How the Death of Arthur Tudor, the Prince of Wales, Changed the Course of Caribbean History

Left Image: Arthur, Prince of Wales (1486-1502) by Behard van Orley (oil on panel, c 1500), Royal Collection (https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/search#/4/collection/403444/arthur-prince-of-wales-1486-1502) RCIN 403444. Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository (File: Arthur Prince of Wales c 1500.jpg).

Right Image: King Henry VIII (1491-1547) by Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist (oil on panel, c 1520), National Portrait Gallery, London, Primary Collection NPG 4690, www.npg.org.uk. Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository (File: King Henry VIII c 1520.jpg).

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Benjamin Franklin,The Way to Wealth
Poor Richard’s Almanac (1758)

The Query

While the Spanish and Portuguese were benefiting from their exploration of the oceans, the English were fighting a series of civil wars over control of the English throne. These wars, that became known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), were fought between two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (represented by a red rose) and the House of York (represented by a white rose).

This power struggle came to a head in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field when the army of Henry Tudor defeated the army of King Richard III. Richard died on the battlefield and Henry claimed the throne of England and the Lordship of Ireland as King Henry VII. He married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and sole heir of King Edward IV, thereby uniting the rival claims and ending the Wars of the Roses. The two roses were combined to form the Tudor rose.

Henry VII and Elizabeth of York had seven children.

King Henry VII reigned for nearly twenty-four years. His foreign policy was to maintain peace and his domestic policy was to create economic prosperity. He entered into a number of treaties and trade agreements to further his goals. He stabilized the government’s finances by creating a financial council that created and collected new taxes. Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson, two of the most powerful men on this council, became symbols of the financial overreaching that was prevalent under Henry VII reign.

Three of Henry and Elizabeth’s children lived into adulthood, Margaret, Henry and Mary, and their average lifespan was forty-seven years. If Arthur, the eldest son, had been living at the time his father died, 1509, he would have been twenty-three and under the rules of male primogeniture would have inherited the throne of England and the lordship of Ireland. He would have died in 1533. He would have been king for twenty-four years: 1509-1533. If Arthur had neither left an heir nor had created a binding document that specified a royal succession, his younger brother, Henry, still would have succeeded to the throne of England and lordship of Ireland as Henry VIII. Henry’s reign, however, would have been fourteen (1533-1547), rather than thirty-eight years (1509-1547).

This article chronicles the events during the reign of King Henry VIII and focuses on the twenty-four years that Henry might not have been king if his older brother, Arthur, had lived. After the chronology, this article projects what the reign of Henry VIII had on the history of the Caribbean a century or two later.

Background

The Years When Henry VII Was King: 1485-1509

Arthur was born at 1:00 am on September 20, 1486, a year after his father had defeated King Richard III to conclude the Wars of the Roses. At the time of his birth, Arthur’s father was twenty-eight and his mother nineteen. Because Arthur's mother, Elizabeth of York, was the sole heir of King Edward IV, the king of England and lord of Ireland, Arthur’s birth brought legitimacy to the Tudor ascension to the crown of England. His birth signified the conflict between the Lancasters and the Yorks was finally over and England could move on. Appropriately, he was named after the legendary king, Arthur of Camelot.

Arthur was a skilled pupil. His education included grammar, poetry, rhetoric, ethics, history, and Latin. He read Homer, Virgil, Cicero and a wide assortment of historical works. He danced and was an accomplished archer. He was studious, thoughtful and reserved. Although he was a pale youth who never appeared in robust health, he was seen as the great hope for a Tudor dynasty.

When Arthur was three, his father arranged with King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile that Arthur, the Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the English throne, would marry their youngest daughter, Catherine (Catherine of Aragon, also often spelled with a K, Katherine).

  The marriage would create an alliance between England and the dominant kingdoms of Spain, Castile and Aragon, against France. When Arthur was eleven, he was formally betrothed to Catherine.

Catherine was born on December 16, 1485, in Castile. She could trace her ancestry back to England. Catherine’s mother was Isabella I of Castile, her grandmother was Isabella of Portugal, and her great grandfather was John Constable of Portugal, her great, great grandmother was Phillippa of Lancaster, and her great, great, great grandmother was Blanche of Lancaster, a member of the English kingdom’s wealthiest and most powerful peer, Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Blanche was the first wife of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, the mother of King Henry IV, and the grandmother of King Henry V of England. Catherine was a third cousin once removed of her soon to be father-in-law, King Henry VII of England and Lord of Ireland, and fourth cousin of her soon to be mother-in-law, Elizabeth of York.

Catherine was born during a time when her mother’s army, the army of Castile, was driving the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula. On the second of January 1492, just after Catherine had turned seven, the army of Castile received the surrender of Muhammad XII of Granada (King Boabdil) ending Muslim rule in the south and completing the Reconquista, the series of Christian campaigns to recapture the territory the Muslims (Moors) occupied from the early eighth century. Her mother and father then issued the Alhambra Decree giving Jews four months to either convert to Catholicism or leave any territory they controlled.

Later that year, her mother would fund Columbus’ venture to seek the East Indies by sailing west across the Atlantic. Columbus would make four voyages and claim the new world for the kingdom of Castile.

Castile, by sailing west, and Portugal, by sailing south, did not have competing interests over land bordering on the Atlantic. Ferdinand and Isabella sought to preserve Castile’s claims to the new world and turned to Pope Alexander VI, a Spanish pope, to support their claims. He issued a bull that divided the world by drawing a line from pole to pole down the Atlantic Ocean. Castile received land west of this line (the Americas less Brazil); Portugal received land east of this line (west Africa and Brazil). The formalities became the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Catherine was now nine.

Also in 1494, Pope Alexander VI, in recognition of Isabella and Ferdinand’s defense of the Catholic faith within their kingdoms, officially bestowed upon them the title “Catholic King and Queen.”

The Spanish proceeded to settle the four largest islands in the Caribbean Sea—Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico—and began developing sugar plantations. The smaller islands were ignored.

Meanwhile, Catherine was being educated by a tutor who was a clerk in Holy Orders. She studied arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. She had an affinity for language and learned to speak, read and write Castilian Spanish and Latin, and spoke French and Greek. She was taught music, dancing, drawing, good manners and court etiquette. She received lessons in the domestic skills of the day: cooking, embroidery, lace-making, needlepoint, sewing, spinning and weaving. Catherine’s strong religious upbringing led to her commitment to her Roman Catholic faith.

Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). Engraving by W.H. Mote (1803-1871) after an illustration by J.W. Wright from Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England (c 1515). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository (File: Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England in her Youth.jpg).

Although Catherine and Arthur had been communicating by letter in Latin, Catherine, now sixteen, and Arthur, fifteen, would soon be of an age to meet and marry.

Columbus had completed three of his four voyages when Catherine sailed from Spain in 1501. Her entourage included the 3rd Count of Cabra, the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, the bishop of Mallorca and a number of her African attendants. She must have been well aware of the world to the west across the sea.

  Catherine met Arthur on November 4th and they were married ten days later. She added Princess of Wales to her titles of Princess of Aragon and Castile.

Arthur and Catherine made a striking couple. He was tall with reddish hair, small eyes, and a high-bridged nose. His contemporaries said he was “extremely handsome.” She was short with long red hair, wide blue eyes, a round face and a fair complexion. She was described as “the most beautiful creature in the world.”

They spent their first month at Tickenhill Manor, Bewdley, Worcestershire, and then moved to Ludlow Castle, Shropshire. In March 1502, Arthur and Catherine contracted the mysterious “sweating sickness.”

“The sweats” was a nasty disease that seemed unique to England. It began as the Wars of the Roses was concluding and ravaged England’s upper class for about a century. The disease began with a feeling of unwell followed by a violent headache, flu-like shivers and aching limbs. A fever with pulse irregularities and cardiac palpitations, dehydration and exhaustion was often followed by death.

Princess Catherine recovered but Arthur, the Prince of Wales, died on April 2, 1502. He was fifteen. They had been married for five months.

At the time Arthur died, his father had received only half of Catherine’s dowry from her father, King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Rather than return Catherine to her family in Spain and return the half-dowry that had been paid, King Henry VII decided that Catherine should stay in England. Isabella and Ferdinand also wanted their daughter to remain in England. Royal children were pawns and it was in Ferdinand and Isabella’s interest to promote an alliance with England.

Princess Catherine had married a prince, the heir apparent to the English throne, and her marriage prospects were better in England than in Spain. Becoming queen of either Castile or Aragon was out of the question. Her older sister, Joanna, would inherit both kingdoms. For a sixteen-year old widow of the Prince of Wales who had aspirations of becoming queen, remaining in England was her most promising option. Catherine, the Dowager Princess of Wales, moved to Durham House in London.

During her first year of widowhood, Catherine was comforted by her mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth of York, but in 1503, the year following Arthur’s death, Elizabeth died from sepsis shortly after childbirth leaving Catherine’s father-in-law, Henry VII, a widower. He thought about taking Catherine as his bride but her father and mother opposed the union; others questioned the legitimacy of their issue. The matter was settled when they agreed that Catherine would marry Arthur’s younger brother, Henry, when he became of age. Henry was twelve at the time.

The year 1503 also saw Henry’s older sister, Margaret Tudor, leave England for Scotland. Arrangements had been made for Margaret to marry James IV, the king of Scotland. The Tudors and the Stuarts would now be linked.

The next year, 1504, Catherine’s mother, Queen Isabella I of Castile, died. Catherine’s older sister, Joanna, succeeded her mother as queen of Castile. The Kingdom of Castile was larger and richer than Catherine’s father’s Kingdom of Aragon. Queen Joanna had the resources to support her younger sister but apparently did not in the style to which Catherine had become accustomed. Catherine wrote her father complaining saying that she had little money and was struggling to cope “as she had to support her ladies-in-waiting as well as herself.”

Also in this year, 1504, William Warham became Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, the latter appointment he held until his death in 1532.

In 1507, King Ferdinand appointed Catherine to serve as Aragon’s ambassador to England. She was the first female ambassador in European history. Although Henry VII and his counselors expected Catherine to be easily manipulated, she proved independent and effectively represented Spanish interests.

The First Years of Henry VIII’s Reign (The Arthur Years): 1509-1533

On April 21, 1509, King Henry VII died and his second eldest son, Henry, age seventeen, became King Henry VIII. Being the second eldest son, it had been assumed he would go into the church. He had studied Latin, French, Italian, theology, and music. He could play the lute and the harpsichord and sing. He excelled at archery, as did his brother, and also excelled at the more physical sports such as jousting, tennis, and hunting. He was tall, six foot one, with auburn hair, a round face and a fair complexion. Henry cut an imposing figure; he was massive—bigger and taller than most around him.

But Henry had a split personality. Winston Churchill described Henry as follows:

To those who saw him often, he seemed almost like two men, one the merry monarch of the hunt and banquet and procession, the friend of children, the patron of every kind of sport, the other the cold, acute observer of the audience chamber or the Council, watching vigilantly, weighing arguments, refusing except under the stress of great events to speak his own mind. . . .

Bursts of restless energy and ferocity were combined with extraordinary patience and diligence. Deeply religious, Henry regularly listened to sermons lasting between one and two hours, and wrote more than one theological treatise of a high standard. He was accustomed to hear five Masses on Church days, and three on other days, served the priest at Mass himself, was never deprived of holy bread and holy water on Sunday, and always did penance on Good Friday. His zeal in theological controversy earned him from the Pope the title of “Defender of the Faith.” An indefatigable worker, he digested a mass of dispatches, memoranda, and plans each day without the help of his secretary. He wrote verses and composed music. Profoundly secretive in public business, he chose as his advisers men for the most part of the meanest origin . . . . Like his father he distrusted the hereditary nobility, preferring the discreet council of men without a wide circle of friends.

Early in his reign he declared, “I will not allow anyone to have it in his power to govern me.” (Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, The New World, 30-31 [Dorset Press, NY 1956])

  On June 11, 1509, less than two months of his father’s death, Henry married Catherine. He was a few days short of his eighteenth birthday. Catherine, now twenty-three, was Queen Catherine of England, a position she had aspired to from the time she was three.

When Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509, he inherited only about seven small warships and no standing navy. As the need arose, a fleet would be assembled for specific campaigns or actions and then disbanded. Within seven years, Henry had two dozen warships built in England and had purchased additional warships from Italian shipbuilders and from the Hanseatic League.

Henry also inherited his father’s policies of isolation and taxation and his father’s paranoia concerning the Yorks and the Scots on England’s northern border but foremost in his father’s mind was his determination that there be a Tudor dynasty.

Young King Henry found in his father-in-law, the king of Aragon, a man thirty-nine years his senior, a person with experience in being king, a king who was active in European politics and a person with whom he could consult. Henry was to discover that his new father-in-law was also cunning and could not be trusted.

Like his father, the new king was determined to sire a male heir to his throne and perpetuate the Tudor dynasty. Catherine’s pregnancies, however, did not go well. On January 31, 1510, her first pregnancy, at age twenty-five, ended with the birth of a stillborn daughter.

Meanwhile, the new king was distancing himself from his father’s reign. On August 10, 1510, he had Edmund Dudley executed for constructive treason. Dudley had been one of his father’s financial ministers and he was a symbol of the financial overreaching that was synonymous with his father’s reign. A week larter, August 17th, Richard Empson was executed. Empson was another of his father’s financial ministers.

On January 1, 1511, less than a year after the birth of her first stillborn child, Catherine gave birth to a son, Henry, a Tudor heir to the throne. Catherine was twenty-six and Henry was nineteen. Prince Henry was christened on January 5th. “The royal couple and their couriers were overwhelmed with joy and gladness.” The joy changed to great sadness when Prince Henry, the heir apparent to the throne, died suddenly on February 22nd. The cause of death was unknown.

The year 1511 was about the year when the twenty-year old king began having an affair with Elizabeth (Bessie) Blount, a maid-of-honor to Queen Catherine.

Prior to 1511, Henry had been advised by his personal secretary, Richard Foxe. He had negotiated a number of treatises on behalf of Henry VII where the objective was peace, not war. But by 1511, Thomas Wolsey was rising in power and Foxe’s influence was waning. English foreign policy was becoming more aggressive, especially toward France. England joined the Holy League with Spain and Venice against France and Scotland.

In June 1512, England landed 10,000 men at Hondarribian in the Basque. These troops remained at Bayonne until October 1512 supporting Henry’s father-in-law’s action in the Kingdom of Navarre. England was no longer an isolationist nation.

In November 1512, Maximilian I, the head of the House of Habsburg and the Holy Roman Emperor, joined the Holy League.

Although Henry’s father had killed King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to seize the crown of England from the House of York, Henry perceived a continuing threat to his Tudor monarchy. Richard had named his nephew Edmund de la Pole as his successor. De la Pole was a member of the York branch of the House of Plantagenet and was the next in line to the throne after the death of his uncle, King Richard III. De la Pole was a legitimate threat to the Tudor monarchy. On April 30, 1513, Henry had Edmund de la Pole executed.

On June 11, 1513, Henry appointed Catherine Regent in England with the titles Governor of the Realm and Captain General. On June 30th, Henry landed at Calais to lead his 40,000 man army into France and he was joined by Maximillion.

On August 16, 1513, Henry and Maximilian routed a body of French cavalry. This became known as the Battle of the Spurs (Guinegate). After Therouanne fell, Henry besieged and took Tournai.

France and Scotland were allies and France had Scotland invade England to take pressure off the English attack in France. Scotland’s 50,000 man army led by King James IV, Henry's brother-in-law, invaded England. On September 3, 1513, Catherine ordered the raising of an army in the midland counties. These troops were led by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. On September 8th, Catherine, in full armor and eight or nine months pregnant at the time, rode north to address her troops. On September 9th, King James IV was killed in the Battle of Flodden, the decisive battle that marked the failed invasion. James was succeeded by his son, James V, age seventeen months. Although Catherine’s ride north was heralded as a great success, it may have led to her giving birth to a stillborn son on September 17th.

King Ferdinand and Venice abandoned Henry in France so Henry and the Pope made peace with France and Henry returned to England. His father-in-law was not the ally Henry thought he had.

Catherine’s pregnancies continued. During 1514, she was pregnant again and in November or December her fourth pregnancy ended with the birth of yet another stillborn son.

After the death of her husband, King Louis XII of France, Mary Tudor returned to England to marry the king’s best friend, Charles Brandon.

In 1515, William Warham, an isolationist from Henry VII’s administration, resigned as the Lord Chancellor. He was succeeded by Thomas Wolsey, a rapidly rising star. Warham resigned because he disliked the king’s aggressive foreign policy.

Finally on February 18, 1516, Catherine, now thirty, gave birth to a daughter who was christened, Mary. Mary became very close to her mother and she received an exceptional education, an education heavily influenced by the Catholic religion.

On June 23, 1516, King Ferdinand II of Aragon died. Catherine’s older sister, Joanna, succeeded her father to the throne. Joanna was now Queen of the Kingdom of Castile and Queen of the Kingdom of Aragon. No longer did the king of England have his Spanish friend, mentor, confidant, and advisor. Catherine was now without her mother-in-law, mother, and father. She was now alone on the islands called the British Isles but she was the Queen of England.

In Germany in 1517, an ordained priest, Martin Luther, posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of a church thereby beginning the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church was being challenged and this challenge would sweep across Europe.

In early 1517, Catherine was pregnant again. During this pregnancy, Henry continued his affair with Elizabeth (Bessie) Blount, a maid-of-honor to Catherine. Bessie’s father, Sir John Blount, was a servant to the Royal family and he had accompanied King Henry to France in 1513 when the king waged war against Louis XII of France. Henry’s eight-year affair with Bessie was his longest. In around September 1518, Bessie Blount became pregnant with his child.

On November 10, 1518, Catherine’s sixth pregnancy ended with the birth of another stillborn daughter. Catherine was now thirty-three.

On June 15, 1519, Bessie gave birth to a son who was named Henry Fitzroy. Fitzroy was an English surname that was derived from the Norman French term for “son of a king.” Henry Fitzroy was the only illegitimate child that King Henry recognized. The king may have thought that the child proved he could have a male heir. There was some discussion that the king would legitimize Fitzroy so he could be heir to the throne but the king never did.

With the birth of Bessie’s son, Henry’s affair with Bessie ended and he began an affair with Mary Boleyn. Henry never publicly recognized either Bessie Blount or Mary Boleyn as his mistress.

The king went on to have a number of mistresses, some confirmed, others only alleged. The confirmed mistresses included Mary Shelton, Anne Boleyn’s first cousin. Except for Bessie Blount, the king’s affairs were brief.

In 1519, on the other side of the Atlantic, Hermán Cortés sailed from Cuba to conquer the Aztec and Mayan Empires in Mexico. This would be followed by Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru. These conquests led to the discovery of silver mines in Potosi (modern Bolivia) followed by silver and gold mines in modern Mexico and Peru. Cartagena, Colombia, Porto Bello, Panama, and Vera Cruz, Mexico, were to become important ports for the shipment of silver and gold to Spain. The Kingdom of Castile was gaining great wealth while England was remaining relatively poor.

Between June 7th to the 24th of 1520, a summit that became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold was held between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France at Balinghem, between Andres in France and Guines in the English Pale of Calais. This lavish display was arranged to increase the bond of friendship between the two kings following the Anglo-French Treaty of 1514. England was still a lesser power in Europe when compared to France and the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire. The event drew its name from the vast amount of fabric woven with silk and gold thread. Relations between England and France deteriorated soon after this event when Cardinal Wolsey arranged an alliance with Charles V, The Holy Roman Emperor, who declared war on France the next year. That began the Italian Wars of 1521-1526 with The Holy Roman Empire, Spain and England against France, the Republic of Venice and Swiss mercenaries.

From 1521 onward, Henry had an occasional bout of malaria. Malaria was “endemic in the English marshlands at that time.” C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later: Henry VIII, Leg Ulcers and the Course of History, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, December 1, 2009 @ 102.

Henry was still paranoid as to the York’s challenge to his throne, so on May 17, 1521, he had Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, executed. The Duke was one of the few peers with substantial Plantagenet blood and he maintained a number of connections with his extended family. He was accused of listening to prophecies of the king’s death and intending to kill the king.

Early 1522, Anne Boleyn returned to England from France to marry her Irish cousin, James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond. The marriage plans were broken-off and Anne became the maid-of-honor to the king’s wife, Catherine of Aragon. At this time, Anne’s older sister, Mary, was having an affair with the king. The rumor was that Henry was the father of one of Mary’s children, Catherine Carey who was born in 1522.

On February 4, 1523, Thomas Ruthall, a counselor to Henry VII and a leading counselor to Henry VIII, died. He, Richard Foxe and Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, negotiated a peace with France in 1510 and he was made Lord Privy Seal in 1516. Ruthall participated in a number of diplomatic negotiations for Henry VIII. He was Bishop of Durham from 1509 until his death. He was succeeded by Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey was continuing to gain power.

On March 10, 1524, Henry was involved in a jousting accident. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, the king’s friend and brother-in-law through his third wife who was Mary Tudor, Henry’s younger sister, was set to joust against the king. Brandon was one of the king’s favorite jousting opponents because he could match the king's skill and athletic ability. Henry had designed a new set of armor and this was his first opportunity to try it out. The two horses and riders charged towards each other with lances poised when the crowd shouted “Hold, Hold!” Through their armor and the galloping hooves, neither rider heard the crowd and continued to gallop forward. It was evident to all except for the king and Brandon that king had forgotten to lower his visor. To everyone’s horror, Brandon’s lance struck Henry on the inside of his helmet sending splinters all over his face. Henry claimed he was not injured although he suffered from migraines from then on.

For the first sixteen years of marriage, although Henry was having affairs, he treated Catherine with respect and affection but by 1525, he had become dissatisfied with his marriage to her. She was approaching forty and well beyond child bearing age. Their marriage had produced only one living heir and she was a female. There was no established precedent for a woman to be on the throne of England.

In 1525, Henry gave FitzRoy, now age six, his own residence in London. Then on June 18th, FitzRoy was elevated to Earl of Nottingham and then to Duke of Richmond and Somerset. FitzRoy would now be referred to in all formal correspondence as the “right high and noble Prince Henry, Duke of Richmond and Somerset.” He would be called Richmond and raised like a prince.

Early in the next year, February or March 1526, Henry began to pursue Anne Boleyn. She was twenty-five. Henry offered Anne the position of public maitresse-en-titre but Anne refused to be Henry’s mistress. She demanded to be his Queen. Needing to sire a male heir, Henry sought to have his marriage to Catherine annulled. When Pope Clement VII refused to grant the annulment, Henry broke from the Catholic Church and created a church, the Church of England, where he would be the supreme head. Early in his reign, Henry had declared “I will not allow anyone to have it in his power to govern me.” Supra, Churchill, A History of the English Speaking People. And so began the English Reformation.

Mary’s relationship with her father began to strain when his desire for a male heir increased, his open rejection of her mother became more obvious, and his infatuation with Anne Boleyn intensified. Anthony Ruggiero, Queen Mary IP: Journey to the Throne, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Queen-Mary-1/

In 1527, Henry injured his left foot playing tennis. His foot swelled so he began to wear a single loose black velvet slipper. This prompted a new fashion among courtiers. Also in 1527, Henry was laid up at Canterbury with a ‘sorre legge’, the first record of a wound thought to be an ulcer, possibly on his thigh. The ulcer healed but Henry was now subject to painful leg problems throughout his life.

On February 29, 1528, Patrick Hamilton, a Scottish churchman and an early Protestant Reformer in Scotland was executed in St. Andrews. He had been tried as heretic by Archbishop James Beaton, found guilty and handed over to the secular authorities to be burned at the stake. He became the first of eleven Protestant martyrs of the Scottish Reformation.

A rise to power when the king was Henry VIII had its risks. In 1529, Thomas Wolsey, who had served Henry for fourteen years as Henry’s Lord Chancellor, was stripped of his government office and property. Wolsey’s failure to secure an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon led to his downfall and arrest. The next year, November 29, 1530, Wolsey, under great distress, was taken ill as he was traveling to London to face the charge of treason. He died at Leicester without reaching London.

In around 1530, John Calvin, a French reformer, minister, and author broke from the Catholic Church. Calvin fled from France to Switzerland where he published in 1536, the first edition of Institutes. John Knox was a leader of the Calvinist movement in Scotland that led to the Scottish Kirk, the Church of Scotland.

Meanwhile, Catherine continued to refuse to recognize the divorce and that Henry was the head of the Church of England. She considered herself the king’s rightful wife and queen. Henry acknowledged her only as dowager princess of Wales. In late August 1531, Catherine was told that the king did not care to see her again and that she should retire to Wolsey’s former palace at Moor, in Hertfordshire, and that she was banished from his court. She lived the remainder of her life being moved from castle to castle.

On May 16, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord High Chancellor, a position he had held since October 1529. His resignation was a protest against royal supremacy in spiritual affairs. Although More said that Henry was the supreme leader of the Church of England, he could not take the oath demanded by the Supremacy Act because it included a statement against the pope. Refusal to take the oath was an act of treason and Sir Thomas was taken to the Tower of London.

On August 22, 1532, William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died. During the early years of Henry’s reign, Warham was an important advisor to the king but he gradually withdrew more into the background although he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 and assisted Wolsey in 1527 as assessor during the secret inquiry into the validity of the king’s marriage to Catherine. One by one, the old guard was being replaced.

With Catherine being banished, Henry needed a new queen. To Anne’s credit, she had kept the king waiting. Finally, on November 14, 1532, Henry and Anne were married in secret ceremony. Two months later, January 25, 1533, they were married in a formal ceremony.

In March 1533, Henry had Parliament pass an Act declaring Mary, his daughter by Catherine, illegitimate thereby removing her from the line of succession to the throne. [First Succession Act, March 1534.] Mary could hardly be legitimate if her mother’s marriage to the king was invalid.

On May 23, 1533, Henry’s marriage to Catherine was declared invalid and on May 28th, Henry and Anne’s marriage was declared valid.

On June 23, 1533, Henry’s younger sister, Mary Tudor, with whom he had shared a close friendship as a child, died. When Mary was eighteen, she was required to marry King Louis XII of  France. He was fifty-two and she, his third wife, was eighteen. King Louis died less than three months later. Mary returned to England and married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Mary was Charles’ third wife. She died at age thirty-seven.

On September 7, 1733, Anne Boleyn gave birth to a daughter. She was christened Elizabeth. In December, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary, now seventeen, was placed in the household of Elizabeth, her younger half-sister.

On December 3, 1533, Thomas Cranmer, a leader of the English Reformation, was installed as the Archbishop of Canterbury. He replaced William Warham. Cranmer helped build the case for the annulment of the King’s marriage to Catherine. During his tenure as Archbishop, the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England were established.

The Later Years of Henry VIII’s Reign: 1534-1547

In 1534, Henry Cromwell became the chief minister to King Henry VIII. Cromwell was one of the most powerful proponents of the English Reformation, the creator of English governance, and helped engineer the king’s annulment from Catherine of Aragon.

In 1534, the king had Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy which deferred the right to himself to be the supreme head of the Church of England, thereby severing ecclesiastical links with the Roman Catholic Church. Mary refused to take the oath the Act required. Although this was an act of treason, she could have been arrested and burned at the stake. The king relented and she was pardoned. Mary was banished from appearing at his court.

On April 20, 1534, Henry had Elizabeth Barton, known as “the Nun of Kent,” the Holy Maid of London,” “the Holy Maid of Kent,” and later “the Mad Maid of Kent,” executed for treason. She was an English Catholic Nun who prophesied against the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn.

In 1534, the gold and silver from the Inca treasury of Cuzco arrived in Seville and there was enough precious metal to upset the money markets in Europe and the Mediterranean. Spain was becoming wealthy.

During Christmas 1534, Anne’s second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

On June 22, 1535, Henry had John Fisher executed. Fisher was a Catholic bishop, cardinal, and theologian. He was executed because he refused to accept Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England. On July 6, 1535, Henry had Sir Thomas More executed. More also refused to take the oath under the Supremacy Act that would recognise Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England.

In 1535, Anne was pregnant with a son but this pregnancy too ended in a miscarriage.

“By the age of 44 years [1535], Henry was already significantly obese, reportedly requiring a hoist in order to mount his horse, but in good enough health to continue with his favorite sporting pursuits.” Supra, C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later.

During the year 1536, Henry’s life and reign dramatically changed. On January 7th, Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, the person who was by his side from the beginning of his reign, the person he trusted with his kingdom when he went to France in 1513 to lead his troops and the person who raised an army to defend England against Scotland’s invasion in 1513, died at Kimbolton Castle, Cambridgeshire, from cancer. She was 50.

The next day, January 8th, Henry and Anne received the news of Catherine’s death and were overjoyed. The following day, they wore yellow, a symbol of joy and celebration in England, a symbol of mourning in Spain. They celebrated Catherine’s death with festivities.

Catherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral with the ceremony due to her position as a Dowager Princess of Wales, and not a queen. Henry did not attend the funeral and forbade Mary to attend. Wikipedia, Catherine of Aragon (last edited Dec. 17, 2022).

About two weeks later, January 24th, Henry was involved in a devastating jousting accident at Greenwich. The report was he was knocked from his horse and his horse, fully armored, landed on top of him. Henry was unconscious or at least he could not speak for two hours. Many thought he would die. Queen Anne was distraught and some said the severity of Henry’s injury caused her on January 29th, to miscarry. Anne’s fourth pregnancy was a male. Rather than show compassion, Henry chastised Anne for not giving him a son. This was their last meeting. Meanwhile, Henry had begun paying attention to Jane Seymour, Anne’s maid-of-honor.

Henry initially recovered from his accident but this was the last time Henry participated in his favorite sport, jousting. Without his daily exercise, Henry began to put on weight. His accident exacerbated his problem with his legs. From the time he was young, Henry and others admired his calves. To call attention to them, he wore compression garters above his calves and below his knees. These garters restricted his blood flow.

Although the wounds to his legs initially healed, the ulceration soon reappeared and it was unpleasant and difficult to manage. When the ulcers appeared, they were purulent and seeping and Henry was advised to curtail his travel.

 [S]uperficial healing of the fistulous communications between abscess cavities and skin inevitably led to episodes of sepsis and bouts of fever: ‘and for ten to twelve days the humours which had no outlet were like to have stifled him, so that he was sometime without speaking, black in the face and in great danger’. Henry’s physicians attempted to keep these fistulae open to allow drainable of the ‘humours’, often lancing the ulcers with red-hot pokers; the therapy unlikely to have improved the King’s ill-temper. Suspra, C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later.

Whether it was his jousting accident, Anne’s miscarriage, or the constant pain from his legs, Henry’s personality dramatically changed. He became “a despotic, cruel and tyrannical sovereign, vile of temper and cursed by his deteriorating health and his ‘sorre legge.’” Supra, C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later.

Henry approached Thomas Cromwell, his chief minister, about how he could get out of his marriage to his second wife, Anne. By late April, Henry had found a way. On May 2nd, Anne was arrested and charged with adultery, incest, and high treason, and was taken to the Tower of London. A few days laters, she was tried and found guilty by a jury of twenty-seven peers. She was sentenced “to be burnt or beheaded, at the King’s pleasure.” Henry chose beheading. Anne asked not to be beheaded with a common axe but rather, like French nobility, with a sword. Henry brought in an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France. On May 19th, Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, was beheaded by the French headsman with his heavy two-handed sword. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London.

Henry was now rid of Anne. The next day, May 20th, he was betrothed to Jane Seymour and on May 30th they were married.

Soon, tragedy struck again. Two months later, July 23, 1536, Richmond, Henry’s only recognized illegitimate child, died from tuberculosis. He was seventeen.

At the time of Richmond’s death, Henry was having Parliament pass the Second Succession Act that repealed the First Succession Act that had declared Mary illegitimate. The Second Succession Act declared both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, thereby removing both from the line of succession to the throne. The Act also permitted the king to designate his successor. [Second Succession Act, June 1536.]

In about February 1537, Jane Seymour became pregnant. The prediction was that she was carrying the heir to the throne, a boy. On October 12th, she gave birth to a male child. He was christened Edward. The line of succession now had a male heir. Mary and Elizabeth, Edward’s half-sisters were still deemed illegitimate and would not follow their half-brother Edward to the throne.

On October 24, 1537, Queen Jane Seymour died from sepsis.

Jane was the opposite [of Anne], gentile though proud; and Henry spent a happy eighteen months with her. She was the only Queen whom Henry regretted and mourned, and when she died, still aged only twenty-two, immediately after the birth of her first child, the future Edward VI, Henry had her buried with royal honors in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. He himself lies near her. Supra, Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, The New World, 70.

  After the death of Jane Seymour, Henry again focused on the Catholic Church. In 1538, Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister, pursued a campaign against the “idolatry” practice by the Catholic Church. This campaign culminated in September with the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. As a result, on December 17, 1538, Pope Paul III announced the excommunication of King Henry VIII from the Catholic Church.

In March 1539, negotiations for the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves began. Henry was seeking a political alliance with Anne’s brother, William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, the leader of the Protestants of western Germany. Henry sought to strengthen his position against potential attacks from Catholic France and the Holy Roman Empire. 

Anne arrived in England on December 27, 1539, and she became Henry's fourth wife on January 6, 1540. Henry found the reports of her beauty exaggerated and thought her appearance plain. Furthermore, she spoke no English. The marriage was never consummated and the marriage was annulled on July 12, 1540, without Anne being crowned queen consort.

Henry wasted little time in finding a fifth wife. Catherine Howard was the tenth child of her mother, Joyce Culpeper. Catherine’s aunt on her father’s side was Elizabeth Howard, the mother of Anne Boleyn. Therefore, Catherine and Anne were first cousins. Catherine’s uncle was Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, a prominent politician in Henry’s court. Howard was able to secure a place for his niece in the household of the king’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. There Catherine caught the king’s eye and she and Henry were married on July 28, 1540. Henry was forty-nine and Catherine was between fifteen and twenty-one.

Henry had another score to settle. On July 28, 1540, he had Thomas Cromwell executed. Cromwell had been the king’s chief advisor from 1534 but fell from favor when he arranged the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves.

Despite his ulcerated legs and ignoring the advice of his physicians to rest, fearful of a rumoured alliance between Rome, France and Spain with the threat of invasion, Henry personally traveled to the coast to oversee fortifications of the harbours, often spending many hours on horseback. Supra, C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later.

  Henry was not done with the Catholic Church. In 1540, he sanctioned the complete destruction of shrines to saints.

Catherine Howard may have been the prettiest of Henry’s wives but she was the least faithful. On November 23, 1541, she was accused of committing adultery with her distant cousin Thomas Culpeper and stripped of her title as queen. On February 13, 1542, she was beheaded.

In 1542, all the remaining monasteries in England were dissolved and the sale of monastery property added to the royal coffers.

Henry was not satisfied with being lord of Ireland. He wanted to be king. The Crown of Ireland Act 1542 established a personal union between the English and the Irish crowns. Whoever was king of England would be king of Ireland, Henry assumed the title of king of Ireland was now one king with two crowns, king of England and king of Ireland.

On December 14, 1542, James V of Scotland died from injuries he suffered during the Scottish defeat by the English at the Battle of Solway Moors. He was succeeded by his six-day old daughter, Mary, who became known as Mary, Queen of Scots.

As the years passed, Henry’s condition with his legs continued to deteriorate. By 1543, the stench from Henry’s infected ulcers could be noticed several rooms from his presence and he was in constant pain.

On July 12, 1543, Henry married Catherine Parr, his sixth and final wife. This was Catherine’s third marriage. Her mother had been a close friend and attendant of Catherine of Aragon. Upon the death of Catherine Parr’s second husband, she took the opportunity to renew her friendship with the late Queen Catherine’s daughter, Lady Mary. By February 16, 1543, Catherine had established herself as part of Mary’s household where she caught the attention of the king. On July 12, 1543, Catherine Parr married Henry and became queen consort of England and Ireland.

Catherine developed a close relationship with the king’s three children. She was personally involved in Elizabeth’s and Edward’s education.

In 1544, Henry, at the urging of Catherine Parr, had Parliament pass the Third Succession Act reinserting Mary and Elizabeth in the royal line of succession. The Act stated the succession upon his death as Edward and his heirs, Mary and her heirs, and then Elizabeth and her heirs.

Henry, however, did not have Parliament legitimize either Mary or Elizabeth. [Third Succession Act, July 1544].

In 1544, Henry appointed Catherine Parr regent during his absence and left England for France. From July 19th to September 14th, he and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, led Henry’s English troops in the First Siege of Boulogne.

In 1545, halfway across the world, at Potosi, Bolivia, the Spanish discovered the richest silver deposit in the world. If this silver could be shipped to Spain from Cartagena, Columbia, through the Florida Straits, the Windward Passage, or the Mona Passage, Spain would become incredibly rich. In 1545, Spain controlled not only the Spanish Main but all the passages to the Atlantic Ocean.

Although Henry had significantly increased the warships from about the seven that he inherited from his father, it was not until 1546 that he officially created the Royal Navy. England had yet to develop the sea power to challenge Spanish shipping.

By 1546, Henry’s personal activities had been seriously limited although he continued to travel to his estates in the south of England and even to hunt in between periods of ill-health. Towards the end of 1546, Henry was forced to return to Westminster. Unable to walk, he was carried around his palace in a chair.

In late 1546 as Henry was lying on his deathbed, he made his last will which was read and stamped using the “dry stamp.” He repeated the succession as Edward, Mary and Elizabeth and their heirs and added the heirs of his sister Mary’s daughters: Frances Grey, the Duchess of Suffolk, and Eleanor Clifford, the Countess of Cumberland. Henry’s younger sister, Mary, was not listed because she had died in 1533. Mary had married Louis XII, the King of France and he died within three months of their marriage. Mary then married Charles Brandon, the 1st Duke of Suffolk. The heirs of Mary’s daughters were Lady Jane Grey, Lady Katherine Grey, Lady Mary Grey and Lady Margaret Clifford (Margaret Stanley) and they would have been in the line of succession in that order. They were Henry’s great nieces. By referring to the heirs of his younger sister’s daughters, his nieces were excluded as well. They were living at the time he made his will.

Henry’s will did not mention his older sister, Margaret, the Queen of Scotland. She had died in 1541, and no mention was made of Margaret’s heirs. They were also heirs of Margaret’s husband, King James IV, so they were Scottish. By not referencing them, they were excluded. Henry was at constant war with Scotland so he would not have want Scotland to claim England by inheritance.

Even on his deathbed, Henry feared that the Yorks would regain the English throne. On January 19, 1547, he had Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a first cousin to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, executed for treason. The king believed that Henry Howard planned to usurp the crown from the king’s son, the future King Edward IV. Henry Howard was the last known person executed under the reign of Henry VIII.

King Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547, and was succeeded, under the Third Succession Act, by his son Edward, who at the age of nine became King Edward VI of England and Ireland. He was the first English monarch to be raised Protestant. Due to his age, the kingdoms were governed by a regency council. During his reign, he furthered the English Reformation with reforms that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and the Mass and the imposition of compulsory services in English.

King Henry VIII died at age 55 at the Palace of Whitehall, Westminster, England. His grossly swollen legs may represent congestive cardiac failure in an arteriopath and his persistent chronic leg ulcers may have contributed to his death. Supra, C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later. Henry was buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England. He was succeeded to the throne by his son Edward VI whose short reign was followed by the nine-day reign of Lady Jane Gray, who was deposed by Henry’s daughter, Mary, from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Mary would become Queen Mary of England and Ireland and she would persecute the Protestants and attempt to return England to the Catholic Church.

During the thirty-eight year reign of King Henry VIII, between 57,000 and 72,000 people were executed. During the six-year reign of his daughter, Mary, who persecuted Protestants and was known as “Bloody Mary,” fewer than 300 were executed. Her half-sister, Elizabeth, agonized for four months before she signed the execution order for her first-cousin, once removed, Mary, Queen of Scots, to be executed. Although Mary had been held prisoner for nineteen years in various English castles including the Tower of London, Mary and Elizebeth never met.

Portrait of King Henry VIII (1491-1547), After Hans Holbein the Younger (after 1537), Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository (After Hans Hoilbein the Younger - Portrait of Henry VIII - Google Art Project.jpg).

Note: [In] his 20s, [Henry] weighed about 15 stone (210 lbs) with a 32 inch waist and 30 inch chest but by his 50s his waist had increased to 52 inches and, by the time of his death in 1547 at the age of 56 years, he is thought to have weighed about 28 stone (392 lbs). C.R. Chalmers & E.J. Chaloner, 500 Years Later: Henry VIII, Leg Ulcers and the Course of History, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, December 1, 2009 @ 102.

This Portrait is dated “after 1537,” about ten years before the king’s death. This may be a year or so after his 1536 jousting accident and before his weight gain. Also note the garter below his knee showing off his calf.

Henry is known for his initiation of the English Reformation that created the Church of England, as the father of the Royal Navy, and as the husband of six wives, including one that he banished from court and two that he had beheaded. During his reign of thirty-eight years, England was transitioning from the Dark Ages and a period of isolation to the Renaissance. England was beginning to be a player in western Europe.

Winston S. Churchill summarized the reign of King Henry VIII as follows:

Henry’s rule saw many advances in the growth and the character of the English state, but it is a hideous blot upon his record that the reign should be widely remembered for its executions. Two Queen, two of the King’s chief Ministers, a saintly bishop, numerous abbots, monks and many ordinary folk who dared to resist the royal will were put to death. Almost every member of the nobility in whom royal blood ran perished on the scaffold at Henry’s command. Roman Catholic and Calvinist alike were burnt for heresy and religious treason. . . . He succeeded in maintaining order amid the turmoil of Europe without army or police, and he imposed on England a discipline which was not attained elsewhere. A century of religious wars went by without Englishmen taking up arms to fight their fellow-countrymen for their faith. We must credit Henry’s reign with laying the basis of sea-power, with a revival of Parliamentary institutions, with giving the English Bible to the people, and above all with strengthening a popular monarchy under which succeeding generations worked together for the greatness of England while France and Germany were racked with internal strife. (Supra, Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, The New World, 84-85.)

How the First Twenty-Four Years of the
Reign of Henry VIII Changed the Course of Caribbean History

Had Arthur, the first son of King Henry VII, lived to inherit the throne of England and the lordship of Ireland, he and his bride, Catherine of Aragon, would have had the opportunity to perpetuate the Tudor dynasty. But that was not to be. With Arthur’s death, his younger brother, Henry, became the heir apparent to the throne and he would have that opportunity. The Tudor dynasty would run through Henry rather than Arthur.

Henry became King Henry VIII of England and Lord of Ireland when he was seventeen. He shared his father’s determination to perpetuate the Tudor dynasty with male heirs. During the first year of their marriage, Catherine of Aragon had her first sillborn birth, a girl. After six births with only one surviving child, a girl, Henry, a devout Roman Catholic, sought an annulment of his marriage. The Pope denied Henry’s request so Henry broke from the Papacy and formed his own church, the Church of England, with himself as head. England was no longer Catholic like France, Spain and Portugal. It was now Protestant.

Henry was now free to marry his next five wives. Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, gave him his second daughter, Elizabeth. Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, gave him a son, Edward.     

     When Edward, Mary and Elizabeth failed to produce an heir to the thrones,  the English Parliament turned to the heirs of Margaret Tudor, Henry’s older sister, who had married King James IV of Scotland. Although they were Catholic, their great great grandson, James VI of Scotland, was Protestant and he became the first Stuart king of England as James I. He was called James VI and I.

Under James VI and I, England began to colonize North America beginning with Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, Bermuda in the Atlantic in 1612, the Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay, in 1620, and St. Kitts in the Caribbean in 1623. Colonization continued under Charles I with the smaller Caribbean island of Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, and Tortola. Charles had his problems with the Parliamentary Army and was beheaded in 1649 when the monarchy was disrupted in favor of the Commonwealth. In 1655, one hundred and eight years after the death of Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland sent a force to the Caribbean to capture Hispaniola but when that failed, rather than come back empty handed to the wrath of Cromwell, they captured Jamaica from Spain. This island proved to be a prize because it was south of Cuba, southwest of Hispaniola, and on the shipping lanes going through the Westward Passage. Port Royal, Jamaica, soon became an English trading center and openly welcomed privateers and pirates from around the world.

In 1545, Spain discovered silver first at Potosi, in modern Bolivia, and then in Zacatecas, Mexico. The harbors of Cartagena, Columbia, Porto Bello, Panama, and Vera Cruz, Mexico, became active shipping ports to and from Spain. What better place for English privateers and pirates to wait for Spanish silver or European luxury items than the bottlenecks of the shipping lanes: the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba, the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola and the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.

The English development of the Caribbean occurred under the Stuart dynasty. One can only wonder whether the English would have played the same role in the Caribbean had they remained Catholic under Arthur and the Tudor dynasty had gone through him rather than his younger brother, Henry.

 And all for Henry as King

Author’s Note: “How the Death of Arthur Tudor, the Prince of Wales, Changed the Course of Caribbean History,” is the ninth blog in this series posted in the website “thepiratehaven.com.” Additional blogs will be posted from time to time.

 maf 1/16/23