How Did King Henry Viii Rise To Power

Following the death of his brother Arthur, Henry VIII received special permission to wed his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. But after many failed attempts at conceiving an heir to the throne, King Henry VIII decided he wanted an annulment. The request was denied by the Pope and eventually Henry VIII was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and, subsequently, so were his subjects. After a complicated power struggle with the Catholic Church, which involved political and theological issues, King Henry VIII split from the Church causing the Church to lose followers. Therefore their power in England, changing England forever. Henry VIII was born on June 28th 1491. He was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. When his brother Prince Arthur died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne of England. He began his rule at the age of eighteen in 1509. Henry was an intelligent young man, he spoke four languages and was also very religious . He even heard three masses a day when he was …show more content…
Soon after his excommunication, Parliamentary action enacting Henry’s decision to break from the Roman Catholic Church followed. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 recognized that the king (Henry VIII) was “the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia.” This schism between the kind and the Pope forced members of the clergy, office holders and other subjects to choose their side. Another effect of the English Protestant Reformation was the Dissolution of Monasteries. This consisted of monastic lands and possessions being broken up and sold off. From the year 1535 to 1536 about 200 smaller monasteries were dissolved followed by the remaining greater houses from 1538 to 1540. Much of the land taken from monasteries was sold to the common people. This made them beneficiaries of the Reformation and therefore less likely to resist it