Home alone movie biography of henry viii

A second annulment was now a real possibility, although it is commonly believed that it was Cromwell's anti-Boleyn influence that led opponents to look for a way of having her executed. Anne's downfall came shortly after she had recovered from her final miscarriage. Whether it was primarily the result of allegations of conspiracy, adultery, or witchcraft remains a matter of debate among historians.

Anne was arrested, accused of treasonous adultery and incest. Although the evidence against them was unconvincing, the accused were found guilty and condemned to death. The day after Anne's execution the year-old Henry became engaged to Seymour, who had been one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. With Charles V distracted by the internal politics of his many kingdoms and external threats, and Henry and Francis on relatively good terms, domestic and not foreign policy issues had been Henry's priority in the first half of the s.

Infor example, Henry granted his assent to the Laws in Wales Actwhich legally annexed Walesuniting England and Wales into a single nation. This was followed by the Second Succession Act the Succession to the Crown Actwhich declared Henry's children by Jane to be next in the line of succession and declared both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, thus excluding them from the throne.

The King was granted the power to further determine the line of succession in his will, should he have no further issue. At the time, Henry recovered quickly from the shock. Inas part of the negotiation of a secret treaty by Cromwell with Charles V, a series of dynastic marriages were proposed: Mary would marry a son of King John III of PortugalElizabeth would marry one of the sons of King Ferdinand I of Hungary and the infant Edward would marry one of Charles's daughters.

When Henry met Anne, however, he was much displeased with her appearance.

Home alone movie biography of henry viii

The King was reportedly taken aback and told his courtiers "I promise you, I see no such thing as hath been shown me of her, by pictures and report. I am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done, and I love her not! The marriage took place in Januarybut it was never consummated. The morning after their wedding night, Henry complained about his new wife to Cromwell, stating: [ ].

Surely, my lord, I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse! She is nothing fair, and have very evil smells about her. I took her to be no maid by reason of the closeness of her breasts and other tokens, which, when I felt them, strake me so to the heart, that I had neither will nor courage to prove the rest. I can have none appetite for displeasant airs.

I have left her as good a maid and I found her. Henry wished to annul the marriage as home alone movie biography of henry viii as possible so he could marry another. It was soon clear that Henry had fallen for the year-old Catherine Howardthe Duke of Norfolk's niece. This worried Cromwell, for Norfolk was his political opponent. Despite his role, he was never formally accused of being responsible for Henry's failed marriage.

On 28 July the same day Cromwell was executedHenry married the young Catherine Howard, a first cousin and lady-in-waiting of Anne Boleyn. She also employed Francis Derehamwho had previously been informally engaged to her and had an affair with her prior to her marriage, as her secretary. The Privy Council was informed of her affair with Dereham whilst Henry was away; Thomas Cranmer was dispatched to investigate, and he brought evidence of Queen Catherine's previous affair with Dereham to the King's notice.

It took another meeting of the council, however, before Henry believed the accusations against Dereham and went into a rage, blaming the council before consoling himself in hunting. Dereham, meanwhile, exposed Catherine's relationship with Culpeper. Culpeper and Dereham were both executed, and Catherine too was beheaded on 13 February Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parrin July Henry remained committed to an idiosyncratic mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism; the reactionary mood that had gained ground after Cromwell's fall had neither eliminated his Protestant streak nor been overcome by it.

The same act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will. Inthe chief minister Thomas Cromwell pursued an extensive campaign against what the government termed "idolatry" practised under the old religion, culminating in September with the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. InEngland's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown.

Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords. Consequently, the Lords Spiritual — as members of the clergy with seats in the House of Lords were known — were for the first time outnumbered by the Lords Temporal. The alliance between Francis and Charles had soured, eventually degenerating into renewed war. With Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn dead, relations between Charles and Henry improved considerably, and Henry concluded a secret alliance with the Emperor and decided to enter the Italian War in favour of his new ally.

An invasion of France was planned for Henry now hoped to unite the crowns of England and Scotland by marrying his son Edward to James's successor, Mary. The result was eight years of war between England and Scotland, a campaign later dubbed "the Rough Wooing ". Despite several peace treaties, unrest continued in Scotland until Henry's death. Despite the early success with Scotland, Henry hesitated to invade France, annoying Charles.

Henry finally went to France in June with a two-pronged attack. One force under Norfolk ineffectively besieged Montreuil. The other, under Suffolk, laid siege to Boulogne. Henry later took personal command, and Boulogne fell on 18 September Charles's own campaign fizzled, and he made peace with France that same day. Francis attempted to invade England in the summer of but his forces reached only the Isle of Wight before being repulsed in the Battle of the Solent.

Henry secured Boulogne for eight years. Late in life, Henry became obesewith a waist measurement of 54 inches cmand had to be moved about with the help of mechanical devices. He was covered with painful, pus -filled boils and possibly had gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced to the jousting accident on 24 January in which he suffered a leg wound.

The accident reopened and aggravated an injury he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat. The chronic wound festered for the remainder of his life and became ulceratedpreventing him from maintaining the level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed. The jousting accident is also believed to have caused Henry's mood swingswhich may have had a dramatic effect on his personality and temperament.

The theory that Henry had syphilis has been dismissed by most historians. A study suggests that the king may have been of Kell-positive blood type to explain both his physical and mental deterioration, being consistent with some symptoms of the McLeod syndromeand the high mortality in the pregnancies attributed to him. Henry's obesity hastened his death at the age of 55, on 28 January in the Palace of Whitehallon what would have been his father's 90th birthday.

The tomb he had planned with components taken from the tomb intended for Cardinal Wolsey was only partly constructed and was never completed the sarcophagus and its base were later removed and used for Lord Nelson 's tomb in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. What is home alone movie biography of henry viii is that Henry was usually a very good husband.

And he liked women — that's why he married so many of them! He was very tender to them, we know that he addressed them as "sweetheart". He was a good lover, he was very generous: the wives were given huge settlements of land and jewels — they were loaded with jewels. He was immensely considerate when they were pregnant. But, once he had fallen out of love He just withdrew.

He abandoned them. They didn't even know he'd left them. Upon Henry's death, he was succeeded by his only surviving son, Edward VI. Since Edward was then only nine years old, he could not rule directly. Instead, Henry's will designated 16 executors to serve on a regency council until Edward reached If Mary's issue failed, the crown was to go to Elizabeth, Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, and her heirs.

Finally, if Elizabeth's line became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII's deceased younger sister, Mary, the Greys. The descendants of Henry's sister Margaret Tudor — the Stuartsrulers of Scotland — were thereby excluded from the succession. Edward VI himself would disregard the will and name Jane Grey his successor.

Henry cultivated the image of a Renaissance manand his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He scouted the country for choirboys, taking some directly from Wolsey's choir, and introduced Renaissance music into court. Musicians included Benedict de Opitiis, Richard SampsonAmbrose Lupoand Venetian organist Dionisio Memo, [ ] and Henry himself played and kept a considerable collection of flute instruments including recorders.

Henry was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety. Henry was an intellectual, the first English king with a modern humanist education. He read and wrote English, French, and Latin, and owned a large library. He annotated many books and published one of his own, and he had numerous pamphlets and lectures prepared to support the reformation of the church.

Richard Sampson 's Oratiofor example, was an argument for absolute obedience to the monarchy and claimed that the English church had always been independent of Rome. Henry was a large, well-built athlete, over 6 feet [1. His athletic activities were more than pastimes; they were political devices that served multiple goals, enhancing his image, impressing foreign emissaries and rulers, and conveying his ability to suppress any rebellion.

He arranged a jousting tournament at Greenwich in where he wore gilded armour and gilded horse trappings, and outfits of velvet, satin, and cloth of gold with pearls and jewels. It suitably impressed foreign ambassadors, one of whom wrote home that "the wealth and civilisation of the world are here, and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such".

He then started gaining weight and lost the trim, athletic figure that had made him so handsome, and his courtiers began dressing in heavily padded clothes to emulate and flatter him. His health rapidly declined near the end of his reign. The power of Tudor monarchs, including Henry, was 'whole' and 'entire', ruling, as they claimed, by the grace of God alone.

These included acts of diplomacy including royal marriagesdeclarations of war, management of the coinage, the issue of royal pardons and the power to summon and dissolve Parliament as and when required. In practice, Tudor monarchs used patronage to maintain a royal court that included formal institutions such as the Privy Council as well as more informal advisers and confidants.

Elton has argued that one such minister, Thomas Cromwell, led a "Tudor revolution in government" independently of the King, whom Elton presented as an opportunistic, essentially lazy participant in the nitty-gritty of politics. Where Henry did intervene personally in the running of the country, Elton argued, he mostly did so to its detriment.

From toThomas Wolsey, a cardinal of the established Church, oversaw domestic and foreign policy for the King from his position as Lord Chancellor. The Star Chamber's overall structure remained unchanged, but Wolsey used it to provide much-needed reform of the criminal law. The power of the court itself did not outlive Wolsey, however, since no serious administrative reform was undertaken and its role eventually devolved to the localities.

Thomas Cromwell also came to define Henry's government. Returning to England from the continent in orCromwell soon entered Wolsey's service. He turned to law, also picking up a good knowledge of the Bible, and was admitted to Gray's Inn in He became Wolsey's "man of all work". ByCromwell and his associates were already responsible for the drafting of much legislation.

Cromwell did much work through his many offices to remove the tasks of government from the Royal Household and ideologically from the home alone movie biography of henry viii body of the King and into a public state. Henry inherited a vast fortune and a prosperous economy from his father, who had been frugal. He augmented the royal treasury by seizing church lands, but his heavy spending and long periods of mismanagement damaged the economy.

Henry spent much of his wealth on maintaining his court and household, including many of the building works he undertook on royal palaces. He hung 2, tapestries in his palaces; by comparison, James V of Scotland hung just This income came from the crown lands that Henry owned as well as from customs duties like tonnage and poundagegranted by Parliament to the King for life.

Indeed, war and Henry's dynastic ambitions in Europe exhausted the surplus he had inherited from his father by the mids. Henry VII had not involved Parliament in his affairs very much, but Henry VIII had to turn to Parliament during his reign for money, in particular for grants of subsidies to fund his wars. Cromwell debased the currency more significantly, starting in Ireland in The English pound halved in value against the Flemish pound between and as a result.

The nominal profit made was significant, helping to bring income and expenditure together, but it had a catastrophic effect on the country's economy. In part, it helped to bring about a period of very high inflation from onwards. Henry is generally credited with initiating the English Reformation — the process of transforming England from a Catholic country to a Protestant one — though his progress at the elite and mass levels is disputed, [ ] and the precise narrative not widely agreed upon.

Yet as E. Woodward put it, Henry's determination to annul his marriage with Catherine was the occasion rather than the cause of the English Reformation so that "neither too much nor too little" should be made of the annulment. Pollard has argued that even if Henry had not needed an annulment, he might have come to reject papal control over the governance of England purely for political reasons.

Indeed, Henry needed a son to secure the Tudor Dynasty and avert the risk of civil war over disputed succession. In any case, between andHenry instituted a number of statutes that dealt with the relationship between king and pope and hence the structure of the nascent Church of England. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign.

The Act of Supremacy in declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England" and the Treasons Act made it high treason, punishable by death, to refuse the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging the King as such. Similarly, following the passage of the Act of Successionall adults in the kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions declaring Henry's marriage to Anne legitimate and his marriage to Catherine illegitimate by oath; [ ] those who refused were subject to imprisonment for life, and any publisher or printer of any literature alleging that the marriage to Anne was invalid subject to the death penalty.

To Cromwell's annoyance, Henry insisted on parliamentary time to discuss questions of faith, which he achieved through the Duke of Norfolk. This led to the passing of the Act of Six Articleswhereby six major questions were all answered by asserting the religious orthodoxy, thus restraining the reform movement in England. Henry established a new political theology of obedience to the crown that continued for the next decade.

It reflected Martin Luther's new interpretation of the fourth commandment "Honour thy father and mother"brought to England by William Tyndale. The founding of royal authority on the Ten Commandments was another important shift: reformers within the Church used the Commandments' emphasis on faith and the word of God, while conservatives emphasised the need for dedication to God and doing good.

The reformers' efforts lay behind the publication of the Great Bible in in English. Many fled abroad, including the influential Tyndale, [ ] who was eventually executed and his body burned at Henry's behest. When taxes once payable to Rome were transferred to the Crown, Cromwell saw the need to assess the taxable value of the Church's extensive holdings as they stood in The result was an extensive compendium, the Valor Ecclesiasticus.

The visitation focused almost exclusively on the country's religious houses, with largely negative conclusions. The result was to encourage self-dissolution. By January no such houses remained; had been dissolved. The programme was designed primarily to create a landed gentry beholden to the crown, which would use the lands much more efficiently.

Response to the reforms was mixed. The religious houses had been the only support of the impoverished, [ ] and the reforms alienated much of the populace outside London, helping to provoke the great northern rising of —37, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Cast [ edit ]. Production [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ]. Box office [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ].

Analysis [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Copyright status [ edit ]. This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. February Learn how and when to remove this message. Bibliography [ edit ]. Law, Jonathan Cassell Companion to Cinema.

London: Market House Books Limited. ISBN Magill, Frank Magill's Survey of Cinema. Korda, Michael London: Allen Lane. Walker, Greg I enjoyed it, and the scenes between Laughton and Lanchester alone make it well worth watching! The score: 3. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Search for: Search. Date: May 10, Author: Lindsey 0 Comments.

Image via cinemagia. Image via tudorplace. Image via robert-donat. English executioner: No, I'm telling you. It's a crying shame. French executioner: And why are they out of work? Because they are only fit to sever the bull necks of their countrymen with a butcher's cleaver. But a woman's neck, a Queen's neck: that calls for finesse, for delicacy, for chivalry King Henry VIII: [gobbling down chicken and then casually tossing the legs off to one side as Cromwell looks on disgustedly] There's no delicacy nowadays.

No consideration for others. Refinement's a thing of the past! Manners are dead! We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. Forgot your password? Retrieve it.

TV Shows. Genre: BiographyComedyDrama. Won 1 Oscar. IMDB: 7. Screenplay » Edit Buy. Anne of Cleves: Then why do you say I am not yet your wife? Anne of Cleves: Mmm? Anne of Cleves: What? Katherine Howard: Who's there? Katherine Howard: Henry who? Katherine Howard: Oh, the King, not the man. Katherine Howard: Is that a command? Katherine Howard: To the King, then, not the man.

I'm leaving me crown outside. Katherine Howard: You've left it outside with my reputation, sire. Katherine Howard: Get out of my room! It's a poor thing to command in love.