The Tudors

On 22 August 1485, on a field at Bosworth in the heart of England, a long and bloody struggle for the crown — the Wars of the Roses — came to its end. King Richard III was killed in the fighting, and a relatively unknown nobleman, Henry Tudor, picked up the crown and became Henry VII. To unite the warring families, he married Elizabeth of York. A new dynasty had begun, but it stood on fragile ground: only a steady line of sons could keep it safe.

Henry VII's second son came to the throne in 1509 as Henry VIII — young, athletic, clever, and convinced of his own greatness. Within weeks of becoming king he married Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of the powerful Spanish monarchs and the widow of his own elder brother, Arthur, who had died young. For years the marriage seemed strong. But it carried one quiet failure that would grow into a national crisis: of all their children, only a daughter, Mary, survived.

To Henry, a daughter was not enough. No woman, he believed, had ever held England together as a ruling queen, and he feared that without a son the Tudor line — and the peace it had brought — would collapse back into civil war. As the years passed and Catherine grew older, his patience ran out. It was high time, he decided, that he had a son. And if this marriage could not give him one, then he would find a marriage that could.

Two things now pulled Henry in the same direction. He had fallen for Anne Boleyn, a sharp, ambitious young woman at his court who refused to become merely his mistress — she would be his wife and queen, or nothing. And he had convinced himself that his marriage to Catherine had been a sin from the start, because she had first been his brother's wife. The solution, he decided, was simple: the Pope must annul the marriage, freeing him to marry Anne. This long campaign became known as "the King's Great Matter."

It was not simple at all. The Pope, Clement VII, could not easily grant it: Catherine's own nephew was Charles V, the most powerful ruler in Europe, whose armies had recently swept into Rome itself. To annul the marriage would be to insult Charles, and Clement would not risk it. Henry's chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, was sent to win the Pope over, and failed — a failure that cost him everything, his power and very nearly his life.

Henry would rather break with Rome itself than give up Anne and his hope of a son. And so, advised by new men such as Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, he took a step no English king had ever taken. If the Pope would not free him, then England would simply stop obeying the Pope.

Events moved quickly. In January 1533, Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn, who was already pregnant. That spring, Archbishop Cranmer declared the marriage to Catherine invalid, and in June Anne was crowned queen. Then, in 1534, the Act of Supremacy made Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The thousand-year tie to the Pope in Rome was cut. England had taken its first great step into the Reformation, and to deny the king's new authority was now treason, punishable by death.

But the marriage that had caused all this could not save itself. In September 1533, Anne gave birth — not to the longed-for son, but to a daughter, Elizabeth. More pregnancies followed and failed. Within three years Henry's love had curdled into impatience and suspicion, and his eye had already moved to another woman, Jane Seymour. Anne's enemies at court closed in.

In May 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested and charged with treason and adultery — charges most historians now believe were invented to be rid of her. She was tried, condemned, and on 19 May 1536 beheaded within the walls of the Tower of London. Henry would marry four more times in his search for security. Yet history played a quiet trick on him. The daughter he had been so bitterly disappointed by, Anne's child Elizabeth, would grow up to become Elizabeth I — one of the greatest rulers England has ever known.