page_title: House of Tudor
section_title: Break with Rome
hierarchical_section_title: House of Tudor / Henry VIII / Break with Rome
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Thomas Cromwell
context_page_description: The House of Tudor was an English royal house, descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including their ancestral Wales and the Lordship of Ireland from 1485 until 1603, with six monarchs in that period: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII of England, descended through his mother from a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster. The Tudor family rose to power in the wake of the Wars of the Roses, which left the House of Lancaster, with which the Tudors were aligned, extinct in the male line.
  Henry VII succeeded in presenting himself as a candidate not only for traditional Lancastrian supporters, but also for discontented supporters of their rival House of York, and he took the throne by right of conquest.
context_section_description: In order to allow Henry to divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn, the English parliament enacted laws breaking ties with Rome, and declaring the king Supreme Head of the Church of England (from Elizabeth I the monarch is known as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England), thus severing the ecclesiastical structure of England from the Catholic Church and the Pope. The newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was then able to declare Henry's marriage to Catherine annulled. Catherine was removed from Court, and she spent the last three years of her life in various English houses under "protectorship," similar to house arrest. This allowed Henry to marry one of his courtiers: Anne Boleyn, the daughter of a minor diplomat Sir Thomas Boleyn. Anne had become pregnant by the end of 1532 and gave birth on 7 September 1533 to Elizabeth, named in honour of Henry's mother. Anne may have had later pregnancies which ended in miscarriage or stillbirth. In May 1536, Anne was arrested, along with six courtiers. Thomas Cromwell stepped in again, claiming that Anne had taken lovers during her marriage to Henry, and she was tried for high treason and incest; these charges were most likely fabricated, but she was found guilty and executed in May 1536.
caption: Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, Henry VIII's chief minister responsible for the Dissolution of the Monasteries
exif: {}