King Henry VIII: Bad Husband Or Father, Good King?

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King Henry VIII; Bad Husband/Father, Good King? King Henry was born on the 28 of June and died January 28, 1547. He was his father’s second child and became king after his brother’s death. Most of his wives had been betrothed or married to other men before they married him. Anne Boleyn, his second wife, wanted to marry Henry Percy. But his father forced him to marry someone else so that Anne would have to marry King Henry. Anne of Cleves was betrothed to a man; it fell through, so she was free to marry another man. Catharine Parr had also been betrothed to a different man; it also fell through. Catharine had previously married other men; the first when she was fourteen, but they all died, leaving her a widow. King Henry VIII had a very strong …show more content…

However, that wasn’t the only reason. He wanted to divorce Catharine of Aragon because she could not give him a male heir, so he started liking Anne Boleyn. King Henry decided that he would have to separate from the Roman Catholic Church to divorce Catharine because the Pope would not allow it. But he needed reasons that had more validity. He, and the men supporting him, saw things in the Catholic religion that they did not completely agree with. Such as why they took communion, and the symbolism it held. After separating from the church, to make the protestant religion even more different, King Henry wrote a new book called “The Book of Common Prayer” that had a lot of the same prayers as the Catholic church. But he changed the scriptures to English instead of Latin, which was the language they were in the Catholic prayer book. He and his men were also not the only people who wanted to separate. Commoners of England also wanted to reform. They did not like some catholic policies as well, they did not feel like people could pay to have their sins removed, and they felt the church was no longer teaching what God wanted. King Henry’s separation from the Catholic church was the start of the Protestant Reformation, where he forced people to convert to the Protestant religion by punishing them with jail, or even death if they resisted. (“The Book of Common