Henry VIII

3 posts tagged with this keyword.

Portrait of Anne Boleyn

The Queen Who Cost England Its Church

May 19, 2026 By Andy Barca

On 19 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Green for crimes everyone knew she had not committed. The execution cleared a path for Jane Seymour, but the real inheritance was a bastard daughter who would rule England for forty-five years.

Portrait of Henry VIII of England after Hans Holbein the Younger

Half His Subjects

May 15, 2026 By Andy Barca

On 15 May 1532, the Convocation of Canterbury surrendered the Church of England's right to make its own laws without royal approval. Thomas More resigned the next day. The monasteries followed four years later. Henry VIII had decided he wanted the other half.

Waltham Abbey Church, Essex - the last English monastery surrendered to Henry VIII on 23 March 1540

The Last Abbey

Mar 23, 2026 By Andy Barca

On 23 March 1540, Waltham Abbey surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners - the last of England's nearly 900 monasteries to fall. Five years of institutional seizure, centuries of religious life, ended with a signature and a pension.