Henry VIII
Henry VIII was born on June 28, 1491. See ranking, bio blurb, and everyone else born that day.
About Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 22 April 1509, and King of England and Ireland from 14 June 1542 until his death in 1547. Henry was born in Greenwich as the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, was heir apparent until his unexpected death in 1502. Henry was created Prince of Wales in 1504 and acceded to the throne upon his father's death in 1509. He married Catherine of Aragon, who had previously been married to Arthur until his death, and had two children with her: Henry, Duke of Cornwall, and Mary I. The English church was in communion with the Catholic Church and when Henry wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine, he appealed to Pope Clement VII for a dispensation. Since Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, the pope delayed the verdict amid political pressure from Charles. Henry became impatient with the delay, and secretly married Anne Boleyn in 1532. Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, declared Henry's marriage to Catherine to be null and void on 23 May 1533. The pope formally rejected the English proceedings and maintained that Henry was married to Catherine, and later excommunicated Henry from the Catholic Church. Henry then broke from the Catholic Church, and passed the Act of Supremacy 1534, which established the English monarch as Supreme Head of the Church of England. The English Reformation that followed attempted to develop a centralised religious identity in England and Ireland. Henry dissolved monasteries and convents, seized their wealth, disposed of their assets, destroyed buildings and relics, dispersed or destroyed libraries, and provided for their former personnel and functions. Anne produced one child, the future Elizabeth I, and was charged with high treason and executed by beheading in the Tower of London. In 1536, Henry married for a third time, to Jane Seymour, who gave birth to Edward, who became heir apparent in accordance with the rules of male-preference primogeniture then in effect. After Jane's death, Henry married three further times to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, who was Henry's last wife before his death in 1547. Henry's contemporaries considered him an attractive, educated, and accomplished king. He has been described as "one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne" and his reign described as the "most important" in English history. He was an author and composer. As he aged, he became severely overweight and his health suffered, and he was frequently characterised in his later life as a lustful, egotistical, paranoid, and tyrannical monarch. Three of his children became English monarchs: Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.