Thomas Howard

The Treaty of the More, concluded on August 30, 1525, between Henry VIII of England and the interim French government of Louise of Savoy, is celebrated by Henry and the French ambassadors at The More, Hertfordshire, a castle owned by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief minister.

England, with Wolsey negotiating, agrees to give up some territorial claims on France, receiving in return a pension from the French of twenty thousand pounds a year.

France settles what is owed to Henry VIII's sister, Mary, dowager queen of France.

England also agrees to work to secure the release of King Francis of France, currently held prisoner by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.

England has been troubled by the threat of a renewal of the "Auld Alliance" between France and Scotland, and France agrees to prevent the Scottish Duke of Albany from returning to Scotland.

Henry had been conducting an affair with Mary Boleyn, lady-in-waiting to his wife Catherine of Aragon There has been speculation that Mary's two children, Catherine and Henry Carey, were fathered by Henry, but this has never been proved and the King never acknowledged them as he did Henry FitzRoy, his six-year-old son by his former mistress, Elizabeth Blount.

As Henry in 1525 grows more impatient with Catherine's inability to produce the male heir he desires, he becomes enamored of Mary's sister, Anne, a charismatic young woman of twenty-five in the Queen's entourage.

Anne, however, resists his attempts to seduce her, and refuses to become his mistress as her sister Mary Boleyn had.

It is in this context that Henry considers his three options for finding a dynastic successor and hence resolving what will come to be described at court as the King's "great matter".

These options are legitimizing Henry FitzRoy, which would take the intervention of the pope and would be open to challenge; marrying off Mary as soon as possible and hoping for a grandson to inherit directly, but Mary is considered unlikely to conceive before Henry's death; or somehow rejecting Catherine and marrying someone else of childbearing age.

Probably seeing the possibility of marrying Anne, the third is ultimately the most attractive possibility to the thirty-four-year-old Henry, and it soon becomes the King's absorbing desire to annul his marriage to the now forty-year-old Catherine.

It is a decision that will see Henry reject papal authority and initiate the English Reformation.

Henry VIII has been happy with Catherine of Aragon for a number of years, but is concerned because Catherine, forty-two in 1527, has borne no male heir to continue the Tudor line.

She has produced six children, two of them boys, but all had been stillborn or died in infancy except Mary, born in 1516, and Catherine’s physical condition clearly will no longer allow her to bear children.

Henry concludes, through his reading of the biblical Leviticus 20:21, forbidding marriage to a dead brother’s widow, that his marriage displeases God.

He therefore orders his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to approach the papacy for a decree that the marriage is invalid and that Henry is free to marry again.

Henry has by this time fallen in love with twenty-six-year-old Anne Boleyn, the niece of Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk.

Pope Clement VII procrastinates over the annulment, which Catherine opposes, as does her nephew Charles V, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain.

Because Charles dominates Italy during this period, Clement is unable to grant Henry's request.

In going public, all hope of tempting Catherine to retire to a nunnery or otherwise stay quiet is lost.

Henry had sent his secretary, William Knight, to appeal directly to the Holy See by way of a deceptively worded draft papal bull.

Knight has been unsuccessful; the Pope cannot be misled so easily.

Thomas More, meanwhile, refuses to endorse Henry's plan to divorce Catherine.

Parliament at Cromwell’s direction passes the Act in Restraint of Appeals (to Rome) in January 1533, calling for England’s break with the papacy.

Henry VIII therefore has Thomas Cranmer, newly created Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounce, without reference to the pope, the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Catherine is forced into retirement and, almost immediately, Henry weds the object of his infatuation, twenty-six-year-old Anne Boleyn, a niece of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk.

The Church of England is thus informally established as an independent national church, no longer in communion with the Roman Catholic church or the pope.

Anne gives birth on September 7, but the child is not the English king’s long-sought male heir.

The child is named Elizabeth, and Henry consoles himself with the idea that Anne will soon produce a healthy son.

Elizabeth is declared heir to the throne in place of Catherine's daughter, Mary, who is now regarded as illegitimate.

King Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves had been politically motivated marriage, but his dissatisfaction with his new bride reflects badly on his chief minister Thomas Cromwell, who had negotiated the marriage plans.

Cromwell had previously helped engineer the King's divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell's conservative enemies, especially Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, take advantage of this situation to engineer the minister’s downfall.

Cromwell, arrested in June 1540, is charged with treason and heresy.

Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, obtains for his king the annulment of his bride of six months on July 9.

Henry almost immediately weds Anne’s maid of honor, the young, flirtatious, Catherine Howard.

The private ceremony takes place on July 28, the same day that Thomas Cromwell, who had negotiated the union with Anne, is beheaded for treason and heresy.

Catherine is one of ten children of Lord Edmund Howard, who died in 1539, a poverty-stricken younger son of Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk, and the niece of Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, who has already lost one niece, Catherine’s first cousin Anne Boleyn, to the headsman’s ax.

Henry publicly acknowledges Catherine as his queen on August 8.

The king is delighted with his new queen.

Unknown to Henry, Catherine has apparently had premarital affairs with Henry Mannock, a music teacher; Francis Dereham, who had called her his wife; and her cousin, Thomas Culpepper, to whom she had been engaged.

Following her marriage, she makes Dereham her secretary.

Henry has meanwhile sent an army of some forty thousand men to Calais under the joint command of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.

While Henry continues to squabble with the Emperor over the goals of the campaign and his own presence in France, ...

...this massive army moves slowly and aimlessly into French territory.

Finally, Henry decides that the army is to be split.

Norfolk, ordered to besiege Ardres or Montreuil, advances towards the latter; but he proves unable to mount an effective siege, complaining of inadequate supplies and poor organization.

The conflict between Francis and Henry continues.

The Dauphin's army advances on Montreuil, forcing Norfolk to raise the siege; ...

Henry himself returns to England at the end of September 1544, ordering Norfolk and Suffolk to defend Boulogne.