Fall of Cromwell

Valuable as Cromwell had been to the king, he failed to please his master in two particulars: first, he inclined toward Protestantism, which Henry did not like ; and secondly, he was not successful as a foreign minister. The strained relation which had existed for ten years between Henry and Charles V had strengthened the alliance with France. Now Cromwell wished to go farther and enter into combination with the German Protestant princes of the Schmalkald League, who were hostile to the emperor. To that end he arranged a marriage between Henry, whose third wife, Jane Seymour, had died when Edward VI was born, and Anne of Cleves, daughter of the duke whose territory controlled the river Rhine. Henry consented, but the plan turned out badly. Anne was lacking in all that renders a woman attractive, and she did not please the king, who promptly got rid of her on the ground that the marriage had been extorted under compulsion by external causes." Anne took the divorce philosophically and settled down in England with a liberal pension.

Henry, without a wife, soon found himself without allies. In 1539-1540 Francis made his peace with the pope, and through the mediation of the latter was reconciled temporarily with Charles V; while in Germany many members of the Protestant league were openly advocating peace with the emperor. Henry seemed to have failed everywhere, and he took his revenge on Cromwell. In 1540 this loyal servant was abandoned by the king; and the nobility, who hated him, wreaked their vengeance upon him. He was beheaded on July 28, and from that time to his own death Henry reigned without a minister.

Wars with France and Scotland

From the year 1539-1540, when Francis committed himself to the cause of the pope, war between England and France was inevitable. The traditional hostility, now made more bitter by the religious rivalry, for Francis supported the pope while Henry opposed him, was increased by the desire of each monarch to add Scotland to his dominions. Henry VII had tried to effect a union of Scotland with England when he brought about the marriage of his daughter Margaret to James IV in 1502. But since that time France had been working to thwart Henry's policy, and through the efforts of Bishop Beaton of St. Andrews had brought about a marriage between James V and Mary, daughter of the duke of Guise, the most determined enemy of the reform movement in France. In the war that followed Henry was in the main successful. James V was badly beaten at Solway Moss in 1542, and the influence of England in Scotland seemed reestablished. A treaty of marriage was arranged between Henry's son, Edward, and Mary Queen of Scots, the daughter of James V, born the year of Solway Moss.

The peace did not last long. In 1543 the French party in Scotland again got the upper hand, and Henry again declared war. Hertford burned Edinburgh in 1544, and in the same year, across the Channel, Henry captured Boulogne from the French. A peace was patched up with Francis, in 1546, in which Scotland was not included; but as both Henry and Francis died the next year, the settlement of the question was only deferred, to come up again in the next reign.

Relations with Wales and Ireland

Although Henry was not successful in his efforts to subdue Scotland, he succeeded in consolidating his kingdom in other directions, thus increasing its extent and making it more powerful. He had subdued the northern counties in 1539, after the Pilgrimage of Grace, and in 1536 had added Wales, reorganizing the shires and admitting members from Wales into parliament. In the matter of administration and law he treated Wales as he had the north, establishing in 1542 a special council, the Council of Wales, similar to the Council of the North.

Ireland gave him a great deal of trouble, for the chiefs there were constantly at war, and were always ready to help France or Scotland whenever the occasion arose. In 1542, after a rebellion of the Fitzgeralds, Henry raised Ireland to the rank of a kingdom; but though he increased his own dignity by this act, he cannot be said to have brought the island much nearer to a union with the English crown.