Henry VIII died in the early hours at Whitehall Palace after years of declining health, obesity, and leg ulcers that plagued his final decade. His death passed the throne to his sickly nine-year-old son Edward VI, but his real legacy was the English Reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries, and six marriages that reshaped the English monarchy and church forever.
By the end, Henry VIII weighed perhaps 28 stone (nearly 400 pounds) and could barely walk, hoisted between rooms at Whitehall Palace by mechanical devices. The vigorous jousting king of his youth had become a bedridden invalid, his body wracked by ulcerated legs that never healed and may have stemmed from an old jousting injury or untreated diabetes.
His death was kept secret for three days while his councilors, led by Edward Seymour, maneuvered to secure power around the boy king Edward VI. Henry's reign had permanently altered England: he broke from the Roman Catholic Church after the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, dissolved hundreds of monasteries and seized their wealth, and executed two of his six wives along with countless nobles and clergy who opposed him.
He was buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, beside his third wife Jane Seymour, the mother of his male heir. The Tudor dynasty he left behind would produce, in his daughter Elizabeth I, one of England's most celebrated monarchs, but his own reign is remembered as much for its brutality and appetite as for its historic religious rupture.