During their courtship, Anne Boleyn and Henry exchanged frequent letters, often in poetry (Jury, 2001).

With renewed confidence, Henry began to expand the military arsenal of England. Henry also invested in the navy, and increased its size from 5 to 53 ships ("Henry VIII." History of the Monarchy: The Tudors, 2007). Without such expansion, it is doubtful that England would ever have been able to defeat the Spanish Armada under Elizabeth. Of course, the great successes of Henry's regime do not cancel out his acts of brutality, such as his beheading of Anne Boleyn on a pretext, to marry again with the hopes of producing a son. After Henry's reign, England grew unstable once again, and there was the war of succession he feared, as England rapidly swung back from Protestant to Catholic again, only finally realizing its true glory under the steadier hand of Elizabeth I. But without the...
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