At the time, the title of Holy Roman Emperor belonged to King Charles V of Spain-Catherine of Aragon’s beloved nephew. That same year-1527-the imperial troops of the Holy Roman Empire had attacked and destroyed Rome itself, forcing Pope Clement VII to flee the Vatican through a secret tunnel and take shelter in the Castel Sant’Angelo. “There was a clear understanding among the princely houses of Europe that the continuation of the dynasty was the ruler's number one priority,” says Pettegree.īut timing was not on Henry’s side. Under other circumstances, it wouldn’t have been too difficult for England’s king to get a papal dispensation to set aside his first wife and marry another in order to produce a male heir.

He argued that the marriage was against God’s will, due to the fact that she had briefly been married to Henry’s late brother, Arthur. So Henry asked Pope Clement VII to grant him a divorce from Catherine.

Anne encouraged the king’s attentions, but shrewdly refused to become his mistress, setting her sights on a higher goal. Henry had also become infatuated with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, whose sister Mary had previously been his lover. “No need because he already enjoyed substantial power over the English church and its income.And he had no wish also, because he was personally rather pious.”īut by 1527, Henry had a big problem: His first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, had failed to produce a son and male heir to the throne. As for Henry VIII, he “had no wish and no need to break with the church,” says Andrew Pettegree, professor of history at the University of St. Though early signs of anticlericalism had surfaced in England by the 1520s, Catholicism still enjoyed widespread popular support. King Henry VIII wanted out from his first marriage.

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