At the beginning of Henry's reign the Church was still
strong in England. Probably most of the people were sincerely attached to it.
Still, the labors of Wycliffe and the Lollards had weakened the hold of the
Church upon the masses, while Erasmus and the Oxford scholars who worked with
him, by their criticism of ecclesiastical abuses, had done much to undermine
its influence with the intellectual classes. In England, as on the Continent,
the worldliness of the Church prepared the way for the Reformation.
HENRY AND CATHERINE OF ARAGON
The actual separation from Rome arose out of Henry's
matrimonial difficulties. He had married a Spanish princess, Catherine of
Aragon, the aunt of the emperor Charles V and widow of Henry's older brother.
The marriage required a dispensation from the pope, because canon law
forbade a man to wed his brother's widow. After living happily with Catherine
for eighteen years, Henry suddenly announced his conviction that the union was
sinful. This, of course, formed simply a pretext for the divorce which Henry
desired. Of his children by Catherine only a daughter survived, but Henry
wished to have a son succeed him on the throne. Moreover, he had grown tired of
Catherine and had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a pretty maid-in-waiting at
the court.
