Rather as Francis was attracted by the idea of adding to his French possessions the northern and western provinces of Italy, so Henry VIII. was tempted by the desire to regain for England some of the continental territory that had once been hers. It was largely to this end that he had sought alliance with Spain and had helped Spain and the Pope in driving the French out of Italy in 1512. Later he had the assistance of the King of Spain in an invasion of a part of France which had belonged to England in a former reign. He gained a quick success, but before he could establish himself in the conquered province the Spanish help was withdrawn. The adventure gained nothing for England, but cost her a large sum and created much dissatisfaction among the people.
The idea of the Spanish alliance had been in the mind of Henry VIII.'s father, before him, and to confirm it he had married his eldest son to a Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. That eldest son died, and left Catherine a widow. Henry VIII. pursuing the same policy, sought, and obtained, from the Pope a "dispensation," as it was called—that is to say, a permission—to marry Catherine, although she was his brother's widow.
Henry VIII. and his Queens
The alliance with Spain did not bring Henry nearly all that he had hoped of it. He was disgusted by the withdrawal from France of the Spanish force that we have just noted. Catherine's children died, with the exception of a daughter, Mary. Perhaps his great minister, Cardinal Wolsey, put it into Henry's head that there was a curse on his marriage with his brother's widow, or perhaps it was a thought that came to him without Wolsey's suggestion. However it came, it seems that it took possession of him. He expressed doubts about the legality of the marriage. Also he had fallen in love with a lady of the Court, Anne Boleyn. He began to desire the annulment of his marriage with Catherine in order that he might marry Anne Boleyn, and approached the Pope with a request that he should pronounce that marriage invalid and illegal. It was, in effect, asking the head of the Church, who, in theory, could do no wrong, and was infallible, to confess that such infallible authority had erred.
The Pope was not at all anxious to make an enemy of Henry. In the troubles created by Luther's preaching and writing, Henry, so late as 1521, had appeared as a true friend to the Pope by ordering the burning of all Luther's books. So the Pope sent great Churchmen to England to look into the matter of the marriage. There was much talk and many conferences, but in the end Henry must have realised, what he probably had deemed probable from the beginning, that the Pope would not reverse a former decision. He could not get his marriage declared to be illegal by the Church at Rome. He determined to act without that Church, to have the illegality pronounced by English bishops, whom he could trust to express such opinions as he should command them to utter, and to proceed in accordance with their views thus expressed. Catherine was divorced. He married Anne Boleyn.
Once he had taken this step, he followed on the path to which it led, never looking back. The proud Cardinal Wolsey fell from the king's favour, largely by reason of his pride and arrogant ostentation which had raised him up a number of enemies among the English nobles, but he was succeeded by another adviser, Thomas Cromwell, whose influence was even greater in determining the king to be the absolute master of England. Under Wolsey he had gone far in this direction. Parliament had power in its hands, because it had the power of granting subsidies for the king's wars and expenses. Wolsey had advised the king not to summon Parliament, but to extort contributions from his subjects instead. They did not give cheerfully, nor to the full extent of the sums demanded, but they gave grudgingly, in fear of punishment for some charge that would be brought against them if they did not.
Under Cromwell's influence, the king did call his Parliament together; but by that time, with his growing power, he had succeeded in getting his own friends in a majority in that Parliament. And in order to put down any possible opposition in the Upper House, he did not hesitate to bring to the executioner's block some of the noblest and most venerable of the Peers. It was a reign of terror, with Henry as absolute despot.
And he made himself despotic in the Church no less; for that was the final end of that path on which he made the first step when he divorced Catherine and married Anne in defiance of Rome. For first came thunders, ever louder and louder, from Rome, answered by ever louder defiance. It was defiance that was not displeasing to a large number in England. Already, before any of the ideas of the Reformation were introduced, we have noticed England growing restive under the attempts of the Popes of Rome to dictate to her. We may be sure that this restiveness had been increased of later years. Some of the clergy themselves, as we have seen, were none too pleased at the demands which Rome made upon them for money for Turkish wars, or for the building of St. Peter's Cathedral. They were the less pleased, because of a strong suspicion that it never was intended to use the money for the purposes stated.
Henry, therefore, and his powerful and ruthless counsellor were able to turn this dissatisfaction to their own use. The clergy were very ready to support Henry in asserting that the English Church was not to be subservient to Rome. Even the bishops in the Upper House probably thought that they were doing a good work for the freedom of the Church when they passed the Act called the Act of Supremacy which made the King of England head of the English Church. That Church was indeed freed, by the Act, from the authority of Rome, but it was only to put it under another authority, the authority of the English king.
And it gave equally little offence to the majority of the clergy when the king drove the monks from their monasteries, and took their land and its revenues for the service of the Crown or gave them to his friends. The good work of the monasteries had been done, and they had passed the time of their usefulness, for their inmates no longer studied to acquire knowledge, nor imparted it to the laity and their children. Only in the north of England did their suppression rouse opposition and lead to a dangerous rising which the Crown's forces put down with great severity.