So then Henry said that he himself would be head of all the Christians in England; then he could do as he wished without the pope’s permission. So he made himself head, and then he divorced his wife. All the churches in England were now told by the king what they should do; the pope no longer had anything to say in the matter; the English churches obeyed the king, not the pope. This made the second big break in the Catholic Church.
After this Henry VIII had five other wives, six in all; not of course all at one time, for Christians could only have one wife at a time. His first wife he divorced, the second he beheaded, the third died. The same thing happened to his last three wives: the first he divorced, the second he beheaded, and the third died—but Henry died before she did.
Is this too difficult for you to understand?
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King Elizabeth
King Henry VIII had two daughters.
One was named Mary, and one was named Elizabeth.
Their last name was of course Tudor, the same as their father’s, although we do not usually think of kings and queens as having last names.
King Henry had a son, also, and he was first to become king after his father died, for though he was younger than his sisters, a boy was supposed to be more fit to rule than a girl. But he didn’t live long, and then Mary was the first of the two sisters to become queen.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary” did not approve what her father had done when he turned against the pope and the Catholic Church. Mary herself was a strong Catholic and ready to fight for the pope and the Catholic Church. In fact, she wanted to have all who were not Catholics, all those who were Protestants, put to death. She thought that all those who did not believe as she did were wicked and should be killed. Like the queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” she was always saying, “Off with his head!” This seems to us very unchristian, but in those days their ideas about such things were peculiar. Mary had the heads of so many people cut off that she was called Bloody Mary.