Section D: Wolsey, Catherine, the succession and annulment

Catherine of Aragon and the succession

1.     Catherine was the princess of Spain, and she had married Henry’s older brother, Arthur, in November 1501.

2.     This had been a political marriage to form an alliance between England and Spain. Catherine’s nephew was Charles V of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor.

3.     Arthur had died in 1502. Catherine swore that the marriage had been unconsummated (which meant it had not been confirmed by having sex; a marriage was not valid until that point). This meant the Pope could grant a special dispensation, and Catherine could be married to Henry instead. Therefore the Anglo-Spanish alliance was maintained.

4.     Henry was genuinely fond of Catherine. She was deeply religious and well educated, and widely respected for her charitable work. In 1513 when Henry was fighting in France, he showed his regard for her by appointing her regent (someone who governs in a king’s absence).

5.     Catherine was pregnant at least six times, but only one baby, Mary, surviving. By 1524, she was 39, and her chances of becoming pregnant again were slim.

Henry’s reasons for wanting an annulment

1.     Henry believed that he needed a healthy male heir to guarantee the future of the Tudor dynasty. He believed that having only a female heir would lead others (both at home and abroad) to challenge for the throne.

2.     Henry started to see Catherine’s failure to produce a son as a sign of God’s displeasure. He found evidence to support this in the Bible; Leviticus, a book in the Old Testament, said: ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an impurity… they shall be childless’.

3.     In 1525 Henry met Anne Boleyn. By this point Catherine was 40 and no longer beautiful, while Anne was young and, if not conventionally beautiful, charming, witty and charismatic.

4.     Anne was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a courtier and minister, and was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, who was becoming a key advisor to the king.

5.     Anne refused the king’s initial advances, and let it be known she would only sleep with him when they were married. This made the king even more determined to secure an annulment: this was a declaration that a marriage had never been valid and therefore never existed. It could only be granted by the pope.

Henry’s attempts to gain an annulment

1.     In 1527 Henry VIII gave the task of getting him an annulment to Wolsey.

2.     This would require the approval of the pope, but Wolsey was a cardinal and the Papal Legate so he had influence in Rome. The Pope was also an ally of Henry. Wolsey assumed it would be straightforward.

3.     However, Catherine was the aunt of Charles V. In 1527 Habsburg troops had taken the Pope, Clement VII, a virtual prisoner.

4.     Clement VII therefore did not want to risk upsetting Charles by granting the annulment, but he also did not want to lose the support of his English ally. He therefore delayed making a decision for as long as possible.

5.     Wolsey was under increasing pressure from Henry, and from Anne and her supporters.

6.     Wolsey tried to find evidence in the Bible to support an annulment, and argued his case with support from Leviticus. However:

a.     there was other contradictory evidence elsewhere in the Bible, in the Book of Deuteronomy, which suggested a man could marry his brother’s widow.

b.     Wolsey’s argument only worked if Arthur and Catherine’s marriage had been consummated, because otherwise they had never been ‘properly’ married in the first place. Catherine insisted it had not.

7.     Huge pressure was also placed on Catherine to renounce her marriage and become a nun. This would automatically terminate the marriage. She refused.

8.     Wolsey then asked the Pope to allow the case to be decided in England – this would leave the decision to Wolsey himself, as Papal Legate.

9.     Clement VII initially agreed and sent Cardinal Campeggio to England to help oversee arrangements. However, Campeggio had in fact been given instructions by the pope to avoid making a decision. He did not arrive in England until October 1528, he did not open the annulment hearing until June 1529, and he then broke the court up for the summer in July 1529 without a decision having been reached.

10.  Clement VII then decided in the summer of 1529 that the case had to be heard in Rome after all.

Opposition to the annulment

1.     As we have seen, a considerable amount of opposition to the annulment came from Clement VII himself, who would have found it politically impossible to support.

Catherine of Aragon was also deeply opposed. She was called to speak at the annulment hearing, where she knelt before Henry and delivered her plea to him in person. As a devout Catholic, she argued that if she accepted that the marriage was invalid from the start, that would effectively mean she had been Henry’s mistress throughout. Accepting the annulment would have also meant accepting that her daughter, Mary, was illegitimate, which she was not prepared to do.

3.     Catherine also had powerful supporters, such as John Fisher, who was Bishop of Rochester, and Thomas More, who was an advisor to the King. Public support for the queen was also strong.

Reasons for Wolsey’s fall from power

1.     When Campeggio suspended work on the divorce case in July 1529, it was clear that Wolsey’s divorce strategy had failed.

2.     In October, Henry punished Wolsey by stripping him of most of his powers and possessions, and exiling him to York.

3.     In November 1530, Wolsey was summoned to London for trial on charges of praemunire: treason by a member of the clergy as a result of working in the interests of the Pope, not the King.

4.     His health suffering, Wolsey died on the journey south, and so was spared execution.

5.     Henry’s faith in Wolsey was undermined by a combination of three key failures: the failure of the Amicable Grant, his failure to build an alliance against Charles V, and perhaps above all, his failure to secure an annulment.

6.     Wolsey’s failure was also caused by the influence of the Boleyn family (see below).

The influence of the Boleyns

1.     The Eltham Ordinances highlighted how Wolsey sought to prevent rivals from gaining close access to the king, and, up until 1527, he was largely successful.

2.     However, as the relationship between Henry and Anne developed, Wolsey was unable to prevent a powerful new group in court developing around Anne, led by her father Thomas Boleyn and her brother, George Boleyn.

3.     The Boleyns argued that Wolsey was deliberately trying to disrupt divorce proceedings because he favoured Catherine.

4.     Anne in particular grew to hate Wolsey, and many other nobles with grudges against Wolsey sided eagerly with her and the Boleyns.