When Henry VII died in 1509 he was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII (1509–1547), who promptly married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Henry was a very gifted man, who spoke three foreign languages, was both an academic and an athlete, a talented musician and a lover of both the arts and learning. At the beginning the young king was not very interested in the day-to-day business of government. For most of the first twenty years of his reign Wolsey, the son of an Ipswich butcher, ruled the country for the king, fulfilling his every whim, while Henry indulged in one long festival. The capable and efficient Wolsey swiftly established a hold over Henry VIII which led to the king showering upon him a great number of offices both in Church and State. In 1515 Wolsey became Lord Chancellor, and later a cardinal and a papal legate, a position that gave him supreme authority over the English church, exceeding that of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Henry VIII is popularly best known for his wives. There were six of them altogether. Henry’s marriage to the first one, Catherine of Aragon, was officially annulled in 1533. The second one, Anne Boleyn, was queen for less than three years and was executed in 1536 on a charge of adultery. The third wife, Jane Seymour, gave Henry the long-awaited son, Edward, but died in childbirth (1537). Anne of Cleves, whose marriage to Henry was arranged by Cromwell, was queen for only six months, after which the king divorced her (1540). The fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was beheaded in 1542. The last one, Catherine Parr, survived the king.

The system remained untouched, but instead of being directly controlled by the king it was run by his great minister. Wolsey’s prime task was to fulfill the king’s wish to make England a major country in Europe. All went well until in 1527 Henry decided that his marriage to his brother’s widow was sinful and sought for it to be annulled. This single decision was to cause the greatest changes England had undergone since 1066. The king’s determination on his divorce was to involve the destruction of every link with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and remaking of many old jurisdictions; which, in turn, involved a great increase in the State’s power, a revolution in the distribution of property and the social structure. It’s noteworthy that all these changes were effected by active cooperation with Parliament, for Henry had no standing army, and it was with the help of the unpaid militia of southern England that he put down rebellion in the Catholic north. He acted in Parliament on a scale never known before, keeping the Commons of 1529 in being for seven years, introducing more and more of his councilors into the House, while for every blow at the Church or in every matrimonial misfortune he boldly wielded the weapons of publicity and printed appeal.

The great change needs to be viewed against the background of the Reformation in Europe. By the time Henry wanted his divorce the movement was well established in Germany under the leadership of Martin Luther, whose ideas were already reaching England. Interestingly, Henry VIII wrote a theological paper against Luther, for which the Pope gave him the title of Defender of the Faith. Luther’s ideas anticipated much of what was to happen during the coming decades: the rejection of papal authority, the abolition of religious orders, the ability of priests to marry, the right of the laity to receive the wine as well as the bread at mass or communion, the use of the vernacular for church services and the sweeping away of the cult of the Virgin and saints, pilgrimages and relics. The medieval church had preached seven sacraments: baptism in infancy, confirmation in childhood, matrimony and holy orders, penance and the Eucharist to cleanse and feed the soul, and anointing to comfort the sick and dying. Luther only preached two: baptism and the Eucharist.