About 1527 it became known that Henry was questioning the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon, whom he had married when he was twelve years old.  She was the widow of his brother Arthur.  The king professed conscientious scruples about his marriage, but undoubtedly his desire for male offspring, and later, his passion for Anne Boleyn, prompted him to seek release from his queen.  In 1529, Henry and Catharine stood before a papal tribunal, presided over by Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s prime minister, and Cardinal Campeggio, from Rome, for the purpose of determining the validity of the royal marriage.  The trial was a farce.  The enraged king laid the blame upon Wolsey, and retired him from office.  The great cardinal was afterwards charged with treason, but died broken-hearted, on his way to the Tower, November 29, 1530.

The breach between Henry and Rome, complicated by numerous international intrigues, widened rapidly.  Henry began to assume an attitude of bold defiance toward the pope, which aroused the animosity of the Catholic princes of Europe.

Notwithstanding the desire of a large body of the English people to remain faithful to Rome, the dangers which menaced their country from abroad and the ecclesiastical abuses at home, which had been a fruitful cause for complaint for many years, tended to lessen the ancient horror of heresy and schism, and inclined them to support their king.  Another factor that assisted in preparing the English people for the destruction of the monasteries was Lollardism.  As an organized sect, the Lollards had ceased to exist, but the spirit and the doctrines of Wyclif did not die.  A real and a vital connection existed between the Lollards of the fourteenth, and the reformers of the sixteenth, centuries.  In Henry’s time, many Englishmen held practically the same views of Rome and of the monks that had been taught by Wyclif[I].

[Footnote I:  Appendix, Note I.]

A considerable number of Henry’s subjects, however, while ostensibly loyal to him, were inwardly full of hot rebellion.  The king was surrounded with perils.  The princes of the Continent were eagerly awaiting the bull for his excommunication.  Henry’s throne and his kingdom might at any moment be given over by the pope to invasion by the continental sovereigns.

Reginald Pole, afterwards cardinal, a cousin of the king, and a strong Catholic, stood ready to betray the interests of his country to Rome.  Writing to the king, he said:  “Man is against you; God is against you; the universe is against you; what can you look for but destruction?” “Dream not, Caesar,” he encouragingly declared to Emperor Charles V., “that all generous hearts are quenched in England; that faith and piety are dead.  In you is their trust, in your noble nature, and in your zeal for God—­they hold their land till you shall come.”  Thus, on the testimony of a Roman Catholic, there were traitors in England waiting only for the call of Charles V., “To arms!” Pole was in full sympathy with all the factions opposed to the king, and stood ready to aid them in their resistance.  He publicly denounced the king in several continental countries.