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The Reformation

The King's Great Matter

It must have seemed simple to Henry at the beginning. Catherine had been married to Henry's big brother, Arthur. When the young prince died, Henry VII immediately arranged for Catherine to marry Prince Henry. Since marrying a brother's widow was considered a violation of canon law, King Henry applied for and received a papal dispensation for the marriage.

All this was quite routine among noble and especially among royal houses. Equally routine was for a prince later to decide that the marriage was distasteful and to plead consanguinity (marriage to someone within the prohibited degrees of relationship) as an excuse to dissolve the marriage. The whole business was regarded as a matter of paper work for canon lawyers to see to.

Unfortunately for Henry, he made his request in the proper form but at the wrong historical moment. Almost immediately after he asked Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage to Catherine, Emperor Charles V's armies entered Rome.

Charles was Catherine's nephew, and he regarded this a matter of family business that was his responsibility. In these circumstances, Clement found it most difficult to grant Henry's request. He also found it difficult to deny the request, as he was trying to wriggle free of the Imperial grip on Rome. So he delayed and he delayed.

Both parties gathered their arguments and their lawyers, and the months dragged by. The business came to turn on the crucial question of where the case should be heard: in England or in Rome. In this manner, the King's Great Matter as it came to be called, became increasingly a question of papal authority and jurisdiction. But always conditioned by events in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1520s.