While Henry was careful to frame his objections to the Catholic Church as primarily political, claiming that he could not abide the divided loyalties of those who made up the church – as Catholic clergy swore oaths to both their monarch and their pope. And there is some truth to this, but it was well-known at the time that the prime cause of Henry’s discontent was the Pope’s refusal to grant him an annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Given that the grounds for annulment are usually that the marriage was unconsummated, and that Katherine was the mother of Henry’s acknowledged daughter, the Princess Mary, the Pope had a point in refusing, although again, political motives were also present there.
And so Henry forced the Church in England to become the Church of England, demanding that they no longer pay fealty to the Pope or be any part of the Roman Catholic order. To preserve the appearances, the high-ranking clergy voted on Henry’s demands, and unsurprisingly, the majority fell in line with them. The formalities would take some time, but the decisive vote was taken at Westminster Abbey on May 15, 1532. Almost overnight, England became a Protestant nation – with the notable exceptions of the now-former Queen Katherine and her daughter Mary.
