Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
The reign of Henry VIII is one of the most momentous in English history because of its far-reaching consequences. On the level of Henry's private life, the reign is also one of the most sensational because of his six marriages and the fates of the rejected wives. His first marriage was the cause of the schism from Rome, which led to the English Reformation and the ecclesiastical settlement under his daughter Queen Elizabeth. Henry, who was born in 1491, came to the throne in 1509. He married Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in the same year. She was the widow of his elder brother Arthur, who had died in 1502. Doubts had been expressed, even by the Pope, about the validity of Catherine's second marriage to her brother-in-law, since marriage to one's brother's widow could be possibly construed as incestuous. This did not trouble Henry's conscience at the time, but when it became certain twenty years later that he could have no further issue from the marriage than his daughter Mary, Henry alleged the canonical impediment as a reason for divorcing Catherine in order to obtain a male heir. There had been no queen regnant in English history and since Henry's father had won the throne after a long civil war, Henry felt it expedient that Mary's right of accession should not be challenged. He therefore decided to obtain a divorce from Queen Catherine which was only canonically possible if his marriage could be considered invalid.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.