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==Henry's "great matter" (1525-1533)== In 1525, Henry's impatience with what he perceived to be Catherine's inability to produce the desired heir increased when he became attracted to a charismatic young woman in the Queen's entourage, Anne Boleyn. Henry became enamoured with her and began his pursuit.[6] Boleyn resisted his attempts to seduce her and she refused to become his mistress, as her sister Mary Boleyn had. Henry was all the more attracted to her because of this refusal and he pursued her relentlessly. Boleyn continued to reject the King’s initial advances by saying, “I beseech your highness most earnestly to desist, and to this my answer in good part. I would rather lose my life than my honesty.”[7] It is possible that the idea of annulment had suggested itself to the King much earlier than this, and it is highly probable that it was motivated by his desire for a male heir. Before Henry's father Henry VII ascended the throne, England had been beset by civil warfare over rival claims to the English crown and Henry wanted to avoid a similar uncertainty over the succession. The King had no sons due to the death in infancy of all Catherine of Aragon's children except his daughter Mary.[8] Anne saw her opportunity in Henry's infatuation and determined that she would only yield as his acknowledged queen.[9] Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII.It soon became the one absorbing object of the King's desires to secure an annulment from Catherine.[10] Henry set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting in this independently of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, to whom he at first communicated nothing of his plans so far as they related to Anne. William Knight, the king's secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the annulment of his marriage with Catherine. The grounds were that the dispensing bull of Pope Julius II was obtained by false pretenses, because Catherine's brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had in fact been consummated. Henry also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free, a dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connection. This clearly had reference to Anne.[9] As the pope was at that time the prisoner of Emperor Charles V, Knight had some difficulty in obtaining access to him. In the end the king's envoy had to return without accomplishing much, though the conditional dispensation for a new marriage was granted. Henry had now no choice but to put his great matter into the hands of Thomas Wolsey, and Wolsey did all he could to secure a decision in the King's favour.[9] How far the pope was influenced by Charles V in his resistance is difficult to say, but it is clear Henry saw that the Pope was unlikely to give him an annulment from the Emperor's aunt.[11] The pope forbade Henry to proceed to a new marriage before a decision was given in Rome. Convinced that he was treacherous, Anne Boleyn maintained pressure until Wolsey was dismissed from public office in 1529. After being dismissed, the cardinal begged her to help him return to power, but she refused. He then began a secret plot to have Anne forced into exile and began communication with Queen Catherine and the Pope to that end. When this was discovered, Henry ordered Wolsey's arrest and had it not been for his death from a terminal illness in 1530, he might have been executed for treason.[12] His replacement, Sir Thomas More, initially cooperated with the king's new policy, denouncing Wolsey in Parliament and proclaiming the opinion of the theologians at Oxford and Cambridge that the marriage of Henry to Catherine had been unlawful. As Henry began to deny the authority of the Pope, More's qualms grew. A year later, Queen Catherine was banished from court and her old rooms were given to Anne. With Wolsey gone, Anne now had considerable power over government appointments and political matters. When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died, Anne had the Boleyn family's chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, appointed to the vacant position. Through the intervention of the King of France, this was conceded by Rome, the pallium being granted to him by Clement.[13] The breaking of the power of Rome in England proceeded little by little. In 1532, a lawyer who was a supporter of Anne, Thomas Cromwell, brought before Parliament a number of acts including the Supplication against the Ordinaries and the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church. Following these acts, Thomas More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister.[14]
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