ON THIS DAY

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I have previously said that when the 'On This Day' is lengthy I will skip the usual Bytes item.

Unfortunately this item is lengthy but I don't want to deprive Byters of Funny Friday so hoefully you will enjoy both.

The day following will be 'On This Day' Week, all lengthier but interesting items from history.

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March 7, 1530:

The Pope refuses Henry VIII's divorce.

When Martin Luther issued grievances about the Catholic Church in 1517, King Henry VIII took it upon himself to personally repudiate the arguments of the Protestant Reformation leader. The pope rewarded Henry with the lofty title of Fidei Defensor, or Defender of the Faith.

Barely a decade later, the same Henry VIII would break decisively with the Catholic Church, accept the role of Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolve the nation’s monasteries, absorbing and redistributing their massive property as he saw fit. The former “Defender of the Faith” ushered in the English Reformation.

His first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, had failed to produce a son and male heir to the throne.

King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

Henry had also become infatuated with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, whose sister Mary had previously been his lover. Anne encouraged the king’s attention, but shrewdly refused to become his mistress, setting her sights on a higher goal, marriage.

Anne Boleyn

Henry asked Pope Clement VII to grant him a divorce from Catherine. He argued that the marriage was against God’s will, due to the fact that Catherine had briefly been married to Henry’s late brother, Arthur.

At the time, the title of Holy Roman Emperor belonged to King Charles V of Spain—Catherine of Aragon’s nephew. Clement VII was not inclined to grant Henry a divorce from the emperor’s aunt. On March 7, 1530 Clement refused Henry’s application for a divorce.

Eager to marry Anne, Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury, after which Cranmer quickly granted Henry’s divorce from Catherine. In June 1533, the heavily pregnant Anne Boleyn was crowned queen of England in a lavish ceremony.

Parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy in 1534 solidified the break from the Catholic Church and made the king the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Anne Boleyn failed to produce a son but she did give birth to a daughter who would become Elizabeth I.

By 1536, Henry had fallen for another lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. That May, after her former ally Thomas Cromwell helped engineer her conviction of adultery, incest and conspiracy against the king, Anne was executed.

Jane Seymour

In October 1537, Jane Seymour gave birth to Henry’s first male heir, the future King Edward VI, before dying of complications from childbirth two weeks later. Henry died in 1547, Edward died young in 1553, and his Catholic half-sister, Queen Mary I, reversed many of the religious changes during her reign. Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn and ruler of England for nearly 50 years, completed the Reformation her father had begun.

The 6 wives of King Henry VIII

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