Henry VIII has been happy with Catherine of Aragon for a number of years, but is concerned because Catherine, forty-two in 1527, has borne no male heir to continue the Tudor line.

She has produced six children, two of them boys, but all had been stillborn or died in infancy except Mary, born in 1516, and Catherine’s physical condition clearly will no longer allow her to bear children.

Henry concludes, through his reading of the biblical Leviticus 20:21, forbidding marriage to a dead brother’s widow, that his marriage displeases God.

He therefore orders his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to approach the papacy for a decree that the marriage is invalid and that Henry is free to marry again.

Henry has by this time fallen in love with twenty-six-year-old Anne Boleyn, the niece of Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk.

Pope Clement VII procrastinates over the annulment, which Catherine opposes, as does her nephew Charles V, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain.

Because Charles dominates Italy during this period, Clement is unable to grant Henry's request.

In going public, all hope of tempting Catherine to retire to a nunnery or otherwise stay quiet is lost.

Henry had sent his secretary, William Knight, to appeal directly to the Holy See by way of a deceptively worded draft papal bull.

Knight has been unsuccessful; the Pope cannot be misled so easily.

Thomas More, meanwhile, refuses to endorse Henry's plan to divorce Catherine.