How did henry viii gain his divorce from catherine of aragon?
What Henry really wanted was an annulment, on the grounds that Catherine had been briefly married to his older brother, Arthur, who would have been king had he not died at a young age (16, maybe?) They had gotten a special dispensation to marry, because there was a prohibition in the church about marrying your brother’s wife. Catherine had sworn her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated–and she most likely was telling the truth. Once the church had granted the dispensation, it would not reverse itself and annul the marriage. Henry desperately wanted a living male heir, and he and Catherine had not had one. So, Henry got his divorce by breaking away from the Catholic Church and founding the Church of England, with himself at the head of it.
