Henry Viii, Why Did He Break From The The Church?

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Why did Henry VIII break away from the Roman Catholic Church? When Henry VIII became King of England, he was a Catholic and had no problems with the rules of the church. However he was a man lustful for power and wanted this power to last so of course he would need a son which his wife couldn’t give him at the time. Also influencing him was the fact that the churches in Europe were divided into protestant and catholic, protestant by Luther and Calvin and Catholic by the traditional priest. His main reason for wanting to break away from the Catholic Church was to give power to his family, in which he needed a son but he couldn’t have a son with Catherine, his wife. So he wanted a divorce so he could marry someone else and divorcing at this time was against the Catholic law, and only the Pope can allow you to divorce. So Henry VIII got people to ask the pope but was turned down and told that he was not allowed to divorce his first wife Catherine. This got Henry very annoyed because he was King of England and didn’t like being told what to do by other people. He also had a very bad temper and quickly got annoyed that the Pope was trying to overrule him. Henry VIII was also very annoyed at Wolsey his adviser at the time for not being able to get him a divorce so he fired him and had him beheaded but he died on the way to execution. He still didn’t have his divorce and also a new person had come to his attention which was Anne Boleyn who also Henry found attractive and wanted to marry her. So the only way he could do this was for him to make the laws of the church rather than the Pope, he therefore established the Church of England. Also Luther and Calvin had already started a protest in Germany about Catholicism so he decided to use this unhappiness with Catholicism to his advantage and there was now more chance that he would have more of the public on his

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