A. F. Pollard: "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation, 1489-1556," ...

2. Cranmer and the Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, 24-60. The divorce issue was the issue that was a turning point for Cranmer’s life and the history of the English Reformation. DPV—imagine the tempestuous Luther or the hot Knox in the station where Dr. Cranmer was? The questions about the marriage went back to Henry VII, Ferdinand, and Julius 11, but the matter was intensified as still-borns/miscarriages (four) mounted before Mary’s birth in 1516. Then, several more occurred afterward. Meanwhile, Lutheranism happens and Henry’s writing about the sacraments gaining a new title, Defensor Fidei. If Henry split from Rome and that was all there was to it, the English people would have quietly agreed to an autonomous patriarchate. Papal fiscal exactions were not popular. Archbishop Warham and Bishop Longland of Lincoln had doubts about the marriage, the latter, it is alleged, being the source of Henry’s doubts. We surmise them to have predated Longland? Henry had good reasons for a good results given that Rome ran DISPENSATION FACTORY FOR DOLLARS. His sister, Mary Tudor, got a nullification for a second marriage. The Duke of Suffolk got the same. His other sister, Margaret, Queen of Scots, got an annulment as well. Send us those dollars to transact it. Clement was not much bothered by it until it began involving Charles V including his imprisonment in Castel S. Angelo. Henry must have been thinking: “What’s the problem around here? I need another breeding mare and Kate ain’t it. C''mon, Clement, pony up and give me an annulment from your dispensation factory.”