How Did King Henry VIII Affect The Papacy In England?

In 1520, the lack of a legitimate- Henry had an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, through his mistress Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Blount- male heir to the throne- this failure was linked to the issue that Henry had married his brother Arthur’s widow- and a fixation with Anne Boleyn (seen as the catalyst of the reformation ) resulted in the decision of King Henry VIII to appeal to Rome for a papal annulment. Henry sought a divorce from Katherine of Aragon, with whom he had only one surviving child, Mary (later to become Mary I or ‘Bloody Mary’) through the annulment and alongside this, the possibility to curb the influence of the Papacy in England . However the annulment was refused by Pope Clement VII, due to wider European politics and so the Great