“...all that chaos because Anne Boleyn didn’t put out for Henry VIII.”
It was actually the fertility failure with Katherine of Aragon that led to the chaos.
As for Anne Boleyn, she too failed to bear a son, but she was the mother of Elizabeth I, inarguably one of Britan’s greatest monarchs. For her trouble she got her head chopped off.
Nevertheless I agree, an awful lot of the trouble in the world today has it’s roots in Henry VIII, the original “self-actualizer”.,
“It was actually the fertility failure with Katherine of Aragon that led to the chaos.”
A woman who gets pregnant 9 times has no problem with fertility.
“According to J.J. Scarisbrick, Catherine of Aragon had “several miscarriages, three infants who were either stillborn or died immediately after birth (two of them males), two infants who died within a few weeks of birth (one of them a boy) and one girl, Princess Mary”. Dewhurst makes the point that “several” must mean three or more so Scarisbrick is crediting Catherine with a total of nine pregnancies, only one of which gave Henry a living heir and it was only a girl. Hester Chapman writes of Catherine having a total of seven pregnancies, Neville Williams writes of how Henry was “mindful of earlier miscarriages” in his second year of marriage to Catherine, John Bowle writes of six pregnancies and A.F. Pollard suggests a total of around ten pregnancies. If Catherine had nine unsuccessful pregnancies it is little wonder that Henry felt that their marriage was cursed!”
I would argue that the root of all the trouble today really started a century later, when that fanatic idiot Catesby bungled a coup attempt against James I.
Henry VIIIs lust for Anne Boleyn doesn’t explain why the reformation took place in Scotland as well, with even more fanatical zeal. The fact of the matter is that if there wasn’t already a hard core of Lollardist sympathy Henry’s reformation couldn’t have taken hold. Apart from anything else, Henry always considered himself an orthodox catholic his whole life and had no sympathy for theological reform. He just didn’t want the bishop of Rome telling him what to do. Frankly, I’m glad we had the reformation. Roman Catholicism at this time was an economic, social and politically retardant factor that would have prevented the development of modern capitalism and industrialisation. Catholic England was a complete backwater till a protestant ethic transformed the place and emphasised individual liberty over social deference.
Of course; thing is, it started out as a normal interest to beget a male hair, but spiraled into a full blown Reformation at the behest of Anne B. and Thomas Cromwell, who was himself a covert Lutheran. If Henry had wanted to marry a French princess or a Spanish princess then there might not have been problems.
He also wanted an annulment, not a divorce. Essentially Henry wanted the Pope to agree that a women he had married, begat a child (Princess Mary Tudor), and crowned Queen of England declared no more than a woman who had been nothing more than Dowager Princess of Wales and a mistress for near twenty years.
Charles V of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor was nephew to Katherine, predictably saw that as offensive to his aunt’s honor and the reputation of the Imperial Family. When Rome was sacked by the Spanish and Imperial army, the Pope was essentially the prisoner of the Emperor and the Pope as a result could hardly be trusted to give an unbiased decision.
So Henry decided to break England away from Rome and have Archbishop Cranmer grant the annulment (ironically Cranmer was approved by the Pope himself) and declare his marriage null and void. With Anne as his legitimate wife (later reversed at Henry’s convenience).
If Henry had wanted a divorce, it might have happened, but he turned it into a more complicated issue with his determination to essentially repudiate his daughter and brand his wife of so many years as an unwitting mistress/concubine.
“It was actually the fertility failure with Katherine of Aragon”
Yes, but like I said before, Henry made it worse by trying to make it out that his marriage had never existed.