Henry VIII. owed his crown to the early death of his brother Arthur, whose widow, Catharine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand, and consequently the aunt of Charles V. [emperor], Henry was enabled to marry through a dispensation obtained by Henry VII. from Pope Julius II.,--marriage with the wife of a deceased brother being forbidden by the laws of the Church. Henry was in his twelfth year when the marriage was concluded, but it was not consummated until the death of his father. ... The question of Henry's divorce from Catharine soon became a subject of discussion, and the effort to procure the annulling of the marriage from the pope was prosecuted for a number of years. Henry professed, and perhaps with sincerity, that he had long been troubled with doubts of the validity of the marriage, as being contrary to the divine law, and therefore not within the limit of the pope's dispensing power. The death of a number of his children, leaving only a single daughter, Mary, had been interpreted by some as a mark of the displeasure of God. At the same time the English people, in the fresh recollection of the long dynastic struggle, were anxious on account of the lack of a male heir to the throne. On the queen's side it was asserted that it was competent for the pope to authorize a marriage with a brother's widow, and that no doubt could possibly exist in the present case, since, according to her testimony, her marriage with Arthur had never been completed. The eagerness of Henry to procure the divorce increased with his growing passion for Anne Boleyn. The negotiations with Rome dragged slowly on. Catharine was six years older than himself, and had lost her charms. {828} He was enamored of this young English girl, fresh from the court of France. He resolved to break the marriage bond with the Spanish princess who had been his faithful wife for nearly twenty years. It was not without reason that the king became more and more incensed at the dilatory and vacillating course of the pope. ... Henry determined to lay the question of the validity of his marriage before the universities of Europe, and this he did, making a free use of bribery abroad and of menaces at home. Meantime, he took measures to cripple the authority of the pope and of the clergy in England. In these proceedings he was sustained by a popular feeling, the growth of centuries, against foreign ecclesiastical interference and clerical control in civil affairs. The fall of Wolsey was the effect of his failure to procure the divorce, and of the enmity of Anne Boleyn and her family. ... In order to convict of treason this minister, whom he had raised to the highest pinnacle of power, the king did not scruple to avail himself of the ancient statute of præmunire, which Wolsey was accused of having transgressed by acting as the pope's legate in