The first four children were either stillborn or died soon after birth; and it was rumored in Rome as early as 1514 that Henry might ask to be divorced in order to save England from a disputed succession. Mary was born in 1516 and survived, but all the children who came afterwards were either stillborn or died soon after birth. There is no doubt that the lack of a male heir troubled Henry greatly. There seems to be no reason for questioning the sincerity of his doubts about the legitimacy of his marriage with Catharine, or that he actually looked on the repeated destruction of his hopes of a male heir as a divine punishment for the sin of that contract. Questions of national policy and impulses of passion quickened marvelously his conscientious convictions. In the perplexities of his position the shortest way out seemed to be to ask the pope to declare that he had never been legally married to Catharine. He fully expected the pope to grant his request; but the pope was at the time practically in the power of Charles V, to whom his aunt, the injured Catharine, had appealed, and who had promised her his protection. From the protracted proceedings in the divorce case, Henry learned that he could not depend on the pope giving him what he wanted; and although his agents fought the case in Rome, he at once began preparing for the separation from papal jurisdiction. In the meantime, Henry had taken measures to summon a parliament; and in the interval between summons and assembly it had been suggested that Cranmer was of the opinion that the best way to deal with the divorce was to take it out of the hands of the pope and lay it before the canonists of the various universities of Europe. Through Cranmer this was so successfully done that the universities of England, France and Italy decided that the marriage was null and void. The king separated from Catharine, married Anne Boleyn, and fell under the papal ban. Parliament sundered the connection between England and Rome, and passed an act declaring that the king was “their singular protector and only supreme lord, and, as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ, the Supreme Head of the Church and of clergy.” The king’s desire was to destroy the influence of the pope over the Church of England, to which, in other respects, he wished to preserve the continuity of its Catholic character; but it was impossible, however, for the Church of England to maintain exactly the same place which it had occupied. There was too much stirring of reformation life in the land. “The cloisters were subjected to visitation in 1535, and totally abolished in 1536; and the Bible was diffused in English in 1538 as the only source of doctrine; but the statute of 1530 imposed distinct limits upon the Reformation, and in particular confirmed transubstantiation, priestly celibacy, masses for the dead, and auricular confession.”