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Rarely has Europe seen a king with ecclesiastical loyalties so outspoken yet so susceptible to change as those of England’s temperamental Henry VIII.

Roman Catholicism initially found in Henry a champion, and Henry’s allegiance was expressed in both ink and blood. In 1513, the 22-year-old monarch waged a “holy war” in Europe on behalf of Pope Julius II, who had promised Henry recognition as “Most Christian King” if he would “utterly exterminate the king of France.”

Eight years later, Henry attacked Martin Luther in a book that defended Catholicism’s seven sacraments. For his rhetorical efforts, Rome titled Henry “Defender of the Faith.”

Other episodes from Henry’s early years, however, hint that his allegiance to Rome was anything but absolute. Henry was a Renaissance king—he learned to speak Latin, French, and Spanish; and he was an accomplished musician and dabbled in theology and in Renaissance humanism, which was often critical of Catholicism.

Henry had also welcomed the appearance in England of a New Testament in Greek and Latin, compiled by his friend, the famous humanist Erasmus—despite the protests of many Catholic clergymen, who believed the distribution of the Scriptures was a great threat to their religious control.

If Henry’s esteem for humanism weakened his bond to Catholicism, his passion for women severed it. Partly because he needed a male heir, and partly because he was infatuated with Anne Boleyn, Henry divorced his first wife, Catherine, during the late 1520s—and opened a split with the Catholic church that only widened in the 1530s.

The king’s disgust with his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, a Protestant princess, led to a divorce and a distancing from Protestantism. (Because of politics, religion, and passion, Henry ended up going through six wives, two of whom lost their heads as a result of losing his favor.)

Henry’s whimsical ecclesiastical loyalties showed in the conflicting church-related directives he issued during the 1530s. He permitted the circulation of English-language Bibles and dissolved the country’s Catholic monasteries. But in 1539, he issued the Six Articles, which reaffirmed his Catholic views on priestly celibacy, the Mass, and the hearing of confession.

Henry never embraced Protestantism as much as he embraced himself as head of the church. Thus he persecuted both Catholics and radical Protestants during his reign—anyone who refused to accept his authority in the church. Still, he did more to open England’s doors to Protestantism than any figure of his time.

Transforming the nation’s Catholic clergy into leaders of a reformed Church of England was no easy task, and it was largely the work of Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell spent (some say ill-spent) his early years adventuring with the French army in Italy. When he returned to England, he took up his father’s cloth trade and practiced law on the side. He helped Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey dismantle some monasteries to fund Oxford University, and after Wolsey’s fall from power (1529), Cromwell entered the king’s service.

At Henry’s insistence, Cromwell pressured provincial bishops at Canterbury in January 1531 to recognize Henry as “sole protector of the church and clergy of England, and, so far as is allowed by the law of Christ, also our supreme head”—effectively undercutting their ultimate allegiance to Rome and beginning Henry’s break with the pope.

Because of Cromwell’s effectiveness, in 1535 Henry appointed him vicar general, which entailed supervising church affairs. During the next half decade, Cromwell took several steps to strengthen Henry’s control of English churches. He dissolved hundreds of the country’s monasteries between the years 1536 and 1539, and in the process he swelled the crown’s coffers.

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