The doctors told Henry and Catherine that she would not be able to produce any more children due to her age and her miscarriages. Henry, determined to provide a male heir to the throne, decided to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn. " Henry wished to invalidate the marriage on the grounds that the papal dispensation under which he and Katherine has been permitted to marry was illegal." (Parmiter, 82) In truth, king Henry had fallen in love (lust) with Anne Boleyn and had promised to marry her. But the pope was not allowing an annulment. .
Henry's situation was now desperate, for Anne was pregnant, and at all costs the child, who Henry believed to be a son, had to be legitimate. Henry began to read scriptures in the Bible to find anything that would back up the divorce he wanted from Catherine. Henry tried to use the book of Leviticus, which said "And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing they shall be childless." ( Hackett, 64) Henry really believing that being the cause of Catherine not being able to produces any more children. That God was doing this to him because he had sinned and married his brother's wife. Henry's other idea of why he had not had a male heir was that he was never married to Catherine in the first place. .
When the pope would not annul his marriage, Henry turned against Wosley, deprived him of his office of chancellor, and had him arrested on a charge of treason. Henry got Parliament to declare that his first marriage was void. He then obtained a divorce through Thomas Cranmer, whom he had made archbishop of Canterbury, and it was soon announced that he had married Anne Boleyn, who he had secretly been married to for a while. .
Over the next several years Henry's wrangle with the pope grew ever deeper, until in 1534 the Act of Supremacy was passed, making Henry, not the pope, head of the church in England. Henry received a letter from the pope telling him that he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.