ABSTRACT
It was hardly a surprise when, on 23 May 1533 in the archiepiscopal court at Dunstable, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer pronounced the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII null and void. The king had been agitating for such a decision for the past six years and if that decision would not be made in Rome, then it was now possible in Canterbury. This was no ordinary decision by the archbishop, and the events which led up to it were no less than extraordinary. For in the process of seeking an annulment1 of his first marriage, Henry VIII had done the unthinkable. The king of England, the ‘Defender of the Faith’, had led the Church in England out of obedience to the Church of Rome.
