The Seymour family hopes Henry’s favor may make Jane queen instead of Anne. Pope Paul III excommunicates apostate England and urges pious French king Francis I to invade it. Now Katherine is dead, rumored poisoned, the emperor offers to accept another queen provided Mary is declared the legal heiress. Henry’s new love inspires him to enter a joust carrying Jane’s color, to the Boleyns’ horror, but he is badly wounded. Cromwell prepares for Elisabeth’s succession, with grandpa Thomas as regent, but Henry recovers. Anne scolds Henry when she finds Jane on his knee, but looses another child. Henry and Cromwell now consider her an obstacle.
While the Pope still hopes that tide will turn Henry’s England back to Rome’s fold, Cromwell and Cranmer use a catalog of real, exaggerated and invented clerical abuses to close all religious houses and confiscate their immense wealth for Henry’s treasury. The Boleyn family worries Anne’s position is perilous without a son, but waits for Katherine’ illness to prove fatal. Henry is prepared to ally himself with the emperor despite Anne. Hunting with duke Charles, Henry meets fellow France veteran John Seymour’s enchanting daughter Jane.
Cromwell convinces Henry the religious houses’ immorality justifies spoliation, which even finances plays to show the people the papist ‘debauchery’. Henry wants the French king’s junior son to marry Anne’s daughter Elisabeth. The French envoy, an admiral entertained by duke Charles Brandon, proposes, rather then legitimize the royal son, the dauphin to wed Katherine’s daughter Mary- or the emperor’s. Charles tells Chapuys he believes Anne is a witch. After More’s ghost haunts Henry, Anne further looses openly unfaithful Henry’s favor.
Efforts to legalize the Henry’s marriage and further advance his authority and power come to steadfast obstructions. Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher demand that only God can govern the church. Arrested and confined to the Tower of London, both men are confronted with charges of high treason and a possible beheading unless they receive the Oath of Allegiance. In the mean time, Henry’s adventurous eye endures to stray.
After princess Elisabeth’s baptism, Henry orders Thomas Cromwell to draw up a bill of succession favoring his and Ann’s offspring, to be accepted by an oath from all subjects. The affront to the imperialist party is maximized by making princess Mary a lowly lady in waiting to her half-sister, yet the French King still refuses openly to recognize the new Queen. Ann orders her rival lady Eleanor Luke eliminated, by false charges of jewel theft. Tired of Henry’s schismatic obstinacy, Pope Paul III makes the loyal, hence jailed bishop Fisher a cardinal, Henry orders his beheading. Thomas More can no longer support his entire family, yet answers Cromwell’s questions with Henry’s own pamphlet arguing for papal supremacy by divine right. At her father George Boleyn’s suggestion only an ambitious mistress is a problematic rival, Ann urges Margaret ‘Madge’ Sheldon to ’succeed’ Eleanor. Thomas More refuses to take the oath as phrased, while accepting he succession, landing him in the Tower.
Henry destroys all ties with authority and the past. After many failed attempts to have his marriage to Katherine annulled by the Catholic Church, Henry’s patience finally wears out and he marries Anne in secret, appoints his Lutheran chaplain Thomas Cranmer the head of the Church of England, and strips Katherine of her title and status of Queen. The king and new queen are disappointed that their first child is a girl, whom they christen Elizabeth.
Having sent Cromwell to Germany to find out about the Lutheran church, Henry, realizing that he will not get a divorce from the Papacy ,cuts off all ties with Rome and declares himself to be the head of the church in England. Katherine is banished as Anne is made the Marquess of Pembroke. Despite Brandon’s opinion that she may not be a virgin, Henry is besotted with her and journeys with her to France to announce that she is to be the next queen of England.
As he seeks the annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII appoints himself the head of the Church of England. And Anne Boleyn insists that Henry remove Queen Katherine from the picture — and Court.
Now cardinal Wolsey lives in misery as penniless archbishop of and in York, barred from court, hoping in vain Ann Boleyn who broke his hold on the king will reward his efforts as she once wrote, honors and offices are mainly distributed to the Boleyn clan, with Norfolk in charge -Charles Brandon neglects his joint presidency- of the royal council. While the devout, rather ascetic new chancellor Thomas More is determined to crush heresy, personally attending the stake, Thomas Cromwell convinces Henry that under Luther’s vision the king is above all earthly laws, even his annulment should merely be treated as a theological matter, so he is commissioned to put the case before European theology faculties, while ambassador Boleyn must approach pope and emperor. Once he tastes the burden of government, Henry reproaches the council less virtue and worse results then the cardinal, especially now the treasury is empty and troubles spread, but when Cromwell learns trough a physician about Wolsey’s plot for his own reinstatement with pope and queen, the former master of the game is thrown in the Tower, where he slits his own throat, while More and the Catholic church are doomed now Henry has decided to make his own, almost Lutheran break-up with Rome after most universities and princes sided with Catherine.
The legatine court’s divorce trial continues in the Queen’s absence, hearing testimony suggesting prince Arthur carnally consummated his marriage to Catherine: embarrassing for the court, amusing for the populace. Catherine’s council, bishop Fisher, dares claim even heaven can’t dissolve the royal marriage, comparing to Herod Antipas’ adultery shamed by Saint John the Baptist who was executed for that truth. Woolsey sends Thomas More to Cambria (Cambray) to check if France and the pope remain irreconcilable with the emperor. After Anne walks off, disbelieving Wolsey’s promises to the king of a divorce by summer, Henry implies to cardinal Campeggio a negative verdict could turn him and England Lutheran, like half of Germany, yet after a papal message the legate prorogues the court till the end of the Roman Curia’s recess, in October; imperial ambassador Mendoza, who is ceding his post to bishop Chapuys, tells Catherine it’s the emperor’s doing. Henry’s sister Margaret dies from the consumption she contracted from Brandon, who recovered. When Thomas More reports the negotiations reconciled the emperor with France and pope Clement, Woolsey fears facing the royal wrath and ends up banned from court, ordered to relinquish all lucrative offices and accused of usurping royal authority. More is persuaded to succeed him as chancellor, under Henry’s promise his conscience won’t be abused by matters such as the divorce.
