 Henry is generally credited with initiating the English Reformation – the process of transforming England from a Catholic country to a Protestant one – though his progress at the elite and mass levels is disputed , and the precise narrative not widely agreed . Certainly , in 1527 , Henry , until then an observant and well @-@ informed Catholic , appealed to the Pope for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine . No annulment was immediately forthcoming , the result in part of Charles V 's control of the Papacy . The traditional narrative gives this refusal as the trigger for Henry 's rejection of papal supremacy ( which he had previously defended ) , though as historian A. F. Pollard has argued , even if Henry had not needed an annulment , Henry may have come to reject papal control over the governance of England purely for political reasons . 
