Henry VIII after his coronation, around 1509

Catherine's relationship with Wolsey followed the same downward spiral as the relationship with Spain. Until then it had survived the occasional competition over whether Henry should lean towards France or Spain. And Wolsey began to behave, for reasons Catherine herself could not understand, as though she had lost all influence over her husband. Such was his confidence, or arrogance, that he began to treat her with disdain.

Catherine had always turned a blind eye to Henry's sexual wandering. But now, however, forbearance had been replaced by fury. It was one thing for her husband to chase her ladies-in-waiting, but it was quite another to flaunt his illegitimate offspring before the court and, worse still, to shower his bastard son with titles and honours. That, however, is what happened in the summer of 1525.

Six years earlier Elizabeth Blount had been sent off to an Essex priory to give birth to the child she was carrying. Her child was a boy - Henry Fitzroy. Blount disappeared from the court, but Henry was quite happy to recognise the child as his and make sure that his former mistress was well looked after. In June 1525 he suddenly showered his son with some of the highest honours and titles in the land. The boy was made, in quick succession, the knight of the Garter, the earl of Nottingham, the duke of both Richmond and Somerset, lord admiral of England. It marked him out as a rival for Catherine's daughter Mary.

The rivalry between Wolsey and Catherine resurfaced in the battle fought over two small children. Catherine's forthright objections to young Richmond's rise may have pushed her husband into sending Mary to govern Wales. On 17 May 1527, a secret tribunal had been called in Wolsey's York Palace at Westminster. Those present were told that the king was racked by terrible and terrifying doubt. Someone had suggested that his marriage was illegal and that he and Catherine had been living in sin all this time. Now, eighteen years after their wedding, he doubted that it have ever been legal to marry his brother's widow. The Bible, he had been told, prohibited such a thing. It was a convenient excuse; Henry wanted to get rid of Catherine.

Henry was capable of convincing himself that the feelings now stirring inside him were dictated by his conscience rather than his own desires. He longed for two things, neither of which he could have, One was a male heir; the other was one of Catherine's young ladies - Anne Boleyn. The second daughter of Thomas Boleyn had spent her early adult life in two of the most sophisticated courts of Europe - at Brussels with Margaret of Austria and in France with Francis I and the late queen Claude. She was clever, spoke French, could sing, play music and dance. She was, in other words, a sophisticate.

Some say that Anne resisted the king's attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress, often leaving court for the seclusion of Hever Castle. She had seen him use, and then cast aside, his last mistress - her own married sister Mary. He threw his boundless energy and will-power into obtaining that which he had been told he could not have. Anne, having possibly hooked him by mistake, then played him long and slow until he was irretrievably enmeshed in her net - and she in his. It was marriage, she ultimately said, or nothing.

Catherine knew that her salvation lay in Rome and she wanted the pope to accept that only he could override the decisions of a predecessor. She also knew that the best person to persuade him of that was her nephew. Charles immediately ordered his people in Rome into action. He wrote to the pope demanding that Wolsey be barred from deciding the case. His aunt, Margaret of Austria, had found out for herself about the affair and tried, from her base in the Netherlands (where she still governed on Charles' behalf), to get Wolsey to explain what was going on. The great powers of Europe were becoming involved and the pope was under pressure to prevent anyone declaring Catherine's marriage null and void.

Clement VII eventually agreed that Wolsey could hear the case in London, though only in the company of another cardinal sent from Rome, Lorenzo Campeggio, who went to see Catherine, after his arrival in September 1528, accompanied by his fellow cardinal Wolsey. She discovered to her horror that both men thought the whole affair could be solved if she took a vow of perpetual chastity, became a nun and moved into a convent. Campeggio found himself in a difficult position, since Charles V was determined to prevent the divorce and was putting pressure on the pope. The deciding point for Campeggio was Julius II's dispensation for Henry and Catherine's marriage. After less than two months of hearing evidence, the pope called the case back to Rome in July 1529.

With the chance for a divorce lost and England's place in Europe forfeit, Wolsey bore the blame; charged with praemunire in October 1529, he was stripped of his government office and property, including his magnificently expanded residence of Hampton Court, which Henry chose to replace the Palace of Westminster as his own main London residence. Briefly reconciled with Henry in the first half of 1530, he was charged once more in November 1530, this time for treason, but died while awaiting trial.

The long-running battle over who would get more of Henry, Catherine or Anne, reached one of its many climaxes in the late spring of 1531. That April Anne had fallen out with Henry over Mary. Catherine's daughter, by then a young woman of fifteen, had fallen ill with stomach pains and wrote asking to be with her mother and father at Greenwich. At Anne's insistence, the request was turned down. In July, Catherine was sent to The More, one of Wolsey's houses in Hertfordshire. Her daughter, to make things worse, was sent away to Richmond.

In late September 1532, a messenger from Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, arrived at her house to deliver the news that Henry wanted Catherine's jewels. He was preparing to meet the French king and needed those jewels for the woman accompanying him, Anne Boleyn.

Catherine watched Anne's progress from a distance, kept up to date by her ladies and their contacts at court, as her rival grew in confidence and pressed home her advantage. Anne had started the year by taking over Catherine's own quarters at Greenwich and surrounding herself with the entourage of ladies-in-waiting. The trip across the Channel to meet the French king was designed to be a moment of crowning glory. Before thay sailed to Calais in October 1532, Henry gave Anne the title of marchioness of Pembroke.

Anne kept her own watchful eye not just on Catherine and her supporters but on Princess Mary as well. When Henry and Mary, apparently by accident, met while out hunting that autumn, Anne sent her ladies to listen into their conversation. A cowed Henry confined himself to swapping pleasantries with his own daughter.

The conference at Calais was something of a political triumph, but even though the French government gave implicit support for Henry's remarriage and Francis I himself held private conference with Anne Boleyn, the French king maintained alliances with the Pope which he could not explicitly defy.

Wha the revolution needed most of all was an enforcer - someone with the talent, determination and discipline to drive through the changes. Thomas Cromwell began to fill the role. His expertise lay both in the law and in the implacable pursuit of money. He had been Wolsey's agent when the cardinal suppressed a series of minor monasteries in order to use their resources to fund his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. After Wolsey's death he proved just as formidable at helping the king administer the cardinal's former estate. By the end of autumn 1531 he had become Henry's man in parliament. He soon acquired a new skill - that of turning parliament against the church and the clergy.

By January 1533, Anne Boleyn was pregnant and the marriage could no longer be delayed. The date of the wedding is unclear. It may have taken place when Anne was with the king in Calais in November 1532, but it seems more likely that it took place at a secret ceremony on 25 January 1533. Parliament was immediately called to pass the necessary legislation. The parliamentary session began on 4 February, and Cromwell introduced a new bill restricting the right to make appeals to Rome. On 30 March, Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury and Convocation immediately declared the king's marriage to Catherine unlawful. In the first week of April, Parliament passed the bill into law as the Act in Restraint of Appeals, ensuring that any verdict concerning the king's marriage could not be challenged in Rome. Later in May Archbishop Cranmer pronounced the king's marriage to Anne to be lawful, and on 1 June, she was crowned queen.

​Anne Boleyn took to her birthing chamber at Greenwich in August 1533. Henry had hidden from her the pope's declaration that, at least in the eyes or Roman Catholic Europe, her children would be considered illegitimate. On 7 September, the child was born; it was a girl who, three days later, was christened Elizabeth. Mary soon felt the fallout from the birth of her half-sister.

With the Act of Succession in 1534, Mary was declared illegitimate; the king's marriage to Anne legitimate and Anne's issue next in the line of succession. With the Acts of Supremacy in November 1534 Parliament also recognised the king's status as head of the church in England and with the Act in Restraint of Appeals abolished the right of appeal to Rome. It was only then that Clement VII took the step of excommunicating Henry and Thomas Cranmer, although it was not made official until some time later.

Catherine had been worried for some time that Henry would either marry Mary off to some inferior suitor or make her enter a nunnery. In November, however, Henry decided to inflict the ultimate humiliation on her. She was to be made a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth. Anne constantly urged Henry to be tougher on his daughter and soon Mary had her jewels and ornaments confiscated. Catherine's daughter, however, remained unbroken. She was also prevented from going to mass at a nearby church in case, like her mother, she aroused the support of the country folk who still greeted her as princess.

By May 1534 Catherine had moved to the fortified manor house at Kimbolton, in Huntingdonshire. Catherine worried that Mary might be poisoned or would crack under the pressure. If her daughter was to die, Catherine wanted to be at her side. Her requests to be allowed to nurse Mary, who frequently fell ill as the strain and fear frew, were turned down.

​In late December 1535 Catherine, had just turned fifty, fell ill. She could barely sit up, let alone stand. She had been unable to eat, or hold food down, for several days. The pain in her stomach had stopped her sleeping for more than two hours in total over the previous six nights. Sensing her death was near, Catherine made her will, and wrote to her nephew, asking him to protect her daughter. She then penned one final letter to Henry, her 'most dear lord and husband'. On the afternoon of 7 January 1536, Catherine of Aragon drew her last breath.

The Spanish ambassador reported that Henry dressed in yellow, stuck a white feather in his cap and went dancing with Anne Boleyn's ladies. The queen was pregnant again and she was aware of the consequences if she failed to give birth to a son. Later that month, the king was unhorsed in a tournament and was badly injured and it seemed for a time that the king's life was in danger. When news of this accident reached the queen, she was sent into shock and miscarried a male child, on the day of Catherine's funeral, 29 January 1536.