Did Henry convert to protestantism when he married anne Boleyn?

Answer 1

Henry VIII never considered himself to be anything other than a Roman Catholic. His establishment of the Church of England was not intended to be an entirely new denomination of Christianity, but a sub-branch of the Roman Church that permitted divorce- or at least, permitted the MONARCH to divorce. So obsessed was he that England should be ruled by a male heir, that he set up the C of E because he believed that it was in his nation's best interests that a King, and not a Queen, should be on the throne, but he did not want a complete break from the Roman Church. He disagreed with the Pope on the divorce issue, but as far as he was concerned, the Anglican Church was the 'Roman Catholic Church of England'- a special offshoot of Catholicism that just had one or two differences from the Church of Rome.

The early rituals and services of the C of E were virtually indistinguishable from those of the Roman Church, and King Henry died earnestly believing himself to be Catholic. It was only after his reign, from the time of his son Edward VI onwards, that further divisions between the two denominations began to appear. This was partly influenced by seperate developments in Continental Europe, where seperatist Christian movements under theologists such as Martin Luther began to gain ground, leading to the establishment of the Lutheran Church in Germany and influencing public opinion about religion in Britain. The term 'Protestant' comes from these times, and was not adopted to describe non-Catholics until several years after Henry's death in 1547.