David Starkey: Do gays need to call each other Mr and Mrs? Pope Julius II, acting with the plenitude of papal power, had "dispensed"" Henry from this prohibition and Henry and Catherine had been married in 1509. But Henry's affection for Catherine, real enough to begin with, cooled and he fell violently in love with Anne Boleyn. Above all, he persuaded himself that his failure to have a son by Catherine meant that he had been visited by the curse pronounced by God against those who broke the Levitical prohibitions. Henry now embarked on his "great matter"" to have the papal dispensation set aside. At first, he resorted at vast cost in time and effort to papal or canon law. But when this failed, and inspired by Thomas Cranmer, he shifted the whole ground of debate. The pope had acted ultra vires, he declared, and the "great matter"" must be tried in the court of conscience, guided by the laws of nature and God as infallibly set down in Scripture. These were the grounds on which Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury, eventually freed Henry from his union with Catherine and authorised his marriage to Anne, whom he had wed twice and bigamously some months earlier. And all Henry's subsequent marital gyrations were fitted, by legal ingenuity and the axe, within the strict rules. Anne was discarded on grounds of adultery and death (by execution, of course); Anne of Cleves because of non-consummation (always a grounds for nullity, though Heaven knows how it will be construed for gay marriages) and Catherine Howard again because of promiscuity before marriage and adultery afterwards, coupled with death by execution. In other words, Henry did not loosen but tighten the rules of marriage. And his Church has continued to keep them tight - against divorcees, including its own future Supreme Governor, Prince Charles, who was notoriously denied a Church service for his second marriage, and now against gays. In respect of marriage, the Anglican Church is not so much a via media, or "middle way"," as an extreme. The Roman Catholic Church continued to temper the absoluteness of the marriage bond by canon law, as it had done to open the way for Henry's first marriage. The new Protestant Churches frankly introduced divorce, in the case of the Scottish Kirk as early as 1560. But the Church of England adhered to the rigour of the Gospel set forth in Jesus's own words in Mark 10: 5-8. Questioned by the Pharisees on the lawfulness of divorce as permitted by the law of Moses, Christ rejected the idea absolutely and without qualification: "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." What could be plainer? And where the Church led, the State followed. The result was that for the first century and a half after the Reformation divorce was unknown in English law. After 1670 a form of parliamentary divorce was developed, by which an Act of Parliament set the law aside in a particular case and permitted divorce and sometimes even remarriage. But the procedure was very expensive and rare - only 300 took place in the following two centuries. The first breach in the dam did not take place till 1857, when an Act of Parliament allowed divorce through the courts of law, though on the single ground of adultery. In 1923 the law was equalised between men and women; in 1937 the grounds were multiplied to include cruelty, desertion and insanity and, decisively, in 1971 the concept of "irretrievable breakdown"" was added. Divorces now became "no fault"" and "quickie"" and the flood gates were opened. In retrospect, the tide of liberalisation looks irresistible. But the Church fought every inch. Delaying tactics held back change for decades and, even when change was conceded, it deployed social stigma and the Crown's authority to turn the legally divorced - who were banned from Court and the Royal Enclosure at Ascot - into social pariahs. And it has never conceded - as Prince Charles discovered to his cost - the principle of the remarriage of divorcees during the lifetime of the parties to the original marriage. Can gays really be surprised that they are being treated with the same rigour as the heir to the throne and would-be Defender of Faith? For the Church's grounds for its refusal to countenance gay marriage are identical. They even come from the same crucial verses in St Matthew's Gospel where Christ roots the indissolubility of marriage in the God-given separateness and complementarity of men and women: "But from the beginning of creation"," He said, "God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife. And they twain shall be one flesh; so then they are no more twain, but one flesh"." Do gays who clamour for church weddings read their Bibles? Do self-proclaimed Christian Conservative politicians, who "want to strengthen marriage by extending it to gays"" listen to the words of their marriage services? It seems that, as in a cooling marriage, relations between Church and State have broken down. The gap between the values and practices of the two, which opened up with the legalisation of divorce, is now, thanks to the even more contentious issue of gay marriage, threatening to become a chasm. There seems very little appetite for reconciliation and a positive insouciance (at least on the part of the Church) about the consequences of breakdown. The idea of a national church is dismissed as the Church of England, God help us, proclaims itself "European""; while disestablishment is declared, by the Primate of All England of all people, "not to be the end of the world"." Indeed not. But it would be the end of so much that matters about England. The buildings of the Church, preserved because of its peculiar conservatism, are among our noblest; its music and liturgy are beautiful beyond compare; and, as we have just seen in the Jubilee, its role in providing both the setting and substance of ceremonial dignifies the great moments of our national life in a way which is the admiration and envy of other countries. All this began in the high drama, tragedy, nobility and suffering of the Reformation. Is it really to end in a fit of mutual petulance over whether gays can legally call each other Mr and Mrs?