King Henry VIII consulted Italian rabbi Yaakov Rafael
The sensational document is featured in an exhibition of Jewish manuscripts at the National British Library. This is a letter from Rabbi Yaakov Raphael from Italy, where he urges the English monarch not to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Henry VIII decided to divorce his wife in 1525. The reason for this was the absence of a male heir in the marriage and the desire of the king to marry Anne Boleyn. Since the Catholic Church did not recognize divorce, a way had to be found to invalidate the marriage. One such method was found in the Bible. In the biblical text there is a prohibition to have a relationship with a brother's widow, and Catherine of Aragon, before her marriage to Henry, was married to his brother, Arthur of Wales, who died early.
Since the Jews were expelled from England 250 years before these events, a rabbi had to be sought for consultation in the Italian 
city of Modena. However, the answer of Rav Yaakov Rafael did not please the king and his advisers. He wrote that the king's marriage was levirate, since his brother died without leaving children. Thus, taking a widow as his wife, Henry
continued his brother's family. This commandment is considered more important, and its observance cancels the prohibition on intimacy with the brother's wife. So the English monarch has no halakhic grounds for divorce.
Nevertheless, having made a religious coup in the country, quarreling with the pope and founding the Anglican Church, Henry in 1531 nevertheless terminated his first marriage and married Anne Boleyn.Correspondence with a rabbi is actually a unique case, usually in the practice of the Christian tradition of that time it was popular to destroy Jewish manuscripts and accuse Jews of numerous atrocities.
Nevertheless, as the exhibition shows, despite threats and harassment, Jews have made a significant contribution to the spread of knowledge in Europe. Many Jewish scholars who lived all over the world spoke several languages, translated many important works not only from Hebrew, but also from Arabic and Greek. The exhibition features a 15th-century copy of the Hebrew translation of the Canon of Medicine, made by the Italian Jew Nathan ha-Meati. This is a translation from Arabic of the famous work of the great physician of the XI century, Ibn Sina (Avicenna). The exposition also includes books of incantations and incantations of the 16th century and one of the first copies of Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed, about 40 documents in total out of 3,000 Hebrew manuscripts stored in the National Library of Great Britain.
Source: https://mjcc.ru/news/kak-ravvin-zapretil-genrihu-viii-s-zhenoy-razvoditsya/