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The English Reformation^[1] was a series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.

These events were, in part, associated with the wider process of the European Protestant Reformation, a religious and political movement which affected the practice of Christianity across most of Europe during this period. Many factors contributed to the process: the decline of feudalism and the rise of nationalism, the rise of the common law, the invention of the printing press and increased circulation of the Bible, the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars and the upper and middle classes. However, the various phases of the English Reformation, which also covered Wales and Ireland, were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion gradually accommodated itself.

Based on Henry VIII's desire for an annulment of his marriage, the English Reformation was at the outset more of a political affair than a theological dispute. The reality of political differences between Rome and England allowed growing theological disputes to come to the fore.^[2] Immediately before the break with Rome, it was the Pope and general councils of the church that decided doctrine. Church law was governed by the code of canon law with final jurisdiction in Rome. Church taxes were paid straight to Rome and it was the Pope who had the final say over the appointment of bishops. The split from Rome made the English monarch the Supreme Governor of the English church by "Royal Supremacy", thereby making the Church of England the established church of the nation. Doctrinal and legal disputes now rested with the monarch, and the papacy was deprived of revenue and the final say on the appointment of bishops.

The structure and theology of the church was a matter of fierce dispute for generations. These disputes were finally ended by a coup d'état (the "Glorious Revolution") in 1688, from which emerged a church polity with an established church and a number of non-conformist churches whose members at first suffered various civil disabilities which were only removed over time, as did the substantial minority who remained Roman Catholic in England, whose church organization remained illegal until the 19th century.

Background[link]

Role of Henry VIII and royal marriages[link]

King Henry VIII of England

Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife.

Henry VIII^[1]ascended the English throne in 1509 at the age of 17. He made a dynastic marriage with Catherine of Aragon, widow of his brother Arthur, in June 1509, just before his coronation on Midsummer's Day. Unlike his father, who was secretive and conservative, the young Henry appeared to be the epitome of chivalry and sociability, seeking out the company of young men like himself; an observant Catholic, he heard up to five masses a day (except during the hunting season); of "powerful but unoriginal mind", he allowed himself to be influenced by his advisors from whom he was never apart, by night or day; he was thus susceptible to whoever had his ear.^[3] Between his young contemporaries and the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, there was thus a state of hostility. As long as Wolsey had his ear, Henry's Catholicism was secure: in 1521 he had defended the Catholic Church from Martin Luther's accusations of heresy in a book he wrote, probably with considerable help from Thomas More, entitled The Defence of the Seven Sacraments, for which he was awarded the title "Defender of the Faith" (Fidei Defensor) by Pope Leo X. (Successive English and British monarchs have retained this title to the present, even after the Anglican Church broke away from Catholicism.) Wolsey's enemies at court included those who had been influenced by Lutheran ideas,^[4] among whom was the attractive, charismatic Anne Boleyn.

Anne arrived at court in 1522, from years in France where she had been educated by Queen Claude of France, as maid of honour to Queen Catherine, a woman of "charm, style and wit, with will and savagery which made her a match for Henry".^[5] By the late 1520s, Henry wanted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled. She had not produced a male heir who survived into adulthood and Henry wanted a son to secure the Tudor dynasty. Before Henry's father (Henry VII) ascended the throne, England had been beset by civil warfare over rival claims to the English crown and Henry wanted to avoid a similar uncertainty over the succession.^[6] Catherine's only surviving child was Princess Mary.

Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife.

Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was "blighted in the eyes of God".^[7] Catherine had been his late brother's wife, and it was therefore against biblical teachings for Henry to have married her (Leviticus 20:21);^[8] a special dispensation from Pope Julius II had been needed to allow the wedding in the first place.^[9] Henry argued that this had been wrong and that his marriage had never been valid. In 1527 Henry asked Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage, but the Pope refused. According to Canon Law the Pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of a canonical impediment previously dispensed. Clement also feared the wrath of Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose troops earlier that year had sacked Rome and briefly taken the Pope prisoner.^[10]

The combination of his "scruple of conscience" and his captivation by Anne Boleyn made his desire to rid himself of his Queen compelling.^[11] The indictment of his chancellor Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 for praemunire (taking the authority of the Papacy above the Crown), and subsequent death in November 1530 on his way to London to answer a charge of high treason^[12] left Henry open to the opposing influences of the supporters of the Queen and those who countenanced the abandonment of the Roman allegiance, for whom an annulment was but an opportunity.

Parliamentary debate and legislation[link]

In 1529, the king summoned Parliament to deal with annulment, thus bringing together those who wanted reform but who disagreed what form it should take; it became known as the Reformation Parliament. There were Common lawyers who resented the privileges of the clergy to summon laity to their courts;^[13] there were those who had been influenced by Lutheran evangelicalism and were hostile to the theology of Rome; Thomas Cromwell was both. There were those, like Foxe and Stokesey, who argued for the Royal Supremacy over the English Church. Henry's Chancellor, Thomas More, successor to Wolsey, also wanted reform: he wanted new laws against heresy.^[14]

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485–1540), Henry VIII's chief minister 1532–40.

Cromwell was a lawyer and a Member of Parliament, an evangelical who saw how Parliament could be used to advance the Royal Supremacy, which Henry wanted, and to further evangelical beliefs and practices which both he and his friends wanted.^[15] One of his closest friends was Thomas Cranmer, soon to be Archbishop.

In the matter of the annulment, no progress seemed possible: the Pope seemed more afraid of Emperor Charles V than of Henry. Anne and Cromwell and their allies wished simply to ignore the Pope; but in October 1530 a meeting of clergy and lawyers advised that Parliament could not empower the archbishop to act against the Pope's prohibition. Henry thus resolved to bully the priests.^[16]

Actions by the king against English clergy[link]

Having brought down Cardinal Wolsey, his Chancellor, Henry VIII finally resolved to charge the whole English clergy with praemunire in order to secure their agreement to his annulment. Praemunire, which forbade obedience to the authority of foreign rulers, had been around since the 1392 Statute of Praemunire and had been used against individuals in the ordinary course of court proceedings. Now Henry, having first charged Queen Catherine's supporters, Bishops John Fisher, John Clerk, Nicholas West and Henry Standish and archdeacon of Exeter Adam Travers, then decided to proceed against the whole clergy.^[17] Henry claimed £100,000 from the Convocation of Canterbury of the Church of England for their pardon, which was granted by the Convocation on 24 January 1531. The clergy wanted the payment to be spread over five years. Henry refused. The Convocation responded by withdrawing their payment altogether and demanded Henry fulfill certain guarantees before they agreed to give him the money. Henry refused these conditions, agreed only to the five-year period of payment and then, to the payment which Henry wanted the Convocation to accept, added five articles:

1. that the clergy recognise Henry as the "sole protector and Supreme Head of the Church and clergy of England"^[18]
2. that the King had spiritual jurisdiction
3. that the privileges of the Church were upheld only if they did not detract from the royal prerogative and the laws of the realm
4. that the King pardoned the clergy for violating the statute of praemunire, and
5. that the laity were also pardoned.

Further legislative acts[link]

In Parliament, Bishop John Fisher championed Catherine and the clergy; he had inserted into the first article, the phrase "as far as the word of God allows".^[19] In Convocation, however, Archbishop Warham requested a discussion but was met by a stunned silence; then Warham said, "He who is silent seems to consent", to which a clergyman responded, "Then we are all silent." The Convocation granted consent to the King's five articles and the payment on 8 March 1531. That same year Parliament passed the Pardon to Clergy Act 1531.

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury and editor and co-author of the first and second Books of Common Prayer.

The breaking of the power of Rome proceeded little by little. In 1532, Cromwell brought before Parliament the Supplication Against the Ordinaries which listed nine grievances against the Church, including abuses of power and Convocation's independent legislative power. Finally, on 10 May, the King demanded of Convocation that the Church should renounce all authority to make laws and, on 15 May, the Submission of the Clergy was subscribed, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church so that it could no longer make canon law without royal licence, i.e. without the permission of the King; thus completely emasculating it as a law-making body. (This would subsequently be passed by the Parliament in 1534 and again in 1536.) The day after this More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister. (Cromwell never became Chancellor; his power came – and was lost – through his informal relations with Henry.)

Several Acts of Parliament then followed. The Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates, which proposed that the clergy should pay no more than 5% of their first year's revenue (annates) to Rome proved at first controversial, and required Henry's presence in the House of Lords three times and the browbeating of the Commons.^[20] The Act in Restraint of Appeals which was drafted by Cromwell, apart from outlawing appeals to Rome on ecclesiastical matters, declared that "this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the Imperial Crown of the same, unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Spirituality and Temporality, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience",^[21] thus declaring England an independent country in every respect. English historian Geoffrey Elton has called this Act an "essential ingredient" of the "Tudor revolution" in that it expounded a theory of national sovereignty.^[22] The Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates outlawed all annates to Rome, and also ordered that if cathedrals refused the King's nomination for bishop, they would be liable to punishment by praemunire. Finally in 1534 the Acts of Supremacy made Henry "supreme head in earth of the Church of England" and disregarded any "usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority [or] prescription".^[23]

Thomas More, with John Fisher the leader of political resistance against the break with Rome. Both were executed in 1535.

Meanwhile, having taken Anne to France on a pre-nuptial honeymoon, Henry was married to her in Westminster Abbey in January 1533. This was made easier by the death of Archbishop Warham, a stalwart opponent of an annulment, after which Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury; Cranmer was prepared to grant the annulment^[24] of the marriage to Catherine as Henry required. Anne gave birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, three months after the marriage. The Pope responded to the marriage by excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church (11 July 1533).^[25] Henry was to be excommunicated again in December 1538.

Consequently in the same year the Act of First Fruits and Tenths transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. The Act Concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations outlawed the annual payment by landowners of one penny to the Pope. This Act also reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by "the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions" of the Pope.^[26]

In case any of this should be resisted Parliament passed the Treasons Act 1534 which made it high treason punishable by death to deny Royal Supremacy; the following year Thomas More and John Fisher were executed under this legislation. Finally in 1536 Parliament passed the Act against the Pope's Authority which removed the last part of papal authority still legal. This was Rome's power in England to decide disputes concerning Scripture.

Theological radicalism[link]

The break with Rome was not, by itself, a Reformation.^[2] That was to come from the dissemination of ideas. The views of the German reformer Martin Luther and his school were widely known and disputed in England.^[27] A major manifestation of theological radicalism in England was Lollardy, a movement deriving from the writings of John Wycliffe, the 14th-century Bible translator, which stressed the primacy of Scripture. But after the execution of Sir John Oldcastle, leader of the Lollard rebellion of 1415, they never again had access to the levers of power and by the 15th century were much reduced in numbers and influence. There were still many Lollards about, especially in London and the Thames Valley, in Essex and Kent, Coventry, Bristol and even in the north, who would be receptive to the new ideas when they came,^[28] who looked for a reform in the lifestyle of the clergy. They emphasized the preaching of the word over the sacrament of the altar, holding the latter to be but a memorial, but they were not party to the actions of the government.^[29][30] Other ideas, critical of the papal supremacy were held, not only by Lollards, but by those who wished to assert the supremacy of the secular state over the church^[31] but also by conciliarists such as Thomas More and, initially, Cranmer. Other Catholic reformists, including John Colet, Dean of St Paul's, warned that heretics were not nearly so great a danger to the faith as the wicked and indolent lives of the clergy.

The impact of Luther's thinking was of a different order. The main plank of his thinking, justification by faith alone rather than by good works, threatened the whole basis of the Catholic penitential system with its endowed masses and prayers for the dead as well as its doctrine of purgatory. Faith, not pious acts, prayers or masses, in this view, can secure the grace of God. Moreover, printing, which had become widespread at the end of the previous century, meant that vernacular Bibles could be produced in quantity. A further English translation by William Tyndale was banned but it was impossible to prevent copies from being smuggled and widely read. The Church could no longer effectively dictate its interpretation. A group in Cambridge, which met at the White Horse tavern from the mid-1520s and became known as "Little Germany", soon became influential. Its members included Robert Barnes, Hugh Latimer, John Frith and Thomas Bilney, all eventually to be burned as heretics.^[32] Cranmer's change of mind, borne partly by his membership of the team negotiating for the annulment, finally came through his stay with Andreas Osiander in Nuremberg in 1532. (Cranmer also secretly married Osiander's niece).^[33] Even then the position was complicated by the fact that the Lutherans were not in favour of the annulment. Cranmer (and Henry) felt obliged to seek assistance from Strasbourg and Basel, which brought him into contact with the more radical ideas associated with Zwingli.^[34]

Cromwell's programme, assisted by Anne Boleyn's influence over episcopal appointments, was not merely against the clergy and the power of Rome. He persuaded Henry that safety from political alliances that Rome might attempt to bring together lay in negotiations with the German Lutheran princes.^[35] There also seemed to be a possibility that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, might act to avenge his rejected aunt (Queen Catherine) and enforce the Pope's excommunication. It never came to anything but it brought to England Lutheran ideas: three sacraments only – baptism, Eucharist and penance – which Henry was prepared to countenance in order to keep open the possibility of an alliance. More noticeable, and objectionable to many, were the Injunctions, first of 1536 and then 1538. The programme began with the abolition of many feast days, "the occasion of vice and idleness" which, particularly at harvest time, had an immediate effect on village life.^[36] The offerings to images were discouraged, as were pilgrimages – these injunctions took place while monasteries were being dissolved. In some places images were burned on the grounds that they were objects of superstitious devotion, candles lit before images were prohibited, Bibles in both English and Latin were to be bought.^[37] Thus did the Reformation begin to affect the towns and villages of England and, in many places, people did not like it.^[38]

Dissolution of the Monasteries[link]

In 1534, Cromwell initiated a Visitation of the Monasteries ostensibly to examine their character, in fact, to value their assets with a view to expropriation. The Crown was undergoing financial difficulties, and the wealth of the church, in contrast to its political weakness, made appropriation of church property both tempting and feasible.^[39] Suppression of monasteries in order to raise funds was not unknown previously. Cromwell had done the same thing on the instructions of Cardinal Wolsey to raise funds for two proposed colleges at Ipswich and Oxford years before. Now the Visitation allowed for an inventory of what the monasteries possessed, and the visiting commissioners claimed to have uncovered sexual immorality and financial impropriety amongst the monks and nuns, which became the ostensible justification for their suppression. The Church owned between one-fifth and one-third of the land in all England; Cromwell realised that he could bind the gentry and nobility to Royal Supremacy by selling to them the huge amount of Church lands, and that any reversion back to pre-Royal Supremacy would entail upsetting many of the powerful people in the realm.^[40] For these various reasons the Dissolution of the Monasteries was begun in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act, affecting smaller houses, those valued at less than £200 a year; the revenue was used by Henry to help build coastal defences (see Device Forts) against expected invasion, and all their land was given to the Crown or sold to the aristocracy. Whereas the royal supremacy had raised few eyebrows, the attack on abbeys and priories affected lay people.^[41] Mobs attacked those sent to break up monastic buildings; the suppression commissioners were attacked by local people in several places. In Northern England there were a series of uprisings by Catholics against the dissolutions in late 1536 and early 1537. In the autumn of 1536 there was a great muster, reckoned to be up to 40,000 in number, at Horncastle in Lincolnshire which was, with difficulty, dispersed by the nervous gentry. They had attempted without success to negotiate with the king by petition. The Pilgrimage of Grace was a more serious matter. Revolt spread through Yorkshire, and the rebels gathered at York. Robert Aske, their leader, negotiated the restoration of sixteen of the twenty six northern monasteries, which had actually been dissolved. However, the promises made to them by the Duke of Norfolk were ignored on the king's orders. Norfolk was instructed to put the rebellion down. Forty-seven of the Lincolnshire rebels were executed and 132 from the northern pilgrimage.^[42] Further rebellions took place in Cornwall in early 1537, and in Walsingham (in Norfolk) which received similar treatment.

It took Cromwell four years to complete the process. In 1539 he moved to the dissolution of the larger monasteries which had escaped earlier. Many houses gave up voluntarily, though some sought exemption by payment. When their houses were closed down some monks sought transfer to larger houses. Many became secular priests. A few, including eighteen Carthusians, refused and were killed to the last man.

Reformation reversed[link]

The abolition of papal authority made way not for orderly change but for dissension and violence; iconoclasm, destruction, disputes within communities which led to violence, and radical challenge to all forms of faith were daily reported to Cromwell, something which he tried to hide from the King.^[43] Once Henry knew what was afoot, he acted.^[44] Thus at the end of 1538, a proclamation was issued forbidding free discussion of the Sacrament^[45] and forbidding clerical marriage, on pain of death. Henry personally presided at the trial of John Lambert in November 1538 for denying the real presence. At the same time, he shared in the drafting of a proclamation giving Anabaptists and Sacramentaries ten days to get out of the country. In 1539 Parliament passed the Six Articles reaffirming Catholic practices such as transubstantiation, clerical celibacy and the importance of confession to a priest and prescribed penalties if anyone denied them. Henry himself observed the Easter Triduum in that year with some display.^[46] On 28 June 1540 Cromwell, his longtime advisor and loyal servant, was executed. Different reasons were advanced: that Cromwell would not enforce the Act of Six Articles; that he had supported Barnes, Latimer and other heretics; and that he was responsible for Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife. Many other arrests under the Act followed. Cranmer lay low.^[47]

In 1540 Henry began his attack upon the free availability of the Bible. In 1536 Cromwell had instructed each parish to acquire "one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English" by Easter 1539. This instruction had been largely ignored, so a new version, the Great Bible (largely William Tyndale's English translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures), was authorised in August 1537. But by 1539 Henry announced his desire to have it "corrected" (which Cranmer referred to the universities to undertake). Many parishes were, in any case, reluctant to set up English Bibles: now the mood of conservatism, which expressed itself in the fear that Bible reading led to heresy. Many Bibles which had been put in place were removed.^[48] By the 1543 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, Henry restricted Bible reading to men and women of noble birth. He expressed his fears to Parliament in 1545 that "the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale-house and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same".^[49]

By 1546 the conservatives, the Duke of Norfolk, Wriothesly, Gardiner and Tunstall were in the ascendency and were, by the king's will, to be members of the regency council, on his death. But by the time he died in 1547, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife (and therefore uncle to the future Edward VI), managed, by a number of alliances with influential Protestants such as Lisle, to gain control over the Privy Council and persuaded Henry to change his will and to replace them as his executors by his supporters.^[50]

Edward's Reformation[link]

King Edward VI of England, in whose reign the reform of the Anglican Church moved in a more Protestant direction.

When Henry died in 1547, his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, inherited the throne. Edward was a precocious child, who had been brought up as a Protestant, but was of little account politically. Seymour was made Lord Protector. He was commissioned as virtual regent with near sovereign powers. Now made Duke of Somerset, he proceeded at first hesitantly, partly because his powers were not unchallenged. When he acted it was because he saw the political advantage.^[51] The 1547 Injunctions against images were a more tightly drawn version of those of 1538 but they were more fiercely enforced, at first informally, and then by instruction. All images in churches were to be dismantled; stained glass, shrines, and statues were defaced or destroyed; roods and often their lofts and screens were cut down; bells were taken down; vestments were prohibited and either burned or sold; church plate was to be melted down or sold;^[52] the requirement of the clergy to be celibate was lifted; processions were banned; and ashes and palms were prohibited.^[53] Chantries, means by which the saying of masses for the dead were endowed, were abolished completely. How well this was received is disputed; Dickens contends that people had "ceased to believe in intercessory masses for souls in purgatory";^[54] others, such as Duffy, argue that the demolition of chantry chapels and the removal of images coincided with the activity of royal visitors.^[55] The evidence is often ambiguous.^[56] In 1549 Cranmer introduced a Book of Common Prayer in English. In 1550 stone altars were replaced by wooden communion tables, a very public break with the past, as it changed the look and focus of church interiors.^[57]

Less visible, but still influential, was the new ordinal which provided for Protestant pastors rather than Catholic priests, an admittedly conservative adaptation of Bucer's draft;^[58] its Preface explicitly mentions the historic succession but it has been described as "another case of Cranmer's opportunist adoption of mediaeval forms for new purposes".^[59] In 1551 the episcopate was remodelled by the appointment of Protestants to the bench. This removed the obstacle to change which was the refusal of some bishops to enforce the regulations.

Henceforth, the Reformation proceeded apace. In 1552 the prayer book, which the conservative Bishop Stephen Gardiner had approved from his prison cell as being "patient of a Catholic interpretation", was replaced by a second much more radical prayer book which altered the shape of the service so as to remove any sense of sacrifice. Edward's Parliament also repealed his father's Six Articles.

The enforcement of the new liturgy did not always take place without a struggle. Conformity was the order of the day, but in East Anglia and in Devon there were rebellions,^[60] as also in Cornwall, to which many parishes sent their young men; they were put down only after considerable loss of life. In other places the causes of the rebellions were less easy to pin down^[61] but by July throughout southern England, there was "quavering quiet" which burst out into "stirs" in many places, most significantly in the so-called Kett's Rebellion in Norwich. And apart from these more spectacular pieces of resistance, in some places chantry priests continued to say prayers and landowners to pay them to do so; opposition to the removal of images was widespread, so much so that when during the Commonwealth, William Dowsing was commissioned to the task of image breaking in Suffolk, his task, as he records it, was enormous.^[62] In Kent and the southeast, compliance was mostly willing and for many, the sale of vestments and plate was an opportunity to make money (but it was also true that in London and Kent, Reformation ideas had permeated more deeply into popular thinking). The effect of the resistance was to topple Somerset as Lord Protector, so that in 1549 it was feared by some that the Reformation would cease. The prayer book was the tipping point. But Lisle, now made Earl of Warwick, was made Lord President of the Privy Council and, ever the opportunist (he was to die a public Catholic), he saw the further implementation of the reforming policy as a means of defeating his rivals.^[63]

Outwardly, the destruction and removals for sale had changed the church forever. Many churches had concealed their vestments and their silver,^[64] and had buried their stone altars. There were many disputes between the government and parishes over church property. Thus, when Edward died in July 1553 and the Duke of Northumberland attempted to have the Protestant Lady Jane Grey made Queen, the unpopularity of the confiscations gave Mary the opportunity to have herself proclaimed Queen, first in Suffolk, and then in London to the acclamation of the crowds.

Catholic Restoration[link]

Queen Mary I of England restored the English allegiance to Rome.

From 1553, under the reign of Henry's Roman Catholic daughter, Mary I, the Reformation legislation was repealed and Mary sought to achieve the reunion with Rome. Her first Act of Parliament was to retroactively validate Henry's marriage to her mother and so legitimise her claim to the throne. Achieving her objective was however, not straightforward. The Pope was only prepared to accept reunion when church property disputes had been settled, which, in practice, meant allowing those who had bought former church property to keep it.^[65] Thus did Cardinal Pole arrive to become Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's place. Mary could have had Cranmer, imprisoned as he was, tried and executed for treason – he had supported the claims of Lady Jane Grey – but she had resolved to have him tried for heresy. His recantations of his Protestantism would have been a major coup for her. Unhappily for her, he unexpectedly withdrew his recantations at the last minute as he was to be burned at the stake, thus ruining her government's propaganda victory.

If Mary was to secure England for Catholicism, she needed an heir. On the advice of the Holy Roman Emperor she married his son, Philip II of Spain; she needed to prevent her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth from inheriting the Crown and thus returning England to Protestantism. There was opposition, and even a rebellion in Kent (led by Sir Thomas Wyatt); even though it was provided that Philip would never inherit the kingdom if there was no heir, received no estates and had no coronation.^[65] He was there to provide an heir. But she never became pregnant; her apparent pregnancy was, in fact, the beginnings of stomach cancer. Ironically, another blow fell. Pope Julius died and his successor, Pope Paul IV, declared war on Philip and recalled Pole to Rome to have him tried as a heretic. Mary refused to let him go. The support which she might have expected from a grateful Pope was thus denied her.

After 1555, the initial reconciling tone of the regime began to harden. The medieval heresy laws were restored. The so-called Marian Persecutions of Protestants ensued and 283 Protestants were burnt at the stake for heresy. This resulted in the Queen becoming known as "Bloody Mary", due to the influence of John Foxe, one of the Protestants who fled Marian England. Foxe's Book of Martyrs recorded the executions in such detail that it became Mary's epitaph; Convocation subsequently ordered that Foxe's book should be placed in every cathedral in the land. In fact, while those who were executed after the revolts of 1536, and the St. David's Down rebellion of 1549, and the unknown number of monks who died for refusing to submit, may not have been tried for heresy, they certainly exceeded that number by some amount. Even so, the heroism of some of the martyrs was an example to those who witnessed them, so that in some places it was the burnings that set people against the regime.^[66]

There was a slow consolidation in Catholic strength in Mary's latter years. The reconciled Catholic Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, produced a catechism and a collection of homilies; the printing press was widely used to produce primers and other devotional materials; recruitment to the English clergy began to rise after almost a decade; repairs to long-neglected churches were begun. In the parishes "restoration and repair continued, new bells were bought, and churches' ales produced their bucolic profits".^[67] Commissioners visited to ensure that altars were restored, roods rebuilt and vestments and plate purchased. Moreover, Pole was determined to do more than remake the past. His insistence was on scripture, teaching and education and on improving the moral standards of the clergy. It is difficult to determine how far Catholic devotion, with its belief in the saints and in purgatory, had even been broken by the previous reigns; but certainties, especially those which drew upon men's purses, had been shaken: benefactions to the church did not return significantly; trust in clergy who had been prepared to change their minds and were now willing to leave their new wives – as they were required to do – was bound to have weakened. Few monasteries, chantries and gilds were reinstated. "Parish religion was marked by religious and cultural sterility",^[68] though some have observed enthusiasm, marred only by the poor harvests which produced poverty and want.^[69] Full restoration of the Catholic faith in England to its pre-Reformation state would take time. Consequently, Protestants secretly ministering to underground congregations, such as Thomas Bentham, were planning for a long haul, a ministry of survival.^[70] Mary's death in November 1558, childless and without having made provision for a Catholic to succeed her, would undo her consolidation.

Elizabethan Settlement[link]

Following Mary's childless death, her half-sister Elizabeth inherited the throne. One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth’s early reign was religion. Elizabeth could not be Catholic, as that church considered her illegitimate. At the same time, she had observed the turmoil brought about by Edward's introduction of radical Protestant reforms. Communion with the Catholic Church was again severed by Elizabeth. She relied primarily on her chief advisors, Sir William Cecil, as her Secretary of State, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, as the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, for direction on the matter. Chiefly she supported her Father's idea of reforming the church but made some minor adjustments such as it being illegal to be catholic etc. In this way, Elizabeth and her advisors aimed at a church that included most opinions. Two groups were excluded. Catholics who remained loyal to the Pope were not to be tolerated. They were, in fact, regarded as traitors, because the Pope had refused to accept Elizabeth as Queen of England. Roman Catholics were given the hard choice of being loyal either to their church or their Country. For some priests it meant life on the run, in some cases death for treason. The other group not to be tolerated was made up of people who wanted reform to go much further, and who finally gave up on the Church of England. They could not see it as any longer a true church. They believed it had refused to obey the Bible, so they formed small groups of convinced believers outside the church. The response of the government was to use imprisonment and exile to try to crush these 'Separatists'.

Within the Church of England itself, three groups existed. Those who believed the form of the church was just what it should be included leaders like John Jewel and Richard Hooker. Others looked for opportunities to reintroduce some Catholic practices. Under the Stuart kings they were to have their chance. Others, who came to be called "Puritans", wanted to remove the traces of the old ways that still remained. The Stuart kings were to give them a rough passage. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Church of England was firmly in place, but within it were the seeds of future conflict.

Queen Elizabeth I of England reached a moderate religious settlement.

Parliament was summoned in 1559 to consider the Reformation Bill and to create a new church. The Reformation Bill defined the Communion as a consubstantial celebration as opposed to a transubstantial celebration, included abuse of the pope in the litany, and ordered that ministers should not wear the surplice or other Catholic vestments. It allowed ministers to marry, banned images from churches, and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Bill met heavy resistance in the House of Lords, as Roman Catholic bishops as well as the lay peers voted against it. They reworked much of the Bill, changed the litany to allow for a transubstantial belief in the Communion and refused to grant Elizabeth the title of Supreme Head of the Church. Parliament was prorogued over Easter, and when it resumed, the government entered two new bills into the Houses – the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity.

Act of Supremacy[link]

The Act of Supremacy validated ten Acts that Mary had repealed and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Supreme Governor was a suitably equivocal title that made Elizabeth head of the Church without ever saying she was. This was important for two reasons: (1) it satisfied those who felt that a woman could not rule the church, and (2) it acted in a conciliatory way toward English Catholics. For the clergy, Elizabeth's changes were more wholesale than those of her half-brother, Edward, had been. All but one (Anthony Kitchin) of the bishops lost their posts, a hundred fellows of Oxford colleges were deprived; many dignitaries resigned rather than take the oath. The bishops who were removed from the ecclesiastical bench were replaced by appointees who would agree to the reforms.

On the question of images, Elizabeth's initial reaction was to allow crucifixes and candlesticks and the restoration of roods, but some of the new bishops whom she had elevated protested. In 1560 Edmund Grindal, one of the Marian exiles now made Bishop of London, was allowed to enforce the demolition of rood lofts in London and in 1561 the Queen herself ordered the demolition of all lofts.^[71] Thereafter, the determination to prevent any further restoration was evidenced by the more thoroughgoing destruction of roods, vestments, stone altars, dooms, statues and other ornaments. The queen also appointed a new Privy Council, removing many Roman Catholic counsellors by doing so. Under Elizabeth, factionalism in the Council and conflicts at court greatly diminished. The Act of Supremacy was passed without difficulty.

Act of Uniformity 1558[link]

However, the Act of Uniformity 1558 which forced people to attend Sunday service in an Anglican church, at which a new version of the Book of Common Prayer was to be used, was passed by only three votes.^[72] The Bill of Uniformity was more cautious than the initial Reformation Bill. It revoked the harsh laws proposed against Roman Catholics, it removed the abuse of the pope from the litany and kept the wording that allowed for both consubstantial and transubstantial belief in the Communion.

After Parliament was dismissed, Elizabeth and Cecil drafted the Royal Injunctions. These were additions to the settlement, and largely stressed continuity with the Catholic past – ministers were ordered to wear the surplice. Wafers, as opposed to ordinary baker's bread, were to be used as the bread at Communion. There had been opposition to the settlement in rural England, which for the most part was largely Roman Catholic, so the changes aimed for acceptance of the settlement. What succeeded more than anything else was the sheer length of Elizabeth's reign; while Mary had been able to impose her programme for a mere five years, Elizabeth had more than forty. Those who delayed, "looking for a new day" when restoration would again be commanded, were defeated by the passing of years.^[73]

Puritans and Roman Catholics[link]

Elizabeth's reign saw the emergence of Puritanism, which encompassed those Protestants who, whilst they agreed that there should be one national church, felt that the church had been but partially reformed. Puritanism ranged from hostility to the content of the Prayer Book and "popish" ceremony, to a desire for church governance to be radically reformed. Grindal was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1575 and chose to oppose even the Queen in his desire to forward the Puritan agenda. "Bear with me, I beseech you Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly majesty than to offend the heavenly majesty of God", he ended a 6,000 word reproach to her.^[74] He was placed under house arrest for his trouble and though he was not deprived, his death in 1583 put an end to the hopes of his supporters. His successor, Archbishop Whitgift more reflected the Queen's determination to discipline those who were unprepared to accept her settlement. A conformist, he imposed a degree of obedience on the clergy which apparently alarmed even the Queen's ministers, such as Lord Burghley. The Puritan cause was not helped even by its friends. The pseudonymous "Martin Marprelate" tracts, which attacked conformist clergy with a libellous humorous tone,^[75] outraged senior Puritan clergy and set the government on an unsuccessful attempt to run the writer to earth. Incidentally, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 made it more difficult for Puritans to resist the conclusion that since God "blew with his wind and they were scattered" he could not be too offended by the religious establishment in the land.^[76]

On the other side there were still huge numbers of Roman Catholics, some of whom conformed, bending with the times, hoping that there would be a fresh reverse; vestments were still hidden, golden candlesticks bequeathed, chalices kept. The Mass was still celebrated in some places^[77] alongside the new Communion service. It was, of course more difficult than hitherto. Both Roman Catholic priests and laity lived a double life, apparently conforming, but avoiding taking the oath of conformity. It was only as time passed that recusancy, refusal to attend Protestant services, became more common. The Jesuits and seminary priests, trained in Douai and Rome to make good the losses of English priests, encouraged this. By the 1570s an underground church was growing fast, as the Church of England became more Protestant and less bearable for Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics were still a sizeable minority.^[78] Only one public attempt to restore the old religion occurred: the Rising of the Northern earls in 1569. It was a botched attempt; in spite of tumultuous crowds who greeted the rebels in Durham, the rebellion did not spread, the assistance they sought was not forthcoming, their communication with allies at Court was poor; they came nowhere near to setting Mary Stuart, whose presence might have rallied support, free from her imprisonment in Tutbury.^[79] The Roman Catholic Church's refusal to countenance occasional attendance at Protestant Services and the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V in 1570 presented the choice to Roman Catholics more starkly, and the arrival of the seminary priests, while it was a lifeline to many Roman Catholics, brought further trouble. Elizabeth's ministers took steps to stem the tide: fines for refusal to attend church were raised from 12 d. per service to £20 a month, fifty times an artisan's wage; it was now treason to be absolved from schism and reconciled to Rome; the execution of priests began – the first in 1577, four in 1581, eleven in 1582, two in 1583, six in 1584, fifty-three by 1590, and seventy more between 1601 and 1608.^[80] It became treasonable for a Roman Catholic priest ordained abroad to enter the country. Because the papacy had called for the deposing of the Queen, the choice for moderate Catholics lay between treason and damnation. Although considerably fewer than on the Continent, by British standards the List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation was extensive.

There is, of course, always some distance between legislation and its enforcement. The governmental attacks on recusancy were mostly upon the gentry. Few recusants were actually fined; the fines that were imposed were often at reduced rates; the persecution eased; priests came to recognise that they should not refuse communion to occasional conformists.^[81] The persecutions did not extinguish the faith, but they tested it sorely. The huge number of Roman Catholics in East Anglia and the north in the 1560s disappeared into the general population in part because recusant priests largely served the great Roman Catholic houses, who alone could hide them.^[82] Without the mass and pastoral care, yeomen, artisans and husbandmen fell into conformism. Roman Catholicism, supported by foreign or expatriate priests, came to be seen as treasonous.

Legacy[link]

By the time of Elizabeth's death a third party had emerged, "perfectly hostile" to Puritans, but not adherent to Rome. It preferred the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1559, from which had been removed some of the matters offensive to Catholics.^[83] The recusants had been removed from the centre of the stage. The new dispute was now between the Puritans (who wished to see an end of the prayer book and episcopacy), and this third party (the considerable body of people who looked kindly on the Elizabethan Settlement, who rejected "prophesyings", whose spirituality had been nourished by the Prayer Book and who preferred the governance of bishops).^[84]

It was between these two groups that, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, a new, more savage episode of the Reformation was in the process of gestation. During the reigns of the Stuart kings, James I and Charles I, the battle lines were to become more defined, leading ultimately to the English Civil War, the first on English soil to engulf parts of the civilian population. The war was only partly about religion, but the abolition of prayer book and episcopacy by a Puritan Parliament was an element in the causes of the conflict. As historian MacCulloch has noted, the legacy of these tumultuous events can be recognised, throughout the Commonwealth (1649–60) and the Restoration which followed it and beyond. This third party was to become the core of the restored Church of England, but at the price for further division.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Susan Brigden New Worlds, Lost Worlds (Allen Lane 2000)
• Patrick Collinson and John Craig The Reformation in English Towns 1500-1640 (Macmillan 1998)
• A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London) (2nd Ed. 1989)
• Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (Yale, 1992).
• Eamon Duffy, Voices from Morebath (Yale 2001)
• G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors: Third Edition (Routledge, 1991).
• G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1982).
• Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993). online edition
• Felicity Heal; Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford UP, 2005) online edition
• Stanford Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529 - 1536 (Cambridge University Press, 1970).
• Diarmaid MacCulloch Reformation (Allen Lane 2003)
• Diarmaid MacCulloch Thomas Cranmer (Yale 1996)
• Judith Maltby, Prayer book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge 1998)
• Richard Wilkinson; "Thomas Cranmer: The Yes-Man Who Said No: Richard Wilkinson Elucidates the Paradoxical Career of One of the Key Figures of English Protestantism," History Review, 2010 online edition

Historiography[link]

• Haigh, Christopher. "The Recent Historiography of the English Reformation," Historical Journal Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 995-1007 in JSTOR
• Marshall, Peter. "(Re)defining the English Reformation," Journal of British Studies, July 2009, Vol. 48#3 pp 564–586

External links[link]

• The History of the Reformation of the Church of England by Gilbert Burnet (Oxford University Press, 1829): Volume I,Volume I, Part II, Volume II, Volume II, Part II, Volume III Volume III, Part II
• Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, and the Emergencies of the Church of England, Under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I by John Strype (Clarendon Press, 1822): Vol. I, Pt. I, Vol. I, Pt. II, Vol. II, Pt. I, Vol. II, Pt. II, Vol. III, Pt. I, Vol. III, Pt. II
• Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and Other Various Occurrences in the Church of England, During Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign by John Strype (1824 ed.): Vol. I, Pt. I, Vol. I, Pt. II, Vol. II, Pt. I, Vol. II., Pt. II, Vol. III, Pt. I, Vol. III, Pt. II, Vol. IV

See also[link]

• Religion in England
• History of England
• Scottish Reformation
• Reformation in Switzerland
• Dissolution of the Monasteries
• Roman Catholicism in England and Wales
• Cestui que
• Charter of Liberties
• Concordat of Worms
• Statutes of Mortmain
• Gunpowder Plot

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Henry VIII
King Henry VIII after Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
King of England and Ireland (more...)
Reign	21 April 1509 – 28 January 1547
Coronation	24 June 1509
Predecessor	Henry VII
Successor	Edward VI
Spouse	Catherine of Aragon Anne Boleyn Jane Seymour Anne of Cleves Catherine Howard Catherine Parr
Among others Issue
Henry, Duke of Cornwall Mary I of England Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset Elizabeth I of England Edward VI of England
House	House of Tudor
Father	Henry VII of England
Mother	Elizabeth of York
Born	(1491-06-28)28 June 1491 Greenwich Palace, Greenwich
Died	28 January 1547(1547-01-28) (aged 55) Palace of Whitehall, London
Burial	4 February 1547 St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
Signature
Religion	Christianity (Anglican, previously Roman Catholic)

English Royalty
House of Tudor
Royal Coat of Arms
Henry VIII
Henry, Duke of Cornwall
Mary I
Elizabeth I
Edward VI

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.

Besides his six marriages, Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry's struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Yet he remained a believer in core Catholic theological teachings, even after his excommunication from the Catholic Church.^[1] Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542.

Henry was considered an attractive, educated and accomplished king in his prime and has a reputation as "one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne".^[2][3] Besides ruling with absolute power, he also engaged himself as an author and composer. His desire to provide England with a male heir—which stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses^[4]—led to the two things for which Henry is remembered: his six marriages, and the English Reformation, making England a mostly Protestant nation. In later life he became morbidly obese and his health suffered; his public image is frequently depicted as one of a lustful, egotistical, harsh, and insecure king.^[5]

Early years: 1491–1509[link]

Catherine of Aragon as a young widow, by Henry VII's court painter, Michael Sittow, in c. 1502.

Born at Greenwich Palace, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.^[6] Of the young Henry's six siblings, only three — Arthur, Prince of Wales; Margaret; and Mary — survived infancy. In 1493, at the age of two, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In 1494, he was made Duke of York. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish.^[7] As it was expected that the throne would pass to Prince Arthur, Henry's older brother, Henry was prepared for a clerical career. Elizabeth of York, his mother, died when Henry was aged 11.^[8]

Death of Prince Arthur[link]

In 1502, Arthur died at the age of 15, after only 20 weeks of marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Arthur's death thrust all his duties upon his younger brother, the 10-year-old Henry, who then became Prince of Wales. Henry VII renewed his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain, by offering his second son in marriage to Prince Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon, youngest surviving child of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.^[9] For the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother's widow, a dispensation from the Pope was normally required to overrule the impediment of affinity because, as told in the Book of Leviticus, "If a brother is to marry the wife of a brother they will remain childless." Catherine swore that her marriage to Prince Arthur had not been consummated. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage.

The impatience of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella I, induced Pope Julius II to grant dispensation in the form of a Papal bull. So, 14 months after her young husband's death, Catherine was betrothed to his even younger brother, Henry. Yet by 1505, Henry VII lost interest in a Spanish alliance and the younger Henry declared that his betrothal had been arranged without his consent.

Continued diplomatic manoeuvring over the fate of the proposed marriage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. Only 17 years old, Henry married Catherine on 11 June 1509 and, on 24 June 1509, the two were crowned at Westminster Abbey.

Early reign: 1509–1525[link]

Two days after his coronation, he arrested his father's two most unpopular ministers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley (grandfather of Henry's daughter Elizabeth's favourite courtier, Robert Dudley). They were charged with high treason and were executed in 1510. This was to become Henry's primary tactic for dealing with those who stood in his way,^[10] as believed by historians such as Crofton. Henry also returned to the public some of the money supposedly extorted by the two ministers.

... his executors made restitution of great sums of money, to many persons taken against good conscience to the said king's use, by the forenamed Empson and Dudley.^[11]

Eighteen year-old Henry after his coronation in 1509.

Henry cultivated the image of a Renaissance Man and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was an accomplished musician, author, and poet. His best known musical composition is "Pastime with Good Company" or "The Kynges Ballade". He was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety.^[12] Meeting Francis I on 7 June 1520 near Calais, he entertained the French king with a fortnight of lavish entertainment to establish a closer diplomatic relationship after the military conflicts of the previous decade.

France and the Habsburgs[link]

In 1511 Pope Julius II proclaimed a Holy League against France. The new alliance rapidly grew to include not only Spain and the Holy Roman Empire but England as well. Henry decided to use the occasion to expand his holdings in northern France. He concluded the Treaty of Westminster, a pledge of mutual aid with Spain against France, in November 1511 and prepared for involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.

In 1513 Henry invaded France and his troops defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs. His brother-in-law, James IV of Scotland, invaded England at the behest of Louis XII of France,^[13] but failed to draw Henry's attention away from France. The English army, led by Queen Catherine, who acted as regent of England while Henry was in France, defeated the Scots at the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513. Among the dead was the Scottish King James IV, ending Scotland's brief involvement in the war.

On 18 February 1516 Queen Catherine bore Henry his first child to survive infancy, Princess Mary. (A son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, had been born in 1511 but lived only a few weeks.)

Power and authority[link]

Government and finances under Henry[link]

Financially, the reign of Henry was a near-disaster. Although he inherited a prosperous economy (and further augmented his royal treasury by seizures of church lands), Henry's heavy spending and high taxes damaged the economy.^[14][15] For example, Henry expanded the Royal Navy from 5 to 53 ships. He loved palaces; he began with a dozen and died with fifty-five, in which he hung 2,000 tapestries.^[16] By comparison, his neighbour and nephew James V of Scotland had five palaces and 200 tapestries.^[17] He took pride in showing off his collection of weapons, which included exotic archery equipment, 2,250 pieces of land ordnance and 6,500 handguns.^[18]

Henry VIII with Charles Quint (right) and Pope Leo X (center), circa 1520.

Henry began his reign with heavy reliance on advisers and ended with complete control. From 1514 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530), a Catholic cardinal, served as lord chancellor and practically controlled domestic and foreign policy for the young king. He negotiated the truce with France that was signalled by the dramatic display of amity on the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520). He switched England back and forth as an ally of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Wolsey centralised the national government and extended the jurisdiction of the conciliar courts, particularly the Star Chamber. His use of forced loans to pay for foreign wars angered the rich, who were annoyed as well by his enormous wealth and ostentatious living. Wolsey disappointed the king when he failed to secure a divorce from Queen Catherine. The treasury was empty after years of extravagance; the peers and people were dissatisfied and Henry needed an entirely new approach; Wolsey had to be replaced. After 16 years at the top he lost power in 1529 and in 1530 was arrested on false charges of treason and died in custody. Wolsey's fall was a warning to the Pope and to the clergy of England of what might be expected for failure to comply with the king's wishes. Henry then took full control of his government, although at court numerous complex factions continued to try to ruin and destroy each other.

Henry VIII's suit of armour, c.1544, Italian made. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Geoffrey Elton (1962) argues there was a major Tudor revolution in government. While crediting Henry with intelligence and shrewdness, Elton finds that much of the positive action, especially the break with Rome, was the work of Thomas Cromwell and not the king. Elton sees Henry as competent, but too lazy to take direct control of affairs for any extended period; that is, the king was an opportunist who relied on others for most of his ideas and to do most of the work. Henry's marital adventures are part of Elton's chain of evidence; a man who marries six wives, Elton notes, is not someone who fully controls his own fate. Elton shows that Thomas Cromwell had conceived of a commonwealth of England that included popular participation through Parliament and that this was generally expressed in the preambles to legislation. Parliamentary consent did not mean that the king had yielded any of his authority; Henry VIII was a paternalistic ruler who did not hesitate to use his power. Popular "consent" was a means to augment rather than limit royal power.^[19]

Reformation[link]

Henry never formally repudiated the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but he declared himself supreme head of the church in England in 1534. This, combined with subsequent actions, eventually resulted in a separated church, the Church of England. Henry and his advisors felt the pope was acting in the role of an Italian prince involved in secular affairs, which obscured his religious role. They said Rome treated England as a minor stepchild, allowing it one cardinal out of fifty, and no possibility of that cardinal becoming pope. For reasons of state it was increasingly intolerable to Henry that major decisions in England were settled by Italians. The divorce issue exemplified the problem but was not itself the cause of the problem.^[20]

Henry's reformation of the English church involved more complex motives and methods than his desire for a new wife and an heir. Henry asserted that his first marriage had never been valid, but the divorce issue was only one factor in Henry's desire to reform the church. In 1532–1537, he instituted a number of statutes — the act of appeal (Statute in Restraint of Appeals, 1533), the various Acts of Succession (1533, 1534, and 1536), the first Act of Supremacy (1534), and others — that dealt with the relationship between the king and the pope and the structure of the Church of England. During these years, Henry suppressed monasteries and pilgrimage shrines in his attempt to reform the church. The king was always the dominant force in the making of religious policy; his policy, which he pursued skilfully and consistently, is best characterised as a search for the middle way.^[21]

Questions over what was the true faith were resolved with the adoption of the orthodox "Act of Six Articles" (1539) and a careful holding of the balance between extreme factions after 1540. Even so, the era saw movement away from religious orthodoxy, the more so as the pillars of the old beliefs, especially Thomas More and John Fisher, had been unable to accept the change and had been executed in 1535 for refusing to renounce papal authority. Critical for the Henrician reformation was the new political theology of obedience to the prince that was enthusiastically adopted by the Church of England in the 1530s. It reflected Martin Luther's new interpretation of the fourth commandment ("Honor thy father and mother") and was mediated to an English audience by William Tyndale.

Half-Groat of Henry VIII

The founding of royal authority on the Ten Commandments, and thus on the word of God, was a particularly attractive feature of this doctrine, which became a defining feature of Henrician religion. Rival tendencies within the Church of England sought to exploit it in the pursuit of their particular agendas. Reformers strove to preserve its connections with the broader framework of Lutheran theology, with the emphasis on faith alone and the word of God, while conservatives emphasised good works, ceremonies, and charity. The Reformers linked royal supremacy and the word of God to persuade Henry to publish the Great Bible in 1539, an English translation that was a formidable prop for his new-found dignity.^[22]

Response to the reforms was mixed. The reforms, which closed down monasteries that were the only support of the impoverished,^[23] alienated most of the population outside of London and helped provoke the great northern rising of 1536–1537, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.^[24] It was the only real threat to Henry's security on the throne in all his reign. Some 30,000 rebels in nine groups were led by the charismatic Robert Aske, together with most of the northern nobility. Aske went to London to negotiate terms; once there he was arrested, charged with treason and executed. About 200 rebels were executed and the disturbances ended.^[25] Elsewhere the changes were accepted and welcomed, and those who clung to Catholic rites kept quiet or moved in secrecy. They would reemerge in the reign of Henry's daughter Mary (1553–1558).

Dissolving the monasteries[link]

England possessed numerous religious houses that owned large tracts of land worked by tenants. Henry dissolved them (1536–1541) and transferred a fifth of England's landed wealth to new hands. The program was designed primarily to create a landed gentry beholden to the crown, which would use the lands much more efficiently.

Henry made radical changes in traditional religious practices. He ordered the clergy to preach against superstitious images, relics, miracles, and pilgrimages, and to remove most candles. The catechism of 1545, called the King's Primer, left out the saints. Latin rituals gave way to English. Shrines to saints were destroyed — including the popular one of St. Thomas of Canterbury — and relics were ridiculed as worthless old bones.

Mistresses[link]

Contrary to popular belief, Henry may not have had very many affairs outside marriage. Apart from women he later married, the identities of only two mistresses are completely undisputed: Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn.^[26] However, it is unlikely that they were the only two; Alison Weir has argued that, aside from the affairs listed below, there were numerous other short-term and secret liaisons, most of them conducted in the king's river-side mansion of Jordan House.^[27]

Elizabeth "Bessie" Blount gave birth in June 1519 to Henry's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. The young boy was made Duke of Richmond in June 1525 in what some thought was one step on the path to legitimising him. In 1533, FitzRoy married Mary Howard, Anne Boleyn's first cousin, but died three years later without any children. At the time of FitzRoy's death (July 1536), Parliament was enacting the Second Succession Act, which could have allowed Henry's illegitimate son to become king.

Mary Boleyn was Henry's mistress before her sister, Anne, became his second wife. She is thought to have been Catherine's lady-in-waiting at some point between 1519 and 1526. There has been speculation that Mary's two children, Catherine and Henry, were fathered by Henry, but this has never been proved and the King never acknowledged them as he did Henry FitzRoy.

In 1510 it was reported that Henry was conducting an affair with one of the sisters of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, either Elizabeth or Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon.^[28] Her brother, the Duke of Buckingham, became enraged and Lord George Hastings, her husband, sent her to a convent. Eustace Chapuys wrote, "the husband of that lady went away, carried her off and placed her in a convent sixty miles from here, that no one may see her."^[29]

Biographer Antonia Fraser has claimed that Henry had an affair with Mary Shelton in 1535, in opposition to the traditional belief that Margaret ("Madge") Shelton was Henry's lover.^[30]

King's Great Matter: 1525–1533[link]

The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Jane Seymour
Anne of Cleves
Catherine Howard
Catherine Parr

Henry became impatient with Catherine's inability to produce the heir he desired. All of Catherine's children died in infancy except their daughter Mary.^[31] Henry wanted a male heir to consolidate the power of the Tudor dynasty.

In 1525, as Henry grew more impatient, he became enamoured of a charismatic young woman in the Queen's entourage, Anne Boleyn.^[32] Anne at first resisted his attempts to seduce her, and refused to become his mistress as her sister Mary Boleyn had. She said "I beseech your highness most earnestly to desist, and to this my answer in good part. I would rather lose my life than my honesty."^[27]:160 This refusal made Henry even more attracted, and he pursued her relentlessly.

Eventually, Anne saw her opportunity in Henry's infatuation and determined she would only yield to his embraces as his acknowledged queen.^[33] It soon became the King's absorbing desire to annul his marriage to Catherine.^[34]

Henry appealed directly to the Holy See, independently from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, from whom he kept his plans for Anne secret. Instead, Henry's secretary, William Knight, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the annulment. The grounds were that the bull of Pope Julius II was obtained by false pretences, because Catherine's brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had been consummated. Henry petitioned, in the event of annulment, a dispensation to marry again to any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connection. This clearly had reference to Anne.^[33]

Catherine of Aragon, first queen of Henry VIII

However, as the pope was at that time imprisoned by Catherine's nephew, Emperor Charles V, Knight had difficulty in getting access to him, and so only managed to obtain the conditional dispensation for a new marriage. Henry now had no choice but to put the matter into the hands of Wolsey. Wolsey did all he could to secure a decision in the King's favour, going so far as to arrange an ecclesiastical court to meet in England, with a representative from the Pope.^[33] Shakespeare's play, Henry VIII, accurately records Catherine of Aragon's astounding coup in that remarkable courtroom in Act II, scene iv. She bows low to Henry, put herself at his mercy, states her case with irrefutable eloquence and then sweeps out of the courtroom, a woman both formidable and clearly wronged. However much this moment swayed those present and the rest of the world to her side, the Pope had never had any intention of empowering his legate. Charles V resisted the annulment of his aunt's marriage, but it is not clear how far this influenced the pope. But it is clear that Henry saw that the Pope was unlikely to give him an annulment from the Emperor's aunt.^[35] The pope forbade Henry to proceed to a new marriage before a decision was given in Rome, not in England. Wolsey bore the blame. Convinced that he was treacherous, Anne Boleyn maintained pressure until Wolsey was dismissed from public office in 1529. After being dismissed, the cardinal begged her to help him return to power, but she refused. He then began a plot to have Anne forced into exile and began communication with Queen Catherine and the Pope to that end. When this was discovered, Henry ordered Wolsey's arrest and had it not been for his death from illness in 1530, he might have been executed for treason.^[36] His replacement, Sir Thomas More, initially cooperated with the king's new policy, denouncing Wolsey in Parliament and proclaiming the opinion of the theologians at Oxford and Cambridge that the marriage of Henry to Catherine had been unlawful. As Henry began to deny the authority of the Pope, More's qualms grew.

A year later, Queen Catherine was banished from court and her rooms were given to Anne. With Wolsey gone, Anne had considerable power over political matters. She was an unusually educated and intellectual woman for her time, and was keenly absorbed and engaged with the ideas of the Protestant Reformers. When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died, Anne had the Boleyn family's chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, appointed to the vacant position. Through the intervention of the King of France, this was conceded by Rome, the pallium being granted to him by Clement.^[37]

Breaking the power of Rome in England proceeded slowly. In 1532, a lawyer who was a supporter of Anne, Thomas Cromwell, brought before Parliament a number of acts including the Supplication against the Ordinaries and the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church. Following these acts, Thomas More resigned as Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister.^[38]

Second marriage[link]

Portrait of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second queen; a later copy of an original painted in about 1534

In the winter of 1532, Henry attended a meeting with Francis I of France at Calais in which he enlisted the support of the French king for his new marriage.^[39] Immediately upon returning to Dover in England, Henry and Anne went through a secret wedding service.^[40] She soon became pregnant and there was a second wedding service in London on 25 January 1533. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer, sitting in judgment at a special court convened at Dunstable Priory to rule on the validity of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine null and void. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to be valid.^[41]

Catherine was formally stripped of her title as queen, and Anne was crowned queen consort on 1 June 1533. The queen gave birth to a daughter slightly prematurely on 7 September 1533. The child was christened Elizabeth, in honour of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York.^[42] Rejecting the decisions of the Pope, Parliament validated the marriage of Henry and Anne with the First Succession Act (Act of Succession 1533). Catherine's daughter, Mary, was declared illegitimate, and Anne's issue were declared next in the line of succession. Most notable in this declaration was a clause repudiating "any foreign authority, prince or potentate". All adults in the Kingdom were required to acknowledge the Act's provisions by oath; those who refused were subject to imprisonment for life. Any publisher or printer of any literature alleging that the marriage was invalid was automatically guilty of high treason and could be punished by death.

Separation from Rome: 1533–1540[link]

Meanwhile, Parliament had forbidden all appeals to Rome and exacted the penalties of praemunire against all who introduced papal bulls into England. Parliament prohibited the Church from making any regulations (canons) without the king's consent. It was only then that Pope Clement at last took the step of launching sentences of excommunication against Henry and Thomas Cranmer,^[43][44] declaring at the same time the archbishop's decree of annulment to be invalid and the marriage with Anne null and papal nuncio was withdrawn from England and diplomatic relations with Rome were broken off.^[37] Several more laws were passed in England. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act 1534 required the clergy to elect bishops nominated by the Sovereign. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England" and the Treasons Act 1534 made it high treason, punishable by death, to refuse to acknowledge the King as such. In response to the excommunications, the Peter's Pence Act was passed in and it reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by "the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions" of the Pope.^[45]

In defiance of the Pope the Church of England was now under Henry’s control, not Rome's. Protestant Reformers still faced persecution, particularly over objections to Henry's annulment. Many fled abroad where they met further difficulties, including the influential William Tyndale, who was eventually executed and his body burned at King Henry's behest. Theological and practical reforms would follow only under Henry's successors (see end of section).

Personal troubles[link]

The king and queen were not pleased with married life. The royal couple enjoyed periods of calm and affection, but Anne refused to play the submissive role expected of her. The vivacity and opinionated intellect that had made her so attractive as an illicit lover made her too independent for the largely ceremonial role of a royal wife, given that Henry expected absolute obedience from those who interacted with him in an official capacity at court. It made her many enemies. For his part, Henry disliked Anne’s constant irritability and violent temper. After a false pregnancy or miscarriage in 1534, he saw her failure to give him a son as a betrayal. As early as Christmas 1534, Henry was discussing with Cranmer and Cromwell the chances of leaving Anne without having to return to Catherine.^[46]

Opposition to Henry's religious policies was quickly suppressed in England. A number of dissenting monks were tortured and executed. The most prominent resisters included John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, Henry's former Lord Chancellor, both of who refused to take the oath to the King and were subsequently convicted of high treason and beheaded at Tower Hill, just outside the Tower of London.

These suppressions, including the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act of 1536, in turn contributed to further resistance among the English people, most notably in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large uprising in northern England in October, 1536. Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues to his attention, then invited the rebel leader, Robert Aske to a royal banquet. At the banquet, Henry asked Aske to write down what had happened so he could have a better idea of the problems he would "change." Aske did what the King asked, although what he had written was later used against him as a confession. The King's word could not be questioned (as he was held as God's chosen, and second only to God himself) so Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home. However, because Henry saw the rebels as traitors, he did not feel obliged to keep his promises. The rebels realised that the King was not keeping his promises and rebelled again later that year, but their strength was less in the second attempt and the King ordered the rebellion crushed. The leaders, including Aske, were arrested and executed for treason.