The English Reformation was the process whereby the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with Royal Supremacy and the establishment of a Church of England outside the Roman Catholic Church and under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its other European counterparts in that it was more of a political than a theological dispute which was at the root of it. The break with Rome started in the reign of Henry VIII and is therefore sometimes called the Henrician Reformation.

Background

Henry was a devout Roman Catholic and in 1521 he had defended the Papacy from Martin Luther's accusations of heresy in a book he wrote called The Defence of the Seven Sacraments. For this he was awarded the title "Defender of the Faith" (Fidei Defensor) by Pope Leo X.

By the late 1520s, however, Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon. She had not produced a male heir who survived into adulthood and Henry wanted a son so the Tudor dynasty would be secure. Before Henry's father Henry VII attained the throne, England had been marred by civil warfare over rival claims to the English crown and Henry wanted to avoid uncertainty over the succession. Catherine's only surviving child was the Princess Mary.

Henry stated that this lack of an heir was because his marriage was "blighted in the eyes of God" . Catherine had been his late brother's wife, and it was therefore against Biblical teachings for Henry to have married her. In 1527 Henry asked the Pope to declare the marriage null but this the Pope refused to do. Earlier in that year the Holy Roman Emperor, Catherine's uncle, had sacked Rome and kept the Pope prisoner, so there was little hope of him granting this divorce.

The break with Rome

Henry therefore called a Parliament in 1529 to deal with the divorce. This Parliament of England lasted for seven years and has subsequently become to be known as the Reformation Parliament. The Parliament passed many of the Acts which cut England's political ties with Rome.

In 1530 Henry brought praemunire charges against fifteen leading clerics, among whom were some prominent supporters of Catherine of Aragon, for obeying Cardinal Wolsey's legatine authority. These included Bishops John Fisher, John Clerk, Nicholas West and Henry Standish and archdeacon of Exeter Adam Travers. The case was never heard however as it was postponed and then later cancelled. Some historians have suggested Henry wanted to threaten the clergy with charges so they would become more agreeable to his demands for a divorce. Then in December that year the whole clergy were indicted for praemunire.

Henry claimed £100,000 from the Convocation of Canterbury of the Church of England for their pardon, which was granted by the Convocation on 24th January 1531. The clergy wanted the payment to be spread over five years but Henry wanted the payment in full immediately in case of a war. The Convocation refused and withdrew their payment altogether and demanded Henry fulfil certain guarantees before they agreed to give him the money. Henry refused these conditions and agreed only to the five year period of payment and then added five articles to the payment which Henry wanted the Convocation to accept. These were:

• that the clergy recognise Henry as the 'sole protector and supreme head of the Anglican church and clergy'
• that the
  
  
  
  King had spiritual jurisdiction
• that the privileges of the Church were upheld only if they did not detract from the royal prerogative and the laws of the realm
• that the King pardons the clergy for violating the statute of praemunire, and
• that the laity were also pardoned.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, persuaded Henry to introduce the sentence 'as far as the word of God allows' into the first article. Warham requested a discussion but was met by a stunned silence from the Convocation, then Warham said: 'He who is silent seems to consent' to which a clergyman present responded: 'Then we are all silent'. The Convocation granted consent to the King's five articles and the payment on the 8th March 1531. That same year Parliament passed the Act of Pardon.

In 1532 Parliament passed the anti-clerical Supplication Against the Ordinaries which listed nine grievances against the Church, including abuses of power and Convocation's independent legislative power. On the 11th May 1532 Henry made a speech to Parliament attacking the clergy for their allegiance to the Pope:

We thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects: for all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope, clean contrary to the oath that they make to us, so that they seem to be his subjects, and not ours.

On the 15th May the Convocation passed the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church and that it could not make canon law without royal licence, i.e. without the permission of the King. (This would subsequently be passed by the Parliament in 1534 and again in 1536.) The day after the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, resigned. Before this reform the Church and the King's Parliament had been making laws independently of each other.

In 1532 Parliament debated the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates which proposed that the clergy should pay no more than 5 %. of their first years revenue to Rome and that if the Pope in retaliation refused to grant bulls for the consecration of any prelate nominated by the Crown then the consecration would go ahead anyway. If the Pope then tried to excommunicate Englishmen then he should not be obeyed and that the clergy 'without any scruple of conscience' should continue to administer sacraments. The Bill proved to be controversial in the Upper House and so Henry added a delay clause to ensure it was not enacted until he confirmed it by letters patent. Henry himself had to appear in the Lords three times. After prolonged debate in Commons it was clear that unanimity could not be reached over the Bill so Henry ordered a division and commanded those of were in favour of his success and the welfare of the realm to one side of the House and those who opposed him and the Bill to the other and a majority was obtained.

In the same year Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury and Cranmer granted Henry a divorce the next year. Henry was now free to marry his lover Anne Boleyn, who was pregnant with Henry's child. 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.

Henry appointed as his new Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell in 1533, who would also play a very significant part in the process of the break from Rome. In April 1533 Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals which was drafted by Cromwell. Apart from outlawing appeals to Rome on ecclesiastical matters the Act declared that:

Where by divers sundry old authentic



histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed 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..to render and yield justice, and final determination to all manner of folk, residents or subjects within this his realm, in all causes, matters, debates and contentions happening to occur..without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes of potentates of the world.

The word 'empire' was used in the medieval sense in which an 'empire' was a territory which accepted no earthly authority superior to the Crown's, including the Papacy. The Act therefore declared England an independent country in every respect. The historian Stanford Lehmberg has said of this Act that it 'was doubtless the most important single piece of legislation' passed by the Reformation Parliament . Geoffrey Elton has called this Act an 'essential ingredient' of the 'Tudor revolution' in that it expounded a theory of national sovereignty .

The Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates was passed in March 1534 which outlawed the payment of all annates to Rome. Henry wanted the payment of annates transferred to the Crown but this was successfully opposed by Parliament. The Act also ordered that if cathedral's refused the King's nomination for bishop they would be liable to punishment by praemunire.

In the same year Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy which made Henry 'supreme head in earth of the Church of England' and disregarded any 'usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority prescription' . Previously the Pope had been head of the church in England but was now only recognised as the Bishop of Rome; this Act separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church.

Also in 1534 the Act of First Fruits and Tenths transfered the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. In the same year Parliament passed the Peter's Pence Act which 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.

After the Supremacy Act Parliament passed the Treasons Act 1534 which made it high treason punishable by death to deny Royal Supremacy. 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.

In the late 1530s there were fears that there was going to be an invasion from France and Cromwell had been displeased with what was discovered during the Visitation of the Monasteries. 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 of the monasteries. Because of this the Dissolution of the Monasteries was carried out in 1535 which gave Henry the monasteries wealth to help build coastal defences against invasion and also all their land was given to the Crown or sold to the aristocracy. In the North of England there were a series of uprisings by Roman Catholics against the dissolutions in late 1536 and early 1537, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, but these were put down. The Dissolution lasted for four years and ended in 1539.

In 1539 Parliament passed the Six Articles reaffirming Catholic practices such as transubstantiation, clerical celibacy and the importance of confession to a priest and proscribed penalties if anyone denied them. In the same year Henry authorised the publication of the Great Bible in English. This Bible was largely made through the use of William Tyndale's English translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scripture's; Tyndale, however, had been burnt at the stake in Belgium just three years before with Henry's approval. The Bible was used in all Anglican churches and was free to be read. However Henry became alarmed by the way the Bible was being preached and so in the Act for the Advancement of True Religion 1543 Henry restricted the reading of Bible to noblemen and women. In 1545 he said to Parliament:

..although you be permitted to read Holy Scripture and to have the Word of God in your mother-tongue, you must understand that it is licensed you so to do only to inform your own conscience and to instruct your children and family..I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, 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.

The reign of Edward VI

When Henry died in 1547 his nine year old son, Edward VI, inherited the throne. Under Cranmer and the Lord Protector Edward Seymour, also Edward's uncle, England became more Protestant. The political break with Rome had already happened under Henry and Edward wanted to make a religious break with Rome within the Church of England. The English Book of Common Prayer was introduced in 1549 (a second more radical one was put in its place in 1552); in churches stained glass, shrines, statues and other Catholic practices were done away with and the requirement of the clergy to be celibate was lifted. There were rebellions in Devon and Cornwall over the Prayer Book but these were put down. Edward also repealed his father's Six Articles. However the Protestant reforms Edward introduced were threatened when he died childless in 1553.

The English Reformation reversed

From 1553, under the reign of Henry's Roman Catholic daughter, Mary I, the Reformation legislation was repealed and England once again was turned into a Roman Catholic state. Mary's first Act of Parliament was to retroactively validate Henry's marriage to her mother and so legitimise her claim to the throne. On the advice of the Holy Roman Emperor she married his son, Phillip II of Spain; Mary wanted a child to prevent her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth from inheriting the Crown and thus returning England to Protestantism. However she never became pregnant. Insurrections broke out across the country when she refused advice that she marry an Englishman instead but these were crushed. Mary had Cranmer burned at the stake and Reginald Cardinal Pole was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in his place. The Marian Persecutions ensued and 283 Protestants were burnt at the stake for heresy, which is more than twice as many people executed for heresy in the previous 150 years. This resulted in the Queen becoming known as 'Bloody Mary'.

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement

When Mary died childless in 1558 Elizabeth inherited the throne and sought to settle the religious turmoil the country had been through. Elizabeth passed an Act of Supremacy 1559 which validated ten Acts which Mary had repealed and conferred on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England. A provision for an Oath of Supremacy was included and the Act made it high treason for someone to refuse to take it. The Act of Uniformity 1559 was passed which forced people to attend Sunday service in an Anglican church and the Thirty-Nine Articles were established in Elizabeth's reign as the defining statements of Anglican doctrine. The Rising of the North emerged as the last Tudor rebellion against these changes.

See also

• Timeline of the Protestant Reformation in England
• Glorious Revolution
• Act of Settlement 1701
• Protestant Reformation