* The Reformation

• The First Succession Act

• Henry's disregard for the Church and fixation on creating an heir eventually led him to execute More on ground of treason.

• Though More had been useful, his Catholic reservations had turned him into an obstacle.

• Henry had already found a better supporter in the inventive Thomas Cromwell, whose Protestant tendencies made him the ideal fellow to push Henry's religious reforms through Parliament.

• Thomas More, however, was canonized by the Catholic Church and became a saint. As a matter of fact, have a cousin who attends St. Thomas More High School

• Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act

• Back on the home front, Anne turned out to be much more of a handful than Henry had anticipated. * The Reformation

• Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act

• On the personal side, Anne's intellectual independence and her sometimes violent temper often embarrassed Henry at court.

• On the political side, Anne's outspoken Protestantism caused no end of trouble for Henry and threatened to undermine his deft balancing of Protestant and Catholic interests in England.

• Anne was forever dabbling in politics, raising Protestants to high positions in both the Church and the State.

• Henry had to make concessions to his more orthodox subjects to keep his kingdom from descending into the religious warfare and political upheaval that was quickly consuming northern Europe.

• None of this would have mattered so much if Anne had managed to produce the son she had promised.

• In this Anne failed, though it was not for want of trying. * The Reformation

• Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act

• Anne suffered a series of miscarriages, culminating in 1536 with the stillborn birth of an identifiably male child.

• It must have seemed to Henry that heaven itself was punishing him, or laughing at him.

• Eventually Henry had enough and decided that Anne had seduced him through witchcraft.

• In the same year, after a travesty of a trial, Anne Boleyn was sentenced to death by beheading, along with her brother and many of her kinsmen.

• As Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn had been deemed illegitimate, so too was the fruit of that union.

• In 1536, Henry pushed the Second Succession Act through Parliament declaring that Elizabeth (like Mary before her) was an illegitimate child. * The Reformation

• Anne Boleyn & the Second Succession Act

• This, of course, left Henry without an heir.

• So the act of succession also decreed that, in the lack of a direct heir, the king would be succeeded by whomever he chose.

• Moreover, insisting on the legitimacy of Elizabeth or Mary became punishable as treasons.

• Yet, perhaps most telling is an amendment in the act that made it treason to criticize the execution of Thomas More, suggesting that the ghost of More was far harder to dispose of than More himself.

• Jane Seymour: A Son at Last!

• The day after Anne's execution, Henry was already well on his way to his third marriage.

• Drawing once again from the pool of his queen's ladies in waiting, Henry picked out Jane Seymour. * The Reformation

• Jane Seymour: A Son at Last!

• The two were engaged that very day and married a mere ten days later.

• We know little about Jane, as her time in the limelight was very brief.

• Yet, the next year, Jane provided Henry with the son he had always wanted.

• Henry rejoiced at the birth of his new son, Edward, who would succeed his father to the throne.

• But Henry's joy was mixed with sorrow, as Jane died soon after from complications related to childbirth.

• Even after her death, Henry is said to have considered Jane his only true wife.

• He was buried beside her in St George's Chapel in Windsor. * The Reformation

• Jane Seymour: A Son at Last!

• At last Henry had the heir he had gone through so much trouble to produce.

• However, young Edward was a sickly child, and Henry was concerned that the boy might die before he could succeed him.

• Moreover, a royal marriage offered political opportunities that were too good to pass up.

• Wife #4: Anne of Cleves

• Eager to match the King with a protestant power, Thomas Cromwell (now Henry's chief minister) pushed the king to marry Anne of Cleves.

• Henry did not want to marry a woman he'd never seen, so he dispatched his favored artist, Hans Holbein (of Kung Fu Christ fame), to paint a portrait of his wife to be * The Reformation

• Wife #4: Anne of Cleves

• Anne was no beauty, her face being pocked by scars from an earlier battle with smallpox.

• Holbein's artistic license got the better of him though, and he depicted Anne in the best light possible.

• Fooled by this depiction, Henry agreed to the marriage.

• Upon Anne's arrival in England, Henry realized that Cromwell had pulled the old bait and switch on him.

• He had the marriage annulled and Cromwell executed.

• Anne, however, he held blameless.

• Not wanting to upset her brother, the Duke of Cleves Henry granted Anne a fine estate, invited her to all holiday gatherings and officially referred to her as 'the King's sister. * The Reformation

• Wife #5: Catherine Howard

• Tired of wedding for political reasons and weary of pandering to Protestants, Henry was determined to enjoy at least one of his wives.

• He therefore married the young and beautiful Catherine Howard.

• Catherine, however, was dissatisfied with the fat and aging king and took every opportunity to cheat on old Henry.

• Henry soon caught wind of her clandestine love affairs and had her executed, along with several of her lovers.

• Catherine Parr and the Third Succession Act

• Exhausted by this series of wives (and probably wary of pretty women), King Henry's sixth and final wife was a matronly woman named Catherine Parr.

• Parr was cultured and sensible. * The Reformation

• Catherine Parr and the Third Succession Act

• As a protestant sympathizer, Parr encouraged Henry to lean more toward the protestant side of the coin, yet she did so gently and reasonably, unlike the fiery Anne Boleyn.

• These features made Catherine Parr the ideal companion for Henry during his final years.

• Catherine was also instrumental in reconciling Henry with his estranged daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.

• Her influence is often cited as the main cause for Henry's passing of the Third (and final) Succession Act, which returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, behind Prince Edward and any children Henry might have by Parr.

• This last clause proved unnecessary, as Henry had no further children in the remaining four years of his life.

• Henry VIII died in 1547 and was succeeded to the throne by his son Edward VI. * The Reformation

• England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry

• As the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Europe, a very different sort of reformation was taking place in England.

• Unlike the reformations of the mainland, which were mostly theological in nature, England's Reformation was decidedly political.

• The debate in England was not about whether one was saved by Protestant faith or by Catholic sacrament. Instead, it was about who had the greater authority in England - the King or the Pope.

• This debate was not a new one for England. English monarchs have a long history of butting heads with the Pope.

• Many English kings saw the Roman Catholic Church as having entirely too much power in their country.

• Conversely, many popes saw the English Crown as too eager to stick its fingers into matters of faith. * The Reformation

• England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry

• Four centuries earlier, during the Investiture Conflict of 1103, Henry I of England challenged the Pope over the right to appoint people to local Church positions.

• A generation later, Henry II also tried to decrease the Pope's influence in England. In the Constitutions of Clarendon of 1164, Henry asserted that clergymen accused of civil crimes were subject to the civil law of the land, rather than the ecumenical law of the Church.

• In this light, Henry VIII was simply resuming a centuries-old conflict between the King of England and the Pope in Rome.

• Though Henry VIII would eventually gain the power to appoint bishops or to hold criminal priests to account, his initial conflict with the Pope was much more personal.

• Henry was simply trying to provide an heir to his throne, and the Pope got in the way by refusing to annul Henry's marriage to the then-barren Catherine of Aragon. * The Reformation

• England vs. Rome: Old Conflict, New Henry

• Henry VIII struggled with Rome to get his annulment

• You need only know that the conflict over annulment eventually led Henry to circumvent the Pope's authority and have his marriage to Catherine annulled by Parliament, rather than by the Pope.

• The annulment was not the first challenge to the Pope's authority. It was preceded by many acts that gradually took powers that were traditionally associated with Church authorities in Rome and transferred them to secular authorities in England.

• Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy

• Henry was aided in his struggle with Rome by an English statesman named Thomas Cromwell.

• Thomas Cromwell was an active supporter of the Reformation and a harsh critic of the Papacy. * The Reformation

• Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy

• It was Cromwell who persuaded Henry to turn his battle over annulment into a full-scale legal break from Rome.

• With Henry's approval and Cromwell's goading, Parliament passed a series of laws undermining Papal authority.

• In 1529, Henry began by finishing what his predecessor, Henry II, had started so long ago, ensuring that the clergy were subject to the common laws of England, rather than the Church laws of Rome.

• The next year, 1530, Henry had Parliament declare that it was illegal to appeal to any external power for resolution of a problem in England.

• They called this crime praemunire, and it basically ensured that no Englishmen would be appealing to the Pope for aide. * The Reformation

• Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy

• A couple years later in 1532, Parliament published the Supplication Against the Ordinaries.

• The supplication was a treatise, not unlike Luther's 95 Theses, criticizing the Church's abuses.

• The Supplication mostly focused on the unjust prosecution of people accused of heresy, but it also condemned the Church's greed in demanding excessive court fees for these trials.

• The Supplication was quickly followed by the Submission of the Clergy, which stated that all church law was subject to review by the King and Parliament.

• When the English clergy balked at this request, Henry called them out, saying: * The Reformation

• Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy

• “Well beloved subjects, 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.”

• Taunted so by the King, the English clergy fell in line.

• Yet the act that cut the Church the deepest was the 1532 Act of Annates, which greatly reduced the amount of Church income paid to Rome.

• This essentially reduced the money flowing from England to Rome from a torrent to a trickle. * The Reformation

• Thomas Cromwell: Undermining the Papacy

• Parliament added salt to the wound with the 1533 Act in Restriction of Appeals, which stated once and for all that England did not need to appeal to Rome for matters involving Church law.

• And since England did not need the Church to handle matters of Church law, Parliament was free to formally annul Henry's marriage to Catherine with the First Succession Act of 1533.

• Excommunication and the Break from Rome

• Enraged by Henry's attempts to undermine his authority, the Pope threatened Henry with excommunication in 1533.

• This excommunication threatened to cut Henry off from the sacraments of the Church and, thus, deny him the possibility of ever going to heaven. * The Reformation

• Excommunication and the Break from Rome

• Moreover, since Henry was a king, the excommunication also threatened the souls of his subjects.

• This put Henry in a difficult position.

• If he recognized the authority of the Church and his excommunication, his only recourse was to go crawling back to the Pope and beg for forgiveness.

• Yet, if he broke from the Church, Henry feared he would have to risk the rebellion that had accompanied the Protestant Reformation across Europe.

• Henry was not about to bow to the Pope, and as we shall see, he had his own methods for repressing rebellion.

• The following year, 1534, Henry and Cromwell pushed a variety of new acts through Parliament, resulting in a total break from the Roman Catholic Church. * The Reformation

• Excommunication and the Break from Rome

• With The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act, Parliament decreed that the King, not the Pope, would be responsible for appointing clergy to high positions in the Church.

• This, in effect, settled the investiture conflict of England that had so troubled Henry I some four centuries earlier.

• The official break with the Roman Catholic Church came shortly after in the form of the first Act of Supremacy, in which Henry was recognized as the only supreme head of the Church in England.

• This removed any last vestiges of authority that Rome had in England.

• It was now the King who would determine Church law, it was the King who would collect Church income, and, of course, it was the King who would grant annulments. * The Reformation

• Excommunication and the Break from Rome

• Every English citizen was supposed to swear an oath affirming Henry's supremacy.

• And just in case someone didn't want to take that oath, Parliament passed the Treasons Act, which made refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy an act of treason punishable by death.

• This provided legal grounds for Henry and Cromwell to purge Rome's supporters from the government and dispose of some of its more vocal critics.

• The Anglican Church

• The 1534 Act of Supremacy established the Church of England, or the Anglican Church.

• Yet, because this English Reformation had been more political than theological and because Henry did not want a religious rebellion on his hands, the bulk of Catholic practices and doctrines remained unchanged. * The Reformation

• The Anglican Church

• Henry had no problem with a system that conferred great wealth and authority upon its leader. He just wanted that leader to be him, not the Pope.

• Therefore, Anglicans still engaged in most of the same sacraments of Catholicism: baptism, the Eucharist, and confession.

• The only real difference was that the prestige and revenues that the Church gained from these sacraments now found their way to Henry, instead of to the Pope.

• In this sense, Henry seems to have found a middle ground.

• On the one hand, Henry had replaced the distant and often arbitrary authority of Rome with the local and invested authority of the King of England. * The Reformation

• The Anglican Church

• On the other hand, Henry had fallen short of the full-scale reformations taking place across the channel, shattering the dreams of many Reformers who had hoped for more, including his ally Thomas Cromwell.

• The following years would see the King pulled back and forth between the conservative tendencies of his orthodox subjects and the revolutionary designs of Reformers.

• Henry flip-flopped on issues of faith regularly.

• On the conservative side, in 1539, Henry rejected the proposed Lutheran reforms of the Anglican Church and instead supported Parliament's Act of the Six Articles, which upheld many Catholic practices and beliefs:

1. Transubstantiation 2. The right to deny wine to common people during communion 3. The celibacy of priests 4. The vows of chastity 5. The right to hold private masses 6. The sacrament of confession * The Reformation

• The Anglican Church

• The Six Articles guaranteed that a Catholic sitting down at an Anglican church would find the ceremony much the same as it had been before.

• Yet, in that same year, Henry made a concession to the Reformers' side.

• He commissioned an English translation of the Bible, the so called 'Great Bible,' so that his subjects could read the book for themselves, a distinctly Protestant notion.

• This move greatly increased Henry's prestige as head of the Church of England, and soon all Anglican churches would be required to use these English Bibles.

• The only religious position on which Henry never flip-flopped was in stripping the wealth and property from religious institutions.

• We've already seen how he slowly but surely redirected church funds from the Roman Papacy to the English Monarchy. * The Reformation

• The Catholic Backlash

• In 1536, Henry seized the property of many of the monasteries in England with the Dissolution of Minor Monasteries Act.

• As the monasteries were popular among the common people, this move inspired the largest local backlash of English Catholics against the throne.

• The next year, tens of thousands of peasants from the countryside marched on London to protest these reforms in what became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.

• Henry dispersed the protesters brutally. He invited the leaders into London to negotiate, only to charge them with treason and have them executed.

• This put a lid on religious conflict in England for the remainder of Henry's reign, but these tensions continued to boil beneath the surface and would soon explode after the King's passing.