Henry’s relationship with Anne had brought him into contact with many scholarly anti-clerics, one of whom being Tyndale. Tyndale used evidence from the Bible to conclude that power and authority should be obeyed and exclude foreign authorities, such as the Pope. Simon Fish was another anti-cleric who criticised the church for it’s riches and Christopher St Germain emphasised that the state should be able to control the church. Henry was heavily influenced by the views of these men and by the end of 1529, the anti-clerics has created a climate where religious reformation was essential. Historian A.G Dickens believes that the religious unrest of the 1500’s, which dramatically increased after cases like that of Richard Hunne in 1514, was the primary cause for the English reformation and he emphasises the role of the Lollards who ‘provided a spring-board of critical dissent from which the Protestant Reformation could overleap the walls of orthodoxy.’
The bitter failures and new ideas of 1527-29 led Henry to begin a new approach in ascertaining his wishes. Henry engaged a strategy of ignoring Rome and trying to resolve the predicament internally. He worked on the principle emphasized by Christopher St Germain,; that his imperial authority of state should extend to that of his church as well. However, this ideal, though receiving an amount of support primarily in the texts of the ‘collectanea satis capiosa’, many of the Kings prominent ministers were unsure about these claims. Henry’s plan of action began when he called Parliament – an assembly sure to voice anti-cleric opinions - in 1529 to discuss ways of scraping away at clerical privileges, his way of warning the Pope that if a divorce was not granted, he had the political power to defy the Popes authority. This parliament would last for the next seven years and become known as the reformation parliament. It was this group that passed all the acts of parliament to sever political and economic ties with Rome. The years 1530 – 31 saw these ‘scrapings’ begin to take place. In 1530, Thomas Cromwell joined Henrys council, an event that would lead to spectacular steps to pursue a break with Rome. Cromwell stressed the importance of being a king and the view that kings were believed to have been appointed by God. Cromwell said that this would make Henry the Popes equal with regards to authority; therefore he didn’t need to ask the Popes permission for a divorce, ‘The king is absolute emperor and Pope in his kingdom.’ This resulted in the senior clergy permitting Henry to assume the title of ‘supreme head of the Church in England and Wales as far as the word of God allows’ – the end of the title was the idea of the , . Nevertheless, to say this was a dramatic breakthrough on Henry’s behalf would be unsound. The title loses standing with the condition ‘as far as the word of God allows’ - the word of God states that the Pope has superior power than that of Kings.
The next step was taken in January 1531 with fifteen leading English Clerics being charged with a breach of Praemunre, the same charge that saw Thomas Wolsey fall from power just a few years previous. This charge was advanced in December when the charge was extended to the whole clergy. However, Henry dropped the charges for a compensation of £119,000. This is the first step in a chain of events, which makes modern day historians question the economic factor involved in attaining a divorce and breaking from Rome. 1532-34 saw significant political breakthroughs, the first of which was the act in restraint of annates. This was Henry’s first direct attack aimed at the Pope, and the starting block of The Break. Only one fifth of the payments of the senior clergy would now be sent to the Vatican. Therefore, this act can also be seen as an economic gain. The convocation also passed the , which recognised that it could not make without royal licence, a crushing blow to the legal powers of the church. In the same year Henry appointed as , and Cranmer granted Henry a divorce the next year. Henry was now free to marry his pregnant lover, Anne Boleyn, which he did in 1533. This marked the point of no return in Henry’s policy. The Pope responded to the marriage by both Henry and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church. Also in this year the act of appeals removed all legal appeals to Rome. This directly struck the legal power of the Pope and was a political success. 1534 saw the Act of Supremacy come into play. This gave Henry the undisputed title of ‘the supreme head of the church.’ Compared with the title of 1531, this holds much more weight. It also disregarded the input of any foreign authorities. The second act of annates, again in 1534, cuts off all financial payments to Rome and confirms the first act in 1532.
As well as these political and economic advances, Henry began to crush any opposition to his policy. Henry brought in the Treasons Act in 1534 which made even individual, verbal opposition punishable by death. This act was the legal authority that formed the foundation for the execution of Elizabeth Barton in May 1534. She was just a laywoman who had refused to accept Anne as king. Henry was out to let people know he meant business. This attack on opposing parties carried on in 1535 with the executions of John Fisher, Sir Thomas Moore and many Carthusian monks who opposed the act of succession passed in 1534, they refused to swear an oath to accept the second marriage of the King as his only lawful marriage and that succession should pass to any offspring from his union. 1534 also saw Thomas Cromwell appointed as the kings vice-gerent which gave him the power of day to day control.
Religious motivations behind the reformation began to emerge towards the end of the 1530’s, challeging the question of the reformation wholly a political affair. Cromwell realised that he could bind the nobility to Royal Supremacy by selling to them the huge amount of Church lands – the Church owened one third of Englands lands - and this was one of the reasons the Dissolution of the monastaries began in 1536. The revenue received was used by Henry to help build defences along the coast to protect England against expected invasion. This approach was detested by laypeople and the suppression commissioners found themselves under attack from local people in a number of places. In the north of England there were a series of uprisings by Catholics against the dissolutions in late 1536 and early 1537. These revolts eventually cumulated with the Pilgrimage of Grace where 47 of the Lincolnshire rebels were executed and 132 from the northern pilgrimage. It took Cromwell until 1539 to complete the process. There was also an introduction of protestant ideas; Henry passed 10 acts that removed the Catholic sacraments. A wave of Protestantism was sweeping England.
Thomas Cromwell, and his exact role in the English reformation, has been a subject of continued discussion among historians. However this much is agreed upon, Cromwell was definitely one of the major proponents of the reformation and it was he who masterminded the best course of action as to how it should be achieved – through parliamentary ruling.
There is continued debate among historians as to how far Cromwell’s influence persuaded the king to unite England as sovereignty. Cromwell wanted the government to have control over the church as well as the state and to be uniformly powerful throughout. To enforce nationalism would make England stronger than by following universalism. It was Cromwell who had been the architect of the act of appeals and the act of supremacy that affirmed this nationalism. Cromwell emphasised that nothing was beyond the reach of parliamentary statute. The ‘Statutes of the realm’ during the thirty-four years of Henry’s reign was a notorious 1,032 pages long, only sixty pages less than the period of 294 years that lasted from the Magna Carta until 1509, and Cromwell outlined many of these decrees himself.
However, historian A.F. Pollard disputes that Cromwell should be accredited as the main contributor with regards to the reformation insisting that ‘the architect of the break with Rome and thus the reformation – an all powerful Henry VIII.’ Pollard confirms this belief by arguing that the divorce was not the cause of The Break, but the occasion for it. Henry had decided he needed supreme control and power over England, so naturally there would come a time when he wished to sever links with the papacy in Rome, ‘If a lion knew his own strength it were hard for any man to rule him.’ Pollard finalises this approach by drawing upon the tide of political nationalism that consequently followed, the lion was truly master of his own jungle.
On the other hand, Elton is adamant that Cromwell was the puppet master of the reformation. He agrees with Pollard that the reformation was based upon political affairs of nationalism, but that this nationalist view was the working of Cromwell who ‘offered to make Henry’s vague claims to supremacy by evicting the Pope from England.’ He wanted to make sure England was self governed, untouchable by foreign authorities. As Henry’s previous attempts had been a failure before the arrival of Cromwell and were a success after his appearance, I agree that it would appear that Eltons’ theory - that Cromwell was the leading man with regards to the reformation - holds the true key to unlocking the source of the English reformation.
In conclusion, I believe that the primary cause for the English reformation was a political development designed to bring the church under royal control, and the reformation was not wholly about changing religious doctrine. Henry did not have a qualm with the Catholic Church itself, but more the Pope. In the early years of Henry’s reign he had proved himself a devout Catholic. He joined the Holy league in 1512 and was awarded the title of “defender of the faith” in 1521. Even after The Break, Henry continued to take Catholic mass until he passed away. The fundamental push towards the reformation was Henry’s need for an annulment, and his desire to marry Anne and sucure his succession. Christopher Haigh held a polictical perspective on the reformation, however he believes that the process was full of uncertainty and contradictions as does Scarisbrick, “ the Henrician Reformation was a movement of inexplicable halts and starts, sudden hesitation and zigzagging… But this is not to deny the overall purposiveness of these years. They were as was Henry himself - belligerent and outwardly confident, yet nervous and uncertain; and they were thus precisely because he dominated them.” As for the economical factor, Henry was known as ‘a nimble opportunist,’ as such, financial pressure was only used as a means to obtain his ultimate goal of a national sovereignty, and as a means to benefit himself through economic gain when the chance arose.
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