When Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 he was able to divorce from Catherine of Aragon, by this he was able to marry Anne Boleyn. He soon became the ‘Supreme Head’ of the Church in England with the Parliament backing him up, so Parliament then ended payment of taxes to the Pope. As Henry was the Head of the Church he controlled its wealth. His close advisor Thomas Cromwell advised him to close the monasteries and take their wealth for himself. So Thomas sent out inspectors to inspect the monasteries to assess their behaviour and wealth, by 1536 Thomas started closing down all monasteries in England.
Henry’s only son Edward was Protestant. These are some of the changes he introduced. The king was Supreme Head, Psalm Sunday was banned, from 1549 priests were allowed to get married, you could not buy your way to heaven. Edward completely changed what was inside the church. The bible was translated in English so that everyone knew what the priests was saying if it was in English, no decoration allowed in the church, it was all simple like. He did not do many big things but the smaller things that need to be changed.
When Mary became queen in 1553, England had only been Protestant for 6 years. She worked hard to undo the changes that Edward had made. She banned the Pray Book and reintroduced Latin Mass. The priests had to leave their wives. The bible stayed in English.
Some problems she faced were that there were many Protestants in England, they hated the Pope and Catholicism. Henry had already closed all the monasteries and sold their land to rich and important people. Mary was 37, was not married and so had no children, her half sister Elizabeth was next in line and she was protestant so she was in a difficult situation.
After nearly 25 years of religious changes Elizabeth’s main aim when she became queen was to keep the country happy with its religion so she made the ‘Middle Way’. It was to keep the Catholics and Protestants happy without choosing a religion, with all its changes that have happened. To make the Catholics happy she did: have a traditional order of service, have bishops in charge of priests, keep all old churches. The bit in the middle to make sure that the Catholics and Protestant were happy she did: Have a few pictures and statues in Church, punish those who refuse to accept the religious changes and who are a threat to the queen, fine those who refuse to go the church. For the Protestants she did: Have a prayer book in English by Thomas Cranmer, Have priests read from the English Bible in Church, have no monks, don’t have the Pope as the head of Church of England, have no shrines or relics, make the queen ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of England. Not everyone might have agreed with Elizabeth’s ways but at least she tried to make it fair and both religions did get some of the laws that went their way.
A religious rollercoaster happened to Catholic of England. Its religion changed many times, every time there was a new monarch the religion changed.
From 1509 to 1603 many laws were changed but some were kept the same like the Bible always stayed English but most of the others were changed. Many laws were reversed when there was a new monarch like when Edward was king priests could marry but when Mary was queen priests had to leave their wives. In the end the religion was equal with the ‘Middle way’. Most people got along with each other.
Henry did changes that suited him like he closed down monarchs just to get more money, he broke away from Rome to split from his wife and other reasons. Some of them he just left if it didn’t matter to him. Edward was protestant so he changed laws to make it more protestant like, making the Church look simple.
Mary was Catholic and a fierce one to. She was the first female monarch and so she had to prove she was strong, one way she proved them was by killing many protestant and some of them fled to Europe. She burnt the most heretics out of Henry VII to Elizabeth. The total was about 250 heretics killed, she also reigned the shortest at of them as well. She pretty much reversed most of Edwards laws putting them back to Catholic ways.
While Elizabeth changed some of them to make both religions equal, she wanted people to live in peace without no problem, people who didn’t follow her ways got punished.
The changes took so long as all those monarchs weren’t the same religion, so many laws were changed and some of them did cause problems which took a long time to fix, some were just left out.
The only way to keep everyone happy was to make it fair.