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The beginning of the English Church

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 Contents

1. Introduction
2. Prior events
3. The Break with Rome
4. The English Church under:
A. Edward VI
B. Queen Mary I
C. Queen Elizabeth I
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
7. Pictures

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 Introduction

History has always fascinated me. I have always asked myself why this or that
happened, what was the reason for a war begin or somebody to get killed. The history of
mankind has all sorts of mysteries. In my opinion we will never know the whole truth, but it is
a good thing to try to understand, in my case, why Henry VIII decided to part from the Roman
Catholic Church. Maybe because he was in love, maybe because he wanted a male heir or
maybe the times were bringing the change. As we well know Henry VIII ruled in the period
of the Renaissance, the time when everything was changing in Europe, it was the time of the
humanists. In Henry’s court there were numerous humanists, one of them was Thomas More
and even Cardinal Wolsey. After the Renaissance it was time for Reformation, Luther’s ideas
started to spread when Henry became king.
There is a theory that in certain times in history humankind is mature enough to
develop something new. Those times brought Reformation, not only in religious matters, but
also in thinking. Nothing has changed since then, people still believe in different things and
fight for them, maybe not with the same weapons, but they just do not give up fighting.
Henry VIII fought for what he thought was right, it did not matter that he lost his
friend or hundreds died because of his will, he took his chances and tried to change the world
in which he was living. Whether he did more evil than good we can not judge, because we do
not know what would have happened the other way around.
I have chosen this subject because I would like to show one of the dark sides of
history, where corruption, cheating, privileges were just the same as these days and I would
like to demonstrate that no one is better than the other, that people cannot be judged by the
religion they follow, or the beliefs they have.

Prior Events
Henry VIII (see Picture 1) did not become immortal because he won great battles, like
his father, he is known today because he laid the bases of the Church of England, breaking
with the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
Henry VIII ascended the English throne in 1509, when he was only 17 years old.
Before his coronation day, he married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon (see Picture
4). The young Henry was influenced in matters such as politics and religion by his advisors,
especially by his Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (see Picture 2) and his friend
Thomas More (see Picture 3).
In earlier years Henry was a defender of the catholic faith; in 1521 he had defended
the Catholic Church from Martin Luther’s heretic ideas in a book he wrote, entitled The
Defence of the Seven Sacraments, for which was awarded the title “Defender of the Faith”
(Fidei Defensor) by Pope Leo X. He also imprisoned and executed those who proved to be
heretics in those days. He also burned and persecuted all the books which proved to circulate
ideas of the Reformation.
Henry already deemed his ‘superiority’ in 1515, when he declared:
‘By the ordinance and sufferance of God we are king of England, and the kings of England in
time past have never had any superior but God of our Crown and of our temporal jurisdiction
as well in this point as in all others.’, by which he denied the Pope’s right to infringe his
territorial sovereignty. But supremacy was not the main problem of the king. He wanted a
legitimate male heir, because the Tudor dynasty was at risk.
Henry and Catherine had a daughter, Princess Mary, and he had an illegitimate son,
Henry Fitzroy, by Elizabeth Blount. Catherine had four children who died shortly after they
were born, one of whom was a boy. Henry claimed he could not have a son with Catherine,
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because their marriage interfered with divine law (Leviticus 20:21). Henry also said that
Catherine had lied about her marriage with Arthur, Henry’s brother, and in fact it was
consummated. He declared that their marriage was invalid and in 1527 asked from Pope
Clement VII the annulment of their marriage.
However the absence of a male heir was not the only reason why Henry VIII wanted
his matrimony to end. He was in love with one of Queen Catherine’s maid of honour, Anne
Boleyn (see Picture 5).
Anne arrived at court, from Europe in 1552 and she was a woman of ‘charm, style and
wit, with will and savagery which made her a match for Henry’. Anne was not only a
charming woman, but she was a reformer and that is why many statesmen, like Thomas
Cromwell, Cranmer, Foxe, Thomas Audley, and Sir George Boleyn were on her party when
the discussion about the annulment started; they saw a chance to promote radical ideas by
solving the divorce crisis.
Henry’s desire and love for Anne was not why he decided that Reformation was the
solution to his problem, partly it was because Reformation became already known in the 16th
century. England had its own reformers, like William Tyndale, who translated the New
Testament in English. Of course all of the copies made after his translation were searched and
destroyed. There were numerous others, who tried to reform the English clergy and thinking,
but without any success, most of the time they ended up becoming heretics and they were
burned on stake.
By the late 1520’s Lord Chancellor Wolsey had not yet succeeded to convince the
Pope about the king’s annulment. Henry being married to Catherine of Aragon, who was the
aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, made it difficult for Pope Clement VII to decide
whether to allow the annulment or not. The Pope tried to mark the time by not giving an
accurate answer for four years. Henry’s case was brought up to Rome, then Wolsey arranged
that delegates to be sent to England, who would investigate about the matter. Neither of these
had any success. By the end of the fourth year Henry put his case before public opinion: he
asked for the support of the leading universities of Christendom and promoted the merits of
his suit by a pamphlet debate. In 1531 he was using the printing press to publish and spread
the statement of his position, his request to wider opinion made the biggest reaction possible,
particularly among those who shared the ideas of the Reformation, because the divorce debate
coincided with the Reformation. However, all this was not enough for the Pope to agree with
the annulment, apparently he feared more the Holy Roman Emperor, than Henry VIII. Pope
Clement VII did not give his consent also, because that would have meant that Pope Julius II
had made a mistake by allowing Henry to marry his late brother’s widow, and that would be
humiliating for the papacy.
Wolsey’s fall in 1529 resulted from the inability of the cardinal to persuade Pope
Clement VII to annul the king’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order that he might
marry Anne Boleyn. In the same year Wolsey was accused of praemunire (maintenance of
papal jurisdiction in England) and died a year later, 1530, on his way to London to answer to
the charge of high treason. His successor as Lord Chancellor was Thomas More, a humanist
and a former advisor of Henry.
In the year 1529, the king summoned the Parliament to deal with the annulment,
therefore bringing together those who wanted reform, but who disagreed what form it should
take. This became known as the Reformation Parliament. In this Parliament were present
Common lawyers who were offended by the privileges of the clergy, there were those who
had been influenced by Lutheran evangelicalism and declined the theology of Rome. Thomas
Cromwell, a statesman at that time, wanted both, to abolish the privileges of the clergy and to
deny the papal supremacy. Others like Foxe and Stokesey argued for the Royal Supremacy
over the English Church. Thomas More, Henry’s Chancellor wanted reform too, but a
different kind, he wanted new laws against heresy. The Parliament was summoned also
because Henry intended to obtain his divorce from there, because the Pope would not give his

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consent. Anyhow his chancellor opposed the divorce and Henry accepted it as a defeat, but
he never stopped trying to work out a strategy for the royal divorce, in this he was helped by,
Thomas Cranmer, Edward Foxe, Edward Lee, and Nicholas de Burgo.
The Queen’s group included More, the earl of Shrewsbury, Bishop John Fisher,
William Peto (head of the Franciscan Observants of Greenwich), Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall,
Nicholas Wilson (archdeacon of Oxford), and Bishop West, Clerk, and Standish, who were
determined to defend both the queen and the Catholic Church. In the years of crises, 1529-
1532, the two parties, Anne Boleyn’s and the Queen’s, challenged each other in court,
Parliament and Council.
The divorce campaign was very costly and in January 1531 Henry VIII insisted that
the clergy should give the king a subsidy. He wanted money because the divorce brought up
threats of imperial invasion from Charles V. Actually Henry charged the whole clergy with
praemunire in order to secure their agreement to his annulment. With praemunire, which
forbade obedience to the authority of foreign rules, were first charged the Queen’s supporters.
Convocation decided to pay the required taxation (which was worth not less than £100,000)
on 24 January 1531. The clergy wanted the payment to be spread over five years. Henry
refused. The Convocation responded by withdrawing their payment and demanded Henry to
fulfill certain guarantees before they agreed to give him the money. Henry refused the
conditions and agreed after all to the five-year period of payment, adding to the payment five
more articles. In the first one he demanded that the clergy recognize him as the ‘sole protector
and Supreme Head of the Church and clergy of England’. He claimed 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. The king pardoned the clergy and the laity for violating
the statute of praemunire. The Convocation approved authority to the King’s five articles and
the payment on 8 March 1531. That same year Parliament passed the Pardon to Clergy Act
1531.

The Break with Rome

The breaking of the power of Rome continued little by little. In the early 1530`s Henry
saw his royal supremacy as a fact rather than a novelty. He could see no objection to it, and
interpreted the clergy’s resistance as culpable disobedience.
He was studying for some time a manuscript called Collectanea satis copiosa, which
was written by Foxe and Cranmer. This manuscript validated his divorce, and justified it from
legal and historical principles, based on the Bible, traditional Catholic texts, and English
histories and chronicles. This manuscript gave Henry the power to summon the bishops and to
pronounce his divorce.
In 1532, Cromwell brought up before the Parliament the Supplication Against the
Ordinaries, which enlisted nine complaints against the Church. On 10 May the King
demanded that the Church renounce all the authority to make laws, and on 15 May, the
Submission of the Clergy was subscribed, which recognized the Supremacy of the King over
the church. The day after this Thomas More, Henry’s Lord Chancellor resigned, leaving
Cromwell as Henry’s chief minister.
Several Acts of Parliament then followed. The first was the Act in Conditional
Restraint of Annates, which proposed that the clergy should pay no more than 5% of their
first year’s income to Rome. The Act in Restraint of Appeals, which was drafted by
Cromwell, banned Rome to obstruct with any jurisdictional or ecclesiastical matters. The
same Act declared that ‘this realm of England is an Empire, and so had 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 bounded and owe to
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bear next to God a natural and humble obedience.’, therefore England became an
independent country in every respect. Then came the second act of restriction of annates,
called Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates, which outlawed all the annates to Rome, and also
ordered if the clergy did not agree with the choice of the King’s nomination for bishop, they
would be charged by the law of the praemunire. With this Act Henry secured his future,
because after Archbishop Warham’s death he chose Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of
Canterbury, who was a similar reformer to Cromwell and Anne Boleyn.
Henry took Anne to France on a pre-nuptial honeymoon in the summer of 1532, and in
January 1533 they were married in Westminster Abbey. Cranmer gave the annulment Henry
needed, by this opposing the Pope’s decision. The Pope responded to this by
excommunicating both Henry VIII and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church (11 July
1533).
The following year the Parliament released many Acts concerning payment to Rome.
In the year 1534 the Act of First Fruits and Tenths transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical
income from the Pope to the Crown. Because of this act the clergy paid more to the crown
than they did to the Pope. Between 1485 and 1534 the clergy paid £4,800 a year to Rome, but
in 1535 they paid £46,052 and in 1536 £51,770 to Henry VIII. The Act concerning Peter’s
pence and Dispensation outlawed landowners to pay their annual taxes to the Pope and
repeated that England had ‘no superior under God, but only your Grace’.
In November 1534 the Act of Supremacy came through the Parliament, which once
and for all declared the King the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England. The
Act of Supremacy was followed by the Treason Act. This Act made it treason, punishable by
death, to reject the Act of Supremacy. It was introduced as a ‘blanket’ law in order to deal
with the minority of cases who would not agree to accept Cromwell’s and Henry’s changes of
rules. All those were guilty of high treason who: ‘do maliciously wish, will or desire by words
or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or
committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's or the heirs apparent (Elizabeth), or to
deprive them of any of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and
maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king should be
heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown...’. Under the charge of this Act
were executed Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. In April 1534 Thomas More refused
Henry’s oath of succession. He refused to approve the Boleyn marriage against his
conscience. So did John Fisher, and both were sent to the Tower, and then executed.
The two biggest reformers Cromwell and Cranmer (see Picture 6) began a program to
transform the English Church. The program started with the elimination of many feast days.
The offerings to images were discouraged, and so were pilgrimages, candles lit before images
were prohibited, Bible in both English and Latin were to be bought.
In 1534, Cromwell initiated a Visitation of the Monasteries, which would value the
worth of the monasteries’ to expropriation. The Crown was having some financial difficulties
and the church, in spite of its political weakness was very wealthy. The Visitation made it
possible to make an inventory about the church’s possessions. However the church had not
only very valuable possessions, but they owned one-fifth and one-third of the land in all
England. Cromwell realized that he could win the gentry and nobility for the King’s cause if
he sold the church’s land to them. For these reasons the Dissolution of Monasteries began in
1536 with the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act, which affected in the beginning
only the smaller houses, those valued for less than £200 a year. Henry used the money to
build coastal defense against expected invasion. The lands were sold or to the aristocracy or
were given to the Crown. The Crown gained from the land sales £799,310, from the gold and
silver plates and jewels raised a further £79,471. The sales were at their height in 1544 and
1545 with totals of £164,495 and £165,459. Sales of goods and movables reached their peak
in 1541-1543 with a total of £13,787. By 1547 almost two-thirds of the monastic property had
been alienated.

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 The massive dissolution of the monasteries made the laity arouse on several occasions.
On 1 October 1536 a rebellion began in Louth and spread north, it was called the Lincolnshire
Rising. By the end of the month the rebellion convulsed the northern counties from the River
Don to the Scottish border and reckoned to be up to 40,000 people involved. They had
attempted without success to negotiate with the king by petition. This uprising was over by
the 18th October.
The second bigger rebellion was called the Pilgrimage of Grace. It was threatening,
because nobles, gentry, clergy and people combined forces, and they shared an ideology.
They wore badges of the Five Wounds of Christ and swore an oath that was contradictory to
the one of the Crown’s oath of supremacy. The rebels were so convinced of their goodwill
that they even wrote and sang ballads:

‘Alack! Alack!
For the church sake
Poor commons wake,
And no marvel!

For clear it is
The decay of this
How the poor shall miss
No tongue can tell.’

The revolt was too big to condone, the rebels occupied York and Hull. Henry
immediately ordered the nobility to take charge. The rebel leaders saw that negotiation was a
better way to reach understanding so a war was not needed. However the aristocrats and
Henry did not keep their promise. All the rebellions were put down by March 1537. Forty-
seven of the Lincolnshire rebels and 132 from the northern pilgrimage were executed.
In 1539 Cromwell moved the dissolution to the larger monasteries. Many of the
houses renounced voluntarily. A few, including eighteen Carthusians, refused and were killed
to the last man.
One of the last Acts that concerned the papal authority was passed in 1536. This Act
was called 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.
Meanwhile Henry executed his much desired wife Anne Boleyn, who could not give
him a son, so she was accused of adultery and witchcraft, then executed together with her
brother. He married after her Jane Seymour (see Picture 7), who became the mother of a male
heir, but she died soon after she gave birth to the future Edward VI.
Henry was waiting for a son from his second wife, Anne Boleyn, so he passed the
First Act of Succession in March 1534, which declared Princess Mary, daughter of Catherine
of Aragon a bastard, who would not inherit the kingship. After the birth of his son, Edward,
he published the Second Act of Succession in June 1536 in which he removed both Mary and
Elizabeth from the line of succession.
In 1539 Cromwell rushed Henry into a marriage with a protestant German noble
woman, Anne of Cleves (see Picture 8). Henry resented the new Queen, so he blamed
Cromwell for the situation. However, this was not the only thing that Cromwell did wrong. In
Henry’s opinion he went too far with the reformation. Henry planned a religious settlement of
his own choosing and for this he summoned Parliament on 28 April 1539. On 5 May the same
year he asked the House of Lords for a committee for an act of uniformity. The Parliament
discussed six questions:
1.) If the Eucharist could be the body of Christ except by transubstantiation.
2.) If the laity might receive communion in both kinds.
3.) If vows of chastity were absolute.

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 4.) If private masses should continue.
5.) If priests may marry.
6.) If auricular confession was necessary.
After discussion these six points were formulated in an act called the Act of the Six Articles,
which afterwards became law. Cromwell refused to obey this law so he was executed. Many
other Protestants were imprisoned or burned.
Parliament also debated another act, the Act for the Advancement of True Religion,
which emphasized that Scripture should be read by only a number of people who are qualified
to understand its true meaning. Parliament endorsed the following:
‘No women nor artificers, prentices, journeyman, serving men of the degrees of
yeomen or under, husbandmen, serving laborers’ were to read the English Bible under
penalty of a month’s imprisonment.’ This act was passed because there were many disputes
among the common men, which led to violence.
Until his death Henry VIII had married two more times. His fifth wife was Lord
Norfolk’s niece Catherine Howard (see Picture 9), who was executed for adultery. His last
wife was a widow Catherine Parr (see Picture 10), who outlived Henry. She convinced him to
return both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession after Edward (Third Act of
Succession).
Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547 leaving as his successor his son, Edward VI.

The English Church under:

A. Edward VI

Edward (see Picture 11) was only a child (nine years old), when he inherited the
throne from his father. Before his imminent death Henry VIII changed his will and named
Edward Seymour and his alliance as the regency council after his death. This is how Edward
Seymour, an influential Protestant gained control over the political, economical and religious
matters in England.
Edward was a bright child, who had been brought up as a Protestant, but was of little
credit politically. His Lord Protector, Seymour, made a very powerful reformation of the
church.
In 1547 the Injunctions against the images law was fiercely enforced, at first
informally, and then by instruction. All images in churches had to be destroyed, stained
glasses, shrines, statues had to be defaced or destroyed, roods and often the lofts and screens
were cut down, bells were taken down, vestments were prohibited and either burned or sold,
church plates were melted down or sold. The requirement for the clergy to be celibate was
erased and chantries were abolished completely. In 1550 stone altars were exchanged for
wooden communion tables changing the look and the focus of church interiors. In 1551 the
episcopate was remodeled by the appointment of Protestants to the bench.
Henceforth, the Reformation proceeded quickly. In 1549 Cranmer, who was still the
Archbishop of Canterbury and a committed reformer, introduced his first version of the Book
of Common Prayer in English. In 1552 the prayer book was replaced by a second much more
radical one, which altered the shape of the service so as to remove any sense of sacrifice. Of
course the Parliament repealed Henry VIII’s Six Articles, leaving no doubt whether the
English Church is protestant or catholic.
The enforcement of the new liturgy did not always take place without a fight. In East
Anglia, Cornwall and Devon were serious rebellions, which were of course put down. After
these uprisings came a time of ‘quavering quiet’ after which new revolts began. The worst of
all rebellions was the so-called Kett’s Rebellion in Norwich, which was not easy to put down.

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 Apart from this kind of resistance, there were more peaceful ones, in some places
chantry priests continued to say prayers and landowners would pay them to do so. The
removal of images confronted oppositions too. However there were places where people saw
opportunity to make money of the clergy’s vestments and plates.
The power of the resistance made people think that, Seymour as Lord Protector would
fall and Reformation would end. He did not fall in 1549, but three years later he was replaced
with the Earl of Warwick, who became Lord President of the Privy Council.
Edward VI died at the age of sixteen. After his death Duke of Northumberland wanted
the Protestant Lady Jane Grey to be made Queen. Princess Mary took the opportunity given
by the unpopularity of the reformers and proclaimed herself Queen of England.

B. Queen Mary I

After Mary (see Picture 12) became Queen in 1553, she repealed all the Reformation
legislation and she replaced everything back as it was before the schism. Mary I tried to
reconnect with Rome and the Pope.
Her first Act of Parliament was to reinstitute the validity of her parents’ marriage and
legitimized her claim to the throne. The Pope would only accept the reunion when the church
property disputes had been settled. In reality that could not happen because the sold properties
belonged to very influential people.
Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury is replaced with Cardinal Pole, who was exiled
during Henry VIII’s reign. Cranmer was accused of heresy, imprisoned and then executed.
Mary wanted desperately to secure England for Catholicism, and for this she needed
an heir. The Holy Roman Emperor advised her to marry his son, Phillip II of Spain. She not
only needed an heir to enforce Catholicism, but to prevent her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth
from inheriting the Crown and therefore returning England to Protestantism. This confronted
opposition, and there was even a rebellion in Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyatt. However, she
never became pregnant; her apparent pregnancy was the beginning of stomach cancer.
Pope Julius died in 1555 and his successor, Pope Paul IV, declared war on Philip and
recalled Cardinal Pole to Rome to have him tried for heresy. Mary refused to let Pole go, and
the support she would expect from a grateful Pope was therefore denied.
After 1555, the initial reconciling tone of the regime was over and begun to harden.
The medieval laws were restored, and the so-called Marian Persecution of Protestants began.
283 Protestant were persecuted and then burned on the stake under the charge of heresy. This
resulted in the Queen becoming known as ‘Bloody Mary’. She was given this name by the
Protestant John Foxe. His book called Book of Martyrs recorded the executions in such detail
that it became Mary’s epitaph.
In Mary’s later years catholic faith seemed to strengthen. Edmund Bonner the Bishop
of London wrote a catechism and a collection of homilies, which were widely spread with the
help of printing press. In these late years recruitment to the English clergy began to rise after
almost a decade. Long neglected churches were repaired, new bells were bought, the altars
were restored, roods rebuilt and vestments and plates purchased.
Cardinal Pole wanted to rebuild the importance of scripture, teaching and education
and to improve the moral standards of the clergy. However this did not help people to return
to catholic faith entirely, benefactions to the church did not return significantly. Few
monasteries, chantries and gilds were reinstalled.
Mary I wanted to bring back catholic faith, but it was too late, Protestantism was
already widely spread, and the few laws and changes in churches could not bring back the
glorious past.
Mary I died childless on December 1558 and his father’s Third Succession Act was
enforced and Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn became Queen.

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C. Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Mary could not ensure a catholic England, dieing childless, so after her death
her half-sister the Protestant Elizabeth (see Picture 13) inherited the throne and turned
England again Protestant. Elizabeth also inherited all the negative and destructive elements of
Henrician anti-papalism and Edwardian Protestantism. Because of this during her early reign
her most important concern was religion. Her chief advisor on this matter was Sir William
Cecil, her Secretary of State, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, her Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.
In the year 1559 Parliament was summoned to pass a Reformation Bill, which would
create a new church. The Reformation Bill defined the Communion as a consubsantial
celebration as opposed to a transubstantial celebration; this Bill included abuse of the Pope in
the litany, and ordered that ministers should not wear the surplice or other Catholic vestments.
It also allowed ministers to marry, banned images from churches, and confirmed Elizabeth as
Supreme Head of the Church of England.
The Bill met heavy resistance in the House of Lords and amongst the catholic bishops
and even the laity voted against it. Because of this heavy resistance they changed much about
the Bill. They changed the litany to allow transubstantial belief in the Communion too; they
also refused to grant Elizabeth the title Supreme Head of the Church. Parliament was
prorogued until Easter and when in resumed, the government entered another two bills into
the Houses; the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity.
The Act of Supremacy validated the ten acts that Mary had repealed and confirmed
Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. She was given the title of Supreme
Governor, because many thought that a woman could not rule the church. After this act all
except one bishop lost their posts, a hundred fellows of Oxford colleges were deprived and
many dignitaries resigned rather than taken the oath.
Elisabeth was not so sewer about the images in the churches. She would allow
crucifixes and candlesticks, even roods, but the newly installed bishops protested. In 1560
Edmund Grindal, one of the Marian exiles made Bishop of London was allowed to demolish
all of the rood lofts in London and in 1561 the Queen herself ordered the demolition of all
lofts.
The queen also appointed a new Privy Council, removing many Roman Catholic
counselors by doing so. Conflicts and factionalism during her reign were diminished. With
these arrangements the Act of Supremacy had passed without any difficulty.
In 1558 the Act of Uniformity was presented to the Parliament. The Act of Uniformity
forced people to attend every Sunday service in an Anglican church, at which a new version
of the Book of Common Prayer was to be used. This Act passed more easily then the first one,
because it was much more cautious then the Reformation Bill. This Act revoked the harsh
laws proposed against Catholics; it removed the abuse of the pope from the litany and kept the
wording that allowed both consubstantial and transubstantial belief in Communion.
Elisabeth’s reign gave birth to Puritanism and Puritans, who were those Protestants
who wanted one national church, and thought that the church was only partially reformed.
Grindal the former Bishop of London, now made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1575, choose
to oppose even the Queen in his desire to forward the Puritanism (‘Bear with me, I beseech
you Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly majesty than to offend the heavenly
majesty of God.’). Grindal was placed under house arrest for his disobedience, and died in
1583 leaving no hope for his followers. His successor was Archbishop Whitgift who settled
for the Queens party and obeyed to her rules and methods of ruling. The defeat of the Spanish
Armada made it more difficult for Puritans to prove that God is not pleased with his earthly
establishment.
On the other side were still a huge number of Roman Catholics, who hoped that some
day there would come a time when everything would change back as it was. Vestments were
hidden and the Mass was celebrated in some parts of the country alongside the new

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Communion service. The catholic priests and laity lived a double life. However some time
passed until Roman Catholics refused to go to Protestant services. By the 1570’s an
underground church was growing, because the Anglican Church became more Protestant and
less bearable for the Catholics. However the Catholics were still a minority, however they
tried to restore the old religion. There was a rebellion in 1569 called the Rising of the
Northern earls, but was rapidly put down and it did not bring any improvements for the
Catholics situation. After this uprising the Catholics did not go to Protestant services even
more often. In the year 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth from the Roman
Catholic Church. These actions of the believers of the old religion brought upon themselves
only trouble. Elisabeth’s ministers started to take charge: fines for refusal to attend service
were raised from 12 d. per service to ₤20 a month; also it was considered treason to reconcile
with Rome. In 1577 the execution of the priests began. In the first year (1577) only one priest
was executed, in 1581 four, eleven in 1582, two in the next year, six in the year of 1584, fifty-
three by 1590, and seventy more between 1601 and 1680. Roman Catholic priests were not
allowed in the country and the Roman Catholic laity could choose between treason and
damnation. The list of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation was extensive.
By the end of Elizabeth’s reign a third party appeared who looked kindly on the
Elizabethan Settlement, whose spirituality was cultivated by the Prayer Book and who
preferred the governance of the bishops. A new dispute arose between the two existing
groups, the Puritans and this third party. It was between these two parties that, after
Elisabeth’s death in 1603, a new, more savage episode of the Reformation was beginning.
This third party was to become the newly restored Church of England.

Conclusion

Those times brought change to the world and change to ordinary people’s lives. As I
have demonstrated those times were really difficult for the people, they must have been
confused by the sudden changes, many of them were punished because of their beliefs.
I tried to show that in the 15th century religion was a taboo matter; common people
were not allowed to speak about religious matters, not to mention that they could not choose
freely which religion, belief to follow. In those times religion was mainly used to gain power
over masses of people. It did not matter that people died or suffered, or did not want to take
up a certain religion. They had to obey the laws of the king. If they did not obey they could
have been risking their lives. Not only priests, but common people were executed, and not
only Catholics but also the followers of the English Reformation died for their religion.
We are very fortunate to have the free choice in what to believe. I think the past and
history is a very good example for what intolerance and ignorance toward people’s person and
personality means. Religion was used and sometimes is used in wrong ways, to abuse
people’s trust and their goodwill. And of course religion was used by kings and emperors to
gain power over the simple masses and to have more superiority than anybody in the world.
I wish to demonstrate with this subject that people should accept each other as they are
and to tolerate each other’s differences regarding religion, choice of lifestyle and values.

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 Bibliography

1. John Guy, Tudor England, Oxford University Press, 1988

2. Christopher Haigh, English Reformations, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993
3. www.wikipedia.org

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 Pictures

Pic.1 Henry VIII Pic.2 Thomas Wolsey Pic.3 Thomas More

Pic.4 Catherine of Aragorn Pic.5 Anne Boleyn Pic.6 Thomas Cranmer

Pic.7 Jane Seymour Pic.8 Catherine of Cleves Pic.9 Catherine Howard

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Pic.10 Catherine Parr Pic.11 Edward VI Pic.12 Queen Mary I

Pic.13 Queen Elizabeth I

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