The formal breach between England and Rome occurred in 1534. Parliament passed a series of laws, one of which declared the king to be the "only supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and others cut off all communication with the pope and inflicted the penalty of treason upon any one who should deny the king's ecclesiastical supremacy.
One step in the transition of the Church of England had now been taken. For centuries its members had recognized the pope as their ecclesiastical head; henceforth they were to own the ecclesiastical headship of their king. From the former Catholic standpoint, this might be schism but it was not necessarily heresy. Yet Henry VIII encountered considerable opposition from the higher clergy, from the monks, and from many intellectual leaders, as well as from large numbers of the lower classes. A popular uprising—the Pilgrimage of Grace—was sternly suppressed, and such men as the brilliant Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, the aged and saintly bishop of Rochester, were beheaded because they retained their former belief in papal supremacy. Tudor despotism triumphed.
[Sidenote: The "Six Articles">[
The breach with Rome naturally encouraged the Lutherans and other heretics to think that England was on the point of becoming Protestant, but nothing was further from the king's mind. The assailant of Luther remained at least partially consistent. And the Six Articles (1539) reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice and visited dissenters with horrible punishment. While separating England from the papacy, Henry was firmly resolved to maintain every other tenet of the Catholic faith as he had received it. His middle-of-the- road policy was enforced with much bloodshed. On one side, the Catholic who denied the royal supremacy was beheaded; on the other, the Protestant who denied transubstantiation was burned! It has been estimated that during the reign of Henry VIII the number of capital condemnations for politico-religious offenses ran into the thousands— an inquisition that in terror and bloodshed is comparable to that of Spain.
[Sidenote: Suppression of the Monasteries]
It was likewise during the reign of Henry VIII that one of the most important of all earlier Christian institutions—monasticism—came to an end in England. There were certainly grave abuses and scandals in some of the monasteries which dotted the country, and a good deal of popular sentiment had been aroused against the institution. Then, too the monks had generally opposed the royal pretensions to religious control and remained loyal to the pope. But the deciding factor in the suppression of the monasteries was undoubtedly economic. Henry, always in need of funds on account of his extravagances, appropriated part of the confiscated property for the benefit of the crown, and the rest he astutely distributed as gigantic bribes to the upper classes of the laity. The nobles who accepted the ecclesiastical wealth were thereby committed to the new anti-papal religious settlement in England.
[Sidenote: Protestantizing the Church of England: Edward VI]
The Church of England, separated from the papacy under Henry VIII, became Protestant under Edward VI (1547-1553). The young king's guardian tolerated all manner of reforming propaganda, and Calvinists as well as Lutherans preached their doctrines freely. Official articles of religion, which were drawn up for the Anglican Church, showed unmistakably Protestant influence. The Latin service books of the Catholic Church were translated into English, under Cranmer's auspices, and the edition of the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1552, made clear that the Eucharist was no longer to be regarded as a propitiatory sacrifice: the names "Holy Communion" and "Lord's Supper" were substituted for "Mass," while the word "altar" was replaced by "table." The old places of Catholic worship were changed to suit a new order: altars and images were taken down, the former service books destroyed, and stained-glass windows broken. Several peasant uprisings signified that the nation was not completely united upon a policy of religious change, but the reformers had their way, and Protestantism advanced.
[Sidenote: Temporary Roman Catholic Revival under Mary Tudor]
A temporary setback to the progress of the new Anglicanism was afforded by the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and a devout Roman Catholic. She reinstated the bishops who had refused to take the oath of royal supremacy and punished those who had taken it. She prevailed upon Parliament to repeal the ecclesiastical legislation of both her father's and her brother's reigns and to reconcile England once more with the bishop of Rome. A papal legate, in the person of Cardinal Reginald Pole, sailed up the Thames with his cross gleaming from the prow of his barge, and in full Parliament administered the absolution which freed the kingdom from the guilt under Mary incurred by its schism and heresy. As an additional support to her policy of restoring the Catholic Church in England, Queen Mary married her cousin, Philip II of Spain, the great champion of Catholicism upon the Continent.