An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

164. Henry was heartless and despotic. With a barbarity not uncommon in those days, he allowed his old friend and adviser, Sir Thomas More, to be beheaded for refusing to pronounce the marriage with Catherine void. He caused numbers of monks to be executed for refusing to swear that his first marriage was illegal and for denying his title to supremacy in the Church. Others he permitted to die of starvation and disease in the filthy prisons of the time. Many Englishmen would doubtless have agreed with one of the friars who said humbly: "I profess that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother, the Church, hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained."

Dissolution of the English monasteries.

Henry wanted money; some of the English abbeys were rich, and the monks were quite unable to defend themselves against the charges which were brought against them. The king sent commissioners about to inquire into the moral state of the monasteries. A large number of scandalous tales were easily collected, some of which were undoubtedly true. The monks were doubtless often indolent and sometimes wicked. Nevertheless, they were kind landlords, hospitable to the stranger, and good to the poor. The plundering of the smaller monasteries, with which the king began, led to a revolt, due to a rumor that the king would next proceed to despoil the parish churches as well. This gave Henry an excuse for attacking the larger monasteries. The abbots and priors who had taken part in the revolt were hanged and their monasteries confiscated. Other abbots, panic-stricken, confessed that they and their monks had been committing the most loathsome sins and asked to be permitted to give up their monasteries to the king. The royal commissioners then took possession, sold every article upon which they could lay hands, including the bells and the lead on the roofs. The picturesque remains of the great abbey churches are still among the chief objects of interest to the sight-seer in England. The monastery lands were, of course, appropriated by the king. They were sold for the benefit of the government or given to nobles whose favor the king wished to secure.

Destruction of shrines and images for the benefit of the king's treasury.

Along with the destruction of the monasteries went an attack upon the shrines and images in the churches, which were adorned with gold and jewels. The shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury was destroyed and the bones of the saint were burned. An old wooden figure revered in Wales was used to make a fire to burn an unfortunate friar who maintained that in things spiritual the pope rather than the king should be obeyed. These acts suggest the Protestant attacks on images which occurred in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The object of the king and his party was probably in the main a mercenary one, although the reason urged for the destruction was the superstitious veneration in which the relics and images were popularly held.

Henry's third marriage and the birth of Edward VI.

Henry's domestic troubles by no means came to an end with his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Of her, too, he soon tired, and three years after their marriage he had her executed on a series of monstrous charges. The next day he married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who was the mother of his son and successor, Edward VI. Jane died a few days after her son's birth, and later Henry married in succession three other women who are historically unimportant since they left no children as claimants for the crown. Henry took care that his three children, all of whom were destined to reign, should be given their due place by act of Parliament in the line of inheritance.[304] His death in 1547 left the great problem of Protestantism and Catholicism to be settled by his son and daughters.

Edward VI's ministers introduce Protestant practices.

165. While the revolt of England against the ancient Church was carried through by the government at a time when the greater part of the nation was still Catholic, there was undoubtedly, under Henry VIII, an ever-increasing number of aggressive and ardent Protestants who applauded the change. During the six years of the boy Edward's reign—he died in 1553 at the age of sixteen—those in charge of the government favored the Protestant party and did what they could to change the faith of all the people by bringing Protestant teachers from the Continent.

A general demolition of all the sacred images was ordered; even the beautiful stained glass, the glory of the cathedrals, was destroyed, because it often represented saints and angels. The king was to appoint bishops without troubling to observe the old forms of election, and Protestants began to be put into the high offices of the Church. Parliament turned over to the king the funds which had been established for the purpose of having masses chanted for the dead, and decreed that thereafter the clergy should be free to marry.