Henry ruled with an iron fist. In 1536, he issued a proclamation that "any rioters or those in an unlawful assembly shall return to their houses" or "we will proceed against them with all our royal force and destroy them and their wives and children." In 1538, he proclaimed that anyone hurting or maiming an officer while trying to make an arrest "shall lose and forfeit all their lands, goods, and chattel" and shall suffer perpetual imprisonment. Moreover, if one murdered such an officer, he would suffer death without privilege of sanctuary or of clergy. In 1540, he proclaimed that there would be no shooting by handgun except on a shooting range. Henry had Parliament pass bills of attainder against many people. For the first time, harsh treatment of prisoners in the Tower, such as placement in dungeons with little food, no bed, and no change of clothes, became almost a matter of policy. Through his host of spies, Cromwell heard what men said to their closest friends. Words idly spoken were distorted into treasonable utterances. Fear spread through the people. Silence was a person's only possibility of safety.
Cromwell developed a technique for the management of the House of Commons which lasted for generations. He promulgated books in defense of royal spiritual authority, which argued that canon law was not divine but merely human and that clerical authority had no foundation in the Bible. A reformed English Bible was put in all parish churches. Reformers were licensed to preach. Cromwell ordered sermons to be said which proclaimed the supremacy of the King. He instituted registers to record baptisms, marriages, and burials in every county, for the purpose of reducing disputes over descent and inheritance. He dissolved all the lesser monasteries. When Cromwell procured a foreign wife for Henry whom Henry found unattractive, he was attainted and executed.
Henry now reconstructed his council to have a fixed membership, an official hierarchy based on rank, a secretariat, an official record, and formal powers to summon individuals before it by legal process. Because it met in the King's Privy Lodgings, it was called the "Privy Council". It had an executive function and met daily instead of just during the terms of the Westminster courts from late autumn to early summer. It communicated with the king through intermediaries, of whom the most important was the King's Secretary. The judicial part of the council was the Court of the Star Chamber, which met at Westminster. When Henry went to war in France, part of the council went with him, and part of it stayed to attend the Queen Regent.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the first English Common Book of Prayer. With its use beginning in 1549, church services were to be held in English instead of Latin. The celebration of the Lord's Supper was a communion among the parishioners and minister all sharing wine and bread. It replaced the mass, in which the priests were thought to perform a miraculous change of the substance of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, which the priest then offered as a sacrifice for remission of pain or guilt. This reflected the blood sacrifice of Christ dying on the cross. In the mass, only the priests drank the wine. The mass, miracles, the worship of saints, prayers for souls in purgatory, and pilgrimages to shrines such as that of Thomas Becket, were all to be discontinued. Imprisonment or exile rather than death was made the penalty for heresy and blasphemy, and also for adultery.
After the King dissolved the greater monasteries, he took and sold their ornaments, silver plate and jewelry, lead from roofs of their buildings, and finally much of the land itself. Many maps of manors and lands were made at this time. Three monasteries were converted into the first three treating hospitals in London, one for the diseased, one for the poor, and one, Bethlehem (or "Bedlam" for short), for the mentally ill. But there were still many poor, sick, blind, aged, and impotent people in the streets since the closure of the monasteries. In 1552, there were 2,100 people in need of relief, including 300 orphans, 600 sick or aged, 350 poor men overburdened with their children, 650 decayed householders, and 200 idle vagabonds. The poor often begged at parishes, where they spread disease. London then set up a poor relief scheme. The Bridewell was established to set to work the idle, vagabonds, and prostitutes making feather bed ticks and wool-cards, drawing of wire, carding, knitting, and winding of silk. Parishes were required to give money for the poor in 1563. Other towns followed London's lead in levying a poor rate.
Henry used the proceeds from the sale of the monasteries for building many new palaces and wood ships for his navy. In war, these navy ships had heavy guns which could sink other ships. In peace time, these ships were hired out to traders. Large ships were constructed in docks, made partly by digging and partly by building walls. In 1545, Henry issued a proclamation ordering all vagabonds, ruffians, masterless men, and evil-disposed persons to serve him in his navy.
The former land of the monasteries, about 30% of the country's land, was sold and resold, usually to great landowners, or leased. Title deeds became important as attorneys sought the security that title could give. Some land went to entrepreneurial cloth manufacturers, who converted the buildings for the manufacture of cloth. They bought the raw wool and hired craftsmen for every step of the manufacturing process to be done in one continuous process. This was faster than buying and selling the wool material between craftsmen who lived in different areas. Also, it was more efficient because the amount of raw wool bought could be adjusted to the demand for cloth.
Many landowners now could live in towns exclusively off the rents of their rural land. Rents were increased so much that tenants could not pay and were evicted. They usually became beggars or thieves. Much of their former land was converted from crop raising to pasture for large herds of sheep. Arable farming required many workers, whereas sheep farming required only one shepherd and herdsman. There were exceptional profits made from the export of wool cloth. But much raw wool was still exported. Its price went up from 6s.8d. per tod [about 28 pounds] in 1340 to 20s.8d. in 1546.
Villeinage was now virtually extinct. But a lord could usually claim a small money-rent from the freeholder, sometimes a relief when his land was sold or passed at death, and occasionally a heriot from his heir.
There was steady inflation. Landlords made their leases short term so that they could raise rents as prices rose. Copyholders gradually acquired a valuable right in their holdings: their rent became light - less that a shilling an acre.