The Reformation in England

The Reformation in England is unique in that its break with Rome was not motivated by a clear conviction of the evangelical faith as had happened in the other European nations that had taken up the Reformation banner, and the Church of England that grew of the break with Rome is unique as it is the only one in which the monarch in the land is "the Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy." Not unique but remarkable also is the fact that the major foundations of the Reformation were laid down within the reign of a single dynasty, the Tudor (four of the dynasty's five monarchs), even though the major event that was to shape it more definitively into what it has largely become—the English Civil War—would come near half a century later.

The Tudors

England, in the last quarter of the 15th Cent, had been wrecked by three decades of continuous bloody wars as the House of Lancaster and the House of York fought one another for the throne in what later historians call the Wars of the Roses. The Wars were finally resolved, in a sort of way, when Henry Tudor—the bastard son of Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire who had secretly married the widow of King Henry V (House Lancaster)—defeated Richard III (House York) in 1485, and had himself crowned King Henry VII. By marrying Elizabeth of York, Henry VII would claim that he had united the two houses. Thus was the House of Tudor established on the throne of England. Though the people of England were subsequently heavily exploited by Henry VII (he was a greedy king), the nation at least, and at last, came to enjoy a measure of peace and stability it had not known for a long time. As the result, trade grew, and so did the nation in wealth and stature.

Henry VIII (1509-1547)

When Henry VII died in 1509, he was succeeded to the throne by Henry VIII. In preparation for the throne Prince Henry had married Catherine of Aragon, the Spanish widow of his brother Arthur. Catherine had sworn that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated, and Rome had issued a dispensation for the marriage to proceed. Henry VIII was a good Catholic; in 1521 he had written a pamphlet denouncing Luther's theology of the sacraments, and promised the Pope to defend England against the new heretics. He was duly conferred the title "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope.

For many years afterwards, however, Catherine failed to give him a male heir; only a daughter named Mary. Doubts began to plague Henry VIII; he began to imagine that his marriage was cursed by God because, Catherine's oath and the Pope's dispensation notwithstanding, Lev 20:21 asserts that "If a man marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless." Henry sought Rome's permission to annul his marriage to Catherine, on the grounds that it was against God's law from the beginning and no Pope could have the power to make it right with a dispensation. Rome, however, was caught in a bind. Catherine of Aragon was the aunt of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, then the most powerful monarch in the whole of Europe. There was no way the Pope could have given Henry the annulment he wanted without suffering the wrath of Charles.¹ So Rome delayed and delayed.

In the end, Henry, already smitten by Anne Boleyn, took things into his own hands. He broke with Rome, claiming that as the sovereign of England he alone could decide the affairs of his nation, even in matters of religion. It was thus, that he became "the Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England." Anne Boleyn, however, did not give him a son either—only a daughter named Elizabeth—and when he charged her with adultery and had her beheaded, she could not. His next wife, Jane Seymour, finally gave birth to a son, Edward, but she died twelve days later. Henry would father no more children with his three other wives.

It remains an important question to what extent the Reformation had transformed England in the reign of Henry VIII. Most are of the view that he had simply taken the Church of England out of Rome but without much rooted in the essentials of the Reformation. One expression often used to describe Henry's reformation was to call it "Catholicism without the Pope." Others call it "Luteranism with justification by faith." As for himself, Henry died pretty much the Catholic he was born. With the death of Henry, the influence of Luteranism—in the persons of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Cranmer (who was, towards the end of Henry's reign, ending his love affair with Lutheranism)—began to wane.

King Edward VI (1547-1553)

Edward succeeded Henry VIII when he was only nine, and survived only six years on the throne, too young and reigned too short to make any impressions on the great affairs of the nation. His appointed protector, first his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, and then the Duke of Northumberland, however, were both evangelically minded. Edward's 'reformation,' however, was also informed and influenced by a more varied and more deeply thought through sort of evangelicalism. Other streams of reformed thinking have since been established all over Europe. Even the always slow and lethagic Church of Rome had called the Council of Trent to fame a meaningful response to the Reformation. The Schmalkaldic War had broken out, sending waves of 'Protestant' emigrants into London, where they would greatly influence the direction in which the English would move.

Under all of these influences, many of the Roman liturgical adornment disappeared from the churches. Mass largely disappeared, many of the festivals, images and roods were removed, and church buildings whitewashed to conform to what was perceived to be less superstitious. In 1549 Parliament approved the Book of Common Prayer for publication, a book—still in use today, though since revised—that would reshape the doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England for all generations to come. The reading of the New Testament in English and reformed devotional reading materials were encouraged. European reformers were welcomed into the universities, and though them Lutheran and, especially, Calvinist influences flowed openly into the land. England would never be the same again.

Mary I (1553-1558)

When the end was clear, Edward sanctioned a will which cut off his two half-sisters from the throne, willing that he should be succeeded by a distant relative, Lady Jane Grey. A woman of deep evangelical devotion, she was also, conveniently, Northumberland's new daughter-in-law. Mary would not permit such a thing, and her popularity with the people won her the day; Jane Grey lasted only nine days on the throne.

Mary very quickly reversed almost every religious enactments passed during the time of Edward, and restated England into the fold of Rome. Next came the persecution that would earn her the nicknames "Bloody Mary" and "Jezebel of England." More than 300 men and women were burnt at the stake for their 'heresy.' Many more fled the country to find refuge in Europe. The dreadful terrors of her reign, however, lasted only five years. She was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I.

Despite Mary's effort, however, the Reformation, for what it was, had moved forward simply from the fact that certain things could not be undone. It had been two decades since her father had abolished the supremacy of the pope; a whole segment of the population then living had never lived under papal authority. It was simply impractical to attempt restoring the pope to his former glory in the land, and Mary remained during her reign "the supreme head of the church." Church property that had been confiscated and sold by her father could not be restored. Most important of all, the hearts and minds of those who had tasted the evangelical life could not be wiped clean.

Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

Having witnessed the horror of religious excesses, including being imprisoned by Mary I for two years, Elizabeth I, was impatient of religious intolerance. She had no wish, she once said, to look into the "windows of other souls." Recognizing that her subjects were by then largely Protestant, she sought a middle path, establishing in 1559 what is called the Elizabeth Settlement, which essentially reversed all of Mary's attempt to restore the country to Roman Catholicism and returned the Church to where things stood in the time of Edward, but also closed the door to further changes.

By 1571, however, she was able to get through Parliament the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. It proclaimed, among other things, that the language of the liturgy must be in the vernacular, i.e., English, the Mass is disallowed, the doctrines of transubstantiation and purgatory are denied, and the adoration of the Eucharist is considered blasphemy. A revision of Edward's Forty-Two Articles, it became the official document defining the faith of the Anglican Church, completing the work begun by the Book of Common Prayer.

Though she got herself entangled in a disastrous attempt to aid the Huguenot, French Protestants, when they came under attack by the Catholics and they sought her help, her policy was always a balance between extremes, for which she had often been accused of vacillating.². Her stance did not please everyone, and in 1569 a revolt by Catholics in the north had to be put down. Soon afterwards Pope Pius V issued a bull excommunicating her, making her, and exposing her as a target for assassination; any Catholic who killed her would be speeded to heaven. Coming so soon after the revolt, however, the bull never served the purpose it was intended.

Of all her decisions she had to make to maintain the nation in the religious state she saw was her responsibility, perhaps the most difficult must have been the fate of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, whose attempts at the throne finally forced Elizabeth to put her to death in 1587.

Footnotes

1. In fact, in May 1927, about the time when Henry was gathering speed on his attempt to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, Charles V had attacked Rome with every form of barbarity imaginable and Pope Clement VII had to flee and find refuge, as a virtual prisoner, in the Castel Sant'Angelo.

2. See, e.g., Peter Ackroyd's assertion that she "never made a decision when one could be avoided" (The History of England, II: Tudors (London: Pan, 2013), 311).

Further Reading

Diarmaid MacCulloch, All Things Made New. Writings on the Reformation. London: Penguin, 2017. See esp., 197-238.

Media Resources

Michael Reeves, The English Reformation and the Puritans. Ligonier Ministries. This is a series of 12 studies. Video

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