266 Chapter 14
required a papal dispensation because marriage to the
wife of one’s brother is prohibited by Leviticus 18:16
and 20:21. Another biblical passage, Deuteronomy
25:5, specifically commands such marriages, but an an-
nulment would involve repudiation of the earlier dispen-
sation. Moreover, the fact that the marriage had
endured for eighteen years raised what canon lawyers
called “the impediment of public honesty.”
Clement temporized. He appointed Cardinals
Wolsey and Campeggio as legates to resolve the matter
on the theory that their opinions would cancel each
other out. Henry could not wait. In 1529 he deprived
Wolsey of his secular offices and took Thomas
Cromwell (1485–1540) and Thomas Cranmer
(1489–1556) as his advisers. These two, a lawyer and a
churchman, respectively, were sympathetic to reformed
ideas and firm supporters of a strategy that would put
pressure on the pope by attacking the privileges and
immunities of the church in England.
This strategy was implemented primarily through
the Reformation Parliament that sat from 1529 to 1536.
Though its proceedings were managed to some extent
by Cromwell, a consistent majority supported the
crown throughout. Parliament passed a series of acts
that restricted the dispatch of church revenues to Rome
and placed the legal affairs of the clergy under royal ju-
risdiction. Finally, in 1532, Anne Boleyn became preg-
nant. To ensure the child’s legitimacy, Cranmer married
the couple in January 1533, and two months later he
granted the king his divorce from Catherine. He was
able to do so because William Warham, the archbishop
of Canterbury and a wily opponent of the divorce, had
died at last (he was at least ninety-eight), permitting
Henry to appoint Cranmer in his place. In September
Anne Boleyn gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, and in
1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which
declared that Henry was “the only supreme head of the
Church in England.”
Opposition was minimal. John Fisher, bishop of
Rochester and Sir Thomas More, the great humanist
who had been Henry’s lord chancellor, were executed
for their misgivings, but most of political England ei-
ther supported the king or remained indifferent. The
Lincolnshire rebellion and the northern revolt known
as the Pilgrimage of Grace were localized reactions to
Henry’s proposed closing of the monasteries in 1536
and he suppressed them easily. The dissolution of
the monasteries proceeded apace. Unfortunately for
his successors, Henry chose to sell off the monastic
properties at bargain basement prices. By doing so he
enriched those who had supported him in the Reforma-
tion Parliament and satisfied his need for ready cash.
His failure to incorporate these lands into the royal
domain deprived the crown of renewable income.
Henry now ruled the English church. He closed
the monasteries and convents and adopted Coverdale’s
English Bible, but other changes were minimal. The
clergy remained celibate (with the exception of Cran-
mer, who had been secretly married before his appoint-
ment as archbishop of Canterbury), and the principles
of Catholic theology were reaffirmed in the Six Articles
of 1539. A visibly Protestant English church began to
emerge only after Henry’s death in 1547.
In 1536 Henry arranged the execution of Anne Bo-
leyn on charges of adultery and had their marriage an-
nulled. His third wife, Jane Seymour, gave him a male
heir in 1537 but died in childbirth, and three subse-
quent wives failed to produce further children. Both
Mary and Elizabeth were officially illegitimate. Jane
Seymour’s son, aged ten, ascended the throne as Ed-
ward VI under the regency of his uncle, Edward Sey-
mour, duke of Somerset. Somerset was a convinced
Protestant with close ties to Cranmer and to the conti-
nental reformers. He and the young king, “that right
godly imp,” lost little time in abolishing the Six Arti-
cles, encouraging clerical marriage, and imposing Cran-
mer’s Book of Common Prayeras the standard liturgy for
English churches. An Order in Council abolished im-
ages in an act of official iconoclasm that destroyed cen-
turies of English art.
In 1550 Somerset was succeeded by the equally
Protestant duke of Northumberland who imposed a re-
vised edition of the new liturgy and adopted the Forty-
Two Articles, also written by Cranmer, as an official
confession of faith. The articles proclaimed salvation by
faith, reduced the sacraments to two, and denied tran-
substantiation, though not the Real Presence. Though
many lay people remained loyal to the old church, they
found no effective way to express their views. Aside
from a brief and unsuccessful rebellion in the west of
England, little resistance emerged. In 1553 Edward died
at the age of sixteen. His sister Mary assumed the
crown and immediately restored Catholicism with the
assent of Parliament, which demanded only that she
not return the lands taken from the church.
Mary’s reign was a failure. Her marriage to Philip II
of Spain aroused fears of Spanish-papal domination
even among those English who were still unfavorably
disposed to Protestantism. Her persecution of the re-
formers, though hardly the bloodbath portrayed in
John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments,the great martyrology of
the English reformation, deeply offended others and