The Tudor dynasty. The break with Rome.

Tudor accession was preceeded by 30 years of feudal struggle and bloodshed, known as the Wars of the Roses. The period had considerably weakened economically and politically the old baronial families.Thus Henry Tudor formed a new monarchy which was based upon a new relationship in society.

Henry Tudor's forces defeated Richard's at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and he became King Henry VII of England. Henry then strengthened his position by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and the best surviving Yorkist claimant. He reunited the two royal houses, merging the rival symbols of the red and white roses into the new emblem of the red and white Tudor Rose. Henry consolidated his position by executing all other possible claimants whenever he could lay hands on them, a policy his son Henry VIII continued. The new Tudor monarchy was absolute: it was supported by the new nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie, who feared the resumption of feudal wars and anarchy. Henry created social groups, directly dependent upon the Crown. He secured favourable terms for English merchants. Even his council rarely came of hereditary nobility: Richard Fox –Chief Minister, had been a schoolmaster; Edmund Dudley – the undersheriff of London; John Stile, who invented the first diplomatic cipher and was appointed ambassedor to Spain – began as a grocer.

The Tudor period is marked by the rise of clothing industry – which lead to enforced removal of peasants from their lands – known as Enclosures (common village pasture lands were enclosed for the rearing of the landowner’s sheep). In some counties 1/3 of arable land was turned to pastures. There followed one of the worst economic crises that England ever endured – pauperisation of peasantry, social anarchy, but also accumulation of free capital, which made traders interested in colonial expansion. Slave trade brought enourmous profits to the traders and the Crown.

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 - 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) from 22 April 1509 until his death. He was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his father, Henry VII. He is famous for having been married six times and for wielding the greatest power than any British monarch. Notable events during his reign included the break with Rome and the subsequent establishment of the independent Church of England, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the union of England and Wales.

Several significant pieces of legislation were enacted during Henry VIII's reign. They included the several Acts which severed the English Church from the Roman Catholic Church and established Henry as the supreme head of the Church in England, the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 (which united England and Wales into one nation), the Buggery Act 1533, the first anti-sodomy enactment in England; and the Witchcraft Act 1542, which punished 'invoking or conjuring an evil spirit' with death.

Henry VIII is known to have been an avid gambler and dice player. He excelled at sport, especially royal tennis, during his youth. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; according to legend, he wrote the popular folk song Greensleeves, along with the lesser-known Pastyme With Good Company (The Kynges Ballade). Henry VIII was also involved in the construction-from-scratch and improvement of several significant buildings, including Nonsuch Palace, King's College Chapel and Westminster Abbey - the existing buildings improved were often properties confiscated from Wolsey (such as Christ Church, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace and palace of Whitehall).

Born at the Palace of Placentia at Greenwich, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. His Lancastrian father acquired the throne by right of conquest, his army defeating and killing the last Plantagenet king Richard III, but further solidified his hold by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of the Yorkist king Edward IV.

In 1501 he attended the wedding of his elder brother Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, who were at the time only about fifteen and sixteen years old, respectively. The two were sent to spend time in Wales, as was customary for the heir-apparent and his wife, but Arthur caught an infection and died.

Consequently, at the age of eleven, Henry, Duke of York, found himself heir-apparent to the Throne. Soon thereafter, he was created Prince of Wales Henry VII was still eager to maintain the marital alliance between England and Spain through a marriage between Henry, Prince of Wales, and Catherine.

Henry VIII wed Catherine of Aragon about nine weeks after his accession on June 11, 1509 at Greenwich, despite the concerns of Pope Julius II and William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, regarding the marriage's validity. They were both crowned at Westminster Abbey on 24 June 1509.

Henry VIII's accession was the first peaceful one England had witnessed in many years; however, the new Tudor dynasty's legitimacy could yet be tested. The English people seemed distrustful of female rulers, and Henry felt that only a male heir could secure the throne.

Henry's long and arduous attempt to end his marriage to Queen Catherine became known as " The King's Great Matter" and finally brought about the break with Rome.

The English Reformation was the process whereby the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with Royal Supremacy and the establishment of a Church of England outside the Roman Catholic Church and under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its other European counterparts in that it was more of a political than a theological dispute which was at the root of it. Sometimes it is called the Henrician Reformation.

Henry was a devout Roman Catholic and in 1521 he had defended the Papacy from Martin Luther's accusations of heresy in a book he wrote called The Defence of the Seven Sacraments. For this he was awarded the title " Defender of the Faith" (Fidei Defensor) by Pope Leo X.

By the late 1520s, however, Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon. She had not produced a male heir who survived into adulthood and Henry wanted a son so the Tudor dynasty would be secure. Before Henry's father Henry VII attained the throne, England had been marred by civil warfare over rival claims to the English crown (the war of the Roses) and Henry wanted to avoid uncertainty over the succession. Catherine's only surviving child was the Princess Mary. Henry stated that this lack of an heir was because his marriage was " blighted in the eyes of God". Catherine had been his late brother's wife, and it was therefore against Biblical teachings for Henry to have to married her. In 1527 Henry asked the Pope to declare the marriage null but this the Pope refused to do. Earlier in that year the Holy Roman Emperor, Catherine's uncle, had sacked Rome and kept the Pope prisoner, so there was little hope of him granting this divorce.

Henry therefore called a Parliament in 1529 to deal with the divorce. This Parliament of England lasted for seven years and has subsequently become to be known as the Reformation Parliament. The Parliament passed many of the Acts which cut England's political ties with Rome. Some historians have suggested Henry wanted to threaten the clergy with charges so they would become more agreeable to his demands for a divorce. Henry claimed 100, 000 from the Convocation of Canterbury of the Church of England for their pardon, which was granted by the Convocation on 24th January 1531. The clergy wanted the payment to be spread over five years but Henry wanted the payment in full immediately in case of a war. The Convocation refused and withdrew their payment altogether and demanded Henry fulfil certain guarantees before they agreed to give him the money. Henry refused these conditions and agreed only to the five year period of payment and then added five articles to the payment which Henry wanted the Convocation to accept. These were:

that the clergy recognise Henry as the 'sole protector and supreme head of the Anglican church and clergy'

that the King had spiritual jurisdiction

that the privileges of the Church were upheld only if they did not detract from the royal prerogative and the laws of the realm

that the King pardons the clergy for violating the statute of praemunire, and

that the laity were also pardoned.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, persuaded Henry to introduce the sentence 'as far as the word of God allows' into the first article. Warham requested a discussion but was met by a stunned silence from the Convocation, then Warham said: 'He who is silent seems to consent' to which a clergyman present responded: 'Then we are all silent'. The Convocation granted consent to the King's five articles and the payment on the 8th March 1531. That same year Parliament passed the Act of Pardon.

In 1532 Parliament passed the anti-clerical Supplication Against the Ordinaries which listed nine grievances against the Church, including abuses of power and Convocation's independent legislative power. On the 11th May 1532 Henry made a speech to Parliament attacking the clergy for their allegiance to the Pope:

We thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects: for all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope, clean contrary to the oath that they make to us, so that they seem to be his subjects, and not ours.

On the 15th May the Convocation passed the Submission of the Clergy, which recognised Royal Supremacy over the church and that it could not make canon law without royal licence, i.e. without the permission of the King. The day after the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, resigned. Before this reform the Church and the King's Parliament had been making laws independently of each other.

In 1532 Parliament debated the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates which proposed that the clergy should pay no more than 5 %. of their first years revenue to Rome and that if the Pope in retaliation refused to grant bulls for the consecration of any prelate nominated by the Crown then the consecration would go ahead anyway. If the Pope then tried to excommunicate Englishmen then he should not be obeyed and that the clergy 'without any scruple of conscience' should continue to administer sacraments. After prolonged debate in Commons it was clear that unanimity could not be reached over the Bill so Henry ordered a division and commanded those of were in favour of his success and the welfare of the realm to one side of the House and those who opposed him and the Bill to the other and a majority was obtained.

In the same year Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury and Cranmer granted Henry a divorce the next year. Henry was now free to marry his lover Anne Boleyn, who was pregnant with Henry's child. Anne gave birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, three months after the marriage. The Pope responded to the marriage by excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church.

Henry appointed as his new Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell in 1533, who would also play a very significant part in the process of the break from Rome. In April 1533 Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals which was drafted by Cromwell. Apart from outlawing appeals to Rome on ecclesiastical matters the Act declared that:

Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same...to render and yield justice, and final determination to all manner of folk, residents or subjects within this his realm, in all causes, matters, debates and contentions happening to occur...without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes of potentates of the world.

The word 'empire' was used in the medieval sense in which an 'empire' was a territory which accepted no earthly authority superior to the Crown's, including the Papacy. The Act therefore declared England an independent country in every respect. The historian Stanford Lehmberg has said of this Act that it 'was doubtless the most important single piece of legislation' passed by the Reformation Parliament. This Act has been also called an 'essential ingredient' of the 'Tudor revolution' in that it expounded a theory of national sovereignty.

The Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates was passed in March 1534 which outlawed the payment of all annates to Rome. Henry wanted the payment of annates transferred to the Crown but this was successfully opposed by Parliament. The Act also ordered that if cathedral's refused the King's nomination for bishop they would be liable to punishment by praemunire. In the same year Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy which made Henry 'supreme head in earth of the Church of England' and disregarded any 'usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority [or] prescription'. Previously the Pope had been head of the church in England but was now only recognised as the Bishop of Rome; this Act separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church.

Also in 1534 the Act of First Fruits and Tenths transfered the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. In the same year Parliament passed the Peter's Pence Act which outlawed the annual payment by landowners of one penny to the Pope. This Act also reiterated that England had 'no superior under God, but only your Grace' and that Henry's 'imperial crown' had been diminished by 'the unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions' of the Pope.

After the Supremacy Act Parliament passed the Treasons Act 1534 which made it high treason punishable by death to deny Royal Supremacy. In 1536 Parliament passed the Act against the Pope's Authority which removed the last part of papal authority still legal; this was Rome's power in England to decide disputes concerning Scripture.

In the late 1530s there were fears that there was going to be an invasion from France and Cromwell had been displeased with what was discovered during the Visitation of the Monasteries. The Visitation allowed for an inventory of what the monasteries possessed and the visiting commissioners claimed to have uncovered sexual immorality and financial impropriety amongst the monks and nuns of the monasteries. Because of this the Dissolution of the Monasteries was carried out in 1535 which gave Henry the monasteries wealth to help build coastal defences against invasion and also all their land was given to the Crown or sold to the aristocracy. In the North of England there were a series of uprisings by Roman Catholics against the dissolutions in late 1536 and early 1537, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, but these were put down. The Dissolution lasted for four years and ended in 1539.

In 1539 Parliament passed the Six Articles reaffirming Catholic practices such as transubstantiation, clerical celibacy and the importance of confession to a priest and proscribed penalties if anyone denied them. In the same year Henry authorised the publication of the Great Bible in English. This Bible was largely made through the use of William Tyndale's English translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scripture's. The Bible was used in all Anglican churches and was free to be read. However Henry became alarmed by the way the Bible was being preached and so in the Act for the Advancement of True Religion 1543 Henry restricted the reading of Bible to noblemen and women. In 1545 he said to Parliament:

...although you be permitted to read Holy Scripture and to have the Word of God in your mother-tongue, you must understand that it is licensed you so to do only to inform your own conscience and to instruct your children and family...I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale-house and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.