Catherine of Aragon had given Henry a daughter, Mary, but all her sons died at birth, and Henry badly needed a son to succeed him. He decided that the way out would be for the Pope to declare that the marriage to his brother’s widow had been allowed by mistake and was unlawful; Wolsey and his bishops supported this view. The pope could easily have agreed, but he was under the control of Emperor Charles V, Catherine’s nephew. Henry was extremely angry. He dismissed Wolsey for failing to obtain a divorce; the latter was arrested and would probably have been executed if he had not died a natural death. Sir Thomas More was appointed a new Lord Chancellor and a new Parliament was called in 1529. At this stage, however, Henry still had no wish to break from the Roman Church. He wanted a reformed national church within the Catholic framework. Parliament consisted not only of the lords, but also representatives of the towns and shires. The great statutes which it was shortly to pass demonstrated a new partnership which set a pattern for the future. The king also benefited from the strongly anti-clerical mood in the Commons. People were envious of the church which held a third of all the country’s land. They resented paying tithes and ecclesiastical courts. The clergy resented the power of Rome.

Thus the scene was set for the king to begin his attack on the Church with the support of Parliament. In 1530 the whole clergy was indicted of unlawful jurisdiction, but two months later pardoned in return for a huge fine and the recognition of the king as supreme head of the Church of England. In 1531 Henry admitted Thomas Cromwell to his Council; he was also made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Events began to move more swiftly. Parliament attacked the church courts and they were put in the hands of the king. In 1533 Henry married Anne Boleyn secretly. In March 1533 Parliament passed an act breaking the church from Rome, in effect creating the Church of England as against the Church in England. When the old Archbishop of Canterbury died Henry appointed a reformer, Thomas Cranmer. He granted the king his divorce, Henry remarried and, in September, the new queen gave birth to Elizabeth.

The year after the Act of Supremacy transferred to the king all ecclesiastical dues formerly sent to the pope. What is surprising is how little opposition this revolution evoked. There were only few protesters, like Thomas More, but on the whole the revolution which destroyed the medieval church in England was a bloodless one.

Anne Boleyn

Now it was the turn of the monasteries. In 1535 Cromwell sent out commissioners to make a detailed review of them. Between 1536 and 1540 the monasteries, about 800, a quarter of the land of the country, were dissolved. It changed the physical appearance of the landscape. The inmates were either pensioned off or became parish clergy. Only 3 abbots resisted and were hanged. Relics and images were destroyed. The shrines were leveled to the ground. The dissolution had important social and political consequences. Two thirds of the abbey lands were sold, the rest was kept by the crown. An immense amount of land came into the possession of the middle classes. Now there were more landowners than ever before: nobility, gentry, merchants, lawyers and yeomen farmers. They gradually came to have great power, for the crown had sought alliance with them to carry through the Reformation. New previously unknown families began to join the ranks of the political йlite.