away, the power of making laws for themselves was taken from the clergy, the Church was declared to be independent of any foreign influence, but wholly dependent on the Crown. Every one was obliged to swear that the King was the ‘Head of the Church’. Archbishop Cranmer.The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced the divorce from Katharine, and married his King to Anne Boleyn; the Princess Mary was set aside, and when Anne's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was born, she was declared heir to the throne. Monasteries dissolved.All the smaller monasteries were dissolved and their lands handed over to the Crown; Henry gave most of them to his courtiers and to Important country gentlemen, and so a new set of nobles, newly enriched from Church lands and entirely dependent on the King, rapidly came to the front.
Thomas Cromwell; fierce measures against the old Church and the old nobles.Many of the best men in England were deeply shocked at these changes, even some who had been prepared to go a long way in reforming the abuses of the Church. But Henry and his savage minister, Thomas Cromwell, struck down every one who stood in their path. The Courtenays and Poles, descended from Edward IV, were imprisoned, or driven into exile, or had their heads cut off. Sir Thomas More, once the King’s intimate friend, and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, both men of European fame for their learning and piety, were the most distinguished victims. Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536.In the North of England, in 1536, a fierce insurrection broke out called the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’; the rebels cried out for the restoration of the monasteries, for in that wild country the monks had been the only doctors and their houses had been open to all travellers. The rising was put down with great cruelty, for Henry was