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ment to leave it in Henry's power to withhold from the Holy See altogether the payment of annates, or first-fruits of bishoprics, which consisted in the amount of the first year's revenue. By such gradual steps the breach with Rome was brought about, though even as late as January, 1533, application in a form most discreditably insincere was still made to Rome for the Bulls of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, who had been elected on Warham's death, and who took the oaths of obedience to the pope, though he had previously declared that he regarded them as null and void. Almost immediately afterwards Cranmer pronounced sentence of divorce between Henry and Catherine.

St. Botolph’s, Boston, Lincolnshire

The king then had Anne Boleyn crowned, and an Act of Succession was passed next year with a preamble and an oath to be taken by every person of lawful age. Parliament all submitted and took the oath, but More and Fisher refused and were sent to the Tower. The climax of the whole work of disruption may be considered to have been reached in November, 1534, by the passing of the Act of Supremacy, which declared the king Supreme Head of the Church of England, this time without any qualification, and which annexed the title to his imperial crown.

A reign of terror now began for all who were unwilling to accept exactly that measure of teaching about matters religious and political which the king thought fit to impose. Fisher and More had been sent to the block, and others, like the Carthusians, who rivalled them in their firmness, were dispatched by that ghastly and more ignominious death-penalty assigned to cases of high treason. In virtue of this martyrdom these and many more are now venerated upon our altars as beatified servants of God. The rising in the North known as the Pilgrimage of Grace followed, and, when this dangerous movement had been frustrated by the astuteness and unscrupulous perjury of the king's representatives, fresh horrors were witnessed in a repression which knew no mercy. Previous to this had taken place the suppression of the smaller monasteries; and that of the larger houses soon followed, while an Act for the dissolution of chantries and free hospitals was passed in 1545, which there was not time to carry entirely into execution before the king's death. Probably all these things, even the destruction of shrines and images, reflect a certain rapacity in the king's nature rather than hostility to what would now be called popish practices. In his sacramental theology he still clung to the positions of the "Assertio septem sacramentorum", the book he had written to refute Luther. Both in the Six Articles and in the "Necessary Doctrine" the dogma of Transubstantiation is insisted upon; and indeed more than one unfortunate reformer who denied the Real Presence was sent to the stake. It was on this side that Henry's task was hardest. Against the Papalist sympathizers amongst his own subjects he consistently maintained a ruthless severity, neither did he relent until all were cowed into submission. Towards men of Calvinist and Lutheran tendencies, who were represented in high places by Cranmer, Cromwell, and many more, the king had intermittently shown favor. He had used them to do his work. They had been of the greatest assistance in prejudicing the cause of the pope, and even the most violent and scurrilous had rendered him service. True, the railing translation of the New Testament by Tyndale, which had been printed and brought to England as early as 1526, was prohibited, as was Coverdale's Bible later on, in 1546, very near the close of his reign. It is plain that the scurrility of the more revolutionary led him to regard such teaching as dangerous to public order. Very remarkable are the words used by Henry in his last speech in Parliament, when he deplored the results of promiscuous Bible-reading: "I am very sorry to know how that most precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse. I am equally sorry that readers of the same follow it so faintly and coldly in living; of this I am sure, that charity was never so faint among you, and virtuous and godly living was never less used, and God Himself among Christians was never less reverenced, honored and served." If ever a moral and religious cataclysm was the work of one man, most assuredly the first stage of the Reformation in England was the work of Henry VIII. One could wish we knew that the sense of his own personal responsibility for the evils he deplored had come home to him before the hour when, on January 28, 1547, he was summoned to his account.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the religious condition of England during the last year of Henry's reign was the fact that, besides the king himself, there were probably not a score of persons who were contented with the existing settlement. One large section of the nation was in complete sympathy with the doctrines of the German reformers, and to them the Mass, confession, communion in one kind, etc., which had been preserved untouched throughout all the changes, were simply as gall and wormwood. The great numerical majority, on the other hand, especially in the more remote and thinly populated districts, longed for the restoration of the old order of things. They wished to see the monks back, St. Thomas of Canterbury and the shrines of Our Lady once more in honor, and the pope recognized as the common father of Christendom. During the two short reigns which intervened before Elizabeth came to the throne each of these parties alternately gained the ascendant. Under Edward VI, the Protector Somerset, and after him the Duke of Northumberland, in full harmony with Cranmer, Hooper, and other bishops even more Calvinistically minded, abolished all remnants of popery. Chantries and guilds were suppressed, and their revenues confiscated, images in the churches, and then altars and vestments were removed and destroyed, while the material desecration was only typical of the outrages done to the ancient liturgy of Catholic worship in the first and second Books of Common Prayer.(See Anglicanism; Anglican Orders; Book of Common Prayer.) The bishops who were more Catholically minded, like Bonner and Gardiner, were sent to the Tower. Princess Mary was subjected to the meanest and most petty forms of persecution. Neither can it be maintained that those in power were animated by any disinterested devotion to Reformation principles. Spoliation in its most vulgar form wasthe order of the day. It is only of late years that fuller historical research has done justice to what seemed the one redeeming feature in the general work of destruction—the foundation of the grammar