During
the Protestant Reformation in England under the rule of King Henry
VIII, the King has fired his closest advisor, Cardinal Wolsey,
the Lord Chancellor of England for failing to obtain the Pope's
consent to his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey was dismissed,
arrested and replaced with Thomas
Cranmer and Thomas
Cromwell.
Both
Cranmer and Cromwell were sympathetic to the new ideas of Martin
Luther and are believed to have advised the King that if the Pope
would not grant the annulment, a split of the English church from
the Roman church making the King the spiritual head of the English
church would allow the King to grant his own annulment.
The
seven years debates by the English Parliament beginning in 1529
did not settle the matter all at once, but instead took powers
away from the church clergy and passed them to the King. In 1531,
the clergy of England recognized Henry as the head of the church,
and in 1533, Parliament passed the "Submission of the Clergy,"
a law which placed the clergy completely under Henry's control.
In
that same year Henry married Ann Boleyn, who was already pregnant
with his second daughter, Elizabeth. By 1534, Parliament had stopped
all contributions to the Roman chuch by English clergy and lay
people and gave Henry complete control over all church appointments.
The
"Act of Succession" required that everyone swear allegiance
to the King as head of the English church and futher declared
the children of Ann Boleyn to be the heirs to the throne.
Henry
VIII ordered Bibles to be published in English and took much money
and land from the church. It is believed that he did this for
political gains and not because he supported the ideas of Martin
Luther, a monk from Germany who believed that the Roman Catholic
church was corrupt. Luther's ideas behind the Protestant Reformation
were simple. The church should be changed, or reformed, so that
it was less greedy, more fair, and accessible to all people, not
just the rich and well educated.
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