Why Did Henry VIII Turn England Protestant?

England’s King Henry VIII founded the Church of England—not from Protestant conviction—but because he wanted to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. But even a king in the 16th century needed the people to view his actions as sanctioned by God and the church. 

Henry’s Reasons for Reformation

Henry had only one daughter by Catherine and lost affection for her as early as 1514, when he took his first known mistress. He had a son out of wedlock in 1519 and continued to commit adultery through the 1520s.[1]

In the early 20s, Henry allied with Habsburg Emperor Charles V against France’s King Francis I. In 1525, that alliance crumbled and this caused him to view Catherine, who was Charles’s aunt, as the symbol of a rejected alliance.[2]

Henry suddenly found himself enlightened to the Biblical revelation of Leviticus 20:21 that it was an abomination for him to have his brother’s wife. That his brother Arthur—Catherine’s first husband—was dead didn’t seem to matter.[4] This was a dubious piece of theology and  hotly contested, particularly because Deuteronomy 25:5 commanded the Israelites to marry their brothers’ widows. But like most authoritarians, Henry stood firmly on religious doctrine when it suited his purposes.

Henry initially displayed no Protestant sentiment when the Reformation broke out in Europe. Under his rule, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and English Church authorities  burned Martin Luther’s works and imprisoned his followers wherever they found them. The English Protestant William Tyndale was even forced to translate the New Testament into English from the safety of the German states.[5] Furthermore, at Wolsey’s request, Henry wrote a rebuttal to Luther for which Pope Leo X gave Henry the title of “Defender of the Faith.”[6]  

But the Reformation never gained a serious following among the English people. The lack of public discontent with the Roman Church made the country infertile ground for a reformation. The English Catholic clergy under William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, had made significant reforms during the time of Luther’s attacks on the church that neutralized many of the Protestant claims of theological and economic corruption.[7] 

Protestant attacks on purgatory and icons also had a limited effect on the population, and the sale of indulgences was not nearly as common as it was in the German churches. Therefore, opposition to the Roman Church on these matters among the masses and laity remained mostly an academic debate and provoked no revolt.[8]

But after Henry waited several years for the Pope to consent to his divorcing Katherine and marrying Boleyn, his patience with the Roman Church came to an end. He making threats to the Habsburg ambassador that his nation could go fully Protestant if the Pope’s arrogance and obstinacy continued. 

He had previously showed an independent streak, refusing to allow church clerks to be tried in their own ecclesiastical courts for civil offenses. 

He also occasionally made statements that drew on lay lawyers’ interpretation of the English common law, which declared the superiority of his majesty to all but God alone.[9] For this, he had legal precedent. In 1485, the English Chief Justice had declared that the King of England was above Papal authority in his own realm and that any ecclesiastical legislation would be invalid if it disagreed with royal legislation.[10] 

Building Protestantism from the Top Down

In 1529, a Reformation Parliament met and issued a series of attacks on church abuses. From 1530-1532, Henry effectively subjected the English Church to royal authority without a formal break with Rome.[11]

He also replaced the Catholic leadership with prominent English Protestants. When Archbishop Warham died in 1532, Henry appointed the Protestant Thomas Cranmer to succeed him. Because Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had failed in his diplomacy to secure papal recognition of his divorce, Henry replaced him with the Protestant Thomas More.[12]

In May 1533, Cranmer officially annulled the marriage between Henry and Catherine and married him and Boleyn, who was already pregnant with Henry’s child.[13] This defiance of the Pope effectively broke the English Church from Rome.[14]

The break with Rome created an opportune moment for Protestants and allowed them to gain political power in Henry’s court, thereby changing the structure and doctrines of the English Church.

The Canterbury Convocation was informed that the king required submission to three articles: all future legislation would be subjected to royal veto; existing canons would be examined by a committee made of clergy and laymen, and all remaining canons would have to stand by royal authority. The bishops submitted rather than face the king’s wrath individually.[16] 

The Convocation only agreed, however, to Henry’s demand that they recognized him as ‘Supreme Head’ of the English Church by tacking on the words “so far as the law of Christ allows.”[17] 

Many like Cranmer were convinced Protestants and pursued Protestant policies and doctrines. Like Henry, though, others leaned toward the Enlightenment and seemed as interested in creating an efficient, well-managed English nation-state as a Protestant state.[15] 

In 1536, Henry’s administration turned its attention on the monasteries. Within four years, his administration had seized over eight hundred religious houses. Some of these were retained by the Crown and the rest were sold, greatly adding to his personal coffers.[18]

Henry’s greatest service to the Protestant cause was his authorizing the publication of vernacular Bibles, which increased literacy and Bible reading throughout the realm. 

Between 1527 and 1547, around eight hundred separate editions of religious works, most of them Protestant, were printed in English.[19] Henry continued to oppose Tyndale’s New Testament, but in 1535, allowed the Protestant cergyman Miles Coverdale to publish the first complete English translation of the Bible. Coverdale produced a more standardized version in 1539, which became known as the ‘Great Bible’ because of its size. This latter version became a great success with the laity.[20] 

Conclusion

Henry VIII is best understood as a secular dictator who ruled in a theocratic age. He understood that he had to seize control of the church to effectively seize control of the state. 

That he used the Reformation to attain the marriage and power he wanted is seen in his persecution of Protestants. As late as 1530, he was still instructing secular authorities to assist ecclesiastical authorities in stamping out Protestant heretics.[21]

He did not found the Church of England from serious religious motivation. He was searching for a way to legitimize his divorce to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn without provoking a domestic revolt or a Papal invasion. The ecclesiastical break came only when he saw no reason to continue holding out for Papal acceptance of his remarriage and felt he had enough authority from English common law to take over the English Church. 

Even though Henry was not personally a reformer—or even a good Protestant—his lust, failed marriage, desire for a male heir, and thirst for absolute power handed the Protestant Reformers a victory in England that most likely would have otherwise never happened for at least another century.

Notes

[1] Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 88-90.

[2] Alan G.R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England 1529-1660, New York: Longman Group Limited, 1984, 18. 

[3] Haigh, English Reformations, 88-90.

[4] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 19.

[5] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 15-16.

[6] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 19.

[7] Haigh, English Reformations, 86.

[8] Haigh, English Reformations, 70.

[9] Haigh, English Reformations, 74, 82.

[10] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 21.

[11] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 21.

[12] Haigh, English Reformations, 99.

[13] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 21.

[14] Haigh, English Reformations, 116.

 [15] Haigh, English Reformations, 114, 115.

[16] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 21.

[17] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 24.

[18] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 29.

[19] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 33.

[20] Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State, 32.

[21] Haigh, English Reformations, 88