English Reformation c.1520–c.1535

Around 1520, England belonged to the Catholic Church, whose head was the pope in Rome. Religion was not simply a private choice: the Church shaped how people understood birth, marriage, death and their prospects of salvation. Its importance was spiritual, political and economic.

Catholics believed that God’s grace ordinarily reached people through seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, anointing of the sick, penance and the Eucharist. These rites connected the Church with major stages of life. Penance involved repentance and confession; holy orders admitted men to the priesthood.

The central act of worship was the Mass. A priest consecrated bread and wine, which Catholics believed became Christ’s body and blood. This teaching, called transubstantiation, gave priests a vital role in religious life. The Mass was understood as an offering of Christ’s sacrifice, not merely a gathering to hear a sermon.

Prayer, death and the parish community

Concern for the dead was especially important. Catholics believed that saved souls might undergo purification in purgatory before entering Heaven. Prayers and Masses could help them. This made the relationship between living communities and their dead relatives a continuing religious responsibility.

People supported chantries, which provided Masses for the dead. Religious guilds sponsored Masses for their members, while monks and nuns also prayed for souls. These practices offered reassurance: a family could act to help a loved one after death.

Traditional devotion also included pilgrimages, honouring saints and relics, and seeking saints’ intercession. Reformers would challenge these practices, but to their supporters they were meaningful parts of Christian life.

Wealth, land and help for ordinary people

The Church’s importance was reflected in its wealth. People paid compulsory tithes, but they also voluntarily gave substantial sums to their parish churches. These donations are important evidence of attachment to traditional religion: the Church’s resources did not come only from demands imposed on an unwilling population.

Religious institutions were also major landowners. Abbeys and priories owned estates worked by tenant farmers, and landholding brought rental income. Some religious houses also received income from parish lands and tithes. Consequently, a monastery could be important to local people both as a religious community and as their landlord. Church leaders exercised political influence as well, making their wealth and authority potential targets for criticism.

Church wealth supported activities beyond worship. Monasteries offered hospitality, food and alms—charitable help—for poor people, and assistance for the old and infirm. Religious hospitals cared for people in need, including older people. The extent of this provision varied, but it helped make religious institutions part of the support available to ordinary people.

The Church also contributed to learning. Monasteries educated their novices, the people preparing to join the religious community, and sometimes taught choristers and other young scholars. Some maintained grammar schools. By the early sixteenth century, donors increasingly supported parish churches, university colleges and grammar schools rather than monasteries alone. Education and charity were therefore not provided by one uniform system, nor did every monastery perform exactly the same functions.

This explains why Church wealth could provoke different responses. Critics might see riches as evidence of greed or a distraction from religious duties; supporters could point to the worship, learning and charitable help that those resources maintained.

Criticism did not always mean Protestantism

English Catholicism remained strong and popular in the early sixteenth century. Nevertheless, support for religion could coexist with criticism of its leaders. A person might want better priests or less clerical corruption without wishing to abandon Catholic worship.

Humanist scholars encouraged a return to the early sources of Christianity, especially the Bible. Erasmus, John Colet and Thomas More criticised clerical corruption and practices they regarded as superstitious. They emphasised sincere inward devotion rather than reliance on outward ritual alone.

In 1512, Colet told an assembly of English clergy that reform should begin with the bishops, then the clergy, and only then ordinary believers. His argument illustrates reform within the Church. More’s later opposition to Henry’s royal supremacy shows why it is misleading to assume that every critic of the clergy wanted a Protestant church.

Other grievances concerned clerical income and conduct. Pluralism meant holding several Church offices; non-residence meant not living where an office required a clergyman to serve. These practices raised concerns that clergy were receiving income without properly attending to their congregations. Complaints about fees and Church courts also gave people reasons to seek reform without rejecting Catholic beliefs.

The Lollards: an older challenge to Church authority

The Lollards followed ideas associated with John Wycliffe, a fourteenth-century English scholar. Their beliefs varied, but a central principle was that the Bible should be the measure of religious teaching. They supported access to scripture in English, allowing people to engage with it rather than depending entirely on clerical interpretation.

Lollards challenged Church wealth, arguing that it distracted religious leaders from preaching and helping the needy. They criticised devotion to saints’ images and rejected transubstantiation. Many also questioned the necessity of confession to a priest, emphasising repentance and confession to God.

These ideas threatened both religious teaching and the authority of the clergy. Persecution drove Lollardy underground during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century it was a minority tradition, not a movement commanding widespread national support.

Its significance was that criticism of Catholic authority already existed in England before Luther. Lollardy kept ideas about English scripture and opposition to established religious practices alive, but it did not itself bring about Henry’s break with Rome.

Luther and the spread of new ideas

Martin Luther was a German friar whose ideas were known and debated in England by the early 1520s. His central teaching was justification by faith alone: salvation was God’s gift received through faith, not something people could earn through good works.

This challenged the importance attached to practices such as prayers for the dead and pilgrimages. Reformers argued that purgatory lacked biblical authority and accused clergy of exploiting fear of it to obtain money for prayers and Masses. Catholics rejected these arguments and warned that removing the need for penance could encourage sinful behaviour. These were competing religious claims, not simply a dispute over money.

William Tyndale’s English New Testament, published in 1526, helped spread Protestant ideas. Printed abroad and smuggled into England, it combined access to scripture with an explanation of justification by faith. Its wording also challenged traditional interpretations: translating a command as ‘repent’ rather than ‘do penance’ emphasised an inward turning towards God.

Some academics and merchants with continental connections were receptive to these ideas. Reform-minded figures met at Cambridge’s White Horse tavern from the mid-1520s; they included Robert Barnes and Hugh Latimer. Tyndale, Barnes and Latimer belonged to the reforming challenge that continued into the 1530s. Their emphasis on scripture and criticism of traditional practices went further than demands simply to correct clerical abuses. Nevertheless, Protestants remained a minority, and their beliefs could be prosecuted as heresy.

Henry himself was initially a defender of traditional religion. In 1521, the pope awarded him the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ for attacking Luther. His later rejection of papal authority therefore needs a separate explanation.

Henry’s marriage became a political and religious crisis

Henry had married Catherine of Aragon in 1509. Their only surviving child was Mary. Henry wanted a legitimate male heir because he feared a disputed succession might revive the instability associated with the civil wars that had ended in 1485.

From 1527, he sought an annulment: a ruling that the marriage had never been valid. Catherine had previously married Henry’s elder brother, Arthur, who died in 1502. Henry used a passage in Leviticus prohibiting marriage to a brother’s widow to argue that his marriage was unlawful. He challenged the validity of the papal dispensation that had allowed it.

Catherine’s supporters disputed his interpretation, pointing to Deuteronomy’s support for marrying a brother’s widow in certain circumstances. The issue was therefore not an uncontested biblical rule. It involved rival readings of scripture and the pope’s authority to permit the marriage.

Henry also wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, who refused to become his mistress. Her pregnancy by early 1533 made the matter urgent: Henry wanted their child born within a legally recognised marriage.

Pope Clement VII would not grant the annulment. Catherine was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, whose troops had sacked Rome in 1527. Charles’s power placed Clement under severe political pressure, and granting Henry’s request would offend Catherine’s powerful nephew. Henry’s personal and dynastic ambitions had become entangled with European politics.

Parliament began by addressing clerical abuses

The Reformation Parliament opened in November 1529. Its early legislation addressed grievances against the clergy rather than immediately declaring a complete break with Rome.

The 1529 Acts regulated probate fees, mortuary payments, clerical trading, pluralism and residence. Probate concerned the handling of a dead person’s will and estate; mortuary payments were payments claimed by the Church following a death. These charges could bring grieving families into conflict with clergy. Restrictions on pluralism and non-residence addressed complaints about clergy holding several offices or failing to live where they should serve.

These measures mattered because they showed Parliament intervening in Church affairs and responding to complaints from lay people—people who were not clergy. Reform could therefore appeal to existing grievances even among those who remained attached to Catholic worship.

Parliament dismantled papal authority

Thomas Cromwell developed the use of parliamentary legislation to remove papal jurisdiction and strengthen royal control. This gave the changes the force of statute law rather than leaving them dependent on royal announcements alone.

The break developed in stages:

The Act in Restraint of Appeals was decisive for the marriage crisis. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer could decide the case in England without an appeal to Rome overturning it. In 1533, Henry’s marriage to Catherine was declared invalid, and his marriage to Anne was recognised.

The legislation changed several connected aspects of power: who could decide religious cases, who could authorise Church laws, who received Church revenue, and whose children would inherit the throne. It did more than solve a private marital dispute.

A change of authority, not an instant change of belief

By 1534, Henry had gained control over the Church’s administration, appointments, finances and laws. Parliament had provided the legal means to achieve what negotiations with the pope had failed to deliver.

This did not mean that England immediately became Protestant in belief and worship. Henry remained religiously conservative, and much traditional practice continued. Some supporters of royal supremacy were reformers, while others accepted the removal of papal authority without accepting Protestant theology.

Opposition could be dangerous. Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed in 1535 after refusing to accept the settlement and being convicted of treason. Their deaths show that royal supremacy raised questions of conscience as well as obedience. Public compliance cannot simply be taken as proof that everyone welcomed reform.

The early English Reformation therefore brought together three different pressures: criticism of the Church, new religious ideas, and Henry’s marriage and succession crisis. They helped create an opportunity for change, but they were not the same thing. The immediate outcome was a Church under the king rather than the pope, while popular religious beliefs remained varied and often traditional.