We cannot escape the fact the Church of England as we know it came into being because of the will, whims, and cruelties of Henry Tudor, the eighth king of that name. The Church of England is not solely a product of Henry’s need for a divorce, but the gulf between the way the church was in the 1520s and the way the church was in the 1550s is stupendous: the way a church building was laid out, the way in which it was decorated, the language spoken in the church, the legal framework which compelled you to worship, the pattern of the church’s year, even the landscape of the country— all were unimaginably altered.
And this was caused by a loyal, thoughtful, conscientious Catholic: Henry VIII.

Henry came to the throne in 1509, aged 18. He was athletic, skilled in hunting and dancing, six feet tall and powerfully built. He was also educated; in rhetoric, music, and theology. In 1521, shocked by the growth of continental religious controversies, he wrote a little paper attacking Martin Luther and defending the papacy. The Defence of the Seven Sacraments was a best seller. It went through twenty editions throughout Europe and earned Henry the reward of a title from Leo X, Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) — which is why your coins to this day carry the initials F. D. around the Queen’s head.

But Henry needed an heir. He could see in the royal houses of Europe that a disputed succession brought weakness and uncertainty. And a male heir was something that his wife, Catherine of Aragon, couldn’t provide. A daughter, yes: Mary Tudor, but no son.

Henry was enough of a good Catholic (and he was a good Catholic) to think that this might be some kind of judgement of God upon him. After all, Catherine had been the wife of his dead brother Arthur, and even though the families had sought papal permission for the marriage to go ahead, perhaps Henry had offended against God’s law? Perhaps the lack of a male heir was God’s way of telling him that he had sinned?
Henry had the ability (common to people who aren’t as clever as they think they are), to match God’s will onto Henry’s will. Because at the same time that he was being taunted by his inability to produce a male heir he met a young woman new to his court: Ann Boleyn. Henry wanted Ann. God wanted Henry divorced from Catherine. A beautiful match of desires. Finding a legitimate way to separate from Catherine was the new project of the English King, and because of that, of the English government: it became “the King’s Great Matter”.

Unfortunately Henry had picked an unfortunate time to seek a divorce from Catherine. He needed the permission of the Pope, but the Pope at this time, Clement VII, was a “guest” of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who just happened to be the nephew of Catherine of Aragon. Do you think the Emperor would allow the Pope to declare his aunt’s marriage annulled, and his cousin, Mary, illegitimate? Certainly not. Also the Pope was reluctant to overturn the earlier papal permission allowing Henry and Catherine to marry. It was a lucrative business, and if the papacy was going to resist the encroachment of the secular powers, it needed all the money it could get. So, for Henry, no deal.

The Great Matter ran into the buffers at a tribunal held at the royal palace of Blackfriars in the summer of 1529. There would be no divorce granted. Henry needed another way out of his predicament, and another way to make an honest (er) woman of Ann Boleyn, who was holding out for the wedding ring before she would allow Henry to take her to bed. Henry’s theological advisors came up with another strategy. There was another, older, law than papal supremacy. Based upon the precedent exercised by King Arthur (yes! really!), it was clear that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church with his dominions. If it was the King who was Supreme Head, then the King did not require the Pope’s permission to do anything.

A series of acts of parliament were passed between 1533 and 1536, brought to birth by Henry’s new “go to” man, Thomas Cromwell, a “discreet but highly motivated evangelical” (MacCulloch). The culmination was the Act of Supremacy of 1534, which declared that the King, and no one else, was “the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England”, and that the English crown shall enjoy “all honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity.” Part of those honours and dignities was the sole right

to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended, most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue in Christ’s religion, and for the conservation of the peace, unity, and tranquillity of this realm.

The King was now in charge.

Three groups of people were satisfied by this outcome. The first was Henry himself: he now had the legal basis to act as he wished. He also had the legal basis to act against the monasteries, priories and chantries of the kingdom, and to appropriate their wealth, if he so needed (and he did so need). Second, the gentry of the country were (mostly) pleased with this. If the King had the right to act against the monasteries, then through loyal service they could expect to pick up a few tit-bits (manor houses, estates, bullion) along the way. The third group were the convinced evangelicals of Henry’s court, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, among them. A Christian monarch was far more amenable to their idea of church government than a pope, and, although Henry wasn’t an evangelical, he could be prodded (they thought) in evangelical directions.

The problem with the Act of Supremacy, the doctrine that the Crown alone is the supreme authority over the church, is what happens when the King is no longer an evangelical; or, worse, when the Queen is a Roman Catholic? This was exactly the problem faced within twenty years when the project of Henry’s male succession failed, and Mary Tudor, the once-illegitimised daughter of Henry’s first queen, came to the throne.