How did Henry's VIII actions affect the Catholic Church in England?

Answer 1

Henry VIII. was the founder of the Anglican Church and the Royal Navy. When he mounted the throne England had 3 ill-armed ships, when he died a fleet of 70 well-armed ships was at service. He also built the first tennis court at Hampton Court near London which is still operative.

Henry was seduced by his father-in-law Fernando V. of Spain to join the 1511-1515 war against France, in 1513 Henry won the Battle of Guinegate and defeated James IV. of Scotland at Flodden. Influenced by Cardinal Woolsey he introduced a balance policy between Emperor Charles V. and France which he fought again in 1522-1525 and in 1543-1546 when Henry could win Boulogne. Woolsey was dismissed in 1529 and succeeded by Sir Thomas More and - after More's execution in 1535 - by Thomas Cromwell who proved to be a willing tool of the royal despotism. The 1538 papal ban bull determined Henry VIII. to align his country's religion to the German Protestantism. In terms of political intelligence Henry was inferior to his father but had a strong power instinct, as a Renaissance nature he was vain, overbearing and fond of splendour.

Answer 2

King Henry VIII of England destroyed the visible Church of his ancestors and drove it underground. He denied his people access to the sacraments and put their eternal salvation in jeopardy by denying them access to priests. He stole all the property and possessions of the Church and made more martyrs for the faith than the Roman emperors.

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King Henry VIII of England closed all the monasteries, confiscated or stole (use whichever word you think fits) all of their property and goods, and turned the monks and nuns out into the streets. He taxed his nation that "exceeded the aggregate amount of all the taxes upon record, which had been imposed by his predecessors". David Hume "for all his rejoicing over the dissolution, admits that the English of that age were 'like eastern slaves.' Lingard observes that

when parliament made the king the supreme head of the Church, it exalted his royal power 'above law and equity,' so that he now acted as if 'infallible in matters of policy and religion.' Parliament groveled before him: Whenever the speaker addressed the kind as 'most sacred majesty,' the House of Lords rose (Commons was already standing), and the whole parliament 'bowed profoundly to the demi-god on the throne.

- from The Curse of Sacrilege" by Dr. Anne Barbeau Gardiner. King Henry distributed the spoils of sacrilege to his nobles in way of reward, yet nearly all of them lost their new found gains: lands and riches, within a generation.

More importantly, with the closing of the monasteries, the endowments and countless services provided by the abbey to the poor including free education and medical services simply vanished with the result that, for the first time since the Middle Ages, the gap between the classes became unbridgeable and the poor were completely left unattended to.

Oxford had 300 halls or private schools, besides the colleges, before the dissolution, after it, there were "not above eight remaining", due to the fact that they had all been supported by religious orders.

Also the welfare system of the abbeys gone, the orphans, widows, the infirm, and the aged were reduced to pauperism: "Thousands upon thousands were forced to wander about in misery, after having been constantly fed, clad, and sheltered, as was their right. Every principal monastery had a hospital, with officers and attendants to take care of the sick and dying. Now these places were gone. . .

original documents in the Public Record Office show[ed]

'that the plunder of the poor by those in power was a deliberate and premeditated act

J.A. Froude, who applauds the dissolution, nevertheless cites, in a footnote, the following manuscript complaint from that era:

'many merchant adventurers, cloth makers, goldsmiths, butchers, tanners, and other artificers and unreasonable covetous persons, which doth encroach daily many farms more than they occupy in tilth of corn; then, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen farms in one man's hands at once so that where there was in a town twenty or thirty dwelling-houses they be now decayed, ploughs and all the people clean gone.'

Altogether, Henry executed two queens, one cardinal, twelve dukes, marquesses, earls and earl's sons, eighteen knights and barons, seventy-seven abbots, priors, monks, and priests, and "huge multitudes" of ordinary people. It is credibly reported by Holinshed and others (including David Hume), that 72,000 of the common people were hanged in his reign, mainly for theft and robbery. Cobbett comments that desperate hunger knows no law.

Dr. Gardiner concludes Thus, England witnessed the end of free education, roads overrun with the sick and destitute, and the start of a new class division.

In addition, Cobbett points out that they didn't even spare the tomb of King Alfred the Great, who reigned from 871 to 899, or that of Saint Grimbald "they sold the very lead of the coffins'" In Canterbury, they attacked the tomb of St. Augustine, as well as the magnificent shrine of St. Thomas a Becket. Besides stealing all the"gold, silver, and jewels" from his shrine, his skull was burned and its ashes scattered.

Please see links below:

William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland

Serenus Cressy, Exomologesis

Charles Dodd, Church History of England

Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain

Nicholas Harpsfield, Treatis of the Pretended Divorce

Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth

John Lingard, History of England

Henry Spelman, The History and Fate of Sacrilege

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars