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The Reformation

Henry VIII's need for an heir triggered the English Reformation, this brought about far-reaching change affecting all aspects of everyday life.

Despite the zeal of religious reformers in Europe, England was slow to question the established Church. It was during the reign of Henry VIII, however, that the tide turned in favour of Protestantism, and by the 1600s the new Church had gained ascendancy over the old. The progress of the Reformation in England was very much bound up with King Henry's personal affairs. His desperation to secure release from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon forced him to contemplate radical steps that went very much against his own instinctive theological conservatism.

The country was, for the most part, obediently compliant rather than enthusiastic about the new order. There is no evidence suggesting great hostility towards the church before the Reformation; on the contrary, both the English episcopate and parish clergy seem to have been, by the standards of other European lands, both well-trained and living without scandal. Nevertheless, few were prepared to defy the King to defend the threatened institutions of the old church. Indeed, many benefited from the windfall of church property that followed the confiscation of monastic lands. The destruction of the monastries is considered to be one of the greatest acts of vandalism inflicted upon England.

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