The King's Great Matter and the Reformation Parliament
The King’s ‘Great Matter’
By 1527 Henry VIII was desperate for a male heir. His marriage to Catherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, a daughter (Mary). Henry convinced himself — and argued to the Pope — that the marriage had been invalid from the start, citing a biblical passage (Leviticus 20:21) that forbade a man from marrying his brother’s widow. Catherine had been briefly married to Henry’s brother Arthur before his death.
Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage. He was under the political control of Catherine’s nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose army had sacked Rome in 1527. Henry’s failure to secure a papal annulment became known as the ‘Great Matter’. Cardinal Wolsey’s failure to deliver it led to his dismissal in 1529 and death in 1530 while awaiting trial for treason.
Henry argued his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid because she had been married to his brother. Pope Clement VII refused to annul it, partly because he was politically dominated by Catherine’s nephew, Emperor Charles V. Wolsey’s failure to resolve the crisis cost him his position in 1529.
The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536
Henry summoned what became known as the Reformation Parliament in 1529. Guided by Thomas Cromwell, it passed a series of statutes that step by step removed papal authority in England.
Key legislation included:
- 1532 — Submission of the Clergy: the Church accepted that it could not make new canon law without royal permission. Archbishop Warham’s surrender ended the Church’s legislative independence.
- 1533 — Act in Restraint of Appeals: declared England an ‘empire’ governed solely by one king, cutting off appeals to Rome. This enabled Thomas Cranmer, as new Archbishop of Canterbury, to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine and declare his marriage to Anne Boleyn valid.
- 1534 — Act of Supremacy: declared Henry ‘the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England.’ This was not a statement of Protestant theology but of jurisdictional authority.
- 1534 — Treason Act: made it treasonable to deny the royal supremacy — in words as well as deeds.
Thomas Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 at Henry’s request. Within months he had conducted an ecclesiastical court and declared the marriage to Catherine void. Five days later he confirmed the validity of Henry’s secret marriage to Anne Boleyn. She was crowned queen on 1 June 1533, already carrying the future Elizabeth I. Cranmer’s appointment marked the beginning of reforming influence at the very top of the English Church.
Resisters: More and Fisher
Not everyone accepted the royal supremacy. Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1532, the day after the Submission of the Clergy. Two years later he refused the oath required by the Act of Succession of 1534. Bishop John Fisher of Rochester also refused. Both were imprisoned in the Tower and executed in 1535 under the Treason Act — by their silence and eventual spoken refusal, they had denied the supremacy.
More’s execution shocked European humanists. He had been a close friend of Erasmus and a man of impeccable scholarly reputation. His death signalled that the break with Rome would be enforced with lethal seriousness.
The legislative break from Rome was completed between 1529 and 1534 through four key Acts: Submission of the Clergy (1532), Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533), Act of Supremacy (1534), Treason Act (1534). Thomas More and John Fisher were executed in 1535 for refusing to accept the supremacy.
Henry VIII consistently denied he was a Protestant. He maintained traditional Catholic doctrine — including transubstantiation and clerical celibacy — throughout his reign. The Act of Supremacy gave him control over Church governance, not a new theology. In this sense the break with Rome was primarily a jurisdictional and political revolution, driven by his marriage crisis and desire for royal power over the Church.
However, the Act also opened the door to reformers like Cranmer and Cromwell who had Protestant sympathies. The administrative break created the conditions in which Protestant ideas could be introduced from the top down — especially after Henry’s death in 1547. Whether the Reformation was ‘from above’ (imposed by government) or ‘from below’ (driven by popular demand) is a key historiographical question.