Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/301

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
277

until the fall of Wolsey, no change of importance took place, but there were many indications of the overbearing character of the clergy of the period, and of their unpopularity and evil repute among the laity, and of their generally corrupt condition.

(2.) That the primary motive of Henry VIII. in separating from Eome was his desire to obtain a divorce from Katherine, which the Pope refused.

(3.) That the separation was purely and simply the act of the King and the Parliament, the share of the clergy in it, such as it was, being entirely involuntary.

(4.) That the Act of Supremacy transferred the whole power—whatever that might have been—of the Pope, to the King, while the Submission of the Clergy bound them to entire dependence upon him.

(5.) That Henry thus for the first time created a National Church which was in truth schismatical, and of which he himself was, in all but name. Pope.

(6.) That he made some, but slight and few, changes in the doctrine and ritual of the Church thus established. Of these probably the most important, at least for the subsequent history of the Church, was the introduction, to some extent, of services in the English tongue.

(7.) That Henry, though he made the Church schismatical, did not make it in any appreciable degree Protestant.

(8.) That on Edward's accession the personal royal papacy fell of necessity into abeyance, and its powers were taken up by the predominant Protestant faction in the Council, which took a Zwinglian direction and retained it to the end of the reign.

(9.) That Mary, by two Acts of Parliament, swept away first the Protestant legislation of Edward's reign,