Catholic (Counter) Reformation (an answer to the Protestant Reformation)
The Catholic Reformation was the counter-force to Protestantism and sought to answer the questions brought up by the Protestant Reformation. In 1545, the Council of Trent:
a. Ended indulgences
b. Worked to educate all that would become priests
c. All sacraments and teachings remained the same

The English Reformation (Henry the V111) creates his own Church.

The English Reformation started in the reign of Henry VIII. The English Reformation was to have far reaching consequences in Tudor England. Henry VIII decided to rid himself of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, after she had failed to produce a male heir to the throne. He had already decided who his next wife would be - Anne Boleyn. By 1527, Catherine was considered too old to have any more children.

However, a divorce was not a simple issue. In fact, it was a very complicated one. Henry VIII was a Roman Catholic and the head of this church was the pope based in Rome.

The Roman Catholic faith believed in marriage for life. It did not recognize, let alone support, divorce. Those who were widowed were free to re-marry; this was an entirely different issue. But husbands could not simply decide that their marriage was not working, divorce their wife and re-marry. The Roman Catholic Church simply did not allow it.

This put Henry VIII in a difficult position. If he went ahead and announced thatas king of England he was allowing himself a divorce, the pope could excommunicate him. This meant that under Catholic Church law, your soul could never get to Heaven. To someone living at the time of Henry, this was a very real fear, and a threat which the Catholic Church used to keep people under its control.

Another approach Henry used was to make a special appeal to the pope so that he might get a special "Papal Dispensation". This meant that the pope would agree to Henry’s request for a divorce purely because Henry was king of England but that it would not affect the way the Catholic Church banned divorce for others. The pope refused to grant Henry this and by 1533 his anger was such that he ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury to grant him a divorce so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.

The Archbishop granted Henry his divorce - against the wishes of the pope. But what else could the archbishop do if he wanted to remain on good terms with Henry?

This event effectively lead to England breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church based in Rome. Henry placed himself as head of the church and in that sense, in his eyes, his divorce was perfectly legal. In 1533, few were brave enough to tell him otherwise!

How did the people of England react to this? In fact, the vast bulk of the population were very angry at the way the Roman Catholic Church had used them as a source of money. To get married you had to pay; to get a child baptized (which you needed to be if you were to go to Heaven - so the Catholic Church preached) you had to pay; you even had to pay the Church to bury someone on their land (which you had to do as your soul could only go to Heaven if you were buried on Holy Ground). Therefore, the Catholic Church was very wealthy while many poor remained just that….poor. Their money was going to the Catholic Church. Therefore, there were no great protests throughout the land as many felt that Henry would ease up on taking money from them. Henry knew of the Catholic Church’s unpopularity and, therefore, used this to his advantage.

Henry was made Supreme Head of the Church by an Act of Parliament in 1534. Mostly Catholic but more power to a king no relationship with the Catholic Church.

Head of the Church : the king
English citizens had to belong to the Church of England.
Church services held in LatinPrayers.
The "Lord’s Prayer" was said in EnglishBible:
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The Puritans
English Protestants who saw the Church of England as an abomination became known as Puritans.They wanted to be pure to the Christian religion as Luther saw it.They met in small communities in secret as it was illegal to be anything other than a member of the Church of England.

Many English Puritans fled to Holland where there was complete religious freedom. However, Puritans thought their souls were in danger being around what they saw as "contamination." Some of these Puritans made their way on to the Mayflower and set sail for America where they would create a "shining city on the hill" as a model for fellow Christians to live a pure life. Puritans lived strict lives In Amerce. Blue laws were created that included crimes against blasphemy, cursing, drunkenness, and adultery.

Mary Tudoraka Bloody Mary

Mary 1, Queen of England (Mary Tudor)

An Allegory of the Tudor Succession', 1572. Mary is on the right of her father, Henry VIII. Her husband, Philip, stands beside her.

Mary was 37 and unmarried when she ascended the throne. She knew that in order to prevent her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth from succeeding her, she needed to marry and produce an heir to secure a Catholic succession. As a result, Mary and her closest aides quickly negotiated a marriage to the Catholic Philip of Spain – the heir to the Spanish throne.

However, members of Mary’s council and the public did not approve of this match. Prior to Mary and Philip’s marriage, in early 1554, a group of rebels assembled in London to demonstrate their retaliation to the marriage, led by prominent Protestant landowner Thomas Wyatt the Younger. Mary refused to hide away from this rebellion, and confronted the rebels by making an extraordinary speech at the Guildhall in London. Mary rallied the rebels to support her and asserted her authority as their anointed queen. As a result, the rebels dispersed, and Wyatt was later executed at Tower Hill. Despite these protestations, Mary married Philip of Spain on 25 July 1554 at Winchester Cathedral.

By the end of 1554, Mary was convinced that she was pregnant and preparations were made in the birth chamber at Hampton Court. In April 1555, bells rang and bonfires were lit around England as news spread that the queen had given birth to an heir. However,Mary was not pregnant. Despite this, she continued to claim that she was pregnant, and stayed in confinement until August 1555. After her physicians convinced her that she was in factnotpregnant, Mary eventually returned to court.

During her reign, Mary revived the heresy laws, which stated that a person who did not follow the faith of the realm would be burned to death. During three years of Mary’s reign, nearly 300 men, women and children were burned at the stake across England for not converting to Catholicism, including Thomas Cranmer, who had been the Archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII and Edward VI’s reigns.

However, Mary did make advances during her reign. She restored the navy, renewed the coinage and increased crown revenue, and also established new hospitals, improved the education of the clergy and increased the authority of local government. Despite this, many of her achievements have been overlooked.

In 1557, England was dragged into a war with Spain against France. This was a disastrous campaign for Mary’s troops and England officially lost possession of Calais in January 1558, which was its last stakehold in France.

Soon after this, Mary’s health deteriorated and she died, possibly from cancer, on 17 November 1558, aged 42. Mary’s half-sisterElizabethsucceeded her. Mary was then buried in Westminster Abbey, despite claiming she wanted to be buried next to her mother in Peterborough Cathedral. Elizabeth restored the Church of England.