II.

A National Church

The acts of Parliament between 1529 and 1536 mark the beginning of the Anglican church as a national church independent of papal jurisdiction. Henry VIII, vexed at the refusal of Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragón, induced Parliament to enact a series of statutes denying the pope any power or jurisdiction over the Church of England. He thus reaffirmed the ancient right of the Christian prince, or monarch, to exercise supremacy over the affairs of the church within his domain. He cited precedents in the relations of church and state in the Eastern Roman Empire and until the 9th century under Charlemagne in the Western Empire.

Although his action was revolutionary, Henry VIII received the support of the overwhelming majority of the English people, clerical and lay alike. Support was given chiefly because no drastic change was made in the Roman Catholic faith and practices to which England was accustomed (see Roman Catholic Church). After Henry’s death, the influences of religious reform were felt more strongly in England, and in 1549 the first Anglican Book of Common Prayer was published and its use required of the English clergy by an Act of Uniformity. The second prayer book, reflecting more strongly the influence of continental Protestantism, was issued in 1552 and was followed shortly by the Forty-two Articles, a doctrinal statement similar in tone. Both were swept away upon the accession (1553) of Mary I, who returned England to a formal obedience to the papacy that lasted until her death in 1558.

A settlement of the religious controversy came when Elizabeth I succeeded Mary as queen of England in 1558. Most of the ecclesiastical laws of Henry VIII were revived, an Act of Supremacy defined more cautiously the Crown’s authority in the church, and another Act of Uniformity established the use of a Book of Common Prayer that avoided the Protestant excesses of the second prayer book. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the Puritans increased their power and became more insistent in their demands for further reform in the Church of England in the direction of the Protestantism of Geneva, Switzerland, and other continental centers. After the accession of the first Stuart monarch, James I, as king of England, in 1603, this agitation for religious change became closely associated with the struggle of Parliament against Stuart absolutism. By 1645, the Parliament party was strong enough to outlaw the use of the prayer book; in 1649, Charles I, king of England, was executed, and the monarchy was temporarily overthrown.

In 1662, after the Restoration of Charles II, the use of the prayer book, revised to essentially its present form, was required by a third Act of Uniformity. One more attack was made on the establishment of the Anglican church when King James II attempted to reintroduce the practice of Roman Catholicism in England. James lost his throne to William III and Mary II in the ensuing revolution of 1688 (see Glorious Revolution).