Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Part One The Tudor Scene
- Part Two The Gathering Storm
- Chap. XI Erasmus
- Chap. XII Reform and suppression under Wolsey
- Chap. XIII European precedents
- Chap. XIV Acceptance of the royal supremacy
- Chap. XV Elizabeth Barton
- Part Three Suppression and Dissolution
- Part Four Reaction and Survival
- Appendix I Sir Thomas More's letter ‘to a monk’
- Appendix II Religious houses suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey
- Appendix III The witness of the Carthusians
- Appendix IV Houses with incomes exceeding £1000 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus
- Appendix V The sacrist of Beauvale
- Appendix VI Itinerary of the visitors, 1535–6
- Appendix VII The commissioners for the survey of the Lesser Houses in 1536
- Appendix VIII The conflict of evidence on the monasteries
- Appendix IX The last abbots of Colchester, Reading and Glastonbury
- Appendix X Regulars as bishops
- Bibliography
- Index
Chap. XIV - Acceptance of the royal supremacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Part One The Tudor Scene
- Part Two The Gathering Storm
- Chap. XI Erasmus
- Chap. XII Reform and suppression under Wolsey
- Chap. XIII European precedents
- Chap. XIV Acceptance of the royal supremacy
- Chap. XV Elizabeth Barton
- Part Three Suppression and Dissolution
- Part Four Reaction and Survival
- Appendix I Sir Thomas More's letter ‘to a monk’
- Appendix II Religious houses suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey
- Appendix III The witness of the Carthusians
- Appendix IV Houses with incomes exceeding £1000 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus
- Appendix V The sacrist of Beauvale
- Appendix VI Itinerary of the visitors, 1535–6
- Appendix VII The commissioners for the survey of the Lesser Houses in 1536
- Appendix VIII The conflict of evidence on the monasteries
- Appendix IX The last abbots of Colchester, Reading and Glastonbury
- Appendix X Regulars as bishops
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
With the disgrace and death of Wolsey there began, for the Church in England, a period of stress and revolution without parallel in the past. Though the waters of domestic discontent and imported revolution had, throughout the cardinal's long lease of power, been mounting against the dykes, and far-sighted observers had long been anticipating a catastrophe, no one dared to prophesy what form it would take. No mortal prevision, indeed, could possibly have embraced those two imponderable forces, the will of the king and the genius of his new minister, which gave to events in the decade 1530–40 the particular impulse which determined their direction.
Throughout the changes of those years, in which there occurred a breathless sequence of events so pregnant with consequence, we are here concerned solely with the attitude and behaviour of the religious. To what extent was their conduct in the supreme crisis from the autumn of 1535 to the end of 1539 predetermined, or at least predisposed, by their action in earlier years? To answer this question it is necessary to begin our review some months before the death of the cardinal.
The precise degree of causal relationship between the king's ‘great matter’ of the divorce and the subsequent ecclesiastical revolution has always been a controversial topic, but it can at least be said that some relationship of cause and effect existed.
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- Information
- The Religious Orders in England , pp. 173 - 181Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979