Religion

Tag: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Most of the monasteries submitted to this process with little resistance. Henry actually showed some compassion, giving some of the priests he considered unemployable a small pension for life, but those who resisted, he crushed ruthlessly. One those who held out was Richard Whiting, the Abbot of the ancient Cathedral at Glastonbury, near the western coast just south of Bristol. Whiting was eighty and had little to lose, but he tried to placate the King. He sent a Christmas present, the deed to twelve manorial estates which he hid in a Christmas pie. He entrusted this pastry delight to his steward, Thomas Horner, and sent him off to London. Horner was a realist. He knew very well that Whiting's gesture was useless. Henry would have Glastonbury. On the way, the disloyal steward popped open the pie and stole the deed to the rich manorial estate at Mells.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: In its early years, the Reformation in England, was none to secure. King Henry VIII remained a theological and emotional Catholic until the day he died. The primary reason for removing England from allegiance to the Roman Church in 1534 was that the pope refused to give him a divorce from his first wife who could not produce for him a male heir. The Protestants around Henry were always a little nervous that the King, on a whim, might act on his true Catholic sentiments and go back to Rome. His chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, convinced the King that if he dissolved the monasteries of England he could accomplish two things. By confiscating them the King could fill his depleted treasury, something that always appealed to Henry, and, because many monasteries were hotbeds of Catholic sentiment, he could suppress a potential threat to the newly Protestant Church of England. In 1536, Henry and Cromwell began to close the monasteries. The King kept some for himself, but wisely distributed the balance to his family, friends and supporters throughout the realm. This land transfer meant a large number of influential people would be committed by pure self-interest to the survival of the Reformation.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: To secure his family's lock on the English throne, Henry VIII felt he had to have a male heir. Since his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had failed to produce a son, he divorced her. To do so meant England had to renounce the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Pope. Henry became the Supreme Head of the Church and then, beginning in 1536, started closing the monasteries, many of which were lingering hotbeds of Catholic sentiment in England.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: King Henry VIII of England had a serious problem. As he moved into middle age he began to despair of ever producing a son with his Queen Catherine of Aragon. She was deeply devoted to her husband but could not deliver to him the male heir which he was convinced would secure his family's lock on the English throne into the future. After repeated attempts to convince Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage, he renounced the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church. With the Act of Supremacy in 1534, the King, not the Pope, became head of the Church in England. With this new power he divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn. Anne did not give him a son, but her successor, Jane Seymour, did and Henry considered his dynastic problems largely solved.