In 1527, King Henry VIII of England asked Pope Clement VII to allow him to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Catherine and Henry had one child, Mary, but the lack of a male heir concerned the king. The Pope, who was at that time under the control of Catherine’s nephew Charles V, refused Henry’s request. About five years later, Henry managed to convince the English clergy to recognize him as the head of the English church. This became official in the Act of Supremacy of 1534, which declared the king the “only supreme head” of the Church of England. Although Henry separated himself from the authority of the Pope, he upheld Catholic teachings as described in the Statute of Six Articles of 1539.
Edward, Henry’s son by his third wife, Jane Seymour, succeeded the king. As Edward was only ten years old, a group of royal advisors held most of the power. These advisors leaned toward Protestantism, and, during this time, the Six Articles were repealed. In their place, the Forty-Two Articles were produced, which outlined the beliefs of the Church of England based on Protestant theology.
In 1553 at age 15, Edward died of illness, and Mary, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, took the throne. Mary’s reign overlapped with the Counter-Reformation, which took place in the European mainland. In her own sort of Counter-Reformation, Mary promoted Catholicism and condemned almost 300 Protestants to burn at the stake. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, succeeded Mary in 1558 and took a more tolerant approach to religion. Under her rule, the Thiry-Nine Articles were written in 1563 to be the creed of the Anglican Church. These articles were meant to serve as a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism by stating Anglican doctrine a way acceptable to both groups.
The lingering Catholic practices of the Church in England caused the formation of a group called the Puritans, who sought to purify the Anglican Church. The Puritans were heavily influenced by Richard Foxe’s exposition The Book of Martyrs, which chronicled the deaths of martyrs at the hands of “Bloody Mary” and led the Puritans to consider themselves “God’s new Israel” (Shelley 294). They opposed, among other things, the use of the sign of the cross, absolution by clergy, and kneeling for Communion. Elizabeth tolerated the Puritans’ lectures about Anglican practices they rejected, but she kept the Church under the monarchy’s control and passed an act in 1593 that permitted the imprisonment of Puritans who did not attend Anglican services.
Although many Puritans sought to remain a part of the Anglican Church while purifying its practices, some started meeting by themselves during the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, James I. These groups, called the Separatists, wanted to break away from the Church of England, and, for more freedom and safety, some moved to Leyden and Amsterdam in Holland. While the Amsterdam group became the first English Baptist church under John Smyth, the Leyden congregation, concerned about losing their English culture, decided to traverse the Atlantic to the New World, like other Englishmen before them. They returned to England and found a group of like-minded believers who joined their voyage. They set sail in 1620 on the famous journey aboard the Mayflower, and in November, these pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, making them the vanguard of the 25,000 Puritans that would migrate to New England by 1642.
Works Cited:
Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church. Third ed., Zondervan, 1996, pp. 322-328.
Shelley, Bruce L. Church History in Plain Language. Updated Third ed., Thomas Nelson, 2008, pp. 265-305.
Image Credit:
Podmore, Tom. “Stained Glass at Hampton Court. 474 Years Today since the Death of Henry VIII.” Unsplash, 28 Jan. 2021, https://unsplash.com/photos/U3xRdlt5vV0. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.