ABSTRACT
The marriage of Elizabeth’s parents had been the occasion, if not the cause, of the original break with Rome and Henry VIII’s declaration of the royal supremacy. By the Act of Supremacy of 1534, parliament had recognized the king’s title as Supreme Head of the Church and his power ‘to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be’. For the remainder of the reign, Henry had used his assumed rights to expropriate ecclesiastical property and reform the Church.
Church reform under Henry was both tentative and moderate; it was ordered that English bibles be placed in churches, certain ‘superstitions’ were condemned and the Litany (part of the Morning Prayer) was translated into English. Catholic doctrines, however, remained largely intact. Consequently, in the 1540s men and women were still being burnt as heretics for denying transubstantiation (the Catholic doctrine that the wafer and wine were transformed into the body and blood of Christ after their sanctification by the priest at the mass).
