ABSTRACT
In England the Reformation was a royal enterprise, initiated when King Henry VIII (1509-47) made himself the supreme head of the church in 1534 while maintaining most of the previous ecclesiastical structure with the exception of the monasteries, which were abolished (1536-9). When Henry VIII was succeeded by his nine-yearold son Edward VI (1547-53), the regents around the young king made the creed of the Church of England more clearly Protestant and allowed Protestants from the Continent to enter England. However, when King Edward died at the age of fifteen, his very Catholic sister Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ascended the throne (1553-8) determined to restore Catholicism to England. She repealed the laws of her father and brother and persecuted those who resisted, thus earning her name “Bloody Mary.” When Mary died in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, succeeded her as queen of England (1558-1603). Thus England had known four monarchs in eleven years, each one representing a change of religious policy.
