ABSTRACT
This government-sponsored Reformation did not stop with the jurisdictional revolution of the early 1530s. Over the following twenty years it moved on to encompass first evangelical reform and later doctrinal change. Exercising his new role of head of the Church, during the 1530s Henry embarked on a programme of moderate evangelical reforms, with the encouragement of humanists at court. After his death, the unexpected seizures of power by prominent Protestant courtiers, first on Henry’s death in 1547 and again after Somerset’s fall in 1549, paved the way for the doctrinal and liturgical changes of Edward VI’s reign. The fact that by 1553 England was, officially at least, a Protestant state was the direct consequence of the successful political manoeuvring by prominent reformers, whose dominance in government allowed them to impose their religious programmes upon the English people. That the regimes they led were able, through a combination of propaganda and intimidation, to ensure a general outward conformity and overcome any active resistance to the new religious orthodoxies is a testimony to the strength and efficiency of Tudor government. In this important sense, therefore, both the Henrician and Edwardian Reformations were official processes, ‘acts of state’.
