ABSTRACT
Voluntarism was enhanced, professional societies were born, universities were freed from religious dogma, and the inchoate beginning of modern civil society was launched. With England's break with Rome in 1533, civil society began to supplant the First Estate in England. While religious persecution and compulsion did not immediately end with Henry VIII's separation from the Roman Catholic Church, the process by which independence of thought and advocacy would be allowed, entertained, and ultimately encouraged began with the schism. The freedom of secular governance and, eventually, of secular belief, media advocacy, art and science from arbitrary religious authority was initiated by the Reformation. Robert Boyle, with the assistance of Cromwell, Henry and the Reformation Parliament began to assess the incomes and privileges of the Church in England. Focusing on grammar schools considerably understates the extent of facilities for attaining literacy in sixteenth-century England. The expansion of grammar school education was reflected in rising university enrollments.
