Pressuring the Pope

Part of domestic policies under Cromwell

Ways Henry and Cromwell tried to pressurise the Pope

• 1531 - Clergy collectively accused of praemunire and fined

• 1532 - Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates

• 1532 - House of Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries

• 1532 - Formal Submission of the Clergy to Henry VIII

1531 Clergy accused of praemunire

• Began a sustained attack on the clergy - forced the clergy to acknowledge Henry as the ‘Protector and the Supreme head of the English Church’

1532 Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates

• Annates - revenue paid to the Pope by a bishop / cleric on his appointment - Church taxes collected in England and sent to Rome

• Designed to increase pressure on papacy by withholding the first year’s income

1532 Supplication against the Ordinaries

• Petition addressed to the king by HoC and directed against alleged abuses of jurisdiction exercised in church law by bishops and archbishops

• Designed to increase anticlerical pessure within the House of Commons

1532 Submission of the Clergy

• Formal surrender of the Church’s independent law-making function

• This provoked the resignation of Sir Thomas More as Lord Chancellor

Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn

• Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled in May 1533 by Archbishop Thomas Cramner - who replaced the Archbishop of Canterbury when he died

• However Henry and Anne had secretly married in January 1533 - invalid according to Catholic Church

• However their child born in September 1533 was legitimate in English law - but still a girl

• Meaning problem of succession had not been solved