The fortunes of Anne Boleyn were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet accomplished in this country was committed.  In the memorable year 1529, after the meeting of parliament, events moved apace.  In six weeks, for so long only the session lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up before the lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer.  The Great Reformation had commenced in earnest.

The carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate duties obliged the legislature to trespass in the provinces most purely spiritual, and to undertake the discipline of the clergy.  Bill after bill struck hard and home on the privileges of the recreant clergy.  The aged Bishop of Rochester complained to the lords that in the lower house the cry was nothing but “Down with the church.”  Yet, so frightful were the abuses that called for radical reform, that even persons who most disapprove of the reformation will not at the present time wonder at their enactment, or disapprove of their severity.  The king treated the bishops, when they remonstrated, with the most contemptuous disrespect.  Archbishop Cranmer now adopted a singular expedient.  He advised Henry to invite expressions from all the chief learned authorities throughout Europe as to the right of the pope to grant him a dispensation of dissolution of his marriage.  The English universities, to escape imputations of treasons and to avoid exciting Henry’s wrath, gave replies such as would please him, that of Oxford being, however, the more decided of the two.  Most of the continental authorities declined to pronounce any dictum as to the powers of the pope.

The Fall of the Great Chancellor

The fall of Wolsey was at hand.  His enemies accused him of treason to the constitution by violating a law of the realm.  He had acted as papal legate within the realm.  The parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the Anglican Church, under a penalty of premunire.  Henry did not feel himself called on to shield his great minister, although the guilt extended to all who had recognised Wolsey in the capacity of papal legate.  Indeed, it extended to the archbishops, bishops, the privy council, the two houses of parliament, and indirectly to the nation itself.  The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey’s position to commit those acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people.  The overflow of England’s last ecclesiastical minister was to teach them that the privileges they had abused were at an end.

In February, 1531, Henry assumed the title which was to occasion such momentous consequences, of “Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England.”  The clergy were compelled to assent.  Further serious steps marked the great breach with Rome.  The annates, or first fruits, were abolished.  Ever since the crusades a practice had existed in all the churches of Europe that bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to the pope one year’s income.  This impressive impost was not abrogated.  It was a sign of the parting of the ways.