Whatever Henry's deeper convictions and understanding
of the religious implications of his political reformation, the
manner in which he both played upon the anti-clerical feelings
of many in Parliament and destroyed the propertied influence of
the secular clergy and the monastaries was crucial to the advancement
of Protestant religious doctrines in later decades. At the time
of Henry's break from Rome, the English people were relatively
content with the teachings of the Catholic Church, even if they
sometimes resented occasionally hypocritical and worldly priests.
Men such as Cranmer who studied Lutheran and other Protestant teachings
and found them favorable were very rare in the kingdom, and most Englishmen
hated Protestant heresies as violently as did King Henry when he
had numbers of Protestants burned at the stake.
The competing religious tendencies between government
and people and between various factions within the government did
not work themselves out in favor of a more Protestant religious
establishment until after Henry's death. The most important aspect
of the Reformation during Henry's reign is precisely its confusion
and its openness to many different interpretations by historians.
Henry always considered himself "catholic" in his beliefs and wished
the Church of England to remain so as well: he hoped to find a Via Media, or
"Middle Way" between what he considered to be the extremes of both
Roman Catholicism–with its popes and devotions to the Virgin Mary
and the saints–and heretical Protestantism, which denied the truth
of Transubstantiation and the validity of other sacraments and
which tended to de-emphasize the importance or necessity of a rigidly
hierarchical, ordained priesthood in the Christian Church.
While he was king, Henry fulfilled the role of Supreme
Head on Earth of the Church of England with ruthless success, but
his desires to uphold rigidly most of Catholic orthodoxy was not
long championed by the majority of Parliament or by the effective
will of future English monarchs.
