A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689: From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VIIGardiner, Samuel Rawson
History
A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689: From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VII
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson
Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- History -- Outlines, syllabi, etc.
6. =The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536.=--Before the end of =1536=
there was a new queen. Henry became tired of Anne, as he had been
tired of Catharine, and on a series of monstrous charges, so
monstrous as to be hardly credible, he had her tried and executed.
Her unpardonable crime was probably that her only living child was a
daughter, and not a son. Ten days after Anne's death Henry married a
third wife, Jane Seymour. As Catharine was now dead, there could be
no doubt of the legitimacy of Jane's offspring, but to make
assurance doubly sure, a new Parliament passed an Act settling the
succession on Jane's children, and declaring both Mary and Elizabeth
illegitimate.
7. =The Ten Articles. 1536.=--It is probable that when Henry took
the title of Supreme Head he intended to maintain the doctrines and
practices of the Church exactly as he found them. In =1536= the
clergy were crying out not merely against attacks on their faith,
but against the ribaldry with which these attacks were often
conducted. One assailant, for instance, declared the oil used in
extreme unction to be no more than the Bishop of Rome's grease or
butter, and another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint
than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy
would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however,
and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be
accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and
practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which
were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of
the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the
circulation of a written document, in which the old doctrines were
stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made
easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism,
Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the
other four--those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme
Unction--were passed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles
in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of
Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an
equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed
of the mediæval Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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