The English Reformation Parliament, which sat from 3 November 1529 to 14 April 1536, was the

English Parliament The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England from the 13th century until 1707 when it was replaced by the Parliament of Great Britain. Parliament evolved from the great council of bishops and peers that advised t ...

that passed the major pieces of

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to ...

leading to the Break with Rome and establishment of the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

. In Scotland, the 1560 Parliament had a similar role. Sitting in the reign of King Henry VIII of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, the Reformation Parliament was the first to deal with major religious legislation, much of it orchestrated by

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false char ...

Background

After the failure of Cardinal Wolsey to win the Court of Blackfriars, Henry VIII was frustrated. He was left without a male heir, and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, was considered to be past child-bearing age. In 1529, Henry opened what would later become known as the English Reformation Parliament. It opened in the month of October and ran until December 1529 without forming a coherent plan on what to do. Because of this, Henry used it to discredit Wolsey. Soon after this Henry turned his attentions to the church itself.

Acts

The major pieces of legislation from the Reformation Parliament included:

1529 Clergy legal privilege removed

An Act was passed to prevent the Clergy from being subject to separate canonical courts. Instead, they were now to be trialled in the same way as everybody else in England was and not be looked upon favourably by the courts.

1530 Praemunire charges reinstated

The Parliament accepted the reinstatement of the charge named Praemunire where individuals could be convicted of a crime for appealing to any power outside of the realm for resolution of a situation within England. In particular, the law was aimed at those recognising the Pope's authority. The law gave leave that charges could be dropped if fines of £118,000 were paid.

1532 Rome deprived of a portion of Annates normally remitted

The session of 1532 saw plan and purpose that had not been evident in earlier sessions. GR Elton 1955 ''England under the Tudors'' p 130. The first Act of

Annates Annates ( or ; la, annatae, from ', "year") were a payment from the recipient of an ecclesiastical benefice to the ordaining authorities. Eventually, they consisted of half or the whole of the first year's profits of a benefice; after the appr ...

(the Act in Conditional Restraint of Annates) was passed allowing only 5% of the money normally remitted to Rome. Annates were monies (church taxes effectively) that were collected in England and sent to Rome. They were levied on any diocese by Rome as payment in return for the nomination and papal authorization for the consecration of a bishop. One third of the first year's revenues from the particular

diocese In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associa ...

went to Rome. The king passed legislation threatening to deprive the Pope of these revenues. During this year even more intensive work was done to try to get Pope Clement to agree to the divorce Henry required. The Parliament threatened that if Henry did not get his

annulment Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning al ...

/divorce within a year, then all payments to Rome would be stopped. The

anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...

Act titled Supplication Against the Ordinaries was also passed.

1533 All appeals to Rome, religious or otherwise forbidden

The Annates threat was carried out but not yet legalised by Parliament. Cromwell's

Act in Restraint of Appeals The Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 (24 Hen 8 c 12), also called the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, the Act of Appeals and The Act of Restraints in Appeals, was an Act of the Parliament of England. It was passed in the first week of April 1533 ...

was passed, preparing the way for further Praemunire charges against leading Catholic clergy and nobles who disagreed with the King's wish to divorce.

1534
Act Concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations The Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 ( 25 Hen 8 c 21), also known as the Act Concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations, is an Act of the Parliament of England. It was passed by the English Reformation Parliament in the early part of 1534 and ou ...

Payment of Peter's Pence (a tax collected annually from householders) to the See of Rome was abolished. The act also eradicated Pluralism in the clergy (the right to hold more than one parish) and forbade English clergy from attending religious assemblies abroad.

1534 Act of Succession

Declared Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's marriage invalid and

Mary Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

as the illegitimate product of this marriage. The Act of Succession secured the children of Henry and Anne Boleyn to which the whole nation had to swear an oath by. To reject the oath was made treasonous.

1534 Act of Supremacy; Annates reserved to the English Crown

The Second Act of

was passed, called the

Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates The Appointment of Bishops Act 1533 ( 25 Hen 8 c 20), also known as the Act Concerning Ecclesiastical Appointments and Absolute Restraint of Annates, is an Act of the Parliament of England. This Act remains partly in force in England and Wales a ...

. The annates were, along with the supremacy over the church in England, reserved to the crown, and the English crown now took all revenue charged for the appointment of bishops. The Act of First Fruits and Tenths transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. The

Treasons Act 1534 The Treasons Act 1534 ( 26 Hen. 8. c. 13) was an Act of the Parliament of England passed in 1534, during the reign of King Henry VIII. Background This Act was passed after the Act of Supremacy 1534, which made the king the " Only Head of the Ch ...

made it

high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

punishable by death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

to deny Royal Supremacy. The first

Act of Supremacy The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the En ...

(among other things) began the process by which the dissolution of monasteries was to be undertaken. It quickly followed the receipt of a survey called ''

Valor Ecclesiasticus The ''Valor Ecclesiasticus'' (Latin: "church valuation") was a survey of the finances of the church in England, Wales and English controlled parts of Ireland made in 1535 on the orders of Henry VIII. It was colloquially called the Kings books, a s ...

'', but applied only to religious houses with an income of less than two hundred pounds a year.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Reformation Parliament 1529 establishments in England 16th-century English parliaments Anglicanism History of Christianity in England English Reformation Protestantism in the United Kingdom Anti-Catholicism in England Anti-Catholicism in Wales History of the Church of England History of Catholicism in England Parliament of England Political history of England Religion and politics