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| 1515 |
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| Thomas Wolsey (1475?–1530), the king's favorite, cardinal and chancellor, papal legate. | 1 |
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| 1520, June 7 |
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| Meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I of France near Calais (Field of the Cloth of Gold). | 2 |
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| 1521 |
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| Henry wrote the Assertion of the Seven Sacraments in reply to Luther, and received the title Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X. | 3 |
| After the battle of Pavia (See 1521–29), the relations between Henry and the emperor, were strained by Charles V's refusal to support Henry's plan to divide France, and then by England's covert support for the League of Cognac. | 4 |
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| 1527 |
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| Henry, desiring to marry Anne Boleyn and claiming that Catherine's failure to produce a male heir was God's punishment for his marriage to his brother's widow (Lev. 18:16, 20:21), appealed to Rome for a divorce. Papal delays and Wolsey's hesitations enraged Henry, who blamed Wolsey and deprived him of the great seal (1529). Henry then appointed Sir Thomas More as Lord Chancellor. | 5 |
| Religious Background. Although the Lollard movement (See c. 1376), which stressed Bible study and attacked clerical wealth, attracted working-class people in southern England and the Midlands, the number of followers was always small. Recent scholarship has shown that traditional Catholicism exerted an extremely strong hold on the loyalty of the people. The teachings of Christianity were graphically represented in the liturgy, constantly reiterated in sermons, enacted in plays, and carved and printed on the walls and windows of parish churches. That is to say, no substantial gulf existed between the religion of the clergy, the educated elite, and the broad mass of the English people. The Reformation in England was an act of state. When Henry VIII's marital difficulties became inextricably tied to domestic and then to international politics, religious schism resulted. | 6 |
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| 1529–36 |
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| The Reformation Parliament was summoned to reform the Church, to give the appearance of broad national support for the king's divorce, and thus to pressure Pope Clement to grant the divorce. Though there is no evidence of direct royal intervention in elections, ties to the court constituted the most important factor in the elections of the knights of the shires. | 7 |
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| 1533, Jan. 25 |
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| Anne Boleyn's pregnancy and the prospect of an heir compelled Henry to hurry; he and Anne secretly married. | 8 |
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| 1533, Feb |
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| Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals, which declared that the king possessed full and sovereign power to yield justice to his subjects on any matter without the restraint of any foreign prince (the pope) or any domestic group (the clergy). This act, intended to halt Catherine's appeal to Rome and to pressure the papacy to grant the annulment (divorce), made it possible for an English court to resolve the matter and, by giving the king control of justice, marked a decisive moment in the development of a national state. Nevertheless, Henry sought, and Pope Clement approved in March 1533, the bulls appointing Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) archbishop of Canterbury; the customary payment of 10,000 marks was remitted to Rome. | 9 |
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| May 23, 1533 |
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| Cranmer held a secret court that declared Henry's marriage to Catherine null and void. | 10 |
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| May 28, 1533 |
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| Cranmer pronounced Henry's secret marriage to Anne valid. | 11 |
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| June 1, 1533 |
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| Anne Boleyn crowned queen of England. | 12 |
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| 1534 |
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| ACT OF SUPREMACY, appointing the king and his successors Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England. This may be taken as the decisive moment of the English Reformation. The break with Rome had political and personal origins; at first there were no real differences in dogma and liturgy. Refusal to take the oath of supremacy was made high treason, under which vote Sir Thomas More was condemned and beheaded (1535). | 13 |
| Thomas Cromwell (1485?–1540), a former servant of Wolsey and his successor in the favor of the king, now viceregent in matters relating to the Church in England, issued a commission for the inspection of monasteries. | 14 |
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| 1536–1539 |
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| Dissolution of the monasteries on the basis of rigged evidence, the smaller ones in 1536, the larger ones in 1539, ended a millennium of monastic cultural influence on English life. The lands sold, eventually bringing into being a powerful gentry class. | 15 |
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