Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/88

 doctrines. They asserted the doctrine of transubstantiation, that after consecration the bread and wine were no longer bread and wine, the celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession to a priest, and private masses for the dead. We see the king's religious opinions from the wish expressed in his will as Mr. Southey reminds us. Henry requested "That a convenient altar be set up, honourably furnished with all things requisite, for daily masses to be said perpetually for his soul while the world should endure."

Facts such as these show that the king was not a Protestant. No; the king was not particularly scrupulous over any shade of religious opinion. What he rigidly insisted on was his own supremacy in place of the Pope's—supremacy over both things spiritual and things temporal in his kingdom, and as long as he was obeyed on this particular point, as long as he was looked upon as the Supreme Head, he cared but little for anything else.

Now I must pass on to speak of the chief events of the Reformation. I shall have to give a hasty survey of facts extending to the death of Queen Elizabeth, for the Reformation certainly was not completed in England before that time.

It was in the year 1527 that Henry first began to look for the divorce, and although the clergy opposed this as a whole, yet they were, most of them, anxious to destroy the Pope's assumption over England. The first thing done to show the nation's determination in this object was the passing of an Act of Parliament, 1530, to abolish payment of money to Rome. Henry married Anne Boleyn 1533. In answer to the Pope's command that the king should return to his