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Church in 1533 he had to deal with the many Roman Catholics still living in England at the time. There were many monasteries scattered over the country, so Henry encouraged their persecution and repression. By 1536, he was ready for a more proactive approach to the Catholic problem, so he initiated a period in English history called the Reformation. It was so-called because it resulted in the dissolution of the monasteries so that the religious infrastructure was ‘reformed’ into one of Protestant values. In 1539, Henry ordered that the surviving monasteries be razed to the ground, signalling the end of Roman Catholicism and diverting total control of ecclesiastical affairs to the Crown.
    It would be an exaggeration to say that Henry VIII was a ruthless monarch. It is true that he chose execution as a means of dealing with certain members of court, including Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, but it was in part because of the law at the time. His chief minister Thomas Cromwell was a famous example of this.
    Cromwell had been instrumental in the downfall of Anne Boleyn, but he also arranged Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves following the untimely death of Jane Seymour. His marriage to Anne remained unconsummated because Henry couldn’t bring himself to arousal as she was so unattractive. Cromwell had shown Henry a portrait of Anne by Hans Holbein in which she had a pleasant appearance, so he agreed to the marriage. He was duly shocked when he met her in person, but had to go ahead with the betrothal for political reasons. Henry’s embarrassment eventually caught up with Cromwell, who was arrested on the charge of treason and executed as a traitor to the king.
    Anne Boleyn’s downfall began when she miscarried a son and heir to the throne. A number of male courtiers and aristocrats were arrested by Cromwell on the charge of having affairs with the queen. It is not clear whether the queen actually did commit adultery, but the king clearly wanted to end the marriage, so she went to trial without any prospect of being found innocent. She was executed along with the accused men, who included her own brother George Boleyn, accused of incest.
    Catherine Howard’s story was slightly different, in that she definitely did have an affair. Before she caught Henry’s eye she began a relationship with a courtier named Thomas Culpepper. That relationship continued behind Henry’s back. As rumours surfaced Catherine attempted to silence people by appointing them positions in court. Francis Dereham was among those shown favour and he turned out to have had an affair with Catherine before Henry had met her. Catherine, Culpepper and Dereham all went to the block.
    The fall of the axe was a common punishment in Tudor times, so Henry would have regarded it a reasonable sentence. He was omnipotent as monarch at that point in history, so any behaviour that saw him betrayed or embarrassed was punishable by death. His actions probably had greater impact on the many Roman Catholics in his kingdom. The dissolution of the monasteries and the reformations of the Church would have caused widespread upheaval across the land. In 1534, a Treason Act was passed that to deny Royal Supremacy over the Church was to commit high treason and so punishable by death.
    Thomas More, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, was a Roman Catholic who refused to acknowledge the king’s claim to being the head of the Church of England and paid with his life by the axe in 1535. Another victim of the new law was William Tyndale. He was a Protestant reformer who translated the Bible into English and distributed it under Henry’s nose. His punishment was partial strangulation followed by burning at the stake.
    These two examples demonstrate clearly that Henry showed equal distain towards both the Catholic and Protestant faiths, which is why his new Church of England was something of a hybrid of the two. Interestingly the faiths of his six wives had been a mix, so perhaps that