It was in defence of the
catholicity, as opposed to the nationalism, of the church that More and
Fisher went to the scaffold in 1535, and nearly the whole bench of
bishops was deprived in 1559. Henry VIII and Elizabeth were bent on
destroying the medieval discord between the Catholic church and the
national state. Catholicity had broken down in the state with the
decline of the empire, and was fast breaking down in the church;
nationalism had triumphed in the state, and was now to triumph in the
church.
In this respect the Reformation was the greatest achievement of the
national state, which emerged from the struggle with no rival for its
omnicompetent authority. Its despotism was the predominant
characteristic of the century, for the national state successfully rid
itself of the checks imposed, on the one hand by the Catholic church,
and on the other by the feudal franchises. But the supremacy was not
exclusively royal; parliament was the partner and accomplice of the
crown. It was the weapon which the Tudors employed to pass Acts of
Attainder against feudal magnates and Acts of Supremacy against the
church; and men complained that despotic authority had merely been
transferred from the pope to the king, and infallibility from the
church to parliament. "Parliament," wrote an Elizabethan statesman,
"establisheth forms of religion...."
But while Englishmen on the whole were pretty well agreed that foreign
jurisdiction was to be eliminated, and that Englishmen were to be
organized in one body, secular and spiritual, which might be called
indifferently a state-church or a church-state, there was much more
difference of opinion with regard to its theological complexion.
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