r desired. However, by a series of
legislative enactments, the Church of England, in 1534, was emancipated
from the superiority of the Church of Rome; the papal authority was
wholly abolished within the realm; Henry was legally recognised as the
supreme head of the Church of England; the power of the spiritual
aristocracy was broken and the whole body of the clergy humbled; the
monasteries were suppressed; the great wealth and vast territorial
possessions of the Church became the prey of the Crown, only to be
dissipated in lavish grants to greedy courtiers: and thus the
foundations were laid for greater changes in both Church and State than
those who promoted such measures ever dreamed of.

From its inception the Church of England comprised two opposing and
apparently irreconcilable elements, namely, those whose sympathies and
leanings were toward the forms, dogmas and doctrines of Roman
Catholicism, and those whose sympathies and leanings were toward the
forms, dogmas and doctrines of the German and Swiss Reformers. Of
religious toleration both parties were probably equally intolerant. That
the State was directly concerned with the religious beliefs of the
people, hence was justified in enforcing conformity to the Church as by
law established, seems to have been unquestioningly accepted by both.
The one desired to make use of the temporal power to prevent, the other
to promote, further changes in Church government, worship and doctrine.
The result was a compromise, which, like most compromises, satisfied the
more logical and consistent of neither party. As ultimately
established, in the reign of Elizabeth, the Church of England occupied
a sort of middle position between the Church of Rome and the Reformed
Churches of the Continent; and the attempt to enforce conformity to its
demands resulted in the separation from it of the extremists of both
sections. On the one hand, the English Roman Catholics became a distinct
and persecuted religious body, whose members were generally regarded,
despite repeated evidence to the contrary, as necessarily enemies of
England. On the other, despairing of further changes in the direction
they desired, a large number of the extreme Protestants separated
themselves from the National Church--though by so doing they rendered
themselves liable to be accused not only of heresy, but of high treason,
and to suffer death--and formed themselves into different bodies of
Separatists or Independents