Реферат: Henry Viii 2 Essay Research Paper Henry

severest penalties, such doctrines as transubstantiation, Communion

under one kind, auricular confession, and the celibacy of the clergy.

Under this act offenders were sent to the stake for their Protestantism just

as ruthlessly as the aged Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was attainted

by Parliament and eventually beheaded, simply because Henry was

irritated by the denunciations of her son Cardinal Pole. Neither was the

king less cruel towards those who were nearest to him. Anne Boleyn and

Catherine Howard, his second and fifth wives, perished on the scaffold,

but their whilom lord only paraded his indifference regarding the fate to

which he had condemned them. On 30 July, 1540, of six victims who

were dragged to Smithfield, three were Reformers burnt for heretical

doctrine, and the other three Catholics, hanged and quartered for denying

the king’s supremacy. Of all the numerous miserable beings whom Henry

sent to execution, Cromwell, perhaps, is the only one who fully deserved

his fate. Looking at the last fifteen years of Henry’s life, it is hard to find

one single feature which does not evoke repulsion, and the attempts made

by some writers to whitewash his misdeeds only give proof of the

extraordinary prejudice with which they approach the subject. Henry’s

cruelties continued to the last, and so likewise did his inconsistencies. One

of the last measures of confiscation of his reign was an act of suppression

of chantries, but Henry by his last will and testament established what

were practically chantries to have Masses said for his own sou