How protestant was England by the death of Henry VIII?

This question can be broken down and judged upon several different criteria. These are whether England was legally protestant, i.e. whether the church as an establishment had severed its ties with the Papacy, whether England was doctrinally reformed, which depended on the rejection of aspects of religious worship which were now considered heretical, and lastly whether the population of England could be considered to believe in the doctrine of the new church. England was clearly legally reformed by the death of Henry VIII. Key parliamentary legislation ended all Papal privileges enjoyed in England, notably financial jurisdiction through acts such as the Act of First Fruit and Tenths and legal jurisdiction through the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Furthermore, the Dissolution of the monasteries, which was completed in 1539, destroyed a Catholic institution which meant that the administration of the Church in England was cosmetically Protestant. Doctrinally however, England could still be considered Catholic because it continued to observe many Catholic doctrines which were not Protestant, such as transubstantiation and a belief in the real presence of the Eucharist. In addition, England could be considered still a Catholic country because its population was still ingrained with a belief in the Catholic doctrine, shown by both the evidence of wills and popular uprisings under Henry VIII against the reformation such as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Therefore, whilst the English Church may have been Protestant in an administrative sense upon the death of Henry VIII, in doctrine and regarding the belief of the English people it was not.

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Answered by Oliver D. History tutor

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