Henry VIII’s break with Rome: Brexit before Brexit? – The Property Chronicle
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Henry VIII’s break with Rome: Brexit before Brexit?

The Historian

In 1533-4, Henry VIII rejected the Pope’s authority and broke away from the Church of Rome, declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. This country thus detached itself from a large supra-national institution that had exercised a powerful influence over its affairs, and the move proved extremely controversial.  It was a decisive moment, it inspired passionate feelings both for and against, and it was to have profound implications for many years thereafter.  Does this scenario sound familiar?  Well, there were some strong analogies between Brexit and Henry’s break with Rome; and constitutionally there is an interesting connection between the two.

The break with Rome was accomplished by two acts of Parliament: the Act of Appeals (1533) and the Act of Supremacy (1534).  The preamble to the former stated that ‘this realm of England is an empire…, governed by one supreme head and king’, who was endowed with ‘plenary, whole and entire power, … without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates of the world’.  In other words, England was a sovereign entity over which ‘foreign princes or potentates’ had no jurisdiction.  No English subject could therefore appeal to the external authority of the Pope.  This was underlined the following year in the Act of Supremacy, which recognised Henry as ‘the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England’.

It is important to note that the break from the Church of Rome was not imposed by royal fiat.  However much we might associate the image of Henry VIII with bombastic self-assertion, the crucial steps were implemented not by royal proclamation but by acts of Parliament.  Like all such acts – or statutes as they are often called – they had to receive the assent of the House of Lords and the House of Commons as well as the monarch in order to be valid.  The reign of Henry VIII demonstrated a principle that was to be of the utmost significance for English constitutional history thereafter: acts of Parliament were the highest form of human positive law in this country and their scope and powers were effectively unlimited.






The Historian

About David L. Smith

David L. Smith has been a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, since 1988 and Director of Studies in History since 1992. His books include Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640-1649 (1994), A History of the Modern British Isles, 1603-1707: The Double Crown (1998), The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689 (1999), and (with Patrick Little) Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (2007). He has also edited two series of A-level History textbooks for Cambridge University Press.

Articles by David L. Smith

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