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The Reformation
The Reform of King Edward
At long last, the reformers had their chance. By the mid-1540s, the stakes had been raised considerably. John Calvin was at work in Geneva, though his influence was yet to be felt in England. The radicalism of the Anabaptists continued to affect everyone, and Münster was still a recent memory. Fewer and fewer people continued to hope that somehow the Catholics and the Protestants could be reconciled at a Church council and the schism within Christianity be healed. Increasingly, the stakes were all or nothing; triumph or annihilation within a given country. And England was very much up for grabs.
The Protestants on the Continent were reeling under the Imperial offensive, and a number of them came to England during these years. The reform movement surged ahead, and it was during Edward's reign that religious reform in England became politicized. The king was still a boy, and family and faction always became prominent in such circumstances. The reformers pressed for action, and the safest recourse was to Parliament, which itself was becoming more interested in the issue of reform.
The first really significant step came in 1549 with the issuance in 1549 of the first Prayer Book of the Church of England. The Prayer Book became a center of controversy in the English Reformation, for this is where the details of Church ritual were laid out. For example, should the ceremony of the Lord's Supper refer to the real presence of Christ in the wine and bread? Or, at the other extreme, should the ceremony be no more than a memorial service, with no significance to the wine and bread at all? Or any of a myriad of variations between? There were scores of such issues, and any position taken was bound to offend someone.
The movement toward a stronger and more explicitly Protestant position continued throughout Edward's reign (1547-1553), though Edward himself did little more than lend his name and support to the initiatives of others. It climaxed in the issuance of the Forty-Two Articles in 1553, a strongly Protestant statement of belief that many felt went too far. By this time, a number of Calvinists had come to England, including Martin Bucer. From the latter part of Edward's reign, Lutheran influence waned while Calvinist influence increased.
And then, in that very year, Edward VI died. The next eligible claimant to the crown was Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, and raised to be steadfastly Catholic.