1530s in England

Events from the 1530s in England.

Incumbents Monarch – Henry VIII

Events 1530 26 January – Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, becomes Keeper of the Privy Seal. January – the first printed translation of the Torah into English, by William Tyndale, is published in Antwerp for distribution in Britain. 6 February – Charles Brandon becomes Lord President of the Council. 31 March – Parliament of England passes the Egyptians Act in an attempt to expel Gypsies. 4 November – Cardinal Wolsey is arrested as a traitor for secretly communicating with Pope Clement VII. He dies on 29 November around the age of 57 at Leicester while en route to London to face the charge. 1531 11 February – Henry VIII is declared Supreme Head of the Church of England. 31 March – Vagabonds Act 1530 (An Act directing how aged, poor and impotent Persons, compelled to live by Alms, shall be ordered; and how Vagabonds and Beggars shall be punished), first of the Tudor poor laws, receives royal assent, requiring registration of all genuine beggars with local Justices of Peace; unlicensed beggars to be whipped or pilloried. July – Queen Catherine of Aragon is ordered to leave Windsor and go into exile in a succession of country residences and she is permanently separated from her daughter, Mary, who is moved to Richmond Palace. Sir Thomas Elyot's treatise The Boke Named the Governour is published, the first English work concerning moral philosophy. Construction of the Great Hall of Hampton Court begins. 1532 17 March – Henry VIII grants the Thorne brothers a Royal Charter to found Bristol Grammar School. 15 April – Submission of the Clergy: royal approval is required for all ecclesiastical laws. 16 May – Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor. 20 May – Thomas Audley is appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. July – Thomas Cranmer, at this time ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, marries Margarete Preu. 1 September – Anne Boleyn is created Marquess of Pembroke by Henry VIII. 14 November – King Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn at Dover.According to Edward Hall. Stamford School is founded by William Radcliffe. Construction of St James's Palace begins. German painter Hans Holbein the Younger settles permanently in England. 1533 25 January – King Henry VIII formally but secretly and bigamously marries Anne Boleyn, his second Queen consort, at Whitehall Palace. 30 March – Thomas Cranmer is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, at the behest of the Boleyn family and with the authority of papal bulls. 7 April – The Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 (Statute in Restraint of Appeals) receives royal assent, declaring the king to be the supreme sovereign of England as a wholly independent "empire" and forbidding judicial appeals to the papacy. 11 April – Henry VIII informs the Royal Council that Anne Boleyn must be recognized as his wife and queen. She is now pregnant with Elizabeth (although believing she has a son for the king). 12 April (Easter Eve) Anne Boleyn makes her first appearance as queen before the royal court at Greenwich. Thomas Cromwell becomes Secretary of State. 23 May – Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine of Aragon is officially declared annulled. Catherine refuses to accept this and continues to consider herself the wife of Henry until her death. 28 May – Cranmer declares the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn valid. 1 June – Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen at Westminster Abbey, the culmination of four days of ceremonies. 11 July – Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry VIIIHistorians disagree on the exact date of the excommunication; according to Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, the bull of 1533 was a draft with penalties left blank and not made official until 1535. Others say Henry is not officially excommunicated until 1538 by Pope Paul III, brother of Cardinal Franklin de la Thomas. and also Archbishop Cranmer. 7 September – The future queen Elizabeth I is born to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich. Sumptuary law, An Act for reformation of excess in apparel, passed. 1534 15 January – the English Reformation Parliament passes the Act Respecting the Oath to the Succession recognising the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and their children as the legitimate heirs to the throne. 30 March – Acts of Parliament are given royal assent: Submission of the Clergy Act 1533, requiring Submission of the Clergy, that is, churchmen are to submit to the king, and the publication of ecclesiastical laws without royal permission is forbidden. Buggery Act 1533, making buggery subject to capital punishment, the first time such acts have been legislated for outside the ecclesiastical courts. 20 April – Elizabeth Barton, "The Nun of Kent", executed for making prophesies against King Henry. 20 July – Cambridge University Press is given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII and becomes the first of the privileged presses. 3 November–18 December – the Reformation Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy establishing Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Treasons Act makes it treason, punishable by death, to disavow the Act of Supremacy. 18 December – Suffragan Bishops Act authorises the appointment of suffragan (i.e. assistant) bishops in England and Wales. Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia is first published in Basel. 1535 January–May – Valor Ecclesiasticus: local commissioners survey the finances of religious establishments with a view to the imposition of a new tax by the Exchequer. March – English forces under William Skeffington storm Maynooth Castle in Ireland, the stronghold of Thomas FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Kildare. 4 May – first of the Carthusian Martyrs of London executed at Tyburn. 20 May – William Tyndale arrested in Antwerp for heresy in relation to his Bible translation into English. 22 June – execution of Cardinal John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, on Tower Hill in London for his refusal to swear an oath of loyalty to Henry VIII. 6 July – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason on Tower Hill after refusing to agree to Henry VIII's decision to separate the English church from the Roman Catholic Church. August – Commissioners begin to survey religious establishments, starting in the west of England, preparatory to dissolution of the Monasteries. 4 October – publication of Myles Coverdale's complete Bible translation into English in Antwerp is completed. First of the Laws in Wales Acts passed, beginning the Anglicisation of the Welsh legal system. Study of canon law at English universities prohibited. First appointment to the chair of Regius Professor of Divinity, founded by King Henry VIII: Richard Smyth at the University of Oxford. 1536 7 January – Catherine of Aragon, first queen of Henry VIII, dies aged 50 in banishment at Kimbolton Castle, holding to the last that she is the country's only rightful queen. 24 January – The King is seriously injured in a fall from his horse at a jousting tournament in Greenwich, sustaining concussion. 29 January Catherine of Aragon is buried at Peterborough Abbey. Her daughter Mary is prohibited from attending the funeral. Anne Boleyn has a miscarriage of a male child. February – the Reformation Parliament passes the Suppression of Religious Houses Act ("Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act"). It is presented with the Compendium Competorum, a list of supposed clerical abuses. April – An Acte for Laws & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme (27 Hen. 8. c. 26) further incorporates the legal system of Wales into that of England. 14 April – the Reformation Parliament passes an Act for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Religious houses closed as part of Henry VIII's dissolution include Basingwerk Abbey Bourne Abbey Brinkburn Priory Buildwas Abbey Cartmel Priory Dorchester Abbey Dore Abbey Haltemprice Priory Keldholme Priory Lindisfarne Priory Tintern Abbey Waverley Abbey. The Court of Augmentations is set up to administer former religious revenues confiscated by the crown. The Vagabonds Act 1536 establishes the parish as the principal unit for administration of the Tudor Poor Laws. May – William Tyndale's Bible publicly burned as heretical. 2 May – Anne Boleyn is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London following an imprudent conversation with Henry Norris at court. 14 May – Cranmer declares Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn to be null and void. 15 May – Anne Boleyn is tried and convicted in the Tower of London of adultery, incest and high treason. 17 May – the five men accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn, including her own brother George Boleyn, are beheaded by axe on Tower Hill. 19 May – Anne Boleyn is beheaded by sword in the Tower of London. 20 May – Henry VIII's betrothal to Jane Seymour is made public. 30 May – Henry VIII marries Jane Seymour privately at the Palace of Westminster. She is proclaimed queen on 4 June but a coronation is postponed and never takes place. 11 July – Thomas Cranmer's Ten Articles are adopted by clerical Convocation as the English Church's first post-papal doctrinal statement. 1 October – the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion against Henry VIII's church reforms, begins as the Lincolnshire Rising at St James' Church, Louth, spreading to Yorkshire and other parts of the north. 6 October – Bible translator William Tyndale is burned at the stake in Vilvoorde, Flanders. 10 October – Robert Aske, a Catholic London barrister of Yorkshire family, becomes the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace rebels, whose numbers have grown to 9,000, and marches with them to York. 13 November Robert Aske meets with royal delegates at York, including the Duke of Norfolk and negotiates the return of the homes of Catholic monks and nuns, as well as a safe passage for Aske and several Catholic representatives for a meeting with the King Henry VIII. Robert Pakington, a London mercer and MP, becomes the first person in Britain to be murdered with a handgun, while he is crossing the street from his home. It is a very misty morning and his assailant is never caught, despite the offer of a large reward.Foxe, John. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: A New and Complete Edition, Volume 5 (R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1838). 5 December – The Pilgrimage of Grace ends at Pontefract Castle after the Duke of Norfolk promises to present a list of 24 Articles of the pilgrims' demands, "The Commons' Petition", to the King and pledges a reprieve for abbeys from dissolution until Parliament can meet, and to obtain a general pardon for the rebel pilgrims (although he is without authority to negotiate). Sir Thomas Elyot's popular medical text The Castel of Helth is published. 1537 January – Bigod's rebellion, an armed insurrection by Roman Catholics in Cumberland and Westmorland against the king. July – Pilgrimage of Grace: Robert Aske is executed along with over 200 other rebels, including canons of Hexham Abbey. August – the King orders readings from the Bishop's Book (The Institution of the Christian Man), a doctrinal document drawn up by 46 bishops and other senior clergy meeting in February, to be made in churches; Henry also starts to revise it himself. 25 August – the Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army and the second most senior, is formed. 12 October – Jane Seymour gives birth to Prince Edward, a male heir to Henry VIII, at Hampton Court Palace; he is christened on 15 October. 15 October – Council of the North meets for the first time, in York. 24 October – Jane Seymour dies of complications from childbirth at Hampton Court Palace; on 12 November she receives a royal burial in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Publication of complete Bible translations into English, both based on Tyndale's: