Reformation Parliament

There were six main reasons as to why they started meeting:

1. Anger at the mass amounts of money being paid to Thomas Wolsey when he was Chief Minister

2. The greed of the church when dealing with the poor. They took such families livestock as payment for burial fees; MPs said this caused unnecessary poverty

3. Priests used grazing land on behalf of Abbots and Bishops and banned access to the poor

4. Abbots and Priors were involved in the wool and cloth trade making them competition to non-churchmen such as MPs and others lost out because they were related to MPs showered involved in this trade

5. Many Abbots and Priests lived like lords whilst those around them lived in poverty. Church houses that were provided for the poor were just left to go to ruin and this was against the teachings of the Church and the Bible

6. Many bishops and priests were non-resident so could not attend to their flock

• Benefit of Clergy meant they were tried on Church Law in Church courts and could 'claim' on Benefit of Clergy
• Abolished benefit of clergy for petty treason and murder

• Annates are taxes that new bishops etc had to pay to the Pope
• Spring 1532, suspended these payments and any papal retaliation was to be ignored
• Winter 1534, abolished them totally
• Bishops now had to elected by Deans and Chapters acting on Royal Intentions

• Wanted to limit Pluralism because priests weren't living up to expectations of the Church
• Tries to make Pluralism illegal
• Gives the Crown more power