Reformation

On 30 August 1535, Pope Paul III issued a papal bull excommunicating King Henry VIII for the Acts of Supremacy, but immediately suspended it. Rome learned that spiritual thunderbolts were useless without continental armies willing to enforce them.

On 23 March 1540, Waltham Abbey surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners - the last of England's nearly 900 monasteries to fall. Five years of institutional seizure, centuries of religious life, ended with a signature and a pension.