How Protestant was England by the time Henry VIII died?

by albull

After Henry died, Edward's reign was largely protestant but then Mary brought it back to Catholic and then under Elizabeth the country stabilised as protestant. A crazy time for religion in England but how did things fare by the time Henry died?

[deleted]

There's no hard facts or numbers, but what we do know is that Catholicism was violently suppressed. Most of the gothic ruins of abbeys, churches and cathedrals in England are results of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, where they were dissolved, sacked and destroyed. Catholic doctrine was censored and eventually the bible itself was restricted to only the nobility.

Anyone openly opposing the Church of England was executed, so all that can be really said is that whilst English Catholicism continued, it was always behind closed doors.

This changed through Bloody Mary's reign, which some view as a white terror. Elizabeth I cemented the kingdom as a tolerant Protestant nation, but also painted the Pope as an enemy after he issued a Papal Bull naming her a usurper and encouraging any Catholic to kill her.