#bcus for all the conflict hviii did avoid civil war. so...

[fideidefenswhore]

"The end of Anne Boleyn marks the more sinister transformation in Henry's kingship which underlay his solemn protestations of spiritual headship and godly reform. Nobody could now call him to account in the sacred or secular realm, and although it goes too far to say that his will was law, since some respect was still due to the judicial process, the legal travesty of Anne's trial and execution shows what his unchecked authority could achieve. It also illustrated the forces which Henry had unleashed by breaking with Rome. From this point onwards, political division would be matched by a level of ideological division previously unknown. Anne had been backed by those who supported religious reform and sneered at papal pretension; her fall was hastened by the efforts of those whose loyalties lay with Princess Mary and the Catholic past. Cromwell had slipped adeptly (and temporarily) from the former group to the latter, and such political reinventions were to remain common, but many continued to be fired by strong religious convictions, allowing religious division to exacerbate political tensions to a dangerous extent." (Henry VIII, Lucy Wooding)

+

"For all Henry's protestations of the contrary, the atmosphere at his court in his final years was almost as unsettled and claustrophobic as during the Wars of the Roses. John Husee answered the charge that he no longer sent reports of state affairs to the Lisles by explaining, 'I thereby might put myself in danger of my life...for there is divers here that hath been punished for reading and copying with publishing abroad of news; yea, some of them are at this hour in the Tower.' Civil order was maintained, but only because Henry sold the bulk of the confiscated monastic lands at rock-bottom prices to willing purchasers to create a whole new class of property-owners with a vested interest in the status quo. Spies and informers stalked the country, safe-conducts were needed to travel abroad and the posts were intercepted-- no one felt completely safe." (Hunting the Falcon, Fox&Guy).