Decisions by archbishops in testamentary, matrimonial, and
marriage annulment matters were appealable to the Court of
Chancery instead of to the pope. The clergy's canons were subject
to the King's approval. The control of the church added to the
powers of the Crown to summon and dissolve Parliament, coin money,
create peers [members of the House of Lords who received
individual writs of summons to Parliament], pardon criminals,
order the arrest of dangerous persons without customary process of
law in times of likely insurrection, tax and call men to arms
without the consent of Parliament if the country were threatened
with invasion.
About 1550 there began indictments and executions for
witchcraftery which lasted for about a century. One of the reasons
for suspecting a woman to be a witch was that she lived alone,
which was very unusual.
Henry ordered all alien Anabaptists, who denied the validity of
infant baptism, to leave the realm.
In Switzerland, Theophrastus Paracelsus, an astrologer and
alchemist who later became a physician, did not believe that humor
imbalance caused disease nor in treatment by blood-letting or
purging. He believed that there were external causes of disease,
e.g. toxic matter in food, contagion, defective physical or mental
constitution, cosmic influences differing with climate and
country, or affliction sent Providence. He urged that wounds be
kept clean rather than given poultices.
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