What happened in England was not so much the Reformation as it was Henry VIII inflicting his will upon the people. He totally destroyed the role of charity in the country.
Before Henry's actions to secure a new wife for himself, the government played no role in caring for the poor and needy. The people did it themselves because the Church encouraged them to.
After Henry ransacked the monasteries, guess where all the poor went? To London.
By the time of Elizabeth so many poor beggars were moving to London that Parliament passed a series of poor laws - two consequences of begging were having a hole drilled through the beggar's ear and of course hanging.
No, England was a much kinder nation when the people controlled their own lives without the assistance of a monarch plying his own will.
Very important points. Charity is such a good thing — it needs to be kept out of the hands of the government, because the government is inherently centered upon its own self-interest, which is inimical to the idea of charity. Churches, neighborhood groups, benevolent societies — the needy can and should be helped by caring people. But government only helps government.
You ignore the effects of the enclosures for the depopulating the country. When lords discovered they could make more money selling wool to Belgian mills than they could raising foodstuffs from individual tenant plots they enclosed their lands, ousted most of the tenants and raised sheep. As to the Anglican Chuch and the Reformation, while the Anglicans do not have the panoply of saints the Romans do, they do celebrate saints by name. In fact their celebration of Francis Bernadone rivals any seen in Italy.The purifying of the Anglican Church was attempted by Knox and his followers and by the Puritan parlimentarians. Its success was modest in the end.