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While many “papists” clung to the old beliefs in private, I’m sure the book agrees that the Roman church had become corrupt, immoral, and was badly in need of reform (especially the monastaries). On the other hand, Henry scarcely acted out out of anything but greed and personal animus against the Pope. The sale of monastic properties brought in the equivalent of millions of dollars in modern terms which Henry used to finane his military ambitions and the Court of Augmentations under Richard Rich provided another opportunitiy for corrupt alliances.

Without a doubt, the dissolutions and massive redistribution of wealth and power under Henry VIII was perhaps the most revolutionary events in English history. And “poor” Thomas Cromwell who project-managed it for the King ended up losing his head for his trouble!

The English church was very remote from Rome - you could figure about a month to get to Rome from London, at best. And the English church was not particularly corrupt - certainly not along the lines of the Borgias etc. While theoretically answerable to the Pope, it had its own traditions, its own hierarchy, its own governance, and its own beautiful artistic and musical traditions.

Just one example - Sarum Chant, which unlike Gregorian is metrical (typically triple time) and characterised by what a musical historian of the time called the "contenance Anglais." Here is a very late example by the great Thomas Tallis - who remained Catholic despite persecution, and along with his fellow-Catholic, student, and successor William Byrd ("our Fenix") was protected by Queen Elizabeth for the sake of their glorious music. Here, Renaissance polyphony is interspersed with the Sarum Chant:

Audivi Vocem de Caelo ("I heard a voice from Heaven")

Henry did not wish to change anything other than placing himself as head of the Church in England, and looting the substantial assets of the monasteries to fund his inflationary policies and reward his friends. It was his son Edward, a child ruled by radical Protestant advisors, who oversaw the destruction of the Church and all its treasures: liturgical, musical, artistic.

The unintended consequence that really hurt was that the Church had been funding all the hospitals, orphans' homes, pilgrims' refuges, and poor relief. Only after the English belatedly realized that they had cut loose all the suffering in the realm to fend for themselves, did stopgaps like the Poor Laws and workhouses come into being. They didn't work nearly as well.

Eamon Duffy (Former president of Magdalene College and member of Pontifical Historical Commission, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge) and provides the following on the Roman church becoming more like the empire in which it was found as a result of state adoption of (an progressively deformed) version of Christianity:

The conversion of Constantine had propelled the Bishops of Rome into the heart of the Roman establishment...They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s...

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule…

Self-consciously, the popes began to model their actions and their style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. — Eamon Duffy “Saints and Sinners”, p. 37,38