The Church of Mary Tudor

Eamon Duffy, David Loades

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317038221
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: British History

The reign of Queen Mary is popularly remembered largely for her re-introduction of Catholicism into England, and especially for the persecution of Protestants, memorably described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments. Mary's brief reign has often been treated as an aberrant interruption of England's march to triumphant Protestantism, a period of political sterility, foreign influence and religious repression rightly eclipsed by the happier reign of her more sympathetic half-sister, Elizabeth. In pursuit of a more balanced assessment of Mary's religious policies, this volume explores the theology, pastoral practice and ecclesiastical administration of the Church in England during her reign. Focusing on the neglected Catholic renaissance which she ushered in, the book traces its influences and emphases, its methods and its rationales - together the role of Philip's Spanish clergy and native English Catholics - in relation to the wider influence of the continental Counter Reformation and Mary's humanist learning. Measuring these issues against the reintroduction of papal authority into England, and the balance between persuasion and coercion used by the authorities to restore Catholic worship, the volume offers a more nuanced and balanced view of Mary's religious policies. Addressing such intriguing and under-researched matters from a variety of literary, political and theological perspectives, the essays in this volume cast new light, not only on Marian Catholicism, but also on the wider European religious picture.

Part I
The Process

CHAPTER ONE
The Marian Episcopate

David Loades

When Mary was recognized as queen, towards the end of July 1553, two bishoprics were vacant by the course of nature. John Scory of Rochester had been translated to Chichester in May 1552, and not replaced; and Arthur Bulkeley of Bangor had died on 14 March.¹ There was also confusion in the north east of England because the ancient Prince Bishopric of Durham had been abolished by statute in March 1553. In theory it had been replaced with two new dioceses, one in Durham and the other in Newcastle upon Tyne. However, neither of these had been filled; the temporalities had consequently never been granted, and the administration of the old see simply carried on as though nothing had happened.² Nevertheless, the queen was faced with 23 bishops, one of whom, John Hooper, held two sees, and all of whom had subscribed, willingly or unwillingly, to the Edwardian settlement.

Of these, four were swiftly deprived as having been unlawfully intruded into their sees. The reason for this was that their predecessors had been removed by royal commissions which the queen chose to regard as illegal. They had not in fact been illegal because they had operated under the terms of the Henrician Acts of Supremacy; and since Mary was doing the same in reversing their decisions, there was little logic in her position. Her lawyers knew this perfectly well, and found (or invented) procedural defects in order to justify her actions.³ George Day of Chichester, John Veysey of Exeter, Edmund Bonner of London and Stephen Gardiner of Winchester were all restored to their episcopal functions at once, without even waiting for the formal nullification of their deprivations. As a result John Scory of Chichester, Miles Coverdale of Exeter, Nicholas Ridley of London and John Ponet of Winchester found that they had never held those sees, and that all the legal dispositions which they had made during their incumbencies, including routine matters like the renewal of leases, were null and void. The consequent legal disputes went on for years.⁴ Cuthbert Tunstall was similarly recognized at once as Bishop of Durham, in spite of the fact that he had been deprived, and his see abolished. This caused a modicum of embarrassment, because when parliament was asked to repeal the statute of abolition in November 1553, it declined to do so, in spite of the fact that Tunstall was sitting in the House of Lords as bishop at the time.⁵ Mary therefore resorted to the dubious expedient of re-erecting the ancient see by Letters Patent in January 1554; and parliament was finally persuaded to tidy up the anomalies in April.⁶ For some reason Nicholas Heath, who had been deprived of Worcester in 1551, was not restored at once, and his supplanter, John Hooper, was not described as intruded. Hooper was deprived as a result of the visitation of March 1554, and Heath was then reinstated.

The queen’s purpose, of course, was to get rid of Protestant bishops as quickly as possible. Thomas Cranmer was effectively deprived by his conviction for high treason in November 1553, although it took another two and a half years to unravel his canonical status.⁷ Robert Farrer of St Davids also seems to have been regarded as deprived before the end of that year, although the formal proceedings are obscure. Others, such as John Hooper of Worcester and Gloucester and John Taylor of Lincoln, were put out of action by imprisonment. Although Mary officially abandoned the title of Supreme Head in December 1553, when the traditional rites of the Catholic Church were restored, in fact she continued to exercise the power in the service of her own policy. In March 1554 royal visitations were conducted, as a result of which a further five bishops were deprived, and one resigned.⁸ Where a bishop had married, even if he was not a particularly zealous Protestant, that was the reason usually given, as was done with Robert Holgate of York, who subsequently (and unsuccessfully) sought reinstatement. The less obliging could be removed for doctrinal reasons, as was done with Hooper. By June 1554, 13 Edwardian bishops had been excluded by one means or another; of these six had been consecrated in accordance with the new Ordinal introduced in 1550, and their episcopal status was therefore disallowed as well.⁹ Six Catholics had been restored. Three of these, Bonner, Heath and Day, had been consecrated and appointed under the royal supremacy; while the remaining three, Tunstall, Veysey and Gardiner, went back before 1533. At this stage it did not make any difference. Of the thirteen who were deprived four, Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper and Farrer were subsequently burned at the stake for heresy; a further four, Barlow, Scory, Coverdale and Ponet, escaped into exile; while five, Bird, Bush, Harley, Taylor and Holgate, remained obscurely in England.¹⁰ Harley continued with some clandestine Protestant activity, while Holgate tried to ingratiate himself with the regime. All five were dead by the end of the reign. Only Ponet died in exile, the other three returning in 1559, two of them to episcopal office.¹¹

Even the most perfunctory calculation, however, will reveal that this leaves a substantial number of conformists. Of the twenty-three men who were actually in possession of a see in July 1553, no fewer than ten accommodated themselves to the Catholic restoration and retained their positions; although in the case of Thomas Goodrich, who died in May 1554, his departure may have been opportune. Given that both Northumberland and Mary were concerned to weed out the unco-operative as well as the downright hostile, this is a surprising statistic. Only one Marian bishop, Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff, was prepared to be similarly accommodating in 1559.¹² Apart from Kitchin and Thomas Thirlby, by then of Ely, the remaining seven of these conformists all died during the reign, the last being Robert King of Oxford, who departed in December 1557. Thirlby was not prepared to flex his conscience a second time, and was duly deprived in July 1559. Of those converts who lived to see the development of persecution after February 1555, only Thirlby and John Salcot of Salisbury were much involved. There was little heresy in Oxfordshire or Cumberland, and even less in Henry Man’s diocese of Sodor and Man, or Robert Parfew’s two patches – St Asaph and Hereford. There was some persecution in Peterborough, and one high-profile burning in Cardiff, but Foxe does not particularly castigate either John Chambers or Kitchin, although the former was safely dead by the time that he wrote.¹³ Thirlby and Salcot did not escape condemnation. Neither was in a front-line diocese, the former having moved from Norwich to Ely in July 1554, but both were involved in the interrogation of heretics, which Foxe regarded as particularly obnoxious hypocrisy in view of their personal histories. In Thirlby’s favour at least it may be said that he had never been at ease with the Protestant establishment, and that his conformity in 1553/4 was not only genuine, but probably a considerable relief.¹⁴

So between conformists and restored Henricians, Mary had more than half her bench. She was without an archbishop until June 1555, when Nicholas Heath was translated to York from Worcester; but that function was performed until January 1555 by Stephen Gardiner, both Lord Chancellor and Bishop of Winchester; and thereafter by Reginald Pole, first as Cardinal Legate and then (after March 1556) as Archbishop of Canterbury.¹⁵ However, there were thirteen other sees to be filled, either as a result of deprivation or natural vacancy, and in the absence of either Pope or Metropolitan, the queen had no option but to fill them herself. During 1554 she provided eleven bishops on her own authority, eight of these before Pole returned to England and was permitted to exercise his jurisdiction, and all before he in fact began to do so. There was, however, a hidden agenda here. Although Pole was not permitted to exercise his legatine authority in England until 10 November 1554 – and even that was technically illegal because his attainder could not be repealed until parliament met on the 12th – he had in fact been confirming the queen’s appointments since the beginning of the year.¹⁶ Unlike the Henrician restorations, therefore, who still had to make their peace with the Pope, these new appointments were men who, from the first, were regarded as reconciled. At the time when the papal jurisdiction was restored, therefore, Mary’s episcopal bench consisted of a strange mixture of men. The five of the six who had been restored and were still alive were technically schismatics rather than heretics, because, like the queen herself, they had accepted the Henrician Supremacy but rejected the Protestant Church of Edward. Needless to say, none of them showed the slightest reluctance to accept a return to the papal jurisdiction. The ten survivors, however, should have been regarded as heretics, because they had accepted, and enforced, the Prayer Books and the Forty-two Articles. With the exception of Goodrich, they were all conservatives, and their survival under Edward is probably more remarkable than their conformity under Mary.¹⁷ Goodrich, however, had been a noted reformer, suspected of heresy as early as 1540. He had been one of the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer, and had sat on the commission which deprived Gardiner. In 1549 the radical Hooper had regarded him as an ally. He was Lord Chancellor at the time of Edward’s death, and had accepted the succession of Jane Grey. As a result, in August 1553 he was one of those listed for arrest and trial for high treason.¹⁸ However, the queen personally struck his name from the list; he submitted and did homage, losing only the Great Seal. Thereafter he simply conformed, and his true feelings are unknown. He was never formally reconciled or faced scrutiny by Cardinal Pole, because he died on 10 May 1554.

Robert Aldrich of Carlisle was simply a survivor. He had had an orthodox, but not particularly distinguished career, culminating in the provostship of Eton College, before being appointed to the northern see in 1537. He had been a promoter of the Act of Six Articles, and had opposed all the Edwardian changes while they were under discussion, accepting them only when they became law.

His degrees were in arts and divinity, so he should probably be counted as a theologian, but he seems to have written nothing of note.¹⁹ By contrast Richard Sampson of Coventry and Lichfield was a civil lawyer who had begun his career as a diplomat in Wolsey’s household. He had been appointed to Chichester in 1536, but by 1540 was a sworn enemy of Thomas Cromwell. Following the latter’s fall, in 1543, he was translated to Coventry and Lichfield and served a term as President of the Council in the Marches. He was more a civil servant than an ecclesiastic, and simply subscribed to each change in turn. Like Goodrich, he died unreconciled, in September 1554.²⁰ Thomas Thirlby was also a lawyer and diplomat, although rather younger. Cranmer had been his first patron, and he had become Dean of the Chapel Royal in 1534. He was the first (and only) bishop of Westminster, and sufficiently opposed to the Reformation to vote against the Act of Uniformity in 1549. However, he enforced it when it was law, and was sufficiently out of the country to avoid most of the domestic crises. He was resident with the emperor when Henry died, and again when Edward died.²¹ At that time he was bishop of Norwich, and simply submitted on his return, which seems to have been accepted without question. He was translated to Ely in July 1554, and subsequently reconciled.

Robert King of Oxford was a more obvious conservative, having started his career as a Cistercian monk at Rewley. He was elected abbot of Thame in 1530, and of Oseney in 1537; from whence he made a seamless transition to become the first bishop of Oseney and Thame in 1541, and to move with the see to Oxford four years later. His record under Edward VI is obscure, and he presumably did as he was told. If anything, he was a theologian, but left no mark as such.²² John Chambers of Peterborough was rather similar. First monk and then abbot there, he surrendered his house in 1539 in return for the large pension of £266, and stepped sideways into the new see in 1541. He was described as ‘a safe and conformable person’, and seems to have floated with the tide, in whatever direction it was set.²³ John Capon, or Salcot, was another ex-monk; this time a Benedictine, who was abbot of St Benet, Hume in Norfolk as early as 1517. He was favoured by Wolsey and was a promoter of the king’s divorce; so ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Series Editor's Preface
• Editors’ Introduction
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Personal Religion of Mary I
• Part I: The Process
• Part II: Cardinal Pole
• Part III: The Culture
• Index