Princes, Pastors and People

The Church and Religion in England, 1500–1689

Susan Doran, Christopher Durston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415205771
• eBook ISBN: 9781134626397
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Princes, Pastors and People traces the many changes in religious life that took place in the turbulent years of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries.

It is designed to make accessible to readers much of the most recent research, and to guide them through the major historical controversies of the last twenty-five years:

* the causes of the English Reformation
* the popularity of the Elizabethan Protestant Church
* the impact of the Laudian innovations of the 1630s
* the Puritan attempt to control popular culture and belief.

By adopting a thematic rather than chronological approach, the book is also able to chart the long-term developments across the period in key areas such as doctrinal and liturgical change, the role of the clergy, and the importance of religion in the everyday lives of people.

1 Introduction

Over the course of the two centuries between 1500 and 1700 the English Church experienced a succession of dramatic changes. Starting out as a branch of the international Roman Catholic Church, it moved through a series of Reformations to emerge under Elizabeth I as a unique, independent, national Protestant Church. For more than a hundred years after 1559, this new English Church was engaged in the difficult tasks of defining its theological and liturgical character, establishing its traditions and drawing its boundaries. The subsequent chapters of this book will provide a detailed consideration of this long and tortuous process. This first chapter offers a narrative outline of the main twists and turns in the story and introduces the major historiographical debates.

The upheavals of the English Reformation arose initially out of the matrimonial problems of Henry VIII. By 1527 the king wanted to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, a woman at his court with whom he had fallen in love. He needed an official annulment not only because Anne had steadfastly refused to become his mistress, but more importantly because he was deeply anxious about the succession to the throne. As the only surviving child of his marriage was a daughter, Mary, the realm was likely to suffer a disputed succession on his death and, if Mary were to marry a foreigner, might even lose its independent status. As early as 1524, Henry had given up all hope of Katherine bearing another child. By the time, two years later, when he became infatuated with Anne, he had already begun to think that his failure to produce a male heir might be a sign that his marriage was sinful. He subsequently became increasingly convinced that it had broken the laws of affinity laid down in the Book of Leviticus in the Bible, because Katherine had previously been married to his older brother, Arthur. In 1527 Henry and his chief minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, began negotiations with Rome aimed at securing an official papal annulment, but by 1529 it was clear that the pope had no intention of allowing Henry to put Katherine aside.

Wolsey was the first victim of Henry and Anne’s anger and disappointment at the failure of the negotiations. In October 1529, the cardinal was charged with the offence of praemunire, of introducing an illegal foreign authority into England through his acceptance of the office of papal legate a latere. When parliament met shortly afterwards, some of its members took advantage of his disgrace to air their grievances against the Church. Rather than siding with the bishops who protested at this action, Henry put his weight behind the anti-clerical agitation and agreed to pass legislation reforming the Church in a number of relatively minor ways. Yet, neither at this stage nor for the next eighteen months did he have any clear plans to launch a full-scale attack on the Church or to break with Rome. In the immediate aftermath of Wolsey’s fall, Henry’s advisers offered him a range of options on how to obtain the annulment and the king responded by trying a number of different schemes. Only in 1532 did he commit to the policy of the royal supremacy: the idea that the English monarchy had enjoyed an unlimited authority over the Church within its realm for centuries and only now needed to start exercising this on a more regular basis.

According to Geoffrey Elton, this revolutionary new strategy was the brainchild of the recently appointed secretary to the privy council, Thomas Cromwell (Elton, 1954). More recent research, however, has revealed that the radical theories justifying the supremacy were being promoted at court well before Cromwell became the king’s chief minister. Furthermore, the king was also deeply involved in the schemes to assert the supremacy and was not merely the prisoner of his advisers. But, although Cromwell was not the architect of the Reformation in England, he was one of its major players. He masterminded the legislation that severed the ties with Rome, manoeuvered the statutes through parliament, sponsored a propaganda campaign to encourage obedience to the changes, and launched a programme of coercion against those who refused to comply

Although Henry’s desires to have a new wife and greater control over the English Church were the primary incentives for the schism, Cromwell and some members of Anne Boleyn’s circle, such as Thomas Cranmer, were also keen to bring about reform of the Church. Sharing some of the reform outlook of the continental humanist, Erasmus, they were in favour of allowing the laity easy access to English translations of the Bible, placing a greater emphasis on preaching, and instituting simplified forms of worship, stripped of practices they regarded as superstitious. Largely through their initiative, the 1530s witnessed a number of reforms of this nature. But Henry himself did not need much prompting to take the path of reform, as long as the measures were compatible with the royal supremacy and his conservative theological instincts. Only when it appeared that the reforms were provoking domestic unrest and isolating him in Europe did he draw back from further experimentation and introduce the 1539 Act of Six Articles, a serious set-back to the reformers. Cromwell’s fall the following year ensured that little further progress towards religious reform was made until after Henry’s death.

The accession to the throne of his young son, Edward VI, in 1547 brought to power at court a reform group led by the new king’s uncle, Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset. During the course of the next two years, Somerset’s government introduced a number of Protestant reforms, including the dissolution of the chantries and the publication of an English Prayer Book, which contained a new liturgy for the mass. In 1549 Somerset was replaced as effective head of the government by John Dudley, earl of Warwick, (who became duke of Northumberland in 1550), and thereafter the Reformation took a more radical direction. A new ordination service for the clergy in 1550 was followed two years later by the appearance of a second Edwardian Prayer Book. This new Protestant regime, however, was extremely precarious, for its survival was threatened both by Edward’s ill-health and by the fact that the heir to the throne, his half-sister Mary, was a devout Catholic. Consequently, during the last weeks of his life in 1553, Edward conspired with Northumberland to exclude his sisters from the throne and elevate instead the duke’s Protestant daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey. Although Jane’s hereditary claim was weak, she was initially recognised as queen in many parts of the realm, and it took Mary several days to organise an effective coup d’état and take power. Once crowned, Mary immediately set about returning England to papal jurisdiction, restoring Catholic forms of worship, and reintroducing the old heresy laws. Her counter-Reformation was, however, shortlived as she died childless only five years later. In November 1558, she was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth, who within a few months of coming to the throne introduced a new religious settlement, including a new Book of Common Prayer.

At one level, therefore, the English Reformation was undoubtedly an ‘act of state’, or perhaps more accurately ‘acts of state’—a series of changes initiated by monarchs and imposed upon their subjects. It was also, however, an evangelical Reformation, involving large numbers of grassroots’ conversions. In the course of the sixteenth century the people of England ceased to be overwhelmingly Catholic and became predominantly Protestant. The question of how quickly and how voluntarily this process was accomplished has divided historians for many years. In the mid 1960s, Geoffrey Dickens claimed that the Protestant Reformation was achieved rapidly and painlessly, mainly because the new religion appealed to the great many lay people who were already alienated from the moribund, corrupt and formalistic Catholic Church. He argued that a number of factors had prepared the English people for major religious change; amongst these were the worsening state of the Church, a widespread and deeply rooted anti-clericalism, and the indigenous English heresy of Lollardy. Thus, when Henry quarrelled with the pope, he was able to use a pre-existing anti-clericalism as a stick with which to beat the Church, and when he embarked on the official Reformation, the greater part of the political nation readily gave him its support. According to Dickens, opposition to Henry’s religious policies was negligible, restricted to the unrepresentative northern backwoodsmen who joined the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, and a few saintly martyrs. Under Edward, he claimed, Protestantism made irreversible advances and Mary’s counter-Reformation was thus doomed to failure (Dickens, 1964).

Dickens’s reading of the English Reformation held sway for nearly two decades, but in the 1980s Jack Scarisbrick and Christopher Haigh began to challenge and revise his interpretation of events. They denied that the late-medieval Church was in terminal decline and that rampant anti-clericalism and widespread heresy existed on the eve of the Reformation, asserting instead that the Church was functioning extremely well and that the vast majority of the laity was both satisfied with the ministry of their priests and orthodox in their doctrinal beliefs (Scarisbrick, 1984; Haigh, 1987). During the 1990s, their views were endorsed and developed by other ‘revisionists’, most notably Eamon Duffy (Duffy, 1992). According to this ‘revisionist’ perspective, Protestantism was imposed on the English people by means of government-sponsored campaigns that had to overcome their passive, and occasionally overt, resistance. The English Reformation (or Reformations as Haigh has preferred to call the process) was thus a slow, tortuous struggle for power both at the centre of government and in the parishes.

Thanks also to the work of the revisionists, no future history of the English Reformation can end in 1559. Elizabeth’s reign is now recognised as crucially important because it witnessed the main evangelical drive to convert the English people to the new Protestant beliefs. Elizabeth’s bishops and prominent lay subjects were engaged in an attempt to create a learned Protestant ministry that could preach, educate and provide pastoral care. Some of the revisionists have questioned whether the new beliefs and practices ever became popular. In their opinion, the majority of people not only deeply resented the government’s attacks on Catholicism, but also failed to warm to the austere theology and liturgy of the new Church, with its emphasis on bible-reading and sermons as the primary expressions of piety. According to Haigh, even by the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, few ordinary men and women fully understood or accepted Protestantism; the prolonged efforts of reforming clergy, he has claimed, may have produced ‘a Protestant nation, but not a nation of Protestants’ (Haigh, 1993). Duffy, on the other hand, has conceded that by the 1580s the reformers had finally won the day (Duffy, 1992).

The accession of James I in 1603 did not usher in any dramatic change, but rather saw the consolidation of the ecclesiastical policies set in train by Elizabeth. The new Stuart king was a staunch Calvinist with a keen interest in theology, who pursued balanced and sensible religious policies. In particular, he adopted a relatively tolerant approach to both Catholic and Protestant nonconformity, thereby maintaining a stable and tranquil domestic religious climate down to his death. But, if James’s accession was marked by continuity in religious policy, that of his son, Charles I, in 1625 was to precipitate major changes in the nature of the English Church. Like his father, the new king was a deeply religious man with strong views about the Church, who was determined to exercise fully his powers as supreme governor. Unlike James, however, he was not prepared to compromise on religious issues, nor parcel out ecclesiastical power and patronage amongst rival factions within the clerical establishment. More fatally, nor did he share James’s Calvinism. On the contrary, he was deeply attached to an ‘anti- Calvinist’ or ‘Laudian’ programme of religious reform that a large majority of his subjects found highly objectionable.

Charles’s eagerness to promote the Laudian faction within the Church was evident from the start of his reign. William Laud began a steep rise to power in 1625, culminating in his appointment as archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Other prominent Laudians also quickly found favour in royal circles, and orders proscribing the dissemination of Calvinist theology soon followed. During the 1630s, the Laudians consolidated their control over the English Church. By the middle of the decade, they were by far the most powerful group on the episcopal bench, and both Laud and Richard Neile, the archbishop of York, had been appointed to the privy council. All criticism of the new clerical establishment was vigorously suppressed and many conformist Calvinists now found themselves labelled as subversive puritans. Lay opinion was further alarmed when Laud made clear his intention to recover much of the Church’s alienated wealth. Historians have long disagreed about the causes of the English Civil War, but few would deny that the religious changes introduced by Laud and his followers were to some degree responsible for bringing it about. Fear and suspicion about the government’s religious policies and intentions grew steadily in England during the 1630s, and when in 1637 Charles and Laud decided to impose their theological and liturgical preferences upon the fiercely Calvinist Scots, they provoked outrage and armed resistance. Charles’s failure in the Bishops’ War prompted the recall of the English parliament in 1640 and the MPs now launched a counter-attack against Laudianism. When the efforts of the king and MPs of the Long Parliament to reach a settlement foundered on their mutual distrust and incompatible visions of the English Church, they resorted to arms. Given such a scenario, it is hard to argue with those historians who have claimed that the English Civil War was a war of religion.

In 1643 the Long Parliament, now made up largely of presbyterians (see presbyterianism), entrusted the task of creating a new liturgy for the national Church to the Westminster Assembly of Divines. In 1645 the product of its lengthy discussions, the Directory for Public Worship, officially replaced the Elizabethan Prayer Book. The same year Laud was executed for high treason, and in October 1646 episcopacy was abolished. The new presbyterian Church failed, however, to win much support. All over England, parish clergy ignored the new Directory and continued to conduct worship according to the old Prayer Book. In 1649 the New Model Army, which was committed to religious toleration, came to power in a military coup, purging the Long Parliament and executing Charles I as a traitor to his people. Thereafter, presbyterianism was just one of a number of Churches competing for the affections of the English people.

During the Interregnum, England experienced a high degree of religious freedom. All trinitarian Protestants who refrained from causing religious disturbances were allowed a wide measure of official toleration. In 1650 parliament passed an Act for the Relief of Peaceable People, which released men and women from the obligation to attend their local parish church for Sunday worship. While the majority continued as before to attend only their parish church, a significant minority now worshipped in gathered congregations of Independents, Baptists and Quakers. Many Congregationalists, meanwhile, regularly attended both parish and sectarian worship. Toleration was not officially extended to Roman Catholics or episcopalian Anglicans, but in practice if they exercised discretion they too were normally able to worship without harassment.

This unprecedented religious freedom did not survive the Restoration. The return of Charles II in 1660 saw both the re-imposition of the compulsory state Church and the renewed persecution of anyone who refused to belong to it. While Charles II himself wanted to re-establish a broad comprehensive Church, which could encompass many of the religious groups of the 1650s, many leading churchmen and influential laymen had other ideas. As a result of the pressure these men exerted in the Cavalier Parliament, the restored Anglican Church was narrow in its boundaries, and conservative, perhaps even Laudian, in its nature. By 1670 the legislation known as the Clarendon Code had effectively outlawed all alternative religious groups, but large numbers of presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers refused to join the established Church and continued to participate in secret conventicles. During the 1670s and 1680s hundreds of these nonconformists, or dissenters, were imprisoned for attending illegal religious gatherings, but persecution failed to eradicate them. In 1689, following the deposition of James II, their religious rights were restored by the Act of Toleration. During the eighteenth century and beyond, the Anglican Church retained its position as a monopoly state Church, but was no longer a national Church.

Works cited and further reading

Dickens, A.G., The English Reformation (1964).

Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars (1992).

Elton, Geoffrey, ‘King or Minister? The Man Behind the Henrician Reformation’, History, 39 (1954).

Haigh, Christopher, The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987).

Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993).

Scarisbrick, J.J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984).

2 Theology and liturgy

Pre-Reformation Catholicism

Throughout the medieval period the core doctrinal beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church were salvation through faith and works, transubstantiation, and the efficacy of grace transmitted through the seven sacraments. The Church taught that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross at Calvary—the Passion—had atoned for the sins of fallen humankind and opened the way for his followers to enter the kingdom of heaven after death. Faith in Christ by itself, however, was insufficient to ensure a place in paradise; the way an individual acted while alive also determined his or her fate after death. Only by avoiding temptation, practising good deeds, and regularly seeking forgiveness for sins through the sacrament of penance, would he or she ultimately receive the reward of eternal life and escape the terrors of hell.

The medieval Church also taught that the ‘blessed company’ of saints was consigned to heaven immediately after death; that a minority who died in a state of unrepented mortal (or serious) sin would go straight to hell; but that the souls of the great majority of sinners would be required to spend a period of time in an intermediate location called purgatory. Purgatory acted as a kind of ante-chamber to heaven, where the departed would be purified and made ready to enter the divine presence. There they would endure severe punishment for the sins committed on earth, which had not been fully paid off by acts of satisfaction. Since a stay in purgatory involved considerable pain and suffering, people were naturally anxious to shorten their allotted time there. The terrifying prospect of spending a lengthy period—perhaps as long as thousands of years—in torment acted as a strong incentive for the living to carry out devotional and charitable works which would weigh in their favour when God passed sentence on them immediately after death. In addition, however, the medieval Church offered several other means for individuals to obtain partial or total remission of time in purgatory. The two thought to be most efficacious were indulgences and intercessory masses.

Indulgences had originally been designed as replacements for the shaming public penances that many lay people had been unwilling to perform. Consequently, they had initially been awarded only to penitents who demonstrated genuine contrition and undertook designated acts of devotion (usually prayers or alms-giving). By the late Middle Ages, however, indulgences had come to mean the remission of punishment after death, and their value was measured in terms of the days or years that would be reduced in purgatory by the acquisition of the indulgence (the standard unit being forty days). Furthermore, in 1457 Pope Calixtus III enhanced their appeal by ruling that indulgences could also be applied to souls already suffering in purgatory, and that the laity could obtain them to hasten the passage of their dead friends and relatives to heaven. By then, moreover, many indulgences were being procured not through the performance of devotional works but through a simple cash transaction.

A second method of shortening time in purgatory was the provision of intercessory masses for the dead. The Church taught that the ceremony of the mass was the most powerful form of intercession that could be offered to God, as Christ’s Passion was literally re-enacted at each performance of the eucharist. Requiem masses, together with intercessory prayers for the dead, were an integral part of the standard funeral service. But, since men and women believed that a single mass could only supply a limited benefit to the departed, the richer laity put aside money in their wills for multiple masses to be said for their souls. The most common multiples were trentals (thirty masses usually said daily during the weeks immediately following death) and obits (annual masses normally held on the deceased’s saint’s day or the anniversary of his or her death). At the same time, many of the wealthiest testators chose to endow chantries where a priest and his successors would regularly celebrate masses for the soul of the founder. While some chantries were short term, usually for one to seven years, others were perpetual, meant to last until the end of the world.

Masses, of course, were thought to benefit the living as well as the dead. As one of the sacraments, the eucharist or Lord’s Supper was necessary for individual salvation, but it was also believed that the renewed shedding of Christ’s blood at each mass would nourish the spiritual life of the Church. Since the twelfth century, Catholic theologians had asserted that at the moment when the priest spoke the words of consecration, the ‘substance’ of the unleavened bread and wine was transformed into the body and blood of Christ, even though their ‘accidents’, or external appearance, remained unchanged. This doctrine was defined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and called ‘tran...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface to the Second Edition
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theology and Liturgy
• 3 Sacred Spaces
• 4 The Church in England and Churches Abroad
• 5 Conformist Beliefs and Practices
• 6 Heresy and Dissent
• 7 The Clergy
• 8 The Church and Social Control
• 9 Conclusions
• Chronology
• Glossary