The Catholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth, 1558–1582

Stephen Hamrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351893329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria

Stephen Hamrick demonstrates how poets writing in the first part of Elizabeth I's reign proved instrumental in transferring Catholic worldviews and paradigms to the cults and early anti-cults of Elizabeth. Stephen Hamrick provides a detailed analysis of poets who used Petrarchan poetry to transform many forms of Catholic piety, ranging from confession and transubstantiation to sacred scriptures and liturgical singing, into a multivocal discourse used to fashion, refashion, and contest strategic political, religious, and courtly identities for the Queen and for other Court patrons. These poets, writers previously overlooked in many studies of Tudor culture, include Barnabe Googe, George Gascoigne, and Thomas Watson. Stephen Hamrick here shows that the nature of the religious reformations in Tudor England provided the necessary contexts required for Petrarchanism to achieve its cultural centrality and artistic complexity. This study makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the complex interaction among Catholicism, Petrachanism, and the second English Reformation.

Chapter 1
The Queen’s Court, the City, and Catholicism

The people are more free than ever, the heretics thinking that they will be able to persecute the Catholics, but things in this respect are somewhat quieter, as on the Sunday before the Queen died the priest who preached the sermon at St. Paul’s told them to pray for the Pope. They see also that the new Queen goes to Mass … She is very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do, and therefore treats foreigners slightingly. For this reason, and seeing that neither she nor they have done anything yet, I have decided to go on very quietly until things settle down and Isee who is to take the lead. Up to the present nothing is certain and everyone talks as his wishes lead him; I wonder they have not sent me crazy.

Count De Feria to King Philip, 21 November 1558¹

On the cusp of a new reign, Catholic De Feria registers the liminal nature of the period leading up to the coronation of Elizabeth Tudor. The death of Queen Mary, the relative freedom of ‘the people,’ Elizabeth’s continued participation in traditional religion, and the apparent social and religious chaos wherein ‘nothing is certain’ aptly represent a state in-betwixt-and-in-between two cultural and religious epochs. A correlative of change, liminal periods enable individuals to examine and reconfigure existing social patterns and behaviors, creating alternate identities through the transposition and combination of normally distinct and relatively static cultural elements. As Victor Turner writes of liminal states, in fact, ‘undoing, dissolution, decomposition are accompanied by a process of growth, transformation, and the reformulation of old elements in new patterns.’² The Count’s recognition (and fear) of the polyvocal nature of this liminal moment and the possibility of cultural transformation finds expression in the competing voices of conservative tradition, ‘pray for the Pope,’ and radical innovation ‘persecute the Catholics.’ Although such destabilizing periods threaten the social order, they also provide possibilities out of which social actors create new identities, practices, and relationships.³

Decidedly antagonistic to Protestant rule, De Feria nevertheless aptly encapsulates both the threat of religiopolitical turmoil and the potential for change characteristic of such liminal moments. The multiple possibilities for the future of religious practice in England may have also threatened to unhinge De Feria; however, Queen Elizabeth and others would use the creative chaos of their liminal moment to build new identities and social practices. In this chapter, I trace the different ways that the Crown and ‘the people’ deployed the Catholic imaginary to navigate the tumultuous changes in national religion and government taking place in 1558–1559. Helping to create the cultural and symbolic conditions necessary for the operation of the Cult or cults, the early discursive transformation of Catholic practices and worldviews prepared the way for later courtly artists to use Catholicism as an effective component in poetic and religiopolitical discourse.⁴ To begin to trace accurately the narrative of early Elizabethan literature and the Queen’s use(s) of the Catholic imaginary, I begin by analyzing Elizabeth’s engagement with the 1558 Christmas mass celebrated at Whitehall and William Cecil’s use of the Mask of Friars to refocus traditional Twelfth Night pieties. I will then examine an ostensibly more popular transformation of the Catholic imaginary in the destruction of the St. Thomas Beckett statue at the Mercers’s chapel in London.

All the People Looked for Her

Intentionally or unintentionally appropriating the Catholic imaginary, Elizabeth engineered a transformational Christmas mass in 1558, which reverberated across the Court, the country, and throughout Europe; reports of her actions, in fact, traveled as far away as Germany and Rome.⁵ The Mantuan agent in London, Aloisio Schivenoglia, provides a partial description of the event: ‘on Christmas day the Bishop of Carlisle sang high mass, and her Majesty sent to tell him that he was not to elevate the host; to which the good Bishop replied that thus he had learnt the mass, and, that she must pardon him as he could not do otherwise; so the Gospel being ended, her Majesty rose and departed, and on other days it has been so done by her chaplains’ (2).⁶ The conflict between Owen Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Elizabeth over the liturgy foreshadows a constant struggle over her leadership of the Church and the nation. Scholars primarily rely upon Shivenoglia’s testimony to understand this moment in late Tudor cultural history, yet the full record of events provides a narrative of cultural appropriation that remains unaccountably absent from our understanding of the Queen and her cults.

Examined retrospectively in light of the coronation, Elizabeth’s performance at the 1558 Christmas mass tends to be discussed as a mistake, which taught her not to repeat such an ‘inconsiderate’ act at the January coronation. In this vein, H. Wilson writes that ‘Elizabeth must have been aware that her action in leaving the church on Christmas Day had given serious offence; she was perhaps conscious that it had been hasty and inconsiderate, and she may probably have realized that it would be unwise to repeat it on an occasion when such an action would have been much more public and notorious.’⁷ Recognizing the performative nature of Elizabeth’s action, Margaret Aston provides the now standard but incomplete interpretation that the Tudor princess walked out in order to ‘demonstrate that she rejected transubstantiation.’⁸ Rather than an inconsiderate action, evidence indicates that crown princess Elizabeth’s actions constituted a thoughtful response to events, if not a premeditated strategy. In addition to making a theological point, Elizabeth carefully staged a symbolic transformation of the Christmas Nativity mass that, to some degree, helped to disrupt or divert the emotions and energies normally invested in Catholic worship. In reducing her actions to a rushed and impulsive response, however, scholars have characterized Elizabeth as headstrong and reactionary, qualities which she had already learned could irreparably damage her reputation.⁹

Contemporary evidence suggests that at the 1558 Nativity mass Elizabeth carefully enacted an identity designed to have both immediate and long-term political impact. In a letter to King Philip, De Feria wrote that ‘on the Sunday of Christmas-tide the Queen before going to Mass sent for the Bishop of Carlisle, who was to officiate, and told him that he need not elevate the Host for adoration’ (283–4; my emphasis).¹⁰ Schivenoglia corroborates this understanding of events indicating that ‘her Majesty sent to tell him that he was not to elevate the host’ (my emphasis). From these two independent reporters, we recognize that Elizabeth knew, ‘before going to Mass,’ that Oglethorpe would disobey her instructions.

To avoid controversy, Elizabeth could conceivably have claimed illness and absented herself from the mass entirely or simply replaced the celebrating priest. Prior to her accession, Elizabeth had engaged just such a stratagem on at least three occasions. At the death of Edward VI, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, worked to place his step-daughter Lady Jane Grey on the throne and summoned Elizabeth (and Mary) to London in the King’s name. Elizabeth, however, claimed illness to avoid being trapped by the crafty Dudley. After Mary’s accession, Elizabeth unsuccessfully feigned illness to avoid attending the mass of the Nativity of Mary in September 1553. During Wyatt’s rebellion in January 1554, she claimed sickness when Queen Mary summoned her to London, which merely resulted in slowing the trip.¹¹ Nevertheless, at the point that Oglethorpe verbally refused her liturgical instructions, Elizabeth could have replaced the recalcitrant bishop. As Schivenoglia writes, ‘on other days it has been so done by her chaplains,’ which, along with English records, confirms that Elizabeth could readily have found a clergyman willing to follow her liturgical instructions on Christmas day.¹²

Rather than reacting impulsively, Elizabeth proceeded with the mass in order to be observed walking out, therein exercising her authority through a dramatic enactment of liminal disaggregation and/or symbolic dissonance highly useful to the process of assuming her crown. In a letter to Mr. More, High Sheriff of Surrey, Sir William Fitzwilliams, later Lord Deputy of Ireland and governor of Fortheringhay Castle at Mary Stuart’s execution, communicates the perceptible staging of this event, writing

Yestyrdaye beyng Chrystemas day, the Quene’s majestie repayryd to hyr great closet with hyr nobles and ladyes, as hath ben acustomyd yn such high feasts. And she perseving a bysshope preparing himselfe to make all in the olde fowrme, she taryyd there onetill the gospell was done, and when all the people lokyd ffor hyr to have offryde according the olde facion, she with hyr nobles returnyd agayn from the closet and the masse, onto hir priveye chamber, which was strange onto dyvers, &c. O blessid be God in all his gifts.¹³

Fitzwilliams focuses notably on the Queen’s concerted engagement with the traditional rituals ‘acustomyd yn such high feasts,’ yet he also notes the dedicated concentration with which Elizabeth observed Oglethorpe preparing to celebrate in the ‘olde facion.’ Although he elides the earlier meeting between the Queen and the archbishop, the letter’s recognition that Elizabeth patiently observed the traditional liturgical preparations and ‘tarried there’ or waited suggests again that Elizabeth could have walked out at any time but chose to wait for a specific moment. The Duchess of Suffolk, Catherine Willoughby, confirms Fitzwilliams’s report, writing, in a letter to William Cecil from Germany, 4 March 1559, ‘well, it is so reported here that Her Majesty tarried but the Gospel, and so departed. I pray God that no part of the report were true’ (my emphasis).¹⁴ Since she knew of Oglethorpe’s plans prior to the service, failed to remove the dispensable celebrant, and waited for the most conspicuous moment to leave, Elizabeth appears to have acted thoughtfully, therein wishing to achieve more than a public rejection of Catholic theology.

Elizabeth’s thoughtfulness, as well as the broader recognition of her role on the public stage, becomes even more apparent when Fitzwilliams writes that ‘and when all the people looked for her to have offered according the old fashion, she with her nobles returned again from the Closet and the Mass into her private chamber’ (283). Here, Fitzwilliams first discusses not Elizabeth but the congregants’s awareness: that they ‘looked for her to have offered,’ significantly, in the ‘old fashion.’ The visually coded metaphor ‘looked for’ represents both the elite congregants’s expectations and their visual apprehension of Elizabeth. Whenever the monarchs attended service, in fact, congregants paid concerted attention to their performances.¹⁵ As Peter McCullough has demonstrated, when Elizabeth or any monarch inhabited the private closet overlooking the chapel, s/he nevertheless remained center stage.¹⁶ Elizabeth, in fact, used the architectural effects of the Whitehall chapel, used the unrestrained Catholic piety of Oglethorpe, used her subjects’s expectations, and used the theology of the mass to wrest the situation to her advantage. Elizabeth manipulated the bishop by previously questioning him and goading him into defiant action. As the bishop indicated that ‘he could not do otherwise’ than to perform the mass in traditional fashion, Elizabeth accordingly expected the bishop to act thusly, relying upon his staunch belief and statement for him to raise the Host.

Relying upon the material effects of her closet and chapel, Elizabeth also manipulated her subjects’s expectations to transform a potentially damaging public spectacle into an event in which she asserted control over her own image as a woman and governor of the Church of England. In sending for and mani...