Hello, and welcome to Western SIV, episode two hundred and ninety one.
Queen Mary's early years. After Mary survived her first rebellion, she grew almost
overnight emboldened to a large extent. We need to remember that religion was Mary's
one and only issue. She was the proverbial single issue candidate of the early
modern period. And if we remember that, then I think it helps us
interpret the balance of her reign. She certainly did other things that were not
directly connected to religion, but they were always with an eye toward achieving religious
goals, which for Mary, of course, meant the full restoration of Catholicism
and reunion with Rome. Let me give you an example. Mary's marriage to
Philip the second of Spain had practical implications, namely, it gave England an
ostensible ally on the continent, and a powerful one at that. But from
Mary's perspective, this was about a Catholic alliance and an heir, an heir
that could continue Catholic restoration. We have to remember that when Mary became queen
she was in her late thirties. If she was going to produce an air,
she needed to do so right away. So I suppose it should come
as little shock that Mary interpreted her initial survival and triumph in late fifteen fifty
three and early fifteen fifty four as a sign of providential pleasure. This was
what God wanted. Mary was certain of that, so she turned up the
pace of religious reform. Processions were restored, all the feast days that were
celebrated under Henry the Eighth returned, and critical clerical celibacy was back. All
the priests who had wed in Edward's reign had to renounce their wives and consorts.
Those who did not lost their benefices. Those who did normally kept them,
but it was not a guarantee. There was also a very subtle change
that few people noticed. Mary removed any requirement for the English to take the
oath of supremacy. No one had to swear, as they did under Henry
and Edward, that the monarch was the head of the English Church. But
to anyone paying attention, the message was clear. This paved the way for
a return to Rome, and of course there was another issue, Henry himself.
It was impossible for anyone to ignore the reality that King Henry the Eighth
was the person who had orchestrated the break with Rome. He was never misled
by wicked advisers. He had done it himself of his own free will.
Now, normally English monarchs exalted those of their line when speaking about the past.
But when Mary did this with reference to her father in a letter to
the papal legate Reginald Pole back in fifteen fifty three, she was soundly rebuked.
He wasn't worth honoring. Pole wrote back, how could you honor the
man who had killed Sir Thomas Moore. Pole pointedly told Mary that if she
wouldn't speak ill of her father, then she needed at least stop honoring him.
Now, for Mary, we need to remember this might not have been
too big of an ask. Henry had divorced her beloved mother and then written
Mary out of her own inheritance. The two had been estranged for much of
Mary's life. Psychologically, it might have actually done Mary some good to admit
to herself that her father was not a hero worth emulating, though of course
much of this we can never know for certain. Momentum for reconciliation with Rome
was growing. Whole frustrated that the process was not more immediate, pressured Stephen
Gardner endlessly to make it happen to an extent, this was not necessary.
Gardener, it had seemed, had converted, once a close ally of royal
supremacy in Henry the Eighth. Gardener now firmly believed that reunion with Rome was
not only morally right, but inevitable. It was God's will to correct a
wayward people. Now, not everyone shared Gardner's desire to turn back the clock.
A lot of people just looked at the situation from a practical perspective.
Many had gone from Henry to Edward and now Mary with a simple shrug of
the shoulders. They just didn't see royal supremacy as that big of a deal.
Gardener, at a dinner party in early fifty ten fifty four, was
reportedly told by another dinner guest that all this was pointless, jipper jabbering royal
supremacy had nothing to do with issues of doctrine. Of course, not everyone
agreed, but my guess is that many people really didn't care. They just
wanted to get on with their lives. Sadly, the late sixteenth century,
as we will see, was not filled with enough of those people to avoid
an ocean of bloodshed for others, including Gardner, the years of blood between
Henry and Edward's reign had just truly changed things. As I mentioned, a
lot of blood had already been spilt. Gardner had watched as his friends were
tried and condemned for treason, and that he himself confined to the Tower of
London. He knew what might happen if Mary should run out of time,
and time was of the essence. In fact, we know in early fifteen
fifty four he was literally champing at the bit to get legislation before Parliament,
reversing Henry and Edwards's legislation and restoring England to Rome. As the new parliament
opened on April third, fifteen fifty four, feelings were still quite raw.
Evangelicals were conquered, but had by no means surrendered. Anti papal sentiments remained
high, as did animosity toward the Spanish marriage. Still, the Catholic faction
now pressed its advantage. Six Evangelical bishops were sacked and replaced with Catholics.
Three of the old bishops were trotted out for a mock debate at Oxford on
the fourteenth of April on the nature of transubstantiation, among other topics, it
should come as no surprise that the Royal moderator of said debate duly declared the
Catholic side victorious, though I should point out, by all neutral accounts the
Evangelicals more than held their own. What it really looked like any observer was
a dry run for a heresy trial, and if you lose those, you
burn. The new bishops were efficient in their posts. All married clergy were
deprived of their positions. In London, where the Evangelical faction had been the
most successful, this amounted to about thirty percent of the clergy. Many of
these men repented and returned to their positions, but a significant portion did not.
Clerical marriage would be one of the battle lines in the fight to come.
Politics remained at the heart of everything. In the spring fifteen fifty four,
it was impossible to get anything significant through Parliament because there were simply too
many factions and none of them agreed on much. Mary remained the official of
the Church. Parliament turned down a few heresy charges, not because it doubted
the guilt of the men in Vaulved, but because Paget, among others,
feared that it might be a prelude to seizure of old ecclesiastical lands and many
members of Parliament on those lands. The marriage treaty with Philip was confirmed,
but honestly barely sure. The leading Edwardian evangelicals remained in prison, but to
what end? It increasingly looked like Mary didn't have the votes or even the
basis to launch proceedings against them. Now, some things did move forward.
On July thirteenth, Philip arrived in England for the wedding. Reportedly, and
reportedly should be underlined in this sentence, everyone was overjoyed with the news.
Of course, privately that certainly wasn't the case, though there were, truth
be told, a massive amount of festivities, and everybody loves feasting. It
had been a long time since a royal wedding, after all. Yet if
theirs was a match made in Heaven, there were reasons to doubt the chances
of the marriage's success here on earth. Philip was more than ten years younger
than Mary, who had never been a beauty, truth be told, and
even in her younger days, the two had little in commons save religion.
They didn't even speak the same language. Philip spoke to his betrothed in Spanish,
Mary replied in French. Throughout the proceedings, Philip's alleged Englishness was played
up. Trumpeters declared that he was descended from Edward I, a dubious claim
at best. Philip did his best to put any reservations about his rule to
rest. He told his English lords that they should continue to prepare to be
English. While those words did go a long way to quell uneasiness, at
least in the part of the Great Magnates in London, xenophobic commoners remained unconvinced.
Wild rumors circulated, including that Philip intended to make a Spanish friar the
Archbishop of Canterbury. He didn't. The rumors went both ways too. The
Catholic faction leaked a rumor that Mary was already pregnant. She wasn't, nor
could she have known even if she were. But such was the state of
England in that time that no one knew what to believe. Things picked up
pace again in September fifteen fifty four. In that month, a Catholic bishop,
Bishop Bonner, announced he would make a complete visitation of his diocese and
would personally examine the clergy therein on all points of doctrine. Anyone found lacking
would be removed. He did this without royal or even papal authority. Bonner
believed he acted quote out of his zeal for God's service end quote. That
was enough, at least for him. Interestingly, Bonner was another of our
reformed Catholic bishops, a one time loyal servant of Thomas Cromwell and a fierce
critic of the pope. He had evidently seen the light. His new process
highlighted the two key themes of the Catholic restoration in England, a return to
Catholic liturgical life and forced Orthodoxy. In truth, the two were one and
the same. The Iconoclasm of fifteen forty seven to fifteen fifty two left parishes
emptied of nearly everything needed for the daily, weekly, and seasonal performance of
the Catholic faith. Bonner provided an extensive shopping list of items parishes needed to
have or get quickly. Foremost, everyone needed a high stone altar with all
its consecrated and dedicated and quote not any gravestone taken from the burial and put
up for an altar end quote. He had to make that specific because a
lot of people were doing it. Other necessary parts were for the mass of
course, were a chalice, crewits for the wine and water, candlesticks,
a bell for ringing at the elevation. You needed a set of vestments for
the priest, surplices for the clerk, a container for the incense, a
sensor for burning it, a pack spread, a picks for the reserved sacrament.
Of picks. By the way, for those who don't know, is
what you take the holy sacrament away from the church in It's like a vessel
for those who were too ill to come to church, a curtain for veiling
the altar and lent. In addition, of course, you had to have
a missile. Parishes were to have seven other liturgical books in general, covering
every range of services. In every church. There was to be a rude
and a roote loft quote, as in times past hath been a custom end
quote. All parishes were to ensure that they had the necessary cross and banners
for processions. A separate cross was required for funerals, along with a buyer
for the dead and for routine and ritual blessings. There must be a christmatory
for holy oils, a stoop for holy water in church, and of course,
a vessel for carrying it around. All this, Bonner said was the
bare minimum of a sacramental religion. The articles did not require the reinstallation of
images devotionally desirable, but at least from Bonner's perspective, for right now liturgically
inessential. It was a challenging list, and some churches protested that the demands
were simply impossible. By and large, however, the parishes of Bonner's diocese
Drew Beth, knuckled down and figured out a way to get the stuff they
needed. Many parishes were able to mend broken altars and demand the return of
their holy plate from the parishioners who had bought them. There were some legal
battles over the return of ecclesiastical properties, and a couple of times these did
get vicious, but across England in fifteen fifty four the pattern of restoration was
quite impressive. In Bath, eighty four percent of parishes had an altar by
that fall. Some were they aforementioned, and banned recycled gravestones, but for
the moment these worked all the same. By the end of fifteen fifty four,
according to official accounting, in all, one hundred and sixty eight parishes
across England high altars were rebuilt, vestments and books reobtained. Physically, at
least, the restoration was going quite a well now truth be told. Of
course, many parishes were using stop apps solutions while more expensive options could be
fundraised. But we also have evidence that said fundraising was going pretty well.
Now. Restoration is a more loaded word than might at first appear. There
could be no question of merely going back. Rudes, alters, images,
investments were no longer what they had once perhaps been. They were the cultural
foliage and a landscape of meaning, assumed to be natural and God given.
Now all such objects had been profoundly and irrevocably politicized by prolonged processes of discussion,
sometimes defense, sometimes denigration, and sometimes destruction. Replacing them was an
assertive but also a very divisive act. It was a statement of faith in
an alternative future. It wasn't an invocation of a vanished past. There simply
was no go going back. It was a future that some people dearly hoped
not to see. In summer fifteen fifty four, shortly after the route was
set up in Saint Paul's, a man joined a large crowd in front of
it, bowed low and addressed the image in mocking and seditious words. Quote,
Sir, your mastership is welcome to town. I had thought to have
talked with your mastership, but that ye here be clothed in the Queen's colors.
I hope ye to be a summer bird, and that ye be dressed
in white and green end quote. Bonner failed to see the funny side.
Those who quote played the fool in the church end quote were part of a
range, an extensive range of religious miscreants, clerical and lay, and he
aimed to discipline them. Gone. Now were the vague exhortations to unity and
charity, with instructions not to call your neighbors a heretic or a papist.
Knew the kind of people he was looking for, and now he wanted names.
Married priests were a particular concern. There was to be a record of
all who had been married, and of any still consorting with their quote unquote
concubines. Such marriages were not just moral lapses, they were schismatical. Without
episcopal reconciliation, no married priest would be allowed to celebrate Mass, and nor
was Mass to be said by any clergymen made schismatically and contrary to the old
ordering custom of the Catholic Church, priests ordained under the Edwardian Ordinal were not
priests at all, period, full stop. Now, the greatest fear was
of married priests or others quote naming themselves ministers end quote, and presiding over
secret assemblies or conventicles, and teaching doctrine that was not accustomed to the Catholic
Church. It was also a worry that lay people might attends such gatherings or
in other ways withdrawal from the collective worship, the Catholic worship by failing to
confess, receive the sacramented Easter, or bring in their children to be confirmed.
An eye was to be kept out for any who, at service time
quote feigned occasions and quote doth use to go abroad, out of their own
parishes and into the fields end quote. And of course those who on Sundays
kept themselves secretly to their houses. Much of the concern, however, was
not about discreet withdrawal from Catholic practices, but argumentative engagement with them who they
wanted to know spoke against sacraments in prayer for the dead, who mocked and
jeered at the pre saying mass, who expounded scripture on their own authority.
What printers and booksellers disseminated slanderous books. Again, if there had been some
vague nod towards religious tolerance at the beginning of Mary's Realm, it was very
quickly fading away. Bonner's articles give the impression not so much of large scale
withdrawal of evangelicals into schism as a variety of disruptive semi separatists within the parameters
of the parish. Heretics at times declined to take part in this procession or
that procession, or perhaps contribute to the weekly Holy Loaf. They might bring
their children to be baptized, but quote not suffer the priest to dip the
child three times end quote. Worst of all, they might come to Mass,
but then refuse to receive the sacrament, or find ways to express disdain
for the holiest of holies. The visitations were met with some grumbling resistance,
but many people were more than willing to turn on their neighbors and name names.
In London fifteen fifty four, four hundred and fifty charges were leveled on
the basis of such accusations. The commonest accusation was failing to attend church on
Sundays or another holy day. But there were other charges as well that were
more serious, speaking against ceremonies, for example. The great majority of these
brought before the court in fifteen fifty four repented and returned to the church.
This likely did not mean many people in England had changed what they thought.
It meant that England was trying to figure out again how to live under a
different set of rules. The whirlwind was becoming dizzying. Indeed, in early
fifteen fifty four, John Bradford Than, a resident of the Tower of London,
wrote a treatise. The question was about conformity, namely, was it
right for someone who knew quote the truth to attend Mass. His answer an
emphatic no. Those who knew it to be wrong, but conformed out of
weakness and cowardice were simply figures of contempt. His real argument was with the
people who believed it was permissible to be there, that is, in church,
in body, while worshiping God secretly and inwardly. The Mass, he
wrote, had no cracks through which such freedom of spirit might escape. It
was a quote mar Malorium a sea of evils, an idolatrous, insidious miasma
of corruption and defilement to hear mass or even be in church while it was
being said, there was a sin breaking quote all God's laws, generally in
every commandment, particularly end quote. There was short shrift for the idea that
attendants could be redeemed by displays of disrespect at the elevation of the host.
That was like a servant willingly accompanying thieves to his master's house and expecting to
be excused because he didn't actually steal anything himself. Nor did Bradford neglected objection.
That was his only incorrect theologically but presumably often posed quote offending our brethren
in not coming to mass end quote. Here sadly he said, there was
little to be done. It was a case of offense taken, not given,
for the evil of the thing. Meant it could never be offensive to
avoid an attack it to refuse the mass was to invite retribution. But Bradford's
only practical advice for the people of England was to take up their cross and
prepare to follow the true faith, the evangelical faith. His view was typical
across Europe. Views toward conforming began to Harden. Such conformists were now called
Nicodemus, after the pharisee who visited Jesus secretly by night. The evangelical leader
Heinrich Bollinger wrote an entire sermon decrying the actions of those who attended Mass,
while rejecting its premise. Many of the people demanding that Englishmen stand up for
their faith, however, were no longer in England. The number of those
who left in fifteen fifty four were staggering, perhaps as many as a thousand,
so I suppose it was a bit easier for them to be critical.
The new Catholic bishops were more than happy to see them go. Gardner even
helped make arrangements for a few to leave the country. That doesn't mean it
was an easy decision for people. Many of those who left were influential evangelical
preacher who were abandoning their flocks by doing so. We have a number of
accounts detailing just what a difficult choice this was for so many. Ironically,
many of those who fled moved to, of all places, Catholic Italy.
It was just easier to get lost in the masses there. Some left cities
and towns but didn't actually leave England. The evangelical printer John Day left London
in fifteen fifty four for a little village called Barham, where he continued to
operate a secret printing press until Mary's death years later. Not every kingdom overseas
was willing to accept refugees either. A few sympathetic princes in Germany outright refused
to accept evangelicals out of fear of angering Charles the Fifth. As always during
this age, politics and religion refused at the hip. One English refugee later
wrote, quote, lost the saving truth at home and found it abroad.
Our countrymen are become our enemies, and our strangers are made our friends.
End quote. There's a lot hidden in this sentence of critical importance to our
later story. A schism was beginning to form in the evangelical ranks, even
if no one knew it yet. After Mary's death, many of these exiles
are going to return. They will then claim that they represent a sort of
untainted church. The stage was already being set for the religious conflicts of Elizabethan
England. For the moment, the arena of trouble that sort of indicates all
this is Frankfurt, an imperial free city of largely Lutheran complexion. It enjoyed
an uneasy friendship with Charles the Fifth after remaining loyal to him in the bout
of warfare brooking out in fifteen fifty two. Early in fifteen fifty four,
the Frankfurt Town Council granted permission to settle the remnants of a small stranger church,
a community of French weavers from Glastonbury in England. As other English exiles
began to arrive that summer, the council insisted that they shouldn't dissent from the
a Frenchman who had already arrived. In doctrine or ceremony. It was an
assertive performance of liturgies just banned in England that might be seen as a provocation
to both Philip and Mary. In practice, these axiles found they could use
their prayer book, but tailored it to resemble the liturgy of the French Congregation,
which was derived from Calvin's Geneva. New prayers and psalms were added and
the litany discarded. The quiet local arrangements were barely in place when on the
second of August fifteen fifty four, the leaders of the congregation, prominent among
them, A man by the name of William Whittingham sent an eye catching letter
to other English Ales. It invited them all to come and settle in Frankfurt,
where worship was subject to no control and the church was free from all
superstitious ceremonies. The implication that other refugees worshiped superstitiously was provocative, to say
the least. Englishmen then living in Zurich and Strasburg reported that while minor changes
were permissible, the continued use of the Prayer Book was vital. They wanted
to show solidarity with persecuted brethren still in England and to rebut papist accusations that
the Protestants were constantly shifting and changing positions. Hardened in November fifteen fifty four
when John Knox, a veteran of battles over the fifteen fifty two Prayer Book,
was invited by the Frankfurt Congregation to become their minister. He immediately allied
himself with the aforementioned Whittingham. His co minister, Thomas Lever, then took
the opposite view. Bail would prove to be just as controversial as Knox himself.
Both then wrote to John Calvin who returned their responses in fifteen fifty five
in January, somewhat wearily urging all sides to compromise. In March fifteen fifty
five, the Strasburg community decided to take matters in hand. A party of
exiles there traveled north to Frankfurt. But at the very first divine service,
these newcomers loudly interjected that the prayer book responses were being omitted by the Frankfurt
congregation. When challenged, they answered that quote this has the face of an
English church end quote. Knox responded angrily. It wasn't long before the two
groups broke into aschism of their own. Knox was content when all of the
exiles from Strasburg were sent back, but this didn't quell the underlying tensions.
What did it mean, Did you have to conform in some way to the
changing nature of religious laws in England or did you have to remain completely pure?
Again? These were the fault lines already forming that are going to fracture
in the years to come. The experience of the exile enabled growing numbers of
English Protestants to see more clearly than ever that they were not in fact bound
to the legacy of Henry the Eighth limited to adapting, reforming, or refining
the old structures that he had rested control from the pope. A church could
be reconstituted from its very first and fundamental principles. The desire to do this
and the fear sometimes of doing this would henceforth pull the movement of evangelical reform
in evermore conflicting directions. But while new fault lines opened up on one side
of the broad religious divide among English Catholics, a twenty ear schism was drawing
finally to an end in a very different gesture of repudiation to the legacy of
Henry the Eighth. In late fifteen fifty four, within the court of Queen
Mary, the decision was at last taken. The English Church was coming home
to roam. If you've enjoyed the episode, feel free to check out the
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