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Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London |
Edmund Bonner was born in or about 1500—possibly
illegitimately—in circumstances of relative poverty in Worcestershire. Despite his lower-class background he was
admitted to Broadgates Hall, a hostel for law students, at Oxford. (Broadgates
Hall was re-constituted as Pembroke College in the 17th century and
is still a constituent college of the University.) Actually, before the gentrification of England—one
of the fruits of the English Reformation—it was not at all unusual for even the
poorest of young men to be able to find a place at Oxford or Cambridge and use
that as a propellant into political, ecclesiastical, and economic advancement. It was Calvinism, with its tying of material
prosperity to the idea of God’s predestination, which contributed to the rigid
stratification of English society, but that topic is for another day. Bonner earned his doctorate in Canon Law and
became a chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey. To
Bonner’s credit, he remained loyal to Wolsey when the Cardinal fell in disgrace
and was with him when Wolsey died at Leicester Abbey in the late autumn of
1530. Taken into the King’s service as a
protégé of Thomas Cromwell, Bonner went to Rome in 1532 to try to win Henry’s
case for annulment, or at least to prevent the Pope and Curia from taking any
action against Henry for his divorcing Katherine. He suggested to Pope Clement that the Pope
should allow Henry to appeal to a General Council for an annulment—a route that
would let the Pope off the hook with the Emperor, Queen Katherine’s nephew, who
opposed the annulment.
Of course, what Bonner—and back in England, Henry and
Cromwell—did not understand was Clement’s policy of allying himself to the
Emperor to further Medici policy in central Italy. That policy opposed any annulment be it from
the Pope or a Council. But it was all in
vain anyway as events were moving faster than Bonner’s diplomacy and Anne
Boleyn’s 1533 pregnancy made it imperative that Henry marry her in time for the
expected child—a hoped for son—to be a legitimate heir to the throne. Of course the child was a daughter, but Henry
was married and excommunicate and Bonner summoned home as Henry was losing
interest in the papacy anyway. Bonner
was rewarded by Henry for his efforts with a number of well-salaried Church
positions and entrusted with further diplomatic duties in embassies to the
Emperor and to the King of France. His
rabid anti-papal tirades annoyed the French King but delighted Henry who in
1540 named him bishop of Hereford. (By
this time, of course, Henry had broken completely with the papacy and thus was
naming bishops himself.) Before he could
be consecrated, however, Henry decided to name him to the far more prestigious
see of London. He was consecrated bishop
in April 1540.
Now Henry had broken with Rome but he was not inclined
to introduce Protestant ideas into his Church.
The Church was Catholic—it just wasn’t papal anymore. (It had never been “Roman,” from antiquity
having its own Rites and peculiarities as outlined in previous postings.) Mass
remained unchanged (except that the prayer for the Pope was dropped) and in
Latin, clergy remained unmarried, prayers to the saints continued to be said,
holy water and incense to be used. As
Bishop of London, Bonner was always vigilant against any Protestant ideas
seeping into his diocese. He was not a
theologian—as he himself admitted—but a canon lawyer and he was very
distrustful of any theological novelties.
London and Norwich, because of their being the primary ports, were
always the first point where new ideas would come in and take root. Londoners had long been disgusted with the
Church and its clergy (as we saw in the entries about Richard Hunne) and
consequently very open to the new Protestant ideas coming from Germany. When Henry died and the new King, Edward
VI—acting under the tutelage of his guardians, Thomas Cranmer and the Duke of
Somerset—began to introduce Protestant practices, Bonner ardently resisted, but
by then it was too late. He was deprived
of his see and thrown into the Marshalsea prison. Upon the accession of Mary and the
restoration of Catholicism, he was returned to his see where he was vigorous in
searching out Protestants and handing them over for prosecution and execution. His most famous prisoner was Thomas Cranmer,
the deposed Archbishop of Canterbury, who was executed at Oxford in March
1556.
With the Accession of Elizabeth, Catholicism was out and
Protestantism back in. Bonner was again
deprived of his see and imprisoned.
Despite calls for his execution by the radical Protestant party, he
remained in prison until his death in 1569.
Four times each year he was called out and given the opportunity to
adjure his Catholic faith in favor of the Reformed Church of England with a
promise of release, and each time he refused.
Bonner, like Tunstall, and like Stephen Gardiner (with
whom we have yet to deal) was very typical of the Churchmen of Henry’s
time. Only one bishop in England went to
his death rather than give in to Henry’s demands to be recognized as head of
the Church of England. Most priests
likewise acquiesced. They were naïve in
failing to see where the Church would go once it got mixed into the political
machinations of rabid nationalists.
Thomas More and John Fisher, on the other hand, stood firm not so much
because they believed in the papacy per
se but because they knew that the Church by its very nature needs to
transcend the political, cultural, and geographic limits that would otherwise
divide it. Catholics must always have an
international outlook that sees the good of the entire human family as trumping
the interests of any particular nation or society.
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