Well, let’s
talk about Elizabeth. Mary died on the
morning of November 17, 1558 and Elizabeth became Queen with no
opposition. She was at her primary
residence, Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, just less than 25 miles north of
London, where she and her brother, Edward VI, had spent much of their
childhood. The Accession Council came to
inform her of her new position and pledge their loyalty.
Mary had not
only turned the Church back to its medieval status, though admittedly without most
of the monasteries. She reversed the
policies of her father and brother who drew their counsel primarily from the
newly ennobled laity and filled key government posts with clergy. Her Secretary of State was John Boxall who
was dean of Peterborough, Norwich, and Windsor.
Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, was Lord Chancellor. Lay members of her Council, such as her
secretary Sir John Bourne, were invariably Roman Catholics—though some such as
William Paulet, the Lord Treasurer, went with whichever religious wind was
prevailing at the moment. William Paget,
Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, was another committed Catholic who served Mary. One member of the Council who was missing to
greet the new Queen was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald
Pole. He died at Lambeth Palace, the
London Residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, only twelve hours after
Mary.
When
Elizabeth looked at the Council she have realized that so much and so many
would have to go if she were to bring England into the path she would set for
it. Polite to her guests—unlike the
other Tudors, she was always gracious—she determined at once to choose her own
advisors and dismiss those who had served her sister. The clergy were, within a year or two,
deprived of both royal and ecclesiastical office and remanded to
custody—usually a fairly gentle custody—most eventually be released and
returned to very private lives. The
laity who remained loyal to their Catholic faith likewise lost their places on
the Council and at Court, though not usually their peerages and place in the
House of Lords. By and large it was a
gentle reshuffling of the deck as Elizabeth replaced Mary’s Catholic ascendency
with a Protestant Council of her own choosing.
Elizabeth was to have a much smaller Council than her sister, but it was
comprised of men chosen for their competence (and at least nominally Protestant
faith) and she was to entrust them with far greater responsibility than any of
her predecessors. Sir William Cecil was her chief advisor. His son, Sir Robert Cecil along with Sir
Francis Walsingham and Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex were the second tier. Sir William Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir
William Knollys were other important advisors.
She did not appoint any of her bishops, even her new Archbishop of Canterbury
to her Council or to key government posts, remarkable innovation only because
the Archbishop of Canterbury had always served as one of the Privy
Councillors.
Elizabeth’s
first aim was to restore the independence of the English Church from Roman
authority. She was aided by the fact
that the Primatial See, the Archbishopric of Canterbury, was vacant due to the
death of Cardinal Pole. She would be
able to choose her new Archbishop. But
this proved to be a more difficult challenge than one would think. Elizabeth had her man in Matthew Parker, but
he was not interested in the post.
Parker had been a much beloved chaplain to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s
mother, and despite his being married (Elizabeth did not like a married clergy,
one of her “Catholic quirks”) insisted on him as Archbishop. A second problem was getting the requisite
three bishops to consecrate him as Mary’s bishops were, to a man, convinced
Catholics who, many having betrayed the Church once under Henry, saw that a
break with Rome inevitably led towards a Protestant doctrine and practice they
were unwilling to stomach again. While the
bishops had failed miserably to resist her father in his break with Rome,
Elizabeth’s bishops—some of whom had been among her father’s lackeys—stood their
ground. It would not, however, stop the
royal policy of an independent and Protestant Anglican Church.
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