Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVII

James VI and I 

Monday July 25, 1603—the day appointed for the coronation of King James VI of Scotland and his wife, Anne of Denmark as James I of England and Queen Anne—dawned drab and wet.  It was not an auspicious omen.  Indeed it was a somber day in more ways than one.  Thirty-six years and one day before, his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been forced to abdicate in favor of her year-old son and the date, possibly chosen to commemorate privately his mother, had to bring back thoughts of her long imprisonment and her execution.  James would, within a few years, remove his mother’s remains from their original grave in Peterborough Cathedral and re-inter them among England’s Kings in Westminster Abbey.  James could not possibly have been close to his mother—or even to have had any memories of her—as they had been separated from his infancy, but she represented to him his royal patrimony and the legitimacy of his wearing the Crowns of Scotland and England.  Just as with the Tudors, the Stuarts too valued family over Creed or any other thing. 

The day before—that fateful anniversary of his mother’s abdication—the new King of England and his wife travelled in the traditional procession from the Tower of London to the Palace of Westminster. They were accompanied by a retinue of guards as well as the leading members of the court and had been greeted along the way by speeches, tableaux, and decorations in their honor at such key places as the Guildhall and Saint Paul’s Cathedral.  The procession, part of all English coronations at the time, would have been an almost-all-day event.  The Palace of Westminster, today the seat of Parliament, had been a chief royal residence in London until the reign of Henry VIII and the monarch traditionally spent the night before the coronation in the palce so as to be near the Abbey where the coronation service began early the next morning.

Indeed workers in the Abbey had been busy all through the night putting the final touches on the “theatre” for the coronation—the area beneath the central tower where the transepts met the nave.  Outside the Abbey workers were laying a carpet of blue cloth from the throne in the Great Hall of the Palace down through the Hall and along the street to the great West Door of the Abbey Church.  About dawn the Abbey vergers began preparing the Church for the service.  This was a tricky matter as never before had the Protestant service found in the Book of Common Prayer been used for the Coronation.  Even the Protestant monarchs, Edward VI and Elizabeth, had been crowned with full Catholic Ritual and the Sarum Rite.  But now, gone was the altar with its jeweled cross and candles and in its place stood a plain wooden table covered with “a faire linen clothe”  for the Holy Communion.  Gone were the snow-white albs and rich brocaded chasubles and tunicles of the clergy.  In their place the bishops wore their rochets of fine white lawn beneath their black silk chimeres.  In place of the miters of previous days, they wore the plain square black caps of their university days.  The lower clergy wore their black gowns.  The Church had been stripped of its glory, but not the peerage.  The peers gathered in their robes of red velvet trimmed with furs, coronets in their hands to be donned at the moment the Archbishop placed the crown on the head of King James. 

Around eight in the morning, James and Anne processed with their court from the Palace of Westminster to the nearby Abbey where, resplendent in their royal robes, they were greeted by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster in somber clerical black. The Dean, the canons, and principal bishops of the realm carrying the Crown, the Chalice and Paten, and the Bible were accompanied by noblemen carrying the scepters, Sword of State, and the orb.  This procession led James and Anne through the Abbey into the choir as the royal choristers sang psalm 112, I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me.  Archbishop Whitgift led the King to the four corners of the coronation theatre, facing East, South, West, and North to present him for “recognition” and the customary shouts of “Long Live the King” by those assembled.  He then administered the Coronation Oath to govern justly and by law.  The oath administered, all settled in for the drab Protestant Service with its multiple collects and turgid readings unbroken by any chants or whiffs of incense, or other bits of more sensual popery. 

It would be another two-hundred and thirty years before a romantic interest in things medieval would encourage the Church of England to root around in its dusty armoires and cubbyholes to find the silk vestments and brocaded hangings of a more vibrant era.  And while Tallis and Byrd had written beautiful music for the Anglican Service (both composers were Catholics and also wrote music for the Catholic Church), and while such music would most likely have been used in the coronation service, for the most part in sixteenth century Anglicanism there was no singing except for psalms, and organs were being allowed to fall into disrepair for lack of use.  In place of ritual and music, there was a preponderance of turgid verbosity and even Cranmer’s elegant English of the Prayer Book was just droned out without any passion.  But when the Gospel had been jumped like a hurdle and the Nicene Creed run through in rote repetition, the service came alive again.  It was time for the anointing.

It is most curious that the anointing survived the Reformation.  All things Catholic had been done away with unless there could be a direct scriptural command such as “do this in remembrance of me,” or “go baptize all nations.”  For many English Protestants with a Puritan bent, even the ring at a wedding was too “popish” for their delicate Christian consciences.  But anointing the king—that was retained.  Granted there was a scriptural precedent for it—Saul had been anointed in his day and David in his.  But all other anointings had been done away with in the revised rites of 1552 and 1559.  There was no long an anointing of the candidate for baptism or a chrismation after the baptism.  There was no anointing in the confirmation service.  There was no anointing of the hands in the ordination of a priest or the anointing of the head of a bishop at his consecration.  Even the anointing of the sick—for which the Epistle of Saint James gave a command—had been done away with.  But a king was still anointed. 

And it wasn’t just the anointing.  Before the anointing the king was divested of his Robe of State and his outer garments, he was vested in the columbium sidonis, a white gown that opened at the neck (to allow for the anointing) and which corresponds to the alb.  Over this, after the anointing, he is vested with the supertunica which corresponds to the Dalmatic.  Over this he is robed with a stole and the cope-like pallium regale.  In other words he is dressed similar to a bishop in his pontificals to show the link between kingship and priesthood.

This link between priesthood and kingship was also displayed in the coronation service of other nations.  The King of France at his coronation received Holy Communion from the chalice, a practice at the time reserved to the priest-celebrant of the Mass.  The Russian Czar also received Holy Communion at his coronation in the manner of a priest—entering the altar through the Royal Doors, the entry into the sanctuary reserved for bishops and priests, and then taking the particle of the Lamb (the consecrated bread) in his hands before drinking from the chalice.  (The normal way the laity receive Holy Communion in the Russian Church is that the priest drops the particle which has been soaked in the consecrated wine, into the mouth of the communicant from a spoon.)

It is ironic that while the Church of England had all but dropped the concept of priesthood for the clergy, it retained it for the Sovereign.   Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that the Monarch becomes “ordained” in the coronation rite or that he or she in any way is authorized for priestly ministry, but the symbols of priesthood are retained and conferred on the Sovereign as a symbol of his (or her) being “The Lord’s Anointed.”  It is a political gesture that draws on religious symbolism.

After James was anointed, he was then invested with the various swords, scepters, and orb that symbolized his rights and duties as protector of the people, administrator to them of Justice and Mercy, and their Ruler.  Queen Anne was then brought forward to the same spot, and anointed like James (though not vested in the priestly garments) and crowned.  They were then led to their thrones and the colorless Anglican Service continued.  Anne caused quite a stir, however, when she refused Holy Communion as this confirmed for many the rumors that she was secretly a Roman Catholic. 

The service over, the priestly vesture exchanged again for the Robe of State, the King and Queen were led from the Abbey back to the Palace of Westminster where the coronation banquet awaited them.  The service lasted about seven hours and it was mid-afternoon before they got to eat.  There was no shortage of food, however, with which to sate the royal appetite.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVI

Anne of Denmark, Queen

of England (1603-16190 
and wife of James I

When Queen Elizabeth I died in on March 24, 1603 she was succeeded on the throne by her distant cousin, King James VI of Scotland.  James was the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII and thus aunt to Elizabeth.   Or, to look at it from another perspective, Elizabeth’s grandfather, Henry VII of England, was great-great grandfather to James.  In either regard Elizabeth and James were not close.  Indeed, there was Arbella Stuart, cousin to both James and Elizabeth, whom some felt had a stronger claim to the Throne.  Elizabeth’s chief minister, Robert Cecil (later, Earl of Salisbury) maneuvered James in as heir, however, as he was more confident of being able to manage James—a foreigner—than of being able to exercise influence over Arbella.  It was probably a mistake and James was far more influenced (and not for the good) by the self0-interest of his “favorites,” especially Lennox, Somerset, and Buckingham than by Cecil. 

James, though the son of Mary Queen of Scots, was a convinced Protestant.  He had been taken from his mother when he was only a year old and he was raised in the Reformed religion to which the vast majority of Scots had turned after 1560.

The Church of Scotland at the time was a curious thing.  Under the tutelage of John Knox who had spent time in Calvin’s Geneva, the Scots Church was definitively Calvinist in doctrine.  At the same time, it was not yet Presbyterian in governance but still had bishops.  It was only in 1582 that the Church of Scotland eliminated bishops and adopted the Reformed model of Church governance by boards of elders and ministers called “presbyteries.”  James was not happy about the abolishment of bishops as he held to the axiom: “No Bishop, No King.”  But the King of the Scots lacked the authority of the King of England.  Henry VII and Henry VIII had broken the power of the feudal nobility and the Tudors were laying the foundation, a very sound foundation, for absolute monarchy.  In Scotland, due to different historical circumstances and especially the long rule of women with the regency of Mary of Guise and the tragic misrule of her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, the Crown had not broken the power of the feudal nobility.  So while Mary remained Catholic, the nobility and the nation had gone Protestant and thus the Protestant Church was accustomed to being self-determinative in its governance.

This whole matter of Bishops versus Presbyterian Government will play a very important role in the history of the Church of England throughout the first three quarters of the seventeenth century.  The Church of England also had bishops and, unlike their Scots counterparts whose authority was overshadowed by fierce evangelical preachers such as Knox and Andrew Melville, the Bishops in England wielded both strong political and ecclesiastical power.   The Puritan party in England was not happy with this as they favored the introduction of Presbyterian Church Polity on the Geneva model as the Scots had done. 

Another sore point for the Puritan party was the Prayer Book and its Liturgy which the Puritans regarded as have retained too much of the pre-Reformation Catholic worship.  The Puritans favored more extempore prayer rather than the set collects and litanies of the Prayer Book.  As the Church of England had done away with vestments, crosses, candles, altars etc. in favor of Spartan Puritan bare-bones worship, however, the differences in Presbyterian and Anglican worship were not that apparent.  (The Church of England officially had retained the Surplice for clergy to wear over their black gowns and had even retained the use of the Cope in cathedral and collegiate churches, but in practice the use of these vestments was very rare. In most churches the minister wore only the same plain black gown, perhaps with tippet and/or preaching tabs, as the Presbyterian clergy north of the border wore.)

The Church of England had, like other Churches coming out of the Reformed Tradition (as distinct from the Evangelical or Lutheran Tradition) minimized its sacramental practice.  Only Baptism and Holy Communion were recognized as sacraments although there were, of course, rites for marriage, ordination of clergy, and confirmation.  Unction of the sick and sacramental reconciliation (aka “confession”) disappeared from church practice.  In most parishes Holy Communion was celebrated somewhat infrequently—usually monthly—and Morning Prayer became the more normal Sunday worship.  The Presbyterian model in Scotland, however, was even less sacramental and Holy Communion was far more rare, perhaps once a quarter. 

Despite the difference in Church governance and worship, however, the Church of England (Episcopal) and the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) were both Calvinist in doctrine and “low-church” in practice.  The Presbyterian faction in the Church of England agitated for change, but was able to accommodate itself for the time being to both the Prayer Book and bishops.  Despite having bishops, parishes tended to be more congregational in governance and frankly the Prayer Book was used selectively in some place and all but totally ignored in others. 

When James ascended the English throne England and Scotland remained two separate kingdoms with two separate parliaments but each having the same king.  James tried—successfully—over the course of his reign to re-introduce bishops into the Church of Scotland and he certainly defended both episcopacy and the Prayer Book in England.   The re-introduction of bishops in Scotland would prove fatal for the monarchy but that is a future story.

In 1589 the 23-year-old James married the 14-year-old Princess Anne of Denmark.  Despite James’ romantic and sexual preference for men, the marriage was initially a happy one.  Anne bore James seven children, though three died in early childhood and one in young-adulthood.  She also had two stillbirths and three miscarriages, bringing the number of pregnancies to twelve.  The problem was that Anne seems to have secretly converted to Catholicism at some point.  The story is that raised a Lutheran in the somewhat ritualistic Church of Denmark, she was bored by the sterile Calvinist worship of the Church of Scotland and found herself more at-home with Catholic worship.  She was very discreet.  James was not happy at the thought of her becoming a Catholic and as he had not yet inherited the English Throne, a Catholic wife could have imperiled his acceptability both to Elizabeth and to her Parliament.  Indeed, Elizabeth wrote Anne warning her not to listen to any who would try to dissuade her from Protestantism and Anne wrote back somewhat dissembling letters to reassure the English Queen that any attempts to convert her (Anne) had failed.  There is no doubt, however, that Anne had embraced Catholicism and she refused communion during the Anglican service of her English coronation on July 25, 1603.  She had several Catholics among her Ladies in Waiting.  Moreover, she supported the idea of a Catholic bride for her son, the future Charles I.  Anne’s official chaplain, Godfrey Goodman, was the Anglican Bishop of Gloucester but had strong Catholic leanings; he officially converted to Catholicism in about 1642 but may have secretly converted at an earlier period.  Rumors of Anne’s Catholicism made her unpopular in Protestant circles both in Scotland and later in England and even strained James’ credibility among the Puritan party.  James’ having a crypto-Catholic wife, his support of bishops, and his favoring the Prayer Book and its Liturgy alienated the more extremely Puritan faction in the Church of England who had hoped that a Scots monarch would bring Presbyterianism to England.