Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVII

The Young Elizabeth 

Well, back to our little exercise on the Church of England.  There is a lot of stuff I want to pursue--especially with the idea of Evangelical Catholicism--but I don't want to drop this Anglican thing along the way.  There are some important lessons we Catholics can learn from the history and experience of the Church of England--and some things which that history may require us to rethink about our own Church.  

With Mary’s death on November 17, 1558 Elizabeth Tudor came to the throne. She was a woman of 25 at the time of her accession.  Ironically her father had feared a woman monarch would be unable to rule England and this woman would turn out to be the greatest monarch in England’s history. Her accession speech demonstrates just how savvy this woman was. When the Accession Council assembled at her residence at Hatfield, the home given her by Mary, she declared. 

My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all ... to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel

Elizabeth clearly states here the “doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies,” a principle that evolved in the Common Law and the unwritten English Constitution, but also which flows over into American Law.  This is a difficult concept for most people to understand and it is more an exercise in arcane trivia than the exploration of a useful topic, but I love arcane trivia.  So here we go.

The King (in Elizabeth’s case, Queen; by extension the Chief Executive—a President, Governor) has two bodies—the “natural body” and the “political body.”  Today, for examples, in and under the Law, Elizabeth Windsor and Queen Elizabeth II are two distinct persons.  Elizabeth Windsor, when driving her Land Rover through the mountains around Balmoral, is a private person subject to the same traffic laws as any other driver in Scotland.  Queen Elizabeth, opening Parliament or performing any of her other constitutionally defined duties, is a symbol of the nation in a way that the lady behind the wheel of the Land Rover is not.  As Queen she is subject to the Constitution but not to the law.  The natural body dies; the political body does not—it simply passes into another as it passed into her on the morning her father died.  The King is dead; long live the King.  The King never dies.  In the same way there is Barack Obama and there is the President of the United States.  Barack Obama has to pay income tax and otherwise obey the law of the land.  The President, however, in the performance of his Constitutionally defined duties, is shielded by the obligations and consequent prerogatives of the office, from personal responsibility for decisions which may not accord with the law.  It is unfortunate, but the President—any President—may need to order someone to be killed for the sake of national security.  He may need—as President Bush did—to order people abducted and held without charges for the sake of counter-terrorism.  This not make the actions morally justifiable, but such actions are difficult—if not impossible—to prosecute as long as they are to fulfill the constitutional duties mandated by the office.  Similarly, while presidents come and go, the Presidency remains.  Whether by the death of a President in office or by the end of one’s term, the man goes but the President remains.   And like the British Monarch, for good or for shame, the President is a symbol of the political structure of the nation.  This is important as the vitriol that one faction or another of Americans tends to spew at whomever is in the White House is an indication only of their ignorance.  Criticism, of course.  Evaluation, a civic duty.  But respect goes to the office and the man who holds it, whether or not it belongs to the man personally. 

Of course, I am well aware that a significant number of readers will not agree with me on this, but I am just stating how the principle of the King’s Two Bodies, distinguishing between the Person in Office and the person in the office, has become part of the political heritage.   Of course, in American law it is not as settled a principle as it is in English Law.  People do try—even Congress tries—to bring suits against the President (as opposed to the individual in the office) but generally without much success as the judiciary sees the need to maintain the checks and balances.  Whether or not this changes is an indication of the unsettled aspects of our Constitution, which though written, is always being re-interpreted by the judiciary. 

Notice too that Elizabeth begins by declaring that “I am God’s creature, ordained to obey His appointment …desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have the assistance of His grace to be the Minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me….” And that she continues “by His permission a Body Politic to govern …may make a good account to Almighty God.”  Elizabeth clearly understands that she, in her “Body Politic” as differentiated from her private person and relationships,  receives her authority from God.  This is very different from our American principle where authority to govern is received from the consent of the governed, though the American principle will evolve from the British Constitutional tradition but only after many twists and turns—motivated by the radical Protestantism that was to be introduced into England under Elizabeth—but that is for postings down the line—considerably down the line.  Elizabeth understood her authority was from God and she was his vice-regent.

This gives an interesting insight into Elizabeth’s religious consciousness.  We will see in the next several postings that Elizabeth had some very definite ideas for the Church during her reign.  But there was a religious dimension to Elizabeth that ran much more deeply than her ecclesiastical polity.  I don’t mean to say that she was devout.  I honestly don’t think she was.  But she was theologically minded.   She had been well schooled in Theology—certainly better than either her sister or her brother—and had a much more open mind than either Edward of Mary.  I think for Elizabeth Theology was primarily political more than doctrinal, devotional, or liturgical.  She wanted, as we will see, to use the Church and its liturgy to advance and impress on the consciousness of her subjects, a certain political theory.  In this she will have to fight Parliament—and will be more often than not blocked by Parliament and its counter-vision.  I don’t see much evidence that Elizabeth had a personal piety as did Mary and as did Edward—or even as much piety as had her father.  Faith, for Elizabeth, was all cerebral and political but then I think this attitude will to a great extent stamp the Anglicanism of the next two centuries and also foment the rebellion against it. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVIII

Stephen Gardiner

Let’s go back to the history of the Church of England for an entry or two. This weekend with the Holy Father’s trip to Jordan, Palestine, and Israel will give some contemporary events to comment on, but before we get into that hoopla, I would like to advance by a notch or two the history of the Church of England as there is still so much to cover.  We are only up to about 1554 and most of the best stuff is yet to come.

Where we left off was Queen Mary’s process of brining the Church of England back into the Roman Communion.  It was not as quick a process as one might think.  Mary had deposed about a half-dozen or more convinced Protestant bishops but to replace them had no choice but to rely on any number of bishops who had supported her father’s schism and even some who had introduced the Protestant reforms of Archbishop Cranmer during the reign of her brother, King Edward VI. Robert Parfew, Bishop of St Asaph, had even been one of the contributors to Cranmer’s 1549 Prayerbook.  With only two or three exceptions of clergy who had remained on the continent during the reigns of her father and brother, there simply were no bishops and few priests who had not acceded to schism, if not having gone further in embracing the new doctrines and liturgies of Cranmer. 

One of the Churchmen who had gone along with the schism of King Henry, indeed provided the canonical justifications for it, but rebelled at the liturgical and doctrinal innovations of King Edward’s reign, was Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

Gardiner was a brilliant jurist—holding the doctorates in both canon and civil law from Cambridge.  He also was a classicist, an avid scholar of both Latin and Greek.  He was one of the humanists in the early phases of what might be called the Renaissance England, following the example of Dean Colet and Thomas More.  (I know I am a snob, but I am reluctant to speak of an “English Renaissance, and if it weren’t for Shakespeare I would refuse completely.  The English have always struck me as far to practical to pay serious attention to anything beyond commerce and the military.)  Originally in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s all-competent Lord Chancellor, Gardiner was noticed by the King and transferred to his service before Wolsey’s fall.  Gardiner served Henry in a variety of diplomatic missions on the continent, several of which had to do with advancing Henry’s plans to divorce Queen Katherine.  In 1527 Gardiner was sent to Rome to plead Henry’s cause to Clement VII—a futile effort despite Gardiner’s superior knowledge of canon law because of Clement’s dependency on the Emperor Charles V, Katherine’s nephew.  (Medici politics doomed this mission from the start.  You can see more about this in the entry for September 7, 2013.)  While Gardiner failed in his mission to secure the annulment, Henry was grateful for his efforts—and anxious to use  his talents in the upcoming battle he (Henry) had determined to wage with the Church—named Gardiner his secretary.  In 1531 Henry arranged for Gardiner to be named Bishop of Winchester—England’s wealthiest see.  This should not be construed to mean that Gardiner was the King’s toady.  In giving Gardiner the See of Winchester, Henry acknowledged that Gardiner had often opposed Henry’s policies and indeed he would do so again in the following year when Henry tried to intimidate the bishops as the break with Rome came closer.  Nevertheless, as the leading canon lawyer in the realm—and indeed one of the finest in Europe—Henry depended on Gardiner both to argue the case for his annulment and to justify the break with Rome.  Gardiner delivered on both counts. 

Henry was no slouch theologically and although a firm Catholic doctrinally and liturgically—though not a papal Catholic after 1530 or so—was willing to make some accommodation to the crypto-Protestants in the English Church and politics.  This was the Cranmer-Cromwell faction. In 1538 Cranmer had brought three Lutheran theologians to London to discuss a variety of doctrines and practices—transubstantiation, celibacy of the clergy, the importance of confession, the sacrificial nature of the Mass.  As Henry was at the time in negotiation for marriage with a Protestant Princess—Anne of Cleves—he turned a blind eye to the introduction of this Trojan Horse of Continental Protestantism into his realm, but a number of conservative bishops, including Gardiner, saw it as a threat to orthodoxy.  The rest of Henry’s reign would be marked by infighting among the bishops as Gardiner, Tunstall of Durham, Bonner of London and other conservatives tried to out maneuver Cranmer, Latimer and Shaxton who represented a Protestant party among the bishops.  While Latimer and Shaxton did fall into Henry’s disfavor, Cranmer was able to outwit his foes and in fact turn the tables on them.  When Henry died, Cranmer was able to keep Gardiner from the Council of Regency and as the new reign changed the course of the Church of England, to advance the Protestant agenda. Gardiner, who resisted, was deprived of his see and imprisoned.  He remained imprisoned throughout Edward reign.  Mary, upon her accession, freed him, restored him to his see at Winchester, and named him her Lord Chancellor, a position equivalent to Prime Minister today.  Tables were now turned as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, was imprisoned for treason and on trial for heresy.  In Cranmer’s enforced absence, Gardiner performed the coronation rites for Mary at Westminster Abbey on November 1, 1553.

Mary and her Chancellor did not always agree.  Their most notable disagreement was over Mary’s plan to marry her cousin, Philip of Spain, in hopes of bearing a child who could succeed to the throne and avoid Mary’s Protestant sister, Elizabeth, becoming Queen.  Gardiner saw the unpopularity of a foreign husband, particularly a Spaniard, and joined a petition of Parliament that Mary should choose an English husband, but Mary would not be dissuaded.  As Chancellor Gardiner had to conduct much of the negotiations for this ill-advised marriage and he carried out his duties and presided at their marriage in his cathedral at Winchester on July 25, 1554.  The marriage failed to produce the desire heir.  While Mary genuinely loved her husband, Philip saw the marriage strictly in political terms and Philip remained in England just over a year.  Mary should have listened to Gardiner.

While she intended on restoring England to the Catholic Communion, Mary initially promised religious tolerance to her Protestant subjects. In regard to Cranmer she was determined to avenge her mother, but otherwise did not seem over anxious to persecute Protestants.  Gardiner encouraged her in this policy of toleration, but as time went on the Queen grew more worried about what would happen should her Protestant sister gain the throne, and became more aggressive in her religious policies. Gardiner tried to warn her off this.  He himself showed great tolerance towards Protestants in his diocese.  But in 1554 Mary had Parliament pass the Heresy Acts as part of the conditions under which the Church of England would be readmitted to the Catholic Communion.   Despite Gardiner’s advice Mary became more and more harsh on her Protestant subjects, executing almost 300 people and earning the sobriquet: Bloody Mary.

Stephen Gardiner died in November 1555 and is buried in a mortuary chapel in his cathedral.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVII

Mary I

Mary was not able to reconcile England to the papacy as quickly as one might suppose.  First she needed clergy on whom she could rely to bring back the ancient rites.  As mentioned in previous entries, she did not have a single bishop who had been Catholic before Henry’s renunciation of papal authority and who had stood firm in their loyalty to the Roman Pontiff.  The best she could do was rely on bishops like Stephen Gardiner, Edmund Bonner, Nicholas Heath, and Cuthbert Tunstall who had been consecrated according to the rites found in the old ordinal, who had not married, and who had seen—and resisted—the slippery slope from schism into Protestant doctrine and practice.  She also needed to retain a number of bishops such as Goodrich, Aldrich, King, and Chambers who had been properly consecrated according to the old ordinal and who, although they had gone along with Cranmer’s Protestant policies, were now willing to return to the ancient rites.  This was a huge compromise as Mary had to wonder whether their orthodoxy could be trusted, but she had little choice given the number of Sees she had to fill.  The convinced Protestant bishops—Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Coverdale, Ferrer, Bush, Scory, Harley, Taylor, Barlow, and Holgate—all had to be removed and replaced.  Mary was able to find a few priests who had not gone along with her father’s schism and her brother’s Protestantization to fill the vacated sees, but for the most part she had to rely on men who had become Protestant but were now willing to return to the old faith.  And again—could they be trusted to be truly Catholic?

In Richard Pate she found a candidate for the Diocese of Worcester who had remained true to the old Church.  Pate had been on the continent the whole time of her father’s schism and her brother’s reign in the service of Mary’s cousin, the Emperor Charles V.  When Mary came to the throne, he returned to England and she made him bishop of  Worcester.  Likewise, Thomas Goldwell had been in Rome throughout the reigns of Henry and Edward and Mary named him to St. Asaph in Wales.  The other sees were not so easy.  James Brooks was named to Gloucester to replace Hooper. Brooks at been at Oxford during the reigns of Henry and Edward and supposedly had conformed but was now ready to return to Catholic practice.  Robert Parfew, whom Mary had named to replace Harley at Hereford had not only conformed but even served on Cranmer’s commission to compose the 1549 Prayer Book. Henry Morgan of St. David’s in Wales, was another who had conformed to the reformed rites under Edward but whom Mary named as a bishop.  Mary restored Tunstall to his see of Durham and named Nicholas Heath, whom her brother had deprived of Worcester, to replace Holgate at York.

Mary’s most important ally in bringing the Church of England back to Catholic practice was Stephen Gardiner whom her father had named bishop of Winchester and who had been deposed by Edward VI for resisting the Protestant policies of his reign.  Mary restored Gardiner to his see—the wealthiest in the realm—and made him Lord Chancellor.  He repaid the favor by officiating at her coronation on October 1, 1553 in Westminster Abbey.

For Canterbury—the primatial see—Mary had a plan but chose to proceed slowly.  It would not be until November 1555—almost a year and a half after her accession—that Cranmer would be deposed and a new Archbishop named. Mary had a score to settle with Cranmer for declaring her parents’ marriage annulled and this leaving him in suspension of duties without being canonically deprived was very much like a cat playing with a mouse.  Cranmer was imprisoned during this time at Oxford along with Bishops Ridley and Latimer.  He was forced to watch them burned at the stake for their heresies.  We will look at his fate in a future posting. 

Mary had her bishops lined up and they proved to be a better lot than might have been supposed.  When Mary died and Elizabeth succeeded to throne, only one bishop who had served under Mary (and who had, in fact, served continuously under Henry and Edward before her), Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff in Wales, would renounce the Catholic faith to remain in office.  The remainder of her bishops—most of whom had gone into schism under Henry and even embraced the Protestant reforms in the reign of King Edward—stood firm in Catholic faith even though it meant the loss of their sees and for some imprisonment.  But there was much more to do than just get reliable bishops. 

Mary needed priests as well.  Unlike the Bishops of King Edward’s time, many of the English priests were not enthusiastic about the Protestant liturgies contained in the Book of Common Prayer—and particularly the 1552 edition which was far more Protestant than the original compromise book of 1549.  Edward had been on the throne only six years and five months.  Most English priests had been ordained before he came to the throne.  Granted some had married under his dispensation but for those who were willing to give up their wives—and many were—Mary was only to happy to have them resume their parishes.  How many actually left their wives and how many maintained a discreet relationship with them would be an interesting study.   Clerical concubinage, or more accurately, clerical common-law marriage had been common enough in and before the reign of King Henry.  It was not difficult to go back to the old ways. 

Yet even with priests and bishops in place for the restored rites, the Queen had much to do to turn England back to the Catholic side.  Mary first required Parliament to repeal the religious legislation passed under her brother that authorized the Protestant liturgy.  Those same rites Parliament had insisted on a few years earlier were now proscribed.  But that does not mean that the Mass could be restored at once.  Altars had been demolished and replaced by plain wooden tables, missals and other service books used as fishwrap, vestments destroyed, and church plate (sacred vessels and such altar furnishings as candelabra and crucifixes) melted down.  It took time—and money—to reequip the churches for the Catholic liturgy. 

In November 1554—more than a year and four months after Mary’s accession Cardinal Reginald Pole arrived in England as Papal Legate with the authority to readmit the Church of England into the Catholic Communion.  Meanwhile, Catholic liturgy and doctrine had been reintroduced.  Pole’s arrival had been delayed by Mary and by the emperor Charles V because they feared that the Papal Legate might oppose their plan to marry the emperor’s son, Philip, to Mary.  There was some tension at this time between the Papacy and the Empire and in fact, Paul IV would recall Pole to Rome because of his displeasure with Mary’s alliance to her husband’s politics, but the Cardinal remained in England—some sources say at Mary’s orders; others due to his failing health.  We will do a posting on Pole in the near future as well as his is a very complex story and key to Mary’s program. 

Henry VIII had confiscated an immense about of Church lands—both from the monasteries and from individual dioceses—during his reign.  This land had been parceled out as rewards for those who supported Henry’s new policies.  Henry had stacked the House of Lords by creating many new peers and he used Church lands to provide income for his allies among the Lords. He also sold property—and much of the Church treasure he had confiscated as well—to provide the income he needed for both is personal luxury but also his political goals such as creating the English Navy.  Many of the newly ennobled families were afraid that they would loose their property to have it restored to the Church with a Catholic Queen.  Mary was anxious to restore the monasteries as far as she could, but in the end was unable to do much.  Monks were brought back to Westminster, nuns to Syon, friars to Smithfield and Greenwich, and the Carthusians to Sheen but vocations were not many and benefactors even more scarce.  Some former monks of Glastonbury petitioned for the restoration of their abbey but I don’t believe monastic life was restored there.  Mary and the Papacy had to settle for the fact that most of this property that had once belonged to the Church was now lost to it.  If Mary wanted to achieve her larger goals of restoring England to the Church—and indeed to reach her various political goals as well—she could not afford to alienate the important families in the realm that now occupied the lands that had once belonged to the monks.  She would have to rebuild the religious life from the ground up but unfortunately history was not to allow her the time needed to achieve this goal.

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVI

"Lady Mary" Tudor c 1544

Mary I of England, aka “Bloody Mary” is a very complex character and to understand her reign you have to take a look at the ups and downs of her life.  Mary was the fourth of five children born to Henry VIII and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.  (There was also one miscarried daughter.)  Each of the other children, including three brothers, died shortly after birth or in infancy, leaving Mary the only heir to her father’s kingdom.  As long as there was prospects for more children—including the hoped for son—Mary had a charmed life.  She was given an extraordinary education in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Music, dancing, and mathematics and was introduced to all the brilliant European scholars who were drawn to her father’s court through his friends such as Sir Thomas More and other humanists.  As a very young girl she was invested with many ceremonial duties and even referred to as the “Princess of Wales” though never invested with that title.  Her father gave her her own household with her ladies in waiting and servants and estates, but when he decided to have his marriage annulled in the hopes that a future wife would produce the longed for male heir, Mary was declared illegitimate, lost her status as princess, was simply “The Lady Mary.”  To add to the indignity, she was assigned as a Lady in Waiting to her infant half-sister, Elizabeth, Henry’s daughter by Anne Boleyn.  This degradation ruined any hope of an escape from England via a royal marriage and condemned Mary to perpetual spinsterhood.  Mary was sent away from Court to live at Hundson House, one of Henry’s hunting lodges in Hertfordshire.   

Henry was a stubborn man and Mary was an apple that fell from that tree.  Mary refused to recognize Henry’s claims to be head of the Church, his “annulment” from her mother, Katherine, or the legitimacy and royalty of her half-sister, the new heir.  Henry, to force her into compliance, would not allow Mary to see her mother who, after her being degraded from Queen to “Dowager Princess of Wales” (her title as the widow of Henry’s older brother and deceased Prince of Wales, Arthur), was forced into exile at The More and later at Kimbolton Castle.  Both Mary and Katherine were seriously ill at this time and Mary’s health issues were probably due to the stress that Henry was putting her under in keeping her away from her mother in her mother’s hour of need.  Meanwhile, Henry’s new wife, Anne Boleyn encouraged Henry in his hardness of heart.   Anne’s insecurity left her with a pathological determination to keep both Katherine and Mary in disgrace, but Anne’s reign was short-lived and when Henry left her (and had her beheaded) for his third wife, Jane Seymour, the tune changed.  Jane was a woman of lovely temperament and wanted things smoothed over.  Katherine was dead by this time and Jane convinced Henry to bring Mary back to Court.  Henry agreed to do so on the conditions that Mary recognize him as head of the Church, that she recognize her parents’ marriage as annulled, and that she recognize her own illegitimacy.  Mary was, at this point, broken.  She had no way out but to accept her father’s terms.  She had no sources of income, no friends (other than the Spanish Ambassador who was anxious to use her for his own diplomatic ends), and no roof over her head accept what the charity of others might provide.  Mary caved in and Henry was most generous.  Although she was not restored to the status of a Princess, she was brought back to Court, given the palaces of Beaulieu and Richmond as well as Hatfield House and Hundson as her own, and provided with a very generous allowance for clothing, entertainment (including gambling), and maintaining her retinue.  She was a Princess in all but title.  When Henry was between wives 5 and 6, Mary filled in as the hostess for royal functions.  Katherine Parr, Henry’s sixth and final wife, though a convinced Protestant took a particular liking to Mary (they were almost the same age).  Katherine was an exceptionally kind woman—in great part due to her genuinely religious nature—and did what she could to rebuild a family out of the shambles of Henry’s marriages and the pains and jealousies of his children that resulted.  Henry also—and this is very important for what was to happen at the end of King Edward’s reign—restored Mary and Elizabeth (in that order) to the succession to the Crown. 

Henry’s death meant a deterioration in Mary’s position.  Her half-brother Edward was a Protestant but, unlike their stepmother Katherine Parr, was an intolerant   fanatic.  This was most likely due to his age and the consequent immaturity that could not cope with ambiguities, but it was fed by the Protestant faction at Court led by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer.  Mary remained away from Court through most of her brother’s reign to avoid conflict, but Edward tried to forbid her Catholic worship and Mary would not worship otherwise.   There was a terrible scene in the Christmas Court of 1550 when Edward went ballistic about Mary ignoring Edward’s new laws insisting on the reformed rites of the 1549 Prayer Book.  Neither Mary nor Edward would budge.

Mary’s absolute refusal to accept the Protestant religion had probably as much to do as clinging the memory of what her mother had suffered after her dismissal from Court as it had to do with doctrinal conviction.  I don’t mean that Mary was not a convinced Catholic, but rather that she was fiercely loyal to her mother and knew the price her mother had paid.  Mary was determined to put things back the way they had been before everything “went south” with her father’s design to cast off Queen Katherine for Anne Boleyn.  It was as much Tudor stubbornness as it was Catholic faith that would guide Mary’s policies once she became queen.

She permitted a Protestant funeral for her brother—according to Cranmer’s rites with “an English Communion” rather than with a Catholic Mass.  The sermon, however, was preached not by a Protestant but by one of the schismatic bishops, George Day of Chichester, who would help Mary guide the Church of England back into the Roman Communion.   Mary did not attend the funeral—it was not the custom for the new sovereign (or even a member of the immediate royal family) to attend the funeral rites for the departed sovereign—or for anyone else for that matter.  Neither Edward nor his sisters attended their father’s funeral; Elizabeth was not to attend Mary’s.  A nobleman of the court would be appointed to be “chief mourner” in place of the sovereign.    Mary herself had served as chief mourner for Henry’s wife #3, Jane Seymour, who had been the one to reconcile Henry with his estranged daughter. 

Putting Edward’s body in their grandfather’s tomb in Westminster Abbey was not enough to bring the English Church back into the Roman Communion.  It would take the better part of a year and a half before England was restored to papal jurisdiction.  More about that soon. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXV

Nicholas Heath,

Archbishop of York

under Queen Mary

Mary was faced with the problem of getting a bench of bishops whom she could trust in her program to restore the Church of England to the Roman communion from which her father, Henry VIII had broken it in the 1530’s and to restore Catholic doctrine and practice which her brother, Edward VI, had replaced with reformed liturgy and doctrine between 1547 and his death in 1553.  The only bishop who had resisted the break with Rome was John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who paid with his head for resisting Henry’s making himself Head of the Church of England.  There were a number of other bishops whose elections to their sees had been done before the break with Rome and with papal approval—Bishops Tunstall, Gardiner, Vesey, Goodrich, and Capon—but they had all bent like wheat before the wind when Henry called for separation from Rome.  Thomas Thirlby of Norwich supported Henry in his break with Rome and was made bishop of Norwich by the King,  but never abandoned Catholic doctrine or practice, even during the reign of Edward VI and yet managed to hold on to  his see.  Mary moved him to Ely as Bishop. 

There was a considerable number of other bishops who had been consecrated without papal approval and after Henry’s final break, but according to the ancient rites which remained in force until two years after Henry’s death.  Some of these men were very staunch in Catholic doctrine and had lost their sees because they would not accede to Archbishop Cranmer’s new rites.  Among these were bishops Heath, Day, and Rugg.  There were still others such as Bishops Goodrich, Aldrich, King, and Chambers who served as Henrician Catholics, embraced Archbishop Cranmer’s Protestant reforms to keep their sees, and then willingly returned to Catholic practice under Mary.  Perhaps these last are the most difficult to understand.  They seemed to have no convictions of their own—Catholic or Protestant—but just went along with whatever they were told to do.  John Bird, Bishop of Chester was ordained under the old rites, was enthusiastic about Cranmer’s Protestant reforms under Edward, and was deprived of his see under Mary because he was married.  Though a convinced Protestant, Bird repudiated his wife and was made a suffragen (auxiliary) bishop of London.  Again: what sort of ambition does it take to wear one’s commitments so lightly?  

And of course, there were the Reformers—Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, and Ferrer.   HoHHThese were all convinced Protestants.  Hooper had refused consecration as a bishop until he was dispensed from wearing episcopal garb.  Mary could not keep them as bishops and the key question is why.  Was it that their consecration as bishops was invalid because of the Reformed Rites under which they were made bishops or was it because they were convinced Protestants who would not carry out her policy of returning England to Catholic worship and doctrine?  Cranmer had been ordained according to the old rites and he actually renounced his Protestant ideas—until he found out that Mary was determined to have him executed anyway.  There will be more about that later.  Latimer was convinced of his Protestant faith and was executed for heresy as was Ridley.  They were burned at the stake at Oxford on October 16, 1555.   Hooper was executed under the Heresy Acts of 1554.   Bishop Miles Coverdale of Exeter was deposed of his see but permitted to emigrate.  Barlow of Bath and Wells also emigrated rather than give up his wife.  Bush of Bristol resigned his see and was given a rectory which he held for the rest of his life, ministering as a priest though not as a bishop.  Scory of Rochester had  been consecrated in reformed rites and was deprived of  his see under Mary, but was permitted to function in the London diocese, though probably as a priest rather than a bishop.  He later emigrated and returned after Mary’s death.  Elizabeth appointed him to Hereford.  Harley of Hereford was deprived of his see, but not arrested.  John Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln walked out of the Mass that commenced Mary’s first parliament but he died a natural death before Mary could  deprive him of his see.  Holgate of York was deprived of his see and imprisoned for having married but was later released—though not restored to ministry—and died within months.  Basically, Mary restored the bishops consecrated during the reign of her father according to the old rites even if they had embraced the reforms of Thomas Cranmer.  She had those bishops who were leaders of the Protestant reform—Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, and Ferrar—martyred by being burned at the stake, but permitted the majority of the Edwardine bishops to function as priests or to emigrate.  Mary had to accept many bishops and priests who had gone along—and some wholeheartedly—with the reforms of Edward VI.  She had no choice.  She had to work with the talent pool she had.  What is interesting is how many of those who had gone along with the Protestant ideas under Edward, would refuse to return to Reformed practices under Elizabeth and would give up their dioceses or parishes rather than do so.  In fact, when we get to Elizabeth and how she treated the Catholics, many readers will be surprised how leniently the Queen handled her Catholic subjects. 

I realize how confusing all this might be—all these names and under which rite they were made bishops and which dioceses they held.  Is there is theme to look for?  I am amazed—and discouraged—by how many of these men just sort of bowed in whichever way the wind was blowing.  I am not so sure that we don’t have bishops of the same spinelessness today—not that they would be subject to the King or whoever in the State—but who for their own ambition sing whatever tune those in power call.  John Paul II was notorious for making loyalty to Roman authority the chief criterion for being a bishop.  While I certainly think bishops do need to be loyal to the larger Church, they also need to be accountable to the local Church of which they are the shepherd.  They need to know the people entrusted to them and listen to the voice of those people so that they can accurately gage the consensus fidelium. This doesn’t have to bring them into conflict with Rome, but Rome needs to hear, from the bishops, what is in the heart of the faithful and that means bishops need to be brave enough to speak up.  The American bishops have over the last thirty years or so failed miserably in this.  The careerism, so deplored by Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, allowed them to give the petty bureaucrats in Rome free run over us whether it was the harassment of the American Religious women or the imposition of this incredibly archaic translation in the current Missal.  To the Bishops of Reformation England and to the Bishops today: grow a pair.