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.  

A Sidebar To the Foundations of the Anglican Church: Continuity (or lack thereof) in English Catholicism

Cardinal William Allen

OK, OK., enough on the Synod and its fall out—and the dizzying fall of Raymond Burke from the highest ecclesiastical heavens to the pit of Malta.  I need to take refuge in the sixteenth century and recover from the madcap pace of the 21^st.   Don’t worry, Avid Readers—humor me on this one.  We will get back to all the intrigue of Rome, the pressures of building the future on the foundations of the past, Synods and Cardinals and the current Pope(s).  But let’s take a short break and shake from our virtual sandals the dust of the fans who are interested only in current ecclesiastical gossip and my cheap shots at the krazies and their kardinal.  Today’s post: One final entry on the Church of England under Elizabeth I—or rather, in this case, the Catholic Church in England during the reign of Elizabeth; and then we will move on to Anglicanism under James I.  And, I promise, the occasional trip back to the present just for fun. 

It was not only the Church of England, taken out of the Roman Communion, that snapped its links with its own ancient heritage during the reigns of Kings Henry VIII and Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I, but under Elizabeth, the Catholic Church in England represents not a continuity with the pre-Reformation Church but a new body—radically discontinuous with the Ancient Medieval Church on that sceptered isle—introduced into England from the continent. (Aren’t you glad that you’re not in fifth grade and Sister M. Humpty Dumpty isn’t making you diagram my sentences.)   

Argument for continuity: The Church of England, an entity now no longer part of the universal communion centered in the Bishop and Church of Rome, retained the ancient cathedral and parish churches, albeit stripped of most of their ornaments and even of much of their revenues.  Argument either way: There is persistent argument as to whether the links of the Apostolic Succession were broken as the new Elizabethan Bishops, consecrated to their office by Cranmer’s reformed Ordinal, replaced the Catholic hierarchy.  (Catholics say the link was broken; Anglicans and Lutherans affirm that it was not, the Orthodox are divided and in the end the arguments—either way—are more political and polemical than soundly theological.)  Argument against continuity: The ancient English rites were replaced by Cranmer’s radically altered Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552 and then by Elizabeth’s 1559 Prayer Book, which was a slight modification of the 1552 Book.  The Church of England, in abandoning its ancient rites in favor of new rites with a distinct Protestant identity, is a new “Church.” 

Yes, those ancient English Rites.  England had never known the Roman Rite but had from ancient days its unique and distinct liturgical tradition.  While people often refer to the Pre-Reformation Liturgical Tradition of England as the Sarum Rite, and the Sarum Rite was the most commonly used Liturgy in the Kingdom, in fact York, Hereford, and Bangor each also had their own distinct rites.  Under Henry VIII, the Sarum Rite became the standard Rite for the entire Kingdom, and York, Hereford ad Bangor Rites were suppressed.  Then Edward VI replaced the Sarum Use with the 1549 Prayer Book.  The Sarum Rite was still used, however, where the old faith was practiced and it was the liturgy which Queen Mary reintroduced upon her accession in 1553.  Abolished again in 1559 by Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity in reintroducing the Protestant Prayer Book of that year, the Sarum Rite was secretly celebrated in those Catholic homes where the old believers gathered for their underground Masses and prayers.  But its days would prove to be numbered.

During the reign of Elizabeth, many devout Catholics fled to the continent even as during Mary’s reign the more ardent Protestants had fled the realm for Geneva, Strasbourg, and other Protestant centers.  Catholics established themselves, for the most part, in Northern France and in Flanders (today’s Belgium).  There they built monasteries, religious houses, and seminaries for English vocations.  The seminaries supplied priests to return secretly to England to minister to those English who clung to “the old faith.” 

Just as the Second Vatican Council called for the Church to “reform” the old rites of its day, so too the Council of Trent had called for the Mass of its time to be reformed.  Pope Saint Pius V established a commission to revise the older missals and create a standard rite for the Western Church.  We now call this revised liturgy the “Tridentine Rite,” and it was the Mass with which those of us “of a certain age” (as one grand old lady of my acquaintance likes to describe herself and her contemporaries) grew up.  In 1570 Pius V promulgated a new Missal introducing this revised Rite, and any Rite, whether of a place or of a religious Order, that could not show that it had been in continuous use for at least 200 years was suppressed.  The English seminaries on the Continent gave up the traditional English Rites in favor of the “new” Missal of Pius V.  When the priests trained in those seminaries returned to England they celebrated the Mass and Sacraments, not according to the ancient rites of the English Church, but to the new revised Rite of Pius V that they had learned during their training. 

The liturgy was the most obvious change in the Catholic Church in post-Reformation England, but not the only one.  When Elizabeth had come to the Throne, a few English Sees, including the Primatial See at Canterbury, were empty, but there were still plenty of Catholic bishops from the reign of Queen Mary.  With the exception of Anthony Kitchin, Bishop of Llandalf in Wales, all Elizabeth’s bishops refused the Act of Supremacy and were deposed rather than accede to the break with Rome.  Rome, of course, still recognized these men as the legitimate bishops in their sees, but as they died (some in prison, some under house arrest, some in retirement, but all peacefully, no martyrs) Rome failed to name new bishops, loyal to Rome, to their sees.  This created a double problem.  By not naming successors, Rome gave tacit acknowledgement to the validity of the new appointments.  More critical than this rather abstract point, Rome’s failure to appoint new bishops left England without a hierarchy.  William Allen, an English priest and exile who had founded the English Colleges at Douai (later moved temporarily to Rheims), Valladolid, and Rome to train priests for “the English Mission,” exercised considerable authority over the priest on the English Mission because of his role in establishing the seminaries.  After Allen’s death in Rome in 1594, however, there was a real authority-vacuum.  In 1598 Enrico Caetani, scion of a prelate-ridden old and noble Roman family who had succeeded Allen as “Cardinal Protector” of England appointed George Blackwell as “Archpriest” to be the superior of the English mission.   This led to a conflict between the Jesuits and the secular clergy who had very different approaches to serving the Catholic faithful in England.  The conflict between the religious order clergy and the secular clergy meant that the Archpriest program never really worked out, and in 1623 Clement VIII appointed William Bishop as Vicar Apostolic of England, Scotland, and Wales, giving him authority over all priests in England, secular and religious.  Bishop was consecrated in Paris in June 1623 (thus becoming Bishop Bishop, neither the first nor the last to hold that particular distinction).   Bishop died the following year and was succeeded as Vicar Apostolic by Richard Smith.  When a warrant was sworn-out for Smith’s arrest (for being an agent of the Pope) in 1631, Smith fled the Kingdom to Paris and there was no Bishop in England again until 1688 when Innocent XI appointed four regional Vicars Apostolic.  However, Bishop Bishop, during his brief tenure, had appointed 20 secular priests to be a “chapter.”  As Bishop had no cathedral, and in fact not even a proper diocese, the legal status of this chapter was disputed but during the long vacancy from Smith’s fleeing England in 1631 until the appointment of the Vicars Apostolic in 1688, the chapter functioned as a diocesan chapter is meant to function during the sede vacante of the bishop with the Dean acting as Vicar General and granting all the necessary dispensations, faculties, etc.   Since the Holy See never challenged the arrangement “the old Chapter” is considered to have been irregular but valid. 

From 1688 until the creation of the English Hierarchy in 1850, the Catholic Church in England was administered by Vicars Apostolic.  When a Catholic hierarchy was appointed for England in 1850 Rome did not “restore” the pre-Reformation hierarchy with its various sees such as Canterbury and York and Winchester and Lincoln, but created new sees for them (though often taking the names of Sees of the English Church from pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon sees).  Again, the failure of Rome to revive the pre-Reformation sees concedes a legitimacy to the Bishops of the Church of England who currently hold them.  Granted, to have given the Catholic Bishops the titles of sees held by the State Church would have broken an Act of Parliament (passed specifically to stop the Pope from appointing Catholic Bishops to the medieval sees) and would have made the new bishops subject to fines and even arrest, but conceding the point is symbolic in the most profound sense of that word.  Creating new sees for the Catholic Bishops, Rome admited that it was not restoring the ancient hierarchy but installing a new one.  Gone were the medieval rites; gone were the medieval bishoprics—the Catholic Church in England was neither continuous with nor a restoration of the pre-Reformation Church but a new and somewhat non-English institution introduced onto that Island whose Church had once given us Hugh of Lincoln and Thomas à Becket and the Venerable Bede and Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and even Thomas More and John Fisher.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCV

James I

Elizabeth was not only having trouble with her Catholic subjects—she was also having trouble with her Protestant ones.  The issue was that the Church of England had become rigidly Calvinist.  The clergy who had embraced Cranmer’s reforms during the reign of King Edward VI and fled to the continent to escape persecution under the Catholic Mary (aka Bloody Mary) had been exposed while on the continent to Calvinist doctrine and polity.  They had already been disposed to continental models of doctrine under the leadership of Archbishop Cranmer who had gradually drifted from Lutheran style Protestantism to the more radical Swiss ideas of Zwingli and Calvin, but Cranmer wanted to retain bishops (he was one, after all) and was in no way anxious to embrace the Presbyterian polity of the continental Reformed Churches.  But Cranmer was now dead (Mary had seen to that) and the Church was more Calvinist in doctrine than ever.  The Puritan faction saw bishops as a holdover from the Catholic era and were anxious to rid the Church of them.  Elizabeth, for her part, saw that the bishops were one of the strong props of the monarchy.  The Presbyterian model of Church government was a tad too democratic for her liking.  Indeed, Elizabeth was no Calvinist.  She had a liking for pomp and ceremony and the Reformed ideas coming from the continent were not to her taste at all.  As we mentioned in an earlier posting, in her revision of the prayerbook she made sure that the vestments and altar furnishings of her father’s day were retained.  For the most part, of course, they weren’t, except in her chapel and there was a constant tension between the Puritan faction (which controlled the House of Commons and thus the taxes that furnished the royal purse) and the Crown over the direction of the Church of England.  Elizabeth shut her eyes to the stark puritan worship followed in the parish churches; the puritans grumbled about the papist trappings in the chapel royal but in the end did nothing confrontational other than an occasional “in-your-face” sermon decrying the Queen’s tendencies towards romish idolatry.  In the end the Puritans knew they were fortunate to have a Queen like Elizabeth who would turn a blind eye to their divergent religious practices, but it also left the Church of England in a certain ambiguity of being neither fully Protestant nor sufficiently Catholic to please anyone.  

Elizabeth died March 24, 1603 and was buried five weeks later with Protestant ceremonial (such as it was) in Westminster Abbey.  She was succeeded by her 3^rd cousin (some would say, and it is more proper but not common usage, “1^st cousin, twice removed”) James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.  James was the nearest relative, but there were several others who could have made a claim for the throne, notably Lady Arabella Stuart.  A 1351 English law prohibited foreigners from inheriting England lands and titles—and thus the crown and its estates.  Moreover, in his 1547 will, Henry VIII had specifically excluded his Scots cousins from potential inheritance of the Crown.  Elizabeth, of course, died childless and had never named her heir before she died.  While Lady Arabella’s claim might have been a bit stronger—given that she was English born and thus neither a foreigner nor under Henry’s ban of a Scots heir—William Cecil (aka Lord Burghley) Elizabeth’s chief minister smoothly maneuvered the succession to James who had proven experience in governing and whose commitment to the Protestant faith was unquestioned.  James arrived in London on May 7^th 1603 and was crowned the following July 25^th.

The coronation is most interesting.  The Church of England had been purged of just about everything Catholic, including the use of consecrated oils for baptism, confirmation, and holy orders.  But what about the anointing of the monarch for his coronation?  The anointing of the monarch, even more than the crowning, is the conferral of Kingship in Christian theology.  Previous to James all the monarchs had been consecrated and crowned in Catholic rites—even Edward VI and Elizabeth, both of whom had inherited Catholic ritual and did away with it during their reigns.  James was the first monarch to be crowned according to the Protestant Book of Common Prayer.  It was decided that the use of chrism was too important to omit so even though it had been ruled out for every other use in the Church of England at the time, it was retained for the coronation of the king. It has remained part of the coronation rite until the present day.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCIV

Philip II, say what you 

will, a snappy dresser

Another follow-up on the saga of Mary, Queen of Scots.  I am grateful to all who sent me messages that they do like the postings that deal with more distant history and in particular for those who like the series on the history of the Anglican Church.  I must admit that I have found it very beneficial myself to work on this series as my own understanding of the history of Anglicanism and, in particular the issue of continuity in the Church of England before and after the various reformations of the sixteenth century, has helped me think more clearly about complex issues such as the Apostolic Succession and the “validity” of sacraments.   And we have a long way to go in the history of the Church of England as we still have the Jacobean Church, the Civil War and the Dissenters, the Restoration, the Enlightenment, the Hanoverians, the Oxford Movement and a long string of complicated and at times contradictory histories. 

Be that as it may.  Let’s look at the impact that the execution of Mary Stuart, the Catholic Queen of Scots, had on England and English Society—Society, of course, including the Church of England. 

The Spanish monarch, Philip II, was deeply involved with the plots to overthrow Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne—plots that led to Mary’s 1587 execution.  Elizabeth’s England—Protestant of the Calvinist variation, though Episcopal in structure—supported the Dutch rebels—Protestant of the Calvinist variation, though Presbyterian in structure—in their revolt against Philip who, in addition to being King of Spain, was the ruler of the Netherlands.  Philip needed to remove the English support for the rebels if he was to secure his authority in the Netherlands and so wanted to replace Protestant Elizabeth with Catholic Mary.  It was not unreasonable.  The old nobility (pre-Tudor) was still overwhelmingly Catholic (and resentful of the loss of power and influence to the new nobility created by the Tudors and overwhelmingly Protestant) and were anxious to support Mary’s ascendency to the throne.  In addition to the nobility, Catholicism survived strongly—even perhaps a majority among the gentry and peasantry—in the North and the West. These Catholics were anxious to see the old religion restored and they were encouraged in their rebellion by the Papal Bull, Regnans in Excelcis, of Pius V that absolved them of any loyalty to Elizabeth.   This Catholic commitment to regime change led to a number of plots, most especially the Ridolfi and Babington Plots, all of which failed and which ultimately led to Mary’s execution to put down the threat of a Catholic rebellion that would put Mary on the throne in place of Elizabeth.  When Mary’s death put her out of the way, Philip had no choice in his campaign to end England’s aid to the Dutch rebels but to invade England and get rid of Elizabeth and her Protestant government.

As if the execution of  Mary were not sufficient grounds in and of itself for Philip to want to strike against England, the English privateer, Sir Francis Drake, raided the Spanish port of Cadiz only two months after Mary’s death, burning ships and seizing supplies. 

Philip drew up bold plans for the retaliatory invasion of England but some of his advisors had strong reservations about their likelihood to be successful.  Anti-English courtiers prevented the critiques from reaching Philip, however, confident that this Catholic mission against Protestant England was God-ordained.   This was a crusade.  In fact, Pope Sixtus V permitted Philip to levy crusade-taxes to finance the expedition and the expedition’s banner was consecrated in a ceremony modeled on the blessing of the banner of the Christian forces against the Turks in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.  Regardless of the political issues of English support for the Dutch rebels, this was a religious war. 

The Spanish fleet consisted of 130 ships, 8,000 sailors, 18,000 soldiers, and 2,500 canon.  They were to be joined by the Duke of Parma’s armies from the Netherlands for the invasion.  This was a serious threat to England. 

In the event, the English bested the much larger and better-equipped Spanish fleet in a series of initial battles.  On August 2, 1588, Elizabeth herself rode out to Tilbury to encourage her army preparing to resist Spanish attempts at invasion and, wearing a somewhat ridiculous breastplate of silver and equally ridiculous, with a page holding her silver helmet, gave her famous speech. 

My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but, I do assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all – to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms – I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns, and, we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

 This is considered one of the best speeches in the English language.  It certainly served its purpose and rallied the English people.  But note her: to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.

And we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

This was for Elizabeth, and for the English, a battle of religion.  To be English was to be Protestant; to be Catholic was to be Spanish.  This marks a turning point in English religious history where not only by law, but in the English political imagination, to be Catholic was to be something other than English.  And so Lord Grantham would say in season 4 of Downton Abbey: "There seems to be something of the Johnny Foreigner about Catholics."  Yes, there does—ever since the Armada.  In many ways the Armada was the deathblow to English Catholicism as the surviving faithful in the rural areas of the North and the West gradually shifted from their foreign religion to the far more English Church of England.