Foundations of the Anglican Church CXVI

 

James II, last Catholic
King of England 

With the death of Charles II on the sixth of February, 1685, England was plunged into a Constitutional Crisis—perhaps the most significant crisis in the development of the unwritten English Constitution.  Charles died without legitimate heir (he had more than enough children born “on the wrong side of the blanket” but no children of his marriage to the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza.)  The Benedictine monk, John Huddleston, chaplain to Queen Catherine, had received Charles into the Catholic Church on the King’s deathbed.  The new King, Charles’ brother James, the Duke of York, had been secretly received into the Catholic Church in about 1668.  His wife, Anne Hyde, had preceded him into the Catholic Church about the time of their return from France at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.  James and Anne had become familiar with Catholicism during their exile in France during the Cromwell years and found the new faith a comfort.  King Charles was not happy with the conversions in his family (despite his wife Catherine of Braganza being Catholic and his own eventual conversion) and insisted that the daughters of James and Anne—the princesses Mary and Anne—remain as Anglicans.  James was able to conceal his Catholicism until a Parliamentary act of 1673 required all military officers to take an oath against the doctrine of Transubstantiation and various other Catholic beliefs, and to take Holy Communion according to the Rites of the Church of England.  James’ refusal to take the oath or receive Holy Communion in the Anglican Church exposed his Catholicism and he had to resign his post as Lord High Admiral. 

James’ wife, Anne, died in 1670 and in 1673 James married the Italian Princess, Mary of Modena, who was, of course, Catholic.   A proxy ceremony had been held in Italy according to Catholic Rites and upon Mary’s arrival in England, they were married in an Anglican service—despite both bride and groom being Catholics.  Anti-Catholicism was rife in England at the time and Mary was highly distrusted as a suspect “agent of the Pope.”  Nevertheless, the inevitable crisis of a Catholic succession was pretty much ignored until Charles death.  Parliament three times proposed a bill to make the Crown bypass James for either Charles’ illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, or for his nieces (James’ Protestant daughters), Mary and Anne.  Each time the bill came near to passing, King Charles dissolved Parliament.  James’ daughter, Mary, had married the Dutch Protestant Prince, William of Orange, in 1677.  This split the English political establishment into parties with the Royalists (or Tories) supporting Charles and James; and the Whigs opposing the royal policy.  This split would outlast the religious conflict over James’s eligibility to the succession and create the basic political divide in England that would last into the reign of Victoria when the parties would morph into the Conservatives and the Liberals.  In 19^th century America, opposition to “King” Andrew Jackson would help create the Whig party that would be the seedbed of the later Republican Party. 

When Charles died, England was faced with the constitutional improbability that the Church of England had a Catholic head.  Only two months after Charles’ death, James and his Italian Queen were crowned in an Anglican service at Westminster Abbey.  Neither, of course, took Holy Communion.  Surprisingly, Protestant England seemed willing to give the Catholic King a shot at good governance.  Of course, the heirs to the throne, the princesses Mary and Anne, were Protestant so this would be, at most, a temporary inconvenience 

James wasted this trust, however, and did several things to provoke Protestant anger.  In Scotland he encouraged laws against the Presbyterians and in favor of Scottish Episcopalians.  Throughout his realms—England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, he relaxed the legal disabilities against Catholics and dispensed many prominent Catholics from the Test Act of 1673, permitting them military and governmental posts without conforming to the Established Church.  He received a papal ambassador, and indeed permitted the ambassador to be consecrated a (Catholic) Archbishop in the Chapel Royal in Saint James Palace with full Roman ceremonial (Cardinal Burke would have loved it) in 1687.  That same year, he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, lifting most disabilities for both Catholics and Protestant dissenters and required that that the Declaration be read from every Anglican pulpit.  This Declaration basically threatened the Establishment of the Anglican Church.  England began to seethe with religious tension. 

In April 1688 James imprisoned the Archbishop of Canterbury and seven other Anglican bishops who challenged his religious policies.  When Queen Mary of Modena gave birth to a son in June of that year, England was suddenly faced with a Catholic succession—a permanently Catholic monarchy.  A group of Protestant nobles petitioned James’ son-in-law, William of Orange, to come to England with an army and take the crown.  By the autumn William arrived; James was captured and imprisoned.  William, not wanting James to become a rallying point, permitted his escape to France where he was received at the court of Louis XIV. 

James tried to raise an army for his support in Ireland which had remained loyal to him, but his forces were defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 by the forces of William.  This battle, and day of its fighting (June 1), have since remained a symbol of the contention between Protestant and Catholic factions in Ireland. 

In April of 1689 William and Mary were crowned in Westminster Abbey.  The Bishop of London performed the ceremony as the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, refused to recognize the deposition of King James.  Eight other English bishops, the majority of the Scots Bishops, and over 400 Anglican priests refused to take the oath to the new monarchs.  They were known as non-jurors.  Deprived of their livings, nonetheless, they had their supporters and the bishops continued to consecrate successors, thus establishing an independent episcopacy in both England and Scotland.  This will be important later for the American Episcopal Church. 

William and Mary, for their part, issued the “Bill of Rights” which established certain limitations on royal power.  Parliament passed an act requiring all future monarchs to be of the Church of England and prohibiting their consorts from being Catholics.  Most significant, however, is that Parliament established the principle that it, Parliament, has the right to choose the monarch.  From Anglo-Saxon times, the English claimed that their monarchy was “elective,” but in actual practice it had become hereditary.  While it is still inconceivable that it would not pass through the established lines of succession, the monarch technically reigns at the invitation of Parliament.  

Foundation of the Anglican Church CXII

Coronation Portrait of
Charles II 

The Reign of Charles II marked not only the restoration of the monarchy but of the Anglican Church as bishops were restored to their sees and conformity to the Book of Common Prayer marked the worship of English churches.  Those clergy who had not been episcopally ordained and would not submit to reordination by a bishop and/or who would not conduct worship according to the liturgical norms of the Book of Common Prayer were deprived of their posts.  The meant that pretty much the entire Puritan wing of the Church of England went into a Non-Conformity from which the Congregational and (English) Presbyterian Churches emerged.  Baptists who had broken with the Puritans during the time of Cromwell and the Commonwealth also fell into the Non-Conformist category.  In 1661 Parliament had passed the Corporation Act which required all local government officials to take the Sacrament according to the Prayer Book Ritual and to formally foreswear the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant which had replaced the Anglican Prayer Book during the Puritan Commonwealth/English Civil War.   Furthermore, by this act, those who would not take the Sacrament according to the Rites of the Established Church could not hold office in the Army or the Navy, nor could they take a University Degree. This meant that Non-Conformists were ineligible for public office and many professions were closed to them.  In 1662 the Act of Uniformity, as mentioned above, required episcopal ordination for all clergy and adherence to the Prayer Book liturgy on pain of deprivation of office.  Parliament also passed a law that year demanding an oath of allegiance to the King.  Quakers could not take this oath as their beliefs proscribed the swearing of all oaths.  This act emarginated the Quakers from the larger English Society even more.  In 1664 Parliament passed the Conventicle Act which prohibited gatherings of more than 5 people for religious purposes unless they were under the auspices of the Church of England.  This law was meant to make Non-Conformist worship illegal.   In 1665 Parliament passed the Five Mile Act which prohibited Non-Conformist clergy from coming within five miles of towns or of the parishes they had held during the Commonwealth period.  They also were not allowed to be schoolteachers.  These acts, known collectively as the Clarendon Code, were attempts to make religious membership and worship outside the Established Church illegal and suppress religious dissent.  These laws were also grossly unsuccessful.  It is unknown just how many English followed their Non-Conformist clergy out of the Church of England as no census number were taken at the time, but later figures might indicate that at least a third of the population rejected the Established Church in favor of the Non-Conformist sects.  

The Jewish community in England was alarmed by the Conventicle Act as it technically proscribed Jewish Worship as well as Non-Conformist worship, but the King assured a delegation of English Jews who appealed to him not to worry, and the Privy Council granted them a explicit exemption so long as they obeyed the laws of the realm.  There was no such provision for Catholics, of course, but neither was there an aggressive campaign at this point to make life difficult for Catholics as Charles’ Queen, Catherine of Braganza, was a Catholic as was also Charles’ chief Mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland.  In 1672 Charles issued the Declaration of Indulgence which lifted the penal laws against both non-Conformists and Catholics, but the following year Parliament made him rescind the declaration in put in its place the Test Act which required one to swear an oath against the doctrine of Transubstantiation as well as take the Sacrament according to the Anglican Rite—this excluded both Catholics and non-Conformists from public life.

Charles was to die a Catholic, being received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed by Queen Catherine’s chaplain, the Benedictine monk John Huddleston.  Ironically Huddleston was among a group of Catholics who had saved Charles from the Parliamentarians after Charles’ defeat at the 1651 Battle of Worcester.  When Huddleston was ushered through a secret passage into the dying King’s bedchamber on February 5, 1685, the Duke of York, Charles’ brother, said: “Sire, this good man once saved your life.  He has now come to save your soul.”  The room had been cleared of all members of the Court except for the Protestant Earls of Bath and Feversham who were confidants of the King.   The presence of these two Protestant peers gave the Privy Council, expelled into an anteroom, a false confidence that the King was safe in his Protestant faith.  In the event, Charles’ conversion would be keep secret until well into the next reign.  Huddleston heard the King’s confession, anointed him, and gave him viaticum.   Some modern writers claim that he was not conscious, or at least not fully aware of what was happening, and that the conversion was foisted upon him by his Catholic Queen and his Catholic brother, James the Duke of York, who was to succeed him as King, but the contemporary accounts do not report any of this and the argument against his conversion to Catholicism seems to be more polemical than historical.  Charles was buried in the vault of Henry VII—the last Catholic King of England who had died in 1509—in Westminster Abbey without any public ceremony to mark his final religious affiliation.  The funeral was held late at night on February 14, eight days after the King’s death.  (This was a remarkably short interval between death and funeral for a prominent person in the 17^th century. Charles niece, Mary II, was not buried until almost ten weeks after her death.)  The (Anglican) Dean and Chapter met the coffin at the West Door as was customary and escorted it the length of the Abbey to the chapel in the retro-choir where lay the royal vault.  Peers—including the (Anglican) bishops—attended in an official capacity but none of the late King’s blood relatives did.  They were represented by Prince George of Denmark, the Protestant husband of the King’s niece, Anne (later Queen herself).  The Dean read the Anglican burial service for this all-Protestant congregation and the King was deposited into his grave.

With Charles’ death and the succession of his brother James to the Crown, England found itself in the constitutional conundrum that a Roman Catholic was head of the Church of England.