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.  

Rebellious Catholics IV

Mary, Queen of Scots

In the previous posting I had begun the story of Mary Queen of Scots, the exiled Queen of Scotland whom Elizabeth had executed in 1587.  Catholic historians have over the past century and a half tried to portray her as a saintly victim martyred for her faith when in fact while she was a devout Catholic she was a person of somewhat tangled morals who was beheaded for purely political reasons.  Elizabeth was not nearly the ogre and Mary not nearly the saint that Catholic writers have tried to portray them as.  History is always political and here the politics of religion has long been allowed to jumble the historical narrative for an agenda of apologetics 
Much had happened in Scotland during Mary’s absence.  The pro-English Protestant faction among the nobility had grown in strength and for several years had been all but in rebellion against Mary’s regent, her mother, Mary of Guise.  Mary of Guise herself had died only six months before her daughter was widowed and the Protestant party had used the power vacuum to consolidate their strength.  The Protestant faction was led by Mary’s illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, the son of James V and Lady Margaret Erskine.    The Calvinist reformer, John Knox, was the spiritual leader of the Protestant party and in 1558 had written a treatise “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” which was not directed solely at Mary’s Reign but also that of the late (Bloody) Mary of England and her sister, Elizabeth, the newly crowned English Monarch.  Knox claimed that Rule by women was an affront to God. (Today he would be made a Cardinal in grateful recognition for this insightful theological contribution.)   Knox now directed his preaching against Mary for her Catholic religious practices, for her dancing and gaming, and for her frivolous dress and lifestyle.  Knox was the leader among those who would give Calvinism a grim reputation—not that Calvinism itself didn’t flourish on cheerlessness even without Knox’s sourpuss preaching.     
Due to her education in the French Court, Mary was a fine athlete, a brilliant linguist, and an accomplished writer, but what had been neglected in Mary’s education in France was how to rule.  She was not bred to be Queen of Scotland but rather Queen consort of France and now she had no idea how to manage the complex politics of her kingdom.  She failed to play the Catholic and Protestant parties off against one another to her advantage but allowed herself to be dominated by her enemies.   She summoned Knox to remonstrate against him—he only mocked her by preaching at her when she tried to speak to him.  She charged him with treason; he was acquitted.  Mary tried to accommodate the Protestant faction and allowed them to dominate her privy-council.  She kept her Protestant half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as her chief counselor and ignored the Catholic lords.  The Catholic nobles, for their part, were angry that the Queen was so sympathetic to the Protestant cause and several of them rebelled against her in 1562.
Realizing that she lacked political astuteness, Mary sensed what she needed was a savvy husband to guide her.  The French proposed an Austrian but Mary refused.  Mary proposed a marriage to Don Carlos, the Spanish heir, but the Spaniards refused.  (Lucky too, as Don Carlos inherited his family’s gene for lunacy.)  Elizabeth suggested a Protestant old boyfriend of her own, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester but the proposed groom refused.  (Mary was not particularly interested anyway.)
By the way, does any of this sound like the stuff of which religious martyrs are made?  Hold on, it only gets worse.

Mary eventually married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley at Holyrood Palace on July 29, 1565.  Both parties were Catholic but they failed to get the necessary papal dispensations for marriage of close kin.  (They were cousins through multiple family intermarriages, but both were grand-children of Margaret Tudor, the wife of James IV and thus first-cousins.)

This marriage infuriated Elizabeth as any child proceeding from the union would have a double claim to the English throne given that as descendants of Margaret Tudor both Mary and Darnley themselves had prime claims.  Moreover, Darnley not only held a Scots title of nobility but an English one and Elizabeth was aggrieved that he had not sought her permission to marry as he was her subject.   Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Moray was also angry as were the Protestant nobles at the Queen having a Catholic consort, and they went into rebellion with Moray as their leader, but after several defeats by Catholic forces Moray fled to England and Elizabeth’s protection.  

Mary and Darnley had a son, James, who would become James VI of Scotland and eventually James I of England—the fellow we had written about in the gunpowder plot (see posting for December 27 2012).  Darnley was not a good choice for a husband.  He wanted to be not merely consort to the Queen Regnant but to be given the “Crown Matrimonial” which would make him co-ruler with his wife and King in his own right should he outlive her.  Mary refused and he grew angry and sullen.  Darnley was not a faithful husband (which was far from uncommon in those days among the upper classes, not that our age is known for marital fidelity) and there are hints that he may have been abusive to Mary.   He was also jealous of Mary’s secretary, David Rizzo.  There were rumors swirling around that Rizzo, not Darnley, was the father of Mary’s child and while these rumors remain unproven they cannot be totally dismissed.  Darnley and some of the Protestant party brutally murdered Rizzo in the presence of Mary who almost miscarried as a result of the trauma.  The Earl of Moray returned at this point and was reconciled to his sister.

The Murder of Rizzo sealed the demise of the Mary/Darnley marriage.  They separated and Mary sought counsel from her advisors as to what she should to terminate the marriage but there seems to have suddenly been a change of plans, indeed a change of the Queen’s heart.  Darnley was summoned back to Edinburgh and given a house in the Kirk o’ Field—a former Abbey—in which to recuperate from health problems—possibly syphilis or the result of poison.  Mary visited him there daily and it seemed they were to reconcile.  Then early in the morning hours of February 10, 1567,  Mary having left the house only hours before  to attend a wedding of a member of her household, an explosion racked the house.    Darnley’s body was found in the garden.  He had not been killed in the explosion and there were no signs of physical violence or strangulation.  He had apparently been smothered, a most curious death.  A variety of people were suspected of involvement in the murder including Mary, her-illegitimate half-brother the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Morton, and James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell.  Now here is where it gets a bit sleazy.

If ever there was an unsavory politician, it was Bothwell.  (As there have been many an unsavory politician, you imagine just how sleazy Bothwell must have been to stand out in such company.)  Bothwell was Lord High Admiral of the Scots Navy and in this capacity he met and married Anna Trondson, the daughter of a Norwegian/Danish Admiral. (Norway at the time was part of the Kingdom of  Denmark.)  Anna travelled with her husband to Flanders and when he had gone through all his money, he forced her to sell her possessions to support his gambling and riotous living.  He then sent her home to get more money from her family, but when the family heard of his abusive behavior towards her they did not permit her to return to him.  Without obtaining any divorce from Anna, Bothwell then married Lady Jean Gordon in a Protestant service.  Lady Jean was Catholic, but Bothwell refused to marry according to Catholic rites.  Mary of Scots was enthusiastic about this match and hosted the wedding at Holyrood Palace.  She also provided cloth of silver for Lady Jean’s wedding gown.  Now here is where things become very murky, but the story will continue in the next posting.