Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVII

James VI and I 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foundations of the Anglican Church 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.