Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVIII

Well, let’s talk about Elizabeth.  Mary died on the morning of November 17, 1558 and Elizabeth became Queen with no opposition.  She was at her primary residence, Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, just less than 25 miles north of London, where she and her brother, Edward VI, had spent much of their childhood.  The Accession Council came to inform her of her new position and pledge their loyalty.

Mary had not only turned the Church back to its medieval status, though admittedly without most of the monasteries.  She reversed the policies of her father and brother who drew their counsel primarily from the newly ennobled laity and filled key government posts with clergy.  Her Secretary of State was John Boxall who was dean of Peterborough, Norwich, and Windsor.  Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, was Lord Chancellor.  Lay members of her Council, such as her secretary Sir John Bourne, were invariably Roman Catholics—though some such as William Paulet, the Lord Treasurer, went with whichever religious wind was prevailing at the moment.  William Paget, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, was another committed Catholic who served Mary.  One member of the Council who was missing to greet the new Queen was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole.  He died at Lambeth Palace, the London Residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, only twelve hours after Mary.

When Elizabeth looked at the Council she have realized that so much and so many would have to go if she were to bring England into the path she would set for it.  Polite to her guests—unlike the other Tudors, she was always gracious—she determined at once to choose her own advisors and dismiss those who had served her sister.  The clergy were, within a year or two, deprived of both royal and ecclesiastical office and remanded to custody—usually a fairly gentle custody—most eventually be released and returned to very private lives.  The laity who remained loyal to their Catholic faith likewise lost their places on the Council and at Court, though not usually their peerages and place in the House of Lords.  By and large it was a gentle reshuffling of the deck as Elizabeth replaced Mary’s Catholic ascendency with a Protestant Council of her own choosing.  Elizabeth was to have a much smaller Council than her sister, but it was comprised of men chosen for their competence (and at least nominally Protestant faith) and she was to entrust them with far greater responsibility than any of her predecessors. Sir William Cecil was her chief advisor.  His son, Sir Robert Cecil along with Sir Francis Walsingham and Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex were the second tier.  Sir William Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir William Knollys were other important advisors.  She did not appoint any of her bishops, even her new Archbishop of Canterbury to her Council or to key government posts, remarkable innovation only because the Archbishop of Canterbury had always served as one of the Privy Councillors. 

Elizabeth’s first aim was to restore the independence of the English Church from Roman authority.  She was aided by the fact that the Primatial See, the Archbishopric of Canterbury, was vacant due to the death of Cardinal Pole.  She would be able to choose her new Archbishop.  But this proved to be a more difficult challenge than one would think.  Elizabeth had her man in Matthew Parker, but he was not interested in the post.  Parker had been a much beloved chaplain to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, and despite his being married (Elizabeth did not like a married clergy, one of her “Catholic quirks”) insisted on him as Archbishop.  A second problem was getting the requisite three bishops to consecrate him as Mary’s bishops were, to a man, convinced Catholics who, many having betrayed the Church once under Henry, saw that a break with Rome inevitably led towards a Protestant doctrine and practice they were unwilling to stomach again.  While the bishops had failed miserably to resist her father in his break with Rome, Elizabeth’s bishops—some of whom had been among her father’s lackeys—stood their ground.  It would not, however, stop the royal policy of an independent and Protestant Anglican Church.

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVI

Tomb of Cardinal Pole in

Canterbury Cathedral

Well, let’s wrap up the reign of Queen Mary (aka “Bloody Mary”) and the Catholic Restoration.  I am anxious to get on to Elizabeth because it is in her Reformation of the English Church we see some of the ticklish questions that remain for us today, in particular the issue of Anglican Orders.
Mary had promised when she ascended the Throne that she would allow her subject to practice religion according to their consciences unimpeded.  In her first year or two, while the churches of her realm were restored to Catholic practice, altars rebuilt, roods re-erected, vestments and sacred vessels restored, she allowed her Protestant subjects to live in peace as long as they were discreet about their dissent.  As we have seen, however, she had some scores she wanted to settle—in particular with Archbishop Cranmer whom she was determined to put to death in the most cruel way imaginable even though—given his renunciation of heresy—canon law forbad his being executed.  She had also—and even before the martyrdom of Cranmer—executed several prominent Protestant bishops under the heresy laws which she directed Parliament to revive in 1554.  Unfortunately, this seems to have given the Queen a taste for blood and as her reign progressed more and more Protestants were arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.  All in all there were just less than 300 Protestant martyrs in her five year reign.  Another 800 prominent Protestants fled England for the continent where they were introduced to the far more radical religious ideas found in the Reformed Churches of Strasbourg, Geneva, Zurich and other Protestant capitals.  This was a huge mistake for Mary’s agenda of keeping England Catholic as it ultimately would have the dandelion effect of scattering the seeds of radical Protestantism throughout the realm.
Mary’s hope was to secure a Catholic succession.  Her marriage to Philip of Spain produced two false pregnancies, one in the autumn of 1554 and the other in the spring of 1558.  This second false pregnancy may have been the missed sign of something far more serious—perhaps uterine or ovarian cancer.  In any event, by the summer of 1558 Mary was clearly dying.  The heir to the throne but one was a Catholic—Mary, Queen of Scots.  The problem was how to bypass Elizabeth, Mary’s Protestant half-sister, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the woman who had cause so much pain to Mary and her mother, Katherine of Aragon.
In the end, Mary was her father’s daughter, a Tudor through and through, and made the decision that better a Protestant Tudor on the throne than a Catholic Stuart.  Mary died in London on November 17^th 1558.  She was buried four weeks later in Westminster Abbey according to Catholic Rites.  Elizabeth did not attend the funeral, but—as I have stated in other postings—it was not the custom for the Sovereign to attend funerals, even of close family members.  Mary had not attended the funerals of either her brother or her father. 
Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, died of influenza in his residence at Lambeth later the same day as the Queen.  (There was an epidemic in London at the time.)  His body was taken to Canterbury Cathedral for burial in the Corona—the chapel immediately behind the spot where Becket’s tomb had once stood.  Elizabeth came to the throne with a clean slate—an opportunity to pick her own Archbishop and shape the Church to her tastes.  But she would find in Parliament some real challenges to her power over the Church.  More on that down the line. 

Foundations of the Church of England, LXXIII

The "cathedra" of Saint
Augustine, the seat of
the Archbishop of
Canterbury in his
cathedral. 

Reginald Pole was the grandnephew of Edward IV and Richard III, the great-great-great-great grandson of Edward III and one of the few Plantagenets to survive the War of the Roses.  His mother, Margaret Pole—through whom he had the royal blood—was the 8^th Countess of Salisbury and one of only two women in 16^th century England who were peers in their own right (as opposed to sharing their husband’s titles.)   He was born at Stourton Castle on March 12, 1500.  He was educated by the Carthusians at Sheen and matriculated at Magdalene College, Oxford where he received his BA in 1518.  Although not yet ordained a priest (he would not be ordained for many years to come) he was given a number of prelacies by Henry VIII, including the Deanery of Exeter Cathedral and a canonry at York.  He studied Law at Padua where he fell in with a group of ecclesiastical reformers including Peter Martyr Vermilgi who would be one of the chief advisors to Cranmer in the English Reformation.  Henry VIII financed his studies and in return Pole represented the King’s cause for divorce from Queen Katherine to the faculty of the Sorbonne. 

While Pole was willing to argue in favor of the required annulment of the King’s marriage to Katherine, he saw early on where the royal policy was headed.  When Wolsey fell, Henry offered Pole the choice between the Archbishopric of York (the number 2 Churchman in England) or the Bishopric of Winchester (the richest bishopric), but Pole declined and went abroad for more studies.  He did return briefly but in 1536, realizing that he was going to be required to foreswear his loyalty to the Pope, he left England into voluntary exile.  Pole saw the problem—and saw it correctly—as the King’s fracturing the Unity of the Church and while he might support the royal divorce and other policies of Henry, he could not go against the unity of the Body of Christ.  Henry took revenge on Pole whom he regarded as ungrateful for all the King had done for him.  His older brother Henry, Baron Montagu, and his mother, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, were both executed for treason, their only “treason” being Reginald’s refusal to accede to the King’s claim to be Head of the Church.  The Spanish Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, tried to arrange for a marriage between Henry’s daughter, Mary (the grand-daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and niece of Chapuys’ master, Charles V) and Pole which—given Pole’s royal descent and Plantagenet blood—would have had great dynastic legitimacy: more than any other child of Henry’s could claim.  Pole was not interested however as he saw his future in the Church.  Moreover, it was all theory as Henry would not allow Pole to return to England and he would not permit Mary to go abroad.

Paul III made Pole a Cardinal in 1537, though he was only in deacon’s orders.  He was commissioned to try to organize support for the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” a popular uprising against Henry’s suppression of the monasteries and break with Rome.  The “Pilgrimage” was a desperate failure and this was probably the cause for Henry’s vengeance on Henry Pole and the Lady Margaret.  Henry tried, unsuccessfully, to have Pole assassinated.

Reginald Pole, meanwhile, was appointed one of the three papal legates for the Council of Trent.  His support for the doctrine of justification by faith led to accusations of heresy, but nothing came of the charges.  Indeed in the conclave of November 1549-February 1550, Pole was almost elected Pope, being only two votes short of the required 2/3 majority.  As it turned out, the opposition of the French King and his cardinals, moved the election in another direction, but Pole maintained his influence and reputation—especially given the scandalous behavior of Cardinal Giovanni del Monte who had been elected as Julius III. 

Pole had been appointed Papal Legate to England as early as 1537 but was unable to take up the post as Henry had broken communion with the See of Rome and was not interested in having a legate.  Moreover, Pole’s role in supporting the Pilgrimage of Grace had left him attainted for treason as well as costing his mother and brother their lives as we have seen.  However with the death of Edward in 1553 and Mary’s accession to the Throne, Pole was now welcome in his native land to reconcile it to the Church.

Well, actually, welcome but not quite yet.  Mary and the Emperor Charles V both feared that Pole would oppose—and try to block—the marriage of Mary to Charles’ son, Philip, which, as we saw in an earlier post, was part of Mary’s strategy to provide a Catholic heir in place of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.   Mary and Charles were correct in their estimation and Pole was opposed to the marriage, but the Queen was successful—with Charles’ help—in delaying Pole’s ability to reach England until November 20, 1554: sixteen months after Mary’s accession and four months after the marriage. 

As Legate Pole had extraordinary authority.  He was no mere nuncio but had quasi-papal powers, a sort of vice-Pope for England.  The major roadblock to reconciling the Church of England to the Roman Communion involved the extensive properties Henry had confiscated from the Church, especially in the suppression of the monasteries.  These lands had been handed out to the King’s political allies and the powerful magnates who now held these lands did not want to loose them.   They would never support a return to Rome if the price came at the loss of their estates.  Pole knew he had to cut his losses and accept the fact that the great wealth of the Church had been severely reduced.  He also believed that in time the Church would regain land and wealth as new bequests were made.  Had Catholicism taken root in England again that may have been the case, but the Marian restoration was all too short. 

On November 30, 1554, ten days after his arrival back in England, the papal legate lifted the excommunications and restored the Church of England to the Roman Communion.  It would last less than five years. 

Mary, for her part, was savoring her revenge on Archbishop Cranmer who was imprisoned but whom had not been deprived of his See of Canterbury.  In November Mary had him deprived of his bishopric and named Pole as his successor.  Pole, though a Cardinal, was not yet a priest.  He was ordained on March 20, 1556 and on the 22^nd was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mary was ramping up her persecution of Protestants by this time and Pole cautioned her to moderation, but without much success.  Pole himself tended to be very lenient with those accused of heresy, pardoning those whose appeals reached him but Pole’s health was failing and his tenure as Archbishop was not marked by an aggressive approach to Catholic restoration.   

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.