Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXXII

The Choir of Winchester

Cathedral--site of the

marriage of Mary and

Philip   July 1554 

Mary’s first challenge was to secure a Catholic succession to the throne as the heir apparent was her half-sister, Elizabeth, a convinced Protestant.  Elizabeth did conform to Catholicism during her sister’s reign, but Mary knew it was a charade: after all, in Catholic eyes, Elizabeth was a bastard and as such could not inherit the Crown.  Indeed, this was to be the conflict for Mary because she was not only a thorough Catholic, but she was every bit her father’s daughter and wanted the Tudor Dynasty to survive.  So she needed a child of her own to displace Elizabeth and keep the Crown Catholic.  Mary was 37 when she came to the throne—in the 16^th century an age at which many women no longer ovulated.   Several English husbands (including Reginald Pole, of whom we will hear more in the future) were suggested, but Mary’s cousin, the Emperor Charles V, suggested she marry his only son, Philip. 
Philip was nine-years younger than Mary.  He was King of Naples and Duke of Milan and he stood to inherit the vast domains of his father, the Emperor.  (In fact, Charles would divide his realms between the Holy Roman Empire which went to his brother, Ferdinand,  and the Spanish Empire which he would give to Philip.) 
The Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, and the House of Lords petitioned Mary to marry English and not seek a foreign husband, but Mary was distrustful of her countrymen. She had seen their collective lack of integrity in how they failed to champion her mother’s cause against King Henry and she saw how fickle was their faith as they first went pacifically along with Henry’s break with Rome and then just as nonchalantly threw away fourteen centuries of Catholic doctrine and practice in favor of the Reformed Religion of her brother and Cranmer.   Moreover Mary felt she owed Charles for his support of her mother and herself during their long suffering and humiliation under Henry and his shabby treatment of them.   Philip was to receive the Crown Matrimonial which meant he would be King of England, but only by right of his marriage to Mary.  They would reign jointly but should she pre-decease him, all titles and rights would end.  He was to “aid her Highness in the happy administration of her Grace’s realms and dominions.”  In other words, his role was mostly ceremonial and the power remained with Mary.  Even so, the marriage grated the English people and Mary’s popularity began to sink.  England felt threatened on every side—Spain, France, the Empire—and no foreign prince would be a welcome King for their Queen, but the Spaniards were seen as particularly arrogant and thus even more offensive to the understated English personality.  In fact this was the beginning of an English-Spanish conflict that would last three and a half centuries.    
The proposed Spanish marriage triggered a rebellion in the winter of 1554.  The rebels, under Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir James Croft, Sir Peter Carew, and Henry Grey, 1^st Duke of Suffolk planned to overthrow Mary and put Elizabeth on the throne.  Grey was the Father of Lady Jane Grey and all the rebellion did was to bring down the axe on the rebels, including Lady Jane and her husband, Guildford Dudley.  It also built up the paranoia Mary was feeling as she became more and more alienated from her subjects and planted a fear of the Protestant faction in her heart. 
Her husband arrived in England on July 23, 1554 and Mary and Philip were married in Winchester Cathedral two days later by Bishop Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor.    For Mary this was a love match.  For Philip, nine years her junior, the marriage was a political duty.  Political duty does not always make a prime stimulant for the husband “to be ready” to perform his husbandly duties.  To the contrary, it can take a normally pleasant activity and make it a burdensome chore.  Nevertheless, by September—two months after the wedding—Mary stopped menstruating and showed other signs of pregnancy.  This was followed by a set of bizarre circumstances that are difficult for us to interpret today, but apparently the Queen experienced a hysteric (false) pregnancy brought on by her desperate wish to be pregnant.  She didn’t menstruate, her abdomen expanded as if she were pregnant, she gained weight, experienced morning sickness, and even lactation.  The Court was convinced she was pregnant.  Her doctors were convinced she was pregnant.  Rumors spread of the birth of a son and Thanksgiving Services were held in several cathedrals, but no child was ever produced.  When by June 1555 she had not yet delivered, there was huge confusion in the Court.  And in July her abdomen receded and other signs of pregnancy disappeared.  Philip left England in August on a military expedition and though Mary did not know at the time he would not return for two years—and then only for a short visit—she was disconsolate and felt abandoned.   Whatever chances that Mary might have had to bear a healthy child also disappeared after her hysterical pregnancy, the effects of which may have led eventually to her death of uterine cancer.  But that is still several years off. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXIX

Bonner's Cathedral of Saint Paul's

London--this cathedral was 

destroyed in the Great Fire of 

London in 1666 and replaced by 

Christopher Wren's masterpiece.

Another bishop on whom Mary depended in her program to restore England to the Catholic faith was Edmund Bonner.  Bonner had pretty humble beginnings.  His father was a woodsman or a lumberman in Worcestershire.  He studied law—not at the Inns of Court, which was common for a person who intended to follow a career in law, but at Oxford, earning degrees in both the Civil and Canon Law.  He was ordained quite young—perhaps as young as 22.  He was in the employ of Cardinal Wolsey and loyally stayed with him when he was arrested and accompanied the Cardinal on his trip to London to face the wrath of Henry (a wrath fanned into fury by Anne Boleyn who resented Wolsey’s attempts to break her ambitious relationship with the King.) It was a dangerous thing to do—to stay with the Cardinal in his time of disfavor.  Wolsey was fortunate enough not to make London but to die on the way—at Leicester Abbey, an Augustinian foundation just about halfway from Wolsey’s See at York to London where Henry—and the Tower—awaited him.  Bonner was with the Cardinal when he died. 

Cromwell scavenged the remnants of Wolsey’s service for what talent could go for the King’s work and Bonner found himself in the royal employ.   He was sent to Rome in 1532 to try to forestall action against Henry in the Roman Curia and in a 1533 meeting with Clement VII at Marseilles (where the Pope was conferring with Henry’s current foe, Francis I of France) Bonner threated the Pope with appealing over the Pope to a General Council for an annulment for Henry.  Clement was furious and Henry never got around to the appeal, choosing schism instead.  Bonner served Henry on embassies both to Charles V and to the French court and he made contact with the German Lutherans with whom he showed some doctrinal sympathy.  As an ambassador, Bonner could be quite abrasive and his tendency to get in altercations with his hosts did not help him achieve his diplomatic goals.  Yet this didn’t displease Henry who had a particular antipathy for the French.  Bonner also went out of his way to alienate Stephen Gardiner who had preceded him as ambassador in Paris and about whom he, Bonner, filed a highly critical report. 

Bonner oversaw the printing of “The King’s Great Bible” at Paris while ambassador to the French Court.  Myles Coverdale, later Bishop of Exeter and strong proponent of Protestant doctrine and worship in the reign of Edward VI, had provided this English translation under the sponsorship of Henry for use in the services of the Church of England.  (Henry had retained the Latin Mass throughout his reign, but much like the first introduction of the vernacular in the Catholic Church at the time of the Second Vatican Council, the custom of reading the Epistle and Gospel in English—after they had been read in Latin—was to pave the way for greater changes yet to come.)  Henry (and his Protestant-leaning minion, Thomas Cromwell) were quite impressed at Bonner’s performance with getting the Bible printed and rewarded him with the Bishopric of Hereford.  As he was still in France, however, he could neither be consecrated or take possession of his see and Henry moved him to London in 1540 where he was consecrated according to the old rites which would remain unaltered in the time of King Henry. 

Bonner had been trained in law, not theology, and he had never shown much interested in the finer points of doctrine. Indeed, if anything he seemed to lean towards a version of Lutheranism.  Yet once in his diocese he became an implacable religious conservative.  When the wind blew in a more traditionalist direction after the execution of Thomas Cromwell, and Parliament passed the Six Articles, Bonner began an earnest persecution of all those in his diocese who did not adhere strictly to Catholic Doctrine on Transubstantiation, on purgatory, and on the cult of the saints. 

The death of Henry and the accession of King Edward changed everything.  Within a few months of the new King’s accession a set of injunctions had been drawn up for reform in the Church and the bishops were entrusted with the task of seeing that they were carried out in their cathedrals as well as in the parishes of their diocese.  The injunctions required

1.    all images were to be taken down

2.    stained glass, statutes, and shrines were to be dismantled

3.    rood screens, their lofts, and the rood beam with its cross and figures of John the Apostle and the Virgin Mary were to be destroyed

4.    vestments were abolished and were to be burned or sold

5.    sacred vessels were to be melted down and replaced by pewter or silver cups and tankards

6.    processions were banned

7.    the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday, Palms on Palm Sunday, and candles on Candlemas was done away with

8.    chantries (mortuary chapels) with endowed masses for those buried there were abolished

9.    masses for the dead were abolished.   

The bishops were responsible to see that these directives were carried out in their respective dioceses, but the Council appointed visitators to go around the kingdom to make sure the changes had been carried out.  Bonner refused to implement the changes and resisted the idea of visitors coming to his diocese.  As London was the national capital, the Council could not afford dissent there. He was arrested and imprisoned in the notorious Fleet Prison.  There he changed his strategy and gave in to the visitation so as to be released and take his seat in Parliament where he could fight the new laws.  His resistance to the Prayer Book of 1549, however,  led to his being deprived of his see and imprisoned for the remained of King Edward’s reign.

Mary, on her accession, freed him and restored him to this See.  Bonner vigorously sought to restore Catholic doctrine and practice but had a rough time of it.  During his imprisonment, Edward’s Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, had pretty thoroughly destroyed what elements of Catholicism were left.  Not only had the stone altars been smashed in the London churches, the crosses and crucifixes torn down, the images of the saints ripped from their niches, but more important, Londoners had been well catechized in the Reformed Religion. 

Protestantism appealed to the merchant class and London was a merchant citu.  Protestantism was a religion that showed an appreciation for critical thinking and intellectual pursuits.  It was not a matter of blind authority and ancient traditions that no longer made sense.  Protestantism was rational, a thinking man’s religion.  There was no room for superstition.  Moreover it was economically rational. One didn’t put good money into silk vestments or silver crosses or gold chalices.  One gave to the poor.  One endowed schools.  And one re-invested one’s money for greater profit.  This was a religion for Londoners.  And when Bonner came back to his diocese after an absence of six years, the damage had been done.  Bonner did what he could do to repair the churches for Catholic worship again but he never won the confidence of the Londoners.  Even worse, he undertook a fierce persecution of Protestants, searching them out, trying them in ecclesiastical courts, and subjecting them to torture and being burned at the stake.  He was responsible for some of the worst excesses of “Bloody Mary’s” reign. 

Unlike Gardiner who predeceased Mary, Bonner lived well into Elizabeth’s reign.  He refused to swear to her supremacy over the Church.  Although he sat in her first Parliament where he spoke against her policy of reintroducing Protestantism, he was deprived of his See and imprisoned by the end of her first year on the throne.  Although many called for his death in retaliation for those martyred under his authority for their Protestant faith, he was never executed.  He remained imprisoned under somewhat genteel terms and every four months was given a new opportunity—which he always refused—to swear to the royal supremacy.  He died eleven years into Elizabeth reign. 

I notice that I have quite often used the term “Protestant” here and I need to clarify that term as I am not using it in the somewhat generic sense that we use to cover everything from a Swedish Lutheran to a Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite.  The problem is that the other-than-Catholic movement in the Church of England was not stable through this period.  Phase I which might be thought to be 1520-1540 leaned towards Lutheran thought.  Phase II, which we shall mark as 1540 to the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 leaned more to the Swiss model but I wouldn’t say “Calvinist.”  It was sort of a generic Swiss/Strasbourg variety influenced heavily by Martin Bucer, the Strasbourg reformer who had taken refuge in England between 1549 and 1551, but also drawing on Bucer’s friends among the Swiss, especially Zwingli.  Phase III which will be the reign of Elizabeth will see a real struggle between the Puritan party who are definitely Calvinist and the more moderate party which would have favored the more middle of the road sort of theology typified in the reign of Edward VI.  The Puritan party was to win out, though Elizabeth herself was definitely a theological moderate.  But all that is still away off in our entries. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVIII

Stephen Gardiner

Let’s go back to the history of the Church of England for an entry or two. This weekend with the Holy Father’s trip to Jordan, Palestine, and Israel will give some contemporary events to comment on, but before we get into that hoopla, I would like to advance by a notch or two the history of the Church of England as there is still so much to cover.  We are only up to about 1554 and most of the best stuff is yet to come.

Where we left off was Queen Mary’s process of brining the Church of England back into the Roman Communion.  It was not as quick a process as one might think.  Mary had deposed about a half-dozen or more convinced Protestant bishops but to replace them had no choice but to rely on any number of bishops who had supported her father’s schism and even some who had introduced the Protestant reforms of Archbishop Cranmer during the reign of her brother, King Edward VI. Robert Parfew, Bishop of St Asaph, had even been one of the contributors to Cranmer’s 1549 Prayerbook.  With only two or three exceptions of clergy who had remained on the continent during the reigns of her father and brother, there simply were no bishops and few priests who had not acceded to schism, if not having gone further in embracing the new doctrines and liturgies of Cranmer. 

One of the Churchmen who had gone along with the schism of King Henry, indeed provided the canonical justifications for it, but rebelled at the liturgical and doctrinal innovations of King Edward’s reign, was Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

Gardiner was a brilliant jurist—holding the doctorates in both canon and civil law from Cambridge.  He also was a classicist, an avid scholar of both Latin and Greek.  He was one of the humanists in the early phases of what might be called the Renaissance England, following the example of Dean Colet and Thomas More.  (I know I am a snob, but I am reluctant to speak of an “English Renaissance, and if it weren’t for Shakespeare I would refuse completely.  The English have always struck me as far to practical to pay serious attention to anything beyond commerce and the military.)  Originally in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s all-competent Lord Chancellor, Gardiner was noticed by the King and transferred to his service before Wolsey’s fall.  Gardiner served Henry in a variety of diplomatic missions on the continent, several of which had to do with advancing Henry’s plans to divorce Queen Katherine.  In 1527 Gardiner was sent to Rome to plead Henry’s cause to Clement VII—a futile effort despite Gardiner’s superior knowledge of canon law because of Clement’s dependency on the Emperor Charles V, Katherine’s nephew.  (Medici politics doomed this mission from the start.  You can see more about this in the entry for September 7, 2013.)  While Gardiner failed in his mission to secure the annulment, Henry was grateful for his efforts—and anxious to use  his talents in the upcoming battle he (Henry) had determined to wage with the Church—named Gardiner his secretary.  In 1531 Henry arranged for Gardiner to be named Bishop of Winchester—England’s wealthiest see.  This should not be construed to mean that Gardiner was the King’s toady.  In giving Gardiner the See of Winchester, Henry acknowledged that Gardiner had often opposed Henry’s policies and indeed he would do so again in the following year when Henry tried to intimidate the bishops as the break with Rome came closer.  Nevertheless, as the leading canon lawyer in the realm—and indeed one of the finest in Europe—Henry depended on Gardiner both to argue the case for his annulment and to justify the break with Rome.  Gardiner delivered on both counts. 

Henry was no slouch theologically and although a firm Catholic doctrinally and liturgically—though not a papal Catholic after 1530 or so—was willing to make some accommodation to the crypto-Protestants in the English Church and politics.  This was the Cranmer-Cromwell faction. In 1538 Cranmer had brought three Lutheran theologians to London to discuss a variety of doctrines and practices—transubstantiation, celibacy of the clergy, the importance of confession, the sacrificial nature of the Mass.  As Henry was at the time in negotiation for marriage with a Protestant Princess—Anne of Cleves—he turned a blind eye to the introduction of this Trojan Horse of Continental Protestantism into his realm, but a number of conservative bishops, including Gardiner, saw it as a threat to orthodoxy.  The rest of Henry’s reign would be marked by infighting among the bishops as Gardiner, Tunstall of Durham, Bonner of London and other conservatives tried to out maneuver Cranmer, Latimer and Shaxton who represented a Protestant party among the bishops.  While Latimer and Shaxton did fall into Henry’s disfavor, Cranmer was able to outwit his foes and in fact turn the tables on them.  When Henry died, Cranmer was able to keep Gardiner from the Council of Regency and as the new reign changed the course of the Church of England, to advance the Protestant agenda. Gardiner, who resisted, was deprived of his see and imprisoned.  He remained imprisoned throughout Edward reign.  Mary, upon her accession, freed him, restored him to his see at Winchester, and named him her Lord Chancellor, a position equivalent to Prime Minister today.  Tables were now turned as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, was imprisoned for treason and on trial for heresy.  In Cranmer’s enforced absence, Gardiner performed the coronation rites for Mary at Westminster Abbey on November 1, 1553.

Mary and her Chancellor did not always agree.  Their most notable disagreement was over Mary’s plan to marry her cousin, Philip of Spain, in hopes of bearing a child who could succeed to the throne and avoid Mary’s Protestant sister, Elizabeth, becoming Queen.  Gardiner saw the unpopularity of a foreign husband, particularly a Spaniard, and joined a petition of Parliament that Mary should choose an English husband, but Mary would not be dissuaded.  As Chancellor Gardiner had to conduct much of the negotiations for this ill-advised marriage and he carried out his duties and presided at their marriage in his cathedral at Winchester on July 25, 1554.  The marriage failed to produce the desire heir.  While Mary genuinely loved her husband, Philip saw the marriage strictly in political terms and Philip remained in England just over a year.  Mary should have listened to Gardiner.

While she intended on restoring England to the Catholic Communion, Mary initially promised religious tolerance to her Protestant subjects. In regard to Cranmer she was determined to avenge her mother, but otherwise did not seem over anxious to persecute Protestants.  Gardiner encouraged her in this policy of toleration, but as time went on the Queen grew more worried about what would happen should her Protestant sister gain the throne, and became more aggressive in her religious policies. Gardiner tried to warn her off this.  He himself showed great tolerance towards Protestants in his diocese.  But in 1554 Mary had Parliament pass the Heresy Acts as part of the conditions under which the Church of England would be readmitted to the Catholic Communion.   Despite Gardiner’s advice Mary became more and more harsh on her Protestant subjects, executing almost 300 people and earning the sobriquet: Bloody Mary.

Stephen Gardiner died in November 1555 and is buried in a mortuary chapel in his cathedral.  

The Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXIV

Nicholas Ridley, Bishop

of London in the reign of

King Edward VI

There is so much to blog about—Pope Francis’ call for economic reform that is driving the katholic krazies even further out of their minds; Cardinal Müller and the nuns and what that is about—but I want to stay on the subject of the transition back to Catholicism after the death of Edward VI (1553) and the accession of his Catholic sister, Mary.  Maybe later in the week we will get back to some history-in-the-making reasons.

Mary’s first problem was getting a bench of good bishops for the Church.  By the time she came to the throne, England had been in schism from Rome for almost 20 years and had been committed to Protestant doctrine and liturgy for about four years.  There were very few bishops in the Church of England who had been consecrated with papal approval and all of those who had survived had been party to Henry’s renunciation of papal authority.  Nevertheless, many of Henry’s bishops—both those consecrated before and those consecrated after the break with Rome were committed to Catholic doctrine and had suffered under the reforms issued by Archbishop Cranmer with the authority of King Edward VI.  Mary would have to pick and choose carefully to get the bishops she could count on to restore Catholicism. 

Not all the Bishops of the Church of England had gone along with Archbishop Cranmer’s reforms with the 1549 and 1552 Prayer Books.  Edmund Bonner had loyally supported Henry VIII in his divorce from Katherine of Aragon and in his break with Rome and in 1539 and so was rewarded with the bishopric of London.  He was consecrated in  April of 1540.  While he was loyal to the Crown, he was no Protestant and refused to enact the liturgical reforms Cranmer introduced in the reign of King Edward VI.  He was canonically tried, removed from his see, and imprisoned for the remainder of King Edward’s reign.  Mary would bring him back and rely on him as bishop of London—a difficult post as London had bought heavily into the Reformation and was the stronghold of Protestantism in the kingdom. 

Stephen Gardiner was also a loyal champion of the King’s cause in the reign of Henry VIII and was reward with the bishopric of Winchester—the wealthiest of English sees—even before the break with Rome.  Gardiner was less comfortable with the break than Bonner had been, but then Gardiner was an exceptionally intelligent man who probably recognized the slippery slope down which Cranmer was leading the Church—indeed in 1542 or 43 he and several others tried to bring heresy charges against Cranmer and would have succeeded had not Henry protected his Archbishop. (Cranmer was very careful not to be public about his Protestant opinions on the Eucharist and the other Sacraments during the lifetime of Henry who was theologically quite conservative.  Henry also owed a great deal to Cranmer who had engineered his annulments to Katherine, Anne Boleyn, and Anne of Cleves as well as his supremacy over the Church.)  Cranmer had his revenge on Gardiner when Henry died by engineering Gardiner’s absence from the Council of Regency.   Henry’s had planned to put Gardiner on the Council as a brake against the Protestant party led by the Duke of Somerset under Cranmer’s tutelage but, as I said, Cranmer was able to outmaneuver the Catholic party and make sure Gardiner was not on the Council.  Gardiner’s refusal to implement in the diocese of Winchester Cranmer’s liturgical reforms led to Gardiner being deprived of his see and imprisoned during the reign of King Edward.  Mary would not only restore him but make him Lord Chancellor. 

A third bishop who fell under a similar fate had been Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham.  Tunstall too had been appointed to his see before the break with Rome. Moreover, he was one of the advocates for Queen Katherine in the annulment proceedings, though his defense of the marriage was not so strong as to annoy the king.  He had some real issues of conscience regarding the break with Rome, but acceded to Henry’s demands.  Upon the accession of King Edward, however, he resisted Cranmer’s reforms and was imprisoned—first in his London residence and later in the Tower of London.  He too was deprived of his diocese.  Mary restored him. 

Nicholas Heath of Worcester was deprived of his see by Edward for refusing to accept the ordination rites contained in the Ordinal of King Edward published in 1549 along with the prayer book.  His refusal to accept this rite was given as one of the reasons that Leo XIII refused to recognize the continuity of Apostolic Succession in the Church of England in the 1896 bull Apostolicae Curae.  Heath was imprisoned under Edward.  Mary made him Archbishop of York, the second highest prelate in the realm. He also would serve her as Lord Chancellor after the death of Gardiner. 

George Day, Bishop of Chichester was likewise deprived of his see and imprisoned for refusing to acceded to the Protestantization of the Church of England under King Edward.  He was restored to his see and made royal almoner by Mary.   John Vesey, the Bishop of Exeter, resigned his see under Edward rather than introduce Cranmer’s reforms and was not imprisoned but given a very healthy pension which allowed him to live handsomely until the accession of Queen Mary when he was reinstalled.   Richard Sampson of Lichfield initially went along with King Edward and Archbishop Cranmer,  but then later recanted his rejection of papal authority he had made under King Henry.  There is no record that he was deprived of his see by Edward for this turnabout, though some historians claim that he was.  He died shortly after Mary came to the throne. 

Robert Holgate was Archbishop of York and easily swung into the Protestant camp under Edward.  Mary would deprive him of his see.  Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of Rochester, was one of the architects of the Protestantiation of the Church of England in the reign of King Edward and was moved to London when Edmund Bonner was deprived of that see.  He played a crucial role in the development of the Church of England as a Protestant Church because London became the stronghold of Protestantism in a kingdom in which many people would cling to “the old religion” for decades yet to come.  The merchants of London, however, were avid in their Protestant religion and much of this was due to the work of Bishop Ridley.  He had a particularly unpleasant fate under Mary—he was burned at the stake—and we will deal with him in future postings.

The See of Bath and Wells had fallen empty before the accession of King Edward and was filled with a candidate with Protestant leanings, William Barlow.  Likewise, Gloucester had fallen empty in 1549, before the Prayer Book was introduced, and was given to the arch-Protestant, John Hooper, who had refused consecration as a bishop until he was dispensed from having to wear vestments.  Henry Holbeach of Lincoln was an ally of Cranmer in the compilation of the new liturgy.  John Skypp of Hereford went along with King Edward’s Protestant policies and died during his reign.  His successor, John Harley, an avid Protestant, was deprived of the see upon the accession of Queen Mary.   Robert Aldrich, the Bishop of Carlisle, seems to have gone with the flow—from Catholic under Henry to Protestant under Edward and Catholic again during the reign of Queen Mary.  He did not live long enough to have to jump the breach again when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558.   Bishop Thomas Goodrich of Ely also was amenable to the reforms but would swing back to the Catholic side upon the accession of queen Mary.  Robert King, Bishop of Oxford and a former Cistercian monk, also rode the changing tides from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic again as did Bishop John Chambers of Peterborough. So too did John Capon, the bishop of Salisbury. All of these men, despite their Protestant stance under King Edward, retained their sees under Mary.  They also, however, all had been consecrated bishops under the Catholic rites before the introduction of the Protestant Ordinal of 1549. John Bird, a former Carmelite friar, was bishop of Chester—one of King Henry’s new sees.  He very easily adapted to the Protestant ways of King Edward and was deprived of his see by Mary.  William Rugg of Norwich was a conservative and an enemy of Cranmer, but was eased into retirement with a pension.  Henry Man, bishop of Sodor and Man, was a one-time Carthusian monk who blew where the wind favored from a Henrician Catholic to a Edwardine Protestant and Catholic again under Mary—who removed him from his see however for political reasons, not religious. 

It is important to note that Mary kept many bishops who had served under her father and brother, even those who had accepted the Protestant liturgies of 1549 and 1552.  She did not retain any bishops who had been consecrated according to the revised rites, but only those elevated to the episcopacy under the ancient ones.  Historians who support Leo XIII’s claim that Anglican orders are invalid point to this fact claiming that even in the sixteenth century, Catholics recognized that the Edwardine ordination ritual was deficient.  However, the subject is considerably more complicated.  Those men who had been made bishops under the new rites were, to a man, convinced Protestants who could not be counted on to implement Mary’s policy of reconciliation with the Papacy.  Did she not restore them because their episcopal ordination was invalid?  Or did she not restore them because they would not go along with her policies?  Or, both?  It is interesting that the various clerics Mary put to death were degraded (returned to the lay state) before their executions, as that implies a recognition of the validity of their ordinations and consecrations.