Henry did not go as far in his reformation of the English Church as many people wished. There were many who 'protested' against practices in the Roman Church which they thought wrong, such as the worship of images or of the relics of saints, to which the people were encouraged by the clergy to pray for help. The Protestants, as the extreme reformers were called, increased in number daily, and in the reign of Edward the Sixth got the upper hand. They did away with the old Latin services of the Church, which the greater part of the poorer classes did not understand, and wrote a Book of Common Prayer in the English tongue. By an Act of Uniformity, all the clergy were called upon to use this Prayer Book in their churches.
During Edward's reign, the rich jewelled vestments of the priests, the church plate and crucifixes, and even the church bells, were swept away and sold for the benefit of the king. Many of our village crosses were wantonly destroyed during this period. The beautiful Sandbach crosses were thrown down and broken in fragments. Most of the pieces were recovered at a later day, and the crosses set up again, but they will for ever remain a proof of the careless destruction of works of art by which the period of the Reformation was marked.
Chester Cathedral (before Restoration)
When Queen Mary came to the throne she restored the old religion of Rome. A memorial obelisk on Gallows Hill, Boughton, reminds us of the dark days when Protestants were persecuted with blind and bitter hatred by their Catholic enemies, and even suffered death for their beliefs. On Gallows Hill, George Marsh was burnt at the stake for teaching the doctrines of the reformed faith. He was tried in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral, and condemned to death. The citizens of Chester, who had shown themselves sympathetic to the reformers, were filled with horror, and, led by one of the sheriffs, tried to rescue him, but failed in the attempt. The bones of the martyr were collected and laid in the burial-ground of S. Giles. The sheriff was forced to flee to the continent until better times. He returned in the more tolerant days of Queen Elizabeth, and became mayor of the city.
A settlement was brought about in Queen Elizabeth's reign, which satisfied all but the extreme men on either side. She was the more inclined to the Protestant cause inasmuch as she hated the Catholic King Philip of Spain, who called her 'the heretic queen', and whose spies were to be found all over England. When the struggle with Spain was near at hand, Protestants and Catholics forgot their quarrels in face of a common danger, and the queen had no more loyal subjects than the great Catholic families of Cheshire. Rowland Stanley, of Hooton-in-Wirral, gave a large sum of money for improving the defence of the sea-coast, for it was thought that Philip might land troops in Wirral.
The Reformation was only part of a great awakening of peoples all over Western and Central Europe. Scholars studied and brought from Italy copies of the books of the ancient Greek and Roman writers. The invention of printing helped the spread of learning, and the Tudor monarchs encouraged the building of schools and colleges in order that all classes might have the benefit of a better education. Over the porch of the King's School, Chester, is a statue of King Henry the Eighth. He was the founder of the school, which for a long time was carried on in the ancient refectory of the abbey.
Some of the wealth taken from the abbeys and monasteries was devoted to the foundation of schools. The Grammar School at Macclesfield was endowed in the reign of Edward the Sixth. At Bunbury, Thomas Aldersey, a haberdasher of London, founded a school, the chantry and college of Sir Hugh Calveley having been dissolved at the same time as the abbeys.
Sir John Deane, son of Laurence Deane, of Davenham, gave some property which had been in the possession of monks for the building of a free Grammar School at Northwich, 'forasmuch as God's glory, His honour and the public weal is advanced and maintained by no means more than by virtuous education and bringing up of youth under such as be learned and virtuous school-masters.'