A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

Sandys and others understood the proviso to mean that recalcitrant clergy like the Warden of Manchester, who carried his consecrated vestments to Ireland, were not to make off with the ornaments, and that churchwardens or patrons were not to confiscate them for their private use. They were property belonging to the Queen, and to be retained until her Majesty’s pleasure was known. The whole history of the visitations goes to prove that Sandys’ interpretation of the proviso was that of its framers.

When the Prayer-Book was actually printed it was found to contain some differences from the Edwardine Book of 1552 besides those mentioned in the Act as the only ones to be admitted; and early editions have not always the same changes. But the one thing of importance was a rubric which, on what seems to be the only possible interpretation, enjoins the use in public worship of the ornaments (i.e. the vestments) in use in the second year of King Edward.[568] How this rubric got into the Prayer-Book it is impossible to say. It certainly was not enacted by the Queen “with assent of Lords and Commons.” We have no proof that it was issued by the Privy Council.[569] The use and wont of the Church of England during the period of the Elizabethan settlement was as if this rubric had never existed. It is directly contradicted by the thirtieth Injunction issued for the Royal Visitation of 1559.[570] It was not merely contemptuously ignored by the Elizabethan Bishops; they compelled their clergy, if compulsion was needed, to act in defiance of it.

Contemporary sources abundantly testify that in the earlier years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the English clergy in their ministrations scarcely ever wore any ecclesiastical garment but the surplice; and sometimes not even that. The Advertisements[571] of 1566, which almost all contemporary notices speak of as prescribing what had been enjoined in the Injunctions of 1559, were drafted for the purpose of coercing clergymen who were in the habit of refusing to wear even the surplice, and they enjoined the surplice only, and the cope[572] in cathedrals. In the Visitation carried out in accordance with the directions in the Injunctions, a clean sweep was made of almost all the ornaments which were not merely permitted but ordered in the proviso of the Act of Uniformity and the Rubric of 1559 on the ordinary ritualistic interpretation of these clauses. The visitors proceeded on a uniform plan, and what we hear was done in one place may be inferred as the common practice. The Spanish Ambassador (July or August 1559) wrote to his master: “They are now carrying out the law of Parliament respecting religion with great rigour, and have appointed six visitors.... They have just taken the crosses, images, and altars from St. Paul’s and all the other London churches.”[573] A citizen of London noted in his diary: “The time before Bartholomew tide and after, were all the roods and Maries and Johns, and many other of the church goods, both copes, crosses, censers, altar cloth, rood cloths, books, banners, banner stays, wainscot and much other gear about London, burnt in Smithfield.”[574] What took place in London was done in the provinces. At Grantham, “the vestments, copes, albs, tunicles, and all other such baggages were defaced and openly sold by the general consent of the whole corporation, and the money employed in setting up desks in the church, and making of a decent communion table, and the remnant to the poor.”[575]

It is true that we find complaints on the part of men like Jewel of ritualistic practices which they do not like; but these in almost every case refer to worship in the royal chapel. The services there were well known, and both friends and foes of the Reformation seemed to take it for granted that what was the fashion in the royal chapel would soon extend to the rest of the realm.[576] Historians have usually attributed the presence of crosses, vestments, lights on the altar, to the desire of the Queen to conciliate her Romanist subjects, or to stand well with the great Roman Catholic Powers of Europe. It is quite likely that the Queen had this thought in her mind. Elizabeth was a thrifty lady, and liked to bring down many birds with the one stone. But the one abiding thought in the mind of the astute Queen was to stand well with the Lutherans, and to be able, when threatened with papal excommunication, to take shelter under the ægis of the Peace of Augsburg.

When the Government had secured the passing of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, they were in a position to deal with the recalcitrant clergy. Eleven of the English Episcopal Sees had been vacant at the accession of Elizabeth, among them that of the Primate; for Cardinal Pole had died a few hours after Mary, In the summer and autumn of 1559 the sixteen Bishops were called upon to sign the Oath of Supremacy, in which the papal rule over the Church of England was abjured, and the Queen declared to be the Supreme Governor of the Church. All the Bishops, more or less definitely, refused to take the oath; although three were at first doubtful. They were deprived, and the English Church was practically without Bishops.[577] Some of the deprived Bishops of King Edward’s time survived, and they were restored. Then came discussion about the manner of appointing new ones. Some would have preferred a simple royal nomination, as in Edward’s time; but in the end it was resolved that the appointment should be nominally in the hands of the Deans and Chapters according to mediæval rule, with the proviso, however, that the royal permission to elect had first to be given, and that the person named in the “leave to elect” should be chosen. Then the question of consecration gave rise to some difficulties; but these were got over in ways which were deemed to be sufficient. Matthew Parker, after more than one refusal, was nominated and consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Lists of clerical persons suitable for promotion were prepared for the Queen,[578] and the other Sees were gradually filled. The Elizabethan episcopate, with the exception of the few Edwardine Bishops, was an entirely new creation. A large number of the Deans and members of the Cathedral Chapters had also refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy; they were deprived, and others who were on the lists were appointed in their place. The inferior clergy proved to be much more amenable, and only about two hundred were in the end deprived. The others all accepted the “alteration of religion”; and the change was brought about quietly and without the riotings which had accompanied the alterations made in the days of Edward, or the wholesale deprivations which had followed upon those made by Queen Mary—when almost one-third of the beneficed clergy of the Church of England had been removed from their benefices. A similar passive acquiescence was seen in the introduction of the new Book of Common Prayer, and in the fulfilment of the various orders for the removal of images, etc. The great altars and crucifixes were taken away, and the pictures covered with whitewash, without any disturbances to speak of.

The comparative ease with which the “alteration of religion” was effected was no doubt largely due to the increased Protestant feeling of the country; but the tact and forbearance of those who were appointed to see the changes carried out counted for something; and perhaps the acquiescence of the Roman Catholics was due to the fact that they had no great leader, that they did not expect the Elizabethan settlement to last long, and that they waited in expectation that one or other of the two Romanist Powers, France or Spain, would interfere in their behalf. The religious revolution in Scotland in 1560 saved the Elizabethan settlement for the time; and Philip of Spain trifled away his opportunities until a united England overthrew his Armada, which came thirty years too late.

The change was given effect to by a Royal Visitation. England was divided into six districts, and lists of visitors were drawn up which included the Lords Lieutenants of the counties, the chief men of the districts, and some lawyers and clergymen known to be well affected to the Reformation. They had to assist them a set of Injunctions, modelled largely, not entirely, on those of Edward VI., drafted and issued by royal command.[579] The members of the clergy were dealt with very patiently, and explanations, public and private, were given of the Act of Supremacy which made it easier for them to accept it. The Elizabethan Bishops were also evidently warned to deal tenderly with stubborn parish clergymen; they would have been less patient with them if left to themselves. One, Bishop Best, Bishop of Carlisle, is found writing to Cecil about his clergy, that “the priests are wicked impes of Antichrist,” for the most part very ignorant and stubborn; another, Pilkington, the Bishop of Durham, in describing the disordered state of his diocese, declared that “like St. Paul, he has to fight with beasts at Ephesus”; and a third, Scory, Bishop of Winchester, wrote that he was much hindered by justices of the peace who were Roman Catholics, and that when certain priests who had refused to take the oath were driven out of Exeter and elsewhere, they were received and feasted in the streets with torch-lights.[580]

Elizabeth’s second Parliament was very much more Protestant than the first, and insisted that the Oath of Supremacy must be taken by all the members of the House of Commons, by all lawyers, and by all schoolmasters. The Convocation of 1563 proved that the clergy desired to go much further in the path of Reformation than the Queen thought desirable.

They clearly wished for some doctrinal standard, and Archbishop Parker had prepared and laid before Convocation a revised edition of the Forty-two Articles which had defined the theology of the Church of England in the last year of King Edward VI.[581] The way had been prepared for the issue of some authoritative exposition of the doctrinal position of the Elizabethan Church by the Declaration of the Principal Articles of Religion—a series of eleven articles framed by the Bishops and published in 1561 (March), which repudiates strongly the Romanist doctrines of the Papacy, private Masses, and the propitiatory sacrifice in the Holy Supper. The Spanish Ambassador, who had heard of the meetings of the Bishops for this purpose, imagined that they were preparing articles to be presented to the Council of Trent on behalf of the Church of England.[582] The Archbishop’s draft was revised by Convocation, and was “diligently read and sifted” by the Queen herself before she gave her consent to the authoritative publication of the Articles.