Church and State under the Tudors/Chapter 9

by Gilbert William Child

CHAPTER IX

REIGN OF ELIZABETH (continued)

The year 1562—in legal language, the fifth of Elizabeth, though when it began she had been little more than three years upon the throne—was remarkable for the assemblage of the second Parliament and the second Convocation of the reign. Again, the first measure passed by the Parliament was one relating to religion—viz., 5 Eliz. c. 1—'An Act for the assurance of the Queen's royal power over all estates and subjects within her dominions.' This Act made it penal in any person to maintain or defend the authority of the bishop or see of Rome within the Queen's dominions, subjecting offenders against it to the pains and penalties of the Statute of Præmunire. One of its clauses (14) incidentally explains that the Oath of Supremacy enacted by 1 Eliz. c. 1, acknowledges in her Majesty 'none other authority than that was challenged and lately used by the noble King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI., as is set forth in an Admonition annexed to the Queen's Majesty's Injunctions published in the first year of Her Majesty's reign.' What that authority was we have already seen in considering Henry VIII.'s Act of Supremacy. This was the only ecclesiastical Act of this Parliament of primary importance, those for the due execution of the 'writ de Excommunicato capiendo' (5 Eliz. c. 23), and some others, being of little permanent interest.

The concurrent Convocation was one which has been considered to have done very important work. Its work was to revise the Forty-two Articles of Edward VI., and re-enact them in their revised form. The changes made in them would appear to most persons in the present day to have been but slight, and to have consisted mainly in the omission of some few dogmatic statements upon obscure theological questions, such as the mode of our Lord's descent into hell, or the condition of the soul in its intermediate state—i.e., between death and resurrection. It is, however, often difficult for men of one generation to sympathise with the difficulties and doubts of those of another, and the whole of Christian theology in the sixteenth century had been thrown, as it were, into the caldron whence the most eccentric and dangerous opinions had come forth, which, so long as it was considered that opinions as well as actions came within the province of government, no Government could, in some cases, avoid taking notice of; and if it took notice of opinion in one case, it was not always easy to avoid doing so in another, where the practical results were not equally important. Hence we must not be surprised to meet with enactments, and, still more frequently, propositions for enactments, which to modern eyes appear at once trifling and inquisitorial. But though the revision and republication of the Articles was the principal work actually accomplished by this Convocation, it had a vast deal more brought before it which it did not accomplish, partly from the wide differences of opinion existing among its members, and partly, apparently, also because a somewhat abrupt prorogation, simultaneous or thereabout with that of the Parliament, brought its labours to a premature termination; and for several years afterwards it met only to be prorogued again.^[1] A vigorous attempt was made in this Convocation to do away with the habits—except the surplice—with organs, and with the sign of the cross in baptism, and to make kneeling at the communion optional—an attempt, moreover, which was extremely near succeeding, since on a division the proposers of these alterations had an actual majority of those present, but lost their motion, when the proxies also were reckoned, by a single vote, 27 members abstaining altogether.^[2] Even more strongly Puritan suggestions had been previously made by Nowel, the Dean of St. Paul's, Sampson, Dean of Christ Church, and some others. It would have been interesting to see how such proposals would have been received by Elizabeth had this trifling majority been reversed. It is more to my immediate purpose, however, to observe two things in regard to this Convocation—viz. (1) That it^[3] first obtained the Queen's permission to revise the Articles, and (2)^[4] That the following protest was appended to the signatures attached to them when revised:—'Ista suvscriptio facta est ab omnibus sub hac protestatione, quod nihil statuunt in præjudiciiun cujusquam senatus consultum: sed tantum supplicem libellum petitiones suas continentem humiliter offerunt'—thus apparently declaring themselves subject, not only to the Crown, but also to Parliament.

Several incidents occurred during these first years of Elizabeth's reign which, though they had no direct bearing upon either the establishment or the modification of the relations of Church and State, yet may be referred to in this place, since they seem in various modes and degrees to illustrate those relations. First of these, we should note the commencement of that issue of Commissions by the Queen to various persons chosen by her, for the purpose of inquiring into and regulating the ecclesiastical affairs of the whole kingdom, or a whole province, or a single diocese. These Commissions, whether permanent, such as that which developed into the Court of High Commission, or temporary, and intended only for some particular occasion, were issued under the Queen's letters patent, were directly authorised by the 1 Eliz. c. 1, sec. 18, and formed the regular mode in which the sovereign's supremacy was brought to bear upon the government of the Church, until the commencement of the discontents which preceded the great Rebellion in the sixteenth year of Charles I. It, in fact, enabled the sovereign to govern the Church with the aid of the Privy Council alone, independently alike of Parliament and of Convocation. We shall have ample occasion to see,^[5] in the course of this reign, how far this personal government of the Church was actually carried into practice.

The congregation of Dutch Protestants^[6] which had been established, under the permission of Edward VI., by his letters patent, and had been driven away and dispersed under Mary, petitioned Elizabeth for the restoration to them of the church given them by Edward, and the renewal of their charter, which they appear shortly after to have obtained.^[7] Of this Presbyterian church, as also of another French one, Grindal, being Bishop of London, became the official superintendent, and in that capacity undertook and exercised careful supervision of their discipline. There is in the State Papers^[8] a recantation of certain false opinions prepared for Hadrian Hamsted, one of the ministers of this church, by Bishop Grindal, in which he is made to speak of himself as 'decreto domini episcopi Londinensis ministerio depositus atque excommunicatus;' of the Bishop as 'utriusque peregrinorum ecclesiæ superintendentem'; and again of himself as 'optimo jure hoc promeruisse et ordine a dicto episcopo meum fuisse actum.' The fact that Hamsted refused to sign this document is of little importance, since it was drawn up by the Bishop, and may be taken to prove his own view of his legalised position in regard to the Dutch Church in London. This is not by any means the only instance of the official interference of the Bishop with the affairs of these churches, as their regular and legitimate superintendent.

Very soon after Parker's consecration^[9] as Archbishop of Canterbury, he received a letter from Calvin containing suggestions for the union of the Protestant Churches. On Calvin's part this appears to have been a reopening of an earlier negotiation with Cranmer in Edward VI.'s reign, which had been brought to an abrupt conclusion then by the accession of Mary, as it was again, now, by his own death, which took place in 1564. From the characteristics of Calvin's own mind, it is likely that he would appreciate to the full the disadvantages under which Protestantism laboured even then—as it has done ever since—from its want of organisation and its tendency to split into sects; and the task of attempting to unite them into one powerful body, was one congenial at once to his courageous temper and his genius for organisation. In this place, however, the matter comes under our notice, not so much from the point of view of Calvin's motives in suggesting it, as of the mode in which it was received by Parker. So far as appears from Strype's account,^[10] drawn, as he tells us, from his own manuscripts, Parker seems to have consulted no bishops or divines about the matter, but to have gone straight to the Queen and her Council, and taken from them his instructions as to how Calvin's proposals were to be received. These were, in effect, that the Council ' liked his proposals, which were fair and desirable; yet, as to the government of the Church, to signify to him that the Church of England would still retain her episcopacy, but not as from Pope Gregory, who sent over Augustine, the monk, hither, but from Joseph of Arimathaea, as appeared by Gildas, printed first, anno 1525, in the reign of King Henry VIII.'

An attempt, made by Home, Bishop of Winchester, to enforce the Oath of Supremacy upon Bonner, at that time a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and therefore within his jurisdiction as diocesan, led to a lawsuit in the Queen's Bench, in which Bonner's main ground of objection was that Home was not lawfully Bishop of Winchester at all, and therefore had no authority to require him to take the Oath. This case was before the Court in Michaelmas Term 6 and 7 Eliz.; and whatever miglit be the real force of Bonner's plea, it appears to have been considered necessary, in consequence of it, to bring a Bill into Parliament, which finally took the form of a very notable Act, viz., 8 Eliz. c. 1, entitled an 'Act declaring the making and consecrating of the archbishops and bishops of this realm to be good, lawful, and perfect.' This Act, which asserts the validity of the consecrations already made by reason of the Act of Supremacy and of the Act of 5 and 6 Edward VI. c. 1, and the revival thereof by 1 Eliz. c. 1, also alleges that (2) the Queen, 'by her supreme power and authority, hath dispensed with all causes or doubts of any imperfection or disability that can or may in any way be objected against the same'; and has a further clause, apparently intended expressly to meet Bonner's case, (6) 'that no person shall at any time hereafter be impeached or molested by occasion or mean of any certificate by any archbishop or bishop heretofore made, or before the last day of the present session of Parliament to be made, by virtue of any Act made in the first session of this present Parliament, touching or concerning the refusal of the Oath declared and set forth by Act of Parliament in the first year of the reign of our said Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, anything in this Act or any other Act or Statute heretofore made to the contrary notwithstanding,' and (7) that all tenders of the said Oath made by any archbishop or bishop aforesaid, or before the last day of this present session to be made by authority of any Act established in the first session of this present Parliament, and all refusals of the same Oath so tendered, or before the last day of this present session to be tendered by any archbishop or bishop by authority of any Act established in the first session of this present Parliament, shall be void and of none effect or validity in the law.'

We may now see plainly what was the theory of the relation between the Church and State in England in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, and we shall see further as we proceed how entirely that theory was carried into practice. The revival of Henry's Act of Submission, and of his Act of Supremacy, in everything except the particular title of Supreme Head, by 1 Eliz. c. 1, was now clearly held, as the words of the Act just quoted are sufficient to show, to mean that the government of the Church was a part of the prerogative of the Crown, and machinery was appointed by which this authority should be exercised—viz., one or more Commissioners, to be appointed by the Sovereign by letters patent under the Great Seal. How far into what may be called spiritual matters this authority of the sovereign was intended to go, is also well shown by the words of the Act now under discussion, wherein she does, by her own dispensing power, take upon herself to make good any defects whatever, which may be supposed to have existed in the order of the bishops or other ministers already made.

The Church of England is thus seen to be in very deed the creature of the State, and to be in all things subject, in Tudor times at least, to the personal government of the sovereign, and this as completely under Elizabeth as under Henry or Edward. As we follow the history during Elizabeth's reign, we shall have occasion to see how very much the mere personal predilections of the sovereign herself have affected the course of affairs in that Church, both in her own time and in every subsequent age to the present. Hitherto we have seen but one contest proceeding—that between the Reformed Church in England and the Church of Rome. The former, from the separation downwards, we have seen following the fluctuations, first of Henry VIII. and of Edward's Council, and then, after its temporary extinction under Mary, revived on the accession of Elizabeth; but through all this period Rome has been theologically and ecclesiastically its only acknowledged adversary. Now we are to see a new foe arise, in the shape of Puritanism, which increased in bitterness as well as in strength in proportion as the danger from Rome became less immediate, until in less than a century it overwhelmed State and Church together. We are concerned with Puritanism in this place simply as its rise affected the relations of the Church with the State, which it did to a greater extent than might have been the case, had the Church been less under the personal control of the sovereign, and had Elizabeth herself been less arbitrary, and less personally disliked it.

Camden gives the year 1568 as the date of the rise of Puritanism, and it was certainly about this time that it became a power with which the Government had to reckon. The thing itself, however, had existed already for many years. Hooper's controversy about the vestments under Edward VI., and, even earlier than this, his letters to Bullinger and others in Henry's reign, show plainly that, almost from the time of the separation, two different tendencies existed among English Protestants. The one was represented by men like Parker and the majority of the Elizabethan bishops, who, while they were in the main thorough Protestants of the Zurich type, yet seem to have been anxious to comprehend as widely as possible, to give as little shock as might be to the prejudices and habits of men, and therefore to change only those forms and ceremonies which they deemed absolutely necessary, and whose feelings of reverence and subordination and order made them anxious to maintain whatever they could of the ancient and venerable rites of the Church's worship. The other party had much less reverence for antiquity, and vastly more confidence in themselves, and when they had once taken up the false principle that they ought to make their worship as unlike that of the old Church as they could, and that they could draw the exact type of their Church government and discipline from the Bible itself, it soon became obvious that, good men as many of them were, they could not be brought under any uniform and orderly government at all, and would perpetually differ, even amongst themselves. The trials which many of the men of this party had undergone under the Act of Six Articles, and afterwards in Mary's reign, together with the circumstances of their exile at Frankfort, Strasburg, Geneva, Zurich, and elsewhere, had both intensified their hatred of Popery, and attached many of them greatly to one or another of the Continental forms of Protestantism, and had thus accentuated the differences between them and the moderate party.

We must remember, nevertheless, that these differences, in the times with which we are now dealing, were only as those between the different wings of a modern political party, and were scarcely yet ready to be displayed in the face of the enemy. It was Elizabeth's own decided adherence to the former party which at once gave it a decisive preponderance, and aggravated the discontent of its rival. It would be entirely inconsistent with Elizabeth's character and intellect to suppose that she really cared one jot for the points in controversy between the tw^o; but she did care for order and pomp and appearances in other things, and in religion too; and, above all, being a Tudor, she did care to have her own way, and she looked upon the Church of England as her own Church, over which her own personal authority was supreme, and to find fault with which was to call in question her own judgment and her own arrangements.

Many, if not even most, of Elizabeth's bishops and divines, at least in the earlier part of her reign, sympathised in a great degree with the Puritans, even while they were unwilling, for the sake of a square cap or the use of the sign of the Cross in baptism, to risk the whole cause of establishing a national Church which should at once, as they hoped, be pure from the corruptions of Rome, and maintain a position of dignity and influence in the nation and avoid anarchical and fanatical extravagances. Jewell may safely be taken as an example of the very best of the Elizabethan divines, and Jewell's sentiments are thus expressed^[11] in his own words: 'The contest, about which I doubt not you have heard either from our friends Abel or Parkhurst, respecting the linen surplice, is not yet at rest. The matter still somewhat disturbs weak minds; and I wish that all, even the slightest, vestiges of Popery might be removed from our churches, and above all from our minds. But the Queen, at this time, is unable to endure the least alteration in matters of religion.' It seems, then, that it was to Elizabeth's personal caprice, rather than to any scruples on the part of the divines of the Church of England, that the first beginnings of organised Puritan discontent are due; but, as usually happens, the longer the dispute continued, the more bitter it became, and those who at first differed about mere questions of habits or ceremonies, by dwelling constantly upon their points of difference, and forgetting their far more numerous and important subjects of union, drew gradually farther apart until the Puritan became almost as great an enemy to the English Churchman as the Papist had always been. Elizabeth, it is true, displayed the same vacillation in her management of the Church as she did in every other department of policy, and, as in other matters, so in these, she too often left her servants to bear the consequences of her own indecision. Thus, early in 1564, she addressed a sharp letter^[12] to the two archbishops complaining of the diversities in the services and ceremonies of the Church, and ordering them to 'provide such other further remedy, by some other sharp proceedings as should percase not be easy to be borne by such as should be disordered.' Upon receipt of this, the archbishops, with such bishops as were on the Ecclesiastical Commission, and one or two others, drew up the book of 'Advertisements,' so called, containing certain orders for the regulation of the clergy in the matters complained of: but when they were drawn up Elizabeth declined to sign them, alleging that the authority of the archbishops and the Commissioners was sufficient; and it was two years or more before they obtained the royal authority, after undergoing some revision.

An incident occurred, at the close of the year 1567, which shows how the government of the Church by the State extended to some degree beyond the bounds of the establishment. It is curious that both Edward VI. and Elizabeth, while as regards their own subjects they tolerated no nonconformity, yet took under their patronage certain Netherlanders and others driven from their own country on religious grounds. These persons, while they were permitted to settle in London, Norwich, Colchester, Canterbury, and elsewhere, and to exercise their own (Presbyterian) form of religion, were at the same time placed under the special care of the bishops of the dioceses in which they settled, who, in some cases at least, as we have seen in the instance of Grindal, became their official superintendents. By this means they became amenable to the authority of the Ecclesiastical Commission; and at this time this authority took occasion to redress certain disorders among the Dutch Protestants in London, to compel certain members who had revolted from it to return, and to decree ' that the said Dutch Church should continue in its lirst constitution, under its own discipline hitherto accustomed, and in its conformity with other the Reformed Churches, confirming the ministers, elders, and deacons of the same Church in their ministries and administrations.' It then exhorted all strangers abiding in the City of London who professed Christ and His Gospel, to join themselves to that Church and submit to its holy appointments; and further declared all such as had made a defection from this Church, and had caused the late disturbance in it, to be unquiet and stubborn persons, until by repentance they had returned and gave satisfaction to God and His Church—reserving to themselves the further restraint and correction of them.^[13]

Another matter which touches the skirts of my subject rather than properly belongs to it, but which it is impossible entirely to omit, may be noticed here—viz., the question whether the deaths of the Jesuits and others executed under Elizabeth can rightly be used, as by Roman Catholic writers they always have been, as a set-off to the burning of the Protestants under Mary.

In considering such a question as this, in order to arrive at a reasonably fair conclusion, it is absolutely necessary to take into account the different views which prevail at different periods; and by this I mean, not only what we may be pleased to consider the moral advance which would enable us in these days to condemn all political assassination in the lump, and which has given occasion to a good deal of very ill-founded self-complacency in some modern historians, but also that more subtle result of political and religious action and reaction, which gives rise to a tendency in each successive generation to take a different, and a more or less antagonistic, view of any subject from that held by its predecessor, and this the more strongly in proportion as the previous opinion has been firm and general. Thus the ascendency of Protestantism in England, from the reign of Elizabeth to a time within the memory of living men, was so complete and so universal, that all the questions concerning it had come to be looked upon by the mass of Englishmen as finally settled, and had ceased to be a subject of study or interest even with the majority of educated persons, who were mostly bred up with the notion that all the right was, and had always been, on the Protestant, and all the wrong on the Roman, side of all questions between the two parties.

It is no exaggeration to say that this was the general opinion of Englishmen of all classes throughout the reign of George III. and for some years after its close. Two causes mainly have led to a reaction since—the great spread, in later years, of a taste for historical and antiquarian research, consequent upon the institution of the Camden and other Societies, and of the enormously increased facilities recently given for the consultation of ancient records in every direction and of every kind; and, secondly, the extension to England of the great Catholic reaction, which began on the Continent towards the close of the last century and dates with us from the rise of what is known as the Tractarian movement in 1833. The first of these, by letting men see the letters and writings of members of the defeated party, put matters in a new light, and displayed, for the first time, the other side of the Reformation questions—the many good points of the sufferers, and too often the meanness, tyranny, and unfairness, on the side of the victors—and so at last there were found English Churchmen who began to write as if the Reformation had been the triumph of wrong, and the real martyrs of the sixteenth century were to be found among the disciples of Allen and Parsons rather than in the victims of Mary's persecution. Now, when a few more years are past, when researches have been still further extended, and there has been time and opportunity to see that the new side of the question is no more the only side than the old one was, we may hope that a more judicial and rational view may be taken, and that we may learn that the ideas of the value of the Reformation which prevailed for almost three centuries in England were, on the whole, nearer the truth than those which have for the moment almost superseded them; that they never would have retained their hold upon the English nation so long and so firmly otherwise; and that they lost it for the time, mainly because this ascendency had been so complete, that men forgot the possibility of holding any other views, and had lost sight even of the grounds upon which they held these. And certainly there is no point in which all the research which has taken place can only serve to re-establish the old opinion in the view of any person who comes to the question with an open mind than the one now before us.

Elizabeth's justification for the execution of Jesuits and Seminarists is in all points complete. It was on May 15, 1570, that Pius V.'s bull of excommunication was found nailed up against the Bishop of London's palace at Fulham. Up to that time no execution had taken place in Elizabeth's reign which could in any way be said to be due to intolerance of Popery; so far from it that, albeit for other reasons, priests, known to be such, had been permitted to retain their livings, and recusants generally, though sometimes worried, were not punished. It was in July 1571 that the first conspiracy was hatched at King Philip's council-table for the assassination of Elizabeth; and from that time till the final scene at Fotheringay had closed the tragedy of Mary Stuart's existence, Elizabeth's life was the mark of unceasing plots and conspiracies, of which Jesuits and Seminarists were both the brain and the hands, even though they had received the unqualified approval of kings, popes, cardinals, and nobles, who, while they would not stain their own hands or risk their own skins by assassination, were willing enough to encourage others to do it, and to profit by the deed when done. The evidence of all this is unimpeachable, and comes from their own side.^[14] There is no room for reasonable question or doubt about it. An English convert in his sermon at Rheims had said, 'Pity it was there could not be found any of that courage to bereave her (Elizabeth) of her life'; and Pope Gregory XIII. had said to Ballard and Tyrrel that he 'not only approved the act, but thought the doer, if he suffer death simply for that, to be worthy of canonisation.' In the face of these precepts given by the highest Catholic authority, and followed by the actual attempts which were made at assassination, the declamation about 'our religion only is our crime' is felt to be mere bluster. If a man, be lie a Jesuit or a Thug, will make murder a part of his religion, he may place his religion pro tanto outside the pale of toleration by civilised society; but he does not palliate his crime, nor make it the duty of society to tolerate that which is incompatible with its own existence.

1. See Lathbury, op. cit. p. 173.
2. Strype, Annals, vol. i. pp. 502-6.
3. Lathbury, op. cit. p. 164, note.
4. Strype, Annals, vol. i. p. 491.
5. Strype, Life of Grindal, bk. ii. chaps. 8 and 9.
6. State Papers, Edward VI., July 24, 1550.
7. State Papers, Eliz. vol. xi. 24, Feb. 1560: The Queen to the Marquess of Winchester, empowering him to deliver over the Church of the Augustine Friars to the Bishop of London for the celebration of divine service by the strangers in London.
8. State Papers, Eliz. vol. xxiii. 67, July, 1562.
9. Strype, Life of Parker, vol. i. p. 188.
10. Strype, Annals, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 2-8.
11. Zurich Letters, pp. 148-9, Jewell to Bullinger and Lavater, Feb. 3 1566.
12. Strype, Annals, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 128-9.
13. Strype, Annals, vol i. pt. ii. p. 250. Strype quotes this decree as given under the seal of the Commissioners on December 19, 1567.

    He refers also to an instrument of Bishop Kinff, of London, nearly fifty years later, in which, after much laudation of the same body, and of a similar Church at Colchester, he enjoins that no member of the same churches that had offended, and thereby deserved their censures, should depart from these congregations and join themselves to any parish church, before he had either been censured for his offence, or had otherwise reconciled himself with his respective congregation.

    A similar instance may be quoted from the State Papers for 1621, under dates January 21, September 25, and October 10, from which we learn that a certain Denis l'Ermite, a freeman of the city of Norwich, had left the Walloon congregation and attended an English church, and declined to pay the rate for the support of the ministers of the church he had left. Complaint was made to the Council, who directed a Commission of inquiry, on which were the Bishop, the Mayor, and others. The Commissioners report, and in their report request that such persons as the aforesaid L'Ermite, though born in England, shall be ordered to continue, and be of that Church, and submit to its discipline, and that 'such of them as shall not conform themselves thereunto, and shall not, in case of their Church discipline, submit themselves to be ordered therein by the Bishop of Norwich for the time being, and in case of civil government by the Mayor and justices of the peace of the said city,' may have to appear before the Council to answer for their contempt and disobedience. The report is signed by the Bishop (Harsnet), the Mayor, and others. The Council, in their reply, order that Denis l'Ermite and all others of the Walloon congregation in Norwich, although born in England, shall continue to belong to that Church, and to submit to its discipline, on bond to appear before the Council in case of disobedience.

14. Records and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, London, 1882, p. 412; also the remarkable reasoning in the historical introduction to the same, pp. 48-51. See also Green, vol. ii. p. 416; and Froude, vol. xi. ch. xxviii. passim, and especially pp. 303-5. Also Simpson's Life of Campian, pp. 342-3, where he says, 'To be a conspirator generally implies a readiness to swear that you are not one. That is but a lame plot when the plotters are not ready to deny it at the bar. But Allen and Parsons put all the English Catholics in this position, that they were obliged to risk life, liberty, and lands, rather than take the oath of allegiance, which denied the Pope's right to depose princes; and, at the same time, they were obliged by their position to deny, with any amount of imprecation, their complicity in any plot, or in any general design or intention, under any circumstances, to enforce this Papal claim. Hence grew up a suspicion which has always remained in England of the inherent falsehood of Catholic morality,' &c. The whole passage is well worth perusal.