Reformation in Britain

and Ireland

FELICITY HEAL

1
 3
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Heal, Felicity.
Reformation in Britain and Ireland / Felicity Heal.
p. cm. ± (The Oxford history of the Christian church)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Reformation±Great Britain. 2. Great Britain±Church history±16th century.
3. Reformation±Ireland. 4. Ireland±Church history±16th century. I. Title. II. Series.
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To my Mother, for all her support
 PREFACE

It was almost a decade ago that the General Editor wrote to ask if I would
be interested in contributing to the Oxford History of the Christian
Church. The volume he suggested would address the early English Refor-
mation, with a concluding date in the ®rst years of Elizabeth's reign. Or
so I read Owen Chadwick's letter. A more careful rereading added a
distinctive dimension to the task: what was needed was a study of the
British churches, or rather those of Britain and Ireland, to match volumes
being prepared on the Continental Reformations. It was that additional
information that seduced me from the paths of social history and per-
suaded me to sign. In the ®rst half of the 1990s there were at last exciting
developments in the integrated and comparative study of the British Isles,
following the ideas ®rst proposed by John Pocock a decade and a half
earlier. Collections of essays on the British dimension of early modern
history began to proliferate. The time had come to try to stretch the
understanding of a `mere English' historian and to think about the ways in
which the three kingdoms, and four nations of the British archipelago,
responded to the most traumatic experience of the sixteenth century, the
coming of the Reformation.
I added only one caveat to the Editor's proposal. It was no longer
possible to halt the story of religious change at 1560, or even 1570. It is at
present fashionable to argue that the Reformation has to be understood as
a long process, ®nishing, according to taste, in 1640, in the 1680s, or even
in the eighteenth century. This seems unnecessarily extended, though
there is an obvious logic in continuing the narrative of changes in reli-
gious politics up to the war of the three kingdoms in 1642, a point made
by Professor Chadwick. Instead Reformation historians would now most
usually argue that it is important to proceed a generation or two beyond
1560: to understand the impact of religious crisis both on those who lived
through the great transitions in public policy and those who followed
them. The latter, as credal Protestants or conscious recusants, had a very
different relationship to religious change from their mothers and fathers,
and needed to be studied to understand how post-Reformation culture
emerged. So, the Editor and I agreed to compromise: both the ecclesi-
astical narrative and the study of post-Reformation beliefs would have a
viii Preface
terminal date around the turn of the sixteenth century. The latter pos-
sessed an intellectual logic; the former the recognition that James VI and
I's arrival in England provides a temporary caesura for each of his three
kingdoms.
At about the time that Reformation in Britain and Ireland became more
than a contract with a rather distant submission date, Diarmaid MacCul-
loch proposed to Judith Maltby, Susan Brigden, and myself, that we estab-
lish an Oxford seminar on Religion in the British Isles 1400±1700. This
has now been a regular feature of the Trinity Term calendar for some
years, with Christopher Haigh joining to replace Susan four years ago. It
has proved a most stimulating seminar, and my gratitude goes to my
fellow organizers who have kept my faith in the intellectual project going
in what have sometimes proved dif®cult circumstances. We often disagree
about the nature of the Reformation, and about the signi®cance of its
`British' dimensions, but for all of us the Thursday evenings of Trinity
Term have proved a high point in the academic calendar.
A number of the speakers and participants at the seminar have been
generous in offering me advice and comments. Jane Dawkins, Linda Dun-
bar, Donald Meek, and Margo Todd have helped to guide my faltering
footsteps on the Scottish Reformation. I am particularly grateful to Margo
Todd for allowing me to read a chapter of her book on Scottish Protes-
tantism in draft. Jenny Wormald has also been a great source of infor-
mation and stimulating discussion on Scotland, as well as a constant
friend. Alan Ford and Raymond Gillespie provided important discussion
and references on the Irish Reformation. Glanmor Williams, the doyen of
Welsh Reformation studies, gave inspiration through his seminar, but
above all through his written works. Bill Sheils, Alec Ryrie, Craig d'Al-
ton, Peter Sherlock, Alison Wall, and Peter Marshall all offered illumin-
ation on England. Cliff Davies reminded me that the Channel Islands had
to be taken into account. Beyond the seminar I have bene®ted from
valuable help from Michael Lynch on Scotland and Steven Ellis on Ire-
land. Tony Shaw has been stimulating on the dissolution of the monaster-
ies. Roger Bowers and Brett Usher were both kind enough to show me
unpublished work on the Elizabethan Settlement and the ®rst Elizabethan
bench of bishops respectively, and to discuss their ®ndings with me. My
graduates have been an important source of inspiration and friendship: in
particular Kevin Dillow, Christine Peters, Helen Parish, Greg Duke, and
Mark Bell have all contributed directly or indirectly to my thinking on
this project.
Diarmaid MacCulloch read the material in Chapter 8, and saved me
from a number of theological errors. Owen Chadwick has been a most
patient and supportive general editor, and has read the whole text system-
 Preface ix
atically. Hilary O'Shea at the Oxford University Press has also waited
uncomplainingly as administrative burdens delayed the completion of the
book for longer than was reasonable. That it is completed at all must be
attributed partly to the administrative support of two colleagues and
friends: Diane Price, who sustained me as senior tutor of my college, and
Sue Bennett, who has been a tower of strength in the History Faculty.
I owe particular personal debts to my uncle, Revd Donald Johnson, for
sustained interest in the project, and intermittent reminders that it was
time it was ®nished, and to my colleague John Walsh, who (rightly)
wondered from time to time if it was wise to commit to a large project of
this kind, but who has always been enthusiastic about discussing it. As
always my greatest debt has been to my husband, Clive Holmes. Though
we have parted intellectual ways since writing together on the gentry, he
remains my greatest academic support and critic, always ready to read
drafts, debate ideas, encourage, and drive me forward.
F. H.
Jesus College, Oxford
Easter 2002
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations xiv

Abbreviations xv
Note on Conventions and Money xvii
Introduction 1

Part I The Traditional Order 13

1 Authority and Control 15
I Papacy 15
II Crown and Church 30
III The Distribution of Power 38
2 The State of the Clergy 43
I The Religious 45
II The Seculars 59
3 Communities and Beliefs 81
I Parish and Guild 81
II The Household and Piety 95
III The Sacramental Economy 98
IV Images and Pilgrimages 105
V Popular Dissent 109

Part II The Coming of Reformation 113

4 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 115
I Divorce and Supremacy 117
II Jurisdiction and Authority in King Henry's Realms 125
III Henrician Policy 132
IV The Monastic Dissolutions 140
V The End of Henricianism 148
VI Scotland and England, 1542±1550 151
VII The Reign of King Josiah 157
VIII Policy in Edwardian and Marian Ireland 166
IX Restoring Catholicism: England, 1553±1558 172
xii Contents
5 The Clergy in the Years of Change, 1530±1558 179
I Prelates and Councils 179
II The Higher Clergy 193
III Wealth and Expropriation 201
IV The Parish Clergy 208
6 Responses to Change: The Laity and the Church 217
I The Defence of Tradition 217
II Evangelical Environments 226
III Taxonomies of Reform 243

Part III Word and Doctrine 255

7 The Word Disseminated 257
I The Perils of Idolatry 261
II Sola Scriptura 269
III Preaching and Teaching 286
IV Idols, Words, and Texts 302
8 Theology and Worship 305
I Confessions 305
II Doctrine Before the Confessions: Henry VIII's Reign 311
III The Eucharistic Debate and Cranmerian Liturgy 323
IV Forms of Protestantism: The Second Generation 330
V Doctrines of the Church in the Later Sixteenth Century 334
VI Calvinist Consensus? 340
VII Conclusion 347

Part IV Reformations Established and Contested 351

9 Cuius Regio, Eius Religio? The Churches, Politics,
and Religious Identities, 1558±1600 353
I Making Two Reformations 353
II Securing the Settlements: Scotland and England
Before the mid-1580s 367
III Ireland and the Elizabethan Settlement 380
IV De®ning the Reformations: Authority and History 386
V Hierarchy and Discipline 394
VI Financing the Churches 402
VII Last Decades 412
10 Reforming People and Community: Church,
Clergy, and Laity, 1558±1600 425
I The Pastoral Ministry 429
II The Congregation: Leadership 436
III The Use of the Church 440
 Contents xiii
IV Patterns of Worship: Communion and the Rites
of Passage 448
V The Practice of Discipline 457
VI Inclusion and Exclusion 463
VII Assimilating the Reformation? 475

Bibliography 485
Index 537
 ILLUST RATIONS

1 `Peculiars, or exempt jurisdictions of medieval Yorkshire',

from R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval
England (1989)
Permission of the author 40
2 `The nulli®dians', from Stephen Bateman, A Christall Glasse (1569)
Bodleian Library Douce B Subt. 266 sig G iiiir permission 222
3 Title-page, The Great Bible (1539)
Bodleian Library Bibl. Eng. 1539 b1 Frontispiece 258
4 Title-page, lower left, from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs
(1583 edn.)
Bodleian Library F3.2. Th. Frontispiece 259
5 Frontispiece, `Matthew Parker preaching'. The Bishops'
Bible (1577 edn.)
Bodleian Library Bibl. Eng. 1577. d. 2 260
6 `Preacher and congregation', from Thomas Williamson,
The Sword of the Spirit (1613)
Bodleian Library 88 W 1(1) Th. p. 61 260
7 `Table of the ordo salutis', from William Perkins, Workes (1630)
Permission of Christ Church, Oxford ch. ch. N. B. 2.8 p. 11 344
8 `The Reformed Church', from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1583)
Bodleian Library F3.2. Th. p. 1294 445
 AB B REVIATIONS

AHR American Historical Review

APC Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J. R. Dasent, 32
vols. (1890±1907)
APS Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson
(1814±75)
ARG Archiv fuÈr Reformationsgeschichte
BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (see also HR)
BL British Library
Bodl Bodleian Library, Oxford
BUK The Booke of the Universall Kirk: Acts and Proceedings of
the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, ed.
T. Thomson, 3 vols. (Bannatyne Club, 1839±45)
C16J Sixteenth-Century Journal
Calderwood History of the Church of Scotland by Mr David Calderwood,
ed T. Thomson, 8 vols. (Wodrow Society, Edinburgh,
1842±9)
CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls
CPR Irl Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Ireland
CS Camden Society
CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic
CSP For Calendar of State Papers Foreign
CSP Irl Calendar of State Papers Ireland
CSP Sc Calendar of State Papers Scotland
CSP Sp Calendar of State Papers Spanish
CSP Ven Calendar of State Papers Venetian
CWTM Complete Works of St Thomas More, 10 vols. (New
Haven, Conn., 1963±90)
DNB Dictionary of National Biography
EETS Early English Text Society
EHR English Historical Review
Foxe J. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. G. Townshend and
S. R. Cattley, 8 vols. (1837±41)
HJ Historical Journal
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission
xvi Abbreviations
HR Historical Research
IHS Irish Historical Studies
JBS Journal of British Studies
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JRH Journal of Religious History
Knox J. Knox, Works, ed. D. Laing, 6 vols. (Wodrow
Society, Edinburgh, 1846)
LP Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer et al., 23 vols. (1862±1932)
LPL Lambeth Palace Library
LRS Lincoln Record Society
OL Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, ed.
H. Robinson, 2 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1846±7)
PP Past and Present
PRO Public Record Of®ce, London
PS Parker Society
RSCHS Records of the Scottish Church History Society
RSTC Revised Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England,
Scotland and Ireland . . . before 1640, ed. W.A. Jackson
and F.S. Ferguson, 3 vols. (1976±91)
SCH Studies in Church History: Ecclesiastical History
Society
SHR Scottish Historical Review
SHS Scottish Historical Society
SP HVIII State Papers of King Henry VIII, 11 vols. (1830±52)
SRS Scottish Record Society
STS Scottish Text Society
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
TRP Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P.L. Hughes and
J.F. Larkin, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1964, 1969)
VAI Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the
Reformation, 3 vols., ed. W.H. Frere and
W.M. Kennedy (Alcuin Club, 14±16, 1910)
Wilkins, Concilia Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hibernicae, ed. D. Wilkins,
4 vols. (1737)
YAJ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal
ZL Zurich Letters, 1558±1579, ed. H. Robinson, 2 vols. (PS,
Cambridge, 1842)
 NOTE O N CONVENTI ON S AN D M O N E Y

All spellings have been modernized, except in the case of verse where
original spelling is pertinent to pronunciation. Dates are given in Old
Style, but with the year beginning on 1 January, not 25 March. The place
of publication is London unless otherwise speci®ed.
Figures for ecclesiastical income are given in the national currencies,
that is pounds English, Irish, and Scots. Until 1460 Irish pounds were
equivalent to English. Thereafter they diverged: in the early sixteenth
century a pound English was worth 30 shillings Irish. Scottish and English
pounds diverged after the mid-fourteenth century. The relationship be-
tween the value of the two varied markedly over our period. Between
1475 and 1565 the shift was from a ratio of 4:1 to 5:1. Thereafter the value
of the Scottish pound collapsed: by 1603 the ratio was 12:1.
 INTRODUCTION

Early one morning in mid-August 1553 John Bale, Protestant polemicist,

dramatist, and bishop of Ossory in the Irish marches, ¯ed from his epis-
copal see to Dublin. Thence he made his escape by sea, intending to go to
Scotland, but, after a series of picaresque adventures with pirates, eventu-
ally arriving in the Low Countries. There, in the wearisome years of
Mary I's reign, he published his Vocacyon, one of the ®rst pieces of writing
in English that can claim the status of autobiography.1 It is, however,
autobiography of a narrowly circumscribed kind. Bale describes his calling
to the see of Ossory by Edward VI in 1552, his experiences in Dublin and
Kilkenny in the months before his ¯ight, and the complex sea journeying
that led him to Flanders. The context of the work is scriptural and provi-
dential: Bale had experienced calling, persecution, and deliverance, and in
this he resembled the saints of the true Church in all ages. The bishop's
particular models were Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and St Paul: all were
`called from their mother's womb to that heavenly of®ce of preaching',
each suffered under tyrants, and each was ®nally `delivered in this life
from parlous dangers and in death from sin, hell and damnation'.2 Though
Bale had not been called upon to suffer direct physical martyrdom, the
cross that he bore was heavy, involving the fear of death, the killing of
several of his servants in Ireland, exile, and the tragic loss of his collection
of books.3
Bale's precipitate ¯ight was one small incident in a summer of profound
crisis for the Protestant cause. His stay in Ireland was so brief that he
scarcely had time to disturb the surface of Irish religious politics and
neither his coming nor his going can be said to have changed much in the
Tudor crown's second realm. However, the bishop's account of his
1
The critical edition with facsimile reproduction of the text is P. Happe and J.N. King
(eds.), The vocacyon of Johan Bale, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 70 (Binghamton,
N.Y., 1990).
2
Ibid., 32.
3
Ibid., introduction. See also A. Had®eld, `Translating the Reformation: John Bale's Irish
Vocacyon', in B. Bradshaw, A. Had®eld, and W. Maley (eds.), Representing Ireland: Literature and
the Origins of the Con¯ict, 1534±1660 (Cambridge, 1993), 43±59; S. Ellis, `John Bale, bishop of
Ossory, 1552±3', Journal of the Butler Society 2 (1984), 283±93.
2 Introduction
experiences is remarkably revealing, both about the nature of evangelical
Protestantism, and about religious change in sixteenth-century Britain and
Ireland. Bale was one of the most vigorous protagonists of the `hot gos-
pelling' generation: men whose objective, in Margaret Aston's vivid
phrase, was not `to re-educate, but to re-convert the world'.4 Steeped in
the scripturesÐHenry VIII was King David, Edward VI a wise Solomon,
the popish clergy of Ireland the spawn of AntichristÐBale was wholly
uncompromising in his determination to preach the gospel. He initiated a
crucial sermon cycle from the pulpit of Kilkenny cathedral, preaching
repentance, Christ's saving merits and sole capacity to save, while lambast-
ing the clergy for their maintenance of `white gods of their making',
which were `no gods but idols'.5 When challenged by his cathedral estab-
lishment after Mary's proclamation as Queen he ®rst `took Christ's testa-
ment in my hand' and then, after preaching at the market cross, organized
the young men of the town to perform `a Tragedy of Gods promises in
the old law' followed by `a Comedy of Saint John Baptists preaching'.
Both plays were probably by Bale, whose reforming interludes were
famous long before he left for Ireland.6 It may be the sheer vigour and
passion of the bishop's approach that won him friends and supporters in
the hostile environment of Kilkenny. His own assessment was that he had
numbers of ordinary lay adherents, who helped among other things to
protect him from murder in 1553, while his enemies were the clergy and
a coterie of in¯uential gentry and magistrates. When his servants were
killed in the countryside 300 local men carried him back to Kilkenny `the
young men singing psalms and godly songs all the way'.7
But John Bale's gospelling, as he narrated it, was of a distinctive sort,
regulated by the Royal Supremacy, and insistent on obedience to an
established Tudor order. His `vocation' was not generated by some in-
ternal divine calling, but by the summons of Edward VI to take up epis-
copal of®ce, articulated in a conciliar letter that he proudly prints in full in
his text. It was, he claimed, the doctrine of obedience that led him to
insist that he and his colleague Hugh Goodacre be consecrated in Dublin
according to the new ordinal of 1550. George Browne, the archbishop of
Dublin, wanted to use the old text on the grounds that the new had not
been sanctioned by the act of an Irish parliament. But Bale argued that `if
England and Ireland be under one king, they are both bound to the
obedience of one law under him'. And his view prevailed because it had
4
M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts: Laws Against Images (Oxford, 1988), 9.
5
Happe and King, Vocacyon, 54.
6
On Bale's career as dramatist see L.P. Fair®eld, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reforma-
tion (Purdue, Ind., 1976).
7
Happe and King, Vocacyon, 64.
 Introduction 3
8
the support of Sir Thomas Cusack, the Irish chancellor. Once Edward's
death was known the bishop tried every shift legally to avoid restoring the
old religion, including arguing that there was no Irish lord deputy in
residence to whom he could appeal. Law and conscience ®nally came
directly into con¯ict when Mary's proclamation allowing the Mass was
made public and `the priests . . . suddenly set up the altars and images in
the cathedral church'. At this point Bale could no longer retain any con-
viction in his appeal to authority and ¯ed shaking the dust of the wicked
off his feet `according to Christ's commandment'.9
Bale's Irish adventures can usefully introduce many of the issues that are
of central importance to this study of the Reformation in Britain and
Ireland. The ®rst is that the Tudor Reformation was incontrovertibly
political. Historians are currently more attracted to the investigation of
`popular' religion and of forms of religious identity than to the ecclesi-
astical proceedings of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.10 But an understanding
of the nature of the Reformation demands above all careful analysis of
exactly this type of religious politics. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio
was well understood by the subjects of the Tudors long before it became
one of the assumptions of the Peace of Augsburg (1555). This doctrine of
obedience to the conscience of the prince could take extreme forms. John
Foxe cites a remarkable speech by the chronicler Edward Hall to the 1539
parliament, in which he asserts the duty of subjects to obey their prince in
matters of religion, following what he, with the advice of the clergy, `shall
at any time please to set forth to be observed or believed'.11 Bale's Prot-
estantism was not erastian in this way: the conscience of the individual
maintained a sovereignty that could not be displaced by prince or parlia-
ment. However, obedience to the spiritual will of the monarch, and to
the political choices that resulted, was an essential aspect of his behaviour
and that of most other leaders of the English church and state.12 The

8 9
Ibid., 52±3. Ibid., 67.
10
Among the important recent studies of religion in early modern England that adopt this
approach are E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400±1580 (New
Haven, Conn., 1992); C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth Century England (Basingstoke, 1998);
M. Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520±1725 (Cambridge, 1995); T. Watt, Cheap
Print and Popular Piety, 1550±1640 (Cambridge, 1992); and A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern
England (Oxford, 2000). For Ireland there is R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early
Modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997). Studies which balance the investigation of high politics and
ecclesiology with that of lay beliefs include C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and
Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993); D. MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England,
1547±1603, 2nd edn. (Basingstoke, 2001) and Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant
Reformation (1999); and for Wales, G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997).
11
Foxe, vi. 505.
12
R. Rex, `The crisis of obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation', HJ 39 (1996),
863±94.
4 Introduction
export of religious change to Ireland was also a matter of political choice
and will. Bale's remarks on the importance of Cusack's support in
Dublin acknowledge that reformation could only be achieved with the
help of the magistrate. A prime explanation for the ®nal failure of reform
in the Irish Pale was that the principle of cuius regio, eius religio was simply
not accepted by enough of those who had to implement the crown's
will.13
The Scottish Reformation seems, at ®rst glance, less obviously politi-
cized than its English, Welsh, and Irish counterpart. The monarchy did
not make the Scottish Reformation. However, the Lords of the Congre-
gation did, and without their political support, and that of Elizabeth's
regime, the ministerial revolution of John Knox and his colleagues would
probably have been stillborn. Power to enforce change rested in the hands
of the lay elite, though since authority in the Scottish realm was far more
decentralized and local than south of the border, the ministers were
offered opportunities for political intervention that would have amazed
Bale, and that appalled later English bishops.14 In the late years of the
century, under a mature monarch, con¯icts at the centre of Scottish polit-
ics became ever more closely associated with issues about the governance
of the Kirk.15 So dramatic, and sometimes violent, were these con¯icts,
that they have tended to mesmerize historians of Scottish reform, who
have been slower than their English or Irish counterparts to turn aside
from ecclesiastical politics to the study of religious behaviour.16
The Reformation, Henry Kamen has observed, became institutional-
ized in northern Europe through the support of state, of lay elites, and of
13
There is a vast historiography seeking to explain the failure of Reformation in Ireland.
The best introduction is the debate conducted in article form over the past twenty-®ve years:
B. Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland', HJ 21 (1978), 475±502;
N. Canny, `Why the Reformation failed in Ireland: une question mal poseÂe', JEH 30 (1979),
423±50; K.S. Bottigheimer, `The failure of the Reformation in Ireland: une question bien
poseÂe', JEH 36 (1985), 196±207; K.S. Bottigheimer and U. Lotz-Heumann, `The Irish Refor-
mation in European perspective', ARG 89 (1998), 268±309; K. Bottigheimer and B. Bradshaw,
`Revisionism and the Irish Reformation: a debate', JEH 51 (2000), 581±92; H.A. Jefferies, `The
early Tudor Reformation in the Irish Pale', JEH 52 (2001), 34±62.
14
The best brief introduction to the relationship between politics and religion in Scotland is
in J. Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470±1625 (1981). The formal narrative is
provided by G. Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960). On power relations
between nobility and Kirk see J. Wormald, ` ``Princes'' and the regions in the Scottish Reforma-
tion', in N. MacDougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society (Edinburgh, 1983), 65±84.
15
For a thorough survey see A.R. MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, 1567±1625 (Aldershot,
1998).
16
An honourable exception is I.B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation: Church and Society in
Sixteenth-Century Scotland (1982). The study by Margo Todd on the post-Reformation Scottish
Kirk is the ®rst that seeks systematically to study belief and behaviour in the congregation:
M. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn., 2002). This
important volume was published too late to be re¯ected fully in the present study.
 Introduction 5
17
towns. For John Bale this secular formulation would have omitted the
one estate below the crown that was of fundamental importance: the
clergy. His Irish venture was structured around monarchical and lay sup-
port for reform but the opposition of the conservative clergy was suf®-
cient constantly to destabilize his mission. And Bale perceived that he and
his opponents were not just locked in con¯ict about ceremonial or behav-
iour: he moved unhesitatingly into preaching on the key doctrinal themes
of justi®cation, grace, and salvation through Christ's merits. The minister
was far more than an agent of an of®cial reformation. Just as the Catholic
priest claimed the key intermediary role between God and man through
the operation of the sacraments, so the Protestant became the medium for
the edi®cation of the congregation through the lively preaching of the
Word.18 The clergy might be beleaguered by the greed and ignorance of
lay society: they still had to bear witness to the truth of the gospel and
recognize the popish priests as their greatest enemies. Of course, sources
like Bale's, or like Knox's far more in¯uential History of the Reformation,
have a tendency to distort the historical record with their belief in the
heroic witness of the godly ministers and their sharp binary division of the
world into the forces of light and darkness.19 The British clergy might, by
the early seventeenth century, have deserved Joseph Hall's epithet `Stupor
mundi clericus Britannicus' (The clergy of Britain is the wonder of the
world).20 It had, however, arrived at that point through a series of crises
and disasters, compromises and processes of accommodation that appeared
far from wonderful. Only perhaps in its contributions to learning, transla-
tion, and doctrinal debate, can the British clergy lay claim to Hall's obser-
vation from the very beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

17
H. Kamen, `Spain', in R. Scribner, R. Porter, and M. Teich (eds.), The Reformation in
National Context (Cambridge, 1994), 211. See also G. Parker, `Success and failure during the ®rst
century of the Reformation', PP 136 (1992), 43±82.
18
Key studies of the role of the clergy in England are, for the pre-Reformation period,
P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994) and P. Heath, The
English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (1969); for the early Reformation, D. MacCul-
loch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, Conn., 1996); and for the Elizabethan period, P. Collinson,
The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982) and R. O'Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and
Consolidation of a Profession (Leicester, 1979). On Scotland see J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform: Continu-
ity and Change in the Reformation Kirk (Edinburgh, 1989) and, for the end of the century,
D.G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism 1590±1638 (Oxford, 2000). On Ireland see H.A. Jefferies, Priests
and Prelates in Armagh, 1518±1558 (Dublin, 1997) and A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in
Ireland 1590±1641 (Dublin, 1997).
19
J. Kirk, `John Knox and the historians', in R.A. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British
Reformations (Aldershot, 1998), 14±15, though Kirk points out that it is the ministers as a group
whom Knox trumpets, not his own role.
20
P. Wynter (ed.), The Works of Joseph Hall, 10 vols. (Oxford, 1843), x. 29. Quoted by
Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 92. Hall chooses to single out the intellectual luminaries of the
English church from Jewel and Humphrey to Willett and White.
6 Introduction
Bale's Catholic clergy and conservative magistrates endeavoured to
impede the true work of reformation: the conversion of the people. Bale
had, he argued, been sent `to seek the peoples health', which must be
achieved by the preaching of pure doctrine combined with good discip-
line. `For doctrine without discipline and restraint of vices maketh dissol-
ute hearers. And on the other side discipline without doctrine maketh
either hypocrites or else desperate doers.'21 The reformation of parish,
congregation, and individual was the objective of all zealous ministers.
The ambition was for nothing less than a regeneration of society: an aim
that often existed in tension with the Calvinist conviction that only a
minority would be saved. In Bale's narrative we can see hints that he
sought to reconcile himself to the failures of general conversion by sin-
gling out groups which showed evidence of regeneration, particularly the
psalm-singing, thespian youths of Kilkenny. Sermon-gadding laymen in
Elizabethan England, or committed congregations like that of the kirk of
St Andrews in Scotland, offered the same promising material to their
clerical mentors.22 But the process of conversion was hard, and in practice
the ambitions of the clergy for many of the laity extended little further
than the conformity that was a requirement of the churches. The very
language of conversion indicated a sharp rupture between past and present
behaviour that was unlikely to be achieved in most ordinary parochial
environments. The establishment of full discipline of the kind contem-
plated by Bale and largely enacted by the Scottish reformers assisted in
redirecting the laity. However, the principal process by which ordinary
Catholics became Protestant was one of accommodation and adjustment.
The displacement of the oldÐthe loss of the Catholic liturgy, of saints, of
prayer for the deadÐwas followed by slow reconstruction, as conformity
was built into acceptance of new liturgy, preaching, and Bible reading.23

Studies of religious change and reformation in lands that became Protestant

have routinely had a national character.24 The practical complexity of
researching and explaining something as fundamental as a transformation
21
Happe and King, Vocacyon, 54±5.
22
P. Collinson, `Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as forms of popular culture', in
C. Durston and J. Eales (eds.), The Culture of English Puritanism 1560±1700 (Basingstoke, 1996),
20±3. J. Dawson, ` ``The face of the perfyt reformed Kyrk'': St Andrews and the early Scottish
Reformation', SCH Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991), 413±35.
23
This is broadly the revisionist position now accepted by most historians of the English
Reformation, who accept the substance of Haigh's argument for a `slow Reformation' only
gradually achieved over the late sixteenth century. Haigh, English Reformations, 12±21, 285±95.
In recent years there has been more interest in the nature of post-Reformation popular belief
than in the speed of religious change. See, in particular, Walsham, Providence; J. Maltby, Prayer
Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998).
24
Scribner, Porter, and Teich, The Reformation in National Context.
 Introduction 7
in of®cial ideology and popular religious behaviour has contributed to this
pattern. So too has the dif®culty of identifying a logical structure of analysis
of a supranational kind. Historians of doctrine and ideas have found it
easiest to transcend ®xed boundaries, for the reformers themselves formed
a `republic of letters', albeit one often divided on critical issues of interpret-
ation. Like their humanist predecessors, Bucer, Bullinger, and Calvin con-
sciously promoted the pursuit of pan-European religious harmony through
correspondence, formal debate, and mission.25 But when the reception of
these ideas and their assimilation into the political mainstream is at issue,
national historians have a tendency to revert to claims of local exceptional-
ism. Protestantism itself, of course, legitimated these national impulses,
with its acceptance that the true Church could have many particular mani-
festations, uni®ed only by the possession of the proper `marks' of faithful
preaching and proper ministration of the sacraments.26 In Germany after
Augsburg the way was opened for a full-blooded acceptance that
reforming churches could proceed autonomously under their own prince.
National autonomy is enshrined in the very fabric of the Reformation.
English and Scottish historians have been among the most committed
proponents of a view of reform founded upon the nation. The Scots
acquired a rigorous form of Calvinism and forged it into a powerful system
of religious identity that also became a major source of political unity. The
preachers were already praising its distinctive Reformation at the end of
the sixteenth century, and understanding the Scots and their faith has been
a major preoccupation of historians ever since.27 English claims to unique-
ness have been less concerned with purity of faith, but have constructed
the Reformation as part of the manifest destiny of the English people.
While historians no longer subscribe to such teleological theories, they
remain intrigued by the contribution made by the Reformation to the
emergence of a sense of national identity.28 They may also be seduced by
the distinctiveness of the structure of the Church of England, which has
traditionally led to claims of separateness. To privilege the study of religious
change in England is at best to acknowledge that distinctiveness, which can
be analysed through rich and abundant sources. At worst it can contribute
to the `fog in the Channel, Continent isolated' view of English history.
Irish historians have their own claims to uniqueness, based not of
course on the acceptance of Reformation, but on its triumphal rejection.

25
P.D.L. Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (1981).
26
D.F. Wright (ed.), Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community (Cambridge, 1994).
27
For re¯ections on this theme see M. Lynch, `A nation born again? Scottish identity in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', in D. Brown, R.J. Finlay, and M. Lynch (eds.), Image and
Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), 82±104.
28
See particularly P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (Basingstoke, 1988).
8 Introduction
In a northern European world in which rulers claimed to control the
consciences of their subjects, goes the argument, the Irish alone resisted. It
was, to quote Brendan Bradshaw, `a kingdom in which the vast majority
of the subjects persisted in refusing to conform to the religion of the
monarch ``as by law established'' '.29 Irish historians, like their English and
Scottish counterparts, have retreated from claims that the success of Cath-
olicism was inevitable, but their readings of religious experience remain
coloured by a conviction of the uniqueness of the island's experience.
The development of `new British history' since the 1970s has provided
one form of riposte to national essentialists in the various parts of the
archipelago. As articulated by John Pocock the new approach was
designed to counter Anglocentric narrative in which the `matter of Brit-
ain' if it was considered at all was constantly identi®ed with `the matter of
England'.30 Instead, the new British history should endeavour to under-
stand the `cultural pluralism and partial domination' that was the story of
the three kingdoms or four nations. The results have been mixed for the
early modern period and for the study of the Reformation. There has
been valuable comparative work on the impact of religious change in
Ireland and Wales, and on the relationship between religion and politics
in these two territories.31 Gaelic scholars have reminded Anglophone
historians of the internationalism of the Gaelic world, and of some of its
responses to religious and political upheaval.32 Religious change in the
sixteenth century has been considered, brie¯y, as the context for the more
visibly British crises of religion in the Stuart period.33 A ®rst attempt has

29
B. Bradshaw, `The Tudor Reformation and revolution in Wales and Ireland: the origins of
the British problem', in B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds.), The British Problem c.1534±1707: State
Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (Basingstoke, 1996), 39±40.
30
The `Ur' text is J.G.A. Pocock, `British history: a plea for a new subject', Journal of Modern
History 47 (1975), 601±28. The quotations are from Geoffrey of Monmouth, used as the focus of
R.R. Davies's Oxford inaugural lecture: The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England (Oxford,
1996).
31
Bradshaw, `The Tudor Reformation' and idem, `The English Reformation and identity
formation in Ireland and Wales', in B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and
Identity: The Making of Britain 1533±1707 (Cambridge, 1998), 43±111. S. Ellis, `Economic prob-
lems of the Church: why the Reformation failed in Ireland', JEH 41 (1990), 239±65. C. Brady,
`Comparable histories? Tudor reform in Wales and Ireland', in S.G. Ellis and S. Barber (eds.),
Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State 1485±1725 (Harlow, 1995), 64±86. This comparative
project has been driven by Irish historians, and Karl Bottigheimer and Ute Lotz-Heumann have
warned of its narrowness and its tendency to con®rm a nationalist view of Irish exceptionalism:
Bottigheimer and Lotz-Heumann, `Irish Reformation', 274±5.
32
M. MacCraith, `The Gaelic reaction to the Reformation', in Ellis and Barber, Conquest
and Union, 139±61.
33
J. Morrill, `A British patriarchy? Ecclesiastical imperialism under the early Stuarts', in
A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (eds.), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge,
1994), 209±37.
 Introduction 9
34
been made to re¯ect comparatively on popular religious practice. The
most stimulating work, since it studies interconnection between reformers
and provides a genuine challenge to national exceptionalism, is that of
Jane Dawson on Anglo-Scottish relations.35
The disinclination of historians of the English Reformation to partici-
pate thus far in this wider analysis of religion in the British Isles is striking.
It could be read as an implicit af®rmation of older claims of English
distinctiveness: there are more important things to be said about England
alone than about English religion in relation to the whole of Britain and
Ireland. But a more telling assumption is that, in so far as the Reformation
was international, it was its European dimensions that most affected Eng-
lish belief and behaviour. Diarmaid MacCulloch's work on Cranmer, for
example, emphasizes the in¯uence of Continental reformers on the arch-
bishop's plans for the English church.36 Thirdly, the exclusion of the other
British realms may be understood as a response to surviving evidence.
One of Pocock's `bons mots' in his plea for a new British history was that
`a highly governed society is a highly literate society'.37 There can be no
doubt that the English church and state accumulated documents and pre-
served them in a systematic manner; and that lay and clerical elites were
also generous in their use of paper and printed text. Scotland, Ireland, and
initially even Wales, were less administratively centralized, less disposed to
elaborate methods of preservation, less routinely able to resort to the
printing press. It is easier, though never of course easy, for historians to
hear the voices of Englishmen than those of the Irish, the Welsh, or the
Scots.38
Each of these challenges to a Reformation history of the British Isles
carries some weight. The evidential issue is the most signi®cant for the
working historian. While the study of political process can be conducted
on an equal footing across much of Britain and Ireland the same is not
true of ecclesiastical organization or of the study of lay belief and behav-
iour. Two acute contrasts may stand as exemplary: over 200 sets of
churchwardens' accounts survive for England during the Tudor period;

34
R. Gillespie, `Differing devotions: patterns of religious practice in the British Isles, 1500±
1700', in S.J. Connolly (ed.), Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500 (Dublin, 1999),
67±77.
35
J. Dawson, `Anglo-Scottish Protestant culture and the integration of sixteenth-century
Britain', in Ellis and Barber, Conquest and Union, 87±114. See also S. Alford, The Early Eliza-
bethan Polity (Cambridge, 1999) and the collection of essays on John Knox, R.A. Mason (ed.),
John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998).
36
MacCulloch, Cranmer, passim.
37
Pocock, `British history', 611.
38
Note the title of Eamon Duffy's local study of a Devon parish: Voices of Morebath: Reforma-
tion and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, Conn., 2001).
10 Introduction
Scotland and Ireland have none.39 Episcopal visitation records are patchy
throughout the British Isles, but they are available in some quantity in
England while they seem rarely to have been kept by the Irish prelates.40
Only when the kirk sessions become available in Scotland after the Refor-
mation is there a comparable source to English church court records.41
Moreover, differences in the way local records have been used by histor-
ians can compound the problem: in Scotland, for example, the kirk ses-
sion records are only now being used to gain access to the attitudes of the
laity.42 Evidence about lay religious behaviour in the Gaelic territories is
almost non-existent before 1600, and indeed it proves impossible to write
a convincing history of lay religion in Ireland before that date.43
Other doubts about the study of reformation in the British Isles are more
readily answered. To consider the relationship between the component
parts of the isles does not preclude an awareness of the Continental con-
tacts of reforming divines, or the broad in¯uence of international politics
on British behaviour. There are circumstances, for example, that of the
Geneva exile in the late 1550s, where an understanding of British identities
enhances the signi®cance of the European perspective.44 The earlier dias-
pora of Scottish Protestants during the reign of James V also exposes fascin-
ating networks of contact across the Protestant world, placing England in
its broader context.45 As for a lingering enthusiasm for English exception-
alism: the comparative study of other Reformations often in practice serves
as a reminder that the uniqueness of Tudor experience can easily be exag-

39
R. Hutton, `The local impact of the Tudor Reformations', in C. Haigh (ed.), The English
Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), 114±15.
40
Not only are visitation records very rare for Ireland, Dr Jefferies believes that the most
basic records of episcopal administration, the registers, were not kept in most Irish sees inter
hibernicos: Jefferies, `Early Tudor Reformation', 37. In the case of Scotland Gordon Donaldson
also doubted if registers were routinely kept: G. Donaldson, `Church records', The Scottish
Genealogist 2/3 (1955), 14. However, it is likely that much was destroyed at the Reformation:
D. MacRoberts, `Material destruction caused by the Scottish Reformation', Innes Review 10
(1959), 169.
41
M.J. Graham, The Uses of Reform: `Godly Discipline' and Popular Behaviour in Scotland and
Beyond, 1560±1610 (Leiden, 1996).
42
See particularly the work of Margo Todd on post-Reformation Scotland.
43
Gillespie, Devoted People, draws some examples from the sixteenth century, but is essen-
tially a study in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century devotion, comprehending Catholics and
Protestants.
44
C. Kellar, ` ``To enrich with gospel truth the neighbour kingdom'': Religion and Reform
in England and Scotland 1534±1561', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), 161±91, is the ®rst
detailed study of these links, though see J.E.A. Dawson, `Trumpeting resistance: Christopher
Goodman and John Knox', in Mason, John Knox, 131±53.
45
J. Kirk, `The religion of early Scottish Protestants', in J. Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform:
The Church in Europe, England and Scotland 1400±1643, SCH Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991), 371±84.
J. Durkan, `Scottish ``Evangelicals'' in the patronage of Thomas Cromwell', RSCHS 21 (1982),
127±56.
 Introduction 11
gerated. This is most obviously the case in the years before Henry VIII's
break with Rome: each part of the British Isles existed within a universal
Church that had a theology, pattern of worship, and institutional organiza-
tion that was essentially the same. Differences were probably less signi®cant
than similarities, and a fault line, if it existed, divided a Gaelic from an
anglophone environment rather than realms from one another.46 Differ-
ence assumes a far greater signi®cance after 1534 but, among the reformers,
doctrinal af®nity and a division of the world between the true and the false
Church discouraged too precise an obsession with national boundaries.
Only once in his narrative does Bishop Bale remember that he is among
the `wild Irish' as a separate racial group.47
This study of religious change and reformation consciously follows
Pocock's prescription that we should study both cultural pluralism and
partial domination in the history of the British Isles. It pursues national
histories of reform, but places them in the context of supranational rela-
tionships. It recognizes that the constant interweaving of the narrative of
religious change in the four nations is largely a consequence of English
claims to hegemony. Not only was this true in politics. When John Foxe
chose in his martyrology to describe persecutions `in this realm of England
and also of Scotland', his Scottish colleagues might legitimately have sus-
pected an implicit assumption of English leadership of the true Church.48
Those political and ideological ambitions provide the foundation for the
British dimensions of this study. The fact that the English Reformation
was not con®ned to the borders of the old kingdom is surely one of its
most crucial features. And the response of the Scots and the Irish to
English pressures for religious change in the sixteenth century constructed
a subsequent history of political breakdown and civil war. The study of
cultural pluralism, on the other hand, provides the opportunity to move
aside from this English focus into comparative histories of individual terri-
tories and into the study of the broader divisions of the British Isles,
especially those that separated Celtic and Anglo-Norman societies. Refor-
mation demanded popular evangelism, the use of new methods of com-
munication, the manipulation of language and text: in all of these areas
the cultural diversity of Britain and Ireland provides an important stimulus
for the ensuing analysis.49

46
J.A. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972).
47
Happe and King, Vocacyon, 58, this was in the period of violence against the English that
followed the death of Edward VI.
48
Foxe, i. 1.
49
The story of the Counter-Reformation is not the objective of this present study, but
would be susceptible to similar treatment. A start has been made on this approach by
T. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1541±88 (Leiden, 1996).
12 Introduction
In the narrative of the coming of reform it is as dif®cult for historians to
delineate a time as a place. The English Reformation was once thought to
have begun in the late 1520s and to have been concluded in its essentials
once the Elizabethan Settlement was completed.50 Now academic fashion
has moved, and there are exponents of the `Long Reformation' not con-
cluded until the seventeenth, or even the eighteenth, century.51 Mean-
while Irish historians, as part of their escape from teleology, have extended
the possible dates for the failure of reform in Ireland into the early seven-
teenth century.52 And even in Scotland, where the emphasis on the Ref-
ormation as transformative moment remains strongest, some historians
now emphasize the slow and partial acceptance of religious change.53
There is certainly nothing of a very speci®c kind that marks out 1500 as
the beginning of a process or 1600 as its end. The former date simply
offers the bene®t of studying the Church, its relations with the states, and
the nature of popular belief, for a whole generation before the bright eyes
of Anne Boleyn turned the English world upside-down. The latter takes
us forty years beyond the Scottish and English `settlements', into a period
when both Reformations had gained a certain political and ideological
maturity and, conversely, when commentators were beginning to ac-
knowledge that the Reformation in Ireland had failed. The narrower
logic of 1600 is, of course, that it pre-dates the Union of the Crowns and
hence the beginning of a new cycle of ecclesiastical politics. By then
James VI, in Basilikon Doron, was already looking forward from a Scottish
Reformation that was wrought `by popular tumult and rebellion', albeit
`extraordinarily wrought by God', to the happiness of a Church `proceed-
ing from the Princes order'.54 Reformation history was already being
reconstructed in the interests of what the king hoped would be a truly
British state.

50
The classic modern exponent of this view is usually taken to be A.G. Dickens, The English
Reformation, 2nd edn. (1989), though in fact Dickens is more cautious on the nature of popular
commitment to the Settlement than some of his critics allow.
51
See especially N. Tyacke (ed.), England's Long Reformation 1500±1800 (1998).
52
See above at n. 13.
53
This is a view particularly favoured by Graham, The Uses of Reform, and M. Lynch,
Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981), and `Preaching to the converted? Perspectives
on the Scottish Reformation', in A.A. MacDonald, M. Lynch, and I.B. Cowan (eds.), The
Renaissance in Scotland (Leiden, 1994), 301±43.
54
J. Craigie (ed.), The basilikon doron of King James VI, 2 vols., STS 11, 18 (1944±50), i. 74.
 PART I

THE TRADITIONAL ORDER

 1
AUTHORITY AND CONTROL

Papacy
On an October day in 1521 John Clerk, Henry VIII's orator at Rome,
stood before Leo X and presented him with a luxurious copy of his
master's defence of Catholic orthodoxy against the attacks of Luther, the
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. In his accompanying speech Clerk expati-
ated on the theme of devotion to the papacy; a devotion displayed both in
the sentiments and actions of his monarch, and in the attitudes of his
countrymen. `Let others speak of other Nations, certainly my Britainy
(called England by our Modern Cosmographers) Situated in the further-
most end of the World, and separated from the Continent by the Ocean:
As it has never been behind in the Worship of God, and True Christian
Faith, and due Obedience to the Roman Church, either to Spain, France,
Germany or Italy: Nay to Rome itself; so likewise, there is no Nation
which more Impugns this Monster [Luther], and the Heresies broached
by him . . .'.1 The occasion demanded ¯orid sentiments and Leo is not
likely to have judged England's commitment to the papacy by such
words. An Italian observer had felt otherwise two decades earlier: `the
kingdom of England is not quite independent, I do not mean of the
Empire, but of the Apostolic See'. The last view clearly proved more
prophetic: the identity of the monarch and his people to the cause of
Rome, and indeed to the universalism of the Church that it expressed,
was to endure only another decade.2
The peoples of the British Isles should have had few illusions about
their position in late medieval Western Catholicism. They remained phys-
ically peripheral, and often politically marginal, in the great game of papal
politics. Du Boulay, considering ®fteenth-century Anglo-Papal relations,
suggested that a glance at Creighton or Pastor indicates how little England
®gured in the vision of Rome.3 Scotland received even more scant

1
Henry VIII, An Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther, trans T.W. (1687), sig. Ai
2
C.A. Sneyd (ed.), A Relation of the Island of England about the Year 1500, CS os 37 (1847), 53.
3
F. Du Boulay, `England and the papacy in the ®fteenth century', in C.H. Lawrence (ed.),
The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages (1965), 217.
16 The Traditional Order
attention, and Ireland merits only two references in Pastor's study of the
period to the end of the ponti®cate of Alexander VI.4 There is, of course,
far more than this to be said about papal relations with the British Isles in
the ®fteenth century, yet even a recent commentator like Margaret
Harvey would acknowledge that by the end of the Hundred Years' War
the papacy only looked intermittently to these northern lands.5 It was in
part this very absence from the stormy heart of papal politics that made
possible the ostentatious displays of loyalty and af®nity proffered in 1521.
The jurisdictional relationship between England and the papacy was al-
ready clear in all its essentials. The English monarch was proximate to his
clergy and, usually, powerful: the papacy was distant and, for much of the
®fteenth century, politically vulnerable. Under the statutes against provi-
sions the crown had secured to itself the general right to control clerical
taxation, and had gradually inhibited all but a small group of payments,
including annates and Peter's Pence, from being transmitted to the papal
treasury. Lunt's calculations put the transmitted ®gure for regular taxes in
the ®fteenth century at only c. £250 per annum. On the eve of the
Reformation Scarisbrick's ®gure for all dues including episcopal payments
for common services is much higher, something under £5,000, but even
so not a dramatic ¯ow of wealth from this loyal corner of Western Chris-
tendom. The right of provision to bene®ces other than bishoprics was
effectively cut off after 1407. Episcopal patronage remained formally with
Rome, but with the full acknowledgement that the crown nominated to
all senior posts. By the early sixteenth century no pope could expect to
exercise his claim to provisions without royal assent.6
The Scottish monarchy had established these controls somewhat later
than England. Gradual de facto incursions upon papal nominations had
been occurring throughout the ®fteenth century. The attempt to reassert
papal control by ®nally establishing St Andrews as the metropolitical see in
1472 back®red, since James III was quickly able to establish one of his
own men, William Scheves, in control. Finally in 1487 Innocent III for-
mally granted James III the right to have eight months' delay in the case
of livings worth more than 200 gold ¯orins before papal nomination
occurred, thereby securing both the king's in¯uence over appointments
and his interim pro®t from temporalities. When the Scottish crown was
relatively stable this agreement held, but in times of weakness, such as the

4
L. Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, 40 vols. (1890±1953),
vols. i±vi. Ireland only features among lists of countries asked to participate in various papal
crusades. J.A.F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417±1517 (1980), 213±14.
5
M. Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 1417±64 (Manchester, 1993), 130±213.
6
W. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327±1534 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962),
436±46. J.J. Scarisbrick, `Clerical taxation in England, 1485±1547', JEH 11 (1960), 41±54.
 Authority and Control 17
years after Flodden, the papacy sometimes exercised its remaining rights
vigorously, as in the appointment of Innocenzo Cibo, nephew to Leo X,
to the see of St Andrews. This, however, was unusual, and the Scottish
crown, like its English neighbour, seems to have established an effective
modus vivendi with the papacy on nominations.7
By the eve of the Reformation the major area of dif®culty in monarchical
control over appointments remained Gaelic and marcher Ireland. Since
Henry VII and Henry VIII (until 1541) were merely lords over a section of
Ireland, the majority of Irish sees were in theory, and often in practice,
beyond their control. Here the papal right to provide to bene®ces com-
manded signi®cantly greater in¯uence than in England, Wales, or Scotland.
Unfortunately, curial knowledge of the native church was so uncertain, and
local political patterns so ¯uid, that provisions were often made to sees not
actually vacant, and double nominations occasionally occurred. In 1492, for
example, Richard O'Guanach was preferred to Elphin in Tuam province,
only to be challenged by Nicholas O'Flanagan, whom the papacy had
presumed dead in 1487.8 A more dif®cult con¯ict concerned the see of
Cork and Cloyne, an area on the margins of English in¯uence, for which
Henry VII supported a candidate of the Geraldine interest, eventually pre-
vailing despite deep uncertainty at Rome about who had been properly
provided to the bishopric in the previous generation. It was often easier for
the papacy to listen to the cardinal protector of the English, who would
promote his master's case for reliable candidates, rather than confront the
mass of competing interests that surrounded Irish candidates.9
The insularity of the northern lands should not, however, be exagger-
ated. The revitalized Tudor monarchy, and the vigour of the `auld alli-
ance' between Scotland and France, did something to persuade the
ambitious popes of the Italian Wars period to reconsider their English and
Scottish subjects.10 The enlarged political chessboard of these years
demanded that the papacy calculated more fully than before distant events
such as con¯ict on the Anglo-Scottish border. In 1514, for example, Leo X
had an ambassador, Balthasar Stuart, resident in Scotland for a whole year,
endeavouring to broker peace with England after the debacle of Flod-
den.11 Leo might be irritated by the tortuous diplomacy of Henry VIII
and Wolsey, and by their reluctance to yield any revenues for his planned
7
L. MacFarlane, `The primacy of the Scottish Church, 1472±1521', Innes Review 20 (1969),
125±8. Cibo was never resident as archbishop, holding the see with numerous others.
8
S. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: 1470±1603 (1985), 184±6.
9
W.E. Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England: Rome and the Tudors before the Reformation
(Cambridge, 1974), 63±73. K. Walsh, `The beginnings of a national protectorate', Archivium
Hibernicum 32 (1974), 72±80.
10
Du Boulay, `England and the papacy', 235±6.
11
J.A.F. Thomson, `Innocent VIII and the Scottish church', Innes Review 19 (1968), 26.
18 The Traditional Order
crusade, but he could not afford to reject the papalist enthusiasm that the
young king developed as a consequence of their exchanges.12
Conversely the importance of the papacy both for control of the
Church and for international diplomacy encouraged the English and Scot-
tish kings to adopt cardinal protectors in the curia: men who could medi-
ate between their own agents and the papal court and speak the language
of curial politics with con®dence. Hostility from the revived ®fteenth-
century papacy to such `national' protectors gave way to of®cial accept-
ance under Innocent VIII and Alexander VI. Giovanni and Silvester de
Gigli, successively bishops of Worcester, and the most important Roman
agents of Henry VII and his successor, were never cardinals, but they
`managed' key connections with Cardinals Piccolomini, Medici, and
Campeggio, around whom English in¯uence was built.13 Meanwhile
Scottish interests were directed by two generations of the Accolti family,
uncle and nephew. The oddest ®gure in this group is that of Christopher
Bainbridge, archbishop of York, cardinal in 1511 and resident at the papal
court until 1514. In the fourteenth century there had been an expectation
that cardinals would reside with the papacy: by the early sixteenth century
it was a feature of the growing national identity of the Western churches
that men such as John Morton and Thomas Wolsey expected to stay at
home to serve their princes. Bainbridge identi®ed himself as strongly with
the interests of Julius II as with those of England and, until the rise of
Wolsey, he conceived his political and perhaps his spiritual role as bridging
the gap between his native land and the curia. The ultimate thanks that he
received, characteristic of Renaissance power politics at their worst, was
gradual exclusion by Wolsey and his local agent Gigli, and an abrupt
death, which led to persistent rumours of poisoning.14
These spokesmen for the English and Scottish crown had a threefold
pattern of responsibilities that indicate the needs of their home regimes.
They had to represent the political interests of their monarchs, to facilitate
the transaction of routine ecclesiastical business, and to secure royal nom-
inations to key of®ce. The importance of the last task, interconnected
with the ®rst, is shown most intriguingly in the intermittent attempts of
the Tudor crown to extend its hegemony over the churches of the British
Isles through its Roman agents. The Irish church has already been men-
tioned: by the beginning of Henry VIII's reign the cardinal protectors
were managing royal nominations for Ireland in exactly the same way as
England, and much of the earlier confusion about provisions had been
resolved. Even earlier there was an abortive plan by Alexander VI to
12
MacFarlane, `Primacy', 111±20. J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968), 97±134.
13
Wilkie, Cardinal Protectors, passim.
14
D.S. Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge in the Court of Rome (Oxford, 1965).
 Authority and Control 19
allow English bishops to reform the Irish church. The extension of Eng-
lish in¯uence over Scotland was also a possibility at moments of Scottish
weakness with the assistance of men at the curia. It was probable that
Henry VIII's assertion of 1513 that all Scottish bishoprics should be subor-
dinate to York as they had been originally was intended as no more than a
gesture. But there were attempts to in¯uence Scottish provisions, both in
that year and again in the mid-1520s. In the latter period the French
interest was virtually excluded, and Henry's agents in Rome consistently
promoted the candidates presented in the name of the young James V by
his mother, Henry's sister. But the cardinal protectors usually bent to the
power in the ascendant in their individual realms: Accolti had no dif®culty
in accepting James's countermanding of the previous nomination of an
Anglophile bishop of Moray when he came to majority.15
It is not easy to estimate how powerful an identity with the papacy lay
behind these political and institutional encounters. The language used by
Clerk to Leo X deploys a rhetoric much favoured in of®cial circles in
England and Scotland in the post-conciliar period. These northern isles
were not to be outdone in their expressions of loyalty to the Holy See;
were apparently enthusiastic adherents of such papal initiatives as crusades;
and in general wished to assert their centrality within the community of
Catholic Christendom.16 In 1512, for example, Henry used his loyalty to
Rome and to the Catholic Church as a justi®cation for declaring war on
the schismatic French, who had just participated in the Council of Pisa.
His boundless enthusiasm for the attack on Luther in 1521 can be ex-
plained as a diplomatic propaganda exercise, which showed identity with
the Emperor and Rome in a period when con¯ict with France was be-
coming likely again. England had had its great representative of vigorous
ideological anti-papalism in Wyclif, whose reputation as a scourge of the
papacy owed much to a particularly low moment in relations between
European powers and Rome. Yet even the indigenous heretical tradition
of Lollardy showed less speci®c interest in challenging the pope after the
early years of the ®fteenth century, focusing much of its anti-clerical
energies instead on those nearer home.17 It is perhaps easiest to argue the

15
Wilkie, Cardinal Protectors, 161±8, 172±5. Walsh, `National protectorate', 78.
16
On the diplomatic signi®cance of the Assertio, and its connection to attacks on heresy, see
C.W. D'Alton, `The Suppression of Heresy in Early Henrician England', University of Mel-
bourne Ph.D. (1999), 125±7.
17
In the Norwich heresy trials of 1428±31 there were fourteen examples of attacks on the
papacy, as against ten challenges to other orders within the Church: N. Tanner (ed.), Norwich
Heresy Trials, 1428±31, CS 4th ser. 20 (1977), 11. In later Lollard trials there was also only limited
evidence of interest in the papacy, though a scattering of references to the pope as antichrist:
Foxe, iv. 208. A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wyclif®te Texts and Lollard History (Oxford,
1988), 469.
20 The Traditional Order
essential acceptance of papal authority by negation. In England there was
little political enthusiasm for the most obvious alternative to papal author-
ity: conciliarism. After the critical period of Constance the English church
took only limited part in the conciliar movement. There were English
delegates at Basel in 1433±4, but their major objectives were to assail the
Bohemian heretics and to use the medium of the Council to negotiate
about the Anglo-French wars.18 The English were represented at the Fifth
Lateran Council of 1512±17 in a basic show of unity with papal aims, as
well as a means of distancing themselves from the competing Council of
Pisa. Even the Scots, whose ideological commitment to conciliarism was
an abiding feature of the late medieval period, did not always feel the need
to be loyal to the practice: James V stressed to Leo X that the Scots had
not supported Pisa, despite the obvious temptation to further the `auld
alliance' by pleasing the French in this matter.19
The doctrine of papal supremacy met with no direct challenge from
British theologians in the early sixteenth century. Zealous support of full
claims of papal plenitude of power, however, was quite another matter in
the period before positions hardened in the 1520s. The Observant Fran-
ciscans seem to have offered the proudest defence of papal authority; their
basic commitment to the pope as their only superior being strongly re-
inforced by Leo X's decision ®nally to separate them from the Conven-
tuals as an independent order.20 Among English theologians Bishop Fisher
stands out in arguing, as early as 1519, in his De Unica Magdalena, that
papal pronouncements should have priority in discussion of doctrine.
Henry VIII's defence of papal supremacy in Assertio, on the other hand,
was less than doctrinally exhaustive: `I will not wrong the Bishop of
Rome so much', he wrote, `as troublesomely or carefully to dispute His
Right, as if it were a matter doubtful.' He proceeded to assert the univer-
sal consent of nations, the precedents of the past, and the habits of the
American Indians, who `do submit themselves to the See of Rome'.21
Thomas More's hand in the Assertio may go some way to explaining this
less-than-wholehearted papalism: Henry's comments on the papal primacy
seemed to him too enthusiastic and he advised his monarch to `leave out
that point, or else touch it more slenderly'.22 More began to move to-

18
A.N.E.D. Scho®eld, `The ®rst English delegation to the Council of Basel', JEH 12 (1961),
167±96.
19
On the Fifth Lateran Council see W. Ullmann, `Julius II and the schismatic cardinals', in
D. Baker (ed.), Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, SCH 9 (1972), 177±94.
20
On the Observants see K.D. Brown, `The Franciscan Observants in England, 1482±1559',
University of Oxford D.Phil. (1986).
21
R. Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991), 102±3. Henry VIII, Assertio, 5±6.
22
E.F. Rogers (ed.), The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, N.J., 1947), 199.
 Authority and Control 21
wards a full articulation of papal supremacy in his defence of the universal
Church in Responsio ad Lutherum, but even then he showed a reluctance
to dilate on his new-found commitment: `I am moved', he wrote, `to
obedient submission to this see by all those arguments which learned and
holy men have assembled in support of this point' and by fear of the
disorder that would ensue without the power of one head.23 Only Fisher,
the papalist, in his Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, provided a full testi-
mony in favour of the authority of Rome, based largely on scriptural
argument for the precedence of Peter, backed by a wide-ranging appeal to
the support of the Fathers.24
Conciliarist sentiment might be of limited practical signi®cance for the
British churches, but like claims to papal sovereignty it could be revived.
There was an acceptance that the universal Church was on occasions best
represented by a general council in conjunction with the papacy. On the
relationship between popes and councils the position articulated by John
Fisher probably commanded most English assent. He assumed that con-
sensus would normally operate between pope and council, that to be a
proper body the latter would be convened by the former, and that a
council could only admonish and reprove a pope who had fallen from the
path of righteousness.25 His colleague Thomas More may well have
begun with the same assumptions, but circumstances led him by a
wavering path to an acceptance of conciliarism. More in his later years,
despite his growing support for papal monarchism, asserted that a true
council could depose a pope.26 By the 1520s circumstances began to force
a reconsideration of the nature of authority on traditional theologians. For
example, it has recently been shown that Fisher's writings against Luther
produced in the young Thomas Cranmer a surprisingly vigorous defence
of the papalist position. This was, however, already tempered by conci-
liarist views. Cranmer's marginal annotations on his copy of Fisher's Con-
futatio denounce above all the `impious' German heretic for his argument
that a general council, as well as the papacy, can err.27
Scottish theologians and canonists were better equipped than their Eng-
lish counterparts for a reopening of the debate on authority. Many had
had some of their training in the schools of Paris, where the strongest
intellectual commitment to conciliarism survived into the sixteenth cen-
tury.28 Thus John Major, the greatest among them, published in 1518 a

23 24 25
CWTM v. 607±9. Rex, Theology of Fisher, 79±81. Ibid., 102, 107±9.
26
CWTM v. 768, 771±2. There is much debate on More's commitment to conciliarism: see
F. Oakley, `Headley, Marius and the matter of Thomas More's conciliarism', Moreana 64 (1980),
82±8.
27
D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (1996), 28±30.
28
J. Burns, `The conciliarist tradition in Scotland', SHR 42 (1963), 89±104.
22 The Traditional Order
tract entitled Disputatio de auctoritate concilii supra ponti®cem maximum. This
rehearsed a number of the old arguments of the ®fteenth century: in
particular the right of a council to depose a heretical pope was reaf®rmed.
Major in his turn taught many of the generation of Scottish clerics who
were to be engaged in the Reformation con¯icts: his views are, for
example, generally believed to have had in¯uence on the thinking of the
young George Buchanan.29 On the other hand we should be cautious
about attributing radical in¯uence to the conciliarism of Major and his
contemporaries. There was no intention to offer any intellectual denial of
normal papal authority, and the interest of the Scots in the issue seems to
have been constitutional rather than reformist. There was little discussion
of the possible role a council might have in promoting active reform `of
head and members'.30
One further group within the Church had a particularly strong interest
in the defence of papal interest: the canonists. They looked to the author-
ity of Rome to uphold the structures and principles of the universal law
by which the Church was governed.31 This was less an issue of the ability
to appeal directly to the supreme pontiff than of a conceptual and insti-
tutional preoccupation with the origins of legitimacy. In the distinctive
case of English Ireland it has been argued that this canonist belief in the
authority of the papacy provided much of the apparatus for maintaining
the peculiar claims of the Church to a civilizing and hegemonic role
within the island. The original papal bull Laudabiliter, which had sanc-
tioned English overlordship, became the justi®cation for the spiritual way
of life established in the Pale. This was explicitly designed to conform to
the best standards of the universal Church, and was vigorously defended
by canon lawyers and senior clerics who feared the contaminating `degen-
eracy' of the Gaelic peoples. In these peculiar circumstances Rome ac-
quired totemic status as the guarantor of a way of life through its more
general status as the guarantor of the Church's system of law.32
It would be unwise, therefore, to place too much emphasis on the
homogeneity of views about authority in the late medieval Church. Ac-

29
F. Oakley, `Almain and Major: conciliar theory on the eve of the Reformation', AHR 70
(1965), 671±90.
30
The general interest in conciliarism among Scottish theologians is indicated as much by
surviving texts, such as those of Gerson and d'Ailly, in Scottish libraries, as in actual writings by
Scots: J. Durkan and A. Ross, `Early Scottish libraries', Innes Review 9 (1958), 5±172.
31
R.A. Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge, 1990), 4±20,
though Helmholz notes that the lawyers managed well enough without the appellate jurisdic-
tion of Rome.
32
J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin: Episcopal Government, Ecclesiastical Politics
and the Enforcement of the Reformation, c.1534±1590', University of Dublin (TCD) Ph.D.
(1997), 68 ff.
 Authority and Control 23
ceptance of the broad supremacy of the papacy, and integration of that
belief with some notion that general councils also played a role in the
rulership of the Church, left niches for other views as well. In particular a
number of English theologians pointed to views that can only be de-
scribed as proto-Gallican. Richard Ullerstone and Thomas Gascoigne,
in¯uenced by the work of Grosseteste, stressed the merits of local epis-
copal autonomy in matters of discipline and reform. `The Lord', Gas-
coigne critically noted, `gives great power to his vicar the pope of the
church that he may reform great ills and give great edi®cation of good
acts.'33 Instead the papacy intruded into the provinces of the Church with
demands for money and the issue of inappropriate licences. The best agent
for change, in the opinion of several of these writers, was the reforming
bishop in his diocese, resident and preaching in person after the manner of
the early Church.34
Beyond the ranks of the theologians and politicians there is little to
suggest that the position of the papacy stirred passions in England or
Scotland before the late 1520s. The arch of customary authority was
upheld: a man who scorned the papal bull excommunicating rebels against
Henry VII was popularly believed to have been punished for his sacrilege
by instant death.35 On the other hand particular popes, like individual
clergy, could be the focus of popular contempt. Edward Hall (scarcely an
unbiased witness) claimed that in 1527, with the Sack of Rome, `the
commonalty little mourned for it, and said the Pope was a ruf®an, and
not meet for the room: wherefore they said that he began the mischief,
and so he was well served'.36 Humphrey Bonner preached an anti-curial
sermon in 1516, but he was incited to do so by particular con¯icts with
the apostolic auditor. Bonner felt the latter was discriminating against his
superior, the abbot of St Werburgh's, Chester, in a poisonous dispute with
the bishop of Coventry and Lich®eld.37 Most negative English comment
on the papacy was the product of such particular circumstances, especially
during the Wolsey era, when the legatine authority was readily labelled as
abusive by interested parties.38 Conversely, it is dif®cult to read earlier
beliefs from the evidence of resistance in the 1530s. Questioning of the

33
Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 230.
34
Ibid., 229±42. Harvey is at pains to stress that there is no shared theological enterprise
here, more a tendency, one among several of the interests of ®fteenth-century authors.
35
C. Harper-Bill, The Pre-Reformation Church in England, 1400±1523 (1989), 23.
36
E. Hall, Henry VIII, ed. C. Whibley (1904), ii. 95.
37
LP ii. i, no. 2692. On the St Werburgh dispute see R.V.H. Burne, `The dissolution of
St Werburgh's Abbey', Journal of Chester and North Wales Archaeological and Historical Society ns 37
(1948), 16±17.
38
Gwyn argues for limited opposition to Wolsey's legatine powers: P. Gwyn, The King's
Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (1990), 284±9.
24 The Traditional Order
royal supremacy there certainly was, and a number of examples have
accumulated of failure to expunge the name of the pope from liturgical
material when required to do so by the crown. Some groups of the clergy
offered principled resistance as long as they dared: those of the Irish Pale
being conspicuous among them.39 But while the cause of Rome was
clearly defended by more than the handful of martyrs of the 1530s, the old
notion that it was dif®cult to lead a counter-revolution on behalf of a
distant and indifferent Rome has much to commend it. Even the Gaelic
Irish took some time to refocus their loyalties on the papacy: in the early
1540s the English regime had much success in persuading the Gaelic
bishops and chiefs to a basic acknowledgement of the supremacy. The
early papal missions associated with Archbishop Wauchope of Armagh
were conspicuous failures.40
This is also surely connected with what men saw, and were taught,
daily in the parishes. The bishop of Rome appeared in the liturgical texts,
but not on the walls of the church, except in the occasional Last Judge-
ment, where the mighty could be found among the damned as well as the
saved. The preaching of the friars, and not just the Observants, no doubt
appealed to the authority of Rome from time to time, but surviving
preaching manuals make little mention of the theme. It is no accident that
Eamon Duffy's massive analysis of the traditional religion of the English
people, their liturgy, their forms of devotion, the methods by which they
were instructed in the faith, includes scarcely a mention of the importance
of the papacy.41 When Thomas Cromwell's agents and informants began
to report on discontent within the realm in the 1530s, it looks as though a
lack of enthusiasm for the curious and novel idea of a secular head of the
Church was more prominent among men's anxieties than a passionate
support for the bishop of Rome.42
The most signi®cant modi®cation to this general view of the papacy is
the evidence that has been accumulating in recent years of the regularity
of individual lay and clerical access to Rome on the eve of the Reforma-
tion. A steady ¯ow of litigants and petitioners moved between the north
39
Murray, `Diocese of Dublin', 110±16: it is interesting that one of the English clerical
defenders of the papacy, John Travers, moved to Dublin in 1533, apparently because he be-
lieved his views would be more sympathetically received there.
40
Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 192. J. Durkan, `Robert Wauchope, Archbishop of Armagh', Innes
Review 1 (1950), 51±62.
41
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400±1580 (1992).
42
See, for example, Christopher Haigh's view that `the papacy had become, for the English,
not much more than a symbol of the unity of Christendom', English Reformations: Religion,
Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 8. Among recent `revisionist' views of the
early Reformation, only that of Richard Rex argues strongly for the spiritual relevance of the
papacy, citing the hostility to the supremacy revealed by Cromwell's archive: R. Rex, Henry
VIII and the English Reformation (1993), 32±5.
 Authority and Control 25
and the papal capital, and proctors made a living from the business of those
who did not wish to make the tedious journey. The Calendar of Entries in
Papal Registers, now available to 1513, shows the wide range of contacts
that existed, and this records only a part of the business that took English
and Irish men to Rome.43 A combination of litigation and pilgrimage
kept the English hospice at Rome active throughout the early Tudor
years: there were 205 visitors in 1506 and 1507, and by 1518 Wolsey
received a complaint that increasing numbers were adding to the costs of
the hospital.44 The Scottish hospice is less well documented, but was
certainly active from the Jubilee of 1450 onwards.45 More men invested
in papal services at a distance. While clerical petitioners were clearly
prominent there is consistent evidence of lay involvement as well. Dis-
pensations were regularly given for marriage where there was the impedi-
ment of consanguinity: in 1445 William Suthirland and his wife Dalmagyn
Marley, for example, alleged that their marriage within the third degree of
consanguinity had been contracted in order to end murders and scandals
among their kinsmen. They therefore sought and obtained dispensation
from incest and the legitimization of their offspring.46 It has been suggested
that the major problem of the Renaissance papacy, when it faced the need
for reform, was the pressure created by the demands for litigation, dispen-
sations, indulgences, licences, and the like, all of which stimulated the
grossly enlarged bureaucracy of the curia.47 The records of the papal peni-
tentiary, only recently and partially opened to historians, reveal the great
diversity of problems referred to Rome. An aged parish priest from Mel-
tham, Yorkshire, sought permission to employ a housekeeper; Patrick
Cantwell from Dublin diocese, son of a bishop, asked for ordination in
spite of his parent; Thomas Caylart wanted exoneration from a potentially
simoniacal promotion; a layman from St David's sought relief from the
penalties of excommunication, imposed on him by his bishop whose
horses he had stolen. Most ordinary laymen who needed the administrative
or legal assistance of the Church seem to have had no dif®culty in
accepting the Roman curia as `a well of grace suf®cient for their suits'.48

43
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 19 vols. (1893±
1988). For Scotland see Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 4 vols. covering 1418±47.
44
Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 52±67, has an extensive analysis of Rome's hospices
in the ®fteenth century.
45
D. McRoberts, `The Scottish national churches in Rome', Innes Review 1/2 (1950), 110±19.
46
A.I. Dunlop and D. MacLauchlan (eds.), Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1433±1447, SHS 4th
ser. 7 (1982), 301±2.
47
Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, 101±14.
48
J.A.F. Thomson, ` ``The Well of Grace'': Englishmen and Rome in the ®fteenth century',
in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. R.B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984),
99±114.
26 The Traditional Order
Most of the English litigants stopped short of full appeal to the Roman
courts. Litigation was an expensive business, and the limited number of
English cases recorded in the Rota, the principal Roman court of appeal,
may in part indicate this.49 However, the effective control exercised over
the Church by the English ecclesiastical courts provides a more convin-
cing explanation. Long legal battles seem to have been the prerogative
of a few wealthy clergy like Archbishop Morton, who twice defended
his authority in the courts.50 There is here a striking contrast with the
Scots: approximately 370 Scottish cases were heard by the Rota between
1464 and 1560, compared to twenty English cases up to 1534.51 The
difference lies above all in the Scottish resolution of bene®ce disputes
before the papal court. It was a source of some anxiety to the Scottish
crown: in 1493 the Scottish parliament passed an act ordering home all
litigants before the Holy See: to little apparent effect.52 The Gaelic church
also made proli®c use of appeal to Rome: indeed it has been suggested
that one of the numerous explanations for a measure of continuing loyalty
to Rome on the part of the Irish church was that `Rome running' was a
congenial means of dispute resolution far beyond the centralist reach of
the English authorities.53
There is some paradoxical sense in which the more ef®cient and access-
ible the local agents of the universal Church, the less the papacy could or
did play a crucial part in the religious life of individual realms. The later
medieval papacy had itself contributed to this process by the devolution of
powers to legates, nuncios, and judge-delegates. While there is no system-
atic pattern in such forms of devolved authority, there was a tendency for
them to become normative in the years before the Reformation. In the
case of judge-delegates, appointed usually for short periods to engage in a
particular commissioned mission, or hear a speci®c cause, Rome was only
weakened by a reduction of direct contact with its petitioners.54 The
higher clergy, both secular and regular, routinely acted as judge-delegates
in cases not heard in Rome considering election disputes, con¯icts be-
tween monks and their bishops, tithe misappropriation, and matrimonial

49
R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 11±16.
J.A.F. Thomson, The Early Tudor Church and Society: 1485±1529 (1993), 29±31.
50
Harper-Bill, Pre-Reformation Church, 12, 19±20.
51
J. Robertson, `Scottish legal research in the Vatican Archives: a preliminary report', Re-
naissance Studies 2 (1988), 339±46.
52
McRoberts, `Scottish National Churches', 114.
53
Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 191. D.B. Quinn and K.W. Nicholls, `Ireland in 1534', in
T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin, and F.J. Bryne (eds.), A New History of Ireland, vol. iii: Early Modern
Ireland (Oxford, 1976), 29±31.
54
R.A. Schmutz, `Medieval papal representatives: legates, nuncios and judges-delegate',
Studia Gratiana, 15 (1972), 443±63.
 Authority and Control 27
causes. Most of these issues were clerical in nature, but laymen still util-
ized the delegated power of Rome, as in 1518 when the London Court of
Aldermen sought clari®cation of their tithe obligations.55 In England,
within a strongly regulated church, the system of judge-delegates seems to
have functioned effectively. When such local control was lacking, how-
ever, it could expose the papal system to abuse, as in Gaelic Ireland,
where petitioners would often be able to nominate delegates in cases such
as contested collation to bene®ces.56 When Maurice Flellian, canon of
Limerick cathedral, was delegated to hear a convoluted case of dispute
between the chancellor of the diocese and the bishop, in which the
former needed absolution from a multitude of offences including abetting
his temporal lord in violent crimes and appearing at Mass while excom-
municate, it is unlikely that he could have achieved any judicial impartial-
ity in the con¯icts.57
The nuncios, more dif®cult to characterize simply, often combined the
of®ce of papal collector with that of agent. Giovanni Gigli is the best-
known English example: he also occupied the see of Worcester and was
followed in all three of®ces by his nephew. As Italians closely connected
to the papal court their loyalties were divided, but both men came to play
important roles in English government, thereby weakening the hold of
the papacy upon them.58 More conventional ambassadorial nuncios, dis-
patched from Rome to promote crusade, reconcile warring monarchs, or
promote papal interests against schismatics, should not be overlooked. A
series of papal interventions in Scotland, the last as late as 1547, came
when Petrus Lippomanus was dispatched to be `near that realm [England],
for the purpose of taking advantage of any opportunity that might arise'.59
Three years later Julius III pursued the same line of thought for Ireland,
when Robert Wauchope, the papally nominated archbishop of Armagh,
was made apostolic nuncio to the whole island on the eve of his journey
to his see.60
The legateship was, however, the most signi®cant and contentious
delegated of®ce at the disposal of the papacy, possessing proctorial powers.
The primates of Canterbury and York had, of course, long been legati nati,
but this usual arrangement could be enhanced as it was, for example, by
55
S. Brigden, `Tithe controversy in Reformation London', JEH 32 (1981), 293.
56
Thomson, Early Tudor Church, 32±3. Swanson, Church and Society, 14±15. J. Watt, The
Church in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972), 189±92.
57
A. Gwynn, Anglo-Irish Church Life in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1968),
73. A.P. Fuller (ed.), Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers, 1492±1503 (1994), no. 485.
58
Wilkie, Cardinal Protectors, 9±10.
59
C.G. Buschbell (ed.), Concilium Tridentinum . . . Epistularum, ii. i (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1923), 821.
60
Durkan, `Wauchope', 63.
28 The Traditional Order
Henry VII and Archbishop Morton who persuaded the papacy that visit-
ation rights over exempt monasteries should be exercised by the arch-
bishop of Canterbury.61 The ®nal creation of the archiepiscopacy and
then primateship of St Andrews, plus the slightly later erection of the
archiepiscopacy of Glasgow, gave the same indigenous authority to the
Scottish church. But it was the greater prize of the legateship a latere that
drew ambitious prelates and their political masters. Full legatine powers
gave much of the authority and jurisdictional control of the papacy into
the hands of its nominees, for the legate more explicitly personated the
monarchical authority of the pope than did a nuncio. In the crisis
following Flodden, Andrew Forman, nominated to St Andrews, was tem-
porarily given the powers of legate a latere, although the fury of the
English at the promotion of an enemy quickly robbed him of the status.62
Wolsey achieved his steadier and more famous ascent to legatine glory ®rst
by being given matching authority to that of the papal legate, Campeggio,
sent to negotiate for crusade in 1518. His powers were steadily extended
until they became a life grant in 1524, by which time, as we have seen, he
was handling much of the petitioning that would previously have been
addressed to Rome. His unusual powers once again re¯ected on the
vulnerability of the papacy, and especially on its political needs: Leo X
could not afford to alienate Henry VIII, whose commitment to the juris-
dictional authority of his cardinal was made abundantly clear.63 The later
grants of legateship to Scottish primates, Beaton in 1545 and Hamilton
thereafter, reveal much the same pattern, though it is worth noting that
Paul III, deeply suspicious of James V's ambition for control of the local
kirk, withheld the grant to Beaton until after the king's death.64
With the existence of a powerful legateship many of those appeals for
dispensations and the like that would routinely have been addressed to the
curia could be heard locally instead. Evidence survives for only one year
of Wolsey's of®ce, but in that time he granted approximately a hundred
dispensations, yielding fees of about £200. The policy also had potential
for English control of the Irish church. A letter from a John, possibly John
Rawson, prior of Kilmain, to Wolsey, expressed anxiety about the dif®-
culty of persuading Archbishop Inge, the lord chancellor of Ireland, to
grant dispensations in the legate's name:

61
C. Harper-Bill, `Archbishop John Morton and the Province of Canterbury, 1486±1500',
JEH 29 (1978), 6±11.
62
Wilkie, Cardinal Protectors, 83±5, 142±4, 146±9.
63
Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, 265±337.
64
M. Mahoney, `The Scottish hierarchy, 1513±1565', in D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the
Scottish Reformation (Glasgow, 1962), 68±75.
 Authority and Control 29
whereof hath ensued the decay of the Church of Ireland, for, when an idle
person goeth to the Court of Rome, the compositions be to Irishmen so small
for their poverty, that by him many other exorbitant matters be sped. So that, in
this land, your Graces dispensations be necessary to be granted with less dif®culty
than else where, for the avoiding of contempt of holy canons, and the occasion
of the inconvenience that followeth of the Rome runners.65
But Wolsey's legatine control over Ireland remained uncertain. He sought
a bull in 1528 to clarify the position and another drastically to reduce the
number of Irish sees to make them more ®nancially viable. All of this
came too late to have much effect in the period before the Cardinal's
fall.66
Finally the legateships raise the question of how far the papacy endeav-
oured to transcend its jurisdictional, ®scal, and political relationship with
the British churches. Was reform ever a signi®cant part of its wider agenda
in the decades before Trent? It is possible to argue that at least it was
expected that, in return for the grant of unusual regional powers, popes
required gestures of renewal and renovation. Andrew Forman, during his
brief period of delegated power, promulgated the decrees of the Fifth
Lateran Council in Scotland. A generation later, admittedly now in the
period overshadowed by the growth of Protestant dissent, Archbishop
Hamilton held major provincial councils in 1549 and 1552 and made
serious efforts to revitalize Scottish Catholicism.67 And Wolsey exercised
his legatine powers in a variety of reforming gestures including the calling
of a council that issued new constitutions in 1518.68 On the effect of this
last, historians have been as divided as the cardinal's colleagues: Bishop
Fox enthused that it opened the way for reform, while Bishop Fisher's
biographer may have re¯ected the jaundiced view of his subject when he
wrote that the synod was held `rather to notify to the world his great
authority . . . than for any great good he meant to do'.69 It may suf®ce
here to note that even if these provincial attempts at reform achieved
something, they scarcely did anything to reinforce the positive in¯uence
of the papacy in the two realms. When Fox wrote to Wolsey on the
merits of the synod his focus was most explicitly upon the English people
and their religious destiny:
in reading your grace's letter I see before me a more entire and whole reforma-
tion of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the English people than I could have
65
PRO sp 1/2/103±4 [LP iv. 5625].
66
Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, 252±3.
67
T. Winning, `Church councils in sixteenth-century Scotland', in McRoberts, Scottish
Reformation, 332±58.
68
Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, 267±70.
69
R. Bayne (ed.), The Life of Bishop Fisher, EETS extra ser. 27 (1921), 34.
30 The Traditional Order
expected, or ever hoped to see completed, or even so much attempted in this
age.70

Crown and Church

The term ecclesia Anglicana may not have readily translated into Church of
England before the Reformation, but many of the institutional attributes
of independence were already in place. Moreover, as Fox's letter suggests,
there was a perception of the Church as integral with the realm. The ®rst
two Tudor monarchs, while ever willing to parade their devotion to the
universal Church, more frequently acted as though they were lords of
their own religious destiny. Royal behaviour was often at its most para-
doxical in the endeavour to combine devotion and autonomy. The early
Tudors had an outstanding prototype in their Lancastrian predecessor
Henry V, whose deep and ostentatious piety is not in doubt, but who
identi®ed devotion with his regalian authority.71 Henry VII, Anthony
Goodman has suggested, was much in¯uenced by the model of religiosity
espoused at the court of the dukes of Brittany with whom he lived in
exile.72 This involved the lavish invocation of papal support for the legit-
imacy of the monarchy: in Henry's case papal con®rmation of title, and of
Henry's marriage to Elizabeth of York, backed by the full sanction of
excommunication for those who challenged it. Yet the enhanced religious
authority with which Henry sought to invest his kingship consisted in the
main of the gestures of a `royal religion': support for the reform of the
monastic orders, for the canonization of Henry VI, and for the foundation
of the Savoy. There was an intention to stamp a monarchical vision of
piety and authority on the realm. His son, equally ostentatious in his piety,
articulated the potentially schizophrenic nature of this royal in¯uence
when he told a bemused Thomas More that `we are so much bounden
unto the See of Rome that we cannot do too much honour unto
it . . . For we received from that See our crown Imperial.'73 The situation
in Scotland was little different in fundamentals, though some allowance
must be made for the greater plurality and localism of Scottish power.

70
P.S. and H.M. Allen (eds.), The Letters of Richard Fox (1929), 114±15.
71
J. Catto, `Religious change under Henry V', in G. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The Practice of
Kingship (Oxford, 1985), 110±15. On the rather oppressive quality of Henry's devotion see
W.N. Mackay, `Sheen Charterhouse from its Foundation to its Dissolution', University of
Oxford D.Phil. (1992), 74±5.
72
A. Goodman, `Henry VII and Christian renewal', in K. Robbins (ed.), Religion and Hu-
manism, SCH 17 (Oxford, 1981), 115±25.
73
E.V. Hitchcock (ed.), William Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More, Knight (1935), 68.
R. Koebner, `The imperial crown of this realm', BIHR 26 (1953), 29±52. On the erratic
evolution of Henry VIII's ideas on imperial authority see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 245±50.
 Authority and Control 31
James IV and James V both valued papal support on occasions and both
produced serious gestures of devotion to the universal Church. James IV
complicated European politics in the period before Flodden by his enthu-
siasm for a crusade: his son was an appropriate scourge of heretics in the
years before Solway Moss. But like their English counterparts these adult
monarchs were committed to determining the essential directions in
which their national churches should evolve.74
For most practical purposes it was the bishops, keeping a wary eye on
their royal masters, who governed the English and Scottish churches,
ensuring essential conformity with the wider Catholic community
through a shared canon law and correspondence with the papacy. The
crown meanwhile routinely permitted itself and its agents to intervene in
the affairs of its spiritual servants, not directly denying jurisdictional au-
thority, yet tempering its practical consequences. The two issues of most
immediate relevance to the Tudor monarchy, provisions and taxation, had
clearly been resolved in its favour long before this period. This is shown
most dramatically in the case of taxation raised from the Church, an old
right given new vigour by the ®rst two Tudors. Figures vary markedly,
and are in any event dif®cult to calculate from the surviving material, but
by the 1520s the clergy were being asked to produce a loan of £60,000 in
1522, a subsidy of £120,000 spread over the ®ve following years, and then
the Amicable Grant of a third of income on top.75 This is dramatic, yet
Henry VII had also squeezed large revenues from his clergy: four separate
grants of tenths were made between 1487 and 1496, and to these were
added demands for benevolences and loans from the most af¯uent. There
was little protest from the Church. Only the Amicable Grant of 1525,
which produced such vigorous resentment in lay society, generated com-
plaints. Then Archbishop Warham reported on the clergy's `untoward-
ness' and their fear that they would have to `live in continual poverty'.76
Nothing as ambitious as this could be contemplated in the Scotland of the
1510s, yet by the 1530s James V was able to follow the precedents of his
southern neighbour, burdening the Church with a range of exactions
reluctantly sanctioned by Clement VII.77

74
J. Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470±1625 (1981), 78±9. J.H. Burns, `The
political background of the Reformation, 1513±1625', in McRoberts, Scottish Reformation, 5±9.
75
Scarisbrick, `Clerical taxation', 49±50. F. Heal, `Clerical tax-collection under the Tudors',
in R.O'Day and F. Heal (eds.), Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church
in England, 1500±1642 (Leicester, 1976), 97±102.
76
LP iv. i. 1267. G. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England (Brighton,
1986), 101±3.
77
W.S. Reid, `Clerical taxation: the Scottish alternative to dissolution of the monasteries,
1530±1560', Catholic Historical Review 35 (1948), 129±53.
32 The Traditional Order
The great years of jurisdictional con¯ict between the English crown
and its clerical subjects were long past by the late ®fteenth century. How-
ever, Henry VII's reign revealed a tendency by the crown to support the
claims of the common law against those of the church courts when any
contest did emerge. In the years of Morton's ascendancy (1486±1500)
these tendencies were kept in check: thereafter they emerged in the sup-
port given to the issuing of writs of prohibition, evoking disputes from
the church courts into those of the king.78 There had long been a convic-
tion on the part of the common lawyers that papal claims to jurisdiction in
areas covered by common law were invalid. In Henry's reign some key
areas, especially defamation involving the imputation of crime, were sys-
tematically prohibited by the royal courts; by the end of the reign all cases
of this kind were under secular control. In this, and in other areas, the
secular courts succeeded partly because they offered adequate remedy.
The same was true of bene®ce disputes involving property right: while in
Scotland these arguments moved through the system of ecclesiastical juris-
diction and might easily end in Rome, in England they were under the
control of the common law, and might end in Common Pleas.79
While the common lawyers and in some measure the litigants them-
selves helped to promote the movement away from ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion, the crown's sensitivity to any jurisdictional challenge was visible as
well. Henry VII began a process of restricting some of the liberties granted
by earlier monarchs grateful for ecclesiastical support in dif®cult times.
Two acts of 1489 and 1497 limited bene®t of clergy: more dramatically
there were ten cases of praemunire before King's Bench in the last two law
terms of the reign. Bishop Nykke of Norwich, the principal sufferer,
complained bitterly to Warham in 1504 that he would `curse all such
promoters and maintainers of praemunire as heretics'.80 Then in 1512 Par-
liament returned to the attack, prohibiting all clerks in minor orders from
claiming bene®t of clergy for certain serious crimes.81 This act eventually
produced a vigorous clerical reaction when, in a St Paul's sermon of 1515,
Richard Kidderminster, abbot of Winchcombe, preached in defence of
the sacrosanctity of all orders major and minor. Henry Standish, warden
of the London Grey Friars, became the spokesman of crown interest
against the seculars at the subsequent Blackfriars Conference summoned

78
M.J. Kelly, `Canterbury Jurisdiction and In¯uence during the Episcopate of William War-
ham, 1503±32', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1963), 98±110.
79
R. Houlbrooke, `The decline of ecclesiastical jurisdiction under the Tudors', in O'Day
and Heal, Continuity and Change, 241±2.
80
4 HVII c. 13; 12 HVII c. 7. PRO sc 1/44, fo. 83: quoted in Houlbrooke, `Decline', 241.
81
Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, 43±50. G. Gabel, Bene®t of Clergy in England in the Later Middle
Ages (New York, 1969).
 Authority and Control 33
to debate the act. The issues debated were made more complex by one of
the few actions of the Fifth Lateran Council that had impact in England:
two papal bulls of 1514 speci®cally invoked the powers of the Church
against any lay interference with the clergy. Standish was eventually cited
before convocation, which was in its turn threatened with praemunire by
the royal judges.82 The ®nal gesture and threat in this crisis was explicitly
Henry's, when he declared at a conference at Baynard's Castle in Novem-
ber 1515 that `by the ordinance and sufferance of God we are King of
England, and the kings of England in time past have never had any super-
ior but God alone'.83
It is customary to see the events of 1515 as evidence of a crown deter-
mination to signal clearly to the clergy the limitations of their jurisdic-
tional autonomy. What is less frequently noted is that the dispute arose
out of a willingness by the clergy to assert that autonomy. It has recently
been suggested that an aspect of the generally recognized energy and
ef®ciency of the last generations of pre-Reformation prelates was a grow-
ing clericalism, a toughness and self-con®dence in the assertion of rights
and authority that risked confrontation with royal interests.84
There are obvious dangers, however, in reading relations between the
Church and the monarchy in the light of the English break with Rome
and the Scottish Reformation. The key to the weaknesses of the religious
establishments is to be found rather in too intimate an association with the
lay authorities than in overt con¯ict, or even subliminal tension. Crown
control of senior appointments within the Church could be employed
with various degrees of bene®cence or otherwise, but it always tended to
af®rm the identity of prelates and other higher clergy as kings' men. The
best test of this proposition is the English bench, which historians gener-
ally agree to have been of impressive quality in the pre-Reformation
years. Among the forty promotions of Englishmen between 1485 and
1529 there were few disasters, in the sense of administrative or moral
failures. If Wolsey is discounted, only James Stanley, the aristocratic bishop
of Ely, can be criticized under both heads. While there were a few non-
entities, such as Penny and Leyburn, the vast majority of the early Tudor
bishops were men of learning, capacity, and great administrative experi-
ence. Most were graduates who had been trained in the laws and all but
four had held some of®ce under the crown before reaching the bench. It
is important for an understanding of later religious change to analyse the
82
A. Fox and J. Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500±1550
(Oxford, 1986), 167. Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, 47±50.
83
A. Ogle, The Tragedy of the Lollards' Tower (1949), 151.
84
For an interesting, if not wholly convincing, argument along these lines see R.N. Swan-
son, `Problems of the priesthood in pre-Reformation England', EHR 105 (1990), 845±69.
34 The Traditional Order
ways in which these admirable prelates were vulnerable. They rarely failed
their dioceses at the level of basic administrative control, left of course on
a daily basis in the hands of their deputies. Many, for example successive
bishops of Lincoln, were energetic in ensuring that the clergy, both regu-
lar and secular, were disciplined through visitation, that their church
courts were maintained in full vigour and that intruders upon their juris-
diction were challenged. A number took a positive interest in learning,
displayed most notably through the founding of colleges, but also through
endowments within their cathedrals or the promotion of better standards
among the parish clergy. It has recently been suggested that they collect-
ively adopted an intelligent humanist-reformist view of the early stages of
Lutheran heresy. No doubt many were remote from the ordinary religion
of the parishes, but this was scarcely an unusual feature of any episcopate,
and most juggled their dual role as royal administrators and diocesan
overlords with some skill.85 The guilt expressed by Bishop Fox that `to
serve worldly' was `the damnation of my soul and many other souls
whereof I have the cure' was the reaction of a politician who had tempor-
arily failed to reconcile these roles.86 The risk of such imbalance was
always present but, given that the daily routines of a diocese rarely needed
the attention of a prelate, most seem to have coped with their broader
directive duties.
The weakness of the late medieval bishops came rather from the very
con®dence instilled by their essentially harmonious relationship with the
crown. Their training was most commonly in the two laws, and as canon-
ists they might be expected, in Maitland's memorable phrase, to be
`steeped and soaked . . . in the papal law-books'.87 Yet that absorption no
longer appeared to demand eternal vigilance about ecclesiastical autonomy
of the kind that had marked church±state relationships since the Investi-
ture Contest. The environment in which these capable men operated was,

85
There is an extensive literature on the early Tudor prelates, with few voices raised in
criticism of their activities. Much of the best work is contained in two dissertations, J.J. Scaris-
brick, `The Conservative Episcopate in England, 1529±35', University of Cambridge Ph.D.
(1955) and S. Thompson, `The Pastoral Work of the English and Welsh Bishops, 1500±1558',
University of Oxford D.Phil. (1984). B. Bradshaw and E. Duffy (eds.), Humanism, Reform and
Reformation: The Career of Bishop John Fisher (Cambridge, 1989), app. 3. Thompson shows that
many pre-Reformation prelates were resident in their dioceses at least 75 per cent of the time.
There is a useful summary in Thomson, Early Tudor Church, 46±60. M. Bowker, The Secular
Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495±1520 (Cambridge, 1968) and The Henrician Reformation: The
Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521±1547 (Cambridge, 1981). D'Alton, `The Suppression
of Heresy', passim.
86
Allen and Allen, Letters of Fox, 83. See also his famous protestation of the renunciation of
worldly duties, 30 April 1517: ibid., 93.
87
F.W. Maitland, The Roman Canon Law in the Church of England (1898), 93. R.J. Schoeck,
`Canon law in England on the eve of the Reformation', Medieval Studies 25 (1963), 131.
 Authority and Control 35
88
to use the words of a recent historian, slightly `stuffy'. They were well-
attuned to detecting threats to the integrity of the Church from heresy,
and threats to the crown from political subversion, less well-armed against
inappropriate behaviour by God's anointed. While prelates could often
detach themselves from the obligations of secular of®ce in their later years
and tend to their bene®ces and souls, they could not so readily escape
from the political and patronage identities of the English state. Bishop Fox
expressed these anxieties to Wolsey on several occasions, especially at the
time of the attempted legatine reforms of 1518:
As far as I can see this reformation of the clergy and religious will so abate the
calumnies of the laity, so advance the honour of the clergy, and so reconcile our
sovereign lord the king and his nobility to them . . . that I intend to devote to its
furtherance the few remaining years of my life.89
The reactions of the bench to the one great exception to all rules, Thomas
Wolsey, are indicative of the dif®culties of the Church under a strong
monarch. No amount of historical rehabilitation of the cardinal as polit-
ician or putative reformer can disguise the contrasts between his behav-
iour and that of his colleagues. His appropriation of power, and even his
¯outing of moral norms, had the visible support of the young king. The
hostility of some of the episcopate, and especially of Archbishop Warham,
to his jurisdictional claims, has been meticulously documented, but so has
their failure to make any essential difference to the cardinal's authority.
Wolsey was the king's man, and as such the prelates had to accommodate
to him, indeed had to regard him as the source of much of their own
power and patronage. What we seem to observe here is not just a recog-
nition of the realities of royal power, but an acceptance that that power in
some sense legitimated Wolsey's activities: the beginnings perhaps of a
displacement of moral authority from church to state? Scarisbrick's com-
ment on the cardinal's secular policies, `his sins were scarlet, but his writs
were read', is a ®tting acknowledgement of the ambiguities of power that
the leaders of the Henrician bench had to accommodate.90
While English bishops have received general approbation from recent
historians, the prelates of the Scottish and Irish, and even the Welsh,

88
D. MacCulloch, `Henry VIII and the reformation of the Church', in D. MacCulloch
(ed.), The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (Basingstoke, 1998), 161.
89
Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, i. app. 18. The original Latin is printed in Allen and Allen,
Letters of Fox, 116.
90
Kelly, `Canterbury Jurisdiction', 176±94. J.J. Scarisbrick, `Cardinal Wolsey and the
common weal', in E.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht, and J.J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor
England: Essays Presented to S.T. Bindoff (1978), 67. Gwyn, The King's Cardinal, takes a very
different view, arguing that Wolsey simply did not possess the power traditionally attributed to
him.
36 The Traditional Order
churches are still, like the curate's egg, considered good only in parts. This
is often represented as a matter of wealth, dividing the British and Irish
churches along economic fault lines. The seventeen English sees (exclud-
ing Sodor and Man) had an average income according to the ®gures of
the 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus of £1,594.91 The four Welsh sees averaged
only £233. Figures for Ireland are complicated by the nature of English
power there and cannot be given exhaustively for the period on the eve
of the Reformation. But among the thirty-two dioceses, those within the
Englishry that were assessed in Henry's reign varied in value from Dublin
at £535 IR (£357) to six bishoprics worth less than £75 each. Bishoprics
within the Irishry were probably even poorer.92 Scotland's ®gures have to
be drawn from a later date when, in the early years of the Reformation,
ecclesiastical rentals were recorded for dividing resources between the
crown and the old and new kirks. These show an episcopate divided
between comfort and relative poverty, with the fault line largely corres-
ponding to the highland and lowland zones. St Andrews, Glasgow,
Moray, and Dunkeld were prosperous, with incomes in money and kind
of between £2,500 and £6,000 (Scots): Caithness and Galloway had
barely any income in kind and only £1,200±1,300 in money. In Scotland
a cleric with powerful connections was likely to aspire to one of the key
lowland sees.93
Yet the weaknesses of these other churches, the Welsh perhaps
excepted, are more usually attributed to the de®ciencies of the lay patron-
age system than to absolute poverty. The Scottish hierarchy, in particular,
has commonly been seen as the collective victim of ambitious but poor
monarchs, ruthless nobles, and long royal minorities. The crown needed
all the patronage advantage it could obtain, so both James IV and James V
were guilty of such blatant actions as giving the see of St Andrews to a
royal bastard ( James IV) and nominating ®ve illegitimate children to hold
®ve of the great Scottish abbeys in commendation ( James V). Neither
monarch was overly squeamish about the elevation of men of known
immorality either: James V's promotion of Patrick Hepburn to Ross
being the prime example. Long periods of minority and the bitter rivalries
of Scottish politics produced a bench with at least 50 per cent noble
blood, and the tastes and interests to accompany af®nity to that social

91
F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor
Episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), 20±34.
92
S.G. Ellis, `Economic problems of the Church: why the Reformation failed in Ireland',
JEH 41 (1990), 249±51.
93
J. Kirk (ed.), The Books of the Assumptions of Thirds: Scottish Ecclesiastical Rentals at the
Reformation, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History ns 21 (1995), pp. xlvi±
xlviii.
 Authority and Control 37
group. Such men could, of course, on occasions be rather successful in
resisting royal pressures, but usually only in the equally secular interests of
their own families.94 Historians are now sometimes disposed to express
surprise at the relative success of some Scottish prelates, rather than to
dwell upon this gloomy tale. The most distinguished bishop was without
question William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen from 1483 to 1514, an
important royal servant, but a diocesan bishop who combined adminis-
trative skill with a desire to evangelize his ¯ock. He founded the Univer-
sity of Aberdeen and laboured to improve the educational standards of his
clergy. Above all he sponsored a speci®cally Scottish approach to liturgy
and the saints through his Martyrology of Aberdeen and Aberdeen Breviary.
Both emphasized national Scottish saints such as Ninian, eliminating a
number of English saints from the calendar. Elphinstone also showed
some of the spirit in defence of ecclesiastical interest that seemed essential
for the preservation of institutional stability. He fought both king and
other patrons to establish control over `his' patronage in Aberdeen dio-
cese. Yet Elphinstone also shows the vulnerability of the late medieval
episcopate: he was excluded from Aberdeen for ®ve years after 1483
because his episcopal revenues had been pocketed by the crown and he
could not pay his common services to the curia.95
Revisionists can certainly list a number of effective Scottish prelates
to place beside Elphinstone: the learned Robert Reid of Orkney, or
Archbishop Blacadder of Glasgow. The two most famous archbishops of
St Andrews, James Beaton and John Hamilton, both exercised themselves
in defence of the kirk: Beaton resisted James V's passion for the feuing of
church lands, Hamilton summoned reforming councils. It is, however,
dif®cult to escape the impression that the Scottish hierarchy was remark-
ably ill-equipped to withstand any of the demands of the crown, or to
bring much moral suasion to bear upon the nobility bent on the expropri-
ation of ecclesiastical property.96
The Gaelic church in Ireland, beyond the regular reach of the English
crown, also had its own problems of episcopal authority and lay control.
Here the prelacy was deeply integrated into the system of familial control
characteristic of the clan culture. Thus the Diocese of Clogher, Fermanagh,
94
Mahoney, `Scottish hierarchy', 39±84. MacFarlane, `Primacy', 111±29. L. MacFarlane,
`Was the Scottish church reformable by 1513?' in N. MacDougall (ed.), Church, Politics and
Society: Scotland 1408±1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 23±43.
95
L. Macfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland (Aberdeen, 1995), 217±89,
192±3. James IV actively supported Elphinstone's liturgical endeavours: he sponsored the
printing of the Breviary, the ®rst volume to be printed on a Scottish press.
96
For a reasonably positive assessment of the episcopate see Wormald, Court, Kirk and
Community, 80±2. The older view, of weakness and worldliness, is presented by G. Donaldson,
The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960), 13±26.
38 The Traditional Order
was dominated by the clerical dynasty of MacCawells, who shared with the
local Maguires the rulership of the see for most of the ®fteenth and early
sixteenth centuries.97 The papacy itself compounded this problem by
allowing procedures to circumvent the canon law requirement that no son
should succeed to a father's bene®ce. Where local competition for power
made the issue less certain, and Roman candidates were inserted into
bishoprics, the results were often absenteeism as friars, for example, supple-
mented their positions in England or elsewhere from Irish bene®ces. Even
on the rare occasions when a man of distinction was promoted within this
confused system, it did not necessarily bene®t the local establishment. For
example, Maurice O'Fihilly, the only distinguished Irish theologian of
the early sixteenth century, was promoted to the archbishopric of Tuam
in 1506. Yet he spent scarcely any time in Ireland before his death in
1513.98
The ecclesiastical hierarchies of the British Isles may in many ways be
said to mirror the polities in which they were located. Where authority
was strong and centralist, as it was in England, the episcopate was vigorous
and effective. It was also rather ®rmly committed to a perception of the
Church as a national body, not detached from the universal Church but
whole unto itself. Where political authority was weak, and/or fractured,
as it was in Ireland, the episcopate either adhered to the norms of secular
society or sought patronage and support outside the island, from the
papacy or from England. Where a strong underlying perception of polit-
ical unity was regularly disrupted by power struggles, as in Scotland, the
episcopate followed the fortunes of the politically strong. In all cases lay
power profoundly in¯uenced ecclesiastical behaviour: in all, except per-
haps Gaelic Ireland, there was until the Reformation suf®cient adjustment
between God and Caesar to ensure the stable management of the insti-
tutional Church.

The Distribution of Power

The jurisdictional and organizational complexity of the late medieval
churches need detain us here only in so far as they have relevance for the
future and reveal something of the strengths and weaknesses of the trad-
itional order. Medieval Catholicism might be monarchical, with only
general councils contesting the high ground of control, but it was a mon-
archy in which power was constantly devolved and evolved away from
the curial centre. Provincial councils and synods legislated on many
matters of regional import; bishops exercised high judicial powers and of
97 98
Gwynn, Anglo-Irish Church Life, 72. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland, 185±7.
 Authority and Control 39
course bowed to the will of their political masters. The devolution con-
tinued to the sub-diocesan level of archdeaconry, commissary, and rural
deanery. Meanwhile the regulars presented another hierarchy of control:
often independent of local episcopal management, and integrated instead
with their universal order, sometimes with their own provincial chapters,
always governed by their own heads of house.
Such complexity was not automatically a source of either strength or
weakness. The long evolution of the medieval church had led to the
establishment of reasonably clear patterns of hierarchical order and explicit
de®nitions of obligation and duty that were cumulatively functional and
only intermittently confusing. A few distinctive jurisdictional patterns can
be itemized for the British Isles. In the case of England and Wales the
®xity of the Northern and Southern provinces, and the absence of a
separate Welsh province, are the most notable features. The primacy of
Canterbury over York had been fully acknowledged by the sixteenth
century, but could still generate tensions when due form was not ob-
served. After three centuries of dispute titles had been settled: Canterbury
had `the primacy of all England' while York was known as `primate of
England'.99 The distinctive quality of the convocations of Canterbury was
that they met concurrently with Parliament. For a brief period during
Wolsey's legateship the division of provinces ceased to have much mean-
ing and a more genuinely national church emerged in embryonic form.100
Relations between the seculars and the regulars were characterized by the
generally high level of disciplinary control that the former exercised over
the latter. But there were major exceptions: the Cluniacs, Premonstraten-
sians, Carthusians, Gilbertines, and Cistercians maintained their exempt
status and were not subject to episcopal visitation.101 Above all the orders
of friars preserved their autonomy and their capacity profoundly to annoy
the leaders of the secular Church. Finally, though this is by no means
exclusive to the English church, the pattern of peculiar or exempt juris-
dictions, well demonstrated in Swanson's map of medieval Yorkshire, is
revealing of the limitations of authority even in a rather centralized and
hierarchical corner of Christendom.
The key organizational and structural features of the Scottish church
arise partly from the late establishment of the two archiepiscopal sees of
St Andrews and Glasgow. This left an unresolved issue of primacy: ®rst
superiority was given to St Andrews but then the elevation of Glasgow, as
99
Swanson, Church and Society, 16±26. J.C. Dickinson, An Ecclesiastical History of England:
The Later Middle Ages from the Norman Conquest to the Eve of the Reformation (1979), 66±8.
100
D.B. Weske, Convocation of the Clergy (1937).
101
D. Knowles, The Monastic Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1959), iii. 28, 33,
39, 222.
`Peculiars, or exempt jurisdictions of Medieval Yorkshire' from R. N. Swanson,
Church and Society in Late Medieval England (1989).
 Authority and Control 41
a consequence of the skilled political manoeuvring of Archbishop Blacad-
der, gave the latter control over four of the thirteen Scottish sees. Histor-
ical opinion is divided upon whether it was this separation that prevented
the calling of provincial councils before 1536, but there was certainly
bitter con¯ict about the symbols of precedence such as the displaying of
the cross of St Andrews in Glasgow Cathedral.102 The abbeys and priories
of Scotland were increasingly identi®ed with a highly developed system of
commendation: from the 1530s onwards, noble houses established a lay
control over many of the great monasteries that was in practice heredi-
tary.103 It is also worth remarking that while the jurisdictional and insti-
tutional densities of the church in the Scottish Lowlands were essentially
similar to those of England, the structure of the Highland zone was a
complete contrast. There diocesan organization was thin and weak, the
parochial structure ineffective, and the monastic orders almost absentÐon
the eve of the Reformation there were only ®ve small houses in the
Highland zone, and the only friary, at Kingussie, had already failed.104
The institutional peculiarities of the Irish churches are, in the main, the
predictable product of the political division of the island. The separation
of dioceses, so that they were of either the Englishry or the Irishry or, in
the case of Armagh, into deaneries inter Hibernicos and inter Anglicos, was of
de®ning importance. Provincial synods were held with some regularity in
the early sixteenth century for those of the Englishry, December assem-
blies, being used for the granting of tax, and July meetings for general
legislation for the whole province. Medieval historians, studying the sur-
viving records of the province of Armagh, have been at pains to empha-
size that there were sustained attempts to treat the two `nations' in a
similar manner.105 However, history, politics, and the ideology of the
canonists who led the church of the Pale conspired to keep the systems
apart.106 The Rome-running of the Gaelic sees was a response to an
ecclesiastical system that had not been able to evolve the administrative
complexity of its English counterpart. Moreover, the common routines of
appeal to Rome produced some distinctive features at home: the Armagh
court of audience, for example, acted as a tutorial court, protecting the
property rights of those litigating at the curia.107 A ®nal feature that is
102
MacFarlane, `Primacy', 118±25. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, 25±6.
103
I.B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation (1982), 29±36.
104
I.B. Cowan and D.E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland (1976), 77±8, 83±4, 89,
94, 101±2.
105
M.A.J. Burrows, `Fifteenth-century Irish provincial legislation', in W.J. Sheils and
D. Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, SCH 25 (Oxford, 1989), 57±9.
106
Murray, `Diocese of Dublin', 54±7.
107
J.A. Watt, `The Church and the two nations in late medieval Armagh', in W.J. Sheils and
D. Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, SCH 25 (Oxford, 1989), 37±54.
42 The Traditional Order
worth remark is the density of monastic penetration, especially in Gaelic
Ireland: there were almost as many houses of regulars as there were in
England on the eve of the Reformation and the society had never fully
lost its origins as a monastic church.108
Jurisdictional and institutional plurality became problematic for the
Church when it resulted in litigiousness. Con¯icts about primacy and
provincial autonomy af¯icted all areas of the British Isles, not perhaps very
seriously in the case of Canterbury and York, but very visibly in Ireland
and Scotland: in the former case the archbishops of Armagh refused to
attend Dublin synods when that archbishopric made a bid for the suprem-
acy.109 Some areas of jurisdiction, notably control over testamentary pro-
visions, were a source of much hostility between the archbishops of
Canterbury and their suffragans, and later between Archbishop Warham
and Wolsey.110 Throughout the system there was a general defensiveness
about individual jurisdictional claims and an eagerness to assert full or
extended rights against others. This was in part because the Church was
serviced by an elaborate hierarchy of courts, each under the control of a
group of professionals who had a strong vested interest in protecting their
own. Compositions were at times necessary to de®ne jurisdictional
boundaries more closely. Since, as we have already seen, the higher clergy
had to be alert to the need to fend off intrusions from the crown and the
laity it is scarcely surprising if they appeared collectively to be more
concerned about their own claims to authority than about discipline,
preaching, or reform. When we include the zealousness with which indi-
vidual clergy litigated against one another, at least in Ireland and Scotland,
about possession of bene®ces, it is possible to paint a dismal picture of
ecclesiastical introversion and greed.111
Yet these con¯icts were rarely seen by contemporaries as a sign of
terminal decline, or as the opportunity to challenge the authority of the
institution in fundamental ways. Reform in `head and members' was a
rhetoric shared by the British churches and their Continental counterparts.
The abiding evidence of the thirty years before the English broke with
Rome, however, is that few felt that a fundamental jurisdictional revolu-
tion was needed and that even fewer anticipated that such a thing might
occur.

108
B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge,
1974).
109
H.A. Jefferies, `Diocesan synods and convocations in Armagh on the eve of the Tudor
reformations', Seanchas ard Mhacha 16 (1995), 120±32. Watt, `Church and two nations', 46.
110
Kelly, `Canterbury Jurisdiction', passim.
111
Watt, `Church and two nations', 46.
 2
T H E S TAT E O F T H E C L E R G Y

John Colet, preaching his famous sermon before the Convocation of Can-
terbury in 1512, cited St Bernard with approval. `The dignity of priests
. . . is greater than either the king's or the emperor's: it is equal with the
dignity of angels.'1 He was not alone in appealing to such a high clericalist
view as the standard against which his contemporaries should be measured.
A few years earlier John Alcock had preached in much the same vein to a
synod of the Ely clergy; somewhat later William Melton, the long-serving
chancellor of York, was equally emphatic on the need for the clergy to
measure up to high standards of spiritual renewal.2 The preachers had, of
course, an agenda and an audience that led to a distinctive emphasis on the
dignity of the priesthood, as well as on the failures of many of its individual
representatives. That agenda may in part be characterized as humanist: the
attempt to establish the clergy as models for lay piety, men worthy of the
association with the angels because of their learning and wisdom, as well as
their probity of life and spiritual leadership. But, though broadly in tune
with humanist aspirations, the ambitions of these churchmen were also
rather distinct from Erasmian ideals. Erasmus, in a characteristic moment in
his Sileni Alcibiades, had identi®ed the Church not with the priests, bishops
and popes that `the followers of the world' assume but with `the whole
Christian people'.3 This conventional sentiment also articulates difference.
Those who urged the clergy to follow the example of St Bernard would
not have denied the Erasmian premise, yet they sought to centre the
Church in the leadership of its priesthood, in those consecrated and
ordained to an estate that transcended mundanity.4
It scarcely needed the words of an Alcock or Colet to remind the
clergy that they were in an exposed social and moral position. Numbers,
1
Colet's sermon is printed in full in C.H. Williams (ed.), English Historical Documents (1971),
652±60. C. Harper-Bill, `Dean Colet's Convocation sermon and the pre-Reformation Church
in England', History 73 (1988), 191±210.
2
J. Alcock, Gallicantus in Sinodo apud Bernwell (1498). R.N. Swanson, `Problems of the
priesthood in pre-Reformation England', EHR 105 (1990), 862±3.
3
D. Erasmus, `The Silene of Alcibiades', in D. Wootton (ed.), Thomas More: Utopia (Indian-
apolis, Ind., 1999), 179.
4
N. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich (Toronto, 1984), 1.
44 The Traditional Order
wealth, and structural in¯uence constantly reminded the laity that, though
the priesthood was only a part of the Church universal, it was one which
placed high demands upon the culture in return for the spiritual services
that it rendered. Even those elements of the priestly order that can be
subject to a crude Gross Domestic Product calculation are revealing: be-
tween a quarter and a third of English acreage was still owned by the
Church, while in parts of Ireland it was nearer a half.5 The demesne
revenues of the Scottish crown amounted to little more than £8,000
(Scots) at the end of the ®fteenth century, while the incomes of the
wealthiest monasteries in their last half-century were between £7,500 and
£13,000 (Scots).6 Numbers of clerics were high, both in absolute terms
and as a proportion of population: one estimate for Scotland puts the ratio
of clergy to laity at 1:32 in the early sixteenth century.7 If a fairly conser-
vative multiplier of three clergy is applied to each English and Welsh
parish and the approximately 6,000 regulars are added, a ®gure of around
33,000 priests in major orders is produced. A much more precise micro-
calculation for the city of Norwich gives a ®gure of 4 to 6 per cent of the
male population as in major orders.8 All these estimates would suggest that
there would have been few lay people without some personal or kin
connection to the clergy. The clerical order was therefore very visible:
collectively, if not individually, it was wealthy and powerful. It was also
extremely diverse: for example, although the percentage engaged in secu-
lar activities was almost certainly declining by the early sixteenth century,
fewer than half of the Scottish clergy were reckoned to be in strictly
`spiritual' employment. Estimates for pluralism in EnglandÐapproxi-
mately a ®fth of livings being held in this way at the beginning of the
sixteenth centuryÐoffer some indication of the number of clerics diversi-
®ed away from parochial cures or from service as chaplains.9

5
W.J. Sheils, The English Reformation, 1530±1570 (Harlow, 1989), 27. The Irish evidence is
very uncertain, but Bradshaw gives one telling example of church power when he compares the
revenues of the earl of Kildare's estates with those of the Cistercian order in the Pale, Ormond,
and county Wexford: the latter were worth £100 more than the former per annum: B. Brad-
shaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1974), 33.
6
J. Kirk (ed.), The Books of the Assumption of Thirds, British Academy Records of Social and
Economic History ns 21 (1995), pp. lvi±lvii.
7
L.B. Macfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland (Aberdeen, 1995), 164.
J. Cameron, James V: The Personal Rule, 1528±42 (Edinburgh, 1998), 257. L. Macfarlane, `Was
the Scottish church reformable by 1513?' in N. MacDougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society:
Scotland 1408±1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 39.
8
R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 30±6. Tanner,
Norwich, 19±20.
9
P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), 109.
J.A. Lipkin, `Pluralism in pre-Reformation England: A Quantitative Analysis of Ecclesiastical
Incumbency, c.1490±1539', Catholic University of America Ph.D. (1979), 155±65.
 The State of the Clergy 45
There was a constant pressure in this culture to evaluate the clergy, to
question whether they could live up to the high vision offered by human-
ist reformers. It must have been dif®cult enough for ordinary clerks even
to realize the ideal already expressed in the ®fteenth century: the priest
should be a preacher, as well as a man of prayer, a generous giver of
hospitality, and a peace-maker.10 These qualities had no doubt always
been demanded in general: the distinctive feature of the century preceding
the Reformation was that the laity were increasingly likely to articulate
their views of the clergy through wills and other instruments of literacy.
Similarly the laity had always had opportunities to `employ' chosen clerics
through parochial patronage, domestic chaplaincies, and court favour: all
these continued but were notably enhanced by the growth of employ-
ment in the singing of Masses for the dead, through either chantries, or
guilds and fraternities. So judgement was likely to be pronounced upon
the clergy both by their own colleagues and by laymen who had a variety
of investments in the Church.11 To these evaluations the historian must
perforce add that of hindsight: the fashion of revisionist historiography has
been to insist that the experience of the Church in the early sixteenth
century should not be read through the distorting lens of our knowledge
of Luther or of Henry VIII's marital problems. Nevertheless, there is an
inescapable awareness of the imminence of the break with Rome, and it is
important to interrogate the preparedness of the clergy for the coming
cataclysm.

The Religious
Colet's sermon was addressed to the whole body of the clergy, yet it said
little about the regulars who comprised between a quarter and a third of
those in orders. There was a passing remark about the desirability of
withdrawal from the world for those who had the appropriate vocation:
the rest was silence. This is perhaps to be expected in a humanist who,
though not hostile to the religious, had imbibed the Erasmian praise of the
active life. There may be a sense in which the historian of the Reforma-
tion should follow Colet's example, and simply note the existence and
wealth of the regulars before passing on to those who did survive the
cataclysm. But monks, nuns, and friars are important not merely because

10
See for example the comments of Bernardino of Siena, and the same view was espoused
by Thomas Gascoigne: B. Manning, The People's Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Hassocks, 1975), 18;
R.N. Swanson, `Problems of the priesthood in pre-Reformation England', EHR 105 (1990),
846.
11
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, is an important study of this process of lay evaluation, as seen
primarily through wills. Swanson, `Problems', 846.
46 The Traditional Order
of their numbers, or because their wealth attracted the most obvious greed
of the laity. In some ways the orders offer the most interesting test of the
health of the clerical estate: like an archaeological site they can reveal layer
by layer the reforming impulses of the Church, and they display the
appeal that forms of spirituality articulated at a particular moment in time
could have in a later and different context. They also offer some of the
most intriguing comparative material across the British Isles since the reli-
gious orders experienced remarkably different fortunes in England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland.
In terms of wealth, power, and numbers it was still the black monks
who dominated the English monastic scene. Barbara Harvey's study based
on Westminster is a major reminder that the Benedictines were still
entrenched at the heart of the life of the capital in the mid-1530s.12
St Albans, Durham, Canterbury, Bury, Peterborough, and a number of
lesser houses all show the general signs of good institutional health on the
eve of the dissolutions. Recruitment was strong: the order as a whole
experienced a growth of more than 30 per cent between 1400 and 1500,
and in many cases numbers continued to rise into the 1530s. Finances had
bene®ted from the general economic recovery being experienced by land-
lords in the ®rst years of the sixteenth century; scandal was con®ned to a
limited number of glaring cases.13 Examples of new building are again
suf®cient to counter any general idea of decline. Abbot Kirton's retrochoir
at Peterborough (c.1510) and the crossing tower at Gloucester are the
®nest surviving ecclesiastical structures: the rich range of lodgings at Glas-
tonbury built by Abbot Bere is perhaps more characteristic of the con-
structions undertaken by the last monastic generation.14 The Benedictines
also remained dominant in the ®elds of education and scholarship. They
played particularly critical roles at Oxford, through their shared founda-
tion, Gloucester College, and in the last generation before the Reforma-
tion were a more potent force in the university than the friars.15 In the
previous century the number of schools run by the monks had increased,
and in the 1530s the monks of St Albans offered a rare example of enthu-
siasm for the potential of new technology when they established the only
printing press to operate outside London.16 The black monks also still
12
B. Harvey, Living and Dying in Medieval England 1100±1540: The Monastic Experience
(Oxford, 1995).
13
D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1959), iii. 9±10.
14
D. Knowles and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (1971),
61±5, 73. J. Leland, Itineraries, 5 vols., ed. L. Toulmin-Smith (1906±8), ii. 289.
15
R.B. Dobson, `The religious orders, 1370±1540', in J.I. Catto and T.A.R. Evans (eds.),
The History of the University of Oxford: Late Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1992), 546±8, 573±9.
16
J.G. Clark, `Reformation and reaction at St Alban's Abbey, 1530±1558', EHR 115 (2000),
304±14.
 The State of the Clergy 47
featured in the consciousness of the laity: where will benefactions have
been analysed they show that giving was by no means con®ned to the
newer orders: in Norwich testators actually gave to the priory in a larger
percentage of cases in the pre-dissolution years than in the early ®fteenth
century. In Salisbury diocese the last century of monasticism saw a steady
increase in giving to the newer order of the Carthusians, but almost 50 per
cent of benefactions went to Benedictine houses.17
It is customary, and no doubt largely appropriate, to see the statement
of the 1536 Act dissolving the poorer monastic houses that the great
monasteries were places `wherein . . . religion is right well kept and ob-
served' as the merest persi¯age.18 But, while the neat division articulated
by a cynical regime has no formal justi®cation, there is a sense that the
traditional orders of the black monks and canons were vulnerable, not in
the great establishments, rather in the large number of small houses that
dotted the English landscape. Here the story of vitality, of levels of re-
cruitment, and of general lay support is more varied: examples of energy
and revivalism in the last generations, as at Winchcombe under the great
Abbot Richard Kidderminster, can be found, but there are counter-
examples of atrophy, weakness, or downright decay.19 Visitation returns
must always be regarded with the utmost caution, but the Norwich visit-
ations between 1492 and 1532 show problems of a failure of conventual
order most commonly occurring in the houses with few recruits. There
was presumably a vicious circle in the case of a house like Walsingham
Priory, where disciplinary and economic problems were matched by
problems of recruitment.20 Even well-organized houses with small
numbers of monks often had to struggle to maintain the full opus dei that
was their prime duty.21 While it is rarely possible to judge the motives of
those who entered the regular life through the old orders, it may be
inferred that parents, guardians and even the recruits themselves sought a
measure of stability and security not always available in these small estab-
lishments.

17
Tanner, Norwich, 120. A.D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of
Salisbury 1250±1550 (Oxford, 1995), 29.
18
27 HVIII, c. 28.
19
W. Dugdale (ed.), Monasticon Anglicanum, 6 vols. (1817±30), ii. 301. W.A. Pantin, `Abbot
Kidderminster and monastic studies', Downside Review 47 (1929), 198±211. Knowles, Religious
Orders, iii. 93±4.
20
A. Jessop (ed.), Visitations of Norwich, 1492±1532, CS 2nd ser. 43 (1888). Bowker shows
some correlation between size and good order for Lincoln, though it is not wholly consistent:
M. Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland 1521±47 (Cam-
bridge, 1981), 17±28.
21
P. Heath (ed.), Bishop Geoffrey Blythe's Visitations, ca. 1515±25, Staffordshire Record Soci-
ety, 4th ser. 7 (1973), pp. xxxviii±xxxix, liii.
48 The Traditional Order
In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland the old orders of the Benedictines and
Cluniacs played a very insigni®cant part in regular life. They were visible
only where Norman in¯uence had penetrated in signi®cant ways: and they
rarely functioned in the role of cathedral chapter as so commonly in Eng-
land.22 On the other hand the Cistercians and Premonstratensians and other
`reformed' Benedictines were spread far more evenly across Britain and
Ireland and not exclusively con®ned to the wilderness. The spiritual colon-
ization of upland Wales owed much to the Cistercians: yet in Scotland, and
in lesser measure in Ireland, there seems to have been a willingness to found
houses wherever convenience, and the support of patrons, justi®ed it.23
The Cistercians lack the appearance of stability and internal growth that
characterizes the Benedictines, oscillating between internal decline and de-
termined attempts at revival. The former state was often explained by ad-
verse external circumstances. In Ireland it was reported at the end of the
®fteenth century that all forty-four houses, with the two exceptions of
Dublin and Mellifont, were impoverished by warfare and desolate.24 The
Welsh Cistercian houses had great dif®culty in recovering from the crises of
the early ®fteenth-century Glyndw à r rebellions: indeed only Strata Florida
and Tintern were in a reasonably healthy state on the eve of the Reforma-
tion.25 The Scottish Cistercian houses were heavily concentrated in the
Borders, and were physically vulnerable even before the sustained crisis of
the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1540s.26 A part of the decay, however, was
more internal to the order: charges of moral and institutional transgression
were common in Ireland and Scotland, and not absent from Cistercian
visitations even of the great English houses. The struggle to sustain the
conventual life in what were often adverse economic conditions created by
the choice of environment often defeated the smaller houses: Grace Dieu in
Wales, for example, was valued at only £19 at the dissolution, had two
monks, and had long been in trouble for failure to pay appropriate dues.27
On the other hand, there are signs both of continuing Cistercian
strength and of attempts at spiritual renewal. There were houses that
recruited well at least until the 1520s: Cleeve Abbey in Somerset offers a

22
There is only one Irish example of a capitular monastery staffed by Benedictines: that at
Down. There were only three Benedictine houses in Ireland and seven in Scotland by the
dissolution period. A. Gwynn and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (1970).
I.B. Cowan and D.F. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland, 2nd edn. (1976).
23
R. Cooper, Abbeys and Priories of Wales (Swansea, 1992), 57±8.
24
B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge,
1974), 16±38.
25
G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 72±7.
26
M. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries: Monastic Life in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1994),
26±7.
27
Knowles and Hadcock, Religious Houses: England and Wales, 120.
 The State of the Clergy 49
good example. There was also one vigorous monastic leader in the shape
of Marmaduke Huby, abbot of Fountains, great builder, and energetic
political leader of his movement. Under his leadership the number of
professed monks at Fountains rose from twenty-two to about ®fty-two.28
Since the houses of these orders were exempt from visitation, and were
still formally linked to the founding establishments in France via the gen-
eral chapters of CõÃteaux, it was always a possibility that new life would be
breathed into the collectivity of houses through externally generated reli-
gious renewal. There were attempts at regulation in all three realms in the
early sixteenth century. In Ireland there was what Bradshaw describes as a
¯ickering attempt to resuscitate the Cistercians, with two zealous abbots
of Mellifont leading the efforts, but little was achieved.29 Scotland wit-
nessed a rather more sustained renewal: visitations orchestrated by CõÃteaux
became more regular after 1500, the general chapter was willing to sup-
port abbots elected by their own monks against royal nominees, albeit
unsuccessfully, and in 1531 there was a famous visitation by Simon Postel,
abbot of Chaalis, which issued in general reforming instructions to the
order.30 The English province was more isolated from CõÃteaux than its
Scottish counterpart, but visitations by provincial commissaries continued,
and Huby's vigilant eye ensured that reform was not wholly neglected.31
These efforts at discipline and improvement did not occur in a political
vacuum. In both England and Scotland the monarchy and the legates, for
their own purposes, intervened to encourage reform in the orders. In
1497 Henry VII urged support for Cistercian reform and praised the
monastic life: half a generation later Wolsey as legate sought to override
exempt jurisdictions and undertake his own programme of change.32 The
Scottish monarchy more consistently intervened in the affairs of the Cis-
tercians, most obviously when James V actually requested the abbot of
CõÃteaux to send a reforming visitor in 1531.33

28
R.W. Dunning, `The last days of Cleeve Abbey', in C.M. Barron and C. Harper-Bill
(eds.), The Church in Pre-Reformation Society (Woodbridge, 1985), 58±67. Knowles, Religious
Orders, iii. 29±37, 39±50.
29
Bradshaw, Dissolution, 33, 36±7.
30
Cowan and Easson, Religious Houses: Scotland, 26.
31
C.H. Talbot (ed.), Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at CõÃteaux, 1442±1521, CS
4th ser. 4 (1967), 83, 97±8, 120, 123. The English Premonstratensians, closely supervised in the
early sixteenth century by Bishop Redman, provide a parallel case of the concern for reform
from above. At least ten of the twenty-nine houses seem to have been consistently exemplary in
behaviour, with few glaring de®ciencies elsewhere: Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 39±51.
32
A. Goodman, `Henry VII and Christian renewal', in K. Robbins (ed.), Religion and Hu-
manism, SCH 17 (Oxford, 1981), 117. P. Gwyn, The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas
Wolsey (1990), 273±4.
33
R.K. Hannay and D. Hay (eds.), The Letters of James V (Edinburgh, 1954), 187, 202,
210±11. Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 35±8.
50 The Traditional Order
Some parts of the Cistercian order may have suffered from that very
disposition to colonize the wilderness that was central to St Bernard's
original vision. Lay support, both political and economic, was more likely
to be directed to the orders in their midst, especially the friars and the
urban monasteries. Robert Aske's hymn of praise to the monasteries can
be read as indicating continuing general enthusiasm for the great houses at
the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, but recent historians have suggested
that there is a dearth of supporting evidence for this proposition.34 A
greater danger for all the old monastic orders was creeping laicization of
the material assets of a house. As so often, this was revealed at its most
extreme in Ireland: to quote Bradshaw, `dilapidation, rather than con-
cubinage, must be considered the most characteristic aberration of late
medieval Irish monasticism'.35 It was routine in areas of Irish, or Anglo-
Norman, hegemony for local magnate and local abbot to be kin-related,
or at least deeply bound together by the clientage system, and for leases
and property therefore to pass readily from the latter to the former.36 The
Scottish system of commendation had some of the same results, though
the commendators themselves remained clerics and were not so automat-
ically under magnate control. In the Scottish case the shift to the feuing of
church lands after the 1520s secured for the laity a control of church
wealth that had previously been unthinkable.37 As always, the closer polit-
ical control exercised by the crown in England made it more dif®cult for a
crude secularism to ¯ourish without its assent, yet lay identities with the
abbeys were extended through long leases and stewardships. These rela-
tionships had some value in providing the monasteries with protectors,
and indeed voices for the defence when the ®nal challenge came. It also
ensured that there were local men well placed to ®nish the work of
appropriation once the crown had decreed an end to the orders.38
The debate about spiritual vitality of British monasticism is as old as the
dissolutions themselves. A part of the problem in providing convincing

34
C. Cross, `Monasticism and society in the Diocese of York, 1520±1540', TRHS 5th ser. 38
(1988), 131±45. R. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001),
47±50.
35
Bradshaw, Dissolution, 27.
36
They could, indeed, be one and the same person, like Rory MacDermot, who died in
1568, and who had been both the lord of Moylung and the abbot of the Premonstratensian
house of Lough Key for sixty years. The Annals of Loch Ce praise him as chief and plunderer,
not as churchman: K.W. Nicholls, Gaels and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972),
109.
37
Dilworth, Scottish Monasteries, 21±4, 39 ff., though Dilworth is properly cautious about a
simpli®ed reading of creeping secularism. For an older and more robust condemnation of
contemporary practice see G. Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960), 2±4.
38
J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1969), 19±20, provides a useful summary of
these issues.
 The State of the Clergy 51
responses lies in the manner of posing the question. There is no absolute
standard to which to appeal for a judgement upon proper monastic spir-
ituality, and the best that historians can usually do is to appeal to the zeal
of the founding fathers and the dynamic thrust of the young movements
of reform from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. Thereafter, runs one
side of the argument, there was a steady glissade towards, at best, middle-
aged complacency; at worst, downright abandonment of the original
ideals. But a functional spirituality, suitable to its social environment, may
not require the white heat of the evangelizing zeal of a St Bernard. If the
monasteries continued to provide the cycle of canonical prayer and
avoided moral depravity or extreme secularism it might be argued that
they served with an appropriate spirituality. This is the essence of a famous
complaint from the black monks against Wolsey's attempted reforms in
the 1520s: few nowadays, they argued, wished to live lives of extreme
austerity, and if all monasteries had to follow the example of the Carthu-
sians, Bridgettines, and Observants, they would soon be depopulated.39
The clear inference was that such austerity was not essential to an effective
life as a regular. It is an approach that carries some conviction, given the
diverse strengths of the Benedictines. But diversity, and its accompanying
ease with the secular world, carried its own risk, particularly that of a loss
of the uniqueness of the monastic calling. It is easy to argue that laymen
valued the monasteries: English will evidence, for example, places them
explicitly within the economy of prayer for the dead.40 It is less clear that
they appreciated the uniqueness of the monasteries, as against the various
other agenciesÐfriaries, guilds, confraternities, and chantriesÐthat could
provide similar spiritual service. Alternative focuses of devotion were
readily available when the attack on monasticism began. Scottish evidence
also suggests an acceptance of a continuing role for the monasteries, yet
little sense of their centrality in the religious life of the nation. When the
Reformation crisis ®nally came it was the friaries, not the monasteries,
which were attacked, the latter were largely left to atrophy in a new and
hostile climate of belief.41
Among the claustral orders it remains almost obligatory to single out, as
did the black monks' petition, the unusual role of the Carthusians and
Bridgettines. They arrived late upon the English scene, and did not in¯u-
ence Scotland, Ireland, or Wales at all, with the exception of one Charter-
house at Perth. Even in England the powerful in¯uence of the Carthusians
39
W.A. Pantin (ed.), Chapters of the English Black Monks, 2 vols., CS 3rd ser. 47, 53 (1933,
1937), ii. 123±4.
40
J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 1±18.
41
See for example M.B. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation (E. Linton, E. Lothian,
1997), 12, 126±8. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation (1982), 39±43.
52 The Traditional Order
was regionalized, with London and Yorkshire as the most important
centres, and the Bridgettines remained con®ned to their one royal founda-
tion at Syon. But it is commonplace to argue that this limited number of
houses had an in¯uence out of all proportion to their size, both because of
the powerful example of their spirituality and because their royal and elite
patronage enabled them to do much to determine the tenor of lay piety at
the heart of the political regime. The tragic end of the London Charter-
house, and the heroic resistance to Henry VIII's will by a scattering of men
from all the houses, tends to magnify their in¯uence in historical hindsight:
it does not gainsay it. Knowles, in a telling comparison, relates the Bridget-
tine house to Port Royal, the great centre of French Jansenism.42 The
importance of these orders, apart from the sheer vitality of their spiritual
life, obviously derives from their proximity to laymen and women, and the
strength of their example despite the demands of enclosure. They were in
the position to preach, write, and, in the case of the Bridgettines, to act as
confessors in ways that helped to determine late medieval spirituality.43
The process of transmission is beautifully encapsulated in the story of a
Passion devotion recorded in a ®fteenth-century text. The cycle of devo-
tion emanated from the London Carthusians, whence it was transmitted to
Mount Grace in Yorkshire. A monk sent it to a pious parish priest, who in
turn shared it with his parishioners. One husbandman in his turn used the
meditations, and was so grateful that they revived his ox, that he went and
requested a full copy in writing from the monastery.44 The vulnerability of
these godly houses, especially those in London, lay in their close identity
with the court. Syon and Sheen, in particular, were treated by monarchs as
extensions of their own spirituality, and unlike the husbandman, they were
not always humbly and unobtrusively grateful for the activities of their
ghostly advisers.45 While all the evidence suggests that the monks and nuns
themselves were extraordinarily adroit at avoiding worldly entanglement,
assumptions were made about their loyalty and gratitude, and about their
willingness to serve the interests of the crown, which proved in the crisis to
be misplaced.
The story of the powerful in¯uence of the Charterhouses and Syon is
one of individuals as much as orders, and we might note two elements

42
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 215.
43
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 212±40. M. Beckwith, `The Bridgettine Monastery of Syon,
with Special Reference to its Monastic Usages', University of Oxford D.Phil. (1975).
44
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400±1580 (New Haven,
Conn., 1992), 296±7. The story is taken from a ®fteenth-century Passion devotion, the `Revela-
tion of the Hundred Paternosters'.
45
W.N. Mackay, `Sheen Charterhouse from its Foundation to its Dissolution', University of
Oxford D.Phil. (1992).
 The State of the Clergy 53
that seem to mark them off from the more general monastic movement.
The ®rst is that there is reasonably sustained evidence of late vocations
among those entering these houses, at least in the last generations and in
London. This means that a number of the Carthusians and the advisers of
Syon came late to their vows, often with university training, or know-
ledge of the secular Church, behind them. Late vocations were, of course,
not unknown elsewhere, and in particular the taking of the habit as a form
of spiritual retirement was widely accepted. But for the Carthusians the
commitment of mature men who were equipped intellectually and spir-
itually to defend the order was a particularly important development.46
The second is that the nuns of Syon, and in lesser degree some of the
Carthusians, were distinguished by high social status. This has long been
known, but only recently has the signi®cance of this situation been under-
lined by careful research on the wider corporation of nuns. Barbara Harris
has shown that few aristocratic women entered nunneries in the century
before the Reformation: of 958 nuns in the dissolutions lists, only thirty-
six can be shown to have come from noble or knightly families, while in
the whole century fewer than a hundred seem to have been destined by
families for the cloister. This lack of enthusiasm for placing elite daughters
in convents underlines the distinctiveness of Syon, where such women
were relatively common. It must be assumed that it was through this one
house that the ideal of enclosed female spirituality was made visible to the
leaders of early Tudor society.47
Enclosed orders continued to play a part in late medieval society, and
even the oldest and most traditional possessed some residual cultural vital-
ity. Yet only the few houses of the Carthusians seem to have possessed the
inner strength to play a major role in the Reformation crisis. Individual
monks, forcibly released from the cloister, sometimes became dynamic
adherents either of religious change or of Catholic tradition, but their
numbers were limited and the majority simply melted into the new envir-
onment of parochial livings and marginal chaplaincies. Of more interest
for the narrative of religious change is the situation of the friars. The
mendicant orders possessed characteristics that made them more visible
actors in the story of late medieval religious behaviour and indicated that
they would play signi®cant roles in the Reformation drama. Although the
®rst religious fervour of the four main orders had in some measure been
dissipated by the late fourteenth century, they continued to be shaken by
more vigorous winds of external and internal change than did the en-

46
Mackay, `Sheen Charterhouse', 163 ff.
47
Beckwith, `Bridgettine Monastery of Syon', 69±70. B. Harris, `A new look at the Refor-
mation: aristocratic women and nunneries, 1450±1540', JBS 32 (1993), 89±113.
54 The Traditional Order
closed orders. The friars had embedded themselves ®rmly in the urban
landscape of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and their close integration
into local communities meant that they were able to in¯uence and be
in¯uenced by patterns of lay pietism.48 Their preaching role seems to
have continued with some vigour until the eve of the dissolutions, as did
their capacity to annoy the secular Church with their attacks on posses-
sioners and worldly clerics. The last notable crisis provoked by such
preaching in England occurred in the 1460s, when Carmelite preaching in
London led to appeals to Rome and the imprisonment of the head of the
order, but Archbishop Morton was still fulminating against them in the
1480s.49 Henry Standish's support for the royal cause against claims of
clerical immunity in 1515 is consistent with this tradition. Episcopal
preaching licences for the 1530s indicate that friars remained the key to
sermon-giving: Archbishop Lee of York, for example, licensed twenty-
nine preachers in 1534, twenty-six of them mendicants.50 Secondly, the
urban positioning of the friars and their growing participation in the
economy of prayer for the dead seems to have made them the focus of
more enduring lay benefaction than the monasteries. This seems to be
true whether elite giving or that of ordinary townspeople is studied.
Thirty-three per cent of Kentish knights and 27 per cent of esquires left
bequests to the friars in their wills in the century after 1422. In Salisbury
40 per cent of ®fteenth-century wills gave to the friars; in Norwich it was
44 per cent of wills made between 1370 and 1532, though the percentages
declined in the last two decades before the Reformation; in York it was
33 per cent in the last three decades. London is particularly interesting
because the proportion giving to mendicants in their wills was actually
increasing on the eve of the break with Rome.51
The presence of the friars in the universities also maintained their vital-
ity and their access to religious debate. The greatest days of the Francis-
cans and Dominicans at Oxford had passed by the later ®fteenth century,
and there were no ®gures to rival the opponents of FitzRalph or Wyclif.
48
For general overviews see Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 52±9; Bradshaw, Dissolution, 8±16;
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 44±8; Williams, Wales and Reformation, 73.
49
F.R.H. Du Boulay, `The quarrel between the Carmelite friars and the secular clergy of
London, 1464±1468', JEH 6 (1955), 156±74. C. Harper-Bill, `Archbishop Morton and the
Province of Canterbury', JEH 29 (1978), 12.
50
S. Wabuda, `The Provision of Preaching during the Early Reformation, with special
reference to Itineration, c.1530 to 1547', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1991), 89. The same
was true in Worcester diocese, where almost all the thirty-six preachers in these years were
friars.
51
P.W. Fleming, `Charity, faith and the gentry of Kent, 1422±1529', in A.J. Pollard (ed.),
Property and Politics (Gloucester, 1984), 48±9. Brown, Salisbury, 44±5. Tanner, Norwich, 119.
D. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 227. S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford,
1989), 73±4.
 The State of the Clergy 55
Yet the studia remained large, and investigation of surviving library evi-
dence suggests that the orders remained open to new ideas.52 In Scotland
the young universities drew heavily upon the resources of the friars: at
St Andrews, for example, a new Dominican house was built with money
left by Bishop Elphinstone in 1516.53
The rise of the observant movement was of crucial importance for the
Franciscans and in¯uenced the Dominicans and Augustinians to a lesser
degree. Observantism was not native to the British Isles: its concerns for
close observation of the rule, and adherence to the spirit of mendicancy,
was developed mainly in France and Italy in the late fourteenth century.54
By the third decade of the ®fteenth century Franciscan and Dominican
observance made a limited appearance in Ireland, and by the end of the
century the movement assumed major signi®cance.55 In Scotland obser-
vants from the Low Countries became in¯uential and established new
foundations after the 1460s.56 In England, by contrast, observantism was a
deliberate royal introduction in the 1480s, and only led to the foundation,
or reallocation from the conventuals, of seven Franciscan houses.57 It is
important ®rst to note that, despite different patterns of foundation, there
was a common belief in all three realms in the spiritual merits of the
observant movement. Moreover the spiritual vitality of observantism on
the eve of the Reformation meant that it routinely presented an obstacle
to those who sought to initiate change. Even without major constitutional
or doctrinal upheaval, the observants could be an irritant to authority.
They adhered in extreme form to the general fraternal identi®cation with
the authority of the papacy, so much so that when Wolsey endeavoured
to visit the Observants of Greenwich nineteen took the extreme step of
¯eeing from their monastery in disobedience to their superior rather than
accept an intermediary power.58
These shared and very signi®cant characteristics of the observant move-
ment have to be compared with differences that were to have considerable
long-term import for the religious history of the British Isles. The sharpest
contrast is between England and Ireland: in the former observantism was
52
Dobson, `Religious orders', 556±65.
53
Cowan and Easson, Religious Houses: Scotland, 119±20.
54
D. Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order (Rome, 1987), pt. iii.
55
T.S. Flynn, The Irish Dominicans, 1536±1641 (Dublin, 1994), 3±8. F.X. Martin, `The Irish
Friars and the observant movement in the ®fteenth century', Proceedings of the Irish Catholic
Historical Commission (1960), 10±16.
56
J. Durkan, `The observant Franciscan province in Scotland', Innes Review 35 (1984), 51±5.
57
A.G. Little, `The introduction of the observant Friars into England', Proceedings of the
British Academy 10 (1921±3), 455±71.
58
K.B. Brown, `Wolsey and ecclesiastical order: the case of the Franciscan Observants', in
S.J. Gunn and P.G. Lindley (eds.), Cardinal Wolsey: Church, State and Art (Cambridge, 1991),
178±218.
56 The Traditional Order
introduced only as a consequence of royal patronage, and was sustained
mainly by the desire of Edward IV and Henry VII to mirror the fashionable
religiosity of the Burgundian and French courts.59 It became a formidable
spiritual force and a major challenge to Cromwell, but numbers were
always relatively low and there was no general movement from other parts
of the mendicant orders into its ranks. Various explanations have been
advanced by historians: the most convincing perhaps is that the English
orders, including the Franciscan conventuals, were in reasonable spiritual
health, had high educational standards and had maintained much of the
original vision of poverty. Reforming ministers of the conventuals had
been defeated in the early ®fteenth century, and thereafter the pressure for
change was limited. The English province had no dif®culty in sustaining
the decree of Eugenius IV that conventual houses should not be given to
the observants: the three that changed did so by royal ®at.60
The situation in Ireland presents a total contrast. There the arrival of
observantism seems to defy all the generalizations normally applied to the
mendicants. The early houses, and the attempts at reform within existing
structures, were all concentrated in Gaelic regions, especially in Ulster and
Connacht. This meant that it grew in rural areas and that its patrons were
local lords, like Cormac, Lord of Muskerry, who founded Kilcrea in 1465
and was buried in the choir in Franciscan habit, or Margaret O'Brien, wife
of Ewghan O'Rourke, who founded Dromahair in 1508. As the movement
spread it attracted all three of the main mendicant orders, and led to internal
reform within existing houses, in many cases happily defying the papal ban
on the transfer from Franciscan conventuals to observants. It reached urban
areas and the Pale from the west, presumably as a result of the zeal of existing
houses. And the scale of change, although not unique in Europe, was very
marked: by the 1530s two-thirds of the sixty Franciscan houses were obser-
vant and, while only eight Dominican and eight Augustinian houses had
explicitly changed, in these orders there was no clear division into two
categories and the in¯uence of observantism was more widely diffused. In
addition there was a completely new growth of the Franciscan Third Order
Regular, an order that had evolved from St Francis's confraternity of sympa-
thetic laymen to become a regular grouping in its own right. It may have
had as many as forty houses at the time of the suppression.61
Explanations for this vigorous growth usually revolve around the inherent
attraction which monasticism still held for Irish culture and, more speci®cally,
the racial divisions of the island that prevented a close identity with English-
59
Little, `Observant Friars', 460±1.
60
K.B. Brown, `The Franciscan Observants in England: 1482±1559', University of Oxford
D.Phil. (1986), 20±3, 25±34.
61
Gwynn and Hadcock, Religious Houses: Ireland, 218±67. Martin, `Irish Friars', 13±15.
 The State of the Clergy 57
dominated forms of rule. The historian of the Franciscan Observants argues
that they tended to appear whenever the in¯uence of the English crown
over Irish affairs was in retreat, and that the great attraction of the movement
was that it was free of English jurisdictional interference, which dogged the
steps of the existing orders. One of the rare moments when the advance of
observantism seemed to be halted was when a Gael, William O'Reilly, was
elected as the conventual provincial in 1469, and a number of friars who had
migrated petitioned to return to their old houses.62 The Dominicans
suffered particularly from this English intrusion: there were con¯icts in the
late ®fteenth century about the election of the ®rst Irish provincial, and only
in 1536 was Paul III ®nally persuaded to rescind a bull of 1397 which had
prohibited the establishment of a separate Gaelic province.63 It is interesting
that the Carmelites, who seem to have been least in¯uenced by observant-
ism, had managed with dif®culty to hold on to their own provincial and
from about 1440 were always governed by an Irishman.64
While the impulses governing Irish observant expansion may in part have
been political, the consequences were to produce a movement that was still
energetically expansionist, and still had powerful popular support in Henry
VIII's reign. Its learning, where it can be tested as in the surviving library
catalogues for Youghal, was impressive, if essentially traditional, and its one
scholar of international repute, Maurice O'Fihilly, was a vigorous defender
of the interests of Rome.65 All of this constructed a powerful form of
opposition to the attempts at religious change of the 1530s and to the dissol-
ution itself. One of the great `what ifs . . .' of the failed Irish Reformation
must be, what if there had been no mendicant revival, or it had been
con®ned largely to those areas within the ambit of the English crown?
This sharp contrast between England and Ireland has left aside Scottish
mendicancy. In purely quantitative terms Scotland conforms more closely
to the former than the latter. The Franciscan Observant movement ar-
rived rather belatedly and was sustained by crown initiative. The August-
inians barely existed north of the Border: the Dominicans, who were an
important group, for a time rested on the laurels of having achieved
provincial separation from England in 1481, although under John Adam-
son, provincial in 1511, they were exposed to more sustained reform
and a new friary was established at Dundee. As in England, Franciscan

62
P. Conlan, Franciscan Ireland (Dublin, 1988), 22±6, 94.
63
Flynn, Irish Dominicans, 4±8.
64
P. O'Dwyer, `The Carmelite Order in pre-Reformation Ireland', Proceedings of the Irish
Catholic Historical Commission (1969), 57±8.
65
J. Coleman (ed.), `A medieval Irish library catalogue', Bibliographical Society of Ireland 2
(1921±5), 111±20. Bradshaw, Dissolution, 15±16, though it should be noted that O'Fihilly was
essentially an international ®gure, rarely resident in his native land.
58 The Traditional Order
Observance owed most to royal effort: the crown established the ®rst four
houses and then James IV played some part in the erection of a further
®ve.66 The movement remained true to the general traditions of mendi-
cancy by working in and through the towns and playing a part in the
revival of learning through the universities: no attempt was made to plant
houses in the desert and there is little evidence of active support from the
Scottish nobility, highland or lowland. Yet these changes are not always
given the weight they deserve in general narratives of the period: the
limited revival seems to have imparted enough vigour to the friars to
make them major actors in the Reformation drama. A quite dispropor-
tionate number of those Scots charged with heresy in the 1530s and 1540s
were friars, but so also were some of the most energetic defenders of the
status quo. On one side one may quickly list John Willock, Alexander
Dick, Alexander Seton, and Friar Rough, on the other John Black, the
formidable defender of orthodoxy in Edinburgh, or Robert Veitch, head
of the Greyfriars in Stirling who was still proselytizing for Catholicism in
the 1580s.67 It is often pointed out that it was the friaries, not the monas-
teries, which the zealous reformers of the 1540s and 1550s attacked and
`cast down'. This was partly a result, no doubt, of proximity: it also
re¯ects the conviction that such establishments were a particular threat to
the progress of reform: they were assailed because they were effective.68
The mendicant orders in England were suppressed before there was
much likelihood of popular aggression against them and, with the excep-
tion of the observants, they vanished with no more than the occasional
brave sermon of protest. But they shared with the Scottish houses com-
plex individual responses to reform. The wholehearted adherence of a
Richard Ingworth or George Browne to the interests of Cromwell can be
compared to the sustained opposition of the Greenwich Observants, and
of men like Friar Peto and Friar Elstow who returned to refound their
house under Mary.69 In all of this we should, of course, perceive self-
interest at work in very adverse circumstances: we should also note what
Dobson calls the radical subjectivism of the friars that made them sit
uneasily under the rule of obedience.70 To return for a moment to the

66
Cowan and Easson, Religious Houses: Scotland, 13±14, 114±34. Cowan, Scottish Reformation,
44, 47, 92, 101.
67
M. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981), 114±15, 175±6. M.J. Yellow-
lees, `The ecclesiastical establishment of the Diocese of Dunkeld at the Reformation', Innes
Review 36 (1985), 81.
68
D. McRoberts, `Material destruction caused by the Scottish Reformation', in D. McRo-
berts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation (Glasgow, 1962), 418±20.
69
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 438±40.
70
B. Dobson, `Mendicant ideal and practice in late medieval York', in P.V. Addyman and
V.E. Black (eds.), Archaeological Papers from York Presented to M.W. Barley (York, 1984), 111.
 The State of the Clergy 59
Greenwich Observants who ¯ed from Wolsey's visitation: we have em-
bodied in this both the passionate commitment to the rule that legitimated
the deepest possible protest under obedience, and the passion that could
transmute that commitment into essentially anarchic action. Clement VII,
intervening rather ineffectually in the quarrel, urged `for gods sake to use
mercy with those friars, seeing that they be as desperate beasts past shame,
that can lose nothing by clamours'. It was from such devout `beasts' that
some of the most powerful advocacy on both sides of a fractured Chris-
tendom was to emerge in subsequent decades.71

The Seculars
The circumstances of the secular Church are far less amenable to succinct
summary than those of the regulars. The clergy were everywhere, and so
intimately a part of the everyday religious life of all sixteenth-century
people that to separate them and categorize them under the institutional
headings normally employed by historians is to risk misunderstanding of
their essential roles. They were those men who particularly represented
the divine to the rest of the society: who marked out a Christian society
by the discharge of their specialist functions and by the calibre of their
lives.72 Such duties and expectations could be said to be perdurable, but
the late medieval priest was also set apart by high claims made for his
mediatory powers, which constructed him, according to the Sermones Dis-
cipuli, as `higher than kings, more blessed than angels, the maker of his
Maker'.73 The priest as celebrant and the priest as confessor were essential
to the laity. Through the sacraments men gained access to spiritual reward,
and in the central drama of the Mass experienced Christ in their midst.
Through the cycle of confession, contrition, and penance they sought
their own spiritual cleansing, and also often the purging of the community
in the interests of charity and harmony.74 These were not simple tasks.
They might be practically burdensome when they involved the cure of
souls in a parish with a large population or problems of access: at Doncas-
ter the chantry commissioners under Henry VIII reported that there were

71
Brown, `Wolsey', 225±9.
72
On the expectations contemporaries had of the seculars see Marshall, Catholic Priesthood;
Swanson, `Problems'; P. Heath, English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (1969), 1±18;
M. Bowker, The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495±1520 (Cambridge, 1968), 110±13.
73
J. Herolt, Sermones Discipuli (Rothomagi, 1511), fo. 111. Herolt's sermons were left in
more English clerical wills of this period than the Bible: Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 89.
74
The role of confessor, in particular, was more doctrinally charged in the period before the
Reformation than it had previously been: J. Bossy, `The social history of confession in the age
of the Reformation', TRHS 25 (1975), 21±38; L.G. Duggan, `Fear and confession on the eve of
the Reformation', ARG 75 (1984), 153±75.
60 The Traditional Order
`2000 houseling people' and excessive work for seven priests.75 They were
certainly spiritually burdensome, since they set the priest apart, making
him both mediator between the divine and human and the exemplar to his
¯ock. As the Imitation of Christ expressed it: `When a priest sayeth Mass he
honoureth God; he maketh angels glad; he edi®eth the church; he helpeth
the people that be living, and giveth rest to them that be dead, and
maketh himself part-taker of all good deeds.'76
Sixteenth-century laymen may not have subscribed to the boldest
claims of this high clericalism, but they had ®rm expectations of their
rectors, vicars, or curates, chantry priests or guild chaplains. These could
be summarized as the ful®lment of First Table duties by the faithful per-
formance of the sacraments, and Second Table duties via a high standard
of behaviour in society. The limited English visitation material available
for the early sixteenth century seems consistently to show that parishioners
complained most vocally about sexual and social misconduct on the one
hand, and about failure to provide adequate services on the other. In the
well-known returns for Lincoln diocese between 1514 and 1521 there
were twenty-®ve accusations of sexual misconduct, and seventeen cases of
complaint that services were not provided, small numbers when over
1,000 parishes were visited, but nevertheless more signi®cant than other
issues.77 The sort of complaint made in 1480 against the priest of Kingston
chapel in Bere Regis, Dorset, that he was not administering the sacra-
ments every day, as was customary, is characteristic of lay anxieties.78 Less
common is the sort of positive af®rmation of priestly behaviour shown in
the case of Sir Robert Rhind, chaplain of Perth, who in 1547 was given
the freedom of the city because he was so conscientious in saying the
Mass that `the whole community and neighbours, who rise early to their
labours' could hear it.79
Laymen were con®dent in their judgements partly because they rou-
tinely hired and ®red their local clergy. Parochial curates and guild chap-
lains were often directly accountable to the laity, especially in urban
communities.80 They were recruited because of their `good fame' and
dismissed for incontinency or incompetence. Ipswich parishioners referred
to one of their inadequate chaplains as `little Sir John' and at Ayr in 1534
the burgh council took the extreme step of ®ring all their hired chaplains

75
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 13.
76
E.J. Klein (ed.), The Imitation of Christ from the First Edition of an English Translation Made
c.1530 by Richard Whitford (New York, 1941), 234: section from the Latin text is bk. 4, ch. 5.
77
A.H. Thompson (ed.), Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517±1531, LRS 33, 35 (1940±4).
78
Brown, Salisbury, 80.
79
D. McKay, `Parish life in Scotland, 1500±1560', in McRoberts, Scottish Reformation, 90.
80
J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 24±5.
 The State of the Clergy 61
81
`till their dispositions improved'. It is from wills that the clearest evi-
dence emerges of what such men expected, especially of the `specialized'
priests that they proposed to employ to sing Masses after their death. Peter
Marshall's striking ®nding was that over 80 per cent of his large sample of
testators leaving money for Masses between 1500 and 1546 speci®ed in
some form the moral quali®cations they expected in their employees.
Priests were to be `honest', `virtuous', and `of good conversation', indicat-
ing attitudes which risk being labelled quasi-Donatist, since they sit uneas-
ily with the Church's ex opere operato understanding of the sacraments.
Orthodox opinion moreover insisted that the priest did not need to be in
a state of grace to render the sacrament ef®cacious: to argue otherwise
would be to accept heretical criticism stretching from the Donatists to the
Lollards.82 More put the point most explicitly in his Dialogue Concerning
Heresies when he argued that the sin of the priest does not detract from
the nature of his liturgical actions, making the sacri®ce `to God as accept-
able and to us as available for the thing itself, as though it were offered by
a better man'.83 In practice laymen seem to be untroubled by the doctrinal
tension, accepting the automatic ef®cacy of sacramental grace without
surrendering a sense that their priests should be men of virtue.84
Priests who had this access to the sacred were also liable to be the focus
of lay expectations that migrated between the territories of `orthodox'
belief and `magic', territories that were not neatly separated in contempor-
ary perception.85 The Welsh clergy, whose reputation as cursers was sol-
emnly recorded by Tyndale, also had more positive roles as the creators of
charms.86 Salt and water blessed by the priest before the Mass each Sunday
offered protection against the supernatural and disease. Holy girdles and
other items blessed in this way, unlike the sacraments themselves, derived
their power from the consecrator. Sacred things were possessed of object-
ive power and, through the mediation of the priesthood, a world of sacra-
mentals was constructed which provided necessary protection and
security.87 The obligation of the clergy in all of this was to remind laymen
81
D. MacCulloch and J. Blatchly, `Pastoral provision in the parishes of Tudor Ipswich', C16J
22 (1991), 458±9. J. Durkan, `Chaplains in late medieval Scotland', RSCHS 20 (1979), 96.
82
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 47±55.
83
CWTM, vi. 299.
84
Tanner, Norwich, 109. Swanson, `Problems', 861.
85
Ideas about the relationship between `belief' and `magic' in late medieval Europe have, of
course, generated a vast literature. Most pertinent for the idea of separation between `elite' or
`of®cial' belief and popular practice are J. Delumeau, Catholicism from Luther to Voltaire (1977),
and K.V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971).
86
G. Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1976), 333±5.
87
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400±1580 (1992),
281±2. For a good analysis of the signi®cance of sacramentals in a European context see
R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (1987), 5±8.
62 The Traditional Order
of the nature of sacred power. One Irish cleric in the early sixteenth
century approved the use of holy water to cure cattle, provided that it
ensured men did not turn to wise men, but that they linked prayer and
trust in divine grace to the process of sprinkling.88 Dependence on these
offerings of the Church, as Eamon Duffy has forcefully argued, was not a
matter of a popular set of beliefs manifesting themselves primarily in some
Celtic `twilight' zone, but in some measure the possession of all the
devout and orthodox.89 But belief in the automatic ef®cacy of holy things
was always close to a mechanistic belief in the power of priestly actions to
guarantee good fortune. And priests at times nurtured this belief, as in the
rubric of the prayer recorded in Salisbury Cathedral: `whosoever sayeth
this prayer following in the worship of God and St Rock shall not die of
the pestilence by the grace of God'.90
The other enduring obligation of the priesthood was that of instruction: a
particular duty enjoined upon those who had the cure of souls, but in a more
general sense a duty inherent in the of®ce as part of the imitatio christi. The
classic statement of this obligation in medieval England was Archbishop
Pecham's provincial decree of 1281, ordering parish priests with cure of
souls to expound the faith four times a year to their ¯ock. They were to
explain the fourteen articles of faith, the ten commandments and their
gospel gloss, the seven works of mercy, principal virtues and deadly sins, and
the seven sacraments.91 Pecham's decree continued to be seen as a useful
tool of parochial instruction until the eve of the Reformation. It was re-
issued in England with of®cial support at the York Convocation of 1518,
Fox of Winchester and West of Ely were still encouraging its use in the last
generation before the Reformation. In 1526 all priests in the Diocese of
Armagh inter anglicos were instructed to acquire a copy.92 Ignorantia Sacerdo-
tum had earlier been translated into English by Bishop Stafford of Bath and
Wells for the bene®t of `simplex sacerdos'. Pecham's decree also distinguished
clearly between the forms priestly instruction should normally take: a four-
fold division of preaching, catechizing, confession, and the expounding of

88
R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997),
6, 68.
89
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 266 ff. See also J. Bossy, `Holiness and society', PP 75 (1977),
110±37.
90
W.K. Clay (ed.), Private Prayers Put forth by Authority during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
(PS, Cambridge, 1851), 392 n. 1.
91
Heath, Parish Clergy, 86±103. Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 86±107.
92
R.M. Haines, Ecclesia Anglicana: Studies of the English Church in the Later Middle Ages
(Toronto, 1989), 134±5, 161. R. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and People during the English Refor-
mation (Oxford, 1979), 199±200. F. Heal, `Parish clergy and the Reformation in the Diocese of
Ely', Cambridge Antiquarian Society 66 (1977), 149. H.A. Jefferies, `Diocesan synods and convoca-
tions in Armagh on the eve of the Tudor Reformation', Seanchas ard Mhacha 16/2 (1995), 122.
 The State of the Clergy 63
sentences of excommunication. Not only was the decree regularly reiterated
in subsequent legislation, it became the basis of several of the sermon cycles
or homilies produced to support the practice of preaching in late medieval
England.93 There was, most famously, John Mirk's Festial, with its depend-
ence upon the stories of the Golden Legend, but also the quatuor sermones and
the sermones discipuli. All feature with some regularity in clerical willsÐten
copies of the sermones discipuli for example in Peter Heath's study of Norwich
clerical wills between 1500 and 1550Ðand evidence for their use can also be
found occasionally in sources such as clerical commonplace books.94
Lay expectations are more dif®cult to penetrate here than in the case of
the sacramental duties of the priesthood: no complaints of failure by the
clergy to preach are found in Warham's 1511 visitation of Canterbury and
only a handful in the great Lincoln visitations.95 Wills, though they reveal
a scattering of bequests for sermons, inevitably subordinate instruction to
the singing of Masses. They also rather rarely included a desire for preach-
ing even in elaborate arrangements for funerals and commemorations.
And when sermons were requested, they seem to have been perceived
less as forms of edi®cation than as suffrages; a functional equivalent to
Masses for the dead.96 It would, however, be unwise to move from the
proper assumption that instruction by the clergy concerned the laity less
than the sacraments, to an argument that preaching and teaching were
rejected. Pulpits became a regular feature of late medieval churches: Eng-
land has over 200 surviving examples, and their ubiquity at the time is
suggested by the 1529 Devonshire will of John Lane, who left money to a
hundred neighbouring churches `to pray for me in their pulpits'.97 Where
iconography survives, it indicates that teaching as well as prayer was sup-
posed to be undertaken from these structures. It is clear that some laymen
had high expectations of the preaching of some seculars, as well as regu-
lars. While the friars may have been the traditional vehicles for powerful
evangelizing sermons, urban elites also congregated to hear star preachers
whatever their background.98 The comment of the great fourteenth-

93
G.H. Russell, `Vernacular instruction of the laity in the later Middle Ages in England',
JRH 2 (1962±3), 98±119.
94
Heath, Parish Clergy, 87±9.
95
K.L. Wood-Legh (ed.), Kentish Visitations of Archbishop Warham and his Deputies, 1511±1512,
Kent Records 24 (1984). A.H. Thompson (ed.), Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517±1531,
LRS 33, 35 (1940±4).
96
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 57. Wabuda, `Provision of Preaching', 183±4. One London
document of the late ®fteenth century rated sermons as less ef®cacious than Masses but prefer-
able to `private or vocal prayer'.
97
R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 1989), 237.
98
M. Dowling, `John Fisher and the preaching ministry', ARG 82 (1991), 287±309.
64 The Traditional Order
century preacher Thomas Brinton, that it was best to preach in London
for there men were more discerning and better informed than in the rest
of the realm, has many sixteenth-century resonances.99 In a more modest
market centre, King's Lynn, Margery Kempe had recorded in the early
®fteenth century `how fast the people came running to hear the
sermon'.100
There has been a tendency in recent studies of sixteenth-century reli-
gion to privilege the role of the secular clergy as spiritual mentors and
agents of the divine at the expense of the evaluation of their institutional
experience. While such an approach may have the merit of enabling us
better to see how contemporaries wished their clergy to behave, and even
on occasions how the latter performed, the institutional experience cannot
be neglected. Men were trained, recruited, organized, paid, and discip-
lined as part of a system which must have appeared almost as divinely
ordained as the Mass or the rites of passage. Certainly one of its most
questionable features, adherence to hierarchy and hence to acceptance of
sharp differences of wealth, privilege, and responsibility, was so integral
that none except a few radically heretical voices saw ®t to challenge it. A
rather larger number of voices questioned the level of the institution's
involvement with the lay world: the most effective of these were often
found in the ranks of the clergy themselves. However, the realities of
power inevitably led to accommodation with the existing order of things.
Training and recruitment of the clergy has recently been judged a
moderate success story in Britain and Ireland in the half-century before
the reformations. The output of a graduate elite from the universities in-
creased, especially in Scotland, where the new foundations of St Andrews,
Glasgow, and Aberdeen began to make their mark on the upper ranks of
the clergy.101 Some of this elite found its way into parochial livings, even
in Ireland, where graduates were a very small minority of the secular
clergy; the names of those gaining bene®ces in the poor diocese of Dro-
more in the 1530s include a number of those styled magister.102 In the
great diocese of Lincoln laymen, perhaps the group of patrons least con-
cerned with educational quali®cations, were appointing 11.5 per cent
graduate clergy by the early sixteenth century.103 At the apex of the
99
Ibid., 293.
100
S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen (eds.), The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS os 212 (1940), 149.
101
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 15±20.
102
H.A. Jefferies, `The Diocese of Dromore on the eve of the Tudor Reformation', in
L. Proudfoot (ed.), Down: History and Society (Dublin, 1997), 128.
103
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 42±6. It is important to note that those who are magistri, that is
who should have covered the full masters' course to graduate, are not necessarily a majority of
those who had attended university. Estimates suggest that only a third of matriculands may have
proceeded to a BA and only a sixth to an MA.
 The State of the Clergy 65
English system, in London, at least 60 per cent of those holding bene®ces
between 1521 and 1546 were graduates.104 This last ®gure was, however,
wholly exceptional. For the vast majority, who did not have access to
university, little changed in this period, though it may be that some exten-
sion in formal educational provision slightly shifted the balance between
the numbers attending school and those who had to manage merely with
informal local resources. Moran's study of educational provision in late
medieval York shows a sharp increase in both reading and grammar
schools between 1501 and 1548.105
General recruitment levels to the priesthood were high for most areas
that can be adequately documented. The average of 187 ordinations per
year for seculars in York diocese in the period from the 1470s to the 1530s
is unusual, but in Lincoln the average between 1496 and 1520 was 105
elevated to the priesthood, though this includes regulars as well as secu-
lars.106 At Lich®eld the ®gure for major and minor orders together was
always over 100 between the 1470s and 1530. Only in some southern
dioceses, notably Chichester, do there seem to have been periods of slug-
gish recruitment, and even there a vigorous bishop like Robert Sherburne
could increase numbers in the last generation before the Reformation.107
Beyond England it is impossible to calculate recruitment levels from or-
dination lists, and numerical success has to be inferred from the availability
of clergy to ®ll chantries and collegiate posts, as well as parochial bene-
®ces.108 It would seem that on the eve of the Reformation many English
dioceses had a ratio of unbene®ced to bene®ced clergy of between one
and two to one, and the same may be true in favoured parts of Scotland.
In some of the northern English sees there was an even higher ratio in
favour of the unbene®ced.109 Although the percentage of the unbene®ced
had fallen in most areas between the ®gures available from the 1377 poll
tax and those for the 1522 subsidy, local examples still sometimes show

104
S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 58. An average ®gure for these
decades would probably be nearer to 30 per cent.
105
J.A. Moran, `Clerical recruitment in the Diocese of York, 1340±1530', JEH 34 (1983), 53.
106
Moran, `Recruitment', 49±51. Bowker, Secular Clergy, 38±9.
107
Swanson, Church and Society, 34±6. S. Lander, `The Diocese of Chichester: Episcopal
Reform under Robert Sherburne and its Aftermath', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1974),
190±5.
108
See for example Sanderson, Ayrshire, 12±14. J. Durkan, `Chaplains in late medieval Scot-
land', RSCHS 20 (1979), 91±103.
109
In Lancashire and parts of Durham, for example, the ratio of the bene®ced to parochial
curates was nearer to 4:1, because of the nature of the large upland parishes: C. Haigh, Reforma-
tion and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), 32±3. L.M. Stevens-Benham, `The
Durham clergy 1494±1540: a study of continuity and mediocrity among the unbene®ced', in
D. Marcombe (ed.), The Last Principality: Politics, Religion and Society in the Bishopric of Durham,
1494±1660 (Nottingham, 1987), 17.
66 The Traditional Order
extraordinary concentrations of clergy, like the case of Holy Trinity, Hull,
where there were seventeen chaplains in 1525.110 In Scotland, with its
roughly 1,200 parishes, it has been estimated that there were approxi-
mately 3,000 clergy in the mid-sixteenth century. Here also the burghs,
each with only one central parish, could display great concentrations of
clerics, like the forty or so who served the altars in St Giles, Edinburgh.111
Among the various complaints about the state of the Church, absence of
manpower is one that rarely features in Britain or Ireland. When parochial
livings, or even bishoprics in the case of Ireland, were vacant or untended
the explanation was usually economic or bound up with complex legal or
personal issues, rather than a consequence of shortage of recruits.112
Indeed the problems of the Church were if anything those created by an
excess of specialists: long delays before preferment was available; fragmen-
tation of parochial funding among too many individual priests; insecurity
because of the temporary nature of much employment. The energy that
the Gaelic clergy of Ireland and of the Scottish Highlands put into `Rome
running' offers another possible indication of an imbalance between
supply and demand in the clerical estate.113 Thomas More, as so often,
acknowledged the problem, and then turned it to critical purpose: `there
is more plenty of priests than of good men . . . Now runneth every rascal
and boldly offereth himself for able.' In Utopia there were only thirteen
priests in each city.114
Those `bold' men who pursued the priesthood as a means of social
mobility were all too liable to be disappointed. The Church adhered to
degree and hierarchy almost as ®rmly as lay society. Degree was af®rmed
by the separation of ordersÐminor from major, the diaconate from the
priesthoodÐand by the patterns of of®ce holdingÐrural dean, arch-
deacon and bishop, canon and dean. Less formally hierarchy was af®rmed
by the gap that existed between the bene®ced and the unbene®ced, and
between the ordinary parochial clergy and those whose quali®cations or
connections marked them out as likely pluralists, sinecurists and of®ce-
holders. There is plenty of evidence that the bene®ced and unbene®ced
were sharply differentiated by contemporaries, even when the context of

110
A.K. McHardy, `Careers and disappointments in the late medieval Church: some English
evidence', in W. Sheils and D. Woods (eds.), The Ministry, Clerical and Lay, SCH 26 (1989),
113±17. `The East Riding clergy in 1525±6', YAJ 24 (1917), 73±4.
111
Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, 16. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation, 28±9.
112
M. Zell, `Economic problems of the parochial clergy in the sixteenth century', in
R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds.), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500±1800 (Leicester,
1981), 19±44.
113
J. Bannerman, `The Lordship of the Isles', in J. Brown (ed.), Scottish Society in the Fifteenth
Century (1977), 230.
114
CWTM, vi. 1. 301; iv. 227. Brigden, London, 46.
 The State of the Clergy 67
115
of®ce was not particularly signi®cant. The English subsidy commission-
ers of 1522, for example, always distinguished between the two categories
when making their returns.116 This careful separation seems largely to
conform to social and economic reality. Chaplains, stipendiaries, and
chantry priests gained bene®ces rather rarely in England in the early six-
teenth century: in the archdeaconry of Leicester, for example, only nine
curates found a bene®ce between 1520 and 1547. In Kent, just over 10
per cent of the clerical proletariat gained bene®ces between 1538 and
1550.117 If the chaplain or curate did succeed in crossing this crucial status
division, it often took many years to do so. Of the twenty-six curates
recorded in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1500, eight had received livings by
1526, but in several cases the process had taken more than ten years.118
Degree and differentiation were also visible in the forms of employment
offered to the unbene®ced. They might have some security of tenure as
perpetual curates or as vicars pensionary, but were more likely to be
salaried, paid either by an absentee cleric or by the laity to perform various
duties. This could, in some cases, threaten the deference that ecclesiastics
believed was due to the clerical estate.119
It is more dif®cult to pattern the difference between the `ordinary' in-
cumbent, whether rector or vicar with cure of souls, and the rest of the
secular clergy. The obligation to reside, to exercise cure, provides one
measure of contrast, sinecurists in orders being common enough in all parts
of the British Isles, but most routinely found where appropriation of bene-
®ces was at its densest: in Scotland, Wales, and parts of Ireland. A second
measure of contrast comes from the system of licensing non-residence for
those who did have cure of souls. Margaret Bowker's close study of this
process in Lincoln diocese from 1514 to 1521 showed that those licensed
were usually those able for whatever reason to pursue wider ®nancial ad-
vantage. More than a third of the absentees were graduates, a signi®cantly
larger group than that of all graduates appointed to bene®ces, the largest
number were `pure' pluralists, but many were also studying at university, or
were in service to crown or private individuals. Among the Lincoln plural-
ists many cannot now be distinguished by any pattern of connection or
career, but there were signi®cant concentrations of men linked to the great
families of the diocese, and personnel of cathedrals or collegiate

115
Zell, `Parochial clergy', 21±30.
116
J. Cornwall, Wealth and Society in Early Sixteenth Century England (1988), 87±94.
117
J.F. Fuggles, `The parish clergy in the Archdeaconry of Leicester, 1520±1540', Transactions
of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 46 (1970±1), 26.
118
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 71±2.
119
Heath, Parish Clergy, 24±6. I B. Cowan, `Vicarages and the cure of souls in medieval
Scotland', RSCHS 16 (1963), 123.
68 The Traditional Order
120
churches. Pluralism and absenteeism in a Scottish diocese like Dunblane
can be linked to much the same pattern of ambitionÐmen serving the
crown, or acting as agents of the nobility: graduates absent by virtue of aca-
demic status.121 The Lincoln categories serve to identify the types of com-
mitment undertaken by the secular clergy who were either wholly detached
from their bene®ces or might, in an infelicitous piece of language, be called
`partially parochial'. The last might be absent for speci®c periods, or at
particular points in their careers; they were often compelled into residence
by the efforts of their ordinaries. They also included many whose intentions
were to continue to evade the mundane business of parochial ministry.122
It is impossible to attach any effective statistics to what these absentees
were doing with their time. The various categories of diocesan of®cial,
and especially the prebends of cathedrals, undoubtedly absorbed many
livings. In any one diocese this group might not be unduly weighty. If we
take, for example, a medium-sized diocese like Chichester, which had 278
bene®ces, its senior personnel can be readily identi®ed as the bishop, two
archdeacons, the chancellor, registrar, a small number of proctors and
apparitors to staff the diocesan courts, a dean, and thirty prebendaries,
only between two and six of the last normally being residentiaries.123
Since the diocese happened to have only two collegiate churches one
might reasonably conclude that it was hierarchical without being unduly
top-heavy. It has been estimated that there were ®fty-®ve `internal plural-
ists' drawing revenues from the Chichester parishes. Of course there were
also some absentee rectors and vicars engaged far more widely in affairs of
church and state, unconstrained by diocesan boundaries. An extreme
example was Thomas Brent, a lawyer and chaplain to Henry VII, who
held six rectories or vicarages (not always in conjunction) plus prebends in
Warwick and London, the deanery of South Malling and the hospital of
St Bartholomew by Rye. What Brent was actually doing during a long
career was to serve at court, as almoner and executor to Elizabeth Wood-
ville as well as royal chaplain. Chichester seems to have been fortunate in
having only a limited number of rich bene®ces that were attractive to this
sort of pluralist, though even a handful of examples, like the livings in the
gift of the earl of Arundel, contributed to absenteeism.124 When large

120
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 85±109.
121
J.R. Todd, `Pre-Reformation cure of souls in Dunblane diocese', Innes Review 26 (1975),
28±34.
122
Jefferies, `Dromore', 125.
123
Thomson, Early Tudor Church, 60±72. S. Lander, `The church courts and the Reformation
in the Diocese of Chichester, 1500 to 1558', in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds.), Continuity and
Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England, 1500±1642 (Leicester, 1976), 215±23.
124
Heath, Parish Clergy, 51±2. Lander, `Chichester', 211±12.
 The State of the Clergy 69
parishes produced signi®cant wealth the scale of absenteeism was greater:
in Lancashire in 1500 83 per cent of the graduate incumbents were non-
residents.125
English dioceses seem to have been able to sustain this third tier of the
clergy, partly because of the number of its parishes, over 9,000, and the
relative wealth of many of its bene®ces. There had also been some decline
since the fourteenth century in the number of clergy occupied by secular
tasks, thereby limiting one reason for absenteeism.126 In Scotland, where
one specialist estimates that more than half the clerical body was still
employed upon secular tasks in the early sixteenth century, the situation
was far worse. There appropriation of 86 per cent of rectories and at least
56 per cent of perpetual vicarages released men and money from the
parishes on a grand scale.127 A good idea of the pattern at diocesan level
can be gained by looking at Dunkeld, where the cathedral staff has been
estimated at ®fty in a diocese comprising sixty-nine parish churches.128
The Scots were also proportionately far more susceptible to absenteeism
created by the development of collegiate churches than their English
counterparts. With thirteen cathedrals and forty collegiate churches to
sustain in a system with just over 1,000 parishes, many of them poor, strain
was inevitable. The Irish churches in some ways resemble the Scots: ap-
propriation of bene®ces was the norm and in English Ireland was used
largely to sustain a body of cathedral clergy who employed stipendiary
curates to serve their cures. St Patrick's, Dublin, was the very model of an
English secular cathedral, but its prebendaries had few lands and had to
maintain themselves almost entirely from the income of the parishes.
Bishop Montgomery's optimistic assertion of 1609 that the bene®ces were
bestowed on those training for priest's orders was far from the truth.129
Even though the laicization of parts of the bureaucracy of the late
medieval state may have curtailed the employment opportunities of some
of the well-connected clergy, there was still the expectation that with
proper training and contacts men would prosper in non-parochial jobs.

125
Haigh, Lancashire, 29.
126
R.N. Swanson, `Learning and livings: university study and clerical careers in late medi-
eval England', History of Universities 6 (1986±7), 81±103.
127
Macfarlane, `Scottish church', 39. I.B. Cowan, `Some aspects of the appropriation of
parish churches in Scotland', RSCHS 13 (1959), 204±5.
128
Yellowlees, `Dunkeld', 74±5.
129
J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin', University of Dublin, Trinity College
Dublin, Ph.D. (1997), 38±42. The Irish situation was complicated by marked differences be-
tween Gaelic areas and those of Norman settlement, but also between Ulster and the West;
K.W. Nicholls, `Rectory, vicarage and parish in western Irish dioceses', Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquities of Ireland 101 (1971), 53±84. P.K. Egan, `Diocesan organisation: Clonfert',
Proceedings of the Irish Catholic Historical Commission (1956), 4±8.
70 The Traditional Order
And for the graduates of the century before the Reformation proper train-
ing meant study of the laws. In Oxford and Cambridge, in St Andrews,
Aberdeen, and Glasgow, the higher degrees in law ¯ourished in some
cases at the expense of theology, which could be undertaken only after
the long initial training in arts.130 Arts training in itself was no necessary
guarantee of success within the Church. As a group the lawyers were
highest on the ladder of promotion. Hence a steady pressure, despite the
founders' intentions, to shift colleges like New and Magdalen at Oxford
towards a fellowship dominated by lawyers. The Scottish colleges also
showed a marked preference for canon law studies, though at Glasgow
John Major's efforts to revive theology at the expense of the laws did bear
fruit.131 The absence of universities in Ireland did not prevent a number
of potential clergy from studying abroad, usually at Oxford in this period,
and they seem almost universally to have studied law if they had moved
beyond a master's degree.132 This training, and the rewards within and
without the Church that routinely accrued to those well quali®ed in the
laws, may have been of little relevance to the parishes, but as we have
seen it may well have fostered litigiousness on the part of the higher clergy
that was at odds with ideas of charity and good pastoral service. It also
risked depriving the Church of active preachers and controversialists if
there were a threat to orthodoxy.133
It was the ®nancing of the clergy that inevitably produced some of the
closest and most dif®cult encounters with the laity, since it was the latter's
tithes or teinds that sustained much of the grand edi®ce of the possessioner
Church. The higher clergy took what most regarded as their share of the
offerings of the faithful through the system of appropriated rectories or
vicarages. The burden of appropriations on parish ®nance was signi®cant,
and the pressure was increasing in the century before the Reformation.
Between 1291 and 1535 the number of appropriated parishes in England
rose from under 2,000 to about 3,300, most of the late increase coming
from grants to new educational foundations or collegiate churches. Yet this
high ®gure still left two-thirds of English livings unappropriated, with a
higher percentage in some of the prosperous dioceses in the south and
east.134 Scottish appropriation followed a similar pattern, though it was the
130
Catto and Evans, Late Medieval Oxford, 526±9, 582. There is an extensive debate on the
career prospects for university graduates in the late medieval period: see Swanson, `Learning
and livings', 85±7.
131
J. Durkan and J. Kirk, The University of Glasgow 1451±1577 (Glasgow, 1977), 132±3, 158±62.
132
A. Lynch, `Religion in late medieval Ireland', Archivium Hibernicum 36 (1981), 4±6, 11±12.
133
R.W. Hays, `Welsh students at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the Middle Ages',
Welsh History Review 4 (1968±9), 325±61. Six per cent of Oxford's recorded alumni were from
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales before 1500.
134
Swanson, Church and Society, 44.
 The State of the Clergy 71
rapid growth in university colleges and the fashion for collegiate founda-
tions that produced massive expropriations. Some Scottish appropriations
redirected funds away from the parish on a scale rarely found in England.
The vicarage of Dunblane, for example, was worth 320 marks Scots, and
formed part of the dean's prebend; its vicar pensionary had an income of
£8, £2 less than the basic sum thought necessary by the Scottish church
for its clergy before the in¯ation of the sixteenth century became signi®-
cant.135 The experience of the Welsh and Irish churches was not dissimilar.
In Wales some 65 per cent of all bene®ces were appropriated by the 1530s,
and once again the late grants were often made to diocesan of®cials or
colleges, to men of the secular Church rather than the regulars. In the
1490s the bishop and chapter of St David's had one of those temporary
moments of self-denial that indicated the unease of the possessioners. No
more parochial revenues were to be taken since `the sustenance of the
sowers of the Divine Word is taken away and want evidently increases
every day among our subjects to the detriment . . . of our whole diocese of
St David's'.136 Ireland inter anglicos experienced similar pressures to those in
Wales, with 85 per cent of bene®ces appropriated in the diocese of
Dublin.137 In the Gaelic lands, tithe had long been divided between those
who served the cures and the hereditary `erenaghs' and `coarbs', or heads
of the tenants occupying church lands within the parish. The erenaghs
might simply be laymen, but many of them were priestly families and
supplied many of the parishes with their incumbents. Such lineages could
hold important livings at the diocesan level as well, an interweaving of
layman and priest, parish incumbent and higher clergy, that makes it dif®-
cult to make comparisons with other parts of the British Isles.138
Those who were left to staff the parishes, usually vicars or curates, had to
manage either upon the share of the tithe left to their portion, or on a
combination of salary and offerings. Taxation rarely produces the best of
sentiments in either payer or payee, and the pre-Reformation Church pro-
vides plenty of cases of clerics who, unlike Chaucer's parson, were not slow
to `cursen for their tithe'.139 Occasionally a confrontation about tithe could

135
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 59±61. J. Kirk (ed.), The Books of the Assumptions of the Thirds
of Bene®ces, British Academy Records in Economic and Social History 21 (1995), p. xxxii.
136
Williams, Welsh Church, 168±9.
137
Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 297. A. Ford, `The Protestant Reformation in Ireland',
in C. Brady and R. Gillespie (eds.), Natives and Newcomers: The Making of Irish Colonial Society,
1534±1641 (Dublin, 1986), 68, gives the lower ®gure of 60 per cent for all dioceses inter Anglicos.
138
K. Simms, `Frontiers in the Irish churchÐregional and cultural', in T. Barry, R. Frame, and
K. Simms (eds.), Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland (1995), 177±8. Nicholls, `Rectory', 66.
139
For ®gures and interpretations see B.L. Woodcock, Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the
Diocese of Canterbury (1952), 86. Tanner, Norwich, 6. R. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and People
during the English Reformation (Oxford, 1979), 101±40.
72 The Traditional Order
assume principled proportions even though no other evidence of hetero-
doxy was involved. David Straiton of Woodstone in Angus was burned for
heresy although his principal fault was to challenge the right of the prior of
St Andrews to the teinds of ®sh.140 The issues more usually at stake in tithe
litigation are not so much the principle of payment, or even resentment
against those parts of the payment that went to absentees, but arguments
about methods of assessment. New crops, such as saffron in eastern England,
were guaranteed to produce dispute and evasion, and problems could be
created by awkward parochial boundary arrangements or shared commu-
nity rights. As a generalization English evidence seems to suggest that there
was a greater likelihood of tithe disputes in or near urban communities than
in fully rural parishes. The extreme manifestation of this is the problem of
London, where the personal, rather than agricultural (or predial), nature of
tithe offerings made them dif®cult to collect. Between 1520 and 1546 over a
third of city parishes are known to have had tithe disputes that reached
court, and, while the individual causes of con¯ict were very diverse, under-
lying many was the problem of an equitable agreement of dues in a complex
commercial environment.141 Elsewhere real acrimony was often it seemed
generated by anxieties that were only partially ®nancial: as in the case of the
parson of Swainsthorpe in Norfolk who collected his tithe on horseback,
with his supposed mistress on the pillion.142 The other aspect of tithe litiga-
tion that is worth noting is that cases often did not involve lay±clerical
relations, but were between incumbents and clerical appropriators. A third
of the cases that came before the Norwich consistory court in the early
sixteenth century were of this last type.143
The evidence of tithe disputes does not support an argument that the
laity were disposed to any fundamental rejection of clerical rights. The
same may broadly be true of sources of revenue that in aggregate were
common to more of the parochial clergy than tithe: offerings and mortu-
aries. Mortuaries seem to have been the most unpopular of the various
dues that could be demanded by clerics, and this not merely because of
Hunne's case.144 There are other examples of solemn protests such as that

140
F. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1989), 22.
141
Swanson, Church and Society, 212±15. J.A.F. Thomson, `Tithe disputes in later medieval
London', EHR 53 (1963), 15±16. Brigden, London, 52.
142
Heath, Parish Clergy, 149.
143
Houlbrooke, Church Courts, 146.
144
Richard Hunne challenged the London clergy on three separate issues in 1511±12. The
most famous of the three was his refusal to give his dead son's winding sheet as mortuary fee to
the parson of St Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel, for burying the child. The complexity of the
case, and Hunne's mysterious death in the Lollards' Tower, have produced a wide range of
historical interpretations. Good recent discussions are in Brigden, London, 98±103 and
W.R. Cooper, `Richard Hunne', Reformation, 1 (1996), 221±51.
 The State of the Clergy 73
made by the inhabitants of Kingston-on-Thames in 1514 that the present
incumbent `hath taken and daily taketh and withholds the old ancient
custom with us in taking of mortuaries otherwise than hath been taken
and used time out of mind'.145 Disputes about mortuary were the most
common source of litigation before the commissary for Buckinghamshire
in the early sixteenth century, and the more limited Scottish evidence
indicates similar resentment.146 Issues included who could claim exemp-
tion, at what rate mortuary could be levied, and in what circumstances
local custom could be modi®ed. The alacrity with which some parishes
opposed mortuaries after the 1529 legislation also hints at earlier resent-
ments.147 Christopher St German, scarcely a disinterested observer, chose
an obvious target when he claimed that `there were few things within this
realm that caused more variance among the people'.148 Yet the payments
of offerings and dues for services rendered seem to have been largely
acceptable, and the clergy must often have adjusted their demands to
customs that were likely to secure good community relations.
Con¯ict about tithes and dues could readily be caused by bad judge-
ment or greed on the part of individual clergy or laymen. If any cause has
to be generalized, however, the most obvious explanation would surely be
that clerical poverty must often have driven the demands of individuals.
The gaping ®nancial gulfs between the possessioner Church and many of
those who served the parishes are readily documented. Some of the most
systematic sources of evidence available to the ecclesiastical historian are
the returns of the 1535 survey the Valor Ecclesiasticus and its Irish equiva-
lent. These can be supplemented for England with the subsidy ®gures for
1522. In Scotland there is nothing so early, but prior to the assumption of
the thirds of bene®ces by the crown in 1561 a general survey of church
wealth was undertaken.149 From these sources historians have been able to
deduce signi®cant evidence of poverty in all parochial systems. In Scottish
parishes, vicars pensionary, the group most easily traced in 1561, were
often paid no more than £6 to £8 Scots, although church councils had
long since established that 10 marks was inadequate, and by 1559 had set a
level of 24 marks as the minimum clerical stipend.150 In Ireland the com-
plex ®gures derived from the Valor show 64 per cent of bene®ces in the

145
Heath, Parish Clergy, 155.
146
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 149±51. Durkan, `Chaplains', 99±100.
147
Whiting, Blind Devotion, 132±3 for Devon cases post-1529.
148
C. St German, `A treatise concerning the division between the spirituality and tempor-
alty', in CWTM, ix. 194.
149
Valor Ecclesiasticus, 6 vols. (Record Comm., 1825±34). Valor Bene®ciorum Ecclesiasticorum in
Hibernia (Dublin, 1741). Cornwall, Wealth and Society. Kirk, Thirds of Bene®ces, pp. xxxii±xxxiii.
150
Kirk, Thirds of Bene®ces, p. xxxii.
74 The Traditional Order
documented dioceses with incomes of under £5 sterling, and no less than
85 per cent worth less than £10.151 £10 is usually taken as the ®gure
necessary to keep an incumbent above the poverty line in England. In
Wales 70 per cent of livings fell below the £10 boundary, though only a
third of these were in the poorest category.152 The bene®ced in England
fared somewhat better, but almost half still apparently fell beneath the
crucial boundary. Moreover the proletariat of chaplains, stipendary
curates, and the like, were poorly paid: the average paid to North Lanca-
shire curates and chaplains in 1524 was £2. 9s. 6d. per annum, while in
the East Riding of Yorkshire it was about £4.153 On the other hand Ken-
tish chaplains averaged £5 to £6 and in general chantry chaplains fared
better, a norm in the south-east of England being £6. 13s. 4d. The only
legislation governing such payments in England was a ®fteenth-century
statute that set the maximum payment for chaplains at £5. 6s. 8d.154
It is more dif®cult to extract full meaning from these ®gures. Two
issues had an obvious bearing on the situation of the parochial clergy. The
®rst is whether the apparent poverty of stipends and bene®ces was re-
¯ected in actual deprivation among the priesthood. Here the availability
of additional income from dues and services not easily quanti®ed has to be
taken into account, as does access to glebe or other forms of exploiting
additional resources. Moreover, cost of living calculations should be a
necessary part of evaluation. It is evident from the English ®gures that it
was more expensive to employ a chaplain in the south-east than elsewhere
and that this must re¯ect in part a difference in cost of living.155 At the
other extreme, the exiguity of Irish livings appears somewhat less grim
when mapped against differentials in cost of living and in the economic
expectations of the rest of the society. Nevertheless, such mitigating
factors do not serve to disguise the reality of clerical poverty. A surplus of
priests, at least in England and Lowland Scotland, helped to constrict pay
rises in a time of in¯ation. Bishop Stokesley of London faced a protest
from local curates in 1531 complaining that `twenty nobles [£6. 13s. 4d.] a
year is but a bare living for a priest, for now victual and everything in
manner is so dear'.156 Studies of wills and inventories of the unbene®ced
in England show some examples of those who by good fortune or ef®-

151
S.G. Ellis, `Economic problems of the Church: why the Reformation failed in Ireland',
JEH 41 (1990), 248±57.
152
Williams, Welsh Church, 273, 285.
153
Heath, Parish Clergy, 173±4.
154
Zell, `Economic problems', 26±7.
155
Zell, `Economic problems', 27. The absence of any attempt to compare wealth creates
problems in the analyses of both Williams and Ellis.
156
Brigden, London, 49.
 The State of the Clergy 75
ciency accumulated some goods, but also plenty of evidence of the sort of
poverty that left behind movables worth only a pound or two.157
The second, perhaps unanswerable, question, is what in¯uence relative
or absolute deprivation had on the quality of spiritual services rendered by
the parish clergy. In some instances, where bene®ces were left empty and
parishes not served, the failures of the system were evident. A handful of
parishes in Kent at the time of Warham's visitation in 1511 were explicitly
stated to be neglected because of the poverty of the living.158 But, as we
have already seen, given available manpower it was unusual to ®nd par-
ishes left without any curate for signi®cant periods. Poverty might also be
associated with failure to maintain the material fabric of the church, and
so provide parishioners with the proper environment for worship. How-
ever, chancels were the responsibility of the most prosperous group of
clergy, the rectors, and it was often rich absentees, rather than residents,
who were most at fault.159 In Ireland the parishes of the Pale and marches
inter Anglicos could only be staffed by appointing Gaelic clergy to ®ll
livings insuf®ciently attractive to the English. The bishops thereby
breached the legal bar against Gaels established in the fourteenth century,
and stored trouble for the future when evangelism for the new faith
needed English-speaking clerics.160 Beyond the acknowledgement of
these identi®able problems contemporaries usually argued about the con-
sequences of poverty from predisposing values. Thus humanists regularly
linked poverty and ignorance as the vices of the parochial system,
regarding the latter as tantamount to neglect.161 Modern historians have,
crudely, divided between those who follow humanist analysis and those
who argue that it was more important that the clergy had a certain stand-
ing in local society, and could perform key sacramental duties ef®ciently,
than that they were well-paid or learned. If we take parochial complaints
against the clergy at face value the latter view has much to commend it,
though two caveats may be in order. Parishioners seem to have been most
inclined to complain about clergy at the two extremes of the hierarchical
system. They assailed the af¯uent possessioners, whether individuals or
monastic appropriators, who neglected church fabric and sometimes failed
to provide proper deputies, and they also challenged the unbene®ced,
whose de®ciencies might indeed at times be associated with that combin-
ation of poverty and ignorance that so troubled reforming humanists.

157
J. Pound, `Clerical poverty in the early sixteenth century: some East Anglian evidence',
JEH 37 (1986), 389±96. Stevens-Benham, `Durham clergy', 21.
158
Visitations of Warham, 133±4, 223±4.
159
The best analysis of the problems of maintenance is in Bowker, Secular Clergy, 125±36.
160
M.A. Lyons, Church and Society in County Kildare, c. 1470±1547 (Dublin, 2000), 74±8.
161
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 213±14.
76 The Traditional Order
The de®ciency of the lesser clergy that apparently most often exercised
the laity was sexual misdemeanour. Having a woman within the house-
hold produced the largest number of comments in Lincoln visitations
between 1514 and 1521, 126 from 1,000 parishes; and even though many
of these women were non suspecte, only twenty-®ve being clearly reported
as undesirable, there was always an edge of anxiety in the presentation of
women associated with priests.162 Chichester produced 15 per cent of
parishes in which there was complaint about clerical incontinency in the
®rst decade of the sixteenth century.163 Other ®gures were lower: like the
1499 visitation of Suffolk that produced only ®ve complaints of immoral-
ity among 478 parishes.164 Small numbers of complaints of this last kind
have been taken to indicate either that there were few delinquents, or that
failures did not trouble the laity. In the case of England, the latter suppos-
ition is unconvincing: popular literature was replete with examples of
jesting hostility against lewd priests, and Protestant polemic found a rich
vein of existing complaint on which to build when it attacked the deprav-
ity of the clergy.165 Laymen who denounced speci®c priests often did so
in unequivocally hostile form. The constable of St Breock, Cornwall,
described Sir Matthew Poldon as having `ordered his life and living con-
trary to the laws of Almighty God'.166 The parson of Shawell in Leicester-
shire was attacked by one of his parishioners as `a man of evil
disposition . . . [an] evil example of all good Christian people'.167 Even
Tyndale thought that the English had assimilated the Hildebrandine
reforms more fully than much of Europe and that laymen would take
their clergy to law `to put away their whores'.168
It may therefore be that the actual standards of clerical chastity re¯ected
in the visitation records possess some objective realityÐanxiety displayed
whenever there was a hint of vice; a small, but deeply troublesome
number of cases of real scandal. On the distinction between general sexual
misdemeanour and concubinage there is ambiguity in the records. Histor-
ians can cite plenty of cases in which de facto toleration of `hearthmates'
and their bastards seems to have occurred, Bishop Bonner being the most
famous offspring of such a union in this period.169 Yet Peter Marshall is

162
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 116±20.
163
Lander, `Church courts', 218.
164
C. Harper-Bill, `A late medieval visitation: the Diocese of Norwich in 1499', Proceedings
of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 34 (1977), 35±48.
165
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 143±6. H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reforma-
tion: Precedent, Policy and Practice (Aldershot, 2000).
166
Whiting, Blind Devotion, 129.
167
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 152.
168
H. Walter (ed.), Doctrinal Treatises of William Tyndale (PS, Cambridge, 1848), 41.
169
Haigh, Lancashire, 50.
 The State of the Clergy 77
surely correct to argue that any display of unchastity was thought by many
to pollute the sacraments that offered access to salvation.170 There are still
some troubling problems to consider, especially in relation to the apparent
chasm between English standards and those of the rest of the archipelago.
If the historian possessed merely the surviving evidence from provincial
councils and episcopal decrees it might be legitimate to assume that the
same standards of sexual discipline were being enforced throughout these
islands. Wolsey's provincial constitutions of 1518 reiterated a decree of
William Green®eld that threatened women living as priests' concubines
with excommunication and possible denial of ecclesiastical burial.171 Irish
provincial and diocesan synods sternly forbade concubinage and individual
priests were sometimes admonished before these meetings. The Scots
chose to use the decree of the Council of Basel against concubinage as the
®rst of their reforming measures to be enacted by the 1549 Provincial
Council.172
But differences of cultural assumption were displayed on this issue more
fully than in any other within late medieval Catholicism in Britain and
Ireland. In Gaelic Ireland, in much of Scotland, and in Celtic Wales con-
cubinage, or rather what is better described as civil marriage, remained a
norm for the secular clergy.173 Its commonplace quality is suggested by the
fact that at least three Welsh Tudor bishops, William Glyn, Richard
Davies, and Rowland Meyrick, were the product of such unions.174 This
has to be understood, as Irish historians have argued most fully, in terms of
the different laws of inheritance, which produced for both laity and clergy
an acceptance of concubinage contracts throughout the culture. So, when
the reforming friars began in the ®fteenth century to write against unchaste
clergy in Ireland, one of their key targets was the dowry that gave `wives'
their security and status. The uphill nature of their task is suggested by the
comment of the Annals of Ulster on Cathal O Â g Maguire, canon of Clogher
and father of at least twelve children, who died in 1498: `[a] gem of
purity . . . [a] dove for purity of heart and [a] turtle for chastity'.175 The
legal position of clerical companions seems almost as critical in Wales,
where both English and Welsh law gave them some of the security that

170
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 142 ff.
171
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 670; iv. 47±8.
172
M.A.J. Burrows, `Fifteenth-century Irish provincial legislation and pastoral care', in
W. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, SCH 25 (Oxford, 1989), 57.
T. Winning, `Church councils in sixteenth-century Scotland', in McRoberts, Scottish Reforma-
tion, 338.
173
Simms, `Frontiers in the Irish church', 194±9. J. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland
(Dublin, 1972), 186. Lyons, County Kildare, 78.
174
Williams, Welsh Church, 339±46.
175
B. MacCarthy (ed.), Annals of Ulster, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1895), iii. 429.
78 The Traditional Order
made it dif®cult to displace them. Married clergy and their children were
recognized as tenants of the bishop of St David's, and the children of `civil'
unions were acknowledged as legitimate in most legal documents. In Scot-
land it was also recognized that the relatively easy acceptance of the legal
position of priests' children remained an encouragement to concubinage:
the councils of 1549 and 1552 endeavoured to restrict the dower and land
that might be left to such offspring.176 One possible measure of the differ-
ence between England and its neighbours might be the papal dispensations
from the stigma of illegitimacy required by sons of priests if they were to
take orders: between 1447 and 1492 there were 578 such dispensations for
Ireland and Scotland, and only eight for England. The last ®gure is quite
unconvincing, if only because the papal collectors in England were some-
times given power to dispense from the stigma of bastardy, but it articulates
a gap in social behaviour that was real enough.177
But explaining the existence of `civil' relationships with reference to
inheritance practices is frankly curious, if neighbouring territoriesÐeven
in the case of Wales territories that are part of the same ecclesiastical
jurisdictionÐwere ®lled with devout Christians horri®ed by the pollution
of sacramental processes. At the very least life in the borderlands must
have been odd: for example, David ap John of Monmouth, ministering in
the Diocese of Hereford, persisted in keeping a concubine and prompted
the unusually drastic step by the ecclesiastical authorities of warning pa-
rishioners not to attend his Masses.178 Edmund Earl Grey, marcher lord of
Dyffryn Clwyd in the ®fteenth century, was so disturbed by concubinage
among the clergy that he conducted his own campaign of moral puri®ca-
tion.179 When the difference of custom and habit was known it could be
explained away by dismissive assumptions about racial superiority, which
is what More seems to be doing with the Welsh example in his Dia-
logues.180 Priests in English Ireland seem to have been deeply troubled by
any idea of clerical marriage, which they associated with Gaelic `degener-
acy'.181 Similarly the attacks of the friars on Irish and Welsh practice could
be used to articulate difference, though in this case of spiritual, rather than

176
D.H. Robertson, The Reformation in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1909), 62, 71±7. McKay, `Parish
life in Scotland, 1500±1560', in D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation (Glasgow,
1962), 95.
177
Lynch, `Religion in Ireland', 8, notes that the readiness of Rome to grant dispensation
undermined the efforts of Irish councils to eliminate concubinage.
178
Thomson, Early Tudor Church, 169.
179
R.I. Jack, `Religious life in a Welsh marcher lordship: the lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd in
the later Middle Ages', in C. Barron and C. Harper-Bill (eds.), Church in Pre-Reformation Society
(Woodbridge, 1985), 153±7.
180
CWTM, vi. 1. 309.
181
Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 144, 209.
 The State of the Clergy 79
racial, standards. But we might also use the evidence of Wales and Ireland
to raise questions about how general the anxiety about the pollution of
clerical sexuality was even in England. Sobriety, good neighbourliness,
and diligence were the qualities men most sought in their priests. These
must most often have been allied with assumptions about chastity, but it
was surely relationships ¯aunted before the parish in de®ance of good
order that were the prime cause of offence. When a priest like Robert
Becket of Lincoln diocese had to be presented by his parishioners for
offering the wife of William Tailboys a noble to go to bed with him the
churchwardens sounded reluctant to prosecute because the man served
the cure well and `doth his duty'.182 The English laity was undoubtedly
acculturated to the Hildebrandine reforms, and, like many human groups,
found charges of sexual delinquency an important way of demarcating the
pure from the impure. The practice of social relations was more complex,
and the processes of accommodation between the lay and clerical more
malleable than some of the ideological statements of contemporaries
would suggest.
In 1503 the University of Cambridge obtained a bull from Alexander
VI allowing the appointment of twelve preachers who would act as itiner-
ant evangelists, preaching throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland
(there was no mention of Wales). The next year, in a related move,
Bishop Fisher encouraged the foundation of the Lady Margaret preacher-
ship, designed to educate youths who would then `spread the gospel of
Christ throughout the land of Britain with superabundant fruit'.183 The
preacher himself was to provide sermons annually in London, Westmin-
ster, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Finally, in the stat-
utes of the new foundation of St John's College, Fisher planned that there
should be English preaching by the fellowship for the bene®t of the laity.
Behind these moves lay his own fervent conviction that `true faith cannot
be gotten but by hearing of this Word; this hearing of this Word shall not
be had but by means of preaching . . .'184 The breadth of the vision, and its
unusual geographical inclusiveness are impressive. Here the voice of
reformed Catholicism speaks vigorously against the assumption that all
was well with the early sixteenth-century clergy. It is unfashionable to
accept the judgement of the humanists that ignorance and idleness were
the vices of the clergy: instead historians look to institutional weaknesses;
the close interdependence of church and state; the involvement of the

182
Bowker, Secular Clergy, 120±1.
183
Dowling, `John Fisher', 288. C. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1842±52),
i. 260.
184
Dowling, `John Fisher', 294.
80 The Traditional Order
clergy in lay society; the appropriation of parochial resources by the
higher clergy. Various parts of the British and Irish churches exhibited
one or more of these weaknesses: none seems fundamentally to have
challenged the laity's acceptance of the key functions of the priesthood.
On the other hand, this was a church that depended more often on the
intellectual instruction ®rst promulgated in the thirteenth century than on
an acceptance of Fisher's challenge to offer new insight via the scrip-
tures.185 In circumstances of religious change this was to prove a costly
mistake.

185
This was Pecham's decree discussed above, p. 62. In addition to the examples given there
it is interesting to note that Fisher's friend, Bishop West, was still promulgating the decrees in
Ely diocese in 1528: F. Heal, `The Bishops of Ely and their Diocese, 1515±ca.1600', University
of Cambridge Ph.D. (1972), 55.
 3
COMMUNITIES AND BELIEFS

Parish and Guild

Laymen in early sixteenth-century Britain and Ireland could belong to a
series of intersecting and overlapping communities, whose purposes were
wholly or partially religious. The pattern of those communities, and the
extent to which they were generally available, tells us much about the
nature of religious behaviour on the eve of the Reformation. Christian
laymen in this culture were above all corporate souls: members of the
body of Christ, with its visible expression in local structures.1 This in no
way precluded personal devotion, but may legitimately be regarded as
prior to personal piety. Collective Christianity was not, of course, an
unchanging entity, nor were communities necessarily highly functional,
bonded groups dedicated to collective spiritual goals. Contrasts and con-
¯icts are as signi®cant in this analysis as harmony and good order.2 But the
structures remain crucial: they offer a frame of reference that was inescap-
able for contemporaries and is indispensable for historians. Parish and
guild, chantry and household provide a grid on which to map the reli-
gious life of ordinary Christians.3
The parish was the prime expression of this corporate identity for the
vast majority of the populations of the British Isles. The process of paro-
chialization had been completed even in Gaelic Scotland and Ireland
during the thirteenth century and remained largely ®xed up to, and usu-

1
The language of corporate Christians is derived from E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars:
Traditional Religion in England 1400±1580 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), ch. 4.
2
To use the term `communities' is to enter a historiographical mine®eld, see C. Carpenter,
`Gentry and community in medieval England', JBS 33 (1994), 340±3 and B. Short, The English
Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), but it still seems possible to apply this
language to the parish and its sub-units without undue emphasis on some idealized sense of
mutuality. For a very sensible recent discussion see the introduction to A. Shepard and
P. Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manches-
ter, 2000).
3
B. Kumin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish,
c.1400±1560 (Aldershot, 1996), 1±2.
82 The Traditional Order
ally well beyond, the Reformation.4 It provided every layman with his or
her formal association with a mother church, which was almost invariably
the focus for the rites of passage, and for the payment of tithe, and usually
the environment for access to the Mass and the Church's liturgical cycle.
Within the parish church individual Christians experienced the same lit-
urgy wherever they lived and there would have been little overt contrast
between attending worship in the Orkneys, Calais, or Galway. Roger
Martyn of Long Melford, Suffolk, writing at the end of his long life lived
mainly under the new Church, looked back with longing to his Henrician
youth. Then the ceremonial year in Long Melford was marked at every
stage by the singing of the Mass, bell-ringing, and processions. There was
the beating of the bounds at Rogation, bon®res on the eves of the feasts
of St James, St Peter, St Paul and St Thomas.5 In prosperous southern and
midland England the parish church was the repository for a rich array of
vestments, liturgical vessels, paintings, and images to support this ceremo-
niousness. Often it would have been wholly or partially reconstructed in
the century before the Reformation as a suitable setting for worship. In
varying degrees most English parishes seem to have striven to provide a ®t
setting for the Mass and for the corporate expression of religious devotion.
But not every parish was Long Melford, or even its more modest
counterpart, Morebath in Devon, where the accounts of the priest, Sir
Christopher Trychay, show strong corporate piety on the eve of the
Reformation.6 There were the obvious contrasts provided by wealth and
poverty, and the availability of an adequate supply of conscientious clerics.
Parishes also tended to be divided into two categories according to their
regional position. The ®rst was characteristic of the Gaelic territories of
Scotland and Ireland, and in more limited measure of parts of Wales and
lowland Scotland. The second was the normal parish of lowland England,
and parts of Scotland and English Ireland, where the area of the parish was
normally small, and the community nucleated. Despite the formal paro-
chialization of the ®rst type of area, and the construction of the churches
that provided their focus, the parish as community remained relatively
weak. The overwhelming importance of kin relationships in de®ning the

4
On the early history of the parish see for England Kumin, Shaping of a Community, 13±17;
for Scotland, I.B. Cowan, The Medieval Church in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1995), 1±11; for Ireland,
K.W. Nicholls, `Rectory, vicarage and parish in western Irish dioceses', Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 101 (1971), 53±84; for Wales, G. Williams, The Welsh Church from
Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1976), 14±17.
5
W. Parker, The History of Long Melford (1873), 70±3. C. Haigh, English Reformations
(Oxford, 1994), 1±11, and Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 39±41, 137±8.
6
J.E. Binney (ed.), The Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520±1573
(Exeter, 1904). See the important new study by E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and
Rebellion in an English Parish (New Haven, Conn., 2001).
 Communities and Beliefs 83
social structure meant that everyday religious behaviour was largely
focused upon these identities, and indeed parochial boundaries themselves
often seem to have been constructed to conform to ancient family
groups.7 The absence of towns, and often of any signi®cant nucleated
communities, the scattered nature of population, and the need to have
large parochial territories for ®nancial reasons, all contributed to a pattern
of religious behaviour very different to that characteristic of the Anglo-
phone British Isles. The report to the papacy in 1517 on the town of
Clogher offers an extreme image of this contrast. Clogher was inhabited
only in the winter, since its herdsmen practised transhumance, and in the
cathedral, the only stone building, Mass was celebrated only on Sundays.8
This could suggest partly simple neglect, but the point is not so much
absence of basic services in the Gaelic lands as their necessary adaptation
to different geographical and social patterns. In both Ireland and Scotland
these patterns were further complicated by the disposition to build
churches on holy sites associated with the Celtic saints rather than in any
natural territorial centre, and then to use those churches as focuses mainly
for pilgrimage or special festivals.9 It is therefore unsurprising to ®nd that
our fragmentary evidence for the devotional life of the laity is to be found
in the household or friary, rather than in the parochial round. John Bossy's
view that kinship relations often dominated religious behaviour before the
sixteenth-century reformations has not found much support from English
historians, but seems far more pertinent in the context of other parts of
Britain and Ireland.10
The sheer size of parishes in the Celtic lands obviously inhibited the
construction of communities centred on the mother church. The Welsh
uplands, for example, had many parishes of over 20,000 acres.11 In Ireland
there was a marked contrast between areas of Norman and of Gaelic
settlement: Armagh's parishes inter Anglicos averaged somewhat over 2,000
acres, while in the Hibernian deaneries they averaged more than 11,000
acres in all cases.12 Some of the Scottish Gaidhealtachd parishes were
7
K. Simms, `Frontiers in the Irish church: regional and cultural', in T. Barry, R. Frame, and
K. Simms (eds.), Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland (1995), 178±84. I.B. Cowan, `The
medieval Church in Argyll and the Isles', RSCHS 20 (1978), 15±29.
8
M.J. Haren, `A description of Clogher Cathedral in the early sixteenth century', Clogher
Record 12/1 (1985), 52.
9
For a more generally sympathetic view of parochial units inter hibernicos see H.A. Jefferies,
Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations (Dublin, 1997), 62±82. J. Dawson,
`Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland', in A. Duke, G. Lewis, and A. Pettegree (eds.),
Calvinism in Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 243.
10
J. Bossy, `The Counter-Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe', PP 47 (1970),
51±70.
11
G. Williams, Wales and The Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 28.
12
Jefferies, Priests and Prelates, 20, 64±5.
84 The Traditional Order
twenty miles long, and few had settlements of any size as a heart.13 The
English uplands often show a similar pattern: the three great parishes of
the central Lake District measured 188,026 acres between them.14 Lanca-
shire offers the best-known English case: there the large parishes averaged
33 square miles. For comparison we have an average of 4 square miles or
less in the Midland and South-Eastern parishes. Large size was usually
linked to low population density. The dispersed parishes of Carlisle dio-
cese are estimated to have had an average of about 450 inhabitants in
1563.15
The best solution to the problem of isolation was the construction of
chapels of ease. The inhabitants of Newchurch in Rossendale, Lancashire,
described how they had founded a chapelry because the parish church was
twelve miles away and in winter `infants borne to church are in great peril
of their lives . . . and the dead corpses there like to remain unburied at such
times for want of carriage'.16 Such problems were not con®ned to the
uplands: the inhabitants of Hindon in Wiltshire petitioned the papacy for a
new chapel because the woods between it and its mother church, two miles
distant, were ®lled with robbers, and in wintry weather access to Enford for
burials was dif®cult.17 This last example is redolent of special pleading: long
after the Reformation Archbishop Bancroft was to comment caustically
that he had known `great suits in law for the maintenance of a chapel of ease
within half a mile of the parish church'.18 But often chapelries were a
crucial way of providing for the spiritual life of scattered congregations. In
England, at least, they meant that few had to go far to hear Mass celebrated.
In a vast parish like that of Kendal the antiquary Leland noted that `there
belongeth about a 30 chapels and hamlets to the head church'.19 Cornwall
possessed, it has been estimated, 700 chapelries of one kind or another.20
Ireland and Scotland are less well documented and studied, but in both
there is evidence of chapels in various forms supplementing parochial

13
Dawson, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd', 243.
14
M. Clark, `Northern light? Parochial life in a ``dark corner'' of Tudor England', in
K.L. French, G.G. Gibbs, and B.A. Kumin (eds.), The Parish in English Life, 1400±1600 (Man-
chester, 1997), 56±7.
15
C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), 22±3.
16
T. Whitaker, A History of the Original Parish of Whalley (Manchester, 1872), 318.
17
A.D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250±1550
(Oxford, 1995), 76.
18
C. Kitching, `Church and chapelry in sixteenth century England', in D. Baker (ed.), The
Church in Town and Countryside, SCH 16 (Oxford, 1979), 279±90.
19
L. Toulmin-Smith (ed.), The Itinerary of John Leland, 5 vols. (Carbondale, Ill., 1964), v. 47.
Kumin, Shaping of a Community, 167±79.
20
Adams, `The medieval chapels of Cornwall', Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 3
(1947), 48. For a useful summary of the role of chapels before and after the Reformation see
N.J.G. Pounds, A History of the English Parish (Cambridge, 2000), 91±6.
 Communities and Beliefs 85
centres. A rare example of being able to count these chapels comes from the
deanery of Tullyhogue in Armagh diocese, where twelve chapels can be
identi®ed to supplement twenty-three parish churches.21 When there were
no chapels of ease private provision sometimes made good the de®ciency:
in Scotland John Major claimed that, since as many as thirty villages some-
times had to depend on one kirk, the private chapels of the lairds ensured
that `all may have a chance to hear divine service'.22
How rich a mimesis of full parochial life these small chapelries could
achieve must be questionable. The aspiration seems to have been the regu-
lar service of a priest and hence the celebration of the Mass on Sundays, feast
days, and some weekdays, `and all other sacraments as necessary'.23 The
reality was more mixed. For example, the congregation of Carleton chapel
in Yorkshire had celebrations of Mass only on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday in the late ®fteenth century since they shared their priest with the
parish church of Husthwaite. Some communities had Mass only at the six
major festivals of the year, though this seems to have been rare. The limita-
tions were not only those of access to priests: the surrender of full parochial
rights, especially those of burial, to a chapelry, were very uncommon, and
the ®nancial demands of the mother church were rarely relaxed. Since
surviving petitions suggest that being able to have easy access to the rites of
passage was one of the two major concerns of scattered congregations ten-
sions not infrequently issued in disputes before the church courts.24
Many of the upland chapels of Britain and Ireland were therefore a
necessary response to population dispersal, offering a relatively simple
focus for the spiritual life of corporate Christians. However, the story of
the chapels is complicated by the existence of some that were neither
physically isolated nor particularly impoverished. These could build their
own church life just as effectively as the full parish. Some chapels, like the
one which served the rapidly growing community of Liverpool, or that of
Farnworth which has surviving churchwardens' accounts, were parishes in
all but name.25 They were there because three centuries earlier canon law
had `laid its cold hand on the parishes of Europe and froze[n] the pat-
tern'.26 The relative ®xity of parochial boundaries after the thirteenth
century meant that there was little opportunity to adapt to social and
21
Jefferies, Priests and Prelates, 64.
22
A.J.G. Mackay (ed.), History of Greater Britain, Compiled by John Major, SHS 10 (1892), 30.
23
Kitching, `Church and Chapelry', 283±4.
24
Kumin, Shaping of a Community, 167±79.
25
Kitching, `Church and Chapelry', 280. G. Tupling, `The pre-Reformation parishes and
chapelries of Lancashire', Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 67 (1957), 10.
26
C.N.L. Brooke, `The missionary at home: the Church and the towns, 1000±1250', in
G.J. Cuming (ed.), The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith, SCH 6 (Cambridge,
1970), 72.
86 The Traditional Order
economic change. Large parishes had been created in Lancashire because of
low population, but when population increased in the early sixteenth cen-
tury, there was scarcely any commensurate increase in the number of
parishes. The consequence was that Lancashire incumbents were respon-
sible for many souls: Haigh suggests an average of 1,700 per parish by
1563.27 Scotland offers a variant on this pattern in the burgh churches that
had been established to cover a whole territory before there was signi®cant
urban growth. Dundee, for example, had 4,500 parishioners in 1480. For a
comparison one could point to the old city of York, whose approximately
8,000 souls were serviced through forty parish churches.28
Although chapelries could provide a full corporate Christian life this did
not prevent congregations from seeking to gain full parochial status. A
major motive was ®scal, since the mother church rarely surrendered its
rights to tithes and dues, and burdens on chapelries could therefore be
heavy. For example, when the wardens of Tywardreath in Cornwall
reached a compromise about rights with the chapel of Golant, the latter
were conceded the right to bury, but had to maintain mortuary payments
to the rector.29 The separate funding of a priest meant double charges for
spiritual services. But a desire for parity with the mother church in their
religious life was also an implicit objective of the ambitious chapelries.
This is suggested both by Bancroft's observation and by the sort of com-
plaint made by the vicar of Barton Stacey, that the inhabitants of Newton
expected him to perform exactly the same services in their chapel as in the
parish church. There is a splendid example of con¯ict in Margery Kempe's
narrative of the attempt of two King's Lynn chapelries to separate them-
selves from the parish by establishing baptismal rights. Despite a papal bull,
and the sympathy of Bishop Alnwick, the ambitious merchants were
doomed to failure when Margery prayed against them, seeking and
gaining the Deity's protection for the existing order of things.30 However,
separations sometimes succeeded, as in the three parishes created out of
Weston Zoyland, Somerset, in 1515. There it was acknowledged by the
incumbent that the two dependent chapelries had the equipment, build-
ings, and resources for a proper liturgical existence. Even when efforts
failed in the face of entrenched interests supported by canon law, the fact
that laymen often tried to make themselves into full parishioners is indica-
tive of the value placed on the corporate community.31

27
Haigh, Tudor Lancashire, 22±3.
28
M. Lynch, `The religious life of medieval Scotland', in S. Gilley and W.J. Sheils (eds.),
A History of Religion in Britain (Oxford, 1994), 120. D. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 226.
29
Kumin, Shaping of a Community, 175±8.
30
S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen (eds.), The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS os 212 (1940), 58±9.
31
J.A.F. Thomson, The Early Tudor Church and Society, 1485±1529 (1993), 285±6.
 Communities and Beliefs 87
A major bene®t of parochial status was the assurance it provided that
the resources of the faithful, tithes apart, could be fully directed to the
building, repair and embellishment of the local church. And in much of
the British Isles parishioners willingly undertook these tasks in the century
before the Reformation. They re¯ected the view that the church, particu-
larly in the lowlands, was the centre of community: providing it with its
cultural and social identity as well as its religious focus. Laymen were, in
Andrew Brown's words, `bound to their parishes, pastorally and ®nan-
cially, from cradle to grave'.32 The ideal essence of the parish was spiritual
and social inclusiveness: men and women worshipped together, celebrated
the feasts of the liturgical year together, and organized the ®nancial sup-
port of the church together under the auspices of the churchwardens. The
author of the ®fteenth-century tract Dives and Pauper argued that the
common prayer of the `community in church' was most pleasing to
God.33 If the parish were part of a wider urban community, as in London
and Coventry, its members would process through the city for thanksgiv-
ings and other special occasions.34 Church ales, shooting matches, and the
like, which were major forms of fund-raising in most parishes, also served
to bind men together, as did the gestures of those who in their wills left
funds for a general parochial feast. The ®rst deacon of Holy Trinity,
Coventry, for example, had an obligation to serve the parishioners with
bread and ale, `at Mylborne's dirge, and Meynley's, and other dirges that
be made of the church's cost'.35 Sacramentals, such as the holy loaf distrib-
uted at the end of Mass, were provided for the whole parish by individuals
on a rota system. The prayers of the living for the souls of the dead
extended the idea of the parish in time and space. And so ®nally it is no
surprise that the overwhelming majority of parishioners seem to have
chosen burial in their local church or adjacent cemetery.36
A curious testimony to the power of the parish as a focus of devotion is
provided by the attitudes of Lollards. Late Lollardy is, as Patrick Collinson
has argued, better seen as a conventicling tendency than as a separated
church.37 The Lanterne of Light had argued that `our church material . . . is

32
Brown, Popular Piety, 67.
33
P.H. Barnum (ed.), Dives and Pauper, 2 vols., EETS os 280 (1976±80), i. 196.
34
S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 23±4. C. Phythian-Adams, The
Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 162.
35
Phythian-Adams, Coventry, 169.
36
R. Dinn, ` ``Monuments Answerable to Mens Worth'': Burial patterns, social status and
gender in late medieval Bury St Edmunds', JEH 46 (1995), 242±3. V. Harding, `Burial choice
and burial location in late medieval London', in S. Bassett (ed.), Death in Towns (Leicester,
1992), 120±1.
37
P. Collinson, `The English conventicle', in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), Voluntary
Religion, SCH 23 (Oxford, 1986), 223±59.
88 The Traditional Order
ordained for parishioners, when they come together' and ordinary Lollards
seem to have assumed that they had a part in this `church material'.38 But
those suspected of heresy were not all quiet nicodemists, serving out their
necessary time in the pews to avoid the denunciation of neighbours. In
Buckinghamshire at least they sometimes played active roles in the parish
community. The Saunders of Amersham had patronage control over the
holy-water clerkship of the town in the 1520s; one of the Bartlet family, a
veritable network of Buckinghamshire Lollards, was churchwarden of
Upton in 1519; and numerous wills of known or suspected heretics left
bequests for the repair of their parish church or sought burial within its
walls.39 There is also the spectacular case of the well-known Essex Lollard,
William Sweeting, who was holy-water clerk of Boxted for seven years
early in his career and at Colchester even after his ®rst abjuration of heresy.
It is, of course, dif®cult to judge the spirit in which these radicals involved
themselves in corporate experience. When Henry Phip of Hitchenden was
chosen to be keeper of the roodloft he is alleged to have said that he must
go and tend a candle before `Block Almighty'.40 London heretics some-
times deliberately avoided parochial involvement and there were ideo-
logical objections to the concept of the church as consecrated space since
the church of the chosen did not depend on buildings for worship.41 But it
is intriguing that at least some of this most alienated group of early Tudor
laymen largely accepted the need for identity with the parish.
The ideal of spiritual inclusiveness should not, however, blind us to the
reality that parishes and their churches existed in a social universe that was
both strati®ed and liable to division. Even the most basic de®nition of
what it was to be a parishioner was contentious. Eamon Duffy has made a
powerful case for the bede-roll, the list recited annually at the requiem for
the benefactors of the church, as the key document of parish identity. To
be included on the roll was to be one of the `good doers and well-willers'
who supported the church, or had sustained it in the past. Good doing
needed money. The sum that had to be given could be small, like the two-
pence donations carefully recorded by the priest of Morebath, but some
must have been excluded from the full membership of this giving com-
munity.42 Then there was the further expectation that proper observance

38
L.M. Swinburn (ed.), The Lanterne of Light, EETS os 151 (1917), 41.
39
D. Plumb, `Social and economic spread of rural Lollardy: a reappraisal', in W.J. Sheils and
D. Wood (eds.), Voluntary Religion, SCH 23 (Oxford, 1986), 111±29; `A gathered church?
Lollards and their society', in M. Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520±1725 (Cam-
bridge, 1995), 132±63.
40
Foxe, iv. 237±8.
41
Brigden, London, 82±92.
42
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 153±4, 332±7.
 Communities and Beliefs 89
of hierarchy would mark the church just as it did society as a whole. After
the Reformation pews ®nally became a most powerful mode of status
display. This trend had already begun in the ®fteenth century, especially
for those gentry and noble families who could link chantry chapels or
aisles to separated seating.43 More general in the pre-Reformation period
is the patterning of burial as an indicator of status. In late medieval Bury
St Edmund's there was a clear correlation between wealth displayed in a
will and explicit choice of burial site: the richer parishioners usually chose
the church, and de®ned their preferred site carefully.44 Ritual behaviour
could also articulate status. The most famous example is the kissing of the
pax board: clerical moralists denounced what they saw as the tendency of
parishioners to subordinate the devoutness of this act to their concerns for
status in its passage. The scattering of cases recorded by the church courts
suggest that there was some basis for the criticism: for example, blood
¯owed at Theydon-Garnon in Essex in 1522 when the clerk offered the
pax to Francis Hamden before John Browne.45
Disputes such as these were deeply regretted, as a threat to the harmony
of the corpus Christiani, but proper hierarchical display was accepted as a
proper expression of the natural order, as logical as the process of gender
segregation that was a consistent feature of congregations. Indeed, prop-
erly managed, the marks of status could be used to provide a frame for
corporate identities. Hence the minute attention that was paid to levels of
parochial dues, to the proper ordering of the bede-roll and so forth. The
same argument is now often applied to that other way in which early
Tudor parishioners expressed their religious identity: guilds and frater-
nities. The religious guilds and fraternities provided a crucial focus for
devotional behaviour in much of Britain and Ireland in the century before
the Reformation.46 It has been estimated that there may have been as
many as 30,000 guilds spread through the land, and though the calculation
may seem improbably high it can be underpinned by evidence from some

43
N. Alldridge, `Loyalty and identity in Chester parishes, 1540±1640', in S. Wright (ed.),
Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350±1750 (1988), 94±7. On the use of
ecclesiastical space to express hierarchy, and often to claim power, see C. Pamela Graves, `Social
space in the English medieval parish church', Economy and Society 18 (1989), 297±322.
44
Dinn, `Monuments answerable', 248±55. The status correlation is less clear in London,
Harding, `Burial choice', 124±7.
45
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 126±7.
46
There is now a vast literature on the parish guilds. A. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of
Medieval England (1919), remains the starting-point. See particularly G. Rosser, `Communities
of parish and guild in the later Middle Ages', in Wright (ed.) Parish, Church and People, 29±55
and `Parochial conformity and voluntary religion in late medieval England', TRHS 6th ser.
1 (1991), 173±89. C.M. Barron, `The parish fraternities of medieval London', in C.M. Barron
and C. Harper-Bill (eds.), The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. Du
Boulay (Woodbridge, 1985), 13±37.
90 The Traditional Order
local studies. In Cambridgeshire, for example, 350 guilds are documented
in the two centuries before the Reformation. Not all had a continuous
existence, but they remained a popular form of religious association
throughout this period: 152 were apparently the product of the half-cen-
tury before the dissolution.47 For Cornwall the number is only 140, but
this is for a handful of parishes, which, if extrapolated for the whole
county, might produce a ®gure of 1,200.48 Guilds were to be found in
most parts of the British Isles: in anglicized Ireland they were established
by royal charter in the hundred years before the Reformation, preponder-
antly in the towns, but also in some rural communities of the Pale coun-
ties.49 In lowland Scotland they were once again a feature of the burghs,
though trade guilds, rather than general fraternities, continued to be the
key here to local solidarity.50 In Wales they appear to have been most
common in the south and on the eastern borders.51 Only the Celtic
regions, and some upland areas like Cumbria, seem to have been little
touched by this form of lay association. Fraternities, one commentator
suggests, ran counter to the nature of these societies, which were inde-
pendent in attitude and able to turn to true kin networks, not their arti®-
cial alternative.52 But it may also be that in Gaelic Ireland, at least, the
development of the tertiary orders associated with friaries offered some of
the same active spiritual engagement for the laity.
The formal purposes of the guilds are articulated in statutes that survive
in quantity for England. They were voluntary associations principally of
lay men and women who joined together to promote a particular devo-
tion, typically to Corpus Christi, the Trinity, the Virgin, or a particular
saint; to maintain a chapel, or light, or candles at the appropriate feasts; to
provide for the burial of members and for prayers for their souls; and to
offer other forms of support both to members and often to the parish
church. The nature of their devotional engagements will be considered
below: here we need to address the dif®cult question of their relationship
with the less voluntary corporate community of the parish. The impulses
that led to the founding of fraternities would seem to be both inclusive

47
V.R. Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Social and Religious Change in Cambridge-
shire, c.1350±1558 (Woodbridge, 1996).
48
J. Mattingley, `The medieval parish gilds of Cornwall', Journal of the Royal Institute of
Cornwall ns 10 (1989), 290±329.
49
M.V. Ronan, `Religious customs of Dublin medieval gilds', Irish Ecclesiastical Record 5th
ser. 26 (1925), 364±85.
50
There seems to be little specialist research on religion and the Scottish guilds, though see
Lynch, `Medieval Scotland', 11, and Edinburgh and the Reformation, 55±61; A.-B. Fitch, `The Search
for Salvation: Lay Faith in Scotland: 1480±1560', University of Glasgow Ph.D. (1994), 289±90.
51
Williams, Welsh Church, 288±92.
52
Clark, `Northern light?' 63±4.
 Communities and Beliefs 91
53
and exclusive. There is plenty of evidence to link the fraternities with
broad support for the parish church. The ®rst is that membership was in
many cases limited to the community, in practice if not in theory. While
great urban guilds had a wider scope, sometimes having almost a national
character as in the example of the Holy Trinity Guild in Coventry, rural
associations tended to limit themselves to logical local boundaries.54 If a
rural parish spawned only one guild this must have made the boundaries
between voluntary and involuntary association very ¯uid. In Bassing-
bourn, Cambridgeshire, for example, the priest employed by the Trinity
Guild kept the churchwardens' accounts, and left most of his goods for
the general improvement of the church.55 It is the routine concern in
guild records to embellish the parish church and maintain its lights prop-
erly that also indicates identity: repairs of roofs and walls, as well as of
particular altars or saints' images, often fell to the lot of a particular frater-
nity. When churches needed expansion, guilds might be organized to
provide the necessary funding: at Golant, Cornwall, in 1509 the guilds
contributed to the new roof and had their names recorded on it.56
Yet historians seem currently too anxious to deny difference between the
experience of being a parishioner and of guild membership. Guilds were
well-organized, highly practical, entities that created a familial solidarity and
bonding. This concept was clearly expressed in the use of the language of
`brothers' and `sisters' to describe membership. Guild popularity is indica-
tive of a desire by the laity to provide a more focused form of collective
devotion and more sustained pattern of intercession than that offered by the
ordinary parochial round. Rosser is surely right to suggest that the guild
Mass and the guild feast both provided a para-liturgical bonding, linking the
members in honourable common spiritual and social purposes.57 It is widely
accepted that this often provided the laity with an organizational role, for
example in hiring and ®ring their own chaplains, which they would not
otherwise have possessed.58 Given the diversity of guild membership and
the choice of association available at least in urban society, this role was
quite widely diffused, and could even in some circumstances embrace
53
Duffy, in his account of corporate Christians, places overwhelming emphasis on the
inclusive elements in guild behaviour: Stripping of the Altars, 141±54. For a more questioning
view see Rosser, `Communities of parish and guild', 37±45.
54
Phythian-Adams, Coventry, 22.
55
W.M. Palmer, `Village gilds of Cambridgeshire', Transactions of the Cambridgeshire and
Huntingdonshire Archaeological Society 39 (1938±9), 366±70.
56
R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 1989), 87.
57
G. Rosser, `Going to the fraternity feast: commensality and social relations in late medieval
England', JBS 33 (1994), 430±6. M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture
(Cambridge, 1991), 232±43.
58
J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 19±39.
92 The Traditional Order
women or the relatively poor. The guilds were also well adapted to give
expression to particular voluntarist needs within the broad church. Some-
times they provided very speci®cally for their own, ®lling gaps in parochial
provision not unlike chapels of ease. In the Isle of Ely, where settlement
centres did not necessarily correlate closely with parish boundaries, some of
the guilds seem to have existed speci®cally to provide for small nucleated
communities.59 When a new town was established without proper paro-
chial provision, as at Weymouth, a guild might supply the need.60 The same
might happen where population was too great for the parochial structure:
all but one of the large extramural parishes of London had more than one
fraternity, which, when one considers the 3,500 souls to be housled in
Southwark, was an almost essential way of disaggregating religious activ-
ity.61 All guilds placed considerable emphasis on their separate identity,
even when contributing ®nancially or otherwise to the collective well-
being of the parish. Brethren might eat together several times a week, not
just at the grand fraternity feast, or sit together within the body of the
church. None of this was an automatic recipe for con¯ict with the wider
corporate body, but it created separate interest groups of active Christians.
Guilds have been described as the `poor man's chantry' and the two
certainly have identical intercessory functions. Perpetual chantries did not
normally structure the experience of living laymen, as did the fraternities.
There were circumstances, however, for example in the use of chantry
chapels for general worship in isolated areas, when intercession for the dead
in¯uenced the community of the living. The importance of chantries used
for communal worship north of the border is evident on the very eve of the
Reformation. Eleven colleges for votive Masses were established between
1450 and 1500 and a further thirteen were initiated before the Reformation.
Most were erected within existing parish churches, though in some cases,
most spectacularly the rebuilt St Giles, Edinburgh, collegiate status was linked
to new building.62 In England, such collegiate foundations had declined in
the early sixteenth century, though the impulse was not entirely dead. At the
dissolution of the monasteries the duke of Norfolk endeavoured to turn
Thetford Priory into a collegiate church to protect his familial interest.63
There are, however, two more general comparisons that can be made
between the social purposes of the guild and the chantry. The ®rst is the
evidence that those who funded these sub-parish structures often had in
59
Bainbridge, Gilds, 20±2, 27.
60
Rosser, `Communities of parish and guild', 34±5.
61
Barron, `Parish fraternities', 28.
62
Lynch, `Medieval Scotland', 117. I.B. Cowan and D.F. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses:
Scotland, 2nd edn. (1976), 213±28.
63
J. Rosenthal, The Purchase of Paradise: Gift Giving and the Aristocracy, 1307±1485 (1972). LP
xiv. 2. 815, 816.
 Communities and Beliefs 93
mind the desirability of supplementing parochial provision. Bristol testa-
tors, who have been studied in some detail, showed an anxiety to have
their priests contribute to the `increase of Divine worship', by saying
general services and singing in the choir. This suggests that the well-being
of the whole parish could often drive intercessory investment. It was, as
Burgess has suggested, evidence of the penitential motive in action.64 But
there is a second dimension to chantry and guild provisions. They con-
cerned themselves with intercession for the individual and his or her
immediate family; both were also likely to involve an identity with wider
kin, natural or arti®cial, as community before extending themselves to
prayer for all Christian souls. When Geoffrey Spring, a London draper,
left money for a perpetual chantry in his native Cambridgeshire he estab-
lished a priest to sing for his father and mother and `for the souls of all
them that I am most bound to pray for' and ®nally for all Christian
souls.65 In Scotland there was a particular tendency to offer the bene®ts of
prayer and protection to vassals and tenants as well as family, thereby
mimicking this world's power structures in hope of the world to come.66
The public face of worship in the late medieval parish was intimately
bound up with the physical boundaries of the sacred and the secular. The
proper use of the sacred space of the church was one old theme routinely
contested between reforming clergy and the laity. There was a concern in
England to restrain sociable use of the body of the church. For example,
Archbishop Warham's visitation of Kent in 1511 attempted to abolish
drinking in church, thereby provoking resentment among parishioners.
The wardens of Willesborough reported that there was an unwillingness
to offer at obits and churchings because `they cannot drink in the
church'.67 Guild regulations, however, indicate that such drinking con-
tinued, and members of the elite, as well as ordinary parishioners, appar-
ently found this mixed use acceptable. Regulations for baptism for the earl
of Northumberland's household required the consumption of wine at
several points during the religious ceremony.68 More generally, quarrel-
ling, unsocial behaviour, and bringing dogs into church were all thought
by church authorities to be inappropriate activities in sacred space. The
contentious ground was primarily that of the nave, the territory of the
laity. The chancel, usually ®rmly isolated by the rood screen, was in
64
C. Burgess, ` ``For the Increase of Divine Service'': chantries in the parish in late medieval
Bristol', JEH 36 (1985), 46±65; ` ``A Fond thing vainly invented'': an essay on purgatory and
pious motivation in later medieval England', in Wright, Parish, Church and People, 56±79.
65
C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth Century England (Basingstoke, 1998), 66.
66
G. Donaldson, The Faith of the Scots (1990), 51.
67
K.L. Wood-Legh (ed.), Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and his Deputies,
1511±12, Kent Records 24 (1984), 156.
68
Bodl. MS, Eng. Hist. b 208, fos. 15 ff.
94 The Traditional Order
theory held sacred from lay intrusion except when by grace men were
allowed to come to view the elevation of the host.69
The same cannot always be said in Ireland, where a powerful sense of
the holy seems to have been compatible with almost casual desecration of
both nave and sanctuary. Rapine and even murder were not unknown,
and since the churches were often used to deposit valuable goods, provin-
cial councils had to legislate against robbery as well. The annals of the
Four Masters report in 1484 that Gilla-Patrick, son of Maguire `was
treacherously slain by his own ®ve brothers' at the altar of the church of
Aghalurcher.70 A recent historian of Irish religion explains this indiffer-
ence to consecrated space as part of the common coin of Gaelic ideas of
con¯ict.71 When there was a Dublin riot involving the men of the earls of
Ormond and Kildare in 1493, the clergy lamented that St Patrick's Cath-
edral had been polluted with slaughter, the images defaced, and altars
destroyed. Kildare could be brazen about such desecration: when charged
before Henry VII with the burning of Cashel church, he is supposed to
have responded, `By Jesus . . . .I would never have done it, had it not
been told me that the Archbishop was within.'72 To explain is hardly to
justify, but perhaps the Irish evidence should be considered as simply the
extreme example of lay attitudes, which accepted the power of the holy,
and saw it as intimately woven into everyday social experience.
The church itself, with its altars and consecrated host, was the most
explicitly sancti®ed territory. But the sacrosanctity of the whole commu-
nity was expressed through processions, Rogationtide, Corpus Christi,
and the circulation of the host that often accompanied these occasions.
Ceremony, and with it the sense of the holy, was taken outwards from the
church when, especially during the `ritualistic' half of the year from
Christmas to Midsummer, the parish dramatized itself in processions,
plays, and holy day celebrations. Of course, it was not only the individual
parish that was involved in this construction of the community as holy: in
towns and cities, as in the famous case of Coventry, procession and reli-
gious drama were directed to articulating the whole society in this way.73
On St Giles's Day, 1 September, Edinburgh was reconsecrated to its saint
as his image was led through the town to the sound of `tabors and trum-
69
P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), 42±3.
70
Jefferies, Priests and Prelates, 23.
71
S. Meigs, The Reformations in Ireland (Basingstoke, 1997), 42±5.
72
M.A. Lyons, `Sidelights on the Kildare ascendancy: a survey of Geraldine involvement in
the church, c.1470±c.1520', Archivium Hibernicum 48 (1994), 76±8.
73
C. Phythian-Adams, `Ceremony and the citizen: the communal year in Coventry,
1450±1550', in P. Clark and P. Slack (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns (1972), 57±85.
M. James, `Ritual, drama and the social body in the late medieval town', PP 98 (1983), 3±29.
Rubin, Corpus Christi, 243±87.
 Communities and Beliefs 95
74
pets'. Not all ceremony was directed to sacred ends: the division of the
year into `ritualistic' and `urban' halves in the cities showed clearly that
public action could be differentiated in the minds of contemporaries. But
the ceremonial life of the parishes indicates above all a belief that the idea
of sanctity was extended to the whole community, not con®ned by the
uniqueness of the church as place or the clergy as mediators of the
divine.75

The Household and Piety

The diffusion of the idea of the holy may have encouraged the growth of
individual lay piety. Individual devotions could be private, con®ned to an
isolated closet or oratory. They could also be articulated in separate prayer
within corporate worship. The popularity of primers in early sixteenth-
century England seems to indicate a desire both to follow the nature of
public worship and to have a measure of control over individual prayer.
The appearance of separate pews for elites within the parish church, taken
by Colin Richmond as a sign that the gentry wished to set themselves
apart from parochial worship, could instead be seen as an example of
continuing commitment to corporate behaviour. It merely employed
new, fashionable forms of status symbol to support it.76 Yet the capacity
of families, groups, and individuals to pursue part of their religious life
apart from the community should not be ignored, indeed without an
understanding of this we may ®nd responses to the challenge of reforma-
tion extremely dif®cult to fathom.
The pluralistic patterns of devotional behaviour characteristic of the
later Middle Ages make it understandable that private oratories and do-
mestic chapels should have been popular. The so-called `free' chapels for
noble households and their tenants had long been a feature of the English
religious landscape: in this period they were supplemented by more intim-
ate arrangements for worship. The episcopal licensing of private oratories
is common: 187 were granted in the Diocese of Salisbury in the second

74
J. Smith (ed.), The Hammermen of Edinburgh and their Altar in St Giles (Edinburgh, 1906),
xxxviii±xlvii.
75
R. Gillespie, `Differing devotions: patterns of religious practice in the British Isles,
1500±1700', in S.J. Connolly (ed.), Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500 (Dublin,
1999), 68±9.
76
C. Richmond, `Religion and the ®fteenth-century English gentleman', in B. Dobson
(ed.), The Church, Politics and Patronage (Gloucester, 1984), 193±208; `The English gentry and
religion c.1500', in C. Harper-Bill (ed.), Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval
England (Woodbridge, 1991), 121±50. For a strong rebuttal of this argument see C. Carpenter,
`The religion of the gentry in ®fteenth-century England', in D. Williams (ed.), England in the
Fifteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1987), 53±74.
96 The Traditional Order
half of the fourteenth century, for example.77 Regional studies for York-
shire and Warwickshire tell the same tale.78 Since the papacy could also be
approached directly for separate licence for a portable altar, there must
have been a vast number of formal locations of worship outside the parish
church and its network of dependent chapelries. In cases where details of
such licences survive the diocesan authorities seem to have adhered to the
canon law requirement of attendance at the parochial church at least on
the major festivals. But the liturgical cycle of the greater gentry and noble
households of ®fteenth-century England seems to have focused more fully
on internal devotions than on the collective worship of the parish. Not
only was Mass said regularly by chaplains in most of these houses, thereby
obviating the need to attend the parish church, but particular feasts were
celebrated in much the same way as the patronal festivals of the churches.
The Stonors, for example, had a particularly rich liturgical cycle in which
the household venerated the Trinity, St Anne, and St Katherine.79 And
there may have been practical consequences for the church of such elite
separation: a study of the gentry of Kent shows those with private chapels
giving less to church repairs at death than those who regularly worshipped
with the community.80
The household, as both Protestant and Catholic reformers were to dis-
cover, was a notably dif®cult territory to regulate. In most instances it seems
to have provided a focus for worship that was sensitive to social hierarchy
but ®rmly orthodox: indeed much of the clearest evidence of sophisticated
lay piety derives from a household context. Women had a particular advan-
tage in this world, with its private confessors, books of hours, and close
association with domestic routine. The devout households of Lady Marga-
ret Beaufort, Cecily, duchess of York, and Margaret, Lady Hungerford,
provide well-documented paradigms of orthodox, though sometimes avant
garde, devotion.81 Lady Margaret Beaufort offers an unusual example of the
latter trend in her use of her household to promote the new cult of the
Name of Jesus, venerated within her walls, with the Of®ce actually de-
veloped there, and then preached by her chaplains far beyond.82 A rather

77
Brown, Popular Piety, 204±5.
78
J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Wood-
bridge, 1988), 10±14. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Society, 1401±1499
(Cambridge, 1992), 225.
79
R.G.K.A. Mertes, `The household as a religious community', in J. Rosenthal and C. Rich-
mond (eds.), People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1987), 123±39.
80
P.W. Fleming, `Charity, faith and the gentry of Kent, 1422±1529', in A.F. Pollard (ed.),
Property and Politics: Essays in Late Medieval English History (Gloucester, 1984), 36±58.
81
M.A. Hicks, `The piety of Margaret, Lady Hungerford', JEH 38 (1987), 19±38.
82
M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of
Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), 174±5.
 Communities and Beliefs 97
different approach to household worship is offered by the work of Richard
Whytford, whose Werke for Housholders (1530) assumed that his household-
ers, perhaps ®rst and foremost the urban middling sort, would attend parish
Mass rather than hearing it in their own chapels. He saw the household
instead as a centre for religious training in which the literate man should
`gather your neighbours about you on the holy day, especially the young
sort, and read to them this poor lesson'.83 The development from the mid-
®fteenth century of the cult of St Anne and the Holy Family is one dimen-
sion of a religious pluralism that focused on households.84
But the household could, and did, also provide the locus for a hetero-
dox alternative to established belief. A network of families sustained Eng-
lish Lollardy on the eve of the Reformation, normally holding their
private conventicles in houses of leading members of the group. The
Durdant household, of Iver Court near Staines, provides a particularly
well-documented example. There one accused Lollard described how
Robert Durdant read from the Epistle of St James to the extended family
and their sympathizers seated at dinner, while on other occasions there
were all-night reading parties and a wedding, the last an almost unique
example of the Lollards providing separate rites of passage.85 Women
could thrive in these unorthodox environments as well: Roger Bennet,
from the notorious Lollard centre of Amersham, described how a group
of women met together on holidays `when they go and come from the
church' and `there keep their conventicle'.86 The household played a
similar, though rather more evangelical, role in Scotland in the years
preceding the Reformation when the `privy kirks' of the 1550s evolved
out of an earlier conventicling movement often centred in the households
of nobles and lairds. Here, as in Amersham or Iver, it was often reading
and hearing the scriptures that provided the content of devotion.87
The ultimate physical withdrawal from the community of the parish
was into the private closet for prayer and contemplation. Elements in the
mystical and devotio moderna traditions of the late medieval Church obvi-
ously encouraged such withdrawal and the process of self-examination
that accompanied it. A profound suspicion of the life of contemplation
occasionally emerges in the clerical writers of the period, most notably in
83
R. Whytford, A Werke for Housholders, ed. J. Hogg, Salzburg Studies in English Literature
89 (1979), v. 11±12.
84
J. Bossy, `Privacy, Christianity and the state, 1400±1650', in J.Ph. Genet and B. Vincent
(eds.), Etat et Eglise dans la GeneÁse de l'Etat Moderne (Madrid, 1986), 105±7.
85
Plumb, `A gathered church?', 120±2.
86
A. Hope, `Lollardy: the stone the builders rejected?' in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds.),
Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (Beckenham, 1987), 10±11.
Foxe, iv. 224.
87
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 1±15.
98 The Traditional Order
the eccentric Reginald Pecock, who used a substantial section of his Reule
of Crysten Religoun for denouncing prayer, and arguing that it was `but a
means' to `outward works'.88 The fear was that the contemplative in-
volved a denial of the social, that the inward response to sin diminished
the anxiety about shame that was integral to public religious performance.
The sin of spiritual pride was to be avoided at all cost, and hence the
mystics themselves, especially the in¯uential Walter Hilton, urged a com-
bination of the withdrawn life of meditation and proper attention to the
active life of the corporate religious community.89 An ideal is represented
by the advice given to a devout ®fteenth-century layman by his confessor.
There should be constant meditation in a private closet and routine re¯ec-
tion upon unworthiness and sinfulness, even during meals. In addition
daily Mass should be heard in church with devout attention to the actions
of the priest, and household godliness should be inculcated through col-
lective prayers and instruction.90 This is an elite example, but, as the
incorporation into some of the primers of Jean Quentin's The Maner to
Lyve Well, Devoutly and Salutarily Every Day for all Persons of Meane Estate
indicates, there was an intention to construct inward Christians as well as
corporate ones in late medieval manuals. Duffy's argument that private
prayer, in closet or pew, should not be seen as antagonistic to collective
devotion, is no doubt correct, but it is naive to suggest that no differenti-
ation was to be found in religious behaviour or social attitude. If we
return to the earlier emphasis on cultural practice, on the use to which a
standard liturgy and ideological system could be put, then such differenti-
ation seems an obvious outcome.91

The Sacramental Economy

`The liturgy', to quote Eamon Duffy, `lay at the heart of medieval religion
and the Mass lay at the heart of the liturgy.'92 Lay belief and behaviour
were centred upon the Mass, with its constant renewal of Christ's sacri®ce
for mankind and its re-articulation of the unity of the Church that he
founded. This had, of course, been true of the Christian community
throughout the Middle Ages, but the centuries preceding the Reforma-
88
Reginald Pecock, The Reule of Crysten Religoun, ed. W.C. Greet, EETS os 171 (1927),
391±7.
89
Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, 357±60. Hughes stresses that no separate devotional sects
were founded in England.
90
W.A. Pantin, `Instructions for a devout and literate layman', in J.J.G. Alexander and
M.T. Gibson (eds.), Medieval Learning and Literature (Oxford, 1976), 389±422.
91
This Prayer of Salisbury Use etc., printed by F. Regnault (Paris, 1531), fos.15±17. Duffy,
Stripping of the Altars, 132±4.
92 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 91.
 Communities and Beliefs 99
tion intensi®ed this preoccupation with the sacramental mediation of the
Eucharist. The causes are less our concern here than the consequences for
ordinary Christians. Hearing daily Mass became the accepted standard of
devout behaviour for early Tudor Englishmen, advocated by the instruc-
tional manuals of the Church, but also attested in sources such as Arch-
bishop Warham's Kentish Visitations of 1511±12.93 At the church men
and women should, according to Jean Quentin, `abide. . . the space of a
low Mass', saying their prayers and reading their primers. Their principal
duty, however, was to reverence the host at the moment of elevation,
`kneeling and knocking' as a demonstration of faith.94 This was particu-
larly manageable at the regular Masses celebrated by chantry priests at the
side altars of the parish church. Regularity of celebration and physical
intimacy enabled parishioners to experience God daily. Cranmer was later
bitterly to denounce arrangements which `made the people to run from
their seats to the altar, and from altar to altar, and from sacring to sacring,
peeping, tooting and gazing at that thing which the priest held up in his
hands'. Their objective was to assure themselves that they had `seen [their]
Maker', without which they could not go quietly about their business.95
What for Cranmer was a matter of reproof must have been for most
laymen part of the repertoire of learned behaviour that demonstrated their
basic understanding of the central message of Christianity. Parishioners
were supposed to be given formal instruction upon the sacrament as part
of the curriculum initiated by Archbishop Pecham's Provincial Decrees,
and many versions of such guidance exist for the late medieval period. A
fourteenth-century reworking of Pecham is typical:
The fourth sacrament is Gods body in form of bread that the priest consecrates at
Mass. That every Christian man shall believe that it is verylike Gods body that is
born of the maid Mary and hanged on the rood.96
Commonplace books, as well as the formal manuals, indicate that laymen
regularly had access to these basic forms of guidance about the centrality
of the Mass. Versions of the appropriate catechetical material appear in the
book of the Norfolk yeoman Robert Reynes in the mid-®fteenth cen-
tury, and in that of the Londoner Richard Hilles early in the sixteenth
century.97 Visual instruction was offered by sources such as the sacrament
fonts of Norfolk, which may have been constructed to provide an ortho-

93
Wood-Legh, Kentish Visitations, 56, 98.
94
This Prayer of Salisbury, fo.16. Richard Whitford gave the same advice in his Werke for
Housholders, 34.
95
T. Cranmer, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters, ed. J.E. Cox (PS, Cambridge, 1846), 442.
96
R. Dyboski (ed.), Songs, Carols and other Miscellaneous Poems, EETS es 101 (1907), no. 71.
97
C. Louis (ed.), The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes of Acle (New York, 1980), 180±1.
100 The Traditional Order
dox rebuttal of Lollard views.98 The Church also consciously promoted
the veneration of the Host that Cranmer so disapproved through its sup-
port of the cult of Corpus Christi, with its processions and regular display
of Christ's consecrated body.99
The forms which heretical denial of the Mass took on the eve of the
Reformation reveal much about its prime meanings for contemporaries.
Lollards interrogated by Bishops Smith and Longland in Lincoln diocese,
by Blythe and Audley in Salisbury, and by Tunstal in London, frequently
made the Mass the focus of their hostility. Of course the evidence is
tainted both by the determination of the ecclesiastical authorities to elicit
confessions on precisely this issue and by the standardization of the inter-
rogatories. But the general approach of the late Lollards is not very differ-
ent from earlier Wyclif®te commentaries.100 Those examined, when they
addressed the Eucharist, were largely in accord in their denial of the
miracle of transubstantiation. Richard Colins of Ginge's views were typ-
ical: `the sacrament of the altar is not very God, but a certain ®gurative
thing of Christ in bread'. When Lollards were bold enough to make a
public statement about their faith in the church they sometimes did so by
failing to co-operate in the central moments of the Mass. A group of those
denounced in Buckinghamshire in 1521 were said to `come to church,
and especially at the elevation time, would say no prayers, but did sit
mum like beasts'.101 This is not to suggest that heretics approved of other
aspects of the sacrament, simply that they (and the church authorities)
believed that they knew where their principal criticism should be
directed.
For the orthodox, on the other hand, the centrality of the miracle of
the Mass did not detract from the plurality of its meanings and uses.
Diversity began with the liturgy itself, in the articulation of new feasts and
forms of Eucharistic celebration, of which Corpus Christi was only the
most famous. From the 1470s onwards the Mass of the Holy Name
became a highly popular devotion, promoted, as we have seen, by Lady
Margaret Beaufort, but sustained at the parochial level by a rapidly grow-
ing number of Jesus fraternities.102 New votive Masses such as that of the
Five Wounds also achieved very wide support, and one of the most
regular forms of requests for Masses in wills on the eve of the Reforma-
tion was for the trental of St Gregory. Particular devotion to the Virgin

98
A.E. Nichols, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350±1544 (1994).
99
Rubin, Corpus Christi, 97±108.
100
J.A.F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414±1520 (Oxford, 1965), 241±2. A. Hudson, The
Premature Reformation: Wyclif®te Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 468±9.
101
Foxe, iv. 235.
102
R.W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1970).
 Communities and Beliefs 101
or to an aspect of the sacrament could be expressed in the form of bene-
factions.103 Sir Edmund Leversedge of Frome, for example, who believed
that he had been saved from a horrendous death and damnation by his
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, left much of his substance to found a
Corpus Christi fraternity to say Masses in honour of Christ's blood.104
Christocentric devotion of this kind is one of the aspects of Scottish pre-
Reformation piety that is well documented: sacrament houses or aumbrys
can be found in at least thirty-®ve medieval churches, and half of these
date from the period after 1500. The feast of the Holy Name also attracted
Scottish support.105 New devotions did not necessarily exclude the old, as
the continuing popularity of traditional shrines and images attests, but they
did offer different forms of contemplation, often connected with contin-
ental fashions of the Rhineland and Low Countries.
Pluralism and diversity also manifested themselves in the world of para-
liturgy and sacramentals that gave meaning to lay approaches to the holy.
The range of possibilities offered by late medieval ritual is here so great as
to defy easy categorization. On the one hand there were rituals that `spun
out' of the experience of Christ's sacri®ce. Easter sepulchres, with their
symbolic burying and raising of Christ during Easter week, became a
common feature of English churches, and the sepulchre sometimes
became a setting for the display of the host in a piece of merged symbol-
ism.106 The holy bread dispensed at the end of the parish Mass was an-
other tangible example of a desire to participate actively in the meaning of
the ritual. In a rather different category were the customs and beliefs
associated with lay concern to see the Host regularly. The blessing it
conferred would, it was believed, protect against evil and disaster so that:
Thy fote that day shall not the fayll;
Thyn eyen from ther syght shall not blynd.107
Conversely medieval literature was full of moralized tales of those who
abused or ignored the Eucharist, and came to horrible ends. Miracle
stories of Lollard priests who made the Blood of Hailes boil or Jews who
violated the host and suffered gruesome fates were, of course, literary
constructs of the clergy, but they probably re¯ected general belief in the
power and ef®cacy of the consecrated bread.108 And this combination of
powerful belief and ¯exible practice readily ended in the world where

103
R.W. Pfaff, `The English devotion of St Gregory's Trental', Speculum 49 (1974), 75±90.
104
Brown, Popular Piety, 1±2, 24±5.
105
Lynch, `Medieval Scotland', 118±19. D. MacRoberts, `Scottish sacrament houses', Trans-
actions of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society 15 (1965), 30±56.
106 107
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 125±7. Ibid., 100.
108
Rubin, Corpus Christi, 294±7.
102 The Traditional Order
pieces of the host were stolen to facilitate magic, or divination, and the
quest for lost goods depended upon the assurance of the Mass.109
Reformers were aware from the ®fteenth century onwards that some
line had to be drawn around the practice of the Mass and its multiplicity
of meanings. The problem was perhaps located less where Keith Thomas
identi®ed it a generation ago, in the territory of magic or popular behav-
iour detached from a full understanding of the sacrament and yet depend-
ent upon it for social meaning.110 Rather it lay in what Miri Rubin has
called the over-determination of the symbol: the vast range of competing
meanings and claims attached to a universal act, through lay and sacerdotal
claims, art and drama, individual and collective investment.111 English
devotion to the Eucharist, Lollard dissent notwithstanding, does not seem
to be in question, and the limited evidence for the rest of the British Isles
con®rms the same tale. But in the multiplicity of uses and devotions, in
the desire to quantify access to the divine through, for example, increased
Masses for the dead, is represented the quest to appropriate the holy for
sectional and lay bene®t. That the symbol nevertheless largely survived
may be due more to the power still exercised by the mediating priesthood
than to any profoundly centripetal force inherent in the Mass itself.112
The sacramental economy of late medieval Britain and Ireland often
seems to overvalue the Eucharist. But for the individual Christian the
Mass represented only a stage in the cycle of salvation, in that process by
which with the assistance of divine grace he or she could through confes-
sion, contrition, and absolution ultimately become worthy of redemption.
The formal sacrament, the `houseling' that looms large in the manuals for
medieval priests, was normally only an annual affair, conducted in Lent in
preparation for the Easter communion.113 It was, if properly conducted, a
burdensome activity, involving the clergy in interrogating parishioners on
their basic knowledge of the catechetical programme of the Church as
well as on their particular sins. When the Pastons `advertised' their bene-
®ce of Oxnead, asking contacts for names of suitable priests, they stressed
its attractions by arguing that there were no more than twenty people to
be confessed annually.114 Contrast this with the dif®culties that must have
arisen in the great burgh churches of Scotland, where there were often
109
K.V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford, 1971), 36±40, 60±1.
110
Ibid., 36±7.
111
Rubin, Corpus Christi, 348±50. T.F. Ruiz, `Unsacred monarchy: the kings of Castile in
the late Middle Ages', in S. Wilentz (ed.), Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics since the
Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985), 109±44.
112
J. Bossy, `The Mass as a social institution, 1200±1700', PP 100 (1983), 29±61.
113
Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 5±13. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 59±63.
114
N. Davis (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971),
i. 178.
 Communities and Beliefs 103
115
several thousand parishioners. We have scattered evidence that the
Easter reception of the Eucharist was taken very seriously in pre-
Reformation England, and that it was preceded by carefully organized
confession.116 The Norfolk sacrament fonts show careful organization of
penitents, provision of kneeling desks and priests' chairs, and some at-
tempt at privacy during the rite.117 In confession, as elsewhere, there was
an enlarged form of lay piety that demanded more than this annual cycle.
Confessors with responsibilities for particular families were regularly li-
censed by the bishops from the fourteenth century onwards, and bequests
to `my ghostly father' become a routine feature of late medieval wills.118
By far the most explicit evidence of general lay assumptions about the
importance of confession comes from the deathbed. The need to `housle
and shrift at my last ending' is recurrent in popular literature, in wills, and
in the anxious fears of parishioners that careless or temporarily absent
priests might not be available to hear their last repentance.119 For
example, the wardens of Bampton, Oxfordshire, complained that John
Taylor had died without `the sacraments of the church' through the neg-
lect of their curate.120 Primers assured devout readers that if they used the
correct prayers they `shall not perish with sudden death'. Through the
genre of the ars moriendi laymen were taught that they must make full
confession of their sins, putting their trust in Christ, the Virgin, and the
whole company of heaven, and seeking absolution. The good deathbed
confession became part of that great weight of `last things' that late medi-
eval laymen were convinced were necessary to protect the soul from the
pains of purgatory.121 Historians disagree on whether the preoccupation
with purgatory disturbed the balance of lay religiosity, making it a `cult of
the living in service of the dead'. Those who underline the obsession are
perhaps unduly in¯uenced by the nature of our sources, which is rich
with information about chantries, monuments, and wills, and certainly
disposes us to a clearer understanding of the wishes of the dying rather

115
Lynch, `Medieval Scotland', 120. Doncaster had 2,000 `houseling people' according to
the chantry commissioners.
116
L. Duggan, `Fear and confession on the eve of the Reformation', ARG 75 (1984),
153±75.
117
A.E. Nicholls, `The etiquette of pre-Reformation confession in East Anglia', C16J 17
(1986), 145±63.
118
Brigden, London, 44±6. Brown, Popular Piety, 203±5. Quentin proposed weekly, or at
least fortnightly, shriving, This Prayer of Salisbury, fo. 16v. Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, 13±15.
119
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 310±27.
120
A. Hamilton-Thompson (ed.), Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517±31, 3 vols., LRS
33, 35, 37, vol. ii, 50.
121
A. Galpern, `The legacy of late medieval religion in sixteenth-century Champagne', in
C. Trinkhaus and H. Oberman (eds.), The Pursuit of Holiness (1974), 149. P. Aries, The Hour of
Our Death (1981).
104 The Traditional Order
122
than those of the living. Even these sources do not necessarily indicate
total preoccupation with the horrors of the afterlife. Chantries served the
function of supporting the living, through the network of Masses, the
linkage of kin, natural and arti®cial, and sometimes teaching or preaching.
Monuments, even when they displayed cadavers and worms, might speak
of the worth of a good name and above all of the need for charitable
deeds. The purpose of their horrors was to stir men to early penitence
since: `penance is health in the man whole, and it is sick and feeble in the
man unsteadfast'.123
Yet death and in particular the doctrine of purgatory did haunt the
living; did require a level of thought, anxiety, and ®nancial investment
from ordinary men and women that is distinctive in Christian history.
Even those aspects of devotion that seemed least structurally linked to
mortality ¯ourished because of the fears of the living. Pilgrimages were
often undertaken with an eye to the afterlife.124 Margery Kempe travelled
to shrines largely to gain indulgences, and she was given money by others
to pray for them at shrines where such bene®ts could be found.125 One of
the most famous sites, that of St Patrick's Purgatory, at Lough Derg,
provoked visions of the sufferings of the souls being purged, such as that
of William of Stranton, a ®fteenth-century pilgrim from Durham, which
both warned against the horrors to come and offered protection against
them.126 Penitential bequests might help in the general provision of
Masses, and might assist parochial regimes: their purpose, however, was
unequivocally to protect individuals and families from the full threat of
purgatory. This required not just careful general investment in the singing
of Masses, the maintenance of lights, and the like. It came to involve
precise calculations about how the soul might progress through its tor-
ments. Wills, for example, often laid great stress on the importance of a
rapid sequence of Masses immediately after death because this was when
prayer was most ef®cacious and made the soul `strong to suffer . . . pain
with the more patience'.127 It might even secure a quick release from
purgatory. The multiplication of Masses indicates a belief that each one

122
G.R. Keiser, `The progress of purgatory: visions of the afterlife in late medieval English
literature', Analecta Cartusiana 107 (1987), 72±100. For a determinedly positive reading see Duffy
Stripping of the Altars and 338 ff.
123
The Arte or Crafte to Lyve Well and to Dye Well (1505), fos. lxxxxxiv±v [sic.].
124
R.C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrimages: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (1977), 191±202.
125
Book of Margery Kempe, 79, 106.
126
R. Easting (ed.), St Patrick's Purgatory, EETS os 288 (1998), 79±117.
127
T. Erbe (ed.), Mirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies, EETS es 96 (1905), 296. Another
example of the same direct association between prayer and time off purgatory is the `Fifteen
Oes', which promised the release of ®fteen souls from purgatory. E. Hoskins, Horae Beatae
Mariae Virginis (1901), 124±7.
 Communities and Beliefs 105
represented a unit of merit, and the rich do seem to have believed that
they were purchasing advantage in the next life having had it in this. No
amount of historical enthusiasm for late medieval piety will quite erase the
sense that the Church manipulated this spiritual calculus in its use of indul-
gences. Its objectives were often worthyÐthe support of a shrine, of
hospitals, of bridges, and so onÐthe explicit claims to a number of days
of remission less so.128

Images and Pilgrimages

When John Foxe summarized the grounds on which Lollards objected to
Catholic doctrine he singled out, in addition to the Eucharist, pilgrimages
and the adoration of images. The two themes are clearly interconnected, as
they were in the jeering attack of Elizabeth Sampson on the pilgrimage
image of Our Lady of Willesden, who `was a burnt arsed elf and a burnt
arsed stock' who would not have allowed `her tail to have been burnt' if
she could have helped her worshippers.129 Radical Lollards hated pilgrim-
ages as `the second trap of the ®end', though a number of the comments in
the early sixteenth-century interrogations suggest mainly contempt for a
worthless and wasteful activity.130 William Sweeting, burned for heresy in
1511, had an orthodox wife whom he despised for her pursuit of shrines,
and Thomas Geoffrey maintained that the only true pilgrimage was going
barefoot to visit the poor and sick.131 Images were more explicitly hated
because they led to idolatry and therefore the denial of the Decalogue, and
they led the innocent astray by substituting `sticks and stones' for the living
power of the Word.132 Agnes Hignell of Newbury went further: when
devout Christian people `be offering their candle to the image of St Eras-
mus I would I had a hatchet in my hand'.133 On occasions such views led
to direct action, as they did at Rickmansworth in 1522, when all the
images in the church were deliberately burned by unknown arsonists.134

128
On the parochial advantages of chantries see C. Burgess, ` ``For the Increase of Divine
Service'': chantries in the parish in late medieval Bristol', JEH 36 (1985), 46±65. N. Tanner, The
Church in Late Medieval Norwich (Toronto, 1984), 105±6.
129
Foxe, iv. 218.
130
M. Aston, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350±1600 (1993), 24.
L.M. Swinburn (ed.), The Lanterne of Light EETS os 151 (1917), 84.
131
Foxe, iv. 215.
132
Foxe, iv. 221. M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts, vol. i: Laws against Images (Oxford, 1988),
96±143.
133
D.P. Wright (ed.), The Register of Thomas Langton, Bishop of Salisbury, 1485±93, Canterbury
and York Society 74 (1985), 495.
134
Aston, Faith and Fire, 231±60.
106 The Traditional Order
At the other end of the reforming spectrum doubts about the merits of
cultivating images were shared by humanists concerned to improve devo-
tional standards. Most famous is Erasmus's outspoken criticism of images
and pilgrimages, particularly his witty demolition of the paraphernalia of
the Walsingham and Becket shrines. In the Enchiridion (1503) he had earlier
expressed deep reservations about the popular tendency to confuse sign
and signi®er through images: `you honour a likeness of Christ's face that
has been crudely shaped out of rock or wood . . . much more to be
honoured is that likeness of his mind . . . portrayed in the words of the
gospels'.135 The localization of the holy in images and sites was criticized
within the devotio moderna tradition.136 Thomas More, even in the heady
pre-Lutheran days, was less disposed than Erasmus and his colleagues to
direct denunciation of holy helpers, but he contributed some of the most
memorable criticisms of popular, or rather female, credulity. London
wives, he complained, gaped at the Virgin by the Tower until they be-
lieved she smiled at them. And the competing devotions to the Virgin
were satirized in the narrative of the wives who challenged one another
with ` ``I love best our lady of Walsingham.'' ``And I'', saith the other,
``our lady of Ipswich''.'137 John Fisher, standing as so often at the most
traditional end of the humanist spectrum, does not indulge in this sort of
critique, but in his sermons avoids discussion of saints and pilgrimages in
favour of strongly Christocentric and biblical piety. Other forms of devo-
tion aroused anxieties, but none seemed to orthodox reformers to be so
open to lay abuse.138
These fears were generated partly by the sheer scale and diversity of late
medieval cults. Duffy has shown that English churches were literally
stuffed with images: Faversham in Kent, for example, had approximately
thirty-®ve in the early sixteenth century, each with their own lights and a
number with their own altars or chapels.139 In addition we have the
surviving evidence of the rood screens, especially of East Anglia and
Devon, on which cycles of saints served as the supporters of the rood
itself, with its central image and Mary and John on either side. The
screens are particularly valuable evidence of lay attitudes to the saints,
since there was no absolutely ®xed iconography and in many cases it can
135
Aston, England's Iconoclasts, 195±201. R. Himelick (ed.), The Enchiridion of Erasmus (Bloo-
mington, Ind., 1963), 112.
136
C.M.N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin
(Cambridge, 1986), 11±22.
137
CWTM, vi. 1. 230±2.
138
J.E.B. Mayor (ed.), The English Works of John Fisher, EETS e s 27 (1876), 289±310,
388±428. S. Wabuda, `The Provision of Preaching during the English Reformation', University
of Cambridge Ph.D. (1991), 65.
139
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 155±60.
 Communities and Beliefs 107
be shown that they were constructed with lay benefactions. Apostles and
prophets were a recurrent feature of the screens as, more interestingly,
were the four Latin doctors of the Church, the latter perhaps intended to
reinforce the signi®cance of orthodoxy in the face of dissent.140 Amid the
diversity of ordinary saints it is dif®cult to offer generalities about the most
popular groupings of saints, but two sets of wide signi®cance may be
noted. This ®rst were the holy helpers, such as St Margaret, St Agatha,
St Barbara, St Erasmus and St George, who were protectors of childbirth,
marriage, and the home, and guarantors of health and stability. These saints
provided, to adapt Duffy's phrase, ®re-insurance and medical cover. Then
there were the images that can only be explained as part of local cults:
St Edmund, St Wulfstan, and even the uncanonized, such as St Etheldreda
and Master John Schorne, in the case of Norfolk. Most of the latter
group have their focus in shrines accessible for local pilgrimage and there-
fore offer an identity as old as saint cult itself with a site of spiritual
power.
Throughout Britain and Ireland the cult of the saints and the pursuit of
pilgrimage continued to have these dual, though interconnected, focuses.
The lives of the universal holy helpers were made more routinely access-
ible through the printed editions of the Legenda Aurea, which ran through
seven editions between 1483 and 1527. The stock of individual helpers
might rise and fall with national or regional fashionÐamong the male
saints, for example, Roche and Sebastian seem to have enjoyed growing
prestige.141 Meanwhile local cult identities also proved remarkably ten-
acious. This was partly because of determined clerical sponsorship: the old
equation of pilgrimage sites with spiritual prestige and wealth endured.
But the enthusiasm of the laity cannot be ignored. For example, the cult
of St Osmund of Salisbury was strongly sponsored by the cathedral: yet it
drew offerings, bequests, and reports of miracles until the eve of the
dissolutions.142 St Urith of Chittlehampton, Devon, was the focus of a
strong local cult still vital in the 1530s: offerings to her image had helped
to fund the late-Perpendicular tower of the church, and contributed ap-
proximately £50 to its coffers per annum.143

140
E. Duffy, `The parish, piety and patronage in late medieval East Anglia: the evidence of
rood screens', in French et al., Parish in English Life, 133±62. For an important study of the
screen of Ashton, Devon, which is directed towards the clergy and the donor family's private
pew, see M. Glassoe, `Late medieval paintings in Ashton church, Devon', Journal of the British
Archaeological Association 140 (1987), 182±90.
141
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 169±83.
142
Brown, Popular Piety, 57±63.
143
Whiting, Blind Devotion, 54±5.
108 The Traditional Order
It is impossible to quantify patterns of pilgrimage, but it might be noted
that this is an area in which popular devotion in the Celtic lands is
particularly visible. The Welsh, Irish, and Scots had the particular advan-
tage of a host of Celtic saints to whom to turn. In Wales St David offered
a national cult, while ®gures of the second rank, such as Teilo, Beuno,
and the 20,000 saints of Bardsey Island, provided regional sites to vener-
ate.144 The Scots focused much of their energy on Saints Ninian and
Duthac, and in the century before the Reformation royal patronage
played a signi®cant part in af®rming their importance.145 The most
famous Irish example was St Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg, but
saints' sites derived from the Celtic tradition continued to be popular,
especially where they were associated with the holy wells that were a
general feature of the Western landscapes of Britain and Ireland.146
St Winifred, for example, was able to preserve the reputation for sanctity
of her well in North Wales even though her remains had been translated
to Shrewsbury.147 However, it is important to emphasize that the Irish
and the Welsh were not caught up in some Celtic twilight directing all
their devotions to local saints whose deeds were unknown to Rome.
Most of those appearing on Irish tombs are universal ®gures, and the
®fteen places of pilgrimage visited by the penitent Heneas MacNichaill in
1539 includes Marian shrines and the abbey at Holy Cross as well as sacred
rocks, wells, and the Arran Islands. Several of the greatest Welsh shrines
were focuses of Marian devotion.148
It is even more dif®cult to read the mind of a parishioner in prayer
before an image, or on pilgrimage, than it is to judge response to the Mass
or confession. But we might note that, while the belief in the intercessory
powers of the saints in the business of this world seems to have been a
constant, concern for their role as petitioners for the soul probably grows
in importance in conjunction with the preoccupation with purgatory.
The point is best shown in relation to the greatest of all the cults, that of
the Virgin. Marian devotion has so many aspects in late medieval Britain
and Ireland that it is impossible to do it any justice within a few lines.
Every aspect of the humanity and sanctity of the Virgin produced its share
of poems and prayers, statues and shrines. The Book of Hours that

144
Williams, Welsh Church, 485±90.
145
Lynch, `Medieval Scotland', 121. D. McKay, `Parish life in Scotland, 1500±1560', in
D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation (Glasgow, 1962), 109±10. See above,
p. 37
146
C. Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin, 1994), 132.
147
T. Charles-Edwards, Saint Winefride and her Well (1964).
148
Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 119±21. L.P. Murray, `A Calendar of the Register of
Primate George Dowdall', Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 6 (1927), 152.
 Communities and Beliefs 109
became the primer of lay devotion was constructed around the Little
Of®ce of the Blessed Virgin, and the meditations on her joys and sorrows
were central to the pious routines of Englishmen.149 They seem to have
been just as signi®cant to the Irish, but with the local variant that their
relationship with the Mother of God was perceived as an extension of
earthly kin-bonds. `May she, my sister and His nurse, help me for God's
sake in virtue of her kinship,' wrote one of the ®fteenth-century poets.150
Rosary devotions loomed large in Scottish piety: they are to be found, for
example, in the poems recorded in Arundel MS 285, and on the banner of
Edinburgh's Holy Blood fraternity.151 The greatest of late medieval Eng-
lish pilgrimage sites, like those of Wales, were dedicated to the Virgin,
with Our Lady of Walsingham as the most outstanding.152 There are,
however, signs that it was intercession for the soul in torment that was
seen as the prime function of Mary and her saintly supporters on the eve
of the Reformation.153 In the ®nal section of the lengthy Marian prayer
`Obsecro te' the suppliant lists the bene®ts of her intercession. They in-
clude spiritual and bodily health, correct living, peace, and so on, but are
aimed above all at procuring the spiritual bene®ts needed at the hour of
death, when Mary's intercession would be crucial.154

Popular Dissent
This rapid survey of religious belief and practice has been deliberately
exclusionary. Little has been said of the massive investment in church
building that characterized most parts of England in the later ®fteenth
century, is almost equally evident in Scotland, and can be identi®ed on a
more modest scale in Wales and Ireland.155 Nor have we exhausted the
devotional possibilities of late medieval religion or the complexities of
sacramental mediation. These additions would not, however, signi®cantly
change the image of lay commitment to the structures and patterns of
the faith already outlined. The centripetal in¯uence of the liturgy held
149
Hoskins, Horae, 66±7.
150
Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 31.
151
Fitch, `Search for Salvation', 471.
152
Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrimages, 195±202. Williams, Welsh Church, 490±2.
153
C. Peters, `Women and the Reformation: Social Relations and Attitudes in Rural Eng-
land, ca.1470±1570', University of Oxford D.Phil. (1992), 264±80.
154
Fitch, `Search for Salvation', 490±7.
155
For England see C. Platt, The Parish Churches of Medieval England (1981), 138±89. For
Wales, Williams, Welsh Church, 428±9; R.I. Jack, `Religious life in a Welsh marcher lordship:
the lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd in the later Middle Ages', in C. Barron and C. Harper-Bill
(eds.), The Church in Pre-Reformation Society (Woodbridge, 1985), 155±7. For Ireland, Jefferies,
Priests and Prelates, 22±5. For Scotland, R. Fawcett, Scottish Architecture from the Accession of the
Stewarts to the Reformation, 1371±1560 (Edinburgh, 1994), 142 ff.
110 The Traditional Order
together a diverse and pluralistic set of religious behaviour, most of which
could be accommodated within the broad frame of the holy. A tension
certainly existed between the assumptions of reforming clergy and the
wilder reaches of lay experience: in the cult of the saints, in understanding
of the sacred and the secular, and in the use to which the sacraments and
sacramentals of the Church might be put. Most of the time the strictures
of the reformers neither destabilized the local church nor, it must be said,
probably changed lay behaviour signi®cantly.
This raises the obvious question of why any sane layman would have
dissented from this comprehensive, but rather permissive, corpus Christiani.
But dissent a number of them did, especially in Essex, Buckinghamshire,
and London, the areas of greatest late Lollard strength.156 Formal dissent
has to be put in perspective, of course. So far as can be judged from the
surviving archives there was no challenge to the established Church in
Ireland or Wales, very little in Northern England or the West Country
and only one `nest of heretics' in Scotland.157 The only evidence of
heretical activity in Wales is that a Lollard Bible seems to have in¯uenced
the ®rst passage of scriptural translation into Welsh.158 In Scotland there
was the shadowy group described by Knox as the Lollards of Kyle, thirty-
four of whom were accused in 1494. The most solid evidence that we
have of their continuing importance comes from the New Testament in
Scots that Murdoch Nisbet translated from the Purvey text in the 1520s, a
version that was never published.159 The limited geographical scope of
late dissent, as well as the essentially quietist nature much of it seems to
possess, has led in recent years to casual dismissals of its signi®cance.
However, where it did exist there is sometimes evidence of quite wide-
spread sympathy or interest from lay men and women across the social
spectrum. The extreme example is Amersham, where as many as a quarter
of the population seem to have Lollard links in the 1520s.160 Elsewhere it
is more dif®cult to be con®dent about the presence or absence of dissent:
in Salisbury diocese, for example, there were scattered prosecutions for
heresy in the early sixteenth century, but little evidence of cells of Lollards
being detected by the bishops.161 Those who were detected appear well

156
On Lollard distribution see R.G. Davies, `Lollardy and locality', TRHS 6th ser. 1 (1991),
200±7.
157
Sceptical views about numbers can be found in Haigh, English Reformations, 54±5, and
R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 342±5.
158
Williams, Wales and Reformation, 15.
159
Knox, i. 7±12. M. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation (East Linton, East Lothian,
1997), 40±3. T.G. Law (ed.), The New Testament in Scots, 3 vols., STS 46, 49, 52 (1901±5),
vol. i, pp. x±xiv.
160
On Amersham see Plumb, `A gathered church?', 132±63.
161
Brown, Popular Piety, 215±22.
 Communities and Beliefs 111
integrated into local society. Are they therefore merely the vocal end of a
more silent sympathy with heterodoxy?
Numbers matter, as does social status, but the most interesting question
in the current historiographical climate is why groups found it necessary
to oppose the powerful embrace of the Church and the diverse communal
expectations that were associated with it. The evidence that family net-
works often sustained heresy provides a part of the answer: Lollardy was
an inherited avocation. Another partial explanation may lie in those
sectors of society prone to general restiveness: Lollardy in cloth towns or
in London may be a symptom of economic and social alienation. But
beliefs must surely be central: denials of aspects of the sacramental system
and of the mediatory role of the saints, and the allied conviction that
access to the Bible was essential to salvation.162 Attacks on the existing
sacramental scheme might, very tentatively, be divided between those
who denied the entire mediatory role of the priesthood, hence the sacri-
®ce of the Mass and transubstantiation, and those whose recorded com-
ments addressed the abuses of popular religion. In the latter category, the
most signi®cant issue of saint cult has already been discussed, but a list
could be accumulated including pilgrimage, prayers for the dead, and the
elaboration of the liturgy. For example, a number of those accused of
heresy in Coventry in 1485 were said to have denied purgatory and to
have insisted that men `incontinent after death' go to either heaven or
hell.163 The doctrines of baptism, of confession before a priest, and of the
authority of the papacy, were all challenged from time to time, though
interestingly the last was rarely found in late Lollardy. There is also evi-
dence that Lollards sought to justify their position by turning their critique
of ceremony to positive ends. True fasting was fasting from sin; true
pilgrimage the visiting of the sick.164
Above all Lollards were a people of the text, insistent that men must
understand their faith by reading and exposition. They tended to displace,
even if they did not utterly reject, the symbolic articulation of belief. The
devout man was one who, like Robert Pope, sat up until midnight read-
ing his text.165 Concern that there should be access to Scripture linked
together the Ayrshire Lollards.166 The vernacular Bible was the core issue,

162
The time seems ripe for a new analysis of the Lollard beliefs that emerge from trials in the
late period. Meanwhile Thomson, Later Lollards, offers a good general survey, though it places
undue emphasis on the negations in Lollard testimony. See also Hope, `Lollardy', 12±25.
A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wyclif®te Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 468±73.
163
Foxe, iv. 133±4.
164
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 307±8.
165
Hope, `Lollardy', 19±21.
166
Sanderson, Ayrshire, 41.
112 The Traditional Order
though in practice few ordinary Lollards could have access to the whole of
the banned text, and they were highly dependent on smaller bindings
being passed between them, or on the oral transmission offered by visiting
preachers. And within Scripture they privileged the tradition of law and
works: the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Epistle
of St James. Like humanists, Lollards seem to have accepted that know-
ledge was the essential prerequisite for proper action, the doing of good
works for their own sake, not as part of the calculus of salvation.167
Lollards were convinced of a conspiracy by the priesthood to deny
knowledge to the laity, a theme vividly articulated by Tyndale in his
attack on priestly authority and widely accepted in subsequent historical
narrative.168 More recently Duffy and others have ®ercely contested this
analysis, pointing to the sustained catechetical literature of the late medi-
eval Church, to the insistence on basic doctrinal knowledge for the taking
of communion, to the translation of prayers and the dissemination of
homilies. The ploughman was supposed to learn his pater noster and the
medieval parish church was often replete with mnemonic devices to help
him do so.169 The only denials, on this reading, were of those texts expli-
citly identi®ed as heterodox, and of the whole Bible in the mother
tongue. Even that last prohibition could be alleviated by episcopal licence,
permitting the in¯uential to read the scriptures. But a more fundamental
denial was involved. Traditional lay religion in pre-Reformation England
is ¯exible and vibrant, able to adapt itself to various spiritual needs, to
enter into a dialogue and exchange of power with ecclesiastical authority.
Through the rich catechetical and devotional literature of the period it
was offered the opportunity for intellectual as well as affective engagement
with the faith. What was denied was any legitimate means of checking the
claims of the Church against the Word. Such a questioning was no doubt
irrelevant for the vast majority of the laity. For a small minority who
quickly extended beyond the immediate ranks of the Lollards, it became
an issue of vital spiritual signi®cance.

167
Foxe, iv. 222, 224±6. LP, iv. 2. 4029. J.F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the
South East of England 1520±1559 (1983), 57±8.
168
W. Tyndale, `Obedience of a Christian Man', in Doctrinal Treatises, ed. H. Walter (PS,
Cambridge, 1848), 144±62.
169
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 53±87. How the plowman lerned his pater noster (Wykyn de
Worde, 1505). Graves, `Social space', 305±6. Nichols, Seeable Signs, 147±57. The commonplace
book of Robert Reynes is also full of counting devices, presumably intended to aid learning:
Louis, Robert Reynes, 152, 154, 287.
 PART II

THE COMING OF R EFORMATION

 4
T H E PO L I T I C S O F R E F O R M , 1 5 3 0 ±1 5 5 8

The powr of princys, ys gevyn fro god above

And as saythe Salomon, ther hartes the lord dothe move
God spekyth in ther lyppes, whan they gave jugement
The lawys that they make, are by the lordes appoyntment
Christ wylled not his [disciples] the[ir] princes to correct
But to ther prescepttes, rether to be subjecte.
J. Bale, King Johan, ll. 1343±81
The English and Scottish monarchies were regularly exposed to the en-
thusiastic political advice of their writers and poets in the long-established
tradition of the regnum principum. It was the duty of the author to counsel
princes to reform themselves and their realms: weak kings, misled by their
own sensuality and weakness, failed to secure order among their subjects
and to produce harmony in the commonweal. Hence the royal characters
of the morality playsÐSkelton's Magni®cence or Lindsay's King Humani-
tieÐare being led to an apprehension of good government through the
representation of the seductive power of the vices.2 Effective monarchs
could discipline their own fallen natures and provide proper remedies for
the failures of their subjects. In the opening session of the Reformation
parliament More spoke of Henry VIII as a `good shepherd', governing the
realm by `vigilantly foreseeing things to come' and seeking to compensate
for the `frail condition of man' by making good laws to reform abuses.3
These topoi were rarely passive commonplaces: instead they should be
read as rhetorical strategies, designed to elicit an appropriate dialectical
response in their audiences. The latter were both the monarch directly
addressed or described and those who might in practice have the power of
persuasionÐnobles, counsellors, clergy, estates, and parliaments. Imagina-
tive writers sought to persuade of the need for proper distributive justice,
of the desirability of strong political control and careful ®nancial manage-
1
J.H. Pafford (ed.), King Johan by John Bale (Malone Society, Oxford, 1931).
2
G. Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge,
1991), 60±101, 169±221. R. Lyall (ed.), Sir David Lindsay of the Mount: Ane Satyre of the Thrie
Estaitis (Edinburgh, 1989).
3
E. Hall, Chronicle: Life of King Henry VIII, ed. C. Whibley, 2 vols. (1804), ii. 164.
116 The Coming of Reformation
ment, of the signi®cance of fostering learning, and a host of related
themes. Challenging the behaviour of the clergy was part of these trad-
itional topoi, but suddenly from the late 1520s began to assume a deadly
political earnestness as Henry VIII sought some way out of his unwanted
marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Pleas for reform quickly became com-
prehensive calls for the reconstruction of church and state. For Bale,
writing at the end of the 1530s, royal power over the Church was repre-
sented as the means to effect a full Protestantism in England. For Sir
David Lindsay, writing The Thrie Estates in the Scotland of the early
1550s, King Humanitie, supported by his Estates, was to enact laws to:
forti®e
The Kirk of Christ and His religioun,
Without dissimulance or hypocrisie,4
and the drama proceeds to list acts that form a thorough reformation.
Even drama that upheld the Catholic faith, such as Respublica, which dates
from the beginning of Mary's reign, turned to the crown as the agent of
regeneration and renewal. Mary was represented by the author as Nemesis
sent:
To reform th'abuses which hitherto have been:
And that ills which long time have reigned uncorrect
Shall now, for ever, be redressed with effect.5
The appeal to monarchy as agent of renewal and reform helps to ex-
plain why cultures that usually identi®ed change with danger and instabil-
ity assimilated radical shifts in religious organization and belief without
collapsing into profound disorder. By investigating the politics of religious
change before examining ideology or religious behaviour the ensuing
analysis will partially subscribe to these readings. Reformation in England,
Wales, and Ireland was initiated from above as a consequence of political
choices. It was driven by monarchical will and sustained as much by
the identi®cation of sections of the political elite with that will as by the
commitment and hope of the clerical reformers. The crown could not act
alone, but it often appeared that it alone could direct the religious des-
tinies of its dominions. The situation of Scotland was very different both
because of the biological crises experienced by the monarchy and because
the state was inherently less centralized. In each realm, however, it is
essential to begin by understanding the matrix of political circumstances
that made reformation, or its rejection, possible for the rulers.

4
Lyall, Ane Satyre, ll. 3827±9.
5
W.W. Greg (ed.), Respublica, EETS os 226 (1952), ll. 50±2.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 117

Divorce and Supremacy

In 1521 Henry VIII's political interests had been served by his trenchant
stand against Luther, articulated in the Assertio dedicated to Pope Leo.
Half a decade later circumstances had changed: Cardinal Wolsey still wove
plans for universal peace and accord, hoping to snatch high reputation for
his monarch, even from the crisis created by the sack of Rome in 1527.
For Henry, however, the behaviour of Charles V's troops was of moment
mainly because it resulted in the imprisonment of Clement VII, the total
dislocation of ponti®cal business, and the threat of long-term Habsburg
dominance of the papacy. These were critical problems because by the
early months of 1527 divorce from Catherine of Aragon had become
Henry's central concern and was rapidly coming to determine the whole
direction of English politics.6 Bitter frustration at the absence of an heir
and the appearance of the bright eyes of Anne Boleyn, with her failure to
accept the mere status of royal mistress, provided Henry with his immedi-
ate motives for action. It was, however, one of the de®ning moments of
the king's own attitudes to authority and belief that he turned to the
Bible, and to his knowledge of two Levitical texts against a man's marriage
to his brother's widow, to justify his repudiation of Catherine. These texts
seem to have been Henry's own `discovery', despite later attempts to
identify either Wolsey or the king's confessor, John Longland, as the
guiding spirit. Of course, Henry had no intention in 1527 of denying the
principle of papal right to act on the divorce: his manoeuvres, for
example, included a botched attempt to seek dispensation for what
amounted to bigamy. But he rapidly acknowledged that his expedient
purposes had to be underpinned by divine sanction and moved with
enthusiasm into the jurisdictional and ideological mine®eld that Wolsey
was seeking to control. His favourite argument based on Leviticus
remained unshakeable throughout the divorce crisis: no pope could dis-
pense from the law of God, therefore the dispensation granted by Julius II
so that Henry could marry his brother's widow was invalid.7
The two years which followed Henry's ®rst overt pressure for divorce
were occupied by Wolsey's increasingly desperate attempts to have the
6
The best narrative of the divorce proceedings remains J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968),
147±240. See also E.W. Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), 77±182.
7
V. Murphy, `The literature and propaganda of Henry VIII's ®rst divorce', in D. MacCul-
loch (ed.), The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (Basingstoke, 1995), 135±58, offers
an important argument for the early dating of Henry's insistence that the pope could not
dispense from divine law. For the particular issues raised in the divorce proceedings see
H.A. Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford, Calif., 1976). Henry's Leviticus texts
were 18: 16 and 20: 21. J. Harps®eld, The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, Knight, ed.
E.V. Hitchcock and R.S. Chambers, EETS os 186 (1932), 41.
118 The Coming of Reformation
whole matter of the divorce remitted to judgement in England, and by
the growing political in¯uence of Anne Boleyn and her supporters. Clem-
ent VII devolved much authority on Wolsey and on Cardinal Campeggio,
who in June 1529 ®nally began to sit as commissioners on the divorce case
at Blackfriars. Immediately the cardinals were faced by ®erce and effective
opposition from Bishop Fisher and the rest of Catherine's defence team.
They also entered a mine®eld of complex legal arguments. Catherine
herself appealed to Rome in disregard of the delegated commissioners.
Any opportunity that Wolsey and the papacy might jointly have had to
compromise the issue without further breakdown was then foreclosed by
imperial success over the French at the battle of Landriano.8 On 16 July
1529, Clement formally revoked the divorce case to Rome. In London,
on the arrival of the news, the duke of Suffolk thumped the table in the
legatine court, declaring `there was never legate nor cardinal that did good
in England'.9 This was not, of course, the end of the road in the attempts
to extract either the divorce itself, or agreement that it might be judged in
England, from Rome, but henceforth the crown increasingly resorted to
threats to the Church as the means of gaining its dynastic ends.10
The early stages of Henry VIII's quest for divorce are replete with
`what if . . .' questions, with a sense that success was snatched from Wolsey
and his monarch by a series of unfortunate accidents. From the sack of
Rome to the battle of Landriano external events moved against accom-
modation with the papacy. Within the realm Cardinal Campeggio's con-
stant delays in establishing the legatine court frustrated Henry's objectives:
the discovery in Spain of a second brief of dispensation for the Aragonese
marriage complicated Henry's case: Catherine was resolute in resisting
persuasion from Campeggio as well as the king to take the veil and make
the monarch a spiritual widower.11 It is dif®cult to argue that Clement's
®nal failure to give Henry his wish was based on any profound moral
objections: his vacillating conduct could not, for example, be a sharper
contrast with the resolution of Bishop Fisher as Catherine's prime defend-
ant. Yet Clement knew that Henry's case was weak in law, and deeply
resented the bullying tactics of king and minister, and if the objective of
the divorce had been achieved through pressure on Rome it would, at the
very least, have left a legacy of profound mistrust by the clergy of royal
intentions. The `what ifs . . . ' on the king's side are even more intriguing.
Had Henry achieved his marital goal would he have abandoned the cri-
8
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 198±228.
9
Hall, Chronicle, ii. 153.
10
E. Surtz and V. Murphy (eds.), The Divorce Tracts of Henry VIII (Angers, 1988), introduc-
tion.
11
Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 54±131; the second brief is discussed at 62±4.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 119
tique of papal power to dispense from divine law which he and his
divorce team had so painfully assembled? Was the challenge to Roman
jurisdiction already a crisis waiting to happen before Wolsey had failed?12
On 1 November 1528 Wolsey wrote an agonized letter to Casale, one
of the king's agents in Rome, denouncing the delays in establishing the
legatine court, and the inhuman treatment of Henry, and prognosticating
the ruin of the Church in England and the destruction of the pope's
power within the realm.13 This was in part a rhetorical gesture in the
campaign of persuasion, but it expressed fears that the cardinal certainly
had for his own future and for that of the existing order of the Church.
Before the debacle of the legatine court it seems unlikely that Henry had
moved far towards formulating any serious alternative to forcing consent
out of Rome. Yet during 1529 his mind was moving upon new paths. As
early as April he was telling Campeggio that ecclesiastics `live very wick-
edly' especially at the Roman court, and was being in¯uenced by what
the legate described as `certain Lutheran books in English'.14 Access to
these ideas, or rather the evidential detail to support these generalizations,
was almost certainly provided by Anne Boleyn and her circle, now in
dominant positions at court. Anne is supposed to have provided Henry
with a copy of Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, with its thorough-
going defence of monarchical powers over the Church.15 Others ensured
that he saw Simon Fish's A Supplication for the Beggars, which provided the
negative attack upon greedy and worldly clerics. In October the king
revealed his changing view of the crisis to the new Imperial ambassador,
Eustace Chapuys. He denounced the vaingloriousness of the Roman
curia, urged the need for reform in the Church, praised Luther's stand
against the corruption of the clergy, and claimed that he proposed to
institute reform in his own lands as the Emperor should in his territories.16
Then on 3 November 1529 the Reformation parliament met for the ®rst
time, aware that the king would look favourably on attacks on the
Church, and especially on the embodiment of its grandeur, Cardinal
Wolsey.17

12
P. Gwyn, The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (1990), 502±4.
13
LP iv. ii. 4897.
14
LP iv. iii. 5416.
15
The involvement of Anne Boleyn in the presentation to Henry of the work of Tyndale
rests on late evidence: see Ives, Anne Boleyn, 161±3.
16
CSP Sp iv. i. 349±50.
17
Lehmberg points out that the parliament was summoned to deal with the vacuum left by
Wolsey, not with the aftermath of Clement's revocation of the cause to Rome, since summons
for the session were issued on 9 August before news of the revocation had arrived: S. Lehmberg,
The Reformation Parliament, 1529±36 (Cambridge, 1970), 2±4.
120 The Coming of Reformation
The summoning of the Reformation parliament acquires full signi®cance
only with historical hindsight. Henry's encouragement of its anticlerical
complaints were part of the campaign of pressure upon the pope and of his
direct grievances against Wolsey.18 The attacks on probate, mortuaries,
pluralism, and non-residence were probably orchestrated by sectional inter-
estsÐthe London Mercers, some of the common lawyersÐand encouraged
by the court groupings bent on destroying the cardinal.19 The anticlerical
debates occupied a rather limited part of the ®rst six-week session, which
passed twenty-six statutes in all, only four of them speci®cally addressing
ecclesiastical issues. The most dramatic moment of the session, a vigorous
challenge by John Fisher to the bills emanating from the Commons, may
have been triggered by a petition advocating disendowment of the Church
which emanated from the group of nobles who were subverting Wolsey.20
Yet the nature of Fisher's speech, as reported by his biographer, is clear
evidence that the consequences of Henry's `great matter' were no longer
readily contained within the spheres of diplomacy and court faction. The
laity, he complained, were merely greedy for the property of the Church,
not seeking clerical reform. He raised the spectre of Germany, and an-
nounced that `all these mischiefs among them arise through lack of faith'.21
This last observation provoked an angry Commons' response and a demand
from Henry that Fisher explain himself. This he did by denying that he had
claimed Englishmen lacked faith.22 Precedents had been set, both for the
engagement of Parliament in anticlerical legislation and for the intrusion of
religious con¯ict into a public and secular sphere.
The divorce proceedings also began to impinge on broader issues
through the pursuit of historical and legal precedents. This occupied
Henry's growing team of specialists between 1530 and 1532. In much of
this effort the target remained the justi®cation of the Levitical texts. This
was the issue on which the theological experts of Europe were consulted
in 1530 at the suggestion of that rising star Thomas Cranmer.23 It also
formed the substance of one of the two major collections of documents
accumulated by the team: a work translated into English by Cranmer and

18
Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 76±104.
19
J.A. Guy, The Political Career of Sir Thomas More (Brighton, 1980), 117±24. C. Haigh,
English Reformations (Oxford, 1993), 97±9, claims that the anticlericalism of the 1529 session was
not particularly signi®cant.
20
On the 1529 petition see R.W. Hoyle, `The origins of the dissolution of the monasteries',
HJ 38 (1995), 284±8 and the convincing suggestion there made that Lord Darcy, and possibly
the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, were associated with the petition.
21
R. Bayne (ed.), The Life of Fisher, EETS es 27 (1921), 68±70.
22
Edward Hall also remarks a Fisher denunciation of the laity. However, Hall claims that it
was the spectre of Bohemia that was raised: Hall, Chronicle, ii. 168.
23
D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (1996), 46±57.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 121
published in late 1531 under the title The Determinations of the most famous
and most excellent Universities of France and Italy. However, it was the parallel
efforts of another group, almost certainly orchestrated by Edward Foxe, to
demonstrate that the divorce case could be heard in England, that proved
of most signi®cance for the crown. By the end of 1530 they had accumu-
lated an eclectic document containing over two hundred sides of citation
from Scripture, the Fathers and medieval commentators `proving' that
Rome did not necessarily possess jurisdictional superiority in a case like
Henry's. The Collectanea satis copiosa deployed historical and conciliarist
arguments, as well as those of acknowledged ecclesiastical authorities, to
show that provincial hierarchies could resist papal authority if appeals
made to Rome were frivolous or if judgements rendered by the papacy
might contravene divine law.24 Some of Foxe's collection also articulated
the implications for monarchs. Henry, who read and annotated the text,
was particularly enthused by the letter (a medieval forgery of John's reign)
supposedly written by Pope Eleutherius to the legendary King Lucius of
Britain in the second century.25 In it the king was urged to rule by a law
above that of Rome: `divinam legem et ®dem Christi'. The king was de-
scribed as vicarius dei, a man fully able to rule in his own kingdom without
external intervention. Thus Henry was presented with an ideological
structure for resolving his matrimonial problems in the fullest possible
manner, by claiming for himself the caesaropapist right to imperial power
within his realms.
By the time aspects of the Collectanea had been incorporated into the
®rst edition of the propaganda text for the divorce, The Glasse of Truth,
probably late in 1531, the king had assimilated much of its radical message.
His ®rst direct assault on the clerical estate in the previous autumn had
involved the charge that a group of sixteen churchmen had been guilty of
praemunire: that is they had permitted the exercise of improper jurisdic-
tional power. The overt complaint was that they had aided and abetted
Wolsey in the exercise of his legatine jurisdiction: the sub-texts an attack
on Catherine's leading supporters and a desire to extract money.26 Henry

24
On the Collectanea we are still primarily dependent on the unpublished dissertation of
G. Nicholson, `The Nature and Function of Historical Argument in the Henrician Reforma-
tion', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1977), some of the key themes of which are summarized
in his `The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation', in C. Cross, D. Loades, and
J.J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Law and Government under the Tudors (Cambridge, 1988), 19±30.
25
On the signi®cance of the King Lucius story see A. Fox and J. Guy, Reassessing the
Henrician Age (Oxford, 1986), 157±64. Below, pp. 389±90.
26
J. Guy, `Henry VIII and the praemunire manoeuvres of 1530±31', EHR 97 (1982), 481±503.
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 273±7, though this places crucial shifts in Henry's position as early as the
summer of 1530, and credits the king with too much planning and foresight about the praemu-
nire attack.
122 The Coming of Reformation
achieved the last when the next January the convocation of Canterbury
promised £100,000 in order to gain a general pardon. By March, how-
ever, the king reacted to the clergy's cautious gestures with a full challenge
to the rights of the courts Christian to exercise their authority without
royal sanction. He bullied two unhappy convocations into some accept-
ance of his title of supreme head of the Church, thereby provoking a
more vigorous backlash.27 The convocation of Canterbury insisted on
qualifying their agreement with the phrase `so far as the law of Christ
allowed'. Cuthbert Tunstal, presiding as bishop of Durham over the
Northern Convocation, had a formal protest against the royal style
entered in the register. When Tunstal followed this with a courageous
letter to Henry defending the jurisdiction of Rome, he was rebuffed by a
claim that each Christian prince was the supremum caput of the congre-
gation of the Church in his realm.28
After the summer of 1531 few of the English political nation can have
doubted Henry's absolute determination to secure his divorce at any cost,
and the well-informed must have understood that the Church was likely to
pay much of the price. But how these ends were to be achieved remained
in some question. At a practical political level there was strong opposition
to overcome from the clergy, and the hounding of Convocation that
®nally resulted in the Submission of the Clergy on 15 May 1532 was one of
the least edifying moments in the whole Reformation crisis. By then
Thomas Cromwell had emerged as the key ®gure orchestrating parliamen-
tary actions. He was almost certainly responsible for the drafting of the
Supplication against the Ordinaries that provided Henry with his ammuni-
tion against the bishops and probably played a part in the earlier bill laid
before Parliament, for the halting of annates paid to Rome. There seems
no reason to question that Cromwell, in early 1532 as later, saw Parliament
as the key to effecting a political revolution.29 His views were shared by,
indeed anticipated by, others, most notably Christopher St German, the
common lawyer who in 1531 in a supplement to his tract Doctor and Student
had already set out a model of parliamentary control of clerical jurisdic-
tion.30 It was St German who ®rst clearly expressed the idea that the king-
in-parliament was `the high sovereign over the people, which hath not
only charge on the bodies, but also on the souls of his subjects'.31

27
Nicholson, `Henrician Reformation', 126±31.
28
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 745, 762 ff.
29
For a narrative of these events that remains largely convincing see G.R. Elton, Reform and
Reformation (1976), 273±95.
30
Fox and Guy, Henrician Age, 99±102, 168±70.
31
T.F.T. Plucknett and J.L. Barton (eds.), St German's Doctor and Student, Selden Society 91
(1974), 327.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 123
Although Henry placed much of the structural responsibility for the
divorce process and the growing separation from Rome in the hands of
Cromwell, in 1532 it was by no means certain that his parliamentary and
common law approach to the crisis would emerge as dominant. The king
himself spoke of the prerogatives of the crown, of imperial kingship and
of a caesaropapist exercise of authority over the clergy. The ®rst draft of
the crucial Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533), which ®nally secured in-
ternal jurisdiction over the divorce case, talked of jurisdiction as `derived
and depended of the imperial crown of this realm'. By the time the legisla-
tion reached the statute book these high claims to royal control had been
eliminated by Cromwell, though they seem to re¯ect the king's views
with some accuracy.32 The Henrician Reformation, as it ®nally emerged,
was an amalgam of the personal, divinely sanctioned view of royal author-
ity over the Church and the institutional legalism of St German and
Cromwell. In 1532 there was also a `third way', or rather a signi®cant
variant on the personal view of royal authority, that was mooted in vari-
ous writings of Henry's clerical apologists, including Edward Foxe. This
largely acknowledged the king as the source of all authority, with duties to
correct sin and suppress heresy. It anticipated, however, that the monarch
would function in concert with his clergy. Parliament was either to be
excluded from decision-making or used only to provide sanctions for
clerical programmes.33 In the early stages of the propaganda campaign this
view was linked to an advocacy of appeal to a general council of the
Church. As this solution became less viable Foxe and his colleagues con-
tinued to favour a `synodal' answer to the king's dilemmas, focusing juris-
dictional submission, and later positive legislation, on Convocation, rather
than Parliament. Foxe's views, which Melanchthon later found too fa-
vourable to `prelatical religion', were apparently displaced in the ®rst
stages of the parliamentary revolution.34 However, they represented a
signi®cant strand in Henrician debate and policy-making, and were to
return to haunt clerical±lay relations throughout the later Reformation.
There was no easy high road to English autonomy from Rome, even
with the skilled parliamentary management of Thomas Cromwell.35 But
by ®ts and starts the legislation restraining appeals to Rome, denying
payments to the papacy, and eventually acknowledging the royal suprem-
acy was enacted. The acknowledgement of Henry's marriage to Anne in
May 1533 brought the beginning of the end of the king's great matter. It
32
G.R. Elton, `The evolution of a reformation statute', EHR 64 (1949), 174±97.
33
Nicholson, `Henrician Reformation', 161±3, 244 ff.
34
E. Foxe, Of True Dyfferens, trans. Henry, Lord Stafford (1548), fo. 15r±v.
35
For the spasmodic quality even of the government's actions in 1533 to early 1534 see
Haigh, English Reformations, 116±20.
124 The Coming of Reformation
began the process of defending his actions against internal and external
threat. Internally the second half of 1533 saw the commencement of
sermon propaganda against the papacy and in favour of the Boleyn mar-
riage, which was followed by the 1534 Succession Act, making actions or
words against it treasonable and ®xing inheritance upon Henry and
Anne's heirs. The Treasons Act provided the coercive force to defend
what was, by the end of the 1534 parliamentary session, the king's revolu-
tion. Concurrently the king's propagandists began to write their formal
defences of the new status quo. Thomas Swinnerton produced the mem-
orably named Little treatise against the muttering of some papists in corners
(1534), deploying the full range of anti-papal rhetoric for the ®rst time. In
the following year William Marshall published his tendentiously annotated
translation of Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis and that reluctant revolu-
tionary Stephen Gardiner wrote De Vera Obedientia, the tract that was to
haunt the rest of his career.36 Obedience to the royal view of order
became the new credo.37 And Henry sought, unsuccessfully, to export
his revolution by persuading Francis I to join him in repudiating the
jurisdiction of Rome.38
If Francis was an unlikely candidate to follow Henry's leadership, the
king had higher hopes of another monarch: the young James V of Scot-
land. The latter was emerging as a mature ruler just as England was
engaged in the divorce crisis. On 17 May 1532, he had addressed the
Scottish Parliament on a range of issues, promising to defend the Kirk as
his ancestors had done.39 Conventional enough language: yet it suggested
a high view of royal protectorship not unlike that of his English uncle,
and James's actions in the next few years revealed that he did indeed have
an imperious understanding of his relationship with churchmen. The
puzzling thing for his royal relative was that he persisted in combining this
with the most explicit statements of loyalty to Rome. Indeed at the height
of the crisis created by the Kildare revolt in Ireland the Scottish king
¯irted with the idea of an alliance with the pope and Charles V against
`heresy'.40 It is not surprising that from time to time there should be
diplomatic overtures from Henry to James, ®rm reminders of the per®dy

36
S. Lockwood, `Marsilius of Padua and the case for the royal ecclesiastical supremacy',
TRHS 6th ser. 1 (1990), 89±119. S. Gardiner, Obedience in Church and State, ed. P. Janelle
(Cambridge, 1930). R. Pogson, `God's law and man's: Stephen Gardiner and the problem of
loyalty', in Cross et al., Law and Government, 71±4.
37
R. Rex, `The crisis of obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation', HJ 39 (1996),
880±3.
38
D. Potter, `Foreign policy', in MacCulloch, Reign of Henry VIII, 119.
39
APS ii. 335±6.
40
M. O'Siochru, `Foreign involvement in the revolt of Silken Thomas, 1534±5', Proceedings
of the Royal Irish Academy, sect. c 96 (1996), 59±60.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 125
of the papacy and of the bene®ts that had accrued to the English king
once he had been freed from his jurisdictional blindness.41
In 1536 Bishop Barlow, as Henry's ambassador, was briefed to urge
James to reject Rome, reform the clergy and restore all church emolu-
ments to the crown, to which they rightly belonged. James responded
with dramatic horror at the thought that he should follow his uncle into
heresy, and the Deity reinforced his pious revulsion with a providential
thunder-clap during the ambassador's presentation.42 Four years later the
English tried again, spurred on by a report of a conversation between
Lord Eure and Thomas Bellenden, one of James's advisers. The Scottish
king had been stung by a court play performed in 1540 that was critical of
the clergy, into threatening that he would `send six of the proudest of
them [the bishops] unto his uncle of England'.43 Sadler was dispatched to
the north, with secret information about Cardinal Beaton's dealings with
Rome and dire warnings about clerical power. The objectives of such
diplomacy were of course to neutralize the political threat posed by
James's alliances, especially the French connection.44 But Henry also
appears to have taken some pleasure in the idea of goading his nephew
into action against Rome. Meanwhile, if relations turned sour, there was
always the English claim to Scotland to resuscitate. The Collectanea had
revived Edward I's imperialist claims to Scotland as part of its tireless quest
for historical proofs of regal authority.45 Bishop Foxe thought it worth
repeating them in his De Vera Differentia (1534), though he can hardly
have guessed how important they would prove to be in the subsequent
decade.46

Jurisdiction and Authority in King Henry's Realms

The 1534 Act of Supremacy acknowledged Henry VIII as Head of the
Church in England: in `the Church called Anglicana Ecclesia'.47 Much of
the rest of the decade was to be devoted to articulating the nature of that
supremacy and to enforcing it within England. There were major prob-
41
As early as 1534 Cromwell had sought to persuade Adam Otterburn of the merits of the
Henrician settlement: LP vi. 1571; vii. 4.
42
C. Patrick Hotle, Thorns and Thistles: Diplomacy between Henry VIII and James V, 1528±42
(1996), 79±81. LP ix. 730; x. 141.
43
LP xv. 136.
44
See Sadler's advice on his 1540 mission, Hotle, Thorns and Thistles, 145±51.
45
Nicholson, `Henrician Reformation', 172±8.
46
Foxe, True Dyfferens, fos. 80 ff. Henry had always been disposed to offer other princes
unsolicited advice on their religious affairs: as early as 1524 he had urged the three dukes of
Saxony to follow his example and uphold orthodoxy: C. D'Alton, `The Suppression of Heresy
in Early Henrician England', University of Melbourne Ph.D. (1999), 128±9.
47
26 HVIII, c. 1.
126 The Coming of Reformation
lems of authority within the Church. For example, the ®rst attempt at
procuring oaths from the clergy renouncing the authority of Rome foun-
dered because it was undertaken as part of Cranmer's metropolitical visit-
ation, and the bishops challenged the archbishop's authority, fearing that
they might be exposed to a second charge of praemunire in ®ve years. The
possibility of a clericalist solution to the issue of authority, with the king
merely providing the temporal support to a policy enforced by the episco-
pate, led by a series of stages to the appointment of Cromwell as full
vicegerent in spirituals in 1536.48 The ®rst notion was that the minister
would simply exercise rights under the royal supremacy during the royal
visitation instituted in January 1535. This in turn, by addressing a wide
variety of issues of religious discipline, con®rmed the quasi-sacerdotal role
of the supreme head. The bishops' fears about their jurisdictions led the
king to grant enhanced powers to his vicegerent: and authority was re-
stored to the ordinaries only at his, and the king's, pleasure. Finally in July
1536 the vicegerency was made permanent. The process had been slow,
and not necessarily self-consciously planned, but the outcome was not in
doubt. Cromwell could intervene at will in the affairs of the Church: the
jurisdictional authority of the supreme head was not to be challenged.49
Clarifying the structure of authority did not necessarily render the task
of enforcement any easier. Much of the theory of obedience to the su-
preme headship was supplied by Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man and
other Lutheran writings. The means for achieving this obedience were
various: for the clergy the most signi®cant were the preaching campaigns
in which they were required to proclaim the abolition of Roman authority
and the nature of King Henry's new-found status.50 In June 1535 Crom-
well ordered that the bishops preach on the royal supremacy each
Sunday.51 The next year a royal circular commanded bishops to institute
preaching against `the ®lthy and corrupt abominations of the bishop of
Rome', associating the preaching of the `word of God' with the promo-
tion of the supremacy. Cranmer was one of several bishops who initiated
their own preaching campaigns in these years.52 Prelates like John Long-
land of Lincoln, and Thomas Goodrich of Ely, organized circulars to all
parishes on the abolition of Roman authority and preaching circuits by
48
S.E. Lehmberg, `Supremacy and vicegerency: a re-examination', EHR 81 (1966), 225±35,
gives an outline narrative, but the discussion of the dating of the commission for the viceger-
ency has been superseded by F.D. Logan, `Thomas Cromwell and the vicegerency in spirituals:
a revisitation', EHR 103 (1988), 658±67.
49
M. Bowker, `The supremacy and the episcopate: the struggle for control, 1534±1540',
HJ 18 (1975), 227±43.
50 51
Rex, `crisis of obedience', 881±94. LP x. 45.
52
P. Ayris, `Continuity and change in diocese and province: the role of a Tudor bishop',
HJ 39 (1996), 290.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 127
53
licensed clergy. At Paul's Cross the pulpit resounded regularly with de-
fence of the supreme head from late 1534 until 1539 and the theme was
resuscitated whenever the political situation appeared threatening.54 When
Henry referred in his proclamation of 9 June 1535 to the preaching cam-
paign, he associated the dissemination of `the very true and sincere word of
God' with the denunciation of the `great and innumerable enormities and
abuses' of the bishop of Rome.55 The clergy were required to engage in an
intense effort to win hearts and minds, and to instil the religious fear that
would secure obedience. However, the key labour of ensuring that there
was no active dissent from the king's policies fell to the secular arm, the
local magistrates whose reports to Cromwell formed the basis of Elton's
de®nitive study of the enforcement of the supremacy.56
The Act of Supremacy, like all the legislation of the Reformation par-
liament, was intended to apply with as much force in Henry VIII's scat-
tered dominions as in the heartland of the Anglicana Ecclesia. There is no
reason to suppose that the parliamentary draftsmen saw any problems in
law when they announced that this applied to `any person, subject or
resident within this realm or elsewhere within the King's dominions'. In
the cases of Wales, Calais, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man the
regime could largely make good these claimed rights to obedience,
though even in these territories it quickly became clear that the new
jurisdictional pattern presented complications.57 The Channel Islands
were governed directly from London by nominated governors, but their
ecclesiastical position was anomalous. Until 1496 they remained under the
diocese of Coutances, Normandy, and, although Henry VII then obtained
papal bulls transferring them ®rst to Salisbury and then to Winchester, in
practice Coutances was where appointments to bene®ces continued to be
registered.58 There was the added embarrassment that they had been
granted especial papal protection by Sixtus IV as a safeguard against piracy.
Political acceptance of Henry's headship seems to have proved largely
uncontentious on Jersey and Guernsey: the royal courts of the islands
emphasized their obedience and, so far as can be judged in the absence of
good internal records, their ecclesiastical traditions continued much as

53
S. Wabuda, `The Provision of Preaching during the Early English Reformation, with
special reference to Itineration, c.1530 to 1547', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1991), 92±9.
54
M. MacLure, The Paul's Cross Sermons, 1534±1642 (Toronto, 1958), 27 ff.
55
TRP i. 230.
56
G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas
Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972).
57
G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 105±6.
58
A.J. Eagleston, The Channel Islands under Tudor Government, 1485±1642 (Cambridge, 1949),
35, 171. C.S.L. Davies, `International politics and the establishment of presbyterianism in the
Channel Islands: the Coutances connection', JEH 50 (1999), 498±522.
128 The Coming of Reformation
59
before. Only later under Elizabeth did the problems of weak ecclesias-
tical control become manifest. Calais was far more closely regulated under
the watchful eye of Lord Lisle as deputy and of Archbishop Cranmer,
since it was part of the peculiar jurisdiction of Canterbury.60 The prob-
lems of Calais were not an absence of control, but an excess of competing
jurisdictions: those of the deputy, the merchant Staple and the local cor-
poration on the secular side, and of the archbishop in spiritual matters.
The volatile combination of a large English-language garrison, a mixed
French and English civilian population, and visitors constantly moving
across the Channel, always made Calais dif®cult to govern. It remained
the gateway to France and was central to the interests of a king for whom
rivalry with his Valois neighbour was accounted little less than an article of
faith. In the 1530s the addition of ideological con¯ict, and of a deputy
who was profoundly opposed to religious change, made the town one of
the ¯ash-points of Henrician politics.61
The case of Wales is again distinct. There was no question about the
crown's claims to enforce religious policy: Welsh sees were simply sub-
sumed within the Anglicana Ecclesia. The principality and marches were
not jurisdictionally identical to English shires, but the king's writ unques-
tionably ran in them. Rowland Lee, bishop of Coventry and Lich®eld,
presided over a rejuvenated Council of the Marches from 1534. This was
explicitly designed both to suppress endemic Welsh disorder and to facili-
tate the enforcement of the supremacy.62 In the prelude to the full break
with Rome Welsh politics had been destabilized by Henry's attack on
Rhys ap Gruffudd, his key regional governor in the south-west. Gruffudd
was accused of planning to ally himself with James V and raise forces
in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man to depose the king. Although
there was little basis to the charges, Gruffudd was executed for treason
in 1531, leaving behind him a resentful clientage led by his unstable

59
D.M. Ogier, Reformation and Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge, 1996), 22±38. It is remark-
able that there is no surviving evidence of attempts to enforce religious change on the islands,
beyond the dissolution of the one small monastery still extant on Guernsey, until 1547. This was
partly because the bulk of the monastic property had been seized in the reign of Henry V under
the legislation against alien priories. I am grateful for information on Jersey to Helen Evans.
60
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 110±12.
61
P. Ward, `The politics of religion: Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation in Calais,
1534±40', JRH 17 (1992), 155±64. The con¯icts are revealed in unusual depth in Lisle's surviv-
ing papers: M. St Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters, 6 vols. (1980). In an indicative letter Cranmer
wrote to Cromwell in 1535 that Calais was a place of `great ignorance and blindness as well of
the heads now resident there, as of the common and vulgar people': LP ix. 561.
62
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 106±9. P. Roberts, `Tudor Wales, national identity
and the British inheritance', in B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and
Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533±1707 (Cambridge, 1998), 8±11.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 129
63
uncle. Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, remained hopeful that the
Welsh would rise in defence of the interests of Catherine of Aragon at the
time of the Kildare revolt.64 Careful management of Wales was therefore
a high priority for the Henrician regime.
Lee's appointment was the ®rst of a series of moves that culminated in
the ®rst Act of Union of 1536. The regime's motives for the incorporation
of Wales are not entirely easy to analyse. There was, no doubt, a strong
impulse for increased centralized control: the abolition of the marcher
lordships was complemented by the general legislation abolishing lordships
and franchises throughout the realm. In a crude dichotomy the legislation
might be described as Henrician in that it made the king's claims to
imperial power territorial as well as jurisdictional, Cromwellian in that it
made jurisdiction uniform and constructed the new identity through stat-
ute.65 But the statute was also probably a conscious appeal to the Welsh
elite, persuaded by the removal of all legal disabilities and the promise of
enhanced local control through the shiring system, to co-operate fully in
the enforcement of Henry's Reformation. Thus was developed one of the
most successful of Tudor political collaborations: the Welsh gentry
achieved a local control that had not previously been possible; the mon-
archy gained effective support from a territory whose general religious
conservatism might otherwise have posed a signi®cant threat.66
It was, of course, in Ireland that the jurisdictional and political limita-
tions of the Henrician settlement were most brutally exposed. Henry's
suzereignty as lord of Ireland was vulnerable both in theory and practice
and the events of the 1530s forced a fundamental rethinking of his pos-
ition. Theoretical authority rested in the lordship, which claimed some
jurisdiction over the whole island, but notionally from the time of John
onwards as a ®efdom of the papacy. The papal bull Laudabiliter remained a
crucial justi®cation for English rule over the barbarous Gaels.67 When the

63
G. Williams, Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c.1415±1642 (Oxford, 1987),
255±7. LP v. 563, 683, 720 (14). The events leading to Rhys ap Gruffudd's execution are
obscure, but it seems that his uncle, James, imprisoned with him, may have accused him as a
result of family quarrels: R.A. Grif®ths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his Family (Cardiff, 1993), 291±2.
64
CSP Sp iv. ii. 853.
65
There is, however, some danger in making the 1536 legislation sound too coherent and
®nal. As Roberts points out elsewhere, the act was ill prepared and its clauses on judicial
provision so uncertain that the king was permitted to suspend its provisions under the great seal
if need be. P. Roberts, `Wales and England after the Tudor ``union'': crown, principality and
parliament, 1543±1624', in Cross et al., Law and Government, 112±13.
66
B. Bradshaw, `The English Reformation and identity formation in Ireland and Wales', in
B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and Identity (Cambridge, 1998), 72±88.
67
For good narratives of the political background to the Kildare revolt and its course see
S. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State (Oxford, 1995), 173±232
and C. Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin, 1994), 93±112.
130 The Coming of Reformation
earl of Kildare sought foreign support for his revolt his chaplain was sent
to Pope Paul III to remind him that the papacy still possessed authority
over the whole island.68 It had, however, been the consistent policy of the
English crown to ignore both its own and the papacy's large claims in
favour of the everyday attempt to control the Pale and the marches.
Henry VII and Henry VIII, like their predecessors, usually employed
methods of indirect rule through the great regional magnates. In the early
Tudor period this meant overwhelmingly the earls of Kildare, though
intermittently Ormond and Desmond were invoked as counterbalance.
Mistrust between crown and magnates was common, and the Irish peers
had periods of enforced residence in England, or even imprisonment in
the Tower, which punctuated their years of control in Ireland.
The crisis which led to the 1534 Kildare revolt appeared at ®rst as little
more than one of these breakdowns: the rule of the ninth earl as governor
was challenged by a factional grouping eagerly abetted by his predecessor,
Lord Skef®ngton, and the earl was summoned to England in 1533. His
son, Lord Thomas, made his deputy in his absence, tried to exert pressure
to sustain the political control of the family. In the tense circumstances of
the divorce and break with Rome the king now chose to interpret this as
outright rebellion, thereby precipitating exactly this outcome.69 Chapuys
hoped that Kildare's uprising would become part of a more general chal-
lenge to Henry's heresy, and since Kildare ultimately chose to present
himself as leading a Catholic crusade, his speculation was not wholly
unfounded.70 During 1533 English spies had been kept busy investigating
contacts between the Irish, the Scots, and the disaffected Welshman,
James ap Gruffudd ap Hywel, now seeking revenge for his nephew's
death. James was received by James V, the former claiming that he `with
the Lion of Scotland should subdue all England'.71 During the Kildare
rebellion clan networks brought highlanders to the aid of the Irish, and
the ubiquitous James ap Gruffudd appeared from the Low Countries,
possibly bringing some military assistance. Meanwhile the earl appealed to
Rome, to the emperor, and to James V.72 All three dabbled cautiously in
Irish affairs: Charles V, in particular, kept his agents to Ireland busy with
verbal interest and support, though his preparations for the Tunisian cru-
68
O'Siochru, `Foreign involvement', 49±66. LP vi. 907; vii. 957, 1057, 1141.
69
B. Bradshaw, `Cromwellian reform and the origins of the Kildare rebellion, 1533±34',
TRHS 5th ser. 27 (1977), 69±94. S. Ellis, `The Kildare rebellion and the early Henrician
Reformation', HJ 19 (1976), 807±30.
70
For a detailed analysis of the `British' implications of 1533/4, see C. Kellar, ` ``To Enrich
with Gospell Truth the Neighbour Kingdom'': Religion and Reform in England and Scotland,
1534±1561', University of Oxford D.Phil. (1999), 21±6.
71
PRO sp 1/81, fo. 59v .
72
LP vii. 1193. O'Siorchu, `Foreign involvement', 55±60.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 131
73
sade left him with no capacity to intervene more directly. For the Hen-
rician regime it was, however, the ®rst alarming evidence that religious
disaffection might unite the other territories of Britain and Ireland against
England.74
Even without the Kildare debacle the process of enforcing the royal
supremacy in Ireland would have been fraught with dif®culty. The king's
title was personal, and therefore not dependent upon parliamentary legis-
lation, but obedience to it was enforced by English statute that had appli-
cation in Ireland, though was fully secure only when certi®ed and rati®ed
by an Irish parliament. It is understandable that in these circumstances
Thomas Skef®ngton, who returned to Ireland as lord deputy to oppose
Kildare, should have been instructed merely to attack papal jurisdiction
`according to the statutes thereupon provided, and the like to be enacted
there the next parliament'.75 Plans to summon that parliament were ini-
tially delayed by the suppression of the revolt, and then in later 1535 by
the death of Skef®ngton and his replacement by Lord Grey. The Irish
Reformation parliament therefore only met ®nally in May 1536 and com-
pleted its business in 1537. In the ®rst session the principal statutes paral-
leling those of England were passedÐfor supremacy, succession, ®rst
fruits, and restraint of annates, as well as a version of the Treasons Act.
There was consistent and tenacious opposition to the legislation from the
clergy in both Houses.76 The 1536 session was followed by the beginning
of a campaign for enforcement as the new archbishop of Dublin, George
Browne, exacted the Oath of Supremacy from his diocesan clergy, and
Lord Grey began to do the same in piecemeal fashion from civic of®cials.
Grey, in particular, brought no very great urgency to the task of ensuring
conformity.77 In 1538, when he was supposed to be supporting Browne's
campaign against images, he was alleged to have gone to the pilgrimage
site at Trim and `very devoutly kneeling' before the image of Our Lady,
heard three or four Masses. In the same year he licensed a deputation of
friars to visit England to petition for the preservation of their order.78 But
more was at stake than a hesitant start to the enforcement of religious
discipline. First, the end of the Kildare ascendancy made it necessary to

73
Earlier, in July 1533 an English spy in Spain reported that it was said that Charles would
set the Scots and the Irish against England: LP vi. 821.
74
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 57±8. Ellis, `Kildare rebellion', 825±30.
75
R.W.D. Edwards, `The Irish Reformation parliament of Henry VIII, 1536±7', Historical
Studies 6 (1968), 60.
76
Ibid., 59±84. B. Bradshaw, `The opposition to the ecclesiastical legislation in the Irish
Reformation parliament', IHS 16 (1968±9), 285±303. The consistent opposition of the clergy to
the Henrician legislation provided a critical complication for the Henrician regime.
77
H.A. Jefferies, `The early Tudor Reformation in the Irish Pale', JEH 52 (2001), 53±6.
78
PRO sp 60/6/127. Jefferies, `Early Tudor Reformation', 54.
132 The Coming of Reformation
rede®ne the nature of political control in the lordship. Secondly, Gaelic
chieftains and dissident marcher lords now became more than a general
threat to law and order in the Englishry, they became potential agents of
the Roman antichrist and his imperial minions.79
Cromwell's solution, as elsewhere, was to promote direct government
from London, with accompanying reform of the Irish council to make it a
more effective agent of control under an English-appointed lord deputy.80
But strict and straight control would only be viable with resources that
London, and especially Henry, was unwilling to commit. Hence on Grey's
failure to resolve the problems posed by the Geraldine league of Gaelic
princes by military action in 1539 a new approach was adopted. Anthony
St Leger arrived as lord deputy in July 1540, committed to the royal
supremacy, but otherwise uninterested in disturbing the religious peace.
Instead he began the policy of surrender and regrant, persuading the Gaelic
chiefs to agree to hold their lands of the king, and accept his title as
supreme head, in return for a surrender of his unenforceable feudal rights.
At its heart was the idea of acknowledging Henry king of Ireland, a project
®rst mooted by Bishop Staples of Meath in 1537 and enacted by the Irish
parliament in June 1541.81 The initiative was undoubtedly from Ireland:
the king had serious reservations about the enlarged responsibilities implied
in the change of style, and only roused himself to action when he under-
stood that the Irish parliament had named him as king, rather than merely
recognizing the pre-existent justice of his title. This was `corrected' by
further legislation in 1542.82 But the potential for enlarged political in¯u-
ence was immense and, as St Leger began the painstaking business of
negotiating the surrender of individual chieftains, the political Reforma-
tion appeared institutionalized throughout Henry's realms.

Henrician Policy
Acceptance of Henry's imperial title and of his jurisdictional authority
over the English and Irish church was an end in itself, but it was never
likely to be the only consequence of the breach with Rome. Ministers,
churchmen, and courtiers all had their own agendas for change after 1534,
and the king himself was initially more than willing to probe the extent of
his newly acquired power. Making sense of Henrician religious politics is
a trying business: living them must often have had a nightmarish quality,
79
Ellis, `Kildare rebellion', 823±30.
80
S. Ellis, `Thomas Cromwell and Ireland, 1532±40', HJ 23 (1980), 497±519.
81
B. Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979),
98±106, 233±8.
82
SP HVIII ii. 480.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 133
as men sought to second-guess the monarch's latest views. It is most
commonly argued by historians that the consequence was policies that
oscillated sharply, driven by whichever individual or grouping com-
manded the king's ear, or by Henry's own erratic and eclectic reading of
the duties of the supreme head.83 The latter, it is suggested, were under-
pinned not by a coherent theology, but by little more than a `ragbag of
emotional preferences'.84 It has recently been urged, however, that the
king was both deeply engaged in the making of policy, and possessed his
own consistent assumptions about moderate reform pursued along a
middle path.85 He leant, in Cromwell's words to Parliament in May 1540,
`neither to the right nor the left hand . . . but set the pure and sincere
doctrine of the Christian faith only before his eyes'.86 The theme was
reprised in many different contexts during the later years of the reign.
Marillac, the French ambassador, was assured that it explained Henry's
dealings with the Lutherans: Sadler, on embassy to Scotland in 1543, was
told to justify the king's position as `neither swerving to the left hand of
iniquity neither the right hand with other pretence of holiness than is
agreeable to God's truth'.87 Those who deviated from this path were to
be `duly corrected and punished', as was the unfortunate Cromwell in
1540. In some of these pronouncements the balanced Aristotelian mean
was genuinely invoked. But Cromwell's language, directly quoting the
Bible on the godly Josiah, should alert us to the fact that the `middle way'
was itself a contested concept.88 It could be represented as the righteous
path from which the monarch was in no circumstances to be de¯ected.
This dimension of Henry's thinking was reinforced in his later years by
his growing identi®cation with Old Testament monarchs, notably David
and Josiah. They, like him, had articulated the divine will through law and
adherence to the word. Josiah had purged the idols: David had defended his
people and served them in righteousness.89 These representations served

83
For interpretations, each markedly different, that emphasize the in¯uence of others in the
making of policy, see Elton, Reform and Reformation, 273±95; D. Starkey, Henry VIII: Personalities
and Politics (1985); and E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England
1400±1580 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 379±447.
84
D. MacCulloch, `Henry VIII and the reform of the Church', in MacCulloch, Reign of
Henry VIII, 178.
85
The revival of the rational and controlling Henry is to be found in G. Bernard's recent
work, especially `The making of religious policy, 1533±1546: Henry VIII and the search for the
middle way', HJ 41 (1998), 321±49, but see also the important earlier article by G. Redworth,
`Whatever happened to the English Reformation?', History Today 37 (1987), 29±35.
86 87
Lords Journals, i. 128±9. LP xiv. ii. 388; xviii. i. 364. SP HVIII viii. no. 901.
88
2 Kings 22: 2.
89
P. Tudor-Craig, `Henry VIII and King David', in D. Williams (ed.), Early Tudor England
(Woodbridge, 1989), 183±205. J.N. King, `Henry VIII as David: the king's image and Reforma-
tion politics', in P.C. Herman (ed.), Rethinking the Henrician Era (Urbana, Ill., 1994), 78±92.
134 The Coming of Reformation
those committed to reform, and were vigorously promoted by them, as in
the use of David on the frontispieces of the Coverdale and Great Bibles.
But Henry's internalization of this latter parallel is strongly suggested by his
approval of the Psalter presented to him by Jean Mallard, a French courtier,
with its miniatures representing him as the Israelite king.90 Henry anno-
tated this volume heavily, identifying particularly with the suffering mon-
arch assailed by his enemies. Neither the adulterous nor the penitential
aspects of King David were emphasized by Mallard, who claimed that the
psalms represented a guide to ideal kingship. Henry's annotations also avoid
re¯ection on penitence. But even if Davidic images de®ned the king's sense
of his religious role, the ideological direction of his church policy remained
unclear to many of those at the heart of the regime. The result was deep
con¯ict in court, council and the assemblies of the bishops.91
Hostility to the papacy, and its obverse, the elevation of the authority
and responsibility of the supreme head, was the guiding theme of Henry's
rhetoric throughout the later 1530s and 1540s. The content of policy
should best be seen as following where the king's current belief in his
duty led. This often involved claiming a commitment to reform and
renewal in the Church, while simultaneously insisting on unity and on
the essential truths of the Catholic faith.92 Each, or all, of these elements
can be found in of®cial pronouncements throughout the later years of the
reign. The king and his clergy, began the King's Book of 1543, `by the
help of God and his word have travailed to purge and cleanse our realm'
of the enormities of superstition and hypocrisy.93 Reform involved access
to the Word and, after 1536, the purging of idolatrous images. In 1538
Henry took particular pleasure in the destruction of the shrine of Thomas
Becket, that martyr to papal interest and clerical autonomy. And in the
same year the linkage between usurped papal power and false idolatry was
attested dramatically in the burning of Friar Forest. The Observant de-
fender of papal supremacy was burned with the wreckage of the image of
St Derfel from Llandderfel, North Wales.94 As for the king's understand-

90
There is disagreement about the dating of Mallard's gift, but agreement that Henry's
annotations post-date the break with Rome.
91
Some of the more interesting recent readings of Henry's policy do not argue with Bernard
for full coherence of policy or dominance by Henry, but accept the signi®cance of the king's
con®guration of his own authority in terms of Old Testament law and kingship: R. Rex, Henry
VIII and the English Reformation (Basingstoke, 1993), 173±5; and D. MacCulloch, `Henry VIII',
in MacCulloch, Reign of Henry VIII, 179±80.
92
Bernard, `Making of religious policy', 321±39.
93
C. Lloyd (ed.), Formularies of Faith put forth by authority during the reign of Henry VIII
(Oxford, 1825), 215.
94
P. Marshall, `The Rood of Boxley, the Blood of Hailes and the defence of the Henrician
church', JEH 46 (1995), 695.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 135
ing of the essential truths of Catholicism: the annotations of his private
psalter suggest they included belief in the sacri®ce of the Mass, confession,
and the salvi®c ef®cacy of works.95 Unity was to be achieved by the
careful regulation of of®cial confessions, by setting out `plain and sincere'
doctrine, and, as the Act of Six Articles (1539) has it, by legislating for the
`abolishing of diversity in opinions'.96
Reform and tradition, however, were always likely to be in con¯ict: if
the middle way was to be one of unity rather than compromise it had to
possess a certain clarity and the capacity to command consent. Henry
presumably did not have in mind the sort of horse-trading among the
bishops that marked the passage of the Bishops' Book (1537), in which
each article was fought phrase by phrase and then often compromised.97
His contempt for this clerical in-®ghting resonates through his parliamen-
tary speech of 1545 in which he denounced the priests for lack of charity
and intellectual arrogance.98 Instead, the king's aims suggest the need for a
certain olympian detachment and disinterest, which would allow him to
act solely in accord with the demands of his conscience, that `highest and
supreme court for judgement and justice' as he once notably called it.99
But the real king was not a self-fashioning isolate, and his middle way had
to be sold in the marketplace of Tudor politics. The pressures of foreign
policy, of internal dissent, and of con¯icting political advice all militated
against his desire to order the trinity of reform, tradition, and unity.
Henry and his ministers saw foreign hostility as the gravest threat to
England's new-found imperial status. The abiding fear of the anger of
Charles V, and of the danger that he might bury his differences with
Francis I and launch a crusade against the heretic English, resonates
through the 1530s and was not wholly buried in the 1540s. Jean du Bellay,
the French ambassador, observed that the divorce would be a means `to
bring the King of England to his knees'.100 The more contentious issue
for historians is how far internal religious politics were driven or distorted
by that fear. The timing of certain stages of the attack on church wealthÐ
in 1534 and again in 1538Ðcertainly seems to have owed something
to enhanced anxieties about hostile coalitions in Ireland or on the
Continent.

95
Tudor-Craig, `Henry VIII and King David', 196.
96
31 Henry VIII, c. 8.
97
The process of negotiation is recalled in Gardiner's letters, though the struggles are
registered independently by Latimer: J.A. Muller (ed.), The Letters of Stephen Gardiner
(Cambridge, 1933), 351. LP xii. ii. 295.
98
Hall, Chronicle, ii. 356.
99
M. St Clare Byrne (ed.), The Letters of King Henry VIII (1936), 86.
100
D. Potter, `Foreign policy', in MacCulloch, Reign of Henry VIII, 119±23.
136 The Coming of Reformation
In the second half of the 1530s Henry was less able than he would have
wished to play the `natural' game of balancing between the two great
European powers. His need for friends, especially in the dark days when
Franco-Imperial rapprochement threatened possible invasion in 1538/9,
drove him to German powers and the Schmalkaldic League.101 Lutheran
encounters were not new. Henry had dabbled with German contacts as
early as 1528, when he began to consider gaining their goodwill in rela-
tion to his divorce. In 1534±5 Bishop Foxe was assigned the task of
negotiating with the League, with a view to achieving a measure of
concord between the churches. From these exchanges came a comprom-
ise document known as the Wittenberg Articles, which did something to
shape the English confession of the Ten Articles of 1536. However, the
compromise was never published or of®cially acknowledged in either
England or Germany: its in¯uence lay in the countenance that it gave to
Cranmer and his allies as they sought to establish the ®rst formularies of
the new church.102 The contacts of 1538 were altogether different: they
had a higher political pro®le and were cemented a year later by the ill-
fated Cleves marriage. Their doctrinal objectives, from the German per-
spective, were acceptance by the English of the essential principles of the
Augsburg Confession. The king willed the proposed alliance, but saw
the ideological cost as too high: from his summer progress he demolished
the envoys' views on clerical celibacy, communion in one kind, and
intercessory Masses. The Lutherans retired in disgust, only to be wooed
again from January 1539 when Henry actually offered to join the League,
displaying an urgency they had never seen in the previous years. A new
delegation was sent to England in the spring, immediately to be con-
fronted with the passage of the Act of Six Articles, and to experience
violent debate with Henry over clerical marriage.
Thus expressed it would appear that Henry was not de¯ected from his
internal religious politics by the Lutheran negotiations. But a closer look
at 1538 to 1540 indicates that the king did respond to the threats posed by
France and the Empire with internal manoeuvring, and that the local
volatility of this period owes much to foreign danger. The negotiations
with the Germans, in 1538 as earlier, encouraged evangelicals internally,
and were one of the elements challenging the balance the king sought.
His response, during the autumn and winter of that year, was to signal a
return to tradition: a return realized in the passage of the Act of Six
101
The de®nitive work on Henry VIII and the Lutherans is now R. McEntegart, `England
and the League of Schmalkalden', London School of Economics Ph.D. (1992), but see also
N.S. Tjernagel, Henry VIII and the Lutherans: A Study of Anglo-Lutheran Relations from 1521 to
1547 (St Louis, Mo., 1965).
102 MacCulloch, Cranmer, 355±6.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 137
103
Articles the following spring. At least one motive, albeit secondary to
internal considerations, was the signal of increased orthodoxy that was
given to foreign powers. The Treaty of Toledo, engineered by the papacy
to facilitate crusade against England, had been signed in January 1539
between France and the Empire, and ambassadors had been recalled,
though they had returned in time to be impressed by the parliamentary
action. Marillac, the French ambassador, commented that the king had
`taken up again all the old opinions and constitutions, excepting only
papal obedience'.104 Yet within two months the atmosphere had changed
again. In June Henry staged a spectacular anti-papal pageant on the
Thames: in July he agreed to the Cleves marriage.105 The former gesture
reminded the world of the ®rmness of his commitment to supremacy, but
the latter seems to re¯ect a disappointment at his fellow monarchs' lack of
response to his trumpeted doctrinal orthodoxy. And with the marriage
treaty came, once again, the promise of serious negotiations with the
Germans and the predictable ®llip to reforming hopes as Cromwell once
again appeared in the ascendant.
The political seesaw continued in 1540 as the Cleves marriage proved
disastrous, the Germans were once again too demanding, and, most cru-
cially, Francis and Charles resumed their quarrels. The Franco-Imperial
breakdown does not necessarily explain Cromwell's fall: it does explain
why Henry could again recon®gure his internal religious politics. During
the ensuing French and Scottish wars Henry seems to have felt less con-
strained in his domestic choices, but in the last year of the reign some of
the violent swings of politics may be connected to the European situation.
This was the year that produced a short ¯urry of diplomacy as Henry
seems to have toyed very brie¯y with abandoning the royal supremacy
and, as the Schmalkaldic War in Germany reached a crisis, he seems to
have wavered between reform and conservatism with an eye once again
on the emperor. John Hooper's caustic judgement from exile was that
Henry would turn to the gospel if Charles was defeated: if he was victori-
ous `he [Henry] will then retain his impious mass'.106
Internal opposition to royal policy is a theme for a later chapter. The only
moment at which it might be argued to have changed Henry's mind is in
the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace. The scale of the uprising, its
interlinkage with the Lincolnshire revolt, and the aftershock of the Bigod
revolt in January 1537 all destroyed his sense that opposition was con®ned
103
G. Redworth, `A study in the formulation of policy: the genesis and evolution of the Act
of Six Articles', JEH 37 (1986), 42±67. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 355±83.
104
LP xiv. i. 1260.
105
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 254±7.
106
LP xiv. i. 1137. OL i. 41.
138 The Coming of Reformation
to fanatical monks, a few Catholic intellectuals, and alehouse dissent.107
The regime's immediate reactions were angry justi®cation and repression,
followed at some distance by a desire to persuade. Henry's letters to the
rebels defended his settlement while expressing fury at their sin against
God's anointed, and at the ®rst politically possible moment he demanded
ferocious retribution. He also concluded that, for the common people,
ignorance was at the root of dissent, and therefore proposed sending
preachers to the north `to instruct the people in the truth and to teach
and preach the word of God sincerely to them'.108 The shock did not,
however, produce convincing evidence that Henry was de¯ected from his
chosen religious course. The pace of monastic dissolution slowed, but per-
haps only because there was policy uncertainty after the closure of the lesser
houses. Cromwell's role as vicegerent was strengthened during the summer
of 1537. At most the `ignorance' of the rebels may have encouraged Henry
to insist that his leading churchmen produce a more comprehensive state-
ment of belief than the short Ten Articles issued the previous year.109
The third problem the king faced, that of con¯icting advice, is usually
seen as the most critical. Even if we posit a king who was closely engaged
in the making of his own settlement, debating its doctrine, overseeing its
legislation, confronting its opponents, we cannot present him as an isol-
ated maker of policy. Cromwell, Cranmer, the collectivity of the bishops,
and the council, all played of®cial roles in the construction of Henry's
church. Many others seized the opportunities of a relatively open and
faction-ridden court to exert in¯uence. The king may not have depended
on any of these individuals or groups as he had done upon Wolsey. But
Anne Boleyn, Cromwell, and Cranmer did manage much of the religious
agenda between 1532 and 1539, and Gardiner, Cranmer, Norfolk, and
some of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber amongst others exercised
in¯uence in the last years of the reign.110 Was Henry manipulated into
choices that he subsequently came to regret by these other policy-makers?
The case for Cromwell and his reform-minded supporters is the strongest.
Cromwell was represented by his adherents as a leader: a warrior who

107
On Henry's reaction to the Pilgrimage see Bernard, `Making of religious policy', 336±7;
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 342±6.
108
The duke of Norfolk also diagnosed the crisis as arising from lack of preaching: `if three
or four loyal preachers had continually been in these parts, instructing the unlearned people, no
such follies had been attempted as hath been': LP xii. i. 1158.
109
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 185.
110
On the role of faction in policy-making see Starkey, Henry VIII; Ives, Anne Boleyn; and,
much less convincingly, J.S. Block, Factional Politics and the English Reformation, 1520±1540
(Woodbridge, 1993). Block has interesting evidence on the evangelical networks but presents
altogether too programmatic a view of Cromwell as leader of the reforming faction, to the
virtual neglect of his ¯exible persona as the king's man.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 139
fought boldly for the truth, by implication more boldly than his monarch.
For Latimer he was God's chosen `instrument'; for the Scot Alesius a great
defender of the `pure doctrine of the gospel'.111 There is much evidence
to support this view. Cromwell became the key broker of royal patronage,
especially after the fall of Anne Boleyn, and he used that patronage to
secure reformers in vital posts in church and state.112 His most critical
promotions for the long-term survival of the evangelical cause were those
made to the king's privy chamber in the aftermath of the Boleyn debacle.
Through the promotion of Anthony Denny, Thomas Cawardine, John
Gates, and others, he ensured that the king had evangelicals as his imme-
diate companions in his declining years.
Cromwell's in¯uence appears ubiquitous in the later 1530s: he oversaw
the production and dissemination of the English Bible, the dissolution of the
monasteries, the attack on shrines, the enforcement of the royal injunctions.
Henry more than acquiesced in these changes: the destruction of shrines, for
example, had been driven partly by his determination to destroy the
memory of Becket, and after Cromwell's fall the king reiterated the proc-
lamation against them. For all the king's doubts about permitting the ordin-
ary laity to debate the scriptures, he reinforced the order to have the English
Bible in parish churches a year after Cromwell's execution. But the familiar
assumption is that Henry slowly recognized that his minister was supporting
too wide a range of reform causes. The very proclamation of November
1538 that ®nally outlawed the Becket cult also regulated the import of
English books and Bibles and defended ceremonies such as creeping to the
cross on Good Friday.113 The king took the unusual step of correcting the
draft of this proclamation himself, not wholly trusting his adviser to ensure
the middle path. Though Cromwell adjusted his religious politics deftly in
the dif®cult year of the Six Articles and the Cleves marriage, Henry
remained conscious of his interest in reform.114 And ultimately he found in
his minister's protection of radicals a justi®cation for his fall. Cromwell's
suppression in 1539 of Lord Lisle's complaints about the nest of sectaries in
Calais became one of the king's dominant grievances against him.115

111
G.E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer (PS, Cambridge, 1845), i. 411.
LP xii. i. 790.
112
A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd edn. (1989), 130 ff.
113
TRP i. 270±6.
114
S. Brigden, `Thomas Cromwell and the ``brethren'' ', in Cross et al., Law and Government,
31±49.
115
The signi®cance of the Calais revelations for Cromwell's fall is controversial. See
A.J. Slavin, `Cromwell, Cranmer and Lord Lisle: a study in the politics of reform', Albion 9
(1977), 316±36; Redworth, `Act of Six Articles', 51±3; Ward, `Politics of religion', 164±71,
makes an interesting case for Cromwell's lack of grasp on the religious politics of Calais, though
he takes at face value statements from Cromwell that seem likely to be disingenuous.
140 The Coming of Reformation
There are dangers, however, in asserting that Cromwell, or indeed any
other councillors to the king, consciously risked pushing policy beyond
the boundaries of the royal will. The Lord Privy Seal famously told the
Lutheran envoys that though he sympathized with their religious views,
`the world standing now as it does, whatever his lord the King holds, so
too will he hold'.116 He would say so, of course: these were foreign
envoys. But Henrician advisers succeeded by not making martyrs of them-
selves and there are ample examples of policy governing ideological pref-
erence in the behaviour of Cromwell, or, on the conservative side, of
Bishop Gardiner. Perhaps what needs to be emphasized most strongly is
not the ideological commitments or factional manoeuvring of these men,
rather the complexity of making policy, of guiding the king in the un-
familiar world of the ecclesia Anglicana, and of enforcing change in a culture
wedded to belief in continuity. This complexity is best explored through a
more systematic case study: the dissolution of the monasteries, the `capital
event' of the later 1530s.117

The Monastic Dissolutions

Writing to the Scottish regent the earl of Arran in 1543, Henry gave
helpful do-it-yourself advice on the abolition of monasticism. His com-
ments read as though drawn from a Machiavellian handbook for princes:
`the enterprise . . . requireth politic handling, . . . commissioners must have
secret commission . . . [to] get knowledge of all their [the monks] abomi-
nations . . . he [the ruler] agreeing with them [the nobility] for the distri-
bution of the lands of the abbeys . . . '.118 From the perspective of 1543 the
dissolution appears to the English king as a rational, fully planned, and
clinically controlled operation, whose objective was the extension of the
power of the crown and the distribution of a portion of the wealth to
the laity. The partial truth of this tale, however, does little justice to the
complexities and confusions of policy formation and execution that led to
the end of the monasteries. There was, of course, from the beginning of
the Reformation parliament some expectation that the revenues of the
Church would be vulnerable to lay attack. `The temporality', as one
commentator wrote in the early 1530s, `scan the possessions of the spiritu-
ality, thinking verily that they may have acquired a great deal more than
reason would require.'119 Already in 1529 a parliamentary petition had
116
R.B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1902), i. 279.
117
The phrase is J.J. Scarisbrick's in The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 68.
118
LP xviii. i. 364, quoted in D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. iii: The
Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1959), 204.
119
BL Cottonian MS Cleo. e i v , fo. 212.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 141
revived Lollard attacks on ecclesiastical possessions, arguing that the clergy
must be returned to their true purity and their property given to the
crown, which would use them to reverse the `decay of the nobility' and,
with their assistance, to ®ght the Great Turk. Hoyle has plausibly sug-
gested that this proposal, which did not gain of®cial sanction, may have
originated in court circles, where the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were
bent upon the destruction of Wolsey.120 The ®rst dissolution proposal in
Ireland, from the pen of Baron Finglas in the early 1530s, followed a
similar line of thought. Border monasteries could be suppressed to ®nance
`young lords and gents out of England', who would colonize the con-
tested territories to the military and ®nancial bene®t of the crown.121
The 1529 petition revived old complaints against the clerical estate, but
also pointed to some possible motives for reform. Wolsey himself had
already set the precedent in the case of the monasteries by his 1525±6
dissolutions designed to ®nance his new educational foundations at
Oxford and Ipswich.122 Moreover, in 1529 he received papal permission
to convert abbacies into bishoprics, suppress some monastic houses to
endow colleges at Windsor and Cambridge, and to unite those unable to
support more than twelve members.123 Events overtook the latter grand
plan, but it represented a good example of the clerical and humanist view
of how wealth might be redistributed to the bene®t of the Church as a
whole. It would be dif®cult to identify consistent clerical views on the
wealth of the monasteries as the 1530s unfolded, but a common position
(held by traditionalists and some reformers alike) was that while recycling
of resources within the Church was acceptable, the loss of the monasteries
to lay greed was not. For example, the drama `Godly Queen Hester'
(c.1529±30) defends the monasteries from a traditional perspective, as
givers of good hospitality, looking both backwards to criticize Wolsey's
suppressions and forwards to the potential threat from the crown.124
Thomas Starkey, occupying a middle ground in his Dialogue of Pole and
Lupset, argued for reform of the monasteries, not their destruction.125
Much later in the decade Latimer's plea for the Benedictine house of
Great Malvern to be preserved `not in monkery . . . but to maintain teach-
ing, preaching, study with praying and . . . good housekeeping', is the most
120
The 1529 petition was discovered by Richard Hoyle and is printed and discussed in his
important article on the dissolution to which the ensuing section is much indebted: Hoyle,
`Origins of the dissolution', 275±305. The original 1410 Lollard petition is printed in J. Youings,
The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1972), 135.
121
B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge,
1974), 44±5.
122 123
LP iv. iii. 5607. Gwyn, King's Cardinal, 464±9. LP xiii. ii. 1036.
124
Walker, Plays of Persuasion, 108±22.
125
T. Starkey, A dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T.F. Mayer, CS, 4th ser. 37 (1989), 103±4.
142 The Coming of Reformation
distinctive of a range of reformers' views.126 The problem for the clergy
was that they had little autonomous voice in a matter so closely touching
the regality and purse of the crown. It is striking that even Henry's
favoured new archbishop played only a limited role in the dissolution
saga, and cannot be shown to have had any signi®cant effect on policy.
Once disendowment of the Church became an established practice, the
bishops began to protest, though even then it was most usual for them to
engage in the cautious defence of their own lands. John Stokesley, for
example, invoked some of that historical evidence supposedly so dear to
his monarch, when he opposed a manorial grant because the land con-
cerned had been given to the see of London by St Ethelbert and King
Offa and hedged with `strange imprecations contra alienatores'.127 Mean-
while Gardiner adopted another ploy, pressing for the establishment of the
new bishoprics that had been another of Wolsey's schemes, thereby saving
something from the ®nal wreckage for the cause of ecclesiastical order.128
The clergy had some fellow-travellers among laymen with a voice at
court: most remarkably it has been argued that Anne Boleyn and Jane
Seymour were hostile to dissolution, or at least to secularization that
would not bene®t godly causes. On Passion Sunday 1536 Anne's almoner,
John Skip, preached a sermon containing a swingeing attack on lay greed,
using the Old Testament story of Ahasuerus, who was deceived by his
adviser Haman into proscribing the Jews. Haman, in Skip's description, is
a scarcely disguised Cromwell.129 Later the same year Jane seems to have
trespassed less publicly on the same territory when she pleaded with the
king for the restoration of the lesser monasteries after the Pilgrimage of
Grace.130 As the process against the monasteries advanced there were
strong voices in defence of particular houses from the commissioners for
visitations and from individual nobles and courtiers who, like their clerical
counterparts, saw merit in conformable and hospitable monks.131 Lord
Chancellor Audley pleaded for the preservation of St John's, Colchester,
and St Osyth's as colleges if not as monasteries since `little hospitality shall

126
T. Wright (ed.), Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, CS
os 26 (1843), 149.
127
LP xiii. i. 1500. F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes (Cambridge, 1980), 109±25.
128
Papal bulls for the establishment of six new sees had actually been issued in 1532, only to
be overtaken by events.
129
E.W. Ives, `Anne Boleyn and the early Reformation in England: the contemporary
evidence', HJ 37 (1994), 395±400. The evidence that Anne approved of the content of Skip's
controversial sermon is circumstantial, but is presented very convincingly in Ives's article.
130
LP xi. 860. E. Hallam, `Henry VIII's monastic refoundations of 1536±7 and the course of
the dissolution', BIHR 51 (1978), 129.
131
See J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 70±4, for a
summary of pleas to the crown for particular houses.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 143
132
be kept' in that part of Essex if they were dissolved. None of this can
be said to have had a long-term effect on royal policy: and indeed Henry
must have taken the anticlerical attitude of the court both before and
during the dissolution as one sign that it was safe to proceed.
The king had intended action against at least some of the regulars from
an early stage of the divorce crisis. In March 1533 Henry informed Cha-
puys that one of his objectives was to reunite to the crown all church
goods held directly of it, asserting his right as founder and benefactor.133
The next year rumour had it that this rather circumscribed plan was to be
superseded by one to remove all ecclesiastical temporalities. John Husee,
the Lisles' London agent, reporting this added `whereof many be glad and
few bemoan them'.134 The parliamentary session that followed saw major
changes, notably the introduction of the ®rst fruits and tenths legislation,
but nothing as drastic as Husee had indicated. He may, however, have
been aware of a proposal entitled `Things to be moved for the Kings
highness for an increase and augmentation of his most royal estate and for
defence of the realm, and necessary to be provided for taking away the
excess which is the great cause of the abuses in the church.'135 Hoyle has
suggested that this set of proposals may actually have been presented in
Parliament late in 1534: if so it left few legislative traces, though a com-
ment by Chapuys indicates that the king may have tried to present an
ambitious project for expropriation, only to retreat back to his demands
for ®rst fruits.136 The key pressure behind `Things to be moved . . . ' was
the Kildare revolt, and the governmental quest for an army to suppress it,
and there is an emphasis on the king's rights to goods for public use.
From the beginning of 1535 it might be assumed that Cromwell would
have established a clearer trajectory for dissolution. That January, letters
patent appointed commissioners to survey church wealth, the end product
being the Valor Ecclesiasticus, and in the same month the minister's eleva-
tion to the vicegerency enabled him to establish monastic visitations under
the terms of the Act of Supremacy. But even the planning of the visit-
ations does not indicate great clarity of purpose by the king and Crom-
well. The question of founders' rights in the monasteries, raised by Henry

132
Wright, Three Chapters, 246±7.
133
Hoyle, `Origins of the dissolution', 281.
134
LP vi. 235.
135
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 103±4. BL Cottonian MS Cleo. e i v , fos. 207±208v : `Things to
be moved . . .' is printed in J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1969), 145±7.
136
Hoyle, `Origins of the dissolution', 282 ff., argues strongly for this as an of®cial docu-
ment, the basis of government initiative in Parliament. It may be more `of®cial' than I allowed
in 1980, but there are still problems with the text, especially the sense that it is a draft proposal
with little evidence of how it would have been worked into legislative form.
144 The Coming of Reformation
to Chapuys, remained pertinent.137 One of the questions that the visitors
were asked to answer was who held original rights over a particular house.
There may also have been some interest in the idea of voluntary surren-
ders, not so unrealistic in the light of Continental experience. And all of
this may re¯ect con¯icting conciliar advice to the king. The late six-
teenth-century chronicle found among the papers of George Wyatt has
Cromwell recommending that it might be best to proceed piecemeal
`little by little and not suddenly by parliament'. It also describes a group
led by Lord Chancellor Audley and Richard Rich as ®nally prevailing and
drafting the 1536 Suppression Act. There are certainly indications that the
last series of visitors' returns, for the Northern Province, were redrafted,
possibly to persuade MPs of the need for action.138
Other European states that took the road to Reformation faced the same
dif®culty and produced rather different answers. Some of the German
princes moved to direct and complete appropriation: Duke Ulrich of
WuÈrttemberg, for example, secularized the monasteries in the period after
1534 and used most of the proceeds to fund his government and war
debts.139 Christian II and Christian III of Denmark proceeded more
slowly, with piecemeal attacks on the friars in the 1520s and encourage-
ment to others to abandon their cloisters and wealth to the crown in the
1530s. In Sweden Gustavus Vasa proceeded somewhat cautiously under
the Recess of Vasteras of 1527.140 Founders' rights were used as a way of
seizing land donated to the Church after 1454, but the monasteries were
to die quietly: there was no general expulsion of the monks. Was this the
type of solution canvassed between 1534 and 1536 as the political and
logistic cost of dissolution was weighed?
If so, it was rejected. Founders' rights would always have been awk-
ward to exploit because of the direct interest they offered to nobles and
other laymen who were properly descendants of those who had estab-
lished houses.141 Henry's own conviction of his complete authority over
the Church would probably not have brooked such a partial approach to
the problem. And Cromwell himself is likely to have weighed political

137
Youings, Dissolution, 36±42. Evidence for Cromwell's interest in a piecemeal settlement is
also found in the advice he was given by counsel early in 1536 that the king could gain land for
the crown worth £40,000 per annum if he exercised founders' rightsÐLP x. 242.
138
D.M. Loades (ed.), The Papers of George Wyatt Esquire, CS 4th ser. 5 (1968), 159. I am
grateful to Tony Shaw, who is currently working on the visitors' returns, for this information.
139
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 165±72.
140
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 15±19. In 1533 Chapuys had feared that a Lutheran embassy was
coming to England to advise on expropriating church property: CSP Sp iv. ii. 6107. Direct
knowledge of Scandinavian experience may not have been great, but it is of interest that
Thomas Legh, one of Cromwell's visitors, had been on embassy to Denmark in 1532.
141
Hoyle, `Origins of the dissolution', 296±7.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 145
caution against the crown's need for revenue, his own usual preference for
statute, and perhaps a real reforming sense that the de®ciencies of monas-
ticism must be exposed. In his remembrances before the 1536 parliament
the minister noted `the abomination of religious houses throughout this
realm and a reformation to be devised therein'.142 It is usual to argue that
the 1536 Act suppressing the smaller houses simply paid lip-service to the
reform that would be achieved by legislation. But the visitors do seem to
have shown that there were proportionately more problems in the lesser
than the greater houses and the parliamentary draftsmen seem to have
believed that they had a powerful rhetorical device when they separated
the small monasteries worth less than £200 per annum, sunk in vice and
immorality, from the great houses in which religion was `right well kept
and observed'.143
The Dissolution Bill came before the Commons in March 1536, per-
haps supported by carefully managed extracts from the reports of the
monastic visitors. Nicholas Harps®eld later recalled that Cranmer had also
preached a sermon during parliament time, assuring the people that the
king would now gain so much treasure `that from that time he should
have no need, nor put the people to . . . any charge for his or the realm's
affairs'.144 The rhetoric of reform and of self-interest seem to have won
the government's case: no record of parliamentary opposition survives.145
Then there was delay, which Ives has plausibly attributed to the court
con¯ict between Cromwell and Anne Boleyn over the proper use of
monastic resources. The fall of Anne coincided with the issue of commis-
sions for the dissolution. With the process now successfully launched the
language of reform was gradually abandoned, or rather it reverted to the
domain of would-be reformers and ecclesiastics. Even these had to accept
realities: in about June 1536 Thomas Starkey wrote to Henry accepting
the diversion of monastic resources, and, in addition to concern for char-
itable works, pleading the cause of younger sons and lesser men as suitable
bene®ciaries of the king's new-found wealth.146 When the Irish Reforma-
tion parliament had a Dissolution Bill for eight Irish houses before it in

142
LP x. 254.
143
The legislation is 27 Henry VIII, c. 28. Tony Shaw's research on the surviving compen-
dium compertorum, made from the visitors' reports, will argue that historians have underestimated
the complexity of these documents, which could have served a variety of purposes and should
not simply be seen as providing the scandalous ammunition for the government's attack on the
monasteries.
144
Quoted in MacCulloch, Cranmer, 151.
145
Though Latimer later claimed that the Commons were presented with scandalous evi-
dence from the visitations and that Henry had been present when the Dissolution Bill was
introduced, presumably for fear of opposition: Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 225±7.
146
S.J. Herrtage (ed.), Thomas Starkey's Life and Letters, EETS es 32 (1878), pp. liii±lviii.
146 The Coming of Reformation
September of the same year there seems to have been no argument for the
improvement of monasticism, simply its extirpation. Once again, Irish
policy revealed political attitudes at their most stark. Con¯ict over the bill
delayed its passage until late in 1537, but this was caused not by commit-
ment to the monasteries but by patronage con¯icts and concerns about
vested interests in the existing estates.147 By the time the Irish legislation
was ®nally passed in September 1537, the focus in both territories was
shifting to the issue of who would bene®t from the king's actions, not of
the future of monasticism itself.148
The eclectic approach to policy on the monasteries nevertheless con-
tinued well beyond the 1536 Act. Anywhere between a quarter and a half
of those houses due for closure under the legislation gained exemptions,
though how selection was made remains obscure.149 Even more puzzling is
that Henry still seems to have had no absolute commitment to extirpation,
as his refoundation of the abbey of Chertsey at Bisham in December 1537
suggests.150 It is possible to believe that there was an elaborate Machiavel-
lian plan to move immediately from the small to the great houses, but the
weight of evidence suggests that the crown proceeded opportunistically,
driven in part by a fear that further grand gestures would provoke a recur-
rence of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Cromwell had the powers of the viceger-
ency to exercise control over the remaining houses, and relied on a mixture
of internal con¯ict, demoralization, and lay pressure to bring about surren-
ders. Only in 1538 was pressure increased with a further round of visit-
ations, in an atmosphere coolly evoked by one of Lisle's agents, George
Rolle. `The abbeys', he wrote in February of that year, `go down as fast as
they may . . . I pray God send you one among them to your part.'151
But the moment that is most telling in this second phase of dissolution
is the appointment of Richard Ingworth as visitor general to the four
orders of friars in February 1538. Ingworth was initially uncertain of his
briefÐwas dissolution always requiredÐso in May Cromwell wrote him
an explicit letter requiring disbandment and complaining that he had
changed his habit `but not his friar's heart'.152 By now the direction of the
minister's policy seems clear: the existence of the mendicants was a threat

147
Bradshaw, Dissolution, 47±65.
148
Hoyle points out that Henry himself abandoned the language of reform between his
defence of his actions to the Lincolnshire rebels in October 1536 and his letter to the Yorkshire
rebels a short time later: Hoyle `Origins of the dissolution', 280.
149
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 315±16 gives the lower estimate; S. Jack, `Dissolution dates
for the monasteries dissolved under the act of 1536', BIHR 43 (1970), 161±81, gives the higher,
but quali®es by pointing out that much of the relevant documentation, especially the Augmen-
tation Order Books, is missing.
150 151
Hallam, `Henry VIII's refoundations', 125±7. LP xiii. i. 235.
152
Knowles, Religious Orders, 360±6.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 147
and an anomaly and they must go. The logic would now have been a full
dissolution statute. However, Parliament was not in session, and its assent
would by no means have been assured: instead the policy of surrender was
continued until the 1539 session was left with nothing to do except give
retrospective con®rmation to the debacle. Only in Ireland, where there
had been limited change after 1537, did the dissolution commission of
May 1539 initiate a further major round of closure.153
What were the plans for the land and wealth acquired between 1536
and 1540? Cromwell, writing to the king from imprisonment in 1540,
claimed somewhat ambiguously, `if it had been or were in my power to
make you so rich as you might enrich all men, God help me as I would
do it'.154 Since even the entire wealth of the Church would have offered
no such freedom, the crown's ®nancial needs were obviously his ®rst
priority. Secondly, political support for royal policy had to be purchased,
and the inner circle of nobles and courtiers were therefore necessary
bene®ciaries. Augmentations policy in 1536/7 was to maintain existing
levels of rent, protect tenancies, and favour leases to local men.155 As the
process of alienation gathered momentum such political calculations were
of less obtrusive importance. The English elites, by their very enthusiasm
for the bene®ts on offer, showed the crown that they were unlikely to
need careful calculation of douceurs. It is easier to see this kind of calculus
at work where the issue of political control hung in the balance: in the
case of Ireland. The Irish dissolutions were effected in an environment
of con¯ictÐthe Geraldine risingÐand of political experimentation with
the coming of St Leger. While those in the Pale and Ormond essentially
conformed to the English pattern, it was clear that in many cases eco-
nomic advantage and ideological distaste for monasticism would have to
be traded for a measure of political control. Even in the core area of
English jurisdiction there are examples of this process: in Ormond three
houses were transmuted into secular colleges because the monks were
Gaelic and were closely controlled by leading local families whose alle-
giance to the crown was sought. Once the policy of surrender and regrant
was in train in Gaelic territory it became common to allow the local chiefs
to retain a measure of control of monastic suppression and any resulting
property. The dissolution became, in Bradshaw's words, `a practical ex-
periment' in persuading the native Irish to co-operate in government
under the English crown. For a time at least, this seemed a far more
signi®cant objective than that of raising additional revenue from monastic
sources.156

153 154
Bradshaw, Dissolution, 110±37. LP xv. 776.
155 156
Youings, Dissolution, 113±15. Bradshaw, Dissolution, 110±80.
148 The Coming of Reformation
The narrative of the dissolution indicates no master plan for the expropri-
ation of church wealth, but rather an experimental, opportunistic, response
to novel circumstances. We can hazard that there were certain consistencies
in the story: the pressures of royal ®nance and the needs of defenceÐ
Ireland and Kildare in 1534; the friendship of France and the Empire in
1538Ðdictated that wealth would be expropriated. Anxieties about parlia-
mentary opposition and popular dissent meant that any governmental ini-
tiative had to be carefully managed. And royal gains had to be matched by
some assurance that pro®t would also be available to the politically in¯uen-
tial. Although the lands passing into Augmentations were initially largely
retained, there were suf®cient gifts and permissions to purchase to reward
the inner circles of Henrician government. But the surprising aspect of a
return to close examination of the politics of dissolution is the pervading
sense of improvisation in policy-making, of a lack of certainty about means
and even about ends.157 It seems likely that there was more internal debate
about these issues than now survives, and that, while Cromwell's manager-
ial role is not in question, he may well have been constrained by the actions
of othersÐAnne Boleyn, Audley, Rich. Above all, he must have had to be
responsive to the king, who seems to have combined a continuing belief in
some of the functions of the monks with an absolute determination to
extract maximum pro®t and political advantage from his new ecclesia Angli-
cana. And it is symptomatic of Henry's priorities that the very last of the
closures, the suppression of the order of the knights hospitaller of St John of
Jerusalem in 1540, was justi®ed, not by the fact that it was an anomaly, but
by the argument that it had upheld the authority of Rome.158

The End of Henricianism

The last years of Henry's reign were marked by intermittent bouts of
ideological and factional turmoil: the aftermath of the Act of Six Articles;
the upheavals of 1543 which are subsumed under the label the Prebendar-
ies' Plot; the last year as the problems of succession began to become acute.
The debate about whether the king was manipulated or manipulator in
these years is perhaps less interesting than the observation that the monarch
had to move between apparently opposing policies in order to represent
royal control to his subjects.159 The inwardness of his actions is dif®cult to

157 158
Hallam, `Henry VIII's refoundations', 130±1. 32 Henry VIII, c. 24.
159
On factionalism in these years see the references above at n. 110, and L.B. Smith, Henry
VIII: The Mask of Royalty (1971). A. Ryrie, `English Evangelical Reformers in the Last Years of
Henry VIII', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), offers a major reinterpretation of these years,
which emphasizes that evangelicals lived in hope of royal sympathy for reform until 1543, when
Bible-reading was restricted.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 149
penetrate, dependent as we are on commentators who were often them-
selves mysti®ed (the ambassadors) or parti pris, like Ralph Morice who
provided John Foxe with much of his account of this period.160 In the
years before 1543 it is plausible to suggest that the king remained deeply
interested in the form of his religious settlement, and was eager to promote
a return to stability after the oscillations associated with the Six Articles, the
international crisis, and the fall of Cromwell. His prime instrument for the
reordering of his church was to be the doctrinal statement the Necessary
Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man (1543), usually known as the
King's Book.161 Henry gave much time and attention to this revision of
doctrine, seeing it as the `means to stay controversy', and arguing vigor-
ously with Cranmer on key doctrinal tenets such as justi®cation.162 His
con®dence in its ef®cacy is indicated by his recommendation that Regent
Arran in Scotland made no attempt to alter statements of faith north of the
border until he had had a chance to see the English confession.163 The
contrast between Henry's active approach to these issues and his response
to the Prebendaries' Plot is illuminating. The attempt to unseat Cranmer
and to challenge the evangelical interest in the Privy Chamber involved
many people, and is a striking indication of the polarity of late Henrician
religious politics. Charges were accumulated, co-ordinated by Gardiner,
and laid before Henry, who proceeded to do nothing with them for ®ve
months, while plots and counter-plots swirled around him. Then he ap-
pointed the archbishop to head the commission to investigate his alleged
misdeeds. Such behaviour can be read as an impressive example of control,
a waiting on events before striking the warring parties, but the con¯icts of
that year were yet another example of the damage being done to the king's
cherished unity, and Henry had some responsibility in allowing dispute to
unfold in so comprehensive a way.164
Some of the same questions occur in the case of the appointment of
royal tutors for Prince Edward in 1543±4: one of the critical determinants
of the future religious direction of the realm. First Richard Cox, already
known for his reformist sympathies, and then John Cheke, who must at
least be labelled an evangelical humanist, were installed to guide the future
ruler of England along the paths of knowledge.165 The result was a nine-
year-old monarch who was already a priggish reformer when he ascended
the throne. Did Henry know this might be the outcome? Did he con-
sciously will it? Since no ®rm evidence on this survives historians have
160
J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, CS os 77 (1859).
161 162
Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, 373 ff. MacCulloch, Cranmer, 343±7.
163 164
LP xviii. i. 364. MacCulloch, Cranmer, 295±323.
165
On the royal tutors see MacCulloch, Cranmer, 325±6, and Rex, Henry VIII, 169±70. The
latter is ®rmly convinced of Henry's ignorance of the signi®cance of his choices.
150 The Coming of Reformation
focused on the second-order question: who could have recommended
these men to Henry? The most convincing answer is that the privy cham-
ber men, led by Anthony Denny and abetted by the evangelical physician
William Butts, presented Henry with these names, though Cranmer may
have promoted Cox, who was his chaplain.166 Henry trusted these men,
but by 1544 had plenty of experience of their cautious reformism. If he
did recognize the import of his actions, he may have been engaged in a
rebalancing of religious politics after a period the previous year when
conservative interests seemed to have been ascendant. Cox and Cheke
would also inculcate his heir with a proper concern for the royal suprem-
acy, a theme on which the conservatives could never quite be trusted. It
seems unconvincing to proceed beyond this to argue that Henry willed a
radical religious order upon his heir: the outcome owes more to deft
manoeuvring by his intimates, who in their turn were no doubt driven in
part by a concern for survival and the prospect of escape from the vicious
cycles of con¯ict that marked the late Henrician court. Most striking in all
of this is the sense that Henry played a relatively passive role in a policy
decision that had vast implications for the future of his church and state.
Henry VIII remained convinced to the end that he was establishing a
`middle way' in religious politics. His famous denunciation before the
parliament of 1545 of those clergy who were `too stiff in their old mump-
simus' and others who were `too busy and curious in their new sumpsi-
mus', is only the most colourful rhetorical representation of his views.167
In the process of jettisoning traditionalism he had grounded himself in an
Old Testament kingship which legitimated attacks on some fundamental
Catholic beliefsÐlove of images, the essential mediatory role of the priest-
hood, and, probably, after 1543 the doctrine of purgatory.168 In his refusal
to follow Luther's path he had tenaciously upheld the Catholic view of
the Eucharist, and denied justi®cation by faith alone. He had also made
the life of some of his reformist clergy wretched by his profound oppos-
ition to clerical marriage. Many of these positions had been reached
through his own enthusiastic study of theology and Scripture. His ideas
had evolved, or sometimes revolved, in response to debate among his
clergy and discussion with key advisers like More, Anne Boleyn, and

166
P.C. Swensen, `Noble Hunters of the Romish Fox: Religious Reform at the Tudor
Court, 1543±1564', University of California at Berkeley Ph.D. (1981), 105±80. Starkey, Henry
VIII, 125±45, offers the most convincing account of factional crises in these years. Butts had
been Cheke's patron from an early date: J. Strype, Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, knight
(Oxford, 1821), 27±30.
167
Hall, Chronicle, ii. 356.
168
On Henry and purgatory see A. Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1979), 151±3.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 151
Cromwell. He rarely appeared de¯ected from his chosen path by internal
dissent: foreign pressures were another matter, especially when England
was exposed to the threat of crusade. In the last years of his reign factional
con¯icts forced a wavering policy upon Henry, and the middle way was
all too easily lost in the thickets of court intrigue. It is indicative of the
confusions of these late years that the ®nal triumph of the evangelicals,
and defeat of Norfolk and Gardiner in the last six months of the reign, can
be read by Haigh as the merest accident.169 Abrupt swings of royal mood
were certainly a key feature of these months: the most dramatic evidence
of the different direction that might have been taken being the king's
acceptance in August of discussions with a papal contact, Gurone Bertano,
indicating the faintest possibility of a return to Rome. But the political
balance was probably already weighted in favour of the reformers on the
council, the best guarantee of Edward's security. By November 1546 the
political miscalculations of Stephen Gardiner, and the self-destructive folly
of the earl of Surrey, then set the seal on this ®nal change of regal direc-
tion.170

Scotland and England, 1542±1550

In the Scottish parliament of 1541 James V made the most public and
explicit of his gestures in defence of the Church Catholic. Nine acts were
passed, beginning with a general af®rmation of the crown's support of the
freedoms of the `holy kirk', and embracing due reverence of the sacra-
ments, proper support of the papacy, the honour of the Virgin, and a raft
of measures against heresy.171 The legislation represented a triumph for
Cardinal David Beaton, who, since his elevation two years previously, had
been using the various instruments of politics to assail heterodox beliefs.172
In 1539 there had been a cluster of burnings of clerical and plebeian heret-
ics and in the subsequent year the greater threat of `Lutherans' within the
royal court had been confronted with the exiling of Sir John Borthwick.
But these victories for Scotland's Wolsey were not quite all that they

169
Haigh, English Reformations, 166±7.
170
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 356±60. The earl of Surrey's downfall was a consequence of
his political ambitions, rather than of any conservative religious sentiments. While his religious
views cannot be de®nitively identi®ed with the reformed cause, the cumulative evidence of
his poems and the company that he kept in the last years of Henry's reign suggest that he was
sympathetic to religious change. In politics, however, he was hostile to the ambitions of the
Seymour circle: S. Brigden, `Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, and the ``conjured league'' ', HJ 37
(1994), 507±37.
171
APS ii. 370.
172
M.B. Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton, c.1494±1546 (Edinburgh, 1986), 74±8,
88±90.
152 The Coming of Reformation
seemed. James was usually only seized by a ®t of devotion to the Catholic
Church when it could serve his interests. In 1533±4 his ®rst heresy hunt
coincided with a request to Rome for the sanction of his college of justice;
in 1539 he was seeking the further promotion of Beaton to the legateship a
latere (®nally achieved only in 1544); in 1541 he was engaged in that most
characteristic of monarchical activities, seeking papal sanction for a clerical
tax.173 The king would usually reaf®rm his devotion to Rome when it
suited his purposes. When the papacy, or his own kirkmen, proved
threatening it was another story. In 1540 Beaton apparently wished to
move against a list of `heretics' with good courtly connections: James ¯atly
refused to move beyond the one sacri®cial victim of Borthwick.174
James Beaton led the Scottish bishops ®rmly in an orthodox, pro-papal
policy anchored politically in support of the crown's maintenance of the
`auld alliance' with France. His opponents were a heterogeneous group of
ousted nobles, humanist and reform-minded courtiers and administrators,
and radical clergy. Some, though by no means all, saw Henrician England as
their salvation. Henry's ambassador, Ralph Sadler, in a rare moment of
perceptive observation in 1540, remarked that there were a number of
those who favoured the gospel, and by implication closer links with Eng-
land, `but the noblemen be young', and there was a lack of potential leaders
to counter the clerical faction.175 While James lived these `favourers' made
little headway against his proclaimed orthodoxy, and the French alliance, so
valued by Beaton, was the cornerstone of policy. However, the defeat at
Solway Moss in December 1542, followed almost immediately by the king's
death, led to a dramatic shift in the nature of Anglo-Scottish politics and
in the religious relationship between the two realms. Henry VIII was pre-
sented with a compelling opportunity to determine the direction of the
Scottish realm as a week-old female child ascended the throne and the
regency council faced disarray and military defeat.176

173
Although Beaton was not made a latere until 1544 the 1539 negotiations paid off in the
form of a papal grant to him of the right to present to bene®ces previously reserved to Rome:
Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland, 108. C. Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir
David Lindsay of the Mount (E. Linton, E. Lothian, 1995), 53±5.
174
The `black list' is only described after James's death in 1543, and could be simply a
construct of the enemies of the clergy, but James's willingness to manipulate opposing groupings
at his court is well-attested.
175
A. Clifford (ed.), The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1809),
i. 47. For a very interesting discussion of the nature of religious attitudes at James's court see
Edington, Court and Culture, 45 ff.
176
Henry's incursions into Scotland in 1542, probably designed to assuage his offended sense
of honour after James had failed to meet him at York the previous year, involved the revival of
the Edwardian claims to suzereignty over Scotland in his printed Declaration conteynyng the just
causes and consideratyons of this present warre. This is published as an appendix to J.A.H. Murray
(ed.), The Complaynt of Scotlande, EETS es 17 (1872), 191±206.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 153
Henry's approach to this crisis is usually presented by historians as indica-
tive of his lack of an imperial vision in his dealings with Scotland.177 He had
an objective, in the marriage of the infant Mary to his own son, but no will
to achieve it by full military intervention. Rather he preferred to rely on
pro-English nobles such as the earl of Angus, and on the return to Scotland
of a group of men captured after Solway Moss who had become `assured' to
the English crown, promising to defend its interests and promote the mar-
riage.178 The king and his advisers linked this to a religious policy of sorts:
Angus and the earl of Lennox had to swear to support the preaching of the
`Word of God' and to renounce the French alliance. It was nevertheless
something of an uncovenanted bonus that the new heir to the Scottish
throne, the earl of Arran, who emerged as victor from the initial power-
struggles of the regency council, chose to represent himself as `a good soft
God's man'.179 Beaton was ousted in January 1543 and temporarily im-
prisoned. Arran ostentatiously employed two radical friars, Rough and
Guilliame, as his chaplains, and had them preach at Holyrood and St Giles,
Edinburgh. More signi®cantly, he called a parliament in March 1543 and,
after some con¯ict and against the will of the ®rst estate, forced through a
measure legitimizing the use of the New Testament in English.180 When
Sadler arrived back in Edinburgh hard on the heels of this parliament, he
was most impressed by Arran's devotion to the scriptures, and his desire to
have the sacred books shipped from England for dissemination. It was on
hearing this report that Henry followed up with the sound advice on how
to strip the kirkmen of their remaining wealth.181
Neither the `assured Scots' nor Arran proved adequate allies in Eng-
land's attempts to secure the person of Mary Queen of Scots or the
destruction of the French connection. The trouble with Arran is memor-
ably described by Margaret Sanderson. It was `not that he could not be
moulded but that he would not stay set'.182 Henry VIII was powerful, but
distant; Beaton was powerful and present, and before the summer of 1543
had resumed much of his former in¯uence over Scottish politics. The
return from exile of Arran's natural brother John Hamilton, the future
archbishop of St Andrews, seems to have persuaded the governor to
return to orthodoxy.183 Before the end of that year the marriage negoti-
ations had collapsed, the French alliance had been revived and the brief
moment of `gospel freedom' was lost. Those Scots who had `taken new
opinions of the Scripture' were doubly condemned as heretics and Anglo-
177
D.M. Head, `Henry VIII's Scottish policy', SHR 61 (1982), 1±24.
178
M. Merriman, `The assured Scots: Scottish collaborators with England during the Rough
Wooing', SHR 47 (1968), 10±34.
179 180 181
SP HVIII v. iv. 410. APS ii. 415. LP xviii. i. 161, 324, 348, 364.
182 183
Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland, 154. Edington, Court and Culture, 59.
154 The Coming of Reformation
184
philes. Such individuals were placed in an even more untenable pos-
ition by Henry's response to the crisis. It is dif®cult to characterize this as
anything other than a quest for revenge upon the troublesome Scots, who
had thwarted his dynastic ambitions and refused to be quiescent while he
sought political glory in France. The brutal campaigns of 1544 and 1545,
which damaged Edinburgh, and devastated so many of the Border abbeys,
did nothing to resolve relations between the two realms, and led to one
English defeat, when the earl of Angus was so incensed at the desecration
of his family tombs that he led a successful attack on Henry's troops at
Ancrum. Head even suggests that 1544, by foreclosing any serious possi-
bility of Anglo-Scottish co-operation, represents a more signi®cant
turning point than the death of James V.185
It might be more appropriate to suggest that the very negativity of
Henry's response gradually forced a further rethinking of Scottish politics
on the English leadership, especially on the earl of Hertford. Hertford
made his military reputation in the Scottish campaigns and became that
unusual phenomenon, an English political leader more concerned with
resolving relations with Scotland than with France or the Empire. The
policy of assurance, begun to sway events at the heart of the northern
regime, was now extended more systematically to become a method of
identifying ordinary Scots with English interests. Hertford looked to a
policy of conquest and stabilization with local support, as against the inter-
mittent raiding conducted in the aftermath of the 1543 debacle.186 More-
over, it seems likely that even before Henry's death, Hertford saw the
merits of reviving earlier emphasis upon English concerns for anti-papalism
and the gospel, and the importance of appealing to an evangelical alliance
against France. Henry's promotion of the Word, both at home and abroad,
had been tempered by his concern for good order. Sadler had been in-
structed in 1543 to tell Arran that the dissemination of the scripture must
be treated cautiously, ensuring that the people did not succumb to confu-
sion and dispute.187 Hertford and his followers, on the other hand, were in
favour of dispensing the Word to all and sundry: the town of Dundee, for
example, requested Bibles in 1547 and was given them.188 Meanwhile the
oath taken by the `assured' was ampli®ed to include a clause by which they
renounced `the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome'.189
184 185
APS ii. 443. Head, `Henry VIII', 22±3.
186
The best general account of Hertford's preoccupation with Scotland is M.L. Bush, The
Government Policy of Protector Somerset (1975), 7±39, though Bush underestimates the importance
of religious factors in the campaigns and garrisoning policy. Merriman, `Assured Scots', 13±16.
187
LP xviii. i. 364.
188
CSP Sc i. 129. D. Davidson, `In¯uence of the English printers on the Scottish Reforma-
tion', RSCHS 1 (1923±4), 79±81.
189
Merriman, `Assured Scots', 14.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 155
Events in Scotland in the year before Henry's death had given under-
standable hope to Hertford and his colleagues. The murder of Cardinal
Beaton and the holding of the Castle of St Andrews against Arran seemed to
point to the growing strength of the Scottish gospellers, just as it constituted
a major blow to the Francophile party. Loyalty to England, or at least to
some sort of union to protect the gains of the reformers, began to make
sense once again. The hopes of the Castilians that they would gain suf®cient
English aid to maintain St Andrews proved false, but the French victors
(a group of galleys that assailed the Castle under Peter Strozzi) offered only
short-term assistance, and the Scottish council could not depend upon ad-
equate French aid until 1548.190 The death of Henry VIII freed Hertford,
now made duke of Somerset, to pursue a more vigorous policy of pressure
north of the border, combining a major military campaign with stabilization
of strongholds. It is in these circumstances that the English created an `Ed-
wardian moment' of high expectation about union between the two realms
underpinned by godly reformation.191 The propaganda offensive begun by
Henry to win hearts and minds north of the border was now intensi®ed.
Somerset's 1547 proclamation justifying intervention in Scotland was widely
circulated, and spoke of the advancement of `the glory of God and his Word'
as well as the need to abolish the `bishop of Rome's corrupted jurisdic-
tion'.192 This was followed by the Epistle Exhortatorie, which urged the Scots
to seize their providential moment and throw off the yoke of both Rome
and France. Such a course was divinely ordained because Scotland and
England were logically one, `having the sea for a wall, the mutual love for
garrison and God for defence'. The Epistle is sometimes attributed to Som-
erset's secretary Sir Thomas Smith, but it may have been written, or at least
in¯uenced, by a remarkable propagandist, James Henrisoun, who had ac-
companied Hertford to England after the attack on Edinburgh in 1544.193

190
Knox, i. 174±207.
191
John Hooper, the future bishop of Gloucester, had also shown a discerning eye for
Somerset's obsession with Scotland when, still in exile in Switzerland, he dedicated his 1547
tract, `A Declaration of Christ and his Of®ce', to the Lord Protector, who would ensure
the creation of `one realm and island, divided from all the world by imparking of the sea',
would now be joined in spiritual amity: S. Carr (ed.), The Early Writings of John Hooper (PS,
Cambridge, 1843), p. xii.
192
The 1544 proclamation of war had already invoked some of this language: A.I. Cameron
and R.S. Rait (eds.), The Warrender Papers, 2 vols., SHS 3rd ser. 18 (Edinburgh, 1931), i. 17.
193
Some of Henrisoun's arguments had already been anticipated in a tract addressed to Henry
VIII by John Elder, a Gaelic Scot urging union for religious reasons: `A Proposal for uniting
Scotland with England', Bannatyne Miscellany 1 (Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1827), 1±18.
M. Merriman, `James Henrisoun and ``Great Britain'': British Union and the Scottish Common-
weal', in R.A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286 to 1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), 85±112.
R.A. Mason, `The Scottish reformation and the origins of Anglo-British imperialism', in Mason
(ed.), Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603 (Cambridge, 1994), 161±86.
156 The Coming of Reformation
Henrisoun, an Edinburgh merchant and committed reformer, was certainly
responsible for the tract An Exhortacion to the Scottes to conforme themselves to
the honourable, expedient and godly unione betweene the realmes of England and
Scotland (1547). Henrisoun appealed to history, geography, and ideology.
The two realms were of one blood, and boundary. Now, as a personi®ed
Britannia expresses it:
as these two realms should grow into one, so should they also agree in the
concord and unity of one religion, and the same the pure, sincere and incorrupt
religion of Christ, setting a part all fond superstitions, sophistications & other
thousands of devilries brought in by the bishop of Rome and his creatures,
whereby to give gloss to their things & darkness to Gods true word.194
For Henrisoun this unionist ideology was not intended to indicate
imperial domination by one realm over the other, and when he estab-
lished that that was the precise trajectory of English governmental think-
ing he became disillusioned, eventually retiring back to his native land.195
A more explicitly English perspective on the Edwardian moment is the
tract written by William Patten, one of Somerset's men who travelled
north with the army to Pinkie. In his narrative, written in 1548, he
assured the Scots that the English sought no dominion, but could barely
conceal his contempt that they had so far failed to throw off the French
yoke and their bondage `under that hideous monster, that venomous aspis
and very ANTICHRIST the BISHOP of ROME'.196 The problem was
that a majority of the Scottish elite not directly under English control had
accepted the necessity of upholding the old order so that they did not
become bound to their southern neighbour. By the time Patten wrote
major French assistance was reaching Scotland and the tide of war was
turning against Somerset. The bishops traded repeal of the articles on
Bible reading for ®nancial support in the war.197 As the English ability to
control the Borders and parts of the Lowlands diminished, their following
among the `assured men' also began to melt away. There were exceptions:
in 1548 Lord Methven argued to the Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise,
that affection for the scriptures meant that `Englishmen were [still]
favoured' by many.198 James Lockhart more realistically saw this as the

194
Henrisoun's tract, like the other pieces mentioned, is printed in Murray, Complaynt of
Scotlande, 207±36; the quotation is at p. 234.
195
Merriman, `James Henrisoun', 97±9. Henrisoun remained in¯uenced by English ideas,
however, see his social reform tract, `A Godly and Golden Book' (1548), summarized in CSP
Sc i. 140±5.
196
W. Patten, `The expedition into Scotland', in A.J. Pollard (ed.), Tudor Tracts, 1532±88
(1903), 70.
197
CSP Sc i. no. 10.
198
M.H.B. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation (E. Linton, E. Lothian, 1997), 64.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 157
stand of a minority, while most had favoured union `only for their own
pro®t'.199 Although Somerset could never bring himself wholly to aban-
don the Scottish policy, the `rough wooing' was effectively over by 1549.
Mary was in France, the garrisons largely abandoned and the reformers at
a low ebb. In the propaganda wars the publication of The Complaynt of
Scotlande (1549) reinforced the links between reform and treasonable asso-
ciation with the old enemy. Dame Scotia warned the three estates that
none of them could expect any mercy if there was an English victory: the
clergy in particular could judge from precedent that their lands would be
annexed and that they would be driven out to be `labourers', `cordwain-
ers', or `tailors'.200 English policy had made it easy for such propaganda to
carry conviction: Henry's imperious handling of the `rough wooing', and
the general sense that even Somerset wanted dominance not unionist
accommodation, gravely weakened the cause of reform with an English
face. In the succeeding years though the `privy kirks' would be happy
enough to utilize the written instruments of Protestantism from south of
the border, it became dif®cult to envisage that the political triumph of
reform could possibly rest on English support.201

The Reign of King Josiah

The crowning of England's child-king was an event heavily freighted with
political anxiety, but also with a sense of expectation. Somerset's regime
had already survived the ®rst fraught days after Henry's demise: Hertford
had been elevated to his dukedom and made Lord Protector, other
leading councillors had also been rewarded with titles, and the basic pat-
tern of the regency council established by royal will had been af®rmed.
Edward's coronation was, like all such events, laden with symbolism,
much of it in this case intended to bolster the young ruler's claim to the
powerful status of his dead father. But the exercise of strengthening royal
authority was not merely protective and conservative. There were delib-
erate signals that Edward should take his father's mantle in religious affairs,
and perfect the work of reformation begun in the previous decades. The
city pageant that preceded the coronation included a representation of
Truth, `which long time was suppressed/with hethen rites and detestable
idolatrye', until freed by Henry as King David.202 At the ceremony itself
Archbishop Cranmer preached a short sermon: this unequivocally af®rmed
199 200
Merriman, `Assured Scots', 34. Murray, Complaynt of Scotlande, 162.
201
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform: Continuity and Change in the Reformation Kirk (Edinburgh,
1989), 11.
202 The description of the coronation pageants is printed in full in J.G. Nichols (ed.), The

Literary Remains of King Edward VI, 2 vols. (1857), i, pp. cclxxix±ccxci.

158 The Coming of Reformation
the royal supremacy, making it clear that the monarch's power derived
directly from God, and then reminded the king to follow the example of
his `predecessor Josiah'. He must see God truly worshipped, assail the
papacy and, most distinctively, remove images as part of the attack on
idolatry.203 An agenda was articulated: one in which `deviating neither to
the right hand nor the left' was to mean the vigorous pursuit of righteous
reform rather than a quest for balance and the middle way.204
A nine-year-old monarch could scarcely, of course, initiate personally
any attack upon the Church bequeathed him by his father. Policy-making
lay with his council: after the fall of Thomas Wriothesley in the immedi-
ate aftermath of the coronation this was collectively disposed to a measure
of reform. In practice the direction of religious change was determined by
an even narrower grouping: the Lord Protector, with the intermittent
assistance of William Paget and the more routine help of his own secretar-
iat, and Cranmer and his reform-minded colleagues on the episcopal
bench.205 These committed individuals operated in an environment in
which the competing ideological pressures of Henry's court were but a
recent, though threatening, memory. Bishop Gardiner, the only effective
leader of an ideological conservatism, was separated from the means of
power: the duke of Norfolk, having escaped execution by Henry's provi-
dential death, was imprisoned in the Tower: the king's court was essen-
tially an educational institution, Edward being surrounded by zealous
godly tutors, rather than by vociferous courtiers.206 Somerset may have
operated from a narrow power-base: he faced little challenge until he
began to alienate those within the council itself.
Stephen Gardiner, from his position in 1547 as an anxious spectator of the
government's moves, sharply identi®ed the strengths and weaknesses of the
Protector's position. All responsibility, he wrote in late February, lay on
Somerset's shoulders, `and what so ever shall happen amiss by the faults of
other, shall be imputed to your grace'. Since these `faults' would eventually
be accounted before God and before an adult monarch, Gardiner made a
powerful plea for caution, for the maintenance of Henry's settlement, and
for the ful®lment of the Protector's verbal assurance that he `would suffer no
innovation'.207 The realm should be delivered to the king at his majority as
203
The sermon is printed in J. Strype, Memorials of . . . Thomas Cranmer, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1840), i. 203±7. See also M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts (Oxford, 1988), i. 249±50.
204 MacCulloch, Cranmer, 364±5.
205
W.K. Jordan, Edward VI: The Young King (1968), 69 ff. D. Hoak, The King's Council in the
Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge, 1976), 165 ff.
206 For Edward's court see J. Murphy, `The illusion of decline: the Privy Chamber

1547±1558', in D. Starkey (ed.), The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil
War (1987), 119 ff.
207
Muller, Letters of Gardiner, 265±6, 278.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 159
his father had left it to him. Somerset's response was a lengthy summary of
his particular proceedings in relation to images (the issue contested between
them in the late spring), which disingenuously referred back to Henry VIII's
mean: some `can abide no old abuses to be reformed' while others `too
rash . . . headlong will set upon everything'.208 But there is little doubt that
the duke was already ®rmly on the side of those who sought, to quote the
bishop again, `that they call ``Gods Word'' against ``Gods truth'' '.209 The
apparent hesitations and delays in the implementation of change in the ®rst
year of the reign owed far more to the external constraints of politics than to
a lack of will on the part of the Protector, or any failure of accord with the
evangelical establishment under Cranmer.210
The major structural problem of this ®rst Edwardian year was the fail-
ure to summon a parliament until November, a failure caused principally
by the complexities of foreign relations and by the delayed Scottish cam-
paign which culminated at Pinkie in September. At the end of April
Charles V had won his shattering victory over the German princes at
MuÈhlberg and it was hardly surprising that in the next two years voices
like those of William Paget and of William Thomas, later clerk of the
council, urged that radical action on religion would alienate the emperor
and endanger the realm.211 While Somerset slowly prepared to march
north, the domestic religious signals remained mixed. The Act of Six
Articles remained in place, and was even exploited by some of the conser-
vative bishops, but Cranmer was given the opportunity to proceed with
the Book of Homilies, which was issued in July after acerbic correspondence
between the archbishop and Gardiner.212 By the time the Protector ®nally
moved north of the border in August the royal visitation of the Church
was also launched. Its injunctions looked back to those of Cromwell in
1538, emphasizing preaching, teaching the Word, and the reform of the
chantries rather than their abolition. They also moved more ®rmly into
the evangelical attack with its prohibition of processions and the recitation
of the rosary. Further, as MacCulloch has shown, the visitation had an-
other agenda, which freed the individual visitors to engage in more vigor-
ous attacks on the old religion than the precise terms of the commission

208 209
Foxe, vi. 28±30. Muller, Letters of Gardiner, 272.
210
On Somerset's religious position see Bush, Government Policy, 102±4, 124±5; and more
recently D. MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (1999),
41±52. MacCulloch highlights the insights that Somerset's letters to the 1549 rebels offer into his
policy: E. Shagan, `Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions: new sources and new perspec-
tives', EHR 144 (1999), 34±63.
211
B.L. Beer and S.M. Jack (eds.), `The Letters of William, Lord Paget of Beaudesert,
1547±1563', Camden Miscellany 25, CS 4th ser. 13 (1974), 23. J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials
(1816), ii. ii. 385.
212
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 372±5.
160 The Coming of Reformation
indicated. The result was radical preaching by the likes of Bishop Barlow
and merry bon®res of `abused' images in Shropshire and elsewhere.213
When Parliament was ®nally convened it afforded the ®rst opportunity
to set the seal on some of the activities of the reformers. But perhaps its
most signi®cant function was to remove the legislative constraint of the
Act of Six Articles and to excise the 1534 Treason Law. Thereafter reli-
gious debate and reforming action were less tied by the fear of conserva-
tive reaction employing the instruments of Henrician supremacy. Positive
measures, which seem to have been promoted with full conciliar agree-
ment, were the act dissolving the chantries and the two bills on the
sacrament of the altar, eventually merged as one act. Half of this latter
measure sought to curb radicals who reviled the Eucharist, the other
restored communion in both kinds to the laity. The tactics used in the
Lords, to get this measure past enough of the conservative bishops, were
to assure them of the priority the regime gave to order and conformity as
exempli®ed by the attack on radicals.214 A further measure not passed in
this session was the ®rst attempt to abolish clerical celibacy: approved both
by the lower house of Convocation and the Commons, it foundered in
the Lords, presumably from episcopal hostility. Even in 1549, when the
abolition of celibacy bill was revived, it only passed the Lords after bitter
con¯ict. The ®rst parliament also offered the regime a reminder that even
the Commons was not necessarily subservient to conciliar aims: the chan-
tries bill encountered stiff opposition until the borough representatives
were assured that no attack was intended upon the general funds of the
secular guilds.215
The Commons' acceptance of religious change seems to have embold-
ened Somerset and Cranmer to proceed with the policies begun in the
®rst year of the reign. The endorsement of communion in both kinds
opened the way for the ®rst major stage of the liturgical revolution, the
Order for Communion translating that part of the service involving lay
participation into the vernacular, which was used from March 1548. The
lifting of the threat embodied in the Six Articles and the Henrician Trea-
son Act freed evangelical preachers and the printing press and encouraged
the vigorous articulation of Protestant sentiment. A particularly crucial
moment came in February 1548 when the council ®nally ordered the

213
MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 65±72.
214
There is still no full study of Edwardian parliaments, but see J. Loach, `Conservatism, and
consent in parliament, 1547±59', in J. Loach and R. Tittler (eds.), The Mid-Tudor Polity (Basing-
stoke, 1980), 9±28, and on religious issues MacCulloch, Cranmer, 376±80, 404±8.
215
The representatives of King's Lynn and Coventry mounted particularly stiff resistance to
the chantries bill and succeeded in initiating separate legislation to protect their urban posses-
sions: Kreider, English Chantries, 189±200.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 161
removal of all images from churches and chapels, thereby ending a year in
which con¯ict about the veneration of icons had been the source of
sharpest debate within the elite.216 Gardiner's passionate plea that `the
destruction of images containeth an enterprise to subvert religion and the
state of the world with it', that it threatened secular as well as spiritual
authority, was swept aside.217 Instead John ab Ulmis could write to Bul-
linger triumphantly (if not accurately) that `images . . . are extirpated root
and branch in every part of England'.218 The puri®cation of ceremony
became the prelude for major doctrinal change.219 Meanwhile evangelicals
often proceeded as though a full reformation was already legally in place:
for example, the failure to legislate in favour of clerical marriage did not
deter a number of them, including Archbishop Cranmer himself, from
openly acknowledging their unions.220
The English Reformation was also turning international for the ®rst
time. Bernardino Ochino and Peter Martyr Vermigli arrived in late 1547
by conciliar invitation.221 They were followed by Jan Laski in 1548 and
then, most signi®cantly, by the Strasbourg refugees Martin Bucer and Paul
Fagius. 1548 saw the beginning of the stranger churches in London, with
the inauguration of Ochino's Italian congregation, swiftly followed by
others for the French and Dutch.222 Here Cranmer's initiative was de-
cisive: it was he who issued most of the invitations to outsiders, and who
did most to sustain them once they arrived. He also tried to woo others
who would not come, most notably Philipp Melanchthon, who had al-
ready proved resistant to Henry VIII's charms. But Melanchthon did pay
Cranmer the compliment of urging that the archbishop provide `an illus-
trious testament of doctrine' for others to follow, and thereby revitalized
his long-standing commitment to the idea of a general council which
might provide the Protestant riposte to Trent.223 Throughout the reign
Cranmer maintained his concern to situate English Protestantism at the
centre of the international reform movement, consulting with the best of
his generation in the production of the liturgies, confession, and law code

216 217
TRP i, no. 300. Muller, Letters of Gardiner, 274.
218
OL ii. 377.
219
On the relationship between reform of ceremony and reform of doctrine see C. Brad-
shaw, `David or Josiah? Old Testament kings as exemplars in Edwardian religious polemic', in
B. Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth Century Europe, 2 vols. (Aldershot,
1996), ii. 77±90.
220 MacCulloch, Cranmer, 361.
221
G.C. Gorham (ed.), Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears During the Period of the Reforma-
tion in England (1857), 38.
222
A. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth Century London (Oxford, 1986),
23±45.
223
On Cranmer and the general council see MacCulloch, Cranmer, 394, 478±9, 518.
162 The Coming of Reformation
of the Church of England. This distinctive extroversion was shared by
Somerset, whose self-imaging seems to have included a notion of himself
as identi®ed with the leaders of godly reform in Europe. The Protector's
evangelical imperialism in Scotland has already been discussed. Calvin and
Bullinger cultivated Somerset, though most of the evidence for their spe-
ci®c interest comes from the period after the crisis of 1549. His own
willingness to be seen in company of this kind is revealed in the gesture of
allowing Peter Martyr's letter to him after his fall to be translated by
Thomas Norton and published.224 In the dif®cult years after MuÈhlberg
the leaders of European Protestantism were understandably eager to look
to godly King Josiah and his ministers for aid, though usually less willing to
abandon their own vineyards for those of the English.
The politics of reform under Somerset are remarkable partly because so
much was done without much formal concern for the notion of consent or
general support from existing elites. Stephen Gardiner's warnings about the
need for stability during the king's minority were ignored as parti pris, but so
were the more measured sentiments of the Protector's own svengali, Wil-
liam Paget. As early as February 1548, Paget was urging `staying all things
unto the parliament time', and insisting that reform should then only pro-
ceed on the advice of the body of learned men, and of the two Houses.225
The following December Paget commented that Somerset was contemplat-
ing changing religion by proclamation if Parliament failed to co-operate.
Paget's anxiety owed much to his fear of the international consequences of
overt Protestantism: early in 1549 he pointed out that the emperor could
perhaps be placated if changes were represented as in `but forms and fash-
ions of service and ministration of the sacrament which is and hath been
diverse in divers places . . . '.226 His Henrician political training also led him
to mistrust any change that could not be effectively enforced. The predilec-
tion for proclamation that Somerset had displayed, while not formally out-
with the crown's power in this area, risked dissent unnecessarily.227
Since the second Edwardian parliament (1548/9), like all those in the
reign, showed a co-operative face to the government, the issue of action by
the Protector's ®at never became so crucial in this area as in some others.
The conservative bishops in the House of Lords were weakened by the loss
of Gardiner, and even the support of four lay peers did not enable them to
suppress the measure ®nally legitimizing clerical marriage. The introduction

224
Gorham, Gleanings, 128±40. Norton was a member of Somerset's household.
225
Beer and Jack, `Letters of William Paget', 15, 24.
226
B.L. Beer (ed.), `A Letter of William Lord Paget of Beaudesert', Huntingdon Library
Quarterly 34 (1971), 277±83.
227
On Somerset's use of proclamations see Bush, Government Policy, 147±56. Shagan, `Pro-
tector Somerset', 34±63. See below, p. 253.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 163
of the Book of Common Prayer via the Uniformity Bill was extensively
debated (and in a rare example the record of the occasion survives) before it
was ®nally taken through the Lords, with only two of the lay peers plus the
conservative bishops opposing it.228 By the time both Parliament and Con-
vocation had accepted the new Prayer Book, Cranmer's revolution must
have seemed to have a momentum of its own. Work quickly began on
other dimensions of a full Protestant settlement. The ordinal, which funda-
mentally rede®ned the role of the priesthood, was developed in debate
between the archbishop and his new houseguest, Martin Bucer, who had
arrived from Strasbourg in the spring of 1549.229 Almost before the printer's
ink was dry on the ®rst Book of Common Prayer Cranmer had begun to
discuss ways in which its ambiguities might be clari®ed. Canon law reform,
another of his favoured projects, remained stalled, but was clearly planned:
only the confession of faith that eventually emerged as the Forty-Two
Articles in 1552 was not yet mooted systematically. In the mind of the
archbishop and his closest advisers, at least, there seems to have been an
awareness of the linear development needed to construct a church congru-
ent with the best reformed tradition of Germany and Switzerland. Finally, a
kind of caution in of®cial policy was af®rmed by the attack on radicals and
anabaptists: there were heresy tribunals in 1548 and 1549, culminating in
the trial and burning of the freewiller Joan Bocher in 1550.230
The political crisis of October 1549, which might have derailed the
whole reforming agenda, may be seen with the advantage of historical
hindsight as little more than an unpleasant glitch in the archbishop's pro-
gramme. Wriothesley and his conservative sympathizers took an active
part in engineering the coup, but they operated in alliance with the earl
of Warwick and his supporters on the council. While the latter group may
have had a less idealistic view of reform than the Lord Protector, they
were already identi®ed as evangelical.231 Warwick's speech on the scaffold
six years later laid explicit claim to a reforming pedigree dating from the
1530s.232 Others saw him as pliant, within the parameters of loyalty to the

228
BL Royal MS 17 b 39, fos. 5 ff. Detailed extracts from the narrative are given in
A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (1928), 128±39.
229
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 504±12. B. Hall, `Cranmer, the Eucharist and the foreign divines
in the reign of Edward VI', in P. Ayris and D. Selwyn (eds.), Thomas Cranmer, Churchman and
Scholar (Woodbridge, 1993), 217±58.
230
MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 141±4. J.W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor Eng-
land (1989), 43±8.
231
The most detailed narrative of the events of late 1549 and early 1550 is Hoak, King's
Council, 239±58. See also S. Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485±1603
(2000), 191±3.
232
J.G. Nichols (ed.), The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, CS os 48 (1850), 21. See
also his own statement to Cecil in 1552: PRO sp 10/15, fo. 137.
164 The Coming of Reformation
royal supremacy, but it was acknowledged that he was usually to be found
on the side of reform. Though in the aftermath of the 1549 coup War-
wick maintained an alliance of convenience with Wriothesley, the inher-
ent instability of the arrangement led to its collapse as soon as the latter
sought to have Princess Mary appointed as regent in Somerset's stead.
There was, perhaps, nothing inevitable about the triumph of the Protestant
cause in this ¯uid political environment: it was simply suf®ciently likely to
make John Hooper's preparations for martyrdom seem unduly melodra-
matic.233 Our understanding of the whole affair would no doubt be greater
had Warwick shared his predecessor's interest in self-representation and
personal glori®cation: instead he remained unobtrusive, employing col-
lective forms of leadership to secure his ends.234
It may be unnecessary to agonize upon the precise nature of Warwick's
commitment to the Protestant cause, since he had good political reasons
to advance it. The exclusion of any claim to authority by Mary and the
inclusion of himself and his family at the centre of political power up to
and beyond the moment of the king's majority, seem cause enough. And
from at least 1550 Edward's views have to be considered as in¯uential in
the general direction of religious policy. The `godly imp' was no ®gment
of the Protestant preachers' imagination. In April of that year he ordered
sermons to be preached at court every Sunday without fail, and the Span-
ish ambassador reported that `there is no bishop . . . so ready to argue in
support of the new doctrine as the King'.235 As early as 1549 Edward had
composed a treatise attacking papal authority which was considered suf®-
ciently effective to merit translation from his schoolboy French and publi-
cation at the height of the Exclusion Crisis in the 1670s.236 And, lest this
should all con®rm the image of a desperately earnest and priggish young
king, it is worth adding that Edward may have written an anti-papal
drama, and actively supported the presentation of court interludes satiriz-
ing Rome and the clergy.237 The most important example of Edward's
intervention came in 1551, when the council decided to abandon the
relatively conciliatory policy pursued by Somerset towards Mary's practice
of her Catholic faith. Faced with absolute intransigence by the princess,
and by the threat of invasion by the emperor if she was not protected, the
council sought compromise. But Edward was deeply opposed to any
concession, citing the precedent of God's wrath to an unfaithful Israel,

233 234
OL i. 70. Hoak, King's Council, 266±7.
235
P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preach-
ing (Cambridge, 1998), 56±7. CSP Sp 1550±52. 63.
236 Nichols, Literary Remains, i. 181±205.
237
P.W. White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in Tudor England
(Cambridge, 1993), 54±6.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 165
and he succeeded in carrying his councillors with him on this occasion.
With the king showing these qualities it was an unwise politician who
resisted the reforms of his archiepiscopal godfather.238
It was in the last year of the reign that the alliance of godly king,
reforming council and Protestant episcopate appeared most threatened. By
then most of Cranmer's ideological and political battles had been won: the
Second Book of Common Prayer had been sanctioned by Parliament; most
of the conservatives on the episcopal bench had been deprived; and a con-
fession of faith for the new, fully reformed, church had been put in place.
All this had been achieved, despite the minority, the popular disturbances of
1549, and the ®nancial and political problems of the regime. No wonder
that Sir Richard Morison, looking back from Marian exile, marvelled that
`the greater change was never wrought in so short space in any country sith
the world was', or that Becon could speak of the wonder of Edward and
Somerset purging religion `in so short a time'.239 But the strain showed: it
was above all visible in the breakdown of relations between the archbishop
and the duke of Northumberland.240 The dissemination of the Second
Prayer Book was delayed for six months, and Cranmer's important project
for the reform of canon law was decisively rejected, in this case by the
duke's direct veto. The crisis was the outcome of a very public debate that
had had the potential to explode ever since the dissolution of the monaster-
ies: the question of the proper use of church wealth. In 1552 the regime, in
urgent need of revenue and patronage resources, had turned to the renewed
sale of chantry lands, and to an intensi®ed attack on episcopal property,
including the dissolution of the bishopric of Durham after the deprivation
of Cuthbert Tunstal. These actions caused bitter debate between Cranmer
and Northumberland, exacerbated by the latter supporting John Knox's
opposition to ceremonial in the draft of the Second Prayer Book.241 Finally
in the winter of 1552±3 the government launched the ®nal stages of its
con®scation of the goods of parish churches, and the evangelicals responded
with a vigorous preaching campaign at court and elsewhere against the
covetousness of the laity. Northumberland responded in kind: Anthony
Gilby later recalled a ferocious letter to Bishop Harley of Hereford in which
the `liberty of the preachers' tongues' was denounced and conciliar reprisal
238
Nichols, Literary Remains, i. pp. ccxxiv±ccxxxiv. Foxe, v. 700±1. For Edward's own
comments, especially on his interview with Mary, see W.K. Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and
Political Papers of Edward VI (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), 55±6.
239
Nichols, Literary Remains, i, p. ccxxxiv. T. Becon, `A Comfortable Epistle to the Af¯icted
People of God', in Prayers and other Pieces, ed. J. Ayre (PS Cambridge, 1845), 205.
240
For a very full narrative of the breakdown between council and bishops see MacCulloch,
Cranmer, 497±500, 520±35. MacCulloch suggests that animosity may have sprung partly from
Cranmer's and Ridley's attempts to save the duke of Somerset's life.
241
Nichols, Literary Remains, p. ccxxxiv.
166 The Coming of Reformation
242
threatened. That reprisal was the temporary halting of the clerically led
revolution, and the loss of the reform of canon law. Only the larger crisis of
Edward's failing health brought a cessation of hostilities in the last two
months of the reign.

Policy in Edwardian and Marian Ireland

When Somerset and Cranmer began to manoeuvre their way towards a
Protestant settlement in England, against a background of con¯ict with
Scotland, the extension of their policy to Ireland was not high on the
privy council's agenda. In so far as Edward VI's second realm ®gured in
the Protector's calculations, it was as a potential source of military instabil-
ity, and of aid and encouragement to the Scots. Both the initial retention
of the Henrician lord deputy, Anthony St Leger, and his reinforcement by
Sir Edward Bellingham, a member of the privy council, as commander-
general of the army, can be explained by the quest for control in dif®cult
circumstances. The gradualism of the religious changes at home also made
it unlikely that the Irish would initially be faced with a new legislative
settlement of religion of the kind they had experienced in 1536±7.243 The
only voice encouraging the export of reform in 1547 seems to have been
that of George Browne, archbishop of Dublin, who visited London in the
autumn and offered proposals for implementing change, including the
appointment of three preachers to offer evangelical leadership.244 Such
suggestions proved premature, not only because of the regime's other
preoccupations, but because Bellingham, made lord deputy on St Leger's
recall in April 1548, was busy putting down a revolt in the Irish midlands
until the autumn. By the latter date there was ®nally some evidence of
active political support for religious change. Richard Brasier, dispatching
the Irish ®nancial account to Somerset, assured him that the lord deputy
was doing far more than any of his predecessors `for the setting forth of
Gods word to his Honour'.245 Meanwhile George Browne had devised a
`book of reformation', probably assimilating the 1547 English injunctions
and the moves against images, which was enforced in the Diocese of
Dublin over the next two years.246
242
Knox, iii. 175±9, 280±2; iv. 566.
243
B. Bradshaw, `The Edwardian Reformation in Ireland, 1547±53', Archivium Hibernicum 34
(1976), 83±99. The ensuing account is heavily dependent on this article, which remains the
only systematic investigation of this period. On the political changes of the mid-Tudor years see
C. Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536±1588
(Cambridge, 1994), 45±71.
244 245
CSP Irl 1509±73, Edward VI, i. no. 122. Ibid., no. 133.
246
J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin', University of Dublin, Trinity College Ph.D.
(1997), 149±52.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 167
There was apparently no doubt in the mind of the English privy council
that the changes introduced at home would become binding on Edward's
Irish subjects. When Sir Dongan Morrice, dean of Tuskard, was sworn to
English allegiance in July 1548 he had to acknowledge that he would teach the
laws and ordinances set forth by the Lord Protector and the archbishop of
Canterbury. These involved `chie¯y teaching the setting forth of the usage
of the communion and all other godly ordinances of the church, according
as it is practised in England'.247 In the same year John Brereton, seeking pat-
ronage for a priest, assured Bellingham that he would `minister according to
the order that shall be set forth'. The lord deputies, or their temporary
replacements, were required to swear to `serve . . . our godly proceedings in
matter of religion', and Bellingham at least regarded this as providing him
with sweeping powers to abolish traditional ecclesiastical rites. When the
royal surveyor and attorney visited Kilkenny in the summer of 1549 they
were armed with a directive to abolish `idolatry, papistry, the Mass sacra-
ment and the like', in other words to enforce the Act of Uniformity.248 That
English act, like preceding religious legislation, had omitted speci®c men-
tion of Ireland from the listed territories in which it had force: only England,
Wales, and Calais were included. The privy council presumably intended
that there should be an Irish parliamentary act to enforce the change, and
indeed licensed a meeting in 1548 and included in its 1550 instructions to
the Irish council a recommendation to call Parliament `against such time as
you shall think good'.249 But no Edwardian parliament met. The secular
reasons are to be found in the continuing military con¯icts: when St Leger
returned to Ireland as lord deputy in 1550 he lamented that he had never seen
the country `so far out of good order'. There may also have been religious
considerations. St Leger's approach to the management of Irish politics was
always gradualist and cautious, and his view of Protestant reform was unen-
thusiastic. While he was willing to second the dissemination of the Book of
Common Prayer, it is striking that his speci®c contribution was the promo-
tion of a conciliar plan to have a Latin translation for dissemination outside
the anglophone areas of Ireland. This was far less of a threat to traditional lay
sensibilities than the English rite. St Leger's only vigorous gesture against the
old establishment was his encouragement of the plan to abolish St Patrick's
Cathedral, and his motives were entirely secular. Money would be saved
for the king's government and crown servants rewarded.250

247
CPR Irl i. 171.
248
E.P. Shirley (ed.), Original Letters and Papers in Illustration of the History of the Church in
Ireland during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth (1851), 28, 35.
249
S.G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown Community and the Con¯ict of Cultures, 1470±1603 (1985),
178. CPR Irl i. 220±1.
250
Bradshaw, `Edwardian Reformation', 86±7.
168 The Coming of Reformation
St Leger's approach to the enforcement of religious conformity also
focused on persuasion: on the encouragement of key prelates like George
Dowdall of Armagh to conform (here he was unsuccessful) and the re-
moval of the really de®cient, like the elderly Bishop Coyne of Limerick.
Promotions, as far as possible, were of local clerics who offered assurance
that they would accept the changes in religion. The English privy council
was often content to allow these forms of internal management and to
maintain a rather distanced approach to the details of Irish religious behav-
iour.251 A nice sense of this remoteness is indicated in the letter of Novem-
ber 1551 sanctioning the union of the sees of Clonfert and Elphin. The
council agreed that Clonfert could absorb its neighbour for ®nancial
reasons but did not even bother with the name of Elphin which `the
messenger remembreth not'.252 When the lord deputy was again replaced
in 1551 by Northumberland's proteÂgeÂ, Sir James Croft, the English council
began to acknowledge that this `hands off' approach was not effective.
Croft was ordered to `give good regard' that the bishops and clergy obeyed
the crown in religious matters, and his intervention precipitated the ¯ight
of George Dowdall from Armagh.253 The lord deputy saw this as the
beginning of a golden opportunity to reform the Church by changing its
senior personnel and persuaded the council to give attention to the ap-
pointment of candidates from England to Irish bishoprics. There are a
series of conciliar memoranda and letters indicating that at least this aspect
of reform was being taken seriously by Northumberland's regime.254
Cranmer was deeply involved. In an amusing letter of September 1552 to
Cecil he describes an encounter with Richard Turner, one of his Canter-
bury Six Preachers, who had been in trouble for preaching to the 1549
rebels and threatened with hanging by his ordinary. `He seemed', writes
the archbishop, `then more glad to go to hanging, than he doth now to go
to Armachane [Armagh]', where he would speak none of the language.255
Others were equally cool: in the end only two were dispatched, Hugh
Goodacre for Armagh and John Bale for Ossory, and the former died at
Dublin before reaching his see, poisoned if Bale was to be believed.
The legacy of Edwardian religious policy in Ireland was a curious one.
Delays in the implementation of English policies meant that the Second
Prayer Book was never disseminated, though it was brought into use in
Ossory through the determination of Bishop Bale. The lack of a full legal
basis for the Reformation hampered the efforts of those few who were

251 252
Ibid., 91±4. CPR Irl i. 286.
253
H.A. Jefferies, Priests and Prelates of Armagh (Dublin, 1997), 158±60.
254
CSPD Edward VI, ed. C.S. Knighton (1992), nos. 549, 627, 662, 704.
255
H. Jenkyns (ed.), Works of Thomas Cranmer, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1833), i. 355.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 169
prepared to support the Irish council's efforts at enforcement. It is most
striking that, because there was no parliament, the chantries and frater-
nities were never dissolved, thereby providing a focus for the later revital-
ization of Catholicism, and placing question marks over the Edwardian
regime's interest in destroying the `remnants of idolatry'.256 The only
®scal measures planned against the Irish church in these years of grand
expropriation in England were those for taking parochial goods: St Leger's
1550 instructions include a requirement to provide inventories.257 The
attention that the rulers of England gave to Irish affairs was frankly inter-
mittent, and the majority of that attention was directed to law and order,
military management, and ®nancial affairs. The strain of making and en-
forcing religious policy at home was signi®cant, and it is scarcely surpris-
ing that the lord deputies were often left to construct their own detailed
plans out of the general injunctions issuing from the court. The key, in
the eyes of both Somerset and Northumberland, seems to have been the
appointment of a trustworthy lord deputy from within their own clien-
tage, with the fall-back position that St Leger could always be recalled if
factions within the Irish council made government by outsiders untenable.
It is scarcely surprising in the circumstances that the reforming efforts of
the Irish council were so fragmentary and ineffectual.
The political uncertainties of Marian Ireland were almost as marked as
those of the preceding reign.258 The lord deputyship was retained by
St Leger until he was displaced by the earl of Sussex in 1556, the latter
arguing that he could bring more order to the warring Gaelic factions and
to the management of the queen's ®nances. But in matters of religion
Mary could better afford the non-interventionist policies that had inter-
mittently been pursued by Edward's council. Since neither Edwardian
Prayer Book had been supported by local legislation, and the clergy seem
to have been universally hostile to major religious innovation, the queen
and the lord deputy could afford to allow the resumption of the old faith
to occur with little governmental input. However, the queen chose,
through careful public actions, to signal very explicitly her support for the
return to the old order. George Dowdall, returned from exile and incon-
testably in possession of the see of Armagh since his successor had died,

256
C. Lennon, The Lords of Dublin in the Age of Reformation (Dublin, 1989), 128±31. Arch-
bishop Browne had suggested dissolution at the end of the 1540s to fund a new college, but he
was ignored: M.V. Ronan, The Reformation in Dublin, 1536±58 (Dublin, 1926), 327.
257
Shirley, Original Letters, 40±1.
258
There has been little detailed study of religion in Marian Ireland, and the following must
therefore be regarded as provisional. The best of earlier narratives are Ronan, Reformation in
Dublin, and R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland (1935). The following account has
been in¯uenced by important new arguments in Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 162 ff.
170 The Coming of Reformation
was reinstated in his temporalities and given royal assistance to compensate
for his losses with the gift of the priory of Ardee. And in February 1555
Mary ordered the re-erection of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, `for the
glory of God and the advancement of his service'. Much of this seems to
have been prompted by Dowdall's own determination to restore the old
order and canonical tradition.259
The most interesting policy problem encountered by the Marian
regime was that of jurisdiction. The issue was two-fold: ®rst Mary, as
supreme head of the Church in Ireland as in England, promoted bishops
and ordinary clergy during the ®rst year of the reign without reference to
the papacy. This caused some searching of conscience in Ireland. For
example, William Walsh, elected bishop of Meath in succession to the
deprived Bishop Staples, was reluctant to accept consecration `not having
lawful con®rmation from the universal Catholic Church', and sought his
restitution of his temporalities as a temporary measure until con®rmation
was possible.260 Secondly there was the more distinctively Irish issue that
the crown feared a recurrence of `Rome-running', as a challenge to its
jurisdictional control. In December 1553 the oath of fealty sworn by the
Gaelic chief Eugene Magennesse included the promise not to admit any
provisors from the Roman court.261 Early in the reign Conogher
McCarthy sought dispensation to apply to Rome for `certain poor bene-
®ces', rightly suspecting that without sanction he might be found guilty of
praemunire.262 No response survives in this case, but in 1558, when the earl
of Tyrone's chaplain obtained papal bulls for the priory of Down Cath-
edral, the queen responded sharply that she `intended to maintain our
prerogative left unto us by our progenitors in that behalf'.263
Ireland reveals particularly acutely the delicate balancing act in which
Mary was engaged. On the one hand she af®rmed her commitment to
Rome as strongly there as she did in England. Her instructions to the Irish
council in 1556 insisted that they `set forth the dignity of the Pope and
of the see of Rome' as well as being willing to support the clergy in the
quest for heretics.264 Pole's legatine jurisdiction, which represented
the reconciliation between crown and papacy, extended to Ireland. On
the other hand, the queen's loyalty to Rome stopped short of any ques-
tioning of her divine right to rule. In the case of Ireland the question was
raised because Henry VIII had assumed the title of King of Ireland during
the schism, a title that in theory only the papacy could confer. Cardinal
Caraffa, on his elevation to the papal see as Paul IV in June 1555, accepted

259 260
CPR Irl i. 301±2, 327±35. CPR Irl i. 337.
261 262
CSP Carew, 1515±74, no. 201. Shirley, Original Letters, 78±9.
263 264
CSP Irl Mary, ii. nos. 56, 58. CSP Carew, 1515±74, nos. 206, 205.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 171
that the bull absolving the English realm from all ecclesiastical censures
because of the schism should also confer the title to Ireland on Philip and
Mary. The Irish patent rolls, interestingly, registered this merely as a bull
`purporting' to erect the kingdom.265 The oath sworn by Irish prelates
continued to contain a very clear clause on upholding the statutes and
ordinances of the realm. It may be partly because of the need for jurisdic-
tional clarity that Mary's council ®rmly steered Sussex towards the holding
of a parliament, which met in June 1557. Its legislation con®rmed Mary's
legitimate title by repealing the Henrician succession acts, revived the
anti-heresy laws, and repealed all the anti-papal statutes made since
1528.266
The more speci®c de®nition of objectives for restored Catholicism was
left in the hands of Archbishop Dowdall, under the general guidance of
his friend Cardinal Pole, who received full authority to visit the Irish
church in July 1555. By then the Irish were already regularly turning to
him for the dispensations and licences that they otherwise had to seek
directly from the papacy. Pole's register reveals that the habit of Rome-
running was alive and well in Ireland after the years of schism, and indi-
cates the potential in¯uence that an English cardinal could exercise over
the island.267 But Pole had barely two years to exercise the plenitude of
his power before Paul IV's quarrel with King Philip led to its revocation.
In that time he proposed a similar reform programme to that initiated in
England. The Irish council was told in April 1556 that Pole intended to
dispatch commissioners to visit the clergy of Ireland.268 He would pre-
sumably have endeavoured to follow the vision of renewal articulated in
the synodal decrees of Archbishop Dowdall of Armagh of 1554. Dowdall
was part of Pole's circle: he, William Walsh, and another new prelate,
Thomas Leverous, had all had contact with Pole in Italy, the last two as
part of the cardinal's household. His decrees followed a predictable pattern

265
CPR Irl i. 339, 340. Murray argues that the initiative for the papal con®rmation of the
royal title to Ireland came from the local Catholic leadership under Dowdall. Dowdall certainly
seems to have been a moving force behind the appointment of Hugh Curwen to Dublin a few
months earlier. He also had general views on the renewal of the Church in English Ireland,
which included the restoration of St Patrick's, and the revival of traditional canonical jurisdic-
tion under royal protection. Thomas Thirlby, bishop of Ely, was both the queen's representative
in the planning of the revival of St Patrick's and her leading diplomat in Rome when the papal
bull was procured. Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 179±85.
266
Edwards, Church and State, 165±9.
267
BibliotheÁque Municipale Douai MS 922 [micro®lm copy held by LPL]. The register
shows that regular dispensations were being issued from March 1555: Douai MS 922, Tome 2,
fos. 97 ff. Irish entries from well beyond the Pale, for example the diocese of Cashel, become
frequent thereafter. The Irish acts in the legatine register are analysed in T.F. Mayer, Reginald
Pole, Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), 268±72.
268
CSP Carew, 1515±74, no. 206. CSP Irl, Mary, i. no. 63.
172 The Coming of Reformation
of reconstruction and discipline, with an emphasis on clerical residence
and the need for preaching.269 In the following year Hugh Curwen intro-
duced similar decrees in his Dublin provincial synod.270 It seems in the
event that all that Pole initiated was an inquiry (under royal commission)
in 1557 into impropriated parsonages and other ecclesiastical revenues and
ecclesiastical goods. This, however, was far less than the full visitation the
legate had envisaged, and left the Irish church to continue in customary
ways.271 The Gaelic dioceses appear essentially untouched by religious
renewal. It has been suggested, however, that it was precisely this leaving
of the church of the Pale to its own devices that provided it with much of
its strength to face the coming onslaught of Protestantism. Dowdall and
Curwen renewed the old instruments of religious rule, strengthened the
clerical elite, and reaf®rmed the spiritual superiority of the Anglo-Irish
which they now identi®ed ever more closely with the cause of canonical
Catholicism.

Restoring Catholicism: England, 1553±1558

Tudor governments, in the words of one recent historian, did not ap-
proach `the matter of policy-making with much enthusiasm'.272 Policy
initiatives, especially in the domestic sphere, encouraged dispute and fac-
tion and presented the threat of a popular response to the royal will. Since
the break with Rome, however, successive Tudor regimes had had little
alternative to policy-making in religion and men who were prepared to
`ride the tiger' of changeÐCromwell, Somerset, probably Edward VI
himselfÐstood in sharp contrast to thoseÐGardiner, Paget, and often
Henry VIIIÐwho regretted the need to embrace new political strategies.
Mary Tudor in many ways offers an extreme case of the denial of the
merits of policy-making. Not only did she emerge from the dynastic crisis
of 1553 fully determined to restore the old faith as she had known it in
her youth: her instincts were entirely in favour of doing so with the least
possible invocation of political debate or any signi®cant exercise of the arts
of persuasion. The return to Rome was incontestably the only true path
and would have been pursued by the queen whatever the views of her
269
Jefferies, Priests and Prelates, 165±8. Pole's favour towards Walsh is suggested by the fact
that he was con®rmed in his rights to the spiritualities and temporalities of the see of Meath in
one of the acts of the cardinal while he was still waiting to cross to England in the autumn of
1554: Douai MS 922, Tome 1, fos. 18±19v .
270 Ronan, Reformation in Dublin, 434. Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 205±7.
271
Mayer speculates that Pole could have visited the Irish church, since the register is
missing for the ®rst half of 1556, but there is no positive hint that he did so; Mayer, Reginald
Pole, 271±2.
272
Brady, Chief Governors, 55.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 173
273
subjects. Fortunately for her, subjects appeared providentially in favour
of her way, both in their support of the Tudor inheritance, and in their
opposition to the one serious rising of the reign, that of Thomas Wyatt in
January 1554.
It would be more appropriate to describe Mary as knowing her royal
mind, rather than making policy, on the issue of religion. Her clear desire
to return to Roman jurisdiction, as well as to reinstate Catholic worship,
led her, at the end of 1553, to abandon the title of Supreme Head of the
Church, which had become an intolerable burden to her conscience. This
action created some legal uncertainty about royal authority in the Church,
which was to endure until the full reconciliation with Rome twelve
months later. This did not prevent the queen from continuing to act as
though she was still supreme head, for example in initiating action to
deprive married priests of their bene®ces.274 Her passionate commitment
to undoing the work of her brother's regime led her at times into danger-
ously illegal behaviour, most notably when, faced with her ®rst parlia-
ment's refusal to restore the bishopric of Durham that had been legally
dissolved in 1552, she simply acted on royal initiative to give his posses-
sions back to Cuthbert Tunstal by letters patent.275 This remarkable
example of Tudor denial of the validity of statute was quickly resolved in
the second parliament of the reign, but stands as a dramatic example of the
queen's attitudes and priorities. However, it is important not to exaggerate
Mary's political naivety. Her abandonment of the title of Supreme Head,
for example, was followed by consultation of the judges to ascertain that
she had acted legally.276 She does not seem to have needed the prompting
of Gardiner as her lord chancellor to recognize that the key religious
change of reconciliation with Rome had to be achieved with political con-
sent, and that it therefore had to wait upon the appropriate time. Her
contacts with Cardinal Pole, appointed legate to England by Julius III as
soon as he heard of her successful coup, are full of yearning for his arrival,
but of measured caution about its timing. In August 1553 she had told the
papal emissary Commendone that though she longed to show herself
obedient to the Holy See `it was ®rst necessary to repeal and annul by Act
of Parliament many perverse laws made by those who ruled before
her'.277

273
On Mary's attitudes to religious policy and government see D. Loades, Mary Tudor: A
Life (Oxford, 1989), 193±4, 240±5, 323±7.
274 D. Loades, The Oxford Martyrs (1970), 106±11.
275
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 152±5.
276
J. Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986), 174.
277
Mayer, Reginald Pole, 206. CSP Ven v. 429.
174 The Coming of Reformation
It was left to others to make policy, though always in broad accordance
with Mary's wishes. In the ®rst part of the reign Gardiner took the pri-
mary initiative. The lord chancellor had not shed all of his Henrician
pragmatism and political caution, and he was far more fully aware than
the queen of the signi®cance of parliamentary endorsement of the govern-
ment's proceedings.278 But his sense of urgency about the full restoration
of Catholicism matched that of Mary. In both the early parliaments of the
reign he endeavoured to revive the authority of Rome by stealth, only to
be thwarted by other interests. It seems pointless to speculate on the
precise nature of the bishop's recovered identity with Rome: what the
Edwardian experience had clearly taught him was that there could be no
secure defence of the truths of the Catholic faith without a commitment
to the universal Church. The powerful sermon that he preached at Paul's
Cross on the eve of the ®nal reconciliation is testimony to his belief that
the coming of Pole represented the end of a nightmare of deep error and
profound confusion of policy. On the text Now it is time to awake out of
sleep, it made the Marian awakening seem an ending to `policy', an estab-
lishment of harmony and peace and emergence to calm after storm.279
Gardiner's images impressed Cardinal Pole, who thought no sermon
had ever pleased him better. They resonated with his own sense of mis-
sion, which was primarily to reconcile; to calm troubled consciences and
to restore that order and discipline that England had so sadly lacked in the
intervening twenty years. Pole believed that without true reconciliation
and penitence the realm could never be healed. He therefore devoted
much time and thought to providing dispensations, offering `comfort' to
the laity and giving personal attention to the schismatic clergy.280 There
was undoubtedly a conservatism about this approach, as about the cardi-
nal's insistence on the return to customary ceremonial as a key to faithful
behaviour. All of this was to be sustained by a return to the natural arch of
authority: the clergy must be honoured, he told a London congregation,
`both the order instituted of God, and the persons for order's sake'.281 It
was in this spirit that Pole's famous concerns about contentious preaching

278
G. Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford,
1990), 311±29.
279 The sermon is quoted by J.A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction (1926),

384±5.
280 Rex Pogson argued powerfully for Pole's qualities as an administrator and reconciler in a

series of articles: `The legacy of the schism: confusion and change in the Marian clergy', in
Loach and Tittler, Mid-Tudor Polity, 116±36; `Revival and reform in Mary Tudor's church: a
question of money', JEH 25 (1974), 249±65; `Reginald Pole and the priorities of government
in Mary Tudor's church', HJ 18 (1975), 3±20. Mayer, Reginald Pole, 252±68, accepts most
of Pogson's argument on administration, but emphasizes innovation more strongly.
281
Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, iii. ii. 484±5.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 175
were expressed. England, and especially London, had suffered from an
excess of dispute, what was now needed was a period of calm, eventually
to be followed by a renewed growth in Catholic understanding.282 But
the calm of reconciliation did not preclude deliberate policies of renewal.
The legatine synod of 1555, whose consequences will be considered in
detail in a later chapter, identi®ed key areas in which reform was neces-
sary. Several covered traditional disciplinary concerns: residence, simony,
presentation to bene®ces. One returned to the issue of church lands,
reserving harsh language for those who had appropriated the goods of the
Church. The canons also included a major educational initiative, the
proposal to found seminaries, and an insistence on the importance of
preaching in the decree on the residence of bishops. A direct riposte to
Protestantism, in the idea of providing an orthodox translation of the
New Testament into English, was mooted at the synod but never reached
the decrees. In these initiatives he had the queen's active support, most
practically displayed in her surrender of the crown's ®rst fruits and tenths,
and in the individual restorations of monastic houses.283
Gardiner, and Pole following him, saw the policy of reconciliation as
also offering resolution to the problem of heresy. While their particular
understanding differed, both seem to have regarded heretical depravity as
an acute, but small-scale problem, to be solved by determined action
against the leaders of Protestantism. Their followers, once separated from
this corrosion, would then be reconciled to Catholicism. Gardiner
adopted a dual policy in his period of in¯uence early in the reign. He
endeavoured to frighten reformers into leaving the realm, or in the case of
those stranger congregations that had been welcomed to London under
Edward, speci®cally expelled them. On the other hand he was deter-
mined to revive the heresy laws as a more direct challenge to the canker
of reform. This became a personal crusade, though one that was thwarted
in the second parliament of the reign as a result of his con¯ict with
Paget.284 When, in the third parliament, the regime ®nally acquired the
power to burn heretics, Gardiner ensured that the power was swiftly used
against some of the clerical leaders of Edwardian Protestantism. But the

282
Mayer, Reginald Pole, 247±50.
283
The decrees of the synod are printed in Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 121±6. On the synod and
the problems of its documentation see Mayer, Reginald Pole, 235±45. The seminary decree is
usually isolated as most distinctive because of its subsequent in¯uence on Tridentine legislation:
J.A. O'Donohoe, Tridentine Seminary Legislation: Its Sources and Formation (Louvain, 1957).
Knowles, Religious Orders, iii. 421±43.
284
On the failure to pass the heresy bill in the parliament of April 1554 see Loach, Parliament
and Crown, 97±102. K.W.T. Carleton, Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520±1559
(Woodbridge, 2001), 153. Redworth, Stephen Gardiner, 330±1. D.M. Loades, The Reign of Mary
Tudor (1979), 331.
176 The Coming of Reformation
®rst crop of public executions failed to have the predicted deterrent effect
and there is no reason to doubt Foxe's statement that `seeing thus his
device disappointed, . . . [he] gave over the matter as utterly discour-
aged'.285
Pole's view of heresy did not include such pragmatic calculations as
deterrence. The horror of heresy was such that `there are no thieves, no
murderers . . . nor no kind of treason to be compared' with it.286 And on
this, as on so many issues, the queen his cousin actively concurred. In
other circumstances Pole had seen the merits of the policy pursued by the
Henrician bishops before the breach with RomeÐcounsel and debate
with learned heretics but always hold the threat of potestas for the arrogant
and wilfully disobedient. But the years of disputation in Rome seem to
have stiffened his resolve, and he did little to counsel the learned Protest-
ants in England.287 On the other hand Pole tended to detach himself from
the everyday pressures of the policy of persecution and was criticized both
by Bishop Bonner and by Bartolome Carranza for his lack of fervour in
the attack on individual Protestants.288
The continuing persecution, which showed no sign of remission even
in the last year of Mary's reign, cannot be identi®ed as the policy of any
one individual, but the privy council undoubtedly supplied much of the
impetus, and behind the council Mary must have positively approved in
order to sustain its action. Early in these grizzly proceedings the queen
had made her own commitment clear in her letter to her council advising
that there should be punishment for those who seduced the simple and
`the rest so to be used that the people might well perceive them not to be
condemned without just occasion'.289 One other possibility is often dis-
cussed, at least at the inception of the policy: King Philip. Philip's own
attitudes are not easily identi®ed: he would have taken no principled stand
against the burnings, but like Gardiner he was likely to weigh mundane as
well as divine consequences of retribution. His confessor Alphonsus de
Castro preached against the death penalty imposed on the ®rst six Protest-
ants tried for heresy, perhaps believing that re-education would be more
effective than exemplary punishment. On the other hand, the in¯uential
Bartolome Carranza favoured some exemplary burnings so that the faith
should not be brought into disrepute: for example, he may have per-

285
Gardiner tried to persuade the imprisoned preachers in London to recant between
the passage of the Heresy Act and the ®rst burnings in February 1555. Foxe, vi. 704.
286 287
Pogson, `Reginald Pole', 7±8. Dickens, English Reformation, 294±5.
288
Mayer, Reginald Pole, 277±80, seeks to detach Pole from any sustained commitment to
persecution, but the evidence is largely circumstantial and not wholly convincing. G. Alexan-
der, `Bishop Bonner and the Marian persecutions', History 60 (1975), 378.
289
G. Burnet History of the Reformation ed. N. Pococke, 5 vols (1865), 5, 440.
 The Politics of Reform, 1530±1558 177
suaded the monarchs of the necessity of burning the former monk Wil-
liam Flower.290
Mary's assumption that her restoration of Catholicism, and the return
to Rome, would not in the long run be opposed by the political nation
proved correct, though she may have been deluded about the strength of
their ideological commitments. Jennifer Loach has shown how infre-
quently Parliament opposed the royal will, and how limited is the evi-
dence of it resisting the queen for doctrinal reasons.291 The one issue on
which the crown can have entertained no doubts about the strength of
political feeling was that of the lands formerly belonging to the Church. It
was the question of property rights that stalled, and then threatened to
wreck, the legatine mission of reconciliation. On this crucial topic Mary
and Pole were not wholly in accord. Both saw the laity's retention of
ecclesiastical property as a sin, and the queen made her own very public
attempts to free her conscience by the restoration of lands to bishops and
monasteries. But, with Philip's support, she was partially reconciled to the
need to secure landed title by gaining papal dispensation for England:
Pole, though forced to yield in order to gain access for his mission, never
ceased to proclaim that no true peace could be established until the lands
were returned.292 On this issue policy was made by the council and
Parliament, with the lawyers playing prominent roles in the drafting of
the crucial statute. The ®nal Act to Unify England to Rome included the
dispensation to retain church goods clearly stated to be part of the law of
the land and claiming that title to property was secured as part of the
authority of the `crown imperial'.293 This was, of course, a triumph of
material greed over ideology, but the form of the language showed the
success of at least one aspect of Henry's revolution. Pole was simplifying
too readily when he accused the Commons of `returning to the obedience
of the church, not moved by your duty to God, but for more surety to
keep your spoil'.294 Mary, willing or otherwise, was identi®ed with a
more complex protection of lay interests against those of the Catholic
hierarchy. And an atmosphere of uncertainty continued to prevail on
matters of land that showed itself in very jittery behaviour in Parliament:
most notably in the Commons resolute opposition to the attempt to seize

290
On Philip's role, and especially that of his confessor Carranza, see Redworth, Stephen
Gardiner, 324±5. J.I. Tellechea Idigoras, Fray Bartolome Carranza y el Cardinal Pole (Pamplona,
1977), 47±53. I am most grateful to Dr Redworth for showing me unpublished material in
which he discusses the roles of Carranza and Castro.
291
Loach, Parliament and Crown, 108±15, 173±9.
292
Mayer, Reginald Pole, 222±4. R. Schenk, Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England (1950), 130.
293
1 & 2 P. & M., c. 8.
294
Loach, Parliament and Crown, 109±10.
178 The Coming of Reformation
the property of those who had gone into exile. The possessioners were in
their turn very dependent on the goodwill of the crown: with the lurking
fear that a pope might always rescind the privilege of the English, as Paul IV
threatened to do in 1555. Property fears do not explain the Commons'
support for Elizabeth and Protestantism in 1559: however, they provide
one element in the story of her welcome.
Mary I was not given to excessive interest in the imaging of monarchy.
In the ®rst year of her reign her court poets sang of her virginity, and her
purity, and situated her as a type of the Blessed Virgin.295 Cardinal Pole,
in his speech of reconciliation before Parliament, expressed amazement
that the queen, `yet . . . being a virgin, helpless, naked and unarmed' had
prevailed over her tyrannical foes, attributing her victory to divine provi-
dence.296 Philip, on the other hand, he described as the type of the wise
ruler Solomon. It is perhaps not surprising that when Mary did address the
issue of self-imaging she favoured the view that she was Truth, the daugh-
ter of Time, the restorer of the integrity of her royal line.297 The most
inadvertently ironic representation came from the author of the court
drama Respublica, in which the queen is described as `our most wise and
most worthy Nemesis' divinely appointed `to reform th'abuses which
hitherto hath been'. The goddess of revenge was invoked by an author
who saw Mary as the restorer of true commonwealth and godliness, re-
establishing, as Gardiner had hoped she would, the peace of the realm.298
In the dif®cult struggle against heresy the queen already risked disappoint-
ing some of these hopes. But in the last years of the reign fate intervened
more decisively by sweeping her up into the quarrel between the papacy
and Philip, which left Pole bereft of legatine jurisdiction in the last eight-
een months of the reign. Policy changed little in these last years, and
indeed Mary showed a Tudor disposition to swallow her ultramontane
loyalties in order to protect Pole and her church, but the vigour of 1554
and 1555 was lacking, both in cardinal and queen.299 The irony was, of
course, that Mary in the end was the destroyer of Catholic harmony and
peace, not so much in her policies as in her person, through her failure to
reproduce, and her early death.

295
H. Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen (Basingstoke, 1995), 34±6. J.M. Richards, `Mary
Tudor as ``Sole Quene'': gendering Tudor monarchy', HJ 40 (1997), 895±924.
296
Foxe, vi. 570.
297
J.N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography (Princeton, 1989), 184±200.
298
The Respublica text is attributed to Nicholas Udall by its modern editor; Greg, Respublica,
2±3.
299
On the last years of religious policy and the crisis with the papacy see Mayer, Reginald Pole,
302±20, and Loades, Reign of Mary Tudor, 428±52. Mary refused to surrender Pole to Rome, and
at one stage was reported to have ordered her ambassador Carne to inform all the cardinals
individually that England did not feel compelled to obey Paul IV on the issue. CSP Ven vi. 1248.
 5
T H E C L ER G Y I N TH E Y EA RS O F C H A N G E,
1 5 3 0 ±1 5 5 8

Prelates and Councils

In 1535 Charles Booth, bishop of Hereford, bequeathed his books to his
cathedral library. Among them was a copy of Antonio of Florence's Reper-
torium totius summe, which included a chapter on the pastoral duties of
bishops and clerics. Booth's text has a sentence underlined (one is tempted
to think by the bishop himself): `non est facile stare in loco petri et pauli'.1 The
next decades were to show just how dif®cult it was for English and
Scottish prelates to follow in the Apostles' footsteps. In 1537 the gathering
of English bishops and theologians preparing the text that became the
Bishops' Book, the second doctrinal confession of the ¯edgling Church of
England, produced a defence of episcopal powers and priestly orders. It
upheld the sacrament of orders, as a divine gift and grace, while insisting
that it conferred upon the priesthood a moderate, rather than a tyrannical,
power over the laity. In the case of the prelates that power included
`special . . . authority and commission under Christ to preach and teach the
word of God unto his people'; to bind and loose; to display Pauline
hospitality and `to order and consecrate others in the same room, order
and of®ce'.2 The language is con®dent: only the ®nal caveat that the New
Testament makes no distinction of degrees in orders or insists on any
more ceremonial than prayer and the laying on of hands, points to the
ideological divisions the Reformation was already opening up among the
English clerical elite.

1
K.W.T. Carleton, Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520±1559 (Woodbridge,
2001), 30.
2
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 832±4. The lengthy discussion of the sacrament of Orders in the
Bishops' Book uses the language of this document, but adds a section on the power of Christian
princes within the Church. C. Lloyd (ed.), Formularies of Faith put forth by authority during the
Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1825), 101±23.
180 The Coming of Reformation
The response of the Catholic bishops to this period of crisis can best be
seen in the series of Scottish, English, and Irish councils and synods con-
vened between 1529 and 1559. When the ®rst of the reforming Scottish
provincial councils met in 1549 it claimed as its objective precisely this
pursuit of consensus: the restoration of tranquillity and the preservation of
`complete unity in the ecclesiastical estate'. The maladies of churchmen
had to be healed, so that in turn the wounds being in¯icted by heresy
could be cauterized. Archbishop Hamilton introduced an extensive set of
statutes aimed primarily at the renewal of the clerical estate in the face of
lay hostility. Two further councils followed in 1552 and 1559: each had a
speci®c reforming focusÐthe catechism in 1552, the de®nition of uni-
formity of doctrine in 1559Ðbut each reiterated the central importance of
strengthening the clerical estate.3 In England episcopal schemes for re-
newal unmediated by royal authority can be seen in Archbishop Warham's
convocation decrees of 1529±31 and in those of Pole's legatine synod
more than two decades later.4 There is no Irish equivalent of Warham's
initiatives, but Pole's lead was, as we have seen, paralleled by those of the
synods of the two Irish provinces inter Anglicos.5
When the provincial and legatine statutes of the reforming Catholic
assemblies are read together, they often display a strikingly traditional ap-
proach to the clergy's problems. The 1549 Scottish statutes, for example,
commenced with the reiteration of the Council of Basel's attack on con-
cubinage, and proceeded through such well-worn themes as sobriety in
clerical dress, temperance in clerical living, the inappropriateness of secular
occupations, and the need for proper behaviour within the parish. An-
other group of statutes cast in traditional language addressed the exercise
of discipline by the bishops, and such potential abuses as non-residence,
pluralism, and simony. Warham's statutes covered similar issues, though
with a particularly strong emphasis on clerical residence and the proper
service of cures. Even Pole's twelve legatine decrees included ®ve directed
to these standard issues of moral and institutional regulation of the
clergy. The reiteration of these customary decrees cannot necessarily
be labelled pre-Tridentine: the 1549 Scottish legislation, for example,
quoted directly from the decrees of the ®rst session of Trent when ad-

3
D. Patrick (ed.), Statutes of the Scottish Church, SHS 54 (Edinburgh, 1907), 84±186. For the
background see I.B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation (1982), 77±83; T. Winning, `Church
councils in sixteenth-century Scotland', in D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation
(Glasgow, 1961), 332±58.
4
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 717±24, 746±7; iv. 121±6. T.F. Mayer, Reginald Pole, Prince and Prophet
(Cambridge, 2000), 235±45.
5
H.A. Jefferies, Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations, 1518±1558 (Dublin,
1998), 166±9.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 181
dressing non-residence, and the holding of livings in commendation. Pole
gave considerable emphasis to residence not only for ordinary incumbents
but also for archbishops and bishops, another Tridentine requirement,
though one that in this case used a traditional concern to achieve a radical
end. The vision is rather that expressed in one of the statutes addressed to
the ordinaries, pleading with them `in the bowels of Christ' to amend
their own lives and morals so they could correct others.6
The preoccupations of the Catholic reformers are, however, more
sharply revealed in the decrees that do not follow long-established patterns
for the regulation of the clergy. For Warham, the attack on heresy was the
obverse of the attempt to purify the parish clergy. The 1529 session of the
Convocation of Canterbury was presented with a long list of heretical
books, and heard a sermon denouncing heresy by Warham: the inventory
of heretical texts eventually became part of the 1532 canons presented to
Henry VIII for approval.7 Scottish reforming councils all denounced
heresy, and once again unorthodox books were one of the key targets.
Archbishop Dowdall's Armagh decrees of 1554 insist that heretical texts
must be burned. Pole's legislation, on the other hand, dealt with unortho-
dox belief only indirectly, as that which had to be countered by orthodox
preaching and teaching. The involvement of the Tudor state in the pursuit
of heresy had by this time done much to remove the legislative control
over this aspect of discipline from the hands even of the Catholic clerical
establishment.8
All the reforming statutes of these councils are also identi®ed with the
positive response to the challenge of heresy: a concern for understanding
orthodox Catholic belief. The canonical requirement that incumbents
with cure of souls preach at least four times yearly formed the starting-
point for Warham, Hamilton, and Pole. Each council then sought to
amplify provision of instruction. Canterbury Convocation in 1532 focused
on the provision of uniform grammar texts for schoolmasters and on the
importance of study for those with cure. Hamilton was more ambitious,
6
Patrick, Statutes of the Scottish Church, 89±97, 113±14, 124. Mayer, Reginald Pole, 241.
7
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 717±22, 746±7, though Wilkins misdates the general reform proposals
to 1529: M.J. Kelly, `The submission of the clergy', TRHS 5th ser. 15 (1965), 97±102. Although
a form of anti-heretical canon was among those presented in 1532, much of the initiative in the
pursuit of heretics and their texts had passed from Convocation as early as May 1530 when a
royal commission required a group of the bishops and `learned men' to read these texts and
inform the king whether they were `expedient and pro®table for his people'. Scarisbrick sees
this as a royal initiative, though Craig D'Alton has now demonstrated that it is Warham's
policy that is being pursued here: C.W. D'Alton, `The Suppression of Heresy in Early Henri-
cian England', University of Melbourne Ph.D. (1999), 247±53.
8
On crown control over heresy proceedings under Mary, and especially the use of ecclesi-
astical commissions, see D. Loades, `The enforcement of reaction, 1553±1558', JEH 16 (1965),
59±66.
182 The Coming of Reformation
especially in the 1552 decrees. In 1549 the Tridentine decree on the
maintenance of lecturers in theology in cathedrals and monasteries was
introduced, and very explicit guidance on the form of preaching was
articulated. Three years later, in decrees far more directly concerned with
the well-being of the laity than those of 1549, the new catechism was
introduced, and detailed explanations of how it should be used were
offered to the clergy. In 1559 the clergy were supplied with a list of
orthodox doctrines to be used in preaching, and with the text of a homily
to precede communion. These last two initiatives anticipated similar pro-
visions made by the Council of Trent in its later sessions.9 Pole, as we
have seen, also anticipated Trent by ordering the establishment of semin-
aries for the training of clergy in each English diocese, by urging the
provision of a catechism, and, in the synod but not the decrees, by con-
sidering an orthodox translation of the New Testament.10
The objectives of the reforming Catholic bishops, while not completely
uniform across time or across the three realms, are remarkably similar.11
Strong leadership was to be achieved by the clergy, who should be `the
mirror and lantern to the rest', as a Scottish petition expressed it in 1559.12
Clerical renewal depended on traditional moral and spiritual discipline,
and on the pursuit of learning to promote orthodoxy among the laity. It
was to be upheld by regular visitation and episcopal interventionÐthe
importance of which had to be underlined to the Scottish, if not the
English, bishops. All this had to be achieved without signi®cant lay sup-
port: the laity were represented in the canons and statutes largely as recep-
tors of preaching and proper liturgy or as threats to church property. The
legislative programmes were in themselves admirable: the problem as ever
lay in enforcement. The ®rst two Scottish councils took place in reason-
ably secure circumstances, towards the end of the Anglo-Scottish con¯ict

9
Patrick, Statutes of the Scottish Church, 98±102, 108, 125, 143±5, 172±6. Winning, `Church
councils', 356±7. These reforming aspects of the councils, especially 1549 and 1552, have
been shown to have connections with the Cologne reform programme of Hermann von Wied.
J.K. Cameron, ` ``Catholic Reform'' in Germany and in the pre-1560 church in Scotland',
RSCHS 20 (1979), 105±17.
10
Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 125. Only the ®rst part of the publication programme, the need to
produce homilies, was speci®cally addressed in the 12 Decrees. The convocation of January
1558 determined that there should be a catechism and homilies. J. Loach, `The Marian establish-
ment and the printing press', EHR 101 (1986), 138±9.
11
A further possible comparison, of Hamilton's Scottish reforms with those of Cranmer in
England, has been proposed by Clare Kellar. There are some obvious parallels, especially in
concerns for education and catechizing and renewal of the clergy, but it seems dif®cult to regard
the general approach to reform of the two clerical establishments as similar: C. Kellar, ` ``To
Enrich with Gospel Truth the Neighbour Kingdom'': Religion and Reform in England and
Scotland, 1534±1561', University of Oxford D.Phil. (1999), 125±33.
12
Patrick, Statutes of the Scottish Church, 156.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 183
and before radicals had fully recovered from the setbacks of the earlier
1540s. Here the dif®culty was that the reach and diversity of the decrees
outstripped the control of the bishops: they acknowledged themselves in
1552 that the preaching legislation of 1549 had not been enforced, and
that vicars and curates had not been examined on their knowledge of
Scripture.13 There were successes: several monasteries appointed theolo-
gians; diocesan preachers were promoted in St Andrews.14 In the absence
of visitation records it is impossible to be sure how much was achieved,
but there seems to have been no instant conversion of the Scottish bench
into painful superintendents. The last of the councils took place in the
months of growing crisis before the full revolt of the Lords of the Con-
gregation. This time the call to reform was taken up in the Dioceses
of Glasgow and Aberdeen at least: too late for much implementation.15
Some of the same sense of ®n de sieÁcle pervades Warham's reforming efforts:
a worthy concern with simony and clerical dress, or even good teaching
and clerical learning, pales into insigni®cance at the moment when the
clergy were asked to accept that their whole jurisdictional power
depended on the royal will.16
Only under Mary did the Catholic hierarchy, dominated by Pole, have
some freedom to implement its legislative programme. Here the conse-
quences are instructive. One of the best-enforced statutes appears to be
that requiring episcopal residence. With the exception of the three polit-
ician-bishops, Gardiner, Heath, and Thirlby, most prelates whose move-
ments can be traced resided in their sees, and were conscientious about
visiting and ordaining in person.17 The legate's own register shows that he
took the standards established by the synod seriously: dispensing clergy for
pluralism, for example, was only done after careful checking of circum-
stances.18 Pole's anxiety for the protection of church goods became one
small element in his major struggle to improve ecclesiastical ®nance. Some
limited success was also achieved on schools: York, Wells, and Lincoln
gained new schools, though scarcely the full-blown seminaries envisaged
in 1555. On vernacular scriptures there is silence, and the full revision of
the 1543 King's Book as a statement of faith proceeded no further than its
sectioning for discussion by the 1555 synod.19

13 14 15
Ibid., 149, 171. Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 80±1. Ibid., 86±7.
16
Kelly, `Submission of the clergy', 97±102.
17
S. Thompson, `The Pastoral Work of the English and Welsh Bishops, 1500±1558', Uni-
versity of Oxford D.Phil. (1984), 1±9 and Apps., but note the problems of evidence discussed
there, and the dif®culty of distinguishing mere residence from active participation in diocesan
affairs. It should be stressed that English precedents for episcopal residence were already good.
See above, ch.1, pp. 33±4.
18 19
Douai MS 922, Tome 2, fos. 97 ff. Mayer, Reginald Pole, 244±5.
184 The Coming of Reformation
On the other hand, the basic concerns for the instruction of the laity
were met. Bonner's short but important Profytable and necessary doctryne
(1555) served as the catechism for the rest of the reign, though the synod
had been more ambitious and commissioned Bartolome Carranza to pro-
duce a full catechetical confession, produced in Castilian in the year of
Mary's death. For general congregations there were the thirteen Homilies
(1556) produced by Bonner's chaplains, John Harps®eld and Henry
Pendleton, in a deliberate effort to supplant the 1547 edition and Thomas
Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctrine (1558).20 Enforcement was patchy,
as a consequence both of the range of institutional problems Pole and his
bishops faced and his own care in proceeding slowly with reform. How-
ever, the legate came closer than either his predecessors or his Scottish
counterpart to reordering the Church according to his clerical priorities.
The bene®ciaries were his fellow clergy in Europe rather than England:
elements of the London synod became a model for Catholic reformers in
other Tridentine lands.21
The late Henrician and Edwardian prelates had far less of an ability to
control their institutional destiny than Pole and his colleagues, or even
their Scottish counterparts. The jurisdictional control that Henry assumed
over the Church after 1532 recast the bishops and their assemblies in the
role of spiritual advisers, rather than quasi-autonomous legislators in de-
fence of the Church Catholic. The Bishops' Book spoke of kings as
having a duty to be `chief heads and overlookers' ensuring the proper
execution of their of®ce by priests and bishops: an oversight that for
Henry in practice comprehended everything but performance in the
sacerdotal of®ce himself.22 Power shifted from Convocation to Parliament
and from bishops to court and king. The institutional structures of the
Canterbury and York convocations were not permanently affected by the
upheaval. However, in the late 1530s Cromwell's exercise of the viceger-
ency provided an additional level of authority, and a synod that overrode
the customary assemblies of the two provinces.23 During Henry's reign
20
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992), 534±7. E.J. Baskerville, A Chronological Bibliog-
raphy of Propaganda and Polemic published in English between 1553 and 1558 (American Philosophical
Society, 1979), 58±9. Loach, `Marian establishment', 140±2. Homelies sette forth by the right
reverend Father in God (1555). I am grateful to Dr Glyn Redworth for information on Carranza
and the catechism. T. Watson, Holsome and Catholyke doctyrne concurringe the seven sacramentes
(1558).
21
J.A. O'Donohue, Tridentine Seminary Legislation: Its Sources and Formation (Louvain, 1957),
98±119. Mayer, Reginald Pole, 245.
22
C. Lloyd, Formularies of Faith put forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford,
1856), 121.
23
Carleton, Bishops and Reform, 65±6. Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 756±76, 802±32, 860±8; iv.
15±16. It is unfortunate that no good modern institutional study of the convocations of Canter-
bury and York has been undertaken, though see D.B. Weske, Convocation of the Clergy (1937).
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 185
the customary pattern of consultation of the convocations during parlia-
mentary sessions also maintained its outward forms, though crucial issues
of doctrine and discipline were often hammered out elsewhere, leaving
the Church's parliament with little to do except assent. After bitter wran-
gling about the Ten Articles in open session in 1536 the crown turned to
smaller committees of bishops and theologians to debate doctrinal state-
ments before they were presented.24
By the beginning of Edward's reign the loss of institutional power was a
matter of acute anxiety to some of the representatives of the clergy in the
lower house of the Canterbury convocation. In 1547 they petitioned that
they should be given representation in the House of Commons, since
legislative sovereignty now lay in Parliament's hands, `or else that all such
statutes and ordinances as shall be made concerning all matters of reli-
gion . . . may not pass without the sight and assent of the said clergy'.25
Their chances of success were slender: the one group of lesser clergy who
had had this parliamentary accessÐthe proctors of the Irish clergy who
traditionally sat as a third houseÐhad lost their position as a result of their
opposition to the dissolution of the monasteries in 1537.26 The clergy's
fears were justi®ed: during Edward's reign it is not clear that Convocation
even met regularly to endorse the fundamental religious changes being
driven through by the regime.
The bishops were in some measure complicit in this loss of institutional
power, not merely its victims. Neither reformers nor traditionalists could
guarantee the upper hand in all public arenas, though under Henry the
convocations usually acted as a barrier to change. Public debate of doctrinal
and liturgical initiatives rendered them vulnerable to challenge and alter-
ation, as in the clashes about the Ten Articles, which apparently forced royal
intervention `to put our own pen to the book'. It was constantly tempting
to use the new mechanisms of royal power, and the informal networks of
court in¯uence, to change the nature of the religious settlement. And when
agreement was essential, prelates of both persuasions seem to have been
willing to struggle for it in small committees assembled under royal aegis,
rather than to approach the representatives of the wider clergy. The com-
mittee assembled at Chertsey to debate the ®rst Book of Common Prayer
in September 1548 offers an excellent example of the process. A group
of approximately ten to twelve bishops and theologians, including at

24
A partial exception should perhaps be made for the 1542±3 Convocation of Canterbury,
which involved substantial debate and work on The King's Book. D. MacCulloch, Archbishop
Cranmer (1996), 121±2, 164±6, 289±95, 377±80, 504±5.
25
J. Strype, Memorials . . . of Thomas Cranmer, ed. P.E. Barnes, 2 vols. (1853), 220±2.
26
B. Bradshaw, `The opposition to the ecclesiastical legislation in the Irish Reformation
parliament', IHS 16 (1968±9), 285±303.
186 The Coming of Reformation
least four conservatives, hammered out an agreement that could be taken
directly to the House of Lords, which debated Eucharistic doctrine in
December.27 As so often agreement was not ideal: Bishop Thirlby was able
to oppose aspects of the document to which he had assented because of
ambiguities of language and purpose.28 The use of committees made expli-
cit the weakness of the position of the English episcopate: deeply divided
throughout these decades on ideological grounds, they perforce accepted
what mechanisms could best achieve their goals. Consent and assent
remained fundamental political norms for bishops as for king, but in prac-
tice the prelates and their specialist advisers moved hesitantly into a world in
which ideology often took precedence over all other considerations.
The confessionalization of the English bench was, however, a slow and
painful process. All those who followed Henry in his renunciation of
Rome had constantly to adjust their own belief patterns to the prevailing
concerns of the monarch. There can have been few prelates who did not
suffer some agonies of conscience when required to support and enforce
either the Bishops' Book (1537) or the King's Book (1543). Yet only Lati-
mer and Nicholas Shaxton took so trenchant a stand against royal initia-
tives that they were persuaded into resigning after the passage of the Act
of Six Articles. For most the theology of obedience to the crown suf®ced,
especially as Gardiner demonstrated that an idea so Lutheran in origin
could be hijacked to conservative ends.29 Obedience to the law became
part of the obedience of the faith, following traditional precepts with the
aid of divine grace. There was also the secondary argument that in matters
not directly essential to faith the will expressed in Parliament might suf-
®ce. `Why do you not', Henry asked Cuthbert Tunstal in 1531, `conform
your conscience to the conscience and opinion of the great number?'30
And indeed Tunstal did conform, while like others among the conserva-
tive leadership he engaged in what MacCulloch has appropriately called
`bush warfare' whenever traditional elements of faith were threatened.
Henry was moved to assail Tunstal again, denouncing his `obstinacy' and
`allegations . . . so little to your purpose' when he defended auricular con-
fession in Convocation in 1536.31
Conformity was aided by the awareness that the composition of the
bench was subject to the vagaries of court politics as well as royal control.
In the 1530s the patronage efforts of Anne Boleyn and Cromwell, plus

27
G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 3 vols. in 6 (1820), i. ii. 515.
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 396±7.
28
J. Muller (ed.), Letters of Stephen Gardiner (1930), 268.
29
R. Rex, `The crisis of obedience: God's word and Henry's Reformation', HJ 39 (1996),
885±7.
30 31
BL Cottonian MS Cleo. evi, fo. 216. BL Cottonian MS Cleo. ev, fo. 132.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 187
Henry's enthusiasm for those who hated the pope, led to a bench on
which at the most eight reformers confronted at least ten leading conser-
vatives. By the end of the reign deaths and deprivations had thinned the
reformers' ranks, while slightly increasing the number of those strongly
committed to traditional Catholicism.32 Cranmer's determination to
remain in post through all the crises of the early 1540s is testimony to one
approach: waiting and hoping that the king or his heir would have their
`eyes opened' to the light of the gospel.33 The tenacity of Gardiner,
Tunstal, Heath, and Bonner, and their disposition to play roles in factional
politics, is witness to a conviction that all would be well if the king would
move with suf®cient vigour against heresy.34
The full crisis of episcopal authority for the conservatives was post-
poned until the beginning of Edward's reign. Under Henry their doctrinal
advice had been valued, if not always accepted, by the crown. Moreover
it was possible for them to maintain a relatively traditional view of epis-
copal power. The Bishops' Book, for example, claimed that the prelates
could `by the authority of God' ordain canons on such matters as holy
days and the proper ceremonies at the administration of the Eucharist.
They could also legislate on those matters that pertained to their sacerdotal
role. These included the potestas ordinis, the transmission of priestly func-
tion through the laying on of hands `by the authority of the Gospel'.35 In
an important sermon before the king in 1539, Cuthbert Tunstal spelled
out the theological consequences of any attack on orders. To challenge
the sacrament was not only to assail the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it was to
subvert the mediatory role of the priest, especially his power to shrive.36
Yet already at the end of the 1530s Cranmer was contemplating a world
in which the supreme head had the right to determine forms of consecra-
tion and the transmission of spiritual authority. Nothing in God's law, he
wrote in 1540, would prevent the king or prince from making bishops
and priests if all the existing clergy of a region were dead.37 That contem-
plation became a reality when in February 1547 the archbishop led his
32
L.B. Smith, Tudor Prelates and Politics, 1536±1558 (Princeton, 1953), 305±8. Smith's classi®-
cation of bishops, with a generous estimate of seven reformers, is not without problems, but he
is careful to exclude from his count prelates whose views are completely opaque.
33
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 189.
34
A good case-study of a conservative bishop engaged in exactly this warfare in the 1530s is
provided by A.A. Chibi, Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce,
Royal Supremacy and Doctrinal Reform (Berne, 1997), 104±9, 151 ff.
35
Lloyd, Formularies, 106±8. P. O'Grady, Henry VIII and the Conforming Catholics (College-
ville, Minn., 1990), 91±3.
36
C. Tunstal, A sermon . . . made upon Palme sondaye laste past (1539), sig. c vr±c viv.
37
H. Jenkyns (ed.), The Works of Thomas Cranmer, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1833), ii. 117. For
Cranmer the validity of orders lay in proper calling, by the prince or the community: MacCul-
loch, Cranmer, 278±9.
188 The Coming of Reformation
colleagues in petitioning the crown for new commissions for the exercise
of their authority. The council at the same time swept away the ®g-leaf of
autonomy in the election of bishops, the conge d'eÂlire, by which chapters
had been authorized to proceed to the rati®cation of the royal candidate.38
Gardiner quickly perceived these bureaucratic moves as a fundamental
challenge to the nature of the episcopate, effectively ensuring that bishop-
rics were held only at the king's pleasure. He wrote to Paget in March,
strongly objecting to the word `delegate' included in the new commis-
sions, `for we be called ordinaries of the realm, and there should be a
request on our part to make ourselves delegates'.39 When this denigration
of episcopal power was combined with the growing challenge to Catholic
doctrine, the compromises that had worked for the conservatives under
Henry were no longer valid. There were still attempts by most of the
survivors to show obedience: Nicholas Heath of Worcester, for example,
examined about his attitude to the new ordinal of 1550, argued that he
would enforce it for obedience's sake, though he would not subscribe his
name to the order.40 In this case, as in those of Gardiner, Bonner, and
Day, there came a moment at which the challenge to Catholic conscience
could no longer be borne, and the council was provided with an oppor-
tunity to initiate deprivation proceedings.41
Edward's reforming bishops, led by Cranmer, had no initial dif®culty in
accepting the delegated authority of the prince. They de®ned their tasks as
the painstaking teaching of the Word and maintenance of true doctrine.
For a radical like Hooper these were the only true functions of episcop-
acy: `There is no more required of the bishop, but that he be faithful and
diligent in the execution of God's word.'42 Prelates might be spiritual
counsellors to the supreme head, but their power was essentially that
of execution within the religious sphere. `The spiritual sword', said Lati-
mer, `is in the hands of ministers and preachers . . . but the preacher
cannot correct the king, if he be a transgressor of God's word, with the
temporal sword; but he must correct and reprove him with the spiritual
sword.'43 When trenchant views of this kind came into con¯ict with the
tough realities of Edwardian politics and godliness was not always tri-
umphant, radicals retreated into the consoling sentiment that the Church
militant here on earth was always nourished `by the bread of adversity

38
D.M. Loades, The Oxford Martyrs (1970), 48±9. F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes (Cambridge,
1980), 126±7.
39
J.A. Muller (ed.), The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), 268.
40
APC iii. 361.
41
Smith, Tudor Prelates, 251±81.
42
S. Carr (ed.), Early Writings of John Hooper (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 142.
43
G.E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons of Hugh Latimer (PS, Cambridge, 1844), 86.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 189
44
and the water of af¯iction'. Indeed it sometimes appears that the
leaders of Edwardian Protestantism had not fully reconciled themselves
to the burdens of government rather than the doctrinal purity of oppos-
ition.
Nevertheless, under the determined direction of Cranmer, the episcopal
leaders of Edwardian England accepted an essentially erastian view of the
Church. Through collaborative action with lay authority they were able
to put in place the components of the Protestant settlement: the new
liturgy and ordinal, the confession of faith, the draft of a revised ecclesi-
astical law. Parliament provided a crucial forum for change, and key actors
like Ridley, Ferrar, Coverdale, and Ponet were assiduous in their attend-
ance.45 Cranmer and his immediate con®dants on the bench and in the
ranks of the leading theologians had an agency which enabled them to
acquiesce in all but the most brutal forms of governmental intrusion into
the control of the Church. They could (usually) convict themselves that
the task of building Solomon's temple was being actively pursued. The
passage of the key documents still involved profound debate among the
bishops, but the process was made easier than in the previous reign by the
gradual exclusion of conservative voices. The last occasion on which a
substantial challenge to Protestant pressure was mounted was the debate
on the First Prayer Book: eight of the conservatives offered trenchant
opposition in the Lords.46 Within the next few years the bench was
slowly transmuted into something more recognizably Protestant. The
Henrician reformers were reinforced by eight new promotions, a number
of them the consequence of the determination shown by Northumber-
land's regime in pushing through the deprivation of conservatives. By
1553 the English and Welsh bench ®nally had a clear majority of reform-
ers: between fourteen and sixteen out of a total of twenty-three prelates.47
Even then, the survival of Thirlby, along with such ambiguous ®gures as
Salcot of Salisbury and Aldrich of Carlisle, indicates that Edward's regime
had not proceeded with any general ruthlessness in the construction of
a reformed prelacy. Some prelates responded to the ¯uctuations of reli-
gious policy by retreating into total silenceÐit is impossible to attach a

44
Carr, Early Writings of Hooper, 79±80. C. Davies, ` ``Poor persecuted little ¯ock'' or ``com-
monwealth of Christians'': Edwardian Protestant concepts of the Church', in P. Lake and
M. Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth-Century England (1987),
78±95.
45
B.L. Beer, `Episcopacy and reform in mid-Tudor England', Albion 23 (1991), 231±52.
M.A.R. Graves, The House of Lords in the Parliaments of Edward VI and Mary I (Cambridge,
1981), 34, 219±27.
46 47
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 404±8. Smith, Tudor Prelates, 149, 307.
190 The Coming of Reformation
convincing ideological label to Bulkeley of Bangor, and Wakeman of
Gloucester.48
Policy-making became the prerogative of a coterie in these mid-Tudor
decades. Yet the bishops retained considerable agency in the enforcement
of that policy, through visitation, ecclesiastical discipline, and preaching.
Both Henry and Edward challenged episcopal control with the use of
royal visitations, the vicegerency, proclamations, and injunctions. After
the 1530s these did not, however, constitute a means of supplanting rou-
tine episcopal control. The choices made by particular bishops therefore
remained of signi®cance in the implementation of religious change. Thus
John Longland's tenure of the great Diocese of Lincoln before 1547 en-
abled him to do much to insulate central England against reforming pres-
sures from the centre. For example, only under direct pressure from
Cromwell in 1540 were the Lincoln shrines of St Hugh and John Dal-
derby destroyed.49 A parallel instance on the reformist side would be that
of Hugh Latimer, whose few years in charge of Worcester raised a reli-
gious storm compounding his earlier energetic attack on traditional beliefs
in Bristol.50 The two most dynamic examples are those of Hooper at
Gloucester and Worcester under Edward and Bonner at London under
Mary.51 Both were ideologically committed; both saw the need to educate
as well as discipline; both applied traditional methods of control with
¯exibility and imagination. Hooper issued articles and injunctions of great
ambition and depth, presided in person over his consistory court at
Gloucester, toured the diocese informally as well as at visitation, opened
his household to the needy, constantly preached, and conducted a well-
known campaign to uncover and remedy the ignorance of his clergy. His
episcopal model was Pauline: his objective expressed in a letter to William
Cecil, `doubtless it is a great ¯ock that Christ will save in England . . . there
lacketh nothing among the people but sober, learned and wise men'.52
48
The temptation is to attach the label `time server' to these last bishops, and several of their
colleagues, but at least in the case of Wakeman his preoccupation with the needs of a new
diocese may partially explain his silence at the centre of affairs: C. Litzenberger, The English
Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540±1580 (Cambridge, 1997), 44±6. Bulkeley and the
other `silent' Welsh bishops are unlikely to have been other than conservatives reluctant openly
to oppose the crown: G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 171.
49
M. Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland (Cam-
bridge, 1981), passim and 93±5.
50
R. O'Day, `Hugh Latimer, prophet of the kingdom', HR 158 (1992), 258±76. M.C. Skeeters,
Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation, c.1530±c.1570 (Oxford, 1993), 38±46.
51
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 204±5. Litzenberger, Gloucestershire, 68±75, gives the best recent
account of Hooper in his diocese. See also F.D. Price, `Gloucester diocese under Bishop
Hooper', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 60 (1938), 51±151.
Foxe's account of Hooper in his diocese has obvious hagiographical elements, but covers many
of the issues that seem to have been important for the bishop: Foxe, vi. 610.
52
HMC Salisbury, i. 107.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 191
His mature thoughts on the organization of his ¯ock included a belief that
there must be lesser superintendents to aid the bishops, ideally one for
every ten parishes to `oversee the[ir] pro®ting'.53 We have already en-
countered Bonner's catechetical and homiletic efforts. His 1554 visitation
articles and injunctions are models of care and ambition, and the visitation
itself was wide-ranging and thorough, much of that thoroughness being
directed to seeking out heresy.54 Like Hooper he was constantly active in
his own courts, and always willing to follow up cases of discipline. Unlike
Hooper he was not a great preacher, but he ensured that his chaplains and
others undertook these duties for him with equal vigour.55 Both prelates
made great short-term impact upon their dioceses: each had the misfor-
tune to be imposing discipline at odds with the views of a signi®cant part
of their ¯ock. In Hooper's case he battled with a conservative clerical
establishment and laity; in Bonner's the resistance of London Protestants
earned him the infamy of presiding over more than eighty heresy trials.
Among the records of the mid-Tudor episcopate one can ®nd examples
of surprising initiative in the face of royal control. For example, Bishop
Ridley's 1550 visitation injunctions for London anticipate the of®cial
policy of abolishing the altar by several months.56 Even when the crown
had sanctioned action, the prelates could exercise some latitude in en-
forcement. In 1541 Bishop Goodrich issued a set of four injunctions
against images that had their basis in a royal order, but went far beyond
the crown in insisting certi®cates about the destruction were provided to
him by each parish.57 However, not all bishops showed the initiative of a
Ridley or Cranmer, or the zeal of a Hooper or Bonner. Most surviving
visitation articles and injunctions of the 1540s and 1550s, for example,
followed dutifully upon the royal sets of orders, or occasionally picked up
those issued by energetic colleagues. This could have curious effects:
Bishop Bulkeley's 1551 enquiries for Bangor are derived almost verbatim
from Ridley's London series. This meant that the clergy were being asked
whether the pater noster, creed, and so on were being taught and recited in
English: this in a diocese which was overwhelmingly monoglot Welsh.
The enquiry is all the more curious because in the previous reign Bulkeley
had shown himself sensitive to the needs of his ¯ock, ordering that the
pater noster, ave, creed and Ten Commandments be taught in English or
53
C. Nevinson (ed.), The Later Writings of Bishop Hooper (PS, Cambridge, 1852), 132. Foxe,
vi. 610. P. Collinson, `Episcopacy and reform in England in the later sixteenth century', in his
Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), 171±2.
54
G. Alexander, `Bonner and the Marian persecutions', reprinted in C. Haigh (ed.), The
English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), 157±75.
55 S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 557±8, 562±70, 578±9.
56
VAI ii. 241, 67±9, 262±6.
57
VAI ii. 68±9. Ely Diocesan Records, g /1/7, fo. 141.
192 The Coming of Reformation
Welsh according to the understanding of congregations.58 The later orders
seem likely to re¯ect an indifference to the dissemination of the Edward-
ian settlement rather than a conscious campaign in favour of English.
The Irish episcopate stood in a curious relationship to its Henrician and
Edwardian counterpart. If the English and Welsh bishops often lacked
agency, their Irish counterparts found themselves without any effective
say in the direction of the Church. A majority of the Irish, especially in
the Gaelic sees, were still papal nominees in the 1530s, and integrated only
to the extent that they were con®rmed in of®ce by the crown. Henry
VIII gained some recognition in twenty-four of the thirty-two dioceses,
but this often involved little more than gestural politics.59 In at least eight
Gaelic sees the crown did not make any attempt to nominate in competi-
tion with the papacy, while the papacy tried to maintain succession in
most sees except Dublin. Only the dioceses of the provinces of Dublin
and Armagh inter Anglicos were likely to be led by men more than for-
mally obedient to the supreme headship. In practice the only signi®cant
reformers, before Edward's last years, were George Browne, Cromwell's
chosen agent to bring change to Dublin, Edward Staples of Meath, and
the Irish Augustinian provincial Richard Nangle, who was intruded into
Clonfert.60 Such men had no ability to control policy: for example the
1538 injunctions were simply extended to Ireland by vicegerental ®at.61
Yet paradoxically the tiny group of reformers was forced to re¯ect
more deeply than their English counterparts on how religious changes
could be enforced at such a remove from royal authority. The ensuing
debate has been de®ned by Brendan Bradshaw as a watershed in Irish
constitutional history.62 The central question for the Irish, says Bradshaw,
was the degree of coercion that should be used in introducing reform to a
largely resistant population. George Browne, Cromwell's catalyst in
Dublin, saw the vigorous use of disciplinary visitations on the English
model plus strong support from the secular arm as the way to enforce
religious change.63 Staples on the other hand believed this approach indi-
cated that `the supremacy of our sovereign lord is maintained only by
power and not reasoned by learning': hence in a political context his
argument for making Henry king of Ireland. Browne on the whole re-
¯ected an English belief in the imposition of discipline as a necessary
58
VAI ii. 230±40, 262±6. Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 145, 181.
59
B. Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland', HJ 21 (1978),
475±502.
60
R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland (1935), 101 ff.
61
S. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and Con¯ict of Cultures, 1470±1603 (1985), 197±8.
62
Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy', 475±8.
63
B. Bradshaw, `George Browne, ®rst Reformation archbishop of Dublin, 1536±1554', JEH
21 (1970), 301±26.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 193
accompaniment to evangelization: in his ®rst visitation he tried to pro-
mote the settlement among his clergy with a mixture of `gentle exhort-
ation, evangelical instruction', and `threats of sharp correction'.64 In 1538
he urged Cromwell to give the chief judicial of®cers of the Irish state
control over conformity.65 Staples looked rather to a slow process of re-
education, though it is often dif®cult to disentangle how far this led him
in a Protestant direction: the language of erasmian humanism often seems
more characteristic of his observations.66 Meanwhile most Irish bishops
probably followed Archbishop Cromer of Armagh and implemented the
royal will in a `resolutely minimalist manner'.67

The Higher Clergy

Tudor bishops, like modern politicians, frequently had `education, educa-
tion, education' as the vision for their clergy. This involved training
the ordinary incumbent in such a way that he could defend his faith
more effectively and pass on his knowledge to his ¯ock. For that minority
which assumed leadership within the Church, it involved providing a
university environment that would secure orthodoxy and offer appropri-
ate career structures for the learned. But the unsettled conditions of the
English church between the break with Rome and Elizabeth's accession
failed to provide the stability at Oxford and Cambridge that would have
nurtured growth and vitality. Latimer famously complained that `few do
study divinity, but so many as of necessity must furnish the colleges', and
Roger Ascham told Cranmer that `the university [of Cambridge] was then
in so depressed and drooping a condition that very few had hope of
coming thither at all, and fewer had any comfort to make long tarrying
when they were'.68 These comments are more revealing of the rhetorical
style employed by their authors than of objective reality, but both Oxford
and Cambridge do seem to have contracted during the disturbed years of
the mid-century. All ®gures are tentative, but Oxford calculations suggest
approximately 1,700 members at the end of the ®fteenth century, declin-
ing to perhaps 1,150 at the end of Edward's reign.69 Some, but by no

64
J. Murray, `Ecclesiastical justice and the enforcement of the Reformation: the case of
Archbishop Browne and the clergy of Dublin', in A. Ford et al. (eds.), As by Law Established:
The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), 33±51.
65
SP HVIII ii. 539±40.
66
LP xii. ii. 760±1.
67
Jefferies, Priests and Prelates, 146±7.
68
Corrie, Sermons of Latimer, 179. J. Strype, Memorials of . . . Thomas Cranmer, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1840), vol, ii. c. 6.
69
J. McConica (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. iii: The Collegiate University
(Oxford, 1986), 152±4.
194 The Coming of Reformation
means all, of this shrinkage is attributable to the loss of the regulars after
1538. Even more signi®cant for the leadership of the Church was the
better-documented decline in those proceeding to higher degrees, which
in the decade after 1530 dropped at Oxford from almost 40 per cent of
known alumni to around 20 per cent. At Cambridge in the same period
the overall number of degrees dropped from an average of 93 to 78.70
Some perspective on the English universities in the early Reformation
years can be gained by comparing them with those of Scotland. The 1540s
and 1550s were dif®cult decades politically for the northern kingdom, but
there was as yet no major religious crisis to perturb applicants, and no
signi®cant loss of ecclesiastical bene®ces to provide employment disincen-
tives. And yet the universities still encountered some of the same dif®cul-
ties as those south of the border. Glasgow, the extreme case, attracted
only ®fty-three students in the 1550s; Aberdeen had problems and even
St Andrews, with its newly founded St Mary's College and lively intellec-
tual environment, barely maintained its pre-1530s numbers, though it
showed signs of recovery in the 1550s.71 It would therefore be rash to
attribute the problems of Oxford and Cambridge exclusively to religious
upheaval. The other comparison, between the late Henrician and Ed-
wardian years on the one hand, and those of Mary on the other suggests,
however, that religious crisis is pertinent. Though there was no obvious
improvement in English economy or society the universities, and espe-
cially Oxford, showed clear signs of recovery between 1553 and 1558.
Two new colleges at Oxford, St John's and Trinity, automatically helped
to increase matriculands, and the numbers of bachelors determining annu-
ally increased by about 50 per cent. By the next detailed estimate of
Oxford numbers, at Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1566, they appear to have
recovered to their 1500 ®gure.72
The dif®culties of the universities were certainly not the consequence
of political neglect. By the accession of Elizabeth they had, to quote
Claire Cross, `capitulated to state control' `to a quite unprecedented
degree'.73 Successive regimes, including Mary's, were determined to pro-
duce an orthodox higher clergy willing to follow the crown's lead in

70
In both cases the abolition of the degree in canon law provides the most immediate
explanation for dramatic change. M. Bateson (ed.), Grace Book B, part ii (Cambridge Antiquarian
Society, 1905), pp. vii±viii. J.B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge from the Royal Injunctions
of 1535 to the Accession of Charles I (Cambridge, 1884), 192±214.
71
J. Durkan and J. Kirk The University of Glasgow, 1451±1577 (Glasgow, 1977), 239±40.
J.M. Anderson (ed.), Early Records of the University of St Andrews (SHS, Edinburgh, 1926), 250±53.
D. Stevenson, King's College, Aberdeen 1560±1641 (Aberdeen, 1990), 12. A.I. Dunlop (ed.), Acta
Facultatis Artium Universitatis Sanctiandree, 1413±1588, 2 vols. (SHS, 1964±5), vol. i, pp. lvi±lxvi.
72
McConica, Collegiate University, 154±5.
73
C. Cross, `Oxford and the Tudor state', in McConica, Collegiate University, 149.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 195
matters of faith. Royal and legatine commissions regularly punctuated the
life of the communities; of®ce-holding was closely controlled by crown
and ministers; the chancellorships became more explicitly political ap-
pointments than they had been before the Reformation. Every shift of
policy was likely to be re¯ected in more vigorous enforcement in the
universities than elsewhere.74 For example the Edwardian 42 Articles,
sanctioned barely two months before the king's death, were enforced in
Cambridge by Thomas Goodrich and two other commissioners. They
required all theologians and masters of arts to take an oath to `defend
them as agreeable to the Word of God' and attack `opposing articles in
the Schools and in pulpits'.75 The well-known moments of high dramaÐ
Peter Martyr's Oxford disputation of 1549, the destruction of books by
the Henrician and Edwardian commissioners, the exhumation and burn-
ing of the remains of Bucer and Fagius at Cambridge in 1556Ðwere only
the tip of a very uncomfortable iceberg. If there is any truth in Aschan's
claim that it was as dif®cult to retain men in the universities as to recruit
them, part of the explanation must surely lie in the dangerous exposure of
those who chose to stay within the system.
We can illustrate the vulnerability of the academic generations active in
the universities between the 1530s and the 1560s through two case studies.
First, take those who occupied chairs of theology, languages, and law at
Oxford, with a concluding date around 1570. The two theology chairs
were occupied by nine men: two distinguished foreigners, Peter Martyr
and Juan de Villa Garcia; two Protestants, Christopher Goodman and
Laurence Humphrey, who spent time in exile rather than compromise
their beliefs; two Catholics, Richard Smith and Francis Babington, who
did the same. Of the three others, one was apparently excluded in 1551,
but did not ¯ee, one was Herbert Westfaling, later bishop of Hereford,
too young to be fully visible under Mary, and one, John Smith, managed
to survive all the religious changes in a low-key career at Oriel.76 Even
the linguists and lawyers often suffered disastrous interruptions to their
careers. Among the eleven individuals involved, two, Thomas Harding
and John Story, ¯ed abroad under Elizabeth, and four others suffered
deprivation at Oxford, or otherwise lost of®ce because of their religious
beliefs. A second sample is provided by those senior clerics who appear
in the Dictionary of National Biography, reaching their fortieth birthdays

74
Even in such disturbed times, there was some relief, for example in the late years of
Henry's reign, when, as Claire Cross's article indicates, Oxford was relatively undisturbed:
McConica, Collegiate University, 132±3.
75
P. Ayris, `Continuity and change in diocese and province: the role of a Tudor bishop', HJ
39 (1996), 309.
76
McConica, Collegiate University, 350±61.
196 The Coming of Reformation
between 1540 and 1560, exactly that generation which would have been
expected to lead the mid-Tudor church. If we exclude those men who
became bishops, of twenty others who reached in¯uential positions in
university and church almost all suffered for their beliefs. Most were part
of the Catholic generation swept away in the early 1560s: a few like
Chedsey and Bullock having already been imprisoned or ¯ed abroad
under Edward. Among the twenty there is only one clear case of constant
conformity: that of Henry Siddall, who was a lively Protestant in Edward-
ian Oxford, a Catholic active in persuading Cranmer to recant, and a
quiet conformist, still in the university, under Elizabeth.77
Though the universities could no longer protect their privileged
members as they moved comfortably from academic training to high
ecclesiastical of®ce, we should be careful not to read the experience of the
elites in wholly negative terms. The criticism of Scottish universities in
these years (St Andrews sometimes excepted) was that they provided a
low standard of education, not having kept suf®ciently in contact with the
mainstream of European thought. When a generation later Andrew Mel-
ville reluctantly returned from Geneva to Glasgow, he did so with the
objective of transforming its teaching.78 The Reformation crisis in Eng-
land also severed some intellectual contacts, especially those of Oxford
with Paris and Louvain.79 Yet religious debate, only imperfectly con-
trolled by the authorities, stimulated another form of contact with
Continental scholarship, and changed the nature of higher study from a
law-dominated to a theology-dominated culture. The centrality of Bible
study, ®rst for Protestants, and then in response for Catholics, encouraged
that growth of linguistic scholarship that had been initiated by the human-
ists. Those who did survive the vagaries of royal policy, to emerge as the
group from whom the next generation of the episcopate would largely be
drawn, were more likely to be theologians, preachers, and authors than
they had been in the early Henrician years. The confessionalization of the
universities ensured intellectual vitality as well as bitter con¯ict. Even the

77
DNB. Most of the group indicate at least a general disposition to Catholicism or Protest-
antism throughout their mature careers, though there are some interesting examples of conver-
sion. Henry Cole, dean of St Paul's under Mary, seems to have shown commitment to reform
until about 1548, and Francis Mallett, Marian dean of Lincoln, was reconverted to Catholicism
by the example of Princess Mary, whose chaplain he became.
78
Durkan and Kirk, Glasgow, 275±6.
79
Some of Oxford's international reputation was already vulnerable before the Reformation:
the greatest days of the arts school, for example, were over by the mid-®fteenth century. J. Catto
and T.A.R. Evans (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol ii: The Later Middle Ages
(Oxford, 1992), 338±42. McConica, Collegiate University, 394±5, 314±20. It is interesting to note
that, although the religious divide formally separated Oxford and Louvain, the latter formed a
very attractive haven for deprived Catholics after Elizabeth's accession.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 197
esoteric battle at Cambridge about the correct pronunciation of Greek
ranged over the map of contemporary ideology, helping to de®ne the
views of the youthful auditors of John Cheke and his conservative oppon-
ents.80 And under Henry and Edward some of the theologians found
themselves in the heady position of acting as professional advisers to the
crown. From the moment that Henry assembled his ®rst team to consult
on the divorce proceedings men like Richard Cox, John Redman, Wil-
liam May, and William Buckmaster were in regular demand to contribute
to the fundamental documents of the English Reformation.81
Those theologians and other senior graduates who were in suf®cient
conformity with royal policy to be appointed to high of®ce emerged into
an institutional world even less comfortable than that of the universities.
The situation of the English prelates was uncertain enough, but in the age
of the dissolutions secular cathedrals were perilously close to total redun-
dancy.82 Archbishop Cranmer had no great love for deans and prebendar-
ies: in so far as he was prepared to tolerate Henry's continued interest in
their existence it was as a basis for learning and evangelization. In his view
the prebendary had normally been `neither a learner, nor teacher, but a
good viander'.83 He hoped to make Canterbury, refounded as a secular
cathedral after the dissolution, into a full-scale university college, with
lecturers in languages and forty students. This was never likely. Henry
favoured the traditional pattern of cathedral worship, and was enthusiastic
in encouraging Gardiner in his reconstruction of six ex-religious houses as
the basis of new dioceses and cathedrals. But the Enabling Act for the
New Foundations (1541) did envisage the education of the young as a
prime purpose for the cathedrals. Schools were established and scholar-
ships instituted at the universities.84
For a brief time it appeared that cathedrals might become one of the
revivifying forces in Tudor religion. However, only part of that hope was
ful®lled: the schools became an enduring part of the new establishments,

80
W.S. Hudson, The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham,
N.C., 1980), 43±57. The vitality of late Henrician Cambridge, and its `stubborn reformism', has
recently been illuminated by A. Ryrie, `English Evangelical Reformers in the Last Years of
Henry VIII', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), 215±37.
81
Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 834. BL Cottonian MS Cleo. ev, fos. 75 ff.
82
S.E. Lehmberg, The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society, 1485±1603
(Princeton, N.J., 1988), 38±66, 101±22. C. Cross, `Dens of loitering lubbers: Protestant protest
against cathedral foundations, 1540±1640', in D. Baker (ed.), Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest,
SCH 10 (1972), 231±2.
83
J.E. Cox (ed.), Cranmer's Miscellaneous Writings (PS, Cambridge, 1846), 396±7. MacCul-
loch, Cranmer, 264±5.
84
C.S. Knighton, `The provision of education in the new cathedral foundations of Henry
VIII', in D. Marcombe and C.S. Knighton (eds.), Close Encounters: English Cathedrals and Society
since 1540 (Nottingham, 1991), 18±42.
198 The Coming of Reformation
sometimes even performing the role of training `poor men's sons'. It was
typical of the regime that the scholarships to universities were cancelled,
and the lands provided to endow them removed in 1546.85 This is para-
digmatic of the situation of the later 1540s. The cathedrals were under
constant ®nancial and patronage pressures from the crown and laity, and
ideological divisions split some of the establishments. Both Canterbury
and the new foundation of Osney next to Oxford became deeply en-
meshed in the complex events known as the Prebendaries' Plot (1543),
which further alienated Cranmer and made Henry mistrustful of those he
had formerly favoured.86 Edward's reign saw some revival of Protestant
ambition for the cathedrals: Holgate's injunctions for York Minster, for
example, stress preaching as the prime function of the institution, and
there is evidence of lecturers being employed at Winchester and Lich-
®eld.87 Yet the new wine did not readily ®t the old bottles: the destruc-
tion of organs, abolition of the daily of®ces, and attack on `confabulation'
in music must have left many of the cathedral personnel with little clear
sense of function.88
The survival of the cathedrals and their `vianders' owes much to their
advantages as sources of patronage for the crown. They also had obvious
utility as environments in which to display government religious policy.89
Every visual change from the ®rst attack on images, through the removal
of altars, to the grandeur of Mary's restoration of the Mass, could be
exempli®ed in the mother churches of the dioceses. The Worcester
chronicler John Steynor kept a detailed record of the changes to his
cathedral which convey some sense of the impact of government ®at. In
1550±1, for example, he noted that Dean Barlow, brother of the bishop of
Bath and Wells, `pulled down Our Lady's chapel . . . and also the altar of
Jesus made in white stone, and a chapel of St Edmund wherein was a pair
of organs and a Chapel of St George made of timber . . . '. He also noted
the order to have a table `of tree' at which Mass would be said and
communion administered in English. Six years later the same chronicler
was recording the elaborate Marian restoration of the chapels, but particu-
larly of the choir with double stalls, organs, and `a goodly loft wherein the
gospel is read'.90 An extreme case of the symbolic signi®cance of the
85
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 264±7.
86
Jenkins, Works of Cranmer, i. 291±4.
87
J. Fines, A Biographical Register of Early Protestant Reformers (Bodleian typescript) under
Saunders.
88
VAI ii. 310±21. The word `confabulation' is Holgate's.
89
D. Marcombe, `Cathedrals and Protestantism: the search for a new identity, 1540±1660',
in Marcombe and Knighton, Close Encounters, 50±3.
90
D. MacCulloch, `Worcester: a cathedral city in the Reformation', in P. Collinson and
J. Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns, 1500±1640 (Basingstoke, 1998), 94±112.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 199
cathedral in the display of royal authority is that of St Patrick's, Dublin.
St Patrick's exercised a political in¯uence in the management of the Irish
church far greater than any of its English counterparts. Yet, since there
were two Dublin cathedrals, it was suppressed in 1547, primarily to serve
the ®nancial interests of the crown, but partly because the local patriciate
pressed the Irish council to spare Christ Church.91 Under Mary, St Pat-
rick's became one of only two Irish foundations to be restored by the
crown. The statutes presented Philip and Mary as committed to `the glory
of God and the advancement of his service and holy word', the last served
partly by the educational arrangements that were part of the restoration.92
Marian statutes for a number of the English cathedrals, including Durham,
also continued what Henry's legislation had begun: residence was more
strictly enforced than in the past, and preaching and instruction of the
laity became an integral part of the obligations of prebendaries.93
If the cathedrals were made vulnerable by religious change, those other
centres of clerical power and administration, the church courts, were even
more insecure. There are a variety of explanations for the decline of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the decades after the Reformation.94 The un-
certain status of ecclesiastical law, controlled by the crown and yet still
largely employing Roman canon law forms, is a key reason. The failure of
Cranmer's great project for the reform of canon law left the church courts
using a system of justice that had no logical place in a Protestant polity.95
The period in the mid-1530s when the vicegerent appropriated ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction left a legacy of uncertainty. Moreover Cromwell's abo-
lition of canon law as a higher degree meant that the courts had now to
be staffed by civilians. Then there are the broader contextual issues: a
decline in the popular respect for the authority of the Church that was a
consequence both of hostility to new doctrine and a general suspicion of
change; the economic and social dislocation of the mid-Tudor decades;
and the structural dif®culties created by the dissolutions, especially by the

91
J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin', University of Dublin, Trinity College Ph.D.
(1997), 149±53. Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 201, 204.
92
CPR Irl i. 327±8.
93
D. Marcombe, `The Durham dean and chapter: old abbey writ large?' in R. O'Day and
F. Heal (eds.), Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England,
1500±1642 (Leicester, 1976), 129±30.
94
The most important study of the work of the church courts in these mid-Tudor years
remains R. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation: 1520±1570
(Oxford, 1979). See also his `The decline of ecclesiastical jurisdiction under the Tudors', in
O'Day and Heal, Continuity and Change, 239±58.
95
R. Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge, 1990), 28±40. On
Cranmer's project see the edition of the Reformatio by G. Bray, Tudor Church Reform: The
Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticum, Church of England Record
Society 8 (2000).
200 The Coming of Reformation
sale of appropriated rectories to the laity. The courts' sphere of jurisdiction
was also slowly circumscribed by parliamentary action. For example, con-
trol of tithes was limited, especially by two statutes of 1536 and 1549, the
latter of which effectively ®xed the monetary value of personal tithe, and
allowed plaintiffs to turn to the common law for redress.96
Archdeacons, chancellors, and other episcopal deputies, whose duty it
was to manage the discipline of the Church on a daily basis, were under-
standably demoralized by the dramatic changes of these years. Such men
could not wholly escape the upheavals of the mid-century: of seventy-
nine English archdeacons listed in Le Neve as holding of®ce between
1541 and 1558, twenty-three were deprived or forced to resign.97 The
survivors were tenacious, but not necessarily enthusiastic. Some of those
who had begun their careers before the break with Rome assisting the
Henrician prelates often seem to have lost heart by the 1540s. At Chiches-
ter Robert Sherburne's key administrators, the chancellor John Worthial
and the dean William Fleshmonger, both outlived their master, Worthial
not dying until 1554. But the vigour of the latter's early jurisdictional
activityÐholding for example peripatetic sessions of the commissary
courtÐvanished as the internal affairs of the cathedral absorbed more and
more of his time.98 Worthial seems characteristic of mid-Tudor chancel-
lors, both in his loss of heart and in his longevity. Although it was theor-
etically possible for a prelate to remove his chancellor, there was a
reluctance to do so, presumably because of the accumulated expertise
acquired in the post, perhaps also by the Edwardian years because of the
dif®culty of ®nding men with the correct training. Continuity in many
ways served the Church well: John Rokeby, for example, who served at
York from the late Henrician years into the reign of Elizabeth, was famed
because only once in thirty-two years' service was a judgement for which
he was responsible overturned on appeal.99 But continuity usually also
meant conservatism, either of the trenchant or the foot-dragging kind.
Edmund Stuarde, Gardiner's long-serving chancellor at Winchester, was
actually imprisoned for a time under Edward, and only reinstated in 1553.
More common was survivalism like that of Miles Spenser, archdeacon of
Sudbury and chancellor of Norwich, who remained in of®ce through all
the changes as the head of a family that became church papist and recusant
under Elizabeth.100 When a new generation had to be recruited it was

96 97
Houlbrooke, Church Courts, 117±50. Le Neve, Fasti, 1541±1830.
98
S. Lander, `Church courts and the Reformation in the diocese of Chichester', in O'Day
and Heal, Continuity and Change, 215±38.
99
R.A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in the
Diocese of York, 1560±1640 (Cambridge, 1969), 41±2.
100
Houlbrooke, Church Courts, 24±5.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 201
painfully obvious that ecclesiastical lawyers were not natural adherents of
reform. Only a few are remarkable because of a sympathy with evangelical
change: Roger Townshend, for example, who became Cranmer's com-
missary in his faculty of®ce, or William May and Edward Leedes, who
served Goodrich at Ely as vicars-general.101 The Church of England ex-
perienced a crisis of middle management that was not resolved until long
into Elizabeth's reign.

Wealth and Expropriation

Fundamental to the problems of the mid-Tudor bishops and the rest of
the higher clergy was the issue of wealth. The Henrician Reformation
removed such prohibitions as had existed against the secularization of
church property and the crown often appeared to sanction a wantonly
anti-clerical attitude towards the possessions of bishops and cathedrals, as
well as monasteries and chantries. In one sense the full-tide of lay greed
never washed against the secular clergy: after the debates of the 1530s the
possibility of systematic expropriation was never fully articulated.102 The
closest that the crown came to a broad alienation of episcopal property
was probably under the duke of Northumberland. Then, as the Catholic
prelates were deprived one by one, a golden opportunity was opened for
the crown. The imperial ambassador Scheyfve commented at the time of
Gardiner's deprivation that his temporalities, and those of others, would
be given to the crown and that `hereafter the government will treat all
bishops alike, and assign them pensions of one or two hundred pounds
sterling for their maintenance'.103 Nothing like this occurred, though
Edward himself seems to have thought along these lines, commenting at
Bishop Ponet's elevation to Winchester that he had `2000 marks of land
appointed to him for his maintenance'.104 The complex plan to dissolve
Durham after Tunstal's deprivation had embedded within it a calculation
that the new see would need 2,000 marks, and the proposed bishopric of
Newcastle 1,000 marks. All of this followed logically enough from
the premise that bishops, and other senior of®cers of the Church, held
of®ce at the crown's pleasure, rather than by some divine ordination.
These were views in which the reformers were often complicit: Hooper

101
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 117. F. Heal, `The Bishops of Ely and their Diocese, 1515±
ca.1600', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1972), 76±7.
102
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 101±50.
103
CSP Sp x. 215.
104
W.K. Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of Edward VI (Ithaca, 1966), 58.
202 The Coming of Reformation
argued that the `fourth part' of the bishop's income should suf®ce for a
preaching minister and Latimer's sermons contain a litany of complaints
against worldliness and wealth that turned prelates from their true voca-
tions.105
But the crucial problem for bishops and for cathedrals was not so much
the planned transmutation of the higher clergy into paid crown servants,
as the quotidian pressure of lay demands upon their property. The crown
was the ®rst bene®ciary, beginning with Henry VIII's appropriation of a
series of attractive estates within distance of London, largely from the
archbishop of Canterbury.106 Cranmer did little to help himself, or take
any stand of principle against unfavourable terms of recompense: `forso-
much as I am a man that hath small experience in such causes, and have
no mistrust at all in my prince on that behalf '.107 Not all, even among the
reformers, shared the archbishop's optimism, and as the list of manors
appropriated grew there was `grudging' though few explicit denials. The
dangers of direct refusal are well-indicated by Bishop Gardiner's political
disgrace in 1546, which owed something to his refusal of an exchange of
lands with the king. The prelates were less inhibited on the subject of lay
greed in general: a majority of the estates they lost in these years went to
courtiers or their clients. The process by which the London inns of the
prelates passed to courtiers is typical: Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk,
gained Norwich Place in 1536, the inn of the bishops of Coventry and
Lich®eld went to Lord Beauchamp in 1537, and Bath and Wells lost its
inn to the earl of Southampton in 1539. The apogee, but by no means the
end, of this process came when the duke of Somerset swallowed the
London residences of Worcester, Llandaff, and Carlisle to clear space for
his great palace in the Strand.108 There could scarcely have been a more
compelling representation of the shift of power from church to laity.
Almost all the manors taken had some recompense, usually in the form of
appropriated rectories. The clerical author of Respublica (1553) offered a
stinging indictment of this policy. Oppression rejoices that he has seized
most of the bishops' houses and in return given:

105
Carr, Early Writings of Hooper, 397. Corrie, Sermons of Latimer, 65, 69±70, 100, 176,
though it should be emphasized that Latimer was more preoccupied by the misdirection of
episcopal energies into secular tasks than with their wealth.
106
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 200±2.
107
Jenkins, Works of Cranmer, i. 203, though even Cranmer tried to preserve some of his
properties: according to his secretary Ralph Morice he tried to downplay the charms of Knole
in order to divert Henry's interest: J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation,
CS os 57 (1859), 266.
108
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 113±14, 137.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 203
Bare parsonages of appropriations,
Bought from Respublica, and ®rst emprowed;
Then at the highest extent to bishops allowed,
Let out to their hands for fourscore and [nineteen] year.
(i i i . v)109
The economic reality was not quite so dire, but bare calculations of rough
parity in the rents in these exchanges concealed the major problem: that
the prelates were being provided with recompense at the expense of the
rest of the Church.110
Lay expectations of all kinds had been aroused by the break with Rome
and the dissolution of the monasteries, and in their turn the clergy had
limited incentive to protect the possessions of a church that might at any
time be subject to further appropriation. Bishops, chapters, and other
clerics granted long leases of lands in order to provide immediate security
for themselves and their dependants, though also perhaps to make their
possessions less attractive to ambitious laymen.111 An example of the latter
comes from Lincoln, where Bishop Longland encouraged the leasing of
most of the prebendal land in the 1530s and 1540s, apparently as a protect-
ive device against spoliation.112 Such strategies did not always succeed: an
extreme capitular case comes from Chester, where in 1553 the dean and
two prebendaries were imprisoned in the Fleet, allegedly for taking lead
from the cathedral roof, but actually as a way of persuading them to lease
Sir Richard Cotton, comptroller of the king's household, most of the lands
of the cathedral in fee farm.113 Nor were churchmen themselves always
scrupulous: Bishop Barlow of St David's, for example, created grave dif®-
culties for his Protestant successor Robert Ferrar, by his alienation of prop-
erty, mortgaging, and leasing at low rents. When relations between Ferrar
and signi®cant sections of the local community broke down in 1549 a
major explanation was the bishop's determination to reverse the actions of
his predecessor. The complex legality of his various actions is less pertinent
than the very fact that a prelate should refuse to accept the prevailing ethos
of acquiescence in lay demands. His enemies complained that he was
obsessed with the business of his property rather than applying himself to
`his chief and principal vocation, his book and preaching'.114 Even an
109
W.W. Greg (ed.), Respublica, EETS os 226 (1952).
110
A careful study of the York exchanges and the value of the appropriated rectories is
W.J. Sheils, `Pro®t, patronage, or pastoral care: the rectory estates of the archbishopric of York,
1540±1640', in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds.), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500±1800
(Leicester, 1981), 91±110.
111
On the leasing policies of the bishops see Heal, Prelates and Princes, 180±93.
112 113
Bowker, Henrician Reformation, 96±8. Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, 178±9.
114
A.J. Brown, Robert Ferrar, Yorkshire Monk, Reformation Bishop and Martyr in Wales,
c.1500±1555 (1997), 127±38.
204 The Coming of Reformation
effective bishop like Ridley felt deep frustration at his inability to control
his own property. In 1551 he complained that some of his sub-tenants
were rack-renting despite their own ®xed rents, something that was `to the
great slander of all Bishops . . . [to] suffer their poor tenants so to be pilled
and polled . . . [to the] very destruction of the commonwealth'.115
For the ordinary parish incumbent, who might lease out glebe or the
collection of tithe, this `pilling and polling' by lay farmers was frequently
one of the ways in which his ¯ock was alienated. Tithe disputes in particular
grew sharply in number in most of the ecclesiastical courts in the mid-
century. After the statute of 1540, which empowered lay owners or lessees
of tithes to sue in the ecclesiastical courts, a substantial percentage of these
cases were initiated by laymen.116 In the Diocese of Lincoln over a third of
the cases before the church courts in the 1540s were initiated by farmers.117
Tithe was treated as simply another kind of income for the lay owners,
albeit one that had to be pursued through the church courts. The aggression
which some of these owners and farmers displayed in the pursuit of claims is
indicated in the demand of Kett's rebels in 1549 that knights and gentlemen
should not `have or take in farm any spiritual promotion'.118
But lay manipulation of clerical resources is only one part of the story.
Rectors and vicars remained the largest group of litigants in tithe disputes.
Their tendency to resort more routinely to the courts to secure their rights
can be explained in a variety of ways. The legislation already mentioned had
facilitated their behaviour, and the declining authority of the Church
weakened their customary hold upon their congregations. The 1536 act
speci®cally complained that men were now unusually bold in withholding
tithe.119 Religious change may have removed some of a cleric's power of
moral persuasion. Later in the century one Saffron Walden parishioner com-
mented that `privy tithes' were no longer paid because auricular confession
once moved men's consciences `more than good preaching can do now'.120
Then there were the economic crises of the mid-century and property
dislocation caused by the dissolution. These in¯icted severe strain on the
rural economy, producing resistance in paying customary dues and (some-
times) unusual aggression on the part of the clergy. Economic con¯ict

115
Kent Record Of®ce, Rochester DC, Egz. 2.
116
Houlbrooke, Church Courts, 117±50. J.S. Purvis (ed.), Select Sixteenth Century Causes in Tithe
from the York Diocesan Registry Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 94 (1949), p. viii. In
the York case it appears (unusually) that lay impropriators may be the largest category of litigants.
117 Bowker, Henrician Reformation, 135.
118
A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, 4th edn. (1997), 140.
119
Houlbrooke, Church Courts, 121.
120
M. Byford, `The Price of Protestantism: Assessing the Impact of Religious Change on
Elizabethan Essex: The Case of Heydon and Colchester, 1558±1594', University of Oxford
D.Phil. (1988), 86.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 205
soured relations between clergy and laity and provided one justi®cation for a
withdrawal of loyalty that might also have ideological roots.121
The levels of actual economic deprivation among the mid-century
parish clergy are dif®cult to determine. As we have seen in an earlier
chapter there was probably an over-supply of clergy in the immediate pre-
Reformation period, making the labour of the unbene®ced cheap. As the
crisis of church and state unfolded a declining number of ordinands even-
tually led to a shortage of labour and dif®culty in ®lling poorer bene-
®ces.122 Price rise put pressure on those who remained, though its impact
was not consistent.123 Those clerics who retained glebe, or had effective
control of a rectory or vicarage with no commutation of tithes, could
prosper: in Warwickshire, for example, where 87 per cent of the rectories
and 40 per cent of the vicarages had substantial glebe lands, there must
have been many incumbents who survived the mid-century relatively un-
scathed.124 For many their greatest problem would have been the crown's
demands for clerical taxation: the requirement to pay ®rst fruits and tenths
for the bene®ced, and subsidies for all the clergy, which bore particularly
heavily upon individuals during the war years from 1542 to 1550. The tax-
burden had increased approximately four-fold from the pre-Reformation
®gures.125 Those with the luxury of grumbling, but paying tax, must be
contrasted with a substantial group who were impoverished tout court,
holding bene®ces that were inadequately endowed, or living on ®xed
money payments that failed to keep pace with in¯ation. The urban clergy
were particular sufferers: after 1549 they virtually abandoned hope of col-
lecting personal tithes, and usually depended on a series of commutation
payments, plus such fees as could be raised for speci®c services.126 York

121
Purvis, Select Causes in Tithe.
122
M. Zell, `Economic problems of the parochial clergy in the sixteenth century', in O'Day
and Heal, Princes and Paupers, 19±44.
123
This was as true in Scotland as in England, where Kirk points out that poverty and
relative ease existed side by side in parishes all over the country at the beginning of the
Reformation: J. Kirk (ed.), Books of the Assumption of Thirds (British Academy Records in Social
and Economic History, 1995), pp. xliv±xlvi.
124
D.M. Barratt (ed.), Ecclesiastical Terriers of Warwickshire Parishes, Dugdale Society 22 (1955),
intro.
125
J.J. Scarisbrick, `Clerical taxation in England, 1485±1547', JEH 11 (1960), 41±54. F. Heal,
`Clerical tax collection under the Tudors: the in¯uence of the Reformation', in O'Day and
Heal, Continuity and Change, 97±9, 104±10. P. Carter, `Economic problems of provincial urban
clergy during the Reformation', in P. Collinson and J. Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English
Towns, 1500±1640 (Basingstoke, 1998), 147±58.
126
Skeeters, Community and Clergy, 98±109. However, in her important article on urban
clergy Claire Cross points out that poor livings did not automatically make poor clergy.
Through pluralism and exploiting other sources of revenue her urban clergy often left quite
adequate estates, even in the mid-century: C. Cross, `The incomes of provincial urban clergy,
1520±1645', in O'Day and Heal, Princes and Paupers, 68±75.
206 The Coming of Reformation
offers an extreme case. There the large number of small parishes registered
an average income of only £4. 5s. in the 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus and drastic
action had to be taken in 1547 when the Union of Churches Act described
York livings as `much decayed by the ruin and decay of the said City'.127
The case of the struggling urban clergy serves to remind us, however,
that we should not automatically construct relations between clergy and
laity during the Reformation in terms of the greed of the latter and weak-
ness of the former. Townsmen often responded to the dif®culties with
local arrangements to protect those who served them, paying directly
from the parish chest, as at St Ewan's, Bristol, or managing the bene®ce
for a cleric, as at St Aldate's, Gloucester.128 Or a more structured solution
might be sought as in the York example of union of bene®ces, which was
followed by Lincoln and Stamford. In York ®fteen churches were closed,
or combined, by 1551, despite some opposition from Archbishop Hol-
gate.129 Colchester drafted a similar bill for unions in 1549, but it never
reached the statute book.130 Just as guilds and fraternities took responsi-
bility for much of the religious life of pre-Reformation towns, so councils
and groups of parishioners began to assume that duty in the new and
confused world of mid-Tudor religion. The beginnings of Elizabethan
urban religion can be faintly discerned. That what was done was so frag-
mentary is a consequence both of the shortage of time under Edward, and
of the fundamental ®xity of the ®nancial structures of the Tudor church.
There is no evidence that either the politicians or the bishops, with the
exception of Hooper, established any clear view of an alternative to the
inherited and profoundly inequitable forms of ecclesiastical wealth.
While a careful analysis of the economic situation of the mid-Tudor
clergy reveals a mixed picture, it is not surprising that the Catholic hier-
archy under Mary identi®ed clerical poverty and lay greed as prime targets
for action. The author of Respublica was only one of those who saw the
chaos of the previous years as a triumph for avarice. The sins of the schism
demanded restitution, and while Mary and Pole were powerless to compel
the laity to atone, they could work towards a cleansing of the royal
conscience.131 The queen's episodic gestures towards monastic restoration
are less germane here than her actions in the secular church. Her initial
moves, before she had the presence of the cardinal to guide her, consisted
of the sacri®ce of crown patronage in the cathedrals, the restoration of the

127 128
D. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 229. Carter, `Economic problems', 154±7.
129
Palliser, Tudor York, 240.
130
M. Byford, `The birth of a Protestant town: the process of Reformation in Tudor
Colchester, 1530±1580', in Collinson and Craig, English Towns, 27±8.
131
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 150±61.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 207
see of Durham, a cause of con¯ict in Parliament, and the release of some
bishops from the burden of ®rst fruits. Some expropriated estates were
restored: most notably the great manors taken from Cranmer in the 1530s
were given to Pole, though for his lifetime only.132 Among the individual
gifts made by the queen, the grant of a set of Leicestershire and Cumber-
land rectories to the University of Oxford has particular signi®cance,
signalling in the words of the grant the `raising up of the university' so
that it might defend the orthodox faith against heresy.133
The changes guided by Pole from 1555 onwards had much greater
potential signi®cance for the clergy at large. By legislation of that year ®rst
fruits and tenths were no longer paid to the crown, instead they were to
be passed to the bishops. After the payment of the remaining monastic
pensions the latter were to use the surplus to provide for the poorest of
the parochial clergy. Rex Pogson has traced in detail the painstaking
process by which Pole and his deputies began to collect the necessary
information to make good this legislation, and the way in which a limited
number of poorer clerics began to bene®t for the ®rst time in 1558.134
The bishops were required to accumulate records in a systematic manner.
In that last year of the reign Mary also ful®lled her declared intention of
returning crown impropriations to the Church: not in time to make
much practical difference, but offering a model which her successors man-
aged sedulously to ignore until the time of Queen Anne's Bounty a
century and a half later. Many questions remain about Pole's capacity to
execute the ambitious ®scal policies he had de®ned: not least whether the
Church, after its period of dependence upon state authority, could once
again enforce its own control over the lesser clergy and over the laity
whose interests had become so inextricably wound into its fabric. The
ambition of Pole's approach can be underlined by comparison with the
reforming councils in Scotland. The Scottish bishops had not yet lived
through a Reformation that legitimated direct expropriation of church
property: however, they had plenty of experience of every other form of
economic pressure, and impoverished clergy aplenty. In both 1549 and
1559 there were decrees endeavouring to halt the exploitation of glebe
lands and the practice of feu-farming: in 1559 a more systematic decree on
the direct collection of teinds by clerics was added.135 One of the recent
132
CPR Philip & Mary, iii. 69±72; i. 165±6.
133
G. Philip, `Queen Mary Tudor's benefaction to the university', Bodleian Library Record 5
(1954), 27±37.
134
R. Pogson, `Revival and reform in Mary Tudor's church: a question of money', JEH 25
(1974), 249±65. P. Carter, `Mary Tudor, Parliament and the renunciation of ®rst fruits, 1555',
HR 69 (1996), 340±6.
135
Patrick, Statutes of the Scottish Church, 84±188. The 1559 decrees still dealt with an aspect of lay
grievance against clerical exactionÐdemands made for Easter offerings and mortuaries; Ibid., 185.
208 The Coming of Reformation
historians of the councils says bluntly that these limited attempts to halt lay
attacks on property were unsuccessful. In Scotland it was the reformed
church that painfully learned the lesson of the importance of providing a
more systematic way of funding the clergy.136

The Parish Clergy

William Sheppard, rector of the small community of Heydon in Essex, has
in recent years become one of the most remarked of English clerics. Mark
Byford discovered his extraordinary `Epitome' among the records of the
parish: a document which details his benefactions and his dealings with
his ¯ock over an extensive period of ministry that lasted from 1541 to
1586.137 Sheppard was an Augustinian canon of Leeds Priory, Kent, before
his appointment to Heydon, and were it not for his text he would inevitably
be labelled as a quiet conformist, a vicar of Bray who adhered with probable
reluctance to royal policy in order to avoid being dismissed from his second
lodging place. In fact Sheppard was a model pastor, and not only in his own
estimation: in the collective memory of the community his reputation was
still alive well into the seventeenth century. He cared for the poor, rebuilt
signi®cant parts of the church, and engaged in local public works. He also
preached in his own cure and, despite perhaps some conservative instincts,
was a strong adherent of the religion ordained by `the Queen's Majesty's
injunctions', as he put it, under Elizabeth. By the 1580s he seems to have
turned a signi®cant section of his congregation into sermon-going Protest-
ants. Though we know less of his doings under Edward and Mary than in
the subsequent reign, there is no reason to suppose that he did not lead his
¯ock steadily where the crown demanded it should go. When required to
describe his ministry in a Chancery suit in the 1580s he talked of his `integ-
rity of life' and `honest and godly conversation'.
One cannot assume that the pastoral devotion sustaining Sheppard's
ideological accommodation is characteristic of those clergy who had to
live through the dangerous years of the mid-sixteenth century. Two other
clergy who survived and, most unusually, commented on their lotÐ
Robert Parkyn of Adwick le Street, Yorkshire, and Christopher Trychay
of Morebath, DevonÐwere both deeply conservative, and only reluc-
tantly conformist to the Edwardian changes.138 Parkyn, from the relative
safety of Mary's reign, spoke of the 1552 parliament as one `wherein no
136
Winning, `Church councils', 344. See below, pp. 408±11.
137
Byford, `Price of Protestantism', 15±87.
138
A.G. Dickens (ed.), `Robert Parkyn's narrative', in his Reformation Studies (1982),
287±312; `South Yorkshire letters, 1555', in his Late Monasticism and the Reformation (1994), 191.
J. Erskine Binney (ed.), The Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520±1573
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 209
goodness towards holy church proceedeth, but all things contrary'. His
mental world, as exempli®ed in his commonplace book, included an
interest in the mysticism of Richard Rolle, in the moralizing poetry of
Lydgate, and in the piety of Thomas More. Trychay recorded in 1558 the
return of many of his beloved church goods after the years of King
Edward's reign when the Church `ever decayed'. In much of the recent
literature it is Parkyn and Trychay who are taken to represent the default
position of the re¯ective and conscientious parish clergy. They did not
want change, were profoundly disturbed by the loss of traditional liturgy,
and were suf®ciently doctrinally aware to understand that the ideological
underpinnings of their faith were threatened. As for the less acute, or able,
probably the vast majority of ordinary incumbents and their deputies, the
assumption is that their accommodation to the new order was almost as
reluctant: spontaneous enthusiasm for reform, or the general proceedings
of Henry and Edward, was, it is argued, unusual in the pulpit. Even in
London, most of the City clergy hated the new ways, `wishing that all
things was now as it was twenty years since'.139
It is certainly true that those parochial clergy who can be counted as
taking a clear stand for reform are in a small minority in the English
parishes, almost non-existent in Wales, and wholly so in Ireland. Fines's
listing of early known Protestants includes approximately 170 men serving
English cures or at Calais who could be described as vigorously reformist,
this spread over thirty years and about 9,000 parishes.140 The closer analy-
sis of London evidence conducted by Susan Brigden traces more than ®fty
reforming clergy in Henry's last years, distributed among the hundred
parishes and other institutions.141 Only in London was there a critical
mass of active reformers: though Kent, Suffolk, and Essex had a generous
scattering of such clergy from the 1530s onwards.142 The identi®ed clergy
run the predictable gamut of the reform-minded: from Thomas Forman

(Exeter, 1904). E. Duffy, Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New
Haven, Conn., 2001), 165. A third traditionalist record-keeper was Sir Thomas Butler, vicar of
Much Wenlock, who noted religious changes in his register, with occasional resentful com-
ments: W.A. Leighton, `The register of Sir Thomas Butler, vicar of Much Wenlock', Transac-
tions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 6 (1883), 93±132.
139
Brigden, London, 396±7.
140
Fines, Biographical Register. It must be stressed that this counts individuals, not the number
of parishes they in¯uenced. Many moved from one bene®ce to another, or undertook itinerant
preaching. There are interesting parallels in Scotland, where the leadership for reform was often
clerical, but rarely found among the parochial clergy: Kirk lists nine instances in the 1530s and
1540s: J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 7.
141
Brigden, London, 398±404.
142
D. MacCulloch, Suffolk under the Tudors (1988), 162±3, 177±8. Other recent local studies
sometimes add to Fines's ®gures, though not substantially. See for example the small group of
Marian exiles from West Wales identi®ed by Glanmor Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 208±9.
210 The Coming of Reformation
and the Lollard sympathizers of the 1520s; through Foxe's learned heroes
of the Protestant Reformation, Rowland Taylor at Hadleigh, or John Bale
at Bishopstoke; to curates accused of non-conformity because they were
at odds with the parish on a range of issues, many of them of the trad-
itional kind. Among this minority were men who burned with an ardour
to convert at all costs, to bring if necessary a sword not peace to their
parishes. Like Rowland Taylor they believed that `preachers must be bold
and not milk mouthed' or like Thomas Hancock, curate of Poole, and
preacher at Southampton, they were prepared to risk division and con¯ict
to plant the gospel in a new corner of England.143
On the Catholic side those who were suf®ciently vocal to bring them-
selves to the attention of the government and be perceived as a threat were
also a small minority. In the period of most determined political enforce-
ment of the Reformation, under Cromwell in the 1530s, 187 secular clergy
were denounced to the regime as potentially traitorous.144 This ®gure ex-
cludes those involved in major rebellion, but includes a number of accus-
ations that seem to have had little basis beyond malice and local con¯ict.
Only 13 per cent of this group suffered death under the harsh Treason Law
of 1534. Conservative clergy were, of course, also deeply implicated in the
two major uprisings of 1536 and 1549. The Lincolnshire Rising was initiated
by the preaching of Thomas Kendall of Louth, and nurtured by a network of
at least thirty local clerics.145 Parish clergy were active in most areas affected
by the Pilgrimage of Grace: for example at least six bene®ce-holders were
involved in the Cumberland rising. The complex nature of priestly involve-
ment in these risings is indicated in Sir John Bulmer's deposition that he had
sent out his chaplain to enquire if the commons would rise, which the local
clergy `should know by men's confessions'.146 The Edwardian council was
looking for simple answers when it attributed the Western Rising to
`the provocation only of certain popish priests', but the latter were a sig-
ni®cant element in the leadership of the revolt.147 At least nine incumbents
were executed in the aftermath, and others were deprived: the vicar of
St Thomas's, Exeter, who had `persuaded the people to the condemn-
ing of the reformed religion', was hanged in chains from his church

143
J. Craig, `Reformers, con¯ict and revisionism: the Reformation in sixteenth-century
Hadleigh', HJ (1999), 1±23. J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, CS os
57 (1859), 76±7. Somerset himself stopped Hancock preaching at Southampton for fear of
divisions.
144
G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas
Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), 398±9.
145
Bowker, Henrician Reformation, 152±5.
146
M.J. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace (Manchester, 1996), 355±6.
147
S.L. Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour: Women and Popular Resistance to the
Reforms of Henry VIII (Basingstoke, 1996), 12.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 211
148
tower. Such behaviour was predictably rare: not only did most tradition-
alists continue to serve silently through the Edwardian years, the great ma-
jority who survived into Elizabeth's reign also acquiesced and subscribed to
the supremacy. While after 1559 the higher clergy often followed their
bishops' example and refused subscription, all but between 200 and 400 of
the bene®ced men remained in place, though it seems that many may have
evaded actual signature.149 Even this, of course, could have serious effects in
some localities: it has been estimated that 10 per cent of West Country
clerics lost their posts in the ®rst twelve years of Elizabeth's reign.150
The majority of these dutiful clerical followers of royal policy seem un-
likely to have harboured any profound enthusiasm for Protestantism. Even
in London clerical wills for the last years of Henry's reign show an almost
complete absence of reformist sentiment, and the majority, through trad-
itional intercessory forms and speci®c bequests, indicate their identity with
Catholic belief.151 In Suffolk the clergy were far slower than the laity to
abandon the traditional form of spiritual commendation in their wills, and
readopted it more rapidly under Mary.152 Reformers could ®nd themselves
ostracized within their localities: the vicar of Yoxford, Suffolk, who wrote
evangelical dramas, complained to Cromwell that the clergy would have no
dealings with him.153 There are examples of clerics who acknowledged
their shifting behaviour as a simple consequence of force majeure. An Exeter
cleric who had sworn not to return to the Mass did so under Mary, defend-
ing himself to his friend Mayor Midwinter, `It is no remedy, man, it is no
remedy.'154 In other cases priests tried to replicate the old services within the
new, or simply abandoned the struggle to their curates, as did John Thack-
wray of East Retford, who settled with a local gentry family in order to
escape the demands of Reformation.155 Other forms of retreat were

148
R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 1989), 230. J. Vowell alias Hooker, Description and Account of the City of Exeter
(Exeter, 1765), 82.
149
H. Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy and Settlement of Religion (Oxford, 1898), 236±47.
150
C.A. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford,
1993), 243±4.
151
Brigden, London, 396±7.
152
MacCulloch, Suffolk, 161±2; though the small sample for the diocese of Ely in the same
period shows more movement: the group that have rejected some aspect of traditional will-
making outnumber the full conservatives by 1547: F. Heal, `The parish clergy and the Reforma-
tion in the Diocese of Ely', Proceedings of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Archaeological
Society (1974), 152±3. For good examples of conservatism in practice see Haigh, English Reforma-
tions, 178, 248 ff. P. Marshall, The Face of the Pastoral Ministry in the East Riding, 1525±1595,
Borthwick Papers 88 (York, 1995).
153
LP xii. i. 529. For an interesting discussion of the letter see Ryrie, `English Evangelical
Reformers', 9±14.
154
W.T. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 1540±1640 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 191±2.
155
D. Marcombe, English Small Town Life: Retford 1520±1642 (Nottingham, 1993), 167±8.
212 The Coming of Reformation
possible: the Winchester vicar and minor canon Thomas Dackcomb, who
was a zealous book collector, seems to have used his intellectual interests as a
means of expressing a traditionalism that was otherwise inadmissable.156
One of the most accessible explanations for this resistance to change is
the pattern of recruitment to the English church in these disturbed
decades. On the eve of Henry's break with Rome the Church was, if
anything, overstaffed. The 1520s had been a particularly signi®cant decade
for recruitment in a longer period of considerable growth in the number of
ordinands. These were the men who were to ®ll the parishes for the next
generation, either because they had moved directly into bene®ces and
curacies, or because they were regulars, or chantry chaplains, and then
sought places in the parochial church after the dissolutions. Meanwhile,
the number coming forward for ordination declined, at ®rst slowly and
then precipitately in the Edwardian years.157 Some of the decline must be
attributed to ideological resistance to change: in the Diocese of Oxford, in
which many of those emerging from the university would normally be
ordained, there were no ordinations between 1551 and 1554, precisely the
years when the new Edwardian ordinal was in use. In Chester, Lincoln,
and Durham there seem to have been no ordinations between 1547 and
1554 or later.158 Where the fall in recruitment occurs from the 1530s
onwards, as it does in Exeter and Winchester, it must be presumed that the
insecurity of the Church and competition from the regulars, as well as
changed ideology, had disrupted ordination. The consequences were the
same in any case: a high dependence on pre-Reformation clerics to service
the parishes and too few new recruits who might have had exposure to
reform through education or would be entering the Church because of a
vocation to Protestant ministry.159 `It seems unlikely', says Margaret Bow-
ker, `from the evidence of the ordination lists that the religion of the statute
books became the religion of men's hearts.'160
Declining numbers of ordinands eventually resulted in structural dif®cul-
ties for the parishes, though the worst effects of the gaps in manpower did
not reveal themselves until Elizabeth's reign. Kentish parishes were still able
to muster an average of 1.17 clerics per parish in 1550, a marked decline
from a pre-Reformation ®gure of almost 2 but not catastrophic.161 In the
156
F. Bussby, Winchester Cathedral, 1079±1979 (Southampton, 1979), 110.
157
M. Bowker, `The Henrician Reformation and the parish clergy', in C. Haigh (ed.),
The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), 78±84, 92.
158
Thompson, `Pastoral Work', 179±85.
159
C. Cross, `Ordinations in the Diocese of York, 1500±1630', in C. Cross (ed.), Patronage and
Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (Borthwick Studies in History, York, 1996), 8±12.
160
Bowker, `Parish clergy', 92.
161
M. Zell, `The personnel of the clergy in Kent in the Reformation period', EHR 89
(1974), 517±24.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 213
Marian period the combination of the dislocation caused by deprivations for
marriage and the high mortality of 1557 to 1558 rapidly worsened the situ-
ation. As numbers contracted, the in¯exibility of the parochial structure
began to reveal itself more sharply. The smaller clerical proletariat of Kent
did not always serve the most urgent parochial need, and in some cases
turnover was high and vacancies inevitable. At the other end of the country
the loss of the regular clergy proved critical in the Scottish Borders, where
friars had provided much of the manpower in areas like Annandale.162 In the
®rst few post-dissolution years the ex-religious seem to have stayed with
their ¯ocks. By the beginning of Elizabeth's reign few Englishmen were
coming forward to supply the gaps created by death, and many parishes and
chapelries came to depend on Scottish clerics, who were often ¯eeing the
effect of religious change in their own land. The other structural change
produced by the dissolutions, the displacement of bene®ces into the hands
of the laity and higher clergy, was yet another form of dif®culty, particularly
in the early years when ownership could shift rapidly. The additional pat-
ronage received by the bishops in the course of exchanges with the crown
was of long-term signi®cance in enabling them to in¯uence the parishes
ideologically. But the much more numerically dominant translation of bene-
®ces into lay hands had ambiguous consequences. Several dioceses saw a
decline in the proportion of graduates recruited to parish livingsÐfrom
39 per cent for Canterbury under Warham to 25 per cent in the post-
Reformation years, from 53 per cent to 48 per cent in the fortunate diocese
of ElyÐand lay patronage was probably as important an explanation as de-
clining graduate numbers.163 In Bristol, where the problem has been studied
at community level, the transfer of the patronage of a signi®cant number of
city churches to the Brayne family certainly contributed to the decline in the
educational quality of the parish clergy identi®ed by Skeeters.164
The argument has at this point lost sight of the vision of conformity
embodied by William Sheppard. But positive aspects of conformity must
surely be invoked if we are not to read the English and Welsh clergy as all
living their lives in profound alienation from the church to which they
had been recruited. For Sheppard, at least in the Elizabethan years, the
sustaining structures of his ecclesiastical universe were divine command-
ment, royal injunction, and `the decent rites of the Church of Christ'.165

162
S.M. Keeling, `The Reformation in the Anglo-Scottish borders', Northern History 15
(1979), 28±9.
163
Heal, `Bishops of Ely', 86. Bowker's ®gures for Lincoln, which stop in 1547, combine
ordination and vacancy calculations to indicate that the situation must have rapidly become
worse under Edward, Bowker, Henrician Reformation, 121±6.
164
Skeeters, Community and Clergy, 94±8, 117±20.
165
Byford, `Price of Protestantism', 42±5.
214 The Coming of Reformation
It needed a full focus on the middle of these three to help reconcile the
conscience to changes in the last, something that must have occurred in
many parsonages in these years. The clergy of Hooper's Gloucestershire
proved very de®cient when interrogated: 168 of the 312 investigated in
1551 could not repeat the Ten Commandments; using the English Bible,
thirty-nine could not locate the Lord's Prayer; but even some of the least
secure had assimilated the importance of the royal supremacy. Three at-
tributed the Lord's Prayer to `Our Lord the King'.166 If such adherence to
the royal will proved an imperfect justi®cation for turning, then there was
always the pastoral virtue of continuity to ensure the proper cure of souls
and the resolution of local con¯ict. Even Christopher Trychay emerged
into the Elizabethan era as a conformist who was `more than a grudging'
minimalist: continuing to preach and care for his ¯ock.167
The most profound social change experienced by the mid-Tudor
clergyÐthe possibility of marriageÐmay perhaps most usefully be read in
the light of the reconciliation of the reluctant to the new order of things.168
There were a few cases of clerical marriage that long preceded the grudging
legislative permission of 1549. In the 1530s reformers anticipated that Cran-
mer and Cromwell would move Henry VIII towards the acceptance of mar-
riage, little comprehending his deep antipathy, suddenly made visible in the
Six Articles. At this stage the deliberate choice of marriage cannot be separ-
ated from evangelical sentiment. To take just two examples, the vicar of Men-
dlesham, Suffolk, who was in trouble for marrying in 1537, was from
a community deeply identi®ed with radicalism, and William Turner wed at
the time of the Six Articles as a part of his renunciation of Henricianism
before departing for exile.169 The most dramatic case comes from Scotland
in 1539, where a group of reforming priests attended the wedding of their
colleague the vicar of Tullibody, breaking the Lenten fast in order to do so.
Three regulars and one secular, plus one layman, were burned at Edinburgh
for this offence.170 After Edward's accession it became clear that clerical
marriage was likely to be permitted, though attempts to gain parliamentary
166
Litzenberger, Gloucestershire, 70±1. K.G. Powell, `The beginnings of Protestantism in
Gloucestershire', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society 90 (1971), 141±57.
167
Duffy, Morebath, 175±6. Both Zell and Bowker also emphasize that the relative security of
bene®ces in comparison with all other forms of clerical employment must be seen as a major
element in the immobility of parochial clergy.
168
For good summaries of the issue of clerical marriage see P. Marshall, The Catholic Priest-
hood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), 163±73; E. Carlson, `Clerical marriage and the
English Reformation', JBS 31 (1992), 1±31. By far the most thorough investigation of the
phenomenon is by H. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000).
169
MacCulloch, Suffolk, 178±9. E. Carlson, `The marriage of William Turner', HR 65
(1992), 336±9.
170
R. Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials of Scotland, 3 vols. (Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh,
1829±33), i. 216±17.
 The Clergy in the Years of Change 215
sanction in 1547 failed and only in 1549 were such unions made legal, even
then with the less than ringing endorsement that they were the remedy for
sin.171
Thereafter the clergy began to marry in considerable numbers, though
with wide variations between dioceses. Historians have calculated rates of
married clergy using the somewhat dif®cult records for deprivations under
Mary.172 It is estimated that one in three clergy married in London and
Essex, one in four in Norwich diocese, but one in ten or less in Exeter,
Coventry and Lich®eld, and Winchester. Among English areas that have
been studied in detail Lancashire is the outlier, with only seven of its over
250 clergy apparently married at the beginning of Mary's reign.173 Only two
Welsh sees, St David's and Bangor, can be calculated, and they produce
®gures of one in six and one in eight respectively.174 As for Ireland, although
several of the bishops and higher clergy lost bene®ces at the beginning of
Mary's reign because of marriage, there is very limited evidence on those
holding parochial livings. Only two parochial clergy seem to have been
deprived in the Diocese of Dublin, though as usual the situation was made
complicated by concerns to assail concubinage as well as marriage.175 These
marked disparities have long led historians to associate sympathy with
reform among the clergy with a propensity to marry, especially since it has
become clear that there was a considerable weight of lay opinion against the
marriage of priests. Why risk social ostracism, runs the argument, unless
there was an ideological as well as a practical incentive to marry?
Reformers often married, and congregations that had some sympathy
with change may have offered some encouragement. Robert Parkyn
argued that those who married showed their true identity by refusing to
elevate the host at Mass even before the 1549 Prayer Book was en-
forced.176 A linkage between clerical marriage and Protestant sympathy is
indicated by the complaint from Kent in 1554 that there were no priests
to serve at Sandwich, a reform-minded community, because of depriv-

171
3EVI c. 17.
172
The English sources are marshalled in E.J. Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation
(Oxford, 1994), and in Parish, Clerical Marriage.
173
The Lancashire ®gures, unusual in including parochial assistants as well as incumbents, are
included in Haigh's calculations: C.A. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire
(Cambridge, 1987), 180±2.
174
The Welsh ®gures have only recently been calculated in Williams, Wales and the Reforma-
tion, 195±7.
175
M.V. Ronan, The Reformation in Dublin, 1536±1558 (1926), 428±9. Jefferies, Priests and
Prelates, 166, indicates that deprivations in Armagh are very unlikely, but the ®rm evidence is
missing. Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', points to the embarrassment caused to the revived
cathedral of St Patrick's in late 1555 when it was revealed that Richard Johnson, one of the
prebendaries, had been married: p. 209.
176
I am indebted to Dr Parish for the ensuing analysis. Parish, Clerical Marriage, 180 ff.
216 The Coming of Reformation
177
ation for marriage. It is also implied by the fact that in the same year
Ipswich had only two priests to serve the parishes.178 In many cases,
however, the alacrity with which clerics disposed of their spouses in 1554
and were prepared to accept other bene®ces after deprivation suggests a
lack of commitment to either marriage or reform. And in some extreme
cases marriage was the only change that the cleric embraced. Philip Stan-
lake of Little Cheverell in Salisbury diocese had a wife, yet was in trouble
at the 1553 visitation for failing to preach in a parish where the high altar
had not been destroyed.179 There is some evidence from the Dioceses of
Chichester and Winchester that other inducements to marriage may have
been signi®cant, especially the behaviour of near neighbours among the
clergy. Clusters of parishes with married priests can be identi®ed in Sussex,
not only in the Rye and Winchelsea area, which was radicalized under
Edward, but in the Weald and in the extreme west of the county, which
seem to have been thoroughly conservative in other ways.180 At most the
association between clerical marriage and Protestantism can only be
argued in the negative: strong Catholic identities were not compatible
with taking a wife, since the unchaste priest polluted the sacraments. For
the rest it might be most useful to regard marriage as one of those elem-
ents that helped to create a certain loyalty to the Protestant regimes
among a drifting and often disorientated body of clergy. As John Foster
had argued to Cromwell as early as 1538, had Henry allowed marriage he
would have found doubly loyal priests, `®rst in love, secondly for fear that
the bishop of Rome should set on his power unto their desolation'.181
The predisposition to marriage, which once again revealed itself rapidly
after Elizabeth's accession, does something to prove his case. Few clergy
would martyr themselves before a determined regime on this issue: given
choice, however, many of them embarked once again on what was inevit-
ably a contract with the crown against Rome. The bad news for the
Edwardian reformers was that only a minority entered this contract in the
years of uncertainty: even on this weak test of loyalty to the new order of
things the parish clergy were found wanting.

177 178
Zell, `Clergy in Kent', 530. MacCulloch, Suffolk, 174±5.
179 180
Parish, Clerical Marriage, 209. Ibid., 217±19.
181
BL Cottonian MS Cleo. e i v , fo. 140.
 6
R E S P O N S E S TO C H A N G E : T H E L A I T Y
AND THE CHURCH

The Defence of Tradition

Seldom can the `bare ruined choirs' of lost Catholicism have been evoked
so powerfully as in Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars. His study of
the process of desacralization is introduced with a haunting lament for the
loss of the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, possibly written by the
Elizabethan earl of Arundel. Its concluding stanzas express a bitterness that
departs from the elegiac quality of Shakespeare's lament for the loss of the
`sweet birds':
Weep, weep, O Walsingham,
Whose days are nights,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to despites.
Sin is where Our Lady sat,
Heaven turned is to hell.
Satan sits where Our Lord did sway;
Walsingham, O, farewell.1
A world lost, and sins felt with an intensity that shakes the historian's
tendency to analytical complacency. Few were able to say anything so
explicit in the England of Elizabeth, but we must accept with Duffy that
the sentiments were still felt by many. They were alive in Bartholomew
Hussey, who scribbled in a Winchester service book, `I pray God I may
live to see the Mass to be said in England again, for that to see it would
glad my heart so much as anything in the world.'2

1
E. Jones (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse (Oxford, 1991), 551.
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400±1580 (New Haven,
Conn., 1992), 377±8.
2
F. Bussby (ed.), Winchester Cathedral, 1079±1979 (Southampton, 1979), 110.
218 The Coming of Reformation
Powerful evocation of traditional belief still, however, begs questions
about the nature of `traditional' religion in the age of crisis. The ®rst is
whether the popular Catholicism of the 1520s was signi®cantly changed
by the experience of con¯ict and persecution. The second, and far more
intractable, question concerns the quality and quantity of commitment to
the old ways. In both areas there is now a rich secondary literature, which
may justify some rather summary generalizations, before we turn to the
exponents of change.
Any consideration of alterations in the nature of Catholicism between
the 1520s and Mary's reign must ®rst assume that it was continuities with
the old world that the laity valued.3 Several years before Mary was restored
John Ponet had complained that men urged one another to `believe as your
forefathers have done before you . . . follow ancient customs and usages'.4
The most popular of the Marian polemicists, Miles Hogarde, looked back
to a time when England lived in `marvellous love and amity, in true dealing
and honest simplicity'.5 The Mass had been at the heart of English religious
experience then, and it seems abundantly evident that it was the promise of
the restoration of the Mass that galvanized support for Marian religious
policy long before the full range of her intentions became visible. In July
and August 1553 there were many examples of clergy and ordinary parish-
ioners anticipating government action by setting up altars and returning to
the old service, especially after Mary's ambiguously worded proclamation
of 18 August seemed to sanction their behaviour. By the beginning of
September Robert Parkyn was reporting triumphantly that `very few parish
churches in Yorkshire but mass was song or said in Latin'.6 In Ireland a
horri®ed Bale observed how the clergy and laity rushed to set up the Mass
again: `they brought forth their copes, candlesticks, holy water stock . . . .
They mustered forth in general procession most gorgeously all the town
over'.7 The wardens of Stanford-in-the-Vale, Oxfordshire, went one stage
further by immediately selling their communion table, the symbol of the
`wicked time of schism'.8 But even in the heartland of reforming in¯uence
there were similar demonstrations: Mass was being sung in London as early
as 6 August, and after the proclamation it began in four or ®ve of the city
churches `not by commandment but of the people's devotion'.9 By Sep-
3
See discussion and examples in Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 524 ff., C. Haigh, English Refor-
mations, (Oxford, 1993), 205±12 and D. Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor (1979), 98±102.
4
A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (1928 ), 257±8.
5
M. Hogarde, The displaying of the Protestantes (1556), fo. 92.
6
`Robert Parkyn's Narrative', in A.G. Dickens, Reformation Studies (1982), 309.
7
P. Happe and J. King (eds.), The Vocacyon of John Bale (Binghamton, N.Y., 1990), 62.
8
R. Hutton, `The local impact of the Tudor reformations', in C. Haigh (ed.), The English Refor-
mation Revisited (Cambridge, 1987), 128.
9
S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 528±32.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 219
tember a hostile witness was reporting the Mass as `very rife' in London.10
At Poole the zealous Thomas Hancock prevented his congregation from
saying Mass in church, only to ®nd that a powerful group had begun the
traditional service in the house of Thomas White.11
Since the Marian regime was in accord with these enthusiasts about the
urgency of restoring the Mass, it is not surprising that the evidence of the
churchwardens' accounts is of sustained effort to recover the impedimenta
of traditional worship. Altars and altar-cloths, Mass vestments, chalices,
pyxes, censors and sacring bells are recorded as purchased or retrieved in
parish after parish.12 The accounts, and following them surviving visit-
ation returns, suggest that much of this kind was done quickly and effect-
ively, though structural work to replace altars and rebuild roods, and the
accumulation of proper texts for worship, sometimes lagged behind the
more strictly ceremonial items. Pole, as we have seen, deliberately encour-
aged this sense of the renewal of tradition since `the observation of cere-
monies, for obedience sake, will give more light than the reading of the
scriptures'.13 Other elements in the old religion that lent support to this
basic restoration of ceremony were also taken up with enthusiasm in the
localities. The Corporation of York restored the Marian plays that had
been excluded under Edward from the Corpus Christi mystery cycle; and
a host of communities that had actually suppressed their religious drama
revived it under royal encouragement.14 Other feasts and processions,
Whit Monday in Leicestershire, Becket's feast in Canterbury, Palm
Sunday processions, can be traced in the surviving records.15
When Marian Catholicism did not revert fully to its early Henrician
past, it was often because some institutional change was almost irrevers-
ible, or because economic considerations made it impossible.16 Time was
short and continuing political and religious uncertainties made givers cau-
tious. Will-makers sometimes hedged their provisions for obits and chan-
tries with the caveat `if the law will suffer it'.17 And where, as in
Gloucester diocese, systematic studies of wills have been undertaken
for the Marian period, they show a decline both in structured provision

10
BL Harl. MS 353, fo.143v.
11
J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, CS os 57 (1859), 82±3.
12
Haigh, English Reformations, 210±13. Hutton, `Local impact', 128±31.
13
J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3 vols. in 7 (1816), iii. 2. 503.
14
D. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 242. D. Galloway (ed.), Norwich 1540±1642
(Records of Early English Drama, Toronto, 1984), 343±4. M. McClendon, The Quiet Reforma-
tion: Magistrates and the Emergence of Protestantism in Tudor Norwich (Stanford, Calif., 1999), 167.
15
R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400±1700 (Oxford, 1994),
98.
16
Hutton, `Local impact', 131±3.
17
P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (1988), 40.
220 The Coming of Reformation
for the soul's health and in the donation of small, ritualistic gifts to the
Church.18 Each could be explained by lingering doubts about the good
sense of such donations in the circumstances. However, it is possible to
argue that wills point the historian towards slow changes in the nature of
traditional religious behaviour. The two areas of pre-Reformation giving
that appear less signi®cant in Marian wills are those for prayer for the dead
and support for the saints. Con®dence in the contract between the living
and the dead, with its mutuality of bene®t, seems to have been shaken by
the attack on the chantries. The paraphernalia of obits, bede-rolls, and
provision for individual intercessory prayers did not return at pre-Refor-
mation levels. And within the body of the Church the restoration of the
rood took priority over the renewal of saints' images.19
The dif®cult evidence of will preambles, which do not automatically
express the sentiments of individual testators, also suggest a diversi®cation
away from the traditional invocation of saints and towards more Christo-
centric forms of devotion. The latter, as Duffy indicates, were nothing
new, but they appear somewhat more regularly in this period, perhaps in
response to the challenge of reform.20 When Joan Holder, or her scribe,
wrote in 1556 that she bequeathed her soul to `God my creator and
redeemer unto whose mercy I commit myself unto, trusting by the merits
of his passion to inherit the kingdom of heaven and also desiring our
blessed Lady with all the whole company of heaven to pray for me', she
18
C. Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540±1580 (Cam-
bridge, 1997), 91±8.
19
Haigh, English Reformations, 215. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 563±4.
20
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 518±22, emphasizes the diversity and the Christocentric
quality of Marian wills, but is perhaps too keen to argue that these are continuities. I do not
propose to dilate in detail on the battle on the meaning of wills which has preoccupied histor-
ians of the Reformation period for the past thirty years. Much sound and fury, and some light,
have been directed to the evaluation of will preambles as a source of evidence for belief. The
literature is well-summarized in appendix A of Litzenberger's study of Gloucester. There is also
a systematic discussion in a thesis by M.D. Lucas, `Popular Religious Attitudes in Urban Lin-
colnshire during the Reformation: The Will Evidence 1520±1600', University of Nottingham
Ph.D. (1998). One of the best of the summaries is C. Marsh, `In the name of God? Will-making
and faith in Early Modern England', in G.H. Martin and P. Spufford (eds.), The Records of the
Nation (Woodbridge, 1990), 215±49. There is still no consensus on exactly how much weight
can be put upon this evidence, but the following points have emerged relatively clearly from
the debate. (1) Will-makers in early modern England normally drew up their testaments only
shortly before death. (2) Most wills were actually prepared by scribes, and the opinion, or
training, of those scribes often played a part in determining the formulae used. (3) Will-makers
and their advisers had reason to be cautious in the expression of unorthodox views lest these
failed to pass the process of probate in the ecclesiastical courts. (4) For devout testators the
bequest of the soul remained of great signi®cance and was unlikely wholly to be surrendered to
a third party. Litzenberger adds the important point that the samples taken by historians to
demonstrate points from wills have often been too small, or too imprecisely used, to yield any
valid results. Although will evidence is used in this and other chapters I wish to avoid placing
great trust in the quantitative ®ndings of historians.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 221
was re¯ecting an orthodox Catholic consciousness that had surely been
honed somewhat by the experiences of a world lost.21
The second issue, that of the scale of adhesion to traditional and Catholic
beliefs and practice, is dif®cult and controversial. It remains easiest to ap-
proach via negation: that for the laity, as for the clergy, there is only limited
evidence of the committed acceptance of the new. Even though the ap-
proximately 3,000 visible reformers whom Fines was able to count are only
a section of those who worked for change under Henry and Edward, even
calculating to the largest iceberg would only produce a small minority in a
population of 2.5 to 3.0 million. The question is whether the bulk of the
rest should be identi®ed as Catholic, or should be assimilated under that
useful, but inherently ambiguous, term `neuter'. Neuters were the uncom-
mitted and indifferent: they were also the confused, and the outwardly
conformist who might inwardly believe differently, three categories that are
themselves somewhat distinct. When, early in Elizabeth's reign, the bishops
were asked to categorize the JPs into three groups, their neuters, roughly a
third of the whole, were essentially those who would probably conform,
but would do little to enforce the new settlement.22 The ideologically
committed, both Protestant and Catholic, were prone bitterly to denounce
such men as nulli®dians, `not regarding any doctrine, so they may be quiet to
live after their own wills and minds'.23 And there are examples of laymen
who respond to religious upheaval by plaguing all houses. On the other
hand, the church papist that emerged in the later sixteenth century has
obvious antecedents in the grudging conformist under Edward.24
None of the materials historians can use to evaluate lay opinionÐwills,
church court records, churchwardens' accounts, material accumulated by
the government at times of civil disturbanceÐcome near to offering us a
full opportunity to assess the views of the silent majority. The attempts to
calculate the part of the population that was resistant to organized religion
has often taken the form of trying to estimate church attendance.25 But
this is impossible for the mid-century since the ecclesiastical authorities
became interested in attendance as a test of orthodoxy only after 1559. Of
21
Litzenberger, Gloucester, 93.
22
M. Bateson (ed.), `A collection of original letters from the bishops to the Privy Council',
Camden Society Miscellany 9, CS ns 53 (1895), pp. iii±iv.
23
S. Bateman, A christall glasse of Christian reformation (1569), sig. g 4.
24
A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early
Modern England (1993), 73 ff.
25
K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), 190, 204. Some generalizations by
historians about church attendance are set out in C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century
England (Basingstoke, 1998), 43±4. Most of the valuable estimates are for the later sixteenth
century: see particularly M. Ingram, `From reformation to toleration: popular religious cultures
in England, 1540±1690', in T. Harris (ed.), Popular Culture in England, c.1500±1850 (Basingstoke,
1995), 111±12. See below, pp. 465±7.
222 The Coming of Reformation

`The nulli®dians' watch the priests attacking the preacher. Stephen Bateman,
A Christall Glasse (1569). Permission of the Bodleian Library

much more signi®cance was the general insistence on obedience, the dom-
inant ethos, it has been suggested, of the early Church of England.26 Obedi-
ence was constantly tested for those in any authority: among the laity in the
parish it was most demanded of the churchwardens. Their response, in so
far as it can be traced through the fragmented records, was generally consist-
ent. When the royal will was clear (by no means always the case as in the
®rst year of Edward's reign) the work of destruction in the churches was
carried out obediently, even though the importation of new materials like
Bibles was much less consistent. Indeed, a recent study of East Anglia con-
cludes that only in the 1560s did the vast majority of parishes have access to
the key texts of Protestant Reformation.27 The most important investiga-
tion of the body of material left behind by the wardens concludes that the
most remarkable feature of the record is the capacity of the Tudor regimes
26
R. Rex, `The crisis of obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation', HJ 39 (1996),
863±94.
27 I am grateful to Greg Duke for this information.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 223
to compel obedience from their subjects. That obedience moreover, while
sometimes grudgingly given, especially under Edward, appears more than
simply a yielding to power: it is as though, says Hutton, the English and
Welsh had `a limited capacity to sustain any beliefs attacked by both leading
churchmen and by the Crown'.28 This can be contrasted interestingly with
the situation in Ireland, where a measure of political obedience was not
necessarily associated with religious conformity, even in the case of many of
the leaders of the Old English community.29
Above the parish and its wardens the interests of lay rulers in town and
countryside was more often served by acquiescence in the royal will than by
challenge to it. Once again, however, conformity conceals a very wide
range of detailed responses and known sympathies. If we take the example
of some of the English cities that have been studied in detail an interesting
gamut of behaviour emerges. York remained an essentially conservative city,
and was the only one exposed to the charge of disobedience for the distinctly
ambiguous role that some of its aldermen played in 1536 when the Pilgrims
of Grace occupied it. Thereafter, it made an ostentatious duty of following
the crown, while still revealing, in, for example, the celebrations at the
accession of Mary, where its sentiments lay.30 Bristol was another city that
learned, painfully, to make a virtue of neutrality and caution. For much of
the 1530s it was caught up in the ideological con¯icts generated by Latimer's
preaching campaigns: the corporation at odds with many of its clergy. After
several bruising incidents, in which governmental support for local initiative
was at best ambiguous, the city fathers adopted an explicit policy of
following the royal will as closely as possible. In February 1540, for example,
they were calculating what course to steer in the aftermath of a visitation by
Latimer's successor at Worcester, John Bell, and decided to ask Cromwell to
send a representative to Bristol to `reform certain points'.31 Norwich's con-
formity, on the other hand, took the form of avoidance of trouble from the
outset, prompting its historian's labelling of its `quiet Reformation'. Divided
religious sentiment was largely contained within the boundaries of the city
and its courts. The external face that Norwich chose to present to the world,
except during the crisis of Kett's rebellion, was one of studied acceptance of
the providential wisdom of Tudor regimes.32
28
Hutton, `Local impact', 138.
29
C. Lennon, The Lords of Dublin in the Age of Reformation (Dublin, 1989), 128±34, 141.
30
Palliser, Tudor York, 234±44.
31
M.C. Skeeters, Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation, c.1530±c.1570 (Oxford,
1993), 34±56. K.G. Powell, The Marian Martyrs and the Reformation in Bristol (Bristol, 1972).
32
McClendon, Quiet Reformation, 61 ff. Similar contrasts emerge in smaller urban centres:
Lucas shows convincing will evidence of early sympathy for reform among the lay leaders of
Grantham and Boston, while Grimsby remained largely immune to change until the second
generation of Elizabeth's reign. Lucas, `Popular Religious Attitudes', 68 ff.
224 The Coming of Reformation
That calm, studied, or sullen, acceptance of the demands of the powers
that be routinely prevents historians from reading the actuality of popular
sentiment.33 Those who, in the words of Sir Thomas Smith, had no part
in rule, could usually evade the intrusive eye of governors lay and cler-
ical.34 It was common for commissioners and JPs to comment that the
people were `quiet and conformable', the equivalent of that bland omnia
bene with which so many churchwardens repelled episcopal interrogators
and subsequent historians.35 But the indications of a reluctance to change
the customary patterns of faith remain widespread in these years, almost
certainly justifying the comment of the French ambassador in 1539 that
the people were `much more inclined to the old religion than to new
opinions'.36 For example, will makers in many parts of the country
returned more rapidly to traditional formulae on Mary's accession than
they jettisoned such patterns under Henry and Edward. We have already
noted the evidence of enthusiasm for the return of the Mass ahead of
of®cial Marian pronouncements. The language of conformity could itself
contain ®rm expressions of orthodoxy, as in the two parishes of the
divided community of Marian Colchester that pronounced their devotion
to `the laws of the Catholic Church and of the King and Queen', when
simply asked if the parishioners attended divine service.37 It is rare for
historians to study a community like Colchester and not to ®nd that it
contained committed Catholics resisting Protestant preaching. Even
Hadleigh, a `University of the learned' under the godly Rowland Taylor,
still harboured traditionalists among its leading clothiers, and its church-
wardens showed a distinct reluctance to turn their church into a preaching
house.38
Sustained and militant resistance to religious changes ordered by au-
thority was uncommon for the laity as for the clergy. What can be ad-
duced, especially in the evidence forwarded to Cromwell in the 1530s, is a
widespread resentment at the attack on images and other supports of the
traditional faith. Parishioners, like their clergy, were often angered by the
changes. A ®ne example comes from Chilham in Kent in the dif®cult days
of 1543. The vicar, Dr John Willoughby, a known and articulate trad-
itionalist, was ordered to destroy his rood, targeted by the diocesan au-
thorities as a monument of superstition. He assembled the leaders of the

33
R. Whiting, Local Responses to the English Reformation (1997), 117 ff.
34
Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. M. Dewar ( Cambridge, 1982), 76.
35
Marsh, Popular Religion, 201±2.
36
LP xiv. i. 1092.
37
L.M. Higgs, Godliness and Governance in Tudor Colchester (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1998), 172.
38
J. Craig, `Reformers, con¯ict and revisionism: the Reformation in sixteenth-century
Hadleigh', HJ 42 (1999), 18±20.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 225
parish, and with their assent devised a response invoking The King's Book
to protect the images, thereafter locking the church against the ecclesi-
astical of®cials. In this case Willoughby escaped the consequences of dis-
obedience through the protection of conservative Kentish JPs.39 A more
normal result in the years of reformist ascendancy would have been the
loss of the rood, its images possibly secreted away against better times.
When priests conformed and sought to enforce the royal will laymen,
unconstrained by deference to their spiritual authority, often protested
vigorously. The curate of Beverley read the royal injunctions for the abro-
gation of saints' days in 1536 but the parishioners collectively insisted `they
would have their holydays bid and kept as before'.40 In St David's at the
end of the decade Bishop Barlow complained that the people were `wil-
fully solemnizing' the feast of their patron saint and continuing to venerate
his relics.41 The catalyst for the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion was the
reading of the new liturgy by the vicar of Sampford Courtenay: resistance
by a small group of parishioners was then emulated by the whole congre-
gation.42 Habits of deference and obedience were not necessarily proof
against strongly held religious principles and the fact that the laity had
long been organizing much of their own local religious lives. But to resist
was to rebel. One of the most painful of learning experiences for the
ordinary parishioner committed to the old faith was that communal auton-
omy in matters of religion was now challenged by the power of the
crown. The power of the saints, like so much else, now deferred to that
of the supreme head of the ecclesia Anglicana.
When ordinary laymen did take the fatal step of rebellion for the sake
of religion their most clearly articulated motives were the protection of
parochial worship.43 The Lancashire pilgrims in 1536 saw the defence of
their local churches, and the promotion of good priests, as prime reasons
for protest.44 The Lincolnshire rising which preceded the main pilgrimage
undoubtedly drew much of its early support from the belief that the king
was about to suppress local churches as well as the monasteries.45 Less
usually, there is the case of the group of women who terrorized the

39
LP xviii. ii. 303, 319, discussed by Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 441±2.
40
LP xii. i. 201, this incident immediately preceded the Pilgrimage of Grace, and may help
to explain Beverley's involvement in it.
41
LP xiii. i. 604.
42
J. Vowell alias Hooker, The Description and Account of the City of Exeter (Exeter, 1765), 34±5.
43
The debate on motives for revolt is extensive and need not be trawled here. See the good
summary in A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, 4th edn. (1997), esp. 117 ff.
44
C.S.L. Davies, `Popular religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace', in C.S.L. Davies and
J. Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), 58±88.
45
M. Bowker, `Lincolnshire in 1536: heresy, schism or religious discontent', in D. Baker
(ed.), Heresy, Schism and Religious Protest, SCH 9 (1972), 227±43.
226 The Coming of Reformation
workman seeking to demolish the rood of St Nicholas Priory, Exeter, in
1536. They presumably saw a monastic house as the focus of their reli-
gious practice.46 The Helston revolt of 1548 in Cornwall was, as far as
can be discerned, another attempt to resist the destruction of images in
the parish church.47 But the laity who rose were at the least persuaded by
their leaders of the necessity of appeal to wider religious principles: the
return of the spiritual power of the papacy in the case of the Pilgrimage of
Grace; a moratorium on further religious change during the minority for
the Helston rebels; the rejection of Prayer Book innovation in 1549. The
evidence is too slender to talk of a more informed popular Catholicism
emerging from the mid-Tudor decades. Yet we might suggest that trad-
itionalists, like their Protestant opponents, began to understand that a
greater confessional awareness was a necessary consequence of crown be-
haviour.

Evangelical Environments
The coming of Reformation in England and Scotland has thus far been
explained largely in political terms, as the consequence of decisions taken
within a circumscribed environment by councillors and clerics driven
principally by royal choice. Yet even if a state-centred view of religious
change is deemed most appropriate, the response of those who had to
enforce reform remains crucial, and the leaven of men who were commit-
ted to the new evangelism essential. For Protestantism to gain suf®cient
control in either realm it needed committed nobles, gentlemen, and
magistrates to enforce the royal will, or to stand against it in the case of
Scotland, and determined preachers to disseminate the new ideology. It
also needed foot soldiers, to provide the beginning of engagement in
the parishes and, as it transpired, to show the ®delity to the new truth that
produced a signi®cant band of martyrs. Where all these elements were
present, as they were at different times north and south of the Anglo-
Scottish border, a Reformation could be made. Where they were lacking,
as in Ireland, the royal will alone could make little headway.
There were, of course, a myriad of individual routes away from Rome
and towards Protestantism, many of them impenetrable to the historian.
But it is possible to consider what Haigh calls the `formation of a minor-
ity' in structural terms, and especially to look at the environments that
facilitated the ideological transactions that could lead to conversion. The

46
W. MacCaffrey, Exeter 1540±1640 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 182.
47
R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 1989), 76, 118.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 227
environment that is most immediately signi®cant is that of the royal court.
The Henrician court offered a critical focus for forms of religiosity that mi-
grated between Erasmian pietism, biblical evangelicalism, and outright
rejection of Catholic belief.48 In Scotland, where James V's insistence on
orthodoxy made it dangerous to stray too far from Catholicism, sections
of the court embraced both humanist ideas and evangelical concerns.49 In
both courts the background to new forms of devotion was on the one
hand the well-established tradition of aristocratic pietism, with its concern
for the inward life, and on the other the growing heterodoxy of the French
court. Anne Boleyn may have `fetched her evangelism' from France, and
the Scottish nobility were also exposed to some of the cultural in¯uences
of the new French pietism.50
Courtiers were not necessarily constructed into piety, nor were the
pious necessarily led to question orthodox beliefs. Most of the leading
humanists of Henry's early court remained in some degree Catholic when
crisis came in the 1530s.51 But a milieu which placed great emphasis on
education, for women of high status as well as men, and that offered the
time for intellectual debate, proved very fruitful for the promotion of new
ideas. The Boleyn circle, especially her brother George, Lord Rochford
and the poet Thomas Wyatt, exemplify the evangelicalism of the Henri-
cian court.52 Wyatt's guarded translations of the penitential psalms reveal
enough awareness of soli®dianism to be more than an orthodox devotional
cycle. Rochford's more explicit commitment is summed up in his scaffold
speech in which he expressed proper penitence, not in usual forms but
because he had not `in very deed kept God's holy word even as I read it
and reasoned about it'.53

48
On the theme of court and reform see M. Dowling, `The gospel and the court: reforma-
tion under Henry VIII', in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church
(1987), 36±77; J.K. McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and
Edward VI (Oxford, 1968).
49
C. Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount
(E. Linton, E. Lothian, 1995).
50
E. Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), 42, 317±24, though Ives warns that the timing
of Anne's contacts with the Margaret of AngouleÃme circle is such that it makes this an
unlikely source of immediate religious in¯uence. For Scotland see Edington, Court and Culture,
164±6.
51
L.E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford, 2000), 16 ff.,
emphasizes, however, the degree to which humanist Catholicism remained reformist in the
1530s. McConica, English Humanists, though this tends to emphasize the continuity between
earlier humanism and the 1530s at the expense of new in¯uences from France.
52
Dowling, `Gospel and court', 52±6. The current researches of James Carley into the
library of Henry VIII will also throw further light on the reforming texts owned by the Boleyn
circle.
53
R.A. Rebolz (ed.), The Complete Poems of Thomas Wyatt (1978), 195±216. Ives, Anne
Boleyn, 306.
228 The Coming of Reformation
From a few key sympathizers with the gospel in the court at the begin-
ning of the 1530sÐthe example of William Butts can be added to that of
Anne and her alliesÐnew ideas circulated outwards through the networks
of patronage and political contact. Sympathetic chaplains and tutors were
employed, and through scripture reading and debate the merits of reform
were laid before key sections of the elite.54 Two vignettes exemplify this
cycle of exchange: Nicolas Bourbon, a French reformer who had to ¯ee
for his beliefs in 1535 approached Butts, who turned to Anne Boleyn for
support. She employed him, amongst other things putting him to tutor
three children of courtiers. He was drawn by Holbein and dedicated
verses, his Nugae, to like-minded courtiers.55 A decade later another set of
verses, John Parkhurst's Ludicra sive Epigrammata weaves within its pages
compliments to a wider evangelical network based upon the court: the
Brandon, Dudley, and Grey families, Edward Bainton and William Butts,
Cranmer, Cox, Cheke, and Sir Anthony Cooke as Edward's tutors, Sir
Anthony Cope and Anne Carew from Catherine Parr's household.56
Many of these shared in the vicissitudes of the reform cause in the last
lethal months of Henry's reign. This was a world which in its most exag-
gerated manifestation produced a self-con®dent autodidact like Sir John
Gates, who on the scaffold in 1554 described himself as `the greatest reader
of scripture that might be of a man of my degree' while formally regret-
ting that he had interpreted it `after my own brain and affection'.57
The courtly world offered access to new ideas and debates not only to the
elite of the household of magni®cence. Fragmentary evidence reveals evan-
gelicals, and even radical Protestants, within the bourg of court. Edward
Underhill, one of the gentlemen pensioners, wrote the story of his impris-
onment under Mary for Foxe, and claimed with con®dence that there was
`no better place to shift the Easter time', that is to avoid partaking of the
sacrament, than the queen's court. He identi®ed `favourers of the gospel'
among the guard, including the lieutenant Sir Humphrey Ratcliffe, who
ensured that his wages were paid to him though he was a known Protest-
ant.58 Even more remarkable is the case of Robert Cooch, one of the most
articulate of the mid-century radicals, who began his career as wine steward
to Catherine Parr. Bishop Parkhurst described him to the Swiss Rodolph
54
Dowling, `Anne Boleyn as patron', in D. Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court
in England (1991), 107±11.
55
M. Dowling (ed.), `William Latymer's Chronickille of Anne Bulleyn', Camden Miscellany
30, CS 4th ser. 39 (1990), 56.
56
J. Parkhurst, Ludicra sive Epigrammata Juvenilia (1573). Parkhurst was later Elizabethan
bishop of Norwich.
57
P.C. Swensen, `Noble Hunters of the Romish Fox: Religious Reform at the Tudor
Court, 1542±1564', University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. (1981), 174.
58
J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, CS os 57 (1859), 149, 161.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 229
Gualter as an accomplished man and skilled musician who `very frequently
troubled Coverdale and myself by controversies' and was always eager to
argue with any visiting divines such as John Jewel.59 Cooch became a
gentleman of the chapel royal and may have organized gathered meetings
within the court. He was forced to recant once in the 1570s in order to
retain his post, but seems to have returned to his radicalism, and may well
have been associated with sectarians of the Family of Love who had some
hold among the yeomen of the guard in that decade.60
There are marked parallels between the development of evangelical
sentiment at the Scottish and English courts. James V's court also had its
humanists who turned evangelical, most notably David Lindsay of the
Mount and the young George Buchanan, and its evangelicals already
sympathetic to Luther, especially Sir John Borthwick; James Kirkcaldy of
the Grange, the Royal Treasurer; James Learmouth of Dairsie, the Master
of the Household; Henry Balnaves, the Treasurer's Clerk; and Thomas
Bellenden, the Justice Clerk.61 Like their English counterparts these men
seem to have reinforced one another through patronage, and by showing
what support they could for clergy of a reforming disposition. They
shared an interest in the vernacular scriptures that came brie¯y to fruition
when Balnaves was one of the sponsors of the parliamentary bill of 1543
permitting the English Bible. They used the medium of drama to dissem-
inate anti-clerical and reforming ideals.62 The existence of a reform move-
ment at the centre of the English court gave them the con®dence to press
for change at home, something that is most directly visible in Borthwick's
attempts to `Cromwellianize' Scotland. What they lacked was any ability
to capture in¯uence over the Church, where the monarch's consistent
refusal to contemplate reform stood against them. Borthwick was made a
sacri®cial victim to demonstrate James's orthodoxy, though he escaped
®nal punishment by ¯eeing to England.63 Yet despite the king's antipathy
the in¯uence of the reformers depended on the continuing existence of a
strong court, and the crises of the regency weakened central structures in
sharp contrast to the situation in England. The con¯icts of the 1540s
dispersed a number of them to exile, but also ensured that they and their
families became important adherents of reform after 1559.

59
G.C. Gorham (ed.), Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears during the Reformation, 2 vols. (1857), i.
481±2.
60
C.J. Clement, Religious Radicalism in England, 1535±1565 (Carlisle, 1997), 237±59.
61
Edington, Court and Culture, 44±57, 163 ff.
62
J. Durkan, `The cultural background in sixteenth-century Scotland', in D. McRoberts (ed.),
Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1513±1625 (Glasgow, 1962), 274±331.
63 J. Durkan, `Scottish ``evangelicals'' in the patronage of Thomas Cromwell', RSCHS 21

(1983), 127±56.
230 The Coming of Reformation
The mobility of courts provided opportunities for their denizens to
in¯uence others by contact and example. The young George Buchanan,
for instance, seems to have forged links with men in Stirling later executed
for heresy when visiting the area with the king at Easter 1538. He also later
claimed to have been in¯uenced by anti-papal picturae brought to the Jaco-
bean court by Henry's ambassador, William Barlow.64 That these were life
and death issues, part of the deadly struggle for the future of the Church,
does not preclude an element of fashion in the behaviour of the English or
Scottish court. For example, elite sponsorship of drama proved to be one
of the most attractive means of reaching out to a wider audience. In the
1530s Cromwell set the example by his patronage of John Bale, and several
others like George, Lord Rochford had their own `men' who played inter-
ludes on evangelical themes.65 So fashionable were `scripture interludes' in
this decade that even Lady Lisle, a great bulwark of traditional religion at
Calais, wanted her agent John Husee to ®nd her a scriptural play for the
Christmas festivities of 1538. Husee responded that he would try to do so,
`but these new ecclesiastical matters will be hard to come by'.66 Later,
when conservatism once again seemed triumphant, the key of®ce of
Master of the Revels was held by Sir Thomas Cawarden, one of the
reform-minded members of the Privy Chamber, who continued to pro-
mote the new drama whenever he was able to do so. The same combin-
ation of deadly earnest desire for reform, and the ability to use the
fashionable court medium of drama for its exposition, lies at the heart of
the impact of Sir David Lindsay in Scotland. Like Cawarden he kept alive a
critical drama in dif®cult times, producing the Tragedie of Cardinall Betoun
in 1547 and his masterpiece The Thrie Estates in the early 1550s. The perfor-
mance of the latter in August 1554 on the slopes of Carlton Hill, Edin-
burgh, brought together the court and nobility, with a `great concourse of
people', who watched the spectacle for the whole day.67
Given the vitality of reforming ideas at the English and Scottish courts
it is tempting to pose the counter-factual question: what if Ireland had
possessed an equivalent cultural and political centre? So acutely different
were the circumstances of Henry VIII's second realm that the question is
unanswerable. However, it is worth noting that those Irish nobles who

64
I.D. McFarlane, Buchanan (1981), 50, 68±70.
65
P. White®eld White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in
Tudor England (Cambridge, 1993), 15±46.
66
LP iv. 4942. S. Baker House, `Literature, drama and politics', in D. MacCulloch (ed.),
The Reign of Henry VIII (Basingstoke, 1995), 15±16.
67
R. Lyall (ed.), Sir David Lindsay of the Mount: Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (Edinburgh,
1989), introduction. Brother Kenneth, `The popular literature of the Scottish Reformation', in
McRoberts, Scottish Reformation, 173.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 231
were exposed to the English court occasionally responded positively to
the atmosphere of change. James Butler, heir to the earl of Ormond,
knew the court in the 1520s, but maintained his contacts through inter-
marriage with the Boleyns, and in 1538 wrote to the king with an enthu-
siasm for the `set[ting] forth the word of God to the people', which is
only partially explained by the political advantage such a stand offered his
family in Irish politics.68 He corresponded with Latimer, from whom he
requested some `good works'.69 A generation later the well-known intim-
acy between Edward VI and his school-fellow Barnaby Fitzpatrick, later
second baron of Upper Ossory, produced an Irish loyalist who, while no
determined Protestant, identi®ed strongly with the intellectual world of
his upbringing.70 The later training of Donough O'Brien, fourth earl of
Thomond, at the Elizabethan court was a more marked success story in
the inculcation of Protestant values, surprising even the privy council by
the unwavering loyalism it produced.71 But these were isolated cases: the
Irish magnates lacked any domestic environment in which to assimilate
new ideas or to pursue the political bene®ts of Protestantism.
While courts offered the most signi®cant opportunity for the exposure of
the lay elites to new beliefs, the leading clergy of the reformed movement
were principally nurtured in the scholastic environment of the universities.
John Foxe's well-known description of the White Horse tavern meetings at
Cambridge, at which the `godly learned' of seven colleges met in the 1520s
to debate the gospel, may read Protestantism into intellectual debate avant la
lettre.72 Yet there is no doubt that the university was the breeding-ground
for radical questioning of the existing order of the Church. From the Cam-
bridge in which Robert Barnes is said to have planned his ®rst explicit
challenge to the Church of 1525 in the company of Bilney, George Staf-
ford, and Latimer, heresy spread to Oxford by the unlikely medium of
Wolsey, who imported a subversive group of scholars to his new foundation
of Cardinal's College. The arrest in 1528 of the Lutheran student and book-
seller Thomas Garrard began an investigation that revealed that many `inex-
pert youth' had been exposed to the poison of heterodox ideas.73 For a time

68
SP HVIII ii. 563. R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland (1935), 33±5, though
Edwards is dismissive of Butler's Protestant credentials.
69
SP HVIII iii. 32.
70
DNB.
71
Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 288.
72
Foxe, v. 415. Gardiner was being somewhat disingenuous about his own early ¯irtation
with this academic debate when in 1545 he described how he was `familiar with such sort of
men' because `there was not in them malice, and they maintained communication having some
savour of learning'. J.A. Muller (ed.), The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), 166.
73
J. McConica (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. iii: The Collegiate University
(Oxford, 1986), 123±4.
232 The Coming of Reformation
Oxford succeeded in closing its doors upon the danger: at Cambridge, on
the other hand, religious controversy had a continuous history, never fully
dislocated by the growing vigour of episcopal persecution. Even in the
more conservative Oxford MacCulloch has found it possible, using Fines's
®gures, to identify 189 graduates of the pre-Elizabethan era who held evan-
gelical opinions.74 In the case of Scotland St Andrews seemed destined
to play a role similar to that of Cambridge. Patrick Hamilton's return
from Germany to the university in 1528 and his trial and execution there
created religious con¯ict.75 Alexander Alesius was converted by Hamilton's
example, having been an academic opponent earlier in the decade. Among
its constituent colleges St Leonard's was thereafter thought to be heterodox:
those sympathizing with religious change were said to have `drunk at St
Leonard's Well'.76 But Scottish politics did not allow sustained dissent
within an institution so close to the control of the archbishops. Even after
the burning of Wishart in 1544 and the murder of Cardinal Beaton, Knox
and his followers did not meet with unquali®ed success in preaching reform
within the university. It is dif®cult to argue that any of the Scottish univer-
sities provided a critical environment for reform before 1558.77
Universities also offered crucial opportunities for the interaction of
clergy and laity: those who could in¯uence the state as well as ruling the
church. The Cambridge of the later 1530s and 1540s demonstrates this
process most signi®cantly. Among those leading lay evangelicals who
emerged at the centre of power under Edward and especially under Eliza-
beth there were key ®gures who had spent some time in higher educa-
tion. William Cecil established himself at the heart of what Hudson has
rightly called the Cambridge connection.78 Seven members of Elizabeth's
privy council had been at Cambridge, as had many of the second-rank
administrators who sustained the Protestant establishment. Beneath this
key political elite there is already the beginning of signs of the universities
in¯uencing those sons of gentlemen sent to them for a humanist training
in ideological directions. Among those who went into exile under Mary,
for example, were Thomas Dannett, gentleman, a student of St John's and
friend of John Aylmer, future bishop of London. Another gentleman was

74
D. MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (1999), 111.
75
Foxe, v. 421±9.
76
H. Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 3rd ser. (1827), i. 240.
77
I.B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation: Church and Society in Sixteenth-Century Scotland
(1982), 94, 102±3. It is, however, important to note that both St Andrews and Aberdeen
sustained the type of advanced humanism that could issue in reformed ideology: J. Kirk, `The
religion of early Scottish Protestants', in J. Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform: The Church in
Europe, England and Scotland, 1400±1643, SCH Subsidia 9 (Oxford, 1991), 363±5.
78
W.S. Hudson, The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham,
N.C., 1980), 34 ff.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 233
Christopher Hales, again trained at St John's, who was to have a future as
an active supporter of non-conformity.79 Parallel developments can be
traced among committed Catholics, with the networks established under
Mary often sustaining religious exiles during and after the 1560s.
In the case of England, the universities, and especially Cambridge, played
key roles as environments for nurturing religious change. One of the prob-
lems for those seeking the conversion of Ireland was the absence of any
institutions of higher education that might have provided access open to
new theories circulating in texts. There were certainly plenty of internal
critics of Irish education who argued that ignorance and barbarism contin-
ued partly because there was no indigenous university to raise men in
civility.80 The project for an Irish university, quite regularly debated during
the sixteenth century, acquired a new urgency when religious change was at
issue. In 1547 Archbishop Browne produced a detailed scheme for the
erection of a college ®nanced by the dissolution of St Patrick's Cathedral,
with the guilds and chantries. Its objectives were `the unspeakable reforma-
tion' of the kingdom, and the education of youths in the knowledge of God
and obedience to the king.81 Since the plan for a university was not imple-
mented until 1591 we cannot judge whether Browne's college would have
changed the commitment of the Irish clergy to reform. The evidence of
Scotland, and indeed of Oxford for much of the century, suggests that we
should not be too ready to equate higher education with vigorous support
for Protestantism. It may be more appropriate to argue that when a critical
mass of intellectual support for change had developed, as at Cambridge, the
university was peculiarly suited to the task of consolidating new knowledge
and belief in its members.
When intellectuals did not learn their evangelism exclusively from the
universities or the printed word, they usually assimilated it from Protestant
environments in Germany and the Low Countries. A small but crucial
number of the clerical reformers developed or enlarged their heterodox
views as a consequence of study abroad. Tyndale, Frith, George Joye,
Lambert, and Coverdale all ¯ed abroad and acquired their full reformed

79
C. Garrett, The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, 1938), 139, 171.
80
See for example the famous speech of James Stanyhurst in the 1570 Irish parliament on the
need for education and English civility: E. Campion, Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland, ed.
A.F. Vossen (1963), 180±1.
81
CPR Irl i. 327±35. Printed in full in M.V. Ronan, The Reformation in Dublin, 1536±1558
(1926), 322 ff. J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin: Episcopal Government, Ecclesiastical
Politics and the Enforcement of the Reformation, 1534±90', Trinity College Dublin Ph.D.
(1997) argues that Browne's `Device' was largely a protest against the plan to dissolve St Pat-
rick's, which was destroying his capacity to administer his diocese. Later projects for the Irish
university usually foundered on the problem of its ®nance, and also on the question of who
would control its curriculum. Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 331±62.
234 The Coming of Reformation
theology only after they had experienced conversion in England.82 Of
that ®rst generation Robert Barnes was probably the only one who de-
veloped his initial critique while on the Continent, studying at Louvain.83
Equally striking is the number of this generation who had little or no
direct contact with what was happening overseas. Thomas Bilney is the
extreme case of a radical who depended very little on European example:
Latimer, Hilsey, and Ridley are among those bishops who never travelled
abroad: Barlow and Ferrar went no further than Scotland, until the former
was propelled into exile under Mary.84 Even Cranmer, whose early
German travels for the crown were of great signi®cance in his growing
understanding of the reform movement and for the structuring of his
networks of evangelical support, perforce developed his vision of Protest-
antism at home, without immediate experience of `the best reformed
churches'. His enthusiasm for summoning aid from learned Continental
divines under Edward shows his awareness of the dangers of inexperi-
ence.85 It took the Marian exile systematically to break down insularity in
the attitudes of the leaders of English Protestantism.
The contrast with Scotland is striking. The Scottish intellectual elite
entered the period of reformation with a far greater acceptance of the
internationalism of learning than that which characterized the English.
Students no longer had to leave Scotland to study: however, it was con-
sidered entirely normal that they should do so. Some of the earliest re-
formers were converted abroad, not at home. Patrick Hamilton, the
proto-martyr, learned his basic ideas in Paris and Louvain, though, like
his English counterparts, his developed Lutheranism was the product of
his period of exile after 1527.86 Buchanan was launched into his long
quest for religious truth by his early experience of Paris. John Gau, the
publisher of one of the ®rst Scots Lutheran texts, lived in Malmo and
probably absorbed his Lutheranism there. John MacAlpine and John Mac-
dowell were graduates of Cologne in the heady days of German refor-
mation.87 All those clergy who made any stand for reform in the
mid-century were forced to choose exile, sometimes for a second time, or
risk execution. Hence the leading Scottish reformers became part of a far
longer diaspora than their English counterparts: Alesius ended in Leipzig
and never returned to his native land; MacAlpine became professor of

82
W.A. Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants 1520±35 (New Haven, Conn., 1964), 78 ff.
83
C.R. Trueman, Luther's Legacy: Salvation and the English Reformers 1525±1556 (Oxford,
1994), 18±19.
84
DNB.
85
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 380 ff.
86
J.E. McGoldrick, Luther's Scottish Connections (1989), 36.
87
Ibid., 42 ff. Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 379±81.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 235
88
theology at Copenhagen. For those, like Knox, who eventually made
the return after long exile there were both advantages and disadvantages
in the separation from their native land. Their thorough understanding of
the `best reformed churches' was of great bene®t in structuring the new
kirk: but it created a yearning for the `Calvinist international' and could
lead to tensions with those, like Erskine of Dun, who had endeavoured to
work quietly for reform within Scotland.89
An alternative or complementary context for the assimilation of
reformed ideas by the clergy was the religious community. Robert Barnes
made the Augustinian house at Cambridge `¯ourish with good letters' and
ideological debate in the 1520s.90 In Scotland some of the most vigorous
con¯icts between the old and the new must have been fought out in the
friaries of Perth, Dundee, and St Andrews, from which came a number of
the key exiles of the 1530s and 1540s. The Dominicans, in particular,
divided upon reform. Black friars were executed at Edinburgh in 1539,
and were in the forefront of the preaching campaigns that ¯ourished
during the brief reforming phase of Arran's regency. The Augustinians
also played a signi®cant role in the early debates about reform.91
Beyond court and universities the environments that might nurture
reform were heterogeneous. Since trade with the Low Countries was of
great importance for both England and Scotland, men, books, and ideas
constantly ®ltered into the ports from the imperial territories. One could
list evidence of men suspected of heresy, or books seized, for most of the
larger ports of the eastern and southern seaboards.92 As early as 1525 it was
reported around Aberdeen that `sundry strangers and others . . . has books
of that heretic Luther'. A decade later at Leith two Scots, a sea-skipper and
a shipwright, were accused of heresy.93 In Yorkshire the earliest heresy
trials are of `Dutchmen' in York and traders in Hull, and a number of
prosecutions of outsiders continued into Mary's reign.94 In the 1520s Tun-
stal's heresy investigations picked up Dutch sacramentarians in Colchester

88
J. Dawson, `The Scottish Reformation and the theatre of martyrdom', in D. Wood (ed.),
Martyrs and Martyrology, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993), 259±61.
89
On Knox and exile see R. Greaves, `The Knoxian paradox: ecumenism and nationalism
in the Scottish Reformation', RSCHS 18 (1972), 85±98.
90
Foxe, v. 415.
91
Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 379±81.
92
The detailed process of transmission is nicely exempli®ed in a case before Tunstal in 1528,
in which John Hig, who may have been Dutch, was charged with translating from a `Dutch'
Gospel, and reading the book out loud to a London congregation during the elevation of the
host. LP iv. 4038 (1).
93
Knox, i. 56±8. Pitcairn, Trials, i. 321. Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 93, 97. The patterns
of Anglo-Scottish trade may be another form of such exposure, especially in the case of Ayr,
with its precocious Lollard community.
94
A.G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York (Oxford, 1959), 17±23.
236 The Coming of Reformation
and London, and Lutheran heretics among the merchants of the London
Steelyard.95 In 1530 Bishop Nykke of Norwich commented to the duke of
Norfolk that only merchants and those living near the sea were infected
with erroneous doctrines.96 `The Germans and Saxons', said Roger
Edgeworth of the 1530s with visible distaste `bring in their opinions'.97
The key texts of reform, especially Tyndale's New Testament, were dis-
seminated via the trading networks of Antwerp and London. The list could
be continued and enlarged for both countries: especially important in
London was the construction of the stranger churches under Edward,
representing to the host community the best-reformed congregation.98
But foreign individuals and groups were an equivocal model for the Scots
and English. Xenophobia, especially among the latter, meant constraints
upon the circulation of ideas: in 1551 the Spanish ambassador thought that
the hostility of Londoners to outsiders was reinforced by the sight of large
congregations at their church of Austin Friars.99 And the religion that they
brought with them did not necessarily accommodate itself to a well-
de®ned mainstream Protestantism: radicals of many hues found it advanta-
geous to escape to England from Continental persecution.100
The contexts in which most laymen gained access to evangelical ideas
must have been the quotidian ones of parish, market-place, ale-house, and
family. Here favourable conjunctions of circumstance were a necessary
prelude to conversion. Areas of old heresy, in which families and individ-
uals were attuned to the importance of the Bible and to anti-clericalism,
provided one supportive environment.101 The historical debate about
continuities between Lollardy and Protestantism has recently been revived
by valuable evidence of long-term continuities of dissent in the Chiltern
heartland. It is now possible to give some genealogical ¯esh to the theory:
Bartlets, Butter®elds, Hardings, and others were suspect heretics in the
early sixteenth century, their descendants were Baptists and Quakers in
the mid-seventeenth century.102 Such precision is unusual, but Essex and

95
LP iv. i. 1962; ii. 1481, 4038. A.G. Chester, `Robert Barnes and the burning of books',
Huntingdon Library Quarterly 14 (1951), 216±19.
96
R. Houlbrooke, `Persecution of heresy and Protestantism in the Diocese of Norwich
under Henry VIII', Norwich Archaeology 35 (1970/73), 313.
97
J. Wilson (ed.), R. Edgworth, Sermons very fruitfull, godly and learned (Woodbridge, 1993), 197.
98
A. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986),
46 ff.
99
CSP Sp x. 278±9.
100
J.W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (1989).
101
A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd edn. (1989), 56±60, summarizes the argument
in favour of continuity. J.F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South-East of England, 1520±1559
(1983). For a sceptical view of Lollard in¯uence see Haigh, English Reformations, 54±5.
102
N. Evans, `The descent of dissenters in the Chiltern Hundreds', in M. Spufford (ed.), The
World of Rural Dissenters, 1520±1725 (Cambridge, 1995), 288±308.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 237
Suffolk have communities and areas in which the emergence of commit-
ment to reform seems connected to older networks of Lollardy. The Stour
valley and Mendlesham in Suffolk, Colchester, and Steeple Bumpstead in
Essex seem to represent such continuities. A similar pattern is shown in
London in groups who focused in families rather than parishes, and on
conventicles like the one in Coleman Street uncovered by Tunstal, but
gradually emerging into identity with the new faith. A good example is
that of John Tewkesbury, a leatherseller, who had been a member of the
Coleman Street group, and then was converted to Lutheran ideas by the
texts given him by London evangelicals. He recanted once, was caught up
in the persecution of 1531, and was burned.103 The most remarkable
evidence of continuity comes from south-west Scotland, where the small
and isolated Lollard group of the 1490s does appear to have fed Ayr's
growing reputation for radicalism half a century later. Again it is families
who provide the inferential evidence of continuity: Campbells, Fullartons,
and Reids were among those arrested in 1494: the same names are to be
found in support of the campaigns leading to the Reformation.104
Urban environments were those most likely to offer access to reforming
ideas where speci®c kin or trade networks were lacking. The complaint
against Anthony Ward of Oundle in the 1530s reveals a process of trans-
mission that must have been common. Ward told a group of friends in the
local hostelry, the Lion, that on his recent visit to London he had heard a
sermon against the reserved sacrament, and had attended a play, at which
one of the actors appeared to challenge the real presence.105 London's
Protestant minority survived under Henry VIII, grew under Edward, and
maintained a tenuous existence under Mary because it was nurtured by
preaching, had ready access to the circulation of ideas in print and other-
wise, and could network through the complex social structures of the city.
Henry VIII's fears about the `rhyming and jangling' of the scriptures in
ale-houses resonate with our knowledge of heterodox views discussed
in Colchester taverns under Mary. Thomas Tye, writing to Bonner from
Colchester in 1556, lamented that `the blessed sacrament of the altar is
blasphemed and railed upon in every alehouse and tavern'.106 Bristol
citizens in the 1530s could scarcely avoid being caught up in the battle of
103
Brigden, London, 86±106, 191.
104
M.H.B. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation (East Lothian, 1997), 39±45. It is, of
course, more problematic to be sure of immediate connection in the Scottish clan structure
than in the nuclear families traced by Evans.
105
P. Collinson and J. Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns, 1500±1640 (Basingstoke,
1998), introduction. A.G. Dickens, Late Monasticism and the Reformation (1994), 143.
106
M. Byford, `The birth of a Protestant town: the process of reformation in Tudor Col-
chester, 1530±1580', in Collinson and Craig, English Towns, 32. Higgs, Godliness and Governance,
146±81.
238 The Coming of Reformation
107
the pulpits. The effects on community worship are vividly evoked by
the conservative preacher Roger Edgeworth: men mock `the divine ser-
vice' which `letteth and hindereth other men from their prayers, and from
attending and hearing God's service'.108 In Norwich, where the pulpits
`jangled' less aggressively, the cases investigated by the mayor's court indi-
cate the way in which new ideas were spread within the face-to-face
society of the city. Hand-bills and songs, both for and against religious
change, were common, the spread of rumours through market-place and
ale-house were reported, and the public stand of priests for or against
change was much discussed. Demonstrations of a purely symbolic kindÐa
group eating meat in an ale-house during LentÐor a more violent kindÐ
a priest and his adherents tearing down the altar of St Augustine's in
1549Ðwere presumably intended to sway public opinion.109 We know
less in detail of the Scottish towns, but at least in Perth, Dundee, and Ayr
the aggression of iconoclastic mobs must have depended in some degree
on the circulation of reformed ideas and the emergence of a critical mass
of townsmen who responded to them.110
Finally, there is the signi®cance of the town as the arena in which the
`theatre of martyrdom' was presented.111 Exemplary execution was not, of
course, an exclusively urban phenomenon: Tudor and Stuart regimes pun-
ished wherever they believed the effects would be most powerfully felt,
sometimes with faint regard to judicial convenience. But on the whole the
monarchs and their agents pursued the principle that the larger the crowd of
witnesses the better, and their subjects often concurred. Thomas Mountain,
one of the Protestant clerics who narrowly escaped execution under Mary,
describes how men and women had come to Cambridge from as far a®eld as
Lincoln to witness his death only to be disappointed by the absence of
a warrant.112 The authorities carefully placed Henry Forrest's pyre in
St Andrews so that it could be seen not only by the townsfolk but across the

107
Skeeters, Community and Clergy, 57.
108
J.M. Wilson, `The Sermons of Roger Edgeworth: Reformation preaching in Bristol', in
D. Williams (ed.), Early Tudor England (Woodbridge, 1989), 223±40.
109
McClendon, Quiet Reformation, 138±41.
110
Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 378 ff. Sanderson, Ayrshire, 61 ff.
111
J.E.A. Dawson, `The Scottish Reformation and the theatre of martyrdom', in D. Wood
(ed.), Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993), 259±70. The use of persecution as
dramatized punishment has been considered most fully for France: D. Nicholls, `The theatre of
martyrdom in the French Reformation', PP 121 (1988), 49±53. Nicholls suggests that if the
dramatized punishment is to work in favour of the authorities there has to be near unanimity of
view against the victims in the community. This may explain why, as a rough generalization,
the exemplary punishment of rebels worked more effectively for the state than that of heretics.
See also S. Byman, `Ritualistic acts and compulsive behaviour: the pattern of Tudor martyr-
dom', AHR 83 (1978), 625±43.
112
Nichols, Narratives of the Reformation, 202±3.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 239
113
Tay estuary. There may have been occasional doubts: for example the
city fathers of Exeter declined the pleasure of burning Thomas Bennet in
1531 and the sheriff had to move the execution to a nearby parish.114 After
Rowland Taylor's execution at Hadleigh his successor complained that `it
moveth many minds to see an heretic constant and to die'.115 And while
individual burnings might produce a variety of responses, the Marian holo-
caust proved too much in some towns: in Colchester in the last year of the
reign the burnings became more furtive events, no longer triumphant af-
®rmations of the return of the community to spiritual purity.116
Studies of German cities during the Reformation have shown that any
discussion of the responsiveness of urban populations to religious change
needs to be carefully nuanced. Some literacy and access to preaching may
have been necessary conditions for reform to gain hold; they were rarely
suf®cient in themselves. It required social or political groups, or kin or
neighbourhood networks to acquire a deep investment in new ideas for
the tenor of urban behaviour to be altered.117 Much of that investment
was in the long run to come from the magistracy: by 1600 many Scottish
and English communities had been led ®rmly in the direction of religious
and moral reform by their corporations, representing themselves as `Jeru-
salem . . . that is compact together in itself '.118 In the troubled decades
before 1560, however, few local regimes had begun to contemplate such
reformation from above, when political survival seemed the main duty of
the burghers. A recent historian of Reformation towns argues that pre-
occupation with the material consequences of monastic and chantry dis-
solutions is the de®ning feature of many local oligarchies.119 Only a few
townsÐCanterbury and Sandwich in Kent, Rye in Sussex, and perhaps
IpswichÐshow clear signs of being driven by a powerful section of their
elites towards godly reformation in the mid-Tudor years.120 The situation

113 114
Dawson, `Theatre of martyrdom', 262. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 186.
115
BL Harl. MS 425, fo. 119v.
116
Byford, `Tudor Colchester', 31±3 and notes: the Marian persecution seems to have played
a major role in Colchester in turning it into a strongly Protestant community. There are major
problems in evaluating the collective reaction of the ordinary laymen who observed the grue-
some deaths of the Scottish and English martyrs, both Protestant and Catholic, because the
nature of the hagiographical narratives of these events is intended to conceal as much as reveal.
117
There is, of course, a vast literature on the Reformation in the German cities. Reference
to the valuable range of local and regional studies can be found in E. Cameron, The European
Reformation (Oxford, 1988), ch. 15.
118
Collinson, Birthpangs, 28±59.
119
R. Tittler, The Reformation and Towns in England (Oxford, 1998), 59±136.
120
P. Clark, `Reform and radicalism in Kentish Towns c.1500±1553', in W.J. Mommsen
(ed.), Stadtburgertum und Adel in der Reformation (Stuttgart, 1979), 107±27. G. Mayhew, Tudor
Rye (Brighton, 1987), 64±72. Ipswich had a `common preacher' as early as 1551: P. Collinson,
The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), 172.
240 The Coming of Reformation
of Exeter, where the 1549 Rebellion exposed a divided magistracy and a
majority opinion in favour of tradition, is probably more characteristic.
Fear of the consequences of rebellion compelled loyalty in the magistracy,
but the Protestant chronicler Hooker admits that there were those who
wanted to make alliance with the `good and religious men' besieging
the city.121 Finally the Irish trading citiesÐCork, Galway, Waterford,
DublinÐshould remind us that there was no deterministic connection
between an open urban environment and sympathy to reform. In Ireland
the story was reversed, and it was Catholic books and preachers that were
able to employ the networks of the towns in the interest of Counter-
Reformation proselytizing.122
In the light of recent research we might tentatively suggest that kin
networks among those who had some in¯uence in their communities may
have been a more important agency for religious change. One important
example is Haigh's demonstration that Protestantism was planted in the
southern Lancashire towns by a network of Cambridge reformers sup-
ported by their families and friends.123 Such kin networks proved crucial
to the diffusion of new ideas in the decentralized environment of Scotland.
The Campbell af®nity is the best-known; but Ayrshire and Angus and the
Mearns, the early territories of reform, also reveal the centrality of a
number of less powerful lairds and their men in the process.124 One inter-
esting consequence, observed by the historian of Reformation Ayrshire, is
that religious change reversed the anticipated pattern and moved from
countryside to town.125
In England neighbourliness and friendship were likely to supplement
familial bonds. Early reform in Halifax was indebted to a group of substan-
tial families, bound together by identity with their curate, rather than by a
particular trade or craft.126 Some of the narratives of those who survived
the Marian persecution tell the same tale. Rose Hickman's reminiscences
of her family's experiences during the Marian persecution provide an ex-
cellent example of a Protestant network of this kind. Rose was the daugh-
ter of Sir William Locke, a London mercer involved in the importation of

121
J. Hooker, Description and Account of the City of Exeter (Exeter, 1765), 71±2.
122
B. Bradshaw, `The Reformation in the cities: Cork, Limerick and Galway, 1534±1603',
in J. Bradley (ed.), Settlement and Society in Medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988), 445±76.
123
C. Haigh, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1979), 159±74.
124
J. Dawson, `Clan, kin and kirk: the Campbells and the Scottish Reformation', in N. Scott
Amos, A. Pettegree, and H. Van Nierop (eds.), The Education of a Christian Society (Aldershot,
1999), 211±41. Sanderson, Ayrshire, 64±80. F. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation
in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1989), 42 ff.
125
Sanderson, Ayrshire, 141.
126
W. and S. Sheils, `Textiles and reform: Halifax and its hinterland', in Collinson and Craig,
English Towns, 130±46.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 241
Bibles in the early 1530s, who became an in¯uential city trader. The family
largely leaned to the new faith, though not always vigorously enough in
the view of Sir William's daughter-in-law Anne, who became the close
con®dante of John Knox. By the beginning of Mary's reign Rose was
married to another mercer, Anthony Hickman, and he and her brother
played active roles in sustaining the imprisoned Protestants. This led to
their imprisonment, where they in turn were assisted by a group of mer-
chant friends themselves imprisoned for their misdemeanours as jurors in
not ®nding Sir Nicholas Throckmorton guilty of treason in 1554. In the
end the brothers purchased their liberty and Rose and her husband
decamped to Antwerp until the end of Mary's `tyrannous reign'. After her
®rst husband's death in 1573 Rose remarried a Throckmorton, one of the
Protestant branch of that ideologically divided family.127
The solidarities that constructed reform also derived on occasions from
shared trade or profession. These can be glimpsed in Perth, where the Perth
Craftsmen's Book reveals defence of craft liberties becoming enmeshed with
reforming language from the 1540s onwards. This culminated in the re-
markable 1558 document announcing the conversion of the community:
`God stirred up our whole community of merchants and crafts by the assist-
ance of His Holy Spirit to be joined in one congregation of Christ . . .'128 In
London several of the City companies, including the Drapers, Grocers and
Mercers, had cells of dissidents well before the 1530s.129 General fellowship
may explain as much here as shared economic interests, and historians are
rightly suspicious of any determinist link between particular trades and reli-
gious change. The clothing industry is, however, usually identi®ed as the
most explicit example of this possible interconnection.130 Weavers and
tailors were disproportionately represented among the Essex Lollards, and
once more among those persecuted under Mary.131 Again and again it is the
clothing towns of southern England that produce early examples of Protest-
ant af®nities, often amid a vigorous religious traditionalism.132 John Care-
less, the Coventry weaver, was at the heart of a network bound together by

127
M. Dowling and J. Shakespeare (eds.), `The recollections of Rose Hickman', BIHR 55
(1982), 97±102.
128
M.B. Verschaur, `The Perth Craftsmen's Book', RSCHS 23 (1988), 157±74, 168.
129
Brigden, London, 121±2. Of course, in general, the livery companies, like many other
corporations, proceeded by slow adaptation to religious change, rather than some precocious
turn to radicalism. Only by the 1570s was the new world ®rmly established in these essentially
traditionalist organizations: J.P. Ward, `Religious diversity and guild unity in early modern
London', in E.F. Carlson (ed.), Religion and the English People, 1560±1640 (1998), 77±97; N. Jones,
The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford, 2002), 111±15.
130
Martin, Religious Radicals, 133.
131
J.E. Oxley, The Reformation in Essex (Manchester, 1965), 6±9, 216±37.
132
A.D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1995), 224 ff.
242 The Coming of Reformation
trade, to whom he wrote letters of exhortation during his King's Bench
imprisonment.133 Yet it is equally true that a number of the cloth manufac-
turing towns, even those like Lavenham in Suffolk that had some tradition
of popular political dissent, were not centres of radical religion.134
There is a danger in focusing too explicitly on social networks and
structures in seeking to explain early evangelical success. Access to the
scriptures, for example, may have depended on favourable environment:
the intensity with which they were experienced was essentially an individ-
ual matter. When James Bainham, husband of Simon Fish's widow, re-
joiced that `the truth of Holy Scripture' was now revealed after being
hidden for 800 years, he gave voice to a very personal kind of wonder at
God's providence.135 John Porter read from the Bible placed in St Paul's
in the late 1530s and proclaimed that Christ `hath left the eternal life by
his Word here amongst us'.136 Conversion could be based directly on an
assimilation of the vernacular scriptures as Bainham's story and many other
narratives from the ®rst generation of English Protestantism make clear.
Rose Hickman described how her mother gained access to reformed ideas
through books sent her from the Continent in the 1540s.137 The Worces-
ter apprentice John Davis claimed that he began to read the New Testa-
ment at the age of twelve and, partly out of fear of prosecution in Henry
VIII's last years, kept his conversion secret until a friend manipulated the
truth out of him and betrayed him.138 There are also a number of Scottish
examples of the intensity with which Scripture was experienced, like that
of the ®ve Dundee men and women executed in 1543 for, amongst other
things, `conferring and disputing . . . upon the holy scripture'.139 David
Straiton, executed in 1534, seems to have moved from anti-clericalism,
and denying his teinds, to personal study of the New Testament, read to
him by his nephew since he was illiterate, in a `quiet place'.140 Adam
Wallace, of Ayrshire, burned in 1550, also appears as an autodidact,
though he was not content with concealed faith, and evangelized `at the
table and sometimes in other privy places'.141
133
Foxe, viii. 176±200, though it should be noted that he wrote to a very wide range of
other individuals as well.
134
D. McCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500±1600
(Oxford, 1986), 176±9, 291±8.
135
Foxe, iv. 698±700: Bainham was one of the most committed of the Bible-men of pre-
Reformation London, and was burned for his views in 1532.
136
Brigden, London, 332±3.
137
`Recollections of Rose Hickman', 97.
138
Nichols, Narratives of the Reformation, 60±3.
139
D. Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, 8 vols. (Wodrow Soc., Edinburgh,
1842±9), i, 171±2.
140
T. Thomson (ed.), Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents (Edinburgh, 1833), 18±19.
141
Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 382. Sanderson, Ayrshire, 50±1.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 243

Taxonomies of Reform
Most inhabitants of England and Wales were neither James Bainham nor
John Careless, and not only because the impulse to martyrdom was the
prerogative of the few. The ¯uidity of the religious settlements destabilized
most attempts to stand ®rmly upon an ideology which was nevertheless
politically acceptable. In some ways the situation was more comprehen-
sible north of the border than in the territories of the English king. There
the clear intention of the crown and its advisers to remain within the
Roman fold imposed certain limits upon challenges to the Church: to
move beyond these was to make an explicit statement of opposition to
royal policy. After 1542, when English intervention helped to crystallize
the connections between politics and religious change, attitudes to the
Church began to be used to identify groupings and parties. This only
became fully visible in England, Wales, and Ireland under Mary: though
we might also argue that the process of confessionalization was suf®ciently
developed in Edward's last years to increase the necessity of a ®rm re-
sponse from faithful laymen of any religious persuasion.
What, in these circumstances, did maps of Scottish and English reform
look like in 1558 and 1553 respectively and how did they compare? Scot-
land seems to have possessed scattered cells of reformed belief and behav-
iour, focused partly in the burghs, and in the universities, but increasingly
dependent on the patronage of a section of the nobility and the lairds. The
latter offered crucial protection that allowed the intermittent preaching
campaigns and meetings with clerical reformers that were essential to the
consolidation of Protestant sentiment. The process was iterative. Support
for George Wishart in the 1540s, when for example he preached before the
Earl Marischal and other nobles at Dundee, failed to protect him from the
wrath of the bishops.142 Ten years later the networks were suf®ciently
strong for Knox to travel and preach throughout Ayrshire and a signi®cant
part of the East Coast.143 Success of this kind, however, depended upon
secrecy rather than direct confrontation. Knox himself observed that the
Protestants `kept their conventions and held councils with such gravity and
closeness that the enemies trembled', but it was the closeness that was most
visible in 1555.144 Networks of the `privy kirks' can be faintly discerned in
the years before the revolt of the Lords of the Congregation. They met in
many of the larger burghs: and not only those that had produced early
martyrs or shown overt aggression to the old church. Edinburgh, the only
city for which detailed information has survived, had congregations that
142
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 101±4. Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 394±405.
143
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 34±6. Sanderson, Ayrshire, 80±2.
144
Knox, i. 256.
244 The Coming of Reformation
met in merchants' houses in the winter and the ®elds in summer. They
elected elders and deacons, and chose individuals to exhort and read.145
Outside the burghs the houses of nobles and lairds provided the obvious
focus for Protestant worship. Before 1555 this was perhaps no more than
Bible-reading and discussion within the household. This can occasionally
be described precisely, as in the case of the household of Robert Campbell
of Kinzeancleuch, whose later chaplain John Davidson talked of the read-
ings and prayers conducted there while the Church was `under the
cross'.146 After 1555/6 Knox, in his own narrative, persuaded signi®cant
groups of lairds in Ayrshire and Angus and the Mearns to break with the
old church and reject the Mass as idolatry.147 In the Mearns John Erskine
of Dun led this withdrawal, probably supported by a majority of the local
landowners. In Ayrshire, a similar departure was led by John Lockhart and
the earl of Glencairn, though there may have been more division of view
among the lairds. Allegiance in both areas has to be understood in terms of
local power structures, especially, as noted above, those of kin.148 Kin-
based authority was essentially contractual: a `surname' or clan might be
mobilized by the likes of the earls of Glencairn, but only in return for
appropriate reward, and in¯uence beyond the immediate kin group was
limited. Thus in Kyle, or the Mearns, the lairds had some ¯exibility in the
construction of religious identities because they were not closely tied to
one or two great names. In other areas of Scotland, especially the north-
east, as well as the majority of the Highland zone, the political elites seem
to have remained untouched by reform until the crisis of 1558±9. The
crucial conversion of the fourth earl of Argyll in the mid-1550s stands out
in these circumstances as a de®ning moment for the broadening of Protest-
ant support outside the heartlands.149
When a Protestant enthusiast in 1559 described `the greatest fervency'
for the movement as lying in the Mearns, Angus, Kyle, Fife, and Lothian,
with Dundee as the outstanding example of a faithful burgh, he probably
summarized the geographical extent of its impact.150 As for the scale of

145
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 9±15. M. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reforma-
tion (Edinburgh, 1981), 31±2, 38±9, 83±5.
146
Sanderson, Ayrshire, 108±9. Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 107.
147
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 46±53. Knox, i. 120±2.
148
On the need to ®t an understanding of religious change into the study of local power
structures see J. Wormald, ` ``Princes'' and the regions in the Scottish Reformation', in
N. MacDougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society (Edinburgh, 1983 ), 65±84.
149
Dawson, `Clan, kin and kirk', 211±41.
150
It is important not to divide burghs too sharply from nobles and lairds. All Scottish
burghs were in¯uenced by their hinterlands, and links can often be made explicit in the early
history of the Reformation, for example in the case of Erskine of Dun's involvement in the
establishment of the `privy kirk' in Edinburgh: Knox, i. 119.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 245
reformed in¯uence: it can only be judged, and then very imperfectly, by
the support offered in the initial period of the revolt of the Lords of the
Congregation. Dundee, Ayr, Montrose, and (less clearly) Perth moved
rapidly to establish reform. In Dundee even before the crisis the preaching
of John Willock and Paul Methven strengthened the faithful who
`exceeded all the rest in zeal and boldness'.151 Ayr town council dismissed
its chaplains and banned private Masses in May 1559, long before any
outcome of the armed revolt of the Lords of the Congregation could have
been known.152 James and George Bannatyne were also paid for riding to
Edinburgh and `bringing home a preacher'.153 It is interesting that only
slightly earlier the burgesses of Peebles had prevented a preacher from
using `any new innovations of common prayers or preaching'.154 Popular
support for reform, and hostility to it, undoubtedly existed in the Scotland
of 1559. As usual, however, much is concealed from historical record.
There was, for example, some sympathy for reform in St Andrews before
1559. But what are we to make of the attitudes of the good citizens who
woke up on Sunday 11 June 1559 as Catholics and went to bed as Protest-
ants by the will of the Lords of the Congregation? Their later pride in
possessing one of the `best reformed kirks' in Scotland is no substitute for
evidence about their earlier engagements.155
It is dif®cult to ®nd a precise moment at which to compare the tax-
onomy of the English Reformation with that of Scotland. The 1530s and
the reign of Edward VI had legitimated reformed activity, and offered it
partial state support in a way that did not occur north of the border until
1560. The textual instruments of the Protestant revolutionÐBible, Prayer
Book, and catechismsÐhad been placed in the hands of most of the clergy
and some of the people. The economic interests of large sections of the
elite had been linked to the rejection of Rome through the dispersal of
the monastic and chantry lands, and the theology of obedience to the
wishes of the crown had been articulated with all the rhetorical power at
the disposal of the state. The taxonomy of Protestantism on the eve of
Mary's accession therefore perforce included a large percentage of the
population who sat in the pew week in and week out listening to the
new messages of sermons and homilies, and not actively resisting whatever
their inward beliefs. The fact that they remained in their places under

151
R. Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials of Scotland, 3 vols. (Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh,
1829±33), ii. 406±7. Knox, i. 300±1.
152
Sanderson, Ayrshire, 90.
153
G.S. Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts, 1534±1624, SHS 3rd ser. 28 (1937), 130.
154
The preacher was John Willock. Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 113±14.
155
J. Dawson, ` ``The Face of the Perfyt Reformed Kyrk'': St Andrews and the early Scottish
Reformation', SCH Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991), 413±55.
246 The Coming of Reformation
Mary has already been discussed. It would be attractive to think that we
could penetrate the silence of these pews by examining wills, but we must
conclude reluctantly that a gradual shift towards neutral and cautious for-
mulae in testaments tells us little more than that it was desirable to be
cautious under the male Tudors.
However, a taxonomy of a kind emerges from the ecclesiastical and
other records of the mid-Tudor decades. Most Protestants who ran into
trouble, or were at least noted by the authorities, were from London and
the South-East. MacCulloch has calculated from Fines's records that 17 per
cent came from London itself, 14 per cent from Essex, 12 per cent from
Kent, and a further 15 per cent from Suffolk and Norfolk, the former
predominating.156 Within these ®gures there is a preponderance of urban
dwellers, even if London is excluded. Approximately a third of those that
can be identi®ed by profession are drawn from the ranks of skilled crafts-
men or traders. Beyond the con®nes of the South-East, only the Bristol
hinterland and Thames Valley yield large numbers: only 2.5 per cent are
drawn from the South-West, and only twenty-six lived in Wales. There
are obvious dangers in focusing on the highly visible and dissident,
notably that we are often gaining more access to the views of the prosecu-
tors than the prosecuted. London's dissent immediately registered with
regimes for whom internal security was of paramount importance. Evan-
gelical activity in farthest Wales might well have escaped observation.
Many, no doubt most, devout evangelicals managed to avoid particular
notice under Henry and Edward, and conformed under Mary for fear and
in hope of better times. Even the noisy might survive if they were part
of a sympathetic community. But with all allowances made, the particular
geographical nature, and the often cellular quality, of early Protestantism
seems well articulated by the head-count. Even in the South there
were areas that seem virtually untouched by more than a narrow con-
formity before Elizabeth's reign: Hampshire and West Sussex for example.
Traditionalist bishops; patronage from gentry who remained overwhelm-
ingly conservative; the absence of an indigenous Lollard tradition; few
clothing centres and few large towns might be some of the environmental
explanations. Yet it remains dif®cult to offer convincing reasons why
Southampton or Portsmouth should not have followed the pattern of
other coastal areas. John Bale, marooned in his Hampshire parish, felt
alienated and complained that he had not seen `blasphemy' like that of the

156
MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 109±11. For a detailed survey, calculating Fines's
®gures slightly differently and expressing more optimism about geographical spread, see Dickens,
English Reformation, 325±30.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 247
local `frantic papist': this before he had been sent to Ireland as bishop of
Ossory.157
Our taxonomy must include acknowledgement that active Protestants
were in a minority even in those areas that showed their greatest numer-
ical strength. It is possible to make some sort of appeal to the evidence
of wills to argue that numbers of the committed were increasing, albeit
slowly. In a series of studies, not always measuring exactly the same thing,
historians have concluded that even in the high years of Edwardian Prot-
estantism will-makers did not necessarily follow of®cial lines.158 Thirteen
per cent of Londoners had unequivocally evangelical will formulae in the
last years of Henry's reign; in the following reign between a third and a
half adopted a formula that was explicitly Protestant.159 The small group
of wills available for the town of Boston, Lincolnshire, shows 51 per cent
with soli®dian preambles under Edward.160 These look remarkably high
percentages, when compared to Kent, which is said to have only 7 per
cent Protestant wills in Edward's reign.161 Seventeen per cent from North-
amptonshire and Rutland, and 12 per cent from East Sussex approximate
more closely to what might be anticipated.162 The Diocese of York appar-
ently has less than 5 per cent of wills with Protestant dedications of the
soul during Edward's reign, though this from a starting-point before 1547
when there were none.163 In Gloucestershire, the subject of by far the
most thorough study of wills thus far undertaken, a large sample shows
that under Edward 23 per cent of gentry wills were expressed in clearly
Protestant terms, but only 6 per cent of non-elite wills were so unambigu-
ous.164 Norwich, which has a relatively high percentage of unambiguously
Protestant wills under EdwardÐ37 per centÐalso shows a distinction
between the small group of aldermanic wills, almost all reformist, and

157
J. Bale, Expostulation or complaynte agaynste the blasphemyes of a frantike papyst of Hamshyre
(?1552). The occasional Protestant in Hampshire seems worthy of very distinctive comment.
See R. Fritze, ` ``A Rare Example of Godlyness amongst Gentlemen'': the role of the Kingsmill
and Gifford families in promoting the Reformation in Hampshire', in Lake and Dowling,
Protestantism, 144±61. Fritze places the Kingsmills at the centre of a Protestant network, which
did indeed begin to in¯uence Hampshire politics after the ®rst few years of Elizabeth's reign,
but held precious little power between the fall of Cromwell and that period.
158
For discussion of the problems of using wills as evidence, especially in any quantitative
way, see above, p. 220.
159
Brigden, London, 384, 486.
160
Lucas, `Popular Religious Attitudes', 113.
161
P. Clark, Reform and Revolution (Hassocks, 1977), 58, 67.
162
W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558±1610 (Northamptonshire
Record Society, 1979), 15±16. Haigh, English Reformations, 200.
163
A.G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York (Oxford, 1959), 215, 220.
164
Litzenberger, Gloucestershire, 75±9.
248 The Coming of Reformation
those of the rest of the population.165 The ®gures have to be treated with
the utmost caution, but they remain one of the few forms of evidence to
offer indication of when, where, and by whom the new ideas were
accepted positively.
Protestantism was in its inception a religion of protest, and it continued
in this role in England and Wales for most of the Henrician period as well
as under Mary. Even under Edward, as we have seen, committed Protest-
ants often found it dif®cult fully to identify themselves with an establish-
ment role. In Scotland protest was the inevitable mode until political
victory in 1559. Hence there was always some tendency to attract those
who had little to lose by challenging `natural' hierarchy. The group usu-
ally emphasized here is the young.166 This is partly because their elders
consistently assumed that they would be delinquent, and therefore pounced
upon supporting evidence of rebellion. Lucubrations such as Catholic
complaints that `lewd lads' were spreading heresy need to be treated with
predictable caution. Footloose apprentices might bait Marian priests in
London just for the pleasure of anarchy. Examples of schoolboy con¯ictÐ
a ®ght between the old and the new religion at Bodmin School in 1549
and a mock battle in Finsbury ®elds between the `troops' of Wyatt and
Prince Philip in 1554Ðprobably tell us more about the need to handle
civil violence by re-enacting it than about the faith of youths.167 There
are, however, plenty of instances of confrontation between generations
about beliefs. One of the best is Dickens's discovery of William Bull, an
apprentice clothworker who learned his Protestantism in Ipswich in the
1540s and returned to Dewsbury to try to convert parents and neighbours,
only to come to the attention of the authorities because of his trenchant
evangelism. Eighteen-year-old John Tudson, also from Ipswich, was ap-
prenticed in London and burned under Mary. The diarist Machyn says

165
E.M. Sheppard, `The Reformation and the citizens of Norwich', Norfolk Archaeology 38
(1983), 52±5. The smaller-scale studies that have been undertaken on individual communities
show the dangers of generalization. Rye conforms to expectation, with at least a third of its
Edwardian wills ®rmly Protestant and a complete elimination of the full Catholic formulae, but
Hadleigh only produces ®ve out of twenty-two, and one of the twenty-two is traditional. On the
other hand Havering, Essex, where there was a distinct lack of effective clerical leadership,
produces 26 per cent Protestant wills in the late Henrician period, and 43 per cent in the reign
of Edward. Numbers in all cases are of course small and, in principle, individual scribal in¯uence
could therefore be particularly distorting, though it does not seem to be particularly evident
in either Hadleigh or Havering. Mayhew, Tudor Rye, 63; Craig, `Hadleigh', 17±19. M. McIntosh,
A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering, 1500±1620 (Cambridge, 1991),
188±90.
166
S. Brigden, `Youth and the English Reformation', PP 95 (1982), 37±67. Dickens, English
Reformation, 334±8.
167
A.L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, 2nd edn. (1969), 262. A.G. Dickens, `The Battle of Fins-
bury Fields and its context', in Late Monasticism and the Reformation (1994), 177±90.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 249
168
that all the young were banned from his burning. He was in good, if
tragic, company: Foxe's martyrs include a signi®cant scattering of appren-
tices, serving maids, and `young men', the age group to have learned their
Protestantism under Edward.169
Protestant art both imitated and sought to mould the response of the
young. Since the instruction of youth was a prime objective of the re-
formers it is not surprising to ®nd that they often dramatized the experi-
ence of conversion. In Nice Wanton the Edwardian court was treated to a
solemn study in the need to educate wayward youth.170 William Bald-
win's Beware the Cat has one cat tell a satirical tale of the old couple rooted
in their faith in the Mass, which led their sons `to be the more earnest to
persuade them' to the new ways.171 Lewis Wager's Mary Magdalene pre-
sents Mary as a young gentlewoman of the court, blaming her Catholic
parents for the pro¯igate lifestyle she had pursued.172 Her counterpart in
the real world, shorn of the pro¯igacy, was Lady Hoby, who sententiously
tried to convert her father, Sir Walter Stonor, from the Catholicism and
fornication in which he was mired.173 The drama which most obviously
presents a topos closer to the life of ordinary Englishmen is Lusty Juventus,
in which a youthful Everyman is tossed between vice and virtue, in the
newer guises of the Old and the New Law. Juventus's conversion by
Knowledge to an understanding of scriptural truthÐ`my elders never
taught me so before'Ðmust surely have resonated with at least some of
the interlude's audience. So must the dramatic inversion in which the vice
Hypocrisy is given lines of lamentation about the decay of natural obedi-
ence:
The world was never mery
Since children were so bolde;
Now every boy wyl be a teacher,
The father a foole, and the chyld a preacher . . . .
Lusty Jurentus (ll. 651±4)

168
J. Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, CS os 42 (1848), 99±100.
169
Haigh, English Reformations, 190±1, notes eight who are identi®ed by Foxe as nineteen or
twenty, and a larger group in their early twenties, but there are many for whom no speci®c
years are given. For a more questioning view of the engagement of youth in the Reformation
see P.Grif®ths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 1560±1640 (Oxford, 1996),
178±9. See below, ch. 10, p. 466.
170
White, Theatre and Reformation, 100±23.
171
W.A. Ringler and M. Flachmann (eds.), Beware the Cat by William Baldwin. The First
English Novel (San Marino, Calif., 1988), 37±9.
172
J.N. King, English Reformation Literature (Princeton, N.J., 1982), 312±15.
173
S. Brigden (ed.), `The Letters of Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby, September
1549±March 1555', Camden Miscellany 30, CS 4th ser. 39 (1990), 100±1. For other examples see
Jones, English Reformation, 35±8.
250 The Coming of Reformation
`God's word', moans the Devil, `is . . . greatly sprung up among youth'.174
It seems likely that the Kilkenny boys who played John Bale's interludes
while he was bishop of Ossory were equally encouraged to rebel against
the old order.175
Evangelicals and Protestants remained a minority in all English and
Scottish environments before 1558: this was even more obviously so in
Wales, and Ireland seems virtually untouched by the new ideologies. The
minorities themselves are not always easily labelled, since reforming ideas
had arrived and been disseminated in a variety of forms. Moreover, the
clergy themselves were constantly grappling with changing of®cial dogma.
In this world it is scarcely surprising that the range of the beliefs articu-
lated by Edwardian Protestants and Marian martyrs do not conform tidily
to the mainstream soli®dianism of Wittenberg, Zurich, or Geneva. The
taxonomy of popular Protestantism has to include those who John Foxe as
martyrologist preferred to exclude from his story, or to rede®ne into
orthodoxy.176 The best-known group are the freewillers who met at
Faversham in Kent and Bocking in Essex in the mid-Edwardian years.
Their depositions in 1551 reveal a hostility to predestination and to estab-
lished churches and their learning that could represent some descent from
radical Lollardy, or exposure to radical ideas imported into the South-East.
Their leader, Henry Hart, was suf®ciently doctrinally con®dent to engage
in formal debate with John Bradford while both were imprisoned under
Mary. Antinomianism is more visible in the case of John Champnes, tried
in London in 1548, who argued that a man regenerate in Christ cannot
sin, a view surely drawn from the Dutch libertines. The following year
Michael Thombe, a London butcher, abjured what appear to be anabaptist
beliefs. Most famously Joan Bocher, who had a history as a sacramentarian
in Kent under Henry VIII, was tried and burned in 1550 for a remarkable
mixture of anabaptist and spiritualist beliefs on the nature of Christ's hu-
manity.177

174
S R. Wever, Lusty Juventus, ed. H. Thomas (New York, 1982). For another example of
Shepherd's encouragement of challenge to authority, this time a simple countryman questioning
his priest, see J.C. Devereux, `Protestant propaganda in the reign of Edward VI: a study of Luke
Shepherd's ``Doctour Double Ale'' ', in E.J. Carlson (ed.), Religion and the English People,
1500±1640 (Kirksville, Mo., 1998), 121±46.
175
Happe and King, Vocacyon of John Bale, 59.
176
There is a large secondary literature on the radicals. See especially, Davis, Heresy and
Reformation; Martin, Religious Radicals; I.B. Horst, The Radical Brethren (Nieuwkoop, 1972);
D.A. Penny, Freewill or Predestination: The Battle over Saving Grace in mid-Tudor England, Studies
in History 61 (1990). The most recent study is C. Clement, Religious Radicalism in England,
1535±1565 (1997), but this adds little to previous analyses.
177
The best study of the doctrinal beliefs of the mid-century radicals is Penny, Freewill or
Predestination.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 251
In the general taxonomy of reform Henry Hart, his small conventicle,
and the heterogeneous individuals who spoke with radical tongues should
not be given exaggerated attention. Their capacity to embarrass Protestant
leadership and alarm Tudor governments seems out of all proportion to
their known numbers. Particularly striking is the prominent place an
attack on radical beliefs was given in the Forty-Two Articles.178 There
anabaptism and libertinism are to be solemnly forsworn, though neither
had shown signi®cant signs of in¯uencing the English clergy. The explan-
ation lies primarily in the convolutions of the stranger congregations in
London, especially the Dutch, where Martin Micron battled to keep rad-
icalism at bay.179 The militancy of the radicals was not con®ned to this
environment: in 1549, for example, they had attended the lectures of the
new Protestant star John Hooper, and challenged his views. The burning
of Bocher and rounding-up of the Hart group drove sympathizers under-
ground, and the council ensured that they remained there by commission-
ing Cranmer to search out heresy in Kent at the end of 1552.180
Undeterred the freewillers re-emerged under Mary to play striking roles
in the period of persecution. In London, Kent, and Essex at least some of
those condemned expressed radical views on the nature of the Godhead,
on free will, and on baptism that Foxe, who accumulated the material,
subsequently suppressed in his printed martyrology. A few would not have
been misplaced in radical Munster: ®ve men burned at Smith®eld in April
1557 argued for the community of wives.181
In sharp opposition to these blunt forms of radicalism we might locate
in the taxonomy of reform those who were at some point explicit evan-
gelicals, but whose experiences led them to forms of equivocation about
their faith. There were, of course, direct conversions back to Catholicism,
most famously that of Nicholas Shaxton, bishop of Salisbury until the Act
of Six Articles, who recanted in 1546 while curate of Hadleigh and ended
his career as suffragan of Thomas Thirlby, the Marian bishop of Ely.182 If
Shaxton provided one model for those experiencing persecution, Edward
Crome, the equivocator par excellence, offered another. His three recanta-
tions under Henry were all so structured as to signal his true reformist
beliefs, but they produced an ambivalent response in the community of
178
The Articles attack millenarianism, mortalism, and the belief in universal salvation:
G. Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1994), 309±40.
179
Pettegree, Foreign Communities, 62±3.
180
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 530±1. It is interesting that one of the free-willers of 1551,
Thomas Cole, had by 1553 been ordained and turned orthodox, preaching a sermon against his
erstwhile colleagues in Maidstone at the end of Cranmer's campaign.
181
Penny, Freewill or Predestination, 68 ff. Foxe, viii. 310±13. Davis, Heresy and Reformation,
147.
182
Craig, `Hadleigh', 8±11.
252 The Coming of Reformation
the godly and left behind him an uncertain reputation. Yet, as Ryrie
indicates, in the late Henrician years a `low-key, pragmatic attitude' to
recantation was common among English evangelicals.183 Many of the
other stars of Edwardian Protestantism had had to compromise in varying
degrees in the dif®cult 1540s. The gravest test for committed Protestants,
the beginning of persecution under Mary, saw these and other responses,
to the deep anxiety of those who had gone into exile. One of the prime
objectives of the polemical literature that the exile communities began
to publish was an assault upon nicodemism: the belief that those who
remained faithful to the gospel in spirit could conform in bodily practice
when required to do so by the magistrate.184 `The body goeth not to Mass
without the company and consent of the soul', argued John Olde. Bodies
were temples of the Holy Ghost, and to take them to church was to
contaminate them by contact with idols.185 This was precisely what the
equivocators of Henry's reign had done but, the clerical reformers did not
add, it was also what had been sanctioned within the indigenous heresy,
Lollardy.
In practice the survival of Protestantism under Mary as any sort of
popular movement depended as much on compromise as confrontation.
When Ralph Allerton told Bishop Bonner in 1557 that there were many
who observed his outward command but had `their hearts set wholly
against the same' he was surely identifying an important aspect of popular
sentiment, though one which neither he nor his interrogator could en-
dorse.186 Survivalism, to use a term more often employed in a Catholic
context, ensured a measure of sympathy for the next great change of
governmental policy at Elizabeth's accession. Sympathizers might and did
provide a network of informal support for the exiles, and for the prisoners
who had made a stand in England, and powerful laymen who chose to
compromise, most notably William Cecil, could on occasion make more
public gestures of de®ance. Cecil and other parliamentarians were able to
destroy a bill aimed at depriving the exiles of their rights to their English
property.187 And lesser men like the burghers of Rye could at least signal

183
S. Wabuda, `Equivocation and recantation during the English Reformation: the ``Subtle
Shadows'' of Dr Edward Crome', JEH 44 (1993), 224±42. For Dr Richard Smith as a compar-
able Catholic equivocator see P. O'Grady, Henry VIII and the Conforming Catholics (Collegeville,
Minn., 1990), 130±3. See also the valuable discussion in A. Ryrie, `English Evangelical Reform-
ers in the Last Years of Henry VIII', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), 97±122.
184
A. Pettegree, `Nicodemism and the English Reformation', in his Marian Protestantism
(Aldershot, 1996), 85±117.
185
J. Olde, Confession of the true Catholic Old belief (Emden, 1555), sig. e 3. R. Horne, Whether
Christian faith may be kept secret in the heart without confession thereof openly to the world (1553),
sig. a 4.
186 187
Foxe, viii. 407. Pettegree, `Nicodemism', 104±5.
 Responses to Change: Laity and Church 253
their unhappiness with Mary's regime by returning a Member of Parlia-
ment known for religious non-conformity.188 The equivocating Protest-
ant, like the later church papist, was an inevitable product of the religious
circumstances of mid-Tudor England. Like the church papist, he or she
would in the very long term have had to identify with one or other faith
in a more confessionalized land. Like them, the conformist could well
have had an extended afterlife of reluctant adjustment to the norms im-
posed by the ecclesiastical establishment.189
Confusion, taciturnity, nicodemism: it might be logical to conclude
that these were the signi®cant responses of the majority of the English
laity to Reformation crisis. But there are occasional signs of a shift in con-
sciousness that indicate a ®rmer recognition of the need to adapt to
change. When the eastern counties were destabilized by rebellion in the
summer of 1549 the duke of Somerset chose to temporize and negotiate as
a means of dispersing the camps of the men of Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Essex. The duke's behaviour is of less interest here than his use of lan-
guage, or rather what his letters reveal about the petitions he had received
from the `camps' of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Oxfordshire. The ®rst
three had all couched their appeals in the discourse of the new Protestant
establishment, alleging `sundry texts of scripture', `professing Christ's doc-
trine in words', and claiming to `greatly hunger' for the gospel. The Essex
rebels, in particular, had perturbed the duke by `a recital of texts to make
for your present purposes': in other words the manipulation of the Protes-
tant's own device in defence of their grievances. This provoked a severe
lecture upon the centrality of the doctrine of obedience: that it had no
meaning to embrace God's word if his truth was not followed in proper
social or political conduct.190 We have no independent evidence through
which to test the veracity and sincerity of the Essex men, but at the least
they reveal a capacity to engage in a new rhetoric and deploy it for their
purposes. The petitions of 1549 indicate that the `years of confusion' in
religious policy did not automatically leave ordinary laymen alienated,
apathetic, or shorn of all agency. Rather they are a faint sign of the process
of assimilation, by which a new language and ideology were to become
normative, the stuff of everyday experience and exchange.

188 189
Mayhew, Tudor Rye, 73, 75. Walsham, Church Papists.
190
E. Shagan, `Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions: new sources and new perspec-
tives', EHR 114 (1999), 58±62.
 PART III

WORD AND DOCTRINE

 7
T H E W O R D D I S S E M I N AT E D

The English Reformation did not produce a strong iconographic tradition

to counter the suasive power of traditional Catholic imagery.1 However,
there are two images that do recur in of®cial and popular texts. They are
of the monarch disseminating the Word, and of the preacher preaching it.
The ®rst famous visual expression of the two images conjoined is that
of the frontispiece of the Great Bible (1539), in which Henry VIII offers
the scriptures to Cromwell and Cranmer, as representative of the lay and
clerical orders, while at the bottom of the page the priest preaches to
seated men and women who praise the magnanimity of the prince. But
this is a vision not so much of authoritative monarchical statement of
identity with Scripture as a plea from the evangelical promoters of the
Word for royal support. The preacher ad plebes does not quote Scripture
explicitly: instead he enjoins all men to pray for the king and those in
authority.2 Later evangelical Protestants could be more direct. Both the
representation of the monarch and that of the preacher were regularly
used, each reiterating the idea that the prince gave the gift of the Word to
his people, and that the preacher expounded it to an informed laity. By
the Elizabethan period, however, there is an interesting parting of the
ways: the queen and her advisers rarely employed the image of the crown

1
This is a more contentious statement than it would have appeared a few years ago. In his
Birthpangs of Protestant England (1988), Patrick Collinson provided a powerful argument on
Protestant iconophobia, based on the traditional view that there was a ¯ight from the image by
godly Protestants under Elizabeth. This has now been challenged by both Tessa Watt, in Cheap
Print and Popular Piety (Cambridge, 1991), and Alex Walsham, in Providence in Early Modern
England (Oxford, 2000), both arguing that English Protestant printing, broadly de®ned,
remained concerned with the visual through into the seventeenth century. It remains true,
however, that religious texts were rarely richly engraved after the 1560s: Foxe's Acts and Monu-
ments being the exception that proves the rule.
2
The most recent and interesting analysis is G. Walker, Persuasive Fictions: Faith, Faction and
Political Culture in the Reign of Henry VIII (Aldershot, 1996), 85±8, 92±5. The point about royal
authority was reinforced by the presence of a prison on the bottom right corner of the title
pageÐno toleration of dissent from the royal will. Professor MacCulloch points out that in the
painted copy of the Great Bible now in St John's Library, Cambridge, said to have belonged to
Cromwell himself, the prison is omitted: D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven,
Conn., 1996), 239.
Title-page of the Great Bible (1539). Permission of the Bodleian Library
 The Word Disseminated 259
offering the Word: the representation of the faithful congregation retained
its vitality, surfacing as late as the Jacobean period in very traditional
forms. The congregation with its preacher appears, for example, at the
foot of the title page of the 1569 Bishops' Bible, deriving from an image
of Archbishop Parker delivering a sermon.3 The iconic structure of the
godly congregation hearing its preacher had been established by Cranach
and the German engravers of the ®rst Reformation generation and varied
little in English reproductions. The essence of the scene was a combin-
ation of intimacy and intellectual engagement, the preacher placed above,
but not too far above, his auditors, they grouped informally beneath the
pulpit, women seated with open books, children sometimes on the ¯oor,
men standing in rapt attention, and once again often holding texts in their
hands. In the woodcut in Thomas Williamson's The Sword of the Spirit
even the child on the ¯oor holds open his book.4
The ideal was of the rapt congregation, unmoved by cold, or other
physical discomfort, `turning up [their] eye, and turning down the leaf in
[their] book, when [they] hear chapter and verse'.5 This diametrically
opposed another topos routinely invoked by Reformation preachers who
complained that the laity preferred the alehouse to the church or allowed

Title-page, lower left. John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1583 edn.). Permission of the
Bodleian Library

3
The detail is interesting here because it shows the preacher with his hour-glass before a
congregation that is all seated. The image was used again in an early seventeenth-century
madrigals text, and in the 1634 edition of the Welsh Book of Common Prayer: R.B. McKer-
row and F.S. Ferguson (eds.), Title-Page Borders used in England and Scotland, 1485±1640 (1932),
pl. 127.
4
T. Williamson, The sword of the spirit to smite in pieces that antichristian Goliath (1613), 61.
5
J. Earle, Microcosmographie (Leeds, 1966, facsimile), 117.
 Frontispiece, `Matthew Parker preaching'. The Bishops' Bible (1577 edition)
Permission of the Bodleian Library

`Preacher and congregation'. Thomas Williamson, The Sword of the Spirit (1613).
Permission of the Bodleian Library
 The Word Disseminated 261
their thoughts to be elsewhere `like the birds which ¯y about the
church'.6 Neither is likely to embody the whole truth, but it is the ideal
from which we need to begin in order to understand the processes of
evangelism in the Reformation. The watchword of the evangelists was
preachingÐpreaching and more preachingÐwith Scripture as the sole
authority for the Word spoken. It was the conjunction of the text and the
word of Scripture that was critical: hence the representations of Protestant
and Catholic preaching are distinguished iconographically by the presence
of the Scripture in the former. The message that the godly preachers
conveyed was one of sustaining simplicity. William Lauder, minister of
the reformed church in Perth, rhymed it thus in advising that the king
must protect God's word:
Itt suld be precheit to all does seik it;
Itt nother suld be paird nor ekit,
Saif Scripture with Scripture ye expone
Conforme unto the trewtwiche stone,
Quhilk is the auld and new Testament,
Quhilk suld be taught most deligent
Be faithfull Pastors that preche can
But feir of ony erthlie man.7

The Perils of Idolatry

The impediments to the ful®lment of this simple vision were legion.
Some, those of a speci®cally political nature, have already been con-
sidered: those that are part of the detailed pattern of clerical organization
and parochial behaviour remain to be discussed in later chapters. Here we
are concerned with the barriers to effective communication that were
conceptual and structural. An appropriate starting-point is Margaret
Aston's observation that the reformers aimed not to re-educate, but to re-
convert, the world.8 The edi®cation that is represented in the preaching
images is an opening of the spirit to the inner workings of God's grace as
well as an exposition of true doctrine. This could only be effective when
men's minds had been emptied of false beliefs, and their vision purged of
corroding icons. The destruction of Milton's `new vomited paganism of
sensual idolatry', the images and sacramentals that enveloped Catholic
worship, became for most zealous Protestants the essential ground for
conversion. The vehemence of the Homily against the Peril of Idolatry, by
6
M. Maclure, The Paul's Cross Sermons, 1534±1642 (Toronto, 1958), 300.
7
W. Lauder, Ane Compendious and Breve Tractate concernyng ye Of®ce and Dewtie of Kyngis,
Spirituall Pastoris and Temporall Iugis (1566), ed. F. Hall, EETS os 4 (1864), 1.
8
M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts: Laws against Images (Oxford, 1988), 9.
262 Word and Doctrine
far the longest of the second set issued early in Elizabeth's reign, summar-
izes the strength of reformed feeling on this issue.
The church or house of God is a place appointed by the Holy Scriptures, where
the lively word of God ought to be read taught and heard . . . [but] . . . corruption
of these latter days hath brought into the church in®nite multitudes of ima-
ges . . . thereby [the priests] greatly hurt the simple and unwise, occasioning
them . . . to commit most horrible idolatry . . .9
The attitude of the Scots was more direct and more trenchant. The
Scottish Kirk after 1559 saw the destruction of images as the essence of its
role in reconverting the ungodly.10 The Scottish Reformation had from
its outset been marked by vigorous outbursts of iconoclasm, like the attacks
on the Perth and Dundee houses of friars in 1543. `Casting down', a piece
of language applied to assaults both on buildings and on their contents,
became a test of ®rm commitment to reform in the dark years of the 1540s
and 1550s.11 Heinrich Bullinger, seeking to strengthen Knox's resolve
when he was in exile, insisted that death was preferable `to the admission
of idolatry'.12 He need not have worried: as early as 1556 Knox's obsessive
fear of idolatry was fully ®xed. He believed that idolaters should suffer the
penalty of death, a sentiment that by 1558 had enlarged itself into a call for
the death of Mary Tudor and other idolatrous queens.13 This was not an
immediately practicable possibility, but it established the tone for the Scot-
tish Reformation. As the reformers swept forward in 1559 Kirkaldy of the
Grange assured Cecil that `open de®ance is now given to all who maintain
idolatry', and the `images and monuments of idolatry' became a major
focus of attack in the Reformation parliament.14 Robert Bruce, Knox's
successor in Edinburgh, spoke with the true voice of the ministers when
he denounced `idolatry and blood; for under there I comprehend all the
sins committed against the Two Tables'.15
The linearity of the Scottish attack upon images was not matched by the
English experience because of the vagaries and ambiguities of of®cial
policy, but this does not mean that the leaders of reform felt less keenly
9
J. Grif®ths (ed.), The Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches (Oxford,
1859), 167±8.
10
J. Kirk, `Iconoclasm and Reformation', RSCHS 24 (1992), 366±83.
11
D. McRoberts, `Material destruction caused by the Scottish Reformation', in D. McRo-
berts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1515±1625 (Glasgow, 1962), 420±3, 428.
12
Knox, iv. 224.
13
J.E.A. Dawson, `Trumpeting resistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox', in
R.A. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998), 141±5.
14
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 104.
15
W. Cunningham (ed.), Sermons of Revd Robert Bruce (Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1843),
192. The First Book of Discipline asked for the death penalty for idolaters and blasphemers:
J. Cameron (ed.), The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), 204±7.
 The Word Disseminated 263
about the issue. Among those who actively pressed for religious change
there were few Luthers, few who were prepared to say that although they
did `not love images very much' eradicating imagery from the church
came second to eradicating idolatry from the heart.16 Instead there was
such spiritual anxiety about the issue that Luther's lukewarmness on icono-
clasm had to be explained away, by Foxe among others, as being a conse-
quence of time and circumstance, not conviction.17 Time and circumstance
certainly constrained those who in the 1520s and 1530s saw the abolition of
idolatry as an essential prelude to the proper preaching of the gospel. Wil-
liam Roye's Brief Dialogue between a Christian Father and his Stubborn Son
(1527) has the father urging that images are idols and that the prince should
cleanse them, following the example of the good king Josiah.18 Tyndale
was not quite so sweeping in his condemnation, but concluded in his
answer to More that since images had been so abused they must be re-
moved.19 Latimer developed from a moderate critique of image abuse to
leadership of the of®cial iconoclastic movement by the later 1530s. His
appeal to the `brethren and fathers' of Convocation in 1536 to `take utterly
away these deceitful and juggling images' heralded the ®rst serious attempt
to precipitate the crown into action against idolatry.20
The partial success of the assault on images in the late 1530s both en-
couraged and frustrated those like Latimer, Cranmer, Hilsey, and Goodrich
who had made their total opposition to icons explicit.21 Foxe's judgement
was that `idolatry and superstition [were] somewhat repressed'.22 William
Turner, writing from exile in Zurich, was able to express a more trenchant
view than the bishops who had been left discomforted at home: `the
Scripture forbiddeth to make images, and to have images, then much more
it forbiddeth to worship them'.23 It was presumably this experience that
made the leaders of reform so determined to confront the issue directly

16
J. Pelikan (ed.), Luther's Works (St Louis, Mo., 1960), ix. 82. M. Stirm, `Die Bilderfrage in
der Reformation', in G.A. Benrath (ed.), Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 45
(Gutersloh, 1977), 36±7, 41, 69.
17
Foxe, iv. 315±16. Aston, England's Iconoclasts, 41±3.
18
A. Wolf (ed.), William Roye's Dialogue between a Christian Father and his Stubborn Son
(Vienna, 1874), 37, 79.
19
H. Walter (ed.), Willliam Tyndale's Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue (PS, Cambridge,
1850), 88, 125.
20
G.E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons of Hugh Latimer (PS, Cambridge, 1844), 55. For Latimer's earlier
position see Aston, England's Iconoclasts, 169±72.
21
The King's Book (1543) shows Henry's own intervention in favour of a moderate support
of images `we be not forbidden to make or to have similitudes or images, but only we be
forbidden to make or have them to the intent to do godly honour unto them'. C. Lloyd (ed.),
Formularies of Faith put forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1825), 299.
22
Foxe, iv. 167.
23
W. Turner, The Huntyng and Fyndyng out of the Romishe Foxe (Bonn, 1543), sig. C viir.
264 Word and Doctrine
once `the godly Josiah' had succeeded his father. Cranmer's call at Edward's
coronation to see `idolatry destroyed; the tyranny of the Bishops of Rome
banished from your subjects and images removed' was echoed by Ridley
and Latimer, and applauded from afar by John Hooper.24 Between the
issuing of the royal injunctions of 1547 and the 1550 statute for `the abol-
ishing and putting away of divers books and images' a radical extirpation
had taken place, even if it was not as exhaustively enforced as the leader-
ship would have wished. The vision that they sought to realize is power-
fully exempli®ed in John Foxe's famous page prefacing the ninth book of
the Acts and Monuments. There the papists ¯ee to the ship of the Romish
church, carrying their `trinkets' and `paltry', while the godly assemble in
the puri®ed temple, beneath the communion table and the baptismal font,
to hear the words of their preacher unencumbered.25
Yet the cleansing of the temple was not secured. Morebath still
mourned for its saints.26 The return of Catholicism under Mary was
marked by a particular parochial enthusiasm for the re-embellishment of
the churches. It may be that the saints were not the primary focus of this
commitment, but it must have been clear to reformers that the battle to
purge false image worship and visual sensuality had thus far been lost. This
sense of defeat, coupled with a justi®ed anxiety about the new queen's
attitude to images, lent the early Elizabethan attack on icons an urgency
even greater than that of the Edwardian years. The political battle focused
on the problem of the chapel royal, with its candles and cruci®x, though
Elizabeth believed more generally that images were not proscribed by the
second commandment. As Edwin Sandys wrote to Peter Martyr in 1560:
The queen's majesty considered it not contrary to the word of God, nay, rather
for the advantage of the Church, that the image of Christ cruci®ed, together with
Mary and John, should be placed, as heretofore, in some conspicuous part of the
church, where they might more readily be seen by all the people.27
The queen sought to circumscribe the attack on idolatry, but at the public
level she had to accept that the returning exiles who manned her church
were deeply iconophobic and that the articles administered by the royal
visitors in 1559 legitimized wholesale image destruction.28 This, and the
continuing con¯ict about the chapel royal, is the context for the lengthy
24
J.E. Cox (ed.), Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer (PS, Cambridge, 1846),
127. J.A. Muller (ed.), Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), 255±9. S. Carr (ed.), Early
Writings of John Hooper (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 203.
25
Aston, England's Iconoclasts, 254±70. J. Phillips, The Reformation of Images: The Destruction of
Art in England, 1535±1660 (Los Angeles, 1973), 82±100.
26
E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New
Haven, Conn., 2001), 162±3, shows the parishioners bringing preserved images out of hiding.
27 28
ZL i. 73±4. VAI iii. 1.
 The Word Disseminated 265
homily against the perils of idolatry, which was one of the set presented to
the convocation of 1563. As Aston has shown, the ®nal authorized version
of the homilies toned down the vigour of the anti-image polemic, and in
particular sought to ensure that its lengthiest section was not assumed to
be public reading but was for `the curates themselves, or men of good
understanding'.29
It was in this last section of the homily that a speci®c, inverse correl-
ation between image worship and preaching was outlined. Why, asked the
author, might images not be allowed to exist alongside `diligent and sin-
cere preaching of God's word', which would rob them of their `poison'?
The answer was in part practical; since the harvest was plentiful but the
labourers few, preaching could not immediately substitute for the constant
presence of, and familiarity with, the graven image. Icons `last for many
hundred years' cheaply, while preachers must be maintained at high cost.
But the power of the image extended beyond familiarity and ease, it
poisoned even the best evangelical challenge. `Those blind books and
dumb school-masters, I mean images and idols . . . . prevailed against all
[the Fathers] written books, and preaching with lively voice, as they call
it.' If images remained in the churches `ye shall in vain preach and teach
them against idolatry' since men were as prone to `spiritual fornication' as
to its secular equivalent.30 Here indeed in the mouth of the established
church was bitter hostility to even moderate icondulia since it was the
chief stumbling-block to conversion. It was apparently the intense hostil-
ity to images in the 1560s, a hostility largely shared by the ®rst generation
of Elizabeth's bishops and their more radical clerical colleagues, that pro-
duced the famous painting of Edward VI trampling the pope underfoot,
watched by his father on his death-bed and the council, while the destruc-
tion of 1548 was recorded in a window at the back of the canvas.31 When
church paintings often remained `slubbered over with a white wash that
in a house may be undone, standing like a Dianas shrine for a future hope
and daily comfort of old popish beldames and young perking papists . . .'
there was need for perpetual vigilance.32 And, as a Paul's Cross preacher
remarked in 1577, even damaged images could retain their sway: `though
their heads be off, yet can they make somewhat of their bodies . . . '.33
29
Aston, England's Iconoclasts, 321±5. Grif®th, Homilies, pp. xxix±xxxii.
30
Grif®ths, Homilies, 266±72.
31
M. Aston, The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (Cam-
bridge, 1994), has fundamentally changed our understanding of this important painting, which
had previously been dated to the Edwardian era that it represents. She suggests a date between
1569 and 1572.
32
A. Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register (Cambridge, 1915), i. 190±1.
33
J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford,
1964), 299.
266 Word and Doctrine
Later in Elizabeth's reign the preoccupation with the puri®cation of
image entered a new phase as the focused concern with the public space
of the church was enlarged to encompass a debate about broader problems
of religious representation. Puritan perceptions of the corroding danger of
the image evolved through the vestarian controversy into a rooted oppos-
ition to the seductive power of the visual.34 The church remained the ®rst
line of con¯ict, with the orthodox Calvinist position being articulated by
William Perkins. Histories of the Bible, he argued, might be painted, but
not in the church, where they might nurture idolatry; instead they could
be presented `in private places'. Even then, this seemed more concession
than positive acceptance for `it is not meet that a Christian should be
occupied by the eyes but the meditation of the mind'.35 Within the
church stained-glass windows became a particular focus of contest if only
because, as William Harrison noted in the 1570s, they were often left in
place for `want of suf®cient store of new stuff '.36 Beyond parochial build-
ings there were other contentious public spaces containing imagesÐ
market and churchyard crosses being the most obvious. And there was the
far greater challenge represented by both the theatre and ®ctive writing,
where the arts of preaching were too often pre-empted by others and led
either directly or implicitly back to loathsome idolatry. The attack on the
old mystery cycles of drama, and the subsequent pursuit of the metropol-
itan theatre by zealous authors like Northbrooke, is beyond our immedi-
ate purposes here. However, it is important to note that it was the stage
representation of Christ, and eventually more generally of biblical mater-
ial, that incurred godly wrath. The divine could no longer be counter-
feited and humanized in the old way without the danger of blasphemy. It
was the displacement of religious meditation from its proper locations in
church and text that proved unacceptable to those who believed that
godly reformation was still imperfectly achieved in Elizabethan England.37
Hostility to the drama, as recent studies have been at pains to argue, cut
across any simple divide between the godly and the conformist. While
many of the hotter sort of Protestant continued to ®nd play-going

34
Collinson, Birthpangs, 115±21, though see above at n.1.
35
W. Perkins, A Reformed Catholicke: Or a Declaration shewing how neer we may come to the
present Church of Rome in sundrie points of Religion (Cambridge, 1598), 172. Phillips, Reformation of
Images, 173±5. M. Aston, `Puritans and Iconoclasm, 1560±1660', in C. Durston & J. Eales (eds.)
The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560±1700 (Basingstoke, 1996), 92±105. John Hooper had
already made a very similar point: `to have the picture or image of any martyr or other, so it be
not put in the temple of God or otherwise abused, it may be suffered': Early Writings, 44.
36
G. Edelen (ed.), William Harrison: A Description of England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 35±6.
37
P.W. White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in Tudor England
(Cambridge, 1993), 166±74. M. O'Connell, `The idolatrous eye: iconoclasm, anti-theatricalism
and the image of the Elizabethan theatre', Journal of English Literary History 52 (1985), 279±310.
 The Word Disseminated 267
tolerable, men like Philip Stubbes and Anthony Munday, who were not
particularly identi®ed with Puritanism, saw in the shape-changing and
delusion of the professional stage the very model of that idolatry that the
Church was struggling to banish from its bounds.38 Players mixed `scurril-
ity with divinity' and seduced men with the `idolatrous eye'. Once again
they raised the spectre that the Word could not compete with the assault
upon the eyes and ears that was embedded in the old faith and now in the
new drama. `How wary,' said Gosson, `ought we to be, that no corrup-
tion of idols, enter by the passage of our eyes and ears into the soul?'39 At
a more mundane level plays and players also represented unfair competi-
tion to the labour of the preachers seeking to convert the realm for `will
not a ®lthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand
than a hours tolling of a Bell, bring to the Sermon a hundred?'40
While the assault on plays and all images as a source of idolatry seems
strongly identi®ed with an obsessive minority, their angst makes sense
when placed in the broad context of the forms of cultural perception that
they confronted. There was an `incarnational logic' about the way in which
the divine was experienced in traditional Catholic worship, in which the
boundaries of the sacred were permeable, and saints' cults, liturgy, the sacri-
®ce of the Mass, religious art, music and drama all embodied a part of the
holy.41 This was shown most clearly in a culture that did not surrender the
traditional, or abandon the image, that of Ireland. In the late 1530s there
had been an attack on the great pilgrimage images similar to that experi-
enced in England. Commissioners toured the Pale in the winter of 1538±9,
netting a modest return of wealth from shrines for the crown, and con-
®rming the slightly earlier attacks on the great shrines of the Virgin at
Trim, the Baculus Jesu in Christ Church, Dublin, and the Holy Cross at
Ballyboggan, County Meath. The evidence on the fate of the images is
ambiguous, but Brendan Bradshaw has shown that there was every incen-
tive for the Dublin regime to proceed with caution, and it seems likely that
even the greater images were often stripped rather than destroyed.42 If Our

38
A. Walsham, ` ``a Glose of Godlines'': Philip Stubbes, Elizabethan Grub Street and the
invention of Puritanism', in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reforma-
tion England (Aldershot, 1998), 177±206. Collinson, Birthpangs, 112±15. P. Stubbes, The Anatomie
of Abuses (1583), sig. l vi. A. Munday, A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theater
(1590), 95±6.
39
S. Gosson, Playes Confuted in ®ve actions (1582?), sig. b 8v.
40
J. Stockwood, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse (1578), 23±4.
41
S.A. Meigs, The Reformations in Ireland: Tradition and Confessionalism, 1400±1690 (Basing-
stoke, 1997), 28±40. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 91 ff.
42
B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge,
1974), 100±9. R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manches-
ter, 1997), 1 ± the Bachulus Iesu was a staff given to St Patrick by Christ.
268 Word and Doctrine
Lady of Trim was destroyed, as the Annals of Loch Ce suggest, it seems to
have been in the minority of `abusive' images that could not be ignored.43
Neither this commission, nor the later Edwardian one, had the ability, or
perhaps the inclination, to engage in the sort of vigorous cull that would
have cleared those churches outside the most immediate range of govern-
ment supervision. The triumph of the saints is vividly suggested in Bishop
Bale's description of the speed with which the clergy `suddenly set up all
the altars and images in the cathedral church' of Kilkenny on the very day
that the restored Mass was proclaimed.44 Three years later the lord deputy,
Fitzwalter, thought that it was this return of the visual environment of
worship that sustained Irish devotion:
their churches [are] so kept and adorned as the sight thereof may bring reverence
. . . the hearts of the people more being daily put in remembrance of their eye
than the words of a rare preacher which for the time commonly feedeth the ear
and after falleth from the remembrance of the ignorant.45
The power of the image, and its ability to sustain the old symbolic
understanding of the faith, is constantly attested in the later sixteenth
century and beyond. Religious statues were common in Waterford houses
in the 1580s, and by the turn of the century the churches of New Ross
were `full of the most miserable idols', who stood in place of adequate
Protestant incumbents.46 Although the evidence is, as usual, very frag-
mentary, there seems no reason to suppose that the Irish experience of the
saints as a prime form of access to the holy changed signi®cantly during
the course of the Reformation century. Peter Lombard, an Irish theolo-
gian writing in 1601, claimed that early Elizabethan Irish Catholics had
attended heretic services, but had used `the cruci®x, with the image of our
Saviour . . . and pictures of the saints' as devotional defence against the
Protestant Latin liturgy. Such continuity, the reformers would have as-
sured themselves, would of itself have been enough to close the ears of the
worshipper against the pure message of the gospel relayed through the
new ritual.47

43
W.M. Hennessy (ed.), Annals of Loch CeÂ, 2 vols. (London, 1871), ii. 314. The Annals of
Connaught and the Annals of Ulster also dwell on the losses at Trim, though with inaccurate
dating, Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 58±9.
44
P. Happe and J.N. King (eds.), The vocacyon of Johan Bale (Binghamton, N.Y., 1990), 67.
45
E.P. Shirley (ed.), Original Letters and Papers in Ilustration of the History of the Church in
Ireland during the Reign of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth (London, 1851), 76±7. Fitzwalter,
however, was a Catholic of a rather different stripe, since he urged the council in London to
provide the best priests and ministers to be sent out to instruct the ignorant people.
46
Gillespie, Devoted People, 20, 68±78. CSP Irl 1606±8. 15: this is part of an extended report
on his Irish activity to the earl of Salisbury by Sir John Davies.
47
Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 70.
 The Word Disseminated 269

Sola Scriptura
`Alas, Gossip,' says the imagined goodwife in the Homily of the Place and
Time of Prayer, `what shall we now do in church, since all the saints are
gone, since all the goodly sights we were wont to have are gone?' The
answer was, of course, to attend and to learn: to resort to the church on
Sunday to `be partakers of his holy sacraments, and be devout hearers of his
holy Word'.48 Men must learn to assimilate the evangelical message and to
do so not in a formulaic or thematic wayÐthose patterns of understanding
that Walter Ong identi®es as characteristic of an oral cultureÐbut as the
Word individually experienced.49 Reformers would have put it more vig-
orously: Christians must turn from the dead image to the living Word.
When William Bill, later dean of Westminster, praised Hutchinson's work
on the Image of God in 1550, he did so in precisely these terms:
Images are made to put us in mind
Of that which is dead or far absent;
But God is neither, as we do ®nd,
But aye living, and each where present.

Images are cursed, graven by man's wit,

In place that are set for any religion;
But an Image made out of holy writ
Is not forbidden, in mine opinion.50
The hearing of the Word meant ideally its lively preaching, for only so
could conversion be secured. But underpinning the edi®ce of instruction
was Scripture itselfÐthe Word made present in text, read from the lec-
tionary week by week, even, in the appalled observation of Henry VIII in
1545, `rhymed . . . and jangled in every ale-house'. It is no longer fashion-
able to credit J.R. Green's ringing sentence that by the time of the meeting
of the Long Parliament `England became the people of a book, and that
book was the Bible'.51 However, the failure of the grandest of the reform-
ers' designs should not be employed, as too often they are in current de-
bate about religious change, as a means of displacing the major ideological

48
Grif®ths, Homilies, 349±50. Pilkington also characterized the horror of the gossips at the
bareness of worship: `What shall I do at the church? . . . there is no images nor saints, to worship
and make curtesy unto: little god in the box has gone: there is nothing but a little reading and
preaching, that I cannot tell what it means . . .' J. Schole®eld (ed.), The Works of Bishop Pilkington
(PS, Cambridge, 1842), 156.
49
W. Ong, The Presence of the Word (New Haven, Conn., 1967), 27±30.
50
J. Bruce (ed.), The Works of Roger Hutchinson (PS, Cambridge, 1842), 10.
51
J.R. Green, History of the English People (1876 edn.), 447. C. Hill, The English Bible and the
Seventeenth-Century Revolution (Penguin edn., 1994), 4±44.
270 Word and Doctrine
and cultural shift that the cry sola scriptura generated.52 Scottish, Welsh,
and English Protestantism was constructed upon the work of the transla-
tors, that succession of learned evangelicals stretching from Tyndale,
through Whittingham and his Geneva colleagues and William Morgan for
the Welsh, to the staid uplands of the committee that arrived at the literary
masterpiece that is the Authorized Version.53 It is an intriguing conse-
quence of the long march from a Whig view of the triumph of Protest-
antism that only Welsh and Scottish historians still feel comfortable with
traditional emphases on the centrality of scriptural translation.54
Tyndale's assumption that conversion had to be posited on an under-
standing of scripture drew little distinction between the written and the
preached word: the urgency of the message transcended any speci®c con-
cerns about the medium. `God is not man's imagination; but that only
which he saith of himself. God is nothing but his law and his promises;
that is to say that which he biddeth thee to do, and that which he biddeth
thee believe and hope.'55 This was essentially the position adopted by the
®rst generation of biblical translators. Access to the Word demanded a
sustained effort at promulgation of the written text: without this the
clergy would be unlikely to preach from the Scripture and would resort
to `silly fables' and other `feigned narratives'; without this the literate laity
could not check upon the truth of their priests' words. Hence the anger of
the evangelical preacher Michael Dunn, when Henry VIII restricted the
reading of Scripture in 1543: he denounced those who `went about to
pluck Christ's words and the Holy Ghost's from the people'.56 It was an
article of faith that men must be given access to the text and that trust in
God's message was what demarcated the true from the false Church. `We
allure the people to read and to hear God's word,' said Jewel, `We lean
unto knowledge, they [the Catholics] unto ignorance.'57 The high-water

52
It is dif®cult, for example, to imagine that by the seventeenth century a devout woman
could have articulated such an undifferentiated view of texts as did Margery Kempe when she
described her reading, eliding the Bible and the commentaries on it with Bonaventura, Hilton's
Ladder of Perfection, and other devotional tracts: S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen (eds.), The Book
of Margery Kempe, EETS os 212 (1940), 143.
53
P. Collinson, `The coherence of the text: how it hangeth together: the Bible in Reforma-
tion England', in W.P. Stephens (ed.), The Bible, the Reformation and the Church, Journal for the
Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 105 (1997), 84±108. S. Greenslade (ed.) The
Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1965), iii. chs. 4 and 5.
54
G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 338±60. D.F. Wright, ` ``The Com-
moun Buke of the Kirke'': The Bible in the Scottish Reformation', in D.F. Wright (ed.), The
Bible in Scottish Life and Literature (Edinburgh, 1988), 155±78.
55
H. Walter (ed.) William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises etc. (PS, Cambridge, 1848), 160.
56
LP xviii. ii. no. 546.
57
J. Ayre (ed.), Jewel, The Apologie for the Church of England, in Works, 4 vols. (PS, Cam-
bridge, 1848), iii. 92±3.
 The Word Disseminated 271
mark of this enthusiasm for the unmediated dissemination of Scripture in
of®cial Protestant thinking is once again the Homilies, this time in their
Edwardian form. There, in the ®rst homily almost certainly written by
Cranmer, is a most powerful and unequivocal call to the reading of the
Word:
Unto a Christian man, there can be nothing either more necessary or pro®table
than the knowledge of holy Scripture: forasmuch as in it is contained God's true
word, setting forth his glory, and also man's duty . . . .Therefore forsaking the
corrupt judgement of ¯eshly men, which care not but for their carcase, let us
reverently hear and read Holy Scripture, which is the food of the soul . . . .These
books, therefore, ought to be much in our hands, in our eyes, in our ears, in our
mouths, but most of all in our hearts . . . For that thing, which by continual use of
reading of Holy Scripture, and diligent searching of the same, is deeply printed
and graven in the heart, at length turneth almost to nature.
As for the complexity of scriptural exegesis, Cranmer boldly dismissed the
idea with the assertion that those things that were necessary for salvation
would be made plain by God.58
This powerful con®dence in the pellucid quality of the scriptures and
the accessible truth of their fundamental message was assailed during the
Reformation century from a variety of positions. The ®rst, usually held by
conservative humanists, such as Thomas More, John Longland, and
Stephen Gardiner, gradually abandoned the old establishment hostility to
the vernacular scriptures, but insisted that it was the nature of translation
and the nature of what could be read that was at issue.59 It was advanta-
geous to have Scripture in the mother tongue, said the preacher Roger
Edgeworth, `if we could get it well and truly translated, which will be
very hard to be had'.60 Hostility to the Tyndale/Coverdale Bible surfaced
at the level of of®cial debate in 1542, when Gardiner campaigned in
Convocation to revise the text, and only Cranmer's deft manoeuvre in
persuading the king that the matter be referred to the two universities
prevented further challenge.61 Behind the disputes about language lay
deep reservations about unrestricted access to the scriptures, since their
profundity demanded interpretation of the kind only truly provided by
58
Grif®ths, Homilies, 7. On the authorship of the homily see D. MacCulloch, Thomas
Cranmer (1996), 372. Cranmer's preface to the 1540 edition of the Great Bible made a similar
case, though there he warned of `some . . . that be too slow, and need the spur: some other seem
too quick, and need more of the bridle'.
59
L.E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford, 2000), 32, 76, 80.
This important study emphasizes that such reformist impulses were widespread, and seeks to
minimize the negative views of translation expressed by clerics like Standish.
60
J. Wilson (ed.), Sermons very fruitfull, godly and learned: Roger Edgeworth Preaching in the
Reformation, c.1535±c.1553 (Woodbridge, 1993), 137.
61
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 290±1, 311.
272 Word and Doctrine
the learned. The laity, thought More, might read and mark the `ordin-
ances of God' and the example of Christ's life but could scarcely be
unleashed on such texts as the Psalms and `should leave all these things to
them whose holy study is beset thereupon and to the preachers appointed
thereunto'.62 Henry's curious restrictions upon the open reading of the
Bible, while they seem to re¯ect partly his own idiosyncratic vision, also
lent credence to this timorous view of the dangers of the text. After
Edward's reign the controversialist John Standish took a more trenchant
stand: the common people he complained had been babbling about the
mysteries of faith, `both at drinking and eating, as though it were but a
Canterbury tale'.63 Even a woman, as the conservative Roger Edgeworth
bemoaned in 1539, `studieth the scriptures [and] teacheth it and disputeth
it'.64 Cardinal Pole, re¯ecting in his homilies on the consequences of this
intemperate enthusiasm, concluded that the thirst for Scripture `must be
directed, and the wit of man that seeketh, and coveteth knowledge must
be limited; which, because it is not, all these disorders and inconveniences
doth follow that we daily do see'.65
The other, more explicitly Catholic, assault on the vernacular scriptures
concerned the fundamental principle of the suf®ciency of the text as the
embodiment of all revealed truth. More's crucial challenge to Tyndale was
that the latter prove that there were no `unwritten verities' to which the
Church could lay claim through Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit.66
The Apostles had `beside the scripture preached gods word unwritten as
long as they lived', and when even learned men found that the `plain text
of scripture seem to speak for both the sides' of an argument, then the only
resort was to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, articulated through the
customs of the Church. Later Catholic controversialists developed the
theme of unwritten verities, and much of the obsessive Protestant insist-
ence on the plainness of Holy Writ must be seen in the context of these
polemical encounters. Roger Hutchinson and Thomas Becon in the mid-
Tudor generation, William Fulke and William Whitaker in the Eliza-
bethan, all found themselves in this position of defence. They also
struggled against the charge that Protestant insistence on sola scriptura ele-
vated the letter of the law at the expense of its spirit. `The papists', said
Hutchinson, `seek by all means to spoil the people of their sword, which

62
CWTM vi. 335.
63
J. Standish, A Discourse wherin is debated whether it be expedient that the Scripture should be
in English for al men to reade that wyll (1554), sig. a vii.
64
S. Wabuda, `The Provision of Preaching during the Early English Reformation, with
special reference to Itineration, c.1530 to 1547', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1991), 12.
65
Ms. Vat. Lat. 5968, fo. 416r [Bodley micro®lm].
66
CWTM viii. 150±62, 397.
 The Word Disseminated 273
is God's word saying . . .``The letter killeth, and the spirit quicke-
neth'' . . . Is God's word the letter ?': to which the answer was Tyndale's
emphatic insistence that the gospel was the evangelion, the good news of
the Spirit.67
The case for `unwritten verities' was one that no Protestant could
concede to the Catholic controversialists. But the dangers of allowing the
text of Scripture to appear as the dead law rather than the living truth of
Christ's redemptive power was one which engaged at least some of those
who regarded the English church in the later sixteenth century as `but
hal¯y reformed'. Their animus was directed not against Bible-reading per
se: rather against the public use of the Word in liturgy as a substitute for
preaching; those readings from Scripture which were, in the words of the
Admonition to the Parliament (1572) `not feeding' of the ¯ock, but `silly
reading'.68 In the subsequent Admonition controversy Thomas Cartwright
elaborated the point, insisting that `the bare reading of the Scriptures with-
out the preaching cannot deliver so much as one poor sheep from de-
struction'.69 The Scots had already moved in this direction: the First Book
of Discipline de®ned the reading of Scripture in the public service as
`pro®table', but preaching as `utterly necessary'. In particular there was
explicit hostility to the division and fragmentation of scriptural reading.
Congregations were to hear each book of Scripture read in whole, and
expounded by the minister, with no `skipping and divagation from place
to place' as in the old lectionary.70 `No pistling [and] gospelling after the
Popes fashion', was the equivalent demand in England.71 This prompted
Whitgift's suave response that `I marvel that you, professing the Gos-
pel, . . . speak so basely of reading the word of God, being a thing so
precious, and so singular a means of our salvation.'72 Puritan polemicists
did not go quite so far: however, the godly in both realms took a ®rm
stand on the need to approach the scriptures systematically and always to
support reading with exposition.
While the controversialists might assert the plain truth of Scripture in
the face of their Catholic opponents there was a constant acknowledge-
ment that the latter could make compelling points about the complexity
and opacity of the Word. There was indeed a need for interpretation and
67
Bruce, Works of Hutchinson, 15±16.
68
W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes (1954 edn.), 22.
69
Ibid., 102.
70
Wright, `Bible in the Scottish Reformation', 169, 173.
71
A. Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1915), i. 95, 151.
72
J. Ayre (ed.), Works of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1851), iii. 38, 50, 53. The
most powerful criticism of the Puritan position came, as so often, from Hooker, who in Book V
of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity demonstrated the illogicality of separating scriptural reading
from preaching: R. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 21. 1±22:20.
274 Word and Doctrine
the exegetical skills that derived from learning in the ancient tongues and
in formal philosophical understanding. William Fulke's peroration to the
biblical translators at the end of his Defence of the . . . Translation of the Holy
Scriptures into the English Tongue (1583) summarizes the signi®cance of such
learning for English and Scottish Protestantism:
Happy and thrice happy hath our English [sic!] nation been, since God hath given
learned translators, to express in our mother tongue the heavenly mysteries of his
holy word, delivered to his church in the Hebrew and Greek languages.73
All the sixteenth-century translators recognized that exposition of the text
was a part of their duty. Even the Bishops' Bible (1568) retained limited
explanatory marginalia, a technique only ®nally eliminated in the Author-
ized Version of 1611. The notoriety and controversial nature of both the
Tyndale and Geneva translations lay largely in their exegetical material.74
Exposition of thorny and contentious passages of Scripture in sermons and
tracts was also of the essence of godly ministerial labour, and the necessary
accompaniment to the basic presentation of the text. Since the papists
made scriptures `nose of wax and a tennis-ball, wresting them unto every
purpose', Protestants had to use all the resources of true learning to af®rm
God's purposes.75 But even as in the second and third generations of
Protestantism the labour of scriptural exposition spawned a vast literature,
so there remained an insistence on the difference between human know-
ledge and faith in the process of understanding. William Whitaker put the
case powerfully in his 1588 tract:
We say that the Holy Spirit is the supreme interpreter of scripture because we
must be illuminated by the Holy Spirit to be certainly persuaded of the true sense
of Scripture; otherwise although we use all means, we can never attain to that full
assurance which resides in the minds of the faithful.76
Whatever the reservations about the need for interpreters, all Protestant
evangelists saw it as a prime task to make the Word available and access-
ible to the people. The English could, as Fulke indicated, afford to be
complacent about the endeavours of their translators. Tyndale provided
the essential framework, both in terms of formal humanist learning and of
an appropriate vitality in the use of the English language. Coverdale was

73
W. Fulke, A Defence of the Sincere and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures into the EnglishTon-
gue, ed. C.H. Hartshorne (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 591.
74
Greenslade, History of the Bible, iii. 150±61.
75
Bruce, Works of Hutchinson, 15. The idea of the `nose of wax' is derived from the Dutch-
man Pighius: see H. Porter, `The nose of wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Erasmus to
Milton', TRHS 5th ser. 14 (1964), 155±74.
76
W. Whitaker, A Disputation of Holy Scripture, trans. W. Fitzgerald (PS, Cambridge,
1848), 415.
 The Word Disseminated 275
de®cient in the ®rst respect, but followed the rhetorical skills of his prede-
cessor.77 Although the upheavals of the later Henrician years did not lend
themselves to further Protestant translation, Cranmer remained aware that
there were contentious issues of translation still to be resolved, and in
1549 made an abortive attempt to produce a new standard of Latin text
that would have provided an authoritative basis for future vernaculars.78
The Geneva translators remedied some of the de®ciencies in earlier trans-
lations, and even the Bishops' Bible added some stylistic felicities.79 One
acknowledgement of the signi®cance of this work lay in the Catholic
response. Even though, as we have seen, there had long been Catholic
interest in the vernacular scriptures, it was only slowly that the urgency of
orthodox translation was accepted. In 1565, in his attack on John Jewel,
Thomas Harding was still relatively hostile to translation: by 1567 he was
associating himself with Nicholas Sanders in an appeal to Cardinal Mor-
one to support at least some of the Bible in the vernacular to aid the
faithful.80 Nothing came of this scheme, but a decade later William Allen
took up the cause, and eventually in 1582 the Rheims New Testament was
published. Its purposes were explicitly polemical: to counteract `the cor-
ruptions whereby the heretics have so long lamentably deluded almost the
whole of our countrymen'.81 The new Catholic attitude is reiterated in an
interesting manner by the Jesuit missioners in Scotland. In 1582 they
argued that there should be a Scots translation of the New Testament,
since this would greatly aid their work.82
The precise forms of translation remained matters of disputeÐat least
across the religious divideÐbut in many ways they pale into insigni®cance
when compared to the institutional dif®culties the vernacular scriptures
encountered. These included the hostility of the conservative bishops in
Henry VIII's reign; the distaste for the Geneva translation by sections of
the clerical establishment under Elizabeth; the relatively limited royal sup-
port for the dissemination of scriptures except for a brief period in the
1530s and during Edward VI's reign; and responses ranging from lack of
77
P. Collinson, `William Tyndale and the course of the English Reformation', Reformation
1 (1997), 72±97. J.E. Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles (1953), 78±109.
78
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 426±9.
79
B. Hall, `The Geneva version of the English Bible: its aims and achievements', in
Stephens, Bible, Reformation and Church, 124±9. G. Hammond, The Making of the English Bible
(Manchester, 1982). D.G. Danner, `The contribution of the Geneva Bible of 1560 to the English
Protestant tradition', C16J 12 (1981), 5±18.
80
T. Harding, An Answere to Maister Juelles Chalenge (Antwerp, 1565) Facsimile, English
Recusant Literature 229 (1975), fos. 197v, 200. A.O. Meyer, England and the Catholic Church
under Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1967), 475±8.
81
T.F. Knox (ed.), The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (1887), 145.
82
T. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1541±1588 (Leiden, 1996),
212.
276 Word and Doctrine
enthusiasm to outright fear of heresy and sedition from the parishes. These
complications have provoked vigorous, but rather inconclusive, debate
among historians of the English Reformation about the impact of the
vernacular scriptures upon the man in the pew.83 The ®rst dif®culty is
that of understanding the sheer logistics of the dissemination of the Bible
under Henry VIII and Edward VI. It is a relatively easy task to estimate
levels of production of the scriptures, provided that we do not demand
too much precision of the ®gures. About a hundred editions of the whole
Bible can be identi®ed between 1525 and 1599, plus 116 versions of one
or other of the testaments and 37 psalters. The great weight of this pro-
duction occurred during Elizabeth's long reign, but 24 complete Bibles
and 60 testaments were imprinted before 1553.84 Although print runs are
never easy to estimate for the early modern period, it may be valuable to
note that in the 1640s Michael Sparke, attacking the Stationers' Company
monopoly, repeatedly used 3,000 as the usual ®gure for an impression of
the Bible.85 This was in the period when folio texts were falling from
fashion, and they almost certainly had shorter print runs but, argue the
bibliographers, probably not much less than 2,000. When Richard Graf-
ton, charged with overseeing the printing of the Great Bible in Paris in
1538, had all his printer's stock and the prepared quires seized by the
inquisitor general, he complained that 2,500 had been lost. These were
eventually retrieved, and became part of an extended English printing
effort that is usually estimated by 1540 to have provided enough texts for
the nearly 9,000 parishes of England and Wales.86
It was, however, one thing to have enough Bibles, another to ensure
that they were purchased. One of the consequences of a shift in historical
thinking about the speed of popular reformation has been an acknow-
ledgement that churchwardens did not necessarily share the logophilia of
the evangelists. The Great Bible was expensive, £1. 5s., of which incum-
bents were supposed to contribute half, and for the ®rst two years after the
1538 injunctions had ordered it to be set up in every parish church, it
seems certain that only a minority had obeyed.87 The proclamation of

83
See A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd edn. (1989), 154±60; C.A. Haigh, English
Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 157±8, 250±1; R. Rex,
Henry VIII and the Reformation (Basingstoke, 1993), 123±6. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 420±3.
84
I. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), 50±6. Green's
calculations essentially agree with those in T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, A Historical Catalogue
of Printed Editions of the English Bible, 1525±1901, revised by A.S. Herbert (1968).
85
C.J. Sommerville, `On the distribution of religious and occult literature in seventeenth-
century England' The Library 29 (1974), 222±3.
86
Greenslade, History of the Bible, iii. 151. A.J. Slavin, `The Rochepot Affair', C16J
10/1 (1979), 3±20.
87
Haigh, English Reformations, 157±8.
 The Word Disseminated 277
May 1541 that gave parishes six months to comply under penalty of a ®ne
of £2 undoubtedly clari®ed minds, and the general instinct for conformity
among Tudor of®cials did its work in many cases.88 However, recent
investigation of East Anglian parishes, which were scarcely located in a
`dark corner' of the land, has indicated that compliance often occurred
only in 1547 when the Edwardian commissioners insisted on Bible own-
ership and when some sale of church plate was permitted in order to
purchase the necessary equipment for Protestant worship.89 In Lancashire
even in 1552 only six churches out of eighty-eight claimed to have Bibles,
a ®gure that Haigh argues may be a consequence of poor record-keeping,
but which nevertheless must include some actual gaps in ownership.90 The
archdeaconry of Derby may offer a more realistic, if still not encouraging,
®gure: there in 1552 nine out of twenty-two parishes claimed a Bible
among their church goods.91 These logistic problems were no longer such
a major issue in the Elizabethan church, although visitation comperta still
reveal cases of missing Bibles, and of a lack of the necessary supporting
text, Erasmus's Paraphrases. Sometimes failures of episcopal visitation can
conceal problems for a surprisingly long time: in Gloucester diocese, for
example, it was only when a reasonably energetic archiepiscopal visitation
was conducted in 1576 that a signi®cant minority of parishes reported
they had no Bible.92 So it seems that the booksellers had to be patient in
marketing their folio Bibles: they could be sure of some level of compli-
ance and hence sales, but not of all churchwardens beating a path to their
doors unprompted.
The public presentation of the scriptures, making them available for the
services of the Church and visible to the laity, was only one step on the
road to the vision of a godly, Bible-dominated, society. Private possession
of the text, which would enable the congregation to read, mark, and follow
as in the woodcuts, was the appropriate ambition of the reformers. This
was made explicit for the Scots when in 1579 an Act of Parliament ordered
every householder, yeoman, and burgess of substance to have a copy of the
Geneva Bible and a Psalter on pain of ®ne.93 In England it is necessary to
use the indirect evidence of print history to guess at dissemination. The

88
TRP i. 296±8.
89
I am grateful to Gregory Duke for allowing me to cite this material from his research on
East Anglia.
90
C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), 115±16.
91
J. D'Arcy, `Late Medieval Catholicism and the Impact of the Reformation in the Deanery
of Derby, c.1520±1570', University of Nottingham Ph.D. (1996), 141.
92
C. Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540±1580 (Cam-
bridge, 1997), 138±9. The same may be true in Scotland after 1560, though the evidence is even
more patchy, Wright, `Bible in the Scottish Reformation', 161.
93
Ibid., 162.
278 Word and Doctrine
decisive decade was that of the 1560s, when both the Geneva Bible and the
Bishop's New Testament were printed in octavo form, providing a port-
able text, at a price that could in principle be afforded by many of the
literate laity. But the earlier print history of the production of individual
testaments, in addition to whole Bibles, is one indication of a demand that
went beyond the of®cial requirements of church and stateÐthose sixty
imprints constituting a formidable bulk of Scripture.94 Yet only a tiny
percentage of lay inventories and wills record Bible-ownership, and even if
we attribute some of this to the vagaries of appraisal practice, it seems
unlikely that we have a scripture-owning literate population before the
turn of the sixteenth century.95 Even late in the century it is only on very
rare occasions that there is effective evidence of congregations that behave
like those in the preachers' woodcuts, bringing their private Bibles into the
public forum of the church and using them. The most famous is William
Weston's description of the Puritan fasts at Wisbech, witnessed from the
Castle where he was imprisoned during the Armada crisis. There the godly
all brought their Bibles and searched for the appropriate texts and disputed
their meanings `all of them, men and women, boys and girls, labourers,
workmen and simpletons'.96
Was the process of dissemination any easier in Scotland than in Eng-
land? The Scots laboured under the disadvantage that they were depend-
ent on the work of the English translators and had to receive a text that
was in some measure alien. As Gordon Donaldson remarked, `it is one of
the most important facts in their history that the Scottish people never had
a printed Bible in their own tongue'.97 The Great Bible was the text of
clandestine Scottish Protestantism before 1560, thereafter the Geneva text
superseded it and remained dominant until the end of the century. Whi-
taker among others noted the importance of this importation, but as-
sumed, with some complacency, that it scarcely mattered: `the Scots read
the English version of the scriptures in their churches, and the people
understand it'.98 Perhaps it did matter little when compared to the ur-
gency felt by the reformers about making the scriptures accessible. Even

94
Darlow and Moule, English Bible, 84±5, 90, 94. Of course, the New Testament was already
being produced in octavo form during the 1530s and 1540s: Green, Print and Protestantism,
57±62.
95
Whiting, for example, found only four examples of Bible-ownership by the laity in the
South-West before 1570, one of these being of a Latin New Testament. R. Whiting, The Blind
Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1989), 190.
96
W. Weston, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. P. Caraman (1955), 164±5.
97
G. Donaldson, `The foundations of Anglo-Scottish Union', in his Scottish Church History
(Edinburgh, 1985), 145. It is interesting that it was the Jesuits, rather than the of®cial Kirk, who
considered remedying this: see above, n. 82.
98
Whitaker, Disputation, 215.
 The Word Disseminated 279
when the Scots began to show some independence of the London printers
after 1579 there was no attempt to concede to the spoken language. The
reverence for the text of Scripture as the starting-point of true reformation
was more explicit in Scotland than in England. There is a wonderfully
evocative description by Knox of the situation in 1543, when the tempor-
ary lifting of a ban on the reading of the vernacular scriptures led to `the
Bible lying almost upon every gentleman's table. The New Testament was
borne about in many mens hands . . .'99 This no doubt tells us more about
the imagination of the reformer than the objective situation of the texts,
but it was the Word of God that provided the rallying-cry for the small
groups of evangelicals who had to struggle for so long to establish reform.
Hence in part the intense af®rmation of sola scriptura when the Lords of
the Congregation triumphed in 1559. Scripture became the badge of
identity for a radical movement that rejected intermediary forms of au-
thority far more decisively than its English counterpart.
There is one further test of the importance of the vernacular scriptures
for the leaders of English and Scottish Protestantism. In each of the realms,
and of course in the separate realm of Ireland, there were substantial
minorities (or majorities) who did not speak any form of English. The
needs of the Welsh, and of Irish and Scottish Gaelic speakers, posed a
signi®cant challenge for committed evangelists.100 Erasmus saw the Gaelic
lands as one of Europe's ultimate linguistic frontiers. `Would', he wrote in
the 1516 exhortation to the reader of the New Testament, `that these
[words] had been translated into the languages of all men, so that they
could be read and studied by Scots and Irishmen, by Turks and Sara-
cens.'101 The challenge was more complex than it might at ®rst appear. It
involved ®rst and foremost the formation of a view on the role of lan-
guage in the process of conversion, and on the relationship between
authority and evangelism rather different from that which was the centre
of English debate. This can be seen from a brief consideration of the role
of Thomas Cromwell in the promotion of Scripture. Cromwell's creden-
tials as the key agent for the dissemination of the of®cial English Bible are
no longer in doubt, and few historians would question his evangelical
concerns. But in the historiography of Wales Cromwell features largely as
99
Knox, i. 100.
100
R. Wardhaugh, Languages in Competition (Oxford, 1987), ch. 4. In his work on British
history Pocock stresses the long-term signi®cance of language as a way of maintaining cultural
hegemony. `The dominant culture maintains rules, speaks a language and preserves a history so
powerfully effective that it obliges others to act in the same way.' J.G. Pocock, `British history: a
plea for a new subject', Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), 610±11. This may have been the
consequence of the use of English for the scriptures; it was not the purpose of the evangelists.
101
Erasmus's preface to the New Testament, trans. W. Roye, An Exhortation to the Diligent
Study of the Scripture (Antwerp, 1529), sig. b iv±iir.
280 Word and Doctrine
the instrument of an Anglocentric political regime that sought to extirpate
cultural difference, to identify Welsh elites with the Tudor regime, and to
eliminate the Welsh language from of®cial and legal proceedings.102 Does
this indicate therefore that Cromwell would have seen English as the
appropriate language in which to make the scriptures available to a popu-
lation estimated to have been 80 per cent monoglot Welsh? The question
is more dif®cult to answer than some of the secondary sources imply.
There was scarcely time for Cromwell to oversee the production of the
Great Bible before his fall, and certainly none for him to give sustained
consideration to the needs of the Welsh and the Irish.103 It seems dubious
to infer from a policy of anglicizing the political elites that Cromwell
would necessarily have rejected a role for the vernacular in religious in-
struction. Rather it seems likely that Cromwell would have turned to the
advice of his regional governors, and to the episcopate whose duty it was
to introduce the Reformation into the Celtic lands. In the 1530s, as later,
it often appears that the failures of evangelical impulse from the centre
were more failures of political and administrative will than of any resist-
ance to the translation of the scriptures. The Scots came to this problem
far later, and via a very different form of reformation: the relative weak-
ness of royal control in the Highlands left the Kirk in practice to make the
necessary decisions about communication and conversion.104 It is dif®cult
to see that James VI's famous views on the barbarity of the Highlanders
and their language made much difference in practice to the spread of
Protestantism in Gaelic.105
The attitudes of both local elites and of those appointed from London
were complex. In the case of the Welsh the bilingual gentry were usually
sympathetic to the use of their `mother tongue' but rarely interested in
Protestant evangelism until late in the sixteenth century. The minority of
the clergy who did see the Bible as the cornerstone of true conversion
were themselves divided. Some saw the advance of civilization, religious
reform, and the English language as an integrated experience: others
quickly recognized that they had a prime responsibility to translate for
their congregations.106 William Barlow, bishop of St David's from 1536 to
1548, was the leading exponent of anglicizing evangelism. As early as
102
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 105±7. P. Roberts, `The Welsh language, English law
and Tudor legislation', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymroddorion (1989), 19±76.
103
R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland (Dublin, 1935), pp. xlii±xliii.
A.L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall (1941), 21±5.
104
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 483±5.
105
Though the contrary view is expressed by Meek, who blames much of the delay in
evangelizing on government hostility to Gaelic. D. Meek, `The Gaelic Bible', in Wright, Bible
in Scottish Life, 10.
106
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 63±4.
 The Word Disseminated 281
1535, when he was prior of the Augustinian house of Haverfordwest, one
of his servants had a copy of the prohibited English scriptures.107 Once he
was well established in his see he devoted his considerable energies to
denouncing Welsh superstition and idolatry, to ®ghting his cathedral
clergy, and to establishing English preaching and schooling. When, in
1538, he instructed the clergy of Cardigan to declare the gospel and epistle
in `the mother tongue' it seems likely that he meant English.108 Barlow's
successor, Robert Ferrar, an enthusiast for evangelical preaching, offered
equally little support to Welsh speakers.109 One should not automatically
assume, however, that Barlow's attitude was shared by all outsiders.
Bishop Parfew of St Asaph seems to have been aware of the desirability of
communication in Welsh, while in neighbouring Cornwall Bishop Voy-
sey made it clear after the 1538 Injunctions that the gospel and epistle
should be declared in Cornish `where the English tongue is not used'.110
The case of Ireland is yet more complicated, because the assumption of
the `New English' that it was obviously desirable to function entirely in
that language was seconded by the belief of the `Old English' that English
was the demarcator between civility and barbarism. Although the linguis-
tic boundaries were in practice very ¯uid, and by the 1530s the use of
Irish was common even in the southern trading towns and in the Pale,
there was still a political impulse in favour of the metropolitan lan-
guage.111 Hence there is the promotion in the 1537 parliament of Eng-
lish-speaking parochial schools, and the acceptance of the requirement
that those appointed to Irish bene®ces should `endeavour . . . to learn the
English tongue and language and use English order [and] fashions if you
may . . .'.112 These assumptions by the Old English community might in
theory have simpli®ed the reception of the Great Bible, and made the
scriptures an instrument of coercive control as well as evangelism in a
benighted land. In 1538 James Butler, heir to the earl of Ormondy, wrote
to Henry VIII urging that `the word of God' should be `set forth' as a
means of bringing the people to civility.113 But the association of the
metropolitan language with religious change had the opposite effect, div-

107
LP x. 1091.
108
LP xi. 1428. T. Wright (ed.), Three Chapters of Letters on the Suppression of the Monasteries,
CS os 26 (1843), 187. Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 118±25.
109
A.J. Brown, Robert Ferrar (1997), 100±1, 171±4.
110
P.B. Ellis, The Cornish Language and its Literature (1974), 59.
111
S. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown Community and the Con¯ict of Cultures, 1470±1603 (1985),
183±225. N. Canny, Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World (Baltimore, 1988), 11±12.
112
H.A. Jefferies, Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformation, 1518±1558 (Dublin,
1997), 145, shows that the order to function in English had the support of the Old English elite
in County Louth.
113
R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland (1935), 33±4.
282 Word and Doctrine
iding the settler communities, and leading to profound debate about how
reform might be established.114 In the absence of clear policy from the
crown such divergent opinions could ¯ourish and impede evangelism in
the indigenous tongue.115 The later history of the translation of Scripture
into the other languages of the British Isles largely con®rms the import-
ance of regional initiative, and individual commitment, against any sus-
tained engagement by the metropolitan leaders of church and state.
Although the reformers cried sola scriptura, in practice the Bible was not
always the ®rst priority for translation and printed dissemination. The ®rst
full text of the reform printed in Welsh was the 1549 Book of Common
Prayer, translated by William Salesbury, which had been preceded by a
printing of the Epistles and Gospels used in the liturgy.116 In Irish the
catechism long preceded the printing of the New Testament, while in
Scottish Gaelic the Form of Common Order was printed in 1567, the full
Bible not until 1801.117 Manx Gaelic had no Bible until the eighteenth
century: the ®rst attempt at a local version of the Prayer Book came in the
early seventeenth century.118 In Cornish it was felt by the bishops that the
most necessary use for the local language was in catechizing, though
Nicholas Udall also advocated the translation of the liturgy.119 Much of
this contrast is, of course, to be explained by the dif®culty of translating
and printing the full text of the BibleÐthe form of the languages in which
to print was initially uncertain; neither orthography nor typography were
necessarily fully agreed; the cost of production and the limited market
made the product expensive; there were dif®culties in ®nding printers.120
The Welsh reformers, in particular, had no doubt about the critical im-
portance of the Word, and laboured with formidable energy to overcome
these practical dif®culties to make scriptural translation a practical reality.

114
B. Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland', HJ 21 (1978),
475±502.
115
H.A. Jefferies, `The early Tudor Reformation in the Irish Pale', JEH 52 (2001), 34±62.
116
W. Salesbury, Kynniver Llith a Ban, ed. J. Fisher (Cardiff, 1931).
117
D. Meek, `The Gaelic Bible', in Wright, The Bible in Scottish Life, 9±23.
118
A.W. Moore (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic (Manx Society, 1895),
pp. xxi±xxii.
119
Ellis, Cornish Language, 62±4.
120
For example, the orthography of Manx was so ¯uid that one of those clerics asked to
review Bishop Phillip's Prayer Book alleged that he could not understand it at all: Moore, Manx
Gaelic, p. xi. One of the many problems in the Scottish case was that Carswell translated into a
modi®ed form of the literary languageÐClassical Common GaelicÐrather than the Common
Vernacular used by the ordinary population. J. Dawson, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in
Scotland', in A. Duke, G. Lewis, and A. Pettegree (eds.), Calvinism in Europe (Cambridge,
1994), 231±53. J. Bannerman, `Literacy in the Highlands', in I.B. Cowan and D. Shaw (eds.),
The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), 221±8.
 The Word Disseminated 283
But in both the Welsh and the Scottish case another explanation for the
slowness of translation can be advanced. These Celtic and Gaelic cultures
were primarily oral, dependent on elite bardic traditions for the transmis-
sion of knowledge. To become logocentricÐto experience at ®rst or at
second hand that reverence for the `word-in-space' that Ong identi®es as
the characteristic of print culturesÐrequired an even greater change than
it did in England or lowland Scotland.121 So approaches to the scriptures
were modi®ed to suit local conditions. The case can be made best in the
Scottish Gaidhealtachd, since there the appearance of the full printed
scriptures long post-dated conversion to Calvinism. The pattern estab-
lished in the reformed churches of the Highlands was that the readers,
who assisted the ministers, were supposed to translate directly from the
English text into the Scottish Vernacular Gaelic, while clergy made their
own translations of texts and passages for sermons.122 This enabled indi-
viduals to overcome the problems of dialect and the divergent forms of
the vernacular, and to modify language to render it accessible. It may be
that in Wales the anonymous translation of part of Tyndale's New Testa-
ment made in 1543 was a similar exercise, intended to act as an aid to
preaching and `declaring' the epistles and gospels. Glanmor Williams iden-
ti®es its prose style as a mixture of the literary and colloquial, with a South
Welsh origin, precisely the sort of tool to verbal evangelizing that the
Scots later used.123
The success of oral forms of the transmission of the Word should cau-
tion us against too ready an acceptance of the centrality of print culture in
the dissemination of Protestantism. The enthusiasm of a small number of
Welsh reformers for a proper and established text of the Bible was cer-
tainly focused upon its importance as a tool of evangelism. It also con-
cerned the intellectual status of the Welsh language: its coming of age in a
period of philological learning.124 The story of the triumph of William
Salesbury, Richard Davies, and William Morgan is so well known as to
need little repetition, especially as the evidence has been elegantly assem-
bled by Glanmor Williams.125 But it is important to emphasize the extent

121
Ong, Presence of the Word, 272±4.
122
On this issue see Jane Dawson's crucial article, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd', 238±41.
123
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 146±7.
124
There is a danger here of privileging Ong's transition from oral to literate culture as being
the essential explanatory tool for the discussion of the transmission of the religion of the Word.
The work of Dawson and others is an important correction, and reminds us of the greater
signi®cance of the oral in some environments. In the Isle of Man, for example, apparent
conformity to the Elizabethan Settlement was achieved by bilingual clergy using entirely oral
modes for their congregations. W.J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
(1982). Moore, Manx Gaelic, pp. xii, xxi.
125
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 235±44, 338±60.
284 Word and Doctrine
to which regional initiative drove the project, and also to note those
moments at which the intervention of the centre proved critical as well.
William Salesbury was profoundly convinced that until translated into
Welsh the scriptures were `bound in fetters' for his countrymen.126 And
when the Elizabethan Settlement offered new hope for Protestantism he
and Richard Davies, the new bishop of St Asaph, began to press for a
translation. The key for these men was not simply a translation, but an
authorized text for churches, hence the need to engage the political centre
and the interesting choice of parliamentary legislation as the route taken.
The 1563 Act for the rendering of the Bible into Welsh was a private
initiative, sponsored by Davies and Humphrey Lluyd, but the sympathy
displayed by Archbishop Parker and William Cecil must have been of
signi®cance.127 Williams suggests that Cecil's interest was engaged partly
because he saw Wales as a possible `back door' to England for Catholic
traitors. It is certainly the case that political and religious threat focused
minds in England on Welsh evangelism: in 1587 John Whitgift gave Mor-
gan vital support in the last stages of production under the spur of the
radical challenge from John Penry and the Mary Stuart crisis.128 The result
of Morgan's labours, the 1588 Bible, was ordered to be held in all Welsh
churches from Christmas of that year and, with some of the usual delays,
it seems the parishes complied.129 As for private reading: the poet-parson
Thomas Jones was already writing that Christmas that men should `go, sell
[their] shirt' in order to have this `treasure beyond price'. It is unlikely
that they did, but it may be that because the Welsh Bible came into a
world already partially Protestantized, its impact was felt more swiftly than
that of its English counterpart.130
The Irish experience of scriptural translation differs as markedly from
that of the Welsh and Scots as does their general religious circumstances.
The most obvious contrast was that there was no strong indigenous pres-
sure for translation: the key social group that might have generated such a
demand, the bardic learned orders, having consistently resisted any reli-
gious change. The surviving poetry of the learned elites suggests that the
bards were deeply content with traditional Catholicism and saw any chal-
lenge to it as alien imposition.131 English Bibles, already circulating in
126
Salesbury, Kynniver, dedication.
127
R. Flower, `William Salesbury, Richard Davies and Archbishop Parker', National Library
of Wales Journal 2 (1941), 7±14. 5 Elizabeth, c. 28.
128
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 350±1.
129
APC 1588. 283±4.
130
Jones, a poet-parson of Llandeilo Bertholau, Monmouthshire, wrote his verses in praise
of Morgan's translation as early as Christmas 1588, a few weeks after its publication: Williams,
Wales and the Reformation, 358.
131
Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 60±5.
 The Word Disseminated 285
Ireland from the 1530s, were just such an imposition. Therefore, any trans-
lation of the scriptures had to be undertaken as missionary endeavour,
mission which was often viewed as an exercise in civilizing control rather
than the evangelion of Tyndale's vision. In a few enthusiasts these elements
were indeed combined. There is a fascinating example in the presentation
of an old Irish text containing scriptural extracts made by Laurence Hum-
phrey to Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Woodstock in 1575. In his speech
he prayed that `by this Word may the English be more and more
strengthened; by this Word may the wild Irish be tamed'.132 For the coun-
cils in London and Dublin `taming' often took precedence over evangeliz-
ing. In 1563, when Cecil was apparently worrying about the threat of
Catholic invasion, the Privy Council in London arranged for the payment
of the large sum of £66. 13s. 4d. to Archbishop Loftus and Bishop Brady,
for the printing of an Irish New Testament.133 Loftus and Brady were
considered the only reliable leaders of the Protestant church in Ireland, and
the latter, at least, had already showed himself concerned to evangelize in
Irish. Yet, given the notable ®scal caution of Elizabeth's regime it seems
unlikely that this sum would have been paid unless it was thought that it
would purchase political stability. The council followed this initiative by
arranging for the cutting of fount for Irish letters, probably by John Day,
who undertook the cutting of the fount for Archbishop Parker's Anglo-
Saxon text.134 It seems that nothing was done with the money in Ireland,
for three years later the council was demanding its money back, and the
only serious translator bene®ced in the Irish church, John Kearney, was
turning his attention to the more modest task of the catechism.135
When the New Testament was ®nally produced in 1602±3 it was as a
result of the combined efforts of several men from the learned Gaelic
orders who had by then become converts to Protestantism, and the
funding came largely from Anglo-Irish families.136 By then, what might
have been a major of®cial initiative was dissipated, and there was no
sustained attempt to place the New Testament of®cially in the churches.
Neither London nor Dublin was really committed to the work of mission
among the Irish. There were occasional attempts by the crown to do
something more, as in James I's comments on Trinity College's obligations

132
J. Nicholls, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (1810), i. 583±99. Sir William Croft,
Croftus sive Hibernia Liber, ed. A. Keaveney and J.A. Madden (Dublin, 1992), 99.
133
M. Ronan, The Reformation in Ireland under Elizabeth, 1558±1580 (1930), 360±1.
134
E.W. Lynam, `The Irish character in print, 1571±1923', The Library 4th ser. 4 (1924),
288±92. B. Dickins, `The Irish broadside of 1571 and Queen Elizabeth's types', Transactions of
the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1/1 (1949/53), 48±60.
135
CSP Irl i. 356.
136
See below, p. 439.
286 Word and Doctrine
in 1620. The Irish church went its own way, creating an anglicized minis-
try. And Bishop Bedell's later passionate efforts to provide an Irish Bible
met with a cool response from the great James Ussher, apparently on the
grounds that it would merely encourage the separatist tendencies of a
hostile people.137

Preaching and Teaching

The Word had to be illuminated by the labour of preaching. `The gospel
sincerely preached' was from the beginning of the Reformation one of
the de®ning marks of the true Church, one of the only two marks agreed
by all the magisterial reformers. `When the Bible and true preachers
thereof be restored into the Church,' said Hooper in his answer to Gardi-
ner's defence of the sacraments, `God shall restore likewise such light as
shall discern everything aright.' Preaching could not, of course, construct
faith, which was the sole gift of divine grace, yet it was `of all things in
this world most necessary for the people'.138 Richard Rollock, preaching
on Corinthians to his Edinburgh auditors, spoke of two revelations: `the
®rst be Word, when it is preached: the second be the spirit when that
holy spirit concurs with the Word'.139 `We cannot be saved without faith,
and faith cometh by hearing of the Word,' thus Latimer in one of his
sermons before Edward VI, `there must be preachers if we look to be
saved'.140 Such arguments were constantly articulated throughout the
English and Scottish Reformations.141 Even when they had become com-
monplaces to the second and third generation of Protestants, and when
the practice of preaching had become a bitterly contested issue, there was
still little dissent among divines that the duty of preaching was the ®rst call
upon a minister. The duty of the pastor, said Laurence Chaderton, was to
`listen unto the voice of Christ ``feed, feed, feed'' '.142 Few put the matter
as passionately as Edward Dering, that key link between the ®rst gener-
ations of Protestant preachers and their Puritan successors: `we cannot
believe except we hear, nor we cannot hear without a preacher'.143 The
importance of preachers was such that, if their duty was properly dis-
charged:
137
A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590±1641 (Dublin, 1997), 124±5. R. Buick
Knox, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (Cardiff, 1967), 88±90.
138
Carr, Early Writings of Hooper, 205.
139
R. Rollock, Certain sermons upon severall places of the epistles of Paul (Edinburgh, 1599), 155.
140
Corrie, Sermons of Latimer, 200.
141
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, pp. xii±xiii.
142
L. Chaderton, A Fruitfull Sermon, upon the 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 verse of the 12 chapter of the
Epistle of St Paule to the Romanes (London, 1584), 72.
143
E. Dering, A Briefe and Necessarie Catechisme, in Workes (1614), sig. a 3v.
 The Word Disseminated 287
the sword of the spirit which God hath given them would vanquish Satan and
destroy the power of darkness, till the knowledge of God were plentiful upon
earth, and all the joys of heart were sealed unto men in perfect beauty.144
The sword was the Word of God: sola scriptura. `All truth', argued John
Knox's Edinburgh successor Robert Bruce, `is contained in the Scriptures,
there can be no interpretation but that which ¯oweth therefrom.'145 The
early generations of Protestant preachers had to clear away what they saw
as the thickets of error in popish preaching, especially the stories of `bears
or apes . . . gesta romanorum, legenda aurea, . . . [or] such other lies'.146 But
though truth ¯owed from Scripture it was notoriously dif®cult to arrive at
an uncontested reading of the Word, which required the lively interpret-
ation of the learned minister. Every minister must in Chaderton's view
`teach sound doctrine by the true interpretation of the word and . . . con-
fute all contrary errors by unanswerable arguments and reasons'.147 When
Kentish ministers agreed articles for the prophesying conferences held in
1572, they urged that speakers upon scriptural texts should `open the
literal sense and meaning of the Holy Ghost and digress not into exhort-
ation, and especially into invectives'.148 Even this strict insistence on a
literal reading of Scripture, which became the hallmark of the Calvinist
divine, allowed some scope for stages of exposition: explaining the words
of Scripture, trying different and `contrary' readings, adding comparative
texts, and offering a context for the words. The process sounds, and often
no doubt was, austere and demanding, but some concession could be
made to `popularity'. William Perkins, in his Art of Prophesying, identi®es
Bruce's fourth heading as `to apply . . . these doctrines rightly collected to
the life and manners of men in simple and plain speech'.149 Bruce himself
put this even more directly: `unless you hear Christ in a familiar and
homely language, you cannot understand, and unless you understand it is
not possible for you to believe'.150

144
BL Lans. MS 17/90, fo. 198r. On Dering and preaching see P. Lake, Moderate Puritans
and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982), 16±24; P. Collinson, `A mirror of Elizabethan
Puritanism: the life and letters of ``Godly Master Dering'' ', in his Godly People: Essays on English
Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), 10±11.
145
W. Cunningham (ed.), Sermons of the Reverend Robert Bruce (Wodrow Society,
Edinburgh, 1843), 375±6.
146
Wabuda, `Provision of Preaching', 54, quoting Robert Wisdom.
147
Chaderton, `Fruitfull Sermon', 61.
148
P. Clark, `The prophesying movement in Kentish towns in the 1570s', Archaeologia Canti-
ana 93 (1978 for 1977), 85.
149
W. Perkins, Works, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1631), ii. 259. On forms of preaching see
J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1964), 71±112.
150
R. Bruce, Sermons on the Sacrament preached in Edinburgh, 1589, ed. T.F. Torrance (1958),
112±13.
288 Word and Doctrine
Plain speaking, being able to translate the literal meanings of Scripture
into the hearts of men, was the ambition of those godly divines who
preached ad plebes. Although they themselves needed to be well founded
in biblical learning they should not disturb their auditors with Latin and
Greek, lest, says Perkins, `they cannot ®t those things which went before
with those that follow after'.151 Such prescriptions seem to have been
followed more systematically in Reformation Scotland than in contem-
porary England, where forms of preaching remained markedly pluralistic
throughout the sixteenth century.152 It often seems that the only discern-
ible consistency among Protestant preachers is the use of scriptural mater-
ial as a ground for preaching. Even then defences of the royal supremacy
early in the period, or the growing genre of sermons for public occasions
under Elizabeth, could readily depart from this de®ning core.153 The
Edwardian preachers were particularly committed to the use of plain style,
with Latimer offering a particular sub-set of colloquial and anecdotal tech-
niques in the presentation of Scripture, but late Elizabethan conformist
preachers like John King and John Bridges still used very similar methods.
Plenty of godly Protestant preachers adopted a more ornate approach to
their material, and did not hesitate to use allegorical ways of interpreting
Scripture when it suited their purposes. Nor was elaborated oratory neces-
sarily reserved for a courtly audience: men like Paul Bush and Thomas
Playfere were quite capable of taking their formal rhetoric to Paul's Cross
congregations who might be thought in need of direct and explicit edi®-
cation.154
This diversity must be partly explained by the need to regard the
sermon as performance. As Patrick Collinson has recently observed, this
elusive aspect of evangelizing is too easily overlooked in concentration
upon the printed word, but the `quickening of the spirit' that was seen as
the purpose of preaching demanded the stimulus of lively presentation.155
Thomas Wilson in his Arte of Rhetorique, that popular work that provided
much of the practical guidance for preachers, observed, `except men ®nd
delight, they will not long abide . . . Therefore even these ancient
151
Perkins, Works, ii. 670±1.
152
D.G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism 1590±1638 (Oxford, 2000), 57±62. Blench,
Preaching in England, passim.
153
MacLure, Paul's Cross Sermons, 14 ff., 69±70; Register of Sermons Preached at Paul's Cross,
1534±1642, revised by P. Pauls and J.C. Boswell (Ottawa, 1989). The listings of the known
sermons at the Cross for the 1530s is so remorselessly political that it is quite a surprise to ®nd
Wriothesley's Chronicle remarking on Bishop Hilsey as `a great setter forth of the sincerity of
Scripture': C. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors from ad 1485 to
1559, ed. W.D. Hamilton, 2 vols. CS ns 18 and 20 (1875±7), i. 104.
154
A.F. Herr, The Elizabethan Sermon: A Survey and Bibliography (Philadelphia, 1940).
155
P. Collinson, `Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism as forms of popular religious culture',
in Durston and Eales, Culture of English Puritanism, 46±8.
 The Word Disseminated 289
preachers must now and then play the fools in the pulpit . . . or else they
are like some time to preach to bare walls'.156 The concept of entertain-
ment presumably embraced a spectrum of behaviour from sheer spiritual
eloquenceÐ`as every sound is not Music, so every sermon is not preach-
ing' says the editor of Rollock's sermonsÐto the violence of delivery that
allowed Foxe to mock Latimer's opponent Hubberdine for `dancing' his
sermon until in his zest he landed among his auditors and broke his leg.157
A rather more acceptable Protestant performance was described by Sir
John Harington, who recalled the court sermons of Matthew Hutton: `I
hear him out of the Pulpit thundering [his] text.'158 The competing collo-
quial narratives of Latimer and Roger Edgeworth presumably offered
speci®c opportunity to perform within the pulpit: Edgeworth, says his
recent editor, sometimes used the language and dialect of his Bristolian
audience to enhance narrative and engage attention.159 Later in the cen-
tury the habit of preaching on the moral and spiritual lessons to be drawn
from prodigies and sensational events provided some of the same enter-
tainment value from the pulpit.160
This need to entertain and to arrest the attention of auditors seems to
con®rm the pessimism of the godly about the populace and its reluctance
to hear the Word. Arthur Dent, George Gifford, and other zealous Prot-
estants who concerned themselves with the attitudes of the plebeians were
convinced that they did not wish to hear the preacher. Most ordinary
men, complained William Harrison of Lancashire, were deaf adders who
closed their ears to God's Word.161 It is unlikely that all Tudor laymen, or
even their Scottish counterparts, had a desire to run `to sermons' and
prattle `of the scriptures', which even at their most stimulating were
lengthy and demanding of concentration of a very different kind from the
ordinary routines of the liturgy.162 But the evidence of the popularity of
Paul's Cross sermons should perhaps not be regarded as completely atyp-
ical, or the words of sharp critics of popular behaviour as gospel truth. It
will never be possible to judge fully what the ordinary man and woman in
the pew thought of the fare that was provided for them from the growing
number of pulpits in the parish churches in the late years of the sixteenth

156
T. Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, ed. G.H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), 3±4.
157
Rollock, Sermons on Paul, preface.
158
Harington, quoted in P. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and
Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), 30.
159
Wilson, Sermons by Edgeworth, 75±6.
160
A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000).
161
A. Dent, A Plaine mans path-way (1601). G. Gifford, A briefe discoures of certaine points of the
religion which is among the common sort of Christians, which may be termed the countrie divinitie (1583).
W. Harrison, The difference of hearers. Or an exposition of the parable of the sower (1614), sig. a 7v.
162
Dent, Plaine mans path-way, 151.
290 Word and Doctrine
century. What is clear is that, in the towns in particular, there was ample op-
portunity to gad to sermons, and that men and women did so in
numbers.163
For the committed evangelicals considerations about the precise struc-
tural and literary forms of preaching were often otiose. The problem was
always that there was too little preaching of any kind; too little presenta-
tion of the truths of Scripture to ordinary laymen. `How should the
people be saved without teachers?', thus asked Bishop Sandys, but the
Pauline question echoed throughout the English and Scottish Reforma-
tions.164 We shall return to the problem and the attempted institutional
solutions in a later chapter. Here we may just brie¯y note some of its para-
meters: only nine preachers, for example, among 166 clergy in the Diocese
of Peterborough in 1560, or thirty-three between 135 West Sussex
parishes in 1579.165 Only at the very end of our period do the 1603
episcopal returns suggest that a preaching ministry was securely estab-
lished in much of England.166 In Wales the process was even slower; the
bishops of St David's could muster only ten and fourteen preachers in
1570 and 1583 respectively, lending some credence to John Penry's charge
that not one in twenty parishes had adequate preaching.167 Ireland, as
ever, presents the extreme case, both because of a desperate shortage of
properly quali®ed preachers and because of the divided opinions of its
Protestant leaders about how best to evangelize. Bishop Loftus of Dublin,
responding to a complaint of Burghley's about lack of preaching, pointed
out that sermons would be nugatory without the sword to force men to
conformity: `unless they be forced they will not once come to hear the
word preached'.168 At the other extreme William Herbert was unique in
his evangelical zeal in the lands of North Kerry, seeking out bilingual men
for local parishes and advising them on preaching from the scriptures.169
Only in Scotland, where the ¯edgling Kirk invested its greatest energy in
the quest for a preaching ministry, did most populous parishes have access
to a preacher by the 1580s.170

163
P. Seaver, The Puritan Lecturerships: The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560±1662 (Stanford,
Calif., 1970), 88±117.
164
J. Ayre (ed.), The Sermons of Edwyn Sandys (PS, Cambridge, 1842), 154.
165
W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558±1610 (Northamptonshire
Record Society, 1979), 20. Haigh, English Reformations, 269.
166
R.G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. (New York, 1910), i. 241.
167
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 300±1. D. Williams (ed.), J. Penry: Three Treatises
concerning Wales (Cardiff, 1960), 36.
168
Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy', 487.
169
CSP Irl iv. 189, 192.
170
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 147±8.
 The Word Disseminated 291
In the absence of suf®cient preachers the Protestant churches resorted
to other means to disseminate the Word: most notably in England the
of®cial homilies, ®rst published in 1547.171 The homily as a read sermon
had a long history: late medieval cycles such as Mirk's Festial were part of
the genre, in so far as they could be delivered verbatim on appropriate
Sundays and festivals, though they could also form the source material
from which independent sermons could be preached.172 Archbishop War-
ham urged John Longland to print some of his sermons so that they could
be `read for the common pro®t', implying that this was common prac-
tice.173 Preaching from a cleric's own resources must always have been a
daunting business, but it acquired both a new urgency and new challenge
when he was required, as in Cromwell's Royal Injunctions, to `purely and
sincerely declare the very gospel of Christ'. The reformers set their faces
clearly against the `legendary' tradition of edifying stories represented by
Mirk or the Legenda Aurea. Even Bishop Bonner acknowledged that his
London clergy should not be preaching `fable or other histories' and
should avoid sermons written within the last two or three hundred
years.174 The need, as Cranmer perceived from a very early moment in
the Henrician Reformation, was for authorized texts based on Scripture
that could be offered verbatim to congregations by even the most ignor-
ant curate. Richard Taverner, who anticipated the of®cial homilies in his
Epistles and Gospels with a brief Postyll upon the same (1540), wrote in his
preface of the `singular help and bene®t' incumbents would receive from
the commentaries for the `edi®cation of Christs Church'.175 These senti-
ments were echoed in more authoritarian tones in the Preface to the
of®cial English homilies which spoke of ministers who lacked the gift of
preaching `whereof great inconveniences might rise, and ignorance still be
maintained' if the crown had not provided appropriate instructional ma-
terial.176
But from the beginning the Reformation homilies had a dual purpose,
best expressed by the convocation order of 1542 that sermons should be
compiled `to make for stay of such errors as were then by ignorant
preachers sparkled among the people'.177 The homilies were to become

171
S. Wabuda, `Bishops and the provision of homilies, 1520 to 1547', C16 J 25/3 (1994),
551±3.
172
T. Erbe (ed.), Mirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies, by Johannes Mirkus, EETS es 96
(1905).
173
Wabuda, `Provision of homilies', 551.
174
VAI ii. 89±90.
175
R. Taverner, The Epistles and Gospelles with a brief Postil upon the same from after Easter tyll
Advent (? 1545).
176
Grif®ths, Homilies, 3±4.
177
Muller, Letters of Gardiner, 296.
292 Word and Doctrine
the exposition of the faith of the new Church, securing orthodoxy in the
pulpit. Already by this date the Bishops' Book had been presented in
homiletic form, designed to be read as sermons, and the 1542 project
atrophied partly because the King's Book was presented in similar struc-
ture the following year.178 When Cranmer ®nally had his way with the
publication of the Book of Homilies in 1547 he began with his ringing
af®rmation of the necessity of Bible-reading and then proceeded to the
clearest possible articulation of the relationship between faith and works.
There was some attempt to accommodate more traditional attitudes in the
`good works' sections of the text. In two cases these were written by
Bishop Bonner and by his chaplain John Harps®eld, but the doctrinal
agenda was ®rmly established by the archbishop himself. 1547 was not an
ideal moment at which to articulate the full confessional stance of the
Church of England, and the pressures of the later years of Edward's reign
did not allow Cranmer time to return to the project.179 It was therefore
left to the ®rst generation of Elizabeth's bishops, and particularly to John
Jewel, to produce the revised homilies that became the staple of the late
Tudor parish.
The value of the of®cial homilies in the process of evangelizing is most
explicitly indicated by the work of Bishop Bonner during the Marian
period. Bonner supervised the production of two sets of instructional
literature during 1555: A Pro®table and Necessary Doctrine, which was a
revised and enlarged version of the King's Book, and Homelies Set Forth, a
group of thirteen sermons designed for reading by clerics to their congre-
gations.180 In the latter particular attention was paid to the Eucharist and
papal supremacy. In the following year Cardinal Pole followed the
example of the Edwardian regime and ordered that every parish acquire
the volume.181 It seemed that the homilies were being established in a
role as core doctrinal documents of the religious settlements. It can be
argued, however, that that role was somewhat weakened by the amended
form of the Elizabethan homilies, which gave a disproportionate role to
the moral and social dimensions of faith. The point was beautifully exem-
pli®ed in the hostile question of the authors of the Admonition to the
Parliament (1572), `are not the people well modi®ed think you, when the
homily of sweeping the church is read unto them?'182 The godly were, of
course, dissatis®ed not only with such trivia, but even with Cranmer's

178 179
Ibid., 306, 311±15. MacCulloch, Cranmer, 206, 224, 293±4.
180
E. Bonner, A Profytable and Necessarye Doctryne (1555). Homelies sette forth by the right
reverende Edmunde bishop of London (1555).
181
Haigh, English Reformations, 216±17.
182
Quoted in P. Collinson, `The Elizabethan church and the new religion', in C. Haigh
(ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (1984), 179.
 The Word Disseminated 293
austere and sound prose on faith and justi®cation. The bare reading of
text, cut up as it usually was into manageable lengths for accessible read-
ing, could in no way edify as did preacher moved by the spirit. Thomas
Cartwright adopted the purist position that homilies, like the Apocry-
pha, had no place in the Church.183 But other sound Calvinists were not
so sure: a bad sermon, said Richard Rollock's editor, might be worse than
`if one should stand up and read a Homily'.184 So homilies might be
tolerated, as they were in the Scottish church for much of the ®rst Refor-
mation generation. There the English text was used by readers, that order
of ministers who had no call to independent preaching.185 Yet they were
not often given pride of place as instruments of instruction or evangeliza-
tion. An interesting test here is the absence of translations into the other
tongues of the British Isles, for Ireland, Gaelic Scotland, and Wales, where
it might be thought there was urgent need for preaching assistance. There
was eventually a Welsh translation, printed in 1606, though SioÃn Dafydd
Rhys claimed that he had been engaged on one for the previous twenty-
®ve years. It was one of the handful of texts that de®ned Welsh religious
prose-writing, but its impact is likely to have been limited, only one
edition appearing before the 1640s.186 The only other Celtic tongue to
have a set of homilies is, intriguingly, Cornish. There the inspiration was
Catholic, not Protestant, and the translation from Bishop Bonner's Home-
lies was presumably designed to sustain traditional religious beliefs.187
The defence of of®cial homilies by the English establishment also seems
curiously lack-lustre. The main point that both Whitgift and Hooker ad-
duced against Cartwright's attack was the obvious one that homilies were
merely written sermons, as likely to be divinely inspired as the spoken
word from the pulpit.188 Hooker displays little of the loving affection for
them that he lavishes on the liturgy or the reading of the scriptures. The
ambivalence of contemporaries is often echoed by historians, who treat the
homilies as an important source of evidence of the concerns of the Tudor
church while ignoring their possible in¯uence on the man in the pew. It is
in the nature of this type of of®cial text that we know more about the
failures to employ it, expressed in complaints before the church court, than
we do about its positive effect. Some compensation for this de®ciency is
supplied by William Harrison's famous commentary on Protestant worship,

183 184
Ayre, Works of Whitgift, iii. 53. Rollock, Sermons on Paul, preface.
185
G. Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960), 83.
186
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 341, 386, 393.
187
Ellis, Cornish Language, 64±5. The translation was undertaken by a local priest, John
Tregrar, but it indicates the dif®culties of providing a proper translation into Cornish by leaving
Latin terms in the original on occasions and sometimes adding English terms.
188
Ayre, Works of Whitgift, iii. 339. Keble, Hooker: Works, ii. 110±12.
294 Word and Doctrine
in his Description of England. Harrison was hostile to `dumb dogs', those
who failed to preach, but he argued that the homilies were a major help to
those who lacked the training to offer independent sermons.189
The Elizabethan hierarchy was even more indifferent to the other aid
to exposition of the scriptures widely promoted by the Edwardian regime.
At the 1547 royal visitation the English and Welsh parishes were ordered
to acquire, in addition to the Homilies, copies of Nicholas Udall's trans-
lated edition of Erasmus's Paraphrases on the New Testament. The order
was repeated and pursued in later Edwardian episcopal injunctions and
again became the of®cial policy of the Church in 1559.190 There were, as
usual, practical problems. The printed editions of the ®rst tome, covering
the Gospels and Acts, did not emerge from the presses until 1548, and the
commentary on the rest of the New Testament was not available until
1551. Richard Whitchurch, the printer, seems to have used at least ®ve
presses in 1548 to produce suf®cient copies, but there were only two
editions in 1551 and, remarkably, no Elizabethan reprinting to satisfy an
apparently huge market.191 Yet the evidence of the churchwardens' ac-
counts is that parishes often purchased dutifully, and replaced in Eliza-
beth's reign, having presumably returned their copies to the authorities
under Mary.192 The Paraphrases were an unusual evangelical tool to be
placed in this compulsory way at the disposal of all parishioners. Not only
did they emanate from a Catholic source, however sound; they were of a
relatively demanding intellectual standard, not always the plain fare
offering easily attained `understanding of the Gospel' that Udall claimed in
his preface.193 Indeed that preface is striking because of its reiterated
insistence that the text would bene®t the `gross and rude multitude' of
curates and teachers. Udall at least seems to have seen the work as a way
of educating the clergy in the scriptures: the laity were not excluded, but
the assumption is that they were most likely to bene®t at second hand.194
Acquiring Erasmus became yet another test of parochial conformity: as an
educational tool for the laity there is deafening silence about its impact.

189
Edelen, Harrison: A Description of England 36. See below, p. 427.
190
VAI ii. 117±18, 180, 235, 289±90; iii. 10, 88, 210.
191
Pollard and Redgrave, Short Title Catalogue of English Books Printed 1475±1641, publishing
history under New Testament. Darlow and Moule, English Bible, 38±40.
192
See, for example, Whiting, Blind Devotion, 160, 191±2. There are examples of copies held
by the Marian authorities being retrieved, as in the Exeter parish that paid 2d. for `fetching
home of the Paraphrases' in 1560. A glimpse into the mechanisms by which copies were
disseminated is given in Bishop Ferrar's accusation that one of his of®cials was withholding
copies of the Paraphrases for pro®t: A.J. Brown, Robert Ferrar (1997), 101. The forthcoming
article by John Craig should illuminate the Elizabethan history of the Paraphrases.
193
N. Udall, Preface to the Paraphrases on the New Testament: tome 1 (1548), sig. b 7v.
194
Ibid., sigs. b 2v, b 7v.
 The Word Disseminated 295
Hooker ignored the Paraphrases, but he was keen to emphasize another
evangelical tool: catechizing. This was `a kind of preaching . . . [which is]
public performance . . . in the open hearing of men'.195 His Puritan op-
ponents might have been unhappy to hear catechizing described as
preaching, since they saw it as essentially a means of training the layman
to give an account of his or her faith, but they would have endorsed his
argument for the centrality of this form of exegesis. Indeed catechizing
can be seen as the most fashionable of all the means by which the faith
was disseminated in sixteenth-century Europe. Catholics and Protestants,
Conformists and zealous Puritans, all placed the training of the laity by
catechetical means at the heart of their activities. In this ®eld as in others
historians of the late medieval Church have recently warned their col-
leagues not to exaggerate the uniqueness of the Reformation experience:
there was an abundance of aids to Christian understanding in ®fteenth-
century England.196 But both the intensity of concern for the education
of the laity, and the forms of tract that emerged in the aftermath of the
Reformation, are qualitatively different from the ploughman's learning of
his pater noster. In England the period between the 1530s and the death of
Edward saw ambitious experimentation with both primers and catechisms,
providing among others things what Philippa Tudor has called `an ambi-
tious programme of religious instruction for children and adolescents . . .
planned on a nation-wide basis'.197 During these uncertain years experi-
mentation was not con®ned to evangelicals: primers, or books of devo-
tion, were issued using the full panoply of the Sarum Use, pointing the
laity to a better understanding of the of®ces and articles of faith in Eng-
lish.198 During Mary's reign Bonner used his publications as forms of cate-
chesis as well as homily, and under Elizabeth Catholic writers established a
genre of Tridentine writing that was to have signi®cant impact within the
recusant community.199 The provision of proper tools for guiding the
laity was also a priority of the Catholic missions within the Celtic lands of
the British Isles. One of the ®rst Gaelic texts of the Irish Franciscans based

195
Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 18. 3. This and the ensuing paragraphs are heavily
indebted to Ian Green's magisterial study of English catechisms, The Christian's ABC: Catechisms
and Catechizing in England, c.1530±1740 (Oxford, 1996).
196
On pre-Reformation education for the laity see above, ch. 3, and Duffy, Stripping of the
Altars, 53±68.
197
P. Tudor, `Religious instruction for children and adolescents in the early English Refor-
mation', JEH 35 (1984), 391.
198
C.C. Butterworth, The English Primers, 1529±1545 (reprint, New York, 1971), 87±103,
131±9.
199
Bonner, Pro®table and Necessarye Doctryne. The most important of the English Catholic
catechisms was that of Laurence Vaux, ®rst printed abroad in 1568, and extensively reprinted up
to the 1620s [RSTC 24625.5±27a.4].
296 Word and Doctrine
at Louvain was the metrical catechism of Bonaventura O Hussey, a bard
turned priest, and the only Catholic work printed in Welsh during Eliza-
beth's reign was Morys Clynnog's Athravaeth Grostnogawl (1568), a transla-
tion of the catechism of Father Juan Alfonso de Polanco.200
Protestants could therefore in no sense claim exclusive rights either to
the invention of vernacular training in the faith for the laity or for the
development of catechism as a tool of confessional identity. Polemical
claims that the accession of Mary Tudor pushed the unlearned back into a
dark world of unmediated religious images were merely grist to the mill of
ideological controversy.201 But Protestants did invest unusual resource and
energy in the provision of printed catechisms. Ian Green's calculations
indicate that nearly 200 new or translated catechisms or catechetical works
were published in England between 1530 and the turn of the century, and
to this can be added a few imprints on the Continent, plus a number of
Scottish printings of Calvin's catechism as part of the Book of Common
Order. It was the second half of Elizabeth's reign that saw rapidly growing
numbers of texts, and this period too that witnessed suf®cient reprints of
the key Prayer Book catechism through the editions of the Book of
Common Prayer, the ABC with the Catechisme and the Primer and Catech-
ism for it to be reasonable to assume that all parishes and most individuals
could have multiple copies cheaply available.202 We can observe some of
the signi®cance attached to the provision of the formal tools for training
the young among Protestants through the process of translation. In the
case of Welsh the famous ®rst published book was Sir John Price's primer,
which included the Creed, Ten Commandments and Pater Noster, for the
bene®t of the rude and unlearned, and later in the century SioÃn Dafydd
Rhys translated the more advanced catechisms of Alexander Nowell and
Gervase Babington.203 In Ireland the ®rst focus for crown investment in
translation was Kearney's rendering of the Prayer Book catechism, pub-
lished in 1571.204 For the Scottish Highlands John Carswell's translation of
the Book of Common Order included Calvin's catechism, though it was
not until the 1650s that a fully popular form was printed in the Scottish
Vernacular.205
200
Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 81±2. C. Mooney, Devotional Writings of the Irish Franciscans,
1224±1950 (Killiney, 1952), 16±17. Williams, Wales and Reformation, 252±3.
201
Tudor, `Religious instruction', 392.
202
Green, The Christian's ABC, 51, 63±8.
203
J.H. Davies (ed.), Yny Lhyvyr Hwnn . . . (Bangor, 1902). Williams, Wales and the Reforma-
tion, 341.
204
J. O'Kearney, Aibidil Gaoidheilge & Caiticiomsma (Dublin, 1571). C. O'Hainle, `The Pater
Noster in Irish: Reformation texts to c.1650', Celtica 22 (1991), 146±7. Kearney exceeded Sir
John Price's rhetoric by referring to the Irish in his preface as `more savage and more barbarous'
than any other Western race.
205
Dawson, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd', 238±41.
 The Word Disseminated 297
From 1552 all children within the English and Welsh church were
supposed to receive regular instruction in the basic catechism of the
Prayer Book, every Sunday and holy day in the parish church.206 After
1560 their Scottish counterparts were also expected to attend regular
Sunday instruction, usually in the afternoon after the main service.207
Both churches had by this time fully adopted the distinctive question-
and-answer form that marked out Protestant catechisms from their pre-
Reformation models. At the simplest level, in the learning of the basic
texts of the faith, this change of form may not have signi®ed greatly, the
process of assimilation was that of rote learning and repetition that inevit-
ably characterized an oral society. Cranmer's catechism, which was only
four pages long, did little more than provide a new dialogue form to
embrace the basic profession of faith, with the shortest of expositions of
his or her understanding by the catechumen. It was perhaps characteristic
of the nature of the emerging Church of England, that there was initially
little between this simple training in faith, preparing children for con®rm-
ation, and rather more demanding texts suitable for `scholars', the most
popular of which was Alexander Nowell's 1570 compilation. It was also
characteristic of Scottish Protestantism that it should adopt Calvin's cat-
echism, not only because of the stature of its author, but because it was a
lengthy and full exposition of belief, comprehensively supported by scrip-
tural reference. Later English editions of Calvin divided the text into short
components, with approximately two pages to be absorbed each Sunday,
which suggests the level of demand that was being made upon ordinary
Scottish congregations.208
In England there was a growing tendency to generate texts which
would exist in what Green describes as an intermediate ground.209 These
were often, though not exclusively, produced by the godly, for both the
young and for older parishioners who had mastered the Prayer Book
basics and were now to be led to a more explicit understanding of the
faith. This underlines a difference of emphasis in the use of catechizing,
certainly between Protestant and Catholic and perhaps also between dif-
ferent types of Protestant. For the Catholic the principal purpose of
training was preparation for participation in the life of the Church, espe-
cially preparation for confession and communion. This was, of course,
also of signi®cance in the reformed churches: for the Scottish Kirk admis-
sion to communion, and also to baptism and marriage, was contingent on

206
J. Kettley (ed.), The Two Liturgies of Edward VI (PS, Cambridge, 1844), 300±1: the 1549
Book had simply required instruction for the six weeks preceding con®rmation.
207 208
Knox, iv. 343. Green, The Christian's ABC, 68±78, 102 ff.
209
Ibid., 68 ff.
298 Word and Doctrine
knowledge of the catechism. But the Protestant was also required to give
an account of the reasons for faith, argued from biblical example, and this
is what the question-and-answer form and the enlarged catechisms were
designed to elicit.210 As so often, George Herbert seems to see the essen-
tial value of the medium: `at sermons and prayers', he observes, `men may
sleep and wander; but when one is asked a question he must discover
what he is'.211 The catechism could also `edify', in the formal sense of
stirring up the spirit and aiding the work of conversion: something at
which the unof®cial texts seem particularly to have aimed.212
Another crucial medium for the dissemination of the Word was, some-
what paradoxically, music. Liturgy had always been sustained by the mu-
sical traditions of the Church that, in pre-Reformation England in
particular, reached new heights of polyphonic splendour. It was precisely
the elaboration of Catholic music that made it in the eyes of many reform-
ers an inappropriate vehicle for the new churches. The composers and
choirs of Reformation England showed that much could be done to adapt
both to the new language of liturgy and to the requirement that the mean-
ing of the words took precedence over musical complexity. Cranmer, who
showed little enthusiasm for any demanding music to support the liturgy,
wrote to Henry VIII in 1544 about processional singing that it should `not
be full of notes but, as near as may be, for every syllable a note'.213 The
1552 Prayer Book virtually abandoned even this concession to the old
ways, and it seems likely that if Elizabeth had not been a passionate sup-
porter of music within the liturgy the professional cathedral choirs and
their adaptations of the service would not have survived.214 But ordinary
congregations assembled in their Scottish kirks, and English parishes
must often have been almost unaware of this withering of the great trad-
ition of polyphonic music. While a few parishes had been able to muster
choirs to sing the of®ces, in most instances there can have been little
more than the voices of clerks and the most basic manipulations of plain-
song.215

210
I. Green, ` ``The necessary knowledge of the principles of religion'': catechisms and
catechizing in Ireland, c.1560±1800', in A. Ford, J. McGuire, and K. Milne (eds.), As by Law
Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), 70±2.
211
F. Hutchinson (ed.), The Works of George Herbert (Oxford, 1941), 257.
212
E. Duffy, `The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism and the multitude', in
N. Tyacke (ed.), England's Long Reformation: 1500±1800 (1998), 42±4.
213
LP xx. ii. 539. MacCulloch, Cranmer, 330±1.
214
N. Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979), 1±16.
215
There were some notable exceptions: at Ludlow, for example, there was not only a full
musical tradition before the Reformation, but the choir was still singing Latin motets as late as
1597: A. Smith, `Elizabethan church music at Ludlow', Music and Letters 49 (1968), 108.
 The Word Disseminated 299
It was into this world that the reformers introduced congregational sing-
ing, one of the most important cultural experiences of the sixteenth century.
Luther's `vernacular psalms', or what he described in a letter to Spalatin as
`spiritual songs so that the Word of God even by means of song may live
among the people', began a major tradition of the writing of hymns, metrical
psalms, and sacred ballads.216 In England and Scotland the intentions of the
early translators were at once didactic and relatively eclectic. Coverdale,
who published Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes in the mid-1530s, ex-
pressed his hope that `our minstrels had none other thing to play upon, . . .
save psalms, hymns and such godly songs as David is occupied withal'.217 In
practice this meant largely the translation of Luther's hymns, which were
themselves drawn from a variety of sources, the psalms, the liturgical hymns
of the Church and even the elements of the catechism to be sung. The
closest Scottish parallel, The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, published in 1567, but
put together in the 1530s by John and Robert Wedderburn, was even more
diverse, translating some of the psalms, and many of Luther's `ditments'. It
also, says Calderwood, turned `many bawdy songs and rhymes into godly
rhymes'.218 The work of both Coverdale and the Wedderburns ®tted well
into the general endeavours of the ®rst reforming generations to use all
possible media for the transmission of the evangelical message.219
The metrical psalms that were to become the dominant element in
congregational singing also emerged from this pluralistic world of mid-
Tudor translation. Thomas Sternhold, the key ®gure, seems to have been
less obsessively didactic in his approach than Coverdale.220 His psalms
were, according to William Baldwin, `sung openly' before the young
Edward VI, and his writing seems closely linked to the English and French
courtly traditions of devotional translation. But Sternhold did intend his
psalms to be sung, and it was probably he who popularized the so-called
common metre that made the verses accessible and memorable.221 The
psalms were already afforded a high and privileged place in Protestant
thought, `for it containeth', said Becon, `what so ever is necessary for a
Christian man to know'.222 The logic would therefore have been to

216
G.G. Krodel (ed.), Luther's Works: Letters II, vol. il (Concordia, Pa., 1972), 68.
217
R. Leaver, `Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes': English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from
Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535±66 (Oxford, 1991), 3, 62±81.
218
A.F. Mitchell (ed.), A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs commonly known as
`The Gude and Godlie Ballatis' (1567), STS 1/39 (Edinburgh, 1897), introduction.
219
J.N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition,
(Princeton, N.J., 1982), 209±25.
220
Leaver, `Goostly Psalmes', 117 ff.
221
R. Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535±1601 (Cambridge, 1987),
31, 121±5.
222
T. Becon, David's harpe, ful of moost delectable armony (1542), sig. a 7v.
300 Word and Doctrine
employ Sternhold's work in church, especially once the 1552 Prayer Book
had emphasized the signi®cance of congregational participation in wor-
ship. This was, however, a logic that was only slowly recognized. In
Edward's reign of®cial psalm-singing was con®ned to the stranger
churches where, in the words of the Forma ac ratio, `there is a psalm sung
in the vulgar tongue of the whole congregation'.223 In exile the English
and Scots ®nally discovered the merits of communal singing, and not only
at Geneva, though it was there that many extra translations were added to
the Sternhold and Hopkins originals by Whittingham, Kethe, and others.
The Frankfurt congregation, from which Knox and the Genevans were
expelled, also used the metrical psalms, linking them with the 1552 Prayer
Book to which they were committed.224
Though godly ballads and psalms were making some inroads into the
Protestant culture of England and Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century, it
was the years after 1559 that witnessed the development of congregations
into singers of what became known opprobriously as Geneva jigs.225
Even then this was not necessarily a change high on the agenda of those
seeking to make good Protestants out of the Catholic masses. The ®rst
Book of Discipline encouraged the use of the psalms, while acknowledg-
ing without apparent anxiety that singing might not be possible in some
churches.226 But the Scots were at least suf®ciently eager to break older
traditions of church music, and the revised metrical psalter was made an
integral part of the Book of Common Order after 1560.227 The 1559 Royal
Injunctions in England made more oblique gestures towards congregational
music. It was made permissible to sing `an hymn or suchlike song' at
the beginning and end of public prayer, provided that the music made the
meaning of the words clear.228 This weak form of liturgical advice seems
to have been intended partly to de¯ect the queen's attention from any-
thing that smacked of Genevan practice. Elizabeth managed to show her
distaste for metrical psalms in characteristic fashion, deliberately leaving
the opening of the 1562 session of Parliament when one was sung. Her
subjects seem to have felt differently: psalms `in the Geneva fashion' began
to be sung at Paul's Cross sermons in 1559, and quickly became associated
with preaching occasions. Jewel described `six thousand persons, old
223
Bodl. MS Barlow 19, fo. 151. This is the translation of Forma ac ratio, probably prepared
with Cranmer's approval.
224
Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, 18.
225
Leaver, `Goostly Psalmes', 238ff.
226
Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 180.
227
The Genevan version of the metrical psalms used in Scotland excluded the hymns added
to Day's English text. It is interesting that the only formal addition of metrical psalms to
the English liturgy came in 1578.
228
VAI iii. 23.
 The Word Disseminated 301
229
and young, of both sexes, singing together and praising God'. The
popularity of the new form of worship is attested by the publishing history
of the revised Sternhold and Hopkins printed by John Day after 1562. The
Whole Booke of Psalmes went through almost 500 editions in the following
century and a quarter, and by the mid-Elizabethan period every congre-
gation must in principle have had ready access to the text.230 By 1578 the
ecclesiastical establishment had decided that congregational singing must
be embraced wholeheartedly, and metrical psalms and hymns were
ordered to be sung at the Accession Day celebrations.231
The evangelical potential of psalm-singing is suggested by the Scottish
commentator who described the collective knowledge of words and tunes
as so good that ministers were `able to direct a psalm to be sung agreeable
to the doctrine to be delivered, so he that taketh up the psalm is able to
sing any tune, and the people for the most part to follow him'.232 In rural
Essex William Harrison prided himself on singing so plain `that each one
present may understand what they sing'.233 But congregational psalm-
singing was probably an ambivalent tool for the construction of godliness.
Its very popularity suggests more about traditions of singing and the pleas-
ure it offers than about enthusiasm for the message of the psalms. The
translation of ballad tunes and vigorous musical rhythm into a sacred
context presumably produced its own excitement, though this did not
necessarily last as years of exposure to this type of unaccompanied singing
reduced Geneva jigs to slow-tempoed dirges. A set of common tunes
based on more formal principles of mid-Tudor church music became
normative, and by the early seventeenth century Temperley estimates that
a psalm note could last for two seconds.234 The other ambiguity of godly
singing was the relationship between those scriptural texts of uncontested
probity employed in church, and the wider pattern of godly ballad-
making. The latter existed outside a formal liturgical context and was less
susceptible to clerical control than the former. Here, as Tessa Watt has
shown, English Protestantism developed a strong godly and popular ballad
tradition, which began, like so many other cultural manifestations of
evangelism, to falter after the 1570s. Thereafter the self-styled godly were
less likely to want what William Samuel had sought with his rhyming

229 230
ZL i. 71. Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, 46±55.
231
Later services of thanksgiving etc. prescribed psalms but did not specify their metrical
form: W. Keatinge (ed.), Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth (PS, Cambridge, 1847), 558±61.
232
Quoted in I.B. Cowan, Scottish Reformation (1982), 158.
233
Edelen, Harrison: A Description of England, 33. G.R.J. Parry, A Protestant Vision: William
Harrison and the Reformation of Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1987), 150±1.
234
Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, 64±7.
302 Word and Doctrine
Pentateuch in the mid-century: to `have my country people able in a small
sum to sing the whole contents of the Bible'.235 The medium became
suspect, and there was a tendency to revert to more formal tools such as
catechisms and primers. But godly ballad-making, as well as psalm-singing,
survived as forms of cultural expression that possessed genuine popularity
beyond the ranks of the zealous.236

Idols, Words, and Texts

The `Genevans', that small band of clerical brothers who became `public
enemies number one' to Elizabeth I, believed fervently that there must be
`full and plain' reformation `according to Gods holy will and work without
addition'.237 `Consider', wrote one of their leaders, Christopher Good-
man, to Cecil in 1559, `the danger to us all if we proceed not with more
ferventness'.238 Goodman, with Anthony Gilby and John Knox, formed a
trio passionately committed to the most austere form of radical religious
change. Idolatry, monuments of superstition, lay avarice, and popular
superstition were to be swept ruthlessly aside by the pure light of the
gospel. The only true instruments of evangelism were the Scripture and
preaching: catechizing and psalm-singing might be conceded, but they
were of secondary value in the pursuit of the victory of the true Church.
And at the end of the 1550s that victory was to have explicitly British
dimensions. Gilby wrote of the need for `earnest travail' in the `Lord's
vineyard', while Goodman followed Knox to Scotland and served the
¯edgling kirk at Ayr and St Andrews. He also undertook a preaching tour
to the Isle of Man, and in the mid-1560s went to Ireland as chaplain to Sir
Henry Sidney in the hope of further conversions (and promotion).239
Knox constantly prayed that both the realms and Scotland would experi-
ence full reformation.240
The vision of Christ's Church made wholly anew by preaching and
teaching was always a chimera, as was the hope of spiritual unity within
`Great Britainy'. In Scotland circumstances made it possible for some
acute confrontation between the old and the new: though even there at
the level of the congregation radical reform had to be made acceptable by
235
W. Samuel, The abridgements of Goddes statutes in myter (1551), sig. a 2.
236
Watt, Cheap Print, 42±57, 115.
237
A. Gilby, `An admonition to England and Scotland to call them to Repentance', in
Knox, vi. 562.
238
CSP Sc i. 257.
239
J. Dawson, `Anglo-Scottish Protestant culture and integration in sixteenth-century Brit-
ain', in S.G. Ellis and S. Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State 1485±1725
(1995), 92±105. DNB
240
See below, p. 366.
 The Word Disseminated 303
241
a measure of integration with old forms and values. In Ireland, as we
have seen, even the preliminary work of cleansing the idols was barely
undertaken, and the crucial dissemination of the Word was hampered by
lack of resources and lack of will. The story is more complex in England:
the extirpation of the idols proceeded with apparent vigour: yet it was
never complete. Almost a century after Edward's godly rule William
Dowsing was able to uncover dramatic evidence of the survival of images
throughout East Anglia.242 More important than this survivalism is the
sense that the cleansers of the Temple always had to contend with alterna-
tive cultural visions that were not swept aside by their zeal. The `idols in
the frontispiece', images directly or indirectly religious, that have been so
vividly described by Tessa Watt, show the existence in post-Reformation
England of a continuation of mixed modes of expression of religious
ideas.243 The eye continued to be distracted and seduced from the purest
forms of hearing the Word.
Words and texts were also less than amenable to the highest demands of
Knoxian Protestantism. Not only did the godly preachers have to contend
with those literary manifestations of a pluralistic culture like Guy of War-
wick and Robin Hood denounced by Edward Dering as `childish folly',
and `witless devices': they had to persuade their auditors that the way of
Christ was to be preferred to these secular tales.244 The rigorous response
to the unregenerate multitude was to compel them to conformity through
discipline: to construct the captive congregation that might then become
obedient to the Word. This was Archbishop Loftus's argument in Ireland:
®rst force your recusants onto the church bench, then constrain them to
listen to the sermon.245 But even rigorous Calvinists recognized that coer-
cion was an imperfect tool for the regeneration of Christian society: dis-
cipline and evangelism were two sides of one coin. And the persuasion
that was essential to true evangelism was also a process of negotiation with
auditors and readers. Negotiation involved the accommodation of the
Protestant message to congregational needs, and more broadly the adjust-
ment of wider cultural norms to meet new circumstances. It was charac-
teristic of Elizabethan England that absolute prohibitions on forms of
religious representation or argument were unusual unless they threatened
the security of the state. But what was acceptable did slowly changeÐin
visual terms, saints were replaced in print and paint by Old Testament
®gures and eventually by allegorical or classical ®gures; in text, Bible
241
On this theme see below, ch. 10.
242
T. Cooper (ed.), The Journal of William Dowsing (Woodbridge, 2001).
243
Watt, Cheap Print, 131±68.
244
Dering, A briefe and necessary Catechisme sig. a 2v.
245
CSP Irl iv. 365 ff.
304 Word and Doctrine
stories superseded those of medieval legendaries.246 Prints of providential
deliverances and images of martyrs or reformers af®rmed a stronger visual
identity with the new faith: one that even Knox would have found it
dif®cult to dispute.247 The success of the evangelists depended upon an
ability to work with the grain of the culture. If a logocentric faith was to
be constructed in Reformation Britain, it had to engage with a predomin-
antly oral and visual environment, and not one in which either written
text or formal preaching had easy access to the people. The world could
sometimes be made anew: more often it had to be renewed painfully in
accommodation with the very culture that the exponents of godliness
despised.

246
Watt, Cheap Print, 178 ff. But Walsham gives interesting examples of old narratives em-
bedded in new texts: for example, medieval exempla of the punishment of lecherous priests by
zealous saints survive little adapted, Walsham, Providence, 90±1.
247
Walsham, Providence, 252±3.
 8
THEOLOGY AND WORSHIP

Confessions
Reformed churches required confessions. They were obliged both to
situate themselves within the communities of the Protestant faithful and
to offer a standard of orthodoxy to their own people. De®nitive English,
Scottish, and Irish formularies of faith were all promulgated within a
decade in the 1560s. The Thirty-Nine Articles, though strictly speaking
Thirty-Eight since one was removed for political reasons, were approved
by Convocation in 1563. Their ®nal form was endorsed by Parliament in
1571.1 The Scots Confession was devised and rati®ed in 1560.2 Then in
1567 the Irish acquired a partial confession in the Twelve Articles, agreed
by the bishops and Lord Deputy Sidney.3 Of course the history of state-
ments of faith was far longer, stretching in the case of sixteenth-century
England from the Ten Articles of 1536 to those of Lambeth in 1595, and
in that of Ireland having a terminus only in the articles issued by the Irish
convocation of 1615.4 However, the 1560s provides a useful vantage point
from which it is possible to examine the doctrinal in¯uences that led to
the articulation of a particular form of confession, and to look forwards to
the responses of mature Protestantism in the last decades of the century.
Labelling the confessions of faith with the badge of identity of one of
the great Continental reformers has long been a hobby of theologians and
historians. In the case of Scotland there has been a comfortable consensus
that the Confession is strongly Calvinistic. The English Articles have
always presented more problems because of their evolutionary nature,
based as they are on Cranmer's 1553 Forty-Two Articles but incorporating

1
For the Thirty-Nine Articles, Cranmer's Forty-Two Articles that preceded them, and the
Irish Articles, the standard text is C. Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion, 3rd edn.
(1895). There is a useful comparative text of the two forms of the English Articles in G. Bray
(ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1994), 284±311.
2
For the Scots Confession see Knox, ii. 95 ff., and in APS ii. 526 ff. For textual problems,
see M. Robinson, `Language choice in the Reformation: the Scots Confession of 1560', in
J.D. McClure (ed.), Scotland and the Lowland Tongue (Aberdeen, 1983), 59±78.
3
Hardwick, Articles of Religion, 120±3, 327±9.
4
A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590±1641 (Dublin, 1997), 156±78.
306 Word and Doctrine
the ideas of Archbishop Parker and his fellow bishops. They are also
problematic because Cranmer's own theology evolved, and is not easily
frozen in a moment of time.5 Both English and Scottish formularies cer-
tainly borrowed freely linguistically and conceptually from Continental
sources.6 However, it is important to consider them as organized state-
ments of the beliefs of their immediate authors, and the distillation of
those aspects of faith that were thought to be essential for their national
churches. And since we are comparing neighbour kingdoms articulating
their beliefs in close physical and temporal proximity it may be valuable to
focus upon similarity and difference largely in a British context.
The briefest of schematic summaries indicates both similarity and differ-
ence. Each confession begins from the principle that articles of faith
should follow medieval precedent in that they should serve as an expos-
ition of the Creed, the Paternoster and the Decalogue. The Scots Confes-
sion moves through twenty-®ve articles essentially under six category
headings. Beginning with theology, the doctrine of God, it moves
through anthropology, Christology, and ecclesiology to end with the
rewards of faith, or eschatology. Its closest focus is on the cycle of justi®-
cation, sancti®cation, and regeneration, which occupy articles twelve to
®fteen. The English Articles also begin with theology, and Christology,
but then appeal to the authority of Scripture, before turning to anthropol-
ogy. Once again the central articles, ten to eighteen, are on justi®cation
and election, followed by ecclesiology, that is articles on the visible and
catholic Church. The concluding articles contain no eschatology, though
this had been present in Cranmer's earlier version. Instead they return to
ecclesiology and the English church's relation to civil society. Thus ex-
pressed the similarities of organization and concern seem clearly to out-
weigh the differences. Only the greater preoccupation of the English text
with the particularities of ecclesiastical affairs, and its silence on eschat-
ology, immediately offers contrast.
Much the same could be argued about the content of many of the
individual sections of the confessions. The two churches share in general
Catholic dogma on the persons of the Trinity, and of Christology, and
they participate equally in the reformed concerns for a proper account of
5
There is a large literature on the Thirty-Nine Articles, much of it re¯ecting confessional
concerns within modern Anglicanism. Of continuing value are E.C.S. Gibson, The Thirty-Nine
Articles of the Church of England, 2 vols. (1910); E. Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-
Nine Articles, revised edn. (1955). The liveliest theological discussion, mercifully unburdened with
too many concerns for labelling, is O. O'Donovan, On the Thirty-Nine Articles (Exeter, 1986).
6
The Scottish Confession has not produced quite such controversy, though considerable
disagreement remains about in¯uences: there are good discussions in W.I.P. Hazlett, `The Scots
Confession of 1560: contexts, complexion and critique', ARG 78 (1987), 287±320; and brie¯y
J.T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (New York, 1967), 298±300.
 Theology and Worship 307
justi®cation, grace, and redemption. Both follow the common Protestant
belief in soli®dianism, in the inef®cacy of works for salvation, and in
predestination, the latter term interestingly not used by the Scots. Both, it
has been suggested, reveal a vigorous negative response to the decrees of
the ®rst session of the Council of Trent on grace, justi®cation, Scripture,
and tradition. They accept the existence of only two sacraments explicitly
enjoined by Christ and offer very similar statements about the nature of
Christ's presence in the Eucharist. `The mean', says the English Article 28,
`whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.'
`The Holy Ghost', says Article 21 of the Scottish Confession, `makes us to
feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus . . . which now is in the
heaven.' Both af®rm the importance of the visible Church militant here
on earth, and both acknowledge that true churches can adopt local custom
while being identi®ed at least by the two `marks' of proper preaching and
administration of the sacraments. Indeed it would be dif®cult to identify
fundamental doctrinal issues that separate the two, or collectively divorce
them from the mainstream of Continental reformed thought.7
It is not dif®cult, however, to discern the seed of future division in
both the substance and the rhetoric of the confessions. The famous Eng-
lish Article 17 on predestination is not wholly incompatible with its Scot-
tish counterpart: neither at this stage offers a full and stark formulation of
the double decree, the predestination to election or reprobation, which is
found in later Calvinist confessions. Yet the Scots begin from God's `eter-
nal and immutable decree', and then turn to election as a part of the
chapter on Christology.8 Cranmer and his revisers move rapidly from the
divine purpose to an equally Christological view of election, one in which
men are chosen `in Christ' out of mankind. The difference lies in a
stronger, Godward emphasis in the Scottish text, as against an anthropo-
logical concern in the English Article. Here, as elsewhere, forms of lan-
guage seem particularly important in marking difference. The English
predestinarian decree dwells upon the knowledge of election as `full of
sweet, pleasant and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel
in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ': the Scots gives far
greater weight to the objective theology of Christ's atonement, and man's
depravity, emphasizing the `darkness' of men's minds and the grace of the
Creator, wholly unmerited by his creatures. Although the Scots Confes-

7
It is interesting, however, that the most direct connection between the English and Scottish
articles comes from the use that the latter make of Cranmer's condemnations of works of
supererogation, of transubstantiation, and of the sleep of the soul after death, the last of which
did not survive into the revised 1563 English text.
8
The Scots actually avoid the term predestination, and the full exposition of election is
subsumed under Christology.
308 Word and Doctrine
sion was the work of six hands, the six Johns, it is dif®cult not to associate
some of its gloomier passages with that purveyor of moral Calvinism, John
Knox.9 Chapter 13, on the cause of good works, is particularly trenchant,
denouncing `murderers, oppressors, cruel persecutors, adulterers, whore-
mongers, ®lthy persons, idolaters, drunkards, thieves and all workers of
iniquity' as excluded from the possibility of sancti®cation. The fact that in
1 Corinthians 6 hope is held out to exactly these sinners appears not to
have troubled the writers. The positive side of this language is a concern
for evangelical activism in the defence of faith that is lacking in the
English Articles. `The sons of God does ®ght against sin, . . . and if they
fall, they rise again with earnest and unfeigned repentance.'10
And with a distinction of language came some separation of doctrinal
emphasis. The Scots followed Calvin in an explicit insistence that regener-
ation and renewal, following upon election, led to a continual battle
between ¯esh and spirit. Justi®cation is the beginning of a process of
sancti®cation.11 Cranmer and Parker engaged in some denials and af®rm-
ations that seemed far less relevant to the Scots: attacking purgatory and
the ®ve non-dominical sacraments; explicitly upholding sacramental ef®-
cacy when the minister proved unworthy; and offering a very precise
de®nition of the canonical books of Scripture. A belief in covenant the-
ology is sketched in the Scots Confession: Chapters 4 and 5 can be read as
a narrative of the promises made between God and man from Adam to
Christ. But it is, as already indicated, in ecclesiology that the two texts
most clearly diverge. The English Articles maintain a remarkable silence
about the invisible Church of the elect: though their predestinarian views
argue for its necessity. The Scots, while acknowledging the visible, cath-
olic Church, are driven by their understanding of the Church of the
saints, `citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem', the `Kirk . . . invisible, known
only to God'. In consequence they are concerned to separate the true and
false Church in this world and to seek out the marks of the former. The
addition of discipline, as a third mark of the true Church, can be ex-
plained by the in¯uence on the Confession of the earlier Forma ac ratio of
Jan Laski, which became the model for reformed texts from the 1560s.12 It
also expresses a clear dualistic theology, in which the wheat and chaff of

9
The six authors of the Confession were John Knox, John Willock, John Winram, John
Spottiswoode, John Douglas, and John Rowe. Apart from Winram, all had studied abroad and
were familiar at ®rst hand with reformed practice. Knox, ii. 128, 105.
10
Hazlett, `Scots Confession', 295±7.
11
Ibid., 314.
12
I am grateful to Professor MacCulloch for pointing out the in¯uence of Laski. See his
article `The importance of Jan Laski in the English Reformation', in C. Strom (ed.), Johannes a
Lasco, 1499±1560 (Emden, 2000), 315±45.
 Theology and Worship 309
the visible Church must be separated as far as it lay within human capacity
to perform God's will. On the other hand, the ordering of the visible
Church and its relationship with the state was a dominant concern of the
English Articles. The doctrine of the Church was established brie¯y: its
traditions, ceremonies, and texts were accorded much attention.
Since the Scots Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles became estab-
lished as the founding doctrinal statements of their respective churches
there is a tendency to accord them a status equivalent to the Catholic
magisterium at the moment of their production. But their contemporary
standing was less assured. Their authors were indeed seeking to articulate
de®nitive beliefs, but in circumstances that they acknowledged were im-
perfect. At the deepest level imperfection was a consequence of man's
inherent depravity and incapacity. Thus the preface to the Confession
followed the example of some of its Continental models by appealing to
the spiritual veri®cation of Scripture, and by requiring that anyone who
doubted its consistency with the Word should `admonish us of the same
in writing' so that the authors might endeavour to give satisfaction.13 To
this must be added the legitimation for adaptation and change, at least in
the areas of pure worship and Christian life, provided by an understanding
of ecclesiology that emphasized the `marks' of the true Church rather than
the full corpus of dogma. Thus Parker apparently felt free to abandon
Cranmer's speci®c condemnations of millenarianism and other radical
doctrines that appeared by 1562 to be less than central to the interests of
the English church.14 The Scottish Kirk was more radical in replacing the
Confession for a time with the closely parallel statement of the Genevan
exiles of the 1550s: this was the printed version that appeared in the Book
of Common Order after 1564.15
The formulation of the texts also has to be understood in terms of
audience. This is particularly true in England, where the Thirty-Nine
Articles happened to represent the end of an extraordinarily complex
struggle to establish a confession of faith. Cranmer had spent much of his
archiepiscopate wrestling with doctrinal statements.16 Both the major for-
mularies of the Henrician church and the endless negotiations with Lu-
therans in the same reign had developed in him acute confessional
antennae as well as providing a stock of language that he was able to
recycle into his ®nal Articles.17 Debates with the Lutherans led him into a

13
Knox, ii. 96. P. Schaff, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches (1877), 437±79.
14
W.P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), 247±51.
15
Hazlett, `Scots Confession', 295. Knox, ii. 169±73.
16
D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, Conn., 1996), 30±1, 161±6, 206±8, 520±38.
17
The articles drafted for agreement with the Lutherans in 1538 proved a major linguistic
in¯uence on the Forty-Two Articles.
310 Word and Doctrine
pattern of balancing the need for an explicit statement of the faith of the
Church of England, against his profound belief in the need for unity
among `true' churches, and these two against the political exigencies of
Protestant alliance. It is striking that when Cranmer was in a more power-
ful position under Edward he chose to focus upon pure worship and the
puri®ed Church before he returned to the articulation of England's con-
fessional identity. MacCulloch has suggested that the delay is to be ex-
plained by the archbishop's ecumenical concerns. In March 1552 he wrote
to Calvin urging that the Protestant churches should convene a meeting
that might `handle all the heads of ecclesiastical doctrine', and propagate
the truth, in opposition to the work of the ®rst session of Trent.18 At the
same time he approached Bullinger and Melanchthon. All was to little
effect, so the archbishop began to collate work begun long before to
ensure that at least England had its own confession.
A second explanation can be offered for Cranmer's ordering of his
religious changes, if not their precise timing. Doctrine taught through
liturgy, and expressed in new church discipline, was a more powerful
evangelical weapon than the theological statement. The notion of the
`edi®cation of the members of Christ' embraced all these levels of expos-
ition, but might in certain circumstances prioritize the ®rst two over the
last. It is revealing that in the contracted timetable available to the Scots in
the ®rst year of their Reformation the preparation of the Book of Discip-
line was given precedence over the Confession.19 Moreover the divines
who prepared the statements of belief always worked against a background
of secular political need and expectation. In 1560 the Scots were deeply
dependent upon English aid, and were constrained by English interests.
The Confession became one of the elements in the pursuit of `how a
uniformity might be had in religion in both realms', and Maitland of
Lethington was anxious to assure Cecil that if the document gave offence
it could either be changed or `at least in some thing quali®ed'.20 The
Elizabethan Articles were caught up in con¯icts which may have been
partly internal debates about ideology, but which also had an eye to the
need to remain in harmony with the Lutherans.21 After the bishops had
actually subscribed to the Articles following considerable debate and
redrafting in the 1563 convocation, Article 29 on the wicked at the Lord's

18
OL i. 24±5.
19
Knox, ii. 183±4. Cameron, in his edition of the First Book of Discipline, prefers the view
that ecclesiastical policy, rather than doctrine, was still undecided: J.K. Cameron (ed.), The First
Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), 8±9.
20
CSP Sc i. 471, 479.
21
H. Horie, `The Lutheran in¯uence on the Elizabethan Settlement, 1558±1563', HJ 34
(1991), 519±38.
 Theology and Worship 311
Supper was abruptly omitted. This must have been on royal initiative: the
tone of the article was anti-Lutheran, and it also offended the sensibilities
of those who sought a strengthening of the idea of the real presence in the
Eucharist. Elizabeth probably disliked it on both counts, though not suf®-
ciently to oppose its restoration in 1571 when the diplomatic situation had
altered.22
The 1567 Irish Articles offer a particular instance of this need to re-
spond to political expediency. While the English hierarchy wrestled with
the ®nal formulation of a full doctrinal position the Irish were left in
limbo, a situation which the small number of committed Protestants
among the clergy began to exploit to avoid the full consequences of
English conformity. There was a political interest, both from the Irish
bishops and from the English governors, in doing as little as possible
further to destabilize the local situation, and so Parker's Eleven Articles of
1561 were adapted to an Irish environment.23 Parker's Eleven Articles,
one of several formularies proposed before 1563, were cautious and gen-
eral, avoiding precise de®nitions of the most controversial issues of Refor-
mation doctrineÐthe sacraments, justi®cation, and sin against the Holy
Spirit. The Irish were left with an `imprecise and undifferentiated Protest-
antism', rather than any thorough articulation of faith.24 In the event this
political caution served the ¯edgling Protestant church rather well, since it
allowed it to develop with less constraint than the full Church of England
credo might have done. The Irish case also reinforces the point that full
confessional documents were not necessarily essential to the development
of a church. By the time the Irish Protestants did acquire such a document
in 1615 they had lived for half a century with only a sketchy account of
their faith.

Doctrine Before the Confessions: Henry VIII's Reign

More than forty years of doctrinal crisis and con¯ict lay behind the ®nal
formulation of the English and Scottish confessions. This was never con-
tained within national boundaries, since it found expression in the debates
of theologians in the universal language of Latin and the universal medium
22
Haugaard, Elizabeth and Reformation, 253±4, stresses Elizabeth's own tastes as against the
issue of Lutheran diplomacy.
23
Hardwick, Articles of Religion, 327±9. The Eleven Articles became Twelve by the simple
expedient of splitting one into two parts. A. Clarke, `Varieties of uniformity: the ®rst century of
the Church of Ireland', in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish,
SCH 25 (Oxford, 1989), 107.
24
A. Ford, `The Church of Ireland, 1558±1634: a Puritan church?' in A. Ford, J. McGuire,
and K. Milne (eds.), As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin,
1995), 57±8.
312 Word and Doctrine
of the printed text. It was also structured by the speci®c circumstances of
the reforming generations: the roles they were able to play within the
universities; the common experience of exile; ultimately the tragedy of
martyrdom. Analysis of the shifting beliefs of the reformers has to remain
sensitive to these external in¯uences. They provided the matrix within
which doctrine was articulated: they also at times profoundly in¯uenced
the nature of dogma itself.
The ®rst generation of reformers in both England and Scotland fell ®rst
and foremost under Lutheran in¯uence. There are predisposing in¯uences
within the universities, above all of course the growing interest in human-
ist ideals and the study of languages. The beginning of direct biblical
exegesis in university lectures, when added to the key contribution of
Erasmus's Novum Testamentum, provides much of the ground on which
the reformers were to build. Bishop Fox's instructions for his theology
reader (1517) clearly broke with the medieval tradition of biblical com-
mentary.25 At Cambridge, in particular, Augustinian scholarship still pos-
sessed in¯uence, sustaining some areas of doctrinal debate that were to be
of great signi®cance for the Lutherans.26 The internationalism of all the
universities, but especially of the Scottish ones, made access to advanced
humanist scholarship, and later to the earliest reformed ideas, a natural
progression for a minority. Finally, there is the paradox that both
St Andrews and Cambridge had towering intellectuals who, by their very
engagement on the side of tradition in the ®rst stages of the European
crisis, brought an awareness of new ideology home to the British Isles.
John Major, the great reviver of the nominalist position, found himself
under direct attack by Melanchthon, and may have contributed to the
earliest debates on reform when he taught at St Andrews from 1523 to
1526. John Fisher, even more clearly, did much to disseminate knowledge
of Lutheran beliefs when he published in Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio
(1523) the most systematic doctrinal defence of the Catholic position in
the generation before the Council of Trent.27
But it was essentially Lutheranism that seduced away the liveliest British
theologians of the 1520s and early 1530s. A number, like Robert Barnes,
William Tyndale, and Patrick Hamilton, moved from a formal humanist

25
S.L. Greenslade, `The faculty of theology', in J. McConica (ed.), The History of the Univer-
sity of Oxford, vol. iii: The Collegiate University (Oxford, 1986), 304, 313±14. One can sometimes
see a largely inadvertent link between the arts and reform, as in the Oxford requirement in 1527
that lectures be given on Melanchthon's Logic: ibid., 179.
26
R. Trueman, Luther's Legacy: Salvation and the English Reformers 1525±1556 (Oxford, 1994),
18±19.
27
G. Wiedermann, `Martin Luther versus John Fisher: some ideas concerning the debate on
Lutheran theology at the University of St Andrews, 1525±30', RSCHS 22 (1984±6), 13±34.
 Theology and Worship 313
training into heresy, and it is often dif®cult to identify a precise moment
when they themselves fully rejected the Church. But none, except per-
haps the eclectic Bilney, escaped the dominance of Luther's theology as it
began to circulate in a series of key texts from 1520 onwards. The conse-
quences of full commitment were usually ¯ight into exile. Tyndale, the
®rst to take this path, left England in 1524, closely followed by William
Roye, from the Observant Franciscans at Greenwich. George Joye
escaped in 1527 at the time of the trial of Bilney and Arthur, and John
Frith in the next year.28 Hamilton ¯ed to Marburg from St Andrews in
1527. Robert Barnes spent two years under house arrest in his Augustinian
order after 1525 and probably left for the Continent in 1528. Slightly later,
Alexander Alan, subsequently known as Alesius, ¯ed from St Andrews
after making clear his conversion in the aftermath of the burning of Ham-
ilton.29 The exiles were all more directly exposed to Lutheran ideas once
on the Continent, and several, including Barnes, studied at Lutheran uni-
versities. If they were not fully Protestantized before departure, they
swiftly became so.
As men of the `new learning' this generation took seriously Luther's
injunctions that correct understanding of the divine will was essential to
the Christian life.30 None, except perhaps Frith, seem to have been theo-
logical systematizers by vocation: they were rather translators, evangelists,
and controversialists, and in consequence they often appear in their doc-
trinal writings primarily as conduits for Continental ideology.31 Robert
Barnes, the most explicitly Lutheran of the English reformers, saw his
Supplication (1531) as a way of making the range of German thought
available in English. After defending himself against the charges of heresy
that had been levelled against him he offered ten theological common-
places. By far the most signi®cant of these was the insistence that works
played no part in justi®cation. This, for Barnes, was the heart of the
Pauline message, and therefore the central organizing principle of the
scriptures. The vision was strongly Christocentric: He is the all-suf®cient
redeemer and `we need of nothing but of him only'.32 Barnes, following

28
There are useful short biographies of this generation of English reformers in W.A. Clebsch,
England's Earliest Protestants, 1520±1535 (New Haven, Conn., 1964). Also D. Daniell, William
Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven, Conn., 1994); C.C. Butterworth and A.G. Chester, George
Joye: 1495±1553 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1962); J.P. Lusardi, `The career of Robert Barnes', in CWTM
viii. 1365±415.
29
For Hamilton see Wiedermann, `Martin Luther versus John Fisher', 15±18; for Alesius,
Wiedermann, `Alexander Alesius, Scottish Lutheran (1500±1565)', ARG 55 (1964), 161±91.
30
J.E. McGoldrick, Luther's English Connection (Milwaukee, 1979).
31
This, and the following paragraph, are strongly indebted to Trueman, Luther's Legacy.
32
R. Barnes, A Supplicatyon made by Robert Barnes doctoure in divinite unto the most excellent and
redoubted prince henrye the eyght (Antwerp, 1531), fo. 38v.
314 Word and Doctrine
Luther, stressed man's passivity in the process of justi®cation, and his
dependence upon divine grace for the gift of faith. Works were not
denied, but they were placed ®rmly within the context of the believer's
grateful response to justi®cation as the fruits of faith. It has been suggested
that in the second edition of A Supplication, written in 1534 after he had
returned to England, Barnes may have diluted his strong defence of the
Lutheran view of justi®cation and works by accepting the controversial
Letter of James as canonical.33 But at most this seems directed to empha-
sizing that abiding concern of the reformers, the moral results of soli®-
dianism.
Tyndale and Frith display rather more distinctive doctrinal positions on
grace, justi®cation, and works, under the broad in¯uence of Luther's
thought. Tyndale's vision of man's redemption focused explicitly on the
latter's bondage to sin, and the role of justi®cation in freeing man to ful®l
the law. He was concerned with the ethics of works and the possibility of
regeneration through them after justi®cation.34 Through Christ's promises
`the elect were then justi®ed inwardly before God, as outwardly before
the world by keeping of the laws and ceremonies'.35 The Old Testament
provided Tyndale with much of his account of the proper keeping of law
and ceremonies. While clearly starting from a Lutheran view of grace and
justi®cation during his years of work on the New Testament, Tyndale
moved via study of the Pentateuch towards the concerns of writers in the
reformed tradition, especially Bucer. Clebsch sees this as part of a move-
ment away from the theocentrism of early Lutheran thought, and towards
the beginning of covenant theology; and Tyndale is indeed a proponent of
the idea that God and man are bound together by mutual promises.36 As
he explained in A Fruitful and Godly Treatise expressing the Right Institution
and Usage of the Sacraments (1536), `by baptism we be bound to God and
God to us, and the bond and the seal of the covenant is written in our
¯esh'.37 But for Tyndale, unlike many later covenant theorists, the bond
between God and man is not that of contract, it is rather one of family
loyalty founded in love. Frith moved closer in sentiment to Luther with
his concern for God's righteous wrath against man and his emphasis on
the atonement, though he stressed that faith in Christ must be associated
33
Trueman, Luther's Legacy, 169±71, 194±6.
34
In the case of both Tyndale and Frith Trueman argues convincingly against Clebsch that
there is a basic consistency in their approach to soteriology.
35
H. Walter (ed.), William Tyndale's Doctrinal Treatises and Other Works, 4 vols. (PS, Cam-
bridge, 1848±9), i. 417.
36
Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants, 181±204. M. McGiffert, `William Tyndale's Concept
of Covenant', JEH 32 (1981), 167±84.
37
T. Russell (ed.), The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John Frith, 3 vols.
(1831), iii. 517.
 Theology and Worship 315
with the cross of suffering and that assurance depended upon a single-
minded commitment to faith. Much of his vision of the righteousness of
God emerged from his most signi®cant polemical work, his attack on
purgatory, in which the false purgatory of the papists was contrasted with
the true purgatories of faith and the cross. Frith was also the translator of
Patrick's Places, the tract based on Patrick Hamilton's disputes at his trial in
1528.38 These are strongly identi®ed with Lutheran soteriology, especially
on the antithesis between the law and the gospel that was a paradigmatic
assumption of the German. And when Alesius came to lecture on the
Psalms in Cambridge in 1536 he followed Luther and Melanchthon in
insisting that the Psalter provided the loci communes doctrinae Christianae:
the major exegetical tool through which the Pauline opposition of law
and gospel could be made manifest.39
While Luther's soteriology was of central importance to this generation
of reformers, his views on the other key area of doctrine disputed with the
Roman church, the sacraments and especially the sacrament of the altar,
were never so fully accepted. The dilemma of the nature of Christ's
presence in the elements was resolved by Lutherans with an insistence on
the reality of the body and blood, underpinned by a belief in the ubiquity
of Christ's risen body. This speci®c solution, defended by Luther at Mar-
burg in 1529, seems to have elicited little enthusiasm from the English,
though Barnes appears to have held it.40 Other theologians, in contact
with a range of Protestant beliefs, were already looking to the Swiss for a
more compelling theology of the Eucharist. George Joye published a tract
(anonymously) called The Supper of the Lord, in which he attacked the
sacri®ce of the Mass, but also questioned the nature of the real presence.41
Frith is the best-known anti-Lutheran: after his return to England in 1532
he was imprisoned, tried, and ultimately burned for sacramentarianism. In
two tracts A Christian Sentence and his Answer to More he had rejected
transubstantiation on the grounds that Christ's presence in the heart, not
the bread, is salvi®c. He was less interested in the precise nature of Christ's
relationship to the bread and wine, though ultimately he argued that
spiritual feeding by the faithful was the only true form of communion. At
his trial he argued that he could not swear that `our Prelates opinion of
38
Knox, i. 19±35, prints Frith's translation.
39
G. Wiedermann, `Alexander Alesius' lectures on the Psalms at Cambridge, 1536', JEH 37
(1986), 22±3.
40
This, at least, is what Tyndale believed, when he advised Frith not to meddle with the
presence of Christ in the sacrament since `Barnes will be hot against you'. Walter, Tyndale's
Works, vol. i, p. liiii.
41
Butterworth and Chester, George Joye, 93±6. W.D.J. Cargill-Thompson, `Who wrote
``The Supper of the Lord''?', in his Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker, ed.
C.W. Dugmore (1980), 83±93.
316 Word and Doctrine
the sacrament', that is that Christ was corporally present, `is an undoubted
article of faith'.42 Cranmer, still orthodox in his adherence to a view of
the corporal presence, identi®ed Frith's position with that of Oecolampa-
dius.43
In the years after Henry's break with Rome the experience of English
and Scottish theologians was inevitably different. The Scots who adopted
the new faith continued to face the harsh necessity of exile or execution.
The most important of them remained a part of the Protestant diaspora,
sometimes until death. Their need for patronage led a number to England,
where the support of Cromwell and Cranmer was of crucial importance
in providing livings and security. Alexander Seton, John MacAlpine, John
MacDowell, and John Willock were the most distinguished of a group
that escaped south of the border from James V's intermittent persecu-
tion.44 Others, like George Wishart and John Wedderburn, chose Euro-
pean refuge instead. The choice of exile was obviously painful, yet it
brought with it the opportunity to pursue gospel truth unimpeded by the
need to consider the construction of a church. Hence Cranmer found the
Scots in England an uncompromising group; worthy predecessors to that
most famous exile John Knox. When Alesius lectured on the Psalms at
Cambridge his Lutheran message was harsh. The true church was distin-
guished by the Word and the Cross, the company of saints justi®ed and
uni®ed by Christ but suffering under the Cross. In a sharply dualistic
image the prosperity of the false Church was compared to the pains of the
true, experiencing weakness and persecution for Christ's sake. There was
little re¯ection on the building of the visible Church for these battered
Christians.45 Alesius was equally unbending on the sacraments. Having
been run out of Cambridge by the university authorities he was offered
the opportunity by Cromwell to participate in the debate on the Ten
Articles (1536). He did so with a trenchant speech on the dominical status
of only two sacraments, and was eager to continue in this vein until told
®rmly by one of Cranmer's aides that he could no longer, as a stranger, be
admitted to the disputation.46

42
Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants, 122±7.
43
J.E. Cox (ed.) The Works of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1556, 2 vols.
(PS, Cambridge, 1844±6), i. 32. D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (1996), 101.
44
J.E. McGoldrick, Luther's Scottish Connections (1989), 36 ff. J. Durkan, `Scottish ``evangelic-
als'' in the patronage of Thomas Cromwell', RSCHS 21 (1982), 127±56.
45
Wiedermann, `Alexander Alesius' lectures', 37±41.
46
Alesius himself tells this tale in A. Alesius, Of the authorite of the word of God agaynst the
bisshop of London (?Leipzig, ?1537), sigs. a v±b viii. Wishart encountered similar problems at
Bristol with his uncompromising preaching: M. Skeeters, Community and Clergy: Bristol and the
Reformation c.1530±c.1570 (Oxford, 1993), 51±6.
 Theology and Worship 317
The shadow of exile had not wholly lifted for English theologians and
polemicists, but from the early 1530s onwards they encountered the possi-
bility of change sanctioned by the prince. This stimulated a struggle to
build a godly visible Church that tended to overshadow more abstract
doctrinal speculation. Indeed even before Henry VIII had contemplated a
breach with Rome Tyndale's two 1528 publications, The Parable of the
Wicked Mammon and The Obedience of a Christian Man, had signalled clearly
that the reformers were committed to building a new order within the
English polity.47 Two interconnected forms of their struggle are particu-
larly important for an understanding of religious change. First, the re-
formers met vigorous ideological opposition from their conservative
colleagues. The tradition of polemical debate begun by Fisher and so
powerfully developed by More was continued by Tunstal, Gardiner, and
Bonner, as well as lesser ®gures like John Standish, Richard Smith, and the
artisan Miles Hogarde.48 These con¯icts moulded Protestant response,
most obviously in focusing upon certain issues, the authority of the
Church, vernacular Scripture, clerical marriage, and the nature of the
presence in the Mass that were central preoccupations for Catholics.49
Secondly, much reforming thought had to be directed to issues of ecclesi-
ology, church building, and the role of the godly prince that were a
consequence of the political opportunities of the 1530s. The limits of
obedience became, for obvious reasons, one of the most deeply experi-
enced ideological debates of the mid-Tudor decades.50
The polemical thrust of Thomas More's work was suf®ciently wide-
ranging and ambitious to force response from the reformers across almost
the whole of the controverted theological landscape. He had, after all,
begun the challenge to Luther, with his support for Henry's Assertio Septem
Sacramentorum, and his own contribution in the Responsio ad Lutherum
(1523). This, however, was part of the international campaign, keeping the
debate within the parameters of European learned discourse, and in Latin.
From 1529 onwards the theological controversy was brought into an Eng-
lish environment with the publication of the Dialogue concerning Heresies.51
More became, in Cuthbert Tunstal's famous phrase, `a rival [to] Demos-
thenes in our native tongue'.52 The purpose was not a narrow assertion of
47
Daniell, William Tyndale, 155±249.
48
R. Pineas, Thomas More and Tudor Polemics (Bloomington, Ind., 1968). Clebsch, England's
Earliest Protestants, 286±90. P. O'Grady, Henry VIII and the Conforming Catholics (Collegeville,
Minn., 1980).
49
H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice
(Aldershot, 2000), 115±79.
50
CWTM, viii. 1137±1268.
51
A. Fox, Thomas More: History and Providence (Oxford, 1982), 128±66. CWTM vi. i. 1±435.
52
E.F. Rogers (ed.), The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, N.J., 1947), 387.
318 Word and Doctrine
doctrinal orthodoxy: rather a powerful act of persuasion directed at the
spiritually faint-hearted utilizing every form of attack upon heresy and its
writers. Tyndale's Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue (1531) is more
overtly doctrinal, focusing upon the nature of the Church, the centrality of
Scripture, and the problem of authority.53 This established the tone for the
later stages of More's confrontations not only with Tyndale, but with Frith
and Joye: the reformers on the whole sought to focus on doctrinal issues;
More on the rhetoric of persuasion in defence of the established Church.54
Diatribes there were on the Protestant side, but they tended to come from
individuals like William Barlow and Simon Fish, more interested in trading
in old-style anti-clerical abuse than in the theology of reform.55
In the aftermath of the break with Rome the polemical energies of
English theologians were for a time caught up in the defence of Henry's
settlement. The main audience was once again international, and diatribes
against Rome provided the most lively rhetorical material. But the
struggle to establish the doctrinal nature of the new church quickly pro-
vided the forcing-ground for another cycle of internal polemical con¯ict.
The 1530s saw the ®rst two attempts at English formularies, the Ten
Articles and the Bishops' Book, the ®rst partially based on the agreements
reached with the Lutherans known as the Wittenberg Articles. The Ten
Articles followed Wittenberg in identifying only three sacraments, pen-
ance as well as baptism and the Eucharist, and in arguing that the `only
suf®cient and worthy causes' of justi®cation were God's grace freely
promised through the merits of Christ's blood and passion. Otherwise
they represented a series of compromises between conservatives and re-
formers in which the tone of commentary, for example on the saints, is
often evangelical, but the substance would scarcely have satis®ed any
Lutheran. The Bishops' Book resuscitated all seven sacraments, but in
other ways it pushed further in the direction of the Articles, articulating a
sacramental theology that was explicitly Lutheran. It perhaps owed most
to Melanchthon's Loci Communes, which had been dedicated to Henry in
1535. The Bishops' Book was produced after a series of bruising encoun-
ters between conservatives and reformers: the former, for example, failed
to get a strong defence of shrines and pilgrimages inserted into the text.56
53
CWTM viii. i. and ii. W. Tyndale, An answere to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, ed. H. Walter
(PS, Cambridge, 1850).
54
Daniell, William Tyndale, 250±80.
55
On the contribution of Barlow and Fish see Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants, 229±51.
His third `minor' ®gure Roye is also a popularizer, but has what appears to be an interest in
more advanced reforming theology in his work of translation.
56
C. Lloyd (ed.), Formularies of Faith put forward by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII
(Oxford, 1825), 3±211. The account given here follows closely that of MacCulloch, Cranmer,
161±6, 185±97.
 Theology and Worship 319
Such compromises failed to please the zealous, and years later Alesius
recalled bitterly to Elizabeth that `as soon as the King began to hate
[your mother], laws hostile to the purer doctrine of the Gospel
appeared'.57 The continuing negotiations Cromwell conducted with the
Lutherans persuaded conservative theologians that confrontation was once
again necessary.58 The opportunity came in 1540, when after the passage
of the Act of Six Articles and the debacle of the Cleves marriage Gardiner
was able to attack Cromwell through that most determined of spokesmen
for Lutheranism, Robert Barnes. Gardiner's sermon for the ®rst Sunday in
Lent deliberately challenged Barnes on the key tenet of justi®cation and
faith. Faith and works were both necessary for justi®cation by God.59
John Standish, responding to Barnes's protestation at the stake, denounced
him on the key grounds that he had taught `that God is the author of sin,
and that works do not pro®t, and that Christ's death is suf®cient'.60 And
indeed not only Barnes, but Jerome and Garret who were burned with
him all presented faith in Christ's merits and a denial of meritorious works
at the heart of their profession of faith.
The Act of Six Articles, followed by the fall of Cromwell and the
burning of Barnes, Jerome, and Garret, once again changed the ideo-
logical landscape. The next few years produced a second Protestant dias-
pora, driving key reformers, John Bale, William Turner, John Philpot,
John Rogers, and the young John Hooper, overseas, and ensuring that
survivors like Miles Coverdale and George Joye were sent on their travels
again.61 Their places of exile are signi®cant: by now the magnets were the
reformed cities of Strasbourg and Basel, along with the great centre of
Swiss Protestantism, Zurich. Antwerp, of course, remained attractive be-
cause of its proximity to England, its printing industry, and its political
environment. While some of the Scots still chose a Lutheran environ-
mentÐMacAlpine went to Copenhagen and John Lyn to WittenbergÐ
this was very unusual for English refugees of the 1540s.62 The Henricians
had ¯ed from the power of a visible Church that constrained their con-

57 58
CSP For Eliz. I, no. 1303, pp. 532 ff. O'Grady, Conforming Catholics, 98±102.
59
On Gardiner's role in these controversies see G. Redworth, In Defence of the Church
Catholic (Oxford, 1990), 106 ff. See also L.E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation
England (Oxford, 2000), 62±81, though this constructs Gardiner as far too sympathetic to some
of the ideas of the reformers.
60
Foxe, v. 434±8.
61
Ryrie has traced thirty men and women who spent time abroad between 1539 and 1547 at
least partly for their faith: A. Ryrie, `English Evangelical Reformers in the Last Years of Henry
VIII', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), 123±46.
62
J. Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', in J. Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform: Essays in Honour
of James K. Cameron, SCH Subsidia 9 (Oxford, 1991), 379±80. J. Durkan, `Heresy in Scotland:
the second phase, 1546±58', RSCHS 24 (1992), 329, 333±4.
320 Word and Doctrine
sciences primarily on three issues: the nature of the Eucharist, free access
to the vernacular scriptures, and the marriage of priests. On the last two
Lutherans were thoroughly sound; on the former they often appeared
little better than the `Act with Six Strings'. The works that this group
produced in exile re¯ect their preoccupations: attacks on the false Church
and the clergy, defence of clerical marriage, and the beginning of the great
English debate on the real presence. The tracts from this period attributed
to George Joye give some ¯avour of exile attitudes. He did continue the
debate about faith and works, bitterly charging Gardiner as the agent of
Barnes's downfall, thereby provoking another round of polemical tracts
on justi®cation, and predestination.63 But he also translated Melanchthon's
Defence of Priests' Marriage, originally sent to Henry VIII, and produced his
own defence of matrimony; he seems to have been responsible for trans-
lating Zwingli's Christianae Fidei Exposito, and possibly for a text on Bap-
tysme and the Lordis Souper, which gives a broadly reformed view of the
Eucharist.64 Finally, in a curious and rambling commentary on Daniel,
incorporating a translation of Osiander's re¯ections on the ending of the
world, he points forward to the preoccupation with eschatology that was
to become so important a feature of English Protestant thought.65
It was scarcely surprising that a persecuted minority should turn to the
prophetic books, and particularly to Revelation, as a way of providing
meaning and purpose for Christ's people suffering under the cross.66 In
his ®rst sermon after his conversion in 1547 John Knox was already iden-
tifying the Roman church with the Antichrist and contrasting this with
the true Church, which `heard the voice of the one pastor, Jesus Christ'.67
Heinrich Bullinger, in a commentary on the Apocalypse that deeply in¯u-
enced English Protestants, spoke of the prophecies as indicating the
working out of God's purposes in history, and his just rule over every-
thing in this world. The sealed book of Revelation 5. 1 contained `all the
counsels of God, all his works and judgements' which, though hidden
from the world, could be understood by the elect who knew Christ.68
This accorded well with the reformers' general insistence on the need for
faith in Christ's hidden glory, and the hope in his promise that would be
made manifest at the End. Traheron, in a tract partly based on Bullinger,
63
Joye wrote against Gardiner in 1543; Gardiner responded in 1546 with A Declaration of such
true articles as George Joye hath gone about to confute as false (1546), and Joye countered with The
refutation of the byshop of Winchesters derk declaration of his false articles (1546).
64
G. Joye, A frutefull treatis of baptyme and the lordis souper (? Antwerp, 1541). Butterworth and
Chester, George Joye, 205±44.
65
K.R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530±1645 (Oxford, 1979), 61±5.
66
R. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse (Appleford, Oxon., 1976), 113±24.
67
Knox, i. 190.
68
H. Bullinger, A hundred Sermons upon the Apocalips of Jesu Christe . . . (1561), 156.
 Theology and Worship 321
written during the Marian exile, explicitly linked the coming of Antichrist
with this dependence upon God's providence:
the decay and ruin, the af¯ictions, and persecutions of the Church in this latter
time, whatsoever is done in the world by Antichrist and his members, is not
tossed at adventure by hap, but governed by the hand and certain providence of
God.69
The most vigorous of this generation's contributors to the debate about
the role of Antichrist and the theology of Last Things was John Bale,
whose Image of bothe churches was constructed in three phases during his
Henrician exile.70 Bale was less a theologian than historian and polemicist,
though he was thoroughly steeped in reformed theology and passionately
committed to sola scriptura. Scripture had primacy in the understanding of
divine purposes, but Scripture had to be used carefully to read the story of
God's actions from chronicle. There was a continuing history of the true,
as of the false, Church: in any age men could determine whether they `are
citizens in the new Jerusalem with Jesus Christ, or . . . in the old super-
stitious Babylon with antichrist the vicar of Satan'.71 The text of Revela-
tion provided Bale with the structure of his commentary on the history
of the two churches, not only in the speci®c identi®cations of, for example,
the pope with the whore of Babylon, but in the historic scheme which
correlated the seven seals with the seven ages of the Church's history. The
Reformation, the time of the seventh seal, was to be the ful®lment of
prophecy.72 Bale shared his concern for the proper doctrinal and moral
understanding of the pattern of history with Bullinger, Osiander, and the
Magdeburg Centuriators. However, his popular text, which went through
four editions in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth, formed the basis
for a very strong and distinctive English engagement in the struggle be-
tween Christ and Antichrist, and in the narrative of history as revelation.
It exerted a powerful in¯uence over John Foxe, whose Acts and Monu-
ments shed Bale's lurid language, and his insistence on the magisterial voice
of the author, while sharing his basic understanding of the relationship
between prophetic Scripture and the history of the true Church.73
The `persecuted remnant' also took up a polemical theme that was
particularly close to many of their hearts: the defence of clerical mar-

69
B. Traheron, An Exposition of the 4. Chapter of St. John's Revelation (1573), sig. a iii.
70
Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, 32±68. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, 68±91.
71
J. Bale, `The Image of Both Churches', in Select Works, ed. H. Christmas (PS, Cambridge,
1849), 252.
72
Parish, Clerical Marriage, 61±81, 151±2.
73
T. Betteridge, Tudor Histories of the English Reformation, 1530±1583 (Aldershot, 1999), 80±8,
175±89.
322 Word and Doctrine
74
riage. While the principle of marriage for priests had been espoused with
vigour by most of the magisterial reformers, circumstances in England
ensured that the controversy would be particularly prolonged and bitter.
Henry VIII's profound hostility to married priests, the curiously reluctant
acquiescence of Edward's regime, and Mary's deliberate policy of depriv-
ing married clergy, all fuelled the controversy. But so did an awareness by
the major protagonists that the dispute about celibacy and marriage
touched many of the key doctrinal issues of the reformed faith. As in the
case of revelation, prophecy, and the history of the churches, no-one
enlarged on this issue so fully as Bale. It was he who most explicitly
identi®ed clerical celibacy, with its inevitable concomitant of `whoredom
and hypocrisy', as being the mark of Antichrist. He linked together his-
tory and his loathing of the `whoring clergy', by showing that the popes
Sylvester II and Gregory VII had poisoned the Church with their insist-
ence that `none should be admitted to holy orders unless he forswore
marriage for the term of his life'. Bale also assailed the falsity of vows by
the celibate clergy, and the pollution of the sacraments that came from
clerical concupiscence. A vow of chastity, especially one made in a mo-
nastic context, was inherently idolatrous, because it was a form of will-
work, claiming the capacity to be virtuous, and to elevate the Rule in the
place of the more visibly idolatrous graven image. And for Bale and others
who wrote in the same vein the impossibility of a chaste priesthood
subverted all claim to a mediatory role in the Eucharistic sacri®ce. God,
wrote Anthony Gilby, `will not be changed into any new forms by the
mumbling and breathing of a whoremonger or sodomitical priest'.75
The debate about clerical marriage had wide doctrinal implications,
but, more than almost any other aspect of Reformation polemic, it also
had a tendency to be conducted at a level of cheap jibes and scurrilous
innuendo. On the Catholic side Thomas More in the ®rst generation and
Miles Hogarde and Thomas Martin thereafter were as willing to be ven-
omous as Bale, Gilby, and William Turner were among the reformers.76
The battle was in part being fought for an in¯uence over the hearts and
minds of the laity, but the more immediate targets were the clergy them-
selves, who might be won or lost for the wider cause of Reformation by
74
I am indebted to the work of Dr Parish, cited above, for this and the ensuing paragraph.
75
A. Gilby, An Answere to the devillish detection of Stephane Gardiner (1547), fo. 56v.
76
At least sixteen of Bale's writings engage in the debate about marriage and celibacy. No-
one else approximates to this ®gure, though six of More's polemics have some mention of
marriage and celibacy, as do the same number of William Turner's. Apart from Bale, the fullest
texts are George Joye, The Defence of the Mariage of Preistes Agenst Steven Gardiner (1541); Thomas
Martin, A treatise declaring and plainly Provyng that the pretensed marriage of prestes . . . is no mariage
(1554); and John Ponet, A defence of the mariage of Priestes by Scripture and Auncuiente Wryters
(1549).
 Theology and Worship 323
the persuasion of the pamphleteers on this issue. This was practical divin-
ity with a vengeance: the subduing of the ¯esh promising `double honour'
to the clergy in the view of the Catholic polemicists, the sober choice of
marriage being an indication of election for the Protestant. And while the
political issue hung in the balance it seems that more energy was
employed in this ideological confrontation than in any other except the
profound divisions of the Eucharistic debate.

The Eucharistic Debate and Cranmerian Liturgy

Early English Reformation polemical debate ranged widely over the intel-
lectual and spiritual landscape in contention between Catholics and re-
formers. Yet it had an unerring tendency to return to the deepest source
of Catholic distress: the challenge to the nature of the Mass. To take
Gardiner's work as exemplary of traditional beliefs: he turned to a public
defence of the Mass in 1546 in his A Detection of the Devil's Sophistrie,
which urged the unlearned not to reject the central mysteries of the
Eucharist because of the complexity of the arguments being presented to
them. Under Edward, while challenging Bucer on clerical marriage, he
reserved his most powerful debating skills for the defence of the Mass
against Cranmer's attack. Though Gardiner could acknowledge that Cath-
olic understanding of transubstantiation had changed over time he
grounded his faith most passionately upon a belief in the reality of Christ's
miraculous presence in the mutation of bread and wine into body and
blood.77 The defence of the Mass was also a defence of the sacri®cing
priesthood, set apart to re-enact Christ's redemptive offering upon the
cross: it touched the heart of traditional conviction that the sacralized,
mediatory role of the clergy was central to the process of salvation. In
comparison, justi®cation by faith alone, though `a terrible speech', as
Gardiner described it when discussing Cranmer's 1547 homily on the
subject, was opposed not so much for itself as for its threat to the suprem-
acy of the Eucharistic sacri®ce.78 The Scottish hierarchy displayed some of
the same horror of sacramentarian heresy above all others. The 1549
provincial council proposed to proceed against heretics and sacrament-
77
Redworth, Church Catholic, 235±6, 260±1. In all Gardiner produced six volumes of polem-
ics during his enforced stay in the Tower under Edward. The immediacy of A Detection is
indicated by the fact that Gardiner seems to have written in response to the sacramentarian
views of the martyr Anne Askew.
78
Gardiner was most familiar with the complexities of the debate on justi®cation through his
attendance at the diet of Regensburg in 1541. Apart from Gardiner, the most signi®cant defence
of the Catholic position was provided by Tunstal in 1551: De Corporis et Sanguinis Domini in
Eucharistia, published in Paris in 1554: H. Davies, Worship and Theology in England from Cranmer
to Baxter (Princeton, N.J., 1970), 88±90.
324 Word and Doctrine
arians `and chie¯y against those who inveigh against the sacrament of the
Eucharist'.79
The intensity of Catholic commitment to the Mass was more than
matched by the vigour of reformed opposition. Once Henry VIII's con-
straining hand had been lifted there was an outpouring of polemical litera-
ture against `Mistress missa'. 1548 alone saw thirty-one hostile tracts
published, ranging from simple negative polemics to sophisticated treatises
preparing the ground for the debate on the First Prayer Book.80 Both sides
acknowledged that, in terms of practical divinity, the most critical task of a
new liturgy would be the proper de®nition of the central act of Christian
worship. Hence the overwhelming importance of a proper understanding
of Cranmer's doctrine of the Eucharist, and of the ways in which he sought
to represent it liturgically. Each phase of the archbishop's evolving under-
standing of Eucharistic theology has been sharply debated by theologians
and historians.81 What has seemed generally clear since the work of Peter
Newman Brooks a generation ago is that Cranmer rejected full Catholic
dogma in the early 1530s and adopted a position not far removed from that
of the Lutherans, insisting on a true and corporal presence of Christ in the
elements while moving away from an explicit emphasis on transubstanti-
ation.82 Then sometime between Henry's last regnal year and 1548 Cran-
mer moved decisively away from the idea of the real presence, and we
have his own word that the main agent for this change of heart was
Nicholas Ridley. Ridley `by sundry persuasions and authorities of doctors',
and in particular through his reading of the ninth-century theologian
Ratramnus of Corbie, persuaded the archbishop to accept that Christ's
words at the Last Supper should be interpreted in a spiritual sense.83
Ridley's mature view of the Eucharist, articulated in his prison treatise
A Brief Declaration of the Lord's Supper (1554), included praise of Ratram-
nus's ®gurative interpretation of Christ's presence, but focused on the
spiritual feeding that was accessible to those who apprehended that pres-
ence through faith. His people were sealed in a unity with his mystical
body.84 As bishop of London Ridley's most powerful contribution to the
reform movement was his ®erce hostility to altars, with their implication
of sacri®ce. A table was the appropriate board at which `spiritually to eat

79
D. Patrick (ed.), Statutes of the Scottish Church 1225±1559, SHS 54 (1907), 123±4.
80
J.N. King, English Reformation Literature (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 89. At the other end of
the debate, Peter Martyr was still writing in answer to Gardiner in 1556: A. Pettegree, Marian
Protestantism (Aldershot, 1996), 120±1.
81
C.W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers (1958), 117. MacCulloch, Cranmer,
278, 399±403.
82
P.N. Brooks, Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of the Eucharist (1965).
83 84
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 382±3. Davies, Worship and Theology, 103±6.
 Theology and Worship 325
85
his body and spiritually to drink his blood'. Cranmer arrived at much
the same conclusion, through complex paths, exposed to a diversity of
in¯uences. Among those in¯uences prior to the full construction of the
First Prayer Book were two of the greatest Continental reformers to
engage themselves with the English Reformation: Martin Bucer and Peter
Martyr Vermigli.86 Bucer corresponded with Cranmer in 1547 and 1548,
expressing his own Eucharistic views: complete hostility to transubstanti-
ation and adoration of the elements, with a form of receptionism in which
the faithful were drawn up to heaven and receive their `own Christ, as
celestial food'.87 Peter Martyr brought to England on his ®rst visit a text
of John Chrysostom, which apparently asserted the unchanging nature of
the bread and wine at the Eucharist.88 Armed with these guides and his
own wide reading in the scriptures and Fathers Cranmer set out to trans-
late the liturgy and steer his revised Eucharist through Parliament. This, as
we have seen, demanded political skill to arm theological rectitude: as
Martyr observed at this crucial juncture, `I see there is nothing in the
world more dif®cult than to found a church.'89
Parallel developments in Scotland obviously lacked the formality of
doctrinal debate that characterized Edwardian England, but the nature of
the Eucharist was also a central preoccupation. The most articulate of the
Castilian exiles, Henry Balnaves, still concentrated on the core Lutheran
doctrine of justi®cation in his 1548 tract The Confession of Faith, written in
his Rouen prison.90 But George Wishart, the leading martyr of the 1540s,
had already used his preaching mission in new ways, introducing his
fellow Scots to a modi®ed Swiss position on the sacraments, and translat-
ing the First Helvetic Confession of 1536 for their bene®t. The Lord's
Supper was commemorative: the bread and wine were also signi®ers of
the spiritual presence of the body and blood in the souls of the faithful.
Thereafter the Scottish reformers regarded it as normative to oppose
Catholic doctrine with a version of the spiritual presence.91 By the time

85
H. Christmas (ed.), The Works of Nicholas Ridley (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 322. Though note
that Ridley was not the ®rst to attack the altars: Cranmer's visitors in Norwich diocese initiated
the campaign at the end of 1550. R. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and People during the English
Reformation, 1520±70 (Oxford, 1979), 165±6; MacCulloch, Cranmer, 438.
86
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 381±3.
87
B. Hall, `Cranmer, the Eucharist and the foreign divines in the reign of Edward VI', in
P. Ayris and D. Selwyn (eds.), Thomas Cranmer, Churchman and Scholar (Woodbridge, 1993), 217±58.
88
M. Anderson, `Rhetoric and reality: Peter Martyr and the English Reformation', C16J 19
(1988), 456±61.
89
G.C. Gorham (ed.), Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears during the Period of the Reformation
in England, 2 vols. (1857), i. 74.
90
H. Balnaves, The Confession of Faith (Edinburgh, 1584): it was Knox who rescued this text,
intending it to be printed. Knox, i. 250.
91
Kirk, `Early Scottish Protestants', 394±6.
326 Word and Doctrine
Knox returned from his period of Continental exile to preach to the
`privy kirks' in 1555 his form of presentation of the sacraments was em-
phatically reformed: he ministered to the gentlemen of the Mearns, for
example, at `the Table of the Lord Jesus'.92
The debate about the First Prayer Book showed Cranmer's clear iden-
tity with reformed views, especially in his insistence that only those who
are `members of his body' truly receive Christ. In Cranmer's revision of
the Mass the adoration of the elements was ®rmly suppressed; Christ's
sacri®ce upon the cross was located at a once-for-all historical moment
and was uncoupled from any re-presentation of the atonement; and all
idea of offertory was detached from the elements.93 In the homily that
preceded the reception of the elements, the spiritual form of feeding was
made explicit: `if with a truly penitent heart and lively faith we receive
that holy Sacrament; . . . then we spiritually eat the ¯esh of Christ and
drink his blood; then we dwell in Christ and he in us'.94 Cranmer's
surviving canon of the Mass was intended to substitute for the Latin
sacri®ce a clear statement denying all material oblation.95 But the language
and structure of the book itself was often conciliatory to conservative
opinion, and was already envisaged by Bucer as `only to be retained for a
time' while `the people . . . may be won over'. Hooper famously com-
plained that he was so offended by the book that `if it be not corrected, I
neither can nor will communicate with the church in the administration
of the supper'.96 The words of administration remained ambiguous, and
the wafer was still broken: some sense of corporeal presence might still be
read into Cranmer's words. Gardiner's on/off response to the text,
claiming that on Christ's presence in the sacrament `there was as much
spoken in that book as might be desired', may have been merely tactical,
or a desire to stretch obedience to the limits.97 However, it underlined
the need, already detected by the archbishop's foreign advisers, to produce
an unambiguous text.
The interval between the two Prayer Books was occupied by continu-
ing intense debate about the nature of the Eucharist, now driven much
more explicitly by the contributions of Cranmer's foreign advisers. Peter
Martyr's most visible offering was his role in the debate on the nature of
92
F. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh,
1989), 47.
93
F.A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (1890), 404±5, 442.
94
J. Ketley (ed.), The Two Liturgies, ad 1549 and ad 1552 . . . in the Reign of Henry VIII (PS,
Cambridge, 1844), 79.
95
E.C. Ratcliff, `The liturgical work of Archbishop Cranmer', JEH 7 (1956), 197±8.
96
OL i. 535±6, 79.
97
Foxe, vi. 14. W.K. Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI
(Cornell, 1966), 36.
 Theology and Worship 327
the Eucharist in the Oxford disputation of May/June 1549. The Oxford
disputation showed Martyr at his most vigorous in the attack on transub-
stantiation, and in his use of patristic sources to demonstrate that bread
and wine continued to be so described after consecration. Although he
was himself dissatis®ed with his performance, Martyr seems to have ex-
pounded the basic nature of the reformed position suf®ciently clearly.98 In
the parallel Cambridge disputations there was not the same sense of a solo
performance by a great divine: Madhew, Ridley, Grindal, Guest, Pilking-
ton, and Perne all spoke against the Catholic position: Bucer seems to
have been present in Cambridge but content for others to lead. There
were some differences of emphasis between Cranmer's two great advisers:
Martyr's position on the presence being nearer to what Gerrish has called
`symbolic parallelism' than Bucer, whose view, like that of Calvin, was
that the signs of the elements produce actual spiritual experience for the
faithful.99
Bucer was alarmed that Martyr's propositions for the Oxford debate
might lead men to assume that Christ was absent from the Supper. But
they were agreed on the essence that had to be conveyed to the faithful
through liturgy. This can be summarized under four headings: Christ's
body and blood are spiritually present in the sacrament; their presence is
only apprehended through faith; the Holy Spirit stirs up such faith; and a
conjunction is effected between believers and the body of Christ.100 All of
this demanded an absolutely explicit separation between the signs and the
things signi®ed. Martin Bucer in his Censura, a thoroughgoing critique of
the 1549 Prayer Book text, insisted, for example, that bread rather than
communion wafers should be used in the service, and that any remainder
of the elements should be taken home and used by the celebrant.101 Two
other theologians also in¯uenced Cranmer: the `Zurichers' John Hooper
and Jan Laski. Laski, at Cranmer's prompting, endeavoured to orchestrate
an agreed statement among the exiles about the nature of the Eucharist;
this failed largely because Bucer was concerned that the language of
Zurich remained too symbolist.102 Hooper offered his own trenchant

98
Foxe, vi. 297±335. P. McNair, `Peter Martyr in England', in J.C. McLelland (ed.), Peter
Martyr Vermigli and the Italian Reformation (Waterloo, Ont., 1980), 85±105.
99 Anderson, `Rhetoric and reality', 454 ff. Hall, `Cranmer and the foreign divines', 227±33,

though this is misleading in minimizing Martyr's in¯uence and exaggerating that of Bucer.
B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis, 1993),
166±7. Cranmer's relationship to these positions is discussed by MacCulloch, Cranmer, 614±16.
100
C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1946), 41±51.
101
B. Hall, `Martin Bucer in England', in D.F. Wright (ed.), Martin Bucer: Reforming Church
and Community (Cambridge, 1994), 152±4. Davies, Worship and Theology, 107±11.
102
Jan Laski contributed a `memorialist' tract to the Eucharistic debate: Brevis ac dilucida de
sacramentis ecclesiae Christi tractatio (1552). MacCulloch, `Jan Laski', 328±9.
328 Word and Doctrine
contribution to the debate with his Answer to Gardiner's polemic and
underscored the memorialist qualities of the rite: `as for the sacramental
eating . . . there is nothing but a memory of this death, whereof Christ
altogether spoke in the sixth of John, and interpreteth many times this
word ``eat'' for ``believe'' '.103
While Cranmer was advised and supported by his theological specialists,
his own full exposition of Eucharistic doctrine, set out in the Defence of the
True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our
Saviour Christ (1550), showed no slavish dependence upon the formula-
tions of others.104 Patristic sources were marshalled with great con®dence
to sustain a case that there must be a complete break from Catholic
concepts of the Mass, the repeated sacri®cial offering of Christ, the ador-
ation and oblation, the belief that the wicked can eat and drink Christ's
body, and the notion that the elements can be in any sense transmuted.
These were themes of far greater import to the archbishop than the pre-
cise de®nition of the form of reception of the elements, though on the
latter he was insistent that Christ truly dwelt in faithful communicants and
they in him. This proceeded beyond any memorialist or metaphorical
de®nition of the nature of reception, and yet Cranmer tended to eschew
any implication of a substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which
he saw as articulated in Bucer's emphasis upon the organic unity of the
faithful in the body of Christ. A characteristic Cranmerian observation is
that `Christ is present in the sacrament, as they [Scripture and the fathers]
teach also that he is present in his word, when he worketh mightily in the
hearts of the hearers.'105
The actual Eucharistic changes of the Prayer Book of 1552 assimilated
Cranmer's own views, those of his advisers, and the need to respond to
critics, especially Gardiner.106 The canon of the Mass was dramatically
broken: for example, the Lord's Prayer was removed to the post-commu-
nion phase of the liturgy lest it should be seen in its petition for daily
bread as having Eucharistic reference, and the Benedictus was deleted for
the same reason. The memorialist form of the administration of the elem-
ents, `Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee and
be thankful', was emphasized, though the notion of partaking of the body
and blood was not wholly lost. There was a sustained attempt to remove
any implication of consecration, and the symbolic elevation of bread and

103
S. Carr (ed.), Early Writings of John Hooper (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 156.
104
The most compelling discussion of Cranmer's writings is in MacCulloch, Cranmer, 462 ff.
See also Davies, Worship and Theology, 111±20.
105
J.E. Cox (ed.), The Works of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1556, 2 vols.
(PS, Cambridge, 1844±6), i. 11.
106
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 504±12.
 Theology and Worship 329
cup by the minister during the recitation of the words of institution was
also abolished.107 And, although the changes to the Eucharistic rite were
of central importance, the ending of prayers for the dead was of almost
equal signi®cance. The use of the communion service at funerals, still
sanctioned in 1549, was abolished, as was the commendation of the soul
of the dead person to the Father. The intermediary role of the priest,
linking the living and the dead, and the possibility of offering sacri®ce to
in¯uence the fate of the departed, were both swept aside as part of the
denial that the Mass could be made ef®cacious through human agency.108
The radicalism of Cranmer's 1552 liturgy was also marked in its ®nal
removal of all suggestion of veneration of the saints and its ®nal denial of
processions as a part of worship. But while its doctrinal position was now
unambiguous, and its denial of any association with the old canon abun-
dantly clear, it remained something very different from the reformed
liturgies which were being developed in the cities of Switzerland and
southern Germany. It may be, as MacCulloch has suggested, that the
archbishop himself wished to go further. Peter Martyr told Bucer in 1551
that `if the business had been committed to his individual hand, purity of
ceremonies would without dif®culty have been attained', but that he was
constrained by others.109 On the other hand, when Cranmer did battle
with John Hooper about the ordinal and the wearing of vestments he
revealed a dimension of his beliefs that militated against rapid change or
the purity of Switzerland.110 At the core of the con¯ict about whether the
bishop-elect of Gloucester should be consecrated according to the ordinal
was an attitude to authority, meshed with a belief in co-operation and
political pragmatism. `The general consent of the whole kingdom' had
established the ordinal, with its insistence on proper clerical dress, and
only a change in such consent could alter the need for obedience to a
requirement that was not repugnant to God's Word. Here the future
battle-lines separating conformists and non-conformists, with their con-
¯icting views of adiaphora, things indifferent, are already discernible.111
And the ordinal itself also sheds some light on the cautious, even con-
servative, aspects of Cranmer's beliefs. It basically followed proposals made
by Bucer in 1549, which torpedoed the old view of a sacrament of orders,

107
F.E. Brightman, The English Rite, 2 vols. (1915), vol. i, pp. cxliv±xvi; ii. 849±77.
108
A.H. Couratin, `The service of Holy Communion, 1552±1662', Church Quarterly
Review 163 (1962), 431±42.
109
Gorham, Gleanings, 232.
110
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 460±1, 471±85.
111
When Martyr was asked by Cranmer to comment on the dispute with Hooper he did so
(though perhaps reluctantly) in terms of the importance of public authority and the concept of
adiaphora: OL i. 486±90.
330 Word and Doctrine
situating the ministry ®rmly amidst the body of the faithful people.112 Yet,
while Bucer suggested no marked contrast between the calling of bishops,
priests, and deacons, the of®cial ordinal differentiated them by providing
different services, and the giving of different symbols. A priest still re-
ceived chalice and paten, a bishop his crozier, until a revision of 1552
deleted these.113 Once again, Cranmer seemed content to allow a measure
of customary behaviour, which was open to traditionalist misinterpret-
ation, while himself holding a thoroughly revised view of the ministry.

Forms of Protestantism: The Second Generation

The doctrinal debates of the later 1540s and 1550s took place in a very
different environment from those of their predecessors. For the English
there was the overwhelming importance of building a visible Church, and
then rescuing its shadow from the debacle of Mary's succession. Inter-
nationally the Protestant churches were swayed to and fro by the changing
fortunes of the German princes and the emperor. The 1548 Interim,
agreed after Charles's crushing defeat of the Schmalkaldic League at
MuÈhlberg, represented the low point for reformed fortunes, while the
emperor's defeat at Innsbruck in 1552 did something, belatedly, to restore
them.114 The Interim shifted the balance of in¯uence within the reformed
churches decisively away from Strasbourg and towards the Swiss, under-
lining the growing in¯uence of Geneva as well as securing Bullinger's role
at Zurich. The Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, in which the major reformed
churches agreed to compromise their differences upon the Eucharist, was
as much a consequence of political threat as of the eirenical efforts of
Calvin. And it was the Interim that helped to produce a ¯ood of religious
refugees in England, providing Cranmer with his advisers, and London
with its ¯edgling stranger churches.115
These circumstances stimulated debate on issues other than the Euchar-
ist: issues which were to assume central signi®cance once the broad con-
tours of sacramental theology had been resolved within magisterial
Protestantism. The ®rst took its participants back to the Ur-themes of
justi®cation and grace, but now began to add a far more speci®c preoccu-
pation with the nature of predestination.116 The second addressed ecclesi-

112
P. Collinson, `The reformer and the archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian',
in his Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), 27±9.
113
Brightman, English Rite, ii. 928±1017.
114
E. Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), 347±9.
115
A. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986),
23±38.
116
Trueman, Luther's Legacy, 243±88.
 Theology and Worship 331
ology, the nature of the Church and its ministry. Predestination was, of
course, one of the rocks on which the reformers founded their faith in the
divine purposes of God towards his faithful people. As such it is to be
found in the thinking of Cranmer, of Peter Martyr, and of Bucer
throughout the 1540s.117 Bucer, in particular, saw predestination as of
central doctrinal importance, and it must have been one of the themes on
which he lectured at Cambridge, drawing his material from his commen-
tary on Ephesians. For Bucer predestination was both a necessary af®rm-
ation of God's glory and an assurance to the man of faith that he was
secure in his election.118 It was the second of these themes which, as an
ideal tool of spiritual counsel and practical divinity, was taken up by John
Bradford, in his confrontation with the `free-will men' when they were
imprisoned together in King's Bench in 1554. Bradford af®rmed a version
of absolute predestination, and in a rather unsystematized form points
forward towards a doctrine of double predestination, though the implica-
tions of the doctrine for the assured Christian life always remain upper-
most in his writing.119
A few years earlier another of the Marian martyrs, John Hooper, had
had a dispute with Bartholomew Traheron on the issue of the divine
decree.120 John ab Ulmis, writing to Bullinger in 1550, noted that it `is
wonderful how very far they disagree respecting God's predestination of
men'.121 This is interesting partly because Traheron was one of the ®rst
of the Edwardian generation to acknowledge the growing in¯uence of
Calvin in this ®eld, and to identify clearly with his views.122 John Knox
also seems to have touched on a Calvinist form of predestination in his
English sermons before he was exposed to direct Genevan in¯uence. On
the other hand the `proto-Puritan' Hooper was deeply disturbed by the
implications of the doctrine because of the danger that it made God the
author of sin and because it seemed to lift from the individual Christian

117
MacCulloch, Cranmer, 405±6, 615±16, places great emphasis upon Cranmer's commit-
ment to predestinarian theology. D.D. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English
Protestant Theology, 1525±1695 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), 15±19. Ochino was another of the
Edwardian exiles who wrote on the theme, asserting incautiously that even Christ cannot `save
a reprobate nor damn an elect': Certayne Sermons of the ryghte famous and excellente Clerke Master
Bernardine Ochine (1550), sig. m i.
118
W.P. Stephens, `The Church in Bucer's commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians',
in Wright, Martin Bucer, 45±60.
119
A. Townsend (ed.), The Writings of John Bradford, 2 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1844, 1855), i.
307±30; ii. 194±8.
120
Trueman, Luther's Legacy, 205±42.
121
OL ii. 406.
122
In 1552 Traheron wrote to Bullinger asking for his views on predestination and asserting
that he and others `embrace the opinion of John Calvin as being perspicacious and most
agreeable to holy scripture': OL i. 426.
332 Word and Doctrine
the obligation to struggle to shun sin and love the gospel after he or she is
saved. Hooper followed Tyndale in his af®rmation of the importance of a
covenant centred upon Christ, and upheld through law, and he clearly
feared the antinomian possibilities of the full `Calvinist' position.123 True-
man has shown that Hooper was here particularly indebted to Mel-
anchthon's Loci Communes, a circumstance which underlines the danger of
trying to `pigeon-hole' English reformers too neatly in these early decades
of change.124
In the event Hooper lacked successors, and as English and Scots re-
formers ¯ed abroad after 1553 they were increasingly exposed to Calvin's
views on this most critical of doctrines. Anthony Gilby, William Whit-
tingham, and John Knox all wrote or translated on predestination under
Genevan in¯uence. Whittingham translated a short tract by Beza on the
subject, and Gilby wrote A Briefe Treatyse of Election and Reprobacion. John
Knox wrote a tract in 1558 against that `anabaptist' denier of predestin-
ation encountered in an earlier chapter, Robert Cooch.125 It is character-
istic of Knox at this stage of his career that his eyes should partly be ®xed
on a debate with an English antagonist rather than directed towards Scot-
land. But Knox also addressed his reforming message north of the border,
in 1557 advising his `brethren in Scotland' that with or without the aid of
the established authorities they must ensure that `Christs Evangel may be
truly preached and his holy sacraments rightly ministered'.126 The most
interesting case is that of John Scory, the Edwardian bishop of Chichester,
who translated Augustine on election, predestination, and perseverance
while in exile. Scory did visit Geneva, but apparently spent most of his
exile in Emden and cannot be accounted one of those who fell wholly
under Calvin's spell. His main objective seems to have been a demonstra-
tion that the Church of England was a true, Catholic church that had
inherited proper doctrine from the scriptures and fathers. His emphasis on
the importance of the divine decree nevertheless is indicative of the par-
ticular issues that he and his contemporaries regarded as central to that
tradition.127
John Hooper may have had doubts about the more absolutist forms of
predestinarian belief to be found in the `best reformed churches', but he
was clear that the latter's separation of church and state was the ideal to
which the English church should aspire. `It is not', he wrote early in his

123
C. Nevinson (ed.), The Later Writings of Bishop Hooper (PS, Cambridge, 1852), 26±7.
124
Trueman, Luther's Legacy, 223±6.
125
Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 24±8.
126
Knox, iv. 285. J.A. Dawson, `The two John Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558
Tracts', JEH 42 (1991), 567.
127
Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, 23±4.
 Theology and Worship 333
career, `the of®ce of the bishop to play the king and lord, nor the king's
part to play the bishop.'128 His clash with Ridley and Cranmer over
conformity to the requirements of the ordinal marks fundamental differ-
ence about the role of the state in the affairs of the Church; difference that
was only partially compromised when he ®nally conceded and was ele-
vated to the Diocese of Gloucester.129 For the other leaders of the English
reform movement ecclesiological doctrine remained essentially as it had
been under Henry, with the royal supremacy at its heart. The application
of this principle, however, became a source of intense division within the
exile churches under Mary, and did more than anything else to open up a
gulf between the English and Scots on the eve of their ®nal reformations.
The troubles at Frankfurt, separating Coxians and Knoxians, were sus-
tained by different beliefs in the nature of the Church; in the degree to
which it must replicate `the grave and godly face of the primitive Church'
and the nature of magisterial intervention in its fortunes.130 The English
could no longer so readily take a sanguine view of royal authority after the
triumph of Mary; yet many of them were unwilling to surrender the
perception of a visible Church de®ned by the mark of loyalty to devo-
tional forms established by law.
On the other hand, exile allowed many to experience `purer' forms
of worship and organization at ®rst hand, not only Genevan structures
but those which Jan Laski had already employed in the London stranger
congregation.131 Such groups more readily approximated to the faithful
brethren of the invisible Church than to the ¯awed society of the visible
Church of Edwardian England.132 This, more perhaps than any immedi-
ate insistence that church organization should conform to a Genevan
understanding of New Testament models, explains the mixed emotions
with which the Continental wanderers greeted Elizabeth's restoration of
the Protestant Church in England. And the Scots, who were unencum-
bered by the complex history of a state reformation, were able to assimi-
late lessons for their own revolution from that `city on a hill' that gave
refuge to their future leader. When in 1560 Thomas Randolph, as Eliza-
beth's ambassador, was negotiating with the Scots about their religious

128
Carr, Early Writings of Hooper, 566±7.
129
D. MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547±1603, 2nd edn. (2001), 14±16.
130
J. Petheram (ed.), A brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford (1846). P. Collinson,
`The authorship of ``A Brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford'' ', JEH 9 (1958),
188±208.
131
MacCulloch, `Jan Laski', 326±30.
132
Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, 19±36. The most trenchant view came from Anthony
Gilby, who described Henry's Reformation as a `deformation' and the Book of Common
Prayer as `an English matins, patched forth of the Popes portasse': Gilby, `An admonition to
England and Scotland to call them to repentance', in Knox, iv. 563±4.
334 Word and Doctrine
settlement he found their ministers uncompromising in their commitment
to their new doctrinal purity. They were `so severe in that they profess
[the Confession], and so loath to remit any thing of that that they have
received, that I see little hope [of agreement with England]'.133

Doctrines of the Church in the Later Sixteenth Century

The sound and fury of the con¯ict between the godly and the conformists
in Elizabethan England can easily be displaced into the category of a crisis
about church governance and ceremony within an essentially shared view
of doctrine. On this reading the main contrast between English and Scot-
tish Protestants was that the latter had been able, by virtue of their free-
dom from the constraints of the magistrate, to develop a system of
governance and worship that accorded fully with the `best reformed prin-
ciples' espoused in both countries. The argument for an essential commu-
nity of doctrinal view on the Church, as on other aspects of reformed
theology, has something to commend it. The Scottish Confession, the
Thirty-Nine Articles and the subsequent contributions to English doctri-
nal debate, especially in the Admonition controversy, all emphasized the
critical importance of the visible Church, and of its ®rst two de®ning
marks, the preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the
sacraments. All accepted the fundamental distinction between the visible
and invisible Church and, in accordance with reformed teaching on elec-
tion and reprobation, saw the latter as the universal Church of the elect in
all ages. All saw the visible churches as containing the regenerate and
unregenerate, as ordained partly for the regulation of man's sin, and as
subject to national regulation, structure, and discipline. All accepted that
there were areas of ecclesiastical behaviour in the visible Church that were
indifferent, that is that were not precisely prescribed by Scripture, which
therefore had to be ordered by human agency.134 This might include
ceremonies or even vestments not wholly attractive to all the godly: for as
the Genevan ministers themselves argued, many `things . . . ought to be
borne and tolerated, which are . . . not justly commanded'.135 The contrast
between the godly and conformists in England was more one of tempera-
ture, of the intensity of commitment to spiritual regeneration, than of
doctrinal substance.

133
CSP Sc i. 479.
134
P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), 101±21. P. Lake, Anglicans and
Puritans? Presbyterian and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988), 13±52.
135
Petheram, A brieff discours, 205.
 Theology and Worship 335
Yet from the earliest years of Protestant triumph in the two realms an
ideological division between views of the Church was already implicit,
wanting only the circumstances of the Admonition controversy to reveal
it fully. The Scots Confession, as we have seen, had developed a particular
strain of the reformed tradition in its insistence that discipline should be
construed as the third mark of the true Church. While Knox's own
interpretation of the nature of the Church shifted in emphasis during the
years following 1560, he was consistent in maintaining that the use of
proper discipline in the visible Church was the means of making it holy,
and ensuring that it was a proper vessel to serve the invisible Church of
the elect.136 In his late work An Answer to James Tyrie, completed in 1568,
he answered taunts about the invisibility of the Scottish Kirk with the
con®dent assertion that `the true Kirk of Jesus Christ is as visible . . . within
the Realm of Scotland, as ever she was in Corinth, Galatia, Philippi (yea
or yet in Rome itself )'.137 Knox was con®dent that the visible Kirk was
seeking to conform itself not just to best Continental practice, but to the
scriptural standards of the early Church. Failure, when it occurred, was a
consequence of individual sin, not of a lack of doctrinal purity.138
Zealous English reformers had no such consolation. They shared with
Knox and his colleagues a conviction that the visible Church would never
be regenerate unless it was made subject to what Thomas Cartwright was
routinely to call `the Discipline'.139 For many this meant a full presbyter-
ian system of church government based on the scriptural model increas-
ingly endorsed by the European reformed churches. But even those who
did not focus their attention on a particular ecclesiological structure shared
beliefs about the nature of the Church that were not readily integrated
into Elizabeth's settlement. These beliefs are most fully explored in Cart-
wright's discursive contributions to the controversy with Whitgift.140 At
the heart of Cartwright's arguments lies an insistence that the visible
Church can become an effective vessel of the regeneration of the Chris-
tian society, which in its turn will serve to sustain and advance the invis-
ible Church of the elect.141 It was the duty of the Church to provide for
the `edi®cation' of the community of true believers, for it, as a spiritual

136
R. Kyle, `The nature of the Church in the thought of John Knox', Scottish Journal of
Theology 37 (1984), 485±501.
137
Knox, vi. 494.
138
R. Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation (Grand Rapids, 1980), 50±6.
139
Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, 28±31.
140
The Admonition controversy is printed in J. Ayre (ed.), The Works of John Whitgift, 3
vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1851±3), i±iii.
141
J.S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford, 1970),
38±9. T.D. Bozeman, `Federal theology and the ``national covenant'': an Elizabethan Presbyter-
ian case-study', Church History 61 (1992), 400±6.
336 Word and Doctrine
body, to be `®tly joined together . . . unto the edifying of itself in love'.142
The task of its leadership must therefore be the ambitious one of con-
structing a discipline and a pattern of of®ces approximating as closely as
possible to the precepts of scripture in order to secure the collective
growth of Christians in grace.
The Church of the elect could never fully be known, but for Cartwright
and his colleagues its visible form was focused upon a community of the
godly, called together by the spirit, whose worship must be facilitated and
enhanced by proper discipline, organization, and constant access to preach-
ing. Regeneration had to be achieved by public policy, so that God's prom-
ise to his people as individuals that they would be given the gifts necessary
to salvation could be enlarged. Christ would rule `not alone in the hearts of
everyone by his spirit, but also generally, and in the visible government of
his Church, by those laws of discipline he hath prescribed'.143 The associ-
ation between the edi®cation of the spiritual body of Christians and the
reconstruction of the visible Church was clearly a dif®cult one, since the
latter operated in the wider unregenerate society, but a passionate belief that
God intended the edi®cation of his people through the rebuilding of his
Church sustained the practical divinity of the godly preachers.144
A corollary of this emphasis upon the doctrine of spiritual regeneration
through the visible Church was a growing commitment to covenant or
`federal' theology.145 The Scots Confession already revealed a narrative of
redemption that was cast in these terms, pointing towards the covenant of
grace established between God and his people as the road to salvation for the
latter. As covenant theology developed on the Continent, especially
through the work of the Heidelberg Calvinist theologians Zacharias Ursinus
and Hieronymus Zanchius, it was of most signi®cance as a form of assurance
that the elect were given faith.146 Just as Abraham had been given the
unconditional covenant of grace and blessing by God, so the elect were now
made a part of the same covenant. It was a doctrine that could also be
invoked in the public sphere. For Knox and his generation of the Scots the
covenant that God established with Israel was part of a theology of his-
tory.147 Their perception was identical with that which one of the fathers of

142
Ayre Works of Whitgift, ii. 113±14.
143
Ibid., iii. 315.
144
P. Lake, `Presbyterianism, the idea of a national church and the argument from divine
right', in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth
Century England (1987), 199±202.
145
Coolidge, Pauline Renaissance, ch. 5. Bozeman, `Federal theology', 394±407.
146
M. McGiffert, `From Moses to Adam: the making of the covenant of works', C16J 19
(1988), 132±6. D. Visser, `The covenant in Zacharius Ursinus', C16J 18 (1987), 532±5.
147
R. Greaves, `The Knoxian paradox: ecumenism and nationalism in the Scottish Refor-
mation', RSCHS 18 (1972), 96±7.
 Theology and Worship 337
covenant theology, Zwingli, had articulated: `the same covenant which he
entered into with Israel he has in these latter days entered into with us, that
we may be one people with them, one church and may also have one
covenant'.148 God made his covenant with `every city, realm, province or
nation' and each had to bind themselves collectively to that agreement,
renewing the commitment if apostasy occurred, as it had done for England
under Mary. When a covenanted nation had accepted the true religion and
then lapsed into idolatry it must be cleansed at all costs: which in political
terms led to the radicalization of resistance theory at the hands of Knox and
Goodman.149 More generally, where covenant had been established as in
Scotland after 1560 there was a common obligation within the visible
Church to act under the covenant for the regeneration of the society.
The single covenant of grace, manifesting God's unconditional gift to
the Church and to the individuals within it, was a regular feature of Eliza-
bethan theological writing. In ecclesiological terms the historicized view
of the covenant could be used to justify either God's gift to the whole
visible Church, or more speci®cally validating the faithful remnant who
were the direct descendants of Abraham.150 But it was from the 1580s, with
the publication of Dudley Fenner's treatise of systematic theology, Sacra
Theologia, that covenant theology began to exercise major in¯uence within
English Protestant thought. Fenner, and following him Perkins and most
of the other Puritan divines, distinguished the covenants of law and grace,
making the former the conditional, moral contract into which `all men at
all times' were presumed to have entered freely.151 Meanwhile the covenant
of grace was preserved in the compact `made between God and man
touching reconciliation and life everlasting in Christ'.152 The two coven-
ants were of a fundamentally different order, but the distinction was not
between an individual covenant of grace and a collective one of law. Puritan
thinkers were clear that the people as a whole could be covenanted under
grace: we are, says John Field, of the English, `his people adopted, assured
in a new covenant, sealed in the blood and obedience of Jesus Christ'.153
148
Kyle, `Knox on the Church', 494±5.
149
There is an extensive literature on covenanting and the political thought of the Genevan
exiles, well surveyed in R.A. Mason, `Covenant and commonweal: the language of politics in
Reformation Scotland', in N. Macdougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society: Scotland, 1408±1929
(Edinburgh, 1983), 97±126. See also Dawson, `Two John Knoxes', 555±76.
150
Bozeman, `Federal theology', 394±400.
151
M. McGiffert, `Grace and works: the rise and division of covenant divinity in Elizabethan
Puritanism', Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982), 463±502. J. Mùller, `The beginnings of Pur-
itan Covenant Theology', JEH 14 (1963), 46±67.
152
The Workes of that Famous and Worthy minister of Christ . . . Mr William Perkins, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, 1608±9), i. 167.
153
Quoted in Bozeman, `Federal theology', 401. Bozeman makes absolutely clear that the
covenant of grace was understood to be both individual and collective.
338 Word and Doctrine
The full ecclesiological and political consequences of the doctrine of
the two covenants belong more properly to the seventeenth than to the
sixteenth century. In the case of Scotland the new period begins from
1596 when Richard Rollock, the ®rst principal of Edinburgh University,
led the General Assembly of the Kirk to the `renewal of the covenant
with God'.154 The Church and the nation were bound together in a
promise of moral renewal that pointed forwards to the covenanting move-
ment of the next century. Meanwhile English Puritans of Perkins's gener-
ation began to wrestle with the consequences of a belief that the nation
could be elect, and under the covenant of grace. How could this be
reconciled with the reprobation of the majority? Was judgement and
death the inevitable fate of most of the children of Israel and England,
part of an elect nation and church only in the sense that it provided the
proper environment for the sancti®cation of the few?155
The conformist understanding of the doctrine of the Church antici-
pated many of the dilemmas faced by the Puritans of Cartwright's gener-
ation. For Whitgift, the key doctrinal issue was the clearest of possible
separations between the visible and invisible Churches. His understanding
of the latter was congruent with that of his opponent, but the visible
Church was inevitably marked out by both good seed and tares, and must
therefore be under law `to maintain peace and unity'. The invisible
Church of the elect was a reality known only to God in Christ, and its
members were reunited with him steadily throughout the pattern of
Christian history. The visible Church could not, in a series of dramatic
disciplinary gestures, be made the agent for the perfectibility of the saints:
that way lay anabaptism. A measure of collective spiritual growth might
be the consequence of the right administration of sacraments, and as much
preaching as was compatible with external order, but regeneration for
Whitgift, as for many conformists, was often a matter of individual piety
rather than the general sancti®cation of the members of the visible
Church.156 The latter was both temporal and spiritual, but practical con-
siderations as much as doctrinal ones led the conformists to emphasize the
temporal aspect of the Church under a godly prince. `I am fully per-
suaded', claimed Whitgift in an important passage, `that there is no such
154
S.A. Burrell, `The covenanting idea as a revolutionary symbol: Scotland 1596±1637',
Church History 27 (1958), 338±50. Though it should be noted that, in the latest study of
covenanting theology in Scotland, Mullan is less impressed by 1596 as a turning-point, seeing
no powerful connection between earlier interest in federal theology and the developments of
the 1630s: D.G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590±1638 (Oxford, 2000), 171±207.
155
P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (Basingstoke, 1988), 18±24. Collinson
points to a large number of printed sermons of the early seventeenth century on the Hosea text:
`Then said God . . . ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.'
156
Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, 28±42.
 Theology and Worship 339
distinction between the church of Christ and a Christian commonwealth
as you and the papists dream of.'157
Later Elizabethan conformist positions deviated from Whitgift's princi-
pally in the doctrinal legitimation offered for the existing form of govern-
ance of the Church. Presbyterian claims for the divinely ordained nature of
`the Discipline' were slowly countered by a growing emphasis on the
signi®cance of episcopacy, not just as a lawful form of government sanc-
tioned by the crown for the maintenance of good ecclesiastical order, but
as iure divino.158 1590 saw the publication of two important tracts that
underpinned the new claims: Hadrian Saravia's Diverse degrees of the ministers
of the gospel and Matthew Sutcliffe's Treatise of ecclesiastical discipline.159 Sar-
avia and Sutcliffe began from the principle that there had always been
inequality within the ministry, sanctioned not just by the New, but also
the Old Testament, with its priestly hierarchy. Christ chose the apostles as
his particular stewards, bequeathing to them not only the obligation to
preach and minister the sacraments properly, the duty of all priests, but the
power of the keys and discipline for the building of the visible Church and
the Christian community. Saravia concluded that this was `the form of
government which was ordained by God, and delivered of the apostles'.160
The protagonists of divine right episcopacy did not yet, however, fun-
damentally challenge the view that the Continental Protestant churches,
with their alternative discipline, were true churches. The most powerful
effect of a revival of con®dence in the spiritual legitimacy of the form of
government espoused by the English church was rather to refocus intel-
lectual attention upon the Catholic past, and on a reconsideration of the
Church's relationship with Rome. The apocalyptic tradition, with its
sharply dichotomous depiction of the true and false Churches had left
scarcely any scope for the idea that the visible Church of Rome might
simply have strayed from its primitive purity rather than being the em-
bodiment of Antichrist.161 But there was always a more cautious doctrinal
position, which acknowledged that the Roman church was a church of
Christ secundum quid, in some sense despite the accumulation of error.162
Jewel, in his Apology, talked of the `rueful state' and `lamentable form' of
the Church of Rome without directly denying its title, and the continu-
157
Ayre, Works of Whitgift, iii. 160.
158
W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation (1980), 94±130.
159
H. Saravia, Of the diverse degrees of the ministers of the gospel (1590). M. Sutcliffe, A treatise of
ecclesiastical discipline (1590).
160
Saravia, Diverse degrees, 41.
161
P. Lake, `The signi®cance of the Elizabethan identi®cation of the pope as Antichrist',
JEH 31 (1980), 161±78.
162
A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant
Thought, 1600±1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 128±40.
340 Word and Doctrine
ing acceptance of the Roman sacrament of baptism was an af®rmation of
the need to af®rm her as a church, however unsound.163
From the 1580s onwards this minimalist acceptance of Rome began to
be subject to intermittent questioning from English theologians. The ®rst
concern was that the pre-Reformation Church could be regarded as a true
visible Church, thus ensuring that the forefathers of the Protestants were
embraced within Christ's scheme of salvation. Men as diverse as Richard
Hooker and the Calvinist polemicist Robert Some pursued this line of
thought.164 But Hooker went much further. In response to the Puritan
vision of a Church marked by true preaching, sacraments, and discipline
he posited one founded upon reason and law, articulating in its visible
form the worshipping community.165 In the light of this basic position the
Church of Rome might be misguided and its doctrinal errors manifest,
but it was scarcely to be denied a place as `of the family of Jesus Christ' or
`a part of the house of God, and a limb of the visible church of Christ'.166
This was a shift of understanding that immediately provoked an alarmed
response from among the godly. Andrew Willet, for example, insisted that
it was essential to return to the earlier Protestant understanding of the
`true Church', in which it was the apostasy of Rome that excluded her
from the company of the visible Church. Thus Hooker began a new and
very intense debate on the theological nature of the relationship between
the English and the Roman church that was to be deeply divisive in the
early years of the seventeenth century.167

Calvinist Consensus?
The Scottish Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles proclaimed the
centrality of a reformed theology of grace that became the heart of Prot-
estant doctrinal identity in the succeeding generations. It was, says Wal-
lace, a pattern of belief that `sought above all to magnify the role of divine
grace in the process of salvation by stressing gratuitous regeneration and
sancti®cation as well as predestination'.168 The precise nature of that the-
ology has been the subject of deep and prolonged controversy among
historians. The disagreements may be summarized baldly as focusing ®rst
upon the degree of doctrinal consensus on predestination that existed in
the late sixteenth-century Church and secondly the extent to which any

163
J. Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. J.E. Booty (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), 99.
164
R. Bauckham, `Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s', JEH 29 (1978),
44±7.
165
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 146±50.
166
R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1.10; v. 28. 1.
167 168
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 128, 140. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 29.
 Theology and Worship 341
such consensus should be labelled with Calvin's name, or with that of his
followers such as Beza and the Heidelberg theologians. The intensity of
this debate, much of which is directed to the problem of the breakdown
in the Caroline church in the 1630s, has sometimes obscured the re¯ective
contributions of the historians of theology. It is on their work that the
ensuing analysis is essentially based.169
English and Scottish theologians rarely sought to question the divine
decree: or to deny the existence of the elect `chosen in Christ before the
beginning of the world' (Eph. 1.4). Their profound engagement with
Scripture led them to a suf®ciency of texts to con®rm this belief. Scripture
also indicated the reasons for the exclusion of the non-elect that, for some,
amounted to an af®rmation of the double decree to reprobation. There
was wide assent for the idea that there was a close causal connection
between lack of faith and reprobation. Many of those who were in¯uenced
by Genevan theology insisted clearly that there was an immutable decree
of double predestination by which God had created some men for damna-
tion as well as others for salvation. It was this fundamental issue that was
felt to have been left in some ambiguity by the Thirty-Nine Articles,
which failed to discuss reprobation and implied, in Article 16, that men
could fall permanently from grace after they had received the Holy Spirit.
In 1595 Archbishop Whitgift was persuaded to intervene in the Cambridge
controversies about the nature of grace and, in the Lambeth Articles,
to give the imprimatur to a more comprehensive predestinarian posi-
tion. `From eternity', the ®rst Article states baldly, `God has pre-
destined some men to life and reprobated some to death.'170
While some divines insisted that this was as far as men should seek to
penetrate the mysteries of faith, speculative theologians, especially those
in¯uenced by Beza, pursued the consequences of predestinarian belief
169
For key contributions to the `consensus' debate see N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of
English Arminianism, c.1590±1640 (Oxford, 1987); P. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic:
Con¯ict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge,
1992); P. Lake, `Calvinism and the English church, 1570±1635', PP 114 (1987), 38±59, and
`Predestinarian propositions', JEH 46 (1995), 110±23. Crucial doctrinal analyses are provided by
J.T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649, 2nd edn. (Carlisle, 1997) and Wallace, Puritans
and Predestination. See also the important contribution of R. Muller, Christ and the Decree:
Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Durham, N.C., 1986),
which questions the centrality of the Bezan position. There is a danger that the debates about
theology in their turn underestimate the importance of the pastoral implications of belief. There
is a detailed consideration of the pastoral implications of the doctrines of grace in I. Green, The
Christian's ABC (Oxford, 1996), 350±422. See also K.L. Parker and E.J. Carlson, `Practical
Divinity': The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham (Aldershot, 1998), 104±22.
170
Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, 399±401. On the Lambeth Articles see
H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), 344±90. Porter
takes the view that Whitgift's objective was to rein in con¯ict. For the alternative view followed
here, see P. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982), 218±42.
342 Word and Doctrine
more explicitly. Beza argued that the ®xed decree of election, which took
precedence over all other divine decrees, meant that Christ died only for
those determined for salvation.171 This had been established before the
Fall, and was `supralapsarian': atonement was limited, not universal. This
is marked out from the `infralapsarian' position espoused by a majority of
sixteenth-century English divines, which accepted the possibility of uni-
versal atonement, and gave no automatic precedence to God's determin-
ing purposes before the Fall.172 Instead they understood that some are
predestined not to accept the redemptive act of Christ's death. The latter
was a suf®cient payment for the sins of all mankind: it was an ef®cient
payment only for the elect. Christ's sacri®ce was therefore understood
above all as an effectual form of salvation for those chosen. This was, said
Christopher Shutte, `only proper to the elect, whereby through faith
. . . . [they were] assured that [their] salvation is wrought by Christ'.173
From the debate about limited atonement followed that about the irre-
sistibility of grace. How far was the human will, corrupted by sin, capable
of withstanding the grace offered freely to the elect?174 This was one of the
questions that most bitterly divided the delegates to the 1618 Synod of
Dort, where irresistibility was eventually af®rmed.175 Those sixteenth-
century theologians who linked predestination to the divine attributes
were most likely implicitly or explicitly to accept irresistibility and the
indefectibility of God's gift to men. The elect were destined to persevere
in faith, by the ordo salutis or process of salvation, which by `degrees and
means' led them ®nally to God. Consideration of salvation as process, but
one from which the elect could not ®nally fall away, had begun in the
work of Bucer and Martyr.176 Both argued that there were a series of
sequential steps proceeding from predestination to calling, justi®cation,
sancti®cation, and glori®cation. Martyr added the crucial idea that perse-
verance in this ordo depended on God's election, and that the chosen could
have comfort and assurance in their calling.177 These were interpretations
of the divine order that assumed great signi®cance in Elizabethan pastoral
171
On Beza see Kendall, Calvin, 29±41.
172
For the varieties of `infralapsarian' view that can be traced by the time of the Synod of
Dort see S.F. Hughes, `The problem of ``Calvinism'': English theologies of predestination
c.1580±1630', in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reformation England
(Aldershot, 1998), 229±49.
173
C. Shutte, A Compendious forme and summe of Christian doctrine (1584), sig. b 2v.
174
A. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justi®cation, 2 vols. (Cam-
bridge, 1986), ii. 15±16, 28±30. White, Predestination, 53±5, 192±4.
175
For Dort see Schaff, Creeds, 589±90. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 43±55.
176
W.P. Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer (Cambridge, 1971), 42, 46,
49 ff.
177
J.C. McLelland, `The reformed doctrine of predestination according to Peter Martyr',
Scottish Journal of Theology 8 (1955), 261, 267.
 Theology and Worship 343
writing and preaching, since they offered hope to the af¯icted conscience,
and guidance to those who sought to persevere in righteousness. As
Anthony Maxey put it: `predestination, calling, justifying and glorifying
are so coupled and knit together, that if you hold fast one link, you draw
unto you the whole chain; if you let go one, you loose all'.178
Elements of the doctrines of irresistibility, and of a concern to articulate
the ordo salutis, can be found in many late sixteenth-century divines. But
its full development is identi®ed with what is sometimes labelled Protest-
ant scholasticism, which in¯uenced both Cambridge and Oxford in the
1580s and 1590s.179 The prime Continental in¯uences were those of Beza
and Zanchius: the latter was particularly important for his detailed treat-
ment of the process of assurance, dividing the relative simplicity of Bucer's
scheme into thirteen sections, each contributing to the process of salva-
tion. While Oxford produced a generation who responded to these scho-
lastics largely through preaching, Cambridge, in the persons of William
Whitaker, Robert Some, and above all William Perkins, had theologians
capable of making distinctive contributions to the development of predes-
tinarian thought.180 They added to later Calvinist doctrinal thinking the
use of Ramist logic, clarifying division by sharp dichotomies, which were
perceived as the proper re¯ections of the working of human rationality.181
One of the most marked preoccupations of these Cambridge theologians
was the doctrine of perseverance, and the question of whether grace can
ever be lost. Their clear answer was no, since when God wills regener-
ation `His work cannot be resisted', but the knowledge of this process was
more dif®cult since it had to be linked to a justifying faith `whereby a man
is persuaded in his conscience' of his true calling. The obverse of this true
experience was the delusion of faith, or the experience of temporary faith,
that could be felt by the reprobate. Those condemned by the double
decree could still acknowledge God, desire salvation, and `confusedly be-
lieve the promises of God'. But the eternal decree was immutable and the
experience of regeneration illusory.182 All of this Perkins expressed most
vividly in the famous table that accompanied his A golden chaine, which
allowed even the illiterate by tracing the lines with their ®ngers `sensibly
[to] perceive the chief points of religion, and the order of them'.183

178
A. Maxey, The Golden Chaine of Mans Salvation (1610), sig. a 3.
179
C.M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford, 1983), 98±102.
180
Lake, Moderate Puritans, 96±103.
181
L. Jardine, `The place of dialectic teaching in sixteenth-century Cambridge', Studies in the
Renaissance 21 (1974), 31±62.
182
Workes of Perkins, i. 716; ii. 29. Kendall, Calvin, 51±76.
183
R.A. Muller, `Perkins' A Goldene Chaine: Predestinarian system or schematized Ordo
Salutis?', C16J 9 (1978), 70±7. The table reproduces and elaborates one by Beza.
 The
Father

Pag.11.
A Survey or Table declaring the order of the causes God created all things for hinfelfe, and he
of salvation and damnation according to God's wicked man for the cuill day, Proc.16.4.
Word. It may be in stead of an ocular. Catichisme GOD Hath not the potter power over the clay, to
to them which cannot read, for by the pointing of make of the fame limpe one veffell to
the finger, they may sensibly perceive the chief honour, and another be in Chrift, lexhim be
points of religion, and the order of them. by William a new creature.
The Son. The Holy
Perkins. Ghost 2Cor.5.17.
God's
fore
knowledge &
God's decrees

Predestination

The Decree of The decree of

Doubting of Election. Reprobation.
Election

Creation

The fall of
Adam

The State of
B Unbelief

Gods hatingof
be Reprobate.

Christ A General
Mediator of the Illumination
The love of God
Elect
to the Elect in A calling not
Christ. effectual No calling
Effectual
Preaching The Holiness
& Hearing of His Manhood
Penitence

The
Regenereation The Fullfings of
of the Heart the Law Temporary Ignorance & va-
A yielding to
Unprofitable faith nitie of minde.
God's calling.
Hearing Effectual
Calling
A
despair doubting
of Chirst
Faith His accursed The hardening
death A Taste of the heart

B Remission of Burniall A reporate

Sin A Zeal
fenle.

Doubting of Imputation of Bondage under Greedines in

Justification
Justification Righteousness. the Grave The deceit of fintie.
Sin

Mortification. Resurrection
The Hardening
of the heart
B
Concupiscence A Ascension
Sanctification Vivification.
of the Flesh
An Evil Heart

Relapse
Sitting at the
Repentance. right hand
Unbelieving
nc -
die obe

heart
e.
w
Ne

Intercession.
Fulness of finne.
Apostasy

Glorification
Appointed
death
Damination.

The Last
Judgement

Enemies of Life Life Eternal

Death eternall
Eternal
in Hell.

The Declaration The Declaration

of God's Justice of God's Justice
To the Reader
and Mercy
The white line flueweth the order of the caufes of faluation from the
firfite the laft.
The blacke line theweth the order of the caudes of dimnation. O the altitude of the riches, both of the wifedome and knowledge of God
The line A.A.A.flew, how faith doth apprcheni Chrift and all his I how infearchable are his iudgement, and his waies paft finding out?
beneefuis, and applieth them to the perfon of cuery beleeuer for his Rom. 11.33.
inftification and fandlefication. I count all things but dung, that I may winne Chrift. Philip.3.9.
The lines B.B.B.defending, likewifefhew the tentation of the godly, and
God's Glory
their remedies.
The wide spices C.C.C. fhew the communication of the Gadhead from
the Faiber to the Sonnc, and from them beth to the holy Ghaft. Ignatius faying,
My love is crucified.

`Table of the ordo salutis'. William Perkins, Workes (1630). Permission of

Christ Church, Oxford
 Theology and Worship 345
The Cambridge theological stirs of the 1590s came out of the world of
scholastic Protestantism. William Barrett, who in 1595 assailed the prevail-
ing predestinarian orthodoxy, was bent on a denial that assurance of
salvation was possible for the ordinary Christian.184 The spectre of anti-
nomianism, of a Calvinist theology that located reprobation not in sin but
in the divine will, had been raised by the unyielding style of Cambridge
Protestant polemic. Now Barrett, and seconding him Peter Baro and John
Overall, went on the offensive against this apparent consensus.185 One
possible reading of the outcome of the crisis is that, once the implicit
acceptance of a `Calvinist' orthodoxy by most Protestants was enshrined
in the Lambeth Articles, it was inevitable that they should become the
focus for outright dissent. In 1596 when Baro found himself isolated from
the university and church establishment, he cast around for support, con-
tacting Lancelot Andrewes and such Continental divines as the Danish
Lutheran Hemmingius. Richard Hooker, who in The Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity had trodden very cautiously on the issue of predestination, moved
in a draft pamphlet of 1600 towards Baro's position, emphasizing God's
general will to save all men. The beginnings of a new doctrinal identity
were being sketched.186
There are alternative readings of the Calvinist `consensus' and its de-
cline. White has stressed the thread of continuity linking together those
theologians who never assented fully to predestinarian views, still less
enthused about their re®ned forms articulated by Perkins and his col-
leagues.187 Many of this generation had been reared in an intellectual
environment in which Lutheran texts were some of the most readily
available Protestant works.188 The favoured volume for training in prac-
tical divinity was the Common Places of the moderate Berne reformer
Wolfgang Musculus.189 There were always a few who refused to subscribe
to the prevailing reverence for Calvin, even though they proclaimed their
orthodox acceptance of the Church of England and its doctrine. Everard
Digby, who fell foul of Whitaker as master of St John's, Cambridge, was
one of these curious sorts of Protestant. He seems to have believed in
human ethical choice as contributing to salvation, while asserting the
merits of the traditions of the medieval Church as continued by Eliza-
beth.190 At Oxford it was the alien presence of Antonio de Corro in the
184 185
Lake, Moderate Puritans, 201±42. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 29±37.
186 187
Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, 182±97. White, Predestination, 83±7.
188
Even Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had twice as many Lutheran as Reformed texts in
the 1590s: S. Bush and C.J. Rasmussen, `Emmanuel College Library's ®rst inventory', Transac-
tions of the Cambridge Bibliographic Society 8 (1985), 516. But note Pettegree and Higman, below
nn. 192 and 193 on the pattern of book ownership and translation in England.
189
W. Musculus, Common places of the Christian Religion (1563).
190
Lake, Moderate Puritans, 172±80.
346 Word and Doctrine
1570s that threatened doctrinal consensus. Corro, a Spanish-born Protest-
ant who had been in England for much of the previous decade, sought a
degree and access to Oxford to publicize his view that salvation depended
on moral improvement and co-operation with the divine will. The charge
of Pelagianism was inevitably raised against him by such leaders of Oxford
Calvinism as John Reynolds. It may have been Corro's position that
encouraged his friend Peter Baro to ®rst air his own anti-predestinarian
views in 1579.191
A few determined critics of Calvinist positions, however, scarcely dis-
pose of the thesis that there was a broad consensus on matters of doctrine.
What is perhaps more signi®cant is that this consensus depended as much
on an unwillingness to probe high theological mysteries as on a systematic
set of beliefs, rigorously analysed. There is, of course, little doubt that the
works of Continental reformed Protestantism, in which such doctrines
were fully analysed, were prized and popular in Elizabethan England.
Despite those Lutheran library holdings, Pettegree's recent investigation of
Cambridge academic wills shows that Calvin's writings were by far the
most generally owned, followed by those of Beza and Martyr.192 On most
tests that can be appliedÐnumbers of English translations, or editions of
works, for exampleÐCalvin reigns supreme, especially by the 1580s.193
But when we turn from imported works to English productions the story
changes. Only in the 1590s, when Perkins's work began to reach print,
did any English doctrinal writing achieve any great in¯uence. The usual
explanation is that the theologians were so enmeshed in the ecclesiological
con¯icts of the reign that they had little resource left for debates upon
soteriology or doctrines of grace. An alternative reading, suggested by
Green's study of catechisms and by the recent analysis of the career of
Richard Greenham, is that the predominant concern of contemporary
divines was pastoral care and guidance, a process not aided by the spelling
out of contentious doctrines such as limited atonement or the fate of the
reprobate. `I am rather to thank God that I do believe', said Greenham,
`than to search out the reason, why others do not believe.'194

191
Dent, Protestant Reformers, 110±25.
192
A. Pettegree, `The reception of Calvinism in Britain', in W.H. Neusner and B.G. Arm-
strong (eds.), Calvinus sincerioris religionis vindex, Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies (36, 1997),
267±89.
193
F. Higman, `Calvin's works in translation', in A. Pettegree, A. Duke, and G. Lewis (eds.),
Calvinism in Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 82±99. Dent comes to rather different conclusions on
the basis of Oxford material, where the Zurichers retained much in¯uence until at least the
1580s: Dent, Protestant Reformers, 93±4.
194
Green, Christian's ABC, esp. 564±70. Parker and Carlson, Practical Divinity, 114. Mullan's
study of Scottish divines suggests that a similar argument might be applied north of the border:
Scottish Puritanism, 45 ff.
 Theology and Worship 347

Conclusion
There are very striking generational shifts in the engagements of English
theologians during the sixteenth century. The pre-Reformation Cath-
olic theologians, led by John Fisher, had addressed themselves primarily to
issues of authority, scriptural exegesis, and translation, turning under the
in¯uence of the con¯ict with Luther towards the profound debates about
faith and justi®cation. The ®rst Protestant generation focused above all on
these same problems, especially on sola scriptura and sola ®de. By the 1540s
the Eucharistic debate assumed overwhelming importance, while for zeal-
ous Protestants the attack on idolatry became the essential precursor to the
establishment of the true visible Church. After the accession of Elizabeth,
and the Scottish Reformation, two themes above all generated debate in
the universities: the nature of the visible Church, its structure and author-
ity, and the theology of grace and election. Towards the end of the
century the challenge of Rome began to evoke a new and complex
doctrinal response about the nature of the Church. This sense of move-
ment within the broad parameters of Christian doctrine may, however, be
somewhat illusory. The `hot spots' of controversy have to be accommo-
dated within the growing body of literature, catechetical, expository, even
systematic divinity, which endeavoured to present a broad analysis of
Protestant belief. If neither the English nor the Scots were initially dis-
posed to systematic theology, we can at the end of the century begin to
see attempts in England to remedy this de®ciency. Fenner's Sacra Theologia
was followed by William Barlow's A Defence of the Articles of the Protestants
Religion (1601). Andrew Willet's Synopsis Papismi (3rd edn. 1600) can be
characterized as a systematic exposition of belief arising from anti-Roman
controversy.195 The internal con¯ict between Puritans and conformists
also produced its own form of systematized defence of the Church of
England in Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker's theoretical am-
bition took the existing debate beyond its Whitgiftian forms and offered a
very different understanding of the relationship between the Christian
community, authority, and belief. The possibility of an integrated mode of
thought and behaviour called Anglicanism was thus signalled at the very
end of our period.196
A rapid glance at Fenner and Willet serves to indicate those areas of
belief too easily swept aside by the intensity of doctrinal dispute on the
key issues identi®ed above. Christology, though of great signi®cance for
Cranmer and for Calvin, among others, proved less than central in mature

195
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 10±30.
196
On Hooker see Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, 145±230.
348 Word and Doctrine
Protestantism. The knowledge of Christ's personal sacri®ce, and the an-
thropological understanding of the nature of redemption that often ac-
companied it, yielded to a greater emphasis on the majesty of God and a
theocentric understanding of the atonement. Re¯ection about the nature
of the afterlife, as opposed to the possibility of attaining it, suffered from
the death of purgatory, and the reluctance of Protestant divines to specu-
late on the destinations of the dead.197 The so-called `Descensus Contro-
versy', on the nature of Christ's descent into hell, forced some thought on
these issues, but scarcely made them central to debate.198
There was also a curious gap in the output of sixteenth-century English
Protestants, in that they rarely published systematic biblical commentaries.
Most of the great Continental founders of Protestantism had felt it manda-
tory to embark upon such commentaries. Among the English reformers of
the ®rst generations only John Hooper, that faithful imitator of Continen-
tal models, and Anthony Gilby published on the prophets.199 By the
1560s it was more common, as witness for example Bishop Pilkington's
commentaries on the Prophets, or Edward Dering on the Epistle to the
Hebrews.200 Sermon series and lectures on the Bible became a regular
feature of Elizabethan Oxford and Cambridge. Few, however, found their
way into print before the mid-Jacobean years. Among William Bradshaw's
large output, for example, there was only one expository work, on the
second epistle to the Thessalonians.201 The best explanation is that English
divines deferred to the great work of Bucer, Bullinger, Martyr, and Calvin
in biblical interpretation as in much else.202 The Scots also `supped their
learning' from Geneva, but in the particular matter of commentaries they
showed more ambition. Their surviving sermons usually take the form of
extended biblical commentaries. Robert Rollock gave an important series
of sermons on Corinthians in Edinburgh in the 1590s that helped to
establish the genre. They were almost immediately put into print. Beza

197
P. Marshall, ` ``The map of God's word'': geographies of the afterlife in Tudor and early
Stuart England', in B. Gordon and P. Marshall (eds.), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remem-
brance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 110±30.
198
D.D. Wallace, `Puritan and Anglican: the interpretation of Christ's descent into hell in
Elizabethan theology', ARG 69 (1978), 248±87.
199
Carr, Early Writings of Hooper, 431±560, for his commentary on Jonas. Gilby published
commentaries on Malachi and Micah: A. Gilby, A Commentarye upon the Prophet Malaky (1553);
A Commentarye upon the prophet Mycha (1551).
200
J. Scole®eld (ed.), The Works of James Pilkington, B.D. (PS, Cambridge, 1842), 1±496.
E. Dering, Workes (1614), no. 3.
201
W. Bradshaw, A plaine and pithy exposition of the second epistle to the Thessalonians (1620). In
the earlier generation Udall, Wilcox, and Fulke each published one biblical commentary.
202
The central texts of Elizabethan theology and religious learning were all foreign: Muscu-
lus's Commonplaces, Martyr's Commonplaces, Bullinger's Decades, and Calvin's Institutes.
 Theology and Worship 349
was fulsome in his praise of Rollock's other published commentaries on
Romans and Ephesians.203
The limited output of the printing presses in the area of biblical exegesis
may underscore the problem of interpreting doctrinal change from the
surviving polemical texts. The Church of England was, from its inception,
embattled ideologically, ®rst and foremost against Rome, but secondly
against itself as its leaders wrestled with the ways in which a reformed
Church might be constructed within the parameters de®ned by the crown
as supreme head and governor. The internal debate contrasted sharply
with the experience of the Scots, who after 1560 were able to direct most
of their debates outwards, against the hostility of the Catholics and the
ignorance of the people. English circumstance produced a lively, strongly
committed, theology, whether expressed in the scurrilous polemics of
John Bale or the measured prose of Richard Hooker. It did not isolate
itself completely from the European reformed mainstream: there were, we
now know, more translations of Calvin into English than into any other
language.204 Indeed, after a period in the ®rst half of Elizabeth's reign
when the intellectual challenge of Continental Protestantism sometimes
appeared lost in the heat of exchanges on the governance of the Church,
mature Elizabethan reform once again looked outwards to Geneva and
(negatively) to Rome. There always remained, however, the complicated
sense, as Cox had once famously insisted to Knox, that he and his col-
leagues would have `the face of an English Church'.205 Even the most
fundamental doctrinal debate was liable to be coloured by that sense of
Englishness.

203
R. Rollock, Certain sermons upon severall places of the epistles of Paul (Edinburgh, 1599).
Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 19. Rollock also published on the Psalms.
204 205
Higman, `Calvin's works in translation', 82±99. Petheram, A Brieff Discours, 38.
 PART IV

REFORMAT IONS ESTA BLISHED

AND CONTESTED
 9
CUIUS REGIO, EIUS RELIGIO?
THE CHURCHES, POLITICS, AND
R E L I G I O U S ID E N T I T I E S , 1 5 5 8± 1 6 0 0

Making Two Reformations

John Knox occupies an honourable place among the lengthy catalogue of
great historical blunderers. Determined after his successful Scottish preach-
ing tour of 1555±6 to exercise a direct in¯uence over the religious fate of
the British Isles, Knox returned to the Geneva congregation to which he
had been elected as minister at the end of 1555. There he and his fellow
minister Christopher Goodman moved to increasingly radical sentiments,
starkly justifying the process of resistance to idolatrous regimes. France
and Scotland were of growing signi®cance in Knox's vision, but his pas-
sions were still most fully engaged by the horrors of English apostasy from
the covenant, and by the need to recall the people from their sins. Yet
England failed to act, and therefore had to be roused from its slumber by
that memorable treatise The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women, which emerged from the printing press just in time
for the accession of Elizabeth.1 No one man did more, by gross miscalcu-
lation, to determine that Genevan reform should be anathema to the
princess to whom the reformers had to turn as the agent of the kingdom's
spiritual renewal. Among the earliest acts of the Elizabethan regime were
a vigorous hunt for copies of the offending text, and the encouragement
to John Aylmer to construct his counter-blast A harborowe for faithfull and

1
Knox, iv. 349±422, also printed in R.A. Mason (ed.), John Knox, On Rebellion (Cambridge,
1994), 3±47. There is a large literature on Knox's views of revolt: see especially R.A. Mason,
Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Lin-
ton, 1998), 139±64, expanding his introduction to John Knox, On Rebellion; J.A. Dawson,
`Revolutionary conclusion: the case of the Marian exiles', History of Political Thought 11 (1990),
257±72; `The two John Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558 Tracts', JEH 43 (1991), 555±76
and `Trumpeting resistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox', in R.A. Mason (ed.), John
Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998), 131±53.
354 Reformations Established and Contested
trewe subjects agaynst the late blowne blaste concerninge the government of
wemen.2 As late as 1561 Knox was attempting to exculpate himself,
claiming that he had `mitigated somewhat the rigour of his book, referring
much unto the time that the same was written'.3 It did no good: he was
forever anathema to Elizabeth, along with his zealous Genevan allies.
Knox's second 1558 attempt to change the world met with better suc-
cess. His Appellation . . . to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland was dissemin-
ated in an environment already receptive to his calls for the punishment of
idolatry and the reform of religion.4 Since Scotland was still an uncoven-
anted nation Knox's main concerns were the protection of the ¯edgling
`privy kirks' and their purity of worship against the malice of the idol-
atrous Catholic clergy. Implicit in his appeal to the nobility to act in this
cause was permission to them to oppose the civil authority if it impeded
godly change.5 The key to the contrast between Knox the blunderer and
Knox the voice of religious revolution lies more within the two British
realms than within the man himself. It can be expressed simply in the
notion that we can date the beginning of the second phase of the English
and Welsh Reformation to 17 November 1558, Elizabeth's Accession
Day. The Scottish Reformation has no such precise origin date, though
later, in the usual search for beginnings, various dates between the signing
of the Band of the Lords of the Congregation in December 1557 and the
calling of the Reformation parliament in August 1560 were canvassed.6
The contrast is, of course, too simplistic, since the English settlement was
a long, complex, and contested process and the Scottish Reformation
slowly established itself with full legal foundations.7 Yet in essence the ®rst
was founded on monarchical choice and order, the second on the radical
rejection of existing authority in church and state.
Scottish reformers, like many of their kind, started with little disposition
to revolution. Their objective, to secure their own worship within `the
privy kirks', must in 1557 have seemed a possible goal, because the regent
Mary of Guise still retained a strong vested interest in religious concili-

2
The observation on house-to-house searches comes from Anthony Ashe, a former member
of the Edwardian stranger church who came from Emden to try to re-establish its privileges in
London in 1559. He attributed the dif®culties he encountered to of®cial hostility to Knox. A.
Pettegree, `The Marian exiles and the Elizabethan Settlement', in his Marian Protestantism
(Aldershot, 1996), 144±5.
3
CSP Sc i. 533 [no. 983].
4
Knox, iv. 461±520.
5
Mason, Knox on Rebellion, 72±114. J.H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of
Monarchy in early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), chs. 4±5. R.A. Mason, `Knox, resistance and
the royal supremacy', in Mason, Knox and the British Reformations, 154±75.
6
J. Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470±1625 (1981), 111±13.
7
C. Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (1969), 19±37.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 355
ation as a route to political stability. The First Band of Association of the
Lords of the Congregation, signed by the fourth earl of Argyll, the earl of
Morton, the earl of Glencairn, and John Erskine of Dun, among a limited
group of others, might seem the initial break with a policy of co-
operation from the Protestant perspective. In fact it was followed by a
period in 1558 when collaboration was at its height and when Mary, in
order to secure political support for the marriage of her daughter to the
Dauphin Francis, allowed public Protestant assemblies outside the capital.8
The regent was praised in letters from Calvin `for excellent knowledge of
God's word and goodwill towards the advancement of his glory'.9 The
language is signi®cant: there was as yet no break with the magistrate, but
the objective was reform on Protestant terms. The leaders of the Band
acted in concert, supporting direct action as well as negotiation with the
regent. In the November parliament of 1558 the pressure was increased
with a direct petition from the Lords for freedom of worship: Mary
stalled, offering some reassurance in return for support on the marriage
treaty. When, in December 1558, Archbishop Hamilton summoned
preachers before the church courts it was the Congregation that protested,
appealing the case to the regent `to be tried most justly according to the
holy scriptures'.10
By the latter date the possibilities of political compromise were dimin-
ishing, both for the regent and for those committed Protestants who
sought reform through the mechanisms of state. The most critical
moment, for Scotland as for England, was the death of Mary Tudor. With
the accession of Elizabeth came the very real threat of a reversion to the
politics of the 1540s, in which a reforming minority in Scotland sought
English support to counter the `auld alliance'. Mary of Guise could no
longer pursue toleration; radical Protestants awoke to the possibility of a
double reformation, and the Lords of the Congregation indeed began to
re¯ect on English aid.11 Meanwhile the de facto toleration of preaching
and propagandizing had facilitated the hardening of religious attitudes,
most clearly demonstrated on the Protestant side by the publication of the
`Beggars' Summons' of January 1559, warning the friars to `¯it and quit'
their hospitals by the following Whitsunday.12 On the Catholic side,
Archbishop Hamilton's summoning of a provincial council of the Church

8
Calderwood, i. 326±8, 416±17, 420±1. I.B. Cowan, The Scottish Reformation (1982), 111±12.
9
Calderwood, i. 421±2.
10
Knox, i. 256±66, 274±5. F.D. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the
Mearns (Edinburgh, 1989), 66±70.
11
Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, 114±16.
12
Knox, i. 320±1. Brother Kenneth, `The popular literature of the Scottish Reformation', in
D. McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1513±1625 (Glasgow, 1962), 179.
356 Reformations Established and Contested
for March is equal evidence of a determination to act.13 The regent made
her own position abundantly clear by a very public celebration of the
Easter communion, and by Lenten proclamations threatening death to
those who attacked Catholic worship in the `communion-season'.14
Meanwhile the signing of the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, and the subse-
quent death of Henri II of France, opened up the possibility of a Catholic
league against the Protestants in Scotland, and of a jurisdictional claim to
the throne of England as well as Scotland by Mary Queen of Scots and
her husband, now Francis II.15
The immediate trigger for the Scottish revolt was the attempt by the
regent in early May 1559 to enforce the Lenten proclamations and to
discipline the intransigent preachers, led by Paul Methven. She drew back
brie¯y when petitioned to do so by Erskine of Dun, but her ®nal decision
to put the ministers to the horn led to full-scale military action by the Lords
of the Congregation, who occupied Perth and enforced reformation.16
The coincidental (or providential) arrival of Knox in the same month
reinforced the preachers, and helped to foster popular reformations in
Dundee and Ayr. A number of burghsÐPerth, Brechin, Montrose, Stir-
ling, St Andrews, and EdinburghÐwere occupied by forces of the Congre-
gation in the following months, and were rapidly opposed by the regent's
forces, backed by French troops.17 The speed of descent into civil war after
a long period of negotiation and apparent compromise is striking, and
indicative of the fact that both sides had been made vulnerable by the rapid
shifts in international events in the ®rst half of 1559. Despite its popular
dimension, the war of the Congregation has to be seen largely as a political
battle for survival by a beleaguered elite, whose commitment to religious
change had led them far further down the path to radical opposition to the
monarchy than they had originally intended. They were constantly to be
reinforced by those who feared the newly ascendant power of France, and
saw in the crisis the opportunity to rid Scotland of foreign dominance.18 It
was no doubt fortunate that John Knox was available to provide this het-
erogeneous alliance with a justi®cation for their actions. Idolatry must be
punished, and men had a general duty to enforce God's laws against the
rulers. By 1564 Knox was spelling out clearly a position he seems to have
13
D. Patrick (ed.), Statutes of the Scottish Church, 1225±1559 (SHS, Edinburgh, 1907), 160±1.
14
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 70±1.
15
On the broad signi®cance of Cateau-Cambresis see S. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity:
William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558±1569 (Cambridge, 1998), 53±5. Henry
had requested aid from Philip II to restore Catholicism and French authority in Scotland.
16
Calderwood, i. 437±9.
17
Knox, i. 317±82; ii. 452.
18
J. Leslie, The History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), 271±9. Cowan, Scottish Reformation,
115±19.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 357
adopted from the time of his return to Scotland: `subjects may not only
lawfully oppose themselves to their kings . . . but also they may execute
judgement upon them according to Gods law'.19
By the time that the forces of the Lords of the Congregation temporarily
occupied Edinburgh in July 1559 the Elizabethan settlement was already a
legislative fact. The parliament which had re-established Protestantism had
been dissolved on 8 May; commissions for the royal visitation to enforce
religious change were issued in June and the ®rst coterie of reformed
prelates were about to be nominated to their sees.20 The settlement was
indubitably orchestrated by the queen and her advisers and, the returning
exiles convinced themselves, was indication of Elizabeth's true commit-
ment to the reformed religion. `We have', Jewel wrote to Bullinger, `a
wise and religious queen, and one too who is favourably and propitiously
disposed towards us.'21 Historians have not always been so con®dent about
Elizabeth's motives. The opacity of her personal religious views and the
fragmentary nature of the evidence for the decisions that produced the
settlement have been a fruitful ground for controversy. Yet the broad
public outlines of policy both before and after the 1559 parliamentary
session are reasonably clear. Although the queen moved with caution, not
even signi®cantly changing the nature of worship within her own chapel
royal in advance of parliamentary sanction, she employed calculated public
gesture to signal her hostility to Catholicism. Famous moments include her
dismissal of the taper-carrying monks of Westminster, her insistence that
the Host should not be elevated in her chapel, and her kissing of the Bible
during the coronation pageants provided by the city of London.22 Less
frequently remarked is the proclamation of December 1558 licensing
churches to read the Epistle and Gospel at Mass in English.23
At the end of the parliamentary session an explicitly Protestant settle-
ment had indeed emerged. The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity had
restored the royal supremacy, in its modi®ed form of royal governorship,
and the 1552 Edwardian Prayer Book in all its essentials. The royal injunc-
tions spoke apparently unambiguously of the `suppression of superstition'
and the need `to plant true religion to the extirpation of all hypocrisy,
enormities and abuses'.24 While the settlement was liturgically driven,

19
Mason, Knox on Rebellion, 203. Dawson, `Goodman and Knox', 145.
20
N.L. Jones, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion 1559 (1982).
W.S. Hudson, The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham, N.C.,
1980). Pettegree, `Marian exiles', 129±50.
21
ZL i. 33.
22
A.F. Pollard (ed.), Tudor Tracts 1532±1588 (1903), 376. C.G. Bayne, `The coronation
of Queen Elizabeth', EHR 22 (1907), 662.
23 24
TRP ii. 102±3. VAI ii. 176±89.
358 Reformations Established and Contested
rather than espousing the `best reformed model' of a confession as the
essential preliminary to spiritual renewal, there was an expectation that the
rest would quickly follow. It may be that the new leaders of the Church
hoped that something like the `Declaration of doctrine' offered to the
queen in April 1559 by a group of the Marian emigreÂs, which followed the
pattern of the Edwardian Forty-Two Articles, would be adopted.25
The months between the coronation in January 1559 and the end of
the parliament are fraught with interpretative dif®culty. A frame is pro-
vided by the two parliamentary sessions, with a break over the Easter
period, and by the signing of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, news of
which reached England at the end of the ®rst week in April. The latter
event was as crucial politically for the English as for the Scots, but as
Norman Jones has shown it came too late fundamentally to in¯uence the
direction of the settlement.26 As for the struggle for settlement itself: the
major competing interpretations turn on the intentions of the regime and
on who provided the parliamentary opposition. For J.E. Neale the queen
was a very tepid sort of Protestant, seeking a return to Henrician values or
at worst the revival of the 1549 Prayer Book. She and her ministers were
opposed by a determined pressure group in the Commons, who forced
her into the acceptance of the 1552 Prayer Book with its unequivocal
commitment to the Protestant cause.27 Jones's challenge to this thesis
displaced opposition to the Lords and the refusal of the prelates to accept
any movement away from Catholicism, and sought to prove by a careful
reconstruction of the texts, that Elizabeth and her advisers achieved the
settlement that they always intended.28
Jones's thesis has won wide acceptance, and in its interpretation of the
oppositional forces faced by the new regime carries great conviction. But
it is less clear that Neale's reading of the queen herself has been fully
displaced. Much of Elizabeth's later behaviour towards her church was so
idiosyncratic, ambiguous, or, in the view of the godly reformed, down-
right erroneous, that it is dif®cult to see her as driven by the pure light of
the gospel in the early months of 1559.29 A recent insight into the queen's

25
W.P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), 238±9.
26
Jones, Faith by Statute, 83±159.
27
J.E. Neale, `The Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity', EHR (1950), 304±32.
28
N.M. Sutherland, `The Marian exiles and the establishment of the Elizabethan regime',
ARG 78 (1987), 253±84, essentially supports the Jones thesis, as does Pettegree, `Marian exiles',
in Marian Protestantism.
29
For valuable re¯ections on the ever-vexed topic of Elizabeth's religious convictions see
P. Collinson, `Windows in a woman's soul: questions about the religion of Queen Elizabeth I',
in his Elizabethan Essays (1994), 87±118. Also, S. Doran, `Elizabeth I's religion: the evidence of
her letters', JEH 51 (2000), 699±720. Both authors see the queen as Protestant doctrinally, but
traditionalist in her religious behaviour.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 359
views as she pondered the settlement of religion has come from Roger
Bowers's study of music prepared for the chapel royal in the early months
of the reign.30 Compositions by Sheppard, Mundy, Parsons, and Tallis,
which can be assigned with some con®dence to the early years of the
reign, set texts from the 1549 Prayer Book. It is also possible that a letter
from Edmund Guest, later bishop of Rochester, to Cecil, commenting
adversely on proposed amendments to the 1549 Prayer Book, dates from
this period.31 Guest resisted suggestions that processions should be re-
vived, the cross used, and prayer for the dead reincorporated into the
communion service. He also opposed the reintroduction of ceremonies,
and insisted on the lawfulness of kneeling or standing for communion.
This reads as a ®rm response to Elizabeth's preoccupations and suggests
that we should take seriously once again the suggestion that Elizabeth
would have preferred the ®rst to the second Edwardian text and would
have liked to give it an enhanced ceremoniousness. The details here are
signi®cant both because of the later history of the Elizabethan church and
because, if true, they raise the question of who or what persuaded the
queen away from her early preference.
While it would be possible to resuscitate the zealous in the Commons
as a source of in¯uence on the settlement, the fragmentary evidence
points more consistently towards the inner conciliar circle, and above all
to William Cecil. Although Cecil, like the queen herself, and like
Matthew Parker, had chosen to be a nicodemite and to conform under
Mary, his Protestant instincts are not in serious doubt.32 There is nothing
in his later behaviour that suggests that he had any interest in processions,
cruci®xes, or vestments, and in his previous existence under Edward he
had been identi®ed fully with the reformed. In 1559 the queen's cause
was his cause, but within a few months he was to show how effectively he
could manoeuvre his mistress when both the gospel and national security
were threatened in the case of Scotland. It is impossible to be sure

30
R. Bowers, `The chapel royal, the ®rst Edwardian Prayer Book and Elizabeth's settlement
of religion, 1559', HJ 43 (2000), 317±44. I am very grateful to Dr Bowers for allowing me to see
a copy of his paper in advance of publication, and for conversations about the settlement.
31
The text of the Guest revision is in H. Gee, The Elizabethan Prayer Book and its ornaments
(1902), 215±24. Gee argues forcefully, against Strype, that the document dates from 1552 and is
associated with the preparation of the second Edwardian Prayer Book. Most modern commen-
tators have accepted this dating, but the internal evidence of the topics discussed is more
compatible with 1559. Above all, the covering note, addressed apparently to Cecil, who much
later forwarded it to Parker, talks of `some causes of the order taken in the new service',
language which from Guest ®ts better with 1559; Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, 31 ff. Bowers,
`Chapel royal', 330±2.
32
Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 25±7. Hudson, Cambridge Connection, 100±2. On nicode-
mism under the Marian regime see Pettegree, `Nicodemism and the English Reformation', in
Marian Protestantism, 86±117.
360 Reformations Established and Contested
whether Cecil was able to de¯ect the queen from the 1549 Prayer Book
before it reached Parliament. Two differently labelled bills for the uni-
formity were introduced into the Commons in mid-February 1559: they
may have been promoting competing versions of the Edwardian book,
with the regime initially sponsoring 1549, or, as Jones suggests, simply
different labels for the same bill, sponsoring 1552.33 If there were moves
towards the 1549 rite it seems likely that they were suppressed by Cecil
and his allies.34 Much later the royal secretary defensively reminded
Edward Dering of how he had been active `above all others in propagat-
ing religion in the beginning' of the reign, `enduring great contestation in
it'.35 A number of others no doubt contended in support of Cecil: his
brother-in-law Nicholas Bacon, Anthony Cooke, and Francis Knollys.
And in the shadowy world of spiritual advisers there were men like Rich-
ard Cox and Edmund Grindal, the latter recalling in after years that they
had struggled long and earnestly for further reform but were `unable to
prevail'.36 Cecil and his network of friends and allies were certainly those
best equipped to persuade the queen of the position that the House of
Commons seems to have supported throughout, that the restitution of the
1552 Prayer Book was the mark of a true Protestant settlement.
In achieving her settlement Elizabeth had been forced to abandon the
hope of persuading even the most politique of her Catholic bishops to
endorse religious change. The most that was in the end offered as gestures
to conservative opinion within the legislative settlement was the so-called
`ornaments clause' inserted in the Act of Uniformity, permitting chancel
ornaments and vestments according to the 1549 use, and the ampli®cation
of the sentences of reception in the communion service.37 The latter
married the 1552 formula, `take and eat this in remembrance that Christ
died for thee and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving', to
that of 1549, `the body of the Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,
preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life'. It can be argued that no
change of doctrine was involved, merely a move away from an overly
blunt statement of Swiss memorialism in 1552 to the more nuanced ar-
ticulation of Christ's spiritual presence in the Eucharist that was the
mature reformed position.38 Since no evidence of controversy about this

33
Jones, Faith by Statute, 90±5.
34
CSP Sp 1558±67. i. 25, 33, for the assumption of the Spanish ambassador Feria that Cecil
was driving change.
35
J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1824), i. i. 119.
36
P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 1519±83: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (1979), 85±9.
37
1 Eliz. I c.2: the ornaments proviso was the last to be added to the text, suggesting that it
was possibly a late insertion.
38
D. MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547±1603 (1990), 30±1.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 361
change survives it may be assumed to have been acceptable to Protestants:
at the most among Catholics it could have appealed to those who were
already actively seeking a way of accommodating their consciences to the
demands of the new regime. For the queen, on the other hand, both
provisions opened the way for an emphasis on devotion to the sacraments,
and to the forms of ritual and prayer which she had valued in her youth.
The determination with which she subsequently maintained the cruci®x
and candles in her private chapel, and her clear preference for a formal,
sung liturgy rather than an excess of sermons, were already given a type of
legitimation in the gestures of the settlement.39
The years that followed the end of the 1559 parliament saw the most
critical stages of struggles to appropriate its meaning as a Protestant settle-
ment.40 The new bench of bishops was slowly appointed, the royal visit-
ation was completed, and the ®rst confessional statement, the Eleven
Articles, was produced. Through all of this the assumption was that 1559
marked the beginning of a process of building a reformed church, not its
apotheosis. Even Cecil, far better placed than most of the new church
leaders to recognize the dif®culty of moving Elizabeth, seems to have
proceeded on the assumption that further change was a practical possibil-
ity. In his lists of proposals for ®lling the vacant bishoprics Cecil consist-
ently favoured active reformers, many of them drawn from his networks
of connection from Edwardian and Cambridge days. He may also have
hoped for a modi®ed episcopate, closer to Lutheran superintendency than
to old lordly prelacy.41 When Edmund Grindal was given charge of the
stranger congregations in London he was made their superintendent at the
secretary's insistence.42 Ultimately Cecil met with much success in his
nominations for the bench, though he was thwarted both by clerical
opposition to plans to reduce the value of bishoprics and by Elizabeth's
unwillingness to unbalance her bench with an excess of exiles, especially
any with the slightest taint of Geneva. The interminable slowness with
which the sees were ®lled, not really completed until 1561, led the
39
The controversy between Elizabeth and her Protestant bishops about cruci®x and candle-
sticks has frequently been narrated: see Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation, 185±200.
On the services in the chapel royal under Elizabeth see P. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics
and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), 76±8.
40
Much of the interpretation in this paragraph draws on the work of Brett Usher on Cecil
and the appointment of the ®rst Elizabethan episcopal bench. I am grateful to Mr Usher for
allowing me to see a part of his text in advance of publication.
41
See F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes (Cambridge, 1980), 200±10; `The bishops and the Act
of Exchange of 1559', HJ 17 (1974), 227±46. Cecil recommended Danish-style superintendency
and the taking of episcopal wealth to the Lords of the Congregation in 1559: CSP For 1558±9.
no. 1086.
42
A. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986),
136±8.
362 Reformations Established and Contested
secretary into intermittent hand-wringing about the failure of true settle-
ment. In March 1560 one of his memoranda reads: `to see the realm set in
order with a clergy, that the Ire of God light not upon the people of the
realm'.43
The new bishops and their supporters among the Protestant clergy also
saw the settlement as a crucial new beginning. Despite bruising encoun-
ters with the queen about her cross and candlesticksÐthose `great grief[s]
to the godly'Ðclerical marriage, and episcopal lands, the prelates antici-
pated a fuller reformation. Looking north of the border they saw what
could be achieved: the Scots, John Parkhurst told Bullinger in 1560, `have
made greater progress in true religion in a few months than we have done
in many years'.44 The royal visitation of 1559 provided the returning
exiles with a major opportunity to make clear statements of faith, preach-
ing extensively on their circuits and deliberately circumventing Elizabeth's
cautious injunction on the removal of `monuments of feigned miracles,
pilgrimage, idolatry and superstition' by encouraging a return to wholesale
Edwardian iconoclasm.45 But the most important opportunity came in
1562±3 when, with the new personnel of the Church ®rmly in place, the
calling of Parliament opened the way for the ®rst convocation of the new
reign.46 That convocation once again restored England's full confessional
status with the passing of the Thirty-Nine Articles, but it sought more,
including reform of canon law and alterations to the liturgy. Issues raised
included some that were to become familiar battle-ground between
Puritans and conformists over the ensuing decades: ministerial dress,
kneeling at communion, forms of music in church, the sign of the cross in
baptism. The careful reconstruction of the surviving documents of the
convocation by David Crankshaw suggests that the bishops were respon-
sible for the preparation and promotion of these reforming proposals.
From this convocation came the so-called `Alphabetical bills' with which
the bishops sought in the next two parliaments to promote further reform
in the Church.47 But by then the world had changed: hopes focused on
Elizabeth had dimmed, and the problem of order and authority in church
and state had been opened up by the beginnings of the con¯ict over
vestments.
43 44
PRO sp 12/11/35. ZL i. 91.
45
VAI ii. 176±89. M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts: Laws against Images (Oxford, 1988),
298±303.
46
The fullest account of the 1563 convocation is in Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English
Reformation, 52±78, but its interpretation needs fundamental amendment in the light of the
following. D. Crankshaw, `Preparations for the Canterbury provincial convocation of 1562±3: a
question of attribution', in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reforma-
tion England (Aldershot, 1998), 60±93.
47
G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559±81 (Cambridge, 1986), 205±12.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 363
Despite the initial success of the parliamentary settlement, Cecil's
memoranda in the second half of 1559 are ®lled with foreboding about
the dangers to the realm within and without. Within men suffered `for
lack of good government ecclesiastical' and were not taught `to live in
obedience to the laws established'; without there were threats from
Catholic powers in general, and above all from France and from Mary
Queen of Scots' claim to the English throne.48 In these strained circum-
stances the `Protestants of Scotland', as Cecil swiftly came to label the
Congregation, could offer the opportunity to counter French threat. From
June 1559 Cecil's agents, especially Sir Henry Percy, were in deep negoti-
ation with the Scottish lords, and the language of the 1540s was being
resurrected to meet the new circumstances.49 In July Cecil wrote to the
earls of Argyle and Glencairn, and other lords, presenting the English
settlement with a clarity he could not always muster at home. The country
had abandoned `idolatry and brought [in] our saviour Jesus Christ', and
Cecil prayed that the same would happen to the Scots, `thereby this terres-
trial kingdom of Christ may be dilated through this noble Isle'.50 This is
not quite the crude unionism of the 1540s, partly because the regime was
not ready for direct intervention, partly because, if we are to take Cecil at
his word, it was a common amity of religion and politics binding two
realms that seemed to him the desirable outcome. The implications of this
amity for the governance of Scotland were spelled out in the secretary's
`memorial of certain points' at the end of August. This endorsed the mili-
tant purging of the kingdom, the authority of the estates, and, most radic-
ally of all, the possibility of deposing a tyrannous monarch.51
Fine sentiments were no substitute for big battalions. In the autumn of
1559 England was not backing its rhetoric with direct support, despite the
Congregation's requests for aid. Like Cecil, the Lords cast their rhetoric
partly in religious, indeed apocalyptic, language, asking for a `league made
in the name of God' seeking `rather the heaven than the earth'.52 In reality,
the situation in Scotland was somewhat less apocalyptic, and when it
became essential to secure English support the Lords turned to a more
directly political form of appeal. The Congregation had remained largely in
the ascendancy in these months, and there were dramatic moments, notably
the `suspension' from power of the regent in October, an action which had
little practical effect. The Scots had reached something like stalemate, a

48 49
PRO sp 12/4/40. Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 55±8.
50
PRO sp 52/1, fos. 147±8, calendared in CSP For 1558±9. 424 [no. 1086].
51
BL Lans. MS 4, fos. 26v±27, printed in Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 223±4. See also
J. Dawson, `William Cecil and the British dimension of early Elizabethan foreign policy',
History 74 (1989), 196±216.
52
CSP For 1558±9. 396 [no. 1028], 431 [no. 1097]; CSP Sc i. no. 903.
364 Reformations Established and Contested
situation in which it was expected that only the vigorous intervention of
England or France would ®nally shift the balance of power. In the winter of
1559 it looked as though the role of the latter would be crucial: Congre-
gation forces had to retreat from Edinburgh and were losing to French
forces around Stirling and St Andrews. Eventually, under the pressure of a
formal delegation from the Congregation and growing fears of French
intentions, Cecil became a fervent advocate of direct intervention and in
turn persuaded a reluctant queen to action. By spring 1560 Lord Grey's
army had made suf®cient impact on the French at Leith for the parties to
accept a negotiated settlement. This proved extremely dif®cult to achieve,
though the practical need of all parties for compromise and the death of
Mary of Guise in June 1560 ®nally opened the way for the signing of the
Treaty of Edinburgh on 6 July. Cecil himself travelled to Scotland to sign
the accord and take the measure of the Scottish political leadership.53
The most curious feature of the treaty was that it did not resolve the
religious issue, which had proved `too hot for the French to meddle
withal', as Cecil reported to Elizabeth.54 Even the English commissioners
were taken aback by the commitment of the Scots, `so deeply persuaded
in the matter of religion, as nothing can persuade them that may appear to
hinder it'.55 It was certainly true that the Scottish leadership had no inten-
tion of waiting on the judgements of the French king and queen as the
treaty had proposed. The extended nature of the revolt against Catholi-
cism had given congregations in Ayrshire, Angus and the Mearns, and Fife
the opportunity to expel their old ministers and appoint reformers. Those
involved in military action had taken a second band in April 1560 to `set
forward the reformation of religion' and to welcome English military
assistance.56 By the time of the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh the
Protestant leadership was ready to act, and the parliament that met in
August 1560 proceeded at a pace that put English endeavours to shame.
Papal authority was annulled, the Confession of Faith was accepted and
the Book of Discipline was commissioned.57 Randolph, the English am-
bassador, reporting to Cecil, remarked that `I never saw so important
matters, sooner dispatched, or agreed to with a better will.'58 It was as

53
Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 64±5. C. Kellar, ` ``To Enrich with Gospel Truth the
Neighbour Kingdom'': Religion and Reformation in England and Scotland, 1534±1567', Uni-
versity of Oxford D.Phil. (2000), 210±12.
54
S. Haynes (ed.), A Collection of State Papers relating to Affairs in the Reigns of King Henry
VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, 2 vols. (1740), i. 352.
55
Ibid., 333.
56
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 70±83. M.H.B. Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation
(E. Linton, E. Lothian, 1997), 97±8.
57 58
APS ii. 526±35. Knox, ii. 61. CSP Sc i. 466±7 [no. 886].
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 365
though the Scots, having come so tardily to public reformation, now
intended to compensate for decades lost.
But appearances can be somewhat deceptive, and the contrast between
the tense and cautious English parliament of 1559 and the vigorous Scottish
response to the clarion call of reformation should not be exaggerated. In
the Scots parliament itself opposition was certainly muted: laymen who
were not convinced wisely remained silent, though two of the three
bishops present offered cautious resistance to the Confession.59 The Book
of Discipline aroused more controversy: its ®rst version was not presented
in Parliament and a group of divines was commissioned to work on a
second version in the autumn of 1560. The ®nished product was approved
by the ®rst General Assembly of the Kirk in December and then presented
to a Convention of the Estates for approval. It won informal approval from
a group of signatories, but among the stars of the reformed ®rmament who
refused to sign were Maitland of Lethington and Erskine of Dun.60 While
there seems to have been very little ideological opposition to the introduc-
tion of a ®rm Calvinism, and the accompanying disciplinary framework,
the problems presented by the need to ®nance the new kirk proved deeply
contentious. Knox remarked darkly that those who opposed the Book were
wholly taken up with their `worldly commodity'.61 The Book was eventu-
ally accepted by the Convention of Estates and the Privy Council, but was
given no general parliamentary sanction.62 It was scarcely surprising that,
after many further vicissitudes, the General Assembly seized a favourable
moment in the 1570s to `set down a constant form of church-policy and
present the same to be allowed by the council'.63
Relations with England were equally uncertain, despite the general
gratitude expressed by the reformers for the decisive military intervention
of 1560. There were those, most notably Maitland of Lethington, who
saw in the English alliance a possibility of bringing the kingdoms into
closer union. The Lords of the Congregation had optimistically proposed
to Elizabeth that a marriage alliance with the young earl of Arran was
the best way to achieve this.64 The project was killed by the queen's lack
of enthusiasm in 1559, but renewed with much greater formality towards

59
Kellar, `Gospel Truth', 215±16. G. Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960),
66±8.
60
J.K. Cameron (ed.), The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), 3±14, 70±5. It should
be noted that the drafters of the First Book con®dently followed Calvinist practice in requiring
the civil powers to enforce the Kirk's will, not petitioning for state support.
61
Knox, ii. 297.
62
The whole Reformation settlement, indeed, remained in an ambiguous legal position
because of Mary's refusal to endorse its proceedings.
63
J. Kirk (ed.), The Second Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1980), 41±2.
64
CSP Sc. i. 465, 495 [nos. 885, 926].
366 Reformations Established and Contested
65
the end of 1560. Any personal preference apart, it does not seem that
Elizabeth took any great interest in British unionist projects of the kind
that underlay these proposals. By this time she may also have begun to
understand a little of the nature of the Scottish religious settlement, not
only its detachment from its sovereign, but its Calvinist nature. Even if
John Knox was less central to the drama for contemporary Englishmen
than for the later readership of his History of the Reformation, he was clearly
established as a leading preacher, and was seconded by that other hated
Genevan, Christopher Goodman. As for Knox himself: he held to a pas-
sionate vision of religious unity between the realms he loved, and was a
more intense unionist than most of his contemporaries, but his view of
that bond was unyielding. The English, like the Scots, must profess the
purity of the gospel, of®cially if possible, but if not, little by little as the
Scots had done.66 It was the view that had been articulated most clearly
by Anthony Gilby while the Genevans still remained in exile in 1558:
both nations must repent and `return into the vineyard', winning God's
favour with complete victories over their enemies. There could be no
union between those who failed to do the Lord's work unequivocally.67
Any triumphalism felt by Scottish Protestants in the months after the
Treaty of Edinburgh and the Reformation parliament was to be short-
lived. Fate intervened and cast up Mary Queen of Scots as a widow on
the shores of her kingdom.68 In August 1561, barely a year after the
meeting of Parliament, an adult queen of Catholic persuasion had
returned to rule. The few articulate Catholic divines who were confront-
ing Calvinism, notably Quintin Kennedy and Ninian Winzet, were en-
couraged, as were those nobles who had no Protestant commitment and
no enthusiasm for the English alliance. Mary could not return to the
principle of cuius regio, eius religio in the absence of military backing from
France, but her commitment to private Catholic worship was suf®cient to
destabilize the settlement, and incidentally to destabilize Knox, who de-
sired direct confrontation with the Antichrist. He was constrained by
Moray and Maitland, who were insistent that compromise was necessary
for political stability, and so it proved for a few years. Mary, however, was

65
Haynes, State Papers, i. 364.
66
Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 88±9. Kellar, `Gospel Truth', 218±20.
67
A. Gilby, Admonition to England and Scotland, to call them to repentance, reprinted in Knox,
iv. 553±71. J. Dawson, `Anglo-Scottish Protestant culture and integration in sixteenth-century
Britain', in S.G. Ellis and S. Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State,
1485±1725 (1995), 99±110. G. Donaldson, `The foundations of Anglo-Scottish union', in his
Scottish Church History (Edinburgh, 1985), 142.
68
Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 86±7, stresses how critical Mary's return was to Anglo-
Scottish relations.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 367
to demonstrate that even in a Scotland reformed without royal ®at sover-
eigns could still count.69

Securing the Settlements: Scotland and England Before the mid-1580s

The annus mirabilis of the Scottish Reformation was not succeeded by any
secure settlement of religion: indeed the Kirk had to wait another thirty
years before it could claim its place in the structure of the Scottish state
with full con®dence. Calvinist ecclesiology not only enabled it to survive
in this uncertain climate, it helped positively to af®rm the separation of
the Kirk from lay authority.70 The magistrate was con®ned to authority
over those `whom they govern civilly': the spiritual governance of the
Church given to Christ alone. The `two kingdoms theory', adumbrated
by the Lords of the Congregation as early as 1559, ensured that it was the
ministry that possessed the power of the keys `which our Master gave to
his disciples and their true successors'.71 Only the clergy could preach,
teach, administer the sacraments, and bind and loose in disciplinary judge-
ment. Admittedly, in an ideal Calvinist polity the civil authorities were to
co-operate with the ministry, but initiative incontestably lay with the
spiritual arm.72 In the real political world, however, the Kirk had con-
stantly to confront the mutability of power and its uncertain impact on
religious organization. The cycle of events began with the personal rule of
Mary, which until 1565 was marked by uneasy manoeuvring between the
queen and the Protestant lords.73 The breathing-space provided allowed
the Protestant church to gain support. It did not permit it to establish itself
with full legality or to solve its pressing ®nancial problems. Then in 1566
there was crisis when in the aftermath of her marriage to Darnley and
Moray's rebellion Mary made a bold bid to restore Catholicism through
Parliament. Not only the reformed Kirk, but the whole structure of
Anglo-Scottish Protestant alliance was threatened. At this the queen's
world famously collapsed.74
Mary's deposition in 1567 offered the Kirk the opportunity for better
collaboration with the state: the earl of Moray as regent for the infant

69
Knox, ii. 142±3. J. Wormald, `Godly Reformer: Godless Monarch: John Knox and Mary
Queen of Scots', in Mason, Knox and the British Reformations, 231±2.
70
Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, 53±75.
71
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 232±40. Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 99,
103.
72
Mason, `Knox, resistance and the royal supremacy', in Knox and the British Reformations,
154±8, 172±5.
73
J. Wormald, Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure (1988), 103±28.
74
G. Donaldson, All the Queen's Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart's Scotland (1983),
74±82.
368 Reformations Established and Contested
James being the closest approximation to a `godly prince' that was to be
experienced in this disturbed period.75 The parliament that met in De-
cember of that year rati®ed the legislation of its predecessor in 1560, and
added some of those public af®rmations of the status of the new faith that
were necessary in the confessional state. Public of®ce was restricted to
Protestants, the Kirk was given the right to examine all those promoted to
bene®ces, and had its control over preaching, discipline, and the adminis-
tration of the sacraments proclaimed. With the exception of a full ®nancial
settlement it seemed to have gained all that it desired. This did not mean,
however, that the leaders of the reform movement had broken faith with
the `two kingdom' ideal. In 1568 the printer John Bassenden was in
trouble for a book title that described James VI as `supreme head of the
primitive Kirk'.76 Four years later the Scottish Oath of Supremacy de-
scribed him only as `governor of this realm as well in things temporal as in
the conservation and purgation of religion'.77
The conservation of religion proved dif®cult in the 1570s. The assassin-
ation of Moray in 1570 was followed by a brief English military interven-
tion. This led to full-scale civil con¯ict, only gradually resolved after the
appointment as regent of the earl of Morton. Morton's early history as a
signatory of the First Band of Association did not automatically make him
a friend of the ministers, and from 1572 onwards he endeavoured to
enhance the authority of the crown over the ecclesiastical structure by
supporting the continuance of bishops. By the time that the Kirk drew up
the Second Book of Discipline in 1578, the crown's advisers were ®rmly
committed to the episcopate, a major moment of con¯ict being Morton's
attempt to appoint Patrick Adamson as archbishop of St Andrews
in 1576.78 Morton's hold on power was subsequently weakened when he
was stripped of the regency in 1578, and then further damaged by EsmeÂ
Stewart, duke of Lennox, whose pro-French interests and ascendancy
over the young king threatened to destabilize the whole Protestant settle-
ment. Morton was executed in 1581 after a trial controlled by his en-
emies.79 Stewart was displaced in 1582, but there followed the capture of
the king by the `Ruthven raiders'. The Ruthven lords were supposedly
sympathetic to the Kirk. However, they showed erastian tendencies and
75
A.R. MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, 1567±1625: Sovereignty, Polity and Liturgy (Aldershot,
1998), 6±8.
76
Mason, `Knox, resistance and royal supremacy', in Knox and the British Reformations, 154,
174.
77
The oath can be compared with its English counterpart in W.C. Dickinson, G. Donaldson
and I.A. Milne (eds.), A Source Book of Scottish History, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1952±4), iii. 12±13.
78
Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, 183±216.
79
For the best full narrative of these events see G.R. Hewitt, Scotland under Morton (Edin-
burgh, 1982).
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 369
80
an unwillingness to commit further resources to the ministry. In a ®nal
twist in 1583 James escaped from the in¯uence of the Ruthven lords, only
once again to promote the Stuart, pro-French interest in the person of the
earl of Arran. The Kirk's support for the ousted regime led directly to one
of the greatest moments of crisis in its chequered ®rst half-century of
existence. In the ensuing factional struggles a group of ministers led by
Andrew Melville ¯ed to England, while others resisted the Arran regime
at home. Only James VI's assumption of power in November 1585 pro-
duced some semblance of calm.81
The Kirk therefore developed its identity partially in independence from
an insecure and unsettled monarchy. From the moment of the First Book
of Discipline onwards the essential features of church organization were
put in place. Local congregations, guided by their elders and deacons,
called ministers to their service, though the process of vetting for the clergy
in practice lay in the hands of the wider pastorate.82 Individual churches
had kirk sessions as their focal assemblies `for treating of things concerning
the Kirk and pertaining to their charges'.83 Broader ecclesiastical policy
was to be decided by the General Assembly, which met for the ®rst time at
the beginning of 1561.84 It is the intentions of Knox and his colleagues
in regard to the levels of organization that were intermediate between
congregation and general assembly that have sparked most contro-
versy among historians.85 The structures that served a city-state quickly
had to be modi®ed in Scotland as in France to create at least the
skeleton of a national church. It may be that, as James Kirk has forcefully
argued, the logic of the Scottish system was presbyterian, disposed towards
a cellular hierarchy of assemblies in which the ministry and eldership
governed without need for an episcopate of any kind. The general

80
MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 18±29.
81
James Melville, Andrew's nephew and a fellow minister, vividly evokes the `dark and
heavy winter to the kirk of Scotland', and his own later ¯ight into exile, R. Pitcairn (ed.), The
Autobiography and Diary of Mr James Melvill (Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1843), 139±72.
82
Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 168±79. Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 57±73.
83
Knox, i. 333.
84
D. Shaw, The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland, 1560±1600 (Edinburgh, 1964). It is
important to note that in its early years the General Assembly did not conform at all neatly to a
Calvinist vision. It contained the secular nobility, at least until James's period of majority, the
superintendents, bishops, and commissioners appointed by the Kirk, representatives of the clergy
chosen in rather traditional ways from the diocesan synods, and representatives of the burghs,
shires, and universities.
85
The controversy over the nature of the early reformed Kirk was conducted between the
late Gordon Donaldson and James Kirk. The former wished to demonstrate continuity with
the past, and above all with contemporary English experience: Donaldson, Scottish Reformation,
130±5; `Foundations of Anglo-Scottish Union', in his Scottish Church History, 137±63. The latter
challenges these arguments, looking above all to the Genevan in¯uence on the Reformation:
J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), esp. 70±95, 334±67.
370 Reformations Established and Contested
determination of the ®rst generation of ministers to conform to the `pol-
ities of the best reformed kirks' in the areas of doctrine and worship cer-
tainly extended to matters of discipline and church order. From the very
beginning a system of diocesan and regional synods, similar to those of the
old church, supplemented the work of the kirk sessions and acted as courts
of appeal.
Within this graded system there remained space for the exercise of
individual authority, though not for traditional prelacy. In 1561, as a late
addition to the Book of Discipline, a plan for superintendency was intro-
duced. It was proposed that there should be ten reorganized provinces or
dioceses, each of approximately 100 parishes, each cared for by a superin-
tendent `to plant and erect kirks, to set, order and appoint ministers'.86
The proposal was only partially implemented, because the return of Mary
and the acceptance of reform by three of the established bishops created
major complications. But in Fife, Angus and the Mearns, Galloway, Glas-
gow, and Lothian, superintendency became a reality. The individuals who
held these posts were not bishops with property, secular power, or exclu-
sive jurisdictional rights, though they did exercise power over appoint-
ments and visitatorial discipline that seems at odds with a presbyterian
view of parity of ministry. A superintendent was an overseer, subject to
the discipline of his own ministers, and not necessarily endowed with
permanent power, yet possessed in practice of considerable in¯uence
should he choose to exercise it.87
Only after the dif®cult Marian years did the issue of authority in the
Church begin to become critical. In 1569 the General Assembly expressed
its commitment to the system of superintendency by asking the Privy
Council to make proper ®nancial provision so that the of®ce might be
extended. Meanwhile there was a pressing need to replace the bishops of
the old church who had retained their bene®ces.88 In 1571 John Douglas,
rector of St Andrews University and a kinsman of the earl of Morton, was
nominated to the archbishopric against ®erce opposition from the General
Assembly. The issue was compromised in the `Concordat of Leith' of the
following year, by which it was agreed that bishops should be appointed,
but that they should hold a parish like other ministers and be subject to
the General Assembly in matters spiritual. The principles of oversight
embodied in the superintendency were upheld but, ominously, the crown

86
For a thorough, but rather negative, interpretation of superintendent power see Kirk,
`The superintendent: myth and reality', in Patterns of Reform, 154±231.
87
For a good recent study of the early operation of superintendency in Fife see L.J. Dunbar,
`Synods and superintendence: John Winram and Fife, 1561±72', RSCHS 27 (1997), 97±125.
88
D.G. Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland: The History of an Idea, 1560±1638 (Edinburgh, 1986),
33 ff.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 371
89
retained rights of appointment subject to vetting by the Kirk. The Leith
settlement survived for a few years, at the cost of organizational confusion,
particularly on the issue of disciplinary responsibility.90 By 1574 the Kirk
was eager to look for a more permanent structural solution, and the
providential return from Geneva of Andrew Melville offered the oppor-
tunity for such a re-evaluation.91 The General Assembly established a
committee to enquire `whether . . . the bishops, as they are now in the
Kirk . . . have their function of the word of God or not'.92
The answer, for most kirk-men, was that a reformed polity had no place
for lordly prelates. The Second Book of Discipline, which was the end
product of the 1570s debates, made it abundantly clear that all ministers
were of equal standing, and that bishops were explicitly excluded from
exercising the disciplinary functions associated with diocesan visitation.93
Bishops slowly ceased to attend meetings of the General Assembly. The
sentiments of Melville on godly discipline prevailed, even though we can
no longer describe the Second Book as his personal handiwork.94 But
while the disciplinary structure of the Church was tightened and moved
more ®rmly in a Genevan direction, the political problem remained. Mor-
ton as regent was determined to continue to exercise royal patronage and
to sustain episcopacy, beginning in 1576 a protracted battle with the Gen-
eral Assembly about the nomination of Patrick Adamson to the
archiepiscopal see of St Andrews. In this Morton eventually prevailed and
he also thwarted the Kirk in its attempts to have the Book of Discipline
sanctioned by Parliament.95 Although no clear statement of his motives
survives, the Kirk's response that `it became not the prince to prescribe a
policy for the Kirk', makes the fundamental issue clear. Episcopal power
was now deeply identi®ed with princely meddling, and fundamentally
incompatible with the separation of spiritual power on which the Kirk was
bent. When Morton was ousted and Lennox achieved ascendancy the
General Assembly, despairing of royal sanction, formally adopted the
Second Book of Discipline, and argued that it was resolved `wholly to
condemn the estate of bishops as they are now in Scotland'. In 1581 the
600 parishes were divided into ®fty presbyteries, and thirteen were
launched as pilot organizational units.96 Fear of Lennox's Catholic leanings
89 90
MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 8±14. Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 353, 355.
91
T. McCrie, The Life of Andrew Melville, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1819), i. 158±9.
92
BUK i. 331, 336±7.
93
Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, sections 176 and 183, on ministers, section 196±7 on
visitation.
94
On Melville see Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, intro., 47±52. McCrie, Life of Melville,
i. 172±4.
95
MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 16±22. Calderwood, iii. 413±16, 619±20.
96
BUK ii. 474±5, 480±7.
372 Reformations Established and Contested
intensi®ed the determination of the assembly to resist state intrusion and
episcopal nomination.97 Con¯ict about the promotion of Robert Mont-
gomery to the see of Glasgow led to a special assembly that warned James
that `in your graces person some men propose to erect a new popedom'.98
Such trenchant behaviour offered its own moral rewards, yet the Kirk
had to exist in the real political world, hence the enthusiasm of the minis-
ters for the overthrow of Lennox and the victory of the `Ruthven raiders'.
James Melville hailed the event in his diary as `a great relief to the Kirk'.99
The Ruthven leaders were certainly sound Protestants, but their insecure
political position scarcely justi®ed the faith that Melville and others placed
in them. The Second Book of Discipline remained unrati®ed, and while
the Ruthven Council acknowledged kirk sessions, synods, and the General
Assembly, it avoided pronouncements on either bishops or presbyteries.100
When the Stuart faction regained the initiative Archbishop Adamson saw
an opportunity for in¯uence and quickly became an adviser to the crown.
In December 1583 he went to England and had meetings among others
with the new archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift.101 Thus the seeds
of an anti-presbyterian campaign in Scotland were sown. Meanwhile, the
ministerial support for the Ruthven faction led inexorably to the disgrace
of their leadership, culminating in the ¯ight to England of Andrew Mel-
ville and a coterie of ministers who were under suspicion of treason. In
May 1584 the Scottish parliament passed the so-called `Black Acts'. These
claimed royal authority over all matters spiritual and temporal and
outlawed `all jurisdictions and judgements not approved by parliament',
this of course including the whole presbyterian system.102 Ministerial pro-
test was in vain, and merely led to a further ¯ight to England by threatened
clerics. It appeared that the crown's advisers had won a notable victory and
that episcopacy was secured, though, as so often in Scottish politics, the
drama proved no permanent indicator of royal success.103

97
The Kirk's fears about Lennox's Catholicism seem thoroughly justi®ed in the light of the
grand Jesuit plot of 1582 for the conversion of James, armed intervention in Scotland, and
perhaps Ireland, by the duke of Guise, and the overthrow of Elizabeth: T. McCoog, The Society
of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1541±1588 (Leiden, 1996), 178±89.
98
BUK ii. 488±512.
99
Pitcairn, Autobiography of James Melvill, 134.
100
Donaldson famously described the Ruthven raiders as `ultra-Protestant', a position seen
by most other historians as exaggerated. G. Donaldson, Scotland: James V±James VII (Edin-
burgh, 1971), 179.
101 G. Donaldson, `The attitude of Whitgift and Bancroft to the Scottish Church', in his

Scottish Church History, 164±77.

102
APS iii. 292±4.
103
J. Kirk, `Royal and lay patronage in the Jacobean Kirk, 1572±1600', in N. MacDougall
(ed.), Church Politics and Society, 1408±1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 135 ff. MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk,
25±6. APS iii. 292±4.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 373
When Thomas Cartwright, the doyen of Elizabethan presbyterians,
responded to John Whitgift's attack on the Admonition to the Parliament
(1572), he spoke bluntly of the role of the magistrate in the Church:
he [Whitgift] thinketh that the Church must be framed according to the com-
monwealth, and the Church government according to the civil government, which
is as much to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hangings,
when as indeed it is clean contrary, that, as the hangings are made ®t for the
house, so the commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church . . .104
It was small wonder that his opponent was able to retort triumphantly that
`these words would be well considered, for they contain the overthrow of
the prince's authority both in ecclesiastical and civil matters'.105 It
mattered little that this was certainly not the end at which the leaders of
the presbyterian movement aimed. What suf®ced was the capacity to
think such thoughts and to air them in public, printed debate. Suddenly
the tensions about the exact nature of ceremony and vestments, which
had dominated the previous decade, paled into insigni®cance beside the
powerfully articulated plea for the construction of a fully confessionalized
church, conforming in order as in doctrine to the best reformed Contin-
ental models.106
Although Cartwright's lectures as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity
at Cambridge in spring 1570 are said to have begun the presbyterian
debate in England, the key event was the publication of the Admonition to
the Parliament in June 1572.107The timing of the onslaught was not fortuit-
ous. In a domestic context it was the consequence both of the general
alienation of the godly preachers from the episcopal leadership of the
Church, which had begun before the vestiarian controversies of the mid-
1560s, and of the speci®c quarrels of the previous year. In the latter the
Privy Council and the bishops had resisted William Strickland's proposals
for cleansing the Book of Common Prayer introduced into the Com-
mons.108 The international context was also signi®cant. For several years
Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, had been hardening his line
on the governance of the British churches. He appears genuinely to have
been shocked by the information that godly bishops had no power to
exercise autonomous discipline with their fellow pastors, and in 1568
reproved Grindal for the arbitrary powers of the prelates. He welcomed
104
J. Ayre (ed.), Works of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1843), iii. 189±90.
105
Ibid., 190.
106
P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), 112 ff.
107
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 112±13. Note his caution that we know only a limited
amount about the detail of Cartwright's lectures.
108
N.L. Jones, `Religion in Parliament', in D.M. Dean and N.L. Jones (eds.), The Parliaments
of Elizabethan England (Oxford, 1990), 122±4.
374 Reformations Established and Contested
Cartwright to Geneva when the latter was banished from Cambridge in
1571, and in the next year warned Knox of the dangers to Scotland of
`pseudoepiscopi'.109 Although this last letter, with other Bezan correspond-
ence, was not published until 1573, Genevan views were well known in
English radical circles. And the publication of the papal bull Regnans in
excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth, provided a further context for the
urgency of Puritan demands. The con¯ict with the Counter-Reformation
Church was now intensi®ed and that binary division of the world into the
forces of light and darkness that characterized godly thought found one
outlet in an insistence on the need for biblical purity in church governance.
In the early years of Elizabeth's reign godly Protestants were encour-
aged to believe that further changes would be acceptable to the crown.
The support of the Scots and of the Huguenots at Le Havre bred a
conviction that `full reformation' at home could not long be delayed. The
English garrison at Le Havre, with the radical Genevans William Whit-
tingham, Christopher Bradbridge, and the Scot William Kethe as its chap-
lains, saw the `marvellous conjunction' they had established with the
Huguenots as the beginning of a new era at home.110 The fact that the
crown's representatives in the Channel Islands acquiesced in the establish-
ment of Calvinist congregations led by Huguenots as a way of converting
the conservative islanders, also indicated the possibilities for `other of your
Majesty's dominions and countries'. That the Channel Islanders were
carefully treated as a breed apart for religious purposes does not appear to
have troubled the godly. It is, however, striking that there was no effort to
enforce the Prayer Book or the Act of Supremacy in the islands and that
when individuals from Guernsey or Jersey visited the mainland they were
treated as part of the stranger churches.111 In practice the Elizabethan
regime showed itself far more concerned with the strategic circumstances
of the Channel Islands than with the nuances of their religious position. It
was essential that their Protestant loyalty was secured, and in practice this
could only be done by evangelization from France.112 What the godly

109
T. Beza, Epistolae, 2nd edn. (Geneva, 1575), no. lxxix: this was to Knox in 1572; to
Grindal four years earlier he had been more circumspect: ibid., no. xxiii. Donaldson, Scottish
Reformation, 187±9.
110
C.S.L. Davies, `International politics and the establishment of Presbyterianism in the
Channel Islands: the Coutances connection', JEH 50 (1999), 505±22.
111
D.M. Ogier, Reformation and Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge, 1996), 62±9. A.J. Eagle-
ston, The Channel Islands under Tudor Government, 1485±1642 (Cambridge, 1949), 55±8.
112
Davies shows that, though the acceptance of Huguenot conversion by the crown and its
island representatives was probably based on strategic considerations in the early 1560s, royal
power was too weak to manage the subsequent reformation. By about 1570 when the last dean,
John Aster, left the islands, there was no effective English control, although Robert Horne,
bishop of Winchester, had nominal authority.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 375
were observing was a pragmatic response to a political threat, not a signal
about the possibilities of further structural change at home.
In 1563, when Convocation and Parliament were dissolved there was
still the optimistic expectation that the Elizabethan settlement would be
completed with a disciplinary and organizational structure appropriate to a
fully reformed polity. The business of isolating those Catholics who
overtly de®ed the settlement continued, though in the most cautious
manner. After the passage of the Treason Act of 1563 the supremacy oath
was administered to all of®ce-holders and, despite the queen's determin-
ation to apply it moderately, deprivations followed and the Catholic
exile community increased rapidly.113 In the 1566 parliament, and again
in that of 1571, the bishops promoted measures to strengthen the Church
through the so-called alphabetical bills.114 These would have given parlia-
mentary sanction to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and would have attacked a
variety of weaknesses in the existing disciplinary structure of the Church.
None succeeded in 1566, and even in 1571 only the bill for the Articles
®nally became statute. The story is complex, and not always adequately
described in the secondary sources, but the essential point is not in doubt:
that it was the queen who opposed initiatives from the prelates and their
parliamentary supporters. For Elizabeth the settlement was established: any
necessary adjustments must be undertaken by the prelates on their own
authority, perhaps supported by the royal prerogative. When Elizabeth
refused to accept the 1566 bill providing statutory sanction for the Articles
of Faith Archbishop Parker acknowledged the nature of the problem:
`Her Majesty is not disliking of the doctrine of the book which she doth
openly profess, but the manner of putting forth the book.'115
The bishops sometimes appeared equally the victims of circumstance in
the major ecclesiastical crisis of the 1560s: the controversy over vest-
ments.116 Elizabeth willed conformity to the essential standards of clerical
dress established in the 1559 settlement, and regarded her royal orders to
the archbishop and his colleagues as suf®cient authority for them to act.
She consistently refused to offer her explicit support for Parker's efforts to
provide a full standard of discipline through the Advertisements. `The
Queen', complained Parker in March 1566, `will needs have me assay

113
N.L. Jones, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (Oxford, 1993), 72±8.
114
Elton, Parliament of England, 205±12.
115
T. Perowne (ed.), The Correspondence of Matthew Parker (PS, Cambridge, 1853), 291±2.
The queen's refusal to allow parliamentary sanction of the Articles in 1566 prompted a general
letter from the bishops pleading for endorsement, but to no avail: Perowne, Correspondence of
Parker, 292±4.
116
The story of the vestiarian controversy has often been told; nowhere more effectively
than in Collinson, Puritan Movement, 59±100.
376 Reformations Established and Contested
with mine own authority what I can do for order.'117 This was more than
a year after Elizabeth herself had apparently precipitated the crisis with a
letter complaining of `open and manifest disorder' in the Church, and
episcopal connivance therein. The prelates appeared ground between the
upper millstone of royal anger and the nether stone of godly non-
conformity. For divines like Thomas Sampson and Laurence Humphrey,
respectively dean of Christ Church and president of Magdalen, the wear-
ing of the surplice and square cap were bitter reminders of popery. For in
Queen Mary's time, said a contemporary commentator, `all shavelings,
known tormentors and massing priests wore such cap'.118 Such things
were not to be tolerated in the new Church. To the regular episcopal
argument that these things were indifferent and should be borne `for
order's sake and obedience to the prince', the divines responded that
tender consciences should not be forced.119 A number of the prelates,
most notably Bishop Grindal in London, were indeed deeply reluctant to
force consciences. Such bishops took an uncompromising stand on con-
formity only when faced with the inevitability of royal demands.120
But it would be a mistake to present Parker and his fellow bishops as
mere victims of a confrontation between the queen and her intransigent
clerical subjects. Much of the initiative to secure conformity came from
the archbishop himself and it was he who requested the queen's letter to
provide support in his campaign. In the crisis of 1566 Parker re¯ected
bitterly that those like Grindal who had winked at those not using the
surplice had perpetuated the problem of indiscipline which otherwise `had
been suppressed for ®ve or six years ago, and had prevented all this un-
quietness now taken'.121 Parker was ®rmly backed by Richard Cox of
Ely, who insisted that if London was disciplined the whole realm would
easily follow. There was here a strain of thought that led from Cox's own
experiences in the troubles of Frankfurt through to Whitgift's campaign
against non-conformity in the 1580s.122 Obedience, order, and a discip-
lined hierarchy were not only the requirements of the Supreme Governor,
they re¯ected the nature of the Church itself as seen by these prelates.
Parker had always feared what he called `popularity'. As early as 1559 he
had prayed fervently `God keep us from such visitation as Knox have
attempted in Scotland; the people to be the orderer of things.'123 He may
have been in a minority among his colleagues, but internal convictions

117 118
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 272, 223±7. Bodl. Tanner MS 79, fo. 16.
119 120
Jones, Elizabethan Age, 54±8. P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (1979), 168±78.
121
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 284, 270.
122
F. Heal, `The Bishops of Ely and their Diocese during the Reformation Period,
ca.1515±1600', University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1972), 26±38.
123
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 105.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 377
about the spiritual virtues of order and discipline seem to have sustained a
number of them in these troubled decades when laymen and godly clerics
alike dealt contemptuously with them.
The crisis provoked by Parker's disciplinary action on clerical dress
evolved into a wider con¯ict in London that uncovered overt de®ance of
episcopal order and led to the suspension of thirty-seven ministers. That
was in 1566: in the following year about a hundred godly Londoners were
arrested at Plumbers' Hall, for conducting separatist worship in what
appears to have been a conscious revival of the pure Marian `underground
church', but now with the Geneva form of discipline and worship.124
Their primary purpose seems to have been a refusal to compromise with
those they called the `traditioners', and they already possessed that impa-
tience with `tarrying for the magistrate' that was the hallmark of later
Elizabethan separatism. Moreover, they believed that they had models
closer than Geneva that they could emulate: the French and Dutch
stranger congregations in London, and the pure Kirk established north of
the border.125 They wrote boldly to John Knox seeking Scottish support,
and urging that `we desire no other order than you hold'. In this last
instance the hard-core separatists got more than they bargained for: in
1569 Grindal sent a group of them to Knox for `re-education'.126 They
found the Scots hostile enough to surplices and Prayer Book, but refusing
to countenance even semi-separation, and `not pure enough for our men'.
By 1570 the group had been broken and dispersed and the energies of the
godly clergy were being refocused upon the construction of a revised
discipline within the Church.127
Paradoxically, the series of challenges that the English church encoun-
tered after 1570 provided some clarity of focus to its leadership. The
political landscape was more stable, the threat of international Catholicism
had been made explicit, and within the Church con¯ict became concen-
trated largely upon the issue of ecclesiastical structure. None of this
offered much consolation to Matthew Parker, whose declining years were
made weary by the (correct) belief that his sovereign would never provide
him with full support, and by irrational conspiracy theories.128 On the
other hand, the ¯edgling Church began slowly to stabilize its personnel,
and to de®ne itself over and against `recusancy', both from Catholics and

124 125
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 84±91. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 177±82.
126
W. Nicholson (ed.), The Remains of Edmund Grindal (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 295±6.
127
J.P. Lorimer, John Knox and the Church of England (1875), 298±300.
128
V.V.K. Brooks, A Life of Archbishop Parker (Oxford, 1962), 314±40. The substantive basis
for Parker's late conspiracy obsession was the claim of the con®dence trickster Humphrey
Needham that the earl of Bedford planned to murder Burghley, Hatton, and the bishop of
Winchester: Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 461±5. APC viii. 261, 319, 322, 340.
378 Reformations Established and Contested
from the small minority of sectaries. After 1571 Parliament ceased to be
used by the bishops as a means to re-ordering the Church: such limited
changes as were made were undertaken through Convocation with the
assent of the queen, as in the canons of 1576, which essentially reaf®rmed
the status quo.129 Meanwhile the challenge of presbyterianism was initially
met by what Collinson, with some exaggeration, called a witch-hunt: the
imprisonment of Field and Wilcox as authors of the Admonition; the sus-
pension of a number of ministers in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire,
and elsewhere, who refused to subscribe to articles de®ning church law
on authority; and the vigorous pursuit of `Puritan' publications in
London. But the drive was less systematic than in the vestiarian contro-
versy, and with Parker's death and Grindal's promotion to Canterbury the
relationship between the prelates and their critics ceased for a time to be
so acrimonious.130
The `Grindalian moment' in the Church of England is the stuff of
much subsequent myth-making. From the later perspective of the godly it
appeared as an opportunity to set the Church on the true path to full
reformation. `Such bishops', Richard Baxter famously remarked, `would
have prevented our contentions and wars.'131 Edmund Grindal certainly
possessed advantages over his predecessor: he inherited a church which,
internal con¯ict and Catholic threat notwithstanding, was more stable
than that of the 1560s. His strong reputation as a zealous Protestant won
him the affection of many so-called `moderate Puritans', and for the same
reason he had active support within the Privy Council. Sir Walter Mild-
may and others made it clear that they believed his views made him very
popular among the devout laity. The problem is that there was so little
time to test Grindal's abilities as a leader, since within a few months of his
elevation to Canterbury in 1576 he was in deep con¯ict with the queen
about prophesyings, and was suspended, leaving a power-vacuum at the
heart of the Church.
Elizabeth's hostility to the clerical meetings at which collective edi®ca-
tion was sought through preaching and biblical study probably owed
much to her general frustration at the behaviour of the godly over the
previous ten years. Perhaps, like Cox who was one of the few bishops to
oppose the meetings, she resented a world `full of new fangles and fan-
cies'.132 She certainly felt no great af®nity for the type of earnest biblical
exegesis that was the stuff of the assemblies held in a wide range of
129
Elton, Parliament of England, 215±16. Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 284±5.
130
C. Litzenberger, `De®ning the Church of England: religious change in the 1570s', in
Wabuda and Litzenberger, Belief and Practice, 137±53.
131
Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 283±93, quotes Baxter at 283.
132
LPL MS 2003, fo. 7.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 379
dioceses. But the issue between herself and her archbishop almost imme-
diately became one of authority. When Grindal felt that he had to defend
the practice of edi®cation at the cost of refusing to circulate the royal
order to suppress prophesyings he acknowledged, for all his deference, a
higher duty. `Where preaching wanteth obedience faileth.'133 He played,
as Collinson has vividly demonstrated, St Ambrose to the queen's Theo-
dosius: like Ambrose, whose words he used, he expected God's judge-
ment to light on a prince who behaved unrighteously, even if he did not
expect to follow this to the saint's logical conclusion of excommunica-
tion.134 Elizabeth's retribution was her six-year suspension of her prelate.
At least twice she endeavoured actually to proceed to his deprivation,
only to be restrained by wiser counsels. Nothing conveys more vividly
the queen's understanding of her authority than her assumption that she
could deprive Grindal with the merest ®g-leaf of legal precedent. How-
ever, the limits to her capacity are equally striking. Her ministers wrung
their hands, `these proceedings cannot but irritate our merciful God'
lamented Burghley. They also circumvented her will until calmer counsels
prevailed. And even prophesyings, though dramatically suppressed in
1577, re-emerged under the more circumspect title of `exercises' during
the next decade. Before the end of Elizabeth's reign many of these had
merged into the lectures by combination that were commonplace in Eng-
lish market centres.135
By the beginning of the 1580s the structural paralysis created by Eliza-
beth's exclusion of Grindal had been partially resolved by the labour of
John Aylmer, bishop of London and president of High Commission, and
of the rising star of the episcopal bench, John Whitgift.136 Neither was a
friend of forward Protestants, and those who resisted conformity to Prayer
Book and surplice now began to ®nd themselves `horsed up to London'
to face disciplinary proceedings before the bishops in Commission.137 But
the years preceding Whitgift's elevation to Canterbury in 1583 were more
conspicuously marked by fears of Catholic threat than by internal Protest-
ant con¯ict. In 1578 Sir Francis Knollys had associated the possible depriv-
ation of Grindal with that threat: `if the bishop of Canterbury shall be
deprived, then up starts the pride and practice of the papists'.138 The
133
Nicholson, Remains of Grindal, 376±90.
134
On Ambrose and Theodosius see P. Collinson, `If Constantine, then also Theodosius:
St Ambrose and the integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana', in his Godly People: Essays on
English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), 109±33.
135
Collinson, `Lectures by combination: structures and characteristics of church life in
seventeenth-century England', in Godly People, 467±98.
136
J. Strype, Life of Aylmer (Oxford, 1821), 60±4. Aylmer also presided over the convocation of
1581.
137 138
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 204±6. BL Harl. MS 6992, fo. 89.
380 Reformations Established and Contested
prospect in the following year of the queen's marriage to the duke of
Anjou must have con®rmed his fears. Protestant opinion rallied against
the match. The attack was led by the passionately ideologically commit-
ted, most famously John Stubbs, Cartwright's brother-in-law, who lost his
hand for his publication of The discoverie of a gaping gulf. The crisis passed,
and in the next years there was a rare measure of accord between the
queen and her godly subjects on the need for defence against Catholicism.
Papal intervention in Ireland and the arrival of the ®rst group of Jesuit
missionaries in England led to the passage of the 1581 Treason Act, a
measure that may not wholly have pleased any of its makers, but which
gave clear signals of the realm's determination to resist Catholic incur-
sion.139

Ireland and the Elizabethan Settlement

In May 1559 Thomas Radcliffe, earl of Sussex, and Mary's erstwhile lord
deputy of Ireland, drafted a comprehensive proposal for settlement in
Ireland. It included an insistence that there must be careful planning for
the ®rst parliament of the reign to ensure that Elizabeth's legislative pro-
gramme was successful. The crown must construct a strong party in the
Commons; the membership of the Lords should be vetted; and potential
opponents of religious change, such as the bishops of Kildare and Meath,
should be called to London on `matters of state' and held there for the
duration of the session.140 Sussex brought a cool head and a sense of
realpolitique to address metropolitan concerns that any attempt at reforma-
tion in Ireland would produce turmoil `by reason of clergy that is so
addicted to Rome'.141 The new queen accepted that he was likely to be
the most able and knowledgeable of those whom she could choose as her
deputy, and Sussex returned to Dublin in August 1559. Bills modelled on
the English statutes were prepared in October of that year and Parliament
assembled at the beginning of 1560.142
The sparse documentation on the 1560 parliament has led to a variety
of theses on the reasons for the success of the government's legislative
programme. Brendan Bradshaw, taking his cue from Sussex's forceful ar-
guments, has suggested extreme coercion, and a meeting bristling with
139
Elton, Parliament of England, 186±7, for a careful consideration of the bill's passage, and a
suggestion that the major divisions about its provisions may have come from within the Privy
Council.
140
HMC Salisbury MSS, vol. iii, no. 968.
141
The comment on Irish religion is from the very cautious `Device for alteration of reli-
gion', BL Cottonian MS. Julius f v i , fo. 167.
142
H.A. Jefferies, `The Irish parliament of 1560: the Anglican reforms authorised', IHS 26
(1988), 128±9.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 381
143
`armed government troops'. Others believe that the settlement never
passed the Upper House, despite the fact that all parties in Elizabethan
Ireland seem to have accepted its full legal status.144 The most recent
attempt at reconstruction is disposed to the view that opposition to the
Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity was not necessarily vociferous, and
that the government was able to gain a measure of support, albeit at some
cost.145 The cost was the addition to an Act of Uniformity otherwise
virtually identical to English legislation of a clause permitting the use of a
Latin version of the Book of Common Prayer `in every such church or
place where the common minister or priest had not the use or knowledge
of the English tongue'.146 This book, unlike its Edwardian predecessor,
was not necessarily envisaged as a stop-gap made available only until an
Irish version could be produced, and when it was printed in 1560 the Liber
precum publicarum perpetuated many of the most doctrinally conservative
elements of the 1549 English Prayer Book. It was a text that proved
popular among the Anglo-Irish population of the Pale, who had no
reason not to use the English version.147 With this concession to conser-
vative opinion the lord deputy was able to put through his legislative
programme. Even the bishops took no general stand against the rejection
of Rome. Of the three who seem to have opposed the parliamentary
changes, Archbishop Bodkin of Tuam, Bishop Walsh of Meath, and
Bishop Leverous of Kildare, only the last two explicitly refused to take the
oath of supremacy and were subsequently deprived. Thomas Leverous
appears to have refused obedience on the interesting grounds that women
were by nature excluded from the exercise of any authority in the
Church.148
Thus Sussex achieved an initial success in establishing the queen's settle-
ment that is in some ways more remarkable than its English counterpart.
When the Act of Uniformity came into effect in June 1560 it did so with-
out any serious evidence of con¯ict or protest.149 Most sees remained ®lled

143
B. Bradshaw, `The beginnings of modern Ireland', in B. Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parlia-
mentary Tradition (Dublin, 1973), 80±1.
144
R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Ireland: A History of the Penal Laws against Irish Cath-
olics, 1534±1603 (Dublin, 1935), 170±91.
145
Jefferies, `Irish parliament', to which this paragraph is much beholden.
146
The Statutes at Large: Ireland, 20 vols. (Dublin, 1786±1801), i. 275 ff. Jefferies suggests that
the Prayer Book clause was added late, during the passage of the uniformity bill through
Parliament.
147
The Latin liturgy was used regularly into the 1580s and was still being used in at least one
parish of the deanery of Ballymore as late as 1615: J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin',
University of Dublin, Trinity College Ph.D. (1997), 220.
148
M.V. Ronan, The Reformation in Ireland under Elizabeth, 1558±1580 (1930), 30.
149
A. Clarke, `Varieties of uniformity: the ®rst century of the Church of Ireland', in W.J. Sheils
and D. Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, SCH 25 (Oxford, 1989), 109±11.
382 Reformations Established and Contested
and few clergy seem to have thought in the ®rst instance of any direct
appeal to Rome against Elizabeth. But the obverse of this success was that
enforcement, even of the most conservative form of the new faith, was
possible only in those areas over which an effective jurisdiction could be
exercised. This still meant primarily the Pale, and some of the southern
towns with an English-speaking population. Beyond this circuit were lord-
ships where a measure of political in¯uence could be exerted: Munster and
Connacht for example, where occasionally a conformist lord like the earl of
Clanrickard would support government initiative. Elsewhere in Gaelic ter-
ritory, most notably in Ulster, any amendment of religious behaviour was
likely to have to wait on political change. It was preoccupation with the
political problems of Ireland, as well perhaps as a certain innate conserva-
tism, that led Sussex to do little to enforce the religious order he had helped
to construct.150
Although the oath of supremacy was administered to some of the
bishops of English Ireland it was otherwise virtually neglected as an instru-
ment of conformity.151 In the Pale moreover, even when a bishop like
William Walsh of Meath was deprived, there was no attempt at this stage
to remove him from the diocese in which he had previously ministered.
The survival of Hugh Curwen at Dublin in the early years of the reign
also provided a signi®cant impediment to change, something that may
have in¯uenced his decision in accepting the oath of supremacy.152 Sussex
dutifully followed the English model in establishing local ecclesiastical
commissions, in 1561 and 1562, and a national commission followed in
1564, but little action seems to have ensued. For the ®rst few years it must
have appeared to the Palesmen that, whatever their other disagreements
with the lord deputy, they were unlikely to be pressed into greater Prot-
estant commitment than they had been under Edward. And the policy of
the Privy Council in London also remained more preoccupied with stra-
tegic political issues than with the labour of conversion. William Cecil
certainly held the Protestantization of Ireland as a serious objective, but in
1560 he saw his goal substantially in military terms, articulated through the
alliance forged with the ®fth earl of Argyle, who after the Treaty of
Berwick forged a `mutual and reciprocal' agreement with Sussex to coun-
ter the papist Ulstermen.153
150
On the political policy of Sussex see C. Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of
Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536±1588 (Cambridge, 1994), 72±101, 179±80.
151
W.N. Osborough, `Ecclesiastical law and the Reformation in Ireland', in D. Helmholz
(ed.), Canon Law in Protestant Lands (Berlin, 1992), 233±4.
152
On the choices made by Curwen see Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 216±20.
153
Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 75±6. J.A. Dawson, `Two kingdoms or three? Ireland in
Anglo-Scottish relations in the middle of the sixteenth century', in R.A. Mason (ed.), Scotland
and England 1286±1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), 119.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 383
In 1564 the earl of Sussex was ®nally recalled to London after a series of
disastrous and costly campaigns against Shane O'Neill. Objective failure in
Ireland was compounded by the ®xed hostility of Robert Dudley at court.
Dudley chose to invest considerable political capital in Ireland in the early
1560s, ®rst campaigning to unseat Sussex, then to replace him with his
chosen agents Sir Nicholas Arnold and Sir Thomas Cusack, and ®nally,
when they failed, to promote the popular Sir Henry Sidney. Sidney as-
sumed the viceroyalty in 1565 and was the dominant ®gure in Irish polit-
ics for much of the next twelve years.154 His instructions on assuming
of®ce were comprehensive and detailed, and included a commitment to
the active promotion of religious reform, with the words `the principal
and ®rst care which her Majesty committeth to the . . . Lieutenant and
Council'. The language closely resembled that of the orders to Sussex
when he resumed power in 1559, but Sidney seems to have started out in
the sincere belief that something must be done to make his own Protest-
ant faith viable in the new land. His instructions, which conformed to his
own interests, placed great emphasis on the erection of a college to be
funded out of the revenues of St Patrick's Cathedral. This would both be
of more `public bene®t for the service of God' and ensure an increase of
`knowledge and civility . . . where now nothing but barbarous and savage
conditions remaineth'.155
Two years after his elevation Sidney appears to have been the driving
force behind the publication of the Twelve Articles, derived from Arch-
bishop Parker's ®rst doctrinal formulation, and a cautious enough state-
ment of belief to be reasonably inclusive.156 The next year he hailed the
promotion of Archbishop Loftus to Dublin with the words `the hour has
now come for reforming the church'.157 Sidney may have helped Loftus
to evade the pressures of the vestiarian crisis: the Zurich divines heard
from some of the former English exiles that the churches in Ireland had
been permitted to `live in the greatest tranquillity' on this issue.158 The
hour of reform passed, but throughout the later years of his viceroyalty
Sidney repeatedly called for a preaching ministry. He also sought the
establishment of proper educational facilities to inculcate Protestantism,
and looked for help from any source, including Scotland, to add to the
woefully inadequate clerical personnel available to the bishops. As late as

154
For contrasting views of the signi®cance of Sidney's `new start' see N. Canny, The
Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established 1565±1576 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976), 45 ff.,
and Brady, Chief Governors, 113±58.
155
E.P. Shirley (ed.), Original Letters and Papers in Illustration of the History of the Church in
Ireland during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth (1851), 206±9.
156
Clarke, `Varieties of uniformity', 107. See above, p. 311.
157 158
Shirley, Original Letters, 292. ZL ii. 167.
384 Reformations Established and Contested
1576, submitting Hugh Brady's visitation of Meath to the Privy Council
in London, Sidney urged that Elizabeth write to the Scottish regent to
send some `honest, zealous and learned men' who spoke Irish to aid in the
work of conversion.159 These aspects of Sidney's behaviour offered some
encouragement to those who believed that the work of reform in Ireland
must be undertaken by persuasion. Irish-born reformers like Brady, Lord
Chancellor Cusack, and Chief Baron Dillon espoused these views, but so
did some of the incomers like Archbishop Lancaster of Armagh and Lord
Chancellor Weston.160 Weston gave active support to the proposal ®nally
passed by the Irish parliament in 1570 for the establishment of free dio-
cesan schools and was a convinced proponent of a bilingual clergy that
should persuade through preaching as the route to conversion.161
Sidney's moderate reformism was, however, far from the forefront of
his priorities. Political survival depended upon success in pursuing the
queen's goals and demonstrating his capacity to order a disordered pro-
vince at a price that Elizabeth was willing to pay. His plans included using
colonization and the necessary force to secure control. Among the of®cials
who served him there was a far more intense debate about how to enforce
the rule of law than about the need to stabilize the Reformation.162 And
as revolt followed upon revolt with scarcely a few years of calm between,
a growing number of observers concluded that the civilizing mission of
the English must precede any sustained attempt to convert the native
Irish. The lord deputy himself expressed horror when, on his grand tour
of Munster in 1567, he found no one to instruct the barbarous people `in
the rules of a Christian, or if they were taught . . . no grace in them to
follow it'.163 Fitzwilliam, who temporarily succeeded Sidney in the early
1570s, was more directly brutal: `this people . . . hath been long nursled in
beastly liberty and sensual immunity so as they cannot abide to hear of
correction, no not for the horriblest sins they can commit'.164
The development during Sir Henry Sidney's deputyship of debate
about how to manage conquest has often been con¯ated with the more
immediately pressing issue of how to ensure a measure of conformity in
the Pale and among the settled Old English.165 There the issue was not
one of civility, but of the degree of disciplinary pressure that should be
applied to the local elites to ensure their attendance at the liturgy and their
overt acceptance of the new order. In the ®rst two decades of Elizabeth's

159
CSP Irl 1574±85. 92±3.
160
B. Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland', HJ 21 (1978),
484±5.
161
Ronan, Reformation in Ireland, 280±1. Canny, Elizabethan Conquest, 128.
162 163
Brady, Chief Governors, 113 ff. PRO sp 63/20/66, fo. 138v.
164 165
PRO sp 63/37/60. Bradshaw, `Sword, word and strategy', 485±7.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 385
reign there is evidence that in Dublin and other major population centres
the church papist was a characteristic ®gure, appearing at Protestant ser-
vices, albeit reluctant to take communion and willing to turn to the
support of Catholic chaplains in private. Even the papal agent David
Wolfe conceded that the policy had some success: he reported of the
Dubliners, `they go perforce to the communion and sermons of the heret-
ics'.166 Outside these centres the ecclesiastical commissioners found that
the Mass was still routinely said, and that the new form of public prayer
was poorly established. A major problem for the new church was that at
its heart, in the cathedral establishment of St Patrick's and the ecclesiastical
administration in Dublin, there was profound resistance to change. For a
time at the end of the 1560s Archbishop Loftus and Lord Chancellor
Weston worked in harmony to manoeuvre these conservatives out of
positions of in¯uence. They did so by `canonical' means, using the
weapons of visitation and traditional discipline to change some personnel
and scare others into conformity.167
In the years preceding Weston's death in 1573 there was some hope
that gradualist pressure on the clergy of the Pale might begin the process
of true reformation. But politics once again intervened, and in his ®nal
period in of®ce Sidney swept aside the policy he had earlier espoused and
began to argue for a greater coercion in the establishment of religious
conformity.168 Eventually Loftus accepted compulsion as the only route
to conformity. By the late 1570s he was once again a vigorous advocate of
using the ecclesiastical commission for this purpose.169 In the 1590s, when
the elites of the Pale had moved decisively towards recusancy, Loftus
wrote gloomily to Burghley that there was little point in the encourage-
ment of preaching unless men were forced into attendance at worship.170
Yet in practice the commission seems to have done little in any routine
way to compel such obedience. The network of the Pale gentry was too
close for effective penetration: `they are so linked in friendship and alli-
ance one with the other that we shall never be able to correct them by the
ordinary force of statute', Loftus had written to Elizabeth as early as
1565.171 The London regime's extreme caution even in the administration

166
C. Lennon, `The Counter-Reformation in Ireland, 1542±1641' in C. Brady and
R. Gillespie (eds.), Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society, 1534±1641
(Dublin, 1986), 75±86.
167
Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 229±55.
168
Ronan, Reformation in Ireland, 480, 139±40.
169
Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 270±3.
170
CSP Irl iv. 1588±92. 366. As early as his elevation to Armagh Loftus gained a commission
to enforce penal legislation in his jurisdiction Fiants (Ireland) Elizabeth, nos. 462, 547.
171
PRO sp 63/13/42.
386 Reformations Established and Contested
of the oath of supremacy is indicative of a fear that pressure might be
detrimental to the political interests of the crown.172
It was those political interests that contributed signi®cantly to the with-
drawal of the Pale gentry and the Dublin merchant community from their
limited conformity of the early Elizabethan years. Problems of resources
and personnel conspired to ensure that the Protestant episcopate could do
little to transcend the survivalist environment of these early years: the
failure to establish a Dublin college was emblematic of far wider dif®cul-
ties. But the militant denial of the new faith which contemporaries began
to identify from 1580 onwards was linked both to a growing assertion by
the Palesmen of their separate identity and to a conviction that they
had to confront coercive colonial government directly.173 The turning-
point has often been taken to be the Baltinglas conspiracy of 1580, in
which a group of sons of gentry and merchant Palesmen rose in a militant
attempt to overthrow the established religion and challenge English
power.174 It is, however, the subsequent policy of repression within the
Pale that seems most deeply to have alienated local rulers. They also
resented the taxation burdens imposed by Sidney and the general costs of
the enlarged administrative establishment constructed by the lord dep-
uties.175 By the time of the parliament summoned by Lord Deputy Perrot
in 1585 the Palesmen managed not only to oppose anti-Catholic legisla-
tion, but explicitly to assert their claim to an alternative faith.176 The
lawyer Edward Nugent said openly in Parliament that `things prospered in
Henry V's and other kings' times when mass was up'.177 From this
moment, as Archbishop Loftus noted, an early `general disposition to
popery . . . [became] . . . this general recusancy'.178

De®ning the Reformations: Authority and History

`You know,' wrote George Gifford in 1596, `it is the question which
every papist propoundeth, where was your Church an hundred years
172
H.C. Walshe, `Enforcing the Elizabethan settlement: the vicissitudes of Hugh Brady,
bishop of Meath, 1563±84', IHS 26 (1989), 352±74.
173
C. Brady, `Conservative subversives: the community of the Pale and the Dublin adminis-
tration, 1556±1586', in P.J. Corish (ed.), Radicals, Rebels and Establishments, Historical Studies 15
(Belfast, 1985), 11±32.
174
H.C. Walshe, `The rebellion of William Nugent, 1581', in R.V. Comerford et al. (eds.),
Religion, Con¯ict and Coexistence in Ireland (Dublin, 1990), 26±52: Walshe stresses the essentially
localist aims and consequences of the Nugent revolt.
175
S.G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown Community and the Con¯ict of Cultures, 1470±1603 (1985),
286±7.
176
V. Treadwell, `The Irish parliament of 1569±71', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 65 c
(1966±7).
177 178
PRO sp 63/154/37. Ibid.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 387
179
past?' Catholic controversialists certainly exploited the vulnerability of
the Protestant churches to the charges of contempt of authority and of a
denial of the continuity of the visible Church Catholic.180 The responses
of English and Scottish divines to this challenge were diverse and com-
plex, and often very revealing of wider assumptions about the nature of
the Protestant churches. Although Gifford's question had already been
posed in the mid-Tudor years, it assumed full polemical signi®cance only
after 1559, when John Jewel tried to pre-empt critics in his Apology of the
Church of England. Jewel was determined to show that the essential histor-
ical foundations for the Church of England were to be found in Scripture
and in the authority of the early Church Fathers.181 He is worth quoting
in detail for his key positional statement on authority:
We have searched out of the Holy Bible, which we are sure cannot deceive, one
sure form of religion, and have returned again unto the primitive church of the
ancient fathers and apostles, that is to say, to the ®rst ground and beginning of
things, as unto the very foundations and headsprings of Christ's Church.182
For John Foxe the true Church was founded on a form of doctrine
`planted by the apostles, and taught by true bishops; afterward decayed
and now reformed again'.183 Provided that Protestants could claim to
derive their doctrines and practices from the earliest Church it mattered
little that the Catholics could display longevity: `Priority', said John
White, `is the ®rst and best antiquity.'184
Appeal to the primitive Church of the Fathers as the validating author-
ity, after Scripture, of the English church permitted some interpretative
¯exibility in relation to two other key elements in the story, the power of
councils and the role of secular authority. One of Jewel's major objectives
was to assail the credentials of Trent as a true council, and he succeeded in
marrying true councils to secular authority by arguing that the councils of
the ®rst ®ve hundred years of the Church had been summoned by em-
perors. Trent had denied the emperor his right.185 Moreover, since these
early emperors were part of the primitive Church they must be true
Christians, wielding legitimate authority, unlike their papalist successors.

179
G. Gifford, Sermons upon the Whole Book of the Revelation (1596), 168, quoted in
R. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse (Sutton Courtenay, 1978), 118.
180
A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protes-
tant Thought, 1600±1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 270±3.
181
W.M. Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge,
Mass., 1962), 174±91.
182
J. Ayre (ed.), The Works of John Jewel, 4 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1845±9), iii. 106.
183
Foxe, iv. 217.
184
J. White, A Defence of the Way of the True Church (1614), sig. **4v.
185
Ayre, Works of Jewel, i. 62, 68, 205, 231.
388 Reformations Established and Contested
John Foxe's narrative of the early Church enlarged the issue by making
Constantine a model of Christian authority whose lifting of persecution
foreshadows God's providential delivery of the Church of his own day.
The early editions of Acts and Monuments include ¯attering comparisons
between Elizabeth and her great Roman predecessor; these, however,
give way after the 1570s' edition to a conspicuous silence on such parallel-
ism. Foxe did not abandon Constantine, or the notion that he pointed the
way to true godly magistracy in the Church; he certainly came to doubt
whether Elizabeth would emulate her great predecessor.186 Others within
the godly mainstream were more directly critical of Constantine and, by
implication, of Elizabeth. For William Harrison the emperor's willingness
to trust his own spiritual judgement led to the recall of Arian heretics and
hence showed how dangerous it was `for a civil magistrate to lean unto his
own wisdom in cases of doctrine'.187
Jewel's appeal to the primitive Church as that which validated current
Protestant practice seems to have satis®ed his polemical needs. The
Church of Rome had subsequently descended into error, from which
Protestant Christians were now being rescued. For Foxe this approach
must have begged as many questions as it answered. He was at one
with Jewel on the primitive Church, but early Christianity was only one
stage in the providential process of the realization of God's purposes in
history. The particular churches that had emerged from the Reformation
were manifestations of that true Church which had constantly battled
against the false Church of the Antichrist of Rome.188 Elizabeth's church
was the heir both of the pure Christianity of the early centuries and of
those who `under the cross' had battled against Rome throughout the
intervening millennium. As a result the most unlikely and disparate of
individuals and groups were invoked to sustain the true faith: Waldensians
and Albigensians, Lollards and Hussites were heaped together. They were
joined in Foxe, as in related apocalyptic narratives, as part of the invisible
Church of the elect in all ages. The establishment of the Elizabethan

186
M.S. Pucci, `Reforming Roman emperors: John Foxe's characterization of Constantine
in the Acts and Monuments', in D. Loades (ed.), John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Aldershot,
1999), 29±51. Archbishop Adamson endorsed this view of Constantine from the Scottish per-
spective: the Christian Kirk had ¯ourished under `the best Emperor, Constantine'. Mullan,
Episcopacy in Scotland, 55±6. George Buchanan, on the other hand, was always contemptuous of
Constantinian kingship, precisely because of its imperialist, caesaropapist, and English implica-
tions: the emperor was dismissed as the bastard son of a general's concubine: J. Aikman (ed. and
trans.), George Buchanan's History of Scotland (Glasgow, 1827), i. 199.
187
G.J.R. Parry, A Protestant Vision: William Harrison and the Reformation of Elizabethan Eng-
land (Cambridge, 1987), 240.
188
J. Facey, `John Foxe and the defence of the English church', in P. Lake and M. Dowling
(eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth-Century England (1987), 162±92.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 389
church under its Constantine had supposedly resolved any tension between
this invisible Church and the visible church of the national community:
history was ful®lled and justi®ed. But the privileging of those few who had
opposed Catholic power, and who had also often resisted the lay `powers
that be', was an awkward process that opened the possibility of a dissenting
ancestry for the established church. By the end of the century those who
followed Foxe from within the moderate Puritan tradition were eager to
stress the relative visibility and respectability of his `heretic' groups.189
While Jewel was defending the Church with the aid of the Fathers, and
Foxe was elaborating the cosmic pattern of Christian history, Matthew
Parker and his circle sought to confront the question of Protestant identity
in a more parochial manner. Since Henry VIII's break with Rome it had
been recognized that it was important to offer an English, or rather a
British, history of the Church that detached it from papal in¯uence as
completely as possible.190 The one general point of agreement was that
the conversion of the British long pre-dated Augustine's Roman mission
to Kent. The legends of Joseph of Arimathea and Simon Zelotes were
invoked as indicators of very early evangelization, but the favoured narra-
tive rapidly became that of Geoffrey of Monmouth's story of King Lucius
and Pope Eleutherius.191 King Lucius supposedly ruled the Britons in the
late second century, and in ad 187 wrote to Rome seeking guidance on
the best method of converting his people. Eleutherius responded by send-
ing missionaries but, crucially, assured the king that he needed no further
authority for conversion than that already contained in the scriptures.
From these sound beginnings the British were converted to Christianity
and never again lost the faith.192 This is the aspect of the story that
interested the Henrician apologists: the compilers of the Collectanea satis
copiosa used King Lucius to demonstrate that the crown could act autono-
mously in religious matters. Parker's circle employed an extended narra-
tive for rather different purposes. This included an attack on Augustine,
using the more respectable Bede as well as Geoffrey. Bede's account of
Augustine's inability to work with the British bishops was emphasized,
and his story of the massacre of 1,200 monks of Bangor by Ethelfrid
was transmuted into a claim that Augustine had sanctioned this.193
189
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 281±3.
190
G. Williams, Reformation Views of Church History (Richmond, Va., 1970).
191
G. Williams, `Some Protestant views of early British church history', in his Welsh Refor-
mation Essays (Cardiff, 1967), 207±19. Geoffrey derived a brief version of the Lucius legend
from Bede.
192
A. Fox and J. Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age (Oxford, 1986), 158±71.
193
A.M. Sellar (ed.), Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (1912), 84±7. Bede quite
clearly says that the monks came to pray for victory and blames the Celtic side for not defending
them. Augustine is not blamed. M. Parker, De Antiquitate Britanniae Ecclesiae (1572), ii. 4.
390 Reformations Established and Contested
The archbishop's engagement with the early British narratives may in
part have been stimulated by Abbot Feckenham's provocative contribution
to the staged debate on religion that preceded the Elizabethan settlement.
Feckenham chose as his main polemic an attack on the novelty of Protest-
antism. This he contrasted with the continuity and ®delity of the Catholic
Church in England, which since the days of King Lucius had never wholly
been lost. The true faith had been imparted by Rome, and upheld by the
Holy See. The sins of the original British Christians, usefully denounced by
Gildas, had led to their defeat at the hands of the Saxons and the renewal of
the mission under Augustine.194 Other Catholic polemicists also made great
play of the centrality of papal mission: indeed Cardinal Pole in his speech of
reconciliation before the 1554 parliament extolled Britain for being the ®rst
territory to receive the gospel `from the Apostolic see universally, and not in
parts as in other countries'.195 Harding taunted Jewel with the same points
in his debate on the Apology, and the latter was forced twice to deviate from
his concerns for the primitive Church to debate the role of Eleutherius and
to denounce Augustine.196 Others such as Calfhill used the Lucius and
Augustine stories to prove the English church's claim to ancient independ-
ence of Rome, and the deleterious effect of the papal mission.197 But it was
left to Parker in his De Antiquitate Britanniae Ecclesiae (1572), to put together
all the early narratives to justify his claim that the British church was indeed
the most ancient of territorial churches and that it owed no signi®cant debt
to Rome beyond assistance with evangelism.198
While Parker's overwhelming concern was to prove that the Church of
England had a history independent of Rome, the narrative of early Chris-
tianity also focused controversialists on the relationship between the
churches of the British Isles. Could all claim pre-papal origin? If so, were
all foreordained to share a common opposition to Rome, and was an
institutional bond thereby created between them? The claim that the
British churches were at the inception of a continuous tradition of Chris-
tianity more signi®cant than papal authority inevitably made the Welsh
church, in Richard Davies's words, the senior sister of its English counter-
part. In his introduction to the Welsh translation of the New Testament
Davies constructed an ecclesiastical history that made Protestantism both
ancient and Welsh, the `once most glorious heritage' of his nation.199 It
was probably more signi®cant to this generation of Welsh Protestants to

194 195
Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, 229±30. Foxe, vi. 569.
196
Ayre, Works of Jewel, i. 300±6; iii. 164±5.
197
J. Calfhill, Answer to John Martiall's Treatise of the Cross, ed. R. Gibbings (PS,
Cambridge, 1846), 305±7.
198
Parker, De Antiquitate, sig. iiv, 2±7.
199
Williams, `Early British church history', 212±13.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 391
make their faith congruent with their own cultural identity than to link it
with England: in practice it was of course possible to do both, because the
English church needed its pre-Saxon ancestry so urgently.
The story was very different in the case of Ireland and of Scotland. For
Ireland in the late Tudor period there was really no strong indigenous
Protestant church whose historical roots yet needed to be purged of
Roman corruption. Only in the early seventeenth century, when Protest-
antism had begun to establish its position as the religion of the minority,
did the Anglo-Irish begin to address this issue.200 The key ®gure is James
Ussher, who in 1613 began his contribution to the history of Protestant
controversy with Gravissimae quaestionis. This essentially followed Foxe in
identifying a true Church that had over the centuries maintained its integ-
rity amid the decline and corruption of papal power. This was later
followed by his much bolder confrontation of Catholic claims to purity of
Irish descent from the papally inspired conversion by St Patrick. He de-
nounced the errors of Edmund Campion, who had believed that the Irish
gave themselves to Rome in temporalities as well as spiritualities. Instead
he succeeded in proving, to his own satisfaction, that the original Irish
church had been pure, biblical, and largely out of the control of Rome.201
Ussher performed the interesting feat of making the Irish church both
autonomous and closely integrated with its Protestant neighbours. He used
the evidence of Bede to af®rm that the ®ve peoples of the islands in his day
`confess one and the same knowledge of the highest truth', with scriptures
available to all. But the Irish church, as converted by Patrick, was clearly
separate unto itself, and, by implication at least, must so remain.202
The Scottish understanding of the `early British church' was compli-
cated by contested histories that re¯ected the complex relationships be-
tween northern and southern neighbours.203 One reading, essentially
English, had King Lucius as ruler over the whole island, converting all its
peoples. Another, equally favoured by the English, identi®ed Constantine
as a pan-British monarch, upholding a uni®ed and Christian island society.
The Scots had an alternative in the medieval invention of a conversion by
missionaries sent by Pope Victor to King Donald in ad 190. However, the

200
A. Ford, ` ``Standing one's ground'': religion, polemic and Irish history since the Refor-
mation', in A. Ford, J. McGuire, and K. Milne (eds.), As by Law Established: The Church of
Ireland since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), 2±3.
201
J. Ussher, `Gravissimae quaestionis', in C.R. Elrington (ed.), The Whole Works of James
Ussher, 17 vols. (Dublin, 1864), ii. 1 ff.; and `A discourse of the religion anciently professed by
the Irish and British', ibid., iv. 238±9.
202
Elrington, Works of Ussher, iv. 243.
203
R.A. Mason, ` ``Scotching the Brut'': the early history of Britain', in J. Wormald (ed.),
Scotland Revisited (1991), 49±59. A.H. Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of
James VI (Edinburgh, 1979), 117 ff.
392 Reformations Established and Contested
reformers seem understandably to have been reluctant to adapt this story,
`from the time of blindness', to Protestant needs. Instead when they re-
¯ected on the historical origins of their faith they were most likely to
think of a diffusionist model, acknowledging the priority of British Chris-
tianity, but seeing the conversion of Scotland as being the work of small
groups ¯eeing from the persecution of Diocletian.204 This had the double
advantage of denying the signi®cance of papal mission, and of detaching
Scottish Christianity from any taint of monarchical or imperialist conver-
sion. Thus Calderwood, building on the original work of Buchanan,
argued, `it is probable . . . that the Christian Britons were the ®rst teachers
of the Christian faith to the Scots'.205
Both the importance and the plasticity of the early history of the British
churches are suggested by the example of one of the few English contro-
versialists who denied the King Lucius story. Thomas Cartwright did so in
his disputes with Whitgift, taking pleasure in assailing the `false Geoffrey'.
Instead he reverted to Gildas to argue that the faith had been received
slowly from the time of Tiberius onwards, by groups of individuals `some
boldly . . . some soundly'.206 Like the Scottish reformers, English Presby-
terians had no desire to `stand their ground' on a church that claimed its
birth from royal ®at and was articulated in a hierarchy of bishops, the
inheritors of the Lucian titles `¯amines' and `archi¯amines'. Zealous re-
formers were anyway more likely to be concerned with the providential
and apocalyptic justi®cations for the true Church than with its historical
roots. The inception of Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland is
characteristic of this approach. God has `caused light to shine out of
darkness, in the multitude of his mercies' and has `made his truth so to
triumph among us that, in despite of Satan, hypocrisy is disclosed'. The
struggle for truth had its own history for Knox: a drastically foreshortened
narrative, in which only the immediate `morning-stars of Reformation'
signi®ed. Future generations studying his contemporary history could be
taught `how wondrously hath the light of Christ Jesus prevailed against
darkness in this last and most corrupted age'.207 A Foxeian vision of the
cycles of Christian history was implicit, but Knox's Church needed no
legitimation beyond its appeal to God's providential judgement in favour
of those who had struggled against the Antichrist.208
The Acts and Monuments, for all its profound and complex historical
understanding, could readily be used as a text for an intensely dualistic and
204 205
Aikman, Buchanan's History of Scotland, i. 188, 199. Calderwood, i. 37.
206
T. Cartwright, The Second Replie of Thomas Cartwright against Maister Doctor Whitgifts
Seconde Answer touching Churche Discipline (Heidelberg, 1575), 472±5.
207
Knox, i. 3±5.
208
K.R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 1979), 125±8.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 393
separatist reading of the history of the Protestant churches. The appropri-
ation of Foxe by a diverse group of radicals from Henry Barrow onwards
indicated the possibilities of the text and perhaps justi®ed some of the
anxieties articulated by the second and third generation of Elizabeth's
bishops. Whitgift gave serious consideration to the possibility of an alterna-
tive history of the Church, one which would build on Parker's researches
and look explicitly to the justi®cation of the Elizabethan settlement.209
Nothing came of this, but the archbishop was later offered an opportunity
to `manage' subversive interpretations of Foxe by supporting the abridge-
ment of Acts and Monuments by Timothy Bright. Bright cut and pasted in
ways which directed the reader in no uncertain terms. He made much of
the King Lucius story, which Foxe had doubted though ultimately
accepted, and he directly linked the establishment of episcopacy with that
monarch's efforts at conversion. In his preface Bright spoke with extraor-
dinary con®dence of England as `the ®rst that embraced the Gospel: the
only establisher of it throughout the world: and the ®rst reformed'.210 In
1589 when it was published this was, at one level, an example of the shift,
in the celebratory aftermath of the Armada, from Foxe's cautious accept-
ance of England as `an elect nation' to the triumphalism that God was
English. Yet for the bishops it should probably be seen as a particularist
af®rmation of the integrity and historicity of their church, a defence against
Puritan charges that it was `but hal¯y reformed'.211
At the end of the century the debate about the nature of the Protestant
churches and their origins was again shifted by Hooker in his Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker accepted both the Jewel arguments for the
congruence of the practice and belief of the Church of England with that
of the primitive Church, and Parker's insistence on the importance of the
foundation myths of British Christianity. However, his primary objective
was to af®rm the catholicity and the rationality of the Church of England:
to situate it once again within a more universalist framework of law and
faith. Men were endowed with reason so that they could apprehend the
divine will as articulated through Scripture, and it was through the `au-
thority of God's church' that those reasoning processes were exercised.212
The visible Church that interpreted Scripture had, for Hooker, to be a

209
D. Nussbaum, `Whitgift's ``Book of Martyrs'': Archbishop Whitgift, Timothy Bright and the
Elizabethan struggle over John Foxe's legacy', in D. Loades (ed.), John Foxe (Aldershot, 1999),
135±53.
210
T. Bright, An Abridgement of the Booke of Acts and Monuments (1589), preface, 68±9.
211
Parry, William Harrison, 189±92. On the Englishness of God in the 1580s see below,
ch. 10, pp. 481±2.
212
R. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1. 3. Citations from J. Keble (ed.), The Works of
Richard Hooker, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1841).
394 Reformations Established and Contested
continuous entity `from the ®rst beginning of the world to the last end',
though it could take particular shapes in different environments.213 There
could scarcely have been a sharper break from the Foxeian vision of the
historical Church. Hooker explicitly denied that the test of the true
Church was the witness of faithful believers in the succession of under-
ground congregations or individual witnesses.214 Instead he insisted that
the popish church must be part of the true Church, albeit one that had
become corrupted in its beliefs and practices. The Church of England was
a reformed continuation of the one visible and Catholic Church. Sud-
denly it became easy to answer the `where was your church?' question.215
`In the church', averred Hooker, `we were, and we are so still.' The
af®rmation might be easy: the consequences of this profound rereading
were to haunt the Church for the next century and far beyond.216

Hierarchy and Discipline

When the kirk of St Andrews recorded the institution of its superintendent
John Winram in 1561 it noted that `without the care [of ] superinten-
dents neither can the kirk be suddenly erected, neither can th[ey] be
retained in discipline and unity of doctrine'.217 Order and godliness were to
be achieved in this unregenerate world through a hierarchical structure and
discipline. Calvin's description of discipline as the `sinews' of the Church
was af®rmed in the Scots Confession and in the Book of Common
Order.218 It was also a view that found favour with the ®rst generation of
Elizabeth's divines, especially those who had experienced exile. Jewel
talked about discipline as the entity which strengthened the Church,
joining and knitting its parts together, and years later Sandys called
it the church's third net in which to take `the little foxes which destroy
the vines'.219 In the high years of Protestant anticipation of full reform the
claim that discipline was the third mark of the true Church had even
crept into the of®cial catechism of 1553.220 Whether or not it became an

213
Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1. 10.
214
P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift
to Hooker (1988), 153±62.
215
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 128±72.
216
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1. 10, in Keble, Works of Hooker.
217
D. Hay Fleming (ed.), Register of the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Christian Congre-
gation of St Andrews, pt. 1: 1559±82 (Edinburgh, 1889), 75.
218
Knox, iv. 203.
219
Ayre, Works of Jewel, ii. 986. J. Ayre (ed.), The Sermons of Edwyn Sandys D.D. (PS,
Cambridge, 1841), 71±2: the metaphor continues the Protestant tradition of identifying the fox
with `Romish practice'.
220
J. Ketley (ed.), The Two Liturgies of the Reign of Edward VI (PS, Cambridge, 1844), 513.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 395
identifying mark of the true Church, the demand that a reformed church
should exercise a thorough control over the people was common to all the
reformers. Magistrates had, in the Prayer Book's words, a duty `truly and
indifferently [to] minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and
vice', but where sin and error abounded the Church had the responsibility
for its correction.221
Proper discipline was a necessary objective of the Protestant churches.
The question was how was it to be achieved, and by whom? John Knox's
answer, bred of his Genevan experience and of his mistrust of the exercise
of lay magisterial power in Edwardian England, was that control was most
properly to be exercised by the congregation constituted according to the
principles of Scripture.222 Before the advent of the presbyterian system in the
1580s this meant the development of local kirk sessions, which spread un-
evenly through urban Scotland after 1560. The impact of these sessions will
concern us later: here it may suf®ce to note that even in those burghs which
quickly established functioning disciplinary mechanisms, progress towards
Knox's goals was spasmodic. St Andrews has been much studied as a model
of `perfect reform'.223 Aberdeen has been identi®ed as essentially tradition-
alist, with its urban magistrates seeking to behave as they always had, except
when required by public pressure to display a facËade of godly zeal.224 At the
level of the national church Knox seems to have had no dif®culty in
accepting the idea of superintendency, as it was added to the First Book of
Discipline, by which essentially supervisory tasks were to be assigned to
ministers of particular distinction. Superintendents were to become the
visitors of the Kirk, preaching, admitting ministers and readers, convening
local synods, ensuring the good repair of churches. By 1565 the General
Assembly had added to these powers the right of excommunication, the
highest form of disciplinary power, in those areas where the Kirk had not
yet established full local reformed practice. Elsewhere the power of the local
sessions was upheld, though there was a de facto expectation that they often
operated in collaboration with the superintendent in dif®cult cases. When
disciplinary problems outran the capacity of the local community to resolve

221
Ibid., 87.
222
M.F. Graham, `Knox on discipline: conversionary zeal or rose-tinted nostalgia', in
Mason, Knox and the British Reformations, 268±86.
223
J.A. Dawson, ` ``The face of ane perfyt reformed kyrk'': St Andrews and the early Scottish
Reformation', in J. Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England and Scotland
1400±1600, SCH Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991), 413±35. G. Parker, `The ``Kirk by Law Established''
and the origins of ``the Taming of Scotland'': St Andrews 1559±1600', in R. Mentzer (ed.), Sin
and Calvinists: Moral Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition (Kirksville, Mo., 1994),
158±97.
224
A. White, `The impact of the Reformation on a burgh community: the case of Aber-
deen', in M. Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (1987), 81±101.
396 Reformations Established and Contested
them, the instinct of the Kirk already in the 1560s was to turn to the higher
councils of synod and General Assembly.225
It is easy to argue that the very different nature of the Elizabethan
settlement inevitably produced a very different interpretation of order for
England, Wales, and Ireland. An inherently conservative political settle-
ment sustained a traditional view of ecclesiastical order, with a hierarchy of
clerics and discipline left ®rmly in the hands of the church courts in their
unreconstructed form. But the story of the early Elizabethan years includes
some hypothetical possibilities that modify this picture. The ®rst gener-
ation of bishops, especially those who had experienced exile, were motiv-
ated by the idea that they were above all preaching pastors, leading their
clergy by spiritual example and instruction. Some, like Jewel, were willing
to own the title of superintendent, and to see themselves as no more than
seniors among a group of preaching pastors.226 Others, notably Grindal,
seem to have been directly in¯uenced by Martin Bucer's theories of church
government in De Regno Christi, in which the great reformer emphasized
the pastoral and supervisory role of the bishops. Discipline should be exer-
cised in a personal, moral, and restorative framework, with other clergy
assisting the bishop, and these lesser ministers, or chorepiscopi, should be
joined together as a synod to preside over the local clergy.227 Aylmer
seems to have been attracted by something like this scheme when he
responded to Knox's challenge about lordly prelates by suggesting that
`every city [may have] his superintendent'.228 In the practice of the Eliza-
bethan church it seemed from time to time that rural deans might become
Bucer's chorepiscopi. Thomas Bentham, bishop of Coventry and Lich®eld,
ordered in 1563 that moral offences should be reported quarterly to the
dean, while in the parliament of 1571 Nicholas Bacon proposed that rural
deans should be given ordinary courts `for the well executing of those laws
of discipline'.229 This last suggestion was taken up in a general proposal
for making the rural deans of Norwich diocese into godly supervisors in
1578.230
The opportunities for change should not, however, be exaggerated.
Not only did the queen, the laity, the system of patronage, and existing
ecclesiastical structures militate against any major reform: elements in the
225
Kirk, `Superintendent', in Patterns of Reform, 182±8.
226
Ayre, Works of Jewel, iv. 906.
227
M. Bucer, De Regno Christi, ed. F. Wendel, Opera Latina 15 (1955), 118. P. Collinson, `The
reformer and the archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian' in his Godly People, 19±44.
228
Aylmer, An harborowe, sig. o 4v.
229
P. Collinson, `Episcopacy and reform in England in the later sixteenth century',
in Godly People, 169±75. HMC Salisbury MSS, ii. 195±8.
230
Collinson sees the prophesyings as proving some substitute for the weakness of the rural
deanery scheme, since they embraced both edi®cation and moral discipline.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 397
thinking even of the bishops of this ®rst generation look very different
from those of the Scottish reformers. James Pilkington was one of the
exiles who believed in the essential parity of ministers and bishops and in
many ways accepted that the latter were godly overseers. But the con®-
dence with which he spoke of prelacy in 1561 is qualitatively different
from anything that John Winram or Erskine of Dun might have uttered:
The power and authority of bishops is spiritual, belonging to man's soul, as their
of®ce and ministry is; and it stands chie¯y in these two points, in doctrine and
discipline . . . God's minister [has] in his church full power and authority to teach
sound doctrine, and confute the false; . . . to bind and loose the conscience by
virtue of God's word; . . . to cast out of God's church, and receive again, such as
he rightly judges by the scriptures meet for mercy or justice.231
Control lay properly in the hands of the bishops. They must indeed, as
Sandys urged in a pastoral letter to Chaderton, bishop of Chester, feed the
¯ock, but `sin should not be allowed to burst the bonds of established law
and ¯y abroad with impunity'.232 There seem to have been few reserva-
tions about the exercise of power, including the power of excommuni-
cation. Bishops were pastors to their ¯ock, and the latter were required
to obey, not to participate in moral discipline and regeneration within
their own congregations.233 Even the sensitive Grindal would not brook
direct challenge to his authority in London in the latter stages of the
vestiarian controversy. Whitgift's generation of bishops acquiesced gladly
in the monarchical and prelatical church: their predecessors did so
with some heart-searching, but also with some belief in the true merits of
episcopal leadership.234
Moderate Puritans might have tolerated a measure of pastoral assertive-
ness by the bishops had it been matched with a willingness to see discip-
line as primarily a process of moral regeneration, conducted in
congregation, parish, and synod.235 As it was they feared from the outset
that the old systems of ecclesiastical courts and canon law would permit
no such redemptive intimacy. `No discipline is as yet established by any
public authority,' Thomas Lever reported to Zurich at the beginning of
the reign, and nothing that occurred in the next forty years would have
led him to change his views.236 When more radical Puritans ®nally took
the risk of trying to establish `presbytery in episcopacy' in the early 1580s,
231
J. Schole®eld (ed.), The Works of James Pilkington (PS, Cambridge, 1842), 491±2.
232
Ayre, Sermons of Sandys, 440.
233
In these early years Jewel and Alexander Nowell were prepared to consider that even the
prince could be subject to ecclesiastical censure, an idea quietly dropped thereafter.
234
P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559±1625 (Oxford,
1982), 10±38; Archbishop Grindal, 52±4.
235 236
Ayre, Sermons of Sandys, 419. ZL i. 84.
398 Reformations Established and Contested
it was the desire for proper fraternal order and discipline that proved the
crucial catalyst. The Dedham conference, established in Suffolk in 1582,
combined features of the earlier `prophesyings' with a more institutional-
ized desire to subject its members to local, and essentially congregational,
control.237 At the national level the leaders of the presbyterian movement
were deeply in¯uenced by their, imperfect, understanding of the situation
in Scotland. The Admonition had asked rhetorically `Is discipline meet for
Scotland? And is it unpro®table for this realm?'238 And when Andrew
Melville and his colleagues had to pass the winter of 1584±5 in exile in
London they became an important in¯uence on the construction of that
most radical of presbyterian texts, the Book of Discipline. Its author,
Walter Travers, provided for the ®rst time a fully considered rejection of
episcopal discipline in all its forms, and followed the Scots in their separ-
ation of spiritual and secular power. The logical outcome of fraternal
discipline was the denial that the supreme governor had any role in the
regulation of the Church.239
For the episcopate any yearning for full moral and spiritual discipline
had little place in the Elizabethan polity. The quest for order meant pri-
marily the enforcement of a basic conformity to the parameters of the
settlement: moral control was left in the uncertain hands of the church
courts. Although Protestant non-conformity produced some spectacular
con¯icts, the quotidian experience of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was far
more that of ensuring obedience from alienated Catholics. The principal
device for the enforcement of conformity, the ecclesiastical commission,
was established by legislation in 1559, before any of the Protestant episco-
pate had been consecrated.240 The commission in theory circumvented
the general problem that the church courts had only one signi®cant
weapon to use to discipline the laity: that of excommunication. It was
a weapon that had power only in circumstances where the Church com-
manded ideological assent. The ecclesiastical commission had powers to
®ne and imprison: as Bishop Horne expressed it vividly, the men of
Hampshire feared `punishment by the purse more than God's curse'.241
Moreover the addition of laymen offered the possibility of strengthening
clerical authority. The national commissions were slowly reinforced by
237
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 222±39.
238
W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes: A Story of the Origin of the Puritan
Revolt (1954), 19.
239
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 291±302. T. Fuller, The Church History of Britain, ed.
J.S. Brewer, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1845), v. 7.
240
For a general survey of the ecclesiastical commissions see P. Tyler's introduction to the
1969 edition of R.G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission. P. Tyler, `The signi®cance
of the ecclesiastical commission at York', Northern History 2 (1967), 27±44.
241
BL Lans. MS 12, fos. 63, 74.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 399
diocesan bodies that have left only limited archival evidence of their
activities.242
The bishops at times spoke optimistically of the possibilities offered by
the ecclesiastical commission. Parker and Sandys, inviting participation of
one of their colleagues in the attack on Dering in 1573, wrote of the good
their meeting could do for the `maintenance of [the] gospel, establishing
of decent and good order, to the edifying of [God's] people, and to the
repressing of all gainsayers'.243 Adam Loftus regarded the provision of a
strong ecclesiastical commission as the only effective way of instituting
discipline in the Irish church.244 Bishop Horne was only one of a number
of English bishops who saw a commission as the answer to the current
`want of severe discipline'.245 But high expectations seem only intermit-
tently to have been ful®lled. The laity who supposedly strengthened the
disciplinary hands of the prelates often proved a disappointment. Catholic
recusancy was a constant and intractable problem, compounded by the
reluctance of gentlemen to prosecute their neighbours. Even the relative
success of the central commission produced its own dif®culties. `Papistry',
said Parker in 1573, `is the chief wherein we should deal, and yet the
clamorous cry of some needy wives and husbands do compel us to take
their matters out of their common bribing courts, to ease their griefs in
commission'.246 Ultimately the urgent political need to combat Catholic
recusancy in the 1580s displaced the commissions in favour of penal laws
enforced by the state, and con¯ict about Archbishop Whitgift's campaign
against Puritan non-conformity may have subverted the local tribunals
from within. Roger Manning has even suggested that the emergence of
iure divino views of episcopacy owed something to the bishops' inability to
make the commissions serve their purposes.247
The commissions were never intended to replace the ordinary discip-
linary controls of the church courts. Throughout Elizabeth's reign the
English, Welsh, and Irish bishops had to accept that their ability to extir-
pate sin and ensure spiritual conformity depended on a body of legal
242
By 1570 Archbishop Parker, in organizing the detail of a new ecclesiastical commission,
was convinced of the signi®cance of its local dimension: he asked Cecil to ensure that there was
no administrative overlap between Winchester, Chichester, and Canterbury commissioners:
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 370±1. One of the few examples of a local commission at
work, and functioning quite effectively, is F.D. Price (ed.), The Commission for Ecclesiastical
Causes within the Dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester, 1574, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological
Society, Records Section, 10 (Gateshead, 1972).
243
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 435.
244
See particularly his letters to Burghley: PRO sp 63/42/76, 63/71/9. CSP Irl iv. 517±18.
245
BL Lans. MS 12, fo. 74.
246
Perowne, Correspondence of Parker, 450.
247
R.B. Manning, `The crisis of episcopal authority during the reign of Elizabeth I', JBS 11
(1971), 23±5.
400 Reformations Established and Contested
of®cials and a pattern of courts scarcely altered since the Reformation.248
When Richard Cosin sought to defend these bodies and their procedures
against the combined attacks of the godly and the common lawyers in his
1591 Apologie, he offered a clever lawyer's justi®cation of civil law pro-
ceedings and the virtues of order.249 Largely untouched was the funda-
mental issue of what law was appropriate to a reformed church.
Elizabeth's notorious reluctance to alter the settlement left the bishops
without the ability to revise canon law in signi®cant ways, and until 1604
the law of the church was a patchwork of old Catholic practice onto
which had been grafted speci®c measures relevant to the new ortho-
doxy.250 In 1598 the bishops collectively protested that they were assailed
by the common lawyers and given insuf®cient support from the crown
that should have upheld their power.251 Individually they were also prone
to lament that their dependence on lawyers to staff their courts meant
that they were thwarted by conservatism and sometimes by outright cor-
ruption in their deputies. These laments had some justi®cation, especially
in the ®rst Elizabethan generation when of®cials inherited from the mid-
century remained in place, and inexperienced administrators like Cheney
of Gloucester had no means of managing them successfully.252
But it can be suggested that the bishops did protest too much, and that
historians have been too ready to take them at their word. The courts, as
Ingram and others have argued, were not necessarily unpopular with the
English people, nor were their disciplinary weapons wholly redundant.253
And, while the prelates portrayed themselves as ground between the
upper millstone of crown indifference and the nether millstone of lay
hostility, much could in practice be achieved by a determined bishop.254
For example, visitation was conducted regularly and systematically in most

248
The best short summary of the activity of the courts remains R.A. Houlbrooke, `The
decline of ecclesiastical jurisdiction under the Tudors', in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds.), Continu-
ity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England, 1500±1642 (Leicester, 1976),
239±57. See also his Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520±1570
(Oxford, 1979). R.A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in
the Diocese of York, 1560±1640 (Cambridge, 1969).
249
R. Cosin, An Apologie: of, and for Sundrie Proceedings by Jurisdiction Ecclesiasticall (1591).
Cosin's main objective was the defence of ex of®cio proceedings in High Commission: J. Guy,
`The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity', in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of
Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995), 137±47.
250
R. Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge, 1990), 34 ff.
251
J. Strype, The Life of John Whitgift, D.D. (1718), 521±2. BL Harl. MS 358, fo. 186.
252
F.D. Price, `An Elizabethan church of®cial: Thomas Powell, chancellor of Gloucester
diocese', Church Quarterly Review 128 (1939), 94±112.
253
M. Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge, 1987). See
Helmholz on the creativity of ecclesiastical lawyers.
254
R. Houlbrooke, `The Protestant episcopate 1547±1603: the pastoral contribution', in
F. Heal and R. O'Day (eds.), Church and Society in England, Henry VIII to James I (1977), 90±4.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 401
Elizabethan dioceses, and visitation articles attest to the wide range of
issues addressed on circuit.255 Several of the ®rst Elizabethan generation
were powerfully involved in these progressesÐGrindal, Jewel, and Horne
predictable names among them. Later there may have been less need to
supervise of®cials whose religious loyalties were suspect, but it is clear
from a Whitgift directive of 1591 that he still expected bishops to visit in
person.256 Bishops could, and occasionally did, sit in their own consistory
courts. In particularly trying cases the bishops could attempt to circum-
vent their own of®cials, as Grindal did at York when he sent his own
chaplains around the deaneries to discover the actual state of the parochial
clergy.257 The importance of these supervisory roles is revealed by the
comparison with Scotland, where the exact nature of the visitatorial
powers of superintendents, commissioners, and bishops was a long-
running source of con¯ict within the Kirk. The Second Book of Discip-
line de®ned a visitor as not an `ordinary of®ce ecclesiastical in the person
of one man', that power was held by the congregation, but in reality
supervision was necessary, and its success depended on the capacities of
one man and his assistants.258
The political and social circumstances of late sixteenth-century Britain
made it dif®cult for the bishops to achieve their objectives of reformation
combined with good discipline. In the case of Ireland these goals appear
well-nigh impossible. Bishop Brady of Meath, the Irish-born reformer
who had all the attributes necessary for proper Protestant leadership, cer-
tainly found it so.259 At the other end of a spectrum one might take the
episcopate of John Jewel in the reasonably manageable Diocese of Salis-
bury. Jewel did not escape from the frustrations of of®ceÐsome of his
later correspondence with Zurich sounds weary in its denunciations of
non-conformityÐbut his energy in visitation and in personal supervision
of his see seems to have been rewarded by general acquiescence to his
rule.260 In a later generation Matthew Hutton, as bishop of Durham and
then archbishop of York, may be taken as another exemplar of the effect-
ive Protestant prelate, unbending in his pursuit of papists and committed
to the preaching ministry.261 But energy and reforming zeal were not
suf®cient to guarantee a successful episcopate, even in the relatively stable

255
VAI iii, passim. H.G. Owen, `The episcopal visitation: its limits and limitations in Eliza-
bethan London', JEH 11 (1960), 179±85, takes a less sanguine view of disciplinary possibilities.
256
Strype, Whitgift, Appendix, 168±9.
257
J.S. Purvis (ed.), Tudor Parish Documents of the Diocese of York (Cambridge, 1948), 109±25.
258
Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 197. Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland, 52±3.
259
Walshe, `Bishop Brady', 352±76.
260
VAI i. 168. Southgate, John Jewel, 64±79.
261
P. Lake, `Matthew Hutton: a Puritan bishop?' History 64 (1979), 182±204.
402 Reformations Established and Contested
dioceses of southern England. Bishop Curteys of Chichester had both in
abundance in the 1570s, but failed to recognize the importance of collab-
oration with the local lay elites. His proceedings against the most distin-
guished lay conservatives in his diocese without adequate sanction from
the Privy Council led to reprimand and effective disgrace before the local
community.262 Finally we might note two examples of the limited au-
thority of prelates being used effectively in the unpromising circumstances
of Elizabethan Wales. Richard Davies, successively bishop of St Asaph and
St David's, is famous primarily for his translation of the New Testament
into Welsh. He was also a conscientious, resident diocesan in both sees,
labouring with inadequate resources to introduce the beginnings of Prot-
estant discipline. Like Curteys, he was appalled by gentry and justices who
defended `papistry, superstition and idolatry'. However, he seems to have
had a better understanding of what could be achieved within his jurisdic-
tion.263 A generation later Henry Rowlands, bishop of Bangor from 1594
to 1616, showed the merits of being fully integrated into local society as a
native son who preached and showed outstanding piety as an example to
his Protestant ¯ock.264

Financing the Churches

`The temporalty', complained John Whitgift in 1575, `seek to make the
clergy beggars, that we may depend upon them.'265 Conspiracy theory
already had its attractions to the future archbishop, and there were no
doubt those among the laity who did indeed equate poor clerics with
subservient ones. It is more convincing, however, to invert the argument
and say that any display of clerical wealth was likely to attract lay hostility,
that automatic re¯ex of anti-clericalism that was a feature of the English
elite. Lord Burghley complained bitterly of the `evil examples in covet-
ousness, looseness of life and many other defaults' that he found among
the proud prelates.266 `The care of this world', wrote the earl of Leicester
to Bishop Scambler, `truly hath choked you all . . .'.267 `Let the godliest
man', said a friend of the Puritan Thomas Wood, `put once a rochet on
his back, and it bringeth with it such an infection that will mar him

262
R.B. Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969), 78±90.
263
G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 218, 228±30, 233±4, 389.
264
Sir John Wynn of Gwydir registered great surprise that Rowland discharged all the
obligations of a good bishop `yet died rich': Sir John Wynn, History of the Gwydir Family (1827),
102±6.
265
White Kennett, The Case of Impropriations Truly Stated (1704), app. ix, p. 21.
266
PRO sp 12/4/40.
267
P. Collinson (ed.), `Letters of Thomas Wood, puritan, 1566±1577', in his Godly People, 77.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 403
268
forever.' The lordly bishops remained the prime target for this type of
criticism, but archdeacons, deans, and their prebendaries all attracted their
share of contempt, and at the parochial level tithe disputes and visitation
returns provide a repository of hostile comment on greedy and wealthy
ministers.269 Henry Trickett, vicar of Marston and Doveridge in Lich®eld
diocese, was accused by his parishioners of living `as a layman', purchasing
land, and lending money at interest; while the dreadful John Otes of
Carnaby in the East Riding of Yorkshire was rightly charged with money-
grubbing by his aggrieved ¯ock.270 The ministers of the Scottish Kirk
were not immune from these criticisms: the motives of those bishops and
clergy who had converted to the reform and retained their bene®ces were
questioned, and by the end of the century the new Protestant prelates
were being accused by their enemies of avarice and worldly ambition.271
Conversely, clerical commentators of all ideological complexions were
in little doubt that the laity was a constant threat to the possessions of the
Church. `Too much dignity and authority', thought William Crashaw,
`[has been taken] from our ministry and . . . too much poverty, contempt
and baseness [laid] upon it.'272 At the parochial level he blamed the perni-
cious system of impropriations, which by `sacrilege and church robbing'
impoverished livings, `which is the source and fountain of all other evils in
our church'. Whitgift agreed, in 1588 calculating the loss to the Church in
England and Wales at £100,000. Grindal was bold enough to complain
directly to the queen that the Church of England had been spoiled by the
process.273 Even more impressively Edward Dering denounced her in a
court sermon for `let[ting] all alone', while bene®ces were de®led by
impropriation and patrons were given to simony.274 The Scottish ministers
felt equally bitter, denouncing the `insatiable sacriligeous avarice' of earls,
lords, and gentlemen, who deprived the clergy of proper maintenance.275
268 269
Ibid., 101. F. Heal, Of Prelates and Princes (Cambridge, 1980), 202±22.
270
R. O'Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession (Leicester,
1979), 186. P. Marshall, The Face of the Pastoral Ministry in the East Riding, 1525±1595, Borthwick
Papers 88 (York, 1995), 19, and esp. `Discord and stability in an Elizabethan parish: John Otes
and Carnaby, 1563±1600', YAJ 71 (1999), 185±99. W.J. Sheils, ` ``The right of the church'': the
clergy, tithe and the courts of York, 1540±1640', in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), The Church
and Wealth, SCH 24 (Oxford, 1987), 231±55.
271
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 312; Second Book of Discipline, 33; BUK i. 166±7. Mullan, Episcop-
acy in Scotland, 127±8.
272
W. Crashaw, Preface to William Perkins's Of the Calling of the Ministerie (Cambridge, 1608),
2. D.J. Lamburn, `Petty Babylons, godly prophets, petty pastors and little churches: the work of
healing Babel', in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, SCH 26
(Oxford, 1989), 237±9.
273
C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament
(Oxford, 1956), 139, 145, 14±38.
274
E. Dering, A Sermon Preached before the Queenes Maiestie, in Workes (1614), sig. l 8.
275
Pitcairn, Autobiography and Diary of Melvill, 188.
404 Reformations Established and Contested
The crisis was most dramatically visible in the case of the English higher
clergy. Why, Abbot Feckenham asked his Protestant opponents in 1559,
should he wish to join a church in which he could see nothing but spoil
`of bishops' houses and of colleges' lands'?276 The crown duly con®rmed
his prejudices by promoting the Act of Exchange that took valuable epis-
copal estates and permitted long leases of episcopal property to be made
only to itself.277 Thereafter the story of episcopal possessions was one of
constant struggle to protect them against the predatory interests of court-
iers and other members of the elite who turned to the crown for material
rewards. While the queen lived there was little relief, despite the con-
spicuous favour that she could on occasions display to individuals.
For defenders of the Elizabethan establishment threats to the wealth of
the prelates were as damaging as the impoverishment of the parishes.
Hooker argued that `to make the bishops poorer than they are were to
make them of less account and estimation than they should be'.278 But
here, of course, the bishops and their critics parted company acrimoni-
ously. The general position of the godly was that the resources of the
Church were its own to manage for the good of the gospel.279 The good
of the gospel was, however, de®ned explicitly as the good of the presby-
terian church: the funding of preachers, and of the discipline. Even mod-
erate Puritans showed no enthusiasm for episcopal wealth, arguing instead
that it should largely be diverted for the bene®t of the parishes. The
bitterness of this division usually prevented clerics from making common
cause in defence of proper funding for the Church, despite many shared
assumptions. Indeed, ideological hostility could persuade polemicists to
encourage the very lay voracity that most churchmen feared. John Penry
sought the earl of Essex's help for the overthrow of the bishops with the
words, `I offer your lordship of her [the church's] spoil.'280 On the other
party Richard Bancroft denounced the presbyterians as threatening hier-
archy and the rights of property and sought political capital by raising the
old spectre that the godly aimed to reappropriate monastic land.281 As

276
Strype, Annals, i. i. 529.
277
On the Act of Exchange see F. Heal, `The bishops and the Act of Exchange of 1559', HJ
17 (1974), 227±46; on its consequences, idem, Prelates and Princes, 228±36. N.L. Jones, `Pro®ting
from religious reform: the land rush of 1559', HJ 22 (1979), 279±94.
278
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vii. 24. 19, in Keble, Works of Hooker.
279
Though, as Collinson points out, the godly ministers were often reluctant to draw the
logical conclusion that a prosperous ministry needed to be funded by support from the laity, as
well as the redirection of resources within the Church: Puritan Movement, 456.
280
A. Peel (ed.), The Notebook of John Penry, CS 3rd ser. 67 (1944), 93. Some of the encour-
agement offered to Leicester in the 1580s seems nearly as blatant.
281
P. Lake, `Conformist clericalism? Richard Bancroft's analysis of the socio-economic roots
of presbyterianism', in Sheils and Wood, The Church and Wealth, 219±29.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 405
chaplain to Christopher Hatton, Bancroft also constructed much of the
lord chancellor's blunt appeal to the 1586 parliament against the presbyter-
ian proposal for a new Prayer Book and Discipline. It should be opposed
on the grounds that its attempts to use ecclesiastical wealth to support a
preaching ministry threatened the property rights of the laity.282
While the clergy argued, the laity consolidated their gains at the ex-
pense of the bishops. An extreme case is that of the Isle of Man, where
the earls of Derby continued to reign supreme. Half a century after Eliza-
beth I's death the seventh earl advised his son to continue the traditional
practice of keeping the lands of the see on long lease, though he acknow-
ledged that to persuade a cleric to reside it might be wise to `give way to
leasing some petty thing or other of little moment'.283 The Irish church
also produced some spectacular cases of lay intrusion, like that of Patrick
Sars®eld, who managed to exchange some tithes of little value with Alex-
ander Craike, bishop of Kildare, in the 1560s, and gain in return most of
the property of the see.284 But even in the more regulated environment of
mainland England and Wales at least nineteen sees were subject to
demands for leases orchestrated by the crown.285 Meanwhile Elizabeth's
regime also burdened the bishops with regular taxation and with the
obligation to act as collectors of taxes in their dioceses. The resultant cries
of pain echo through the records of the Elizabethan Exchequer: some
bishops like Parkhurst of Norwich and Overton of Coventry and Lich-
®eld, who failed to control the proper collection of crown funds, were
driven almost to desperation by their debts.286 Others, like Bishop Brady
of Meath, found that even paying their own ®rst fruits on entry to the see
produced a `mountain of accumulated debt'.287 Not all bishops were in
such dire straits. The situation was particularly bad at the beginning of the
reign, and a few sees encountered recurrent dif®culties. Others like Lin-
coln seem largely to have escaped through a combination of good man-
agement and good fortune.
The problems of funding the ecclesiastical hierarchy paled into insigni®-
cance beside those of providing for the parochial church. Despite the
282
T.E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 2 vols. (1995), ii. 333±8.
J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (1957), ii. 160±1. Collinson, Puritan Movement,
313±14.
283 The History and Antiquities of the Isle of Man, in F. Peck (ed.), Desiderata Curiosa (1779),

436.
284
Ronan, Reformation in Ireland, 54.
285
Heal, Prelates and Princes, 233±6.
286
P. Carter, ` ``Certain, continual, and seldom abated'': royal taxation of the Elizabethan
church' in Wabuda and Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice, 94±112. S.M. Jack, `English
bishops as tax collectors in the sixteenth century' in S.M. Jack and B.A. Masters (eds.), Protest-
ants, Property, Puritans: Godly People Revisited (Parergon, n.s. 14, 1996), 129±63.
287
Walshe, `Bishop Brady', 362±3.
406 Reformations Established and Contested
passionate pleas of the godly, and the more measured criticism of the
bishops, Elizabeth had no intention of changing a system of patronage and
®nance that had suf®ced for her predecessors. Impropriations, the leasing of
bene®ces, and the wide variety of forms of funding of incumbents and
curates continued essentially as in the past.288 But distinctive dif®culties
were added: in¯ation could erode the value of livings which depended on
money payments or limited access to tithe; taxation became, in William
Harrison's words, `certain, continual and seldom abated'; and clerical mar-
riage brought its own pressures in the need to provide for families.289 None
of these was uniformly negative in its effects. Clerical marriage was costly
but, as the ubiquitous Harrison again had it, it ensured domestic ef®ciency:
meat `well dressed' and hospitality maintained.290 Taxation was always bur-
densome, yet not really acutely so before the war crisis of the 1590s, and the
fact that assessments were still at the Valor Ecclesiasticus rates offered some
relief to a proportion of the clergy.291 Above all, in¯ation bene®ted some
clergy: Christopher Hill demonstrated that a sample of rectories grew more
than ®vefold in money value between the 1535 survey and those done by
Parliament during the interregnum. Since these were also the livings most
likely to have glebe land, and hence some capacity to raise revenue in kind,
we may assume they survived well even in the later sixteenth century.292
The Puritan surveys of parochial livings in Cornwall and Berkshire in 1586
show average increases over the Valor of between 220 per cent and over 300
per cent, suggesting broadly a capacity to keep pace with in¯ation.293
There is, however, ample evidence that parts of the English, Welsh, and
Irish churches were now so poorly funded that they could attract neither
incumbents nor adequate curates. At the end of the sixteenth century
chapel curates in Lancashire were being paid an average of £4 per annum:
not surprisingly there was dif®culty in ®lling the posts.294 It is a re¯ection
on the even graver ®nancial problems of the Scottish Kirk that at least
thirty-two chaplaincies and curacies in the Border counties were ®lled by

288
F. Heal, `Economic problems of the clergy', in Heal O'Day, Church and Society, 108±18.
289
Carter, `Royal taxation', 95±100.
290
G. Edelen (ed.), William Harrison: A Description of England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 37.
291
Whitgift's recognition of the signi®cance of retaining the 1535 assessments is indicated in
his memorandum to Burghley opposing revision: BL Lans. MS 45, fos. 184±5v.
292
Hill, Economic Problems, 111. Hill's sampleÐ525 parishesÐis large but is heavily weighted
to Essex, Worcester diocese, and London. 87 per cent of rectories and 40 per cent of vicarages
in Warwickshire had glebe: D.M. Barratt (ed.), Ecclesiastical Terriers of Warwickshire Parishes, Dug-
dale Society 22 (1955), intro.
293
M. Zell, `Economic problems of the parochial clergy in the sixteenth century', in R. O'Day
and F. Heal (eds.), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500±1800 (Leicester, 1981), 35±41.
294
C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), 238±9;
cf. London, where curates were often paid £20: H.G. Owen, `Parochial curates in Elizabethan
London', JEH 10 (1959), 69.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 407
Scots in the 1560s and 1570s. Bishop Pilkington acknowledged baldly that
this was `because they take less wages than other'.295 Urban livings, always
vulnerable because of the need to depend on personal tithes and offerings,
suffered particularly badly. In cities most acutely affected, like York, plural-
ism and non-residence were the rule as a means of survival for the clergy.296
The extreme cases were, as always, Wales and Ireland. In Wales Richard
Davies blamed impropriators who gave their clerics no more than starvation
wages, and often made do with a cleric from another parish paid no more
than £4 a year.297 As for Ireland, the best of the evidence available is Bishop
Brady's 1576 survey of Meath, which revealed that more than half the
impropriated parishes were served by impoverished curates who lived on
bare altar offerings. In¯ation was a ®nal blow for many of these clerics. In
1584 the prebendaries of St Patrick's, Dublin, vividly described for the
Privy Council the fate of their curates who travel like `lackeys to three or
four churches in a morning' to secure enough stipend to live.298 At these
levels of absolute poverty there is no question that the structure of the
Church prevented any signi®cant religious change being initiated. Bishop
Brady spoke with feeling about how his clergy were `wont to live upon the
gain of masses, dirges, shrivings and such like trumpery godly abolished'.299
The critical issue facing the British and Irish churches was not how to
provide for `ragged clergy' or the mere readers who plugged the worst gaps
in parochial ministry after the accession of Elizabeth, but how to offer
long-term endowments and incomes suitable for a learned, preaching min-
istry. By the later years of Elizabeth's reign the rough rule of thumb about
the size of income needed to support a preaching cleric had moved from
Archbishop Cranmer's £10 to £30, a ®gure that was used by the Irish
bishops as well as by those engaged in the internal English debate about the
ministry. Grindal thought that at most one parish in eight could yield
enough for a preacher.300 Whitgift, taking as always a more trenchant
view, insisted that not one parish in twenty was worth £30 clear, and used
this to support his argument that pluralities must continue as a means of
maintaining a preaching cadre.301 As the Puritan position became more
strident, polemicists argued that ministers needed £100 or more for

295
S.M. Keeling, `The Reformation in the Anglo-Scottish Border counties', Northern
History 15 (1979), 30.
296
C. Cross, `The incomes of provincial urban clergy, 1520±1645', in R. O'Day and
F. Heal (eds.), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500±1800 (Leicester, 1981), 65±89.
297
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 297±8.
298 299
PRO sp 63/113/56. Walshe, `Bishop Brady', 362±3.
300
Nicholson, Remains of Grindal, 383.
301
Strype, Whitgift, 193. Bishop Curteys argued for a variant on Whitgift's insistence on
pluralities: the uni®cation of bene®ces and allowing pensions out of parishes occupied by the
unlearned for the bene®t of preachers.
408 Reformations Established and Contested
302
suf®ciency. What all parties frequently ignored was the supply side of
the issue: until at least the 1590s there were simply not enough graduates to
supply the English parishes (let alone those of Wales or Ireland) with
preachers at any price.303
The issues involved in providing proper funding for a Protestant church
are revealed more starkly when Scotland is compared with the rest of Brit-
ain and Ireland. The Scottish Reformation was inevitably accompanied by a
major upheaval in ecclesiastical ®nance, since there was a clear break be-
tween the old Kirk and the new. Since congregations provided the build-
ing-blocks of the reformed polity they might be expected, like their
Continental counterparts, to provide funding for the ministry as well.304
But the new Kirk could also from the beginning claim some measure of
establishment by law: the rituals of the Catholic Church were prohibited,
and therefore in principle it had a powerful claim upon the latter's resources
as well. Those resources, just as in the English case, were already deeply
woven into the structure of the society, both clerical and lay. Speci®cally,
the system of feuing ensured that large sectors of the Scottish elite had a
vested interest in church property, and the localist, kin-based nature of the
society meant that it was extremely dif®cult to unskein lay and clerical
interests. The revolution had been made by nobles and lairds who had a
strong interest in the maintenance of the structure of the old Church.305
Therefore much of the energy of the ¯edgling Kirk had to be directed to
®nding ®nancial solutions that would secure support for a `learned ministry'
without compromising the wealth of their lay supporters. The belief of the
First Book of Discipline that all teinds should be returned to the Church as
proper spiritualities did not at this stage look likely of realization.306
The ®rst, rather deft, compromise proposed by Mary's council was the
agreement of 1562 that when bene®ced men did not support the reform,
they should have a third of their income appropriated for the shared use of
the crown and the new Kirk. This produced the major survey of ecclesi-
astical revenues known as the Books of the Assumptions of the Thirds
of Bene®ces, and for a brief period the division of the spoils between
crown and kirk appears to have been reasonably successful.307 This is despite

302
A. Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register: Being a Calendar of Manuscripts . . . , 2 vols.
(1915), ii. 209.
303
K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990), 181±3: Dr Fincham
points out that even in the early seventeenth century the capacity of the bishops to ordain
graduates remained highly area-sensitive.
304
Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, 64±72.
305
On the dif®culties that church ®nance produced in the initial settlement see above, p. 365
306
Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 30±1, 156±64.
307
J. Kirk (ed.), The Books of the Assumptions of the Thirds of Bene®ces, British Academy
Records in Social and Economic History ns 21 (1995), pp. xiv, xvii ff.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 409
John Knox's famous observation that `two parts [was] freely given to the
Devil, and the third must be divided betwixt God and the Devil'.308 It was,
however, inevitable that an impoverished crown would be tempted to ap-
propriate income designated for the clerical estate. The thirds were only a
temporary expedient, and the General Assembly began to demand a more
fundamental solution to these problems with growing vociferousness in the
later Marian years. Finally in 1567 the Kirk was granted succession to all the
lesser bene®ces of the old Church as they became vacant, and church
collectors were placed in control of the thirds. This still left unresolved the
problem of the major bene®cesÐbishoprics and abbeys. In the 1572 Leith
agreement there was again a rather elegant attempt at compromise in which
the bishoprics were to be included in the new Kirk, and monastic resources
divided between land and teinds, the latter coming to the Kirk. The General
Assembly, however, remained committed to the view that all ecclesiastical
resources should be returned to the Kirk, and this was the position adopted
in the Second Book of Discipline. The issue was not really settled until in
1587 the Act of Annexation was passed, by which the temporalities passed to
the crown, while the spiritualities were to remain with the holders, and
were by this time largely available to the Kirk.309
The moral is that the Scottish reformers were no more successful than
their English counterparts at freeing the clerical estate from the embrace of
lay interest. Melville wrote bitterly to Beza in 1578 that `those who have
grown rich by sacrilege . . . deny that ecclesiastical discipline is to be derived
from the word of God'.310 And, since the aggregate resources available to the
clergy had always been more limited than south of the border, the inevitable
consequence was a Kirk that struggled to meet the needs of its ministry. The
First Book of Discipline had recommended that ministers should be paid
equitable stipends, varied mainly by marital circumstance and the logistical
burdens of a parish.311 In reality few ministers in the early years could com-
mand more than £100 Scots per annum, and there are many cases where
kirks struggled to provide a bare minimum for their clerics. In the somewhat
extreme case of Caithness it was not possible to offer more than £66 for a
minister, or £20 for a reader in the early years.312 The Kirk not only had
problems about establishing a legal claim to the resources of the old Church,
it also encountered resistance to paying from those owing teinds: a combina-
tion of opportunism born of political confusion and a demand for value for

308 309
Knox, ii. 29. Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 17±18, 23±5, 122±4.
310 311
McCrie, Life of Melville, ii. 200±1. Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 108±9.
312
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 123±36, 314±22. In Angus and the Mearns, where the ministers
seem to have been fairly well-placed, over half received an income in excess of £100 by 1563,
but only twenty-eight out of eighty-eight clergy in the new church were ministers: Bardgett,
Scotland Reformed, 90, 109.
410 Reformations Established and Contested
money in religious services. There were problems about payment at every
level within the Kirk, from con¯icts about superintendents' salaries to the
dif®culty of recruiting readers in the Highlands because of the impossibly
low stipends.313
Yet the early history of ®nancing the Scottish Reformation actually
provides a salutary corrective to easy assumptions that a poor church was
necessarily a spiritually ineffective church. In practice the ®rst generation
of reformers resolved many of the most pressing ®scal problems by ad hoc
means. In the 1560s there might be no guarantee of secure income for
learned ministers, but there were a series of individual initiatives that
helped to provide funding. Bene®ce holders who had not converted to
the new Kirk often gave voluntary support to clerics, lessees sometimes
funded ministers, and congregations occasionally raised their own revenue
to call a minister.314 In 1562 an Ayrshire bond was signed to `assist the
preaching' and `maintain the ministers of the same'.315 Congregational
enthusiasm was met with reasonable supply of clerics from the old
Church, so that at least at the level of readers it was relatively easy to
service the new congregations. By the early 1570s there were almost 1,000
men in the ministry, close in principle to the number needed to furnish
the number of Scottish parishes.316 There is, of course, a further problem
about the nature of these clerics: about 70 per cent in the ®gures accumu-
lated in 1574 were readers or exhorters not full preaching ministers. Here
informal solutions, especially that of giving a minister supervisory control
over several adjacent parishes, were usually attempted.317
In the second and third generation of the Reformation the ®nancial
problems of the Kirk had a rather different impact. As more graduates were
produced by the universities, and the future of the Kirk became more
secure, it became possible in principle to ful®l the General Assembly's
ambition of recruiting more fully learned men to the ministry. The ®nancial
expectations of such men were very different from those of readers. A
minister in the 1590s still did not necessarily command a salary of more than
£100, though there was a general tendency for stipend to edge upwards.318
313
A. Macdonald (ed.), Register of Ministers, Exhorters and Readers and of their Stipends after the
period of the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1830).
314 315
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 117, 122±30. Knox, ii. 55±6.
316
Macdonald, Ministers, Exhorters and Readers.
317
M. Lynch, `Preaching to the converted? Perspectives on the Scottish Reformation', in
A.A. MacDonald, M. Lynch, and I.B. Cowan (eds.), The Renaissance in Scotland (Leiden, 1994),
310. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 89±90.
318
Kirk and Bardgett take a reasonably positive view of the ®nancial progress of the 1580s to
1590s, emphasizing a slow if uneven advance for many ministers: Bardgett shows that stipends
were increasing on the whole in Angus and Mearns, Scotland Reformed, 109. Lynch, on the other
hand, emphasizes a second-generation crisis, partly created by inadequate resources: `Preaching
to the converted?', 307±13.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 411
The leaders of the Kirk now aimed to make it possible to have such preach-
ing ministers in every parish, while acknowledging that salaries must at least
keep pace with in¯ation. In the 1580s the General Assembly seriously con-
sidered reducing the number of parishes to 600 to ensure proper ministerial
supervision.319 This came to nothing because in a slow and piecemeal way
more of the wealth of the old Church became available to the new, and
because the status, if not the income, of the ministry continued to rise.
Moreover the king's serious assurances that he wished `all the kirks of
Scotland planted with ministers and suf®cient livings appointed to them'
led the assembly to continue in hope.320 But not until the early seventeenth
century was there a systematic attempt to improve ministerial incomes
through augmentation, and then it was orchestrated not by the General
Assembly, but by the crown and the much-despised bishops.321
Did the economic problems of the British and Irish Protestant churches
make any fundamental difference to their evangelical success ? It is unlikely
that direct economic determinism is a particularly useful guide to the impact
of Protestantism. Wealthy livings certainly attracted the well-educated and
in¯uential: poor curacies, if ®lled at all, would draw only the marginal.
When particular inducements were available, as they were in the case of
Scottish preachers persuaded to Ulster in the next century, the nature of
evangelism could certainly be changed.322 But supply, in the form of output
from the universities, was probably the most critical way in which the
quality of clergy was changed by the early seventeenth century. Graduates
might make high claims for their ®nancial rights: they had to settle for what
the market offered, and in so doing began to spread the preaching of the
Word beyond a small minority of rich parishes. The greatest signi®cance of
®nancial problems was that they distracted clergy, at all levels of the
churches, from their primary spiritual duties. Unseemly wrangles about
leases and property, and dif®culties about tax collection, certainly diverted
the energies of Elizabeth's bishops. Litigation about tithe; tensions with
patrons, or with farmers and lessees; the need to pursue other sources of
pro®t: all these could burden a cleric. The solution of the godlyÐthat
ministers should be relieved of worldly cares and dedicate themselves solely
to their cures in return for an adequate salaryÐwas no doubt the ideal one.
Always it fell foul of the willingness of the laity to pay the true costs of such
a church. In the case of England, at least, it was also a solution that violated
those principles of hierarchy, which must be sustained by money. Wealth,
said Hooker, `is held in so great admiration . . . in this golden age . . . that
319 320
BUK ii. 480±7; Kirk, Second Book of Discipline, 104±5. BUK ii. 771.
321
On the changes of the early 17th cent, see W.R. Foster, The Church before the Covenants:
the Church of Scotland 1596±1638 (Edinburgh, 1975), 156±72.
322
A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590±1641 (Dublin, 1997), 72±4.
412 Reformations Established and Contested
without it angelical perfections are not able to deliver from extreme con-
tempt'.323 And the nature and power of that hierarchy was to become one
of the de®ning issues of the last decades of Elizabeth's reign.

Last Decades
Two distinguished contributions to a recent study of church and politics
in the 1580s and 1590s chose to title their papers `ecclesiastical vitriol'.324
The language re¯ects a paradox pertinent to both English and Scottish
Protestantism. As the internal settlements of religion became more
secureÐin Scotland through the presence of an adult monarch willing to
uphold the Calvinist faith, in England through the acceptance that the
queen's faith was the faith of the majority of the nationÐso the polemic
of the churches became more aggressive. This is partly to be explained by
intense fears about the genuine threat of resurgent Catholicism. The glori-
ous success of the Armada, and the Protestant wind that turned back
subsequent invasion attempts, were regarded only as provisional victories
in the struggle against the forces of Antichrist. Ireland remained a constant
reminder of the reality of the papal challenge, especially when general
insurrection threatened in the 1590s after the outbreak of Tyrone's
revolt.325 The impact of the Jesuit mission in England and Scotland stirred
deep horror of the enemy within, and the vacillation of of®cial policy
towards the Catholic laity of both realms generated bitter disputes be-
tween the godly and the politicians.326 But ecclesiastical vitriol also
erupted from the unresolved problems of church governance, of the au-
thority of the prince, and of the autonomy of the churches. And lurking
in the wings was the awareness that James was Elizabeth's only credible
successor.
The ®gure that encapsulated many of these fears and con¯icts was that
Rottweiler of the English establishment, Richard Bancroft. Bancroft's
famous sermon at Paul's Cross in February 1589, the week of the opening
of the parliamentary session, managed to touch aggressively on almost
every contentious issue in English and Scottish ecclesiastical politics. He
remembered to give due thanks to the Almighty for the deliverance of the
Armada, and for the godly rule of his sovereign Elizabeth, but his object-
ive was to attack the `consistorian puritans' wherever they were to be
found. Taking as his text `many false prophets are gone out into the
323
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vii. 24. 19, in Keble, Works of Hooker.
324
P. Collinson, `Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of
puritanism', in Guy, The Reign of Elizabeth I, 150±70; J. Wormald, `Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk,
the puritans and the future king of England', in idem, 171±91.
325 326
Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 298±311. McCoog, Society of Jesus, 224 ff.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 413
world', he denounced the zealous who assailed bishops, insisted on an
equality within the ministry, gaped after episcopal property, and refused to
conform to the order of Prayer Book services. He isolated in particular
their refusal to subscribe fully to the Elizabethan settlement: the issue that
had preoccupied his patron Archbishop Whitgift in the previous half
decade.327 Behind his anger about clerical disobedience, however, Ban-
croft insisted there lay a deeper fear about the consequences of Puritan
behaviour for the whole structure of church and state. It was here that he
raised the question of Scotland. The Scots, to his mind, revealed all too
starkly what happened when the `consistory' gained authority in the state.
The king of Scots was not master in his own land: his desire to control the
Kirk, expressed in the `Black Acts', was now swept aside by the assertive
ministers. But in the end `his crown and their sovereignty will not agree
together'. Scotland should act as a profound warning to England, lest
things should also `grow to extremities' south of the border. There was in
the ambition of the ministers an implication of treasonous levelling when
`civil government is called into question: princes' prerogatives are curi-
ously scanned: the interest of the people in kingdoms is greatly advanced
and all government generally is pinched at and condemned'.328
Bancroft's denunciations of Scottish presbyters occupied only nine text
pages of a long sermon, but it produced an intense reaction both from the
divines themselves and from an angry James. John Davidson wrote a
rebuttal, and the Edinburgh presbytery drew up a supplication to Eliza-
beth against her preacher, though in the end they had the sense not to
send it.329 The king, on the other hand, did protest once he had returned
from his wedding visit to Denmark, and Bancroft was belatedly made by
Burghley to publish a rather unapologetic submission.330 The shared anger
of kirk and king brought a rare moment of full accord and contributed to
James's most public statement of identity with his ministers when he
addressed the 1590 General Assembly. There he praised the Deity for the
purity of the Kirk, elevating it even above that of Geneva which `keepeth
Pasche and Yule'. And, to show Bancroft that he was not the only bruiser

327
R. Bancroft, A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 9 of Februarie . . . Anno 1588 (1589).
Quotations are at 75, 84, 87. For analysis of the sermon see W.D. Cargill Thompson, `A
reconsideration of Richard Bancroft's Paul's Cross sermon', JEH 20 (1969), 233±66; Wormald,
`Ecclesiastical vitriol', 174±7.
328
Bancroft is an intriguing ®gure in that he also links the Irish and the English churches. He
was a great-nephew of Hugh Curwen's and began his route to promotion as a prebendary of
St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He may have been instrumental in preventing Sir James Perrot's
plans for the appropriation of St Patrick's revenues to construct an Irish university in 1585.
329
J. Davidson, Bancroft's Rashness in Rayling against the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1590).
Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland, 69±70. For James's protests see CSP Sc 1589±93 x. 409±10, 528.
330
O. Chadwick, `Richard Bancroft's submission', JEH 3 (1952), 58±73.
414 Reformations Established and Contested
in inter-kingdom disputes, he denounced the Book of Common Prayer as
`an evil said mass in English, wanting nothing but the liftings'. As with
any outstanding party political speech the result was ®fteen minutes
of standing ovation.331
Bancroft's tactless intervention in Scottish affairs, which incidentally
was renewed in his pamphlet war of 1593, showed no understanding of
the complexity of relations between king and kirk in the years after
1584.332 The ministers and the General Assembly were certainly capable
of overt denunciations of royal delinquency, both on moral issues and on
the politics of religion. But much of this was part of the hard-bargaining
necessary to secure a godly prince for the `conservation and purgation of
religion' as well as for the proper management of temporal affairs.333 For
his part James desired greater ability to command his stroppy Melvillians:
given the well-entrenched nature of the Kirk's power he acknowledged,
however, the need for management and negotiation.334 His archbishop of
St Andrews, Patrick Adamson, was moved by indignation against the
presbyters to write A declaration of the kings majesties intention and meaning
toward the lait actis of parliament in 1585, a tract which became one of
Bancroft's prime sources.335 James may have encouraged the publication:
he did not formally endorse it. In the second half of the 1580s he therefore
allowed a slow movement towards presbyterian church structures while
not surrendering his claims to uphold episcopacy. After 1584 James also
maintained his right to summon the General Assembly. For a time in 1586
and 1587 reorganized dioceses were overseen by bishops or newly ap-
pointed commissioners, while presbyteries were also re-established. By
1590 the latter had superseded the former in many areas of organization,
culminating four years later in the right to examine appointees to bene-
®ces. In 1592 the so-called `Golden Acts' gave legislative endorsement to
the presbyterian system, though crucially the king still retained his erastian
right of summons of general assemblies. There were therefore plenty of
speci®c moments of con¯ict between kings and clerics in these years,
though hardly enough to demonstrate that the king could not live with
some version of the `two kingdoms' theory of authority.336

331
BUK ii. 771.
332
In his 1593 pamphlet, Dangerous Positions and Proceedings, published and practised within this
Island of Brytaine under pretence of Reformation and for the Presbiteriall Discipline (1593), bk. i,
Bancroft indulged himself in a much more lengthy denunciation of the Scots.
333
Wormald, `Ecclesiastical vitriol', 182±6.
334
Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland, 58±9.
335
The text of Adamson's Declaration was printed in the 1587 edition of Holinshed's
Chronicle of England, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols. (1808), v. 713±20.
336
MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 30±49.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 415
The major source of dispute between James and his clergy throughout
the late 1580s and the early 1590s was relations with the lay elite. For the
Kirk, the king's failure properly to discipline the key leaders of Catholi-
cism, the earls of Huntly and Erroll, was a fundamental betrayal. For
James, the ministers' ¯irtation with the earl of Bothwell after his involve-
ment in treason and witchcraft was equally threatening. Even when, in
1594, all three nobles were banished, suspicions were not wholly allayed.
Two years later the combination of a government headed by a group of
men known as the Octavians, several of whom were suspected of Catholic
leanings, and the secret return of Huntly and Erroll, once again stimulated
denunciations from the Melvillians.337
It was at this point that the king's relations with the Kirk moved from
chronic stand-off to acute con¯ict. James Melville, looking back over the
years between 1596 and 1610, was to label them `A True Narration of the
Declining Age of the Kirk of Scotland', and, at least for the ®rst of those
years, his apocalyptic sentiment had some justi®cation.338 Faced with
royal reluctance to move against the earls, local presbyteries and synods
attempted their own initiative, and a standing commission of the General
Assembly convened ®rst in Cupar and later in Edinburgh without royal
licence.339 When king and ministers met in September 1596 tempers ran
high. It was on this occasion that Andrew Melville memorably plucked
James's sleeve, called him `God's silly vassal', and delivered himself of a full
lecture on the `two kingdom theory'.340 In October David Black, minis-
ter of St Andrews, deepened the crisis by preaching a sermon in which he
allegedly denounced the king as treacherous, Queen Anne as unsound in
religion, and, for good measure, the queen of England as `an atheist'.341
This was not all that remarkable as Scottish pulpit rhetoric, but in the
circumstances it was too much for James. He insisted that Black be discip-
lined, and by the Privy Council, not the Kirk. Black, supported by the
commissioners, denied the council's power in the case. By December
there was confrontation in Edinburgh: the king ordered the dispersal
of the commissioners and their supporters and summoned his own con-
vention of ministers to Perth for February 1597. A riot resulted, leading
James to withdraw both the royal court and the courts of justice to Lin-
lithgow. Thereafter tempers cooled and the king began to regain the
initiative. The four leading ministers of Edinburgh ¯ed, and before the
end of the year the courts had been restored.342

337 338
Ibid., 50±73. Pitcairn, Autobiography of James Melvill, 505.
339 340 Pitcairn, Autobiography of James Melvill, 37.
Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland, 80±3.
341 342
Calderwood, v. 443 ff. MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 65±73.
416 Reformations Established and Contested
Most recent accounts of the crisis at the end of 1596 have emphasized
the situation-speci®c nature both of the ministers' behaviour and of
James's response. Without the earls, and without the tactlessness of Black,
no confrontation would necessarily have occurred.343 But as Williamson
has pointed out, the moment at which co-operation failed was that at
which `basic questions about the nature of authority . . . would surface'.344
Buchanan's texts could be brought out of the closet and upheld or chal-
lenged by the warring parties.345 An insistence on the right of the Kirk to
try its own was a catalyst for James to campaign vigorously for a true royal
supremacy. And, though it seems that many moderates among the clergy
were initially indignant about royal intervention, there was a gradual ac-
knowledgement that the Melvillians and the Edinburgh ministers had
gone too far. The king held his convention at Perth in February 1597,
followed by a full General Assembly at Dundee in May. Both were well
attended by ministers from the north, helping to secure loyalty. A com-
mission of the assembly was given permanent status under the king, and
this began to exercise power over the local presbyteries. In the following
period the possibility of reviving episcopacy was opened by the king's
proposal that the Kirk should have parliamentary representation through
chosen ministers. A newly compliant assembly voted in support. How-
ever, co-operation did not necessarily indicate trust. James's reaction to
the events of 1596±7 appeared in his writings on monarchy, Basilikon
Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. These laid Buchanan's ghost
(temporarily) and enabled him to give a bitter account of the conse-
quences of popular reformation to his older son. `Some ®ery spirited men
in the ministry . . . ®nding the gust of government sweet, they began to
fantasy to themselves, a democratic form of government' and fed them-
selves on the hope `in a popular government by leading the people by the
nose, to bear the sway of all the rule.'346 In words that must have been
music to Bancroft's ears he denounced the doctrine of ministerial parity as
`the mother of confusion and enemy to unity'. Whatever James's senti-
ments before 1596, thereafter he was already anticipating his Hampton
Court assertion of 1604: `no bishops, no king'.
When Bancroft preached his Paul's Cross sermon, he looked back on ®ve
years of struggle with the non-conformist godly both in the English dio-

343
Wormald, `Ecclesiastical vitriol', 180±9. MacDonald, Jacobean Kirk, 62±83. Lynch,
`Preaching to the converted?', 315±17.
344
A. Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh, 1979), 50.
345
R.A. Mason, `George Buchanan, James VI and the presbyterians', in R.A. Mason (ed.),
Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603 (Cambridge, 1994), 112±37.
346
J. Craigie (ed.), The Basilikon Doron of King James VI, 2 vols. (STS, 1944±50), i. 75, 79
(quotation is from the 1603 edition).
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 417
ceses and in Parliament. At the beginning of the third parliamentary session
since Whitgift's promotion to Canterbury Bancroft was also issuing a warn-
ing to those MPs who might be disposed to return to the bruising con¯icts
of 1584/5 and 1586/7.347 Those, for the godly, were the heroic years when
John Field orchestrated the compilation of surveys on the state of the minis-
try and the accompanying petitions to Parliament, Robert Beale directly
challenged the archbishop, and Sir Anthony Cope promoted the `Bill and
Book' to sweep away the Book of Common Prayer. The last, described by
Collinson as `perhaps the most immoderate measure ever to come before
the House of Commons', is indicative more of desperation than of any
tactics likely to achieve the desired goal.348 Other aspects of the reform
programme, especially the attempt to protect ministers against pressures to
conform, were more moderate and popular, but even they met with a
determinedly negative response from bishops and queen. At the end of the
1587 session the queen sent a peremptory message to her MPs insisting that
her religious settlement was inviolate and she `mindeth not now to begin to
settle herself in causes of religion'.349 By 1589 it may not have needed
Bancroft's monitions to reinforce this point: after thirty years the godly
seem ®nally to have understood the message. There would be no more
attempts to build a new Jerusalem through Parliament.
The bitterness of these 1580s sessions is a re¯ection of the extraordinary
impact that the arrival of Archbishop Whitgift had had on the godly
ministers and their lay supporters.350 When Walsingham's secretary, Nich-
olas Faunt, reported the likely promotion six months before Grindal's
death he already opined that `the Lord is even determined to scourge his
Church for their unthankfulness'.351 Whitgift entered of®ce committed to
the imposition of order on the wayward brethren, though also, of course,
to strengthening the organizational structure of the Church and reforming
and improving its ministry. The notorious three articles, promulgated as
part of a more general reform programme at the end of 1583, became the
focus of a fundamental con¯ict about subscription and obedience. Of the
three only the second, it should be noted, was anathema to many of the
zealous ministers. This required that clerics should swear that the Book of
Common Prayer and the ordering bishops, priests, and deacons `contain-
eth nothing in it contrary to the word of God'. Moreover they were to
agree to use the form of the book in public prayer and the administration
of the sacraments.352 Proceedings for the taking of subscriptions began
347
On the politics of these parliaments see Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, ii. 58±83,
145±65; Jones, `Religion in Parliament', in Dean and Jones, Parliaments of Elizabethan England,
124±7; Collinson, Puritan Movement, 273±88, 303±16.
348 349
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 307. LPL MS 178, fo. 88.
350 351
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 243±72. LPL MS 647, fo. 162v.
352
Strype, Whitgift, app., 51.
418 Reformations Established and Contested
promptly in November 1583. By the time that the majority of the south-
ern province had been covered during 1584 between three and four hun-
dred ministers had been suspended. The raw numbers indicate widespread
and deep perturbation among the parish clergy, especially in key areas
such as London, Essex, and Northamptonshire.353 But the in¯uence of
these individuals outweighed their numerical strength, both because they
were a learned section of the ministry and above all because they had such
powerful lay support in court and in country. Robert Beale was the
councillor who most systematically risked his career in defence of the
non-conformists: he was backed by Mildmay, Walsingham, and, most
noisily, by Knollys. Burghley, though as constitutionally cautious as ever,
strongly opposed Whitgift in a number of speci®c cases. Only Sir Christo-
pher Hatton proved a dependable friend to the archbishop.
During the latter half of 1584 Whitgift, a political realist as well as a
disciplinarian, accepted that compromise was necessary to separate those
of `tender conscience' from the determinedly non-conformists and those
heavily implicated in the presbyterian movement. Subscription became
`somewhat more tolerable', and in many cases less than full adherence to
the second article was demanded. If there were ever any plans to extend
subscription to the northern province they were shelved.354 Before the
autumn parliamentary session the archbishop had therefore been able to
reduce the number of clerics who had to be deprived to a small core of
`ultras'.355 For the rest, the later history of the reign was scarcely one of
happy acquiescence in the ways of the archbishop, but involved a realistic
recognition of the dangers of proceeding too far in building the `church
within a church' that was the presbyterian discipline. In the aftermath of
1584 the archbishop began to accept that diocesan bishops must also exer-
cise a measure of discretion in the taking of subscriptions. Thus Fincham
has shown that, while some bishops like Aylmer of London followed
Whitgift in a strict policy of enforcement, elsewhere after the initial burst
of activity subscription was not `much urged'.356 In a number of dioceses
such as Exeter, Chichester, and Salisbury the three articles were not sub-
scribed in the later years of the reign: often prelates accepted just the oath
to the articles of religion instead. Needless to say, none of this met with

353
For the history of the Articles in Northamptonshire see W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the
Diocese of Peterborough, 1558±1610, Northamptonshire Record Society 30 (Northampton, 1979),
48±51.
354
G.W. Kitchin (ed.), The Records of the Northern Convocation, Surtees Society 113 (1907),
lxxviii±lxxx, 354.
355
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 263 ff.
356
K. Fincham, `Clerical conformity from Whitgift to Laud', in P. Lake and M. Questier
(eds.), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560±1660 (Woodbridge, 2000), 126±33.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 419
Bancroft's approval: in 1593 he denounced bishops who, desiring `to be at
ease and quietness', did not require subscription of `that factious sort'.357
The combination of court pressure and a dawning political realism
robbed Whitgift of success in his full-frontal attack on non-conformity in
1583. Yet the crisis both gave clear notice that overt challenge to the
episcopal order would not be tolerated and left the archbishop with a
formidable weapon against the radical minority. The latter was the use by
the revitalized High Commission of the ex of®cio mero oath. This had
already been employed as a form of civil law procedure against Catholic
recusants, virtually requiring them to swear to incriminate themselves and
permitting the judges to proceed inquisitorially on the basis of `notoriety'
or `common fame'. It was now used with interrogatories addressed to those
like seven Cambridge ministers who refused to subscribe in May 1584.358
Beale, trained in common law and like most of his legal colleagues deeply
opposed to ex of®cio procedure, complained that commissioners acted with
`cunning dealing [which] savoureth more of a Spanish inquisition than
Christian charity'.359 Not surprisingly, the 1584 parliament demanded the
abolition of the oath. On this issue Whitgift did not yield to pressure, and
throughout the later 1580s non-conformists were summoned to London to
be put on oath. Those who refused to swear (which became the common
godly position) were proceeded against for contumacy.
It is, however, interesting that one of the contentious issues that Ban-
croft did not pursue in his Paul's Cross sermon was the ex of®cio oath.
Only in the period immediately after his harangue did this disciplinary
weapon achieve its full signi®cance, to be defended with predictable
vigour in his 1593 pamphlets. The English `ecclesiastical vitriol' of the
1590s had obvious roots in the previous decade: it might not have de-
veloped had it not been for the conjunction of the remarkable Martin
Marprelate crisis and the consequent uncovering of the Puritan `classes'.360
The Marprelate tracts, that extraordinary ¯urry of pamphlets produced by
an illegal press between October 1588 and June 1589, adopted the tone
and strategies of popular satire to lambast the bishops. Although there
were solemn anti-Martinist responses, notably Bishop Cooper's Admon-
ition, there were also answers in rhetorical kind, helping to perpetuate
popular enjoyment of episcopal discomforture.361 If, said Thomas Bright-
357
R. Bancroft, A Survay of the pretended Holy Discipline (1593), 310±11.
358
J. Guy, `The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity', in Guy, Reign of
Elizabeth I, 126±49. Collinson, Puritan Movement, 266±7, 270±1.
359
BL Add. MS 48039, fos. 49v±50.
360
Collinson, `Ecclesiastical vitriol', 154±65. On the Marprelate crisis in general see
L.H. Carlson, Martin Marprelate, Gentleman: Master Job Throkmorton Laid Open in his Colors (San
Marino, Calif., 1981).
361
On the anti-Martinist literature see Carlson, Martin Marprelate, 59±74.
420 Reformations Established and Contested
man, the angel of the Church of England had had any credit, men `would
rather have cast those writings into the ®re, than have worn them out
with continual reading and handling of them'.362 As it was, the bishops
could only search for the press and, in the furious hunt, the pursuivants
closed in on the circle of Job Throckmorton, John Udall, and John Penry.
In the latter part of 1589, evidence was seized of the organized presbyter-
ian classis in Northamptonshire: the legal attack on radicalism was re-
sumed.363
Throughout 1590 and 1591 the leading non-conformist preachers were
harried, silenced, and imprisoned, often for refusing the ex of®cio oath. In
extreme cases the high commissioners handed men over to the secular
arm.364 John Udall was tried at Surrey Assizes for the felony of publishing
the Demonstration of discipline, and sentenced to death, though eventually
pardoned, interestingly through the intervention of James VI.365 Eventu-
ally Thomas Cartwright himself was imprisoned for refusal to take the
oath, and thirty-one articles were presented against him. Cartwright had
led a charmed life, protected by signi®cant court interests, but in 1590 even
the sympathy of Burghley could not protect him from Whitgift and from
the queen's `heavy displeasure'. During the winter of 1590 Cartwright
wrestled with the commissioners as he had once wrestled in written ex-
change with Whitgift. By the next spring it had been decided to put
Cartwright and nine of the other leaders of presbyterianism on trial in Star
Chamber. There much of the evidence produced against them had
been unearthed by the ubiquitous Bancroft.366 The charges against the
men were essentially that they intended to put their Book of Disci-
pline into practice, in de®ance of the laws of the realm and the queen's
settlement, and that they encouraged rebellion through their pamphle-
teering. Whether they were to be regarded as dangerous radicals or as
moderate `mainstream' reformers was very much in the eye of the be-
holder.
The outcome of the show trial was, to quote Collinson, a `typically
Elizabethan' story with no tidy ending. The accusations were not upheld,
the ministers were offered some form of submission and were slowly
released, ®rst into house arrest and then permitted back to their counties.
Cartwright ended in Guernsey in 1595. The defendants repeatedly
claimed no desire to separate from the Church, only to work within a

362
T. Brightman, Workes (1644), 150.
363
Sheils, Puritans in Peterborough, 51±60.
364
Collinson, Puritan Movement, 403±31.
365
J. Udall, A Demonstration of the Truth of that Discipline (1588).
366
Whitgift boasted of Bancroft's role when he recommended the latter for the bishopric of
London in 1597: R.G. Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. (1910), ii. 366±9.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 421
system of discipline that they hoped to see legally established. It was a
refusal to adopt this line which doomed John Penry, who was executed
with the separatists Barrow and Greenwood in 1593. By then Whitgift
had driven organized presbyterianism decisively underground and effect-
ively silenced the seditious press. He had also, with powerful assistance
from Bancroft, Hatton, and the civil lawyer Richard Cosin, managed to
protect much of the interest of High Commission, and the queen's imper-
ial prerogative, from the challenges of the common lawyers.367 In 1591
there occurred one of the critical cases of Elizabethan constitutional law,
when the judges of Queen's Bench were asked to rule on whether it had
been lawful for Robert Cawdrey, a non-conformist minister, to be de-
prived of his bene®ce by High Commission. The ruling was that it was
lawful, because the queen had `plenary and entire power' to give her
imperial authority to her bishops so to act. The victory, like so many in
law, was less complete than it appeared, but it provided a justi®cation for
that authoritarian reading of the rights of the Church which appealed to
the archbishop. And it suited a world in which the divine right of bishops
was beginning to be asserted freely in polemical writings. The monarch
reigned and guided the Church by imperial right. Her commission for the
regulation of that body was given directly to the prelates, who formed
beneath her a spiritual hierarchy divinely ordained and legitimated.
One sceptical observer of this love-fest between the bishops and Eliza-
beth was Lord Burghley. There is no evidence that his affection for ambi-
tious and assertive prelates had increased during the course of the reign.368
He seems to have been particularly troubled by the claims to iure divino
episcopacy being canvassed at the end of the 1580s. He told Sir Francis
Knollys, who pressed him to consider this matter in 1589, that he believed
all bishops and ministers had equal authority under Scripture and that the
superiority of the former was merely `a positive ordinance by wisdom
of men'.369 Burghley seems to have regarded the nine ministers as moder-
ate and Whitgift's and Hatton's obsessive pursuit of Protestant non-
conformists as mistaken.370 This is not to say that full resistance to the
settlement was to be tolerated: the Martinist assault had to be suppressed
and the separatists assailed. Even in these last cases, however, Burghley
367
Guy, `Elizabethan establishment', in Reign of Elizabeth I, 131±48.
368
In the 1589 parliament Burghley spoke for the abolition of pluralities, denouncing the
bishops for slackness and greed, and complaining, `all the fruits are gathered and put in the
purse': BL Lans. MS 396, fo. 60.
369
BL Lans. MS 61, fo. 66. The later years of Burghley's religious policy are analysed in
W.B. Richardson, `The Religious Policy of the Cecils, 1588±98', University of Oxford D.Phil.
(1994), esp. chs. 1±4.
370 Richardson may exaggerate here the level of con¯ict between Burghley and Whitgift and

Hatton, but he unravels a number of complex policy debates not properly evaluated elsewhere.
422 Reformations Established and Contested
was reluctant to use exemplary punishment, though in the end he was
unable to save Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry from their determination
to oppose the religion of the state. Meanwhile, the complex parliamentary
history of the 1593 Act against Seditious Sectaries may re¯ect Burghley's
attempt to address the problem of those who rigorously refused to tarry
for the magistrate, without threatening the rest of the godly. Under the
Act, which was not in force when the three separatists were executed,
those who dissented were to be banished: the Elizabethan regime was there-
by unwittingly beginning a new and remarkable chapter in the history of
religion.371
The key to Burghley's awkward progress through the religious politics
of the 1590s was his perception that the Catholic threat outweighed all
others. In particular, his dealings with the leading lay English Catholics
was marked by profound mistrust, and by a desire to keep them interned
when there was any external danger.372 This could readily be justi®ed in
1588 and again in later periods of invasion scare, but after 1590 some of
the council, including perhaps Whitgift, were increasingly sceptical.373
When Richard Rowlands denounced Burghley in his Declaration of the
True Causes (1592) as `violently' overruling his colleagues on the council
he was no doubt scoring propaganda points.374 Yet it was true that the
minister drove the ambitious recusancy commissions of 1591±3.375 And
when, at Walsingham's death, he had to take over part of the work of
the secretaryship, his long memorandum of tasks had as its ®rst target to
have care that all papists and recusants of wealth and in¯uence `be re-
strained and punished according to the laws'.376 In pursuing these pol-
icies Burghley was proving consistent to the attitudes of the previous
generation of Elizabeth's ministers. He also represented an important
aspect of Protestant belief and behaviour that had not been lost despite
the loud voices of the disciplinarians and the con®dence of new claims
for episcopacy. There were still bishops who sympathized with Dr John
Reynolds's observation that they should take greater comfort in
`labouring to discover and overthrow the errors of Jesuits and papists,
enemies of religion' than in assailing `brethren professing the true faith of

371
On the Act against Sectaries see Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, ii. 280±97, but
Richardson modi®es this account with a more convincing analysis of the subtlety of
Cecilian policy: Richardson `Religious Policy', 83±120.
372
Richardson, `Religious Policy', 127 ff.
373
M.C. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580±1625 (Cambridge, 1996),
157±62.
374
R. Rowlands, A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles, presupposed to be
intended against the realm of England (Cologne, 1592), sig. e 4v.
375
R.B. Manning, `Elizabethan recusancy commissions', HJ 15 (1972), 23±35, esp. 31±4.
376
PRO sp 12/231/70.
 Churches, Politics, Religious Identities 423
Christ'.377 Men like Matthew Hutton were consistent in their belief that
the prime duty of the Christian prince was still to `put down idolatry and
punish idolaters' and pursued Catholic recusancy with vigour, while still
showing tenderness towards Protestant consciences.378 And a new gener-
ation of bishopsÐAnthony Rudd, Richard Vaughan, William Barlow,
John King, and Arthur LakeÐshared many of the same values.379 By the
turn of the century such men might be less willing than their predeces-
sors to accept the erastian assumptions of a Burghley or a Knollys: they
remained convinced that the ideological agenda of such politicians was
still critical.
In both England and Scotland the last few years before the union of the
crowns were periods of relative calm in the long story of religious con¯ict.
James's initiatives against the Kirk had stilled some of the paranoid anxiety
of Bancroft and his allies; the godly were living in expectation that the
Scottish king would offer them a more truly reformed church than the
infuriating Elizabeth had done. But inhabitants of the British Isles had
only to look across the Irish Sea to perceive the vulnerability of their
settlements and the limitations of the ideological control exercised by
either the godly prince or the Protestant ministry. In the decade preceding
the Nine-Years-War lord deputies, the ecclesiastical establishment, and the
new settlers had continued to wrangle about how best to convert the
island. When bold moves were made they usually foundered on local
resistance, as when Lord Deputy Perrot tried to make the Pale JPs take
the supremacy oath and could not then ®ll the commission. In 1591,
when the ecclesiastical commission tried to ®ne seven leading recusant
Palesmen not actually caught attending Mass, the queen ordered more
restraint, implicitly criticizing the general direction of Archbishop Loftus's
policy.380 Thereafter the constant presence of rebellion, and the fear of
invasion, offered English of®cials little opportunity to worry about con-
version or control. But when, in 1602, Tyrone's rebellion was over, the
endless discussion about who to convert and how to undertake the task
resurfaced. It was now Lord Mountjoy, the most successful of Elizabeth's
lord deputies, who revived the argument that persuasion was the necessary
route to religious change and conformity. Meanwhile Loftus and the
Dublin establishment continued to adhere to a disciplinary approach.381
Neither party to this debate had begun seriously to address a situation in
which political authority now extended over the whole island. Conversion

377
P. Lake, `The signi®cance of the Elizabethan identi®cation of the pope as antichrist',
JEH 31 (1980), 161±78.
378 379
Lake, `Matthew Hutton', 189±91. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 250±76.
380 381
Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 219±20. Edwards, Church and State, 270±80.
424 Reformations Established and Contested
remained something to be achieved through those centres of `civility', the
Pale, the port towns, and a few carefully chosen areas of anglicized inter-
est.382
There is a curious paradox in this continuing debate about the proper
methods for the reformation of the Irish. While its terms remained largely
unchanged the external realities of religious behaviour were shifting, not
only among the Catholic population, but within the world of the Protest-
ant minority. The 1590s, for all its dislocation, was a critical period in the
formation of the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church and of the Prot-
estant Church of Ireland.383 While the Irish bishops would have rejected
the notion that they were laying the foundations of a minority church, in
practice their efforts at educational and pastoral reorganization were often
a more effective form of spiritual activity than the arid and dispiriting
attempt to sustain the Protestant royal supremacy in the world of the Pale.
The evolution of separate, and clearly confessional, churches in early
seventeenth-century Ireland did not dismantle the principle of cuius regio,
eius religio, but it rendered it marginal.
So Bancroft's paranoia in 1589 had some justi®cation. Although James
VI and I was to prove a sound defender of ecclesiastical hierarchy, and a
canny adherent of the principle that the prince should have the rulership
of the Church under God, confessional politics were always prone to
escape from monarchical control. It appeared that the English, dissenting
minorities apart, were prepared to acknowledge royal claims to authority,
while the Scots and the Irish did so only upon conditions. The next half-
century was to show that even in England the Reformation had taught
men of conscience that the king did not have binding control over their
religious behaviour.

382
Ford, Protestant Reformation, 48±55.
383
P.J. Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey (Dublin, 1985). Ford, Protest-
ant Reformation, 31 ff.
 10
R E F O R M I N G P E O P L E A N D C O M M U N I T Y:
CHURCH, C LERGY, AND
LAITY, 1 5 5 8± 1 6 0 0

In 1603 the congregation of the remote kirk of Kilchrist, Easter Ross, is

alleged to have been imprisoned in their building and burnt alive by a
rival clan, the Glengarry Macdonalds.1 This is one of several narratives of
bloody feuds in the Scottish Highlands involving attacks on rivals during
Sunday worship. The signi®cance of such tales of the Gaidhealtachd in
the early seventeenth century is that they assume the regular presence of
clan members in church on the sabbath: almost certainly a sharp contrast
with the pattern of pre-Reformation religious observance. Then the vast
Highland parishes, often focused on churches that were located on in-
accessible sites such as islands off the coast or in lochs, were a major
disincentive to parishioners who in theory should have observed the
requirement to attend Matins, Mass, and Evensong each Sunday. In prac-
tice the critical function of these churches for the community seems to
have been to act as the focus for festivals and pilgrimages. Now, in the
long aftermath of the Scottish Reformation, makeshift buildings had to be
pressed into action to accommodate congregations under discipline and
law, who were beginning to learn the full signi®cance of sabbatarian
practice.2
Throughout most of the territories of the British Isles and Ireland,
however, it had been feasible for parishioners to observe the requirements
of weekly church attendance before the Reformation, in either their

1
J. Dawson, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland', in A. Pettegree, A. Duke, and
G. Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 1540±1620 (Cambridge, 1994), 243±50. There is a possibility
that the tradition of the Easter Ross massacre is apocryphal, but it is important as a representa-
tion of expected patterns of behaviour. Sir John Wynn tells a parallel tale for pre-Reformation
Wales, where his great-grandfather built the church of Dolwyddelan in about 1512 in open
country to be safer from his enemies during divine service, and then posted watchmen to stand
guard while the family was at worship: J. Wynn, The History of the Gwydir Family (Ruthin,
1827), 93±4.
2
I.B. Cowan, `The medieval church in Argyll and the Isles', RSCHS 20 (1978), 15±29.
426 Reformations Established and Contested
own church or a dependent chapelry. The great religious changes of
the century meant for many of them the substitution of one form of manda-
tory liturgy for another, with attendance now being enforced with the
support of state as well as church. The choice of language for the titles
of the English and Scottish liturgies is obviously signi®cant: the Book of
Common Prayer, the Book of Common Order. There was an expectation on
the part of the reformers that the population would sit in pews or on
benches week in and week out for the same shared acts of worship.3
Though for Protestants the sermon was bound to be the centre of that
process, it also involved a more complex act of prayer and praise, a ritual
integration of ordinary Christians into experience and knowledge of the
divine. `The whole multitude of Gods people in the parish', said the Homily
for repairing and keeping clean of churches, `should with one voice and heart
call upon the Name of God.'4 Resistance to the liturgy, often its outright
rejection, has been a theme constantly emphasized by historians. Only in
recent studies, however, has the centrality of the practice of the liturgy
in the parish for the establishment of Protestant identities been more
systematically explored.5
By the time of the union of the crowns in 1603 three generations of
English, Welsh, and Scottish parishioners had been regularly participant in
the reformed liturgies. That experience framed and conditioned their reli-
gious life, both positively and negatively, and needs to be understood as a
prelude to any discussion of religion, community, and the individual. In
his Description of England William Harrison provided a revealing account
of the liturgical round, re¯ecting his own experience in the parish of

3
See above, pp. 259±61.
4
J. Grif®ths (ed.), The Two Books of Homilies (Oxford, 1859), 275.
5
For an excellent summary of the English evidence see C. Marsh, Popular Religion in Six-
teenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 1998), 31±43, and ` ``Common prayer'' in England
1560±1640: the view from the pew', PP 171 (2001), 66±94. S.L. Arnault, ` ``Spiritual and sacred
actions'': the Book of Common Prayer and the understanding of worship in the Elizabethan and
Jacobean Church of England', in E. Carlson (ed.), Religion and the English People: 1500±1640,
Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies 45 (Kirksville, Mo., 1998), 25±47. J. Maltby, ` ``By this
Book'': parishioners, the Prayer Book and the established church', in K. Fincham (ed.), The
Early Stuart Church, 1603±42 (Basingstoke, 1993), 115±37. A valuable account from a literary
perspective is R. Targoff, Common Prayer: The Language of Devotion in Early Modern England
(Chicago, 2001). Above all see Judith Maltby's full development of this theme in her Prayer
Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998). I.B. Cowan, The
Scottish Reformation (1982), 139±58. G. Donaldson, `From reformation to covenant', in
D.B. Forrester and D.M. Murray (eds.), Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland (Edinburgh,
1984), 37±47. There is also an older pattern of liturgical study that provides excellent insight
into the broad intellectual signi®cance of the reformed liturgy: W.H. Davies, Worship and
Theology in England from Cranmer to Baxter (Princeton, 1970). W. McMillan, The Worship of the
Scottish Reformed Church, 1550±1638 (1930).
 Church, Clergy, Laity 427
Radwinter, Essex. The ®xed core of Sunday worship was the combin-
ation of Morning Prayer, litany and ante-communion, supplemented
by sermon or communion on occasions. The cycle of scriptural reading
built into these services ensured that parishioners heard the Psalter every
thirty days, the New Testament four times a year and the Old Testament
once. The ante-communion `of some in derision called the dry commu-
nion' noted Harrison, was followed by a homily if there was no sermon.
Although he was hostile to `dumb dogs', the non-preaching clergy, he
was willing for public consumption and national pride to acknowledge
the merits of the homilies. But his warmth was reserved more for the
manner of the services than their matter. The minister now addressed the
congregation directly, enabling even the unlearned to understand and
repeat psalms and prayers. The literate followed in their books `so that the
whole congregation in one instant pour out their petitions unto the living
God, for the whole estate of the church in most earnest and fervent
manner'.6
The earliest parallel Scottish account of the practice of regular worship
comes from the beginning of the next century. William Cowper, bishop
of Galloway, described a Sunday service that conformed closely to the
Book of Common Order. This began with the readers' service, comprised
of scriptural passages, set prayers, and the singing of metrical psalms, by
which `the hearts of the people are prepared more reverently to hear the
word'. The second phase of worship began when the minister entered the
pulpit, a psalm was sung, a prayer offered, and then the sermon delivered.
The whole was concluded with further prayer, the creed, and the bene-
diction.7 It is worth stressing the contrasting manner of the two rituals.
The Scottish emphasis on the sermon not only displaced a number of
the affective aspects of liturgical behaviour; it reinforced the idea that
this was a clerically dominated act of worship. Congregational participa-
tion in the ritual was con®ned to the singing of psalms and the saying of
the creed: other prayer was explicitly ministerial petitioning on behalf of
the community. The predictability and repetitiveness of the English ser-
vice, allowing collective responses in set formulae, was never the Scottish
way, and the only assurances in worship were that Scripture would be

6
G. Edelen (ed.), William Harrison; The Description of England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 35±6. In
fact Harrison's narrative leaves out several aspects of the obligatory cycle, especially of Morning
Prayer with its collects, use of the `Te Deum' and `Benedictus' and general confession:
W.K. Clay (ed.), Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
(PS, Cambridge, 1847), 53±63.
7
Knox, iv. 293 ff. McMillan, Worship, 127±9. The pattern of the reader's service still retained
the basic structure of matins and ante-communion, though in a drastically simpli®ed form.
428 Reformations Established and Contested
proclaimed, psalms sung, and, when a minister was available, a long
sermon given.8 Yet the differences can easily be exaggerated: Scottish
congregations were expected to be actively participant in prayer and
praise: the saying of `Amen' clearly `declaring their consent to that which
is said' and responding with their reason and spirit to the words of the
preacher.9
Public prayer and collective worship were seen as equally crucial by
English and Scottish divines. Not only were these the necessary means to
inculcate spiritual obedience and understanding in individuals, they were
also a most powerful weapon in gaining divine attention and blessing.
Richard Hooker, following Chrysostom, reminded his readers that `the
Prince and the people of Nineveh assembling themselves as a main army
of supplicants, it was not in the power of God to withstand them'.10
But Hooker and his conformist contemporaries were more impressed by
the idea that public prayer offered the opportunity for `common consent',
for the pursuit of what was `needful and good' for the community. In a
most vivid phrase Hooker asserted that the collective performance of
prayer made everyone present `earwitnesses' to the petitions and desires
of each man.11 Private prayer, and the pursuit of individual spirituality,
while not of themselves condemned, could never substitute for the collect-
ive prayer of the Christian corporation, which was far from the mindless
conformity or rote repetition assailed by the Puritans. Hooker, of course,
sought to defend the `due performance' of Prayer Book worship, the
inward assimilation of formalized prayer, but his af®rmation of the power
of collective worship could stand as exemplary of the ambition of all Prot-
estant reformers.12
Of course, the familiarity of worship might breed contempt as well as
acquiescence. Nothing in the repetitions of the Prayer Book liturgy seems
to have touched those Dublin congregations that turned from bare con-
formity to private Catholic devotion. Every form of dissent from outright
rejection to sleeping in the pews is to be found in the ecclesiastical
records. But it is still essential to emphasize that the proper performance

8
Arnault, `Book of Common Prayer', 34 ff. There is debate in Scottish historiography
about how far the Book of Common Order was a guide and directory rather than a ritual: see
Knox, vi. 281±3. Donaldson, `Reformation to covenant', 41±7.
9
Targoff, Common Prayer, 38±41.
10
R. Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 24. 1. Jewel also emphasized the power of
collective prayer, drawing on Chrysostom: Targoff, Common Prayer, 52±5.
11
Hooker, Laws, v. 36. 2.
12
Margo Todd discusses the importance of active and consensual participation in Scottish
worship in The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn., 2002),
84 ff.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 429
of worship was the bedrock on which all reformation of the parish and its
people had to be grounded. Where this critical service failed, or was never
fully established, there was little hope of constructing a conformist laity,
let alone full Protestants. Both acculturation to the new forms of religious
behaviour and gradual training in their meaning were essential for further
progress. The local minister remained the key agent in both processes, and
on his abilities and dedication most of the viability of the religious settle-
ments rested. The Reformation had stripped the churches of alternatives
to parish ministry: there were no post-Tridentine forms of mission to re-
inforce the efforts of the parson.13 Most of the time the latter stood alone
and as Edward Dering described him: `the Minister by whom the people
do believe'.14

The Pastoral Ministry

Richard Greenham, the godly pastor of Dry Drayton in Cambridgeshire,
was said to have summed up the duties of the minister as `none other
thing, but to preach the word of God sincerely, and purely with a care of
the glory of God . . . and secondly a reverent administration of the sacra-
ments, according to the order and institution of our Saviour Jesus
Christ'.15 In reality his tasks were more complex, including catechizing
and other forms of instruction, and the provision of a variety of liturgical
services still expected by parishioners and sanctioned by law. And, in
emphasizing the primary spiritual duties he undertook, Greenham omitted
his own functions as a counsellor, and a leader of the community. He was
remembered, for example, as `a great Friend to, and promoter of peace
and concord amongst his neighbours', one who often prevented recourse
to litigation, and who himself avoided disputes with his parishioners.16
Much of this pattern of godly leadership would have been seen as the
function of the parish ministry both before and after the Reformation,
and across different forms of churchmanship. To read the commentaries
on Greenham's time at Dry Drayton is often to recall George Herbert's
country parson, or even William Sheppard's ministry in Heydon.17

13
On the wider choices available to the Catholic Church, and the general signi®cance of
parish ministry in England, see E. Duffy, `The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism
and the multitude', in N. Tyacke (ed.), England's Long Reformation, 1500±1800 (1998), 33±70.
14
E. Dering, A Briefe and necessarie Catechisme or Instruction, very needfull to be known to all
Housholders, in Workes (1614), sig. a 3v.
15
K.L. Parker and E.J. Carlson, `Practical Divinity': The Works and Life of Richard Greenham
(Aldershot, 1998), 59.
16
Ibid., 59±85.
17
F.E. Hutchinson (ed.), The Works of George Herbert (Oxford, 1941), 244±86. On Sheppard,
see above, p. 208.
430 Reformations Established and Contested
Greenham's contemporary Bernard Gilpin, the `apostle of the North',
exempli®ed many of the traditional qualities of the parson. He was charit-
able, reconciled neighbours, and gave hospitality, as well as conducting
powerful preaching campaigns.18 Even the purists of the Scottish kirk
were not unaware of the importance of the minister's general spiritual and
social leadership of his community. William Lauder advised that clergy
must be chosen who preached the true gospel, but who could also `with
example of their life/ . . . edify Man, Maid and wife', as well as providing
hospitality and charity.19
But the prime function of the pastoral ministry was the provision of
preaching and instruction in the Protestant faith. Indeed, as Collinson and
others have pointed out, it would be possible to assume from much of the
literature designed to guide the cleric that there were no other duties of
critical importance.20 Richard Bernard's The Faithfull Shepherd, one of the
most important examples of the genre, devoted almost two-thirds of its
length to the process of preaching, and much of the rest to the preacher's
relationship with his congregation.21 The centrality of preaching led in its
turn to the dream of both English and Welsh bishops and Scottish general
assemblies that the parochial clergy should become a body of graduates.
They would be learned in theology and the tongues and able to convey
pure doctrine with authority even to the most discerning of lay audiences.
The obstacles in the way of the realization of this vision could be re-
hearsed at great length. As we have already seen, ®nancial constraints
contributed to the dif®culties of recruiting learned clergy in all parts of
the British Isles, especially in the Highland zones and in Ireland, where
little was done to tackle the problems until the next century. Secondly
there was the general issue of the instability of the religious settlements
until well after 1560, which meant that recruitment of any kind proved
to be problematic, and that the dif®culties caused by the survival of a
previous generation of clerics was compounded by the need to take less-

18
G. Carleton, The Life and Death of Bernard Gilpin (1727 edn.), 29±31, 43±4. D. Marcombe,
`Bernard Gilpin: anatomy of an Elizabethan legend', Northern History 16 (1980), 20±39. The
importance of the traditional virtues in clerics is endlessly underlined in visitation returns.
Typical is the comment of Herne parishioners in 1569: `Mr. Vicar should be a peace-maker, but
is a peace breaker': A. Hussey (ed.), `Visitations of the archdeaconry of Canterbury', Archaeologia
Cantiana 25 (1902), 26.
19
F. Hall (ed.), William Lauder: Ane Compendious and Breve Tractate concernyng the Of®ce and
Dewtie of Kyngis, Spirituall Pastoris and Temporall Iugis, EETS os 4 (1864), 12.
20
P. Collinson, `Shepherds, sheepdogs and hirelings: the pastoral ministry in post-
Reformation England', in W.J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, SCH
26 (Oxford, 1989), 185±220. N.R. Enssle, `Patterns of godly life: the ideal parish minister in
sixteenth and seventeenth century English thought', C16J 28 (1997), 3±28.
21
R. Bernard, The faithfull shepherd . . . to further young divines in the studie of divinitie. With
shepherds practise in the end (1621).
 Church, Clergy, Laity 431
than-satisfactory successors into the ministry. Thirdly there was the ques-
tion of patronage, and of lay control of key parts of the parochial ministry
(less of a dilemma in Scotland than elsewhere). This meant that even
when suitable men were ordained they were not necessarily those whom
lay patrons wished to promote. And ®nally there was the question of
training: how possible was it for the universities to educate enough men to
®ll the 9,000 English and Welsh parishes, and the 1,000 Scottish ones, let
alone to leave some surplus for Ireland? Harrison certainly thought that the
supply of graduates could not meet the demand: `both our universities are
never able to perform' the furnishing of `able men' for all cures. He com-
mended instead the planned union of bene®ces, especially in the towns.22
The output of the universities was of critical importance in the con-
struction of the pastoral ministry, since Oxford and Cambridge and the
four Scottish universities between them provided the major training
ground, though they were slowly being supplemented by Trinity College,
Dublin, at the very end of the century. Already in 1573 Whitgift was
claiming that Cambridge had bred 450 preachers since Elizabeth's acces-
sion.23 Twenty years after Harrison wrote, his pessimism would have been
less justi®ed: there were now suf®cient graduates in parts of England to ®ll
80 per cent of the livings in favoured dioceses, and to supply over 50 per
cent in almost all.24 Even in Wales approximately half of those bene®ced
in Bangor diocese were graduates by the turn of the century.25 From the
university side the matriculation records of Oxford and Cambridge show
a marked upward turn in numbers especially after the 1580s. Stone calcu-
lated admissions in excess of 400 per annum at Cambridge in the last
decades of the century, with a similar but more ¯uctuating ®gure for
Oxford.26 Graduation ®gures were, of course, much lowerÐbetween a
quarter and a third of those admitted to Oxford seem to have gained BAs
in this periodÐthough in turn the majority of this last group were un-
doubtedly destined for the Church. In Scotland the story was much the
same: by the 1590s it was possible to contemplate staf®ng as many lowland
parishes as could afford the cost with graduate clergy, and the steady
growth of the universities sustained this trend.27 The extreme contrast
between this situation and that of Ireland did not escape contemporaries.
22
Edelen, Harrison's Description of England, 28.
23
J. Ayre (ed.), Works of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (PS, Cambridge, 1851±3), i. 313.
24
R. O'Day, The English Clergy (Leicester, 1979), 135±6.
25
G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), 390±1.
26
L. Stone, `The size and composition of the Oxford student body, 1580±1910', in
L. Stone (ed.), The Universities in Society, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1975), i. 91±2.
27
D. Stevenson, King's College, Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1990), 55±6, gives ®gures for average
admissions at Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh for the decade 1601±10: 19.1, 27.4, and 26.6
respectively.
432 Reformations Established and Contested
Until the foundation of Trinity College in the 1590s the only hope of
providing graduates for the Irish church lay either in recruiting native-
born English or Irish clergy, or in persuading Englishmen or Scots to
serve.28 Neither strategy proved very successful: in the Diocese of Dublin
the only graduates normally in parochial cures were the prebendaries of
St Patrick's Cathedral, and by the 1580s they were almost all imported
from England.29 Bishop Lyon's reports on the Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne,
and Ross in the 1590s showed that none of his native-born clergy were
graduates or preachers.30
It is important to stress how far the mainstream Scottish and English
churches had moved in their pursuit of a learned body of parish clergy
between 1560 and the end of the century. The Scottish Kirk had the
graver problem initially, because it could not automatically depend on the
conversion of the old clergy to staff its parishes, and it had no signi®cant
reserve of new candidates to make good the de®cit. The solution was to
ensure that at least readers were recruited to every kirk, while ministers
who were approved as preachers were given the task of covering several
congregations.31 These basic standards were met outside the Highland
dioceses by the early 1570s, though the proportion of ministers to readers
was only one to ®ve in some places.32 The percentage of clergy recruited
from the old Church seems to have varied quite widely: in Orkney, for
example, where the bishop, Adam Bothwell, led the way with his own
conversion, a majority of the reformed congregations were served by men
ordained under the old order. On the other hand, the Catholic clergy of
Moray seem collectively to have been unwilling to transfer their allegiance
to the new Kirk: only a handful of the 200 can be traced serving new
congregations.33 Perhaps the situation in Angus and the Mearns is more
characteristic of lowland Scotland: there between a third and a half of
those who served the new churches in the early 1560s were drawn from
the old establishment.34 By the 1580s even that part of the old generation
that had changed was no longer available, and the General Assembly also

28
A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590±1641 (Dublin, 1997), 63±7.
29
J. Murray, `The Tudor Diocese of Dublin: Episcopal Government, Ecclesiastical Politics and
the Enforcement of the Reformation, 1534±90', Trinity College Dublin Ph.D. (1997), 302±5.
30
Ford, Protestant Reformation, 36±7.
31
R.M. Healy, `The preaching ministry in Scotland's First Book of Discipline', Church
History 58 (1989), 339±53.
32
T.M.Y. Manson, `Shetland in the sixteenth century', in I.B. Cowan and D. Shaw (eds.),
The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), 211.
33
C.H. Haws, `Continuity and change: the clergy of the Diocese of Moray, 1560±74',
Northern Scotland 5 (1983), 91±8.
34
F. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1989),
90±3.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 433
began to take a more rigorous attitude to the position of reader, alleging
that it was not an of®ce within the Church, and apparently prohibiting
further admissions.35 Yet readers continued to be employed into the
seventeenth century, and inevitably had to be available to plug gaps in a
system that still, it was claimed in the 1590s, had 400 parishes `destitute of
the Word'.36
While the English and Welsh churches did not experience the same
sharp break with the past as did Scotland, the recruitment of clergy proved
almost as problematic. In the 1560s and even into the 1570s there were
simply too few men of any intellectual calibre being ordained to ®ll the
bene®ces emptied by the crises of the previous decades. Only one-third of
livings in the Diocese of Ely had a resident minister in 1561, and in 1563
the same proportion of Suffolk bene®ces had no cleric at all.37 Two
decades later parts of the North were still in as bad a condition. Bernard
Gilpin, on his itinerant preaching tours of Northumberland, described the
clergy as `poor base priests' with not a preacher among them, and some
congregations as `even dispersed and destitute of pastors'.38 The bishops
were forced to take those who presented themselves, acting, to quote
Rosemary O'Day, on the principle that `an ignorant pastor was better
than no pastor'. There were serious attempts to examine candidates on
their doctrinal knowledge, and early attempts by Parker to become more
`circumspect in admitting any to the ministry', but circumstances forced
uncongenial decisions on most of the prelates.39
The archbishop's temporary solution, like that of his Scottish counter-
parts, was to employ non-ordained readers who could take the regular
Sunday service and read the homilies. The English readers never had the
preponderant numerical role that they had in parts of Scotland: Grindal's
1561 visitation of London, for example, shows ®fty-two readers, and
thereafter there was a marked decline to only eleven at the time of Ayl-
mer's 1574 visitation.40 It seems clear that the leadership of the Church of
England found the need to employ readers embarrassing in a way that the
Scots did not, and it made every effort to curtail their role. There must, in
consequence, have been a number of examples of presentations of unsatis-
factory incumbents to livings, men who thereby acquired permanent
35 36
BUK iii. 876. J. Kirk, Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989), 97±153.
37 38
O'Day, English Clergy, 49±54, 126±34. Carleton, Life of Gilpin, 45.
39
The most important example of admissions examinations conducted by the bishops in
these years comes from Ely. Even in the early 1560s the archdeacon was rejecting some of those
who presented themselves. By the late 1560s enquiries about scriptural knowledge were quite
searching and individuals were regularly rejected: Ely Diocesan Records, a /5/1. Perowne,
Correspondence of Parker, 120±1.
40
B. Usher, `Expedient and experiment: the Elizabethan lay reader', in R.N. Swanson (ed.),
Continuity and Changes in Christian Worship, SCH 35 (Woodbridge, 1999), 185±98.
434 Reformations Established and Contested
security in situations which might better have been resolved by short-term
appointments until calmer times came. Nor is it entirely clear that readers,
in either country, were necessarily the sweepings of the pool of ecclesi-
astical manpower. The Scots intended readerships as a possible route into
full ministry, and in England there are examples of men of good Protestant
credentials and some standing taking readers' posts and then moving to
ordination and into bene®ces.
The reformers endeavoured to remedy the de®ciencies of clerical
understanding with in-service training of the kind that attracted Elizabeth's
wrath during the prophesyings crisis. In both Essex and Kent the supervi-
sion of unlearned clergy, and their examination in Scripture, was an essen-
tial obligation of the prophesying, and in practice continued in one form
or another after the major crisis of the 1570s.41 Bishop Barnes of Durham
was persisting steadily with his demand that the clergy give an account of
the contents of St Matthew's Gospel to his commissioners in the year after
Grindal's disgrace.42 The convocation of 1587 drew up general orders for
the supervision of the unlearned by `certain grave and learned preachers'.43
At the end of the century Bishop Howland of Peterborough among others
was still enquiring earnestly whether the exercises for `the increase
of . . . knowledge in the Holy Scriptures' were being observed.44
None of this wholly satis®ed the godly, bent as they were on a preaching
ministry, and they continued to denounce `tolerated readers and . . . newly-
made ministers whose readings . . . are such that the people cannot be edi-
®ed'.45 They should perhaps have been more grateful that even this bare
reading from new men might protect congregations from the worse infec-
tion of `old popish priests', continuing to hold their livings but scarcely
changing their spiritual attitudes. It was this latter group, Haigh suggests,
who in the transitional generation of the 1560s and 1570s constructed the
Elizabethan liturgy in ways that were acceptable to conservatives, adding
Latin prayers, accepting the telling of beads during worship, or reciting fac-
ing the east end of the church.46 Curates like William Shaw of Baddesley
Clinton, Warwickshire, who `prayeth for the dead' while administering
the Eucharist according to the Protestant rite, were part of an `army of

41
P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559±1625 (Oxford,
1982), 128±31.
42
The Injunctions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings of Richard Barnes, Bishop of Durham
from 1577 to 1587, Surtees Society 22 (1850), 70±9.
43
Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 321±2.
44
W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558±1610, Northamptonshire
Record Society 30 (1979), 95.
45
Usher, `Elizabethan lay reader', 197: the quotation is from A Brieff Discours off the Troubles
at Franckfort (1575).
46
C. Haigh, English Reformations (Oxford, 1993), 247±9.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 435
time-servers', whose size, precise views, and ultimate af®liation can only
be conjectured.47 In some areas, notably Lancashire, but also in parts of
Yorkshire, and in the archdeaconry of Derby, such men were probably in a
majority among those serving the parishes in the ®rst years of the reign.48
Only in the case of Ireland can we be reasonably certain that variations
on the theme of church papism and minimal conformity remained the
standard norms of behaviour for the clergy throughout Elizabeth's reign.
Andrew Trollope, a prebendary of St Patrick's, believed that the local
curates carried with them the Latin version of the Book of Common
Prayer but read `little or nothing of it or can well read it, but they tell the
people a tale of our Lady or St Patrick'.49 One of his colleagues denounced
the curates as `a company of Irish rogues and Romish runagate priests'.50
There were recurrent complaints of this kind: the clergy were too ignor-
ant and worldly, but were also papists at heart.51 It seems to have made
little difference whether the Pale was being described or those border and
Gaelic areas brought under more effective political control in the second
half of the Elizabethan era. For example, Bishop Lyon, the conscientious
prelate of Cork, Ross, and Cloyne, visited his three dioceses in the early
1590s and found both extensive church papism and the desertion of Prot-
estant services. The clergy often led their congregations into outright
recusancy. In 1595 Lyon reported that `the priests of this country forsake
their bene®ces to become massing priests because they are so well en-
treated and so much made of amongst the people'.52 The result was a
remarkable manpower crisis experienced by the Church of Ireland that
was the reverse image of the situation in mainland Britain. By the turn of
the century, when the parishes of England, Scotland, and even Wales
were increasingly ®lled by trained pastors, the Irish church ®nally lost the
remnant of its pre-Elizabethan clergy. They could not be replaced. At that
point, if not before, the Protestant church in Ireland ceased to have even a
tenuous claim to provide a general parish ministry to the people.53

47
A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early
Modern England (Woodbridge, 1993), 15.
48
J. D'Arcy, `Late Medieval Catholicism and the Impact of the Reformation in the Arch-
deaconry of Derby, c.1520±1570', University of Nottingham Ph.D. (1996), 269±75.
49
PRO sp 63/131/64.
50
PRO sp 63/115/27.
51
Murray, `Tudor Diocese of Dublin', 324±7.
52
PRO sp 63/183/47. Bodl. MS Carte 55, fos. 580v±86.
53
Ford, Protestant Reformation, 36±40. For other visitation materials for these years see
H.J. Lawlor, `Two collections of visitation reports in the library of Trinity College', Hermathena
31 (1905), covering Commission for Faculties material, but really just a liber cleri. A less formal
report on religious af®liation in Thomond is printed by B. Cunningham, `A view of religious
af®liation and practice in Thomond, 1591', Archivium Hibernicum 48 (1994), 13±23: this pays
scant attention to the parishes, focusing instead on the prelates, towns, and noble households.
436 Reformations Established and Contested

The Congregation: Leadership

Zealous divines argued that, if only the pastor were worthy, the sheep
would unhesitatingly follow him. The history of the Reformation parish
yields ample examples to support this premise: communities that were
transformed by godly preaching in such a way that lay behaviour was
unequivocally altered. The vigour of the young Scottish Kirk is exempli-
®ed by the congregational leadership of men such as John Hepburn at
Brechin or James Melville at Fern.54 William Denman, deprived under
Mary as rector of Ordsall, Nottinghamshire, returned at the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign and for the next decade exercised a crucial in¯uence over
the development of Protestantism in his own parish and in neighbouring
Retford.55 When John Favour was appointed as vicar of Halifax in 1594
he immediately began to transform a vast parish of uncertain spiritual
loyalties into one in which the principal inhabitants followed his clear lead
in the enforcement of strong Protestant standards.56 It is even easier to
argue the case from its negative. Parishes that did not have strong, evan-
gelical leadership from their clergy were frequently slow to assimilate
reformed ideas. Thus Tewkesbury, with no resident incumbent and a
series of non-preaching curates, did not begin to respond to the Reforma-
tion with any visible enthusiasm until the 1580s.57 Grimsby displayed the
same conservatism, born largely of the in¯uence of the traditionalist vicar,
Peter Munby, who survived into the Elizabethan era from the mid-Tudor
decades.58 Once again, examples could be multiplied and extended across
the English realm, though they are less pertinent to Scotland, with its
sharp break with the past.
An emphasis on the dominant in¯uence of the clergy conceals, how-
ever, the more complex reality. Power and in¯uence in the parish was
shared between clergy and laity: the latter were patrons, wardens, elders,
overseers for the poor, and the like. The views of men of weight and
worth in the community on matters of religion proved critical to any
effective construction of reform.59 While some of these laymen might
54
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 103.
55
D. Marcombe, English Small Town Life: Retford, 1520±1642 (University of Nottingham,
1993), 179±81.
56
W. and S. Sheils, `Textiles and reform: Halifax and its hinterland', in P. Collinson and
J. Craig (eds.), The Reformation in English Towns, 1500±1640 (Basingstoke, 1998), 141±3.
57
C. Litzenberger, `The coming of Protestantism to Elizabethan Tewkesbury', in Collinson
Craig, English Towns, 86±90.
58
M.D. Lucas, `Popular Religious Attitudes in Urban Lincolnshire during the Reformation:
The Will Evidence, 1520±1600', University of Nottingham Ph.D. (1998), 111±12.
59
On the general theme of lay/clerical relations in the parish see P. Collinson, `Magistracy
and ministry: a Suffolk miniature', in his Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritan-
ism (1983), 445±66.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 437
tarry on the leadership of the clergy, they were equally likely to seize the
initiative if circumstances permitted. When the leading parishioners of
Hornchurch in Essex found their conservative vicar William Lambert not
to their ideological taste in the 1580s they withdrew to other churches,
protesting against his `unsound doctrine' and failure to preach. In the next
decade they went further, persuading the patrons of the bene®ce, New
College, Oxford, to allow them the de facto nomination of clerics in return
for a contribution to their support. Thereafter the incumbents of Horn-
church had two characteristics: they were sympathetic to Puritan views and
they were related to one or other of the key families of the parish.60 This
was merely to act within a traditional parochial structure in ways that town
councils behaved throughout England, as they promoted lecturers to urban
pulpits and supported the disciplinary efforts of the clergy with their own
court structures. While godly preachers like Percival Wiburn in North-
ampton, Anthony Gilby at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, or Samuel Ward in Ips-
wich sought to build mini-Genevas in English towns, they had constantly
to be aware of the power of the magistracy and their need for its support.
This was particularly true when the non-conformity of such men attracted
episcopal wrath: for example, the bailiffs of Colchester were unremitting in
their efforts to have the town preacher, George Northey, reinstated after
he was suspended by Bishop Aylmer in the autumn of 1583. After a year of
petitioning, and some braving of episcopal anger, Northey was restored to
them and was once more preaching `the sincere Word of God'.61
The Scottish Kirk provides particularly clear evidence of active lay
initiative within the parish. Calvinist elders assumed key disciplinary and
organizational roles in the kirk sessions and, within the continuing con-
straints of the traditional patronage system, chose and evaluated their min-
isters.62 Indeed the surviving records of the sessions often convey the
impression that the clergy were playing subordinate roles in the parishes,
especially in those burgh churches where laymen had traditionally funded
much of their own religious provision. When the burgesses of Ayr elected
boldly to support the Lords of the Congregation and adopt Protestant
worship they sent representatives to Edinburgh to ®nd a minister, then
casually alluded to in the accounts as `a preacher'.63 The only early surviv-

60
M. McIntosh, A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering, 1500±1620
(Cambridge, 1991), 181±3.
61
M. Byford, `The birth of a Protestant town: the process of reformation in Tudor Colches-
ter, 1530±1580', in Collinson and Craig, English Towns, 42±5. L.M. Higgs, Godliness and Govern-
ance in Tudor Colchester (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1998), 323±4.
62
Kirk, Patterns of Reform, 368 ff.; `Royal and lay patronage in the Jacobean kirk, 1572±1600',
in MacDougall, Church, 127±50.
63
G.S. Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts, 1534±1624, SHS 3rd ser. 28 (Edinburgh, 1937), 130.
438 Reformations Established and Contested
ing example of a rural register for a kirk session, that for Moni®eth in
Angus, shows the powerful in¯uence of families of local lairds as elders
but is surprisingly silent on the role of the clergy.64 Later records are more
ample, and do much to correct these impressions, but the intrusion of the
laity into what might customarily be thought to be clerical affairs is strik-
ing. It seems, for example, that it was accepted practice for the sessions to
agree on the subjects suitable for preaching: in 1598 St Andrews' session
endorsed the arrangement by which the minister, George Gladstaines,
would give sermons on the Second Book of Samuel, to be followed by
the Book of Kings.65
Yet it would be naive to conclude from the last example that the
ferocious ministers who led the Calvinist revolution in Scotland saw
themselves as subordinated to lay interests. Gladstaines was conciliating a
congregation that had been deeply polarized by a prime example of minis-
terial determination not to co-operate with the laity. David Black, the
minister at St Andrews from 1590 to 1597, was a high clericalist who
would, as one historian has noted, have gladdened the heart of Innocent
III. In 1592 he refused for a time to continue his ministry on the grounds
that his ¯ock did not deserve him and he would `disgrace his ministry no
more amongst them'.66 The only consolation for his congregation was
that he despised his fellow ministers as much as the laity, calling them
`belly fellows, sycophants, gentlemen ministers, leaders of the people to
hell'.67 Black was merely the most extreme of a Melvillian coterie who
denied any possibility of compromise within the local kirks. James Mel-
ville described another, Robert Bruce, as `most comfortable to the good
and godly, and most fearful to the enemies,' but the danger was that
extremism lost such men as those to whom they should be `most comfort-
able'.68 The lesson learned by the end of the 1590s was that such absolut-
ism was counterproductive: even in the white heat of religious
revolution good governance of the Church depended on lay±clerical

64
F.D. Bardgett, `The Moni®eth kirk register', RSCHS 23 (1987±9), 175±95. McMillan,
Worship, 121. This impression of initiative is sometimes the product simply of a shortage of
clergy. The image of parishioners organizing much of their own spiritual lives, because they had
no preachers, emerges very clearly from visitations of the 1580s: J. Kirk (ed.), Visitation of the
Diocese of Dunblane, SRS 11 (Edinburgh, 1984).
65
D. Hay Fleming (ed.), Register of the Minister, Elders and Deacons of the Christian Congregation
of St Andrews, 2 vols., SHS 4, 7 (1889±90), ii. 856.
66
G. Parker, `The ``Kirk by law established'' and the origins of ``the taming of Scotland'':
St Andrews 1559±1600', in R. Mentzer (ed.), Sin and the Calvinists: Moral Control and the
Consistory in the Reformed Tradition (Kirksville, Mo., 1994), 186±7.
67
M.F. Graham, The Uses of Reform: `Godly Discipline' and Popular Behaviour in Scotland
and Beyond, 1560±1610 (Leiden, 1996), 192±201.
68
R. Pitcairn (ed.), The Autobiography and Diary of James Melvill (Wodrow Society, Edin-
burgh, 1842), 271.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 439
69
co-operation. `If magistrates and ministers agree not,' said a Bury
St Edmunds preacher in 1600, `and the people reverence and love them
both, what can come of it?'70
There has been much debate among historians about the status of those
laymen who exercised in¯uence over the parochial church in the later
sixteenth century. The thesis sometimes advanced is that the diversity of
lay of®ce-holding before the Reformation, diffused as it was through the
ranks of the guilds and fraternities, ensured participation from men of
modest standing in the community. However, by the end of the century
it was only the `better sort' who could exercise control through patronage
and of®ce in England, and through the speci®c institution of the eldership
in Scotland.71 Parallels are remarked with the intensi®cation of oligarchy
in secular government in towns and burghs. There is evidence to support
these views: the eldership in Scotland was certainly led in many rural areas
by lairds. In the burghs the mercantile establishments were dominant: in
Edinburgh, for example, they are described as becoming `virtually the
proprietors' of the kirk sessions, though they needed support from leading
lawyers.72 At St Andrews an equally oligarchic arrangement divided
power between the leaders of the burgh and the university regents.73
Much the same function was performed in Irish towns by the guilds that,
incongruously, had been allowed to survive the Reformation. The Dublin
guild of St Anne dominated the church of St Audoen's, and its masters
and wardens were almost invariably drawn from the ranks of the alder-
men.74 It is indicative of the peculiar religious situation in the Irish capital
that the guild was a crypto-Catholic public institution that evaded gov-
ernmental attempts to change its nature. The most powerful urban initia-
tives in support of the English clergy usually came from town councils, as
corporations strove to build new Jerusalems `compact together'.75 At

69
For some interesting comparative examples of negotiations between laity and clergy in
different European Reformation contexts see A. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation of the Parishes:
The Ministry and the Reformation in Town and Country (Manchester, 1993). The ability of Scottish
elders and ministers to use the support of local secular courts also needs to be stressed:
B. Lenman, `The limits of godly discipline in the early modern period with particular reference
to England and Scotland', in K. Von Greyerz (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe,
1500±1800 (1984), 137±9.
70
Quoted in P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), 156.
71
The classic statement of the restrictive view of lay participation after the Reformation is in
J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 162±4.
72
M. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981), 39±41.
73
Graham, Uses of Reform, 78±82. Parker, `St Andrews', 166±7.
74
C. Lennon, The Lords of Dublin in the Age of Reformation (Dublin, 1989), 144±9, 163.
75
P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (Basingstoke, 1988), 28±59: the quotation
is from the Geneva Bible. Higgs, Tudor Colchester, 191±8. J. Martin, `Leadership and priorities in
Reading during the Reformation', in Collinson and Craig, English Towns, 125±7.
440 Reformations Established and Contested
parochial level concerns for godliness and good order began to express
themselves in the later years of the century in the form of `closed' or
`select' vestries.76
But a case can be made for a continuing pluralism in lay service of the
parish. Elders had to be seconded by deacons, and they could be drawn
from a wider cross-section of the community. Churchwardens were still
often chosen from the ordinary ranks of the middling sort, the `solidly
placed' rather than necessarily the wealthy or in¯uential.77 Beneath them
the growing diversity of parochial obligations also created a diversity of
of®ces. Sworn men, overseers of the poor, administrators of private char-
ities, and, somewhat later, sidesmen, were added to the crucial wardens.
In St Mary's, Chester, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw
a ten-fold increase in of®ce-holders.78 Towards the end of the century
both wardens and sidesmen in Romford and Hornchurch, Essex, were
drawn from the middling ranks of local society, with a strong represen-
tation from artisan groups.79 Parochial involvement was certainly not
egalitarian, since it usually demanded a measure of standing in the com-
munity, but it was often diffused more widely than is suggested by histor-
ians obsessed by the growth of oligarchy.

The Use of the Church

A prime necessity for the congregation was the provision of a proper
physical environment and the supporting furnishings for Protestant wor-
ship. Neither the English nor the Scottish settlement was fully prescriptive
on this matter. There was a pragmatic understanding that existing build-
ings would have to be adapted as best they might to the demands of the
new liturgy. In the case of Scotland the basic principles for reformed
worship followed from the guidance of the Book of Common Order:
there was to be no division within the church, the pulpit was to be the
focus of the assembly, and when communion was to be celebrated a table

76
B. KuÈmin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish,
c.1470±1560 (Aldershot, 1996), 29±31, 236. P. Collinson, `Cranbrook and the Fletchers: popular
and unpopular religion in the Kentish Weald', in P.N. Brooks (ed.), Reformation Principle and
Practice (1980), 171±202.
77
E. Carlson, `The origins, function and status of the of®ce of churchwarden, with particular
reference to the diocese of Ely', in M. Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520±1725
(Cambridge, 1995), 191±200. J. Craig, `Co-operation and initiatives: Elizabethan churchwardens
and the parish accounts of Mildenhall', Social History 18/3 (1994), 357±80.
78
N. Alldridge, `Loyalty and identity in Chester parishes 1540±1640', in S. Wright (ed.),
Parish, Church and People (1988), 103±12. The Chester hierarchy within parish of®ce-holding can
be identi®ed by age as well as status; senior of®ces were largely reserved for men of mature age.
79
McIntosh, Community Transformed, 231±8. Marcombe, Retford, 235±9.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 441
was to be set in the midst of the congregation, who were to be seated
around it.80 Even this apparent clarity left considerable scope for congre-
gational adaptation. In the early years some chancels continued to be used
for the administration of communion, as at Crail and Perth.81 An alterna-
tive location for the table was a separate communion aisle. Much more
signi®cantly, many congregations seem in the early years to have resisted
the speci®c requirement of the General Assembly that there should be no
burials in the church. Like their English counterparts Scottish congrega-
tions continued to use their churches as a means of articulating social
hierarchy: pewing became common in the new sermon-based form of
worship, and pews were so ordered that `everyone [is] entertained answer-
able to his quality'.82 The placing of pulpits, decoration of the walls with
scriptural texts, and the painting of lofts all re¯ected much local congre-
gational choice.83
The Book of Common Prayer also seemed to offer ®rm instructions for
the physical environment of worship in the parish church. The rubric
before Morning Prayer ordered that chancels should remain as they had
been, demarcated from the nave. The 1559 Book repeated the order of the
1552 Communion Service that the celebrant stand on the north side of the
communion table, which should be located `in the body of the Church, or
in the chancel, where Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer be appointed to
be said'.84 But these orders proved open to a variety of interpretations. The
Royal Injunctions of 1559, displaying Elizabeth's sympathies, actually
insisted that it was of no great signi®cance whether altars or tables were
used in churches provided `the Sacrament be duly and reverently minis-
tered'.85 The visitors, however, adopted the ®rmest interpretation of the
orders, denying that the altars were matters of indifference, and upholding
the principle of the moveable table, placed against the east wall only when
not being used for communion. Stone altars were attacked systematically.
Edwin Sandys may have exaggerated when he claimed in 1559 that `all

80
Knox, vi. 292 ff.
81
G. Hay, The Architecture of Scottish Post-Reformation Churches 1560±1843 (Oxford, 1957),
25±6, 179±81.
82
The seventeenth-century pewing plan for the new church of Burntisland shows the
Scottish preoccupation with status within church: D. Howard, The Architectural History of Scot-
land: Scottish Architecture from the Reformation to the Restoration, 1560±1660 (Edinburgh, 1995),
175±84. P. Hume Brown, Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1891), 205.
83
Hay, Scottish Churches, 216. N. Yates, Buildings, Faith and Worship: The Liturgical Arrange-
ments of Anglican Churches, 1600±1900 (Oxford, 1991), 28.
84
J. Ketley (ed.), The Two Liturgies ad 1549 and ad 1552 . . . In the Reign of King Edward VI
(PS, Cambridge, 1844), 217, 265.
85
G. Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1994), 347. On the
bishops' opposition to Elizabeth on the stone altars see J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation (1824
edn.), i. i. 237±42.
442 Reformations Established and Contested
polluted and de®led altars' were down, but within a few years all but the
most remote parishes had displaced their stones.86
Episcopal orders, the Interpretations of 1561 and the 1566 Advertise-
ments, offered further, somewhat divergent, directions for worship. The
second allowed the communion table to be moved into the nave for the
celebration `where either the choir seemeth to be too little or at great
feasts of receiving'; the last permitted Common Prayer to be said `in such
place as the Ordinary shall think meet . . . so that the people may be most
edi®ed'.87 Later episcopal injunctions tended to interpret the last com-
ment as meaning that the service should be read in the body of the
church, ®nally af®rming the end of the separation between laity and
clergy in nave and chancel. The drastic process of remodelling was com-
pleted by the replacement of the old images with the royal arms, and
scriptural texts, especially Commandment boards.88
In practice these injunctions, like those of Scotland, left scope for con-
gregational initiative. The communion table, for example, was normally
stored at the east end of the church, but its exact positioning for the
giving of the Eucharist remained unspeci®ed.89 The fragmentary evidence
suggests that parishioners overcame any earlier aversion to moving into
the chancel and gathering round the communion board.90 However, only
in 1604 did the canons ®nally ®x the location of the table east/west in the
centre of the chancel for the administration of communion.91 Other
issues, such as where the minister should stand to read the service and
whether organs were retained, were largely determined by congregational
choice, within broadly stated principles of decorum and audibility.92 A
traditional parish like Tewkesbury took until a decade into the seven-
teenth century to move its pulpit to the customary place in the nave,

86
J. Ayre (ed.), The Sermons of Edwyn Sandys (PS, Cambridge, 1841), 250. R. Hutton, `The
local impact of the Tudor Reformation', in C. Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised
(Cambridge, 1987), 134±6. Parts of Wales seem to have been an exception: Bishop Middleton
remained convinced in the 1580s that altars and rood lofts survived, and railed against them in
his injunctions: W.M. Kennedy, Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, 3 vols. (1924), iii. 139 ff.
87
VAI iii. 62, 174, 208±9.
88
G.W.O. Addleshaw and F. Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (1948), 30±6.
89
Yates, Buildings, Faith and Worship, 31. G. Yule, `James VI and I: furnishing the churches
in his two kingdoms', in A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (eds.), Religion, Culture and Society in Early
Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1994), 182±208. In an early lament about diversity of liturgical
practice, Archbishop Parker complained of the endless ways in which the communion table was
being stored and used: BL Lans. MS 8, fo. 16.
90
Maltby, Prayer Book and People, 48±9.
91
G. Bray (ed.), The Anglican Canons, 1529±1947, Church of England Record Society 7
(Woodbridge, 1998), 377.
92
Craig, `Co-operation and initiatives', 372. For a parochial debate on organs see
H.G. Owen, `Tradition and reform: ecclesiastical controversy in an Elizabethan London parish',
Guildhall Miscellany 11 (1961), 63±70.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 443
presumably thus belatedly signalling its acceptance of the centrality
of sermons.93 The survival of chancel screens, demarcating the areas of the
church, was similarly a matter of local choice, and the bishops in general
seem to have been willing to accept that screens were quite distinct
from the roods that they had once held, in no sense a monument to
superstition. Stained glass often remained, despite an attack on it in 1559 as
part of the challenge to images, for the very practical reason that it was too
costly to replace.94 Like the Scots, English parishioners also retained con-
siderable freedom to furnish their churches with pews, tombs, and the like,
within the broad parameters of ecclesiastical law. Pews became an ever
more important element in the hierarchical ordering of the congregation,
the subject of increasingly elaborate planning by the churchwardens and a
fertile source of litigation in the church courts. Burial within the church
continued to be acceptable to the English bishops, and the last years of the
sixteenth century became a golden age of funeral architecture.95
Ecclesiastical authorities were often more concerned about the state of
the fabric of churches than about their precise internal layout. The 1562
homily `For repairing and keeping clean the Church' lamented that `the
world thinketh it but a tri¯e to see their church in ruin and decay', and a
host of visitation returns attest to the depth of the problem in England and
Wales.96 Litigiousness between churchwardens, responsible for the care of
the nave, and appropriators, farmers of rectories, or clerics responsible for
the chancel, enhanced the rhetoric of complaint, but the physical prob-
lems of fabric decay were very real.97 Even so, the building stock of
the English church was in better heart than that of the Scots. In Scotland
the neglect of appropriators, the relative poverty of congregations, and the
general weakness of the parochial structure outside the burghs meant that
there was major work to be done to provide a proper physical environ-
ment for worship. This was just beginning in the last decades of
the sixteenth century: fewer than a dozen new churches were built be-
tween 1560 and 1620.98
93
Litzenberger, `Tewkesbury', in Collinson and Craig, English Towns, 88.
94
Edelen, Harrison's Description of England, 35±6.
95
For a useful set of examples from the ecclesiastical records see J.S. Purvis (ed.), Tudor
Parish Documents of the Diocese of York (Cambridge, 1948), 87±91. On tombs see N. Llewellyn,
Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000), which supersedes all earlier
work, and P. Sherlock, `Funeral Monuments: Piety, Honour and Memory in early
Modern England', University of Oxford D.Phil. (2000).
96
Grif®ths, Homilies, 275.
97
For example, a third of the parishes of Chichester registered defective fabric at the 1571
visitation of West Sussex, and Grindal's 1575 visitation of York produced 75 chancels and 25
churches in decay: Haigh, English Reformations, 250; W.J. Sheils (ed.), Archbishop Grindal's Visit-
ation, 1575, Borthwick Texts and Calendars 4 (1977), vii.
98
Howard, Architectural History, 177±88. Yule, `Furnishing the churches', 204±7.
444 Reformations Established and Contested
Those Scottish kirks that were constructed in the early decades of the
Reformation show a very self-conscious break with the Catholic past both
in physical organization and in aesthetics. Apart from the remarkable
square church at Burntisland, thought to have been in¯uenced by both
Scandinavian and French examples, the rest tend to a simple rectangular,
or later to a T-plan, seek to maximize open space, and use modi®ed
classical features rather than Gothic detail.99 No semblance of a chancel
was retained. These seem to be the choices of the devout laymen who paid
for their construction, and they can be read as evidence of ®rm acceptance
of clerically de®ned Calvinist forms of worship.100 But Scottish kirk build-
ings reveal one signi®cant deviation from the established convention of the
simple open church structure: the building, or extension, of burial aisles
often associated with a loft or seat above for the family of the laird. The
importance of burial practices, and of the continuity between living and
dead kin, could scarcely be more strongly illustrated. And this was under-
taken in the face of the explicit hostility of the General Assembly.101
In England there was effectively no new church building in the late
sixteenth century, though from the 1580s onwards there are signi®cant
examples of internal reconstruction.102 What can be accumulated from
churchwardens' accounts is evidence of adaptivity in the use of existing
building space. There seems to have been quite wide acceptance of the
continued partitioning of the church, and plenty of examples of the alter-
ation of stalls in the choir to make them suitable for communicants kneel-
ing around a table in the centre of the chancel. It is probable that a
number of churches went further and, as in the surviving examples at
Hailes and Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, constructed virtual communion
rooms for the comfort of the parish, running the benches around the back
of the east wall, as well as in the customary choir location.103 These
99
Though it must be said that not all simple rectangular churches derive from the post-
Reformation period: this modest form with no differentiated chancel was characteristic of many
small kirks in the late medieval period: Hay, Scottish Churches, 19, 22±3.
100
The only new church speci®cally inspired by, and partly funded by, a cleric appears to be
Prestonpans, where the minister was John Davidson: Howard, Architectural History, 184±5.
101
A. Spicer, ` ``Defyle not Christ's kirk with your carrion'': burial and the development of
burial aisles in post-Reformation Scotland', in B. Gordon and P. Marshall (eds.), The Place of the
Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 149±69.
102
D. MacCulloch, `The myth of the English Reformation', JBS 30 (1991), 13. The accumu-
lating evidence suggests that the period from the 1590s onwards is signi®cant for church refurbish-
ment, with Archbishop Whitgift's survey of churches commissioned in 1602 providing the
stimulus for renewal already under way: A. Foster, `Churchwardens' accounts of early modern
England and Wales', in K.L. French, G.C. Gibbs, and B.A. KuÈmin (eds.), The Parish in English Life,
1400±1600 (Manchester, 1997), 86±9.
103
Addleshaw and Etchells, Anglican Worship, 37±45. Yule, `Furnishing the churches', 192±8.
C. Litzenberger, `St Michael's, Gloucester, 1540±1580: the cost of conformity in sixteenth-
century England', in French et al., Parish in English Life, 246±7.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 445
alterations show acceptance of reformed Eucharistic practice, but also
positive investment in what was only a very intermittent aspect of parish
worship. Otherwise the evidence of repair and reconstruction in the years
before 1600 often seems to indicate conservatism among those supplying
the funds, whether patrons or congregations.104 The survival of Gothic
design for windows, arches, and the like shows that masons were not
pressed to rethink their traditional ecclesiastical repertoire, even though
they might be required to produce classical motifs for tombs.105 It seems
to have occurred to no one in England that clear aesthetic delineation of
places of worship might signal more explicitly the separation of the
Church from its popish roots. The only classical temple for worship

`The Reformed Church'. John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Permission of

the Bodleian Library

104
The only wholly new buildings tend to be chapels associated with noble and gentry
households, though Easton Grey in Wiltshire was built in 1591 by Edward Seymour, earl of
Hertford, after the demolition of the friary church. St James, Southwick, Hampshire, was rebuilt
in 1566 by John Whyte, and a new church at Risley in Derbyshire was begun by Michael
Willoughby in 1592: N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Wiltshire (1975), 233; Hampshire (1967),
604±5; Derbyshire (1978), 310.
105
A. Woodger, `Post-Reformation mixed Gothic in Huntingdonshire church towers and
the campanological associations', Archaeological Journal 141 (1984), 269±308. The Tuscan columns
identi®ed by Pevsner at Metheringham, Lincolnshire, are a rare exception, made the more
interesting because they are by John Tirrell, mason to the recusant Sir Thomas Tresham, a noted
exponent of Renaissance architecture: N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, 605.
446 Reformations Established and Contested
remained in the visual imagination of John Day when he illustrated the
Edwardian Reformation in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.106
The drastic changes in the physical appearance of British churches in
the half-century after the Reformation raises the further question of how
far the idea of the church as sacred space was altered by religious change.
The ecclesiastical authorities in England, Scotland, and Ireland consistently
maintained that the church was territory apart, `not for any superstition'
or veneration of a popish kind, but because it was `God's house'.107 After
the Reformation, as before, visitation articles asked about the decent order
of the church and churchyard and reverent behaviour during services and
at other times. And there were invariably a stream of complaints in arch-
deacons' courts and at kirk sessions under all these headings. Naves were
routinely in disrepair; dog-whippers had to be appointed to remove the
barking animals during divine worship; children played in the kirk and the
kirkyard; popular festivities invaded sacred territory.108 Two examples can
stand for an in®nity of others: the wardens of Goring, Berkshire, were
in trouble in the 1580s for allowing dancing and bowling in the church-
yard, the latter `in the processional way'. They also turned a blind eye
to the curate's pigs, who rooted among the tombs. Meanwhile two `ale-
men' were cited for disturbing the minister during the service, apparently
by allowing a reveller to enter the church during Whitsun week celebra-
tions.109
Much of the evidence of casual profanity of sacred space, neglect of
fabric, and promiscuous mixing of the sacred and secular is merely a
continuation of age-old peccadilloes, contested between the local agents
of the parish and their superiors. However, there are some indications of
change before 1600. The general assault upon popular festivities in both
England and Scotland had the indirect consequence of diminishing con-
¯ict about the use of sacred space: no Lords of Misrule, no invasion of the
church.110 In so far as festivity continued to possess a sacred dimension, it

106
Included as illus. 8.
107
Todd, Culture of Protestantism, 315 ff. J. Hubert, `Sacred beliefs and beliefs of sacredness',
in D. Carmichael, J. Hubert, et al. (eds.), Sacred Sites, Sacred Places (1994), 11±14.
108
I owe the emphasis on dog-whippers to a paper given by John Craig at the Reformation
Studies Colloquium, Warwick, April 2000. The Scottish Kirk was also eager to exclude dogs,
McMillan, Worship, 157±8. On May revellers invading the church see R. Hutton, The Rise and
Fall of Merry England (Oxford, 1994), 116±17, citing a famous passage of denunciation by Philip
Stubbes.
109
E.R.C. Brinkworth (ed.), The Archdeacon's Court: Liber Actorum, 1584, 2 vols., Oxfordshire
Record Society 23±4 (1942±6), i. 27, 43.
110
On the slow exclusion of popular drama from the church see Collinson, `Elizabethan and
Jacobean Puritanism as forms of popular religious culture', in C. Durston and J. Eales (eds.), The
Culture of English Puritanism 1560±1700 (Basingstoke, 1996), 32±57.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 447
was more likely to be marginalized and heterodox, to locate itself in such
alternative venues as holy wells.111 The notion that the whole parish was
in some way sacred space was also weakened by the general attack on
processions, and by of®cial constraints on the one form of procession still
permitted in the English church: the beating of the bounds at Rogation-
tide. A series of injunctions sought to limit the idea of Rogation to
thanksgiving for divine blessings, avoiding any implication that any form
of consecration was involved. Grindal's 1560 injunctions set the tone by
ordering that no banners, surplices, or lights should accompany the pro-
cessions. There were plenty of complaints of neglect of the ceremony
under Elizabeth, but far fewer that it had been abused for popish ends.112
The greatest change, however, was internal to the church, and conse-
quential on the Protestant demolition of the sacri®cial sacramental econ-
omy of the Mass. The of®cial removal of the altar and its replacement by a
formal table was deemed insuf®cient by the godly: they admired instead
the Scottish example of tables placed temporarily in the kirk for the
communion. There were therefore symbolic gestures of `irreverence' to-
wards the communion table by Puritans, with hats placed upon it and the
like. In the Isle of Man one enthusiast ended in gaol for persisting in
`irreverently' leaning on the table.113 Ordinary English parishioners were
not necessarily moved to subvert the sacred in this way. However, they do
seem to have recognized the table as spiritually distinct from the altar that
had preceded it. The evidence that the parishioners of Morebath con-
ducted their annual audit at and on the communion table is particularly
revealing. It still offered a serious focus for parochial activity, but no
longer one imbued with the sacred.114 Perhaps sacred space became, for
some of these parishioners, something that might more properly be called
solemn space: an environment in which proper re¯ection on religious
matters took place. But older views died hard, and the belief in conse-
crated ground as set apart retained ef®cacy in the new world. The insist-

111
R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997),
90±2.
112
VAI iii. 164. See also iii. 14, 15, 60, 208, 264, 378. Hutton, Merry England, 142±3.
F. Emmison, `Tithes, perambulation and sabbath-breach in Elizabethan Essex', in F. Emmison
and R. Stephans (eds.), Tribute to an Antiquary (1976), 183±7. R. Greaves, Society and Religion in
Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, Minn., 1981), 427±8. Perambulation was widely neglected by
the late years of Elizabeth's reign, but it is impossible to distinguish godly objections to the
practice from a plethora of practical objections to going a-walking.
113
A.W. Moore (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic (Manx Society, Oxford,
1895), p.ix. The determination of the godly to desacralize the altar is understandable in the light
of the type of report from New Ross, County Wexford, in 1606 that Catholics regularly made
superstitious offerings at the place `where the high altar stood': CSP Irl 1606±8. 15.
114
E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Religion in an English Parish (New
Haven, Conn., 2001), 144.
448 Reformations Established and Contested
ence of Scottish congregations on kirk burial in the teeth of clerical op-
position is a paradigmatic example of this sentiment.115

Patterns of Worship: Communion and the Rites of Passage

The Book of Common Prayer required that parishioners should take
communion three times a year, including Easter. The General Assembly
of the Scottish Kirk decreed in 1562 that communion should be cele-
brated four times a year in the burghs, though twice was thought suf®-
cient in rural areas.116 Yet in both churches committed Calvinist divines
longed for a much more regular reception. Herbert Westfaling, later
bishop of Hereford, wrote in 1582 of `our negligence in resorting to
the Lords table' that `giveth the adversary great advantage against us'.117
The ideal of a monthly, or even weekly, communion was regularly in the
minds of those godly divines who counselled on proper Christian behav-
iour. There is little evidence, however, that the laity of either realm felt
moved by the arguments of their clergy on this issue. The cultural norm,
inherited from the pre-Reformation world, was that of an annual Easter
communion, and even when clerics supplied three celebrations a year, or
even had begun to follow the episcopal ideal of monthly celebration, the
laity seem to have assumed that only one appearance was required of
them.118 There are many possible explanations for this adherence to old
patterns of behaviour, including, no doubt, residual beliefs that the two
rites possessed the same meaning. But there was also the fact that it was at
least as complex to administer the Eucharist in the reformed rite as it had
been under Catholicism. The demands on the clergy were signi®cant.
Parishioners had to be subject to some examination of their worthiness to
receive, disputants to be reconciled, and adults tested on their knowledge
of the Ten Commandments, Creed and Lord's Prayer. The burdens on
the wardens or elders included the purchase of considerable quantities of
wine, and the dif®cult logistics of managing large congregations, the latter

115
One of the identifying marks of radical non-conformity should have been the insistence
that the church as building possessed no distinctive holiness: in practice one of the few
who makes this attack is John Penry, who in a draft letter to the earl of Essex denounces exist-
ing churches and cathedrals, which must be destroyed so `that the land may be cleansed from
these dead bones of Gog': A. Peel (ed.), The Notebook of John Penry, 1593, CS 3rd ser. 67 (1944),
89.
116
J.K. Cameron (ed.), The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), 183, for the initial
insistence on communion four times yearly. BUK i. 30, 58.
117
H. Westfaling, A treatise of Reformation in Religion (1582), sig. 2b i.
118
A. Hunt, `The Lord's Supper in early modern England', PP 161 (1998), 41±9. Injunctions
of Bishop Barnes, 13.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 449
problem both in Scotland and England leading to the introduction of
communion tokens in urban parishes.119
There were, therefore, practical disincentives to frequent celebrations.
In Scotland and Ireland, as elsewhere in the Calvinist world, the logical
development of a sacramental celebration taken so solemnly and involving
such complexity was the great open-air communion service, called the
`holy fair' by Burns.120 There are some signs that English Puritan congre-
gations might have moved in this direction, in the communions that they
associated with days of preaching and fasting, like the famous assembly of
over a thousand people in the grounds of Wisbech Castle, witnessed by the
Jesuit William Weston.121 The English church courts and ordinary English
parishioners continued to settle for the more modest target of regular
Easter communion, though by the end of the century there is evidence of
a slow movement towards more frequent celebration in some commu-
nities.122 London parishes seem to have led the way, with quite regular con-
formity to the Prayer Book requirement increasing to monthly
communion in some places during the early Jacobean years.123
The general continuance of annual celebration of communion does not
point to a conclusion that the sacrament was not taken seriously by either
clergy or parishioners. Many of the former saw it as an opportunity to
ensure that their ¯ocks had a proper understanding of the faith. The
weapon of exclusion from communion appears to have been used spar-
ingly, but when it was employed in England in the late sixteenth century
it was most often because of alleged ignorance. The rector of Lexden,
Essex, refused communion to two of his parishioners in 1580, and they
were told by the church court to go to him each week to `learn to say
that catechism by heart'.124 Elinor Awd of Elwick, County Durham, was
excluded by the collective judgement of the curate and churchwardens
because she had quarrelled with a neighbour, but also because `she is not

119
The classic study of the organizational demands of communion in late Elizabethan Eng-
land is J. Boulton, `The limits of formal religion: the administration of Holy Communion in late
Elizabethan and early Stuart London', London Journal 10/2 (1984), 140±6. I.B. Cowan, The
Scottish Reformation (1982), 144±9.
120
L.E. Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern
Period (Princeton, N.J., 1989). Gillespie, Devoted People, 100±1.
121
P. Caraman (ed.), William Weston: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (1955), 164±5.
See also Patrick Collinson's comments on this form of popular religious culture in his `Eliza-
bethan and Jacobean Puritanism', in Durston and Eales, Culture of English Puritanism, 52±6.
122
M. Ingram, The Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge, 1987),
ch. 3.
123
Hunt, `The Lord's Supper', 53±5.
124
C. Haigh, `Communion and community: exclusion from communion in post-
Reformation England', JEH 51 (2000), 721±40.
450 Reformations Established and Contested
diligent to learn the Ten Commandments'.125 The test of basic catechism
knowledge was also applied ®rmly in Scotland, where tokens were only
handed out once the recipients had recited the relevant confessions.126
From the perspective of the parishioners access to communion was likely
to possess both social and spiritual connotations. It continued, as in the
pre-Reformation period, to show that you were in charity with your
neighbours, and therefore in good standing in the community.127 Exclu-
sion was an embarrassment, a challenge to status and reputation, and there
are examples of individuals expressing this clearly by demanding their
`rights' to the sacrament, or even forging tokens if they were denied
access. The visibility of the `goats' excluded from grace was clearest in
Scotland, where the communion tables were roped off to keep the token-
less outside. But the evidence sometimes points to a rather more complex
commitment to communion in the new dispensation. There were com-
plaints against clergy who failed to provide the proper occasions for recep-
tion. John Robotham's parishioners were aggrieved that at Easter 1577 he
was so preoccupied by bowls that they were `defrauded of their intent'.128
Or there is the admission from several of the Puritan ministers critical of
popular behaviour that parishioners often regarded the day of the Euchar-
ist as a solemn occasion when virtue and sobriety predominated. The
common people, said Jeremiah Dyke, will resist temptation by their com-
panions after the sacrament saying `Oh ®e, by no means, I have been
today at the sacrament, I may not so much forget my self.'129
Taking the Eucharist in Elizabethan England and Jacobean Scotland
showed some continuities with the Catholic past. One was the insistence
on proper preparation: for the Protestant clergy primarily a matter of the
congregation having appropriate understanding of the rite; for the laity it
involved an insistence on `being in love and charity with thy neigh-
bour'.130 Clerics were willing to forbid feuding members of the commu-
nity the table, though this was not a common reason for exclusion. The
records of the church courts would, however, suggest that this was the
commonest excuse that the laity offered for their failure to communicate.
Margaret Crosby of Chesilton, Dorset, did not receive Easter communion
because of a quarrel with her neighbour in 1593, though she assured the
court that she would receive at Whitsun. Some were inhibited by quarrels
with their clerics, like Anne Bradbury of Wicken Bonhunt, Essex, who

125 126
Injunctions of Bishop Barnes, 125. Graham, Uses of Reform, 107.
127
Hunt, `The Lord's Supper', 63±8.
128
Maltby, Prayer Book and People, 46 and following pages for other examples.
129
J. Dyke, A Worthy Communicant: or, A Treatise, Shewing the Due order of Receiving the
Lords Supper (1636), 615.
130
Haigh, `Exclusion from communion', 738±9.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 451
would not take communion because of `a controversy between her and
Mr Swynho, parson there'.131 In Scotland, where feud was an integral
part of the social environment, it could dislocate even well-established
Calvinist congregations. In 1603 the disciplinary arrangements of the
kirk of Moni®eth were paralysed by the refusal of either of the local lairds
to take the Eucharist because of a feud. Once the two were persuaded
to return to communion, normal disciplinary life was resumed.132 The
function of communion as an instrument of reconciliation within the
community survived the doctrinal upheavals of the Reformation.
The problem for the ecclesiastical authorities lay in drawing boundaries
between this acceptance of communion as the ritual that de®ned men's
relationships with their neighbours, and the manipulation of the idea of feud
as a protective device by church papists and others.133 The standard formula
of the visitation returns, so-and-so `being out of charity' did not communi-
cate at Easter, can conceal a multitude of sins, but could obviously be a cover
for non-conformity. The vehemence of some wardens' returns shows that
they were conscious of the need to demarcate the non-conforming from
those merely out of charity. Richard Westerdale was presented by the war-
dens of Bridlington, Yorkshire, in 1575 because he was not in charity `and
not of any obstinacy'.134 Yet we know that William Shakespeare's father
excused himself from communion because of debt and that in this case there
was deliberate avoidance of the sacrament for conscientious reasons.135 John
Earle's later caricature of the church papist as one keen `to shift off the Com-
munion, for which he is never unfurnish't of a quarrel, and will be sure to
be out of Charity at Easter' exempli®ed a type that must have become more
common in the second half of Elizabeth's reign, as the pressure to use com-
munion as a test of conformity increased.136 Presence at communion, and
the reception of the Eucharist, became the critical marks of conformity,
identifying marks understood by the authorities to be meaningful precisely
because they involved a denial of fellowship as well as belief.137
The impact of community values was felt even more directly upon the
other episodic ceremonies of the reformed churches: the celebration of

131 132
Hunt, `The Lord's Supper', 47±51. Graham, Uses of Reform, 243±4.
133 134
Walsham, Church Papists, 85±97. Sheils, Grindal's Visitation, 87.
135
J.F. Andrews (ed.), William Shakespeare: His World, His Work and His In¯uence, 3 vols.
(New York, 1985), i. 38±9.
136
J. Earle, Microcosmographie, facsimile edn. (Leeds, 1966), 41.
137
The insistence of Scottish reformers and English Puritans on not kneeling at the commu-
nion is primarily doctrinal, a refusal to indicate any adoration of the elements, but it also serves
to emphasize the nature of communion as a love feast, breeding spiritual and social reconcili-
ation in the community. For an important discussion of the implications of such communitarian
concerns in a German context see D. Sabean, Power and the Blood: Popular Culture and Village
Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), 37±60.
452 Reformations Established and Contested
the rites of passage. The rite of baptism provides an interesting study in
the diversity of English practice and some contrast with that of Scotland.
Both churches articulated the same essential doctrinal understanding of the
sacrament: the baptismal water signi®ed forgiveness of sin and new spiritual
life, but only divine grace conferred faith and secured forgiveness. The
ceremony, incorporating the child into the church, was a `seal' of union
with Christ.138 Liturgical practice was less homogeneous. The Scottish
Kirk deliberately chose to make a physical break with the past: insisting that
baptism should be conducted in a basin, not in the font that was a symbol
of the old Church. Baptism was always to be a public ceremony, inte-
grated into the general service on a preaching day, though not usually a
Sunday, since that precluded feasting after the ceremony.139 These were
also the preferences of many English Puritans. From very early in Eliza-
beth's reign the bishops issued injunctions against the practice of baptizing
in basins, rather than in the traditional font. Questions about the use of
baptismal equipment ®gured in many visitations. On the timing of bap-
tism the bishops were, as so often, cautious: infants should be baptized on
the Sunday or next holy day after their birth, though the ceremony could
be performed on other days in case of need, and private baptism was not
absolutely excluded if there was `peril of death'. While no very substantial
ideological difference was evident in these choices, the practices came
sharply to differentiate groups. The godly were particularly troubled by
the issue of private baptism, which they feared opened the way for the
continuation of such `popish remnants' as baptism by midwives, and
which risked representing the sacrament as essential to salvation.140
Church court evidence suggests that ordinary parishioners often erred
towards the views stigmatized by the godly. When Mr Udall, the minister
of Kingston-on-Thames, preached in 1586 that it did not matter if a child
died before baptism, he was delated to the ecclesiastical authorities.141
There are numerous complaints against clergy who refused to baptize
except on Sundays, even though the child might be in danger of death.142
Baptism by midwives seems to have been uncommon in the Elizabethan
church, but individuals were prepared to defend it as a necessity, as in the
case of George Bourne, the son of William, who was christened by the
midwife of the parish of Bobbingworth, Essex, in 1569 `by mother Wright
the midwife of the parish, and in the presence of nine other honest

138
J.D.C. Fisher, Christian Initiation: The Reformation Period (1970), 80±4.
139
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 150±2. Knox, ii. 252. Cameron, First Book of Discipline, 91, 182.
140
D. Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and
Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), 97±123, 140±8.
141
A. Peel (ed.), The Second Part of a Register, 2 vols. (1915), ii. 45.
142
Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 114±22.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 453
143
women of the parish'. Even profound religious differences did not
necessarily modify popular beliefs about the urgency of baptism: in seven-
teenth-century Ireland, for example, Catholics and Presbyterians were
equally keen to baptize within a few days of birth.144 It was to allay these
fears that Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham, instructed his clergy to
assure parishioners that a child dying without baptism was `not to be
condemned or adjudged as a damned soul'. It could be buried in the
churchyard, secure in consecrated ground, though there could be no
service if it had not been received into the church.145 By the end of the
century there is some evidence that the Church of England's emphasis on
the priority of public baptism was beginning to take effect. Berry and
Scho®eld, studying St Peter's, Cornhill, in London, showed that the aver-
age period between birth and baptism gradually lengthened, and that by
1596±8 82 per cent of baptisms took place on a Sunday.146 It has also been
suggested that the changing use of the term `chrisom child' in the parish
registers of the early seventeenth century, to denote a growing number of
unbaptized children, is indication of popular acceptance that the cere-
mony was not essential for salvation.147
The Scottish Kirk took a predictably severe view of private baptism and
insisted on a more rapid transformation of the nature of the baptismal rite
than occurred in England. It also sought to assail the strong traditional social
commitment to godparentage. In the early years of the Scottish Reforma-
tion the Kirk conceded the continuation of godfathers (though not appar-
ently godmothers) but their function was changed from that of sponsor,
speaking for the child, to that of witness, only the father actually being
permitted to speak for his offspring. Because he acted as sponsor the father
was required to show understanding of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed
before the ceremony.148 The English church continued to accept the idea of
the arti®cial kinship constructed by sponsors at baptism, but it also insisted
that knowledge of the faith was now an essential part of their duties, and
they were in theory interrogated on the basic points of the catechism.149

143
Ibid., 120. Maltby, Prayer Book and People, 52±6.
144
Gillespie, Devoted People, 76±7.
145
Injunctions of Bishop Barnes, 18.
146
B.M. Berry and R.S. Scho®eld, `Age at baptism in pre-industrial England', Population
Studies 25 (1971), 462±3.
147
W. Coster, `Tokens of innocence: infant baptism, death and burial in early modern Eng-
land', in Gordon and Marshall, Place of the Dead, 283±6.
148
Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 151±2. Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 103±4. The concerns of
the Kirk, and of the godly in England, were two-fold: there was no scriptural legitimation
for godparentage, and no individual could stand warrant for another in the face of God.
149
Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 151±6. D. Meads (ed.), The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby
1599±1605 (1930), 107, 118, 192, 195, 222.
454 Reformations Established and Contested
Similar negotiations between public doctrine and customary behaviour
marked the other rites of passage. Marriage, no longer a sacrament, never-
theless retained strong sacramental elements for the Protestant Church in
England. The solemnization of marriage underlined the fact that it was a
religious contract in which the church ceremony was the focal activity. In
contrast to the late medieval church the ceremony was conducted entirely
in the body of the church, not at the church door, to reinforce the
church's commitment to the `honourable estate' of matrimony.150 Scottish
marriages were also emphatically kirk-based, public events: from 1571
onwards a General Assembly statute insisted that all had to be celebrated
`in the face of the congregation' and as part of a preaching service.151 This
created the same dif®culties as for baptisms: the threat of festivity on the
sabbath.152 Apart from the ®rm insistence upon the relationship between
the Church and marriage it is most striking to note how much of earlier
custom survived even in the of®cial attitudes of Protestant reformers. Both
churches retained a table of prohibited degrees; banns continued to be
read in both England and Scotland; both followed the practice of the
medieval Church in regarding public consent to marriage as binding,
though only the Scots drew the conclusion that the Church should not
pronounce couples man and wife; the English retained forbidden days,
effectively closing off nearly 40 per cent of the calendar year.153 Marriage,
although far more ®rmly under the control of the ecclesiastical authorities
than in the medieval past, continued to exhibit some of the social and
cultural ¯exibility that must have helped it to retain continuity of meaning
in the eyes of many parishioners.
The rites of burial provide perhaps the most potent evidence of the
impact of religious change on congregations and the individuals who
composed them. A rich vein of surviving evidence indicates the signi®-
cance of these last things for sixteenth-century parishioners: indeed so rich
is the material that it has in the last few years spawned a historical industry
in its own right.154 It was through the processes of interment and memor-
ialization that men expressed their understanding about the relationship
between the living and the dead, an understanding that the Reformation

150
E.J. Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), 105±42. Cressy, Birth,
Marriage and Death, 285±339.
151 152
BUK i. 192. Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 152±5.
153
Though on the last point Carlson indicates that there is scarcely any evidence of church
court prosecution for marriage at an inappropriate season: Marriage, 132±3.
154
The ®rst stimulus to new work on death was provided by P. Aries, The Hour of our Death,
tr. H. Weaver (1981). For England there are three particularly important works: C. Gittings,
Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (1984); Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death;
R. Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480±1750 (Oxford, 1998). There are
several essays pertinent to England in this period in R. Houlbrooke (ed.), Death, Ritual and
 Church, Clergy, Laity 455
had in theory changed out of all recognition. Since the doctrine of purga-
tory was anathematized, the living could no longer aid the dead with their
prayers, and the community that bound them was shattered. Burial now
served primarily to offer closure upon a life past and to comfort the living
with the assurance that, to quote a contemporary funeral sermon, the dead
may `sleep quietly till they be awakened by the sound of the last Trum-
pet'.155 As Duffy has compellingly argued, there was a traumatic moment
of liturgical and doctrinal transition when the Book of Common Prayer
instructed the priest to address the survivors, not the corpse being sent on
its last journey.156 Commemoration recorded reputation, fame, and virtu-
ous achievements: exemplars to survivors also intended to warn of the
transitoriness of mortal things.
The Scottish Kirk appeared to achieve the most dramatic break with its
Catholic heritage and to constrain traditional parochial behaviour most
®ercely. The funeral service was reduced to a minimalist form in the
Book of Common Order. There was to be no singing or reading, simply
a committal within the churchyard, though there was a concession that
the minister might exhort the people on the nature of death and expound
the Kirk's teaching on resurrection. Dignity in the practice of burial was
to be combined with a total rejection of the ef®cacy of any form of prayer
for the dead.157 The Kirk's assault upon burial within the walls of the
church gathered momentum from the 1580s onwards: it re¯ected a fear
that if men kneeled on the graves of their ancestors, or even saw their
tombs, it might stimulate them to pray for the latters' repose.158 That this
fear was not wholly irrational is suggested by the 1593 case in which two
parishioners of Logie admitted to entering the kirk and removing the pew
of the local laird, David Balfour, because it stood `on our forebears'
bones'.159 In the disputes about place of burial it is possible to observe
both the determination of the reformed Kirk, and some of the limitations
on its capacity to change attitudes to death and the family.160 While

Bereavement (1989). Distinctive themes on doctrine and popular beliefs are introduced in the
volume edited by Gordon and Marshall, The Place of the Dead. For Scotland see A. Spicer,
` ``Rest of their bones'': fear of death and reformed burial practices', in W.G. Naphy and
P. Roberts (eds.), Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester, 1997), 167±83. There is, as so often,
no equivalent work on Ireland, though note J. Bossy, `The Counter-Reformation and the
people of Catholic Ireland, 1596±1641', in T.D. Williams (ed.), Historical Studies 8 (1971) and
R. Gillespie, `The image of death 1500±1700', Archaeology Ireland 6/1 (1992), 8±10.
155
R. Pricke, A Verie Godlie and Learned Sermon treating of Mans mortalitie (1608), sig. d 3.
156
E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400±1580 (Yale,
1992), 475.
157
J. Cumming (ed.), Liturgy of the Church of Scotland (1840), 105. Cowan, Scottish Reforma-
tion, 155.
158 159
BUK i. 6. Graham, Uses of Reform, 179.
160
Spicer, `Burial and burial aisles', 153±9.
456 Reformations Established and Contested
funerals were, it seems, conducted according to the new norms wherever
the Kirk became strongly established, burials continued, in one form or
another, to be linked to kin identity and to a strong sense of familial
continuity. Both lairds and ordinary laymen often de®ed the demands of
the General Assembly and insisted on kirk burial: and ultimately the ses-
sions conceded to this view of the world by accepting such burials in
return for ®nes.161 Moreover, leading laymen sometimes took the unusual
step of continuing to seek burial in monasteries or collegiate churches
founded by their ancestors and now redundant, as did the Frazers of Lovat
at Beauly, Invernesshire, or the Kennedys at Maybole, Ayrshire. The Kirk
could not object, since such sites were no longer consecrated, but the
choice of these families seems to indicate a more intimate linkage between
the living and the dead than it would have wished to accept.162 The
choices of the elite mutatis mutandis are unlikely to have been very differ-
ent from those of the ordinary population, and the sense of dramatic break
in understanding of mortality much less than the change in the funeral
service would indicate.
The Elizabethan Prayer Book made greater concessions to formal rite at
burial than its Scottish counterpart. Prayer and reading were acceptable
parts of a service that never precluded committal in church rather than
churchyard, making the location of burial a matter of discretion for the
minister. `Sure and certain hope of resurrection' was proclaimed, to the
disquiet of some Puritans.163 But the Book of Common Prayer, no less
than its Scottish counterpart, sought to break belief in service to the dead,
and the idea that burial was merely part of an elaborate process of support-
ing them into an afterlife through obits, month-minds, and cycles of
prayer. In the ®rst two decades of the reign the bishops remained uncon-
vinced that the traditional view was subverted. Parker, visiting Canterbury
diocese in 1569, continued to use the language of the Elizabethan Injunc-
tions, reminding the parishes that `obits, dirges, trentals, or any such
like use' were outlawed.164 A decade later Richard Barnes of Durham was
still having to insist in his northern territory that there should be `no
communions or commemorations' for the dead or associated rituals.165 In
the 1560s wills often continued either to request prayers for the dead, or
to provide forms of benevolence that suggest a continuing belief in the

161
Margo Todd has shown convincingly that Spicer exaggerates the success of the Kirk on
burial. Initially kirk sessions demanded penance for offences, even from the elite, but by the
turn of the century they had often abandoned the struggle to exclude the laity from burial, and
turned the arrangement to ®nancial advantage by taking ®nes. Culture of Protestantism, 333±8.
162
Spicer, `Burial and burial aisles', 156±8.
163
Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 396±8.
164 165
VAI iii. 215. Injunctions of Bishop Barnes, 16.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 457
166
ef®cacy of such prayer. By the 1570s explicit requests for prayer had
virtually disappeared, and so it seems had most resistance to Prayer Book
committal outside determinedly Catholic areas.167
This process of acculturation must surely have been aided by the reluc-
tance of the churches to intervene in the rest of funeral custom. In some
ways it positively endorsed continuity with the past. The tolling of bells
was maintained (to the dismay of the godly), the ritual of funeral proces-
sions was not challenged, neither were offerings to the poor.168 In Ireland
keening continued, and was reluctantly tolerated.169 The most that the
bishops sought to do was to regulate excess or overtly `superstitious' be-
haviour. Bells, for example, were to be tolled only brie¯y, not rung
endlessly, and no crosses were to be used in the church or churchyard or
on the graves of the dead. Regulation of these types of popular tradition
proved dif®cult, especially in the North. In the late 1570s several sextons
in Chester diocese were still ringing `more peals at funerals than is
decent'.170 Celebration of a godly life, endorsed even by many Puritans
through the preaching of the funeral sermon, maintained its hold in the
wider culture through almsgiving and feasting.171 The Elizabethan church
legitimated the expression of loyalty to the dead, or as Hooker put it, `that
love toward the party deceased which nature requireth'.172 The process of
remembering, reinforced as it was by legacies, church monuments, and
other cultural forms, still nurtured the idea of bonds between the dead and
the living.173 The weaning of the population from a belief in purgatory
did not, perhaps, create quite such a traumatic divide between the present
and hereafter as Duffy's argument suggests.

The Practice of Discipline

The Scots Confession of 1560 had followed the French reformed church
in making ecclesiastical discipline the third mark of the `true Kirk of

166
C. Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire 1540±1580 (Cam-
bridge, 1997), 118±24, 152±60. F.G. Emmison (ed.), Wills of the County of Essex, 12 vols.
(Washington, D.C., 1982±), i. 365±6; ii. 142, 194±5.
167
For an example of continuing resistance see H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: The Catholic
Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire 1558±1790 (1966), 21.
168
Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 398±403. Houlbrooke, Death and the Family, 264±71.
For Scotland see D.B. Thoms, The Kirk of Brechin (Perth, 1972), 21, 45.
169
S.A. Meigs, The Reformations in Ireland (Basingstoke, 1997), 136±8.
170
VAI iii. 256, 289, 309, 383. Purvis, Tudor Parish Documents, 73, 160.
171
Maltby, Prayer Book and People, 56±63.
172
Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 75. 2.
173
J.S.W. Helt, `Women, memory and will-making in Elizabethan England', in Gordon and
Marshall, Place of the Dead, 188±205.
458 Reformations Established and Contested
174
Christ'. Upon that statement of belief was erected a system of congre-
gational discipline that in theory, and increasingly in practice, sought to
construct a society regulated according to the principles of the reformed
faith.175 Kirk sessions, presided over by a consort of ministers and elders,
disciplined erring laymen, ordered penance, and, as an ultimate threat,
excommunicated offenders. From the 1580s onwards the presbyteries pro-
vided powerful regional support for the efforts of individual communities.
Meanwhile, the Kirk had managed to free itself from much of the business
of the old church courts: from 1564 onwards disputes about teinds, testa-
ments, and defamation were heard by a separate commissary system estab-
lished by the Privy Council.176 The ministers were enabled to concentrate
on the true business of bringing godly discipline to an unregenerate soci-
ety. It was small wonder that English Puritans looked northwards with
envious eyes. Instead of this steady movement towards true order, the
English church was saddled, in the words of the Admonition to the Parlia-
ment, with a local court system that was `but a petty little stinking ditch'
which `punisheth whoredoms and adulteries with toyish censures, remit-
teth without satisfying the congregation . . . and committeth a thousand
such like abominations'.177 Rather than making discipline a de®ning mark
of the Church, the English hierarchy was, in this view, content to com-
promise with the secular world by continuing the old business of the
Catholic courts; to employ a law almost entirely papal in its content; and
to use such powers as it possessed against virtuous ministers, not against
sinners. Few aspects of the Reformation seemed so clearly to divide Eng-
land and Scotland as the practice of discipline.178
The bitterness of English Puritan invective had some justi®cation. Formal
rights to self-discipline within the congregation were of®cially closed by
the nature of the Elizabethan settlement, and even the most sympathetic
prelate could not surrender jurisdictional rights to any nascent presbytery.
The promised reform of the ecclesiastical law was stillborn, and the courts

174
G.D. Henderson (ed.), The Scots Confession, 1560 and the Negative Confession, 1581 (Edin-
burgh, 1937), 75±7. For a valuable analysis of the origins of the emphasis on discipline see
J.K. Cameron, `Godly nurture and admonition in the Lord: ecclesiastical discipline in the
reformed tradition' in L. Grame and K. Horby (eds.), Die Danische Reformation vor ihrem inter-
nationalem Hintergrund (Gottingen, 1990), 264±76.
175
Parker, `St Andrews', 159±92. Graham, Uses of Reform, 4 ff.
176
G. Donaldson, `The church courts', in An Introduction to Scottish Legal History (Stair
Society, Edinburgh, 1958), 363±73.
177
W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes (1954), 33±4.
178
M. Ingram, `Puritans and the church courts, 1560±1640', in Durston and Eales, Culture of
English Puritanism, 58±91. It should be noted that the Channel Islands also aspired to the true
discipline of the Calvinist church, and established a standard of godly control that made Guern-
sey an attractive place of exile for Thomas Cartwright in the 1590s: D.M. Ogier, Reformation and
Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge, 1996), 89, 104±8.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 459
were staffed with lawyers, often laymen, who were trained in the civil law
and who, at least in the early part of the reign, were routinely conservative in
religious sympathy.179 Accusations of corruption and inertia can sometimes
be substantiated. Meanwhile, the General Assembly of the Kirk threw itself
enthusiastically into the task of establishing discipline. Some ¯avour of its
sentiments can be gained from the 1569 Ordoure of Excommunicatioun and of
Public Repentance, which established a tariff of punishments. Murderers,
witches, and open blasphemers were all deserving of death by scriptural law,
and must therefore be excommunicate; fornicators, drunks, and those who
displayed open contempt for the Kirk were to do public penance; lesser
offenders, including absentees from church, were normally to be offered
private reproof by the session.180 The Kirk also achieved some notable
disciplinary triumphs that seemed to af®rm godly rule: the abolition of
Yuletide celebration being merely the most spectacular example.
Yet, when viewed from the perspective of the parish, the sharp differ-
ences between the two systems become blurred. This is partly because the
broad objectives of episcopal and presbyterian discipline were often iden-
tical. Both churches aspired to impose regular patterns of Sunday worship,
and of communion reception; both sought to punish sin, especially sexual
sin, and to regulate the aspects of social behaviour that might lead to
delinquency; both were acutely aware of the threat of Catholicism. In
practice, both systems addressed much of their energy to issues of sexuality
and marriage: they represented approximately a third of cases in mid-
Elizabethan Wiltshire; as much as two-thirds in Aberdeen in the 1570s.181
There are also parallels in the problems that the English courts and Scot-
tish sessions encountered in forcing appearance and imposing punishment.
In the 1560s the kirk session for Canongate, Edinburgh, and St Andrews
had modest `no show' rates, but two decades later Anstruther Wester
failed to persuade a third of those complained against to attend. As soon as
cases moved from the local court to the presbytery no-show rates tended
to climb, so that at the end of the 1580s Stirling presbytery could not
compel the attendance of well over a third of those summoned.182 Even
the last ®gure looks very impressive when compared with Marchant's
calculation that barely 30 per cent of defenders in disciplinary cases in the
Diocese of Chester in 1595 appeared and were obedient to the court's
orders.183 But in England, as in Scotland, it seems that the more local the

179
R.A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in the
Diocese of York, 1560±1600 (Cambridge, 1969), 236±45.
180
Knox, vi. 447±70.
181
Ingram, Church Courts, 66±9. Graham, Uses of Reform, 120±1.
182
Graham, Uses of Reform, 86±7, 100, 167, 225.
183
Marchant, Church under the Law, 204±35.
460 Reformations Established and Contested
court, the more likely to secure some response: ®gures for the Wiltshire
archdeaconries, for Chichester, and for Leicester show appearance rates
that average about 75 per cent.184
In both systems certain social groups were routinely resistant to discip-
line. The mobile poor, though particularly prone to be accused of illicit
sexual behaviour, were notoriously dif®cult to control, and rarely seem to
have been pursued with tenacity by the ecclesiastical authorities. At the
other end of the social spectrum the elites were more than likely to escape
the disciplinary net, particularly in sexual cases. Even the Scots, says
Graham, did not peer `into the bedrooms of the notables' with the same
zeal as those of lesser mortals.185 A small category of persons were also self-
consciously contumacious, particularly some of those accused of major
sexual offences. William Flower of Northallerton, Yorkshire, for example,
was said in 1575 to live in an adulterous relationship, to be `full of con-
tempt' for his local minister, and to care `for no law'.186 Such individuals
were small in number, but represent a substratum of `irreligion' against
which the court system had little effect, and communal norms probably
also failed. More predictably, both the English and the Scottish courts
found it particularly dif®cult to handle determined religious dissent: the
ecclesiastical commission, and ultimately the apparatus of the secular state,
had to be invoked against Catholicism: in Scotland the General Assembly
took up the struggle, only intermittently supported by the crown.187
The success or failure of discipline, when viewed from the perspective of
the parishioners who were its prime targets, lay above all in its compatibility
with communal values. Sexual offences made up much of the business of
the courts largely because wardens and elders wished to police these aspects
of lay behaviour, particularly since the outcome of sin was so often bastardy.
The mantra often repeated by churchwardens at visitation, that so and so
was suspected of unchastity `to the offence of the parishioners', seems to
re¯ect the sentiments of at least the substantial householders.188 Even less
glaring sins, like carting on a Sunday, began to be described as offensive to
184
The calculations for appearance are complex, since adjustments have to be made to the
crude ®gures to arrive at any realistic conclusions: they are discussed systematically in Ingram.
Some diocesan evidence runs counter to the assumption that the archidiaconal courts could
exercise the most effective discipline. Most notably, attendance levels for disciplinary proceed-
ings in the Diocese of Ely after the 1590±1 visitation reached 93 per cent on Ingram's adjusted
®gures: Church Courts, 340±54.
185
Graham, Uses of Reform, 259±79. B.P. Lenman, `The limits of godly discipline in the early
modern period, with particular reference to England and Scotland', in von Greyerz, Religion
and Society, 124±45. Ingram, Church Courts, 353±8.
186
Sheils, Grindal's Visitation, 64±5.
187
M. Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981), 214±22.
188
For the language of complaint from the wardens see Sheils, Grindal's Visitation, passim,
and Hussey, `Visitations of Canterbury', 33 ff.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 461
`well-disposed people' as the reformation of manners had impact in some
parishes towards the end of the century. Miscreants who failed to perform
penance did not give `satisfaction' to the parish: the language of the wardens
here often implying that the courts had been de®cient as well for their
failure to enforce penalties. But the social role of the courts went beyond
the control of sexual misdemeanour: they represented the outlet for those
disputes that could not be settled by local arbitration and peacemaking.
When, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, the volume of business being
conducted in the English ecclesiastical courts began to grow signi®cantly it
may be that this re¯ects the failures of local processes of dispute-resolution
rather than an increasing interventionism from above.189 There is no par-
ticular evidence that ecclesiastical judges in England sought to abrogate to
themselves more sexual and social business. Here, however, there is some
contrast with the Scottish sessions. The intense localism of Scottish congre-
gational discipline encouraged the Kirk to assume a more explicitly medi-
atory role, resolving the con¯icts of the community.190 For example, the
Canongate kirk session held meetings in the 1560s that were a prelude to
communion celebration, reconciling neighbours, and, if necessary, impos-
ing penance on those who failed in Christian charity.191 This was precisely
the sort of activity, backed by enforceable penalties, that was the envy of the
English Puritan movement, and it may well be that it would have been
quite widely acceptable to ordinary parishioners concerned about order and
discipline in their communities. One can imagine the wardens of Milden-
hall, Suffolk, so closely studied by Craig, warming to a system that gave
greater powers of enforcement to the parish.192
The disciplinary systems of the two churches were not, however,
driven only by social and sexual concerns. Both aspired to enforce con-
formity, and, towards the end of the century, to link this with regularity
of worship and good order on the sabbath. Both were pressed from above
by bishops and by the leaders of the presbytery. Whitgift's regime at
Canterbury produced a notable tightening of control and ecclesiastical ini-
tiative.193 In Scotland the development of the network of Presbyterian

189
Carlson, Marriage, 156±80, stresses very strongly that the role of the ecclesiastical courts in
communal affairs was that of a safety net. Large numbers of disputes and cases emerging from a
particular parish is, he suggests, indicative of the failure of internal mechanisms of management
and control, and often as well as showing a weakness in clerical leadership. There is a danger
that this line of analysis excludes too completely the initiatives of the ordinaries, but it is better
attuned to an understanding of how the courts were seen than studies that work purely from the
evidence provided by the courts themselves.
190
Parker, `St Andrews', 174±7.
191 192
Graham, Uses of Reform, 102±3. Craig, `Co-operation and initiatives', 370±80.
193
J. Strype, The Life of John Whitgift DD (1718), 209±10. Brinkworth, Archdeacon's Court,
vol. ii, pp. v±vi.
462 Reformations Established and Contested
synods from the 1580s, although interrupted by political con¯ict, estab-
lished a fuller grid of discipline upon the very variable endeavour of the
local sessions. Before this period there is genuine uncertainty about how
many congregations could be said to live under discipline: by the 1590s
the question remains relevant only for the Highland zone. Drives for
conformity, energetic attacks on sabbath-breaking in the case of the Scots,
and a steadier insistence on regular Sunday worship characterize the last
years of the century. Yet, even then, the courts often re¯ect particular,
local concerns and con¯icts, rather than a systematic disciplinary agenda
from above. A godly, but contentious, cleric in an English parish could
fundamentally change the court record. Thus Simon Hacksuppe, rector of
Weston Colville, Cambridgeshire, from 1583 to 1605, who called himself
a `teacher of God's Word', had his parish in deep con¯ict about his refusal
to wear the surplice and attacked individuals in his sermons. A ¯ow of
presentments came to the courts from Weston Colville about non-attend-
ance and sabbath failures. Few cases involved community disputes and
both before and after Hacksuppe's ministry the parish appears to have
been quiet.194 The Scottish system could produce similar abrupt transi-
tions: notably in small kirk sessions like that of Moni®eth, where a key
minister, Andrew Clayhills, pushed a disciplinary agenda with great vigour
at the turn of the century. Within three years the initiative was spent, and
the session went back to performing its routine task of assailing sexual
delinquency.195
Perhaps the ultimate contrast between the two disciplinary systems es-
tablished by the English and Scots lies in the visible contrast in `perform-
ing repentance' in church and kirk.196 English parishioners were
intermittently exposed to a traditional penitent standing in white sheet
before the congregation on a Sunday confessing to sins as ordered by the
church courts and asking forgiveness. The performances were sporadic,
repeated at most only three times and apparently undertaken with great
reluctance: commutation to a ®ne or simple evasion of punishment were
the preferred English modes of behaviour. The Scottish congregation, by
contrast, seems to have accepted communal discipline with unconcealed
enthusiasm. The ritual of discipline, with its processions of penitents, its
sermons urging repentance, and its unique use of the stool, or bench,

194 195
Carlson, Marriage, 173±4. Graham, Uses of Reform, 239±45.
196
I owe the discussion of `performing repentance' to Margo Todd, who gave a stimulating
paper on this theme to the Religion in the British Isles seminar in Oxford in Trinity Term
2001. This was a preview of her important book on Protestantism in Scotland. Cameron also
emphasizes the drama of repentance: `Godly nurture and admonition', in Grame (ed.), Die
danische reformation, 272±5. The signi®cance of repentance is indicated in the unique survival in
Scotland of stools and benches designated for the sinner: Hay, Scottish Churches, 196.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 463
placed in front of the preacher, all spoke to the central signi®cance of the
experience. Kirk session records indicate that there was a regular expect-
ation of several members of the congregation performing repentance at
any one time, and serious offences involved many weeks of sitting upon
the stool. While some individuals inevitably resisted the pressure to con-
fess sin publicly, the importance of reincorporation into communities that
had accepted discipline so enthusiastically led others to seek forgiveness
with apparent alacrity. This public expiation of sin had by the end of the
century indeed become the third de®ning mark of the `true' Kirk in
Scotland.197

Inclusion and Exclusion

When Richard Gough wished to anatomize his community of Myddle,
Shropshire, a hundred years after the death of Queen Elizabeth, he de-
scribed the parish at prayer, seated in its pews.198 The period between the
Elizabethan settlement and the civil war had been of great signi®cance for
the articulation of local hierarchy and order through the ®xing of church
seating. The primary purpose of such pewingÐthe provision of more
comfortable conditions in which sermons and public prayer could be
heardÐdid not con¯ict with the secondary bene®t, that of assuring and
stabilizing social structures which might otherwise have remained ¯uid
and uncertain.199 There were various methods by which the churchwar-
dens, who were normally in charge of the process, could act. Pews could
in certain circumstances be erected by individuals, and maintained by
them, a route particularly favoured by the elite. But more generally the
wardens proceeded to erect and allocate pews, usually in return for rent,
often by the end of the sixteenth century designating the whole church
for pewing at the same time. Pew plans were drawn up `for the parish to
have good order', and by the early seventeenth century there was an
expectation that they would be revised from time to time.200 Certain
general conventions governed allocation, but much was driven by custom,
above all the choice of whether space should be allocated by householders
(the most favoured method) or by holdings or tenements (the method
adopted at Myddle).

197
Parker, `St Andrews', 180±2.
198
D. Hey (ed.), Richard Gough: The History of Myddle (1981).
199
K. Dillow, `The Social and Ecclesiastical Signi®cance of Church Seating Arrangements
and Pew Disputes, 1500±1740', University of Oxford D.Phil. (1990). Marsh, ` ``Common
Prayer'' ', 66±83.
200 Marsh, ` ``Common Prayer'' ', 81±2.
464 Reformations Established and Contested
The erection of seating in English, Welsh, and Scottish churches gave
rise to a rich vein of disputes about allocation, bearing on such key sensi-
tivities as the reputation of individuals and the failure of charity.201 In
Scotland, where general pewing post-dates our period, the ambition of
individual families and groups such as guilds drove the process in earlier
years. By the end of the century kirk sessions were regularly hearing
disputes about the placing of seats by prominent individuals `for keeping of
peace and quietness and good order both in kirk and country'.202 In
England and Wales, where pewing was quite general before 1600, it is
possible at times to use the evidence available to gain insight into the
choices made about who was de®ned as belonging fully to the commu-
nity. The most common pattern appears to be that pews were assigned on
the basis of rank, so that the wardens had to consider `the dignity and
degree of the party' and their `antiquities and callings'.203 Landed families
would occupy the front rows of the nave, or sometimes even penetrate
into the chancel if the church had not been separated to provide a com-
munion room. Lesser mortals had to rely on their good standing with the
wardens, and the subtle variations of status inevitably led to con¯ict.
These could be so dif®cult to adjudicate that by the early seventeenth
century some urban parishes, such as St John's, Chester, actually appointed
commissioners for `Placing and Displacing'.204 To possess a pew came to
indicate identity in the community and to express the precise nature of
that identity. There are no absolute rules, since matters were clearly
governed as much by local custom as by broad social convention. How-
ever, a common pattern was for all married householders who could
afford any rent to hold a pew, sometimes with their whole family, some-
times with the women and children separated in another seat.205 Children
might be seated on stools at the pew ends, as at Great Haddenham in
Essex, or assigned benches at the back of the church, as at Hornchurch.
This may have been a practical matter of space, but is likely also to have
been indicative of their marginal status in the order of the church. Un-
married men and maidens were usually, following the ancient practice of
the church, allocated distinct seats. Thus far the arrangements within the

201
Dillow, `Church Seating', 120 ff. Marsh, ` ``Common Prayer'' ', 86±90.
202
Todd, Culture of Protestantism, 318±24; the quotation is at p. 321. Hay, Scottish Churches,
195±9. The importance of guild pews, a logical development from the guild altars of the pre-
Reformation church, seems to be unique to Scotland within the British Isles.
203
McIntosh, Community Transformed, 199±201. Dillow, `Church Seating', 142±5.
204
Alldridge, `Loyalty and Identity', 95.
205
On gender separation in England see M. Aston, `Segregation in church', in W.J. Sheils
and D. Wood (eds.), Women in the Church, SCH 27 (Oxford, 1990), 237±94. For Scotland,
McMillan, Worship, 155. D. Hey, An English Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and
Stuarts (Leicester, 1974), 219±20.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 465
206
church were designed to re¯ect those of the wider community. The
dif®cult question is what happened to the poor: those unable to pay
church rate, or pew rents, or those who were strangers. The general
maxim adopted by the wardens seems to have been `no church rate, no
seat'. Most plans indicate the existence of `common' or free seats at the
back of the church where the poor in theory sat. At St Michael's, Chester,
in 1578, for example, they were probably occupied by the twelve cellar-
dwellers who could pay nothing for their own space.207
Free benches were of their nature undifferentiated and inferior, symbolic
of the weak attachment of the poor and outsiders to community. There has
been debate about how far these marginalized groups ever attended
church.208 To begin with mechanisms of enforcement: it seems clear that
neither church made sustained efforts to control non-attendance in the ®rst
decades after the settlements. In Scotland it was only in the 1580s, and more
consistently from the 1590s, that a number of the kirk sessions began to
pursue absenteeism and sabbath-breaking with the diligence initially re-
served for the assault on sexual misconduct.209 In the case of England it was
the growing fear of recusancy that prompted sustained action. Although the
1559 Act of Uniformity had imposed a 12d. ®ne for absence from church,
the state acted vigorously only in the 1580s with the imposition of crippling
monthly ®nes on the resolutely non-conformist. Though weekly attend-
ance at church was the key issue, a willingness to receive annual communion
became a major way of identifying those who were essentially conform-
ist.210 Local studies for participation at Easter communion, like that for
Havering in 1562, suggest that between 71 and 85 per cent of the population
received.211 The situation in Scotland was complicated by the relative
powerlessness of the Kirk to enforce its will outside certain favoured centres
in the ®rst decades of the Reformation and by its dependence on the support
of the local elites. It has been calculated that in godly St Andrews perhaps a
half to two-thirds of the population were communicant members of the
congregation in the 1570s.212 Thereafter in both countries percentages were

206
Dillow, `Church Seating', 143.
207
D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603±1660
(Oxford, 1985), 31. Alldridge, `Loyalty and identity', 94±8.
208
See, for example, K.V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), 189±90. M.
Ingram, `From reformation to toleration: popular religious cultures in England, 1540±1690', in
T. Harris (ed.), Popular Culture in England, c. 1500±1850 (Basingstoke, 1995), 115±17.
209
Graham, Uses of Reform, 204 ff.
210
Walsham, Church Papists, 10±11. M.C. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in Eng-
land, 1580±1625 (Cambridge, 1996), 98±115.
211
McIntosh, Community Transformed, 197±8.
212
K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Parish: Terling 1525±1700
(New York, 1979), 156.
466 Reformations Established and Contested
increased by disciplinary campaigns of the kind identi®ed by Wrightson and
Levine for Terling in Essex from 1583 to 1597. At their most impressive the
results can be seen in the carefully orchestrated Easter communions held in
Southwark in the 1590s where over 90 per cent of the population considered
eligible seem to have received.213
Regular attendance at Sunday worship was another matter. In the 1570s
Archbishop Grindal acknowledged in his visitation that those who were
not householders did not necessarily attend church.214 A generation later a
Wiltshire householder declared that men had `as good send their horses'
to prayer as their servants.215 The godly ministers of Dedham, Essex,
discussing discipline in the 1580s, saw householders as the key to attend-
ance on the sabbath, though they aspired to an inclusive church.216 All-
dridge's ®gures for Chester, based on pew rents, show high percentages of
assumed regular attendance in the middle decades of Elizabeth's reign:
83 per cent in St Michael's parish, and much lower 61 per cent in
St Oswald's.217 The dif®culty is that these ®gures do not include the poor
who did not pay their rents. Ingram, looking at a longer time span for the
area of Wiltshire, is cautiously optimistic about the growing habit of
attendance at Sunday worship, as a steady drive for attendance by the
diocesan of®cials after the 1570s, and again particularly from the 1590s,
made its mark.218 In Essex it was not until after the end of the century
that a number of parishes began to take simple absenteeism from church
seriously.219 Much the same story could probably be told in Scotland: in
the rural parish of Moni®eth, for example, attendance at annual commu-
nion involved most of the population, but until the 1580s weekly attend-
ance seems to have been only about 10 per cent of the communion
®gure.220 The Scots, however, strove to establish a clear discipline of

213 214
Boulton, `Limits of formal religion', 142±3. VAI iii. 266, 288.
215 216
Ingram, `Reformation to toleration', 116. Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 218.
217 218
Alldridge, `Loyalty and identity', 94±8. Ingram, Church Courts, 107±8.
219
Wrightson and Levine, Terling, 156±7. Attempts at calculating what percentage of the
English population was included within the church community have produced wildly varying
conclusions. The ®gures are inherently unreliable, and have to be worked on the basis of
evidence that is not necessarily commensurate: change over time is particularly dif®cult to
gauge. The conclusions of Peter Clark, that church absenteeism was rising as fast as the popula-
tion rate in Elizabethan England, is not sustained by any adequate quantitative data: P. Clark,
English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution (Hassocks, 1977), 156±7. Among
the groups poorly represented at Sunday worship were children: in some instances young
children were speci®cally excluded, as in Guernsey, where children under four were banned
from sermons: Ogier, Guernsey, 141. The Canons of 1604 required that everyone above four-
teen years should be present. For England see P. Grif®ths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experi-
ences in England, 1560±1640 (Oxford, 1996), 181±3, who emphasizes the ambiguity of the
evidence, but the assumption that youth should be present.
220
Bardgett, Scotland Reformed, 158±60.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 467
church attendance. Unlike their Dutch Calvinist counterparts, whose
control was restricted to the minority of full church members, Scottish
divines were free to try to comprehend the regenerate and unregene-
rate within the con®nes of the kirk.221 It must have been with some
complacency that the St Andrews Session recorded in 1600 that `the
people convene so frequently to the preaching that the kirk may not con-
veniently contain them'.222
Although the late sixteenth-century parish was capacious, and the ec-
clesiastical authorities sought to make it inclusive, it was in practice
marked by a series of involuntary and voluntary exclusions. Least
remarked by historians are those who were excluded from the parish
community and from the discipline of churchgoing by the continuing
weakness of the parochial structure. The pre-Reformation pattern of large
and scattered parishes with chapelries in the uplands of the British Isles,
and particularly in the Gaelic territories, was not altered in any fundamen-
tal way at the Reformation. At its most extreme this could still isolate
communities from religious support for prolonged periods: when the
minister of Kintail, Wester Ross, visited the Isle of Lewis in 1610 he
claimed that he had to marry people who had been co-habiting for years
and to baptize mature men and women.223 This pattern of distribution
does not explain the strength of Catholicism in Lancashire, or the resist-
ance to change in Elizabethan Ireland, but it facilitated those develop-
ments. In Lancashire it was some (though by no means all) of the large
upland parishes that proved most dif®cult for clergy and churchwardens to
supervise.224 In the case of Gaelic Ireland the population proved willing to
continue its pre-Reformation habits of accepting a variety of environ-
ments as holy: parish churches and other sites where Mass had been said,
but also former monastic sites and holy wells. The pervasiveness of the
idea of the holy in Catholic Ireland ensured that there was only a weak
connection to the idea of ®xed community that was so valued in England
and Lowland Scotland.225 It is an interesting paradox that it was the
Scottish Calvinists, in many ways so hostile to the idea of a building
possessing any peculiar sanctity, who, at the very end of the sixteenth

221
Lenman, `Limits of godly discipline', 135. Graham, Uses of Reform, 204 ff.
222
Hay Fleming, Register of St Andrews, ii. 925.
223
T.P. McCaughey, `Protestantism and Scottish Highland culture', in J. Mackey (ed.), An
Introduction to Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh, 1989), 188.
224
C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), 316±20.
225
Gillespie, Devoted People, 87±92. Peter Clark is one of the few historians who notes the
likely connection between scattered parishes and absenteeism, calculating that in Kent extra-
parochial areas like Blean Forest, and areas poorly served by parish churches like Romney
Marsh, could have accounted for 2 per cent of the local population: Clark, English Provincial
Society, 437 n. 26.
468 Reformations Established and Contested
century, slowly began the most effective exercise in ®xing the location of
congregations in Gaelic territory.226
Another form of physical separation was that provided by the great
household. Household worship was a deeply ingrained habit for the nobil-
ity and greater gentry in the generations before the Reformation, and there
was little incentive thereafter to adapt to new practices. The impulse to
associate this automatically with dissent or alienation from the established
faith must be resisted: the earls of Bedford worshipped in their own chapel,
precisely as did the earls of Arundel. When the 1559 Act of Uniformity
exempted the private worship of the nobility from its disciplinary provi-
sions, it was a re¯ection both of the speci®c need to secure noble support
and the more general belief that it was inappropriate to challenge the patriar-
chal authority of these men.227 Whitgift was understandably uncomfortable
with the idea of private worship, but in the Admonition controversy he
argued that it was acceptable to have ministry, preaching, and sacraments
apart from the parish if, for example, a nobleman's house was far from a
church.228 Although the Scottish Kirk felt no such inhibition, the state in
the person of James VI proved equally tolerant of the private devotions of
the great nobility: it would indeed have been dif®cult to be otherwise given
that as many as a third of the nobility and gentry remained Catholic in
sympathy.229 The Irish nobility managed to achieve a virtual separation
from the church through the use of their own chaplains, who, as a hostile
commentator observed of the earl of Clanricard's priests, favoured papistry
and had a `sacri®cing function'.230 Below the level of the greatest magnates
there was a more general expectation that members of the elite would be
present in church from time to time and, in the case of the English and
Welsh, would take communion publicly. From at least the 1570s private
chapels that were licensed by the English bishops were subject to the pro-
viso that communion must be taken once a year in the parish church. Yet
there was an understandable fear that this would not suf®ce, and that the
great household would be a breeding ground for `conventicles', or would
nurture a `nest of papists'. At the end of the century Bancroft noted with

226
Dawson, `Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd', 243±6.
227
L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), 730±1. F. Heal and C. Holmes, The
Gentry in England and Wales, 1500±1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), 368±9. W. Gibson, A Social History
of the Domestic Chaplain, 1530±1840 (1997), 16±28.
228
Ayre, Works of Whitgift, i. 207±12.
229
J. Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, Scotland 1470±1625 (1981), 133±4, though James
equally did nothing to stop the Kirk sending godly ministers into Catholic households to
`reason' with the nobility.
230
B. Cunningham (ed.), `A view of religious af®liation and practice in Thomond, 1591',
Archivium Hibernicum 48 (1994), 16.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 469
deep disapproval the French Calvinist Discipline that allowed princes and
nobles to have `particular consistories in their private homes'.231
Mobility, in its various forms, was a third manner in which contempor-
aries might be separated from their parish churches. Sailors and merchants,
drovers and carriers, all had respectable reasons for non-attendance, while
at the end of the century the growing mobility of the English and Welsh
elites, and the development of a London season, rendered aspirations to
parochial control more dif®cult. Above all the mobile poor were a self-
excluded category, and one that the wardens only intermittently regarded
as ripe for discipline.232 In contrast, the local poor and disaffected, those
who preferred the alehouse to the pew, were the subject of growing com-
plaints about sabbath-breaking. Such individuals were subject to commu-
nity pressures in that they were present and visible to the authorities, but
resistant, in that many cared little for the sanctions that the courts and
locality could impose. William Scrowton, accused of absenteeism by the
wardens of Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1575, `did give opprobrious words and
answers for executing their of®ce, calling them knaves'.233 A St Andrews
man came before the kirk sessions in 1593 for `playing on the sabbath,
extraordinary drinking, dinging of his wife, and passing forth of the kirk
before the blessing be given'.234 From individuals such as these emanated a
whole range of compromise behaviour: appearing in church only for the
second half of the service, or escaping before the sermon; regarding the
churchyard as a proxy for the building itself; putting in an appearance once
a month. Trading or playing sports were usually regarded as more than
satisfactory alternatives to listening to a sermon. Even when the disciplin-
ary noose was tightening in Scotland in the 1590s the ®shermen of Dun-
blane still preferred their Sunday market to attendance at the kirk.235
Beyond those who were not fully assimilated by the parish by virtue of
physical or social circumstances, or indifference to religious sanctions, are
the minorities who self-consciously rejected the Protestant settlements. Not
all refused a measure of protective integration into the community. For
many of those who are labelled as church papists in particular, the political
231
R. Bancroft, A Survay of the Pretended Holy Discipline (1593), 98. The canons of 1604
allowed for the consecration of chapels, but with the proviso that communion should rarely be
ministered on Sundays, and that the family should attend the parish church : G. Bray (ed.),
The Anglican Canons, 1529±1947 (Woodbridge, 1998), 362±3.
232
Ingram, Church Courts, 99±100, 106. Ingram shows that in the case of Keevil, Wiltshire,
which he subjected to in-depth study, most of those who were excommunicated and remained
contumacious were transients or servants: Ingram, `Religion, communities and moral discipline in
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: case studies', in K. von Greyerz (ed.), Religion
and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500±1800 (1984), 189.
233
Sheils, Grindal's Visitation, 47.
234
Hay Fleming, Register of St Andrews, ii. 771. McMillan, Worship, 158±9.
235
Graham, Uses of Reform, 178.
470 Reformations Established and Contested
and social advantages of minimal conformity outweighed their distaste for
the Protestant settlements. But the church papist was often placed so reluc-
tantly in the pew, that he or she would not make the necessary gestures of
outward obedience.236 Lancashire Puritans complained of those who with
`scof®ng and laughing countenances' withdrew themselves to the farthest
corners of the churches, or scuf¯ed and chattered during the sermon.
Thomas Blenerhasset, a Norfolk gentleman, so troubled the local vicar with
his `loud talking, laughing and reading' that the latter was on one occasion
forced to vacate the church.237 In Ireland, as ever, resistance was prone to be
particularly dramatized: wine was poured from communion cups and conse-
crated bread ¯ung about, the minister was sometimes forced to stop the
service `until the hostile auditors were expelled from the parish church'.238
Public gestures of this sort articulate a claim to separation, while following
the basic legal obligation to be present in church. Most church papists prob-
ably opted for quieter forms of withdrawal, especially the evasion of commu-
nion. It is notoriously dif®cult to quantify and differentiate recusants and
church papists, but Lancashire ®gures for the beginning of the seventeenth
century suggest more than half the known Catholics were thought to come
into the latter group.239
Non-conformists at the other end of the ideological spectrum also
practised outward obedience. Most notably the adherents of the Family of
Love, a Netherlandish sect which gained a foothold in parts of East Anglia
in the 1550s and 1560s and consciously encouraged its adherents to be
nicodemist and to blend into their own parishes.240 However, it was
critical for those who sought to challenge the prevailing ideology of the
established churches that they developed networks separated from the
community, sustaining spiritual identity through kin groups, households,
and the role of itinerant leaders. The network of gentry households that
sustained the Catholic mission under Elizabeth is so well known as to
need no detailed discussion here.241 In Scotland such arrangements were

236
Walsham, Church Papists, 89±91.
237
J.F. Williams (ed.), Bishop Redman's Visitation of 1597, Norfolk Record Society 18 (1946), 47.
238
P.F. Moran, A History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin since the Reformation
(Dublin, 1864), 72.
239
For example, a survey of Prescot, Lancashire, one of the `affected' parishes in the country,
enumerated 204 recusants and 244 non-communicants: C. Talbot (ed.), Recusant Records, Cath-
olic Record Society 53 (1961), 146. Purvis, Tudor Parish Documents, 77. On the methodological
problems of identifying forms of conformity see Questier, Conversion, 98±102.
240
On the Family of Love see C. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550±1630
(Cambridge, 1994).
241
On Catholic recusancy the fullest study remains J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community
1570±1850 (1975). See also A. Dures, English Catholicism 1558±1642 (Harlow, 1983). The vivid
narrative of John Gerard provides the best insight into these networks from a contemporary
perspective: P. Caraman (ed.), John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (1951).
 Church, Clergy, Laity 471
slower to develop, partly because the control the Kirk could exercise was
imperfect. The most striking case, as ever, is that of Ireland, where even
within the Pale the networks sustaining Catholic recusancy possessed the
qualities of an alternative church by the 1580s. Dublin patricians and
Waterford merchants did nurture militant Catholicism through household
chaplaincies and kin loyalties, but there was also a distinctive sense of a full
challenge to the Protestant Church in operation. When the president of
Munster happened to arrive in Waterford early one Sunday morning in
1576 he was amazed to see the inhabitants `resort out of the [Catholic]
churches by heaps'.242
When an English Protestant found that the bounds of parish religious
routine proved too constraining, a range of alternatives presented them-
selves. The most orthodox of these fell within that Collinsonian category
of `voluntary religion'.243 Sermon-gadding was the favoured pastime of
the godly, who, like John Winthrop the future governor of Massachusetts,
`could not miss a good sermon, though many miles off'.244 Urban lectur-
erships broke the parochial habit with their emphasis on shared spiritual
fellowship and the edifying of the soul provided by great preachers. The
next development from the pattern of individual sermon-gadding was
attendance at a fast, like that orchestrated at Southill in Bedfordshire in
1603, when four ministers presided over a day of preaching, prayer, and
psalm-singing. By then such behaviour was well established: the ®rst
famous example being the Stamford fast of 1580 proclaimed in the after-
math of the earthquake of that year. The parallels with past Catholic
activities sometimes struck observers. In 1586 the town clerk of Barnsta-
ple, Devon, recorded that `an exercise or holy fast' was held at Pilton in
Devon, previously a major Marian pilgrimage centre, and that `there some
offered [money] as they did when they went on pilgrimage'.245 Ecclesi-
astical authorities were not opposed to the principle of public fast and
repentance, but as ever they were deeply suspicious of occasions not
deliberately sanctioned by authority, and particularly of the way in which
parochial boundaries were transcended.246 The English godly could once
again only look with longing at their Scottish counterparts, who fasted

242
H.H.W. Robinson-Hammerstein, `Aspects of the Continental education of Irish Students
in the reign of Elizabeth I', Historical Studies 8 (1971), 146.
243
Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 242±83.
244
Winthrop Papers, vol. i: 1498±1628 (Massachussetts Historical Society, Cambridge, Mass.,
1929), 155.
245
Collinson, `Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism', in Durston and Eales, Culture of English
Puritanism, 51±4.
246
The 1604 canons were explicit on the need for fasts to be sanctioned by authority: Bray,
Anglican Canons, 363±5.
472 Reformations Established and Contested
with remarkable regularity, making whole weeks periods of abstinence, to
`avert the Lord's wrath'.247
The development of such fellowship in the Lord was also likely to
generate inward-looking bonds: those of the spiritualized household, and
of the gathered community. Meetings to repeat sermons and discuss them
became part of the `accepted economy of religious practice' among Eng-
lish Protestants.248 The problem was that such meetings quickly became
tarred with the brush of non-conformity, especially after Whitgift had
uncovered the `classis' movement. So the archbishop who had earlier
defended the possibility of private household worship became morbidly
sensitive to any display of privatized piety. In 1583 `preaching, reading,
catechism and other such exercise' undertaken in private and involving
more than one family was prohibited. The canons of 1604 repeated the
prohibition, and episcopal instinct continued to associate the most con-
strained of Calvinist devotional meetings with unorthodox behaviour.249
The fears of authority were not wholly irrational, however. Coming to-
gether to repeat sermons and to pray, perhaps to enjoy the hospitality of a
like-minded family, left open the possibility of overturning the established
religious order. There could be active ideological dissent, or simply too
great a lay initiative in interpretation. Women might speak on the basis of
a knowledge that they should not and could not display in the public
sphere.250 Groups sometimes went further, and covenanted among them-
selves to `turn unto the Lord with all our hearts in sincerity' and avoid
`outward hindrances'.251 Thus in the late Elizabethan years some groups
of the godly arrived either at `quasi-separatism', de®ning themselves as
distinct among the unregenerate but not wholly detached from the parish,
or at the full separatism of a few. Among the last are the congregations at
London and Amsterdam, under the leadership of Henry Barrow, clearly
intent on not `staying for the magistrate' in the establishment of a godly
church. But they were a small minority among those who sought spiritual
solace beyond the de®ning bounds of parochial Protestantism.252

247
I.P. Hazlett, `Playing God's card: Knox and fasting, 1565±6', in R.A. Mason (ed.), John
Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998), 176±200. For national fasts see APS 3:40,
353, 453; 4:70. For local fasts see Todd, Culture of Protestantism, 344±8.
248
Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 264±76.
249
Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 307. Bray, Anglican Canons, 365.
250
P. Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1500±1720 (1993), 119±24.
251
R. Rogers, Seven Treatises, containing such direction as is gathered out of the holie scriptures
(1603), 487, 489
252
B.R. White, The English Separatist Tradition (Oxford, 1971). S. Brachlow, The Communion
of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology, 1570±1625 (Oxford, 1988). M.R. Watts, The
Dissenters, i: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), 14±40.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 473
The concerns that drove minorities into semi-separation or a full de-
tachment from the church `by law established' were diverse. The London
congregation located in Holy Trinity in the Minories that so morti®ed
Grindal in the 1560s was strongly Calvinist in tendency, baptizing by `the
Geneva book' and showing an alarming unwillingness to behave reverently
before the magistrate.253 The chronicler John Stow swiftly labelled them as
`Anabaptists who are called puritans'.254 Grindal was particularly discon-
certed by the truculence of the women who invaded his palace and
hooted him in the pulpit calling `ware horns'.255 The few radical recusants
uncovered in Gloucester diocese in the 1570s seem to have been of the
same type. They refused to have children baptized in the parish church or
to participate in its ceremonies since `malefactors and papists [be not]
excluded out of the church'.256 It is likely that these and other early
recusants had some connection with mid-Tudor opposition to Catholi-
cism, to which the Londoners at least looked back as a time of heroic
resistance when there was no hierarchy but `a congregation of us in this
city in Queen Mary's days and a congregation at Geneva'.257 More re-
markable is the evidence of the tenacity of a hard-core of separatists in the
face of persecution by the bishops: several of those arrested by Grindal
refused conformity and remained permanently imprisoned; several of
those in trouble in Gloucestershire in the early 1570s were still imprisoned
or under renewed investigation in the 1580s.258
The more organized Calvinist dissenting congregations of the last
decades of Elizabeth's reign took as their point of departure a refusal to
compromise upon ceremony and a determination not to integrate with the
ungodly. The Brownists and others found assurance in Revelation 3. 16:
`because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, it will come to pass
I will spew thee out of my mouth'.259 And vitriol against the established
253
P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 1519±1583 (1979), 176±83. H.G. Owen, `The Liberty of
the Minories: a study in Elizabethan religious radicalism', East London Papers 8 (1965), 81±97.
254
J. Stow, Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, ed. J. Gardiner, CS ns 28 (1880), 143.
255
W. Nicholson (ed.), The Remains of Edmund Grindal (PS, Cambridge, 1843), 288±9.
256
C. Litzenberger, `De®ning the Church of England: religious change in the 1570s', in
S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger (eds.), Belief and Practice in Reformation England (Cambridge,
2000), 146±9.
257
On the networks of godly Protestantism in London from Mary's reign to the 1570s see
B. Usher, `Backing Protestantism: the London godly, the Exchequer and the Foxe circle', in
D. Loades (ed.), John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), 105±25.
258
Litzenberger, `De®ning the Church of England', 147.
259
There were continuities from earlier non-conformity to outright separation in East
Anglia, where leaders of the Brownist movement in the 1580s, such as Henry Copping, had an
earlier history of trouble with the authorities: D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors (Oxford,
1986), 204±7. It was Copping who made particular play of the quotation from St Paul.
M.E. Moody, `Trials and troubles of a non-conformist layman: the spiritual odyssey of Stephen
Offwood, 1564±c.1635', Church History 51 (1982), 159.
474 Reformations Established and Contested
church, unconstrained by the formalities of much mainstream Calvinist
discourse, became a de®ning feature of the separatists. This sometimes
issued in millenarian `incidents' like that provoked by William Hackett,
the Northamptonshire man who claimed to speak with the spirit of John
the Baptist, and who prophesied imminent doom for the Church of Eng-
land unless it adopted a full Calvinist programme of regeneration.260
Or there was the vitriol of John Penry, whose agonies over the tragedy
of his own Welsh church did much to propel him from non-conformity
to the more radical solution of separatism.261 The circumstances of the
early 1590s, with a number of the leaders of separatism imprisoned and
then tried for sedition, pushed others such as Francis Johnson across the
boundary from non-conformity to full separation, and Johnson's ¯ight to
Amsterdam provides a de®ning moment in the development of later sect-
arianism.262
Although the label of anabaptism was freely dispensed by the opponents
of radicalism, it is dif®cult to detect in Elizabethan England much
identity with Continental Anabaptist thought.263 Only the Family of
Love, with its emphasis on a spiritualized mysticism and inner illumin-
ation, stands out as a distinctive movement opposed to the fundamental
Calvinist principles of Elizabethan Protestantism. The teachings of the
movement's founder, Hendrik Niclaes, had taken the form of a combin-
ation of Catholic mystical and of Anabaptist radical ideas and melded
them into a belief system based upon the idea that the true disciple could
be `godded with God', set apart for spiritual perfection in this world. This
produced a group who were both antipathetic to the unregenerate and
were themselves not easily integrated into a sect-type movement. Their
radical individualism and willingness to conceal belief behind a facËade of
conformity made them both elusive and, perhaps, attractive to those who
found the prevailing ideology spiritually barren. The recent historian of
the movement may have been unduly ambitious in discovering familist
tendencies not only in the Elizabethan court but also in the person of the
queen. He is surely correct, however, to suggest that the mysticism of
Niclaes had a potential appeal for those who sought a personal spirituality
beyond that of the congregation.264

260
W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558±1610 (Northampton, 1979),
136±9. A. Walsham, ` ``Frantick Hacket'': prophecy, sorcery, insanity and the Elizabethan Pur-
itan movement', HJ 41 (1998), 27±66.
261
J. Penry, Three Treatises concerning Wales, ed. D. Williams (Cardiff, 1960).
262
White, English Separatist Tradition, 82±115.
263
I.B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558
(Nieuwkoop, 1972), 54, 76, 152±4.
264
Marsh, Family of Love, 162 ff.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 475
Rejection of the established Church of England by those seeking further
reform is an interestingly circumscribed phenomenon: limited both by
numbers and by geography. Neither in northern England, nor Wales, if we
discount the lone voice of John Penry in the latter, is there evidence of
full separatism or sectarianism.265 It may be that in both these cases pressure
on Protestants to adopt a fully conformist position was less intense than in
southern England, and the incentive to exclude oneself from an imperfect
church correspondingly less. There is silence also from Ireland, where recu-
sancy was simply and automatically identi®ed with Catholicism. Scotland
also shows no evidence of any move to reject the Kirk from any more
radical position: again those who chose exclusion were almost by de®nition
Catholic. In these two last cases the stark contrasts between the churches
seem to have left little space for any third way. The binary divisions of
confessionalization demanded allegiance that tended to preclude such long-
ings as those of the English familist who explained that he belonged neither
to the Church of England, nor to the Romanist Church `but hoped yet
there was a third Church, which should stand where both these shall fail'.266

Assimilating the Reformation?

Looking back from the vantage point of the early years of the united reign
of James VI and I, British Protestants had many reasons to offer thanks to
the Lord for `restoring the purity of religion'.267 England was now
reformed, at least to the extent that its people had all been exposed to
three generations of of®cial Protestant settlement, to a stable liturgy, and
to an increasing range of preaching across the realm. The Scottish Kirk
had emerged bloody but unbowed from the battles of the previous
decades, and was providing settled witness of the truth of the gospel.
Ireland was another matter, but its papists showed through their unassail-
able obstinacy that Satan and his minions still walked the earth and that
there must be perpetual vigilance and perpetual preaching by the defend-
ers of God's truth. It was, however, unduly optimistic of the preacher
Thomas Baughe to claim even in 1614 that there was `no nook, nor angle
of this Isle, where the language of the gospel is not heard'.268 There were,
in fact, great swathes of territory where the effort of primary evangelism
265
On the absence of separatism in the north see R.C. Richardson, Puritanism in North-West
England (Manchester, 1972), 86, though there were some household conventicles. On Wales,
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, offers nothing on radicalism.
266
Quoted in C. Marsh, `The gravestone of Thomas Lawrence revisited', in M. Spufford
(ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters (Cambridge, 1995), 228.
267
R. Tynley, Two Learned Sermons (1609), 66±8.
268
T. Baughe, A Summons to Judgement (1614), 33. A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern
England (Oxford, 1999), 287±95.
476 Reformations Established and Contested
by Protestant ministers had scarcely begun. Even in the heartlands, there
had been insuf®cient preaching and catechizing: in the Celtic territories
the dissemination of Protestantism was still in its infancy. Only in Wales,
where the work of biblical translation was beginning to take effect, did
the decades around the turn of the century see a sustained commitment to
the conversion of the people in their own tongue. William Morgan's
revised Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1599,
and the Homilies, translated by Edward James in 1606, were the most
visible fruit: equally intriguing were the struggles to translate the Psalms
into Welsh verse, ®nally resolved by Edmwnd Prys in 1620.269 But even in
Wales some sense of the continuing dif®culties of evangelization through
print is revealed in one distinctive vignette. In the Breconshire parish of
Talachddu there was a collection of twenty-®ve parish books: only
three were in Welsh, though the population must have been largely
monoglot.270 `God only knows how pathetic is the situation of the poor
commonalty' remained an appropriate lament for divines who depended
upon the power of the Word.271
Elsewhere the picture was even less promising. The Irish New Testa-
ment was ®nally published in 1603 with the support of Dublin Protestants,
and the translated Book of Common Prayer was printed in 1608.272 But
the newly formed Trinity College failed to live up to the expectation that
it would begin to produce an Irish-speaking ministry. Only one of the
founding fellows, William Daniel, encouraged the study of Irish: the rest
followed Archbishop Loftus's policy of anglicization. Despite cautious in-
terest from both Elizabeth and later James in the construction of a mission
to the Irish orchestrated through Trinity, little was achieved. The failure
was one both of institutional capacity and of recruits: to quote Ford, `in
order to convert the native Irish, [the Church] needed native ministers;
but the supply of native ministers was meagre because the Irish were
unconverted'.273 Moreover, a striking feature even of those like William
Daniel who were ®rmly committed to evangelization was that they

269
Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 382±6, 393±4; The Welsh and their Religion (Cardiff,
1991), 158±61.
270
W.P. Grif®th, Learning, Law and Religion, c.1540±1642 (Cardiff, 1996), 305.
271
This is from the Welsh tract on witchcraft Tudor and Gronow by Robert Holland, cited in
S. Clark and P.T.J. Morgan, `Religion and magic in Elizabethan Wales: Robert Holland's
dialogue on witchcraft', JEH 27 (1976), 40.
272 Ford, Protestant Reformation, 107±10. H.R. McAdoo, `The Irish translations of the Book

of Common Prayer', Eigse 2 (1940), 250±7. C. O'Hainle, `The Pater Noster in Irish Reformation
texts to c.1650', Celtica 22 (1991), 145±6. As the author points out it is odd that when Sir
William Herbert later arranged for the translation of the essentials of the catechism into Irish for
his tenants, he appeared unaware of the Kearney translation.
273
Ford, Protestant Reformation, 98.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 477
discussed conversion in a severely confessionalized language. The indigen-
ous Irish were despised for following the `®lthy frogs of the synagogue of
Antichrist', even while there was an attempt to wrestle for their souls. The
process of wrestling came, of course, too late to stem the other evangelical
initiative emanating from the Continent, as the Louvain Franciscans pro-
vided the tools for conversion in Gaelic.274
The situation in the Scottish Highlands was again different, since there
was a slow process of conversion as the General Assembly established its
network of kirks, many with Gaelic-speaking pastors. But a tension
remained between the desire to disseminate Protestantism in an appropri-
ate medium and the cultural contempt in which much Gaelic culture was
held. The 1609 Statutes of Iona, through which James VI and I assailed
the clans and their language, were not of the making of the Kirk. How-
ever, they reinforced the message that Protestantism was identi®ed with
the interests of the Lowland Scots. The 1616 reinforcement of the Statutes
insisted that the `vulgar English tongue be universally planted, and the
Irish language, which is one of the chief and principal causes of the
continuance of barbarity . . . be abolished and removed'.275 Lack of en-
forcement helped to soften the impact of the Statutes.276 Yet some of that
hopeful evangelical environment which John Carswell had earlier nur-
tured was soured in these new circumstances. Finally we might note that
much the same was true of the Isle of Man, where John Phillips, the
bishop of Sodor and Man, in the ®rst decade of the seventeenth century
produced a `Mannish book of Common Prayer', but received no backing
for its publication. In the Restoration period his successor Bishop Barrow
was apparently totally ignorant of the existence of such a text.277
These Celtic worlds were alien to London, Edinburgh, and even Dublin.
In much of Britain and Ireland the Reformation had been tamed and
become either a de®ning part of the culture, or apprehended and con-
sciously rejected. In Ireland and Scotland the choices presented to the popu-
lation appeared stark: a rigorous Calvinism driven by a determined body of
clerics, or Catholicism increasingly sustained by counter-Reformation mis-
sion. In the Irish case, in John Hooker's apocalyptic language, military

274
P. Jenkins, `The Anglican Church and the unity of Britain: the Welsh experience,
1560±1714', in S.G. Ellis and S. Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State,
1485±1725 (1995), 121±4. Meigs, Reformations in Ireland, 81±9, 101±2. From Louvain emanated a
crucial metrical catechism by O Â hEodhusa, as well as much devotional literature: J. Brady, `The
catechism in Irish', Irish Ecclesiastical Record 83 (1955), 167±76.
275
Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, i. ser. x . 671±2. McCaughey, `Scottish Highland
culture', 177±83. J. Bannerman, `Literacy in the Highlands', in I.B. Cowan and D. Shaw (eds.),
The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), 225±6.
276
J. Goodare, `The Statutes of Iona in context', SHR 77 (1998), 31±57.
277
Moore, Common Prayer in Manx, vol. i, pp. ix±xii.
478 Reformations Established and Contested
defeat was the `just judgement of God upon such a Pharsical and stiff-
necked people', who would not `serve God in true religion'.278 However,
in early modern society nothing was quite as stark as this rhetoric suggests.
Even the most aggressively self-righteous Scottish clerical leadership had to
negotiate localist lay interests, and the complex politics of Jacobean Scot-
land constantly disrupted the ambitions of the Kirk.279 In Ireland at the turn
of the century occasional conformity still remained an option for sections of
the Anglo-Irish elite as a means of preserving of®ce and political connec-
tion. But in neither realm was there any longer much cultural space be-
tween ideological alternatives. John Penry identi®ed the stark demands of
Scottish clericalism very clearly when he debated with his hosts and protect-
ors what liberty individual members of kirk assemblies should have.280 The
Kirk had established its control through an apparently draconian disciplin-
ary policy. Yet the remarkable feature of the system was that it attracted
levels of popular support of which the English church could only dream.
Control was not the de®ning aspect of either the Protestant or the Catholic
Church in Ireland, and forms of popular devotion and belief ¯ourished
often in a symbiotic relationship with the views of elites. But political
circumstance and the growing in¯uence of the clergy sharpened the ideo-
logical divide and led to the representation of Irish religion in clear binary
terms.281
Even in these confessionalized realms, however, ideological labels and
disciplinary structures may not be the best ways of understanding the
assimilation of religious change.282 The taming of the Reformation in-
volved constant negotiation between clergy and laity, elites and ordinary
men and women: negotiations that modi®ed the religious landscape in
ways not necessarily anticipated in of®cial formulae. The effect was cer-
tainly to modify `the economy of the sacred', compelling individuals and
groups to rede®ne their relationship with the Church, and with the Deity:
it was not necessarily to ensure full communities of informed and com-

278
Hooker's comment re¯ects his own observations of the sufferings of Munster in the early
1580s: R. Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Ireland and Scotland, 6 vols. (1808), vi. 460.
279
Parker, `St Andrews', 190±1.
280
D.G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590±1638 (Oxford, 2000), 267±8. Calderwood, v. 696±8.
281
Both Alan Ford and Brendan Bradshaw point out that Irish Protestants had by this time
adopted the language of the true and false churches as a way of articulating the con¯ict with
indigenous Catholicism: A. Ford, `The Protestant Reformation in Ireland', in C. Brady and
R. Gillespie (eds.), Natives and Newcomers (Dublin, 1986), 67±8; B. Bradshaw, `The Reformation
in the cities: Cork, Limerick and Galway, 1534±1603', in J. Bradley (ed.), Settlement and Society
in Medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988), 465±6.
282
The case for not being obsessional about the confessional divide in Ireland at the
expense of studying religious culture is made most powerfully in Gillespie, Devoted People, esp.
10±14.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 479
283
mitted Catholics or Protestants. It has become fashionable to label the
world that emerged from these exchanges as post-Reformation, rather
than speci®cally confessional. Parochial identities in this post-Reformation
world have been the main burden of this chapter. But the experience of
religion did not con®ne itself to church or community: it also found out-
lets in the processes of reading and listening, of debate and rumour, of
festivity and of seeking to explain misfortune.284
Tessa Watt has argued that the best access into post-Reformation men-
talities is through the medium of cheap print, the ballads, broadsides, and
predecessors of the `penny dreadfuls' that found a ready market and wide
circulation in late Elizabethan England. Alexandra Walsham's work on
providentialism uses similar material, reinforced by more elaborate printed
texts and by the evidence of sermons. Both reveal a culture in which the
sacred jostles with the profane, residual Catholic narratives are sometimes
dressed in Protestant weeds, and godly preachers seem almost as willing as
balladeers to accept the miraculous and occult. God's providences
unveiled through prodigies, wonders, and miracles, ghostly armies clash-
ing in the clouds, or ®re falling out of heaven on a Lincolnshire town,
seem far removed from the sober insistence on divine judgement found in
the of®cial formulae of the established church.285 Yet the former were the
routine offerings of the press, and could inculcate a crude but powerful
understanding of God's purposes for his people. Biblical and moralizing
stories could be rendered appealing by the addition of the miraculous, as in
the ballad version of Tobias, when the protagonist chases an evil spirit
away with smoke from the heart of a ®sh.286 Conversely, secular tales of
283
R.W. Scribner, `Cosmic order and daily life: sacred and secular in pre-industrial German
society', in K. von Greyerz (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500±1800 (1984),
17±32. The idea of a `sacred economy' has been developed in some outstanding Continental
and American case studies, notably D. Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred
in Early Modern Terra d'Otranto (Manchester, 1992); Sabean, Power and the Blood; and D.D. Hall,
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement: Popular Religious Belief in Early Modern New England
(Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
284
There are now a series of important studies on this `post-Reformation' world-view for
England: D. Cressy, Bon®re and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan
and Stuart England (1989); Hutton, Merry England; T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety,
1550±1640 (Cambridge, 1991); Walsham, Providence.
285
Walsham, Providence, 65±115. Peter Lake has argued that we should discard the idea that
much Protestant thought was hostile to the assumptions of traditional religion: P. Lake, `Deeds
against nature: cheap print, Protestantism and murder in early modern England', in K. Sharpe and
P. Lake (eds.), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (1994), 313±34. Most of the current
research on this topic emphasizes that these `popular' providentialist views were as much the
possession of the elites as of ordinary men. When Sir Henry Sidney reported armies having been
seen in the sky over County Louth, he added to his commentary, `doubtless there was such a thing
seen': quoted in Gillespie, Devoted People, 108±9. For providentialism and the London mercantile
elite see D. Hickman, `Religious belief and pious practice among London's Elizabethan elite',
HJ 42 (1999), 943±4.
286
Watt, Cheap Print, 118±19.
480 Reformations Established and Contested
wickedness undone, like that of the cruel landlord who, having evicted a
poor widow, was driven to suicide, are strongly rhetoricized as examples
of divine judgement. And the preachers readily took up these themes,
formalizing their message, while rarely losing the narrative impact of the
exempla. Most of this had little contact with Calvinist soteriology and in
its assumptions was not inimical to Catholic views of providence: indeed
in Ireland tales of this kind were being used a century and more later
with equal force on both sides of the confessional divide.287
Were the godly writers and preachers who used the worlds of miracles
and wonders simply pandering to the sensationalist instincts of their audi-
ences? The desire to instil proper fear as a route to repentance could no
doubt involve the manipulation of narrative: Richard Bernard, in his
book on clerical behaviour, recommended that the preacher should keep
a stock of `home observed' providences to focus the attention of his
congregation.288 It is more appropriate, however, to see these ways of
understanding the world as shared between preacher and audience. The
preachers were, to quote Walsham, rehearsing `visible sermons'.289 When
John Rogers described the case of a clerical supporter of the Familists who
dropped dead after recanting at Paul's Cross, he surely internalized the
assertion that it was a `terrible example' of the punishment God meted
out to heretics.290 Indeed preachers whose own world-view was intensely
informed by the immanence of the divine, and the importance of special
providence, were likely to be empathetic to popular views of disasters and
wonders. It was the ministers who constantly repeated to the people of
Scotland that they must fast to atone for their abounding `sin and impiety'
which led to plague, harvest disaster, ®re, and ¯ood, all witness to God's
wrath.291 The 1580 earthquake that shook much of southern England also
moved several preachers to denounce the apostasy of God's people, while
also offering ideal opportunities for the sensationalism of the pamphlet-
eers.292 The jeremiad sermons preached at Paul's Cross in the early seven-
teenth century traded in an economy of the sacred that must have
resonated with most of their auditors.293
287
Gillespie, Devoted People, 40±63.
288
Bernard, Faithfull Shepheard, 68. George Herbert makes much the same suggestion in
`The Country Parson': F.E. Hutchinson (ed.), The Works of George Herbert (Oxford, 1941), 233.
289
Walsham, Providence, 116 ff. where the language is drawn from a Joseph Mede newsletter
of 1627 on violent storms near Boston, Lincolnshire.
290
Marsh, Family of Love, 94±5.
291
J. Maidment (ed.), Chronicle of Perth (Edinburgh, 1831), 3±34. Todd, Culture of Protestant-
ism, 349 ff.
292
A. Golding, A Discourse upon the earthquake (1580). A. Munday, A View of Sundry Examples
(1580).
293
On jeremiads see Walsham, Providence, 281±325, and M. McGiffert, `God's controversy
with Jacobean England', AHR 88 (1983), 1151±74.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 481
The obvious dif®culty, both for the preachers and for the historian, is to
understand how far audiences were detaching themselves from traditional
providential narratives. Were they responding in a `post-Reformation'
manner to tales and ballads? A part of the answer to this must lie in the
nature of the texts: a part of the output of the English presses Watt labels
`Godly tables for good householders', simple instructional texts that might
be nailed to walls or doors conveying explicitly Protestant messages.294
More generally, it is the shifting content of popular works over the late
sixteenth century that is important. The sins and sufferings of individuals
might have a universal quality; the changes in the experience of church
and nation were another matter. Here Foxe's Book of Martyrs is the obvi-
ous point of departure. Even though the text of Foxe was beyond the
reach of most ordinary Englishmen, his contemporary narratives were of
paradigmatic importance in ®xing the providentialist understanding of the
world upon Protestantism. His tales of the abominable deaths of Catholic
persecutors carry little conviction across the centuries, but were consistent
with a desire to explain the world in a way congruent with his under-
standing of God's purposes.295 The whole form of the martyrology was an
adaptation of a Catholic genre for Protestant ends. Foxe, while denying
that England was the elect nation, offered some hostages to fortune in his
insistence that God had placed `us Englishmen here in one common-
wealth, also in one Church, as in one ship together'.296
From Foxe it appears but a short step to the anti-Catholic providential-
ism of the post-Armada period. In 1588 even those godly preachers whose
usual impulse was to denounce the unregenerate masses were prepared to
urge thanksgiving because the Lord had been on `our' side against the
Goliath of Spain.297 The bon®res and bells that had initially greeted Eliza-
beth's accession day in the late 1560s, often under local of®cial sponsorship,
had become by the 1580s a national celebration, not so much because it
was generally ordained as because it had been adopted by a myriad of
individual communities across the land.298 By the early years of James's
294
Watt, Cheap Print, 217 ff.
295
P. Collinson, `Truth, lies and ®ction in sixteenth-century historiography', in D.R. Kelley
and D.H. Sacks (eds.), The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric and
Fiction, 1600±1800 (Cambridge, 1997), 49±62. T. Freeman, `Fate, faction and ®ction in Foxe's
Book of Martyrs', HJ 43 (2000), 601±23.
296
Foxe, i. 520. P. Collinson, `Biblical rhetoric: the English nation and national sentiment
in the prophetic mode', in C. McEeachern and D. Shuger (eds.), Religion and Culture in Renais-
sance England (Cambridge, 1997), 34±5.
297
C.Z. Wiener, `The beleaguered isle: a study of Elizabethan and early Jacobean anti-
Catholicism', PP 51 (1971), 27±62.
298
R.C. Strong, `The popular celebration of the accession day of Queen Elizabeth I', Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958), 86±103. Cressy, Bon®re and Bells, 50±7. Hutton,
Merry England, 146±51, 186±7.
482 Reformations Established and Contested
reign the speci®c celebration of monarchical events had merged with the
far more intense memorialization of the `great miracle[s] of our latter age',
in which deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, from Jesuit conspiracy
and from the power of Spain were woven into an `intoxicating mixture of
jingoism'.299 God had intervened decisively on behalf of `his Englishmen':
all the subtleties of general rather than special providence were thrown
aside. The popular view here parted company with that of the prophetic
preachers, who still saw the people as corroded by sin, and imminent ruin
as facing the nation unless they repented and atoned for their sins.300
Scotland was not immune from the desire to establish a providential
association between the victory of Protestantism and the integrity of the
realm. Thanksgiving came even less naturally to the leaders of the Kirk
than to their southern colleagues, though public events such as James's
deliverance from the Gowrie Plot, or later from Gunpowder, were made
solemn moments of celebration.301 But it was in the purity of the Refor-
mation, the liberty with which the gospel was preached and discipline
properly ministered, that the Scots found their greatest assurance of divine
favour. `God dwelt never in no nation of the earth . . . so long with such
sincerity and purity . . . as he hath done with us.'302 The people of Scot-
land were covenanted, as Israel had been, to ful®l divine imperatives: a
view of the world whose consequences proved even more revolutionary
than England's jingoistic con®dence in the Deity's support.303 The Irish
also emphasized their exceptional relationship with the Deity, though it
was far more dif®cult for the Protestant minority to associate this with any
af®rmation of collective political identity. Instead, it was the righteousness
or sinfulness of individuals and groups on one side or other of the confes-
sional divide that was believed to invoke divine wrath or blessing. Ireland
had its language of providentialism in the early modern period, but it was
employed, says Gillespie, to provide confessional groups with `a divine
justi®cation for their distinctiveness'.304
To suggest that the majority of early seventeenth-century Britons de-
rived a strong sense of cultural and political identity from their Protestant-
ism is not to argue that they had collectively become experiential

299
E. Bourcier (ed.), The Diary of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, 1622±4 (Paris, 1975), 164.
300
Walsham, Providence, 246±7.
301
APS iv. 213±14.
302
W. Cunningham (ed.), Sermons by the Reverend Robert Bruce (Edinburgh, 1843), 288.
303
Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 267±73. Mullan points out that Scottish ministers were, how-
ever, even less likely than their English counterparts to think exclusively of Scotland as the elect
nation, given the continuing commitment to the `Calvinist international'. Moreover, after 1603
their rhetoric is more likely to embrace England as well as Scotland.
304
Gillespie, Devoted People, 57.
 Church, Clergy, Laity 483
305
Calvinists, still less proto-rationalists. Their soteriology no doubt often
corresponded to the characterization of Antilegon in Arthur Dent's Plaine-
Man's Pathway: `if a man . . . say no body harm nor do any body no harm
and do as he would be done to; have a good faith God-ward and be a
man of God's belief, no doubt he shall be saved'.306 Moreover, even a
sacred landscape peopled by men and women with access to God's word,
alerted to his Protestant purposes for the individual, community, and
nation, was also occupied by witches, fairies, and cunning men. For most
it seems unlikely that the world was either `disenchanted' or `demysti®ed'
by the coming of a logocentric religion.307 Men were, it seems, capable of
inhabiting multiple, even contradictory, mental worlds simultaneously.
But there were also processes of adaptation, as the old surrendered to the
new. For example, the changed liturgy steadily rede®ned the sacred year,
with fewer days of festival (or scarcely any in the case of Scotland). We
may infer that this was successful partly because of the pressures usually
labelled `social control', partly because even in Scotland there remained a
means of marking out God's time from the mundane through holy days
and fast. Or, to take another critical example, the idea of the Mass as re-
enactment of Christ's sacri®ce was destroyed by the reformed churches,
yet the centrality of that sacri®ce was reaf®rmed in the solemnity of the
Protestant communion.
The precise impact of these changes must have depended on accommo-
dation and adjustment. Negotiation was undertaken in the parish between
the most austere forms of clericalism and communal interests, or at least
the interests of those who exercised local power. The critical importance
of this process of negotiation is most clearly suggested by its failure in
Ireland. In the Pale and other Anglo-Irish territories there was by the
1590s a resolute refusal by both the gentry and ordinary parishioners to
engage with the established church. In Bishop Lyon's vivid report on
Cork, the Prayer Book services were being denounced as the devil's
service, and ministers as spreading diabolical contagion.308 Elsewhere in
the British Isles forty years of Protestantism, of the majority sitting in the

305
There is extensive debate on what sort of Protestants the English became after the
Elizabethan settlement. Many of the main issues are well summarized in P. Collinson, `The
Elizabethan church and the new religion' and C. Haigh, `The Church of England, the Catholics
and the people', in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984).
306
A. Dent, The Plaine-Man's Pathway to Heaven (1601), 27. For similar sentiments see
G. Gifford, A Briefe Discourse of Certaine Points of the Religion which is among the Common Sort of
Christians, which may bee Termed the Countrie Divinitie (1581).
307
R.W. Scribner, `Reformation and desacralisation: from sacramental world to moralized
universe', in R. Po-Hsia and R.W. Scribner (eds.), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early
Modern Europe (Wiesbaden, 1997), 90±1.
308
Bradshaw, `Cork, Limerick and Galway', 464.
484 Reformations Established and Contested
pew, or on the stool, assimilating the reformed liturgy and preaching, had
produced the opposite effect. Conformity to national settlements was the
norm. Acceptance of godly preaching and the denunciation of sin was
common in Scotland, and perhaps even in England, though in the latter
case there was highly varied tolerance of Puritan zeal and manipulation of
the Prayer Book. Despite the aspiration of the reformers to make worship
common, local arrangements continued to modify the Protestantism of
the settlements in a variety of directions. In the process a distinctively
post-Reformation religion was grounded in community and in daily ex-
perience.309

309
One of the most useful discussions on these problems is the conclusion of Haigh, English
Reformations, 289±95. For a recent restatement, with some modi®cations, of this position by
Haigh, see `The taming of Reformation: preachers, pastors and parishioners in Elizabethan and
early Stuart England', History 85 (2000), 572±88. In both cases the argument that parishioners
tamed the ambitions of the reformers, rather than vice versa, underestimates the transactional
element emphasized above.
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 INDEX

Aberdeen, 395 anabaptism 250±51, 332, 338, 473±4

diocese 37, 183, 235, 459 Ancrum, Battle of 154
university 37, 64, 70, 194, 232n Andrewes, Lancelot, bishop of
Accolti family 18±19 Winchester 345
Adamson, John, Dominican Anglo-Scottish border 17, 48, 213, 407
Provincial 57 Anglo-Scottish relations 9, 152±7, 159,
Adamson, Patrick, archbishop of St 363±7
Andrews 368, 371±2, 388n, Angus 240, 244, 364, 370, 409n, 410n,
414 432
Declaration of the kings majesties Angus, earl of see Douglas family
intention 414 Anjou, duke of see Valois
adiaphora 329, 334, 376 Annals of Loch Ce 268
Admonition Controversy 273, 334±5, Annandale, Dumfries 213
468 annates 122
Admonition to the Parliament 273, 292, Anne of Cleves 136±7, 139, 319
373, 378, 398, 458 Anne of Denmark 415
Advertisements, the 375, 442 Anstruther Wester, Fife 459
Adwick le Street, Yorkshire 208 anti-Catholicism 481±2
Aghalurcher, Co. Tyrone 94 Antichrist 321±2, 339, 366, 388, 392,
Albigensians 388 412
Alcock, John, bishop of Ely 43 anticlericalism 120, 125, 242, 318, 402
Aldrich, John, bishop of Carlisle 189 antinomianism 250, 345
Alesius, Alexander, Scottish Antonio of Florence 179
reformer 139, 232, 234, 313, Antwerp 236, 241, 319
315±6, 319 appropriations and
Alexander VI 16, 18, 79 impropriations 69±71, 172,
Alldridge, N. 466 200, 202±3, 207, 403, 406, 443
Allen, William, cardinal 275 archdeacons 200, 403
Allerton, Ralph 252 courts of 446, 460n
Alnwick, William, bishop of Ardee Priory, co. Louth 170
Norwich 86 Argyll, earls of see Campbell
altars 191, 198, 216, 218±9, 238, 268, Armada, the 412
324, 442, 447 Armagh, archbishops of 42
Ambrose, St. 379 diocese 41, 62, 83, 168, 192, 385n
Amersham, Buckinghamshire 97, 110 two nations in 41, 192
Amicable Grant 31 Arnold, Sir Nicholas 383
Amsterdam 472, 474 Arran, earls of see Hamilton family
538 Index
ars moriendi 103 Bainbridge, Christopher, cardinal and
Arthur, Thomas 313 archbishop of York 18
Articles of Religion Bainham, James 242±3
Ten (1536) 136, 138, 185, 305, 316, Bainton, Edward 228
318 Baldwin, William 299
Forty Two (1553) 163, 195, 251, Beware the Cat 249
310, 358 Bale, John, bishop of Ossory 1±6, 11,
Eleven (1561) 311, 361 115±16, 168, 210, 230, 246,
Thirty Nine (1563) 305±10, 334, 250, 268, 319, 321±2, 349
340±1, 362, 375, 418 King Johan 115
Twelve, Irish (1567) 305, 311, 383 Vocacyon of 1
Lambeth (1595) 305, 341, 345 Balfour, David 455
See also faith, confessions of ballads 301±2, 479±81
Arundel, earls of see Fitzalan Ballyboggan, Co. Meath 267
Ascham, Roger 193 Ballymore Deanery, co.
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire Westmeath 381n
437 Balnaves, Henry 229, 325
Ashe, Anthony 354n Confession of Faith 325
Aske, Robert 50 Baltinglas conspiracy 386
Askew, Anne 323n Bampton, Oxfordshire 103
Assumptions of the Thirds of Bancroft, Richard, archbishop of
Bene®ces 408±9 Canterbury 84, 86, 404±5,
assured Scots 153±4, 156 412±14, 416±17, 419±21,
Aster, John, dean of Jersey 374n 423±4, 468
Aston, Margaret 2, 261, 265 Bangor, diocese 191, 215, 431
Audley, Edmund, bishop of monks of 389
Salisbury 100 Bannatyne, George 245
Audley, Thomas, Lord Bannatyne, James 245
Chancellor 142, 144, 148 baptism 93, 297, 318, 340, 452±3, 467,
Augsburg, Confession 136 473
Peace of 3, 7 baptismal fonts 452
Augustine, St, of Canterbury 389±90 Baptists 236
Augustine, St, of Hippo 332 Barlow, John, dean of Worcester 198
Augustinian Observants 55±7 Barlow, William, bishop of
Awd, Elinor 449 Chichester 125, 160, 203, 225,
Aylmer, John, bishop of London 232, 230, 234, 280±1, 318
353, 379, 396, 418, 437 Barlow, William, bishop of
Harborowe for faithfull subjects 353±4 Lincoln 423
Ayr 60±61, 235n, 237±8, 245, 302, Defence of Protestants Religion 347
356, 437 Barnes, Richard, bishop of
Ayrshire 111, 240, 242±4, 364, 410 Durham 434, 453, 456
Barnes, Robert 231, 234±5, 312±5,
Babington, Francis 195 319±20
Babington, Gervase, bishop of Supplication 313
Exeter 296 Barnstaple, Devon 471
Bacon, Sir Nicholas 360, 396 Baro, Peter 345±6
 Index 539
Barrett, William 345 The Faithfull Shepherd 430
Barrow, Henry 393, 421±2, 472 Bernardino of Siena 45n
Barrow, Isaac, bishop of Sodor and Bertano, Gurone 151
Man 477 Berwick, Treaty of 382
Bartlet family 88, 236 Beverley, Yorkshire 225
Barton Stacey, Hampshire 86 Beza, Theodore 332, 341±3, 346,
Basel, 319 348±9, 373±4, 409
Council of 20, 77, 180 Bible 2, 5, 7, 105, 112, 126, 187, 196,
Bassenden, John 368 250, 253, 261, 263, 266±7,
Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire 91 298±9, 302, 307, 309, 320, 328,
Bath and Wells, bishops of 202 334, 355, 357, 387, 393, 417,
Baughe, Thomas 475 434, 483
Baxter, Richard 378 and Ireland 280, 282, 284±5, 476
Beale, Robert 417±9 and Scotland 110, 153±6, 229, 270,
Beauchamp, Lord 202 274±5, 277±80, 282
Beaton, David, cardinal and archbishop and Wales 110, 270, 279±84, 390,
of St Andrews 125, 151±3, 155, 402, 476
232 commentaries 348±9
Beaton, James, cardinal and archbishop distribution of 222, 240±1, 276±7
of St Andrews 28, 38 interpretation of 133, 214, 271±4,
Beaufort, Lady Margaret 96, 100 308, 312, 318, 321, 341, 347,
Becket, Robert 79 378±9, 479
Becket, Thomas a 134, 139, 219 parts:
Becon, Thomas 165, 272, 299 New Testament 175, 182, 236,
Bedell, William, bishop of 242, 270±71, 274±5, 283, 314,
Kilmore 286 339, 427
Bede, the Venerable 389, 391 Old Testament 133±4, 314, 339,
bede roll 88, 220 427
Bell, John, bishop of Worcester 223 Ephesians 331
Bellay, Jean du, French Epistle of James 314
ambassador 135 Hosea 338n
Bellenden, Thomas 125, 229 Levitical texts 117, 120
Bellingham, Sir Edward, lord Matthew 434
deputy 166±7 Pentateuch 302, 314
Benedictine Order 46±8, 51 Revelation 320±21
bene®t of clergy 32±3 preaching from 79, 159, 179,
Bennet, Roger 97 269±70, 273±4, 281, 286±8,
Bennet, Thomas 239 291, 434, 438
Bentham, Thomas, bishop of Coventry printing of 276, 278±9
and Lich®eld 396 private ownership of 277±9,
Bere, Richard, abbot of 242
Glastonbury 46 reading of 97, 148n, 219, 227±8,
Bere Regis, Dorset 60 236±7, 242, 244, 262, 269±73,
Berkshire 406 292, 304
Bernard, St 43, 50±51 translation 175, 182, 271, 274±5,
Bernard, Richard 430, 479 279±82, 313, 317, 347, 476
540 Index
Bible (contd.) Blacadder, Robert, archbishop of
versions: Glasgow 37, 41
Authorised 270, 274 Black, David 415±6, 438
Bishops' 259, 274±5, 278 Black, John 58
Coverdale 271, 275 Blenerhasset, Thomas 470
Geneva 270, 274±5, 278, 281 Blood of Hailes, the 101
Great 134, 139, 257±8, 271, 276, Blythe, John, bishop of Salisbury 100
278, 280 Bobbingworth, Essex 452
Lollard 110±12 Bocher, Joan 163, 250±51
Rheims (Catholic) 275 Bocking, Essex 250
Tyndale 236, 242, 270±1 Bodkin, Christopher, archbishop of
Bigod Revolt 137 Tuam 381
Bill, William, dean of Westminster 269 Bodmin, Cornwall 248
Bilney, Thomas 231, 234, 313 Boleyn, Anne 12, 117±9, 123±4,
bishops, British 389, 392 138±9, 142, 145, 148, 150, 186,
English 4, 33±5, 38, 122, 126, 135, 227±8, 231
138, 142, 158, 160, 165, 175±6, Boleyn, George, Lord Rochford 227,
181±2, 184±92, 221, 224, 265, 230
275, 290, 310, 358, 360±61, Bonaventura, St. 270n
362, 373, 375, 378, 393, 411, Bonner, Edmund, bishop of
419, 430, 433, 468 London 76, 176, 184, 187±8,
and discipline 376, 395±400, 417±9, 190±1, 237, 252, 291±3, 295,
459 317
appointments 361±2 Bonner, Humphrey 23
authority 23, 33±5, 42, 123, 179, Book of Common Order 282, 296,
185±8, 330, 333, 339, 361, 373, 300, 309, 394, 426±7, 440±1,
375, 379, 399, 417, 421±2 455
duties 188, 190±91, 203, 207, 396 Book of Common Prayer 163, 165,
lands 201±4, 361±2, 404±5 167±9, 185±6, 189, 215, 245,
residence 183, 191 282, 296±8, 373±4, 376, 379,
wealth 36, 165, 177, 201±2, 402±5 395, 414, 417, 426±8, 441,
bishops, Irish 1±2, 10, 17, 170±71, 448±9, 455±7, 483±4
192±3, 280, 311, 381, 399, 407, First, 1549 300, 324±7, 358±60, 381
424 Second, 1552 328±9, 357±8, 360
wealth 36, 405 Irish translation 476
bishops, Scottish 31, 35±7, 125, 152, Latin translation 167, 268, 381, 435
156, 179±80, 183, 207, 243, Manx translation 477
368, 370±72, 401, 403, 411, Welsh translation 282, 476
414, 416 Book of Discipline, First Scottish 273,
wealth 36, 409 300, 310, 364±5, 369±70, 395,
bishops, Welsh, 280, 399, 430 408±9
wealth 36, 405 Book of Discipline, Second
see also visitations, and individual Scottish 368, 371±2, 401, 409
dioceses Book of Discipline, English 398, 405,
Bishops' Book 135, 179, 184, 186±7, 420
292, 318 books, import 235±7, 242
 Index 541
ownership 345n, 476 Brittany, dukes of 30
Booth, Charles, bishop of Brooks, Peter Newman 324
Hereford 179 Brown, Andrew 87
Borthwick, Sir John 151, 229 Browne, George, archbishop of
Bossy, John 83 Dublin 2, 58, 131, 166, 169n,
Boston, Lincolnshire 67, 223n, 247, 192, 233
480n Brownists 473
Bothwell, Adam, bishop of Bruce, Robert, minister of
Orkney 432 Edinburgh 262, 287, 438
Bothwell, earl of see Stewart Bucer, Martin 7, 161, 163, 195, 314,
Bourbon, Nicholas 228 323, 325±9, 331, 342±3, 348,
Bourke, Richard, 2nd earl of 396
Clanrickard 382, 468 Censura 327
Bourne, George 452 De Regno Christi 396
Bowers, Roger 359 Buchanan, George 22, 229±30, 234,
Bowker, Margaret 67, 212 388n, 392, 416
Boxted, Essex 88 Buckinghamshire 73, 88, 100, 110
Bradbridge, Christopher 374 Buckmaster, William 197
Bradbury, Anne 450 Bulkeley, Arthur, bishop of
Bradford, John 250, 331 Bangor 190±91
Bradshaw, Brendan 8, 49±50, 147, 192, Bull, William 248
267, 380 Bullinger, Heinrich 7, 161±2, 262,
Bradshaw, Dr. William 348 310, 320±1, 330±1, 348, 357,
Brady, Hugh, bishop of Meath 285, 362
384, 401, 405, 407 Bullock, George 196
Brandon family 228 Bulmer, Sir Thomas 210
Brandon, Charles, duke of Burgundian court 56
Suffolk 118, 120n, 141, 202 burials and monuments 63, 87, 89±90,
Brasier, Richard 166 441, 443±4, 454±7
Brayne family 213 Burntisland, Fife 441n, 444
Brechin, Angus 356 Bury St Edmunds, 89, 439
Brent, Thomas 68 abbey 46
Brereton, John 167 Bush, Paul, bishop of Bristol 288
Bridges, John, bishop of Oxford 288 Butler family, earls of Ormond 94,
Bridgettine Order 51±2 130
Bridlington, Yorkshire 451 Butler, James, earl of Ormond 231,
Brigden, Susan 209 281
Bright, Timothy 393 Butler, Thomas, 209n
Brightman, Thomas 419±20 Butter®eld family 236
Brinton, Thomas 64 Butts, William 150, 228
Bristol 93, 190, 213, 223, 237±8, 246, Byford, Mark 208
289, 316n
St Ewan's 206 Caithness, diocese 36, 409
Britain 2±3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 79, 302, Calais 127±8, 139, 167, 209, 230
353 Calderwood, David 299, 392
`British' History 6±10, 389±91 Calfhill, John 390
542 Index
Calvin, John 7, 162, 296±7, 308, 310, Carmelite friars 54, 57
327, 330±2, 341, 345±9, 355, Carranza, Bartolome 176, 184
373, 394 Carswell, John, superintendent of
Calvinism 6±7, 266, 287, 305, 307, Argyll 282, 296, 477
331, 343, 345, 365±6, 369n, Carthusian Order 39, 47, 51±3
374, 412, 444, 458n, 469, Cartwright, Thomas 273, 293, 335,
472±4, 480, 482n, 483 338, 373, 392, 420, 458n
Cambridge 238, 240, 419 Casale, Gregory 119
university 70, 79, 141, 193±5, 197, Cashel, co. Tipperary 94
231±3, 271, 312, 315±6, 327, diocese 171n
331, 341, 343, 345±6, 348, 361, Castro, Alphonsus de 176
373±4, 431 Cateau-Cambresis, Treaty of 356, 358
Augustinian Priory 235, 312 catechisms and catechising 62, 99, 102,
St Johns College 79, 232±3, 345 112, 180, 182, 184, 191, 282,
White Horse Tavern 231 295±9, 302, 346, 394, 449±50,
Cambridgeshire 79, 90 453, 472, 476
Campbell family 237, 240 cathedrals 34, 48, 68, 182, 188,
Campbell, Archibald, 4th earl of 197±202, 298, 448n
Argyll 244, 355, 363 and education 197±9
Campbell, Archibald, 5th earl of Catherine of Aragon 116±8, 121, 129
Argyll 382 Catholic threat 284±5, 377, 379±80,
Campbell, Robert 244 412, 415, 422, 460
Campeggio, Lorenzo, cardinal and Cawardine, Sir Thomas 139, 230
papal legate 18, 28, 118 Cawdrey, Robert 421
Campion, Edmund 391 Caylart, Thomas 25
canon law 22, 31±2, 34, 38, 70, 85±6, Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury 268n
96, 187, 194n, 199, 397 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 168,
jurisdiction of 32±3 , 42 190, 232, 252, 262, 284±5, 290,
reform of 163, 165±6, 189, 199, 362, 302, 310, 359, 363, 377, 379,
400, 458 382, 385, 399n, 402, 406n, 413,
canon lawyers 22, 41±2, 200 418, 420±3
canons of 1576 378 and Elizabethan Settlement 359±62
of 1604 442, 466, 469n, 471n, 472 and Scottish policy 363±5, 413
Canterbury 219, 239 Chaderton, Laurence 286±7
abbey 46 Chaderton, William, bishop of
archbishops of 378 Chester 397
cathedral 197±8 Champnes, John 250
diocese 39, 42, 128, 213, 399n, 417, Channel Islands 127, 374, 458n
456 chantries 45, 61, 92±3, 103±4, 159,
Cantwell, Patrick 25 219
cardinal-protectors 17±19 commissioners for 59
Careless, John 241, 243 dissolution of 160, 165, 239
Carew, Anne 228 chapel royal 229, 264, 357, 359
Carleton, Yorkshire 85 chapels and chapelries 84±6, 467
Carlisle, bishops of 202 private 85, 95±6, 445n, 468±9, 472
diocese 84 chaplains, private 228, 244, 385, 401
 Index 543
Chapuys, Eustace, imperial buildings 87±8, 91, 93±4, 109, 266,
ambassador 119, 129±30, 143±4 292, 440±47, 456, 464, 467
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 119, furnishings 106±7, 198, 218±9, 222,
124, 130±1, 135, 137, 159, 162, 440±3, 447, 463
330 lands 177±8, 183, 201±8
Chedsey, William 196 registers 208
Cheke, Sir John 149±50, 197 churching 93
Chertsey, Surrey 185±6 church papists 221, 253, 385, 435, 451,
Abbey, Bisham 146 469±70
Chester 440n, 466 churchwardens 79, 218, 222±4, 276±7,
cathedral 203 436±7, 439±40, 443, 448±9,
diocese 212, 457, 459 451, 460±61, 463±5, 467, 469
St John's 464 accounts 9±10, 219, 221, 294, 444
St Mary's 440 churchyard 446, 453, 455±7, 469
St Michael's 465±6 Cibo, Innocenzo, archbishop of St
St Oswald's 466 Andrews 17
Cheyney, Richard, bishop of Cistercian Order 39, 44n, 48±50
Gloucester 400 civil law 70, 400, 459
Chichester, archdeaconry 460 lawyers 195, 199, 459, 461
diocese 65, 68, 76, 200, 216, 399n, Clanrickard, earl of see Bourke
418 Clayhills, Andrew 462
children 464, 466n Clebsch, W. 314
Chilham, Kent 224 Cleeve Abbey, Somerset 48
Chilterns 236 Clement VII 31, 59, 117±8
chorepiscopi 396 clergy, English, parish 5±6, 33, 43±80,
Christian II of Denmark 144 102, 116, 123, 126, 174, 179,
Christian III of Denmark 144 193, 204±6, 208±16, 223±4,
christology 306±7, 313, 347±8 248, 251, 401, 429±36, 439,
Chrysostom, St John 325, 428 443, 453, 462, 467, 470, 480
Church, British 389±93 and conformity 211±12, 214, 225,
Church, Catholic 8, 15, 21±22, 43, 250, 413, 418, 435
218, 361, 390, 394 and teaching 62, 181±2, 281, 294
jurisdiction 39, 122 and treason 210±11
reform of 29, 35, 79, 120, 170±84 bene®ced 66±7, 74, 205
Church, Reformed, marks of 7, 189, duties of 43, 45, 59±60, 174, 180,
307±9, 334, 394±5 208, 429±30, 450
origins 386±92 education of 34, 37, 64±5, 70, 175,
see also Church in England, Ireland, 182, 190, 193, 214, 378, 433±4
Scotland and Wales graduate 64±8, 213, 430±32
Church, true and false 1,11, 189, 270, income 70, 204±5, 207, 406±7,
316, 320±21, 332, 339, 387±8, 409±11
478 marriage of 136±7, 150, 160±1,
visible and invisible 308±9, 316, 173, 213±6, 317, 320±23, 362,
333±6, 338±40, 347, 393±4 406
church: non-residence 67±8, 120, 172, 180
attendance 221±2, 384±5, 465±9 numbers of 44, 65, 212±3, 433
544 Index
clergy, English, parish (contd.) Common Pleas, Court of 32
preaching of 290±92, 429±31, communion 160, 167, 182, 186, 198,
479±80 297, 307, 311, 315, 326,
pluralism 67±9, 120, 205n, 407 359±60, 362, 385, 427, 434,
reformed 209 442, 445, 448±51, 456, 461,
sexual misconduct 60, 72, 76±9 465±6, 468, 470, 483
status of 43, 174, 187, 330, 339 exclusion from 449±51
taxation of 16, 31, 205, 406 frequency of 448±9, 459
urban 205±6, 407 table 264, 324, 326, 440±2, 444,
wealth and poverty of 73±5, 82, 447±8, 450
119, 141, 205±7, 402±3, 407±10 tokens 449±50
clergy, higher 193±201, 211 communities, de®nition of 81n
careers 195±6 charity in 450±2, 461, 463±4
see also archdeacons, prebendaries Complaynte of Scotlande, The 157
clergy, Irish 2±3, 6, 18, 24, 38, 62, 64, conciliarism 20±23, 121, 123, 161,
73±4, 77, 79, 171, 185, 193, 387
209, 215, 380, 384, 407, 430±2, Concordat of Leith 370±71, 409
435, 478 concubinage 76±9, 180, 215
Scottish 73±4, 213±4, 283, 369, 403, confession 52, 59±60, 62, 92, 98,
406±11, 415±16, 430±3, 438, 102±3, 135, 186, 204, 210, 297
458, 462, 478, 480 Confession, Scots 305±10, 334±6, 340,
Welsh 61, 74, 77±9, 209, 213, 364±5, 394, 457±8
280±1, 407, 431, 433 confessionalization 186, 196, 226, 243,
Clerk, John 15, 19 424, 477, 482
Clogher 83 congregations 259±60, 273, 298, 300,
diocese 37±8 302±3, 369, 395, 397±8, 408,
Clonfert, diocese 168, 192 410, 425, 436±41, 445, 449±50,
cloth trade 241±2, 248 454, 458, 461±2, 464±5, 468±9,
Cluniac Order 39, 48 472±3
Clynnog, Morys 296 Connacht, province of 56, 382
Colchester, Essex 88, 206, 224, 235, Consensus Tigurinis 330
237, 239, 437 Constance, Council of 20
St John's Priory 142 Constantine, Emperor 388±9, 391
Cole, Henry, dean of St Paul's 196n Convocation of Canterbury 33, 39, 43,
Cole, Thomas 251n 122±3, 160, 163, 180±1, 184±5,
Colet, John, dean of St Paul's 43, 45 263, 271, 291, 305, 310, 362±3,
Collectanea satis copiosa 121, 125, 389 375, 378, 434
collegiate churches 68±9, 92, 456 of York 62, 122, 184±6
Collinson, Patrick 87, 288, 378±9, 417, conversion 2, 6, 226±7, 234, 236, 242,
420, 430, 471 249, 261, 265, 269, 279, 320,
Cologne 182n, 234 382, 384, 389, 391, 423, 478±9,
commendation 41, 50 483±4
commissions, ecclesiastical 382, 385, Cooch, Robert 228±9, 332
398±9, 423, 460 Cooke, Sir Anthony 228, 360
common law 32, 123, 200, 419 Cooper, Thomas, bishop of
lawyers 120, 400, 421 Winchester 419
 Index 545
Cope, Sir Anthony 228, 417 Craike, Alexander, bishop of
Copenhagen 235, 319 Kildare 405
Copping, Henry 473n Crail, Fife 441
Cork 240 Cranach, Lucas 259
Cork and Cloyne, diocese of 17, 435, Crankshaw, David 362
483 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of
Cormac, Lord of Muskerry 56 Canterbury 21, 99±100, 120,
Cornish language 281±2, 293 126, 128, 142, 145, 149±50,
Cornwall 84, 90, 226, 281, 406 157±61, 165, 167±8, 182n, 187,
Corpus Christi 94, 100, 219 193, 196, 202, 207, 214, 228,
Corro, Antonio de 345±6 251, 263±4, 298, 316, 323,
Cosin, Richard 400, 421 330±1, 333, 347, 407
Cotton, Sir Richard 203 and Bible 257, 271, 275
Council, King's (later Privy Council) and cathedrals 197±8
138, 144, 151, 157±8, 160, and confessions of faith 136, 138,
163±8, 171, 176±7, 188, 210, 201, 305±6, 308±11
231±2, 251, 268n, 285, 373, and Eucharist 324±8
378, 380n, 382, 384, 402, 422 and homilies 159, 271, 291±3, 323
Council, Irish 167, 169±71, 199, 285, and international Protestantism 161,
383, 407 163, 234, 310, 316, 330
councils, provincial 29, 41, 77, 171, and liturgy 163, 165, 297, 325±30
175, 180±84, 207, 355 and royal supremacy 187±9
decrees of 77±8, 99, 171±2 , 175, metropolitical visitation of 126
180±83, 323±4 Crashaw, William 403
counsel, pastoral 342±3, 346 Creighton, R.F. 15
courts, royal 227±31, 415, 419 Croft, Sir James 168
reform in 227±31 Crome, Edward 251±2
Coutances, Normandy 127 Cromer, George, archbishop of
covenant theology 308, 314, 332, Armagh 193
336±8, 353±4, 482 Cromwell, Thomas 24, 56, 122±3,
Coventry, Warwickshire 94, 160n, 241 126, 132±3, 137, 138±40,
Holy Trinity church 87 142±9, 151, 172, 186, 192,
Holy Trinity guild 91 210±11, 214, 216, 223±4, 230,
Coventry and Lich®eld, bishops of 23, 257, 279±80, 316, 319
65, 202 as vicegerent 126±7, 138, 143, 146,
diocese 215, 403 159, 184, 190, 192±3, 199
Coverdale, Miles, bishop of Crosby, Margaret 450
Exeter 134, 189, 229, 233, Cross, Claire 194
274±5, 299, 319 cuius regio, eius religio 3±4, 366, 424
Cowper, William, bishop of Cumberland 90, 207, 210
Galloway 427 Cunningham, Alexander, 5th earl of
Cox, Richard, bishop of Ely 149±50, Glencairn 244, 355, 363
197, 228, 333, 349, 360, 376, Cupar, Fife 415
378 curates and chaplains 60, 65±7, 74,
Coyne, John, bishop of Limerick 168 205, 210±11, 240, 265, 406±7,
Craig, John 461 411, 449
546 Index
curia 17±19, 23, 25±8, 37, 54, 119, Dewsbury, Yorkshire 248
122, 170 Dick, Alexander 58
litigation in 26 Dickens, A.G. 248
petitioners in 25, 78, 171 Digby, Everard 345
Curteys, Richard, bishop of Dillon, Robert 384
Chichester 402, 407n Diocletian, Emperor 392
Curwen, Hugh, archbishop of discipline, ecclesiastical 6, 172, 174,
Dublin 171n, 172, 382, 413n 191±3, 303, 308, 334±6, 339,
Cusack, Sir Thomas, chancellor of 363, 368, 370, 373, 376±7,
Ireland 3±4, 383±4 384±5, 394±402, 409, 457±63,
466, 469, 478, 482
Dackcomb, Thomas 212 failures of 459
Dalderby, John 190 sexual 459±62, 465
Daniel, William 476 disendowment 120, 125, 141±3,
Dannett, Thomas 232 145±8, 201
Darcy, Thomas, Lord 120n dispensations 171, 174
Darnley, Henry, Lord 367 Dives and Pauper 87
David, St 108 Dobson, B. 58
Davidson, John 244, 413, 444n dog-whippers 446
Davies, Sir John 268n Dolwyddelan, Carmarthenshire 425n
Davies, Richard, bishop of St Dominicans 54±5, 57, 235
David's 77, 283±4, 390, 402, Observant 55±7
407 Donald, King 391
Davis, John 242 Donaldson, Gordon 278, 369n
Dawson, Jane 9 Doncaster, Yorkshire 59±60
Day, George, bishop of Dort, Synod of 342
Chichester 188 Douglas, Archibald, 18th earl of
Day, John 285, 300n, 301, 446 Arran 153±4
deans, rural 396 Douglas, James, 4th earl of
Dedham Conference 398, 466 Morton 355, 368, 370±1, 384
Deerhurst, Gloucestershire 444 Douglas, John 308n
Denham, William 436 Douglas, John, rector of St
Denmark 361n, 413 Andrews 370
Denny, Sir Anthony 139, 150 Dowdall, George, archbishop of
Dent, Arthur 289, 483 Armagh 168±72, 181
Plaine-Man's Pathway 483 Down Cathedral 170
Derby, archdeaconry of 277, 435 Dowsing, William 303
Derfel, St 134 Dromahair Friary 56
Dering, Edward 286, 303, 348, 360, Dromore, diocese of 64
399, 403, 429 Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire 429
descensus controversy 348 Dublin, 1±2, 42n, 36, 42, 168, 240,
Desmond, earls of see Fitzgerald 380, 385, 428, 477
Determinations of the . . . Universities 121 Christ Church Cathedral 199, 267
Devereux, Robert, 2nd earl of Cistercian monastery 48
Essex 404, 448n diocese 71, 166, 192 , 215, 383, 432
Devon 106 guild of St Anne 439
 Index 547
merchants 386, 439, 471 Holyrood 153
St Patrick's Cathedral 69, 94, 167, Holy blood fraternity 109
170, 171n, 199, 233, 383, 385, presbytery 413, 416
407, 413n, 432, 435 St Giles Church 66, 92, 153
Trinity College 285±6, 431±2, Edinburgh, Treaty of 364, 366
476 Edward I 125
Du Boulay, F. 15 Edward IV 56
Dudley family 228 Edward VI 2, 149, 151, 153, 162,
Dudley, John, duke of 164, 166, 172, 189±90, 201,
Northumberland 163±5, 209, 231, 243, 246, 265, 286,
168±9, 189, 201 299
Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester 383, and Protestantism 164±5
402, 404n as Josiah 157±8, 162, 264
Duffy, Eamon 24, 62, 88, 98, 106±7, as Solomon 2
112, 217, 220, 455, 457 coronation of 157±8, 264
Dunblane, Stirling 469 his tutors 149, 158, 228
diocese 68 Elder, John 155n
vicarage 71 elders 437±40, 460
Dundee, 86, 154, 238, 242±5, 262, 356, Eleutherius, Pope 121, 389±90
416 Elizabeth I 3, 128, 178, 208, 257, 264,
friary of 57, 235 285, 298, 300, 311, 319, 353,
Dunkeld, diocese 36, 69 355, 364±6, 372, 375±6, 378±9,
Dunn, Michael 270 380, 384, 388, 396, 400, 404,
Durdant family 97 406, 412±13, 415, 417, 420±1,
Durham, cathedral 199 423, 474
diocese 65n, 165, 173, 201, 206±7, Accession Day 301, 354, 481
212 and church ornaments 264, 361±2
priory 46 and settlement of 1559 357±62, 375
Dutch 250, 467 as Constantine 388±9
traders 235±6 Elizabeth of York 30
Dyffryn Clwyd, Denbighshire 78 Elizabeth Woodville 68
Dyke, Jeremiah 450 Elizabethan Settlement 12, 335,
357±63, 390, 393, 396, 413, 458
Earle, John 451 Elphin, Tuam, diocese 17, 168
earthquake of 1580 471, 480 Elphinstone, William, bishop of
East Anglia 106, 222, 277, 303, 470, Aberdeen 37, 55
473n Elstow, Friar 58
ecclesiology 306±8, 317, 330±2, Elton, Geoffrey 127
334±40, 346, 367, 373, 377 Ely, diocese 43, 80n, 211n, 213, 433,
Edgeworth, Roger 236, 238, 271±2, 460n
289 Emden 332, 354n
Edinburgh 94±5, 153±4, 243±5, 348, Empire, Holy Roman 15, 19, 136±7,
356±7, 364, 415, 437, 439, 477 148, 154
Blackfriars 235 England 2, 6, 9±12, 15, 19, 23, 363±4
Canongate 459, 461 and covenant 337, 353
Carlton Hill 230 as elect nation 338, 393, 412, 481±2
548 Index
England (contd.) 264, 319±20, 332±3, 357±8,
Reformation in 9±12, 134, 139, 361, 366, 397
159±66, 226±33, 243, 245±54, exiles, Scottish 234±5, 309, 316
357±62
England, Church of 7, 9±10, 30, 39, Fagius, Paul 161, 195
44, 69, 127, 201, 222, 308±9, faith, confessions of 135±6, 138, 149,
332, 345, 375±9, 386±7, 393±4, 163, 179, 185±6, 189, 195, 292,
406, 420±1, 452, 454, 464, 475 305±11, 318, 325, 358, 375
church courts of 10, 26, 32, 34, 42, Family of Love 229, 470, 474±5, 480
72±3, 199±201, 204, 221, 293, Farnworth, Lancashire 85
396±401, 449, 452, 454, 458±62 fasts, Protestant 278, 449, 471±2, 483
funding 403±4 Fathers of the Church 328, 387, 389
new bishoprics 142 Faunt, Nicholas 417
origins 389±90 Faversham, Kent 106, 250
English exceptionalism 7±9, 12, 15 Favour, John 436
Epistle Exhortatorie, The 155 feasts, new religious 96, 100±01
equivocation 251±3 Feckenham, John, abbot of
Erasmus, Desiderius 43, 45, 106, 279 Westminster 390, 404
Enchiridion 106 Fenner, Dudley 337
Novum Testamentum 312 Sacra Theologia 337, 347
Paraphrases 277, 294±5 Ferrar, Robert, bishop of St
Sileni Alcibiades 43 Davids 189, 203, 234, 281, 294n
erastianism 3, 189, 423 festivals, national 481±2
Erroll, earls of, see Hay popular 446±7, 459, 481, 483
Erskine of Dun, John 235, 244, 355±6, feud 450±1
365, 397 feuing 50, 207, 408
eschatology 306, 320±21, 339, 363, 392 Field, John 337, 378, 417
Essex 110, 143, 209, 215, 236, 246, Fife 244, 364, 370
251, 253, 406, 418, 434, 466 Fincham, Ken 418
Ethelfrid, King 389 Fines, John 209, 221, 232, 246
eucharistic theology 315±16, 318, 320, Finglas, Sir Patrick 141
322±30, 347, 360±1 Fish, Simon 242, 318
Eugenius IV 56 A Supplication for the Beggars 119
Eure, William, Lord 125 Fisher, John, bishop of
evangelism 11 Rochester 20±21, 29, 79±80,
exchequer, English 405 106, 118, 120, 312, 317, 347
Exclusion Crisis 164 Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio 21,
excommunication 27, 30, 63, 395, 312
397±8, 458±9, 469n De Unica Magdalena 20
Exeter, Devon 211, 215, 239±40, 294n Fitwilliam, William, lord deputy 384
diocese 212, 418 Fitzalan family, earls of Arundel 68,
St Nicholas's Priory 226 468
St Thomas's church 210±11 Fitzgerald family, earls of
exiles, Elizabethan 233, 375 Desmond 130
exiles, Henrician and Marian 177±8, Fitzgerald, Gerald, 9th earl of
209n, 232, 234, 240±1, 252, Kildare 44n, 130
 Index 549
Fitzgerald, Thomas, `silken Thomas' Frazer family 456
130 freewillers 250±51, 331
Fitzpatrick, Barnaby 231 friars 39, 45±6, 51, 53±9, 77, 90, 131,
FitzRalph, Richard, archbishop of 146±7, 235, 355
Armagh 54 Frith, John 233, 313±6, 318
Fitzwalter, Thomas see also Radcliff, Fulke, William 272, 274, 348n
Thomas, earl of Sussex 268 Defence of Translation of the Scriptures
Flellian, Maurice, canon of 274
Limerick 27 Fullarton family 237
Fleshmonger, William, dean of funerals see burials
Chichester 200
Flodden, Battle of 17, 28, 31 Gaelic Church 26±7, 37, 41, 56±7, 66,
Flower, William, monk 177 71, 75, 77, 83, 90, 93, 147, 170,
Flower, William, of Northallerton 172, 435, 467±8
460 bishops of 37±8, 192
Ford, Alan 476 Gaelic Ireland, language 279±81,
Forest, Friar 134 284±5, 290, 293, 295±6, 384,
Forman, Andrew, archbishop of St 475±6
Andrews 28±9 peoples 22, 24, 132
Forman, Thomas 209 territories 8, 11, 17, 382
Forrest, Henry 238 Gaelic Scotland, language 282±3, 293,
Foster, John 216 296, 477
Fox, Richard, bishop of Galloway, diocese 36, 370
Winchester 29±30, 34±5, 62, Galway 240
312 Gardiner, Stephen, bishop of
Foxe, Edward, bishop of Winchester 124, 138, 140, 142,
Hereford 121, 123, 125, 136 149, 151, 158±9, 161±2, 172±6,
De vera differentia 125 178, 183, 186±8, 197, 200±2,
Foxe, John 3, 11, 105, 149, 176, 210, 231n, 271, 317, 319±20, 326,
228, 231, 249±51, 263, 289, 328
387±9, 391±4, 481 A Detection of the Devil's Sophistrie
Acts and Monuments 11, 249, 251, 323
264, 321, 388, 392±3, 446, 481 De vera obedientia 124
France 15, 17, 19±20, 49, 55±6, 118, Garrard, Thomas 231
125, 128, 136±7, 148, 152±6, Garrett, Thomas 319
227n, 353, 356, 363±4, 366, Gascoigne, Thomas 23
369, 374, 469 Gates, Sir John 139, 228
Francis I 124, 128, 135, 137 Gau, John 234
Francis II 355±6 Geneva 10, 196, 250, 300, 302, 330,
Franciscans, Conventual 20, 54, 332±3, 353±4, 374, 473
56±7 Church of 334, 341, 348, 353, 361,
Observant 20, 24, 51, 55±8, 295±6, 366, 377, 395, 413
313, 477 Geoffrey of Monmouth 389, 392
Third Order 56, 90 Geoffrey, Thomas 105
Frankfurt 300 Geraldine family, earls of Kildare 17,
troubles at 333, 376 94, 130
550 Index
Germany 7, 15, 120, 136±7, 144, 163, Great Haddenham, Essex 464
232±4, 236, 239, 313, 329±30 Great Malvern, abbey of 141
Gifford, George 289, 386±7 Green, Ian 296±7, 346
Gigli, Giovanni de, bishop of Green, J.R. 269
Worcester 18, 27 Greenham, Richard 346, 429±30
Silvester de, bishop of Worcester 18 Greenwich, friary of 55, 58±9, 313
Gilbertine Order 39 Greenwood, John 421±2
Gilby, Anthony 165, 302, 322, 332, Gregory VII, Pope 322
348, 366, 437 Grey family 228
Gildas 390, 392 Grey, Edmund, Earl Grey 78
Gilla-Patrick 94 Grey, Leonard, Lord 131±2
Gillespie, Raymond 482 Grey, William, Lord, of Wilton 364
Gilpin, Bernard 430, 433 Grimsby, Lincolnshire 223n, 436
Gladstaines, George 438 Grindal, Edmund, archbishop of
Glasgow, cathedral 41 Canterbury 327, 360±61, 373,
diocese 28, 36, 39, 41, 183, 370 374n, 376±9, 396±7, 401, 403,
university 64, 70, 194, 196 407, 417, 433±4, 447, 473
Glasse of Truth, The 121 Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of
Glencairn, earl of see Cunningham Lincoln 23
Gloucester: Gualter, Rodolph 228±9
St Aldate's 206 Guernsey 127, 374, 420, 458n, 466n
diocese 190, 219, 277, 329, 333, 473 Guest, Edmund, bishop of
Gloucestershire 214, 247, 473 Rochester 327, 359
Glyn, William, bishop of Bangor 77 guilds and fraternities 45, 51, 89±93,
Godly Queen Hester 141 100, 109, 160, 206, 439, 464
godparents 453 Guillame, Friar 153
Golant, Cornwall 91 Guise, Francis, duke of 372
Goodacre, Hugh, archbishop of Gunpowder Plot 482
Armagh 2, 168 Gustavas Vasa of Sweden 144
Goodman, Anthony 30
Goodman, Christopher 195, 302, 337, Hackett, William 474
353, 366 Hacksuppe, Simon 462
Goodrich, Thomas, bishop of Ely 126, Hadleigh, Essex 210, 224, 239, 248n,
191, 195, 201, 263 251
Gordon family, earls of Huntly 415±16 Haigh, Christopher 86, 151, 226, 240,
Gordon, George, 6th earl of 434
Huntly 415±16 Hailes, Gloucestershire 444
Goring, Berkshire 446 Hales, Christopher 233
Gosson, Stephen 267 Halifax, Yorkshire 240, 436
Gough, Richard 463 Hall, Edward 3, 23
Gowrie Plot 482 Hall, Joseph, bishop of Exeter 5
Grace Dieu Abbey, Haman 142
Monmouthshire 48 Hamilton, James, 3rd earl of
Grafton, Richard 276 Arran 140, 149, 153±5, 235
Graham, M.F. 460 Hamilton, James, 4th earl of Arran
Grantham, Lincolnshire 223n 365
 Index 551
Hamilton, John, cardinal and and Break with Rome 122±5, 130,
archbishop of St 317, 389
Andrews 28±9, 37, 153, and dissolution of the
180±81, 355 monasteries 140±8
Hamilton, Patrick 232, 234, 312±3, 315 and `middle way' 133, 150±1, 159
Patrick's Places 315 as King David 2, 133±4, 150, 157
Hampshire 246, 247n, 398 as King of Ireland 132, 170, 192
Hampton Court Conference 416 as Supreme Head 125±6, 131±5,
Hancock, Thomas 210, 219 137±40, 148±9, 184, 186±7,
Harding family 236 190, 192
Harding, Thomas 195, 275, 390 court of 227±31
Harington, John 289 divorce 45, 116±24, 130, 197
Harley, John, bishop of Hereford 165 foreign policy of 135±7, 140, 151±5,
Harps®eld, John 184, 292 157
Harps®eld, Nicholas 145 his Assertio Septem Sacramentorum 15,
Harris, Barbara 53 20, 117, 317
Harrison, William, of Essex 266, Hepburn, John 436
293±4, 301, 388, 406, 426, Hepburn, Patrick, bishop of Ross 36
431 Herbert, George 298, 429, 480n
Description of England 294, 426±7 Herbert, Sir William 290, 476n
Harrison, William, of Lancashire 289 Hereford, diocese of 78
Hart, Henry 250±51 heresy 34, 58, 88, 97, 110±12, 123,
Harvey, Barbara 46 151±2, 163, 170, 175±6, 180±1,
Harvey, Margaret 16 187, 191, 207, 230±2, 235±6,
Hatton, Sir Christopher 377n, 405, 238n, 248, 251, 276, 313, 318,
418, 421 323, 388±9, 480
Havering, Essex 248, 465 Hertfordshire 79
Hay, Francis, 9th earl of Erroll 415±16 Heydon, Essex 208
Heath, Nicholas, archbishop of Hickman, Anthony 241
York 183, 187±8 Hickman, Rose 240±42
Heath, Peter 63 Hig, John 235n
Heidelberg theologians 341 High Commission, Court of 379,
Helston, Cornwall 226 400n, 419±21
Hemmingius, Nicholas 345 ex of®cio oath in 419±20
Henri II 356 Highlands, Scottish 41, 66, 83±4, 244,
Henrisoun, James 155±6 280, 283, 410, 425, 432, 462,
Henry V 30, 386 477
Henry VI 30 Hignell, Agnes 105
Henry VII 17±18, 23, 28, 30±32, 49, Hill, Christopher 406
56, 68, 94, 127, 130 Hilles, Richard 99
Henry VIII 2±3, 15, 17±20, 30, 32±3, Hilsey, John, bishop of Rochester 234,
115, 117, 121, 128, 130, 157, 263, 288n
159, 172, 181, 197±8, 202, 209, Hilton, Walter 98
214, 216, 227n, 237, 246, 257, Hindon, Wiltshire 84
265, 269±70, 272, 281, 298, Hoby, Margaret, Lady 249
318±19, 322, 324 Hogarde, Miles 218, 317, 322
552 Index
Holbein, Hans 228 humanists 75, 79, 106, 112, 141, 149,
Holder, Joan 220 152, 193, 227, 232, 271, 312
Holgate, Robert, archbishop of Humphrey, Laurence, president of
York 198, 206 Magdalen 195, 285, 376
holy fairs 449 Hundred Years War 16
holy wells 447, 467 Hungerford, Lady Margaret 96
homilies 184, 261±2, 265, 269, 271, Hunne, Richard 72
291±4, 323, 426±7, 433, 443, Huntly, earls of see Gordon
476 Husee, John 143, 230
Hooker, John 240, 273n, 477±8 Hussey, Bartholemew 217
Hooker, Richard 293, 295, 340, 345, Hussites 388
347, 349, 393±4, 404, 411, 428, Husthwaite, Yorkshire 85
457 Hutchinson , Roger 269, 272
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 345, 347, Hutton, Matthew 289
393 Hutton, Matthew, archbishop of
Hooper, John, bishop of York 401, 423
Worcester 137, 155n, 164, 188, Hutton, Ronald 223
190±1, 201±2, 206, 214, 251,
264, 266n, 286, 319, 326±8, iconoclasm 238, 262, 264±5, 302, 362
331±2, 348 idolatry 2±3, 105, 134, 158, 169, 252,
and ordinal 329, 333 262±8, 302±3, 337, 347, 356±7,
Hopkins, John 300±01 363, 423
Hornchurch, Essex 437, 440, Ignorantia sacerdotum 62
464 images 105±7, 133±4, 150, 158,
Horne, Robert, bishop of 160±61, 166, 191, 224±6, 257,
Winchester 374n, 377n, 398±9, 261±9, 322, 443
401 Imitation of Christ 60
hospitality, clerical 141±2, 179, 190, in¯ation 406±7
406, 430 Inge, Hugh, archbishop of
households and householders 95±8, Dublin 28
244, 464, 466, 468±70, 472, Ingram, Martin 400, 466
481 Ingworth, Richard 58, 146
Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey 151 Innocent III, Pope 16, 18, 438
Howard, Thomas, 3rd duke of Innsbruck, Battle of 330
Norfolk 92, 120n, 138, 141, Interim, the 330
151, 158 Interpretations, the 442
Howland, Richard, bishop of Investiture Contest 34
Peterborough 434 Iona, Statutes of 477
Hoyle, Richard 141, 143 Ipswich, Suffolk 60, 141, 216, 239, 248
Huby, Marmaduke, abbot of shrine of 106
Fountains 49 Ireland 1±6, 8±12, 16±17, 27, 108,
Hudson, W. 232 128±32, 135, 141, 147±8,
Hugh, St. 190 166±72, 223, 230±1, 267±8,
Huguenots 374 281±2, 284, 302, 372n, 386,
Hull, Yorkshire 235 424, 449, 453, 457, 467, 470,
Holy Trinity 66 475, 477, 480, 482±3
 Index 553
Ireland (contd.) James ap Gruffudd ap Hywel, 129n,
Catholic restoration in 169±72, 243, 130
477 Jeremiah 1
lord deputies 131±2, 166±7, 169, 423 Jerome, William 319
nobility 468 Jersey 127, 374
Old English community 281, 285, Jesuits 275, 278, 372n, 380, 412, 422,
384±6, 423, 478, 483 482
proposed university in 233, 383, 386 Jewel, John, bishop of Salisbury 229,
Reformation in 131, 166±9, 226, 270, 275, 292, 300, 339, 357,
233, 380±86, 477 387±90, 393±4, 396, 397n, 401
Ireland, Church of 18±19, 22, 26±9, Apology of the Church of England 387,
35, 38, 41±2, 44, 166±8, 215, 390
290, 391, 396, 399, 401, 406, John the Baptist 1±2, 474
413, 424 John, David ap 78
bishops of 38, 168, 215, 246, 401 Johnson, Francis 474
buildings 93 Jones, Norman 358, 360
friars 55±6, 131 Jones, Thomas 284
origins 391 Joseph of Arimathea 389
Protestant Church of 435, 476±8, Josiah, King of Israel 133, 157±8, 162,
482 263±4
Irish Pale 22, 24, 44, 56, 75, 90, 130, Joye, George 233, 315, 318±20
147, 172, 267, 281, 381±2, Supper of the Lord 315
384±6, 423±4, 435, 471, 483 judge-delegates, papal 26±7
Isle of Ely 92 Julius II, Pope 18, 117
Isle of Lewis 467 Julius III, Pope 27, 173
Isle of Man 127±8, 283n, 302, 405, justices of the peace 221, 224±5
447, 477
language of 282, 283n, 477 Kamen, Henry 4
Israel 336±7 Kearney, John 285, 296, 476n
Italian observer 15 Keevil, Wiltshire 469
Italy 15, 55 Kempe, Margery 64, 86, 104, 270n
Iver, Buckinghamshire 97 Kendal, Westmorland 84
Ives, Eric 145 Kendall, Thomas 210
Kennedy family 456
James III of Scotland 16 Kennedy, Quintin 366
James IV of Scotland 31, 36, 58 Kent 54, 67, 74±5, 96, 209, 212±3,
James V of Scotland 10, 19±20, 28, 31, 215, 225, 246±7, 250±1, 287,
36±7, 49, 124±5, 128, 130, 389, 434, 467n
151±2, 154, 229±30, 316 Kethe, William 300, 374
court of 227, 229±30 Kidderminster, Richard, abbot of
James VI and I 12, 280, 285±6, 367±9, Winchcombe 32, 47
372, 412±6, 420, 423, 468, 475, Kilchrist, Easter Ross 425
477, 482 Kilcrea Friary, co. Cork 56
Basilikon Doron 12, 416 Kildare Revolt 124, 129, 130±31, 143,
Trew Law of Free Monarchies 416 147±8
James, Edward 476 Kildare, earls of see Fitzgerald
554 Index
Kilkenny 1±2, 6, 167, 250, 268 support of clergy 206, 410±11,
kin networks 240, 244, 455±6, 470±71 436±9
King, John, bishop of London 288, 423 Lake, Arthur, bishop of Bath and
King's Bench, court and prison 32, Wells 423
242, 331, 421 Lake District 84
King's Book, 1543 134, 149, 183, 186, Lambert, John 233
225, 263n, 292 Lambert, William 437
King's Lynn, Norfolk 64, 86, 160n Lancashire 65n, 69, 74, 84, 86, 215,
Kingsmill family 247 240, 277, 406, 435, 467, 470
Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey 73, 452 Lancaster, Thomas, archbishop of
Kingussie Friary, Inverness 41 Armagh 384
Kintail, Wester Ross 467 Landriano, Battle of 118
Kirk, James 369 Lane, John 63
Kirkaldy of the Grange 262 Lanterne of Light 87±8
Kirton, Robert, abbot of Laski, Jan 161, 327, 333
Peterborough 46 Forma ac ratio 300, 308
Knollys, Sir Francis 360, 379, 418, 421, Lateran Council, the 5th 20, 29, 33
423 Latimer, Hugh, bishop of
Knowle, Kent 202n Worcester 139, 141, 145n, 186,
Knowles, David 52 188, 190, 193, 195, 202, 223,
Knox, John 4, 165, 232, 235, 241, 231, 234, 263±4, 286, 288±9
243±4, 262, 279, 300, 302, 304, Lauder, William, minister of
308, 316, 320, 325n, 326, Perth 261, 430
331±3, 335, 337, 349, 353±4, Lavenham, Suffolk 242
356, 365±6, 369, 374, 376±7, Learmouth, James 229
395±6, 409 lecturers 437, 471
Appellation to the Nobility of Scotland Lee, Edward, archbishop of York 54
354 Lee, Rowland, bishop of Coventry and
First Blast of the Trumpet 353±4 Lich®eld 128±9
History of the Reformation 5, 366, 392 Leedes, Edward, vicar-general of
Kyle, Ayrshire 244 Ely 201
Leedes Priory, Kent 208
laity: legates, papal 26±8, 118
and conformity 222±4, 471±2 a latere 28±9, 152 , 171, 173
and discipline 460±1, 469 nati 27±8
and parochial of®ce 436±40 legatine jurisdiction 23, 28±9, 35, 39,
and reformation 227±30, 232, 243±53 49, 118 ±19, 121, 171±2, 175,
beliefs 10, 24, 81, 218±21, 224±6, 178, 183
436 Legenda Aurea 107, 291
devotion 89±91, 95±109, 227, 378, Legh, Thomas 144n
427, 472 Le Havre 374
expectations of 60±1, 63, 76, 174, Leicester, earl of see Dudley
182, 253, 430, 437, 448, 478, Leicester, archdeaconry of 67, 460
483±4 Leicestershire 207, 219
instruction of 184, 232, 257, 291±8, Leith, port of Edinburgh 235, 364
300 Leland, John 84
 Index 555
Lennox, earl of and duke of see Lombard, Peter 268
Stewart London, city 54, 63n, 64±5, 72, 79,
Leo X , Pope 15, 17, 19±20, 28 87±8, 92, 106, 110±11, 161,
Lever, Thomas 397 174±5, 202, 209, 211, 215, 218,
Leverous, Thomas, bishop of 236±7, 246±7, 250±1, 333, 357,
Kildare 171, 380±1 376±8, 380, 398, 418±9, 449,
Leversedge, Sir Edmund 101 472±3, 477
Lexden, Essex 449 Baynard's Castle 33
Leyburn, Roger, bishop of bishops homes in 202
Carlisle 33 Blackfriars 32
libraries 55, 57, 179, 195, 227n, 346 Coleman St. 237
Lich®eld, cathedral of 198, 206, 238 Court of Aldermen 27
Lincoln, bishops of 34, 405 Finsbury Fields 248
diocese 47n, 60, 64±5, 67±8, 76, Mercers Company 120
183, 190, 203±4, 212 Minories, The 473
courts of 73 Paul's Cross 480 see also preaching
Lincolnshire 79, 479 Plumbers' Hall 377
Rising, 1536 137, 210, 225 St Peter's, Cornhill 453
Lindsay, Sir David 115±16, 229±30 Savoy Hospital 30
The Thrie Estates 116, 230 Smith®eld 251
Tragedie of Cardinall Betoun 230 Steelyard 236
Linlithgow, West Lothian 415 Strand 202
Lippomanus, Petrus, papal nuncio 27 Tower 130
liturgy, Catholic 3, 6, 24, 37, 61, 82, London, diocese 142, 291, 397, 406,
96, 98±102, 110, 219, 267, 298, 433
357, 425 Longland, John, bishop of Lincoln
Protestant 160±3, 165, 186, 189, 100, 117, 126, 190, 203, 271,
268, 273, 282, 297±8, 300, 310, 291
324±5, 328±9, 357±60, 362, Long Melford, Suffolk 82
425±9, 434, 440±1, 452±7, 475, Lords of the Congregation 4, 183, 243,
483±4 245, 279, 354±7, 361n, 363±5,
Liverpool 85 367, 437
Llandaff, bishops of 202 and 1st Band of Association 354±5,
Lluyd, Humphrey 284 368
Loach, Jennifer 177 Lothian 244, 370
Locke, Anne 241 Louth, county of 479n
Locke, Sir William 240±41 Louvain, university of 196, 234, 296,
Lockhart, James 156±7 477
Lockhart, John 244 Low Countries 1, 55, 101, 130,
Loftus, Adam, archbishop of 233±5
Dublin 285, 290, 303, 383, Lucius, King 121, 389±93
385±6, 399, 423, 476 Ludlow, Shropshire 298n
Logie, Fife 455 Lunt, W. 16
lollardy 19, 87±8, 97, 100±1, 105, Luther, Martin 15, 19, 21, 45, 119,
110±12, 141, 210, 235n, 236±7, 150, 229, 235, 263, 299, 313±5,
241, 250, 252, 388 317, 347
556 Index
Lutherans and Lutheranism 34, 119, Marsilius of Padua 124
126, 133, 136±7, 140, 144n, Martin, Thomas 322
186, 234, 236±7, 309±10, Martyn, Roger 82
312±13, 316, 318±19, 324±5, martyrdom, theatre of 238±9
345±6 Mary I 1, 3, 58, 116, 164, 169±71, 183,
Lydgate, John 209 194, 196n, 243, 246, 262, 333,
Lyn, John 319 355
Lyon, William, bishop of Cork, and restoration of
Cloyne and Ross 432, 435, 483 Catholicism 169±78, 198,
206±7, 218, 322
MacAlpine, John 234, 316, 319 images of 178
McCarthy, Conogher 170 Mary of Guise 156, 354±6, 363±4
MacCawell family 38 Mary Queen of Scots 153, 157, 284,
MacCulloch, Diarmaid 9, 159, 186, 356, 363, 365n, 366±7, 370
232, 246, 310, 329 Mass, the 3, 59±61, 82±5, 87, 91,
MacDermot, Rory 50n 96±105, 108, 111, 131, 135,
Macdonalds of Glengarry 425 137, 150, 167, 198, 211, 215,
MacDowell, John 234, 316 217±19, 224, 237, 244±5, 249,
Machyn, Henry 248±9 252, 267±8, 315, 317, 323±4,
MacNichaill, Heneas 108 326, 328, 356, 385±6, 414, 423,
Madhew, John 327 425, 447, 467, 483
Magdeburg Centuriators, the 321 Maxey, Anthony 343
Magennesse, Eugene 170 May, William 197, 201
magic 61±2, 101±2 Mearns, the 240, 244, 326, 364, 370,
magistrates, godly 387±8, 395 409n, 410n
Maguire family 38 Mede, Joseph 480n
Maguire, Cathal O Â g, canon of Melanchthon, Philipp 123, 161, 310,
Clogher 77 312, 315, 320
Maitland, F.W. 34 Loci Communes 318, 332
Maitland of Lethington 310, 365±6 Mellifont, abbey of, Ireland
Major, John, Scottish theologian 21±2, 48±9
70, 85, 312 Meltham, Yorkshire 25
Mallard, Jean 134 Melton, William, chancellor of
Mallett, Francis, dean of Lincoln York 43
196n Melville, Andrew 196, 369, 371±2,
Manning, Roger 399 398, 409, 414±16, 438
Marburg, Colloquy of 315 Melville, James 369n, 415, 436,
Marchant, R.A. 459 438
Margaret of AngouleÃme 227n Mendlesham, Suffolk 214, 237
Margaret Tudor, of Scotland 19 Methven, Lord see Stewart
Marillac, Charles de, French Methven, Paul 245, 356
ambassador 133, 137 Meyricke, Rowland, bishop of
Marprelate, Martin 419±21 Bangor 77
marriage 25, 298, 454, 459, 467 Micron, Martin 251
Marshall, Peter 61, 76 Middleton, Marmaduke, bishop of St
Marshall, William 124 Davids 442n
 Index 557
Midwinter, John, mayor of Exeter 211 Morton, John, cardinal and archbishop
midwives 452 of Canterbury 18, 26, 28, 32,
Mildenhall, Suffolk 461 54
Mildmay, Sir Walter 378, 418 Morton, earl of see Douglas
Milton, John 261 mortuaries 72±3, 86, 120
miracles 479±80 Mountain, Thomas 238
Mirk, John 63, 291 Mount Grace, priory of, Yorkshire 52
Festial 63, 291 Mountjoy, Charles, Lord 423
monasteries, English 28, 30, 44±7, 49, MuÈhlberg, Battle of 159, 162, 330
175, 177, 235 Munby, Peter 436
commissions for 145 Munday, Anthony 267
dissolution of 138±48, 239 Mundy, John 359
visitations of 142±5 Munster, province of 382, 384, 478n
Irish 42, 48±50 president of 471
Scottish 41, 44, 48±9, 51, 183, 235, Musculus, Wolfgang 345
456 Commonplaces 345
Welsh 48 music, church 298±301, 362
monastic orders 39, 44±53 Myddle, Shropshire 463
Moni®eth, Angus 438, 451, 462, 466
monks 45, 51±3, 212±3 Nagle, Richard, bishop of
vocations and vows of 53, 322 Clonfert 192
Montgomery, George, bishop of national identity 7±9, 11
Meath 69 Neale, J.E. 358
Montgomery, Robert, archbishop of Needham, Humphrey 377n
Glasgow 372 Newcastle, proposed bishopric of 201
Montrose, Angus 245, 356 Newchurch in Rossendale,
Moran, Jo Ann 65 Lancashire 84
Moray, diocese of 19, 36, 432 New Ross, co.Wexford 268, 447n
Moray, earl of see Stewart Nice Wanton 249
Morden, John 100 Niclaes, Hendrick 474
More, Sir Thomas 20±1, 30, 66, 106, nicodemism 252±3, 359, 470
115, 150, 209, 263, 271±2, Nine Years War 423
317±18, 322 Ninian, St 37, 108
Dialogue Concerning Heresies 61, 78, Nisbet, Murdoch 110
317 non-conformity 376±7, 398±9, 401,
Responsio ad Lutherum 21, 317 413, 416±21, 451, 465, 470±5
Utopia 66 Norfolk 100, 103, 107, 246, 253
Morebath, Devon 82, 88, 208, 264, Norfolk, duke of see Howard
447 Northampton 437
Morgan, William, bishop of St Northamptonshire 247, 378, 418, 420,
Asaph 270, 283±4, 476 474
Morice, Ralph 149, 202n Northbrooke, John 266
Morison, Sir Richard 165 Northey, George 437
Morone, Giovanni, cardinal 275 Northumberland 433
Morrice, Dongan, dean of Northumberland, duke of see Dudley
Tuskard 167 Norton, Thomas 162
558 Index
Norwich 20n, 44, 47, 54, 223, 238, Osiander, Andreas 320±1
247 Osmund, St 107
diocese 47, 63, 215, 325n, 396 Osney abbey 198
consistory court of 72 Ossory, bishopric of 1, 168
St Augustine's 238 Otes, John 403
Nowell, Alexander 296±7, 397n Oundle, Leicestershire 237
Nugent, Edward 386 Overall, John, bishop of Norwich 345
nulli®dians 221±2 Overton, William, bishop of Coventry
nuncios, papal 26±7 and Lich®eld 405
nuns 45, 52±3 Oxford, diocese 212
Nykke, Richard, bishop of Oxford, university 46, 54±5, 70,
Norwich 32, 236 193±7, 207, 231±3, 271, 312n,
327, 343, 345±6, 348, 431
O'Brien, Donough, 4th earl of Christ Church 141, 231
Thomond 231 Gloucester College 46
O'Brien, Margaret 56 Magdalen 70
O'Day, Rosemary 433 New College 70, 437
Ochino, Bernardino 161, 331n Oriel 195
Octavians, the 415 St Johns 194
Oecolampadius, Johannes 316 Trinity 194
O'Fihilly, Maurice, archbishop of Oxfordshire 253
Tuam 38, 57 Oxnead, Norfolk 102
O'Flanagan, Nicholas 17
O'Guanach, Richard 17 Paget, William, Lord 158±9, 162, 172,
O'Hussey, Bonaventura 296 175, 188
Olde, John 252 paintings 265±7, 303
O'Neill, Con, 1st earl of Tyrone 170 papacy 15±30, 38, 83, 96, 117±18, 120,
O'Neill, Hugh, 2nd earl of 124, 129, 151±2, 177±8, 216,
Tyrone 412, 423 265, 389±90
O'Neill, Shane 383 and Ireland 129±30, 132, 170, 192,
oral culture 269, 283, 297, 380, 382, 391, 412
303±4 hostility to 19, 23±4, 134, 137,
ordinal, reformed 2, 163, 188±9, 212, 154±6, 164, 187, 230, 321, 390
329±30 supremacy of 20±1, 23, 30, 119,
ordinations 65, 183, 205, 212 121, 124, 126, 134, 148, 173,
ordo salutis 342±4 226, 264, 364
Ordoure of Excommunication and of Public papal bulls 33, 79, 86, 142n, 170±1
Repentance 459 Laudabiliter 22, 129
Ordsall, Nottinghamshire 436 Regnans in excelsis 374
O'Reilly, William, Franciscan Parfew, Robert, bishop of St
Provincial 57 Asaph 281
organs 442 Paris 276
Orkney, diocese 432 university 21, 196, 234
Ormond, county of 147 parishes 6, 24, 44, 66, 73, 81±96, 208,
Ormond, earls of see Butler 212±13, 218, 223, 425±6, 429,
ornaments, ecclesiastical 360, 362 436, 446, 467, 479, 483
 Index 559
Parishes (contd.) and dissolution of
ceremonial life of 94±5, 225 monasteries 145±6, 185
size of 82±6, 467 sessions of:
English 44, 60, 69, 71±2, 75, 84, 1536±7 131, 145±6, 281
218, 225, 266, 276±7, 289, 292, 1560 380±1
294, 397, 404±6, 426, 429, Parliament, Scottish 26, 124, 151, 153,
439±40, 461±2, 466, 469, 471, 355, 367±8, 371, 416
473 Reformation (1560) 262, 354, 364±6
Irish 69, 71, 75, 82, 84±5, 169 of 1584 372
Scottish 44, 66, 69, 71, 82±4, 84±5, Parr, Catherine 228
103 Parsons, Robert 359
Welsh 71, 82, 284 passion, devotion to 52
parish goods 165, 209, 277 Paston family 102
Parker, Matthew, archbishop of Pastor, L. 116
Canterbury 259, 284±5, 306, Patrick, St 391, 435
308±9, 311, 359, 375±8, 383, patronage, ecclesiastical:
389±90, 393, 399, 433, 442n, episcopal 37
456 lay 36, 45, 50, 52, 64, 167, 213,
De Antiquitate Britanniae Ecclesiae 390 228±9, 246, 396, 431, 437
Parkhurst, John, bishop of papal 16±17
Norwich 228, 362, 405 royal 16±19, 33, 36, 50, 52, 55±6,
Ludicra sive Epigrammata 228 58, 108, 147, 198, 206,
Parkyn, Robert 208±9, 215, 218 406
Parliament, English 162, 173±4, 177, Patten, William 156
185, 189, 207, 252±3, 362, 378, Paul, St 1, 179, 190, 290, 313
406, 412, 417±18 Paul III, Pope 28, 57, 130
House of Commons 120, 177±8, Paul IV, Pope 170±1, 178
185, 360, 373, 417 pax board 89
House of Lords 186, 189 Pecham, John, archbishop of
sessions of 1512 32 Canterbury 62, 80n, 99
Reformation (1529±36) 115, Pecock, Reginald 98
119±20, 122±4, 140, 143, 145 Peebles, Peebleshire 245
1539 3 penance, public 458±9, 461±3
1545 135 Pendleton, Henry 184
1547 159±60 Penny, John, bishop of Carlisle 33
1549 160, 162±3 Penry, John 284, 290, 404, 420±2,
1552 209 448n, 474±5, 478
1555 175 Percy family, earls of
1559 357±60, 365 Northumberland 93
1562±3 300, 362, 375 Percy, Sir Henry 363
1566 375 Perkins, William 266, 287±8, 337±8,
1571 375, 396 343, 345±6
1584 417, 419 Art of Prophesying 287
1586/7 405, 417 A Golden Chaine
Parliament, Irish 2, 131±2, 167, 171, Perne, Andrew, master of
185, 380±1, 384, 386 Peterhouse 327
560 Index
Perrot, Sir James, lord deputy 386, Ponet, John, bishop of
413n, 423 Winchester 189, 201, 218
Perth, 238, 241, 245, 356, 415±6, 441 Poole, Dorset 219
Charterhouse of 51 poor, the 464±6, 469
Dominican friary 235, 262 Pope, Robert 111
Perth Craftsmen's Book 241 popular belief 12, 24, 52, 61±2, 302±4,
Peter, St 179 479±84 see also laity
Peterborough, diocese of 290 Port Royal, Paris 52
abbey 46 Porter, John 242
Pettegree, Andrew 346 Portsmouth, Hampshire 246
Peto, Friar 58 Postel, Simon, abbot of Chaalis,
pews and church seating 89, 96, 98, France 49
426, 428, 441, 443, 463±5 praemunire 32±3, 121, 126, 170
rents 463±6 prayer 98, 108±9, 112, 238, 298,
Philip II of Spain 171, 176±8, 248, 427±8, 471
356n for the dead 6, 54, 60±1, 63, 87, 93,
Philips, John, bishop of Sodor and 102, 104±5, 220,359, 434,
Man 282n, 477 455±7
Philpot, John 319 preaching 2, 5±6, 24, 43, 45, 54, 62±4,
Phip, Henry 88 79, 104, 124, 153, 159±60,
Pilgrimage of Grace, the 50, 137, 142, 164±6, 172, 174±5, 179, 181±3,
146, 210, 223, 225±6 187±8, 195, 198, 204, 208, 210,
pilgrimages 104±8, 131, 267, 318, 425, 224, 231, 237±8, 240, 243, 245,
471 259, 264±5, 267±8, 298, 303,
Pilkington, James, bishop of 361, 368, 385, 415, 427,
Durham 269n, 327, 348, 397, 429±30, 449, 462, 466n
407 and reformers 257±61, 265, 286±91,
Pilton, Devon 471 302, 331, 338, 353, 356, 379,
Pinkie, Battle of 159 383, 396, 407±8, 410±11, 430,
Pisa, Council of 19 434, 437, 442±3, 475±6,
Plantaganet, Arthur, Lord Lisle 128, 479±80, 484
139, 143, 146 as entertainment 288±9, 479±80
Honor, Lady Lisle 230 at court 403
Playfere, Thomas 288 at St Paul's Cross 32, 64, 127, 174,
plays 2, 94, 115±16, 125, 141, 164, 265, 288±9, 300, 412, 416, 419
178, 202±3, 211, 219, 230, 237, by friars 54, 63
249±50, 266±7 jeremiads 480, 482
Pocock, John 8±9, 279n popularity of 289±90, 467, 471
Pogson, Rex 207 of royal supremacy 124, 126±7, 138,
Poldon, Matthew 76 257, 288, 362
Pole, Reginald, cardinal and unpopularity of 469
archbishop of prebends and prebendaries 70±1, 197,
Canterbury 170±8, 180±4, 199, 203, 403
206±7, 219, 272, 292, 390 Prebendaries' Plot 148±9, 198
polemics 317±18, 320, 322±4, 327, predestination 250, 307±8, 320, 330±2,
349, 389±90, 413±14, 419 335, 338, 340±5, 347
 Index 561
Premonstratensian Order 39, 48, 49n rebellions of 1549 159, 165, 168, 204,
presbyterianism and presbyteries 335, 210, 223, 225±6, 240, 253
369±74, 378, 395, 397±8, recusancy 200, 295, 303, 377, 386, 399,
404±5, 412, 414, 416, 418, 420, 419, 422±3, 465, 470±1, 475
458±9, 461±2 Redman, John 197
Prestonpans, East Lothian 444n Redman, Robert, bishop of Ely 49n
Price, Sir John 296 Regensburg, Diet of 323n
primers 96, 98, 103, 109, 295±6 Reid family 237
printing press 9, 46, 160, 181, 237, Reid, Robert, bishop of Orkney 37
282±3, 294, 378, 420, 479, 481 resistance theory 353±4, 357, 363
Privy Chamber 138±9, 149, 230 Respublica 116, 178, 202±3, 206
privy kirks 97, 157, 243±4, 326, 354 Retford, Nottinghamshire 436
processions 94±5, 219, 329, 359, Reynes, Robert 99
446±7, 457 Reynolds, Dr. John 346, 422±3
proclamations 3, 127, 139, 155, 162, Rhind, Robert, chaplain of Perth 60
190, 218, 276±7, 357 Rhys ap Gruffudd 128±9
prohibition, writs of 32 Rhys, SioÃn Dafydd 293, 296
prophesyings 287, 378±9, 396, 398, Rich, Richard, Lord 144, 148
434 Richmond, Colin 95
Protestantism, spread of 246±7 Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire 105
providence 1, 12 , 62, 178, 304, 388, Ridley, Nicholas, bishop of
392, 479±83 London 189, 191, 204, 234,
Prys, Edmwnd 476 264, 324, 327, 333
psalms 2, 6, 134±5, 227, 272, 277, 299, rites of passage 82, 85, 452±7
302, 315±16, 427, 471, 476 Robotham, John 450
metrical 299±302, 427±8 Rogationtide 82, 94, 447
pulpits 63, 289, 440, 442 Rogers, John, early reformer 319
purgatory 103±5, 108, 111, 150, 308, Rogers, John, Elizabethan
315, 348, 455 preacher 480
Purgatory, St Patrick's, Lough Rokeby, John, chancellor of York 200
Derg 104, 108 Rolle, George 146
Rolle, Richard 209
Quakers 236 Rollock, Richard, minister of
Queen Anne's Bounty 207 Edinburgh 286, 289, 293, 338,
Quentin, Jean 98±9 348±9
Rome 15, 17, 24±5, 176
Radcliffe, Thomas, Lord Fitzwalter Church of 339±40, 347, 349, 388
and earl of Sussex 169, 171, English and Scottish hospices in 25
380±3 Sack of 23, 117±18
Radwinter, Essex 427 `Rome-running' 26, 29, 41, 66, 170
Ramist logic 343 Romford, Essex 440
Randolph, Sir Thomas 333±4, 364±5 roods and roodlofts 99, 106±7, 224±6,
Ratcliffe, Sir Humphrey 228 442n, 443
Ratramnus of Corbie 324 rosaries 109, 159
Rawson, John, prior of Kilmain 28 Rosser, Gervase, 91
readers, clerical 293, 407, 410, 432±4 Rota, the 26
562 Index
Rough, Friar 58, 153 castle 155
Rowe, John 308n kirk sessions 394±5, 438±9, 459,
Rowlands, Henry, bishop of 467, 469
Bangor 402 prior of 72
Rowlands, Richard 422 university 55, 64, 70, 194, 196, 232,
royal supremacy 3±4, 12, 24, 121±7, 312
129, 133±4, 137, 150, 158, 164, St Leonard's College 232
170, 173, 177, 179n, 183±4, St Breock, Cornwall 76
186, 188, 214, 223, 317±18, St David's, bishop of 71, 78, 203
333, 357, 373, 376, 416 dean and chapter of 71
enforcement of 127, 131±2, 138, diocese 71, 215, 225, 290
225, 382 St German, Christopher 73, 122
oath to 131, 374±5, 381±2, 386, 423 St John of Jerusalem, Hospital of 148
visitations and injunctions St Leger, Anthony 132, 147,
under 126, 159±60, 190, 195, 166±9
225, 264, 291, 294, 300, 357, St Osyth's Priory, Essex 142
361±2, 441 St Werburgh's Abbey, Chester 23
Roye, William 263, 313, 318n saints 6, 83, 90±1, 96, 220, 225, 264,
Rubin, Miri 102 268±9, 303, 304n, 318
Rudd, Anthony, bishop of St cults of 96±7, 105±8, 110, 225,
Davids 423 267±8, 329
Russell family, earls of Bedford 468 Salcot, John, bishop of Salisbury 189
Russell, Francis, 2nd earl of Salesbury, William 282±4
Bedford 377n Salisbury, cathedral 62, 107
Ruthven raid 368±9, 372 diocese 47, 54, 95, 110, 127, 216,
Rye, Sussex 216, 239, 248n, 252±3 401, 418
Ryrie, Alec 252 Sampford Courtenay, Devon 225
Sampson, Elizabeth 105
sabbatarianism 425, 454, 461±2, 465, Sampson, Thomas, dean of Christ
469 Church 376
sacramentals 61±2, 87, 101, 110, 261 Samuel, William 301±2
sacrament fonts 100, 103 Sanders, Nicholas 275
sacrament houses 101 Sanderson, Margaret 153
sacraments 7, 59, 61, 63, 78, 85, Sandwich, Kent 215±16, 239
98±103, 110±11, 151, 179, 187, Sandys, Edwin, archbishop of
216, 228, 237, 269, 307±8, 311, York 264, 290, 394, 397, 399,
315±16, 318, 322, 325±6, 332, 441
338, 340, 361, 368, 417, 448±53 Saravia, Hadrian
sacred space 445±8, 467 Diverse degree of ministers 339
Sadler, Sir Ralph 125, 133, 152±4 Sars®eld, Patrick 405
Saffron Walden, Essex 204 Saunders family 88
St Alban's Abbey 46 Saxons 390
St Andrews, Fife 6, 235, 238, 245, 302, Saxony, dukes of 125n
313, 356, 364, 465 Scambler, Edmund, bishop of
archdiocese 16±17, 28, 36, 39, 41, Norwich 402
183, 371 Scarisbrick, J.J. 16, 35
 Index 563
Scheves, William, archbishop of St Scrowton, William 469
Andrews 16 segregation in church 89, 464±5
Scheyfve, Jehan, imperial separatism 377, 393, 422, 472±5
ambassador 201 sermo humilis 287±8
Schmalkaldic League 136±7, 330 sermon-gadding 471
Scory, John, bishop of Chichester 332 Sermones Discipuli 59, 63
Scotland 1, 4, 6, 8±12, 15±17, 19, 21, Seton, Alexander 58, 316
23, 27, 30, 128, 130, 133, 137, Seymour family 151n
149, 151±7, 159, 162, 166, 226, Seymour, Edward, duke of
234, 359, 363, 374, 383, 439n, Somerset 154±60, 162±4,
449, 451, 480, 482±3 166±7, 169, 172, 202, 253
as elect nation 482 letters of, to rebels 253
nobility of 37, 368±9, 408, 415, 460, Seymour, Jane 142
468 Shakespeare, William 451
privy council of 365, 370, 408, 415, Shaw, William 434
458 Shawell, Leicestershire 76
Reformation in 4±5, 7, 10±11, 58, Shaxton, Nicholas, bishop of
97, 155±6, 214, 226, 229, 232, Salisbury 186, 251
234±55, 242±5, 248, 262, 270, Sheen Abbey, Surrey 52
278, 332, 334, 353±7, 362±72, Shepherd, Luke 250n
374, 398 Sheppard, John 359
supremacy, oath of 368 Sheppard, William 208, 213, 429
Scotland, Church in 15±17, 28±9, 39, Sherburne, Robert, bishop of
41±2, 69, 90, 93, 116, 124±5, Chichester 65, 200
151, 180, 182±3, 205n, 207, Shrewsbury, Shropshire 108
209n, 387, 408, 458 shrines 139, 217, 267, 318
®nancing of 365, 367, 369, 403, 406, Shropshire 160
408±11 Shutte, Christopher 342
friars in 55, 57±8 Siddall, Henry 196
General Assembly of 338, 365, Sidney, Sir Henry, lord deputy 302,
369±72, 395±6, 409±11, 305, 383±6, 479n
413±16, 432, 441, 444, 448, Sithirland, William and Marley,
454, 456, 459±60, 477 Dalmagyn 25
kirk sessions 395, 437±9, 446, 456n, Sixtus IV, Pope 127
458±9, 461, 463, 464±5, 478 Skeeters, M. 213
lollardy in 110, 237 Skef®ngton, Thomas, lord
origins 391±2 deputy 130±1
Scotland, reformed kirk 10, 235, 280, Skelton, John 115
288, 290, 297±8, 302±3, 335, Skip, John, bishop of Hereford 142
346n, 367±71, 377, 401, 408±10, Smith, John 195
413±6, 423, 427±8, 432±3, Smith, Dr. Richard 195, 252n, 317
436±8, 444, 452±6, 462, 464±5, Smith, Sir Thomas 155, 224
467±8, 471, 475, 477±8, 482±3 Smith, William, bishop of Lincoln 100
taxation 152 sola®dianism 2, 5, 149±50, 227, 247,
Scottish cases in Rome 26 250, 293, 306±7, 311, 313±14,
Scottish crown, wealth of 44 318±20, 323, 325, 342, 347
564 Index
Solway Moss, Battle of 31, 152 six articles, 1539 135±7, 139, 148,
Some, Robert 340, 343 159±60, 186, 214, 251, 319
soteriology 314±15, 330, 340±2, new cathedrals, 1541 197
345±7, 480, 483 dissolution of chantries, 1547 160
Southampton 210, 246 sacrament of the altar, 1547 160
Southill, Bedfordshire 471 union of churches, 1547 206
Southwark, Surrey 92, 466 abolition of celibacy, 1549 160, 214
Spain 15, 131n, 346, 482 uniformity, 1549 163, 167
Sparke, Michael 276 regulating tithes, 1549 200
Spenser, Miles, chancellor of abolition of images, 1550 264
Norwich 200 uniting England with Rome, 1554
Spring, Geoffrey 93 177
Spottiswood, John 308n against heresy, 1555 175
Stafford, George 231 returning ®rst fruits to church, 1555
Stafford, John, bishop of Bath and 207
Wells 62 supremacy, 1559 357
Stamford, Lincolnshire 206, 471 uniformity, 1559 357, 360, 465, 468
Standish, Henry 32±3, 54 exchange of bishops' lands, 1559
Standish, John 271n, 272, 317, 319 404
Stanford-le-Vale, Oxfordshire 218 translation of Bible into Welsh, 1563
Stanlake, Philip 216 284
Stanley family, earls of Derby 405 treason, 1563 375
Stanley, James, bishop of Ely 33 treason, 1581 380
Stanley, James, 7th earl of Derby 405 against seditious sectaries, 1593 422
Staples, Edward, bishop of Meath 132, Statutes, Irish:
170, 192±3 for use of English language, 1537
Star Chamber 420 281
Starkey, Thomas 141, 145 supremacy, 1560 381
Stationers' Company 276 uniformity, 1560 381
Statutes, English: establishing parochial schools, 1570
against provisions 16 384
limiting bene®t of clergy, 1489 Statutes, Scottish:
and 1497 32 in defence of the kirk, 1541 151
against mortuaries, 1529 73 for reading English Scriptures, 1543
submission of the clergy, 1532 122 229
supplication against the ordinaries, ownership of Bible, 1579 277
1532 122 `black acts', 1584 372, 413
in restraint of appeals, 1533 123 annexation, 1587 409
supremacy, 1534 125, 127, 143 `golden' acts, 1592 414
succession, 1534 124 Steeple Bumpstead, Essex 237
treasons, 1534 124, 160, 210 Sternhold, Thomas 299±301
®rst fruits and tenths, 1534 143 Stewart, EsmeÂ, duke of Lennox 368,
union with Wales, 1536 129 371±2
dissolving lesser monasteries, 1536 Stewart, Francis, earl of Bothwell 415
47, 144±5 Stewart, Henry, Lord Methven 156
regulating tithe, 1536 200, 204 Stewart, James, earl of Moray 366±7
 Index 565
Stewart, James, earl of Arran 369 Helvetic Confession 325
Stewart, Matthew, earl of Lennox 153 Sylvester II, Pope 322
Steynor, John 198 synods 370, 396±7, 415
Stirling, Stirlingshire 230, 356, 364, Syon, abbey of 52±3
459
Stokesley, John, bishop of London 74, Tailboys, William, wife of 79
142 Talachddu, Breconshire 476
Stone, Lawrence 431 Tallis, Thomas 359
Stonor family 96 Taverner, Richard 291
Stonor, Sir Walter 249 Taylor, John 103
Story, John 195 Taylor, Rowland 210, 224, 239
Stour Valley, Suffolk 237 Temperley, N. 301
Stow, John 473 Terling, Essex 466
Straiton, David 72, 242 Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire 436,
stranger churches 161, 175, 236, 251, 442
330, 333, 354n, 361, 374, 377 Tewkesbury, John 237
Strasbourg 161, 163, 319, 330 Thackwray, John 211
Strata Florida Abbey, Cardiganshire 48 Theodosius, Emperor 379
Strickland, Walter 373 theology, study of 195±6
Strozzi, Peter 155 Thetford Priory, Norfolk 92
Stuarde, Edmund, chancellor of Theydon-Garnon, Essex 89
Winchester 200 Thirlby, Thomas, bishop of Ely 171n,
Stuart, Balthasar, papal ambassador 17 183, 186, 189, 251
Stubbes, Philip 267, 446n Thirsk, Yorkshire 469
Stubbs, John 380 Thomas, Keith 102
Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf 380 Thomas, William 159
Suffolk, 209, 211, 237, 246, 253, 398, Thombe, Michael 250
433 Thomond, earl of see O'Brien
archdeaconry of 76 Throckmorton, Job 420
Suffolk, duke of see Brandon Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas 241
superintendents 361, 369, 394±6, 401, Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire 48
410 tithes and teinds 70±3, 200, 204±5,
surrender and regrant 132, 147 207±8, 242, 403, 405, 407, 409,
Surrey, assizes 420 411, 458
Surrey, earl of see Howard Toledo, Treaty of 137
Sussex 216 towns, reformation in 205±6, 223,
East 247 237±41, 243±4, 395
West 246, 290 magistrates of 239, 437±40
Sutcliffe, Matthew Townshend, Roger 201
Treatise of ecclesiastical discipline 339 Traheron, Bartholemew 320±21, 331
Swainsthorpe, Norfolk 72 Travers, John 24n
Swanson, R.N. 39 Travers, Walter 398
Sweeting, William 88, 105 Trent, Council of 161, 180±2, 295,
Swinnerton, Thomas 124 307, 310, 312, 387
Switzerland 163 Trickett, Henry 403
churches in 325, 329±30, 360, 383 Trim, Co. Meath 131, 267±8
566 Index
Trollope, Anthony 435 Vasteras, Recess of 144
Trueman, Carl 332 Vaughan, Richard, bishop of
Trychay, Christopher 82, 208±9, 214 London 423
Tullibody, Clackmannanshire 214 Vaux, Laurence 295n
Tullyhogue, co. Armagh 85 Veitch, Robert 58
Tudor, Philippa 295 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 161±2, 195,
Tudson, John 248 264, 324n, 325±7, 329, 331,
Tunisian Crusade 130 342, 346, 348
Tunstal, Cuthbert, bishop of vestarian controversy 373, 375±6, 378,
Durham 100, 122, 165, 173, 383, 397
186±7, 201, 235, 237, 317, 323n vestries 440
Turner, Richard 168 vestments 329, 359±60, 362, 373,
Turner, William, dean of Wells 214, 375±7, 379
263, 319, 322 Victor, Pope 391
two kingdom theory 367±8, 415±6 Villa Garcia, Juan de 195
Tye, Thomas 237 Virgin Mary 90, 99, 101, 103, 105±6,
Tyndale, William 61, 76, 112, 233, 108±9, 131, 151, 178, 217,
263, 270, 272±4, 285, 312±14, 267±8, 435
331 visitations, episcopal 10, 28, 34, 39, 47,
Answer unto More's Dialogue 318 60, 63, 75±6, 93, 99, 126, 183,
Obedience of a Christian Man 119, 190±1, 216, 219, 277, 384±5,
126, 317 400±1, 433, 442±3, 446±7, 452,
Parable of the Wicked Mammon 317 456±7, 460, 466
Right Institution of the Sacraments 314 voluntary religion 471±2
Tywardreath, Cornwall 86 Voysey, John, bishop of Exeter 281

Udall, John 348n, 420, 452 Wager, Lewis

Demonstration of Discipline 420 Mary Magdalene 249
Udall, Nicholas 282, 294 Wakeman, John, bishop of
Ullerstone, Richard 23 Gloucester 190
Ulmis, John ab 161, 331 Waldensians 388
Ulrich, Duke of WuÈrttemberg 144 Wales, 4, 8±9, 108, 127±9, 223, 280,
Ulster, province of 56, 382, 411 282
Underhill, Edward 228 gentry of 129, 280, 425n, 468±9
universities, size of 193±5, 411, 431 lollardy in 110, 283
academic development of 196 Marches of 128±9
reformation in 231±3, 243, 312, 410 Reformation in 129, 167, 243, 246,
unwritten verities 272±3 270, 279±80, 354
Urith, St. 107 Wales, Church in 35±6, 39, 77±8, 90,
Ursinus, Zacharias 336 191±2, 290, 297, 390, 396,
Ussher, James, archbishop of 402±3, 406±7, 425n, 464, 474±5
Armagh 286, 391 Wallace, Adam 242
Gravissimae quaestionis 391 Wallace, D.D. 340
Walsh, William, bishop of
Valois, Henri, duke of Anjou 380 Meath 170±1, 380±2
Valor Ecclesiasticus 73, 143, 206, 406 Walsham, Alexandra 479±80
 Index 567
Walsingham, priory 47 407, 413, 417, 419±20, 422,
shrine of 106, 109, 217 431, 444n, 461, 468, 472
Walsingham, Sir Francis 417±8, 422 and Three Articles 417±19
Ward, Anthony 237 Whittingham, William 270, 300, 332,
Warham, William, archbishop of 374
Canterbury 31±2, 35, 42, 63, Whytford, Richard 97
75, 93, 99, 180±1, 183, 213, 291 Werke for Housholders 97
Warwickshire 96, 205, 378, 406n Wiburn, Percival 437
Waterford 240, 268, 471 Wied, Hermann von, archbishop of
merchants of 471 Cologne 182n
Watson, Thomas, bishop of Wilcox, Thomas 348n, 378
Lincoln 184 Willesborough, Kent 93
Holsome and Catholyke Doctrine 184 Willet, Andrew 340, 347
Watt, Tessa 301, 303, 479, 481 Synopsis Papisimi 347
Wauchope, Robert, archbishop of William of Stranton 104
Armagh 24, 27 Williams, Glanmor 283±4
Wedderburn, John 299, 316 Williamson, A. 416
Wedderburn, Robert 299 Williamson, Thomas 259
Gude and Godlie Ballatis 299 Willock, John 58, 245, 308n, 316
Wells, diocese of 183 Willoughby, Dr. John 224±5
Welsh language 191±2, 280, 283±4, wills 42, 47, 51, 54, 63, 74±5, 93, 103,
293, 296, 476 120, 211, 219±21, 247, 278,
West, Nicholas, bishop of Ely 62, 80n 346, 456±8
Westerdale, Richard 451 preambles to 220n, 224, 246±8
Westfaling, Herbert, bishop of Wilson, Thomas 288
Hereford 195, 448 Arte of Rhetorique 288±9
Westminster 79 Wiltshire 459, 466
Westminster Abbey 46, 357 archdeaconry of 460
Weston, Robert, lord chancellor of Winchcombe Abbey,
Ireland 384±5 Gloucestershire 47
Weston, William 278, 449 Winchelsea, Sussex 216
Weston Colville, Cambridgeshire 462 Winchester, cathedral 198, 212, 217
Weston Zoyland, Somerset 86 diocese 127, 200, 212, 215±6, 399n
Wever, R. Windsor, Berkshire 141
Lusty Juventus 249±50 Winifred, St 108
Weymouth, Dorset 92 Winram, John 308n, 394, 397
Whitaker, William 272, 274, 278, 343, Winthrop, John 471
345 Winzet, Ninian 366
Whitchurch, Richard 294 Wisbech, Cambridgeshire 278, 449
White, John 387 Wishart, George 232, 243, 316, 325
White, Peter 345 witchcraft 483
White, Thomas 219 Wittenberg 250, 319
Whitgift, John, archbishop of Articles of 136, 318
Canterbury 273, 284, 293, 335, Wolfe, David 385
338, 341, 347, 372±3, 376, 379, Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal and
392±3, 397, 399, 401±3, 406n, archbishop of York 17±18, 23,
568 Index
Wolsey (contd.) Wynn, Sir John 402n, 425n
25, 28±9, 33, 35, 39, 42, 49, 51,
55, 59, 77, 117±21, 138, 141±2, York 54, 65, 86, 205±6, 223, 235, 407
231 archdiocese 19, 39, 65, 183, 200,
women 96±7, 105±6, 226±7, 249, 272, 202n, 204n, 247, 401, 435,
381, 452±3, 464, 473 466
Wood, Thomas 402 corporation 219, 223
Worcester, bishops of 202 minster 198
cathedral 198 York, Cecily, duchess 96
diocese 54n, 190, 406n Yorkshire 39, 74, 96, 218, 235,
worship 425±8, 433, 441, 446±57, 459, 403
462, 466 Youghal Friary, co. Cork 57
Worthial, John, chancellor of youth 2, 6, 248±50, 297, 464,
Chichester 200 466n
Wrightson, K. & Levine, D. 466 Yoxford, Suffolk 211
Wriothesley, Thomas, earl of
Southampton 158, 163±4, 202 Zanchius, Hieronymous 336,
Wyatt, George 144 343
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, the elder 227 Zelotes, Simon 389
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, the younger 173, Zurich 250, 263, 319, 327, 330, 346n,
248 397, 401
Wyclif, John 19, 54 Zwingli, Huldrych 320, 337