The Age of the Reformation Part 23

In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised in a Protestant sense. Bucer had something to do with this revision, and so did John Knox. Little was now left of the ma.s.s, nothing of private confession or anointing the sick. Further steps were the reform of the Canon Law and the publication of the Forty-two Articles of Religion. These were drawn up by Cranmer on the basis of thirteen articles agreed upon by a conference of three English Bishops, four English doctors, and two German missionaries, Boyneburg and Myconius, in {314} May, 1538.

Cranmer hoped to make his statement irenic; and in fact it contained some Roman and Calvinistic elements, but in the main it was Lutheran.

Justification by faith was a.s.serted; only two sacraments were retained.

Transubstantiation was denounced as repugnant to Scripture and private ma.s.ses as "dangerous impostures." The real presence was maintained in a Lutheran sense: the bread was said to be the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ, but only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. It was said that by Christ's ordinance the sacrament is not reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

A reform of the clergy was also undertaken, and was much needed. In 1551 Bishop Hooper found in his diocese of 311 clergymen, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, ten could not say the Lord's Prayer in English, seven could not tell who was its author, and sixty-two were absentees, chiefly because of pluralities.

The notable characteristic of the Edwardian Reformation was its mildness. There were no Catholic martyrs. It is true that heretics coming under the category of blasphemers or deniers of Christianity could still be put to death by common law, and two men were actually executed for speculations about the divinity of Christ, but such cases were wholly exceptional.

[Sidenote: Social disorders]

The social disorders of the time, coming to a head, seemed to threaten England with a rising of the lower cla.s.ses similar to the Peasants' War of 1525 in Germany. The events in England prove that, however much these ebullitions might be stimulated by the atmosphere of the religious change, they wore not the direct result of the new gospel.

In the west of England and in Oxfordshire the lower cla.s.ses rebelled {315} under the leadership of Catholic priests; in the east the rising, known as Kett's rebellion, took on an Anabaptist character. The real causes of discontent were the same in both cases. The growing wealth of the commercial cla.s.ses had widened the gap between rich and poor.

The inclosures continued to be a grievance, by the ejection of small tenants and the appropriation of common lands. But by far the greatest cause of hardship to the poor was the debas.e.m.e.nt of the coinage.

Wheat, barley, oats and cattle rose in price to two or three times their previous cost, while wages, kept down by law, rose only 11 per cent. No wonder that the condition of the laborer had become impossible.

The demands of the eastern rising, centering at Norwich, bordered on communism. The first was for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of all bondsmen for the reason that Christ had made all men free. Inclosures of commons and private property in game and fish were denounced and further agrarian demands were voiced. The rebels committed no murder and little sacrilege, but vented their pa.s.sions by slaughtering vast numbers of sheep. All the peasant risings were suppressed by the government, and the economic forces continued to operate against the wasteful agricultural system of the time and in favor of wool-growing and manufacture.

[Sidenote: Execution of Somerset, January 22, 1552]

After five years under Protector Somerset there was a change of government signalized, as usual under Henry VIII, by the execution of the resigning minister. Somerset suffered from the unpopularity of the new religious policy in some quarters and from that following the peasants' rebellion in others. As usual, the government was blamed for the economic evils of the time and for once, in having debased the coinage, justly. Moreover the Protector had been {316} involved by scheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, for this least b.l.o.o.d.y of all English ministers in that century, had executed his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious man rightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.

Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the cla.s.s of mere adventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and the worst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only be deposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiated himself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council.

Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name of royalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At his command Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote: Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, again using the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.

The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward lived and was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visibly declining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alter the succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick had been a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's will appointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1) Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there had been born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married Henry Grey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriage were three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, was picked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to {317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was now appealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter the succession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but his lukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant Lady Jane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession to the crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting to do this.

[1] See A. L. Lowell: _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, 1914.

SECTION 3. THE CATHOLIC REACTION UNDER MARY. 1553-58

[Sidenote: Proclamation of Queen Jane, July 10, 1553]

When Edward died on July 6, 1553, Northumberland had taken such precautions as he could to ensure the success of his project. He had gathered his own men at London and tried to secure help from France, whose king would have been only too glad to involve England in civil war. The death of the king was concealed for four days while preparations were being made, and then Queen Jane was proclaimed.

Mary's challenge arrived the next day and she (Mary) at once began raising an army. Had her person been secured the plot might have succeeded, but she avoided the set snares. Charles V wished to support her for religious reasons, but feared to excite patriotic feeling by dispatching an army and therefore confined his intervention to diplomatic representations to Northumberland.

[Sidenote: Accession of Mary]

There was no doubt as to the choice of the people. Even the strongest Protestants hated civil turmoil more than they did Catholicism, and the people as a whole felt instinctively that if the crown was put up as a prize for unscrupulous politicians there would be no end of strife.

All therefore flocked to Mary, and almost without a struggle she overcame the conspirators and entered her capital amid great rejoicing.

Northumberland, after a despicable and fruitless recantation, was executed and so were his son and his son's wife, Queen Jane. Sympathy was felt for her on {318} account of her youth, beauty and remarkable talents, but none for her backers.

The relief with which the settlement was regarded gave the new queen at least the good will of the nation to start with. This she gradually lost. Just as Elizabeth instinctively did the popular thing, so Mary seemed almost by fatality to choose the worst course possible. Her foreign policy, in the first place, was both un-English and unsuccessful. [Sidenote: Marriage of Mary and Philip, July 25, 1554]

Almost at once Charles V proposed his son Philip as Mary's husband, and, after about a year of negotiation, the marriage took place. The tremendous unpopularity of this step was due not so much to hostility to Spain, though Spain was beginning to be regarded as the national foe rather than France, but to the fear of a foreign domination. England had never before been ruled by a queen, if we except the disastrous reign of Mathilda, and it was natural to suppose that Mary's husband should have the prerogative as well as the t.i.tle of king. In vain Philip tried to disabuse the English of the idea that he was a.s.serting any independent claims; in some way the people felt that they were being annexed to Spain, and they hated it.

The religious aim of the marriage, to aid in the restoration of Catholicism, was also disliked. Cardinal Pole frankly avowed this purpose, declaring that

as Christ, being heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from the royal throne, to be at once Spouse and Son of the Virgin Mary and to be made the Comforter and Saviour of mankind; so, in like manner, the greatest of all princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms that he, too, might come hither into this land of trouble, to be the spouse and son of this virgin Mary . . . to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.

For Mary herself the marriage was most unhappy. {319} She was a bride of thirty-eight, already worn and aged by grief and care; her bridegroom was only twenty-seven. She adored him, but he almost loathed her and made her miserable by neglect and unfaithfulness. Her pa.s.sionate hopes for a child led her to believe and announce that she was to have one, and her disappointment was correspondingly bitter.

So unpopular was the marriage coupled with the queen's religious policy, that it led to a rebellion under Sir Thomas Wyatt. Though suppressed, it was a dangerous symptom, especially as Mary failed to profit by the warning. Her attempts to implicate her sister Elizabeth in the charge of treason failed.

Had Mary's foreign policy only been strong it might have conciliated the patriotic pride of the ever present jingo. But under her leadership England seemed to decline almost to its nadir. The command of the sea was lost and, as a consequence of this and of the military genius of the Duke of Guise, Calais, held for over two centuries, was conquered by the French. [Sidenote: 1558] With the subsequent loss of Guines the last English outpost on the continent was reft from her.

[Sidenote: Religious policy]

Notwithstanding Mary's saying that "Calais" would be found in her heart when she died, by far her deepest interest was the restoration of Catholicism. To a.s.sist her in this task she had Cardinal Reginald Pole, in whose veins flowed the royal blood of England and whom the pope appointed as legate to the kingdom. Though Mary's own impulse was to act strongly, she sensibly adopted the emperor's advice to go slowly and, as far as possible, in legal forms. Within a month of her succession she issued a proclamation stating her intention to remain Catholic and her hope that her subjects would embrace the same religion, but at the same time disclaiming the intention of forcing them and forbidding strife and the use of {320} "those new-found devilish terms of papist or heretic or such like."

Elections to the first Parliament were free; it pa.s.sed two noteworthy Acts of Repeal, [Sidenote: Repeal of Reforming acts] the first restoring the _status quo_ at the death of Henry VIII, the second restoring the _status quo_ of 1529 on the eve of the Reformation Parliament. This second act abolished eighteen statutes of Henry VIII and one of Edward VI, but it refused to restore the church lands. The fate of the confiscated ecclesiastical property was one of the greatest obstacles, if not the greatest, in the path of reconciliation with Rome. The pope at first insisted upon it, and Pole was deeply grieved at being obliged to absolve sinners who kept the fruits of their sins.

But the English, as the Spanish amba.s.sador Renard wrote, "would rather get themselves ma.s.sacred than let go" the abbey lands. The very Statute of Repeal, therefore, that in other respects met Mary's demands, carefully guarded the t.i.tles to the secularized lands, making all suits relating to them triable only in crown courts.

The second point on which Parliament, truly representing a large section of public opinion, was obstinate, was in the refusal to recognize the papal supremacy. The people as a whole cared not what dogma they were supposed to believe, but they for the most part cordially hated the pope. They therefore agreed to pa.s.s the acts of repeal only on condition that nothing was said about the royal supremacy. To Mary's insistence they returned a blank refusal to act and she was compelled to wait "while Parliament debated articles that might well puzzle a general council," as a contemporary wrote.

Lords and Commons were quite willing to pa.s.s acts to strengthen the crown and then to leave the responsibility {321} for further action to it. Thus the divorce of Henry and Catharine of Aragon was repealed and the Revival of treason laws were revived. [Sidenote: Revival of treason laws] Going even beyond the limit of Henry VIII it was made treason to "pray or desire" that G.o.d would shorten the queen's days.

Worse than that, Parliament revived the heresy laws. It is a strange comment on the nature of legislatures that they have so often, as in this case, protected property better than life, and made money more sacred than conscience. However, it was not Parliament but the executive that carried out to its full extent the policy of persecution and religious reaction.

The country soon showed its opposition. A temporary disarray that might have been mistaken for disintegration had been produced in the Protestant ranks by the recantation of Northumberland. The restoration of the ma.s.s was accomplished in orderly manner in most places. The English formulas had been patient of a Catholic interpretation, and doubtless many persons regarded the change from one liturgy to the other as a matter of slight importance. Moreover the majority made a principle of conformity to the government, believing that an act of the law relieved the conscience of the individual of responsibility. But even so, there was a large minority of recusants. Of 8800 beneficed clergy in England, 2000 were ejected for refusal to comply. A very large number fled to the Continent, forming colonies at Frankfort-on-the-Main and at Geneva and scattering in other places.

The opinion of the imperial amba.s.sador Renard that English Protestants depended entirely on support from abroad was tolerably true for this reign, for their books continued to be printed abroad, and a few further translations from foreign reformers were made. It is noteworthy that these mostly treat of the {322} question, then so much in debate, whether Protestants might innocently attend the ma.s.s.

Other expressions of the temper of the people were the riots in London.

On the last day of the first Parliament a dog with a tonsured crown, a rope around its neck and a writing signifying that priests and bishops should be hung, was thrown through a window into the queen's presence chamber. At another time a cat was found tonsured, surpliced, and with a wafer in its mouth in derision of the ma.s.s. The perpetrators of these outrages could not be found.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.sive resistance]

A sterner, though pa.s.sive, resistance to the government was gloriously evinced when stake and rack began to do their work. Mary was totally unprepared for the strength of Protestant feeling in the country. She hoped a few executions would strike terror into the hearts of all and render further persecution unnecessary. But from the execution of the first martyr, John Rogers, it was plain that the people sympathized with the victims rather than feared their fate. Not content with warring on the living, Mary even broke the sleep of the dead.[1] The bodies of Bucer and f.a.gius were dug up and burned. The body of Peter Martyr's wife was also exhumed, though, as no evidence of heresy could be procured, it was thrown on a dunghill to rot.

[Sidenote: Martyrs, October 16, 1555]

The most famous victims were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. The first two were burnt alive together, Latimer at the stake comforting his friend by a.s.suring him, "This day we shall light such a candle, by G.o.d's grace, in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." A special procedure was reserved for Cranmer, as primate. Every effort was made to get him to recant. He at first signed four submissions recognizing the {323} power of the pope as and if restored by Parliament. He then signed two real recantations, and finally drew up a seventh doc.u.ment, repudiating his recantations, re-affirming his faith in the Protestant doctrine of the sacraments and denouncing the pope. By holding his right hand in the fire, when he was burned at the stake, he testified his bitter repentance for its act in signing the recantations. [Sidenote: March 21, 1556]

The total number of martyrs in Mary's reign fell very little, if at all, short of 300. The lists of them are precise and circ.u.mstantial.

The geographical distribution is interesting, furnishing, as it does, the only statistical information available in the sixteenth century for the spread of Protestantism. It graphically ill.u.s.trates the fact, so often noticed before, that the strongholds of the new opinions were the commercial towns of the south and east. If a straight line be drawn from the Wash to Portsmouth, pa.s.sing about twenty miles west of London, it will roughly divide the Protestant from the Catholic portions of England. Out of 290 martyrdoms known, 247 took place east of this line, that is, in the city of London and the counties of Ess.e.x, Hertford, Kent, Suss.e.x, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge. Thirteen are recorded in the south center, at Winchester and Salisbury, eleven at the western ports of the Severn, Bristol and Gloucester. There were three in Wales, all on the coast at St. David's; one in the south-western peninsula at Exeter, a few in the midlands, and not one north of Lincolnshire and Cheshire.

When it is said that the English changed their religion easily, this record of heroic opposition must be remembered to the contrary. Mary's reign became more and more hateful to her people until at last it is possible that only the prospect of its speedy termination prevented a rebellion. The popular epithet of {324} "b.l.o.o.d.y" rightly distinguishes her place in the estimate of history. It is true that her persecution sinks into insignificance compared with the holocausts of victims to the inquisition in the Netherlands. But the English people naturally judged by their own history, and in all of that such a reign of terror was unexampled. The note of Mary's reign is sterility and its achievement was to create, in reaction to the policy then pursued, a ferocious and indelible hatred of Rome.

[1] The canon law forbade the burial of heretics in consecrated ground, but it is said that Charles V refused to dig up Luther's body when he took Wittenberg.

SECTION 4. THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT. 1558-88.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth, 1558-1603]

However numerous and th.o.r.n.y were the problems pressed for solution into the hands of the maiden of twenty-five now called upon to rule England, the greatest of all questions, that of religion, almost settled itself.

It is extremely hard to divest ourselves of the wisdom that comes after the event and to put ourselves in the position of the men of that time and estimate fairly the apparent feasibility of various alternatives.

But it is hard to believe that the considerations that seem so overwhelming to us should not have forced themselves upon the attention of the more thoughtful men of that generation.