The Marian Restoration

1. The Marian Restoration Religion and Religious Change, c.1470-1558

2. Restoration? Reformation? • Does ‘Catholicism’ necessarily mean ‘backwards’ or ‘reversal’? • Which Catholicism? • Pre-Reformation Church not a fixed entity • Strength in vibrancy/ capacity to house plurality of views • Liturgy ever-evolving • Just negate EdVI; or HVIII too? • Difficult political issues: 20 years into the break with Rome • Legitimacy of own father/brother/Tudor regime. • Which point in Henry’s reign return to? • Pre-1532? • 1532? • 1543? • To what extent involved in/touched by the Counter Reformation? • Reformist currents picking up pace in Europe for a third of a century • Not simply a ‘Protestant’ event • Seen throughout course that terms ‘Prot’/ ‘Cath’ only becoming something resembling stable towards the end of EdVI’sreign. • All reforming action occurred in context of Christian Humanism, recognised itself as ‘Catholic’. ‘Restoration’ or ‘Reformation’?

3. Traditional: an aberration Revisionist: surprisingly successful • Englishness = Protestant; Protestant = Progress; Progress was the purpose of History; therefore the Reformation’s success was inevitable/ liberating. • Mary’s attempts to pull the reign back to ‘Popish’ tyranny ill-advised and doomed to fail. • Moment of reunion with RC passed – Mary’s policies ill-advised and clumsily enacted. • Numerous problems: • Mary: (mad and cruel) • Bishops: (inept and cruel) • Cardinal Pole: (old, inept and cruel) • Organised opposition in Parliament: (possibly Protestant and therefore civilised and sensible bulwarks against tyranny). • All part of an anti-Catholic narrative which celebrated Reformation as liberation from tyranny – typified by Foxe, part of national identity for centuries. • Mid Tudor Crisis? • Duffy, Loades, Wooding, Freeman, Wizeman, Whitelock, Richards. • Catholicism popular: • Tied to the presentation of LMC as ‘vibrant’ • Restoration in the parishes largely successful: • Despite significant problems (finance) • Not simply bring back the past: • Regime that had to plan for the future. • Like EdVI – NO-ONE KNEW THAT MARY WAS GOING TO DIE • Needed a plan going forward. • Significant changes to the liturgy of the Church: if Catholicism ever ‘a cult of the living in the service of the dead’, certainly was not by 1558. • Duffy: not just in-tune with the rumblings of Counter Reformation, actually a pre-cursor for it. • If lived longer, would have been successful. Historiography

6. Reign with most current active research – sense that genuinely new things to say: • Duffy/ Loades/ Wooding – shining remarkably positive light on Mary’s Church and its achievements. • Cannot understand the reign without recourse to politics – story arguably a little different there. • Tricky – and emotive – issue of the burnings still problematic. • A ‘hinge’ of the C16th: • Decide whether England’s Reformation completed or not; or point at which a genuine Counter Reformation could have occurred in England.

7. She was a she: • Ist Queen – no-one was expecting her to rule, because no-one was expecting Edward to die a) young; b) heirless. • Problem of succession. Need an heir, therefore need a husband. Who will that be, and how ensure not a king? • Foreign power? Xenophobia; difficult balancing act in Europe. • English noble? Problem of instability, patronage. • Emerging resistance theory: • How resist a monarch? • Saw last lecture: not solidified yet, but would be over the course of the reign. • Only a handful of Prot thinkers – but ideas hard to kill. • Jane Grey: • Essentially come to the throne after deposing a monarch. • EdVI’s ‘Device For The Succession’ with Northumberland • Jane supported by political establishment – history could have been very different. • Very strong argument’s to Jane’s legitimacy on grounds of Edward’s nominating the succession and Mary’s illegitimacy (Eric Ives) • Was this a massive vote in favour of Tudor succession, rather than Catholicism? • Only hammer home how precarious the Tudor regime was – in essence, a de facto elected monarchy which ruled by the people’s consent. • What role was the Pope going to play in all of this? 1553: Problems

8. Significant part of the brains, energy and organisation behind Mary’s Church. • HVIII’s cousin – had made an international stand against the divorce/Royal Supremacy. • Earned him Cardinal’s hat; resulted in HVIII viciously executing most of his family for treason. • Intimately connected to the Counter Reformation since mid-1530s. • Part of a moderate wing of reformers, inspired by Christian Humanism and prepared to negotiate with Protestants (Regensburg 1541). • Clash with hard-core wing of the Church – Carrafa, newly elected Paul IV; believed Pole’s view on Justification heretical. • Left Mary’s Church in difficult position internationally • Previous historians – meant untouched by CR • Now, not the case – CR not Papal-led alone. Key figures: Cardinal Reginald Pole

9. Bishop of Winchester. • Lord Chancellor. • Leading writer/ intellectual. • Thorn in the side of the evangelicals since HVIII’s reign – always a blockade en route to Protestantism. • Bitter rivalry with Cranmer escalated since 1532. • Major figure in initiating heresy laws (and therefore persecutions). • ‘Wily Winchester’ – evangelical bête noir. Stephen Gardiner

10. Bishop of London • Swapped the position back-and-forth with Nicholas Ridley as denominational changes occurred. • Conservative since the days of HVIII; vehement enforcement of the Act of Six Articles (1539); Bishops who oversaw most of the burnings. • ‘Bloody Bonner’ (Foxe). Edmund Bonner

11. ‘Supreme Head’ Monasteries • Refused to use the title (even though effectively possessed the same powers). • Mary’s key aim was to unite England with Catholic Church (thus undoing the work of her father). • Two decades of anti-Papal propaganda. • Conservatives – uniting with the Pope a barrier against doctrinal deviation (Thomas More onwards) • Mary keen to restore to an extent. • Gave some of the lands which the crown had taken back. • But also continued to sell others (like HVIII & EdVI). • 800 abbeys dissolved by HVIII; only 7 re-founded. • Huge problems – opposition in parliament because MPs the ones who had benefitted from the sale of land under the Tudors. • Not prepared to make moves towards return of Papal headship of the English church until lands safeguarded (meant no heresy laws, therefore no means of prosecuting Prots). • July 1554 – Papal brief on the issue rejected by Mary’s council; Pole secured a deal that worked for everyone in November. • After then, parliament prepared to repeal all religious legislation since 1529. • Change of Popes kept the issue alive in politics – Paul IV denounced alienation of Church property, made relations frosty. ‘Restoration’ or ‘Reformation’?

12. Purgatory The Cult of Saints • Very few confraternities founded. • Obits and bede rolls less prominent in use • Intercession prayer for the dead declined – in some regions, only 15% of parishes used them. • ‘Cult of the living in the service of the dead’? • Rupture in belief – even if not supported it, must have had an impact. • Pre-Ref shrines/pilgrimage centres not revived. • Images of Christ and Virgin restored at parish level, but saints much less so – decline of local cults (mainstay of LMC) • Decline of side-altars for saints/guilds – few masses for splinter groups (unlike LMC) • Read as success of evangelism – reformed Catholicism actually grow out of Prot? • Ultimately – a more Christ-centred style of devotion. ‘Restoration’ or ‘Reformation’?

13. Propaganda The Bishops • Prot usually seen as ‘the religion of the Word’ – Mary’s Church now understood to be very effective: a) in terms of propaganda; b) in the provision of religious material for laity; c) use of Latin propaganda to win international war. • Miles Huggardeparticularly important. • Preaching – far more effective than previously understood. • Pole’s CH of 1520s/30s previously thought to be out-of-date – more interested in sacraments/ceremonies than evangelical fervour. • Rejected Ignatius Loyolla’soffer of Jesuits in 1555. • Pole needed effective leadership • Rapid purgation of Bishops by Mary • Much new blood – many engaged in preaching etc: Thomas Watson (Lincoln); Richard Pate (Worcester – had been at Trent). • All declined places in the Elizabethan Church – men of conviction. Positives:

14. Centre-point of liturgy LMC; heightened under Mary. • Significant propaganda potential – tied Mary’s Church to her father’s, rendered Edward’s as the aberration. • Peace – in the absence of the Mass the CWealth fell apart. • What better demonstration of the verity of Christianity could there be than neighbourliness? The Mass

15. Problem of definition – Catholic or Counter? • Had it even begun by this point – Trent not finalised until 1563. • Duffy/ Thomas Mayer – Pole actually ahead of the European curve of Catholic Reform. • 1555 – Pole summoned a legatine synod to London (aim to reform the clergy). • Bishops to undertake regular visitations. • Measures to tackle absenteeism. • New book of homilies; catechism; translation of the New Testament. • Homilies written by Dominican Bartolomé Carranza (basis for that of Trent a few years later). • Establish seminaries in every diocese to train priests. • Little chance to succeed because of shortness of reign – but plans were there. • Undercut many Protestant criticisms of LMC. Counter Reformation?

16. Had iconoclastic destruction of LMC gone too far to be pulled back; had evangelical ideas been too widely circulated to be reigned back in? • Destruction much cheaper than restoration – a huge task to restore. • Not just the case of buying lots of stuff. • Physical changes to the building of the Church. • Churchwarden’s accounts as a measure of how parishes responded (trace payments): • Some areas considerable resistance (because of Prot or because fed up with interference in the parish?) • Good records for diocese of Bath & Wells, but can be read either way. • Even in staunch Prot areas like Canterbury almost every parish had an altar, vestments and Mass book by 1557. • Problem of obedience once again. • Revisionists and traditionalists agree that Marian Church not LMC resuscitated. • How read this? • Sign of its weakness? • Or sign of reformist capacity? Impact: the Parish

17. Persistent clashes with Parliament over money: • HVIII & EdVI impoverished the Church; reform cost money. • Attempts to restore First Fruits & 10ths; confiscation of property of Church exiles – clashes. • Revenues essentially not recouped until 1556. • Paul IV (after May 1555): • dislike Pole; • dislike Spanish (Neopolitan – Spain were colonial overlords); • went to war with Phillip II; • recalled legates from Phillip’s lands (embarrassing for Pole); • Mary’s intervention to prevent extradition to Rome made her the Pope’s political enemy; delayed filling position of Bishops. • War with France (at Phillip’s biding – traditional enemy). • Humiliating loss of Calais, January 1558. Politics

18. Marriage to Phillip – son of Emperor Charles II, soon to be ruler of the Netherlands and (in 1556) Spain. • Marriage treaty limited Phillip’s powers; excluded from throne should Mary die. • Opposition not just Protestant. • Careful not to remember 1588 before it happened. • Gardiner (supported Earl of Devon as possible husband) • Universally unpopular, if not unexpected – Habsburgs were the traditional allies of the English against the French. • War not seem like a wise decision (especially after recent campaigns in Scotland). Politics: marriage & martyrdom

19. Rumours of Spanish cruelties in the New World; and of the Inquisition. • Rebellion in January 1554 – only Sir Thomas Wyatt’s in Kent of any real threat, and troops actually made it to outskirts of London. • Mary: public appearances roused resistance – mother of nation; marriage not harm commons. • Was it just Elizabeth who could inspire? • Was this a ‘Protestant’ rebellion? • Dickens and Thorp: yes. • Mary listed Prot as a cause in her speeches (a ploy?) • Several prominent Prot clerics involved – John Ponet (former Bishop of Winchester). • Hindered Mary’s reformation because tied Catholicism with Spanish overlordship. • Loades: no. • Secular/political – no concrete evidence of a disproportionate Protestant involvement at elite or popular level. • Nothing could be proven against Elizabeth. Wyatt: