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The Piety of The Catholic Restoration in England, 1553–1558
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
There was very little in Reginald Pole’s previous record as a scholar, confessor, or ecclesiastical statesman to suggest that he attached great importance to the externals of traditional worship. However, in his task of restoring the Church in England to the Catholic fold, he felt constrained to use whatever methods and materials were available to his hands. Ceremonies, as Miles Huggarde rightly observed, were ‘curious toyes’, not only to the Protestants, but also to those semi-evangelical Reformers of the 1530s whose exact doctrinal’standpoints are so hard to determine. Along with the papal jurisdiction had gone the great pilgrimage shrines, not only St Thomas of Canterbury—that monument to the triumph of the sacerdotium over the regnum—but also Our Lady of Walsingham and a host of others. Down, too, had gone the religious houses, lesser and greater, with their elaborate liturgical practices, and many familiar saints’ days had disappeared from the calendar before the austere simplifications of 1552. Such changes had provoked much opposition and disquiet, but they had left intact die ceremonial core of the old faith, the Mass in all its multitude of forms, and the innumerable little sacramental and liturgical pieties which constituted the faith of ordinary people. The recent researches of Professor Scarisbrick, Dr Haigh, Dr Susan Brigden, and others have reminded us just how lively these pieties were before—and during—the Reformation, even in places heavily infiltrated by the New Learning, such as London. It was at this level that traditional religion seems to have been at its most flourishing; in the small fraternities and guilds attached to parish churches; in the ornamentation and equipment of the churches themselves; and in the provision of gifts and bequests for obits, lights, and charitable doles.
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- Part II. The Church in England
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991
References
1 Cardinal Pole’s speech to the citizens of London, in Strype, Memorials, III, 2, p. 502.
2 The Displaying of the Protestants (London, 1556) [STC, 13557], preface: Prelacy is popishe pompe / Vertuous vowews are vaine / Ceremonies curious toyes / Priesthood popery plaine.
3 The Royal Injunctions and proclamation of 1538 had caused some saints, such as Thomas of Canterbury, to be removed from the calendar. By the time the official primer was published in 1545, a very substantial reduction had taken place. White, H. C, Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Wisconsin, 1951), pp. 108–9Google Scholar; Butterworth, C. H., The English Primers (New York, 1971), pp. 168–70Google Scholar.
4 Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984Google Scholar); Haigh, C., ‘From monopoly to minority: Catholicism in early modern England’, TRHS, ser. 5, 31 (1981), pp. 129–47Google Scholar; Brigden, S., ‘Youth and the Reformation in London’, PaP, 95 (1982), pp. 37–67Google Scholar.
5 The evidence for this statement is to be found mainly in the activities of Mary’s council to secure the return of church goods in the hands of the commissioners, and in the returns of such Marian visitations as those of Cardinal Pole sede vacante at Lincoln (1556) (Strype, III, 2, pp. 389–413) and Archdeacon Harpesfield at Canterbury (1557): Catholic Record Society, 45–6 (1950-1).
6 Bucer to Brentius, 15 May 1550: Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, PS (1847), 2, p. 542.
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9 As late as June 1556 the ecclesiastical authorities in London were still trying to make participation in procession compulsory for at least one representative of each household ‘on peyne of forfettynge xii d every time’, but as the conservative author of the Greyfriars Chronicle noted, ‘it was lyttyll lokyd upon, and the more pytte’: Chronicle of the Greyfriars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, PCS, os, 53 (1852), p. 97.
10 ‘Robert Parkyn’s narrative’: The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. G. Nichols, PCS, os, 42 (1848).
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15 E.g. item 13 ‘… the laudable and honest ceremonies which were wont to be used, frequented and observed in the church, be also hereafter frequented and observed.’ Frere, W. H and Kennedy, W. M., Visitation Articles and Injunctions (London, 1910), 2, p. 328Google Scholar.
16 Interrogatories upon which churchwardens shall be charged (London, 1558) [STC 10117].
17 The bitter comment of the layman Miles Huggard, is typical of this sentiment: ‘A just plague of God upon such dissolute priestes, who cared not what women they married, common or other, so they might get them wyves…’: Displaying, fol. 73V.
18 Baskerville, G., ‘Married clergy and pensioned religious in Norwich diocese, 1555’, EHR, 68 (1933), pp. 43–64Google Scholar; Pryce, A I., The Diocese of Bangor in the Sixteenth Century (Bangor, 1923), pp. 12—14Google Scholar. These deprivations created 30 per cent of the vacancies during the reign.
19 Procter, The waie home, preface.
20 Ibid.
21 Loades, Oxford Martyrs, pp. 138–49; Reign of Mary, pp. 321–30.
22 Giacomo Soranzo to the Doge and Senate, 11 September 1553, CalSP, Venetian, pp. 410–11. Penning’s report is calendared in ibid., pp. 429–32. The imperial ambassador, Simon Renard, was even more pessimistic. In May 1554 he reported that the name of the pope was ‘odious’, even among those who favoured the old religion, and that there was scarcely such a thing as a true Catholic in the country: CalSP, Spanish, 12, p. 243.
23 Ibid., p. 92.
24 STC 24754, 24755. James Canceller in The pathe of Obedience (London, 1556) [STC 4565] makes frequent reference to ‘the churche of Rome’, but not to the pope. As far as I can discover, the only work specifically defending the papal authority was John Standish’s The trial! oflhe Supremacy (London, 1556) [STC 23211].
25 See, for example, Bishop Brooke’s Injunctions for Gloucester diocese (1556), where the only mention of the pope comes in article 16, in which the clergy are instructed to ensure that the pope’s name is restored to the intercessions. The seventeen articles addressed to the laity make no reference to him. Frere and Kennedy, 2, pp. 401–8.
26 Interrogatories.
27 For a full examination of the effects of this quarrel see Loades, Reign of Mary, pp. 428–52.
28 Fenlon, Dermot, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 116–36Google Scholar.
29 Knowles, D., The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1959), 3, pp. 424–5Google Scholar; Crehan, J. H., ‘St. Ignatius and Cardinal Pole’, Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu, 25 (1956), pp. 72–98Google Scholar.
30 Marmion, J. P., ‘The London Synod of Cardinal Pole’ (Keele University MA thesis, 1974)Google Scholar.
31 Appointed to the chairs of Hebrew and Divinity at Oxford.
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33 MS BL Cotton Titus C VII, fol. 120.
34 Reformatio Angliae ex decretis Reginaldi Pole (1565): Bodleian MS fdm 33 (Vat. Lat. 5968); Frère and Kennedy, 2, pp. 330–414. The shortage of competent preachers was also recognized to be a problem, although much less emphasized than by the Protestants, ‘There be not in half a shyre scarcely two hable men to showe their faces in the pulpitt’: Glasier, M., A Notable and veryfruictfull sermon made at Paules Crose (London, 1555) [STC 11916.5]Google Scholar.
35 Strype, III, 2, p. 503.
36 Ibid., p. 483 : “yet there be other churches, that are nowe fryste to be helpen, and these be your parryshe-chyrches; which albeyt they have not byn cast downe by coulore of authoyte, as the abbayes were, yet have they byn sufferede to fawle downe of themselves.’
37 Books of hours and primers together (the distinction was not always clear cut) accounted for 50 titles during the 1520s, and 60 during the 1530s, when they began to reflect the struggle between conservative and reforming churchmen. Bartholomew, Alison F., ‘Lay Piety in the reign of Mary Tudor’ (Manchester MA thesis, 1979), pp. 16–18Google Scholar; White, , Tudor Books of Private Devotion, pp. 53Google Scholarff.
38 Ibid., p. 122.
39 Bonner’s Articles for London Diocese; Frere and Kennedy, 2, p. 324.
40 An authorized Catholic translation of the Bible was promised at the legatine synod, but never produced: Reformatio Anghae.
41 STC, 23207, 23208.
42 Royal Articles of 1554; arts 12 and 13. Frere and Kennedy, 2, p. 328. One example of this small output was This is the boke of the unis of Goâ… unto Elizabeth (R. Caly? 1557?) [STC 7605.5].
43 Bartholomew, , ‘Lay piety’, p. 40; Archeologia, 36 (1856), pp. 284–93Google Scholar.
44 These homilies were published as an adjunct to the Profitable and Necessary Doctrine, and went through ten editions [STC 3285.1-3285.10].
45 CPR, Mary, 1, pp. 165–6, 203. Abbot Feckenham of Westminster solemnly reinterred the body of Edward the Confessor in 1558, and seems to have intended to re-erect the shrine, but without any official encouragement.
46 Bartholomew, ‘Lay piety’, p. 105.
47 For a full account of these restorations, see Knowles, Religious Orders, 3, pp. 421–33. Pole, like More, had been greatly influenced by the Carthusians in his youth, and this affected his personal piety deeply. Fenlon, Heresy, pp. 27–8; Schenk, W., Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England (London, 1950)Google Scholar.
48 By the Bull, Praeclara, 20 June 1555. This was a direct result of the terms upon which the English settlement had been negotiated. Knowles, Religious Orders, 3, p. 423.
49 Bartholomew,‘Lay piety’, p. 158.
50 The Franciscans at Greenwich and the Dominicans at Smithfield’, APC, 5, p. 169.
51 ‘Life of Father Baker’ in Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, ed. MacCann, J. and Connolly, R. M., Catholic Record Society, 33 (1933), pp. 95–6Google Scholar.
52 CPU, Mary, i, p. 230 (Collegiate church of Wolverhampton); 3, p. 513 (Manchester College); 3, p. 543 (Savoy Hospital); 3, p. 542 (Petre at Ingatestone); 3, pp. 363–4 (Rochester at Terling).
53 For example: Sir Thomas White (St John’s College, Oxford); CPR, 2, p. 322; Sir Thomas Pope (Trinity College, Oxford); CPR, 3, p. 90; and numerous schools. Viscount Montague returned a number of impropriated livings, and others followed his example; CPR, 3, p. 290; CPR, 4, p. 91.
54 Knowles. Religious Orders, 3, pp. 222ff. John Colet was also among those deeply influenced by the Carthusians.
55 Bartholomew, ‘Lay piety’, p. 152.
56 Examinations of John Danyell. PRO SP 46, 8, 35. Both the Commons and the Lords expressed unease over the return of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Loades, Reign of Mary;]. Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Queen Mary (Oxford, 1985).
57 Cancellar, Pathe of Obedience, Sig. A. iii.
58 Watson, Thomas, Holesome and catholyke doctryne concerning the seven sacraments (London, 1558), sermon 9, fol. 48Google Scholar.
59 Watson, Thomas, Holesome and catholique docttyne concerning the seven saacraments (London, 1558)Google Scholar, sermon 9, fol. 66. Bonner, Profitable and Necessary Doctrine, ‘On the sacrament of penance’, sig. D vi, wrote ‘When I do say a declaration or uttering, I do use the same to exclude mental confession, which though it may and at times ought to be made unto God, yet that is not the sacramental confession of which we heare speake.’ These Marian guides have nothing of the systematic intensity of the later Catholic manuals on confession.
60 Watson, Seven sacraments, sermon 15,’Against desperation’, fol. 86.
61 Don Gomez Saurez de Figueroa, Count of Feria, to Fr Ribadeneyra, S.J., 22 March 1558: CalSP, Spanish, 13, pp. 370–1.
62 There was a beginning of a hagiography of Fisher and More, the latter mainly promoted by the More family, and associated with Rastell’s edition of his collected works, published in 1557.
63 A dialogue describing the originali grounde ofthese Lutheran factions (London, 1553) [STC 1462]: preface.
64 The main deficiencies revealed by visitations in the last year of the reign are concerned with the dilapidation of churches. Churchwardens’ accounts, where these have been studied, almost invariably record substantial payments for liturgical restorations. Scarisbrick, Reformation, pp. 136–61.
65 These were mostly for eating meat in Lent, or having a consecrated super altar for a private chapel: Pole’s Legatine Register, Douai Municipal Archives, MS 292 (microfilm in Lambeth Palace Library).