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The Myth of the English Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Diarmaid MacCulloch
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Extract

The myth of the English Reformation is that it did not happen, or that it happened by accident rather than design, or that it was halfhearted and sought a middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism; the point at issue is the identity of the Church of England. The myth was created in two stages, first in the middle years of the seventeenth century, and then from the third decade of the nineteenth century; and in either case it was created by one party within the church, largely consisting of clergy, with a particular motive in mind. This was to emphasize the Catholic continuity of the church over the break of the Reformation, in order to claim that the true representative of the Catholic church within the borders of England and Wales was not the minority loyal to the bishop of Rome, but the church as by law established in 1559 and 1662. In the seventeenth century the group involved was called Arminian by contemporaries, and in later days it came to be labeled High Church, or Laudian, after its chief early representative William Laud. In the nineteenth century the same party revived was known variously as Tractarian, Oxford Movement, High Church, Ritualist, and, most commonly in the twentieth century, Anglo-Catholic. Here are two characteristic quotations from one of the most distinguished of this nineteenth-century group, John Henry Newman, before his departure for Rome and a cardinal's hat. First, when defending himself against the charge of innovation: “We are a ‘Reformed’ Church, not a ‘Protestant’ … the Puritanic spirit spread in Elizabeth's and James's time, and … has been succeeded by the Methodistic. …We, the while, children of the Holy Church, whencesoever brought into it, whether by early training or after thought, have had one voice, that one voice which the Church has had from the beginning." Second, introducing the characteristic Anglican expression of the idea of continuity, the notion of the via media: “A number of distinct notions are included in the notion of Protestantism; and as to all these our Church has taken a Via Media between it and Popery.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1991

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References

1 Ker, I. and Gornall, T., eds., The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman . . ., vol. 4Google Scholar, July 1833 to December 1834 (Oxford, 1980), p. 314Google Scholar; Newman , J. H., The Via Media of the Anglican Church, 2d ed., 2 vols. (London, 1877), 2:33Google Scholar. For a recent discussion of the historiography of the English Reformation representing a viewpoint more sympathetic to the Anglo-Catholic line, see Bernard, G. W., “The Church of England, c.1529-c.1642,” History 75 (1990): 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Chatfield, M., Churches the Victorians Forgot, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Addleshaw, G. W. O. and Etchells, F., The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (London, 1948), esp. chap. 2Google Scholar.

3 The Works of … Archbishop Laud, D.D. …, 7 vols. in 9 pts., ed. Scott, W. and Bliss, J., Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (Oxford, 1847–,1960), 3:159Google Scholar.

4 Burnet, G., History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 3 vols. in 6 pts. (London, 1820), vol. 3, pt. i, pp. 318, xviiGoogle Scholar. On Heylyn, see O'Day, R., The Debate on the English Reformation (London, 1986), pp. 32–38, 40–42, 49, 55, 58, 64Google Scholar.

5 H. Sacheverell, The Perils of False Brethren, Both in Church and State, quoted in Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal (London, 1979), p. 18Google Scholar.

6 See Opie, J., “The Anglicizing of John Hooper,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 59 (1968): 150–75Google Scholar; Pettegree, A., Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986), chaps. 2–3Google Scholar.

7 Gore, C., Roman Catholic Claims, 9th rev. ed. (London, 1906), chaps. 9–11Google Scholar. This little book is a classic expression of the Anglo-Catholic view of the Church of England.

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11 See Neale's presentation of his thesis in Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559–1581 (London, 1953), pp. 33–84Google Scholar. Jones, N., Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559, Royal Historical Society Studies in History no. 32 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Sutherland, N. M., “The Marian Exiles and the Establishment of the Elizabethan Regime,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987): 253–86Google Scholar.

12 For an elaboration of the arguments in this and the following paragraphs, see MacCulloch, D., The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (Basingstoke, 1990), chaps. 5, 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 A forthcoming book by Peter White from Cambridge University Press argues the case against a Calvinist consensus; for the opposing view, see Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar. Bernard (n. 1 above), esp. pp. 191–203, argues for White and against Tyacke.

14 Parker, K., The English Sabbath (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 6, 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Addleshaw and Etchells (n. 2 above). An important pioneering piece of research is Woodger, A., “Post-Reformation Mixed Gothic in Huntingdonshire Churches and Its Campanological Associations,” Archaeological Journal 141 (1984): 296–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Addleshaw and Etchells, pp. 30–32, and chap. 2.

18 Foster, A., “Church Policies of the 1630s,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, ed. Cust, R. and Hughes, A. (London, 1989), pp. 193–223Google Scholar, gives a valuable picture of Laudian energy in building and restoration.

19 Coolidge, J. S., The Pauline Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 27–80Google Scholar.

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21 Lake, p. 145.

22 MacCulloch, D., Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 210–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caraman, P., ed., John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (London, 1951), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. On Perne and Baro, see Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), p. 376Google Scholar. Perne was succeeded as master of Peterhouse by a mainline Calvinist, Robert Some; see Porter, pp. 314–15. On Shelford, see Tyacke, pp. 53–56.

23 On moves in the 1571 Parliament, see Elton, G. R., The Parliament of England, 1559–1571 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 205–11Google Scholar. For a general survey pursuing these arguments in more detail, see my Later Reformation in England (n. 12 above); and for a brilliant exposition of these themes, see Collinson, P., The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke, 1988)Google Scholar.