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Continuity and Divergence in Tudor Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Eamon Duffy
Eamon Duffy*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge
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Extract

On a mild spring evening in late April 1537 a group of men from the Wiltshire villages of Mere and Bledney sat drinking ‘without the door’ of a neighbour, William Brownyng. It was St Mark’s Day, traditionally a holy-day on which labour was forbidden, but recently demoted by royal command. Thomas Poole had accordingly gone about his normal work that day, but was denounced by John Tutton as a heretic ‘because he wrought on St Mark’s day’. Poole defended himself by invoking the new law, tempers flared, and Tutton imprudently aired his opinion that the moving spirit behind the new reforms, Thomas Cromwell, was, like all his ‘witholders’ a ‘stark heretic’; ‘Shall I obey the King’s commandment and it be naught?’ he asked. ‘Marry I will not.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 171 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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References

1 Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H., eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London, 1862–1910), 12/i, no.567 (p. 264).Google Scholar

2 Merriman, R. B., The Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols (London, 1902), 2, pp. 111–12 Google Scholar: Hughes, Paul L. and Larkin, James F., eds, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1964-9), 1, p. 271.Google Scholar

3 Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars (London and New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 432–3.Google Scholar

4 Printed in Townsend, J. and Cattley, S. R., eds. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 8 vols (London, 1837-41), 5, pp. 534–6.Google Scholar

5 Bond, R. B., ed., Certain Sermons or Homilies 1547: A Critical Edition (Toronto, 1987), p. 191.Google Scholar

6 More, Thomas, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in Lawlor, T. M. C., Marc’Hadour, G. and Marius, R. C., eds, The Complete Works of St Thomas More, 6/i (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1981), p. 192.Google Scholar

7 Wilson, Janet, ed., Sermons Very Fruitfull, Godly and Learned by Roger Edgeworth (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 280–1.Google Scholar

8 I have preferred to quote from the Tudor translation printed in the old Everyman Library edition, Utopia with the dialogue of Comfort, by Sir Thomas More (London, 1910), quotation at p. 100. For the Latin text with a modern translation, E. Surtz and J. H. Hexter, eds, Utopia, in The Complete Works of St Thomas More, 4 (New Haven, Conn., and Toronto, 1965).

9 More, Utopia, pp. 101-3; Latin text, Complete Works, 4, pp. 216-22.

10 Roper, William, The Life of Sir Thomas More, Knight (London, 1963), pp. 14, 18–19.Google Scholar

11 2 & 3 Edward VI, Cap I, cited from the text in H. Gee and W. J. Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London, 1896), pp. 358-66; the Marian phrases taken from I Mary, Statute 2, Cap 2, ibid., p. 377.

12 The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward the Sixth (London, 1910), p. 4.

13 Ibid., pp. 3-5, 286-8.

14 John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, in The Works of John Jewel, ed. J. Ayre, 4 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1845-50), 3, pp. 68-70.

15 Ibid., p. 69.

16 Foxe. Acts and Monuments, 5, pp. 536-7.

17 More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies, p. 124.

18 Gifford, George, A Briefe discourse of certaine points of the religion, which is among the common sort of Christians, which may be termed the Countrey Divinitie (London, 1612 [first published 1581]), pp. 85–7.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., pp. 6-7.

20 The speech is printed in J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 4 vols in 7 (Oxford, 1824), 2/ii, pp. 438-50, quotation at p. 442, and also (modernized) in Gee, H., The Elizabethan Prayer-Book and Ornaments (London, 1902), pp. 236–52 Google Scholar, quotation at pp. 241-2. The scriptural citation is from Deut. 32.7.

21 Jewel, Apology, P. 85.

22 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 1, ‘To the True and Faithful Congregation of Christ’s Universal Church’, pp. 512-20, quotation at pp. 519–20.

23 Olsen, V. N., John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley and London, 1973), pp. 51–100 Google Scholar; Christianson, P., Reformers and Babylon (Toronto and London, 1978), pp. 13–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Firth, K. R., The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530-1645 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 1–110.Google Scholar

24 The phrase is from the ‘Admonition to Parliament’, note 25 below, p. 21.

25 Radical objections to these conservative elements in the Prayer Book are summarized in the ‘View of Popishe abuses yet remaining in the Englishe Church’ appended to the ‘Admonition to Parliament’, in W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, eds, Puritan Manifestoes (London, 1954), pp. 20–37, and explored at greater length in A Survey of the Booke of Common Prayer (Middelburg, 1610 [first published 1606]). This is number 16451 in W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Panzer’s revised second edition of A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, eds, A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, 3 vols (London, 1976-91) [hereafter RSTC]. Famously, the Fifth Book of Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is devoted to refuting such criticisms.

26 There is a convenient summary of episcopal concern about such practices in W. P. M. Kennedy, Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, 3 vols., Alcuin Club Collections, 25-7 (1924), 1, pp. lxii-lxxv; for the Baxter quotation, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 578.

27 As the godly themselves admitted — Frere and Douglas, Puritan Manifestoes, p. 28.

28 Nichols, A. E., Seeable Signs: the Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350-1544 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 207–21 Google Scholar; I am not entirely persuaded, however, that the absence of a chrismatory in the font representations reliably indicates that confirmation without the use of chrism was actually practised, given that by the later fifteenth century St Thomas’s view that anointing rather than laying on of hands constituted the matter of the sacrament was universally accepted.

29 Baxter, Richard, Confirmation and Restauration, the necessary means of Reformation and Reconciliation (London, 1658), pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

30 Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1833), p. 381.

31 Bruce, J. and Perowne, T.T., eds, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, PS (Cambridge, 1853), p. 215 Google Scholar; H. Robinson, ed., The Zurich Letters, 2 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1842-5), 1, p. 23.

32 Robinson, Zurich Letters, 2, p. 26.

33 Ibid., p. 122.

34 Robinson, Zurich Letters, 1, p. 85.

35 Ibid., p. 162.

36 Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 1560-1642 (London, 1960), p. 19.Google Scholar

37 Nicholson, W., ed., Remains of Edmund Grindal, PS (Cambridge, 1843), pp. 211–13 Google Scholar. Grindal was consistent here, for he had intervened in the dispute over the Prayer Book at Frankfurt in Mary’s reign, urging conformity to the book for the sake of solidarity with those who were suffering for it in England; P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (London, 1979), pp. 73-9.

38 The sixth rubric after the Communion service required the use of ordinary wheaten bread, though of the best quality, and directed that any remaining after the service should be taken home by the curate for his lunch, a directive which radical Protestants did not hesitate to apply to the consecrated species, to the discomforture of later generations of Anglo-Catholics: Proctor, F. and Frere, W. H., A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1925), p. 501 Google Scholar. Significantly, Anglo-Catholic commentaries on the Prayer Book and the history of Anglican liturgical practice were sometimes unable even to contemplate the enormity of the practice prescribed in this rubric. It is never discussed, for instance, in Vernon Staley’s Hierurgia Anglicana, 3 vols (London, 1902-4), and in citing the sixth rubric Staley actually suppressed the crucial sentence directing the profane consumption of the remaining bread: ibid., 2, p. 129.

39 For Whytford and his associates, see G. Williams, ‘Two neglected London-Welsh clerics’. Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1961/i (1961), pp. 23-44; P. Caraman, ‘An English monastic reformer of the sixteenth century’, Clergy Review, ns 28 (1947), pp. 1-16; J. T. Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its religious publications in the sixteenth century’, JEH, 44 (1993), pp. 11–25; Werke for Householders has been edited with an introduction in J. Hogg, Richard Whytford’s ‘The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection’, 5 vols, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies, 89 (Salzburg, 1979-89), 5, pp. 1-62.

40 Quoted by Perkins, William in ‘The Foundations of Christian Religion’, in The Workes of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ … Mr William Perkins, 3 vols (London, 1612-13), 1 Google Scholar, sig. A2.

41 Mayhew, G. J., ‘The progress of the Reformation in East Sussex: the evidence from wills’, Southern History, 5 (1983), pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

42 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 61, 80-1, 541; the ‘Form of Confession’ is printed in full in W. Maskell, Monumenta ritualia ecdesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols (London, 1846-7), 2, pp. 271-83.

43 Mayhew, ‘Progress of the Reformation’, p. 45.

44 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars pp. 382-3, 402, 444-7, 537-43, 567. And on this whole area, see the pioneering and still indispensable work by H. C. White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Wisconsin, 1951), and the more specialized work (concentrating on the question of versions of scripture in the primers) by C. Butterworth, The English Primers 1529-1549 (Philadelphia, 1954).

45 White, Tudor Books, pp. 91-100.

46 The Primer, in Englishe and Latyn, set foorth by the Kynges maiestie and his Clergie (London, Richard Grafton, 1545). The ‘Injunction’ is also printed in Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1, pp. 349-50, and in E. Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis or Sarum and York Primers with Kindred Books (London, 1901), pp. 237-8.

47 Sources identified in the collation by Hoskins, Horae, pp. 237-44.

48 Ibid., nos 174-96 and 239-40.

49 I have discussed these issues in Stripping of the Altars, pp. 537-43.

50 The Flower of Godly Prayers ([London], c.1550), RSTC, 1719.5-1720.7; modernized text in J. Ayre, ed., Prayers and Other Pieces of Thomas Becon, PS (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 1-72.

51 The Pomander of Prayer ([London], 1558), RSTC, 1744-8, modernized text in Ayre, Prayers and Other Pieces, pp. 73-85; the revised Edwardian Primer of 1553 is reprinted in modernized spelling in J. Ketley, ed.. The Two Liturgies … set forth by Authority in the Reign of King Edward VI, PS, (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 357-484.

52 Ayre, Prayers and Other Pieces, pp. 3-13, 21-4, 53-5.

53 Discussed more fully in White, Tudor Books, pp. 129-30.

54 RSTC, 16087-92: J. Cosin, A Collection of Private Devotions … as they were after this maner published by Authoritie of Q Eliz 1560 ([London], 1627), RSTC, 5815.5-5919.

55 A Godlye Medytacyon composed byJB, latlye bumte at Smytfelde (London, 1559), RSTC, 3483-3493.5; M. Sylvester, ed.. Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1696), p. 4.

56 Modernized edition in W. K. Clay, ed., Private Prayers put forth by Authority During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth PS, (Cambridge, 1851), pp. 429–561; discussion of the book and its contents: White, Tudor Books, pp. 188-96.

57 Clay, Private Prayers, p. 515.

58 Ibid., p. 464.

59 This discussion is based on Clay’s edition, which provides attributions and sources for most of the prayers. For a discussion of the Fifteen Oes and related Primer material, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 248-54.

60 Clay, Private Prayers, pp. 519-20.

61 The windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, are the best-known English examples of this method of biblical illustration; it was extremely popular in late medieval and Renaissance religious illustration in all media; Emile Mâle, Religious Art in France, the Late Middle Ages (Princeton, 1986), pp. 219-30.

62 For a discussion of the illustrations of Tudor primers, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 225-32; Regnault’s primers abandoned the convention of framing each page of text in an ornamented surround, based on medieval manuscript book-production, in favour of a more modern page layout in which occasional whole-page pictures and inset vignettes were used instead: M. C. Erler, ‘“The Maner to lyve weir and the coming of English in Francois Regnault’s Primers of the 1520s and 1530s’ The Library, 6th ser., 6 (1984), pp. 229-43.

63 Frere, W. H., ed.. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, III, 1559-75, Alcuin Club Collections, 16 (1910), pp. 157 and 289 Google Scholar; Purvis, J. S., Tudor Parish Documents of the Diocese of York (Cambridge, 1948), p. 31.Google Scholar

64 The programme of the illustrations to the Daye prayer-books, and the changes between editions, are discussed more fully in S. C. Chew, ‘The iconography of A Book of Christian Prayers (1578) illustrated’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 8 (1944-5), pp. 293-305.

65 Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia (Reading, 1986), and The Birthpangs of Protestant England (London, 1988), ch. 4; but see the caveat by Tessa Watts, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 134-9.

66 RSTC, 21446.7. I have worked from the University Microfilm copy, reel 717, where the book is misnumbered as 21056b. It is unpaginated, so no page references are given in the following discussion.

67 I have collated the Right Godly Rule with CUL Young 263, ‘The Primer in Latin and Englishe (after the Use of Sarmn) with many godlye and devoute prayers (London, 1 555), RSTC, 16065.

68 There were others, which I cannot discuss here: the best known of them was the ‘borrowing’ of Robert Parson’s stupendously popular and influential Christian Directorie by the Protestant Edmund Bunny; ‘Bunny’s Resolution’ itself became a key converting work in the early seventeenth century. An old copy given by a pedlar to Richard Baxter’s father was a key text in Baxter’s spiritual development. For Parson’s outrage, see R. Parsons, A Christian Directorie Guiding Men to their salvation … set forth now again with many corrections … with reprofe … by E. Bunny (Louvain, 1598); RSTC, 19353-19354.9 (Catholic versions) and 4088, 19355-19389 (Protestant versions); A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559-1582 (London, 1950), pp. 181-93: Brad S. Gregory, ‘The “True and Zealouse Service of God”: Robert Parsons, Edmund Bunny, and The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, JEH, 45 (1994), pp. 238-68.

69 This whole development is discussed in J. M. Blom, The Post Tridentine English Primer, Catholic Record Society Publications (Monograph Series) 3 (1982).

70 P. J. Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, Catholic Record Society Publications (Records Series) 67, (1981), p. 24.

71 Duffy, E., ‘The English secular clergy and the Counter-Reformation’, JEH, 34 (1983), pp. 214–30.Google Scholar