Marian restoration - Grade: A* PDF

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Topics: Mary I, Marian Restoration, Catholicism, Protestantism, Reformation, Tudors...

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How successful were Mary’s efforts to restore Catholicism in England?

The traditionally damning view of Mary Tudor’s church, shaped by the work of John Foxe and later protestant historians, is perhaps the greatest testament to the reality that, despite the promise of Catholic renewal between 1553 and 1558, the queen’s efforts at restoring Catholicism in England were ultimately unsuccessful. The two decades prior to Mary’s ascendancy to the throne saw a drastic change in the relationship between the church and the state, whereby the advent of royal supremacy gave the monarchy license to recast the long-standing institutions of the church in a new image entirely. The penetrative impact of Protestantism on both the physical and metaphysical landscape, delivered through novel means of communication triggered reappraisal of ideas that were previously fundamental to the Catholic religious experience. Therefore, the successes of the Marian church should not be judged on how close it came to restoring the Catholic experience on the eve of the English Reformation. Instead, they should be judged against a backdrop of the material destruction of the church, the confiscation of its property, the abolition of its sacraments, and a fractured political base. Considering these challenges, it transpires that Mary did achieve extraordinary success in energising a Catholic community which was in danger of being outmanoeuvred by an active and somewhat explosive Protestant community of thinkers and political actors who, despite their minority status, did capture the attention of the wider population. The successful rebuilding of parish worship despite the lack of financial resources available demonstrate the incredible regenerative capability of the Marian church, whilst her appointment of Cardinal Pole proved valuable in sharpening the theological and intellectual backbone upon which the Church rested. Whilst there is no escaping the damaging impact had by her handling of the incumbent Protestant population, this should not detract from the reality that the reasons for her failure were largely political. Change in Mary’s England came from above and the experience of the Tudor era shows that the church was largely obedient to the will dictated by the royal government. Thus, it was her failure to find a successor to the throne that would build upon the promising start she made that rendered her restoration a predominantly short-lived phenomenon.

For there to be an authoritative framework whereby Catholicism could be restored in England, the church was returned under the authority of the papacy which, despite contemporary debate, remained the institution from which the Catholic church derived its highest spiritual authority. Although a generation had passed between Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534 and Mary’s succession in 1553, English belief in the papacy had not evaporated and its importance was still appreciated. Reform in the Catholic kingdoms had historically been executed by the papal legates, thus the arrival of Cardinal Pole in November of 1554 ensured Mary’s restoration was afforded a greater sense of credibility. Pole was a renowned humanist scholar who had been a strong advocate for reform at the

Council of Trent from 1542, where he was appointed one of three Papal Legates to preside over the proceedings. That he came within one third of the votes he needed to be appointed Pope in the conclave of 1549-50 speaks volumes of the value he would bring to Mary’s programme of reform. He used his position to negotiate a papal dispensation with Pope Julius III which allowed the English laity to retain their share of confiscated church lands, thus paving the passage for the approval of Roman primacy by Parliament. Whilst Mary’s marriage to Philip II of Spain is often criticised as an obstacle to her restoration, in this episode the king was vital in using his network to persuade the cardinal, the Pope and the English gentry to accept this crucial compromise. The speech given by Pole on the 30th November 1554 to absolve the realm for the sins of heresy set the tone for the nature of England and the Roman Catholic Church’s reconciliation, which can be seen in the successful preservation of the episcopate under Mary’s rule.

The episcopal structure of the Roman Catholic Church was certainly threatened under the scrutiny of new Protestant ideas about religious authority, which questioned the nature of offices such as “bishop” which were so often filled by men who did not uphold the values that they preached. They were seen more as exploiters of benefices than the ministers of the church that they were expected to be. Therefore, Mary’s commitment to only raising men to the episcopate who had both the theological acumen and the pastoral sensibilities that the office required helped strengthen the structure of the church and give it an added sense of religious conviction. The restoration of Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, proved these criteria correct when he began writing his catechetical works that went on to define the restoration Catholic doctrine, such as his “Profytable and necessary doctrine” (1554 and 1555), of which 10,000 copies were printed. This shift towards a Catholic clergy that was both educated and committed to fulfilling their pastoral duties to their dioceses was heavily influenced by Cardinal Pole, who no doubt had been exposed to such ideas during his time in Europe. Recent reappraisals of his role in the Marian church draw attention to its greater administrative efficiency since his introduction and especially after he was named successor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, in late 1555. Much of the reform that was undertaken under Mary’s rule was inspired by Pole’s legatine synod of 1555-56, which drew on his earlier work as a cardinal and focused on improving clerical standards. For example, his call for more sermons that could be translated by lower educated priests, more translation of theological texts, and better education standards of the clergy helped ensure that the intellectual output of the restoration church reached a wider population, making Catholicism more accessible than it had previously been in England. However, this episcopal structure was susceptible to the influence of the papacy, as seen during the pontiff of Pope Paul IV where sees were kept vacant and appointments kept unapproved, making Elizabeth’s removal of the bishops much easier – a telling example of how for all its immediate benefits, the restoration struggled to establish durable foundations. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm with which the church experienced a revival at the parish level can be interpreted as a consequence of the

structural improvements made by Mary and the Cardinal, which enabled a more engaging interaction between the church and its people.

The revival of parish worship and the re-establishment of Catholic rites and rituals following the upheaval of the Edwardian regime was remarkably strong. Despite the traditional emphasis on the persecution and violence behind the Marian church, the restoration was seen as a process of reconciliation. This was most effectively achieved through rituals such as Mass which served not only a religious function in reinforcing Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but also a social one in uniting different groups together as a congregation. That Thomas Cranmer in his final recorded words described it as the “easiest route to the demarcation of Catholic identity” speaks volumes of its centrality to Catholic doctrine. Thus, the replacement of the English service with the Latin mas in the Book of Common Prayer demonstrates how Mary understood well that a revival of the more tangible elements of the Catholic religious experience was central to her success in restoring Catholicism at a grass-roots level. Reviving ritual also required a return of the physical elements of the church which had been stripped by Edwardian iconoclasm, such as the altar, the phyx, the Rood and others which were vital to the texture of the liturgical experience. Therefore, the almost universal compliance with the demands of the Marian church regarding interior decoration is indicative of Mary’s success in this aspect of her restoration and the latent enthusiasm people held for their Catholic faith, no doubt fostered by doctrine such as Waymer’s primers. Eamon Duffy draws attention to the fact that even in Kent, the area most impacted by iconoclastic destruction, by 1557 there existed in virtually every parish a high altar of stone, along with the necessary furniture and crucial literature for worship. Therefore, whilst Mary’s failure to restore the church its lands and subsequent financial power precluded her from rebuilding the church from above, the people’s enduring commitment to the old religion ensured its revival from the ground up. Whilst the success of these efforts during Mary’s reign are undermined by their lack of longevity beyond the queen’s death, the intellectual emphasis of the restoration was a resounding success that, unlike many other aspects, was independent of Mary’s political situation. Almost immediately into her reign, Mary sent letters to Oxford and Cambridge in what was a first step to her attempts at restoring them to their state before Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Control of the university curriculum was essential as they formed the training ground for future leaders in both the clergy and royal government. Furthermore, in 1534 the senior and junior members of both universities had sworn oaths rejecting the Pope’s supremacy, which was symptomatic of a wider intellectual culture that was more critical of Catholicism in favour of Protestant and Evangelical ideas. Therefore, Mary’s swift action in placing Peter Martyr, a critic of the Catholic church, under house arrest in Christ Church demonstrates the priority with which control of the higher education system was seen. The subsequent exile of around 130 academics from both institutions served to distance potentially influential dissenters from

the country, with the newly formed English Church of Zurich in 1534 giving a sense of the great distance they were away. Consequently, in the first six months of Mary’s reign all but three Cambridge colleges underwent leadership changes, with Stephen Gardiner resuming mastership of Trinity Hall serving as an indication of the direction of the new Catholic programme, before Cardinal Pole became chancellor of both Oxford and Cambridge in 1556. Both universities underwent legatine visitations and received £500 each from Queen Mary to fund scholarship, whilst Pole used his continental network to add foreign Catholic scholars to the university ranks, such as John de Villagarcia and Peter de Soto who went to Oxford. The resistance of these communities of Catholic scholars and theologians under the reign of Elizabeth is a testament to the success of Mary’s cultivation of Catholicism in the higher education system. Both universities became centres for sixteenth-century Catholic learning and added to England’s identity as a Catholic country, attracting visiting academics and theologians from across Europe. However, the extent of repression they attracted once Elizabeth ascended to throne as opposed to areas such as the parishes can be put down to Mary’s miscalculated prosecution of Protestants, which reached their climax in Oxford itself.

Although the principle of heresy was not foreign to the inhabitants of sixteenth-century England, it was the miscalculated and excessive scale of the campaign of prosecution which Mary embarked on which most alienated herself to the detriment of the Catholic cause. Eamon Duffy has argued that in order to truly stamp out Protestantism to give Catholicism the freedom of true revival the burnings of people accused of heresy was necessary. Indeed, imprisonment did not stop prisoners writing letters which went into circulation, and public recantations served as a powerful propaganda tool – such as that of John Dudley at the beginning of Mary’s reign. However, Mary failed to control her personal grievances and in turn provided the Protestants with the license for propaganda, as can be seen in the case of Thomas Cranmer: the man who secured Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, which caused Mary great grief during childhood. Having secured his recantation, she placed herself in an immensely strong position of having the chance to have the Archbishop of Canterbury – the second highest authority in the church – to publicly renounce his faith in return for him escaping with his life. Instead, Mary continued with the execution against the will of her advisors, only for Cranmer to symbolically withdraw his recantation by placing the hand with which he signed it in the flame first – an act so symbolic that there exists still a memorial stone in the exact spot where he was burnt in Oxford. The extent of the persecution was doubted by many of Mary’s advisors, such as Paget, which suggests that alternatives did exist. Mary made martyrs of the Protestants and furthermore, due to already-existing xenophobic feeling towards her Spanish marriage, Catholicism was presented as an alien force of terror that mercilessly attacked the native Protestant faith. That an ideology which was imported from the Continent was able to take on a national identity speaks volumes of the extent to which Mary alienated herself from those upon whom her rise to power had depended.

The successes of Mary’s restoration of Catholicism therefore can be seen to have been limited by her failure to consider the political contexts within which she was acting. The church’s position had been shifted demonstrably beneath that of the monarchy over the course of the Tudor era, meaning that instigating lasting religious changes required a strong political base from which to act. In this respect, her Spanish marriage, lack of heirs, and divided inheritance provided her with many challenges. Whilst the fatal episode of Protestant persecution will inevitably define her rule in the popular historical imagination, it should be the misunderstanding of her fragile political position which is remembered as the reason for her failure to implement lasting reform. With a restricted view of the five years she had in power it is clear to see that this was a period not only of Catholic restoration but also reinvention. She succeeded in dismantling the Edwardian church and left a legacy which did extend into the reign of her sister. However, the reality is that in the long term, restoration of Catholicism did fail as the roots she laid were given neither the space nor the time to set in.

Bibliography: Ryrie, Age of Reformation Duffy and Loades, The Church of Mary Tudor Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars Pettegree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies Loach, Marian establishment and the printing press Redworth, Matters Impertinent to Women...