THE CHANGE OF RELIGION: 1559
Mary died on the 17th of November 1558. Parliament was then sitting,
and, in communicating the event to both Houses, Archbishop Heath frankly
took the initiative in recognising Elizabeth, “of whose most lawful
right and title in the succession of the Crown, thanks be to God, we
need not to doubt.” He was a staunch Catholic, and two months later
refused to officiate at her coronation. But he was an Englishman, and
even the most convinced Catholics, though looking forward with
uneasiness to the religious policy of the new Queen, were sincerely glad
that there was no danger of a disputed succession. Besides, it was by no
means clear that Elizabeth would not accept the ecclesiastical
constitution as established in the late reign. That there would be an
end of burnings, and of the harassing tyranny of the bishops, every one
felt certain; but it seemed quite upon the cards that Elizabeth would
continue to recognise the headship of the Pope in a formal way and
maintain the Mass. It must be remembered that the religious changes had
only begun some thirty years before. All middle-aged men could remember
the time when the ecclesiastical fabric stood to all appearance
unbroken, as it had stood for centuries. Only twenty-four years had
passed since the Act of Supremacy had transferred the headship of the
Church from the Pope to the King; only eleven since the Protestant
doctrine and worship had been forced on the country by the Protector
Somerset, to the horror and disgust of the great majority of Englishmen.
The nation had sorrowed for the death of Edward VI., because it darkened
the prospects of the succession, and seemed likely sooner or later to
bring on a civil war. But apart from the hot Protestant minority,
chiefly to be found in London, the mass of the nation was conservative,
and welcomed the re-establishment of the old religion as a return to
order and common sense after a short and bitter experience of
revolutionary anarchy. There was a rooted objection to restore the old
meddlesome tyranny of the bishops, and the nobles and squires who had
got hold of the abbey lands would not hear of giving them up. But the
return to communion with the Catholic Church and the recognition of the
Pope as its head gave satisfaction to three-fourths, perhaps to
five-sixths, of the nation, and to a still larger proportion of its most
influential class, the great landed proprietors. Mary’s accession was
the great and unique opportunity for the old Church. If Mary and Pole
had been cool-headed politicians instead of excitable fanatics, if they
had contented themselves with restoring the old worship, depriving the
few Protestant clergy of their benefices, and punishing only outrageous
attacks on the State religion, Elizabeth would not have had the power,
it may be doubted whether she would have had the inclination, to undo
her sister’s work.
This great opportunity was thrown away. Mary’s bishops came back
brooding over the long catalogue of humiliations and indignities which
their Church had suffered, and thirsting to avenge their own wrongs. For
six years they had their fling, and contrived to make the country forget
the period of Protestant mis-government. England had never before known
what it was to be governed by clergymen. It was a sort of rule as
hateful to most Catholic laymen as to Protestants. Catholics therefore
for the most part, as well as Protestants, hailed the accession of
Elizabeth. At any rate there would be an end of the clerical tyranny.
Nor were they without hope that she would maintain the old worship. She
had conformed to it for the last five years, and Philip had given the
word that she was to be supported.
We are now accustomed to the Papal _non possumus_. No nation or Church
can hope that the smallest deviation from Roman doctrine or discipline
will be tolerated. But in 1558 the hard and fast line had not yet been
drawn. France was still pressing for such changes as communion in both
kinds, worship in the vulgar tongue, and marriage of priests. The
Council of Trent, it is true, had already in 1545 decided that Catholic
doctrine was contained in the Bible _and tradition_, and in 1551 had
defined transubstantiation and the sacraments. But in 1552 the Council
was prorogued, and it did not resume till 1562. Doctrine and discipline
therefore might be, and were still considered to be, in the melting-pot,
and no one could be certain what would come out. If Elizabeth had
contented herself with the French programme, and had joined France in
pressing it, the other sovereigns, who really cared for nothing but
uniformity, would probably have forced the Pope to compromise. The
Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation might have been tolerated. The
Anglican formulæ have been held by many to be compatible with a belief
in the Real Presence. The formal severance of England from Catholic
unity might thus have been postponed--possibly avoided--in the same
sense that it has been avoided in France. After the completion of the
Council of Trent (1562-3) it was too late.
Two years after her accession Elizabeth told the Spanish ambassador, De
Quadra, that her belief was the belief of all the Catholics in the
realm; and on his asking her how then she could have altered religion in
1559, she said she had been compelled to act as she did, and that, if he
knew how she had been driven to it, she was sure he would excuse her.
Seven years later she made the same statement to De Silva. Elizabeth was
habitually so regardless of truth that her assertions can be allowed
little weight when they are improbable. No doubt, as a matter of taste
and feeling, she preferred the Catholic worship. She was not pious. She
was not troubled with a tender conscience or tormented by a sense of
sin. She did not care to cultivate close personal relations with her
God. A religion of form and ceremony suited her better. But her training
had been such as to free her from all superstitious fear or prejudice,
and her religious convictions were determined by her sense of what was
most reasonable and convenient. There is not the least evidence that she
was a reluctant agent in the adoption of Protestantism in 1559. Who was
there to coerce her? The Protestants could not have set up a Protestant
competitor. The great nobles, though opposed to persecution and desirous
of minimising the Pope’s authority, would have preferred to leave
worship as it was. But upon one thing Elizabeth was determined. She
would resume the full ecclesiastical supremacy which her father had
annexed to the Crown. She judged, and she probably judged rightly, that
the only way to assure this was to make the breach with the old religion
complete. If she had placed herself in the hands of moderate Catholics
like Paget, possessed with the belief that she could only maintain
herself by the protection of Philip, they would have advised her to be
content with the practical authority over the English Church which many
an English king had known how to exercise. That was not enough for her.
She desired a position free from all ambiguity and possibility of
dispute, not one which would have to be defended with constant vigilance
and at the cost of incessant bickering.
From the point of view of her foreign relations the moment might seem to
be a dangerous one for carrying out a religious revolution, and many a
statesman with a deserved reputation for prudence would have counselled
delay. But this disadvantage was more than counterbalanced by the
unpopularity which the cruelties and disasters of Mary’s last three
years had brought upon the most active Catholics. Again, Elizabeth no
doubt recognised that the Catholics, though at present the strongest,
were the declining party. The future was with the Protestants. It was
the young men who had fixed their hopes upon her in her sister’s time,
and who were ready to rally round her now. By her natural disposition,
and by her culture, she belonged to the Renaissance rather than to the
Reformation. But obscurantist as Calvinism essentially was, the
Calvinists, as a minority struggling for freedom to think and teach what
they believed, represented for a time the cause of light and
intellectual emancipation. Was she to put herself at the head of
reaction or progress? She did not love the Calvinists. They were too
much in earnest for her. Their narrow creed was as tainted with
superstition as that of Rome, and, at bottom, was less humane, less
favourable to progress. But whom else had she to work with? The
reasonable, secular-minded, tolerant sceptics are not always the best
fighting material; and at that time they were few in number and
tending--in England at least--to be ground out of existence between the
upper and nether millstones of the rival fanaticisms. If she broke with
Catholicism she would be sure of the ardent and unwavering support of
one-third of the nation; so sure, that she would have no need to take
any further pains to please them. As for the remaining two-thirds, she
hoped to conciliate most of them by posing as their protector against
the persecution which would have been pleasing to Protestant bigots.
In the policy of a complete breach with Rome, Cecil was disposed to go
as far as the Queen, and further. Cecil was at this time thirty-eight.
For forty years he continued to be the confidential and faithful
servant of Elizabeth. One of those new men whom the Tudors most
trusted, he was first employed by Henry VIII. Under Edward he rose to be
Secretary of State, and was a pronounced Protestant. On the fall of his
patron Somerset he was for a short time sent to the Tower, but was soon
in office again--sooner, some thought, than was quite decent--under his
patron’s old enemy, Northumberland. He signed the letters-patent by
which the crown was conferred on Lady Jane Grey; but took an early
opportunity of going over to Mary. During her reign he conformed to the
old religion, and, though not holding any office, was consulted on
public business, and was one of the three commissioners who went to
fetch Cardinal Pole to England. Thoroughly capable in business, one of
those to whom power naturally falls because they know how to use it, a
shrewd balancer of probabilities, without a particle of fanaticism in
his composition and detesting it in others, though ready to make use of
it to serve his ends, entirely believing that “what-e’er is best
administered is best,” Cecil nevertheless had his religious
predilections, and they were all on the side of the Protestants.
Moreover he had a personal motive which, by the nature of the case, was
not present to the Queen. She might die prematurely; and if that event
should take place before the Protestant ascendancy was firmly
established his power would be at an end, and his very life would be in
danger. A time came when he and his party had so strengthened
themselves, if not in absolute numerical superiority, yet by the hold
they had established on all departments of Government from the highest
to the lowest, that they were in a condition to resist a Catholic
claimant to the throne, if need were, sword in hand. But during the
early years of the reign Cecil was working with the rope round his neck.
Hence he could not regard the progress of events with the imperturbable
_sang-froid_ which Elizabeth always displayed; and all his influence was
employed to push the religious revolution through as rapidly and
completely as possible.
The story that Elizabeth was influenced in her attitude to Rome by an
arrogant reply from Pope Paul IV. to her official notification of her
accession, though refuted by Lingard and Hallam in their later editions,
has been repeated by recent historians. Her accession was notified to
every friendly sovereign except the Pope. He was studiously ignored from
the first. Equally unsupported by facts are all attempts to show that
during the early weeks of her reign she had not made up her mind as to
the course she would take about religion. All preaching, it is true, was
suspended by proclamation; and it was ordered that the established
worship should go on “until consultation might be had in Parliament by
the Queen and the three Estates.” In the meantime she had herself
crowned according to the ancient ritual by the Catholic Bishop of
Carlisle. But this is only what might have been expected from a strong
ruler who was not disposed to let important alterations be initiated by
popular commotion or the presumptuous forwardness of individual
clergymen. The impending change was quite sufficiently marked from the
first by the removal of the most bigoted Catholics from the Council and
by the appointment of Cecil and Bacon to the offices of Secretary and of
Lord Keeper. The new Parliament, Protestant candidates for which had
been recommended by the Government, met as soon as possible (Jan. 25,
1559). When it rose (May 8th) the great change had been legally and
decisively accomplished.
The government, worship, and doctrine of the Established Church are the
most abiding marks left by Elizabeth on the national life of England.
Logically it might have been expected that the settlement of doctrine
would precede that of government and worship. It is characteristic of a
State Church that the inverse order should have been followed. For the
Queen the most important question was Church government; for the people,
worship. Both these matters were disposed of with great promptitude at
the beginning of 1559. Doctrine might interest the clergy; but it could
wait. The Thirty-nine Articles were not adopted by Convocation till
1563, and were not sanctioned by Parliament till 1571.
The government of the Church was settled by the Act of Supremacy (April
1559). It revived the Act of Henry VIII., except that the Queen was
styled Supreme Governor of the Church instead of Supreme Head, although
the nature of the supremacy was precisely the same. The penalties were
relaxed. Henry’s oath of supremacy might be tendered to any subject, and
to decline it was high treason; Elizabeth’s oath was to be obligatory
only on persons holding spiritual or temporal office under the Crown,
and the penalty for declining was the loss of such office. Those who
chose to _attack_ the supremacy were still liable to the penalties of
treason on the third offence.
Worship was settled with equal expedition by the Act of Uniformity
(April 1559), which imposed the second or more Protestant Prayer-book of
Edward VI., but with a few very important alterations. A deprecation in
the Litany of “the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable
enormities,” and a rubric which declared that by kneeling at the
Communion no adoration was intended to any real and essential presence
of Christ, were expunged. The words of administration in the present
communion service consist of two sentences. The first sentence, implying
real presence, belonged to Edward’s first Prayer-book; the second,
implying mere commemoration, belonged to his second Prayer-book. The
Prayer-book of 1559 simply pieced the two together, with a view to
satisfy both Catholics and Protestants. Lastly, the vestments prescribed
in Edward’s first Prayer-book were retained till further notice. These
alterations of Edward’s second Prayer-book, all of them designed to
propitiate the Catholics, were dictated by Elizabeth herself. In all
this legislation Convocation was entirely ignored. Both its houses
showed themselves strongly Catholic. But their opinion was not asked,
and no notice was taken of their remonstrances.
While determining that England should have a purely national Church, and
for that reason casting in her lot with the Protestants, Elizabeth, as
we have seen, made very considerable sacrifices of logic and consistency
in order to induce Catholics to conform. Like a strong and wise
statesman, she did not allow herself to be driven into one concession
after another, but went at once as far as she intended to go. At the
same time the coercion applied to the Catholics, while sufficient to
influence the worldly-minded majority, was, during the early part of her
reign, very mild for those times. She wished no one to be molested who
did not go out of his way to invite it. Outward conformity was all she
wanted. And of this mere attendance at church was accepted as sufficient
evidence. The principal difficulty, of course, was with the clergy. From
them more than a mere passive conformity had to be exacted. To sign
declarations, take oaths, and officiate in church was a severer strain
on the conscience. It is said that less than 200 out of 9400 sacrificed
their benefices rather than conform, and that of these about 100 were
dignitaries. The number must be under-stated; for the chief difficulty
of the new bishops, for a long time, was to find clergymen for the
parish churches. But we cannot doubt that the large majority of the
parish clergy stuck to their livings, remaining Catholics at heart, and
avoiding, where they could, and as long as they could, compliance with
the new regulations. It must not be supposed that the enactment of
religious changes by Parliament was equivalent, as it would be at the
present day, to their immediate enforcement throughout the country;
especially in the north where the great proprietors and justices of the
peace did not carry out the law. A certain number of the ejected priests
continued to celebrate the ancient rites privately in the houses of the
more earnest Catholics; for which they were not unfrequently punished by
imprisonment. Of course this was persecution. But according to the
ideas of that day it was a very mild kind of persecution; and where it
occurred it seems to have been due to the zeal of some of the bishops,
and to private busybodies who set the law in motion, rather than to any
systematic action on the part of the Government.