CHAPTER IV. MARY AND THE CATHOLIC REACTION. two stages lish Re siastical from I. WITH the death of Henry VIII. ended the first stage of The first the English Reformation, which consisted of the severance of the Engfrom the Roman See, by a political act, of a people impelled formation: by a growing sense of nationality to assume absolute independence, without any departure whatever from the Roman dogma and ritual employed by the national church from the earliest times. While, in response to the touch of selfinterest, Henry was prompt to embody in his Act of Supremacy the new Lutheran doctrine1 of national religion that The first, embodying claimed the right for each people to determine the form of only a legal belief which should prevail within its bounds, he as sternly and eccleimposed by his Act of the Six Articles the severest penal- separation ties upon all who dared to dissent from the teachings of the Rome, older faith. Apart from the bitter feeling which the subsequent suppression of the monasteries excited, there can be no doubt that the bulk of the nation went with the king, in was cheerhis first great act involving the legal and ecclesiastical sever- cepted by ance of the realm from the Roman dominion. While the the bulk of papal party, which rejected as a whole the new order of things brought about by the separation, included in its ranks such lofty spirits as Fisher and More, its numbers were certainly insignificant when compared with the greater mass of Catholic Anglicans and Lutherans who fully accepted the royal supremacy, while they differed sharply as to what should be the future doctrine of the emancipated national church. So far did the bulk of the nation acquiesce in the change with the which Henry's legislation brought about that when, in the ing that the reign of Edward, organized rebellion broke out in the western ancient counties against the introduction of the new service which the ritual prayer-book inaugurated, the demand was for the retention retained. of the mass and for the reëstablishment of catholicism, not 1 See above, pp. 50, 76. fully ac the nation, understand dogma and should be The second stage, em accepted at bulk of the nation; the cause greatly during the second stage by the greed and reck its leaders; with the pope as its head, but as the laws of King Henry had left it.1 With the death of Edward VI. ended the second stage, embodying a bracing the changes of dogma and ritual embodied under the change of guidance of Cranmer in the Prayer-book and the Forty-two dogma and ritual, not Articles, which, by virtue of the Acts of Uniformity, were first by the made the standards of orthodoxy. That the changes thus brought about by the authority of the privy council under the presidency first of Somerset and then of Northumberland did not at the time receive the assent of the bulk of the nation is a fact which seems to be settled as well by the consensus of historians as by the sudden reaction in which Cranmer's work was for a time overthrown. Certain it is that the period occuprejudiced pied by the second stage of the English Reformation was a period of great want, misery, and administrative disorder, during which the cause was greatly prejudiced by the selfish conduct of the knot of greedy protestant nobles who at Henry's lessness of death seized upon the powers of the privy council, by means of which they completed the confiscation of the property of the church in order to enrich themselves, while they permitted the public treasury to become empty, the expenses of the court to increase, the coinage to be debased, and the peasantry to be oppressed by the enforcement of the heartless policy of inclosures which they carried out in the interest of the landlords the nation by the aid of foreign mercenaries.2 It is not therefore strange refused to that when the upstart Northumberland, around whom had support the gathered the hate which such a policy naturally engendered, party attempted to consummate his selfish work by a grossly illegal Northum attempt to transfer the crown itself to his own family, the berland, nation should have risen in arms against him; and that when even in the his puppet queen, protestant as she was, was proclaimed, on interest of the 10th of July, 1553, but "few or none said, God save her." 3 As to Mary's religious status there could be neither doubt nor question. So firm had been her insistence during her brother's reign upon her right to reject the new service and to cling to the mass. that she was brought into sharp collision with both the king and the privy council, who only yielded to her 4 Privy Council Register, entry of June 16, 1549. finally protestant headed by Jane Grey; religious status of Mary; 1 See above, p. 121. 2 See above, p. 124. 8 Grey Friars' Chron., p. 79; Holinshed's Chron., p. 1087. the crown ment; demands under a threat of war from her powerful cousin the emperor.1 But the fact remained that she was the daughter of a king who had never lost his popularity; that her right her right to to the crown had been sanctioned by an act 2 of parliament; sanctioned and that her accession would end at least a period of political by parliaand religious chaos during which the nation had become thoroughly disheartened. So it was that within the ten days that followed the proclamation of Lady Jane, Northumberland's conspiracy collapsed; and Mary, around whom had gathered an army of thirty thousand men 3 drawn mainly from the eastern counties in which the new religious movement had taken the deepest hold, was proclaimed by order of the council proclaimed by the in London on the 19th, and in Cambridge on the next day. council in On August 3 the queen entered London with Elizabeth by London on her side amid the acclaim of the populace, and according to July, 1553; custom she proceeded to the Tower, where she found upon the visits the green, awaiting release at her hands, an historic group of state releases prisoners, among whom were the old duke of Norfolk, and Norfolk Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, who, after a rigid confinement Gardiner. of five years, now came forth to take the first place at Mary's side as the councillor who was to direct the conservative policy that prevailed down to the Spanish marriage, and the subsequent domination of Philip and Pole. the 19th of Tower and and accession: vative policy of 2. Gardiner, an ecclesiastical statesman, trained in the tol- Mary's erant school of Wolsey, and who became secretary of state The conser after his fall,5 had taken an active part in the measures that culminated in the repudiation of the papal supremacy, which Gardiner; he denounced at the time in a tract in which he said "that no his views as to the new thing was introduced when the king was declared to be supremacy; supreme head."6 And yet in spite of his well-known advocacy of an independent national church, he was with Norfolk excluded from the list of Henry's executors because they were both known to be unalterably opposed to any further change involving either doctrine or ritual. Upon that ground he was sent to the Tower by finally sent to the Tower by Somerset, despite the fact that, Somerset; 1 See Cecil's statement of the matter, MS. Germany, bundle 15, State Paper Office, cited by Froude, vol. iv. P. 538. 2 35 Hen. VIII. c. I. See above, p. 107. 8 Haynes' State Papers, p. 157. House MSS. See above, p. 67. 6 In his book De Vera Obediencia. See Brown's Fasciculus, vol. ii. p. 806. to power Henry's ec system; extent; 1 while he maintained that there should be no new ecclesiastical legislation during the minority of Edward, he had openly declared in a memorable sermon 1 against the papal and in favor comes back of the royal supremacy. Inspired by such principles Gardiner resolved to now came back to power, resolved to reestablish Henry's restore ecclesiastical system in the identical form in which he had left clesiastical it. After the restoration of the bishops 2 who had been deposed and imprisoned in the preceding reign, and the execution of justice upon three of the ringleaders of the conspiracy Mary's first against the queen,3 Mary's first parliament, which met on the parliament legislated 5th of October, 1553, addressed itself under Gardiner's guidonly to that ance to the task of wiping out only so much of Edward's ecclesiastical legislation as would make possible the restoration of the legal conditions as they existed in the last year of Henry VIII. The session opened with the ancient form of the mass, so long omitted, and the first act of the reign reëstablished the law of treason as defined by 25 Edw. III., by Edw. III. reenacting the repealing section of the act of Edward VI., with the addition of words extending it to misprision of treason.* The next act,5 in order to settle the question of the queen's legitimacy, after declaring the validity of the marriage of her mother with Henry, annulled the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, as well as all acts of parliament which questioned her legitimacy. Then followed the act repealing nine statutes passed in Edward's reign, relating to creed and Edward's ritual, the marriage of priests, and the election of bishops, reign, as to which may be enumerated as follows: the two Acts of Uni treasons act of 25 restored; queen's annulled: nine statutes of creed and ritual, repealed; formity, and that authorizing the Ordinal (2 Edw. VI. 1; 5 Edw. VI. 1; 3 Edw. VI. 12), the act authorizing the communion in both kinds (1 Edw. VI. 1), the act authorizing the appointment of bishops without election (1 Edw. VI. 2), the act for the limitation of holy days (5 Edw. VI. 3), the act abolishing the old service-books (2 Edw. VI. 10), and the two acts permitting priests to marry (2 Edw. VI. 21; 5 Edw. VI. 1 Foxe, vol. vi. pp. 87-93, ed. 1838. 2 As to the return of Bonner from the Marshalsea, see Grey Friars' Chron., p. 82. 3 Northumberland, Gates, and Palmer were executed for high treason on August 22. 4 I Mary, c. I. 5 I Mary, sess. 2, c. I. Nothing was said in the act as to the papal dispensation, an omission of which Pole afterwards bitterly complained. See Strype's Cranmer, vol. iii. pp. 477, 479. Eccl. Hist., Soc. ed. 61 Mary, sess. 2, c. 2. vine service the end of tablished 12). By the express terms of the repealing act "all such form of didivine service and administration of the sacraments as were in use at most commonly used in this realm of England in the last year Henry's of the reign of our late sovereign lord, King Henry VIII., shall reign reesbe, from and after the 20th day of December, 1553, used by law; throughout the whole realm of England, and all other the Queen's Majesty's dominions." And the same rule was repeated in the next act,1 which provided for the punishment of all who should molest priests, "celebrating the mass or other such divine service, sacraments, or sacramentals, as was most commonly frequented and used in the last year of the reign of the late sovereign lord, King Henry the Eighth." While thus conserving and restoring Henry's work, parliament was careful not to repeal the Act of Supremacy, and Mary accordingly Act of retained the title of "Supreme Head" down to April 2, 1554,2 a date subsequent to the arrangement of her marriage with repealed, Philip, an event which marks the beginning of a new policy maining the that culminated in the wiping out of the whole scheme of Head" legislation through which the supremacy of the pope had been repudiated. not Mary re "Supreme down to April, 1554. solved from lish the strengthen There can be no doubt that Mary was resolved from the Mary reoutset to do her utmost to restore the realm to full communion the outset with the Roman See, and that she only acquiesced for the to reestab moment in the moderate policy of Gardiner until she could Roman sufficiently strengthen her hands by a marriage alliance for supremacy; the final enterprise. Motives both religious and political sug- seeks to gested that she should seek a husband from her mother's kin, and the emperor was more than willing to offer to her the by a marhand of Philip 3 in extension of the ambitious policy of the Philip; house of Austria. Cardinal Pole, the queen's second cousin Cardinal once removed, who had been commissioned as legate the mo- cates the ment that Edward's death was known at Rome, although he alliance; was prevented by his attainder from entering the kingdom, riage with Pole advo |