Heretic Queen
Page 9
Though outlawed with the Elizabethan religious settlement, telling the time of year by saints’ days remained the common practice. Days that were pagan in origin, like Midsummer Day, sometimes called St. John’s Day, on June 24, had been masquerading as holy days for over a millennium. In Elizabeth’s England, they came under government scrutiny as an unacceptably pagan solar festival in Romish disguise. Barnaby Googe attacked the St. John’s Day festivities of “bonfires and floral garlands … as popish relics.”9
Ecclesiastical holy days—or red-letter days in the calendar—were struck off at a stroke with the Elizabethan settlement, with the result that the days off from work were reduced by nearly half. “Our holy and festival days,” according to the Elizabethan chronicler and country parson William Harrison, “we had under the Pope four score and fifteen called festival, and thirty profesti [minor festivals], beside the Sundays, they are all brought unto seven and twenty; and with them the superfluous numbers of idle wakes, guilds, fraternities, church ales, help ales, and soul ales, called also dirge ales, with the heathenish rioting at bride ales, are well diminished and laid aside.”10
All too soon, the preferred country way of celebrating just about anything in the calendar with cakes and ale would become abhorrent to the new Protestant pious, as Shakespeare’s memorable line in Twelfth Night reminds us: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”11 In some parishes, maypoles were relegated to an ignominious reuse as parish ladders. Garlands remained unpicked in the meadows. Still, despite official censure of the custom of merrymaking with cakes and ale, as well as loud fireworks (the louder the better) and bonfires, these would remain steadfast features of country life, just as the hills and valleys remained constant in the landscape.
Along with the country ways went magic and superstition. The English read their weather from the behavior of the animals, from the turning color of the leaves, and from the skies and stars. Astrology was a booming trade, with local astrologers charging their townspeople as much as a shilling to foretell where a lost cow or mare had strayed off to. Everyone looked to the stars to help decipher the uncertain future, and many believed in a harmonious “music of the spheres” where, unlike in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the time was not out of joint.12 For the average Elizabethan, if there was discord in the planets, life on earth would become most distinctly “out of joint.”
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All these long-held belief systems did not sit easily with the new religion Elizabeth sought to give her people. Though outwardly everything seemed to be the same, within the church, life was different. Vicars and bishops inveighed against the seasonal rituals and feasts as heathen practices, spawned by the bishop of Rome, the Antichrist. Papists, as the Roman Catholics were called by the Tudor Protestants throughout Elizabeth’s reign, blamed the age-old pagan customs for the poor morals of the people. “I never commanded,” preached William Keth from his parish pulpit in Dorset, “your candles at Candlemas, your popish penance on Ash Wednesday, your eggs and bacon on Good Friday, your gospels at superstitious crosses decked like idols, your fires at Midsummer, and your ringing [of church bells] at Hallowtide for all Christian souls.”13
What Elizabeth had sought to create was security and stability through the Protestant faith that would replace all the controversy and rhetoric of the previous fifty years. However, this stability was bought at the cost of local customs and generations of homegrown magical ways of making sense of the world in which the English lived. The change, if it was to be successful, she believed, would need to be swift, like the removal of a bandage from an oozing sore.
Visitations of parish churches by bishops were well under way within a year of the religious settlement passing into law. The “visitors” would ask the local parish vicar “whether any holy days or fasting days heretofore abrogated … be superstitiously observed.” Moving on from there, they inquired if there was any “superfluous ringing on All Saints’ Day at night, or on the following day, of old superstitiously called All Souls’ Day.” Ministers answering yes would find themselves censured as surely as if they allowed licentious church ales to continue unabated.14
Altars were stripped, their rood screens demolished, and the saintly images painstakingly painted onto the walls of every church and set into stained glass wherever possible were erased with lavish coats of whitewash. Liturgical vestments and ornaments were burned or smashed. Commissioners ensuring that the realm’s parishes complied with the Act of Settlement of 1559 were sworn in. Presiding in the county of Lincoln, Bishop Nicholas Bullingham ordered his commission to visit 180 parishes in the months of March and April 1566. The records of these visitations survive to this day. What emerges is a litany of rampant destruction, the fate of every image, book, vessel, and ornament used in Catholic worship being accounted for. From the rood and altar stones down to the cruets and towels, everything was punctiliously inscribed. Even the names of those attending the visitations were noted down. What emerges from the Lincolnshire visitations some eight years into Elizabeth’s reign is a reluctance of the inhabitants to abandon all their touchstones of Catholicism coupled with a lack of enthusiasm for the process of reform. At Ashby near Horncastle in Lincolnshire, the parish proved exceptionally recalcitrant in “defacing of all papistry” until absolutely forced to do so by Bishop Bullingham, when he “caused his men to rive … in pieces” all manner of books and candlesticks.15
As late as 1568, the rood lofts still stood at Chichester, or were laid by in readiness to be reconstructed. All “trifling trumpery for the sinful service of the popish priest … feigned fables and peltering popish books” were targeted for mass destruction, and yet the “old ways” prevailed without the benefit of their accoutrements.16 The men carrying out the visitations could take away the objects, but they couldn’t stop the people from retaining an element of the pagan or Catholic magical past.
One of the sticking points in the minds of the English was that the Anglican Church denied the claim disseminated by Roman Catholicism that God’s grace could be manipulated for earthly causes. “That which we call fortune,” wrote Thomas Cooper, an Elizabethan bishop, “is nothing but the hand of God, working by causes and for causes that we know not. Chance or fortune are [sic] gods devised by man and made by our ignorance of the true, almighty and everlasting God.”17
Lay people persisted in the mingling of Catholic magic and its supernatural miracles with special divine providences as taught by the new Anglican Church. Their social belief systems were based on an uneasy mélange of superstition, witchcraft, philosophy, and the new science of medicine. The clergy frequently lamented that it was “scarce credible” how miserably “our common ignorants are besotted” with the opinions of “charmers, fortune-tellers, wizards and cunning men” and “how pitifully they are gulled by their damnable impostures, through their own foolish credulity.”18
Any parish worth its salt had its own miracle worker, wise woman, white witch, or astrologer—all of whom claimed that they could “cure” what ailed body or soul. With many of these practitioners claiming to have derived their powers from Adam or Moses or the Archangel Raphael, thereby linking themselves to the ancient religious past, they gained common and easy currency in the eyes of the people. After all, the old Roman Catholic Mass with its healing power of the saints and their relics had long performed a magical repertory for the faithful, and the people had been robbed of its enchantment by the Protestant Reformation. These “cozeners,” or deceivers, gave comfort and a necessary link to the past that the Elizabethan settlement strove hard to sever. If Elizabeth’s church was to win the hearts and minds of her people, something needed to be done.
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Somehow Elizabethan clergy had to unite the notions of popular magic into religion through the worship of God and prayer, rather than allow the common “charmers” to hijack the people’s need to worship with superstition. Essentially, they needed an improved education system; and it was the Lord Keeper and
Lord Privy Seal Sir Nicholas Bacon, William Cecil’s brother-in-law, who devised the solution and set it into practice. Bacon had been excluded from meaningful office during Mary I’s reign due to his Protestant leanings. By the time Elizabeth ascended the throne, he had become absorbed in the benefits of educational planning, scientific and literary patronage, and classical studies. These would continue to be his primary interests beyond his fully active political career until his death in 1579.
What Bacon recognized was that “the chief thing … in wardship is the ward’s mind.”19 Bacon had originally submitted his plans for educating young wards who came under the influence of the Master of the Court of Wards to Sir Francis Englefield under Mary, but it was only when Cecil held the post in 1561 that the mass education plan for “the better sort” was accepted.
Under Bacon’s plan, all male wards whose lands were worth in excess of £100 annually and who were at least nine years old were to be enrolled into an academy, where they would be taught Latin, Greek, French and other modern languages, music, and physical education and practice regular Christian devotions. Throughout their twelve years at the academy, these boys would learn the fundamentals of common law, martial arts, horsemanship, and the other social requirements for young gentlemen.
Yet, his plan didn’t stop there. Bacon recognized that many of these elite young gentlemen neglected their studies, not seeing how very lucky they had been. The yeomanry in the countryside craved the same opportunities but had been denied them. His solution was to establish a grammar school at Redgrave in Suffolk, where he lived, specifically to meet the needs of the young country lads. Though far less was expected of them than of the young gentlemen, Bacon was explicit that students should be firmly taught to read and write in English and Latin and that they would benefit from a firm hand. The same level of Christian devotions was expected of these boys as of the wealthier wards, though training in horsemanship and weaponry was vastly scaled down to the proper use of the longbow. Naturally girls were excluded from the plan, as what they needed to learn for a fruitful life could be taught in the home.
Bacon went on to refound the grammar school at Bury St. Edmunds, supervise the founding of a new grammar school at St. Albans, and endow Corpus Christi College at Cambridge with six scholarships and money for the college chapel. The intent was for his grammar school boys to be elevated to the new vision for England, as expressed by the new Anglican Church, and to spread the word among their fellow parishioners. In other words, Sir Nicholas believed that by mass education, at home and within the parish as well as at universities, superstition and Roman Catholicism could be eradicated at a stroke. What Bacon did in East Anglia was replicated by other privy councillors throughout the land, most notably by Robert Dudley in the Welsh Marches and the Midlands, where he was the chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Of course, mass education took a long while to take hold, and it was still limited to boys, and further to boys from yeoman families “in good standing.” Still, it was a beginning.
Near the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign in 1561, it is estimated that as much as 85 percent of the population could neither read nor write. This meant Elizabeth and her clergy were well aware that although the new Book of Common Prayer was placed in every pew that year, few could read the words, much less understand their meaning. The government’s solution to the literacy problem came in the unusual guise of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, which recounted the tales of the Protestant martyrs. It became the duty of those who were fortunate enough to have been taught to read to ensure that those who couldn’t would be able to hear them recite the tales aloud instead. Every parish church held several copies, and this little book alone, which touched people’s everyday lives, became the cornerstone of literacy throughout the realm. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign in 1603, literacy would reach levels never before thought imaginable, with some communities boasting a literacy rate in excess of 60 percent. While the queen maintained that she did not wish to make windows into men’s souls, she was determined to fill their minds with the words she wanted them to hear.
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Over the ensuing years, the common peddler, or “chapman,” became a familiar sight trudging along the highways and byways of England, selling wares from linen to ballads and chapbooks. These were essentially pamphlets printed cheaply and destined for the masses. Those who bought them learned the ballads sung to familiar tunes of old about social ills or reform or godly works and often hung them on their walls as decoration. The image of the Protestant martyr, unsurprisingly, was among the most popular ballads, as it repeated the images engraved into the public psyche by Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.
Yet in the 1560s, both ballads and chapbooks were fast becoming a blunt instrument written by rural dissenters claiming that the Elizabethan settlement hadn’t gone far enough to eradicate “popery.” Surprisingly, it was from the voices of the Protestant dissenters that the next unseen threat to Elizabeth’s England would arise.
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Still, in the fast-changing landscapes of 1562, Elizabeth’s main task remained far more complex than a reeducation of the English to win their hearts and minds. Peace at home and the security of the realm depended on her ability to play off the powers of the papacy, Spain, France, and Scotland against one another rather than allowing them to join forces against England. By January that year, Pope Pius IV had caved in to Philip II’s demands that the Council of Trent should be a continuation of the abandoned council of 1545, rather than a new council that would give Protestant states a clearer voice in a reconciliation of the Christian faiths. In February, the archbishop of Milan wrote to the Holy Roman Emperor’s nuncio that “the decision come to by the Assembly of France … to allow the Huguenots no more respite, and not to suffer them to preach in walled towns, albeit they say they must needs connive at their conventicles outside the cities,” making for grim reading when intercepted by Cecil’s spies.20
By March a call went out from the pope to Europe’s monarchs for their representatives at the Council of Trent to make their way there. This would be the council’s third sitting, which would eventually welcome over two hundred bishops.21 That same month, Elizabeth sent an ambassador to Paris with a message to Catherine de’ Medici offering her support and her good offices as mediator between the Catholic Guise faction, the young king’s and Catherine’s loyal supporters, and the Huguenots. When Pius IV heard of Elizabeth’s offer, he penned a consiliatory letter to Catherine. In it, the pope begged the dowager queen to give guidance to England’s heretic sovereign. Surely, if Elizabeth sought mediation between the Christian faiths, he added pursuasively, the English queen could only achieve her ends by sending a representative to Trent. While Pius IV awaited news of his entreaty, the cardinal archbishop of Milan wrote to the papal legate in France that “England remaining thus oppressed by the heretics, it is to be feared that there will be constant correspondence between them and the rebels and heretics of France and other neighboring countries, whereby heresies and rebellions will be propagated in all the surrounding states.”22
Elizabeth responded to the papal request by asking for a prorogation of the council. She claimed to be “excited by the opinion expressed” and “waxed much more ardently” about how she needed the prorogation in order to organize representation there.23 In fact, Elizabeth was merely playing for time.
Word had reached Elizabeth that Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was militating for her son Henry, Lord Darnley, to marry the Scots queen. In Lady Margaret’s view, as the eldest sister of Henry VIII, the marriage of her son to Queen Mary would create an undeniably strong entitlement to succeed to the English throne. Naturally, Elizabeth was apoplectic with rage, ordering Cecil to quash without delay any claim Lady Margaret’s descendants could possibly make. Cecil dutifully wrote to Lord Randolph, the Scottish Protestant leader, to obtain the proof “bearing upon the papal annulment of the marriage between Lady Margaret’s father and mother.”24
At t
he same time, Cecil persuaded Elizabeth that she should attempt a rapprochement with Mary. Talk of “an interview” between the cousins was first mooted from Scotland at the end of 1561, after the first proposal of marriage by Lady Margaret on behalf of her son to Mary. While the English response is missing from the archives, Cecil wrote on New Year’s Eve that he found “a great desire in both these Queens to have an interview, and knowing the diversity of both their intents, although I wish it yet I think it dangerous to be any singular dealer therein.”25 In other words, he smelled a double-cross.
He wasn’t the only one. The Scottish Protestant Lords were unhappy to learn that their queen was sending a number of prelates to the council at Trent without “the concurrence of the realm, which is indeed wholly alienated, insomuch that Mass is said nowhere except in the Queen’s own house.” In fact, the papal newsletter of April 6, 1562, goes on to state that Mary “will certainly send thither someone to represent herself, and testify at least to her good intention of living in the religion of her forefathers, which cannot fail to be a great help towards the more ready settlement of the affairs of that kingdom.”26 The papal view was that as Mary was firmly ensconced on her Scots throne, she should “take for her model Mary Queen of England, of pious memory, and she will receive all the support that the Pope and the Catholic Princes can render her.”27