15. The English Reformation: Royalty Exploiting Religion

CHAPTER 15

The English Reformation

Royalty Exploiting Religion

The English Reformation set the stage not only for the establishment of the Church of England but also for the Church of Scotland and the Puritan movement in its various guises. The era exploded with turmoil and excitement. Today religion in England almost seems to be a relic of the past. In fact, as we traveled through the English countryside a few years ago, my husband and I wondered at times if the Anglican Church might be classified as a vast museum.

Our vacation doubled as a speaking and study tour. As part of my research we visited dozens of old Anglican churches in urban settings as well as in small towns and rural areas. We were struck by their beauty—beauty often tempered by disrepair.

In London we wandered in the late afternoon to St. Paul’s Cathedral for evensong and stayed on for the weekly lecture. In spite of its being presented by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, once a position of great power and prestige, no more than a few dozen worshippers were scattered throughout the vast sanctuary.

Our travels also took us to Scotland, where the once-vibrant Church of Scotland has now lost much of its fervor. Founded by John Knox, a sixteenth-century Reformer, its nineteenth-century mission outreach was second to none. I was curious to get a closer look at this fiery preacher—in some ways a male chauvinist of the first order—but we were disappointed to find the Knox home in Edinburgh closed for repair. I have since wondered how present-day Presbyterians feel about their founder.

Two miles away from my office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is the John Knox Presbyterian Church, one of many churches so named. This morning I called Rick, the interim minister, asking him about the man for whom the church is named. Does anyone ever clamor to have the church otherwise identified, I asked, considering Knox’s attitude toward women? His response did not surprise me. “I don’t think anyone knows anything about him.”

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

THOMAS MERTON

Studying hell is not a bad place to start in seeking to understand the English Reformation. It is a study of social and political history as much as a study of religion. And surely there must be a special place in one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno for King Henry VIII and others who used the Christian faith as an excuse for just plain wickedness.

The English Reformation is often dated with the decision of Henry VIII to split with the Church of Rome. But nearly two centuries earlier John Wycliffe had laid the foundation for reform in the hearts and minds of the English people. His followers, called Lollards, kept the movement alive, albeit underground. But they were routed out and persecuted and burned at the stake. One of the last, Thomas Harding, was executed in 1532. Earlier, in the 1520s, Luther’s writings had penetrated the British Isles as did the writings of Zwingli and other Reformers. Calvin’s Institutes would also have a major influence on the English church. But the English (and Scottish) Reformation came clearly into focus with the work of William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and John Foxe, all of whom were at times both aided and impeded by royals.

The English Reformation, more than other sixteenth-century reform movements, cannot be understood apart from political alliances and court intrigue. Henry VIII captured center stage, but he was not first in the order of accession. Had he lived, Arthur, Henry’s brother, would have been king and the English Reformation might have taken an entirely different course. But fifteen-year-old Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502 of a mysterious virus. Married early to solidify political alliances, the young widow was none other than Catherine, daughter of Europe’s power couple, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose marriage had united these two principalities into the now powerful Spain.

Ten-year-old Henry attended the wedding in the fall of 1501, after which the newlyweds took up residence in Wales. Then some four months later Arthur was dead. Although Catherine later claimed the marriage had not been consummated, the pope stepped in and abrogated the law of Leviticus (“If a man marries his brother’s wife it is an act of impurity…. They will be childless,” 20:21), granting Henry a dispensation to marry the widow, now sixteen. How eleven-year-old Henry felt about this arrangement is unknown, but due to wrangling over money on both sides, his marriage to Catherine did not take place until he ascended the throne at seventeen, a mature groom by family standards.

PARADE OF HISTORY

A parade marked the beginning of the English Reformation—that is, more specifically, the birth of the Church of England. Thomas Cranmer described the pageantry accompanying the coronation of Anne Boleyn, now the wife of Henry VIII: “All the [water]crafts of London” and “several barges decked after the most gorgeous and sumptuous manner,” each featuring “diverse pageants,” waited “for the Queen’s coming to her barge” and then followed after “unto the Tower,” while “trumpets, shawms, and other diverse instruments” were “making great melody”—pageantry so grand, “never was like in any time nigh unto our remembrance.”

Considering the circumstances, the marriage had incredible longevity—twenty-four years—though Catherine is out of favor long before, largely because she does not produce a male heir who survives infancy. To solve the problem, Henry finds another woman, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. For the next several years he connives to have his marriage to Catherine annulled. His closest aide and chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, seeks the blessing of Clement VII. But the pope balks, in part because he is a virtual lackey of Emperor Charles V, nephew of Catherine. For his failure in persuading the pope, Wolsey is stripped of his titles.

At the same time, Anne Boleyn is becoming increasingly impatient, refusing to become merely the king’s mistress as her sister Mary had been. “Did I not tell you that when you disputed with the queen she was sure to have the upper hand?” she angrily wrote to King Henry. “I see that some fine morning you will succumb to her reasoning, and that you will cast me off. I have been waiting long and might in the meantime have contracted some advantageous marriage…. But alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.”

Henry VIII

With the help of his legal expert, Thomas Cromwell, and theologian Thomas Cranmer, Henry finally rids himself of Catherine. His rationale is that he had breeched the Levitical law when he married Catherine in the first place. Cranmer, a student of Scripture, an admirer of Luther, and a chaplain to Anne, is also a man of ambition who knows how to impress the king. He had contacted Henry as early as 1529, suggesting that divorce should be dealt with by theologians like himself, not by canon lawyers. The king is pleased, and in 1533 Cranmer is named archbishop of Canterbury.

THE ENGLISH REFORMATION AND DOGS

Pawprints of History [by Stanley Coren] is not just a story; it is an homage. Historians must look carefully, in the crannies of the past, to find the dogs of yore…. Still, whether or not dogs have their own history, there is no question that they have left their pawprints on ours. Had it not been for timely canine intervention … Henry VIII might never have founded the Church of England…. [He] wanted the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, so he sent Cardinal Wolsey to the Vatican to negotiate. Everything was going fine, the story goes, and Wolsey kneeled to kiss the Pope’s toe, but, just then, Wolsey’s greyhound, Urian (whom Wolsey had, oddly, brought with him), charged forward and bit down hard on the papal foot. This injury put an end to the negotiations, Henry was not granted his divorce, and the English Reformation followed shortly afterward.

Larissa MacFarquhar, “Bark,” The New Yorker

In 1533 Henry passes the Act of Supremacy, declaring himself head of the English Church. All the while, Cranmer is working behind the scenes preparing divorce (more accurately, annulment) papers, even though Henry had, months earlier, already secretly married the pregnant Anne Boleyn. Cranmer informs Catherine in a memo:

It was thought convenient by the King and his learned Council that I should repair unto Dunstable … where the said Lady Catherine keepeth her house, and there to call her before me, to hear the final sentence in this said matter. Notwithstanding she would not at all obey thereunto, for when she was … cited to appear … she utterly refused the same, saying that inasmuch as her cause was before the Pope she would have none other judge.

Catherine had overlooked Henry’s affairs in the past, but an annulment and remarriage would risk their daughter Mary’s chance of becoming queen. As it turned out, Mary (later saddled with the label “Bloody Mary”) would indeed become queen, her reign sandwiched between those of two younger half-siblings, Edward and Elizabeth. Henry would go on to rid himself of one wife after another. Anne Boleyn, too wily to be merely exiled from court, was beheaded. But her daughter Elizabeth would go on to set apart the English Church as truly distinct from Catholicism.

Anne Boleyn

With Henry’s break from Rome, the English Reformation was officially underway. But he remained a Catholic at heart. In fact, much earlier Pope Leo X had given Henry the title “Defender of the Faith” for his fierce attacks on Luther. It would be left to Elizabeth to bring about the English Reformation. While retaining much of Catholic high-church ritual and tradition, the Church of England adopted doctrinal changes introduced by Protestant Reformers. There had long been disenchantment with the Roman Church in England. In a popular pamphlet of the day, “The Supplication of the Beggars” (1529) by Simon Fish, the clergy are described as parasites. So in the minds of many there is a feeling of “good riddance” to Rome. But the English Reformation would not progress without pain. Persecution, execution, and ferocious fighting among Catholics and Protestants would be the distinguishing mark of this most political Reformation.

THE ANGUISH OF A SCORNED WIFE

My tribulations are so great, my life so disturbed by the plans daily invented to further the king’s wicked intention, the surprises which the king gives me, with certain persons of his council, are so mortal, and my treatment is what God knows, that it is enough to shorten ten lives, much more mine.

Catherine of Aragon to

Charles V, November 1531

EVERYDAY LIFE

Sixteenth-Century Divorce

The Reformation influenced every aspect of life in Western Europe. Matters that were once routinely determined by canon law were disputed as Protestants severed ties with the Catholic Church, which had once reigned supreme. The dissolution of marriage was one such matter—one that changed the course of English history when Henry VIII ended his marriage with Catherine.

The ancient Romans under Augustus had made marriage and divorce a matter of government regulation. Before that, such issues were left solely to the family, without state interference. In the generations after Constantine, marriage and divorce were deemed church affairs, and canon law disallowed divorce. Some marriages were annulled for various financial reasons, especially among the wealthy and well connected. Typically, the justification for such a claim was that the spouse was a blood relative. But the church regarded marriage as a sacrament that could not be undone except in certain cases of adultery, and even then there could be no remarriage.

With the Protestant Reformation, however, the rules changed again. Protestants had freed themselves from canon law and did not regard marriage as a sacrament. Martin Bucer, a Reformer from Strasbourg, was the most articulate spokesman against the Catholic position. He wrote a lengthy treatise presenting legitimate grounds not only for divorce but also for the right to remarry:

The Papists … oppose themselves to God when they separate [couples] for many causes from bed and board and yet have the bond of matrimony remain, as if this covenant [of marriage] could be other than the conjunction and communion not only of bed and board, but of all other loving and helpful duties…. God requires of [both spouses] so to live together and to be united in body and mind with such an affection as none may be dearer and more ardent among all the relations of mankind…. The proper and ultimate end of marriage is not copulation or children … but … the communicating of all duties, both divine and humane, each to the other with utmost benevolence and affection.

John Calvin was likewise open on the matter of divorce and was personally involved in two cases in Geneva. Pierre Ameaux sought a divorce from Benoite, his wife of three years. The matter came before the Geneva consistory (a committee of pastors and lay people). When Benoite boldly claimed to have had many adulterous affairs, the consistory members were not convinced of her truthfulness and judged her mentally unstable. She was twice incarcerated, and Pierre was counseled to work things out with her. After more than a year when he again appealed to the consistory, he was granted the divorce and the right to remarry, with the support of Calvin. The second case involved Calvin’s brother, who accused his wife of adultery. For her alleged sin, she was ordered to leave town, and her husband was given custody of the four children.

The allowance for divorce in Protestant realms did not open the floodgates for the dissolution of marriages. Indeed, until the twentieth century divorces would remain very rare. The difference between the Protestant and Catholic positions is that Catholic dissolution of marriage by annulment declares the union void, while Protestant allowance for divorce accepts the fact that a legitimate marriage has been severed. For both Protestants and Catholics marriage rarely rose to the standard Bucer called for.

William Tyndale: Father of the English Bible

Remembered as the father of the English Bible, William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536) was a scholarly cleric who sacrificed his career and his life for the cause of the Reformation. Cambridge educated, he sought to bring knowledge of the Bible to his fellow Englishmen, most of whom were utterly ignorant of its content. The Catholic Church insisted that only clerics could be trusted with Scripture, but they, according to Tyndale, were not preaching it to their parishioners. “If God spare my life, ere many years pass,” he warned a priest, “I will cause a boy that driveth the plough [to] know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.” He was convinced that biblical faith would be dispersed more effectively by laity than by those trained in theology. Indeed, he had no confidence in the theological education of his day: “In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be nozzled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.”

The Wycliffe Bible, translated into English from the Latin Vulgate, was available, but only in scarce hand-copied editions distributed against the law by the Lollards. Tyndale was determined to translate the New Testament from the Greek text and distribute it widely, ideally with the blessing of the church. He would be stymied, however, by Henry’s fear of Lutheranism, “the German plague.”

When authorities began to harass him, Tyndale in 1524 moved his translation project to Germany. With help from others he completed the New Testament translation in 1525, the first to be printed in English. The first six thousand copies were then smuggled back into England. So threatened were church officials that they confiscated as many copies as they could find and burned them in a public ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at the same time turning the hidden copies into priceless treasures. Realizing that he had been outsmarted, the archbishop of Canterbury devised a new plan. He would purchase copies before they were publicly sold and immediately destroy them—a financial windfall for Tyndale, who used the money to fund a corrected revision.

Tyndale published the first five books of the Old Testament in 1530 and planned to follow through with the rest of the Old Testament. In 1529, Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More attacked Tyndale, accusing him of heresy. Besides criticizing his translation for bad word usage, he resorted to name-calling, describing Tyndale as a devil, a fraud, and one “puffed up with pride and envy.” Tyndale responded publicly on specific doctrinal issues, including justification by faith:

In this you see what faith it is that justifies us: The faith in Christ’s blood, of a repenting heart toward the law alone justifies us, and not just any kind of faith. You must understand this therefore, so that you may see to come out of More’s blind maze: that there are many faiths and all faiths are not the same faith. There is a historical faith, without feeling in the heart, through which I may believe the whole history of the Bible, and yet not set my heart earnestly to apply it…. And the faith through which a man does miracles is different than the faith of a repenting heart, to be saved through Christ’s blood, and the one is no relation to the other, though Mr. More would have them seem so.

On orders of Henry VIII, Tyndale becomes a hunted man. Thomas More, the legal scholar, argues for his burning at the stake. While hiding out in Belgium, Tyndale is turned over to authorities by a fellow Englishman who had feigned friendship. Arrested and incarcerated in a prison near Brussels for more than a year, he pens a plea for mercy from the governor:

I believe, right worshipful, that you are not unaware of what may have been determined concerning me. Wherefore I beg your lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through the winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me, from the goods of mine which he has, a warmer cap; for I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh [runny nose], which is much increased in this cell; a warmer coat also, for this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth too to patch my leggings. My overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to put on above; he has also warmer night caps. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study.

William Tyndale

Above all else he desires to finish the translation of the book he so loves. That wish does not come true. He is put on trial, found guilty, and strangled, his body burned at the stake. His last words reportedly are: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” Thomas More, his nemesis, had been beheaded a year earlier in 1535 because he had opposed Henry’s divorcing Catherine and had refused to swear allegiance to the Act of Succession, making Elizabeth rather than Mary heir to the throne.

CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST WILLIAM TYNDALE

First, he had maintained that faith alone justifies.

Second, he maintained that to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to embrace the mercy offered in the gospel, was enough for salvation.

Third, he averred that human traditions cannot bind the conscience, except where their neglect might occasion scandal.

Fourth, he denied the freedom of the will.

Fifth, he denied that there is any purgatory.

Sixth, he affirmed that neither the Virgin nor the Saints pray for us in their own person. Seventh, he asserted that neither the Virgin nor the Saints should be invoked….

Thomas Cranmer: Theologian and Martyr

Considered the premier leader of the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) ranks alongside Luther in Germany, Calvin in Switzerland, and Knox in Scotland as a national religious figure of the sixteenth century. As the archbishop of Canterbury, he played a key role in making liturgy and doctrine conform more closely to Scripture. The Book of Common Prayer was largely his project, as were the Forty-two Articles, later reduced to thirty-nine.

Thomas Cranmer

Cranmer was born in Nottingham to a landed family, but his future lay outside the ranks of the country gentry. His older brother would inherit the land, while he and his younger brother would become clerics. Awarded a fellowship at Cambridge in 1510, he lost funding when he married a tavern-keeper’s daughter. However, her death in childbirth brought him back into the good graces of the school officials, and he was readmitted to prepare for clerical ordination. Completing his studies in the lower quartile academically, he was nevertheless appointed a university priest. In this capacity, he was introduced to the writings of an audacious monk from Wittenberg. It was an exciting time. Disputes and discussions broke out spontaneously, especially at the White Horse Tavern, labeled “Little Germany.”

Unlike Tyndale, who, in the 1520s was taking a lead in English Reformation, Cranmer’s “conversion” was slow in coming. During this decade, Cranmer was ordained to the priesthood and completed his doctorate of divinity at Cambridge. In 1532, because of his close connection with the Boleyns and his scriptural support of annulling the King’s marriage to Catherine, Henry appoints him archbishop of Canterbury.

That Cranmer would support the king in his marriage to Anne Boleyn is difficult to understand apart from his being the Boleyn family chaplain. But that he would remain loyal to Henry after Anne was executed is astonishing, were it not for the fact that he might well have been beheaded along with her. When he is first told of the charges of adultery and incest (with her brother), he is incredulous, convinced the accusations are untrue. Yet he does the king’s bidding by declaring the marriage to her invalid, as Catherine’s had been, and he makes no outward effort to save her life, though he reportedly wept uncontrollably on the day she died. The king, however, is betrothed to Jane Seymour and marries her less than two weeks later. After she bears him a son (Edward) and dies shortly thereafter, Henry marries and divorces Anne of Cleves, then marries and executes Catherine Howard, and then finally marries Katherine Parr.

During Henry’s lifetime, Cranmer remained loyal and alive, fearing to speak out against the king’s wickedness. But on other matters he was sometimes his own man. When Henry brought his Six Articles (upholding transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, and other Catholic dogma) before the Parliament, Cranmer initially argued against them. Indeed, he had a very personal stake in the matter of clerical celibacy. The previous year he had married Margaret, the niece of Andreas Osiander, a prominent Lutheran Reformer. She remained in Germany, and the marriage was kept secret—so secret that those who knew he was married joked that he traveled with her in his suitcase. But when Parliament voted to approve Henry’s Six Articles, Cranmer backed down. Despite enemies in the court, however, Cranmer managed to remain in the good graces of the king, and he stood at Henry’s bedside during his final moments.

A PLEA TO JOHN CALVIN FOR A PROTESTANT “COUNCIL OF TRENT”

Our adversaries are now holding their councils at Trent for the establishment of their errors; and shall we neglect to call together a godly synod, for the refutation of error, and for restoring and propagating the truth? They are, as I am informed, making decrees respecting the worship of the host; wherefore we ought to leave no stone unturned, not only that we may guard others against this idolatry, but also that we may ourselves come to an agreement upon the doctrine of this sacrament. It cannot escape your prudence how exceedingly the Church of God has been injured by dissensions and varieties of opinion respecting the sacrament of unity…. I could wish for an agreement in this doctrine…. You have now my wish, about which I have also written to Masters Philip [Melanchthon] and Bullinger; and I pray you to deliberate among yourselves as to the means by which this synod can be assembled with the greatest convenience. Farewell.

Your very dear brother in Christ,

Thomas Cranmer



March 20, 1552

With Henry’s son Edward VI on the throne, Cranmer enjoys greater freedom to follow his instincts and develop a more Protestant-oriented liturgy and theology, particularly through the Book of Common Prayer. The first version, appearing two years after Edward ascended the throne, presented a mild Protestant stance. But three years later, in 1552, the volume demonstrated an even greater separation from Rome. The Forty-two Articles, which would become known as the Thirty-nine Articles, also held an unapologetic Protestant slant. Yet his theology offered a balanced perspective on such issues as predestination, accepting the Augustinian view of God’s providence in salvation while adding a warning that it not be used to sanction sin or to despair of being elect. God leads and directs, according to Cranmer, but the individual has freedom of choice.

ENGLISH ROYALTY AND THE REFORMATION

Henry VIII (1491–1547) defended the church against Reformation ideas so adeptly that the pope named him “Defender of the Faith.” Yet he was responsible for separating the Church of England from the Church of Rome. With the help of Thomas Cromwell, he shut down monasteries and confiscated their property. During his reign, both Catholics and Protestants who were deemed disloyal were executed. Also ordered executed were two of his six wives.

Edward VI (1537–1553) ascended the throne at nine years of age when his father Henry VIII died. He was influenced by Lord Protector Edward Seymour to turn the direction of the Church of England toward Protestantism. He died of tuberculosis before he reached his sixteenth birthday, leaving a will (believed to have been written by the Duke of Northumberland) excluding his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth from ascending the throne. Rather, his successor would be Lady Jane Grey (a distant cousin who had lived in the royal court before his father’s death), who just happened to be the new bride of the Duke’s son. The “conspiracy” to make her queen failed. She reigned for only nine days.

Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) was the same age as Edward VI and grew up in court with him under the supervision of Katherine Parr, his father’s last wife. Like Edward, she held to Protestant convictions and would have carried on with the Reformation had she not been unseated by Edward’s half-sister, Mary. Forsaken in the end even by her father, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded at sixteen, on orders of Mary.

Mary I (1516–1558) was the daughter of Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon. She was twenty years older than her stepbrother and predecessor, Edward VI. Unseating her hated rival Lady Jane, she claimed the throne in 1553, and the following year married Philip II of Spain. A stanch Roman Catholic, she not only reversed the Reformation but also restored papal supremacy. Persecution of Protestants was her pastime. Indeed, there were so many executions that she was labeled “Bloody Mary.” On her death from natural causes, Elizabeth I, her half-sister, succeeded her.

Elizabeth I (1533–1603) ruled for forty-five years. Daughter of Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn, she reversed Mary’s Catholic restructuring and established once and for all the Church of England in a way that offered a balance between Reformed Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Like her predecessor, she was known for executions, most notably that of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. In 1588 she led her nation to victory over the Spanish Armada. Any concerns that her father and others may have had about a woman being incapable of wielding power were put to rest during her reign. She expanded the British Empire through commerce and exploration and also encouraged cultural development in literature and the arts. Courted by European royalty, she played the game to enhance her power but did not succumb to the offers of marriage.

The future looks bright for Cranmer until the death of the young King Edward in 1553, followed by the nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey. But when Edward’s older sister Mary ascends the throne, Cranmer’s standing in court quickly changes. He is the one, after all, who declared Henry’s marriage to Mary’s mother void, making her technically a bastard. Mary had endured an unhappy childhood, and she is not in the mood for forgiveness. A devout Catholic, she is determined to reverse the English Reformation and restore the Catholic Church.

THE “GREAT BIBLE”

As archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, with the blessing of King Henry VIII, employed Myles Coverdale in 1539 to publish the first authorized English Bible. Known as the “Great Bible,” it was a very large volume that was chained to the pulpit of every church. A key victory for the Reformation, it debuted three years after the martyrdom of Tyndale, who is remembered as “father of the English Bible.”

RIDLEY AND LATIMER

A long with Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were the most renowned churchmen burned at the stake by Queen Mary I. Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500–1555) was priest and later a professor at the University of Cambridge, where he had received his master’s degree. He argued that the English Church should not be ruled by Rome—that a pope had no more authority than any foreign bishop would have. He later served as one of the chaplains for Henry VIII, and in 1547 he was appointed Bishop of Rochester. In that post he directed churches to discontinue the Mass and replace it with the Lord’s Supper. He also worked with Cranmer on the Book of Common Prayer. In the early 1550s he argued against John Hooper in a long debate (the Vestment Controversy), taking the stand that vestments were proper wear for churchmen and did not signify unnecessary uniformity with Rome. A more pressing concern was the matter of the impoverished conditions of London’s homeless, particularly women and their children. Ridley is also remembered for his encouraging a daily program of Bible memory and family Bible reading. His support of Lady Jane Grey on the death of Edward VI was not forgotten by the new queen. He was sentenced to death.

Hugh Latimer (c. 1485–1555), also educated at Cambridge, is remembered as one of the most celebrated ministers during King Edward’s reign. As Bishop of Worcester, he encouraged other ministers to hone their preaching skills and to make Sunday services a meaningful worship experience. He had been imprisoned in the Tower of London as a Protestant heretic in the waning months of Henry’s reign. His preaching fame grew during the reign of Edward VI, but after Mary ascended the throne he was burned at the stake along with Ridley on October 16, 1555.

PRAYERS OF CONFESSION AND CLEANSING

Almighty and most mercyfull father, we have erred and strayed from thy wayes, lyke lost shepe. We have folowed too much the devises and desyres of oure owne hearts. We have offended against thy holy lawes. We have left undone those things whiche we oughte to have done, and we have done those thinges which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us: but thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offendors. Spare thou them, O God, which confesse theyr faultes. Restore thou them that be penitent, according to thy promyses declared unto mankynde, in Christe Jesu oure Lorde. And graunt, O most merciful father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sobre life, to the glory of thy holy name. Amen.

Thomas Cranmer, 1552 Book of Common Prayer

When Mary brings back the Old Latin Mass and sets aside the Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer strongly protests. He is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. But executing him is too easy. He languishes in prison and lives on to agonize over the burning of his fellow Reformers, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer. Mary and the Catholic clerics are seeking a public recantation. Indeed, so important is his reconversion to Catholicism that he is visited regularly by clerics seeking to wear him down. The tactics work, and Cranmer recants his Protestant faith—not once but a total of five times. He signs a six-point document that denounces the tenets of the Reformation. And even though he gives his allegiance to the “Pope and vicar of Christ, to whom all the faithful are bound subject,” it is not enough to save him. It is enough, however, to thoroughly humiliate him, which is exactly what his opponents desire. He is sentenced to be burned at the stake.

On March 21, 1556, after giving multiple copies of his signed recantation to the prison warden, Cranmer is led out to make a final public confession of his Catholic faith. But perhaps realizing the execution would not be stopped no matter what he says, he confesses his sins—particularly the grave sin of recanting the gospel message that he truly believes. He admits that the recantations were signed “for fear of death.”

THE EXECUTION OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER

Then was he carried away; and a great number, that did run to see him go so wickedly to his death, ran after him…. Coming to the stake with a cheerful countenance and willing mind, he put off his garments with haste, and stood upright in his shirt…. Then the [Catholic] bishop … yet required him to agree to his former recantation. And [Cranmer] answered, (showing his hand), “This was the hand that wrote it, and therefore shall it suffer first punishment.” Fire being now put to him, he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space, before the fire came to any other part of his body; where his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a loud voice, “This hand hath offended.” As soon as the fire got up, he was very soon dead, never stirring or crying all the while.

Anonymous bystander, March 21, 1556

With those words Cranmer goes down in the history books as a martyr to the Protestant faith. He is taken to the stake and the fire is lit. His final moments are memorable. He reaches into the flames with his right hand. “As my hand offended,” he confesses, “writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished.” (Another version of the account suggests that he was forced by his executors to burn first the hand that had falsely signed the recantation.) It was a slow, agonizing death as it had been for others—both Protestant and Catholic—who were sacrificed to the flames of religious intolerance.

John Knox: Fiery Scotsman

Remembered as the founder of the Presbyterian Church, John Knox (1514–1572) was the leader of the Scottish Reformation. By his own account, he was born into a “base” environment near Edinburgh, Scotland. Orphaned when young, he and his brother were taken in by a prosperous family and provided with educational opportunities. In his mid-teens he enrolled at the University of St. Andrews to study for the ministry. It was an invigorating environment. Lutheran tracts smuggled in from the Continent circulated among students and professors. Debates were often heated. Church officials sought to suppress the new heresy with force, executing a Protestant convert during Knox’s tenure as a student.

After graduation Knox found employment as a tutor and notary at the Catholic diocese of St. Andrews. But his heart is with the new Protestant movement, and he volunteers to serve as bodyguard for George Wishart, the most outspoken Protestant preacher in the region. Fiery passion drives him as he travels with the preacher, ever ready to defend him with his “two-handed sword.” The evangelistic tour comes to a sudden end in December of 1545, when Wishart is arrested and executed a month later. Knox eulogizes his hero: “A man of such graces as before him were never heard within this realm, yea, and are rare to be found yet in any man.”

John Knox

Despite the obvious dangers, Knox is determined to pick up the mantle and carry on with reform. Banned from preaching on Sunday mornings, he offers lectures during the week and soon has a loyal—and angry—following. The execution of Wishart is not quickly forgotten. Indeed, two months after his death Protestant sympathizers attack St. Andrews Castle and murder Cardinal David Beaton, mutilating and hanging his body from a castle window for the crowds to see. Knox claims he was unaware of the conspiracy but insists the slaying is sanctioned by God to punish evil. The attackers barricade themselves in the castle, and Knox, having gone into hiding, soon joins them. Impressed with his courage and his commitment, the attackers invite him to serve as their minister, and he becomes the de facto leader of the Scottish Reformation.

But in 1547 the French Navy forces the rebels holed up in the castle to surrender. Knox and the others are taken captive and incarcerated as galley slaves. Chained at the neck and forced by the whip to row twelve hours a day, he survives despite lean rations and filthy sleeping conditions. But for rescue by the forces of King Edward VI, he might have perished. Knox later reported that during a religious service on board he was ordered to kiss a painted image of the Virgin Mary. He grabbed the “idol accursed” and hurled it into the water as he cried out, “Let our Lady now save herself.” Assuming the account is true, it is surprising that he was not hurled into the high seas himself.

After his release Knox moves to England, where he serves in the royal chaplaincy and travels as an itinerant preacher. When young King Edward dies in 1553, however, he is suddenly out of favor at court. Queen Mary, whom he had labeled the “wicked English Jezebel,” has ascended the throne. Fearing execution, he flees to France and then to Geneva, where he spends time with John Calvin. From Geneva he moves to Frankfurt to minister to English exiles. In this role he contemplates matters of church liturgy and sets aside the Book of Common Prayer (1552) in favor of a new guide, the Book of Common Order, a liturgy guide that would become standard for the Church of Scotland.

Not all of the church members approve of this liturgical change, however. Sharp dissension arises, and less than a year later, he departs for Geneva and then back home to Scotland, where he forms a congregation. But fearing a political backlash, he again goes into exile in Geneva, where he spends his time writing tracts against the British monarchy. Calvin wants no part in stirring up a revolution, but Knox is undeterred. He lashes out at the “iniquity and cruelty” of the Catholic rulers. Against Mary Tudor he writes his most vitriolic tract, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558). Comparing her to the biblical Queen Jezebel, he rails: “How abominable before God is the Empire of Rule of a wicked woman, yea of a traiteress and bastard.”

The tract backfires. “My first Blast,” he concedes, “hath blown from me all my friends in England.” Nor could he have imagined that hardly before the ink had dried, Mary Tudor would die. Elizabeth ascends the throne. She is favorable to Protestants generally, but she despises Knox, whom she considers, among other things, a surly misogynist. She refuses to grant him safe passage through England, forcing him to make a longer journey on his way home. He returns to a Scotland now ruled by the Regent, Mary of Guise, who is French and Catholic. She is anxious about the growing Protestant influence and is convinced—perhaps rightly so—that Knox and others are motivated by a political more than a religious agenda. Fearing they will be banished, Knox and supporting nobility storm St. John’s Kirk, where he lashes out against Catholic idolatry. The church and nearby monasteries are trashed by mobs.

A BLAST THAT BACKFIRED

For who can denie but it is repugneth to nature, that the blind shall be appointed to leade and conduct such as do see? That the weake, the sicke and impotent persons shall norishe and kepe the hole and strong? And finallie, that the foolishe, madde and phrenetike shal governe the discrete and give counsel to such as be sober of mind. And such be al women, compared unto man in bearing of authoritie. For their sight in civile regiment is but blindness; their strength, weaknes; their counsel, foolishnes; and judgment, phrensie, if it be rightlie considered.

John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

This is one more step toward a victorious Reformation in the eyes of Knox. Mary of Guise is forced to back down, but for Knox revenge has just begun. Increasing mob violence prompts the Regent to call for French reinforcements. When the English throne becomes involved in diplomacy, Knox is not permitted at the peace table. Yet his bitter venom continues. Mary of Guise is at death’s door, suffering from dropsy (severe swelling due to accumulation of fluids), though safely ensconced in Edinburgh Castle. Knox responds to the news: “Her belly and loathsome legs [were caused] to swell, and so continued till God did execute his judgment upon her.” Soon after her death, the Treaty of Edinburgh is finalized, followed by Acts of Parliament that seal Protestantism as the official religion of Scotland.

Knox quickly assumes ecclesiastical leadership through his preaching and writing and connections with well-placed nobility. But the political fighting continues, especially when the nearly six-foot-tall Mary Queen of Scots (daughter of Mary of Guise) leaves her exile in France and comes to Scotland in an effort to re-establish Catholic rule. But she is opposed by many of her subjects as well as by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, in England. Recognizing the situation for what it is, Mary reaches out to the Protestants. She rules amid turmoil and court intrigue until she is forced to abdicate the throne in 1567, having survived husbands and lovers who died or were murdered. After a lengthy series of house arrests, she is executed in 1587 on the order of Elizabeth—a guarantee that she would never succeed Elizabeth as queen of England.

A contentious figure in public life, Knox is no less controversial in his personal affairs. A decade earlier, when he was preaching in England, he had become a close friend of Elizabeth Bowes. Though a Catholic and married to a staunch Catholic, she contributes to his ministry and corresponds with him regularly on personal and religious matters. “Since the first day that it pleased the providence of God to bring you and me in familiarity,” he writes, “I have always delighted in your company.” In fact, so intimate is their relationship that it creates scandal. She frequently follows him as he preaches in various places, bringing her teen-age daughter Marjorie with her. A few years later, she and Knox arrange for Knox to marry Marjorie, despite her husband’s strong objections.

In the following years, Elizabeth is the one in whom he confides, the one to whom he pours out his heart and shares his struggles. When they are separated, he writes to his “Dearly Beloved Mother…. There is none with whom I would more gladly speak.” He addresses her as “dear mother and spouse”; while to his young wife he writes, “Most dear sister … Be sure I will not forget your company.” Elizabeth abandons her husband to accompany Knox and her daughter to Geneva, and when they are separated he expresses his devotion in writing. When Marjorie dies in 1560, he is left with two young children and a mother-in-law who continues to live with him and care for the children. But Elizabeth Bowes is not the only love of his life. The married Anne Locke, mother of two children, also becomes a close confidante as letters indicate: “You write that your desire is earnest to see me. Dear Sister, if I should express the thirst and languor which I have had for your presence, I should appear to pass measure.”

PRINTING AND THE REFORMATION

The Lord began to work for his Church not with sword and target to subdue His exalted adversary, but with printing, writing and reading…. How many printing presses there be in the world, so many blockhouses there be … so that either the pope must abolish knowledge and printing or printing at length will root him out.

John Foxe

Four years a widower, he marries again at past fifty. His bride, seventeen-year-old Margaret Stuart, is the daughter of another ardent admirer, a woman who keeps a “prophet’s chamber” for him in her home. At his death at fifty-nine, he leaves behind three young daughters and a widow in her twenties.

The legacy of John Knox lies primarily in his foundational ministry in securing the Scottish Reformation. His courage and outspoken support of Reformed doctrine challenged others to follow his example and carry on with the work he left unfinished when he died in 1572. As a preacher he systematically expounded the Scripture for the first thirty minutes, and then made application to the Scottish situation. Known as the “thundering Scot,” he was so “active and vigorous” in pounding the pulpit that one parishioner confessed he could hardly take notes: “He made me so to … tremble, that I could not hold pen to write.”

Through his influence the Church of Scotland became more closely aligned doctrinally with Calvin and the Reformed churches on the Continent than with the Church of England. Like Puritans of New England, the church prohibited secular activities on the Sabbath and Christmas and saints’ day celebrations. In the nineteenth century the Church of Scotland sponsored overseas missions, with dozens of renowned missionaries on its roll, including David Livingstone, Mary Slessor, and Thomas Chalmers.

John Foxe

John Foxe: Documenting Persecution and Martyrdom

The most influential and inspirational book arising out of the flames of the Protestant Reformation was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This book, second only to the Bible in popularity, should be found, according to John Wesley, in every minister’s library.

Born in Boston, England, John Foxe (1517–1587) grew up in a family of modest wealth and prominence. He began his studies at Oxford at the age of sixteen and completed theological studies with a master’s degree nine years later, prepared to become a lecturer in logic, an academic career that would require priestly ordination and celibacy. However, his acquaintance with William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer, and other Reformers as well as his theological and biblical studies turned him away from his Catholic heritage.

Without a clerical position, Foxe struggled to support his bride, Agnes Randall. But with the death of Henry VIII and the ascension of Edward VI to the throne, his prospects improved. Protestant sympathizers were eager to support his ministry of teaching and writing. The Duchess of Richmond served as his patron and for a time provided housing in her castle. She introduced him to other leading Reformers of the day, including Nicholas Ridley, who presided over his ordination in 1550. But when Edward VI died and Mary ascended the throne, the good times for Foxe, his patron, and his fellow Reformers were over. Fearing for their lives, he and his pregnant wife left for Holland and then moved on to Frankfurt and Strasbourg.

Although united by a fear of Catholic rulers back home, the English exiles were unable get along among themselves. From Strasbourg, Foxe returned to Frankfurt as the minister of an English church. But soon the matter of liturgy caused the members, in his words, to fall into “the violence of warring factions.” Some, influenced by Knox, insisted on following Calvin’s church order, while others demanded the continued use of the Book of Common Prayer. Though a friend of Knox, Foxe, like most Reformers, was deeply troubled by Knox’s “rude vehemency” toward Queen Mary.

ORIGINAL TITLE FOR FOXE’S BOOK OF MARTYRS

Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye in this Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now present. Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatone as well of the Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of the Bishop’s Registers, which were the Doers thereof.

FIVE MARTYRS OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

These five martyrs suffered together, January 31, 1556. John Lomas was a young man of Tenterden. He was cited to appear at Canterbury…. His answers being adverse to the idolatrous doctrine of the papacy, he was condemned…. Agnes Snoth, widow, of Smarden Parish, was several times summoned before the Catholic Pharisees, and rejecting absolution, indulgences, transubstantiation, and auricular confession, she was adjudged worthy to suffer death, and endured martyrdom, January 31, with Anne Wright and Joan Sole, who were placed in similar circumstances, and perished at the same time, with equal resignation. Joan Catmer, the last of this heavenly company, of the parish Hithe, was the wife of the martyr George Catmer … four women … led to execution, whose lives were irreproachable…. The above five persons were burnt at two stakes in one fire, singing hosannahs to the glorified Savior, until the breath of life was extinct. Sir John Norton, who was present, wept bitterly at their unmerited sufferings.

John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, Chapter XVI

HISTORY THAT NEVER HAPPENED

[Had Lady Jane Grey prevailed] England would have become the most powerful political player in the Reformed camp, with Cranmer a cordial if geographical distant partner with John Calvin. There is a potent symbolism in the fact that it was Cranmer’s son-in-law who translated Calvin’s Institutes into English, and Cranmer’s veteran printer who published it. With a Cranmer-Calvin axis, the profile of Reformed religion across the whole continent would have been changed, and with the help and encouragement of Bishop Knox, the Reformation in Scotland might have followed a close path to that of the Reformed Church of England.

That is the history that never happened. Instead, in 1558 Queen Elizabeth had to cope with the consequences of Mary’s steadily more successful effort to integrate a traditionalist comeback with the new dynamism of the Counter Reformation….

Elizabeth’s solution to her dilemmas was remarkable: quite deliberately, she established a version of the Edwardian Church which proved to be a snapshot, frozen in time, of the church as it had been in September 1552, ignoring the progress made in further changing of the Church of England after that date.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life

With the death of Queen Mary in 1558, Foxe, like many of his fellow English exiles eagerly returned to his homeland. But never again would he enjoy the luxurious patronage of his earlier years. Yet he continued writing and publishing, focusing on the history of persecution and martyrdom from the time of the early church to his own day. In 1563 he published the first edition of his Book of Martyrs, which became an immediate bestseller (though it never made him a rich man). His writing, based on trial records, journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, served as a powerful defense of the Protestant cause while at the same time exacerbating the hostility between Catholics and Protestants. He exonerated Protestants while recording every account of Catholic brutality that came his way. But the book stood as a monument to faith and courage amid persecution, bringing consolation to Christians worldwide.

Although a religious partisan, Foxe was known for a spirit of religious toleration unusual in his era. He petitioned Queen Elizabeth to grant reprieve to several Anabaptists who had been sentenced to death, and some years later he pleaded for the lives of Jesuits awaiting execution.

The English Reformation would continue on into the late seventeenth century with the Puritans and their profound influence on religion in America. The dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church and its failure to carry out reform as Calvin had in Geneva spurred many English Christians to call for purity and separation, thus the terms Puritans and Separatists.

What if…

What if Catherine of Aragon had submitted to the demands of her husband to have their marriage annulled? Had she done so, Henry VIII might never have separated from the Church of Rome. Without this first step in the English Reformation, the history of England and America would be very different today.

What if Edward had not died so young, or if Lady Jane Gray’s ascension to the throne had not been dismantled? Would the English Reformation have emerged along the lines of the Reformation in Geneva?

What if Queen Mary I (“Bloody Mary”) had lived to old age rather than dying of apparent stomach cancer and her hated half-sister Elizabeth had not become Queen? There would be no Anglican Church worldwide, as we know it today. The English “Reformation” might be remembered as a brief failed attempt to separate from Rome.

What if John Foxe had cared more about earning money than spending his days writing his Book of Martyrs? Next to the Bible, that book has had a profound influence, particularly on Methodist circuit-riding evangelists and early overseas missionaries.

Further Reading

Collinson, Patrick. The Sixteenth Century: 1485–1603. New York: Oxford University, 2002.

Daniel, David. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Foxe, John, and John N. King. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

George, Margaret. The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers. New York: Macmillan, 1998.

Kyle, Richard G., and Dale W. Johnson. John Knox: An Introduction to His Life and Works. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2009.

Loades, David M. John Foxe and the English Reformation. Menston, England: Scholars Press, 1997.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Marshall, Rosalind K. John Knox. Edinburgh, Scotland: Birlinn Publishers, 2008.

Porter, Linda. The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary.” New York: St. Martin’s, 2008.

Selderhuis, Herman J., John Vriend, and Lyle D. Bierma, trans. Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin Bucer. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University, 1999.

Thomas, Jane Resh. Behind the Mask: The Life of Queen Elizabeth I. New York: Clarion Books, 1998.

Weir, Alison. Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove, 1991.

Wilson, Douglas, and George Grant. For Kirk and Covenant: The Stalwart Courage of John Knox. Toronto: Cumberland House, 2000.

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