CHAPTER 42
FOUR DAYS AFTER HER CORONATION, MARY OPENED HER FIRST Parliament. As she looked on from her throne, Bishop Gardiner, the lord chancellor, made his opening address in which he “treated amply of the union with religion,” demonstrating how many disadvantages had befallen the realm owing to its separation. “Parliament,” he declared, “was assembled by her Majesty and the Council to repeal many iniquitous laws against the said union, and to enact others in favour of it.”1
In one of its first acts, Parliament declared that the marriage of Mary’s parents, Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, had been valid and that Mary was therefore legitimate. The queen’s title was vindicated from “the corrupt and unlawful sentence” that had divorced her father and mother and from subsequent laws that had declared her illegitimate. It was what Mary had fought for since the years of her adolescence. Finally she had restored her mother’s memory and confirmed her own legitimacy.
Next came the repeals of the Edwardian religious legislation that had pronounced on the Prayer Book, the sacraments, and married priests, thereby restoring the Church settlement to that of the final years of her father’s reign. All offenses defined as treasonable during Henry and Edward’s reigns were repealed, and the law was taken back to its basic definition of 1352, with evidence of guilt now lying once more in action against the monarch rather than in a denial of the royal supremacy.
To make the bills acceptable to the House of Commons, all allusion to the pope had to be avoided. Holders of monastic and chantry lands, whatever their doctrinal beliefs, feared that a return to Rome would threaten the property that they had received following the dissolution of the monasteries during the 1530s. Writing to Pole, Mary explained that the Commons would not hear of “the abolishing, specially of the law that gave the title of the supremacy of the Church in the realm of the crown, suspecting that to be an introduction of the Pope’s authority into the realm, which they cannot gladly hear of.”2
Although the bill was eventually passed, it demonstrated that though Parliament was willing to restore church services and religious ceremonies to the pattern of the 1540s, it was not prepared to sanction the abolition of the Supreme Headship and the return of papal authority in the realm. The Commons would not sacrifice their property and revenue from ex-monastic lands; these would need to be safeguarded before a return to Rome could be achieved.3 “There is difficulty about religion, the Pope’s authority and the restitution of Church property,” Renard explained, “so much so that a conspiracy has been discovered among those who hold that property either by the liberality of the late Kings Henry and Edward, or by purchase, who would rather get themselves massacred than let go.” Renard’s message to the emperor was clear: “The majority of Parliament refuses to admit the Pope’s authority or to come back into the fold.”4
Mary was forced to curb her zeal; for now she would remain supreme head of the Church. As she wrote to Pole on November 15:
This Parliament was to make a full restoration [of obedience], but we now need another in three or four months. You will hear that all Edward’s statutes about religion have been annulled, and the state of religion put back where it was at the time of the death of King Henry, our father of the most pious memory.
Yet Pole still pushed for an immediate and full restitution: “He [God] destroyed the government that displeased Him without any human action, and gave power to a virgin, who trusted in Him,” he railed, yet Mary “thinks that temporal matters should be taken care of first. She must not be so ungrateful … nothing more neglectful than putting off religion to the end. Her impudent councillors must not intimidate her.” And he implored Mary, “[God] did not give you such great courage so that you might become fearful as Queen.”5 In a subsequent letter he told her, “You have given your enemies good argument that you [are] schismatic, since [you] have taken Parliament’s authority for most important confirmation of your claim.” It was “no excuse” that some of Parliament had proved resistant. Her adversaries could say that she was “no better than Northumberland” with regard to obedience. “You look weak now,” he ended; “these acts establish schism.”6
Despite Pole’s insistence, Mary knew she could not move too fast. Yet she dared not show “the intent of her heart in this matter,” given the opposition expressed.7 On the day that Parliament rose, a dead dog with a shaved crown, representing a tonsured priest, a rope about its neck, was slung through the windows of the Queen’s Presence Chamber.8 Mary was indignant and warned Parliament that “such acts might move her to a kind of justice further removed from justice than she would wish.”9
AS OF DECEMBER 20, religious services were to be conducted and sacraments administered as they had been in the last years of Henry VIII’s reign. It marked the beginning of restoration and reform. Although Mary did not use the title, she did use her authority as supreme head to press for reform. In royal articles of March 1554, she ordered the strict observance of the traditional ceremonies and the repression of “corrupt and naughty opinions, unlawful books, ballads, and other pernicious and hurtful devices.” Married priests were to be deprived, all processions were to be conducted in Latin, all “laudable” ceremonies were to be observed, and “uniform” doctrine was to be set forth in homilies.10
The restoration of the Mass and of Catholic ceremonies demanded the return of all that the Edwardian government had had stripped out of the churches. In articles designed for the visitation of his diocese in the autumn, Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, outlined a program of reconstruction to be adopted by bishops. The articles specified what his church now required, and parishioners were ordered to return property still in their possession:
Whether the things underwritten (which are to be found at the cost of the parishioners) be in the church: it is to wit, a legend, an antiphoner, a grail, a psalter, an ordinal to say or solemnize divine office, a missal, a manual, a processional, a chalice, two cruetts, a principal vestment with chasuble, a vestment for the deacon and sub-deacon, a cope with the appurtenances, it is to wit an amice, alb, girdle, stole and fannon, the high altar with apparel in the front and parts thereof, three towels, three surplices, a rochet, a cross for procession with candlesticks, a cross for the dead, an incenser, a ship or bessel for frankincense, a little sanctas bell, a pix with an honest and decent cover, and a veil for the Lent, banners for the Rogation week, bells and ropes, a bier for the dead, a vessel to carry holy water about, a candlestick for the paschal taper, a font to christen children with covering and lock and key, and generally all other things, which after the custom of the country or place, the parishioners are bound to find, maintain and keep?11
Bonner’s investigation was minute in its detail, from issues of dress to clerical residence and morality. But it also focused specifically on seeking out heresy. He wanted to know about the doctrine taught by the clergy, about seditious or heretical books in circulation, and about priests who administered any sacraments in English. In addition, Bonner wanted the names of any laity who, at the moment of consecration, “do hang down their heads, hide themselves behind pillars, turn away their faces, or depart out of the church,” any who “murmured, grudged or spoke against” the Mass, the sacraments, or ceremonies, and any who “made noise, jangled, talked or played the fool in church.”12 He demanded the names of any circulating “slanderous books, ballads or plays, contrary to the Christian religion.” He wanted to know about any who refused to take part in rituals such as procession on Sunday, and issuing of the pax, and any who had eaten flesh on the traditional fasts or vigils. Pictures on the walls of churches were to be removed that “chiefly and principally do tend to the maintenance of carnal liberty” by attacking fasting, good works, celibacy, or the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament.13
Gradually, signs indicating the return to Catholicism were visible across the country. In November 1553, Saint Katherine’s image was carried around the steeple at St. Paul’s on her patronal feast day, and on Saint Andrew’s Day there was “a general procession … in Latin with ora pro nobis.”14 As Machyn recorded in his diary, “The viii day of December was [the] procession at [St.] Paul’s. When all was done my lord of London [Bonner] commanded that every parish church should provide for a cross and a staff and cope to go to the procession every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, and pray unto God for fair weather through London.”15
Outside London, Robert Parkyn, a Yorkshire priest, described how
it was joy to hear and see how these carnal priests (which had led their lives in fornication with their whores and harlots) did lower and look down when they were commanded to leave and forsake their concubines and harlots and to do open penance according to the Canon Law … all old ceremonies, laudably used beforetime in the holy Church was then revived, daily frequented and used.16
The process of Catholic revival, resisted by some but welcomed by many, had begun.