Raymond A. Powell
The Marian Episcopate and Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
When the Catholic confessional historian Philip Hughes told the story of English bishops and the religious settlement of Elizabeth I, he entitled his article “A Hierarchy that Fought.”1 All but one of the men on Elizabeth’s bench suffered deposition rather than submit to her Protestant establishment, a remarkable feat in an era in which senior churchmen frequently followed lockstep the twists and turns of the Crown’s religious policy. Hughes largely credited this unexpected act of unified resistance to the stiffening formerly wavering Catholics received during Mary’s brief Catholic restoration. In doing so, he seems remarkably prescient; the majority of more recent scholars similarly credit Marian Catholicism for creating subsequent Catholic resistance.2
Yet the significance of the English bishops’ principled stand is not as obvious as the bald facts might suggest. Presuming Marian Catholicism did have such a bracing effect, it is curious that while all but one of the bishops resisted, at the next rank of clergy—suffragens, cathedral canons, archdeacons—a large percentage accepted the new state of affairs. And at all layers save the top, even the majority of [27] future recusants initially conformed. Indeed, in one or two puzzling cases, such as that of bishop nominate to Salisbury, Francis Mallet, important ecclesiastical officials who had been jailed or exiled rather than conforming under Edward VI never did reject the Elizabethan settlement.3 It was only upon reflection, and after some time, that most Catholics committed themselves to various forms of resistance. So what made the difference for the bishops? Why were they so swift to stand firm when other equally devout Catholics were slower to follow their lead or never followed it at all?
There are two simple answers. The first is that Mary had some luck in death’s lottery. Yes, untimely demise robbed the Catholics of champions such as Cardinal Reginald Pole or Bishop Stephen Gardiner who might otherwise have led the resistance to the Elizabethan settlement.4 But equally, death stripped the bench of those Henrician bishops retained by Mary who were most likely to conform to the new settlement. If Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, had lived longer, Anthony Kitchin of Landaff would certainly not have been alone when he took the oath, and the two might well have been joined by bishops such as John Chambers of Peterborough, Robert King of Oxford, John Capon of Salisbury, Robert Aldrich of Carlisle, or even Maurice Griffin, Mary’s bishop of Rochester, or Robert Parfew, whom Mary herself translated from St. Asaph’s to Hereford.5
The second, and more important, answer is that Mary chose and promoted as bishops the sort of men liable to have resisted Protestant innovation in the past and who were, accordingly, most likely to take a stand in the future. But Mary did not select her bishops solely on this criterion of past resistance to Protestant settlements. Indeed, she passed over some obvious candidates and selected others of somewhat dubious commitment to serve as leaders in her restored Catholic Church.
This paper will examine the basis for episcopal promotion in Marian England. It will suggest that the queen did in fact personally choose most of her bishops, analyze the grounds for her choices, and show that while Mary did not necessarily select candidates for their previous resistance to Protestantism, the [28] factors behind her decision making favored candidates who had resisted heterodox settlements in the past and were likely to do so in the future. Using this information, this essay will try to explain the basis for initial resistance to the Elizabethan settlement, perhaps providing a new perspective on the actual achievements of the Marian restoration.
The Queen and Episcopal Promotion
In studying the leadership of the Marian church, it is crucial to realize that Queen Mary personally chose her bishops. The majority of the men nominated to the episcopate by the queen can be shown to have had some personal tie with her before their promotion. The number is seventeen out of twenty-seven, with five more moving in circles that almost certainly merited a personal introduction to Princess Mary during Edward’s reign. Thus only five of her candidates for the episcopate do not appear to have had any personal link to the queen—and one of these was an exile who had no opportunity for personal contact, but who earned Mary’s gratitude through his defense of her mother.6
The most important and obvious personal tie between the queen and her nominees was service as her chaplain. John Hopton of Norwich, John Holyman of Bristol, John Christopherson of Chichester, Thomas Wood, nominated for St. Asaph’s, and several others were all former chaplains of Mary’s, many of them from her difficult days as princess when the office was sometimes more a burden than a sinecure, and relationships were apt to be close.7 One former chaplain, Gilbert Bourne, elevated to Bath and Wells in 1554, could claim another link. He was also the nephew of Mary’s principal secretary, Sir John Bourne, a critical supporter during the Edwardian regime.8 Thomas Goldwell, initially raised by the queen to St. Asaph’s, had been Cardinal Pole’s envoy to Mary early in her reign and may have acted as her Latin secretary.9 Shared resistance to Henrician and [29] Edwardian innovations or through critical support for her claim to the throne was another tie that bound Mary to many of her bishops. As will be discussed below, the majority of her nominees had suffered either for her sake or for her mother’s.
If Mary did not select her own bishops or chose them primarily from a list of suggestions, who did supply the names? Perhaps surprisingly, it was not Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary’s cousin, her confidant, and her future archbishop of Canterbury (bp. 1556–58). Pole was out of the country when Mary ascended to the throne, and remained abroad until late in 1554. An extensive correspondence between the two survives, yet there is no record that either brought up the question of specific candidates for the crosier. Mary certainly asked about the technicalities of filling vacant sees, and, among much other advice, Pole spoke to the qualities of character necessary in her nominees, but names were never requested or offered. When it comes to evaluating Pole’s role in shaping the composition of the English episcopate, it is perhaps telling that, as a recent biographer noted, Pole was surprisingly unsuccessful at having episcopal vacancies filled with members of his own household—typically any of his men enthroned were given second-rate Irish sees. The only one of Pole’s close associates promoted to an English bishopric was Thomas Goldwell, who had St. Asaph’s and would have possessed Oxford had Mary lived a few months longer but who, as noted above, was personally known to Mary before his elevation.10 Perhaps more importantly, some of the Marian episcopal nominations were not entirely consistent with Pole’s reforming commitments to a more disciplined clergy and against clerical absenteeism. The evidence strongly suggests Pole did not influence episcopal promotion. There is no record that he tried to do so, the men he trusted most were rarely nominated, many of those actually selected were not particularly close to the cardinal, and at least some of the new bishops failed to match Pole’s standards.
Other senior ecclesiastics were no more successful than Pole in promoting the careers of their protégées. Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, a critical figure in the restoration, had a number of close associates elevated to the episcopal bench, but there was no exact relationship between their promotion and his influence. Far and away the most important preferment offered to Gardiner’s men occurred after Gardiner’s death in 1555, when one of his former clients was translated from [30] Lincoln to Gardiner’s old see of Winchester, and another then filled the vacancy at Lincoln. This is particularly telling in the case of Thomas Watson (d. 1584), the man who ended up with Lincoln—he was one of Gardiner’s close collaborators and an extremely worthy candidate for a crosier, yet he received promotion only after the death of his patron. More importantly for evaluating Gardiner’s role in episcopal promotion, the basic patterns of episcopal preferment remained unaltered after his death. Yet no other lord, whether spiritual or temporal, had anything approximating the influence of Gardiner.
No claim is being made that Mary did not consult trusted advisors before appointing bishops or that no one else had any influence at all. Patronage obviously played a role in directing some episcopal preferment—Maurice Griffith’s elevation to Rochester, for instance, must be attributed in part to his close ties with the critical Marian ally Sir William Petre. What is being claimed is that Mary was directly responsible for her choices. As in so many other areas of her rule, Queen Mary put her personal stamp on her episcopal bench. The pattern of appointments reflects her values, values easily recognizable in her non-ecclesiastical policy. While her selections display the imprint of her own commitments, some fit oddly with the new standards Pole and his allies were trying to inculcate in the restored Catholic Church. Henry VIII routinely appointed bishops chiefly on the recommendation of advisors such as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey or Thomas Cromwell, and frequently as a result of some political or financial quid pro quo. Mary chose as bishops men she knew, trusted, and felt confident in. During Mary’s reign, it was not the Crown in the abstract, but the queen in person who filled vacant sees.
Recognizing that the queen personally chose her bishop makes it possible to identify a series of principles that shaped the episcopal bench in the Marian church: relationship, restoration and retention, and restitution. With only three exceptions, the elevation or translation of every bishop during Mary’s reign can be understood through the first and third category, while the three together explain the composition of Mary’s house of bishops.11
[31] Restoration and Retention
One of the hallmarks of Marian religious policy was the expressed desire to put things back as they had been before the recent religious innovations. While an absolute return to the past was not possible (or even genuinely desirable), it was a way of expressing a vision for the Restoration Church. Mary’s injunctions commanding “that the laudable and honest ceremonies which were wont to be used, frequented, and observed in the church, be also hereafter frequented, used, and observed,” nicely summarized the attitude of English Catholics towards the restoration as one of a return to tradition.12 The appeal of restoring what had been lost lay behind the Marian recreation of much of the pre-Edwardian episcopal bench.
By the last year of Edward’s reign, a number of conservative bishops were in prison, most of them legally deprived of office. Among these bishops, Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Edmund Bonner of London, Nicholas Heath of Worcester, and George Day of Chichester had been deposed, John Veysey of Exeter forced to resign, and Cuthbert Tunstall’s diocese of Durham had been dissolved. Mary insisted on returning all these men to their sees.
Mary’s obvious decision to restore deposed conservatives did benefit English Catholicism. While not all the newly restored diocesans were men of weight, those deprived of office included the most important and talented of the conservative bishops, and all the men returned to their dioceses were not only committed Catholics, but also experienced officials.13 Most of them would prove to be assets to the restored Catholic Church.
Yet if Mary’s impulse to restore deposed Catholic bishops was understandable, her commitment to upholding the past also led to the restoration or retention of several Henrician diocesans of dubious worth or suspect Catholic credentials, moves that did not so obviously benefit English Catholicism. John Veysey, forced to resign as bishop of Exeter in 1551, was certainly a conservative, but he had been noted for his extravagant lifestyle over the years and was over ninety years old.14 He was certainly no ornament to a renewed Catholic hierarchy [32] in 1553. It would have been simple, and canonically permissible, to take his resignation at face value, expel the current Protestant incumbent (as was done), and appoint a solid candidate such as James Turberville, Veysey’s ultimate successor. But Veysey was restored. At least he was Catholic and perhaps Mary was attempting to repay him for wrongs done during the previous regime.
An even more curious retention was Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely since 1534 and a committed evangelical. As Edward’s chancellor, Goodrich had played an essential role in the plot to replace Mary with Jane Grey and even had the dubious honor of holding the chancellorship under Jane! As deeply implicated as Goodrich was in treason, Mary could easily have deprived him of office or forced him to resign and replaced him with a loyal Catholic. But the queen permitted Goodrich to conform. He retired to his diocese and remained in office until his death in 1554.15 Nothing but Mary’s determined efforts to recreate the pre-Edwardian past could explain Thomas Goodrich as a Marian bishop.
Mary’s commitment to the retention of bishops past did have limits. Most importantly, she would not permit bishops who had married during Edward’s reign to retain their sees. The expulsion of married incumbents swept several convinced Catholics out of high office, including Paul Bush of Bristol, along with John Bird of Chester, and probably Henry Mann of Soder and Man.16 Official policy required married priests to vacate their benefices, separate from their “concubines,” and undergo penance; only then were the disgraced clerics permitted to take new cures (but never to resume their old posts). Theoretically the government could have rehabilitated the deprived bishops, at the very least using them to assist overworked ordinaries as suffragens, yet these three ended their lives as rectors.
Previous possession of a see weighed heavily with Mary. Under certain circumstances she might ignore an otherwise legitimate claim because of severe moral and sacramental failing. However, recreation of the past bench was an extremely important factor, one that, at least in one case, outweighed questionable orthodoxy, a heterodox past, and political disloyalty.
Restitution
Although Queen Mary did not share Cardinal Pole’s intense antipathy to Henry VIII, she clearly believed that her exalted father had wronged specific people and [33] that it was her responsibility to make amends for these wrongs. This sense of obligation towards restitution is one of the most important factors to be considered in understanding Marian policy within or outside of the church. In terms of the Marian episcopate, it is vital to recognize the role restitution played in Mary’s choices. John Holyman, for instance, a trained theologian and a prominent anti-Lutheran preacher, sacrificed his career through his opposition to the divorce.17 Mary’s choice of him for Bristol was an attempt to recompense one of the men who had suffered for his defense of her mother. John Hopton of Norwich earned his promotion during Edward’s reign when, as Mary’s chaplain, he defied the Council and continued to celebrate the Mass until he was arrested.18 Francis Mallet, another of her chaplains later nominated to a diocese, was jailed on the same charge.19
If several of Mary’s senior prelates had been persecuted or jailed for their Catholic commitments, a number of others had endured exile because of opposition to religious change. The most prominent among these was Mary’s cousin Cardinal Reginald Pole. Although Pole merited Canterbury on other grounds, his own suffering, and that of his family, for the sake of Katherine and the Catholic faith certainly commended him to the queen. Other exiles elevated to the bench included Pate of Worcester, Christopherson of Chichester, Goldwell of St. Asaph’s, and Ralph Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield. While not every Marian nominee could boast of imprisonment or exile for the faith, most had suffered hardships or taken risks in defense of conservative religion. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle (d. 1559) lost his posts as vice chancellor of Oxford and canon of Christ Church during Edward’s reign. The experience of William Glyn of Bangor (d. 1558) was similar, only he lost his Lady Margaret professorship at Cambridge.
Others had paid a lesser price for their Catholic commitments. Cuthbert Scott of Chester (d. 1564), an outspoken conservative, avoided any dire consequences by retiring from Cambridge to a Yorkshire parish and remaining there as long as Edward was on the throne. Other Marian bishops, such as James Turberville of Exeter, may not have suffered great losses, but certainly saw their careers founder because of their traditional commitments.
Marian appointments also reflected other forms of repayment. Thomas Tresham, the widowed layman appointed by Mary as English prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, owed his elevation not to past hardship but to more recent service—he had taken a leading role in championing Mary’s claim to the throne [34] during the accession crisis. Mary’s choice of David Pole for Peterborough represents another kind of restitution she frequently practiced in the secular realm, restoring wealth or status to the heirs of those unjustly dealt with.20
Past suffering for Catholicism could be just as easily linked to advantageous episcopal translation. Nicholas Heath (d. 1578) would prove to be a trusted favorite, but he earned his promotion from Worcester to metropolitan of York in part through his recent faithfulness to Mary and the Catholic Church during Edward’s reign. Even Thomas Thirlby (d. 1570), who escaped prison and deprivation by virtue of his diplomatic value to the Edwardian government, had proved himself a loyal Catholic in difficult times, which was reflected in his promotion to Ely. All in all, seventeen of the twenty-seven men Mary chose for episcopal elevation or promotion had suffered serious hardships on behalf of the Catholic Church during previous reigns, with several others paying at least some price for their loyalty to traditional religion.
Queen Mary did not set out to appoint as bishops only men who had opposed Protestant innovations. Thomas Reynolds, nominated to St. Asaph’s at the close of the reign, had been a successful conformist and had certainly not suffered in any way under the Edwardian settlement, and two or three of her other appointees had been obvious careerists. But Mary’s choices tended to favor men who had fought. She relied heavily on personal knowledge of candidates, and naturally those most likely to be introduced to her by men or women in her circles tended to be outspoken conservatives. Likewise, her desire to repay those who had been wronged during previous reigns resulted in a majority of bishops who had taken active stands against the Henrician or Edwardian settlements. Mary did not necessarily intend to pack her bench with men who had opposed previous religious innovation, but that was indeed the result of her choices.
Marian Nominations and Traditional Patterns of Preferment
While the composition of Queen Mary’s bench can be understood in terms of relationship, restoration and retention, or restitution, a fuller understanding of the Marian episcopate requires a consideration of the queen’s choices in the context of traditional patterns of prelate selection. In some cases, her selections clearly reflected emerging trends. On the other hand, in several critical ways, she broke from recent patterns of preferment to return to an older tradition. These [35] cases are particularly helpful in understanding the Marian episcopate, and in underlining Mary’s personal role in decision-making.
During the reigns of Henry and Edward, more and more episcopal nominees were drawn from the ranks of theologians and academics, not from the legists who had previously predominated. Mary too chose pastors and teachers instead of civil servants for her bench. James Brooks of Gloucester, Christopherson of Chichester, and Ralph Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield all held senior university posts. Thomas Watson was an academic but also one of the most active Marian preachers, both before and after his elevation to Lincoln. John Feckenham (d. 1584), prior of Westminster, was also an extremely active pulpiteer.
Mary promoted a number of former religious to the episcopate, just as her father had. One always assumes that Henry was intent on saving the cost of their pensions or perhaps was rewarding them for services rendered in surrendering their houses. In contrast, loyalty to Mary or her mother as well as general steadfastness to Catholicism in difficult times lay behind Mary’s nominations of religious or ex-religious such as John Hopton, a former Dominican prior, or the Theatine Thomas Goldwell. Henry had frequently promoted ex-religious to Welsh sees, a custom Mary continued.21
One area where Mary broke decisively with the recent past and returned to the habits of earlier monarchs was her distinct preference for episcopal chancellors. Henry relied on a mix of laymen and prelates to fill the office. Both churchmen such as Cardinal Wolsey and non-churchmen such as Sir Thomas More held the post during Henry’s reign, but laymen predominated over clerks. Edward’s government had relied predominantly on laymen, such as Lord Rich, though he had appointed as chancellor Bishop Thomas Goodrich. When Mary came to the throne, Stephen Gardiner, with his vast political experience, his recognized ability, and the credit of his recent stint in prison for opposing the Edwardian settlement, was a natural choice as chancellor. When Gardiner died, Mary wanted Thirlby of Ely for the post. Philip countered with the layman Lord Paget and later with clerical civil servant Nicholas Wotton. Either before or after the queen opted for Thirlby and he was vetoed by Philip, they offered the chancellorship to Cardinal Pole, who declined; although the pope had previously ordered him to avoid the office, he almost certainly would have refused on his own account.22 Ultimately the job went to Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York. A number of observers have [36] suggested that Heath’s lack of ability made it that much more difficult for the queen to secure legislation in Parliament.23 Mary appointed one other national chancellor, this one of Ireland, and the post went to her archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Curwen. Thus, all five of the men Mary consented to have as chancellors were bishops, while her consort’s known preferences were for a layman and a (non-episcopal) bureaucrat in orders. Especially considering that there were a number of equally strong candidates besides Heath, the evidence suggests that Mary preferred the traditional clerical chancellor to the more recent practice of lay chancellors.
Although scholars have frequently noted that Mary promoted men with no government service to the episcopate, she was comfortable with bishop bureaucrats. In general, Mary’s policies saw “bishops returned to their traditional roles in high office and public life,” with Gardiner, Heath, Tunstall, and Thirlby all serving as privy councilors.24 Gardiner as chancellor and Heath as president of the Council of the North were authorized to retain. Thirlby’s work as an ambassador, financial expert, and troubleshooter, or Tunstall’s place as head of a county palatine, or Heath’s work with the Council of the North, were all continuations of their previous careers. But Mary also put Bishop Gilbert Bourne at the head of a regional council late in her reign, and at the time of her death she was sending Goldwell, now nominated for translation from St. Asaph’s to Oxford, as ambassador to the papal court.25 Sir Thomas Tresham’s service to the regime was not interrupted by his elevation to prior of the English Knights of St. John, in which capacity he remained busy in royal service, as for instance commanding an expedition meant to recover Calais.26 While Mary may have inherited some of her bureaucrat bishops, she personally promoted Heath and Thirlby, and she elevated Goldwell and Bourne. Tresham was her choice too, though in fairness, there apparently was not any other suitable candidate. If in filling her episcopal bench with academics and theologians, Mary was in line with recent trends under Henry and Edward, she was much more traditional in the way she used senior prelates in government and was willing to elevate or promote men dedicated to government service. This difference is telling, because a return to senior ecclesiastics as government bureaucrats flew in the face of Reginald Pole’s conviction that bishops were to concentrate their efforts and attentions on service to the church.
[37] It was not only with respect to Crown servants that Mary’s episcopal selections were at odds with the new ethos of ecclesiastical leadership Cardinal Pole was struggling to create. In many areas, Mary’s appointments seemed to flout the synodical legislation often recognized as Pole’s greatest contribution to the restored Catholic Church. Mary certainly appointed worthy men and good Catholics. All of her nominees actually provided to English sees refused to conform under Elizabeth. Mary’s archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Corwen, conformed, as did her nominees to Salisbury and Gloucester.27 The only English bishop who accepted Elizabeth’s Church of England, Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff, was one of Henry’s selections. Mary’s appointee to Soder and Man, Thomas Stanley, kept his see under Elizabeth, but it is unclear whether he conformed or was simply allowed to stay on because of the difficulty of removing him.28
Yet if Mary appointed generally decent men to high ecclesiastical office, some of her candidates for the episcopate were not the most obvious choices. One of the dissonances between Marian nominations and official church policy was with respect to absenteeism. At a time when Pole was emphasizing residence as a primary requirement for faithful pastors, a surprising number of Marian appointees were absentees. Non-residents fall into two categories. There were, of course, those who were away from their sees on government business, including Chancellor Heath of York and Thirlby of Ely. Goldwell of St. Asaph’s/Oxford was about to leave on embassy to Rome when Mary’s reign ended, though this was perhaps as much church business as government business. However, the trend for a generation or so had been for England’s resident agents in Rome to be laymen. And in order to keep him nearby, Mary denied Pole’s repeated requests to depart court for his diocese of Canterbury. The second principle cause of absenteeism was academic service. Without the excuse of pressing duty or the queen’s command, several other Marian appointees spent much more time at their university posts than they did in their sees. James Brooks of Gloucester, for instance, kept himself busy with matters at Oxford and Cambridge, leaving his diocese to the care of a local archdeacon.29
[38] Another area of dissonance involved episcopal estates. At a time when part of the drive for reform concerned an increasing emphasis on clerical discipline, an issue addressed by Pole’s synod, at least two Marian bishops (Bourne of Bath and Wells, and Christopherson of Chichester) were unfortunately prone to favoring family members with lucrative leases.30 At Exeter, one of many impoverished sees, James Turberville managed to recover a valuable estate that had been lost to the Crown, and immediately let it to his nephew.31 The worst offender was Bourne. At the end of Mary’s reign and the beginning of Elizabeth’s, he may be excused for his wholesale looting of his diocese on the understandable grounds of “making friends with unrighteous mammon” and for the potentially laudable goal of diverting as much as possible from his Protestant successor. However, Bourne had already used the resources of his see to enrich family members beyond what was seemly.32 Christopherson’s financial shenanigans occurred at Cambridge during Mary’s reign but prior to his elevation. There was a nasty public confrontation with Pole’s official visitor; the strain was so great that the future bishop collapsed in public several times in the following days.33 Such careless acts of nepotism, particularly at a time of financial hardship in the church and during a period of calls for higher standards by leading clerics, were unfortunate to say the least.
Mary chose her candidates according to her own standards, even when those standards were at odds with those of her recent predecessors or with the stated policy of her restored church. When considering in addition that Mary retained the services of a Protestant such as Thomas Goodrich, or overturned the resignation of the feeble and slightly-worldly John Veysey, while passing over more obvious candidates, hardworking, reliable, and dedicated church administrators such as Nicholas Harpsfield (d. 1575), one can only conclude that Mary’s selections were definitely her own, slightly idiosyncratic, and, in the end, surprisingly effective.
[39] The Marian Episcopate and Resistance to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement
There were sixteen English bishops in possession of their sees to confront the Elizabethan settlement in January 1559. Five of these (Heath of York, Bonner of London, Tunstall of Durham, Watson of Lincoln, and John White of Winchester) had suffered imprisonment under Edward VI, the first three losing their sees as well. Three more (Baynes of Coventry and Litchfield, Goldwell of St. Asaph’s/Oxford, Pate of Worcester) had previously chosen exile over conformity to Protestant religious settlements. Several others, while escaping jail or exile, had very publicly nailed their colors to the mast before Mary came to the throne and paid a price for their allegiance. Thomas Thirlby of Ely certainly would have joined Heath, Bonner, and Tunstall in jail if the regime had not needed his services as ambassador so badly. Gilbert Bourne of Bath and Wells escaped jail but stood by his patron, Bonner, during trial and imprisonment. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle had been stripped of his senior university posts for his conservatism, while Cuthbert Scott, a vocal conservative under Henry, had abandoned his academic career at Cambridge for the duration of Edward’s reign. Twelve of the sixteen surviving Marian bishops had already lined up against previous Protestant settlements.
Four of the bishops confronting the Elizabethan settlement had no pre-Marian public record of opposition to Protestantism. Pole of Peterborough and Turberville of Exeter retained their posts under Edward through quiet and minimal conformity. Neither suffered any obvious hardship, though their failure to achieve preferment to the level of their qualifications (especially in the case of Turberville) suggests known Catholic sympathies. Only two of the surviving Marian bishops had uninterrupted records of positive cooperation with Edward’s Protestant innovations. Henry Morgan (d. 1559) was an obvious careerist, advancing up the ecclesiastical ladder even under Edward before Mary elevated him from being her chaplain to being her bishop of St. David’s. Anthony Kitchin had occupied the diocese of Landaff through every Tudor religious settlement since Henry VIII had nominated him to it in 1545. Elizabeth’s regime apparently had hopes for Tuberville—even after his initial refusal of the oath, his diocese was kept vacant for an extended period just in case.34 Similar generosity may have been extended to Morgan. On the other hand, Kitchin wavered for some time before opting to keep his see under his fourth sovereign and at least his fourth settlement. In the end, only one conformed.35
[40] Different historians have found all sorts of significance in the principled last stand of the Marian hierarchy. Hughes attributed it to the nourishing influence of five years of restoration Catholicism. Others have seen resistance as evidence of lessons learned, particularly about papal headship: “The behavior of the surviving bishops indicates that the events of the schism . . . had clarified the need for Roman loyalty.”36 But what conclusion can be drawn from the fifteen bishops who chose deposition and prison rather than accept a new Protestant settlement? Mary’s prior of Westminster, John Feckenham, aligned himself with the bishops in this instance, but he had been in the Tower with some of them at the end of Edward’s reign as well. Thomas Tresham, last prior of the English hospital, did not survive the Elizabethan settlement for long, but evidently he planned on the same outward conformity and secret attendance at the Mass that had carried him through Edward’s reign.37 Mary’s nominees to Bangor, St. Asaph’s, and Hereford stood with the consecrated bishops and refused to conform, but, as mentioned above, her nominee to Salisbury remained a part of the Elizabethan church despite having once been jailed for defying the Edwardian settlement. Another of Mary’s nominees, John Bourchier, designated for Gloucester, did ultimately reject the Elizabethan settlement, but only after some years of minimal conformity.38 Further examples could be taken from the next levels of the English hierarchy, where one finds instances of resistance, pretended obedience, and genuine conformity. Only in future decades would many English Catholics reach any clarity about recusancy.
The noted historian Eamon Duffy has pointed out that over half of the cathedral prebendaries in England resigned rather than conform to Elizabeth’s settlement and that other office holders surrendered their posts at an even higher rate, in marked contrast to the beginning of Mary’s reign when only about one third of the higher clergy gave up preferment for the sake of conscience. To Duffy, this stark contrast demonstrates that there had been a “dramatic stiffening of spine and principle among the higher clergy” as a result of the Catholic restoration.39
There is a significant problem, however, in contrasting resistance during the two epochs. By and large, the highest offices in the Edwardian church had not been filled with evangelical loyalists—Protestants would complain loudly about [41] this same trend during Elizabeth’s reign, when conservatives of various stripes retained a great number of important posts. Only towards the close of Edward’s reign had the regime started to replace conservative bishops, and outside of the universities most conservative churchmen kept their positions. In marked contrast, the Marian regime made it a matter of policy to remove those with Protestant leanings and replace them with staunch Catholics. This was true not just in the realm of the church, but also extended to the secular authorities as well; the Marian regime had carried out a purge of Protestant justices that was unique in Tudor England for its extent and thoroughness.40 According to Duffy, four-fifths of the high-ranking justices who resigned during Elizabeth’s reign had been appointed by Mary. It remains an open question whether the higher ranks of the Marian clergy were stiffened, or merely packed. The latter seems more likely, in which case such statistical comparisons are of limited value, and still begs the question of what the Marian restoration accomplished in terms of transforming the convictions of individual Catholic consciences.
So what had English Catholics learned by 1559, after five years of restoration Catholicism and many years of various heterodox settlements? What exactly were the bishops refusing to conform to when they refused their oath to Elizabeth? When trying to pinpoint the grounds on which the bishops rejected the Elizabethan settlement, it may be that there is no single answer. Not all fifteen bishops may have been equally opposed to the same elements.
A number of historians have pointed out an unfortunate tendency to substitute assumptions about affiliation for analysis when considering sixteenth-century English religion, a tendency particularly common with respect to conservatives, given the fact that most historians are tolerably aware of the different varieties of Protestantism.41 While it is fair for the Catholic Church to claim the resisting English bishops as its own, it is equally legitimate for historians to investigate the question of exactly what the nonconforming bishops were resisting.
The evidence suggests that different bishops drew their lines in the sand in different places. A few of Mary’s bishops, including John White of Winchester and Cuthbert Scott of Chester, were committed papalists by the end of the reign, and would unquestionably have rejected any settlement that did not continue Roman obedience. On the other hand, some of their fellow bishops were not nearly as committed to the authority of the pope. It seems quite possible that at [42] least a few of the men on Mary’s bench could have been won over by some return to a conservative Six-Articles style settlement.
One prime candidate for conformity to a conservative settlement was the bishop of Durham. Prior to refusing the oath of supremacy and his subsequent deprivation, Tunstall, in a letter to Elizabeth’s secretary of state William Cecil, offered to continue in office, but only under very specific conditions. He objected to the removal of altars and crucifixes in his diocese and announced he would not participate in their suppression: “I cannot in my conscience consent to it, being pastor there; because my conscience will not suffer me to receive or allow any doctrine in my diocese other than Catholic.”42 The implications of this admission are spelled out in testimony from Matthew Parker’s secretary: the bishop of Durham was willing to concede the papal primacy (as well as clerical marriage) in 1559.43 Apparently Nicholas Heath was willing to make the same compromise. Although a subsequent public statement did refer to Roman obedience, there was no mention of the papacy in the circumstantial and moving account of Heath’s personal interview with the new queen in which he made a final plea for an acceptably Catholic settlement.44
What were the bishops resisting when they refused to submit to Elizabeth’s religious settlement? In most cases, there was a desire to avoid the same thing(s) they had resisted when refusing to submit to Edward’s settlement. For some bishops, the critical issue was the maintenance of Catholic ceremony, particularly the Catholic Eucharist. However, other bishops, equally committed to the Catholic Eucharist, had additional doctrines, such as papal supremacy, on which they would have taken their stand as well.
There are two important lessons to be drawn from this study. First, instead of crediting the Marian church for creating the basis for opposition to the Elizabethan settlement, historians must recognize that Mary used those who had opposed the Edwardian settlement to create her church’s leadership. Next, it is important to recognize that Catholic bishops in 1559 had still not achieved absolute clarity about the breadth and substance of Catholic orthodoxy. They stood together, but not necessarily on the same ground.
The Marian church provides a unique and vital window into the process of Catholic reform. It was a laboratory in which Catholics who knew Protestantism firsthand, but had not yet received definitive guidance from the Council of [43] Trent, worked to define their own faith. As such, historians will find it beneficial to move beyond convenient labels in order to clarify beliefs and values. Any insight into the Catholic restoration in England will lead to understanding the course of Catholic reform.
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