Chapter XVIII: Part 18

In May a new parliament met, chosen under great excitement, for the people were inflamed on the subject of religion, and animosities ran high. The principal object of the session was known to be a settlement of the national church, and as the reformers were in a minority against the court, the temper of the Houses was not likely to be encouraging for them.[1209] On the 5th of May, a week after its assembling, a committee was appointed, at the king’s request, to take into consideration the differences of religious opinion. On the 16th, the Duke of Norfolk, who was not a member of the committee, reported that no agreement could be arrived at, and he therefore laid before the House of Lords, for full discussion, articles embracing—1st. Transsubstantiation; 2d. Communion in both kinds; 3d. Vows of Chastity; 4th. Private Masses; 5th. Sacerdotal Marriages; and 6th. Auricular Confession. Cranmer opposed them stoutly, arguing against them for three days, and especially endeavoring to controvert the third and fifth, which enjoined celibacy, but his efforts and those of his friends were vain, when pitted against the known wishes of the king, who himself took an active part in the debate, and argued in favor of the articles with much vigor. Under such circumstances, the adoption of the Six Articles was a foregone conclusion. On the 30th of May the chancellor reported that the House had agreed upon them, and that it was the king’s pleasure “that some penal statute should be enacted to compel all his subjects who were in any way dissenters or contradicters of these articles to obey them.” The framing of such a bill was intrusted to two committees, one under the lead of Cranmer, the other under that of the Archbishop of York, and they were instructed to lay their respective plans before the king within forty-eight hours. Of course the report of the Archbishop of York was adopted. Introduced on the 7th of June, Cranmer again resisted it gallantly, but it passed both Houses by the 14th, and received the royal assent on the 28th. It was entitled “An Act for abolishing Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion,” and it stands as a monument of the cruel legislation of a barbarous age. The Third Article was “that Priests after the order of Priesthood might not marry by the Law of God;” the Fourth, “that Vows of Chastity ought to be observed by the Law of God,” and those who obstinately preached or disputed against them were adjudged felons, to suffer death without benefit of clergy. Any opposition, either in word or writing, subjected the offender to imprisonment during the king’s pleasure, and a repetition of the offence constituted a felony, to be expiated with the life of the culprit. Priestly marriages were declared void, and a priest persisting in living with his wife was to be executed as a felon. Concubinage was punishable with deprivation of benefice and property, and imprisonment, for a first offence; a second lapse was visited with a felon’s death, while in all cases the wife or concubine shared the fate of her partner in guilt. Quarterly sessions were provided, to be held by the bishops and other commissioners appointed by the king, for the purpose of enforcing these laws, and the accused were entitled to trial by jury.[1210] Vows of chastity were only binding on those who had taken them of their own free will when over twenty-one years of age.[1211] According to the Act, the wives of priests were to be put away by June 24th, but on that day, as the act was not yet signed, an order was mercifully made extending the time to July 12th.[1212]

Cranmer argued, reasonably enough, that it was a great hardship, in the case of the ejected monks, to insist on the observance of the vow of chastity, when those of poverty and obedience were dispensed with, and when the unfortunates had been forcibly deprived of all the advantages, safeguards, and protection of monastic life.[1213] The matter, however, was not decided by reason, but by the whimsical perversity of a self-opinionated man, who, unfortunately, had the power to condense his polemical notions in the blood of his subjects.

To comprehend the full iniquity of this savage measure we must remember the rapid progress which the new opinions had been making in England for twenty years; the tacit encouragement given them by the suppression of the religious houses, and by the influence of the king’s confidential advisers; and the hopes naturally excited by Henry’s quarrel with Rome and negotiations with the League of Schmalkalden. In spite, therefore, of the comparatively mild punishments hitherto imposed on priestly marriage, which were no doubt practically almost obsolete, such unions may safely be assumed as numerous. Even Cranmer himself, the primate of Henry’s church, was twice married, his second wife, then living, the niece of Osiander, being kept under a decent veil of secrecy in his palace.[1214] When, after his fruitless resistance to the Six Articles, the bill was passed, he sent his wife to her friends in Germany, until the death of his master enabled him to bring her back and acknowledge her openly;[1215] but vast numbers of unfortunate pastors could not have had the opportunity, and perhaps lacked the self-control, thus to arrange their domestic affairs. Even the gentle Melanchthon was moved from his ordinary equanimity, and ventured to address to his royal correspondent a remonstrance expressing his horror of the cruelty which could condemn to the scaffold a man whose sole guilt consisted in not abandoning the wife to whom he had promised fidelity through good and evil, before God and man—a cruelty which could find no precedent in any code that man had previously dared to frame.[1216]

As might be expected, numerous divorces of married priests followed this Draconian legislation, and these divorces were held good by the act of 1549, which, under Edward VI., granted full liberty in the premises to ecclesiastics.[1217] Even Henry, however, began to feel that he had gone too far, and the influence of Cromwell was sufficient to prevent the harshest features of the law from being enforced in all their odious severity, especially as the projected marriage with Ann of Cleves and the alliance with the German Lutherans rendered active persecution in the highest degree impolitic. When the comedy of Henry’s fourth marriage culminated in the tragedy of Cromwell’s ruin (June, 1540), the reactionary elements again gathered strength. There can be no little doubt that the atrocity of the law had greatly interfered with its efficient execution and had aroused popular feeling, for now, although the Vicar-General was removed, the Catholics passed with speedy alacrity a bill moderating the act of the Six Articles, in so far as it related to marriage and concubinage. For capital punishment was substituted the milder penalty of confiscation to the king of all the property and revenue of the offenders.[1218]

The Six Articles, as thus modified, remained the law of England during the concluding years of Henry’s reign, nor is it likely that any one ventured to urge upon him seriously a relaxation of the principles to which he had committed himself thus definitely. The fall of Cromwell and the danger to which Cranmer was exposed for several years were sufficient to insure him against troublesome remonstrants, even if his increasing irritability and capriciousness had not made those around him daily more alive to the danger of thwarting or resisting his idlest humor. How little progress, indeed, the Reformation had thus far made in England is shown in a letter written in 1546 by John Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, during the exile into which he was forced by the act of the Six Articles—“Our king has destroyed the pope, but not popery; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down their monasteries; he has caused all their possessions to be transferred into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail female sex, by the king’s command, to perpetual chastity. England has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is allowed to marry. The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment.”[1219]

On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, and Edward VI. succeeded to the perilous throne. Not yet ten years of age, his government of course received its direction from those around him, and the rivalry between the protector Somerset and the chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, threw the former into the hands of the progressives, as the latter was the acknowledged head of the reactionary party. The ruin of Southampton and the triumph of Somerset, strengthened by his successful campaign in Scotland, soon began to develop their natural consequences on the religion of the country. Under the auspices of Cranmer, a Convocation was assembled, which was empowered to decide all questions in controversy. When the primate was anxious to again enjoy the solace of his wife’s company and to relieve both her and himself from the stigma of unlawful marriage, it is easy to understand that the subject of celibacy would receive early and appropriate attention; and so confident were the reformers of success that they did not hesitate to enter into matrimony without waiting for any formal sanction.[1220] Accordingly, on December 17, 1547, a proposition was submitted to the effect that all canons, statutes, laws, decrees, usages, and customs, interfering with or prohibiting marriage, should be abrogated, and it was carried by a vote of 53 to 22. No time was lost. Two days afterwards a bill was introduced in the Commons permitting married men to be priests and to hold benefices. It was received with so much favor that it was read twice the same day, and on the 21st it was sent up to the Lords; but in the Upper House it raised debates so prolonged that, as the members were determined to adjourn before Christmas, it was laid aside. This might be the more readily agreed to, since on the 23d an act was approved which abolished numerous severe laws of the former reign, including the statute of the Six Articles, and was immediately followed by another granting the use of the cup to the laity and prohibiting private masses.[1221]

The repeal of the Six Articles left the marriage of the clergy subject to the previous laws of Henry, imposing on it various pains and penalties, but with the votes recorded in Convocation and Parliament, it is not likely that much vigor was displayed in their enforcement. Those interested could thus afford to await the reassembling of the Houses, which did not take place until November 24, 1548, but they claimed the reward of their patience by an early hearing in the session. On the 3d of December a bill was introduced, similar to that of the previous year, rendering married men eligible to the priesthood; it passed second reading on the 5th, and third reading on the 6th. Apparently encouraged by the favorable reception accorded to it, the friends of the measure resolved on demanding further privileges. The bill was therefore laid aside, and on the next day a new one was presented which granted the additional liberty of marriage to those already in orders. It conceded to the established opinions the fact that it were better that the clergy should live chaste and single, yet, “as great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage,” therefore all laws and canons inhibiting sacerdotal matrimony should be abolished. This bill, after full discussion, was read a second and third time on the 10th and 12th, and was sent up to the Lords on the 13th. Again the Upper House was in no haste to pass it. It lay on the table until February 9, 1549, when it was stoutly contested, and, after being recommitted, it finally passed on the 19th, with the votes of nine bishops recorded against it.[1222]

Cranmer and his friends were now at full liberty to establish the innovation by committing the clergy individually to marriage, and by enlisting the popular feeling in its support. During the discussion they had not been idle. Much controversial writing had occurred on both sides, in which Poynette, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, took an active part, while Bale, Bishop of Ossory, distinguished himself on the same side by raking together all the foul stories that could be collected concerning the celibate clergy—a scandalous material not likely to be lacking in either quantity or quality. Burnet declares that no law passed during the reign of Edward excited more contradiction and censure, and the matrimonialists soon found that, even with the act of parliament in their favor, their course was not wholly a smooth one. Cranmer ordered a visitation in his province, and directed as one of the points for inquiry and animadversion, “Whether any do contemn married priests, and, for that they be married, will not receive the communion or other sacraments at their hands,”[1223] which distinctly reveals the difficulties encountered in eradicating the convictions of centuries from the popular mind. Sanders says, and with every appearance of probability, that the Archbishop of York united with Cranmer in ordering a visitation of the whole kingdom, during which the visitors investigated particularly the morals of the clergy, and used every argument to impel them to marriage, not only declaring celibacy to be most dangerous to salvation, but intimating that all who adhered to it would be regarded as papists and enemies of the king.[1224] The active interest which Cranmer took in the question is manifested by the fact that when Dr. Richard Smith, who had fled to Scotland in consequence of having endeavored to stir up a tumult at Oxford against Peter Martyr, desired to make his peace and return, the inducement which he offered to the Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain for him the king’s pardon was that he would write a book in favor of priestly marriage, as he had previously done against it.[1225]

The Reformers speedily found that they were not to escape without opposition. The masses of the people throughout England were in a state of discontent. The vast body of abbey lands acquired by the gentry and now inclosed bore hard upon many; the raising of rents showed that secular landlords were less charitable than the ancient proprietors of the soil; the increase of sheep-husbandry threw many farm laborers out of employ;[1226] and the savage enactments, already alluded to, against the unfortunate expelled monks show how large an element of influential disaffection was actively at work in the substratum of society. Those priests who disapproved of the rapid Protestantizing process adopted by the court could hardly fail to take advantage of opportunities so tempting, and they accordingly fanned the spark into a flame. The enforcement of the new liturgy, on Whitsunday, 1549, seemed the signal of revolt. Numerous risings took place, which were readily quelled, until one in Devonshire assumed alarming proportions. Ten thousand men in arms made demands for relief in religious as well as temporal matters. Lord Russel, unable to meet them in the field, endeavored to gain time by negotiation, and offered to receive their complaints. These were fifteen in number, of which several demanded the restoration of points of the old religion, and one insisted on the revival of the Six Articles. On their refusal, another set was drawn up, in which not only were the Six Articles called for, but also a special provision enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. This was likewise rejected; but during the delay another rising occurred in Norfolk, reckoned at twenty thousand men, and yet another of less formidable dimensions in Yorkshire. Russel finally scattered the men of Devon, while the Earl of Warwick succeeded in suppressing the rebels of Norfolk, when the promise of an amnesty caused the Yorkshiremen to disperse.[1227]

The question of open resistance thus was settled. Cranmer and his friends had now leisure to consolidate their advantages and organize a system that should be permanent. In 1551, he and Ridley prepared with great care a series of forty-two articles, embodying the faith of the church of England, which was adopted by the convocation in 1552, and was ordered to be signed by all men in orders and all candidates for ordination.[1228] Burnet speaks of it as bringing the Anglican doctrine and worship to perfection. It remained unaltered during the rest of Edward’s reign, and under Elizabeth it was only modified verbally in the recension which resulted in the famous Thirty-nine Articles—the foundation stone of the Episcopalian edifice. Of these forty-two articles, the thirty-first declared that “Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God’s law to vow the estate of a single life or to abstain from marriage.”[1229]

The canon law had thus invested the marriage of the clergy with all the sanctity that the union of man and wife could possess. Yet still the deep-seated conviction of the people as to the impropriety of such proceedings remained, troubling the repose of those who had entered into matrimony, and doubtless operating as a restraint upon the numbers of the imitators of Cranmer. Among the interrogatories drawn up by John Hooper for the visitation of his diocese of Gloucester, in 1552, is one which enquires whether any midwife refuses to attend the confinement of women who are married to ministers of the church[1230]—a suggestion which indicates how rooted was the popular aversion to such matches. If Strype’s description of the clergy of the period, indeed, be correct, there was nothing in the character of the body to overcome the popular aversion in consideration of its purity and devotion to its sacred duties.[1231] The act of 1549 had to a certain extent justified these prejudices by admitting the preferableness of a single life in the ministers of Christ, and it was resolved to remove every possible stigma by a solemn declaration of parliament. A bill was therefore prepared and speedily passed (Feb. 10th, 1552), which reveals how strong was the popular opposition, and how uncertain the position of the wives and children of the clergy. It declares “That many took occasion, from the words in the act formerly made about this matter, to say that it was only permitted, as usury and other unlawful things were, for the avoidance of greater evils, who thereupon spoke slanderously of such marriages, and accounted the children begotten in them to be bastards, to the high dishonor of the King and Parliament, and the learned clergy of the Realm, who had determined that the laws against priests’ marriages were most unlawful by the law of God; to which they had not only given their assent in the Convocation, but signed it with their hands. These slanders did also occasion that the Word of God was not heard with due reverence.” It was therefore enacted “That such marriages made according to the rules prescribed in the Book of Service should be esteemed good and valid, and that the children begot in them should be inheritable according to law.”[1232] A still further confirmation of the question was designed in a body of ecclesiastical law which was for several years in preparation by various commissions appointed for the purpose. In this it was proposed to make the abrogation of celibacy even more distinctly a matter of faith, for, in the second Title, among the various heresies condemned is that which, through the suggestion of the Devil, asserts that admission to holy orders takes away the right to marry. This work, however, though completed, had not yet received the royal assent, when the death of Edward VI. caused it to pass out of sight until 1571, when it was printed by Foxe and brought to the attention of Parliament, but was laid aside owing to the opposition of Queen Elizabeth.[1233]

* * * * *

If the Protestants indulged in any day-dreams as to the permanency of their institutions, they were not long in finding that a change of rulers was destined to cause other changes disastrous to their hopes. Even the funeral of Edward, on the 8th of August, 1553, afforded them a foretaste of what was in store. Although Cranmer insisted that the public ceremonies in Westminster Abbey should be conducted according to the reformed rites, Queen Mary, still resident in the Tower, had private obsequies performed with the Roman ritual, where Gardiner celebrated mortuary mass in presence of the queen and some four hundred attendants. When the incense was carried around, after the Gospel, it chanced that the chaplain who bore it was a married man, and the zealous Dr. Weston snatched it from him, exclaiming, “Shamest thou not to do thine office, having a wife as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as thou!”[1234]

Trifling as was this incident, it foreboded the wrath to come. Though Mary was not crowned until October 1st, she had issued writs for a parliament to assemble on the 10th, and, as an entire change in the religious institutions of the country was intended, we may not uncharitably believe the assertion that every means of influence and intimidation was employed to secure the return of reactionary members. These efforts were crowned with complete success. The Houses had not sat for three weeks, when a bill was sent down from the Lords repealing all the acts of Edward’s reign concerning religion, including specifically those which permitted the marriage of priests and legitimated their offspring; and after a debate of six days it passed the Commons.[1235]

The effect of this was, of course, to revive the statute of the Six Articles, and to place all married priests at the mercy of the queen; and as soon as she felt that she could safely exercise her power, she brought it to bear upon the offenders. A day or two after the dissolution of parliament she commenced by issuing a proclamation inhibiting married priests from officiating.[1236] The Spanish marriage being agreed upon and the resultant insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt being suppressed, Mary recognized her own strength, and her Romanizing tendencies, which had previously been somewhat restrained, became openly manifested. On the 4th of March, 1554, she issued a letter to her bishops, of which the object was to restore the condition of affairs under Henry VIII., except that the royal prerogatives as head of the church were expressly disavowed. It contained eighteen articles, to be strictly enforced throughout all dioceses. Of these the seventh ordered that the bishops should by summary process remove and deprive all priests who had been married or had lived scandalously, sequestrating their revenues during the proceedings. Article VIII. provided that widowers, or those who promised to live in the strictest chastity, should be treated with leniency, and receive livings at some distance from their previous abode, being properly supported meanwhile; while Article IX. directed that those who suffered deprivation should not on that account be allowed to live with their wives, and that due punishment should be inflicted for all contumacy.[1237]

No time was lost in carrying out these regulations. By the 9th of the same month, a commission was already in session at York, which cited the clergy to appear before it on the 12th. From an appeal which is extant, by one Simon Pope, rector of Warmington, it appears that men were deprived without citation or opportunity for defence;[1238] and that this was not infrequent is probable from the proceedings commenced against offenders of the highest class, designed and well fitted to strike terror into the hearts of the humbler parsons. On the 16th a commission was issued to the Bishops of Winchester (Stephen Gardiner), London (Bonner), Durham, St. Asaphs, Chichester, and Landaff, to investigate the cases of the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of St. Davids, Chester, and Bristol, who, according to report, had given a most pernicious example by taking wives, in contempt of God, to the damage of their own souls, and to the scandal of all men. Any three of the commissioners were empowered to summon the accused before them, and to ascertain the truth of the report without legal delays or unnecessary circumlocution. If it were found correct, then they were authorized to remove the offenders at once and forever from their dignities, and also to impose penance at discretion. This was scant measure of justice, considering that the marriage of these prelates had been contracted under sanction of law, and, if that law had recently been repealed, that at least the option of conforming to the new order of things could not decently be denied; yet even this mockery of a trial was apparently withheld, for the congé d’élire for their successors is dated March 18th, only two days after the commission was appointed.[1239]

During the summer the bishops went on their visitations. The articles prepared by Bonner for his diocese are extant, among which we find directions to inquire particularly of the people whether their pastors are married, and, if separated, whether any communication or intercourse takes place between them and their wives; also, whether any one, lay or clerical, ventures to defend sacerdotal matrimony.[1240] Few of the weaker brethren could escape an inquisition so searching as this, and though some controversy arose, and a few tracts were printed in defence of priestly marriage,[1241] such men as Bonner were not likely to shrink from the thorough prosecution of the work which they had undertaken.

When the convocation assembled in this year, it was therefore to be expected that only orthodox opinions would find expression. Accordingly, the lower House presented to the bishops an humble petition praying for the restoration of the old usages, among the points of which are requests that married priests be forcibly separated from their wives, and that those who endeavor to abandon their order be subjected to special animadversion. This clause shows that many unfortunates preferred to give up their positions and lose the means of livelihood, rather than quit the wives to whom they had sworn fidelity, demanding, as we shall see, much subsequent conflicting legislation. The social complications resulting from the change of religion are also indicated in the request that married nuns may be divorced, and that the pretended wives of priests have full liberty to marry again.[1242]

Everything being thus prepared, the purification of the church from married heretics was prosecuted with vigor. Archbishop Parker states that there were in England some 16,000 clergymen, of whom 12,000 were deprived on this account, many of them most summarily; some on common report, without trial, others without being summoned to appear before their judges, and others again while lying in jail for not obeying the summons. Some renounced their wives, and were yet deprived, while those who were deprived were also, as we have seen, forced to part with their wives. We can readily believe that the most ordinary forms of justice were set aside, in view of the illegal and indecorous haste of the proceedings against the married bishops described above, but Parker’s estimate of the number of sufferers is greatly exaggerated. According to Dr. Tanner, in the diocese of Norfolk—then estimated at one-eighth of the whole kingdom—there were only 335 deprivations on this account; and at York, from April 27th to December 20th, 1554, there were only fifty-one ejected.[1243] It is probable, therefore, that the list throughout England would not exceed three thousand; yet when to these are added the hosts who no doubt succeeded in retaining their positions by a compliance with the law in quietly putting away their wives,[1244] it will be seen that the privilege of marriage had been eagerly improved by the clergy, and that an amount of misery which it would be difficult to estimate was caused by the enforcement of the canons.

The proceedings in the case of John Turner, rector of St. Leonard’s, London, would seem to show that the extremity of humiliation was inflicted on these unfortunates. Cited on March 16th to answer to the charge of being a married man, he confessed the accusation, and we find him on the 19th condemned to lose his benefice and be suspended from all priestly functions, to be divorced from his wife, and to undergo such further punishment as the canons required. The sentence of divorce soon followed, and on May 14th he was obliged to do penance in his late church in Eastcheap, holding a lighted candle in his hand and solemnly declaring to the assembled congregation—“Good people, I am come hither, at this present time, to declare unto you my sorrowful and penitent heart, for that, being a priest, I have presumed to marry one Amy German, widow; and, under pretence of that matrimony, contrary to the canons and custom of the universal church, have kept her as my wife, and lived contrary to the canons and ordinances of the church, and to the evil example of good Christian people; whereby now, being ashamed of my former wicked living here, I ask Almighty God mercy and forgiveness, and the whole Church, and am sorry and penitent even from the bottom of my heart therefore. And in token hereof, I am here, as you see, to declare and show unto you my repentance: that before God, on the latter day, you may testify with me of the same. And I most heartily and humbly pray and desire you all, whom by this evil example doing I have greatly offended, that for your part you will forgive me, and remember me in your prayers, that God may give me grace, that hereafter I may live a continent life, according to His laws and the godly ordinances of our mother the holy Catholic Church, through and by His grace. And do here, before you all, openly promise for to do during my life.”[1245] Such scenes as these were well calculated to produce the effect desired upon the people, but we can only guess at the terrorism which was requisite to force educated and respectable men to submit to such degradation.

All this was done by the royal authority, wielding the ecclesiastical power usurped by Henry VIII. Strictly speaking, it was highly irregular and uncanonical, but as the papal supremacy was yet in abeyance it could not be accomplished otherwise. At last, however, the kingdom was ripe for reconciliation with Rome. In calling the parliament of 1554, the queen issued a circular letter to the sheriffs commanding them to admonish the people to return members “of the wise, grave, and Catholic sort.”[1246] Her wishes were fulfilled, and ere the year was out Cardinal Pole was installed with full legatine powers, and Julius III. had issued his Bull of Indulgence, reuniting England to the church from which she had been violently severed.[1247] An obedient parliament lost no time in repealing all statutes adverse to the claims of the Holy See, but its subserviency had limits, and one class largely interested in the reforms of Henry had sufficient influence to maintain its heretical rights. The church lands granted or sold to laymen were not revendicated. Indeed, the queen, in her call for the parliament, had felt it necessary to contradict the rumour that she and Philip intended the “alteration of any particular Man’s Possessions.” Though the transactions by which they had been acquired were wholly illegal; though no duration of possession could bar the imprescriptible rights of the church, yet the nobles and country gentlemen enriched by the spoliation were too numerous and powerful, and the reclamation of the kingdom was too important, to incur any peril by unseasonably insisting on reparation for Henry’s injustice. The abbatial manors and rich priories, the chantries, hospitals, and colleges were therefore left in the impious hands of those who had been fortunate enough to secure them,[1248] and the miserable remnants of the religious orders were left to the conscience of the queen, who made haste to get rid of such fragments of the spoil as had been retained by the crown.[1249]

Whatever tacit understanding there may have been on this delicate subject between Queen Mary and Pope Julius was not assented to by the imperious Caraffa who shortly afterwards ascended the chair of St. Peter. Elected May 23, 1555, he lost no time in proclaiming the imprescriptible rights of the church, and by his Bull “Injunctum nobis” issued June 21st, he pronounced null and void “de apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine” all transactions by which ecclesiastical possessions had passed into the hands of laymen, who were duly threatened with excommunication for prolonged attempts to hold their unhallowed acquisitions.[1250] The effort of course was fruitless, but the spirit in which the English protestants watched the apparent opening of a breach between England and Rome is well expressed in a letter of Aug. 23, 1555, from Sir Richard Morrison to Henry Bullinger—“This anti-Paul, Paul of the apostasy, the servant of the devil, this antichrist newly created at Rome, thinks it but a very small plunder that is offered to him, that he is again permitted in England to tyrannise over our consciences, unless the revenues be restored to the monasteries, that is, the pigsties; the patrimony, as he calls it, of the souls that are now serving in the filth of purgatory. Our ambassadors, who went to Rome for the purpose of bringing back the wolf upon the sheep of Christ, are now with the emperor, and bring us these demands of the chief pontiff: God grant that he may urge them in every possible way.”[1251] The hopes of the reformers however were disappointed, for Paul IV. gave way, and on the reassembling of Parliament, Oct. 23, 1555, a Bull was read by which the pope assented to the arrangement agreed to by Cardinal Pole, confirming the church lands to their new possessors.[1252]

Cardinal Pole, indeed, was not remiss in giving the sanction of the papal authority to all that had been done. Convoking a synod, he issued, in 1555, his Legatine Constitutions, by which all marriages of those included in the prohibited orders were declared null and void. Such apostates were ordered to be separated by ecclesiastical censures and by whatever legal processes might be required; all who dared to justify such marriages or to obstinately remain in their unholy bonds were to be rigorously prosecuted and punished according to the ancient canons, which were revived and declared to be in full force in order to prevent similar scandals for the future.[1253] As the queen by special warrant had decreed that all canons adopted by synods should have the full effect of laws binding on the clergy, these constitutions at once restored matters to their pristine condition. It was doubtless in order to mark in the most conspicuous manner his detestation of clerical marriage that Pole descended to the pettiness of ordering the body of Peter Martyr’s wife to be dug up from its resting-place, near the tomb of St. Frideswide in Christ’s Church, Oxford, and to be buried in a dung-hill.[1254]

It was easy to pass decrees; it was doubtless gratifying to eject married priests by the thousand and to grant their livings to hungry reactionaries or to the crowd of needy churchmen whom Italy had ever ready to supply the spiritual wants and collect the tithes of the faithful. All this was readily accomplished, but the difficulty lay in overcoming the eternal instincts of human nature. The struggle to effect this commenced at once.

It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that those who had entered into matrimony with the full conviction of its sanctity would willingly abandon all intercourse with their wives, although they might yield a forced assent to the pressure of the laws, the prospect of poverty, and the certainty of infamous punishment. Accordingly we find that the necessity at once arose of watching the “reconciled” priests, who continued to do in secret what they could no longer practise openly. Some, indeed, found the restrictions so onerous that they endeavored to release themselves from the bonds of the church rather than to submit longer to the separation from their wives; and this apparently threatened so great a dearth in the ranks of the clergy that Cardinal Pole, as Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1556, forbade the withdrawal of any one from the mysteries and functions of the altar, under pain of the law.[1255]

Notwithstanding all this legislation, royal, parliamentary, and ecclesiastical, the question refused to settle itself, and the Convocation which assembled on the 1st of January, 1557, was obliged to publish an elaborate series of articles, which demonstrated that previous enactments had either not been properly observed or that they had failed in effecting their purpose. Thus the prohibition of marriage to those in priests’ orders was formally renewed. Such of the married clergy, who had undergone penance and had been restored, as still persisted in holding intercourse with their separated wives, were to be deprived irrevocably of their office, and only to be admitted to lay communion—thus reversing the policy of Cardinal Pole’s injunctions. As all priests who had been married were obnoxious to the people, they were to be removed from the priesthood; or, at least, on account of the scarcity of ministers, to act only as curates, and to be incapable of holding benefices until a thorough course of penance should have washed away their sins. Even then, in no case were they to officiate in the dioceses wherein they had been married, but were to be removed to a distance of at least sixty miles, and if detected in any intercourse with their wives, they were to incur severe punishment, a single interchange of words being sufficient to call down the penalty. To insure the observance of these rules, all synods were directed to make special inquiry into the lives of these unfortunates, who were thus to exist under a perpetual surveillance, at the mercy of inimical spies and informers.[1256] This may, perhaps, be considered a moderate expiation for men who, in those days of fierce religious convictions, possessed that flexibility of faith which enabled them to change their belief with every dynastic accident.

If the rigid rules now introduced were successful in nothing else, they at all events succeeded in restoring the old troubles with the old canons. Denied the lawful gratification of human instincts, the clergy immediately returned to the habits which had acquired for them so much odium in times past, and the rulers of the church at once found themselves embarked in the sempiternal struggle with immorality in all its shapes and disguises. If the scandalous chronicles of the period be worthy of credit, neither Gardiner nor Bonner, nor other active promoters of the canons, were without the visible evidences of the frailty of the flesh;[1257] and though they were above the reach of correction, the minor clergy were not so fortunate. The Convocation of 1557, which issued the stringent regulations just quoted, was also obliged to promulgate articles concerning the residence of women with priests, and the punishment of licentiousness, similar to those which we have seen reproduced so regularly for ten centuries. Cardinal Pole, too, in his visitation of the same year, directed inquiries to be made on these points in a manner which shows that they were existing, and not merely anticipated evils.[1258]

* * * * *

Fortunately for the character of the Anglican clergy, the reign of reaction was short. On the 17th of November, 1558, Queen Mary closed her unhappy life, and Cardinal Pole followed her within sixteen hours. The Marian persecution had been long enough and sharp enough to give to heresy all the attractions of martyrdom, thus increasing its fervor and enlarging its circle of earnest disciples; and the sudden termination of that persecution, before it had time to accomplish its work of extirpation, left the reformers more zealous and dangerous than ever. Heresy had likewise been favored by the discontent of the people arising from the disastrous and expensive war with France, which aided the improvident restoration of the church lands in impoverishing the exchequer and in rendering necessary heavy subsidies from the nation, repaid only by cruelty and misfortune. Dread of Spanish influence also had a firm hold of the imagination of the masses, while the church itself was especially unpopular, as the conviction was general that the ill-success of Mary’s administration was attributable to the control exercised by ecclesiastics over the public affairs. Under such auspices, the royal power passed into the hands of a princess who, though by nature leaning to the Catholic faith and disposed to tread in the footsteps of her father, was yet placed by the circumstances of her birth in implacable hostility to Rome, and who held her throne only on the tenure of waging eternal warfare with reaction. The reformers felt that the doom of Catholicism was sealed. Emerging from their hiding-places and hastening back from exile, the religious refugees proceeded at once to practise the rites of Edward VI. Elizabeth, however, after ordering some changes in the Roman observances, forbade, on the 27th of December, all further innovations until the meeting of Parliament, which was convoked for January 23, 1559.

Parliament assembled on the appointed day and sat until the 8th of May. It at once passed acts resuming the ecclesiastical crown lands and restoring the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and it repealed all of Mary’s legislation concerning the power of the papacy. Several other bills were adopted modifying the religion of the kingdom, with a view of discovering some middle term which should unite the people in a common form of belief and worship.[1259] Anxious to avoid all extremes, it negatived the measures introduced by the ardent friends of the Reformation, and among the unsuccessful attempts was one which proposed to restore all priests who had been deprived on account of marriage. This, indeed, was laid aside by the special command of the queen herself.[1260]

The question of clerical marriage was thus left in a most perplexed and unsatisfactory condition. The Six Articles had been repealed by Edward VI., and had been virtually revived by Mary; but Mary’s efforts had been to restore the independent jurisdiction of the church, and she had therefore not continued to regard the Six Articles as in force, the canons of synods and the legatine constitutions of Pole being the law of her ecclesiastical establishment. This was now all swept away, a statute to fill the void was refused, and men were left to draw their own deductions and act at their own peril. Elizabeth refused the sanction of law to sacerdotal marriage, and would not restore the deprived priests, yet she did not enforce any prohibitory regulations, and even promoted many married men. Dr. Parker, the religious adviser of Ann Boleyn, who had left him in charge of her daughter’s spiritual education, was married, and one of Elizabeth’s earliest acts was to nominate him for the vacant primacy of Canterbury, which after long resistance he was forced to accept. The uncertainty of the situation and the anxiety of those interested are well illustrated by a letter to Dr. Parker, dated April 30th, just before the rising of Parliament, from Dr. Sandys, afterwards Bishop of Worcester: “The bill is in hand to restore men to their livings; how it will speed I know not.... Nihil est statutum de conjugio sacerdotum, sed tanquam relictum in medio. Lever was married now of late. The queen’s majesty will wink at it, but not stablish it by law, which is nothing else but to bastard our children.”[1261] In this, Dr. Sandys spoke nothing but truth, and those who were married were obliged formally to have their children legitimated, as even Dr. Parker found it necessary to do this in the case of his son Matthew.[1262]

At length Elizabeth made up her mind, and in the exercise of her royal supremacy she asked for no act of Parliament to confirm her decree. Archbishop Parker has the credit of being the most efficient agent in overcoming her repugnance to the measure, and the ungracious manner in which she finally accorded the permission shows how strong were the prejudices which he had to encounter. In June, 1559, she issued a series of “Injunctions to the Clergy and Laity” which restored the national religion to nearly the same position as that adopted by Edward VI., and it is curious to observe that when she comes to speak of sacerdotal matrimony, she carefully avoids the responsibility of sanctioning it herself, but assumes that the law of Edward is still in force. All that she does, therefore, is to surround it with such limitations and restrictions as shall prevent its abuse, and although this form had perhaps the advantage of establishing the legality of all preëxisting marriages, yet the regulations promulgated were degrading in the highest degree, and the reason assigned for permitting it could only be regarded as affixing a stigma on every pastor who confessed the weakness of his flesh by seeking a wife.[1263]

From the temper of these regulations it is manifest that if Elizabeth yielded to the advice of her counsellors and to the pressure of the times, she did not give up her private convictions or prejudices, and that she desired to make the marriage of her clergy as unpopular and disagreeable as possible. It was probably for the purpose of meeting her objections that the order for a return of the clergy, issued by Archbishop Parker, October 1st, 1561, contained in the blanks issued the unusual entry classifying them as married or unmarried,[1264] and Strype informs us that in the Archdeaconry of London the returns show the ministry for the most part to have been filled with married men.[1265] Even the haughty spirit of the Tudor, thus, could not restrain the progress which had now fairly set in. Those around her who controlled the public affairs were all committed to the Reformation, and were resolved that every point gained should be made secure. When, therefore, in 1563, there was published a recension of the Forty-two Articles issued by Edward VI. in 1552, resulting in the well-known Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, care was taken that the one relating to the liberty of marriage should be made more emphatic than before. Not content with the simple proposition of the original that “Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God’s law either to vow the estate of a single life, or to abstain from marriage,” the emphatic corollary was added, “Therefore it is lawful for them as for all other Christian men to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to Godliness”[1266]—such as we find it preserved to the present day. This specific declaration in a special article marks the necessity which was felt to place the matter beyond controversy, as a rule of practice. The Articles on Justification and Works of Supererogation (Arts. xi. and xix.) would have sufficed, so far as principle was concerned.

This was not an empty form. Not only the right to marry at their own discretion, thus expressly declared, did much to relieve them from the degrading conditions laid down by the queen, but the revival and strengthening of the article marked a victory gained over the reaction. When, in 1559, the queen appointed a commission to visit all the churches of England and enforce compliance with the order of things then existing, the articles prepared for its guidance enjoin no investigation into opinions respecting priestly marriage, showing that to be an open question, concerning which every man might hold his private belief.[1267] After the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, however, this latitude was no longer allowed. In 1567 Archbishop Parker’s articles of instruction for the visitation of that year enumerate, among the heretical doctrines to be inquired after, the assertion that the Word of God commands abstinence from marriage on the part of ministers of the church.[1268] As we shall see, it was about the same time that the council of Trent likewise erected the question of clerical marriage into a point of belief.

Yet Elizabeth never overcame her repugnance to the marriage of the clergy, nor is it, perhaps, to be wondered at when we consider the contempt in which she held the church of which she was the head,[1269] and her general aversion to sanctioning in others the matrimony which she was herself always toying with and never contracting. When she made her favorites of both sexes suffer for any legalized indiscretions of the kind, it is scarcely surprising that she always looked with disfavor on those of the clergy who availed themselves of the privilege which circumstances had extorted from her, and which she would fain have withheld. When Archbishop Parker ventured to remonstrate with her on her popish tendencies, she sharply told him that “she repented of having made any married bishops.” This was a cutting rejoinder, but even more pointed was the insolence from which his life-long services could not protect his wife. The first time the queen visited the archiepiscopal palace, on her departure she turned to thank Mrs. Parker:—“And you—madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, so I know not what to call you—but, howsoever, I thank you.”[1270] So in Ipswich, in August, 1561, she found great fault with the marriage of the clergy, and especially with the number of wives and children in cathedrals and colleges—a feeling possibly justified by occasional disorders not unlikely to occur. In 1563 we find Sir John Bourne complaining to the Privy Council that the Dean and Chapter of Worcester had broken up the large organ, the pride of the cathedral, which had cost £200; the metal pipes whereof were melted into dishes and divided among the wives of the prebendaries and the case used to make bedsteads for them; the copes and ornaments, he added, would likewise have been distributed had not some of the unmarried men prevented it, “and as by their Habit and Apparel you might know the Priests wives, and by their Gate in the Market and the Streets from an hundred other Women: so in the Congregation and Cathedral Church they were easy to be known by placing themselves above all other of the most ancient and honest Calling of the said City.”[1271] There was no lack of persons to pour such stories into the queen’s ear, and, with her well-known tendencies, it is no wonder that her counsellors found it difficult to restrain her to the simple order which she issued from Ipswich, declaring “that no manner of person, being either the head or member of any college or cathedral church within this realm, shall, from the time of the notification hereof in the same college, have, or be permitted to have, within the precinct of any such college, his wife, or other woman, to abide and dwell in the same, or to frequent and haunt any lodging within the same college, upon pain that whosoever shall do to the contrary shall forfeit all ecclesiastical promotions in any cathedral or collegiate church within this realm.” Burghley, in sending this royal mandate to Parker, remarks, “Her Majesty continueth very evil affected to the state of matrimony in the clergy. And if [I] were not therein very stiff, her Majesty would openly and utterly condemn and forbid it. In the end, for her satisfaction, this injunction now sent to your Grace is devised. The good order thereof shall do no harm. I have devised to send it in this sort to your Grace for your province; and to the Archbishop of York for his; so as it shall not be promulged to be popular.”[1272] It is doubtless to this occurrence that we may attribute the last relic of clerical celibacy enforced among Protestants, that of the Fellows of the English Universities.