CHRISTOPHER HAIGH: THE ENGLISH REFORMATION REVISED
Historiography of English Reformation
Professor A G Dickens’ ‘The English Reformation’ has stood as the unquestioned rival in its field for over 20 years. It is a highly sophisticated account of a story first told by John Foxe in 1563. Foxe, like Dickens, had investigated pre-history of Reformation, and had contrasted superstition and tyranny of medieval Catholic Church with honest piety of discontented proto-Protestants, spoken of growing power of Protestantism furthered by ideas and experiences of ordinary Christians eager to break away from priestly control.
Revisionism has attacked the Foxe-Dickens approach. Revisionist attack first mounted against prevailing interpretations of origins of the English Civil War. Revisionists have also critiqued the Whig-Protestant versions of English history. They counter the idea that English Protestant history saw a number of rises: rise of new monarchy, rise of Protestantism, rise of gentry, rise of Puritanism, rise of Parliament, rise of Civil War. For revisionists, the era was marked much more by conservatism, continuity and orthodoxy than by such revolutionary ‘rises’. Also, they raise the idea that only because the Protestant reformation happened does not mean that it was desirable; it does not imply a deep-seated popular demand for religious change. The Lollards continued to be a marginalised heretic group that were more of a problem created by the monarchy to mirror its own fears, than a group important for bringing in Protestantism by introducing Calvinist, Erasmian and Lutheran ideas in England.
Christopher Haigh talks of 2 horizontal matrices interlaced with 2 vertical ones. While the horizontal matrices rest on the debate over the pace of the English Reformation, others debate over whether it was from above or from below. Of those who feel that the English Reformation was a rapid imposition from above, G R Elton is the foremost proponent. For him, the Reformation was initiated under Henry VIII and carried further by Edward VI’s reforms, with imposition of Protestant liturgy, destruction of Catholic Church furniture, and a preaching campaign to carry the Gospel into the villages. For him, by 1553 England was almost fully Protestant. Peter Clark validates this by his study of Kent, within the Church of Kent, Cranmer and his preachers were crucial to the progress of Protestantism, and reformers took control of the administrative machine.
However, ‘Reformation from above’ depended for its effectiveness on the cooperation of the justices of the peace and diocesan administrators, who seem to have been unsatisfactory proponents of reform. In this sense, Prof Dickens has stressed on religious rather than pol roots of the Reformation, and has sought to demonstrate the links between Lollardism and Protestantism to explain advance of Protestantism at the popular level. Dickens’ interpretation of the Reformation focuses on conversion rather than coercion, with Protestantism spreading in the localities by the uncoordinated effort of the radical clergy, itinerant clothworkers and Bible-reading anticlerical gentry. Therefore, it is the scene of a ‘rapid Reformation from below’.
Revisionists find that a picture of a moribund, dispirited and repressive institution which failed to meet the needs of its people became more and more difficult to sustain. Indeed, except in areas in and around London, there is surprisingly little solid evidence of conflict between clergy and laity. Protestantism was above all religion and the Word, the preached word and the printed word, and it stressed salvation through a God-given faith supported by a reading of the Scriptures and an attendance at sermons. But the Reformation shift from a ritualistic to a bibiocentric presentation of religion spelled disaster in the countryside. This was because the magical and communal rituals of the later-medieval Church met important parish needs. The Reformation abolished these significant rural rituals, and attempted to impose a band of personalised religion that was more suited to the needs of the gentry and the literate townsmen.
Therefore according to Haigh, at the level of rural England a rapid reformation, whether from above or from below, cannot be visualised. Rather, a third group of historians has presented a Reformation which was imposed from above by authority, but which had only a slow impact on the localities. Penry Williams has suggested that the early Reformation infected the statute book more effectively than the parishes, and that popular Catholicism was broken only by official preaching, printing and prosecution in the reign of Elizabeth. A I Rowse’s study of Cornwall reveals that there was a power struggle between 2 parties for religious dominance. Under Edwards Vi, there were attempts at imposing religious change upon the Cornish, though repression following the Western Rebellion of 1549 weakened popular resistance. A coalition of aggressive coastal gentry in the 1570s broke the conservatism of the inland gentry, and thereafter there was no effective bar on the imposition of religious reform. In Durham, Lancashire, Derby and Sussex, the Protestant movement therefore had little impact. In the 1580s, this was reversed, and anti-Catholic laws were now enforced in the well-governed parts of the country, where radical preachers could work unmolested.
Those advocating ‘slow reformation from below’ include Patrick Collinson, who has treated Elizabethan Puritanism as the evangelical phase of the English Reformation. Margaret Spufford in Cambridgeshire talks of handfuls of Protestants in the villages in 1540s, that began to have a significant impact in the 1560s and 70s, and Protestant enthusiasm peaked only in the 1590s. Such proponents feel that the absence of serious recorded heresy cases under Mary shows that the early Reformation had failed. Margaret Bowker’s survey of the diocese of Lincoln is taken as the ideal case in point, since Lincoln was a well-administered diocese that included a university, had strong Lollard influence and important towns. But strong clerical inducements for a powerful career rather than anything else were the motivating factor for conforming to Henrician changes. There is little evidence of shifts in laity’s beliefs until the late 1540s. Marian visitations discovered isolated critics of Catholic doctrine, but it was not until the late 16th century, with remodelling of commissions of peace and diocesan administrations, and with redistribution of clerical patronage, that conservative interests were weakened, and Protestantism had a real and widespread impact. Thus, Lincoln is an example of ‘slow reformation from below’.
So far, only one general account of the period has accepted the possibility of another outcome and presented the Reformation as a long-fought struggle. It is clear from the works of Guy, Starkey, Elton, Smith, Slavin and Hoak that the main period of the early Reformation (1527-53) saw swirling factional conflict at court, in which religious policy was both a weapon and a prize. It may be that the settlement of 1559 was the result of a preconceived plan by Elizabeth and her advisers. There remained areas like Yorkshire and Cheshire, where religious change hardly had any effect. Therefore, at the local level the reformation was not a walkover for the Protestants, it was a real contest.
Haigh aptly concludes that of the case for a ‘rapid Reformation’ is usually substantiated from areas where socio-political conditions were favourable to change, the argument for a ‘slow Reformation’ is supported in evidence from counties with poor communications and less effective government.
Anticlericalism
Anticlericalism owes its popularity to utility and not veracity. It was both a cause of religious change and a reason for its acceptance. It is a concept that establishes the link between the statutes of 1489, 1497 and 1512 on benefit of clergy, the Hunne and Standish Affairs of 1512-15, hostility to Cardinal Wolsey, the ‘anticlerical legislation’ of 1529 and the Commons’ Supplication of 1532, to demonstrate a rising wave of discontent against the papal curia that ultimately led to a break with Rome, suppression of monasteries and attack on superstitions of the Catholic Church.
Haigh draws attention to the multiple branches within anticlericalism as opposed to the general manner in which most historians gloss over these differences and present hostility to the clergy as a unitary force critiquing the absenteeism, pluralism, nepotism and legalism of the Church. This represents modern rather than Tudor attitudes towards the Church and its functioning. If visitation presentiments of clergy are used as an index of lay attitudes rather than clerical conduct, it seems that the volume of criticism rose sharply under Elizabeth and this may reflect a new post-Reformation antagonism. This, in a sense, views anticlericalism as a result rather than a cause of the Reformation.
The crucial social leverage in early Tudor England was horizontal, between the propertied and the propertyless, rather than vertical, between laymen and priests, as Marxist historians have written. Thus, both indirect and direct evidences of resentment of the clergy are unclear. While philosophers like Tyndale and Fish were energetic Lutheran activists, Fisher, Gardiner and more thought attacks on the clergy were part of a Lutheran conspiracy to discredit the Church and weaken its resistance to heresy.
The main chronicle that shows anticlericalism is the work of Edward Hall, a parliamentary ally of Thomas Cromwell (minister to King Henry VIII). It is a narrative of how Henry VIII and his people threw off clerical oppression. When the Parliament met in 1529, the chief issue was not the king’s marriage, or even reform of the church; it was to decide the future of the Cardinal of York, Wolsey. Though Cardinal Wolsey was a target of criticism, as Haigh points out, Wolsey was not the Church, and the priests most men knew were chaste and ill-paid pastors. The passing of the Mortuaries, Probate and Pluralities Acts (the 3 statutes of 1529) in quick succession was a factor in the Hunne affair, and in permanently excluding Wolsey from power by making allegations against him including improbable excesses in the fees he charged.
The point being made is that anticlerical sentiment was not a given, at least not at the popular level; it is on the basis of isolated cases that the argument is made. If pluralism within the Church and neglect of the Scriptures caused discontent, it was after rather than before the Reformation. The significance attached to the 3 statutes of 1529 is unwarranted, and it is misleading to label the Parliament which passed them ‘The Anticlerical Commons’.
The ‘Commons Supplication against the Ordinances’ and the Annates Act tell a different story. In 1532, Thomas Cromwell got these acts passed with great difficulty. Elton believes the Supplication was in response to popular anticlerical protest that was probably a preconceived attack on Church courts. The Annates Bill was designed to further the king’s annulment of marriage by challenging papal annates. That a large majority of those prosecuted in the Supplication admitted to charges against them reveals that they accusations were not made for the sake of fees, but for reasons of actual religious discontent. It has been suggested that the real reason which moved the Commons to pass these bills was the fear of heresy prosecutions and the inability of laymen to provide a convincing defence. Moreover, the lawyers stood to gain from the attack on the Jurisdiction of the Church, since the scope of ‘spirituality’ was a lively issue among them. The Common Pleas which they launched were aimed to acquiring some of the power then exercised by the Church, which they believed to be their business. A series of prohibitions and writs challenged the Church’s power to hear contract cases. Thus, the Supplication has been put down to either personal Cromwellian vendetta against the Church, or a lawyers’ tactic to wrest power away from the Church.
From the 1530s, as preaching of reformed religion and official limitation on the coercive power of the Church weakened respect for its institutions and its sanctions, the courts found it more and more difficult to enforce appearances and obedience for the Church. Even so, the official campaign against Church jurisdiction did not go much further, and volume of litigation boomed, probably due to expansion of tithe business, in which plaintiffs were often the clergy, and the laymen too beginning to initiate larger no. of cases.
Another reason why there could have been possible resentment against the church was the punishment it meted out to the poor for their sexual irregularities. But the pastors were, on the whole, exhorted to prevent any bastard children, and the possible allegation against the Church would have been not its oppressive punishments, but their ineffective implementation. From the 1580s, ‘reformation of manners’ increased persecution against sexual offenders and fornicators. Thus, even here, anticlericalism was an Elizabethan consequence and not a Henrician cause.
The imposition of tithe by the Church has also been cited as a reason for the growth of popular anticlericalism. But tithe litigation was almost always about interpretation of local custom rather than the principle of tithing, even though there were many cases of local struggle over payment of tithe, and some of these dragged on for years and caused obvious bitterness. So one may hardly suppose that tithe-paying was popular, but in general tithe does not seem to have been a divisive issue before the Reformation.
Thus the 3 classes of evidence which historians use to try and demonstrate anticlericalism: literary, legislative and litigatory— are weak foundations for such a significant edifice. In the 1510s and 20s, there was complaint about inadequate parish clergy and parasitic monks, but these came from some intellectuals rather than the laymen. Nevertheless, not all priests were worthy of the privileges they were endowed with. The high level of recruitment to the secular clergy does not suggest that laymen were contemptuous of priesthood. Financial attractiveness of priestly life was low and falling, and therefore evidence of ordinations is surprising. Bequests to the Church, like recruitment, were high in no. and fell rapidly only after the 1530s. Personal abuse of clergy wasn’t common before Reformation, and defamation cases were rare, if any. Thus, the English Church had trouble with its laity not before the Reformation, but from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, when clergymen reduced.
The post-Reformation context of criticism was different, and made individual clashes significantly dangerous, which is when anticlerical sentiment peaked.