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PATHS NOT TAKEN IN THE BRITISH REFORMATIONS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

ALEC RYRIE
ALEC RYRIE*
Affiliation:
Durham University
*
Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RSalec ryrie@durham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Traditional historiographies of the Reformation, seeing it as a unified, directed transition from Catholicism to Protestantism, seem increasingly untenable. This article looks in detail at three individuals from the British Reformation whose careers did not fit this pattern: a Scotsman, John Eldar, and two Englishmen, John Proctor and John Redman. Enthusiasts for Henry VIII's Reformation, they found themselves alarmed, but disempowered and compromised, in the face of Edward VI's more radical religious changes. Redman died in 1551, but Proctor and Eldar both celebrated Mary I's Catholic restoration, while not entirely forgetting their Henrician sympathies. The article argues that these men represent a distinctive religious strand in Reformation Britain. Such ‘latter-day Henricians’ valued Henry VIII's distinctive Reformation: anti-papal, anti-heretical, sacramental, Erasmian, and Biblicist. The vicissitudes of religious politics in both England and Scotland in the 1540s and 1550s left no space for such beliefs, although the article suggests that traces of Henricianism can be seen in Elizabeth I herself. It also argues that the impotence of the latter-day Henricians under Edward VI is a symptom of the paralysing weakness of all English religious conservatives in the reign, a predicament from which they were rescued only by Mary's restoration.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Diarmaid MacCulloch and to Nick Thompson for conversations which informed this article, and to audiences in Oxford, Cambridge, and Aberdeen who heard and commented on earlier versions.

References

1 W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and all that (London, 1930), p. 54.

2 Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: religion, politics and society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993).

3 Amongst many examples, the outstanding study of this kind is Norman Jones, The English Reformation: religion and cultural adaptation (Oxford, 2002).

4 John W. O'Malley, Trent and all that: renaming Catholicism in the early modern era (Cambridge, MA, 2000).

5 This account of Eldar's career taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB); British Library (BL), Royal MS 18.A.xxxviii, fos. 1–17; John Eldar, The copie of a letter sent in to Scotlande (RSTC 7552: London, 1555); Barber, Peter M., ‘Mapping Britain from afar’, Mercator's World, 3 (1998), pp. 20–7Google Scholar.

6 The manuscripts are undated, but internal and external evidence suggest that the likeliest date is early 1544. Eldar's description of Scotland as being ‘reulid … be the advyse of the Cardinall’ and in ‘neid of a wyse gouernor’ (BL, Royal MS 18.A.xxxviii, fo. 1r–v) would make no sense before September 1543. Nor would his presumption that Henry VIII is planning an invasion, since it was only at the end of 1543 that England abandoned hopes for a negotiated settlement. If Eldar was already in the circle of the earl of Lennox at this point, that would also point to early 1544, as it was only in January 1544 that Lennox moved unambiguously to a pro-English stance. Eldar's annuity from Henry VIII was granted on 25 March 1544: James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (eds.), Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (London, 1862–1932) (L&P), xix (i) no. 278.71.

7 The letter is BL, Royal MS 18.A.xxxviii. The gazetteer, ‘An abstracte for Englisshe men to know the realme of Scotland thrugh out’, survives in two copies: BL, Harleian MS 289, fos. 4–5, and BL, Cotton MS Vespasian D.xviii, fos. 135–9 (the former is used here).

8 L&P, xix (i) nos. 278.71, 1035.10; xx (ii) no. 533.

9 BL Royal MS 18.A.xxxviii fos. 1v, 2r, 11r–v, 14r, 15r–v, 17r.

10 Alec Ryrie, The origins of the Scottish Reformation (Manchester, 2006), pp. 75–8.

11 The National Archives (TNA), SP 70/7 fos. 65r, 68r, 75r; SP 70/33 fo. 8r (Joseph Stevenson, ed., Calendar of state papers, foreign series, of the reign of Elizabeth (CSP Foreign), 1558–1559 (London, 1863), no. 1355, p. 562; CSP Foreign, 1561–1562 (London, 1867), no. 743; CSP Foreign, 1562 (London, 1867), no. 26); BL, Additional MS 35831, fo. 56r; BL, Harleian MS 289, fo. 75r (Joseph Bain, ed., Calendar of state papers relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots, 1547–1563 (Edinburgh, 1898), no. 1076).

12 Barber, ‘Mapping Britain’.

13 William Ferguson, Scotland's relations with England: a survey to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1994, cf. first edn, 1977), p. 59.

14 TNA, SP 70/7 fo. 65r (ciphered sections deciphered on fos. 68r, 75r) (CSP Foreign, 1558–1559, no. 1355, p. 562).

15 Eldar, Copie of a letter, sigs C7v–C8r, F1v–F2v.

16 Alec Ryrie, ‘Counting sheep, counting shepherds: the problem of allegiance in the English Reformation’, in Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds., The beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 98–105.

17 BL, Royal MS 18.A.xxxviii fo. 7r.

18 For most of what follows, see ODNB.

19 TNA, SP 49/7 fo. 49v (L&P, xix (i) no. 522).

20 Ryrie, Alec, ‘Reform without frontiers in the last years of Catholic Scotland’, English Historical Review, 119 (2004), pp. 27–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Paternoster controversy, see John Foxe, Actes and monuments of matters most speciall in the church (RSTC 11225: London, 1583), pp. 1274–5.

21 ODNB.

22 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: a life (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 407; idem, Tudor church militant (London, 1999), pp. 116–17.

23 Catharine Davies, A religion of the Word: the defence of the reformation in the reign of Edward VI (Manchester, 2002), ch. 2.

24 John Proctor, The fal of the late Arrian (RSTC 20406: London, 1549), sigs. A2r–A3v, A5v, A7r, A8r–v, B2v–B4r, B6r, C3r–Cv, E5r.

25 Marshall, Peter, ‘Mumpsimus and sumpsimus: the intellectual origins of a Henrician bon mot’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52 (2001), pp. 512–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Proctor, The fal of the late Arrian, sigs. B3r–Bv, C4v–B5r, D3r, D7r.

27 St Vincent of Lérins, trans. John Proctor, The waie home to Christ and truth leadinge from Antichrist and errour (RSTC 24754: London, 1554), sigs. A4v–A5r, B3r.

28 Proctor, The fal of the late Arrian, sigs. B5v–B6r.

29 Vincent, The waie home to Christ, sigs. A7r, B5r–B7r; John Proctor, The historie of wyates rebellion with the order and maner of resisting the same (RSTC 20407: London, 1554), fos. 88v–89r, 93v–94r; Proctor, The fal of the late Arrian, sig. D8v.

30 Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: evangelicals in the early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 187–91.

31 Vincent, The waie home to Christ, sigs. A6v, A8r.

32 Ibid., sig. A3r; ODNB.

33 Vincent, The waie home to Christ, sigs. A6v–A8r, C2v; Proctor, Historie, fo. 1r.

34 Vincent, The waie home to Christ, sig. A6v.

35 Lucy Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford, 2000), pp. 117–20.

36 Augustine, Twelue sermons of Saynt Augustine, now lately translated into English by Tho. Paynel, trans. Thomas Paynell (RSTC 923: London, 1553), sigs A2r, A3v–A4r.

37 John Angell, The agrement of the holye fathers, and Doctors of the churche, vpon the cheifest articles of Christian religion (RSTC 634: London, 1555?), sigs. A2v–A4r, fos. 74r–75r, 81r–83r; Angell, A collection or gatherynge together … concernyng the most holy and blessed body and blode of Christ to be royally present in the Sacrament of the Aulter (RSTC 634.5: London, 1556?), sigs A8v–B1r, C4r, E4r; cf. Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, p. 36.

38 ODNB; see also BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.v, fos. 43v–44r; TNA, SP 1/218 fo. 44r (L&P, xxi (i) no. 790.1); John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes (RSTC 11222: London, 1563), pp. 794, 799, 801, 854; James A. Muller, ed., The letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 325, 365; Guildhall Library, London, MS 9531/12 fo. 108v; BL, Royal MS 7.c.xvi, fo. 92r. The most valuable recent treatment of Redman's career, to which I am indebted, is Ashley Null, ‘John Redman, the Gentle Ambler’, in C. S. Knighton and Richard Mortimer, eds., Westminster Abbey reformed, 1540–1640 (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 38–74.

39 Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, pp. 166, 168; Christopher Haigh, Reformation and resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), p. 164; Foxe, Actes and monuments (1563), p. 1558 recte 1570.

40 John Redman, A compendious treatise called the complaint of grace compiled by … Ihon Redman … nowe newly and first set furth by Thomas Smyth (RSTC 20826: London, 1556); John Redman, ed. William Crashaw, The complaint of grace, continued through all ages of the world. Written many yeares ago, by Doctor Redman, then president of Trinity Colledge in Cambridge. Printed in Popish times, fasly and corruptly (RSTC 20826.5: London, 1609).

41 Null, ‘John Redman, the Gentle Ambler’; Redman, The complaint of grace, pp. 68–9.

42 Redman, The complaint of grace, pp. 58–9, 61, 67, 71, 76–9.

43 Foxe, Actes and monuments (1563), pp. 867–74.

44 Ibid., pp. 867–70, 873.

45 ODNB (Young); Foxe, Actes and monuments (1563), pp. 870, 872, 874.

46 TNA, SP 10/7 fos. 39v–40r, 64r, 81v (C. S. Knighton, ed., Calendar of state papers of the reign of Edward VI, 1547–1553 (London, 1992), nos. 222, 251, 271).

47 Patrick Collinson, ‘Andrew Perne and his times’, in Patrick Collinson, David McKitterick, and Elisabeth Leedham-Green, Andrew Perne: quatercentenary studies (Cambridge, 1991), p. 4.

48 Judith Maltby, Prayer book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998), p. 2.

49 Peter Marshall, ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Henry VIII and the semantics of schism’, in Ethan Shagan, ed., Catholics and the Protestant nation (Manchester, 2005), pp. 22–48.

50 Ryrie, Origins of the Scottish Reformation, pp. 107–13, 187–9.

51 Cameron, James K., ‘“Catholic Reform” in Germany and the pre-1560 Church in Scotland’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 20 (1979), pp. 105–117Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Cologne Reformation and the Church of Scotland’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979), pp. 39–64.

52 In contrast to my earlier view in Alec Ryrie, ‘Divine kingship and royal theology in Henry VIII's Reformation’, Reformation, 7 (2002), pp. 76–7.

53 Gardiner, Letters, pp. 299–302, 322–5, 365.

54 A copye of a letter contayning certayne newes, & the articles or requestes of the Deuonshyre & Cornyshe rebelles (RSTC 15109.3: London, 1549), sig. B6r.

55 John Hooper, The later writings of Bishop Hooper, ed. Charles Nevinson (Cambridge, 1852), p. 129.

56 Gardiner, Letters, p. 322.

57 TNA, SP 1/212, fos. 111r–112r (L&P, xx (ii) no. 1030).

58 Doran, Susan, ‘Elizabeth I's religion: the evidence of her letters’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), p. 720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Ryrie, ‘Reform without frontiers’.

60 Ethan Shagan, ‘Confronting compromise: the schism and its legacy in mid-Tudor England’, in his Catholics and the Protestant nation (Manchester, 2005), esp. pp. 59–61.

61 Vincent, The waie home to Christ, sig. A3r.