Good Queen Mary

“Sterility was the keynote of her reign,” thundered A.F. Pollard, doyen of Tudor historians in the interwar years, when passing judgment on the brief reign of Mary I, Roman Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and half-sister of Elizabeth I. In Pollard’s convenient Whig/Protestant (or, at any rate, anti-Catholic) view, Mary was simply a half-Spanish bigot, her marriage to Philip II of Spain as politically inept as it was barren, her government confused and amateurish, her attempt to undo the “inevitable” Reformation and restore the old Catholic order doomed to fail, her right-hand man in attempting this, Reginald Cardinal Pole, an anachronistic fumbler.

Above all, Mary’s brutal persecution of her Protestant subjects damned her cause forever, not least because it was to be famously recorded by the martyrologist John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, a book which was to be found on most English gentlemen’s bookshelves, and burnt anti-popery deeply into the English psyche. Indeed, that book was a grandiose piece of historical theology claiming to trace a bloody struggle between truth and Antichrist down the centuries, portraying Mary’s violence as the last fling of the forces of darkness and proclaiming England’s manifest destiny to lead the way to the universal triumph of the Protestant cause.

For Foxe, as for many of his coreligionists, that Mary and Pole should have died suddenly on the same day, and that their abominable campaign should thus have been brought to a sudden halt just when it seemed to be invincible, was final proof that God is a Protestant. For Catholics, those deaths, which brought about the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth and the swift overturning of Mary’s religious policies, were a baffling disaster.

In recent decades, much of what the likes of Pollard regarded as virtually self-evident has been severely challenged. Probably no part of English history has been so thoroughly revised as Mary’s reign. The queen, we must now agree, was both courageous and widely popular. Her marriage made much political and economic sense. Her husband conducted himself very circumspectly. All princes, Catholic and Protestant, persecuted religious dissenters in the 16th century–and for long afterwards–and most of their subjects would have found the idea of religious toleration, i.e., religious pluralism, unthinkable.

True, Mary’s persecution was more bloody than any before or since in English history, but it claimed far fewer victims than did religious bigotry in other parts of Europe and was acceptable to most of the queen’s subjects. Pole was no fool and nor were Mary’s councillors. The latter included seasoned servants of the crown who had been tested for their loyalty to Mary and the Church during the reigns of Henry VIII and his son and were well equipped to meet the day-to-day political demands of the new reign.

Then consider the challenges Pole faced. We may be familiar with the story of the suppression of hundreds of England’s religious houses, chantries, and religious guilds between 1536 and 1553, and the dispersal of their buildings and lands via the crown into the all-too-eager hands of the possessing classes. What is less well known is how, by 1553, Henry and his son bled what remained of the English Church. Bishops and cathedral chapters had had their landed possessions relentlessly pilfered, they and all parish clergy had been heavily taxed, cathedrals and parish churches had been stripped of all their Catholic vestments, bells, and other “gear”–so much so that Mary had to lend a mitre to one of her new Catholic bishops when he was installed in his impoverished see.

Mary quickly relieved the surviving Church of its heavy burden of royal taxation and started to help English monastic life and religious guilds to revive. But Pole still faced more than economic problems. Where and how to refurbish the parish churches with missals, vestments, and church plate, for example? Perhaps even worse, many parish clergy who had been validly ordained by Catholic bishops had taken advantage of the abolition of clerical celibacy during the Protestant Edward VI’s reign to marry. Many other parish clergy were invalidly ordained (because ordained under the Protestant Ordinal of 1550) but, if they had acquired a wife, were validly married.

How, then, to distinguish between those who were validly ordained Catholic priests who had acquired “concubines” (but could continue to act as Catholic priests if they put away their “wives” and did penance) from those validly ordained who refused to put away their wives? And again, how to distinguish between those who had been validly married (because not authentically ordained Catholic priests) but were to be ejected from their livings because they would not renounce their Protestant leanings, and those unmarried ex-Protestant clerics who, for whatever reason, righteous or otherwise, had seen the light and wanted to be ordained (not reordained) as Catholic priests?

Sifting out such complex personal canonical problems required enormous patience. Pole had embarked on this promptly and efficiently, with Rome’s guidance.

When Mary ascended the throne in 1553, England was still a largely Catholic country (even if much of its Catholicism was on the defensive and residual) and English Protestants still a small (and increasingly divided) minority. There was, therefore, no intrinsic reason why there could not have been as successful a Catholic recovery in England as there was later in many other parts of Europe. What Mary and Pole needed was time–and that was denied them. They were carried out of this life within a few hours of each other on November 17, 1558. That is why England is not a Catholic country today, one could argue, and why one recent historian (who has no religious axe to grind) has written that the only mistake that Mary made was to die.

And now the learned, astonishingly productive Eamon Duffy has joined the fray, revising the revisionists upwards–dramatically. In this powerful, punchy book he argues that the Marian restoration of English Catholicism was much more than the rather low-profile and sometimes timid attempt to return to the past which even the recent revisionists have portrayed. No, says Duffy (and I must now agree), it was a full-blooded attempt to introduce into England the “new” Catholicism of the fledgling Counter-Reformation.

It was deeply inspired by the Council of Trent–still in progress–and even helped to inspire it. It had all the hallmarks of vibrant Counter-Reformation Catholicism: a truly pastoral, preaching episcopate (and Duffy is especially indignant about recent historians who have accused Mary’s bishops of neglecting the pulpit); skilled use of the printing press for catechetical purposes; hearty loyalty to Rome; a strong emphasis on affective spirituality and Eucharistic devotion (the latter exemplified by replacing the small pyx hanging from roof or wall by the tabernacle on the high altar); proud promotion of “genuine” martyrs like Thomas More and John Fisher (Nicholas Harpsfield’s biography of More, Duffy argues brilliantly, being a perfect apologia for the Marian regime).

Pole saw, as did Trent eventually, the urgent need for what we know as seminaries–for the better formation of the rank-and-file clergy. Duffy suggests that the cardinal even planned to turn the English hospice in Rome into one–thus anticipating by some 25 years the opening of the Venerabile, the English seminary in the Eternal City. Indeed, in Duffy’s view, Pole showed extraordinary pastoral vision, energy, and sensitivity; and, given the immensity and complexity of the task which had faced him, he was remarkably successful.

I confess that I think Duffy is right.

And what of the infamous Marian persecution? 284 people, including 58 women, were brutally put to death by burning in four or so years. Perhaps some 30 more died in prison. Many more were flushed out by royal and episcopal commissions and interrogated. Several hundred fled to mainland Europe; others went into hiding at home.

Of course, this appalls us today. But we must not impute modern sensibilities to our 16th-century ancestors. Death was then the penalty for many crimes–even petty ones. Some of Mary’s victims were members of radical “left-wing” Protestant sects which her father and half-brother had had no hesitation in persecuting before her. Mary’s burnings were usually carefully orchestrated and attracted large numbers of spectators. Some of these (Protestant sympathizers) went to be edified and to encourage the victims; others (Catholics) went to shout derision and mock; many went for entertainment. There is little evidence, Duffy points out, of people being shocked or of growing revulsion towards these horrible Christian pogroms. Rather, since the persecution peaked in 1557 and declined thereafter, it is at least arguable that it was proving successful.

Finally, we must remember that Mary and Pole–and many others–were convinced that Protestantism was the mother of sedition, social disruption, and even treason. After all, had not the outrageous attempt to deny Mary the throne (the Lady Jane Grey plot) been a thoroughly Protestant one? Was not Wyatt’s rebellion early in her reign inspired by anti-Catholicism? Were there not numerous examples of individual Protestants disturbing the peace in towns and villages? Were not Protestants who had fled to safety abroad screaming at their coreligionists at home to resist the wicked Jezebel? Mary could reasonably believe that a good Protestant could not be a loyal subject–as, later, Elizabeth claimed that a good Catholic could not be a true Englishman.

Pole, Duffy insists, fully approved of and promoted the persecution. Mary and her Privy Council did likewise, even encouraging reluctant bishops. Nonetheless, the latter often went to extraordinary lengths to secure recantations (one bishop even entertained a dissenter to dinner) and were often successful. Especially if the “heretic” was someone of substance, assent to some vague, even quite ambiguous, formula would suffice to earn discharge–because of the propaganda value of the “conversion.” But bishops’ eagerness to secure recantations (however insincere), and their reluctance to send fellow humans to the funeral pyre, were born not of humanitarianism or squeamishness but, as Duffy chillingly reminds, of the conviction that they were thereby saving people from the inevitable punishment that awaited the unrepentant heretic, namely Hell’s fire.

All this is engrossing. It would cause an A.F. Pollard not merely to turn in his grave but to implode. Yet for me, the most exciting part is still to come–in the last chapter, a mere 19 pages, where, having reminded us of how thoroughly not only the episcopate but also the higher echelons of the clergy (e.g., cathedral chapters) and the universities, especially Oxford, had been re-Catholicized, Duffy goes on to show how many of those who fled (or were ousted) when England returned to the Protestant fold on Elizabeth’s accession played a conspicuous role in advancing the Counter-Reformation on the Continent.

The Marian diaspora (which I think has never before been fully appreciated) produced men like Thomas Stapleton (one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the century) ensconced in Louvain with distinguished fellow-refugees, William Allen founding the first full-blown Counter-Reformation seminary in Douai in 1568, Harpsfield and Nicholas Sander producing a stream of polemical writings.

The Marians brought Pole’s vision of the importance of seminaries to the last sessions of Trent. Later on, Charles Borromeo, faced in Milan with a situation similar to that which Pole had confronted in England, took inspiration from the latter’s legatine program. And so on. Mary not only rescued English Catholicism and enabled it to survive decades of persecution; what happened in England between 1553 and 1558 was a prototype of the Catholic Reform which would later win back much of Germany, Poland, and the Habsburg lands.

Heady, brilliant stuff. Once again, Eamon Duffy has changed the landscape of English Reformation history. But I have two comments. Several of the most important points that he makes–the high quality of Mary’s bishops and the important role of -laymen, justices of the peace, sheriffs, mayors, and the like in pursuing Protestant dissenters–were made by Philip Hughes in his Reformation in England over 50 years ago. That courageous, if uneven, work was at its best when dealing with Mary’s religious policies. Indeed, here was the real beginning of that radical revision which Duffy has brought to a climax. But Duffy makes no mention of its author.

Second, while accepting all that he says about the Marian persecution, I wonder if there is not a crucial point still to be made. It is this: In 1553, when Mary came to the throne, English Protestantism was not only divided but also badly demoralized–because besmirched by the sleaze and political scandal of the previous reign (especially the Lady Jane Grey plot) and by that godless plunder and feathering of nests which had made a mockery of the promises and hopes that the huge wealth which the crown had seized from the Church would be used to succor the poor, and build schools, hospitals and roads, etc. Mary’s persecution allowed someone like Thomas Cranmer, former archbishop of Canterbury, to make amends for years of disgraceful time-serving with a heroic death. He was deeply implicated in the Lady Jane plot and therefore clearly guilty of treason. Mary should have hanged him as a traitor; her father and half-sister would not have hesitated to do so. Instead, she made him a martyr.

That was bad enough. But there was much worse to come. Many of those who went to the stake like Cranmer were “little” people–weavers, tanners, husbandmen, and the like–some of whom were semiliterate. They were far removed, socially, from the lofty heights of an archbishop and, unlike him, had never faltered. Their constancy and fortitude as they went to their horrible deaths (often singing psalms and praising the Lord) did something profoundly important for English Protestantism. It gave it back its self-respect.

Mary rescued English Catholicism. She did much to rescue English Protestantism, too. And Eamon Duffy has produced another dazzling book.

J.J. Scarisbrick, professor emeritus of history at the University of Warwick, is the author of Henry VIII.