Much Ado About the End of November

November 30th is an important day: it is the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, and thus the day to start the St. Andrew Christmas Novena, with this prayer said 15 (fifteen) times each day for 25 days:

Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment at which the Son of God was born of a most pure Virgin at a stable at midnight in Bethlehem in the piercing cold. At that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, to hear my prayers and grant my desires. (Mention your intentions here) Through Jesus Christ and His most Blessed Mother. Amen.

The prayer is all focused on the Nativity of Jesus (and doesn't even mention St. Andrew) and is named for the saint because we start praying it on his feast day!

As the Tudor Society explains, in 1554, the Feast of Saint Andrew was the date of the official reconciliation between England and the Catholic Church:

In Mary I's reign, 30th November became a day to celebrate the reconciliation of England and the papacy due to it being the anniversary of that reconciliation in 1554. On that day in 1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, papal legate, announced to Parliament and the King and Queen:

“And we, by the apostolike authoritie given unto us by the most holie lord pope Julius the third […] do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with the whole realm, and the dominions thereof, from all heresie and schism, and from all and every judgements, censures and pain for that cause incurred. And also wee do restore you againe to the unity of our mother the holie church [...]”

It was decreed that on 30th November every year “a solemn procession shall be held, in which not only the clergy of every place, but also the faithful members of Christ of the secular order, shall gather and renew the memory of so wonderful a blessing received from God... and that on the same day, in the church from which the procession shall set out, during the solemn rites of the mass, a sermon shall be preached to the people in which the reason for this solemnity shall be explained.”

In 1577, St. Cuthbert Mayne suffered martyrdom, found guilty of treason:

He was brought to trial in September; meanwhile his imprisonment was of the harshest order. His indictment under statutes of 1 and 13 Elizabeth was under five counts: first, that he had obtained from the Roman See a "faculty", containing absolution of the queen's subjects; second, that he had published the same at Golden; third, that he had taught the ecclesiastical authority of the pope in Launceston Gaol; fourth, that he had brought into the kingdom an Agnus Dei and had delivered the same to Mr. Tregian; fifth, that he had said Mass.

As to the first and second counts, the martyr showed that the supposed "faculty" was merely a copy printed at Douai of an announcement of the Jubilee of 1575, and that its application having expired with the end of the jubilee, he certainly had not published it either at Golden or elsewhere. As to the third count, he maintained that he had said nothing definite on the subject to the three illiterate witnesses who asserted the contrary. As to the fourth count, he urged that the fact that he was wearing an Agnus Dei at the time of his arrest was no evidence that he had brought it into the kingdom or delivered it to Mr. Tregian. As to the fifth count, he contended that the finding of a Missal, a chalice, and vestments in his room did not prove that he had said Mass.

Nevertheless the jury found him guilty of high treason on all counts, and he was sentenced accordingly. His execution was delayed because one of the judges, Jeffries, altered his mind after sentence and sent a report to the Privy Council. They submitted the case to the whole Bench of Judges, which was inclined to Jeffries's view. Nevertheless, for motives of policy, the Council ordered the execution to proceed. On the night of 27 November his cell was seen by the other prisoners to be full of a strange bright light. The details of his martyrdom must be sought in the works hereinafter cited. It is enough to say that all agree that he was insensible, or almost so, when he was disembowelled.

He is one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales.

In 1586/1587, Blessed Alexander Crow was hanged, drawn, and quartered in York. He was included among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1987.

In 1675, Cecilius Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, "Absolute Lord of Maryland and Avalon" died in England. He had fulfilled his father's goal of establishing a colony in British America where Catholics could worship freely (and other Christians too!). The Catholic Encyclopedia entry for him emphasizes several difficulties in his endeavors:

It was Lord Baltimore's intention, at first to come to America with the colonists, but as there were many enemies of his colonial project at home, he concluded to send his brothers, Leonard and George, at the head of the expedition. The former was appointed governor. The enemies of the charter, chiefly members of the London Company, did everything in their power to defeat the objects of the proprietor. It was claimed that the charter interfered with the grant of land of the Virginia Company and that, owing to its liberality, it would attract people from other colonies and depopulate them. The arguments of the enemies of the charter were of no avail, and finally the colonists, numbering twenty gentlemen and about three hundred labourers, embarked on the Ark and the Dove, in the harbour of Cowes, Nov., 1633. Before sailing, Leonard received instructions for the government of the colonists. Religious toleration was the keynote of Baltimore's policy throughout his long career. In spite of the fact that the Catholics were persecuted when Calvert's government was overthrown, every time his authority was restored persecution ceased and every faith had equal rights. When the Puritans were persecuted in Massachusetts, Baltimore offered them a refuge in Maryland, with freedom of worship. . . .

His absence from the colony produced a peculiar condition, the absence of laws. The charter gave the proprietor the right to make laws with the advice and consent of the freemen. The latter met in 1634-35 and passed "wholesome laws and ordinances." Feeling that this act had infringed on his rights, in his commission to the governor, April, 1637, the proprietor expressed his disapproval of all laws passed by the colonists. For the endorsement of the assembly of 1637-38, he sent a body of laws with his secretary, John Lewger. These laws were rejected by the assembly, as they were considered unsuited to the colony. A few laws not differing materially from those sent by Baltimore were agreed to and sent to the proprietor for his consent. At first his approval was withheld, and the colony was without laws. Later, however, his sanction was given to the laws in a commission to the governor, authorizing him to give his assent to the laws made by the freemen, which would make the laws binding until they were either approved or rejected by the proprietor. With this commission the privilege of initiative in matters of legislation was conceded to the colonists, the proprietor retaining the right of absolute veto. As this power was never used by Baltimore except in extreme cases, the colonists practically enjoyed freedom in self-government. . . .

Cecilius Calvert ruled over the colony for nearly forty years. Although he never interfered with the administration of details, he ruled at every turn with an iron hand.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us!

Saint Cuthbert Mayne, pray for us!

Blessed Alexander Crow, pray for us!

And may Cecilius Calvert rest in peace!

The Reconciliation of England with the Catholic Church

On November 30, 1554, Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Papal Legate, soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury, received the submission of the English Parliament and granted absolution to the entire kingdom, reconciling England to the Holy See and the universal Catholic Church. As both Alison Weir and H.F.M. Prescott comment in their biographies of Mary I, the first Queen Regnant of England and Ireland, this must have been one of the happiest days of her life as she witnessed this solemn act. She was married to Philip of Spain, her cousin had returned, Parliament and Convocation were both repenting of the acts led by her father and her half-brother to separate England from the Catholic Church--and she believed she was pregnant (as her doctors had told her).

For this day to occur, several things had to be arranged and decided. First of all, for the Papal Legate to arrive in England, the Act of Attainder against Reginald Pole had to be removed by Parliament. This was the Act that condemned his mother Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and many others to death. Parliament lifted this sentence of death and Mary invited the Papal Legate to return from exile on November 20, 1554. He would be the first Papal Legate present in England since the trial of her mother's marriage in 1529--when Katherine of Aragon appeared before Cardinal Campeggio and Cardinal Wolsey, appealed to Henry her husband and left the Court, impervious to pleas to return. The matter of former Church lands also had to be decided: Henry VIII and then Edward VI had seized the monasteries and then the chantries and the chantry schools, destroyed most of them, sold or given the lands to courtiers and others who benefited. Were these all to be given back?

The Papal Legate wanted them back, but Mary was concerned about alienating the Court and nobility her reign had so lately unified against the plots of Northumberland to replace her in the succession with Lady Jane Grey and that of Thomas Wyatt the younger to prevent the Spanish marriage and place her half-sister Elizabeth and young Edward Courtenay on the throne. She had to yield on the issue so that she could divest herself of the title Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England and give it back to the Pope. So the lands and property of the Church stayed with their current owners.
As you might imagine, Cobbett explores this issue of the "plunderers" as he calls them extensively in his chapter on the reign of Mary I:

But when the question came, whether the Parliament should restore the Papal Supremacy, the plunder was at stake ; for to take the Church property was sacrilege and if the Pope regained his power in the kingdom he might insist on restitution. The greater part of this property had been seized on eighteen years before. In many cases it had been divided and subdivided, in many the original grantees were dead. The common people, too, had in many cases become dependants on the new proprietors ; and besides, they could not so easily trace their connexion between their faith and that supremacy, as they could between their faith and the mass and the sacraments. The Queen, therefore, though she most anxiously wished to avoid giving in any way whatever her sanction to the plunder, was reduced to the necessity of risking a civil war for the Pope's supremacy, to leave her kingdom unreconciled to the Church, and to keep to herself the title of Head of the Church, to her so hateful, or to make a compromise with the plunderers. She was induced to prefer the latter ; though it is by no means certain that civil war would not have been better for the country, even if it had ended in the triumph of the plun- derers, which, in all human probability, it would not. But observe in how forlorn a state as to this question she was placed. There was scarcely a nobleman or gentleman of any note in her kingdom who had not in one way or another soiled his hands with the plunder." The Catholic bishops, all but Fisher, had assented to the abolition of the Pope's supremacy. Bishop Gardiner, who was now her High Chancellor, was one of these, though he had been deprived of his bishopric and imprisoned in the Tower because he opposed Cranmer's further projects. These Catholic bishops, and Gardiner especially, must naturally wish to get over this matter as quietly as possible ; for how was he to advise the Queen to risk a civil war for the restoration of that the abolition of which he had so fully assented to and so strenuously supported? And how was she to do anything without councillors of some sort?

On November 28 Cardinal Pole spoke to Parliament and asked them to repeal all the other acts that were obstacles to reunion. On November 29 Parliament did so and then petitioned Queen Mary to intercede with the Papal Legate for absolution and reunion with Rome (two members refused to sign the petition).

Then on St. Andrew's Day Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Mary's Chancellor, led the members of both houses of Parliament to kneel before the Papal Legate and Mary, presenting the petition. The petition proclaimed that Parliament was "very sorry and repentant of the schism and disobedience committed in this realm against the See Apostolic" and begged to be returned "into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church." As Cobbett describes it grandly and effusively:

Thus was England once more a Catholic country. She was restored to the " fold of Christ": but the fold had been plundered of its hospitality and charity, and the plunderers before they pronounced the "amen" had taken care that the plunder should not be restored. The Pope had hesitated to consent to this; Cardinal Pole, who was a man full of justice, had hesitated still longer; but, as we have seen before Gardiner, who was now the Queen's prime minister, and indeed all her council were for the compromise, and therefore these "amen" people while they confessed that they had sinned by that defection, in virtue of which defection, and of that alone, they got the property of the Church and the poor, while they prayed for absolution for that sin, while they rose from their knees to join the Queen in singing Te Deum in thanksgiving for that absolution, while they were doing these things they enacted that all the holders of Church property should keep it, and that any person who should attempt to molest or disturb them therein should be guilty of praemunire and be punished accordingly! 

Cobbett even considers this compromise the greatest error of Mary's reign. She should have made sure the monasteries and chantries were returned to the Church because then Cobbett believes, the Catholic culture and economy that existed before the Dissolution of the Monasteries would have been restored. He does praise Mary for restoring the religious properties like Westminster Abbey and Syon Priory--and the tenths and first fruits of those benefices--that her father had seized.

Cardinal Pole then welcomed "the return of the lost sheep" and granted absolution to the entire kingdom, proclaiming a new Holy Day on November 30: the Feast of Reconciliation. Unfortunately, Cardinal Pole and Mary I would have only three celebrations of this Feast (in 1555, 1556, and 1557)--both died on November 17, 1558.