July 18, 1538: Cromwell's Marian Bonfire

This is almost too timely: as statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary on church grounds, as well as public, not necessarily religious statues of Saint Junipero Serra and Saint Louis of France are threatened, defaced, desecrated, and destroyed, we have an historical example from the English Reformation to remember.

According to the Walsingham Blog's Facebook page today is the anniversary of the burning of many statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary--perhaps even including Our Lady of Walsingham--in 1538:

On the 14th of July 1538 Prior Vowell of Walsingham Priory reported to Thomas Cromwell that the royal commissioners had take the image of Our Lady from the chapel. 

On July 18th the Image that had for centuries been loved and venerated in its Holy House, and where so much prayer and pleading had poured forth, reached London, along with statues of Our Lady of Basingstoke, Caversham, Ipswich, Penrhys, Willesden, Worcester and others. They were taken to the residence of the Lord Privy Seal , Thomas Cromwell, Chelsea Manor, where they were burnt in the presence of the Lord Privy Seal himself.

Chelsea Manor had been Saint Thomas More's home. It was no accident Cromwell chose that location.

Bishop Hugh Latimer, as Gary Waller recounts in his book The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2011), rejoiced in the burning of these statues, proclaiming:

Here is confounded and overthrown the foolish opinion of the papists, which would have us to worship a creature before the Creator; Mary before her Son. These wise men do not so; they worship not Mary; and wherefore? Because God only is to be worshipped: but Mary is not God.

In 1538, in the late summer or autumn, in Chelsea or Smithfield or Tyburn, we can surmise – from both casual remarks recorded at the time and various histories and memoirs some years later – that one or more fires was lit and in it (or them) were burned statues, “images,” of the Virgin Mary, most probably those that had been brought from shrines dedicated to her at Doncaster, Ipswich, Penrhys, and Walsingham. Local records suggest that similar images from Caversham, along with roods from Bermondsey, Boxley, Islington, and others were added to this, or similar, fires elsewhere. In 1537, the reformist bishop Hugh Latimer had announced that in his own diocese there reigned “idolatry, and many kinds of superstition,” and during what Helen Parish terms 1538’s “long summer of iconoclasm,” he also named the statue of the Virgin at Worcester a “devil’s instrument.” He gloated that the statue, along with “her old sister of Walsingham, her young sister of Ipswich,” and statues from Doncaster and Penrhys, “would make a jolly muster” and, he added for good measure, unlike flesh-and-blood heretics, would not “be all day in burning.” There are conflicting accounts on the date or dates on which such a “jolly muster” took place, and exactly when and what “idols” were destroyed, whether publicly or privately, but, Latimer pronounced, they were destroyed because they had “been the instrument to bring many (I fear) to eternal fire.”

You might recall that Hugh Latimer preached a long sermon while Blessed John Forest was hanging in chains in preparation for his being burned alive on May 22, 1538, with a statue of a Welsh saint, Derfel Gadarn, being added to the pyre:

Father Forest was brought on a hurdle from prison in his tattered Franciscan habit to Smithfield and forced to hear Bishop Latimer’s sermon. After an hour’s preaching, Latimer asked Forest to respond. They argued and Forest even noted that he and Latimer had formerly agreed upon the important points of Catholic doctrine but that Latimer had succumbed to the offers of power and authority. He should instead have followed the examples of Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. Either Latimer or Cromwell then cried out, “Burn him! Burn him!”—enraged by what English witnesses called his stubbornness.

Latimer was not the only one rejoicing at the debasement and destruction of the statues (from the BHO entry for the priory of Walsingham):

John Husee, writing to Lord Lisle, on 18 June, also attempted to be witty on the same subject:

This day our late lady of Walsingham was brought to Lambithe (Lambeth), where was both my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Privy Seal with many virtuous prelates, but there was offered neither oblation nor candle. What shall become of her is not determined. (fn. 57)

Melancthon, on 1 November of the same year, exulted in the overthrow of the image of 'Mary by the Sea.' (fn. 58)

And Henry VIII, who had visited the Walsingham shrine in 1511, evidently approved of this iconoclasm:

Among the Lady Day accounts of 1538 [the Annunciation, March 25] the usual payments were made for the king's candle, and to the king's priest who sang before Our Lady at Walsingham. But when the Michaelmas payments came round the entry runs:

'For the king's candle before Our Lady of Walsingham, and to the prior there for his salary, nil.' (fn. 59)

Do not fear, however, because the prior, Richard Vowell, was well paid:

On 20 October, 1539, the late prior received a grant of the exceedingly large pension of £100 in reward for his obsequiousness and considerable bribes to Cromwell.

So as Catholics in the USA are reacting to what may be 2020's "long summer of iconoclasm", at least we may have the hope that justice may done to those who destroy private property. Otherwise, we must pray:

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

Birth of Jane Dormer, Future Duchess of Feria

Jane Dormer, the future Duchess of Feria, was born on Sunday, January 6, 1538. Her early biographer, Henry Clifford, noted the significance of the date:

Jane Dormer was born at Eythrope, not far from Aylesbury in the County of Buckingham, in her grandfather's house, on the 6th of January, the year of our Lord 1538, being Sunday, and the Feast of the Epiphany; therein presaging the virtues of her after life by coming into the world, when Christians were rejoicing in the birth of our Lord. In her baptism the name of Jane was given to her after her grandmother; and this name signifying grace, how well it did befit her will appear in her life. When she began to speak and discern and learn her duty, her natural inclinations might easily be seen. She was apt, very disciplinable, obedient, humble, awful, generous in her condition; so that she seemed a child only in years. She was much beloved by the servants and gentlewomen, that were in her grandmother's house, (for there were many of noble descent, commended by their parents, to learn good education and virtue in that house), all presaging, that so sweet conditions, in so tender years and so graceful a countenance, gave hope to produce answerable effects.

Note that "Jane" is a derivative of "John" meaning "God is gracious", so that's the reference Clifford makes to "this name signifying grace". By the beginning of 1538, Henry VIII's reformation of the Church in England was well underway with many of the monasteries being dissolved, shrines being destroyed; the Ten Articles, the Bishop's Book and other methods of determining what the new Church of England believed and taught, were developed: and Father Sebastian Newdigate, a Carthusian monk who had served at Henry VIII's court, had been hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn (on June 19, 1535).

The reason that last fact is important is the Sebastian Newdigate was Jane's grandmother's brother. Jane's grandmother was also named Jane and raised Jane until she went to Court. According to the 1888 Dictionary of National Biography:

In her early years she was the playfellow of Edward VI, whose tutor, Jane's maternal grandfather, would constantly send for her to read, play, dance, and sing with his pupil. Between Jane and Mary there sprang up a strong friendship, which continued unimpaired until the latter's death. They were inseparable companions, and often shared the same bedchamber; during the two months of Mary's last illness Jane Dormer was ever at her bedside, and it was into her hands that the dying queen committed her jewels to be handed over to Elizabeth. When Philip II came to England to marry Mary, he was accompanied by Don Gomez Suarez de Figueroa of Cordova, count of Feria, between whom and the queen's favourite maid of honour arose the attachment which led to their ultimate union. Jane's remarkable beauty and the sweetness of her disposition caused her hand to be sought in marriage by several English noblemen, among whom were Edward Courtenay, earl of Devonshire, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Earl of Nottingham, but by Mary's advice they were one and all rejected in favour of the Spaniard.

It's important to note that Jane's father's side of the family (the Dormer's) remained staunchly Catholic, while her mother's side of the family (the Sidney's) conformed to the Church of England.

Jane married the Count of Feria after Mary I died and then they left England for Spain, recognizing that Elizabeth  was not going to continue Mary's religious policies:

But before Philip was ready to return, Mary died, and Jane Dormer went back to her grandmother, now lodging in the Savoy. The Count of Feria, who was in England at the time, having been sent by Philip when he heard of the queen's sickness, strongly urged an immediate union, and accordingly the marriage took place on 29 Dec. 1558. The reason for this haste was the count's anticipation that the catholic supremacy was now at an end, and that consequently his stay in England would not be long. His fears were justified, and on learning that Elizabeth's coronation ceremony would not be in strict accordance with catholic usage, he refused, notwithstanding the queen's personal entreaty, to be present on the occasion, and at Philip's command prepared to leave the country. After arranging for his wife to follow him, he set out for Flanders in May 1559. At his wife's suggestion he obtained leave of the queen, in face of much opposition, to take with him the members of certain religious orders, including the Carthusian monks of Sheen, the nuns of St. Bridget of Sion, and the Dominican nuns of Dartford. The Countess of Feria remained at Durham House till the end of July, when Don Juan de Ayala arrived to escort her to Flanders. After a fare well interview with Elizabeth, who is variously stated by catholic and protestant writers respectively to have rudely slighted her and to have received her with marked affection, she started on her way to the continent, accompanied by her paternal grandmother, Alvara de Quadra, bishop of Aquila, and six attendant gentlewomen, among whom were included Lady Margaret Harrington, a sister of Sir William Pickering, Mrs. Paston, and Mrs. Clarentia, the favourite waiting-woman of Queen Mary. The journey was a triumphal progress.

Her biographer in the DNB, Alsager Richard Vian, pays tribute to her power and influence in Spain:

The duchess had the stronger character of the two, and her husband, in his will, left her sole guardian of their son and manager of his estates. At the time of his death he was in debt to the extent of three hundred thousand ducats, the whole of which she had cleared off before her son came of age and entered into possession of his estates. As a widow she continued to further the papal cause with unexampled zeal. More than once spies were dispatched from England to Spain to gain some insight into her supposed intrigues with the catholic church. At least four popes—Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Clement VIII, and Paul V—personally corresponded with her. All Catholics who came to Spain from England received a welcome at her house, and were provided according to their needs with food, clothes, or money. She used all her influence at court to procure the release of such fugitives as were imprisoned on their arrival; on one occasion she obtained freedom for thirty-eight Englishmen imprisoned at Seville, and among others who owed their release to her intercession was Sir Richard Hawkins. In all matters the piety of the Duchess of Feria took a practical form. She took the habit of the third order of St. Francis, and wore it and the scapulary as long as she lived. Every week, and sometimes oftener, she supplied a supper to a monastery of this same order, of which both she and her husband, while he lived, were generous patrons.

She sounds like a most formidable woman! It's rather amazing there's no modern biography of her.

Duchess of Feria died on January 13, 1612 (on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord!) and was buried in the Convent of St. Clare in Zafra, Spain, which is now a museum.

Image Credit: a portrait believed to be of Jane Dormer, the Duchess of Feria, by Sir Anthonis Mor.

The Chalice, sequel to The Crown

Coming in March 2013:

In the next novel from Nancy Bilyeau after her acclaimed debut The Crown, novice Joanna Stafford plunges into an even more dangerous conspiracy as she comes up against some of the most powerful men of her era.

In 1538, England is in the midst of bloody power struggles between crown and cross that threaten to tear the country apart. Joanna Stafford has seen what lies inside the king's torture rooms and risks imprisonment again, when she is caught up in a shadowy international plot targeting the King. As the power plays turn vicious, Joanna understands she may have to assume her role in a prophecy foretold by three different seers, each more omniscient than the last.

Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII as well as the future of Christendom are in her hands—hands that must someday hold the chalice that lays at the center of these deadly prophecies...

"Rarely have the terrors of Henry VIII's reformation been so exciting. Court intrigue, bloody executions, and haunting emotional entanglements create a heady brew of mystery and adventure that sweeps us from the devastation of the ransacked cloisters to the dangerous spy centers of London and the Low Countries, as ex-novice Joanna Stafford fights to save her way of life and fulfill an ancient prophecy, before everything she loves is destroyed."
—C.W. Gortner, author of The Queen's Vow

You may download a preview here (requires an account or facebook login). I wonder if Bilyeau will include any details of the Exeter conspiracy, which involved the Courtenays and the Poles.