Belloc on Gardiner and More

Just a reminder that Anna Mitchell--still recovering from the Sacred Heart Radio fundraiser yesterday--and I will discuss what Hilaire Belloc thinks of Stephen Gardiner and Mary I, the first Tudor Queen Regnant of England and Wales (and parts of Ireland). Listen live here a little after 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern.

Belloc offers some comments on Gardiner's concern about the division that would take place in England because of Henry VIII's takeover of the Church in England--and compares Gardiner to St. Thomas More:

But here we may note a curious point. When it came to the danger of schism Gardiner had about him a touch of hesitation. It was only a touch, but it is significant of what was to come. He was still whole-heartedly in favour of that absolute kingly government and of that strong national feeling which went with it; he was still as much opposed as ever to the political Papal claims over temporal sovereigns, and especially over his own sovereign; and when the decision had to be taken he was ready to accept the supremacy of Henry over the Church of England, and even to defend it, as we shall see. 

I pointed out in the case of Saint Thomas More, that to be so farsighted as to discern what the schism would ultimately mean was granted to very few. The average Englishman was with the King against the Pope in that particular quarrel — hoping vaguely perhaps that it would soon be patched up as so many others had been, but not connecting it in any way with doctrine. Therefore Gardiner, in every sense the average Englishman, followed the same road. 

Yet he did show a slight hesitation when the exact formula by which the King's supremacy should be first hinted at was introduced into the debates of the clergy. It should always be remembered in this connection that the Royal Supremacy was not, in the first steps towards it, represented as schismatical; the full schism was only arrived at by degrees and after a series of steps, each of which, save the last, might be twisted or argued into orthodoxy. 

Belloc also offers some comments on Gardiner's death, including his famous last words:

That which he had never thought possible, the presence of an anti-Catholic government in England — the destruction of the Mass — the unscrupulous despoiling of Guild property — the oversetting of all Shrines — the wanton destruction of Churches — had proved to him what the fruits of disunion might be. But for the schism, which he had approved, such things could not have come to pass; and now he was determined to undo the schism and worked with all his might for the restoration of England to the unity of Christendom, which he had the great privilege to see accomplished before he died. As he died he gave the famous cry, Negavi cum Petro, exivi cum Petro, sed non flevi cum Petro: "I denied as Peter did, I went out as Peter did, but I have not wept as Peter did."

So he had never truly repented of what he had done to destroy the Catholic Church in England by cooperating with Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Cranmer. Nevertheless, Belloc avers that both Gardiner and Mary thought they had done all they could to restore the Catholic Faith in Catholic England:

She died as her mother had died, hearing the Mass which was being said in her death-chamber in the early hours of a dark winter's morning; and it is pathetic but pleasant to remember that as she died she said that angel children were about her bed. 

With her death the whole gang immediately seized power, using Elizabeth whom she had spared and whom she had regarded as her successor, because she had been deceived by the violent protestations of Catholic loyalty on the part of that Princess. With the death of Mary and the advent of Elizabeth began that slow and ultimately successful effort to drive the Mass out of England and destroy Catholicism in the people. 

But Mary died under the impression that the situation had been met, and that the national religion, to which the great majority of Englishmen still adhered, was no longer in grave or imminent peril. 

Belloc on the English Gardiner and the Spanish Mary

Anna Mitchell and I will continue our discussion of Hilaire Belloc's Characters of the Reformation tomorrow morning. I hope you are enjoying it--but there will be a break in our bi-weekly pattern as the Son Rise Morning Show takes the week of Christmas off. Early in the New Year, perhaps on January 3, we will continue the series: Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots!!

Tomorrow, however, we will discuss Belloc's takes on Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, and Queen Mary I, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's only surviving child. In the chapter on Gardiner Belloc sets up a theme: being truly English:

The figure of Stephen Gardiner is not among the very great figures of the English Reformation, or at any rate not quite in the first flight. On this account it has been in great part neglected, and quite unduly neglected, because although he did not mold events nor decide the general course of the movement, there is one reason for which all those who desire to understand the great disaster should make themselves well acquainted with this man. This reason is that he was the typical Englishman of the day. 

 If you follow the fortunes of Stephen Gardiner's soul, the fluctuation of his opinion, his utter devotion to national feeling, his original error on this account, his gradual awakening to the peril in which religion lay — his whole career, especially on its spiritual internal side — then you understand the England of the time. Henry the King, impulsive and very vain, was certainly not a typical Englishman. Even Mary Tudor, with her half Spanish blood and her isolated mind, could not be called typical of the country; Cranmer was not, for he was too much of an artist and much too much of a time-server and a coward to be typical of any ordinary healthy normal citizen of any time or place. Elizabeth was still less typical of England, for both by her talents and by her diseases of body and soul she was an abnormality. 

But Gardiner is the true Englishman of the time in body and mind and everything else. And that is his importance; understanding him, you understand the English Reformation, or rather you understand the kind of average citizen upon whom the catastrophe fell. It is, therefore, a great loss to history that even highly educated men have heard so little of him. For a hundred men who have heard of Henry, for fifty who have heard of Cranmer, perhaps one could tell you who Stephen Gardiner was.

Belloc brings up the heresy trials and burnings of Protestants (and those any orthodox Christian would consider believing in heresies about the Person of Jesus etc) and Gardiner's involvement:

There is one last point to be made with regard to him, and that is his attitude towards the prosecutions of the revolutionaries for heresy rather than for treason. Because he was Chancellor, because he was Mary's right-hand man and the most prominent of the Catholic protagonists, the symbol of tradition in the national religion, he was until recently almost universally accused by our official historians of particular harshness and even cruelty in the treatment of the heretics after the new policy began.

Now what was his real attitude towards it? We have no need for reluctance in the matter. The government had a perfect right to treat a small rebel minority, which was working for the destruction of religion and of the Monarch as well, as public enemies; it was rather a matter of policy than of morals whether the rebels should be treated as heretics or as traitors. But was Gardiner as a fact prominent in the prosecutions? Was he a leading spirit in them? It may be doubted or even denied.

As Chancellor it was of course his business to preside over the affair; but it is to be remarked that he took pains to save men from the consequences of their error, that he personally helped some of those most in danger to escape from the country, and in his own great diocese there were no executions. That was due in part, of course, to the fact that the poison had not reached the western country parts over which that diocese extended; it was only virulent in London, one or two seaport towns and certain sections of East Anglia and the Home Counties.

But still, from all that we know of the nature of the man and of his policy in other things, we may fairly conclude that if he had had a free hand he would have been in favour of Philip of Spain's policy and not of that of the Council. He would, I think, had he had a free hand, have made a few examples by prosecuting for treason; but he would have prevented the wholesale prosecutions for heresy. For that was what Mary's Spanish husband had urged: to repress treason rather than heresy. But Paget and the council, to show their English independence, rejected the foreigner's counsel.

I find it interesting that Belloc emphasizes Mary's "Spanishness": she was no more Spanish than he was French (and Belloc was born in France; his father was French and his mother English) in her feeling for the English people. He seems to use this foreignness (and she had never even been to Spain!) and her isolation and loneliness as the most long-suffering of Henry VIII's children as  excuses for the errors of her reign:

The true picture of Mary Tudor is that of a woman simple in character, like her mother, somewhat warped by isolation, devout, thoroughly virtuous, led of necessity by her all-powerful Council but in some points insisting upon her own will, and without too much judgment. She was also a woman suffering, like all Henry's children, from bad health, and dying early; a woman who was thoroughly representative in her religion of the bulk of the nation, and yet who was somewhat out of touch with the spirit of the nation in important matters, such as that of her Spanish marriage. It is further true that had she lived a few years longer England would probably be Catholic to-day, and had she had a child England would certainly be Catholic to-day. For the English people had always loved her and always regarded her as their true Queen and would not have tolerated the rivalry of anyone against her descendants. 

Mary Tudor was born in 1516, on February 18, when Henry and his wife Catherine of Aragon had been happily married for less than seven years, when the young King was still devoted to his wife and when everything was going well. . . .

She was in her fourteenth year when the great trial was held under Wolsey and Campeggio in London by which Henry hoped to obtain his divorce from her mother, Queen Catherine. She was already quite able to understand every- thing that was happening and to burn with indignation against the abominable way in which her mother was being treated. She was a woman grown, in her eighteenth year, when Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen and was therefore in a position to heap indignity and insult not only on the legitimate Queen (who was now exiled from Court) but on the legitimate heiress to the English throne, Mary herself. 

It was at such an age — eighteen — that Mary saw the illegitimate child of her mother's rival — the baby Elizabeth — proclaimed heiress to England and herself legally bastardized. Finally, when she lost her chief support by her mother's death, she was within six weeks of her twentieth birthday. All that youth of hers had been passed in the one preoccupation of the shameful affair which was bitterly disastrous and humiliating to her.

That last comment about the humiliation of how her mother was discarded and she was rejected because of the affair and the "divorce" shows me that Belloc sympathized with what Mary had endured. Yet, he does not make the point directly that Mary had to work with Stephen Gardiner, her Chancellor, who had aided and abetted her father's "Great Matter" and his take over of the Catholic Church. He had, as Belloc noted in the previous chapter, thoroughly supported Henry VIII in both the divorce and his Supremacy: while he repented of the latter, it's not clear what he thought about the former by the time Mary came to the throne. 

Belloc does take issue with how Catholic historians have defended or apologized for the burnings and Mary's part in the them:

But the curious thing is that those who should be the defenders of true, that is Catholic, history, have helped to perpetuate the legend by doing no more than answer individual points in it and not dealing with its falsity as a whole. 

For instance, they point out that if Mary persecuted she was only acting according to the spirit of the time; that if she put to death a great number of Protestants, so under Elizabeth were put to death a great number of Catholics — and so on. They imply the whole time that the main thesis of their opponents is true, namely, that England was already Protestant or at least was divided into two halves — Protestant and Catholic; that the initiative in the executions proceeded from Mary herself, and that her government had no right to check rebellion. 

When you meet the falsehood of an opponent by picking holes in the details of what he says, while still admitting his general thesis, you only confirm the error which he desires to propagate: the right way of meeting false propaganda is by the statement of the truth and the vigorous erection of a true picture which shall cancel the false one.

So the question would have to be: did Belloc succeed in establishing "a true picture"?

More tomorrow.

St. Thomas More and Anne Boleyn's Coronation

On June 1, 1533, Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England, the last of Henry VIII's wives to be crowned. Edward Hall described the event:

On 1 June Queen Anne was brought from Westminster Hall to St Peter’s Abbey in procession, with all the monks of Westminster going in rich copes of gold, with thirteen mitred abbots; and after them all the king’s chapel in rich copes with four bishops and two mitred archbishops, and all the lords going in their parliament robes, and the crown borne before her by the duke of Suffolk, and her two sceptres by two earls, and she herself going under a rich canopy of cloth of gold, dressed in a kirtle of crimson velvet decorated with ermine, and a robe of purple velvet decorated with ermine over that, and a rich coronet with a cap of pearls and stones on her head; and the old duchess of Norfolk carrying her train in a robe of scarlet with a coronet of gold on her cap, and Lord Burgh, the queen’s Chamberlain, supporting the train in the middle.

After her followed ten ladies in robes of scarlet trimmed with ermine and round coronets of gold on their heads; and next after them all the queen’s maids in gowns of scarlet edged with white Baltic fur. And so she was brought to St Peter’s church at Westminster, and there set in her high royal seat, which was made on a high platform before the altar. And there she was anointed and crowned queen of England by the archbishop of Canterbury and the archbishop of York, and so sat, crowned, in her royal seat all through the mass, and she offered at the said mass. And when the mass was done they left, every man in his order, to Westminster Hall, she still going under the canopy, crowned, with two sceptres in her hands, my Lord Wiltshire her father, and Lord Talbot leading her, and so dined there; and there was made the most honourable feast that has been seen.

The great hall at Westminster was richly hung with rich cloth of Arras, and a table was set at the upper end of the hall, going up twelve steps, where the queen dined; and a rich cloth of estate hung over her head. There were also four other tables along the hall; and it was railed on every side, from the high dais in Westminster Hall to the platform in the church in the abbey.

And when she went to church to her coronation there was a striped blue cloth spread from the high dais of the king’s bench to the high altar of Westminster on which she went.

One guest was absent: Sir Thomas More, former Chancellor of England. He had been invited and Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and John Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wales even sent him money to buy new clothing. He responded with a witty but perhaps mistimed joke, and warning, telling a story about an emperor and a virgin:

an emperor . . .  had ordained a law that whosoever committed a certain offense (which I now remember not) except it were a virgin, should suffer the pains of death, such a reverence had he for virginity. Now so it happened that the first committer of that offense was indeed a virgin, whereof the Emperor hearing was in no small perplexity, as he that by some example fain would have had that law to have been put in execution. Whereupon when his Council had sat long, solemnly debating this case, suddenly arose there up one of his Council, a good plain man, among them, and said, ‘Why make you so much ado, my lords, about so small a matter? Let her first be deflowered, and then after may she be devoured.’ And so though your lordships have in the matter of the matrimony hitherto kept yourselves pure virgins, yet take good heed, my lords, that you keep your virginity still. For some there be that by procuring your lordships first at the coronation to be present, and next to preach for the setting forth of it, and finally to write books to all the world in defence thereof, are desirous to deflower you; and when they have deflowered you, then will they not fail soon after to devour you. Now my lords, it lieth not in my power but that they may devour me; but God being my good lord, I will provide that they shall never deflower me. (From William Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More, his notes for the authorized biography by Nicholas Harpsfield.)

More was right to warn these three bishops; they accepted Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church and even aided the monarch in his efforts to become the lay Vicar of Christ in England (thus they were "deflowered"). Clerk would die after travelling to the Duchy of Cleves to explain the annulment of the marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves in 1540/1541. Tunstall would end up deprived of his bishopric during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I and eventually die under house arrest; Gardiner would spend five years in the Tower of London during Edward VI's reign (thus they were "devoured").

Certainly Anne Boleyn would be devoured, reigning as Queen for fewer than three years.

The Vicar of Bray

On August 4, 1543, three Protestant "heretics" according to Henry VIII's reckoning, were burned at the stake. They are known as the Windsor martyrs: Robert Testwood, chorister at Windsor College; Anthony Pearson, a Protestant preacher; and Henry Filmer, a church warden at St. John's in Windsor, who thought the parish priest was too Catholic. Two other men had been arrested, but were not executed.

The Royal Berkshire History website has this background on their trial and execution:

Testwood, Filmer, Pearson, Bennet and Marbeck were all committed to the Bishop of Winchester’s gaol in Southwark for trial under the terms of the Act of Six Articles. The 26th July 1543 was fixed for their trial at Windsor. Because twelve Papists could not be found in the town to fill the jury, Dr. London recommended that the Dean’s tenant farmers be summoned to attend. The accused were all found guilty, but only after William Simonds leaned on the jurers. The judges were John Capon, Bishop of Salisbury, Sir William Essex, Sir Thomas Brydges, Sir Humphrey Forster, William Franklin, Dean of Windsor and Thomas Vachell, but most of them were uncomfortable with the sentencing which was eventually left to Vachell, the most junior of the group. The prisoners were all condemned to be burnt at the stake. However, Bishop Gardiner obtained a pardon for Marbeck whose musical abilities he admired and Bennet’s execution was postponed due to ill-health. For old time’s sake, Simonds later obtained a pardon for him too.

It said that, all night long, the prisoners called on God for his aid and strength, and prayed for the forgiveness of their persecutors, until sleep finally overtook them. Their guards, and even the sheriff – Sir William Barentyne of Little Haseley (Oxfordshire) – were quite moved by their words. On 4th August, the small party was conducted from their prison, through the town, to a field below the castle walls, on the site of the Riverside Station. Having expressed, at the stake, their utmost confidence in their passage to heaven, the three meekly yielded to their fate amongst the flames.

Amongst those in watching crowds was the Vicar of Bray. So shocked was he by the spectacle before him that he swore to himself there and then that, no matter what the religious winds blowing through the nation, he would keep his head down so he might always remain ‘the Vicar of Bray still’. Thus the cleric entered history as the titular character of the famous English ballad. Some say he was William Simonds’ own brother, the Archdeacon of Suffolk.

Simon Aleyn, a canon at Windsor and vicar at several parishes, was also identified as the possible model for the Vicar of Bray, changing his religious practice with the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. The famous or infamous ditty "The Vicar of Bray" with its chorus

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

recounts religious changes during the Stuart era from Charles II to George I:

In good King Charles's golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Furious High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd Preferment.
Unto my Flock I daily Preach'd,
Kings are by God appointed,
And Damn'd are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's Anointed.

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

When Royal James possest the crown,
And popery grew in fashion;
The Penal Law I shouted down,
And read the Declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my Constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution. (Refrain)
When William our Deliverer came,
To heal the Nation's Grievance,
I turn'd the Cat in Pan again,
And swore to him Allegiance:
Old Principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance,
Passive Obedience is a Joke,
A Jest is non-resistance. (Refrain)
When Royal Ann became our Queen,
Then Church of England's Glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory:
Occasional Conformists base
I Damn'd, and Moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was,
From such Prevarication. (Refrain)
When George in Pudding time came o'er,
And Moderate Men looked big, Sir,
My Principles I chang'd once more,
And so became a Whig, Sir.
And thus Preferment I procur'd,
From our Faith's great Defender,
And almost every day abjur'd
The Pope, and the Pretender. (Refrain)
The Illustrious House of Hannover,
And Protestant succession,
To these I lustily will swear,
Whilst they can keep possession:
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will faulter,
But George, my lawful king shall be,
Except the Times shou'd alter. (Refrain)

More background here from the BBC History Magazine. Royal Doulton used to have a toby mug depicting a winking Vicar (illustrated above).

A Wedding of England & Spain: Philip and Mary

On July 25, 1554, Mary of England and Philip of Spain were married in Winchester Cathedral; their nuptials were witnessed by Stephen Gardiner, the Archbishop of Winchester and Mary's Chancellor. Author Conor Byrne offers some details about the celebration of "A Marriage of England & Spain":

 . . .the queen was attired magnificently in 'rich apparel', including a golden robe and a gown of rich tissue embroidered upon purple satin (purple being the colour of royalty) set with pearls and lined with purple taffeta, and a kirtle of white satin embroidered with silver. Mary was accompanied by loyal members of the nobility. Her soon-to-be husband was also splendidly attired in gold. The earl of Derby carried the sword of state before her, while her train was borne by the marquess of Winchester. Notable attendees included the bishops of Winchester, London, Ely, Durham, Chichester and Lincoln.

The wedding was attended by vast numbers of observers, who 'gave a great shout' of joy upon witnessing their sovereign's marriage. The queen's absence of close male relatives meant that she was given away by the marquess of Winchester and the earls of Derby, Bedford and Pembroke. Following a nuptial mass, Philip and Mary proceeded to the bishop's palace under the canopy of state. The couple spent several joyous days in Winchester following their summer wedding. They then departed for Windsor and then to London, in order for the capital's inhabitants to welcome their queen and new king.

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen made a recording of music that might have been performed at the first Christmas Mary and Philip celebrated together, when Mary and her physicians thought she might be pregnant. It includes music by both Spanish and English composers--most especially, Thomas Tallis Puer natus est Mass. The cover image is from the National Archives, Kew.

Factions and the Prebendaries Plot

Derek Wilson describes the factions at Court during the last years of Henry VIII in the June 2015 issue of History Today and how they contributed to the Prebendaries Plot, which threatened to bring Thomas Cranmer down:

In the 1530s the reform movement had been led by Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer: the former giving the forces of change legislative teeth, the latter providing the theological meat for them to chew on. They had seemed unstoppable. Then the fiasco of Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves gave the Catholic clique the opportunity for a counter-attack. Cromwell’s fall in July 1540 was sudden and complete. One charge against him was that he was an extremist religious radical and a supporter of known heretics. Over the ensuing months the Catholic group on the council, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, made the most of their advantage. They took every opportunity to block moves by Cranmer and his supporters to press on with the work of reform. There are various schools of thought about how appropriate it is to think of the sick and aged king as being manipulated by ‘court factions’, but there is no doubt that two activist groups were now emerging with radically different visions for the future of the realm.

For his support Cranmer could look to members of Henry’s intimate inner circle, such as the Earl of Hertford, Prince Edward’s grandfather, the royal physician, Sir William Butts, and the head of the privy chamber, Sir Anthony Denny, as well as lesser members of the household carefully placed in position by Cromwell before his fall. To counter this the conservatives tightened their grip on the Privy Council. In order to prevent an ‘over-mighty subject’ ever again holding supreme power, this body re-invented itself. By adopting a new constitution it became a committee whose collective decisions carried ultimate authority under the Crown. Cranmer was a member of this body but was in no position to dominate its proceedings. For 16 months there was a period of calm at the political centre. Gardiner was away most of the time on a diplomatic mission. The court was much taken up with the celebrations of Henry’s fifth marriage, to the vivacious Catherine Howard (Norfolk’s niece), and with preparations for a royal tour of the North (from June to November 1541). This does not mean that the politico-religious conflict was over. As Diarmaid McCulloch explains, the conservatives began ‘nibbling again at the edges of the Cranmer circle’ in December 1540. Pulpit wars continued in various locales and Bishop Bonner began a purge of people suspected of being in breach of the Act of Six Articles, which demanded obedience to major Catholic doctrine.

Read the rest here. I think this would usually be behind a pay wall but History Today has opened up access for now, at least. Wilson, who writes both fiction and non-fiction, has written a mystery novel set against the backdrop of the Prebendaries Plot under the nom-de-plume D.K. Wilson.

I admit that I had to look up the term "own goal" which Wilson uses in reference to the Howard faction: it means that a player scores a goal for the other team by mistake. More on those executed in the Prebendaries Plot here.

John Donne's Grandfather Survives the Prebendaries Plot

Blessed Germain or Jermyn or German Gardiner was executed at Tyburn on March 7, 1544. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. As Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner's nephew and secretary, he became involved in the Prebendaries' Plot of 1543 and was hung, drawn, and quartered for the denial of Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church of England.

The Prebendaries' Plot was named after the five prebendary canons of Canterbury Cathedral (including William Hadleigh, a monk at Christchurch Canterbury prior to the monastery's dissolution) who formed its core. Others involved were two holders of the new cathedral office of "six preacher" (created in 1541), along with various local non-cathedral priests and Kentish gentlemen (eg Thomas Moyle, Edward Thwaites and Cyriac Pettit). Simultaneous agitation at the court in Windsor, and the conspiracy in general, was led covertly by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

Henry VIII's chaplain Richard Cox was charged with investigating and suppressing it, and his success (240 priests and 60 laypeople of both sexes were accused of involvement) led to his being made Cranmer's chancellor (and later, under Elizabeth, bishop of Ely). Gardiner survived, though his relation Germain Gardiner, who had acted as his secretary and intermediary to the plotters in Kent, was executed in 1544 for questioning the Royal Supremacy.

So Blessed Germain Gardiner was left as the scapegoat to suffer for the plot, while Henry VIII, still valuing Bishop Stephen Gardiner's efforts in supporting both Henry's "Great Matter" and his more "conservative" reformation of the Church, spared his uncle.

Along with Gardiner, Blessed John Larke, friend of St. Thomas More and former rector of Chelsea (More's parish) and Blessed John Ireland, also connected with St. Thomas More and Chelsea, were executed for denying Henry VIII's Supremacy. Robert Singleton, a parish priest, was also executed under a charge of treason, but he has not been beatified.

John Heywood, the playwright and grandfather of John Donne was also on the scaffold at Tyburn sentenced to death, but he recanted and was spared. He also had connections to St. Thomas More and survived the ups and downs of the Tudor succession until Elizabeth I's reign. Then he went into exile in Mechelen, Belgium where he died around 1580. You may have used one of John Heywood epigrams and not realized the source: wikipedia lists many of the most famous:

What you have, hold.
Haste maketh waste. (1546)
Out of sight out of mind. (1542)
When the sun shineth, make hay. (1546)
Look ere ye leap. (1546)
Two heads are better than one. (1546)
Love me, love my dog. (1546)
Beggars should be no choosers. (1546)
All is well that ends well. (1546)
The fat is in the fire. (1546)
I know on which side my bread is buttered. (1546)
One good turn asketh another. (1546)
A penny for your thought. (1546)
Rome was not built in one day. (1546)
Better late than never. (1546)
An ill wind that bloweth no man to good. (1546)
The more the merrier. (1546)
You cannot see the wood for the trees. (1546)
This hitteth the nail on the head. (1546)
No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth. (1546)
Tread a woorme on the tayle and it must turne agayne. (1546)
Many hands make light work. (1546)
Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue your cake? (1562)
When he should get aught, each finger is a thumb. (1546)

His son Jasper Heywood, SJ was briefly in charge of the English mission, arrested and exiled. He is best known for his translations of Seneca.

The Feast of St. Andrew in 1554: A Holy Day of Reconciliation in England

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, reconclining 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 benefitted. Were these all to be given back?

The Papal Legate wanted them back, but Mary was more 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. So the lands and property stayed with their current owners.

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."

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, as the Once I Was a Clever Boy blog recounts. This year marks the 455th anniversary of their deaths.

Bishop Stephen Gardiner, RIP



Stephen Gardiner, Mary I's Chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester, died on November 12, 1555. While he had supported Henry VIII's supremacy, he also opposed Edward VI's Calvinist Reformation, and then he assisted Mary I, and renounced  his views on the supremacy, since that was a role she rejected. The 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica summed up his life and character thusly:

Perhaps no celebrated character of that age has been the subject of so much ill-merited abuse at the hands of popular historians. That his virtue was not equal to every trial must be admitted, but that he was anything like the morose and narrowminded bigot he is commonly represented there is nothing whatever to show. He has been called ambitious, turbulent, crafty, abject, vindictive, bloodthirsty and a good many other things besides, not quite in keeping with each other; in addition to which it is roundly asserted by Bishop Burnet that he was despised alike by Henry and by Mary, both of whom made use of him as a tool. How such a mean and abject character submitted to remain five years in prison rather than change his principles is not very clearly explained; and as to his being despised, we have seen already that neither Henry nor Mary considered him by any means despicable. The truth is, there is not a single divine or statesman of that day whose course throughout was so thoroughly consistent. He was no friend to the Reformation, it is true, but he was at least a conscientious opponent. In doctrine he adhered to the old faith from first to last, while as a question of church policy, the only matter for consideration with him was whether the new laws and ordinances were constitutionally justifiable.

His merits as a theologian it is unnecessary to discuss; it is as a statesman and a lawyer that he stands conspicuous. But his learning even in divinity was far from commonplace. The part that he was allowed to take in the drawing up of doctrinal formularies in Henry VIII's time is not clear; but at a later date he was the author of various tracts in defence of the Real Presence against Cranmer, some of which, being written in prison, were published abroad under a feigned name. Controversial writings also passed between him and Bucer, with whom he had several interviews in Germany, when he was there as Henry VIII's ambassador.

He was a friend of learning in every form, and took great interest especially in promoting the study of Greek at Cambridge. He was, however, opposed to the new method of pronouncing the language introduced by Sir John Cheke, and wrote letters to him and Sir Thomas Smith upon the subject, in which, according to Ascham, his opponents showed themselves the better critics, but he the superior genius. In his own household he loved to take in young university men of promise; and many whom he thus encouraged became distinguished in after life as bishops, ambassadors and secretaries of state. His house, indeed, was spoken of by Leland as the seat of eloquence and the special abode of the muses.

He lies buried in his own cathedral at Winchester, where his effigy is still to be seen. (Image credit for his chantry tomb: wikipedia commons.) His last words were: "I have erred with Peter, but have not wept with Peter."

 

The bishop has been in the news lately, as an important document of the English Reformation was recently sold at auction, but its export has been prevented, per this story from The Guardian:

 

A 16th-century manuscript that shines a light on a furious battle between two bishops of Winchester, over the then touchstone Reformation issue of clerical marriage, has had a temporary export bar placed on it. The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, announced the bar on Thursday in the hope that someone will find the money to keep the manuscript in the UK.

 

The paper's abridged title is A Traictise declarying and plainly prouying, that the pretensed marriage of Priestes … is no mariage (1554), and was sold by the Law Society at Sotheby's in June for £116,500, nearly six times the upper estimate.

 

The manuscript contains two diametrically opposed positions on clerical marriage. There is the anti-marriage stance of Stephen Gardiner and the virulently pro-marriage opinions of John Ponet, one of Thomas Cranmer's righthand men and a key figure in the English Reformation.

 

It was Ponet who replaced Gardiner as bishop of Winchester in 1551, although his tenure lasted only two years, before he was forced to flee England when the Catholic Mary Tudor came to the throne in 1553. Gardiner then resumed the job.

 

It's interesting to note that John Ponet survived Gardiner only by several months, as he died in August of 1556. Ponet argued for tyrannicide--specifically, the execution of Mary I--while in exile on the Continent in A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power.

The Prebendaries' Plot of 1543 and Tyburn in 1544

Blessed Germain or Jermyn or German Gardiner was executed at Tyburn on March 7, 1544. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. As Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner's nephew and secretary, he became involved in the Prebendaries' Plot of 1543 and was hung, drawn, and quartered for the denial of Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church of England.

The Prebendaries' Plot was named after the five prebendary canons of Canterbury Cathedral (including William Hadleigh, a monk at Christchurch Canterbury prior to the monastery's dissolution) who formed its core. Others involved were two holders of the new cathedral office of "six preacher" (created in 1541), along with various local non-cathedral priests and Kentish gentlemen (eg Thomas Moyle, Edward Thwaites and Cyriac Pettit). Simultaneous agitation at the court in Windsor, and the conspiracy in general, was led covertly by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

Henry VIII's chaplain Richard Cox was charged with investigating and suppressing it, and his success (240 priests and 60 laypeople of both sexes were accused of involvement) led to his being made Cranmer's chancellor (and later, under Elizabeth, bishop of Ely). Gardiner survived, though his relation Germain Gardiner, who had acted as his secretary and intermediary to the plotters in Kent, was executed in 1544 for questioning the Royal Supremacy.

So Blessed Germain Gardiner was left as the scapegoat to suffer for the plot, while Henry VIII, still valuing Bishop Stephen Gardiner's efforts in supporting both Henry's "Great Matter" and his more "conservative" reformation of the Church, spared his uncle.

Along with Gardiner, Blessed John Larke, friend of St. Thomas More and former rector of Chelsea (More's parish) and Blessed John Ireland, also connected with St. Thomas More and Chelsea, were executed for denying Henry VIII's Supremacy. Robert Singleton, a parish priest, was also executed under a charge of treason, but he has not been beatified.

John Heywood, the playwright and grandfather of John Donne was also on the scaffold at Tyburn sentenced to death, but he recanted and was spared. He also had connections to St. Thomas More and survived the ups and downs of the Tudor succession until Elizabeth I's reign. Then he went into exile in Mechelen, Belgium where he died around 1580. You may have used one of John Heywood epigrams and not realized the source: wikipedia lists many of the most famous:

What you have, hold.
Haste maketh waste. (1546)
Out of sight out of mind. (1542)
When the sun shineth, make hay. (1546)
Look ere ye leap. (1546)
Two heads are better than one. (1546)
Love me, love my dog. (1546)
Beggars should be no choosers. (1546)
All is well that ends well. (1546)
The fat is in the fire. (1546)
I know on which side my bread is buttered. (1546)
One good turn asketh another. (1546)
A penny for your thought. (1546)
Rome was not built in one day. (1546)
Better late than never. (1546)
An ill wind that bloweth no man to good. (1546)
The more the merrier. (1546)
You cannot see the wood for the trees. (1546)
This hitteth the nail on the head. (1546)
No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth. (1546)
Tread a woorme on the tayle and it must turne agayne. (1546)
Many hands make light work. (1546)
Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue your cake? (1562)
When he should get aught, each finger is a thumb. (1546)

Stephen Gardiner's Nephew, Blessed Germain Gardiner

Blessed Germain or Jermyn or German Gardiner was executed at Tyburn on March 7, 1544 at Tyburn. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. As Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner's nephew and secretary, he became involved in the Prebendaries' Plot of 1543 and was hung, drawn, and quartered for the denial of Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church of England.

The Prebendaries' Plot was named after the five prebendary canons of Canterbury Cathedral (including William Hadleigh, a monk at Christchurch Canterbury prior to the monastery's dissolution) who formed its core. Others involved were two holders of the new cathedral office of "six preacher" (created in 1541), along with various local non-cathedral priests and Kentish gentlemen (eg Thomas Moyle, Edward Thwaites and Cyriac Pettit). Simultaneous agitation at the court in Windsor, and the conspiracy in general, was led covertly by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

Henry VIII's chaplain Richard Cox was charged with investigating and suppressing it, and his success (240 priests and 60 laypeople of both sexes were accused of involvement) led to his being made Cranmer's chancellor (and later, under Elizabeth, bishop of Ely). Gardiner survived, though his relation German Gardiner, who had acted as his secretary and intermediary to the plotters in Kent, was executed in 1544for questioning the Royal Supremacy.

So Blessed Germain Gardiner was left as the scapegoat to suffer for the plot, while Henry VIII, still valuing Bishop Stephen Gardiner's efforts in supporting both Henry's "Great Matter" and his more "conservative" reformation of the Church, spared his uncle.

Along with Gardiner, Blessed John Larke, friend of St. Thomas More and former rector of Chelsea (More's parish) and Blessed John Ireland, also connected with St. Thomas More and Chelsea, were executed for denying Henry VIII's Supremacy. Robert Singleton, a parish priest, was also executed under a charge of treason, but he has not been beatified. John Heywood, the playwright and grandfather of John Donne was also on the scaffold at Tyburn sentenced to death, but he recanted and was spared. He also had connections to St. Thomas More and survived the ups and downs of the Tudor succession until Elizabeth I's reign. Then he went into exile in Mechelen, Belgium where he died around 1580.

November 30, 1554: A New Holy Day

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, reconclining 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 benefitted. Were these all to be given back?

The Papal Legate wanted them back, but Mary was more 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. So the lands and property stayed with their current owners.

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."

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.

As readers might remember, not quite two weeks ago (November 17) I posted a reflection on the day this Catholic revival ended in England when Mary and Pole died on the same day in 1558. They did not live long enough to celebrate the fourth anniversary of this great day! This event took place in the Palace of Whitehall which Henry VIII had taken from Cardinal Wolsey after his fall. Whitehall, except for the Banqueting Hall, burned down in 1698.

Stephen Gardiner, Mary I's Chancellor

Stephen Gardiner, Mary I's Chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester, died on November 12, 1555. While he had supported Henry VIII's supremacy, opposed Edward VI's Calvinist Reformation, and then assisted Mary I, which included renouncing his views on the supremacy, since that was a role she rejected. The 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica summed up his life and character thusly:

Perhaps no celebrated character of that age has been the subject of so much ill-merited abuse at the hands of popular historians. That his virtue was not equal to every trial must be admitted, but that he was anything like the morose and narrowminded bigot he is commonly represented there is nothing whatever to show. He has been called ambitious, turbulent, crafty, abject, vindictive, bloodthirsty and a good many other things besides, not quite in keeping with each other; in addition to which it is roundly asserted by Bishop Burnet that he was despised alike by Henry and by Mary, both of whom made use of him as a tool. How such a mean and abject character submitted to remain five years in prison rather than change his principles is not very clearly explained; and as to his being despised, we have seen already that neither Henry nor Mary considered him by any means despicable. The truth is, there is not a single divine or statesman of that day whose course throughout was so thoroughly consistent. He was no friend to the Reformation, it is true, but he was at least a conscientious opponent. In doctrine he adhered to the old faith from first to last, while as a question of church policy, the only matter for consideration with him was whether the new laws and ordinances were constitutionally justifiable.

His merits as a theologian it is unnecessary to discuss; it is as a statesman and a lawyer that he stands conspicuous. But his learning even in divinity was far from commonplace. The part that he was allowed to take in the drawing up of doctrinal formularies in Henry VIII's time is not clear; but at a later date he was the author of various tracts in defence of the Real Presence against Cranmer, some of which, being written in prison, were published abroad under a feigned name. Controversial writings also passed between him and Bucer, with whom he had several interviews in Germany, when he was there as Henry VIII's ambassador.

He was a friend of learning in every form, and took great interest especially in promoting the study of Greek at Cambridge. He was, however, opposed to the new method of pronouncing the language introduced by Sir John Cheke, and wrote letters to him and Sir Thomas Smith upon the subject, in which, according to Ascham, his opponents showed themselves the better critics, but he the superior genius. In his own household he loved to take in young university men of promise; and many whom he thus encouraged became distinguished in after life as bishops, ambassadors and secretaries of state. His house, indeed, was spoken of by Leland as the seat of eloquence and the special abode of the muses.

He lies buried in his own cathedral at Winchester, where his effigy is still to be seen.

More from this site. Of course, I refer to Stephen Gardiner in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.

Views of Bishop Stephen Gardiner

From Once I Was a Clever Boy, referring to In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner by Dr. Glyn Redworth:

Gardiner emerges first of all as the humanist scholar he undoubtedly was, but not as the steriotypical reactionary of usual versions, but rather the very reluctant man who felt compelled through the 1530s and 1540s under King Henry VIII to go along with changes he did not really agree with. by 1548 he realised he could go no further and making his position clear ended up in the Tower of London and was deprived of his bishopric. Restored by Queen Mary I he accepted reunion with the Holy See as the only guarentee of the Catholic faith, and said so in his great sermon preached at Paul's Cross in the days after the reconciliation on St Andrew's day in 1554.