All the Queen's Men (22 page)

In 1561, Elizabeth's dislike of married clergy had led her to ban all women from residing within the colleges or cathedral closes. She would like to have banned married clergy completely, but was dissuaded from this controversial proposal by Cecil and Parker, albeit with considerable difficulty. At this time, the hapless archbishop experienced one of the Queen's notorious tongue-lashings, during which he was deeply shocked by her choice of language. Despite such stormy moments the relationship between Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker was essentially a productive partnership, as he strove to maintain the authority of the Church and firmly establish the Anglican faith while struggling against a rising tide of Puritanism whose followers firmly intended to push England far further along a path of reform than either the Queen or her archbishop wished to happen.
The Thirty Nine Articles of Religion
, introduced in the mid-1560s, to which all clergy were required to conform, outlined the precise nature of Church doctrine, while the
Book of Homilies
defined their manner of preaching.

When Parker died in 1575, Elizabeth turned to Edmund Grindal as his replacement, largely as a result of the recommendation of her trusted Lord Treasurer Burghley, who was an enthusiastic supporter along with most other moderate Protestants. Grindal had studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where Nicholas Ridley had been his tutor. When Mary became Queen of England, Grindal went into exile, first to Strasbourg and then to Frankfurt. This resulted in Grindal being far more radical in his religious outlook than Parker, at the same time displaying a more sympathetic attitude towards the Puritans than his predecessor. After Grindal returned to England, following Elizabeth's succession to the throne, he had first been appointed Bishop of London and then created Archbishop of York in 1570. Grindal was a deeply devout and pious man with a far more positive attitude towards the role of archbishop than Parker had shown. He had a clear vision of how the Anglican Church should evolve, together with the role of the clergy within it – furthermore, he was unmarried. Unfortunately, Grindal's grand design did not coincide with that of the Queen and it was not long before serious disagreement arose between them. Essentially, there were two fundamental reasons for discord between the Queen and her new archbishop: his leniency towards the Puritans and his enthusiastic support of the concept of prophesying, a form of religious seminar designed to develop theological thinking and assist in advancing the technical ability of the parish clergy in the performance of their duties. Grindal had been accused of being soft on Puritans during his tenure as Bishop of London, a city where there was a relatively high concentration of this more extreme Protestant faction, whose increasingly strident actions were causing the Queen progressively more concern. Thus she required her Archbishop of Canterbury to adopt a strong line with them and not sympathize with their beliefs as Grindal was doing.

The issue of prophesying caused a far more serious rift between the increasingly irate Elizabeth and the obdurate Grindal. Not that this was a new concept that he had introduced: prophesying had been around for some time, but as the Queen was never particularly interested in mere mundane ecclesiastical routine, it took some time for her to become aware of its existence. Prophesying had originated from good intentions coupled with sound reason, an attempt to improve the quality of the clergy, school them in the art of preaching and generally advance the cause of the Reformation in an orderly and constructive manner. This was to be achieved in group sessions, calling on the instructional abilities of better-quality clerics, a period of intense activity followed by a good dinner – an excellent and innovative procedure it might have been thought. The Queen, however, saw it differently, regarding activities such as these with grave misgivings, suspicious that they might degenerate into potential hotbeds of evangelicalism and missionary mayhem which could undermine the orthodox, well-regulated uniformity that she preferred. Nothing should be allowed to take place that might threaten the carefully orchestrated practice that the Queen and her Privy Council desired.

Grindal was ordered to ensure that the practice of prophesying ceased forthwith. When he refused, he was summoned to Court to be confronted by an angry Queen in the spring of 1576. Grindal presented her with an extremely detailed and well-reasoned argument as to why this concept should be allowed to continue. The defiant archbishop then overreached himself when loftily informing Elizabeth that while she was indeed a mighty Prince, there was One in heaven that was even mightier and as a mere mortal she would be answerable to Him on Judgement Day. The Queen was not accustomed to such blunt speaking from one of her subjects, even one as august as an archbishop. Grindal's criticism of her, together with the hectoring manner in which it was delivered, caused Elizabeth to become incandescent with rage and fully determined to remove him from office forthwith, raising echoes of Henry II's religious power struggle with Thomas à Becket. Only the combined efforts of Burghley and Walsingham managed to dissuade the Queen from this course of action, being concerned that his dismissal would considerably weaken the Protestant cause in England and send unfavourable signals to Spain at a time of worsening relationships between the two nations. They reasoned that, ‘. . . if the Bishop of Canterbury shall be deprived then upstarts the pride and practice of papists.'
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Elizabeth permitted the wretched Grindal to continue in office but completely forbade him to fulfil any further meaningful part in Church activities. In effect, she had consigned her stubborn archbishop to a spiritual limbo, one in which he was unhappily destined to remain until his death six years later. Nobody was permitted to challenge the Queen's authority, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if he would not do as requested, Elizabeth was quite prepared to do without the services of an archbishop until she found somebody more to her liking.

Grindal's demise meant the end of further reformation in England during Elizabeth's lifetime. The evangelical movement had come to an abrupt halt in her kingdom and further reform of ecclesiastical procedures was firmly rejected. The Puritans realized it was futile to continue their attempts to change the Church from within; this would have to be achieved by mounting an external challenge. Elizabeth's firm line with Grindal would produce some considerable problems for her successors but that moment lay firmly in the future – for the time being, the Church of England would remain precisely as she wished it to be. A Frenchman visiting England towards the end of the sixteenth century considered, ‘there is little difference between their ceremonies and those of the Church of Rome'.
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Elizabeth was always ready to learn from experience, particularly one that had not gone according to plan. Grindal had not been a bad archbishop or even a poor choice, but he had failed to conduct the Church in the manner that Elizabeth required. Grindal had strayed from her ecclesiastical agenda while developing a dangerously independent attitude in a religious world where there was already far too much free-thinking for the Queen's liking. Elizabeth was determined to find an archbishop more sympathetic to her way of thinking and more ready to put her thoughts into practice. In John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester, the Queen discovered a fellow soulmate. It was a marriage made in heaven; she even called her diminutive new archbishop, ‘my little black husband'. Whitgift was an administrator rather than a theologian – he had been at Pembroke College during Nicholas Ridley's time as Master, subsequently becoming Master at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here his encounter with Thomas Cartwright, a Fellow of the college and religious hardliner, on the extreme edge of radical reform, fully demonstrated Whitgift's ability to take a tough line with anyone daring to challenge the authority of the Church. Cartwright's desire to abolish the bishops was the mere tip of the ecclesiastical iceberg in his enthusiasm for religious reform. Yet Cartwright was a skilled debator whose preaching drew enormous crowds whenever he appeared and he was considered to have one of the finest minds of all the Puritans. It was a tussle of theological titans: Whitgift's skilled exposition of orthodox Anglican philosophy was both cogent and masterly, marking him out as a man destined for greater things. His subsequent speedy dismissal of Cartwright demonstrated that his practice was every bit as incisive as his theory. This man-to-man contest between orthodox and nonconformist thinking did not go unheeded in the corridors of power and Whitgift was singled out for high office, becoming successively Vice-Chancellor of the University, Bishop of Worcester, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583.

At the time when Whitgift was consecrated as Elizabeth's third archbishop, the Puritan challenge to the established Church was reaching a crescendo, while the Privy Council contained a nucleus of hardline Protestants such as Leicester, Knollys, Walsingham and Hatton who were not wholly unsympathetic to the Puritan cause. The Puritan party dominated a Parliament where the fanatical Peter Wentworth was particularly vocal, only to be silenced when thrown in the Tower. Whitgift faced formidable opposition, yet had the full and unqualified support of the Queen, something conspicuously lacking with her two previous archbishops, whenever unpopular measures were required. Whitgift endured a sustained and vicious propaganda campaign from the Puritans aided by their underground press, in particular the amusingly scurrilous Martin Marprelate tracts which viciously lampooned him at every conceivable opportunity. At the same time, Whitgift was constantly obstructed and opposed by the more militant Protestant members of the Privy Council. The archbishop was totally unmoved. He was both tough and resourceful – the Puritan press was silenced, the Council outflanked, and Whitgift managed to push through the measures he desired. He was even conciliatory towards his old adversary Thomas Cartwright, gaining him an academic position in Warwick. Whitgift had triumphed and was secure for the rest of Elizabeth's lifetime. There were periods of turbulence throughout the rule of the Stuarts, but Protestantism survived to be England's official religion to the present day. Elizabeth had cause to be grateful to Archbishop Whitgift, he had served her faithfully and well. He outlived her by barely a year.

When the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity were successfully passed at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign thereby establishing the Church of England in the Anglican faith, both the Queen and her Privy Council had hoped that Catholicism would gradually die out in England of its own accord, as both priests and congregation either defected to Protestantism or grew old and died. It was reasoned that without any bishops, and faced with a diminishing number of priests, Catholicism would wither and die like a neglected plant. This turned out to be sheer wishful thinking by Elizabeth and her Council: Catholicism in the mid-sixteenth century was an extremely well-established, enduring and deeply held faith. It had already suffered a period of persecution during the reign of Edward VI, but survived relatively unscathed. It was not about to obligingly disappear in Elizabeth's reign. Catholicism was surprisingly resilient in the north and the far west of her kingdom and in the middle period of Elizabeth's long reign, seminary priests who had been educated on the continent in religious establishments, such as Douai and the English College in Rome, were discreetly infiltrated back into England like so many religious secret agents. In turn, these were followed by the more fanatical Jesuits, members of the Society of Jesus, men like Robert Southwell, Robert Parsons, John Gerard and Edmund Campion, who were fearlessly prepared, even eager, to die for their cause. They were encouraged by Cardinal Allen, the Englishman who would have become the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor had the Armada succeeded and England been conquered by Spain.

Parsons came to England with Campion but eventually returned to Rome to die there in 1610 and was buried alongside Cardinal Allen. The extremely handsome Robert Southwell possessed a passionate faith coupled with an equally passionate longing for martyrdom, a wish which was fulfilled when he was arrested and executed at the age of thirty-four, following particularly hideous torture. Gerard was also captured but made a spectacular night-time escape from the Tower where he had been imprisoned with Southwell.

Campion was the best known of all the Jesuit martyrs, dying at the age of forty-one in 1581. The young Campion had been a precocious orator who had made an eloquent welcoming oration to Queen Mary when she entered London for her coronation in 1553. He was subsequently to deliver an equally fine speech to Queen Elizabeth when she visited Oxford in 1566. Elizabeth was hugely impressed and became his patron. Campion was ordained in the Anglican Church but later defected to Rome to enrol in the Society of Jesus, returning to London in 1580. When apprehended, he was consigned to the Tower of London and subsequently questioned in the presence of the Queen who offered him a full pardon providing he return to the Anglican faith. When Campion graciously declined the Queen's offer, he was put on trial, endured the rack on three separate occasions and then publicly hung at Tyburn in front of a huge crowd. Campion is considered the noblest of all the Catholic martyrs – scholarly, courageous, honourable in all his actions, which were entirely to preserve the Catholic faith in England and did not involve any political motives. The fact that he was well known and highly regarded by the Queen makes Campion's martyrdom particularly poignant. His story also gives an interesting insight into the activities of the Jesuits, whose actions are all too easily dismissed as those of misguided and fanatical conspirators who were traitors to the country at the time when it was facing great danger from potential Spanish invasion.

Many of the Jesuit martyrs fell foul of the odious Richard Topcliffe, self-appointed persecutor and torturer of Roman Catholics, who approached his ghoulish task like a vengeful angel. Topcliffe kept a rack, together with a formidable array of torture equipment, at his own home; the latter were rumoured to be more horrific than those kept in the Tower. Topcliffe was to die only a year after the Queen, who must have been fully aware of activities belonging to the darker side of her reign.