God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

  It is evident from his business dealings that Vaux shied away from confrontation. His wife, the redoubtable Elizabeth (née Cheney), negotiated property transactions on his behalf. On one occasion, she ‘dashed the matter’ of an unfavourable sale of land to Thomas Cromwell. ‘The man is of such constancy,’ Cromwell’s agent reported of Lord Vaux, ‘that he would be turned in a minute of an hour from the most earnest matter that ever he was resolved in.’ No doubt aware of this flaw in his character, Vaux had sent Elizabeth as his proxy ‘and he said he would make me no further answer therein till my Lady his wife had spoken with you’.11 Perhaps he knew that in politics, as in business, he didn’t have the stomach for resistance.

  The second Lord Vaux should be remembered for his poetry. If he was not quite as pioneering or polished a poet as his contemporaries Wyatt and Surrey, he nevertheless stood high on the second rank in the generation before Shakespeare. His verse was included a year after his death in Tottel’s Miscellany, the most popular anthology of the day, and his work will forever live on in Hamlet, for it is Vaux’s lyrics that Shakespeare adapted for the song of the gravedigger.fn2 12

  Thomas, second Lord Vaux of Harrowden, died in October 1556 at the age of forty-seven. Elizabeth followed her husband to the grave the following month. It is possible that they both succumbed to the plague that ravaged England that year. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to read an apologia of sorts in the following lines:

  Companion none is like unto the mind alone,

  For many have been harmed by speech, through thinking few or none:

  Fear oftentimes restraineth words, but makes not thoughts to cease,

  And he speaks best that hath the skill when for to hold his peace.13

  *

  We return now to Thomas’s son William, third Baron Vaux of Harrowden, the man ‘by whom,’ Edmund Campion wrote, ‘I am dearly loved, and whom I particularly revere’. He would hold the dubious honour of being the only peer convicted of recusancy under Queen Elizabeth, but before his loyalty was tested, he had muddled along fairly well.14

  He was born in 1535 and brought up at Harrowden Hall within a household of almost fifty people that included grooms, laundresses, the cook, the baker, an embroiderer, the chaplain and the steward. An account book survives for the year of his birth revealing payments for a birdcage, soap, swaddling and, on 14 August, five shillings ‘to buy ale for the nurse’.15 William grew up as monumental religious changes enveloped the country. He was too young to notice the dissolution of the smaller monasteries in 1536, but when the larger ones were targeted in 1539, he was four, old enough to wonder at the assault on the big, beautiful landmarks of his infancy.

  Followers of the New Learning, as it was known, were convinced that salvation could only be attained by faith in Christ. For centuries Christians had believed that good works – prayers, charitable deeds, fasting and so on – could be stockpiled against the day of judgement. The more good works done in this life, the less time one would have to suffer the pains of purgatory before moving on to heaven. If ‘indulgences’ were obtained (either through some devotional exercise such as pilgrimage or by purchase from the papacy), and if the departed soul was prayed for on earth, then further remission was granted.

  The reformers argued that this was superstitious nonsense. Purgatory was not mentioned in the Bible; therefore it did not exist. The primacy of the Pope was grounded on tradition, not Scripture; therefore he had no more authority over Christian souls than any other bishop. Indeed in perverting doctrine and deceiving the people, he was Antichrist. And the Mass – the sacrament around which most Christians shaped their lives – was a mummery. The more radical reformers argued that when Christ had broken the bread at the Last Supper and said ‘take, eat, this is my body’, he had not meant it literally. They believed that communion was valid as a commemoration of the Passion, but any notion that a priest could re-enact Christ’s sacrifice on an altar, mutter some Latin and thereby transform the bread and wine into Christ’s ‘real presence’ was idolatry of the worst kind. To reformers, the Roman Catholic priest was a charlatan who used stage tricks and sorcery to gull his congregation.fn3

  This was, of course, vile heresy to Catholics. They revered the Mass, ‘that Sacrament of Sacraments’, as the renewal of Christ’s redemption and the manifestation of the divine.16 Catholics examined their consciences and confessed their sins before communion so they could receive in a state of grace. During the ceremony their senses were heightened by music, incense, candles, relics, a great crucifix, painted images and other ‘godly ornaments’ in order to repel the devil, bring themselves closer to God and evoke the reverence appropriate for worship. They believed that ‘the very Passion of our Saviour is there lively represented’. The priest originally wore an alb, for example, because Herod had sent Christ back to Pilate in a white coat, ‘reputing him as a fool’. The girdle ‘betokeneth the scourge wherewith Christ was whipped’.17 Vestments were so important to Catholics – and were later made and preserved by recusants despite the high risk of discovery – partly because each article worn by the celebrant memorialised an aspect of the Passion. And thus, at the moment when the priest, representing Christ, recited his words, the substances of bread and wine were transformed – ‘transubstantiated’ – into the physical body and blood of Christ. When, at least every Easter, communicants received the consecrated bread themselves, they believed they were consuming Christ. And by feeding on Him, they were nourishing their souls and participating in a common union. They renewed their faith and, in turn, received the pledge that they would share in life everlasting.

  The Mass was one of the chief bones of contention between Catholics and Protestants and amongst the reformers themselves. For the increasingly beleaguered Catholic community, it would be a symbol of continuity and collective suffering: ‘We many be one bread and one body.’18 The Mass was the source of Christian fellowship, a symbol of the visible Church at a time when individual Catholics would increasingly have to become invisible. It later reminded those in prison, or on the run, or leading a double life of outward conformity, that they were not alone. It would be the lifeblood of the recusant community and people would be prepared to pay the ultimate price to preserve it.

  A Reformation of ideas and faith may have been sweeping through Europe and across the Channel, but at Harrowden Hall life carried on much as usual. Under the instruction of the family chaplain, young William read his catechism and his primer.19 He recited the paternoster and the Ave Maria. He read the lives of the saints and chose his favourites. He joined the household in observing the fasts and celebrating the feasts. He prayed for his family and for the souls of his dead ancestors. And he was taught what to do at his First Communion: with his heart ‘inflamed in fervent love and charity’, his hands at his breast, his head ‘conveniently lifted up’, his mouth ‘reasonably open & not gaping’, and his tongue ‘not too much put forth’, he had to receive the consecrated wafer and swallow it without chewing and without letting it touch the roof of his mouth. For a quarter of an hour after receiving, he was not allowed to spit, or if it was absolutely necessary, ‘at the least it is decent to spit where it may not be trodden on’. Likewise, he had to refrain from eating meat for a while, ‘lest thou mix corruptible food with that divine and heavenly food which thou so lately receivest’.20

  Children could only receive their First Communion when they were deemed old enough to understand transubstantiation. This was usually around the age of twelve.21 Just as William reached this important milestone everything that he had been taught was overturned. What had been radical heresy under Henry VIII became orthodoxy in the reign of his son and what had been considered traditional worship was denounced as idolatry. William was twelve years old at the change of monarch in 1547 and eighteen when Edward VI died in 1553. As the boy became a man, England was transformed into a Protestant country.

  One of the early casualties of Edward VI’s reform programme was the Vaux chantry. William’s grandfath
er Nicholas, the first baron, had left instructions in his will for its foundation at Harrowden. He endowed a priest ‘and his successors … to sing for the soul of me and the souls of my grandfather, my father, my mother, my wives, my children and other my ancestors’ souls, and all Christian souls’.22 In November 1547, Edward VI’s first Parliament abolished the chantries with the reformed logic that as there was no such thing as purgatory, prayers were wasted on the dead. At a stroke, Lord Vaux’s foundation was rendered obsolete.

  Edward VI was hailed by reformers as the new Josiah, the boy-king who would destroy the temple of false worship. He did not disappoint. Whitewash and the axe were the preferred agents for purging the church of idolatry. Before Edward’s reforms, the parish church was an assault on the senses – gleaming chapel plate, painted walls and ceilings, stained glass, elaborate statuary, reliquaries and shrines lit by wax tapers and tallow candles. Dominating the interior was a great rood, or crucified Christ, often flanked by images of the Virgin and St John. The church was a stage, especially during the holy days: there were Candlemas candles, Ash Wednesday ashes, Palm Sunday palms and ‘creeping to the cross’ on Good Friday, when the clergy and heads of houses crawled barefoot towards a veiled crucifix. There was ‘singing, ringing and organs piping’.23

  After the Edwardian ‘purification’, the church was a pared-down affair. All vestiges of popery were ripped out, smashed up or daubed over. It was not entirely colourless: bright coats of arms replaced the religious murals, scriptural quotations were inscribed in striking black lettering that was decorative as well as edifying. But the overall effect must have been stark. The roods were pulled down and the side altars demolished along with anything else that diverted attention from the pulpit and lectern. Nothing was screened or hidden. The new church was a monument to the plain and lively word of God. The Bible was freely available and if there were no more palms or ashes or holy day processions, there was an increased stress on the participation of the congregation in everyday worship. The sounds were plainer: bell ringing was minimised and metrical psalms replaced elaborate polyphony.fn4 24

  Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the Edwardian Reformation was the assault on the Mass, for reformers the most ingrained and pernicious form of adoration. As Bishop John Hooper put it, ‘as long as the altars remain, both the ignorant people and the evil-persuaded priests will dream always of sacrifice.’ The 1552 Prayer Book insisted that the ‘Lord’s Supper’ was a commemorative rite only. Stone altars were replaced with wooden tables and positioned lengthwise down the nave or chancel. Communion was to be ‘in both kinds’ (bread and wine) when previously parishioners had only received the bread. The service was to be in English, not Latin, and the priest had to substitute his richly embroidered vestments for a simple white surplice. Indeed, the priest was no longer a priest, no longer the pure – and celibate – demi-God that William Vaux had been brought up to revere, but a simple minister who could marry and have children.

  For many of Edward VI’s subjects, ‘the stripping of the altars’ was welcome. Indeed, in some areas iconoclasm anticipated policy: at least eighteen London parishes demolished their altars before it became an official requirement.25 Compliance was the norm. Edward may have been a minor, but he was a divine-right king to whom every Christian subject owed obedience. Resistance imperilled body and soul, as several thousand Cornish and Devonshire rebels learned at the cost of their lives when their demands over the summer of 1549 for (among other things) a reversion to the old Latin prayer book were ruthlessly suppressed.

  Parishioners were nothing if not resourceful. When, in 1551, the government sent commissioners into the shires to seize superfluous church property, much was sold off or adapted to secular use. At the Northamptonshire parish of Moulton, a chalice was sold ‘by the common assent of the parish’ and the proceeds were ‘employed towards the furnishing of one soldier for all things belonging unto him’. Another memorandum revealed that two Moulton men had bought one of the church bells and, ‘by the consent of the whole parish’, converted it into the ‘clock-bell’. It was to be rung ‘when any casualty shall chance and for the gathering together of the inhabitants of the said town … and not given to the said church’.26

  One gets a sense here of the spirit of the English parish – pragmatic, resilient, protective of its community and its materials, adaptable and perhaps also a little bloody-minded. Many of the objects that the commissioners hoped to confiscate were bequests from parishioners’ ancestors. If their local church could no longer have them, they made sure that the government could not take them. The people of Moulton naturally obeyed the law, but in as much as it was possible, they strived to do so on their own terms. Parochialism usually trumped patriotism. It was this attitude that enabled the people of Moulton to carry on and to thrive during the early phases of the English Reformation. Perhaps, too, it was the kind of mindset that lay behind the ‘stolid conformity’ of the vast majority of subsequent generations of English men and women.27

  Before the Reformation could take firm root in England, there was the reign of Mary I. She was so resolutely Catholic that it was inevitable that her reign would be assessed for a long time afterwards on confessional lines. For Protestant polemicists, she was the ugly sister of the Tudor dynasty, a throwback to a time when England was shrouded in darkness and superstition. Mary may have been Great Harry’s child, but reformers loathed her as the daughter of Aragon, the bride of Spain and the creature of Rome. At the end of her reign, she surrendered Calais to the French, further evidence, if any were needed, that she was no patriot.

  For Catholics like the Vauxes, however, Mary was the answer to their prayers, a genuine Defender of the Faith, who would guide them back to the truth. The Queen tried valiantly and imaginatively to revitalise Catholicism in her land. The papal supremacy was restored with the sensible proviso that redistributed monastic wealth could remain in lay hands. The Mass and traditional ceremonies returned, and the parish church was reinvested with altars, vestments, roods, bells and images. Protestant Bibles were removed from the churches, but a new, acceptably Catholic translation was conceived. Mary’s cousin and Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, led a concerted drive to re-educate the clergy and raise their moral standards. He planned a ‘seed-bed’ (seminarium) for the training of priests in every diocese. Preaching was encouraged and new catechisms and collections of homilies were printed and distributed. Recruitment to the clergy began to rise for the first time in a decade.28

  It is remarkable how much was achieved in the five years from 1553 to 1558 that Mary ruled England, especially in light of the harvest failures and epidemics that blighted her reign. But it would have taken decades fully to undo the work of her father and brother. Mary’s early demise and the subsequent longevity of her Protestant sister’s reign ensured that any changes were short-lived. It also meant that Mary would be associated less with renewal than repression.fn5 She was the queen who put the torch to the human bonfires. More than 280 men and women were roasted alive for refusing to accept her version of Christianity. Toleration was not a word that had any currency with sixteenth-century rulers. Within their kingdom, there was one truth faith – their own. All else was error and it was the duty of the godly magistrate to provide correction. Nevertheless, the scale and intensity of the Marian burnings between February 1555 and November 1558 were unprecedented and shocked even those who were familiar with the Spanish Inquisition. The sight of ‘fat, water and blood’ dripping from roasting bodies, or lips moving in prayer till ‘shrunk to the gums’, lived long in the memory.29

  The burnings were horrific and contemporaries thought so at the time, but they were also deemed by many to be an appropriate punishment for heresy. If, as Christians fervently believed, unrepentant heretics would burn in the flames of hell for eternity, then death by fire was a fitting appetiser to the torment to which they had condemned themselves. The Protestant preacher John Rogers argued as much under Edward VI when he supported the
burning of Joan Butcher in 1550. Her sentence, he urged, was ‘sufficiently mild’ for an Anabaptist.30 It is doubtful that he found it so mild when, on 4 February 1555, he was himself tied to the stake at Smithfield, but he refused to recant:

  He was the first protomartyr of all that blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time, that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking on her breast, met him by the way as he went towards Smithfield. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience in the defence and quarrel of Christ’s Gospel.31

  The words come from John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a work first published in English in 1563 and popularly known as the ‘Book of Martyrs’. Celebrating Mary’s Protestant victims as the true heirs of the Apostles, the emotive text and accompanying woodcuts catalogued each stake-side speech and every detail of death. It sought to destroy the religious credibility of Roman Catholicism, but even more damaging to English Catholics in the long run was the undermining of their patriotic credentials. Ministers were urged to place the ‘Book of Martyrs’ alongside the Bible in their churches. Sir Francis Drake sailed with a copy and read extracts to his crew. Protestantism – an import from the free towns of Germany and Switzerland – increasingly came to be seen as the ‘true religion’ of England. Catholicism, by contrast, was regarded as an alien faith characterised by obscurantism, persecution and tyranny. People began to question if it was even possible for an English Catholic to be a true patriot.