Under Elizabeth there were, of course, extreme Protestants who could not accept the settlement, who could not believe with John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, that ‘every soul, of what calling soever he be’ was subject to the monarch and magistrates, and that the State must decide what the one religion of the country must be. There were also unreconciled Catholics who could not accept Cranmer’s English Prayer Book as a replacement of the Latin Mass. Several revolts, notably in the western counties and in Oxfordshire, erupted against the new liturgy. Among fifteen demands which some insurgents made were these: ‘We will have the Sacrament hung over the high altar and thus to be worshipped as it was wont to be, and they which will not thereunto consent, we will have them die like heretics against the holy Catholic faith … We will have holy bread and holy water every Sunday, palms and ashes at the time accustomed, images to be set up again in every church, and all other ancient ceremonies held heretofore by our Mother Holy Church.’5 At Sampford Courtenay in Devon, so David Mathew tells us, the parishioners forced their priest to defy the law by saying Mass publicly in Latin, ‘the common people all the country round clapping their hands for joy’.6 But Roman Catholics were not at first harried, except those who were notorious papists or whose loyalty was suspect. They were required to attend Anglican services and were fined a shilling for not doing so; but they were otherwise left largely to their own devices. John Trevelyan, a Catholic Cornish squire, attended church to avoid the fine; yet he always left before the sermon, calling out cheerily to the parson: ‘When thou hast said what thou hast to say, come and dine with me.’7 There were Catholics in all counties – more in Lancashire and Yorkshire, Cheshire and Shropshire than elsewhere – who were allowed to practise their own religion, provided they did so discreetly. Several of them still had their private chaplains; and noblemen were not even required to take the oath required of others. There were Catholics, too, at court; one of them, William Byrd, was organist at the Chapel Royal.8 Queen Elizabeth herself had candles on the altar and a crucifix in her private chapel, and did not at all care for sermons, particularly from Puritan-minded preachers. ‘Do not talk about that!’ she called out when one of these spoke against images and implied criticism of the crucifix. ‘Leave that!’ she cried in an even louder voice when, not having heard her, the preacher continued his sermon. ‘Leave that! It has nothing to do with your subject and the matter is now threadbare.’9 On another occasion she opened the window of her closet to thank a bishop for a sermon to which she had obviously not been listening.
Many of her subjects were shocked by the trappings of popery which were permitted to remain in churches. ‘Our churches stand full of such great puppets, wondrously decked and adorned,’ wrote Bishop Jewel in a homily against the ‘Perils of Idolatry’. ‘Garlands and coronets be set on their heads, precious stones hanging about their necks; their fingers shine with rings set with precious stones; their dead and stiff bodies are clothed with garments stiff with gold.’10 Rosaries were still used in some churches; the shrines of saints were still revered and the passing bell was rung at Hallow-tide. Several former holy days were no longer celebrated; but others, like vigils and patronal festivals, remained as before. The parish clerk still led the responses, while the ecclesiastical courts still functioned, punishing parishioners for working on Sundays and keeping a stern eye upon their morals, as upon those of one John Gill of Adderbury who got Mary Spenser with child and who was required
… to come into the church on Sunday sennight next and there tarry the whole evening prayer and after evening prayer in some convenient place of the church before Mr Rawlins the vicar … and confess his fault and deliver 6s 8d to Mr Rawlins for the use of the poor and undertake 6s 8d more to the same use at the feast of St Michael next.11
In certain parts of the country, indeed, the old religion continued almost as before. ‘In Lancashire and the parts thereabouts,’ according to Strype, ‘papists [showed] themselves to be numerous, Mass was commonly said, priests harboured, the Book of Common prayer and the church established by law laid aside. Many churches were shut up and cures unsupplied, unless with such popish priests as had been ejected.’ In Yorkshire recusancy was common. In York itself numerous citizens were examined as to their failure to go to church:
William Bowman, locksmith, sayeth he refuseth to come to the church because he thinketh it is not the Catholic Church, for there is neither priest, altar, nor Sacraments … Isabel Bowman sayeth she cometh not to the church, for her conscience will not serve her, because there is not the Sacrament hung up and other things as hath been aforetime … Janet Strickett, widow, sayeth she cometh not to the church because her conscience will not serve her, for the bread and wine is not consecrate, as it hath been in the past … John Wood, tailor, cometh not to the church …12
In Ribblesdale in north Yorkshire, so it was complained, people continued to use the ‘Popish rites of Burial’:
They set forth the corpse in their houses all garnished with crosses, and sit round about with tapers and candles burning night and day, till it be carried to the Church. All which time the neighbours … visit the corpse and there everyone do say a Pater Noster or De Profundis for the soul: the bells all the while being rung many a solemn peal. After which they are made partakers of the dead man’s dole or banquet of charity. Thus all things being accomplished in right Popish order at home, at length they carry the corpse towards the Church all garnished with crosses (wrapped in a shroud & uncoffined) which they set down by the way at every Cross, and there all of them devoutly on their knees make prayer for the dead. And when in this superstitious sort they have brought the corpse to the Church, some with haste prevent the Minister and bury the corpse themselves, because they will not be partakers of the service said at the burial … And when the corpse is ready to be put into the grave, some by kissing the dead corpse, others by wailing the dead with more than heathenish outcries, others with open invocations for the dead and another sort with jangling bells, so disturb the whole action that the Minister is often compelled to let pass that part of the service appointed for the burial of the dead & to withdraw himself from their tumultuous assembly. After which burial, at their banquet in the ale house, they oftentimes have a Pater Noster for the dead.13
All over the country there were Catholics who condemned what Nicholas Fitzherbert called the ‘pernicious opinion’ that ‘it was permitted them to attend the heretical churches and meetings without committing any great crime or separating themselves from the Catholic church’. One of the recusants was Cardinal Allen, former Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and Principal of St Mary’s Hall, who left England in 1561 for Flanders whence a mass of Catholic literature and propaganda was imported into England, despite government legislation against it. Some years later Allen established at Douay a seminary for English students abroad and from this and other colleges and religious communities on the Continent a regular flow of missionary priests entered England.
They took shipping and, wind and weather being both prosperous, they sailed along the coast of England and meant to have landed on Essex side [runs a contemporary account of one secret landing of missionary priests]. But for their sakes the master of the bark lingered that evening until it was two hours within the night, and being come near unto Scarborough, there came out a little boat with divers rovers or pirates in it, to have surprised them, who shot at them divers times with muskets, but had no harm; for the wind being then somewhat contrary, the master turned his ship and sailed back into the main sea, where in foul weather they remained three days; and so at last being driven eastward, they landed near unto Whitby in Yorkshire on the side of a high cliff, with great danger to their lives. At last they came to Whitby, where going into an inn they found there one Ratcliffe, a pursuivant, who after an exact view of them all questioned with them about their arrival in that place, whence they came and whither they would? They answered that coming from Newcastle, they were by tempest driven thither. And so after refreshing of themselves, they a
ll went to a Catholic gentleman his house (whose name for divers respects I suppress) within two or three miles of Whitby, by whom they were directed some to one place, some to another, according to their own desires.14
The searches of houses which were made for such missionaries led to the construction of hiding places in the houses of Catholic families. They were often behind chimneys, or concealed in fireplaces or hidden behind sliding panels in attics and lofts; and are still to be seen in such houses as Stonor Park where Edmund Campion and his companions had their secret printing press in 1581. Some of these so-called priests’-holes were actually built into the house at the time of its construction as was done at the house of the Caryll family at West Grinstead. Nicholas Owen, a Welsh carpenter and Jesuit lay brother, ‘developed a very resourceful invention’ over the course of twenty-five years. He was twice captured, on the second occasion being starved out of his refuge at Hindlip after a search lasting four days.15
The presence of Mary Queen of Scots on English soil and the fulminations of Pope Pius V against Queen Elizabeth led to firmer measures being taken against the recusants. A list of leading Catholics was drawn up. Heavy fines were imposed upon the rich – the annual fine to be imposed upon the Stonoi family was set in 1577 at a figure which today would represent well over £50,000 – and those who declined to recant were arrested and put on trial.
‘The priests they succeed in capturing are treated with a variety of terrible tortures’, wrote William Allen.’ [One] is to drive spikes between the nails and the quick … When they would not confess under this torture, the nails of their fingers and toes were turned back.’ Edmund Campion and other Jesuits were executed at Tyburn after repeated torturing upon the rack. And at York, Margaret Clitherow, the daughter of a wax chandler and wife of a butcher, was subjected to the punishment known as peine forte et dure for refusing to plead to the charge of having harboured priests and heard Mass.
She was stripped naked [in the words of her biographer and friend, John Mush], after this they laid weight upon her, which when she felt it she said, ‘Jesu! Jesu! Have mercy upon me!’ which were the last words she was heard to speak. She was in dying one quarter of an hour. A sharp stone, as much as a man’s fist, was put under her back; upon her was laid to the quantity of seven or eight hundredweight at the least, which breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin.16
Between 1581 and 1588, the year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, at least sixty-four priests, eighteen laymen and two women were executed for their religion, as opposed to nearly 300 Protestants who had perished in the fires of Smithfield and elsewhere during the reign of Queen Mary. But the now of missionary priests into England continued unabated, as a Proclamation against Jesuits of 21 November 1591 indicates:
And furthermore, because it is known … that they do come into the same realm by secret creeks, and landing places, disguised both in names and persons; some in apparel as soldiers, mariners, or merchants, pretending that they have heretofore been taken prisoners, and put into galleys, and delivered. Some come in as gentlemen, with contrary names, in comely apparel, as though they had travelled into foreign countries for knowledge … and many as gallants; yea in all colours, and with feathers and such like, disguising themselves; and many of them in their behaviours as ruffians, far off to be thought or suspected to be friars, priests, Jesuits, or popish scholars.17
By the time that this proclamation was issued, however, measures against Catholics were being relaxed, while changes could be observed in churches everywhere except in the most remote parishes. Images were being destroyed; medieval wall paintings replaced by religious texts or by the Ten Commandments; and railed altars at the east end of the church were removed to make way for communion tables in the nave. There was now no chanting during the services; psalms were sung in rhymed versions, sometimes to the accompaniment of viols and wind instruments, and prayers were said. Queen Elizabeth and Archbishop Whitgift had ‘weathered the storm, and the Anglican vessel slipped safely on between the dashing rocks of Romanism and Puritanism’. Most of the Puritan clergy, gentry and clergy had been loyal to the queen and ‘the younger generation brought up on Bible and Prayer Book, and sharing the struggle for national existence against Spain, Pope and Jesuits, became for the most part fervent Protestants. Bible reading and family prayer were becoming customs of the English’.18
Listening to sermons, however, was not customary yet, though those clergy who did preach often did so for two hours or more. In the earlier years of the sixteenth century there had been many clergymen who could not preach the shortest of sermons, who could scarcely even read the prayer book. And as late as 1561–2 in the archdeaconry of Leicester, then in the diocese of Lincoln, only fifteen out of 129 clergymen were able to preach a sermon. Nor was the general behaviour of the clergy much better than it had been in the previous century. In the diocese of Norwich a rector was said to spend more time farming than in tending his human flock; in that of Lincoln one rector was fined for allowing a puppeteer to make use of the church for his performance, another was found guilty of adultery, and more were known to have been guilty of the same offence. In Kent a vicar was described as ‘a common cow-keep and one that useth commonly to drive beasts through the town of Faversham … and other open places, in a jerkin with a bill on his neck, not like a prelate but rather like a common rogue, who hath oft-times been warned thereof, and he will not be reformed’.19 Elsewhere, parsons were accused of forgetting that the church was a house of prayer; of allowing it to become a house of ‘talking, of walking, of brawling, of minstrelry, of hawks and dogs’; and of not ensuring that men and women sat apart from each other as they were meant to do. They guzzled flesh on Fridays and let belief ‘revolve with the wind’.20
By the end of the century, however, both the behaviour of the clergy and their educational standards had been much improved by the bishops; while their social standing had also been enhanced. Formerly they had as often as not been extremely poor. Harrison had said that ‘the incumbent thinketh himself well acquitted if [on an income of £20 a year], all ordinary payments being discharged, he may reserve £13 6s 8d towards his own sustenation or maintenance of his family’. A poorer living than this was not able to maintain ‘a mean scholar much less a learned man’. ‘The greater part of the more excellent wits,’ Harrison continued, ‘choose rather to employ their studies unto physic and the laws, utterly giving over the study of the Scriptures for fear lest they should in time not get their bread by the same.’21 Priests had been allowed to marry since 1547, and their children had put further strain upon their resources. But now the stipends of clergy had increased; and the parsonage was becoming a more comfortable house than its neighbours with better furniture and with books in the study. The parson was just beginning to be accepted on equal terms by the squire,
16 Country Houses and Country People
During his prolonged tour of England in the 1530s and 1540s, John Leland was struck by the number of ruined castles he found upon the way. Many of these like Belvoir Castle, the property of the Earl of Rutland, were being converted into great houses. So were many former religious houses, such as Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, which had been bought by Sir William Sharington, and the priory in the same county which was now the property of Sir John Thynne, begetter of Longleat.
These two men were representative of many of those who were building grand new houses in every county in the middle of the sixteenth century. Sir John Thynne, a nephew of Sir William Thynne, Clerk Comptroller of the Royal Household, had made his fortune as steward to the Duke of Somerset; Sir William Sharington had made his, much more dubiously, as vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint. Whether self-made men or the inheritors of great wealth, the builders of this new age wanted their country houses to appear no less splendid, and usually more eccentrically fanciful, than the castles and fortified manor houses of the medieval past. The earlier Gothic styles of architecture, which were later to be known as Early English and Decorated, had
gradually given way to the Perpendicular and this was now being overlaid with what has been termed Tudor-Gothic. Cupolas sprang up on top of towers; chimney stacks, protruding from the walls, clustered in a variety of shapes over the roofs; gables were surmounted by painted weather vanes and heraldic beasts; finíais sprouted from the summits of the entrance porch; glass was used with increasing liberality, almost entirely replacing oiled linen and horn panels. Indeed, at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, which was built in the 1590s by the immensely rich and overpoweringly bossy Countess of Shrewsbury, the windows occupied so much of the façade that it gave rise to the jingle, ‘Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall’.
Stone for these houses was plundered from monasteries which the Dissolution had placed, either by gift or by purchase, in the hands of rich laity. There were also stone quarries in most English counties from Devon to East Anglia and Kent to Yorkshire. Timber was also used, of course, in building and altering such manor houses as Little Moreton Hall, that astonishing black and white creation in Cheshire to which, in the late 1550s, William Moreton added extravagantly decorated extensions and a jettied gatehouse. Brick, however, was now more commonly used than any other material.1
In earlier times bricks had been imported from the Continent and, known as Flanders tiles, been used mainly in the construction of fireplaces. The thirteenth-century Little Wenham Hall had been constructed of locally-made pink and yellow bricks, but this was an unusual example which had not been followed elsewhere until the brick buildings of France attracted the attention of English knights fighting there well over 100 years later. The English word ‘brick’, from the French brique, did not enter the language until 1416, and the town wall at Hull, built in the second half of the fourteenth century of locally-made bricks, was probably the first major public work to be constructed in England of the new material.2 Thereafter brick became an extremely fashionable building material, used not only for palaces which were or became royal, St James’s Palace and Hampton Court among them, but even for houses like Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire which were built in districts where the local material was stone.3
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