It is a very difficult thing to form a clear and accurate picture of the triumph of the Reformation in this country. Professor Trevelyan in his History of England (p. 297) has summed up the situation very fairly in the following words:
“Those who conceive of opinion in Tudor England as sharply divided between two mutually exclusive and clearly defined parties of Catholic and Protestant can never understand the actual course taken by the Reformation before the latter years of Elizabeth. Opinion was in the making, not yet made. Honest men as well as time-servers were perpetually altering their views. Few held a consistent body of doctrine which would have satisfied the Catholic or Protestant partisans of a later day.”
What the Elizabethan Government set out to do was to kill the Catholic life in this country by a policy of slow starvation. Everybody knows the story of the arrest and deprivation of the Catholic Bishops at the beginning of the reign, and it is natural to expect that the absence of a hierarchy, with consequent lack of guidance and the curtailing of the administration of the Sacraments, was bound in the long run to produce the desired effect; but it is difficult to fix a turning point before which we could say that a Catholic recovery was possible, after which we must say that a Protestant triumph is inevitable.
Some would place that date in the first two years of the reign, when the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy were placed on the Statute Book. Others might suggest that the decisive event was the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Dr. Brian Magee in his book, The English Recusants, holds that the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587 should be considered as a definite religious turning point. It might be held that there was possibility of a Catholic revival up to the execution of Charles I in 1649. Mr. Belloc puts the decisive date even later with the flight of James II in 1688.
It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that the turning point in the religious history of this country is the decade between 1560 and 1570, and that in this period the foundations of the Protestant triumph were secured. It can be shown too, I think, that the chief responsibility must be laid, in the odd irony of history, upon the shoulders of His Most Catholic Majesty, King Philip II of Spain, whom a very fair and exact student of the period has rightly described as “the best friend of the English Reformation.” [C. G. Bayne, Anglo-Roman Relations, 1558-1565, p. 224.]
During the first eleven years of Elizabeth’s reign, from 1559 to 1570, the religious settlement established by the Act of Uniformity was so precarious and there was so much internal weakness that any decisive action on the part of the Holy See or of the Catholic powers would, inevitably one must think, have turned the scale in favour of Catholicism, and led, possibly, to Elizabeth’s deposition. What might have followed in the religious history of this country and indeed of the world cannot be estimated.
It was Philip of Spain who prevented this action being taken by the Papacy, and who refused to take it himself- with consequences which are now history. Not only did he prevent the Papal envoys Parpaglia and Martinengo from entering England, but he succeeded in postponing the sentence of excommunication against Elizabeth for more than ten years. When the excommunication came, in 1570, it was too late.
The Elizabethan Government was secure and the chance of restoration of Catholic life and worship had already faded away. The forces of the Counter-Reformation fought a grand battle full of high courage and noble endeavour. The missionaries and martyrs gave generously their labours, their blood, and their lives; but they could never hope to retrieve the position yielded in the first years of the reign.
The Crucial Decade
During this decade a deep and far-reaching change took place in England, a change in the essentials of religious worship, by which the habit of centuries was swept away, and the new practice of assistance at the Anglican Prayer Book service was established and consolidated. It may perhaps be a truism, but it is worth repeating that the defeat of the Catholic Church in England and the triumph of the new Establishment was, in the last analysis, a question of lapsed Catholics.
A large part of the Catholic population, whose exact proportion it is extremely difficult to determine, faced with the great decision whether it should stand out boldly against the Act of Uniformity or not, surrendered to the constant and tenacious pressure of the Government, not only in many cases lost contact with the Mass, but with some specious display of excuse sacrificed its principles, capitulated to the enemy, and went off to attend the new heretical service. This mass apostasy, the true turning point in the religious history of England, was not a sudden and spectacular surrender. It was gradual, but it was cumulative, and in its effects it was permanent. It can be held, I think, that the battle was lost from the very start.
The German historian A. O. Meyer has put the matter in its true light. “The vast majority of Catholics were entirely left to themselves without any bond of union with their Church. No doubt the long history of the sufferings of English Catholics comprised periods of much greater oppression than the first twelve years of Elizabeth, but at no other period did Catholics see themselves so utterly forsaken by the Church, or so entirely cut off from all communication with Rome, as at this period-especially in the seven years between the close of the Council of Trent and the Queen’s excommunication.
“Neither Pope nor Council, neither Emperor nor Spanish King, had done anything whatsoever for them, not one priest had been sent to them. ‘Who would ever have believed that until now (1570) the Roman court would have done so little to win back this island which had always been so faithful?’ . . . The great apostasy from the Catholic Church did not therefore take place suddenly and of set purpose, but was the result of silent compromises with conscience.”[England and the Catholic Church Under Queen Elizabeth, pp. 67-70. ]
It is possible to catch a glimpse through these years of some of the external manifestations of this spirit of compromise, of the subterfuges adopted by Catholics to justify their attendance at the Anglican services, of the pathetic attempts to exonerate themselves, and to prevent themselves falling into the completest apostasy; and, later on, of their unwillingness to accept the decisions which condemned their practices, their stubbornness in resisting authoritative prohibitions, and of the final failure of the later missionaries to draw more than a small fraction of them away from the habits into which they had fallen.
When people compromise with conscience they become all too readily stubborn defenders of their own defection, and this certainly seems to have been the case with many a lapsed English Catholic during the reign of Elizabeth. It meant, inevitably, in the course of a few years the loss of whole families to the Faith.
A good general picture of the situation in these early years is provided by Cardinal Allen in a letter written in 1580, relating his experiences in Lancashire, whither he had returned for the sake of his health, before becoming a priest, and where he had stayed from 1562 to 1565. By his teaching and example he was able, he relates, to convince many among the nobility and landowners that truth was to be found only in the Catholic Church, but it was a far harder task to persuade them to give up receiving the Anglican Communion, going to Church, hearing sermons reading books, and in fact having any spiritual intercourse whatever with the heretics.
His attempts, he remarks, to separate these Catholics from their former lax habits in this regard were bitterly resisted, and he notes that the difficulty was increased not merely because many lay folk thought that they could with a safe conscience hear Mass in secret and then go publicly to the Anglican service and even receive Communion there, but also because many priests had adopted the practice of celebrating Mass secretly and then conducting the Anglican service in public, on the plea that it was sufficient to preserve an interior assent to the true Faith, and that they might look upon attendance at the heretical service merely as an act of obedience to the civil authorities. [“. . . and this is a very difficult thing to do over there because of the harsh laws, and the fact that they are punished with prison and various penalties; and also because in the past the Catholics themselves through fear gave way to this practice. So much was this the case that not only did well-meaning lay people, otherwise firm in their faith and ready to assist at Mass when possible, go to their churches and assist at schismatical services, sometimes even receiving Communion, but even many priests, after saying Mass in secret, publicly on the very same day, conducted the heretical services, thus in a most wicked way sharing the chalice of the Lord with the chalice of the devil. They did this because they falsely thought it was sufficient if they held to their faith by inward assent while obeying the government in outward actions.” Full Latin text in T. F. Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, p. 56.]
An Italian account published in 1590 confirms this picture. The author notes the practice, in the early years of the reign, of assistance at the Prayer Book service, and indicates that there were Catholics who thought that they could save themselves from taking part in the actual service with the heretics if they came to the church before them and refused to leave in their company.
They took Communion “in the Calvinist Supper,” or at least got themselves inscribed as having done so, and then went home to hear Mass privately, “thus sullying the Most Sacred Body of Christ with sacrilege and with the profane bread of Calvin, serving at the same time Christ and Baal.” They allowed heretical Ministers to baptise their children and to bless their marriages. All this, the author continues, was done without scruple because the priests remaining in the Kingdom and at liberty (save only a few) either by ignorance gave their approval to such conduct, or through fear pretended that it was permissible (Allen, p. 57, n. 1).
There were many who, while quite willing to assist at the Prayer Book services, could not bring themselves to receive the Anglican Communion, and found various means to avoid doing so. If they were lucky they might arrange to be inscribed by a compliant vicar as having fulfilled this legal duty; or, if they were sufficiently prosperous, as for example were Sir John Bourne or Viscount Montagu, they would undertake a change of residence on Holy Saturday so as to avoid appearing on the register of either the parish they had just quitted or the one in which on Easter Sunday they had just arrived.
Bourne was a staunch Catholic under Queen Mary and had been for a time her Secretary. In 1563 Sandys Bishop of Worcester said of him, “If he were put on Trial when and where he received the Communion, I think it would fall forth that he received it not since the Queen’s Majesty’s reign, for his custom is to shift ever on Easter even from the one of his houses to the other and so to avoid the matter.” Others took refuge behind the rubric in the Prayer Book which forbade the Minister to admit to the Lord’s Table not only those who were open and evil livers, but also those betwixt whom he perceived malice or hatred to reign. By claiming to be “out of charity” with one or other of their neighbours, some Catholics were able to make this an excuse for not receiving the Anglican Communion at Easter or at the other times.
The “Church Papists”
The Catholics who went to the Anglican services were a sufficiently large body to be given a special name. They were called aptly enough, “Church Papists”: Churchgoers for legal purposes, but Papists in sympathy. Perhaps the most brilliant portrait of the typical Church Papist is that provided by a contemporary: “A Papist is one that parts religion between his conscience and his purse, and comes to church not to serve God, but the King. The fear of the Law makes him wear the mark of the Gospel which he useth, not as a means to save his soul, but his charges. He loves Popery well, but is loth to lose by it and though he be something scared by the Bulls of Rome, yet he is struck with more terror at the apparitor.
“Once a month, he presents himself at the church to keep off the churchwardens, and brings in his body to save his bail; kneels with the congregation, but prays by himself and asks God’s forgiveness for coming thither. If he is forced to stay out a sermons he puts his hat over his eyes and frowns out the hour: and when he comes home, he thinks to make amends for his fault by abusing the preacher.
“His main subtlety is to shift off the Communion, for which he is never unfurnished of a quarrel, and will be sure always to be out of charity at Easter. He would make a bad martyr, and a good traveller, for his conscience is so large he could never wander from it, and in Constantinople would be circumcised with a mental reservation. His wife is more zealous in her devotion, and therefore more costly, and he bates her in tyres what she stands him in religion.” [Quoted by Birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, p. 52. See Magee, The English Recusants, p. 2.]
Of course this is not the whole picture. There is evidence on the other side of those who refused at any price to go to the Protestant Church or to assist at the new service, but most of this evidence comes from the period after 1570 when the excommunication of Elizabeth had made the situation much clearer. Fr. Persons in a letter to Rome mentions several cases of people who readily endured persecution rather than even walk through a Protestant church while service was on, and he has a touching story of a lad who unwittingly assisted as a page at an Anglican wedding service) and who thought himself excommunicated in consequence. [“A certain boy, ten years old I think, was induced by some trick on the part of his friends to walk in procession to the church in front of a bride on the day of her marriage (as is the custom), and on being taken to task afterwards by his fellows because by so doing he had fallen into schism, as they said, he began to weep inconsolably and refused to accept any consolation until after a few days he chanced to meet me, whereupon he ran to me and falling at my feet begged me with a flood of tears that he might make confession of his sins, promising that he would be racked with every kind of torment rather than again consent to so great a sin. There are innumerable other stories, which I refrain from telling.” On the other hand Persons emphasizes the fact that in the first ten years of the reign there was wholesale defection on this point. “For at the beginning of the reign of this Queen, when the danger of this schism was not very well realized, for ten consecutive years practically all Catholics without distinction used to go to their churches, yet at that time the enemy were not satisfied with this kind of pretence but required oaths to pledge their faith and participation in communion. This was noted by the Catholics and prudently and piously they have severed themselves completely from them; and we see how pleasing to God was their holy zeal, this being shown in the harvest of innumerable souls that ensued after that period.” Persons to the Rector of the English College, Rome, 17 November, 1580. Catholic Record Society. Vol. xxxix, pp. 58-59.]
In the first decade of the reign, however, the position was far from clear, with the result that there were cases of people who seemed to have a foot in both camps and to be in a situation which later would have been impossible.
There were, of course, many reasons of a temporal character urging the Church-Papists to adopt this policy of compromise. First of all there was lack of sure guidance. The deprivation of the Bishops had destroyed the hierarchy and insistence on the Oath of Supremacy had removed the best of the parish priests, so that for large numbers of Catholics there was no one to turn to for spiritual help or advice on matters of conscience.
It is perhaps natural but none the less significant, that the leaders in the policy of compromise were members of the nobility and the gentry, the nobiles et magnates, as Allen calls them, who in matters temporal had so much to lose if convicted of recusancy. The burden of persecution was in the beginning of the reign comparatively light, but could be severe and even crippling, for, as Bayne has pointed out, although the shilling fine for non-attendance at the Anglican Service was all that the Act of Uniformity imposed on lay folk, the authorities could, and often did, proceed under ecclesiastical law where under the writ De excommunicato capiendo there was no limit to the term of imprisonment the recusant might suffer (Bayne, p. 176, n. 35).
We must also give full weight to the habit of implicit obedience to the civil authority, a habit strong in England in the sixteenth century, and one for which we of to-day probably make too little allowance. Above all there was conflicting counsel, the dread evil of differences of opinion, lack of clear understanding of the deeper issues involved, with the inevitable result that weaker Catholics found an excuse, if not a justification, for their action, thus preparing the way for the mounting influence of bad example.
Even the clergy compromised. Thus, for example, Dr. Alban Langdale, a learned priest who lived in the house of Viscount Montagu, and Johnson, another priest whose opinion is said to have been highly esteemed, considered that it was not a sin to go to the Protestant Church in order to avoid persecution provided that a protest was made that the attendance was merely a civic act done in obedience to the Queen. [Catholic Record Society. Vol. ii, 28, 61, 178; iv, 4.]
Some went even further. Thus Robert Pursglove who had been suffragan Bishop of Hull for twenty years and was eventually deprived by Elizabeth had openly advocated conformity; [“Who indeed in the Beginnings of the late Schism was exceeding far out of the right way and could never be reclaimed perfectly until his death, in so much that ordinarily he was accounted amongst Catholics of all sorts no better than a schismatic and rather thought to be a scandalous newter to the destruction of many simple souls which by his schismatical actions were seduced and kept in schism than to give any good example of Christian duty at all; much more timorous to incur the danger of temporal laws than forward to do his duty to God.” From an Oscott College Manuscript, quoted by Bayne, appendix 43.] and in 1588 there were still men like Thomas Langdale who “affirmed as many schismatical old priests do still that it was not only lawful in these extremities to go to Church without protestation but also to receive the Supper of the Lord” (Bayne, p. 290).
There was in fact no unanimity of opinion and, to complete the tragedy, in the first two decisive years of the reign an authoritative pronouncement was not forthcoming. This is a point on which sufficient emphasis has not been laid. The fault seems to lie at the door of Philip II of Spain. Bayne has shown how he successfully prevented the Papal envoys Parpaglia and Martinengo reaching this country and how he succeeded in preventing the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V until it was too late. [Philip seems to have feared in 1560 that the duty of deposing Elizabeth might fall to France; while in 1561 he obstructed the Martinengo mission through fear that if the Pope deprived Elizabeth, on him as elder son of the Church would fall the duty of conquering England in execution of the Papal sentence. This is was not prepared to do. See Bayne, op. cit. , pp. 50, 120; Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, pp. 67-68. There is a very clear statement of Philip’s own view to his Ambassador in Rome and to the Duchess of Parma in Gachard, Correspondence de Marguerite d’Autriche avec Philippe II, I, No. xlviii, pp. 204-8.]
Seeking for Guidance
It was the English laity, however, who made the first move to get a definite pronouncement on the question of Catholic assistance at Anglican services. A group of nobles drew up a petition to be forwarded to the Council of Trent, explaining their peculiar circumstances and begging for a decision. The petition was made out in duplicate, one copy being entrusted to the Spanish Ambassador, and one to the Portuguese. De Quadra, the Spanish Ambassador, considering that a more informed decision would be arrived at in Rome than at the Council, sent his copy to the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, to be submitted to the Pope.
His covering letter, dated 7th August, 1562, from London, throws interesting light on his conception of the situation, and clearly suggests that he was hopeful that permission to assist at the Anglican services would be granted. For this purpose he did not scruple to go beyond the limit of objective truth. He suggests to his Roman counterpart that the abnormality and novelty of the case, la mucha insolencia y novedad del caso, make it difficult to resolve the question by the ordinary rules of canon law concerning the relations of Catholics with excommunicated persons and heretics.
In England, he says, with more than a little exaggeration, everyone must by law live as a heretic under pain of death, so that the question of deciding whether there is fear or coercion does not arise. Here, he maintains, there is always absolute coercion, parece que es siempre coaction absoluta. Moreover, he goes on, again without very high regard for the truth, in England those who go to church have to assist only at “Common Prayer,” preces communes, which contain no false doctrine or impiety, but consist of prayers taken from the Catholic Church, except that there is no mention of merit or of the intercession of the saints, so that apart from dissimulation and the question of bad example, the act of assistance is not intrinsically evil.
There is no question of receiving Communion but merely of passive assistance at the service. He himself, De Quadra continues, has not been able to give a definite answer in the matter and he thinks that a definite Papal pronouncement should be made, though he admits that he finds it hard to imagine that a general answer will be able to cover all the circumstances (Bayne, appendix 47).
The Roman Answer
Vargas, the Spanish Ambassador in Rome, may have presented De Quadra’s letter to the Pope, together with the English petition, the text of which has not come down to us. This is suggested by the fact that the Roman answer mentions the death sentence for recusants. It is probable that the English petition did not mention the extreme penalty which was not, as yet, in force, but it is certainly referred to in the letter of the Spanish Ambassador.
In any case the petition was presented to the Inquisition, and the answer of the Inquisitors, whose President was Cardinal Ghislieri, the future Pope Pius V, was an unqualified refusal to countenance any association whatever with heretics in any form of religious worship. After forbidding the practice, the Inquisitors go on to point out that in this matter not only is there a question of communicatio with heretics, but that assistance at their services must be interpreted as a public profession of their life and errors, for it is clear that those who go to these services do so precisely that they may be looked upon as heretics, and so escape the penalties imposed on Catholics.[“The reply to the proposed is that it is not lawful to give up Catholic practice or to adopt outwardly the heretical religion, or to assist at their psalm-singing and preaching. For in the case proposed it would not be merely a question of religious participation with heretics or joining in their practices; but it would mean accepting and professing their life and errors, for Catholics who do these things have no other reason for doing them than to be considered as heretics so that they may escape the penalties imposed on Catholics.” Full Latin text in Bayne, appendix 48.]
This is a particularly important point and one worth recalling to-day when circumstances have so greatly changed. It is a good thing for Catholics to remember in the midst of invitations to, and talking about joint prayer or joint religious services with non-Catholics, that this communicatio in sacris had, in the England of the sixteenth century, a very special significance. It was equivalent to apostasy and was accepted as such by the Elizabethan Government. Fr. Pollen emphasized this point years ago, but it is worth repeating.
“The Elizabethan settlement of Religion,” he wrote, “depended on the participation of the people in heretical worship. Thus for a Catholic to attend . . . was not merely participatio in sacris with heretics (which does not necessarily imply renouncing the Catholic Faith oneself), it was here, by force of circumstances, also an act of adherence to the system of Tudor Religion; it was a participation in a tyrannical effort to put King before God, not merely in one’s own heart, but in the conscience of the whole Kingdom” (p. 335).
There was no doubt, then, about the attitude of the Roman authorities. As Maitland has truly put it, when the question was one of pretending that coercion was an excuse for this sort of thing, “Pius, the conciliatory Pius, will have none of it. If the choice lies between Church and gallows, the gallows must be chosen.” The fate of this Roman answer is obscure. Apparently De Quadra received it in November, 1562. He was probably disappointed at its uncompromising character and wondered how he should act. As a good Ambassador he consulted his master. He suggested communicating the decision, together with certain faculties contained in the same reply, by word of mouth to a few trustworthy priests, but he would be careful to leave nothing in writing which might fall into the hands of the Elizabethan Government.
Philip’s reply is not known but there is good reason to suppose that he refused to allow his Ambassador to take any action at all. So far as we know the Roman decision was never published in this country. It is not referred to by Allen, Sanders or Persons, and seems to have been completely unknown. Once again it looks as though Spanish political consideration had overridden religious duty. The English Catholics were allowed to remain in doubt and the deadly paralysis of compromise was allowed to spread unchecked.
The extent of the responsibility of King Philip seems obvious enough and it may be worth while to recall Bayne’s judgement on both the man and his policy. “Although he regarded himself as the patron of the English Catholics, who looked to him as their foremost hope he never stirred a finger to bring about a Catholic restoration. He steadily discouraged all plans of insurrection, he refused to listen to proposals for resistance in Ireland, his voice was always on the side of patience and forbearance.
“To Elizabeth herself he used no other language than that of kindness. He exhorted her, he advised her, he tried to persuade her to marry an orthodox husband, he supported Dudley’s wooing in the hope that Dudley would bring her back to Rome, but he shrank from the use and even from the threat of force. His share in English relations with the papacy may be summed up in the one word obstruction.
“Whenever the Pope contemplated or was thought to contemplate active intervention Philip interposed to stop him. In 1559 he overwhelmed Paul IV with entreaties to leave Elizabeth unmolested. When Parpaglia was sent to her in 1560 he protested with all his force and persuaded Pius to revoke the mission. When Martinengo was dispatched in 1561, as he himself had originally suggested, he repeated his old tactics. When it was proposed to excommunicate Elizabeth in 1563 he still harped on the old string, that the time was not ripe for such a dangerous enterprise. The net result of his policy was to make him the best friend of the English reformation” (Bayne, p. 224).
The Portuguese Petition
The petition entrusted to the Portuguese Ambassador has had a kindlier fate. The text is known to us. The English Catholics, it says, in danger of imprisonment or even already convicted, are being urged by their friends and relations to put in an appearance at least at the Anglican services on Sundays and other Feasts, while psalms are sung, readings made from the Bible and sermons are preached. The petition seeks to know if Catholics may do this without sin, and asks that the question may be discussed in secret at the Council of Trent, lest the matter should come to the ear of the Elizabethan government and arouse more bitterness against Catholics. In England, the petition concludes, it is impossible to get a definite decision on this question for the English theologians either are afraid to give an answer or do not agree among themselves
There is some doubt as to what happened to this petition. It was delivered by the Portuguese representative at Trent to the Legates on August 2nd, 1562, and was sent by them to Rome for submission to the Pope. It seems to have been returned by the Pope to the Council to be dealt with in secret as the Portuguese Ambassador had desired. A Committee of 12, under the presidency of Cardinals Hosius and Soto, was set up. It seems to have discussed the question and to have decided unanimously against the practices of the “Church Papists.” “In no way is it permitted to you without great sin and incurring the wrath of God to be present at these heretical prayers or to listen to their sermon.” [The full Latin text of the petition is given in Bayne, appendix 44.] The history of this decision is also very vague and the means by which it was transmitted to England are not clear. There is a story that Thomas Darbyshire, Bonner’s former Chancellor, brought it back, but this is very unlikely since he was almost certainly abroad at the time. [See Bayne, appendix 46; also Pollen, op. cit. , p. 100.]
Allen, at a later date, writes of a certain resolution which he sent to England from Rome, on this question of not going to the churches of heretics, and says that it was received as an oracle and that the English Catholics were prepared to suffer anything rather than sully their consciences by this sort of sin. But it is not at all clear that he is referring to the decision of the Committee of the Council of Trent or to a later decision made by Pope Pius V.
Dodd says that Allen had the decision of the Inquisitors with him during his stay in Lancashire between 1563 and 1565, but Allen himself makes no mention of this nor does Nicholas Fitzherbert refer to any Roman or Papal decision when he speaks of Allen’s successful work in Oxford in winning many people away from this “pernicious opinion” (see Knox, p. xxxii, 5). Allen stresses the fact that there was considerable opposition to what was considered his excessive severity in this matter and he goes on to say that he was successful in breaking down this opposition to the great good of souls, so much so that the authorities began to wink at the illegal absences of the more prominent Catholics from the Anglican Services, and turned their attention to the clergy and the lesser gentry.
Even so, Allen has to admit, the laity were occasionally obliged to assist at the heretical services and he seems to imply that further sacrifice could not in fairness be demanded of them (Knox, p. 57). This concession to compromise is certainly not in the spirit of the Roman resolution and it is unlikely that Allen would have on his own authority softened the severity of that decision.
In any case Allen’s intervention was less effective than he seems at first to have thought, and the Church-going practices appear to have continued without any “considerable or permanent change” (Law, p. xxx). The situation was made more difficult by the fact that there were very few or no priests in England with faculties to absolve from excommunication those who had sinned by going to the Protestant services and this, of course, greatly increased the tendency to drift.
The First “Faculties”
In 1564, either as a result of the English Petition or because of other information, Pope Pius V decided to put an end to the confusion, and he gave such faculties orally to four English priests, Harding, Sanders, Wilson, and Pecock, with power to delegate them to others. Apparently he also gave them “a special commission to make known the Papal sentence that to frequent the Protestant Church was a mortal sin, and a practice under no circumstances to be tolerated or justified” (Law, p. xxxi).
Wilson and Pecock went to England and they seem at first to have had considerable difficulty in getting the English Catholics to accept the Papal ruling. Their faculties were not in writing although Sanders appears to have written a sort of circular letter to the English Catholics, addressed to and entrusted to Laurence Vaux. The text of this is lost, but Vaux himself wrote a letter to his Lancashire friends in November, 1566, which almost certainly gives us the substance of the original document written by Sanders.
It is a moving and earnest appeal to his friends to give up the subterfuge of compromise, and to stand out boldly for the unity of the Church and as Confessors of Christ. Those who allow their children to be baptised by heretical ministers “or be present at the communion service now used in churches in England, as well the laity as the clergy, do not walk in the state of salvation”. To this rule he insists there can be no exception. Pope Pius V (the “conciliatory Pius”, as Maitland was later to call him) is not a rigorist. His decision is in line with the whole tradition of the Church since the early ages of persecution.
“In matters of Faith and conscience,” he continues in a downright passage, “I must therefore without halting, colouring or dissembling, tell you that the Pope cannot dispense any of the laity to entangle themselves with the schism, as is aforewritten concerning sacraments and services that you may not be present amongst them. If you associate yourselves at Sacrament or service that is contrary to the unity of Christ’s Church you fall in schism that is to say you be separated from Christ’s Church, and being in that state (as saith St Augustine), although you lead ever so good a life in the sight of the world, the wrath of God hangeth over you, and dying in that state you shall lose the everlasting life of Heaven” (Law, xxxvi). He points out that nobody in England can absolve them from schism except those who have the faculties communicated through Sanders and Harding, and begs them to follow the noble example of the early martyrs and their own Bishops. Vaux’s letter and his own preaching seemed to have produced considerable effect, but he obviously met with opposition on two points. The English Catholics were willing to abstain from the reception of the Anglican Communion, but they appear to have thought that it was too much to expect complete abstention from all Anglican services, and they called in question Vaux’s authority to speak as he did.
In June 1567 Harding and Sanders wrote from Louvain to Cardinal Morone to get a solution to this difficulty. They admitted that the earlier practice, because of differences of opinion among the clergy had been to absolve those lay folk who abstained from the Anglican Communion even though they continued to assist at the heretical services. [The full Latin text of the report to Cardinal Morone is given in Meyer, op. cit. , p. 475.] This lax attitude had served only to increase weakness and to undermine Catholic courage. As long as a lax attitude was taken with regard to those who failed in this way, it was impossible to establish a firm and constant line of conduct.
The new decision had cleared the air and had given to wavering Catholics courage and fortitude. But their authority for adopting this stricter teaching was being called in question by the nobility, and written justification for their attitude was necessary. They proposed that an authoritative statement should be forwarded to Louvain, whence copies could be sent over to England.
Compromise and Apostasy
In fact, however, the earlier laxity and lack of decision had made a lasting mark. In the seven years which had elapsed the cancer had bitten too deeply into the minds of many English Catholics to be eradicated by a tardy pronouncement Compromise continued and the apostasy went on. In 1580 Parsons and Campion, at a synod held in London, found themselves obliged to renew the condemnation of the practice of assistance at heretical services, and the general attitude about this period is reflected in a letter from Richard Topcliffe to Burleigh, written in 1590. Topcliffe notes that refusal to receive the Anglican communion is general, but thinks that many Papists still go to church merely to evade the law, and declares that dispensations are granted to them for this purpose. [“But I know that there is a great danger in many others, who sometimes do come to the church, and yet be papists, both in their inward hearts and in their outward actions and conversations, refusing to receive the communion; and in everything else as ill as the worst. Of which there be also two sorts. The one goeth to the church for the saving of the penalties of thirteen score pounds a year, yet his wife and whole family, most of them, continue resolute recusants, and harbour traitors. The other sort go to the church because they may avoid suspicion of the magistrates the better: and is dispensed withal by some secret dispensation of a delegate, or such a great priest as hath episcopal authority, to the end they may the better, and with the less suspicion, serve the turn of their cause Catholic. . . .” Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. IV, No. xxxi.]
In 1592 Allen thought it necessary to write a circular letter to the English Catholics in which, while urging priests to be merciful in forgiving those who had fallen into heresy and were now repentant, he insisted that they must all remain firm in forbidding and condemning communication in heretical worship in any format The matter, he repeated, was not one of positive law which for weighty reasons might be dispensed. It was “God’s own eternal law” from which there is no dispensation.
On this he had obtained the express teaching of the Pope, Clement VIII, “who expressly told me that to participate with the Protestants either by praying with them or coming to their churches or services or such like was by no means lawful or dispensable” (Knox, p. 345). Allen concluded with a moving appeal to his children who “be all printed in my very heart” to resist schism at any price and to be unanimi in Domino. But the exhortation was too late. The spirit of compromise and the drift to Anglican services had done their work. Only a relic of English Catholicism was saved from the wreck and went on to suffer bravely and steadfastly for the sake of its faith under the penal laws.
The failure of the early years of the reign was never adequately repaired. New generations grew up ignorant of the Mass and content with the Prayer Book services or breaking out into Puritan forms of worship. The children of the apostates became in time zealous Protestants. The trickle of deserters, unchecked at the beginning, grew into a great stream. And the beginning of the defection lay in the early years of the reign, years which were decisive for the future. There were indeed days of more violent and bloody persecution, but, as Meyer has said, “at no other period did Catholics see themselves so utterly forsaken by the Church, or so entirely cut off from all communication with Rome . . . Neither pope nor council neither emperor or Spanish King, had done anything whatsoever for them, not one priest had been sent to them” (Meyer, p. 67). It was in that early doubt and isolation that the seeds of the Elizabethan apostasy were sown.