----------
Excerpts
From
LITURGICAL
REVOLUTION
Cranmer's
Godly Order
by
Michael Davies
"Godly
Order" or "Christmas Game"?
THE
REACTION to the new liturgy has already been touched upon in Chapter VIII. It
was shown that most of the clergy tended to make use of the ambiguities in the
new communion service in an attempt to interpret it in an orthodox manner. This
reaction will be examined in detail in the next two chapters. The ordinary
faithful did not possess the theological skill to put an orthodox
interpretation upon a radical break with the traditions of their forefathers. If
the Reformers had no intention of altering the traditional doctrine of the Mass
then why had they changed the traditional liturgy? As is so often the case, the
intuition of the simple faithful proved to be the most accurate and the most
honest. Scholars like Gardiner who tried to show that the new service was
compatible with the Catholic doctrine on the Mass could certainly have had no
illusions about the beliefs and intentions of Cranmer and his associates. As
the Anglican historian J. T. Tomlinson expresses it: " . . . the First
Prayer Book was regarded at that time as merely provisional until the
English Reformers could give full effect to their own predilections." l
The
changes in religious policy made during the reign of Henry VIII had passed over
the heads of the mass of the English people. The suppression of chantries in
1547 and the removal of images had brought the nature of Protestantism home to
every parish. The imposition of the new communion service proved to be the last
straw in some cases, and it provoked a number of armed risings.
Like all
reformers, those who had devised and imposed the new liturgy were confident
that they knew what was best for the people . . . The services must be
understood by the people and made congregational, the people must be turned
from spectators intent upon their private devotions into active
participants." 2 The new service became mandatory on 9th June, 1549,
Whit-Sunday. However the congregational activity which it evoked was not
exactly of the kind which Cranmer had intended. The parishioners of Sampford
Courtenay-----a beautiful granite church
on the edge of Dartmoor-----"heard it read and did not like it, and on the
following day they compelled their parish priest to return to the old ritual.
They likened the new service to 'a Christmas game' and would have no changes
until the king was of full age." 3 A contemporary Protestant historian complained that
the parish priest "yielded to their wills and forthwith raversheth himself
in his old popish attire and sayeth mass and all such services as in times past
accustomed." 4
Local
justices of the peace came to remonstrate with the peasants-----but it was of no avail. One
was so tactless that a farmer named Letherbridge struck him with his billhook
and others "fell upon him and slew him . . ." 5 The west country men were
in no mood for argument, in fact they were not really competent to argue. They
were making a stand for something which deep within them they knew was right;
it involved their roots and their eternal destiny. Scholars could, and would,
belittle them. Cranmer could, and would, sneer at them-----but it is not always those who are able to put the
best reasons for their cause who are in the right.
The
news spread "as a cloud carried with a violent wind and as a thunder clap
sounding through the whole country and the common people so well allowed and
liked thereof that they clapped their hands for joy." 6
The
Mass was restored in neighbouring parishes. A force was gathered and gaining
strength as it marched, went to Crediton where it joined a Cornish force which
had
risen independently a few days earlier. The rebels were soon in effective
control of the west country and could have reached London with competent
leadership. But they were not organized revolutionaries with an objective and a
strategy-----they were humble men who
had risen spontaneously to defend the Faith of their fathers.
The
Protestant historian, Professor W. G. Hoskins, is unable to conceal his
admiration when describing their march on Exeter. "With the sacred banner
of the Five Wounds of Christ floating before them, and the pyx borne under a
rich canopy, with crosses, banners, candlesticks, swinging censers, and holy
bread and water 'to defend them from devils and the adverse power,' the
procession of Devon and Cornish farmers and labourers, led by a few of the
gentry, ignorantly pitting themselves against the whole power of the State,
marched on to Exeter behind their robed priests, singing as they advanced; a
pathetic, futile, and gallant rebellion." 7 Futile? In worldly terms perhaps-----but sub specie
aeternitatis . . . ?
"We
do not know how many conservative and stubborn West countrymen marched in that
hopeless rebellion: a few thousands probably. They spoke and fought for tens of
thousands, no doubt, who disliked and detested the changes. But in most
parishes the parson and his people accepted the orders from above and conformed
outwardly." 8
Even
in Exeter the majority, including the mayor and chief citizens, disliked the
reforms, but as was the case with Catholics throughout all the persecutions and
penal times, they faced an agonizing choice between the dictates of religion
and an obligation, which in itself they regarded to be religious, of obedience
to the crown. The Protestant historian Hooker concedes that the party "of
the old stamp and of the Romish religion" was larger than the Protestant
group in Exeter but that "the magistrates and chieftains of the city albeit
they were not fully resolved and satisfied in religion yet they not respecting
that but chiefly their dutifulness to the king and commonwealth, nothing liked
the rebellion . . ." 9
So widespread was popular feeling in support of the
rebels that even those who lacked the courage to join them were not willing to
fight against them. Lord Russell, the Lord Privy Seal and an experienced
soldier, had been sent to crush the rebellion. He found it almost impossible to
raise local levies to combat the men of Devon and Cornwall, not simply in those
counties but in Dorset, Wiltshire, and Somerset. The strong Catholic sympathies
of the people of Somerset are made clear by a letter from the King's Council to
Lord Russell suggesting a method of overcoming their reluctance: " . . .
Where ye declare that thoccasyon of being able to levie so few in Somersetshire
is the evil inclynation of the people, and that there are amongs them that do
not styck openly to speak such traterous words agaynst the kyng and in favour
of the traytrous rebells. Ye shall hang two or three of them, and cause them to
be executed lyke traytors. And that wilbe the only and best staye of all those
talks." 10
Even Protestant historians concede that the Western
Rebellion was genuinely religious. 11 The rebels were
attacked by a propaganda campaign as well as with military forces. The
government propagandists warned the West country men that they were deceived by
their priests "whelps of the Romish litter". 12 It had, in fact,
been the laity who had forced or shamed their priests into making a stand for
the Faith. Nicholas Udall, a Protestant scholar who had gained the favour of
Edward VI through the patronage of Catherine Parr, derided the rebels for their
pronouncements against heresy which, he claimed, they did not understand. The
changes were, he insisted, based on the "most godly council . . . with
long study and travail of the best learned bishops and doctors of the
realm." 13 Had the rebels had the learning or debating skill of
St. Thomas More they could have pointed out that the traditional religion had
the support of a numberless host of the best learned bishops and doctors,
stretching back in time to the Apostles themselves.
The religious nature of the rebellion is made clear by
the demands of the rebels. "Fyrst we wyll have the general counsall and
the holy decrees of our forefathers observed, kept and performed and who so
ever shal agayne saye them, we hold them as Heretikes . . . we will have the
masse in Latten, as before . . . we will have the Sacrament hange over the
hyeyhe aulter, and there to be worshypped as it was wount to be, and they
whiche will not thereto consent, we wyl have them dye lyke heretykes against
the Holy Catholyque fayth . . . we wyl have palmes and asshes at the tymes
accustomed, Images to be set up again in every church, and all other auncient
olde Ceremonyes used heretofore, by our mother the holy church . . . we wil not
receyve the newe servye because it is like a Christmas game, but we wyll have
foure old service of Mattens, masse, Evensong and procession in Latten not in
English, as it was before." 14 [How many
of us more learned Catholics of just a generation ago had enough true faith and
courage to insist on this? Especially when we feared no actual slaughter as
befell the English laity? To ask the question is to answer it.-------The Web Master.]
Like Nicholas Udall, Cranmer took great delight in
ridiculing the rebels for their ignorance . "When I first read your
request, O ignorant men of Devonshire and Cornwall, straightways came to my
mind a request, which James and John made unto Christ; to whom Christ answered:
'You ask you wot not what.' Even so thought I of you, as soon as ever I
heard your articles, that you were deceived by some crafty priest, which
devised those articles for you, to make you ask you wist not what." 15
In his very lengthy reply to the fifteen demands of
the rebels he shows himself to be as outraged by the manner in which the
demands are phrased as by the demands themselves. "Is this the fashion of
subject to speak unto their prince, 'We will have'? Was this manner of speech
at any time used of subjects to their prince since the beginning of the world?
Have not all true subjects ever used to their sovereign lord this form of
speaking, 'Most humbly beseecheth your faithful and obedient subject?' Although
the papists have abused your ignorance in propounding such articles, which you
understand not, yet you should not have suffered yourselves to be led by the
nose and bridled by them, that you should clearly forget your duty of
allegiance unto your sovereign lord, saying unto him, 'This we will have', and
that saying with armour upon your backs and swords in your hands."
Cranmer considered the plea for the return of Latin
particularly ridiculous. "For the whole that is done should be the act of
the people and pertain to the people, as well as to the priest. 16 And standeth it
with reason, that the priest should speak for you, and in your name, and you
answer him again in your own person; yet you understand never a word, neither
what he saith, nor what you say yourselves? . . . Had you rather be like pies
or parrots, that be taught to speak, and yet understand not one word what they
say, than be true Christian men, that pray unto God in heart and in
faith?"
Cardinal Gasquet points out how mistaken is the notion
that the Latin service is a closed book to the uneducated in Catholic
countries. "The Latin words become not infrequently so familiar that they
suggest themselves to the uneducated even in the occurrences of ordinary daily
life. Therefore in considering the sudden substitution of English for Latin in
all the public services of the Church it must be borne in mind that to a very
great number this measure, so far from affording any gratification to their
religious feelings, was one to which they had to be reconciled." 17 The Cardinal also
quotes the opinion of an unprejudiced Anglican scholar whose travels in
Catholic countries had convinced him that the ordinary faithful could follow
the audible parts of the Mass "quite as well as the English generally
follow the prayer book." 18
The Western rebels had demanded that those who refused
their demands should "dye lyke heretykes against the holy Catholyque
fayth." In the event, of course, it was the rebels who died when the
rebellion was eventually crushed with the help of foreign mercenaries commanded
by Lord Russell and Lord Grey de Wilton who had joined him after putting down
another religious rising in Oxfordshire. The only reliable troops were the
mercenaries, Italians, Spaniards, and Germans. When they eventually discovered
the religious nature of the campaign in which they had fought, many of them sought
absolution. 19 "There was a fierce battle at Clyst St. Mary and
another at Clyst Heath, where the rebels died by hundreds; and after the battle
a massacre of the prisoners. And then in the night of August 4th and 5th the
rebels withdrew from Exeter." 20 Lord Grey had
never fought against Englishmen before and marvelled at "such stoutness .
. . never in all the wars did he know the like". 21
The rebellion was far from over, however, and the
final battle took place at Sampford Courtenay where the rebellion had begun.
Groups of rebels still kept up the fight, retreating into Somerset and at least
4,000 west country men died at the hands of the royal army. Thomas Cranmer's
Prayer Book had had its baptism of blood. "By the end of August it was all
over," writes Professor Bindoff, " . . . some thousands of peasant
households mourned their menfolk slaughtered on the battlefield, some hundreds
those who expiated their treasons on the gallows of a dozen counties." 22
Cardinal Gasquet writes: " . . .the imposition of
the book of the new service was only effected through the slaughter of many
thousands of Englishmen by the English government helped by their foreign
mercenaries. The old dread days of the Pilgrimage of Grace were renewed, the
same deceitful methods were employed to win success, the same ruthless
bloodshed was allowed in the punishment of the vanquished. Terror was
everywhere struck into the minds of the people by the sight of the executions,
fixed for the market days, of priests dangling from the steeples of their
parish churches, and of the heads of laymen set up in the high places of the
towns." 23 The parish priest of the church of St. Thomas
(Exeter) was hanged on a gallows erected on his church tower in his Mass
vestments, with "a holy water bucket, a sprinkler, a sacring bell, a pair
of beads and such other like popish trash hanged about him." 24 "The last
act in the western tragedy was the execution of the leaders at Tyburn on 7th
January, 1550. The very objective Venetian envoy reported that: "had the
Country people only a leader, although they had been grievously chastised they
would rise again." 25 Thus were the peasants of the West induced to accept
"the very godly order set forth by order of Parliament for common prayer
in the mother tongue."
1. The Prayer Book, Articles, and Homilies
(London, 1897), p. 19.
2. TR, p. 118.
3. DEV, p. 233.
4. TUD, p. 50.
5. Op. cit., Note 3.
6. RIE, vol. II, p. 165.
7. Op. cit. Note 3.
8. Ibid., p. 234.
9. TUD, p. 53.
10. Ibid., p. 141.
11. Ibid., p. 57. "The Edwardian Council
always regarded the Western Rebellion as primarily religious in purpose. On
11th June, Somerset spoke of an attempt, instigated by 'seditious priests, to
seke restitucion of the olde bluddy lawes'. The chroniclers unanimous emphasis
on the religious motivation of the rebels is confirmed by their articles,
"a manifesto for a return to catholicism."
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 58.
14. Ibid., p. 135.
15. CW, vol. II, pp. 163-187.
16. It is interesting to note that in 1947 Pope Pius
XII found it necessary to condemn the proposition that the whole of the
eucharistic liturgy is, as Cranmer phrased it, "the act of the
people". The essence of the Catholic Mass is that: "The unbloody
immolation by which, after the words of consecration have been pronounced,
Christ is rendered present on the altar in the state of a victim, is performed
by the priest alone, and by the priest in so far as he acts in the name of
Christ, not in so far as he represents the faithful." Mediator Dei,
C.T.S. edition, para. 96. As was made clear in Chapter XIII, there is all the
difference in the world between a priest who possesses powers different not
only in degree but in essence from those of the laity, and who offers sacrifice
in the person of Christ, and of a minister simply acting as the representative
of the faithful by whom he is appointed to preside over their assembly.
17. EBCP, p. 238.
18. Ibid.
19. RIE, vol. II, p. 169.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. TE, p. 157.
23. EBCP, p. 254.
24. TUD, p. 55.
25. EBCP, p. 246.
No comments:
Post a Comment