Elizabeth I and Catholics

Hello, I'm Dr Francis Young,

and I tutor for the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education.

The theme of this lecture is Queen Elizabeth's relationship with Catholicism

and how it affected the English Catholic community.

Looking back at Elizabeth's early life,

she was, of course, born in 15 33 the daughter of an Berlin and Henry the eighth.

This was before Henry's formal break with Rome in 15 34 to 15 35.

So Elizabeth was baptised as a Catholic.

But her formative years were lived during a

period when England was experiencing extreme religious turmoil

and shifts from more Catholic to more Protestant ways of running the church.

Certainly when we look at Elizabeth's teenage years,

she was under the tutelage of Katherine Parr, the Queen Dowager,

who was very much a figure with reforming instincts.

Furthermore,

Elizabeth was undoubtedly influenced by her

mother's interest in reforming matters.

Of course, it was Thomas Cranmer who created the Book of Common Prayer,

who was ambulance personal chaplain.

So she certainly comes from a reforming background,

and the tutor who was selected for her Roger Asham

during her half brother Edward's reign was certainly of a reforming bent of mind,

and Elizabeth showed an early interest in moderate

reformers such as the Lutheran leader Millington.

During Mary's reign between 15 53 and 15 58

when Elizabeth was effectively the heir to the throne,

she was compelled to show outward conformity

to the Mass and to the restoration of Catholicism.

But nevertheless, she remained a patron of reforming figures.

But it was by no means certain what Elizabeth's religious policy

was going to be once she came to the throne.

In hindsight,

it's easy to look back and say that Elizabeth was

clearly going to restore some kind of Protestant settlement.

But she was very vulnerable at the beginning of her reign,

not least because as an unmarried woman, she was perceived as weak, uh, wrongly,

as it turned out.

But that was the perception that many people had of her,

and it was quite likely that should she marry,

she might end up marrying a Catholic prince.

Therefore, her policy would be pro Catholic.

Furthermore,

many people thought that it would be unwise for her to

forsake the relationship that Mary had built up with Catholic Spain,

and therefore there was a chance in some people's minds that

Elizabeth was going to bring back Catholicism in some way.

But the first indication that Elizabeth was going to take a different

path was in November 15 58 when she exceeded to the thrown

in the first mass that she heard in her private chapel.

Elizabeth walked out before the elevation of the host.

The elevation of the host was emblematic of belief in the

real presence of Jesus' body and blood in the Eucharist,

and therefore a key element of Catholicism.

So by walking out at that moment,

Elizabeth was indicating that she thought differently.

What followed in the period up to June 15 59 when it was enacted,

was debate about the religious settlement and exactly

what kind of religious settlement Elizabethan England would have

the bishops in the Lords who were, of course, Catholic bishops.

At this point,

we're given the opportunity to bring forward their own

ideas about what that settlement was going to be.

But ultimately Parliament reinstated the royal supremacy,

as it had been during the reign of Edward and during the reign of Henry the eighth,

but with one crucial difference

in that Elizabeth was styled,

not supreme Head of the Church of England

but supreme governor of the Church of England.

And that was down to concerns about the propriety of

a woman being given the title of Supreme Head,

the Protestant exiles.

That is to say,

those who had been leading figures in the Church of

King Edward returned at the start of Elizabeth's reign.

But Elizabeth did not show

complete favour towards these exiles. For example, she tended to favour moderates

those who had stuck with a more considered approach

to the legacy of the Church of England,

rather than those who had embraced radical ideas in places like Frankfurt,

Geneva and Zurich.

So, for example, she excluded the more radical figure Miles Coverdale,

who had been bishop of Exeter under Edward,

the sixth because he refused to wear the surplus.

And King Edward's prayer book of 15 52

was essentially restored under the Elizabethan settlement,

but with some crucial

differences small yet important.

For example,

the book dropped a rubric that specifically said that no adoration

of the consecrated elements was meant when people knelt in church,

leaving it open for people to interpret it as adoration if they so chose.

There was also a longer formula introduced of administering Holy Communion,

which described Holy Communion both as a remembrance of Christ's death but

also made reference to the real body and blood of Jesus Christ,

allowing both Protestant and more Catholic interpretations

of what was happening in the Eucharist.

There were there was also a dropping of prayers against the pope

and indeed a requirement for the wearing of surpluses.

And this became very much a shibboleth of the Puritans.

Those who believe that the Elizabethan Reformation hadn't gone far enough.

They refused to wear the surplus and argued that the requirement to wear the surplus

should be dropped.

But having said all this,

Elizabeth did not go so far as to restore the

older 15 49 prayer book of Edward the Sixth.

That was what allowed the Holy Communion service to be called the Mass as

an alternative word for it and included things like a litany of the saints.

Elizabeth settlement is often described as a via media,

and the more naive understanding of that is that Elizabeth was

navigating a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism.

But in reality,

the via media that she was seeking was between something like Edwards Reformation,

which was a radical Protestant Reformation,

and Henry's Reformation,

which was essentially a kind of national Catholicism,

a sort of slightly reformed version of Catholicism that

nevertheless was very much focused on royal supremacy.

And Elizabeth was achieving a compromise between those things.

It's interesting to note that in her own private chapel,

Elizabeth favoured a rather more conservative liturgy.

For example, she had candlesticks, altar hangings, a crucifix and, indeed,

prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, but translated into Latin.

So her personal piety seems to have been somewhat more Catholic,

somewhat higher than what she was prepared to permit her own subjects

right up until 15 61 there was a great deal of hope in

the Catholic world that Elizabeth might still be brought back into the fold.

But in 15 61 Elizabeth refused the papal legate sent from Rome entry to England.

The legate had come specifically in order to invite Elizabeth's bishops

to participate in the Council of Trent.

So by making that definitive decision

that she wasn't going to participate in the council of Trent,

Elizabeth was essentially severing England from the counter reformation

catholic world that her sister Mary was so keen

to make England a part of.

It's also worth noting that Elizabeth,

after the the settlement of 15 59 made moves towards making

a more conservative move towards more conservative ways of thinking.

For example,

she introduced an ordinance in 15 65 that required the

celebration of Holy Communion in cathedral and collegiate churches,

to be accompanied by the priests wearing vestments, richly embroidered copes,

suggesting a more Catholic style of worship.

She also in the same year enjoined a series of prayers, recommended these,

which were essentially English translations of prayers from the mediaeval Book

of Hours so very much from a conservative devotional tradition.

Now Elizabeth presided over severe penal laws, as we shall see,

but she also throughout her reign,

resisted any attempt to make it a crime to be a Catholic.

The system in her reign was arguably designed to permit crypto Catholics,

Catholics who concealed their beliefs and nicotine might Catholics,

Catholics who pretended to be something else, essentially

to continue to take part in government.

And a good example of that would be her courtiers, Sir Christopher Hatton,

who remained a Catholic at heart throughout his life,

Elizabeth famously said she had no desire to make windows into men's souls.

And while this may be true,

she certainly did have a desire to make windows into men's wallets in so

far as she was keen on collecting fines from Catholics who refused to conform.

But none of this amounted to toleration in any way

that we would understand it in the modern world.

In other words,

Elizabeth permitted a certain degree of public dissembling by Catholics,

but she didn't permit even private practise of the Catholic faith.

It's also worth noting that her sympathy towards Catholics varied over time,

while Elizabeth may have been rather more ironic

in her attitudes early in her reign.

By the time of the Babington plot in 15 86

the Spanish Armada in 15 88 and the continued

Spanish attacks on England throughout the 15 nineties,

Elizabeth's attitude seems to have hardened.

So there was no monolithic attitude towards Catholicism.

Throughout Elizabeth's life, her views changed, and yet, to a large extent,

by the standards of her time, her views remained moderate.