In the Mary Triumphant concert series, we hear truly wonderful church music — music that has been neglected for centuries. It is rich, sonorous, subtle and compelling: it breathes faith, vitality and confidence. It comes from the reign of Queen Mary I, who ruled England from 1553 to 1558. In English national tradition, Mary's reign was a mistake — a hangover from a dead past, a brief Catholic interruption of England's growth into Protestantism. It was dull, repressive, out of touch, and deeply unpopular. English Catholicism was corrupt and moribund, culturally exhausted and haunted by superstition, incapable of producing good art or literature or music — or so we were once told. Mary's reign should not have left us music of such quality and exuberance — but it did! And if we want to understand why, we have to look again at England's history.
At the beginning of the 16th century, England was a Catholic country — indeed, a very Catholic country. The Catholic Church dominated English religion, and played a big part in politics, the economy, and ordinary life. The Church was everywhere in 1500. Its law and its courts regulated belief and morals, and enforced attendance at church and the payment of taxes to support the clergy. Its bishops sat in Parliament and on the king's council, its monasteries owned vast tracts of farmland, its priests were the leaders of their local communities. It controlled education at school and university. Anyone who dissented from Catholic teachings risked a trial for heresy and execution by burning — but hardly anyone did dissent. The English were then very religious: they went to church often, they gave generously to religious causes, they paid for special prayers, and in their thousands they joined the Church's professionals, as priests, monks, and nuns. Religious books were best sellers. Catholicism in England was popular, and seemed secure.
By the end of the century, things were very different: England was a Protestant nation, at least in name. The bishoprics, the churches, the vicarages, the schools, the universities, and the taxes had been taken over by Protestants. The monasteries had been suppressed and their property seized by the Crown. Altars, crucifixes, relics, and the images of saints had been torn from the churches and destroyed. The Latin mass had been replaced by services in English, polyphonic music was replaced by simple psalm singing, and the Bible had been translated. Catholic beliefs and devotions were proscribed by law, and Catholic priests faced the death penalty. There were heavy fines for those who would not attend Protestant church services. Not everyone in England was an informed and enthusiastic Protestant in 1600 — but almost everyone went to the Protestant churches, and almost everyone hated the pope.
This shift from Catholicism to Protestantism is labelled 'the Reformation' by historians — but it can be a misleading term. In some parts of Europe 'the Reformation' was an energetic popular movement. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others taught a new kind of religion. Young Protestant preachers turned people against the old Catholic ways, and created a demand for change. Angry crowds pulled down altars, smashed images, and roughed up priests. To restore order, princes and councils banned Catholic worship, confiscated Catholic endowments, and imposed Protestantism. Often it was all over in a year or two of upheaval and drama: Catholics became Protestants, quickly. But it was not like that in England. There, Reformation was a political, not a popular, process — long drawn-out, difficult, and highly contentious.
No one, not even its bishops, thought the English Catholic Church was perfect — but very few wanted to destroy it and build something new. There were a few Lutherans in the universities and among London merchants, and handfuls of 'heretics' in some market towns. But all the indicators suggest that Catholic religion was popular and successful in England, and there were no good reasons for a Reformation. But King Henry VIII got into a row with Rome, and began an unintended sequence of events that led eventually to a Protestant England. The English Reformation was a chapter of accidents, but they were accidents that changed the course of English history and the very identity of England. England became Protestant, but not because its people wanted to: it happened by chance.
In the late 1520s Henry VIII had two very personal problems. First, he did not have a male heir to his throne, and the succession of his daughter Mary was almost unthinkable: the last reigning queen of England had been 400 years before, and there had been civil war. Second, Henry had fallen for Anne Boleyn. But these problems might have a single solution, if the pope would annul his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon and so allow him to marry Anne. But the pope would not, partly because the legal grounds for a divorce were flimsy and partly because Queen Katherine's nephew, the Emperor Charles V, controlled Italy. Henry tried pressure, and suspended English payments to Rome, but the pope was more afraid of Charles than of him. So Henry began to bluster.
Henry's declared that England was an independent, sovereign state, owing obedience to no foreign authority — and that he himself was head of the Catholic Church in England. Perhaps he simply meant to frighten the pope; perhaps he envisaged a temporary rejection of papal authority while he sorted out his marital problems; perhaps — though this is least likely — he really did mean to establish an independent national Church. Henry also leaned heavily on the English Church, fining the clergy for infringing his alleged sovereign powers and forcing them to recognise his new claims by threats of expropriation. He appointed a new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer — a protégé of the Boleyn family — and Cranmer obediently annulled Henry's first marriage, married him to Anne, and crowned her queen. And then things turned nasty.
The pope (and Charles V) was horrified by these events, and warned Henry he would be excommunicated and deposed unless he returned to Katherine. Henry protected himself by repudiating papal authority. Parliament was persuaded to declare Henry supreme head of the Church of England, and make denial of this supremacy, or of the validity of the Boleyn marriage, treason. A former lord chancellor (Sir Thomas More), a bishop (John Fisher), and cartloads of monks were executed in 1535. Henry's desires — for a new wife and a son — had brought schism and oppression, and the possibility of war.
The Emperor Charles V and the king of France now threatened a Catholic crusade against England, and Henry was forced into desperate measures. To raise money for defence spending, on ships and fortresses, he imposed new taxes on the clergy and seized the property of the monasteries. And to find allies against Charles V, he courted the German princes who had turned Lutheran. But the Germans' price was high: they wanted England to move towards Lutheranism, and to reject not just the pope but Catholicism itself. Reluctantly, cautiously, Henry agreed: he began to incorporate bits of Lutheran doctrine into the official theology of the Church of England, and to appoint English Protestant converts to bishoprics.
So far, the English had gone along with their king. Some were afraid of him, some thought he must know what he was doing, some believed his anti-papal and anticlerical propaganda, and some bought ex-monastic land from him. Most people probably thought that the breach with Rome was a temporary disruption, and the pope would be back sometime soon. But the abolition of monasticism and the moves towards Protestantism were too much — no longer marital politics, but sacrilege and heresy. There was muttering everywhere, and in the north of England in 1536 a great rebellion: 40,000 men were on the march against the king's policies. Henry had a real scare, and promised to set things right — but it was difficult.
Henry was caught between German Lutherans and English Catholics. He needed the Germans as insurance against invasion, and had to buy their support he had to pose as a Lutheran sympathiser — but that risked driving his own subjects into revolt. For a time, he was more afraid of invasion than of revolt, but then the balance shifted. He broke off negotiations with the Lutherans, enforced Catholic definitions on the most contentious theological issues, and, in 1540, executed the councillor most responsible for the Lutheranizing policies. He even considered a return to papal obedience — but he rather liked being head of the English Church, and it flattered his ego to be responsible for English souls as well as English bodies.
From 1539, Henry followed a Catholic line: it looked as if England wasn't going to join the Reformation after all. But what would happen after his death? Anne Boleyn had had a daughter, Elizabeth — but in 1536 Anne had been disgraced and executed in a Court coup. Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, had fulfilled Henry's hopes and in 1537 gave birth to a prince: little Edward was heir to the throne. When Henry grew sick in 1546, there was a power struggle over who would then control the boy-king. The Catholic leadership seemed secure, and Edward would surely be a Catholic king. But there was a Protestant group at Court, led by Archbishop Cranmer and Edward's uncle, Edward Seymour — and in the weeks before Henry's death they staged a brilliant palace revolution. The Catholics were discredited: Protestants and their politique allies controlled access to the old king, and when he died on January 27th 1547 they were the men in power. If Henry had died a few months earlier, it would have been different. Against all expectations — and Henry VIII's wishes — there would be a Protestant government, and his son would be educated as a Protestant king. Could they make a Protestant England?
The new Protestant rulers faced a dilemma. They wanted religious change, which would also marginalize their Catholic rivals and justify further confiscations from the Church — but there was still the risk of Catholic invasion from abroad and Catholic revolt from within. So they moved quite cautiously, a step at a time — seizing the endowments that had funded masses for the dead, removing images from the churches, and introducing a service book in English that retained some elements of the Catholic mass. But in 1549 there was a Catholic rebellion in Cornwall and Devon, and riots and demonstrations elsewhere — some religious, some economic. It looked as if Protestant policies were bringing disaster — and Catholics on the Council conspired to eject Seymour: was England going to be Catholic again? No, not yet! — because John Dudley deserted his Catholic allies, teamed up with Archbishop Cranmer and Edward Seymour, and restored Protestant supremacy.
Now the Protestant leadership moved more determinedly — and Charles V was busy with his own problems in Germany. A revised and more Protestant service book was imposed in 1552, and a set of Articles of Religion defined English religion as officially Protestant. In the cities, preachers tried to turn the people Protestant, but they had little success against old Catholic loyalties. A series of orders from London changed the parish churches: altars were removed, wall paintings were whitewashed, and the equipment used for Catholic services was confiscated — chalices, candlesticks, vestments, banners, and the rest. There was mounting anger in the localities, as the old religion was stripped away — anger which came to a head in the early summer of 1553, when the chalices were being seized and the clergy were made to subscribe to the Articles. And then young Edward died, probably of pneumonia.
Catholic Henry VIII had timed his death very badly, and let in the Protestants; Protestant Edward VI timed his death badly too, and let in the Catholics. John Dudley and his allies tried to alter the succession to the throne, to crown the Protestant Jane Grey instead of the Catholic Mary — daughter of Katherine of Aragon. A few months earlier, or even later, it might have worked — but in July 1553 the coup had no chance. Mary announced her own claim to the throne, and received massive support — from Catholics, from angry parishioners, and from everyone who hated Dudley and his cronies. Mary swept to power on a wave of popular sentiment, as Henry's daughter and the Catholic queen. Soon parishioners were rebuilding their altars, and the priests were saying mass — still technically illegal under the laws of King Edward. English Catholicism was not dead — it was lively, popular, and in charge.
Under Mary, Catholic religion was restored with speed and enthusiasm: the Reformation was over, Protestantism was finished, the future was Catholic — or so the Catholics thought. This explains the confidence of the Catholics and of Mary's government, the triumphalism of their festivals and celebrations — and the vitality of their music. The Catholics believed they had won, and won finally. Their propaganda declared that God had struck down the Protestants and put Mary on the throne. They restored their altars, paid for new images and chalices, and recreated the glory of Catholic worship. Their music celebrated the return of England to Catholic truth, as in Tallis's motet Derelinquat: 'The wicked man forsakes his ways, the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord and He will have mercy upon him'. But if the wicked would not forsake their ways, there was no mercy: in four years, almost three hundred Protestants were burned for heresy.
And then, once again, the unexpected happened. Mary died, childless, at the age of forty-two — and before Protestantism had been crushed and discredited. She was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn — the woman whose allure had started all the trouble, twenty years before. Elizabeth was a Protestant, and so were her friends and advisers. When she became queen, in November 1558, England was at war with France — and at loggerheads with a pro-French pope, who supported another candidate for the throne. This meant two things: first, that it made sense to reject papal authority and pursue a Protestant policy; second, that the anti-French states had to support her whatever she did. So in 1559 the English Parliament was pressed into repudiating the pope and imposing a revised version of the Protestant service book of 1552. The English Church was Protestant again. And this time it stayed Protestant
For a time, this was uncertain: would Elizabeth marry a Catholic prince, and move in a more Catholic direction? She did not. She remained single, did not change her religious policy, and ruled for forty-four years. When she died in 1603, after a generation of Protestant evangelism, England was safely Protestant — a Protestant nation, if not quite a nation of Protestants.
If Queen Mary had lived longer, it would have been different. If she had had time to rebuild Catholicism, contain Protestantism, and see out that pro-French pope, then Elizabeth would not have dared to go Protestant again — and perhaps she would have married a Catholic prince. England would have been Catholic, like its continental neighbours. Edward's Protestant reign would have been an aberration, Mary's Catholic reign a return to normal, and the music a splendid celebration of victory. Instead, Mary's early death made a Protestant England possible — and Mary's reign the apparent oddity. The deaths of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary had led to a change of official religion: Elizabeth's did not, and she was succeeded in England by the Protestant King James of Scotland. England's national Church was the Church of England — and so it still is. But now, in an ecumenical age, its cathedrals use Catholic polyphonic music — Tallis, Sheppard, Tye, and the great William Byrd.
