Most absenteeism was due to pluralism. This was when a clergyman held more than one position within the church. Wolsey was a famous pluralist, holding many bishoprics and abbeys, but he was an exception and not the rule. Although he didn’t carry out his jobs, there were plenty of people working beneath him that did them. This was one of the reasons why the church was able to offer so many jobs, making pluralism a positive and negative thing. As with absenteeism, pluralism had been going on for a number of years and was only seen as a minor problem. It had not caused major outcry and did not make the church particularly unpopular at the time.
Something within the church that may have caused unpopularity was Simony. This was when a position within the government was bought or sold. There were many complaints against clergymen that had supposedly bought their position in office. How widespread the problem was is unknown. If it were only a problem in certain parts of England then it would not have caused a great amount of unpopularity. But if it was going on all over England then it could have caused much grief to the English people. However, even if positions had been paid for, there seemed to be very few scandals and all the higher clergymen in government were well respected.
A victim of the Reformation was the monastery. At the time of the reformation Thomas Cromwell had many checks on the monasteries carried out. However, he made sure that the monasteries were given poor reports. But in the 1520’s the monasteries seemed to have little opposition and there were very few scandals within them. The Pilgrimage of Grace, in 1536, showed that the monasteries were popular.
In 1514 the Hunne Case clearly undermined the church and is well quoted as ‘cause celebre’. Richard Hunne was imprisoned after heretical books were found at his home. And before he was put on trial he died suspiciously. Two clergymen were accused of killing Hunne but were never brought to trial and this made the church unpopular as they were seen to be protecting their own. This case has always been used in arguments against the popularity of the church but there were never any riots or protests against the church because of the ‘Hunne Case’.
Heresy was a minor problem in England with groups like the Lollards. The Lollards were only ever a fringe group and never had much support. This showed that most people were content with the church and didn’t see the need for a reformation. Another heretical group was the White Horse Group. However the people in the group did not have the desire to bring reform to the church and, like the Lollards, they gained little support. William Tyndale was a heretic who was in favour of a vernacular bible. However, he seemed to be a lone voice and when he did print the bible he was burned as a heretic, one of many few heretical burnings made before 1530.
By 1530 there had been much literature produced that attacked the church clergy. Most notably were Simon Fish’s “Supplication for the Beggars”, Jerome Barlow’s “Burial of the Mass” and Erasmus’ “The Praise of Folly”.
Popular support for the pre-reformation church came on Saint’s days. These days were widely celebrated within the church and remained popular. Also guilds were popular, as donations were constantly made throughout the 1520’s, again showing the churches popularity.
J.J. Scarisbrick looked at the popularity of the church by studying the wills. He studied 2500 wills from the period 1500-50 and found that only a few wills did not include something for the church. This meant that the church was popular but it could be argued that people made donations because of habit. However, it is unlikely that people would have made donations if they thought the church was corrupt or if they didn’t like it.
In conclusion it is unlikely that the church was very unpopular. Although it has many criticisms there is a lot of evidence suggesting that the church was popular. Such evidence includes the lack of support for heretics and the inclusion of the church in many wills. Also most churches underwent some kind of building work, whether it was an extension or an improvement, during 1500 to 1530, something that would not have happened if people were not attending the churches. In support of the pre-reformation church being strong are the revisionist historians, Haigh and Scarisbrick. A quote by Scarisbrick is ‘on the whole, English men and women did not want the Reformation and most of them were slow to accept it when it came’. This supports the opinion of the church being popular before the reformation. Haigh quoted ‘The Henrician Reformation when it came was not the product of long standing discontent with the church ...it was a crisis which blew up out of nothing’. This shows that the reformation was not required because the people thought the church was unpopular therefore meaning that people liked the church.
Dickens and Elton criticised the church and believed that it was unpopular. Elton criticised the clergy when he said, ‘People in England thought little of Priests’. This was saying that public opinion of the clergymen was very low suggesting that they were unhappy with the clergy. But there is evidence to prove Elton right, such as pluralism, simony and absenteeism, done by the clergy, being unpopular.
Bibliography
BBCi,
J.J. Scarisbrick, ‘The Reformation and the English People’ (1984).
G R Elton, ‘Reform and Reformation’ (1977).
Colin Pendrill, ‘The English Reformation 1485-1558’ (2000).
C Haigh, ‘English Reformations’ (1993).