The accession and subsequent demise of Mary seems to hold the hold the key to the question of whether change was inevitable. It is argued that the fact that Mary was allowed to inherit the throne and the accommodation of most people to Mary’s religion means that Catholicism enjoyed considerable support. However, it is more likely that Mary’s legitimate right of succession was generally supported. Also the majority of people accommodated themselves to the monarch’s religious belief, rather than gave it enthusiastic support.
Mary's religious policies reveal the extent to which the personal views of the monarch could affect the entire nation. Mary’s strategy was to return to Rome. Mary rescinded the Edwardian Prayer Book, replaced Protestant bishops with Catholic ones and prohibited clerical marriage. Transubstantiation was upheld and images and altars returned.
Repression was part of Mary’s strategy, with almost 300 Protestants burned at the stake. This strategy failed to return England to Catholicism and associated Catholicism with persecution in the public mind.
It can be argued that far from the change to Protestantism being inevitable, had Mary reigned for longer than her 5 years, she would have achieved an enduring change back to Catholicism. This is because of people’s natural tendency not to oppose the will of their monarch; it would also have given Mary more time reform the clergy back to Catholicism and in turn made them an effective instrument of persuasion.
It is agreed that the major causes of Mary’s unpopularity at the end of her reign were religious persecution, the restoration of papal authority and the end of royal supremacy and her Spanish marriage. Most of the population regarded interference by foreigners to be an affront to English nationalism. Mary resisted advice to take a more pragmatic and cautious approach, even from the Pope himself. If Mary had re-introduced the return of Catholic religious practices, without the ending of royal supremacy and overt persecution she would have been more likely to create consensus.
She was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth. She pursued a religious middle way, as the best means of stabilising her authority and securing peace. As we shall see Elizabeth was most successful because her approach was more broadly aligned to the will of the people than her two predecessors. Elizabeth was disinclined to pry into her subject's innermost thoughts, and as long as they offered outward conformity and political loyalty, she was prepared to turn a blind eye to many things. However, for those who offended her the punishment was hard. Elizabeth restored England to the Protestant camp, but to the moderate wing.
Elizabeth understood that her country was being torn apart by the warring doctrines. While she repealed Mary's Catholic legislation, she did not return to Edward's more austere Protestantism. Rather, she worked out a compromise church that retained as much as possible from the Catholic church while putting into place most of the foundational ideas of Protestantism.
The expression ‘English People’ requires further examination. We can say that the people were Christian and believed in the authority of the monarch; beyond this the explanation is more complicated.
After the monarch the most important people were the elite, who formed the monarch’s Privy Council and influential advisors. There was a broad split between Catholic conservatives and Protestant radicals. Religion was important and became mixed with the general political machinations. A good example is Northumberland who moved from moderate Protestantism to radical Protestantism to renunciation of Protestantism, before his execution by Mary. Clearly, the elite had to adjust to the viewpoint of the Monarch. Conversely, to differing extents monarchs were influenced by their advisors. Broadly, the elite and to an extent gentry benefited from the redistribution of the wealth of the Catholic Church. There was also resentment about the influence of the Roman Pope.
Whilst it was a straightforward process for the Monarch and elite to enact laws, the implementation was largely dependant on the local gentry. There is a general view that different laws were enforced with different levels of enthusiasm in different areas of the country.
At the head of the Church were the Bishops, appointable by the monarch. Obviously, Bishops changed with the viewpoint of the monarch. The people responsible for convincing the people to support either Catholicism or Protestantism were the lower clergy. The consensus seems to be that the clergy were obviously fundamentally Christian, but not terribly interested in doctrinaire disputes. Like the people they adjusted to different laws with different levels of enthusiasm. The lower clergy were not effective evangelisers either Protestantism or Catholicism.
With regard to the rest of the people only a small minority were intensely interested in the religious debate. In additional to the attachment to tradition practices, there was probably an element of popular nationalism, antagonistic to the Roman church. In the past historian have argued that the country can be divided by region, with Protestantism enjoying most support in the southeast and least in the southwest and Lancashire. However more intensive local studies have cast doubt on this broad proposition. In the absence of mass media, effective evangelisers for either point of view seem to have had an effect on the local population.
Accepting the complex situation outlined above, a general conclusion can still be drawn. For Haigh “The Protestant Reformation was much less effective than the political reformation had been: legislative destruction proved easier than evangelical construction”. Laws could be passed to proscribe the type of church service and ordering the destruction of artefacts of ‘popish superstition’. However, it was a tougher proposition to change people’s hearts. People still expected to be saved by the church, rather than by inner contemplation. The people were still attached to traditional services.
Haigh argues “The combination of successful political reformation and less successful Protestant Reformation had established an anomaly: the Church of England was Protestant; but its people-most of the people were not. However this did not mean they supported the Church of Rome or were Catholic”
The general view is that whilst there seems to have been an emotional attachment to traditional forms of worship, the mass of people were not terribly interested in doctrinal disputes and complied with whatever laws were enacted. The evidence for this is that the majority of people adjusted themselves to Mary’s restoration of the Catholic Church and Elizabeth’s subsequent return to moderate Protestantism.
CONCLUSION
From the point that Henry broke with the Church of Rome it was highly likely that a Church of England would develop. It was not inevitable that the Church of England would be Protestant. At the end of Henry’s reign the English church was still Catholic in form. Edward attempted to move the Church towards Calvinism, but his reign was too short for him to achieve a fundamental change. Had Mary’s reign been longer and /or her approach been more pragmatic she may have achieved her Restoration of Catholicism. Elizabeth’s compromise was the most successful because she recognised that the Protestant Reformation had not comprehensively won over the hearts and minds of the people. The notion of the English people is problematic. The contention that Protestantism was “supported and encouraged” by the people is even more difficult. If it was the people pushing for the Reformation it is likely that Elizabeth’s reforms would have been more radical and less of a compromise. Therefore, it was more the actions of the monarchs, rather than will of the people that pulled the country into the Reformation.
