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The Crisis of Episcopal Authority During the Reign of Elizabeth I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Roger B. Manning
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Extract

The theory behind the Henrician religious settlement was that certain papal and episcopal powers of jurisdiction were vested in the Crown by parliamentary enactments because the Pope and the English bishops had failed to reform abuses in the Church. In the absence of an alternative administrative system, the bishops continued to govern the Church as agents of the royal ecclesiastical supremacy. Although some episcopal powers of jurisdiction were returned to the Elizabethan bishops, the actual authority allowed them did not suffice to effect a reformation or to enforce conformity to the established church. In order to resolve this crisis of episcopal authority the seventeenth-century prelates and divines elaborated theories of divine-right episcopacy, but the Elizabethan bishops found it more expedient to fall back upon extraordinary grants of royal authority contained in ecclesiastical commissions.

I

The Henrician and Edwardian alienations of episcopal jurisdiction are spectacular and dramatic, yet the erosion of episcopal authority began long before the Henrician Reformation. For over two centuries English bishops had been primarily royal servants. They were, by temperament and training canonists and diplomats rather than pastors; like the Renaissance popes they had grown accustomed to compromise rather than providing spiritual leadership. Not only in England, but throughout Western Europe, bishops rarely sat as judges in their own courts. Much of their authority had been permanently delegated to commissaries, who tended to become independent agents. They were, moreover, hard put to resist encroachments upon their ordinary authority by archdeacons and cathedral chapters, while ecclesiastical corporations devoted considerable effort to securing exemption from episcopal visitations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , November 1971 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1971

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References

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33. For a discussion of Bishop Curteys's disputes with the gentry of Sussex, cf. Manning, Roger B., Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex: A Study of the Enforcement of the Religious Settlement, 1558-1603 (Leicester, 1969), pp. 63–125Google Scholar. For Edwin Sandys's encounter with Sir John Bourne and Sir Robert Stapleton, cf. Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1843), I, ii, 15-42, III, i, 142–58Google Scholar.

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35. When Richard Davies, bishop of St. David's was appointed as a commissioner fbr suppressing piracy, he discovered that two of the principal agents of royal government in Wales, Richard Vaughan and Sir John Perrott, were implicated. It was said that the vindictive Sir John Perrott, allegedly an illegitimate son of Henry VIII, hounded Bishop Davies to death for the part he played in the subsequent enquiry. Williams, , Welsh Reformation Essays, pp. 167–68Google Scholar.

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45. The only thorough study of an Elizabethan diocesan commission is Price, F. D., “The Commission for Causes Ecclesiastical for the Dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester, 1574,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, LIX (1937), 61–184Google Scholar (Hereafter cited as TBGAS). But also see Leatherbarrow, J. S., The Lancashire Elizabethan Recusants [Chetham Society, CX] (Manchester, 1947)Google Scholar, passim.

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55. Ibid., pp. 62-63. The new ecclesiastical commission was given the authority to hear the matter of the Huntley-Arnold riot, but it ultimately had to be settled by the Privy Council. Dasent, J. (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council, VIII, 356–7Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as A. P. C.)

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58. PRO, Bishop Horne to Privy Council, Jan. 12, 1562/3, SP 12/21/7.

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64. PRO, Richard Davies, bishop of St. David's to Privy Council, Jan. 25, 1569/70, SP 12/66/26-26.I. Five clerics from the diocese of St. David's, including Bishop Davies, were included in the Ecclesiastical Commission of 1572 for the Province of Canterbury, so it is probable that a local branch of the High Commission operated in that diocese. Cal. P.R., 1569-1572, V, 440–442Google Scholar; SP 12/66/26.I. On Bishop Davies, see also Williams, , Welsh Reformation Essays pp. 155–90Google Scholar.

65. PRO, SP 12/66/26.

66. PRO, [Richard Curteys, bishop of Chichester to P.C., Nov. 1570?], SP 12/74/44.

67. Ibid.; BM, William Overton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield to Lord Burghley, April 1581, Lansdowne MSS, 33, fo. 27.

68. Hist. MSS Comm., Salisbury MSS, VI, 265–66Google Scholar. Under the 1581 Recusancy Act, Statutes of the Realm, IV, i, 657Google Scholar: 23 Eliz. I, c. 1, the J.P.s could take sureties of a recusant only after that person had persisted in his recusancy for twelve months following conviction, and after that fact had been certified into the Court of King's Bench.

69. PRO, Charges against Edmund Freake, bishop of Norwich made by gentry of diocese, [Oct. 1578], SP 15/25/119; A. P. C., X, 310-312. Norwich illustrates a particular problem. The Privy Council, Bishop Parkhurst and the Puritan gentry saw the suppression of recusancy as the main task facing the ecclesiastical commission, while the queen, the assizes judges and Bishop Freake saw the Puritan experiments in church government and the liturgy as the greater evil. Cf. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London, 1967) pp. 164, 205Google Scholar; cf. also Smith, A. H., “The Elizabethan Gentry of Norfolk: Office-Holding and Faction” (London Ph.D. thesis, 1959), p. 164–66Google Scholar., esp. p. 186. I am presently working on an article that examines the involvement of the Puritan gentry in the work of the ecclesiastical commissions in the dioceses of Norwich and Chester.

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In the Henrician diocese of St. David's the reforming energies of Bishop William Barlow were expended in a protracted quarrel with the cathedral chapter. Barlow was not only trying to extend his episcopal authority over the chapter in an unconstitutional way, he also sought to have himself appointed dean. His vindictive treatment of the canons of St. David's brought down on his head the active opposition of the townsmen of Pembroke as well as that of the two most powerful families in West Wales, the Devereux and the Baskervilles. Although the fall of his patrons, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, and the conservative reaction of the 1540s weakened his position, Barlow continued to introduce his supporters into the cathedral close whenever vacancies occurred.

The disputes between bishop and canons not only continued under Barlow's successor and protégé, Bishop Robert Ferrar, but spread more widely among the laity and seriously hampered efforts to spread Protestant doctrines in the diocese of St. David's. Williams, , Welsh Reformation Essays, pp. 116–35Google Scholar.

75. The first royal commission was that of June 20, 1559 for the visitation of Cambridge University and Eton College to alter the statutes of those two institutions. Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth MSS, 1166/3, printed in Gee, Elizabethan Clergy. A second royal commission, issued on June 4, 1562 granted authority to revise the statutes of all ecclesiastical and scholastic corporations, which were promulgated in the time of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary. Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth MSS, 276. The cathedral corporations that were surveyed under this commission included Winchester, Ely, Worcester, Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, Bristol, Gloucester, Durham, Chester, Carlisle, and Canterbury.

76. Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth MSS, 276, fo. 1.

77. Ibid., fo. 7v.

78. PRO, Robert Horne, bishop of Winchester to Sir William Cecil, Jan. 12, 1562/3, SP 12/21/7.

79. BM, Robert Horne, bishop of Winchester to Sir William Cecil, Jan. 2, 1569/70, Lansdowne MSS, 12, fos. 63-63v.

80. BM, Edmund Scambler, bishop of Peterborough to the Queen, June 19, 1582, Lansdowne MSS, 38, fos. 178-178v.

81. PRO, William Chaderton, bishop of Chester's Injunctions to Cathedral Chapter, Jan. 14, 1580/1, SP 12/147/8.

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83. PRO, the Queen to John Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, Sept. 25, 1570, SP 12/75/58. A royal commission to visit Norwich Cathedral and to draw up statutes (apparently none were in force at that time) was issued to Bishop Parkhurst in 1568, PRO, SP 12/47/89. The report of the commissioners is found PRO, SP 12/49/43.

84. PRO, John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester to Privy Council, April 19, 1583, SP 12/160/16-16.I.

85. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church, passim; BM, Lansdowne MSS, 38, fos. 178-178v; PRO, SP 12/49/43, 160/16-16.I.

86. BM, Edmund Scambler, bishop of Peterborough to the Queen, June 19, 1582, Lansdowne MSS, 38, fos. 178-178v.

87. PRO, Patent Rpll, March 9, 1598, C. 66/1478, mm. 8-11.

88. PRO, Patent Roll, May 21, 1599, C. 66/1504, mm. 17d-21d.

89. PRO, Patent Roll, July 16, 1583, C. 66/1212, m. 16d; PRO, John Whitgift, bishop of Worcester to P.C., April 19, 1583, SP 12/160/16-16.I. See also PRO, Archbishop Matthew Parker to Sir William Cecil, SP 12/22/12.

90. Lambeth Palace Library, Archiepiscopal Commission issued to John Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, Jan. 20, 1582/3, Carte Misc. II/79; BM, Archiepiscopal Commission issued to John Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, Jan. 20, 1582/3, Lansdowne MSS, 36, fos. 39-39v.

91. BM, Archbishop John Whitgift to Lord Burghley, March 21, 1585, Lansdowne MSS, 46, fo. 140.

92. PRO, Duchy of Lancaster, Special Ecclesiastical Commission, May 21, [1588], DL 42/98, fos. 26v-27. Walsingham was the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

93. Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (New York, 1967), p. 107–109Google Scholar.

94. Hill, , Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, p. 371Google Scholar.

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96. PRO, Patent Roll, June 16, 1596, C. 66/1449, m. 12d, printed in Rymer, , Foedera, XVI, 291–297Google Scholar.

97. For example, Chester (PRO, Patent Roll, Jan. 31, 1598, C. 66/1479, mm. 1d-6d) and Norwich (PRO, Patent Roll, Sept. 3, 1576, C 66/1138, m. 2d).

98. Cal. P.R., 1569-1572, V, 440–442Google Scholar.

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101. Ibid., p. 133

102. For example, the proportion of clerics and civilians on the ecclesiastical commission for the diocese of Norwich rose from 16.6% in 1576 to 57.1% in 1596; in the diocese of Winchester between 1596 and 1603 the proportion changed from 50% to 63.3%. In the diocese of York the proportion of clerics and civilians went from 33% in 1585 to 42% in 1596, and in 1627 they constituted 76% of the York commission. (These last figures are derived from Tyler, Philip, “The Significance of the Ecclesiastical Commission at York”, Northern History, II (1967), 24–44.)Google Scholar

103. Tanner, , Tudor Constitutional Documents, p. 362Google Scholar. The same tendency has been noted in the cases of the Council in the Marches of Wales (see Williams, Penry, Council in the Marches, pp. 100–02)Google Scholar, and the Council in the North Parts (see Reid, R. R., The King's Council in the North (London, 1921), p. 308Google Scholar).

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105. Lambeth Palace Library, “Note of things which ought to be included in the new ecclesiastical commission,” circa 1600, Carte Misc. IV/3.

106. In 1576, 30 out of 36 (or 83.3%) of the commissioners were gentry, while in 1589 the number was 8 out of 19 (or 42.1%).

107. From 18 gentry commissioners in 1562 (78.3%) to 43 (62.3%) in 1598.

108. Tyler, , “The Significance of the Ecclesiastical Commission at York,” Northern History, II, 40–1Google Scholar.

109. Leatherbarrow, Lancashire, passim; Peck, Desiderata, passim.

110. PRO, The Queen to William Downham, bishop of Chester, Feb. 21. 1567/8, SP 12/46/33.

111. I wish to thank Dr. Philip Tyler, Dr. A. Hassell Smith, Dr. John I. Daeley and Fr. F. X. Walker, S.J. for permission to consult and cite from their doctoral dissertations.