The losers' story
Kevin Sharpe
The Reformation and the English People J. J. Scarisbrick (Blackwell £14.50) Innovators usually overestimate their impact. And those who claim to have el.- fected revolutions in attitudes and beliefs are those most prone to exaggerate their achievement. New ideas may win a war of attrition; but they seldom take the citadel of custom by storm. The history books do not always tell the story in this way: they report the victory rather than the uncertain fight' reducing the long struggle to a moment. In history, even more than politics, the losers are soon forgotten. This has been nowhere truer' than in the history of the English Reformation. Professor Scarishrick's Pur pose, therefore, is to return to the struggl — to question again the inevitability and ", speed of the triumph of Protestantism an demise of Catholicism in 16th- and 17t11- century England. Rome, he finds, was not demolished in a day. The pre-Reformation church England stood on the rock of tradition an lay support. Laymen continued to pour money into legacies to friars, new ellarc, building and bequests for masses for the souls of the dead. Even in the decade of the break from Rome, two-thirds of testators requested prayers after their death. The laY fraternity which administered expiatory be- quests — a kind of Friendly Society for thcei hereafter — flourished. Many men an women belonged to several; immortal fate poltcY In early 16th-century England, purgatorY was worth more than one insurance and the anxiety over salvation were bi! business. They still are. But continuing ay tachment to the old ways was not, as s°111„e self-styled historians have argued e°'ik- descendingly, the mere expression of f0 religion or superstitious fear. Ara; thropological parallels should not be pretei.: red to the historical evidence of real atraeub ment to the old religion. For the Pari, sas church was the social and political as vie,lt spiritual centre of the communtiy, the piace of business, assembly and gossip — like t„f modern villagepub. It was the focus mloco
Why then was the old fabric broiler!
down? The campaign against the eltall'ut was directed from above, not as an all n_se war, but in a series of raids viltvso belligerent purpose was disguised, f oas often, by the style of commissions . quiry. Even those at the centre of thln:f were caught unawares: the Earl the Shrewsbury who helped to suppressthe Lincolnshire rebels, in arms agaiostf dissolution of the monasteries, himsel st` money for a thousand priests to saY inaffit When the true threat behind governalc policy was perceived, it was resisted. With a shrewdness which we may one day need to emulate in the face of full nationalisation, the chantries and churches sold or leased lands and plate in order to circumvent of- ficial plunder. Much of it returned to the ecclesiastical authorities in Mary's reign. Catholicism, as we know, was never re- established as the official religion of the realm. But that was not a foregone conclu- sion in 1559. Scarisbrick talks more sense than most in pointing out that under Elizabeth 'the official desire was to win over and not to exclude'. Many were not won over. And 'church papists' who form- ally adhered, as well as those who refused to subscribe to the new order, continued to support the old religion. Therewere Bridgettine nuns in Berkshire until the 1580s. It should not surprise us that the Protestant vanguard did not change habits and attachments overnight: despite the feminists, it is still the women who do the washing up. The old Marian priests not only survived, they laid the foundation for the Jesuit missions of the 1570s and 80s. Professor Scarisbrick rejects the idea of sharp distinctions and differences between traditional old Catholics and militant mis- sionaries: like Kinnock and Benn, they were all of the same party. Post-Reformation Catholicism did not linger on; it flourished. May be that of the 'rival evangelisms', 'athulic and Puritan, the former was more popular for the Protestantisation of England, a consequence rather than a cause Of the Reformation, 'was an uphill task and never perfectly achieved'. Certainly the old church with its pilgrimages, may poles and church ales, its festivities of social inversion and Misrule, seems more attractive than the sanctimonious cant and sober Sundays of Puritanism. an'srn. Protestant theology, as e arisbrick so valuably reminds us, was no their or enticing option. Those who placed v., stake on it 'had to face up to their own vile sinfulness and to the awesome fact that the were already predestined to heaven or ,,`" • These were not good odds. And for 71 that the number of committed Pro- thestams remains unknown, they may have Anglican few takers. Perhaps the strength of the hedge church was that it allowed men to "hedge their bets — or at least not to choose settlementdefined Protestantism and a concern for the fe place of the parish church. Pro- f,sro,r Scarisbrick even dares the un- c'se monable suggestion that in the early 17th thnturY still 'many Englishmen preferred ste beauty of holiness to Protestant starkness'. I suspect that he is right.
statistics history, like reports that use tioqnsties more often displays denomina- 411'.10Yalties than impartial investigation re evidence. At times, Scarisbrick's book dells like a Catholic apologia. For all his of elle!, the chantries' and abbeys' record charitable donation (three per cent of in- `tonruthe) not impressive. The failure to rally t„,, the Church suggests less than the com- '''ffrnent claimed here. Mary the frustrated benefactress and Edward VI the boy plunderer are more the goodies and baddies of a fairy tale than the characters of history. At times, the prose is — unforgiveably by the now austere canons of academic 'style' — emotional. But this is a very good and very important book — not just, or even primarily, for its matter, but for its valuable perspective and sound judgment. (Who could lack confidence in an impression that 'female defiance and constancy were more common than female submission'?) Both are healthy antidotes to some bad cases of Puritan or sectarian hagiography. Like the lords of misrule of the old Catholic festivities, Scarisbrick turns the traditional Protestant view of the Reformation and the Whig view of the past topsy-turvy. In doing so, he sets history the right way up.
Previous page
