ELIZABETH THE FIRST

ELIZABETH AND RELIGION

SECTION 6 : ELIZABETH'S ARCHBISHOPS

The Archbishops Under Elizabeth I

There were 3 :

Matthew Parker, 1559-75

Edmund Grindal

John Whitgift

MATTHEW PARKER (1559-1575)

Parker began his life as a Catholic, but was converted to Protestantism while at Cambridge University. He was favoured by both Henry VIII and Edward VI. Parker's association with Protestantism advanced with the times, and he received higher promotion under Northumberland than under the moderate Somerset. In July 1553 he supped with Northumberland at Cambridge, when the duke marched north on his hopeless campaign against the accession of Mary Tudor. As a supporter of Northumberland and a married man, under the new regime Parker was deprived of his various positions. However, he survived Mary's reign without leaving the country He became Queen Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559. Elizabeth wanted a moderate man, so she chose Parker. There was also an emotional attachment. Parker had been the favourite chaplain of Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn. Before Anne was arrested in 1536, she had entrusted Elizabeth's spiritual well-being to Parker. A few days after this, Anne had been executed on false charges of adultery, incest and treason. Parker also possessed all the qualifications Elizabeth expected from an archbishop except celibacy. He distrusted popular enthusiasm, and he wrote in horror of the idea that "the people" should be the reformers of the Church. He was largely responsible for implementing the Elizabethan religious settlement and monitoring abuses within the Church. He was a man dedicated to his work, and earned the title of "Nosy Parker" for his interference in people's affairs. He and Elizabeth did not always see eye to eye on religious matters, and both had to compromise their views in order to work together. Early in her reign, Elizabeth expressed a dislike of the clergy marrying. In 1561 she issued a royal injunction forbidding any cleric to live with his wife and family in any cathedral close or college. This was not popular, and Parker, who was married himself, defended clerical marriage. The Queen relented over the cathedral closes, but not the colleges.  Elizabeth was also concerned that the religious settlement was not being properly observed in some areas outside London, and she blamed Parker for not ensuring that the act of uniformity was properly enforced. However He was one of the primary architects of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the defining statements of Anglican doctrine. Parker avoided involvement in secular politics and was never admitted to Elizabeth's privy council. Ecclesiastical politics gave him considerable trouble. Some of the evangelical reformers wanted liturgical changes and at least the option not to wear certain clerical vestments, if not their complete prohibition. Early presbyterians wanted no bishops, and the conservatives opposed all these changes, often preferring to move in the opposite direction toward the practices of the Henrician church. The queen herself grudged episcopal privilege until she eventually recognised it as one of the chief bulwarks of the royal supremacy. To Parker's consternation, the queen refused to add her imprimatur to his attempts to secure conformity, though the she insisted that he achieve this goal. Thus Parker was left to stem the rising tide of Puritan feeling with little support from parliament, convocation or the Crown. The bishops' Interpretations and Further Considerations, issued in 1560, tolerated a lower vestiarian standard than was prescribed by the rubric of 1559, but it fell short of the desires of the anti-vestiarian clergy like Coverdale (one of the bishops who had consecrated Parker) who made a public display of their nonconformity in London. The Book of Advertisements, which Parker published in 1566, to check the anti-vestiarian faction, had to appear without specific royal sanction. Disputes about vestments had expanded into a controversy over the whole field of Church government and authority, and Parker died on May 17, 1575, lamenting that Puritan ideas of "governance" would "in conclusion undo the queen and all others that depended upon her." By his personal conduct he had set an ideal example for Anglican priests, and it was not his fault that national authority failed to crush the individualistic tendencies of the Protestant Reformation.

EDMUND GRINDAL (1575-83)

Although Elizabeth's relationship with Archbishop Parker was not always easy, they worked well together, and put the Elizabethan Church on a firm foothold. They had differences of opinion, but this was perhaps inevitable, and the strength of the partnership can be seen in the success of the Church in the early years, and that Parker remained in his office until his death in 1575.  Elizabeth's relationship with his successor, Edmund Grindal, was disastrous. Until Parker's death, he had been Archbishop of York and was well thought of and admired. the problem with Grindal was that he had some Puritan sympathies,  and wished the Church to be more overtly Protestant. 

Almost immediately he began to make changes, and allowed the publication of the Protestant Geneva Bible, which had been suppressed by Parker. His actions soon irritated the Queen. She wanted every church in the land to worship God as the religious settlement dictated, and did not want any change made to the settlement, or for the church to be pushed in a more fervent Protestant direction. She liked the settlement just as it was, and didn't want to change it. She and Grindal soon clashed over the matter of "prophesyings", and it was the Archbishop who came out worse for wear.  Prophesyings were unauthorised meetings for prayer and preaching. These concerned Elizabeth who felt that the preachers would preach what ever came into their head, not what was sound doctrine. Not only would this undermine her Church, but could also be dangerous, as there was no control over what would be said, or the issues that could arise. 

Elizabeth was deeply suspicious of Puritans and their dislike of hierarchy, and was concerned that what began as religious talk could quickly become political. Such preachers, she felt, would also make people discontented with her Church and heighten what was already a very tense religious situation. As well as facing opposition to the Church from Puritans, she also faced a very dangerous opposition from the Catholics. Elizabeth believed that all the preachers of the realm should preach according to the regulations of her Church, preach the same message and doctrine, and read from approved books of homilies and prayers. This would unite the country, not divide it. 

In 1576, she ordered Grindal to suppress the prophesyings.  Two or three pastors would band together to speak on a chosen topic, questioning and critiquing each other. However, Grindal was very much in favour of them. He believed that they were a good way of educating the people into the doctrine of the new faith, and for providing religious instruction, as some places were without ministers. . This method of presenting the gospel drew large crowds. Grindal himself had made heavy use of it in York. Elizabeth feared that under guise of such meetings, insurrections could gather. He consulted his bishops over the matter, and finding that ten out of fifteen approved of them, he felt obliged to write to the Queen to tell her that he thought they were a good idea. His letter to her was remarkably bold, as were his further petitions. He told her that although she was the highest authority in the land over political matters, she did not have the same authority over spiritual matters, and that he must put the will of God above his duty to her as sovereign. Elizabeth was outraged at his defiance, and he was suspended from his office in the summer of 1577 until his death in 1583. That she did not execute him was owing to his wide popularity and winsome spirit. He remained under arrest until his death, despite petitions from the other clergy that he be restored to his archdiocese. The queen did, however, send Grindal a heavy silver cup as a gesture of peace, and allowed him to conduct some of his functions quietly.

JOHN WHITGIFT (1583-1604)

Of all her Archbishops of Canterbury, John Whitgift was the one that Elizabeth got on the best with. He shared many of her views and aspirations, and as well as this, was unmarried. Like Elizabeth, he was suspicious of Puritans, and was eager to defend the Elizabethan Church against this religious group, as well as protect it against the machinations of the Catholics. He was a devoted Anglican, and pushed for obedience to the English Church. Elizabeth affectionately called him her "little black husband". When she lay on her death-bed, she drew comfort from his presence, and his prayers for her immortal soul.

Whitgift�s extreme High Church notions led him to see the Puritans as a danger. In a pulpit controversy with Thomas Cartwright, regarding the constitutions and customs of the Church of England, his oratorical effectiveness proved inferior, but was able to exercise arbitrary authority. Together with other heads of the university, he deprived Cartwright of his professorship, and in Sep 1571 Whitgift exercised his prerogative as master of Trinity to deprive him of his fellowship also. In Jun of the same year Whitgift was nominated Dean of Lincoln. In the following year he published 'An Answere to a Certain Libel entitled an Admonition to the Parliament', which led to further controversy between the two churchmen.

In Aug 1583 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and placed his stamp on the church of the Reformation. Although he wrote to Elizabeth remonstrating against the alienation of church property, Whitgift always retained her special confidence. In his policy against the Puritans, and in his vigorous enforcement of the subscription test, he thoroughly carried out the Queen's policy of religious uniformity.

He drew up articles aimed at nonconforming ministers, and obtained increased powers for the Court of High Commission. In 1586 he became a privy councillor. His action gave rise to the Martin Marprelate tracts, in which the bishops and clergy were bitterly attacked. Through Whitgift's vigilance the printers of the tracts were discovered and punished; and in order to prevent the publication of such opinions he got a law passed in 1593 making Puritanism an offence against the statute law. In the controversy between Walter Travers and Richard Hooker he prohibited the former from preaching; and he presented Hooker with the rectory of Boscombe in Wiltshire, in order to afford him more leisure to complete his Ecclesiastical Polity, a work which in the end did not represent either Whitgift's theological or his ecclesiastical standpoint.

In 1595, in conjunction with Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, and other prelates, he drew up the Calvinistic instrument known as the Lambeth Articles, which were not accepted by the church. Whitgift attended Elizabeth on her deathbed, and crowned James I. He was present at the Hampton Court Conference in Jan 1604, and died at Lambeth the following Feb. He was buried in the church at Croydon, but his monument there with his recumbent effigy was practically destroyed in the fire by which the church was burnt down in 1867.

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