The flavours of English protestantism

(Today's entry covers pages 16-21 of Gardiner's History. The picture to the left is of a young John Calvin.)

We're taking a tour here. It's not a bad thing to consider Big Ideas when our attention is not distracted elsewhere, but we shouldn't get stuck on them, should we?

Unfortunately, there are some huge (and vague) Big Ideas strewn like boulders in our way through the 17th century, and some of the biggest have to do with the beliefs--and the ceremonies that reflect them--of varieties of English Protestants.

Why should I emphasize Protestant Big Ideas rather than Catholic ones? Well, for one thing, I can hardly discuss protestant ideas without discussing catholic ones: they can best be understood in contrast to what was believed before. And by the time of Charles I, more than 90% of Englishmen paid at least lip service to some variety of Protestant belief. The big rocks are all protestant.

The central idea of protestantism is salvation by faith. Protestants aren't opposed to good works; they just don't think you can save your soul by them. Martin Luther was the first teacher to give this idea wide currency in the modern age. The idea is important in terms of ceremony, more so in terms of doctrine, but very important in terms of church government. Gardiner tries to summarize the importance in these areas in a very few paragraphs. He doesn't try very hard, and comes far short of succeeding. I can recommend a few books on the subject, such as Protestant Thought Before Kant, but I don't recommend you bring any of them along on the tour.

Because salvation by faith is least important in terms of ceremony, the forms of worship in early protestant churches were not wildly different than in catholic ones. More of the service was in the worshippers' tongue; some prayers were omitted; some homilies diverged. This allowed the English church to become protestant almost underhandedly, with the same ministers using largely the same liturgy as they had before.
Gardiner does do a good job of explaining this, and why a growing trend in protestantism, Calvinism, which adds several Big Ideas of its own, had to be resisted during the reign of Elizabeth.

As we know, Elizabethan resistance had little long-term effect on the spread of Calvinism, due, as Gardiner points out, "to its logical completeness, and to the direct antagonism in which it stood to the doctrines of the Roman Church."

A form of Calvinism was allowed to take hold in Scotland, however. We'll talk about Presbyterianism when we pick up on page 22.

The Spanish Armada, again

Gardiner's treatment of the Armada is too brief to be called dry, but it doesn't give an idea of the effect the victory had on Englishmen. For that, I can't think of a better source that the reminiscences of Captain John Smith (yes, the same that will colonize Virginia in 20 years' time.) The following is from The Adventures and Discourses of Captain John Smith, sometime President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, Newly Ordered by John Ashton:

I was born in the year 1579; that year when Jack Spaniard invaded Ireland, bringing with him a holy banner blessed by the Pope. Much blood and time it took before the rebellion was put down, and the Dons were all either killed, or put in ward. But the work was done thoroughly, and with a good heart, so that none, methinks, ever went back home to tell the tale. Ha! but we paid them out well, and made them dance a Coranto to a pretty tune when they tried the same sport, on a larger scale, with their Invincible Armada. Invincible, quatha! my Lord Howard and his old sea-dogs found joints enow in their harness, I trow; and Ireland proved even more unkind to them than before, for seventeen of their ships were taken or destroyed, and much over 5,000 men were killed or taken prisoners on that coast which, I warrant me, they love not now.

I mind the time well, though I was but a youngster of nine years old, for the whole land was drunk with joy, and of course my native village must be a piece with the rest of the world. My Lord Willoughby did give two great oxen to be roasted, and also good strong October; both of which were given without stint to all comers. Ay and he provided also a bull to be baited, which was the first I had ever seen of that rare sport. I remember it so well, more by token that our dog Tyke must needs be very valiant and join in the fray, but he limped on three legs ever after, and it had nigh cost him his life but for the great care and good nursing he received.

There was dancing round the May-pole, too, and it would have been kept up till night, but old Jack the crowder [fiddler] got overcome early in the afternoon with too much October, which he kept pouring down to make his arm lissome, for he said it ached with constant work; so many of us betook ourselves to Alford, to see the two Frenchmen with their bear and monkey.

The Spanish Armada

It is curious that Gardiner disposes of the proposed Spanish invasion of England—the dispatch of the Armada—in a slender paragraph.

True, the Spanish attack was poorly planned, weakly co-ordinated, long anticipated, and extremely unlucky. But it is still a grand story. Gardiner admits that the prospects of an invasion were terrifying to the English. A ballad of the time began

From merciless invaders, from wicked men's device,
O God, arise and help us to quell our enemies!

Gardiner emphasizes the polarization that Spanish hostility cemented in England. The majority Protestants found in their religion a political ground more powerful than the philosophical and doctrinal differences they recognized with the Roman church. The polarization was strong and long lasting. It was possible 300 years later for an English clergyman to slaver at the mouth over the threatened religious invasion.

There is one result of the English victory that is perhaps so obvious that it has gradually been forgotten: the effect it had on English nationalism. Englishmen could feel that they were not only just the match, but the superior of men from anywhere in Christendom. Forget the Spanish grandee: the English gentleman drank his beer while the Spaniard drowned in the North Sea. As Gardiner says, the disintegration of the Armada instilled in the English the illusion of discipline, an illusion that both fed and fed on the discipline inherent in Calvinist theology. At the bottom of page 17, Gardiner sums it up with this observation:

Anchored on the Rock of Ages, they could safely bid defiance to all the menaces of the Pope and to all the armies of the mightiest potentates of Europe.

We'll pick it up next time on page 18.

Mary Stuart

Picking up on page 14...

Gardiner gives short shrift to Mary Queen of Scots. He mentions a few important facts—that she came into England looking for a way back to her throne; that her story generated Catholic buzz; and that the inevitable result of the decision to imprison her in England was that England must kill her.

Of the popular histories of Mary, I prefer the one by Antonia Fraser, which you can find on Amazon or in almost any used-book shop. Frasier is sympathetic but realistic and cuts neither Mary nor Elizabeth any slack. A far more romanticized story, but a very popular one, is the History of Mary Queen of Scots by Jacob Abbot, which you can read online.

I think the circumstance that strikes most modern readers is that Mary was the mother of James VI, the reigning king of Scotland at the time of her death, and who will be king of England, as James I, when we get to the start of our tour. As we will learn in Chapter 2, James did not lightly pass over the murder of his mother, but he didn't let it become a political issue, either. What does that say about James and about Mary and about their relationship?

If you want more about Mary Stuart, refer to the colorful EnglishHistory.net site, which has plenty of links and pictures.

What we should learn from the brief discission on pages 14 and 15 is that—to the English government—Mary Stuart's life was less important than her religion, and her religion important only for its political implications. She had to go, and that was just the way things worked in late Tudor England.

"Miss Porter" in the DNB

This afternoon I transcribed the article on Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, in the Dictionary of National Biography. He was born a year or so before the period we are slowly building up to. My problem is not with Manchester, though: it is with the author of the article, which is signed "B. P.".

The contributor list for volume 38 shows "B. P." to be a "Miss Porter". So who is Miss Porter? I find her Christian name was Bertha. A little more research finds this article, which says she live 1852-1941, was an
employee of the DNB, was a "professional bibliographer" and edited the Topographical Bibliography of
ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings. More looking about indicates that she became an expert on the antiquities of Egyptian Thebes. I must look for her obituary, which was published in The Times, January 22, 1941.

(Update: the obit is available in the Times archives, but their rates are a bit steep -- $130 per year. If you already have a subscription, and you happen to go to the Times Archive search page and search for Bertha Porter on January 22, 1941, I'd appreciate a report.)

It is strange where Saturday-night recreational reading can take you.

Picking up again on page 12

Picking up again with the brief overview of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at page 12 of Gardiner's History of England…

(By the way, if you want to direct your browser to a particular page in Volume 1 of Gardiner's History, copy this into your browser's address window:

http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#pagexx

and change xx to the page number you want. The string for page 12 will be http://bob.fooguru.org/content/gardiner/hist10/HistV1.html#page12.)

It's an important aspect of the international political landscape of the early 17th century that Spain was greatly over-estimated in its wealth and military strength. The English government, and probably most governments in Europe, thought Spain to be invincible and in possession of almost unlimited resources. In fact, Spain was already over-extended. Even the wealth of the Indies—which itself did not come without great expense—could not sustain perpetual standing armies in the Low Lands and Italy, and military adventures elsewhere. Still, knowing the outcome, I think we underestimate Spain at this time, and Gardiner makes the point very well.

Gardiner mentions Lepanto, the 1571 sea battle in which a combined Imperial, Spanish and Venician fleet defeated a Turkish flotilla in the Adriatic. It is one of the reasons that we will be talking much more about Christian-versus-Christian conflict in the 17th century than about Christian-versus-Musselman. It is the subject of what some consider the best poem of the 20th century, and I bring it up because (saving the unflattering reference to The cold queen of England in the first stanza), it might almost be an Elizabethan poem, in sentiment if not language. The English of that time, and we today, liked their enemies well-caricatured and their heroes too. Don John's subsequent history in the Netherlands would, of course, have dampened any English enthusiasm that might have existed for him after Lepanto. (See this blog for more information about the Battle of Lepanto, including a photo of a reproduction of Don John's flagship.)

The important take-away from this part of the first chapter is that protestantism and its attendant anti-catholicism were political as well as religious issues to the English ruling classes. Elizabeth and her council put a lid on the emotional aspects of doctrinal difference by making outward conformance to a compromise doctrine a requirement of the law. That a large part of the Catholics were practically excluded from the compromise was considered an acceptable political trade-off. In the short and the long term, this approach was sufficient; but in the middle—the period we are concerned with—the lid would not stay on.

We'll pick up next time on 14, with mention of Mary, Queen of Scots, and of the Armada.

Aside on Bacon's view of Queen Elizabeth

I mentioned Bacon's In Felicem Memoriam Elizabethæ, a short memorial/apology/analysis of the Queen's life by one of the most intelligent men of the age, written in 1609, six years after her death. On first reading, I did not realize how remarkable a document it is.

Part of the problem is that most of us are reduced to reading James Spedding's English translation (the linked document). Spedding does not quite capture the force of Bacon's Latin.

In Felicem is a tour-de-force, an extended conceit that casts Elizabeth's life and successes as felicitous—that is to say, both happy and lucky.

Bacon is not skimping in his praise of the queen's wisdom and temperance. Even for her persecution of papists he finds politic reasons. But at root, he says that Elizabeth was fortunate.

One has to think that this is a rationalization. A woman, even an exceptional woman, can not be expected to rule well, but Elizabeth (for the most part) did. How can this be explained? It must have been good fortune. That it was the good fortune of England as well as of the Queen, Bacon does not doubt; but the aberration, he implies, is merely happy chance.