The Reformation of England's Past

John Foxe and the Revision of History in the Late Sixteenth Century

Matthew Phillpott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429886058
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book is a detailed examination of the sources and protocols John Foxe used to justify the Reformation, and claim that the Church of Rome had fallen into the grip of Antichrist. The focus is on the pre-Lollard, medieval history in the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments. Comparison of the narrative that Foxe writes to the possible sources helps us to better understand what it was that Foxe was trying to do, and how he came to achieve his aims. A focus on sources also highlights the collaborative circle in which Foxe worked, recognizing the essential role of other scholars and clerics such as John Bale and Matthew Parker.

1
Our History Is a Lie

Our history is a lie. That was a fundamental hypothesis that dominated many of the writings published during the Reformation in England. Relying on a series of assumptions, beliefs, and methodological practices, clerical scholars argued that the traditional story of English and religious history had been misinterpreted and distorted by past authorities, and that it was up to them to rectify this deficiency. On 20 March 1563, one of the most significant of these works—The Actes and Monuments of Matters Most Speciall and Memorable—went on sale for the first time. Its author was the Lincolnshire-born John Foxe (1516/1517–1587) and its printer John Day (1521/1522–1584). Together, they worked to reshape history, rendering persecution and martyrdom as the determinant features of the true church.

The Acts and Monuments and its creators Foxe and Day were, however, smaller cogs in the larger machine run by Queen Elizabeth’s senior statesmen. Men, such as Sir William Cecil (1520–1598) and Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504–1575), set the tone for English scholarship across a 20-year period, and they themselves focused on the rediscovery and promotion not only of an entirely revised conception of English history but also a new set of standard historical sources upon which that history was expected to emerge.

This book examines the processes, methodologies, ideas, and interpretations that formed the backbone of this work, with its focus being the pre-Lollard history in the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments. Such a focus has practical purposes. First, the concentration on pre-Lollard history enables us to study the historical element in the Acts and Monuments, without concerning ourselves with oral testimony or contemporary martyrological material. Both subjects have already received in-depth examination elsewhere.¹ This division is also a distinction that Foxe himself made, claiming that Satan was released around the time of the Lollard uprisings and that the fourteenth century was the true beginning point of the Reformation. Second, a focus on the first two editions, that being the first published in 1563 and the second published in 1570, is a benefit to the study, as it covers the period in which Foxe most developed the classical and medieval sequences and where most alterations were made. The third edition, published in 1576 contained almost no changes, whilst the 1583 edition (the final published in the lifetime of Foxe and Day) was largely expanded by bringing contemporary events up to date. The earlier history was largely left alone.

This study is about understanding not only the why but also the how behind the purposeful appropriation of history to support and sustain the Elizabethan regime and its programme of religious reforms. The how not only asks how honest Foxe was in his re-ordering of the past but also what sources he used, how he used them, and why. There can be no doubt at all that Protestant reformers came at their past from a de-neutral position—no history that placed the pope as Antichrist could be claimed as otherwise—but how far off a neutral telling was it? On a scale of truth, where might this history be placed and was it any different than other histories written around the same time?

To arrive at some answers to these questions, this study will offer a focus on the sources that Foxe and his colleagues used to construct their arguments and compile their history. The Reformation of the sixteenth century represents for writers of history a time of flux not only in what it was that they believed (or should believe) but also in terms of what history was required to tell them. The Reformation placed more emphasis on individual belief and on converting the hearts and minds of people, and not just on producing outward conformity. History and its re-telling were important to this process.

There were purely academic challenges as well that had a huge effect on how and why histories were written in the way that they were. Those who wrote histories during the Tudor period and those who sought to gather and collect old manuscripts for the same goal were generally trained in new humanist learnings that placed classical writers, particularly Cicero, in a place of authority and sought to return research to the source.² Yet retained as well were the older scholastic methods focused on dialectical reasoning and on ideas of inference and disputation.³ This meant that methodological approaches to writing about the past were constantly under scrutiny and persistently evolving whilst contestation arose about religion. Thus ecclesiastical history, such as that compiled by John Foxe, became as much about preserving memory and history as it did about shaping it. It harked back to tradition whilst also striving for re-evaluation. Foxe and his colleagues were asking not only what this history should be about but also how it should be constructed and structured as well.

This, then, is the story of how Elizabethan scholars, clergymen, printers, and other men of learning sought to rewrite history for their own age. It is also a story that involves the deconstruction of accepted historiographical practices, assumptions, and arguments in favour of a new interpretation based on the hypothesis that much of the accepted wisdom was flawed. There was a genuine belief amongst English writers that history had long been misrepresented, distorted, and even falsified in favour of the Roman Church, and very much at the expense of the ‘true’ church that was now again believed to be in the ascendancy.

The History of a History

The sixteenth century is generally viewed today as a breaking point between the old and the new, the end of medievalism and the bringing forth of science, enlightenment, and renaissance. In the 1560s, that new age would have been apparent, if not for those reasons or on terms that would now be recognisable. The break from Rome in the 1530s followed rapidly by the dissolution of monastic life had transformed England’s landscape both physically and figuratively. The rising of a rival ‘protestant’ Christian faith, especially after the death of Henry VIII, had transformed the Church experience and asked the ordinary person to reappraise his or her approach to religious devotion. This was no small thing to ask. The cult of saints may have been waning, but this by no means meant that belief in a saint’s ability to transmit aid and comfort at times of need was viewed as any less crucial an aspect of community life. People were accustomed to the mystery of the church service—from the lifting of the Mass glimpsed only at a distance through a rood screen to the quoting of Scripture in Latin and right down to the pictorial representation of biblical stories and characters that covered the church fabric in bright colours and evocative imagery. The Reformation in England was not only a political act carried out by a king desiring a divorce but also a wholesale demystification of religion from the revelation of the Scriptures in an understandable tongue right down to the demotion of bread and wine from a very real transformation to little more than a symbolic gesture.⁴

Of course, there were those who were already dissatisfied with the state of the Church. Widespread envy of and anger at monastic wealth and luxury filled many words of gossip and complaint across the country. But as Eamon Duffy has argued, the Church, whilst needing some aspects of reform, was not in a state of decline or in need of such a massive upheaval as that professed by radical reformers.⁵ As is often the case, the dissatisfaction of a few highly placed individuals selected the course of change, whilst the rest did their best to conform and manage the upheavals placed on them from above.

Alongside this very physical and noticeable change in people’s lives and relationship with the Church, the State and with God, Queen Elizabeth’s government worried itself also with the true state of belief. The rhetoric would have us believe that this concern was due to salvation; only true belief in the acts of faith outlined in Scripture would save the people (and thus themselves) from sin. There is much truth to this claim, and there were certainly many who would have seen salvation as the principal purpose of promoting the reformed church. But the truth of the matter was that Elizabeth’s regime found itself exposed both internally and externally to the threat of collapse. Her claim to the throne could be contested from many avenues, and the threat from Catholic Spain remained ever present. If the hearts and minds of the people could be won over to their new queen, then invasion or rebellion was all the less likely. Such a need to obtain the support of the populace was not, of course, dependent entirely on the religious conversion of the people. The cult of the ‘virgin queen’ is still clearly recalled because it represented a very successful campaign of propagandistic rhetoric that transformed the Queen of England into a superhuman figure. However, religion did figure prominently. If Elizabeth was promoted as the saviour and protector of England, then her predecessor and Roman Catholic half-sister Mary was vilified as ‘Bloody Mary’. The burning of Protestants during her reign had, even at the time, seemed brutal and savage, and Protestant preachers and writers sought to make use of that. Those Protestant converts presented themselves always in contrast to the other, to what would happen if the Roman Catholic was allowed back into power. They considered themselves to be the light to the pope’s darkness.

This was the hearts-and-minds struggle with which the Elizabethan government sought to defend its power base. The constant paralleling of Protestant faith to that of the Roman Catholic became omnipresent. This was nowhere made more clearly than in the revising and rewriting of English history. The Reformation was not to be won or lost through doctrine alone but upon a clearer examination and understanding of the past, and the role of the Church through time.

Protestant scholars realised that it was vital not only to reinterpret the traditional stories told in old chronicles and annals but also to claim those histories themselves as untrustworthy testimonies containing a multitude of errors, misleading statements, and full-blown lies. This understanding of the past, present, and future was important for Protestants who sought to overcome the dangerous accusation that the doctrines and theology that they claimed as true were new innovations, without tradition or ancient authority. Protestant reformers recognised this argument as a very real threat to their authority.

The trick, however, was to produce something that could speak to a variety of people. The printing press enabled a presentation of beliefs and arguments on a scale inconceivable even a generation earlier.⁶ It was to prove not only important but also revolutionary in what Elizabethan writers were able to achieve. Men of power recognised that it was vital not only to satisfy the intellectually knowledgeable believer (that was the relatively easy part) but also to convince the learned Roman Catholic as well. It was also important to speak to the ordinary person, those unable to read the Latin tongue and those who might only ever hear the words read out loud, as they were neither in a position or capable of reading the words themselves. The results were staggering. Manuscript copies of old and ancient chronicles—forgotten and neglected just one generation before—were rediscovered, gathered, and used to support and promote a new history of England and the Church. New transcriptions and translations were published, and new histories emerged promoting a past partially familiar but wholly revised both in terms of its content and its primary sources. To be successful, the Reformation of religion required a Reformation of history.

John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments speak volumes to this process. Whilst this book is largely remembered as a martyrology recording the writings and experiences of those persecuted under Mary I, it is also extensively an ecclesiastical history covering the rise and fall of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Our History Is a Lie
• 2 Sources and Evidence
• 3 The First Edition
• 4 From Christ to Constantine
• 5 From King Lucius to Harold Godwinson
• 6 From William the Conqueror to Henry II
• 7 From Richard Lionheart to Edward III
• 8 Our History Is the Truth
• Appendix: A Bibliography of Sources That Foxe Consulted for His Pre-Lollard History
• Index