This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Episcopal office in the English church 1520-1559. Carleton, Kenneth William Thomas The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 10. Oct. 2021 EPISCOPAL OFFICE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH 1520-1559 Kenneth William Thomas Carleton King's College Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1995 Abstract In the forty years preceding the consecration of Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury the bishops of the English Church held a wide range of opinions on the nature and function of their office. Their number included six martyrs, one of whom was canonized in 1935 as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. They Included many whose understanding of the episcopal office was conditioned by the demands made by the Crown for ministers of state, and whose careers as lawyers and diplomats were mirrored in their understanding of the order to which they belonged. This study takes the surviving writings of the bishops of the period on the subject of episcopal office, and setting those writings in the context of their activity as bishops and of the changing legal foundation for the order, attempts to describe the changing nature and understanding of the office amongst those who exercised it between the first stirrings of Protestant Reform in England to the death of Queen Mary, and the deprivation of almost all the , diocesan bishops in the months before the consecration of Parker. Particular aspects of the episcopal office, as understood by Its holders, are dealt with thematically, and the dissertation includes a prosopography of the bishops, as well as an analysis of the surviving records of diocesan episcopal participation in the conferring of the Church's ministry. A particular concern has been to identify possible influences upon the development of the idea of episcopal office, both from Continental Protestantism and the movement for Catholic Reformation in which Mary's Archbishop of Canterbury played such a prominent part. 2 Contents Abstract 2 Introduction 4 1. Bishops of the English Church 1520 - 1559 6 2. Bishop, Priest and Presbyter 37 3. The Bishops and the Royal Supremacy 64 4. The Bishops and the Preaching Office 100 5. Episcopal Office and the continuation of Ministry 125 6. The Bishops, Heresy and Excommunication 163 7. Education and Learning 193 8. Episcopal Households and Hospitality 214 9. Models of Episcopal Office 238 10. The Marian Episcopate 265 11. ConclusIon 286 Appendix I: Prosopography of the Bishops In office 1520-59 296 Appendix II: The Dioceses 343 Appendix III: Ordinations conducted 1520-59 349 Appendix IV: The Bishops of Sodor and Man 361 Appendix V: 1540 commission on doctrine 364 Bibliography 365 Tables Table I: Membership of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges 34 Table 2: English and Welsh Bishops at foreign universities 36 Table 3: Ordinations by Diocesan Bishops 1520-59 by Diocese 350 Table 4: Ordinations by Suffragan Bishops 1520-59 by Diocese 353 Table 5: Total Ordinations 1520-59 by Diocese 356 Illustrations Figure 1: Edward VI and his Bishops 62 Figure 2: John Fisher Preaching 98 Figure 3: OrdInations conducted 1520-59 359 Figure 4: Percentage of Ordinations conducted by Diocesan Bishops 360 Figure 5: WIlliam Peto's gift to Princess Mary 380 3 Introduction In 1520 the office of bishop In the English Church carried with It duties and responsibilities both to the diocese and to the realm. The holders of the office had been appointed, just as they had for several centuries, by a compromise between papal authority over the universal Church and royal sovereignty over the realm. Owning spiritual power from their relationship with God and the Pope, they also had great temporal wealth attached to their sees, wealth which brought with It a share In temporal government and an obligation to conduct their households in a way which reflected more the temporal Lords with whom they sat in Parliament, and less the poverty of the divine Master whom they served as shepherds to His flock. This inclination away from evangelical simplicity had been called into question along with a number of the fundamental doctrines of the faith by Individuals in England and on the continent, and in 1520 the campaign against the teaching of Martin Luther began in earnest in the realm. Not all bishops conformed so readily to the model of absent prelate, whose affairs were conducted by delegates both spiritual and temporal. A number of individuals, in England and throughout the continent, sought in their own dioceses to exercise a true pastoral ministry through frequent residence and regular preaching in person. By 1559 the English Church (which is taken to signify the dioceses of England and Wales which made up the two provinces of Canterbury and York) had undergone a series of fundamental changes ending with the effective extinction of the line of bishops which traced Its line of succession back to 4 Augustine of Canterbury. Since the sixth century bishops for the English Church had been consecrated within the realm by one or more bishops In legal possession of their see. For Parker's consecration, no such bishop could be found to undertake this act. The purpose of this work is to trace, through study of surviving writings of the bishops of that period and other contemporary sources, the understanding of episcopacy which prevailed among those who held that office or influenced its development. Except in the sense that it may cast light on Elizabethan and Jacobean episcopacy through setting out more clearly the understanding of the office in the years preceding the Elizabethan settlement, the present work does not seek to add to the debate on the office in that period. The principal aim is to establish those features of the office which were held in common by opposing protagonists, and where there were significant differences. It also aims to provide where possible both the historical context for certain features of the office, and identify points of contact with reform movements on the continent. In this thesis original spellings have been retained In quotations, and abbreviations have been expanded. The practice of commencing the new year on 1 January rather than 25 March has been applied throughout this work. Where sources are ambiguous in this respect, the later of the two possible years has been assumed. 5 1. Bishons of the English Church 1520 - 1559 During the period from 1520 to 1559, key changes of episcopal personnel took place which provided successive monarchs with the opportunity to change the character of the bench of bishops according to the needs of religion or state, or to reward royal servants for their part in their ruler's designs. The first decade, from 1520 to 1530, was a time of comparative stability, with few vacancies occurring for the appointment of new diocesan bishops. The second decade, particularly around the years 1532-36, was one in which most dioceses had a change of bishop. Even disregarding the few deprivations for political reasons in the early years of the 1 530s, the decade Is clearly one of change to an unusual extent. Whether this contributed to the nature and spread of the Henrician Reformation is a matter for same debate. Even in the latter part of the 1 540s, when religious change was at its most rapid with the accession of Edward VI, changes to the episcopal bench were relatively few. It was by chance, rather than by design, that Henry was able to appoint known supporters of his supremacy to high office in his Church, though the influence of Anne Boleyn in putting forward her chaplains at a key period of change should not be forgotten. 1 The period from the accession of Queen Mary in July 1553 to the deprivation of all but one of her bishops in the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth was the most unstable for the episcopate of the English Church throughout the whole early modern period up to the Civil War. 1 As Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out in his contribution to Pettegree, A., (ed.), The early Reformation In Europe, (Cambridge, 1992), p.167. 6 The growth of papal power in the later Middle Ages had led to a situation where, by a succession of papal enactments in the fourteenth century, control over episcopal appointments was in the hands of the pope. The rights of ordinary episcopal electors, the cathedral chapters, were taken over by the papacy, while the rights of secular rulers over episcopal appointment were, in effect, revived.