CHAPTER TWO
ENGLISH EVANGELICALS, PERSECUTION, AND OBEDIENCE, 1540–1547
During the last seven years of Henry’s reign (1540–1547) the situation for evangelicals was dire. Cromwell had sheltered evangelicals for years. But with the Act of Six Articles in 1539 and Cromwell’s execution the following year, conservatives returned to power. Conservative leaders, backed by the king, quickly went to work reinforcing traditional elements of Catholic worship that were under pressure in the 1530s, such as clerical celibacy and the seven sacraments. Moreover, the great victory for evangelicals under Cromwell—the official publication of the English Bible—met with resistance. Restrictions were now placed on scripture reading amongst laymen. In the end, the small groups of reformers in and around London were confronted with the likelihood of persecution and exile.1 After over a decade of evangelical teachings on obedience, Henry was in fact becom- ing a tyrant. The rapid change in English religion was a constant source of anxiety for evangelicals during the 1540s.2 The rhetoric used by evangelicals dur- ing these years often dwelt on the tragedy of England’s ‘return to Babylon’, or the egregious persecution of God’s people. Picking up on this language, historians have stressed how evangelicalism was marginalised during these years. Haigh and others argue that evangelicalism was largely irrel- evant after 1540. Other scholars are less pessimistic about the role of evan- gelicalism in England, but nevertheless admit that Protestant voices were little more than a noisy minority group. In terms of political thought, recent studies of Henry’s final years have emphasised the tensions within evangelical political theology as it struggled to come to terms with Henry’s oppression of the gospel. Alec Ryrie, for example, writes that the 1540s created ‘conundrums’ for evangelicals and that ‘it was after 1540 that
1 Evangelical influence was not entirely thwarted, however. Cranmer still remained in the king’s graces and survived a number of similar attacks (e.g. the so-called ‘Prebendaries’ Plot’ in 1543). Duffy rightly points out that Henry often turned to Cranmer for religious matters after the fall of Cromwell (Stripping of the Altars, p. 430). See also MacCulloch, Cranmer, pp. 297–325. 2 For a fresh look at the enforcement of obedience in 1540 and beyond, see Shagan, Rule of Moderation, pp. 110.
significant divisions in the evangelical attitudes towards the Royal Supremacy became evident for the first time’.3 Likewise, Gunther and Shagan argue that Henrician evangelicals were growing increasingly more radical and were beginning to adopt ideas that would lead to Puritan separatism.4 Yet as we have seen, evangelicals did not blithely profess unreserved obedience to the king in the 1530s. Woven into evangelical teachings on obedience was an acceptance of the possibility of martyrdom, as Christians owed a higher obedience to God. Indeed, one might describe Tyndale’s political theology as an apology for ‘obedient suffering’—one must accept any temporal burden, no matter how onerous, but should the king contra- vene the word of God one must submit to death rather than disobey God. Evangelical emphasis on suffering, in particular, was a call to remain obe- dient even under tyranny. Through suffering, they argued, the believer becomes like Christ who suffered under Roman tyranny during his cruci- fixion. Suffering, then, becomes the ultimate test of one’s obedience to the king. The purpose of this chapter is to reconsider evangelical political theol- ogy from the fall of Cromwell to the end of Henry VIII’s reign and to clarify evangelical involvement in 1540s politics in the light of recent historiogra- phy. It will argue that evangelical commitment to the Royal Supremacy was not dependent on naivety or political optimism. There was no dis- cernible loss of confidence in royal authority per se during the 1540s, only a growing awareness that Henry was not their Solomon. Evangelical writ- ers continued to wed the doctrine of political obedience to the concepts of martyrdom and suffering under tyranny—a link made by evangelicals from the start. Thus, despite recent claims by historians, evangelicals were not shaken awake by persecution and forced to face the ‘revolutionary’ nature of their doctrine of Christian liberty. This chapter will argue that the recent quest for the Henrician origins of radical political ideas—resistance theory and separatism in particular— rests on a misunderstanding of the overtly theological dimensions of evangelical political thought, obedience, and persecution. Resistance theory was neither natural to evangelicalism nor did it creep into evan- gelical minds as Henry VIII’s executioners lit their fires. Rather, in the
3 A. Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 58, 61. 4 Gunther and Shagan, ‘Protestant Radicalism’, pp. 35–74. This article draws some of its material from Gunther, ‘The Intellectual Origins of English Puritanism, c. 1525–1572’ PhD dissertation (Northwestern University, 2007).