The Northern Rebellion of 1569
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Durham E-Theses Religious Deviance in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham TENNO, SIIRI How to cite: TENNO, SIIRI (2009) Religious Deviance in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/167/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Religious Deviance in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham Siiri Tenno MA by research Durham University Department of Theology and Religion September 2009 Contents CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................... 2 LIST OF TABLES AND MAPS ........................................................................................... 4 DECLARATION ................................................................................................................... 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... 6 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER I: CONTEXT .................................................................................................... 12 The state of parishes and clergy in the Elizabethan diocese of Durham ................. 12 Popular beliefs in the early modern diocese of Durham .......................................... 19 Practice of the Consistory Court .............................................................................. 25 CHAPTER II: THE NORTHERN REBELLION OF 1569................................................. 29 The course of the events .......................................................................................... 29 The burning of Protestant books and the destroying of communion tables ............. 32 Restoring of altar stones and holy water vats .......................................................... 37 Celebrating Catholic mass ....................................................................................... 41 Aftermath of the Northern Rebellion ....................................................................... 44 Motives for participation in the Rebellion ............................................................... 51 CHAPTER III: THE CLERGY AND THE PARISH IN THE ELIZABETHAN DIOCESE OF DURHAM ...................................................................................................................... 61 The clergy, their sense of duty and dutifulness ....................................................... 61 2 The legitimacy of the clergy and the concerns around it ......................................... 67 The reputation of the clergy among the laity ........................................................... 69 Disturbance and misbehaviour in the churches of Durham diocese ........................ 76 Acts against the laws of the Queen, God and the Church of England ..................... 91 CHAPTER IV: BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT ............................................ 103 The context of English witchcraft beliefs .............................................................. 103 The case of Jenkyn and Jennet Pereson ................................................................. 108 Witches or not – cases of defamation .................................................................... 114 Witches, sorcerers, exorcists and charmers ........................................................... 118 The pattern of magical and „superstitious‟ beliefs as religious deviance in the Elizabethan diocese of Durham ............................................................................. 125 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................... 131 APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................ 139 Map 1. .................................................................................................................... 139 Map 2. .................................................................................................................... 140 Map 3. .................................................................................................................... 141 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 142 3 List of tables and maps Table 1. Value of livings in 1535 in the diocese of Durham ............................................... 17 Map 1. Parishes of Elizabethan Durham City .................................................................... 139 Map 2. Parishes of Elizabethan County Durham ............................................................... 140 Map 3. Parishes of Elizabethan Northumberland ............................................................. 141 4 Declaration I confirm that no part of the material offered has previously been submitted by me for a degree in this or in any other university. Material from the work of others has been acknowledged and quotations and paraphrases suitability indicated. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any format, including electronic and the Internet, without the author‟s prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. 5 Acknowledgements I would like to take the opportunity to thank the people who have offered their kind help and support throughout my studies for a MA degree and without whom it would have been impossible to complete this dissertation. I am sincerely grateful to my supervisors Dr Alec Ryrie and Dr Adrian Green who have encouraged me at every single stage of the research and whose valuable suggestions and comments broadened and shaped my views on the subject of religious deviance. Thanks must also go to the helpful staff of Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections, especially to Ms Margaret McCollum whose guidance made it possible to conquer the palaeographical challenge that the manuscript sources set. 6 Introduction This research focuses on the occurrences of religious deviance in its different forms in the Elizabethan diocese of Durham and its aim is to find the causes behind the diversity of deviance. What is treated as religious deviance here is every form of religious mindset or act that in its nature differed from the official orthodox religion, i.e. Protestantism, and challenged it. Deviants in this context are those people whose religious practices or beliefs were in contradiction to or in tension with the official religion, sometimes leading to legal actions being taken against them. Using the terms „deviants‟ and „religious wrongdoers‟ applies in this context to the way the church and the government classified these people, not necessarily meaning that this was the general popular understanding. The questions I hope to answer are: What were the different forms of religious deviance? Why did they occur? What were the reasons why some people did not conform to official orthodoxies? Was religious diversity caused by the conflict between the „old‟ and the „new‟? Was it caused by the lack of Protestant preachers in distant and rural parish churches? Was deviance a result of a failure of government policy or did people‟s own personal needs give a good ground for the development of different religious beliefs? Also, how did the understanding of „deviance‟ change during the period in focus? I have chosen to study the Elizabethan era that extended from 1558 to 1603. This period is of special interest because it follows a period of important changes to religious life, which radically changed the understanding of orthodox and unorthodox religion, and which had taken place both in Europe and in England. England was a Catholic country until the 1530s when the break from the Roman Catholic Church was initiated by Henry VIII. The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity under Elizabeth I in 1559 decreed England officially to be a Protestant country and people were expected to adapt to Protestantism. Conflict between 7 the „old‟ and the „new‟ religion was inevitable and had a direct impact on popular religious life. Previous research has shown that the north of England was slower to welcome Reformation than the southern parts of the country and Roman Catholicism offered serious competition for Protestantism.1 But as the acts of the Northern High Commission court, Durham quarter sessions rolls and various depositions and ecclesiastical proceedings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show, the diversity of popular religious beliefs and practices was much more colourful than that solely of Catholicism and Protestantism. Even within the two broad schools of thought