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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110551/ Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ESSEX, CIRCA 1500 TO 1570 BY IAN JAMES HART SUBMITTED FOR A DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF HARWICH DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY SEPTEMBER 1992 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 Summary 5 Note 6 INTRODUCTION 7 1 THE CHURCH IN ESSEX ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION 18 The parish church and the community 18 Pre-Reformation wills and intercessory institutions 27 The religious guilds of Essex 39 The Church and social order 50 Lollardy in sixteenth-century Essex 55 Some problems of the pre-Reformation Church 65 72 Parish churches and parish life 74 Wills and intercession 91 'Traitors' versus 'heretics' 106 The general effect in Essex of the break with Rome 123 •1- 3 THE REFORMATION DURING THE REIGN OF EDUARD 126 Introduction 126 The Edwardian Chantries Act 130 Changes in the parish church 140 The religion of the people 151 The effectiveness of the Edwardian Reformation 164 4 RELIGION DURING THE REIGN OF MARY 167 The restoration of Catholicism in Marian Essex 167 Popular piety under Mary 180 Protestantism in Marian Essex 193 The religious complexion of Marian Essex 213 3 RELIGION IN ESSEX IN THE 1560s 216 The parish church 216 The clergy of early Elisabethan Essex 228 The survival of conservatism 243 The laity and religion in the 1560s 253 6 RELIGIOUS DRAMA AND COMMUNAL FESTIVALS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ESSEX 276 The variety of activities 277 Corpus Christi celebrations 280 -2- Religious plays 286 May Day 294 Christmas 296 Silver games 303 Plays and festivals between 1530 and the death of Mary 307 Religious drama in Elizabethan Essex 319 The end of communal religious drama in Essex 332 CONCLUSION! ESSEX AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 341 Abbreviations 352 Notes 354 Appendices! 1 Analysis of wills 407 2 Religious guilds of Essex 411 3 Lights in Essex churches 431 Bibliography 437 TABLES TABLE l! The occupations of testators. c.1500-1570 13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank various people for the help I have received in preparing this thesis. First, Professor Scarisbrick has provided encouragement, constructive criticism and guidance of the highest order, and this work owes a great deal to his supervision during the last three years. Darryl Ogier, too, provided much food for thought with his comments and suggestions about the various drafts he kindly read for me. I would also like to thank the staff of the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford and Colchester for their help, together with the staff at the Public Record Office and the British Library. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for giving me the opportunity to pursue my education this far, and my wife, Nicky, for her love and support throughout. SUMMARY This thesis investigates popular religion in Essex during the English Reformation, and it assesses whether revisionist arguments that the Reformetion was generally unwanted and was slow to take root apply there. Verious sources, such as wills, churchwardens' accounts and court records, have been examined. These reveal that popular piety was strong on the eve of the Reformation, and that Lollardy influenced only a minority. Most people acquiesced to the changes in religious practice and church decor demanded by the Henrician and Edwardian governmants, but this was due mainly to obedience and coercion, not conversion to the new teachings. By Edward's death there was a minority of convinced Protestants in Essex, mainly in the North of the county and along the Thames. For the majority, however, the result of the changes was uncertainty and confusion in religious matters. Victims of this unease included religious drama and the Church's sponsorship of popular festivals; both had been widespread throughout the early sixteanth century, but were severely curtailed by the mid-1540s. Mary attempted to restore Catholicism, and traditional piety did revive slightly during her reign, whilst traditional dacor reappaared in Essex churches under the authorities' supervision; her reign also occasioned the death or exile of dozens of Essex Protestants. However, relatively few were committed to either set of doctrines, and confusion remained in matters pertaining to religion. During the early Elizabethan period traditional piety and decor mostly disappeared, but while the majority continued to exhibit Christian beliefs and principles, few were doctrinally Protestants. In addition, the environment which had allowed communities to put on plays in earlier decades continued to disappear, and an Elizabethan revival of communal religious drama failed. Thus by 1570 the old order was mostly destroyed, but the Protestant altarnative still needad to be disseminated amongst the masses. 5- NOTE All quotations from primary sources use the original spelling and punctuation, with abbreviations expanded and underlined. Dates from original documents are old style, but the beginning of the year is taken as 1 January not 25 March. INTRODUCTION In 1965 James E. Oxley's The Reformation In Essex to the Death of Mary was published. In it the advance of Protestantism is portrayed as both popular and inevitable and, if the matrices suggested by Christopher Haigh are applied to Oxley's work, his thesis is that the Reformation in this county was both swift and from below. Oxley's argument is based on two assumptions! first, that the pre-Reformation Church did not command the respect and commitment of the people; secondly, that Protestantism had a wide appeal.* Whilst Oxley asserts that 'at the beginning of the sixteenth century...many people were passionately devoted to religion', and he accepts that the parish church provided not only the religious but also the social centre of parish life, he claims that the clergy had 'an almost total disregard of spiritual values'.2 The continued failings of the clergy of Essex is one theme of Oxley's work. At the outset religious houses are condemned as having 'long since ceased to play any effective part in either religious or social life', whilst the majority of parish clergy are described as 'pluralists and time servers of the worst sort'. Oxley concludes that 'at the end of Mary's reign the Church in Essex was in a bad - 7 - State. The clergy were time-servers, unprincipled, and for the most part uneducated*.5 Parallel to the assertion that the clergy were moribund is the theme of popular Protestantism in Essex. This, Oxley argues, dated back to Lollard antecedents, a heritage which meant that 'Essex was a strongly Protestant county. Before Henry had thought of the breach with Rome, Protestantism was strong in Essex, for there Lollardy was rife'. Lollardy meant that Essex was 'prepared for a breach with Rome before such a thought entered Henry's ha.d*.4 However, it is not only in heretical groups that Oxley sees the seeds of Protestantism. For example, the establishment of chantries in Essex is regarded as 'at once a symptom of the low esteem into which monasteries had fallen, and of the growing individualism in religion which finally expressed itself in Protestantism'. A will from 1540 is said by Oxley to illustrate 'the flowing tide against Romanism' which he argues was prevalent by then, and he opines that by the 1550s Protestantism was so strong in Essex that active opposition to the policies of the Catholic Mary became apparent early in her reign.5 Throughout Mary's reign 'Protestantism was still a force to be reckoned with', although it was divided into conservatives and radicals. Oxley concludes that the - 8 - death of Mary marked the end of the primary phase of the English Reformation.8 In addition, he argues that Protestantism grew in Essex in spite of the government's actions, not because of them. Henry was horrified by the growth of Protestantism, and Parliament passed the conservative Act of Six Articles in 1539 which heralded the renewed persecution of heretics.7 Under Edward 'the parishes of Essex lost their property, their poor relief and their schools, and received nothing in return except the church service in English'. Furthermore, parish churches were looted, both officially by the crown and illegally by local gentry, while they were further impoverished by the debasement of the coinage. Indeed, Oxley asserts that the 'so-called Reformation of Edward's reign was probably much more disastrous than the changes of Henry's reign'.8 Under Mary persecution became overt; some dissidents were forced into exile, while others were brought to the stake. After the events of Edward's reign, 'it says much for the strength of Protestant feeling in Essex that when Mary came to the throne and restored Romanism, many Essex people resisted it to the death and proclaimed their devotion to the religious services introduced in Edward's time • #9 Oxley provides a fairly comprehensive summary of the material from Essex, but his prime concern is with tracing the development of Protestantism. Thus on the whole he fails to examine what effects the changes of the sixteenth century had on the religious beliefs and practices of most people. He acknowledges that alterations to parish life did occur, but these he confines to the disappearance of guilds (bodies whose importance he underestimates), the end of religious plays, and the administretion of social services, such as roads and poor relief, by the parish rather than by 'the hit-and-miss of private charity'.