Asixteenth-century woman was expected to show love for God and to educate her family in their religion. Books written for women both at the time and earlier agreed that this was the most essential part of the woman’s role. The Goodman of Paris starts his book by reminding his wife that ‘you must gain the love of God and the salvation of your soul’1 while Markham reminds his housewife right at the start of his book that she ought ‘above all things, to be of an upright and sincere religion, and in the same both zealous and constant; giving by her example an incitement and spur unto all her family to pursue the same steps, and to utter forth by the instruction of her life those virtuous fruits of good living, which shall be pleasing both to God and his creatures.’2
Women of all classes became involved in the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century. At the top of society two women, the queens Mary I and Elizabeth I, were obviously at the centre of the religious debate, but as their role is discussed fully elsewhere it will not be discussed here.
The church was the bedrock of sixteenth-century society. The various festivals marked the seasons; its ceremonies blessed the stages of everyday life at christenings, weddings and funerals. At a time when death was never very far away it provided comfort in the hope that there was a better life to follow. Its physical presence was also a part of the landscape. In most towns there were not only churches but abbeys, nunneries, friaries and various other institutions, such as hospitals, which had church backing.
Today many people are brought up without any religious beliefs at all, which makes the depth of feeling that went into the sixteenth-century religious debate all the more difficult to understand. However, any religious belief which is strongly held affects all areas of life from how children are educated to how the family income is spent, and, of course, how authority is viewed. It was this last point which was all-important in the sixteenth century. Politics and religion were completely tied up together. Support for either Catholicism or Protestantism was strongly linked to supporting certain political views.
The situation was complicated by the fact that official policy on religion changed so frequently that sometimes people were unsure exactly what the ‘official view’ was. Sometimes even the monarch him or herself seems to have been unsure. Throughout the Middle Ages people had been used to obeying the lead given them by the parish priest, and following the practices which generations of their forefathers had followed. Now practices which everyone had been taught to observe for time out of mind, such as praying for the souls of the dead and lighting candles before the images of saints, became suspect. Familiar objects in the church came and went as official religious policy changed. Before discussing the woman’s part in religion, therefore, some kind of overview of the religious changes of the period needs to be given.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, England was most definitely a Catholic nation. There were still monks and nuns, just as there had been since the Middle Ages, and the monasteries do not seem to have been particularly in a state of decline.3 There were calls for the reform of the Church, but these did not really affect the English Church until Henry VIII decided to rid himself of his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.
Henry VIII is usually seen as being the first English Protestant king, but this was certainly not the case. He was quite happy with Catholicism, and if the Pope had agreed to the annulment of his first marriage then it is unlikely that any significant reform would have come in his reign. The problem for Henry VIII was that those who were happy to see him made head of the English Church in place of the Pope tended to be those who also favoured further church reform, such as doing away with the worship of statues of saints and seeing that copies of the Bible were available in English so that people could study it for themselves. As a result, the reforms of Henry VIII’s reign probably went further than the king had originally intended.
Thomas Cromwell, the minister who took Cardinal Wolsey’s place as Henry VIII’s right-hand man, certainly favoured change. While he was in power the reformers had the upper hand. It was he who oversaw the dissolution of the monasteries, and who actively encouraged a number of reforms such as the reduction of the number of saints’ days observed and putting an end to pilgrimages. In March 1534 he made a memorandum to have substantial persons in every good town to discover ‘all who speak or preach’ against the reforms;4 his postbag makes interesting reading as it shows how disputes over religious matters took place all over the country. Arguments between clergy and their congregations, or between neighbours, are all reported. For example, Thomas Coverley, vicar of Tysehurst, was in trouble in June 1538 for praising miraculous images and discouraging the reading of the Bible at a time when official policy was to encourage both these things. It is quite clear that even people right at the bottom were involved in the controversy surrounding the changes.
Those who spoke up for their beliefs were taking a risk. Even the wealthy and powerful had to be careful. By 1538 the reforms were being felt even in the Englishrun town of Calais. Cromwell was at the height of his powers. The wife of the governor of Calais, Lady Lisle, who seems to have favoured traditional religious views, received a letter from John Husee, the family’s servant at the court. Lady Lisle, it seems, was holding to the old ways, burning candles before the images of saints and openly speaking in favour of conservative views. Mr Husee warns his mistress to be careful of how she worshipped:
I first protest with your ladyship not to be angry with me, but if it might be your pleasure to leave part of such ceremonies as you do use, as long prayers and offering of candles, and at some time to refrain and not speak, though your ladyship have cause, when you hear things spoken that liketh you not, it should sound highly to your honour and cause less speech . . .5
Even grand ladies like Lady Lisle could not consider themselves above trouble.
Cromwell fell out of favour and was beheaded in 1540. Official religious policy then became more conservative again, and we find those with more traditional views fighting back. The parson of Milton near Canterbury had removed an image of St Margaret because there had been a pilgrimage there, and pilgrimages were disapproved of by the reformers. On St Margaret’s day in 1542 a certain John Cross, who had been cellarer at Christ Church, set up the image again, garlanded it with flowers and said mass in front of it.6 He did this even though this was in the see of Canterbury, where Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was trying particularly hard to root out such practices.
The changes did not end with the death of Henry VIII in January 1547. His young son Edward became King. The regent was the Duke of Somerset, the brother of Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour. Somerset was in favour of more reform, as was the young King who despite his youth took a great interest in religious affairs. During his short reign – he died in 1553 – England became a truly Protestant nation. At the end of Henry’s reign the basic fabric of the Church as it had been at the end of the Middle Ages was still preserved in England. This was not the case by the time Edward died. A new prayer book came into force, the old images were done away with, the chantries where prayers were said for the souls of the dead disappeared – people must have been reeling with the many changes they saw. Many of the old, reassuring practices were gone.
A simple example of how deeply these reforms must have been felt is the removal from churches of many of the things which were believed to help women through childbirth. There are many records of girdles, such as Our Lady’s girdle which was to be found at Westminster, and St Aelred’s girdle which was kept at Rievaulx, for this purpose. As childbirth was a dangerous time, these must have been a considerable comfort for women during labour. The reformers saw such objects as heretical, as they led women to rely on the object rather than on God himself. To most ordinary women, the removal of such objects, which had after all been relied on by generations of mothers, must have seemed almost beyond comprehension.7 Certainly their use must have been very widespread, as one of the promises a midwife had to make when she was officially licensed by her local bishop was not to use any such objects.8
The accession of Mary, Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, as Queen in 1553 saw a reversal of policy. Mary realized that she could not put the clock back to how things had been before her father’s reforms, but she did try to turn England back to being a Catholic nation. The images, and much of the church regalia which had disappeared under Edward, were now ordered back into the churches. Significant amounts of it had evidently been salted away by ordinary people, as it reappeared remarkably quickly. Doubtless many felt relief at the prospect of returning to the old, familiar ways.
Mary died in 1558, and with the accession of Elizabeth, policy was reversed yet again. Elizabeth’s main concerns were that her religious settlement should be workable, and that it should be permanent. There was strong support for the reform movement not only amongst the wealthy and educated upper classes but also amongst the increasingly self-confident middle classes. It was, of course, impossible to find a religious settlement to please everyone, but a Protestant settlement seemed the best way and above all Elizabeth wanted to see an end to the chopping and changing that was so damaging to the country. For example, the images had to be not only removed this time, but, if they could be traced, destroyed. The Stonyhurst Salt, now in the British Museum, is an example of what happened to some of the jewels and plate that once adorned a church. England became Protestant again.
The religious debate of the sixteenth century was especially fierce as religion and politics were so firmly entwined. If you did not share the religious convictions of the government of the time, your loyalty was suspect. This was particularly the case at times of national emergency, such as the Spanish Armada of 1588, and in the 1590s when another Armada was expected. The atmosphere must have been rather similar to that in 1940–1, when a German invasion was thought to be imminent. Any Germans, regardless of their opinion of Hitler or how long they had been living in England, were regarded with suspicion. In the same way Catholics were suspected of being pro-Spain, and likely to be traitors. Protestants under Mary were considered likely to want to undermine the government. The attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne must have added fuel to these suspicions.
It was impossible not to be affected by the changes so of course women as well as men became caught in the religious crossfire. Despite the limitations placed upon them, women with strong religious convictions were able to take an active part in supporting their religious views. Women were not, of course, allowed to have positions of authority in the Church. They could not be ordained as priests and neither could they preach. Their influence had to be more indirect, as they had to show suitable modesty, humility and obedience to their husbands. It was the women, though, who instructed the children in their religion, and many men who later got into trouble with the authorities for their religious views told those who examined them with pride that it was their mother or grandmother who had taught them. In Fox’s Acts and Monuments for example, Thurston Littlepage tells his examiners that he had been taught the creed in English by his grandmother.9
Women were the organizers of households, and they were often well placed to help people, such as recusant priests, who needed food and shelter and some kind of base in England for their religious activities. Women could also fall foul of the authorities on religious matters just as men could; the records show women as well as men suffering persecution, and even death, for their faith, whether Catholic or Protestant.
The changes also affected women in that the nunneries were destroyed. Religion was the only career other than marriage open to the well-bred lady at the time. The last nunneries were suppressed in 1539 but until that time life in the nunneries continued very much as it had done for centuries.
The usual view is that the religious houses were on the decline and that the dissolution merely did away with a system that was already in decay. This does not seem to have been the case. The reports sent back to Cromwell on the state of the monasteries and nunneries were designed to show them in the worst possible light, so that he would have an excuse for doing away with them. Even if some houses were very badly off by this time they still seem to have been happily used by wealthy families for the education of their daughters. Two of Lord Lisle’s daughters were entrusted to the Abbess of St Mary’s convent in Winchester10 and Robert Southwell wrote a report to Cromwell in 1537 of how he had seen one of Cromwell’s granddaughters at Wilberfoss Nunnery in Yorkshire where she was being educated.11 Certainly the nuns seemed no less well educated than ladies outside of the convent and there are various incidental references to them owning books.
Nuns all came from wealthy backgrounds. Any poor girl who wished to become a nun could only get as far as being a lay sister, who was in effect a servant. It was cheaper for a wealthy man to settle his daughter in a nunnery than to find a husband for her, but this did not mean that everyone who became a nun did so unwillingly. Women could not, after all, choose their husbands and religion could well have been a pleasant alternative. Inside the convent there were opportunities for responsibility without having to marry, as well as opportunities for study that a girl was unlikely to find elsewhere. In any case, girls who did become nuns were not forgotten by their families: they were often left legacies in wills of anything from furniture to jewellery and plate. Clearly the girls were not sent into religion purely so their families could be rid of them.
The closure of the nunneries must have been quite a loss for women. Those who wished to become nuns now had to go abroad. Many of the nuns certainly looked back with affection on their days in the convent: in the ten wills known to have been made by former Yorkshire nuns there are no fewer than twenty-four legacies left to their former sisters.12
The dissolution of the nunneries also left the former nuns badly off. Many, of course, had well-off families to return to but those who had to rely on the pensions given to them must have struggled. At Basedale in Yorkshire the prioress Elizabeth Roughton was given £6 13s and 4d at the dissolution but most of the nuns only had £1 per year to live on. It must have been hard for them to settle in the world too, as the nuns were not given permission to marry immediately and life as a single woman in the sixteenth century was not easy.13
The chance to live the religious life may have gone but the chance to play an active part in religion did not. The changes of the sixteenth century centred largely around the idea of being able to study the Bible, not to mention other religious works, for yourself. It was therefore very important that religious works should be translated into English, so as to reach as wide an audience as possible. Upper-class, educated women had both the ability and the time to do some of these translations. Translating religious works was just the kind of thing that was considered a suitable occupation for a lady, Vives recommends in his influential book The Instruction of a Christian Woman. One of the earliest of these translations was Margaret More-Roper’s translation of Erasmus’s Devout Treatise upon the Pater Noster, published in 1524. Her name does not actually appear upon the first edition. Instead the book is described as being ‘turned into englishe by a young vertuous and well lerned gentylwoman’. Even though it was permissible for a woman to spend her time translating religious works, she had to be careful about publishing them. Even in the cause of religion a woman could not be seen to put herself forward.
The same spirit is seen in the publication of the Cooke sisters’ work. They were the daughters of Anthony Cooke, who was tutor to Edward VI. Between them, four of the five sisters translated part of St Chrysostom, sermons by Bernadino Ochino, The Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae or Answer in Defence of the Church of England and A Way of Reconciliation Touching the True Nature and Substance of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament. The works which were published were produced in such a way as to suggest that the translator had no desire to be published, and had even been published against her will. The editor of the Apologia stresses that publishing was entirely his idea, as does the editor of Ochino’s sermons.14 In fact, none of the sisters seems to have been shy and unassuming – if anything, quite the reverse. It was simply important that they showed a token reluctance in order to have the works accepted.
Women were also important as patrons. This had been the case for centuries but in the sixteenth century, as views on religion changed, so did religious patronage. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was a very religious woman who supported a number of causes. She lived from 1443–1509, so it is not surprising that she supported many of the things that any conventional Catholic of the time would have done. For example, she founded many chantries, such as the one at Wimbourne Minster in Dorset, where prayers could be said for her soul after her death. Ironically, her grandson Edward VI later dissolved them. Other works that Margaret patronized proved to be more lasting. She was a patron of the new printing press, supporting Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson. She also founded Christ’s and St John’s Colleges in Cambridge as the universities at the time were largely for the training of priests.
Anne Boleyn was another patron, although she favoured evangelical Protestantism.15 The extent of Anne’s patronage is difficult to judge as she was a rather controversial figure. After her death, many people were keen to show her as an utterly worthless adventuress, and it was unwise to say anything else. Equally, religious reformers such as Fox rather exaggerated her importance in order to flatter Elizabeth I. The truth is somewhere between the two extremes.
Anne was far more than a pretty woman who managed to catch the king’s eye. She was certainly a very cultivated lady, having been educated at the glittering French court and also at that of Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands. She certainly read the Bible in English and French and a copy of the Bible in French which belonged to her still survives and is now in the British Library. She must have had a serious interest in Protestantism as she employed Hugh Latimer, something of a Protestant firebrand, as one of her chaplains. Anne helped and protected various people who got into trouble over their religious views both in England and abroad. William Latymer, who wrote a biography of Anne, states that she helped Nicholas Bourbon of Vandoevre who had been imprisoned in France for speaking against the Pope. She not only helped gain his release by obtaining letters from the King but also brought him to England and made him tutor to her nephew Henry Carey, Henry Norris and Thomas Howard.16
Providing work for men of particular religious persuasions was something that many well-off women were able to do. It might have been an unspectacular way of furthering a cause, but without suitable employment it would have been much harder for these men to go about spreading the word.
Katherine Parr, another of Henry’s queens, was another patron of the reform movement. Protestant humanists such as Roger Ascham, John Aylmer, John Fox and Thomas Wilson all received appointments as tutors to the sons and daughters of royalty and nobility.17 These men were to have considerable influence on their pupils, who included Lady Jane Grey, Princess Elizabeth and the future Edward VI. They also wrote a number of important works, such as Fox’s Acts and Monuments telling of various Protestant Martyrs, a book which was reprinted for centuries. Ascham’s book on education, The Scholemaster, advocated changes in education, encouraging the teaching of children through kindness and interest rather than through beatings. Society may have forbidden women such as Catherine to write original work of their own, but it certainly didn’t stop them from helping others to do so.
Not all patronage was as spectacular. During Elizabeth’s reign many recusant women were able to help the Catholic cause by providing places in their households for priests. Lady Anne Petre, who was a widow, used her home at Ingateston Hall as a base for Catholics. She employed as her steward John Payne, who was also a Catholic priest. He was eventually betrayed and executed for his faith in 1582 but only after he had been operating as a missionary from Ingateston for several years.18
Women such as Lady Anne were vital in keeping Catholicism alive in England during these years. Without places to stay, and, of course, places to hide in times of need, the priests could not have carried on their work. According to Richard Smith’s Life of Lady Montague,19 Lady Magdalene Montague, another widow, maintained three priests in her household, and even had a household chapel complete with all the necessary plate and vestments where a full mass with music was often said. According to Richard Smith there were sometimes 120 people at the service. Understandably, her house was known as ‘Little Rome’. As if this were not enough, she also kept two houses near London Bridge which were used as safe houses for priests on their way in and out of London.
All the women discussed so far were wealthy and influential, and thus well placed to further their religious views. You did not have to be well-off to be able to support your views. Some very ordinary women were also able to make their public stance.
It was certainly not only the wealthy who harboured priests. Widows with their own homes, whether rich or poor, were especially well placed to help out but married women could help too. The Staffordshire Quarter Session Rolls20 record Alice Tully, wife of Henry Tully, yeoman, who was ‘a continual receiver’ of two priests named Perton and Bounday. Alice Line, who was a widow, even kept three adjoining houses in London: one where she educated children and where she lived herself, another for priests to live in and another which was used as a rest house for Jesuits. She carried on this work for eight years before she was arrested and executed.
Sometimes the women’s involvement was not as exciting as harbouring priests, but was no less important. Preachers needed somewhere to stay and women such as Mary Glover, the niece of Hugh Latimer, provided such practical assistance.21 Mrs Statham, a London mercer’s wife, was another such woman. She even looked after Hugh Latimer during an illness and he mentions her kind attentions in a letter to Cromwell.
During the years when the reformers were in favour this was merely friendly help but when reform was out of favour it was dangerous. In 1540 Mrs Statham was accused of supporting three men who were executed for their beliefs that year. Although Mary Glover herself survived, her husband Robert was burnt as a heretic in Coventry in September 1555 and Hugh Latimer was executed in Oxford in October of the same year. Being a known supporter of such men put a woman in a very precarious situation.
For a woman who wished to make a stance to support her religious views the fact that a married woman’s property belonged not to her, but to her husband, worked to her advantage. Punishments such as fines and the confiscation of property simply meant nothing to married women, who in the eyes of the law owned nothing. Wives were therefore in a position to make their views known by not attending church, and by stating their views openly when brought to book of their offences, even if their husbands were not.
From 1559 onwards people were required by law to attend official Protestant church services. Those who did not attend were subject to fines and persistent offenders to the forfeiture of property. In the 1580s, as relations with Spain worsened, there was increasing pressure on those who did not conform, and in 1581 an ‘Act to retain the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects in their due obedience’ was passed. The Justices of the Peace, rather than the church courts, were now responsible for enforcing church attendance, and the matter was considered to be far more urgent than before.
From 1575 onwards the Earl of Huntingdon was the president of the Northern High Commission. He was very active indeed in trying to make sure that everyone went to church, so the proceedings at York give a good insight into the attitudes of both the recusant women, their husbands and also of the authorities.22 By 1575 a hardcore of about forty determined recusant families had emerged. They came from a variety of backgrounds but some were from well-known families who even played a part in running the city. Lord Mayor Dinley’s wife was one of those who refused to conform.
Some of the women were obviously expressing their own views and were going against their husband’s wishes. Christopher Kinchingman had dragged his wife to church by force on one occasion and another, George Hull, had beaten his wife for her disobedience. Presumably both men disapproved of their wives’ religious views. Others, it seems, were expressing their husbands’ as well as their own views. A number of couples, such as the Geldarts and the Wellards were in conflict with the authorities for a long time. Often the husband would continue to attend church, so as to avoid forfeiting the family property, whilst the wife expressed the family views by not attending.
The women who were called before the authorities to answer for non-attendance were well able to express their reasons. Fifty-one of them were questioned in November 1576 and between them they covered most of the doctrinal issues at stake. One of the major points of disagreement between Catholic and Protestant was whether or not the consecrated bread and wine given at communion was merely symbolic of the flesh and blood of Christ, or whether it actually became the real thing; many of the women’s answers revolved around this. Certainly the women do not seem to have been shy about expressing their views before men, however humble and submissive they may have been brought up to be.
These women, however, did not always get away without paying any penalty for their actions. Women could and were gaoled for their offences, and as Tudor gaols were not pleasant places to be, many died there. In 1594 it was reported that eleven women had died in Ousebridge gaol in York out of thirty imprisoned there over a fourteen-year period.23
The women were also in trouble if their husbands died, as the jointure settled on them at their marriage would then become their property. Two-thirds of this could be seized by the government, and the Exchequer Rolls of 1593–4 record sixty such seizures. This, however, does not seem to have stopped the women offending.
However high feelings ran regarding religion, the problem of the recusant wives was never really adequately solved. Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign Catholics were usually confined to staying within five miles of their home and a fine of £10, a considerable sum, was placed on the head of the household for every member of his family who did not attend church. In 1593 a bill was passed allowing for a husband to be sued jointly with his wife and a wave of recusant prosecutions followed, although the authorities soon backed off again. The government may have wanted religious conformity, but they realized that interfering in family life was a dangerous step. Essentially it was seen as a man’s job to see that order was maintained in his family, and not the government’s. The women’s stance worked in the end.
In the religious upheavals women as well as men also paid the ultimate price and became martyrs. Fox’s Acts and Monuments gives the most comprehensive account of the Protestant martyrs. It is, of course, openly biased in its view and very anti-Catholic, but even so it does show how the women were actively involved in furthering the cause. Sometimes the women are very much in the limelight, like Anne Askew, but others are mentioned almost in passing, sometimes suffering death together with their husbands. Others are not executed themselves but are still mentioned as having played an important part in their husband’s work.
Anne Askew is the most famous of the Protestant martyrs, not only because Fox talks about her at length but also because she could have incriminated many important court ladies if she had not proved so strong under torture.24 According to Fox, Anne unwittingly became part of a plot by Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, the Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley and others to discredit Queen Catherine Parr, who was, of course, a supporter of the reformist cause. Anne’s refusal to name anyone even though she was put on the wrack thwarted the plot.
Anne also wrote an account of her first imprisonment, ‘The First Examinacyon’, which she finished shortly before she was burnt as a heretic at Smithfield. It is one of the few first-hand accounts written by a woman at the time. It shows a determined woman who had clearly thought out what her beliefs were and why. Anne was important to the reformers precisely because she was a woman. At the time, of course, women were seen as weak and by many as incapable of sound reasoning. Anne showed herself as anything but weak, and in her defence before the authorities showed herself capable of reasoning openly in public even with such an exalted man of the church as Bishop Bonner. She was seen as an example of the weak made strong by God, and certainly she refused to play the role of victim. This was no mean achievement for a woman at this time.25
The number of women who are mentioned almost in passing by Fox is quite considerable. They may not have been as famous as Anne but the sheer number of them shows how women were taking an active part in furthering their religious views despite the limitations placed on them. There was Alice Colins, wife of Richard Colins, who had such a good memory that she could recite ‘much of the scriptures and other good books’ and was often called upon to do just this for people who wished to study the Bible.26 A certain J. Scrivener was forced by his oath to accuse not only John Barret, a goldsmith of London, but also his wife Joan and their servant, also called Joan, because Barret recited the Epistle of James in his house. Presumably they were studying the Bible together.27 Elizabeth Young is mentioned as being in trouble for bringing forbidden books in English over from Emden and distributing them in London. Clearly the women were as fully involved in religious work as the men.28
For some women differences in religious views meant that they felt that they had no alternative but to leave their husbands. Anne Askew, whose parents had rather unwisely married her to an uneducated and firmly Catholic gentleman, eventually asked for a divorce and Elizabeth Bowes, who became John Knox’s mother-inlaw, became so estranged from her husband that she even followed Knox to Geneva.29
In religious matters, as in other areas, women were forced to take a back seat in not being allowed to be priests or to preach. However, they did make the most of the opportunities they had and, as in the case of the recusant wives, were even able to use the legal position of their sex to their own advantage. When they were forced into the spotlight on being called to account for their disobedience they showed themselves capable of sound argument and clear expression. This must have been an especial challenge to the women who had been taught not only to be humble and submissive but also to keep their opinions to themselves. The fact that so many of them acquitted themselves so well is a great tribute to them.