- So far in this series of lectures on England's reformations
and their legacies, we've been dealing with might've beens. With victims, with opponents, with opportunists and exploiters. And I don't apologize for dwelling on those perspectives at length, because between them they
constituted the experience of most of the English people. But it's true that the English reformation was for some people
neither an unwanted horror nor a tempting opportunity. It was a pulse quickening possibility. A moment eagerly to be seized. So threaded through all
the grubby politicking, is another story. A story of ideas of faith,
of courage, and of renewal. You may regard its protagonists
as heroes or as fanatics. But they're undoubtedly a
different cast of characters from the ones we've been
dealing with up till now. For many people both now and then, this is the real English reformation. A story which was suppressed at the time and has often been
deliberately forgotten since. But which will not go away. In 1517, a German Augustinian Friar, named Martin Luther picked
a high profile fight, with his local Archbishop over
some fundraising practices. A fight which quickly mushroomed into two dangerously
intertwined conflicts. Luther made his critique
in the form of a series of sweeping theological principles. Which seem to deny not just the basis of the lessons of indulgence which would kick the whole thing off, but also most of the
ministry that the church offered to its people. He said that all a true
Christian needed was faith and the word of God alone. That neither the rituals and
sacraments of the church, nor even the good works around which so much
Christian life was based where necessary for salvation. And his opponents in
the hierarchy countered but not by answering his arguments. But by insisting that Luther
ought to submit humbly to the authoritative
determinations of the church. The result of which of course is that Luther and his
allies were soon defying not only the church's
teachings, but its authority and they were doing so in
printed pamphlets, in sermons in ballads and in a brush
fire of rumor and excitement that was setting much of Germany, alight. We can't call these
people Protestants yet. That word was only coined in 1529. And it was a long time before
it would come to be applied to the movement as a whole. There wasn't yet a party but there was a broad loose movement. Which for want of a better
word, we can call evangelical. That is literally a
movement, of the gospel of the Christian good news. And if it seems
breathtakingly, self-assured, even presumptuous for
this movement to lay claim to the Christian gospel
as its own property. Well, breathtaking self
assurance was very much what these people did. The heart of this fire is in
the German speaking lands, where Martin Luther's
uniquely inflammatory words weren't tamped down by translation. And where the particular
politics of church and state made for bone dry tinder. But the sparks were quickly
flying elsewhere too. And everywhere they landed,
they started to smolder. So the Netherlands
Denmark, Poland, Hungary. Italy was surprisingly receptive. France with its long interest... Long history of touchy
relations with the papacy was an obvious opportunity. Maybe the least promising of
the major European territories was the larger of the Island
kingdoms off to the North West. Not just for the political
reasons I've talked about in previous lectures,
structurally as well, England was green wood for the heretics. The English church was
unusually well-disciplined and well led by European standards. They were none of the egregious scandals and abuses that were common elsewhere. And the English church was
also uniquely experienced in actually dealing with Harrison. The so-called Lollard movement,
which we'll come back to in the final lecture had been
sputtering away in England for nearly a century and a half. Bishops and clergy elsewhere
knew about heresy in theory, the English are familiar
with it in practice. Even so, the sparks fell. The initial entry points
for the new doctrines, and the mood of defiance
that accompanied them, were the same as they were everywhere. Merchants plying the North Sea routes were early transmitters. As we all know, international
travelers are key vectors. A group of German merchants in London were arrested for the possession of heretical books since 1526. And gospelers. And evangelicals began to be spotted amongst Londoners as well. But another critical early entry
point was the universities. Petri dishes for dangerous ideas. Scholars always had a degree of freedom to explore provocative and
questionable doctorates. It's no accident that Luther's own protest erupted after having been
incubated in a university setting for several years. And England's universities had some particular characteristics. Unlike, for example neighboring Scotland with its three tiny institutions scattered across the country,
England for a big country had just two universities. But they're substantial. Each of them has got
considerable critical mass. They've both got a fair
degree of legal independence and their colleges and their holes form a rabbit warren of jurisdictions. Neither one's got a resident Bishop breathing down their necks. And remarkably given that England is an unusually centralized country. Neither of them is in London. So then under the royal court breathing down the necks either. In one way, that limits their influence. England's printing industry is
again unusually concentrated, very London centric. So scholars in Oxford and Cambridge couldn't rush their books into print the way that Martin Luther could using using local booksellers. But that also does help to
avoid attracting attention. And they may not be in London, but they are plugged into
the international world of Latin scholarship. England's academics will
have been amongst the first to hear the German Friar's name. Luther's books are on sale
in Oxford as early as 1520. But Oxford, the university
which had indirectly produced the [indistinct] movement was as a result twitchy
about dangerous ideas. It's Cambridge the
younger upstart of the two which had recently put itself
spectacularly on the map by hosting Europe's
premier academic celebrity Erasmus of Rotterdam for a few years. It's Cambridge that
seizes the opportunity. England as a whole and
Cambridge in particular had fallen good and hard for
Erasmus' style of religion. Which prioritized inner
piety and simplicity over outward ritual or hierarchy or anything that could
be called superstition. Luther was not a disciple
of Erasmus, very much not but to begin with plenty
of people thought he was. And it's true that there were some real common points between them. So Cambridge was fertile ground. And if not many scholars there became fully signed up Lutherans. There wasn't really any such thing. There were plenty of people
who were Luther curious. Who stayed up late into the night talking excitedly about new ideas. The way that students do with
bright-eyed young friends. That mood of undergraduate
excitement is one to hold onto. I said in the first
lecture, in this series that what Catholic reformers
like Thomas Moore wanted to do. What he described in his famous Utopia, was to turn society
into a giant monastery. But the evangelicals and their successors, who we can properly call
Protestants wanted to do was to turn society
into a giant university. Where everyone would spend their time earnestly debating doctrine,
studying the Bible, fearlessly pursuing truth together. Before long there's mood started to bubble out from the colleges. The first public crisis
came at Christmas 1525. When a Cambridge friar was arrested following a sermon,
who's a cervic criticism of the church drew heavily on Luther. The church where he preached
has long since been revamped of course, but they still
have the pulpit that he used. By the end of the decade,
there are networks of curious dabblers in evangelical ideas actually in both universities. And some people go beyond dabbling. In 1523 William Tyndale who
had been schooled at Oxford in Erasmus' idealism proposed translating the
New Testament into English. He's denied permission,
and he does it anyway. He moves to Germany to have his translation
printed in 1525 to 6, and decisively throws his
lot in with the reformers. He became the network of a
small but formidable group of evangelical English
exiles in the Netherlands. Smuggling printed New
Testaments and polemical tracks back to England. Book running networks sprang up. Robert Foreman, master
of a Cambridge College turned rector of a wealthy London parish, oversaw a distribution web
which encompassed the city, both universities and even reached west as far as reading and Bristol. A few daring preachers spreading
out from the universities began testing what they
could get away with. But England's well-oiled
anti heresy machine was not far behind them. Foreman's network was cracked in 1528. Thomas Moore as Lorde
chancellor from 1529 to 32, worked with the bishops
in a formidable crackdown, on the new [Indistinct]. Preachers were swiftly arrested. Satisfyingly, many of them
could be persuaded to recant but others held firm
and the regime was ready to follow through. Between 1530 and 33, at
least 13 evangelicals were burned as unrepentant heretics. Including the most brilliant of Tyndale's colleagues, John Frith, whose conscience wouldn't
let him sit safely at home. Safely abroad while his
Brethren at home suffered. A price was set on Tyndale's own head. And despite extensive precautions, he was portrayed to the
Netherlandish authorities in 1535 and executed the following year. That should have been
the beginning of the end of England's Protestant reformation. The English church and
state were more than capable of snuffing out such a movement or at least reducing it to
the level of an annoyance. But by the time of Tyndale's
death, everything had changed. Thomas Moore himself
died the previous year for his once Orthodox faith. And Henry the 8th dispute with, and then vendetta against the Pope provided English
evangelicals with what seemed like a heaven sent opportunity. The evangelicals alliance with the King was always an awkward one. For a few idealists there
simply was no deal to be done. Tyndale took a stern view
of a King who was trying to claim divine sanction
for his adulterous lusts. And the King whose
ability to hold a grudge was second to none never forget Tyndale, even as he read his books with approval, and licensed a very likely revised version of his Bible translation. But for evangelicals who
could persuade themselves that the King's first
marriage really was unlawful. And most of them could,
if they tried hard enough, the possibilities were mouthwatering. Denouncing [indistinct]
tyranny suddenly became a rouge not to the stake, but to royal favor. Many of the people around the
king were now evangelicals. Not least his intended
new queen Anne Boleyn and his indispensable new
minister, Thomas Cromwell. The two of them were never allies. And by the end were mortal enemies, but they did agree on one thing. And that was evangelical religion. Partly thanks to their patronage, Henry was now staffing his church with men like Hugh Latimer. A Cambridge evangelical
who was by most accounts the most electrifying
preacher of his generation. A man able to hold an
open air crowd spellbound even during a heavy downpour and able under the right circumstances to start a religious riot
with just a few sentences. In 1535, this is the
man whom the king made Bishop of Worcester. And Henry needed no persuading to make the most senior
appointment of all. In 1532, he lifted another
Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer from academic obscurity to
be Archbishop of Canterbury. An appointment based not
only on his personal rapport with this earnest rising theologian but also in above all on the fact that the new Archbishop was gonna have to as his first job preside
over the replacement of the king's first wife with his second. That king needed someone
he could absolutely utterly rely on to dislike the Pope as much as he himself now did. This was gonna become one
of the defining features of Henry's reformation. He himself was no Protestant. He was his own thing. An idiosyncratic hodgepodge of doctrines. Whose keynote was his unwavering faith in his own God-given authority. He disliked Martin Luther heresies. He held firm to a great
deal of Catholic doctrine. But he also needed allies. And if it came to the crunch, he was almost always more
willing to extend a cautious hand to the heretics than he was
willing to risk his kingdom. Once again, being subjugated
to the Bishop of Rome. And it's on that deep strategic advantage that England's tiny well-placed
evangelical minority built a Protestant reformation. Progress was slow, promising
diplomatic negotiations with the new Lutheran territories
of Germany and Scandinavia aimed at forming the anti-people
common front, limped on. But evangelicals were
willing to be patient. They have reason to hope
that time was on their side. That as more of them could
replace the old guard, as the king was slowly worked on by his wife and his chief
minister and his archbishop he'd joined their cause and
bring the country with him. And so it seemed for most of the 1530s. Small partial victories
were being chalked up by the evangelical. Some of them not small, the monasteries. Those vast monuments to
clerical self-satisfaction, which leached resources from
the Pius in order to mumble useless prayers for the
dead were suppressed. The network of shrines and pilgrimages and relics and indulgences
which lured the faithful into superstition and idolatry. The very issue which had first
provoked Luther's protest. Their banned, their publicly mocked. And above all the great achievement. The act that convinces any
doubters amongst the evangelicals that the King really is
at heart on their side, the English Bible is first legalized and then made freely available
in every parish church. Henry does it because of
his touchingly naive belief that anybody else who read
the Bible would discover in it what he discovered himself. That is that God has
appointed him, Henry Tudor as supreme head of the church. The evangelicals faith in
the power of English Bible was if anything, even greater than that. For them, it was the great flood that would wash away the filth of Rome. The great enlightening that would dispel all the darkness of popery. Once the English had heard
the word of God so long hidden from them in Latinate obscurity. The scales would fall from their eyes and they'd see the old church for the lecherous corrupt monstrosity, which had been exploiting
them for so many centuries. And instead the realm
would become that giant university that the brethren
in Cambridge had dreamt of. Listen to this description of one of the first towns
where evangelical religion broke out of it's scholarly and clerical an mercantile get up, Hadley in Suffolk. If we were to read about
a religious revival in a small town, nowadays, we would expect to hear
about dramatic conversions or weeping mass meetings and so forth. But this is what was said
about Hadley in the 1530s. The people became exceedingly well learned in the Holy scriptures
as well, women as men. So the demand might've
found among the many that had often read the
whole Bible through. And that could have said a great part of St. Paul's epistles by heart, and very well and readily have given a godly learned
sentence at judgment in any matter of controversy. The whole town seemed rather
an university of the land than a town of cloth
making or laboring people. This dream of course, was as naive as the king's. Hadley doesn't in fact seem
to have been nearly as godly as the reformers hoped. Neither then or anywhere else did the English Bible sweep all before it. England's Protestant
reformation was gonna come, but neither quickly nor easily. At the end of the 1530s, Henry subjects were
reminded that he was not and was not about to
become an evangelical. The King presided over a heresy trial, at which an outspoken
evangelical was burnt live. The following year negotiations
with the German Lutherans broke down provoking Henry into a grumpy legislative
reassertion of a series of the traditional
doctrines that the Germans had been trying to persuade him to drop. Cromwell tried to use a new royal marriage to relaunch the diplomatic effort in 1540. But this match Henry VIII
was such a humiliating fiasco that it ended up costing
Cromwell his head. Evangelicals were dismayed
and some of them fled abroad. But in fact, it's the
traditionalist who hoped for a turn back towards
Rome who were disappointed. During the 1540s it became
clear that the aging King Henry would neither go on nor back. Both religious factions
scored minor victories. The king firmly stated his opposition to evangelical doctrines of salvation and imposed rather in
effect of restrictions on the English Bible. He allowed several limited bouts of persecution of evangelicals, but he also ordered
English language orders for public and private prayer. How to further purge of images in churches and consistently undermined
the doctrine of purgatory. The really decisive change that took place during these confusing years in the 40s wasn't in government policy but amongst the evangelicals themselves. As they digested the fact
that that the king was not and it never really
had been on their side. Their positions hardened. The tipping point came
in the summer of 1546. A veteran evangelical
preacher named Edward Chrome, who was a man with moderate
Lutheran leaning views was arrested for a provocative sermon. He made a show of defiance, and was then persuaded to
make an abject recantation. This was by this stage of
pretty well-rehearsed dance. Evangelicals had learned how
far they could push their luck. If they pushed it too far, then they would pretend to apologize. The regime would pretend to believe them, and it avoids a nasty confrontation. This was the third time in Chrome's career he'd made a public recantation. But some of his supporters
either didn't know the rules of the game or
were now tired of playing it. A wave of more defiant figures surfaced after Chrome's recantation. Denouncing him for his faintheartedness and abandoning his nuanced positions for more full throated
denunciations of Romish era. A group of these radicals went defiantly to the stake that summer. Most prominent amongst them, the fiery Lincolnshire
gentle woman Anne Askew. These people had friends in high places, senior members of the king's council, even queen Catherine Parr herself were said to be supporting them. And the interrogators went to
the edge of the law and beyond to try to secure a damning testimony from. Askew was tortured on the
rack in the tower of London. When the Lieutenant of the
tower refused to take part in such a flagrantly illegal act the Lord chancellor operated
the rack with his own hands and Askew you was so badly injured. That by the time she was executed, she could no longer stand. But she still wouldn't
give them any names. And from the stake she
shouted down the preacher who was trying to denounce
her heresies to the crowd. She was celebrated like no English evangelical
martyr before her. And this really marks
a turning of the tide. A whole swathe of previously
moderate gospelers. Not least Archbishop Cranmer
himself decided in 1546 that the time for patients
and compromise was over. They needed to do more than simply wait. The world wasn't gonna
fall into that laps. The English Bible wasn't
gonna sweep all before it. They had to act. They had to make it happen. They're hardening into a party with a clear and radical agenda. And this is the point where
we can drop this mealy mouth talk off evangelicals and call them what they were becoming Protestants. And then almost at that moment,
they were handed the keys to the kingdom. In January, 1547, the old King died. It's not pure political chance that the regency government
for the new King Edward VI ended up in the hands
of a Protestant clique. Henry had entrusted his
young son's education chiefly to evangelicals. For the reason I mentioned before. He might dislike their doctrines, but at least he could trust them not to be treacherous agents
of the Bishop of Rome. And the result was that the nine year old king's
Protestantism was [indistinct] but unmistakable. So the strategic patience
of the 1530s was vindicated just at the moment that
it had been abandoned. The new regime threw itself fully behind Archbishop Cranmer's project to create a fully reformed
Protestant church in England. Now to be modeled less on
the pragmatic settlements, of Lutheran Germany. Than on the radical purity of the Swiss and Southern German cities like Zurich and Strasbourg and Geneva. The time for patients was over. These were revolutionary years
with a radical government determined to bulldoze through its agenda in the teeth of any opposition. God was on their side. The greatest danger lay in hesitation. If Edward the sixth had lived longer, this is what would have happened. The church of England would have adopted an assertively Protestant
confession of faith, structure and order for worship. Cranmer went through two versions of his book of common
prayer in 1549, 1552. Steadily weaning the population
off traditional practice, ceremonial and doctrine. A third maybe a fourth edition would have continued this trajectory. Cranmer's idealistic project to renew the English church's legal structure was blocked by the government in 1552. But given another few years,
a watered down version would doubtless have been enacted. Bishops would have been
replaced with superintendents. The cathedrals entities,
which really serve no purpose in a Protestant church
would have disappeared. And they would have been an argument of what to do with them. Cranmer would have wanted to
use the wealth to be seized from them to train a new generation of Protestant preaching ministers. Maybe even to turn them
into new universities. The government would probably
have instead swiped the lot. But whether or not it was well resourced, England would have had an unmistakable Protestant reformation. Instead that moment of
possibility remains a mirage. And it's replaced by a catastrophe. By Mary's excursion. England's reconciliation with Rome. An unprecedentedly intense
wave of persecution. Hundreds are executed, not
at least special Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer himself. Cranmer in a throwback to
those days of compromise under King Henry, under pressure offered a partial recantation of his convictions. But that game was out of date. He's burned anyway. And he famously held the hand
that signed the recantations in the flames. Triumphantly turning
that moment of wavering into the reigns most
dramatic demonstration of Protestants steeliness. Meanwhile almost a thousand
English Protestants fled abroad forming themselves into churches in exile. They prayed for the nations
popish ordeal to end, but they also did the other thing which passionate radicals tend to do and fell out with one another bitterly. A split felt most painfully in the exile church in Frankfurt. One party there believed
that this was a moment to stop the clock, to stick more or less
to the 1552 prayer book to demonstrate that
loyalty to that dead king. The other party believed
that it was a moment not to pause but to accelerate, to embrace the spirit of Cranmer
and of the six reformation by surging forward to the
destinations that they had or should have had in mind when that group of zealots
are thrown out of Frankfurt, they found refuge in John Calvin's Geneva. And they embarked on a
series of radical projects. A new English translation of the Bible, a new order for worship based on Calvin's rather than Cranmer's model. And for some of them, talk
of fermenting rebellion, even assassination
against Catholic rulers. Didn't the Bible say that idolatry should be punished by death? But Mary died without
Protestant intervention and the new queen Elizabeth
restored a Protestant settlement but initial hopes that they could pick up where they'd left off at Edward's death are quickly disappointed. Queen Elizabeth's so-called
settlement in 1559 restores the religious status quo that her brother had bequeathed in the last year of his life. And everybody supporters
and opponents alike, assumed that the engine
would be fired up again and the relentless drive forward to further reformation would continue. It felt like another moment
for strategic patience. That's recognized that
the glass is half full. That the tap is surely
gonna start to flow again. Work with this new queen to
reach that common destination. But it quickly became clear that she was following
her father's example as well as her brothers. Having defined a religious position in the first year of her reign, she would not budge from it. As the exiles returned
and threw themselves into the work of reformation. They brought that post
Frankfurt divide back with them. So many of them accepted
office in Elizabeth Church. Either contend with her settlement or at least willing to work with it to move it in the right direction. Two thirds of Elizabeth's
new bench of bishops were returned exiles. And they did secure a
handful of victories. In particular, the queen
was plainly reluctant to allow priests and bishops to marry. But if she wanted to start a
new church, she had no choice. But a minority of the
former exiles set their face against the regimes,
unacceptable compromises. And the wariness was very much mutual. The Genevans talk of
rebellion and assassination left Elizabeth permanently suspicious of anyone associated
with that fanatical city. And so the story of the
Protestant reformation from Elizabeth reign onwards
can be told in two ways. There's an, eye-catching a prominent story and this is our running battles over the nature of the reformation. A battle between increasingly
impatient reformers, who wanted to pick up the pace of change and the queen and her
allies who were determined to draw the line and say
thus far and no further. And caught between those two
were the patient reformers. Biding their time, waiting for
the world to turn their way as an increasingly ill
temperate political struggles seemed to make a mockery
of their modest hopes. For the queen consistently
blocked any aspirations for further reform. Battle was first properly joined in 1563. When the church's parliament convocation considered a modest set of ritual changes on issues like the use of pipe organs or the making of the sign
of the cross in baptism. These are not matters on which
anyone's salvation turns. But for the regime, these
harmless and familiar features of Christian piety
were points to be defended while for their opponents who from now on begin to have the derisive label
Puritan slapped on to them. For the Puritans these
things are the drags of antichrist in which the
half reformed English church was still sought errors,
that must be swept away. Naturally the queen and
her allies made sure that the Puritans were
defeated in complication. And this was the pattern. The greatest moment of hope
for the Puritans came in 1575. When the queen appoints a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal,
a former exile plainly committed to pressing for further reforms. The queen blocks his plans. He stands up to her. She places him under house arrest and tries to deprive him of office. Repeatedly Puritans of
one stripe or another put forward proposals in
parliament or convocation. And the queen's managers ensures that every one of them is defeated. A few despairing Puritans begin to trickle into exile again, believing
that half a reformation is no better than none. In 1588 to '09 one
group of Puritans vented their frustrations in a
series of scurrilous wickedly satirical pamphlets aimed
at the bishops under the pseudonym Martin Marprelate. After 30 years of playing
nice, it felt good, but it also triggered a crack down in which his string of
dissidents were imprisoned and a handful executed for sedition For these Puritans then,
England's Protestant Reformation is over almost before it's begun. Only in 1640 to '41 do these
people finally come to power. When the collapse of
King Charles I government leaves him at the mercy of his parliament. It's the Puritan moment. Their chance to reform the
church, as they put it. root and branch, no more
tinkering with ritual details. No bishops cathedrals set liturgies. The whole rotten apparatus
can be taken down. And up proper reformed
church set up and its place. Governed by presbyteries
the way that Scott's and other Calvinists across
Europe had pioneered. Finally completing the
English reformation. It's so close. It's another revolutionary moment, like Edward VI reign, a century before. And it stays just out of their reach. First of all, the king succeeds in dividing his opponents enough to be able to mount a civil war. Even so parliament controls
London in the Southeast and slowly grinds out a military victory. And surely that must leave the way open. In 1643, a year into the war,
a solemn league and covenant binding the English church to its Presbyterian Scottish
counterpart was sworn. Parliament abolishes bishops. And in case anyone had missed the point, has Archbishop Lord of
Canterbury, beheaded. Cranmer's book of common prayer, which now seemed hopelessly
redolent to the old ways was banned and replaced with a new purified order for worship. A formidable gathering of
fear logins was assembled and charged with drawing
up a statement of faith and the result the
Westminster Confession of 1646 remains a touchstone for Presbyterians around the world today. But this dreamt of reformation
slips out of their grasp. Four years of war had changed the country. Radical movements were springing up. Outflanking the Puritans and Presbyterians who now started to look like
yesterday's revolutionaries. We'll be coming back to them in the last lecture of the series. And the Presbyterians in
particular have gotten no good solution to the problem of what to do with the
king who they've defeated. When the radicals
eventually cut off his head, the Presbyterians are horrified but they have a good
practical alternative. And the result is that they
and the Republican governments of Oliver Cromwell regard
each other as enemies. When the British Republic collapses and the monarchy and the
pre-war church of England are restored in 1660 to '62 the Presbyterians and other
Puritans are locked out of the national church. That they'd come so close
to making their own. Instead they form dissenting or so-called nonconformist churches. Presbyterians, congregationalists,
even some Baptists. Under King Charles II they
endured considerable persecution. And then from 1689 to 1828, a legal regime of so-called toleration, which nevertheless systematically discriminated against them. And they survived. And from the end of the 18th century, they're joined by another group
of unrepentant Protestants, ejected from the church of England, for their refusal to
submit their consciences to its laws and processes. That is the Methodists. And together, these non-conformist. The Protestant nonconformist have been hugely influential
communities in English history and also in England's global reach. But they never succeeded
in their aspiration to define the nation in the way that Presbyterian for
centuries defined Scotland. In this sense England's Protestant
reformation was imagined, but never really happened. But as I said, there are
two ways to tell this story. And that story of politics, of high hopes that came to nothing. The purist perspective
is only one of them. While the Puritans of
the Elizabethan Church were fighting and losing
their set piece battles over contentious points of law and ritual. Another strain of Puritan
had a different perspective. From these people's viewpoint, important as those
contentious issues might be. They're not what the
Protestant reformation was really about. Issues of ritual and structure
were only a means to an end. What truly mattered
was bringing the gospel to England's people so
that souls might be saved and God glorified. The reformation wouldn't succeed or fail at the level of national politics, but parish by parish and soul by soul. And so a generation of moderate Puritans, many of them impatient
for structural reforms, nevertheless reconciled
themselves to working within an imperfect Protestant church. And began the slow work
of a Protestant nation from the ground up. And they thought they'd failed. Their rhetoric is full of division between the godly minority
and the carnal Protestants and church papists and atheists who composed the mass of the population. Many people resented them,
moralizing busybodies being easy to dislike. The lines dividing
doctrinal self-confidence from obnoxious self-righteousness, from rank hypocrisy within
Puritans and anti-Puritans alike could agree that the Puritan bid for the nation's soul had failed. But we shouldn't take them at their word. By their nature Puritans
put perfectionist, much readier to see a
glass as one tenth empty than as nine tenth full. Their imagined reformation
was an impossible mirage. But their achievements were real. The English church's commitment to full blown Protestant
reform was undoubted. Elizabeth third, Archbishop
of Canterbury, John Whitgift was a merciless hammer
of Puritan dissenters. But he also ordered his
clergy to study the sermons of the formidable Zurich
minister Heinrich Bullinger and stamped out any open defiance of the Calvinist doctrine
of predestination. Predestination. Communist Protestantisms
maybe most distinctive and most divisive doctrine
was the English church's consensus position, not quite
its own challenged orthodoxy during the reigns of
Elizabeth and James I. In 1618 to '19 England even sent delegates to an international synod
of reformed churches in the Netherlands. Summoned to resolve a
dispute about predestination. The other Calvinist
churches unproblematically recognized their English
colleagues as brethren. The English happily supported the senate's staunch
reaffirmation of predestination. This was a shared world to
which they all belonged. And more to the point, the reformation on the
ground in England was real. It was slow. Far slower than Puritans
of any kind wanted. But those who had the
patience to wait for it discovered that it was relentless. There were no new university, in painful contrast to Calvinist Scotland. Which after the foundation of
Edinburgh University in 1582 had twice as many
universities as England did. But there weren't new colleges founded at the old pair. By the 1580s foundations like
Emmanuel College Cambridge were steadily pumping
committed Protestant ministers into the church's bloodstream. And it's not all book learning either. A string of aspiring
young Protestant ministers not only took a degree at Emmanuel, but also served an apprenticeship
at the Cambridgeshire Village of Dry Drayton. Under its minister, Richard Greenham. Who is a Puritan of a different sort. He managed to avoid confrontations about the ritual scruples he held. He focused on taking his
message out of his pulpit into painstaking individual
pastoral work with his people walking with them in the
fields as they labored. As much a counselor as a preacher. In an age, which groaned
under too many hefty books of theological controversy. Greenham wrote to very little. But his sayings and advice
were lovingly collected and published by the many
students who passed through his vicarage. And they have a practical wisdom to them, suggesting that those who
couldn't control their tempers should simply moderate their diet. He offers advice on how to avoid what he calls tediousness in prayer and warned long faced Puritans
who think we should keep a continual sorrowing, that
rather we have a flat precepts to the contrary, continually to rejoice. Others took up the theme. The greatest theologian, the most internationally popular author of [indistinct] England William Perkins, said virtually nothing in his many books about contentious ritual
or structural issues. His focus was pastoral on
how to apply that doctrine of predestination to
individual believers lives. He was aware that it could lead believers into either despair or conceit. And he wanted to steer a path
between those two dangers. Affirming predestination
in the strongest terms. While also mapping out
how Christians can live and draw strength from lives of the highest moral seriousness. His posthumously book, the Treatise of the Cases of Conscience became a classic of Protestant devotion. And he was translated into
languages as diverse as well. Spanish, Hungarian and Czech. But even Perkins' success was
equip eclipsed by Louis Bailey Bishop of Banger, whose 1612 book The Practice of Piety has been published in 124 English additions, and 199 more in at least 13 other languages. Including the Wampanoag
language of Massachusetts. And this is most more recent, so maybe it doesn't count in Korean. Modern readers might find
its 800 pages hard going. The club of those of us
who've read the whole thing is a select one. But what it offers is a systematic guide, to living the Protestant life day by day. From morning to evening
prayers at your bedside and everything in between. This, not that battles
over bishops and liturgies was what the reformation was about. And the preachers found audiences and the books found readers. Local communities lent
their support to the cause. Towns established endowed
lectureships to provide themselves with proper Protestant preaching. Even many of the
impoverished Upland parishes of Northern England, raised funds to build a new chapels and to attract preachers. And the cheap pamphlets
and ballads that passed from hand to hand in
post reformation England, tell their own story. These texts are suffused with Protestant imagery and assumptions. It's not just that markers
of Catholic thought and identity, saints
and prayer for the dead are steadily retreating. But the Protestant notions
of divine providence. Protestant patterns of piety, above all the now Ubiquitous English
Bible become pervasive features of English culture. It's the sea that the English swim in. Puritans, anti Puritans alike. So the Puritans lost every battle. But if any of them had
the patience to see it, they were quietly winning the war between the Elizabethan settlement and the English civil war, the church of England was
bluntly and unproblematically a reformed Protestant. A Calvinist church. And it was also in those years, much closer to being a
truly national church than it's ever been since. This has left some awkward legacies to later Anglicanism. The fact that many Puritans
were driven into non-conformity after the restoration, has given rise to a wholly unjustified
myth amongst Anglicans, that the Puritans had been cuckoos in the church of England's
nest since the beginning. And aren't really a part
of Anglicanism history. The majority of Anglicans today
are in long-standing denial over their Puritan heritage. Reluctant to recognize that these people are part of Anglicanism story. Fully part of it, not just on sufferance. Meanwhile, a minority
strain in modern Anglicanism is so enthusiastic to claim this Protestant, Puritan
heritage for itself, that it asserts that the reformation ought to be normative for Anglicanism not just one stranded within it. But the plain fact are
these, the church of England was once a mainstream
reformed Protestant church. A Calvinist church. And secondly, that it isn't one anymore. How it and the English
speaking world more widely should deal with that mixed heritage is... Well, there's the story
of the next lecture, but for now it's a story of two books. The Book of Common Prayer is the more complicated of the two. When Cranmer introduced its
first additions in 1549 and '52 it was an alarmingly
radical engine of reform. Its form was radical. The old Latin liturgy had been a framework within which lay people
could pray their own prayers. But this new English common prayer was intended to be a united voice. In which the minister spoke to
the people as much as to God. And in which the greatest part
of worship was instruction. The new liturgy had in some ways an outwardly traditional frame. But that frame was a digestif intended to make two
novel features palatable. Two are still pretty conservative people. First of all, the huge slabs of the Bible that comprise the bulk
of most of the services. This is a legacy of that early faith that the English Bible alone would carry the country before it. And secondly, the actual
texts written for it, taught a robustly Protestant theology. Especially in the 1552 version. But when the prayer book was
restored, after the civil war although the text was virtually unchanged its meaning was reversed. Despite its title, it
no longer truly aspired to national common prayer. It was an instrument of division now. Not one of unity. It's intended to smoke
out those who wanted to stay part of the national church, but who couldn't tolerate
this half reformed liturgy. And of course its meaning has
changed in centuries since, in the many contexts that
it's found a home in. Partisans on various sides,
naturally try to claim one of those historic meanings
as authentic and normative. There is no good reason to believe them. The second simpler book is of course the English Bible itself. The English reformation doesn't produce any theologians of truly European stature, but in Tyndale it did a great translator. It's a plain fact that he did more than any other single individual to shape the modern English language. And that the English
Bible he set in motion would become central to
English identity for centuries. Tyndale once promised that
if only an English Bible could be set forth freely, he would be willing never
to write another word. Henry VIII pursued Tyndale to is death and was deeply implicated in his arrest, but he also did what Tyndale asked. He promulgated an authorized
version of the English Bible in 1539 and Elizabeth I, followed up with her
own authorized version. The Bishops Bible in 1568. But these Royal attempts to seize control of the English biblical tradition were seen off by the exiles in Geneva. The original Puritans. Who in the 1550s produced
a new English Bible printed in 1560. This Geneva Bible had a shaky
start, but Edmund Grindal in one of his few
achievements as archbishop before the queen silenced him, succeeded in popularizing it. And it quickly outstripped
its official rival. It's filled with handy and
firmly Protestant annotations to guide readers. It appeared in every format. Pocket size to lectin sized. It's seeped into private homes and into England's verbal landscape. When Shakespeare quoted from the Bible, this is the translation that he used. And so when King James I set into motion a project to update the English Bible, it's the ubiquitous Geneva version not the unloved official
Elizabeth translation, that he was competing with. The translators who produced
the King James Bible in 1611 took a generation or more to when their competition
with the Geneva Bible. And when they eventually did it, it's partly because of the scholarly care and excellence with which they worked. Partly because they very
deliberately drew on Tyndale and on the Geneva version revising rather than reinventing the text. And partly because they shared
those provocative annotations and made this into a Bible for readers in every tradition. They would I think have
been surprised to know, that they'd created a text
that were still being read and loved around the world
four centuries later. But they might've concluded that that showed that they'd
faithfully done their duty. They might also have noticed
that with enough patience, the English Bible really does seem to have carried all before it.
