Introduction
The limited focus of this paper is to provide a brief summary of religious persecution in sixteenth and seventeenth century England in terms of some of the specific laws which allowed persecution and some of the specific persons who were persecuted, as well as to reveal some of the history showing the progress of religious freedom. While examples of statutes and persecution will both be given herein, it necessarily must be recognized that centuries of related history preceded the events and people noted during the time of this study. Further, it is acknowledged that persecution in the two centuries of this investigation existed in a context of other factors, such as, conflicting allegiances between Protestants and Catholics, as well as between civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The sixteenth century was also important as a time of turmoil relating to English translations of the Bible. Nevertheless, a simple thesis will be obvious: religion established by law results in persecution.
In order to establish some historical context, the following is extracted from a letter dated March 7, 1528, to Sir Thomas More giving him freedom to read heretical books:
Cuthbert, by divine permission bishop of London to the very reverend and distinguished Sir Thomas More, . . .
Since of late, after the Church of God throughout Germany has been infested with heretics, there have been some sons of iniquity who are trying to introduce into this country of ours the old and accursed Wycliffite heresy and its foster-child the Lutheran heresy, by translating into our mother tongue some of the most subversive of their pamphlets, and printing them in great quantity. They are, indeed, striving with all their might to defile and infect this country with these pestilential doctrines, which are most repugnant to the truth of the Catholic faith. It is greatly to be feared, therefore, that Catholic faith may be greatly imperilled if good and learned men do not strenuously resist the wickedness of the aforesaid persons. . . .
. . . And to that end we give and grant you facilities and licence to keep and read books of this kind. 1
In 1528 the Church of England was committed to Roman Catholic supremacy and considered Protestants heretics. In June 1530, King Henry VIII, as "Defender of the Faith," issued a proclamation "concerning heresies, and . . . erroneous books, contrary and against the faith catholic,"2 including "the New Testament or the Old, in the English tongue."3 However, in 1534, Henry renounced papal authority over the Church of England (because the Pope refused to approve Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon) and pressured the ruling body of the Church of England to acknowledge his supremacy over ecclesiastical matters. Parliament then declared the king as "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England"4 and approved an act for punishment of heresy:
Every person . . . indicted of heresy . . . and convict[ed] thereof . . . shall be committed . . . to be burned in open places for example of other[s]. . .
[But] . . . no manner of speaking, doing communication, or holding against the said Bishop of Rome, . . . repugnant or contrariant to the laws and statutes of this realm or the king's prerogative royal, shall be deemed, reputed, accepted, or taken to be heresy.5
In 1539 Parliament approved a "Statute of Proclamations" which stated that proclamations made by the king shall be obeyed, including "divers and sundry articles of Christ's religion."6 In effect, statutory laws, created by a king or queen and Parliament, dictated rules for religion and punishments for violations. The political argument which promoted assumption of ecclesiastical power by the crown was based on the theory of a "divine right" which yielded authority over matters worldly and spiritual to whomever occupied the hereditary throne.
One of the next sixteenth century steps in England's civil and legislative control over matters of religion was a 1549 "Act of Uniformity" in which King Edward VI "appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, . . . [to] draw and make one convenient and meet order, rite, and fashion of common and open prayer and administration of the sacraments, to be had and used in his Majesty's realm of England."7 Similar acts followed as each king or queen attempted to solidify his or her power over England's citizens. The driving force giving reason to the desire for such power was a continuing and expanding attitude of nonconformity among leaders in both Parliament and the Church of England, regardless of whether or not the crown was Anglican or Catholic. The increasing impact of the Protestant Reformation and the so-called Puritans, upon the existing Church of England, was to encourage various other types of more radical dissent--including rejection of not only the idea of episcopacy, with its rites and ceremonies, but also of the legalized relationship of religion to government. Numerous groups classified as Separatists, such as Mennonites and Baptists, completely rejected the idea of a national church and insisted instead that
apostolic precept and example required the formation of local churches absolutely independent one of another, and that each local body should be a pure democracy, each member being a truly regenerate believer and all having absolutely equal rights and privileges, the only headship belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ.8
These types of examples of disagreement between Protestants, as well as between Protestants and Catholics, exposed individual dissenters to political authority.
In 1559 Parliament passed another "Act of Supremacy"--an act confirming jurisdiction of the crown over the state and all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. This act required that "all and every archbishop, bishop and all and every other ecclesiastical person, and other ecclesiastical officer and minister . . . shall make, take, and receive a corporal oath upon the Evangelist [the Bible]," saying:
I, A.B. do utterly testify and declare in my conscience, that the
queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm and of all other her highness' dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, . . . ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm.9
This "Act of Supremacy" continued:
If any person or persons dwelling or inhabiting within this your realm, . . . shall by writing, printing, teaching, preaching, express words, deed or act, . . . and directly affirm, . . . jurisdiction, spiritual or ecclesiastical, of any foreign prince, . . . for his or their first offence shall forfeit . . . all his and their goods and chattels, . . . [or be imprisoned for one year, if not worth £20 in goods: . . . The second offence shall merit the penalties of Praemunire. The third offence shall be adjudged high treason.]10
In 1559 Parliament passed another "Act of Uniformity"--this act declared:
The order of service, and of the administration of sacraments, rites and ceremonies . . . shall stand and be . . . in full force and . . . all and singular ministers in any cathedral or parish church or other place within this realm of England . . . shall . . . be bounded to say and use the matins, evensong, celebration of the Lord's Supper and administration of each of the sacraments and all their common and open prayer in such order and form as is mentioned in the said book so authorized by Parliament . . . And that if any manner of person, vicar or other whatsoever minister . . . refuse to use the said common prayers or to minister the sacraments in such . . . order and form . . . or shall preach, declare or speak anything in the derogation or depraving of the said book . . . and shall be thereof lawfully convicted according to the laws of this realm . . . the person so convicted shall for the same offence suffer imprisonment by the space of six months without bail.11
A second offence required imprisonment for one year; a third for life. The act also dictated that no one could speak derogatorily of the uniformity prescribed in the books of common prayer and ceremony even in plays, songs, or rhymes without penalty of money or imprisonment; and, the same penalties applied to unexcused absences from church attendance on Sundays or other designated holy days. Like the "Act of Supremacy," which left no doubt as to from whom spiritual authority came, the "Act of Uniformity" clearly stated rules for religion which were established by law and left no room for tolerance or freedom.
In 1559 injunctions were issued by Queen Elizabeth which said that all "ecclesiastical persons shall faithfully keep and observe, . . . all and singular laws and statutes made for the restoring of the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical"12 and that no man was to preach "but such as shall . . . be sufficiently licensed."13 In 1571, Parliament passed another "Treasons Act" which established that any person who "shall by writing, printing, preaching, speech, . . . affirm that . . . Queen Elizabeth, is an heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, . . . then . . . such said offence . . . shall be . . . high treason."14 In 1593 an "Act against Sectaries" said that all nonconformists who "deny . . . her majesty[Īs] power and authority in causes ecclesiastical, . . . under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion contrary to her majesty's said laws and statutes; . . . shall be committed to prison . . . until they shall conform."15 Further, an "Act against Papists" was directed against "persons, who, terming themselves Catholics . . . under a false pretext of religion and conscience"16 would be committed to prison where, if they did not conform, would be deported from England.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Parliament attempted to legislate religious conformity in one form or another, regardless of whether a Catholic or a Protestant ruled. But, dissent continued; and, so did the laws. In 1661 a "Corporation Act" required all officials of cities and towns, "for preservation of the public peace both in Church and State,"17 to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England. In 1662 another "Act of Uniformity" required that a "Book of Common Prayer in the English tongue shall be bought and had in every church."18 In 1665 a "Five Mile Act" forbid persons to preach under "pretence of exercise of religion, contrary to the laws and statutes" of England, required all such preachers to swear that they would not "endeavour any alteration of government either in Church or State," and fined any dissenter who came "within five miles of any city"19 to preach or even to teach at any public or private school. In 1670 a "Conventicle Act" proclaimed that "any person of the age of sixteen years or upwards . . . present at any assembly . . . under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion in other manner than . . . the Church of England"20 shall be fined; and, "every person who shall wittingly . . . suffer any such conventicle, . . . to be held in his or her house, outhouse, barn, yard or backside, . . . shall forfeit the sum of twenty pounds."21 In 1673 a "Test Act" again required all civil office holders to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance and declare that there is "not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper."22
By 1678 Parliament's toleration for dissent had improved; the death penalty for heresy was abolished. Nevertheless, in 1689 a "Toleration Act" stated the exact limits of toleration: "Any assembly of persons dissenting . . . with the doors locked . . . shall not receive any benefit from this law, but . . . nothing herein . . . shall . . . exempt any . . . from paying of tithes . . . to the church."23 This act of toleration was not religious freedom. It repealed "none of the Acts by which conformity with the Church of England was exacted, . . . but it recognised [sic], for the first time, the right of public worship beyond the pale of the state church."24
The above are examples of numerous laws, as authorized by the crown and passed by Parliament, which regulated religion with penalties for violations and involved tens of thousands of persecuted citizens; but, none were more significant than the act of ecclesiastical supremacy which effectively incorporated the existing statutes of praemunire and treason. A 1393 "Statute of Praemunire" stipulated that "lands, tenements, goods, and chattels are to be forfeit to our lord the king"25 for showing disrespect and contempt for the crown by asserting superiority of any legal authority outside the kingdom. As for treason, "the hurdle, the gallows, the axe, and the quartering knife, were for ages the instruments of the punishment of treason, varied only by the stake and the faggot if the convicted traitor were a woman."26 In 1534 a "Verbal Treasons Act" provided King Henry VIII with absolute power over the physical existence of every English citizen who dared to deny the authority of the crown over religion. England, for all practical purposes, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a theocracy; and, the above is a brief summary of the types of legislation which imposed religion, while the below provides examples (some in more context and detail than others) of individuals persecuted because of laws regulating religious opinion. When the argument was made that "laws could not bind that went counter to the faith, the only answer offered was that law . . . was supreme and not the faith."27
After the 1534 "Act of Supremacy," King Henry VIII deliberately tested the clergy. On April 28, 1535, monks John Houghton, Augustine Webster, and Robert Lawrence were brought to trial "for denying the king to be supreme head of the English Church."28 On May 4 they were put to death as traitors and hung in their religious dress as a warning to other clerics. Three weeks later three more monks (Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew, and Sebastian Newdigate) were imprisoned for seventeen days after which they were tried, convicted, and eventually hung on June 19, 1535. During the seventeen day imprisonment, they were:
Standing bolt upright, tied with iron collars fast by the necks to the posts of the prison, and great fetters fast rived upon their legs with great iron bolts; so straitly tied that they could neither lie nor sit, nor otherwise ease themselves, but stand upright, and in all that space were they never loosed for any natural necessity.29
On June 22, 1535, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who had been found guilty of treason, was beheaded on Tower Hill. His last words to the crowd were: "Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's holy Catholic Church."30 On July 6, 1535, Sir Thomas More was led from the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned nearly a year, to the scaffold whereupon he pulled his long beard from under his chin and told the executioner that the beard had committed no treason. The head was then carried to London Bridge to a pole from where the head of Fisher was removed, tossed into the river, and replaced with that of More--both chose to die rather than submit to the "Act of Supremacy."
England's sixteenth century religion laws applied to all dissenters, whether Catholic or Protestant, dependent upon particular variations and prejudices or pleasures of the crown; and, persecution even reached English citizens beyond its borders. In 1524 William Tyndale found it impossible to safely translate the Bible into English and left England for the continent from where he smuggled copies of translations and other writings back to his homeland--including his most important original work:
ĪThe Obedience of a Christen man, and how Christe rulers ought to governe,' . . . for the first time stated clearly the two great principles of the English reformation--the supreme authority of scripture in the church, and the supreme authority of the king in the state.31
As a result of his writings, which were distributed in England, "Tyndale became engaged in literary warfare with Sir Thomas More."32 In 1531, Henry VIII issued orders for the kidnapping of Tyndale who was eventually discovered by a Catholic Englishman in Belgium--where Tyndale was betrayed, captured, imprisoned, and burned in 1536, saying, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."33
On June 18, 1546, Anne Askewe of Lincolnshire was arraigned. She confessed heresies against the sacrament of the altar [a denial of transubstantiation] and without a jury trial was condemned to be burned. After judgment she was led to prison at Newgate. On the next day she was taken "to the Tower of London and there set on the rack, where she was sore tormented, but she would not convert for all the pain."34 The rack failed; Anne was burned.
As England proceeded through the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, the names and atrocities related to all of those persecuted due to religion are too many to be recorded here. However, because of the continuing effort to maintain power and due to a growing nonconformist movement, civil war eventually erupted between the crown and Parliament. In 1649 Charles I was executed, and the Commonwealth was established as the only republic in English history. The soldier leader of Parliament's military forces was Oliver Cromwell. One of Cromwell's tasks after gaining control of the government was to curb intolerant Protestants (revolutionary Puritans) who were members of Parliament.
By the time of the republic, many who had been on the parliament's side in the Civil War appeared to wish to use its victory to impose Puritanism, both doctrinal and moral, by law not only on conservative and royalist Anglicans, but on dissenting religious minorities--Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians--which had found their voice under the Commonwealth. There was nothing politically or religiously democratic about Puritanism. Those who were of the Elect . . . [were] an oligarchy claiming to know God's will for others.35
After Cromwell's death, the republic of the Commonwealth ended in 1660 with the restoration of a king, Charles II, and the Church of England.
Upon restoration of the monarchy, Parliament again moved to counter the more extreme forms of nonconformity to the Church. Quakerism was a target:
Quakers, along with other revolutionaries of the Cromwellian era, terrified the forces of law and order. With the Restoration in 1660 came the resolve to set English society once more on a safe and sober course. [A series of laws known as] the Clarendon Code, was designed to do precisely that, as it provided fines, jails, social ostracism, and other forms of discouragement to dissent. Perhaps the most famous prisoner of the Code's several measures, John Bunyan, achieved his first notoriety by attacking the Quakers. Even that could not endear him to the crown, however, for he too dissented from the Church of England.36
Paul Bunyan, in his time, was the most popular religious writer in the English language, mainly because of Pilgrim's Progress. Yet, in 1660 Bunyan was in Bedford jail with common criminals for preaching without a license and being a dissenter from the laws relating to religion as established by Parliament. He was informed that if he persisted in disobeying the law he would be banished and his neck would be stretched. Even though he could not support his family, his answer was, "If you let me out to-day, I will preach again tomorrow."37 Nevertheless, while in prison he read the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs; and, he wrote. As a Baptist, he wrote against the Quakers and the Church of England. Before he left his twelve years of prison, in 1671 when Charles II cancelled statutes penalizing Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics, Bunyan had begun the book which made him famous.
Perhaps no seventeenth century movement in England provided more impact toward the eventual and meaningful development of the significance of religious freedom than that of George Fox who was the founder of the Society of Friends (commonly known as Quakers). If it can be said that any institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, then is "Quakerism of George Fox."38
The Journal of George Fox is an autobiography and is considered a religious classic. It was first published in 1694 and distributed to every organized community of Friends in the world where from each church it was made available to members. Through the book shines the life of George Fox which established an example for individual Quakers and defined the essence of Quakerism: immediate and direct revelation from God, as contrasted to written revelation detailed in an historical record. Fox put "inner experience above scripture record, religion today above divine acts in the past."39 Therefore, even the twentieth century Quaker says that the same God who was at work in the lives of believers in the time of Jesus and George Fox is also at work today in the hearts and minds of all who will acknowledge God's immediate presence. This radical religious concept was unacceptable to most of the civil and religious leadership of seventeenth century England.
George Fox was born (1624) just preceding a social revolution which in a significant way related to religion. Theology in England was struggling between a fixed formula (or authority) and a flexible searching for independence of thought and form of expression. In political terms, the latter position advocated separation between religion and government while the former supported religion established by civil law. In the middle of this conflict, it was the destiny of George Fox to become "the first real prophet of the English Reformation."40
In 1643 (age nineteen) George Fox wrote of London: "I looked upon the great professors [church leaders] of the city of London, and saw all was dark"41--organized religion lacked the Spirit of God and was form without substance. Fox conceived a message of a new faith that could be experienced within each individual believer who would accept and become personally aware of and obediently committed to the Divine Being. Thus, Fox became a preacher: "He preached in cathedrals, on hay stacks, on cliffs of rock, from hill tops, under apple trees and elm trees, in barns and in city squares, while he sent epistles from every prison in which he was shut up."42 He preached that God and men were not isolated. He lived as though he knew he was living in the presence of God. It is in his application of what he believed, in his living what he believed, and in his having the courage to implement his convictions that George Fox is understood. He brought religion from heaven to earth and taught that the here and now was more important than past history or the by-and-by.
George Fox, then, was more than a preacher; he was a social reformer. He promoted the dignity, equality, and worth of every person. He spoke out against wastefulness and drunkenness. He opposed slavery, war, and the barbarity of the penal system. He advocated education for everyone. He proclaimed the priesthood of the believer through a direct relationship to God. He needed no idols, no icons, no rituals, and no clergy. Therefore, Fox went to jails and prisons over and over again because he was in direct conflict with the civil and religious authorities of a nation wherein religion and government were united--where religion was established by statutory law.
Religious freedom slowly and painfully made progress through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The "Act of Toleration" of 1689 preserved the privileges and unique status of the Church of England, but it brought an end to the long and unhappy history of some of the bloodiest forms of religious persecution--the impact of which was not lost on those English Puritans, transplanted into the colonies of the "new world," who ruled and watched, "between 1658 and 1661, when . . . Massachusetts hanged four Quakers."43
Nor was the message lost on the colonist Roger Williams of Rhode Island who wrote: "It hath been Englands sinful shame, to fashion & change their Garments and Religions with wondrous ease and lightness, as a higher Power, a stronger Sword, hath prevailed."44 Williams said,
I must professe, while Heaven and Earth lasts, that no one Tenant that either London, England, or the World doth harbour is so hereticall, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous to the corporall, to the spirituall, to the present, to the Eternal good of all Men as the bloudie Tenant . . . of persecution for cause of Conscience.45
More than a century later (December 2, 1815) former colonist John Adams reflected on England's history:
The apprehension of the Episcopacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention . . . of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of Parliament . . . [because] if Parliament can erect dioceses and appoint bishops, they may introduce the whole hierarchy, establish tithes, forbid marriages and funerals, establish religions, forbid dissenters, make schism heresy, impose penalties extending to life and limb as well as to liberty and property.46
It is, then, no surprise, after independence was won from England, Americans in the first statement of their "Bill of Rights" restricted their legislature as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."47
1 C. H. Williams, English Historical Documents 1485-1558, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 828-829.
2 Ibid., 832.
3 Ibid., 831.
4 Carl Stephenson and Frederick George Marcham, eds., Sources of English Constitutional History (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937), 311.
5 Williams, 833-834.
6 Stephenson, 316.
7 Williams, 849.
8 Albert Henry Newman, A Manual of Church History (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1903), 2:273.
9 Claire Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1969), 129.
10 Ibid., 130.
11 Ibid., 132-133.
12 Ibid., 178.
13 Ibid., 180.
14 Stephenson, 351-352.
15 Ibid., 354.
16 Ibid., 355.
17 Andrew Browning, ed., English Historical Documents 1660-1714 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 375.
18 Ibid.,382.
19 Ibid., 383.
20 Ibid., 384.
21 Ibid., 385.
22 Ibid., 391.
23 Ibid., 401-402.
24 Thomas Pitt Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946), 728.
25 Stephenson, 246.
26 Sidney J. Low and F. S. Pulling, The Dictionary of English History (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1910), 1010.
27 Cross, 279.
28 Ibid., 280.
29Ibid.
30Ibid.
31 Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds. The Dictionary of National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1921-1922), 19:1352-1353.
32 Ibid., 1353.
33 Ibid., 1355.
34 Williams, 837.
35 J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 566.
36 Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 25-26.
37 Encyclopedia Britannica , 9th ed., s.v. "John Bunyan," by T. B. M. Macaulay.
38 Rufus M. Jones, ed., The Journal of George Fox (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), 8.
39 Ibid., 18.
40 Ibid., 28.
41 Ibid., 70.
42 Ibid., 36.
43 Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 22.
44 Samuel L. Caldwell, ed., The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1963), 3:137.
45 Ibid., 4:501.
46 Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), 10:185.
47 Constitution, amend. I.
Browning, Andrew. English Historical Documents 1660-1714. New York: Oxford university Press, 1953.
Cross, Claire. The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1969.
Forbush, William Bryon, ed. Fox's Book of Martyrs. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965.
Jones, Rufus M., ed. The Journal of George Fox. New York: Capricorn Books, 1963.
Low, Sidney J. and F. S. Pulling. The Dictionary of English History. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1910.
Newman, Albert H. A Manual of Church History. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publishing Society, 1903.
Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the World. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Stephen, Leslie and Sidney Lee. The Dictionary of National Biography. London: Oxford University Press, 1921-1922.
Stephenson, Carl and Frederick George Marchan. Sources of English Constitutional History. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937.
Taswell-Langmead, Thomas Pitt. English Constitutional History. London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., 1946.
Williams, C. H., ed. English Historical Documents 1485-1558. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Copyright 1999 Gene Garman