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REFORMATION ENGLAND 1480–1642
ii
REFORMATION ENGLAND 1480–1642

THIRD EDITION

Peter Marshall
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Peter Marshall, 2022

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to be identified as Author of this work.

Cover design: Terry Woodley

Cover image © St Peter holding Keys, much defaced by iconoclasts, St Michael’s Church, Irstead,
Norfolk. ASP Religion / Alamy Stock Photo

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Marshall, Peter, 1964 October 26- author.

Title: Reformation England, 1480-1642 / Peter Marshall.
Description: Third edition. | London, UK ; New York, NY, USA : Bloomsbury Academic,
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021013818 (print) | LCCN 2021013819 (ebook) |
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Subjects: LCSH: Reformation–England. | Protestantism–England–History–16th century. |
England–Church history–16th century.
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For Alec Ryrie
vi
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
Preface x
List of Maps xv

1 Catholic England 1480–1530 1

Overview 1
1.1 Faith and community 3
1.2 Reform and stagnation 12
1.3 Heresy and orthodoxy 17
1.4 Church and state 21
Summary 26

2 Henry VIII’s Reformation 1525–1547 29

Overview 29
2.1 Reformation without the king 30
2.2 Catholicism without the pope? 38
2.3 Compliance without complaint? 52
Summary 61

3 Edwardian revolution 1547–1553 65

Overview 65
3.1 Reforming priorities 67
3.2 Community responses 79
3.3 Evangelical testimonies 86
Summary 91

4 Mary I’s Counter-Reformation 1553–1558 95

Overview 95
4.1 The politics of religion 96
4.2 The shape of restoration 104
4.3 The price of persecution 112
Summary 122

5 Protestantism and Puritanism 1559–1625 127

Overview 127
5.1 Elizabethan Settlement 129
Contents

5.2 Puritan discontents 134

5.3 Calvinist consensus? 142
5.4 Godly identity 152
Summary 158

6 Religions of the people 1560–1630 163

Overview 163
6.1 Protestantizing the people 165
6.2 Ways of conforming 175
6.3 Reading, seeing and singing the Reformation 181
Summary 190

7 Catholics in Protestant England 1560–1625 195

Overview 195
7.1 The creation of a community 197
7.2 The paradoxes of persecution 206
7.3 The trials of toleration 216
Summary 222

8 Charles I’s Reformation 1625–1642 227

Overview 227
8.1 Origins and objectives 228
8.2 Impact and implementation 238
8.3 Containment and collapse 245
Summary 254

Afterword: Legacies 259

General further reading 273
Glossary of key terms 274
Timeline of key events 277
Index 280

viii
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1.1 The Transfiguration, from the rood screen at Westhall, Suffolk 8

2.1 The Great Bible of 1539; Hans Holbein’s frontispiece 46
3.1 The beginning of the baptism service from the Book of Common
Prayer of 1549 73
4.1 A contemporary portrait of Cardinal Reginald Pole by the Italian painter
Cristofano dell’Altissimo 101
4.2 The burning of Thomas Cranmer, March 1556: a woodcut from John Foxe’s
Acts and Monuments (1563) 115
5.1 Title page to the new bible translation of 1611: the ‘Authorized Version’ 141
6.1 A 1617 pamphlet describing the murder of the judge Sir John Tindall 185
7.1 Harvington Hall, Worcestershire, home of the Catholic Pakington family 212
8.1 Time carrying the pope from England back to Rome: a satirical
broadsheet of 1641 253

Maps

1 Dioceses in England and Wales before the Reformation (showing location

of cathedrals) xv
2 Counties and Principal Towns in Early Tudor England xvi
PREFACE

This is the revised, third edition of a book first published nearly two decades ago. The
aim was then (and still is) to offer to students and their teachers, as well as to interested
general readers, a volume that managed to provide both a clear narrative introduction
to the key events of the English Reformation and a critical, analytical guide to the most
important recent scholarship on the topic. The sum of historical interpretations (the
historiography) of any important period or process is constantly on the move. The ‘shape
of the field’ shifts even as one is sitting in it. The book has been again rewritten, and
further expanded (including a reflective Afterword, on the legacies of the Reformation),
to take account of the most recent major contributions, to relate them to what has gone
before and to sketch out where the subject currently seems to be heading.
The very fact that so much noteworthy, and often contentious and provocative,
work continues to be produced on the topic of the Reformation in England is in itself
an indication of the importance of the theme, and of the need for continued critical
reflection on its meanings and significance. The Reformation was a seminal moment in
the history of religion – a ferocious argument about what God expected from human
beings. But in England, as elsewhere, it was much more than a narrowly ‘religious’
phenomenon. Political and constitutional developments, international relations, cultural
and artistic expression, social relations within communities as well as the English
people’s fundamental understanding of who they – individually and collectively – were:
all these were shaped and transformed by the ferment of ideas and actions that we call
‘the Reformation’.
Not surprisingly, then, interpretations of the Reformation have always been
contentious. The arguments began in the sixteenth century itself, and for centuries
thereafter ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ accounts of why the Reformation happened, and of
what its principal consequences were, differed dramatically one from another. In Britain
of course, as in most of the English-speaking world, the Protestant account dominated
into relatively recent times. It is sometimes said (not without a hint of smugness) that
the study of the Reformation is now in a ‘post-confessional’ stage. We can certainly
welcome the fact that virtually no serious scholars working today are consciously writing
propaganda to support the historical claims of a particular church or institution. But
we should not imagine that the Reformation has ceased to matter to those who study
it, or that there can be such a thing as a self-evident historical ‘objectivity’ which we
can all recognize when we see it. Some historians of the Reformation are practising (or
lapsed) Catholics, just as others are Protestants, Jews, atheists or agnostics. Their political
instincts also cover the spectrum from left to right. Historians disagree because they
bring different perspectives, preoccupations and imaginative concerns to the business of
studying the past, and this is a good thing. They are able to engage in meaningful debate
 Preface

with each other because they (broadly) agree about the rules of the competition: the
need to provide appropriate evidence to support their contentions and to own up when
the evidence is patchy or ambiguous. In summarizing the debates, and commenting on
them, I have tried to be fair-minded, though my own biases, instincts and assumptions
will undoubtedly shine through.
We usually make sense of a varied and contested historiography by dividing historians
into schools of thought, often seen as succeeding one another in terms of prominence
and influence at a particular moment. For example, readers will quite often encounter
the terms ‘revisionist’ and ‘post-revisionist’ in the pages that follow. Specifically, a
‘traditional’ emphasis on the virtual inevitability and speedy triumph of the Reformation
was challenged (‘revised’) from the late 1970s onwards by new interpretations stressing
the popularity and vitality of the pre-Reformation Church. These also portrayed a slow
and uncertain pace of officially directed reforms and suggested that they were by no
means irreversible. This emphasis in turn (from the 1990s onwards) was modified by a
‘post-revisionist’ lurch in the scholarship. Post-revisionists, while accepting fundamental
parts of the revisionist case, usually want to insist that ‘things were more complicated
than that’. Thus, for the early period they might want to claim that significant stresses or
vulnerabilities attended the undoubted vigour of late medieval Catholicism. In a longer
perspective, they might argue that the Reformation should be classed not as a ‘failure’
(a common revisionist view) but as a ‘success’, though a success precisely because it was
not as destructive or alien as the revisionists suppose. Deep underlying continuities,
post-revisionists often suggest, link the religious cultures of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’
England.
These are helpful ways of mapping changing interpretations, and ones that historians
recognize (and constantly refer to) themselves. Yet they risk oversimplifying a much
messier (and more interesting) scholarly process. Virtually all historians are in some
sense ‘revisionists’, in that their prime justification for writing and publishing books
and articles is the presumed inadequacy of previous interpretations (virtually no one
ever calls themselves a ‘traditionalist’). Though they might often collaborate with other
scholars (and readers will notice that many of the works cited in this book are edited
collections of essays), most historians are by instinct individualists, reluctant to sign
up to agreed party programmes. Labels like ‘revisionist’ or ‘post-revisionist’ are thus
at best loose descriptive ones, and even scholars conventionally assigned to the same
camp can often be found disagreeing with each other. Moreover, historians’ own views
change, sometimes dramatically, over time. I have tried in this book to give a sense
of the dynamic and fluid character of historical understanding, getting away from a
notion of fixed battle lines, while at the same time pointing out underlying patterns and
convergences of explanation.
Shifting interpretations of the English Reformation have been accompanied at
every stage by changes in the sorts of questions historians ask and the types of sources
they consult. In the later twentieth century, the focus of interest broadened out from
the archival records of the centre (acts of parliament, royal proclamations) to those
of the localities (church court records, churchwardens’ accounts, wills), as historians

xi
Preface

recognized that religious change was not simply something decided upon and imposed
by the government but a process that had to be mediated and negotiated, welcomed or
resisted, in a host of local communities.
Interest in the Reformation as an agent of social and cultural change led to a
further enlargement of the source base. Scholars began to look to a wider variety of
printed sources – news pamphlets, ballads, poetry and plays – as well as to the more
overtly religious material in prayer books, sermon collections and guides to conduct.
In the twenty-first century, the digitalization, online availability and possibilities for
electronic searching and analysis, of vast numbers of printed texts from the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries have provided important new opportunities for Reformation
historians. Since the digitalization of texts is still ahead of that of manuscript and archival
sources (though this too is picking up pace), it has undoubtedly helped to move the
subject in a more ‘literary’ direction, towards a greater concern with ‘discourses’ and
‘representations’. This, though, is also a result of an ever-greater willingness to hop over
the traditional disciplinary walls. Historians have learned some of the methodologies
and ways of thinking of literary scholars (and vice versa), a welcome development that
seems sure to continue.
They have likewise learned much from art historians about how to ‘read’ visual
sources: paintings and woodcut illustrations in books; fonts, windows and monuments
in churches. This has been supplemented by an increasing awareness of what can be
learned from the surviving artefacts of the past – its ‘material culture’ – in all their forms.
The significance of the environment, both built and natural, has become increasingly
evident, along with a need to think about the meanings and uses of ‘space’. Conversations
have also opened up with musicologists, as historians have begun to recognize the vital
importance of recovering the aural dimension of historical lives. In short, we have become
ever more aware of the ‘multimedia’ character of the Reformation changes as they were
experienced by those living through them. The emergent generation of Reformation
historians, themselves raised in a world which no longer automatically privileges the
written text over the sound or the image, is particularly well equipped to appreciate this.
While this third edition seeks to keep pace with how the subject is developing, I
have not thought it necessary to change the basic structure and approach, which earlier
readers have generally found helpful. The book adopts a broadly chronological rather
than thematic framework, within which specific themes are addressed at the appropriate
moment. Each chapter takes a topic or issue which has generated academic controversy,
and on which there is a developed and often complex secondary literature. Within each
chapter, an introductory overview explains the significance of the topic, three or four
subsections sharpen the focus on particular aspects and debates and a brief summary
brings out some key conclusions. Overly specialist vocabulary has been kept to a
minimum, and unfamiliar terms are explained on their first occurrence. For this edition,
I have added a set of illustrations and a couple of maps as learning aids, to complement
the glossary of technical terms and timeline of significant events. Suggestions for general
reading are to be found at the back of the book, and selected follow-up reading on more
detailed aspects is recommended at the end of each chapter.

xii
 Preface

As the dates in the title suggest, the Reformation here is understood to be a fairly
extended process, covering the years from the late fifteenth century to the outbreak of
the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth. When this book was first published, at the
turn of the twenty-first century, the idea of ‘the long Reformation’ was still relatively new.
We had become aware, however, that it made more sense to think of the Reformation as
a ‘process’ than as an ‘event’, and that if our interest was in the gradual transformation
of the religious, social and cultural habits of the English people (rather than just the
political and liturgical enactments that separated the English Church from Rome) then
the older practice of ending the story in the middle decades of the sixteenth century
simply wouldn’t do. Two decades on, the question of the appropriate ‘length’ for the
English Reformation has not been settled as a matter of consensus, and I reflect further on
some of the implications of variant chronology and periodization in the new Afterword.
Nonetheless, among general surveys of the Reformation this book remains fairly
unique in the chronological breadth of its coverage. At a time of ever-greater academic
specialization, I hope that the encouragement to take the long view, to track continuities
and chart connections over time, will be of value to those studying the Reformation and
seeking to form views of its historical importance.
My title is chronologically expansive but geographically precise. I have stuck with
my earlier decision not to follow the lead of some other modern historians and treat
the English story alongside a narrative of events in Scotland and Ireland. In part, this is
because there are real problems with doing this in an integrated way before (and even
after) the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603; in part because, as a
survey of the historiography, my book is framed by the way historians have tended to
approach the matter, which has usually been as an English Reformation or Reformations.
(I readily concede that Wales – formally united with England shortly after the break with
Rome – probably gets less attention than it ought to in the pages that follow, though for
linguistic and other reasons, Wales also deserves its own histories and historians.)
Nonetheless, the England of my title is emphatically not a ‘little’ one, implying that
proceedings in the core kingdom of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs were cut off from
what was happening in the other parts of the British Isles or in the other territories of
Western Europe. Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a pan-
European (and, as historians increasingly want to emphasize, a global) phenomenon.
The patterns it followed in England were distinctive and indeed unique ones, but this
was equally true of every other European state. The extent to which developments
abroad influenced and interacted with patterns of events in England is a theme I have
attempted to keep a firm eye on, and the longer-term significance of events in England
for its neighbours and for the wider world is a theme I return to in the Afterword.
This revised version of the book provides a renewed opportunity to say some heartfelt
thank-yous. My daughters, Bella, Maria and Kit, grew up and left home between the
creation of the second and third editions, but they have continued to support and
inspire me in more ways than they know. Their mother, Ali Marshall, has made this
and all my other books possible. Emily Drew and Abigail Lane at Bloomsbury have
been most supportive (and patient!) editors. I owe a very great deal to the interest and

xiii
Preface

encouragement of historian friends who have contributed in a variety of ways to the

current and previous editions: Bernard Capp, Eric Carlson, the late Patrick Collinson,
Will Coster, Eamon Duffy, Andrew Foster, Catherine Holmes, Ronald Hutton, Beat
Kümin, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Salvador Ryan, Laura Sangha, Alex Walsham, Jonathan
Willis and the late Bill Wizeman SJ. A very particular, and very long-standing, debt
of friendship and scholarly fraternity is owed to Alec Ryrie. Finally, and far too many
to name individually, I wish to thank the outstanding graduate and undergraduate
students who, over more than a quarter of a century, have discussed aspects of English
Reformation history with me at the University of Warwick. I have learned much more
from them than they have from me.
Peter Marshall
Feast of St Edward the Confessor, 2020

xiv
MAPS

DURHAM
CARLISLE

YORK

BANGOR COVENTRY
ST &
ASAPH LICHFIELD
N
O L

NORWICH
RD

N C
FO

ELY
RE

L I

ST. DAVIDS
TE
HE

S
CE
OR

LLANDAFF LONDON
W

Y
UR

BATH
WINCHESTER ROCHESTER
SB

& CANTERBURY
LI

WELLS
CHICHESTER
SA

EXETER

Map 1 Dioceses in England and Wales before the Reformation (showing location of cathedrals).
 Berwick

SCOTLAND

Northumberland
Newcastle
Carlisle
North Sea
Cumberland Durham
West-
morland
Scarborough
Yorkshire
Isle of Man
York
Irish Sea
Lancashire
ngham

Lincoln
Cheshire Derby
Chester Lincoln
Notti

Huntin

Stafford
Leicester Norfolk
Shropshire
Cam
n

Norwich
try

pto
Co ck

bridg
ven

gdon
ter

am
rwi

Suffolk
ces

rth
Wa

e
dford

Hereford Cambridge Ipswich

este Wor

No
Bucking

WALES Colchester
r

Be

d
Oxfor

or

Essex
Oxford
rtf
uc

He
ham

Middlesex
Glo

Berkshire
Pembroke London
Reading
Bristol
ire re
ltsh shi Surrey
W i
a mp Kent
Somerset H Winchester
Salisbury Sussex
Southampton
Dorset
Devon Exeter Portsmouth
all
r nw Plymouth Isle of Wight
Co

Map 2 Counties and Principal Towns in Early Tudor England.

CHAPTER 1
CATHOLIC ENGLAND 1480–1530

Overview

In 1480, and for the next fifty years, England was Catholic England, an expression
which now sounds like an oxymoron, or a place in a whimsical alternative universe.
It was moreover, according to much persuasive scholarship, a wholeheartedly Catholic
England, a showcase of ecclesiastical vigour and orthodox piety. Just as Russia was the last
place Marxist theorists expected to undergo revolution in the early twentieth century, so
early-sixteenth-century England seemed unfertile ground for a successful revolt against
the church. Since at least the mid-1970s, historians have regularly observed that the
Tudor monarchs were on notably good terms with the papacy; that the English church
was almost uniquely fortunate in Western Europe in the quality and commitment of
its bishops and clergy; and that English lay (non-clerical) people participated with
enthusiasm in ceremonies and sacraments, and poured considerable resources into
their parish churches. In short, English religion was in remarkably good shape, though
there is a degree of anachronism in phrasing the thought in this way. In the later middle
ages ‘religion’ did not enjoy the modern meaning of a self-contained system of belief
and worship (the word itself usually referred to what went on in monasteries). Rather,
‘religion’ was so woven into every aspect of cultural, political and even economic life that
it could not easily be conceived of as something separate. In a real sense, ‘the church was
society’.1 This does not necessarily imply that pre-Reformation England was an inspiring
‘age of faith’, in which all were pious or devout, but it does mean that, unlike modern
Christians, late medieval Catholics had no opportunity to opt out, that their lives were
shaped in a fundamentally religious culture.
Over the course of the sixteenth century, however, the religious culture of Catholic
England was transformed into something else. Why and how this came about constitutes
the core subject of this book, but a necessary first step is to survey the religious regime
that prevailed before that transformation was openly underway. The very concept of
‘pre-Reformation’ religion sometimes troubles historians of the later middle ages. The
term smacks of hindsight, of a sidelong approach to a period and set of themes which
demand treatment on their own terms.2 There is a danger that scholars and students

Robert Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), p. vii.
1

Clive Burgess, ‘“A Fond Thing Vainly Invented”: An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in Later Medieval
2

England’, in Susan Wright, ed., Parish, Church and People (London, 1988), p. 69; Christine Carpenter, ‘The
Reformation England 1480–1642

whose primary interest is the Reformation will be tempted to regard the decades – or
even the century – before the break with Rome as an unchanging constant, a kind of
land before time. There was ‘no static “pre-Reformation Catholicism”, into which the
Reformation suddenly inserted itself ’.3 Yet an account of England’s religious revolution
has to begin somewhere, and starting the narrative abruptly in the mid-1520s risks the
misleading impression that the Reformation was shaped solely by fortuitous political
developments, or was simply imported wholesale from the continent. Attention to the
pre-Reformation context inevitably involves selectivity in the treatment of evidence and
themes. The opening chapters of A. G. Dickens’s classic The English Reformation, for
example, highlight the importance of Lollardy, the limitations of ‘conventional religion’
and the institutional failings of the clergy and religious houses. By contrast, Eamon Duffy’s
powerful evocation of ‘traditional religion’ focused almost exclusively on parish religion
and lay piety, with little to say about the church as an institution, or about heterodoxy
and dissent. A more recent general study of the Reformation has in its opening chapters
more to say about reforming impulses within late medieval Catholicism, as well tensions
and disputes over the scope of the church’s authority.4
In this chapter, the importance of religion (in the approximate modern sense) for the
life of late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century England will be examined under four
thematic headings. The first of these looks at the religious outlook and experiences of lay
people, and the role that the church played in the life of local communities. The second
highlights perceived institutional problems of the church, and the state of the clergy, both
regular and secular. A third section explores the significance of unorthodox religious
beliefs, the church’s response to them and their relationship to orthodoxy, and the
fourth attempts to evaluate the balance of conflict and cooperation in relations between
the institutions of the church and the English crown. The intention is not to sift the
evidence for signs of impending Reformation. Revisionists have rightly warned against
the assumption that because the Reformation happened it must have been necessary
or inevitable.5 On the other hand, revisionists themselves are sometimes half-jokingly
accused of proving that the Reformation didn’t happen, or at least of reducing it to an
externally imposed ‘act of state’ which struck the world of late medieval Catholicism like
a meteor from outer space. The way forward is surely to acknowledge that the religious
changes of the mid-sixteenth century, and the ways in which people would respond to
them, were shaped and conditioned by what had gone before; that the historical process

Religion of the Gentry of Fifteenth-Century England’, in Daniel Williams, ed., England in the Fifteenth Century
(Woodbridge, 1987), p. 72.
3
David Aers, ‘Altars of Power: Reflections on Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars’, Literature and History,
3rd ser., 3 (1994), 100; Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven
and London, 2017), p. 5.
4
A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (2nd ed., London, 1989), chs. 2–4; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the
Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), part 1; Marshall, Heretics
and Believers, part 1.
5
Christopher Haigh, ‘Introduction’, in Christopher Haigh, ed. The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge,
1987), p. 3.

2
 Catholic England 1480–1530

which would in time become known as ‘the Reformation’ grew out of late medieval
religious life, rather than simply reacted against it.

1.1 Faith and community

In late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century England (and for long afterwards), the

place where faith met community was the parish. Parishes were the basic administrative
units of the English Church (there were somewhat over 9,000 of them in early Tudor
England), but they were also much more than this, and a great deal of modern research
has focused on parishes and parish records as a route to understanding the religious
culture of ordinary lay people in the decades before the Reformation.6 Everyone was
supposed to be a parishioner somewhere, the place where they would get married and
have their children baptized in the parish church, and in due course be buried in its
churchyard. In between, they would attend parish services (appearance at Sunday mass
was required by ecclesiastical law) and pay tithes (a 10 per cent tax on all agricultural
produce and income) to the priest.7
There was no such thing as a typical parish. In towns like London, Norwich or York
they might be tiny, jostling together in the shadow of cathedrals or friary churches
(London had no fewer than 107 parish churches within the walls, and another 10 in the
suburbs). Since the creation of new parishes had effectively stopped by around 1300,
towns that had grown after this date were less well provided for and typically had but
a single parish church. Rural parishes in southern and midland England were often
compact; in the less intensively settled north, they could be geographically vast, and
include numerous small settlements with their own ‘dependent’ chapels, subordinate to a
distant parish church. All parishes, however, had certain features in common, especially
the fact that financial responsibility for the upkeep of the church, and provision of much
of its equipment, was in the hands of elected lay representatives called churchwardens.
Crucially for us, churchwardens kept accounts, over 200 sets of which survive for pre-
Reformation England, an archive unparalleled elsewhere in Europe.8 These show that

6
Wright ed., Parish; Robert Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English
Reformation (Cambridge, 1989); Duffy, Stripping; Beat Kümin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and
Reformation of the English Parish c. 1400–1560 (Aldershot, 1996); Katherine French, Gary Gibbs and Beat
Kümin, eds, The Parish in English Life 1400–1600 (Manchester, 1997); Katherine French, The People of the
Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001); Clive Burgess and Eamon
Duffy, eds, The Parish in Late Medieval England (Donington, 2006); Valerie Hitchman and Andrew Foster, eds,
Views from the Parish: Churchwardens’ Accounts c. 1500–c.1800 (Newcastle, 2015).
7
Norman Tanner and Sethina Watson, ‘Least of the Laity: The Minimum Requirements for a Medieval
Christian’, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006).
8
Beat Kümin, ‘The English Parish in a European Perspective’, in French, Gibbs and Kümin, Parish, p. 26. For
disagreement about the extent to which churchwardens’ accounts illuminate parish life, see Clive Burgess, ‘Pre-
Reformation Churchwardens’ Accounts and Parish Government: Lessons from London and Bristol’, English
Historical Review, 117 (2002), and the subsequent debate between Burgess, Beat Kümin and Ronald Hutton in
English Historical Review, 119 (2004), and 120 (2005).

3
Reformation England 1480–1642

huge amounts of money were being poured into parish churches. Supplementing the
accounts with surviving physical evidence, it is possible to calculate that two-thirds of
all English parish churches may have had major refurbishment in the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, much of it going beyond necessary repairs to include items of status
and beauty. An example is the lavish new spire, for which the churchwardens of Louth
(Lincolnshire) were able to raise the astronomical sum of £305 between 1501 and 1515.
To revisionist historians like Jack Scarisbrick or Christopher Haigh, such costly activity
clearly indicated ‘that local communities took great pride in their churches’.9
They also took pride in what went on inside them. Parishes had by law to pay for the
necessary equipment for worship: service books, vestments, bells, altar cloths, banners
and processional crosses (over thirty separate items). But accounts and some surviving
parish inventories show parishes often going beyond the requirements, enhancing the
experience of liturgy (the public prayer of the church) through the provision of elaborate
polyphonic music or the purchase of extra clerical vestments – in 1527 there were twenty
sets rather than the obligatory one in the parish of Long Melford (Suffolk).10
Historians have taken a particular interest in what the accounts tell us about how the
money for such projects was raised. In some places the wardens drew on rental income
from parish properties, or imposed local levies, but elsewhere (and particularly in the
countryside) we can observe a variety of enjoyable fundraising activities taking place,
activities which in themselves helped create a sense of community. These included
church ales (the equivalent of the modern church fete, but much less decorous), parish
plays (often based on the exploits of Robin Hood), Hock-tide celebrations after Easter
(involving the symbolic kidnap and ransoming of young men by young women, and vice
versa), May Day and summer games and the mysterious form of Christmas collecting
known as ‘hoggling’. As Ronald Hutton has demonstrated, the church and the structure
of its ‘ritual year’ provided the basis of a popular festive culture in countless parishes, a
‘Merry England’ which was reaching its most developed form in the century before the
Reformation.11 The impression of lay people enthusiastically committed to the church
is further supported by the evidence of wills. These survive in their thousands for the
early sixteenth century and show that gifts of money and valuable objects to the church
(usually the testator’s own parish church) were almost universal. Another symptom is
the proliferation of parish guilds or fraternities, literally brotherhoods – though women
could be members in their own right, and in some places formed their own voluntary
associations.12 Guilds were dedicated to a saint or Christ-centred devotion (Our Lady’s
Guild, St Michael’s Guild, Corpus Christi Guild) and had a mixture of religious and social

9
J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), pp. 12–14; Christopher Haigh, English
Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), pp. 34–5.
10
Beat Kümin, ‘Masses, Morris and Metrical Psalms: Music in the English Parish c. 1400–1600’, in Fiona Kisby,
ed., Music and Musicians in Urban Communities (Cambridge, 2001); Peter Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood
and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), p. 201.
11
Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994).
12
Katherine French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia,
2008), pp. 118–56.

4
 Catholic England 1480–1530

obligations, holding an annual feast on the patron saint’s day, maintaining lights before
his or her image in church, ensuring decent burial for guild members and saying prayers
for them. Most parishes seem to have had at least one fraternity, and they proliferated
in towns: London had over 150 of them in the century before the Reformation and even
somewhere like Great Yarmouth boasted at least 19.13
None of this is to say much about religion per se, about people’s beliefs and patterns
of piety. There is growing interest, for example, in the complex issue of how devotion and
spirituality was gendered, with distinctive roles and preferences for men and women.14
What is certain is that late medieval religion was profoundly sacramental; that is, it held
that God’s cleansing power (his ‘grace’) became available to people by being channelled
through particular ritual actions, and forms of words, through special material objects
and sacred places. There were seven official sacraments (baptism, confirmation, marriage,
the ordination of priests, the anointing of the sick and dying, penance, the eucharist). The
first five of these were essentially ‘rites of passage’, performed once to sanctify particular
moments in an individual’s life cycle. The other two, penance (the confessing of one’s
sins to a priest) and the eucharist (the ritual re-enactment of Christ’s Last Supper in the
ceremony known as the mass), were endlessly repeated, serving continually to renew
grace in the penitent sinner. The mass had a special place in the contemporary religious
imagination. Here, uniquely, Christ became physically present among his people. Mass
was said in Latin by a priest standing with his back to the congregation at a high altar
situated at the far east end of the church (the chancel). He was separated from the lay
people in the body (the nave) of the church by an elaborately carved semi-solid ‘rood
screen’ (so-called because of the great crucifix or rood which surmounted it). When the
priest repeated Jesus’ words, ‘This is my Body . . . This is my Blood’, the ‘elements’ used in
the ritual ceased to be bread and wine and became the real body and blood of Christ, a
daily miracle which the theologians referred to as transubstantiation. Lay people received
the body of Christ in the form of a fine wheaten disc or ‘host’, but this communion was
for most people infrequent, taking place usually once a year at Easter time.15 For the
rest of the year there was greater emphasis on seeing the sacrament – at the moment
of consecration when the priest elevated the host above his head, bells would be rung,
candles lit and (according to later Protestant accounts at least), people would jostle with
each other for the privilege of ‘seeing their Maker’. Popular belief held that people would
not go blind or die suddenly on a day when they had gazed upon God.16

13
Scarisbrick, Reformation, ch. 2; Duffy, Stripping, pp. 141–54; Caroline Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of
Medieval London’, in id. and Christopher Harper-Bill, eds, The Church in Pre-Reformation Society (Woodbridge,
1985).
14
French, Women; Kathleen Ashley, ‘Cultures of Devotion’, in Judith Bennett and Ruth Karras, eds, The Oxford
Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 511–26; Christine Peters, Patterns of
Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge, 2003), pointing
out (pp. 47–8) that women testators do not seem to have disproportionately favoured female saints.
15
They received the bread but not the wine (communion ‘in one kind’) – a source of annoyance to later
reformers.
16
Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 55–63; Duffy,
Stripping, ch. 3; Marshall, Priesthood, pp. 41–3, 83.

5
Reformation England 1480–1642

The mass was not just an occasion for intense individual devotion but also for the
expression and restoration of social harmony. No one ‘out of charity’ with their neighbours
was to be admitted to receive communion. The custom of annual confession in the week
before Easter was designed to impel people to make amends to those they had wronged,
as well as to clear their consciences before God. During the mass an engraved plate
known as a pax (literally, peace) was passed around for the worshippers to kiss as a sign of
being at peace with each other. The consecrated host was itself the most powerful symbol
of unity (an idealized microcosm of the totality of Christian believers, who, according
to St Paul, constituted ‘one body in Christ’). On Corpus Christi, the special summer
feast day of the body of Christ, the host was carried in elaborate procession through the
streets of Bristol, Coventry, York and other places, a means of demonstrating, and of
restoring, the social unity of towns all too given to faction and internal conflict.17
The mass was also valued as the most effective way of helping the souls of the dead.
Central to medieval Catholicism was the belief in purgatory, a third place in the afterlife,
where the souls of those not wicked enough to deserve the eternal pains of hell, but not
good enough to merit immediate entry into heaven (i.e. the vast majority of Christians),
would be purged in painful fires until they had worked off the debt ‘due’ for sins committed
in this life.18 Theologians taught that all faithful Christians in this world and the next
were part of a single ‘communion of saints’ – a Church Militant (on earth), Church
Suffering (in purgatory) and Church Triumphant (in heaven) – and that the prayers of
one party could benefit the others. A great deal of both the official theology and liturgy
of the church, and of popular religious practice, was based around this principle, and
considerable effort went into securing the intercession of the living for the dead: at least
two-thirds of all pre-Reformation will-makers explicitly requested prayers or masses
to be said for them (and others may simply have taken such provision for granted or
made detailed arrangements while still in good health). These ranged (depending on the
testator’s means) from the establishment of a chantry, an institution where a priest would
be employed to say daily masses, either in perpetuity or for a set number of years, at a
particular altar or chapel, to an ‘obit’, a single annual commemoration on the anniversary
of the death. The more humble might invoke the prayers of their neighbours through
securing inclusion on the ‘bede-roll’, a list of all who had made gifts to the parish, read
annually in church. The desire for intercession was also a prime motive for joining
fraternities, which have been described as ‘communal chantries’.19
In addition to the active forms of intercessory prayer, the dead might be assisted by
indulgences, certificates issued by the pope or bishops declaring that individuals had been

17
John Bossy, ‘The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200–1700’, Past and Present, 100 (1983); Mervyn James, ‘Ritual,
Drama and the Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town’, Past and Present, 98 (1983); Rubin, Corpus
Christi, pp. 243–71.
18
The actual forgiveness of sin was achieved by sacramental confession, but this still left a penalty or ‘satisfaction’
to be made, which penances imposed by the confessor were unlikely to cover in full. For a helpful summary of
the theology, see Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 79–83.
19
Barron, ‘Fraternities’, p. 23.

6
 Catholic England 1480–1530

let off a certain amount of the penalty due for their sins in purgatory, usually in return
for performance of a good work or, increasingly in the late middle ages, a monetary
payment in support of some good work, like the building of a church. Indulgences
have had a bad press over the centuries, seeming to represent a corrupt money-making
scheme through which people could mechanistically buy their way into heaven (they
were to be the trigger for Martin Luther’s protest in Germany). It was once thought that
‘indulgences did not play a big part in English religion’.20 But subsequent research has
made clear that so-called pardons were a ubiquitous feature of the late medieval scene.21
To historians of a previous generation it seemed clear that all this provision was
motivated by fear, the fear of languishing for hundreds of years in the pains of purgatory,
if prayers and intercessions were not ceaselessly directed upwards.22 Most recent
accounts, however, have tended to be more optimistic, noting the rarity of ‘panic’ clauses
in wills (thousands of masses to be said by thousands of priests, as soon as possible), and
also emphasizing the ways in which bequests for the dead were designed to improve the
lot of the living. Chantry priests often helped with the round of services in the parish,
or kept schools, and objects like chalices or vestments, inscribed with the donor’s name,
were given to churches both to solicit prayers and to enhance the splendour of liturgy.
The poor benefited from the frequent distributions of bread and small money doles at
funerals (their prayers were believed to be particularly pleasing to God).23 Indulgences,
meanwhile, were not necessarily a quick fix for salvation but might be purchased with
a genuinely altruistic concern for the cause at hand (rather like modern-day charity
stickers). Where they were issued for the charitable relief of sick or destitute individuals,
one of their functions may have been to remove some of the stigma and shame
increasingly attached to begging.24
The centrality of purgatory underlines the extent to which late medieval religion
involved a series of exchanges between the visible world and the invisible one. This
appears clearly in the public veneration accorded to saints, the ‘very special dead’ who
lived with Christ in heaven and were thus able to intercede powerfully with him for the
needs of supplicants on earth.25 The saints were ubiquitous in England in the decades
around 1500: carved and gilded images of them, flanked by rows of votive candles, stood
in every parish church, and two-dimensional representations were painted on walls, rood

20
Haigh, English Reformations, p. 70.
21
R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise (Cambridge, 2007); Marshall,
Heretics and Believers, pp. 17–18.
22
K. L. Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries in Britain (Cambridge, 1965), p. 313; Alan Kreider, English Chantries:
The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 41, 93; Dickens, Reformation, pp. 29–30.
23
Duffy, Stripping, pp. 341–66; Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002),
pp. 18–33. The social utility of intercession is the theme of many studies by Clive Burgess. See in particular his
The Right Ordering of Souls: The Parish of All Saints’ Bristol on the Eve of the Reformation (Woodbridge, 2018).
24
Nicholas Orme, ‘Indulgences in the diocese of Exeter 1100–1536’, Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire
Association, 120 (1988), p. 16; Swanson, Indulgences, p. 467.
25
A phrase of Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981),
ch. 4.

7
Figure 1.1 The Transfiguration (Jesus, flanked by Moses and Elijah) from the rood screen at
Westhall, Suffolk. Devotional images of Christ and the saints were common in late medieval
churches, often painted on the screen dividing the chancel where the priest performed mass from
the nave where lay people sat. Source: Alamy.
 Catholic England 1480–1530

screens and stained-glass windows.26 Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary (‘Our Lady’), was
the focus of the most intense and universally diffused cult, but the number of venerated
saints was legion, from those, like Peter, James, John or Mary Magdalene, with impeccable
biblical references to those (often supposed early martyrs) whose popularity rested on
the colourful, not to say fanciful stories in the popular sermon collection known as The
Golden Legend. There were also saints whose appeal was primarily regional or local:
Yorkshire parishes might venerate St Robert of Knaresborough; Devon ones, St Sidwell
of Exeter or St Urith of Chittelhampton.27
The saints were not so much what they were to become in modern Catholicism – models
of devout living to be emulated – as powerful supernatural beings, dispensers of visions
and healing miracles, often with recognized specialisms: St Apollonia for toothache, St Loy
for diseases of horses.28 The power of the saints was channelled through their traces in
the physical world, images and relics, sometimes housed in special shrines, to which the
devout, the curious or the desperate might travel on pilgrimage. Within England, the most
popular shrines were those of Our Lady at Walsingham and of the martyred archbishop St
Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The more adventurous might journey abroad, to the Shrine
of St James at Santiago de Compostella or to Rome or Jerusalem. It has been plausibly
suggested that in the later middle ages an earlier obsession with the physical relics of saints
was giving way to a greater interest in miracle-working images, though some relics retained
their potency. Walsingham housed a portion of the Virgin’s milk in addition to the famous
statue there, and as late as the 1530s ‘flocks’ of pilgrims were reported trooping to view the
relic of Christ’s blood at the monastery of Hailes in Gloucestershire.29 Theologians regarded
images as didactic aids to devotion, ‘lay men’s books’, but the distinction between the
represented and the representation may have been more blurred in the minds of ordinary
people, who spoke about ‘Our Lady of Walsingham’, ‘Our Lady of Ipswich’, almost as if
they were separate persons.30 There was without doubt a strong desire for the emotional,
the tangible and visible in religion. This was reflected also in a strong devotional concern
with the humanity of Christ, and an emotive and imaginative emphasis in prayers and
imagery on his passion and crucifixion.31 For all the importance of the saints, late medieval
religion was powerfully ‘Christocentric’, a circumstance with considerable significance for
understanding what came next (see Section 1.3).
The revisionist scholarship of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
has made a powerful case for a vibrant, popular religious culture in the parishes, with

26
Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004).
27
Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge,
1988), pp. 326–7; Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New
Haven and London, 2001), pp. 73–4.
28
Duffy, Stripping, ch. 5; French, People of the Parish, pp. 194–207.
29
Ronald Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London, 1977), ch. 11; André
Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, tr. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), 444–53; Hugh Latimer, Sermons
and Remains, ed. G. E. Corrie (Cambridge, 1845), p. 364.
30
Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts: Laws against Images (Oxford, 1988), pp. 31–4.
31
Duffy, Stripping, pp. 234–56.

9
Reformation England 1480–1642

little sign of disenchantment from the church and its teachings. Clearly, late medieval
parishioners ‘were not waiting for the Reformation’.32 But this does not necessarily
mean that pre-Reformation religious life was immune from stresses and tensions. Some
historians have argued that because fraternities were separate, voluntary organizations
with membership fees and sets of rules, they created a degree of social distinction in
religious practice. They might also imply some dissatisfaction with the limitations of
what the parish could provide, particularly where fraternities drew their members
from across parish boundaries.33 Duffy, Kümin and others have rejected the notion of
parish and guilds as rivals, pointing out that many of the latter existed to support parish
activities (maintaining the church fabric, keeping lights burning before images in the
parish church) and that fraternity chaplains frequently helped out with the parochial
‘cure of souls’ by hearing confession and saying mass.34 Nonetheless, it is interesting
to note that the parishes in London with active fraternities in Henry VII’s reign were
the same ones which a hundred years later funded the most lectureships for Puritan
preachers35 (see Section 6.1). This is not to say that fraternities were sponsors of early
Protestantism. Their activities, such as arranging masses for souls in purgatory, were
entirely orthodox. But there does seem here to be a continuity of the impulse towards
active lay participation in religion, one which the official structures could not entirely
contain.
Churchwardens’ accounts have little to say about the social elite of the landed gentry,
who tended not to play a hands-on role in the day-to-day running of parishes.36 The
case has been made for an increasing gap opening up between the religious outlook
of the gentry and that of their social inferiors – between what we can call with crude
shorthand ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ religion. Could such a gap have been widened by the
advent of printing (the first book was printed in England in 1477), accompanied by
the slow but steady spread of literacy among the laity? The illiterate mass of the people
experienced religion through the eye, through the spectacle of rituals and processions
and the imagery of statues and wall paintings. The literate could reflect on the inner
meaning of religious texts. According to an influential book by Keith Thomas, the
late medieval masses were scarcely Christianized in a meaningful sense. Their religion
effectively took the form of protective magic – ceremonies to ward off crop failure
or plague. There was little common ground with educated book owners, clerical or

32
French, People of the Parish, p. 208.
33
John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 57–63; Gervase Rosser, ‘Parochial
Conformity and Voluntary Religion in Late-Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
6th ser., 1 (1991).
34
Duffy, Stripping, pp. 141–54; Kümin, Shaping, pp. 148–59. But see the more equivocal conclusion of Ken
Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia c. 1470–1550 (York, 2001), pp. 166–71.
35
Barron, ‘Fraternities’, p. 34.
36
There were exceptions. See the detailed and elaborate prescriptions for the layout of his parish church in the
1518 will of the Warwickshire gentleman Robert Throckmorton: Peter Marshall, ‘Crisis of Allegiance: George
Throckmorton and Henry Tudor’, in Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott, eds, Catholic Gentry in English Society:
The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation (Farnham, 2009), pp. 33–4.

10
 Catholic England 1480–1530

lay.37 Colin Richmond has pointed to evidence that the gentry in this period were
increasingly establishing private chapels in their own houses, and in church were using
their own private pews where they read books of devotion during the services. The
gentry, he suggests, were withdrawing from a shared religious mentality into a private
sphere of their own. Moreover, they were beginning to look down on popular religion
with its shrines, pilgrimages and miracles, and thus became prepared to collude in
its destruction when the Reformation came.38 Similar suggestions have been made
by George Bernard: though practices like pilgrimage were undoubtedly popular, they
were also intrinsically vulnerable to criticism, and the large collections of (frankly
rather suspect) relics housed in numerous English monasteries ‘invited satire and
incredulity’.39 This was certainly the response of one famous visitor to England, the
humanist scholar Erasmus, who in 1512–14 attended the shrines at Canterbury and
Walsingham and wrote up a caustic account of what seemed to him the corrupt and
superstitious practices there.40 The orthodox piety of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries undoubtedly had within it an austere and moralistic streak, disapproving
of excessive emphasis placed on relics, images and pilgrimage. As even the arch-
revisionist Eamon Duffy has conceded, ‘a desire for simplicity . . . must often have
been felt amidst the lavishness of late medieval Catholicism.’41
Were such desires harbingers of the Reformation to come? Perhaps, though there
is a danger in taking such interpretations too far. As Duffy himself has demonstrated,
there was no hard-and-fast divide between the worlds of the literate and the illiterate.
For example, the many thousands of printed lay prayer books known as ‘Primers’ or
Book of Hours circulating in pre-Reformation England contained religious pictures,
which could be used for meditation in exactly the same way as statues in church. The
manuscript collections of instructive texts known as ‘commonplace books’, kept by some
gentry, merchants and more educated parishioners, suggest an easy intermingling of
‘elite’ and ‘popular’ motifs – prayers and summaries of official doctrine sit alongside
zodiacal material and spells for conjuring angels onto the fingernail of a child. It seems,
moreover, hard to argue that the printing press was in some way undermining traditional
Catholicism when primers, lives of saints and service books comprised the largest part of

37
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-
Century England (London, 1971), ch. 2.
38
Colin Richmond, ‘Religion and the Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman’, in R. B. Dobson, ed., The Church,
Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984); ‘The English Gentry and Religion, c. 1500’, in
Christopher Harper-Bill, ed., Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge,
1991); ‘The English Reformation: Report from a Stationary Train’, in G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn, eds,
Authority and Consent in Tudor England (Aldershot, 2002).
39
George Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome
(New Haven and London, 2012), p. 140.
40
Erasmus, The Colloquies, ed. C. R. Thompson (Chicago and London, 1965), pp. 285–312.
41
Peter Marshall, ‘Catholic Puritanism in Pre-Reformation England’, British Catholic History, 32 (2015); Duffy,
Stripping (2nd ed., 2005), p. xxvii.

11
Reformation England 1480–1642

the presses’ output.42 The diversity of late medieval religious practice, with its sacraments,
relics, fraternities, festivities, pilgrimages and pious books, can plausibly be read as a sign
of health and confidence. But the sheer variety also meant that there was little clarity and
consensus about what was essential and what was peripheral in the practice of the faith –
something that would prove significant in Henry VIII’s reign, when selected aspects of
traditional Catholicism came under attack (see Section 2.3)

1.2 Reform and stagnation

With a few exceptions, modern revisionist writing has shown more interest in lay
and parochial religion than in the institutional face of the late medieval church, yet
in the opening stages of the Reformation it would be the institutions – clergy, church
courts, monasteries – which would first come under attack. Christopher Harper-Bill’s
contention that in any fair comparison with earlier and later periods, ‘the institutions of
the English church in the early sixteenth century do not appear to have been in urgent
need of radical reform’ is probably accurate.43 Yet calls for reform, and indeed frequent
bandying-about of the word ‘reformation’, filled the air in these years.44 In February 1512,
John Colet, humanist dean of St Paul’s, delivered a thunderous sermon to convocation
(the church’s equivalent to the Houses of Parliament) blaming all the ills of the church on
the secular lifestyles and ‘covetousness’ of the clergy. He castigated their greed for tithes
and promotions and urged ‘reformation of the church’s estate’.45 A similar diagnosis was
put forward in a treatise drafted by Henry VII’s leading minister, Edmund Dudley, after
he had fallen from favour at the start of Henry VIII’s reign. Dudley urged the king to
put an end to pluralism (the holding of more than one church living) and simony (the
purchase of ecclesiastical office) and advocated the improvement of the clergy through
greater education.
There were a number of ironies here. Dudley had earlier shown no hesitation in
securing ecclesiastical positions for various relatives and clients, and on Henry VII’s
behalf had received numerous payments from churchmen for confirmation in their
offices. Colet himself was a pluralist (the strictures apparently did not apply to humanist
scholars who needed the extra income to advance the cause of education).46 The most

42
Duffy, Stripping, pp. 68–87, chs. 6–8; Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240–
1570 (New Haven and London, 2006).
43
Christopher Harper-Bill, The Pre-Reformation Church in England 1400–1530 (London, 1989), p. 91.
44
Swanson, Church, pp. 312–14; Barry Collett, A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage: The Correspondence of
Marguerite D’Angoulême and Vittoria Colonna (Princeton, 2000), p. 39; Marshall, Heretics and Believers, part
1, ‘Reformations before Reformation’.
45
J. H. Lupton, Life of John Colet (London, 1887), pp. 293–304. The latest assessment is Jonathan Arnold, Dean
John Colet of St Pauls: Humanism and Reform in Early Tudor England (London, 2007).
46
Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘Dean Colet’s Convocation Sermon and the Pre-Reformation Church in England’, in
Peter Marshall, ed., The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640 (London, 1997); Steven Gunn, ‘Edmund
Dudley and the Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000).

12
 Catholic England 1480–1530

notorious pluralist in early Tudor England was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a figure
whom historians have usually thought to exemplify the abuses complained of in Colet’s
sermon.47 Yet Wolsey owed all his promotions directly to the favour of Henry VIII and
can himself claim some credentials as a reformer, advocating schemes to increase the
number of dioceses and tighten up the administration of canon law.48 The aspiration
for reform was almost universal in educated lay and clerical circles at the start of the
sixteenth century (internationally, it was being sounded at the Fifth Lateran Council of
1512–17, which leading English churchmen attended). But at every level it confronted
the reality of deeply vested interests. The jurisdiction of bishops was undercut by the
exemption from their oversight of numerous parishes and religious corporations, and by
the fact that they only controlled appointment to a minority of the spiritual promotions
in their dioceses. Much ecclesiastical patronage was in the hands of lay people, who,
from the king downwards, exercised it with a variety of spiritual and decidedly non-
spiritual motives.
It is significant that Wolsey’s most substantial reform initiative involved the closure
of almost thirty small and decaying monasteries, and the redirection of the revenues to
educational purposes (a grammar school in Ipswich and a new Oxford college). For the
religious houses provide a case study in the complex blend of reform and stagnation to be
found in the English Church in the immediate pre-Reformation decades. Conventional
wisdom holds that the monasteries were ‘in decline’ in this period, both in terms of the
numbers entering religious houses and in terms of the moral and spiritual standards
being observed in them.49 The idea that monasteries were in a bad condition spiritually
comes from the evidence of visitations (inspections) carried out by the bishops in the
‘non-exempt’ houses. From these it is easy to draw a picture of lukewarmness and
slackness, with many complaints of poor attendance at services, ill-discipline, tyrannical
or incompetent leadership by abbots and priors and occasional sexual misdemeanours.
There were some real black spots, like St Albans in 1489–90, where the abbot was
accused of robbing the shrine of St Alban to buy his office and of allowing his monks to
resort to nunneries for immoral purposes.50 But there is a need for caution in using the
visitation evidence, which represents only a snapshot of a house at a particular time, and
which aimed to find fault with the intention of putting it right. When the monastery at
Welbeck (Nottinghamshire) was visited in 1478, it was found to have been ruined by the
abbot’s diversion of revenues to support his illegitimate children. But by 1491, under a
replacement head, the house was thriving.51

47
In addition to the archbishopric of York, Wolsey held a succession of other dioceses, as well as the wealthy
abbey of St Albans.
48
Peter Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990), ch. 8; Glenn Richardson,
Wolsey (Abingdon, 2020), ch. 4.
49
See, for example, G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, (3rd ed., London, 1991), pp. 105–6.
50
David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England III: The Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 77–9
51
Knowles, Religious Orders, p. 43.

13
Reformation England 1480–1642

In any case, there is evidence to set alongside the visitation reports suggesting a
more positive picture. A vigorous building programme in many monasteries in the later
fifteenth century paralleled that in the parish churches, and it has been suggested that
‘the second half of the fifteenth century in England . . . witnessed something of a surge
in monastic vocations’.52 The friars, who were based in towns, and whose vocation was
to preaching and pastoral work among the laity, were attracting donations and requests
for burial in their houses right up to the 1530s.53 There was also the inspiring example
set by a number of the newer, smaller orders – the Franciscan Observants (who came
to England in the 1480s and had five houses), the Bridgettines, who had a single house,
Syon, near London, and several of whose number (Richard Whitford, William Bonde)
published devotional tracts in English for the edification of the laity. Strictest of all were
the nine houses of Carthusians, whose inmates lived lives of austerity and solitary prayer.
Significantly, it was these monks who provided the bulk of clerical opposition to Henry
VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s (see Section 2.3). Before this cataclysm, they were
patronized by royalty and nobility, and received a disproportionate share of the gifts that
lay people made to religious houses in their wills.54
Ironically, it may have been the monks in closer day-to-day contact with the
laity who inspired them less. The largest orders, the Benedictines and Augustinians,
were major landowners and employers. They performed various social functions,
acting as deposit houses for important documents and providing charity for the
poor (though historians disagree about how significant this was). Their abbots and
priors entertained and hunted like other landowning gentry and often did their duty
as justices of the peace.55 After some decades of relative scholarly neglect, there has
been a revival of interest in the institution of monasticism. James Clark, in particular,
has argued vigorously that the Benedictines were thriving rather than stagnating in
the pre-Reformation decades, stressing their role as patrons of humanist learning.56
Martin Heale points to the monasteries’ continuing importance for fostering
pilgrimage and devotion to the saints, as well as to the encouraging fact that England
manifested virtually no sign of the ‘commendatory’ system, which elsewhere in

52
Bernard, English Church, p. 179; James G. Clark, ‘The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England’, in Clark,
ed., The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 15. The other chapters in this
volume paint an optimistic picture of the state of late medieval monasticism, as do those in Janet Burton and
Karen Stöber, eds, Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2008).
53
Richard Rex, ‘The Friars in the English Reformation’, in Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds, The Beginnings of
English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 38–40.
54
Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), pp. 73–4; E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham,
eds, Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion, c. 1400–1700 (Woodbridge, 2010).
55
Swanson, Church, pp. 82–6; Claire Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York 1520–1540’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988); N. Rushton, ‘Monastic Charitable Provision in
Tudor England’, Continuity and Change 16 (2001).
56
James Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c. 1350–1440
(Oxford, 2004); ‘Humanism and Reform in Pre-Reformation English Monasteries’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 19 (2009); ed., The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans: Gesta abbatum monasterii sancti Albani
(Woodbridge, 2019).

14
 Catholic England 1480–1530

Europe (particularly in Scotland) siphoned off the revenues of religious houses into
the hands of aristocrats and secular churchmen.57 There is not very much evidence
that monasteries were actively disliked or undergoing any kind of fundamental crisis
in the early sixteenth century; Clark indeed argues that in urban centres dominated by
monasteries – traditional sites of economic and jurisdictional tensions with townsfolk
– relations were noticeably improving over the century preceding the Reformation.58
Others, however, have suggested that the stereotypes of avaricious and arrogant
monks to be found in the highly popular Robin Hood ballads imply that Benedictines
in particular had an ‘image problem’ with the laity.59 People can of course be critical
of institutions without expecting or wanting them to disappear. The likelihood is that
monasteries were simply taken for granted as a prominent feature of the religious
landscape. But, with some exceptions, they may have been too closely integrated into
lay society for their own good. The lack of much clear sense of identity, solidarity and
purpose across the religious orders made it harder to mount a coordinated defence
when Henry VIII turned on them in the 1530s.
For most people, however, day-to-day contact with the clergy was not with monks
but with the ‘secular’ clergy in the parishes, an extremely large and diverse body.60 Huge
numbers of priests worked for wages with little job security, finding work where they
could as fraternity chaplains, parish curates or temporary chantry priests. These were
often scarcely better off than agricultural labourers, forming a kind of ‘clerical proletariat’,
and frequently under the direct control of lay people. Above them were the rectors and
vicars, themselves a highly diverse group, who were appointed by a patron (bishop,
monastery or wealthy layman) to a parish ‘living’, and were entitled to collect the tithes.61
It is thus difficult to generalize about the condition of the clergy and the nature of their
relationship with the laity, though these are issues that have generated fierce debate.
It was once generally assumed that that the privileges and abuses of the clergy
produced widespread ‘anticlericalism’ among the pre-Reformation laity, and that this was
a crucial element in the acceptance of the Reformation.62 But revisionist historians like
Haigh and Scarisbrick argued that the evidence for anticlericalism was something of an
optical illusion, that there was no deep-seated dissatisfaction. Visitation reports produce

57
Martin Heale, ‘Training in Superstition? Monasteries and Popular Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation
England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (2007); The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation
England (Oxford, 2016), p. 31.
58
James Clark, ‘Religion and Politics in English Monastic Towns’, Cultural and Social History, 6 (2009).
59
Sean Field, ‘Devotion, Discontent, and the Henrician Reformation: The Evidence of the Robin Hood Stories’,
Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002); A. J. Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical
Context (Abingdon, 2004), ch. 5.
60
There may have been up to 40,000 priests in the parishes in the early sixteenth century: Haigh, Reformations,
p. 5.
61
Technically, a parish had a ‘vicar’ (literally, stand-in) where the parish had been granted to a religious house.
This became corporate rector, receiving the greater part of the tithes.
62
Dickens, Reformation, chs. 6, 13; ‘The Shape of Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’, in his Late
Monasticism and the Reformation (London, 1994).

15
Reformation England 1480–1642

comparatively few complaints about pastoral care, while surviving court records suggest
that quarrels over tithe were rare. Conversely, levels of recruitment to the priesthood
were at a record high in the first decades of the sixteenth century, something hard to
explain if the laity were overwhelmingly ‘anticlerical’.63 It is easy enough to find examples
of priests who failed to say services properly, who were sexually immoral or grasping in
demanding their tithes, though as with the monasteries, there is a temptation to give too
much attention to the juicy cases. It is worth noting that lay complaints against individual
priests sometimes bemoaned that they did not ‘do as other vicars and rectors’ – the bad
behaviour of a few did not necessarily reflect on the standing of the clergy as a whole.
We should remember that people were taught to believe that there was no possibility of
getting to heaven without the assistance of the priesthood – only they could say mass,
hear confession and give the last rites to the dying.
Much of what historians have termed ‘anticlericalism’ (a word unknown at the time)
was probably prompted not by hatred of priests but by high expectations from them.64
There is now more or less a consensus that anticlericalism simply doesn’t work as a
straightforward ‘cause’ of the Reformation.65 But it would be unwise simply to dismiss the
significance of criticism of the clergy. In humanist circles it was common to sneer at the
ignorance of rural clergy – ‘a crop of oafish and boorish priests’, as Colet’s friend William
Melton, chancellor of York Minster, called them in around 1510. Complaints about the
wealth and behaviour of the clergy were a recurrent feature of early Tudor parliaments.66
A literary tradition enjoyed by the educated laity, running from Chaucer in the fourteenth
century to the playwright John Heywood in the early sixteenth, mercilessly satirized
supposed instances of clerical greed and corruption. Criticism of this sort was certainly
compatible with orthodox Catholic piety, but it also generated a repertoire of familiar
‘anticlerical’ themes and jokes which the less orthodox would find extremely useful in
the future. It included what Martin Ingram has called the ‘long-standing currents of
resentment’ about sexual misbehaviour on the part of the clergy.67 The habit of looking
critically at the institutions of the church, the often frustrated aspiration for some kind
of internal ‘reformation’, is certainly no indication that the system was on the verge of
collapse. But it may have made it more difficult to mount a convincing defence of those
institutions when a doctrinal attack on the church began in the 1520s.

63
Scarisbrick, Reformation, pp. 45–8; Christopher Haigh, ‘Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’, in
Haigh, Reformation Revised.
64
Marshall, Priesthood, pp. 215–16 and passim.
65
David Loades, ‘Anticlericalism in the Church of England before 1558: an “Eating Canker”?’ in Nigel Aston
and Matthew Cragoe, eds, Anticlericalism in Britain, c. 1500–1914 (Stroud, 2000).
66
Peter Marshall, ‘Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus: The Intellectual Origins of a Henrician Bon Mot’, Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, 52 (2001), 515–16; Paul Cavill, ‘Anticlericalism and the Early Tudor Parliament’,
Parliamentary History, 34 (2015).
67
Peter Marshall, ‘Anticlericalism Revested? Expressions of Discontent in Early Tudor England’, in Burgess
and Duffy, eds, Parish; Martin Ingram, Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470–1600 (Cambridge,
2017), ch. 8 (quote at p. 242).

16
 Catholic England 1480–1530

1.3 Heresy and orthodoxy

It is possible to argue that such a doctrinal attack on the church was already under way
in the late fifteenth century – what about the Lollards? These were real anticlericals,
people reportedly saying such things as that they would prefer to confess their sins to
a tree than to a priest.68 Lollards were in their origins disciples of the late-fourteenth-
century heretical Oxford theologian, John Wyclif, who attracted a radical following,
including some high-ranking laymen, after teaching that the church should have no
property or secular power, that popes and priests should be obeyed only as far as their
behaviour merited and that the only source of religious authority was the Bible. Wyclif
also condemned the doctrine of transubstantiation, and he attacked aspects of popular
religion like pilgrimage and the veneration of images. The church countered the threat
with persecution. The death penalty was introduced for heresy in 1401, and the English
translation of the scriptures undertaken by Wyclif ’s followers – the Wycliffite Bible – was
banned in 1407. After Lollardy became associated with a revolt against Henry V in 1414,
the upper classes got cold feet and withdrew their support. Thereafter Lollardy seemed
to cease being a significant threat to the church – persecution died off after the early
decades of the fifteenth century, and the movement, it is often argued, declined into a
pattern of small dispersed pockets of disgruntled lower-class heretics, without much
coherence in organization or beliefs.
But in the decade or so before the accession of Henry VII, something interesting
seems to be happening – a marked increase in trials of Lollards which continued
through the 1480s and 1490s, and reached a high point in 1511–12. The main areas
affected were London, Kent, the Chilterns area of Buckinghamshire and Coventry. There
is little or no sign of Lollardy in the north of England. It looks as though Lollardy was
undergoing a genuine revival, with the bishops forced to react to a perceived threat.
But some historians have been sceptical about this, suggesting that there may simply be
better survival of records, or that increased political stability after the Wars of the Roses
meant the bishops were not so preoccupied with political concerns as they had been in
the 1450s and 1460s, and could thus go looking for heretics. Richard Rex refers to the
adoption of a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards religious dissent after the arrival of the
Tudors, while Robert Swanson has suggested that concerted heresy hunts were launched
in 1511–12 as a way of demonstrating the importance and authority of the church courts
at a time when they were being criticized by common lawyers (see Section 1.4).69
Survival or revival? It is not necessarily an either/or choice: the relative absence of
persecution in the mid-fifteenth century may have allowed the consolidation and even
expansion of Lollard groups. One (from the historian’s point of view) happy result of the
renewed persecution is that it supplies a considerable amount of information about how
Lollard communities were structured, how Lollardy spread and what Lollards believed.

John A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards 1414–1520 (Oxford, 1965), p. 183.

68

Richard Rex, The Lollards (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 113; Swanson, Church, pp. 345–7.
69

17
Reformation England 1480–1642

Modern research has revised the older notion of early Tudor Lollards as invariably
ignorant country dwellers – in places like Coventry, or Amersham in Buckinghamshire,
Lollard suspects came from across the social scale. One of the accused in Coventry in
1511, for example, was a former MP and twice mayor of the town. London Lollards
included leading figures in the prestigious trade guilds like the Goldsmiths’ company.70
More contentious is the question of whether a strain of Lollardy among the gentry
had completely died out by the later fifteenth century. The fact remains that no landed
gentleman was tried as a Lollard in Henry VII’s reign, though it has been argued that this
simply reveals ‘the realities of gentry status’, the bishops’ reluctance to treat the powerful
and well-connected in the same way as the lower orders.71 The survival of splendidly
produced volumes of Lollard sermons and bibles implies production and transmission in
gentry households, and we cannot rule out the possibility that at the end of the fifteenth
century some at least of the upper classes were starting to show a greater interest in
unorthodox religious ideas.
The question of what Lollards did or thought that actually made them Lollards is an
intriguing one.72 It is almost certainly wrong to think of Lollardy as a kind of ‘counter-
church’ or denomination; it does not seem to have had its own rituals or clergy. Indeed,
Lollards do not in the main seem separated from the orthodox communities in which they
lived. They took part in Catholic worship – accusations that they failed to go to confession
or receive communion are rare. There are even cases of Lollard churchwardens.73 The
wills of known or suspected Lollards usually look the same as those of their orthodox
neighbours. Of course, a justified fear of persecution might explain all this, but another
possibility is that, for those taking part, Lollardy was a kind of added spiritual dimension
to parochial religious life. Some scholars, noting the presence of women in lists of Lollard
suspects, have speculated that participation supplied opportunities for expression and
leadership denied to them by orthodox religion. But the most persuasive assessment
(by Shannon McSheffrey) concludes that Lollardy was no less patriarchal than Catholic
orthodoxy.74
The one activity we know Lollards engaged in was to meet at each other’s houses,
where there were readings from the English Bible or other books. Lollardy displays

70
Andrew Hope, ‘Lollardy: the Stone the Builders Rejected’ in Peter Lake and Maria Dowling, eds, Protestantism
and the National Church in Sixteenth-Century England (London, 1987); Derek Plumb, ‘The Social and Economic
Status of the Later Lollards’, and ‘A Gathered Church? Lollards and their Society’, in Margaret Spufford, ed., The
World of Rural Dissenters 1520–1725 (Cambridge, 1995).
71
Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond, ‘Introduction’, in Aston and Richmond, eds, Lollardy and the Gentry
in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1997), p. 20. Rex, Lollardy, p. 103, counters that accusations of heresy would
have been an obvious weapon in inter-gentry feuds.
72
J. Patrick Hornbeck, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010).
73
Plumb, ‘Status’, pp. 106, 124–5.
74
Claire Cross, ‘“Great Reasoners in Scripture”: The Activities of Women Lollards, 1380–1530’, in D. Baker,
ed., Medieval Women (Oxford, 1978), pp. 359–80; Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers (London, 1984),
pp. 49–70; Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530
(Philadelphia, 1995), passim.

18
 Catholic England 1480–1530

few of the characteristics of a modern evangelical sect. People were drawn in not so
much by migrant teachers known to Lollard groups in different parts of the country
(there seem to have been only a handful of these) but through their existing social and
family networks – parents converted their children, husbands their wives, masters their
apprentices. R. G. Davies has argued that personal connections were more important
than formal beliefs in sustaining Lollardy, memorably remarking that ‘if Wyclifism was
what you knew, Lollardy was who you knew’.75
Yet what did Lollards actually believe? The confessions recorded at heresy trials
suggest a wide variety of opinions but also some recurrent themes: opposition to images,
pilgrimage and prayer to saints; denial of the value of sacraments (especially confession
and the mass); a stress on the importance of the Bible. From the trial evidence Lollardy
can appear an essentially negative protest movement against the sacramental teaching
of the church, underpinned by a rather grumpy common-sense rationalism – the priest
could not make God in the mass, it was often said, for how can the house make the
carpenter? Eamon Duffy has caustically described Lollardy as ‘primarily a critique of
religion rather than an alternative religion . . . the ideology of the village know-all’.76
But it is clear that Lollard trials give a rather skewed picture. No suspect was invited
to offer a statement of his or her beliefs; rather, the judges were interested in identifying
where they had contradicted orthodox teaching and getting them to retract their views
or ‘abjure’. The great majority of those arrested did so and were in serious danger only
if caught a second time: between 1485 and 1522 there were around 308 abjurations
and 25 burnings.77 Some historians have argued that the trial evidence creates a false
impression of unity and consistency in Lollard beliefs – the concerns of the persecutors
imposing systematic form on a mass of incoherent attitudes and diverse individuals.78
Taken to the extreme, this argument can come close to suggesting that ‘Lollardy’ as such
never really existed – like witchcraft, it was a ‘crime’ created by its persecutors.79 But the
alternative view, which has been advanced most powerfully by Anne Hudson, argues
that the judicial record presents a one-sided, unduly negative view of Lollard beliefs,
which must be supplemented by the textual evidence of Lollard writings and especially
the Wycliffite Bible. There are over 250 surviving manuscripts of the latter, more than for
any other medieval work. Hudson sees a positive spirituality and underlying coherence
in Lollard beliefs. For example, the opposition to images of saints was prompted by a
sense of their social injustice – they took offerings away from the poor, the real images
of Christ.80

75
R. G. Davies, ‘Lollardy and Locality’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991), 212.
76
Eamon Duffy, ‘Preface’ to the second (2005) edition of Stripping of the Altars, p. xxvii.
77
Thomson, Later Lollards, pp. 237–8.
78
Thomson, Later Lollards, p. 229; Robert Swanson, Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before the
Reformation (Manchester, 1993), pp. 35–8.
79
Bernard, English Church, p. 224: just as there were no real witches, ‘there were no heretics in any coherent or
organized sense of the word’.
80
Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988).

19
Reformation England 1480–1642

An argument against the idea of an intellectually vibrant Lollard movement is that

hardly any new Lollard works seem to have been written after about 1440, though old
ones continued to be copied. The issue is complicated by the fact that it is often difficult
to say exactly what a ‘Lollard’ work is. Lollard suspects sometimes possessed mildly
reformist vernacular writings, which would hardly have raised suspicion in other hands.
Conversely, English (Wycliffite) bibles were quite regularly owned by people no one
has ever suspected of Lollard sympathies, such as the nuns of Syon Abbey, and King
Richard III.81 It may be helpful to think of orthodoxy and heresy as shifting points along
a spectrum, rather than as the opposite banks of an unfordable river. This approach
has been stressed by a number of scholars who suspect Duffy and other revisionists of
overemphasizing the ‘fundamentally consensual and unitary character’ of late medieval
Catholicism, at the expense of its ‘complexity and heterogeneity’.82 For example, Robert
Lutton’s close-focus work on the wills and devotional habits of the Kent parishes of
Cranbrook and Tenterden finds more evidence of investment in traditional forms of piety
at the former, and a more ‘parsimonious’ pattern of benefaction at the latter, combined
with a distinct interest in the recently arrived devotion of the mass of the Holy Name of
Jesus. Orthodoxy here, Lutton contends, was developing in the direction of ‘a moderate
Christocentric reformism’. He also thinks it revealing that Tenterden, unlike Cranbrook,
was known as a centre of Lollardy.83 The significance of the growing popularity of the
cult of the Holy Name has been spotted by other scholars, including Susan Wabuda and
Christine Peters. For some at least in the late medieval church, a simplified and intense
focus on the person and passion of Jesus might ultimately have represented ‘a bridge to
Reformation’.84
The significance of these trends in scholarship for our understanding both of Lollardy
and the beginnings of the Reformation is debatable. The collapsing of some strands of
apparent Lollardy into a more diverse and variegated late medieval Catholicism might
seem to strengthen revisionist complaints about the ‘disproportionate historiographical
attention’ lavished on the Lollards.85 They also have implications for the ongoing debate
about the contribution Lollardy made to the Reformation from the late 1520s (see
Section 2.1). But was diversity and divergence in religious life a sign of the vigour and
vitality of the church, or of its potential vulnerability to the winds of change? Common
sense suggests that it was both. In any case, we should not get too carried away by the

81
Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Heresy, Orthodoxy and Vernacular Religion, 1480–1525’, Past and Present, 186 (2005),
63–7; Swanson, Church, p. 343; Charles Ross, Richard III (London, 1981), pp. 128–9.
82
E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham, ‘Introduction’ in Jones and Walsham, eds, Syon Abbey, p. 14.
83
Robert Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety (Woodbridge,
2006); Lutton, ‘Geographies and Materialities of Piety: Reconciling Competing Narratives of Religious Change
in Pre-Reformation and Reformation England’, in Robert Lutton and Elisabeth Salter, eds, Pieties In Transition:
Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot, 2007), quote at p. 29.
84
Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2002), ch. 4; Christine Peters, Patterns
of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge, 2003), quote at
p. 4.
85
Rex, Lollards, pp. 143.

20
 Catholic England 1480–1530

imagery of the hazy spectrum. While recognizing the sometimes close connections
between orthodox and heretical beliefs and reading practices, Shannon McSheffrey
insists that Lollardy was a real phenomenon and Lollards were real people. The key
issues were not so much strictly doctrinal as questions of self-identity. To be a heretic in
the immediate pre-Reformation decades meant to claim the right to decide matters for
oneself and ‘to reject the authority of the Catholic Church’.86

1.4 Church and state

When full-scale Reformation came to England in the 1530s, in fact, its first and most
conspicuous aspect was not the spiritual concerns of Lollardy but the spectacle of a head-
on crash between church and state, and a fundamental reordering of their relationship.
The king replaced the pope as the supreme spiritual and administrative authority in
the English Church, and the church’s independent system of law – canon law – was
made subject to the authority of statute law, that made by the king in Parliament (see
Section 2.2). Can any embryonic sign of these developments be detected in the decades
before 1525?
Certainly there was little indication that links with the pope were to become so badly
derailed in the not-so-distant future. Tudor-papal relations had got off onto a good
foot, with Innocent VIII giving his blessing to Henry VII’s usurpation of 1485.87 Henry
was able to reciprocate after 1494, when the papacy found itself directly challenged
by French intervention in Italy. English foreign policy thereafter generally followed a
pro-papal line, particularly since the early Tudors had no strategic interests in Italy and
were naturally interested in checking the ambitions of France. In return for political
support, royal candidates were appointed to English, Welsh and Irish bishoprics, and the
crown was permitted to exact heavy taxation from the clergy. Despite what Reformation
propaganda would later say about the financial burdens imposed by Rome, Henry VII
and Henry VIII squeezed out of the English Church over two and a half times the sum
that the popes did.88 After the death of Henry VII’s heir Prince Arthur, in 1502, Julius II
granted a request for Arthur’s widow Catherine to be allowed to marry his brother Prince
Henry. It is of no small significance that Henry VIII seems to have expected as a matter
of course that Julius’s successor would be prepared to reverse this decision in the 1520s.
Henry VII also hoped that the papacy would deliver him a propaganda coup by
agreeing to declare as a saint Henry VI, the last of the Lancastrian line from which
the Tudors claimed descent. Canonization was a slow process, but a satisfactory final
verdict would almost certainly have been achieved if Henry VIII’s Reformation had

86
McSheffrey, ‘Heresy’, 48.
87
C. S. L. Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See, and the Accession of Henry VII’, English Historical Review,
102 (1987).
88
Harper-Bill, Pre-Reformation Church, p. 18.

21
Reformation England 1480–1642

not intervened to spoil it.89 Before this, however, Henry VIII had received his own
propaganda boost from the pope, in 1521 receiving the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ for
his literary efforts against Martin Luther, something which at last put him on a par with
the ‘most Christian’ kings of France and his in-laws the ‘Catholic Kings’ of Spain. In a
variety of ways the spiritual authority of the pope was useful to the English crown and
was in consequence unchallenged by it.
Within England, however, the pope’s theoretical supremacy was diluted by a
practical supremacy increasingly in the hands of the crown, a creeping nationalization
paralleled elsewhere in late medieval Europe: the result, suggests George Bernard, was a
fundamentally ‘monarchical church’.90 The early Tudor monarchs continued the pattern
already established in the fifteenth century of appointing royal servants to bishoprics;
effectively they used the resources of the church to finance their bureaucracy. Some
important state officials, like the chancellor and the Lord Privy Seal, were invariably
churchmen in this period.91 The early Tudor bishops have enjoyed a good press from
historians in recent years. Virtually all of them were graduates (and among them Wolsey
sticks out both for his pluralism and for the irregularity of his personal life). The great
majority, however, were trained in law (both canon and civil) rather than theology,
appropriately enough for men who were primarily royal and ecclesiastical administrators.
In itself, this did not make them bad bishops – several (including Wolsey) were
benefactors of education, and most kept a conscientious eye on their dioceses, policing
heresy and keeping discipline among clergy and laity through visitations and the church
courts. Many managed to be resident in their dioceses for long stretches of time, and
those called away on royal business usually employed competent deputies.92 But both
the career patterns and the intellectual training of English bishops inclined them to look
naturally to the crown as the focus of their loyalty. It is entirely in character that the star
theologian on Henry VII and Henry VIII’s bench of bishops, John Fisher, was appointed
to Rochester, the smallest and poorest of English dioceses; significant too that Fisher was
the only one of the bishops openly to choose the side of pope rather than king when the
episcopate was forced to make an uncomfortable choice in the 1530s.
Where the theory of a universal church most often rubbed against the local control
sought by the crown was in the practice of the law, and the fact that two separate legal
systems operated in England: the church courts administered the canon law of the
church, while the common law exercised in the common law courts looked to the crown
as the ultimate source of jurisdiction. Most of the time the two systems operated without

89
For the popular devotion to Henry, see Thomas S. Freeman, ‘“Ut Verus Christi Sequester”: John Blacman and
the Cult of Henry VI’, in Linda Clark, ed., Of Mice and Men: Image, Belief and Regulation in Late Medieval
England (Woodbridge, 2005).
90
Bernard, English Church, ch. 2.
91
Swanson, Church, pp. 103–5; R. L. Storey, The Reign of Henry VII (London, 1968), p. 98.
92
John A. F. Thomson, The Early Tudor Church and Society (London, 1993), pp. 46–60; Stephen Thompson, ‘The
Bishop in his Diocese’, in Brendan Bradshaw and Eamon Duffy, eds, Humanism, Reform and the Reformation:
The Career of Bishop John Fisher (Cambridge, 1989), p. 250 (Appendix 3).

22
 Catholic England 1480–1530

great tension, and with an agreed division of labour – the policing of moral offences, and
of heresy, for instance, clearly belonged to the church. But there were regular complaints
from common lawyers that church courts were stepping beyond their boundaries: for
example, claiming jurisdiction over cases of unpaid petty debts on the grounds that these
involved breach of a promise, a spiritual crime. Common lawyers counter-attacked by
invoking the fourteenth-century statute of praemunire (literally, to protect). This was a
law to prevent appeals over issues of appointments being made from royal courts to the
papal court in Rome. But the loose wording of the statute allowed the interpretation that
cases belonging to royal courts were not to be heard in any church courts. In the early
sixteenth century, common lawyers’ aggressive use of praemunire was starting to make
serious inroads into the business of the ecclesiastical courts.93
Yet the suggestion that church courts were widely unpopular with the laity (a back-
projection from charges of high-handedness and excessive fees made in the ‘Reformation
Parliament’ in 1529–32) has been largely rejected by modern scholarship. In some areas,
the church courts offered a useful service (such as the opportunity to sue slanderers), and
their policing of morals may have been approved of by ‘respectable’ lay society, worried
that fornication would lead to bastard children becoming a charge on the parish.94 Even
the church’s provision of rights of sanctuary – temporary legal protection for debtors and
other offenders in certain ecclesiastical ‘liberties’ – seems, despite what scholars have
often assumed, to have been widely accepted as part of the natural order of things.95
A periodic source of tension, however, was the church’s long-standing insistence
that clerics could be tried only in ecclesiastical courts, so-called benefit of clergy. The
traditional test of whether a man actually was a cleric – the ability to read – meant that
increasing numbers of laymen could claim the benefit of the lighter punishments the
church courts imposed, and raised fears that the system was being exploited by career
criminals. In 1489 the law was tightened to allow benefit of clergy to be claimed by
laymen only once (murderers and thieves were to be branded on the thumb), and in
1512 there was a further attempt to restrict the privilege by specifying offences which
were not covered by it and exempting only those in the ‘major orders’ of sub-deacon,
deacon and priest.96
This was an issue that touched closely on the self-identity (or self-importance) of the
English clergy, and one that tested the limits of their acquiescence to the ‘monarchical
church’. It was seldom forgotten that England’s greatest martyr, St Thomas of Canterbury,

93
Gunn, ‘Dudley’, 514–15; Paul Cavill, ‘“The Enemy of God and His Church”: James Hobart, Praemunire, and
the Clergy of Norwich Diocese’, Journal of Legal History, 32 (2011).
94
Margaret Bowker, ‘Some Archdeacons’ Court Books and the Common’s Supplication Against the Ordinaries’,
in D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey, eds, The Study of Medieval Records (Oxford, 1971); Harper-Bill, Pre-
Reformation Church, ch. 6; Thomson, Tudor Church, ch. 8. A more sceptical note is struck in Richard Wunderli,
London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA, 1981).
95
Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London’, Law and History
Review, 27 (2009).
96
Thomson, Tudor Church, pp. 93–4.

23
Reformation England 1480–1642

had in the twelfth century given his life for this very cause, and attempts in Parliament
to restrict benefit of clergy, or deny it to those in ‘minor orders’, were vigorously opposed
by bishops and other leading churchmen.97 Fatefully, by the time the 1512 act came up
for renewal in 1515, it had become embroiled with a notorious cause célèbre, the case of
Richard Hunne.98
Hunne was a London merchant (and likely Lollard sympathizer) who in 1511 refused
to pay the customary mortuary (death duty) to the local priest on the death of his infant
son. Suit and counter-suit followed, with Hunne attempting to launch a praemunire action
and the diocesan authorities raising charges of heresy. When Hunne died in suspicious
circumstances in the bishop of London’s prison in 1514, the bishop’s chancellor, William
Horsey, and the minor officials suspected of murdering him could not be brought to trial
because of benefit of clergy, and lay feeling in London became inflamed. Matters were
complicated further by a papal bull of 1514 reiterating the principle that laymen had
no jurisdiction over clerics. This was appealed to in a sermon the following year by the
Abbot of Winchcombe, Richard Kidderminster, who argued that any extension of the
1512 statute would be contrary to the law of God. He was opposed by the Warden of the
London Franciscans (and court preacher) Henry Standish, who protested that the bull
had not been formally received in England and that the 1512 act was socially desirable.
When convocation threatened Standish with heresy proceedings, the royal judges
declared that those concerned were guilty of praemunire. At this point Henry stepped in,
and at a conference held at Baynard’s Castle compromise was reached. The bill removing
benefit from minor clerics was dropped, as were the praemunire charges and the heresy
proceedings against Standish (a few years later Henry made him a bishop). Horsey was
summoned before the royal court of king’s bench but was allowed to plead innocence
and be dismissed. The bishops’ suggestion that the case be referred to the pope was
ignored.
Historians have disputed the significance of the Hunne/Standish affair. Dickens hailed
it as ‘a landmark in the development of Erastian and anticlerical opinion’; Scarisbrick
dismissed it as an ‘isolated clash’.99 Despite the intensity of passions aroused on all sides,
matters soon returned to normal, and the ecclesiastical and royal courts continued to
exercise their complementary jurisdictions without obvious strain. But in the course of
the furore, some interesting things had been said. During the Baynard’s Castle meeting,
Henry told the assembled churchmen that ‘we are kings of England, and kings of England
in time past have never had any superior but God only’.100

97
Peter Marshall, ‘Thomas Becket, William Warham and the Crisis of the Early Tudor Church’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 71 (2020); Paul Cavill, ‘A Perspective on the Church–State Confrontation of 1515: The
Passage of 4 Henry VIII, c. 2’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 63 (2012).
98
The best guide to this remains J. D. M. Derrett, ‘The Affairs of Richard Hunne and Friar Standish’, in Thomas
More, The Apology, ed. J. B. Trapp (New Haven and London, 1979).
99
Dickens, Reformation, p. 113; Scarisbrick, Reformation, p. 47. ‘Erastian’ refers to the doctrine of lay control
over the Church.
100
Gwyn, King’s Cardinal, p. 51.

24
 Catholic England 1480–1530

Although this sounds like the starting pistol for the Reformation, it has been argued
that in making the remark Henry was not ‘saying anything very new, or anything very
significant’; it was ‘high-sounding but vague rhetoric’.101 Similar grandiose claims had
been made on behalf of Richard II in the fourteenth century, and by other European
monarchs. They expressed the widespread aspiration in later medieval Europe to conceive
kingship in terms of Roman emperorship (an ‘empire’ was a completely independent
sovereignty, while, under the feudal system, kings might owe fealty to other rulers). There
are indications, however, that an interest in ‘imperial kingship’ was intensifying under the
first Tudors. Henry VII had himself depicted on coins and elsewhere wearing an ‘imperial’
crown (a closed or arched type, rather than an open-topped circlet). More generally,
Henry seems to have built on a fifteenth-century tradition of interpreting the coronation
promise to defend the church as a charter to exercise strong royal leadership over the
church. It is revealing that when Edmund Dudley made his plea for ecclesiastical reform
in 1509, he evidently assumed that the initiative would come from the crown.102 Henry
VIII went so far as to amend the coronation oath itself, limiting the promise to defend the
rights and liberties of the church to those ‘not prejudicial to his jurisdiction and dignity
royal’.103 A dispute over who should be bishop of Tournai, a town captured during Henry’s
otherwise fairly inglorious campaign in France, led in 1516 to a royal temper tantrum,
with the king muttering darkly about papal actions ‘against the sovereignty of princes’.104
Though not to burst into full flower until the 1530s, when an act of Parliament would
unambiguously declare that ‘this realm of England is an Empire’, there is no doubt that
seeds of imperial kingship were germinating much earlier in Henry’s mind.
The significance of all of this should not be pushed too far: there was no countdown
to royal supremacy, and modern commentators have emphasized not only the generally
good state of Anglo-papal relations in the early sixteenth century but also the usually
peaceful pattern of coexistence and compromise that prevailed in practice between the
two systems of jurisdiction.105 That there was no necessary collision course between
the interests of the English crown and those of Rome is suggested by the career of
Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey’s extraordinary accumulation of promotions between 1514 and
1524 – archbishop, cardinal, temporary and then permanent legate a latere (i.e. a deputy
exercising quasi-papal powers in England) – in practice facilitated a centralized control
of the English Church in the hands of his master, Henry VIII. But, at every stage, the

101
Haigh, Reformations, p. 82; David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (London, 2003), p. 410.
102
Anthony Goodman, ‘Henry VII and Christian Renewal’, Studies in Church History, 17 (1981); Gunn,
‘Dudley’, 510–11.
103
Walter Ullman, ‘This Realm of England is an Empire’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979), 183.
Historians dispute whether the change was made in 1509, during the 1515 crisis or in the later 1520s: Haigh,
Reformations, p. 82 and n.; Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘Henry VIII and King David’, in Daniel Williams, ed., Early
Tudor England (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 187–9.
104
Marshall, Heretics and Believers, pp. 74–5.
105
Harper-Bill, Pre-Reformation Church, pp. 22–3; Thomson, Tudor Church, pp. 79, 360; Swanson, Church,
p. 190, though note also the latter’s comment (pp. 184–5) that praemunire was ‘a time-bomb ticking under the
whole edifice of the spiritual courts’.

25
Reformation England 1480–1642

appropriate authorization was sought from and given by Popes Leo X and Clement VII,
hoping in return for English diplomatic support.106 There was a general commitment,
on both a national and international level, to make the system of church–state relations
work. But over the course of the later 1520s and 1530s, it was to become clear just how
much this depended on the ability of the English king to get his own way.

Summary

The revisionist scholarship predominant around the turn of the twenty-first century rescued
late medieval Catholicism from the partisan caricature of earlier generations of Protestant
and nationalist historians. We can now see that the institutions of the church were not
fundamentally ‘corrupt’, nor the religion of the people irredeemably ‘superstitious’. There
was no swelling tide of discontent against lordly bishops, grasping monks and tyrannical
church courts. But with the historiography now well settled into a ‘post-revisionist’ cycle, it
seems evident that recognizing how pre-Reformation religion was not like the old caricature
should be a starting point for discussion, not its end. Certainly, there was nothing inevitable,
or even likely, about the course events took after 1530, but across all of the areas we have
surveyed it is possible to detect reasons why England’s traditional religious regimen may
have been vulnerable in the face of the two novel developments of those years – an attack
on the institutions of the church, led by the crown itself, and the simultaneous offer of a new
style of religious devotion being made by early Protestant reformers.
Without doubt, a great strength of the late medieval church was its flexible and
adaptable nature, its ability to ‘accommodate a wide diversity of practices which brought
satisfaction to people of many different levels of intellect and social status’.107 There was in
the early sixteenth century no shortage of enthusiastic devotion and committed lay piety,
as the profusion of fraternities, chantries and religious books amply testifies. But not all
of this energy was channelled directly through the ‘official’ sacramental structures of the
church: ‘late medieval Catholicism was not oppressively monolithic. If anything, it was
alarmingly unregulated.’108 In encouraging spiritual aspirations which it could not always
direct or control, the pre-Reformation Church was arguably a victim of its own success.
Moreover, for some at least of those drawn towards an introspective piety, a piety in which
meditation upon the passion of Christ played a central role, the evangelical message of the
first reformers, and their offer of untrammelled access to vernacular scripture, would strike
a definite chord. Importantly, it would do so among the thoroughly orthodox, as well as
those already inclined towards Lollardy. Meanwhile, the desire to bring ‘reformation’ (in a
non-doctrinal sense) to the personnel and institutions of the church was widely experienced
and articulated by bishops, humanist churchmen, lay lawyers and politicians alike. Yet too

106
Gwyn, King’s Cardinal, pp. 33, 102, 265.
107
Harper-Bill, Pre-Reformation Church, p. 96.
108
Marshall, Heretics and Believers, p. 22.

26
 Catholic England 1480–1530

often it was seen to flounder in a welter of competing interests and jurisdictions, in which
those who advocated reform were as enmeshed as anybody else. The one authority with
the wherewithal, and perhaps the will, to impose and direct reform was the English crown.
Its wearer had long been looked to as a ‘rex Christianissimus’, a most Christian king, with
obligations to the welfare of the church in his realm.109
Was early-sixteenth-century England, therefore, in some sense ‘ready’ for Reformation?
Caution is required here. Parallel developments can be discerned elsewhere in Europe
(for example, the Spanish kingdoms) where there was no breach with the papacy and
no (or only the most abortive) doctrinal rebellion. The appropriate geological metaphor
is not that of the live volcano: a lava bed of discontent hissing and bubbling with
increasing vehemence before erupting with explosive and predictable force. We should
think rather of a set of pre-existent fault lines, which helped to determine the way the
religious landscape would fracture when it was hit by an earthquake which no one was
particularly expecting to happen. The tremors and aftershocks would in due course
bring down much of the edifice of traditional Catholicism described in this chapter. The
epicentre was the conscience of the king.

Further reading

Barron, Caroline, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in Caroline Barron and
Christopher Harper-Bill, eds, The Church in Pre-Reformation Society (Woodbridge, 1985).
Bernard, George, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break
with Rome (New Haven and London, 2012).
Burgess, Clive, ‘“A Fond Thing Vainly Invented”: An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in
Later Medieval England’, in Susan Wright, ed., Parish, Church and People (London, 1988).
Burgess, Clive, The Right Ordering of Souls: The Parish of All Saints’ Bristol on the Eve of the
Reformation (Woodbridge, 2018).
Cavill, Paul, ‘“The Enemy of God and His Church”: James Hobart, Praemunire, and the Clergy of
Norwich Diocese’, Journal of Legal History, 32 (2011).
Cavill, Paul, ‘Anticlericalism and the Early Tudor Parliament’, Parliamentary History, 34 (2015).
Clark, James, ed., The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (Woodbridge, 2002).
Cross, Claire, ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York 1520–1540’, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988).
Davies, R. G., ‘Lollardy and Locality’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1
(1991).
Derrett, J. D. M., ‘The Affairs of Richard Hunne and Friar Standish’, in Thomas More, The
Apology, ed. J. B. Trapp (New Haven and London, 1979).
Dickens, A. G., ‘The Shape of Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’, in his Late
Monasticism and the Reformation (London, 1994).
Duffy, Eamon, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven and
London, 2006).
Farnhill, Ken, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia c. 1470–1550 (York,
2001).

Swanson, Church, pp. 92–3.

109

27
Reformation England 1480–1642

Field, Sean, ‘Devotion, Discontent, and the Henrician Reformation: The Evidence of the Robin
Hood Stories’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002).
French, Katherine, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese
(Philadelphia, 2001).
French, Katherine, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death
(Philadelphia, 2008).
Goodman, Anthony, ‘Henry VII and Christian Renewal’, Studies in Church History, 17 (1981).
Gunn, Steven, ‘Edmund Dudley and the Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000).
Gwyn, Peter, The King’s Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990).
Harper-Bill, Christopher, The Pre-Reformation Church in England 1400–1530 (London, 1989).
Heale, Martin, ‘Training in Superstition? Monasteries and Popular Religion in Late Medieval and
Reformation England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (2007).
Heale, Martin, The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England (Oxford, 2016).
Hornbeck, J. Patrick, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford,
2010).
Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988).
Ingram, Martin, Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470–1600 (Cambridge, 2017).
James, Mervyn, ‘Ritual, Drama and the Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town’, Past and
Present, 98 (1983).
Knowles, David, The Religious Orders in England III: The Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1959).
Kümin, Beat, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish c.
1400–1560 (Aldershot, 1996).
Lutton, Robert, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety
(Woodbridge, 2006).
Marshall, Peter, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994).
Marshall, Peter, ‘Catholic Puritanism in Pre-Reformation England’, British Catholic History, 32
(2015).
Marshall, Peter, ‘Thomas Becket, William Warham and the Crisis of the Early Tudor
Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 71 (2020).
McSheffrey, Shannon, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530
(Philadelphia, 1995).
McSheffrey, Shannon, ‘Heresy, Orthodoxy and Vernacular Religion, 1480–1525’, Past and Present,
186 (2005).
Peters, Christine, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and
Reformation England (Cambridge, 2003).
Plumb, Derek, ‘The Social and Economic Status of the Later Lollards’, and ‘A Gathered Church?
Lollards and their Society’, in Margaret Spufford, ed., The World of Rural Dissenters 1520–1725
(Cambridge, 1995).
Rex, Richard, The Lollards (Basingstoke, 2002).
Richmond, Colin, ‘Religion and the Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman’, in R. B. Dobson, ed.,
The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984).
Richmond, Colin, ‘The English Gentry and Religion, c. 1500’, in Christopher Harper-Bill, ed.,
Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991).
Rosser, Gervase, ‘Parochial Conformity and Voluntary Religion in Late-Medieval England’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991).
Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991).
Swanson, Robert, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989).
Swanson, Robert, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise (Cambridge, 2007).
Thomson, John A. F., The Later Lollards 1414–1520 (Oxford, 1965).
Ullman, Walter, ‘This Realm of England is an Empire’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979).
Wabuda, Susan, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2002).

28
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
deux reprises au cours de cette demi-heure : la première lorsqu’il
dégringola du haut d’un rocher dans le ruisseau, l’autre parce qu’il
appuya trop fort sur le piquant de porc-épic qu’il avait dans la patte
gauche.
Finalement, Tyr se détourna du ruisseau, entreprit de gravir une
profonde ravine qui débouchait sur une petite plaine en forme de
plateau à mi-hauteur de la pente et s’arrêta à proximité d’une roche
plate au milieu d’une sorte de pelouse.
La persévérance de Muskwa à le suivre avait sans doute fait
vibrer une corde sensible dans le cœur du grand grizzly. Le fait est
qu’après avoir flairé quelques instants de-ci de-là, il s’étendit auprès
du roc. Ce fut seulement alors que l’ourson à la frimousse brune osa
se coucher, mais il était tellement épuisé qu’il s’endormit en trois
minutes.
Deux fois durant la première partie de l’après-midi, le sapoos-
oowin produisit son effet sur Tyr et il commença de sentir la faim.
Ce n’était pas une faim à se laisser apaiser par des fourmis, des
limaces ou même des loirs ou des marmottes.
Muskwa n’avait pas ouvert l’œil une seule fois et il dormait
toujours profondément lorsque Tyr se décida à continuer.
Il était environ trois heures. L’après-midi était particulièrement
calme. Les loirs avaient sifflé jusqu’à complète fatigue et lézardaient
au soleil sur leurs rochers ; les aigles planaient si haut au-dessus
des pics qu’ils n’étaient plus que des points dans l’azur.
Les éperviers, gorgés de viande, avaient disparu dans les sapins.
Les moutons et les chèvres se détachaient sur le ciel, silhouettes
accroupies au sommet des crêtes. Et s’il y avait des ruminants tout
proche, ils avaient l’estomac plein et ils devaient somnoler.
C’était l’heure où Tyr se mettait en chasse. Il savait par
expérience qu’il pouvait se déplacer avec moins de chance d’être
découvert lorsque les autres créatures digéraient et faisaient la
sieste.
 C’était l’heure la plus favorable à la découverte du gibier et à son
observation ; mais il ne tuait guère au grand jour, quoiqu’il surprît
parfois alors un mouton ou un caribou.
C’était surtout au crépuscule que Tyr abattait son gibier. Il se leva
avec un whouf prodigieux qui réveilla instantanément l’ourson brun.
Tandis que Muskwa s’étirait, Tyr le considérait avec une sorte de
moue.
Après le sapoos-oowin, il avait envie de viande rouge et
juteuse… il avait envie de viande… de beaucoup de viande… et il se
demandait avec une pointe d’inquiétude comment il s’y prendrait
bien pour attraper un caribou avec cet ourson affamé et fort
encombrant à ses trousses !
Muskwa parut comprendre son état d’esprit.
Il courut en avant de Tyr et, après avoir parcouru une douzaine
de mètres, s’arrêta et le regarda d’un air impudent en dressant ses
petites oreilles. Il prit tout à fait l’air d’un garçonnet cherchant à
convaincre son père de son aptitude à suivre une première chasse
au lapin.
Émettant un deuxième whouf, Tyr se mit à descendre la pente.
D’un seul élan il rattrapa Muskwa et, du revers de sa patte droite, il
l’envoya rouler à quelques mètres derrière lui, manière d’exprimer
clairement :
— Tâche moyen de rester derrière si tu veux chasser avec moi !
Les yeux, les oreilles et les narines alertes, Tyr descendit donc
lentement jusqu’à deux cents mètres du ruisseau.
Il ne recherchait plus maintenant les chemins faciles, mais bien le
terrain le plus accidenté.
Il avançait doucement en zigzag, faisant précautionneusement le
tour des grands éboulis, flairant chaque ravine sur son passage et
fouillant les boqueteaux et les fourrés.
Parfois, il était si haut, qu’il voisinait presque avec les sommets
dénudés des monts ; d’autres fois, si bas, qu’il foulait le sable et le
gravier du ruisseau.
 Il surprit bien des fumets dans le vent, mais aucun ne l’intéressa
assez pour qu’il s’y attachât.
Pas une seule fois au cours des deux heures qui suivirent, Tyr ne
sembla prêter d’attention à Muskwa. L’ourson avait de plus en plus
faim et se sentait de plus en plus las à mesure que le jour
s’allongeait !
Dans les passages accidentés, il tombait et trébuchait
fréquemment ; dans les éboulis, il avait toutes les peines du monde
à gravir les blocs que Tyr franchissait d’un pas.
Trois fois le grand grizzly passa le ruisseau à gué et Muskwa se
noya à moitié pour le suivre. Il était éreinté, rompu et trempé… Pour
comble, sa patte lui faisait mal, mais il s’obstinait toujours.
Parfois, il était tout près de Tyr ; d’autres fois, au contraire, il lui
fallait courir pour le rattraper.
Le soleil était sur le point de se coucher et Muskwa était presque
mort lorsque Tyr découvrit enfin un gibier digne de lui.
L’ourson ne comprit pas tout de suite pourquoi Tyr aplatissait sa
masse énorme derrière un rocher, à l’entrée d’une prairie raboteuse.
Il avait envie de pleurer et, de plus, il avait peur. Il n’avait jamais
désiré à ce point la présence de sa mère.
Il ne savait pas pourquoi elle l’avait quitté et pourquoi elle n’était
pas revenue. C’était l’heure où il tétait avant de s’endormir. Car il
était né en mars et aurait dû téter jusqu’en août au moins.
A quelque trois cents mètres au-dessous de Tyr s’élevait un
boqueteau de pins balsamiques au bord d’un lac en miniature qui
occupait le fond d’un creux. Dans ce boqueteau il y avait un caribou,
peut-être même deux ou trois… Tyr en était aussi certain que s’il
avait pu voir.
Le wenipoo, l’odeur des ruminants couchés, était aussi différente
pour Tyr du mechisoo, l’odeur des ruminants en train de paître, que
le jour l’est de la nuit. La première flotte passagèrement dans l’air
comme le parfum des cheveux d’une femme qui passe, l’autre
s’étale, chaude et lourde à fleur de terre, comme l’odeur d’un flacon
de parfum renversé.
Muskwa lui-même avait senti l’odeur. Il se rapprocha tout
doucement du grand grizzly et se coucha.
Pendant dix bonnes minutes, Tyr ne bougea pas. Ses yeux
sondèrent la courbe en coupelle, la rive du lac, l’orée du boqueteau
et ses narines analysèrent le vent. Rassuré, il se mit en chasse en
rampant presque sur le ventre.
Ses oreilles pointées en avant, une nouvelle lueur dans les yeux,
Muskwa prit sa première leçon.
Tyr avançait lentement, sans bruit, dans la direction du ruisseau.
Son énorme collerette se dressait à la naissance des épaules
comme une fraise godronnée.
Pendant une centaine de mètres, il continua son crochet, sans
cesser de flairer le vent, qui venait droit du boqueteau. Il était
prometteur, ce vent. Tyr continua d’avancer en roulant sur son
arrière-train. Il faisait de plus petits pas qu’à l’ordinaire et tous ses
muscles étaient tendus pour l’action.
En deux minutes, il eut atteint l’orée des pins balsamiques et il
s’arrêta de nouveau.
Un craquement de branches brisées lui parvenait distinctement.
Les caribous s’étaient levés, mais ils n’étaient pas inquiets.
Ils allaient sortir du boqueteau pour aller boire avant de paître.
Tyr, silencieux, se déplaça. Muskwa semblait son ombre même.
Ils parvinrent à la corne du bois. De là, caché par le feuillage, Tyr
commandait la rive du lac et la courte étendue de plaine.
Un grand caribou apparut. Ses ramures avaient atteint les trois
quarts de leur croissance et se couvraient de mousse verte.
Un jeune mâle de deux ans à peine, aux flancs lustrés et
rebondis, luisant comme du satin brun, venait à quelques pas.
Pendant un temps, le chef de horde, yeux, oreilles et narines
alertes, épiait le danger possible. Le jeune animal, moins méfiant,
croquait une herbe, de-ci de-là.
 Mufle levé, ramures basses, effleurant presque les épaules, le
vieux caribou s’ébranla dans la direction du lac. Tyr, lui, sortit de sa
cachette.
Pendant une fraction de seconde, il se ramassa sur lui-même et
puis il bondit en avant. Quarante mètres au maximum le séparaient
du jeune mâle. Il avait couvert la moitié de la distance, tel un bolide,
quand les caribous l’entendirent. Ils détalèrent comme des flèches.
Mais il était déjà trop tard.
Comme le vent, Tyr s’était porté sur le flanc du jeune caribou et
l’avait un peu dépassé. Il obliqua légèrement sur le côté et d’un élan
il s’enleva, telle une balle.
Sa formidable patte droite ceintura l’encolure du cerf, et, lorsqu’ils
s’abattirent ensemble, sa patte gauche vint saisir et broyer le mufle
frémissant.
Tyr tomba dessous comme toujours, replia une patte de derrière,
la détendit et ses cinq griffes éventrèrent le caribou.
Elles ne firent pas que l’éventrer, mais tordirent et brisèrent ses
côtes.
Alors Tyr se releva, jeta un coup d’œil circulaire et se secoua en
grondant. Était-ce clameur de triomphe ou invitation au festin à
l’adresse de Muskwa ? Si c’était une invitation, le petit ours à
frimousse brune n’hésita pas à accepter.
Pour la première fois, il sentait et goûtait la chair palpitante et
lapait le sang âcre et chaud. Dès lors, Muskwa serait, comme l’était
Tyr, un tueur de gibier.
Tous les grizzlys incidemment ne chassent pas le gros gibier.
Ceux qui le chassent sont plutôt rares. La plupart d’entre eux se
contentent d’un régime végétarien, corsé de gerboises, de
marmottes, de porcs-épics, et de poissons. C’est le hasard qui les
transforme en chasseurs de caribous, de chèvres, de moutons,
même de buffles.
Pendant deux heures, Tyr et Muskwa festoyèrent sans
interruption, non pas à la façon des chiens, mais à la manière des
gourmets.
Muskwa, à plat sur sa bedaine et presque entre les pattes de Tyr,
se gorgeait de chair juteuse.
Tyr commençait par les hors-d’œuvre, malgré que le sapoos-
oowin l’eût vidé comme une pièce sans meubles.
Il arrachait les minces feuilles de graisse qui entouraient les reins
et les entrailles de sa victime, et les mâchonnait les yeux mi-clos.
Les dernières lueurs du soleil s’effacèrent par delà les monts et
l’obscurité s’étala après un crépuscule rapide. Il faisait sombre
lorsqu’ils cessèrent de se repaître et cette fois Muskwa était plus
large que long.
Naturellement conservateur, Tyr ne gaspillait jamais rien de ce
qui est bon à manger, et si le vieux caribou mâle s’était fourré à cet
instant délibérément dans ses pattes, il l’eût certainement épargné.
Il avait de quoi satisfaire sa faim pendant plusieurs journées et
entendait mettre en sûreté cette réserve de nourriture.
Il s’en fut donc vers le boqueteau de pins balsamiques sans que
l’ourson gavé eût fait un effort pour le suivre. Muskwa était trop
heureux pour bouger, et il se doutait bien que Tyr n’abandonnerait
pas les reliefs plantureux de son festin.
Dix minutes plus tard, Tyr justifiait, en revenant, ces prévisions
optimistes.
Entre ses mâchoires puissantes, il saisit la carcasse du caribou à
la base de la nuque, et il se mit à la tirer sous le petit bois, comme
un roquet tournerait un énorme gigot.
Le caribou pouvait peser quatre cents livres. S’il en avait pesé
huit cents ou même mille, Tyr l’aurait tout de même traîné, mais
autrement, à reculons.
Tyr amena donc sa lourde charge jusqu’à l’orée du boqueteau,
où il avait su découvrir certain creux de terrain propice. Il l’y poussa
et aussitôt entreprit de la recouvrir avec des aiguilles de pins, des
branches et de l’écorce pourrie. Après quoi, il flaira le vent et sortit
rapidement du bois.
 Cette fois Muskwa le suivit.
Il avait une certaine peine à se diriger normalement, grossi qu’il
était par son poids additionnel considérable.
Les étoiles commençaient à poindre comme Tyr gravissait une
pente accidentée qui conduisait au sommet même de la montagne.
Ils traversèrent un champ de neige et arrivèrent à un endroit où
on eût dit qu’un volcan avait éventré la montagne.
Un homme n’aurait guère pu passer là où Tyr conduisit Muskwa.
Finalement ils s’arrêtèrent.
Ils se trouvaient sur une sorte d’encorbellement très étroit au pied
d’une muraille à pic, au-dessus d’un chaos de rocs.
Tout là-bas, dans le fond, s’étalait la nappe bleue d’un lac
apparemment sans fond.
Tyr se coucha et, pour la première fois depuis sa blessure, il
étendit sa tête entre ses grosses pattes et poussa un soupir de
soulagement.
Muskwa se glissa tout contre lui, et tous deux dormirent du
profond sommeil paisible qui accompagne les bonnes digestions,
cependant que les étoiles scintillaient plus brillantes et que la lune se
levait pour baigner les pics et les vallées de sa splendeur argentée.
 CHAPITRE VII
BRUCE BAVARDE

Langdon et Bruce commencèrent à descendre dans l’autre vallée

au début de l’après-midi.
Ils suivirent lentement le cours du ruisseau au-dessus duquel Tyr
avait voyagé, et, lorsqu’ils campèrent pour la nuit, ils étaient encore
à deux ou trois milles de l’endroit où le grizzly avait rencontré
l’ourson.
Les chasseurs n’avaient pas encore découvert les traces de Tyr
dans le sable des fonds…
Et cependant Bruce avait confiance. Il était certain que Tyr s’était
déplacé le long des crêtes et des pentes.
— Quand tu regagneras la civilisation et que tu décriras les
mœurs des ours, ne fais pas l’idiot comme la plupart des
noircisseurs de papier, Jimmy mon ami, émit le guide, tandis qu’ils
fumaient une première pipe après le dîner.
Il y a deux ans, j’accompagnai un naturaliste pendant plus d’un
mois. Il fut si content de sa tournée qu’il me promit de m’envoyer des
bouquins sur les bêtes sauvages…
Je les reçus en effet et je me mis à les lire. Ils me firent me
régaler d’abord et puis je sortis de mes gonds et les flanquai tous au
feu ! Les ours sont curieux à étudier. Il y a des tas de choses
intéressantes à dire sur eux sans pour cela faire l’imbécile… Y en a
des tas ! que je te dis…
Langdon approuva de la tête.
— Il faut chasser et tuer, chasser et tuer pendant des années
avant de découvrir en quoi consiste la vraie passion de la chasse au
gros gibier, dit-il lentement en regardant le feu. Et lorsqu’on a su
découvrir ce plaisir véritable, qui vous absorbe corps et âme… on
s’aperçoit que l’émotion la plus forte ne vient pas du fait de tuer…
mais du fait de laisser vivre…
Je tiens à ce grizzly et je l’aurai… Je ne veux pas quitter la
montagne avant de l’avoir. Mais, d’un autre côté, nous aurions pu
tuer deux autres ours aujourd’hui, et je n’ai même pas tiré dessus.
J’apprends à connaître le vrai plaisir de la chasse, Bruce… et
quand on chasse comme il faut, on apprend des faits…
Tu n’as pas besoin de t’inquiéter, ce que j’écrirai sera documenté
à fond.
Il se retourna brusquement et regarda Bruce dans les yeux…
— Cite-moi donc quelques-unes de ces idioties que tu as lues
dans ces livres !
Bruce souffla un nuage de fumée en réfléchissant.
— Ce qui m’a rendu le plus furieux… c’est ce que ces types
écrivaient… sur les prétendues « marques » des ours !
Jésus, Seigneur… d’après ces gens-là… il suffit à un ours de se
dresser de toute sa hauteur le long d’un arbre et d’y laisser sa
marque pour devenir seigneur et maître d’alentour, jusqu’au jour où
un ours plus grand arrive et mette sa marque plus haut…
Dans un livre je me rappelle même avoir lu qu’un grizzly eut
l’idée de rouler un rocher au pied d’un arbre et qu’il monta dessus
pour mettre sa marque au-dessus de celle d’un autre grizzly.
Ce qu’il faut lire, tout de même ! Jamais un ours ne fait de
marque qui signifie quelque chose. J’ai vu des grizzlys arracher des
morceaux d’écorce avec leurs dents et se faire les griffes contre des
arbres, tout comme les chats.
 Et l’été, quand ça commence à les démanger et qu’ils perdent
leur poil, je les ai vus se dresser et se frotter contre les arbres.
Ils se frottent parce que cela les démange et pas du tout pour
laisser leur carte de visite à l’intention d’autres ours.
Les caribous et les cerfs font la même chose pour s’ôter la
mousse de leurs bois.
Les mêmes types s’imaginent que chaque grizzly a son territoire.
C’est encore faux, bigrement faux, même !
J’ai vu huit grizzlys de belle taille sur la même pente… Tu te
souviens, il y a deux ans, de la petite vallée grande comme un
mouchoir de poche, où nous avons tué deux grizzlys.
De temps en temps, il y a un boss parmi les grizzlys… dans le
genre de celui que nous pistons…
Mais il n’est pas le seul ours sur son territoire. Je te parie qu’il y
en a vingt autres dans ces deux vallées. Et d’ailleurs, ce naturaliste
que j’accompagnai il y a deux ans eût été incapable de différencier
les traces d’un grizzly de celles d’un ours noir, et je te jure
solennellement qu’il ne savait pas ce que c’est qu’un ours brun !
Il sortit sa pipe de sa bouche et cracha dans le feu d’un air
truculent.
Langdon comprit que d’autres choses allaient suivre. Ses heures
les plus agréables étaient celles où Bruce, généralement silencieux,
se trouvait d’humeur causante.
— Un ours brun ! pensa Jimmy. Il s’imaginait, le pauvre homme,
qu’il existe une famille d’ours bruns. Et lorsque je lui affirmai qu’il
n’en existe pas et que les ours bruns qu’on rencontre sont des
grizzlys ou des ours noirs couleur brune, il se moqua de moi. Et
pourtant je suis né et j’ai été élevé parmi les ours.
Ses yeux lui sortaient de la tête lorsque je lui parlai de la couleur
des ours. Il s’imaginait que je lui racontais des blagues. J’ai compris
plus tard que c’était à cause de ça qu’il avait voulu m’envoyer des
livres. Il voulait me prouver qu’il avait raison. Jimmy, il n’y a pas
d’animaux sur terre dont la couleur varie autant que celle des ours.
 J’ai vu des ours noirs aussi blancs que neige, et j’ai vu des
grizzlys aussi noirs que le plus noir des ours noirs. J’ai vu des ours
noirs et des grizzlys de couleur brune. J’en ai vu de dorés et de
jaunes des deux espèces.
Ils sont aussi différents de couleur qu’ils peuvent l’être de nature
ou de manière de se nourrir.
Je m’imagine que la plupart des naturalistes se contentent de
faire la connaissance d’un seul ours et qu’ils décrivent tous les
autres grizzlys d’après celui-là.
Ce n’est pas juste pour les grizzlys, cré nom d’un chien ! Il n’y en
a pas un seul qui ne prétende que le grizzly est la plus sale bête qui
soit au monde.
Ce n’est pas vrai, à moins qu’on l’accule ! Il est aussi curieux
qu’un gosse, et il a bon caractère quand on ne l’embête pas. La
plupart d’entre eux sont végétariens, mais il y en a qui ne le sont
pas.
J’ai vu des grizzlys abattre des chèvres, des moutons et des
caribous et j’en ai vu d’autres vaquer paisiblement à leurs affaires à
côté des mêmes animaux, sans songer à les attaquer.
Ce sont de drôles de bêtes, Jimmy. On peut en dire des tas de
choses, sans se rendre ridicule pour ça !
Bruce secoua la cendre de sa pipe pour bien souligner cette
dernière affirmation. Tandis qu’il la remplissait de tabac frais,
Langdon lui dit :
— Il y a gros à parier que le gaillard que nous poursuivons est un
chasseur de gros gibier, Bruce.
— On ne peut jamais savoir, répliqua le guide. J’ai connu un
grizzly jadis qui n’était pas beaucoup plus gros qu’un chien… eh
bien ! c’était un tueur de gibier.
Des centaines d’animaux meurent gelés dans ces montagnes,
chaque hiver, et, lorsque le printemps vient, les ours en mangent les
carcasses, mais cela ne les rend pas nécessairement chasseurs.
 Parfois, les grizzlys sont nés chasseurs et tueurs de gros gibier.
Parfois, ils le deviennent par hasard.
Celui qui a tué une fois continuera à tuer.
Un jour que j’étais sur une pente de montagne, je vis une chèvre
se fourrer dans les pattes d’un grizzly. L’ours allait la laisser passer,
mais la chèvre eut si peur qu’elle se jeta sur lui à coups de cornes,
et il la tua.
Il parut très étonné pendant dix minutes et il passa bien une
demi-heure à flairer la carcasse chaude avant de se décider à la
déchirer à belles dents.
C’était la première fois, évidemment, qu’il goûtait de la chair
fraîche.
Je ne réussis pas à le tuer et je suis certain que, depuis ce jour-
là, il a dû devenir chasseur de gros gibier.
— Il me semble pourtant que la taille y est pour quelque chose,
déclara Langdon. Il me semble qu’un ours qui mange de la viande
doit être plus grand et plus fort qu’un végétarien.
— Voilà justement l’occasion d’écrire quelque chose de curieux
sur les ours, répliqua Bruce avec un de ses sourires bizarres.
Comment se fait-il qu’un ours engraisse au point de ne plus
pouvoir marcher en septembre alors qu’il ne se nourrit plus guère
que de baies, de fourmis et de limaces ? Ce n’est pas toi qui
engraisserais avec un régime de raisins sauvages !
Et pourquoi grandit-il si vite durant les quatre ou cinq mois qu’il
hiverne, alors qu’il n’avale pas une bouchée ?
Comment se fait-il que, pendant une période d’un mois et
quelquefois de deux mois, la mère peut allaiter ses oursons, alors
qu’elle dort encore ou à peu près ?
Son sommeil est à peine aux deux tiers lorsque les petits
naissent.
Et pourquoi les petits ne sont-ils pas plus gros en venant au
monde ?… Ce fameux naturaliste rigolait comme un bossu quand je
lui ai dit que les petits grizzlys, à leur naissance, n’étaient guère plus
gros que des petits chats de deux jours.
— Je comprends qu’il ait été sceptique, répliqua Langdon. Il y a
quatre ou cinq ans, je ne l’aurais pas cru, Bruce. Je ne l’ai cru que
du jour où nous avons déniché ces oursons dans l’Athabasca. L’un
d’eux ne pesait que dix onces et l’autre neuf. Tu te souviens ?
— Et ils avaient une semaine, Jimmy, et la mère pesait huit cents
livres.
Pendant quelques instants, les deux hommes tirèrent
silencieusement sur leurs pipes.
— C’est presque inconcevable, émit Langdon, et pourtant c’est
vrai. Et ce n’est pas une absurdité de la part de la nature, Bruce…
c’est, au contraire, une preuve d’intelligence.
Si les oursons étaient comparativement aussi gros que des petits
chats domestiques, la mère ours ne pourrait pas les allaiter pendant
ces semaines au cours desquelles elle ne mange ni boit.
Par exemple, je ne comprends pas pourquoi les oursons noirs,
quand ils naissent, sont la moitié plus gros que les petits grizzlys. Ce
devrait être le contraire puisque les oursons noirs sont moitié moins
grands que les mères grizzlys ! Je n’arrive pas à m’expliquer cette
apparente anomalie !
Bruce interrompit son ami avec un bon rire.
— C’est pourtant facile à comprendre, Jimmy ! s’exclama-t-il. Te
rappelles-tu que, l’année dernière, nous avons pu faire des boules
de neige sur la montagne deux heures après avoir cueilli des fraises
dans la vallée ? Plus haut tu montes, plus il fait froid. Aujourd’hui
même, 1er juillet, tu gèlerais sur quelques-uns de ces pics. Un grizzly
hiverne sur les hauteurs, Jimmy, un ours noir… dans les vallées.
Alors qu’il y a déjà quatre pieds de neige aux alentours de la
tanière d’un grizzly, l’ours noir peut continuer à se nourrir dans les
forêts des bas-fonds.
Il ne s’endort guère que quatre ou cinq semaines après le grizzly
et il se réveille au printemps une ou deux semaines plus tôt.
 Il est plus gras quand il se terre et moins maigre quand il ressort,
de sorte que les mères ont plus de force pour allaiter leurs petits.
— Tu as mis en plein dans le mille ! s’écria Langdon
enthousiaste. Bruce, je n’y aurais jamais pensé.
— Il y a des tas de choses auxquelles on ne pense pas avant de
mettre le doigt dessus, répliqua le montagnard.
Bruce se leva et s’étira, opération coutumière qui précédait
toujours sa mise au lit…
— Il fera beau demain, prédit-il en bâillant. Regarde comme la
neige est blanche sur les pics !
— Bruce…
— Quoi ?
— Qu’est-ce que peut bien peser l’ours que nous poursuivons ?
— Douze cents livres, peut-être un peu plus ; je n’ai pas eu le
plaisir de le regarder d’aussi près que toi, Jimmy. Si j’avais été à ta
place, nous serions en train de faire sécher sa peau en ce moment.
— Et il est dans la force de l’âge ?
— Entre huit et douze ans, je pense, si j’en juge par la manière
dont il gravit la pente. Un vieil ours ne se déhanche pas si aisément.
— Tu as rencontré de vieux ours, Bruce ?
— Si vieux qu’ils auraient eu besoin de béquilles ! repartit le guide
en délaçant ses bottes. J’ai tué des ours si vieux qu’ils avaient perdu
leurs dents.
— Quel âge ?
— Trente, trente-cinq, peut-être quarante ans… Bonsoir, Jimmy.
— Bonsoir, Bruce.
 CHAPITRE VIII
LA MÈRE DE MUSKWA

Bien après que Bruce se fut endormi, Langdon demeura seul à

méditer sous les étoiles, tandis que le feu, à ses pieds, passait du
rouge vif au rouge sombre.
Ce soir, plus que jamais peut-être, il sentait sur lui l’empire de
l’Esprit du désert, qui provoquait en lui des désirs étranges, en
même temps qu’un apaisement profond.
L’Esprit de la montagne, des lacs et des forêts, ce merveilleux et
mystérieux Esprit du silence, l’avait enchaîné par des liens
infrangibles après tant d’années passées à errer dans les solitudes
du Nord.
Son désir impérieux était de faire connaître au monde la poésie
majestueuse du désert canadien.
Il eût voulu que les autres hommes pussent sentir et voir comme
lui et qu’ils pussent aussi comprendre.
Depuis des années, il avait réglé sa vie de manière à pouvoir
passer la plus grande partie de son temps dans la grande solitude. Il
avait alors la passion de tuer. La maison s’emplissait de trophées de
chasse, têtes et peaux de créatures qu’il avait abattues.
Et maintenant, voici que quelque chose étanchait en lui le besoin
de tuer…
 Au cours des toutes dernières semaines, il avait laissé vivre des
centaines de créatures qu’il eût pu facilement abattre.
Aujourd’hui même, il avait épargné deux ours !
Au plaisir ancien de la chasse s’en substituait lentement, mais
sûrement, un autre.
La main d’Achatt était sur lui. Il ne pouvait plus tuer pour le plaisir
de tuer.
Il se souvenait d’un rêve curieux qu’il avait eu en s’endormant
certain soir sur son travail dans le studio de sa maison.
Les têtes empaillées accrochées au mur s’étaient prises à revivre
et l’une après l’autre avaient tourné vers lui leurs grands yeux
brillants de lumière et l’avaient accusé de meurtre.
Quarante ans ! Les paroles de Bruce résonnaient toujours à ses
oreilles.
Si une créature du désert pouvait atteindre un âge aussi avancé,
combien d’années de vie n’avait-il pas détruites en ces jours de
massacres où il s’était estimé un chasseur heureux ?
Combien d’années de vie avait-il volées aux animaux massacrés
par lui ?
Quel bourreau sinistre il avait été ce jour où, dans une matinée, il
avait tué trois ours sur un éboulis de montagne et deux caribous
dans la vallée… Cent ans de battements de cœur, de bonheur
paisible… Il avait détruit cent ans en trente minutes, pour le plaisir
exacerbé de tuer !
Il se mit à additionner, en fixant le feu, le total de ses
destructions, et il arriva à mille ans. Il se leva et sortit du camp sous
la lumière froide des étoiles. Il écouta le ronron nocturne de la vallée
et emplit ses poumons de l’air balsamique, cependant qu’il se
demandait ce qu’il avait gagné par ce rouge massacre de dix siècles
de vie.
Il conclut justement qu’il n’avait rien gagné. Ce fameux jour où il
avait détruit cinq vies, il ne s’était pas senti plus joyeux
qu’aujourd’hui où il n’avait pas tué.
 Il avait perdu son envie de tuer comme il avait tué, mais la
chasse n’avait rien perdu de sa fascination pour lui. Son attrait était
plus grand que jamais. Elle tenait pour lui en réserve des joies qu’il
n’avait jamais connues auparavant.
Des centaines de choses nouvelles avaient pris la place du
triomphe momentané qu’il éprouvait jadis à voir les convulsions
d’agonie d’une bête tombée sous ses balles.
Il éprouvait toujours le désir de tuer et il continuerait à tuer, sans
quoi il n’eût été ni un chasseur, ni un mangeur de viande, mais il
n’avait plus la mentalité d’un Indien et la joie du massacre ne
l’aveuglait plus !
Il contempla la vallée éclairée d’étoiles où il pensait que Tyr
devait être.
C’était là une chasse, une vraie chasse, et il s’était déjà promis
de jouer franc jeu.
Il s’était décidé à chasser Tyr, mais Tyr seul. Il était enchanté de
ne l’avoir point tué sur la pente, car la chasse gagnerait en intérêt
maintenant à cause de la méfiance du grand grizzly pour l’homme.
Il était certain qu’il n’éprouverait pas de remords à abattre Tyr.
L’énorme bête qu’il avait vue et sur laquelle il avait tiré ne serait
pas une proie facile. Elle leur donnerait du fil à retordre. Elle se
défendrait désespérément et les chiens auraient à en découdre si
Metoosin arrivait à temps avec eux.
Tyr était averti.
Il lui était loisible de changer de territoire et d’échapper s’il le
voulait, ou bien il pouvait rester et combattre.
Langdon pensait bien que l’ours demeurerait et il alla se coucher
dans l’attente joyeuse du lendemain.
Il fut éveillé quelques heures plus tard par un déluge de pluie qui
le fit jaillir de ses couvertures avec un cri d’avertissement à Bruce.
Ils n’avaient pas monté leur tente et, l’instant d’après, il entendit
Bruce maudissant leur idiotie.
 La nuit était aussi sombre qu’une caverne, sauf lorsqu’elle se
zébrait d’éclairs et que la montagne s’emplissait du roulement
sinistre du tonnerre.
Se dégageant de ses couvertures trempées, Langdon se leva. A
la lueur d’un éclair, il aperçut Bruce assis sur son lit de camp, les
cheveux dégouttants d’eau, plaqués sur la figure, et à cette vue il
éclata de rire.
— Il fera beau temps demain ! railla-t-il en répétant les paroles
prononcées par Bruce quelques heures auparavant. Regarde
comme la neige est blanche sur les pics !
La repartie de Bruce fut étouffée par le fracas du tonnerre.
Langdon attendit un autre éclair et se précipita vers l’abri fourni
par des sapins épais. Il y demeura tapi, recroquevillé sur lui-même
pendant cinq à dix minutes. Puis la pluie cessa soudain comme elle
avait commencé ; le tonnerre roula vers le sud et les éclairs
l’accompagnèrent.
Dans l’obscurité, il entendit Bruce qui fouillait parmi les objets de
campement, puis une allumette fut grattée et il vit son camarade en
train de regarder sa montre.
— Il est bien près de trois heures, émit le guide… Saleté de
pluie !
— Je m’y attendais plutôt, répliqua Langdon blagueur… Tu sais,
Bruce, quand la neige est aussi blanche sur les pics…
— Ferme ta bouche… et allumons du feu, C’est une veine que
nous ayons eu l’esprit de recouvrir nos vivres avec les couvertures…
Es-tu mouillé ?
Langdon tordait ses cheveux pour en égoutter l’eau.
— Non, j’étais à l’abri sous les sapins ! je m’attendais d’ailleurs à
l’être. Quand tu attiras mon attention sur la blancheur de la neige…
je me méfiai tout de suite.
— Au diable la neige ! grogna Bruce, et Langdon l’entendit qui
cassait les basses branches résineuses d’un sapin.
 Il s’en fut l’aider et, cinq minutes plus tard, ils avaient déjà une
belle flambée.
La lueur illumina leurs visages et ils se rendirent compte chacun
que le camarade n’était pas de mauvaise humeur.
Bruce ricanait entre ses mèches détrempées.
— J’étais dans le plus profond sommeil quand ça commença,
expliqua-t-il, et je rêvais que j’étais tombé dans un lac. Je me suis
réveillé en essayant de nager.
Une averse du début de juillet dans les montagnes du Nord de la
Colombie britannique n’est pas particulièrement tiède, et, pendant
une bonne petite heure, Langdon et Bruce continuèrent à
rassembler du combustible pour sécher leurs couvertures et leurs
vêtements.
Il était cinq heures lorsqu’ils déjeunèrent et il en était six lorsqu’ils
se remirent en route avec deux chevaux de selle et un seul cheval
de bât.
Bruce eut la satisfaction d’une revanche sur Langdon : ses
prévisions se vérifièrent et une journée merveilleuse fit suite à
l’orage.
Les prairies que foulaient les chevaux conservaient l’humidité. La
vallée ronronnait plus haut, les ruisseaux s’étaient enflés. Des
sommets des montagnes la moitié de la neige s’était trouvée
balayée et les fleurs semblaient à Langdon plus hautes et plus
belles.
L’air qui flottait à travers la vallée était chargé de la fraîcheur et
de la douceur du matin. Le soleil épandait sur le tout ses chauds
rayons d’or.
Ils continuèrent à remonter le cours du ruisseau, se penchant du
haut de leurs selles pour examiner les étendues de sable qu’ils
franchissaient. Ils n’avaient pas parcouru un quart de mille lorsque
Bruce poussa une brusque exclamation et s’arrêta. Il désignait un
petit banc de sable rond sur lequel Tyr avait laissé l’une de ses
larges empreintes.
 Langdon sauta à bas de sa selle et la mesura.
— C’est donc lui, s’écria-t-il avec une ardeur nouvelle dans la
voix. Ne ferions-nous pas mieux d’abandonner les chevaux, Bruce ?
Le montagnard hocha la tête. Mais, avant d’émettre une opinion,
il sauta de sa selle et étudia les flancs de la montagne devant lui à
travers son long télescope. Langdon en fit autant avec ses jumelles
prismatiques, mais sans rien découvrir non plus.
— Il est toujours dans les bas-fonds et probablement à trois ou
quatre milles devant nous, fit Bruce… Nous pouvons toujours
parcourir un couple de milles à cheval, avant de chercher un endroit
où mettre au piquet nos canards ! L’herbe et les buissons seront
secs d’ici là.
Il leur fut dès lors facile de suivre la piste de Tyr, car le grizzly ne
s’était plus guère écarté du ruisseau.
A trois ou quatre cents mètres du grand éboulis au détour duquel
le grizzly avait découvert l’ourson à la frimousse brune, s’érigeait un
petit boqueteau de pins au cœur d’une courbe herbeuse ; les
chasseurs y dessellèrent et y entravèrent leurs chevaux.
Vingt minutes plus tard, ils foulaient précautionneusement le
tapis de sable fin sur lequel Tyr et Muskwa avaient fait
connaissance.
La lourde pluie avait oblitéré les petites empreintes de l’ourson,
mais le sable gardait celles très prononcées du grizzly.
Les yeux de Bruce scintillaient lorsqu’il se retourna vers
Langdon.
— Il n’est pas très loin, chuchota-t-il. Ça ne m’étonnerait pas qu’il
ait passé la nuit tout près, et il doit être en train de s’étirer quelque
part par là.
Il mouilla un de ses doigts et le tint au-dessus de sa tête pour voir
d’où venait le vent, puis il hocha de nouveau la tête.
— Vaudrait mieux grimper sur la pente ?
Ils achevèrent de contourner l’éboulis, leurs carabines prêtes à
faire feu, et se dirigèrent vers un étroit ravin qui semblait permettre