Rowland Taylor - Taylor's Troubles (circa 1553)

Taylor's Troubles (circa 1553)

Taylor's troubles began on July 25, 1553. He was arrested just six days after the new Queen, Mary I, ascended the throne. Aside from the fact that Taylor had supported Lady Jane Grey, Mary's rival, he was also charged with heresy for having preached a sermon in Bury St. Edmunds denouncing the Roman Catholic practice of clerical celibacy, which required that a priest in holy orders be unmarried. Many English clergymen, including Dr. Taylor, had abandoned this teaching since the 1530s as a token of the English Reformation.

Taylor also denounced the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation which is the belief that the two elements (bread and wine) taken during Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Since the Roman Catholic position is that the Eucharist (and the miracle of transubstantiation) is a sacrament commanded by God, anyone denying it, particularly a cleric or pastor, is considered a heretic. This teaching was opposed universally by the Reformed and Protestant Churches, who maintained that, since a sacrament is a sign, it cannot also be the thing signified. For similar reasons relating to the problem of idolatry, Taylor took issue with the Roman Catholic form of the Mass, and received much support from the villagers of Hadleigh.

These issues came to a head after Edward VI died (July 6, 1553) and was succeeded by Queen Mary I. In 1554 Mary began a program of re-establishing Catholicism in England. However the English clergy and Anglican faithful, whose hopes for a Protestant royal succession had been dashed by Mary's imprisonment and execution of Lady Jane Grey, saw it as a matter of English Christian duty to resist this backlash, not least to resist the political ambitions of the King of Spain (Philip II, whom Mary married) to draw England within the sphere of the Holy Roman Empire and its Roman Catholic satellites. Although Mary, as Henry VIII's eldest daughter, was a legitimate successor to Edward VI, England was no longer minded to tolerate a Roman Catholic monarch, and the courage and endurance unto death of men like Dr Taylor provided the public example which ensured that the Reformation was not in fact overturned, but became established in the Realm of England.

On March 26, 1554 the Privy Council ordered the arrest of Taylor and he thus appeared before Archbishop Stephen Gardiner. The proceedings against Taylor ran over several years. During this time he was kept in the King's Bench Prison. While in prison he befriended many inmates and was instrumental in many conversions to Anglicanism.