Vestments Controversy - The Controversy During The Reign of Elizabeth I

The Controversy During The Reign of Elizabeth I

With the accession of the new queen, many Marian exiles hoped for further reform upon their return to England and for the final removal of vestments from mandatory church use. The new queen, however, sought unity with her first parliament in 1559 and did not want to encourage nonconformity. Under her Act of Uniformity 1559, backed by the Act of Supremacy, the 1552 Prayer Book was to be the model for ecclesiastical use, but with an even more conservative stance on vestments that went back to the second year of Edward VI's reign. The alb, cope, and chasuble were all to be brought back into use, while the exiles had abandoned even the surplice. The queen assumed direct control over these rules and all ceremonies or rites.

Anticipating further problems with vestments, Thomas Sampson corresponded with Peter Martyr Vermigli on the matter. Martyr's advice, along with Bullinger's, was to accept vestments but also to preach against them. However, Sampson, Lever, and others were unsatisfied with the lack of such protest from Elizabeth's bishops, such as Cox, Edmund Grindal, Pilkington, Sandys, Jewel, and Parkhurst, even though some, like Sandys and Grindal, were reluctant conformists with nonconformist sympathies. Archbishop Parker, consecrated by the anti-vestiarian Miles Coverdale, was also a major source of discontent.

Tensions built to a crisis in the wake of the 1562-63 convocation, which saw the victory of the conservative position over some proposed anti-vestiarian revisions to the Prayer Book. Thirty-four delegates to the convocation, including many Marian exiles, brought up seven articles altering the Prayer Book. The articles were subsequently reshaped and reduced to six; they failed to be sent to the Upper House by only one vote due to the abstentions of some of the sponsors of the original draft who apparently rejected a compromise settlement. Debate among the bishops and lower clergy was followed by support from the queen for Archbishop Parker to secure uniformity along the lines of the 1559 Prayer Book.

On March 20, 1563, an appeal was made to the ecclesiastical commissioners by twenty petitioners to exempt them from the use of vestments. These included a number of prominent clergy, mainly in the diocese of London, whose bishop, Grindal, had packed his see with former exiles and activists for reform. The petition was approved by all the commissioners except Parker and Guest, who rejected it.

Sampson and Humphrey were the first nonconformist leaders to be targeted by Parker and whose steadfast refusal to conform led to Sampson's quick deprivation in 1565, as he was directly under the queen's authority. Humphrey, under the jurisdiction of Robert Horne, the bishop of Winchester, was able to return to his position as president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was later offered by Horne a benefice in Sarum, though with Sarum's bishop, Jewel, opposing this. At this time, Bullinger was counselling Horne with a position more tolerant of vestments, while nonconformist agitation was taking place among students at St John's College, Cambridge.

Tuesday, March 26, 1566, brought the peak of enforcement against nonconformity, with the diocese of London targeted as an example, despite Parker's expectation that it would leave many churches "destitute for service this Easter, and that many will forsake their livings, and live at printing, teaching their children, or otherwise as they can." The London clergy were assembled at Lambeth Palace. Parker had requested but failed to gain the attendance of William Cecil, Lord Keeper Nicholas Bacon, and the Lord Marquess of Northampton, so it was left to Parker himself, bishop Grindal, the dean of Westminster, and some canonists. One former nonconformist, Robert Cole, was stood before the assembly in full canonical habit. There was no discussion. The ultimatum was issued that the clergy would appear as Cole—in a square cap, gown, tippet, and surplice. They would "inviolably observe the rubric of the Book of Common Prayer, and the Queen majesty's injunctions: and the Book of Convocation." The clergy were ordered to commit themselves on the spot, in writing, with only the words volo or nolo. Sixty-one subscribed; thirty-seven did not and were immediately suspended with their livings sequestered. A three-month grace period was given for these clergy to change their minds before they would be fully deprived.

The deprivations were to be carried out under the authority of Parker's Advertisements, which he had just published as a revised form of the original articles defining ecclesiastical conformity. (The full title is Advertisements partly for due order in the publique administration of common prayers and usinge the holy sacramentes, and partly for the apparrell of all persons ecclesiasticall, by vertue of the Queenes maiesties letters commaunding the same.) Parker had not obtained the crown's authorisation for this mandate, however, though he increasingly positioned himself toward the nonconformist clergy as acting on and under the authority of the state. Royal authority stood to simplify the problem for him, because disobedience of the monarch was disobedience of God. However, without explicit backing from the queen and council, this assertion lacked force. Thus, the nonconformist reaction to Parker's crackdown was, as he expected, a vociferous assertion of their persecuted status with some serious displays of disobedience. John Stow records in his Memoranda that in most parishes, the sextons did not change the service if they had conducted it without vestments previously: "in some places the ministers themselves did service in their gowns or cloaks with turning collars and hats as they were wont to do, and preached stoutly and against the order taken by the queen and council and the bishops for consenting there unto." By some lights, these clergy constituted an emerging Puritan faction, and that word was indeed first recorded as being in use at this time as term of abuse for nonconformists.