Grumbling with the Godly
If you let in something like the Reformation, you open the floodgates to all
sorts of oddballs. Religion was at the heart of everybody's life in the 16th cen-
tury and what began in Martin Luther's day (see Chapter 6) as an attack on
the abuses of the Catholic Church became a fertile breeding ground for ever-
more wacky ideas.
The new `left' in religion were the Puritans � Anabaptists, Calvinists and
Presbyterians � who took a leaf out of John Calvin's book in Geneva,
Switzerland. They were staunchly against the following:
Blasphemy: If you took the Lord's name in vain you were punished with
an iron spike through the tongue.
Flash clothes: The sign of the worst sin of all � vanity. Puritans stuck to
simple clothing.
Playing cards: These were the `Devil's picture books' and were banned.
Plays: Don't even go there! (See the following section.)
As early as 1565 a hard-line group of Puritans was emerging in the Commons
and Cambridge University had a nest of them, especially in St John's College.
The following year the tolerant, even laid-back Matthew Parker, archbishop
of Canterbury, had to send out his advertisements (see Chapter 13) to remind
both `right' and `left' in the country what the Church of England actually
believed. Puritan priests were refusing to kneel to take communion, make the
sign of the cross in baptism or wear surplices, which they called `the livery of
Antichrist'.
Thrashing the theatres (and
everything else enjoyable!)
The Puritan killjoys were soon at work attacking the `vices' of Elizabeth's
England. Philip Stubbes wrote his Anatomie of Abuses in 1582, which attacked
almost everything from country dancing to the size of gentlemen's ruffs:
Football (a 300-year-old street game in Elizabeth's day) was `a bloody
and murdering practice rather than a fellowly sport and pastime'. (Fair
enough!)
Bowling alleys were wastes of `time, wit and money'. (Okay.)
Maypoles were `stinking idols' (and they were phallic symbols � penis
worship for the sake of fertility � so were doubly naughty). Chapter 14: Gunning for Elizabeth 247 But Stubbes saved his best lines for the theatres.
Stubbes said that theatres were invitations to debauchery of all kinds:
Mark the flocking and running to Theatre and Curtains [two London
playhouses in the 1580s] daily and hourly, night and day, time and tide . . .
where such kissing and bussing [canoodling] such winking and glancing of
wanton eyes . . . is wonderful [not in a good way] to behold. And what happened after the show? `Every mate sorts to his mate . . . and in their secret conclaves they play the sodomites or worse.' Worse? Steady on! Can't you just see the steam coming out of Stubbes's ears?
And he wasn't alone. John Stockwood complained that thousands went to the theatre where barely a hundred went to church. Theatres taught you to lie, cheat, steal, scoff, mock, murder, `devirginate maids' and to ignore God's laws.
By 1588 various tracts signed by `Martin Marprelate' � not a real person, and the surname means `evil bishop' in Latin � appeared on walls all over London attacking the bishops in the Church of England. The Godly were gaining ground.
Remember that brilliant scene in Shakespeare in Love where a Puritan preacher is ranting outside two theatres in London � `A plague on both your houses,' he screams. It's a good phrase and Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), passing at that moment, overhears the words and pinches them for his forthcoming Romeo and Juliet. Genius!
Pressing the Presbyterians In Chapter 13 we explain that some Puritans wanted a church run by synods (assemblies of clergy and important laymen), not bishops. One Puritan sect, which came to control the Scottish church, was the Presbyterians. They didn't believe in bishops, but wanted a church run by elders who were responsible to their local community. All Presbyterians were Puritans, but not all Puritans were Presbyterian.
What bothered Puritans most was the cop-out clause that allowed people to go to Anglican services now and again (occasional conformity) while they were actually secret Catholics. They realised they wouldn't get anywhere in Parliament so they did their own thing and set up prophesying, group train- ing sessions for Bible study. Elizabeth wasn't happy with prophesying and banned it.
Archbishop Edmund Grindal, who succeeded Matthew Parker as archbishop
of Canterbury in 1576, ignored Elizabeth's ban on prophesying and lost his
job. His replacement, John Whitgift, was an Anglican hard-liner who blasted
both Presbyterians and Catholics from his pulpit.
Anthony Cope tried to push Puritan legislation through the Commons, want-
ing to abolish Elizabeth's Church and set up a Presbyterian model instead.
Most of Parliament was horrified and the queen had the move stopped.
Cope's timing was appalling � this was 1587 and a great deal of uncertainty
existed in the country over the plans of Philip of Spain (see Chapter 15). It
wasn't the right time for change of any kind.
Silencing the separatists
By the 1590s many Puritans believed that the Church of England was so cor-
rupt that nothing and no one could save it. The only way forward was to
break with the Church and set up separate sects. Puritans got a real hold on
the country in the next century, and of course the Pilgrim Fathers took their
ideas to America, but separatists didn't make much headway at first.
In 1593 Parliament passed the Act against Seditious Sectaries, which killed
the separatist group in the Commons and in the country as a whole. That
year Parliament was difficult, holding up taxes for war costs (see Chapter 15)
until religious issues were put on the agenda. Elizabeth refused to cooperate,
and dismissed her MPs. On 29 May a leading Puritan, John Penry, was hanged
after a dodgy trial accusing him of printing anti-Church propaganda.
Wondering about Witchcraft
The year before Henry VII became king (see Chapter 2) two Catholic monks,
working on orders from the pope, wrote Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer
of the Witches). The Catholic Church believed (wrongly) that all over Europe
people were worshipping the devil and having sex with demons of the night.
Malleus was a sort of guidebook for recognising witches and a punishment
manual too.
The Middle Ages wasn't crammed full of witches. The actual number of trials
for witchcraft was tiny. It wasn't until the upheavals of the Reformation that
witchcraft's ideas gained ground, and even then different types of witchcraft
existed: Chapter 14: Gunning for Elizabeth 249
White witches were cunning women (and men) who'd been around
forever. They lived in villages, helped at births, looked after the sick and
laid out the dead. Most of their remedies were harmless, some
were (unintentionally) dangerous and some actually worked (the life-
saving miracle drug penicillin is, after all, mould on bread). At a time
when doctors were few, expensive and not very good, cunning women
made sense.
Black witches could be hired for maleficia (bad doings) like making your
neighbour's crops fail or his best cow die. The success of spells was
largely in the eye of the beholder (sympathetic magic) � if you believed
it was possible, then anything could happen.
Punishment for English and European witchcraft differed. In England the crime was a felony, punishable by hanging. In Europe (and in Scotland) it was heresy, punishable by burning. A lot of the information we have about 16th- century witchcraft is European and the so-called confessions of witches were obtained under the torture of the Inquisition (see Chapter 10).
Flying to the sabbat (mass meeting) on a horse or a broomstick may have been the result of taking hallucinogenic drugs like hemlock. And if you had sex with the devil at an orgy, that was either some guy in a goat's head getting lucky or wishful thinking.
Preying on the poor Very few examples of witchcraft affecting anybody with money or status exist. James VI of Scotland changed all that when he became king of England in 1603 (see Chapter 16) because he was obsessed with the subject and even wrote a book about it, Daemonologie, in 1597. Before that, only the poor seemed afflicted (remember, the six-fingered Anne Boleyn wasn't, in the end, accused of witchcraft at her trial for treason; see Chapter 5).
Going bump in the night People were very superstitious in Elizabeth's England. In 1584 de-bunker Reginald Scot wrote A Discoverie of Witches in which he rubbished witchcraft in a very 21st-century way. He listed nearly 80 sprites and goblins that coun- try-folk were afraid of, saying they didn't exist. Few people shared his views.
At Bungay, Suffolk on 4 August 1577 during a terrible storm (writers call it pathetic fallacy today) a black dog rushed into the church during morning service and tore the throats out of two people before dashing out again, leav- ing the shocked parishioners to note the claw-marks on the door and the fact that the church clock had gone haywire. Explanation? You tell us. 250 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth
The Chelmsford Trials
The first full trial for witchcraft took place at If you look at the case of Agnes Sampson
Chelmsford, Essex, in 1566. Three women were (admittedly in Scotland) in the 1590s, you find
charged with bewitching a child and on the stand out how the evidence for these trials was
one of them, Agnes Waterhouse, told an appalled obtained. She had a bridle put on that pressed
jury that she had a talking cat called Satan that four iron prongs into her mouth and she was
fed on her blood. Like the Elvis song of 400 years kept without sleep. After that, Agnes was prob-
later, the cat was `the devil in disguise'. Satan ably prepared to swear that the moon was
promised her all sorts of riches in exchange for made of green cheese (which, for all she knew,
doing bad works and Agnes was hanged. it was!).
Hanging with the witches
The witch craze didn't catch on in England until James Stuart became king
and he brought a lot of superstitious baggage with him from the North.
The best portrayal of witchcraft from the time is Shakespeare's Macbeth
in which the three weird sisters can prophesy the future and summon up
Hecate, goddess of the underworld. But the play was written in James I's
England specifically for the king himself, which is why it's about Scotland and
witchcraft � James' two favourite topics. Did Shakespeare believe in it? We
don't know.
Putting things in perspective
Witchcraft stories have been exaggerated over the years to include all sorts
of sexual deviance, pacts signed in blood with the devil and so on. It whipped
up hysteria and was infectious but no statements made by witches them-
selves were obtained without torture.
The old, the lonely and the eccentric were likely to annoy people in a village
and it was all too easy to point an accusing finger at them.
No recorded examples exist of witchcraft being used against the queen or her
Government in Elizabeth's England. On the other hand, one knack that witches
were supposed to have was the ability to cause storms at sea. As you see in
Chapter 15, Elizabeth could have used their services in the summer of 1588,
the summer of the Armada.
Facing the Armada In This Chapter
Getting on the bad side of Philip of Spain
Defending the Dutch
Singeing the king of Spain's beard with Francis Drake
Drumming the Armada up the Channel
T he world was not enough for Philip II of Spain in the 1580s. He owned
huge chunks of the world, his treasure ships prowled the seas and
the 16th century was Spain's si�cle d'oro � golden century. But irritated by
Elizabeth's privateers (see Chapter 12), Philip was eventually forced into
action when England backed the Dutch revolt against him in the Spanish
Netherlands.
Elizabeth's approach was cool and pragmatic, making stirring speeches to
her troops and relying on the most brilliant seamen of the age � and bad
weather � to destroy Philip's Armada: the biggest invading fleet the world
had ever seen.
Provoking Philip of Spain
The king of Spain was autocratic and pious and had no sense of humour. He
was the most powerful man in the world in the 1580s, more than the presi-
dent of the United States today because no one had elected him. He was king
of Spain, the Netherlands and much of the New World because, he believed,
God had put him on the throne, and he never let anyone forget it.
For much of his reign Philip was at war with France and the Ottoman Turks
whom he regarded as something less than human because they weren't
Christian. But he knew Elizabeth personally, had once proposed to her, had
been married to her sister (see Chapters 10 and 11) and had a grudging
respect for her. 252 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth
Walking a fine line
In Chapter 12 we introduce you to two seafarers: John Hawkins and Francis
Drake. Hawkins had already annoyed the Spanish authorities in the New
World, but he'd now settled down to become treasurer of the navy and to use
his huge talents redesigning ships and reorganising the fleet. Drake, on the
other hand, was still upsetting Spain's apple cart by helping himself to loot in
Spanish America.
The 1570s and 1580s were the decades in which Elizabeth turned a blind eye
to the piracy of her seadogs, infuriating Spanish ambassadors sent by Philip to
sort out the English privateers' antics.
Elizabeth's promise to Philip was half-hearted at best. In theory
All unlicensed voyages must stop.
All plundering of friendly ships must stop.
All loot taken illegally must be handed over to the Lord Admiral's Court
in London.
All this was fine but in practice complications existed. Merchant ships had
been armed for several years for their own protection on the seas and cap-
tains who were a long way from home and without any communication from
land did their own thing, firing on foreign shipping as a matter of course.
Tightening up?
In July 1561 Elizabeth issued a proclamation giving special protection to the
subjects of `her good brother' of Spain and sent out a few warships to arrest
and execute pirates. She gave the Bristol merchants a licence to use armed
ships for their own protection (which may actually have increased violence
on the high seas). In any case, Elizabeth's instruction was too little, too late.
The general trend was for captains to shoot first and sort it out with the lord
admiral later.
By 1569 Elizabeth was distinguishing between acts of piracy that went along
with foreign policy (attacks on Spanish ships) and acts of piracy that didn't
(attacks on anybody else).
The international waters were muddied, however, by what happened in
December 1568. The English grabbed five ships out of Biscay laden with
wool and 450,000 ducats of Spanish silver at Plymouth and Southampton on
the orders of William Cecil, Elizabeth's secretary of state. Technically, the
treasure didn't yet belong to Spain because it hadn't got there, but nobody
could pretend that this was the work of a rogue Devon seadog acting without
orders miles from anywhere.