Rule Brittania, Brittania Rules the Waves! Spanish Armada, 29 July 1558, in the Channel

Rusten, E. Michael and Rusten, Sharon. The One Year Christian History. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003.

On July 29, 1588, the Spanish Fleet and the infamous Armada was in defeat. May the Triune God be praised for this defeat on the high seas.
 

"Man up, lads. General quartars! General Quarters!  All hands, to your battle-stations!  This is not a drill. To your battle-stations, set zebra conditions, this is not a drill!  The Spaniards are in the Channel. Give em' hell, boys! By God, that man of Rome shall have no rule in England!"

Some of the backstory which has been told often. Being the 29th of July, we remember the victory for English Protestantism.

Elizabeth 1 ascended the English throne in late 1558 after the tumultuous and bloody Mary, the half-sister of Elizabeth. We know the story here. At issue, Ms. (queen) Mary hated Protestantism. But, Elizabeth was a Protestant to some degree. This much, the bishop of Rome "shall have no rule in this dominion." Times had been perilous.

The most powerful monarch in Europe was Mr. (king) Philip II of Spain.

More largely in the Romanist fold, Emperor Ferdinand I of the Romano-Germanic Empire (Holy Roman Empire or Holy German Empire), Philip II, Mary Queen of Scots, and the bishop of Rome constituted the mighty phalanx in behalf of Western Romanism. Make no mistake. They were committed to extinguishing and extirpating that odious "Protestantism."

There was encouragement for Philip II to invade England and restore the holy, catholic and apostolic faith…as understood by the bishop of Rome.

But, marital arrangements could sometimes resolve the difficulties. At least that was a plan. Elizabeth toyed with Philip II, suggesting she might perhaps marry the son of Philip II. (But she had learned how that played out when her half-sister Mary 1 married the Spanish King. That was ugly.) Of course, Elizabeth was the master of Realpolitik.

Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake (avid reader of John Foxe’s "Book of Martyrs") was plundering Spanish merchant vessels with Elizabeth’s tacit approval.

In another “meanwhile,” Philip II’s agenda was on view with the Netherlands, “those crabbed Dutch Calvinists.” Philip II’s story in the Netherlands with the effort to impose Romanism on Calvinistic Churchmen...well, that had long and ugly chapters.

The Dutchmen said, "We seal our Confession with blood. We give you our backs to the stripes and we confess with the heart and with the mouth..." That, is the Belgic Confession is what they "confessed." And these hearty Dutchmen resisted and the stories are many.

Elizabeth covertly helped to fund the Netherland’s resistance. She hoped that with Philip II pinned down in the Netherlands, they might avoid invading England. It was only delayed.

In another “meanwhile,” Elizabeth ran into a financial gain. English pirates drove Spanish ships into English ports—Spanish ships that carried the “pay roll” for Spanish soldiers in the Netherlands. For the meantime, Philip II “kept his temper” and Elizabeth 1 “kept the cash.”

“A” trigger for Philip’s temper was pulled when Elizabeth imprisoned the Roman Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. That was it. As a result, Philip implicated himself in a covert assassination plot against Elizabeth. The lines of opposition were hardening. Elizabeth evicted the Spanish ambassador from England and began war preparations. If you’re a betting man or woman, who do you put your money on? England or Spain?

Both sides fleeted up for a conflict. A Naval war would ensue. Elizabeth had 34 royal ships and contracted with 170 merchant ships to be equipped with armaments. The Spaniards had 130 vessels—the biggest and the latest in nautical developments for those times.

The Spaniards put their fleet to sea. (Of course, the ever-clever, seemingly ubiquitous Spy-Master, Sir Francis Walsingham, a committed Calvinist, had the preliminary intel-reports on the ships' movements.) Monks were aboard the Spanish ships to help convert England back to the fold of the bishop of Rome, the Pope. The morning that the fleet set to sea, all sailors partook of the Eucharist (that is, drinking blood and eating flesh…cannibalism). “All of Spain prayed.” Off they headed to old England.

However, as they approached England, winds drove Spanish ships back to port. When the later engagement unfolded, Sir Francis Drake set some small boats afire, positioned them downwind of the Spanish fleet, set them off, and they caused two ships to catch on fire. Several Spanish ships became “entangled” in the disorder, but also caught afire. At noon, English artillery laid into the Spanish fleet. Some sank. Others fled.

The Spaniards also encountered further bad weather and were driven into the North Sea…an inhospitable world as sailors have often noted (myself included). Some Spanish ships were driven off towards Ireland.

One Irish city found 1100 dead Spanish sailors ashore after, inferably, they went down at sea. It was beginning to look like a Naval and meteriological victory for the Brits.

Of Philip II’s 130 ships, 53 returned to Spain, damaged if not sea-worthy. Of the 27,000 sailors who left Spain in hopes of victory, 10,000 returned to home ports.

England lost 60 men. England’s Royal Navy lost no ships.

Of greater significance, England remained a Protestant, Reformed and mostly cleansed communion in the one true, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

Without the victory of the English fleet in 1588, we might well have been speaking Spanish and….what else?

Without the victory of the English fleet in 1588, we might be:

1. Doing meritorious tours on Rosary beads to importune His Triune Majesty,
2. Believing in purgatory,
3. Invoking 100s of saints,
4. Hosting transubstantiatory Masses with the cannibalism of it,
5. Doing Mariology,
6. Worshipping at the Lady of Walsingham Shrine,
7. Reserving the blessed Sacrament,
8. Denying justification by faith alone,
9. Denying sola scriptura,
10. Denying sola fide,
11. Denying solus Christus,
12. Strenuously opposing Reformation theology of Confessional Lutherans, Presbyterians, the Reformed, and old school Anglicans.
13. Praying this:

"Hail, O Queen, on high enthroned, Hail, O Lady, by Angels owned; Jesse's rod; yea heaven's portal Whence hath shone earth's Light immortal: Hail, O Virgin, most renowned, Hail, O truly worthy Maiden: Pray Christ for us so burden-laden.

V. Accept my praise, O hallowed Virgin.
R. Pray that I may have strength against your enemies. Lord, mercifully assist us in our infirmity: that like as we do now commemorate blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, Mother of God; so by the help of her prayers we may die to our former sins and rise again to newness of life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen."

Oh wait, Tractarians and Anglo-Romewardizers, e.g. FIFNA and their sponsors, already have these things. Oh my, have they forgotten 29 July 1588? Yes, willingly and willfully.

Fortunately, Elizabeth 1 and the Royal Navy prevailed in 1588. Largely, England was spared the above.

For some fun without surrendering the serious points above, we include this youtube: “Rule Brittania, Rule the Waves.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XPHL4Q86t4

On the serious point, Spain and the bishop of Rome was pushed off and away from English shores, religion, thought, liberty and life.  Western and American history was changed.

 

May we do the same with the Tractarians and other inhospitable parasites.  Send them back to Spain or Italy.

 

To the Triune God, be all praise, honor and glory, now and forevermore.

 

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves...

www.youtube.com

Or, this, Gilbert and Sullivan's "For He is an Englishman...:"  

http://youtu.be/z2r9t6l_eE8

Luther, Cranmer, & the Romano-Germanic Empire

Beard, Charles. Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany Until the Close of the Diet of Worms. London: Philip Green, 1896.

A few musings, notes and reminders.

Objective: lay out larger geo-political context for 16th century and, in view of Cranmerian studies, assess the Canterbury-Wittenberg connection. We have not seen much between Mr. Cranmer and Mr. Luther in the 1520s. Cranmer gets his doctorate in/around 1522-23ish at age 34. What does he know, if he knows much?

As for the English outpost north of the Channel and external to Imperial-Romanist politics, Mr. (bp.) John Fisher, Mr. (king) Tudor, Mr. More and others knew about Lutheranism in the 1520s, but what about Mr. Cranmer?

As such, we’ll review Mr. Beard and Lutheranism (worthy to be studied on its own), but as an effort to assess Early Henrician reformism. And, more narrowly, to investigate this slow and plodding Cambridge man...hero or villain?

As such, the central narrative in Beard’s work is the German Reformation from 1517 to Melancthon’s death in 1560. The setting is Saxony and Wittenberg. The more narrow focus of his book are the events between 1517 and 1521. Again, Mr. Cranmer gets his doctorate about 1522-23ish at age 34.

The 16th century had the printing press. This would have helped Wycliffe; it helped Luther. Libraries grew and books were more readily available. Even Mr. Cranmer’s collegiate library grew quite significantly from its modest beginnings in 1498 (about 500-600 volumes) until 1690, as previously noted.

Erasmus had noted that a “change” at Cambridge had occurred over “his last two years there” (1510-1515) as Mr. Pollard informs us. “The New Learning” was at hand. A revival of the study of classical literature and philosophy, allegedly and reportedly, was occurring; or, so it is said. The exact lineaments of those changes are still under review.

Mr. Beard gives us a brief tour of the political Reich, the “Holy Roman Empire,” which was in fact the “Holy German Empire” baptized, ratified and supported by various Popes. It may be called the “Romano-Germanic Empire.” The Second Reich, a Babel of several languages but united in the Latin tongue for Churchmen and scholars. The gift of the modern American Pentecostals, so skilled in numerous languages (tongue in cheek) and so supported by several ACNA bishops (tsk! tsk!), had not been invented yet. In those days, studying grammar and languages was important in some academic centers.

The Carolingian Kingdom of the Franks invested “the succession of the Roman Empire” with renewed vigor under “Otho the Great.” But, although an Empire, it was heading away from monarchy towards a “confederacy of states.”

The Empire had been rather “homogenous” under Charlemagne in 800 A.D.  However, Italy was disunited into varied principalities in the 16th century (and wouldn’t be a united Italy until 1870). We might refer one to Mr. Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise on the inter-tribal conflicts in Italy.

Spain had united Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella. England, an outpost of sorts, was strengthening its national consciousness after the War of Roses. A hat tip goes to the Tudors for this consolidation. The Royal Absolutists of the Stuarts further enabled this nationalism. Brittany had united under the House of Valois, thereby strengthening and unifying France. Germany, however, had some disunity. Various unities and disunities are evident.

The ideal was when the "two swords" were “happily in accord.” The Pope ruled over the spiritual realm with the Emperor ruling over the civil realms. American theonomists like Mr. Sutton, Mr. Jordan and others would like to see this revived. The “sun” and the “moon” stood in the intellectual, political, legal, moral, and cultural sky.

It is a huge mistake to think of Erastianism as an English problem.

But, back tracking.

The coronation of Charles by Leo in 800 was the “central event of the Middle Ages.” Charles began his evangelism program with this charming gem: “convert” or take the sword.

By 962, Otho the Great descended from the Alps with his victorious army to become another “crowned Emperor.” Setting: of course, Rome. Allegedly, “…the Pope owned himself a subject and the citizens swore for the future to elect no Pope without Otho’s consent.”

The two bedfellows would frequently get to fighting each other.

The Papacy, itself, had its ups and downs. 100 years would pass until Mr. (pope) Gregory VII and Henry IV would appear.

In one instance of infamy, at a height of Papal sovereignty and a nadir for the Empire, the Emperor waited in the snow in the castle-yard at Canossa until “the Pope should be willing to see and to absolve a penitent.” Cheer up, Sir Emperor, Mr. Pope is the Sovereign. Have you not read Matthew 16 and are you unaware of the sense of it...e.g., Unam Sanctum, 1301?  You, Mr. Emperor are the moon and we, the Popes, are the "Sun of the Sky."

St. Mark's, Venice
A stones throw from the harbor area
and source of the Venetian
canal system.  It is located
on the famous piazza or plaza
with surrounding cafes and the like.
And pigeons.

Or, on another occasion, Frederick Barbarrosa appeared at the grandiose St. Mark’s in Venice and “humbly bowed before Alexander 111.” Mr. Barbarrosa “deliberately confessed itself the Empire] vanquished.” Now, now, Mr. Barbarrosa, things will improve.

The Papacy put out its pseudo-Isadorian decretals, later proven to be titular and legal forgeries but forgeries nonetheless that were skillfully used by Popes, to claim vast land holdings. It might be called “Estate Planning.”

Mandatory clerical celibacy, a novelty, was enforced and vows of obedience from monks and nuns were vital to the Roman apparatchiks and their machineries of governance and control.

Avignon, however, and the Papal Split for some 70 years was a disaster for Papal pretensions.

By the 16th century, Electors of the Empire, while retaining their own territorial privileges, began to “bestow the Imperial Crown on a prince who like Charles V might have a fair ground to aspire to universal dominion.” One good thing from Mr. Charles V...he evicted the Muslims from southern Europe, an ever-avaricious theocratic breed.

A College of Electors was made up of 7 persons. Mr. (pope) Urban established in 1265 that 3 archbishops would be Electors: Mainz, Kohl, and Trier. The other 4 were Dukes from chief tribes: Franks, Swabians, Saxons, and Bavarians. Charles IV would later expand this college to include: Bohemia, Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg. This Romano-Germanic Empire as configured by this college, continued in this pattern until the Thirty-Years War, 1618-1648.

The Electors retained dominion in their own territories. They could independently collect taxes. They had their own courts. In short, a monarch was moving towards a “confederation of states.”

Into this matrix, Mr. Luther in time would get "political cover" from an Elector of the college. Without it, the Emperor and the Imperial Edict would have meant the stake and death for Mr. Luther.

The Popes surely wanted Mr. Luther's head.

Ultimately, they got Mr. Cranmer's...and his whole body.