Richard Hooker (1554-1600)

Richard Hooker
Exeter Cathedral

A doctoral student at Edinburgh wrestles with interpretations of Hooker.

 

http://calvinistinternational.com/2013/02/19/richard-hooker-reformed-irenic/

Richard Hooker, Reformed Irenic

by W. Bradford littlejohn

Brad Littlejohn is completing a Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh, where he is working under Oliver O’Donovan on the relationship between law, loyalty, and liberty in the thought of Richard Hooker. His passions include early modern and Reformation studies, as well as political theology and economics.

Or, A Refutation of the Calumnious Slanders Lately Lodged Against the Most Judicious and Rev. D. Hooker by D. Joyce of Birmingham, in Which are Exposed hir sundrie Errors, Misquotacions, and Misconceipts which do Uniustlie Stayne his moste Noble Memorie.

In her recent book, Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology,^[1] Alison Joyce offers an important new salvo in the ongoing battle over the interpretation and legacy of Richard Hooker. Although perhaps few Protestants today either know or care about this battle, it is in fact a conflict in which anyone who calls themselves “Reformed” or “Anglican” should have a stake. Hooker stands as a theological giant of the English church in the era when it understood itself as one of an international family of Reformed churches, an understanding which unfortunately both the “Anglican” church and the other Reformed churches have since lost. Although it has long been common to read Hooker in light of this later rift, seeing him, indeed, as one of the seminal figures in the development of a distinctive un-Reformed “Anglican” consciousness, the recent work of Torrance Kirby and disciples such as Nigel Atkinson over the past twenty-five years has set out to correct this reading.^[2] Kirby’s insistence on reading Hooker as a theologian of the Reformed tradition, challenging his Puritan opponents on the basis of their departures from Reformed orthodoxy, has proved remarkably contentious, given its prima facie plausibility. Eminent Hooker scholars such as Peter Lake and Nigel Voak have vigorously resisted Kirby’s revisionist reading, but although offering helpful correctives at certain points, they have by and large failed to engage his central arguments.^[3]

Although Joyce’s recent book is in many ways an excellent contribution to Hooker studies, it suffers throughout from an ongoing polemic against Kirby that likewise consistently evades the key issues at stake, or the substance of Kirby’s revisionist argument.^[4] Nowhere is this more true than in chapter three, where she proposes to lay the groundwork for a historically sound interpretation of Hooker by teaching us how to discern his rhetorical style and agenda. Although she purports to be breaking new ground by cutting through the thickets of misunderstanding that have grown up around Hooker’s text and setting the record straight about mild-mannered, “judicious” Hooker, she is in fact simply reciting the fashionable new orthodoxy among Hooker interpreters. She will argue that, although cultivating a persona of cool objectivity, Hooker is fully engaged in a polemical battle to discredit and defeat his Puritan opponents. He quotes selectively from them, uses devious little turns of phrase to make them look bad, and imputes bad motives to them, trying to convince his audience that they’re motivated by an emotional agenda, rather than reason. The irony of all this is that this is in fact precisely what Joyce does to Hooker in this chapter.

She says that while Hooker tries to present himself as a cool, detached observer interested only in truth for truth’s sake, he in fact has a polemical agenda, to show that certain people are up to no good, are deceptive and not to be trusted, and need to be silenced. But this is precisely her own method in the book: to claim to present an objective, historical reading of Hooker in Hooker’s own terms, while in fact motivated throughout by a desire to discredit a particular school of Hooker interpretation, which she fears is trying to align him too closely with the Reformation. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this, really. Of course our desire for truth means that we feel the need to combat error forcefully where we find it; few of us indeed can be moved to write out of a detached love of truth that has not been stirred to action by the perception of error. So polemicism in the service of truth is no vice. Joyce gleefully comes to tell us of the juicy scandal she has uncovered – Richard Hooker was a polemicist – when, alas, there is no scandal at all, for he never pretended to be anything else.

To be sure, he does present himself as interested in truth for truth’s sake, as opposed to interested in truth for personal gain, but she makes no attempt to discredit this particular self-construal; most scholars seem quite agreed that Hooker wrote the Lawes more to satisfy himself than to please anyone who might offer him advancement, and she appears to grant this in chapter two of her book. He does present himself as the voice of reason, having carefully weighed the various alternatives and found one of them wanting.  But who would not go into writing if they did not think that of themselves?  And this is only a problem if in fact it is shown that he is not arguing rationally, or has not genuinely considered carefully the alternatives. The latter of these Joyce does not really attempt to deny, acknowledging in fact the evidence that Hooker was probably broadly Puritan in his leanings before gradually reconsidering his views. She does, however, hint at the end of this chapter that she will undermine the former: “What is perhaps more extraordinary still, however, and of particular interest to us here, is the discovery that, as we shall see, on occasions Hooker is in fact prepared to put at risk the logical coherence of his argument in order to score points at his opponents’ expense” (67). In point of fact, Joyce makes little attempt later in her book to cash in on her promissory note here, and the examples she does offer are generally the sort of tensions that one would expect to find frequently in any book of this sort and scope.

What Hooker does not make any attempt to deny is that he is passionately interested in seeing the Puritan position refuted. Rather, he makes clear from the very beginning that he considers it dangerous to the truth, and dangerous to society, and he intends to do his best to expose its flaws. It is only by straw-manning Hooker as purporting to be a man of her own ilk – that is, an academic scholar who disclaims any interest in normative judgments, for whom truth and error are merely interesting points of view – that she can then attempt to display him as a hypocrite. She speaks of the “literary persona that Hooker created for himself as the master of objective reasonableness, and the man whose sole desire was to work constructively with his opponents in the interests of securing peace and harmony” (64). Elsewhere she describes him as “presenting himself as a man of unimpeachable Christian charity: an agent of peace and reconciliation who is determined to seek unity and to find common ground with his opponents, however much they might resist such a noble and godly cause” (60). But since when did Hooker ever present himself that way? Joyce triumphantly reveals that she has seen through his charade: “despite claiming that his aim is purely to establish the truth through an impeccably even-handed and impartial exploration of the issues involved, Hooker knows full well what his eventual conclusion will be, even before embarking upon the discourse … in his view they [the Puritans] need only look rationally at the evidence that he is so carefully … laying before them, and they will then see why he is correct and they are mistaken” (61). Aha!  Now we’ve got the criminal! Guilty as charged: he has the audacity to believe he is right, and his opponents are wrong! “If Hooker does indeed seek unity with them, it is abundantly clear that it will be entirely on his own terms” (61).

A considerable portion of her re-assessment of Hooker thus consists in revealing that he is not in fact doing something he never claims to be doing: suspending a passionate commitment to the truth as he understands it in order to seek a cordial meeting of the minds with his Puritan opponents on mutually-agreeable terrain. On the contrary, Hooker is convinced that his opponents are in error, and dangerously so, and that both for their own sakes and the sake of the commonwealth as a whole, the nature of this error needs to be exposed, as unbiblical, irrational, and seditious. Did anyone ever think otherwise? Certainly not, I think, Dr. Kirby, whom Dr. Joyce takes herself to be correcting at this point; given Hooker’s polemical vigor, she says, “it is difficult to see how Kirby can possibly regard the fundamental cast of Hooker’s argument in the Lawes to be an ‘irenical appeal to the hearts and minds of the disciplinarian Puritan opponents of the Elizabethan Settlement’” (51–52). Part of the problem here, I would suggest, is a confusion of what the terms “polemic” and “irenic” mean.^[5] Irenicism, although oriented toward peace, is not about compromise. It is about unity in truth, for it understands that without truth, any peace will be unstable. Irenicism is the proper end of all good polemics, but it can rarely do without some resort (often very considerable resort) to polemics. What separates irenic polemics from non-irenic polemics then?  Well, irenic polemics does not take pleasure in cutting the opponent down just for fun or gratuitously, but cuts him down only to the extent that is necessary to build him up again. Irenic polemics is motivated by hatred of error, and its hurtful consequences, but not by hatred of the erring, whom it seeks to treat with all the respect they are due. Irenic polemics uses an exposé of the opponent’s errors only as a means to an end, that by contrast with error truth may shine more brightly, rather than indulging the unedifying spectacle of dissecting the opponent without offering anything positive in his place. Finally, irenic polemics operates on the assumption that there is some common ground that lies behind the disagreements, however large they may loom, that unity is always prior to and stronger than division; and it aims to clear disagreements out of the way in order that this more fundamental unity may be rendered apparent again. This, it should be emphasized, is what Dr. Kirby has in mind when he characterizes Hooker’s work as an “irenical appeal” based on shared principles of Reformed orthodoxy. Hooker believes that his opponents have departed far from these shared principles, but not so far that there is no point in trying to argue with them, and reveal to them the nature of their error.

A Hermeneutic of Suspicion

Is it true, though, that Hooker’s polemics are irenic in this way? That he does not play dirty and get personal? Well the problem is, as Joyce’s study reveals, that it depends partly on our assumptions. If we think that his general orientation is charitable and irenic, then we will take at face value all the passages where he shows himself to be so, and will argue that in passages that appear rather harsher, the harshness is justified: e.g., if he accuses his opponents of arrogance, we may deem that this is because they genuinely were, or at least that he had good grounds for thinking so. On the other hand, if we begin with a hermeneutic of suspicion, and are inclined to think that really he’s just interested in tearing them down by fair means or foul, then we will insist that all the charitable and irenic passages are just a fa¸ade, a pretense, behind which crueler intentions lurk, and that anything that can be read as a personal attack should be read as a personal attack.

This seems to be Dr. Joyce’s method. She speaks of Hooker’s “consistent charge” against the Puritans, namely, that “they are motivated by malice.” If this were indeed Hooker’s consistent approach to his adversaries, judging their personal motives and dismissing them accordingly, he could hardly be very irenic in orientation, and could hardly hope to get far in persuasion. But Joyce’s footnote regarding this “consistent charge” cites only two instances, both of which turn out to describe his opponents as having fallen into and displayed “gall and bitterness,” but which do not suggest that this is their root motivation. On the contrary, he repeatedly attributes basically good intentions to many of the Puritan leaders, and even at times takes it upon himself to offer excuses on their behalf – explaining how an error into which they have stumbled can be understood as the result of a good goal gone astray. But Joyce, of course, reads all such passages as sarcasm and backhanded compliments:

And yet, throughout the Preface, Hooker’s prose is laden with irony and sarcasm: he is, as we shall now see, more than ready both to damn with faint praise, and on other occasions to exaggerate his opponents positive qualities, purely to enable him to undercut them with devastating effectiveness. Indeed, ironically, part of the effectiveness of his demolition of his opponents’ case comes from his purporting to take their claims with profound seriousness: this is itself a highly successful and persuasive literary device…. We see this again in the exaggerated praise that Hooker gives his opponents for the ‘wonderfull zeale and fervour wherewith ye have withstood the received orders of this Church’. Initially, Hooker claims, this led him to deem their writings worthy of serious consideration, assuming as he did that their position must be based on a solid, ‘reasonable’ basis; this was, however, before he examined their case in detail: ‘Wherein I must plainely confesse unto you, that before I examined your sundrie declarations in that behalfe, it could not settle in my head to thinke but that undoubtedly such numbers of otherwise right well affected and most religiouslie enclined mindes, had some marvelous reasonable inducements which led them with so great earnestnes that way.’ Unfortunately for his opponents, having duly examined their case ‘with travail and care’ and in an open‐minded fashion … he found that their case was based on nothing but ‘error and misconceipt’. Moreover, observe once again the stark contrast in the text that follows between the extravagant praise he gives to his opponents’ qualities (particularly their ‘right well affected and most religiouslie enclined mindes’ and ‘great earnestnes’, thus parodying the self‐image of the disciplinarians) and his own self‐effacing mock humility (as in the reference to his own ‘slender abilitie’ and ‘poore understanding’) (58–59).

If, in the hands of a hermeneutic of suspicion, every compliment can be read as an insult (and to be sure, Hooker is gifted with that wonderful English penchant for the backhanded compliment, the savage little turn of phrase at the end that takes the ground right out from under his opponents), then how are we to know how to judge him on the whole? Well, the best way, from a historical perspective, is to ask what we might have expected the book to look like if Hooker were, as Joyce contends, “unambiguously contemptuous” of his opponents. I would suggest that it would have been a very different sort of book, one something like that of Hooker’s contemporary Richard Bancroft, who lost no opportunity whatsoever to impugn the motives of his opponents, and portrayed their theological scruples as merely a fa¸ade for their insolence and sedition. Instead, what we find is an extremely patient attempt to go back to first principles and build up an argument step by step so that, when Hooker does come to engage his opponents’ particular complaints, he can address them on the basis of an overarching theological anthropology, epistemology, and ecclesiology that he has carefully constructed. This does not look like the method of a man who believes his opponents are unworthy of anything but mockery. Rather, it looks very much like the method Hooker sets for himself:

Nor is mine own intent any other in these several books of discourse, than to make it appear unto you, that for the ecclesiastical laws of this land, we are led by great reason to observe them, and ye by no necessity bound to impugn them…. [M]y whole endeavor is to resolve the conscience, and to shew as near as I can what in this controversy the heart is to think, if it will follow the light of sound and sincere judgment (Pref. 7.1).

In judging whether we should take this self-description seriously, a good historian would compare the tone of the Lawes with the style of writing that was common among his contemporaries. Indeed, it is striking that, given her professed commitment to placing Hooker within his historical context, Joyce makes no attempt at all in this chapter to evaluate his rhetoric alongside similar contemporary examples. This is particularly problematic given the way she pooh-poohs other scholars for doing just that: “It seems remarkable that Patterson could claim of Hooker that ‘He stands apart from theologians who were intent on ridiculing, belittling, or demonizing their opponents’” (64). Well, it seems remarkable only if one does not bother to look at said theologians. It is true that Hooker’s calm detachment has often been overstated, but if so, it is only because it seems so pronounced alongside writers like Cartwright, Whitgift, and especially Bancroft.

Of course, none of this commits us to treating Hooker as some kind of contemplative St. Francis of Assisi, clothed all in soft pastels and with a warm glow about him, regretting at every step the onerous task of controversy that the times had forced upon him. Inasmuch as such a portrait can frequently be found in writing about Hooker, from his own day to ours – and Dr. Joyce quotes a few abysmal passages of this sort – Joyce’s corrective is not wholly uncalled-for. This serene and saintly halo is silly, and indeed, hardly an honor to the man. Hooker was an extraordinarily gifted polemical writer, and anyone who claims to be a fan of Hooker ought to appreciate him for this skill, rather than making him out to be a mild-mannered martyr. Nor need we imagine that Hooker never stooped to taking cheap shots – misrepresenting his opponents, unfairly attacking their character, using sarcastic put-downs to avoid the real issues at stake, etc. He is, after all, human, and few polemicists have managed to always resist such temptations, especially in a 1,400-page work. The question is whether taking cheap shots comprises part of his intentional method, or comprises the exception that proves the irenical rule.

Justified Harshness?

Of course, there is another dimension to irenical polemics, which cannot afford to think exclusively in terms of oneself and one’s opponent: there is always the third-party audience to consider. It is because of this audience that one must sometimes be rather sterner with one’s opponent than one might wish. If it were merely I and my opponent alone on a desert island, Christian charity would require immense patience on my part, as I carefully listened, dialogued, and argued, seeking to bring my opponent (and myself) toward a better understanding of truth, to bring him to the point where he could acknowledge his errors of his own accord. But if his error is genuinely serious, and genuinely dangerous, then every day that goes by in which he is unchallenged, others may be led astray, to their own harm and that of others. While a humble faith in God should prevent us from ever getting too worried about this state of affairs, sometimes urgency is called for. Urgency never means that we should resort to slander to discredit our opponent, but it may sometimes mean that we have to take off the gloves and be very blunt, to quickly convince our hearers that the opponent should to be listened to. Of course, for such stern procedure to be justified, the urgency must be real, not imagined. Which is another way of saying that the irenicism of a given piece of polemics cannot be judged without considering the question of truth: is there a real error to be opposed? And if so, how serious of a threat does it pose? When Joyce and other modern scholars attempt to assess Hooker’s rhetorical agenda in abstraction from the question of truth, from the question of whether he was right to charge his opponents with errors and to fear the social consequences of their agenda, they hopelessly hamstring their interpretive enterprise.

This becomes glaringly obvious when we come to the most substantial passage that Dr. Joyce cites as evidence of Hooker’s “waspish, acerbic, and irreverent assaults” (51). This comes from Book V, chapter 22 of the Lawes, where Hooker sharply rebuts the Puritan teaching that only the preached word of God is effective to engender faith; the public and private reading of the Word can merely nourish faith already present. She is right to focus on this section as an example of some of Hooker’s strongest polemics, because Hooker is clearly quite appalled at the Puritans in this chapter. And no wonder; for if his rendering of their position were accurate, then this would show them to have quite undermined the confidence in the power of the Word that had inspired the Reformation and had been a central pillar of Protestant doctrine. If faith is impossible without the mediation of the minister, then we have regressed to a logocentric version of papist sacerdotalism and clericalism, the very kind of thinking that the Reformers were so concerned about. This passage is thus in fact an excellent example of the sort of thing that Torrance Kirby has argued: that Hooker’s enterprise is fundamentally one of calling the Puritans back to Reformed and Protestant doctrinal commitments that he thinks they have lost sight of in their zeal. Dr. Joyce quotes the following specifically:

They [the puritans] tell us the profit of readinge [scripture] is singular, in that it serveth for a preparative unto sermons; it helpeth pretilie towardes the nourishment of faith which sermons have once ingendered; it is some stay to his minde which readeth the scripture, when he findeth the same thinges there which are taught in sermons and thereby perceiveth how God doth concurre in opinion with the preacher; besides it keepeth sermons in memorie, and doth in that respect, although not feede the soule of man, yeat help the retentive force of that stomack of the minde which receiveth ghostlie foode at the preachers hand. But the principall cause of writinge the Gospell was that it might be preached upon or interpreted by publique ministers apt and authorised thereunto. (V.22.7).

Harsh, to be sure, but the question is, is Hooker fair to the Puritans here? Joyce appears to think not, introducing the quote by saying, “He goes on to parody their stance in a way that is not merely barbed, but quite outrageous,” and concluding that Hooker “parod[ies] the puritans’ stance quite mercilessly in the passage from Lawes V.22.7 cited above …” (51). This, however, is nothing short of “outrageous” on Joyce’s part, given that Hooker, in the very passage she cites, does us the favor of including a footnote, in which he quotes from page 375 of Thomas Cartwright’s Second Replie. This quotation shows that Hooker’s own text, explaining the Puritan view of sermons, is a fairly close paraphrase, and in places, a direct quotation, of Cartwright’s own explanation. Indeed, so closely does Hooker follow Cartwright’s own language here that it is hard to see in the particular passage she cites anything particularly “barbed” or biting on Hooker’s part: he appears to be simply faithfully reproducing their own teaching, and then moving on to critique it. Now, perhaps Joyce would want to argue that he has quoted Cartwright out of context, or has singled out one particularly egregious passage that does not reflect his opponent’s teaching as a whole. If so, we might blame Hooker for polemical excess here. But she makes no attempt to do this. She simply ignores the whole question of whether the Puritans ever said what Hooker attributes to them.

A similar bracketing out of the question of truth afflicts Dr. Joyce’s attempts to indict Hooker for fear-mongering and his hostility to private judgment. Of the preface she says,

One is left in no doubt that this is very far from being a neutral or impartial introduction to his subject. Such motifs include Hooker’s loathing of individuals who arrogantly claim an inappropriate status and authority for themselves; his rejection of newfangled practices that have not been tried and tested by past human experience … his conviction that the Elizabethan Settlement represents the most appropriate church polity for these islands; and his utter condemnation of anything that engenders civil unrest (52–53).

It is hard to imagine why we would expect Hooker not to think that the Elizabethan Settlement was the most appropriate polity for England: no one, after all, has denied that that is the whole point of his argument. As for his antipathy to novelty, private judgment, and civil unrest, we could read these as mere prejudices and paranoias, or else as a legitimate concern about the social implications of Puritan policy and rhetoric. Which reading we take depends on our reading of the historical and political situation. Given that most scholars of the period acknowledge that both Puritan rhetoric and policy had, by the late 1580s, become deeply subversive and radical, and given that England’s political stability was at this time extremely tenuous, with all of her neighbors engaged in some kind of religious strife, it seems hard to deny that Hooker’s fears were broadly justified. Again, Joyce might want to argue that he overstates his case, and deliberately misrepresents the nature of the Puritan threat, but she doesn’t really attempt to. Instead, she just observes the prevalence of “the language of fear and danger; the implication of demagogy and disorder” (63), and then concludes on this basis, “In short, it is difficult to see how the kind of account that Kirby and Atkinson have attempted to give of the fundamental nature and purpose of the Lawes as demonstrating Hooker’s commitment to Reformed theology can possibly be sustained” (63).

The Calvin Question

Dr. Joyce’s chief argument about Kirby, Atkinson, and the idea of a “Reformed” Hooker, however, consists in her extended treatment, in this chapter, of Hooker’s attitude toward Calvin. Unfortunately, this section suffers from the same hermeneutic of suspicion that we have described above. Hooker undoubtedly does seem to speak well of Calvin in places, but Joyce is convinced that such lines are invariably dripping with sarcasm:

His remarks could hardly be more scathing: ‘[Calvin’s] bringing up was in the studie of the Civill Lawe. Divine knowledge he gathered, not by hearing or reading so much, as by teaching others’ (my italics). Given the puritans’ focus upon scripture as the sole source of authority for the Christian life, combined with Hooker’s acute sense of the perils of the clever (but misleading) arguments that human wit can devise, the passage that follows is particularly barbed. Here, Hooker suggests, not only did Calvin presume himself to receive instruction direct from the Almighty, but he was also (damningly) dependent upon his own ‘dexteritie of wit’ and ‘the helpes of other learning’ for his knowledge of God: ‘For, though thousands were debters to him, as touching knowledge in that kinde; yet he to none but onely to God, the author of that most blessed fountaine, the booke of life, and of the admirable dexteritie of wit, together with the helpes of other learning which were his guides…’ (54–55).

Is this irony, or not? Again, a lot depends on your assumptions. But Joyce’s next paragraph ends up providing evidence for a more balanced reading:

A recurrent motif within the Preface, and indeed throughout the Lawes as a whole, concerns the perils of a single individual holding an inappropriate degree of authority over others. A little later in the Preface, Hooker applies this criticism expressly to the power that was wielded not only by Calvin but by Luther as well. It must be said that, however oblique the reference in the example that follows, the implied association between the faults of men such as these esteemed (and named) leaders of the magisterial Reformation and the putrefaction caused by the presence of dead flies in ointment is anything but flattering:

‘Such is naturally our affection, that whom in great things we mightily admire; in them we are not perswaded willingly that any thing should be amisse. The reason whereof is, for that as dead flies putrifie the oyntment of the Apoticarie, so a little folly him that is in estimation for wisedome. This in every profession hath too much authorized the judgements of a few. This with Germans hath caused Luther, and with many other Churches, Calvin, to prevaile in all things.’

For Hooker, the perennial danger is, as he puts it elsewhere, that ‘Nature worketh in us all a love to our owne counsels,’ and it is abundantly clear within the Preface to the Lawes that this criticism is levelled squarely at Calvin himself (55).

Joyce seems unaware that the line about the “dead flies” here is a quote from Ecclesiastes, not Hooker’s own metaphor, and thus reads it as a more biting insult than necessary. More importantly, though, she seems to take Hooker as hostile to Luther here as well, which suggests that she must be overreaching, because it is hard to imagine that Hooker would intend to present himself to a Protestant audience as an opponent of Luther as well as Calvin. In fact, the reference to Luther makes Hooker’s overall purpose quite clear here: it is not that Hooker denies that Luther or Calvin were great theologians, but as a good Protestant, he wants to remind his readers that even the greatest human authority is merely human. When German Protestants started treating Luther’s word as infallible, and certain English Protestants began treating Calvin’s word as infallible, they played right into the hands of papal apologists. All men err, Calvin included. Hooker thus, throughout the Preface, makes a point of complimenting Calvin in a very measured way, a way that may seem like an insult to his admirers, but which is intended as a call to remember that he was a great man, but just a man. So with the most mis-quoted line in the Lawes, when Hooker says that Calvin was “incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy, since the hour it enjoyed him.” Joyce rightly points out the error of scholars who only quote the first clause, without the second qualifying clause, but she overstates the effect of the qualification. Hooker is saying that Calvin is without a doubt the greatest French theologian of the past sixty years – since the Reformation began – but he will not hazard a judgment beyond that. Is he the greatest of all Protestant theologians? Or the greatest theologian in the history of the French church? Time will tell how highly his legacy should be valued. Indeed, it is worthy of note, as the anti-Kirbian Hooker scholars consistently fail to note, that throughout the Reformed world of the late 16th century, Calvin did not enjoy the kind of exclusive prominence that the Elizabethan Puritans sought to attribute to him. For the German Reformed, Dutch Reformed, and even French Reformed, he was one of a number of chief authorities. In seeking to qualify his authority, conformists such as Whitgift and Hooker were arguably more in line with the continental Reformed than were their Puritan adversaries.

Elsewhere in the Lawes, when critiquing the Puritan tendency to attribute too much to Scripture in their desire to exalt it, Hooker will note that “incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the credit of their deserved commendation” (II.8.7); so, he pointedly stops short of giving Calvin “incredible praises.” Indeed, the two are linked, as we see in Hooker’s description of Calvin’s introduction of Presbyterianism.

The reason which moved Calvin herein to be so earnest was, as Beza himself testifieth, ‘For that he saw how needful these bridles were, to be put in the jaws of that city.’ That which by wisdom he saw to be requisite for that people, was by as great wisdom compassed. But wise men are men, and the truth is truth. That which Calvin did for establishment of his discipline, seemeth more commendable than that which he taught for the countenancing of it established. Nature worketh in us all a love to our own counsels. The contradiction of others is a fan to inflame that love. Our love set on fire to maintain that which once we have done, sharpeneth the wit to dispute, to argue, and by all means to reason for it. Wherefore a marvel it were if a man of so great capacity, having such incitements to make him desirous of all kind of furtherances unto his cause, could espy in the whole Scripture of God nothing which might breed at the least a probable opinion of likelihood, that divine authority itself was the same way somewhat inclinable. (Pref. 2.7)

This passage is actually an excellent example of Hookerian rhetoric, ending as it does with one of his satirical understatements: the jure divino case for Presbyterianism boils down to the probability that God was “somewhat inclinable” toward it. But the overall attempt is not to show “contempt” for Calvin, as Joyce argues. Rather, his point is simply to insist that “wise men are men” and they will make mistakes like everyone else, mistakes like trying to claim divine authority for their wise ideas. This is, notably, a mistake that Hooker himself is careful throughout the Lawes not to commit himself. Instead of countering Presbyterian claims with an argument that the Elizabethan polity is the one that God himself has called for, he deliberately refuses to take that tack, and defends it as the best framework that human wisdom could come up with under the circumstances, one consonant with Scripture, but not mandated by it.

Given this concern, it should not surprise us that Hooker quotes so little from Calvin in the course of the Lawes. Unlike Whitgift, he does not want to get drawn into a tit-for-tat of lining up Reformed authorities for his position over against the Puritans, though there are a few key points at which he does point out to the Puritans that Calvin is on his side, not theirs (a point that Joyce notes, but fails to see the significance of; that Hooker was able to do so lends credence to Kirby’s argument). That whole style of argument, he seemed to think, bred an unhealthy idolatry of human authorities. So, in resolving the question of Hooker’s Reformed identity, we must look at the substance of his ideas, not how often he quotes Calvin; and we certainly cannot take the fact that he considers his opponents unhealthily obsessed with Calvin as evidence that he had no use for the Reformed tradition (which, after all, was far broader than Calvin at his time).

A final note: neither can we resolve the question of Hooker’s Reformed identity by taking the judgment of certain of his opponents at face value, as Joyce does. Twice she suggests that Kirby’s thesis, of an overall irenic intention that is committed to Reformed fundamentals, is rendered highly doubtful by the fact that the anonymous Christian Letter, written in response to Hooker in 1599, clearly didn’t see his work that way. “Kirby attempts to dismiss the response of A Christian Letter by maintaining that Hooker’s ‘irenical purpose’ was ‘radically misconstrued’ by its author.  It would appear to be intrinsically more likely that Hooker in fact hit his intended target with devastating precision, and it was this that elicited such an outraged response’” (52). But why is this intrinsically more likely? Later she says, “the fact that the author of A Christian Letter read Hooker’s remarks about Calvin as being deeply insulting, and regarded his theological and ecclesiological position as being dangerously ‘unsound’, cannot lightly be dismissed, since they are a telling indication of how Hooker’s remarks were received and interpreted by his principal target audience” (60). We might object that a single respondent can hardly claim to speak exhaustively for the “target audience”; indeed, it is notable that, whether or not this is due in part to Hooker’s Lawes, most Puritans were largely reconciled to the established church over the three decades after he wrote. More importantly, though, Joyce seems blissfully ignorant of the world of Reformed theological controversy, in which, however irenic an author’s intentions, and however much common ground he in fact shares with his opponent, he can usually expect to be rebuffed out of hand as insulting, unsound, and inadequately respectful of Calvin. Indeed, one might rather suggest as a maxim that one should never interpret a theological work primarily on the grounds of how it is received by its target audience. Perhaps this suggests that Hooker’s hope of “resolving the conscience” was naïve, but it hardly proves that he never had any such intention.

Kirby’s interpretation of Hooker certainly cannot claim to be the final word, and there is much work that remains to be done in understanding the many threads and influences that comprise Hooker’s thought. The interpretation of his work, however, can be advanced only by our taking the text seriously; while this certainly includes attentiveness to Hooker’s use of irony and understatement, “rhetorical criticism” does not give us license to pretend that Hooker never means what he says. Such an interpretive approach, so fashionable among Hooker scholars today, enables those eager to oppose Hooker’s Reformed identity to ignore the agenda that he announces for himself, and substitue an agenda of their own devising. Despite their pretensions to non-partisan historical objectivity, we have seen that their own method is not merely blind to considerations of theological truth, but also shockingly inattentive to historical context.

---

[1] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

[2] See for instance W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden: Brill, 1990); Richard Hooker: Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Kirby, ed., A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Nigel Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason: Reformed Theologian of the Church of England? (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1997).

[3] See for instance Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? : Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988); “Business as Usual: The Immediate Reception of Hooker’s Polity,” Journal of Ecclesiastical history 52:3 (2001): 456–86; Nigel Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

[4] For an introduction to her book, and a review of its first two chapters, see my recent post here. An ongoing review of the remaining chapters in the book will follow over the next couple weeks at www.swordandploughshare.com.

[5] For a fuller discussion of this point, see my recent posts here and here, and also Steven Wedgeworth’s expansion of the same with specific reference to Hooker.

 

(Tudor.org): Elizabeth 1 and Sir William Cecil

http://www.tudors.org/undergraduate/74-elizabeth-and-cecil.html Elizabeth and Cecil

William Cecil was Elizabeth I's chief councillor. He served her from her accession in November 1558 until his death in August 1598. It was a partnership that lasted 40 years! Just imagine. What would it have been like if Margaret Thatcher had served as Prime Minister from 1979 until 2019!   In fact, the relationship between Cecil and Elizabeth began not in 1558, but in 1550 when Cecil was appointed surveyor of the estates and steward to Princess Elizabeth: Cecil became Princess Elizabeth's 'man of business' eight years before he became her secretary of state. He knew this young woman extremely well -- or rather, he may have thought he did! A week before Mary Tudor died, Cecil was in London and at the centre of politics: the Spanish ambassador already called him 'the man who does everything'. All rulers had their ministers or men of business in the Renaissance: Henry VII had Reynold Bray, then Empson and Dudley. Henry VIII had Wolsey and then Thomas Cromwell. Charles V had Gattinara, Philip IV had Olivares, Louis XIII had Richlieu, and so on. Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, it is now recognized, had quite different mind-sets. Cromwell was the king's servant, but he was more radical especially in religion than either the king or the nobility. Thanks to G. R. Elton, Jack Scarisbrick, Eric Ives, David Starkey -- and I've thrown in my own sixpenny worth on Henry VIII and his ministers -- we now know a great deal about the inner politics of the early Tudors. We still know extremely little, comparatively, about the inner politics of the reign of Elizabeth I. To disguise this, historians incant 'Elizabeth and Cecil' or 'Elizabeth and Burghley' as a catch-all explanation for government action or policy-making during the reign. I have become deeply sceptical about this. Elizabeth and Cecil have been so closely conjoined in the repertory of history that they might as well be two halves of a pantomime horse! My argument -- in brief -- is that, certainly until the mid-1580s, Elizabeth and Cecil subscribed to discordant philosophies despite their enduring political relationship. Historians have treated Elizabeth and Burghley as if they shared the same intellectual genes. I do not agree with this. My argument is going to be that, beneath the surface, they were virtually different species! Vast topic. Cannot be covered in 50 minutes except by a process of selection, so I propose to tackle the two most important topics. These are: The Religious Settlement of 1559, its implementation and implications; The debates in the Privy Council and Parliament on Scotland, Elizabeth's marriage and the succession to the throne. 1. Cecil and the making of the Religious Settlement of 1559 All stages of the bills for supremacy and uniformity were managed by Cecil; Collection of preliminary advice (from 'Athenians') managed by Cecil; Cecil had done it before: had been Somerset's private secretary and Northumberland's public secretary. The religious debates which underpinned the Prayer Book of 1552 had been held at the houses of William Cecil and Richard Moryson; Cecil dealt with the Catholics in the House of Lords: lay lords made aware of the property implications of the Marian reunion with Rome and the views of the Marian bishops; Cecil and Nicholas Bacon (brother-in-law) organized a religious disputation at Westminster Abbey immediately before the second session of 1559 Parliament which trapped the Catholic bishops. Walked out when oral tradition excluded from the debate and leading Catholic bishops sent to the Tower for contempt; the proposed legislation was underpinned by a carefully choreographed pulpit campaign: the Lent Court sermons of 1559. (NB Other pulpits silenced in December 1558 by the Privy Council). The Court pulpits were packed with returned Marian exiles like Richard Cox and other loyal Protestants like Matthew Parker. Furthermore there is a direct correlation between those who preached these sermons, and those who were appointed bishops once the Settlement had been approved. One cannot say with certainty that it was Cecil who appointed the 1559 Court preachers. Cecil acted as an overseer for Court sermons in the 1560s, but evidence is lacking for 1559. We can say that in 1565-66, and again in 1570-71, Archbishop Parker would not appoint the Lent Court preachers without Cecil's say-so. But, whoever appointed the Lent preachers of 1559, they were among the most radical of the reign: Richard Cox (exile at Frankfort where he had led the defence of the 1552 Prayer Book) John Scory (exile at Geneva) David Whitehead (former pastor of the English congregation at Frankfort) Edmund Grindal (exile in Frankfort) Edwin Sandys (exile in Frankfort and Zurich) Matthew Parker. We can say that it was Cecil who appointed the first generation of Elizabethan bishops, once the Settlement of 1559 was approved and the Marian bishops could be removed. And with only three exceptions, he chose Cambridge men and 'Athenians', who in the majority of cases had been Marian exiles in Frankfort, Zurich, Geneva etc. All those who had preached Lent sermons in 1559 offered bishoprics. NB Men of Calvinist convictions, these bishops increasingly saw the 1559 Settlement as flawed. And the second generation of Elizabethan bishops (appointed by Hatton and Elizabeth) were very different! In other words, it was Cecil who 'fixed' the Settlement of 1559 whatever Elizabeth did (if anything) behind the scenes. 2. Elizabeth's attitude to the 1559 Settlement There are fascinating internal contradictions within the Settlement. The queen was manifestly at odds with some aspects of what the Settlement and the appointment of the new bishops implied: the Prayer Book of 1559, when finally printed, specified that vestments and ornaments were to be those used during the last year of the mass in 1548. But the Royal Injunctions of 1559, drafted by Cecil, specified vestments as used in 1552-3; The Prayer Book prescribed plain baker's bread for use at the Communion, but the Royal Injunctions specified wafers resembling the old hosts used at the Catholic mass; The right of the clergy to marry was a fundamental tenet of Protestantism. Elizabeth disapproved strongly. The Royal Injunctions specified that clergy might marry with the permission of the local bishop and two JPs, but Elizabeth refused to alter the law on clerical marriage and the law was not reformed until 1604. Archbishop Parker found this appalling. The Prayer Book of 1559 was modelled on that of 1552 minus the Black Rubric and with the amalgamation of the communion sentences of 1552 with those of 1549. The Royal Injunctions of 1559 called for the removal from the churches of 'things superstitious', and the visitors nominated by Cecil to enforce the Injunctions were abrasively Protestant who sought to pull down images and replace altars with plain wooden communion tables. Yet in 1560 Elizabeth considered it not contrary to the word of God, 'and rather for the advantage of the church, that the image of Christ crucified, together with Mary and John, should be placed as heretofore, in some conspicuous part of the church, where they might more readily be seen by all the people'. This quotation speaks volumes for the religion of Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had a distaste for sermon-centred piety. She did not consider frequent attendance at preaching necessary either for herself or her subjects. She told Archbishop Grindal in 1576 that three or four preachers were sufficient for an entire county. Her views were considered shocking by the returning Marian exiles (= also the first generation bishops). Sermons, when preached before Elizabeth, were to be short. They was also a preferred style: 'courtly delivery' and 'courtly wit' -- sophistication in eloquence and invention -- were the required norms, not theological profoundness. Elizabeth adored what the puritans loathed: rhetorical figures and tropes, the use of metaphor and alliteration, a sort of theological sprezzatura. (She also liked a 'comely' preacher!) Elizabeth allowed images and the crucifix and candles in the Chapels royal. This was due to personal preference (NB Henrician evangelicals typically justified on educational grounds the cults of saints and those ceremonies which were not based directly on scripture.) The history of the Elizabethan Articles of Religion and Homilies, as well as that of the ornaments rubric of the Prayer Book, is one which represents a struggle by Elizabeth to retrench on what her bishops thought had been agreed in the Parliament of 1559. For example, when the second Elizabethan edition of the Homilies emerged from Convocation in 1563 and was sent to Court for approval, the homily against idolatry which proscribed the use of 'filthy and dead images' in churches was completely rewritten to limit the use of images 'for fear and occasion of worshipping them, though they be of themselves things indifferent'. (And Elizabeth and even some bishops believed that the supreme governor decided what was and was not 'indifferent'). The music in the Elizabethan Chapels royal was that which had previously accompanied the pre-Reformation mass. Composers like Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and John Bull were Catholics. This was possible because the Chapel Royal answered directly to the sovereign. It was the only Court department that did so. (Others answered to the Lord Chamberlain [above stairs] and Lord Steward [below stairs]). Elizabeth vigorously asserted her royal supremacy over the church of England. She 'changed the name' from 'supreme head' to 'supreme governor of the church of England', but this was essentially for reasons of gender and public relations in 1559. She claimed in 1569 (under pressure!) that her power (in church + state) came from 'the law of God and this realm always annexed to the Crown of this realm and due to our progenitors'. But this did not mean Elizabeth's power was bounded by the common law. These were weasel words. Elizabeth meant by them that she was a theocratic ruler whose power was defined by God's law and by the (theocratically) declared 'laws' given by the kings of England since Lucius I and the Anglo-Saxon kings; whose power to 'give' the laws was divinely sanctioned and annexed to the Crown of this realm as an inalienable right. cf. High Commission + Caudrey's Case (1592) - Cited Act of Appeals word for word on 'empire' and imperial 'crown'. This was not Cecil's interpretation of the royal supremacy. He held (by his actions as a privy councillor and parliamentary manager) that bills for the advancement of religion could be introduced in the interests of the 'preservation of the Protestant state' without the queen's permission, and took the view (like Richard Hooker) that the royal supremacy was properly exercised in Parliament. Cecil even denounced the Court of High Commission under Whitgift as a 'Spanish Inquisition' and did his best to support Caudrey and his lawyer James Morice 3. The religious convictions of Cecil Cecil was not a politique. Although not an ideological presbyterian, he was a conviction-Protestant whose theology came closest to that of moderate Calvinism. He passionately believed in the importance of scripture, and he held a providential view of the world. He believed that the forces of darkness, in particular Catholicism, the papacy and Spain, were mobilizing against England and that they intended to use Mary Queen of Scots as their agent. For this reason he believed that the Protestant Reformation had to be disseminated by every available means, even if he took a cautious position (as compared to Leicester and Walsingham) on the issue of intervention in the Netherlands. But Cecil did not take a cautious position in relation to intervention in the British Isles (see below). Cecil's household was unequivocally Protestant in its outlook (wife = Mildred Cooke, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke). The family emphasized piety and scripture readings (cf. The Werke for Householders -- the family is the 'reformed' equivalent of the monastery). It is well known that Elizabeth supported bishops, and repudiated the presbyterian demand for their removal. Cecil may not have contradicted this after 1558, but it ought to be better known that, under Northumberland, Cecil signalled his support for a proposal to abolish bishops and appoint preaching and teaching 'pastors' in their place. NB Thomas Cartwright, the presbyterian leader, was repeatedly imprisoned by Bishops Aylmer and Whitgift, and it was Cecil (or sometimes Leicester) who let Cartwright out! NB Kafka-like quality of Elizabethan religious history. As in the 1530s, the 'imperial Crown' is the thesis (Henry VIII/Elizabeth), and theory of 'queen-in-Parliament' is the counter-thesis! (Cromwell/Cecil). This is where Elton and Graves on Parliament fit in, but .... 4. The debates in the Privy Council and Parliament on Scotland, the queen's marriage and the succession to the throne Here the agenda comprises: Clashes on the decision to intervene in Scotland in 1559-60; Clashes of 1563 and 1566 on the queen's marriage and succession; Clashes of 1572 and 1586-7 on Mary, Queen of Scots and again in 1584-5 on the Bond of Association -- these centred on disputes between the queen and Privy Council, which the Council thought it could win if it went public. NB HEALTH WARNING In respect of these clashes, the existence of differences between Elizabeth and Cecil have always been recognized. But they these have usually been explained away. as disagreements over timing or as clashes over the choice of individual husbands for Elizabeth or Mary Stuart respectively, rather than as fundamental differences of political attitude; there has been a tremendous investment in the argument linked to orchestrated debates in the 1560s (especially Elton and Graves). According to this view, Cecil and other privy councillors arranged for 'planted' speeches to be delivered in the House of Commons in favour of their position in the Privy Council. On this basis the episodes can be explained as clashes of will and as extreme points of tension in the Elizabethan political system, but they do not have to be regarded as representing clashes of ideology or belief. It is not clear how much longer this interpretation will survive. Cecil repeatedly wished to intervene in Scotland between 1559-66, and did in fact persuade Elizabeth to intervene in 1559-60, for three reasons: Cecil wished to depose Mary Queen of Scots even during her personal rule in Scotland, and the correspondence with his agents and with Mary's opponents in Scotland shows that Cecil sought not only to establish responsible conciliar government in Scotland, but that he could happily brook regicide if this was the only way to defeat the powers of Catholic darkness (as he saw them) which themselves sought to use Mary as an agent. Cecil wished to incorporate Scotland (and possibly Ireland also) within an 'imperial' British state under Elizabeth as queen and empress. While Elizabeth also talked this language, there was a very important difference in that Cecil saw a fully-Protestant Britain as the necessary precondition of the survival of Protestant England, and for this reason he wished to pursue a vigorous politics of culture: i.e. Protestant cultural colonialism within the British Isles. This was the essence of his case for the intervention in Scotland in 1559, and his position was so radical on that occasion that even Bacon, his brother-in-law, opposed him in the Privy Council. Cecil finally got his way, and Elizabeth was bludgeoned into the intervention in support of the Lords of the Congregation, but this was the moment that Cecil discovered the queen's conservatism -- threatened to resign, etc. In the debates of 1563, and especially 1566, there is no evidence whatsoever that speeches were planted by Cecil and the Privy Council! On the contrary, this argument by Graves and Elton constructed largely on the basis of reasoned conjecture to explain away what otherwise could only be explained in terms of the ideological opposition of a 'puritan' choir comprised of MPs who wished to force the queen to marry and wished her to further reform the Religious Settlement of 1559. Elizabeth refused to do both these things What we have in 1563 and especially 1566, is evidence of spontaneous speeches by those who were Cecil's men of business or were within his conciliar orbit, and also there is massive evidence of Cecil ignoring the queen's express instructions, verbal and written, to stop pursuing the issue of her marriage and the succession, and also ignoring her instructions not on any account to link to the grant of taxation imminent in 1566 the issues of the succession or her promise of 1563 to marry. Cecil flatly ignored the queen's express commands, and covered reams of paper with pro and contra arguments and with drafts and redrafts of position papers in defence of his case for action. What we have in these documents is the self-fashioning of a 'minister' who faced a crisis of role confusion! Was he a personal servant of the queen, or the 'public servant of the state'?? The argument can be pursued because the clash at Court during the Northern Rising, also the key to the threatened dismissal of Cecil in 1569, was characterized by his advocacy of the thesis of 'state' over 'dynasty'. Was the queen to follow a traditional 'dynastic' policy (i.e. marriage, treaties etc), or was a policy to be followed, force majeure (i.e. in defiance of the wishes of the queen), to ensure the 'preservation of the state of this Realm', i.e. the Protestant state of this realm! i.e. queen subsumed within the state! And this is the crux. In Elizabeth's reign the tension was played out between the queen's high view of kingship -- the idea that sovereignty was vested in her alone -- and the conviction of Cecil and his supporters on the Privy Council that 'the preservation of the [Protestant] state of this realm' took precedence. Pat Collinson has noticed this, and called it 'monarchical republicanism'. Others have linked it to constitutional monarchy or the doctrine of 'mixed' polity But the issue at stake was essentially the beginning of the classical conceptualization of the 'state' as an ideal. Moreover, in the hands of puritan-inclined authors, this was a 'state' which gave a political role to Parliament and to the House of Commons. In this respect, there was more than a grain of truth in Neale's volumes on the history of Parliament. There were also times when Cecil actively conspired, force majeure, to 'protect' the Protestant state at the expense of the queen's instructions. (Cf. Cecil's notes for the succession in 1563 and 1584-5.) If the queen's presumed heir to the throne was to be the Catholic, Mary Queen of Scots, then Cecil and the Privy Council intended to infringe the Crown's sovereignty and the subvert the rules of succession if the worst happened. As I have several times remarked, what Cecil and the Privy Council planned was comparable in many points of detail with what happened in 1688-9. Again, the political theory which underpinned Cecil's plans of 1563 and 1584-5 is almost exactly the constitutional position argued by Thomas Cartwright and the presbyterian movement. For Cartwright repeatedly claimed that the Elizabethan (secular) polity was mixed and Polybian: it was a state in which monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy were admixed and conjoined in the forms of queen, Privy Council and Parliament. The queen was not 'imperial' in the sense understood by Henry VIII. She shared her sovereignty with the Privy Council and Parliament, a position not so far from that claimed by the opponents of Charles I in the Nineteen Propositions in 1642. This was as much political heresy as presbyterianism was doctrinal heresy. But the fact remains that in the interests of England as a Protestant state, Cecil embraced it. 5. Summary There is far too much here to summarize in a few sentences, but we can say the following: William Cecil was a committed Protestant, with a mission to energize the creation and preservation of a Protestant English (and also British) state. We cannot say with any real conviction that Elizabeth I was this sort of Protestant. Elizabeth believed in her 'imperial' prerogative as supreme governor to direct and govern the church, and to appoint commissioners (the High Commission) to act in her name as supreme governor in legal cases. Cecil believed the queen's supremacy was properly exercised in Parliament, and that both Privy Council and Parliament had a duty to act when required to ensure the further reformation and preservation of the Protestant state. Elizabeth believed the ideal of monarchy was sacred. Rulers were directly empowered by God. Cecil believed deposition or regicide could be justified, and was willing to intervene in Scotland to prove it. Elizabeth regarded Cecil and her privy councillors as her trusted, but personal, servants in the same way that Henry VIII had regarded Wolsey and Cromwell. Cecil, and later Walsingham, influenced by their humanist-classical education, increasingly regarded themselves as the public servants of the state, especially where religion was concerned. They were 'active citizens', and Protestant ones to boot! Last but not least, it is a burgeoning hypothesis that the Elizabethan Settlement was, to all intents and purposes, Cecil's Settlement and not Elizabeth's. Elizabeth (as Neale always argued, but for completely the wrong reasons!) may originally have aimed to revive Henry VIII's religious legislation, to re-establish her royal supremacy and the break with Rome, and to permit communion in both kinds (bread and wine) after the reformed fashion -- but nothing else. If so, she was successfully 'bounced' by Cecil and the Privy Council for the first and only time in her reign. But if that is true, it is also true that the Elizabethan régime was established on false premises, and if that is true, much of the existing work on Elizabethan political and religious history may have to be done again.