Social impact of religious and economic changes under Mary I

• Religious change under Mary I


  Restore the English Church to papal jurisdiction
• Religious changes under Mary I


  • Quickly produced large sums of money for popular conservative religious projects
  • Generated by a largely enthusiastic populace rather than government action
• Legislative attack on Protestantism


  1. Repeal of religious laws passed during Edward VI's reign

  2. Restoration of the order of service as at the time of HVIII's death

  3. All clergy who had married could be deprived of their livings

  4. Legal status of the Church of England was upheld
• To rely on parliamentary legislation to reverse the royal supremacy, Mary would have to accept the superiority of statute law over divine law, which was the opposition of her own fundamental belief
• Cardinal Pole


  • Arrived in England and became legate and Archbishop of Canterbury
  • Parliament reversed the Henrician Act of Attainder that had been passed against Pole
  • Pole's grudging attitude on Church property made him an object of suspicion among landowners and his reputation never recovered
• Pope Julius III and his legate Reginald Pole believed the land could undoubtedly be restored to the Church


  The Imperial Ambassador Renard told Charles V that more ex-monastic lands were in the hands of Catholics than Protestants i.e. Catholic landowners should keep their land
• Pope and Pole wanted the English Church to submit to Rome before exemptions from the repossession of land happened
• The Council, HRE Charles V and Philip knew this was politically impossible
• Pope Julius III died in 1555 and was succeeded by the anti-Spanish Paul IV
• Paul IV hostile towards Mary's husband Philip demonstrated in his open hostility towards the Spanish side in a war in 1555 and into which Mary's England was later dragged into; this meant Mary found herself at war with the Papacy
• Suspicious of Pole whom he regarded as a heretic, Paul IV dismissed him as papal legate in April 1557 meaning he could no longer act directly on behalf of the Pope in his supervision of the English Church
• Pope named a new legate, William Peto but due to Mary's trust in Pole she refused to acknowledge superior papal authority which placed Peto in a higher position within the CofE than the Archbishop of Canterbury
• This placed Mary in a difficult legal relationship with the Pope meaning her reward for restoring Catholicism in England was meagre
• Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs'


  • Most widely read book in England excluding the Bible
  • Established the notion of the English as God's elect (and protestant) nation
  • Condemned Mary for her cruelty and ungodliness
• 280 Protestants burnt for heresy
• • Main locations were south-east: Canterbury, Lewes, Colchester
  • ¾ of martyrs found in the south east and East Anglia where Protestantism was rife
  • No burnings in the diocese of Durham
  • Majority were void of title which suggests Protestantism was important to some people who didn't financially benefit from religious change
• The first victims were John Rogers (London) and Rowland Taylor (Hadleigh, Suffolk) burnt due to their popularity as preachers
• Deaths elicited widespread public sympathy
• The scope of this is illustrated in the Council's decision to ban servants, apprentices and the young from attending burnings, but failed to extinguish heresy
• Henry VIII killed over 57,000
• Pole's legatine synod of 1555-1556


  • Made expectations clear that bishops were to reside in their diocese, preach, and oversee the religious life of their parishes
  • Proposal never put into effect that each cathedral should have a seminary attached for the training of new recruits to the priesthood
  • Effectiveness depended on commitment at parish level
• • Guaranteed in Catholic Lancashire or Durham
  • Very few candidates for ordination in Kent
  • Wide variation in practice in London where some parishes re-embraced Catholicism enthusiastically whilst other churches were virtually in ruins
• • If given time and resources, Pole and Mary may well have re-Catholicised England
  • More could have been achieved during Mary's reign
  • The delay in restoring the Church's institutional structure and the divisions between the Crown and the Papacy didn't help
  • Mary certainly didn't complete what she set out to do
• • Continued pressure on demand due to the quickly growing population which increased inflation
  • Debasement of the coinage heightened inflation
  • Harvest failures 1555 and 1556 caused severe food shortages
  • The 'sweating sickness', a virulent form of influenza 1557-1558 meant the death toll was at its worst in the century
• Financial reforms


  • The Court of Exchequer took over both the Court of First Fruits and Tenths and the Court of Augmentations but in the process adopted some of the more recent courts' superior methods
  • Remitting the final part of Edward's last subsidy bought Mary cheap popularity at a financial cost
  • Royal indebtedness rose but not dramatically given that England was at war during the later stages of the reign
  • Long term security of Crown finances was boosted by the plans for recoinage drawn up from 1556-1558 but implemented by Elizabeth
  • Inflationary pressure caused by the proliferation of debased coins in circulation
  • Elizabeth reaped the benefit from the introduction of a new Book of Rates on 1558 which raised customs revenue dramatically
• Wyatt's Rebellion


  • Reaction to the prospect of a Spanish marriage
  • Mixed motives: religion, xenophobia, decline in the local cloth industry, gentry who had lost office within the country
  • Showed the religious opinions of the Protestants couldn't be ignored
  • Demonstrated the popular suspicion of the marriage
  • Resulted in the execution of Lady Jane Grey due to her father's involvement in the rebellion
  • Elizabeth arrested and confined to the Tower
• • Gardiner and Paget were her interrogators who had a vested interest in not finding out the full truth
  • Gardiner had close links to Courtenay
  • Paget knew Elizabeth would be queen so he was eager not to alienate her
  • Allegations didn't have real substance so she was eventually released
• • No scope under Marian Catholicism for the expression of evangelical humanism which had been linked to religious reform
  • Little sign of Catholic humanism which was closely associated with the Catholic martyrs
  • Pope Paul IV considered Erasmus a heretic, putting his work in the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books
• Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London and chief villain in Foxe's Book of Martyrs


  • Published A Profitable Necessary Doctrine which explained the faith simply, and a book of homilies to replace Cranmer's one that was published under Edward VI
• • Pole was keen to stress the importance of papal supremacy, a somewhat weak feature of pre-Reformation Catholicism
  • Seemed ironic given Paul IV's hostility towards him
• • Protestants in exile sent back numerous publications
  • Not a united group: some were happy to use the 1552 prayer book, others led by John Knox and Christopher Goodman wished for a more radical approach