Newman and the Royal Martyr: the loss of a native piety

Thanks to The Young Tractarians for drawing attention to a John Henry Newman sermon for the commemoration of the Royal Martyr.  The sermon seems to have been preached twice on the commemoration, in 1835 and 1837.  It is significant in two ways.

The first is that it offers a very traditional High Church account not only of the martyrdom of the King, but also of the meaning of that martyrdom for political theology. Invoking Romans 13, Newman states that "the civil power is the representative of God ... His minister".  He goes on, however, to particularly address the role and vocation of Christian monarchs:

Such is St Paul's view - And, if this be so, how much more sacred is the power of such Kings as the Church has blessed, anointed, and recognized as her own.  Hence we give our Kings the power over the Church which they possess - we allow them to choose our Bishops and legislate for us - but only on this ground, that they are God's Ministers, anointed to their special office.

Here is a classical High Church account of the Royal Supremacy and sacral kingship, with no hint at all of the later Tractarian anti-establishmentism, with its romanticising of the ecclesiology of Scottish and American Episcopalianism.

Secondly, Newman notes that the Royal Martyr's death had been preceded by the martydom of Archbishop Laud.  He then considers each of the martyred Archbishops of Canterbury, including a sympathetic reference to Becket - killed by "four fierce servants of a desperate King" - which perhaps may have sat somewhat uneasily with traditional High Churchmen.  Newman follows this, however, with a reference to Cranmer:

Next, by fire, when the Archbishop was brought to the stake, because he had renounced the errors of the Church of Rome.

This was a quite traditional High Church celebration of Cranmer's witness, a proud statement of a native Anglican piety against "the errors" of Rome.  At this stage (1835-37), then, Newman was content to publicly express a traditional High Church endorsement of the English Reformation.

Nockles suggests that this was "not always sincere and was made for tactical purposes", noting that by "1837, Newman was privately denouncing Cranmer".  And, of course, by 1839 the Tractarians were refusing to support the proposed Oxford memorial the martyrdoms of  Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley.  What, however, of Cranmer's appearance in this sermon?  If Newman had wanted to avoid praise of Cranmer, he could merely have avoided reference to martyred Archbishops of Canterbury, without doing injury to the central theme of the sermon.

What it does seem to suggest is the continued power and attraction of a very traditional High Church narrative of the ecclesia Anglicana, with a pride in its native piety, native constitution, and native martyrs.  Even as elements within the Tractarian movement were anticipating the later rejection of the Reformation and the Royal Supremacy, and even as Newman privately began to countenance such a stance, he could not avoid the power and attraction of the traditional High Church narrative on 30th January. 

What is more, he concludes the sermon with a traditional High Church rejection of Whig assaults on the Church's establishment, regarding these assaults as sharing in the same nature as the act of the forebears of the Whigs in executing the Lord's anointed:

Surely here is a deep lesson to us who are so bent in this age on making changes.  Such words as reform, retrenchment, and the like are Satan's baits for unstable souls.  Should they issue in the downfall of the Church, there will be another heinous national sin upon our heads, and no Church left to deprecate it, as we do the Royal Martyr's death at this day.

As late as 1837, then, Newman was proclaiming from the pulpit a conventional, traditional High Church vision of the ecclesia Anglicana, its Royal Martyr, its relationship with the Crown, and its martyred Archbishop of the Reformation.  The consequences of the coming rejection by the Tractarian movement of this vision, and its emotional power, were profound.

The loss of this ecclesial expression of what Burke terms "a sense of habitual native dignity" opened Newman to Roman claims (and can be contrasted with Keble retaining something of that sense).  It contributed to a rejection of the coherence of pre-1833 Anglicanism, with Tractarians increasingly not at ease with the foundations of the Reformation settlement for which the Royal Martyr died - a national church and the Royal Supremacy.  It led to an Anglo-Catholic preference for Roman liturgical and devotional norms, grievously undermining the uniformity and native piety rightly prized by the High Church tradition.

Newman's 30th January sermon might therefore be regarded as something of a turning point in the history of the Movement, one of his final celebrations of Anglicanism's native piety and native constitution, before turning his eyes - and the eyes of others - across the Tiber, to a different piety and a different constitution. 

Neither shall we ever give Way to the Authorising of any Thing, whereby any Innovation may steal or creep into the Church; but to preserve that Unity of Doctrine and Discipline, established in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, whereby the Church of England hath stood and flourished ever since - the Declaration of King Charles I on the dissolution of Parliament, 1628.