Gloriana Day: Bishop Aylmer and the Elizabethan Settlement
The first preferment I find him possessed of was the Archdeaconry of Stow, in the diocese of Lincoln, which he obtained in the beginning of the year 1553, succeeding Dr. Draicot, lately deceased. This dignity qualified him to be of the Convocation, which happened the first year of Queen Mary, wherein when he saw the Clergy to run strongly towards Popery, in compliance with the Queen, he, with five more, (though with an hundred halberds about his ears,) boldly and bravely offered to dispute the controverted points in religion openly in that synod, against all the learned Papists in England; and learnedly argued out of Theodoret with one Moreman there, against the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Needless to say, this stand led to his deprivation. He then became one of the Marian exiles:
But for this confidence, grounded upon his love of truth and the Gospel, he underwent great danger, and was deprived of his archdeaconry. Under this reign, uneasy and unsafe for him and all others that conscientiously adhered to the reformed religion, he soon fled away into Germany, and with several others of the best rank, both divines and gentlemen, he resided at Strasburgh, and afterward at Zurich in Helvetia; and there in peace followed his studies, and heard the learned Dr. Peter Martyr Lectures, not long before the King's Reader of Divinity in Oxford.
Strasbourg and Zurich were revealing locations. Both, and particularly the latter, would shape the Elizabethan Settlement. Notice, too, where Aylmer did not take refuge - in either Frankfurt, where the congregation of English exiles was to know bitter division because of Knox, or Calvin's Geneva. Aylmer's presence in the Strasbourg of Bucer and the Zurich of Zwingli and Bullinger was most fitting for a future bishop in Elizabeth's Church. Something of this may also be hinted at in Strype's statement that Aylmer "there in peace followed his studies", contrasting with the distinctly unpeaceable approach of certain of the Marian exiles.
If Aylmer's time in Strasbourg and Zurich anticipated the nature of the Elizabethan Settlement, so too did his public refutation of Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women:
When Queen Mary was extinct, whose reign was deeply besmeared with blood, and her sister Elizabeth, a lady of other principles, succeeded to the crown, Aylmer with the rest of the exiles came home to their native country, with no little joy and thankfulness to God, to enjoy the quiet profession of that religion they had suffered for before, and endured the loss of all. But before he returned home he printed an English book at Strasburgh, called 'An Harborough for faithful Subjects' ... which he wrote upon a, consultation, as it seems, holden among the exiles, the better to obtain the favour of the new Queen, and to take off any jealousy she might conceive of them and the religion they professed, by reason of an ill book a little before set forth by Knox, a Scotchman and fellow exile ; who had asserted therein, that it was unlawful for women to reign, and forbid by God in his word. This doctrine was seasonably confuted by Aylmer, and learnedly. And for Queen Elizabeth, he gave her a great character, concluding that there would be all peace and prosperity under a Princess of such admirable parts and godly education.
As Aylmer declared in An Harborough for faithful Subjects, "the Princes hadde authorite in spiritualties to ouersee them and order them". By contrast, it was "our aduersaries the Papistes" - and Knox - who wanted "to pull from the Prince the ouersight and gouernmet of the churche". Here, then, was an affirmation of the Queen's supremacy, against both Papist and Puritan.
On returning to England, Aylmer found himself again sitting in Convocation, this time the Convocation of 1562 which agreed the Articles of Religion:
And being Archdeacon, he was present at the famous Svnod anno 1562, when the doctrine and discipline of the Church, and the reformation of it from the abuses of Popery, were carefully treated of and settled: and I find his own subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles under the name of Johannes Aelmeruss Archidiac. Lincoln.
That Aylmer was a member of that Convocation which "agreed upon" the Articles "for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and for the establishing of consent touching True Religion" associates him, therefore, with another pillar of the Elizabethan Settlement.
Strype in this reference to the Convocation of 1562 notes that Aylmer was absent ("whether by chance or on purpose, I know not") when a group within the Convocation sought to remove certain ceremonies from the Prayer Book - use of the Cross at Baptism, kneeling for Communion, wearing the surplice, saints' days in the calendar. It is surely revealing, however, that Aylmer's name is not to be found amongst those who signed the paper requesting such changes. In his Annals of the Reformation, Strype comments of the signatories "most of which seem to have been Exiles". This highlights the significance of Aylmer's absence from the list of signatories. At the very least, he was unwilling to disturb the peace of the Church of England, under the Queen's Supremacy, in seeking abolition of accepted ceremonies.
The vote in Convocation was, to say the least, a close-run thing: the proposal to remove the ceremonies was defeated 59-58. Strype's summary of the case of those who opposed the changes could act as a statement of the case for Conformity to the rites and usages of the Church of England:
But the Divines on the other Side reckoned the Wisdom, Learning and Piety of Cranmer, Ridley, and the other Reformers of this Church, to be equal every way with those of the Foreign Reformers: And knew, that what those venerable Men did in the Settlement of this Church, was accompanied with great Deliberation, and a Resolution of reducing it in Doctrine and Worship, to the Platform of the Primitive Churches, as they found it in the antient Ecclesiastical Writers; and had consulted also in this great Work, with the most learned Foreigners: And some of them had sealed it with their Blood. Add to which, that these that thus stood for King Edward's Reformation without Changes, did prudently consider the present Constitution of the Church and Nation, and the Queen's Disposition and Education.
Returning to the Historical collections of the life and acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer, when he was appointed Bishop of London in 1577, it was this understanding of Conformity which shaped Aylmer's approach to non-conformity amongst ministers in his diocese:
As soon as he entered upon his episcopal function, he His main made it his main business to preserve the Church in the state in which it was established by the laws of the land, in respect both of the doctrine and discipline of it; and therefore thought it his duty to restrain both Papist and Puritan; both which laboured to overthrow the constitution of religion, as it was purged and reformed in the beginning of the Protestant reign of Queen Elizabeth.
As an example of how this was enacted, in January 1581 Aylmer assembled his clergy and gave robust directions for conformity:
1. No invectives to be used of or against estates [that is, this or other kingdoms, or potentates: some preachers, as it seems, being now-a-days Very liberal of their speeches both against France and Spain.] 2. None to re-use the wearing of the surplice. 3. That there be no diminishing or altering the service. 4. Inquiry to be made who did not celebrate the Sacraments together with their preaching; doing the one, but wholly omitting the other. 5. Also, who made alteration in the rites required to be used in Baptism. 6. Who did not catechize the youth. 7. The seventh article related to contentious preachers, who scandalously gave others the name of dumb dogs. 8. The last related to such as utterly refused to read the Homilies. The Bishop at this assembly shewed himself somewhat earnest, and said, he would surely and severely punish the offenders in these points, or "I will lie," said he, "in the dust for it."
A commitment to the Reformation of the Church for he was "from the beginning was a hearty embracer of the reformed religion, and an earnest Protestant"; following Strasbourg and Zurich, rather than Geneva; the Royal Supremacy; the Articles of Religion; conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the Common Prayer Book. To look at Aylmer, then, is to look at the Elizabethan Settlement, as envisaged by Elizabeth. It is also to remind ourselves, as Torrance Kirby has stated, that 'Reformed' was a contested category. Indeed, as Kirby provocatively but convincingly argues, the claim to Reformed orthodoxy on matters of conformity may "in fact lie more plausibly with the Queen and her loyal bishops". It certainly was not the case that 'the Reformed' were the dissidents, agitators, and malcontents in Elizabeth Church: Aylmer, a former exile in Strasbourg and Zurich, was, in Strype's words, "deeply and heartily concerned for the true religion in opposition to Popery". Aylmer the Conformist was, in other words, thoroughly Reformed.
Aylmer calls us to recognise that Geneva did not provide the only definition of what it was to be Reformed. It is appropriate, therefore, that it was Aylmer who ordained Richard Hooker deacon (1579) and presbyter (1581). When Travers provoked controversy over Hooker's sermon on predestination at St. Paul's Cross - the sermon contended "That in God there were two Wills, an Antecedent, and a Consequent Will; his first Will, that all Mankind should be saved; but his second Will was, that those only should be saved, that did live answerable to that degree of Grace which he had offered, or afforded them" - Hooker invoked both Aylmer and the other Reformed Churches:
That which I taught was at Paules Crosse; it was not hudled in amongst other matters in such sort that it could passe without noting. it was opened, it was proued, it was some reasonable time stood vpon. I see not which way my L. of London, who was present and heard it, can excuse so great a fault as patiently without rebuke or controlement afterwardes, to heare any man there teach otherwise then the word of God doth, not as it is vnderstood by the privat interpretation of some one or two men, or by a speciall construction receaued in some few bookes, but as it is vnderstood by all Churches professing the Gospell, by them all.
It is, therefore, only slightly exaggerated to say that in John Aylmer we find the heart of the Elizabethan Settlement - distinctly, clearly, decently Reformed, but not subservient to Geneva.
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