Even as Mary made her way to London, her religious policy, which hardly needed explicit formulation, was being eagerly if illegally implemented by squires and parsons across the country. As Robert Parkyn noted in Yorkshire:
In the meantime, in many places of the realm, priests was commanded by lords and knights
Catholic to say Mass in Latin with consecration and elevation of the Body and Blood of Christ
Under form of bread and wine with a decent order, as hath been used before time.
Parkyn’s unselfconscious assumption that humble priests would follow the lead of their social superiors tells us a lot about the reasons for the success of the English Reformation. But not everyone was so co-operative. Down at Adisham in Kent, the Cambridge graduate and zealous Protestant John Bland, a protege of Archbishop Cranmer, resisted his parishioners’ demands for the Mass, and was offered physical violence in return for his determination to uphold the law. Mary herself showed none of that precise legalism which was to accompany the reversal of her policy in the reign of her successor, Elizabeth. Mass was immediately restored in the Chapel Royal, and the Common Prayer service was used only for Edward’s spartan obsequies. Within a few weeks she issued a proclamation which in effect suspended the statutory penalties for celebrating and attending Mass, and when her first Parliament convened on 5 October, the repeal of Edward VI’s religious legislation was high on the agenda. It met with unusual resistance in the House of Commons. Some eighty votes were cast against it, although the 270 in favour carried it easily. The Book of Common Prayer, which many had dismissed as a ‘Christmas game’ on its first appearance in 1549, was outlawed in time for Christmas.
World History
