Vestments controversy
Edification became one of the chief duties of the supreme head or governor of the church of England [i.e. the monarch] and was enshrined in the laws which enforced Protestantism in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth.
Combined with the belief that most of the externals of worship were adiaphora, the concept of edification justified and circumscribed the monarch's right to intervene in the church's affairs.In section 13 of the Act of Uniformity 1559, if acting on the advice of her commissioners for ecclesiastical causes or the metropolitan, the monarch had the authority "to ordeyne and publishe suche further Ceremonies or rites as maye bee most meet for the advancement of Goddes Glorye, the edifieing of his church and the due Reverance of Christes holye mistries and Sacramentes.
[sic]"[a] John Hooper, having been exiled during King Henry's reign, returned to England in 1548 from the churches in Zürich that had been reformed by Zwingli and Bullinger in a highly iconoclastic fashion.
Summoned to answer to the Privy Council and archbishop—who were primarily concerned with Hooper's willingness to accept the royal supremacy, which was also part of the oath for newly ordained clergy—Hooper evidently made sufficient reassurances, as he was soon appointed to the bishopric of Gloucester.
Warwick disagreed, emphasising that the king must be obeyed in things indifferent, and he pointed to St Paul's concessions to Jewish traditions in the early church.
Ridley did not dispute Hooper's main typological argument, but neither did he accept that vestments are necessarily or exclusively identified with Israel and the Roman Catholic Church.
Heinrich Bullinger, Pietro Martire Vermigli, and Martin Bucer, while agreeing with Hooper's views, ceased to support him; only John a Lasco remained an ally.
Because of this publication, his persistent nonconformism, and violations of the terms of his house arrest, Hooper was placed in Thomas Cranmer's custody at Lambeth Palace for two weeks by the Privy Council on January 13, 1551.
On the other side, that of Richard Cox, the martyrdom of Hooper and others was blamed on Knox's polemic against Mary I, Philip II and the emperor, Charles V. By 1558, even the supporters of the prayer book had abandoned the Edwardian regulations on clerical dress.
All the Marian exiles—even the leading promoters of the English prayer book such as Cox–had given up the use of vestments by the time of their return to England under Elizabeth I, according to John Strype's Annals of the Reformation.
Notably, some of the leaders of the Elizabethan anti-vestments campaign spent time in Calvin's Geneva, many of them following the successful takeover of the Frankfurt congregation and ouster of John Knox by the pro-prayerbook group.
At this time, Bullinger was counselling Horne with a position more tolerant of vestments, while nonconformist agitation was taking place among students at St John's College, Cambridge.
Stow says Crowley declared "the church was his, and the queen had given it him during his life and made him vicar thereof, wherefore he would rule that place and would not suffer any such superstitious rags of Rome there to enter."
Crowley himself assumed this lectureship before the end of the year after being deprived and placed under house arrest, which indicates the cat-and-mouse game being played at the parish level to frustrate the campaign for conformity.
By May, Henry Denham, the printer of A briefe Discourse, had been jailed, but the writers escaped punishment because, according to Stow, "they had friends enough to have set the whole realm together by the ears."
Following an opening that expresses a reluctance to respond to folly, error, ignorance, and arrogance on its own terms, A Brief Examination engages in a point-by-point refutation of Crowley, wherein Bucer, Martyr and Ridley are marshalled for support.
Following this retort came another nonconformist pamphlet, which J. W. Martin speculatively attributes to Crowley: An answere for the Tyme, to the examination put in print, without the author's name, pretending to mayntayne the apparrell prescribed against the declaration of the mynisters of London (1566).
The contradiction is resolved, tenuously, with the point that vestments do possess a theoretical indifference apart from all practical considerations, but their past usage (i.e. their abuse) thoroughly determines their present and future evil and non-indifference.
It becomes clear in the development of this point that the nonconformist faction believed that the Bible always had at least a general relevance to every possible question and activity: "the scripture hath left nothing free or indifferent to mens lawes, but it must agree with those generalle condicions before rehearsed, and such like."
It elicited a further nonconformist response in The judgement of the Reverend Father Master Henry Bullinger, Pastor of the church of Zurick, in certeyne matters of religion, beinge in controversy in many countreys, even where as the Gospel is taught.
Two other nonconformist tracts appeared, both deploying established authorities such as St Ambrose, Theophilactus of Bulgaria, Erasmus, Bucer, Martyr, John Epinus of Hamburg, Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Philipp Melanchthon, a Lasco, Bullinger, Wolfgang Musculus of Bern, and Rodolph Gualter.
xviii (1566) and The Fortress of Fathers, ernestlie defending the puritie of Religion and Ceremonies, by the trew exposition of certaine places of Scripture: against such as wold bring an Abuse of Idol stouff, and of thinges indifferent, and do appoinct th' authority of Princes and Prelates larger than the truth is (1566).
New developments in these pamphlets are the use of arguments against English prelates that were originally aimed at the Roman church, the labelling of the conformist opposition as Antichrist, and advocacy for separation from such evil.
Eight letters between ecclesiastics from the reign of Edward VI to Elizabeth were included, and a no longer extant tract thought to have been written by Cox or Jewel is discussed at some length.
Following suit, a non-conformist collection of letters (To my lovynge brethren that is troublyd about the popishe aparrell, two short and comfortable Epistels) by Anthony Gilby and James Pilkington was published in Emden by E. Van der Erve.
The collection begins with an undated, unaddressed letter, but it appears in another tract attributed to Gilby (A pleasaunt Dialogue, betweene a Souldior of Barwicke and an English Chaplaine), where it is dated May 10, 1566, and is addressed to Miles Coverdale, William Turner, Whittingham, Sampson, Humphrey, Lever, Crowley, "and others that labour to roote out the weedes of Poperie."
A second title inside the book reads: "A pleasaunt Dialogue, conteining a large discourse betweene a Souldier of Barwick and an English Chaplain, who of a late Souldier was made a Parson, and had gotten a pluralitie of Benefices, and yet had but one eye, and no learning: but he was priestly apparailed in al points, and stoutly maintained his Popish attire, by the authoritie of a booke lately written against London Ministers."
The nonconformists looked to Geneva for support, but no real opportunity for change was coming, and the anti-vestments faction of the emerging Puritan element split into separatist and anti-separatist wings.
This letter was acquired by pro-presbyterian Puritans and was published in 1572 with Thomas Wilcox and John Field's Admonition to Parliament, the foundational manifesto and first public manifestation of English Presbyterianism.
This was a pro-presbyterian historical narrative of the disputes among the Marian exiles in Frankfurt twenty years earlier "about the Booke off common prayer and Ceremonies ... in the which ... the gentle reader shall see the very originall and beginninge off all the contention that hathe byn and what was the cause off the same."
