A shilling for Queen Elizabeth: the era of state regulation of church attendance in England, 1552-1969

Journal of Church and State, Spring, 2008 by Clive D. Field

Throughout Christian history, churchgoing has been widely regarded as one of the most important and tangible expressions of religious observance. Yet, before the Reformation, failure to attend services was subject solely to ecclesiastical sanctions, such as admonition, penance, and excommunication, as applied by the Episcopal courts. Partly as a consequence, despite some evidence of action by these courts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, (1) "Many pre-Reformation English men and women probably did not go to church very regularly, and some hardly ever or not at all." (2) In England, for four centuries after the birth of Protestantism, the situation changed dramatically. From that time forward, regular attendance at religious services on Sundays and holy days was, under statute law, technically mandatory for every person, and enforceable through civil as well as ecclesiastical judicial procedures, by the mechanism of constables and justices of the peace, and churchwardens and officers of the church courts. The primary intention behind the legislation was to promote uniformity to the Church of England by targeting popish recusants and, later, Protestant sectaries, but it was also designed to curtail those branded as "practical atheists. This article has a threefold objective: to trace the development of the specific corpus of legislation on non-attendance at church between 1552 and 1969 (as opposed to the broader canvass of laws affecting Sunday observance as a whole); (3) to investigate the extent to which the law was enforced on the ground; and to assemble evidence about churchgoing levels, recognizing that, as Margaret Spufford has argued, it is very difficult to quantify religious belief and practice in the pre-industrial age. (4) A particular focus will be on the long eighteenth century, a period that remains unstudied systematically in terms of church attendance. Despite this, William Jacob, not with standing evidence he concedes to be "mostly circumstantial and haphazard" and "difficult to evaluate," has recently made some rather large claims for the first half of the century when the Church of England perhaps reached the zenith of its allegiance among the population of England and Wales." (5) In this way, the essay complements Donald J. Withrington's pioneering work on non-churchgoing in Scotland. (6)

SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The obligation to attend the established Church was initially laid down, on pain of punishment by ecclesiastical censures, in the uniformity act of 1552 (5 & 6 Edw. VI cap, 1, sn. 1-2), in response to a situation in which:

a great number of people in divers parts of this realm, following their own sensuality, and living either without knowledge or due fear of God, do wilfully and damnably before Almighty God abstain and refuse to come to their parish churches and other places where common prayer, administration of the sacraments and preaching of the word of God is used upon Sundays and other days ordained to be holy days. (7)

In consequence, the statute determined:

That from and after the feast of All Saints next coming all and every person and persons inhabiting within this realm, or any other the king's majesty's dominions, shall diligently and faithfully (having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent) endeavour themselves to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed; (2) or upon reasonable let thereof, to some usual place where common prayer and such service of God shall be used in such time of lett; (3) upon every Sunday, and other days ordained and used to be kept as holydays. (8)

In 1553, 1 Mary I sess. 2 cap. 2, (9) repealed this Edwardian legislation, which was seen to penalize Catholics, but, following Mary's death and the state's reversion to Protestantism, the churchgoing provision soon reappeared in the Elizabethan uniformity code of 1558-59 (1 Eliz. I cap. 2 and associated injunctions), thus bringing Edward's statute back into force. The Edwardian wording was repeated, but spiritual punishment for failure to attend worship was now supplemented with a fine of twelve pence (one shilling) for each offense, to believed by the churchwardens on the defaulter's property, the proceeds to be applied to the relief of the parochial poor (sn. 14). The officers of the Church (sn. 16), justices of the peace (sn. 17), and mayors and officers of towns and boroughs (sn. 29.) were given full authority to enforce the law. (10)

The population, and the relevant civil and ecclesiastical officers, was evidently slow to comply with Elizabeth's requirements, as is suggested by the obligation-placed on all churchwardens in England and Wales, in 1561 and 1566, to prepare, respectively, monthly and quarterly lists of those parishioners who would not pay the shilling fine for non-attendance. (11) In 1563, the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, asked Parliament: "Howe commeth it to passe that the common people in the country universallie come so seldome to common prayer and devine service ... ?" He bemoaned the failure to implement the law on churchgoing: "hitherto noe man, no, hoe man--or verye fewe--hath scene it executed." (12) Some evidently felt that the threshold of expectation needed to be revised, so that in 1571, Parliament debated a bill to fine those who did not come to church on a quarterly, and to partake of Holy Communion on an annual, basis. During the deliberations, Sir Owen Hopton noted that churchwardens, being simple men and fearing to offend, would rather incurre the danger of periurie then displease some of their neighbours" by presenting them for absence from church. (13) Perhaps the situation described by the new wardens of Sawston in 1579 was typical: