England

The Reformation in England

The Reformation proceeded in England in two distinct stages. The first was limited and focused and was driven by King Henry VIII's desire to dump his wife Catherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Because the motivations were fundamentally secular and political, Church practices themselves were not reformed much, though the nearly-universal desire for Church reform in a general sense did lead to certain changes of significance.

The second phase was quite long, arguably lasting until 1688 and the Glorious Revolution. This second phase was driven by the vexing question of how far reform should proceed in England. At one extreme were English Catholics who wanted at least toleration for their faith and at best a return of England to the obedience of Rome. At the other extreme were Puritans and other radicals who not only would have nothing to do with popes, but wanted complete religious freedom for themselves and to have the government of England subordinated to supervision by the religious.

So, while England formally broke with Rome in the 1530s, the issue of reform was still burning a century later, and was one factor in the outbreak of the English Civil War. Our narrative of the Reformation in England will follow the twists and turns, from its beginnings through 1688.

People in England heard about Martin Luther, of course, and there was a good deal of sympathy for his arguments. The humanist movement was well received under the young Henry VIII, who himself had classical training. Henry did not, however, support Lutheran criticism of the mass or the sacraments, and he certainly would have no truck with the notion of the priesthood of all believers. In fact, Henry gained a certain modest celebrity by writing a little work on the seven sacraments that was a reply to Luther. Ironically, for this work, the pope awarded the English king the title of Defender of the Faith, a title which Henry kept even after his break with Rome.

So, the reformers had to watch their step in England as carefully as any place else. One of the early reformers was William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English. He had to leave England in order to get the work published (1524). The 1520s were a heady time for reformers everywhere, and Lutheran ideas spread through illicit printing presses and secret meetings.

Still, the ingredient that seemed to be a prerequisite for reform on the Continent -- the support of a prince -- was missing in England. Until 1527. In that year, Henry decided at last that he would divorce Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. His position was that the marriage had been a violation of canon law, a common dodge among European princes, but Henry seems to have been reasonably sincere. Perhaps more to the point, he pointed to a long string of miscarriages, stillbirths, and deaths in infancy, with only a daughter, Mary, surviving (she was eleven at the time). These misfortunes were clear evidence of God's disapproval.

It must have seemed simple to Henry at the beginning. Catherine had been married to Henry's elder brother, Arthur. When Arthur died, his father (Henry VII) immediately arranged for Catherine to marry Prince Henry. Since marrying a brother's widow was considered a violation of canon law, Henry VII applied for and received a papal dispensation for the marriage.

All this was quite routine among noble and especially among royal houses, for the families often married into each other and close degrees of relationship were not uncommon. Equally routine was for a prince later to decide that the marriage was distasteful and to plead consanguinity (marriage to someone within the prohibited degrees of relationship) as an excuse to dissolve the marriage. The whole business was regarded as a matter of paper work for canon lawyers to see to.

Unfortunately for Henry, he made his request in the proper form but at the wrong historical moment. Almost immediately after he asked Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage to Catherine, Emperor Charles V's armies entered Rome. Charles was Catherine's nephew, and he regarded this a matter of family business that was his responsibility. In these circumstances, Clement found it most difficult to grant Henry's request. He also found it difficult to deny the request, as he was trying to wriggle free of the Imperial grip on Rome. So he delayed and he delayed, trying not to displease either the king or the emperor.

Both parties gathered their arguments and their lawyers, and the months dragged by. The business came to turn on the crucial question of where the case should be heard: in England or in Rome. In this manner, the King's Great Matter as it came to be called , became increasingly a question of papal authority and jurisdiction, always conditioned by events in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1520s. With Carindal Wolsey as the chief negotiator, the case was first to be heard in England.

In July 1529, however, pressed by the emperor, Clement revoked the case to Rome. This now brought the matter to a crisis, for if the case were heard at Rome, Henry's petition would surely be denied and then he would be stuck with Catherine. He was more and more smitten with Anne, so this alternative Henry refused to accept. This move cost Wolsey his position at court.

The question, then, was how and on what legal basis to defy the pope. He could do so openly and simply suffer excommunication, as other English kings had done, but this was a desperate course made doubly risky in that it would leave the door open for the religious radicals. He could give up and live with Catherine, but Henry was too wilfull to accept that alternative. Somehow, a way must be found to a divorce.

Some time in 1531, the idea was floated (probably first by Thomas Cromwell) that Henry might turn to Parliament for a solution. This was not Henry's first choice, for Parliament wanted to talk about religious reform and Henry did not; he only wanted the divorce, and he still really wanted papal permission. But by 1532 he was persuaded to Cromwell's argument that England was an empire unto itself and that Henry as its king was utterly independent of Rome. The nation as a whole comprised the Church in England, and just as the pope could be held to represent all Catholics, so could Parliament be held to represent all English Catholics. It was a novelty, but it had enough legal precedent to satisfy Henry.

The business had to be done in steps. First came the Submission of the Clergy, in 1532, by which the clergy acknowledged that they had no law independent of the crown. In 1533 came the Act of Restraint of Appeals, by which no legal case could be appealed to Rome. Including, of course, Henry's case. The head of the English Church in terms of law courts was to be the King of England. A series of acts over these two years dealt with the appointing of bishops, granting dispensations from canon law, giving annates to the crown, and granting to the crown the right to tax the clergy. Together, these acts gave specificity and substance to the general statement that the king was the head of the Church in England.

The divorce itself was granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in May 1533. This was fortuitous, for Henry had secretly married Anne in January of that year, and she was already pregnant. The culmination of the whole process came in the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which declared that Henry as King of England was the sole head of the English church. Henry, who merely wanted a new wife, had had to create a new church in order to accomplish that.

There was talk for a long time of reconciliation with Rome, but nothing came of it. Reconciliation seemed at least possible for a time because there was as yet no real reform in England; Henry had merely supplanted the pope, leaving Church practices intact. Indeed, throughout the Great Matter there had been no question of denying papal authority in other matters, still less of doing away with sacraments or secularizing the clergy. There were, however, reformers within in England and within the court, and some limited reforms were implemented. And, outside the court, reform was very much a topic of discussion.

The political issue was the most burning. In 1535 Parliament passed the Act of Succession, which in part demanded an oath to the new order. Some refused, Thomas More among them, and were executed. The following year saw the execution of Anne Boleyn, for whom Henry had started the English Reformation. It also saw the only serious revolt against Henry's reforms, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace--a rebellion that began in the north of England and which was contained there. Henry did not again face open resistance.

Also in 1535, Thomas Cromwell conducted a thorough survey of the wealth of the English Church, and at the end of the year conducted visitations of the monasteries that resulted in a report of widespread corruption there. Secularization may not have been part of Henry's initial agenda, but it certainly was for the reformers. Henry himself was persuaded, at least in part, by the financial angle. By seizing the properties of the monasteries, the chronic financial woes of the crown could be assuaged, if not permanently solved. Initially, only monasteries with incomes under £200 were dissolved, their property reverting to the crown and their members receiving some sort of pension. Over the next few years the larger communities were dissolved, most "voluntarily", with a final act in 1540 finishing off the remainder.

The dissolution of the monasteries was an important step in the English reformation. Initially the intent had been to use the lands as income for the crown, but almost from the beginning parcels were sold to raise quick cash. Then came a war with France and sales came quickly. By mid-century, little was left to the crown from the dissolution of the monasteries. The real beneficiaries were the moneyed nobility. Once monastic lands had been redistributed among the nobility, going back to Rome became a much more complicated affair. The nobles had a vested interest in maintaining at least the acts of Henry, even if they had no sympathy for the religious reformers.

Once the divorce was final and the Church's assets had been seized, there was a bit of a pause, for Henry was not really interested in religious reform. Nevertheless, if England wasn't exactly Protestant, it was not Catholic either, and Protestant preachers spread the Lutheran message with little royal interference.

How little down the Lutheran road Henry was willing to travel can be seen in the act of Parliament in 1539. These were six statements of faith and practice that were soundly conservative in tone, and were not at all what the Lutheran preachers had hoped to see. It was enough for Henry, however. He was emperor within his own kingdom, and Germany was providing plenty of evidence of how socially dangerous the radical reformers could be.

After Thomas Cromwell was executed in 1540 (he'd engineered Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves, whom Henry despised on first sight), Henry took a more direct hand in Church matters, and reform came to a standstill until his death in 1547. Everyone understood that nothing further would happen under the old king, so activity shifted to the heir.

Henry had one son, Edward. The boy was being raised as a Protestant, so it was clear that reforms would follow upon his accession. Henry was no supporter of this, but he feared that if he turned Edward over to the conservatives, the ones who wanted a return to Rome, then the crown would lose supremacy in the name of papalism. So, he let the boy be.

Edward VI (1547-1553)

When Edward became king, the reformers had their chance. Pent-up expectations were released. Moreover, by the mid-1540s, the parameters of reform had been extended considerably. John Calvin was at work in Geneva, though his influence was yet to be felt in England. The radicalism of the Anabaptists continued to affect everyone, and Münster was still a recent memory. Fewer and fewer people continued to hope that somehow the Catholics and the Protestants could be reconciled at a Church council and the schism within Christianity be healed. Increasingly, the stakes were all or nothing; triumph or annihilation within a given country. And England was very much up for grabs.

The Protestants on the Continent were reeling under the Imperial offensive, and a number of them came to England during these years, including Martin Bucer (at Cambridge). The reform movement surged ahead, and it was during Edward's reign that religious reform in England became politicized. The king was still a boy, and family and faction always became prominent in such circumstances. The reformers pressed for action, and the safest recourse was to Parliament, which itself was becoming more interested in the issue of reform. Reform could move forward all the more quickly because after Henry VIII's death, Sir William Paget (Edward's uncle) gained ascendancy at court and had himself made Lord Protector. In that role, he at once abolished the Act of Six Articles (Henry VIII's one gesture of reform) and permitted communion in both kinds.

The first really significant step came in 1549 with the issuance of the first Prayer Book of the Church of England. The Prayer Book became a center of controversy in the English Reformation, for this is where the details of Church ritual were laid out. For example, should the ceremony of the Lord's Supper refer to the real presence of Christ in the wine and bread? Or, at the other extreme, should the ceremony be no more than a memorial service, with no significance to the wine and bread at all? Or any of a myriad of variations between? There were scores of such issues, and any position taken was bound to offend someone. Henry had carefully avoided such controversy and had passed severe laws concerning it. With the advent of Somerset, all that went out the window. In that same year of 1549, for example, priests were allowed to marry, and in 1550 all priests became instead ministers in the English Church.

1549 also saw two rebellions, one in Norfolk and one in Cornwall. Both demonstrate how social and religious issues were easily tangled up. For example, one issue in the Cornish rebellion was that while the new Bible was in English, it was not in Cornish, which was quite a different language. The rebels demanded that the Bible be translated again into Cornish. Without success. The Norfolk rebellion is also known as Ket's Rebellion. This was a larger movement. The immediate economic issue was enclosures, but this got entangled with radical religious rhetoric that resulted in the rebels demanding the end of private ownership of property altogether, along the lines of the revolt in Germany in 1525.

In 1552 came a revised Prayer Book, reflecting strong Protestant tenets. Also in this year was an Act of Uniformity, which declared other forms of worship illegal. This was specifically aimed not only at Catholics but at the Anabaptists as well.

The movement toward a stronger and more explicitly Protestant position continued throughout Edward's reign, though Edward himself did little more than lend his name and support to the initiatives of others. It climaxed in the issuance of the Forty-Two Articles in 1553, a strongly Protestant statement of belief that many felt went too far. By this time, a number of Calvinists had come to England, and their influence was becoming uppermost, certainly more significant than Lutheran reformers.

And then, in that very year, Edward VI died. The next eligible claimant to the crown was Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, and raised to be steadfastly Catholic. Suddenly, all the gains of the reformers were at risk.

Mary I

Mary was only in her 30s when she became the first queen ever to rule England, and there was every reason to expect that she would not only have a long life but would produce heirs as well. She was a devout Catholic and was married to Philip, the prince of Spain. Catholics everywhere rejoiced at their good fortune. But nothing turned out right for the Catholics. Her marriage to Philip was loveless and he rarely visited England. There were no children. And Mary died young.

Moreover, the business of reverting to Catholicism was tricky. The Protestant prayer books were banned, and Catholic priests returned to the pulpit. Although there were no immediate persecutions, many of the Protestant refugees found reasons to return to their homelands, in part because the religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had made it propitious to do so.

But Henry had redistributed much of the land he had seized from the Church to great numbers of nobles and gentlemen, and these landowners had no intention of returning their properties to the Church. By 1554, Parliament had stated in law that all the confiscated lands were to remain in the hands of their new owners--Henry's real estate scheme had worked. This meant that the monasteries were not re-opened, and many of the returning bishops found themselves much impoverished.

The Protestants, of course, resisted, and some openly. Mary sought to enforce religious uniformity and ordered arrests. Some of these went to trial, and some of those trials ended in public executions, the victims being burned at the stake for heresy.

The most notorious of these took place at Smithfield, near Oxford. Over three hundred were burned in the Smithfield Fires between 1553 and 1558, giving England her first Protestant martyrs and giving the queen the harsh title "Bloody Mary". Mary herself was a gentle soul who found that the logic of her ardent faith, and the demands of politics, led her to endorse acts from which she personally quailed.

The general public had begun by loving Mary, for her attractive personal qualities, but they ended by hating her. The worst blunder, politically, was that most of those who died in the Smithfield Fires were ordinary people--tradesmen and peasants. The great lords who had fostered, protected, or even openly professed Protestantism, were able to use their influence to avoid arrest and execution. So Mary's attempt to enforce Catholicism was viewed as hypocritical and biased.

Elizabeth I

And then, with her death, the Reformation in England lurched yet again. For, the next in line, and indeed the only child of Henry who still lived, was the young Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. So, in 1559, the persecutions ended, and no one was quite sure which direction reform would take under the new queen.

One thing was certain: the new queen was solidly Protestant. She had been so raised and she so remained throughout her lifetime. By temperment she was moderate, and she steered a course between more radical factions on every hand. Because she was also politically adept, she was able to steer her course without major mishap.

Calvinism comes to England

Calvinism began as a movement in England after the return of the Marian exiles in 1558. Being a community in exile, English Protestants had the freedom to develop ideas and formal organization to an extent not enjoyed in the island even under Edward. One community formed in Frankfurt, and another formed in Geneva during the 1540s, a time when the city was under the direct control of Calvin himself. Even at Frankfurt, though, a more presbyterian form developed than was current in England at the time--not surprising since John Knox was there until 1555.

The returning exiles came home full of hopes and plans. They ran smack into Queen Elizabeth, who wanted to move cautiously. Parliament ordered a return to the 1552 Prayer Book, much too timid a step for the exiles. Ironically, the queen had to use many exiles to fill vacant sees (the Catholic bishops of Mary's reign having been turned out), who in turn had to implement a religious settlement they objected to. Some pushed to go further, and of course preachers and other radicals called constantly for more. They wanted the Prayer Book to state clearly against transubstantiation, and clearly for the mass as a simple memorial. They wanted the Anglican vestments removed. Elizabeth would not budge.

Over time, there was a steady infiltration of Calvinist theology, liturgy and discipline, mainly by way of Parliament, but Calvinist-style organization made very little headway. Episcopalianism was firmly established and was never really challenged during Elizabeth's reign, mainly because the Anglican Church was firmly under state control, and that control was exercised through the bishops. The state needed episcopalianism.

The 1570s saw a new wave of puritans, more dogmatic in tone, who insisted on no deviation from Calvinist practice as observed in Geneva (by then under Theodore Beza). This insistence on purity in practice as well as doctrine is what earned them their name. The leader of this first generation of Puritans was Thomas Cartwright, professor of divinity at Cambridge (1570).

The Puritans objected to an episcopal form of church government, which should instead by ruled by consistories. Parliament would have none of this, which effectively made the Puritans a marginal group. They turned to the usual expedients, the first of which was to state their case in pamphlets and letters.

The difficulties of this period are well illustrated by the case of Archbishop Grindal. In 1575 Archbishop Parker died and Grindal succeeded him. Grandal had very much been the queen's man, concerned above all to effect and enforce the settlement of 1559. Grindal was just as loyal, but he was willing to go further in the reform of the church.

For, the Anglican Church was not yet much reformed. It had broken from Rome, the monasteries were gone, and the liturgy noticeably changed, but much of the administrative apparatus was still in place and so, notoriously, were abuses and corrpution. Many regretted the abuses, but the Puritans used them as one basis for demanding further reforms. Grindal did not go so far as to criticize episcopalianism, but he planned a meaningful reform. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he might have pulled them off. An issue blew up early, however, that completely derailed his efforts.

The Puritans had developed a practice called "prophesying". This was not the making of prophetic pronouncements in the style of the Old Testament; rather, it was more like a disputation. The faithful would meet, with several ministers in a kind of panel, and the laity as the audience. The clergy would take Bible passages and comment on them, offering their interpretations and their impact on doctrine, and critiquing those of their colleagues. This was an important activity to the Puritans, for it was the True Church hearing the Word of God, struggling to understand it, and trying to apply it to individual communities. The Anglican authorities saw the prophesying differentlyu. Such gatherings could easily scandalize the laity, as they were unaccustomed to theological speculation. They might derive incorrect conclusions from what they heard, leading to all sorts of heresy. They might simply become confused and despairing as they tried to follow theological arguments too sophisticated for their uneducated minds. The opportunities for error, even leading back to papacy, were boundless.

Queen Elizabeth deeply objected to prophesyings. At such meetings, the authority of the church, even of the crown itself, could be questioned. That, no Tudor could permit. She ordered Grindal to suppress the practice in 1576. She also ordered him to reduce the number of licensed preachers.

He refused. In the first place, he said, it was not the place of the queen to rule in religious matters. Besides, he argued that the meetings were healthy for the church.

Elizabeth simply went around him. She wrote a letter directly to all the bishops in the land, ordering them to suppress the prophesyings. She suspended Grindal and placed him under house arrest. In her mind, the English monarch had every right to intervene in matters of religion: this is what the Act of Supremacy was all about.

Grindal refused to budge, which of course meant he lost, for no one bested Elizabeth in a contest of wills. Grindal remained suspended until his death in 1583, which effectively meant that Elizabeth directed the church during those years. The prophesyings, needless to say, ended.

More correctly, they went underground. Now they were called "classes", and were more or less secret. Being smaller and more private, they developed into something like actual consistories, and the Puritan movement looked like it might become a kind of secret society.

The practice of classes, though, was documented and exposed in 1589. In 1590 the secret press that was publishing their pamphlets was found and seized. The leaders of the movement were arrested or fled. One was executed. By the late 1590s, puritanism as a formal organization was spent.

The "Elizabethan Settlement" as it is known, came at the very beginning of her realm, as part of the general reaction against the excesses of Mary. The Act of Uniformity passed in 1559 essentially returned England to the reformation of Henry VII's later years. The Anglican Church was headed by the monarch, its priests were called ministers, and they celebrated the Lord's Supper, not Mass. The official Prayer Book set down the rituals to be used. And all the lands seized from the old Catholic Church were to remain in lay hands.

On the surface, religion faded away for a time as a divisive issue in England, but under the surface tensions remained. For one thing, there were still a great many Catholics in England who stubbornly resisted the domination of the Anglican Church. This was especially true in the rural areas. At the other end, there was a politically powerful group of ardent reformers who felt that the job was still only half done. Elizabeth did not so much deal with these factions as she neutralized them politically, without appeasing or satisfying them.

The result was that the issue of reform in England was postponed rather than resolved. And when the social peace of the nation was disturbed again in the 1630s, religion again came to the forefront, this time in the form of civil war.

Elizabeth and Scotland

The political situation when Elizabeth became queen was delicate. For one thing, there was a rival--Mary, Queen of Scotland--who claimed the throne by way of the marriage of James IV of Scotland to the eldest daughter of Henry VII of England (Margaret, 1503). Mary was the daughter of James V, who had married Mary of Guise. Mary Stuart had been raised in a French court, had a French mother, and it was French troops that invaded Scotland and secured a French regency on her behalf. Thus, when Mary Stuart claimed the throne of England, behind the claim lay Guise and the house of Valois.

How could she claim England? The grounds were actually pretty good, if you were a Catholic, which Mary was. Elizabeth was the child of Anne Boleyn, and the pope had never recognized that marriage as valid. Moreover, Elizabeth was a heretic, unworthy of reigning as a monarch. On more practical grounds, England had only recently been Catholic, under Queen Mary I, and there were plenty of Catholics in the country. The Catholic Church was beginning to win back some territories in Europe, so the prospect of reconquest here was not only glorious but was also possible.

Elizabeth acted with surprising maturity. True, she acted upon the advice of counsellors, but the decisions were still hers and plenty of teenage monarchs had proved wilfull and foolish. At home, she accepted an Act of Uniformity (April 1552) that imposed a greater degree of Protestantism than she herself desired. The wisdom here was mainly in bowing to pressure. She didn't like implementing the Prayer Book of 1552, but she liked even less that Parliament would not pass a new Act of Supremacy until she gave way on the religious front. The new queen was wise enough to choose to fight other battles.

1559 was the year of Cateau-Cambrésis. That treaty disengaged France and Spain from their debilitating war, releasing both to turn their attentions elsewhere. In early summer, a rebellion in Scotland certainly attracted attention.

The Scots were fed up with the French as allies. Revolts broke out in the Lowlands and Highlands alike. Some objected to the French alone, while others objected to France and to Rome as well (that is, on both political and religious grounds). John Knox returned from exile to organize the new church. The French were isolated at their garrison at Leith.

The French would have responded, but in July 1559, Henry II was killed in a tournament. The Guise faction took over and tried to send aid, but the fleet was destroyed by storms. In February 1560 Scotland and England signed a treaty. In March, the Guises had to deal with the Amboise conspiracy at home, even as an English army was crossing into Scotland to besiege Leith, which surrendered in July.

In August 1560, Scotland formally broke with Rome and formed a Calvinist, presbyterian church largely architected by John Knox. By 1561, divisions were already showing along the usual lines. Some were satisfied with the reforms so far, others wanted to go further, and relations between church and state were getting complicated.

Mary Stuart landed in Scotland 19 August 1561. The Scots were not ready to do without a monarch; she was allowed back only after she agreed to abide by the Scottish religious settlement. She was allowed to hold Mass, but only in private. The ministers, led by Knox, thundered against any and every manifestation of popery and demanded further reforms. These further reforms on many points infringed on the powers and rights of the lairds, who successfullyl prevented the proposals from becoming law. Moreover, Mary was genuinely keeping to the letter and the spirit of the St Dizier agreement. A rift between lairds and ministers widened steadily, with Mary caught between.

Elizabeth was having her own problems. In March 1552 the massacre at Vassy in France complicated relations. The war party, led by Sir Robert Dudley, persuaded Elizabeth to send troops to aid the Huguenots.

Matters went badly. The Guises and the French Catholics were everywhere victorious that summer. English troops didn't arrive until October, at Le Havre, and could do little. That same month, Elizabeth nearly died of smallpox. The question of the succession, and specifically of Mary's claim, came to the forefront.

The English were driven out of Le Havre in July 1563 by a coalition of Huguenots and Catholics, who had made common cause to drive out the foreigner. In 1564 Elizabeth was forced to give up the English claim to Calais. The expedition had been a miserable failure and determined the queen not to lend direct military support to foreign Protestant causes if she could possibly avoid it.

In 1565 Mary married Lord Darnley, a man with an excellent pedigree in the nobility but whose arrogance alienated everyone. Unfortunately, Mary was smitten with him and saw no faults. Within weeks, trusted advisers were withdrawing from the Scottish court. Within months, there was open rebellion. The revolt played out with no serious consequences.

James VI was born 19 June 1566.

Mary had soon tired of Darnley, judging him a dangerous fool. With the birth of her son, she distanced herself still further. She was relying now on Bothwell.

Late in January 1567, Mary and Darnley were to some degree reconciled. At any rate he returned to Edinburgh. He went with Mary to nearby Kirk o' Field, where Mary was to attend a wedding on February 9. Darnley and his man remained behind. At about 2a.m., before the return of the wedding party, an explosion blasted the house. Both men were found dead some distance away, with no trace of powder burns.

General opinion at once surmised that Bothwell was the perpetuator with Mary's approval. Mary made little effort to find the murderer. Bothwell was exonerated in a farcical trial. That trial was on 12 April. on the 24th, he "kidnapped" Mary and they were "forcibly" wed. The whole business was too plained managed to be genuine.

A new rebellion broke out. This time Mary lost and she herself was captured at the Battle of Carberry Hill on 15 June 1567. Bothwell escaped into exile. When Mary refused to renounce and condemn Bothwell, the lairds forced her to abdicate in favor of her son, aged one year. She escaped and tried a second revolt, was again defeated (1568) and fled to England.