The monumental case of Worcester v. Georgia1 was a monumental case, which involved the jurisdiction of state laws concerning Native Americans, the reach of the Supreme Court, the responsibility of the Executive Branch, and also states’ rights. Its controversial opinion can be directly correlated with the Trail of Tears and Civil War. The Supreme Court tried to get out of a sticky situation in which it had political pressure from both sides. Ultimately, it seemed that the ruling did not change the track of where the country was headed.
Background:
In 1832, a monumental case concerning the jurisdiction of Cherokee lands came before the Supreme Court. It was concerning a Georgia law, passed in 1830, which required all whites that were living in Cherokee territory to apply for and receive a license from the governor of Georgia. The law reads:
[A]ll white persons residing within the limits of the Cherokee nation, on the 1st day of March next, or at any time thereafter without a license or permit from his excellency the governor, or from such agent as his excellence the governor shall authorize to grant such permit or license, and who shall not have taken the oath hereinafter required, shall be guilty of high misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by confinement to the penitentiary at hard labour for a term not less than four years.2
However, not only did one have to obtain a license, one also had to take an oath to “support and defend the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia”.3 Politics was heavily involved in the passing of this law. There was much rumor and speculation that the white Northern missionaries living among the Cherokees were expressing encouragement to resist the state in their strain to force the Cherokees to leave their lands. In actuality, “Worcester became intimate with leaders of the Cherokee government and did indeed encourage them to resist the removal pressures.”4 The legislature of Georgia was just trying to watch its back and trying to prevent an uprising.
Because of their refusal to leave, the state of Georgia ordered the arrest of Samuel A. Worcester, Elizur Butler, James Trott, Samuel Mays, Surry Eaton, Austin Copeland, and Edward D. Losure, all missionaries, on July 7, 1831. These missionaries were of the American Board of Commissioners foe Foreign Missions, “a Congregationalist organization based in Massachusetts”.5 While all but two were convicted and accepted pardons, Worcester and Butler knew how the case would turn out, and were determined and committed to running the case all the way to the Supreme Court, as a test case for Cherokee rights.
Trial Proceedings:
The County of Gwinnett criminal trial court, where the five missionaries took their sentences and pardons, first tried Worcester and Butler, as well as the other five missionaries. Worcester and Butler then went on to the County of Gwinnett Supreme Court, who claimed jurisdiction working as an appellate court. They were found guilty and were sentenced to four years of hard labor in a penitentiary, as was the punishment described in the Georgia law in question. Worcester appealed to the United States Supreme Court under the pretense of a writ of error, meaning he believed that the court’s decision was not only wrong, but also out of jurisdiction. As the Supreme Court report states, “The case of Elizur Butler, plaintiff in error v. The State of Georgia, was brought before the supreme court in the same manner.”6 The missionaries both believed that the state of Georgia held no jurisdiction when meddling with the affairs of the Cherokee Nation.
A writ of error was administered to the county court, returned by a clerk, but not signed by a judge. While the judge’s signature is asked for, it is not required. This rule has several precedents that are mentioned in the Supreme Court document. For example, “In M’Culloch v. The State of Maryland, 4 Wheat, 316m was a qui tam action, brought to recover a penalty, and the record was authenticated by the seal of the court and the signature of the clerk, without that of a judge.”7 Therefore, ““a record was duly created in the case, and while the state of Georgia never appeared before the Court, and publically announced that it would disregard any decree of the Court overturning a conviction, Worcester v. Georgia appeared on the Court’s docket for the 1832 Term.”8 The arguments began on February 20, 1832 with Wirt and Sergeant representing Worcester and Butler.
By looking at the pre-existing views of the justices, Worcester and Butler knew that they would win the case if they argued it correctly. In a stroke of luck, the conservative Justice Johnson was absent because of ill health, but Justice Duvall, who was a good friend of Story, Marshall and Wirt, had returned. In his concurrence in Cherokee Nation,9 Johnson stated that the Cherokees, and all Indians, were “nothing more than wandering hordes, held together only by ties of blood and habit, and having neither laws or government beyond what is required in a savage state”10 Luckily, he was not at this court. As White explains, “Story’s and Thompson’s support for the Cherokees was on record, and Marshall’s posture might have been surmised from hints in his Cherokee Nations opinion.”11 Story also had written several letters to his wife expressing blatant sympathy for the Cherokee Nation. He writes:
[I was] introduced to two of the Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation, so sadly dealt with by the state of Georgia. They are both educated men, and conversed with singular force and propriety of language upon their own case, the law of which they perfectly understood and reasoned upon. I never in my whole life was more affected by the consideration that they and all their race are destined to destruction. And I feel, as an America, disgraced by our gross violation of the public faith toward them.12
He later added, “I confess that I blush for my country”.13 Story’s support was very safe to assume.
The argument for the case itself was over jurisdiction. Did the state of Georgia have the constitutional right to regulate the law in the Cherokee territory? While Worcester and Butler believed they were being specifically targeted by the Georgia legislature because of their support of Cherokee resistance. They believed that if they applied for licenses, they would have been denied anyways. Worcester argues that the Cherokee nation is “out of the jurisdiction of [the county] court, and not in the county Gwinnett, or elsewhere within the jurisdiction of [the] court.”14 He states that:
[H]e was at the time of his arrest, engaged in preaching the gospel to the Cherokee Indians, and in translating the sacred Scriptures into their language, with the permission and approval of the said Cherokee nation, and in accordance with the humane policy of the government of the United States, for the civilization and improvement of Indians.15
He argues that the state of Georgia is out of jurisdiction because the fact that the treaties of the Cherokee Nation have been with the United States not the state. He claims that the Cherokee Nation is under jurisdiction of the federal government and that the “treaties the United States of America acknowledge the said Cherokee nation to be a sovereign nation, authorized to govern themselves”.16 He claims that Georgia’s attempt to stretch its laws across the territory undermine the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. He points out that “the aforesaid treaties, which, according to the constitution of the United States, compose a part of the supreme law of the land; and that these laws of Georgia are, therefore, unconstitutional, void, and of no effect.”17 Worcester also argues that these state laws impair the treaties between the federal government and Cherokees. Sergeant and Wirt also pointed out that the law itself, not only the conviction, was unconstitutional.
The stakes for this case were very high, possibly more extreme than anyone could have foreseen. With a hostile Congress and an even more hostile President Andrew Jackson breathing down the necks of the Justices, the pressure was on. The obvious issues riding on this decision were the Native American- United States relations and the future of legislation concerning Native Americans. However, what possibly none could have foreshadowed was the issue of states rights, the power of the judiciary, and the grasping hold of the federal government.
Opinion:
Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court on March 3, 1832. Duvall, Story, and Thompson all signed on to it. McLean concurred but wanted to emphasize the limits of the Court when dealing with states’ rights. Baldwin dissented because he believed the validation of the writ of error was erroneous. The court sided with Worcester, entitling the Cherokee nation to the protection of the federal government and giving sovereignty to the tribe. This evident sign of paternalism was a contrast to Marshall’s previous ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia18 where the court gave the state jurisdiction over the Indian tribes. Marshall argues that “the treaties, subsisting between the United States, and the Cherokees, acknowledge their right as a sovereign nation to govern themselves and all persons who have settled within their territory” free from state legislature.19 He believed that Georgia’s law “interferes with, and attempts to regulate and control, the intercourse with the Cherokee nation, which belongs, exclusively, to congress.”20 Therefore, the Supreme Court holds jurisdiction in this case, not only because the suit is against a state, the case is of appellate nature, but also because it concerns Cherokee Nation as a protected entity of the federal government.
Marshall then goes on to validate the right of the federal government to preside over the Native Americans. When discussing the two different civilizations of the Native Americans and the Europeans, he states “the discovery of either by the other should give the discoverer rights in the country discovered, which annulled the pre-existing rights of its ancient possessors.”21 He leaves the history lesson to discuss “the actual state of things”.22He claims that “power, war, [and] conquest, give rights”23 Marshall argues that the fact that the Europeans discovered the natives, assumed that they were conquered. Also, the United States “succeeded to all the claims of Great Britain, both territorial and political” therefore giving them control over the Native Americans.24 Marshall continues to discuss the European way of dealing with Native Americans. He summarizes by saying “their actual independence was untouched, and their right to self-government acknowledged, they were willing to profess dependence on the power” of the Anglo man. 25 The history lesson continues and Marshall discusses early revolutionary Congress to have American-Indian relations as a prime concern. This congress wanted to “impress on the Cherokees the same respect for congress which was before felt for the king of Great Britain.”26 In exchange for the Cherokees claiming dependence, the United States would protect them.
Finally, Marshall claims, “the Cherokee nation is under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whatsoever.”27 Marshall clarified by stating:
[C]onsider the several Indian nations as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged, but guaranteed by the United States.28
This is possible because “the treaties and laws of the United States contemplate the Indian territory as completely separated from that of the states”.29 Marshall grants the Cherokee Nation the protection of the federal government, while keeping their sovereignty.
Contemporary writers have criticized Marshall’s opinion heavily. It was seen as “more sympathetic” and “less stigmatic” than Marshall’s earlier cases dealing with the Cherokees, and seen as “a fascinating exercise in converting the natural law argument to arguments based on the sovereign powers of the Union and of his Court.”30 However, as Marshall usually is, he is criticized for his lengthiness and wordiness. White comments by stating:
In an opinion whose total length was twenty-six pages and one fraction of a sentence, history (by which Marshall meant the time between the earliest white settlements in America and the framing of the Constitution) and associated principles occupied seventeen.”31
He goes on:
Of the remaining pages approximately six were devoted to the preliminary procedural and jurisdictional issues, leaving about three pages for explicit constitutional analysis. The structure of the opinion, then, was designed to make Marshall’s familiar point that attention to history and to the principals embodied in that history were not only clarified constitutional analysis, it went a long way toward disposing of the issues to by analyzed.”32
Overall, Marshall’s opinion was received well by the Cherokee’s but criticized by many.
The Cherokee nation seemed to have faired better in the handling of the issues at hand. White comments that:
A social role for Indian tribes in America was cemented by the opinion, and in a sense that role was new: the ‘plight’ of the tribes was to be solved by making them wards of the federal government. But their natural rights remained the same—if existent in republican theory, nonexistent in practice—and their implicit options remained the same.33
Marshall covered the issues regarding jurisdiction over Native American nations as well as what rights the states had over them, which was not many at all. He “acknowledged that the Court held jurisdiction pursuant to its right to review state laws and actions that conflicted with the Constitution” while still keeping states in check.34 White points out that “the fact that the Court had not been unanimous in either Cherokee Nation or Worcester testified to the internal changes a decade had produced, but from a sovereignty perspective the result was the same: a state had defied the Court and had been decisively rebuffed.”35 However, enemies of the Court took the response to this much harsher.
Reactions:
Wilson Lumpkin, newly elected governor of Georgia was very upset by the ruling. Tensions with states’ rights were already brewing and South Carolina was known to be thinking of secession. Lumpkin had this to say about the matter:
[The] majority of judges of the Supreme Court of the United States have not only assumed jurisdiction in the cases of Worcester and Butler, but have, by their decision, attempted to overthrow that essential jurisdiction of the State, in criminal cases, which has been vested by our Constitution in the Superior Courts of our own State. This proves that the States of this Union never did, and never will, permit their political rights to be suspended upon the breath of the agents or trustees to whom they have delegated limited powers to perform certain definite acts.36
The state of Georgia was not happy about this decision, and it threatened a Civil War.
One of the biggest opposers to the ruling was President Andrew Jackson. A president of the people and a veteran of several Indian wars, Jackson was fiercely critical of the Court’s decision. He is reported to have said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” However, this is most likely untrue. Jackson actually said, “the decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.”37 Jackson had found a legal loophole in the ruling in order to get his way. Marshall and his court could have ruled that Georgia release the prisoners and rebuke to law that infringed on Cherokee and federal jurisdiction, but it was up to Jackson to enforce it. He simply could ignore the problem.
It did not help Marshall’s cause that Jackson had a disdain for this opinion. Jackson was politically supportive of Georgia and wanted the relocation of the Cherokees. There are several instances in Jackson’s letters to political allies and friends of his disdain of the Supreme Court because of their decision. In a letter to Colonel Antony Butler, Jackson writes:
If anything can paralyze the course of the executive, it will be done—they have become envious of its success, both at home and abroad, and Clay, Calhoun, and Webster have [never?] ceased to endeavour to put me down and the supreme court in a late decision, declaring the Cherokees an independent nation, have united, to embarrass me.”38
He seemed to feel that the court made this decision in order to embarrass him, rather than their actual opinion. In a letter to John Randolf, Jackson wrote in the margin, “If I had a seat in the House of Representatives I would move an impeachment against the Chief Justice and Story. Their motives are nothing to me, and Thompson.”39 His obvious hate for the justices were probably one on the many reasons why Jackson never acted to enforce their decision, pressuring Georgia to free Butler and Worcester. The court never retaliated because they feared a Court-Executive rivalry. Boundinot summed up the situation well saying, “It is not now before the great state of Georgia and the poor Cherokees, but between the friend of the judiciary and the enemies of the judiciary.”40 This gave Jackson his needed loophole.
Worcester and Butler remained in prison. They had options to get out, but there were risks involved. White clarifies that “Wirt and Sergeant could inform the Court, at the opening of the 1833 Term, that Georgia had refused to comply with its mandate to release Worcester and Butler, and ask the Justices to certify the refusal and notify the president of the United States.”41 In this case, Jackson would have to get involved, under obligation. Wirt and Sergeant could argue before the court in January of 1833, but “influential Georgians informed them, Jackson would have to enforce the Court’s decree, Georgia might declare the federal treaties and statutes pertaining to the Cherokees ‘null and void’ and other southern states might support Georgia.”42 This could lead to secession. So the fate of two missionaries could have caused a civil war. It was suggested that Worcester and Butler merely get a pardon. However, elite Cherokees thought that this would admit that the states did “have the authority to regulate Indian affairs within their borders” and this would “undermine the autonomy of Indian tribes”43 In the end Governor Wilson persuaded them to accept pardons. According to some reports, “Public criticism of Georgia’s incarceration of the missionaries persuaded Governor Lumpkin to work for their release. He asked the state legislature to repeal the law used to convict them”.44 Worchester ended up joining the Cherokees again until he died. Neither of the men ever accepted or was given a formal pardon, but they were released on a general proclamation on January 14, 1833.
Public opinion dictated the views of many Americans. While there were fearful views like the Cherokee Phoenix which said:
[S]hould the President and Georgia regardless of honor, humanity and justice, exercise power to remove us by force, and such a removal bring ruin and destruction upon our nation, the accountability must rest upon those who ought to be our friends, guardians and protectors,45
most newspapers bashed the Cherokees and the Court. An interesting viewpoint was from the Augusta Chronicle which states that, “One good at least, will grow out of the decision, inasmuch as it must tend to unite the southern states more closely, and show them that they have common cause of self-protection and self-defense against federal usurpation and oppression.”46 This was another warning sign of the upcoming, seemingly inevitable, Civil War. However, some newspapers did not see this coming, or merely refused to believe it. The Newark Advertiser, a paper from New Jersey, stated: “Much as we would regret the necessity of sustaining the supremacy of the laws, by an appeal to arms, still we have no doubt, that every State in the Union, would promptly furnish the Executive of the nation its requisite portion of patriotic freemen, to aid him in upholding the judiciary.”47 Was this paper simply in denial? Or did it truly believe that patriotism would win out over the antagonism of states rights. The National Intelligencer seems to have an answer to that: “We trust that the Unions will endure for many centuries, though more than one state shall rise against it.”48 It goes on to comment on the case saying:
The mandate of the Supreme Court us directed to the Superior Court for the county of Gwinnet, in the state of Georgia; and it requires of that court that it do release the missionaries, who are confined at hard labor in the penitentiary…. If the court obey the mandate, it is well, and no more is to be said or done. If the court does not obey the mandate, application will, we suppose, be made to the Supreme Court, as its next term…”49
Overall, it seems that more sympathy came from northern newspapers, while more threats of secession and anger came from southern newspapers.
Changes in Society:
The ruling of the Worcester case did nothing to help the Cherokees in the long run. Urofsky states “Jackson’s inaction proved to be the death blow to Cherokee hopes to remain in their southeastern homeland.”50 A small faction of Cherokees signed a treaty in 1835 that relocated the tribe westward. The majority of Cherokees were not in agreement with the treaty, but “[w]ith Jackson’s 1830 removal legislation in effect, the federal government began to enter into agreements with southeastern tribes for the cession of their lands”51 The treaty was ratified by the Senate in 1836 where it was passed by just one vote. This directly led to a mass movement of Cherokees out west. Urofsky states that “[p]erhaps as many as 4,000 Cherokees, roughly one-fourth of the nation’s population, died on the removal paths that came to be known as the Trail of Tears.”52 The Cherokees were sentenced to “confinement on federal reservations and the consequent legitimization of their ‘dependant’ status.”53
This extremely sad massacre of people still resonates in the hearts and minds of Native Americans today.
Effects on the Law:
Although this decision did not work out favorably for the Cherokees, it provided the precedent for many court cases dealing not only with Native Americans and the concept of sovereignty, but also other racial minority cases. Most of the Native American cases dealt with the power of federal laws on Indian reservations. In U.S. v. Holiday54 it was argued that Congressional bans on selling liquor was constitutionally applicable to reservations. In Wisconsin Potowatomies of Hannahville Indian Community v. Houston55, it was argued that tribal law won over state law when dealing with the custody of children domiciled on reservation land.
The track of racial minority cases was also changed. Before the Trail of Tears, “the Cherokees could claim that in their struggle with Georgia they had emerged as the winners.”56 However, it was not really a win legally. The Cherokees now made themselves wards of the federal government. Federal power could potentially place Indians in the position of abandoning their cultural heritage—becoming ‘civilized’—or being dispossessed of their land and forced to emigrate,”57 which they did. This did not bring the Cherokees any more freedom or respect. What was really learned was that: “in the case of racial minorities whose ‘character’ or ‘condition’ made their amalgamation into white society precarious, natural rights principles simply did not apply in their full force.”58 White summarizes by saying, “Natural law was not only not ‘paramount to all other laws’ in such cases, it had very little force.”59 This is the legacy of the Marshall court, to undermine natural law, relying more on ‘the actual nature of things’. In the end, “[r]acial minorities received a message from the Marshall Court that they were to receive repeatedly in the subsequent course of American history: liberty and equality in America have been regularly contingent on whose freedom and whose equal treatment is at issue.”60 The Worcester case left a long legacy for racial minorities to try and solve.
Overall, Worcester v. Georgia provided the ground work for Native American tribes to be eradicated out of the states and out west under the watchful eye and strong stick of the federal government. In a historical opinion, Marshall displayed justification for jurisdiction to remain to the United States government rather than states. This decision was another case in which states were denied what they believed was their rights, a major conflict leading up to the Civil War.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Zoot Suit Riots: A Study of Hate and Hats
There are a few moments in American history that can sum up an entire movement. The Zoot-Suit Riots exposed the ironic racism during World War II, showed how the war effort back on American soil could be the cause of dismay and corruption, and encompassed the groundwork for a social revolution dealing with racial prejudices. The city of Los Angeles provides the prefect scenery for this event, a city of many, many races and cultures, crammed into an industrial machine of white-washed society. The Zoot-Suit Riots provide for a part of American history that often gets overshadowed by the war: the embedded racism at home, while ironically trying to fight racism abroad.
Los Angeles, 1943, was a tough town to be in. Conflicted and stretched because of the way, citizens witnessed the containment of Asian Americans and the estrangement of African Americans. However, for ten days in June, Los Angeles would feel the pinch of a new racial movement, spurred by the ten days of abuse towards Mexican Americans. Already, there was tension between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans, mainly centered on labor disputes. The tension added by the war, the draft, and United States policy on racial prejudice only sped up this time bomb of racial and societal tension. On June 3, “[m]arching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find”. 1 These were not only Mexican Americans, but also African Americans and Filipinos.
What was soon called the Zoot-Suit Riots was sparked by the Sleepy Lagoon affair, which took place in December of the previous year. Very simply, the affair centered on the murder of a Mexican-American who was part of this zoot-suit generation. The murder brought into public life the image of the Mexican, zoot-suit wearing gangster, prone to violence and chaos. David E. Hayes-Bautista comments that, “The Sleepy Lagoon trial and the subsequent ‘Zoot-Suit’ Riots in Los Angeles seemed to prove that Richard Henry Dana was right about those lazy, fatalistic, present-oriented Latinos”. 2 Even local government officials sponsored this outrageous notion of stereotyping. For example:
The Los Angeles County sheriff, Captain E. Duran Ayers, testified that the murder was, no doubt, a result of the uniquely Latino racial character traits of the defendants: “The Mexican element… desire[s] to kill, or at least let blood… When there is added to this inborn characteristic that has come through the ages, the use of liquor, then we certainly have crimes of violence”. 3
This image of the Mexican American stuck in the minds of the American people during the riots the following June. Those zoot-suiters that were convicted were all Mexican Americans and were treated quite unfairly during their imprisonment and also their trial. This only added to the image of the Mexican gangster.
The riots themselves were caused by a rumor that a group of zoot-suiters attacked a group of servicemen, who were stationed in Los Angeles, because they were flirting with some Mexican American women. Whether or not this was true, the rumor itself inspired hundred of servicemen, mainly sailors with the Navy, to roam the streets of Los Angeles, expressing their anger at the group. Hayes-Bautista describes the event stating, a number of servicemen descended on downtown and East Los Angeles and attacked zoot-suited Latinos, stripping them of their symbolically offensive clothing and beating them”.4 However, these victims were not defended and many were blamed for the riots themselves, being further abused and arrested by law enforcement. The Los Angeles Police Department turned what they considered a patriotic blind eye to the crimes of the servicemen, seeing the riots as a way of cleaning up the streets of the city. In can be said that “the victims of mob violence were portrayed as deviants whose dress seemed to demand rebuke”. 5 Hundreds of Mexican Americans were arrested during and after the ten day raid and many were convicted of weapons and public indecency, although no servicemen were convicted and only a handful arrested. Providing the press coverage that saw these zoot-suiters as victims, Time Magazine criticized the Los Angeles Police Department reporting that:
Scores of Mexican youths had been stripped of their pants (some of them on the stages of movie houses), beaten and then arrested by the Los Angeles police for "vagrancy" and "rioting." (The police practice was to accompany the caravans in police cars, watch the beatings and then jail the victims. Their orders apparently were to let the Shore Patrol and the Military Police handle the rioting sailors. The service police were futile.).6
However, most of the press saw these zoot-suiters as delinquents and mobsters rather than victims.
The press coverage of the riots did not help the Mexican American cause. Most of the press covered the story much like the following:
Subdued and no longer ready to do battle, twenty-eight zoot-suiters, stripped of their garish clothing and with county jail barbers hopefully eyeing their flowing duck-tail haircuts, languished behind bars today after a second night of battle with of fleers and service men. The arrests came after a "war" declared by service men, mostly sailors, on zoos-suit gangs which have been preying on the East Side as well as molesting civilians. 7
With words such as “battle”, “garish”, “preying”, and “molesting”, it is very hard to look beyond the negative stereotype being enforced onto the deeper meanings of the riots themselves. In fact, “The press treated the affair as a joke rather than as a jeremiad, and nothing in the coverage was likely to provoke readers to think about the racial implications of the riots”. 8 This neglect for what was going on slowed the process for revealing the true nature of the riots.
But why were these zoot-suiters targeted in the first place? In the conventional history there seem to be two camps. The first is that zoot-suiters were seen as unpatriotic and anti-military. The second is supportive of the idea of deep-rooted racial hate. Both of these seem to be correct in their own way; however the combination of the two camps seems to be a better study that has not been explored in extent.
In regards to the first camp, many saw the zoot-suiters as unpatriotic because of their lifestyles. Many even saw the zoot-suits themselves as anti-American. Hayes-Bautista comments that:
The press reported public worries about the unpatriotic appearance and behavior of Latinos wearing zoot suits—long-waisted, wide-lapelled coats paired with baggy, chest-high pants with narrow cuffs. Newspapers editorialized about menacing crowds of these outlandishly dressed young men who were described as unpatriotic. 9
There were many reasons for this assumption. These youths were seen as wasting their time and not helping with the war effort. Portrayed as un-American draft dodgers, this lifestyle caused a rift between zoot-suiters and servicemen. The zoot-suits themselves were seen as showy and overly extravagant, things that people felt were not appropriate for wartime. The bright-colored suits drew attention to these young men (and some women) when people felt all focus should be on defeating the country’s enemies. Also, the lavish wardrobe suggested wealth, even though zoot-suits were worn mainly by the middle class youth. Considered a waste of much needed money and resources, the zoot-suiters, also known as pachucos, were generally looked at with disdain. This situation is well-described by Cosgrove:
In an attempt to institute a 26% cut-back in the use of fabrics, the War Production Board drew up regulations for the wartime manufacture of what Esquire magazine called, "streamlined suits by Uncle Sam." The regulations effectively forbade the manufacture of zoot-suits and most legitimate tailoring companies ceased to manufacture or advertise any suits that fell outside the War Production Board's guide lines. Thus the polarization between servicemen and pachucos was immediately visible: the chino shirt and battledress were evidently uniforms of patriotism, whereas wearing a zoot-suit was a deliberate and public way of flouting the regulations of rationing. The zoot-suit was a moral and social scandal in the eyes of the authorities, not simply because it was associated with petty crime and violence, but because it openly snubbed the laws of rationing.10
This view of a disregard for the restrictions imposed on a wartime society, coupled with the spreading stereotype of the young Mexican Americans, caused tension to run high concerning these individuals.
This tension was also aided by the growing paranoia about Mexico joining the Axis powers. Mexican immigration and labor was very important not only for the West, but also for the war effort. The Brachero Program, a very successful system for allowing Mexican laborers to temporarily live in the United States as long as they are working to manufacture war supplies, was considered “Mexico’s single most important contribution to the war effort”.11 In fact, the grip on Mexico was so tight, it inspired the Good Neighbor Policy of censoring materials published about Latinos. The United States government was very aware of Mexico’s threat to the war. So much so that the government did not interfere with the rioting servicemen until the Mexican Ambassador mentioned the crimes of hate that were occurring. Many historians believe that:
It was the fear of an international incident that could only have an adverse effect on California's economy, rather than any real concern for the social conditions of the Mexican American community, that motivated Governor Warren of California to order a public investigation into the causes of the riots. 12
The paranoia of Mexican alliances was so great that when investigating the Zoot-Suit Riots “[t]he un-American activities investigation was ordered to determine whether the present Zoot-Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries’”.13 This paranoia was also assisted by the ingrained racism in American society.
Racism in America was nothing new at this point, and neither was racism towards Mexicans. Seen as a huge potential for cheap labor, Mexicans in the southwestern region of the country witnessed much racial hate and abuse from their employers, as well as neighboring Americans. Mexicans were considered ‘job-stealers’, taking low-end jobs for cheaper than the white man would. Due to these views, the negative image of Mexicans as lazy and corrupt spread throughout much of America. This, coupled with the fact that many of the servicemen stationed in Los Angeles at the time of the riots were not from the southwest and had never been personally exposed the Mexican Americans before, only knowing of the hate and stereotyping revealed by white audiences, leads to believe that the riots also had a lot of racial prejudice as backing. Ironically, these servicemen with such racist views were fighting a war against the oppression of a group based on their race, such as the Nazis were oppressing the Jews.
Many contemporary histories cover these previous statements of this study, usually leaning one way or another, but few address the reason why a Mexican American would wear a zoot-suit. These outfits came out of the jazz age and were coupled with a search for identity in a divided society. These youthful Mexican Americans did not see themselves as Mexican, like their parents, or as Americans, like the servicemen beating them. Therefore, they created their own culture, their own definition of who they were. Cosgrove, one of the only historians that address the wearing of the zoot-suit, comments that the zoot-suit was “an emblem of ethnicity and a way of negotiating an identity. The zoot-suit was a refusal: a subcultural gesture that refused to concede to the manners of subservience”. 14 He goes on further to say the zoot-suit allowed these youths to “[flaunt] their difference rather than disguise their alienation”.15 The wearing of the zoot-suit, with the background of the racial and patriotic prejudices associated with them, would make for a great microhistory.
Studying this as a microhistory would provide a new look at the struggle of Mexican Americans during their migration and integration into American culture. It would also be beneficial when studying the idea of “the war at home” during World War II. This study would also be useful for the broader study of the effect of fashion on history. This topic is narrowly tailored and on a small scale that Ginsburg and Levi discussed, giving a viewpoint of history from ‘the bottom-up’. The Zoot-Suit Riots are an important part of history that often does not get studied, but encompasses many issues that are still relevant in our history today.
Los Angeles, 1943, was a tough town to be in. Conflicted and stretched because of the way, citizens witnessed the containment of Asian Americans and the estrangement of African Americans. However, for ten days in June, Los Angeles would feel the pinch of a new racial movement, spurred by the ten days of abuse towards Mexican Americans. Already, there was tension between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans, mainly centered on labor disputes. The tension added by the war, the draft, and United States policy on racial prejudice only sped up this time bomb of racial and societal tension. On June 3, “[m]arching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find”. 1 These were not only Mexican Americans, but also African Americans and Filipinos.
What was soon called the Zoot-Suit Riots was sparked by the Sleepy Lagoon affair, which took place in December of the previous year. Very simply, the affair centered on the murder of a Mexican-American who was part of this zoot-suit generation. The murder brought into public life the image of the Mexican, zoot-suit wearing gangster, prone to violence and chaos. David E. Hayes-Bautista comments that, “The Sleepy Lagoon trial and the subsequent ‘Zoot-Suit’ Riots in Los Angeles seemed to prove that Richard Henry Dana was right about those lazy, fatalistic, present-oriented Latinos”. 2 Even local government officials sponsored this outrageous notion of stereotyping. For example:
The Los Angeles County sheriff, Captain E. Duran Ayers, testified that the murder was, no doubt, a result of the uniquely Latino racial character traits of the defendants: “The Mexican element… desire[s] to kill, or at least let blood… When there is added to this inborn characteristic that has come through the ages, the use of liquor, then we certainly have crimes of violence”. 3
This image of the Mexican American stuck in the minds of the American people during the riots the following June. Those zoot-suiters that were convicted were all Mexican Americans and were treated quite unfairly during their imprisonment and also their trial. This only added to the image of the Mexican gangster.
The riots themselves were caused by a rumor that a group of zoot-suiters attacked a group of servicemen, who were stationed in Los Angeles, because they were flirting with some Mexican American women. Whether or not this was true, the rumor itself inspired hundred of servicemen, mainly sailors with the Navy, to roam the streets of Los Angeles, expressing their anger at the group. Hayes-Bautista describes the event stating, a number of servicemen descended on downtown and East Los Angeles and attacked zoot-suited Latinos, stripping them of their symbolically offensive clothing and beating them”.4 However, these victims were not defended and many were blamed for the riots themselves, being further abused and arrested by law enforcement. The Los Angeles Police Department turned what they considered a patriotic blind eye to the crimes of the servicemen, seeing the riots as a way of cleaning up the streets of the city. In can be said that “the victims of mob violence were portrayed as deviants whose dress seemed to demand rebuke”. 5 Hundreds of Mexican Americans were arrested during and after the ten day raid and many were convicted of weapons and public indecency, although no servicemen were convicted and only a handful arrested. Providing the press coverage that saw these zoot-suiters as victims, Time Magazine criticized the Los Angeles Police Department reporting that:
Scores of Mexican youths had been stripped of their pants (some of them on the stages of movie houses), beaten and then arrested by the Los Angeles police for "vagrancy" and "rioting." (The police practice was to accompany the caravans in police cars, watch the beatings and then jail the victims. Their orders apparently were to let the Shore Patrol and the Military Police handle the rioting sailors. The service police were futile.).6
However, most of the press saw these zoot-suiters as delinquents and mobsters rather than victims.
The press coverage of the riots did not help the Mexican American cause. Most of the press covered the story much like the following:
Subdued and no longer ready to do battle, twenty-eight zoot-suiters, stripped of their garish clothing and with county jail barbers hopefully eyeing their flowing duck-tail haircuts, languished behind bars today after a second night of battle with of fleers and service men. The arrests came after a "war" declared by service men, mostly sailors, on zoos-suit gangs which have been preying on the East Side as well as molesting civilians. 7
With words such as “battle”, “garish”, “preying”, and “molesting”, it is very hard to look beyond the negative stereotype being enforced onto the deeper meanings of the riots themselves. In fact, “The press treated the affair as a joke rather than as a jeremiad, and nothing in the coverage was likely to provoke readers to think about the racial implications of the riots”. 8 This neglect for what was going on slowed the process for revealing the true nature of the riots.
But why were these zoot-suiters targeted in the first place? In the conventional history there seem to be two camps. The first is that zoot-suiters were seen as unpatriotic and anti-military. The second is supportive of the idea of deep-rooted racial hate. Both of these seem to be correct in their own way; however the combination of the two camps seems to be a better study that has not been explored in extent.
In regards to the first camp, many saw the zoot-suiters as unpatriotic because of their lifestyles. Many even saw the zoot-suits themselves as anti-American. Hayes-Bautista comments that:
The press reported public worries about the unpatriotic appearance and behavior of Latinos wearing zoot suits—long-waisted, wide-lapelled coats paired with baggy, chest-high pants with narrow cuffs. Newspapers editorialized about menacing crowds of these outlandishly dressed young men who were described as unpatriotic. 9
There were many reasons for this assumption. These youths were seen as wasting their time and not helping with the war effort. Portrayed as un-American draft dodgers, this lifestyle caused a rift between zoot-suiters and servicemen. The zoot-suits themselves were seen as showy and overly extravagant, things that people felt were not appropriate for wartime. The bright-colored suits drew attention to these young men (and some women) when people felt all focus should be on defeating the country’s enemies. Also, the lavish wardrobe suggested wealth, even though zoot-suits were worn mainly by the middle class youth. Considered a waste of much needed money and resources, the zoot-suiters, also known as pachucos, were generally looked at with disdain. This situation is well-described by Cosgrove:
In an attempt to institute a 26% cut-back in the use of fabrics, the War Production Board drew up regulations for the wartime manufacture of what Esquire magazine called, "streamlined suits by Uncle Sam." The regulations effectively forbade the manufacture of zoot-suits and most legitimate tailoring companies ceased to manufacture or advertise any suits that fell outside the War Production Board's guide lines. Thus the polarization between servicemen and pachucos was immediately visible: the chino shirt and battledress were evidently uniforms of patriotism, whereas wearing a zoot-suit was a deliberate and public way of flouting the regulations of rationing. The zoot-suit was a moral and social scandal in the eyes of the authorities, not simply because it was associated with petty crime and violence, but because it openly snubbed the laws of rationing.10
This view of a disregard for the restrictions imposed on a wartime society, coupled with the spreading stereotype of the young Mexican Americans, caused tension to run high concerning these individuals.
This tension was also aided by the growing paranoia about Mexico joining the Axis powers. Mexican immigration and labor was very important not only for the West, but also for the war effort. The Brachero Program, a very successful system for allowing Mexican laborers to temporarily live in the United States as long as they are working to manufacture war supplies, was considered “Mexico’s single most important contribution to the war effort”.11 In fact, the grip on Mexico was so tight, it inspired the Good Neighbor Policy of censoring materials published about Latinos. The United States government was very aware of Mexico’s threat to the war. So much so that the government did not interfere with the rioting servicemen until the Mexican Ambassador mentioned the crimes of hate that were occurring. Many historians believe that:
It was the fear of an international incident that could only have an adverse effect on California's economy, rather than any real concern for the social conditions of the Mexican American community, that motivated Governor Warren of California to order a public investigation into the causes of the riots. 12
The paranoia of Mexican alliances was so great that when investigating the Zoot-Suit Riots “[t]he un-American activities investigation was ordered to determine whether the present Zoot-Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries’”.13 This paranoia was also assisted by the ingrained racism in American society.
Racism in America was nothing new at this point, and neither was racism towards Mexicans. Seen as a huge potential for cheap labor, Mexicans in the southwestern region of the country witnessed much racial hate and abuse from their employers, as well as neighboring Americans. Mexicans were considered ‘job-stealers’, taking low-end jobs for cheaper than the white man would. Due to these views, the negative image of Mexicans as lazy and corrupt spread throughout much of America. This, coupled with the fact that many of the servicemen stationed in Los Angeles at the time of the riots were not from the southwest and had never been personally exposed the Mexican Americans before, only knowing of the hate and stereotyping revealed by white audiences, leads to believe that the riots also had a lot of racial prejudice as backing. Ironically, these servicemen with such racist views were fighting a war against the oppression of a group based on their race, such as the Nazis were oppressing the Jews.
Many contemporary histories cover these previous statements of this study, usually leaning one way or another, but few address the reason why a Mexican American would wear a zoot-suit. These outfits came out of the jazz age and were coupled with a search for identity in a divided society. These youthful Mexican Americans did not see themselves as Mexican, like their parents, or as Americans, like the servicemen beating them. Therefore, they created their own culture, their own definition of who they were. Cosgrove, one of the only historians that address the wearing of the zoot-suit, comments that the zoot-suit was “an emblem of ethnicity and a way of negotiating an identity. The zoot-suit was a refusal: a subcultural gesture that refused to concede to the manners of subservience”. 14 He goes on further to say the zoot-suit allowed these youths to “[flaunt] their difference rather than disguise their alienation”.15 The wearing of the zoot-suit, with the background of the racial and patriotic prejudices associated with them, would make for a great microhistory.
Studying this as a microhistory would provide a new look at the struggle of Mexican Americans during their migration and integration into American culture. It would also be beneficial when studying the idea of “the war at home” during World War II. This study would also be useful for the broader study of the effect of fashion on history. This topic is narrowly tailored and on a small scale that Ginsburg and Levi discussed, giving a viewpoint of history from ‘the bottom-up’. The Zoot-Suit Riots are an important part of history that often does not get studied, but encompasses many issues that are still relevant in our history today.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Portal: the Validity of Mechanics, Rules, and Cake
Valve’s Portal is an interesting game that challenges the norms of game design and emotional response. It allows the players to learn skills and plot implicitly while keeping the concept of logic-based puzzles. However, the game explores what it really means to be a first person shooter. Through observation of players, one can see that Portal’s design and play of mechanics offer the balance between one’s thirst for rebellion and structured puzzles.
Coming in the Valve The Orange Box series, Portal offers a unique look into first-person gaming that keeps the player constantly enthralled in the game. Dan Adams says “[i]t's quirky, clever, polished, and presented with a spark of a subtly evil humor that it's hard not to enjoy the quick romp through Aperture Laboratories” 1. Starting out as a mere design pitch of students, Portal how now developed into an extremely popular game. The game manual offers a good summary:
In Portal, the player controls the character named Chell from a first person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("portal gun" or "ASHPD"). The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. Neither is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through the one portal will exit through the other. If subsequent portal ends are created, the previously created portal of the same color is closed. Not all surfaces are able to accommodate a portal. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes which she can pick up and use to climb on or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Special barriers exist at the end of test chambers (and within some) which, when passed through, close any open portals and "emancipate" (disintegrate) any cubes carried through; portals cannot be fired through them.2
Its simplicity, coupled with the logical application of given tools offer a unique game experience.
On introduction, the main character is revealed to be in some type of holding facility. One later discovers that “You're evidently a lab rat in an 'Enrichment Center' specifically designed to test your ability to use this device to navigate an absurdly hazardous obstacle course, led along by a lilting, broken-sounding synthetic female voice that rings out from tinny speakers” 3. One discovers that this female voice is GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence species that narrates throughout the game, offering the slightest hints of plot and litters the game with moments worthy of a fit of giggling. Tom Frances summarizes the mood of the game well commenting that “Portal is a comedy puzzle game. A pretty black comedy, granted, but firmly a comedy. Most of the jokes revolve around you being lied to, killed, or thirsty to the point of delirium, but that won't stop you chuckling at least once per puzzle” 4. The humor of the narrative adds a special spark to the plot itself.
Portal has quite a simple plot, however, it takes quite a little time in game play to expose it. While you soon discover that you are a test subject in an advanced science research facility, you are not given any back story. For example the only hint that you are given into your past is when the narrator lets it slip that you were an evil person before and you were unwanted. She states that “You’re not a good person you know. Good people don’t end up here”. This peaks the player’s curiosity to learn more about the female character they are playing. More plot clues can be found by not-so-hidden ‘secret’ rooms, meant to be unknown and unseen by beings in the testing facilities. These rooms have “been daubed with graffiti by other test subjects in later rooms, which suggests some degree of rebellion” causing the player to rethink the character of the omnipotent GLaDOS and achieve an overwhelming sense of paranoia that already has its underlyings because of the very clean and composed nature of the environment.5 This is further fueled by the unreliable narrator. As soon as level four, GLaDOS reveals itself as “enhancing the truth” before. Swift, a designer for the game, comments that “"On its own, the [Portal] game play would be alright. Honestly, a little on the dry side”.6 He emphasized the importance of clever writing in the beloved title. Not to worry though, the paranoia does pay off and not without humor. Leading up to the climax of the game GLaDOS politely asks, “Didn’t we have fun though? Remember when you were on the platform sliding into the fire put and I was like ‘goodbye’ and you were like ‘no way!’ and we pretended we were going to murder you? That was grand.” The humor of the narrator just adds to the creepiness factor. As a new way to look at first-person shooters, Portal’s plot and narration allow the reader to become immersed in this simple, yet addicting game.
To study the social and tutorial aspect of Portal, I merely watched people play the game. I had played and beaten the game on my own accord, but luckily enough time had passed that I forgot most of the solutions to each particular puzzle and merely only had an advantage because of the gained skill-set in playing the game previously. I wanted to make sure that I watched people who have either never played or never heard of the game experience it for the first time. I felt that this way, the player would really be implicitly and explicitly learning while the game was going on. First, I watched a single player play through the first half of the game. Ryan, the observed player, was familiar with the XBOX 360 platform and had heard of the game, knowing only about the idea that one creating portals for game play, but had never played any of The Orange Box series before. Therefore, he was not familiar with the environmental aspect of the server, or the nature of the games.
For my second player experience, I observed a group of six to seven students who had never played the game before. These students had ranging video game experience, but all seemed to have grasped the basic concepts of gaming. I had these students pass off the controller on each level. As a group they conquered the level, providing input and suggestions to the controlling player. This type of social atmosphere fostered and enhanced the growing sense of eeriness and paranoia that the game hopes to accomplish. These players seemed not only to learn from their own mistakes and attempts in the game, but also from each others erroneous endeavors.
To gather data, mainly I wrote down the reactions of each of the players to the implicit and explicit rules and game information as it presented itself. I felt that this play-testing of sorts would ultimately give me the information I would find most useful. The idea came to me from the Portal designers themselves who stated that:
Play-testing is probably the most important things we ever did on Portal. Actually sit down and watch people play your game. Watching how they react tells you what they want from the game, where they need more training, where you need to reinforce game play mechanics, and whether they get the story. 7
Therefore, I decided that this would work best when observing the players’ reactions to the game and given information.
Portal offers the chance for the experimental game design that the first half of the game is merely a tutorial for the more action-packed second half. Through implicit and explicit education to the game mechanics and skills, players build an infantry of knowledge that will eventually help them in the ‘real world’ of the game. Tom Bradwell commented on this stating that “The first levels serve as a gentle introduction to the various concepts at work, and it's a good few minutes before you gain access to the weapon itself, and even longer before it's fully operational”8. Sal Accardo offered a similar view saying:
The initial puzzles train you in certain concepts, like carrying a box through a portal to hold down a switch, or creating a path for an energy ball to reach a power receptacle. But once you're given the ability to place both entrance and exit portals, puzzles soon become devious, introducing moving platforms, live turrets, the need to place portals in a timed sequence, and generating momentum to fling yourself across large distances.9
Another critic, Tom Francis states that, “although it introduces its concepts to you gradually, it's a complex equation by the end” 10. These skills allow you to finally beat the game by mastering and honing your knowledge of the mechanics of the game. The game is set up as if the entire first half was merely a tutorial. Accardo also commented on this declaring that:
As it turns out, most of the puzzles are just training to prepare you for this last section of the game, at which point you'll have a vocabulary of skills that free you up to experiment instead of looking for that one perfect solution.11
However, the player does not even realize this until things begin to heat up (forgive the fire-pit reference).
The design of the game itself lends to the balance of creative innovation of the player, coupled with the feeling of confinement versus rebellion. The narrator of GLaDOS is key to achieving this. In the in game commentary, designers discuss that “GLaDOS's announcements serve not only to instruct Chell and help her progress through the game, but also to create atmosphere and develop the AI as a character”.12 Not only does she offer humor and critical phrases that move along the plot, such as her nagging references to cake, she also gives the player knowledge of the mechanics of the game. “Anyone who's played Portal has heard GLaDOS state, ‘Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out’. That line sums up the mechanics that distinguished Portal from the rest of the herd” Jeremy Alessi explained.13 Most of the game mechanics deal with the play of physics and perspective that a first person shooter has to offer. Alessi comments on this as well stating, ““In the end, Portal uses the traditional teleportation mechanic with a velocity and orientation change”.14 Even though the game is mainly meant for logical, possibly hesitant, play, it does leave room for that Rambo/Bond character in all of us. David Craddock comments in his review of the game that “Portal doesn't allow the player to carry any weapons per se, that doesn't mean no hostiles will appear to antagonize the test subject during her adventure”.15 Tom Francis explains very well about the diversification of the first person shooter mechanic. He states:
What's surprising about the turret encounters is that they're not purely puzzles: most of them can be conquered with speed, quick-thinking and makeshift cover, and they're entirely freeform. In other words, they're combat. It's a refreshing change of pace from the thoughtfulness of the rest of the game, but if you do prefer to use only your brain, there's always a clever way of avoiding being shot altogether. 16
This aspect allows the game to achieve a certain level of playability.
Portal’s playability is determined by many things. The most obvious of these are the rules. Every game must have rules. Rules establish the boundaries of the game and differentiate it from play. While sometimes players are given explicit instructions via the diagrams on the floor and walls, these must be discovered to be useful by the player, rather than just pointed out to by the narration or context of the game. However, most of the learning in this game takes place on an implicit realm. Often, players must discover for themselves what things will kill you and what will not and what to do in each given situation in order to pass the level. Bradwell discusses the implicit learning of portal placement stating that:
Framing the game play are the portal placement restrictions - grey concrete floors, walls and ceilings can accept a portal, but reflective black sections, moving surfaces, doors, glass partitions and other world-objects cannot - and those springy metal rods tied to your calves, which allow you to fall over vast distances without incurring damage.17
All of these things must be learned in the game. Through the use of trial and error, the player learns what is allowed and what is not. Dan Adams also has a comment on this discussing:
The trick is that you can only have one entrance and one exit meaning sometimes you'll encounter several kinds of brain teasers on how to use the portals correctly, and in some cases, quickly and often. It'll make you think about which portal you're placing, the exact location of where it needs to go, and the timing of when portals need to be switched. 18
This is all done by trial and error, the implicit experiments of the game in order to get a player to follow the rules and plot. This manipulation of the environment in order to achieve the access to the next level is the very basis of the game. The HalfLife server allows all sorts of objects to be used “rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment”.19 Though implicit learning one advances in the game.
Implicit learning can also be used to move along the plot. Bradwell interestingly enough discusses how the design of this game guides the player to notice certain things. He comments that:
One of the game's great strengths, if not its greatest, is that concepts are introduced in such a way that players are entertained and informed without exception or confusion, guided by subtle design decisions that emphasize particular elements and concepts by constraining.20
An example of this is that the first ‘secret’ room that reveals plot hints of rebellion and doom appears in the first android level. Because the players usually find the need to drop some kind of object on the android, the game provides boxes. However, the boxes are placed strategically in from of the entrance to the secret room. Therefore, when the player removes the boxes in the hope of advancing to the next level and surviving the vicious machine guns, he or she will notice the secret room. This strategic way to get the player to notice a certain element without explicitly saying so is genius. For a game like Portal which is about bending the rules of physics and games, it is ironic that the rules of the game make it worth playing.
Through watching the different types of players, I noticed the way the game teaches and therefore makes the game playable. The short, interesting games offer fun for both the casual gamer and the triple-A market.21 The game keeps you on a range of emotions, while some like Bradwell find the game “rewarding, not frustrating, to sit and ponder one, partly because of that economy of design, partly because the pacing is so patiently considered, and partly because it always comes together with such delightful eloquence,” most find themselves getting pleasantly frustrated with themselves.22 This frustration though is conveniently targeted at the game, through the sense of the earlier discussed paranoia and need to rebel, so that it creates a competitive edge of beating the game and showing the narrator that you are not just some lab rat to a single player game, which by nature has no competition except for completing one’s self-goals. An example of this anger turned into passion to win that I encountered was when one of the players saw an obstacle and merely said, “I can just portal across so f*#& you!” This competition and anger is also fueled by the narrator’s torture of allowing you to become attached to a companion cube, which one player nicknamed ‘Cubie’, and then asking you to exterminate it when it is no longer needed without the chance to say goodbye, causing players to wonder just how much the narrator will hesitate to exterminate you once your use is over. This play with emotions was inspired when one of the designers, “Wolpaw was reading some declassified government interrogation documents and learned that isolation leads subjects to become attached to inanimate objects”.23 The game also evokes a certain sense of curiosity. Accardo comments that:
About 16 of 19 puzzles into Portal, it's easy to start wondering "is this all there is?" The answer, happily, is a resounding "no." What starts out as an amusing and engaging diversion gives way to an extended and memorable finale, leaving us hungry for more.24
This curiosity is still not completely satisfied plot-wise, but skill wise the game “becomes a unique puzzle game where the solutions always turn out elegant and satisfying once you've figured them out”.25 The mechanics and game play offer the balance between anger and satisfaction, allowing the game’s simplicity to blossom.
Both the implicit and explicit rules, coupled with the unique mechanics of the game offer a special experience of game play. The implicit rules of the game, when applied, move along both the plot and the game play, which was seen in the example of the discovery of the first secret room. The mechanics of the game offer the balance of allowing the user creative freedom to solve the puzzles how they want, but also to teach the player the necessary skills to beat the game. With these concepts, the game comes to life, playing with the emotions of the players and allowing one to question the validity of said cake. Overall, Portal offers a look into the future of the trend of simple, yet compelling games that challenge what one thinks of as educational, tutorial, and basic video game design conceptions.
Coming in the Valve The Orange Box series, Portal offers a unique look into first-person gaming that keeps the player constantly enthralled in the game. Dan Adams says “[i]t's quirky, clever, polished, and presented with a spark of a subtly evil humor that it's hard not to enjoy the quick romp through Aperture Laboratories” 1. Starting out as a mere design pitch of students, Portal how now developed into an extremely popular game. The game manual offers a good summary:
In Portal, the player controls the character named Chell from a first person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("portal gun" or "ASHPD"). The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. Neither is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through the one portal will exit through the other. If subsequent portal ends are created, the previously created portal of the same color is closed. Not all surfaces are able to accommodate a portal. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes which she can pick up and use to climb on or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Special barriers exist at the end of test chambers (and within some) which, when passed through, close any open portals and "emancipate" (disintegrate) any cubes carried through; portals cannot be fired through them.2
Its simplicity, coupled with the logical application of given tools offer a unique game experience.
On introduction, the main character is revealed to be in some type of holding facility. One later discovers that “You're evidently a lab rat in an 'Enrichment Center' specifically designed to test your ability to use this device to navigate an absurdly hazardous obstacle course, led along by a lilting, broken-sounding synthetic female voice that rings out from tinny speakers” 3. One discovers that this female voice is GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence species that narrates throughout the game, offering the slightest hints of plot and litters the game with moments worthy of a fit of giggling. Tom Frances summarizes the mood of the game well commenting that “Portal is a comedy puzzle game. A pretty black comedy, granted, but firmly a comedy. Most of the jokes revolve around you being lied to, killed, or thirsty to the point of delirium, but that won't stop you chuckling at least once per puzzle” 4. The humor of the narrative adds a special spark to the plot itself.
Portal has quite a simple plot, however, it takes quite a little time in game play to expose it. While you soon discover that you are a test subject in an advanced science research facility, you are not given any back story. For example the only hint that you are given into your past is when the narrator lets it slip that you were an evil person before and you were unwanted. She states that “You’re not a good person you know. Good people don’t end up here”. This peaks the player’s curiosity to learn more about the female character they are playing. More plot clues can be found by not-so-hidden ‘secret’ rooms, meant to be unknown and unseen by beings in the testing facilities. These rooms have “been daubed with graffiti by other test subjects in later rooms, which suggests some degree of rebellion” causing the player to rethink the character of the omnipotent GLaDOS and achieve an overwhelming sense of paranoia that already has its underlyings because of the very clean and composed nature of the environment.5 This is further fueled by the unreliable narrator. As soon as level four, GLaDOS reveals itself as “enhancing the truth” before. Swift, a designer for the game, comments that “"On its own, the [Portal] game play would be alright. Honestly, a little on the dry side”.6 He emphasized the importance of clever writing in the beloved title. Not to worry though, the paranoia does pay off and not without humor. Leading up to the climax of the game GLaDOS politely asks, “Didn’t we have fun though? Remember when you were on the platform sliding into the fire put and I was like ‘goodbye’ and you were like ‘no way!’ and we pretended we were going to murder you? That was grand.” The humor of the narrator just adds to the creepiness factor. As a new way to look at first-person shooters, Portal’s plot and narration allow the reader to become immersed in this simple, yet addicting game.
To study the social and tutorial aspect of Portal, I merely watched people play the game. I had played and beaten the game on my own accord, but luckily enough time had passed that I forgot most of the solutions to each particular puzzle and merely only had an advantage because of the gained skill-set in playing the game previously. I wanted to make sure that I watched people who have either never played or never heard of the game experience it for the first time. I felt that this way, the player would really be implicitly and explicitly learning while the game was going on. First, I watched a single player play through the first half of the game. Ryan, the observed player, was familiar with the XBOX 360 platform and had heard of the game, knowing only about the idea that one creating portals for game play, but had never played any of The Orange Box series before. Therefore, he was not familiar with the environmental aspect of the server, or the nature of the games.
For my second player experience, I observed a group of six to seven students who had never played the game before. These students had ranging video game experience, but all seemed to have grasped the basic concepts of gaming. I had these students pass off the controller on each level. As a group they conquered the level, providing input and suggestions to the controlling player. This type of social atmosphere fostered and enhanced the growing sense of eeriness and paranoia that the game hopes to accomplish. These players seemed not only to learn from their own mistakes and attempts in the game, but also from each others erroneous endeavors.
To gather data, mainly I wrote down the reactions of each of the players to the implicit and explicit rules and game information as it presented itself. I felt that this play-testing of sorts would ultimately give me the information I would find most useful. The idea came to me from the Portal designers themselves who stated that:
Play-testing is probably the most important things we ever did on Portal. Actually sit down and watch people play your game. Watching how they react tells you what they want from the game, where they need more training, where you need to reinforce game play mechanics, and whether they get the story. 7
Therefore, I decided that this would work best when observing the players’ reactions to the game and given information.
Portal offers the chance for the experimental game design that the first half of the game is merely a tutorial for the more action-packed second half. Through implicit and explicit education to the game mechanics and skills, players build an infantry of knowledge that will eventually help them in the ‘real world’ of the game. Tom Bradwell commented on this stating that “The first levels serve as a gentle introduction to the various concepts at work, and it's a good few minutes before you gain access to the weapon itself, and even longer before it's fully operational”8. Sal Accardo offered a similar view saying:
The initial puzzles train you in certain concepts, like carrying a box through a portal to hold down a switch, or creating a path for an energy ball to reach a power receptacle. But once you're given the ability to place both entrance and exit portals, puzzles soon become devious, introducing moving platforms, live turrets, the need to place portals in a timed sequence, and generating momentum to fling yourself across large distances.9
Another critic, Tom Francis states that, “although it introduces its concepts to you gradually, it's a complex equation by the end” 10. These skills allow you to finally beat the game by mastering and honing your knowledge of the mechanics of the game. The game is set up as if the entire first half was merely a tutorial. Accardo also commented on this declaring that:
As it turns out, most of the puzzles are just training to prepare you for this last section of the game, at which point you'll have a vocabulary of skills that free you up to experiment instead of looking for that one perfect solution.11
However, the player does not even realize this until things begin to heat up (forgive the fire-pit reference).
The design of the game itself lends to the balance of creative innovation of the player, coupled with the feeling of confinement versus rebellion. The narrator of GLaDOS is key to achieving this. In the in game commentary, designers discuss that “GLaDOS's announcements serve not only to instruct Chell and help her progress through the game, but also to create atmosphere and develop the AI as a character”.12 Not only does she offer humor and critical phrases that move along the plot, such as her nagging references to cake, she also gives the player knowledge of the mechanics of the game. “Anyone who's played Portal has heard GLaDOS state, ‘Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out’. That line sums up the mechanics that distinguished Portal from the rest of the herd” Jeremy Alessi explained.13 Most of the game mechanics deal with the play of physics and perspective that a first person shooter has to offer. Alessi comments on this as well stating, ““In the end, Portal uses the traditional teleportation mechanic with a velocity and orientation change”.14 Even though the game is mainly meant for logical, possibly hesitant, play, it does leave room for that Rambo/Bond character in all of us. David Craddock comments in his review of the game that “Portal doesn't allow the player to carry any weapons per se, that doesn't mean no hostiles will appear to antagonize the test subject during her adventure”.15 Tom Francis explains very well about the diversification of the first person shooter mechanic. He states:
What's surprising about the turret encounters is that they're not purely puzzles: most of them can be conquered with speed, quick-thinking and makeshift cover, and they're entirely freeform. In other words, they're combat. It's a refreshing change of pace from the thoughtfulness of the rest of the game, but if you do prefer to use only your brain, there's always a clever way of avoiding being shot altogether. 16
This aspect allows the game to achieve a certain level of playability.
Portal’s playability is determined by many things. The most obvious of these are the rules. Every game must have rules. Rules establish the boundaries of the game and differentiate it from play. While sometimes players are given explicit instructions via the diagrams on the floor and walls, these must be discovered to be useful by the player, rather than just pointed out to by the narration or context of the game. However, most of the learning in this game takes place on an implicit realm. Often, players must discover for themselves what things will kill you and what will not and what to do in each given situation in order to pass the level. Bradwell discusses the implicit learning of portal placement stating that:
Framing the game play are the portal placement restrictions - grey concrete floors, walls and ceilings can accept a portal, but reflective black sections, moving surfaces, doors, glass partitions and other world-objects cannot - and those springy metal rods tied to your calves, which allow you to fall over vast distances without incurring damage.17
All of these things must be learned in the game. Through the use of trial and error, the player learns what is allowed and what is not. Dan Adams also has a comment on this discussing:
The trick is that you can only have one entrance and one exit meaning sometimes you'll encounter several kinds of brain teasers on how to use the portals correctly, and in some cases, quickly and often. It'll make you think about which portal you're placing, the exact location of where it needs to go, and the timing of when portals need to be switched. 18
This is all done by trial and error, the implicit experiments of the game in order to get a player to follow the rules and plot. This manipulation of the environment in order to achieve the access to the next level is the very basis of the game. The HalfLife server allows all sorts of objects to be used “rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment”.19 Though implicit learning one advances in the game.
Implicit learning can also be used to move along the plot. Bradwell interestingly enough discusses how the design of this game guides the player to notice certain things. He comments that:
One of the game's great strengths, if not its greatest, is that concepts are introduced in such a way that players are entertained and informed without exception or confusion, guided by subtle design decisions that emphasize particular elements and concepts by constraining.20
An example of this is that the first ‘secret’ room that reveals plot hints of rebellion and doom appears in the first android level. Because the players usually find the need to drop some kind of object on the android, the game provides boxes. However, the boxes are placed strategically in from of the entrance to the secret room. Therefore, when the player removes the boxes in the hope of advancing to the next level and surviving the vicious machine guns, he or she will notice the secret room. This strategic way to get the player to notice a certain element without explicitly saying so is genius. For a game like Portal which is about bending the rules of physics and games, it is ironic that the rules of the game make it worth playing.
Through watching the different types of players, I noticed the way the game teaches and therefore makes the game playable. The short, interesting games offer fun for both the casual gamer and the triple-A market.21 The game keeps you on a range of emotions, while some like Bradwell find the game “rewarding, not frustrating, to sit and ponder one, partly because of that economy of design, partly because the pacing is so patiently considered, and partly because it always comes together with such delightful eloquence,” most find themselves getting pleasantly frustrated with themselves.22 This frustration though is conveniently targeted at the game, through the sense of the earlier discussed paranoia and need to rebel, so that it creates a competitive edge of beating the game and showing the narrator that you are not just some lab rat to a single player game, which by nature has no competition except for completing one’s self-goals. An example of this anger turned into passion to win that I encountered was when one of the players saw an obstacle and merely said, “I can just portal across so f*#& you!” This competition and anger is also fueled by the narrator’s torture of allowing you to become attached to a companion cube, which one player nicknamed ‘Cubie’, and then asking you to exterminate it when it is no longer needed without the chance to say goodbye, causing players to wonder just how much the narrator will hesitate to exterminate you once your use is over. This play with emotions was inspired when one of the designers, “Wolpaw was reading some declassified government interrogation documents and learned that isolation leads subjects to become attached to inanimate objects”.23 The game also evokes a certain sense of curiosity. Accardo comments that:
About 16 of 19 puzzles into Portal, it's easy to start wondering "is this all there is?" The answer, happily, is a resounding "no." What starts out as an amusing and engaging diversion gives way to an extended and memorable finale, leaving us hungry for more.24
This curiosity is still not completely satisfied plot-wise, but skill wise the game “becomes a unique puzzle game where the solutions always turn out elegant and satisfying once you've figured them out”.25 The mechanics and game play offer the balance between anger and satisfaction, allowing the game’s simplicity to blossom.
Both the implicit and explicit rules, coupled with the unique mechanics of the game offer a special experience of game play. The implicit rules of the game, when applied, move along both the plot and the game play, which was seen in the example of the discovery of the first secret room. The mechanics of the game offer the balance of allowing the user creative freedom to solve the puzzles how they want, but also to teach the player the necessary skills to beat the game. With these concepts, the game comes to life, playing with the emotions of the players and allowing one to question the validity of said cake. Overall, Portal offers a look into the future of the trend of simple, yet compelling games that challenge what one thinks of as educational, tutorial, and basic video game design conceptions.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Puritanism and Social Control
During the seventeenth century, England saw the rise of Puritanism as a large minority within the governmental system. Both before and after the Civil War, Puritans were trying to implement social control, regulating the behaviors of individuals or the community as a whole. Through use of legislation and societal pressures, puritan leaders led a movement that strived for rooting out the ungodly natures and individuals of England. Aided by economic struggles, Puritan ideas of social control spread throughout England during the seventeenth century.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century England suffered from a number of economic struggles; the population of the country had doubled (Wrightson, 122). Wrightson speculated that “a decline in the incidence and virulence of the bubonic plague in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries may have triggered off the population rise of the sixteenth century” (123). This overpopulation caused agricultural prices to go up and wages to go down. For elites, “their control of land presented splendid opportunities for those of the possessed of sufficient initiative to profit from both the land hunger and the rising prices of the time” (130). This coupled with the rise of the middle class because of the supplying of food and supplies to ever-growing cities, caused a social polarization to occur in England (126). Those who depended on wages were soon impoverished, migrating to urban areas out of necessity (128). Archer explains that “the policing of the capital was becoming more intense in the later 1580s and 1590s when social problems escalated and poverty assumed more threatening forms” which can be seen by the numerous food riots that occurred (229). With the rise of poverty came the rise of alehouses and fornication, possibly to heal the pain of the poor’s economic state. Therefore, the elite began to fear the potential of the poor to bring degradation upon the masses. Although these economic conditions probably hastened the need for a moral revision in society, it seems as though Puritanism really provided the push for English society to eradicate itself of sin.
Puritans believed that the godliest communities enforced a strict sense of discipline in all aspects of the community. Discipline was incredibly important to the puritan lifestyle. Not only did puritans expect a godly morality from the individuals, but they wanted discipline in the community to avoid the wrath of God. They believed that when a community sinned, God would punish them by means such as a plague or drought. Puritans also believed it was their calling to enforce this movement of morality, considering themselves ‘the elect’, a term meaning that God chose them since the beginning of time to join him in Heaven, otherwise known as predestination. As Underdown explains, “Puritans enforced discipline with a special conviction because they believed that as God’s elect they had the singular duty of advancing His kingdom during these ‘last days’ before the millennium, when Satan’s agents were so conspicuously aggressive” (108). They believed “it was their mission, as members of God’s appointed elect, to transform the disorderly, ill governed town…into a reformed, disciplined more truly godly community” (90). This can be seen in Underdown’s study of Dorchester, a leading puritan town that was deeply submerged in this godly movement (108). The local preacher John White spoke that “[t]hey vowed to reform themselves through ‘the true and pure worship of God’ by ‘catechiz[ing] and examin[ing] their families’” (91). Self-reflection was common in puritan society, urging people to see the sin in their lives and eradicate it. White also believed that “[i]f sin and poverty were to be overcome, the first requirement was to impose discipline of the undisciplined, to force the sinful to live orderly, virtuous lives” (85). By looking at Dorchester, one can speculate the changes going on around the country.
Puritans implemented their beliefs on different tiers of society. While the smallest tier would be self-reflection, this was reinforced by household discipline. Ian Archer comments that, “[t]he household stood in the front line of maintenance of order throughout early modern English society” (215). The Protestant family was very patriarchal and enforced by legal means, usually allowing parents to discipline their children publicly (Underdown, 101). For example, “[c]hildren found guilty of minor offences were often ordered to be chastised by their parents, either at home or publically in the Town Hall” (101). Along with the immediate family, masters and servants held the same status as a parent and child. Masters were relied upon to discipline their servants (Archer, 216). This paternal responsibility is shown by the requirement of masters “to pay the costs of maintaining the illegitimate offspring of their servants on the grounds that such a breach of the patriarchal order was the result of their neglect” (216). This implements the idea of discipline in the household was the local, intimate way of controlling society.
Puritan ideas of discipline were also enforced on a wider scale. Locally, Dorchester “employed a variety of officers to keep the peace and bring offender to justice” (Underdown, 95). On a broader scale, the puritan movement had great power in the national government. They did such things as “called for days of public thanksgiving in order that the nation could publically display its gratitude of God” and regulating what people could do on the Sabbath day, believing that it “should be given over exclusively to a round of private and public religious exercises” (Durtson 213). In September 1641, puritan MPs actually declared that dancing and sports should be restrained on the Sabbath (214). This was followed by a “1642 ordinance which closed the London theatres,” which puritans believed led to shenanigans and sin (217). In 1645, a new legislation was passed called the Directory for Public Worship that declared that “Festival days, vulgarly called holy days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued” (211). The Rump Parliament even went so far as to pass an Adultery Act in 1650, imposing the death penalty on anyone found guilty of adultery (217). Puritans were willing to use every powerful weapon in the arsenal, curving the legislation of the times to fit their goal of a City on a Hill.
Puritans also resorted to more societal pressures. As Underdown states, “[m]oral standards were up held by the formal actions of authorities, but also by the informal pressures of gossip and rumor” (100). He gives the example of Joyce Yeomans, who claimed she saw Margaret Richardson, a maid, and John Edwards, a gardener, go into a chalk alcove. She told her friend Joan Maudit, implying some scandalous sexual activity between the two individuals. She continued to repeat this story at the rectory center and “[w]ord was soon passed on to the magistrates, who promptly investigated the incident” (101). This shows how a simple rumor could lead to an investigation and how neighbors were always watching for signs of sin, in this case fornication. This atmosphere would have a large effect on the pressures form the community to remain sinless and also deplete the amount on privacy one had to commit these sins.
The Puritans had many ways of publically punishing someone for sin. In every town, and certainly several in every city, stocks were erected to publically embarrass someone for their sin. Usually this was used for drunkenness (Underdown, 98). There was also a prison system. In Dorchester, there was the Blindhouse, which was more of a lock-up for drunks (98). Then, there was the House of Correction, also known as Bridewell, which was a “cross between a workhouse and a prison” where “idle or immoral people were sent to be disciplined and reformed” (98). Finally there was the County Gaol, where religion was enforced on the prisoners and “[i]t gave business to local traders” such as Joseph Purchase who held the baker’s contract in 1632 (99). While these institutions of puritan reform were a benefit for some, others tried to get out of their duties to the community.
In many towns, the constables and officers of the town would rotate between householders. In Dorchester, “constables were drawn from the upper and middling ranks of the town hierarchy,” however, “[i]n practice, the wealthy usually paid for substitutes” (Underdown, 96). There was much corruption among the officers in the town. Underdown describes several examples, speaking of an incident where “some watchmen were totally demoralized by a group of countrymen from the Sherborne area…[who] hospitably offered them a jug of beer” (96). They took the offer up and soon their colleagues came to join them, even though all of these watchmen were supposed to be suppressing drunken behavior (96). It is incidents like this that make one question whether the puritan push for moral reform really succeeded in England.
Overall, it looks as though most results point to a failure on the account of the puritan reformers. With a lack of support from local officials, such as the watchmen discussed earlier, coupled with the people’s attachment to the traditional ways, social control by the puritans seemed to have been defeated (Durston, 222). Neglect from local officers completely undermined any of the actions that the central government was taking in order to preserve the godly society they envisioned. Durston explains that “[m]any puritans were well aware that the role of these local officers was crucial and as the 1650s progressed they became increasingly frustrated by the failure of the great majority of them to embrace the reform work wholeheartedly (221). He further discusses the low level of indictment in such towns as Warwickshire (220). Even if the crime was reported, sometimes the local clergy rebelled against the puritans which can be seen in the example in November 1656 when “John Witcombe of Barton St David in Somerset was placed in his village stocks for persistent swearing. His local ministers, who might have been expected to have approved of the punishment… publically declared that the punishment was illegal” (221). Another example of this is in Middlesex, twenty-five out of twenty-seven individuals were charged with adultery, but “[t]he fact that the Middlesex JPs imprisoned some of those they had acquitted… may suggest that they believed that they had in fact committed the offence, but did not wish to invoke the act’s draconian penalty” (220). The resistance of these public officials showed insight into the resistance by the people against the strict Puritan legislation.
The greatest amount of resistance shown by the English people revolved around the banning or toning down of traditional feast days, especially Christmas. Durston explains that “[d]espite the succession of orders to the contrary, the vast majority of shops and businesses remained closed on 25 December and most of the population continued to indulge in their traditional feasting and celebrating” (223). He gives examples of Christmas being observed in full taverns and taphouses (223). Sometimes the resistance turned violent. In 1647, “in London, a mob attacked the mayor and his marshals as they attempted to remove Christmas decorations from the city conduit in Cornhill” (224). There was an event in Canterbury where Christmas Day rioters took control of the city for more than a week (224). Naturally, “Ezekial Woodward, the puritan minister of Bray in Berkshire, complained in exasperation that Christmas was still widely observed and that ‘the people go on holding fast to their heathenish customs’” (224). Fast days and Sabbaths were also widely religiously neglected, but greeted with a beer in hand.
Drinking was a major problem with the puritans as they saw it as a gateway to other sins such as fornication, swearing, and adultery. This can be seen as the “puritan Edward Curl was angered by the excessive drinking in Queen Camel in Somerset in the early 1650s, and one Wiltshire churchwarden complained in 1652 that his parishioners were addicted to drinking” (Durston, 230). In puritan Dorchester, major purges of alehouses took place in February and October of 1631 and May of 1632, “yet none of this activity permanently reduced the number of unlicensed alehouses” (Underdown, 104). It seems as though the puritans were no where near eliminating drinking from English society.
However, not all was a failure in the protestant movement. Underdown comments that “[o]ne of the reformers’ most striking successes was the enforcement of regular church attendance” (106). This can be proven through the supply records of one of the churches in Dorchester which showed that the quantity of wine consumed each year would be enough for six hundred recipients at each communion (106). The puritans also succeeded in the realm of sexual habits. In Trinity parish in Dorchester there are “reasonably complete records of births, marriages, and deaths” that have survived, with which “we can chart changes in the frequency of illegitimate births” and pregnant brides, a sure sign of fornication (106- 107). Soon after 1600 there was decline of both illegitimacy and pre-marital intercourse (107). Underdown explains that “[i]n both respects Dorchester followed the national trend, but in a greatly exaggerated fashion” (107). England had seen a peak of bastardy in Elizabeth’s reign, yet began a steady decline at the end of the sixteenth century (107). Underdown also comments that the change in Dorchester occurred soon after John White’s arrival in the parish (107). This alludes to the idea that Puritanism was the reason for this shift in morality. However, Durston points out that Wrightson “argued convincingly that this was not caused by a reduction in fornication but by deficiencies in the registration system” (Durston, 231). Nevertheless, these minor successes are incredibly overshadowed by the impression of corruption, apathy, and resistance among the English people.
Puritanism offered many ways for society to regulate itself into a better state of morality, however it ultimately failed. Although the movement saw a number of legislative means to attempt to curve the moral laxity of the masses, the people were too attached to traditional practices for them to take a major effect. This was aided by the lack of support of local officials who usually met this legislation with apathy or even outright resistance. It seems as though Puritanism pushed the people too far, causing them to revert to the middle ground between the old and the new.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century England suffered from a number of economic struggles; the population of the country had doubled (Wrightson, 122). Wrightson speculated that “a decline in the incidence and virulence of the bubonic plague in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries may have triggered off the population rise of the sixteenth century” (123). This overpopulation caused agricultural prices to go up and wages to go down. For elites, “their control of land presented splendid opportunities for those of the possessed of sufficient initiative to profit from both the land hunger and the rising prices of the time” (130). This coupled with the rise of the middle class because of the supplying of food and supplies to ever-growing cities, caused a social polarization to occur in England (126). Those who depended on wages were soon impoverished, migrating to urban areas out of necessity (128). Archer explains that “the policing of the capital was becoming more intense in the later 1580s and 1590s when social problems escalated and poverty assumed more threatening forms” which can be seen by the numerous food riots that occurred (229). With the rise of poverty came the rise of alehouses and fornication, possibly to heal the pain of the poor’s economic state. Therefore, the elite began to fear the potential of the poor to bring degradation upon the masses. Although these economic conditions probably hastened the need for a moral revision in society, it seems as though Puritanism really provided the push for English society to eradicate itself of sin.
Puritans believed that the godliest communities enforced a strict sense of discipline in all aspects of the community. Discipline was incredibly important to the puritan lifestyle. Not only did puritans expect a godly morality from the individuals, but they wanted discipline in the community to avoid the wrath of God. They believed that when a community sinned, God would punish them by means such as a plague or drought. Puritans also believed it was their calling to enforce this movement of morality, considering themselves ‘the elect’, a term meaning that God chose them since the beginning of time to join him in Heaven, otherwise known as predestination. As Underdown explains, “Puritans enforced discipline with a special conviction because they believed that as God’s elect they had the singular duty of advancing His kingdom during these ‘last days’ before the millennium, when Satan’s agents were so conspicuously aggressive” (108). They believed “it was their mission, as members of God’s appointed elect, to transform the disorderly, ill governed town…into a reformed, disciplined more truly godly community” (90). This can be seen in Underdown’s study of Dorchester, a leading puritan town that was deeply submerged in this godly movement (108). The local preacher John White spoke that “[t]hey vowed to reform themselves through ‘the true and pure worship of God’ by ‘catechiz[ing] and examin[ing] their families’” (91). Self-reflection was common in puritan society, urging people to see the sin in their lives and eradicate it. White also believed that “[i]f sin and poverty were to be overcome, the first requirement was to impose discipline of the undisciplined, to force the sinful to live orderly, virtuous lives” (85). By looking at Dorchester, one can speculate the changes going on around the country.
Puritans implemented their beliefs on different tiers of society. While the smallest tier would be self-reflection, this was reinforced by household discipline. Ian Archer comments that, “[t]he household stood in the front line of maintenance of order throughout early modern English society” (215). The Protestant family was very patriarchal and enforced by legal means, usually allowing parents to discipline their children publicly (Underdown, 101). For example, “[c]hildren found guilty of minor offences were often ordered to be chastised by their parents, either at home or publically in the Town Hall” (101). Along with the immediate family, masters and servants held the same status as a parent and child. Masters were relied upon to discipline their servants (Archer, 216). This paternal responsibility is shown by the requirement of masters “to pay the costs of maintaining the illegitimate offspring of their servants on the grounds that such a breach of the patriarchal order was the result of their neglect” (216). This implements the idea of discipline in the household was the local, intimate way of controlling society.
Puritan ideas of discipline were also enforced on a wider scale. Locally, Dorchester “employed a variety of officers to keep the peace and bring offender to justice” (Underdown, 95). On a broader scale, the puritan movement had great power in the national government. They did such things as “called for days of public thanksgiving in order that the nation could publically display its gratitude of God” and regulating what people could do on the Sabbath day, believing that it “should be given over exclusively to a round of private and public religious exercises” (Durtson 213). In September 1641, puritan MPs actually declared that dancing and sports should be restrained on the Sabbath (214). This was followed by a “1642 ordinance which closed the London theatres,” which puritans believed led to shenanigans and sin (217). In 1645, a new legislation was passed called the Directory for Public Worship that declared that “Festival days, vulgarly called holy days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued” (211). The Rump Parliament even went so far as to pass an Adultery Act in 1650, imposing the death penalty on anyone found guilty of adultery (217). Puritans were willing to use every powerful weapon in the arsenal, curving the legislation of the times to fit their goal of a City on a Hill.
Puritans also resorted to more societal pressures. As Underdown states, “[m]oral standards were up held by the formal actions of authorities, but also by the informal pressures of gossip and rumor” (100). He gives the example of Joyce Yeomans, who claimed she saw Margaret Richardson, a maid, and John Edwards, a gardener, go into a chalk alcove. She told her friend Joan Maudit, implying some scandalous sexual activity between the two individuals. She continued to repeat this story at the rectory center and “[w]ord was soon passed on to the magistrates, who promptly investigated the incident” (101). This shows how a simple rumor could lead to an investigation and how neighbors were always watching for signs of sin, in this case fornication. This atmosphere would have a large effect on the pressures form the community to remain sinless and also deplete the amount on privacy one had to commit these sins.
The Puritans had many ways of publically punishing someone for sin. In every town, and certainly several in every city, stocks were erected to publically embarrass someone for their sin. Usually this was used for drunkenness (Underdown, 98). There was also a prison system. In Dorchester, there was the Blindhouse, which was more of a lock-up for drunks (98). Then, there was the House of Correction, also known as Bridewell, which was a “cross between a workhouse and a prison” where “idle or immoral people were sent to be disciplined and reformed” (98). Finally there was the County Gaol, where religion was enforced on the prisoners and “[i]t gave business to local traders” such as Joseph Purchase who held the baker’s contract in 1632 (99). While these institutions of puritan reform were a benefit for some, others tried to get out of their duties to the community.
In many towns, the constables and officers of the town would rotate between householders. In Dorchester, “constables were drawn from the upper and middling ranks of the town hierarchy,” however, “[i]n practice, the wealthy usually paid for substitutes” (Underdown, 96). There was much corruption among the officers in the town. Underdown describes several examples, speaking of an incident where “some watchmen were totally demoralized by a group of countrymen from the Sherborne area…[who] hospitably offered them a jug of beer” (96). They took the offer up and soon their colleagues came to join them, even though all of these watchmen were supposed to be suppressing drunken behavior (96). It is incidents like this that make one question whether the puritan push for moral reform really succeeded in England.
Overall, it looks as though most results point to a failure on the account of the puritan reformers. With a lack of support from local officials, such as the watchmen discussed earlier, coupled with the people’s attachment to the traditional ways, social control by the puritans seemed to have been defeated (Durston, 222). Neglect from local officers completely undermined any of the actions that the central government was taking in order to preserve the godly society they envisioned. Durston explains that “[m]any puritans were well aware that the role of these local officers was crucial and as the 1650s progressed they became increasingly frustrated by the failure of the great majority of them to embrace the reform work wholeheartedly (221). He further discusses the low level of indictment in such towns as Warwickshire (220). Even if the crime was reported, sometimes the local clergy rebelled against the puritans which can be seen in the example in November 1656 when “John Witcombe of Barton St David in Somerset was placed in his village stocks for persistent swearing. His local ministers, who might have been expected to have approved of the punishment… publically declared that the punishment was illegal” (221). Another example of this is in Middlesex, twenty-five out of twenty-seven individuals were charged with adultery, but “[t]he fact that the Middlesex JPs imprisoned some of those they had acquitted… may suggest that they believed that they had in fact committed the offence, but did not wish to invoke the act’s draconian penalty” (220). The resistance of these public officials showed insight into the resistance by the people against the strict Puritan legislation.
The greatest amount of resistance shown by the English people revolved around the banning or toning down of traditional feast days, especially Christmas. Durston explains that “[d]espite the succession of orders to the contrary, the vast majority of shops and businesses remained closed on 25 December and most of the population continued to indulge in their traditional feasting and celebrating” (223). He gives examples of Christmas being observed in full taverns and taphouses (223). Sometimes the resistance turned violent. In 1647, “in London, a mob attacked the mayor and his marshals as they attempted to remove Christmas decorations from the city conduit in Cornhill” (224). There was an event in Canterbury where Christmas Day rioters took control of the city for more than a week (224). Naturally, “Ezekial Woodward, the puritan minister of Bray in Berkshire, complained in exasperation that Christmas was still widely observed and that ‘the people go on holding fast to their heathenish customs’” (224). Fast days and Sabbaths were also widely religiously neglected, but greeted with a beer in hand.
Drinking was a major problem with the puritans as they saw it as a gateway to other sins such as fornication, swearing, and adultery. This can be seen as the “puritan Edward Curl was angered by the excessive drinking in Queen Camel in Somerset in the early 1650s, and one Wiltshire churchwarden complained in 1652 that his parishioners were addicted to drinking” (Durston, 230). In puritan Dorchester, major purges of alehouses took place in February and October of 1631 and May of 1632, “yet none of this activity permanently reduced the number of unlicensed alehouses” (Underdown, 104). It seems as though the puritans were no where near eliminating drinking from English society.
However, not all was a failure in the protestant movement. Underdown comments that “[o]ne of the reformers’ most striking successes was the enforcement of regular church attendance” (106). This can be proven through the supply records of one of the churches in Dorchester which showed that the quantity of wine consumed each year would be enough for six hundred recipients at each communion (106). The puritans also succeeded in the realm of sexual habits. In Trinity parish in Dorchester there are “reasonably complete records of births, marriages, and deaths” that have survived, with which “we can chart changes in the frequency of illegitimate births” and pregnant brides, a sure sign of fornication (106- 107). Soon after 1600 there was decline of both illegitimacy and pre-marital intercourse (107). Underdown explains that “[i]n both respects Dorchester followed the national trend, but in a greatly exaggerated fashion” (107). England had seen a peak of bastardy in Elizabeth’s reign, yet began a steady decline at the end of the sixteenth century (107). Underdown also comments that the change in Dorchester occurred soon after John White’s arrival in the parish (107). This alludes to the idea that Puritanism was the reason for this shift in morality. However, Durston points out that Wrightson “argued convincingly that this was not caused by a reduction in fornication but by deficiencies in the registration system” (Durston, 231). Nevertheless, these minor successes are incredibly overshadowed by the impression of corruption, apathy, and resistance among the English people.
Puritanism offered many ways for society to regulate itself into a better state of morality, however it ultimately failed. Although the movement saw a number of legislative means to attempt to curve the moral laxity of the masses, the people were too attached to traditional practices for them to take a major effect. This was aided by the lack of support of local officials who usually met this legislation with apathy or even outright resistance. It seems as though Puritanism pushed the people too far, causing them to revert to the middle ground between the old and the new.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Loyalty to Creed or Crown
In the sixteenth century, England faced several religious and political upheavals. The Protestant Reformation, starting in the reign on Henry VIII, caused a permanent rift between Catholic Rome and England. This continued in Edward’s rule, but reverted during the reign of Mary. A devout Catholic, Mary imposed a strict regime of Catholicism that shook the nation that had already seen a religious upheaval the same century. However, soon Elizabeth came to the throne, taking on the threat of Catholicism, and soon a new upcoming sect, Puritanism. The Elizabethan Church was successful in adequately meeting most of the challenges of Catholicism and Puritanism.
With the rising threat of Puritanism and the constant threat of the Catholicism, the enforcement of loyalty to Queen Elizabeth was the key to ensuring the conformity of the people’s religious practices. Coming out of a strong push for Catholicism under Marian reign, “[t]he majority of people were not Protestant ‘converts’… therefore caution was essential” (Guy, 252). The queen needed to win over the people to ensure that they would follow her in faith (252). The process had to be a smooth one in order to prevent an uprising from either Catholics or Protestant reformists. England was at a tipping point, balancing between two extremes of chaos. The 1559 Settlement was the keystone to Elizabeth’s careful balancing act. The use of loyalty and careful compromise shaped the outcomes of possible outbursts of resistance by making opposition a matter of treason rather than a matter of religious preference.
The continuing threat of Catholicism weighed heavily on Elizabeth and her Parliament. To them, it would have seemed that Catholicism came at them from all angles. Geographically, Catholic powers encircled England, constantly surrounding the island in a blanket of threat. It could easily be believed that at any given time there would be a plot to overthrow Elizabeth and plant a Catholic monarch at the head of the nation. The murders of William the Silent and Henry III, both national leaders, justified the fears of the Elizabethan regime of murderous plots to kill the queen (MacCulloch, 47). An example of this is the Ridolfi Plot where six thousand Spaniards gathered to overthrow Elizabeth and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne (Guy, 277). In both 1579 and 1580, the Spanish interfered again by supporting a rise of Catholic rebellions in Ireland (MacCulloch, 47). Usually, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s Catholic rival for the throne, was rumored to be behind most of these. Most likely terrified, Elizabeth and her court had to make provisions to ensure the survival of the Elizabethan Church. In 1584, Elizabeth’s inner circle enacted a Bond of Association, promising to “pursue to the death anyone who attempted to harm the Queen,” and whomever benefited from this harm (47). Without a direct heir to the throne, it was very likely that Mary Queen of Scots could succeed Elizabeth if something were to happen to the English queen.
The use of the loyalty to the Queen was important to controlling the threat of Catholicism. The enactment of the Supremacy Act and the Uniformity Act met the challenges of Catholicism by control and compromise. In 1559, Parliament enacted the Supremacy Act, which changed the title of Elizabeth in relation to the Church as the Supreme Governor of the Church, rather than the Supreme Head of the Church (Guy, 261- 262). This gave Elizabeth a permanent hold on religious matters in England. It ensured that when those whom she wished took the oath to follow the Supremacy Act they acknowledged Elizabeth’s holiness as a monarch picked out by God. This meant that dissenters of the queen’s religion could be seen not only as heretics but traitors as well. All priests, officers, and university men had to take this oath; this was extended in 1563 to all school masters, lawyers, and members of Parliament (Williams, 265). It also ensured that all of the leaders of English community would have pledged to Elizabeth and therefore to Protestantism. Early on, the queen’s regime realized the importance of controlling the Catholic leadership in order to demolish the religion in England and hold off the fear of Catholic invasion.
As with most of the challenges that occurred during the Elizabethan regime, the challenge of the Catholic clergy was met with both force and compromise. The Catholic clergy was critical because although Protestants had “leadership in the Church of England,” they lacked control of the parishes, “where Catholic priests and traditionalist laity were in large majorities” (Haigh, 252). However, the Elizabethan regime was better at compromising in order to appease the clergy into silence. The Supremacy Bill, which seemed to cause so much trouble for Catholic clergy, was amended to make “only opinions contrary to Scripture and the General Councils of the early Church could be treated as heresy by royal commissioners” (240). This allowed Catholics to survive within the Church as a peaceful and conforming minority.
The Uniformity Act, while placing all of England under the Protestant Church of England, allowed for coexistence of Catholics within the Church. The act reestablished the 1552 Book of Common Prayer with some modifications (Haigh, 240). The act allowed for the removal of criticisms and mentions of papal abuse, helping Catholics to accept the book as a religious guide. Also, the words of administration were worded in an ambiguous fashion in order to allow a Catholic interpretation, the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, otherwise known as transubstantiation, but did not explicitly say so in order to appease Protestants (240). This kept the Church “rather more Catholic than had been planned” (241). Catholic clergy played an important role during the entire English Reformation. Elizabeth provided many steps for the clergy to convert or conform to Protestantism.
Even with these compromised ways, the Protestant populace forced Catholicism to become a minority. Haigh writes that “memories faded and rosaries were lost, as new ministers cajoled and bishops imposed penances, survivalist Catholicism was diluted by conformity, until, as at Weaverham after 1578, it disappeared completely” (252). This was helped by the dying off of Catholic-trained clergy, replaced by the Protestant-educated (Haigh, 252). However, this lack of Catholic clergy brought a new uprising of seminary-trained priests from Europe. These priests “were sent to sustain and strengthen the faith of existing Catholics, not to convert Protestants from their heresy” (261). However, it was not this that caused problems with the Elizabethan regime.
In 1570, a papal bull was released that caused Elizabeth’s outlook on Catholics to change dramatically. In the bull, the pope excommunicated Elizabeth and released all of her subjects from the bond of loyalty to her. By Catholic doctrine, people who were excommunicated must be ostracized and were believed to be damned to hell. This placed the otherwise tolerated Catholics in a dilemma. They had to choose between their pope and their queen. These seminary priests encouraged rebellion against Elizabeth’s Church by not attending service, known as recusancy (Haigh, 263). However, this was soon seen as treason, as was the giving of aid to any of these now illegal seminary priests (263). Tolerance was held until there was a threat to the queen’s power. Anti-Catholicism was highly prevalent again, helped by the fact that “[l]ater in 1585, the war between England and Spain brought greater dangers, since Protestants believed priests were spies recruiting support for a Spanish invasion” (263). This only added to the mass hysteria concerning a Catholic conspiracy.
These seminary priests tried to appeal to the elite families of England, knowing that the gentry were also important in Catholic leadership. Elizabeth had to carefully rule in order to not frighten the gentry into rebellion. The gentry held much of the political power and could easily turn against the queen. Knowing this, Elizabeth made provisions and gestures to keep the gentry loyal to her. For example, to appeal to conservatives, she kept her prayer table in the fashion of a communion table and “kept her crucifix, as a hint to conservatives that she was really one of them” (Haigh, 244). Gestures such as these, plus the compromises of the Supremacy and Uniformity Acts allowed Catholics to hope for English tolerance, if not eventual reversion back to Catholicism. So just like their parents during Edwardian rule, most gentry conformed publically, keeping their Catholic ideals private.
However, Elizabeth planned to raise the new generation of English gentry to have Protestant ideals, mainly through education. First, Elizabeth censored the books being published in England, banning any works with Catholic or anti-Elizabethan Church views. Luckily for Elizabeth, there were very few English printers and most of them were in London where they could be easily watched (Williams, 280). The queen also went a step further and controlled the education of the youth. Children were no longer allowed to go to school abroad, forcing any gentry to send their children to Protestant institutions (284). To control the teachings in schools and colleges, not only did all schoolmasters have to take the oath outlined in the Supremacy Act, but they had to be licensed by the bishops (284). It was also forbidden to employ an unlicensed teacher (284). It was precautions like this that allowed for Elizabeth to control the majority of Catholic gentry.
However, there was one notable revolt by the Catholic gentry, which ultimately showed the weaknesses of the religion. In 1569, earls in the north revolted against the queen when they were denied for office and ignored by the queen (Haigh, 257). In a mass destructive campaign in Durham and Yorkshire, the earls tore up Protestant books, calling out for support from their Catholic supporters (257). Although many came to their aid, Catholicism was not powerful enough for the revolt to become a mass upheaval. In actuality, most of the Catholic gentry did not join the rebellious earls because of loyalty to the queen. They believed that “God would intervene in time, without any need for treason” (258). This shows that Elizabeth’s plot to gain the loyalty of the Catholic gentry seemed to be working.
Overtime, Catholicism died down as a major threat against the Elizabethan Church. The leadership of the church was lost, too loyal or weak to resist conforming. The lower classes followed, having fewer resources available to them in the way of teachings and priests. This reflected in the diminishing political power of Catholics. Even in 1559, only sixteen out of forty-two Marian JPs returned in Norfolk; only twenty-five out of thirty-seven were elected in Sussux between 1560 and 1565 (Williams, 271). In fact, “[n]o avowed Roman Catholics were returned to the House of Commons after 1571,” while the House of Lords remained party Catholic, but were held by loyalty to the queen (MacCulloch, 37). The revamping of anti-Catholic views and loss of toleration brought on by the Papal Bull of 1570, forced Catholics to hide in isolation, reducing their social and political influence.
In response to the anti-Catholic sentiment, a group of Protestant reformers emerged, wanting to cleanse the Elizabethan Church of anything they thought was ‘popish’ or excess. The Puritans were a religious sect within the Anglican Church that believed in the supremacy of Jesus over all and the strict following of Scripture. Unlike the mixture of compromise and loyalty that was used to suppress Catholics, Elizabeth used an iron fist to block any more reform of her church. Protestants believed that Parliament was the correct media for reform (Durston, 188). For example in 1571, William Strickland introduced a revision of the Prayer Book and in 1587, Sir Anthony Cope tried to revoke the existing ecclesiastical laws (187). However, Elizabeth would have none of it. She was absolutely firm on not reforming her Church anymore, especially in 1566 and 1572 where the queen blocked church reform in Parliament (MacCulloch, 39).
The puritans believed that movement would come from within the Church by the masses, which is shown in writings by Edmund Snape and John Field (Collinson, 390). This mere fact alone, of the sect being within the Anglican Church, rather than a separate force trying to convert the masses against Elizabeth’s Church, caused Puritanism to survive as a minority sect. There were many powerful puritan leaders high up in Elizabeth’s regime. One of the most noted is the Earl of Leicaster. A puritan-sympathizer, but never openly public about it, Leicaster was very anti-Catholic and supported the “puritan protégés as the threat from Spain increased in the 1580s” (Durston, 189). Although losing political power with the rising of his rival Whitgift, it was Leicaster’s death that hurt the puritan movement most (Collinson, 386). Although many tried, Durston points out, “attempts to reconstruct his patronage network under the earl of Essex ended in failure and the execution of Essex in 1601” (189). The 1590s were very hard for puritans, as they lost many of their key leaders. This loss of a great leader, Leicaster, and then another leader, Essex, shows the beginnings of decline in the puritan sect, coupled with the queen’s impatience for the movement.
The queen was growing tired of the puritans and no doubt felt threatened by them. Puritan beliefs state that one should always follow the Lord, even if it goes against the queen. By the standards already set up for the Catholics, choosing between the pope and Elizabeth, these puritan beliefs could easily be seen as treason. Their suspicious beliefs, coupled with the extreme sect of Presbyterianism, which wanted to reconstruct a whole new government without bishops, made Elizabeth wary of the group (Collinson, 396). Their criticism of her slightly ‘popish’ ways did not help their cause (396). However, it was not until one of her bishops clearly defied her that Elizabeth started a massive push to eradicate what she deemed was a radical and dangerous threat to the crown.
In the 1570s a new trend of preaching was coming about called prophesying. Collinson explains that “[a]ccording to the progressive protestant view now in the ascent, the ministry of the Church should be an energetic force, converting the people to a godly obedience by proclamation of the word and discipline” (191). Bringing in a more zealous reform-sympathetic crowd, Elizabeth was concerned with the spreading of Puritanism through this media and ordered it to be banned several times (192). However, it was not until 1577 that the situation caused the downfall of Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, when he refused to put a stop to prophesying, saying “he was subject to a higher power” (60). Grindal could have easily side-stepped the confrontation, but instead, he dared to directly defy the queen, encouraging her fears that a puritan conspiracy of disloyalty and treason could easily be achieved. In his letter he defended the exercises, deeming them necessary and declared the limitations of the crown in spiritual matters (C195). The puritan belief that prophesying could lead to a revolution can be seen in the writings of Thomas Wood, quoted by Collinson, who explained, “for surely… if they had continued they would in short time have overthrown a great part of [Satan’s] kingdom, being one of the greatest blessings that ever came to England” (167). The queen took direct action against puritans and the view in her regime turned criticizing and even mocking toward puritans.
Elizabeth’s government now had the obligation to their queen to eradicate this supposed threat to her crown. The Privy Council successfully imprisoned and executed leaders in puritan confrontation (Durston, 184). Durston concludes that, “the imprisonment of prominent lay Presbyterians such as Thomas Cartwright and Humphrey Fenn in 1590 and the execution of John Penry, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood in 1593 contribute to driving the more radical reformers underground or into exile” (188). Along with the death of John Field, one of the most well-known puritan authors and organizers, the puritan followers had very little leadership, losing their political power in England.
Another factor that led to the loss of puritan zeal was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Puritanism often sustained the reformist enthusiasm by continuing to focus on the continuing Catholic threat and further conspiracies. However, the defeat of the Spanish, the great ally of Catholic Rome and constant treat to Protestant England, caused the danger of Catholicism to drop dramatically, though still remain. This significantly caused puritans to lose their top scare tactic to get converts. However, the threat of Catholicism was still considered strong and “in a highly patriotic speech to the Parliament which et in the aftermath of the Armada, Sir Christopher Hatton as lord chancellor lumped papists and puritans together as equally dangerous subjects” (Collinson, 386). Elizabeth had now achieved the means to keep her Church in the ‘middle of the road’ with the threat of too much reform on one side, and too much papacy on the other.
The Elizabethan Church was successful in adequately meeting most of the challenges of Catholicism and Puritanism, using a forceful push from the crown towards conformity, fueled by the people’s strong loyalty to the queen to deal with Catholicism, and stubbornness to compromise or reform in reference to puritans. Seeing both religious factions as a threat to her crown, Elizabeth took strong steps to ensure the loyalty of the masses to her, rather than their religious beliefs. By neutralizing the leadership of Catholicism and Puritanism in England, she relatively kept the peace and made a smooth transition for everyone to her Church possible. Queen Elizabeth’s tactics of standing the middle ground between Catholics and Puritans ensured the success of the Anglican Church during her reign.
Works Cited
Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. London: Jonathen Cape, 1967.
Durston, Christopher, and Jacqueline Eales. The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700. Houndmills: MacMillian Press Ltd., 1996.
Guy, J. Tudor England. New Ed. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1988.
Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603. New York: St. Martin’s Press
Williams, P. The Tudor Regime. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1979
With the rising threat of Puritanism and the constant threat of the Catholicism, the enforcement of loyalty to Queen Elizabeth was the key to ensuring the conformity of the people’s religious practices. Coming out of a strong push for Catholicism under Marian reign, “[t]he majority of people were not Protestant ‘converts’… therefore caution was essential” (Guy, 252). The queen needed to win over the people to ensure that they would follow her in faith (252). The process had to be a smooth one in order to prevent an uprising from either Catholics or Protestant reformists. England was at a tipping point, balancing between two extremes of chaos. The 1559 Settlement was the keystone to Elizabeth’s careful balancing act. The use of loyalty and careful compromise shaped the outcomes of possible outbursts of resistance by making opposition a matter of treason rather than a matter of religious preference.
The continuing threat of Catholicism weighed heavily on Elizabeth and her Parliament. To them, it would have seemed that Catholicism came at them from all angles. Geographically, Catholic powers encircled England, constantly surrounding the island in a blanket of threat. It could easily be believed that at any given time there would be a plot to overthrow Elizabeth and plant a Catholic monarch at the head of the nation. The murders of William the Silent and Henry III, both national leaders, justified the fears of the Elizabethan regime of murderous plots to kill the queen (MacCulloch, 47). An example of this is the Ridolfi Plot where six thousand Spaniards gathered to overthrow Elizabeth and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne (Guy, 277). In both 1579 and 1580, the Spanish interfered again by supporting a rise of Catholic rebellions in Ireland (MacCulloch, 47). Usually, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s Catholic rival for the throne, was rumored to be behind most of these. Most likely terrified, Elizabeth and her court had to make provisions to ensure the survival of the Elizabethan Church. In 1584, Elizabeth’s inner circle enacted a Bond of Association, promising to “pursue to the death anyone who attempted to harm the Queen,” and whomever benefited from this harm (47). Without a direct heir to the throne, it was very likely that Mary Queen of Scots could succeed Elizabeth if something were to happen to the English queen.
The use of the loyalty to the Queen was important to controlling the threat of Catholicism. The enactment of the Supremacy Act and the Uniformity Act met the challenges of Catholicism by control and compromise. In 1559, Parliament enacted the Supremacy Act, which changed the title of Elizabeth in relation to the Church as the Supreme Governor of the Church, rather than the Supreme Head of the Church (Guy, 261- 262). This gave Elizabeth a permanent hold on religious matters in England. It ensured that when those whom she wished took the oath to follow the Supremacy Act they acknowledged Elizabeth’s holiness as a monarch picked out by God. This meant that dissenters of the queen’s religion could be seen not only as heretics but traitors as well. All priests, officers, and university men had to take this oath; this was extended in 1563 to all school masters, lawyers, and members of Parliament (Williams, 265). It also ensured that all of the leaders of English community would have pledged to Elizabeth and therefore to Protestantism. Early on, the queen’s regime realized the importance of controlling the Catholic leadership in order to demolish the religion in England and hold off the fear of Catholic invasion.
As with most of the challenges that occurred during the Elizabethan regime, the challenge of the Catholic clergy was met with both force and compromise. The Catholic clergy was critical because although Protestants had “leadership in the Church of England,” they lacked control of the parishes, “where Catholic priests and traditionalist laity were in large majorities” (Haigh, 252). However, the Elizabethan regime was better at compromising in order to appease the clergy into silence. The Supremacy Bill, which seemed to cause so much trouble for Catholic clergy, was amended to make “only opinions contrary to Scripture and the General Councils of the early Church could be treated as heresy by royal commissioners” (240). This allowed Catholics to survive within the Church as a peaceful and conforming minority.
The Uniformity Act, while placing all of England under the Protestant Church of England, allowed for coexistence of Catholics within the Church. The act reestablished the 1552 Book of Common Prayer with some modifications (Haigh, 240). The act allowed for the removal of criticisms and mentions of papal abuse, helping Catholics to accept the book as a religious guide. Also, the words of administration were worded in an ambiguous fashion in order to allow a Catholic interpretation, the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, otherwise known as transubstantiation, but did not explicitly say so in order to appease Protestants (240). This kept the Church “rather more Catholic than had been planned” (241). Catholic clergy played an important role during the entire English Reformation. Elizabeth provided many steps for the clergy to convert or conform to Protestantism.
Even with these compromised ways, the Protestant populace forced Catholicism to become a minority. Haigh writes that “memories faded and rosaries were lost, as new ministers cajoled and bishops imposed penances, survivalist Catholicism was diluted by conformity, until, as at Weaverham after 1578, it disappeared completely” (252). This was helped by the dying off of Catholic-trained clergy, replaced by the Protestant-educated (Haigh, 252). However, this lack of Catholic clergy brought a new uprising of seminary-trained priests from Europe. These priests “were sent to sustain and strengthen the faith of existing Catholics, not to convert Protestants from their heresy” (261). However, it was not this that caused problems with the Elizabethan regime.
In 1570, a papal bull was released that caused Elizabeth’s outlook on Catholics to change dramatically. In the bull, the pope excommunicated Elizabeth and released all of her subjects from the bond of loyalty to her. By Catholic doctrine, people who were excommunicated must be ostracized and were believed to be damned to hell. This placed the otherwise tolerated Catholics in a dilemma. They had to choose between their pope and their queen. These seminary priests encouraged rebellion against Elizabeth’s Church by not attending service, known as recusancy (Haigh, 263). However, this was soon seen as treason, as was the giving of aid to any of these now illegal seminary priests (263). Tolerance was held until there was a threat to the queen’s power. Anti-Catholicism was highly prevalent again, helped by the fact that “[l]ater in 1585, the war between England and Spain brought greater dangers, since Protestants believed priests were spies recruiting support for a Spanish invasion” (263). This only added to the mass hysteria concerning a Catholic conspiracy.
These seminary priests tried to appeal to the elite families of England, knowing that the gentry were also important in Catholic leadership. Elizabeth had to carefully rule in order to not frighten the gentry into rebellion. The gentry held much of the political power and could easily turn against the queen. Knowing this, Elizabeth made provisions and gestures to keep the gentry loyal to her. For example, to appeal to conservatives, she kept her prayer table in the fashion of a communion table and “kept her crucifix, as a hint to conservatives that she was really one of them” (Haigh, 244). Gestures such as these, plus the compromises of the Supremacy and Uniformity Acts allowed Catholics to hope for English tolerance, if not eventual reversion back to Catholicism. So just like their parents during Edwardian rule, most gentry conformed publically, keeping their Catholic ideals private.
However, Elizabeth planned to raise the new generation of English gentry to have Protestant ideals, mainly through education. First, Elizabeth censored the books being published in England, banning any works with Catholic or anti-Elizabethan Church views. Luckily for Elizabeth, there were very few English printers and most of them were in London where they could be easily watched (Williams, 280). The queen also went a step further and controlled the education of the youth. Children were no longer allowed to go to school abroad, forcing any gentry to send their children to Protestant institutions (284). To control the teachings in schools and colleges, not only did all schoolmasters have to take the oath outlined in the Supremacy Act, but they had to be licensed by the bishops (284). It was also forbidden to employ an unlicensed teacher (284). It was precautions like this that allowed for Elizabeth to control the majority of Catholic gentry.
However, there was one notable revolt by the Catholic gentry, which ultimately showed the weaknesses of the religion. In 1569, earls in the north revolted against the queen when they were denied for office and ignored by the queen (Haigh, 257). In a mass destructive campaign in Durham and Yorkshire, the earls tore up Protestant books, calling out for support from their Catholic supporters (257). Although many came to their aid, Catholicism was not powerful enough for the revolt to become a mass upheaval. In actuality, most of the Catholic gentry did not join the rebellious earls because of loyalty to the queen. They believed that “God would intervene in time, without any need for treason” (258). This shows that Elizabeth’s plot to gain the loyalty of the Catholic gentry seemed to be working.
Overtime, Catholicism died down as a major threat against the Elizabethan Church. The leadership of the church was lost, too loyal or weak to resist conforming. The lower classes followed, having fewer resources available to them in the way of teachings and priests. This reflected in the diminishing political power of Catholics. Even in 1559, only sixteen out of forty-two Marian JPs returned in Norfolk; only twenty-five out of thirty-seven were elected in Sussux between 1560 and 1565 (Williams, 271). In fact, “[n]o avowed Roman Catholics were returned to the House of Commons after 1571,” while the House of Lords remained party Catholic, but were held by loyalty to the queen (MacCulloch, 37). The revamping of anti-Catholic views and loss of toleration brought on by the Papal Bull of 1570, forced Catholics to hide in isolation, reducing their social and political influence.
In response to the anti-Catholic sentiment, a group of Protestant reformers emerged, wanting to cleanse the Elizabethan Church of anything they thought was ‘popish’ or excess. The Puritans were a religious sect within the Anglican Church that believed in the supremacy of Jesus over all and the strict following of Scripture. Unlike the mixture of compromise and loyalty that was used to suppress Catholics, Elizabeth used an iron fist to block any more reform of her church. Protestants believed that Parliament was the correct media for reform (Durston, 188). For example in 1571, William Strickland introduced a revision of the Prayer Book and in 1587, Sir Anthony Cope tried to revoke the existing ecclesiastical laws (187). However, Elizabeth would have none of it. She was absolutely firm on not reforming her Church anymore, especially in 1566 and 1572 where the queen blocked church reform in Parliament (MacCulloch, 39).
The puritans believed that movement would come from within the Church by the masses, which is shown in writings by Edmund Snape and John Field (Collinson, 390). This mere fact alone, of the sect being within the Anglican Church, rather than a separate force trying to convert the masses against Elizabeth’s Church, caused Puritanism to survive as a minority sect. There were many powerful puritan leaders high up in Elizabeth’s regime. One of the most noted is the Earl of Leicaster. A puritan-sympathizer, but never openly public about it, Leicaster was very anti-Catholic and supported the “puritan protégés as the threat from Spain increased in the 1580s” (Durston, 189). Although losing political power with the rising of his rival Whitgift, it was Leicaster’s death that hurt the puritan movement most (Collinson, 386). Although many tried, Durston points out, “attempts to reconstruct his patronage network under the earl of Essex ended in failure and the execution of Essex in 1601” (189). The 1590s were very hard for puritans, as they lost many of their key leaders. This loss of a great leader, Leicaster, and then another leader, Essex, shows the beginnings of decline in the puritan sect, coupled with the queen’s impatience for the movement.
The queen was growing tired of the puritans and no doubt felt threatened by them. Puritan beliefs state that one should always follow the Lord, even if it goes against the queen. By the standards already set up for the Catholics, choosing between the pope and Elizabeth, these puritan beliefs could easily be seen as treason. Their suspicious beliefs, coupled with the extreme sect of Presbyterianism, which wanted to reconstruct a whole new government without bishops, made Elizabeth wary of the group (Collinson, 396). Their criticism of her slightly ‘popish’ ways did not help their cause (396). However, it was not until one of her bishops clearly defied her that Elizabeth started a massive push to eradicate what she deemed was a radical and dangerous threat to the crown.
In the 1570s a new trend of preaching was coming about called prophesying. Collinson explains that “[a]ccording to the progressive protestant view now in the ascent, the ministry of the Church should be an energetic force, converting the people to a godly obedience by proclamation of the word and discipline” (191). Bringing in a more zealous reform-sympathetic crowd, Elizabeth was concerned with the spreading of Puritanism through this media and ordered it to be banned several times (192). However, it was not until 1577 that the situation caused the downfall of Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, when he refused to put a stop to prophesying, saying “he was subject to a higher power” (60). Grindal could have easily side-stepped the confrontation, but instead, he dared to directly defy the queen, encouraging her fears that a puritan conspiracy of disloyalty and treason could easily be achieved. In his letter he defended the exercises, deeming them necessary and declared the limitations of the crown in spiritual matters (C195). The puritan belief that prophesying could lead to a revolution can be seen in the writings of Thomas Wood, quoted by Collinson, who explained, “for surely… if they had continued they would in short time have overthrown a great part of [Satan’s] kingdom, being one of the greatest blessings that ever came to England” (167). The queen took direct action against puritans and the view in her regime turned criticizing and even mocking toward puritans.
Elizabeth’s government now had the obligation to their queen to eradicate this supposed threat to her crown. The Privy Council successfully imprisoned and executed leaders in puritan confrontation (Durston, 184). Durston concludes that, “the imprisonment of prominent lay Presbyterians such as Thomas Cartwright and Humphrey Fenn in 1590 and the execution of John Penry, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood in 1593 contribute to driving the more radical reformers underground or into exile” (188). Along with the death of John Field, one of the most well-known puritan authors and organizers, the puritan followers had very little leadership, losing their political power in England.
Another factor that led to the loss of puritan zeal was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Puritanism often sustained the reformist enthusiasm by continuing to focus on the continuing Catholic threat and further conspiracies. However, the defeat of the Spanish, the great ally of Catholic Rome and constant treat to Protestant England, caused the danger of Catholicism to drop dramatically, though still remain. This significantly caused puritans to lose their top scare tactic to get converts. However, the threat of Catholicism was still considered strong and “in a highly patriotic speech to the Parliament which et in the aftermath of the Armada, Sir Christopher Hatton as lord chancellor lumped papists and puritans together as equally dangerous subjects” (Collinson, 386). Elizabeth had now achieved the means to keep her Church in the ‘middle of the road’ with the threat of too much reform on one side, and too much papacy on the other.
The Elizabethan Church was successful in adequately meeting most of the challenges of Catholicism and Puritanism, using a forceful push from the crown towards conformity, fueled by the people’s strong loyalty to the queen to deal with Catholicism, and stubbornness to compromise or reform in reference to puritans. Seeing both religious factions as a threat to her crown, Elizabeth took strong steps to ensure the loyalty of the masses to her, rather than their religious beliefs. By neutralizing the leadership of Catholicism and Puritanism in England, she relatively kept the peace and made a smooth transition for everyone to her Church possible. Queen Elizabeth’s tactics of standing the middle ground between Catholics and Puritans ensured the success of the Anglican Church during her reign.
Works Cited
Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. London: Jonathen Cape, 1967.
Durston, Christopher, and Jacqueline Eales. The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700. Houndmills: MacMillian Press Ltd., 1996.
Guy, J. Tudor England. New Ed. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1988.
Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603. New York: St. Martin’s Press
Williams, P. The Tudor Regime. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1979
The Needs of the People
Historically, it has been believed that the Reformation occurred because of the Catholic Church’s decline do to dissatisfaction of its parishioners. Explanations for this have been blamed on the people’s anti-clericalism and the loss of faith in Catholic doctrine. However, through looking at the way the Catholic Church provided for its followers and those followers responses, one can see that the Reformation was a clear break of the beliefs of the majority. The Church immediately preceding the Reformation met the needs of the people on providing the means necessary for salvation according to its doctrine.
The Catholic Church laid out a few key ways of obtaining salvation, one of which being the attendance of mass. Conducted by clergy, the mass was central to belief system of receiving Christ as a requirement for salvation. Therefore, having an available clergy was important. Christopher Haigh explains that “[a]lthough there were variations from place to place, the overall demand for masses, and therefore for the priests to say them was huge” (37). He further explains that from about 1450 there was a large expansion of needed clergy and this expansion was supplied (37). For example, in the county of York, the average number of secular priests ordained was about two hundred per year, meeting a high of 1508 of 363 ordained priests (38). Both the large number of clergymen needed and the fulfillment of this need show the people’s satisfaction with their religion. If they were dissatisfied, they would not need the clergy or fill in the positions from within the population.
It has widely been thought that there was much anti-clericalism among the gentry leading up to the Reformation. However, a closer look reveals that these accounts are heavily exaggerated. Christopher Harper-Bill offers the theory that most of the complaints against the clergy are from identifiable authors who were clergymen themselves, irate a t those few who “tarnished the priestly image” (77). It seems as though jealousy over wealth seemed to have caused many complaints as well (77). However, complaints were very rare and often exaggerated by anti-Catholic propaganda during the forceful years of the Reformation. Most priests got along splendidly with their parishioners, often serving them in ways outside of Church life. In fact, “the vast majority of conscientious priests fitted easily into parish society. Many of them were local men, serving in or near their birthplaces” (Haigh, 44). By having locals be the ministers in each respective region, the Catholic Church provided a great means for its clergy to be able to relate to the parishioners, having a common bond of region and lifestyle. Overall, clergymen easily performed their duties as leaders to salvation. Haigh further explains that complaints at the visitations of bishops and archdeacons about local clergy were very rare, as shown in Cardinal Morton’s visitation of Suffolk in 1499, where although there were forty-eight clergymen were absent from their benefices, but only two of these did not assign deputy substitutes (41). With instances like this, a well-run community of parishes in a county, being very common, it further shows how the anti-clerical thoughts of the people could have been widely exaggerated.
Ironically, the parishioners themselves usually provided the means for a mass to be held, in an incredibly decorated church, allowing the Church to provide the means to satisfy the needs of the people for salvation. Throughout the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation, donations to the Church were very common and often went towards expansions and updating decorations. Seen in the records of churches as in Ashburton, Yatton, and Morebath, parishioners were constantly funding the repairs of these churches, hinting that they supported the ideals of the church, such as the prayers to saints (Haigh, 30- 31). These investments in the church allowed for laity to feel ownership of their church and allowed for participation in the church. Usually given as gifts by individuals or collections from church members, “many folk, well-to-do ones in the know, as well as the humbler sort, were endowing many of the old structures right up to the moment when they were abolished” (Scarisbrick, 12). This hints that many did not even think that these institutions would face their demise in the near future, proving that they were not warned by the wide-spread dissatisfaction among the laity of the Church and its beliefs, claimed by later Protestant propaganda and some historians. This dissatisfaction was obviously exaggerated as well.
It could be argued that these people were merely not involved in national politics or religious trends to foresee this bad investment. However, Robert Burgoyne, an auditor of the Court of Augmentations, “the government agency in charge of the dissolution of monasteries” founded his own chantry and funded others mere weeks before the dissolutions of chantries started (Scarisbrick, 8). If there was any indication of a massive upheaval of religious institutions, one would think that he would have invested better. Another example is George Earl of Shrewsbury, “a no-nonsense Tudor aristocrat” who wrote his will leaving a plethora of money to nunneries and monasteries months before their obliteration (8). Scarisbrick continues saying, “a man sufficiently involved in national affairs [should] have known which way the wind was blowing” (8). With these examples, it seems obvious that there were extremely few warning signs of the upcoming Reformation, therefore suggesting that the laity was satisfied with how the Church was meeting their needs.
Another major path to salvation according to Catholic doctrine is the prayers of the souls departed. Catholics believe that when one dies, one soul is in Purgatory, a ‘waiting-room’ to get to Heaven. The way to get to Heaven from Purgatory is through the prayers of those still living for the dead. Parishioners had many ways of ensuring that they were prayed for after their deaths. Often in their wills there was an outline for how they wanted their finances to be used and were riddled with Catholic ideals. Through wills there was an obvious support for the Church. Donations were given in mass amounts with an estimation of sixty percent of people gave gifts and services in the first half of the sixteenth century (Haigh, 29). Wills however only give a small dose of the gifts given to the Church, as many of them could have been given during the lives of these parishioners.
Wills also give insight into the devotion of the people to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. It is suggested that “two-thirds of all will-makers made some formal arrangement for prayers or masses after death” (Haigh, 37). The remaining third merely assumed their family and friends would fulfill this without having to request it (37). The domination of these wills by requests for prayer shows the enthusiasm people had for this belief. It can be questioned on whether or not there was fabrication by the priest, usually also the writer of the wills, dictated to by the parishioner, of the will. However, Scarisbrick suggests that “it is difficult to see why the local priest should have encouraged bequests to (often) six, eight, ten or more parishes besides his own” (10). Also, these wills were often filled with references to an extensive amount of family members, quite a hard topic to forge (10). Wills also showed the giving of benefactions and prayer requests to several guilds or fraternities.
Guilds were extremely popular leading up the Reformation as a way of ensuring the necessary prayer counts for one to get into Heaven. These guilds based on membership fees, supported its brethren by often providing funeral arrangements and subsequent prayers on death anniversaries and special events. These guilds were usually “under the patronage of a particular saint, the Trinity, Blessed Virgin Mary, Corpus Christi or similar” (Scarisbrick, 19- 20). The main function of these guilds was to employ priests to say masses for the souls of departed members (Haigh, 35). Some of these guilds had other objectives as well such as implementing high moral standards. For example, some guilds would not allow the membership of adulterers (Scarisbrick 20). Therefore, the initial belief of the Catholic Church in the prayer for the departed in order to achieve salvation led to the establishment of these guilds, which led to the implementation of a stricter moral standard, fulfilling the need of the people to abstain from sin. These guilds also provided a number of social benefits such as funding for schools and highways (21). Guilds also helped fund the production of Catholic literature in the secular language in order for the literate to become informed of their religion and further their relationship with God. Scarisbrick adds that “the bulk of the numerous religious works produced by the printing press (in England as elsewhere), presumably to satisfy public tastes, consisted of wholly tradition works of piety and devotion—and the lives of saints” (15). The literature was bought and distributed widely, many works often needing multiple editions (Haigh, 26). The books provided more religious guidance foe the masses. Therefore, these guilds, and subsequently the Church, helped the social, religious, and economic needs of the people as well.
Religious guilds were extremely popular and “[i]n London, eighty-one fraternities are known to have existed after 1500” (Haigh, 35). Relative numbers coincide for smaller regions. It can be argued that guilds were in decline after 1530, but this was most likely caused by economic troubles that struck urban areas on England, as can be proven by the thriving of rural fraternities (36). Membership into the fraternities was extremely easy in most cases. There were several tiers of fraternities in order to fit the social-economic statuses of parishioners. Guild membership was quite diverse. Women were often members of guild or formed their own guild such as the Young Maiden’s Guild (Scarisbrick, 25; Haigh, 31). In fact, “[a]ll the surviving guild registers except that of St. George’s Norwich, include single women and widows in their lists” (Scarisbrick, 25). Guilds were now providing the means for salvation for all peoples.
The Catholic Church not only provided for the needs of the people, but inspired other factions of society to provide additional needs. Through the use of wills as a source, it can be seen that people leading up to the Reformation still had a passionate approach to the Church, often leaving the majority of their material goods to it in the event of their death. In these wills they also secured the means of praying for their souls after death, often through the use of guilds. These guilds flourished and provided many social and education, as well as religious services for the populace. By looking at the active population in these associations, coupled with the proof of clerical satisfaction and investments in church renovations, one can assume that the mass population did not see any warning signs of the Reformation.
Works Cited
Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
Harper-Bill, Christopher. The Pre-Reformation Church in England, 1400-1530. London: Longman, 1989
Scarisbrick, J.J. The Reformation and the English People. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited, 1984
The Catholic Church laid out a few key ways of obtaining salvation, one of which being the attendance of mass. Conducted by clergy, the mass was central to belief system of receiving Christ as a requirement for salvation. Therefore, having an available clergy was important. Christopher Haigh explains that “[a]lthough there were variations from place to place, the overall demand for masses, and therefore for the priests to say them was huge” (37). He further explains that from about 1450 there was a large expansion of needed clergy and this expansion was supplied (37). For example, in the county of York, the average number of secular priests ordained was about two hundred per year, meeting a high of 1508 of 363 ordained priests (38). Both the large number of clergymen needed and the fulfillment of this need show the people’s satisfaction with their religion. If they were dissatisfied, they would not need the clergy or fill in the positions from within the population.
It has widely been thought that there was much anti-clericalism among the gentry leading up to the Reformation. However, a closer look reveals that these accounts are heavily exaggerated. Christopher Harper-Bill offers the theory that most of the complaints against the clergy are from identifiable authors who were clergymen themselves, irate a t those few who “tarnished the priestly image” (77). It seems as though jealousy over wealth seemed to have caused many complaints as well (77). However, complaints were very rare and often exaggerated by anti-Catholic propaganda during the forceful years of the Reformation. Most priests got along splendidly with their parishioners, often serving them in ways outside of Church life. In fact, “the vast majority of conscientious priests fitted easily into parish society. Many of them were local men, serving in or near their birthplaces” (Haigh, 44). By having locals be the ministers in each respective region, the Catholic Church provided a great means for its clergy to be able to relate to the parishioners, having a common bond of region and lifestyle. Overall, clergymen easily performed their duties as leaders to salvation. Haigh further explains that complaints at the visitations of bishops and archdeacons about local clergy were very rare, as shown in Cardinal Morton’s visitation of Suffolk in 1499, where although there were forty-eight clergymen were absent from their benefices, but only two of these did not assign deputy substitutes (41). With instances like this, a well-run community of parishes in a county, being very common, it further shows how the anti-clerical thoughts of the people could have been widely exaggerated.
Ironically, the parishioners themselves usually provided the means for a mass to be held, in an incredibly decorated church, allowing the Church to provide the means to satisfy the needs of the people for salvation. Throughout the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation, donations to the Church were very common and often went towards expansions and updating decorations. Seen in the records of churches as in Ashburton, Yatton, and Morebath, parishioners were constantly funding the repairs of these churches, hinting that they supported the ideals of the church, such as the prayers to saints (Haigh, 30- 31). These investments in the church allowed for laity to feel ownership of their church and allowed for participation in the church. Usually given as gifts by individuals or collections from church members, “many folk, well-to-do ones in the know, as well as the humbler sort, were endowing many of the old structures right up to the moment when they were abolished” (Scarisbrick, 12). This hints that many did not even think that these institutions would face their demise in the near future, proving that they were not warned by the wide-spread dissatisfaction among the laity of the Church and its beliefs, claimed by later Protestant propaganda and some historians. This dissatisfaction was obviously exaggerated as well.
It could be argued that these people were merely not involved in national politics or religious trends to foresee this bad investment. However, Robert Burgoyne, an auditor of the Court of Augmentations, “the government agency in charge of the dissolution of monasteries” founded his own chantry and funded others mere weeks before the dissolutions of chantries started (Scarisbrick, 8). If there was any indication of a massive upheaval of religious institutions, one would think that he would have invested better. Another example is George Earl of Shrewsbury, “a no-nonsense Tudor aristocrat” who wrote his will leaving a plethora of money to nunneries and monasteries months before their obliteration (8). Scarisbrick continues saying, “a man sufficiently involved in national affairs [should] have known which way the wind was blowing” (8). With these examples, it seems obvious that there were extremely few warning signs of the upcoming Reformation, therefore suggesting that the laity was satisfied with how the Church was meeting their needs.
Another major path to salvation according to Catholic doctrine is the prayers of the souls departed. Catholics believe that when one dies, one soul is in Purgatory, a ‘waiting-room’ to get to Heaven. The way to get to Heaven from Purgatory is through the prayers of those still living for the dead. Parishioners had many ways of ensuring that they were prayed for after their deaths. Often in their wills there was an outline for how they wanted their finances to be used and were riddled with Catholic ideals. Through wills there was an obvious support for the Church. Donations were given in mass amounts with an estimation of sixty percent of people gave gifts and services in the first half of the sixteenth century (Haigh, 29). Wills however only give a small dose of the gifts given to the Church, as many of them could have been given during the lives of these parishioners.
Wills also give insight into the devotion of the people to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. It is suggested that “two-thirds of all will-makers made some formal arrangement for prayers or masses after death” (Haigh, 37). The remaining third merely assumed their family and friends would fulfill this without having to request it (37). The domination of these wills by requests for prayer shows the enthusiasm people had for this belief. It can be questioned on whether or not there was fabrication by the priest, usually also the writer of the wills, dictated to by the parishioner, of the will. However, Scarisbrick suggests that “it is difficult to see why the local priest should have encouraged bequests to (often) six, eight, ten or more parishes besides his own” (10). Also, these wills were often filled with references to an extensive amount of family members, quite a hard topic to forge (10). Wills also showed the giving of benefactions and prayer requests to several guilds or fraternities.
Guilds were extremely popular leading up the Reformation as a way of ensuring the necessary prayer counts for one to get into Heaven. These guilds based on membership fees, supported its brethren by often providing funeral arrangements and subsequent prayers on death anniversaries and special events. These guilds were usually “under the patronage of a particular saint, the Trinity, Blessed Virgin Mary, Corpus Christi or similar” (Scarisbrick, 19- 20). The main function of these guilds was to employ priests to say masses for the souls of departed members (Haigh, 35). Some of these guilds had other objectives as well such as implementing high moral standards. For example, some guilds would not allow the membership of adulterers (Scarisbrick 20). Therefore, the initial belief of the Catholic Church in the prayer for the departed in order to achieve salvation led to the establishment of these guilds, which led to the implementation of a stricter moral standard, fulfilling the need of the people to abstain from sin. These guilds also provided a number of social benefits such as funding for schools and highways (21). Guilds also helped fund the production of Catholic literature in the secular language in order for the literate to become informed of their religion and further their relationship with God. Scarisbrick adds that “the bulk of the numerous religious works produced by the printing press (in England as elsewhere), presumably to satisfy public tastes, consisted of wholly tradition works of piety and devotion—and the lives of saints” (15). The literature was bought and distributed widely, many works often needing multiple editions (Haigh, 26). The books provided more religious guidance foe the masses. Therefore, these guilds, and subsequently the Church, helped the social, religious, and economic needs of the people as well.
Religious guilds were extremely popular and “[i]n London, eighty-one fraternities are known to have existed after 1500” (Haigh, 35). Relative numbers coincide for smaller regions. It can be argued that guilds were in decline after 1530, but this was most likely caused by economic troubles that struck urban areas on England, as can be proven by the thriving of rural fraternities (36). Membership into the fraternities was extremely easy in most cases. There were several tiers of fraternities in order to fit the social-economic statuses of parishioners. Guild membership was quite diverse. Women were often members of guild or formed their own guild such as the Young Maiden’s Guild (Scarisbrick, 25; Haigh, 31). In fact, “[a]ll the surviving guild registers except that of St. George’s Norwich, include single women and widows in their lists” (Scarisbrick, 25). Guilds were now providing the means for salvation for all peoples.
The Catholic Church not only provided for the needs of the people, but inspired other factions of society to provide additional needs. Through the use of wills as a source, it can be seen that people leading up to the Reformation still had a passionate approach to the Church, often leaving the majority of their material goods to it in the event of their death. In these wills they also secured the means of praying for their souls after death, often through the use of guilds. These guilds flourished and provided many social and education, as well as religious services for the populace. By looking at the active population in these associations, coupled with the proof of clerical satisfaction and investments in church renovations, one can assume that the mass population did not see any warning signs of the Reformation.
Works Cited
Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
Harper-Bill, Christopher. The Pre-Reformation Church in England, 1400-1530. London: Longman, 1989
Scarisbrick, J.J. The Reformation and the English People. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited, 1984
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