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Ryrie, Alec (2013) 'The fall and rise of fasting in the British Reformations.', in Worship and the parish church
in early Modern Britain. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 89-108. St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.
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Used by permission of the Publishers from 'The fall and rise of fasting in the British Reformations', in Worship and the
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CHAPTER
4
The Fall and Rise of Fasting in the
British Reformationsl
Alec Ryrie
little attention from
The subject of fasting has received surprisingly
in Britain: whether it is the formal,
historians of the Reformations
fasts
household
here,
or the private or
which are our subject
collective
fasts which many Protestants encouraged and some may also have
because
2
Or
it
is
the outlines of the
perhaps
not surprising,
practised.
The
Catholic
Church,
subject are almost too clear to need explanation.
fasting
both pre- and post-Reformation,
institutionalized
regular
as part
believer's
life.
in
`Fasting',
this context, primarily meant abstinence
of the
from the meat of land animals and birds, and from so-called white meats,
dairy
keep
Catholic
Christians
is,
that
products and eggs.
were expected to
during
days,
Lent,
Ember
to this regimen
on
on the eves of numerous
days
Protestants
Friday
the
throughout
saints'
year.
and on virtually every
kind
legalism
of every
and
rejected this practice as works-righteousness,
language
liberty.
Christian
Famously,
the tippingthe
superstition, using
of
Zurich
Reformation
in
point of the
was the ostentatious eating of a small
I
Much of the research for this paper was carried out during two fellowships at
the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2006 and 2009. Earlier versions were presented to the
Reformation Studies Colloquium (2008), the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (2008),
the Folger's own seminar (2009) and the British State Prayers Conference (2010): I am
grateful to all those audiences for their comments.
2
See principally
humiliation
Christopher
Durston,
"'For
the better
of the
During the English Revolution',
The
people": Public Days of Fasting and Thanksgiving
Seventeenth Century, 8 (1992),
but
limited
discussion
by
Peter
important
129-49;
pp.
an
lver Kaufman,
für
`Fasting in England
in the 1560s: "A Thinge of Nought"? ', Archiv
Re/ormationsgeschichte,
fit for the time":
94 (2003), pp. 176-93; C. J. Kitching,
'"Prayers
Fasting and Prayer in Response to National
Crises in the Reign of Elizabeth I', in W. J. Shiels
22; Oxford
(ed. ), Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition
(Studies in Church History,
1985), pp. 241-50. W. Ian P. Hazlett, `Playing God's Card: Knox
Fasting,
1565-66',
in
and
Roger Mason (ed. ), John Knox
1998) is invaluable
(Aldershot,
and the British Reformations
Raymond A. Mentzer, `Fasting, Piet), and Political Anxiety among
on the Scottish situation;
French Reformed Protestants',
Church History, 76 (2007), pp. 330-62, despite its title, is not
only about France. Modern study of the subject all looks back to H. R. Trevor-Roper,
`The
Fast Sermons
in his Essays in British History: Presented to Sir Keith
of the Long Parliament',
Felling (London, 1964),
pp. 85-138.
90
WORSHIP
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
Good
Friday
Protestant
1522.
establishments generally
piece of sausage on
fasting.
rejected the calendar of religious
This meant that fasting, amongst Protestants, took three courses. First,
becoming
it
something that pious
and most commonly,
was privatized,
individuals did on their own initiative when they felt the need. Second, it
became an occasional public event, used in response to a real, anticipated
fasting
imagined
And
British
third -a
or
public calamity.
peculiarity in
new rationales.
practices persisted clad
was secularized, as traditional
This chapter will briefly survey each of these three responses and consider
for
Reformation
our understanding of worship and the
what they mean
as a whole.
I
The use of fasting in Protestant private devotion is a large subject and one
by
beyond
is
But
that
the scope of this volume.
the process
which regular,
fasting
Catholic
irregular,
to
private and selfregulated, public
gave way
imposed Protestant fasting is very much our concern. It changed both the
face
be
Christian.
it
to
meant
a
private experience and the public
of what
More than that, I suggest, it also provided significant lubrication for the
process of religious change.
Fasting was only one of a large number of traditional pious practices
but
Protestants
it
In
which
rejected,
was one with particular significance.
first
Reformation
1550,
two
the
the
generation or
of
era, until around
Protestantism
to
or to evangelicalism was not a clear-cut matter,
conversion
drawn
boundaries.
There
since there were no sharply
confessional
was no
faith
Henrician
Oath
Supremacy
to
to
the
confession of
reject;
sign or
of
Elizabethan
its
the
was not seen as a confessional marker
way
successor
be
defined,
by
Only
Anabaptists
the provocative act of
could
sharply
was.
had
baptism.
Evangelicals
identities
to
adult
a series of ways
assert their
Bible-reading,
(for
married
getting
clergy and religious), or acts of
iconoclasm, for example - but all of them were ambiguous or limited.
This is frustrating for those of us who like to try to apply religious labels to
individuals, but it had obvious advantages at the time. Prospective converts
both
identity
dabble
to play
their
could use ambiguous markers of
sides: to
toes in evangelicalism without committing or incriminating
themselves.
This is where fasting becomes important,
for three reasons. First,
fasting
in
teaching
the pre-1550 period made one point
on
evangelical
Christians
do
because
it,
indeed,
almost exclusively:
are not obliged to
and
it tends to hypocrisy and works-righteousness,
Christians may have a duty
do
John
it.
Bale's
from
if
not
point can stand as representative:
abstinence
food were good in itself, `than were the deuyll most holye, which neuer
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
91
fasting
3
drynketh'.
face
Second,
is
it
the
on
of
an unattractive
eateth nor
being
fast,
All
equal, most people would choose not to
other things
activity.
if they can do so safely, respectably and with a clean conscience. Third,
fasting had always been in some sense a voluntary activity. Not fully, of
fasts,
breaking
breaking
fast,
Lenten
the
and especially
was an
course:
discipline
Church,
in
England,
the
the
of
and one which,
offence against
lead
heresy.
But
in
to
an accusation of
the sense
voluntary
could sometimes
domestic
is
individuals
often a private or
activity, which
that eating
and
households had to police for themselves; in the sense that the young, the old,
for
themselves,
the pregnant and the unwell could negotiate exemptions
large
indeed
numbers of people could
choose whether and
so that very
fasts;
boundaries
in
the sense that the
and
to what extent to observe
of
fuzzy.
fasting
flesh
The
were
rules said no
or white meats on
approved
days,
letter
it
was proverbial that some adhered only to the
and
the set
drinking
fish,
like)
law,
(and
gorging themselves on
or preparing
of the
from
delicacies
ingredients.
On
the permitted
the other side, many
subtle
beyond
letter
law,
fasting
individuals
the
went
of the
some
only on
pious
bread and water on fasting days, or going without food or even without
drink entirely, or fasting on other days in addition to the set times, notably
A
in
Wednesdays.
1500
set of verses printed
around
urged readers to
on
fast on Wednesdays, promising that those who did would be miraculously
from
dying
but
its
anecdotes of such miracles also
protected
unshriven,
fasting
how
Wednesday
testify to
rare the practice of
was: one member of
And
it.
to
a ship's crew, one man amongst an army, adhered
even then the
book only advocated fasting from flesh, not from white meats. ' So it was,
laxly
believers
how
individual
to a considerable extent, up to
strictly or
fasts.
they observed the set
fast-breaking
All this combined
into
to make
an alluring
way
first
The
in
the
evangelicalism.
opportunity
was made much plainer when,
Lent
1538, Henry VIII issued a proclamation relaxing that year's
week of
fast. Citing a poor fish catch, which had driven prices up, and claiming
that the Lenten fast was `a mere positive law of the church, and used by a
custom', the proclamation permitted the consumption of white meats that
Lent. It nevertheless urged the English to fast with due devotion. We have
following
being
in
no record of this proclamation
three
any of the
renewed
but
do
in
know
1543,
in
it
1542
years,
that
we
and again
was reissued
John
Bale,
Yet a course at the romyshe taxe. A dvsclosvnge or openvnge of the
Manne of
1543: RSTC 1309), fo. 64v.
synne (Antwerp,
4
Here heginneth
lytel
hou
fand!
treatvse
that
woman ought to
a
weuere man
sheweth
faste
1500%: RSTC 24224).
and ahsteyne them from flesshe on ve Wednesday (Westminster,
AND
WORSHIP
92
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
been
'
have
The
`book
it
of ceremonies'
so-called
may
an annual event.
and
drawn up in 1539, an attempt at an official statement of what the English
Church's remaining ceremonies meant, similarly accepted that the existing
for
fasting
regulations
were entirely arbitrary and open to change at the
king's pleasure. ' It appears that this opened the gates to a flood of Lentbreaking, much of which went beyond the new permissions. The official
be
changed so easily undermined the entire
admission that the rules could
fasting
Thomas
Becon,
more
an evangelical author who took
system.
his
Henry
English
`worthy
as
co-religionists, praised
seriously than most of
for
immortalite
that proclamation.
and eternall glory'
of
Whether or not the official relaxation of the fast encouraged it, there is
became
last
decade
doubt
Henry's
in
Lent-breaking
the
that
of
endemic
no
life. In 1537, the conservative cleric Roland Phillips believed that the
fasting
faith
had
by
led
justification
`the
people' to abandon
preaching of
'
Londoner
On
Thursday
Maundy
1539,
a
ate a
and other good works.
her
her
her
bacon,
`for
sin to
saveryng of
piece of
mowthe', and confessed
her
[her]
`that
told
parish priest, who
yf
conscyence ... thought yt good yt
find
'
We
Kentish
in
1542
`masters
that
preaching
a
cleric
was none offence'.
lent,
bounde
butter
in
to give
to eate egges,
and chese
and mistresses were
his
houshold
do
One
the same'.
to
of
neighbours was
ensample to their
faste
disposed
kepe
have
diuers
breake
`caused
to
to
thair
that were
said to
it', saying that `all daies be like', while another preached that `allmighty
God was neither pleased wt fasting nor discontent wt eating', and that on
Whitsun eve `you nede not to fast except you wil'. 'o As these cases suggest,
fast-breaking was often something that one nibbled at piecemeal rather
fast
days
days
devouring
The
Ember
in
(the
than
at
a single sitting.
whole
four
in
in
Rogation
the
the
the start of the
particular
set
seasons of
year),
flouted
held
that
particularly often: an evangelical urban myth
week, were
honour
had
been
"
instituted
in
they
of a papal concubine.
Tudor
James
F.
Larkin
Royal Proclamations
(eds),
and
(New Haven and London, 1964), nos. 177,209,214.
6
BL, Cotton MS, Cleopatra E. v, fo. 288r (LP, XIV (i), 374.3).
Paul L. Hughes
1485-155.3
drinkynge
for
holi
Becon, ps. Theodore Basille, A potation
this
time of
or
for all penitent synners, newly prepared by Theodore Basille (London.
lent very comfortable
1542: RSTC 1749), sig. G1v.
Thomas
8
Society; Cambridge,
9
Writings
Miscellaneous
Corporation
1846),
and
338.
p.
of London
Letters
Record
Thomas
of
Office
ICLROI,
Cranmer,
Court
ed. John
Aldermen
of
Cox
Repertory
(Parker
Book
10, fo. 90v.
1f' Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
546, pp. 306,310,315
).
11
Policy
LP,
XI,
Police:
and
1424;
CCCC,
MS
The Enforcement
MS 128,45,63,83
ICCCCI,
(LP, XVIII u'.
128, p. 54 (LP, XVIII
(i), 546, p. 308); G. R. Elton,
Reformation
in the Age of Thomas Cromwell
the
of
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
93
What accelerated this process was that, while eating was often a private
lure
Company
it
into
rarely
a
solitary
was
one.
could
one another
activity,
fast-breaking and encourage one another in so doing. One of the regular
features of the unofficial,
Reformations
in
England
underground
and
Scotland was the Lent-breaking group. The ones which are documented
include one in Norwich in 1537, an intercollegiate group in Oxford in
1539, a group in Calais in 1540, a group in St Andrews in 1548, and one
in Dundee in the later 1550s. A drive against Lent-breaking in London in
1543 discovered that the fast was being routinely ignored in a swathe of
households,
humbler
in
Some
as well as
ones.
of the offenders
aristocratic
but
had
dispensations
from
imprisoned,
them
many of
already secured
were
for
fast:
becoming
it
those
the
with the right connections,
was
a voluntary
discipline. In such cases, it was only possible to ask Lent-breakers to be
discreet.
despite
And
City
drive
the
authorities' efforts, their next
more
in 1545 discovered the same problem, and many of the same households,
'
for
And
indeed,
discreet
it
the
same suppliers:
offending.
a time,
seems, a
butcher
invaluable
in
sympathetic
and
was an
contact
evangelical circles.
Some of these groups were plainly Protestant conventicles. In two cases,
from
from
London
in
Tullibody
1540
Clackmannanshire
in
one
and one
in 1539, it appears that the occasion for a collective Lent-breaking was the
feast
for
j
illegally
'
But
wedding
an
married priest.
commonly these seem to
have been more religiously fluid occasions, using meals to draw outsiders
into evangelical company, implicating them in a venial offence to see if
they had a taste for more. A Salisbury evangelical named William Holmes
kepe
fast'
`contemptuouslye
Imber
who
refused to
and obserue the
was also
having
by
his
`subtyll wayes
accused of
the
alluryd
sonnys'
of
neighbour
...
his
beliefs.
' The relative safety of fast-breaking was also one
to share
by
the
of
means
which evangelicalism could cautiously emerge into the
In
February 1540, the members of an English embassy to Scotland
open.
(Cambridge, 1972), p. 376; Muriel McClendon,
The Quiet Reformation:
Magistrates and the
Emergence of Protestantism
in Tudor Norwich
1999), p. 76; Henry Brinklow,
(Stanford,
ps.
Roderyck Mors, The
for
laces
Rodervck
Mors,
the
complaynt
of
redresse of certen wicked
(Strassburg, 1542?: RSTC 3759.5), sig. HIv.
12 TNA: PRO, SP1/141, fo. 232r; TNA: PRO, SPl/146,
fos 252r-252v;
TNA: PRO,
SPI/158, fos 189v-190r;
TNA: PRO, SP1/176, fos 152r, 156r (LP. XIII (ii), Addenda 19, XIV
(i), 684, XV 460; XVIII (i), 315,327);
CLRO, Court of Aldermen
Repertory Book 10, fo.
324v, Book 11, fo. 176r; John R. Dasent (ed. ), Acts
of the Pricy Council of England (46 vols,
London, 1890-1964),
I, pp. 104,106,114;
James Balfour Paul (ed. ), Accounts of the Lord
High Treasurer
Scotland
X, pp. 369-70;
Alec Ryrie,
1877-1978),
(13 vols, Edinburgh,
of
The Origins
2006), p. 36.
(Manchester,
of the Scottish Reformation
13 CLRO, Court
fo.
Aldermen
Repertory
Book
The
10,
169v; David Calderwood,
of
History
Society, 8 viols; Edinburgh,
of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Thomas Thomson (Wodrow
1842-49), I,
p. 124.
14 TNA: PRO,
STAC 2/17/261.
WORSHIP
94
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
be
breaking
Lent.
Cardinal
Beaton
issued
to
a proclamation
were reported
he
heresy;
Sir
Sadler,
Ralph
that
treat
this as
would
whereupon
warning
head of the English mission, protested to his host King James V. The whole
by
Sadler,
in
truth a confirmed
nods and winks.
exchange was conducted
freedom
he
did
Gospel.
Rather,
evangelical,
not claim the
assured
of the
James that he was merely eating white meats, not flesh - as Henry VIII had
in
His
I
`I
that
eat eggs and white
permitted
previous years.
reason?
confess
fishman,
because
For
I
I
it
if
it
meats,
am an evil
and think
none offence.
be
loath
holiest
James,
'
I
it
to eat
were ... would
as
as the
of your priests.
his
in
He
to put the cardinal
place.
characteristically, saw an opportunity
he
liked,
Sadler
Beaton
that
replied
could eat what
regardless of what
might
he
borne
by
say, and
also ensured that the message was
an evangelical
herald who sauced it with some anticlerical commentary. Sadler's weak
for
"
discipline.
Lenten
stomach was a transparent excuse
abandoning
To begin to break the Lenten fast in England or Scotland in the 1530s
decision:
but
1540s
or
was a real act of rebellion, and took a conscious
decision
by
inertia,
that
selfishness and a weakening sense of
was eased
did
Lent-breaking
But
not make you an evangelical.
social obligation.
liable
interpret
it
it
that way, and
to
might well throw
some people were
defend
in
into
to
the
those
company of
who were willing
you convivially
had
decided
do
in
to
principle what you
all
practice.
In other words, part of Protestantism's appeal was its relaxation of
irksome moral duties. '6 This was of course a problem for Protestants. It
fasting,
fun
Catholic
was all well and good to reject the
use of
and good
be
had
doing
but
Protestant
theologians were unwilling to
could
so,
while
fasting
for
do
First,
three reasons.
to
reject
so was a propaganda
altogether,
fasting
holiness
life,
it
to
gift:
was a widely accepted sign of
of
and
abandon
high
helped
but
Catholicism.
(It
to
the
to
seemed
yield
moral
ground
only
fasting
little
had
been
Christ
in
just
that
the
a
accused
of
abandoning
same
'-)
Second,
Protestants
Bibles
took
their
way.
seriously, and they could not
fact
both
Old
New
Testaments
that
the
and the
escape the
repeatedly and
fasting
living.
key
Third,
explicitly enjoined
as a
part of godly
which may
be the most important, experience also convinced many of them that fasting
life.
A
British
Protestant
the
theology of right
was a central part of
godly
fasting developed very early on. It is there in all its essentials in Tyndale;
Thomas Becon spelt it out in 1542 and became the first writer in English
5
Edinburgh,
16
English
1809),
(ed. ), The State Papers
I, pp. 47-8
(LP, XV, 249).
`Counting
Sheep, Counting
Alec Ryrie,
Reformation',
Protestantism
1-
Clifford
Arthur
in Peter Marshall
(Cambridge,
Matthew
11: 19.
2002),
and
Letters
Shepherds:
and Alec Ryrie
pp. 99-105.
of Sir Ralph
The Problem
Sadler
(2 vols,
of Allegiance in the
(eds), The Beginnings
of English
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
95
book-length
in
1551;
it
is
it
treatment
essentially unchanged when
to give
by
Thomas
Cartwright
in
is
1580,
again
and
not really altered
expounded
by
8
Laudians
'
This
in
1630s.
taken
theology
the
over
significantly when
fasting
favour
is
in
God's
not, of course, about earning
eyes.
stresses that
Rather, it is both an outward sign of inner repentance, and a means of
for
The
is
that
to
term which
repentance.
universally used
stirring oneself up
it is humiliation. It is a means of signifying to God and to oneself that one's
lip-service,
but
for
is
not merely
rather reflects a true sorrow
sin.
repentance
Becon argued that a true fast took place when the Christian is so overcome
for
hys
heart
him
`the
sin that
verye trouble of
wyl not suffer
with sorrow
drynke'.
19
Cartwright's
But
Becon's
reading, which reversed
to eat or
cause
became
he
from
(whether
more standard:
argued that abstinence
and effect,
food, or from sleep, fine clothing, the marriage bed or other earthly benefits)
feeling
draw
feeling
in
`to
the
thereof,
of our vnworthiness, so
vs to a
served
by them wee make a solemne confession of the same'. 2° And it was widely
held that, as Archbishop Sandys put it, `a full belly maketh a faint prayer.
The Elizabethan Homilies taught that one fasts `that the spirit may be more
fervent
''
body
Or
Becon
it,
is
`the
to
the
as
prayer.
put
more
earnest and
filled, the more the mind is dulled'. 23All this led a great many Protestants, in
for
documents,
to argue
the appropriateness of private
official and unofficial
fasting as a part of Christian discipline: Becon, Cartwright, John Hooper,
John Knox, James Pilkington and many more.
The problem is that relatively few people seem actually to have done
it. We should not be surprised. In Edwardian and Elizabethan England,
fasts
denounced
Scotland,
and post-Reformation
as
set calendrical
were
fasting
actively wicked; and congregations were regularly told that true
fasting
from
fasting
laudable
but
lesser
in
consisted
sin, with outward
a
ceremony. When Hugh Latimer preached on gluttony and the right use of
18 William
Tyndale,
Treatises
Introductions
Henry
Walter,
Doctrinal
to
and
ed.
Different Portions
Scriptures
Cambridge,
90-2;
Holy
Society;
1848),
(Parker
the
pp.
of
Thomas Becon, ps. Theodore Basille, A newe pathwaye unto prayer (London,
1542: RSTC
1734), sigs. L5v-Mlv;
fasting
declared
Thomas Becon, A fruitful
is
treatise of
u'herin
what
), The Hohe Exercise
1551: RSTC 1722); [Thomas Cartwright?
ve Christen fast is (London,
For a Laudian
1580: RSTC 24251.5).
of a True Fast, described out of Gods word (London,
fasts
Concerning
view of the subject, see John Browning,
the
publike-prayer,
and
of the
Church (London, 1636: RSTC 3919).
19 Becon, A fruitful
treatise, sigs. CSv-C6r.
2" [Thomas Cartwright?
) and Thomas Wilcox,
4.314), p. 28.
21
The Sermons
Edwin
of
Sandys,
DD,
Two
John
ed.
treatises
Ayre
(London,
(Parker
Society;
1610:
RSTC
Cambridge,
1841), p. 275.
Certain
he
Churches
Read
Homilies
Appointed
in
to
or
Late Queen Elizabeth (Oxford,
1844), p. 254.
23 Becon, A fruitful
treatise, sips. H7v, 13v.
Sermons
in the Time of the
AND
WORSHIP
96
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
MODERN
IN EARLY
BRITAIN
food in 1552, he did not so much as hint that Christians might sometimes
fast. 24James Pilkington even set his readers five tests against which they
failed
fast,
desist
if
they
any
must measure any planned
warning them to
become
fasting
have
25
As
rare,
a result, private
seems to
one of them.
Scots
Protestants
English
and a marker of unusual earnestness.
and
were
Grindal
Catholics
Edmund
(and
gleefully) aware of this.
worried
painfully
`that in no one thing the adversary hath more advantage against us, than in
believed
fast,
26
Bradford
John
that
the matter of
which we utterly neglect'.
in Edward's reign `fasting to subdue the fleshe, was farre out of vse'. 27John
Redman wrote in 1551 that `I cannot with great difficulty find one now in
fasteth
day'
because
be
`men
a whole cittie which
so afrayd of popish
one
describing
21
The
Catholic
Thomas
English
Harrab,
the
superstition'.
fast or abstaine from flesh any day,
Church in 1616, wrote that `fewe
...
if any doe he is suspected to be a Papist'. 29 The Arminian Henry Mason
Christians
in
1625
`all
that
such austerity
many earnest
consider
agreed
be
Q
&
&
Feckenham
Monkish,
John
to
preached
superstitious
vngodly'.;
fast
feare
dared
be
laughed
'
`for
that no one
to scorne'. -; It was
they shulde
bull
Catholic
When
it
in
the papal
a standard
accusation.
was renewed
John
jewel
in
indignantly
1570,
of excommunication
rejected the charge:
`What if some few be wanton, and neglect the wholesome use of fasting? '-'2
But they were not few. In 1563 the Catholic Ninian Winzet felt confident
in claiming that fasting had been entirely abandoned in Scotland. " And
24
Sermons
Cambridge,
25
The
Cambridge,
2'
Works
of James
1842), p. 559.
John
32
ed. William
of matters
Tessaradelphus,
Scholefield
Nicholson
most special]
William
Crashaw,
The
complaint
ed.
1609: RSTC 20826.5),
(London,
p. 78.
Society;
(Parker
in the church
([Lancashire?
Society;
(Parker
of grace, continued
foure
brothers
The
or
Society;
(Parker
(London.
through
all
], 1616: RST('
sig. E4r.
Henry
_30
RSTC 17602),
31
DD,
Elwes Corrie
ed. James
John Redman,
ages of the world
29 Thomas Harrab,
12797),
BD,
Grindal,
Foxe, Actes and monuments
11225), p. 1625.
George
ed.
Latimer,
Pilkington,
Archbishop
of
1843), p. 265.
1583: RSTC
28
of Hugh
The Remains
Cambridge,
2'
and Remains
1845), pp. 14-17.
TNA:
Mason,
Christian
Humiliation,
Or, A Treatise
Fasting
of
(London,
162i:
p. 29.
PRO, SP1/228,
fo. 55r (LP, XXI
(ii), 710).
The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, ed. John Ayre (Parker Society; 4 vols.
Cambridge,
IV, p. 1141.
1845-50),
33 Ninian Winzet, The buke
fourscoir-thre
RSTC
25859),
1563:
(Antwerp,
questions
of
G4v-GSr.
sips.
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
97
Mason lamented: `who almost is there, euen among them that are counted
finde
fasting
'34
themselues
to
who
willing
vse
any
religious,
at all?
Clearly private fasting of the kind the preachers advocated did take
least,
Protestants
Some
at
under some circumstances, emphasized
place.
keep
fasting
injunction
Gospel
3a
John
Knox
to
their
the
secret.
claimed
dout
but
1566
in
`we
have
Realme
that
the
this
not
godlie within
airily
[fasting]
Papistes
the
same
as
necessitie
the
craved,
albeit
used
with
we
blew no trumpetes', which may not inspire enormous confidence, but
his
for
have
it.
With
Protestant
to
take
the
word
the
emergence
we
of
'36
late
journal
in
find
the
sixteenth century, we start to
spiritual
concrete
37
But
it
is
it
the
of
practice.
that
still pretty clear
evidence
was unusual.
Plenty of otherwise sincere and earnest Protestants could and did practice
from
faith
full
belly.
did
This
to
the
their
one year's end
next with a
no
damage at all to their religion's practical appeal.
II
Protestant discussions of fasting maintained a strict distinction between
fasts.
former
The
individual
private and public
were
events, embarked on
in
latter
The
voluntarily
response to one's own sin and spiritual need.
were
impending
to
collective responses
real or
public calamities, and once they
had been established by lawful authority, participation
was not voluntary.
Here the biblical model was the prophet Jonah, whose warnings persuaded
the sinful people of Nineveh to fall to fasting and prayer and so to avert the
threatened judgement. Protestant exegetes noted that the king of Nineveh
had compelled every soul under his care, and even the city's livestock, to
take part in a total fast from all food or drink until God's wrath was turned
aside. They were too pragmatic to imitate him, but he set a certain mood.
If the Protestant aspiration to private fasting proved a little anticlimactic,
they would make the public fast their own.
34
Mason,
Christian
;'
William
Perkins,
(Cambridge,
Humiliation,
p. 110.
learned
Christs
Sermon in the Mount
and
exposition
of
daily
hole
Henry
Scudder,
Christians
338;
The
in
p.
walke
First intended for private use; nou' (through importunity)
published
A godly
1608: RSTC 19722),
securitie and peace
...
for the
1631: RSTC 22117), p. 146.
common good (London,
36 The Works
John
Knox, ed. David Laing (6 vols, Edinburgh,
1846-64), VI, p. 394.
of
3- See, for
Puritan Diaries by Richard
example, M. M. Knappen (ed. ), Two Elizabethan
Rogers and Samuel Ward (Chicago,
Cotton Mather, Magnalia
1933), pp. 75-6,89,110;
Christi Americana
(London,
Praise yee
1702), book III, p. 111; Richard Kilby, Hallelujah.
the Lord, for the unburthening
loaden
1635: RSTC 14956.7),
of a
conscience (London,
p. 62; David Booy (ed. ), The Notebooks
Nehemiah
Wallington,
Selection
A
1618-1654:
of
(Aldershot, 2007), pp. 56,181-2;
FSL, MS V. a. 436, p. 43.
AND
WORSHIP
98
THE
IN EARLY
CHURCH
PARISH
MODERN
BRITAIN
The joint fathers of the practice in the British Isles are Edmund Grindal
drew
`stranger'
Huguenot
Knox,
John
the
precedents and on
on
who
and
likely
38
Grindal
in
England.
author of the
was the
churches established
Elizabethan Homily on fasting, which laid out the theory of such events; "
he was certainly the moving force behind the formal liturgy for a public
fast created during the plague epidemic of 1563, which would remain the
Reformed
Scottish
In
1566,
Charles
I's
the
early
reign.
official model until
Church too issued an order for public fasting, this one being Knox's
both
have
40
As
men were well aware of the accusation
seen,
we
work.
libertinism.
They
fasting
Protestantism's
were
that
amounted to
neglect of
determined to demonstrate that this was false.
from
fasts
different
in
Although
their core theological
private
no
Inevitably,
this meant
rationale, these events were structured and regulated.
lengthy
built
around a
attendance at public worship, worship which was
When
parliament observed
sermon or, more commonly, a series of sermons.
hours
Westminster
in
king
fast
Lords
in
1625,
the
spent six
and the
a
Abbey, hearing two sermons. The Commons, in an ominous display of
heard
hours
Westminster
St
in
Margaret's
and
one-upmanship, spent nine
three sermons; a witness noted with surprise that not one man present
fainted 41 The English order allowed for fast days on weekdays - most
.
for
just
Wednesdays;
as
once, sometimes weekly
sometimes
commonly on
long as a crisis persisted. The Scottish order adopted what swiftly became
`humiliation'
Scottish
invariable
which
the
practice, an eight-day period of
days
first
last
days
from
Sunday,
in
Sunday
to
of
and
were
which the
ran
fasting
intervening
week was a time of severe austerity -a
and the
actual
diet was recommended, and public merrymaking of any
bread-and-water
kind (including marriages and baptisms) was forbidden.
In England, full-scale national fasts of this kind remained relatively
have
happened
known
in
before
1563,1596
1625,
to
they
are only
rare:
deal
it
However,
1603.42
more public or
seems that there was a good
and
iR
draw on Calvin: the first recorded public fast in Geneva
They did not, interestingly,
death.
Piety
Political
Calvin's
Mentzer,
`Fasting,
in
1567,
three
and
years after
place
took
Anxiety',
356.
p.
39
Certain
40
Remains
41
George Roberts
Sermons
Homilies,
or
Archbishop
of
p. 249.
Grindal,
pp. 83-94;
Works of John Knox,
VI, pp. 393-417-
P.
M.
Peace,
Yonge,
Esq.,
Walter
Justice
the
and
of
of
from
Co.
for Honiton,
Devon,
1604
1628
Colyton
Axminster,
(Camden
to
and
written at
Society, o. s. 41; London, 1848), p. 86.
42 For these
National
prayers: special worship since the
and subsequent statistics, see
Isles.
British
Occasional
Prayers
in
Reformation.
Volume 1: Fasts, Thanksgivings
the
and
Stephen
Taylor
Philip
Williamson
Mears,
Alasdair
Raffe,
Natalie
1535-1870,
with
and
ed.
Lucy
Natalie
England
Record
of
essay in this volume.
Bates (Church
Mears's
(ed. ), The Diary
Society,
in preparation
for 2013)
Table
and
2.1 in
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
99
fasting
below
Of
the
going
on
radar screen.
all the expressions
semi-public
disliked,
decision
Elizabethan
the
the
regime
of gathered godly piety which
hardest
it
is
the
to
to
perhaps
was
police;
eat
unsurprising that godly
not
it
in
in
Essex,
their
meetings, as
or that they encouraged
ministers adopted
flocks
in
"
join
in
Dorchester.
1580s
Puritan
the
to
practice,
as
crowds
their
Catholic
Wisbech
to
the
gather within sight of
prisoners at
were permitted
in the 1590s for a day's preaching and fasting: a permission which served
for
foretaste
a while, and which was a
the regime's purposes
of what was
44
Such
gatherings took place particularly when a public calamity
to come.
fast,
back
throwing the godly
onto their own
was not met with a public
initiative. When the Essex trained bands were summoned for the Armada
his
flock
Richard
Rogers
40
in
1588,
into
impromptu
organized
of
an
crisis
fast.
for
He
the
was pleased with the event, and organized another
public
king
Protestant
France
45
Protestants
the next year.
of
new and embattled
in both England and Scotland were also keen to fast collectively in support
during
Thirty
Years
the
the
their
early stages of
embattled co-religionists
of
War. 4" The Stuart regime was less keen on such confrontational
gestures,
fasting
become
how
In
quickly
could
politically
pointed.
one sign of
Scotland, Presbyterians met to fast and pray while the parliament of 1621
Perth
Articles
the
and on the suspension of nonconforming
was voting on
but
fasts
likewise
held
in
London
Informal
to
collective
were
ministers.
bolster the work of the Puritans in the Long Parliament in 1641 and 1642.4
The regime may have seen this kind of semi-public fasting as subverting
have
drawn
but
in
the official variety,
support
practice the two seem to
from one another. This, at least, is the implication
intriguing
of one
incident from the early seventeenth century. In England, a public fast was
during
Hoby,
Lady
Margaret
1603;
the plague epidemic of
proclaimed
and
the redoubtable Yorkshire Puritan, recorded the event in her diary. It was
first
had
four
diary-keeping
Hoby
in
the
time
that
mentioned
years of
fasting, and perhaps the first time she had ever done it. Nevertheless, she
took to it like a fish to water. With the enthusiastic support of her minister,
Richard Rhodes, who it seems had first persuaded her to keep a diary, she
43
Tom Webster,
Movement, c. 162(-1643
44
Caraman
William
Godly
4
Knappen,
4b
Calderwood,
1955),
The
in
Stuart
Early
England:
The
Caroline
Puritan
1997), p. 67.
(Cambridge,
Weston,
(London,
Clergy
Autobiography
of an
Elizabethan,
ed. and
trans.
Philip
pp. 164-5.
Two Elizabethan
Puritan
Diaries,
pp. 79,89.
The
[Thomas
Scott],
V11,
453;
Kirk
Scotland,
p.
of
of the
Belgicke Pismire: Stinging the
Fast,
Watch,
Diligent
Sleeper,
Ai'vaking
to
the
and
slothful!
Pray (`London' [i.
1622: RSTC 22069), pp. 88-9.
e. Holland],
4, James Kirkton,
The Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland, ed. Charles
Kirkpatrick
Wallington,
Sharpe (Edinburgh,
Nehemiah
1817), p. 16; Booy, Notebooks
of
pp. 127.155.
History
WORSHIP
100
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
fast
for
days
beyond
She
the set order.
set additional
and the parish went
herself alongside the required ones, and on one of the official days, Rhodes
kept
his
in
the
the church until two or three
people
colleagues
and one of
for
in
the
the morning preaching at them, and taking a collection
o'clock
for
late
before
houses
they all retired to their
supper.
a very
plague victims,
Even more strikingly, the following year, Rhodes did it again, apparently
fast
his
holding
initiative,
in
the parish church one
own
a public
entirely on
day in September 1604. Hoby's diary ends soon thereafter, but it seems
had
liturgical
deduce
that this official
sparked a
novelty
reasonable to
48
imitations.
pattern of
Thereafter formal public fasting again fell into abeyance for a while,
but with the renewed epidemic of 1625, shortly after Charles I's accession,
his
king
The
issued.
in
observance
another order was
new
was enthusiastic
fast:
fasts
English
1626,
thick
and
public
came
of the order, and now
did
Archbishop
Laud
1628,1629,1636,
1637.
not share
and
apparently
his king's zeal for the practice, and events may have proved him right. For
from
fasting
interest
1625
is
in
there
onwards,
a considerable upswing of
from
by
all sides
as evidenced
a stream of new publications on the subject
his
bestselling
debate.
In
Henry
Scudder
1631
of the religious
amended
devotional guide, The Christians daily walke, to include a substantial
his
fasting.
49
Charles
I
in
It
is
ironic
training
that
succeeded
section on
become
in
the use of a pious practice which was to
one of the
enemies
for
during
Civil
War
Interregnum
their
the
sinews of
war effort;
and
fasts
became
Parliament
period, public
routine.
enforced a monthly public
fast, which began as a response to the Irish rebellion but took on a life of
its own and lasted from 1642 to 1649. Royalists, too, were supposed to
fast
date.
during
late
different
Civil
The
War,
the
observe a monthly
on a
Chris Durston reckoned that there were over 130 public fast days enforced
in England in the 1640s and 1650s. S°
Those monthly fasts during the 1640s point us to another part of the
fasting.
This
in
story: the question of regularity
was a sensitive point,
because it was a mainstay of Protestant polemic to distinguish between
fasting,
Protestant
good
which was a response to private or public sin
hoc,
fasting,
bad
Catholic
or calamity and so was necessarily ad
and
formal
which was conducted according to a set calendar, and therefore
hypocritical.
however,
distinction
limited
In
this
and
practice,
made
from
break
down
beginning,
It
in
the
threatened
to
the
sense.
almost
and
did
The
it
in
William
tensions
actually
are visible
seventeenth century
so.
48
1930),
Dorothy
M. Meads
(ed. ), The Diary
Lady
Margaret
of
Hoby,
1599-1605
206-7,213.
pp.
49 Scudder, The Christians daily
68-146.
walke, pp.
50
Durston,
`"For
the better humiliation
of the people"',
pp. 132-4.
(London,
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
101
Perkins's treatment of the subject, for example. His list of occasions for
fasting includes troubles such as living in a sinful society, or needs such
for
blessing
he
himself
As
on godly ministers.
admitted, these
as that
fasting'.
deduce
He
`continuall
occasions of
explicitly refused to
provided
from
but
he
fasts
Churches
this,
that
admitted
some reformed
regular, set
did do so. s'
One natural step was for pious individuals to adopt a set pattern for
fasts.
This
was relatively uncontroversial,
since such patterns
their private
be
binding
self-imposed and not
on the conscience,
were understood to
did
liberty.
described
fasting
Gospel
Scudder
not violate
and therefore
kind
into
`will
the
of spiritual spring-cleaning,
which
put
soule ...
as a
be
kept
habit
it
that
of spiritualnesse,
will
cleane
ordinary
with
such an
...
long
"
That
time
after'.
certainly seems
sweeping a quarter of a yeare, or
bestselling
been
Wallington's
Another
have
Rogers's
and
experience.
to
Caroline divine, William Pemble, recommended taking one day a month
for prayer, fasting and self-examination. '; But again, the blurring of the
line between private and public fasting meant that such regular personal
disciplines could easily become collective, as they did amongst the godly
in
Scotland.
Essex ministers. This seems to have been particularly
so
The Scottish ministers who were exiled to England in 1584 adopted a
fast
discipline
Scottish
collective
under which they observed the eight-day
by
4
it
Eucharist.
In
the
the early
once a month, and concluded
celebrating
from
from
seventeenth century, that practice evolved
a simple abstinence
food on the morning of a Eucharist to the holding of a full-scale fast in the
for
fasting
before
it,
weeks
a celebration, as a spiritual preparation
so that
became a kind of anti-Eucharist,
fast
a spiritual
anticipating the spiritual
feast. This was used periodically in Scotland from the 1590s onwards and
became widespread after 1638. " It also became a characteristic of the huge
festivals
developed
in
revivalist outdoor communion
southwest
which
Scotland in the 1620s and spread to Ulster in the 1630s, when there was
for
fast
huge
held
Friday
Antrim,
a monthly
a
crowds gathering
at
with
day of preaching in advance of a Eucharistic celebration on the Sunday. ''
"
Perkins,
52
Scudder, The Christians
Godly
learned
and
exposition,
daily walke,
330-1,335.
pp.
p. 142.
53 William Pemble, An introduction
to the t't-orthy receiving the sacrament
Supper (London, 1628: RSTC 195798),
pp. 49-50.
54 William
Church.
McMillan,
Reformed
The Worship
Scottish
the
of
(Dunfermline,
1931), p. 333.
of the Lords
1550-1638
Ibid., pp. 197-8,226-7;
340.
Political
Anxiety',
Piety
Mentzer,
`Fasting,
p.
and
cf.
W. K. Tweedie (ed. ), Select Biographies
Edited for the Wodrou' Society, Chiefly from
the Manuscripts
Society,
2
I
in the Library
Faculty
(Wodrow
Advocates,
the
vols;
vol.
of
of
Edinburgh 1845-7), I,
Communions
Fairs:
Scottish
Schmidt,
Holy
Leigh
Eric
143;
and
p.
cf.
American Revivals in
1989).
the Earl' Modern Period (Princeton.
WORSHIP
102
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
And if formal, compulsory public fasts never attained to quite this level of
least
Scotland.
At
become
in
did
almost routine
eventually
regularity, they
18 public fasts were ordered for the Scottish Church between 1566 and
1600: the rate then slows down, with a long gap between 1601 and 1621,
but it picks up again dramatically in the mid seventeenth century, with at
least 33 public fasts between 1638 and 1660. Of course, these were years
but
what
which were genuinely thick with real and threatened calamities,
becoming
institutionalized.
be
irregular
events were
were supposed to
Periodic fasting began as an occasional response to specific events; it
habit.
into
a
morphed
So was the Protestant public fast really so different from its reviled
Catholic predecessor? Clearly it was: in mood, in polemical intensity and
in theological content. And yet there was a tendency to drift back into the
And
same patterns of regular observation, connected to the sacrament.
fasting
Catholic
as a meritorious work was rejected,
view of
while the
did
fasting
Protestant
the
sharpened prayer could and
argument that
become
Protestant
It
is
to
thing
writers
cite, as
mechanistic.
one
easily
from Becon onwards did, the old commonplace that fasting gives wings
fasting
did,
is
Cartwright
indeed,
`a
that
to
to prayer;
also
claim, as
Grindestone, to make a poynt of [prayer], that it may pierce; and to set
both
inuisible
it
the
that
enimies, which
visible and
an edge,
may cut,
for
'Sibbes
Richard
in
It
is
to claim,
perhaps another
wee pray against'.
1640, that those who pray and have `watered the seed with mourning' for
for
he
defined
but
hope
`[cannot]
their sins
good success', success which
in worldly as well as spiritual terms. 5 Or for Scudder to claim that `it
fast
kept
heard
in
truth according to the
that
of,
a
was
was never read or
former directions from the Word, but either obtained the particular thing
for which it was kept, or a better'. " His contemporaries were ready to
from
Henry
Burton
in
1628
the
the
to
particular.
observed
move
general
fasts
held
both
in
in
1625
1626,
that, when general public
cases
and
were
for
better
dramatically
the
the unseasonable weather changed
on the very
day of the fast. 60The Exeter Puritan Walter Yonge also observed that the
fast
broke
day
in
1626,
the
the
and preserved a tale of eight
of
on
weather
labourers who refused to observe the fast, and were soon thereafter caught
s'
Becon, Newe pathwaye unto praier, sig. M2v; Scudder, The Christians daily walke.
p. 70; Mason, Christian Humiliation,
p. 77; Cartwright
and Wilcox, Two treatises, pp. 3S-'.
sK Richard
Sibbes, `The Spiritual
Favourite
at the Thone of Grace', in Works, ed.
Alexander Balloch Grosart (7 vols, Edinburgh,
1862-4), VI, pp. 103-4.
sy Scudder, The Christians daily
walke, p. 142.
60 Henry Burton, Israels Fast. Or
Seuenth
Chapter
Meditation
Joshua!
'
the
a
upon
of
(London,
1628: RSTC 4147), p. 15.
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
in a thunderstorm,
which
four mad with terror. 61
struck
IN THE
four
BRITISH
of them
REFORMATIONS
dead and drove
103
the other
William Prynne was even more incautious. In 1636 he denounced the
for
fast
during
his
Laudian
(to
time of plague, which
order
a public
new,
horror) omitted preaching. Remarkably, however, Prynne tried to prove
flawed
fast
failing.
He
God's
`plagues
that
this
that
was
claimed
statistically
have
fast
increased
begun
judgements
this
the
strangely
since
and
...
...
dying
before
fast
being
but
458
the
the
the
of
plague
totall number
week
first
fast
infected,
838
58
the
and
very
parishes
week of the
and
and
...
67 parishes infected', and a variety of other towns newly infected. This is
`cleare evidence, that Got) is much offended with these purgations, and the
fast
day'
62
the
restraint of preaching on
.
If we ask bluntly whether fasting was being used as a magical ritual
have
God's
but
in
the world, we
to answer no to manipulate
activity
have
Knox,
Cartwright,
to
that
that
tendency
admit
was present.
we also
Arthur Hildersam and others cited one of the slipperiest biblical examples
fasting,
fast
he
King
Ahab's
Kings
21.
Ahab,
in
I
of
although
was a godless
king,
blessing
for
by
his
God
wretch of a
was nevertheless given worldly
fasting. Even `the shadow of this exercise, ' Cartwright deduced, `doth heale
diseases
This
&
in
the
some
extraordinarie
obedience
exercise
worshippe
...
from
blessinges
God,
his
of
must needes receiue speciall, and extraordinary
hand. '6; True, for those predestined to Hell it could only bring blessings in
life,
fate
long
fasting
Even
this
as their eternal
was
since sealed.
so,
offered
Protestants some purchase on their otherwise dauntingly unmanipulable
God. And for a religion so phobic about ritual activity this was the perfect
for
fasting
from
It
ritual,
of course consists of abstinence
activity.
was one of
the ways in which Protestantism could re-acquire a ritual life despite itself.
III
The oddest part of the story remains. For while Catholic fasting was reviled
in post-Reformation
England and Scotland, the traditional fast days were
not entirely abandoned in either country. In England, a proclamation
of
January 1548 finally abandoned the much-waived restriction on eating
however, also insisted that fasting
white meats. The same proclamation,
61
Roberts
(ed. ), Diary
`2
William
Prynne,
`';
Cartwright
of Walter
Newes from
Yonge, p. 96.
Ipswich
(Edinburgh,
1636%: RSTC 20469)
A4v.
Wilcox,
Works
John
Two
39-40;
treatises,
and
ct.
of
pp.
p. 400; Arthur Hildersam,
The Doctrine
Humiliation
Fasting
Praier,
and
and
of
(London, 1633: RSTC 13459),
pp. 62-3.
A3r,
sigs.
Knox,
VI,
for Sinne
WORSHIP
104
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
from flesh during Lent and on other days should be retained: this was both
king's
to encourage the
subjects to mortify themselves, and `for worldly
benefits
The
proclamation
arose
and civil policy'.
claimed that two civil
from fasting. First, it helped to preserve England's fishing fleet, by ensuring
for
but
its
in
(It
the early
a market
products.
was all
universally assumed
fish
by
helped
Second,
it
)
to
modern period that no one would eat
choice.
for
for
lambing,
livestock:
England's
Lent
calving
conserve
was the season
farrowing,
from
butcher
it
the
and
made sense to preserve animals
and
A
Elizabeth.
h4
at that time of vear.
similar regime was maintained under
This required that most traditional fast days be kept, including Lent, the
Ember days, every Friday and even every Wednesday. However, the fast
flesh
be
from
its
to
was only
and
purpose was explicitly to support the
fishing fleet. The legislation went out of its way to state that these rules
for
intended
Fishermen
`purposely
thincrease
were
and ment politikely
of
for
"
Mariners
Supersticion'.
and
and
not
any
...
In Scotland, there is a parallel story. Queen Mary's government in
1562, and more remarkably, Regent Morton's in 1574 and 1575 reiterated
legal
flesh
during
Lent
Lent).
The
(only
the existing
prohibitions on eating
law which they were enforcing justified the fast with reference to `the Law
halie
kirk''i'
but
decrees
God
the new
of
and constitutioun
of
referred
from
be
The
only to secular concerns.
proclamation,
which was to
read
Scotland
in
in
1574
1575,
`in
that
every market cross
the
and
claimed
flesche
kyndis
debilitattis,
Lentren,
tyme
the
spring
of
yeir callit
all
of
decayis and growls out of sessioun, unmeit to be eitten
All nationis
...
forborne
flesche
hes
during
in that consideratioun
the eitting of
cheiflie
býThe
'
that tome.
transparent mendacity of that claim was reinforced
fast
from
first
Sunday
in
Lent
the span of the
the
proclaimed: six weeks,
to Easter Sunday - but of course the popish festival of Easter was not
Scotland,
in
Reformed
observed
so the proclamation
simply stated that
fast
from
dates
in
28
February
April,
if
1574
11
the
to
ran
as those
were
fact
Rome
April
Sunday
11
1574
Easter
the
that
arbitrary and
called
was
falls
but
for
decade:
Thereafter
the record
merely a coincidence.
silent
a
in 1586 James VI's government required fasting from flesh not merely in
Lent but also on all Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and envisaged
for
bureaucratic
for
ill
those too
a
system
providing medical certificates
The
Edinburgh
6to comply .
town council of
made periodic attempts to
F4
Miscellaneous
Writings
and
ý'S 5" Eliz.
c. 5 (1563).
"
The Acts of the Parliaments
44), II, p. 493.
"Scotland
John
Hill
Burton
Letters
Thomas
of
Scotland,
of
Cranmer,
ed. T. Thomson
pp.
507-8.
(1 1 vols, Edinburgh,
David
The
Masson
Register of the Privy
(eds),
and
II, pp. 337,431;
1877-98),
IV, p. 49.
(14 vols, Edinburgh,
1814-
Council
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
105
doubt
how
We
but
b"
these
may
orders.
widely they were observed,
enforce
lip-service continued to be paid to them until the 1630s, and there was
ineffectual
64
Restoration.
to
them
the
attempt
revive
after
even an
This bizarre survival is steeped in ambiguity. It should be emphasized
both
in
A
regimes cited were
that the reasons of civil policy which
earnest.
be
fishing
Lent
made that the artificial support which
gave to the
case can
industry really did help to drive European maritime expansion, forcing
fishermen ever further out into the Atlantic. ` And there is no doubt that
both
the
to maintain the
practical need
contemporaries were serious about
fish
The
the
and restrict
consumption of meat.
regimes'
consumption of
Protestant apologists of course found it politic to claim to believe this, -'
defenders
of traditional
practice were glad to use the
and conservative
2
But
English
in
the
privy council maintained
private as well
argument.
fish-days
for
in
in
`requisite
the maintenance of
were
policy
public that
as
fishmen,
harried
bishops
the
to
and the navy of the realm', and
mariners,
basis.
-;
The
Worshipful
Company
Fishmongers,
them
that
on
enforce
of
issue
the
and petitioned parliament
unsurprisingly, were concerned about
law
in 1571.4 Hard-bitten naval officers, including men of
to enforce the
fish-days
defended
Protestant
sympathies, passionately
unmistakable
as a
feared,
fishing
fleet
Without
England's
them, they
military necessity.
would
it
the nation's reserve of ships and of skilled mariners.
atrophy, and with
They worried that Wednesdays, in particular, were not observed by as much
And
issue,
tenth
the
the need to
as a
of
population.
as well as the naval
livestock
during
breeding
minimize the slaughter of
season was apparently
fretted
it
in
taken seriously; commonwealth-minded
about
writers
other
One
contexts too.
worried policy-maker's
memorandum calculates that
if the law were to be enforced properly, the number of cattle slaughtered
by
butchers
fall
by
London's
13,500,
annually
would
and the number of
by
-`
That memo's calculations eventually
sheep
ten times that number.
made their way into a draft proclamation in 1597, which victuallers were
supposed to paste up in their houses. This insisted both that the regulation
r
ý..
J. D. Marwick
AD 140.3(ed. ), Extracts from the Records o/ the Burgh of Edinburgh
1 i89 (Scottish Burgh Records Society, 4
111,
IV,
Edinburgh,
48-.
1869-1882)
194;
p.
p.
viols;
by McMillan,
The Worship of the Scottish Reformed Church, pp. 324-6.
I)
Brian Fagan, Fish on Friday:
(New York, 2006).
Thomas Becon,
Prayers
and
Feasting,
Fasting and the Discovery
Foxe,
Actes
and
monuments
W orld
Other Pieces, ed. john Avre (Parker Society; Cambridge,
1$441, p. 621; Works
John
Jewel, R.' p. 1142.
of
2
New
the
of
(1583),
p. 1343;
,
FSL,
MS ß'. a. 399,
Remains of Archbishop
Grindal, p. 407.
,4 TNA:
PRO, SP12/77, fo. 173 (Robert
Lemon (ed. ), Calendar
Domestic Series
1547-80 (London,
1856), p. 411).
...
[Scott, Belgicke Pismire,
h.
FSL,
MS
V.
303,
7-10,15-16.
83;
p.
pp.
fo.
19r.
State
of
Papers,
AND
WORSHIP
106
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
BRITAIN
MODERN
for
better
land'
Navye
`the
maintenaunce of the
of this
and
was necessary
fact
`in
tymes past a
the
that
also that this was entirely unconnected to
fayned ceremonye therein was used'. ''
So was the seamless continuity of fasting days between the old and new
for
harness
order merely a convenience, an attempt to
an old practice
new
have
been
least,
In
Edward
VI's
reasons?
reign at
some reformers seem to
knockabout
Lent
In
1548,
thinking this way.
a personified
a
pamphlet of
was
fyrst
he
inuencion
&
`the
ordinaunce of man
made to admit that
was
mere
inuented for a polityke ordre', and now maintained by his `faythfull fryndes,
fyshmongers
Lent-observance
He
as well
as other'.
warned that unless
fishmongers'
fasting
it
the
was reformed,
would vanish entirely, and with
livelihoods. - This seems to imply breaking the link between fish-days and
fasts,
his
English
Martin
Bucer
traditional
the
calendar of
as
was urging
hosts to do. In 1551 the Venetian ambassador in England reported that the
days
fish-days
indeed
its
to other
of the
regime was
contemplating moving
did
happen,
''
This
week to avoid the appearance of popery.
not
and perhaps
it was thought simply that the existing system was a better way of keeping
fish consumption up. The apparent difficulties of enforcing the Wednesday
fish-day in particular
have
been
justified.
suggest that caution would
And clearly the sudden abolition of fish-days would have constituted the
industry,
to
removal of a massive subsidy
a strategic and capital-intensive
Tudor
England
the
although
economy of
certainly absorbed other shocks
fishfast
days
But
the maintenance of the old
of comparable magnitude.
as
days also allowed the English Church to play it both ways. On the one hand,
Puritans such as Robert Bolton, William Gouge or Henry Scudder could
bluntly deny that fish-days were in any sense religious fasts, insisting that
79
But Bishop jewel could also respond indignantly
they were purely civic.
Church
English
to the claim (otherwise uncomfortably
plausible) that the
had abolished fasting. `What one fish-day is changed throughout the whole
he
in
'
1570.
preached
year?
What Lenten,
besides those
76
TNA:
Ember, Saturday,
days which
our
PRO,
Papers, Domestic
SP12/265,
Series
'/7
The recantacio
ýR
Kaufman,
Nay,
Friday, or other usual fasting-day?
...
forefathers
kept, we have appointed
that
fos 38v-39r
1595-97
(London,
...
f nJ of Jacke lent (London,
`Fasting
Calendar
in England
(Mary
A. E. Green
1869),
540).
p.
1548: RSTC
15461),
State
of
sigs. A2v, A4r.
in the 1560s',
Manuscripts,
Relating
Rawdon
Brown
181;
p.
et al. (eds).
Existing
in the
to English Affairs,
Libraries of Northern
Italy. 1202-[1674,. '
of State Papers and
Venice,
Other
Archives and Collections
in
of
and
V, no. 703 (p. 347).
1864-1947),
(38 vols, London,
'y
Robert Bolton, A three-fold
treatise (London,
William
Gouge,
12122),
Scudder,
The
Christians
456;
p.
IIANOI7AIA
(ed. ), Calendar
1634:
TOY OEOY. The Whole-Armor
daily walke,
RSTC
God
of
pp. 68-9.
3255),
(London,
III p. 44:
1616: RST(
book
THE
FALL
AND
RISE OF FASTING
IN THE
BRITISH
REFORMATIONS
107
Wednesday in every week throughout the year be kept fish-day, and that no
flesh
day
hear
like
We
the
person
shall eat
on
the
manner of
same
cannot
of
...
increase of fasting-days procured by the pope. "0
Bishop Pilkington
made a similar
'
case.
There is no doubt that plenty of serious Protestants in England saw
discipline.
Lenten
George
observance
as
a
their
religious as well as a secular
Herbert's view was unequivocal: `Welcome deare feast of Lent
The
...
Scriptures bid us fast; the Church sayes, now. ' And his description of the
fasts,
held
Friday,
it
every
makes
clear that these are
country parson's
fish-days rather than days of humiliation
in the godly sense.12 Herbert
Protestants
is himself a slippery fish, but more straightforwardly
godly
fish-days
Anne
Clifford
Lady
her
in
noted neglect of observation
agreed.
diary, and in 1617, when she failed to observe the official diet in Lent until
Good Friday, she resolved as an act of penitence to keep every Friday as a
fish-day thereafter. "; Daniel Featley, always an ambiguous figure, argued
fasts,
held
that alongside extraordinary
public
which were
when occasion
demanded it, there should be regular `fasts against sinne', which was of
he
These
identified
Lent
course an endemic condition.
explicitly with
and
fasts.
fish-days
Against
the other traditional
the claim that
were purely
he
civic,
argued that they were:
by
a mixed constitution; partly ciuill, appointed
the King or State, to preserue
fish,
fishermen:
Partly Ecclesiasticall
young cattell, spend
and encourage
"
for
by
Church
Religious
the
ordered
ends.
On a historical level, at least, it is very hard to disagree with that. To deny
that Lent had any religious element required a conscious effort to blinker
oneself. For mainstream Protestants like the Dorset minister John Mayo,
it simply seemed a statement of the obvious that Lent was ordained both
for civic and for religious purposes. "
These attitudes were, of course, an open door for Laudian reformers.
Richard Hooker stressed the link between fasting and the liturgical
x()
81
82
93
S4.
Works of John Jewel, IV p. 1142.
Works of James Pilkington,
556-61.
pp.
The Works of George Herbert,
(Oxford,
ed. F.E. Hutchinson
David J. H. Clifford
(ed. ), The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford
94 Daniel Featley, Ancilla Pietatis:
1626: RSTC 10726),
pp. 507,542-3.
85 John Mayo,
A Sermon of fasting,
Or, the Hand-Maid
Lent
(London,
and of
1941), p. 86,241-2.
(Stroud,
to Priuate
1990), pp. 43,
Devotion
(London,
1609: RSTC 1; ' 7SS ), pp. 34-
WORSHIP
108
AND
THE
PARISH
CHURCH
IN EARLY
MODERN
BRITAIN
became
in
it
1620s
1630s
the
calendar, and
a commonplace to argue
and
for the observation of Lent and even of the Ember days as a religious duty.
There were explicit attempts to attach the medieval practice of Wednesday
fasting to the Wednesday fish-day. "' A manuscript
sermon surviving
from that period insists that `were men left to fast & mourne only when
know
how
litle
doth
We
they please, we
this exercise
please vs ...
yt sin
delightfully
bitterly:
leaving
but
ill
&
it
is
must weepe
vs to take our
for
Laudian
Times
it.
It
is
'xa sentiment at once triumphantly
and
owne
Protestant.
authentically
These three perspectives show us something of the meaning of fasting in
the British Reformations. It was a paradoxical practice, which illuminated
The
instability
Protestantism.
initial
the
and contradictions
attack on
of
fasting was both part of Protestantism's appeal and one of its points of
freedom
Christian
The
it
moral vulnerability.
attempt to reconcile
with
Gardiner
Protestants
it:
Bishop
observed,
ended up almost abolishing
as
bankets'
Good
Friday
`notable
than
preferred to mark
and speciall
with
fast.
fasting
"
But
the attempt to retain, reinvent and regularize
ended
with a
had
before,
gone
and
up recreating a practice recognizably similar to what
This
in
implication
the
even smuggling
of works-righteousness.
uniquely
deritualized ritual became both a site of and an accelerant of confessional
difference.
by
At
identity
its
the
time,
conflict, a marker of
and
same
means
Laudians, conformists
Puritans
and
all attained to remarkably
similar
fasting
did
No
experiences.
one could quite shake off the perception that
indeed give wings to prayer: a perception which, like so many other aspects
devotional
life,
Protestant
of
opened cracks through which popery could
back
doctrine
into
Protestant
implied.
the
sterile ritual space which
seep
86
Church
See, amongst many other examples,
England
RSTC
1630:
(London,
of
Mason, Christian
prayer, pp. 173-6,181;
8ý FSL, MS V. 1, fos 11r-11v.
a.
88
Stephen
unlearned people,
11591). fo. 110v.
Ambrose
10885),
Humiliation;
Fisher, A defence of the liturgie of thy'
Concerning
publikep. 31; Browning,
Webster,
Godly
Clergy,
pp. 63-4.
deuils
he
A detection
the
of
sophistrie,
wherwith
robbeth the
hyleef,
RST(
in
(London,
1546:
the
the
true
the
sacrament of
aulter
of
Gardiner,