A Study in the Formulation of Policy: The Genesis and Evolution of the Act of Six Articles

Abstract

The Act of Six Articles of 1539 affirmed half a dozen key Catholic beliefs and their denial was made punishable by law: a heretic's death was automatically prescribed for repudiation of transubstantiation, and possible death as a felon for those who denied the divine authority of clerical celibacy, vows of chastity, private masses or the practical necessity of auricular confession. The measure was made even more severe as recantation was of no effect where transgression of the first article was concerned. Little wonder its detractors called the act ‘the whip with six strings’, or the ‘bloody statute’. From early on, the passage of the act was often seen in terms of a personal triumph for Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, along with Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, who piloted the measure through parliament. All of the allusions to Gardiner's involvement come from hostile sources, and most of these ascriptions are vague and lacking in circumstantial detail. William Turner, in The rescuyinge of the Romishe fox, referred to the act in a much quoted statement as ‘the six articles, otherwise called Gardiner's gospel’; it remains a moot point whether Winchester's enemy, Turner, was ascribing to Gardiner authorship of the act or merely endorsement of its orthodoxy. An unknown author, whose work is to be found in Narratives of…the Reformation, argued that the act stemmed from the king's anger against reformist bishops who quarrelled over his deployment of monastic wealth, so Henry, ‘being stirred thereunto by Winchester and other old papists in the next parliament, made vj new articles of our faithy.… The most comprehensive and detailed indictment of Winchester's involvement comes in a highly virulent, and extremely effective, piece of propaganda directed against the bishop.