A TALE OF TWO EPISCOPAL SURVEYS: THE STRANGE FATES OF EDMUND GRINDAL AND CUTHBERT MAYNE REVISITED

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to relate the course of Edmund Grindal's disgrace to the formulation and enforcement of policy against catholics. It argues that the two were integrally related and that the nature of that interrelationship can be seen as a function of certain manoeuvres and debates about a range of issues involving the queen and her councillors and bishops and indeed members of the wider regime. The resulting exchanges were conducted in terms of the nature and relative significance of the popish and puritan threats. The aim here is to reveal the dynamics of the resulting mode of ideological politics and to show how very serious differences of approach, priority and world view could be both canvassed and contained within the consensual mechanisms and assumptions of the Elizabethan regime. Through a close analysis of one political moment the paper also hopes to demonstrate the extent to which a series of conventionally separately told stories – about ecclesiastical affairs, about foreign policy, about puritans and about catholics, about both court and local politics – need to be seen as parts of a unitary political narrative or process, the nature of which this paper is an attempt to reveal.