Vicar of Bray, The

DESCRIPTION: "In good King Charles's golden days... A zealous high churchman was I, and so I got preferment." In the reigns that follow, the Vicar changes his opinions to suit the monarch, "That whatsoever king shall reign, I'll be the Vicar of Bray."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1813 (broadside Bodleian, Douce Ballads 4(49))
KEYWORDS: clergy political royalty
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1660-1685 - Reign of Charles II (an Anglican, but devoted to "High Church" and probably baptised Catholic on his deathbed)
1685-1688 - Reign of James II (brother of Charles II; Catholic)
1688 - Glorious Revolution. William III of Orange overthrows James II in his own behalf and on behalf of his wife, James's daughter Mary II. William is Dutch, and favors a more Reformed faith.
1688-1702 - Reign of William III (first cousin of Mary and nephew of James. Mary died in 1694)
1702-1714 - Reign of Anne (second daughter of James II; Protestant but conservative)
1714-1727 - Reign of George I (a cousin of Charles II and James II, and far down in the line of succession -- but the closest relative of the Stuarts to be safely Protestant)
FOUND IN: Britain(England) US(SE)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 652-654, "The Vicar of Bray" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic II, pp. 122-123, "The Country Garden, or, The Vicar of Bray" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #210, "The Vicar of Bray" (1 text)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #78, "The Vicar of Bray" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 314, "The Vicar of Bray" (1 text)
Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, pp. 149-151, "The Vicar of Bray" (1 text)
cf. Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, p. 187, "Country Gardens"
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN1416, "In Charles the second's Golden Reign"
DT, VICARBRY*
ADDITIONAL: Reginald Nettel, _Seven Centuries of Popular Song_, Phoenix House, 1956, pp. 124-126, "(The Vicar of Bray)" (1 text)
Roud #4998
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce Ballads 4(49), "The Time Server, or, Vicar of Bray," T. Evans (London), 1790-1813
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "When the Rebels Come A-Marchin'" (theme)
SAME TUNE:
So Here I Work (File: WJL199)
The American Vicar of Bray ("When Royal George ruled o'er this land and loyalty no harm meant") (Rabson-SongbookOfTheAmericanRevolution, pp. 62-63)
NOTES [8694 words]: According to Nettel, p. 126, "the song seems to have been derived from an early one by Ned Ward called The Religious Turncoat, sung to the tune of London is a fine Town." Perhaps true, but this is far better known.
According to Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, p. 206, "A certain Canon of Windsor is said to have been Vicar of Bray, near Maidenhead, from 1540 to 1588, and to have been a Papist under Henry VIII, a Protestant under Edward VI, a Papist again under Mary, and a Protestant again under Elizabeth. This gave rise to a proverb, 'The Vicar of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still."
Although the song is mostly a commentary on political trimming, it also reveals the strange and complex religious situation in late seventeenth century England. The ferment had been rising since the death of Elizabeth, really: James VI and I (reigned over England 1603-1625, having previously been king of Scotland) was inclined toward absolute monarchy, and his son Charles I (reigned 1625-1649) was even more so. This also naturally inclined them toward a hierarchical, ritualistic church. Neither king was popular, so they could do little to prevent the rise of the hard-line puritan denominations.
And then, of course, came the rebellion against Charles I, with Scotland turning to the Covenanting version of Presbyterianism and England increasingly Puritan. When Oliver Cromwell died and the Commonwealth crumbled, Britain restored the monarchy, but it didn't at once solve the issue of the national faith. And, of course, for many years, the monarch had been the primary influence on the church: Henry VIII had instituted the Anglican church, Edward VI (or, rather, his ministers) had tried to codify it, then Mary I had inclined back toward Catholicism, leaving it for Elizabeth I to try to find a middle road.
Religion doesn't seem to have been a particularly big deal to Charles II on his restoration. Clark, p. 18, writes, "The king himself was the son and heir of one who was regarded as a martyr for the church of England, but he never showed much feeling for that church. He was without serious personal religion, and his theological opinions, so far as he had any, were those of the deism which was by this time common among unprejudiced men of position. He was therefore inclined to be tolerant of differences of belief, and he was disposed to be particularly indulgent to the Roman Catholics, that body among his subjects who were the most generally feared and ill-treated."
Compare Miller-James, p. 40: "Charles's religious outlook was more complex. He had a good knowledge of scripture and liked to discuss religious topics but does not seem to have had a deep religious faith. Unlike James [II], he apparently felt no guilt at his endless adulteries. He believed that 'to be wicked and to design mischief is the only thing that God hates' and that 'God would not damn a man for a little irregular pleasure.' His attitude towards institutional religion seems to have been guided mainly by political and social considerations."
Similarly Fraser, p. 149: regarding Charles's faith, "only two things can be stated with absolute certainty: that he was born a member of the Church of England (like his father), and that he died fifty-five years later a member of the Roman Catholic Church (like his mother)." Fraser mentions various rumors that he had converted before he was on his deathbed, but he certainly acted like an Anglican until the very end. As for what he actually felt, one of the few testimonies we have is from his close friend the Duke of Buckingham, who claimed that in his early years he had "no religion at all except a kind of vague 'deism'" (Fraser, p. 150).
Hence, perhaps, the description of the era as a "golden time"; Charles by was not inclined toward the persecution of anyone.
Which doesn't mean it was a golden time if you weren't Anglican. In Scotland, Charles re-imposed the bishops that the Scottish Kirk had gotten rid of in the Covenanting era, and deposed many clergy who wouldn't go along; the result was that most of his bishops were boot-lickers rather than quality churchmen, and many congregations were at conflict with the central church (Hutton, pp. 179-180). Even in England, which was mostly Anglican, Charles's attempt at a toleration bill was tossed by the Commons (Fraser, p. 191), and the 1662 Act of Uniformity forced out about a tenth of the active clergy (Hutton, p. 183), and Scotland was worse, and Ireland of course remained a nation of Catholic helots ruled by Protestant nobles, many of them absentee. The Church in England was more oppressive than Charles would have liked, both toward Catholics and toward dissenters -- as Fraser observes on pp. 215-216, the Anglicans were doing unto the Puritans almost exactly as the Puritans had done to the Anglicans in the Commonwealth era. According to Hutton, p. 424, says that, for "presbyterians, sectaries, or Quakers," the late years of Charles's reign saw the most severe persecution "of the reign and, indeed, in history."
In Charles's defense, although he couldn't get the penal laws repealed, he could offer that, "at the least, the laws would be laxly enforced" (Hutton, p. 176); in England at least, the clergy who resigned simply went home and worshipped their own way in their own place (Hutton, p. 183; Hutton adds on p. 184 that Charles "enjoyed the exotic" and so found "Quakers and sectaries [to be] strange and intriguing creatures" rather than people to be oppressed). And Charles started to open the door for the Jews to again be legally allowed in England (Fraser, p. 218).
The flip side was that Charles didn't really do much to strengthen the laws about religion or the succession. One of his most important servants, Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, called him "irresolute" and said that he was too apt to be influenced by those around him (Miller-James, p. 39). Neither was he hard-working; he would talk to anyone who wanted his attention, then... not do anything. (I can't help but think that Charles and the Vicar would have appreciated each other very much. Another reason it was a "golden time" for the Vicar.) The result was that no one liked him much, and he faced constant crises, but he didn't offend anyone so much that they felt the need to overthrow him (Miller-James, pp. 35-39, etc.)
And there seemed to be something about Catholicism that struck a note in the heart of all the Stuarts. Prall, p. 44, records that "Charles II had developed a feeling of sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church and for French ways during his years of exile. How deeply his religious views went is certainly problematic, but there was an air about the court at Versailles [where Charles II spent much time after his father's execution and his own exile], Catholic and monarchical, that deeply impressed the young man in exile."
Certainly Charles liked to be in control -- in the latter years of his reign, funded by a subsidy from France as well as revenues voted him for life by his subjects, he dispensed with parliament (Trevelyan, p. 22). Hence, presumably, the line in the song, "Kings are by God appointed" (something his father and grandfather believed even more profoundly; James I had actually written a book Trew Law of Free Monarchies, which set forth his belief in the Divine Right of Kings; Davies, p. 30. Charles I didn't write any books, but he did say that he "owe[d] the account of [his] actions to God alone," and that a king "cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction"; Davies, p. 32. Compare also the quotes from Charles I's trial in Wedgwood-Coffin, pp. 121-134. Somehow, his belief that no one had jurisdiction over him that didn't stop Parliament from executing him).
It didn't really matter by then, but Charles II is said to have joined the Catholic church on his deathbed (Kenyon, p. 224; Prall, p. 89; Hutton, p. 443). It is not clear what caused his death -- Miller, pp. 118, thinks he had had a stroke, which fits the contemporary verdict of apoplexy (Fraser, p. 449) while Hutton, p. 443, suggests "chronic glandular kidney disease with uraemic convulsions," which might explain why he recovered a degree of rationality so quickly, Once the condition set in, he was subjected to a lot of bleeding and the like (Miller-James, pp. 118-119; Fraser, p. 446, says he was subjected to more than fifty different drugs, plus bleeding, blistering, cupping, and more). In the circumstances, it is not entirely clear that he actually made a conscious decision to turn Catholic.
It hardly matters either way. What did matter is that Charles II had no heir; he had sundry illegitimate children, the most important of whom had became Duke of Monmouth, but even when England had had illegitimate Kings (William the Conqueror, Henry VII), great effort was made to pretend they were legitimate. Nor was Monmouth to prove a particularly good leader; shortly after his father's death in 1685, he tried to raise a rebellion (Chandler, p. 3, and most of the rest of his book; Trevelyan, pp. 26-27; Clark, pp. 113-115, etc.; for background on Monmouth, see "The Monmouth Rebel"). His rising was quickly quashed at the battle of Sedgemoor; he was executed, and his followers suffered very badly (Kenyon, pp. 228-229), as songs of the time tell:
Oh Lord, where is my husband now --
Where once he stood beside me?
His body lies at Sedgemoor
In grave of oak and ivy;
Come tell me you who beat the drum,
Why am I so mistreated? (Chandler, p. 92; Alexander, p. 268, says that there are exceptionally many tales of ghosts told about the Sedgemoor battlefield. There were also a lot of broadsides about Monmouth, but they left effectively no trace in tradition).
But Monmouth's elimination left Charles's brother James (II and VII) as the only claimant. James was already king; with Monmouth out of the way, there wasn't anyone else to rally around. James, contrary to this song, did not "usurp" the throne; he was Charles's legitimate heir, and had been expected to succeed for many years, since it had become clear that Charles's wife Catherine of Braganza was barren. (At least, that's what they called her. I wonder if she might have been the first real victim of the venereal disease we know Charles had.) But James was Catholic. Proudly and openly Catholic. Maybe it was the family attitude; maybe it was the effects of the exile he had shared with Charles II. But he openly professed the Roman faith (Prall, p. 46). At this time, Catholics were barred from almost every office in England by the Test Act and the penal laws, and only quick action by Charles during the "Exclusion Crisis" had kept parliament from barring Catholics from the succession. And here was one on the throne! (It is perhaps possible that a parliament might have barred James from the throne before his accession, but as noted, Charles II managed to avoid summoning parliament in the latter years of his reign; they had no opportunity to do so.)
What's more, James gained firm control in the aftermath of Monmouth's rebellion, and although he failed to induce parliament to repeal the penal laws against Catholics (Trevelyan, pp. 33-34; Kenyon, p. 229, says that he never even raised the issue), he *did* induce them to vote him subsidies for life (parliament would learn from this, and never again give a monarch life subsidies; Trevelyan, p. 26). Free of financial needs, James prorogued the parliament after it met for just a week and a half (this even though it was the most pro-Monarch parliament in decades; Prall, p. 92, says that its composition would have "made any Tudor or earlier Stuart king weep with envy").
Free of outside restrictions, James began to show clear favor to Catholics -- and to turn the machinery of government over to them ("Every effort was made to recruit Catholics and suitable Dissenters as magistrates and sheriffs" -- Kenyon, p. 238. The dissenters had no more fondness for Catholics than did the Anglicans, but they would support James if it would get them toleration). And he was intent on creating a standing army -- something that was anathema to both the radical Whigs (because they didn't trust him) and the otherwise reliable Tories (because they remembered Cromwell and the Commonwealth and what it had done to the Church of England; Trevelyan, pp. 29-30). Trevelyan, p. 34, writes, "James, in short, in his desire to restore Romanism in England, found it necessary to become an absolute monarch like the other Princes of Europe."
The reference to the Vicar "read[ing] the Declaration" in the reign of James is perhaps somewhat confusing, because the natural thought would be that he is referring to the Declaration of Right, issued by William and Mary when they came to the throne. But James had made his own Declaration -- the Declaration of Indulgence (1687). This was, in effect, a unilateral repeal of the Test Act and anti-Catholic legislation (Prall, p. 126). This, on its face, was a liberal move -- James not only lifted the restrictions on Catholics but on Protestant Dissenters (Kendall, p. 236). But it was clear that he meant to use it to appoint more Catholics to high positions. And -- the key point, this -- he had done it without consent of parliament. The Test Act might be needless; it was certainly (by modern standards) odious, but it was the law. What James had done was patently unconstitutional.
Fortunately for the peace of the country, James's two daughters, Mary (born 1662) and Anne (born 1665), were safely Protestant, and Mary, James's heir, was safely married to the equally Protestant William of Orange. Unfortunately, James's first wife Anne Hyde had died in 1671. (That, for a royal marriage, was noteworthy for having been an actual love match; he had gotten Hyde, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, pregnant, and finally earned Charles's permission to marry her; Miller-James, p.45. On the other hand, he was only the brother of the monarch, and the marriage took place in 1660, meaning that it was plannedt before the Restoration -- Miller-James, p. 44 -- so at the time there was no reason to expect that James would inherit the throne. They had seven children, but only two reached adulthood. Nor did it prove a happy match.)
Anne Hyde, like James, had been moving toward Catholicism when she died (Miller-James, pp. 58-59), but that was no problem; even if James was Catholic, his heirs were Protestant, and were being brought up by Protestants so that James could not try to convert them. But James's second wife, Mary Beatrice of Modena (1658-1718), was Catholic (Clark, p. 77). It was a semi-arranged marriage; James was willing to marry someone who would bring diplomatic advantage to Britain, but made it a condition that she be beautiful (Anne Hyde had been morbidly obese by the time of her death) -- and wanted to get it done before Parliament could interfere, resulting in some comic opera maneuvers trying to find someone who fit the bill (Smith, pp. 71-73). James was right to expect opposition; Parliament opposed this marriage in 1674 (by that time, the Stuarts were back on the throne, and Charles II had failed for years to produce a legitimate heir). Indeed, there was talk of banning Catholics succeeding to the throne -- but before that could reach a vote, Charles prorogued parliament (Miller-James, p. 74), and Charles had allowed the marriage to go forward (Kenyon, p. 209).
It was a surprisingly happy marriage, given their differences (she was fifteen, pretty, and friendly; he was forty, ugly, and both closed-minded and rather stupid). The age gap was so great that Mary of Modena actually became friends with her stepdaughter Mary, who was only a few years younger! (Miller-James, p. 75). But from the standpoint of the succession, it looked for a time as if it wouldn't matter; Mary became pregnant five times, and none of the children lived (Kenyon, p. 239, attributes this to a venereal disease -- James's, not Mary's -- but Miller-James thinks this unlikely). And Mary had been barren for several years by the time James came to the throne. But then, in late 1687, it was announced that she was pregnant (Prall, p. 173). And the child proved to be a boy -- the future Old Pretender, "James III," of Jacobite fame. As an adult, he would prove to be not a very forceful character, but he was healthy, and everyone knew he would be raised Catholic, and he was now heir to the throne (Trevelyan, p. 49). The fragile religious balance in England was suddenly no balance at all.
And across the channel was William of Orange, stadtholder of the Netherlands, the husband of James's daughter Mary. It was an odd marriage: "The wedding itself was hardly a jolly affair. When Mary heard of her fate, she wept for a day and a half. William was twelve years older and four inches shorter than his bride. Hook-nosed, solemn, and asthmatic, 'he had a constant deep cough... spoke little and very slowly and most commonly with a disgusting dryness.' He was also slightly hunchbacked, very unfashionably dressed and had forgotten much of the English he had learned from his mother" (Miller-James, p. 85).
And yet, "As William's cold reserve gradually thawed, Mary came to love him for his kindness and thoughtfulness and to respect his ability and integrity. Her unquestioning devotion helped sustain him through seventeen years of difficulties and uncertainties. When she died, in 1694, he was so distraught that it took him months to recover" (Miller-James, p. 85).
William, being both James's nephew (he was the son of James's older sister Mary) and his son-in-law, had long expected to succeed James (Prall, pp. 173-175). And, indeed, he desperately *needed* to succeed James, because his tiny country was trying to hold off the France of Louis XIV, and he could hardly hope to hold out much longer on his own. (This was a big reason Louis XIV had paid off first Charles II and then James II: To keep England from joining the Dutch war on the side of a fellow Protestant nation.)
On June 30, 1688, a group of English barons, frightened of James and his policies, issued an appeal to William of Orange to do something about the King (Trevelyan, p. 50; Clark, p. 127; Kenyon, p. 243, described William as actively inducing them to make their appeal; this may be his interpretation of a comment by William that he would not intervene in English affairs unless invited. For this situation, see Clark, p. 127f., Prall, p. 174fff.).
Whatever William's original intentions, once the invitation came, he pounced. His timing was excellent; the French navy was unavailable and could not stop him (Clark, p. 129), and the French army headed off on a wild goose chase into Germany (Clark, p. 130; Trevelyan, p. 56). William managed to get to sea by November. And he succeeded in a great gamble: He chose to sail past the English fleet (which, to be sure, was in a state of near-mutiny after James had installed Catholic chaplains; Clark, p. 132). Helpful weather allowed him to sail past them and land in the southwest of England. The conditions worked so well for him that people called it a "Protestant Wind" (Kenyon, p. 249); note the reference in the song to the "new wind."
James of course was still "in possession" in England, but it was not to last. The people were learning the tune "Lillibullero" (Trevelyan, p. 58), which was to "whistle James from his throne," and the lords started bailing out not long after (Trevelyan, p. 61). Hence the Vicar set aside the "doctrine of non-resistance" and "passive obedience," which basically meant, when ordered by a monarch to do something immoral, to refuse to do it but remain loyal (Clark, p. 33; the doctrine is stated most explicitly in 1 Peter 2:13-17, but is in accordance with passages such as Matthew 5:39). With the whole country turning against him, James's government fell apart.
The outcome was settled when James went into a panic. Everyone expected a parliament to be called -- but James, rather than letting it meet and hoping to dominate it, burned the writs of summons and fled to France (Prall, pp. 237-238). Perhaps, with his absolutist trend of mind, he thought that the government would be paralyzed -- it was, after all, the King's government, and without him parliament could not meet. In theory (cf. Trevelyan, p. 67). In practice, they managed to use a legal fiction to cover up what had happened. By fleeing, James II was held, after some discussion, to have abdicated (Kenyon, pp. 254-257; Prall, p. 261; Trevelyan, p. 77). Parliament was regarded as having been properly summoned. And that parliament declared the infant James son of James (who of course had gone off with his father; Kenyon, p. 255) illegitimate, or at least ineligible for the crown (Kenyon, pp. 259-260) because of his presumed Catholicism (Trevelyan, pp. 77-78). So James the Father was off the throne, and James the Son was not to succeed.
So who was? William, the conqueror? James's daughter Mary? (The obvious choice, except that she was a woman and she wasn't the guy with the guns.) Someone else? Perhaps even James himself, with someone else as regent?
Another compromise made the William of Orange and James's daughter Mary joint monarchs -- William III and Mary II -- with William being given control but it being understood that whichever lived longer would be sole monarch after the death of the other, and their children if any would succeed them, with Mary's sister Anne being next in line. (Miller-Glorious, pp. 16-21). Since William was a dozen years older than Mary, and sickly, it was expected that she would outlast him, so it wasn't expected that the joint monarchy would matter. As it turned out, Mary died of smallpox in 1694 at the age of just 32 (Gregg, p. 101), and William in 1702, and they had no children -- a problem suffered by several other Stuarts as well. (Though I've seen people speculate that William liked men and had trouble performing around Mary. I'm not sure about this. William doesn't seem to have had much of a sex urge -- he showed no interest in remarrying after her death -- but he and Mary were clearly devoted to each other.)
A series of additional compromises -- the "Glorious Revolution" -- assured greater religious freedom and a more constitutional government, with an independent judiciary and stronger parliamentary controls (Trevelyan, p. 88, etc.), enshrined in the "Declaration of Right" (Trevelyan, p. 79). Toleration was guaranteed to just about everyone, although the Anglican church was still the official church (Miller-Glorious, pp. 60-61). It was not a happy church, however, since it had lost a lot of power, and there were major internal fights between High and Low Church factions (Miller-Glorious, pp. 61-63). Not everyone was reconciled to the Revolution -- most of Ireland would follow James II to the banks of the Boyne, and Scotland would later break out in the Jacobite rebellions -- but the matter was pretty well settled in England, and what England said, went. Hence the Vicar's prompt conversion.
(Incidentally, it was probably a very good thing that James was displaced. Had William and then Anne not been monarchs at the start of the eighteenth century, England would have been less anti-Catholic, and the France of Louis XIV would very likely had won the War of the Spanish Succession, resulting in France dominating all of Europe -- possibly for centuries to come.)
William himself, and his closest Dutch advisors, were "Calvinists in belief, congregationalists in religious observance -- the English dissenters were in a very real sense their coreligionists" (Kenyon, p. 236). But the Netherlands by this time was fundamentally tolerant; William did not impose any real religious restrictions on his subjects. The Vicar needed only to return to the Protestant (Anglican) fold. (Note that the song is typically not very clear about the Vicar's actual practice in William's time.)
But then Mary died, followed by William, and Anne took the throne. William and Mary had in effect governed from the center of the newly-forming Whig/Tory spectrum -- the deposition of James II was entirely a Whig idea, but James's behavior had forced most Tories to join the anti-James crowd (Trevelyan, pp. 76-77); only the Jacobite extremists still held out for the full Tory position.
Anne wanted no part of this; she had the Stuart conservatism in a fairly pure form, and insisted on a Tory government -- although Gregg, p. 134, suggests that she disliked the whole idea of parties and factions, and eventually she was put off by the "High Tories" and tried to balance Tories and Whigs. Still, most agree that she was a firm believer in High Church Anglicanism (e.g. Gregg, pp. 15-16), which was a key tenet of the Tories, and even Kenyon, who thinks she wasn't so strongly Anglican, admits that everyone *thought* she was (Kenyon, p. 299). And, politically, even Kenyon admits that her "reign opened with a bang, with the dismissal of every Whig in sight and their replacement with firm Tories" (Kenyon, p. 300).
By 1707 she had settled on a policy of working with anyone who would work with her (Gregg, p. 255). It must have been great for the Vicar.
There is however agreement (e.g. Kenyon, p. 299) that she had no use at all for the habit of "occasional conformity" -- the fairly common practice of a Dissenter going to an Anglican church a few times a year to meet the requirements of the Test Act, allowing him to serve in government. Anne at the start of her reign tried to promote a law against occasional conformity, which failed (Gregg, pp. 162-163), but in 1711 she pushed through a bill stopping this practice (Clark, p. 222), which the Vicar naturally approved of, as long as it was on the statute books.
It didn't last long. Anne herself died childless in 1714. Which revived the succession problem. When the Glorious Revolution took place, the succession had been defined only as far as Anne, to succeed William and Mary; Anne had just given birth at that time to the future Duke of Gloucester, and it seemed likely that the succession could pass through him.
But the Stuarts truly were jinxed, genetically as well as historically. Something caused them to have few (and often emotionally troubled) children. It is possible that this is due to the genes of King Charles VI of France. The mad king was the father of Queen Katherine of Valois, wife of Henry V. Her son by Henry V, who became King Henry VI, was feeble-minded and had at most one son. By her second husband/paramour Owen Tudor, Katherine was the grandmother of King Henry VII -- and while Henry VII was healthy, his heir Henry VIII's wives repeatedly miscarried, and of his three legitimate and one illegitimate children to reach the age of one year, none would have offspring of their own.
Charles I was the great(x6)-grandson of Charles VI -- via Katherine of Valois, Owen Tudor, Henry VII, Margaret Tudor, James V of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, and James VI and I -- and had nine legitimate children, six of whom died without legitimate issue. Of the remaining three, James II, like Henry VIII before, caused his wives to miscarry repeatedly, and Mary the mother of William of Orange had only one child. William and Mary, both grandchildren of Charles I, were childless, and Mary herself had been through miscarriages. James the Old Pretender had two sons, but neither produced a legitimate heir. And Anne -- well, Anne went through many pregnancies, almost all of which produced babies who died very young. The child of 1689 lived to become the Duke of Gloucester -- but then died in 1700 while still a boy.
Goucester's death produced a crisis, which William of Orange sort of resolved by passing the Act of Settlement in 1701 (Prall, pp. 287-288). This made it official: A Catholic could not ascend to the throne of England (later broadened to all of Britain by the passage of the Act of Union in 1707), nor could the monarch marry a Catholic. This was the "Protestant Succession."
Anne had repeatedly talked, at the end of her life, of passing the throne to the Old Pretender, who was after all her closest living relative (her half-brother). Thackeray wrote, "Had the Queen lasted a month longer; had the English Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty; had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in St. James's Chapel Royal" (quoted in Sinclair-Stevenson, p. 11). But Anne died too soon, and the law was not altered. The hunt was on for a Protestant heir.
In fact, the Protestant heir was already known -- except that he was far down the line of succession. Several people could have supplanted him had they wanted -- but they would have had to give up their Catholic faith.
It really helps to see a genealogy here; I used the one in Oman, p. 458. Under strict blood succession, the heirs of Anne (after setting aside the Old Pretender) would have been the descendants of Henrieta, the daughter of Charles I who had married Philip, Duke of Orleans. These were, apart from the Old Pretender, the only legitimate descendants of Charles I still around. But they were all Catholic. That left the offspring of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I. (She and Charles I were the only children of James I to live to have children.)
Elizabeth had had a truly sad history: Born in 1596 (Oman, p. 1), her early portraits show a very pretty red-haired girl, who apparently was also quite clever (Oman, p. 36). Not too surprisingly, half a dozen princes were mentioned as possible marriage prospects (for the list, see p. 469 in Oman's index). Somehow, though, James decided to favor the suit of Frederick V, who, when he came of age in 1614, would be the Elector Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire (Oman, pp. 52-53). James's wife Anne of Denmark wasn't so happy (Oman, p. 62), but the young pair (Frederick was the older by just a few days; Oman, p. 54) were formally betrothed at the end of 1612. (Some think that Shakespeare's "The Tempest," or at least the Masque in IV.I.106 and following, was modified to suit her wedding; we know, according to The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1606, that it was performed as part of the elaborate marriage festivities.)
Dill, p. 33, describes Frederick as "young, handsome, charming... and a Calvinist," but not even that combination of traits could bring calm to Germany. The rest of Elizabeth's life was not so happy. Frederick soon decided to accept the vacant throne of Bohemia (Oman, p. 170), against the advice of most of those around him (Wedgwood-Thirty, pp. 97-99; the Bohemians, after all, had just ousted the previous King even as he was being elected Holy Roman Emperor; Wedgwood-Thirty, pp. 90-97).
That decision put Frederick squarely at the center of the Thirty Years' War; Bohemia, which was trying assure its Protestantism, was the front line. Elizabeth came to be called "The Winter Queen," because it was foretold that her husband, "The Winter King," would vanish with the snows (Oman, p. 202). He did. In November 1620, his forces lost the Battle of the White Mountain (Oman, pp. 223-224, etc.; Wedgwood-Thirty, pp. 122-125, describes the Bohemian forces, who were few, ill-paid because of the poverty of the crown, and ill-led, being destroyed in almost no time despite what should have been a strong position. Dill, p. 33, adds that James I of England provided no help to the Protestants, since he was "dallying with an alliance with the Spanish Habsburgs").
Frederick, and the Bohemian Protestants, were driven out as the Habsburg Emperor re-imposed Catholicism. (Elizabeth is surely the only Stuart to get in trouble for not being Catholic enough!) Frederick formally allowed Maximilian of Bavaria to become Elector, and got out of there. Elizabeth spent the rest of her life in exile of one sort or another: She and her husband, living in (by royal standards) poverty, tried to improve their position until Frederick died in 1632. Her son finally regained his status as Elector in 1648, but by then the Stuart dynasty in England was on the ropes. She finally returned to England in 1661 after the Stuart restoration -- and promptly died (Oman, p. 455). It was quite a drama -- but it shouldn't have mattered much in England, except for the failure of the Stuart line.
Even if you ignore the sad history of her life, Elizabeth had a typical Tudor/Stuart story: She had thirteen children (including the famous Prince Rupert). But nine of her children died without any offspring at all, and Rupert had no legitimate children. That left three: Charles Louis, the Elector Palatine (restored after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, but with reduced territory; Dill, p. 37), whose offspring were Catholic; Edward, whose offspring were Catholic, and Sophia, who married the Elector of Hanover. (It is interesting to note that the Guelfs of Hanover had only recently become electors -- a new electorate, the ninth, in 1692; Dill, p. 43. Thus the Hanoverian dynasty only became Electors *after* the Glorious Revolution!)
If it's any consolation to the memory of Elizabeth, it appears that *every* remaining crowned head of Europe is her descendant; the monarchs of Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden are all descended from Sophia of Hanover (as were the pre-World War II monarchs of Greece, Yugoslavia, and Romania among others), and the royal house of Belgium, along with the extinct dynasties of Bulgaria and Italy and others, descend from Liselotte daughter of the Elector Palatinate (Oman, p. 457).
By 1710, it was of course clear that none of the people ahead of her would turn Protestant, so Elizabeth's daughter Sophia became Anne's heir apparent. She did not quite live to succeed, dying in 1714 at the age of 84 (perhaps, some have argued romantically, as a result of news from England which seemed to imply that Anne would disinherit her; Sinclair-Stevenson, pp. 13-15).
And so, in default of anyone else, George Lewis, Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. He was not in any way exceptional -- Sinclair-Stevenson, p. 24, quotes an unnamed source as saying, "To imagine George I possessed any exalted views regarding either the supremacy of the Protestant religion or the economic and progressive development is to credit a mollusc with the aspirations of an eagle." As it turned out, none of his descendants to the present day has been exceptional, either (except George III, who was exceptional for stupidity and madness, and George IV, who was an exceptional jerk); the only one prior to Elizabeth II whom I can imagine making even a decent ruler in his own right is George V. But England had had its handsome Plantagenets and its triumphant Lancastrians and its romantic Stuarts; maybe it had had enough of exceptional monarchs. George was much laughed at -- for his lack of English, his two ugly mistresses, his clan of German friends (Sinclair-Stevenson, p. 26). But even though he faced two Jacobite rebellions (1715 and 1719), there was never any serious danger of his overthrow. Even Our Vicar had little to say about George's theology -- except that he would follow it.
The reference to George arriving in Pudding Time has perhaps as many as three meanings. It refers to a the beginning of a meal, as George was the beginning of a new dynasty. It also implies a good meal (recall that pudding, in British English, is what Americans call "dessert"), in which case the Vicar might be using it to try to compliment the new king. And -- well, George I, by the time he succeeded to the English throne, was rather pudgy, and his expansive cheekbones made him appear pudgier. He had the look of a man fond of his pudding.
Many candidates have been proposed for the "real" Vicar of Bray, although I don't believe any of them. The earliest is the one supported by Nettel, p. 124: Simon Alwyn, who was Vicar during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, and thus went from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant. This proposal of course has two problems: First, it has nothing to do with the song (which refers to events a century after Alwyn's death), and second, many clerics went through this lurching process in the years from 1536 to 1558; there is no reason to specifically point to this Vicar of Bray. But the various other candidates aren't much better.
Although there does not seem to have been an actual Vicar of Bray, this sort of shifting-of-allegiance is by no means unknown in British history. The Wars of the Roses in particular brought many instances of turning one's coat. The greatest example I can think of is Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (died 1471). Warwick became an earl in the reign of King Henry VI, to whom he initially gave his loyalty (Ross-Wars, p. 34). But then he joined the opposition under the Duke of York (Ross-Wars, p. 31). Eventually he became one of the "Yorkist Earls" who invaded England to overthrow Henry VI (Ross-Wars, p. 45). When York was killed, it is possible that Warwick thought to try to rule again through Henry , but then Henry VI fell back into the hands of Queen Margaret (Ross-Wars, p. 52), so Warwick, in desperation, joined with York's son Edward IV, who went on to become King.
Warwick had become "The Kingmaker" (Ross-Wars, p. 54), but soon grew disillusioned with his role and began to intrigue on behalf of Edward IV's brother George of Clarence (Ross-Wars, p. 77). This failed, so Warwick eventually made a deal with ex-Queen Margaret and the French to support the old King Henry VI (Ross-Wars, p. 85). They briefly drove out Edward IV, and "re-adepted" King Henry (their spelling, and their invented word; Kendall, p. 100). But Edward IV killed Warwick at the Battle of Barnet (Ross-Wars, p. 90). The Kingmaker's career was over.
At least Warwick was overt in his actions. A better example of the pure trimmer comes in the form of the brothers Thomas Stanley (c. 1435-1504), later Earl of Derby, and his brother Sir William Stanley (c. 1440-1495). Thomas Stanley succeeded his father as Lord Stanley in 1459 (a title bringing with it control of the Isle of Man); this was in the reign of Henry VI, though the Wars of the Roses were already underway. Longford, p. 48, says that Henry VI admitted him to the Order of the Garter (though Kendall, p. 381, attributes this to Richard III), then Edward IV made him Steward of the Household. Stanley retained power under Richard III, even though he had married Margaret Beaufort (the mother of the future Henry VII) around 1482. He brought an army to Bosworth (where Richard III died), carefully did not fight in the battle, but when Richard died, reportedly put the crown on Henry VII's head.
That's the short version. In fact it appears the situation was even more complicated than Longford admits. Kendall, p. 404, notes that the Stanleys "thrived by daring to make politics their trade, by sloughing off the encumbrances of loyalty an honor, by developing an ambiguity of attitude which enabled them to join the winning side."
Kendall implies that, early on, the brothers Stanley deliberately played both sides (see pp. 404-406): In 1459, William joined the Yorkists (and was attainted by a Lancastrian parliament), while Thomas, claiming to be Lancastrian, kept his troops idle at Blore Heath. Thomas did fight for the Lancastrians at Northampton, but when Edward IV became King, Thomas was made Chief Justice of Cheshire and Flint.
When in the late 1460s Warwick made the first of two attempts to bring back Henry VI, Thomas made sympathetic noises but did nothing and was taken back into favor. In the second attempt, he joined Warwick -- but did nothing at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. Since William had joined the Yorkists, Thomas was allowed to rejoin the government. It was after this that he became Steward. During the reign of Richard III, even though his wife lost her estates after Buckingham's rebellion, Thomas Stanley became treasurer.
Then came the invasion of Henry VII, which eventually overthrew Richard. Stanley was, by now, the third-greatest landholder in England, after the Howard Duke of Norfolk and the Percy Earl of Northumberland. When Henry VII landed, Stanley asked to be allowed to leave Richard. Richard consented, though he made Stanley turn over his son Lord Strange as a hostage. (But, we note for the Richard III haters out there, once it was clear that Stanley would not support Richard at Bosworth, Richard let Strange live.)
Even after the death of Richard, the Stanleys kept their feet in both camps. Thomas became Earl of Derby (a title that is still in his family) -- though Kendall, p. 457, says that Margaret Beaufort eventually refused to share his bed any longer. But William, the man who had ordered the counter-charge that killed Richard III and won England for Henry, did not even receive a peerage. He allegedly conspired with the pretender Perkin Warbeck, and the Stanley luck finally ran out; Henry VII had him executed. (To be sure, there are those who think Henry just wanted Sir William's money; Poole, p. 18.)
It should be noted that Kendall's was the most vigorous defense of Richard III in the twentieth century; to preserve Richard, he must inherently blacken the Stanleys. But others tell the same story. Gillingham's history seems to try to be balanced, in that it does not condemn Richard out of hand (but he betrays his bias in failing to note that Henry VII faced as many rebellions in his first two years as Richard did in his, and had a little support from peers; the only difference is that Richard was killed at Bosworth, whereas Henry won his battle at Stoke -- fortunately, since there would have been at least one more round of civil wars had he lost). But Gillingham's account of the Bosworth campaign (pp. 233-242) cannot conceal the extensive treachery of the Stanleys, though it tries to hide it under the cloak of necessity.
Seward-Roses, pp. 303-304, in the space of two pages manages to refer to "Lord Stanley's well-deserved reputation for trimming," and his "treacherous behavior in 1470-1471," also mentioning that "Thomas Stanley had survived the Wars of the Roses... by his shrewdness in identifying and backing the more powerful side" and noting that Henry and the Stanleys "were men of utmost cynicism," as well as that "the Stanleys were never men of their word."
Long after I wrote the above, I was amazed to find that Ross-Richard, p. 162, took exactly the same view, referring to "the Vicar of Bray attitude which the Stanley family usually adopted."
Perhaps the best evidence of all comes from the will of William Catesby, one of Richard III's closest associates. Three days after the Battle of Bosworth, as he prepared for execution, he wrote his will. Cunningham, pp. 76-77, shows a reduced image of the will, which reads in part, "My lords, Stanley, Strange and all that blood help and pray for my soul for you have not for my body as I trusted in you."
No matter what source you consult, both brothers had careers with even more changes of coat than the Vicar of Bray (who just went along with whoever was in charge).
For additional details on Richard III's story, see the notes to "The Children in the Wood (The Babes in the Woods) [Laws Q34]" "The Rose of England" [Child 166], plus -- especially for the Stanleys -- "The Battle of Bosworth Field."
England had also had a period of almost as much religious instability from about 1530-1560. Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) began as a staunch defender of Catholicism against Lutheranism, but when he wanted to dump his wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn (Williamson, p. 111) , and was refused, he created Harryism (as it should have been called) or Anglicanism (as it calls itself). By 1529, he summoned the Reformation Parliament, which would work with him in creating the new denomination (Scarisbrick, p. 245).
Following Henry VIII was his son Edward VI. Although only a boy, his protector, Somerset, was a zealous Protestant who moved toward a much more strict reformist position (Ashley, p. 637). Somerset did not last long, but his opinions lasted until Edward VI himself died, still in his teens, in 1553 (Loach, p. 167). Edward had been persuaded to name Jane Grey, the "Nine Days' Queen," as his successor (Ashley, p. 638). But Henry VIII's eldest daughter, Mary (I), raised an army and was able to take control (Loach, p. 170).
Had her supporters known what was coming, they might not have been so adamant. She was a fanatical Catholic, and a foolish one, with no understanding of the people; her attempts to reimpose Catholicism earned her the name "Bloody Mary" (Ashley, p. 640). She lost Calais, England's last possession in the continent, and had no heir; she died, as 2 Chronicles says of Jehoram, "with no one's regret." Her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded, and put Anglicanism in roughly its final form (Ashley, p. 641): Largely Catholic in worship and in episcopal organization, but separate from Rome and with a more Protestant theology.
It would have taken a rare trimmer to manage to keep his congregation from 1529 to (say) 1559, however. Henry VIII disposed of uncompromising Catholics, Bloody Mary burned any number of Protestants (and didn't trust those who recanted), and even Elizabeth was at times forced to deal harshly with Catholics (Ashley, p. 642). It was a far harsher period than 1685-1714; James II and William III, because their positions had been so weak, had generally been willing to accept any followers they could find. Whereas Bloody Mary was a true zealot. - RBW
The form of broadside Bodleian Firth c.8(33), "Beef and Butt Beer, Against Mum and Pumpernickle" or "A Bumper to Old England, Huzza," B. C. (London), 1743, shows it either to be a forerunner or derivative of "The Vicar of Bray." Here is the first verse:
In good King G---'s golden days,
Whoe'er advis'd the King, Sir,
To give H---r the Bays,
Deserv'd a hempen String, Sir.
For this is true, I will maintain,
Give H----r away, Sir,
Or whatsoever K---g shall reign,
Will ne'er have a happy Day, Sir. - BS
The king in the item above must be one or another King George (no other English king has had the initial "G," unless you count Richard of Gloucester). And since the king mentioned clearly is no longer on the throne, and the song was published in the 1740s, it must be George I.
This strongly implies that "H---r" is Hanover, the German principality that England had inherited with George I.
My guess is that the reference is to the Battle of Dettingen (1743) during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). Britain had joined the war on the Austrian side, partly because France was on the other side, partly because Hanover was part of the Holy Roman Empire (of which the Habsburg Emperor of Austria was usually Emperor, though an exception had had to be made at this time; Maria Theresa of Austria was a woman and therefore ineligible), and partly because Britain wanted to maintain the balance of power.
The War of the Austrian Succession was very expensive for Britain, and unpopular, causing several governments to fall rather spectacularly. Dettingen was of particular note because it was very bloody, and a strategic defeat for the British, who ended up sitting and licking their wounds, rather than continuing to campaign, afterward (Browning, p. 140).
Dettingen also was remembered because George II personally led troops (Browning, p. 137; the last time a British monarch was directly involved in battle). It frankly should have been a worse defeat, except that the French Duke of Grammont gave up an almost unassailable position, allowing the British to escape a trap (Browning, p. 139). According to Browning, p. 139, "George II basked in his long-sought (and unmerited) glory." But Browning, p. 140, notes that he wore Hanoverian, not British, insignia in the battle (something his British officers strongly resented; Brumwell/Speck, pp. 175-176).
Also, the Hanoverian connection was very unpopular in Britain, where it was felt that the Georges paid too much attention to their continental domains. It is easy to understand a British writer saying, "Give Hanover away!"
George I was, of course, the last King mentioned in the "standard" Vicar of Bray. It thus seems likely that the Bodleian broadside is a follow-on to the Vicar -- which in turn implies that the Vicar was in existence by the reign of George II if not earlier.
Just how traditional "The Vicar of Bray" is is an open question. That it's well-known, however, cannot be denied.
Improbable as it sounds, a bark named The Vicar of Bray was built in 1841. After a complicated career, it ended up in a decrepit state in Port Stanley in the Falklands. It still exists as part of a pier there, and is believed to be the only surviving ship to have made the voyage to San Francisco during the 1849 gold rush (Paine, pp. 546-547).
The song also gave its name to a biological theory. Ridley, p. 31 etc., describes how biologists for long thought that sex existed in order to promote the diffusion of good genes, helping along evolution. This came to be called the "Vicar of Bray" theory. Alternatives go by such names as the "Tangled Bank" and the "Red Queen" (after the Red Queen's Race in Through the Looking Glass).
Unlike its namesake, though, the "Vicar" theory proved inadequately adaptable. The basic premise is sound: Sex allows the diffusion of genes (i.e. it allows genes A and B, which arose independently, to end up in the same organism), and sharing of genes is indeed helpful when a species must seek to optimize behavior; it is the best way to create superior mixes of genes. But this does not explain why so many creatures reproduce only by means of sex. Mammals use sex exclusively, and most other vertebrates and many invertebrates also reproduce exclusively sexually.
The problem with the Vicar of Bray is that sex is not needed for genetic diffusion. It's perfectly possible to swap genes without sex; bacteria often do it, and viruses manage it by invading a cell and adding their DNA to its. And in the ordinary course of things asexual reproduction (cloning or fissioning) is a faster way to reproduce. Indeed, we see a mix of such strategies in many creatures (strawberries, for instance, send out runners to populate their local area, while spreading seeds to the wind. And there are a number of species which reproduce primarily asexually while going through an occasional sexual phase, e.g. at the end of a growing season).
Plus, while sex serves to distribute good genes, it also serves to break up good gene combinations. As Ridley puts it on page 47, "Sex disobeys that great injunction, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"
It has been noted, however, that asexual reproduction seems to be a very rare thing; if one looks at a "Tree of Life" (one of those drawings that show species splitting off from each other), and marks the multicellular creatures which reproduce asexually, they are few and scattered (description in Dawkins, p. 425). The one major exception is the bdelloid rotifers, which -- unlike all other rotifers -- reproduce exclusively asexually, and have managed to persist for an estimated 85 million years and spawn some 360 species (Judson, pp. 219-220; Dawkins, p. 425). Judson, p. 213, calls it a "notorious scandal" (in the circles of evolutionary biology). According to Ridley, p. 85, it was John Maynard Smith who first used the term. Scandal they may be, but they are still very much the exception. Almost every other species reproduces sexually. It must have some strong advantage -- but no one knows what.
(This gives rise to an irony: The Vicar of Bray in the song kept himself in business by selfishly concerning himself solely with his own survival. The Vicar of Bray hypothesis regarding evolution failed because it does not take into account the selfish desires of each creature that its genes, and only its genes, survive.)
Because of these problems, there is still debate about why sex persists. It will be interesting to see the name applied to the consensus theory if and when a consensus forms. - RBW
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