2 - ‘Tasting the Word of God’: Evangelicalism and the Religious Development of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk

Summary

After Hugh Latimer's death, his colleague Augustine Bernher edited a collection of the bishop's sermons which he dedicated to Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk. In his dedication, Bernher compared faith to a feast. Men and women found a table set before them with the ‘sweet delicates’ of idolatry as well as the ‘bitter morsels’ of godliness. Bernher praised those individuals like Willoughby, who tasted the wholesome morsels ‘which the Lord … prepared for his chosen children and especial friends’ rather than consumed the unwholesome dainties that could not provide spiritual nourishment. Willoughby extended the analogy when she described her desire to see men and women ‘savor’ the Lord and His commandments. Together these comparisons evoke reformers’ understanding of their faith as a gradual development through which they tried, tested, and absorbed evangelical doctrine.

Willoughby embodied contemporary perceptions of the godly patroness. By 1546 she believed that scripture, not participation in the corporate rituals of the Catholic Church or submission to papal supremacy, should be the focus of Christian life and practice. She placed evangelicals in her household and presented others to ecclesiastical livings in Lincolnshire. She regarded reformers such as Martin Bucer, Hugh Latimer, and John Parkhurst as close personal friends. Reformation scholars have perpetuated Willoughby's reputation as a ‘champion of the godly’ and the Protestant cause in their studies. Yet such descriptions often obscure the complexity of the religious development alluded to by Bernher and Willoughby and prompt the question, how did evangelicalism develop among the aristocracy during the early sixteenth century? In Willoughby's case, how did she move from devout Catholicism in the 1530s to evangelicalism in the 1540s? This chapter examines the development of Willoughby's religious identity in the 1540s and 1550s and argues that the growth of her evangelicalism was a process that spanned nearly two decades and included a range of views. As chapter 1 demonstrated, Willoughby's kinship and patronage relationships exposed her to new religious ideas in the 1530s. Her initial contact with reformers did not result, however, in her immediate acceptance of the primacy of scripture. Rather, her Catholicism and her ties to religious conservatives persisted and continued to shape her attitudes for the next decade.