Church of England

The Church of England is invoked in Thomas Woolgar’s chronicle as a defining consequence of the Reformation under Henry VIII, placing the institution within the religious and political upheavals surrounding the events he records. The novel gives it no sustained institutional portrait; instead, it appears through Woolgar’s account of a parish committed to the Roman Catholic faith, successive changes in royal policy, and his eventual removal from St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield. This historical reference should be distinguished from the modern Banfield miracle controversy, which the evidence identifies with the Roman Catholic Church, not the Church of England.

Historical Setting

In the chronicle, the Church of England is associated with the religious settlement established during Henry VIII’s reign. A note accompanying Woolgar’s account identifies his reference to the troubled heretical times as the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England. The institution therefore enters the story as part of a national transformation that reaches into local religious life, rather than through a description of its doctrines or internal structure.

Woolgar presents himself as having served for years at St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield, where the villagers trusted his authority and, in his telling, kept the True Faith through those unsettled times. His account is not a detached history: it records the parish from the perspective of a priest who sees himself as responsible for its spiritual life, even as his own conduct and judgement become compromised. The Church of England thus belongs to the political and confessional background against which he defines his former parish and his sense of religious duty.

Royal Policy and Confessional Conflict

Woolgar’s narrative moves through the reigns of Henry VIII, the young Edward, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth, presenting changes in royal power as changes to the religious conditions around him. He describes his father as remaining loyal to the Pope during the periods of Henry and Edward, and as being rewarded under Mary for that loyalty. The chronicle consequently links religious allegiance to family standing and political protection, although these details come from Woolgar’s own retrospective account.

Under Mary, Woolgar says that witchcraft and religious dissent were subject to severe punishment. He recalls having witnessed burnings near Lewes and describes the Prioress and himself invoking the queen’s policy when they arranged for Einor to be denounced. His account then connects the return of Elizabeth to a renewed denial of the Pope in Rome. These successive changes frame the confessional conflict in which Woolgar’s personal crisis unfolds; they do not establish that the Church of England itself directed the accusations or violence he recounts.

Woolgar’s Transfer and the Limits of the Record

After the violence at Banfield and his ensuing breakdown, Woolgar says that his father and bishop decided he should leave St. Joseph’s and serve instead at St. Peter’s Church at Stapley, on his father’s estate. The chronicle presents this relocation as a response to his mental condition and as a way to keep him away from his former parish. It also places his new life under Elizabeth, when Woolgar says that the Pope had again been denied. The Church of England remains part of the surrounding religious order, but the text focuses on Woolgar’s confinement and isolation rather than on the institution’s administration.

The chronicle itself is an interested and unstable source: Woolgar writes under the weight of guilt, insists on a supernatural explanation for events, and records that others regarded him as mad. His references to religious policy therefore reveal both the historical framework he believes governs his life and the language through which he tries to interpret and defend himself. The novel’s modern plot further marks the boundary between institutions: claims about Alice Pagett’s recovery and the proposed purchase of the field are handled by Catholic authorities, including Bishop Caines, rather than attributed to the Church of England.