Conclusion

Summary

In 1569, John Pretie wrote Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, to offer her encouragement after a series of personal and political setbacks. He and his wife Alice prayed daily that God would direct the ‘course of [her] … pilgrimage’ so that she might ‘set out God's glory’ and edify his ‘church of poor faithful Christians’. 1 Like other godly men and women, John and Alice Pretie understood faith as a journey taken with other Christians. Although they praised Willoughby's personal piety, they also reminded her of her responsibility to support the spread of the Gospel. Her material and political resources provided her with both the opportunity and obligation to promote religious change. Pretie's letter vividly illustrates the issues integral to the study of evangelicalism among elite men and women: the development of their beliefs, the importance of kinship and patronage ties in this growth, their significant role in supporting local reform, and the opportunities the English Reformation gave aristocratic women to extend their influence in a patriarchal society. This study's examination of the development of Protestantism among the governing classes challenges Reformation scholarship that describes elite views as static or dismisses evangelicals’ vital ties to Catholicism. Willoughby's early life shows, for example, the fluidity of belief in the early sixteenth century. Her vibrant Catholicism and ties to religious conservatives throughout the 1530s and 1540s demonstrate the aristocracy's strong attachments to traditional religion. In Willoughby's case, she maintained her commitment to the medieval church in this period despite her exposure to evangelicalism in Lincolnshire and at court. The persistence of her conservative views shows the importance of differentiating between factional identities and ideology in the study of men and women's religious development. It further demonstrates that the growth of evangelicalism among the aristocracy was a gradual, eclectic process. During the 1540s, Willoughby's participation in Catherine Parr's household encouraged her increased exposure to evangelicalism and her acceptance of the centrality of scripture to the Christian faith. Her beliefs continued to develop in the 1540s and 1550s as she rejected some elements of Catholicism, embraced evangelicalism, and accepted certain Reformed doctrines. Thus, a study of Willoughby's religious growth emphasizes the importance of the 1540s and 1550s as a seminal period in the development of evangelical beliefs among some members of the aristocracy.