4 - ‘Helping Forwardness’: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Reform during the Reign of Edward VI

Summary

Like many reformers, John Olde recognized that members of the ruling class made a significant contribution to the process of religious change in their local communities. Olde credited the advancement of evangelicalism in Lincolnshire in 1547 to the ‘helping forwardness of that devout woman of God, the Duchess of Suffolk’. Recent scholarship on the English Reformation suggests the value of understanding local responses to reform, yet this work often neglects the aristocracy’s role in facilitating the spread of reform within their native counties. Local studies also frequently privilege men’s activities and overlook women’s initiatives.

This chapter focuses on the religious activism of Katherine Willoughby and her circle during the 1540s and early 1550s to show the ways they promoted evangelicalism within their households and in conservative counties like Lincolnshire. It demonstrates their integral role in constructing godly households, their promotion of reformers to benefices in their gift, and their educational initiatives. Although discussions of the early English Reformation often emphasize the aristocracy’s role as enforcers of reform legislation, this study also examines their occasional disagreement with the government. Its analysis broadens our understanding of the early English Reformation in two ways. It demonstrates the importance of the ruling classes’ involvement in promoting reform in a historiographical climate that emphasizes the vitality of traditional religion and local resistance to changes enacted by the government and its representatives. Aristocratic evangelicals clearly represented a minority in their counties, but they, nevertheless, played an important role in shaping religion in their spheres of influence. Several recent studies have examined the role of the aristocracy at court in the spread of religious change, but less attention has been given to their activities in their home counties. Moreover, while some evangelicals clearly supported the reforms of Edward VI, their actions cannot simply be reduced to acquiescence with official policies. This study of Katherine Willoughby and her associates demonstrates the range of their efforts to encourage evangelicalism. As we shall see, their endeavors often diverged from, and even challenged, government reform initiatives.

Placing a woman at the center of local religious change further enriches Reformation scholarship. Historians’ focus on male-dominated spaces, such as the Privy Chamber, Privy Council, and regional government offices, neglects women’s responses to evangelicalism in their local communities.