The following is a guest submission by Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore.
Though there was a short respite during the reign of Queen Mary I (r. 1553-1558), during the Protestant Rebellion (Reformation) in the mid 16th to early 17th centuries, the rosary became the target of denunciation from the Protestant governments starting from the official censure of it in 1538 and thereafter.[1] Although Christopher Haigh argues that during the early years of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign (r. 1558-1603), along with other Catholic relics and devotions, the rosary “remained prominent in the churches” and “kept aspects of Catholic worship in the public arena,” the rosary in England went from being condemned to becoming illegal in early 1559 when Queen Elizabeth I declared the Act of Uniformity which made Protestantism the “only legal religion.”[2]
However, even after the first official censure in 1538, English Catholics’ love for the rosary never stopped, and, though over time the amount of priests and access to the sacraments decreased, (especially beginning in the 1570s when the penal laws were passed), devotion to the rosary increased among the English Catholic laity during their exile in their own country.[3] Anne Dillon claims that the rosary among the English Catholics persisted in being “a cherished devotion” in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s time on the throne.[4] After the Act of Uniformity passed in 1559, Catholics’ use of the rosary began to not only be an act of pious devotion but to also be used “to access the protection and intercession of a reinterpreted warrior-like Virgin Mary – in an effort to aid believers’ quest for salvation in the frequent absence of traditional avenues to grace.”[5]
Although the picture of the Virgin Mary changed from a gentle lady and queen before the Protestant Rebellion to a more militant portrayal of the Blessed Mother, devotion to our Lady was still the same and increased among Catholics during the English Rebellion.[6] The rosary provided English Catholics a way to carry on a devotional practice, encouraged by their priests, which aided the laity in “work[ing] for the good of their souls.”[7] English Catholics knew that without ready access to God’s sanctifying grace through the sacraments their salvation was at stake; but, the rosary offered them a way to receive the grace of Christ via His Mother’s intercession during such dire times, with the addition that they gained our Lady’s defense by honoring her through her rosary.[8]
Therefore, the rosary was such a popular and beloved devotion for English Catholics during their exile that rosaries were smuggled into England from the continent, mailed to each other, given to family members as part of their inheritance, and bought in marketplaces and on the streets, and it was prayed while walking on English roads, when Catholics were in Protestant services, and when they were in prison for their faith.[9] Rosaries were in a constant state of ready supply for faithful Englishmen.[10] A Catholic woman of Devon in 1567 donated her rosary in her will “as a treasured possession,” and another woman from Durham in 1570 informed the magistrates in her area “that she used her ‘guades’ (beads) just as many others did.”[11] Protestant clergyman, Bishop Nicholas Robinson of Bangor, wrote in 1567 how the laity in his diocese still prayed the rosary as well as doing other Catholic practices, with similar actions continuing even in 1589.[12] There was no stopping the practice of the rosary for English Catholics, even though there were penalties for even owning a rosary.[13]
While other forms of Marian devotion were suppressed by the English Protestants, English Catholics held on to the rosary and was deeply beloved by those who prayed it.[14] The importance of the rosary for English Catholics was so deep that McClain asserts the following, which deserves to be quoted at length: “As English Catholic needs for comfort, protection, and saving grace grew, so too did their reliance upon Mary as protector and intercessor. As the ability of English Catholics to invoke Mary’s aid through Marian cathedrals, chapels, altars, shrines, images, relics, and public prayers decreased, their reliance upon the rosary to access Mary increased.”[15] The Lord works in mysterious ways in order for the faithful to promote His Mother’s Psalter.[16]
[1] Anne Dillon, “Chapter 11: ‘To seek out some Comforts and Companions of his own kind and
condition’: The Benedictine Rosary Confraternity and Chapel of Cardigan House, London,” in Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism, ed. Lowell Gallagher, (Toronto, CAN: Toronto University Press, 2012), 279.
[2] Christopher Haigh, “Chapter 9: The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation,” in The English Reformation Revised, ed. Christopher Haigh, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 179-180. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 565. Lisa McClain, “Using What’s at Hand: English Catholic Reinterpretations of the Rosary, 1559–1642,” The Journal of Religious History 27, no. 2 (June 2003): 162.
[3] McClain, “Using What’s at Hand,” 162, 163-164.
[4] Anne Dillon, “Praying by Number: The Confraternity of the Rosary and the English Catholic Community, c.1580–1700,” History 88, no. 3 (July 2003): 453.
[5] McClain, “Using What’s at Hand,” 162.
[6] Ibid, 170.
[7] Ibid, 163.
[8] Ibid, 165-166, 167.
[9] Ibid, 164.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Robert Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 70. Dillon, “Praying by Number,” 453.
[12] Haigh, “Chapter 9,” 199.
[13] McClain, “Using What’s at Hand,” 163.
[14] Ibid, 166.
[15] Ibid, 174.
[16] Our Lady told St. Dominic in 1208 that the rosary was her Psalter (Our Lady to St. Dominic, quoted in Champions of the Rosary, by Fr. Donald H. Calloway, M.I.C., Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon, (Stockbridge, MA: Marian Press, 2016), 193).
Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore earned his B.S. in History (2019), M.A. in History (2021), and Ph.D. in History (2025) from Liberty University. During his Ph.D. studies, he converted from Reformed Protestantism to Catholicism, along with his seven living siblings, instrumentally being brought in by their father who reverted to the faith. His dissertation is titled “‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: The Religious and Political Missions of the American-Catholic Military Chaplaincy during the Mexican-American War,” which will be taken and published as his first book. He also runs a scholarly YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TheSt.BedeCenter), Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/thestbedecenter/), and Substack account (https://substack.com/@thestbedecenter), named The St. Bede Center, where he posts Catholic and Catholic-related history content for academics and history buffs to learn and enjoy alike. He is also a freelance writer for 1Peter5, with his first article to be published this April, a history teacher for Scholè Academy, and a freelance editor for Arouca Press. He lives in North Carolina with his large family.
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