Edwin Sandys and the Defence of the Faith

In 1583 the Archbishop of York, Edwin Sandys wrote to the Bishop of Chester lamenting ‘the course and condition of this world lost in impiety’. Sandys was by the 1580s still fighting a battle against the ‘tyranny of antichrist’, the ‘papal stragglers, the firebrands of seditions, and the pests of the church’ as he named them. He had risen through the ranks of the church, becoming Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of London and then Archbishop of York and – in each of these roles he saw the fight for the ‘true’ church as a very real one. He was involved in the shaping of the new regime in words and in the less academic battles at ground-level, taking words and putting them into action, fighting for the Elizabethan Church against the ‘enemies’ he categorises as little papist foxes who were destroying the godly vineyard. It is these practical defences of faith that this paper will focus on taking Sandys first position at Worcester and the battle ground where he took up arms against the papist foes.