Edmund Grindal - Mary I and Elizabeth I

Mary I and Elizabeth I

Although Grindal was not politically compromised by the events surrounding the accession of Mary I in October 1553, he had resigned his Westminster prebend by 10 May 1554, and made his way to Strasbourg as one of the Marian exiles. In 1554 he was in Frankfurt, where he tried to settle the disputes between the "Coxians", who regarded the 1552 Prayer Book as the perfection of reform, and the "Knoxians", who wanted further simplification.

He returned to England in January 1559, on the day that Elizabeth I was crowned. He was appointed to the committee to revise the liturgy, and was one of the Protestant representatives at the Westminster conference. In July 1559 he was also elected Master of Pembroke Hall in succession to the recusant Dr Thomas Young (1514?–1580) and finally created Bishop of London in succession to Edmund Bonner, six years after his first nomination in Edward's reign.

Grindal had qualms about vestments and other traces of "popery" as well as about the Erastianism of Elizabeth's ecclesiastical government. Firmly Protestant, he did not mind recommending that a priest "might be put to some torment", and in October 1562 he wrote to William Cecil, begging to know "if that second Julian, the king of Navarre, is killed; as he intended to preach at St Paul's Cross, and might take occasion to mention God's judgements on him". Nevertheless, he was reluctant to execute judgements on English Puritans, and failed to give Matthew Parker much assistance in rebuilding the shattered fabric of the English Church.

Grindal lacked that firm faith in the supreme importance of uniformity and autocracy which enabled John Whitgift to persecute nonconformists whose theology was identical to his own. London, which was always a difficult see, involved Bishop Sandys in similar troubles when Grindal had gone to York. As it was, although Parker said that Grindal "was not resolute and severe enough for the government of London," his attempts to enforce the use of the surplice evoked angry protests, especially in 1565, when many nonconformists were suspended; and Grindal of his own accord denounced Thomas Cartwright to the Council in 1570. Other anxieties were brought upon him by the burning of his cathedral in 1561, for although Grindal himself is said to have contributed £1200 towards its rebuilding, the laity and even the clergy of his diocese were not generous.