The return of Piers Gaveston to England becomes an immediate point of contention in the English court, as he his regarded by virtually all of the nobility as a scheming and socially ambitious commoner. The King soon finds that his decision to lift Gaveston's exile is also opposed by the religious authorities of his nation, as the Bishop of Coventry, a powerful figure in the Church, travels to London in order to petition against Gaveston. The King responds with a lengthy diatribe that satirizes the Catholic church:
Why should a king be subject to a priest?
Proud Rome, that hatchest such imperial grooms,
For these thy superstitious taper lights,
Wherewith thy antichristian churches blaze,
I’ll fire thy crazèd buildings and enforce
The papal towers to kiss the lowly ground,
With slaughtered priests make Tiber’s channel swell,
And banks raised higher with their sepulchres.
Here, King Edward speaks harshly about the Church even though Catholicism was, at this time, the official state religion of England. He condemns “Proud Rome,” a common euphemism for the Vatican. Further, he mocks the “superstitious taper lights,” or candles that can be found in many Catholic churches and cathedrals, which he further derides as “antichristian.”
Here, Marlow echoes the anti-Catholic sentiments of his own day in satirizing the church as superstitious and un-Christian. When Edward II was written, England had been an officially Protestant nation for over half a century, ending the long-standing conflict between the crown and the religious authorities that is depicted in the play.
