‘DAYES OF GALL AND WORMWOOD’: PUBLIC RELIGIOUS DISPUTATION IN ENGLAND, 1558-1626 JOSHUA MARK RODDA, BA (Hons), MA Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JULY 2012 Attestation I am aware of and understand the university’s policy on plagiarism. I further certify that this thesis represents work undertaken by me during my period of study at the University of Nottingham. Signed _______________________________________ Date _______________ Abstract This study examines a form of religious debate that saw Catholic priests and ministers across the reformed spectrum arguing in direct opposition to one another, and drawing on long- standing academic forms and intellectual ideals in doing so. Public religious disputation is first defined and placed in its religious, cultural and intellectual context, alongside formal disputation in the universities, printed controversy, literary dialogue and other manifestations of discourse and debate. The structures, tropes and tactics of the formal, academic process – as used in public or ‘professional’ controversial debate – are then detailed, in order to give a more precise definition, and a framework for the analysis of individual events. The chapters following this move chronologically from the accession of Elizabeth I and the 1559 Westminster conference to the aftermath of the death of James and the 1626 debate at York House. Drawing on the trends discussed in the first chapter and the procedures detailed in the second, these sections place individual disputations in their immediate context; examining the use and restriction of public religious debate by state and church authorities, the impact academic forms could have upon public, controversial disputation, the interplay between faith and human learning on display and the changing perceptions of the practice as political, religious and cultural conditions developed through the period. The aim of this study is to assert the significance of public religious disputation, and accounts thereof, as something more than a simple ‘variety’ of religious controversy or polemic. Its formal structures and direct interactions shed light on Reformation and post-Reformation religious arguments; but its structures and ideals also demonstrate a shared, fundamental mode of discourse and competition underlying those arguments. These encounters, and the accounts they produced, are not just examples of partisan polemic – they are potentially invaluable tools for the religious and cultural historian. i ii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been completed without the generous support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, to whom acknowledgement and thanks must be given from the outset. I can only hope this work lives up to their faith in my project and potential. I am further indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Julia Merritt, for her encouragement, support and guidance through the preparation and writing of this study. Julia’s diligent attention to my work and invariably thought-provoking comments and feedback have been invaluable from the beginning. Thanks must also go to those historians and other scholars – professional and postgraduate – who have allowed me to discuss my topic with them, and those who have attended my conference and seminar papers relating to it, whose interest, feedback and choice questions have been a vital source of energy. I must also thank my family and friends for their unwavering support these past three and half years, for glancing at the occasional draft chapter, and, quite simply, for their existence. Your role might have been less tangible, but this thesis – and its author – would be nothing without you. iii iv Conventions Original spellings and punctuation have been followed throughout. Where clarity has forced a change, it is marked with brackets: [ ] Abbreviations HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography v vi Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Conventions v Contents vii Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Culture of Controversy 12 Academic Disputation 13 Intellectual and Educational Developments 16 Logic and Rhetoric 19 The Universities in Religious Discourse 23 Literary Discourse 25 Religious Controversy: Written Polemic 27 Religious Controversy: Public Disputation 31 Chapter Two: The Disputation Process 37 The Fundamentals: Opponent, Respondent, Moderator and Question 39 Arguments and Authorities: Logic Form, Scripture and the Fathers 45 Tactics: Attack, Defence and Use of the Audience 56 Practical Considerations 61 Notes, Written Answers and the Production of Accounts 64 Adopt, Adapt and Invoke: the Departure from Academic Disputation 71 Chapter Three: Disputation Exploited, 1558-1581 75 The Examination of Catholics 76 The Westminster Conference 81 William Fulke at Wisbech 85 Disputations with Campion 90 vii Chapter Four: New Opponents, 1582-1603 109 John Rainolds and John Hart 111 The Lambeth Conference 124 The Examination of Separatists and Nonconformists 132 Conversion and Reclamation 141 James Ussher and Henry Fitzsimon 146 The Spread of Elizabethan Religious Debate 148 Chapter Five: Disputation Distinguished, 1604-1620 151 The Hampton Court Conference 152 Protestant Demands and Godly Debate 165 Conference and Disputation with Catholics 174 Chapter Six: The Fisher Controversies, 1621-1625 189 Prelude: Daniel Featley and George Musket 191 Arguments before the Countess of Buckingham 198 Disputations with Jesuits 213 Coda: Featley and Fisher 222 Solomon Sleeps 236 Conclusions 239 Gall and Wormwood? 246 Bibliography 259 viii Introduction ‘I never knew good come by disputation.’1 This thesis describes an aspect of post-Reformation controversy that has fallen between fields of inquiry. Amid the mass of written polemic generated by controversialists in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, there were more immediate engagements: face-to-face debates, that fuelled and complemented the storm of proselytising and denunciation in print. Spurred on by classical ideals and biblical imperatives, and encouraged by prior historical examples, divines throughout the period issued calls for scholarly, often public, disputation as a means of addressing religious questions, and the resulting events – ranging from smaller encounters to occasions like the Hampton Court conference of 1604 – formed milestones in controversy. The Reformation had, in the words of Thomas McCoog, been ‘punctuated’ with challenges to dispute; indeed, in some contemporary minds, its changes were ‘propelled’ by disputation.2 Direct religious argument was regarded as distinct from written controversy; a view reflected in the manner in which it was reported and described, and in the histories of the practice that appeared through the seventeenth century.3 In their structures and ideals, these events offer a fascinating window into the period’s divisions, and provide an opportunity for those seeking a 1 John Feckenham, in William Fulke, A True Reporte of a Conference had betwixt Doctour Fulke, and the Papists, Being at Wisbiche Castle (London, 1581), sig. B2v. 2 Thomas M. McCoog, ‘‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission’, in Thomas M. McCoog (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Oxford, 1996), p. 119; and the view of Francis Savage, in Joseph Puterbaugh, ‘“Your selfe be judge and answer your selfe”: Formation of Protestant Identity in A Conference Betwixt a Mother a Devout Recusant and Her Sonne a Zealous Protestant’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 (2000), p. 423. 3 In 1604, the Jesuit Robert Persons compared Augustine’s disputations with those fuelling the Reformation, and in 1658, the clergyman John Ley, spurred on by an encounter between fellow ministers, produced a detailed history, moving from a biblical dispute between two angels and the Devil through the continental Reformation to more immediate events: N. D., A Review of Ten Publike Disputations (St Omer, 1604), passim; John Ley, A Discourse of Disputations Chiefly Concerning Matters of Religion (London, 1658), esp. pp. 31-47. For recent emphasis on the role of controversy in shaping ideas about the past, see Thomas Freeman, ‘The Power of Polemic: Catholic Responses to the Calendar in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 61 (2010), pp. 475-6, 495. 1 combined Catholic and reformed post-Reformation narrative. Their procedures describe a shared intellectual arena, allowing for broad, cross-confessional analysis.4 Thus, public religious disputations in this period call for a dedicated study. They have not been neglected entirely, but as events they are often considered in isolation; their printed results treated as but one element of that mass of pamphlet controversy to which, even in the seventeenth century, there appeared to be ‘no end’.5 In order to address this gap, this thesis will concentrate on the mechanics, implications and perception of the practice. As will be discussed below, ‘public’ is here taken in opposition to ‘academic’, to denote events taking place beyond the educational sphere: those public in purpose as well as performance (or through the distribution of accounts). The period of focus is from the accession of Elizabeth I to the immediate aftermath of James’ death, through which time a clear arc – in application and perception – can be traced in public religious disputation. These encounters united two distinct phenomena: academic disputation, which was a staple of university education and