Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520–1640 Studies in the History of Christian Traditions
General Editor Robert J. Bast Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee Eric Saak, Liverpool Christine Shepardson, Knoxville, Tennessee Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana
Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman†
VOLUME 171
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/shct Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520–1640
Edited by Torrance Kirby P.G. Stanwood
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Cover illustration and Frontispiece: ‘A sermon preached in the presence of King James I at Paul’s Cross’. The Society of Antiquaries’ diptych commissioned by Henry Farley in 1616 and painted by John Gipkyn. Scharf XLIII, Way/Museum No. 304, Burlington House, London. By kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1520-1640 / edited by Torrance Kirby, P.G. Stanwood. pages cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; VOLUME 171) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-24227-2 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26281-2 (e-book) 1. Preaching-- England--London--History--16th century. 2. Preaching--England--London--History--17th century. 3. Sermons, English--16th century. 4. Sermons, English--17th century. 5. St. Paul’s Cathedral (London, England) 6. London (England)--Church history--16th century. 7. London (England)--Church history-- 17th century. I. Kirby, W. J. Torrance, editor of compilation. II. Stanwood, P. G., editor of compilation.
BV4208.G7P38 2013 251.009421’09031--dc23
2013039807
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Illustrations ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix Abbreviations and Acronyms ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi Contributors ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ xiii Acknowledgements ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xix
Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1
PART ONE SITUATING PAUL’S CROSS
1 Reconstructing St Paul’s Cathedral, 1520–1640 �������������������������������������� 23 John Schofield 2 Paul’s Cross and Nationwide Special Worship, 1533–1642 ������������������ 41 Natalie Mears 3 Virtual Paul’s Cross: The Experience of Public Preaching after the Reformation ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 61 John N. Wall
PART TWO EARLY TUDOR SERMONS, 1520–1558
4 ‘The Tree and the Weed’: Bishop John Fisher’s Sermons at Paul’s Cross ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 95 Cecilia Hatt 5 Paul’s Cross and the Crisis of the 1530s ���������������������������������������������������107 Richard Rex 6 Reformation Conflict between Stephen Gardiner and Robert Barnes, Lent 1540 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 Ralph S. Werrell 7 Paul’s Cross and the Implementation of Protestant Reforms under Edward VI ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������141 John N. King
8 Public Conversion: Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation’ at Paul’s Cross in 1547 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������161 Torrance Kirby 9 ‘Lords and Labourers’: Hugh Latimer’s Homiletical Hermeneutics �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������175 Jason Zuidema 10 The Style and Logic of James Brooks’s 1553 ‘Reconciliation Sermon’ �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������187 Mark Rankin
PART THREE ELIZABETHAN SERMONS, 1558–1603
11 The Challenge of Catholicity: John Jewel at Paul’s Cross ��������������������203 Angela Ranson 12 Paul’s Cross and the Dramatic Echoes of Early-Elizabethan Print ���223 Thomas Dabbs 13 Richard Hooker’s Paul’s Cross Sermon ����������������������������������������������������245 David Neelands 14 Edmund Campion in the Shadow of Paul’s Cross: The Culture of Disputation ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������263 Gerard Kilroy 15 Thomas Bilson and Anti-Catholicism at Paul’s Cross ��������������������������289 Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer 16 Queen Elizabeth’s Performance at Paul’s Cross in 1588 ���������������������301 Steven W. May 17 John Copcot, John Whitgift, and Mark Frank: ‘Right Cause and Faithful Obedience’ ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������315 P.G. Stanwood 18 Bancroft versus Penry: Conscience and Authority in Elizabethan Polemics �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������327 W. Bradford Littlejohn
PART FOUR JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE SERMONS, 1603–1640
19 Preaching the Good News: William Barlow Narrates the Fall of Essex and the Gunpowder Plot �������������������������������������������������������������345 Anne James
20 ‘Paul’s Work’: Repair and Renovation of St Paul’s Cathedral, 1561–1625 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������361 Roze Hentschell 21 The Love-sick Spouse: John Stoughton’s 1624 Paul’s Cross Sermon in Context ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������389 Jeanne Shami 22 Sermon, Salvation, Space: John Donne’s Performative Mode and the Politics of Accommodation ��������������������������������������������������������411 Kathleen O’Leary 23 The Paul’s Cross Jeremiad and Other Sermons of Exhortation �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������421 Mary Morrissey 24 Lost at Paul’s Cross: Unrecorded Sermons ���������������������������������������������439 Susan Wabuda
Bibliography �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������453
Index �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������475
Chapter 1
Fig. 1. St Paul’s Cathedral from the south side in 2010 ��������������������������� 24 Fig. 2. The nave of St Paul’s by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1657 ������������������������ 26 Fig. 3. Arch-stone of the mid-12th century ������������������������������������������������ 27 Fig. 4. View of the choir by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1657 ������������������������������ 30 Fig. 5. The Cathedral from the east by Hollar, 1657 ��������������������������������� 31 Fig. 6. Paul’s Cross in the foreground of the Cathedral viewed from the northeast ����������������������������������������������������������������� 34 Fig. 7. Effigy of Sir Thomas Heneage (d. 1594), formerly in the Cathedral Quire ������������������������������������������������������������������������� 36 Fig. 8. West entrance to the Cathedral with portico designed by Inigo Jones, 1633–41, drawn by Hollar, 1657 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37 Fig. 9. Architectural fragment of a lion’s head from the upper façade of the portico designed by Inigo Jones ������������������ 38
Chapter 3
Fig. 1. Paul’s Churchyard looking west, from the Visual Model �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 62 Fig. 2. Bishop King preaching at Paul’s Cross, Society of Antiquaries Diptych ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63 Fig. 3. Wenceslaus Hollar, St Paul’s Cathedral, north side ���������������������� 64 Fig. 4. John Schofield, St Paul’s Churchyard around 1450 ���������������������� 64 Fig. 5. View of Paul’s Cross from about 50 feet, from the Visual Model ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 65 Fig. 6. View of Paul’s Cross from the Sermon House, from the Visual Model ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 67 Fig. 7. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������� 75 Fig. 8. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������� 76 Fig. 9. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������� 78
Fig. 10. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������� 79 Fig. 11. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������� 82
Chapter 12
Fig. 1. Paul’s Church before Wren ���������������������������������������������������������������227 Fig. 2. Paul’s Cross with Booksellers, 1572 �����������������������������������������������228 Fig. 3. Virtual Paul’s Cross Image �����������������������������������������������������������������229
Chapter 20
Fig. 1. A Complaint of Paules, page 3 (London, 1616) ���������������������������370 Fig. 2. Procession to St Paul’s from St Mary Overie, Society of Antiquaries Diptych, by Thomas Gipkyn for Henry Farley, 1616 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������374 Fig. 3. ‘Beholde the King commeth with great joye’, detail of James I entering St Paul’s, Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������375 Fig. 4. Bishop King preaching at Paul’s Cross, Society of Antiquaries Diptych ���������������������������������������������������������������������������376 Fig. 5. Paul’s spire rebuilt, Henry Farley’s imagined restoration of St Paul’s with celebratory angels blowing trumpets, Society of Antiquaries Diptych ��������������������377
APC Acts of the Privy Council of England, new series, ed. J.R. Dasent. 46 vols. (1890–1964) BL British Library Bodl. Bodleian Library CCC Corpus Christi College, Oxford CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CSP Calendar of State Papers FLE The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, gen. ed. W. Speed Hill, 7 vols. (1977–1998) FSL Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC GL Guildhall Library, London HALS Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies HH Hatfield House, Herts. HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office JW The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (1845–1850) Lawes Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593, 1597) LP Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (1862–1932); repr. (1965) LPL Lambeth Palace Library LS Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555, ed. George E. Corrie (1845) Machyn The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (1848) MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2009) OL 1 & 2 Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, edited by Hastings Robinson for the Parker Society, 2 vols. (1846 and 1847) PG Patrologia cursus completus, Series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (1857–1866) PL Patrologia cursus completus, Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (1844–1864)
PRO Public Record Office PS Parker Society RSTC Revised Short Title Catalogue, ed. W.A. Jackson, F.S. Ferguson, and K.F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (1976–1991) STC A short-title catalogue of … English books … 1475–1640, ed. A.W. Pollard, G.R. Redgrave, and others (1926) USTC Universal Short Title Catalogue, http://www.ustc.ac.uk WA D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, 80 vols. Weimar (1880–2007) Wrioth Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from a. d. 1485 to 1559, 2 vols. (1877) WW The Works of John Whitgift, DD, ed. by John Ayre for the Parker Society, 3 vols. (1851–1853) ZL 1 The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bishops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1579, First Series, translated and edited by Hastings Robinson for the Parker Society (1842) ZL 2 The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bishops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1602, Second Series, translated and edited by Hastings Robinson for the Parker Society (1845)
Thomas Dabbs is Professor of English at Aoyama Gakuin University, Shibuya, Tokyo. He is the author of Genesis in Japan: the Bible beyond Christianity (2013) and Reforming Marlowe: The Nineteenth-Century Canonization of a Renaissance Dramatist (1991). Recent pertinent articles include ‘The Glamorous Echoes of Godly Print’ (2011) and ‘Paul’s Cross Churchyard and Shakespeare’s Verona Youth’ in A. Shifflett and E. Gieskes, eds. Renaissance Papers (2013). Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer is Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, Vermont. She is the author of ‘Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship,’ Religion Compass 5.7 (2011) and ‘Catholics and the King James Bible: Stories from England, Ireland, and America,’ Scottish Journal of Theology 66.3 (2013). Her monograph Catholic Critics of the King James Bible, 1611–1911 will be published in 2014. Cecilia Hatt’s critical edition of the English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469–1535): Sermons and Other Writings, 1520–1535 was pub- lished in 2002. Recent articles include ‘Keeping the Conversation Going: Fisher and More and Henry VIII’s intellectual tyranny,’ Moreana 49 (2012) and ‘The Two-Edged Sword as Image of Civil Power for Fisher and More,’ Moreana 45 (2008). The British Academy recently awarded Dr Hatt a grant to edit Fisher’s Treatise on the Penitential Psalms (1508) and his two royal elegies of 1509. Roze Hentschell is Associate Professor of English at Colorado State University. She is the author of The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity (2008); co-editor with A. Bailey of Masculinity and the Metropolis of Vice, 1550–1650 (2010), and with K. Lavezzo of Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations (2012). Dr Hentschell is currently researching the cultural geography of St Paul’s Cathedral Precinct. Anne James recently received her doctorate in English Literature from the University of Alberta for her dissertation entitled Reading, Writing, Remembering: Gunpowder Plot Literature in Early Modern England, 1605– 1688 (2011). Dr James is currently a Lecturer in English Literature at Luther College, University of Regina, Saskatchewan where she is revising her doc- toral dissertation for eventual publication.
Gerard Kilroy is Honorary Visiting Professor of English, University College London. He has been a Visiting Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford; Marsh’s Library, Dublin; and the Folger Shakespeare Library while he com- pletes Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life. Dr Kilroy is the author of Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription (2005), The Epigrams of Sir John Harington (2009), and ‘Advertising the Reader: Sir John Harington’s “Directions in the Margent”,’ English Literary Renaissance 41.1 (2011).
John N. King is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus (in English and Religious Studies) at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (2010) and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (2006). He is also co-editor of Henry VIII and His Afterlives: Literature, Politics, and Art (2009) with Mark Rankin and of John Foxe and his World (2002) with C. Highley.
Torrance Kirby is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the Centre for Research on Religion, McGill University. His recent books include Persuasion and Conversion: Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (2013), The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (2007) and Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (2005). He edited A Companion to Richard Hooker (2008) and A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (2009).
W. Bradford Littlejohn recently received a PhD in Christian Ethics from the University of Edinburgh. His research addresses the political theology of Richard Hooker. In addition to a forthcoming co-authored article on early Reformed views of church discipline and a book chapter on Hooker’s view of Scripture and politics, he is the author of The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity (2009) and editor of the Mercersburg Theology Study Series.
Steven W. May is adjunct Professor of English at Emory University and Senior Research Fellow in English at Sheffield University, where he leads a project on Renaissance English scribal culture sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. His books include The Elizabethan Courtier Poets (1991), an edition of Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works (2004), and Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, 1559–1603 (2004).
Natalie Mears is Senior Lecturer in English History at the University of Durham. She is author of Queenship and political discourse in the Elizabethan realms (2005) as well as several articles on Elizabethan politics and the ‘public sphere’. Dr Mears has edited, with Alec Ryrie, Worship and the parish church in early modern Britain (2013) and she is currently edit- ing, with P. Williamson and S. Taylor, National Prayers: Special Worship since the Reformation (3 vols).
Mary Morrissey is Lecturer in English in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. She is the author of Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (2012) and ‘Sermons, Prayer-books and Primers’ in the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, ed. J. Raymond (2011). Dr Morrissey is currently editing John Donne’s Sermons for Civic Pulpits for the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, gen. ed. P. McCullough.
David Neelands is Margaret Fleck Professor of Anglican Studies and Dean of Divinity at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He is author of numer- ous learned articles on Richard Hooker and other sixteenth-century reformers including ‘Hooker on divinization: our participation in Christ,’ From Logos to Christos, ed. E. Leonard and K. Merriman (2010) and ‘Predestination and the 39 Articles of the Church of England’ in A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (2009).
Kathleen O’Leary is a Tutor of English Literature in the ‘Culture, Mind and Modernity’ programme validated by Liverpool John Moores University. She received her PhD (Lancaster) for a dissertation about The art of salvation is but the art of memory: soul-agency, remembrance and expres- sion in Donne and Shakespeare (2007). Dr O’Leary is currently researching a monograph on the theme of alchemy in Shakespeare’s romance dramas.
Mark Rankin is Associate Professor of English at James Madison University. He is author of Religious Orthodoxy and Dissent in Early Modern England (2005) and co-editor of Henry VIII and His Afterlives: Literature, Politics, and Art (2009) with C. Highley and John N. King. Dr Rankin is currently editing William Tyndale’s The Practice of Prelates (1530) and completing a monograph entitled Henry VIII and the Language of Polemic in Early Modern England.
Angela Ranson is a doctoral student at the University of York. Her research interests focus on the Church of England at the time of the Reformation. Her recent publications include ‘Sincere lies and creative truth: recanta- tion strategies during the English Reformation’ in the inaugural issue of the Journal of History and Cultures 1.1 (2012) and ‘Consent Not to the Wyckednesse: The Role of Nicodemites in the Elizabethan Settlement,’ History Studies 12 (2011).
Richard Rex is Reader in Reformation History at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and Tutor of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Infamous for his heretical views on Lollardy in The Lollards (2002), Dr Rex is also author of Henry VIII and the English Reformation (2nd edn, 2006) and The Theology of John Fisher (1991), and is perhaps best known for his brief historical survey The Tudors (2009).
John Schofield is the Cathedral Archaeologist for St Paul’s Cathedral in London. He was an archaeologist at the Museum of London from 1974 to 2008 where he specialised in the rescue archaeology of the City of London. He is author of The Building of London from the Conquest to the Great Fire (3rd edn, 1999), Medieval London Houses (2nd edn, 2003), London 1100– 1600: the Archaeology of a Capital City (2011) and St Paul’s Cathedral before Wren (2011).
Jeanne Shami is Professor of English at the University of Regina and recently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She is joint editor with D. Flynn and T. Hester of The Oxford Handbook of John Donne (2011), and author of John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (2003) and ‘Women and Sermons’, Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, eds. P. McCullough, H. Adlington, and E. Rhatigan (2011).
P.G. Stanwood is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of British Columbia. He has edited various Renaissance and seventeenth-century religious and literary texts, including the posthumous books of Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1981), Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living; and Holy Dying (1989), and the sole surviving manuscript of Lancelot Andrewes’s Apospasmatia Sacra, or ‘Orphan Lectures’, English Manuscript Studies 13 (2007).
Susan Wabuda is Associate Professor of History at Fordham University. She is the author of Preaching during the English Reformation (2002), as well as numerous articles on patronage and the sermon. She contributed eleven articles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (e.g. ‘Nicholas Ridley’ and ‘Hugh Latimer’), and co-edited with C. Litzenberger Belief and Practice in Reformation England: a tribute to Patrick Collinson from his students (1998).
John N. Wall is Professor of English at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. He is the author of Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan (1988), as well as numerous articles on the setting of Donne’s sermons, including ‘Situating Donne’s Dedication Sermon at Lincoln’s Inn, 22 May 1623,’ John Donne Journal 26 (2007). He edited George Herbert: The Country Parson, the Temple (1981) and is co-author with J. Booty and D. Siegenthaler of The Godly Kingdom of Tudor England: Great Books of the English Reformation (1981).
Ralph S. Werrell received his doctorate from the University of Birmingham for a dissertation on The Theology of William Tyndale which was published in 2006. He is also author of The Roots of William Tyndale’s Theology (2013) and of a forthcoming monograph titled The ‘Blood of Christ’ in William Tyndale’s Theology. He is currently researching the theology of the Early English Reformers up to Henry VIII’s break with Rome.
Jason Zuidema received his PhD in ecclesiastical history from McGill University in 2006; he is Assistant Professor at Concordia University, Montreal. He is author of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) and the Outward Instruments of Divine Grace (2008), co-author with T. van Raalte of Early French Reform: The Theology and Spirituality of Guillaume Farel (2011), and ‘Vermigli and French Reform’ in A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (2009).
The papers comprising this volume were presented at an International Conference held at McGill University on 16–18 August 2012 on the theme ‘Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1520–1640’. The con- ference marked the culmination of a collaborative research endeavour undertaken by P.G. Stanwood (University of British Columbia), Mary Morrissey (University of Reading), John N. King (Ohio State University) and Torrance Kirby (PI, McGill University). In addition to this present col- lection of essays, we are jointly editing a volume of selected sermons preached at Paul’s Cross during this period, to be published in due course. We acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for our programme of research over the past four years as well as for funding of the conference itself under a SSHRC Workshop Grant. We extend thanks also to the McGill Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR) for sponsorship of the confer- ence and to the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University for host- ing the event. Contributors to this volume acknowledge the generous support of their research afforded by SSHRC, the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). We also thank the editor-in-chief of the series, Robert J. Bast, and the anonymous reviewer for their generous contributions to this volume. The conference steering committee owe special thanks to Francesca Maniaci, Administrative Assistant to the Director of CREOR, and to Alex Sokolov, Research Accounts Administrator, for their invaluable support in organiz- ing the conference, and we are also grateful to doctoral candidates Richard Cumming and Eric Parker in the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies for their very able assistance.
Torrance Kirby Montreal Michaelmas 2013
Without any doubt the open-air pulpit in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral known as ‘Paul’s Cross’ can be reckoned among the most influ- ential of all public venues in early-modern England. In a world where sermons generally counted among the conventional means of adult edu- cation, as vital instruments of popular moral and social guidance, not to mention political control, Paul’s Cross stands out as London’s pulpit of pulpits; indeed it lays claim to being the ‘public pulpit’ of the entire realm, and was arguably as much a stage as a preaching station. It was an arena of vital consequence where ‘the conscience of church and nation found pub- lic utterance,’ particularly in moments of crisis.1 Very large crowds, some- times numbering in thousands, gathered here to listen to the weekly two-hour sermons. On one occasion after delivering a sermon at Paul’s Cross not long after the accession of Elizabeth, John Jewel wrote in a letter to his mentor Peter Martyr Vermigli in Zurich that as many as 6,000 people stayed afterwards to sing metrical psalms.2 Going back to the thirteenth century St Paul’s churchyard had been a bustling public space, a privileged venue for the announcement of royal proclamations and papal bulls to citizens of the capital. At Paul’s Cross spokesmen authorized by both Crown and Church expounded government policy and denounced heresy
1 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 4, 18. For an account of the architecture of the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral see P.W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical Society, 1990). 2 Dated 5 March 1560. The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bish- ops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1579, First Series, ed. H. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1842), 71 (hereafter ZL 1). ‘You may now sometimes see at Paul’s cross, after the service, six thousand persons, old and young, of both sexes, all singing together and praising God. This sadly annoys the Mass priests, and the devil. For they perceive that by these means the sacred discourses sink more deeply into the minds of men, and that their kingdom is weakened and shaken at almost every note.’ Henry Machyn confirms the great popularity of sermons of Paul’s Cross in several entries to his Diary. See Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from ad 1550 to ad 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Printed for the Camden Society by J.B. Nichols and Son, 1848), the entry for 3 March 1560: ‘The sam day dyd pryche at Powlles crosse the nuwe byshope of London master Gryndall, in ys rochet and chyminer; and after sermon done the pepull dyd syng; and ther was my lord mayre and the althermen, and ther was grett audy- ence.’ See also Machyn’s entries for 3 and 16 April and 23 June 1557, 10 and 17 September 1559, 26 November 1559, and 28 February and 15 June 1561.
3 J.R. Maddicot, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 167. 5 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 4, 7, 8. 6 E. Beresford Chancellor, St Paul’s Cathedral (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1925). Perhaps a more accurate formulation would employ the plural: ‘all the English Reformations were accomplished from Paul’s Cross.’ See C. Haigh, English Reformations.
a strictly Habermasian measure.7 Yet, between 1534 and the early 1640s, this pulpit remained continuously at the centre of events which trans- formed England’s religious identities, and through this transformation contributed substantially to the emergence of a public arena of discourse animated above all by a ‘culture of persuasion.’ Of prime significance is the fact that the transition from a late-medieval to an early-modern religious identity was achieved to a very large extent through persuasion—arguments, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice. At the end of the reign of Elizabeth, religious identity could no longer be assumed as simply ‘given’ within the accepted order of the world. Structures which had previously connected a hierarchically-ordered cosmos to a parallel, interconnected religious understanding in late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’ had given way, even among adherents of Rome, to a ‘culture of persuasion.’ One has only to peruse MacLure’s Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642 to obtain an impression of this epic transformation.8 At one time or another, all of the significant players among the ecclesiastical and university estab- lishments put in an appearance on stage—John Fisher, Cuthbert Tunstall, and Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley, John Jewel, John Whitgift, Richard Hooker, and Richard Bancroft are just a few of the prominent preachers who ‘made their exits and their entrances’ in the tortuous course of the English Reformations. Yet, the full significance of their appearances is not to be interpreted solely with regard to their official standing in traditional institutions—Church, Parliament, or University. Their contribution to a nascent public sphere is to be inter- preted rather through the arena of their discourse—their relation to the audiences, and their reliance upon the devices of rhetoric and argument to shape religious identity. The dynamic of stage and audience at Paul’s Cross promoted an emerging sense of religious identity shaped by the instruments of exegesis, argumentation, and exhortation. It is through such a dynamic that the sense of an emerging ‘public’ open to persuasion begins to take hold and to redefine religious identity. Paul’s Cross is arguably the single most important vehicle of public per- suasion to be employed by government from the initiation of the Henrician
7 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). See also N. Crossley and J.M. Roberts, eds., After Habermas: new perspectives on the public sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 8 Revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6. (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989).
Reformation down to the final years of the reign of Elizabeth. On this claim rests a further assertion that the formation of England’s religious identities in this period comes to depend to a high degree on the words uttered here. The emergence at Paul’s Cross of an increasingly sophisti- cated ‘culture of persuasion’ moving concurrently with public policy was intrinsic not only to the formation of a new Protestant religious identity, but also to the articulation of a Counter-Reformation Catholic identity. In part this was owing to the intimate proximity of pulpit and press. The names of dozens of printers and booksellers are identified on colophons in the period 1530 to 1600 as ‘dwelling in Paules churchyarde,’ and by rough estimate they are in the majority. Virtually all booksellers not in Paul’s churchyard are located nearby within the sound of Bow bells. It is cer- tainly no mere happenstance that a large part of the book trade in sixteenth-century London was conducted within hailing distance of Paul’s Cross.9 The ‘culture of persuasion’ which issued from the pulpit continued on its course in print. Yet it would be advisable not to exaggerate the role of print culture with respect to the pulpit. Andrew Pettegree has cautioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass movement in an age before mass literacy must be careful to ‘relocate the role of the book, as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion,’ and especially with respect to public preaching. ‘Scripturally-based preaching is restored to its central place as the ‘bedrock’ around which the churches harnessed other communication media.’10 Nowhere is this more accurately applied than in the case of Paul’s Cross. Yet curiously the sermon remains a much neglected genre in the study of this period.11 In the first of three essays situating Paul’s Cross, John Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral archaeologist, offers a summary of what is currently known and thought about the architecture and archaeology of the medieval and Tudor cathedral in the period 1520–1640, highlighting recent discoveries. According to Schofield, the cathedral buildings can now be plotted for the first time in modern decades, and St Paul’s recognised as the largest build- ing in area in medieval Britain. The cathedral was rebuilt into its gigantic
9 See Peter W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: The Bibliographical Society, Occasional paper no. 5, 1990) which includes modern diagrams of Paul’s Cross Churchyard in 1545, 1600, 1640, 1665 & 1675 (75–79), and a detailed modern plan of the whole precinct in 1600 (facing p. 3). 10 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39. 11 Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
medieval form from 1087. As we progress through the succession of cathe- drals on the site, the information increases and our understanding of the building and therefore its architectural and historical significance become clearer. The New Work (i.e. the choir) of 1269–1314 was presumably intended to provide an enlarged, spacious setting for the shrine of Erkenwald, Anglo Saxon bishop of London in the seventh century. The architecture was similar in scale and character to contemporary parts of other great English churches which have survived, particularly Lincoln, Lichfield, St Alban’s and York; but there are also elements which suggest precedents in France, especially the window tracery and the large rose window in the choir gable. The chapter house and cloister of 1332–49 are now displayed in facsimile south of the Wren nave, after work of 2004–7. At the Reformation in the 1530s the cathedral suffered. Its fabric was despoiled and neglected; in 1561 the spire caught fire and was afterwards demolished. During the Elizabethan and Jacobean decades, however, the choir of the cathedral became the site of prestigious, assertive tombs of courtiers and high-ranking officials. This collection of post-Reformation monuments is second only to those which survive in Westminster Abbey. A major new element in our understanding of the development of the pre- Fire cathedral comprises the recovery and analysis of fragments of the Jones portico and other fragments from his restoration of the church in 1633–41. The majority of these fragments come from excavation of 1994–6. The portico can be reconstructed from fragments, and a detailed picture of his whole restoration is emerging from the conjunction of archaeologi- cal and documentary study. Paul’s Cross is well-known as one of the most important points of con- tact between the Tudor and early Stuart governments and the people: the pre-eminent venue for public discourse, a forum to assert political control, and site where proclamations were published. Natalie Mears explores how Paul’s Cross played a role in another ‘instrument of control’: namely spe- cial nationwide worship. Such worship comprised petitionary prayers and services ordered by the Crown to seek divine intervention in earthly events such as war, famine, disease, bad weather and earthquakes as well as thanksgivings offered in gratitude for divine aid. From 1533 to the outbreak of civil war in 1642, sermons were only preached there for eleven of the ninety-seven occasions of special worship ordered in England. This is despite the fact that sermons assumed a more central part in special ser- vices during this period and special worship was increasingly invoked in response to confessionally charged events, such as the discovery of catho- lic plots to assassinate Elizabeth I and the support of protestant rebels
the appearance of Paul’s Churchyard and the Cathedral and new archaeo- logical evidence about the actual size of historic buildings and spaces in this part of London. He describes how acoustic simulation software enables recreation of the acoustic properties of this space, approximating the experience of hearing a sermon delivered at Paul’s Cross by people at different positions in the crowd by integrating the ambient noise of early modern London with a performance of John Donne’s (1572–1631) sermon delivered at Paul’s Cross on 15 September 1622 recorded in original pro- nunciation by an actor in an anechoic chamber. In the first of seven essays on early Tudor sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, Cecilia Hatt examines two occasions on which Bishop John Fisher (1469–1535) preached against the teachings of Martin Luther, in 1521 and 1526. These addresses were both substantial sermons, as was to be expected of so celebrated a preacher; and huge crowds were present at both. Cecilia Hatt demonstrates in her essay that the five years that intervened between these two Paul’s Cross sermons had seen significant changes in public per- ceptions of Lutheranism which meant that not only were the reactions of the audience less predictable in 1526 than they had been in 1521 but also that Fisher’s state of mind, in which he found himself arguing for doctrinal orthodoxy, was much more troubled. Fisher’s 1521 sermon ‘against the per- nicious doctrine of Martin Luther’, put officially to print by Wynkyn de Worde, widely disseminated and reprinted, was generally regarded as a definitive statement of papal authority, so much so that when Henry VIII’s religious sympathies changed he took steps to suppress it. The printing on the other hand of the 1526 sermon seems, as its preface suggests, to have been Fisher’s private initiative, and its composition shows signs of the bish- op’s anxious eagerness to assert the importance of a community of belief against what he saw as the dangerous individualism of Lutheranism. In 1521 the sheltering and constant nature of that community had been evoked by means of an impressive logical sermon structure and the imagery of the tree, a strong and dependable natural phenomenon. The 1526 sermon also uses natural imagery, but this time it takes the form of a pervasive meta- phor of growing plants threatened by weeds, suggesting a beleaguered community, not bolstered by exterior structures but seeking to maintain its integrity by means of the willed adherence of its separate members. Hatt examines the differences in both structure and language between these two Paul’s Cross sermons, as signs of a reaction on Fisher’s part to popular feeling that caused him slightly to redefine his ecclesiology. Richard Rex surveys the attempts by Henry VIII’s regime to control and exploit the City of London’s premier pulpit in the context of the rapidly
imposed the death penalty on alleged heretics who denied transubstantia- tion, clerical celibacy, and other traditional theological doctrines. This chapter investigates the contribution of three out of five extant Paul’s Cross sermons from the reign of Edward VI. On the occasion of the burn- ing of books whose views ran counter to the Royal Injunctions of Edward VI, Dr Richard Smith (1499/1500–1563) formally retracted his previous defense of the Catholic Mass and assertion that unwritten human tradi- tions based on extra-biblical authorities are as important as scripture. The great spiritual leader of the first generation of English evangelicals, Hugh Latimer (c. 1485–1555), followed by preaching his memorable Sermon on the Ploughers, which argues in favour of a humble ministry devoted to preaching sermons that expound the English Bible in simple terms acces- sible to lay people. Thomas Lever (1521–1577) then preached during the aftermath of an insurrection in Cornwall and Devon against the new English liturgy and a rebellion in Norfolk against the enclosure movement and exploitation of commoners by the gentry. He affirmed the orthodox Tudor doctrine of political obedience of subject to ruler and asserted that both rulers and wealthy individuals have an obligation to succour the poor through charitable acts. Torrance Kirby takes a closer look at Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’, preached both at Paul’s Cross and later at Oxford in 1547 shortly after the accession of King Edward VI, and published by Reginald Wolfe in the same year. Smith’s recantation was accompanied by the ritual burning of his two books in defence of the traditional account of sacramental pres- ence, viz. Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament of the Alter and Defence of the Sacrifice of the Masse, both published in 1546. There is not only the question of Smyth’s renunciation of this traditional teaching in order to conform to the newly reformed religious settlement established following Edward VI’s accession, but also his later ‘retraction of the retractation’—a double conversion, so to speak—which resulted in his ejection from the Regius professorship and replacement by Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499– 1562), the Florentine divine invited to England in 1548 by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). At the core of this rather complicated episode of Smyth’s retractation and public recantation at Paul’s Cross is the underlying substantive hermeneutical question of how to interpret the mode of ‘presence’ in the sacraments, viz. the how to interpret the semiotic relation between the sign (signum) and the thing signified (res). In his inaugural lectures at Oxford Vermigli took up this same question. Smyth’s challenge to debate precipitated the famous Oxford Disputation of 1549 which was to exercise a decisive influence on the later revision
England. While he is most often portrayed as a champion of the reformed Church, mainly due to his apologetics and his correspondence, less well known is his Challenge Sermon of November 1559, in which he rejected specific practices of the Roman Church because they were new inven- tions. By doing this, Jewel removed the charge of novelty that had been laid on the Church of England and placed the burden of proof on the Roman Church. Ranson argues that Jewel made this challenge at Paul’s Cross for two reasons: first, to provide a way for the people of England to define themselves through opposition to other beliefs; and second, to begin a shift in protestant polemic that focused on calling people to inter- nalize their belief in the protestant message, not just accept it outwardly. Paul’s Cross was essential for the achievement of these goals both because of its widespread influence, and because of the makeup of its audience. Jewel once observed that his Challenge Sermon was addressed to the ‘Prince, the Council, and the whole state of the Realm.’ This suggests that Jewel expected his message to spread beyond his immediate hearers. He chose Paul’s Cross as the first place to present this sermon because he knew it would give his message a chance to reach every parish in England. Paul’s Cross, then, became both the sphere to influence and the sphere of influence for Jewel. He met the challenge of being called to preach there, and issued a challenge in return. At Paul’s Cross, John Jewel earned his reputation as a champion of the church. The sermons that echoed in the public ear from the Paul’s Cross pulpit during the 1560s and ‘70s, with their famed theatrics, were directly related to a simultaneous growth in the print industry in early Elizabethan London. In a period of growing literacy, Thomas Dabbs maintains, popular religious print became integrated with the sensational echoes of popular religious disputes from the aural environment of Paul’s Cross. Along with the echoes of sermons from the pulpit and off the north transept and choir of St Paul’s, another echoing cycle surfaced, one in which print echoed in the public ear and from the pulpit and back into print. This new, thriving marketplace for Godly print, along with printing contracts secured from the Church of England, persuaded entrepreneurial publish- ers to engage in a more risky commercial publication—pleasure read- ing—that was often issued under the guise of moral instruction but that soon held a separate sway as secular entertainment for the common reader. Although religious writers, speakers, and translators often decried their questionable moral value, these works in fact flourished within the profitable, echoing marketplace of religious print. Stories from William Painter’s (1540?–1594) Palace of Pleasure and such other works that were
by examining the career and polemical writings of Thomas Bilson (1547– 1616), Bishop of Winchester and member of the final review committee of the King James Bible. In Lent 1597, Bilson preached at Paul’s Cross on Christ’s descent into hell. He attacked Roman Catholic doctrine and undue veneration of the cross, but he quickly found himself in both pulpit and printed controversies with puritans who were scandalized at his defense of the literal harrowing of hell. As Gebarowski-Shafer shows, Bilson’s foray into Anti-Catholic polemic (at the expense of puritan beliefs) is connected with his literary involvement in the Rheims New Testament controversy a decade earlier. In The True Difference Between Christian Subjection and Unchristian rebellion (1584), he attacked Catholic teachings and biblical translation while setting his views apart from those of puritan Cambridge divine William Fulke (1538–1589), who himself had written against Rheims translator Gregory Martin in 1583 and had previously preached his Bachelor of Divinity sermon (now lost) at Paul’s Cross on Christ’s descent into hell, supporting Calvin’s view of this article of faith. Gebarowski-Shafer also analyses debates on translating Acts 2:27, in which Fulke’s rigorous defense of the Genevan translation was disregarded by Bilson, who ultimately ensured that the King James Bible’s rendering of the verse allowed for the literal understanding of Christ’s descent into hell. Even special occasions at Paul’s Cross are often difficult to reconstruct in any detail. According to Steven May, this was essentially the case with the celebration there of England’s victory over the Armada on 24 November 1588. However, two recently discovered ballads that describe the event provide considerable new information about it. Above all, they corrobo- rate other relevant testimony pointing to the Queen’s prominent role in both the spectacle and the liturgical substance of the occasion. Apparently Queen Elizabeth not only controlled what happened, she made the cere- mony’s grand finale a uniquely personal part of the celebration. May investigates her relationship with John Piers (1522/3–1594), Bishop of Salisbury, who was honoured by being selected to preach at Paul’s Cross on that day. In addition, the ballads’ accounts of what happened dovetail with other evidence, mostly from manuscript sources, to establish that when Piers finished his sermon, the Queen’s own poetry, now set to music, was performed for all to hear. John Copcot (d. 1590), sometime Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a stalwart defender of the English Church, preached at Paul’s Cross in 1584, principally against Dudley Fenner’s Counter-Poyson. His colourful sermon was evidently widely circulated, but never printed. It exists, however, in manuscript, in a collection put together by the
Restoration Archbishop Sancroft, now in the Lambeth Palace (London) Library. P.G. Stanwood describes the occasion of this sermon, its context, and its rhetorical significance and persuasive force. Copcot carefully lays out what he sees to be ‘the pillers of the Church of Rome’, which in his view feebly supported the doctrine of grace—of works and merits—and he defends the sacraments upheld by Canterbury, urging that Rome is wanting in their right use. He also discusses and defends the episcopacy and the English mode of church government. For comparison and the- matic expansion, Stanwood considers John Whitgift’s (1530–1604) Paul’s Cross sermon on the 3rd chapter of Titus. Whitgift’s is a helpful reflection on certain themes in Copcot’s discourse. Preached in 1583, but not printed until 1589, Whitgift returns to the significance of the episcopacy and to the necessity of public obedience to those in authority. His sermon does of course mark the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Together these two sermons define and uphold the constitution of the Elizabethan Church and Commonwealth. Stanwood concludes his essay with a discussion of one of the last sermons ever to have been preached at Paul’s Cross, namely that by Mark Frank (1613–1664), fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in May 1642. Stanwood reveals that in his sermon style Frank was a distin- guished successor of Lancelot Andrewes, and in sensibility an exemplary inheritor of the conformist tradition of Paul’s Cross sermons represented by such predecessors as Copcot, Whitgift, and Bancroft. While truth may win out in the end, the power of persuasion often depends upon a willingness to manipulate it, particularly when it comes to representing one’s opponent. An audience must be persuaded to fear or scorn the opposition, and this means concealing the more attractive or reassuring aspects of their position, and insinuating unsavory aspects that they would be quick to deny. Bradford Littlejohn argues that nowhere was this more true than in the polemics of Elizabethan England, as conform- ists and puritans each sought to get the rhetorical upper hand, posturing as the friends of God, Queen, and country, and portraying their opponents as wicked, unstable, and even treasonous. These highly-charged polemics pose a considerable challenge for the historian, who must seek, amidst all the rhetorical posturing, to determine what the disputants each really believed, and what they really believed about their opponents. Richard Bancroft’s (1544–1610) famous sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1588, and John Penry’s (1559–1593) reply two years later, offer an excellent case for testing the authenticity of Elizabethan polemics on both sides of the conformist-puritan divide. For, like so many conformist polemics, the capstone of Bancroft’s lurid portrait of perilous puritan instability is his
claim that they wish to abolish the royal supremacy, and may even be prepared to engage in full-blown revolution, like their fellow Presbyterians in France and Scotland. And if ever there were a puritan who would accept the charge of opposing the Royal Supremacy, we might expect him to be a radical like John Penry, one of those who would not ‘tarry for the magis- trate,’ embracing separatism in 1592. Yet, like nearly every other puritan and separatist of his day, Penry vociferously denies the ‘slanderous’ charge, declaring, ‘Looke whatsoever prerogative in ecclesiastical or civil causes hee or any man livinge can truly attribute unto the civil magistrate, wee do the same.’ Were Bancroft and his fellow conformists merely indulging in dishonest demagoguery, then, to frighten their hearers away from danger- ous revolutionaries, or were Penry and his fellows disingenuous in their zealous affirmations of support for her Majesty and the royal supremacy? Littlejohn suggests that a closer look at Bancroft’s sermon and Penry’s response shows both men to be wrestling with a pervasive paradox of the Reformation, the relation of conscience and authority. In their different attempts to balance these two poles, we can perceive the basis for their different understandings of the royal supremacy to which they both pro- fess allegiance, and the reasons why they see one another as such serious threats to a well-ordered Christian society. Although numerous scholars have explored the role of the Paul’s Cross pulpit in disseminating news of current events to large and diverse Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, their studies have usually mapped a unidirectional flow of information from the secular and ecclesiastical authorities through the preacher to the people. Anne James argues, how- ever, that by interpreting the information he had been given, the preacher also offered his political masters valuable rhetorical strategies for shaping later narratives of these events. In other words, the preacher’s intermedi- ary position enabled him to influence the understanding of his superiors as well as his inferiors. In order to comprehend this process, we need to read these sermons not as isolated pulpit utterances but as part of developing communication strategies. William Barlow’s (d. 1613) sermons on the execution of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex (1565–1601), and the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot created rudimentary narratives of these incidents, shaping them according to existing generic conven- tions. In the first case, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) developed Barlow’s rep- resentation of the Earl’s fall as a tragedy in the later pamphlet attributed to him, thus crafting a coherent, if unpopular, justification of the govern- ment’s actions. In the second, however, the anonymous author of the ‘Discourse of the maner of the discouery of this late intended treason’ and
and one partial). Moreover, the manuscript differs substantially from the printed version, and speaks more directly and topically to political, reli- gious, and cultural circumstances in 1623/24, at the height of controversy and tension precipitated by plans for the Spanish Match between Charles and Maria Anna von Hapsburg, Infanta of Spain. Dr Shami explores how the manuscript and sermon forms can be employed to consider how closely manuscript practices of scriptural citation differ from those of the printed sermon. She speaks to the early impact on preaching of the publication of the King James Bible and probes similarities and differences of the vari- ous extant forms of Stoughton’s sermon in order to illuminate processes of sermon delivery and transmission (including the larger compilations in which the manuscript sources are found), as well as to uncover some of the political, religious, and historical resonances at play in these texts. The visceral effect of spoken language mixed with the preacher as per- former makes the sermon more than a cerebral exercise that accompanies reading and contemplation, but a physical one that engages the very body of the listener. Moreover, if the body shivers and is awed by the delivery of the preacher’s words, then the soul that is entangled in its sinews might also be quaking. Kathleen O’Leary examines Donne’s use of performance in his Paul’s Cross sermons. She focuses on the preacher’s use of verbal communication, examining how language is used to enthral listeners whilst also developing what we might term a Protestant aesthetic. The vis- ceral effects that the employment of carefully selected diction, phrase and rhythmic pattern can have on listeners can transform not only the congre- gation’s sense of their individual salvation but the preacher’s too. His ser- mons, however, also forge an individual path, so indicative of Donne, which places him between conflicting doctrinal positions: on the one hand, firmly wedded to the concrete authority of the logos; on the other, using this power of the Word to create an alternative to Catholic sensibil- ity. Donne’s attempts at using the power of language to affect his congrega- tion both physically and by means of images is, O’Leary argues, an attempt to recreate parts of a forgotten world, to symbolise them within the semi- otics of Protestantism and thus to create space and accommodation for the past. The soul/body connection in the sermons extends to the rela- tionship between the power of the Word and the past, where the Word has the power to energise, to re-kindle—a kind of ‘recompaction’. When Joseph Hall (1574–1656) preached a ‘Spital’ sermon in 1618, he opened his sermon with the declaration that ‘there is nothing more necessarie therefore, for a Christian heart, than to be rectified in the man- aging of a prosperous estate, and to learne to be happy here, that it may be
well recorded, then the reactions of the members of the audience are even more elusive: but some tantalizing bits of evidence have survived in obscure sources that give a few indications of how the people responded to the men in the pulpit.
PART ONE
SITUATING PAUL’S CROSS
RECONSTRUCTING ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, 1520–1640
John Schofield
Introduction
This paper describes the main features of St Paul’s Cathedral and its churchyard, including Paul’s Cross, as they stood in 1520; and develop- ments of the building and its surroundings from then until about 1640, the opening of the English Civil War.1 The materials from which we can reconstruct the medieval cathedral, and St Paul’s Cross which lay outside it at the north-east corner, are vari- ous. Although the Wren building, with crypts below all four of its arms, has destroyed almost all the medieval building and its foundations, the latter do survive in small isolated parts around it, underground. Part of the cathedral’s 14th-century cloister and the bases of buttresses which sup- ported an octagonal chapter house are laid out in new stone south of the present nave (Fig. 1). There are drawings, notably the series of engravings of the outside and inside by Hollar, but these all date to just before the Great Fire in 1666 or immediately after. A third important source is a col- lection of architectural fragments, individual carved stones dug up at vari- ous unknown times in the past 150 years. Whether walking round the outside of the cathedral, or through it, a person wishing to listen to a sermon or public announcement at Paul’s Cross in 1520 would experience at least four centuries of architecture on the way there. Some small parts of the cathedral were even older: the north wall of the Gothic choir contained two sarcophagi of Saxon kings, Sebba (d 695) and Aethlred II (d 1013). But the chief periods of building the cathedral were 1087–about 1190, the 1250s, 1269–1314, 1332–9 and the 15th century.
1 This summary and discussion is based on John Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral before Wren (London: English Heritage, 2011), which describes the archaeology and history of the cathedral site from Roman times up to 1666. Detailed references will be found there.
Fig. 1. St Paul’s Cathedral from the south side in 2010.
The Romanesque Cathedral
The cathedral, founded in ad 604, was rebuilt into its gigantic medieval form from 1087; this may have obliterated the previous Anglo-Saxon build- ing, which would have lain either under its medieval successor or possibly
to one side. In fact we do not know what relation the Norman cathedral had to its predecessor. In 11th-century major churches, there was a short range of possibilities, from superimposition on an existing structure to placing the new cathedral on a green field site clear of the existing church, as at St Albans, where the siting and form of the Norman ancillary build- ings may have been influenced by their predecessors. As at Winchester, there seems to have been a wish to retain the memorials of kings and bish- ops which had stood in the Anglo-Saxon cathedral.2 Between 1087 and about 1200 there were two building campaigns con- cerning the transepts. The full length of the transepts (300ft / 91.5m, north to south) with central space and two aisles was the result of the second campaign, probably started in 1108–27. The transepts with three aisles would find one parallel in the surviving south transept at Winchester Cathedral, of about the same time. At St Paul’s this incorporated an apsi- dal chapel in the east aisle of the south transept from an earlier phase of work, perhaps that of 1087. The London region was where a fully-developed style of Romanesque architecture might be expected before the Norman Conquest, and the new cathedral would fit into this context. The presbytery of four bays and underlying crypt place St Paul’s alongside the major church projects at Winchester and Bury St Edmunds; its long nave also suggests that its build- ing was intended to rival or stand as an equal to Winchester. Its nave eleva- tion may have derived from St-Etienne in Caen (Fig. 2). The splendour of the building is indicated by architectural fragments which have been found in the past and are now kept at the present cathe- dral. One example is given here, which shows the potential. It is a voissoir or arch stone of the 1150s, thus from the Romanesque cathedral or an ancillary building in the churchyard (Fig. 3). The measurements of the voussoir indicate an arch diameter of approx- imately 2 metres, which would be very wide for a cloister arcade though possible for a tomb. It is more likely to belong to a doorway, possibly multi- ordered but certainly reasonably large in scale. Stylistically the use of beaded stems in this kind of interlacing pattern and deeply carved is found on the voussoirs of the cloister arcade at Reading Abbey in the 1130s, and in related work excavated in the chapter house of St Albans Abbey, which is datable to 1151–66. What stands out about the St Paul’s voussoir is the precision of the design, the delicately carved leaf terminals, and the use of
2 Martin Biddle, Winchester in the early Middle Ages, Winchester Studies I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 311–12.
Fig. 2. The nave of St Paul’s by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1657. Source: Wikimedia Commons. a square flower as the focal point of the design, and for these reasons it is datable to the 1150s. Much of the internal elevation of masonry and carved detail in the cathedral was painted, but so far very few traces of Romanesque paint have been identified on recovered fragments; some notable pieces carved with chevron designs come from a large 12th-century doorway. Study of the historic collection of moulded stones in the present triforium will in the future no doubt produce more painted pieces. Romanesque St Paul’s was similar in size and concept to Winchester, probably intentionally. Winchester was started in 1079 and almost complete
Fig. 3. Arch-stone of the mid-12th century.
within 30 years; the work at St Paul’s which began in 1087 took far longer. Winchester had architectural features associated with its royal connec- tions, such as a western massif and a giant order of piers in the nave. William the Conqueror kept the treasury there and at Easter wore the crown at Winchester, previously the capital of Saxon Wessex. When
William came to London, he wore the crown at Westminster. In the late 11th and for much of the 12th century, St Paul’s was not much used for royal purposes, though it had the bones of two Anglo-Saxon kings. But by 1190, when the building of the nave reached the new west end with its towers, the cathedral was a large church on a European scale. It should be com- pared with the largest pilgrimage churches such as St-Sernin at Toulouse and St James at Compostella, which are similar in date and concept.
13th Century: The New Work
The 13th and early 14th centuries were an era of ambitious building on the cathedral and other religious sites which provided London with many of its landmark buildings for the next 350 years. During the 13th century, in and immediately around the City of London, there was much building at new religious houses, and some rebuilding at those established before 1200. At St Paul’s, the crossing tower was finished in 1222, and the spire added to it shortly after. Both these structures were precocious or innovative for their height within Europe. My calculations suggest that the tower was about 204ft (62.2m) high, and the spire a further 200ft (61m) high.3 Further building followed in several stages. In 1256 the east sides of both transepts were rebuilt and given flying buttresses. And in 1269 work began to extend the Romanesque choir into a new rectangular form; this was called the New Work, though it was only the largest of several building projects. Thus St Paul’s was like other large English churches which have survived: by 1400 it had a new Gothic choir and transepts, but a nave from the 12th century, as at Peterborough, Gloucester, Ely and Norwich. The New Work was presumably intended to provide an enlarged, spa- cious setting for the shrine of Erkenwald; a similar extension for the patron saint had just been finished at Ely in 1252. The architecture was similar in scale and character to contemporary parts of other great English churches which have survived, particularly Lincoln, Lichfield, St Albans and York; but there are also elements which suggest precedents in France, especially the window tracery and the large rose window in the choir gable. From 1270 to the 1290s, St Paul’s was the greatest architectural undertaking in the London area, surpassing even the works at Westminster Abbey.
3 Schofield, St Paul’s, 103–4. The height of the tower is based on the testimony of Robert Hooke and Hollar’s elevations, and the height of the spire is that recalled by Wren.
Fig. 4. View of the choir by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1657.
The interior of the New Work, as shown by Hollar in 1657 (Fig. 4), is devoid of built-in statuary, an apparent contrast to the contemporary interiors of the eastern arms of Ely or Lincoln, but at St Paul’s it is probable that all traces of internal statuary had been removed at the Reformation.
By Hollar’s time the walls were bare, partly a result of Inigo Jones’s redeco- ration in 1633–41 (of which more below). In 1609 a Herald noted 28 coats of arms in the windows of the north and south sides of the choir.4 External views (Fig. 5) show the tracery of the rose window itself, within a square, like the roses in the north transept of St-Denis, Paris, of 1235–40, and the south transept of Notre-Dame, Paris, of 1262–7.5 The east front of St Paul’s was apparently also embellished with statues in niches, since Hollar shows two tiers of niches and in the lower, larger pair, the corbels for missing figures. When the New Work was finished in 1314, St Paul’s was the largest build- ing in area in medieval Britain, and one of the largest in Europe. Further construction works followed, along the sides of the building. The most important 14th-century work was a two-storeyed cloister forming a square,
Fig. 5. The Cathedral from the east by Hollar, 1657.
4 William S. Simpson, Gleanings from Old St Paul’s (London: E Stock, 1889), 66–9. 5 Also Jean Bony, French Gothic architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), figs. 356 and 337 respectively.
inside which was an octagonal chapter house, on the south side of the nave. Both these were built by mason William Ramsey in 1332–49, and they are one of the earliest works in the Perpendicular style which was thereafter to dominate royal and church work throughout England. Because the chapter house was adapted by Wren to be his site office, it and the lower cloister survived until about 1714. Then the lowest part of their walls and buttresses were allowed to remain in the ground, to be discov- ered in 1879. For a time these remains were visible south of the Wren nave. In 2004–7 the area was landscaped to provide the setting for a disabled access to the present cathedral, and the 14th-century remains, uncovered once more, were carefully backfilled and their alignments laid out in facsimile stone (shown from the south-west in Figure 1). The low walls of the facsimile cloister and the buttress bases contain replicas of their 14th-century mouldings. In comparison to the period before 1350, the constructional history of the cathedral after the middle of the 14th century is poorly known. There was a new south window and doorway for the south transept in 1387, and some work done on the bishop’s palace which lay north-west of the cathedral. The only major constructions from 1350 up to 1530 were the building or rebuilding of the Pardon Cloister (with Sherrington’s library along one quadrant, and Becket’s chapel within the garth) in the 1420s and the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cross in the 1440s, both on the north side of the cathedral (as was the grandest private chapel, that of John of Gaunt). Apart from these developments, the basic structure of the main church, its four arms, had reached its largest form around 1314 and stayed in that con- figuration until Jones’s portico was added to the west end in 1633.
The Folkmoot, the Belfry and Paul’s Cross
North-east of the Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque cathedral lay the folk- moot. By the 11th century this open space was a well-known and possibly already ancient court. It held sessions three times a year and every citizen was expected to attend; it was the highest court in the City. In 1244 the mayor and citizens suggested to a royal judge that a vicar choral of St Paul’s, judged guilty of a murder committed in 1226, should be outlawed by a precept of the king at the folkmoot.6 Despite an order of Edward I that it should be closed, the folkmoot was still used for public meetings in 1321.
6 Helena M. Chew and Martin Weinbaum (eds), The London Eyre of 1244 (Leicester: London Record Society 6, 1970), no. 45.
As at other medieval cathedral or major monastic churches, St Paul’s had a separate stone belfry which stood in this north-east corner of its precinct, near Cheapside (its site, which probably survives intact, is below the new post-War street called New Change). The large stone belltower or belfry, built in the 1220s but probably replacing a more ancient place for the bell used in the folkmoot, contained four bells and had an image of St Paul on the top of its spire. By 1243 it was a distinctive landmark in the neighbourhood. There was a similar, probably larger belfry at Westminster built in 1249–53.7 At St Paul’s, as at Salisbury and Norwich, both the central tower of the church and a separate belfry held large bells. At Norwich, the larger, heavier bells were in the belfry, and although this is also likely at St Paul’s, we have no knowledge of the character of the bells in either loca- tion. The point has also been made, in a study of the Norwich cathedral close, that the belfry there was in a semi-public space, between the church and its main point of public access and contact with the surrounding town; the bells in the belfry were especially rung on public occasions and at festivals.8 Thus there was probably a similar historic purpose at St Paul’s which connected the sites of the ancient folkmoot, the belfry, and Paul’s Cross; the latter lay a few yards south-west of the belfry. The belfry was disposed of by Henry VIII by 1546 and its site became secular buildings, just north of another new building, St Paul’s School. St Paul’s Cross combined several functions. It was used for outdoor ser- mons; its location in the lay cemetery and the folk moot (which was still functioning in the middle of the 13th century) meant it was the place for public, especially royal or religious, announcements of national impor- tance. In 1241, 1252 and 1261, Henry III took leave of the citizens of London there before crossing over to France.9 St Paul’s Cross itself is mentioned in 1241. Possibly the building of the Cross and the nearby belfry were related projects in the two decades after about 1220. The Cross was damaged in 1382 (perhaps by the earthquake of that year), possibly repaired in 1387 and rebuilt in 1448 by Bishop Kempe as a roofed pulpit for public preach- ing. It is shown by Norden around 1610 (Fig. 6) and on the ‘unrestored’ view
7 Christopher Thomas, Robert Cowie, and Jane Sidell, The royal palace, abbey and town of Westminster on Thorney Island: archaeological excavations (1991–8) for the London Underground Limited Jubilee Line Extension Project (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 22, 2006), 71–2. The Westminster belfry was a massive stone structure, about 75ft (22.8m) square and perhaps 60ft (18.5m) high. 8 Roberta Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close: the evolution of the English cathedral land- scape (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), 189–90. 9 Henry T. Riley, Chronicles of the mayors and sheriffs of London: ad 1188 to ad 1274 (London: Trübner, 1863), 9, 20, 53.
Fig. 6. Paul’s Cross in the foreground of the Cathedral viewed from the northeast. Vignette from a map of Middlesex in John Speed, The Theatre of Empire of Great Britaine (1611).
St Paul’s Churchyard around the Cross
That part of the Churchyard which lay north-east of the cathedral build- ing, with its gate to Cheapside, was sometimes called the Cross Churchyard. This may have been because the transepts were often known as the ‘Cross’ in large churches, as much as taking its name from St Paul’s Cross; no doubt both meanings were understood and conflated. It was the only open space adjacent to the transepts. A bookbinder is known to have had premises in Paternoster Row, which ran outside the north wall of the cathedral precinct, in 1312, and several stationers are found in the cathedral churchyard shortly after 1300. Paternoster Row contained many book artisans from the late 14th century. There were two church courts held in the cathedral, both probably in parts of the north side of the building, which would need scriveners and books. This trade was transformed by the arrival of the printing press in London in the late 15th century. Although some early bookshops were at other locations around the churchyard, the emphasis by 1523 was certainly in the north-eastern part, the Cross Churchyard.10 The location of indi- vidual bookshops, and in many cases plausible suggestions as to the area they occupied, can be made from about the 1570s.11 Archaeologically,
10 James Raven, ‘St Paul’s precinct and the book trade to 1800.’ In St Paul’s: the cathedral church of London 604–2004, edited by Derek Keene, Arthur Burns and Andrew Saint, 430–1. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. 11 Peter Blayney, The bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical Society Occasional Papers 5, 1990).
unfortunately, this area has been badly damaged by the digging of the foundations of the Wren building in 1675–86 and burials in the area from 1666 to 1853. It is highly unlikely that any remains of the slight foundations of the bookshops survive in the ground to be recorded.
The Cathedral from the Reformation to 1640
By 1530, St Paul’s Churchyard was already the centre of the country’s book- selling trades. Protector Somerset destroyed three arms of the Pardon Cloister north of the nave, leaving the 15th-century library above the east walk, in 1549; thus making space for more bookshops. The spire was hit by lightning in 1561, taken down and not replaced. The separate belfry and the gates disappeared; Paul’s Cross was to follow in the 1640s. St Paul’s suffered in the Civil War and Commonwealth period, like many other cathedrals in England such as Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield and Worcester. It was not bombarded, but it was abused and the vault of the south transept was allowed to fall down in the 1650s. By this time the 14th-century chapter house was dilapidated, and half the cloister probably in ruins. Hollar would rebuild it and other parts of the cathedral in his engravings. Though this is the overall picture of decline of the building after the 1530s, there were two significant additions. The first is a group of presti- gious, large and assertive tombs of Court figures placed in the choir in the Elizabethan decades, just as there had been bishops and nobility favoured by the monarchy in the 13th and 14th centuries. This group of tombs included those of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (d 1569), Sir Nicholas Bacon (d 1579) and Sir Christopher Hatton (d 1591). All were illustrated by Hollar in the 1650s, but most perished in the Great Fire of 1666. A few broken effigies survived and are now in the crypt of the Wren cathedral. The example given here is that of Sir Thomas Heneage (d 1594), a favourite courtier of Elizabeth’s (Fig. 7). As a collection at the time, they were sec- ond in importance only to the royal and noble tombs in Westminster Abbey. A major new element in our understanding of the development of the pre-Fire cathedral comprises the recovery and analysis of fragments of the Jones portico and other fragments from his restoration of the church in 1633–41 (Fig. 8). The majority of these fragments come from excavation of 1994–6, when a tunnel was dug between two of the crypt spaces in the west part of the Wren building, where we know from the building accounts that the nearby Jones portico was dismantled in 1688 to make way for and
Fig. 7. Effigy of Sir Thomas Heneage (d. 1594), formerly in the Cathedral Quire. to provide rubble for the foundations of the new west end. Now other stones in the historic collection, housed in the south triforium of the pres- ent building, can be recognised as also being from Jones’s works (Fig. 9). The portico can be reconstructed from fragments, and a detailed picture of his whole restoration of the building is emerging from the conjunction of archaeological and documentary study.
Fig. 8. West entrance to the Cathedral with portico designed by Inigo Jones, 1633–41, drawn by Hollar, 1657.
In about 1642 the chapter of St Paul’s was abolished, and the cathedral closed. A parliamentary ordinance of August 1643 ordered the removal from all churches, as idolatrous, altars and altar-rails, crucifixes, crosses and images, but there appears to be no surviving record of iconoclastic destruction as St Paul’s at this particular point, as there was for instance at Canterbury; no doubt there was some. Like Canterbury, St Paul’s was used as a barracks in 1647–8, and in 1657–8 800 horse were quartered in it. A partition was erected in the choir, which thereby became a preaching place, in 1649;12 a new entrance to it made at the same time at the east end of the north side of the choir can be seen in the north elevation by Hollar, suggesting that the preaching place occupied the east end of the old choir, the Lady chapel. Sawpits were dug within the church, and part of
12 William Dugdale, The history of St Paul’s Cathedral in London (London: Thomas Warren, 1658), 173.
Fig. 9. Architectural fragment of a lion’s head from the upper façade of the portico designed by Inigo Jones. the pavement was demolished. In 1650 the council of state directed that the statues of King James and King Charles should be taken down and broken up (Hollar restored them in his view).13 The inscription along the cornice of the portico which alluded to Charles was also to be defaced. Despite any removal of the inscription on the portico, however, Evelyn noted after the Fire ‘the inscription in the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defaced!’14 Jones’s portico became the site of shops, and the approach to it obscured by two irregular blocks of buildings built in the space to the west, the former open space outside the west facade. Access around the north side, by the entrance to the for- mer bishop’s palace, now London House, was narrowed to 12ft (3.7m) at
13 William S Simpson, S. Paul’s Cathedral and old city life: illustrations of civil and cathe- dral life from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries (London: E Stock, 1894), 276. 14 William Bray (ed), The diary of John Evelyn (Dent: Dutton, 1966), ii, 14.
the top of Ludgate Hill and 9ft (2.7m) at the north-west corner of the por- tico. This second narrow gap, some thought, contributed to the cathedral’s catching alight in the Great Fire in 1666. This was the setting for Paul’s Cross in the years 1520 to 1640. The reconstructed plan of the medieval and Tudor cathedral outlined here is not only now used to show the relationship of medieval St Paul’s to its successor, in a panel of stone inlays in the south churchyard near the cloister (in the foreground of Figure 1), but has been the basis of a more detailed reconstruction of the Cross and its surroundings in the early 17th century.15
15 See John Wall’s discussion of the experience of preaching at Paul’s Cross in chapter three below.
CHAPTER TWO
PAUL’S CROSS AND NATIONWIDE SPECIAL WORSHIP, 1533–16421
Natalie Mears
Paul’s Cross, one of the most important outdoor public preaching places in England and able to accommodate audiences of approximately 6,000 people, is well known as a ‘site of persuasion’. It was there that ‘free-standing’ sermons—that is to say, sermons not delivered as part of a religious ser vice—were preached on issues of government policy as well as on doc trine; where public penance and recantations were performed; where pro hibited books were publicly burned, and where proclamations were published. It was also an important venue for public discourse and pro test, and a centre for news-gathering.2 Less well known is a particular ‘form of persuasion’: occasions of special worship. These were petitionary prayers, liturgies and fasts ordered by the crown for observance in all churches in the kingdom at times of natural or man-made disasters— famine, disease, bad weather, earthquakes or war—and the prayers and services in thanksgiving for divine intervention in overcoming these trou bles. At these times of crisis or celebration, the crown sought to persuade
1 I would like to thank Torrance Kirby for inviting me to the conference ‘Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion’ which stimulated me to explore the issues in this essay and also the other conference delegates, especially Mary Morrissey and Peter McCullough, for their comments and thoughts on my paper. I would also like to thank my colleagues Alex Barber and Philip Williamson for their comments on earlier drafts of the essay, and Mary Morrissey for her advice and help regarding the Corporation’s records in the London Metropolitan Archives. Most of the research for this essay was conducted as part of the project ‘British state prayers, fasts and thanksgivings, 1540s to 1940s’, led by Philip Williamson, Stephen Taylor and Natalie Mears, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council grant E007481/1. I would also like to acknowledge additional financial support provided by the Department of History, University of Durham, which enabled further research to be con ducted in London. 2 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2–8, 105–106, 108–109; Thomas Cogswell, The blessed revolution: English politics and the arming of war, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 20–36; Millar MacLure, Register of sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642, revised and expanded by Peter Pauls and Jackson Campbell Boswell, Centre for Reforma tion and Renaissance Studies, Occasional Publications 6 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989).
3 John Cooper has used the term ‘strategy of persuasion’ to describe special worship and argued, based on a selective survey of certain occasions, that it was used to ‘shore up’ the Tudors’ authority: J.P.D. Cooper, ‘“Oh Lorde save the kyng”: Tudor Royal Propaganda and the Power of Prayer,’ in Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays presented to C.S.L. Davies, ed. G.W. Bernard and S.J. Gunn (Aldershot, 2002), 179–196. As I have explained elsewhere, a more comprehensive analysis of all occasions and attention to the widespread belief in divine providence suggests instead that special worship was a shared political enterprise in which the crown sought the participation of its subjects, through prayer, fast ing and almsgiving, in helping to remedy the realm’s problems: Natalie Mears, ‘Public wor ship and political participation in Elizabethan England’, Journal of British Studies 51 (2012), 4–25. 4 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons. Contrast to Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 20, 55, 87; Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of protestant England: religion and cultural change in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries (London: St Martin’s Press, 1988), 20; Joseph Black, ‘The rhetoric of reaction: the Martin Marprelate tracts (1588–89): Anti-Martinism, and the uses of print in early modern England’, Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997), 711. 5 I exclude the sermon preached by an unknown cleric on 30 May 1630 at which Charles I and the Privy Council were present to offer thanks for the birth of the king’s first son, later Charles II (MacLure, Register of sermons, 135). As the child had only been born the previous day and as Charles came privately to the cathedral to offer thanks, subsequently remaining for the sermon, it seems unlikely that the preacher had time to rewrite his sermon to re- orientate it to the subject of the prince’s birth. Arthur Hopton, Hoptons concordancy enlarged (London: Anne Griffin for Andrew Hebb, 1635; STC 13781), sig. Q3r. 6 MacLure, The Paul’s Cross sermons; Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect nations and prophetic preaching: types and examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad’, in The English sermon revised: religion, literature and history, 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43–58; Mary Morrissey,
at times of special worship.7 The text of a fourth, which was summarised by a preacher at the Cross, has been identified, though in what ways it was abridged are unknown.8 Just one of the announcements made at Paul’s Cross in times of special worship is extant.9 Despite the possible gaps in the evidence, it seems clear that the answer lies elsewhere: in the nature of special worship itself and the purpose of the sermons ordered to be preached at these occasions. These issues not only change understand ings of how the crown—and its subjects—used Paul’s Cross as a ‘site of
‘Presenting James VI and I to the Public : Preaching on Political Anniversaries at Paul’s Cross’, in R.A. Houlbrooke, (ed.), James VI and I : ideas, authority, and government (Aldershot, 2006), 107–22; Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon : Paul’s Cross and the culture of persua sion in England, 1534–1570’, Renaissance and Reformation 31 (2008), 3–30; Torrance Kirby, ‘Signs and Things Signified: Sacramental Hermeneutics in John Jewel’s “Challenge Sermon” and the “Culture of Persuasion” at Paul’s Cross’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 11 (2009), 57–89; MacLure, Register of sermons; Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross ser- mons, 42. 7 The three sermons are William Barlow, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent: Martij 1. 1600 (London: Mathew Law, 1601; STC 1454); William Hampton, A proclamation of vvarre from the Lord of Hosts. Or Englands warning by Israels ruine shew- ing the miseries like to ensue vpon vs by reason of sinne and securitie (London: John Norton for Mathew Lawe, 1627; STC 12741), and Thomas Fuller, A sermon intended for Paul’s Crosse, but preached in the Church of St Paul’s, London, the III. of December, M.DC.XXV. (London: Nathaniell Butter, 1626; STC 11467). It is unclear how far the printed text of Barlow’s sermon fully represents what was preached. On this issue see: Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons, ch. 2; Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English preachers and their audi- ences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ch. 3. 8 On 21 July 1549, in his sermon on the gospel prescribed for the day (John 9), John Joseph summarised the substance of Cranmer’s sermon given earlier that day in the Cathedral: A chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from ad 1485 to 1559 by Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald, ed. William Douglas Hamilton (2 vols, Camden Society, old series, Westminster, 1875–77), II, 16–18. The text of Cranmer’s sermons survives: ‘A sermon concerning ye tyme of rebellion’ now in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (CCCC MS 102, 411–19). Though Torrance Kirby has demonstrated that this sermon was written by Peter Martyr Vermigli in The Zurich connection and Tudor politi- cal theology (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 125–30, with the text of the sermon tran scribed 149–80, the similarities between ‘A sermon’ and the accounts of Cranmer’s sermons in Wriothesley’s chronicle and the Grey Friar’s chronicle are striking (compare Wrioth. 2, 17 to CCCC MS 102, 462–8, 474–5, and J.G. Nichols (ed.), Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (Camden Society, old series, 53, London, 1852), 60 to CCCC MS 102, 423–40, 454, 443–50, 455–6). It is possible that Cranmer either commissioned Vermigli to write a sermon he could use at St Paul’s, or that the archbishop made use of an existing sermon by Vermigli when he ‘came sodenly to Powlles’ (Grey Friars’ Chronicle, 60). Cranmer did delegate the preaching of a third sermon on the rebellions on 31 August to Joseph, which may indicate that the archbishop was too busy to write his own sermons at this time: Grey Friars’ Chronicle, 62. Cranmer had invited Vermigli to England in October 1547 and was resident at Lambeth Palace in the summer of 1549 during the rebellions (Pietro Martire Vermigli [Peter Martyr Vermigli], ODNB). 9 John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes touching matters of the Church (London: John Day, 1563; STC 11222), 1286.
I
From 1533 to 1642, eleven occasions of special worship are known to have prompted at least one sermon at Paul’s Cross. During Edward VI’s reign, on 21 July 1549, John Joseph, chaplain to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, summarized his master’s sermon against the South Western and Kett’s rebels which had been preached earlier that day in the Cathedral.11 The following year, on 31 March, an unknown preacher delivered a thanksgiv ing sermon for the peace with France (the Treaty of Boulogne).12 Under
10 J. Robin Wright, The church and the English crown, 1305–1334: a study based on the reg- ister of Archbishop Walter Reynolds (Toronto, 1980), 351, 358; W.R. Jones, ‘The English church and royal propaganda during the Hundred Years War’, Journal of British Studies 19.1 (1979), 22–23, 27–8; D.W. Burton, ‘Requests for prayers and royal propaganda under Edward I’, Thirteenth Century England III: proceedings of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Conference, ed. P.R. Cross and S.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), 32; David S Bachrach, ‘The Ecclesia Anglicana goes to war: prayers, propaganda, and conquest during the reign of Edward I of England, 1272–1307’, Albion 36.3 (2004), 398–9. 11 MacLure, Register of sermons, 30; Wrioth. 2, 16–18. 12 MacLure, Register of sermons, 31; Wrioth. 2, 34; Grey Friars’ Chronicle, 66.
Mary I, on 2 December 1554, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, announced England’s formal reconciliation to Rome during his sermon at the Cross;13 the reconciliation was formally celebrated across the kingdom in January and February 1555.14 On 15 August 1557, after Te Deums for the victory at St Quentin had been sung at the Cathedral and a procession conducted to Cheapside and back, Nicholas Harpsfield, archdeacon of Canterbury, preached a sermon of thanksgiving.15 During Elizabeth I’s reign, Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, preached at Paul’s Cross on 1 November 1562 on English support for the Huguenots in France, a month after petitionary services had begun in the parishes.16 On 26 January 1564, Thomas Cole, archdeacon of Essex, delivered a sermon ‘to rejoice that ye plage wasse cleane sesyd, and that God had takyn it awaye from us’;17 this may have been part of a larger thanksgiving service at the Cathedral planned by Grindal.18 Five thanksgiving sermons were preached for the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.19 The fifth of these, on 24 November,
13 MacLure, Register of sermons, 31; Wrioth. 2, 124–5. 14 MacLure, Register of sermons, 37; Wrioth. 2, 126; Grey Friars’ Chronicle, 94; Diary of Henry Machyn, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius, F. V, fol. 42r (available online at http://quod.lib .umich.edu/m/machyn/). A proclamation ordering this occasion is cited in John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, relating chiefly to religion, and the reformation of it, and the emer- gencies of the Church of England (3 vols, London, 1721; 3 vols in 6; Oxford, 1822), III: 1, 264–6, but this now either untraceable or no longer extant. 15 MacLure, Register of sermons, 38; Machyn’s diary, fol. 77v. 16 MacLure, Register of sermons, 47; Grindal to Robert Horne, bishop of Winchester, 9 Oct. 1562, Guildhall Library, London [hereafter, GL], MS 9531/13: 1, fol. 26r. 17 MacLure, Register of sermons, 47; John Stowe, ‘Historical memoranda in the hand writing of John Stowe, from the same MS [Lambeth MS. 306]’, in Three Fifteenth-century chronicles with historical memoranda by John Stow, the antiquary, and contemporary notes of occurrences written by him in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. James Gairdner, Camden Society, new series, 28; Westminster, 1881), 128. The sermon proved premature, as deaths from the plague rose again the following month: Grindal to Cecil, 22 February 1564, BL, Lansdowne MS 7, fols. 141r–141v. 18 Grindal to Cecil, 15 December 1563, BL, Lansdowne MS 6, fol. 192r. Grindal told Cecil that ‘I entende att that time, to have a sermon & some solempne assemblye off the Companies att powles on some wednesdaye, to geve godde thankes’. There is some confusion over when thanksgivings were formally ordered to be observed in London and elsewhere. This is examined in National prayers: special worship since the Reformation. Volume 1: Fasts, thanksgivings and occasional prayers in the British Isles, 1533–1688, eds Natalie Mears, Alasdair Raffe, Stephen Taylor and Philip Williamson with Lucy Bates (Church of England Record Society, forthcoming, 2013), see occasion 1564-E. 19 The sermons were preached on 20 August (Alexander Nowell); 8 September (unknown preacher, though not, according to his ODNB entry, Nowell who preached in the Cathedral on this day), 17 November (Accession Day; Thomas Cooper, bishop of Winchester); 19 November (unknown preacher) and 24 November (John Piers, bishop of Salisbury). MacLure, Register of sermons, 66. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and establishment of religion, and other various occurrences in the Church of England, during Queen Elizabeth’s happy reign (London: John Wyat, 1709; 4 vols in 7; Oxford, 1824), II:2, 27–31.
The thanksgiving service (for 19 November) was not ordered until late in the autumn: privy council to the archbishop of Canterbury, and to the dean and chapter of York, 3 Nov. 1588, described in Acts of the Privy Council of England, new series, ed. J.R. Dasent (46 vols; London: HMSO, 1890–1964), XVI, 334; Aylmer to Hutchinson, 5 Nov. 1588, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, ASA 5/2/84, 441–2. 20 Huntington Library, California, MS EL 1118, fols. 17v–18r. 21 MacLure, Register of sermons, 72–3. The thanksgiving was ordered in c. August: Burghley to Matthew Hutton, archbishop of York, 2 Aug. 1596, in The correspondence, with a selection from the letters, etc. of Sir Timothy Hutton (Surtees Society, XVII; London, 1843), 111–12; Edward Reynoldes to Essex, 1596, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 658, fols. 259r–60v. 22 The preachers were John Hayward, rector of St Mary Woolchurch, London (15 February); unknown (22 February) and, on 1 March, William Barlow, rector of St Dunstan-in-the-East and Orpington, Kent. MacLure, Register of sermons, 75–7; Strype, Annals, IV, 495–7; John Strype, The life and acts of John Whitgift, D.D. (London: T. Horne et al, 1718; 4 vols, Oxford, 1822), II, 441; Richard Bancroft, bishop of London, to Sir Robert Cecil, 15 February 1601, Hatfield House, Herts, CP 76/75; same to same, 21 February 1601, HH, CP 180/27; William Barlow (d.1613), ODNB; Barlow, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse. No order for the official thanksgiving for the failure of the rising is extant though a form of prayer was issued. See Certaine prayers collected out of a forme of godly meditations, set forth by his maiesties authoritie (London: Robert Barker, 1603; STC 16532). 23 MacLure, Register of sermons, 129–30; Fuller, A sermon intended; Royal Proclamation, 22 Jan. 1626, STC 8821. 24 MacLure, Register of sermons, 131; Hampton, A proclamation of vvarre; Royal Pro clamation, 30 June 1626, STC 8834.
and the Frenche Kynge.’25 The second announcement was made on 1 October 1562 to inform London citizens of Elizabeth’s recovery from smallpox; thanksgiving prayers were then recited.26 On this evidence, it would appear that sermons during periods of spe cial worship were preached at Paul’s Cross primarily in the mid-Tudor period, from 1549 to 1564. After 1564, few sermons were ordered there at times of special worship, and these were clustered around the periods 1588–1601 and 1625–26. It would also appear that, throughout the 16th and early -17th century, Paul’s Cross tended to be used to mark thanksgivings (eleven sermons and both announcements) rather than petitionary wor ship;27 and that it was only from 1588 that Cross sermons for special wor ship became fully ‘free-standing’. Before this, they tended to be connected to the Cathedral service: summarising sermons preached there earlier (as in 1549), acting as the final part of the cathedral service (1557, 1564), or notifying citizens of forthcoming services in the cathedral (1555). This is a deceptive impression, however, because it records only those sermons which explicitly addressed the events which had prompted spe cial worship. If we consider the purpose of sermons delivered during times of special worship and, indeed, the very purpose of special worship itself, a significantly different account emerges. The main purpose of these ser mons, and of special worship itself, was either to exhort listeners to repent and confess their sins, or to thank God for his merciful intervention in the realm’s affairs. It was widely believed that events such as wars, plagues, famines, and bad weather were signs of divine providence: divine warn ings against the realm’s sins. Conversely, military victories, royal childbirth and the cessation of plagues and famines were regarded as signs of God’s favour or forgiveness. Without confession and repentance, God could never be persuaded to intervene in the realm’s problems nor could he be properly thanked for his mercy. Consequently, though ministers were instructed in their sermons to ‘entreate of such matters especially as be meete for this cause of publique prayer’ during both petitionary and thanksgiving services, they were expected to emphasise the need for their
25 Foxe, Actes and monuments, 1286. In addition to making this announcement, Chedsey was ordered to read out a letter from Philip and Mary admonishing Bonner and other clergy for failing to punish heretics but which also defended Bonner from accusations of cruelty against those in prison. 26 This occasion has been classed as special worship by the investigators of the State Prayers project. Privy Council to Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, 17 October 1562, GL, Guildhall MS 9531/13.1, fol. 26r. 27 It is unclear whether Grindal’s sermon in 1562 was petitionary or thanksgiving. Hampton’s sermon in 1626 had a thanksgiving element.
28 A fourme to be vsed in common prayer twise a weeke (London: Richard Jugge and John Cawood, 1563; STC 16505), sig. Aiiiv. 29 John Aylmer, Bishop of London, to [William] Hutchinson, Archdeaconn of St Albans, 14 May 1586, HALS, ASA 5/2/54, 329. 30 John Rainoldes, A sermon vpon part of the eighteenth psalm: preached to the public assembly of scholers in the Vniuersity of Oxford the last day of August, 1586 (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1586; STC 20621.5), sigs. C1v–C2r, C2v–C3r.
of God’s word, ‘hee hath giuen vs his Mercies, but these wee haue abused: hee hath warned vs by his Iudgements, but those wee haue neglected.’31 And he justified his exhortations on the grounds that ‘The pleasantest Potion doth seldome purge so kindly as the bitterest Pill.’ Accordingly, ‘Euery one of vs (that are the Surgeons of soules) had neede to cut and lance these festered sores, and by sharpe Corrasiues make them smart at the quicke, though our Patients be impatient’.32 His message was the same, for instance, as Thomas Fuller’s, preaching during the outbreak of plague in 1625. Fuller berated his audience for their sins—‘sinnes which in former ages were but in their Infancy, are now in ours, growne to their full height and strength’—which were the cause of the plague. God had shown them much favour—‘this little fleece of ours hath beene dry, when all the earth round about vs hath been ouerwhelmed with the Deluge and Inundation of Warre’—but they had become complacent and corrupt.33 ‘[L]et vs res olue a Christian alteration and reformation,’ he extolled his audience, ‘oth erwise though this bee remoued, yet a worse thing will befall vs, which surely must be in the other life, for here naught worse can come’.34 Including these types of exhortatory sermons into examination of the relationship between Paul’s Cross and special worship shifts the under standing of how, when and by whom the Cross was used during such wor ship. First, it becomes clear that sermons preached at Paul’s Cross during periods of special worship did not decline in number after 1564. It is diffi cult to quantify this precisely, because there is no comprehensive list of exhortatory sermons preached at Paul’s Cross. Nevertheless, exhortatory sermons were a staple genre of the Cross, notably the ‘Jeremiads’, ‘pro phetic sermons’ or sermons of ‘national warning’, that is to say, sermons on Old Testament prophetic texts, usually Jeremiah or Hosea, which used the histories of nations of Israel and Nineveh, as well as those of contem porary realms, as examples the fate of sinful people.35 These developed in the 1540s and 1550s, became more common in the 1580s, and increased in number in the early 17th century.36 Therefore, to the tally of eleven
31 Abraham Gibson, The lands mourning, for vaine swearing (London: T. S[nodham] for Ralph Mab, 1613; STC 11829), 2–4. 32 Gibson, The lands mourning, 5–6. 33 Fuller, A sermon intended, 9[printed as 1]–10, 11–17, 20, 24–5, 31–33. 34 Fuller, A sermon intended, 28–9. See also 33–6, 40, 42–3. 35 For the different terms used to describe this genre of sermon, see Morrissey, ‘Elect nations and prophetic preaching’, 54 n1, and for a discussion of ‘examples’, as opposed to ‘types’, see 43–57. 36 Joy Shakespeare, ‘Plague and punishment’, in Peter Lake and Maria Dowling (eds), Protestantism and the national church in sixteenth-century England (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 101–23.
37 Adam Hill, The crie of England. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse in September 1593 (London: E[dward] Allde for B. Norton, 1595; STC 13465); Certaine prayers collected out of godly meditations, set foorth by her Maiesties authoritie in the great mortalitie (London: Ed[ward] Allde, for B. Norton, 1593; STC 16524). 38 Richard Jefferay, The sonne of Gods entertainment by the sonnes of men (London: T. P[urfoot] for Henrie Tomes, 1605; STC 14481). 39 Robert Milles, Abrahams suite for Sodome (London: William Hall for Mathew Lawe, 1612; STC 17924); A forme of praier to be vsed in London, and elsewhere in this time of drought (London: T. S[nodham] for Ralph Mab, 1611; STC 16538). 40 Gibson, The lands mourning, with specific references to the weather on 98; Sampson Price, Londons warning by Laodicea’s luke-warmnesse (London: T. Snodham] for Iohn Barnes, 1613; STC 20333); A forme of prayer to be publikely vsed in churches, during this vnsea- sonable weather, and aboundance of raine … Hosea 5.15… (London: Robert Barker, 1613; STC 16539). 41 Anthony Fawkner, Comfort to the afflicted (London: [by H. Lownes] for Robert Milbourne, 1626; STC 10718). 42 Price, Londons warning, sig. A2r. 43 Hill, The crie of England. 44 Gibson, The lands mourning, 7.
also not always appointed by the crown, and may also have used the Cross to articulate their own grievances. Thomas Cole was appointed to preach by Grindal in 1564. Although he was archdeacon of Essex and dean of Bocking, he was also a vocal opponent of the Elizabethan Settlement, and his sermon may not have taken an official line.45 Indeed, Grindal’s own sermon in 1562 may not have been ‘official’: the bishop informed Cecil of his plans to preach on Antoine de Bourbon, the king of Navarre’s political and religious vacillations and only asked the Principal Secretary if ‘ther be anie other matter which ye wisshe to be vttered ther for the present state’.46 This re-examination of the sermons preached at Paul’s Cross during periods of special worship raises doubts about current definitions of ‘political sermons’. It suggests that ‘political sermons’ cannot be defined solely as those that addressed explicitly political figures and events, such as Mary queen of Scots or the proposed Spanish Match, and/or those that delivered news to their audiences. Because divine providence was the dominant contemporary explanation of causation, sermons—and, indeed, the homilies prescribed to be read if parishes lacked a preaching minister—that addressed issues of sin and repentance were also ‘political sermons’. These sermons addressed both the root of the realm’s problems— sin—manifested in war, famine and disease, and encouraged subjects to participate in resolving such problems through confession and repen tance of sins.47 Such sermons were also ‘political’ because they provided opportunities, both for the crown and for its subjects, to articulate a range of views about what constituted ‘sin’, whether this was, according to Joseph in 1549, the ‘neglecting [of] his worde and commandment’ or, for Gibson, profane swearing.48 This definition of ‘political sermon’ is not only rele vant to those exhortatory or ‘prophetic’ sermons delivered during periods of special worship. Because divine providence was the dominant theory of causation, any sermon that attributed local or national disasters to sins and called on parishioners to repent can be regarded as a ‘political sermon’, whether or not such disasters had prompted the crown to order special worship. Thus, for instance, the ‘prophetic sermons’ preached at Paul’s Cross by Thomas White and Oliver Whitbie during outbreaks of
45 Thomas Cole (c.1520–1571), ODNB; APC, VII, 145; Three fifteenth-century chronicles, 128. 46 TNA: PRO, SP12/25/23, fol. 44r. 47 On the ‘political’ nature of prayer, fasting and other activities ordered during special worship, see: Mears, ‘Public worship and political participation’, 4–25. 48 Wrioth. 2, 17.
II
By redefining what ‘political sermons’ were, the disjuncture between ser mons preached at Paul’s Cross and occasions of special worship appears less marked. Although the number of sermons preached at Paul’s Cross which explicitly discussed the event that had prompted special worship declined after 1564, from the 1580s the number of ‘prophetic sermons’ preached at Paul’s Cross appears to have increased.50 Strikingly, however, based on the numbers that were printed, after the mid-1560s more ser mons appear to have been preached in the parish churches of London and elsewhere during (and relating to) special worship; sermons that either addressed explicitly the events which prompted special worship, or were ‘prophetic sermons’.51 This increase cannot be attributed solely to the
49 Thomas White, A sermo[n] preached at pawles Crosse on Sunday the thirde of November 1577. in the time of plague (London: [Henry Bynneman for] Francis Coldock, 1578; STC 25406); Oliver Whitbie, Londons returne, after the decrease of the sicknesse (London: N. and I. Okes, 1637; STC 25371). Though petitionary prayers had been ordered on the out break of plague in 1636, no thanksgivings appear to have been ordered when the disease declined the following year: royal proclamation, 18 October 1636, STC 9075. 50 For instance, Thomas Hopkins, Tvvo godlie and profitable sermons (London: M. Baker, 1611; STC 13771); Robert Abbot, Bee thankfull London and her sisters (London: P. Stephens and C. Meredith, 1626; STC 56). 51 Robert Wright, A receyt to stay the plague (London: Mathew Lawe, 1625; STC 26037); Sampson Price, Londons remembrancer: for the staying of the contagious sicknes of the plague by Dauids memorial (London: Edward Allde, for Thomas Harper, 1626; STC 20332); Christopher Hooke, A sermon preached in Paules Church in London and published for the instruction and consolation of all that are heauie harted, for the wofull time of God his gener- all visitation (London: E. Allde, 1603; STC 13703); William Cupper, Certaine sermons concern- ing the pestilence (London: R. Dexter, 1603; STC 6125.3); John Rainoldes, A sermon vpon part of the eighteenth psalm: preached to the public assembly of scholers in the Vniuersity of Oxford the last day of August, 1586 (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1586; STC 20621.5); John Udall, The true remedie against famine and warres Fiue sermons vpon the firste chapter of the prophesie of Ioel (London: Robert Waldegrave, [1588]; STC 24507); Richard Leake, Foure sermons preached and publikely taught by Richard Leake … immediately after the great visitation of the pestilence in the fore-sayd countie (London: Felix Kingston, 1599; STC 15342); Nicholas Bownd, Medicines for the plague that is, godly and fruitfull sermons vpon part of the twentieth Psalme … very fit generally for all times of affliction, but more particularly applied to this late visitation of the plague (London: Cuthbert Burbie, 1604; STC 3439); John Dod, Foure godlie and fruitfull sermons two preached at Draiton in Oxford shire, at a fast, enioyned by authority, by occasion of the pestilence then dangerously dispersed, likewise (London: W. Hall for W. Welbie, 1610; STC 6937.5 and subsequent reprints); John Sanford, Gods arrowe of the pesti- lence (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1604; STC 21734). ‘Prophetic sermons’ include Thomas
general increase in the publication of sermons from the late 16th century; there must have been a reason why more of these sermons were available for print, and why printers thought there was a sufficient market for them to make their publication commercially viable. It appears, instead, that the crown’s communicative practice—the ways in which it informed its subjects of important crises and celebra tions, and encouraged them to participate in them through confession and repentance of sins—changed from the 1560s. After 1564, and espe cially from the 1580s, the crown sought to communicate directly with sub jects by ordering sermons to be preached regularly in parish churches during special worship. Sermons delivered at Paul’s Cross were reserved for the provision of additional persuasion, admonition and celebration during times of particular crisis—such as the Essex Rebellion or the plague in 1625–26—or thanksgiving (Cadiz, 1596; the Armada, 1588). In 1587, for instance, the privy council ordered the bishops to ensure that ‘all parsons, vicars, Curates, and preachers with in your dioces … vse their best indeuoure in exhorting, and instrucinge the people committed to their charge, to the charitable releiving of the poore … and to the performance of everie other pointe of their sayd Lordships letters … even where there are no preachers’. Conveying these instructions to William Hutchinson, the archdeacon of St Albans, Bishop Aylmer of London reiterated the council’s urgency, instructing ‘preachers and others to take more then ordinarie paines therein’. Hutchinson was also told to ensure that all min isters were resident in their parishes to provide services and leadership during times of special worship.52 In 1589, Aylmer told Hutchinson that ‘yow shall also admonishe the ministers once in the weeke att the leaste to preache; that the people maye be stirred vpp to prayer and fastinge accordinge vnto their Christian devotion’.53 And in 1590, in preparation for petitionary services expected to be ordered in response to the threat of a Spanish invasion, Hutchinson had to report to Aylmer the parishes within his archdeaconry that lacked a preaching minister.54 In parishes without a licensed preacher, ministers were ordered to read from the
Hopkins, Tvvo godlie and profitable sermons (London: M. Baker, 1611; STC 13771); Abbot, Bee thankfull London. 52 Although the archdeaconry of St Albans was a peculiar, Aylmer’s exhortations to Hutchinson seem to have had little do with jurisdictional anomalies but were standard letters sent out to a range of ecclesiastical officials. Aylmer to Hutchinson, 8 Jan 1587, HALS, ASA 5/2/68, 369–71. 53 Aylmer to Hutchinson, 3 May 1589, HALS, ASA 5/2/89, 457. 54 Hutchinson to Aylmer, 4 April 1590, HALS, ASA 5/3/104, 497.
Book of Homilies. ‘[W]here there be no preachers’, Whitgift told the bish ops in 1586, ‘that the parsons Vicar or Curate doe Reade to the people suche homilies as are sett forthe in the booke which herewithall I sende vnto yow.’55 Indeed, as Whitgift’s instructions show, the specific homilies chosen to be read during periods of special worship were sometimes printed in the official forms of prayer ordered to be used instead of the Book of Common Prayer.56 The shift from Paul’s Cross to the parish church as the principal ‘site of persuasion’ for special worship from the 1560s was brought about princi pally by changes made in the liturgical provision for such occasions. Between 1560 and 1564, liturgical formats for petitionary and thanksgiving services were developed which became firmly established for use in post- Reformation special worship until, in September 1641, set forms of prayers for special worship were abandoned altogether (with their revival, in 1660, after the civil war and interregnum).57 The first format, established either in 1560 or 1563,58 made significant changes to the daily service in the Book of Common Prayer, and required different liturgical formats for different days of the week (Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays).59 The second for mat, established in 1564 for the thanksgiving for the end of the plague, provided a single liturgy based on the Common Prayer service but with specially composed psalms, prayers and collects and specially selected biblical readings to replace those prescribed in the Prayer Book.60 In addi tion, the Elizabethan and early Stuart regimes continued the Edwardian
55 Aylmer to Hutchinson, 14 May 1586, HALS, ASA 5/2/54, 329–30. 56 For example, see A forme of common prayer; to be used upon the eighth of July: on which day a fast is appointed by His Majesties proclamation, for the averting of the plague, and other judgements of God from this kingdom (London: Robert Barker, 1640; STC 16557). 57 This development is described and analysed in detail in Mears, ‘Special nationwide worship’, 31–72. 58 Only the text of the opening of the preface of the liturgy for 1560 is extant: A short form and order to be vsed in Common prayer thryse a Weeke, for seasonable wether, and good successe of the com[m]on affayres of the Realme (London, 1560; not STC); see John Strype, The life and acts of Matthew Parker, the first archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: John Wyat, 1711; 3 vols, Oxford, 1821), I, 179). But, because it is the same as that for A fourme to be vsed in common prayer twise a weeke (STC 16505) and the liturgical format remained the same throughout Elizabeth’s reign, it is likely that the two texts were broadly similar or the same. 59 A fourme to be vsed in common prayer (STC 16505), sigs. Aiiv-Aiiir. 60 A short fourme of thankesgeuyng to God for ceassing the contagious sicknes of the plague, to be vsed in Common Prayer, on Sundayes, Wednesdayes, and Frydayes, in steade of the Common prayers, vsed in the time of mortalitie (London: Richard Jugge and John Cawood, 1563; STC 16507); A short forme of thankesgeuing to God for the delyuerie of the Isle of Malta (London: William Seres, 1565; STC 16509).
practice of commissioning individual prayers to be recited in the daily BCP service. These liturgical developments changed the crown’s use of Paul’s Cross as a ‘site of persuasion’ in four ways. First, they distinguished between dif ferent types of special worship, particularly between those occasions which were ordered to be observed only once (mainly thanksgivings) and those ordered to be observed multiple times (daily, thrice weekly, weekly, monthly). Before 1564, sermons at Paul’s Cross had usually been preached at large, one-off (thanksgiving) services or when special worship was observed only at St Paul’s Cathedral, on occasions when the Cathedral was evidently being used to represent the kingdom as a whole. After 1564, large, one-off occasions of special worship became less common and the cathedral was not used to represent the nation as a whole again until 1872.61 Second, although sermons had been a part of special worship since the early 14th century, and although ‘exhortations’ had formed part of evangelical and early protestant services from 1544, the liturgical changes in the 1560s made sermons for the first time a common and integrated part of special worship in the parishes. Third, the sermon was not the only activity in which parishioners were expected to participate. In petitionary services, they were expected to listen to biblical readings, join in singing or reciting of psalms, and undertake silent meditation, fasting, alms-giving, and reading and studying of the scriptures. For thanksgivings, they were expected to undertake bell-ringing and organise bonfires as well. These activities were ‘an helpe to prayer’ or the ‘wings of prayer’, which humbled the flesh, made the heart contrite, brought prayers to the attention of God.62 However, such activities were at odds with Paul’s Cross which largely, and especially after the mid-1560s, provided a ‘free-standing ser mon’, divorced from other religious activities. Fourth, the new liturgies officially allowed sermons to be replaced by homilies, taken from the Book of Homilies, if the parish lacked a licensed preacher.63 This also militated against Paul’s Cross which had been used to provide London citizens with a weekly sermon at a time when the number of licensed preachers was
61 Order of the lords of the council, 2 Feb. 1872, London Gazette, 23825, 6 Feb. 1872. 62 Thomas Becon, A new pathway vnto praier ful of much godly frute and christen knowl- edge, lately made by Theodore Basille (London: John Gough, 1542; STC 1734), sigs. Lviiv, CCCivr [note this is misprinted and is the second CCCiv in this gathering], Lviiiv-Miiir, Ccccciir; Richard Whitforde, The pomander of prayer (London: Robert Redman, [1530]; STC 25421.3), sigs. Giiv-Giiir. 63 HALS, ASA 5/2/84, 441; A fourme to be vsed in common prayer (STC 16505), sigs. Aiiir-Aiiiv.
64 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons, 24. 65 A fourme to be vsed in common prayer twise a weeke (STC 16505), sig. Aiiiv. 66 Aylmer to Hutchinson, 12 Jul 1588, HALS, ASA 5/2/78, 421. 67 Documentary annals of the reformed Church of England, being a collection of injunc- tions, declarations, orders, articles of inquiry &c, ed. Edward Cardwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1839; 2 vols, 1844), II, 198–206. 68 For the extended admonitions see: An order of praier and thankes-giving, for the pre- seruation of the Queenes Maiesties life and salfetie … (London: R. Newberie, 1585; STC 16516); An order for prayer and thankes-giuing (necessary to be vsed in these dangerous times) for the safetie and preseruation of her Majesty and this realme (London: C. Barker, 1594; STC 16525); An order for prayer and thankes-giuing (necessary to be vsed in these dangerous times)
III
It would be easy to conclude that, despite the growing number of ‘pro phetic sermons’ at Paul’s Cross in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Paul’s Cross became a less important ‘site of persuasion’ for the crown, at least for a particular ‘form of persuasion’, special worship. Although the crown did not have full control over the appointment of preachers at the Cross and was not able to vet the content of their sermons (at least until the 1630s),69 successive monarchs seemed increasingly unwilling or uninterested in competing with the dean, the bishop of London and the city’s Corporation in appointing preachers for the Cross, other than during a very small number of notable crises or celebrations. This would, however, be a simplification of both the practice of, and the reasons for, ordering special worship itself and the crown’s use of Paul’s Cross as a ‘site of persuasion’. It would also neglect the large number of ‘political’ sermons, both ‘official’ and ‘independent’, preached at Paul’s Cross from the 1530s which were not connected with special worship and about which Mary Morrissey has written so eloquently, including Edwin Sandys’s sermon on Mary, queen of Scots in 1571; the series of sermons on Thomas Cartwright and the Admonition to Parliament in 1572, and those on the Spanish Match in the 1620s.70 From the Break with Rome until the outbreak of civil war, the crown’s use of Paul’s Cross as a ‘site of persuasion’ evolved. During periods of special worship, it was often used to inform the inhabitants of London of events of major political, con stitutional or religious significance;71 to quash rumours;72 to interpret the crises and to persuade subjects to accept these interpretations;73 and, on occasions, it was used to influence the behaviour of the City’s inhabitants
(London, 1594; STC 16525.7); An order of prayer and thankesgiuing (necessary to bee vsed in these dangerous times) for the safetie and preseruation of her Maiestie and this realme (London, 1598; STC 16529). For occasions for which only prayers were ordered, see the table at the end of Mears, ‘Special nationwide worship’, 31–72. This increase was partly because special worship was regularly ordered in the 1620s and 1630s for Henrietta Maria’s pregnan cies, but the commissioning of prayers was still common in the 1590s for events such as war and plague which had previously warranted liturgies. 69 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons, 97–101. 70 MacLure, Register of sermons, 52–4, 116–17, 121, 123; Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons, 85 and passim. 71 MacLure, Register of sermons, 66; Strype, Annals, II:2, 27. 72 GL, MS 9531/13, part 1, fol. 26r. 73 Richard Bancroft to Sir Robert Cecil, 15 Feb 1601, HH, CP76/75; same to same, 21 Feb 1601, HH, CP180/27; [Instructions about a sermon regarding the earl of Essex], [nd; 1601?], LPL, LPL MS 2872, fols. 57r–58r.
74 For instance, in 1549 the Corporation of London feared insurrection would break out in the City and so instigated curfews, established night watches, repaired the City gates and commandeered ordinance and gunpowder. See LMA, Court of Aldermen, Repertories 12 (1), fols. 91v, 95r, 98v–99r, 100r, 102r, 103r, 104r–105v, 107v, 110r–110v, 111r, 112r, 113v, 114v–115v, 117r–117v, 118r, 120r, 122r. For the regime’s concern about the popularity of Protestantism in the city and Edmund Bonner, bishop of London’s ‘slacknesse’ in effecting reform see: The king to [Edmund bonner], bishop of London, 2 Aug 1549, TNA: PRO, SP10/8/36; TNA: PRO, SP10/8/36; Articles to be sent to the bishop of London, [? 9 Aug 1549], TNA: PRO, SP10/8/37; Commission by letters patent to [Thomas Cranmer], arch bishop of Canterbury [and others], [8 Sept 1549], TNA: PRO, SP10/8/57; Questions put to the bishop of London, 13 Sept 1549, TNA: PRO, SP10/8/58; Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby, 18 Jan 1550, in ‘The letters of Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby, September 1549–March 1555’, ed. Susan Brigden, Camden Miscellany XXX, Camden Fourth series, 39 (1990), 109–10. On the possible unpopularity of the war in 1550, especially the financial burden it placed on the City, see: LMA, Court of Aldermen, Repertories 13 (2), fols. 527v–528r, 531r, 533r, 538r.
City. After 1564, the balance shifted towards the parish church as the main venue in which all activities for special worship were to be conducted, including preaching. But the Cross remained an important venue for spe cial worship at times of particular crisis or celebration. On these occasions the Cross still often worked in conjunction with the Cathedral and parish churches across the realm, providing an additional or focal point to ser vices conducted in parish churches across the realm. Third, the relationship between Paul’s Cross and special worship may also expand current understandings of ‘persuasion’. ‘Persuasion’ was not just about moving people to accept an ‘official’ (or ‘unofficial’) interpreta tion of an event, such as the rebellions of 1549. It was also concerned with convincing subjects to participate in particular ways (prayer, fasting, alms- giving etc) to help resolve the realm’s problems. The sermon (or homily) was one of the persuasive tools that was used to encourage people to per form these actions and to reform their behaviour. Cranmer (and presum ably Joseph) exhorted his listeners in 1549 ‘now let vs repent while wee haue tyme. for the axe is layd ready at the roote of the tree to fell it downe’.75 ‘Persuasion’, therefore, was not just a rhetorical activity, based on the spo ken or written word. It could also be a whole range of participatory actions, including, for special worship, praying, processing, singing Te Deums and, for thanksgivings, bell-ringing and bonfires. And, as a result, ‘persuasion’ by the state easily merged with independent actions, making the line between the two a thin and porous one. For instance, Oliver Pigg, a mem ber of the Dedham Conference, wrote prayers for himself and his friends to supplement the official ones during the summer of 1588.76 Others independently organised feasts, mock-battles and other celebrations on 19 November 1588, the day of the thanksgiving for the defeat of the Spanish Armada.77 Of necessity, this essay has been able to address these issues only briefly and broadly, and a number of avenues for further research suggest them selves. In particular, more attention is required on the period before 1549 which has been relatively neglected by scholars and which falls outside the scope of this essay because no sermons appear to have been delivered at Paul’s Cross during periods of special worship during these years.
75 CCCC MS 102, 485–6, 494–5. 76 Oliver Pigg, Meditations concerning praiers to almightie God for the saftie [sic] of England (London: R. R[obinson] for Thomas Man, 1589; STC 19916). 77 David Cressy, Bonfires and bells: national memory and the protestant calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989; Stroud: Sutton, 2004), ch. 7.
Although this is the period for which evidence is scarcest, it is also the period when political debate was at its most vociferous, contentions between the crown and its subjects (and, indeed, within the regime) were at their sharpest, and when it was paramount for the crown to win over its subjects to a new constitutional and religious order.
VIRTUAL PAUL’S CROSS: THE EXPERIENCE OF PUBLIC PREACHING AFTER THE REFORMATION
John N. Wall
The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project1 enables us to experience a Paul’s Cross sermon as a public event unfolding in real time, in the presence of large crowds of people, and in a space filled with the ambient noises of birds, horses, dogs, church bells, and the sounds of the crowd.2 It encourages us to explore the audibility of the sermon by allowing us to hear the preach- er’s voice at different distances from the preacher and with different sizes of crowd, ranging from about 250 people to 5,000 people. This project also allows us to explore questions about style of delivery, about the congrega- tion’s response to different kinds of passages in the sermon, and about the preacher’s use of the time of delivery in making his points. The Project combines a visual model of the north east end of Paul’s Churchyard, including St Paul’s Cathedral, the Paul’s Cross Preaching Station, and the Yard’s bookshops, with an acoustic model of the same space. The visual model (Fig. 1) was made using architectural modelling software;3 it integrates the surviving visual record of this part of London in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the work of Gipkyn (Fig. 2) and Hollar (Fig. 3), with several sets of measurements of the actual buildings and spaces being shown in the model. These include (1) measurements of the Cathedral done by Christopher Wren in the early 1660s, (2) mea- surements of the foundations of houses surrounding the Cross Yard taken
1 See vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu. The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project is supported by a digital humanities start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 2 For more on the sounds of worship in early modern England, see John Craig, ‘Psalms, groans, and dog-whippers: the soundscape of worship in the English parish church, 1547– 1642,’ in Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe, ed. Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 104–23. 3 The visual model was made by Joshua Stephens, a graduate student in architecture at NC State University, working under the supervision of David Hill, Associate Professor of Architecture at NC State. Three more graduate students in the College of Design at NC State worked on this project: Chelsea Sacks developed the graphics, Craig Johnson created the website, and Jordan Gray rendered the images.
Fig. 1. Paul’s Churchyard looking west, from the Visual Model. by surveyors after the Great Fire of 1666, and (3) measurements of the foundation of the Paul’s Cross preaching station and the cathedral made by archaeologists working over the past century in Paul’s Churchyard (Fig. 4).4 The visual model also incorporates the appearance of the sky and the angle of the sun appropriate for the time of day and the season of the year (Fig. 5).5 A simplified version of the visual model was then imported into acous- tic modelling software to produce the acoustic model.6 The acoustic
4 Sources for this information were chiefly Peter Blayney’s The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical Society, 1990) and John Schofield’s St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (London: English Heritage, 2011). 5 5 November 1622 in our model is a damp, chilly, overcast day, with the sun low on the horizon casting long shadows across the Churchyard. There is a light breeze. Because of the chill in the air, people in the surrounding buildings have built fires; their smoke con tributes to the general atmosphere of greyness. These details are provided by the website http://weatherspark.com/averages/28729/11/15/London-England-United-Kingdom which provides average weather conditions for every day in London, including 15 November (5 November on the Julian calendar), informing us that the sun rises at 7:20 am and sets at 4:12 pm on this day. Between 10:00 am and 12:00 noon, the sun rises from about 18 degrees of elevation above the horizon to 20 degrees of elevation, casting, even at noon, a long shadow across the Churchyard. The temperature typically varies from 44°F to 50°F. The weather is cloudy 87% of the time and there is a 70% chance that precipitation will be observed at some point during the day—in other words, typical late autumn weather in London. 6 The acoustic model of The Cross Yard was made by Ben Markham and Matthew Azevedo at Acentech, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fig. 2. Bishop King preaching at Paul’s Cross, Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
model enables us to hear the full text of a performance of John Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon for Tuesday 5 November 1622, delivered in early modern London pronunciation, in the acoustic space in which Paul’s Cross sermons were delivered. The recording of this sermon was made by the professional actor Ben Crystal in an anechoic recording studio at the University of Salford, in Manchester, to prevent introduction of modern
Fig. 3. Wenceslaus Hollar, St Paul’s Cathedral, north side, ca. 1655.
Fig. 4. John Schofield, St Paul’s Churchyard around 1450. ambient noise or the acoustic properties of the recording studio into the model of seventeenth-century acoustic space.7 In spite of our efforts to situate our virtual simulation of Paul’s Church yard on the best available store of data, we do not present the Virtual Paul’s
7 The script in early modern London pronunciation was prepared by the linguist David Crystal. Supervising the recording were D.J. McCaul, Ian Rattigan, and James Massiglia of the University of Salford.
Fig. 5. View of Paul’s Cross from about 50 feet, from the Visual Model.
Cross Project as a definitive recreation of Donne’s Gunpowder Day ser- mon for 1622.8 Far too much about that event is irretrievably lost to us to pretend to do so. In fact, this project is deliberately based on a sermon that, while it was ‘intended for Paul’s Cross,’ was, ‘by reason of the weather, preached in the church.’9 As a result, it enables us to model the elements of one of Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermons without pretending that we are recreating in detail a specific event of the past. On that basis, we can integrate all the information we have and all we might infer about the place, the space, and the physical circumstances, including the light and sound,10 together with the words of Donne’s text, the manner of his preaching style, and the behavior of his congregation into a single experi- ential and interactive model.
8 See John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon: a parallel-text edition, transcribed and edited, with critical commentary by Jeanne Shami (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996). 9 So we are informed by the title given this sermon for its first appearance in print. See John Donne, Fifty sermons: the second volume preached by that learned and reverend divine, John Donne (London: J. Flesher, 1649). 10 Not the smell, however. The smell must have been awful, given the open sewers, the closely-packed urban living conditions, and the large population of dogs and horses. For more on the smell, and other conditions of life in early modern urban London, see Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England (London and New Haven: Yale University Press 2007). For more on the sound of early modern England, see Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999).
The goal of this project is to make available for study our assumptions about the conditions of sermon delivery and reception, reminding us that these sermons were, originally, performances during which preacher and congregation interacted to shape their mutual experience of the occasion and of the sermon itself. We can then test the consequences of our assump- tions as they are realized in the visual model and play out in the acoustic model, always aware that we can revise the model as we develop our understanding, incorporating new research into an unfolding process of development. Scholars have recently reminded us that the Paul’s Cross sermon was a regularly-occurring public event, usually but not exclusively11 held on Sunday mornings between the hours of ten o’clock and noon, and as such, took place each time within the context of a set of expectations about content, style of delivery, length of duration, and extent and character of audience participation.12 Our process, in developing this project, has been to assemble what we do know and to explore this knowledge in progress, as a basis for reconsidering what was involved in actually staging a Paul’s Cross sermon, including such questions as the preacher’s need to gain and sustain a congregation’s attention, his need to accommodate into the per- formance the realities of ambient noise, and his need to deal with prob- lems of audibility and crowd response (Fig. 6). This process has, over time, opened up new areas of inquiry, raising questions, for example, about the order of events surrounding the actual delivery of the sermon, how the preacher got from the cathedral and across the Churchyard to Paul’s Cross, how he convened the gathered throng so he could begin his sermon, and how the whole thing came to a conclusion so people knew when it was time to leave. Paul’s Cross sermons did not happen spontaneously, we have realized; they involved the organization of time, space, and people. These open-air sermons were delivered without benefit of amplification, and in the heart of a large and bustling city of at least, by 1622, 175,000 to 225,000 people.13
11 The sermon at the center of this project, for example, was delivered on a Tuesday rather than a Sunday in 1622. 12 See especially Arnold Hunt’s The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Mary Morrissey’s Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), as well as the work of Peter McCullough and his colleagues in the ongoing project to produce the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne. 13 We do speak too easily, however, of mass communication through public preaching to large crowds at Paul’s Cross; no estimate of the size of these crowds exceeds 5,000 or 6,000, a mere 2–3% of the populace of over 200,000 people by the 1620s.
Fig. 6. View of Paul’s Cross from the Sermon House, from the Visual Model.
Crowds at these sermons ranged in social rank from the Lord Mayor of London and his entourage (and sometimes members of the nobility, the Court, and the Royal family) to members of the broader populace of London who had free access to this event and who were encouraged by governmental policy to attend.14 Wealthier members of the congregation paid to sit in benches stored in the cathedral during the week and brought out for the occasion (Fig. 6). Folks who chose to stand found their places in the area of Paul’s Churchyard behind or to the side of the established seating area. We also have had to take into account what we know about the condi- tions of delivery for a Paul’s Cross sermon. Donne scholars remind us that Donne’s sermons—like other sermons in the early modern period—were planned but not written out in advance.15 Donne went into the pulpit with notes from which he drew guidance in the process of preaching, but his sermons were, in their specifics of word choice, timing, inflection, volume,
14 Officials of the Church of England asked parish clergy in London to complete their Sunday morning worship services before 10:00 am so that parishioners could attend the Paul’s Cross sermons. 15 The best account of Donne’s preaching overall is Jeanne Shami’s John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2003).
16 I have had the privilege of being present for Professor McCullough’s performances on two occasions, one at the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge University, in 2003, and again at the Conference of the John Donne Society in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2011.
Paul Stanwood17 are regarded by their—chiefly scholarly—audiences as the equivalent of lectures, to be attended to quietly and attentively, draw- ing on our years of experience and practice as formal lecture-goers. Yet Donne’s account of his contemporary audiences paints a signifi- cantly different picture. In a sermon preached in St Paul’s Cathedral, Donne rehearses a history of congregational responses to preaching, find- ing that congregations have, historically, approached the act of hearing a sermon with expectations that their response will be active rather than passive. Donne says that from the early days of the Church, congregations had understood what was taking place was a form of theatre:
[T]he manner of hearing sermons, in the Primitive Church … testified a vehement devotion, and sense of that that was said, by the preacher, in the hearer; for, all that had been formerly used in Theaters, Acclamations and Plaudites, was brought into the Church, and not onely the vulgar people, but learned hearers were as loud, and as profuse in those declarations, those vocall acclamations, and those plaudits in the passages, and transitions, in Sermons, as ever they had been at the Stage.18
St Augustine, Donne says, reports of his congregations that ‘when the people were satisfied in any point which the Preacher handled, they would almost tell him so, by an acclamation, and give him leave to passe to another point.’ In other countries, Donne claims, ‘the people doe yet answer to the Preacher, if his questions be applyable to them, and may induce an answer, with these vocall acclamations, Sir, we will, Sir, we will not.’19 Such active and engaged congregational behavior is not unfamiliar in England, Donne says: ‘wee come too neare re-introducing this vain glori- ous fashion, in those often periodicall murmurings, and noises, which you make, when the Preacher concludeth any point; for those impertinent Interjections swallowe up one quarter of his houre.’ Active verbal response to the preacher on the part of his congregation is sufficiently loud and prolonged in congregations for whom Donne preaches that it has become a sign to some of the quality of the sermon: ‘many that were not within
17 Paul Stanwood’s delivery of Donne’s Second Prebend Sermon in 2012 at St James’s Anglican Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, is available on video: http://www .stjames.bc.ca/index.cfm?method=pages.showpage&pageid=6505c711-25b3-a18a-c596 -f1f4434f4c83. 18 Donne, The Sermons of John Donne, ed. Potter and Simpson, 10 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953–62), X.132. 19 Donne, Sermons, X.133.
Situating the Text
The text for Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon for 1622 exists in two ver- sions, one in manuscript and the other in printed form. The manuscript version is a copy prepared by a professional scribe, presumably from a copy of the text written out by Donne shortly after he delivered the ser- mon; the scribal copy was then reviewed by Donne, providing corrections in his own hand. This version was then sent to King James, where, in time, it became MS Royal 17.B.XX in the British Library. The printed version appeared as part of an anthology of sermons by Donne printed under the title Fifty Sermons in London in 1649.22 Jeanne Shami,who was the first to
20 Donne, Sermons, X.133–134. 21 http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/preaching-to-the-stalls. 22 Donne, Fifty Sermons (London: J. Flesher, 1649).
recognize MS Royal. 17B.XX as Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon, has con- ducted a careful and thorough comparison of the manuscript version and the printed version; she argues convincingly that the text of this sermon in Fifty Sermons reflects Donne’s later additions to his original manuscript version.23 Both these versions are post-delivery versions, however, products of Donne’s reflection on, or reconstruction of, the sermon he delivered, rather than the actual text he delivered on 5 November 1622. We have good reason to believe that there is substantial congruence between the version of this sermon Donne delivered on 5 November 1622 and the manuscript version; Donne wrote out his memorial reconstruction of what he actually said shortly after the day of delivery, apparently, at the request of King James, and, with other note-takers in the audience, Donne had good rea- son to make sure the version of the text he delivered was one that others would recognize.24 Nevertheless, human memory being what human memory is, inevitably there must be some distance between the text as delivered and the text recorded. Preceding them were three other versions of this sermon, or perhaps better put, three other stages of the text. One consists of the actual words Donne spoke from the pulpit on 5 November; the second is the set of notes Donne took into the pulpit to enable him to deliver a coherent, structured sermon of two hours’ duration. The third is Donne’s mental vision of the sermon, developed as he reviewed his text and wrote down his notes. Izaak Walton’s account is suggestive of the process that lay behind compo- sition of that set of notes: The latter part of his life may be said to be a continued study; for as he usu- ally preached once a week, if not oftener, so after his Sermon he never gave his eyes rest, till he had chosen out a new Text, and that night cast his Sermon into a form, and his Text into divisions; and the next day betook himself to consult the Fathers, and so commit his meditations to his memory, which was excellent. But upon Saturday he usually gave himself and his mind a rest from the weary burthen of his week’s meditations, and usually spent that day in visitation of friends, or some other diversions of his thoughts.25
23 See Shami, John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon, especially her introduction, 24–35. 24 Arnold Hunt’s The Art of Hearing demonstrates that note-taking at sermons by some members of the congregation was customary (see esp. 94–114.). 25 Izaak Walton, The life of John Donne, Dr. in divinity, and late dean of Saint Pauls Church London (London: Marriott, 1658); reprinted in The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert and Robert Sanderson (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1973), 67.
Walton imagines a Donne obsessed with sermon preparation, devoting all his time to it, except for his Saturday day off. This can hardly be an accu- rate account of the life of a man who was the Dean and chief administra- tor for a large establishment like St Paul’s Cathedral, with its continual round of worship, its large staff of clergy, musicians, bell ringers, custodi- ans, its extensive financial affairs, and the like, and all to keep up with. Nor is it likely that Donne preached weekly, or more frequently.26 But Donne preached frequently enough to have established a routine for sermon composition, so while Walton exaggerates for the sake of emphasis, and to underscore his belief that the life of a priest and Dean is wearying and burdensome, Walton’s account does suggest that sermon composition consisted of choosing a text, developing a ‘form’ or an outline of the ser- mon’s content, supported by divisions of the text into parts, augmented by readings from the Fathers, and all worked up into a coherent structure, embodied in the notes to enable his delivery. Donne might well have worked out the language of sections of his ser- mon, and committed them to memory, but the specific text of his actual sermon—if Walton is to be believed—was separated from the completion of preparation for it by at least a day, even as the writing-out of the sermon was itself separated by at least a day from its actual delivery. A conse- quence of preaching from notes rather than from a complete text that is read is that the actual words of the sermon—as opposed to the organiza- tion of ideas or the terms of the argument—are original to the occasion, are realized in performance, are part of the work of delivery. This means, as we will see in some detail, that content is fluid, that the amount of time spent on any given point is flexible, that sections of the sermon can be expanded upon or contracted according to events external to the sermon itself. Being aware of this enables us to reconsider what we might be able to know about an earlier form of this sermon, the set of notes that Donne prepared to take into the pulpit. In the process of preparing the version of Donne’s sermon for delivery by Ben Crystal, two possible clues about the contents of Donne’s set of notes have emerged. Each consists of a sentence fragment, embedded in a sequence of complete sentences but grammati- cally independent of them; the meaning content of these fragments seems related only tangentially to the meaning of the sentences that surround them.
26 For a discussion of Donne’s preaching schedule, see my essay ‘John Donne and the Practice of Priesthood,’ Renaissance Papers 2007, 1–16.
The first of these comes about thirty minutes into the sermon. Donne is here reviewing the history of monarchy in Israel. He wants to defend mon- archy, but also make something of the fact that the people of Israel demanded that God provide a king for them before God was ready to do that. So Donne claims that God intended for Israel to have a monarchy all along, but by demanding a king of God before God was ready to deliver one, the people of Israel were both asking for a good thing and showing lack of trust in God to know the right time to provide him. Donne says, They would not trust Gods meanes, theire was their first fault; And then though they desird a good thing, and intended to them, yet they fix God his tyme, they would not stay his leasure; and both these, to aske other things then God would giue, or at other tymes then God would giue them is dis- pleasing to him. use his means and stay his leysure. But yet though God were displeasd with them, he executed his owne purpose; he was angry with their manner of asking [for] a King but yet he gaue them a King. The sentence fragment—‘use his means and stay his leisure’—in the mid- dle of this passage, part of which repeats the phrase ‘stay his leisure’ from the previous sentence, does not add anything to the preceding thought, nor does it provide a transition to the next sentence; in fact, if one reads the passage, leaving this phrase out, the passage makes perfectly good sense. Donne says the people asked too soon for God to name a king, and thus displeased God, but that God did what he wanted anyway, in spite of his displeasure, and gave them a king. I suggest that this phrase ‘use his means and stay his leisure’ is in fact a survival of one of Donne’s notes to himself, somehow carried forward from Donne’s set of notes into his full draft reconstruction of the sermon. The text surrounding this sentence fragment represents Donne’s expan- sion of this note as he performed it in the actual sermon.27 Hence, Donne would not actually have said ‘use his means and stay his leisure’ because he has already made of that note what he wanted to on that occasion. I think a similar thing happened at another point, later in the sermon, about an hour and forty-five minutes into it, when Donne is pulling together his sermon’s argument so it is no longer just about Josiah and Zedekiah, but includes King James as well. Donne has suggested that kings—whether they be good kings like Josiah or bad kings like Zedekiah— are the anointed of God and therefore should be honoured and obeyed,
27 In the recording in the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project, the phrase ‘use his means and stay his leisure’ is part of the sermon as delivered by Ben Crystal, but if I could record it again I would have Ben leave it out.
Situating the Text: Liturgy
A regularly-occurring public event that involves a crowd of hundreds, even thousands of people, must assemble and follow some predetermined order of service. Donne’s congregation must have come to Paul’s Cross through the several gates opening into Paul’s Churchyard. The presence of the figure of a verger in Gipkyn’s painting, robed and carrying his verger’s wand (Fig. 7), suggests that Donne himself would have been led from the cathedral to the Cross by the verger, in procession. The sequence of events must then have begun with a Call to Order. Language used in the prayer that begins Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon locates this sermon in a litur- gical context and helps us identify a source, and text, for such a Call to Order. Donne asks, ‘O Lord open thou our lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise; for thou, O Lord, didst make haste to help us.’ Donne’s congregation would have recognized instantly this allusion to the versicles and responses of the Book of Common Prayer’s Office of Morning Prayer:
Fig. 7. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
Prieste. O Lord, open thou our lippes. Aunswere. And our mouthe shall shewe furth thy prayse. Prieste. O God, make spede to save us. Aunswere. O Lord, make haste to helpe us.28 A few lines later, he again echoes the texts of Morning Prayer. The lines ‘We praise thee, O God, we knowledge thee, to bee the Lord; All our Earth doth worship thee’ recall the opening lies of Te Deum, one of the Canticles for Morning Prayer: ‘We prayse the, O God, we knoweledge the to be the Lorde/ All the earth doth worship the, the Father everlastynge.’ Soon he echoes yet again the lines we noted before: ‘Thou Lord openest their lip- pes, that their mouth may shew forth thy prayse, for, Thou, O Lord, diddest make haste to helpe them, Thou diddest make speede to save them.’
28 Quotations from the Book of Common Prayer are from the version of 1604, a rela- tively light revision of the version of 1559.
Donne’s congregation would, presumably, have come to Paul’s Churchyard from local parish churches, or from the Choir of St Paul’s, where daily Morning Prayer would have been said or sung.29 Donne’s ver- bal echoes of this rite at the beginning of his Paul’s Cross sermon thus situ- ate the extra-liturgical occasion of the Paul’s Cross sermon within the liturgical language, and thus the liturgical practices, of the Church of England. For this reason, we have borrowed from the Book of Common Prayer necessary texts to enable this Paul’s Cross sermon to be performed. First, we have supplied, from the Book of Common Prayer, the definitive Call to Order for people formed as Christian people by use of that Prayer Book, that is ‘The Lord be with you/And with thy Spirit./Let us pray.’ In like manner a text must be introduced, so we have the actor perform ing Donne’s sermon using the form for introducing a reading from the Bible, again taken from the Prayer Book, where it is used to announce readings at the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and also at Holy Communion. According to contemporary accounts, the sermons at Paul’s Cross ended with another liturgical element, the singing of Psalms. In fact, the Gipkyn painting of a Paul’s Cross sermon shows the Choir of St Paul’s perched upon a balcony of the cathedral waiting the opportunity to lead the con- gregation in singing (Fig. 8). Presumably, the gathered congregation would
Fig. 8. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
29 Sung, surely, in the Choir of St Paul’s, by the cathedral’s professional choir of men and boys, to settings composed for use in that space. But sung not just in St Paul’s; the printed editions of the Sternhold and Hopkins’ musical settings of the Psalms, thought of by church historians as the song books of reformed worship in the Church of England, also contain settings of the Canticles and other texts of Morning and Evening Prayer, enabling parish congregations to sing the Offices as easily as they did the Psalter. Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, Al such psalmes of Dauid as Thomas Sternehold late grome of [the] kinges Maiesties Robes, didde in his life time draw into English Metre ([London]: Edwarde Whitchurche, [1549]).
have sung the Psalms in a musical setting either from the developing prac- tice of Anglican Chant, or, more likely, from the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical Psalter. Since the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project has focused on the sermon, recre- ating the singing of psalms in the acoustic space of Paul’s Churchyard has had to wait for another occasion (and more grant funding). The presence of Psalm-singing as part of the context for the Paul’s Cross sermon—along with Donne’s extensive echoes of the Book of Common Prayer earlier in the text—does, however, suggest that the congregation for the Paul’s Cross sermon gathered for an occasion more diverse in practice—and longer in duration—than simply showing up for the sermon at 10:00 and heading off for lunch when the sermon ended at 12:00. It also reminds us that the performance of the Paul’s Cross sermon was, as this point in its history, not merely an extra-liturgical event, but one grounded in the Church of England’s liturgical practice. While Reformed Protestantism rapidly devel- oped a wholly sermon-centered corporate worship life, the Church of England’s use of the Book of Common Prayer formed the context for and shaped the performance of even so extra-liturgical an event as a two-hour sermon delivered outdoors and in a large open space.
Situating the Text: Audibility
Claims for the importance of Paul’s Cross sermons suggest that these ser- mons were central to the development of the reformed Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this view, the occasion of the Paul’s Cross sermon was important not only for its role in debating and defining reformed Christianity but also for the creation of a public space and a public, urban identity in a city undergoing rapid population growth and in a time of the expansion of centralized governmental structures. Thus the Paul’s Cross sermon is argued to be an occasion for the gathering of the nation in microcosm, where the monarch’s role as Supreme Governor of the Church, the Church of England’s role as a national church unifying all the people before God and king, and the City of London’s role as the center of national cultural, political, and religious life were acted out before a significant gathering of Londoners and visitors to the city. Claims for the importance of these sermons hinge on their being deliv- ered to a significant percentage of London’s population who could actu- ally hear what was being preached to them, relying on the strength of the
Fig. 9. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
30 Common sense as well as the details of Gipkyn’s painting remind us that these crea- tures were very much part of the London urban scene. 31 Donne, Sermons, X.134. 32 Depictions of Paul’s Cross sermons are of course far more representative than they are accurate, but the Gipkyn painting shows the most folks in attendance. I have counted the number of people shown listening to the sermon in this painting several times and gotten different numbers each time, but never higher than about 250 people in attendance.
Fig. 10. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
physically available for a crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 people in the part of the Churchyard in front of the Cross structure itself, these numbers may well call for some skepticism before accepting them as actual crowd counts. Our survey of the acoustic properties of the space indicates that, while the best sites for hearing a Paul’s Cross sermon were in front of or just to the sides of the Cross pulpit, and the closer to the preacher the better, one could, theoretically, hear the preacher’s words well enough to understand them from pretty much anywhere in the Churchyard. As one might expect, people standing behind or, in general, out of sight of the preacher, or at the edges of the Churchyard, furtherest from the preacher would have had the greatest difficulty hearing. But the space itself, bounded by buildings that reflected sound, acted as a kind of natural amplifier. This means that a major element in the question of audibility is the density of the crowd, and hence how noisy it might have been. The space available for realistic listening is about 140 feet by 150 feet, or about 22, 000 square feet, comprising an irregular rectangle extending to the north wall of the Choir of the cathedral to the preacher’s left, to the north transept directly in front of the preacher, and into the larger open area between the Cross pulpit and the booksellers’ shops to the preacher’s right. Contemporary estimates of crowd size suggest that people each need about 4.5 square feet of space to themselves, yielding the possibility that about 5,000 people could fit into this space; given the fact that people were smaller physically in the early modern period, a number between 5,000
[Crystal] delivers a speech consistent with a practiced orator delivering a speech to a great outdoor crowd: the voice is strong, the cadence measured.
33 See the discussion here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/the-curious -science-of-counting-a-crowd. 34 The discussion above says that a lightly populated crowd needs about 10 square feet per person; I have gone with a slightly smaller number because, again, they were smaller than we were, and perhaps were more accustomed to standing for long periods in more densely packed crowds than we are. 35 http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/engineers-report/.
Speech varies in loudness continuously, but we have modeled a typical sus- tained sound pressure level of approximately 75 dB at a distance of 3 feet from the speaker, which is consistent with standards for loudness of raised vocal effort. [T]he slow cadence and emphasis of certain phrases helps to improve intelligibility by overcoming the effects of reverberation, ambient noise, and listeners’ imperfect attention.
Hence, the matter of audibility in Paul’s Churchyard was chiefly a matter of the density and the vocal expressiveness of the crowd rather than the distance one happened to be from the preacher. In addition, the world of early modern London—noisy though it was—was still quieter than our post-industrial world. Markham suggests that instead of [today’s] steady mid-day background noise level of perhaps 45 to 50 decibels or more, the steady-state ambient noise of the day was perhaps closer to 35 decibels at the critical frequencies when people were quiet and listening. In other words, background sound in Paul’s Cross in 1622 might have been more than 10 decibels quieter than it is now—less than half as loud. When the sound reinforcing acoustic properties of the space are taken together with the lower levels of ambient noise, Markham concludes: ‘[I]n Paul’s Cross in 1622, the signal to noise ratio was … favourable … the differ- ence between speech at 140 feet (55 dB) and 1620s background sound (roughly 35 dB) is as much as 20 dB—sufficient for a high degree of speech intelligibility.’ The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project’s website permits the user to sample Donne’s sermon from eight different locations in the Courtyard and with 4 different sizes of crowd. Especially interesting is to compare the sound of the preacher’s voice when one listens from Position 2, the Dignitary’s Box in the Sermon House to the preacher’s left, with other positions on the ground level of the Churchyard. The preacher’s voice is much clearer from the Dignitary’s Box, although more strongly reverberant, than it is from other listening positions; obviously here as in other circumstances, rank has its privileges.
Situating the Text: The Passage of Time
The standard length of a Paul’s Cross sermon was two hours, marked visu- ally by the passage of sand through an hour glass mounted adjacent to the pulpit which the preacher would turn after he had declared his text and before he launched into his sermon. This hourglass is visible in Gipkyn’s
Fig. 11. Detail of Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
36 Professor Stern’s paper, ‘“Observe the Sawcinesse of the Jackes”: Clock Jacks and the Complexity of Time in Early Modern England,’ was delivered at the 2012 Convention of the Modern Language Association, as part of the panel Clocks, Jacks, Jacquemarts: Time as Character in Early Modern Drama.
It seems unlikely, therefore, that the preacher could have talked over them. So he paused; the pause at 15 minutes past the hour would have been fairly brief, but it would have gotten longer with each passing quarter hour. The pause on the hour, at 11:00, would have been of a significant length, about a minute. Hence the bell could be an interruption to the flow of his ser- mon as it unfolded, or an opportunity to complete a thought, treat the bell as an underlining of that point, treat the pause created by the bell as a chance to catch his breath, perhaps take a sip of the wine we are told preachers kept in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross, then begin the next section of his sermon afresh. If the latter were the case, then the preacher would need to be very good at keeping track of time, able to anticipate the end of a fifteen- minute time period well enough to end a section of his sermon just in time for the bell, then be ready to launch into the next section as the echo of the bell’s tolling fades away. We have evidence from other sermons that Donne was capable of just this sort of attention to the passage of time. Preaching at the Chapel Royal on 11 February 1627, for example, Donne finds himself, toward the end of his allotted hour, needing to renegotiate the terms of his relationship with his auditors. Describing the everlasting- ness of God’s justice, Donne asserts that the news is grim—‘as long as his eternity lasts … God shall never see that soul, whom he hath accurst, deliv- ered from that curse, nor eased in it’—and just at that moment, he draws attention to the hourglass that has been marking the passage of time dur- ing the course of his preaching, and he informs his congregation that he is out of time.
But we are now in the work of an houre, and no more. If there be a minute of sand left, (There is not) If there be a minute of patience left, heare me say, This minute that is left, is that eternitie which we speake of; upon this min- ute dependeth that eternity.
Donne says, in effect, that he is now living on borrowed time as a preacher, able to continue only in hope that there is left for him ‘a minute of’ his congregation’s ‘patience.’ This precarious position is, however, one he shares with his congregation, for they, too may be out of time as well, for ‘this minute makes up your Century, your hundred yeares, your eternity, because it may be your last minute.’37
37 From Donne’s Sermon for Lent 1627, Sermons VII.368. For more on this extraordinary sermon, see my ‘John Donne and the Practice of Priesthood.’ Renaissance Papers 2007 (Columbia, SC: Camden House; Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 1–16.
Donne’s congregation, presumably, agreed to an extension of Donne’s contract, for the printed text of this sermon continues for three more pages, and the moment of patience he has successfully negotiated from his congregation becomes an opportunity for Donne to bring the sermon to a dramatic—and now positive, and hopeful, and celebratory—close. ‘[B]e this your Peace,’ Donne says, ‘[T]o know [that] God hath laid the whole curse belonging to us upon him … this glorious Sonne of God … that hangs upon the Crosse.’ Donne’s ability here to use the mutually agreed-upon conventions of preaching to entwine his theological argument into his interactions with his congregation—shifting the news from bad to good only after asking for and receiving from them the gift of more time, putting himself at their mercy even as they are at God’s mercy—demonstrates Donne’s skill at keeping time while preaching, since the whole point of this sermon depends on Donne’s ability to bring his hour-long argument to just the right place at the precise moment when the sand has run through the glass. But the effectiveness of his argument also depends on the respon- siveness of his congregation, on their willingness after an hour of preach- ing to grant him mercy, to extend to him more time to shift from bad news to good. In other words, the impact of this sermon is dependent not just on Donne’s performance, delivering the word to a passive audience, but to active collaboration between preacher and congregation.38 Donne’s ability to time his delivery to fit the time available, to build the meaning and impact of his sermon around the movement of time and the conventions of handling time in preaching, is of course enabled by the fact that he was preaching from notes and not from a set text. The passage of time, marked by the movement of sand through the hourglass, imposes the temporal structure; the preacher, working from notes, can adjust the content of his delivery to fit the time available; he can shorten his presen- tation or stretch it out, as the pace of time’s passage demands, either by reducing or expanding the number of words he uses, or speeding up or slowing down the pace of his delivery. This flexibility is lost when the text is written down. When looking for the places in Donne’s sermon for 5 November 1622 where the bells should ring, I noticed that a moment of transition often fell very close to the 15 minute break points. For example, early in the sermon, and very close to the fifteen minute mark, Donne is summarizing one of the chief points that he will develop later in the sermon:
38 Donne liked this rhetorical move so much that he tried it again in another sermon preached on 29 February 1628, in the same venue. But he didn’t try it again.
we argue not, we dispute not now: we embrace that which arises from both, that both good Kings, and bad Kings, Josiah and Zedichia, are the anointed of the lord, and the breath of the Nostrills, that is the lyfe of their people; and therefore both to be lamented when they fall into dangers, and consequently both to be preservd by all meanes, by prayer from them who are private persons, by Counsayle from them, who haue the great honor, and the great chardge to be near them, and by support and supplie from all of all sorts, from fallinge into such dangers. Having concluded this introduction, he launches into the first develop- mental section of the sermon:
These considerations, will, I thinke, haue the better impression in you, if we proceed in the handling of them, thus. First, the maine cause of the lamenta- tion, was the ruine, or the dangerous declination of the Kingdome, of that great and glorious state, the Kingdome.
Between these two statements on the Virtual Paul’s Cross website, the bell rings, marking the passage of 10:15. We have bent time somewhat to make this happen; the goal here is to test the proposition that the bell could be used to structure the text. With a sermon delivered from notes, rather than a sermon read from a prepared script, the words themselves can be made to fit the passage of time. We could have made the recording fit the time, but the sermon had been recorded months earlier, before I had any inkling that timing within the course of the sermon might be important. Ben Crystal had been told that a major agenda of the project was audibility; he had been told roughly the dimensions of the space in which his audience would be imagined to be gathered. He takes his delivery at a very deliberate pace, perfect, Ben Markham and Matt Azevedo tell me, for maximum audibility in the acous- tic space of Paul’s Churchyard. His performance of the sermon—exclud- ing the opening prayer and the reading of his text—comes in at just over two hours. But he was of necessity working with the full script, a script based closely on the manuscript of the sermon, under the necessity of say- ing every word in that script, a script that is not the actual script of the sermon, but Donne’s reconstruction of that sermon done after the fact, a time no longer under the structuring pressure of time’s passage, of the suc- cession of bells marking the fifteen minute intervals, no longer needing to accommodate congregational response, a time rich with possibilities of modification, alteration, expansion here and contraction there. The number of times transitional moments in this sermon come close to the 15 minute time markers has convinced me that in his actual deliv ery on 5 November 1622, Donne structured this sermon as he composed it
Situating the Text: Style and Interaction
We return to the question of Donne’s interactions with his congregation, those folks who may have responded to the effectiveness of his presenta- tion so strongly that they delayed his forward progress through his sermon for ‘up to a quarter of his houre.’ The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project reminds us that Donne’s performance of his sermons was not the univocal delivery of a text to a passive congregation of listeners but part of a collaborative experience, an experience that results from the encounter of occasion, preacher, and audience, a negotiated experience through which tradition, expectation, intention, and response merge into a one- or two-hours traf- fic upon the pulpit. We know that Donne sought to engage his hearers, to change his hear- ers, to bring them—through both cognitive and emotional means—to amend their lives in directions set out in the sermon. Donne once described the performance of an effective preacher in terms of a coordinated effort of body, feeling, and ideas, uniting ‘matter and manner,’ the quality of the voice (‘pleasant’) and personal manner (‘acceptably, seasonably, with a spiritual delight’), with ‘a holy delight,’ toward the goal of ‘profit’ for his congregation. Donne’s contemporaries described his preaching style in terms of its wit, its eloquence, its capacity to express and arouse feeling, to elevate, to captivate, to motivate. His words, Walton says, ‘did so work upon the affections of his hearers, as melted and moulded them into a companionable sadness.’39 One Mr. Mayne says that Donne, with his words, ‘could charm thy audience, / That at thy sermons ear was all our sense,’ that he could ‘stir up their emotions and place them at the
39 Walton, Lives, 52.
discretion / Of the familiar voice,’ and with his ‘look and hand’ and ‘speak- ing action’ could give them ‘More sermon that some teachers used to say.’40 A Mr. Chudleigh wrote that Donne ‘did not banish’ his wit when he took orders, ‘but transplanted it; / Taught it both time and place, and brought it home / To piety which it doth best become.’41 Donne preached for an audience well-experienced in sermon-going, with a high regard for the quality of performance, for the techniques of delivery, the techniques of text-handling, of division and application. Holding their attention must have been a major concern, both through cleverness of content and through skillful delivery, skillful performance of the roles of priest, prophet, spiritual guide, interpreter, model and enabler of transformation. The occasion of the early modern sermon had the potential—from a pragmatic perspective—to provide an entertaining way to spend time on a Sunday morning, create an occasion for a large social gathering with one’s neighbors, or advance a clerical career. As Jeanne Shami says, in Donne’s time, sermons satisfied many appetites—for news, for entertain- ment, for social interaction, for politics and, of course, for religious edifica- tion. They were the mass media of their day. They fulfilled the role that newspapers, and more recently television, now occupy as places where breaking news was reported, and where issues of politics, religion and cul- tural values were debated. … Sermons satisfied a high cultural appetite as well, such as that provided by the theatre. Descended from traditions of clas- sical oratory, they were ‘highly wrought pieces of literary persuasion that, like Spenserian epic or Shakespearean drama, invite[d] emotional and intel- lectual engagement between author-performer and audience’. 42 Yet this occasion could also provide—from a theological perspective—an occasion that could change lives, advance the general welfare, promote social cohesion (especially promote support for the monarchy), and open the way to eternal life. Since what we have of Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day 1622 is an after-the-fact reconstruction, our search for congregational response must lead through the text we have, looking for moments in the text at which
40 Jasper Mayne, ‘On Dr Donnes death: By Mr. Mayne of Christ-Church in Oxford,’ from the 1633 edition of Donne’s Poems, reprinted in H. Grierson, ed. The Poems of John Donne, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), I.382–4. 41 John Chudleigh, ‘On Dr. John Donne, late Dean of S. Paules, London,’ from the 1633 edition of Donne’s Poems, reprinted in Grierson, I, 394–95. 42 Jeanne Shami, ‘Women and Sermons,’ in Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan, eds. The Oxford handbook of the early modern sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 168.
Donne seems to prompt, or script, particular kinds of congregational response. Accounts of Donne’s style of delivery support a characterization of Donne’s preaching style as multi-vocal, varying in mode of delivery from section to section of the sermon, if not moment to moment of his delivery, depending on the content of each passage and its relationship to the overall structure and argument of the sermon as a whole. Donne could be analytic, discursive, informal, witty, joking, engaging, declamatory, and affective, depending on what part of the sermon he hap- pened to be in at any moment of delivery, using a style of verbal delivery appropriate for the kind of material he was covering at that moment in the section of the sermon he happened to be in and appropriate for the kind of effect he hoped to have on the audience. His manner of delivery at any moment would also be situated within an overall strategy of performance, keeping the momentum of the sermon moving forward, keeping in mind a larger arc of feeling, aware of the need to make the key points the most engaging, the most emphatic. Thus we can expect that Donne’s sermons were delivered in an energetic, engaged, empathetic, emotionally expres- sive, responsive, evocative speaking style, or, better, range of styles, always aspiring to intimacy, to engagement, sometimes confrontational, some- times laudatory, always lively, engaging, personable, and connecting with his congregation. This much we know. What we don’t know, of course, except in the most general terms, is how Donne’s congregations responded to his preaching. If Donne’s comments are any indication, they responded actively, vocally, engagingly, accepting responsibility for their side of a cooperative, interac- tive, corporate performance. We do know that certain kinds of audience response were scripted, for example the congregation’s joining in the Lord’s Prayer at the end of Donne’s opening prayer. If I am right that the event drew on models from the Book of Common Prayer for openings and closings, then congregations responses like the phrase ‘And with thy Spirit’ as the reply to ‘The Lord be With you’ were also scripted. The specifics of the congregation’s performance in response to other parts of the sermon are of course lost to us; the one way we may glimpse them is through exploring possibilities for Donne’s performance, noting places where he invites, even incites, certain kinds of response. Starting from the accounts of Donne’s preaching style, reviewed above, we can suggest portions of his Gunpowder Day sermon that seek or invite certain kinds of response. The version of Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon for 1622 at the center of the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project performs one set of possible modes of delivery. Ben Crystal’s performance ranges from the
witty to the expository to the instructional to the argumentative to the exhortative to the incantatory; the program that enables us to hear his performance of this sermon inside the acoustic model of Paul’s Churchyard also draws on a set of recorded crowd responses, so that as the speaker’s voice becomes more energetic, the congregation responds in kind. This is not offered as ‘the way it was,’ but instead is designed to remind us, always, that the congregation is present, engaged, responsive to the preacher. Here are some examples of moments in Donne’s Gunpowder Day ser- mon that suggest a style of delivery that invites specific kinds of congrega- tional response.43 1. Scripted address and response (tone of response tends to echo tone of address) V. The Lord be with you. R. And with thy Spirit. 2. Repetitive and incantatory (invests current moment with meaning, links meaning of the current moment to significance of past events; invites solemnity, awareness of the gravity of the present moment) This is the day, and these are the houres, wherein that should have been acted; In this our Day, and in these houres, We praise thee, O God, we knowledge thee, to bee the Lord; All our Earth doth worship thee; The holy Church throughout all this Land, doth knowledge thee, with com- memorations of that great mercy, now in these houres. Now, in these houres, it is thus commemorated in the Kings House, where the Head and Members praise thee; Thus, in that place, where it should have been perpetrated, where the Reverend judges of the Land doe now praise thee; Thus in the Universities, where the tender youth of this Land, is brought up to praise thee, is a detestation of their Doctrines, that plotted this; Thus it is commemorated in many severall Societies, in many severall Parishes, and thus, here, in [the shadow of] this Mother Church, in this great Congregation of thy Children, where, all, of all sorts, from the Lieutenant of thy Lieutenant, to the meanest sonne of thy sonne, in this Assembly, come with hearts, and lippes, full of thankesgiving: Now, in these hours … 3. Expository (laying out points, summarizing arguments, providing guid- ance to the organization of the sermon)
43 The quotations from Donne’s sermon for 5 November 1622 given here are from the performance script for the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project, here: http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/ script/. They all may be heard in the recordings of the sermon, here: http://vpcp.chass .ncsu.edu/listen-the-sermon/.
These considerations, will, I thinke, haue the better impression in you, if we proceed in the handling of them, thus. First, the maine cause of the lamentation, was the ruine, or the dangerous declination of the Kingdome, of that great and glorious state, the Kingdome. 4. Witty and playful or sarcastic (inviting laughter, establishing a sense of being an insider, part of a community with the preacher) Of the Autor of this booke I thinke there was never doubt made. But yet it is scarse safely donne by the Councell of Trent, when in that Canon which numbers the books of Canonicall Scriptures they leave out this booke of Lamentations. For, though I make no doubt but that they had a purpose to comprehend and inuolue yt in the name of Jeremy, yet that was not inough; for so they might haue comprehended and inu- olud Genesis and Deuteronomie and all between, in one name of Moses: and so they might haue comprehended and inuolud, the Apocalypse and some Epistles in the name of John, and haue left out the booke it selfe in the number. 5. Energetic, emotionally charged (inviting emotional response, here a sense of outrage at what was done, or attempted) They made that House which is the hyue of this kingdome, from whence all her Hony comes, that House, where Justice herselfe is conceyud, in their preparing of good laws, and inanimated and quickned and borne by the Royall assent there giuen, they made that whole house, one Murdring peece: and hauing put in theyr powder, they chargd that peece with Peers, with people, with Princes, with the King, and ment to discharg it vpward at the face of heauen, to shoote God at the face of God, Him, of whome God had sayd, Dij estis, you are gods, at the face of that God who had said so: as though they would haue reprochd the God of heauen, and not haue been beholden to him for such a king, but shoote him vp to him and bid him take his king againe, for Nolumus hunc regnare, we will not haue this king to reigne ouer vs. 6. Instructive, directive, drawing conclusions from the argument that have implications for the congregation (inviting reflection, agreement, assent to the argument) That Man must haue a large Comprehension that shall aduenture to say, of any king He is an yll king. He must know his office well and his actions well, and the actions of other princes too, who haue corre- spondence with him, before he can say so. When Christ says let your Communication be yea yea, and nay, nay, for whatsoeuer is more then these, when it comes to swearinge, that commeth of evill, Saint Augustine does not vnderstand it of the evyll disposition of the
Man that swears, but of them who will not beleeue him without swearinge. 7. Exhortatory, invitational to agreement, here at the end of the sermon (invites assent, acceptance, agreement) But lastly, and espetially let vs preserve him, by preserving God amongst vs in the true and sincere profession of his religion. Let not a mis- grounded and a disloyall imagination, of coolenes in him, coole you in your own families. Omnis spiritus qui soluit Jesum, says Saint John in the vulgate. Euery spirit that dissolues Iesus, that embraces not Iesus intirely, all Iesus, all his truth, and all his, all that suffer for him, is not of God… Cities are built of families, and so are Churches too; Euery man keepe his own family, and then euery pastor shall keepe his flock; and so the Church shalbe free from Scisme, and the state from sedition, and our Josiah preserud, prophetically, for euer, as he was historically, this day, from them, in whose pitts, the breath of our Nostrills, the anointed of the lord was taken. Amen. Such observations perhaps give us access to the ebb and flow of priestly presentation, and of congregational response, and thus help us track the give-and-take of a sermon-as-event, that is being composed as it is hap- pening, an event grounded in custom and tradition, and in the plans the preacher made before entering the pulpit and the expectations his congre- gation brought with them about how all this would unfold, yet open to discovery and surprise as it unfolds in the specific moment-by-moment realization of its composition.
Conclusion
The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project asks us to view the Paul’s Cross sermon as an event unfolding in real time, in a space shaped much like a public theatre, in the presence of a large public gathering of people who came to enjoy a public occasion even while seeking spiritual enrichment and theological education. Donne and his contemporaries cautioned their lis- teners to avoid the pleasures of the theatre even as they helped organize and participated in events that were in their own way highly theatrical, drawing on conventions and expectations of early modern culture that Paul’s churchyard and the public theatres held in common. This project does not offer conclusions so much as it seeks to incite con- versation, to provoke reconsideration of our understanding of the early
44 E.g. in Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), and elsewhere.
EARLY TUDOR SERMONS, 1520–1558
‘THE TREE AND THE WEED’: BISHOP JOHN FISHER’S SERMONS AT PAUL’S CROSS
Cecilia Hatt
John Fisher’s first public sermon against Luther was preached at Paul’s Cross in 1521, on the Sunday within the octave of Ascension Day. It was put into Latin by Richard Pace and presented to the Pope, who expressed his appreciation, but the preached English version was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, William Caxton’s son-in-law and inheritor of his press. The title page of Fisher’s sermon consisted of an elaborate woodcut which showed a mitred bishop in a pulpit, preaching to a congregation. The scene is not of Paul’s Cross, but of a church interior, because the woodcut had been designed for an earlier volume, John Fisher’s funeral sermon for King Henry VII. The bottom quarter of that title page had depicted the dead king lying in state before the preacher and people. Not many weeks after the funeral, Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, died. Bishop Fisher preached a sermon at her ‘month’s mind’ and Wynkyn printed this also, using the woodcut which had been adapted to show, instead of the king’s body, a coffin covered with a pall. This must have been quite a costly woodcut and no doubt Wynkyn was glad to be able to recycle it in this way. Wynkyn continued to print the bishop’s sermons for the next couple of decades and must have made a good profit with Fisher’s Treatise on the Penitential Psalm which went into five editions. Another occasion suitable for the special woodcut, however, did not arise until 1521, when he printed John Fisher’s sermon ‘against the pernicious doctrine of Martin Luther’. This time the printer removed the section showing Lady Margaret’s cof- fin and set it up with type: The sermon of Iohan the bysshop of Rochester made agayn the pernicious doctryn of Martyn luther within the octaues of the ascensyon by the assingnement of the most reuerend fader in god the lord Thomas Cardinal of Yorke and Legate ex latere from our holy father the pope.1 The two previous sermons had their titles printed above or below
1 This woodcut is reproduced in English Works of John Fisher, 1520–1535 ed. Cecilia A.Hatt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 76.
2 MS.Cott.Vitell.B, iv, 111. Printed in W. Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo X, 4th edn. (London: H.G. Bohn, 1846) 2, appendix lxxxvi, 606–7.
The sermon was structured around the operation of the Holy Spirit in the world. The text of the day was John 15.26: Cum venerit paracletus quem ego mittam vobis spiritum veritatis qui a patre procedit ille testimonium perhibebit de me, which he translates: ‘whan the comforter shall come whom I shall sende vnto you, the spyryte of trouthe that yssueth from my father, he shall bere wytnesse of me.’ After stating this text, Fisher embarks on a dramatic captatio benevolentiae that puts before his audience a familiar, yet troubling scenario: Full often whan the daye is clere and the sonne shyneth bryght, ryseth in some quarter of the heuen a thyk blacke clowde that darketh the face of the heuen and shadoweth from vs the clere lyght of the sonne. And stereth an hydeous tempest and maketh a grete lyghtnynge and thonderyth terrybly, so that the weyke soules and feble hertes be put in a grete fere and made almost desperate for lacke of comforte. ¶In lyke maner it is in the chyrche of Christ …3 So he continues, putting the occasional storm of heresy in the context of the continuing stability and calm of the Church. He will organise his argu- ment against Luther into four instructions, of which the first three will refute Luther’s articles and the fourth will serve to dispel the appearance of plausibility that attaches to the figure of Luther himself. In the first instruction: Cum venerit paracletus quem ego mittam vobis, spiritum verita tis qui a patre procedit, Fisher tells how Christ promised that he would be with his church at all times and that the Holy Spirit would instruct it. This promise pertains to the universal church of which the pope is the head, and the bishop demonstrates the primacy of the pope, using the figures of Moses and Aaron and Christ’s words about the position of Peter in respect of the other apostles, supporting his exegesis of the scriptural passage with quotations from Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome and others. The old law is a figure of the new, he says, using the analogy of a tree and its shadow: Whan ye se a tree stande vpright vpon the ground and his braunches spred a brode, full of leues and fruyte, yf the sonne shyne clere, this tree maketh a shadowe in the whiche shadowe ye may perceyue a fygure of the braunches of the leues and of the fruyte. Euery thynge that is in the tree hathe somwhat answerynge vnto it in the shadowe. And contrary wyse, euery parte of the shadowe hath some thynge answerynge vnto it in the tree.4
3 Fisher, English Works, 77. 4 Fisher, English Works, 79.
The tree image appears again in the second instruction, Ille testimonium perhibebit de me: ‘What meruaylous vertue, what wonderfull operacyon is in the bemes of the sonne whiche … dothe quycken and make lyfely many creatures the whiche before appered as deed!’5 This instruction is addressed to Luther’s principle of sola fides. Just as the tree puts out leaves and blossoms under the influence of the sun, so does the operation of faith, hope and charity cause a person to blossom into good works. Without the leaves and blossoms we should conclude that the tree was dead and likewise with the human being who performs no good works. Also, in a passage drawing on Robert Grosseteste’s and Albertus Magnus’s work on optics, Fisher stresses how the rays of the sun are not strong in themselves but, joined together, they are powerful and effective. His third instruction, on the text Et vos testimonium perhibebitis, quia ab initio mecum estis, addresses Luther’s sola scriptura: church tradition is also a source of knowledge and in support of this principle, Fisher quotes Origen, Damascene, and Dionysius. He cites also the operation of the Holy Spirit on church councils, the antiquity of ceremonial traditions and, bringing in something that fascinated him in his Hebraist studies, the Jewish cabala. The fourth and final instruction of this sermon offers an answer to the argument that Luther is a sincere and virtuous teacher. Fisher continues with the beginning words of the chapter that follows: haec locutus sum vobis vt non scandalizemini. Absque synagogis facient vos sed venit hora vt omnis qui interficit vos arbitretur obsequium se praestare deo. (This I haue tolde you before to the entent that ye shall not quale in your fayth, for they shall deuyde you from theyr synagoges, and the tyme shal come that euery man that mordereth you shall thynke that he dothe therby grete seruyce vnto God.) He points out that many heretics have been sincere and learned men and are all the more dangerous for that: Now than chrysten man, whan thou herest that Martyn Luther is a man of grete lernynge and hath grete redynes in scryptures and is reputed of vertu- ous lyuynge and hathe many grete adherentes, thynke that many suche hath ben before hym in the chirche of Chryst, that by theyr lernynge and mistakynge of scryptures hathe made suche tempestes in the chirche byfore this tyme.6 He has reminded us of the image of the storm cloud that opened his ser- mon, but this time lets the scenario play out to the climax:
5 Fisher, English Works, 83. 6 Fisher, English Works, 93.
O christen man, here this gracyous warnyng of our sauyour Christ, marke well what he saith. I haue warned you, sayth he, of these thynges before bycause that whan they fal ye shall not be ouerthrowen in your soules by them. As though he sayd, whan ye shal se the stormes aryse, whan ye shal behold the thick black clowdes aloft that shal darken al the face of the heuen and shadow from you the clere light of the sonne and shewe a false glys- teryng light that yssueth out of the clowde from the spirite of that tempest, and ye shall here terryble comminacyon of theyr thonderynge.7 It is an impressive picture: the unfailing laws of nature mirror the onto- logical order of God’s creation, itself mirrored by the order of human insti- tutions which are shadows of that order expressed in scriptural types. Heresy and unbelief may threaten and terrify, but the faithful need only trust to the promise of Christ which will guide the way of the church into final peace and security: Who that thus often warned wyll yet gyue faythe to Martyn Luther, or to any other suche herytyke, rather than too Christ Iesu and vnto the spyryte of trouthe, whiche is left in the chyrche of Chryst vnto the worldes ende, specy- ally to enforme vs of the trouthe? This man gothe fer wyde from the streyght waye and is neuer lyke to entre in to the port of euerlastynge rest whiche all we desyre and couet to come vnto.8 Five years later, on 11 February, Quinquagesima Sunday 1526, the bishop of Rochester preached another sermon at Paul’s Cross, later printed under the title ‘A sermon concernynge certayne heretickes; whiche than were abiured for holdynge the heresies of Martyn Luther that famous hereticke/ and for the kepyng and reteynyng of his bokes agaynst the ordinance of the bulle of pope Leo the tenthe.’ The title is slightly misleading; the argu- ment of Fisher’s sermon was directed in a general way against Luther and his followers, not principally against the abjured individuals present. A let- ter to Wolsey from John Longland, the bishop of Lincoln, suggests that Fisher had been asked in January to preach: I assertaignyd him the King ouer this your pleasour … that wuld be att the Crose hauinge the Clergy with you. ther to haue a notable clerk to prech afor you a sermond contra Lutherum, Lutherianos, fautoresque eorum, contra opera eorum et libros, et contra inducentes eadem opera in regnum … And his Grace thinks My Lord of Rochester to be moste meete to make that sermon afore you, bothe propter auctoritatem, grauitatem, et doctrinam personae.9
7 Fisher, English Works, 94. 8 Fisher, English Works, 97. 9 MS.Cott.Vit.B.v.fol.8; L&P 4 995; Ellis, 1st Series (1824) 1, LXV.
This letter is dated 5 January 1526, and it is likely that Fisher had written his sermon early, for it does not contain much direct reference to Barnes and the others; at the end of each section Fisher turns to ‘the brethren that be abjured’ with a few impromptu words, which are for the most part equally applicable to the congregation in general. The sermon was preached against the background of a hunt for heretical literature, the main target being the octavo edition of Tyndale’s New Testament, but books by Luther, Huss and Zwingli were known to be in circulation as well. Those abjured included four Hanse merchants who were found to have Luther’s books in their possession. On 8 February they were examined by Wolsey and others, who asked what they knew of Luther’s writings, what they thought of them and whether they could read Latin. All four admit- ted to knowledge of the writings and holding heretical opinions but said they would henceforth be guided by the Church. On the following Sunday they stood outside St Paul’s to listen to the bishop of Rochester’s sermon and to abjure their heresy. The fifth man was Robert Barnes, the prior of the Cambridge house of Augustinian friars, who was at that time thirty- one years old. On the previous Christmas Eve, Barnes had preached at the University church in Cambridge, at first against the practice of litigation and then going on to make swingeing criticisms of various clerical faults. He was called before the University authorities. According to Barnes, Wolsey recommended him to submit himself to his authority rather than to the law. Barnes was reluctant to do this but was finally persuaded to abjure: although he subsequently did espouse the Lutheran cause, Barnes was not a Lutheran in February 1526. He later published a Suppli cation to Henry VIII, in which he voiced various grievances against the English bishops, particularly against Fisher, who had offended him by say- ing he was not learned because Barnes had misunderstood one of the texts he quoted. One gets the impression from the Supplication that Robert Barnes was rather a disputatious man, and that Fisher had found their discussion very trying, not just because of the frustrating nature of the argument but because of what Fisher saw as the irresponsibility of Barnes’ enterprise. Much of his criticism of Robert Barnes’s sermon was not on the grounds of heresy but of ill-advisedness; to give rash utterance in public to private grievances, he thought, was a failure of charity as it was of common pru- dence, which confused the faithful and gave succour to the malicious. Fisher’s comment on one of Barnes’ pronouncements, that it was not heretical, but ‘it was folly to speak thus before the butchers of Cambridge’, is very expressive of this point of view.
This is an important point to bear in mind when considering the differ- ence between the 1521 and 1526 sermons. The predominant mood of the earlier sermon had been reassurance: Luther’s rebellion needs not to be heeded or feared because such things are commonplace. They have been predicted and they will pass away. It was not a question so much of the content of the heretical writings or teachings, disturbing though that might be, it was important that the people, especially the uneducated or ill-educated, should know where to look for guidance. By the time of the 1526 sermon, however, it is clear that Fisher was gravely worried about the effect that the controversies were having on the faithful. Heresy was not just a matter of erroneous opinion: by seeming to discount logic and scorn authority it attacked the stability of the mind itself, and in doing so desta- bilised society as well, as he pointed out, invoking the unrest and violence that had been taking place in Germany. As has been remarked, even the physical appearance of the 1521 ser- mon, against the pernicious doctrine, made a statement about its rooted- ness in the establishment and the time-honoured customs of society. In 1526, the sermon concerning certain heretics looked quite different. It was prefaced by a personal letter from Fisher to the reader, ‘My dere brother or syster in our sauior Christe Iesu/ who so euer ye be’. The letter informs us that Fisher himself had the sermon printed, which makes it, as far as we know, unique among his surviving English sermons. The reason was that ‘my wyll and mynde is that some frute myght ryse by the same vnto the christen people/ whiche be the spouse of Christe. Vnto whom (though vnworthy) I am ordeyned a minister for my lytell porcion.’10 This sense of pastoral responsibility powers the entire sermon. Heresy and wrong opin- ions grow easily and fast, like weeds, he says, and it behoves them who have care of the faithful to resist the spread of these dangerous ideas. He adds ‘I haue put forthe this sermon to be redde/ whiche for the great noyse of the people within the churche of Paules/ whan it was sayde/ myght nat be herde.’11 This is an interesting detail: people may have been heckling Fisher, or they may have been shouting at Barnes and the abjured mer- chants, or at both. At any rate, we get the impression of a rowdy and con- fused gathering, the sort of thing that was becoming increasingly common at Paul’s Cross. Fisher goes on to make a remarkable offer: And if parauenture any disciple of Luthers shall thynke/ that myn argumen- tes and reasons agaynst his maister be nat sufficient: Fyrst let hym consider/
10 Fisher, English Works, 145. 11 Fisher, English Works, 147.
that I dyd shape them to be spoken vntyll a multitude of people/ whiche were nat brought vp in the subtyll disputations of the schole. Seconde. if it may lyke the same disciple to come vnto me secretely/ and breake his mynde at more length/ I bynde me by these presentes/ both to kepe his secreasy/ and also to spare a leysoure for hym to here the bottom of his mynde/ and he shal here myne agayne/ if it so please hym: and I trust in our lorde/ that fynally we shall so agre/ that either he shal make me a Lutheran orels I shal enduce hym to be a catholyke/ and to folowe the doctryne of Christis churche.12 Apart from the bold promise that he would keep the secrecy of a Lutheran sympathiser, this declaration is significant because of its terminology. In using the words Lutheran and Catholic, Fisher is now signalling that he no longer regards Luther and his teachings as a temporary anomaly, but as a category of persons that exists in his society. He was one of the earliest users of the noun Catholic, which did not become common until the end of the century. The 1526 sermon begins with an extended prelocution, a form of which Fisher had made effective use in the past. The utility of a prelocution or protheme was that a preacher could use it to introduce an extra text which gave depth or variety to the matter of the sermon proper. On this occasion, however, the prelocution text is the text of the day, Lk.18:35–43, the story of the healing of the blind man at the wayside, who keeps crying out, ‘Son of David, have pity on me’. He takes the text of v. 42. Respice/ fides tua te saluum fecit, which he Englishes as ‘Open thyn eies/ thy faith hath made the safe.’ A more usual translation, which Fisher might well have used on a different occasion, would be ‘Your faith has made you whole’, but safety is an important issue in this sermon. This section, on the healing of the blind man, is informed by the metaphor of darkness and light. One might pick out as key passages the two sentences, ‘a certain blind man sat by the way side, begging’ and ‘And immediately he saw, and followed him, glorify- ing God’. The significance of this is that the blind man was initially sitting out of the way but on having his sight restored he followed in the way of Jesus and the disciples. The remaining part of the sermon expounds the parable of the sower, from Luke chapter 8. Alongside this parable we have also reverberating in our minds another parable, from Matt.13:24–30, of the wheat and the tares, where the word for tares or cockle is zizania, a word famously associated with heresy in the Fasciculi Zizaniorum of the previous century, an anti-Wycliffite text attributed to Thomas Netter of
12 Fisher, English Works, 147.
Walden, himself a Paul’s Cross preacher in his day. This recalls Fisher’s words in the prefatory epistle, about weeds taking hold: where they haue enteres [ = entress, i.e. entry] ones in any grounde/ it is veray herde to delyuer that grounde from them: euen so it is of these here- sies/ they nede no plantynge/ they nede no wateryng/ they nede no lowkyng/ nor wedyng/ but rankly sprynge by themselfe of a full lyght occasion. Contrary wyse it is of true doctryne of God/ this is lyke vnto the good herbes/ whiche wil nat euery where lightly growe/ but they must be set or sowen in a chosen erthe/ they must be watred/ they must be weded/ and haue moche attendaunce/ orels they wyll anone myscary.13 John Fisher divides the sermon proper into four ‘collections’, of the sower, the seed, the good earth and the increase of fruit. The second, third and fourth collections are themselves also divided. The preacher chooses to stress certain things. One is the unity of the seed: working with the analogy of Ezechiel’s wheels within wheels, Fisher shows that the Old Testament and the gospels make one ‘roundel’, the epistles another and the exposi- tions of the Fathers another, but all the roundels are inside and contribut- ing to each other. Another feature is the disposition of the good earth, which is ready prepared to receive the seed, and which shows its goodness by the fruit that it brings forth. Quoting Augustine, Fisher makes a very characteristic comment: What am I sayth he? verily nothyng els but the cophyne or the hopper of hym that soweth. The preacher may well reherse the wordes of scripture: but they be nat his wordes/ they be the wordes of Christe. And if our sauiour Christ speke nat within the preacher the sede shalbe but caste in vayne.14 Pervasive though the agricultural metaphor is, Fisher does not allow it to overpower the prelocution’s image of light: when he later remarks that the church is in ‘the clere bryghtnes of faith’, the visual effect of the former image is still operative. Similarly, the figure of the sower in the main part of the sermon is not allowed to remain merely analogous; the soil, the weeds and stones and general agricultural aspects of the story for a while suggest a vast metaphor, or rather a symbol of metaphysical reality, an expression of actual divine operation, in much the same way as the storm image of the 1521 sermon had been used to expound a physical fact as well as metaphorically to illuminate a spiritual one: ‘this sower … is the sonne of god, our sauiour Christe Iesu: and he is the very spirituall sonne of the
13 Fisher, English Works, 146. 14 Fisher, English Works, 156.
15 Fisher, English Works, 156.
demonstrate some of Fisher’s greatest strengths: his use of the prelocution and subsequent grasp of a complicated structure, his control over the images and the degree to which they proliferate within the sermon. More than this, the sermon concerning certain heretics shows us Fisher’s pastoral character, straining every nerve faithfully to discharge his episcopal duty, to meet the dissenter at the intellectual point where she happens to be. Setting aside for a while the shelter of structural authority, John Fisher directly addresses the one-to-one encounter between Christ and the human individual, the private moment of choosing or rejecting belief, as he would term it. The nurturing community of believers had been evoked before by his imagery of dependable natural phenomena. Now the equally natural, but less comforting, metaphor of growing plants threatened by weeds offers a picture of a changed grouping, still a community, but one not bolstered by exterior structures, seeking to maintain its integrity by means of the willed adherence of its separate members. Charles Taylor has coined the term ‘social imaginary’ which he explains as a common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.16 In the mental environment within which Fisher grew up, a text, whether of Scripture or anything else, was not in the first instance an object of critical survey, but another rendering of truths which people had all their lives been taught orally, visually and imaginatively. The picture of a light shining to guide some people and throwing others into relief, the scene of a field of wheat being weeded, watered and harvested, were part of a ‘social imaginary’ within which they could watch an argument taking shape, and thus in which legitimacy owed much to the processes of logic. That a teaching should remain unchanged for centuries argues powerfully for its validity; temporal conti- nuity reinforces the use of typology, a significant part of the bishop’s argu- ment. Such an environment took for granted the continuity of the Church Militant, Suffering and Triumphant, the correspondence between exter- nal sign and internal verity, which found its expression in medieval sacra- mentalism; the procession from reason to will to action, all perceived in the light of the knowledge of God. It was a correspondence expressed also in the continuity of body and spirit: Fisher would have complained that the Lutheran doctrine of the uselessness of good works put an enmity between the two. This made up the ‘social imaginary’ of the 1520s, a
16 See Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2007), 146 et passim.
PAUL’S CROSS AND THE CRISIS OF THE 1530S
Richard Rex
Long before the reign of Henry VIII, the role of Paul’s Cross in shaping English opinion, in London and beyond, had been well established. It was from Paul’s Cross, on 22 June 1483, that Dr Ralph Shaw presented Richard III’s case against the right of his nephews to succeed to the throne.1 A gen- eration earlier, in 1440, a nervy government had put up a friar to preach there when popular agitation threatened to make a saint of a man burned for heresy.2 In 1382 a friar had followed up the synodical condemnation of John Wycliffe with a sermon reporting the reconciliation of a Wycliffite sympathiser, Sir Cornelius Cloyne, won back to the orthodox doctrine of the eucharist after a miraculous vision of the consecrated host as bleeding flesh.3 So it is hardly surprising that this pulpit was used to inaugurate Henry VIII’s campaign against Luther in May 1521, when John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a lengthy sermon to accompany the prom- ulgation of the papal condemnation of Martin Luther. The burning of Luther’s books in sight of the booksellers whose shops lined the square was a pointed message, as was the public announcement that Henry had himself written a book refuting Luther’s heresies. The ceremony was attended by the cream of church and state, and Cardinal Wolsey held up a copy of the king’s book for the crowds to cheer.4 However, while events such as this underline the role of Paul’s Cross as a platform for the regime, it is important to remember that prior to 1534 the Cross was by no means under direct royal control. It was from Paul’s Cross that the Abbot of
1 Charles Ross, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 88. 2 R. Rex, ‘Which is Wyche? Lollardy and Sanctity in Lancastrian London,’ in Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c. 1400–1700, ed. Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas F. Mayer (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 88–106, at 95. 3 Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. G.H. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 260–63. 4 Richard Rex, ‘The English campaign against Luther in the 1520s,’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 5.39 (1989), 85–106. For Fisher’s sermon, see the critical edition in English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469–1535): sermons and other writings, 1520–1535, ed. Cecilia A. Hatt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 48–144; and in chap- ter one above.
Winchcombe, Richard Kidderminster, provoked the church-state crisis of 1515 by arguing that the 1512 statute restricting benefit of clergy was con- trary to divine and canon law.5 The 1530s were to see some sharp changes of direction in religious poli- tics, as Henry turned successively against his wife, the pope, his second wife, the monasteries, and ‘graven images’. These changes were all reflected at Paul’s Cross, and the political tensions of a decade of crisis and contro- versy led the Crown to seek increasing control over that pulpit. That said, we should not forget that most of the preaching there in the 1520s and 1530s, as at any time, was probably routine and unremarkable. Theologians from Oxford and Cambridge were obliged to preach there as a condition of graduation.6 In the 1530s over 100 graduates from Cambridge needed to take their turn.7 Not one of these graduation sermons is definitely recorded, nor are any of them known to survive. Indeed, few Paul’s Cross sermons of any kind survive from the 1530s, and while we know of several dozen others, the story that can be pieced together is necessarily patchy. Nevertheless, a thorough re-examination of the evidence for Paul’s Cross preaching in this decade enables us to offer a fuller picture than has previously been sketched. This is partly because new evidence has come to light, including the discovery of a previously unidentified Paul’s Cross sermon in manuscript, and partly because many of the papers and sources on which Millar MacLure based his handlist of sermons for these years have been misdated, miscalendared, and misin- terpreted in ways that have obscured the full import of the evidence.8 It is now possible both to correct MacLure’s list and to clarify numerous details in a way that gives a fuller understanding of the struggles in and over that pulpit between the Bishop of London (John Stokesley), the king’s Vicar
5 Relationes quorundam casuum selectorum ex libris Roberti Keilwey (London: T. Wight, 1602), STC 14901, fol. 181r. The best modern account of this crisis is J.D.M. Derrett, ‘The Affairs of Richard Hunne and Friar Standish,’ in Thomas More, The Apology, ed. J.B. Trapp, in The Complete Works of St Thomas More, vol. 9 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1979), 215–46, esp. 225–27. 6 See D.R. Leader, The University to 1546, in A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 174; and S.L. Greenslade, ‘The Faculty of Theology,’ 295–334 of The Collegiate University, ed. J.K. McConica in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), at 311–12. 7 See Grace Book Γ, ed. W.G. Searle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), pas- sim. Cambridge theologians required to preach at the Cross included Nicholas Shaxton in 1530 (247), George Day in 1533 (272), Matthew Parker in 1535 (296), and John Scory in 1539 (337–38). 8 M. MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 184–88, gives a list of the sermons delivered there in the 1530s.
General in Spirituals (Thomas Cromwell), and the latter’s cat’s-paw, John Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester. And this in turn leads us to the startling con- clusion that preaching at Paul’s Cross became in the 1530s an exercise fraught with risk. The new decade opened with the religious policy of the 1520s still in full swing.9 On the first Sunday of Advent 1531, a new list of forbidden books was proclaimed at Paul’s Cross, doubtless with a suitable sermon.10 The following year, however, saw a change. As Henry’s matrimonial problems became public knowledge, pulpit wars broke out across the land, and Paul’s Cross was the premier battleground. In March 1532 Henry had someone arrested for preaching against the divorce ‘in the great church’.11 Later that year an unnamed abbot (possibly Dr John Capon, alias Salcot, Abbot of St Benet’s Hulme, who was to become Bishop of Bangor in 1533, a frequent preacher at the Cross) preached there in favour of the divorce, inspiring an Observant Franciscan to offer to refute him from the same pulpit.12 And Thomas Abell’s published attack on the king’s case, his Invicta Veritas, attracted considerable interest—even the king read it, until the mounting fury evident in his marginalia got the better of him. Abell himself had preached publicly to the same effect and ended up in custody as a result.13 On Sunday 3 November, another Observant Friar, John Forest, was using Paul’s Cross to oppose Henry’s policy. It might seem strangely prescient that he forecast the pulling down of churches as a con- sequence of what was afoot, but he was probably developing a ‘thin end of
9 See Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 151–63 for the struggle against heresy in the city of London in the 1520s. 10 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (London: Longmans, 1862–1932), vol. 5, appendix 18 (hence- forth cited as LP with volume and item numbers). 11 LP 5.879, Chapuys to Charles V, 20 March 1532. Chapuys presumably meant St Paul’s. Susan Brigden identifies this preacher as ‘Dr Coke’ in London and the Reformation, 209. Laurence Cooke had succeeded the early evangelical Dr Thomas Farman as rector of All Hallows, Honey Lane, in autumn 1528. For Cooke’s presentation to All Hallows on 31 Oct. 1528, see Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense, ed. G. Hennessy (London: S. Sonnenschein, 1898), 77. Cooke was imprisoned in the Tower, and was still there in October 1532. See LP 5.1467, Whalley to Cromwell, 23 Oct. 1532. 12 LP 5.142, John Laurence to Cromwell, no date, reports the offer made by Friar Robinson. 13 LP 5.1256, Chapuys to Charles V, 26 Aug. 1532, reports his arrest and the efforts to sup- press his book. LP 5.1325, Dr Ortiz to Cobos, Rome, ca. Sept.1532, shows that Abell was also an active preacher. LP 6.19, Chapuys to Charles V, 3 Jan. 1533, notes Abell’s release on condi- tion of keeping silent. See Thomas Abell, Invicta Veritas (‘Luneberg’ [i.e. Antwerp]: [M. de Keyser], 1532. STC 61). For Henry VIII’s annotations, see Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, ed. S. Doran (London: British Library, 2009), 135, with images from Henry’s copy, now in Lambeth Palace Library.
14 LP 5.1525, Richard Lyst OFM Obs to Cromwell, 7 Nov. 1532. The Sunday before that was 3 Nov. 1532. See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 213 for Forest’s allusion to the sur- render of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. For the surrender itself, see LP 5.823, 24 Feb. 1532. 15 R. Rex, ‘Redating Henry VIII’s The Glasse of the Truthe,’ The Library, 7.4 (2003), 16–27, shows that the tract was indeed published in autumn 1532, and not, as has been suggested, in 1531. 16 LP 5.1525, Richard Lyst OFM Obs to Cromwell, 7 Nov. 1532. 17 LP 6.391, Chapuys to Charles V, 27 April 1533. This testimony may of course be coloured by Chapuys’s own undisguised hatred of Anne. 18 SP6/6, fols. 90–98 (calendared under 1534 at LP 7.266). The text has helpfully been edited by A.A. Chibi, ‘Henry VIII and his Marriage to his Brother’s Wife: the Sermon of Bishop John Stokesley of 11 July 1535,’ Historical Research 67 (1994), 40–56.
by Stokesley on Sunday 11 July 1535.19 However, the arguments for this attri- bution do not stand up to close scrutiny. According to Chapuys, Stokesley’s sermon not only argued against the validity of Henry’s marriage to Catherine but also denounced ‘the authority of the pope and … those who suffered death in its defence’ (most notably John Fisher and Thomas More, who had been executed on 22 June and 6 July respectively).20 But the man- uscript sermon in question confines itself exclusively to the subject of the marriage. While it does deny the capacity of the pope to issue a dispensa- tion for marriage to a brother’s wife, there is not a word against papal authority as such. And its entirely matter-of-fact references to various popes—using that title—make it unlikely to be later than December 1533, when Henry’s government ordered Englishmen to talk, henceforth, not of ‘popes’ but of ‘bishops of Rome’.21 There is not even a hint of a break with Rome, still less of anyone having suffered death on that account. When Stokesley’s own chaplain, Simon Matthew, preached a sermon on the supremacy in June 1535, he referred to the pope exclusively as the ‘bishop of Rome’ (11 times), and denounced Fisher and More by name for their ‘dampnable opinions’.22 In any case, the clinching argument against the identification of this manuscript with Stokesley’s 1535 sermon is the bish- op’s firm, polite, and disingenuous refusal to furnish Cromwell with a writ- ten copy of his text, on the grounds that he always preached extempore and that it would be damaging if a printed version were issued which dif- fered, as it must inevitably do, from what he had actually said.23
19 Chibi, ‘Henry VIII and his Marriage,’ 40–43. Although Chibi identifies the hand of the manuscript as Stokesley’s (42–43 and note 19), comparison of its script with that of per- sonal letters signed by Stokesley reveals several distinctive differences in letter formation, besides one very marked difference in spelling: in his correspondence, Stokesley spells the word ‘other’ as ‘odre’ (see below, at note 45), while the manuscript sermon invariably uses the form ‘oother’, suggesting that the writers pronounced the word in rather different ways. Chibi also suggests that the sermon ‘provides information that could refer only to Stokesley’ (p. 43), implying that only Stokesley could have written it. However, this information is merely a reference to the ‘determinationys off universitees’, which was of course a printed book available in the public domain. 20 Chapuys to Charles V, 11 July 1535, LP 8.1019. 21 See Chibi, ‘Henry VIII and his Marriage,’ 53, for ‘pope Damasus’, ‘Gelasius the pope’, and ‘pope Celestin’. For the instruction not to say ‘pope’, see LP 6.1510, Chapuys to Charles V, 9 Dec. 1533; and for more on this see R. Rex, ‘The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation’, Historical Journal 39 (1996), 863–94, at 879–80. 22 See Simon Matthew, A Sermon made in the cathedrall churche of saynt Paule at London, the XXVII. day of Iune, Anno. 1535. (London: Berthelet, 1535. STC 1765), passim, for the ‘bishop of Rome’; and sig. C8r for ‘doctour Fysshare and syre Thomas More’. 23 Thomas Bedyll to Cromwell, 15 July 1535, SP1/94, fol. 50r (LP 8.1043), reporting Stokesley’s demurrer. See also Stokesley to Cromwell, 17 July 1535, SP1/94, fols. 98r-99v (LP 8.1054), at 98r, explaining his refusal to supply a written text.
Everything about the sermon seems to point towards April 1533. It can- not be earlier, as it makes explicit reference to Convocation’s declaration, agreed at the beginning of that month, that marriage to a brother’s wife was contrary to divine law. It also seems to allude to the Act against Appeals to Rome, which had passed in March 1533.24 Moreover, it is hard to believe that the sermon can postdate the annulment of Henry’s first marriage on 23 May 1533, for if Cranmer had already delivered his judge- ment, it would have been strange for a sermon such as this not to mention it. Its argument, which can be easily summarised, looks very like an attempt to prepare public opinion for the imminent annulment. After an introduction outlining the necessity of the law to counteract the effects of the Fall, it draws the classic distinction between the moral, judicial and ceremonial aspects of the law of the Old Testament, emphasising that the moral law is immutable. The Levitical laws regulating marriage are classi- fied as moral rather than judicial, and from this it follows that sexual inter- course with ‘a brothers wyff carnally known before off hys oother brother’ is a ‘greet offence … agaynst Godd’ (47). The preacher then buttresses his argument with evidence from scripture (48–49) and church councils (49–52) before arguing that no human authority can dispense from this prohibition and that it is the duty of the metropolitan bishop to enforce this law within his jurisdiction (52–55). Although it finishes with a brisk dismissal of the familiar objections to the royal case from Deuteronomy and other scriptural texts (55–56), it is the insistence on the duty of arch- bishops to enforce the Levitical law which ties it firmly to the tribunal Cranmer was about to convene at Dunstable. Paul’s Cross would be used to equally dramatic effect towards the end of 1533. On 23 November, John Capon preached there to denounce the Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, who at that time was easily the most outspoken and most widely known, and arguably the most dangerous, opponent of the divorce.25 Elizabeth Barton was a nun of St Sepulchre’s
24 The preacher expresses his confidence that listeners of ‘hygh discretion and lernyng’ will have been satisfied by ‘the awtenticall order whych after grett deliberation hath been takyn both in the convocation and in the parleamentt’ (Chibi, ‘Henry VIII and his Marriage’, 47; further references in brackets in this paragraph are to this edition). Between 26 March and 4 April 1533 Southern Convocation debated the principle of marriage to a deceased brother’s wife and the question of whether the marriage between Arthur and Catherine had been consummated. See D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ et Hiberniæ (4 vols. London: R. Gosling, F. Gyles, et al, 1737), vol. III, 756–57. 25 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J.G. Nichols (London, 1852. Camden Society, 53), 37. L.P. Whatmore, ‘The Sermon against the Holy Maid of Kent and her Adherents,’ English Historical Review 58 (1943), 463–75, presents the text in modernised spelling.
in Canterbury whose experience of illness and miraculous healing in the 1520s had left her with a sense of being a vehicle of divine revelation to her contemporaries. Her visions, miracles, and prophecies won her a wide fol- lowing not only among the common people but also among the clergy and aristocracy. Around 1530 her revelations had developed a political edge as they offered dire warnings about the dangers that would ensue if Henry repudiated Catherine and married Anne. Her wide influence made her a very real threat, and she was arrested in 1533 with several of her closest associates. Under imprisonment and interrogation she apparently con- fessed her imposture, and the result was her public humiliation at the Cross. The Holy Maid’s appearance as a penitent—like so many heretics before her—was an emphatic proclamation of Henry’s triumph. Capon’s sermon portrayed her as a wilful fraud, deluded by a sense of her own importance and manipulated for malicious ends by a cabal of corrupt monks and friars. In a tirade whose keywords are ‘false’ and ‘feigned’, he ridiculed her visions and prophecies, insinuated that her relations with her spiritual advisers were far from purely spiritual, and made it omi- nously clear that placing any credence in her would be construed as trea- son. Her ‘false miracles and feigned revelations’, he concluded, had done more than anything else to foment opposition to Henry’s divorce and new marriage.26 According to Chapuys, the Holy Maid’s humiliation was to be repeated on the two following Sundays, after which she was to be taken away to repeat it further in other places. But his information was perhaps imperfect, as the show was already in Canterbury on Sunday 7 December, where Nicholas Heath delivered a lightly amended version of Capon’s sermon.27 An intriguing coda to this story shows that the regime was now keeping a close eye on Paul’s Cross. It has not previously been realised that John Rudd, a former fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, offered some ill- judged comments in mitigation of the Holy Maid’s offences in a sermon at the Cross on Sunday 28 December, and found himself a prisoner in the Counter by Tuesday. Until now this episode was thought to have taken place some months later, as the letter in which he explained himself, and sought some much-needed help, has hitherto been dated to March 1534.
26 Whatmore, ‘Sermon’, 475. The words ‘false’ and ‘feigned’ (with variants) appear 32 times each in the text, much more than any other pejoratives deployed. 27 LP 6.1460, Chapuys to Charles V, 24 Nov. 1533. See D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996), 106, for the events in Canterbury and for some helpful observations on the text of the sermon, which was amended by Cranmer himself.
But that letter should properly be assigned to 30 December 1533.28 By his own account, Rudd was concerned that, notwithstanding the nun’s con- fession of her misdeeds, various false insinuations had been made against her by Capon, which Rudd had then used in his own sermon as an exam- ple of the sort of malicious gossip he was urging his audience to avoid. His explanation is somewhat tortuous and far from straightforwardly or entirely convincing. The fact that he was a former fellow of St John’s College will not have helped him. One of his contemporaries on the fel- lowship, Henry Gold, had become one of the nun’s closest associates, and was to share her terrible fate, while the college as a whole was marked as suspect in the regime’s eyes by the influence within it of John Fisher, who had overseen its foundation and continued to watch over it keenly until his own imprisonment in spring 1534.29 Rudd probably remained in cus- tody for some months, as a letter from Thomas Cranmer to Thomas Cromwell of 28 April 1534 reports that Rudd had been persuaded to take the oath to the succession.30 This may imply some initial reluctance on his part. But the Holy Maid and her associates, including Henry Gold, had been butchered on Monday 20 April, with their severed heads then dis- played on poles at the city gates.31 That was a powerful object lesson, and John Rudd made his submission almost immediately. Ever since Millar MacLure first compiled his handlist of sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, it has been thought that autumn 1534 saw an
28 SP1/82, fol. 236 (LP 7.303), John Rudd to ‘Electo Chestrensi’, dated ‘crastina diui Tome’. Rowland Lee was elected Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (a diocese confusingly known as ‘Chester’ in late-medieval England) on 10 Jan. 1534 and consecrated on 19 April. This led James Gairdner (editor of LP 7) to identify the feast of St Thomas as that of Thomas Aquinas on 7 March, the only feast of a St Thomas between those dates. However, this feast is only rarely found in English calendars, and even then takes second place to the feast of Felicity and Perpetua the same day. I have never seen an English document dated by the feast of St Thomas Aquinas. As Lee’s promotion had been rumoured for months (LP 6.1109 and 1226, 10 Sept. and 6 Oct. 1533), and he was being called ‘Elect of Chester’ from mid- November (LP 6.1433, 1514, and 1531), ‘crastina diui Tome’ evidently refers to the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, 29 Dec. As Rudd wrote of having preached ‘Superiore dominica’, that puts his sermon on Sunday 28 Dec., making it a much more immediate response to events. 29 See R. Rex, ‘The Sixteenth Century,’ in St John’s College, Cambridge: A History, ed. P. Linehan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 5–92, at 5–29 for Fisher’s relationship with the college. See SP1/233, fols. 187 onwards (a badly damaged tax assessment of the University of Cambridge, ca. 1522–23), at fol. 195r for a list of the fellows of St John’s, which includes both Henry Gold and John Rudd. 30 See Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. J.E. Cox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846. Parker Society. The Works of Thomas Cranmer, vol. II), 287. See also Brigden, London and the Reformation, 257. 31 C. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, ed. W.D. Hamilton (2 vols. London 1875–77. Camden Society, new ser. 11 & 20), vol. 1, 24.
episcopal propaganda offensive in favour of the royal supremacy launched from that pulpit.32 In fact this was not the case. The idea was based on a claim made thirty-five years later by John Foxe in his account of the year 1534: ‘Duryng this Parlament tyme, euery Sonday preached at Paules Crosse a Byshop, which declared the Pope, not to be the head of the Churche’.33 But Foxe’s chronology here is unreliable. There is no other evi- dence for such a series of sermons having been preached in autumn 1534, and it is inconceivable that such a high-profile series could have passed entirely unnoticed at the time. That said, there was such a series of ser- mons by bishops, and it was noticed—but not in autumn 1534. The ser- mons Foxe dates to 1534 were preached in early 1536, as we know from the precise dates given in Charles Wriothesley’s chronicle.34 We shall return to them in their proper place. Preaching of the royal supremacy did not begin in earnest until Henry sent an encyclical letter to his bishops on 3 June 1535, instructing them to arrange sermons ‘against the usurped authority of the bishop of Rome’.35 The earliest surviving sermon of this campaign was preached on Sunday 13 June 1535 (although thanks to a printer’s error the date has hitherto been taken as 27 June) by Dr Simon Matthew, a canon of St Paul’s, and it was printed shortly afterwards (30 July 1535).36 Described as preached
32 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 184. 33 John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (London: John Day, 1570. STC 11223), 1200. It is evi- dent from his placement of this report that he thought these sermons were given during the Parliament of early 1534 which passed the Act of Succession, and not where MacLure placed them, during the autumn Parliament that passed the Act of Supremacy. Foxe does not mention these sermons in his earlier 1563 recension. 34 Wrioth. 1, 34–35. Foxe does not mention these sermons under 1536, though MacLure lists them correctly under that year in Paul’s Cross Sermons, 185–86. 35 G.R. Elton, Policy and Police (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 231–32, and references there. Elton ascribes the encyclical to Cromwell, but his references show that it went out under Henry’s name. 36 Simon Matthew, A Sermon made in the cathedrall churche of saynt Paule at London, the XXVII. day of Iune, Anno. 1535. (London: Berthelet, 1535. STC 17656). The dating of the sermon is not as straightforward as the title-page might suggest. The colophon is dated 30 July 1535, so if both these dates were correct, the printing would have been turned round exceptionally quickly. But Matthew took as his text 1 Peter 5:6–7 (sig. A.ii.v), taken from the epistle for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity (1 Peter 5:6–11), which in 1535 fell on 13 June. Moreover, Matthew recited the text of 1 Peter 5:5–11 almost verbatim (interestingly enough, closely following Tyndale’s version), observing that ‘This is the englyshe of the Epistle, that we rede this present sonday’ (sig. A.v.v). Finally, in alluding to John Fisher and Thomas More (C7v-C8r), Matthew speaks of them in the present tense, praying that ‘our lord gyve them grace to be repentaunt’ (C8r). This prayer would have been redundant in the case of Fisher had the sermon been preached on 27 June, as Fisher was executed on 22 June. It is therefore clear that Matthew preached his sermon on 13 June and the printer simply got the date wrong.
‘in the cathedrall’, it is presumably a ‘Paul’s Cross’ sermon delivered indoors because of heavy summer rain.37 Its agenda is too obviously public for it to have been a rival sermon to anything preached outdoors that same day, and the preacher was a regular performer at the Cross. Dr Matthew, who often appears in the records of the 1530s as Dr or Mr Simons, was a Cambridge theologian who enjoyed the patronage of John Stokesley, Bishop of London.38 His sermon is almost certainly the one referred to by Thomas Bedyll in a letter to Cromwell of July 1535, in which he explains why Stokesley was reluctant to supply a written version of his own extempore sermon of 11 July, and adds that ‘Mr Simons’ would have sent his sermon already except that he was preparing another Paul’s Cross sermon for the following Sunday (18 July).39 Simon Matthew’s Sermon made in the cathedrall churche of saynt Paule is therefore the first surviving pulpit expression of the new ideology of unquestioning obedience to the prince which was to lie at the heart of the Henrician Reformation. This point is pressed from the start. However great the spiritual privileges Christians enjoy, they have no reason ‘to thynke them selfe at liberte to disobey their superiours’.40 Matthew steers a careful course through barely charted territory, emphasising the unity of the Christian church across many nations (A7v-B2r) while observing that Christ alone—and definitely not the Bishop of Rome—is the head of that church (B2r). Scriptural testimony in favour of political obedience is then cited from Peter, Paul, and the gospels (B3r-6r) before Matthew turns finally to an assault on papal claims. The classic ‘Petrine text’ of Matthew 16:18 (‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock …’) is interpreted in what was becoming classically Henrician fashion as addressed to the apostles col- lectively rather than to Peter alone (C1v-3v). Matthew illustrates this with a well-judged analogy, arguing that Peter’s role among the apostles was
37 Stokesley’s sermon of 26 April had been delivered indoors for this reason, as was the custom when it was wet; and May that year was the wettest May in living memory. See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 234, note 110. (It sounds as though the English sum- mer weather in 1535 was akin to that of 2012.) 38 For Matthew’s London benefices, see A.A. Chibi, Henry VIII’s Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce, Royal Supremacy and Doctrinal Reform (Bern: P. Lang, 1997), 142, note 121. I am unable to explain why Matthew was frequently referred to as ‘Dr Simons’ or ‘Dr Symons’, but there is one other similar case. Until his consecration as Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner was often referred to as ‘Dr Stephens’. 39 Thomas Bedyll to Cromwell, 15 July 1535, SP1/94, fol. 46r (LP 8.1043). Stokesley’s sermon of 11 July 1535 is the one that Chibi erroneously identified with the text at SP6/6, fols. 90–98 (LP 7.266), for which see above at notes 18–19. 40 Matthew, A Sermon made in the cathedrall, sig. A3v. Further signature references to this sermon in this paragraph are given in brackets in the text.
akin to that of the Recorder of London as an appointed representative or spokesman for the city in its dealings with its true lord, the king. He adduces patristic evidence for the thesis that bishops, like their predeces- sors the apostles, are essentially equal in authority (C4v-7r). At once lamenting and condemning the intransigent opposition to the royal will displayed by John Fisher and Thomas More (C7v-8r), he insists that his audience should neither follow their example nor fear any excommunica- tion issued by the pope (C8r-v). That said, he urges restraint upon his fel- low preachers, reproving the wild talk of ‘the harlotte of Babylon, or the beaste of Rome’ typical of those he regards as fitter ‘to preche at Paulis wharfe then at Paulis crosse’ (D1v; a turn of phrase which surely shows that his own sermon was indeed intended for delivery there). The peroration reiterates the need for obedience to God and king (D2r-v). Matthew’s sermon had a second context in a pulpit debate over prayer for the dead that, as Susan Wabuda has shown, was played out at Paul’s Cross and elsewhere in 1535.41 He criticises the preacher from the previous week for ostentatiously omitting the customary prayer for the souls of the faithful departed and reminds his hearers that he has himself ‘in times paste’ confirmed the validity of such prayer with both scriptural and patristic evidence.42 This comment not only suggests that Matthew was already a regular preacher at the Cross, but also places his sermon in an ongoing exchange there. Shortly afterwards, Bishop Stokesley sought to appoint Matthew to preach there again, on Sunday 18 July, in place of Cranmer’s nominee, the Provincial of the Blackfriars, John Hilsey. This was because Stokesley suspected that Hilsey would ‘mainteigne his undiscrete faschion of remembrance of the soules departed’.43 Stokesley had himself
41 S. Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55–58. Chibi, Henry VIII’s Conservative Scholar, 141–44, gives a help- ful account of the preaching on this topic at Paul’s Cross, but errs at some points, largely owing to the miscalendaring of several of the documents in the case. 42 Simon Matthew, Sermon, sig. A5v-A6r: ‘And all though the laste sonday the preacher coude not fynde in his conscience to pray for the soules departed, saying, that he thought his prayer shuld nothynge auayle them: yet I will desyre you to praye for them…’. (This pas- sage is another of the internal indications that this sermon was meant for Paul’s Cross.) 43 Stokesley to Cromwell, 17 July 1535, SP1/94, fols. 98r-99v (LP 8.1054), at 98v. Stokesley referred to Hilsey only as ‘this prouinciall of the freres’. James Gairdner (editor of LP 8) reckoned this was George Browne, Provincial of the Austin Friars, but Susan Brigden rightly corrected this to Hilsey in the light of Hilsey’s undated letter to Cromwell, mistak- enly calendared a year early at LP 7.1643 (from which we learn that Hilsey had been nomi- nated to preach by Cranmer). See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 234. This letter belongs to 1535 because of its reference to ‘hym … that came from Norwych’ (see below, note 46).
44 Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (1570), 1439, specifies the day, but gets the year doubly wrong, giving it as 1534 while adding that it was ‘about the first begynnyng of Queene Anne Bullen’! Foxe’s interest in this sermon is that it elicited a response from one Thomas Meriall which led to his appearance as a penitent at Paul’s Cross on 19 Nov. 1535. See Brigden, London and the Reformation, 272 for the case and for the correction of the date. 45 LP 8.1054, summarising Stokesley’s letter, gives ‘order’. But ‘order’ makes little sense in the context, as Stokesley goes on to air his misgivings about what will be in the sermon. Once ‘odre’ is read as ‘other’, the confusion and obscurity are dispelled. See SP1/105, fol. 198r (LP 11.186), for a similar use of ‘odres’ (for ‘others’) in a letter of Stokesley’s. 46 Stokesley to Cromwell, 17 July 1535, SP1/94, fols. 98r-99v (LP 8.1054) at 98v for ‘Mr Symons’ and 99r for Cromwell’s intervention. The identification of the third preacher as Harcocke (a Dominican, and therefore subject to Hilsey’s provincial jurisdiction) depends on two letters. The first is Hilsey to Cromwell, undated but dateable to 17 July 1535, SP1/88, fol. 72r (LP 7.1643), in which Hilsey tells Cromwell of Stokesley’s efforts to stop him preaching the next day (i.e. Sunday 18 July), but adds that he had not intended to do so, wishing instead to have ‘hym to preche that came from Norwych’. The second is Richard Ingworth to Cromwell of 1 May 1535 (SP1/83, fol. 182r, mistakenly calendared under 1534 at LP 7.595), which reports that Harcocke had preached unsoundly in Norwich on Easter Monday (and encloses a copy of the sermon). See also Roger Townsend to Cromwell, 20 May (SP1/84, fol. 69r, mistakenly calendared under 1534 at LP 7.694); and a report of another of Harcocke’s sermons, preached on 5 May 1535 (LP 8.667). This is the only docu- ment that gives the year. Piecing together Harcocke’s story is made very difficult by the absence of clear or full dates on several of the documents in the case, which has led to their being bound and calendared in inappropriate places.
Stokesley’s attempt to hinder evangelical preaching at the Cross back- fired heavily. For Cromwell did not confine himself to overruling the bish- op’s authority on that one occasion, but, on 20 October 1535, transferred responsibility for the selection of preachers at Paul’s Cross to Hilsey.47 Hilsey, in turn, was very much under the thumb of Cromwell and Cranmer. Thus Cranmer nominated his own chaplain, Dr Francis Mallet, to preach there on the fourth Sunday of Epiphany (30 January 1536). Mallet had already done sterling work preaching the supremacy through Canterbury diocese in autumn 1535.48 The chaplain, it turned out, was the warm-up act for the bishop. Cranmer himself preached at the Cross a week later on 6 February, raising the rhetorical temperature by explaining at inordinate length that the Pope was that same Antichrist ‘who was to herald the Last Judgement and the end of the world’.49 Cranmer thus introduced that series of Paul’s Cross sermons by bish- ops, which (as noted above) was misdated to 1534 by John Foxe. At first sight it seems puzzling that this weighty series of sermons was delivered more than a year after the enactment of the royal supremacy. But the explanation probably lies in the death of Catherine of Aragon on 7 January 1536. The point of these sermons was to emphasise that her death did not herald the reconciliation with Rome for which many yearned. Such hopes were understandable. After all, it was Catherine who was the problem: once she was dead, there was no longer any reason to oppose Henry’s mar- riage to Anne. What the Lenten sermons of 1536 show is that the Break with Rome was a solution that had outgrown its problem. What had begun as an expedient had become a principle. Henry was more in love with his royal supremacy than with any of his wives. The names of the bishops who followed Cranmer were Hilsey, Longland, Tunstall, Latimer, Shaxton, and Capon (Bishop of Bangor). The most
47 Brigden, London and the Reformation, 234–35, citing BL Add. MS 48022, fols. 87–88. As Brigden shows, this was just part of a wider process by which Cromwell undermined Stokesley’s jurisdiction in his own diocese (235–38). 48 Cranmer to Cromwell, 18 Jan. 1536, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 318–19. Mallet’s sermon may have been in fulfilment of the Cambridge ‘grace’ for his DD, which was granted in 1535, after his appointment as Master of Michaelhouse. See Grace Book Γ, 300. Cranmer thanks Cromwell for his help with this in the above letter. 49 Pole to Priuli, 24 March 1536, in Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli, 5 vols. (Brixiæ: J.-M. Rizzardi, 1744–57), vol. I, 440–49, at 444, citing a letter from England of 25 February which reported that three bishops had preached about papal authority, adding that the first of them was Cranmer, who had argued ‘Episcopum Romanum esse Antichristum, & eundem, qui diem Judicii, & finem sæculi sit præcessurus’ (calendared at LP 10.631, where dated 3 April 1536). See LP 10.283, Chapuys to Charles V, 10 Feb. 1536, for an earlier summary of Cranmer’s argument.
50 LP 13.ii.695, no. 2. 51 For a fuller account of this series of sermons, and in particular of Latimer’s contribu- tion, see Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, 131–34. 52 M. MacLure, Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Cross 1534–1642, rev. & augm. by J.C. Boswell & P. Pauls (Ottawa, 1989), 20, dates Singleton’s sermon to 2 April 1536, but Torrance Kirby gives 2 April 1535 in his invaluable recent edition of this rare text: ‘Robert Singleton’s sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1535: the “true church” and the Royal Supremacy,’ Reformation and Renaissance Review 10 (2008), 343–68, esp. 348. Further references to this edition in this paragraph and the next are given as page numbers in brackets.
would have been too far ahead of the royal agenda, which was dominated at that time by the need to establish the royal supremacy. It therefore seems likely that ‘1535’ is a printer’s error, explicable by the fact that 26 March was only one day into the new calendar year.53 Singleton’s sermon, which was manifestly intended to herald a pro- gramme of church reform, fits firmly into the context of early 1536. Strongly royalist and evangelical, it is rather like the sermon Hugh Latimer was to preach a few months later at the opening of the 1536 Convocation.54 Singleton’s scorn for the monastic vow of chastity (‘they avowe that thinge that is nat in their power’) and his invocation in that context of Sodom and Gomorrah (364) chime with the presentation to Parliament that spring of the carefully distilled and edited findings of the monastic visita- tions that Cromwell had set in motion. The fact that Singleton’s sermon was almost immediately put into print with the combined arms of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn on the title page seems to confirm its programmatic character. Very few Paul’s Cross sermons of this decade were afforded the accolade of publication in print. However, the fact that this sermon sur- vives in only one copy suggests that it became a casualty of the dramatic events that shook the Court in May. The sudden fall of Anne Boleyn, brought to the scaffold on charges of adultery, incest, and treason, meant that a pamphlet with her arms emblazoned on the front would retain little market value. Whether the sermon was officially suppressed or the bookseller simply cut his losses, it looks as though this pamphlet never made it to market. And for a moment, at least, Anne’s fall made the prospects look bleak for the sort of reform Singleton stood for. It inspired a conservative backlash at the 1536 Convocation which in turn even brought Stokesley back into play at Paul’s Cross. Cromwell, though only a layman, had chosen to assert his authority as Henry VIII’s Vicar General
53 Moreover, as the regnal year began on 22 April, the sermon would have been preached in one regnal year (27 Henry VIII) but not printed until the next (28 Henry VIII). It would have been very easy for the printer to think of it as having been preached ‘last year’ and therefore to date it ‘1535’. 54 Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ et Hiberniæ, vol. III, 803, notes that this sermon was preached at the opening ceremony, which seems to have been on 15 June. It was pub- lished next year as Concio quam habuit … Hugo Latimer (Southwark: James Nicolson for John Gough, 1537. STC 15285). See also the English translation, The sermon that … Hugh Latimer made … to the clergie in conuocation (London: Berthelet, 24 March 1537. STC 15287). The delay between preaching and printing can be accounted for by the events of autumn 1536. The outbreak of the Pilgrimage of Grace in October would have made it unwise to pour oil on the flames by publishing Latimer’s sermon, while the eventual discrediting of the rebels early in 1537 probably made publication of this aggressively evangelical polemic seem more appropriate and timely.
55 Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ et Hiberniæ, vol. III, 803. For the conservative moves at the 1536 Convocation see R. Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, 2nd edn. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 117. 56 SP1/105, fol. 198r (LP 11.186), Stokesley’s covering note to Bedyll (the list itself does not survive) is undated, but endorsed ‘July’ in a contemporary hand. It is fixed to summer 1536 by its reference to Cromwell’s ‘departour from the chapitour house’. Cromwell presided at the closing ceremony of Convocation in St Paul’s on 20 July 1536. See Wilkins, Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ et Hiberniæ, vol. III, 803. When Convocation met at St Paul’s, it did so in the chapter house. 57 For Matthews (as ‘Mr Symondes’) at Paul’s Cross, see LP 11.325. 58 T. Cromwell, Iniunctions gyven by thauctorities of the kynges highnes (London: Berthelet, [1536]. STC10085. Cambridge University Library Sel.3.196). The first injunction requires all clergy to preach on this subject ‘for the space of one quarter of a yere nowe next ensuyng, ones euery sonday, and after that at he least wise twise euery quarter of a yere’. 59 Latimer to Cromwell, 27 Dec. 1536, in Hugh Latimer, Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, ed. G.E. Corrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1845), 375–77, at 376. Cromwell was at the Rolls (between London and Westminster) on Sunday 24 Dec. (LP 11.1363), which was probably the day of Latimer’s sermon, although the date cannot be fixed with certainty.
on Low Sunday.60 Hilsey proposed to start the Easter sermons himself on Monday, followed by Edward Crome and John Bird, with his own chancel- lor finishing off on the Sunday. For the Good Friday sermon he proposed Simon Matthew, subject to an ‘admonycion’ from Cromwell to make sure he toed the line. If Matthew went off message, Hilsey added, he would be corrected by the others in their subsequent sermons.61 A Good Friday sermon that can be confidently ascribed to Simon Matthew is still extant, and is almost certainly the one he delivered on this occasion, for it goes out of its way to dispel any abiding suspicions among the audience that the preacher was still in some sense a ‘papist’.62 Matthew’s authorship is initially indicated by a reference made to the ser- mon he had preached at St Paul’s in June 1535. In order to demonstrate his anti-papal credentials, the preacher reminds his audience that ‘commaun- dyd I haue putt a sermon yn pryntt to be communicat to all the worlde whych remaynyth emong youe. and so farre as I know noo man haue soo doon hythertoo butt I’ (146v). Simon Matthew’s 1535 sermon was undoubt- edly the first, and for some years the only, sermon against the pope printed in England. Stephen Gardiner and Richard Sampson had both published works on this theme, but theirs were described as ‘orations’ and were printed in Latin:63 the preacher’s comment in this case plainly implies that his earlier sermon had been printed in English. The identification of Matthew as the author is conclusively corroborated by a comparison of the sermon’s hand with that of an autograph letter from Simon Matthew to Thomas Cromwell of 3 April 1538. Not only are the hands identical in letter formation, but, because the sermon is a lengthy text, it actually fur- nishes exact matches for dozens of the 130 different words used in the letter.64 The sermon begins as an entirely traditional reflection on the passion and death of Jesus, but it soon develops into a complex response to the
60 For this annual mini-series, see Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, 44. The original evidence is in John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C.L. Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), vol. I, 167. It is not clear why the Easter Sunday sermon at Paul’s Cross (see e.g. above, notes 17–19) was not regarded as part of this mini-series. 61 Hilsey to Cromwell, no date, SP1/117, fol. 117r (LP 12.i.726). 62 SP1/91 fols. 134r–152v. For his disclaimers see fols. 146r, ‘I can nott persuade soom men. butt that I shulde styll be a papyst’; and 146v, ‘yett I haue been and styll am callyd a papyste by sooch as by noo meanys wyll oothre wyse reporte me’. Further references to this sermon in this and the following two paragraphs are given as folio numbers in brackets. 63 Stephen Gardiner, De Vera Obedientia Oratio (London: Berthelet, 1535. STC 11584); Sampson, Oratio (London: Berthelet, [1535]. STC 21681). 64 SP1/131, fol. 10r (LP 13.i.669), Matthew to Cromwell, 3 April 1538, from Prescott in Lancashire (one of Matthew’s benefices).
65 SP1/91, fols. 136r (for ‘towardnes to vertue’) and 138v-139v (real presence and sacrifice of the Mass). 66 SP1/91, fol. 146v, complaining about those who have ‘long tyme … labourde to bryng me owtt off credence. and putt me to silence. ore utterly to bryng me to confusion. for that I shulde nott detecte ther fraudulent heresys’.
here he strikes a glancing blow at evangelicals by defending those ‘oon- wrytton veritees’ handed down from the apostles to the church (150r-v). Conscious that his argument has taken him some way from Good Friday, he manages to close the circle by proposing, in almost evangelical fashion, that the papacy has led Christians to dishonour the passion of Christ by placing their hopes of salvation in indulgences (150v-51r). Thus recalling himself and his audience to the liturgical moment, he brings his sermon to an end by urging penance and patience as the path to eternal glory (151r-52v). Paul’s Cross took on renewed public importance through 1538, as it was used to pursue Henry VIII’s crusade against idolatry. It was Hilsey himself who opened the campaign on 24 February with a sermon against the famous Rood of Grace, which had been brought from Boxley in Kent to be burned in London that day. Bonfires of images replaced the bonfires of books familiar from the previous twenty years, and Wriothesley’s chroni- cle records the most notable acts of iconoclasm. Thus Hugh Latimer preached at the burning of the image of Darvell Gadarn on 12 May 1538. The symbolic importance of this event was heightened still further by the fact that it also saw the hanging and burning of the dissident Observant friar John Forest, who had himself been a noted preacher at the Cross in former years. The year of iconoclasm was brought to a close when the Holy Blood of Hailes, one of the most widely venerated relics in medieval England, was burned at the Cross on the last Sunday before Advent, 24 November. It was Hilsey, fittingly, who preached.67 There may, though, have been practical as well as symbolic reasons why Hilsey preached that day, for the following year he was complaining to Cromwell about his difficulties in persuading anyone other than his own chaplains to occupy the pulpit. The sole exception was Dr John Bird, he reported, who agreed only after much importunity. So he urged Cromwell to adopt his plan (no longer, sadly, extant) for managing the pulpit, and to require Stokesley to implement it.68 Hilsey does not explain why he was having such problems, but we can hazard a guess, namely that it was the
67 Wrioth. 1, 75–80 for the events at Paul’s Cross that year. For more on these events see P. Marshall, ‘The Rood of Boxley, the Blood of Hailes and the Defence of the Henrician Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995), 689–96; and ‘Papist as Heretic: the Burning of John Forest, 1538’, Historical Journal 41 (1998), 351–74. 68 Hilsey to Cromwell, 23 July 1539, SP1/152, fol. 176r. LP 14.i.1297 does not summarise Hilsey’s message entirely accurately: Dr Bird was not one of Hilsey’s chaplains, nor does Hilsey’s letter identify him as one. Bird was a former Carmelite who would dally with evan- gelicalism for a few years before returning to Catholicism under Mary.
69 Leighton to Cromwell, 16 July 1534 (SP1/85, fol. 49r. LP 7.981). For Leighton’s career as a comfortable pluralist of conservative persuasions see BRUO IV, 349. 70 Novum Repertorium, 300 for Gold at St Mary Aldermary. See LP 7.523 for his sermon notes. Although no trace of it survives in the Grace Books, Gold had taken his BD at Cambridge in the 1520s, probably in 1527. See LP 5.1700, William Longforth to Gold, 25 March (no year), and the helpful comments of MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 31. So Gold presumably preached at the Cross to fulfil his graduation obligations. 71 LP 12.i.530 and LP 12.ii.530. 72 SP1/ 106, fol. 22 (LP 11.325), Marshall to Cromwell, 18 Aug. 1536, enclosing notes that he hoped would lead to action against Matthew. He had hoped to delate another conservative, William Buckmaster, for a sermon on Sunday 13 August, but Buckmaster did not turn up.
side might cobble together some charge of heresy or treason on the basis of an unguarded or misreported word. Certainly the events of 1540 were to demonstrate how dangerous preaching at the Cross could be, as 30 July saw the simultaneous execution of three ‘heretics’ and three ‘papists’, all six of them noteworthy preachers who had doubtless performed at the Cross in their time.73
73 Wrioth. 1, 120–21. For more on these events, see R. Werrell in chapter 3 below.
CHAPTER SIX
REFORMATION CONFLICT BETWEEN STEPHEN GARDINER AND ROBERT BARNES, LENT 15401
Ralph S. Werrell
Introduction
According to Robert Barnes, Paul’s Cross was a cockpit in which the Henrician religious traditionalists and the evangelical avant-garde fought their battles. The cock fight between Barnes and Stephen Gardiner during the Lenten season of 1540 is the subject of this paper. Assessments of Henry VIII’s attitude towards the Reformation have frequently been sim- plistic. After his break with Rome in the 1530s, England was set on a course leading to the full-scale Reformation of Edward VI’s reign. But Henry had to lead the English into the direction he wanted them to go. There were areas where he could force his will, as he did in getting the clergy to yield to him, and to remove the pope from supremacy in England. But there were many occasions where he had to tread carefully. The memory of the Wars of the Roses was alive, and there were families that had a better claim to the English crown than Henry VII had. Henry VIII still had to keep the balance of power, and following his break with Rome, the balance was still delicate between two major parties, which now became not so much political as religious, between the Catholics and the reformers. Henry had to secure a balance between those who wanted a return to some form of traditional Catholicism—even, for some, a restoration of the power of the papacy and, on the other hand, those who wanted a move towards a Reformed Church. The motives of some were probably less towards their religious beliefs but more to gain from the dismantling of the Church, which possessed great wealth. It is not likely that Henry VIII’s personal religious beliefs fluctuated between catholic and reformed extremes. Rather, Henry embraced a hybrid religion that tried to hit a mean between the traditionalist and evangelical
1 I thank Dr Jonathan Willis, of Birmingham University, for his most helpful comments on this paper.
Paul’s Cross Sermons, Lent 1540
Robert Barnes was not a likely choice as a preacher at Paul’s Cross that Lent, even though he had recently been in the service of Henry VIII in
2 See Peter Marshall, ‘Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus: The Intellectual Origins of a Henrician Bon Mot’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52.3 (2001), 512. ‘Henry VIII’s appearance before the assembled houses of parliament on Christmas Eve 1545 was perhaps his finest hour. In what has been called a ‘pioneer royal Christmas broadcast. … Henry illustrated the breakdown of fraternal love among his people: ‘the one calleth the other Hereticke and Anabaptist, and he calleth hym again, Papist, Ypocrite and Pharisey’; rival preachers inveigh against each other ‘without charity or discrecion’. To the king’s mind, the blame for this deserved to be apportioned to all sides, and to reinforce the point, Henry brought forward one of the more curious metaphors of contemporary religious discourse: ‘some be to styff in their old Mumpsimus, other be too busy and curious in their newe Sumpsimus’ … What the king was invoking appears to represent the rhetoric of reformist Christian humanism, decisively appropriated into more overtly evangelical discourses, though still to an extent countenanced by the anticlerical and antipapal attitudes of con- servative lay elites.’ 3 H. Gee and W.J. Hardy, eds., Document Illustrative of English Church History (London: MacMillan and Co., 1896; repr. 1921), 244.
Germany. Bishop Bonner would never have considered a reformer as a suitable preacher unless he was commanded to do so by a superior power. In fact, Thomas Cromwell had told Bonner to appoint Barnes, Gerrard and Jerome to preach at Paul’s Cross during Lent, and Barnes was appointed to preach on the First Sunday. There is a question over who instigated the replacement of Barnes by Gardiner for that first Lenten sermon that year. Stephen Gardiner was the Bishop of Winchester, and although he was a Catholic he had accepted Henry’s supremacy as Head on Earth of the Church of England, and so was a natural choice as a preacher at Paul’s Cross. He was of the King’s Counsel at the court when Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was pronounced null and void. In 1535 he signed the declaration repudiating papal jurisdiction in England, and followed this with his De Vera Obedientia, a very able defence of the Royal Supremacy, where he wrote of those who objected to Henry’s supremacy, ‘The king (say they) is head of the realm, but not of the Church. O what an absurd and foolish saying is that! As though, because the people begin now to believe in God, it were a just cause, why they should be no more in subjec- tion to the king.’4 This was, perhaps, a snide remark directed against Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. For most of Henry VIII’s reign Gardiner held positions of authority. In 1540 he was instrumental in pushing the attack on Thomas Cromwell that led to Cromwell’s arrest and execution. According to Routh, ‘Gardiner disliked a good deal of Henry’s treatment of the Church, but he was invalu- able to the king as a proof to the outside world that the Church had not fallen away from the old faith.’5 He remained in favour with Henry, but he misjudged Henry’s position. For when he led the attack against Archbishop Cranmer, and the Catholics tried to destroy Cranmer, Henry caught wind of this plot, and, in the strongest and clearest manner, the king showed his support for Cranmer, and so prevented anyone attacking his Archbishop again. Eventually Gardiner lost the King’s support. As John Guy once observed, the key document is Henry VIII’s will. When the two extant versions of this are compared, it is clear that Hertford’s coup was approved by a king who ‘very much knew to whom he wished to bequeath the government of his son
4 Gardiner, De Vera Obedientia (Rome [Wesel?]: [J. Lambrecht for H. Singleton?], 1553; Leeds: Scolar Press, 1966), fols. xix–xx. 5 C.R.N. Routh, Who’s Who in Tudor England, 1485–1603 (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2001), 148.
and kingdom.’ The day after the Howards’ arrests Henry altered his will so as to oust Gardiner and Norfolk from the regency Council.6 Whether Henry had wanted to do this earlier (perhaps after the episode with Cranmer) we will never know: but towards the end of his life he needed to establish control of the Regency Council. Thus Henry, after his death, had ensured that Edward, through his education, and the guidance of his Regency Council, would move the Church towards a more Reformed position. By 1540 Barnes had had a chequered career. He had escaped being burnt at the stake, but only by being put under house arrest. Then, when it was discovered that he was still spreading the cause of the Reformation, his liberty was further restricted. He faced being retried for heresy and condemned to death. In order to escape this fate Barnes pre- tended to be drowned, leaving his clothes on the riverbank whilst he escaped to the Continent. There he became a close associate of Martin Luther, and his theology became distinctly Lutheran. When it became politically convenient for Henry to see if he could form closer links to Protestant Germany, Barnes was called upon to be Henry’s ambassador, and given safe conduct when he returned to England. It was then that Cromwell instructed Bishop Bonner to appoint Barnes to preach at Paul’s Cross; and Barnes was duly listed to preach on the First Sunday in Lent. It is highly unlikely that a man of Barnes’ temperament would take kindly to being told that he had to give way to Gardiner, and that the ser- mon that Sunday would be traditionalist rather than evangelical in tone. There is very likely some truth to the suggestion that Barnes’s replacement as preacher was part of a larger plot to undermine Thomas Cromwell. As James Muller wrote, There can be no doubt that Gardiner was heartily opposed to Barnes’ opin- ions, but it seems equally certain that his objection to Barnes at this time was primarily an objection to his patron. He judged the moment had come to strike at Cromwell and saw that Cromwell’s most vulnerable point was his support of radical reformers.7 Barnes had shown a few years earlier how he could be provoked when he attacked Cardinal Wolsey, and Stephen Gardiner was going to provoke him in the same way. It would now be possible for Gardiner to achieve a double blow for the Catholic Party. As Korey Maas wrote, ‘From the mid-1530s especially, the patronage of Vicegerent Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop
6 John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 198. 7 J.A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction (London: SPCK, 1926), 84.
Thomas Cranmer combined with Barnes’s own notably unrestrained preaching throughout the realm to make him a lightening rod for conser- vative criticism.’8 Gardiner himself wanted to preach at Paul’s Cross that First Sunday in Lent instead of Barnes. There is a question over who insti- gated the replacement of Barnes by Gardiner for the first Lenten sermon that year. That his move was part of the plot to get rid of Cromwell seems, to me, very probable for Gardiner knew if he preached before Barnes, he would be able to inflame Barnes against him. On the Saturday, before the First Sunday in Lent, Gardiner went to Lambeth, for what seems to have been an ordinary meeting for him. He wrote, When I had done my business at Lambeth, which ended not afore five of the clock that Saturday, my chaplain, then waiting for me, told me he had been so bold over me to appoint me to preach the next day at Paul’s Cross, adding how he thought better to disappoint Barnes on the morrow than some other Catholic man appointed on other Sundays.9 It is unlikely that Gardiner’s chaplain could have taken that decision, or carried it off, without Gardiner himself instigating it. Of course, Bonner would have preferred a Catholic preacher rather than a reformer, but, in the political situation at the time, without someone of Gardiner’s stature behind him, he was powerless to make the change himself. Therefore, I agree with Burnet’s remark. ‘But Gardiner sent Bonner word that he intended himself to preach on Sunday at St Paul’s Cross.’10 Gardiner was going to preach on the most important doctrine of the Lutheran Reformation—‘Justification by faith’. Most of what we know about Gardiner’s sermon is found in his A Declaration of such true articles as George Joye has gone about to confute as false.11 When Gardiner knew he was preaching the next day, he wrote, I gathered my wits to me, called for grace, and determined to declare the gospel of that Sunday, containing the Devil’s three temptations, the matter whereof seemed to me very apt, to be applied to the time, and good occa- sion, to note the abuse of scripture among some, as the Devil abused it to Christ, which matter indeed, I touched somewhat plainly, and in my judge- ment truly.12
8 Korey Maas, ‘Confession Contention, and Confusion: the Last Words of Robert Barnes and Theological Identity,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 42.3 (2011), 690. 9 Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction, 85. 10 Gilbert Burnet, Reformation, vol. 1, 475. 11 (London: John Herford, 1546). 12 Stephen Gardiner, A Declaration, fol. V.
John Foxe tells us something about that sermon: Gardiner therefore, determining to declare the gospel of that Sunday con- taining the devil’s three temptations, began amongst other things to note the abuse of scripture amongst some, as the devil abused it to Christ; and so, alluding to the temptation of the devil, wherein he alleged the Scripture against Christ …13 We get a clearer picture of one of the main issues raised in Gardiner’s ser- mon in Burnet’s Reformation: ‘in his sermon [Gardiner] treated of justifi- cation, and other points, with many reflections on the Lutherans.’14 Gardiner attacked Barnes’s teaching in his Sentenciae. Quoting Hilary, Barnes had stressed that ‘faith Alone justifies’ and proceeded to invoke Ambrose of Milan, who wrote that saints, ‘without labouring or working have their iniquities remitted and sins covered, not on account of works of penitence, but ONLY by believing.’15 And so, in his sermon, Gardiner stressed that the friars of the Reformation no longer sold heaven but offered it freely: ‘as heaven needs no works at all, but only belief, only, only, and nothing else.’16 Gardiner’s statement about his sermon accused the reformers of turn- ing the scriptures backward. ‘There is no forward in the new teaching, but all backward. Now the devil teacheth, come back from fasting, come back from praying, come back from confession, come back from weeping for thy sins. … And all, I said, is turned backward.’ Gardiner supported the break with Rome, but linked the reformers—in some way—with turning back to an ‘unreformed’ position. The devil deceived man with his lies: ‘And therefore coveteth to have man idle, and void of good works … and for that purpose procured out pardons from Rome, wherein heaven was sold for a little money … the devil used friars for his ministers.’ Now, having lost that way to sell heaven, the devil tells us ‘heaven needs no works at all, but only belief.’ Those who said that we obtained heaven, not by our works but by our belief, ‘set forth this the devil’s craft,’ were called ministers. Now there were no more friars, but amongst the ministers ‘be some of those that were friars.’17 He contin- ued, the Devil ‘perceives it can no longer be borne to buy and sell heaven
13 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: Adam and Co, 1873), 5.2, 430. 14 Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 4 vols. (London: Scott, Webster and Geary, London, 1837), vol. 1, 475. 15 Korey Maas, The Reformation and Robert Barnes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 43. 16 Foxe, Actes &Monuments, 5.2, 431. 17 Muller, Stephen Gardiner, 85 ff.
(both the merchandise is abhorred, and the ministers also, we cannot away with friars, nor can abide the name).’18 The result was the reformers had thrown the baby out with the bath water. Justification by faith meant the reformers removed the need for good works; heaven is given ‘so freely that men shall not need for heaven to work at all, whatsoever opportunity they have to work.’19 Of course Gardiner did not do justice to the reformers’ teaching, when he said that good works had no place in a Christian’s life. He said the dif- ference between the reformers’ Church and the Papal Church was not whether a Christian got into heaven freely or by buying his way in; but whether money passed hands or not, it was the Devil’s ministers—the friars—who did the transaction. This was a veiled attack on Luther as much as an attack on Barnes.
29 February 1540
It probably seemed safe for Barnes to preach against Stephen Gardiner, as suggested in a letter from John Butler to Heinrich Bullinger dated 24 February 1540; ‘Meanwhile, the word is powerfully preached by an indi- vidual named Barnes, and his fellow-ministers. Books of every kind may safely be exposed to sale.’20 According to Korey Maas, it ‘was in response to [Gardiner’s] attack that Barnes preached his own critical sermon from the same pulpit two weeks later.’21 Barnes had no choice left him; his sermon also had to be on ‘Justification by Faith, giving the Reformed answer to Gardiner’s Catholic teaching. It would probably not have caused too many headaches—he could also have gained some points if he had stressed that the doctrine of Justification by Faith was scriptural and disagreed with the pope’s teaching. Barnes’s ser- mon not only dealt with justification by faith, it did what Gardiner hoped: it contained a personal attack on the Bishop of Winchester. If Barnes had stuck solely to his explication of the doctrine of justification by faith and shown that the reformers held firmly to the Scriptures, and sought only to remove the accretion of Catholic tradition from the Word of God, he prob- ably would have been able to survive Gardiner’s attacks.
18 Gardiner, A Declaration, f. vi. 19 Gardiner, A Declaration, f. vi. 20 OL 2, 627. 21 Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 49.
In George Joye confuteth / Whinchesters false Articles, Gardiner states the doctrine of ‘justification by faith’ as preached by Barnes: This thinge do I tell you (saith Paul) leste any man (as nowe wolde Winch.) deceyue you with his apparent Popish perswasions. This full iustificacion by onely faith Paul expresseth clerely in these words also. This owr euerlasting liuing preist & interrcessour Christe abydeth for euer vnto this ende / euen absolutly / fully / and perfitly with oute any fall or breache to saue all them that thorowe him by faithe come to God the father.22 However, Barnes felt he had to attack Gardiner personally. As Foxe describes it: Taking the same text of the gospel which Gardiner had done before, was, on the contrary side, no less vehement in setting forward the true doctrine of Christian religion, than Winchester had been before in plucking men back- ward from truth to lies, from sincerity to hypocrisy, from religion to supersti- tion, from Christ to Antichrist. In the process of which sermon he proceeding, and calling out Stephen Gardiner by name to answer him, alluding in a pleasant allegory to a cock-fight; terming the said Gardiner to be a fighting cock, and himself to be another: but the garden cock (he said) lacketh good spurs: objecting moreover to the said Gardiner, and opposing him in his grammar rules; thus saying, that if he had answered him in the schools, so as he had there preached at the Cross, he would have given him six stripes: declaring furthermore what evil herbs this Gardiner had set in the garden of God’s Scripture, &c.23 Gardiner complained about Barnes’ sermon, and the case was referred to the King; ‘and Barnes, understanding that he did not have the King’s sym- pathy, requested time to consider Gardiner’s arguments.’24 The King had told Barnes that he must apologise to Gardiner, which he subsequently did on the 11 April. On the 21 May, Barnes referred to the matter in a letter to John Æpinus: A fierce controversy is going on between the bishop of London, Gardiner, and myself, respecting justification by faith and purgatory. He holds that the blood of Christ cleanseth only from past sins previous to baptism, but that those committed since are blotted out partly by the merits of Christ, and partly by our own satisfactions. He adds too, that voluntary works are more excellent than the works of the ten commandments. As to purgatory, he says, that if a woman shall have caused masses to be celebrated, and shall have
22 George Joye, Confutation of Winchesters false Articles, fol. 1. 23 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 5.2, 431. 24 Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 38.
bestowed alms for the soul of her husband, she may boldly demand his soul in the day of judgement, and say that she has paid the price of his redemp- tion. But I, on the other hand, in opposition to all these things, vindicate the efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ my Lord; but hitherto I stand alone in doing it.25 On 7 March, William Jerome preached at Paul’s Cross on the same text. Then once again on 14 March, Thomas Gerrard preached on the same theme. The people attending the Paul’s Cross sermons that Lent had thus heard three sermons contradicting the Bishop of Winchester’s sermon of the First Sunday in Lent. Although neither Jerome nor Gerrard attacked Stephen Gardiner, many people would think that as they preached the same doctrine at Robert Barnes, they agreed with everything that he had said, including his attack on the person of Gardiner; and that could be used against them as well as against Barnes. On 11 April 1540 Barnes, Jerome and Gerrard recanted their errors at Paul’s Cross. When Barnes made his recantation, he also asked Gardiner for his pardon. Barnes asked Gardiner to indicate his forgiveness by raising his hand, and, according to Foxe, he had to ask a second time for this sign before Gardiner responded. According to Foxe Then Barnes, entering into his sermon, after his prayer made, beginneth the process of a matter, preaching contrary to that which before he had recanted; insomuch that the mayor, when the sermon was finished, sitting with the bishop of Winchester, asked him whether he should from the pulpit send him to ward, to be forthcoming for that his bold preaching, contrary to his recantation.26
The Plot against Thomas Cromwell
This was not the end of the dispute, for in May 1540 another change in the preacher at Paul’s Cross was effected. ‘Bishop Sampson of Chichester, who was supposed to preach, was arrested, and Cranmer preached the oppo- site of what Gardiner had preached in Lent.’27 It seems clear that the fate of Barnes, Jerome and Gerrard was more political than religious for, as Susan Brigden observes,
25 OL 2, 616 ff. 26 Foxe, Actes &Monuments, 5.2, 433. 27 Millar McLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 189.
If Cromwell were to be removed ostensibly for his dangerous sympathy to heretics there could be no better way to illustrate his complicity in a hereti- cal movement than to purge three radicals. Barnes, Garret and Jerome were exempted accordingly from the general pardon for crimes committed before 15 July 1540 and condemned by attainder, without trial. That their deaths proceeded from such an enactment rather than by the Act of Six Articles, which—had they been guilty—would have acted equally swiftly and inexo- rably, again points to the political motive behind their fall. It also suggests that the extreme charge of sacramentarianism could not have been proved against them.28
Barnes’s Martyrdom
Although this paper concerns the sermons at Paul’s Cross, it would not be complete until we hear Barnes speaking on the 30 July 1540 before his mar- tyrdom. Barnes commenced with an affirmation of his faith in the Trinity, the Incarnation, that Christ, the second Person of the Trinity became man, and then followed this Creed with the following statement as recorded by John Standysshe in his Lytle treatyse: And I believe he lived here among us: and after he had preached and taught his Father’s will, he suffered the most cruel and bitter death, for me and all mankind, and I do believe that this his death and passion was the sufficient price and ransom for the sin of the world: And I believe that through his death he overcame the devil, sin, death and hell. … And there is no other satisfaction unto the Father but this his death and passion only. After commenting on this Standish again quotes Barnes: ‘And that no work of man did deserve anything of God but only his passion as touching our justification.’ Then, later, ‘Wherefore I trust in no good work that ever I did, but only in the death of Jesus Christ.’ Because he had been accused by Gardiner in his sermon of denying that there was a place for good works, Barnes continued, Take me not here that I speak against good works. For they are to be done; and surely they that do them not shall never come to the kingdom of God: we must do them because they are commanded us of God to show and set forth our profession, not to deserve or merit, for that is only the passion of Christ.29
28 Susan Brigden, ‘Popular Disturbance and the Fall of Thomas Cromwell and the Reformers, 1539–1540,’ The Historical Journal 24.2 (1981), 267. 29 John Standysshe, A Lytle treatyse …. Against the protestacion of Robert barnes at ye time of his deth (London: Robert Redman, 1540).
After Barnes’s death his memory ‘was not only kept alive by conservative and evangelical balladeers; it was increasingly made the subject of more substantial treatments than were possible in halfpenny broadsides.’30 Robert Kolb begins his article, ‘God’s Gift of Martyrdom’, with a quotation from Luther referring to Barnes’ martyrdom. ‘It is a special joy for me to hear that our good and pious table companion and house guest has been so graciously called by God to pour out his blood for the sake of God’s dear Son and to become a holy martyr.’31
30 Korey Maas, ‘Last Words of Robert Barnes,’ 693. 31 Robert Kolb, ‘God’s Gift of Martyrdom: the Early Reformation Understanding of dying for the Faith’, Church History 64.3 (1995), 399.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PAUL’S CROSS AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROTESTANT REFORMS UNDER EDWARD VI
John N. King
The preaching of sermons at Paul’s Cross epitomized dramatic changes in religion that took place following the accession of Edward VI as a nine- year-old boy.1 This is the case because the government of Edward VI con- tinued the long-standing practice of employing this out-of-doors pulpit at St Paul’s Cathedral as a venue for sermons that disseminated and defended official doctrine. The heterogeneity of the congregations that gathered there made Paul’s Cross a powerful vehicle for the manipulation of public opinion. The Protestant lords who governed England during the royal minority (28 January 1547 to 6 July 1553)—first Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Protector of the Realm, who was the young king’s eldest uncle, and second his successor John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland—fostered a sweeping and controversial pro- gram of Protestant reform in theological doctrine and ecclesiastical prac- tice. It veered away from the Anglo-Catholic theology countenanced by the largely political Reformation effected by Henry VIII.2 Under Edward VI, royal edicts and Parliamentary legislation ordered a radical alteration of official religion and replacement of the Roman-rite Mass with a Protestant worship service in the vernacular. Royal Injunctions issued in the name of King Edward (31 July 1547)3 went beyond revival of the attack against pilgrimages and veneration of relics and religious images in the Royal Injunctions of 1536 by ordering clergy to preach offi- cially authorized sermons from the Book of Homilies4 if they were not
1 I am indebted to consultation with Torrance Kirby and Sarah-Grace Heller during the course of the preparation of this essay. 2 On England’s multiple Reformations, See Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 14. 3 RSTC 10087.5, et seq. 4 Certain Sermons or Homilies (STC 13638.5, et seq.). This book was published in con- junction with the Edwardian Injunctions: Injunctions geuen by the moste excellente prince, Edward the VI by the grace of God, Kynge of Englande, Fraunce, and Ireland: defendour of the faith, [and] in earthe vnder Christe, of the Churche of Englande [and] of Irelande the supreme
practices, and rituals that remained in place at the end of the old regime. For example, Hugh Glasier, Cranmer’s commissary for Calais, called for the disestablishment of the Lenten fast on the ground that it was a human tra- dition that lacked biblical warrant. William Barlow, Bishop of St David’s, attacked the veneration of religious images in a Lenten sermon and a sec- ond sermon delivered on 27 November. During the latter address, he preached against ‘the great abhomination of idolatrie in images’ by mock- ing an image of the Virgin Mary wrapped in a winding cloth and a puppet- like image of the Resurrection in which Christ emerged from the tomb, gave a blessing ‘with his hand, and turned his heade.’ Following the sermon, boys smashed these ‘idolls’ into pieces.5 During the same month, Nicholas Ridley preached against transubstantiation and the Roman-rite Mass.6 On 15 May 1547, Dr. Richard Smith (or Smyth; 1499/1500–1563) was required by the privy council to deliver the first of two recantations of views contained in theological treatises that he had published while serv- ing as royal lecturer in theology and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and as a prebendary of Christ Church, Oxford.7 His recantations withdrew previously orthodox positions on religious author- ity, transubstantiation and the Mass, fasting during Lent, clerical celibacy, and other doctrines and practices that were in the process of undergoing reversal during the new Protestant regime. The burning of copies of his newly forbidden books accompanied these addresses, which took place respectively at Paul’s Cross and at Oxford. The importance of Smith’s renunciation of his views was such that Reginald Wolfe published sepa- rate octavo editions of these sermons. Within days of its delivery, the printed version of the London recantation—A godly and faythfull retracta- tion made and published at Pavles crosse in London, the yeare of oure lorde God 1547. the 15. daye of May, by Mayster Richard Smyth Doctor of divinitye, and reader of the Kynges majestyes lecture in Oxford. Revokyng therin
5 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from a. d. 1485 to 1559, 2 vols. [Camden Society, vols. 11 and 20] (Westminster: Printed for the Camden society, 1875–77), vol. 2, 1. 6 See Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642, rev. and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989), 28–29. 7 Originally funded by Westminster Cathedral, the Regius Professorship of Divinity at the University of Oxford underwent transfer to Christ Church at the time of its refounda- tion in 1546 under new Henrician statutes. See G.D. Duncan, ‘Public Lectures and Professorial Chairs,’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3: The Collegiate University, ed. James McConica, 344–346. See also Charlotte Methuen, ‘Oxford: Reading Scripture in the University,’ in A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli, ed. Torrance Kirby, et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 81.
8 In actual fact, Wolfe printed few Greek books and did not own a fount of Hebrew type. See E. Gordon Duff, A Century of the English Book Trade (London: Blades, East, and Blades, 1905), 171–72; and Andrew Pettegree, ‘Wolfe, Reyner [Reginald, Reynold] (d. in or before 1574),’ ODNB. 9 RSTC 22824. 10 Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 116. 11 Indeed, these words drew a hearty laugh from the audience when I presented a short version of the present essay as a paper at ‘Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England 1520–1640,’ an International Conference sponsored by the Centre for Research on Religion, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 16–18 August 2012.
At the very least, he invites suspicion that he is cynically playing with the logical paradox that he actually believes the views that he is about to retract. And he appears to pay lip service to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (‘by scripture alone’). He leaves himself open to further suspi- cion concerning intellectual arrogance by modelling his address on retrac- tations delivered by patristic authorities: ‘The which thing how trew it is, theldest and best writers in the Christen Church, doo evidently declare, because they all have erred in their bookes’ (A2r).12 As we shall see, the early reception of this address indicates that both Protestants and Catholics believed that his retractation was disingenuous. Indeed, the most recent full-length study of Smith declares that his retractation is a ‘masterpiece of equivocation.’13 In contrast to other sermons delivered at Paul’s Cross, in which preach- ers engage in exegesis or topical application of set scriptural texts, Smith’s Retractation constitutes a public withdrawal of positions that he had embraced in print. In particular, he retreats from positions that he had taken in treatises that he had completed during the waning days of the reign of Henry VIII. Indeed, A brief Treatyse settynge forth divers truthes necessary both to be beleved of chrysten people, and kepte also, whiche are not expressed in the Scripture but left to the church by the apostles tradition in the vernacular (1547) was published soon after the king’s death on 28 January 1547. Referring to the last-named treatise by the familiar title of ‘my boke of Traditions,’14 he retracts his previous assertion ‘that Christ and his Appostles taught and lefte to the church many things without wri- tyng which we must both beleve stedfastly and also fulfyll obediently under payne of dampnation ever to endure’ (Retractation, B3v). In so doing, the reader witnesses a stark collision between the axiomatic Catholic belief that unwritten traditions constitute authoritative prescrip- tions concerning matters of faith and religious practice and the equally axiomatic Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, whereby the Bible is held to be an all-sufficient source on matters of faith and worship. Under the old regime, Smith had argued in favour of apostolic succession and
12 See below concerning Smith’s allusion to St Augustine’s Retractationum libri duo. 13 J. Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth and the Language of Orthodoxy: Re-Imagining Tudor Catholic Polemicism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 35. I am indebted to Torrance Kirby’s address, ‘Public Conversion: Richard Smyth’s Retractation Sermon at Oxford and Paul’s Cross in 1547,’ which he delivered at ‘Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England 1520–1640,’ McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 16–18 August 2012. See chapter eight below. 14 STC 22818, A4r. Although the exact date of publication is unknown, it seems likely that Thomas Petyt, the printer and bookseller, had moved toward production of this book while Henry VIII remained alive.
15 E.g., A Dialogue Between Lent and Liberty (1547?), a fragmentary treatise attributed to Robert Crowley, who had some links to the circle of Protector Somerset. 16 RSTC 22815. Published during the same year, The assertion and defence of the sacra- mente of the aulter (RSTC 22820) espouses views that are in fundamental agreement with those stated in Smith’s Defence.
payment of tithes (Gen. 14:17–20) acknowledged Melchizedek’s superior- ity to Abraham and the levitical priesthood descended from him (see Heb. 7:7). Following St Paul, Christians understand Melchizedek as a pre- figuration of Jesus and his conferral of bread and wine to the disciples dur- ing the Last Supper. According to Smith’s Defence Melchizidek ‘dyd beare the figure and image of christ the very preist [sic]’ (D6r). Smith retracts his assertion that the Mass is a repeated sacrifice in which the elements of bread and wine undergo transubstantiation into the body and blood of Christ. His Assertion had declared: ‘Melchisedech dyd sacrifice with breade and wyne, because we shulde lerne therby, that Messias our savyour the sonne of god, and the king of justice, shuld come and use like thinges in his sacrifice …’ (Retractation, D3v) Printed from standing type, the core of Smith’s Declaration is identical to the text of the Retractation. Additional material consists of the prologue and epilogue that he added to the Oxford sermon.17 Smith explains that he adds prefatory remarks because of his failure adequately to explain his major points or his audience’s failure to comprehend then. He backped- dles when he insist that his sermon is ‘but a Retractation and not a Recantation’ (A2v) because recantation connotes the withdrawal of erro- neous opinions, particularly with regard to formal public confession of mistaken religious beliefs. Retractation has a softer sense that connotes revision or reconsideration of previously stated views in a manner that falls short of an express confession of religious error.18 To a theologian like Smith, the latter term would necessarily bring to mind St Augustine’s Liber Retractionum libri duo, in which he reflected upon and added corrections to his previous works late in life.19 Smith furthermore denies that he delivered his address as a mouth- piece for others: ‘that the retractacion send abrode in my name was either none of myne, or elles that I was compelled and forced to agre unto it’ (A3r). Finally, he insists on the doctrinal orthodoxy of his remarks: ‘I do not deny the holy sacrament of the aulter, nor the Sacrament of baptisme, nor finally any other thinge comprised in the body of holy scripture as
17 In addition, five glosses added to the body of the printed text stress the authority of the Bible and the invalidity of traditions that lack a basis in scripture (C3v–4v, D1r-v). 18 John Strype indicates that Smith ‘wrote also letters to his friends, denying he had made a recantation.’ See Ecclesiastical Memorials; Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, 3 vols. (London: John Wyat, 1721), 2.39. 19 Aurelius Augustine, Opera omnia, Retractionum libri duo, in Patrologia Latina 32, 583–656. Augustine, The Retractations, trans. Sister Mary Inez Bogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968).
20 This spelling preserves the sense of the OE word ānlīc (i.e., ‘one’ + ‘ly’), which pro- vides the etymology of ‘only.’ 21 Wrioth. 1.184.
city and to the lords of this court. Concerning Protector [Somerset], Sire, many persons reckon that he not only favors such things, but that he is also initiating them.22 De Selve’s prolixity, tortuous grammar, and use of the passive voice con- tribute to an oblique writing style that may be typical of the ambassador’s personal indirectness or the style in fashion at the French court. His sug- gestion that Richard Smith communicated with him directly exaggerates de Selve’s involvement in local affairs in London, given the fact that he seems to believe that the preacher recanted inside the cathedral rather than at Paul’s Cross. Smith’s recantation and its aftermath contributed to his reputation for inconstancy among both Protestants and Roman Catholics. In this he dif- fers from Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who never swerved from his beliefs despite his reputation for equivocation and deviousness. Even Gardiner held Smith in low esteem according to a letter of 6 June 1547 to Protector Somerset, in which the bishop declares that a priest in his diocese brought a copy of Smith’s Godly and faythfull retractation ‘with speede, and made by meanes to have it broughte to my knowledge … And when I saw Doctor Smith’s recantacion begin with Omnis homo mendax, so Engleshed and such a new humility as he woulde make all the doctors of the Church liers with him selfe … it enforced me to write unto your Grace for the ease of my conscience; geving this judgement of Smith, that I neither liked his tractation of unwritten verities, ner [i.e., nor] yet his retraccion, and was glad of my formar judgement, that I neyver had famili- aryty with him.’23 At the end of Edward VI’s first regnal year, the great spiritual leader of the first generation of English evangelicals, Hugh Latimer (c.1485–1555) preached as many as eight sermons at Paul’s Cross during January 1548. Prior to this burst of activity, he had last preached at this pulpit on 12 May 1538. At that time, he decried John Forest’s denial of the Royal Supremacy
22 ‘Sire, vous puys dire que ces jours passés y a eu ung prescheur lequel publiquement comme m’a esté récité s’est desdict en la grande église d’icy des choses qu’il avoyt autres- foys preschées selon la tradition de l’Église et a parlé le plus irrévéremment des sacramentz et des sainctz et le plus licentieusement du caresme et de toutes les constitutions ecclési- astiques qu’il est possible, et incontinent a esté icy imprimé ce beau sermon en angloys et se vend publicquement en ceste ville et aux seigneurs de ceste court. Du protecteur, Sire, plusieurs estiment que non seulement il favorise telles choses, mais qu’il les introduit.’ Translated from Correspondance Politique de Odet de Selve, Ambassadeur de France en Angleterre (1546–1549), 145. 23 The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. James Arthur Muller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 293.
24 See John Stowe, Annales (1615), Ddd3r; MacLure, Register, rev. Boswell and Pauls, 22. 25 See Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 10–11. 26 John N. King, ed., Voices of the English Reformation: A Sourcebook (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 273.
curates at the parochial level. He therefore takes issue with the standard use of prelate to denote a primate at the apex of the ecclesiastical hierar- chy. It is in this sense that Richard Smith had employed the term at Paul’s Cross during the course of recanting his claims concerning ‘the autorite of Bysshoppes in makyng lawes and ordenances’ (B1r). Latimer favoured colloquial plainness, homely diction and figures of speech, and an anecdotal style for which he gained renown. His insistent consonance renders his words memorable to a socially stratified audience heavily reliant on oral instruction. The preacher’s recourse to alliteration and rhyming prose can have a humorous, indeed a satirical effect, as in his emphatic linkage of indolent loitering (i.e., wasting of time) with the lord- liness of transgressive prelates who have grown rich through holding mul- tiple benefices and farming out their pastoral duties to ill-trained clerics at the parish level. In defining the ideal prelate as a humble preacher (i.e., a sower), Latimer’s use of alliteration underscores his distorted mirror imag- ing of preaching clergy dedicated to pastoral care and negligent clerics who violate their calling by dedicating themselves to personal enrichment through the accumulation of multiple benefices and clerical absenteeism, rather than devotion to pastoral care:
Therfore preache and teache, and let your ploughe be doyng, ye lordes I saye that lyve lyke loyterers, loke well to your offyce, the plough is your office and charge. If you live idle and loyter, you do not your duetye, you folowe not youre vocacion, let your ploughe therfore be going and not cease, that the ground maye brynge foorth fruite … How then hath it happened, that we have had so manye hundred yeres, so many unpreachynge prelates, lordyng loyterers and idle ministers? (B3r–3v) Listeners encountered alliteration run wild in Latimer’s riot of words:
They are soo troubeled wyth lordlye livyng, they be so placed in palacies, couched in courtes, ruffelyng in their rentes, dauncyng in their dominions, burdened with ambassages, pamperyng of their paunches lyke a Monke that maketh his Jubilie, mounchynge in their maungers, and moilyng in their gay manoures and mansyons, and so troubeled with loyterynge in theyr Lordeshyppes: that they canne not attende it … Well, well. (B6v–7r)
The preacher’s likening of ‘false’ prelates to monks, who had not walked abroad since Henry VIII’s dissolution of monastic houses, attacks clerical aggrandizement in a manner familiar from late-medieval anticlerical sat- ire of the kind familiar from Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s portrayal of the Monk and a variety of unsavoury clerics in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales:
For ever sence the Prelates were made Lordes and nobles, the ploughe standeth [i.e., remains at rest], there is no work done; the people sterve. Thei hauke, they hunt, thei card, they dyce, they pastyme in their prelacies with galaunte gentlemen, with theyr daunsyng minyons, and with their freshe companions, so that ploughyng is sette a syde. And by the lordyng and loy- tryng, preachyng and ploughyng is cleane gone. (B4v)
Latimer abandons alliteration when it might undercut the blunt sobriety of his jeremiad against the failures of wealthy Londoners. His citation of Jeremiah 48:10—‘Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord with slack- ness; and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed’—during the course of his harangue against ‘false’ prelates broadens into a broad- side attack against London as a city dominated by prosperous merchants whose avarice leads them into ungodliness. After all, the Hebrew prophet levelled this particular oracle against Moab, whose enmity toward Israel associates it with irreligion. Latimer accordingly likens London to Nebo, a Moabite town whose destruction Jeremiah prophesies ‘Woe to Nebo, for it is laid waste!’ Fusing his appeals for religious reform and social justice, Latimer invokes Londoners to repent and demonstrate religious fidelity:
So that, that place of the prophet was spoken of them that wente to the distruction of the cityes of Moab, among the whiche there was one called Nebo, whiche was muche reproved for idolatrie, supersticion, pryde, ava- ryce, crueltie, tiranny, and for hardenes of herte, and for these sinnes was plaged of God and destroied. Nowe what shall we saye of these ryche citi- zens of London? What shall I say of them? shal I cal them proude men of London, malicious men of London, mercylesse men of London. No, no, I may not say so, they wyl be offended with me than. Yet must I speake. For is there not reigning in London, as much pride, as much covetousnes, as muche crueltie, as muche oppression, as much supersticion, as was in Nebo? Yes, I thynke and muche more to. Therefore I saye, repente O London. Repent, repente. (A8r-v)
In opposition to ‘racking scriptures,’ Latimer advocates dissemination of their plain literal sense. His advocacy of the use of similitudes in sermons accords with Tyndale’s denial of four-fold interpretation of scriptures and advocacy of the literal sense as the only permissible interpretation. In his view, allegory may inhere within the literal sense even though it is forbid- den as an alternative mode of interpretation. His position accords with that of a contemporary rhetorician for whom allegory is permissible so long as it is subordinated to the literal sense: ‘in any article of the faithe, it
is and must be only the literall sense that proveth.’27 In a similar vein, Latimer likens preaching to meat rather than strawberries ‘that come but once a yeare and tarye not longe, but are sone gone’ (A6r). Although Latimer was accused of sacrilege for likening the Blessed Virgin Mary to a saffron bag (a sachet of seasoning whose essence under- goes depletion during the course of cooking), he denies that he ever employed this controversial trope: ‘It hath bene saied of me. Oh Latimer, nay, as for him I wil never beleve hym whyle I lyve, nor never trust him, for he lykened our blessed Ladye to a saffrone bagge, where in deede I never used that similitude’ (A3v). Nevertheless, he goes on to claim that such a comparison need not connote disrespect to the mother of Jesus Christ. Indeed, this figure of speech would have honoured the Virgin Mary by praising her for being imbued with the essence of her offspring: But in case I had used this similitude, it had not bene to be reproved, but myght have bene wythout reproche. For I might have sayed thus, as the saf- frone bagge that hath bene full of saffron, or hath had saffron in it, doth ever after savoure and smel of the swete saffron that it conteyned: so oure blessed Ladye which conceyved and bare Chryste in her wombe, dyd ever after resemble the maners and vertues of that precious babe which she bare’ (A3v–4r). Latimer’s sardonic praise of the Devil as a model plowman typifies his use of similitudes that are both humble and outrageous. In satirizing the der- eliction of duty of haughty prelates who hire deputies to discharge their duties, he lodges a two-sided complaint that urges them to emulate the Devil, whom he ironically praises as the least idle of plowman: The Devill is dilygente at his ploughe. He is no unpreachyng prelate. He is no Lordelye loyterer from his cure, but a busie ploughe man, so that amonhe [sic] all the prelates, and amonge al the packe of them that have cure, the Devill shal go for my money. For he styll applyeth his busynes. Therefore ye unpreachynge prelates, learne of the devill to be diligent in doyng of your offyce. (D6v). Resorting to runaway alliteration and word repetition, yet again, he com- piles a satirical catalog that slides into sarcasm as he drives home his critique: Where the Devyl is resydente and hath his ploughe goyng: there away with bookes, and up with candelles, awaye with Bybles and up with beades,
27 Richard Rex, ed., A Reformation Rhetoric: Thomas Swynnerton’s The Tropes and Figures of Scripture (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 1999), 165.
awaye with the lyghte of the gospel, and up with the lyghte of candelles, yea at noone dayes. Where the Devyll is residente, that he maye prevayle, up with all supersticion and Idolatrie, sensing, paintynge of ymages, candels, palmes, asshes, holie water, and new service of mennes inventyng, as though man could invente a better waye to honoure God with, then god hymselfe hath apoynted. Doune with Christes crosse, up with purgatory picke pursse, up with hym, the popishe pourgatorie I meane. Awaye with clothing the naked, the pore and impotent, up with deckynge of ymages and gaye gar- nyshynge of stockes and stones. Up with mannes tradicious and his lawes, downe with Gods tradycions and his most holye worde. (C3v–4r). The Sermon on the Ploughers survives because John Day and William Seres published two octavo editions not long after its delivery. It seems certain that Day and Seres were cashing in on high demand for copies of Latimer’s sermon soon after its delivery. The second edition attests to the patronage of Catherine Brandon (née Willoughby), dowager Duchess of Suffolk, by bearing her coat of arms on the verso of the title page. She was a notable patron of Protestant reformers, who received dedications to many printed books. Her coat of arms appears in other books printed and published by Day and Seres during the reign of Edward VI, including English transla- tions of the Apocrypha and New Testament (STC 2087.5 [formerly 2791a] and 2853) as well as treatises by William Tyndale and the Swiss reformer, Pierre Viret (STC 24441a and 24784). It may be that Thomas Some tran- scribed the Sermon on the Ploughers, possibly at the behest of the Duchess of Suffolk, just as the texts of other sermons have survived due to their transcription by Some, Augustine Bernher, who served Latimer as amanu- ensis, and other admirers. Some gathered the edition of Lenten sermons that Latimer preached at Whitehall Palace in 1549. The disappearance of the majority of Latimer’s sermons attests to the preacher’s apparent disre- gard for their survival. During the remainder of 1548, sermons at Paul’s Cross tended to focus on consolidation of recent changes in religion. Millar MacLure errs in stat- ing that Stephen Gardiner preached at Paul’s Cross on 29 June 1548.28 In actual fact, he preached at the Chapel Royal at Whitehall.29 London records indicate that ‘alle thoys prechers that prechyd at Powlles crosse at that tyme spake moche agayne the bysshoppe of Wynchester.’30 They
28 MacLure, Register, rev. Boswell and Pauls, 29. 29 See John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, 172–73. 30 John Gough Nichols, ed., Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (London: Printed for the Camden Society, 1852), 56.
included Richard Cox, Almoner and schoolmaster to Edward VI, who criti- cized Gardiner for ‘contemptuouslie and obstinatlie’ reneging on his agreement to deny unwritten verities and preach, in the manner of Richard Smith, in favour of recent changes in religion. Nonetheless, Cox called upon the congregation to pray for Gardiner’s ‘conuersion to the truth, and not to rejoyce of this his troble, which was godlie donne.’31 Thomas Lever is the final preacher whose Edwardian sermons at Paul’s Cross remain extant. Unlike Hugh Latimer, who came of age long before Martin Luther is said to have tacked his Ninety-five Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg (1517), Lever (1521–1577) was born during the year when Luther’s books were burnt in London and the King’s Printer, Richard Pynson, published Assertio septem sacramentorum under the name of Henry VIII. It rejects Luther’s reduction of the traditional system of seven sacraments on the ground that only three (Holy Communion, baptism, and, for the time being, confession) possessed scriptural warrant. An associate of Latimer and a university man like Smith and Latimer, Lever matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow and college preacher. His evangelical sympathies propelled his rise in favour as a preacher at the court of Edward VI. During the year prior to his appointment as master of St John’s College by order of the boy king, Lever delivered a Paul’s Cross sermon in the Shrouds because of inclement weather on 2 February 1550. He did so against the backdrop of social disorder that gave rise to the Western Rebellion that began in Cornwall and Devon in June 1549. Motivated by devotion to the old religion, dissidents attacked the Edwardian religious settlement and recent imposition of the English liturgy promulgated in the Book of Common Prayer. John, Lord Russell, took the lead in lifting the siege of Exeter on 6 August and defeating the rebels on 17 August. A rising in Norfolk began on 12 July 1549 under the leadership of a wealthy tanner and property owner named Robert Kett. Establishing an encampment at Mousehold Heath outside of Norwich, the rebels opposed exploitation of commoners by the gentry and enclosing of common land in order to con- vert it from agricultural use to the profitable grazing of sheep owned by wealthy landowners. (It is worthy of note that Latimer’s Sermon on the Ploughers attacks two kinds of enclosing, namely the fencing in of worldly land to the detriment of subsistence farmers and the misdirection of cleri- cal income that should properly be dedicated to the sowing of scriptural
31 Wrioth. 2.4.
32 B5v–6r. 33 Gen. 19:1–28; Jonah 3:4–10.
that repentance and obedience will forestall divine vengeance and result in providential deliverance that accords with the cyclic historical pattern inscribed within Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets. In defending the Edwardian religious settlement, Lever attributes recent turmoil in Norfolk and the West Country to the twin evils of civil disobedience by common- ers and profiteering by the wealthy: ‘pore men have been rebels, and ryche men have not done their duetie. Bothe have done evyll to provoke goddes vengeance, neyther doth repente to procure gods mercye.’ He drives home his critique of the wealthy with no fewer than thirty-six references to cov- etousness. A recurrent pattern of doubling runs through the entire ser- mon, whereby he blames both commoners for dissidence and wealthy individuals (and rulers) for failing to share their wealth with the poor. He connects the two sides of his argument in claiming that rebellion consti- tutes the worst form of covetousness. Even though the preacher denies that the apostolic model of commu- nal ownership provides a precedent for the levelling of wealth or social distinctions, he nonetheless asserts that prosperous individuals have an obligation to share their wealth through charitable acts. In a refrain famil- iar from Latimer’s preaching and tracts written by Robert Crowley, Lever blames both rulers and wealthy individuals for failing to fulfil their obliga- tion to succour the poor.34 Once again, non-preaching clerics and absen- tee holders of multiple benefices share the blame. Reflecting upon the dissolution of monastic houses under Henry VIII and recent completion under Edward VI of the dissolution of chantries endowed for the singing of perpetual Masses for the dead, Lever blames both rulers and wealthy individuals for breaking a promise to fulfil the monastic ideal of support- ing the poor and inculcating learning. Lever’s appointment to preach again at Paul’s Cross on 14 December 1550 reflects his stature as an energetic reformist churchman who had preached a series of Lenten sermons at the royal court during the same year. In this renowned sermon, he covered familiar ground in admonish- ing the wealthy for exploiting the poor and echoing Latimer’s chastise- ment of worldly clerics for idleness and hypocrisy. To these charges, he added a critique of the government, now led by John Dudley, Earl of
34 Geoffrey Elton lays to rest the notion that Latimer, Lever, Crowley, and others were members of a coherent party that favoured social reform in a 1979 essay entitled ‘Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men’ of Edward VI’s Reign’; republished in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews, 4 vols. (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974–92), 3:234–53.
Warwick, who had deposed Protector Somerset during January of the same year, for its failure to support education in both grammar schools and the universities. 35 Lever’s attack on the ‘Wicked Mammon’ alludes to William Tyndale’s popular and influential Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1528). Lever and his fellow reformers knew well that the implementation of the Edwardian settlement of religion was contingent on the survival of Edward VI, who acceded to the throne as a sickly minor. During the remaining years of his reign, preachers at Paul’s Cross continued to decry the survival of forbidden religious practices. Matthew Parker preached in favour of national unity and obedience to the laws of the land in early 1551, and Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, preached an exceedingly long sermon following the introduction of the second Book of Common Prayer on 1 November 1552. In addition to sermons on theological topics, one preacher gave thanks for a peace treaty with France and Hugh Latimer spoke concerning the absence of appropriate sanitation in St Paul’s churchyard.36 The death of Edward VI on 6 July 1553 led to the succession of his half- sister, Mary I (1553–1558), who came close to restoring the Church of England to the status quo ante prior to Henry VIII’s divorce from her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Indeed, Queen Mary in effect attempted to bring about a Hapsburg succession through marriage to her cousin, Philip of Spain. Following Smith’s resignation from his lectureship and removal from the Regius Professorship at the University of Oxford, he attended lec- tures on 1 Corinthians delivered by his successor, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1548–49). According to Strype, he ‘took notes, as tho’ he had been one of his diligent and glad auditors. But all this was dissimulation,’ because he challenged Martyr to engage in theological disputation, and then fled to Louvain before it took place.37 After the death of Edward VI, Smith returned to England and Mary I appointed him to serve as her chaplain and as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. After withdrawing from the royal court not long after the fall of Protector Somerset, Hugh Latimer dedicated himself to service of the dowager Duchess of Suffolk, at whose
35 A sermon preached at Pauls crosse, the .14. day of December, … 1550. In addition to two editions published by John Day during 1551, John Oswen published a third edition, perhaps during the same year (RSTC 15546–15546.7). In 1548 Oswen had relocated his printing establishment from Ipswich to Worcester, where he published quasi-official publications for the population of Wales under the terms of a royal patent. 36 MacLure, Register, rev. Boswell and Pauls, 31–33. 37 Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2.40.
home in Lincolnshire he preached a series of sermons that were later printed by John Day. Refusing to go into exile under Mary I, he underwent trial and conviction as a heretic at the University of Oxford. As Chancellor, Richard Smith preached from a portable pulpit when Latimer was burnt alive in the company of Nicholas Ridley in Broad Street, Oxford. Smith also presided at the heresy trial of Thomas Cranmer. After supporting John Dudley’s attempt to bypass Lady Mary in a failed attempt to alter the line of royal succession in order to engineer the accession to the throne of Lady Jane Grey, Thomas Lever went into exile in continental Europe, where he associated with prominent Protestant reformers in Strasbourg, Zurich, and Geneva. Returning to England after the death of Mary I and accession of her half-sister, Elizabeth, on 17 November 1558, Lever neither resumed the mastership of St John’s College, Cambridge, nor returned to favour at the royal court. His radical religious convictions and involvement with the nascent Puritan movement blocked him from advancing in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PUBLIC CONVERSION: RICHARD SMYTH’S ‘RETRACTATION’ AT PAUL’S CROSS IN 1547
Torrance Kirby
One of the key ‘forms of conversion’ that contributed substantially to the intellectual transformation of Europe and its world during the early mod- ern period is the purposeful turn of humanist scholars and reforming theologians alike towards the Forms themselves. I refer to the conscious, indeed fervent embrace of the Platonic epistemology of illumination exemplified by Erasmian reform. Underpinning many of the early-modern forms of conversion is a conversion in the the deep assumptions of the theory of cognition. In a blistering attack on the egregious moral abuses of the late-medieval Church in his Enchiridion militis Christiani of 1503, Erasmus draws a telling parallel between Plato’s theory of knowledge and his own ‘philosophia Christi’.1 The philosopher’s turning away from the fleeting images of sensuous ‘phantasy’ on coming out of the Cave, and fac- ing toward the brilliant luminosity of the intellectual Sun—Plato’s Form of the Good—represents for Erasmus a humanist model of conversion to what he terms ‘quick and vigorous adulthood in Christ,’ that is a religious life characterized by inward clarity of cognition strongly contrasted with perfunctory observance of external ceremony and arcane ritual. In the peroration of the fifth rule of the Enchiridion, an especially vivid passage reminiscent of Pico della Mirandola’s Oration fuses the epistemological imagery of Republic and the erotic metaphor of the soul’s ascent to the intellectual heaven in Phaedrus with Jacob’s dream of angels ascend- ing and descending a ladder between heaven and earth;2 with a characteristic nod in the direction of Lucretius, Erasmus sums up his case for religious reform as consisting first and foremost in metanoia, a radical conversion of the mind, rendered here in the translation published
1 On Erasmus and the Philosophia Christi as ‘a life centered on Christ and characterized by inner faith rather than external rites,’ see Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 138–154. 2 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the dignity of man; translated by A. Robert Caponigri (South Bend, Indiana: Regnery Gateway, 1956), 17–19.
3 Desiderius Erasmus, Ratio seu methodus compendio perueniendi ad ueram theologiam: Paraclesis, id est adhortatio ad sanctissimum, ac saluberrimum Christianæ philosophæ studium (Basle: [Johannes Froben], 1521), republished (Strasbourg: Felicem, 1522). An English translation of Erasmus’s original Latin text, attributed to William Tyndale, appeared in 1533: A booke called in latyn Enchiridion militis christiani, and in englysshe the manuell of the christen knyght replenysshed with moste holsome preceptes, made by the famous clerke Erasmus of Roterdame (London: Wynkyn de Worde, for Iohan Byddell, 1533). See Douglas H. Parker, ‘The English Enchiridion militis christiani and Reformation Politics,’ Erasmus in English 5 (1972), 16- 21. While John Foxe maintained that Tyndale made this translation while a tutor in Gloucestershire in the mid 1520s, David Daniell attributes the translation to Nicholas Udall: see William Tyndale: A Biography (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 72. See Anne M. O’Donnell, ‘Editing the independent Works of William Tyndale’, in Erika Rummel, ed., Editing Texts from the Age of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 55. 4 Erasmus, Epistle 181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138.
that the common body of Christians was corrupt not only in its affections, but in its ideas … Abraham long ago dug wells in every country seeking veins of living water; and when the Philistines filled them with earth they were dug anew by Isaac and his sons, who, not content with restoring the old wells, dug new ones besides … Nor are we quite free of Philistines nowadays, who get more pleasure from earth than from fountains of living water.5 The prescribed cure was to be nothing less than a return back to the sources—a radical conversio ad fontes! In the first instance this was to be a return to the ancients, and most especially to the Greeks. The classical turn was not, however, an end in itself, but was plainly understood as instrumental in preparation for the return to what Pico called the living waters of the Sacred Oracles, that is to say to the Holy Scriptures.6 Erasmus’s Enchiridion epitomizes a far-reaching conversion of the the- ory of knowledge which underpins two grand projects of the 16th century—namely, the humanist challenge to scholastic method and the Protestant reformers’ challenge to the traditional assumptions governing the doctrine and practice of the late-medieval Church.7 For Erasmus, following Plato, metanoia is to turn from the impermanent sensuous appearances—literally the phainomena—towards the permanent reality, namely the ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’. The preliminary mode of knowing proper to fleeting appearance is designated by Plato as ‘phantasia’ or ‘doxa’—mere sensuous opinion—while the mode of cognition proper to the converted and illuminated soul is a ‘tethered’ rational understanding—‘episteme’. The sense of turning around in the Latin ‘conversio’ brings with it an addi- tional sense of subversion, alteration, or radical change.8 Pliny the Younger speaks of ‘conversio’ as a complete alteration of point of view or opinion,9 while both Cicero and Quintilian employ the term in the formal language
5 From Erasmus’s prefatory epistle address to Paul Volz, Abbot of Hugshofen, Epistle 181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138, 139. 6 ‘Sed in primis ad fontes ipsos properandum, id est græcos et antiquos.’ Erasmus, De ratione studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores (Paris: G. Biermant, 1511) in Opera omnia, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1969), 120.11. 7 Charles G. Nauert, ‘Humanism as Method: Roots of conflict with the Scholastics,’ The Sixteenth Century Journal, 29. 2 (1998), 427–438. 8 See, e.g., Cicero, De divinatione, 2.2.6: ‘moderatio et conversio tempestatum’; idem, Oratio pro L. Flacco, 37, 94: ‘conversio et perturbatio rerum’. The following classical citations are derived for the most part from the definitions of ‘metanoia’ in A Greek-English Lexicion compiled by H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, New Edition ed. Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) and of ‘conversio’ in A Latin Dictionary, ed. C.T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 9 Pliny the Younger, Epistulæ 9.13.18: ‘tanta conversio consecuta est’.
Richard Smyth’s Retractation Sermon of 1547
In the heady, combative atmosphere of late-scholastic and humanist scholarship in mid-Tudor Oxford, all of these classical, scriptural, and patristic senses of ‘metanoia’ and ‘conversio’ were commonplace. The epis- temological significance of conversion Erasmus attaches to the concept of conversion in his Enchiridion, may assist us constructively in interpreting a representative event of formal public conversion early in the reign of Edward VI, namely in Dr Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ preached at Paul’s Cross in London on 15 May 1547,13 and preached again two months later on 24 July at the University of Oxford.14 At the time, in his capacity as Regius Professor of Divinity and Prebendary of Christ Church, Smyth held
10 Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriæ, 10.5.4; Cicero, de Oratore, 3.54.207. 11 Matt. 4:17. 12 Augustine, De civitate Dei, 14.28. See also 7.33 and 8.24 ‘conversio ad verum Deum sanctumque’. 13 Richard Smyth, A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, the yeare of oure lorde God 1547, the 15 daye of May, by Mayster Richard Smyth Doctor of diuinitye, and reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in Oxford. Reuokyng therein certeyn Errors and faultes by hum committyd in some of hys bookes (London: [Reynolde Wolfe], Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum, 1547). 14 Richard Smyth, A playne declaration made at Oxforde the 24. daye of July, by mayster Richarde Smyth, Doctor of diuinite, vpon hys Retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, in the yeare of our lorde God, MDxlvii the xv. daye of May (London: [Reynolde Wolfe], 1547).
one of the most prestigious academic appointments in the realm. Such was his intellectual distinction that later, during the subsequent reign of Edward’s sister Mary, Smyth was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Most likely owing to his prominence in the university, Smyth was singled out by the Privy Council to preach a sermon retracting certain tra- ditional teachings on the nature of religious authority and the sacraments that had been published in two books in the previous year, in order to signal the determined shift of religious policy under the new regime. In effect, Smyth was called upon to disavow publicly doctrines and opinions that until only a few months previously, that is in the final year of the reign of King Henry VIII, had represented something close to the accepted stan- dard of doctrinal orthodoxy.15 Regime change inevitably brought the ques- tion of conversion in its wake—and with it the necessity for Smyth to make a decisive adjustment to his primary doctrinal assumptions if he was to continue in possession of his eminent academic situation, not to men- tion the enviable emoluments pertaining thereto as a Canon of Christ Church. Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ provides an instructive case for weighing the public religious and political implications of conversion in the course of England’s multiple Reformations, as well as an opportunity to examine their dependence upon shifting epistemological assumptions concerning conversion such as those proposed by Erasmus in his Enchiridion. Smyth’s career maps an exhilarating sequence of public conversions followed by later retractions which provides an exemplar of the rapid adaptation necessary for those who hoped to survive recurring changes of regime between 1530 and 1560, and of course later as well. Numbering among the leading intellects of his day, Smyth graduated BA from Merton College in 1527 and was shortly thereafter elected to a fellowship of his col- lege. He read for the BD degree which he received in 1533, and was subse- quently inducted to the nearby living of Cuxham. Three years later in 1536 Smyth was appointed ‘reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in Oxford’ at King Henry VIII’s newly constituted college, formerly Cardinal College which had been suppressed in 1531 after the fall of Wolsey, and refounded by Henry in 1532. In 1546, a year before Smyth’s Retractation sermon, the college was renamed Christ Church (Aedes Christi) in acknowledgement of its elevation to the status of Cathedral in a jurisdictional transformation
15 For a full discussion of the career of Richard Smyth and his recantations see J. Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth and the language of orthodoxy: re-imagining Tudor Catholic polemi- cism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), esp. 34–40.
16 On the question of the plurality of Tudor Reformations, see Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Peter Marshall discusses Henry VIII’s own attempt to address this matter in his Christmas Eve address to Parliament in 1545, in Marshall’s view perhaps Henry’s ‘finest hour’. ‘Mumpsimus et Sumpsimus: the intellectual origins of a Henrician Bon Mot,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001), 512–520. 17 The Priory of Wallingford near Smyth’s parish at Cuxham was among thirty monastic houses dissolved by Wolsey in order to found his college in Oxford and a Grammar School in his birthplace at Ipswich. 18 Richard Smith, A brief treatyse settynge forth diuers truthes necessary both to be beleued of Chrysten people, & kepte also, whiche are not expressed in the Scripture but left to ye church by the apostles traditio[n] … (Lo[n]don: in Paules Churche yearde, at the synge of the Mayde[n]s hed by Thomas Petit, 1547). 19 Richard Smyth, The assertion and defence of the sacramente of the aulter. Compyled and made by mayster Richard Smythe doctour of diuinitie, and reader of the Kynges maiesties lesson in his graces vniuersitie of Oxforde, dedicate vnto his hyghnes, beynge the excellent and moost worthy defendour of Christes faythe (London: Iohn Herforde for Roberte Toye, dwell- ynge in Paules church yarde at the sygne of the Bell, 1546). Richard Smyth, A defence of the blessed masse, and the sacrifice therof prouynge that it is auayleable both for the quycke and the dead and that by Christes owne and his apostles ordynaunce, made [and] set forth by Rycharde Smyth doctour in diuinitie, and reader of ye kynges highnes lesson of diuinitie, in his maiesties vniuersitie of Oxforde. Wherin are dyuers doubtes opened, as it were by the waye, ouer and aboue the principall, and cheyfe matter (London: John Herforde, 1546). See Löwe, Richard Smyth, 186–200. 20 Charles Wriothesley notes in his Chronicle of the Grey friars of London that on ‘the fiftenth daie of maie, 1547, Doctor Smyth of Wydyngton [i.e. Whittington] College … recanted and burned two bookes … and there professed another sincere doctrine contrarie to his old papisticall order.’ See A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from a. d. 1485–1559 ed. W.D. Hamilton (Westminster: Camden Society, 1875–77), 184.
Reformed standards favoured by Protector Somerset, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and the majority of the Council—in effect a public, though as events transpired, insincere conversion. Smyth’s Retractation Sermon is described by Andreas Löwe as a ‘masterpiece of equivocation.’21 Smyth chose to preach on a decidedly ambiguous text from Psalm 116, 2 ‘Omnis homo mendax’22—‘every man is a liar’—a passage quoted by Paul in Romans 3:4, and made much use of by Martin Luther in his explication of the forensic doctrine of Justification by faith.23 With typically dialectical emphasis Luther asserted in a scholium on Romans that ‘God alone is true; all men are liars’ (solus Deus verax, omnis homo mendax) to which he then added his trademark soteriological gloss: ‘Just as in former times David left behind all the means by which Solomon built the temple, so also in this grace Christ left behind the Gospel and other writings so that by these and not by human decrees the church is built.’24 Given the recent controversial association of his chosen sermon text in continental theological debates, Smyth’s discourse goes directly, and indeed both deliberately and play- fully, to the very substance of the Reformation controversy which had pre- cipitated his recantation, namely to the vexed question of divine versus human authority in the constitution and government of the Church. Given the context of his making a public recantation, the scripture pas- sage ‘omnis homo mendax’ carried a heavily ironical, and in the view of some a distinctly cynical flavour. Even a traditionalist Henrician Catholic like Stephen Gardiner, wily Bishop of Winchester, who might reasonably be considered to have had some degree of sympathy for Smyth’s conserva- tive Henrician stance, wrote to Edward Seymour complaining about Smyth’s evident lack of sincerity: And when I sawe Doctor Smithes recantacion begin with Omnis homo mendax so engleshed and such a new humility as he woulde make all the doctors of the church liers with him selfe, knowing what oppinions were abrode, it enforced me to write vnto your grace for the ease of my conscience.25
21 Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth, 35. 22 Richard Smyth. A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, Aii. 23 See, e.g., Luther’s scholion on Romans 8, Weimarer Ausgabe 56, 385. 24 For a discussion of ‘omnis homo mendax’ theme, see Kenneth Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture as seen in his Commentaries on Galatians, 1519–1538 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993), 19–28. 25 ‘And when I sawe Doctor Smithes recantacion begin with Omnis homo mendax so engleshed and such a new humility as he woulde make all the doctors of the church liers with him selfe, knowing what oppinions were abrode, it enforced me to write vnto your
Under the circumstances, one could hardly blame Gardiner for seeking to distance himself from Smyth. In A Playne declaration, the preface to the second edition of the sermon, Smyth openly admits that his attempt at retractation at Paul’s Cross had been received sceptically—and this reading is supported by John Foxe in his reports of correspondence between Edward Seymour and Stephen Gardiner concerning the Paul’s Cross event. In his letter to Seymour, Gardiner takes considerable care to distance himself from Smyth: ‘I nether liked his tractation of vnwritten verities, more yet his retractacion, & was glad of my formar Iudgement, that I neyuer had familiaryty with him.’26 Nonetheless, in a somewhat ironic inversion of expected roles, Seymour— ever willing to see the best in his adversaries—applauds the sincerity of Smyth’s recantation and expresses his incredulity at Gardiner’s cynicism.27 Winchester’s more judicious assumption of Smyth’s equivocation, on the other hand, was doubtless motivated by his own clear interest in seeking to disassociate himself from Smyth. In a sermon preached before the young King Edward in June 1548, Gardiner attempted his own high-wire balancing act when, against the express wish of Somerset, he simultane- ously defended the Royal Supremacy and the doctrine of Transubstantia tion.28 For this audacious attempt to reassert the conservative provisions of the late-Henrician doctrinal consensus, Gardiner shortly found himself
grace for the ease of my conscience: geuing this Iudgement of Smith that I nether liked his tractation of vnwrittē verities, more yet his retractacion, & was glad of my formar Iudgement, that I neyuer had familiaryty with him, I sawe him not (that I wot these iii yeres ne talked with him these vii yeres, as curious as I am noted in the commō welth). And wher as in his vnwritten verites he was so mad to say, Byshops in this realme may make laws, I haue witnes that I said at þe word, we should be then dawes, and was by & by sory that euer he had written of the sacramēt of the alter, which was not as it was noysed, vntouched, with that Woord, all men be liers which is a maruaillous word, as it soundeth in our tong when we saie a man were better haue a thief in his house then a lier.’ John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), IV, 795. 26 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), IV, 795. 27 Seymour wrote to Stephen Gardiner just days later, on 21 May 1547, expressing his incredulity at Gardiner’s dissatisfaction with Smith’s retractation: ‘As it apered, you be so angrye wyth hys retractions … that you cannnot abide his beginning … it appered vnto vs then of him taken but godly … we would haue wished your lorship to have written against his booke before, or now with it, if you thinke that to be defended whiche the author him- self refuseth to averre. Your Lordship writeth so ernestly for lent, which we go not about to put awsaye, no more then when Dr Smith wrote so ernestly that euery man should be obedient to the bishops, the magistrates by and by went not about to bring kings and princes, and others, under their subjection.’ Foxe, Actes and Monuments, IV, 735–736. 28 ‘The sermon of the bishop of Winchester before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on Matthew XVI.13.’ Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 127.5.
confined to the Fleet, and later to the Tower of London where he remained a prisoner till the end of Edward’s reign. After being deprived of his chair at Oxford in 1548, Smyth fled across the Channel to the University of Louvain where, on another public occasion he formally retracted his Retractation, and then proceeded to compose a series of polemical tracts attacking the doctrinal views of leaders of the Edwardian Reformation, including Thomas Cranmer and the great Florentine biblical scholar Peter Martyr Vermigli who, recently arrived in England from Strasbourg, had displaced Smyth as Regius Professor at Cranmer’s invitation.29 Later in 1553, in the wake of the accession of Queen Mary I, Smyth returned to England, and was restored to his previous posi- tion at Oxford where, as Chancellor of the University, he presided at Cranmer’s trial for heresy in 1555 during which Smyth enjoyed the vindication of having his own writings on Transubstantiation and the Eucharist employed as the judicial yardstick of orthodoxy. Smyth preached publicly at Oxford on the occasion of the burning for heresy of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, and employed this opportunity in the pulpit with an attempt to secure their recantations and conversions.30 The wood- cut image of this occasion in Foxe’s Actes and Monuments is the only extant likeness of Smyth. The whirligig of time, however, had not yet com- pleted the cycle of her revenges. Following the accession of Elizabeth Smyth attempted to flee to Scotland but was apprehended and compelled, once again, to recant and subscribe the Oath of Supremacy; and on this occasion his conversion was short-lived as he was able to make his escape to Louvain and was soon instituted as Reader of Scripture at the recently founded Catholic University in Douai where he spent the remainder of his career until his death in 1563. By the time he had done, Smyth had achieved the feat of publicly supporting and recanting five distinct religious estab- lishments (or as many as seven if three distinct religious regimes under Henry VIII are included in the calculation).
Argument of the Retractation
The central question Smyth addresses in his ‘godly and faythfull retracta- tion’ concerns the ultimate source of religious authority, particularly as it
29 On Vermigli and Smyth in Oxford see Charlotte Methuen, ‘Reading Scripture in the University’, in Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi, and Frank James, eds., A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2009), 71–94 and Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), chap. 3. 30 Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), Bk XI, 1793.
31 Smyth, Retractation, Diir. 32 Aurelius Augustine, Opera omnia, Retractationum libri duo, in Patrologia Latina 32, 583–656. Augustine, The Retractations, translated by Sister Mary Inez Bogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). 33 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiir.
human traditions, precepts, ordinances, rites and ceremonies not con- tained in Scripture, but as being nonetheless necessary to salvation. This was one of Smyth’s books described by Charles Wriothesley (‘call me Risley’) as having been ritually burnt at Paul’s Cross at the time of Smyth’s recantation: ‘which booke I do Reproue and Reuoke in dyuers faultes in it.’34 Thus, the first part of the Retractation sermon consists of Smyth’s repudiation of the six principal points on the necessity of human tradi- tions to salvation which he had set out previously in the argument of A brief Treatyse, combined with a second major part in which he revokes his traditionalist teaching concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass. Taken together these two main parts of the Retractation comprise the principal theological questions then in dispute as evidenced by numerous sermons preached at Paul’s Cross at that time. In his Booke of Traditions Smyth defended the ‘autorite of Bysshoppes in makiyng lawes and ordenances’ in such manner as to impugne the juris- diction of both Prince and Parliament.35 In so doing he implied that eccle- siastical tradition was authoritative independently of ‘the consent and auctoritie of the Prince and people,’ and thus constituted a direct chal- lenge to the Act of Supremacy.36 In the Retractation Smyth sets out to toe the new Edwardine line: ¶ Secondly, I say and affirme that no Bysshop nor none of the clergy assem- bled togither haue auctoritie to make any Lawes or Decrees besydes Gods Law ouer the people without the consent of the Princes and the people: and if they do make anye suche, no man is bounde to obey theym. ¶ Thirdly, I say that in those countryes, where by the auctorite of the Prince they haue made any suche Lawes, thauctorite of those Lawes, doth not appende and hang of the Bisshops and the Clergy, but of the princes and cheif heds in euery country.37 ¶ Fourthly, I say and affirme that within this Realme of England and other the kinges Dominions, there is [B.ii.r] is no Law, Decree, Ordinaunce or
34 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiir. 35 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiiv. 36 The parliamentary sessions of 1533–1534 made decisive moves against the papacy with the formal enactment of the Royal Supremacy. In strictly constitutional terms, a series of statutes beginning with the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1533), followed by the Act of Supremacy (1534), and culminating with an Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome (1536) accomplish the revolution which established Henry VIII’s headship of the Church. The preamble of the Act of Supremacy famously declares that England is an ‘empire,’ governed by one Supreme Head, namely the King, and that under his rule the Church was wholly self-sufficient ‘without the intermeddling of any exterior person or per- sons.’ 24 Henry VIII, c. 12; 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; 28 Henry VIII, c. 10. 37 Smyth here affirms the formal Submission of the Clergy, 25 Henry VIII cap. 19; Statutes of the Realm III, 460–461.
constitution ecclesiasticall in force and auaileable by any mans auctority, but only by the kynges maiestyes auctority or of his Parliament.38 Having treated the jurisdiction of Crown, Parliament, and Clergy, Smyth then proceeds to repudiate the authority of human tradition in the form of the spurious Clementine Epistles, forgeries exposed as such by humanist historical scholarship a century previously, namely by Nicholas of Cusa and Lorenzo Valla.39 For centuries the False Decretals, as they came to be called, had provided the foundation for papal claims to supremacy of authority over the Emperor and other princes. Yet according to Smyth in his Booke of Traditions, these decretals ‘must be taken for the Appostles doctrine and techyng’. In his Retractation, Smyth proclaims his conversion from Scholastic obscurantism to the hermeneutics of the New Learning:40 Now hauynge red many thynges, whiche at that tyme I had not diligently marked and wayed: I doo thinke, affirme, and confesse that doctrine to be not trew, but a wayne, unlawfull, uniust, and unportable berdeinn to Christen consciences: and that those Canons pretended to be of thappostles making and gatherd of saint Clement, not to be made of thappostles.41 Finally Smyth recants his assertion that numerous ritual customs and practices prescribed by ecclesiastical tradition but not found in Holy Scripture must be observed ‘under payne of dampnation’42 and goes on to affirm the classic Reformed position concerning the sufficiency of Scripture alone to salvation. Many of the ecclesiastical customs Smyth lists in his Retractation as being in dispute belong to the category of the very religious practices that Erasmus had censured in the Enchiridion as belonging to the sphere of phantasia, the sensuous imagination: viz. ‘the hallowyng of the water in the font, the thrise dippyng of the Chylde in the
38 In this Smyth affirms the Act of Supremacy itself, 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; Statutes of the Realm III, 492–493. 39 Smyth, Retractation, Biiv—Biiiv and Ciiv. The Clementine Epistles are included among 58 out of 60 apocryphal letters or decrees attributed to the popes from St Clement (88–97) to Melchiades (311–314) and are now known to be forgeries. See the excellent and highly accessible account is the essay by E.H. Davenport, The False Decretals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916), xxii. Cf. also William Shafer, Codices pseudo-Isidoriani: a palæographico-historical study, Monumenta iuris canonici, Series C: Subsidia vol. 3 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971). With the possible exception of Hincmar in the 9th century and the guarded expression of the Synod of Gerstungen, no one raised a voice against the forgeries until Valla and Cusanus in the 15th century. See Philip Schaff, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. IX (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1953), 347. 40 Smyth, Retractation, Biiv. 41 Smyth, Retractation, Biiir. 42 Smyth, Retractation, Biiiv.
water at the Christenyng, the puttyng on of the Chrisome, the Consecration of the Oyle, and Anoyntyng of the christened chylde, the hallowyng of the Aulters, the prayeng towardes the East, the Sensyng of the aultare, the Wasshyng of the handes, and sayeng Confitoer, and lifting up of the Sacrament of the Masse, the makyng of Holy water …’43 In Smyth’s Retractation, all of these rituals, ceremonies and traditional practices are to be deemed adiaphora, and therefore rendered subject to the authority of the king’s majesty, either to receive or to abrogate, and his subjects ‘may use his said lybertie without any daunger of synne or scruple of con- science, either to the kynges maiestie which gaue lybertie, or to him whiche hath obteyned the lybertie or Dispensacion.’44 All of this Smyth ascribes to a conversion away from ‘a respecte to a fantasy that then I had in my mynde, than to the trew and infallyble doctrine of scripture’—yet, as Gardiner shrewdly observed, the entire discourse of the Retractation is construed under the crafty aegis of the sermon text ‘Omnis homo mendax.’
43 Smyth, Retractation, Biiiv—Bivr. 44 Smyth, Retractation, Ciiiv.
CHAPTER NINE
‘LORDS AND LABOURERS’: HUGH LATIMER’S HOMILETICAL HERMENEUTICS
Jason Zuidema
One month after the death of Henry VIII in late January 1547, Hugh Latimer was released from the Tower of London, apparently by the terms of the general pardon issued in the name of Edward VI on his coronation day.1 It is unclear what Latimer did following his release until the close of 1547 when we see his name among several prominent English reformers, John Knox, Matthew Parker, Edmund Grindal and others who had, since July, been re-licensed to preach under the ecclesiastical seal. Latimer had not preached in eight years, ever since renouncing his bishopric of Worchester in 1539 and spending several difficult years under house arrest and impris- onment, silenced by Henry VIII’s concern with the increasing diversity of doctrine in his realm.2 Though he had not ministered publicly for the bet- ter part of a decade, his presence in the pulpit was not diminished.3 Testifying to the importance of Latimer’s voice behind the new govern- ment and its reforming agenda, Latimer was one of the first to occupy the pulpit at Paul’s Cross. Indeed, in January 1548 (possibly late December 1547) Latimer was called on for as many as four Sunday sermons and four mid-week sermons.4 The four mid-week sermons compared agricultural
1 Allan G. Chester, Hugh Latimer: Apostle to the English (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 162. See also the details provided in Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555, ed. George E. Corrie for the Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), I.xii and II.xx–xxi. Cited hereafter LS. 2 Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 2009), 250–57. Also see her ‘From Tudor Humanism to Reformation Preaching,’ in The Oxford Handbook of The Early Modern Sermon, ed. P. McCullough, H. Adlington and E. Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 341–44. 3 Latimer’s activities in this period are described in part in Susan Wabuda, ‘Shunamites and Nurses in the English Reformation: the Activities of Mary Glover, Niece of Hugh Latimer,’ in Women in the Church, Studies in Church History 27, ed. W.J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 335–344. 4 Chester, Hugh Latimer, 163. The 16th-century chronicler John Stow adds some detail of other sermons: ‘In the I. of January doctor Latimer preached at Paules crosse, which was
the first sermon by him preached in almost eight yeeres before, for at the making of the sixe articles, he being bishop of Worchester would not consent unto them, and therefore was commanded to silence, and gave up his bishoprike: he also preached at Pauls crosse on the 8. of January; where he affirmed, that whatsoever the cleargie commanded, ought to be obeyed, but he also declared that the cleargie are such as sit in Moyses chaire, and breake not their masters commission: adding nothing thereto, nor taking any thing there from: and such a cleargy must be obeied of all men, both high and lowe. He also preached at Paules on the 15. and on the 29. of January.’ John Stow, Annals of England (London: John Windet, 1603), 1002. Though he acknowledges that Chester and Stow list more, MacLure notes only five entries in his 1958 register of sermons at Paul’s Cross: Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 192. No addi- tional information is given in the updated register based on MacLure’s: Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642, rev. ed. Peter Pauls and Jackson Campbell Boswell (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), 28–9. The ‘sermon on the plougher’ examined here is the fourth mid-week sermon preached by Latimer in January (see text history below). Since it was preached on January 18 in the third Wednesday of January 1548, it can be inferred that he preached at the Cross on the last Wednesday of December 1547. However, as cited above, Stow highlights that the 1 January sermon was his first. We have no additional infor- mation with which to solve this apparent discrepancy. 5 Latimer recounts his conversion while a student at Cambridge in a sermon before Katherine of Suffolk in 1552: ‘Master Bilney … was the instrument whereby God called me to knowledge, for I may thanke him, next to God, for that knowledge that I have in the word of God. For I was as obstinate a Papist as any was in England, insomuch that when I should be made Batcheler of divinity, my whole Oration went against Philip Melanchthon, and against his opinions…Then Bilney took me aside and taught me more than I had learned to that point…So from that time forward I beganne to smell the word of GOD, and forsooke the school doctors: and such fooleries.’ Hugh Latimer, Fruitfull Sermons (London: Thomas Cotes, 1635), 125r. 6 On the state of ideas for reform at Cambridge in this period see: Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), ch. 5. See also a 16th-century testimony in LS II. xxvii–xxxi. 7 Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 81 and Michael Pasquarello, ‘Evangelizing England: The Importance of the Book of Homilies for the Popular Preaching of Hugh Latimer & John Wesley,’ The Asbury Theological Journal (Oct, 2004), 154.
Nonetheless, the Crown had often protected him, particularly for his vocal support of Henry’s wish to annul his first marriage. He was rewarded, one could say, with the bishopric of Worchester in September 1535.8 Though he renounced that position in 1539 and suffered imprisonment in the following year, he continued to receive a pension related to this position on which he lived until he was burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions in November 1555. Most commentators consider the ‘Sermon on the Plougher’ to be one of Latimer’s best. Allan Chester, the most comprehensive modern biographer of Latimer, notes, ‘The Sermon on the Ploughers is generally, and quite properly, regarded as one of the finest of Latimer’s extant sermons.’9 Though judgments of homiletical perfor- mance are often too subjective for the historian, this sermon was clearly influential in its own time and continued to confound and inspire by its many printings in the decades and centuries following.10 Yet, how should we understand it? Beyond a simple description of Latimer’s rhetoric or recitation of his metaphors, how ought we situate this sermon in the wider history of the English Church in the Edwardian period?
Setting, Argument and Impact
The earliest witnesses and printings of the Sermon give a few clues to its immediate setting. It was preached on Wednesday, 18 January 1548 in the ‘shrouds’ of Paul’s Church in London. In times of inclement weather, as it is wont to be in London, the speaker and important guests at the sermon took refuge in the undercroft of St Paul’s Church.11 As with most of these sermons preached at the Cross, there was a central text that occasioned
8 For Latimer’s work as bishop see: Susan Wabuda, ‘“Fruitful Preaching” in the Diocese of Worchester: Bishop Hugh Latimer and His Influence, 1535–1539,’ in Religion and the English People, 1500–1640: New Voices, New Perspectives, ed. Eric Josef Carlson (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Pres, 1998), 49–74. 9 Chester, Hugh Latimer, 163. 10 One example of the nachleben of Latimer’s sermons is in Steven Kenneth Galbraith, ‘Latimer revised and reprised: editing Frutefull sermons for pulpit delivery,’ Reformation 11 (2006), 29–46. 11 On location and significance of preaching from the ‘shrouds’ see the work of St Paul’s archeologist John Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (Swindon: English Heritage, 2011), 114, 211 and figure 4.57. Schofield notes that though some claim the ‘shoruds’ were on the grounds of the medieval cloisters, the likely location was the Church of St Faith at the end of the west crypt under St Paul’s choir where listeners could actually attain shelter from inclement weather. On the significance of sermons preached there see also Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 11; Chester, Hugh Latimer, 165.
12 Latimer was not the first to preach on the Parable of the Sower at Paul’s Cross. In 1526 Bishop John Fisher used this parable to condemn the doctrine of Martin Luther. 13 Chester, Hugh Latimer, 163. 14 Hugh Latimer, Sermon on the Ploughers, ed. Edward Arber (London: Alex Murray and Son, 1869), 2. 15 Allan Chester, Selected Sermons of Hugh Latimer (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1968), xxviii. 16 Susan Wabuda, ‘Latimer, Hugh,’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 32 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 636.
it is about monks who leave their cloisters.17 Latimer, in contrast, argues that this text is ‘directlie spoken of diligente preachyng of the worde of God. For preachynge of the Gospel is one of Goddes plough workes, and the preacher is one of Goddes plough men.’18 Though comparisons of preachers to farm labourers might be offensive for some, says Latimer, they are legitimate and help us think rightly about the labour of the preacher. Like a ploughman, a preacher should be busy in all seasons and ready for all types of work—the preacher’s is a right ‘busie work.’19 Two key problems arise from this misunderstanding of the preacher’s work: faithful preachers are not enough appreciated financially and unfaithful preachers, those who preach only rarely, if at all, live in comfort. Latimer confronts these two problems in memorable turn of phrase: Great is theyr busines, and therefore greate should be theyre hyre. They have great laboures and therfore they ought to have good liuinges, that they maye comodiously seade theyr flocke, for the preachynge of the worde of God unto the people is called meat. Not strauberies, that come but once a yeare and tary not longe, but are sone gone: but it is meat. It is no deynties.20 Indeed, Latimer suggests that since London has never been as bad as it was then, such as ‘loyter & liue idelly,’ these ‘unpreaching prelates,’ need to stop ‘lording’ and start following their true vocations.21 Like in the Old Testament, faithful prophets need to call the people to repent.22 A major problem with the present situation, from Latimer’s point of view, is that these prelates, who he defines as any who ‘hath any spirituall charge in the fayethfull congregation, and who so ever he be that hath cure of soule,’23 is not trained to preach, but to participate in administration and politics: ‘For ever sence the Prelates were made Loordes and nobles,
17 [Hugh Latimer], A notable sermo[n] of ye reuerende father Maister Hughe Latemer, whiche he preached in ye Shrouds at paules churche in Londo[n], on the. xviii. daye of Ianuary, 1548 (London: John Day and William Seres, 1548, [STC 15292a]), A.iii.recto. 18 A notable sermo[n], A.iii.recto. 19 A notable sermo[n], A.v.recto. 20 A notable sermo[n], A.vi.recto. 21 A notable sermo[n], B.iii.recto. 22 Latimer’s use of Old Testament types in relation to his prophetic critique of contem- porary England sustains Mary Morrissey’s thesis in ‘Elect nations and prophetic preaching: types and examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad,’ in The English Sermon Revised, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43–58. 23 A notable sermo[n], A.iv.verso. Chester asserts that this definition is Latimer’s own. Selected Sermons, 31 note 3.
24 A notable sermo[n], A.iv.verso and B.iv.verso. 25 A notable sermo[n], B.v.recto. 26 A notable sermo[n], B.vii.recto. 27 A notable sermo[n], C.ii.recto. 28 A notable sermo[n], C.iii.recto.
propitiatorie.’29 It is good, says Latimer, that the new King has counselors who take such matters seriously. However, if there are still unpreaching prelates, they must learn from Scripture or the Devil how perilous are the times.30 This brief overview of the sermon gives us a glimpse of the content, but also the style and rhetoric. Most commentators rightly note the plainness of Latimer’s style, with the vivid and forthright use of metaphors or anec- dotes.31 Though he was very serious about his subject matter, he had a rare wit and humour for a Paul’s Cross preacher.32 In a later sermon, Latimer would comment on his own style: ‘I have a manner of teaching, which is very tedious to them that be learned. I am wont ever to repeat those things which I have said before, which repetitions are nothing pleasant to the learned: but it is no matter, I care not for them; I seek more profit of those which be ignorant, than to please learned men.’33 It would seem this popu- lism was successful for Latimer would continue to preach multiple times a week for the duration of the reign of Edward VI.34 The success of this sermon was not only on the day of delivery, but also through the impact of the print editions in the months and years that fol- lowed. Though we are not sure what source they used for their work,35 the
29 A notable sermo[n], D.ii.verso. 30 Compare Latimer’s rhetoric with that of Thomas Lever two years later: ‘Truly Frenchmen and Scottes be but feble ennemyes, and at certayne tymes do sclenderly assalt castels, towers, and such manner of holdes. The devyl sekiug lyke a roryng Lyon, whome he may devoure, nyghte & day, wunter and sommer, wyth a wonderful sort of wycked spirits, dothe ever besyge byshopryckes, shyres, townes, and parishes.’ Thomas Lever, A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, the. xiiii. day of December (London: John Day, 1550). 31 On Latimer’s style see: Hugh Latimer, The Sermons, ed. Arthur Pollard (Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2000), xii; MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 146 and 164; Pasquarello, ‘Evangelizing England,’ 154; Wabuda, ‘Latimer, Hugh,’ 636; Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 129–39; Chester, Hugh Latimer, 165 and 194; O.C. Edwards Jr., A History of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), ch. 12; and Pierre Janton, L’éloquence et la rhétorique dans les Sermons de Hugh Latimer: Étude de l’art et de la technique oratoire (Paris: PUF, 1968). 32 See Chester, Select Sermons, xxviii. 33 LS I.341. 34 In the introduction to a later edition of Latimer’s sermons, the editor, Augustine Bernher, remarked: In the which his painful travails he continued all king Edward’s time, preaching for the most part every Sunday two sermons, to the great shame, confusion, and damnation of a great number of our fat-bellied unpreaching prelates.’ In LS I.320. See also Wabuda, ‘Latimer, Hugh,’ 637. 35 ‘Nothing in the volume indicates the source of the printer’s copy for the sermon. It may have been based on Latimer’s own manuscript, or it may have been made from notes taken by a member of the audience, as was the copy for the sermons which were printed in the following year.’ Chester, Hugh Latimer, 165. In a later book Chester suggests that the anonymous member of the audience could be Thomas Some. Chester notes, ‘Some was
also within eyesight of many of the city’s book printers and sellers.42 It is suitable to highlight Latimer’s sermon as one that benefitted from the inter-relationship of printing and preaching. As the century wore on, the spoken word, printed word and diverse audience opinion echoed around the Paul’s Cross plaza, giving cheap source material for printers and providing written accounts of the reforming or conserving ideas of the preachers.
Key Concerns
No doubt, Latimer thought he was preaching the pure Word of God. Yet, he also wished to push a social agenda—there is little doubt that he was enthusiastic in his support for the Injunctions of 1547 and the projects for reform under Edward VI. As Chester notes, Latimer’s invitation to preach at Paul’s Cross so early in Edward’s reign is ‘a remarkable testimonial to the value which the government attached to his preaching.’43 From this ser- mon and the details we can glean concerning the others preached in the same month, we see Latimer’s concern for preaching, Scripture reading in the vernacular, support for clergy, and the reform of all Roman Catholic ‘fantasies’ and ‘idolatry’.44 For this reason Latimer’s sermons were deemed appropriate for Paul’s Cross. As Mary Morrissey argues for these sermons generally: ‘preachers used the literary conventions for preaching as one of the resources that allowed them to intervene in political controversies without breaking the fundamental rule that the preacher’s message comes from God, not the monarch.’45 Though preaching at the cross had been an increasingly dubious privilege in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign because of the shifting doctrinal landscape, the new government’s push for reform was clearer and so reforming preachers could speak their mind freely. Further, through choice of the ‘ploughman’ metaphor, Latimer also touched on a perennial grievance. As Andrew McRae has noted, ‘In a wave of mid-Tudor publications that combined traditional social morality with Protestant agitation, the honest labourer emerged as a powerful
42 See Peter Blayney, The bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990), esp. fig. 16.3. 43 Chester, Hugh Latimer, 163. 44 Felicity Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 157–66. 45 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, xiii.
46 God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2. On the imagery of the plough in the 16th century, see pages 64–5. 47 See Chester, Hugh Latimer, 37, note 11. 48 Compare with Thomas Lever, A sermon preached at Paules crosse. See also Andy Wood, The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter 1. See also Peter E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 42–46. 49 A notable sermo[n], A.v.verso. 50 Chester, Hugh Latimer, 44, 77–78. 51 [Hugh Latimer], Fruitfull Sermons: Preached by the right Reverend Father, and constant Martyr of Iesus, Master Hugh Latimer, newly imprinted with others not heretofore set forth in
small thing—it went to the heart of the support structures of the English Church.52 Latimer, like others before him, judged that a renewal of preach- ing needed to take place in priestly education and in the practice of eccle- siastical leadership.53 With other reformers of his generation, the renewal of the priestly office, especially the renewal of preaching, was key to true reform.54 Yet, we would suggest that Latimer’s preaching had another impact, quite apart from whether one agreed with his application of Scripture. Until this point in English reform, it was difficult to make clear distinc- tions between theological camps—even Latimer was difficult to count clearly with one or another of the continental schools of reform.55 How ever, with government assent, Latimer could now discuss and preach openly. He, and many other leaders of the Edwardian Church, would asso- ciate more with the Strasbourg—Helvetian models of doctrine and church structure, especially under the influence of the recently arrived Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli. On the hot-button issue of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, for example, there was a growing satisfaction with the solutions these theologians were proposing to the awkward stale- mate between Wittenberg and Zurich. The continental reformed opinions were being brought into England by the same press as the sermons of Latimer. Among others texts from Day and Seres in these years, we see those of John Calvin, Pierre Viret and Antoine de Marcourt. In particular, Latimer was an integral player in a process that would increasingly define the Early Modern era. As Norman Jones as argued: ‘By the 1550s the English were living in a world which was irretrievably multi- theological…By 1580 they were living in a world where very few people had clear memories of a time without religious confusion.’56 Though ideas of
print, to the edifying of all which will dispose themselves to the reading of the same. (London: Thomas Cotes, 1635), 53 verso. 52 The seriousness of Latimer’s critique is understood in its practical impact. As Wabuda writes: ‘We can count among the ironies of the Reformation in England the fact that the reformers’ insistence that good works were a sign of grace, not the means of salvation itself, meant the traditional apparatus of funding sermons was injured. If the bidding prayer could not help the dead, why should testators leave money for their names to be prayed for publicly?’ Preaching during the English Reformation, 61. 53 Latimer can be placed in a longer line of those calling for episcopal reform. See: Kenneth Carleton, Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520–1559 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 83. 54 Compare with the interesting analysis of Rosemary O’Day, ‘Hugh Latimer: prophet of the kingdom,’ Historical Research 65 (1992), 258–76. 55 Compare with Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII, xv–xvi. 56 Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 3.
THE STYLE AND LOGIC OF JAMES BROOKS’S 1553 ‘RECONCILIATION SERMON’
Mark Rankin
In 1561, the querulous controversialist John Bale said that Queen Mary Tudor’s bishop of Gloucester, James Brooks, ‘had bene detected and proued a Sodomyte in Oxforde.’1 Bale’s antagonistic caricature is unsur- prising given his longstanding disdain for members of the Catholic clergy, whom he vilified extensively in his Acts of English Votaries (1546) and other works.2 Bale shares this contempt toward the clergy with other early Tudor polemicists and propagandists. For his part, the Bible translator William Tyndale, in his Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), dismissed members of the clergy as bad readers who ‘permitte & sofre you to reade Robyn hode & bevise of hampton / hercules / hector and troylus with a tousande histo- ries & fables of love & wantones & of rybaudry.’3 According to Tyndale, clerical misreading extended from folk legends and romances to misplaced methods of biblical exegesis. Catholic clerics had promulgated a four-fold exegetical method which derived from Augustine’s De doctrina christiana and underwent further development in the writing of St Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians. This method paired the literal, or historical, sense of the text with what might be described as its figurative sense. Notions of figurative reading had undergone subdivision into allegorical, tropological, or moral, and ana- gogical, or soteriological, methods of reading. In the Obedience Tyndale dismisses this entire category of figurative reading. Allegories, he writes, are ‘[t]he greatest cause of which captivite and the decay of the fayth and this blyndnes wherein we now are.’4 Tyndale’s dislike of allegories follows
1 John Bale, A retourne of James Cancellers raylinge boke upon hys owne heade, Lambeth Palace Library MS 2001, fol. 18r. 2 John Bale, The actes of Englysh votaryes, comprehendynge their vnchast practyses and examples by all ages (Wesel [i.e. Antwerp: S. Mierdman], 1546). STC 1270. 3 William Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man (Marlborow in the lande of Hesse [i.e. Antwerp]: Hans Luft [i.e. Marten de Keyser], 1528), C4r. STC 24446. In this paper I expand brevigraphs using italics and omit the abbreviation ‘sig.’ in signature references. 4 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R4v.
Martin Luther, who urged the reader ‘as much as possible [to] avoid alle- gory, so that he may not wander in idle dreams.’5 Tyndale goes on to con- tend with contemporary theologians, whom he calls ‘sophisters’ who promulgate, as he puts it, ‘their Anagogicall and chopologicall sence.’6 Tyndale shows no patience with tropological reading when he character- izes these so-called ‘[c]hopologicall sophisters,’ according to a printed marginal gloss, as seekers after what he describes as ‘some choplogicall sence.’7 In Tyndale’s view, reading the Bible for moral meaning distorts the manifest literal sense. In his Paul’s Cross sermon of 12 November 1553, which he preached to urge the nation’s restoration to Catholicism, James Brooks also opposed those whose hermeneutic ‘chopped’ the literal sense. This similar use of the chopping metaphor in Brooks and Tyndale affords my point of departure for the present essay. In the sermon Brooks supplies an anec- dote concerning a certain Demosthenes, who was cook to the fourth- century eastern Roman emperor Valens. This Demosthenes interrupts a conversation between the emperor and St Basil of Caesarea in order to correct the latter in his erroneous reading of the Bible. Brooks describes Demosthenes’s comments as ‘chopping in lumpes of scripture beselye.’ Such ‘chopping,’ for Brooks, identifies Protestantism’s misplaced insis- tence upon the doctrine of sola scriptura and the primacy of individual Bible reading. Brooks paraphrases Basil’s reply to Demosthenes, saying, ‘what you choppelogike, how long haue you been a chopper of Scripture? Meddle with chopping of your hearbes and leaue your choppyng of scrip- tures hardely.’8 Brooks goes on to argue that if shoemakers are most quali- fied among all others to make shoes and physicians are similarly qualified to practice physic, then Roman Catholic doctors are best informed to determine the meaning of the Bible. Those who are qualified to read the text ought to do so, and those who lack qualification should trust others’ reading over their own.
5 Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, 80 vols. (Weimar: Heinrich Böhlau, 1880–2007), 42.174; English translation Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, 56 vols. (St Louis: Concordia Publishing, 1955–86), I, 233. Cited in Brian Cummings, ‘Protestant Allegory,’ in Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177. 6 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R5r. 7 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R5r. 8 James Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, made at Paules crosse the .xii. daie of Noue[m]bre, in the first yere of the gracious reigne of our Souereigne ladie Quene Marie … by Iames Brokis (London: Within the late dissolued house of the Graie friers, by Roberte Caly, 1553), B7r–v. STC 3838.
Brooks and Tyndale join other sixteenth-century readers in viewing the act of reading as an experience of cutting and ingesting. The poet John Skelton wrote this way in 1528 against the recently tried heretics Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur: ‘Wolde god / for your owne ease / That wyse Harpocrates / Had your mouthes stopped / And your tonges cropped / Whan ye Logyke chopped / And in the Pulpete hopped / And folysshly there fopped.’9 Early in the 1540s the Bible translator Miles Coverdale accused his adversary of misreading the Bible in this fashion: ‘Euen as ye peruerte the wordes of holy scripture / so do ye with .S. Augustine / As ye choppe and chaunge with it / so do ye with him.’10 Queen Elizabeth her- self, in her copy of a 1580 Geneva New Testament, inscribed the front fly- leaf to this same effect: ‘I walke many times into / the pleasant fieldes of the / holye scriptures. Where / I plucke vp the goodlie / greene herbes of sentence / es by pruning: Eate them / by reading.’11 The chopping meta- phor proved fluid in encompassing the physical and sometimes problem- atical nature of reading. Sixteenth-century readers of the Bible in particular encountered allegories, parables, and other genres which do not easily reduce to an explicit literal signification, forcing them to ‘chop’ their way through a text. The resulting ambiguity challenged Protestant reformers keen to emphasize the primacy of literal reading.12 Tyndale for his part insisted that ‘the scripture hath but one sence which is ye literall sence’ and further argued that all allegories found within the Bible signify some literal sense to be found elsewhere within the text.13 Paradoxically, the reader who identifies the literal sense may simultaneously investigate the allegorical sense. ‘Which allegories I maye not make at all the wilde adven- tures,’ Tyndale reports, ‘but must kepe me with in the compasse of the fayth and ever apply myne allegory to Christ and vnto the fayth.’14
9 John Skelton, Honorificatissimo, amplissimo, … A replycacion agaynst certayne yong scolers (London: Richard Pynson, 1528), A4v. STC 22609. 10 Miles Coverdale, A confutacion of that treatise, which one J. Standish made agaynst the protestacion of D. Barnes (Zurich: Christopher Froschauer, 1541?), k6v. STC 5888. 11 Bodl., shelf mark Arch G.e.48. STC 2881.5. Cited in John N. King and Aaron T. Pratt, ‘The materiality of English printed Bibles from the Tyndale New Testament to the King James Bible,’ in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds.), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 84. 12 On this phenomenon see James Simpson, Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), ch. 3: ‘Salvation, Reading, and Textual Hatred.’ 13 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R1v. 14 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R3r.
Brooks also prevaricates when he differentiates between literal and figurative reading. Brooks’s sermon, on Matthew 9:18, interprets the story of Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead as an allegory of England’s hoped-for reconciliation to the Church of Rome. What Brooks calls the ‘mistical sence’ of this story may be found, in his words, ‘ without preiudice to the leter.’15 Brooks opens his exegesis of this text by describing the love of the Catholic Church for England, which is akin to the love of a mother for her child. Brooks shows how the Church possesses authority to care for, revive, and instruct England in matters of religion. In a transitional section, Brooks then comments upon England’s present state of schism before describing three causes of its perceived spiritual death. These con- cern its lack of unity with the Catholic church, its failure to embrace proper doctrine, and its failures in charitable living. The sermon concludes with an analysis of tyrants, whose demise affords examples of divine retri- bution against bad rulers. Brooks is confident that Mary’s accession to the throne will bring about the spiritual revival which he desires. The sermon reveals Brooks’s awareness of the fully rhetorical nature of reading.16 It employs a full range of tropes and devices in order to increase its persuasive appeal and instruct in proper reading.17 Brooks sarcastically employs antimetabole, or repeating the same idea in inverse order, for instance, in noting the ‘stoute stedfastnesse, & stedfast stoutenesse’ dis- played by both Arian heretics and contemporary Protestants.18 Brooks also relies upon asyndeton, or the deliberate omission of conjunctions, combined with anaphora, or the repetition of the same or opening words in successive phrases, in order to express his distaste for unsupervised Protestant Bible reading. Such reading makes readers, he says, ‘the more blinde, the more bold: the more ignoraunt the more busie: the lesse wittie, the more inquisitiue: the more fooles, the more talkatiue.’19 Anaphora functions alone when Brooks laments recent uncertainty in religion. ‘[H]aue not we had chaunge in doctrine,’ he writes, ‘chaunge in bookes, chaunge in tounges, chaunge in aultares, chaunge in placyng, chaunge in gesture, chaunge in apparaile, chaunge in breade, chaunge in geuyng,
15 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, A2r. 16 On the rhetorical nature of reading and marking books in the sixteenth century, see William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 4–5, 27. 17 On the use of tropes and figures, see Sylvia Adamson, et al. (eds.), Renaissance Figures of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 18 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, D5r. 19 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, B6v.
chaunge in receyuyng, with many changes mo, so that we had still chaunge vpon chaunge, like neuer to haue lefte chaungyng, til al the hole world had cleane been chaunged?’20 The sermon frequently resorts to epistrophe, or the conclusion of repeated phrases with the same syntactic structure, as when Brooks derides the Protestants’ approach to the Bible: ‘haue not wee ben likewise by them assaulted wt the word of ye lord,’ he says, ‘urged with ye word of ye lorde, pressed wt the word of ye lord, ye when the lorde (our lord knoweth) ment nothing lesse?’21 Brooks urges his audience through the use of epizeuxis, or the strident repetition of a word or phrase, when he implores, ‘[y]ou are dead, you are dead, you are dead. Hither to your mother, good brethren.’22 Brooks’s use of these and other figures helps us more fully to appreciate the sophistication of his ‘chopping’ metaphor. Having held a fellowship at Corpus Christi College, the leading humanistic foundation in Tudor Oxford, Brooks was trained to view intellectual questions in utramque par- tem (i.e., on both sides of the question), and he applies this training to his use of this metaphor. Throughout the sermon Brooks threads together complex layers of signification in negotiating the competing demands of literal and figurative ways of reading. He appears simultaneously to value both ways of reading, to ‘chop’ the text, as it were, in order to arrive at the desired interpretation, tendentious though it may seem, but always in support of his charge that the nation be reconciled with the Church of Rome. The resulting puzzle of Brooks’s ‘chopping’ helps make this sermon such a richly provocative text. More than any other component of this ora- tion, which Brooks revised for publication following its initial pulpit deliv- ery, this particular metaphor places Brooks in conversation with Tyndale and shows him wrestling with the same challenges posed by Bible reading during an age of sharply divided confessions. Brooks relies upon the literal sense when interpreting some of his proof texts. For example, if Christ’s controversial words at the consecration of the Mass, Hoc est corpus meum, were ‘but a figure,’ argues Brooks, ‘than coulde … euery other man carie his owne body in his owne handes toe, euen as wel as Christ.’23 They must accordingly take on literal signification. Brooks emphasizes the primacy of these words’ literal sense, saying that if they ‘be not playne inoughe, I can not tell, what is playne inough.’24 ‘[T]his
20 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, D6v. 21 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, D2v. 22 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, F7r. 23 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, E8v. 24 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, E5v.
25 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, E6r. 26 Cf. Tyndale: ‘So when I saye Christ is a lambe / I meane not a lambe that beareth woll / but a meke and a paciente lambe which is beaten for other mens fautes. Christ is a vine / not that beareth grapes: but out of whose rote the braunches that beleve / sucke the sprite of lyfe.’ Obedience of a christen man, R2v-3r. Tyndale cites John 1:29 and John 15:5. 27 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, F1v. 28 Tyndale, Obedience of a christen man, R4v.
typically do not scavenge for food. This hermeneutical difficulty may have prompted divergent interpretation in Tudor commentary. Closely follow- ing Tyndale’s own translation of this passage, the 1557 Geneva translation of the New Testament, for example, describes eagles feeding upon carrion as a sign of the imminence of apocalypse. It renders this passage, ‘For where soeuer a dead carkas is, euen thyther wyl the Egles resort,’ and appends the gloss, ‘In despite of Satan the faithful shal be gathered and ioyned with Christe, as the Egles assemble to a dead carkas.’29 The image of scavenging eagles gathering in the same manner as Christ and his fol- lowers affords at the least a non sequiter. Brooks’s own interpretation does not necessarily improve upon the Geneva gloss’s logic. For Brooks, the Church of Rome guards the carcass for the eagles’ use; the church is, he says, ‘thonlye keper of the carcas, that is to witte, of all trueth, wherunto the Egles, that is, ye high lerned of ye churche, hath alwaies haunted and fedde vpon.’30 In this reading the carcass signifies ‘truth,’ and the eagles signify bishops and other divines who control its interpretation. Brooks offers at one level a standard typological reading, which draws out the moral, or tropological, sense of the passage. After all, the text says nothing about the guarding of the carcass, nor does it tell us how long the eagles have been feeding upon it; such points in Brooks’s logic (and that of the Geneva glossators) acquire symbolic signification. At a more fundamental level, these examples show Brooks emphasizing the literal and figurative senses of successive passages at differing times. The dilemma of balancing the literal and figurative senses of reading dates back at least to St Augustine, whose De doctrina christiana wrestles with the relative emphasis to be given to both kinds of reading. Given their interest in this subject and given Augustine’s prominence, both Tyndale and Brooks would certainly have known of his work, which was first printed in Kraków in 1476.31 Ten editions, either in full or part, had appeared by 1528, and another 22 before 1553.32 Augustine’s discussion of the role of signs and allegories in the reading of the Bible helps to frame Brooks’s treatment of these issues in his sermon. Readers, for Augu stine, must undertake the challenges posed by any text which demands figurative reading. Casual readers, he says, ‘are misled by problems and
29 The newe testament of our lord Jesus Christ (Geneva: Conrad Badius, 1557), f. 43r. STC 2871. Compare Tyndale’s New Testament: Translated … in 1534, ed. David Daniell (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 53. 30 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, C4r-v. 31 Universal Short Title Catalogue (www.ustc.ac.uk), no. 240415. Hereafter USTC. 32 Source of data USTC search 15 August 2012.
33 Augustine, On Christian Teaching, tr. and ed. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 32, 88. 34 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, A3v. 35 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, D2r.
in question affords an exposition of 1 Corinthians 7:5, in which St Paul advises husbands and wives not to pursue celibacy except by mutual con- sent for a short while. Brooks’s logic here bends toward figurative under- standing, but at the literal level it represents misunderstanding. According to Origen, says Brooks, ‘the continuall Sacrifice is letted by suche as geue themselues vnto Mariage matiers.’ For this reason, he continues, ‘none ought toffre the continual sacrifice, but soche onely, as hath vowed con- tinuall, and perpetual chastitie.’36 This point may be more or less persua- sive, but what is noteworthy about this example is Brooks’s specific use of Origen’s reading of the Pauline text, which opposes celibacy, to defend the very position, celibacy, which the text would seem to oppugn. In addition to Augustinian and perhaps Tyndalean methods of reading, Brooks’s polemical method reveals his indebtedness to other analogous texts and genres in which the challenges of reading take center stage. The sermon certainly shows the influence of Thomas More’s Dialogue concern- ing heresies (1529), for example. In that work More creates a persona of himself who counsels the young man whose opinions had been adversely affected by the reading of heretical books. Brooks’s opening point, that the church cannot be vanquished by persecution, follows More in arguing that the Old Testament Hebrews were members of the same ‘true’ church, only under a different name. ‘What persecutions hath she suffred, first in tholde time before the commyug [sic] of Christe, when she was rather a Synagog then a churche,’ Brooks asks.37 Brooks quotes Tertullian’s De prae- scriptionem haereticorum in order to argue that the early church fathers are not likely all to have erred, a point also made by More.38 Indeed, there is evidence that Brooks had adopted a similar stance toward Henry VIII as did More’s former circle of associates. They went into exile during Edward’s reign and would go on to produce works commemorating the former chancellor during Mary’s reign.39 Similarity between Brooks and More on reading methods draws atten- tion to the ways in which Brooks’s sermon functions in the manner of the
36 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, G8r-v. 37 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, A4r. Compare Thomas More, A dyaloge of syr Thomas More knyghte (i.e., A Dialogue Concerning Heresies), in Thomas M.C. Lawler, et. al. (eds.), The Complete Works of St Thomas More, vol. 6, 2 pts. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 6:1.252–53. 38 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, A6v. 39 On the program to commemorate More during Mary’s reign, see Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 179–87.
40 Among other examples of polemic in this period is the common and evocative refu- tation-by-reprinting technique whereby a writer reprints his adversary’s work in the act of refuting it, thereby paradoxically publicizing ideas which the writer rejects. 41 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, B5v. 42 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I5v. 43 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I7r–v. 44 Biblia: the bible, that is, the holy scripture, ed. Miles Coverdale (Antwerp, 1535) (i.e., the Coverdale Bible), + ii r. STC 2063.
change of Religion.’45 Nevertheless, in his News from Spain (1593), Persons provides an account of an exceedingly unflattering likeness of Henry VIII as the antitype of the medieval Henry II. This episode appeared on a tab- leau vivant erected at the English Catholic seminary at Seville to com- memorate the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, whose execution Henry II had ordered. This display contained three tiers, and the first level reveals Henry II slaying Thomas á Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, with Henry VIII, ‘very fatt and furious,’ observing. The second and third levels display Henry VIII digging his own passageway to hell, where he is eventually tor- mented by demons.46 As a polemicist in this sermon, Brooks deserves recognition alongside other writers whose creative use of genre and invective advanced the cause of Catholicism against Protestantism. Brooks’s censure of Henry closely echoes that of Nicholas Harpsfield, biographer of More and arch- deacon of Canterbury under Mary.47 He probably completed the majority of his biography while exiled in Louvain during Edward’s reign, and he added, as an appendix, A treatise concerning the pretended divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Brooks concludes his sermon with a discussion of the fates of tyrants that indicates his familiarity with a num- ber of texts associated with the Harpsfield circle, including Harpsfield’s own Treatise, an anonymous, vituperative vita of Henry VIII, and the prin- cipal source of both these works, Reginald Pole’s 1536 letter to Henry now known as the Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione.48 Pole went on to become Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury. As is also the case in all three of these works, Brooks locates his criticism against Henry as the culmina- tion of a substantial list of tyrannical prototypes, drawn from the Bible and classical sources. In so doing, Brooks locates his sermon in the specu- lum principis tradition of cautionary tale which dates back at least to Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (c.1355–60). Brooks’s list includes,
45 Robert Parsons, A treatise of three conversions of England, 2 vols. in 3 parts ([Saint- Omer]: François Bellet, 1603–04), 1.236. STC 19416. 46 Robert Parsons, Nevves from Spayne and Holland conteyning. An information of Inglish affayres in Spayne vvith a conference made thereuppon in Amsterdame of Holland ([Antwerp: A. Conincx], 1593), f. 12r. STC 22994. 47 Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith, 181–86. 48 Nicholas Harpsfield, A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce of Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon, ed. Nicholas Pocock (Westminster: Printed for the Camden Society, 1878). On the Vita Henrici VIII, see BL, MS Sloane 2495. Reginald Pole, Pro ecclesiasticæ unitatis defen- sione (Rome: Antonio Blado, c.1539). Eamon Duffy, ‘Hampton Court, Henry VIII and Cardinal Pole,’ in Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 197–213.
49 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I1v-2r. 50 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I3r. 51 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I3v. 52 This tradition affords the subject of the second chapter of my monograph-in-prog- ress, Henry VIII and the Language of Polemic in Early Modern England. 53 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, I5r. 54 Pole, Pro ecclesiasticæ unitatis defensione, IXr. Cf. Daniel 3. 55 Johannes Cochlæus, De matrimonio serenissimi Regis Angliæ, Henrici Octavi, Congratulatio (Leipzig: Michael Blum, 1535).
Cochlaeus argues, ‘for when that king sins conscientiously, truly he perse- veres in the sins of the devil.’56 The Vita henrici VIII likewise calls Henry a latter-day Julian, for both monarchs, according to this text, ‘[c]ommaun- ded religious people to breake their vowes, [and] Church treasures [to be] brought into ye kings treasury.’57 Brooks, then, crafts his sermon with the genres of hostile vitae in mind. He also incorporates the Judgment tale. It features prominently in John Foxe’s influential martyrology, The Book of Martyrs, in a segment titled ‘The severe punishment of God upon the persecutors of his people and enemies to his word, with such also as have been blasphemers, contem- ners, and mockers of his religion.’58 Indeed, Brooks’s sermon is noteworthy for its use of vituperative satirical lists in the manner of Protestant contro- versialists such as John Bale and William Turner. The notion that the ‘true’ church has been ‘hidden,’ for example, leads Brooks to decry ‘the filthie sinke, and swillowe of all these tragedies whiche hathe raged well nighe ouer all Christendome, oute of the which hath roked of late so many stink- yng filthie contagious Heresies.’59 Bale could scarcely have written more colorful prose. Indeed, in his own Retourne of James Cancellers raylinge boke with which I began this essay, Bale incorporates a substantive and disgusting caricature which supposedly details the manner of the death of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Drawing on the traditions of the Judgment tale and of the myth of Gardiner as Protestant villain par excel- lence, Bale says that Gardiner’s ‘bellye swelled lyke a great bottle made of a gotes skynne.’60 In his list of metaphors to describe the Church of Rome, Brooks likely responds either to Bale’s commentary on the book of Revelation, The Image of Both Churches (c.1545), or to Martin Luther’s September Testament (1523), which featured apocalyptic woodcuts by Lucas Cranach the Elder.61 Both Bale and Cranach had equated the Church of Rome with the Whore of Babylon from Revelation 17, but Brooks refutes
56 ‘malignum profecto & inhumanum est gaudium hæreticorum de peccato regis Angliæ, cum humanum sit peccare, Diabolicum vero in peccatis perseuerare.’ Cochlæus, De matrimonio, A3r. 57 BL, Sloane MS 2495, ff. 22r-v. 58 John Foxe, The Book of Martyrs (London: John Day, 1583), sig. BBBBB1v–BBBBB4r. 59 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, B2v. 60 Bale, A retourne, fol. 38r. Michael Riordan and Alec Ryrie, ‘Stephen Gardiner and the Making of a Protestant Villain,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003), 1039–63. 61 John Bale, The image of both churches, after the reuelacion of saynt Johan the euangelyst ([Antwerp: S. Mierdman], 1545?), STC 1296.5. On Cranach’s illustrations to Luther’s September Testament, see Martha Driver, ‘Iconoclasm and Reform: The Survival of Late Medieval Images and the Printed Book,’ in The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and Its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), 185–214.
62 Brooks, A Sermon very notable, fruictefull, and Godlie, C4r. 63 John N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 8–9, 219, 226, 246. 64 Irena Backus, Life Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) affords valuable context for the extent of hos- tile vitæ in Reformation Europe.
ELIZABETHAN SERMONS, 1558–1603
THE CHALLENGE OF CATHOLICITY: JOHN JEWEL AT PAUL’S CROSS
Angela Ranson
John Jewel preached at Paul’s Cross nine times between his return from continental exile on the accession of Elizabeth and his death in 1571. His first sermon took place in November 1559, and contained within it a challenge that sparked a decade of controversy. Over the next ten years, twenty English divines produced approximately sixty works that either attacked the claims of Jewel’s Challenge Sermon or defended them. The central issue was that of catholicity, for both sides claimed to represent the true universal church. This was not a new argument: the question of who was truly ‘catholic’ had been going on since before England’s break with Rome in 1534. However, over the course of the controversy Jewel managed to define the term ‘catholic’ in a way that emphasized its connec- tions to the primitive, apostolic church. This allowed him to include the newly established Church of England in the universal church, and yet maintain its distinction as an English institution. As this chapter will argue, Jewel began this process in his Challenge Sermon, through his portrayal of himself, his unique negative method, and his treatment of his audience. The sermon was made up of fourteen articles, which all demanded evi- dence that certain sixteenth-century practices of the Roman Church had existed in the first six hundred years after Christ. The mass was Jewel’s main target, through which he attacked all other traditions of the Roman Church. He questioned the validity of private mass, reserving and adoring the sacrament, the use of images, conducting common prayers in a strange tongue, denying the people a vernacular Bible, and calling the pope a uni- versal bishop. When he preached the sermon a second time, he expanded the fourteen articles into twenty-six, which were all included in the text of the sermon that was published in 1560. This written text was attached to the letters that Jewel had exchanged with Henry Cole, who was the first responder to the challenge. In it, Jewel acknowledged that he was writing what he said in the sermon as best as he could remember it, not providing
1 Alexander Nowell, A reproufe, written by Alexander Nowell, of a booke entituled, A proufe of certayne articles in religion denied by M. Iuell (London: Henry Wyckes, 1565), A2v. 2 John Ayre, The Works of John Whitgift, vol 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), 624. 3 John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (London: John Wyatt, 1711), 181. 4 Patrick McGrath, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London: Blandford Press, 1967), 50–51.
skill that made the Challenge Sermon so effective involved more than knowledge of the scriptures. Jewel came up with a new approach to per- suading people through eloquence, using his training in rhetoric, his edu- cation in disputation, and his experience in exile, as well as his scriptural knowledge. The next section will examine Jewel’s methodology, and show how all of this allowed him to present the Church of England as part of the primitive, apostolic, universal church.
God’s Messenger
The foundation of Jewel’s unique approach was his portrayal of himself. Although he had the authority of the crown to preach and acted as the church’s official apologist, Jewel did not claim that authority. Nor did he claim the authority of his own learning. Instead, he spoke as a messenger for God and a conduit of divine authority. As he said in the Challenge Sermon, ‘I have received of the Lord, that thing which I also have delivered unto you’. He associated himself with St Paul, suggesting that as Paul had written to plead with the Corinithians, so he was pleading with the English. As he phrased it, ‘I gave you not any fantasy or device of mine own, but that thing only that Christ had before delivered me’.5 This approach allowed him to do two things: advocate for the purity of the sacraments in the Church of England, and provide a long history for a church that was seen as brand new. This provided an impetus for Jewel’s us-vs.-them meth- ods of persuasion, as well as both legitimacy and authority for the English Church. Significantly, Jewel also brought in an element of prophecy. He called their time ‘the last age of the world’, and often referred to these ‘latter days’.6 Suggesting that he was speaking for God in advance of the apoca- lypse enhanced his self-portrayal as a messenger from God, and rendered a certain degree of urgency to his appeal. Jewel used that sense of urgency to simplify the message. He claimed that he would not take the time to speak about larger issues, such as transubstantiation or the real presence, but focus instead on specific practices that would prove that there were errors and abuses in the mass. In this too, Jewel connected himself with St Paul. In the passage Jewel used as his text, 1 Corinthians 17–34, Paul also focused on right practices. Paul was very specific about the attitude people
5 John Ayre, ed., Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, vol 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for PS, 1835), 3, 4. Cited hereafter JW. 6 JW 1:4.
7 Rosamund Oates, ‘For the Lack of True History: Polemic, Conversion and Church History in Elizabethan England,’ in Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England – Essays in Honour of Professor W.J. Sheils, edited by Nadine Lewycky and Adam Morton (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2012), 137. 8 JW 1:7.
Once Jewel had drawn in his listeners this way, making his message real and relevant for all of them, he employed his skills in rhetoric to persuade them. Jewel used many rhetorical devices during his career, both in spo- ken and written polemics. In the Challenge Sermon, he focused on two: emotional appeal, and the challenge. The first, emotional appeal, was the most prevalent in sixteenth-century polemic. It was in fact so prevalent, and done with such skill, that some people considered it duplicitous.9 Harding eventually grew impatient with Jewel’s emotional appeals during their debate; in his Rejoindre he summarized Jewel’s Replie by saying that: ‘there is … much idol sport, and some sad hypocrisy, with many a crying- out: Blessed be God, O Master Harding, Alas Master Harding, etc; there be strange phrases, there be affected terms, there be pinching nips [and] irk- some cuts’. Harding claimed that Jewel had a threefold purpose for appeal- ing to the emotions in this way: ‘to discredit the person of the adversary, to call a colour of truth upon the cause, [and] specially to delight and please the baser sort.’10 Harding may well have effectively summarized Jewel’s goals in this claim. Jewel did intend to discredit the Roman church and persuade his audience that he spoke the truth, and he did deliberately use emotional appeal to do so, arranging it within the structure of the Challenge Sermon in a place that was typical for spoken rhetoric of the time. His emotional appeal took place after the exposition and persuasion, in order to suggest the right interpretation of his audience’s new knowledge.11 Jewel first established himself as a messenger for God, then presented information that made the English people part of the universal church. Finally, he drew on their emotions by referring to the recent past. And if there be any here, that have had, or yet have, any good opinion of the mass, I beseech you for God’s sake, even as you tender your own salvation, suffer not yourself wilfully to be led away: turn not blindly to your own con- fusion. Think with yourself, it was not for nought that so many of your breth- ren rather suffered themselves to die and to abide all…cruelty, than they would be partakers of that thing that you reckon to be so holy. Let their deaths, let their ashes, let their blood, that was so abundantly shed before your eyes, somewhat prevail with you, and move you.12
9 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 57. 10 Harding, A Reioindre to M. Iewels replie (Antwerp, 1566), ***3r. 11 David K. Weiser, ‘The Prose Style of John Jewel,’ Salzburg Studies in English Literature 9 (Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1973), 14. 12 John Jewel, The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole vpon occasion of a sermon (London: John Day, 1560), 175v-176.
This direct appeal to the emotions of the audience, and the deliberate rec- ollection of a shared traumatic experience, was designed to clarify what was and was not a part of the English church’s true religion. If people maintained their loyalty to the mass, they rejected the sacrifices of their ‘brethren’, a term which suggested both a religious affiliation and a kinship relationship. In this, Jewel not only showed his adversarial mentality, but also how his experience in exile under Mary had affected him. He had been acquainted with many of the martyrs who had died for their faith at that time, including Thomas Cranmer, whom he had held in high regard. In many ways, his work in the Challenge Sermon and the resulting contro- versy was an attempt to maintain what the martyrs had established in the English Church. To Jewel, the Marian martyrs were part of ‘us’ because of their steadfast faith in Christ, and the people who had survived the persecution during the reign of Mary had an obligation to continue their work. This attitude comes through most clearly when Jewel mentions Mary herself. Being English and someone who believed in Christ, she was by default part of ‘us’. However, she had also persecuted the universal church, which made her part of ‘them’. Jewel sidestepped around this by acknowledging that Mary’s religion had been wrong, in contrast to the religion of her brother and sister, but denying that she could be blamed for it. She ‘knew none other religion, and thought well of the thing that she had been so long trained in’.13 Thus, the persecution could be blamed on ‘them’, who had deceived everyone so thoroughly that they had even fooled an English prince. Jewel developed the motif of deception to explain his enemies’ reaction to his sermon. He said that since he had preached it, his adversaries had been conspiring against him: they ‘whisper in corners’ that he had said ‘more than he was able to justify and make good’.14 This attempt at decep- tion led Jewel to re-emphasize his second and most important rhetorical device: the challenge. If any learned man of all our adversaries, or if all the learned men that be alive be able to bring, any one sufficient sentence, out of any old catholic doctor, or father: Or out of any old general council: Or out of the holy scrip- tures of God: Or any one example of the primitive Church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved, that there was any private mass in the whole world at that time… or that there was then any Communion ministered unto
13 JW 1:7. 14 JW 1:20.
the people under one kind: Or that, the people had their common prayers then in a strange tongue, that they understood not: Or that, the Bishop of Rome was then called, an universal Bishop, or the head of the universal church…or that the lay people was then forbidden, to read the word of God in their own tongue. If any man alive were able to prove, any of these arti- cles, by any one clear, or plain clause, or sentence, either of the scriptures: or of the old doctors: or of any old general Council: or by any example of the primitive church: I promised then that I would give over and subscribe unto him.15 Jewel challenged all learned men, both those who represented ‘us’ and those who represented ‘them’, to prove through patristic and Biblical sources that the practices of the Roman Church were part of the primitive universal church. He clearly delineated the sources of the challenge, limit- ing them to the writers and councils of the first six hundred years of the church. He also offered his enemies a great prize if they were willing to take it on: his own submission. In the published text of the sermon, he made note that no one had responded in the year since he had first preached it. Even Cole had not actually answered the challenge by proving the articles with Biblical or patristic sources; he had just attempted to change the terms. The rest of Jewel’s adversaries had done nothing but make claims in hidden corners that his challenge was unsupportable, which led Jewel to point out that if that were so, ‘I marvel that the parties never yet came to the light, to take the advantage’.16 Challenging one’s opponents was an important part of polemic because it allowed the author to make a stand over a particular point or issue. In one sense all polemic was a challenge, since it was considered unac- ceptable to leave any polemical work unanswered. This was the all- encompassing challenge of polemic. From within it, polemicists issued a more direct form of challenge to provide special emphasis. For example, Thomas Cranmer presented Stephen Gardiner with a challenge in his book Answer to a Cavillation. He said that he, Cranmer, would maintain that he had the correct interpretation until Gardiner could prove ‘that these authors spake one thing, and meant another, and that qualities and accidents be substances’.17 This was an unanswerable challenge due to its subjectivity, and did not really expect a literal response. It was meant both to discredit Gardiner and to halt any possible misinterpretation the reader
15 Jewel, True Copies of the Letters, 163–164. 16 JW 1:20. 17 Henry Jenkyns, ed, The Remains of Thomas Cranmer, vol 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833), 469.
18 Peter Matheson, The Rhetoric of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 4–5. 19 Thomas More, The second parte of the co[n]futacion of Tyndals answere in whyche is also confuted the chyrche that Tyndale deuyseth (London: William Rastell, 1533), xc. 20 Thomas Cranmer, A defence of the true and catholike doctrine of the sacrament of the body and bloud of our sauiour Christ (London: Reginald Wolfe, 1550), 58v. 21 Jewel, The true copies of the letters, B1.
part of Jewel’s self-portrayal: he presented himself as a messenger of the truth, not an instigator of doctrine. Jewel maintained his negative position throughout the controversy when arguing with Harding, which annoyed Harding into demanding ‘will you never leave that peevish kind of argument deduced of negatives?’22 The answer, though unspoken, was definitely ‘no’. Arguing from the nega- tive in the Challenge Sermon was strategic. It drew Jewel’s enemies out onto uncertain ground. Harding, in his frustration, attacked Jewel for preaching his ‘negative articles’ at Paul’s Cross, saying that Jewel should not have rested his argument on such ‘questions of light importance’. Jewel immediately responded to that, asking pointedly why the negative would be so offensive to his opponents, if not because they were incapable of proving him wrong. Then he said: You say, I have sought up certain small questions of light importance, wherein the ancient doctors have not travelled, as not daring to enter into matters of greater weight. How be it, it seems over much for you to limit and appoint each man what he should preach at Paul’s Cross. Neither is it much material, whether these matters be great or small: but whether you, by colour of the same, have deceived the people.23 It can be seen in this passage that Jewel, in his guise of a messenger of God, was working out a strategy that he had begun at Paul’s Cross. He had delib- erately structured his Challenge Sermon using the negative in order to provoke his adversaries into challenging it, for the negative allowed Jewel to attack the Roman church on what J.W. Blench calls ‘historical and ratio- nal grounds’ without opening himself up to similar attacks.24 Also, using the negative in the Challenge Sermon formed the founda- tion for Jewel’s definition of ‘them’, through the continuing motif of decep- tion. As the passage above reiterates, ‘they’ deceived the people through the practices Jewel listed in the challenge articles. ‘They’ denied the peo- ple a vernacular Bible, refused to allow universal participation in the Communion in both kinds, introduced new man-made traditions, and placed the pope as head of the universal church. None of these were ‘small matters’ to Jewel. They represented the falseness of ‘them’, which ‘we’, as the English inheritors of the apostolic universal church, had to resist.
22 Harding, Rejoindre, 20. 23 John Jewel, A replie vnto M. Hardinges ansvveare by perusinge whereof the discrete, and diligent reader may easily see, the weake, and vnstable groundes of the Romaine religion (London: Henry Wykes, 1565), q 5. 24 J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964), 292.
This negative method reflected Jewel’s training in rhetoric, his knowl- edge of Biblical and patristic sources, and his skill at engaging the audience. As a messenger of God, he could take such an authoritative position as to challenge the entire church to prove him wrong. He could set up the church he defended as representative of the apostolic church that had been led by another messenger for God, St Paul himself. Finally, he could connect emotionally with his audience and make them feel the weight of their history of persecution. This was not the full extent of his methods of persuasion, however. As the next section will show, Jewel recognized the variation in his audience. This enabled him to expand his definition of ‘us’ and simultaneously speak to those who supported him, those who were uncertain of him, and those who opposed him.
God’s People
As noted above, Jewel built strong walls between right and wrong, and aligned the English on the side of the right. He acknowledged that the English had drifted over to the side of the wrong in accepting the mass during Mary’s reign, but maintained that they truly belonged on the side of the right due to the right religion formed in Edward’s time, which Elizabeth had restored. She had brought back the holy communion, ‘to the same order that was delivered and appointed by Christ, and after prac- ticed by the apostles, and continued by the holy doctors…for the space of five or six hundred years throughout the whole catholic church of Christ’.25 That meant that the Church of England that had been established in 1559 was a legitimate part of the universal church, because it practiced the right use of the sacraments. Jewel could therefore call the people back to the primitive church because in doing so he was also calling them back into its descendent, the Church of England. This was how Jewel estab- lished the English church as both part of the universal church and dis- tinctly English. Jewel knew his audience; he knew that he was talking to people who had heard it all before. He also knew that many people in his audience, of all classes and vocations, were unwilling to invest in yet another new form of religion. Others were willing, but uncertain whether or not it was the right thing to do. Parish visitation records show just how complicated
25 JW 1:5.
Jewel’s task of persuasion was. The varying levels of devotion were care- fully recorded, so men and women gained such labels as ‘well-ordered in religion’, ‘loyal in religion’, ‘conformable’ or ‘unconformable’.26 Among the clergy, beliefs were similarly diverse, and the clergy were more likely to be openly hostile than the laity. Jewel said in a letter to Peter Martyr that ‘if… obstinacy were found anywhere, it was altogether among the priests, those especially who had once been on our side. They are now throwing all things into confusion, in order, I suppose, that they may not seem to have changed their opinions without due consideration’.27 Since he was aware of this great variation, Jewel knew that he had to speak to several different types of people at once. As he said, he had to show the people ‘that have forsaken the mass, for what cause and how justly they have forsaken it, and also unto them that as yet delight in it, what manner of thing it is that they delight in’.28 He rose to this challenge by creating a contradiction, treating his audience as simultaneously the lost and the found. They were both the sheep that had strayed, and the holy nation set up to judge the straying sheep. He called the lost back to the right use of the sacraments, pleading with them to align their beliefs with the primitive universal church, which was the mystical body of Christ. At the same time, he set up the found as judges of the visible church. He gave them the authority to evaluate Roman practices, espe- cially the mass, and set up the structure of the Challenge Sermon so that it clearly presented Biblical and logical evidence for their consideration. Throughout the sermon, Jewel continually engaged the part of his audi- ence that he set up as judges, requesting them to evaluate the information they had received. In the following passage, for example, he required them to consider the information about the mass provided by the Roman Church.
Of all that holy supper, and most comfortable ordinance of Christ, there was nothing for the simple souls to consider, but only a number of gestures and countenances: and yet neither they nor the priest knew what they meant. Think you that this was Christ’s meaning when he ordained the communion first? Think you that St Paul received these things of the Lord, and delivered the same to the Corinthians? O good brethren, Christ ordained the holy sacrament for our sakes, that we might thereby remember the mysteries of his death, and know the price of his blood.29
26 John Craig, Reformation, Politics and Polemics: The Growth of Protestantism in East Anglian Market Towns (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), 6, 26. 27 ZL 1, 45. 28 JW 1:5. 29 JW 1:9.
This theme of ‘think you’ was often repeated, although Jewel sometimes altered it to ‘think we’, which further encouraged the implication that they were all in a position to determine truth or falsehood in the mass. Jewel also continually used terminology that suggested a court case. He set up the Roman church as the opposing counsel and the mass itself as the defendant, then presented Roman arguments as well as his own so that the audience could ‘more indifferently judge of both’.30 He also used meth- ods of disputation, specifically the constructs of logical argument, to expose logical fallacies in church traditions. He provided an entire list of such fallacies, such as: ‘Christ was buried in a shroud of linen cloth, ergo, the corporal must be made of fine linen. … Many of the lay people have the palsy, and many have long beards, ergo, they must all receive the com- munion under one kind. … Christ was the rock, ergo, the altar must be made of stone.’31 Then he pointed out that these traditions had been cre- ated by the Roman Church, and contrasted them with the practices of the Church of England that came out of the word of God. In setting up some people as judges, Jewel gave these members of his audience a certain status that they did not always receive. The writers and preachers who spoke for the Roman church in opposition to Jewel, such as Thomas Harding, John Rastell and Nicholas Stapleton, often mea- sured faith by obedience instead of by participation. A commonplace of their writings was that the reader or listener could judge the value of what they said, but not actively question or evaluate the message itself. Stapleton, for example, described true Catholics as people ‘which have learned…to subdue their understanding to the obedience of faith’.32 John Rastell said that the people’s devotion would be acceptable to God if they ‘believe whatsoever the church teaches’.33 Jewel, however, actively encour- aged his audience to question. Instead of dictating what his audience should believe, he would present information and evidence in a way that at the very least created the illusion that they could draw their own conclusions. The entire structure of the sermon was arranged to allow this. It began with a detailed description of the work done by St Paul to maintain the purity of the Eucharist. Jewel explained what the Eucharist should be, contrasted it with the mass, and blamed the Roman church for corrupting
30 JW 1:14. 31 JW 1:15. 32 Thomas Stapleton, The History of the Church of England (Antwerp, 1565), 8v. 33 John Rastell, A Confutation of a Sermon Pronounced by M Jewel (Antwerp, 1564), 90.
it. Then he presented a solution, saying: ‘Thus, whensoever any order given by God is broken or abused, the best redress thereof is to restore it again into the state that it first was in at the beginning’.34 The new church that had begun under Elizabeth made such a restoration possible. Jewel com- pared the accession of Elizabeth to the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, and pointed out the folly of the people who had wanted to turn back instead of following Moses to the Promised Land. It was similar, Jewel said, to the folly of the English people who wanted to return to the mass, even though Elizabeth’s church had restored the use and form of the Holy Communion to the state it had been in during the time of the primitive church. Those people who wanted to return to the mass would not, as he said, ‘hearken or inquire to come to knowledge. And so in the midst of the light, they remain still in darkness’.35 The people who were still in darkness were the lost, and Jewel embed- ded another metaphor into his sermon for this part of his audience. They were on a battleground, one where God’s people were being ‘deceived and mocked’, which brought him back to the motif of deception.36 He blamed their Roman adversaries for refusing to accept the truth, and mourned over some deceived English people who spread rumours that the mass was actually a ‘blessed and a catholic thing’.37 Then he promised that these enemies would not prevail.
Even so, good people, is there now a siege laid to your walls: an army of doc- tors and councils show themselves upon a hill: the adversary that would have you yield, bears you well in hand that they are their soldiers and stand on their side. But keep your hold: the doctors and the old catholic fathers… are yours: you shall see the siege raised, you shall see your adversaries dis- comfited and put to flight.38
This part of Jewel’s audience was lost and confused, and needed encour- agement. Jewel spoke gently to them, promising that a more peaceful time was coming. This again reflects his self-portrayal as a messenger and a prophet, and his conviction that the English were ‘us’, either because they were already members of the universal and apostolic English Church or because they had the potential to be, through their faith in Christ.
34 JW 1:4. 35 JW 1:5. 36 JW 1:23. 37 JW 1:20. 38 JW 1:22.
Jewel did not treat his audience as a unified body simply because they were all on what he considered the ‘right’ side; he recognized their diversity and spoke to it. However, in one way Jewel did unify them. He pitted them all against their common enemy, the Roman Church, and gave them new weapons of legitimacy and authority with which to fight it. These weapons were theirs because the Church of England was part of the true catholic church: the invisible universal church that maintained the right use of the sacraments, allowed universal participation as the apos- tolic church had done, and was part of the wider reform movement. As Jewel said, the light of the gospel ‘is now so mightily and so far spread abroad, that no man would lightly miss his way (as afore in the time of darkness), and perish wilfully’.39 Through this idea, Jewel connected the English church to the wider circle of reformed churches. He kept them separate and distinct by creating a parallel with Israel instead of with Lutheran or Swiss reformed churches, but he also included England in the world that had newly heard the gospel, and so come out of the time of darkness. Jewel managed to speak to a large, complex and potentially hostile group of people in his Challenge Sermon, through his eloquence and his awareness of the different groups of people who were listening. He had two very specific purposes in doing so: to establish the legitimacy of the Church of England, and to inspire devotion in his listeners. He accom- plished the first by rejecting the Roman Church and establishing the Church of England as the true descendant of the apostolic church, but it is much harder to tell if he accomplished the second. Although it is next to impossible to know the minds and hearts of Jewel’s listeners, it is at least possible to trace the influence of the sermon itself.
Influence of the Challenge Sermon
The Elizabethan audience was made up of people who belonged to what Andrew Pettegree calls the second generation of reform. The first genera- tion of reform happened during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and involved painful decisions on the part of English people to reject the traditional church and accept the new learning based on nothing more than ‘the good faith and charismatic authority of preachers who had often emerged from a comparatively lowly position in the local clerical
39 JW 1:3, 4.
hierarchy’. The second generation of reform had to adapt to new reformed churches which had crown support. At this point in the process of refor- mation, people could adhere to the new religion that emerged during the reign of Elizabeth without any real mental engagement, because it was simply the new official church.40 To men like Jewel, who advocated individual participation and personal accountability, this was not acceptable. Thus, he played to a different trend that was developing in English society: self-awareness and what Stephen Greenblatt calls ‘self-fashioning’.41 At this time, the individual conscience was becoming more important. As Stephen Chavura put it, ‘the individual was roused with a duty to work out his own salvation directly before God’.42 The result was an increasing awareness of personal responsibility, which Alexandra Walsham calls a mixed blessing. It gave the clergy a certain level of influence, but at the same time could ‘create a virtual priesthood of believers and…open a Pandora’s box of private interpretation’.43 Jewel accepted this participa- tion and took that risk. By leading the audience to a particular conclusion, instead of pushing them to it, he recognized this shift in English society. He also recognized the value of rhetorical eloquence, logic, and a multi- layered structure in persuading people through these new ideas, which he employed to great effect. The result was that Jewel’s Challenge Sermon and the resulting contro- versy had a great influence on the religious atmosphere of the 1560s. As Torrance Kirby phrases it, the Challenge Sermon ‘caused an unprece- dented commotion… Paul’s Cross reverberated repeatedly with repercus- sions’ for years afterward.44 It was, at the time, more influential than discussions of some of the internal problems of the early Elizabethan Church, such as the issue of the wearing of clerical vestments. Despite the popularity of this issue in modern historiography, the clerical vestments were not the main topic of the Paul’s Cross sermons during the 1560s.
40 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–2, 6. 41 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 42 Stephen Chavura, Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547–1603 (Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2011), xii. 43 Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Spider and the Bee: The Perils of Printing for Refutation in Tudor England,’ in Tudor Books and Readers, edited by John N. King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 163–164. 44 Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England,’ Renaissance and Reformation 30.4 (2006), 13.
As Mary Morrissey notes, the majority of preachers campaigned against ‘the corruption of the Roman Church …and the need for moral reforma- tion’, making that a more relevant issue at the time.45 The Challenge Sermon became an on-going means of persuasion for both those who wished to maintain the mass in England, and those who wished to abolish it. Both sides assumed that the sermon had affected people’s religious perceptions, or at least had the potential to do so. Thus, they both felt the need either to discredit the articles of the sermon, or provide evidence for them. The resulting controversy was continually reinforced through further sermons at Paul’s Cross, making the Cross the focal point from which this entire argument about catholicity was both defended and attacked. It was a battle with a significant prize: as Felicity Heal points out, they were all fighting for ‘the soul and body of the English nation’.46 Both sides acknowledged the importance of Paul’s Cross itself. Jewel used Paul’s Cross not only to present his own message, but to keep his opponents accountable. He felt it necessary to speak against the argu- ments Dr Richard Smyth preached regarding patristic authority, because they were ‘open and known lies’ and he did not want to risk letting his audience believe them.47 He also held his main opponent, Thomas Harding, accountable to his past using Paul’s Cross, saying that ‘the Cross at Paul’s, and other like places of great concourse, can well record’ that Harding had once preached the message of reform. Harding also fre- quently mentioned the role the Cross played in spreading the word. He was scornful of it, saying that from there Jewel made the world the witness of his foolishness.48 This may well have derived from his bitterness that he did not have access to the Cross, since he continually pointed out that he was not allowed to preach there. It also could have been an attempt to intimidate Jewel into submission. In another passage, Harding pointed out that there would be no Paul’s Cross on Judgement Day, which meant that Jewel and his fellows would no longer have ‘an audience after their own liking, where they may freely sell their smokes and glorious toys for the people’s vain praise and favour, where they may allure unto them and beguile light believing souls’.49 This suggests that Harding was trying to
45 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 197. 46 Felicity Heal, ‘Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past,’ Huntingdon Library Quarterly 68.1/2 (2005), 117. 47 Jewel, Replie, 46. 48 Harding, Rejoindre, 302. 49 Harding, Confutation, 305v.
prick Jewel’s conscience, and make him more careful about what he said to such a large and influential audience, since he would one day be judged for it. Harding’s opinions of Jewel’s work at the Cross show that Jewel’s meth- ods of persuasion were perceived as effective. As Arnold Hunt points out, Harding and his fellows would not have accused Jewel of being a ‘shame- less crowd-pleaser’ if Jewel had not shown skill in engaging an audience.50 In his study of the Paul’s Cross sermons Millar MacLure also noted Jewel’s skill in the pulpit. He said that the preachers ‘of force and distinction’ at Paul’s Cross tended to be of two types: the ‘forceful, often homely and col- loquial’ city preachers such as Hugh Latimer and Henry Smith; and the ‘more formal, sober and gracious’ eloquent men like John King and Mark Frank. MacLure singled Jewel out as one of the eloquent men, saying that ‘the regular and solemn fall of the clauses in Jewel’s Ciceronian eloquence’ was more moving than the eccentricities of some of the Paul’s Cross preachers who based their style on wit.51 Jewel’s eloquence was an important part of his methods of persuasion, and it was effective in part because Jewel knew his audience. The combi- nation of the two inspired the content of the Challenge Sermon, where Jewel made difficult theological concepts real and relevant for his audi- ence by focusing on particular practices rather than on abstract controver- sial issues. These specific practices targeted the things that Jewel’s audience disliked, and essentially justified their dislike. It gave them a clear picture of what they were supporting by devoting themselves to the new Church of England, and what they had to reject. This was not the establishment of a via media religion. Jewel did not try to say that the Church of England displayed the proper balance between continental reformed churches and the Roman church. He did not justify episcopacy or clerical vestments or even the royal supremacy. Instead, he focused on basic doctrine. This is what we believe, and this is what we stand against. This is right, and this is wrong. These claims inspired a great reaction, which suggests that Jewel may have managed to effectively per- suade people at Paul’s Cross. Not everyone agreed with him, but a large number of people were at least affected by him.
50 Arnold Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement,’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCullough et al (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 372. 51 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 163.
Conclusion
After the Challenge Sermon gave him a reputation as an eloquent and engaging preacher, Jewel quickly rose to a position of influence in the Church. He repeated his challenge from the pulpit twice more after its ini- tial presentation at Paul’s Cross; first, at court on 17 March 1560, and finally once again at Paul’s Cross on 31 March 1560. The sermon then became the first Elizabethan court sermon to be published, and it was printed by John Day, who also printed Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.52 Jewel was made Bishop of Salisbury, and approximately a year later he was commissioned by William Cecil to write the official apology of the Church of England. This apology was published in 1562, quickly translated into several lan- guages, and used by representatives of the English crown to justify the decision not to send delegates from the English Church to the Council of Trent.53 Jewel also contributed to the Thirty-Nine Articles, edited The Second Book of Homilies, and was chosen to preach at the celebrations when the rebellions of 1569 were over. Five divines chose to support Jewel in the controversy that arose out of the Challenge Sermon, and their decision to do so was, at least in part, due to the inspiration of Jewel himself. In 1567, Alexander Nowell said that John Jewel ‘well deserved the state and name of a bishop and of a jewel’. A year later, another English divine named Edward Dering referred to Jewel as ‘our Alexander in Christian war and godly courage’.54 This suggests that Jewel had a certain status amongst the learned divines of the Elizabethan church, which is further supported by sources written by Jewel’s enemies. Thomas Dorman said that there were some in England ‘with whom [Jewel] is in such credit, that they believe verily each word that proceeds from [his] mouth, to bear for truth the weight of the gospel’.55 Thomas Harding, Jewel’s nemesis, admitted bitterly in 1566 that Jewel’s preaching had made people believe that Jewel was ‘a great clerk, a pillar of the gospel, a peerless fellow’.56 Both sides recognized that the central issue of the controversy was that of catholicity. Both sides claimed to represent the true universal church,
52 Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 94. 53 John E. Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 56. 54 Alexander Nowell, A confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last boke entituled a disproufe (London: H. Bynneman, 1567), 6v. 55 Thomas Dorman, A Request to M. Jewel (Louvain: Ioannem Foulerum, 1567), 2. 56 Harding, Rejoindre, C1.
but their definitions of ‘universal’ changed due to Jewel’s re-definition of the term ‘catholic’. He connected the English to the holy nation of Israel, and the English church to the church of Paul. This provided his audience with a history, which weakened the Romanist claims to antiquity. It also provided his audience with a sense of the authority and legitimacy of the English church, due to the way they had restored the right practice of the Holy Communion. These connections allowed Jewel to include the newly established Church of England in the universal church, and yet maintain its distinction as an English institution. The claims in the Challenge Sermon were provoking enough to gener- ate interest, eloquent enough to persuade, and designed perfectly for the venue at which the sermon was presented. They caused a decade’s worth of controversy, which various divines used to define the beliefs of the Church of England more and more clearly as the years went by. Jewel inspired both his fellows and his enemies through the Challenge Sermon, and won his reputation as champion of the church. However, he also did more than that. Through the Challenge Sermon, he established the means by which others could fight with him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PAUL’S CROSS AND THE DRAMATIC ECHOES OF EARLY-ELIZABETHAN PRINT
Thomas Dabbs
Before the Elizabethan period, the Paul’s Cross pulpit was at times used for dramatic and even volatile church events that fell outside the strictures of the sanctuary. It had been the site of book burnings, emotionally charged trials for heretics, and public attacks on heresy. A fiery sermon from Paul’s Cross could incite a riot and, if we are to believe John Foxe and others, even an impromptu demonstration in the art of knife throwing.1 During the Elizabethan period the drama intensified as the standing hostilities between Rome and reform remained, and new and intractable interfaith conflicts emerged and were addressed from the pulpit. These sermons took on a new dramatic flare, presented as they were to large, often unruly audiences within a populace that was growing more literate and that had more immediate access to the religious print material that flowed around and through these events. Despite the shaky relationship the print industry endured with the one true church in all of its forms during the 16th century, from the 1560s and ‘70s, with the increase in supplemental print material, the well-attended sermons at Paul’s Cross gained a broader, more intense and enduring cul- tural impact as they resonated print knowledge sold by booksellers nearby. Indeed, Mary Morrissey holds that we may ‘postulate an element of sym- biosis in the relationship between the booksellers of Paul’s Churchyard and the preachers who delivered sermons at the Cross.’2 The idea of such a symbiosis can be advanced by mapping the physical and cultural environs of Paul’s Cross churchyard, then tracking the print histories of pertinent sermons and related religious writing, and finally by plac ing these texts as accurately as possible within the Paul’s Cross sermon environment.
1 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, vol. 2 (London: John Day, 1570), Book 10.3. See also STC (2nd ed.), 11223. 2 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2.
This task is too large to complete here, although a convincing diagram may be drawn that shows the semi-accidental emergence of an unprece- dented broadcast medium, one that demonstrates how these pulpit ser- mons intensified their dramatic efficacy by echoing fresh and local print with amplified orations that would be re-echoed from printed works sold from booksellers within the same locale. This argument will be encom- passed by the idea of this echo effect, and the word, echo, will be stretched to the range of its meanings, starting on the most literal level and then graduated up the latter of abstraction. It is also possible to the advance the idea of a symbiosis between Paul’s Cross and the emergence of a new type of public theatre event in what Andrew Gurr calls the ‘amphitheatre playhouses’ that appeared during the early Elizabethan period.3 Arguably from 1567, with the construction of the Red Lion theatre east of the city limits, but certainly by 1577, when the Theatre and Curtain were established next to each other to the north in Shoreditch, there was a remarkable cultural development in the unprece- dented appearance, just outside the City of London, of theatres that were staffed by professional companies and patronized by the general public. We know from anti-theatre sermons and other religious writing that these theatres put on well-attended plays that, by 1580, according to Gurr, took on a ‘plainly commercial function’ that ‘offered fresh possibilities to an urban audience.’4 The most influential, albeit perhaps the least tasteful site for early Elizabethan theatrical innovation was among adult playing companies that began performing in these new commercial venues. Semi- or fully private dramas staged at court, at private theatres, or at schools and universities will not be considered in this discussion because the focus here will be on the cultural impact of mixing new and popular print with mass audiences at public events, both at Paul’s Cross and from the stages of the large public amphitheatres. Similar to the public sermon events at Paul’s Cross, public plays began to resound recent print from the stage during the early Elizabethan period. We know that these plays adapted novel and popular stories or collections of stories that had recently appeared in the bookshops of St Paul’s. Many of them, including the story of Romeo and Juliet, were translations of exotic tales and so-called histories from the continent. Though of a differ- ent character than strict religious writing, it will be forwarded here
3 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; rpt. 2004), 14. 4 Gurr, Playgoing, 143–44.
that these stories and the plays adapted from these stories grew out of and were sustained by the same resounding mixture of print with public event that powered the reverberating religious environs at Paul’s Cross Churchyard proper and generally around St Paul’s. Over the past thirty years, there have been literary studies that have broadly linked the Reformation pulpit with the early modern stage. Some fine connections have been made, but one wonders if using the term, pul- pit, in such an abstract and general manner sometimes finds scholars of early modern drama guilty of seeing the vast complexities of Reformation religion in singular and one-dimensional terms.5 Also these broad studies of cultural trends or theories of linguistic inspiration that connect church and stage tend to assume a latter day dichotomy and even an equivalency between Reformation religion and early modern drama while examining a culture in which a hard and clear dichotomy or equivalency of this nature never existed. Church historians have not missed the auditory and textual connections between sermons and plays or their close inter-rela- tionship with the art of performance and the early modern print industry and have recently exposed convincing material links between these cul- tural forms.6 This study, though, will focus on the Paul’s Cross sermon environment alone and its relationship with specific early books, book- shops, and public amphitheatres. Peter Lake, using the dark materials inherent to early modern murder pamphlets, brilliantly pioneered the effort of detailing the relationship between specific sermons and play texts by showing where cheap print made its way into both sermon and play. Lake views the pulpit and stage as being in competition with one another essentially for the same audience.7 Though there certainly was the feel of competition between religious and secular interests, a closer look at the physical environment at Paul’s Cross from the early Elizabethan period on out points more to a collaboration rather than an outright competition between the Paul’s Cross pulpit and the public stage, an unwilling collaboration that grew out of the commercial successes achieved by the religious print industry.
5 See for example such studies as Brian Crockett, The Play of Paradox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) and Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). 6 See, for example, the articles by Emma Rhatigan, Kate Armstrong, and James Rigney in a recent edition, unassumingly entitled The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 7 Peter Lake, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), in particular Chapters 9 and 10.
From the efforts of more recent scholarship on St Paul’s and its environs, it now seems plausible to show precisely how the Paul’s Cross pulpit was, from the early Elizabethan period, strongly connected and entwined with the secular stage, and also map how the localized environment of the pulpit and churchyard and attendant bookshops even prompted the development of large public playhouses and spurred on the creation and execution of public play events.8 The audience that attended public events during the Elizabethan period should be considered in terms of a canon of studies on aural London and the stage.9 Recently, though, it has become possible to dia- gram the precise way in which the acoustic and geophysical environs of the cathedral influenced changes in discourse and consciousness, the exact routes that connect the echoing relationships between print, Paul’s Cross, and stage. To chart the path of these relationships, it is necessary to take a quick pedestrian tour through the re-created Paul’s Cross church- yard of the Elizabethan period, with its growing number of bookshops, and attempt to hear within the space between pulpit and bookseller. The growth in the number of bookshops of course signals a significant rise in literacy but more significantly the increased presence of booksellers indi- cates that the interaction between the literate and the semi-literate or illit- erate had reached a critical mass, a point where newly printed works were broadcast and would inspire sustained public response within this con- centrated area.10 From this populace there arose echoes of consciousness, or what might be termed extra-aural reverberations of the mind between public forum and print. The image of the St Paul’s precinct, circa 1500, shown here is set of course well before our period, before the cathedral was plundered and
8 On the cathedral before Wren, see John Schofield, St Paul’s before Wren (Swindon: English Heritage, 2011). For a history of St Paul’s to 2004, see St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, ed. Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, Andrew Saint (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 9 Bruce R. Smith, in his seminal work on auditory London, briefly mentions the envi- rons of St Paul’s in The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Smith’s work prompted further research on the ‘soundscapes’ of the theatres. See Gina Bloom, Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), Kenneth Gross, Shakespeare’s Noise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), Wes Folkerth, The Sound of Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 2002), and Keith Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 10 See David Cressy on the ‘spillover from the literate to the illiterate’ in Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 150.
Fig. 1. Paul’s Church before Wren. Source: St Paul’s. The Cathedral Church of London: 604–2004 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2004), 42, fig. 20.
much of the church holdings were sold off. It does give us, though, a fine visual of space and proximity in the cathedral area, and also will work here to show us something of how things changed during the Reformation when we consider how prominent the print industry became in this pre- cinct. Most important to this discussion is the Paul’s Cross pulpit and the surrounding churchyard on the northeast side of the cathedral. But the west side of the cathedral is also pertinent and should be considered first. In 1557, after receiving a royal charter, the Stationers Company relo- cated to Peter College, just across from the great west entrance of St Paul’s. Throughout Paul’s Churchyard, the print industry enjoyed a marked increase in the already substantial presence that the freemen of the com- pany had gained around St Paul’s after the selling off of church grounds. During the early Elizabethan period key printers secured lucrative patents from church and state, and they were also helped by the successful mar- keting of religious texts from the concentrated environs in and around St Paul’s and specifically from Paul’s Cross Churchyard. Millar MacLure reflects on the Paul’s Cross sermons as taking place during ‘those days when amplifiers were happily unknown.’11 But a recent
11 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 8.
Fig. 2. Paul’s Cross with Booksellers, 1572. Source: Peter M.W. Blayney, ‘John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was,’ in Material London, c. 1600 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 327, Diagram 16.3.
12 The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project, http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com (11 November 2012) and in particular the diagrams and audio of John Donne’s Gunpowder Plot sermon at http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/2012/08/wall-delivers-paper-at -pauls-cross.html (11 November 2012).
He concludes that the bookshops were not ‘at all like the little booths and stalls that many have envisaged.’13 In fact Blayney holds that among the buildings that flanked Paul’s Cross in the 1572 image reprinted here, some had three stories, but ‘most had four, not counting garrets.’14 Wall’s team has confirmed this observation, showing us that Paul’s Cross Churchyard was the single most influential amphitheatre in early modern London and one that echoed popular print well before the public theatres covered below. Included here is one of the images of Paul’s Cross Churchyard from the Virtual Paul’s Cross website.15
Fig. 3. Virtual Paul’s Cross Image. Source: The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project. Web. http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.jp/ search?updated-max=2012-08-21T11:44:00-07:00&max-results=7.
13 Blayney, ‘Paul’s Cross Churchyard in 1572,’ in ‘John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was,’ 327, Diagram 16.3. 14 Blayney, ‘John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was,’ 328. For evidence of the grad- ual encroachment of bookshops within Paul’s Cross churchyard throughout the Elizabethan period, see also Figure 11. Paul’s Cross Churchyard in 1600 in Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990), 76. 15 John Wall, The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project. Web: http://virtualpaulscrossproject .blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012–08–21T11:44:00–07:00&max-results=7.
It was a space that, though acoustically disperse, would still have broadly amplified and echoed sound. The speaker was aimed at the north transept some 30 meters away. Also, as the figure of the preacher in the Paul’s Cross diptych suggests, the speaker’s voice could also be projected toward the row of bookshops between 30 and 60 meters away. At 10 meters tall or better the buildings were well able to amplify the voice of a strong speaker throughout the churchyard. The voice of the pulpit preacher resounded from the bookshops that were embedded along the outer walls of the choir and the north transept and also from the outer walls of the line of bookshops that encircled the pulpit beneath Paternoster Row. The sermons also drew from and resounded print works that sold from these and other nearby shops, including Englished Bibles perhaps, but certainly hymnals, prayer books, religious tracts and, important but slow in coming, print copies of prior sermons from the Paul’s Cross pulpit. Lake traces the use of popular pam- phlet material at Paul’s Cross sermons from the late 1570s, specifically when the stage came under attack with a flurry of warnings from pam- phleteers.16 But the use of sensational images in sermon and print occurred from the beginning of the Elizabeth period as sermons from Paul’s Cross glorified Protestant martyrs while sensationally demonizing the clergy of the Roman church.17 The print industry also began to promote a new iconography by way of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, published by the grand wizard of religious print marketing, John Day. Foxe’s work was imposing in size and forbidding in cost, but on a more pedestrian level, Day printed, as John N. King points out, ‘single-text editions or small collections in inexpensive octavo for- mat’ as a way of ‘testing the market’ for the larger books he issued by such ‘Protestant luminaries’ as Foxe, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Becon.18 These cheap print market tests also helped to bolster the names of these luminaries as the reception of their works echoed among the readers in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, whether they could afford the larger books or not. In a prior article, I have argued that Day in fact helped to glamorize what we might now view as the distinctly unglamorous field of Protestant
16 Lake, Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, 322–23. 17 See MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 204–05 and such examples as a September 1563 sermon in which the preacher ‘calls for the gallows for the Marian bishops’ and a November 1565 sermon in which the Archdeacon of Essex ‘likened priest to apes.’ 18 John N. King, Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 83.
sermons and writing.19 Day certainly understood the glamour of the interaction between the Paul’s Cross pulpit and surrounding bookshops. The Good Friday sermon that Foxe delivered from Paul’s Cross was published and re-issued in both English and Latin by Day as an affordable quarto entitled A Sermon of Christ Crucified, in 1570, the same year that the upgraded and expensive Book of Martyrs came out in two volumes.20 The cheaper publication, along with the Day’s similar sponsorship of other such (affordable) Paul’s Cross celebrities as Thomas Becon, demonstrates that Foxe was well aware of how to create and maintain the reciprocal buzz of a writer’s name within the compressed pulpit and print environ- ment of Paul’s Cross Churchyard.21 Though Day’s print shop was at Aldersgate, he did secure a bookshop in the early 1570s near the northwest door of the cathedral, and near the action. Day’s interest in constructing a controversial bookshop within the Paul’s Cross churchyard itself near Paul’s gate reflects that he fully understood the importance of having a strong foothold in that reverberating location.22 In an important Paul’s Cross sermon delivered in 1535, Robert Singleton, the ‘avant-garde evangelical,’ defended the legislative position of Thomas Cromwell, confirming Henry as head of the Church of England and mark- ing a pivotal point of reformed thinking in church history. Torrance Kirby’s introduction to an edition of Singleton’s sermon offers a brief history of Paul’s Cross and includes John Jewel’s 1560 statement in a letter to Peter Martyr that as many as 6,000 people attended Jewel’s Paul’s Cross ser- mon.23 One imagines that Singleton’s apology for the crown and reform, like Jewel’s apology, would have drawn a goodly crowd, too. However, 24 years later, Jewel’s challenge sermon on 26 November 1559, would be an entirely different event, even though both Singleton and Jewel were speaking from Paul’s Cross on behalf of the Church of England, even though both were marshalling biblical antecedents to level criticism against the Roman church. By the time we get to Jewel, source material for his sermon was on offer probably adjacent to or just next to the churchyard at one or more of the
19 Thomas Dabbs, ‘The Glamorous Echoes of Godly Print,’ in Renaissance Papers 2010 (Rochester: Camden House, 2011), 123–33. 20 First imprint, STC (2nd ed.), 11242.6. 21 King, Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, 83. King identifies Becon as Foxe’s ‘protégé.’ 22 See Peter M.W. Blayney, ‘John Day and the Bookshop That Never Was,’ in Material London, c. 1600 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 322–43. 23 Torrance Kirby, ‘Robert Singleton’s Sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1535: The ‘True Church’ and the Royal Supremacy,’ Reformation & Renaissance Review: Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 10.3 (2008), 343–68.
24 Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 26. 25 David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 265. 26 STC (2nd ed.), 14612. 27 STC (2nd ed.), 14581.
together and praising God.’28 Jewel repeated his sermon on 31 March 1560, and Henry Machyn recorded psalm singing after sermons delivered on 3 March and 17 March of the same year.29 It is difficult to imagine a large congregation, indeed in Jewel’s case, 6,000 people, bursting out in song spontaneously and singing melodies in unison. One wonders if there was clerical leadership that employed the ‘lining out’ technique that Christopher Marsh identifies as being then used in parish churches. In this case a line of words is called out first, then sung by the group, a laborious way of singing hymns, but dramatic enough given that this act was an affront to the Roman Mass and even to the Book of Common Prayer.30 Still there had to be a common printed text. Marsh holds that ‘it seems that people, after all, learned the Sternhold and Hopkins tunes during the 1560s.’31 John Day’s lucrative full edition of Sternhold and Hopkins’ metri- cal psalms did not come out until 1562, after Jewel’s sermon and the other psalm-singing episodes, but Day published a truncated version of metrical psalms in 1560, and one wonders if this edition was not concurrent with the singing of psalms in March of that year.32 There were, of course, the earlier Geneva imprints which would have followed the same course into London and into the Paul’s Cross Churchyard as the Geneva Bible. All of these popular source texts echoed throughout Paul’s churchyard, from the sermon, within the minds of those who heard the sermon, from the voices that sang in unison after the service. And religious print reverberations prompted by these sermons contin- ued to agitate the print marketplace at Paul’s Cross Churchyard. The exchanges that sounded and resounded from John Jewel’s challenge and the responses from his two adversaries, the aforementioned Cole and Thomas Harding, are well known to church historians. The Harding exchanges were more durable. Harding, the exiled former treasurer of Salisbury cathedral and one with perhaps far more than a mere bone to pick with Jewel, who was then Bishop of Salisbury, took up Jewel’s chal- lenge in a pro-Catholic printed work that resounded in the City of London
28 ZL 1, 71. See also Arnold Hunt’s coverage of Jewel in ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement,’ The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 370–71. 29 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 202. 30 Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 553. There is a demonstration of the lining technique on Track 45 on the accompanying CD. 31 Marsh, 422. See also Marshe’s thorough discussion of Sternhold-Hopkins and psalm singing, 408–52. 32 STC (2nd ed.), 2427 (STC 90608).
33 Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 73, see also 73–85. 34 Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 72–73.
dialectic of a preaching performance.35 As print echoed from sermons, so it would echo in the minds of congregants who would encounter printed responses to what they heard soon enough in surrounding bookshops. In this environment, certain repeated themes and stories would become well known and gain popular appeal, would indeed become fashionable and glamorous. Some years ago MacLure made the connection between the Paul’s Cross 1616 diptych and the Elizabethan public theatre. He remarks that at Paul’s Cross, the ‘sermons, proclamations, processions, and penances were all theatrical,’ after comparing the scene at Paul’s Cross with the Elizabethan theatre, with its ‘groundlings and notables, pit and galleries, and, in the midst, the pulpit as stage.’36 This remark was imaginative and right- minded, as the recent reconstructed views of this theatrical space con- firm. Given that the view at the time of the Paul’s Cross diptych was much the same at the beginning of the Elizabethan period, it is reasonable to assume that Paul’s Cross and its echoing environs at least partly inspired the designers of the new theatres that were constructed roughly a decade or two after Elizabeth came to power. Perhaps more influential on the physical design of the early public the- atres were public inn yards, for instance the Bel Savauge, with its close quarters and standing space, that would have provided better structural and acoustic models for the Red Lion in 1567 or the Theatre in 1576. The exact architectural features of inn yards and of the early public theatres, the precise details of early stages and how they were assembled and used, are difficult to reconstruct, but certainly the acoustics of new amphithe- atres would have been far more compressed than they were at Paul’s Cross. Even so, the big venue was the Paul’s Cross Churchyard, the theatrical enclosure that was unique in English speaking history in that it came to contain the reverberations of the bookshops, the swirling buzz of the liter- ate and immediate response to fresh and controversial print. Of course preaching and sung services, or congregational singing, are dramatic events and of course dramatic events influence other dramatic events. While examining how early modern secular drama came to be, it is often difficult to parse the secular from the religious, and one even won- ders if such a dichotomy ever truly existed. The church had a long and
35 Hunt, Art of Hearing, 6. See in particular Donne’s observation on the preacher com- monly being ‘interrupted by a buzz of conversation, taking up as much as ‘one quarter of his houre’.’ 36 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 4.
37 Gurr, Playgoing, 11. 38 Lake, Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, 484.
were appropriations of hot printed matter much earlier at Paul’s Cross. Of course from the early Elizabethan period onward, the primal, eldest source for sensational and dark stories of violence and murder is the Bible itself as it entered into the common consciousness with more force than ever before. When the attacks on the public stage from the pulpit began, there was indeed a feeling of competition for audiences among some church spokes- men, but the parameters for competition had already been set within the Paul’s Cross Churchyard among feuding ministers, who, with their dra- matic disputes, promoted themselves as they did their opponents. Indeed, the Paul’s Cross pulpit, with the attendant religious controversy and fre- quent dramas of public penances, seemed to couple with the sensational romances and melodramas eventually staged at the public theatres. Both pulpit and theatre helped to drive the print industry. The print industry gave both public forums new material, and, in turn, fresh responses to this material, as if all were functionally in partnership in driving up demand. However, the most powerful competitions that emerged were the raging conflicts of religious reform that were manifest at Paul’s Cross from the early Elizabethan period onward. Indeed, the very foundation of the Church of England came under attack from the pulpit during well- attended sermons; ‘controlling the sermon’ was difficult, as Morrissey shows, and sometimes trusted speakers unexpectedly railed against the ecclesiastical policy of the main church.39 Any competition between ser- mon attendance and stage attendance were secondary to the interfaith conflicts that raged during the early modern period. Church history and theatre history are equally conjoined, though, by the mutually beneficial relationship they both enjoyed with the highly localized print marketplace at St Paul’s, surrounded by the echoing environs of public reception, not just at Paul’s Cross Churchyard, but also in the vast nave of the cathedral, Paul’s Walk, along with the semi-enclosed area around the west door of the cathedral and other spaces. As men- tioned above, print contracts secured from the Church of England and other official sources provided a secure financial base for key freemen of the Stationer’s Company. The offices of the company even faced the west door of the cathedral. Also the commercial successes of early Elizabethan cheap religious print, pioneered by John Day, lent entrepreneurial publishers the necessary confidence to engage in the risky commercial
39 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 78–9.
40 The pleasure reading that appeared before Paul’s Cross sermons were more routinely published indicates perhaps that the successes of these volumes helped to prompt the risky enterprise of publishing sermons. 41 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (London: John Day, 1570), I3v. The spelling has been modernized. 42 STC (2nd ed.), 19121. 43 STC (2nd ed.), 19124.
end of Paules church,’ probably the same ‘long shoppe’ mentioned above.44 If so, then Seres’ shop, one of the early homes to patents from the Church of England, was mixing the business of religious printing with the read ing of bawdy stories and with what became, on the pleasure reading side, two of the great sources for the secular theatre and, in particular, Shakespeare. A number of fine examples of pure pleasure reading, or at least pleasure reading under the auspices of self-betterment, surfaced in the 1560s and 70s. Much of it sold from somewhere in St Paul’s precinct, but Painter and Golding stand out in showing how pleasure reading was to the early public amphitheatre what the Bible and other distinctly religious print was to the Paul’s Cross sermon. We also know from such commentaries as Stephen Gosson’s Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582) that playwrights in the 1570s and early 1580s began adapting plays from such controversial volumes years earlier than Shakespeare and his contemporaries did from the late 80s onward. Well before Shakespeare’s early plays appeared, Gosson lists Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, indignantly, as one of the books ‘ransackt to furnish the Play houses in London.’45 E.K. Chambers labeled Clyomon and Clamydes and Common Conditions as examples of this ransacking and of the ‘characteristic debris’ of early Elizabethan drama. It has been mostly assumed since Chambers that the non-extant drama of the period was not preserved for good reasons. Chambers’ observation rests on Phillip Sidney’s evaluation of a typical drama of the period, but, to be fair, we do not know much about most of these plays beyond their titles.46 By expanding into non-extant titles or so-called lost plays identified from play lists and other sources, more evi- dence can be gathered to support the notion that adaptations of popular stories and themes from the bookshops of St Paul’s were the main fare at London amphitheatres, particularly from the Theatre in the 1570s, and from the Red Lion even earlier. It is probable that a play entitled The Story of Samson was performed at the Red Lion in 1567.47 A potentially spectacular show, one suspects it broke from the standards of biblical morality plays while adapting a
44 STC (2nd ed.), 18956. 45 Stephen Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972), D6v. See also STC (2nd ed.), 12095. 46 E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923; repr. 2009), 41. 47 Roslyn L. Knutson and David McInnis, eds., ‘The Story of Samson,’ Lost Plays Database (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009). Web. http://www.lostplays.org/index.php/ Samson,_The_Story_of.
48 Knutson and McInnis, ‘A Greek Maid, A,’ Lost Plays Database, Web: http://www .lostplays.org/index.php/A_Greek_Maid#Theatrical_Provenance. 49 ‘The Queen of Ethiopia,’ Lost Plays Database, Web: http://www.lostplays.org/index .php/Queen_of_Ethiopia,_The. 50 Gosson, D5v.
and not germane to this discussion. However such derivative romances were then also the staple of the public amphitheatre. As with Painter, there seems to be here an echoing reciprocity between print and stage: The Golden Asse was reportedly put on offer in 1571 at Abraham Veale’s shop that Blayney situates behind Paul’s Cross next to St Paul’s School.51 Shortly after the stated production of ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ The Golden Asse collection was released again and reportedly sold at the same shop in 1582.52 These echoes from print to theatre to print precedent more in the future from playwrights who were listening in on and well aware of the benefits of re-sounding well-known stories from the book inventories of St Paul’s bookshops. Indeed, along with adapting Painter’s work years later, Shakespeare echoed the theme of love at first sight (and of course the Ass) in the Cupid and Psyche story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and there are more than hints of this story in Romeo and Juliet.53 Both of these plays were performed at the Theatre in the 1590s, and both resounded again in print from the quartos that followed their performances. Though Gosson was and is much maligned for his stance against poetry and certain dramas (and what he felt was the non-English fashion of gender confusion), he is the echo of print at Paul’s Cross Churchyard incarnate. Not only does he point directly to popular pleasure reading that resounded as it was adapted for public theatre, he also marked another reverberating exchange back in the churchyard as sermons began to become critical of plays and play going, or, better, as Paul’s Cross ser- mons inadvertently promoted a cultural form that mimicked the way of preaching and hearing at Paul’s Cross. To echo Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, when reluctantly giving his daughter to Othello, the preachers of Paul’s Cross gave that which with all their hearts they would have kept. And in their efforts to condemn the theatre, they continued to give to the theatre. In his confutation of plays, Gosson represents, even in his title, the actual echoing conflict of having the five-act sounds of rowdy public plays in one ear and the vociferous moral turpitude of recent, play damning from Paul’s Cross sermons in the other, the culmination in stereo of the
51 Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, 57. 52 STC (2nd ed.), 719a. 53 For more on this connection, see William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, ed. Rene Weis (London: Metheun, 2012), 41. Weis references Helen Hackett’s discussion in her edi- tion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New York: Penguin, 2005), liv-lv. See also Marjorie Garber, Coming of Age in Shakespeare (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 1981), 170.
54 According to its entry in the STC, the ‘Confutation’ was sold at the Goshawk in the Sun, STC (2nd ed.), 12095. According to Blayney this was the corner shop at Paul’s Gate. See The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, 45. 55 Gosson, Confutation, B6r. 56 Gosson, Confutation, F1r. 57 Gosson, Confutation, B2v. 58 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd, 3rd ed., rev. R.W. Maslen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 111. 59 Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 114. 60 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (London: Arden, 2006), 3.2.10–12.
with unprecedented immediacy and at a high volume. Many of the same people would have also heard the preachers crying out against plays using the Bible and other religious sources that were selling from the same bookshops as the sources of these plays. And they may have read or heard about the damning reviews from Paul’s Cross and from other fiery cri- tiques whose commentaries were printed and sold in and around Paul’s Churchyard.61 As public sermons echoed into more and more print, so would the pleasure reading of Paul’s echo from the local amphitheatre into more print in response to the new, public theatre. Gosson’s writings picked a localized dispute with pleasure reading and play going. The details of this dispute, along with the difficult details of the Marprelate controversy during the late 80s, fall outside the scope of this discussion, but all of these examples show how the early Elizabethan echoes of print at Paul’s Cross Churchyard continued to re-echo from pub- lic event into more print within a close and intense proximity. The trend we see, from the 1580s, of publishers frequently engaging in the risky pub- lication of both sermon and play after the fact had not fully developed yet, but the localized reciprocity between event and printed work shows us how these risky print ventures became feasible. Eventually the publishers would undertake, in the manner of John Day and John Foxe, the unwieldy and unheard of venture of publishing expensive folio versions of the com- plete works of a playwright. The sermons resounding within the attendant print environment would have survived without the public theatre, but the public theatre would have had little chance to reverberate through history without the cathedral and print industry fueled by religious conflict. The next genera- tion of playwrights, chiefly Shakespeare, inherited and fully put to use what was by Shakespeare’s time an established way of ‘cobbling’ plays, to use Gosson’s pejorative term, by resounding popular print circulating in and around St Paul’s. This method for crafting new plays from fresh popu- lar print was the unintentional offspring of the early Elizabeth preaching environment around Paul’s Cross. Though the large public amphitheatres were necessarily and by law built beyond the city limits, they were still very nearby geographically and in public consciousness. Indeed, to the
61 White’s 1578 sermon in which he stated dramatically that plays caused the plague was reportedly on offer at the Green Dragon in Paul’s Cross Churchyard at the same shop that sold one of the sources for plague-causing plays, the An Æthiopian historie written in Greeke by Heliodorus: very wittie and pleasaunt, Englished by Thomas Vnderdoune (London: Henrie VVykes, for Fraunces Coldocke, dwellinge in Powles Churcheyarde, at the signe of the greene Dragon, [1569?]).
RICHARD HOOKER’S PAUL’S CROSS SERMON
David Neelands
How Do we Know that Hooker Preached at Paul’s Cross?
Despite the fact that it is one of the most remembered and important ser- mons preached at Paul’s Cross, there is in fact very little certainty about the sermon of Richard Hooker. It was not mentioned in the earliest bio- graphical notices of Hooker, in Camden and in Fuller.1 Nor was it men- tioned in the first biography of Richard Hooker, written by John Gauden and published in 1662.2 Izaak Walton, whose biography of Hooker was first published in 1665, makes the Paul’s Cross sermon a crucial incident in Hooker’s life, estab- lishing him as a controversial author identified as anti-Calvinist and inci- dentally leading to a bad marriage that would ultimately maim his work.3 Walton’s words are: about which time he entered into sacred orders, being then made Deacon and Priest; and, not long after, was appointed to preach at St Paul’s Cross. In order to which Sermon, to London he came, and immediately to the Shunamite’s House; (which is a House so called, for that, besides the stipend paid the preacher, there is provision made also for his lodging and diet for two days before, and one day after his Sermon) …which was in or about the year 1581. And in this first public appearance to the world, he was not so happy as to be free from exceptions against a point of doctrine delivered in his sermon; which was, ‘That in God there were two wills; an antecedent and a consequent will: his first will, that all mankind should be saved; but his second will was, that those only should be saved, that did live answerable to that degree of grace which he had offered or afforded them.’ This seemed to
1 William Camden, Annales: the true and royall history of the famous empresse Elizabeth Queene of England France and Ireland &, true faith’s defendresse of diuine renowne and happy memory (London: Benjamin Fisher, 1625) and Thomas Fuller, The Church-History of Britain (London: John Williams, 1655). 2 See David Neelands, ‘John Gauden, first biographer of Richard Hooker: an influential failure’, in Perichoresis, 3.2 (2005), 125–136. 3 The life of Mr. Rich. Hooker, the author of those learned books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London: J.G. for Rich. Marriott, 1665).
cross a late opinion of Mr. Calvin’s, and then taken for granted by many that had not a capacity to examine it, as it had been by him before, and hath been since by … others of great learning, who believe that a contrary opinion entrenches upon the honour and justice of our merciful God. How he justi- fied this, I will not undertake to declare; but it was not excepted against (as Mr. Hooker declares in his rational Answer to Mr. Travers) by John Elmer, then Bishop of London, at this time one of his auditors, and at last one of his advocates too, when Mr. Hooker was accused for it.4 An account of the incident indeed survives in Hooker’s ‘rational Answer to Mr. Travers’, The Answere of Mr. Richard Hooker to a Supplication preferred by Mr. Walter Travers to the HH. Lords of the Privie Counsell, first published in 1612 but composed just after the controversial events involving Walter Travers at the Temple church in March 1585.5 In this tractate, we have the one surviving contemporary account that Walton apparently used. And here indeed Hooker brings into the discourse the presence of John Aylmer, the Bishop of London, in his defence of the views expressed in the Paul’s Cross sermon: That which I taughte was att Pawles Crosse. … I see not which waye my Lord of London who was presente and heard it can excuse so greate a faulte, as paciently without rebuke or controlmente afterwards to heare any man there teache otherwise then the Word of God doth, not as it is understood by the private interpretacion of somme one or two men, or by a speciall con- struccion receyved in some fewe bookes but as it is understood by all the churches prefessinge the gospel, by them all and therefore even by our owne also amonges others. A man that did meane to prove that he speaketh would surely take the measure of his wordes shorter.6 So we can say, with some certainty, that Richard Hooker did preach at Paul’s Cross, and that the Bishop of London was present for the sermon. Judging by the norms of such Paul’s Cross sermons, it was probably pre- ceded and followed by prayers, and possibly sung psalms, it began about 10 am, and lasted about two hours. The mayor and corporation of the city of London were probably in attendance. And it would not have been unusual for the crowd in attendance to express their approval or disap- proval loudly.
4 Izaak Walton, Life of Hooker in John Keble (ed.), The Works of Richard Hooker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1877), 1: 22–3. 5 The answere of Mr. Richard Hooker to a supplication preferred by Mr Walter Travers to the HH. Lords of the Privie Counsell (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612). 6 Answere to the Supplication 7–8, in The Folger Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker [FLE], vol. 5, ed. Lætitia Yeandle (Belknap Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1990), 5:236.7–19.
When Did it Take Place?
When we come to address the date, there is considerably less certainty. Walton says vaguely ‘in or about the year 1581’.7 On what did Walton base that opinion? As we now know, Richard Hooker was ordained deacon, by Bishop Aylmer, on 14 August 1579, at Fulham Palace.8 Thus it can be noted that Hooker had a presence in London well before the preaching of the sermon at Paul’s Cross. No documentary evidence of the date of his ordi- nation to the priesthood has yet been discovered. It may be assumed that this took place about a year later, in accordance with the rubrics in the Ordinal (unless the Bishop supplied a faculty for an earlier ordination based on some reason of conveniency).9 Based on (a) an entry in the Corpus Christi College Statutes that sug- gests that MAs leaving Corpus will preach at Paul’s Cross if possible,10 (b) the known fact that Hooker left Corpus no earlier that the Fall of 1584, (c) the letter dated 4 December 1584 from Richard Bishop the printer indi- cating that Hooker had been in London that year,11 and (d) the linking of three of Hooker’s supposed errors from this sermon with the longer list related to the Temple Sermons of March 1585, a tentative date of Fall 1584
7 Although C.J. Sisson radically questioned Walton’s larger narrative of the stay of Hooker at the Churchman House, he accepted the date of 1581. C.J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 25. 8 London Book of Ordinations, Guildhall MS 9535/2. Georges Edelen, ‘A Chronology of Richard Hooker’s Life’ (FLE 6.xxi). 9 Some have proposed an ordination date as late as 1584, at which time Hooker was presented to his first known living (Drayton Beauchamp) and appears to have left his posi- tion at Oxford. FLE 6.xxii. Since Samuel Harsnett was invited to preach in 1584 shortly after his ordination, there is no reason to assume that Hooker would not be invited to preach soon after his ordinations, whenever they may have been. 10 ‘The Corpus Christi College Statutes seem to indicate that MAs who are priests, when they leave Corpus, are obligated for ten years thereafter to preach seven times a year in public to the people in some city, town or borough, or large parish, at seasons specified in statute, and one or more of these sermons is to be at St Paul’s Cross, or the Hospital of the Blessed Mary in London, if he can obtain room and facilities there.’ Manuscript note of Georges Edelen. Edelen adds ‘Note that if he left CCC in 1584 that would explain when he gave the Paul’s Cross sermon—& why he was in London that fall according to Byshop’s let- ter. It’s true MAs, after the completion of their necessary regency had within five years to preach publicly but the places specified are in Oxford: St Peter’s in the East or St Frideswide’s Cross’. Thus there is no reason that Hooker would not have been invited to Paul’s Cross before he left Oxford. Edelen was dependent on The Foundation Statutes of Bishop Fox for Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford a.d. 1517, trans. G.R.M. Ward (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843), 124, 129. 11 Letter to John Rainoldes from London printer George Bishop indicating Hooker had delivered Rainoldes’s manuscript. CCC MS C 318 (FLE 6.xxii).
What was the Subject?
With respect to the subject of Hooker’s sermon, we can speak with some certainty, although his biblical text (if, as is almost certain, he had one) and the precise topic remain unknown. Hooker himself indicated (a) that the subject of the sermon was ‘the matter of predestination’, (b) that he had retained a written copy of the sermon, and (c) that the matter was carefully and fully argued in the sermon: Towching the firste pointe of his [Travers’] discoverye which is aboute the matter of predestination, to sett down that I spake (for I have it wrytten) to declare and confirme the severall braunches thereof would be tedious nowe in this wrytinge where I have so many thinges to towche, that I can but tow- che them onely. … It was not hudled in amonges other matters in such sorte that it could passe without notynge, it was opened, it was proved, it was some reasonable tyme stood uppon.14 In the aftermath of the Temple controversy of 1585, Hooker describes ‘con- ferences’ he had with Travers that included discussion of three opinions that had apparently been expressed in the offending Paul’s Cross sermon: In the other conference he questioned aboute the matter of reprobation mislyking firste that I had termed god a permissive and no posityve cawse of evell which the schoolmen do call malum culpae. Secondly that to their objection who saie If I be elected do what I will I shalbe saved I had aunswered that the will of god in this thinge is not absolute but conditionall to save his electe beleving fearing and obedientlye servinge him. Thirdly that to stop the mouthes of suche as grudge and repine againste god for rejectinge castawaies I had taughte that they are not rejected no not in the purpose and counsell of god without a forseen worthynes of rejection goinge though not in tyme yett in order before.15
12 By Georges Edelen, FLE 6:xxii. 13 See Philip Secor, Richard Hooker, Prophet of Anglicanism (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1999), 115. 14 Answere to the Supplication 7, FLE 5:235.29–236.10. 15 Answere to the Supplication 22, FLE 5:252.30–253.9.
As has been shown elsewhere, Hooker more or less accepted these opin- ions as his own.16 Furthermore, versions of these opinions occur in only one of the several surviving contemporary documents listing Richard Hooker’s theological errors, the one that speaks of ‘at divers times deliv- ered by Master Hooker in his publicke sermons’ rather than one that spe- cifically describes a sermon in March 1585 at the Temple, which suggests they were delivered publicly, but outside the Temple.17 Walton’s version of Hooker’s controversial opinion described above— the attribution to God of two wills, an antecedent and a consequent— does not appear on the surviving list, although a more careful version of that view can be found in the Lawes of Eccesiasticall Politie published eight years later, and that may be Walton’s source for the detail.18 Thus the sub- ject, though not the title or text can be known. Hooker’s sermon dealt with a doctrinal matter, not a matter of discipline as had many Paul’s Cross ser- mons, ‘the matter of predestination’. And in some sense Hooker’s account does deal with upholding ‘the honour and justice of our merciful God’, in Walton’s phrase, in this matter. The sermon included a well developed argument, carefully argued at length. It was also, claimed Hooker, (a) not a position that went beyond Scripture—not ‘otherwise then the Word of God doth’, but (b) rather was consistent with the consensus of orthodox churches—‘as it is understood by all the churches prefessinge the gospel, by them all and therefore even by our owne also amonge others,’ and (c) not based on idiosyncratic opinion—‘not as it is understood by the private interpretacion of somme one or two men, or by a speciall construccion receyved in some fewe bookes’. We will return to these three points in assessing the public significance of Hooker’s Paul’s Cross sermon.
John Aylmer, Bishop of London, ‘One of his Auditors, and at Last One of his Advocates too’
In the quarrel at the Temple, which would eventually involve Archbishop Whitgift, there was another witness brought in by both Hooker and
16 David Neelands, ‘Richard Hooker and the Debates about Predestination, 1580–1600,’ in Torrance Kirby (ed.), Richard Hooker and the English Reformation (Dortrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 47. 17 A shorte note of sundrie unsounde pointes of Doctrine at divers times delivered by Master Hooker in his publicke sermons, Lansdowne MS 96, no. 14, (L2), f. 50r-v. These points are not included in Harleian MS 291, ff. 184v-185r, Doctrin preached by master Hooker in the Temple the fyrste of marche 1585[/86], which refers to a precise date at the Temple. FLE 5:282–292, especially 286.11–15. 18 Neelands, ‘Debates about Predestination’, 49–50.
Travers, John Aylmer (1521–1594), who had been bishop of London since about 1576. Nearly thirty-five years older that Hooker, he had examined and ordained him, he had invited him to preach at Paul’s Cross, and he had been present at the sermon and approved of it. He had also licenced Walter Travers, Hooker’s kinsman and opponent, despite Travers’ irregular non-episcopal ordination.19 John Aylmer was a veteran of the Reformation in England. Already a senior cleric by the time of the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, he had been a Cambridge scholar, a protégée of the future Duke of Suffolk, and tutor in Greek to his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, the future queen. But, as his eighteenth-century biography John Strype would put it, Under [the reign of Queen Mary], uneasy and unsafe for him and all others that had conscientiously adhered to the reformed religion, he soon fled away into Germany, and with several others of the best rank, both divines and gentlemen, he resided in Strasburgh, and afterwards at Zurich in Helvetia; and there in peace followed his studies, and heard the learned Dr. Peter Martyr’s Lectures, not long before the King’s Reader of Divinity in Oxford.20 John Aylmer was among the Marian exiles with the Zurich connection, with Bullinger and Peter Martyr, a connection that relates to our current topic. Moreover, he was not averse to the Lutheran and Evangelical world, or even perhaps to Italy. As Strype puts it, While Aylmer thus continued abroad in exile, he took the opportunity of improving himself by travel, visiting almost all the Universities of Italy and Germany; and had much conferences with many the best learned men. At last he was stayed at Jene, an University erected by the Dukes of Saxony; and should, if he had not come away, have had the Hebrew lecture there …21 At the very end of his exile, he took on the task of a loyal defence of the new Queen Elizabeth from the intemperate tract of one of the English exiles in Geneva, The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regi- ment of women.22 The author turned out to be John Knox, ‘the Scot’, whose targets were initially not Elizabeth but her sister and cousin, the two Catholic Queen Marys. In his An Harborowe [harbour] for faithfull and trewe Subjects, against the late blown Blaste, concerning the Government of Wemen. Wherin be confuted al such reasons, as a Straunger of late made in
19 Walter Travers, A Supplication to the Privy Counsel [sic], FLE 5:195.21–22. 20 John Stype, Life of John Aylmer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821) (chapter 1), 7 [first published 1701]. 21 Life of Aylmer (chapter 1), 10–11. 22 ([Geneva: J. Poullain and A. Rebul], 1558).
that behalfe: with a briefe Exhortation to Obedience,23 John Aylmer used forms of argument that Hooker would later use in his defence of the English establishment, especially the relativizing of New Testament texts apparently limiting the spiritual jurisdiction of women, by suggesting that St Paul wrote what he did because of the behaviour of some particular women and restricted the public ministry of women in the Corinthian church because of particular circumstances. Aylmer, like Hooker for that matter, took for granted that women are naturally weaker than men, but not all women are the same. In the case of Elizabeth, God had made the decision about the succession of a woman, and further, the English parliamentary monarchy, as ‘a mixed rule’ of oligarchy, aristocracy and democracy, would provide remedy for displays of weakness in a female sovereign.24 His expressed opinion in that work defending Henry VIII’s use of gov- ernment by proclamation independent of parliament, like his opinion about the luxury of bishops offered before he became one, would be an embarrassment for him in the hands of Martin Marprelate. But the consti- tutionalism would anticipate the political theories of the eighteenth cen- tury, and would not be alien to Hooker’s treatment of the role of the Queen in parliament in terms of the royal supremacy.25 What is more significant in the present instant is Bishop Aylmer’s inter- est in the competence of the clergy, and the measures he maintained to ensure their learned and sound opinions. As Strype describes him, In his ordination of Ministers he was very punctual and careful: admitting none to Orders but such as himself did examine in his own person in points of divinity, and that in the Latin tongue, in the hearing of many; whereby it came to pass, that none lightly came at him, but such as were graduates, and of the Universities.26 Perhaps Richard Hooker was personally examined by Aylmer before his ordination by him. Aylmer was, however, unpopular for his disciplining of clergy for unsound views on church polity, and thought that good preach- ing, including the Paul’s Cross sermons, was a defence for the Church of England, the ‘present established Church’, both its ‘doctrine and disci- pline’. He attempted, in 1581, and with the support of the government, to
23 (Strasbourg [i.e. London: John Day], 1559). 24 Life of Aylmer (chapter 13), 177. 25 Lawes VIII.2.7, 9, 11, 12. 26 Life of Aylmer (chapter 14), 185.
27 Life of Aylmer (chapter 5), 57–58. 28 This was the same Convocation that authorized the Decades of Henry Bullinger, the senior pastor of Zurich, to be required reading for all the unlicensed clergy. See below. 29 Life of Aylmer (Additions), 201.
In addition to informing his choice of Paul’s Cross preachers and his expectations of them, Aylmer’s concern for ‘confirming the people’s judge- ments in the doctrine and discipline of the present established Church, so much struck at and undermined by many in these times’, also informed one of the tasks he urgently took on in 1580, when a Jesuit mission, includ- ing Edmund Campion, attractive and credible Londoner, and former Oxford scholar (who in his Church of England phase had himself refused to preach at Paul’s Cross), arrived in England and began its work to solidify the people to the form of religion abolished twenty years earlier by the Act of Uniformity. Unlike the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis of 1570, and for that matter, unlike John Knox’s earlier First Blast of the Trumpet, the man- date of the Jesuit mission of 1580–81 did not challenge the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s rule but, more embarrassingly, the unseemliness of the ‘doc- trine and discipline of the present established Church’, by exposing the unsavoury and contradictory sayings of the continental reformers that had apparently inspired the reforms of the English church and were defended sporadically by that church’s leaders. Campion’s ‘Challenge to the Privy Council’, commonly known as ‘Campion’s Bragg’, made clear that his challenge was not treasonous but rather a matter of the doctrine of the Church, and offered a challenge that he be allowed access to ‘iii sortes of indifferent and quiet audiences’. The second of these would be ‘the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both Universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholike Church by proofs innumerable, Scriptures, Councils, Fathers, History, nat- ural and moral reasons.’ Campion went on to claim that ‘I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation.’30 For this learned audience, Campion produced a Latin tract Rationes decem, ‘Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities’. The tract was printed quickly and well, and four hundred copies of it were found on the benches of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford on the day of Commencement, 27 June 1581. This sudden appearance of this
30 Edmund Campion, ‘Challenge to the Privy Council’ found in Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities, by Edmund Campion, translated by J.H.P. [John Hungerford Polley] (London: Manresa Press, 1914), 7–11.
31 In the same year, the first volume of Robert Bellarmine’s Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adversus hujus temporis Hæreticos, also referred to as De Controversiis) appeared. This work, by another Jesuit, provided a full systematic treatment of all the con- troversies of the Reformation period, offering a careful and historically accurate defense of the Roman positions, and setting the agenda for defence of non-Roman churches for gen- erations. It might be seen as a much more thorough and universal extension of Campion’s tracts. It continued to provide a challenge for defenders of the Church of England. 32 Life of Aylmer (chapter 3), 32–33.
When Aylmer at last found a copy of the book, he was particularly moved by the eighth ‘reason’, the ‘Paradoxes’, and proposed a response involving two approaches: (a) acknowledgement that ‘none of our Church meant to defend Luther’s hyperbola, or all things that had passed the pens of Calvin or Beza: for quisque suo sensu abundet’33 and (b) that a ‘malicious collec- tion of their writers and Schoolmen’ be drawn up so that it could be shown that the Church of England ‘had learned to swear by the dictates of no master but of Christ’.34 Among the hyperboles, ‘certain portentous errors of self-opinionated men’, noted by Campion in the ‘Paradoxes’, were Calvin’s opinion, ‘God is the author and cause of evil, willing it, suggesting it, effecting it, com- manding it, working it out, and guiding the guilty counsels of the wicked to this end. As the call of Paul, so the adultery of David, and the wicked- ness of the traitor Judas, was God’s own work’; another’s opinion that ‘when Christ, praying in the Garden, was streaming with a sweat of water and blood, He shuddered under a sense of eternal damnation, He uttered an irrational cry, an unspiritual cry, a sudden cry prompted by the force of His distress’; Calvin’s account of Christ’s suffering on the Cross ‘when Christ Crucified exclaimed, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me, He was on fire with the flames of hell, He uttered a cry of despair, He felt exactly as if nothing were before Him but to perish in everlasting death’, an offensive interpretation that Calvin enforced against critics with ridicule; the many and varied attempts to alter the Apostles’ Creed’s reference to Christ’s descent into Hell; the loss of the image of God in man because of Adam’s Sin; the adequacy of a righteousness that blotted away sin exter- nally rather than overcoming it through grace; the insistence that faith includes assurance of one’s perseverance; the impossibility of sexual con- tinence in a man, and the vaunting of marriage over virginity; the insis- tence that baptism has no effect and is merely a token of salvation; the requirement only to bury the conscience in order to receive Communion—a series of intemperate and extreme expressions of Protestant theology that could be explained away perhaps, but on the surface were undoubtedly
33 A common expression, apparently a reference to Romans 14.5 (Vulgate) unusquisque in suo sensu abundet, literally, ‘Let everyone abound in his own sense.’ Perhaps this is a reference to authors’ taking extravagant liberties of expression among matters that are oth- erwise indifferent, that is, not determined by Scripture and tradition. 34 Life of Aylmer (chapter 3), 34. It should be noted that, although Aylmer thought the Church should not defend Luther’s hyperboles, Aylmer had visited Jena in Saxony, and maintained a strong admiration for Luther himself, as is shown in his elaborate praise of Luther (chapter 14), 183.
35 Ten Reasons, 121–130. 36 The same principles would inform his extended treatment of the development of the theology of grace, including predestination, in the Pelagian controversy and its aftermath, found in the Dublin Fragments composed at the end of his life. See David Neelands, ‘Predestination’ in Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008,) 185–219 (especially 201–204). 37 At the end of his life, in the Dublin Fragments, Hooker returned to the account of the presence of Christ deriving from Bullinger. See David Neelands, ‘Christology and the Sacraments’ in Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 369–402 (especially 391n112).
Calvinian gospel’ brought censure from none other than Archbishop Whitgift, apparently for causing controversy by criticizing authority rather than simply expounding Christian teaching.38
The Zurich Connection and the Grounds of Persuasion
One other connection might be noted, namely the Zurich connection. During his exile Bishop Aylmer had spent a considerable time in Zurich, and knew both Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) and Heinrich Bull inger (1504–1575) there. Bullinger’s views on predestination, and Martyr’s, had previously been of significance in the English Reformation. And Bullinger was a continuing correspondent of many, as he had been with Lady Jane Grey and her family and circle to which Aylmer had belonged. Coincidentally, neither Martyr nor Bullinger were singled out by Campion in the ‘Paradoxes’. And it was Bullinger’s Decades that in February 1586 the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury authorized as required reading for the clergy not licenced to preach.39 Martyr had been chosen to be on the commission to reform ecclesiasti- cal law, a commission that had also produced the draft Forty-two articles of Religion. Article 17 ‘Of predestination and election’ bears many marks of Martyr’s published views on predestination, including his opinion that Scripture speaks always of election when it refers to predestination, and never damnation.40 Martyr had, in fact, maintained a plain and simple approach to the doctrine of predestination, avoiding Calvin’s hyperboles of unconditional reprobation and security of assurance, as Hooker also would. Bullinger’s role was less obvious than Martyr’s, but important. In September 1552, Bartholemew Traheron, also a member of the commis- sion on the ecclesiastical law, and a known advocate of Calvin’s views on various matters, wrote to Heinrich Bullinger to ask for Bullinger’s views
38 In 1583 Richard Harsnett [1561–1631] was ordained, and soon after disciplined by Archbishop Whitgift for preaching against predestination at St Paul’s Cross on 27 October 1584 Sermon against predestination, on the text of Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 11 [Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?]. 39 The Decades of Henry Bullinger … translated by H.I., ed. Thomas Harding for the Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849–1852), 1.viii. 40 David Neelands, ‘Peter Martyr Vermigli and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England’, in A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 355–374, especially 361–62.
41 OL (1846), 325. Traheron goes on ‘But the greater number among us, of whom I own myself to be one, embrace the opinion of John Calvin and being perspicuous, and most agreeable to holy scripture.’ 42 Epistola 1707, columns 489–490, Calvini Opera 14.480–490. Translated by the Rev. Dr. William Craig, 2009. See Cornelis P. Venem ‘Heinrich Bullinger’s Correspondence on Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination, 1551–1553’, in The Sixteenth Century Journal 17.4 (1986), 435–350.
and the first four councils.43 Bullinger in similar fashion had prefixed an account of the patristic creeds and the first four councils to the first book of the Decades, ‘that it might manifestly appear that the doctrine and faith of the Protestant churches, which was by many ill-reported of undeserv- edly condemned as heretical, was perfectly agreeable with the teachings of the apostles and of the primitive church.’44 To avoid the conclusion that God is the author of sin, Bullinger acknowl- edged that God does all, but that much of what he does is done providen- tially, through the media he has ordained. Thus what human beings do is also done by God since he created them and gave them wills; but they are permitted to do things that God does not will. This use of the scholastic distinction between first and second causes, and the insistence, found in scripture, that much of what transpires is permitted but not directed by God, provides a ready freedom from the hyperbole that God is the author of sin:
In fact the providence of God does not throw the order of nature [rerum] into confusion, it does not abolish the duties of life, nor do away with our diligence in domestic economic or politics (col. 482). God works all those things that are fitting to his nature. He does not will sins, or impel to sins because they are contrary to his nature. Therefore he does not work sins, but permits them to happen. That permission is in the divine providence and not separate from it (col. 483).
Further, God’s grace enabled human beings to act freely and sometimes virtuously:
Regenerate man is of free will, not by the power of nature but by virtue of divine grace (col. 486).
As for predestination, the elect are subject to God’s undeserved mercy and the damned to God’s deserved justice:
The cause of election and predestination is nothing other than the good and just will of the God who saves the elect undebite, but who condemns and rejects the reprobate debite (col. 487).
Yet those who are elect are those who actually come to faith:
43 See §20, in Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 327. 44 Decades of Henry Bullinger I.12. Compare Gratian, Decreti I, dist. 25 in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Richter (Turnhout: Brepols, 1959), vol. I, columns 34–35.
Therefore God has chosen from eternity those whom he willed. But accord- ing to the decree and intention of God he willed those who believe. And the former are predestined to death and destruction, the latter to life and salva- tion (col. 487). And those who are lost are to blame for the grace they have rejected: that they do not believe and indeed perish, we do not cast the fault on God or his predestination, but on man himself repelling the grace of God and not receiving the heavenly gifts (col. 488). there is in man an inborn corruption which rejects the word of God. But if man accepts the word of God, that is of grace which illuminates (col. 488). we urge the more those universal promises and bid all to hope well. Indeed predestination, shut up from eternity in the secret counsel of God was at length revealed to us by the prophets, but especially through Christ and his apostles, that manifestly God is the lover of men, that he wishes well to men (col. 488–89). Further, wrote Bullinger, paradoxical and hyperbolic treatments of pre- destination are not useful; they may lead to doubt in the faithful: lest arguing too precisely about the hidden judgements of God, of the pre- destination and election of God, we introduce doubt into the minds of both the simple and the experienced equally, which we shall never again thereaf- ter be able to extinguish: from [which doubts] soon follows hatred of God, despair, and blasphemy, as if God who calls all and offers his gifts to all wished to give to none but a few and even to mock the others and send them empty away. And therefore the divine promise and truth would also come into peril. Therefore thus I am accustomed to expound, moderately, of course, of predestination in a religious and orthodox way (col. 490). And, for Bullinger, Calvin’s overstatements are not to be adopted, despite Calvin’s brilliance. Especially those that would have astonished the ancients:
Because Calvin, our honoured brother in the Lord, tried in every way to assert the purity of divine grace, who would find fault with the holy purpose [literally ‘institute’] of the man? Because he entered anywhere in his own writings that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man and in that the ruin of his posterity, but also managed it by his own will: further, that he cre- ated them for destruction to become organs of his wrath, that they should come to their end now to take away their faculty of hearing his word: now more to blind and numb to his proclamation &c.: who would not see these things to be so propounded that the Fathers [veteres] would scarcely recog- nize them (col. 489–90). Thus all three of the points alleged as errors against Hooker in his Paul’s Cross sermon could be found in the Letter of Bullinger to Traheron of
thirty years’ earlier. And all were prevented by avoiding the idiosyncratic hyperboles of gifted individuals, and adopting the long consensus of the Church, from the time of the apostolic witness in Scripture. This was pre- cisely Aylmer’s suggested programme against the assault of Edmund Campion in 1581.
Date and Significance of Hooker’s Sermon
To conclude, we can suggest, in the first place, that Hooker’s sermon and his understanding of it is entirely consistent with the programme of Bishop John Aylmer to respond to the accusations against the Church of England, to ‘confirm the people’s judgements in the doctrine and disci- pline of the present established Church,’ and especially to avoid the hyper- boles of outspoken individual reformers, the extreme, unnecessary and difficult to accept variances from received Christian teaching. And the ser- mon may have been inspired directly by Bishop Aylmer. In the second place, Hooker’s sermon may be seen as offering a moder- ate Zurich approach, used previously by Zwingli and Bullinger (an approach for that matter consistent with the brief note on Predestination at Trent against the rash presumptuousness of personal certainty of assur- ance and unconditional perseverance). This may mean that the sermon should not be interpreted simply as ‘anti-Calvinist’ as Walton might sug- gest after the quarrels of the Commonwealth, and as Harsnett’s sermon in 1584 certainly was; rather the sermon might be interpreted as the plain truth, without hyperboles, of the common understanding of ‘the matter of predestination’. Thirdly, the sermon is more likely than not to have been delivered ‘in or around 1581’ (at the time of the Jesuit mission), as Walton said. Finally, for that matter, the sermon adopted apologetic principles that informed Richard Hooker’s approach to disputed theological ques- tions for the rest of his life. In introducing the task of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1594), Hooker acknowledged the difficulties of persuasion of the general public: ‘He that goeth about to perswade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; …’45 For Hooker, that is, the enterprise of Bishop Aylmer’s purpose would require work and care. The Paul’s Cross sermons in general, and Hooker’s in particular, may be seen as such an enterprise of persuasion.
45 Lawes I.1.1; 1:56.7–9.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EDMUND CAMPION IN THE SHADOW OF PAUL’S CROSS: THE CULTURE OF DISPUTATION
Gerard Kilroy
On 14 July 1568, the governing body of the Grocers’ Company met: Where as at a Courte of Assistents holden this month 9 July yt was then thought good by the same courte that Edmond Campian, one of this Companies scollers, being suspected to be of no sound judgement in reli- gion … should come and make sermon at Paulls cross betweene that and Candelmas next … and now consydering that by the first grante the scoller shuld ones in a year preache at paulls crosse and the said Campian haath allready had his exhibition ij yeares at midsummer last past and yet to the companies knowledge not made one sermon anywhere; Wherefore after good and indifferent deliberation … they concluded that the said Campian shall betweene this and the second Sunday after Michaelmas next make one sermon at Paulls crosse which if he refuse to doo then his exhibition to cease and be bestowed upon another.1 Campion’s detailed negotiations with the Grocers’ Company, still extant in beautifully neat minutes, reveal a close triangular relationship between the city companies, Paul’s Cross, and the university of Oxford. The original scholarship of £6 13s 4d had been granted on 28 September 1566, when Laurence Humfrey, the President of Magdalen, and Thomas Godwin, the Dean of Christ Church, Sir John White and Sir William Chester had requested the Grocers that ‘Edmond Campion Master of Arts and student in St Johns Colledge in Oxford … shall have the said benevolence so long as … he shal ones in the yere preche at paulls crosse’.2 Sir William Chester is not surprising, but it is interesting to see the two most powerful figures in Oxford, Dr Humfrey, an ardent Calvinist oppo- nent of vestments, and Dr Godwin, a fervent protestant, recommending Campion to the city aldermen. The recommendation comes within a month of the Queen’s visit to Oxford, between 31 August and 6 September
1 Orders of the Court of Assistants, Grocers Company Records MS 11.588 (Guildhall Library, London Metropolitan Archives), 185. 2 Orders of the Court of Assistants, GL MS 11.588, 156.
1566, when Campion’s fellow Oxford MAs chose him to open the thirteen hours of disputations in front of Queen Elizabeth.3 Yet for four months from July 1568, Campion struggled to avoid preaching at Paul’s Cross. Finally, on 14 October, the Grocers recorded that they had received a letter from him in which he thanked them for the benefit he had receyved at their handes and frankly yielded up the same unto them (aledging that he dare not, he cannot, nei- ther was it expedyent he shuld preche as yet, declaring in his letter dyvers reasons for the same). Whereupon after reading of the said letter it was ordered by this court … that the exhibition shall be bestowed upon some other scoller …4 Scholars have explained Campion’s reluctance mainly in the light of the Grocers’ suspicion that he was ‘of no sound judgement in religion’. But if his religious beliefs were shifting, those seem initially to have stayed within ‘the religion now established’. For, in March 1569, he did three things that suggest he was confidently pursuing a career in the more traditional wing of the church. On 3 March 1569, he compounded for the first fruits of the parish of Sherborne, in Oxfordshire, then in the diocese of his friend, the Bishop of Gloucester, Richard Cheney, where the living was worth £15 6s 8d.5 Campion’s sureties were two stationers from Paul’s Cross Yard: Humphrey Toye and William Norton. He seems to have been ordained deacon at about this time, and on 19 March he supplicated for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity.6 Something changed over the next four months. He did not come forward on 11 July, when the Act was held, and on 6 October 1569 he was first granted a Travelling Fellowship, a standard way at St John’s of avoiding ordination.7 For some unknown reason, he did not take up the Travelling Fellowship, and the date was changed on the certificate from ‘6 October 1569’ to ‘7 August 1570’.8 At least six of the sig- natories are known to have had Catholic sympathies: Henry Russell, Francis Willis, Thomas Jenkins, William Wiggs, Henry Shaw and John
3 For a full account of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Oxford and of Campion’s participation, see Kilroy, ‘The Queen’s Visit to Oxford in 1566: A Fresh Look at Neglected Manuscript Sources’, in Recusant History 31.3 (2013), 331–373. 4 Orders of the Court of Assistants, GL, MS 11.588, 188. 5 Clerical Database, E. 334/8 (GL, London Metropolitan Archives), fol. 69. 6 W.H. Stevenson and H.E. Salter, The Early History of St John’s College, Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 181 and 184. No record can be found of his ordination, presumably by Bishop Cheney of Gloucester. 7 Stevenson and Salter, Early History of St John’s College, 185. 8 Stevenson and Salter, Early History of St John’s College, 185. The original document sur- vives in Reg. Coll. i. 73.
Case. Campion’s father had published an anti-Catholic book, Newes from Rome about 1550, and had been close to two Cross Yard neighbours, Robert Toye, the father of Humfrey, and Thomas Petyt. If Campion was moving further from his father’s stance, he seems, in March 1569 at least, merely to be shifting towards Cheney’s conservative position on the Councils of the Church, free will and the Eucharist, all of which were anathema, as Campion himself said in a letter to Bishop Cheney, to Laurence Humfrey, Charles Sampson and Thomas Cooper, his ‘antagonistae (enemies)’.9 Campion grew up in the Cross Yard, and it may be that behind his reluc- tance was also a boyhood memory of violent altercations at Paul’s Cross. London had been the stage on which four successive monarchs presented the whirligig of religious change imposed on the population. As Campion was starting at Paul’s School, he would have felt the impact of the 1547 injunctions of Edward VI. On 16 November 1547, they ‘beganne that night to take downe the roode with all the images in Poules Church’, leading to the death of a workman when the great cross fell down, and on 27th November, there preached at ‘Poules Crosse Doctor Barlowe’, with ‘before the pulpitt the imag of our Ladie’, which had been hidden by the parishio- ners.10 The 153 boys of St Paul’s School, Campion perhaps among them, were made to listen to his sermon ‘aginst idolatrie in images … After the sermon the boyes brooke the idolls in peeces’.11 Campion, whose father must have died around 1550, joined Christ’s Hospital when it opened its doors to fatherless boys on 23 November 1552.12 The new Queen, Mary Tudor, entered London on 3 August 1553, and it was Campion, now a Blue Coat boy, who on ‘a great stage’, where all the children of Christes Hospitall sat, with all the governors and officers, ‘on his knees made an oration to
9 Paolo Bombino, Vita et Martyrium Edmundi Campiani (Mantua: Osannas, 1620), 33. 10 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from a. d. 1485 to 1559, 2 vols (London: Camden Society, 1877), vol. 2, 1 (hereafter Wrioth.). 11 Wrioth. 2, 1. 12 John Howes’ MS., 1582, ‘A brief note of the order and manner of the proceedings in the first erection of’ The Three Royal Hospitals of Christ, Bridewell and St Thomas the Apostle, introd. William Lempriere (London: Septimus Vaughan Morgan, 1904), 6. For a full discus- sion of Campion’s schooling, see Sir Michael McDonnell in his monumental article, ‘Edmund Campion, SJ and St Paul’s School’, Notes and Queries 194 (1949), 46–49, 67–70, 90–92. He repeats the evidence for his being at St Paul’s more succinctly in, The Registers of St Paul’s School 1509–1748 (London: privately printed, 1977), 27. See also A[nthony] M[unday], A Discouerie of Edmund Campion, and his Confederates, their most horrible and traiterous practises, against her Maiesties most royall person, and the Realme (London: Edwarde White, 1582), STC 18270: ‘Edmund Campion, as it is by men of sufficient credit reported, at what tyme he spent his studie heere in Englande, both in the Hospital, and also at the uniuersity of Oxenford: was alwaies addicted to a meruailous suppose in himselfe,’ sig. G1v-G2r.
13 Wrioth. 2, 94; Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, 2–3. 14 Wrioth. 2, 106. 15 Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 19. 16 Duffy, Fires of Faith, 19, citing Edmund Bonner, Interrogatories set foorth by the kyng and quenes maiesties commissioners upon which … Churchwardens shall be Charged (London: Robert Caly, 1558), RSTC 10117, no. 47. 17 The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: J.B. Nichols for the Camden Society, 1848), 41, cited by Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 7. I should like to acknowledge a profound debt to the seminal work of Mary Morrissey and Arnold Hunt on Paul’s Cross. 18 John Stow, The Annales or General Chronicle of England, continued by E. Howes (London: Adams, 1615), STC 23338, 614; The Chronicles of England, from Brute vnto this present
Sir George Barnes, and Aldermen failed to restore order, John Rogers and John Bradford, two evangelical preachers who were later to be among the first martyrs of Mary’s burning, found themselves trying to restrain the crowd of young men and women.19 After the dagger was thrown, Bradford gave up trying to calm the crowd and, ‘with the helpe of John Rogers’, man- aged to ‘convey M. Bourne out of the audience … into Paules Schoole’.20 This busines was so heynously declared to the Quene and her Counsell, that my Lord Mayor and Aldermen were sent for to the Quenes Counsell to the Tower the 14 and 15 of August, and yt was sore layd to theyr charge, that the liberties of the city had lyke to [haue] bene taken away from them, and to depose the Lord Mayor, straightly charginge the Mayor and Aldermen to make a direct ansere to them on Wednesday the 16 of August whether they would rule the city in peace and good order, or ells they would sett other rul- ers ouer them.21 The Mayor, Sir George Barnes, summoned ‘the Commons of the liuerye’ to pass on the warning, and the Common Council pledged loyalty and a tough line on offenders. The Privy Council gave clear instructions for young apprentices and servants ‘to kepe their parishe churches the holie daye’, and for no curate or ‘non other man to preache or make any open or solemne reading of Scripture in their churches’, unless licensed to do so.22 These edicts reveal that the authorities associated the trouble with young evangelicals, set free from authority by reading the Bible in English, and that they feared the power of ‘sediciouse preachers’, several of whom were arrested, including John Bradford and John Rogers, who had actually res- cued Dr Bourne.23 On the following Sunday, 20 August, when Dr Watson (Chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester) preached, by the queenes appoyntment, and for feare of the like tumult certain Lords of the Counsell repaired to the sermon, … and Sir Henry Gernigam, Captain of the gard, with two hundred of the guard, which stood about the preacher with halberts. Also the Maior had warned the companies of the Cittie to be present in their liveries.24
yeare of Christ, 1580 (London: Henry Bynneman, 1580), STC 23333, 1068. Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1852), says that he was ‘pulled owte of the pulpyt by vacabonddes’, 83. 19 Wrioth. 2, 98. 20 John Stow, The Annales (1615), 614. 21 Wrioth. 2, 98. 22 Acts of the Privy Council, 1552–1554, vol. 4, ed. John Roche Dasent (London: HMSO, 1892), 13 August 1553, 317. 23 Acts of the Privy Council, 1552–1554, 16 August 1553, 321. 24 Stow, Annales (1615), 614. See Chronicle of Grey Friars, 83; Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 7.
These two Sundays in August represent two aspects of the Cross: a visual representation of civic hierarchy and social order, from the Privy Council down to the Livery Companies, it could also be a flashpoint of riot and dis- order, in which even radical preachers were unable to contain the crowd. Worse was to come in the following year, 1554: ‘The 10. of June, doctor Pendleton preached at Pauls Crosse, at whom a gunne was shot, the pellet whereof went very neere him, and light on the Church wall. But the shooter could not be found.’25 The shot narrowly missed both him and the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas White, who was sitting beneath him. It was a violent introduction outside Campion’s front door not just to the whirligig of political and religious change and the strength of the reform movement in London, but also to the volatile nature of London audiences. If the audience in the Cross Yard was representative of London street culture, preachers had to be paid. Once funding for the Paul’s Cross ser- mons had dried up, preachers from the two universities were reluctant to incur the expense of travelling and lodging for what must have been at least four days. Mary Morrissey has shown that between June 1565 and November 1566 (when Campion accepted the Grocers’ scholarship), most of the preachers at Paul’s Cross were ‘London ministers and senior clerics’; only eight out of seventy preachers are described as from Oxford and Cambridge.26 In 1591, William Fisher declared in his sermon that the ‘lerned men, from both universities’ who preached at Paul’s Cross were ‘hardely, and unwillingly … drawn hither’ because of the cost involved.27 John Aylmer, Bishop of London, complained to the Privy Council that ‘men out of both universities and other places that bee called to preache there, are soe hardly drawne unto that place that those which by my appoyntment have the chardge to call the said preachers … cannot have twoe amongst tenne of them that be soe sent for.’28 Campion’s reluctance to mount the pulpit, however, was probably influenced more by two current controversies, both at their height between 1566 and 1568. The manuscript accounts of the Queen’s visit to Oxford in 1566 show how closely intertwined in these
25 Stow, Annales (1615), 624; see Chronicle of Grey Friars, 90. 26 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 30, citing sermon notes in Bodl. MS Tanner 50. 27 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 30, citing William Fisher, A Godly Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse the 31. day of October 1591 (STC 10919), sigs. C4–C6. 28 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 30, citing John Strype, Historical Collections of the Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer (Oxford: University Press, 1821), 360.
years were the affairs of the city of London and the University of Oxford.29 The controversy over clerical vestments in church reached its peak in 1565–66. Charles Sampson, dean of Christ Church, had been removed in 1565, because of his opposition to vestments, and replaced by Thomas Godwin; Humfrey survived at Magdalen, only because the crown had no direct control of his appointment, but the Queen greeted Humfrey, who came to welcome her, with an acerbic comment: ‘Master doctoure umphrey me thinckethe this gowne becummeth yu verye well & I marvell that you are so straighte laced in thes poyntes but I cam not nowe to chide.’30 The anti-vestiarian Bishop of Winchester, Robert Horne, was the visitor of several Oxford colleges and, with the help of his commissary, George Ackworth, was seizing recusant books and weeding out of New College, Corpus, Merton, in the years 1566 to 1568, all remaining papists. The controversy, which in Oxford looks like academic politics, was enough to inflame the population in London to serious disorder. The Zurich exiles must have so effectively preached against vestments for the first seven years of the Elizabethan settlement, that when Archbishop Parker (at the Queen’s behest) published his edicts on 26 March 1566, insisting on vestments, London congregations reacted angrily. On Sunday 7 April, there were violent arguments and such ‘quarylynge and conten- cion was bewen the mynystars and parishioners’ that the doors of many churches were closed.31 On Whit Monday, 3 June, ‘the Scott’, a preacher at St Margaret’s Pattens, who had previously inveighed against ‘capps, surpli- sis, and such like’, obeyed the Archbishop and wore a surplice into the pul- pit, whereupon ‘a certayne nombar of wyves threw stons at hym and pullyd hym forthe of the pulpyt, rentyng his syrplice and scrattyng his face, &c.’32 The following day, 4 June, two to three hundred women (with bags, bottles and spices for a banquet) came to London Bridge to ‘accom- pany’ and encourage a march of readers and ministers leaving London for ‘xxj’ days to appeal to Bishop Horne in Winchester in protest at the instructions.33 On 26 January 1567, when Bishop Grindal himself came to preach at St Margaret’s Old Fish Street, ‘the people (especially the wymen)
29 For a full account see Kilroy, ‘The Queen’s Visit to Oxford’. 30 CCC MS 257, fol. 117; Bodl. MS Twyne 17, 158. 31 James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles with Historical Memoranda by John Stowe (London: Camden Society, 1880), 138. 32 Stow, Memoranda, 139; quoted by Arnold Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, in Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, eds. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: University Press, 2011), 373. 33 Stow, Memoranda, 140. The diocese of Winchester then stretched as far as Southwark.
34 Stow, Memoranda, 140; Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 373. 35 John Foxe’s Collection of Papers, BL MS Harley 417, fol. 129r (my translation). 36 Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 373. 37 Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 372. 38 A.C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose (London: Sands & Co, [1950]), 62–66, lists the controversy in print. See Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 374–76, for the pulpit aspects. 39 Alexander Nowell, A Confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last Boke entituled A Disproufe. &c as also of D. Sander his causes of Transubstantiation (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1567).
This booke of Doctor Saunders hath ben very rare to be gotten or seen amon- gest us, upon what occasion I doe not know, but I could never see but onely two copies of it, one of which remained not in my sight one halfe hour, the other I obteined of the bishop of London, which was at Easter last past this yeare, 1567, and before that time of very truthe I could never have any vewe or survey of it, howbeit I had heard very much of it.40 At the Cross, he had to apologise for an earlier, inadequate, sermon against Harding’s latest book: he explained that, although he had had the book only for two days, he had answered it because the book ‘was come in all mens hands almost’.41 In their turn, Dorman and Harding accused Jewel of launching his challenge in a Paul’s Cross sermon because he did not dare to put his ideas to the test, and ‘adventure the triall of them with making your matche with learned men, and in the meane tyme set them forth by sermons busyly among the unlearned and simple people’.42 As Hunt says, ‘This view of Jewel as a shameless crowd-pleaser makes little sense unless we see the controversy not just as a textual exchange but as a pulpit event’.43 John Martial, another New College exile, attacked James Calfhill, the Calvinist student of Christ Church, for acting as a crowd stirrer: ‘at Poules crosse … the precher talking against the papistes, saieth, the Lord confounde them’, to which ‘the prentises and dentye dames … answer Amen.’44 For this unruly audience ‘a peculiarly aggressive and populist style of preaching predominated’ that was despised and derided by the Louvain theologians.45 The ‘Great Controversy’ initiated by Bishop Jewel’s ‘Challenge’ sermon in 1559, was, therefore, conducted not just in print between the Bishop of Salisbury and the New College exiles now in Louvain, but in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross, where Bishop Jewel and Dean Nowell would attack the latest Louvain book as soon as it circulated in New College and London.46 This was a triangular debate in which Oxford,
40 Nowell, A Confutation (1567), fol. 150v. Fellows of New College, Oxford clearly had no such difficulty: see Jennifer Loach, ‘Reformation Controversies’, in History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3, The Collegiate University, ed. James McConica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 363–96 (386). 41 Bodl. MS Tanner 50, fol. 38v, cited by Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 375. 42 Thomas Dorman, A Proufe of Certyne Articles in Religion, Denied by M. Juell, Sett furth in Defence of the Catholyke Beleef therein (Antwerp, 1564), 127; cited by Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 372. 43 Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 372. 44 John Martial, A Replie to M. Calfhills Blasphemous Answer Made Against the Treatise of the Crosse (Louvain: Fowler, 1566), 60, cited by Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 376. 45 Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 382. 46 Loach, ‘Reformation Controversies’, HUO, vol. 3, 386.
Louvain and Paul’s Cross were key, but sharply differentiated, points.47 The former New College fellows may have been in exile, but they elicited a visceral response from Jewel. On 27 October 1567, a month before Nowell’s confutation, Jewel’s A Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande was published.48 In Jewel’s annotated copy, still extant in Magdalen College, Oxford, marginal handwritten apostrophes to Harding reveal the passionate, personal quality of this debate: they answer Harding’s printed reply, as if written words in the marginal space mimic the words echoing in the air around Paul’s Cross.49 Campion was at the two schools, St Paul’s and Christ’s Hospital, which were a central part of the civic structure of the city of London. The most important sermons in the London calendar were the five Easter sermons. John Stow says that: time out of minde, it hath bin a laudable custome that on good friday in the after noone some especial learned man by appoyntment of the prelate doth preache a sermon at Paules crosse, treating of Christs Passion. And upon the three next Easter holidayes, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the like learned men by the like appointment doe use to preach on the forenoon at the said Spittle, to perswad the articles of Christs resurrection, and then on low Sunday before noon one other learned man at Paules crosse is to make rehersall of those fowre sermons, either commending or reproving them, as to him by judgment of the lerned divines is thought convenient. And that done he is to make a sermon of himselfe, which in all were five Sermons in one.50 The aim was clearly to set up theological disputation, but the Spital ser- mons were also colourful civic occasions: At these Sermons so severally preached, the Maior with his Brethren the Aldermen are accustomed to be present in their Violets at Paules on Good Friday and in their Scarlets, both they and their wives, at the Spittle in the
47 Hunt, ‘Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement’, 372. 48 John Jewel, A Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande, Conteininge an Answeare to a certaine Booke lately set foorthe by M. Hardinge, and Entituled, A Confutation of &c (London: Wykes, 1567), STC 14600. 49 The copy is in Magdalen College Library, sheflmark 0.17.8, and was presumably inherited by Dr Humfrey. This book has 742 folio pages, but from 126 to 132, where the subject is papal supremacy, Jewel has filled virtually every marginal space with apostro- phes to M. Hardinge. 50 John Stow, A Survay of London (London: John Wolfe, 1598), STC 23341, 129–130; The Survey of London: ‘now completely finished by A[nthony] M[unday], H[ugh] D[yson] (London: Bourne, 1633), STC 23345, 176. See A Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), vol. 1, 167, cited by Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 21.
Holy daies (except Wednesday in Violet), and the Maior with his Brethren, on Low Sunday at Paules Crosse.51 In St Mary’s Spital, there was even a two-storey house, built on the south side in 1488, in whose loft ‘the Ladies and Aldermens wives doe stand at a large window or sit at their pleasure’, and the crowds (not surprisingly with such an operatic setting) were even greater than at the Cross.52 So impor- tant was the presence of Christ’s Hospital that, in 1594, when a new pulpit was built, a ‘large house on the east side of the said pulpit was then builded for the governors and children of Christes Hospital to sit in’.53 In 1557, Dr Henry Pendleton and Dr John Young were the star preachers, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, ‘alle the masters of the hospetall with grenstayffes in ther handes, and all the chylderyn of the hospetall in bluw garmenttes’, and ‘aboyff xx M. [20,000] pepull of old and younge’ on Easter Monday, and ‘the holl cete boythe old and yonge, boythe men and women’, on Easter Tuesday.54 Campion, in blue coat, would have been there for the sermons; he might have stayed for the game of barley break, when ‘ever was master parsun in the fyre’, but probably not for drinking in the Swan, or dinner in Westminster with the Duke of Muscovy, which followed.55 On 12 April, only seven days earlier, Campion would have been in Christ’s Hospital itself, which was only three hundred feet from Smithfield, where Thomas Loseby, Henry Ramsey, Thomas Thyrtell, Margaret Hyde and Agnes Stanley were burned as a group; the noise, smell and smoke must all have enveloped the consciousness of the boys and their teachers.56 The participation of Christ’s Hospital in the Spital sermons is a reminder that the sermon culture was itself part of a larger culture of disputation that began with inter-school competitions. We know that Campion won such competition on several occasions.57 Both the use of competitions and the emphasis on speaking were the direct inheritance from the educa- tional programme Erasmus set down in 1511 for the founder of St Paul’s
51 Stow, Survay of London (1598), 130; Survey of London (1633), 176. 52 Stow, Survay of London (1598), 129; Survey of London (1633), 176 (which adds that, before the Ladies, ‘the Bishop of London and other Prelates’ used to sit in the loft). 53 Stow, Survay of London (1598), 130; Survey of London (1633), 176–77. 54 Machyn, Diary, 131–32; cited in Duffy, Fires of Faith, 19. 55 Machyn, Diary, 132. 56 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 2 vols (London: John Day, 1583), STC 11225, vol. 2, 2161. 57 McDonnell, ‘Edmund Campion’, 67–70, makes a convincing case. There seems no evi- dence, however, of any competition in 1553 or 1554. I suggest that Campion won competi- tions, in 1552 while he was at St Paul’s, and in 1555 while at Christ’s Hospital.
School, John Colet, De Ratione Studii.58 It was a culture that rapidly spread across the entire system of grammar schools in England, and indeed throughout Europe.59 In a 1564 edition of the schoolbook edited by Erasmus, Brevissima Insitutio, a schoolboy has written at the top of the first page, ‘Summativa est ars bene loquendi’ [The central aim of all is the art of speaking well].60 This rivalry in ars bene loquendi, in and away from the schoolroom, was to be extremely helpful to Campion. John Stow begins his survey ‘Of Schooles and Houses of Learning’ with the suggestion that the importance of disputation goes back to the reign of Henry II: Upon Festivall dayes, the Maisters made solemne meetings in the Churches, where their Schollers disputed Logically and demonstratively: some bring- ing Enthimems, other perfect Sillogismes, some disputed for shew, others to trace out the truth: cunning Sophisters were thought brave Schollers, when they flowed with wordes.61 Stow’s account gives pride of place to scholarly disputation in churches, and gives one a vivid sense of the public profile of the four London ‘free’ schools in the period, and of the competition, official and unofficial, between them. As for the meeting of the Schoolemaisters, on festivall dayes, at festivall Churches, and the disputing of their Schollers Logically, &c., whereof I have before spoken, the same was long since discontinued: But the arguing of the Schoole boyes about the principles of Grammer, hath beene continued euen till our time: for I my selfe in my youth haue yearely seene on the Eve of S. Bartlemew the Apostle [23 August] the schollers of diuers Grammar schooles repayre vnto the Churchyard of St Bartlemew, the Priorie in Smithfield, where vpon a banke boorded aboute under a tree, some one Scholler hath stepped vp, and there hath appoased and answered, till he were by some better Scholler ouercome and put downe: and then the ouer- comer taking the place, did like as the first: and in the end the best apposars and answerers had rewards, which I obserued not but it made both good
58 Erasmus, De ratione studii, ac legendi, interpretandique auctores libellus aureus, Offi cium discipulorum ex Quintiliano. Qui primo legendi, ex eodem, 2nd edn (Strasbourg: Schurer, 1513). This is the earliest copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library. 59 The influence of Erasmus is discussed at more length in my edition of The Epigrams of Sir John Harington (Burlington VT and Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 26–27. 60 This copy is in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which also has an earlier copy from 1557. The book, A Short Introduction of Grammar Generallie to be Used, was published anon- ymously, but William Lyly was always regarded as the principal author (London: Reginald Wolfe, 1564), STC 15613.8. 61 Stow, Survay of London (1598), 53; Survey of London (1633), 63. See Stow, Survey of London (1908), vol. 1, 74–75.
Schoolemaisters, and also good Schollers, diligently against such times to prepare themselues for the obtayning of this garland. I remember there repayred to these exercises amongst others the Maisters and Schollers of the free Schooles of S. Paules in London, of S. Peters at Westminster: of S. Thomas Acons Hospitall: and of S. Anthonies Hospitall: whereof the last named commonly presented the best schollers, and had the prize in those dayes. This Priorie of S. Bartelemew, being surrendred to Henrie the 8. those dis- putations of schollers in that place surceased. And was againe, onely for a year or twaine, in the raigne of Edward the 6. reuiued in the Cloystre of Christes Hospitall, where the best Schollers, then stil of S. Anthonies schoole, howsoever the same be now fallen, both in number and estimation, were rewarded with bowes and arrowes of siluer, giuen to them by Sir Martin Bowes, Goldsmith. Neuertheless, howsoeuer the encouragement fayled, the [schollers of Paules, meeting with them of S. Anthonies, would call them Anthonie pigs, and they againe would call the other pigeons of Paules, because many pigions were bred in Paules Church, and Saint Anthonie was always figured with a pigge following him] children mindfull of the former vsage, did for a long season disorderly in the open streete prouoke one another with Salue tu quoque, placet tibi mecum disputare, placet? and so proceeding from this to questions in Grammar, they vsually fel from that to blowes, [with their satchels full of bookes,] many times in so great heapes that they troubled the streets, and passengers: so that finally they were restrained [with the decay of Saint Anthonies schoole].62 The school competitions, in the churches, at Smithfield, Christ’s Hospital, and on the streets of London, show that Paul’s Cross was not an isolated phenomenon, but a synecdoche for a culture that permeated the whole of London life, from the school bench and pulpit to the courtroom and the scaffold. It was no accident that in the first disputation granted to Campion in the Tower of London on 31 August 1581, and obviously intended to shame Campion in front of a large crowd, Campion’s first opponent was the vet- eran preacher of Paul’s Cross, Alexander Nowell. Significantly he spoke in English, and not in Latin, the normal language of academic disputation, although Campion’s first biographer, Paolo Bombino, makes clear that Nowell slips into Latin for insults: ‘ita latine magna voce peroravit, impu- dentissime mentiris Campiane [and so, in Latin, in a loud voice, he con- cluded, “You, Campion, lie most impudently”]’.63 The crowd in the Tower
62 Survay of London (1598), 56, with additions [in square brackets] from Survey of London (1633), 65. The later version charts the changing position of London schools, and changes the heaps of boys to heaps of satchels and books. 63 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, 227–28; trans. Bodl. MS Tanner 329, fols. 95v–96r.
64 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, 235–36; Tanner, fol. 100r-v. As the ‘festivall and soothing murmur’ seems to be an addition of the translator, there is the possibility that he was pres- ent. For a full discussion, see Thomas M. McCoog, SJ, ‘“Playing the Champion”: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission’, in Thomas.M. McCoog, SJ, ed., The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early Jesuits, 2nd edn (Rome: IHSJ, 2007), 139–63.
From the Cross to the Scaffold
Paul’s Cross, then, was the principal theatre in a London where competi- tive civic disputation and controversial sermons were popular. If the Queen and the state used the pulpit to promulgate policy, the audience at Paul’s Cross became skilled at making its views known, so the Privy Council used the Cross Yard to gage public reaction to its policies. On Sunday, 27 September 1579, for example, a Royal Proclamation was issued at Paul’s Cross banning John Stubbe’s book, The Gaping Gulf, and the preacher was instructed by John Aylmer, Bishop of London, and Sir Christopher Hatton, to use the Sunday sermon to attack ‘the seditious book’. The following day, Monday 28 September, Aylmer wrote to Hatton to tell him that the preacher had done as instructed, but that the crowd’s reactions were complex: Whereat the people seemed even as yt were with a shoute, to geve God thankes, & as farr as I could perceave, tooke yt very well, that she was comended, for her zeale, and constancie. I have understoode synce the ser- monde, that as the people well lyked of the commendation attributed to her majestie, with the greate hope of her continuance so to saye playnlye, they utterlye bente theire browes at the sharpe and bitter speeches, which he gave againste the author of the booke, of whome they conceave, & reporte, that he is one, that fearethe God deereleye, lovethe her majestie, intred into this course, beinge caryed with suspicion & jealousye of her persone, & safetye.65 The crowd has made its finely discriminated views known to a senior member of the Privy Council within twenty-four hours of the Royal Proclamation. Aylmer’s letter also reveals that the Privy Council is relying on London pulpits to control a population it fears. ‘Of the people of London, I hope well, that by the good instructions of the prechers they wyll staye themselves from all outerages.’66 Aylmer goes on to tell Hatton that many ministers outside London are preaching against the marriage, ‘the furder off the wourse’, that he has brought a number of them into London, but that he dare not bring more for fear that they will make his ‘owne flocke’ aware of how much ‘grudgynge and gronynge abroade’ there is.67
65 BL Add. MS 15891, fol. 8v. The letter is printed in Sir Harris Nicolas, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton (London: Bentley, 1847), 132–134. See Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audience, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 7. 66 BL Add. MS 15891, fol. 8v; Nicolas, Sir Christopher Hatton, 133. 67 BL Add. MS 15891, fol. 8v-9r; Nicolas, Sir Christopher Hatton, 133.
When proclamations and sermons failed to win the argument, the state turned to public executions. One month later, on 3 November 1579, John Stubbe lost his right hand, as William Camden narrates: From there they proceeded to a scaffold set up in the market place at Westminster, where Stubbe and Page had their hands cut off by a butcher’s knife being struck by a mallet on a chopping-block. The printer was spared. I remember because I was present, that when Stubbe’s right hand had been cut off, he took off his hat with his left hand and in a clear voice said, Long live the Queen! The crowd that was round the scaffold was completely silent, whether in horror at this new and unusual punishment, or in pity for a man of unspotted life, or from hatred of a marriage which most men sensed would be destructive for religion. These events occurred in the first days after the arrival of Anjou in England, and while he was lingering here, the Queen, in order to take away the fear that had seized hold of the popular imagination that the religion was about to be changed, and Papists tolerated, gave in to insistent entreat- ies and allowed Edmund Campion, the Jesuit, as I have said, Luke Kirby and Alexander Briant, seminary priests, to be put on trial, and prosecuted, under the Treason Act of the 25th year of Edward III, for planning an attack on the Queen and the Realm.68 Camden makes Anjou the bridge to Campion’s execution, passing neatly over two years of ineffective marriage negotiations with the word ‘linger- ing (haereret)’.69 Camden shows that the Queen and the state first tried to silence (with a meat cleaver) the opposition to the marriage, but when the crowds at Paul’s Cross and Westminster turned silence into a form of sul- len resistance, the Queen and her Council threw Campion to the wolves at Tyburn, in an attempt to placate the very people whom they had outraged with a butcher’s block at Westminster. Campion’s refusal to preach at Paul’s Cross draws attention both to the close links between the University of Oxford and the city of London, and to the manipulation of the spoken word by the state. In an age of political uncertainty and religious flux, the state tried to win the argument in the public sphere with spectacular viva voce disputations. The monarch and the state needed to humiliate Campion before the London crowd in large public speech acts, whether in the Tower, Westminster Hall or Tyburn.
68 William Camden, Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum (London: Stansby, 1615), STC 4496, (my translation) 326. 69 For a full account of the way three contemporary chronicles link the Anjou marriage negotiations both with the mutilation of Stubbe and the execution of Edmund Campion, see my ‘A Tangled Chronicle: the Struggle over the Memory of Edmund Campion’, in The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England, eds Andrew Gordon and Thomas Rist (Burlington VT and Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 141–159.
On Friday 21 July 1581, the Sheriff of Berkshire brought the captive Jesuit, Edmund Campion, to London. In the country, the Sheriff had led a digni- fied progress, with Campion accompanied by sixty armed horsemen of the Berkshire trained band; but when they reached Colebrook on the edge of London, Campion’s hands were tied behind his back and a paper put in his hat-band saying, ‘EDMUND CAMPION SEDITIOUS JESUIT’, and they were told to wait till Saturday, market-day, so that the crowds, stirred up by cheer-leaders in advance, could jeer at the captive priest as he passed.70 The journey through London was to be a spectaculum, as we know it was from the diary of Richard Stonley, who records on 23 July: ‘And this day report was made that one Campion [was] a I[e]suyt was brought through Chepside & so to the Tower & viij others, w[i]th a paper vpon his hatte, writtne this ys Campion the Chef Capten of the Iesuytes.’71 Stonley also recorded Campion’s final journey along Cheapside as he and his two com- panions were dragged to their execution past his boyhood house and between his two schools: This day After morning preyer cu[m]inge thorough Chepside ther came one Edmond Ca[m]pyon (blank) Sherwyn & (blank) drawen vpon hurdles to Tyborne & ther suffred execuc[i]on at w[hi]ch tyme a pamphlet boke was redd by wey of Adu[er]tisment agenst all thos that were sausye flaterers favorers or whisperers in his cause.72 Campion’s own power of speech was capable of swinging the balance of justice. Before Campion’s first disputation in the Tower, Bombino tells us, ‘Now, not just London but the whole of the kingdom was excited by the prospect of such a great spectacle (tanti spectaculi).’73 On the cart at Tyburn, Campion used scripture to show he was aware that his execution was a politically manipulated spectacle: Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, Angeli[s], & hominibus saying, These are the wordes of S. Paule, Englished thus: We are made a spectacle, or a sight unto
70 From the letter of Robert Persons, SJ to Claudio Aquaviva, SJ on 30 August 1581 (CRS 39), Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, SJ (London: Catholic Record Society, 1942), 92–93. The scene was etched in the European consciousness by the copperplate engraving added by Richard Verstegan to Robert Persons, De Persecutione Anglicana Epistola. Qua explicantur afflictiones, ærumna, & calamitates gravissimæ, cruciatus etiam & tormenta, & acerbissima martyria, quæ Catholici nunc Angli, ob fidem patiuntur. Quæ omnia in hac postrema editione æneis typis ad vivum expressa sunt. 8o. (Romæ: George Ferrarius [English College], 1582), A&R 876. 71 Folger MS V.a.459, fol. 10v (I am grateful to Alan H. Nelson for his transcription of these extracts). 72 Folger MS V.a.459, fol. 33v. 73 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, 215.
God, unto his Angels, and unto men: verified this day in me who am here a spectacle unto my lorde god, a spectacle unto his angels and unto you men.74 Even here speech was contested. When Campion was ‘interrupted by Sir Francis Knowles and the sheryfs were urging him to confess his treason against her majestie,’ he answered, ‘I besech you to have patience and suf- fer me to speake a worde or too.’75 But, on the orders of the Privy Council, Thomas Hearne, ‘a scolemaster’, read An Advertisement, putting the state’s case ‘in a lowde voyce unto the people.’76 While this was going on, Lord Charles Howard put to Campion questions on his loyalty: At the upshot of this conflict he was willed to aske the queene forgivenes, and to praye for her. He meekely answered: wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent, this is my laste speache, in this give me credite, I have and do pray for her. Then did the Lord Charles Howard aske of him: for which queene To whom he answered, Yea for Elizabeth your queene and my queene, unto whom I wish a long quiet raigne, with all prosperity.77 Even amidst this cacophony of conflicting voices, Campion’s words made a critical impact. They won over Lord Charles Howard sufficiently for him to save Campion from being disembowelled while still alive, and to report well of him to the Queen: A certain gentleman, one of the principal men at court, on his return to the palace from the execution, was asked publicly by the Queen where he had come from. He replied ‘From the death of the three Papists.’ ‘And what is your opinion of them?’ she said. To which he replied, ‘They seem to me to be very learned men and steadfast, and to have been put to death for no fault; for they kept praying to God for your majesty, they pardoned everyone, and they protested under pain of the loss of souls in eternity that they had never even thought of doing any evil act against the state or against your Majesty.’ On hearing this, ‘Is that so?’ said the Queen. ‘Very well, that has nothing to do with us; let the men who condemned them see to it.’ This same gentleman, Hayward [Howard] by name, though he was a thor- ough heretic, yet being present at the martyrdom and seeing the executioner approaching to cut the halter and perform the butchery on Fr. Campion while alive, as is the custom, drove him away in great wrath, threatening him with death if he dared to touch him before he had drawn his last breath.78
74 [Thomas Alfield], A true reporte of the death & martyrdome of M. Campion Jesuite and preiste ([London: Richard ‘Rowland’ Verstegan, 1582]), STC 4537, A&R 4, sig. B8v–C1. 75 [Alfield], A true reporte, sig. C1. 76 Anon., An Advertisement and defence for Trueth against her Backbiters, and specially against the whispring Favourers, and Colourers of Campions, and the rest of his confederats treasons (London: C. Barker, 1581), STC 153.7 (formerly STC18259). 77 [Alfield], A true reporte, sig. C2v. 78 Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons (CRS 39), 134.
If Paul’s Cross was a theatre, it was nothing to this drama of life and death, played with speech and sword at Tyburn, in front of an audience of many thousands. The Spanish Ambassador reported on 4 December that there had been ‘three thousand horsemen and a great number of footmen’ con- trolling the crowd.79 Published exactly a month later, the earliest extant printed account, L’Histoire de la Mort, simply states that: ‘Se trouva au demeurant un si grand nombre de gens a sa mort, que jamais n’avoir este veu le semblable, & ce avec une plaincte & gemissement incroyable.’80 After Campion’s death, it was not over what Campion had written that the state argued with his supporters, but over what he had said, who had won the arguments in the Tower disputations and whether his trial had been just. Conflicting discourse did not cease with Campion’s death. In Oxford, in a diary entry for 25 January 1582, Richard Madox, a Fellow of All Souls, noted ‘how John Conrad had a lybel about the hard usage of Campion’, ‘how our Walton was used for saying that Campion was hardly delt withal’, and the Warden had been summoned to Lambeth.81 Nor did the contro- versy die down. Four years after the execution, a former chaplain, Gregory Gunnes (alias Stone), was arrested at Henley on 7 June 1585, and examined on 8 June before Sir Henry Neville and William Knollys. At the time of his arrest in 1585, he had just returned to Oxfordshire from London, and unluckily struck up a conversation with Evan Arden, a ‘servaunt unto Mr Treasorer of the household’ (Sir Francis Knollys, who had presided at the execution), at the sign of the Bell. Gunnes had praised Edmund Campion as ‘the only man in all England’. When Arden asked how a traitor could be so praised, Gunnes had prophesied that a chapel would be built at Tyburn: ‘O saye not so for the day will come, and I hope to see yt, and you may to, that there shalbe an offeringe where Campion did suffer… you shall see a religious house buylte there, for an offeringe.’82 Gunnes had been a chaplain at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then beneficed at Yelford, but given up his respectable ministry ‘for his Conscience’ about
79 CSP Spanish, 1580–1586, No. 175, 231–32. 80 L’Histoire de la Mort que le R. P. Edmond Campion Prestre de la compagnie du nom de Iesus, & autres ont souffert en Angleterre pour la foy Catholique & Romaine le premier jour de Decembre, 1581 (Paris: Chaudière, 4 January 1582), A&R 197, sig. D2. [Transl: There was pres- ent at the death such a great number that no one had ever seen the like, and that with a wailing and groaning that defied belief.] 81 Folger MS M.a.244, 5–6. 82 Alan Davidson, ‘Roman Catholicism in Oxfordshire from the Late Elizabethan Period to the Civil War (c. 1580–c.1640)’ (PhD thesis at the University of Bristol, 1970), 377, citing CSPD 12/179/7, i and ii.
‘vij yeares paste’, and since then been nowhere conversant, but ‘vagrant heere and there’.83 In London, on 28 December 1581, Oliver Pluckett was hauled before a wardmote in St Andrew’s Holborne for saying that in the disputations ‘the said Campyon was both dyscrett, and learned, and dyd saye verie well.’ The Foreman of the Wardmote, ‘Mr ffox’, gave his verdict: Neighbor Olyver yf you thinke soe well of hym that is judged for treason we doe not thinke well of you. And therefore I would wysh you to gve place to another for this tyme, where withall, the said Pluckytt seaming to be well contented said withall my heart, you cane not doe me a greater pleasure. And soe departed the howse.84 These prosecutions, and the fact that the Elizabethan state tried to censor the written word only 39 times, but intervened 211 times against spoken ‘lybels’, might suggest that it thought the spoken word five times as danger- ous as the printed word.85 Paul’s Cross was supposed to be a place where ‘a preacher lately come from Oxford’, and funded by the City fathers, would be heard by ‘an hon- ourable audience’.86 In this world dominated by the spoken word, there was a clear hierarchy of discourse. Highly emotive and inflammatory speech in English belonged to Paul’s Cross, the popular pulpit, and the scaffold; trials and executions were populist spectacles organized by the state. In Campion’s trial, the Queen’s Council mocked Campion for using the syllogistic language of the ‘schooles’.87 Campion’s refusal to preach at Paul’s Cross reveals some of the dangerous political currents that swirled around the base of a pulpit where public policy and proclamation could wrestle with a crowd that was highly volatile, but also adept at ‘utterly’ outfacing and subverting the power of the state. When Campion accepted the Grocers’ Scholarship in 1566, he must have thought (since it was a condition of the scholarship) that he could preach at Paul’s Cross; by 14 October 1568, perhaps under the growing influence of Richard Cheney, Bishop of Gloucester, perhaps swayed by his
83 Davidson, ‘Roman Catholicism in Oxfordshire’, 377. Gunnes claimed that he had never been out of England, but he had been reported at Rheims, CSPD 12/168/35. 84 BL MS Lansdowne 33, no 63, fol. 153v. 85 Cyndia Susan Clegg and Randall McLeod, eds., ‘The peaceable and prosperous regi- ment of blessed Queene Elisabeth’: A Facsimile from Holinshed’s Chronicles (San Marino CA: Huntington Library, 2005), 2 and 16 (note 6). 86 William Stepney, The Spanish Schoole-maister (London: Harrison, 1619), STC 23257, fol. 6v, cited by Hunt, Art of Hearing, 321. 87 BL Add. MS 6265, fol. 18v.
loyalty to the New College exiles, he seems to have fully shared their con- tempt for Paul’s Cross preaching. In the version of Campion’s 1580 ‘Letter to the Privy Council’ (usually known as the ‘Brag’) that is among Foxe’s papers, we find a slight but significant variant: I know perfectly that none of those protestants, no nor all the protestantes lyvinge, nor any secte of our adversaries (how so ever they face men downe in their pulpettes and overrule us in their kingdome of grammaryans and unlearned eares) can mayntayne their doctryne in disputacion.88 ‘Their pulpettes’ seems a fair jibe when the pulpits, especially in London, were being used to promote not just approved theology but monarchical marriage plans and government policy. The state’s uncertainty about how to manage public perception of the trial is revealed by the fact that two drafts of Campion’s indictment sur- vive.89 In the end, the Privy Council, having given a second warrant for him to be tortured at the end of October, decided to try to minimise the celebrity status of the trial, by charging him with nineteen other defen- dants, five of them absent, for conspiracy in partibus transmarinis (over- seas).90 This was a risky strategy, since, as the defendants were quick to point out at the trial, most of them had not met before.91 They were, nev- ertheless, indicted under the treason statute of 1352. The fifteen present defendants were divided into two groups, and Campion’s trial on 20 November in Westminster Hall drew an immense crowd from all ranks of society: ‘many simply to see and hear’.92 The conduct of the trial and the surprising verdict of guilty at the end of eight hours, were to be the subject of fierce debate all over Europe for many years.93
88 BL MS Harley 422, fol. 134v. 89 BL MS Lansdowne 33, no. 64, fols. 154r–156v is a draft of indictment of Campion alone; this was clearly abandoned, and another prepared in which he is one of many, no. 65, fols. 157v–164r. 90 The actual indictment is in PRO, Coram Rege Rolls, K.B. 27/1279, Crown side, rots. 2 and 3. See Cause of the Canonization of Blessed Martyrs John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, Richard Reynolds, John Stone, Cuthbert Mayne, John Paine, Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant, Ralph Sherwin and Luke Kirby (Vatican Polyglot Press, 1968), 292. These two warrants for torture are dated 30 July 1581 and 29 October 1581, Acts of the Privy Council, 1581–1582, vol. 13, ed. John Roche Dasent (London: HMSO, 1896), 144–45 and 249. 91 John Hungerford Pollen, Acts of English Martyrs Hitherto Unpublished (London: Burnes and Oates, 1891), 38. This is Thomas Fitzherbert’s account from Archives of Westminster Cathedral, A.II, 185ff, also quoted in Cause of the Canonization, 333. 92 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium (my translation), 267. 93 For a full account of this, see my, ‘A Tangled Chronicle’, in The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England.
Campion had drawn all eyes to him as he mounted the rostrum to begin the disputations in front of the Queen in Oxford in 1566.94 Fifteen years later, at the start of the first disputation in the Tower of London, his body damaged by racking, he again drew all eyes to him.95 At the pre- trial arraignment, Campion again won sympathy when having his hands ‘wrapped in a furred cuffe, he was not able to lift his hand so high’ to take the oath.96 Finally, when he entered Westminster Hall for the trial, slightly later than the rest, Bombino says that ‘you would have thought a new planet had appeared, so much does he draw all eyes towards him as if the trial put only one man in jeopardy’.97 Campion’s London background made him at ease on a public stage, whether welcoming Queen Mary or preaching to Rudolf II in Prague. It is not an accident that the three men whose martyrdoms in very different periods instantly caught the imagination of the whole of Europe were all Londoners: Thomas à Becket, Thomas More and Edmund Campion. Campion, the son of a bookseller, rose up, like Becket and More, through a network of London merchants and patrons, which enabled him to move among princes and Emperors abroad, and nobles and gentry in England. Part of the reason why the state could not ignore Campion, any more than they could ignore John Stubbe, was the vocal base of support in the legal and mercantile community that made up the heart of the city of London. At two key moments in the early 1570s, after he had left Oxford, Campion styled himself a Londoner. Soon after arriving in Douai, Campion pur- chased a three-volume edition of the Summa of St Thomas Aquinas, pub- lished by Christopher Plantin in 1569. On the title page we find: Edm. Campianus anglus londinensis, and the date of purchase, 3 August 1571.98 When, on 23 August 1573, Campion joined the Society of Jesus, he began his profession document: ‘Vocor Edmundus Campianus, Anglus Londinensis My name is Edmund Campion. English and a Londoner …’99
94 John Bereblock, in Folger MS V.a.109, fol. 10r–v; printed in Plummer, Elizabethan Oxford, 131. For a full account see Kilroy, ‘The Queen’s Visit to Oxford’. 95 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, (my translation) 218. 96 William Allen, A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of XII. Reverend Priests,executed within these twelvemonethes for confession and defence of the Catholike Faith. But under the false pretence of Treason ([Rheims: Foigny], 1582), STC 369.5, A&R 7, sig.d8r. 97 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, 267 (my translation). 98 S. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Totius Theologiæ (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1569). The copy belongs to the Society of Jesus, and is now in the library of Heythrop College, London. 99 Joanne Schmidl, Historiæ Societatis Jesu Provinciæ Bohemiæ, 2 vols (Prague: Klementinum, 1747), vol. 1, lib. IV, 338.
Camden was the first historian to see that the regional backgrounds of Robert Persons (‘Somersettensis’) and Campion (‘Londinensis’) were cen- tral to their different approaches, but saw this as issuing in different char- acter traits rather than missionary policy. So Persons is ‘vehemens, ferox natura & moribus incultioribus [passionate, fierce in his personality and of uncultivated morals’] while Campion is ‘vir suavis & politissimus’ [a charm- ing and very cultivated man].100 Yet Campion’s London background was also central to his missionary outlook. The reactions of the audience on the stage that was London made Campion vividly aware of the power of public opinion, and especially of the strong opposition, after the Marian burnings and the Spanish mar- riage, to a return to Catholicism. Campion, by his refusal to preach at Paul’s Cross in 1568, may have escaped being ‘howled off the stage’ in the Cross Yard, but, in the end, he had to win over similar audiences in the first Tower disputation, the trial in Westminster Hall, and his execution at Tyburn. The spoken word had an importance in early modern England that is almost outside our experience, and Paul’s Cross comes into focus only when we see it as part of a larger culture that was particularly strong in London. Campion challenged the academics of the two universities to a formal Latin disputation, but he was given a one-sided vernacular debate in the Tower before a crowd that could have come straight from the Cross Yard. The Privy Council wanted to humiliate the academic champion in London. The conflicted relationship of Edmundus Campianus Londinensis with Paul’s Cross shows us that, while the spoken word was the dominant medium from school to the scaffold, it was unusually populist and com- bative in the city of London. Fr William Hartley, a former St John’s College chaplain, left Campion’s Latin challenge, Rationes Decem, quite properly, on the seats in St Mary’s Church, Oxford, on 27 June 1581.101 Yet when the Bishop of London was asked by Lord Burghley to provide names of those he thought could answer Campion, he said that ‘none of our church mean to defend Luthers hyperboles or all thinges that have passed the pennes of Calvin or Beza’.102 The Regius Professors of Divinity in Oxford and Cambridge, Laurence Humfrey and William Whitaker, published their responses in print only after Campion’s death; it was the Paul’s Cross preacher, Alexander Nowell (who was Whitaker’s uncle), who tried to
100 Camden, Annales (1615), 299. 101 Bombino, Vita et Martyrium, (my translation) 141. 102 BL MS Lansdowne 33, No. 19, fol. 38r, another letter of Bishop of London of 25 July 1581: ‘His opinion touching Campions Cavilles’.
103 Clegg and McLeod, ‘The peaceable and prosperous regiment, Clegg, 10 and 17, note 46; see McLeod, 64 for diagram of cancellation. The Campion cancelland was sig. 6M3 (1328/1329) mainly written by Abraham Fleming, who seems to have been reluctant to execute this particular cancellation. For further exploration of the Campion censorship, see my, ‘A Tangled Chronicle’, in Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England. 104 Bodl. MS Add. C. 303, fol. 73; BL MS Harley 6265, fol. 22. Both texts are identical in this passage, but I have here followed the spelling and punctuation of the Bodl. MS (which, unfortunately, lacks several pages at the beginning), since it is a better text. 105 Edmund Campion, Rationes Decem: quibus fretus, certamen adversarijs obtulit in causa fidei, Edmundus Campianus ([Stonor Park: S. Brinkley et al, 1581]), STC 4536.5, A&R 135.1, was the fourth book to be printed on the Greenstreet House press, but the first to be in roman type. Since this is the only one in which Campion directly participated, it seems likely that, having spent so much time in Rome and Prague, Campion chose the type that had become standard on the Continent, but was only just becoming fashionable here. Sir John Harington, in his first edition of Orlando Furioso (London: Richard Field, 1591), STC 746, had to ask Field for the same font, pica roman, as Puttenham, BL Add. MS 18920, fol. 336r. See my ‘Advertising the Reader: Sir John Harington’s “Directions in the Margent,”’ English Literary Renaissance 41.1 (2011), 64–109 (64–65, and 94) and Steven K. Galbraith, ‘“English” Black-Letter Type and Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender,’ in Spenser Studies 23 (2008), 13–40.
word. It regarded public speech acts, whether they were sermons, disputa- tions, trials or executions as powerful, and perhaps exciting, theatrical events, but discriminated subtly between the varieties of human dis- course: in the pulpit, the law court, St Mary’s, Oxford, Westminster Hall or the Tower of London. Of course, it wished to record discourse in manu- script and print, as the battle over ‘true reports’ of what was said at Campion’s trial and at the disputations testify.106 The written text, in print and manuscript, was important, but it was often used in conjunction with viva voce debate. Campion asked leave on the scaffold to speak a word or two: it was the last public speech act in a rhetorical career that began (at the age of thirteen) with greeting Queen Mary in 1553, and that included speaking in front of Queen Elizabeth and the Emperor Rudolf II. At Paul’s Cross, he might not have been howled off the stage, but ‘Mr Campion in speech so polished and eloquent as to have few equals’, was still waiting for that serious academic ‘disputacion’ when his last ‘worde or too’ fell on ‘unlearned eares’.107
106 For a full account, see my, ‘A Tangled Chronicle’, in Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England. 107 Thomas Francis Knox, ed., The First and Second Douai Diaries of the English College, Douay (London: 1878), 166, cited by McCoog, ‘The Role of Disputation’, 149. See BL MS Harley 422, fol. 34v.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THOMAS BILSON AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM AT PAUL’S CROSS
Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer
Attacks on Roman Catholic beliefs and practices featured widely in orally- delivered sermons, their printed versions, and associated controversial literature for several decades, beginning with John Jewel’s Challenge ser- mon of 1559.1 By the 1580s, anti-Catholicism had diminished in scale as a specific focus in Paul’s Cross sermons, yet it still featured as an occasional topic, and a frequent aside, in the common combination of doctrine, exhortation, and confutation.2 The printed text rather than the pulpit had by the 1580s become the primary medium by which to wage inter-religious warfare. By then, verbal battles at Paul’s Cross were being fought between supporters of the Elizabethan Episcopal establishment and puritans, many of them advocates of a Presbyterian form of church government. Consequently, bishops preaching from the Cross, such as Thomas Bilson Bishop of Winchester, often borrowed polemical techniques from anti- popery sermons and literature to use in arguments against their puritan opponents. Bilson does this in his 1597 Paul’s Cross sermon on Christ’s descent into hell, where he treats a contentious doctrine found in the Apostles’ Creed and disputed by many puritans with allusions to anti- Popery, even though his real opponents are radical puritans.3 There are interesting connections here as well to the Rheims New Testament contro- versy of the 1580s, with which Bilson was involved, and to revisions made
1 The Challenge sermon was delivered twice at the Cross and an additional time else- where. Indeed the best evidence of Paul’s Cross sermons comes from manuscript notes of sermons from May 1565 to 1566, of which 18 were confutational sermons, and an additional four treated anti-Catholic subjects on the side. 2 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 175. 3 See Thomas Bilson, The effect of certaine sermons touching the full redemption of man- kind by the death and bloud of Christ Iesus wherein besides the merite of Christs suffering, the manner of his offering, the power of his death, the comfort of his crosse, the glorie of his resur- rection, are handled, what paines Christ suffered in his soule on the crosse: together, with the place and purpose of his descent to hel after death: preached at Paules Crosse and else where in London, by the right Reuerend Father Thomas Bilson Bishop of Winchester. With a conclu- sion to the reader for the cleering of certaine obiections made against said doctrine (London:
Peter Short for Walter Burre, and are to be sold in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Flower deluce, 1599). 4 At Oxford, he received aid from the benefaction of Robert Nowell (brother of Alexander, dean of St Paul’s), made on his death in 1569. William Whitaker was another beneficiary of the Nowell trust. James McConica, ‘The Collegiate Society’, in idem (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), III, 725. On the ‘great controversy’ see Angela Ranson’s discussion of John Jewel’s Challenge Sermon in Chapter Eight above. 5 ‘Thomas Bilson’, ODNB, quoted by Gordon Campbell in Bible: The Story of the King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 292–3. 6 ‘He had also been too ill to serve on a translation committee,’ says Campbell, Story of the King James Version, 47, 64. 7 Gregory Martin, A discouerie of the manifold corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the heretikes of our daies specially the English sectaries, and of their foule dealing herein, by par- tial & false translations to the aduantage of their heresies, in their English Bibles vsed and authorised since the time of schisme. By Gregory Martin one of the readers of diuinitie in the English College of Rhemes (Rheims: Iohn Fogny, 1582).
Campion’s Rationes Decem, also known as ‘Campion’s brag,’8 they prompted many establishment replies and counter-replies from the Catholic camp. Not by Gregory Martin, however, who died in 1583. The Rheims New Testament controversy brought Bilson together with puritans such as William Fulke and Thomas Cartwright, in defense of the Bishops’ Bible and the Geneva Bible against these Catholic attacks on their credibility and faithfulness to the Greek and Hebrew originals, and most importantly, the validity of the Bible as the ‘rule of faith’ in the Church of England. Catholic writers and controversialists had been accused publicly of mistranslating and misquoting their selections from the fathers, and using them to prove their doctrines. Every error was treated by Protestant opponents, in public sermons and in print, as proof of the unreliability of the Catholic author or theologian and of a grander plot by the Roman Catholic Church to conceal the truth and keep the laity in ignorance—the very stereotypical image of Catholicism and late- medieval religion that the last few generations of scholars have been trying to set right! Soon, though, in some impressively thorough and intensely polemical work coming out of the English seminary at Rheims, Catholics suddenly had Protestants by the nose. Gregory Martin showed how early versions such as the Great Bible had seemed to translate with a bias against church traditions like the veneration of sacred images and doctrines such as pen- ance but then changed those readings to the more usual and common- sense ones in the Geneva Bible and/or Bishops’ Bible. Common examples are ‘congregation’ being changed back to ‘church’ and ‘worshipping of images’ changed back to ‘worshipping of idols.’ This, Martin alleged, showed that the Church of England was formed, in the 1530s, on a false translation of the Bible—a Bible that remained corrupt, he said, for its continued use of ‘repent’ instead of ‘do penance.’ Stepping up first to the anti-popery plate in this literary battle was William Fulke, puritan professor of divinity at the University of Cambridge. He was on the puritan side of the Vestiarian Controversy in the 1560s and subsequently preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1568. This was done, as we would say now, ‘in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity.’ Common custom at the time, this mandatory
8 BL MS Harley 422. Edmund Campion, Rationes Decem: quibus fretus, certamen adver- sarijs obtulit in causa fidei, Edmundus Campianus ([Stonor Park: S. Brinkley et al, 1581]), STC 4536.5.
9 William Fulke, A defense of the sincere and true translations of the holie Scriptures into the English tong against the manifolde cauils, friuolous quarels, and impudent slaunders of Gregorie Martin, one of the readers of popish diuinitie in the trayterous Seminarie of Rhemes (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1583), 204. ‘The Englishe meeter vppon the Creede, except it be drawen to an allegorie, in my iudgement, can not be defended, which iudgement I declared openly at Paules crosse foureteene or fiueteene yeares agoe. Maister La|timers errour of Christ suffering torments in hell, af|ter his death, is iustly reprehended, by whome soeuer it be.’ 10 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 183.
It is to printed controversies, then, that we look to find point-by-point refutations. And the Rheims New Testament controversy is an excellent case study here, since Protestant replies such as Fulke’s tended to reprint the whole Catholic work they were refuting plus their own, usually longer, answers to each point. Fulke’s response to the Rheims New Testament pre- sented Martin’s translation in parallel columns with the Bishops’ Bible translation, and following each chapter were every marginal note and exegetical comment, reprinted and answered with few pains taken for brevity. It was a long but moderately successful work, owing as much to its symbolic defeat of popery as to the analytical and theological qualities of the work itself, going through some four editions by the mid 17th century. Puritan leader Thomas Cartwright’s confutation, delayed from publica- tion until 1618, functioned in much the same way, in the latter case belat- edly commemorating his scholarly acumen and reminding moderate opponents who the true champions of the Church of England were, over and against her Roman Catholic rivals. We learn more of Fulke’s puritan position on Christ’s descent into hell from his refutation of Martin’s A Discoverie, published in 1583 and titled, A Defense of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue against the Cavils of Gregory Martin.11 In the seventh chap- ter of the work, Fulke answers Martin’s allegations about ‘heretical transla- tions against Purgatory, Limbus Patrum, and Christ’s descending into Hell.’12 Martin had said that English translations ‘deny all third places,’ that is, places of afterlife other than heaven and hell, by following the render- ing of a quotation from Psalm 16 in Acts 2:27 by Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor in Geneva: Quoniam non derelinques *cadauer meum *in sepul- chro, that is, ‘because you will not leave my body in [the] grave.’ This is said of Christ and was traditionally translated, ‘thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,’ often taken as scriptural evidence for Purgatory among Catholics, or at the very least as the descent of Christ into hell in more traditionalist varieties of Protestantism. Puritans, however, tended to deny the literal descent into hell, even though it was one of the articles of the Church of England.13 The Geneva Bible clearly appears to be influenced by Beza’s and Calvin’s teachings on the subject, with its reading, ‘Because thou wilt not leave my *soule in grave.’ The side note on the word ‘soul’ comments ‘Or, life, or, persone,’ and hints at Beza’s more radical translation, ‘body in
11 See note 8 above. 12 William Fulke, A defense of the sincere and true translations, 203–210. 13 See Articles III and VIII of the Articles of Religion.
[the] grave.’ In both cases, these readings, of obvious appeal to puritan sympathizers, seemed to take away scriptural support for any kind of descent into, or harrowing of, hell. Showing his puritan leanings even while attacking Catholic exegesis, Fulke defends the Genevan translation. In his answer to Martin, he frames the very same puritan understanding of Christ’s descent into hell that Bilson later attacked in his 1597 Paul’s Cross sermon. Fulke’s view on Christ’s descent into hell was that he descended into no prison after his death…yet…he descended into hell by suffering in soul the pains due to God’s justice for the sins of all whom he redeemed, and by vanquishing the devil, and all the power of hell, in work- ing the redemption of all the children of God.14 This was Fulke’s way of both affirming the doctrine of the Church of England on Christ’s descent into hell, and denying the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory as a ‘middle place’ where Christ descended in order to redeem the patriarchs, the so-called Limbus Patrum. Here, and throughout the book, Fulke drives home the point that English translations of the Bible are correct, that all the variations are due to very sound philological rea- sons, and ultimately that the Bible, indeed the English Bible, constitutes the one true rule of faith for the Church of England. This distinctively puri- tan view was disputed by establishment figures who gave more authority to ecclesiastical tradition. Bilson, of course, was one of those people: as anti-Catholic as Fulke was, but with different goals and strategies. Thomas Bilson, an establishment man who became a bishop in 1596, entered the Rheims New Testament controversy with his 1584 book, The True Difference between Christian subjection and Unchristian Rebellion.15 Bilson’s anti-Catholic refutation style, compared with that of Fulke and other puritans involved in the same written controversy, is night and day. His point is not to defend English Bibles per se, but to defend the Elizabethan Settlement, politics and doctrine, against popish attacks, and to show that the Church of England is truly ‘catholic’ itself, in accordance
14 Fulke, A defense of the sincere and true translations, 198. 15 Thomas Bilson, The true difference betweene Christian subiection and unchristian rebellion wherein the princes lawfull power to commaund for trueth, and indepriuable right to beare the sword are defended against the Popes censures and the Iesuits sophismes vttered in their apologie and defence of English Catholikes: with a demonstration that the thinges refourmed in the Church of England by the lawes of this realme are truely Catholike, notwith- standing the vaine shew made to the contrary in their late Rhemish Testament: by Thomas Bilson warden of Winchester. Perused and allowed by publike authoritie (Oxford: Ioseph Barnes printer to the Vniuersitie, 1585).
with the scriptures and the ancient writers of the church. Different from Fulke, Bilson is not concerned with defending the Bible as the rule of faith, nor with defending English Bibles to the teeth. This becomes significant later on, when we find Bilson on the final review committee of the King James Bible, whose translation shows some significant changes to read- ings Fulke and other puritans had upheld against Catholic criticisms in the 1580s. Bilson attacks what he calls ‘a whole sworme of Boie-priests,’ who have been ‘sent into England to reduce the Realme to the Romish obedience, which they call the faith of their fathers.’ But he doesn’t refute his target texts point by point, the way Fulke did. Instead, he refutes, in a lively dia- logue format, only the points that claim that the measures of religious Reform in England are heretical, against scriptures, and against the Fathers. Perhaps a jab at Fulke’s long-winded approach, Bilson says he chose this format, ‘for avoiding of tedious repetitions. … My intent was to discusse the things, and not to hold on a brable in words …’16 I now return to Bilson’s 1597 Lenten sermon at the Cross, which addressed Christ’s descent into hell. A sermon directed specifically at a Protestant lay audience, it is different from the aforementioned printed controversial texts, which were much denser in content, relentlessly polemical, and served multiple readerships, both lay and clerical. The two genres were coming closer together than ever before, however, with Richard Bancroft’s inauguration of anti-puritan sermons at Paul’s Cross in 1589. This meant that preachers took the techniques of anti-Catholic preaching and redeployed them against puritans.17 Paul’s Cross became a platform from which to defend the Elizabethan settlement from oppo- nents within, not just from without. Anti-Catholicism did not disappear but it also changed in function: in print and in pulpit sermons, it served as a vehicle for moderates to take jabs at puritans. Preachers like the newly installed Bishop Bilson had to confute on two fronts: against popery and against puritans, the more radical sort advocating for Presbyterian church government, without bishops. In his Lenten sermon, Bilson attacked Roman Catholic doctrine and undue veneration of the cross yet quickly found himself in a controversy with puritans who were scandalized at his defense of the literal harrowing
16 See Bilson’s Dedicatory Epistle addressed ‘TO THE MOST EX|CELLENT, VERTVOVS AND NOBLE PRINCESSE, ELIZABETH’, in The true difference betweene Christian subiection and unchristian rebellion. 17 See Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 193.
18 Quoted in Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 103. 19 Thomas Bilson, The effect of certaine sermons touching the full redemption of mankind by the death and bloud of Christ Iesus (London: Peter Short for Walter Burre, 1599). See note 3 above. 20 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 100. 21 Bilson, The effect of certaine sermons, 4.
into hell. In classic sermon rhetoric, he enumerates what the pains of hell do mean: The paines of hell (if I be not deceiued) make a fourefold impression in the soules of men; a carefull feare, which decli|neth them; a doubtfull feare, which conflicteth with them; a desperate feare which sinketh vnder them, and a damned feare which suffereth them.22 Later he provides six causes of Christ’s agony on the cross, every one of them, he says, ‘more likely and more godlie than this [puritan] devise of hell paines.’23 Bilson also employs numerous Latin quotations, from the Bible and the fathers, including Tertullian, Athanasius, and Cyril—so much for the now thoroughly outdated notion that Protestants abandoned the fathers and the use of the Vulgate.24 Bilson’s frequent quotations from the Vulgate do, however, suggest an extra layer of anti-puritanism and pro-establishment, ‘catholic’ confidence, since writers and preachers like Fulke had worked so hard in the 1580s to disparage the Vulgate and the English Catholic transla- tion from it published at Rheims. Bilson’s use of the fathers is certainly an anti-puritan strategy, since he rails against Henry Jacobs, his puritan oppo- nent who ‘scornefullie reiecteth the iudgement of the Fathers when I alle- age them.’25 All this while also employing anti-Catholicism and setting aside the establishment position from that of Roman Catholicism, where the authority of later fathers were accepted and there was an insistence on the superiority of the Vulgate to the Greek and Hebrew texts, which, to be fair, Catholics also consulted when making their vernacular translations. Finally, Bilson’s work on the King James Bible comes to bear on this discussion. The bishop opposed the convening of the Hampton Court conference, but once it was called he attended and served as a leading delegate, along with Archbishop Whitgift and Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London.26 He would have been on the opposite side of the conference table, facing puritans Rainoldes, Chaderton, Knewstub, and Sparks, who hoped in vain to get approval for the Geneva Bible to be the official Bible of the Church of England. The translation project resulting in the
22 Bilson, The effect of certaine sermons, 9. 23 Bilson, The effect of certaine sermons, 17. 24 On this point, see Gebarowski-Shafer, ‘Augustine and Apocalypticism in the Rheims New Testament Controversy,’ in Augustine and Apocalyptic, ed. Kim Paffenroth and Kari Kloos (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). 25 Bilson, ‘To the Christian Reader’, The effect of certaine sermons, B2. 26 S. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London: SPCK, 1962), 64; Patrick McGrath, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (New York: Walker, 1967), 348.
Authorised Version was the unexpected result, which has received much attention in the many conferences and quatercentenary publications of 2011.27 Yet very little was said about Thomas Bilson. Nonetheless, he did play an important role in the project when he served on the final revision committee, along with translator Miles Smith, a moderate puritan who became bishop of Gloucester. Unfortunately, we have no record of the rea- sons for or the potential arguments surrounding the changes that were made after the general meeting of the translators, but it has been sug- gested that Bilson’s ‘high church views and zeal for the Establishment bal- anced the puritan leanings of Miles Smith.’28 During the translation process, many readings were changed that Fulke and other puritans had defended and that seemed to support puritan teachings. Many of these changes were mandated in Article Three of Bancroft’s ‘Rules to be Observed in the Translation of the Bible,’ where scholars were instructed to keep the ‘old Ecclesiastical Words,’ specifying that ‘the Word Church’ was ‘not to be translated Congregation.’29 Fulke and Cartwright had vigorously defended previous English translations as being accurate, even when they differed from one another. In contrast, the com- mittee translators largely ignored the previous generation’s impassioned apologetics. They changed various readings that seemed to give Mary more cause for veneration, and others that allegedly gave priests and clergy more authority.30 In still other places, words that had been used to
27 See E.G. Bagley (Gebarowski-Shafer), ‘The King James Bible’s 400th Anniversary in Retrospect,’ at Oxford Biblical Studies Online, ed. Michael Coogan (April 2012), http:// global.oup.com/obso/focus/focus_on_king_james. Recent book-length studies on the making and reception of the KJB include David Norton, The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Gordon Campbell, The Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611–2011 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones, eds., The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 28 G.S. Paine, The Learned Men (New York: Crowell, 1959), 24. Smith protested that after he and Bilson had finished their revision work, Archbishop Bancroft, who was ‘so potent there is no contradicting him,’ unilaterally made fourteen additional changes! We do not know what all these changes were, but at least one of them was the adding of what Smith called ‘the glorious word bishopric’ in Acts 1:20, in reference to Judas, so that the passage read, ‘His bishopric let another take.’ Quoted in Paine, The Learned Men, 128. Since Smith protested against this important change by Bancroft, he probably stood against the Archbishop and/or Bilson on other changes—perhaps against some of the theologically significant revisions in the Authorized Version, of which there were many. 29 Alfred W. Pollard, Records of the English Bible (London: Oxford University Press, 1911), 53–54. 30 E.g. Luke 1:42 and 1 Timothy 4:14. See E.G. Bagley (Gebarowski-Shafer), ‘Appendix of Controversial Translations in English Bibles and Other Relevant Versions,’ Heretical
cast Catholic teachings in a dark light were modified, such as ‘traditions’ which was previously used only with negative connotations, such as in reference to ‘traditions of men’, then avoided when used in a positive sense. According to Martin, this had been done in the early years of Protestantism in order to undermine unwritten apostolic traditions. Notwithstanding current imprints of Fulke’s New Testament, the word ‘tradition’ was restored in several key passages in the new but ill-received establishment Bible. These changes related specifically to the debate over Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27, ‘thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.’ Here, Fulke’s rigorous defense of the Genevan translation and the Calvinism of Theodore Beza were dis- regarded by members of the second Oxford company of translators who were responsible for the Gospels, Acts, and the Book of Revelation. Just as Bilson had preached against the Geneva Bible’s ‘soul in grave’ in favour of the Bishop’s Bible’s ‘soul in hell,’ he would have been pleased to oversee the retention of the traditional wording of ‘hell’ in that key passage.31 Knowing what Bilson and others did about controversies ranging from printed anti-Catholic texts to anti-puritan sermons and related literature, this choice was significant, and it helped to maintain direct scriptural sup- port for Christ’s literal descent to hell, and of course to take a subtle jab at puritans who kept Fulke’s refutation of the Rheims New Testament in print and saw Cartwright’s Confutation through to the press in 1618. By the 1620s, much changed at Paul’s Cross, not least the nature of anti- Catholicism, which was specifically discouraged in the Directions for Preachers.32 The heyday of the Cross was over, but the fashion of ranting
corruptions and false translations: Catholic criticisms of the Protestant English Bible, 1582– 1860 (Oxford University: DPhil thesis, 2007), 35–36, 73–4. 31 I include here a sample of comparative translations of Acts 2:27. For a fuller list with original annotations from the relevant versions, see the appendix of my DPhil dissertation, 42–44: Vulgate, Erasmus, Pagninus Quoniam non derelinques animam meam in inferno Wycliffe For thou schalt not leeue my soule in helle Tyndale 1534, Matthew, Great Because thou wilt not leve my soul in hell Castalione quoniam tu animam meam non relinques in Orco Beza Quoniam non derelinques *cadauer meum *in sepulchro Geneva Because thou wilt not leaue my *soule in graue | [Or, life, or, persone.] French Geneva Car tu ne delaisseras point *mon ame au sepulchre | [c. Que mon corps soit laissé en pourriture.] Bishops’ Because thou wylt not leaue my soule in hell RNT Because thou wilt *not leaue my soul in *hel AV Because thou wilt not leaue my soule in hell 32 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 188.
33 Morrisey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 101.
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S PERFORMANCE AT PAUL’S CROSS IN 1588
Steven W. May
On Tuesday the fifth of June 2012, Queen Elizabeth II journeyed to St Paul’s Cathedral for a thanksgiving service celebrating her sixty years on the throne. Some 424 years earlier, on 24 November 1588 her namesake, Queen Elizabeth I, had likewise attended services at St Paul’s, to thank God for England’s victory over the Spanish Armada. The royal participation in these two ceremonies differed in this crucial respect: the first Elizabeth actually composed a part of the service performed at the Cathedral in 1588, something that, so far as I know, Elizabeth II did not attempt last June. We have long known that Elizabeth Tudor may have contributed some- thing to the Armada victory celebration. The calendar of John Henry Gurney’s manuscripts published in 1891 described a poem beginning ‘Look and bow down thine ear, O Lord’ as ‘made by her Majesty and sung before her at her coming from Whitehall to Paul’s through Fleetstreet in 1588. Sung in December.’1 The text is clearly a very personal, first-person expres- sion of thanksgiving for victory. Its title, however, casts some doubt on when and where the poem was sung. The Queen did pass along Fleet Street to St Paul’s, but the celebration took place in November, not December. Moreover, Elizabeth made her way to the Cathedral from Somerset House, not Whitehall. Another text of the poem in John Rhodes’s Countrie Mans Comfort (1637), likewise attributes it to the Queen at the time of the Armada, with the additional information that it was ‘per- formed at Saint Pauls crosse in London’ (sig. D6v). Rhodes also credits Elizabeth with the unique text of a second poem written on the same occasion. This is a metrical prayer for protection beginning ‘Deliver me, O Lord my God, from all my foes that be’ (sig. D6r-6v). It obviously
1 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, part 9 (London: HMSO, 1891), 128. Edited from this document (now National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MS SNG/4) in Steven W. May, ed. Selected Works of Queen Elizabeth I (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), Poem 9. I am grateful to John King, Peter McCullough, Mary Morrissey, and John Wall for very useful advice and information regarding various aspects of this paper.
2 Bodl. MS Tanner 76, f. 30r (spelling modernized). 3 Lambeth Palace Library, Fairhurst MS 3470, f. 195r (spelling modernized).
four different states only two of which include Elizabeth’s prayer. Under standably, editors of the revised Short-Title Catalogue assumed that the Queen’s prayer was added to the pamphlet, not deleted from it. They thus identify them as later editions, whereas Cecil’s letter reveals that they belonged to the earlier states of the text.4 Accordingly, although Elizabeth has been credited with four substantial contemporary collections of prayers, three printed and one in manuscript, their authenticity as either her own work or, with regard to the printed volumes, published with her approval, invites skepticism. While all four collections include prayers addressed to God in the Queen’s voice, only two include prayers she is likely to have composed, and only one of these seems likely to have been published with royal approval. The lost manu- script termed ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book’ can be dismissed at the out- set. It is manifestly not her work, for its handwriting bears no resemblance to anything she is known to have written.5 Henry Woudhuysen confirmed this rejection from the canon by identifying the scribe as a Cambridge student, John Palmer, who obviously prepared the book as a gift for the Queen.6 With regard to the printed books, Elizabeth no doubt sanctioned the publication in 1569 of Christian Prayers and Meditations in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin (STC 6428). The book was published by a royally favoured printer, John Day, and one meticulously hand-colored copy of it was presented to the Queen.7 As the editors of her Collected Works note, the royal arms appear on the book’s ‘first and last leaves,’ while the woman kneeling in prayer illustrated in the frontispiece is labeled ‘Elizabeth Regina.’8 For all its royal trappings, I doubt that Elizabeth wrote
4 A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland 1475–1640, first compiled by A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, 2nd ed. begun by W.A. Jackson and F.S. Ferguson, completed by K.F. Pantzer, 3 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–86) hereafter cited as STC. Cecil showed the Queen either STC 16528a or 16528a.5, with her prayer opposite the royal arms. Her prayer was excised from the subsequent editions, STC 16528 and 16528.5. 5 The original survives only as British Library MS Facs. 218, with an introduction signed J.W. (John Southwood), 1893 (f. iii verso). The facsimile was edited by Adam Fox with a translation of the foreign language prayers as A Book of Devotions Composed by Her Majesty (Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1970). 6 ‘The Queen’s Own Hand: A Preliminary Account,’ in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, ed. Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo (London: The British Library, 2007), 19. [1–27]. 7 Now Lambeth Palace MS 1049. 8 Elizabeth I Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 143–4n. Translations of prayers in foreign lan- guages attributed to the Queen are quoted from this edition.
9 The most striking case, in the second Latin prayer, has Elizabeth confessing that ‘my youth—indeed my cradle—breathed forth nothing but the dung of that prior life, whence yet again I have had to await your coming as a Judge angry with me’. See Elizabeth I Collected Works, 159. 10 These seven prayers are translated into English in Elizabeth I Collected Works, ed. Marcus et al., 135–43. The editors describe other contents of the book as, second, Elizabeth’s ‘commonplace book (sigs. Fii r-Kvi r),’ and third, ‘Lists of the civil and ecclesiastical offices
We know that in these years Elizabeth continued her training in Greek and Latin under Roger Ascham’s tutelage.11 This could explain the prayers’ language. Perhaps her recovery from a life-threatening disease moved her to allow the publication of these private devotions as a form of thanksgiving–or perhaps she merely tolerated publication after the book’s printer, Thomas Purfoot, acquired these copies of her prayers. Purfoot was a rather obscure printer, not a royal patentee as was Day. The book is care- fully set forth in a diminutive decimo-sexto format, but its miscellaneous contents mark it as an ad hoc, opportunistic production. It was not entered in the Stationers’ Register. The prayers occupy signatures A2-F1, some seventy-nine pages. Purfoot brought it closer to full book length by appending seventy-four pages of Latin ‘Sententiæ,’ or sayings excerpted from the Bible, Church Fathers, and classical authors. These are arranged under commonplace headings beginning with ‘De Regno’ (rule, sig. F3), and continuing with entries under justice, mercy, counsel, peace and war. The subjects are appropriate for princely consideration, but nothing con- nects them overtly with Elizabeth. The ‘Sententiæ’ are followed on signa- tures K7-M8v with listings, also in Latin, of the lands and offices of church and state that comprise the kingdom of ‘Elizabeta Regina Angliæ. Anno. D. 1562.’ These include among other lists, all the bishoprics, classes of noblemen, and the principal financial and legal offices of the realm. The entries are generously spaced on these twenty pages. Purfoot thus employs two types of filler to bring the volume to a competent size, giving it a miscellaneous character inappropriate for the make-up of a royally sanc- tioned book of devotions. The third printed book of prayers, published in 1582, has the best claim to both the authenticity of its prayers attributed to Elizabeth and the like- lihood that she approved its publication. Variae Meditationes et Preces piae (STC 17774), was set forth by Christopher Barker, who describes himself on the title page as her majesty’s ‘Typographus’ and humble servant. The assertion was literal. During the 1570s, Barker became a protégé of the Queen’s Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham. In 1575, Barker gained a patent to publish the Geneva Bible, and two years later he purchased the office of
of the realm’ (135). Mueller and Marcus edit the Latin prayers with their prefatory verses from Scripture in Elizabeth I Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 109–23. 11 Ascham recounts how he ‘went vp to read with the Queenes Maiestie … in the Greke tongue’ on the evening of December 10, 1563 when Sir Richard Sackville interrupted their study to request that he write a treatise on education that became The Scholemaster; Roger Ascham, English Works, ed. William Aldis Wright (1904; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 177.
Queen’s printer with the valuable patent to publish all bibles in English.12 He duly entered the Variae Meditationes in the Stationers’ Register on 12 April 1582. The book opens with two Latin prayers, ‘Precatio Reginae ad Dominum Iesum,’ followed by ‘Precatio Reginae pro Subditis’ (sig. A4r-8v). The remaining contents, both prayers and religious instruction, are unat- tributed, but given Barker’s status, the two prayers here attributed to the Queen are no doubt authentic and set forth with royal assent. The prayers attributed to Elizabeth in these four volumes thus present rather inconsistent testimony to her attitude toward publication of her prayers or prayers intended for her use. She manifestly did not compose the prayers set forth in her person in the manuscript prayer book that was composed as a gift for her. While the 1569 Christian Prayers and Meditations was no doubt published cum privilegio, the copy Elizabeth owned was most likely another gift book of devotions for her use, not a collection of her own compositions in whole or part. She probably did compose the Latin prayers in the 1563 Precationes, but the book’s miscellaneous con- tents suggest that its publication was unauthorized. Barker’s authorized publication of her two Latin prayers in 1582 could indicate that she objected only to publication of her English prayers; those in Latin (as set forth by Purfoot as well) presumably would have been read by a suffi- ciently discerning, educated audience of her subjects. But there is this fur- ther complication regarding her attitude toward her English prayers. Oblivious to Cecil’s warning about Elizabeth’s proprietary regard for her prayer for the expedition of 1596, during her reign John Norden included it in at least three editions of his very popular Pensive Mans Practise (1596– 1600). Norden was a prominent surveyor as well as devotional writer, but neither he nor his English printers during these years (John Windet, Robert Robinson, John Oxenbridge, and Richard Bradocke), enjoyed any particular royal favour. Nevertheless, and unlike Archbishop Whitgift’s Certaine Prayers of 1597, their work went uncensored. Perhaps, then, Elizabeth’s inconsistent policies regarding the publica- tion of her own prayers left room for her to condone an anonymous, public performance of her Armada hymn at St Paul’s in 1588. The likeli- hood is bolstered by the fact that she was not secretive about all of her writings. On at least two occasions she was, in Harold Love’s phrase, a scribal publisher.13 In 1576 she sent a fair copy of her closing speech in
12 David Kathman, ‘Barker, Christopher,’ ODNB. 13 The Culture and Commerce of Texts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998). See especially Chapter 2, ‘Publication in the Scribal Medium’.
Parliament to her godson, John Harington. Others may have been favoured with copies of this speech as well, for it circulated widely and survives in at least a dozen manuscripts.14 Elizabeth seems also to have released into scribal circulation a much more private work, her poem on the defeat of the Northern Rebellion in 1570. This defiant work begins, ‘The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy.’ It excoriates those who rose up against her and threatens to behead any future rebels, particularly Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth chastised Lady Willoughby for secretly copying a draft of this poem from her writing tablet. However, textual analysis of a dozen contemporary manuscripts reveals that this poem descended from the archetype along not one, but three independent lines of transmission. In other words, it was copied from the original version not only by Lady Willoughby, but by two other scribes. These other copies could have been made later, and from a revised version or versions of the poem, but it is hard to imagine that anyone except the Queen could have authorized mul- tiple releases of her work.15 Finally, with regard to Elizabeth’s first Armada hymn, Rhodes entitled it ‘An Antheme often Sung in the Royall Chappel of our late Queene Elizabeth.’16 Indeed, a contemporary musical setting for the poem is attributed to Dr. John Bull, who had been appointed gentle- men of the Chapel Royal in 1586.17 Thus Elizabeth did not consider her personal compositions, whether prayers, poems, or speeches, entirely private. The question is would she have allowed even an anonymous public performance of her Armda thanksgiving hymn? Given the emotional environment surrounding England’s conflict with the Armada, and its unexpectedly wholesale dis- persal and defeat, I think Elizabeth might well have been moved to take
14 Sir John Harington, Nugæ Antiquæ, ed. Henry Harington (London: J. Wright, 1804), 1:127–8; May, ed., Selected Works, Speech 7. 15 For a preliminary analysis of the textual transmission of this poem see Steven W. May, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Future Foes’: Editing Manuscripts with the First-Line Index of Elizabethan Verse (a Future Friend),’ in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2004), 1–12. 16 A briefe summe of the treason intended against the King & state, when they should haue been assembled in Parliament. Nouember. 5. 1605 Fit for to instruct the simple and ignorant heerein: that they be not seduced any longer by papists (London: E[dward] A[llde] for Edward White, and are to be solde at his shop neere the little north doore of Saint Paules Church at the signe of the Gunne, 1606), sig. C3v-4. The first person singular viewpoint of Rhodes’s text in The Countrie Mans Comfort is here revised to first person plural. In the second edition of the Briefe some (STC 20960.5), also published in 1606, Rhodes added four more lines of poulter’s couplets to the hymn. Presumably, his 1588 text preserved the Queen’s voice as does the 1637 reprint. 17 Bodl. MS Rawl. poet. 23, 141.
18 Arthur F. Marotti and I have published the two ballads from this manuscript as a spin-off of our book-length study of its highly miscellaneous contents, in ‘Two Lost Ballads of the Armada Thanksgiving Celebration,’ English Literary Renaissance 41 (2011), 31–63. 19 Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet 1555–1606 and the Gunpowder Plot (London and New York: Longmans, 1964), 82.
No descriptions of what happened at the service in St Paul’s point to any liturgical opportunities for the Queen’s compositions to have been per- formed there. A welcoming party of leading clergy headed by the Bishop of London and the Dean of St Paul’s greeted the Queen at the Cathedral’s west door. They escorted her ‘under a rich Canapy’ down the west aisle to a private, enclosed stall. There she heard the service. Then, according to John Stow, she was ‘brought to a closet of purpose made out of the North wal of the church, towards [that is, facing] the pulpit crosse.’20 From this vantage point she listened to the sermon delivered by John Piers, Bishop of Salisbury. His was the fifth sermon at Paul’s Crosss on the subject of the Armada since the previous August 20.21 Piers was also a royal almoner, suggesting that Elizabeth influenced the choice of preacher on this his- toric national occasion. He was elevated to the Archbishopric of York in the following year. At this point, events unfolded as described only in the first ballad from the Additional Manuscript. As Bishop Piers finished his sermon, the ballad states that:
The Ear[l] of oxford openyng then The wyndowes for hyr grace The Chyldren of the hospytall She sawe before hyr [f]ace (ll.173–76)
The identity of these children is uncertain, as is the purpose of their sud- den confrontation with the Queen at this point in the ceremony. The chil- dren most ready at hand were, of course, the boys of St Paul’s. Originally, the cathedral had nurtured children in a grammar school, a song school, and a hospital or almonry for the poor supervised by an almoner. From at least the thirteenth century the almoner of St Paul’s had been responsible for the nurture and training of these ‘charity boys’ or ‘almonry boys.’ Cathedral statutes of 1263 state that the almoner was to supervise ‘eight boys fit for the service of the Church whom he is to have instructed either by himself or by another master in matters pertaining to the service of the Church and in literature,’ that is, Latin grammar.22 By Elizabeth’s reign, these pueri elemosinarii, now ten in number, had long ‘formed the nucleus
20 The Annales of England (London: Ralfe Newbery, 1592), sig. 4P1v. 21 Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Cross 1534–1642, revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989), 66. 22 A.F. Leach, ‘St Paul’s School before Colet,’ Archæologia 62.12, 2nd ser. (1910), 196–7.
23 E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923; rpt. 1961), 2:9–11. 24 Private communication, December 16, 2012. 25 STC 772.5, sig. C4. 26 Diary of Henry Machyn, 32, 99, 131, 291, 305.
hospytall,’ that is, Christ’s Hospital, unless they were to play some part in the ceremony. Even if assembled some one-hundred strong for the occa- sion, they would have formed only part of the crowd in the churchyard that afternoon among many other of the Queen’s subjects. Although these children never performed plays at court or in public, as did Paul’s Boys, the children of the Hospital received a similar education. John Stow records that after attending Bartholomew Fair in 1555, the Lord Mayor and alder- men ‘came to Christs Hospital within Newgate, where they heard a dispu- tation betweene the Schollers of Paules Schoole, Saint Anthonies Schoole, and the Schollers of the said Hospitall.’27 Upon her entrance into London as Queen on 14 January 1559, Elizabeth had encountered the children of the Hospital at St Dunstan’s Church, where one of them greeted her with a Latin oration: ‘The child after he had ended his oration, kissed the paper wherein the same was written and reached it to the Queen’s Majesty,’ who took it and declared ‘her gracious mind toward their relief.’ As good as her word, on 4 March following Elizabeth sent to Christ’s Hospital £10 for the children’s use.28 Perhaps she nurtured a sentimental attachment to the Hospital on account of its founding by her half-brother, Edward VI. If so, she might have commissioned an ad hoc choir of these children to sing her hymn, whether or not singing formed a part of their schooling. On the other hand, it is possible the balladeer expanded the customary phrase in referring to these children as ‘of the hospytall’ when they were instead the children of St Paul’s. The problem he faced was to work them into his poem in an iambic tetrameter line, which is easy enough for ‘The Chyldren of the hospytall.’ But the Children of Paul’s do not readily lend themselves to this meter: ‘The Children of St Paul’s School’ is a syllable short; ‘The boys of St Paul’s School’ is short by two syllables while ‘The St Paul’s school boys’ (or children) destroys the line’s rhythm. ‘The boys of the Cathedral school’ will do it, but they were always termed the boys or children of Paul’s, not of the Cathedral. Its choir boys were, however, still part of an eleemoysonary foundation, as were the children of Christ’s Hospital. The master of the Cathedral song school had always been its almoner. In his will of 1582, for instance, Sebastian Westcott, master of the song school who became schoolmaster of Paul’s by 1557, described himself as ‘almoner of St Paul’s dwelling in the almonry.’29 The boys of Christ’s
27 The Chronicles of England, STC 23333, 1580, sig. 3Z2v. 28 The Queens Majesty’s Passage and Related Documents, ed. Germaine Warkentin (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 93, 124. 29 Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 2:12, 15n.
Hospital, and those of St Paul’s were thus very similar beneficiaries of reli- gious institutions and might be described as ‘of the hospital’ in that word’s sense as ‘A charitable institution for the housing and maintenance of the needy’ (OED ‘hospital,’ n. 2a). Whether of Christ’s Hospital or St Paul’s Cathedral, the children who confronted the Queen ‘before her face’ when Oxford opened the windows were surely present for some purpose beyond mere display. In addition to opening and closing prayers, the singing of psalms at Paul’s Cross sermons had been introduced during Elizabeth’s reign, and Rhodes’s title to the hymn of thanksgiving specifies that it was ‘performed at Saint Pauls crosse.’ The second ballad in the Additional Manuscript confirms that there was, indeed, singing after the sermon: And when he hade the Sermon done And psalmes Ryght solemply were songe Hyr heighnes shewd hyr selff amonge Hyr people th[e]re of London (f. 25v) Tantalizing but inconclusive evidence suggests that the royal musician William Byrd was commissioned to set the Queen’s hymn to music for this performance. A setting of the work attributed to Byrd survives in British Library MS Add. 31992, f. 43v. Its text, however, is limited to the incipit, and the score is in lute tablature, not the multi-part setting appropriate for a boys’ choir. Still, Byrd obviously did have access to Elizabeth’s poem. He had been a gentleman of the Chapel Royal since 1572. In 1575 the Crown favoured him with a joint patent for publishing music. The Queen thereafter intervened to protect Byrd, a devout Catholic, from the harsh legal penalties levied against recusants. He was an obvious choice to provide music for the Queen’s hymn of thanksgiving so that the children could sing it to her. The logistics of their performance, whatever they sang, create addi- tional problems. While the royal ‘closet’ in the north wall of the Cathedral faced the Cross, John Wall has concluded in a research report on the ‘Virtual Paul’s Cross’ website, that ‘the preacher at Paul’s Cross faced west- ward, toward the North Transept, and stood in a small pulpit a step out from under the roof line of the Cross structure itself.’30 In that case, the Queen, looking north toward the Cross, must have turned at least slightly
30 http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/st-pauls-cathedral-rises-again .html.
to the left in order to view Bishop Piers in profile as he delivered the ser- mon. Was the choir, perhaps, stationed in a room along the east wall of the north transept? Afterward, Oxford opened the room’s windows to reveal the Children poised to sing the Queen’s hymn ‘before her face.’ Their presence across the churchyard, however, would lack the imme- diacy implied by their sudden appearance ‘before her face.’ It would also require the Lord Great Chamberlain to leave the royal presence in order to open windows in the east wall of the north transept. A more likely sce- nario, perhaps, has Elizabeth listening to the sermon in the privacy of the ‘closet,’ her person shut off from prying eyes by its windows. After the ser- mon, the children were placed in the churchyard before the royal enclave. Only then did Oxford open the windows so that the choir ‘appeared before her face.’ Other scenarios are no doubt possible, and the case for their singing the Queen’s hymn to her on this occasion is admittedly circumstantial. It derives, however, from the following evidence: 1. A contemporary manu- script claims that Elizabeth’s hymn of thanksgiving for the Armada’s defeat was sung before her at some point in the thanksgiving ceremony. 2. John Rhodes specifies in print that this occurred at Paul’s Cross, while the second ‘Armada’ ballad states that psalms were sung after the sermon in the churchyard. 3. After the bishop’s sermon, ‘The Chyldren of the hospytall’ appeared before the Queen to perform some concluding part in the ceremony. 4. The royal musician William Byrd had access to the Queen’s poem and set it to music, granted that his extant setting would not be suitable for performance by a choir. 5. The first-person voice of Elizabeth’s hymn describes such a concluding event’s basic contours: it asks God to look down on His handmaid, among His priests, offering to Him her devotion, herself, and her scepter of rule. It is reasonable to con- clude, I think, that the Queen arranged for her hymn to be performed by either the Children of Christ’s Hospital or the Children of St Paul’s to pro- vide an especially personal, royal closure to the Thanksgiving celebration.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JOHN COPCOT, JOHN WHITGIFT, AND MARK FRANK: ‘RIGHT CAUSE AND FAITHFUL OBEDIENCE’
P.G. Stanwood
Among many defenders of the reformed English Church in the years after the Elizabethan Settlement (1559), stand a number of lively proponents. One of them is John Copcot (ca. 1547–1590), who spent much of his life in Cambridge, where he eventually became master of Corpus Christi College in 1587, on the recommendation of Lord Burghley. Another is the well- known John Whitgift (ca. 1532–1604), Elizabeth’s archbishop of Canterbury from 1583. Closely aligned with Whitgift is Richard Bancroft (1564–1610), who succeeded Whitgift at Canterbury (1604). And finally, even as preach- ing at Paul’s Cross was nearing its end in the Laudian years, we meet the little-known, but estimable Mark Frank (1612/13–1664). All of these men held similar beliefs about obedience, hierarchy, and the episcopacy, regarding it as necessary for a strong and unified church, and all urged their doctrinal views in sermons at Paul’s Cross. Let us first consider John Copcot, whose Paul’s Cross sermon of 1584 is a typical example in defence of the Elizabethan Settlement against its Puritan detractors, and a condemnation of the disciplinarians.1 While Whitgift was addressing the boldly abusive Marprelate tracts with help from the strenuous invective of Richard Bancroft, Copcot appeared at Paul’s Cross in 1584 to answer the Counter-poison, also of the same year. This was a work probably by Dudley Fenner (c. 1558–1587). Fenner, a pro- tege of Thomas Cartwright, was an outspoken advocate of the ‘godly min- istry.’ He urged that the government of the church belonged to all people, and that they should choose from among themselves their own ministers. Copcot is answering Fenner’s attack on a convocation sermon that Copcot had given on 1 Tim. 5:17.2 His Paul’s Cross sermon is long—over
1 See Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), esp. 205–14. 2 Most of Fenner’s attack deals with the eldership, with verse 17 giving the admonition: ‘Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.’
18,000 words, including many marginal notes that cite numerous authori- ties. The sermon was never printed; and the only known manuscript copy is in the Lambeth Palace Library (MS 374), likely made by an unidentified scribe soon after the sermon was preached. It was probably circulated, just as another Copcot sermon (not at Paul’s Cross): ‘It goeth from hande to hande amongst those who delight in it.’ Copcot’s sermon is on Psalm 84 (85): 1 (‘A Psalm for the sons of Korah’): ‘Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob.’3 This text is little explored, except implicitly, and it disappears in the elaborate discussion that follows. Copcot is concerned in the early part of his sermon with the right translation and transmission of scriptural texts. Concerning scriptural integrity, Copcot charges the Church of Rome with linguistic mismanagement and mangling—notable qualities of the ‘Rhemish’ bible. Consequently, ‘the Romanistes joyne with Christe diverse thinges which God never commaunded and yet require them, with that rigor that they deny, many may be saved without them. Therefore they corrupt the gospell’ (128r). Copcot quickly moves to a discussion of faith and works, carefully dis- tinguishing Roman claims from appropriately ‘reformed’ views. They say that we have no merit of our own, and Copcot elaborates: Our workes and the merits of Saynctes are necessarye to merite righteousnes, salvation and everlastinge life. … But there is neither lyne nor letter in the whole Bible which either wholy or in parte attributeth any deserte of redemption, of justification, of salvation, and our eternall inheritance to the worke of any Saint or Angell. … Our naturall corruption is suche so longe as here we live, that it doth staye and pollute all that which we doe by his grace, so that it is imperfect, and not accepted of God, but in Christ, who covereth our imperfection when we cleave unto him by a true faithe (128r). Copcot now addresses the sacramental deficiencies of Rome, where the cup is denied, where baptism is sullied by many additional ‘inventions,’ such as exorcism, oil, and salt. Nevertheless, the Church of Rome is still the church of God, even though it is not a ‘true’ church. For such a church, we must look to the reformed church in England. Copcot is happy to assert that Wee maye be accused for want of discipline … but he that with a single eye looketh into the estate of our Churche shall finde as good discipline, as
3 Vulgate: Magistro chori. Filiorum Core. Psalmus. Propitius fuisti, Domine, terræ tuæ; Bene vertisti sortem Iacob.
agreable to the worde, and practise of the most auncient Churches as in anye citie, countrie, or commonwealthe under heaven; but that forme of disci- pline which some strive for and want in our Church, wee have not (134r). Fenner, of course, sees Copcot as one who urges ‘tumultuous and insin- cere dealing’; for one who can find ‘agreement with the Papistes’ should be ashamed in stead of incountringe with the truth, … in steed of overthrowing the con- sent of people in Church-elections, to make warre against a meere populer Election … and in steede of manly buckling with the substantiall pointes of Church-election, with the foreleading of the Presbytery, with the due con- sent of the people, cowardly to betake himself unto the changeable circum- stances of the same; as who should present, the Elders or the people; howe the people shoulde signify their consent by lifting up their handes, or other- wise by themselves or by proctors, and divers such other.4 Copcot in his ‘confutation’ is moving into a vast comparison between the English establishment and its conformity with the universal church, of which the Church of Rome is one though defective part, and the false reformist claims of the puritans, who ignorantly trouble the polity of church and state. Copcot’s refrain is familiar and typical of all ‘right’ believ- ers; no further church reform is needed because the English church is already fitly reformed. The language of invective and controversy so well displayed in these sermons, and through much of early modern literature, seems largely to have been lost in later times: Milton might have been one of the last who could fashion deadly insults. Yet Copcot is vigourously dismissive of Fenner and of all his associates. He is surely thinking of but not naming the youthful author of the Counter-poison, the work that Fenner probably wrote in the year before he died at the age of 30. Copcot says that there are some who minister the sacraments ‘that cannot preach the word, who know little of the judgement of the primitive church or the “ancient fathers”,’ such as Augustine, who had inspired the ministry of godly men at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. But now, with a glance toward Fenner and his fellows, there is ‘verbosity,’ teaching before learning ‘with vayne woordes’ that ‘give greate occasion of offences to the weake’ (136v).
4 See Fenner, A Defence of the Reasons of the Counter-poyson, for maintenance of the eldership against an aunsvvere made to them by Doctor Copequot, in a publike sermon at Pawles Crosse, vpon Psal. 84. 1584 ([Middelburg: R. Schilders], 1586). The work is attributed also to William Stoughton, or to Henry Jacob. It is one in the brief series of attacks and responses over Copcot’s Paul’s Cross sermon. The quotation appears at sig. C5r-v. See STC 10772 (cf. 10770). incountringe with the truth = encountering, i.e. embracing the truth.
I should wish, Copcot continues, that ‘they had suche discretion, as to con- sider what they should utter before they did speake’ (137r). ‘These are such as have daylye some newe devise or other to broache, that they maye pro- cure followers and favorers for their owne maintaynance, and the trouble of others: few of these will heare the word out of the mouth of anye, onlesse they be of theire owne vayne’ (147r). Fenner, with several other strongly puritan supporters in Kent, had refused to subscribe to Archbishop Whitgift’s articles, and indeed he met with Whitgift in person. After this meeting, he was suspended from his ministry. Copcot is of course mindful of these events, and of Fenner’s bit- ter attack on him (and on Whitgift’s authority) in the Counter-poison. Nothing of fresh consequence appears in Fenner’s tract, but he does con- demn Copcot for ‘his tumultuous and insincere dealing, his contrarietie with him selfe, his agreement with the Papistes.’ Fenner tirelessly urges the necessity of popular election in ecclesiastical government, condemning Copcot for cowardice and insincerity; for right thinking reformers must know that bishops cunningly and selfishly claim power for themselves. In 1583, the year before Copcot preached his sermon, Archbishop Whitgift had forcefully outlined the theory of submission, setting forth the traditional view of the reformed church in England. Whitgift is saying what many English churchmen believed, but he fiercely condemns the disobedient, those he names as ‘the Papist, the Anabaptist, the conceyted and wayward person.’ He takes his text from Paul’s warning to Titus (3:1–2):5 ‘Warn them to be subject to rule and power, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work. To blaspheme no man, to be no fighters …’ The sermon, preached in the 25th year of the Queen’s accession, was not printed until 1589, at about the same time as the Marprelate tracts were appearing.6 This sermon, like Copcot’s, is principally concerned with dis- cipline; and it raises the spectre of non-conformity, mostly by fiercely rail- ing against it. Like Copcot, he offers little if any theological consideration of opposed views—Richard Hooker’s carefully constructed arguments of the 1580s, for example, were unusual in the climate of these last years of the 16th century; and Hooker’s full response to the Elizabethan Settlement
5 Vulgate: Admone illos principibus, et potestatibus subditos esse, dicto obedire, ad omne opus bonum paratos esse: neminem blasphemare, non litigiosos esse, sed modestos, omnem ostendentes mansuetudinem ad omnes homines. 6 See A Most godly and Learned Sermon, Preached at Pauls Crosse the 17 of November … 1583 (London: Thomas Orwin, 1589). See also Joseph Black’s excellent edition (with intro- duction and commentary) of The Martin Marprelate Tracts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
would wait until the very end of the century. His treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593, 1597), encouraged and supported by Whitgift himself, had little effect on continuing disputes.7 Whitgift’s accession sermon is brief, likely much abbreviated in the printed text, with portions lost in the time between delivery and publica- tion. In its present form, the sermon consists largely of extended quota- tions, not only scriptural but also patristic, with long passages from St John Chrysostom, whose text Whitgift freely translates: ‘It is passing ill where there is no governement, for that is the occasion of great harme, as also the beginning of trouble and confusion’8 (B2v). Whitgift draws also on the wis- dom of Gregory Nazianzen, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Augustine, all of whom in their time dealt with dissent and insolence. ‘Basil saith,’ Whitgift reminds his audience, ‘that in his time, whosoever could raile most of the Bishops in their sermons, (as manie yong Preachers then did) were best liked of the people, and coumpted most perfect, and most holy’ (D1r). The implied analogy points to the alleged inadequacy and misinterpretation of current ‘heretical’ preaching. Thus Whitgift constructs his sermon on the presumed ugly similarity of the present with the sad experience of the past. Contention, indeed, persists across the centuries, only changing names and objectives. Yet Whitgift ends with surprising irenicism, not by excluding any persons, but exhorting all (even Anabaptists) to ‘consider one another, to provoke unto love, and good workes, not leaving our mutu- all societie, as the manner of some is’ (D7v). Richard Bancroft was one of the least conciliatory and most outspoken of Paul’s Cross preachers, attitudes which he shows in a famously strident, fiercely anti-puritan and anti-presbyterian sermon of 9 February 1588, on a text from 1 John 4. This sermon may be a culmination of what we have so far seen; for in defending the episcopacy and urging obedience to it and to the state, Bancroft condemns and casts adrift all who would challenge the established order. False prophets are heretics and schismatics—the Admonitionists, Martinists, Anabaptists, and any with puritan views—all these Bancroft excludes from the English Church. Other preachers might
7 See Hooker’s Tractates and Sermons, ed. Laetitia Yeandle and Egil Grislis, The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 5 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990), esp. Introduction to the Commentary by Grislis, 619–55. One misses Richard Hooker’s Paul’s Cross sermon (of 1584? David Neelands has essayed a kind of reconstruction in chapter ten above); and one laments the entire absence of Lancelot Andrewes, while yet being grateful for the several and eloquent performances by John Donne throughout his ministry (1616, 1622 [2], 1627 [2]. 8 See Chrysostom, Homily 34, In Epistolam ad Hebræos 13: Malum quidem est ubi nullus est Principatus, et multarum cladium hæc res existit occasio, et confusionis.’ PG 63.231.
9 See W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘A Reconsideration of Richard Bancroft’s Paul’s Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20 (1969), 253–66. Traditionally, Bancroft was first to urge the jure divino theory of episcopacy. But Cargill Thompson demonstrates that Hadrian Saravia better deserves this claim, for his De Diversis Ministrorum Evangelii Gradibus (London: Georgius Bishop & Radulphus Newberie, 1590) was much more influential than Bancroft’s sermon on the divine origin of the episcopacy. ‘The Sermon … shows [Bancroft] in process of evolution from the traditional Elizabethan concept of church government as a ‘thing indifferent’ which he appears to have held in the early 1580s to the new theory of the dominical origin of bishops which he took over from Saravia in the 1590s.’ (266) See also Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, on ‘Whitgift, Marprelate, Bancroft,’ esp. 208. Quotations are from the Huntington Library copy of the first corrected edition, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse the 9. of Februarie … 1588, by Richard Bancroft (London: I. Jackson for Gregorie Seton, 1589), STC 1346.
lips: to the viper, bicause they regarde not to wound and destroie their mother the church: to tigers and lions, for that they are verie cruell and fierce: and to diverse other such thinges as ought to make them odious to all that love the truth’ (B3r-v). In upholding episcopal privilege and the three-fold orders of ministry, Bancroft soon turns to a defense of the Book of Common Prayer, while also condemning ignorance. In these days, dull minds are covered by ‘Thicke clouds and mistes of palpable darkness’; and such foolish prophets like to say that some of the most famous and learned men of this realm— Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer, Peter Martyr—laboured in vain. Now, says Bancroft, ‘two or three yeeres studie is as good as twentie. It is woonderfull to see, how some men get perfection. One of fower or five and twentie yeeres old, if you anger him, will sweare he knoweth more then all the ancient fathers. And yet in verie deede, they are so earnest and fierce, that either we must beleeve them, or else account their boldnes to be, as it is, most untollerable’ (E5v-r). So much and more has Bancroft to say of the Admonitionists.10 He affirms with determined and heavy force that ‘the doctrine of the church of England, is pure and holie: the government thereof, both in respect of hir majestie, and of our Bishops is lawfull and godlie: the booke of com- mon praier containeth nothing in it contrarie to the word of God’ (G5r-v). Bancroft is moving toward the exhortation, offering accusation, interroga- tio, apostrophe, and sermocinatio, whereby he gives speech to those who dare to object.11 He ends by calling on terms well known to the rhetori- cians and homilists of his day. ‘Will you give yourselves over to an unbri- dled course [pursued by hypocrites and apostates], the ende wherof you know not? Shall men of such inconstancy lead you from the truth, and make you to imbrace those thinges, which you know to have been condemned with one consent by all the ancient fathers for heresies? … [S]tand fast, and keepe the instructions which you have beene taught’ (H8r-v). Obedience remains a prominent theme in subsequent Paul’s Cross ser- mons; but Bancroft set a high mark for the episcopacy, excluding and
10 The Admonition controversy is well documented in Puritan Manifestoes: A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt (with a reprint of An Admonition to the Parliament of 1572 and kindred documents), ed. W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (London: SPCK, 1954). 11 See Peter Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. chap. 8, ‘Religious discourse.’ And see also the excellent discus- sion of Richard Hooker’s rhetoric by P.E. Forte in Hooker’s Tractates and Sermons, FLE 5:674–82.
12 The sermon is dated by Millar MacLure, October 10, 1641. See The Paul’s Cross Sermons 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 255; and see MacLure’s comments on Frank, 114–15. But Kenneth W. Stevenson (in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) gives 4 May 1642, a much more likely date, for it suits the political situation of the sermon. I quote from my copy of the first edition of 1672: LI sermons preached by the Reverend Dr. Mark Frank…: being a course of sermons, beginning at Advent, and so continued through the festivals: to which is added a sermon preached at St Pauls Cross, in the year forty-one, and then commanded to be printed by King Charles the First (London: Andrew Clark for John Martyn, Henry Brome, and Richard Chiswell …, 1672) [Wing F2074A]. Frank’s Sermons appeared only once more (slightly modernized) in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, vols. 41–42 (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1849).
Royalist-inspired response before an increasingly embattled audience. He opens his sermon with a strong but ironic statement of purpose, even as he will unveil, often in sharp and excitable terms, the universal meaning of the text: ‘I cannot say, the Text is fit for the time, but, I am sure, ‘tis needful. A Text of Obedience never more. A little of that well practised would make us understand one another, set all together again, ‘Tis needful for That: and that’s as much as peace, Plenty, and Religion is worth’ (sig. 4C3v). Obedience is the key to a fit polity and a circumspect life. Frank carefully examines his text, unfolding its terms and discovering what he understands to be parallels between the situation of the Rechabites and his own present. The sermon is organized with immense care, and with the kind of close verbal analysis and oratorical manage- ment that characterizes the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes. And one hears Frank’s voice, his acute sense of his audience whom he cajoles, pleads, condemns, praises. There are many sharp, often witty passages in which he forcibly draws on the analogy of the obedient Rechabites, on the one hand, and those persons who would now be selfishly disobedient, on the other. ‘Some of our age would have told them, they might have excused them being the seed of the Godly. ‘Tis a part of their Commendation that they thought not so’ (sig, 4D1r). Obedience has inward and outward expression, but it is always necessary in sustaining peaceableness and good order. ‘Authority us’d to be a Logical Argument to guide our reason: and have we lost our Logick too, as well as our Obedience?’ Frank turns from the Rechabites ‘to ourselves,’ carefully pulling the pieces of his text into current affairs. Jonadab was a father, whose precepts were fully obeyed: This Father was commended in three ways, all describ- ing obedience: Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical. The Rechabites understood that ‘Father’ was so by nature, and were obedient to his judgement, and to his rule. Yet in our time obedience is much compromised, for we acknowl- edge only ourselves. ‘Every Magistrate … every Father of a Family: Some of these have their Statutes to be kept; all of them their commands to be obeyed.’ Such are secular powers, but there are spiritual ones as well, ‘such as take order for your Souls, as the other for your Bodies, and Estates, your Bishops and Clergy’:
Bishops are Fathers by their Title, the Fathers of the Church; so the first Christians, so all since, till this new unchristian Christianity started up. Fathers in God, ‘tis their stile; however some of late, Sons of Belial, would make them Fathers in the Devil, Antichrist: perhaps, that they might make them like themselves. Strange Antichrists to whom Christ hath left the Governing of his Church these 1500 years! (sig. 4E2r).
Frank is becoming highly exercised as he surveys his London audience, not all of whom would have held Royalist sympathies, and condemns the tumultuous times. Perhaps he is nowhere more outspoken—nearly inco- herent with rage—than in this application of his text:
Your Inferiour Magistrates have almost every where found disrespect. And whether your Bishops and Clergy have been used like Fathers, if the usage they have had of late, the tumults about their houses, the riots upon their Person, the daily insolencies the whole Clergy have met with in your streets, never seen till now in a Civill Common-wealth, in any ordered City upon the most contemptible men, if the injuries done their Persons in the Churches, at the very Altars, once Sanctuaries against violence, now thought the fittest places for it, in the very administration of the Sacraments, in their Pulpits, both among you and abroad the Kingdom: in a word, so many slanderous, malicious accusations without ground, entertain’d with pleasure, besides the blasphemies upon the whole Order, if these cannot tell you, after-ages will determine, and in the interim let the world judge (sig. 4E2v).
There is little hope in Frank’s sermon—the Civil War was beginning to break out even in the precincts of St Paul’s; Frank offers faint hope amidst his catastrophic view of contemporary London and England. He concludes,
If you will return, and hear, and hearken, and submit to your ancient Fathers, your King and Church, your Magistrates, and Clergy, observe, and keep, and do your ancient Laws and Customs, I dare warrant you, what God promises to the Rechabites, he shall perform to you. Your City shall flourish, your places be renowned, your Liberties encrease, your persons rise up in honour, your estates prosper, your affairs succeed, your children be famous, your Posterity happy, your Religion display the glories of her first primitive purity, and all go on successfully for ever (sig. 4F1r).
There is desperation in Frank’s sermon; for the call to obedience, and to a faith that esteems the certitude of allegiance and hierarchy, seems empty in view of the critical occasion. Sir Richard Gurney, the Lord Mayor who was likely in Frank’s audience, and strongly sympathetic to the court party, was increasingly beset by a radical opposition, and he would be impeached in July 1642. Frank preached one of the last of the Paul’s Cross sermons, which had already by the early 1640s lost much of their popularity. We may imagine that Frank was speaking to a well-disposed, perhaps small audi- ence in the Cathedral itself, and in predictable terms that encouraged the beliefs of one side against the other; and Frank himself disappeared until the Restoration. Nevertheless, in spite of the desperate political situation
and the strident urgency of his sermon, Frank managed to compose a work, still in the mode of the best and most traditional rhetorical art, ordered as Andrewes himself would have recognized. Paul’s Cross was ever a vehicle for all sorts and conditions of persons, throughout the inevi- table and restless, even revolutionary trans-shifting of time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BANCROFT VERSUS PENRY: CONSCIENCE AND AUTHORITY IN ELIZABETHAN POLEMICS
W. Bradford Littlejohn
Although no stranger to controversy, the pulpit at Paul’s Cross witnessed few more incendiary sermons than that of Richard Bancroft in February 1588/9, ‘Deerly beloved, beleeve not every spirit.’1 This sermon provoked remonstrance from contemporaries as diverse as Welsh radical John Penry, Sir Francis Knollys, and King James VI, and is still debated among scholars today. For a long time, it was chiefly reputed as the inception of the doctrine of jure divino episcopacy,2 although modern scholarship has dramatically qualified this interpretation.3 It has also been highlighted as an initial statement of the charge Bancroft was to embellish richly in
1 A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 8. of Februarie, being the first Sunday in the Parleament, Anno. 1588. by Richard Bancroft D. of Divinitie, and Chaplaine to the right Honorable Sir Christopher Hatton Knight L. Chancelor of England (London: E. B. [Edward Bollifant] for Gregorie Seton, 1588, i.e. 1589). 2 The concern that Bancroft had gone too far in his claims for episcopacy was raised by critics at the time including Lord Burghley and Francis Knollys. See Stuart Barton Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London: SPCK, 1962), 28–29; W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Campaign Against the Jure Divino Theory of Episcopacy,’ in C.W. Dugmore, ed., Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker (London: The Athlone Press, 1980), 118–19. It became enshrined in the historiographical tradition by the ill-informed statements of John Strype in his 1718 Life and Acts of John Whitgift and his 1728 Annals of the Reformation. From there it was subsequently picked up and embellished upon by later writers well into the 20th century. For a good overview see W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘A Reconsideration of Richard Bancroft’s Paul’s Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20.2 (1969), 253–57. 3 See for instance Norman Sykes, Old Priest and New Presbyter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 24–26; Cargill Thompson, ‘A Reconsideration,’ 258–60; Cargill Thompson, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Campaign,’ 99–101. Cargill Thompson, however, warns against downplaying the significance of Bancroft’s sermon in this regard too much. See ‘A Reconsideration,’ 260–66. See also Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 95–96, for an example of the sermon continuing to be invoked as part of the development of the doctrine of iure divino episcopacy. Collinson’s balanced statement in 1967 remains perhaps the best verdict: ‘Bancroft did not go so far as to assert directly the ius divinum of episcopal government, but it is significant that some at the time and many since have read the highest doctrine of episcopacy into his words’. See Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: J. Cape, 1967), 397.
Dangerous Positions and Proceedings (1593), that Presbyterianism’s rejec- tion of the royal supremacy was seditious and politically dangerous.4 More recently, Mary Morrissey has argued that the sermon’s distinctiveness lies in the fact that it is the first Paul’s Cross sermon that adopts the ‘confuta- tional genre’ (typical of anti-papal sermons, particularly in the 1560s) in order to attack the Puritans.5 The objective is no longer to appeal to the Puritans, but to reveal them as a threat to be shunned, and a political threat as much as a religious one. This is certainly true, but it remains to be asked why Bancroft sought to do so; his opposition to Puritanism, I would argue, though rhetorically exaggerated to stir his hearers to action, stemmed from his genuine con- viction, shared with many other conformist leaders, that they posed a threat to church and commonwealth.6 If nothing else, Bancroft consid- ered the recent Marprelate tracts ample proof that Puritans held no authority to be sacred—if Puritans could justify such savage attacks on the bishops, what was to stop them from going after Her Majesty’s authority as well?7 Although zeal for episcopal prerogatives, concern over Puritan diminutions of the royal prerogative, and Martinism as intolerably
4 See for instance Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 397; Edward O. Smith, Jr., ‘The Elizabethan Doctrine of the Prince as Reflected in the Sermons of the Episcopacy, 1559–1603,’ Huntington Library Quarterly 28.1 (1964), 8–11; Joseph Black, ‘The Rhetoric of Reaction: The Martin Marprelate Tracts (1588–89), Anti-Martinism, and the Uses of Print in Early Modern England,’ The Sixteenth–Century Journal 28.3 (1997), 718–19. Bancroft was particularly bold in this sermon in his indictment of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, claiming that their seditious behavior toward their prince showed what England could expect if the Presbyterians there had their way. These claims, based on inaccurate sources, created such a backlash in Scotland that Bancroft was forced to issue a formal apology to James VI. For a full account, see Owen Chadwick, ‘Richard Bancroft’s Submission,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 3.1 (1952), 58–73. 5 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 197, 207–14. 6 Morrissey’s emphasis on Bancroft’s rhetorical shrewdness can at times imply that he is consciously fabricating a case against the Puritans, merely presenting them as a threat when he really knows they are not. Indeed, much of the recent vogue for rhetorical analysis among historians of this period runs the risk of displacing attention too much from what the author thought to what he wanted his audience to think. Both dimensions are impor- tant, of course, but we must not allow attention to the second to lead us to treat polemic as ‘mere rhetoric,’ rather than taking seriously the genuine concerns that motivated the inter- locutors in this period. For some good methodological remarks on this front, see Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Puritanism: The Structure of a Prejudice,’ in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Studies in Modern British History, vol. 13), ed. Peter Lake and Kenneth Fincham (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2006), 92–94. 7 See for instance Bancroft, A Sermon, 68. On the Marprelate tracts as the context for Bancroft’s sermon, see Black, ‘Rhetoric of Reaction,’ and Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 207–14.
disrespectful public speech were all crucial components of Bancroft’s fear of Puritan sedition, there is a more fundamental problem at stake, I would argue, which runs throughout the text of Bancroft’s Sermon. At the root of Puritan rebellion, Bancroft will argue, is a warped understanding of the relationship between conscience and authority—a relationship that bedevilled all the European reformations, not least England’s. To see how contemporary Puritans perceived and responded to Bancroft’s accusation of sedition, we need look no further than John Penry’s Briefe Discovery, published in 1590.8 Penry was a member of the Puritan left-wing, and indeed, was suspected of involvement in the writing and production of the Marprelate Tracts, so much so that he was at this time hiding in Scotland.9 When he returned to England later in 1590, he was quickly imprisoned as part of the crackdown of 1590–92, and was eventually executed along with Barrow and Greenwood as a separatist. As one of only three Protestant dissenters to lose their lives for the cause dur- ing this period, Penry is clearly not just your ordinary middle-of-the-road Puritan.10 With the exchange between Bancroft and Penry, then, an arch-conser- vative vs. an arch-radical, the historian has the opportunity to see the bat- tle between Puritan and conformist thrown into the sharpest relief. Here we have Bancroft’s ringing accusation that the Puritans are seditious schis- matics being answered by a man who is soon to be imprisoned and exe- cuted for sedition and schism. If the seditious implications of Puritanism are anywhere to be seen, we would expect to find them from a man like Penry. And yet the most remarkable thing about Penry’s reply is the absence of such sedition; indeed, it is at times almost sycophantic in its devotion to Her Majesty. Even on the key question of the royal supremacy, Penry protests, ‘Looke whatsoever prerogative in ecclesiastical or civil causes hee or any man livinge can truly attribute unto the civil magistrate, wee do the same’ (39).11 When we consider that Penry was at this point of
8 A Briefe Discovery of the Untruthes, and Slanders against Reformation, and the favour- ers thereof, contained in D. Bancroft’s Sermon […] (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1589/90). 9 Penry was indeed the leading suspect in the hunt for Marprelate at the time, and while suggesting a more complex authorship, most modern scholarship has confirmed that he was likely deeply involved. See Owen Chadwick, ‘Richard Bancroft’s Submission,’ 59; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 391–96. See also D.J. McGinn, John Penry and the Marprelate Controversy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966). 10 William Pierce, John Penry: His Life, Times, and Writings (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923) remains the most comprehensive treatment of this fascinating man. 11 Throughout, I will use original spelling and punctuation, except that I will render consonantal ‘i’s as ‘j’s and ‘u’s as ‘v’s.
12 See Stephen Brachlow’s discussion of this frequent assertion in The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology, 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 249–50. 13 The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). 14 See for instance Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, 53–60. Notably, however, Stephen Brachlow argues that even radicals like the early Jacobean congregationalists made no steps toward populism: ‘It would be a serious distortion of their own self–understanding to suggest that the Jacobean radicals therefore held populist political views. Congregational in church polity, they made it clear that they believed a monarchical state, as Brad shaw said, was the most appropriate civil polity for English society’. See Communion of Saints, 245. 15 In John Ayre, ed., The Works of John Whitgift, DD, PS 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851–53), II: 73. 16 See for instance Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, 73–79.
Saints, Stephen Brachlow showed convincingly that even the most radical figures show no desire to give up the Reformation ideals of the godly prince or the cura religionis, and seem to honestly believe that their theory detracts in no way from the rightful prerogatives of the magistrate.17 Were conformists such as Bancroft, then, merely indulging in cheap slander when they tarred the Puritans with accusations of sedition, Anabaptistry, and popery, the easiest ways to discredit an opponent in Elizabethan England? To an extent, perhaps, but not entirely. Of course, obviously not all claims to support the royal supremacy amounted to the same thing, and Cartwright’s or Penry’s version would have certainly limited the constitutional scope of the Queen’s jurisdiction. But we must look a little beneath the surface of the charge of sedition, I suggest, to discern the underlying fears that gnawed Bancroft and the conformists, which the quote from Whitgift above gestures toward. Essential to the Elizabethan settlement, and in Whitgift’s mind, to Protestant theology as a whole, was the magistrate’s right to command in adiaphora, ‘things indifferent,’ which were by nature not supposed to affect the conscience;18 and yet the Puritans were complaining that their consciences compelled them to dissent. The question of authority over conscience had been rendered urgently pressing for the sixteenth-century by the Protestant rejection of papal authority and proclamation of Christian liberty. The Word of God alone could bind the conscience, Luther had taught, and beyond the Word lay adiaphora, in which the magistrate could command outward actions, but not consciences.19 Luther’s teaching was itself, as Susan Schreiner has argued in her recent book Are You Alone Wise?, an attempt to resolve late medieval struggles over the search for certitude by anchoring the
17 See Brachlow, Communion of Saints, ch. 7. ‘Although James I took the puritan theory of royal limitations as a serious threat to his prerogatives, the radicals were convinced that neither their political theories nor their nonconformist practices disparaged royal suprem- acy in the least’ (245). 18 For an excellent and thorough discussion of the doctrine of adiaphora as it was devel- oped in the early Protestant Reformation both on the continent and in England, see Bernard Verkamp, The Indifferent Mean: Adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1554 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1977). Torrance Kirby’s essay, ‘“Relics of the Amorites”: The Civil Magistrate and Religious Uniformity,’ in The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 203–33, offers an excellent introduction to the issues sur- rounding adiaphora as they stood early in the Elizabethan era. 19 The classic statement of the Protestant doctrine of Christian liberty was of course Luther’s treatise The Freedom of a Christian, although perhaps the most precise and sys- tematic discussion can be found in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion Bk. III, ch. 19. See also Verkamp, The Indifferent Mean, and Verkamp, ‘The Limits Upon Adiaphoristic Freedom: Luther and Melanchthon,’ Theological Studies 36.1 (1975): 52–76.
Christian’s certainty in a transcendent source.20 But by rejecting any infal- lible earthly epistemological authority, the question of certainty resur- faced: who was to offer binding interpretation on what was in the Word and what was merely adiaphora?21 Who was to determine the truth, who was bound to submit to their determination, and how did such submis- sion square with the Christian individual’s freedom of conscience? This preoccupation drove radicals like Penry, who sought the desired certainty in the determinations of learned ministers, as well as conformists like Bancroft, who sought it in the decrees of lawfully established authorities. It was this that underlay their futile debates about the royal supremacy; as Brachlow notes, If left-wing puritans were willing to acknowledge royal supremacy, provided the prince submitted to the supremacy of the Word, the really crucial ques- tion, then, was not whether the final authority lay with the magistrate or the Bible, but who was to provide the final court of appeal in relevant matters of biblical interpretation.22 Debates over royal supremacy, over presbytery and episcopacy, were in the end merely the waves on the surface caused by this tectonic shift which the Reformation had set in motion.
Bancroft’s Argument
We can see this preoccupation with what I am calling ‘epistemological authority’ in the very text that Bancroft has chosen, 1 John 4:1: ‘Dearly
20 Susan Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The conflicts that played out in England should thus be understood not as a peculiar problem created by Tudor politics, as they often are, but as manifestations of the general crisis of epistemological authority that both gave birth to and was intensified by the Reformation. 21 One recent scholar to recognize this epistemological question—‘discerning God’s will,’ as he puts it—at the heart of Tudor political–theological controversies, is Daniel Eppley. See Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England (London: Ashgate, 2007), particularly his excellent analysis of the faultlines over authorita- tive interpretation between Whitgift and Cartwright in ch. 4. Eppley notes that, contrary to frequent assertions, the debate between Puritans and conformists was not fundamentally over whether there was such a thing as ‘things indifferent’ in the church, or even over whether Scripture provided general rules to direct them, but over what rules Scripture pro- vided, and who was to interpret them. Whereas Puritans such as Cartwright argued that certain Pauline principles of edification and non-offensiveness, interpreted and applied by individual ministers, always took precedence, Whitgift argued that Romans 13, the call to submit to the magistrate’s judgment, must always take precedence (149–54). 22 Brachlow, Communion of Saints, 237.
beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God: for many false prophets are gone out into the world.’ The choice of this text is quite remarkable at first glance, this being the sort of passage we would tend to expect to find on the lips of a Puritan. The central clause, ‘try the spirits,’ in particular sounds a Puritan theme, a warning against simply accepting as binding the word of the authorities, and calling for Christians to test every word of man against the word of God. As Susan Schreiner has shown, the preoccupation with ‘trying the spirits’ and the invocation of this passage, had been a recurrent theme for Catholic, Anabaptist, and Protestant writers for at least a century.23 Cargill Thompson notes, in par- ticular, that continental reformers had often employed this text against Anabaptists.24 Nonetheless, the choice of such a text presents a noticeable contrast to the common strategy of conformist sermons, which frequently leaned heavily on calls to obedience like Romans 13 or Titus 3.25 Bancroft is thus making a daring move: rather than immediately calling his hearers to submit their judgments to the prince, who speaks with the authority of God, he is inviting them to exercise judgment as to who speaks from God and who does not. In fact, I would suggest, it is a self-conscious move to turn the tables on Puritan dissent, one made possible by the outrageous- ness of Marprelate’s scurrilous tracts. Up till now, Puritan claims have been fairly sober invocations of Scripture; now, Martin Marprelate has asked the public to hear frightful attacks on the character of those in authority, and Bancroft sees an opportunity to convince the public that if we are to fall to a trial of whose word deserves to be believed, the Puritans are very untrustworthy witnesses. In the process, Bancroft seeks to wrest texts such as 1 John 4:1 away from the Puritan agenda and its call to try everything at the bar of Scripture. Such an agenda, argues Bancroft, is ipso facto seditious. It relies on private interpretation, setting oneself up as an epistemological authority above bishops and princes.26
23 Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?, ch. 6. 24 Cargill Thompson, ‘A Reconsideration,’ 261. 25 Note for instance the contrast in approach with Accession Day sermons preached by Whitgift and Sandys in this period, as seen in Smith, Jr., ‘The Elizabethan Doctrine of the Prince,’ 4–6, 15–17. 26 This was a regular charge of conformist apologists. In the Vestiarian Controversy, Archbishop Parker had complained, ‘But (belyke) you wyll have every man to understande as much as the Prince and councell knoweth and intendeth; or els you wyll set the subject at his choyse. Moreover, here is perylous auctoritie graunted to every subject, to determine upon the Princes lawes, proclamations, and ordinances, that when they shall see them (many tymes otherwayes then they are in deede) unprofitable, then shall they, nay they must not do and accomplyshe the same’. Matthew Parker, A Briefe Examination for the tyme, of a certain declaration lately put in print […] (London: R. Jugge, 1566), 14r. A few years
In the sermon, he actually works through the passage in reverse. He spends the first thirty-two pages of the printed version27 demonstrating that the situation described in John’s time clearly applies in his time as well: false prophets are everywhere to be found in England. He then spends the next eighteen pages (33–49) elaborating on the apostles’ advice to ‘trie the spirits whether they be of God.’ Then we have thirty-five pages (50–84) in which he marshals damning evidence to show that once tried, the Puritans are spirits that clearly do not deserve to be believed, before he moves toward his conclusion, exhorting the magistrates to suppress these dangerous people (85–98); only then, after his opponents have been thor- oughly discredited, does he finally offer, almost as a postscript a brief sub- stantive argument in refutation of their historical claims regarding the equality of ministers (98–103). The logic of his argument is thus: Beware, there are false prophets and seditious spirits out there, among them these Puritans; accordingly, you must be careful whom to believe; and as the Puritans have shown in many ways that they do not deserve to be believed, we can only conclude that they are false prophets that must be suppressed. In the opening section, he argues that false prophets are all those who resist God-given authori- ties, and this includes those who make constant appeal to Scripture, but in novel, idiosyncratic, and self-serving ways, insisting that theirs only is the true interpretation. Accordingly, he is at pains in his early arguments to show how they have no Patristic pedigree for their understanding of the structure of Church government. Tertullian is quoted, ‘They murder the Scriptures to serve their own purpose.’28 Having represented these ‘false prophets’ as so irrational, then, he must provide some explanation of why later, Whitgift declared to Cartwright, ‘It is not every private man’s part to define what is order and comeliness in external matters being indifferent, but is proper to them only to whom God hath committed the government of his church; whose orders and laws (not being against the word of God) whosoever doth disobey, disobeyeth both God and the prince; as you do in disobeying the prince’s laws in these matters’. WW II: 55. 27 We have no way of knowing precisely how closely the printed version matched what was preached on the day, but the title page of Bancroft’s sermon does tell us, ‘wherein some things are now added, which then were omitted, either through want of time, or default in memorie.’ Mary Morrissey argues in ch. 2 of Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons that, although such additions were common, ‘the differences between the oral, written, and printed copies of a sermon did not prevent contemporaries from seeing them as different versions of the same oration’ (35); a relatively close correspondence between oral and printed versions seems the more likely in cases, such as this one, when the sermon was printed shortly after being preached. 28 ‘Cædem scripturarum faciunt ad materiam suam,’ as Bancroft quotes it on p. 11 (‘ad materiam suam cædem scripturarum confecit’ is the original), from De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 38.
they would pursue such a baseless agenda. He offers four motivations, all of which are forms of the fundamental vice of autonomy that he is seeking to highlight: contempt of bishops, ambition, self-love, and covetousness (14–28). In other words, the only reason that individuals will insist on pri- vate interpretations of Scripture contrary to those commonly received is a desire for private advancement. We may thereby infer the converse: those who are public-spirited, seeking the public good, will defer to public inter- pretation of Scripture. This thus sets the stage for the central argument, focusing on the exhortation to ‘Trie the spirits whether they be of God.’ By the time we come to this injunction, then, Bancroft means us to be confident that it cannot possibly mean what a Puritan might mean by it— that individuals are bound to weigh every command against their own assessment of Scripture. We have already been given a litmus test: submis- sive spirits are of God, seditious spirits are of the evil one. Yet as a Protestant, Bancroft cannot deny the doctrine of Christian liberty, which says that Scripture alone and no human authority can bind the conscience. Of course the standard conformist argument here will be that the matters disputed by the Puritans are adiaphora, and hence left open by Scripture, so that Christian liberty is not in question; but Bancroft clearly recognizes that for the Presbyterians, on the matter of church government, this is to beg the question. Who then can determine authoritatively the teaching of Scripture? Bancroft thus knows that he is on dangerous ground and must tread carefully: ‘That which I have to saie of this matter will be subject to slanderous toongs: I praie you therefore conceive me rightly, and do not pervert my meaning’ (33). At this point Bancroft invokes the ideal of a via media, but interestingly, it is not a via media between Rome and Protestantism. Rather, he insists, it is the via media of the magisterial reformers between Rome and radicalism; the Puritans, he will argue, are not super-Protestant but sub-Protestant: Some forbid the children of God to proove any thing. Others command them to be ever seeking and prooving of all things. But neither of them both in a right good sense, do deale therein as they ought to do. A meane course betwixt these two is to be allowed of and followed: which is, that we proove some things, and that we receive without curiositie some other things being alreadie examined, prooved and tried to our hands (33). The first error, he says, is that of Rome, with her hated doctrine of ‘implicit faith’; on this view, Christians must simply take the church authorities’ word for it and seek no further in Scripture themselves: ‘If a man have the exposition of the church of Rome touching any place of Scripture, although he neither know nor understand, whether and how it agreeth with the
29 The quote from Augustine, ‘Melior ergo est fidelis ignorantia quam temeraria scien- tia’, comes from his Sermo 27.4 CCL 41, 362. 30 ‘Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum nec inquisitione post euange- lium. Cum credimus, nihil desideramus ultra credere [Bancroft quotes as quærere].’ From De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, ch. 7.
Bancroft’s diagnosis of the problem, and his prescription of the golden mean, is in fact remarkably similar to that of Henrician reformer Thomas Starkey in his Exhortation on Unitie and Obedience, a work which set the stage for future conformity with its dual rejection of popery and liber- tinism and call for extensive magistratical authority in adiaphora. This realm of adiaphora, in which Starkey calls for implicit faith and quiet sub- mission to authority, is immense, encompassing for Starkey everything beyond the Nicene Creed alone.31 Bancroft appears to concur with this sweeping rejection of lay theological reflection, which places him in an awkward position for an orthodox Protestant, given that Starkey in the 1530s classed English Lutherans among the arrogant libertines. To fortify his Protestant credentials, therefore, Bancroft summons to his aid two of the greatest Protestant theologians, appealing first to the authority of Calvin and then Melanchthon. He invokes Calvin’s commen- tary on the very passage he is considering in order to warn against a Puritan construal of the command to ‘trie the spirits whether they be of God’: ‘he restraineth the words to a due consideration of certain circumstances. For as there he addeth, ‘Gold is tried by the fire, and by the touchstone, but yet of those who have skill so to trie it: for unto those that have no experience therein, neither the stone nor the first serveth to any purpose’ (45) Calvin, he says, distinguishes between public and private trial of doctrine, and says that public must take precedence, ‘For if authoritie and libertie of judging shall be left to private men, there will never be anie certaintie set downe, but rather all religion will wholie become doubtfull’ (46).32
31 ‘Scrupuloous and exact knowlege of thinges conteyned in goddis scriptures, is noth- inge so necessary to induce them to obedience, as is mekenes and humilitie, which is among many other thinges to them whiche be rude, the chiefe way, wherby they maye attayne to the trewe sense of goddis worde and doctrine. For the which cause as I thynke in the counsayle of Nece, the summe of our feythe, conteynynge suche poyntis as be neces- sary to every mannes salvation … as a thynge sufficient to be had in hart and mynde of all men, without ferther enserce or inquisition, in the reste ever gyvynge obedience to the order and custome in every countrey receyved with concorde and unitie. So that we may judge, as hit appereth to me, that to the unlerned people and bodye of everye commynaltie, withoute ferther knowledge, sufficiente hit is, every manne doying his office and dewtie, as he is called, and by goddis provysion therto appoynted, here in this worldly polycie, sted- fastely to hange uppon the commune order, leanyng therto constantely, ever comforted with the same feythe and expectation of the everlastynge lyfe, hereafter to be hadde in immortalitie’. See Exhortation to Unitie and Obedience, facsimile reprint (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), 7r–7v. For a good introduction to this fascinating and elu- sive Henrician political theorist, see Thomas F. Mayer, Thomas Starkey and the Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 32 See Calvin’s Commentaries, ed. and trans. Joseph Haroutonian, vol. 45: Commentary on James, Peter, 1 John, Jude (available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom45.html).
Accordingly, every good Christian polity, he says, requires of its minis- ters subscription to publicly established articles of religion. Is this a violation of Christian liberty? Well yes, according to some, says Bancroft, such as the ‘notable heretike’ Andreas Osiander, who said, ‘O tyrannie, O cruelty, christian liberty is heerby restrained; a yoke & bondage laid upon men’s consciences: godlie mens mouths heereby shall be stopped,’ a cry, says Bancroft, that is now frequently heard in England. Against such libertinism, Bancroft brings in no less an authority than Melanchthon, who in his refutation of Osiander, argued that subscrip- tion to publicly determined doctrine cohered with Christian liberty.33 In this section, then, Bancroft has sought to cleverly turn the tables upon the Puritans: he invokes a passage central to their protest, shows that it cannot possibly mean what they use it for, and turns it against them, by implying that when we ‘trie the spirits’ by the appropriate means—the voice of the church and public authority—it is the Puritans who are shown not to be of God (and indeed, not of the Reformation either). The remainder of his sermon serves merely to further confirm this devastat- ing verdict.
Penry’s Response
Has Bancroft successfully maintained a golden mean? Peter Lake, for one, doesn’t think so, recounting this passage in Anglicans and Puritans? as evi- dence of the extremity of quietism and authoritarianism to which the conformist rejection of the ideal of edification tended. ‘On this evidence there was no room left in Bancroft’s view of the world for any sort of active (and conventionally protestant) lay piety.’34 In his response to Bancroft, Penry clearly shares this bleak assessment, saying that ‘this doctrine of yours, tendeth whollie to remoove an able Ministerie out of the church’ (32). Indeed, he goes further, and unsurprisingly insists that far from
In fact, Bancroft is somewhat one-sided in his use of Calvin here, for Calvin goes on to remind us that councils (the public trial of doctrine) may err, and accordingly makes much more clear than does Bancroft that conscience must defer to this public trial only for the sake of good order in the forum politicum; this does not obviate the need for private trial by each individual in the forum conscientiæ. 33 Bancroft here cites from Melanchthon’s Oratio in qua refutatur calumnia Osiandria, reprehendetis promissionem eorum, quibus tribuitur testimonium doctrinæ, in Declama tionum D. Philippis Melanthonis omnium […], ed. Johannes Caselius, Georg Cracow, and Petrus Lotichius (Strassburg: Theodosius Rihel, 1570), 564–73. 34 Anglicans and Puritans, 128.
carving out a golden mean, Bancroft has simply replicated the popery that he claims to oppose: You account the Papists to be false Prophets, because they will suffer the people to trie nothing, but teach them wholly to depend upon them: you do wel in it. But if this touching [the authority of] councels, be not to join hand with them, in the point wherein you pretend to be their adversary, and if this be not to teach men to beleeve, as their mother the church doth, let the reader judge? (34) There are two options, says Penry. Either Bancroft must believe the church cannot err, which would make him papist outright, or else that she is sub- ject to error; if the latter, ‘to what end should we stand to her determina- tion in matters of question, any further then we are assured, that her decrees are according unto the word?’ It is accordingly necessary ‘to trie whether her determinations bee according unto the word, and to reject them, if they bee otherwise.’ Penry minces no words in his assessment of Bancroft, saying that he is ‘not far from a close papist, how vehement so ever you speake against them’ (35). Surprisingly, Penry makes no effort to counter the quotations from Calvin or Melanchthon directly, but he does address the issue of confes- sional subscription, which Bancroft had claimed the Puritans considered an infringement of their Christian liberty. Not at all, says Penry: ‘It is not onely lawfull but necessary, that all men, of what state soever they bee, should be required, yea, and compelled by the Magistrate, to subscribe unto true religion. … This we doe willingly confesse: Howbeit, we hold it unlawfull to subscribe in that forme that our Bishops do exact at our hands’ (36). In other words, as Penry goes on to explain, subscription is wonderful, so long as it is subscription to the truth. When they oppose terms of subscription that they consider anti-Christian, including ‘the pro- phanation of the Sacrament by women, with other manifold abuses,’ ‘wee are presently cried out uppon, as being giddie Spirits, and men that cannot bee content with any good order established by lawe’ (37). At this point, one cannot but sympathize with both Bancroft and Penry. Bancroft’s charge that the Puritans consider required subscription to be ipso facto a violation of Christian liberty is clearly unfair—hardline Puritans are in fact every bit as zealous for uniformity as the conformists are. But Penry’s response is clearly question-begging; if ministers will sub- mit only to terms of subscription that they consider to be true according to the Word of God, this is as much as to say, ‘If I agree with you, I’ll agree to agree with you; but if not, I must disagree.’ And yet how could it be oth- erwise, given the Protestant doctrine of Christian liberty? The conscience
Defining the Royal Supremacy
When conflict over the doctrine of the royal supremacy surfaces explicitly in the debate between Bancroft and Penry, it is thus, as we suggested above, upon this battle-line of epistemological authority that it plays out. ‘Looke whatsoever prerogative in ecclesiastical or civil causes hee or any man livinge can truly attribute unto the civil magistrate, wee do the same’ (39), Penry protests. He goes on to argue that, unless Bancroft claims for the magistrate powers that formerly belonged to the Pope, such as remit- ting sins, or invests her with authority to ‘preach the word, administer the sacramentes, take the charge of watching over the maners of the people … ordain ministers … etc.,’ or authorizes her to make laws contrary to the law of God, then they occupy the same ground, and Bancroft has no reason to object to the Puritan teaching on the royal prerogative. He willingly grants that her majesty and Parliament alone have power to enact godly laws concerning religion, and to enforce them upon the ministers and people. Does Bancroft really mean to imply that the Queen has authority to enact ungodly laws, contrary to Scripture? Penry certainly hopes not. As Eppley, Brachlow, and others have pointed out, it is just this that made the differ- ence between the two parties so elusive, and so difficult to resolve.36 All were agreed that the magistrate must, as a matter of course, rule according to the Word of God, and that if she commanded contrary to it, a subject’s allegiance to God must come first. But how was she to determine what laws were according to the Word of God? For Penry, the answer was obvi- ous: just ‘as her majestie in worldly matters, is to give eare unto the Lawiers which have skill in that facultie’ (40–41), so she will of course take advice
35 Daniel Eppley makes the same point of Whitgift’s argument against Cartwright, say- ing ‘Because he accepts the internal, self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit as the ultimate source and standard of a right understanding of scripture, Whitgift also concedes the foundational claim of the Presbyterians that the subjective insight of the individual Christian under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is the highest criterion of a correct biblical interpretation. … A Christian who feels led by the Spirit to an interpretation of scripture in accord with Cartwright’s must, on Whitgift’s own principles, hold to that interpretation no matter how many opposing arguments or human authorities can be mustered to the con- trary’. See Defending Royal Supremacy, 159–60. 36 See Brachlow, Communion of Saints, ch. 7; Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, ch. 4.
in spiritual matters from those learned in such—the ‘true ministers of the word’—‘in the matters of God is she to establish nothing in the church, but that which the true ministers and true governors (if they may bee had) shall shew unto her to be according unto the worde of God’ (41). Of course, while Penry perhaps intends this protestation of innocence in good faith, it is certainly a bit disingenuous. The problem is not that he makes the clergy the Queen’s legislative advisors—indeed, Richard Hooker will in fact make a very similar argument in Book VIII, chapter 6 of his Lawes regarding the need for the magistrate to consult with the clergy on matters spiritual (although of course he is talking primarily about the bishops, not a select group of credentialed Puritan pastors and presby- ters). But for Hooker, the Queen is bound from the standpoint of prudence to take such counsel—this is ‘the most naturall and religious course in making of lawes’37—but it is not absolutely necessary. The counsel of ministers thus remains just that: counsel. Parliament and the Queen still reserve the right to assent to it or to veto it, and without such assent it is not law for the realm, however convinced some may be of its godly necessity.38 Penry, however, appears to invest so much interpretive author- ity in the hands of ‘true ministers of the word’ that the magistrate has no choice but to assent: her majesty and the Parliament are bound to establish and erect amongst their subjects, al such lawes and ceremonies, as the true ministers of the word, shall proove by the Scriptures of God, to be meet and necessary for the government of the temple, and house of the Lord, within this kingdome: and that they are bound to see, that no form of religion or Church-government be in force amongst their subjects, but that alone which by the word of God may be proved lawful (41, italics mine). No wonder, then, that leading conformists saw this as no better than popery—a demand that the laity and those in civil authority quietly sub- mit to all determinations of the clergy, with no right to interpose their own convictions. Seen this way, it appears that Penry’s model of epistemologi- cal authority is little better than that of Bancroft’s which he resists; he has merely flipped it around: where Bancroft denies to ministers the right to withhold assent from the interpretive decisions of the magistrate and the
37 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, VIII.6.11. In W. Speed Hill and P.G. Stanwood, eds., The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1981), 403. 38 See Lawes VIII.6.6–8, VIII.6.10–14 for Hooker’s careful spelling out of this relationship.
39 See Anglicans and Puritans?, ch. 3. 40 Hooker’s attempt to resolve the Puritan crisis of conscience is a prominent theme of my forthcoming PhD dissertation, ‘The Freedom of a Christian Commonwealth: Richard Hooker and the Problem of Christian Liberty.’ Existing articles that helpfully address the subject along similar lines to my own view are M.E.C. Perrott, ‘Richard Hooker and the Problem of Authority in the Elizabethan Church,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49.1 (1998): 29–60; and Robert Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’s Synthesis and the Problem of Allegiance,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 37.1 (1976): 111–24.
JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE SERMONS, 1603–1640
PREACHING THE GOOD NEWS: WILLIAM BARLOW NARRATES THE FALL OF ESSEX AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT
Anne James
In the introduction to his pamphlet justifying the execution of the second earl of Essex, published anonymously, Francis Bacon distinguishes between the evidence necessary for a legal conviction and that required to satisfy the public appetite for knowledge. Essex’s trial should have pro- vided ‘sufficient satisfaction,’ but because ‘false and corrupt Collections and Relations of the proceedings’ continue to circulate, ‘it is requisite that the world doe vnderstand aswell the præcedent practises and inducements to the Treasons, as the open & actuall Treasons thēselves.’1 In other words, while a judge only requires proof that certain actions were committed, the public insists on understanding how and why they were committed. To satisfy this demand, Bacon needed to create a narrative, and he found the rudi- ments of one in William Barlow’s sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on the Sunday following Essex’s execution. Less than five years later, Barlow was to supply a narrative framework for another official pamphlet when he preached on the Sunday following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. On both occasions the authorities provided Barlow with instructions as well as details of the events, but allowed him some degree of latitude in constructing interpretations that would be acceptable to both his political masters and his audience. The preacher’s response to this challenge was to plot the events according to existing generic codes, creating memorable scenes for his hearers and readers. So successful were his efforts that secu- lar apologists adapted them for their own pamphlets, Bacon’s account of Essex’s revolt and the anonymous ‘Discourse of the maner of this late intended treason’ that recounted the Gunpowder Plot. Generally speaking, scholars have paid more attention to the relation- ship between the instructions Paul’s Cross preachers received and the
1 Francis Bacon, A Declaration of the practises & treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his complices (London: Robert Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1601), A3r, A3v.
2 The printed version of the sermon misidentifies the text as Matthew 21.22. 3 John Mayer, A Treasury of ecclesiasticall expositions, vpon the difficult and doubtfull places of the Scriptures collected out of the best esteemed interpreters, both auncient and moderne, together with the authors judgement, and various observations (London: J[ohn] D[awson] for John Bellamie, 1622), 257; Richard Ward, Theologicall questions, dogmaticall observations, and evangelicall essays, vpon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to St Matthew (London: [Marmaduke Parson et al] for Peter Cole, 1640), 284. The only source Barlow cites in the margin is Saint Basil.
God inuisible. Certainely, a mind inclined to rebellion, was neuer well pos- sessed of religion.4 Even a tyrant is God’s minister, and anyone who wants to kill or depose a ruler is guilty of both irreligion and treason. By downplaying the second part of Jesus’s command, Barlow makes clear that the correct way to please God is to obey temporal authority. The opening of the sermon contextualizes the verse within the chapter through images of hunting, describing the series of hostile questions Jesus faces as nets and snares set by various enemies including the Pharisees and Herodians, who thought he could answer the question of whether it was lawful to pay taxes only by committing either treason or blasphemy. Jesus avoids this trap with his astute answer, and Barlow, walking a similar razor’s edge, clearly hopes to emulate Christ’s example by satisfying both his political masters and his religious conscience. Nevertheless, he must have known that the text was not innocent of associations with Essex. In 1599, John Richardson had found himself under house arrest for an 18 November Paul’s Cross sermon on this text that was suspected of com- paring the relationship between Essex and the queen to that of Seneca and Nero.5 Dividing his text into three parts, Barlow begins by explaining that ‘Give’ refers to the Christian’s primary duties of willingly and cheerfully offering alms to the poor and obedience to superiors. ‘Caesar’ is any ruler, whether kind or cruel, legitimate or tyrannical, and exposing him or her to any fear or danger, even without intending murder or deposition, consti- tutes both irreligion and treason. This definition is broad enough to include Essex’s actions, whatever his intentions had been. Edging into application, Barlow condemns Robert Parsons for corrupting Essex by dedicating his book on the succession to him.6 Honour, obedience, fear, subsidies, and prayers are ‘the things of Caesar,’ but Barlow pleads lack of
4 William Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent: Martij 1.1600. With a short discourse of the Late Earle of Essex his Confession, and Penitence, before and at the time of his death (London: Mathew Law, 1601), B3r. 5 Arnold Hunt, ‘Tuning the Pulpits: The Religious Context of the Essex Revolt,’ in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 91–92. The synopsis of Richardson’s sermon appears in PRO, SP 12/276/107, The National Archives, London. See also Richardson’s answers to his examiners: Examination on oath of John Richardson, DD, MS 2004, fol. 9, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 6 Published under the name R. Doleman, A Conference abovt the next svccession to the crowne of Ingland, divided into two partes ([Antwerp: A. Conincx], 1594).
7 Cecil’s instructions survive in State Papers, Domestic, SP 12/278/126, The National Archives, London (calendared in CSPD 1598–1602, 598–99). Mary Morrissey notes that these instructions represented a tactical shift from the directions given to preachers in the immediate aftermath of the failed rebellion. Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 89. Another several pages of notes apparently intended for Barlow’s use in composing the sermon survive in Lambeth Palace Library along with a copy of Barlow’s sermon emended by Archbishop Whitgift prior to publica- tion. The handwriting on these pages has not been identified but may be Whitgift’s. Their author instructs the preacher to emphasize that the queen had been generous to Essex and that he had been insolent in return, that nevertheless she was ‘so farre from disgracinge him as shee rather heaped on him honor and gifts of infynite proffitt,’ that Essex had scorn- fully denied any intent against the queen at his arraignment but had later admitted ‘what danger he should haue brought the realm unto if his proiect had taken place,’ and that he had finally called witnesses to hear his confession. The notes conclude that Barlow may end with his own recollections of Essex’s penitence ‘wherein nothing can bee better sett downe, then as you have allreadie done it vnder your owne handes,’ suggesting that Barlow had already written his account of the execution. ‘Papers Mainly concerning Robert Devereux’, 2nd Earl of Essex, MS 2872, fols. 57–58, LPL. Barlow clearly followed some of these instructions as well as those from Cecil. Hunt points out that Barlow also seems to have used Stephen Egerton’s 15 February Blackfriars sermon as a source. Hunt, ‘Tuning the Pulpits,’ 99–102. Despite the evidence that Barlow received advice from several quarters, he insisted that his information was the result of his own visits to the court during the period of Essex’s imprisonment. 8 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, B8v. Barlow had preached the victory sermon at Paul’s Cross, which was one of the reasons that he was selected to preach in 1601, the authorities believing that the condemnation would have more weight coming from a former supporter. 9 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, C3r.
more grievous sin of pride.10 Nevertheless, Essex’s story, unlike those of Satan and other overreachers, must end not with obduracy and damna- tion, but with repentance and salvation. Having already assured his audience that Essex’s ‘soule, no doubt [is] with the saints in heauen,’ Barlow needs only to conduct his auditors to the pinnacle of Essex’s pride by describing his defiance after his arrest and then to lead them through the stages of his penitence.11 Cecil’s instructions required Barlow to emphasize the threat to the queen, and he uses his commentary on Essex’s confession to offer his audience a vivid word picture describing Elizabeth at the mercy of armed Catholics, inviting them to ‘imagine’ how frightened she would have been, and to ‘thinke’ what it would have been like for her to see her chambers running with blood.12 Although imagining the queen’s death is treason, and despite his own promise to speak only of what he has witnessed, Barlow relies heavily on cultivating the imaginations of his hearers, sweeping them up in the possibility that they could have been harmed or killed as the revolt unfolded. He must show his auditors not only that Essex deserved death for his disobedience to Caesar, but also, as per his instruc- tions, that the earl does not deserve their support, having merely courted the people for his personal ends. To this end, Barlow suggests a parallel for Essex in the life of Coriolanus, relying on Plutarch to describe him as ‘a gallant young, but a discontented Romane.’13 Although Barlow does not develop the analogy, his auditors could hardly have been unaware that while Plutarch’s portrait described a Roman of great ability and courage, Coriolanus was no friend to the lower classes. The preacher then describes Essex’s overnight transformation from defiance to penitence and his good death as a repentant sinner. The proofs of the earl’s penitence are his request for humility and his admission of pride, the sin he had previ- ously refused to confess.14 Barlow thus assures Essex’s followers of his eternal welfare. Even if this crumb of comfort did not satisfy many of his hearers, the preacher’s narrative of Essex’s fall and redemption served a homiletic purpose, while his defence of secular obedience satisfied the authorities.15
10 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, C3v. 11 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, C3v. 12 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, Dv-D2v. 13 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, C3v. 14 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent, D7v. 15 The defensive tone of Barlow’s preface indicates that he had been stung by criticism, and he recites some of the rumours that his performance had been subjected to.
Having acknowledged the need for an interpretative framework, Bacon adapted Barlow’s dramatic account into a self-consciously theatrical de casibus tragedy in his anonymous pamphlet, A Declaration of the Treasons of the late Earle of Essex, and his Complices.16 The first act of this play takes place in Ireland, although Essex may have been plotting treason even before that time.17 Like Barlow, Bacon emphasizes the honours the queen heaped upon Essex, which became ‘nothing els but wings for his ambition’ because he aspired ‘vnto a greatnesse,’ desiring only power.18 In Ireland, ‘Essex drawing now towards the Catastrophe, or last part of that Tragedy, for which he came vpon the Stage in Ireland, his Treasons grew to a further ripenesse,’ and he made a secret bargain with Tyrone.19 Blunt and Southampton have attested to dissuading Essex from returning to England with an army, ‘So as nowe the worlde may see how long since my Lord put off his vizard, and disclosed the secrets of his heart to two of his most confident friends, falling vpon that vnnaturall and detestable treason, whereunto all his former Actions in his gouernement in Ireland, (and God knowes howe long before) were but Introductions.’20 Thereupon he planned ‘the second act of this Tragedy … which was, that my Lord should present himselfe to her Maiestie as prostrating himselfe at her [Elizabeth’s] feete, and desire the remoue of such persons, as he called his enemies, from about her.’21 The earl’s alleged plans for distributing his men about the palace read like a set of stage directions, enabling the reader easily to visualize the action intended, and perhaps to forget that it never actually occurred.22 The tragedy’s third act takes place at Essex House on Sunday 8 February. Bacon situates this day’s events carefully in both space and time, beginning with Essex’s mustering of his friends at 8 a.m. and con- cluding with his surrender at 10 p.m. While most of the action occurs at
16 Bacon, of course, could draw upon other sources, including his own previous rela- tions with Essex and his presence at and participation in Essex’s arraignment. 17 In contrast, the Lambeth Palace Library manuscript of instructions to Barlow had advised him not to discuss Essex’s conduct in Ireland (LPL MS 2872, f. 57r). 18 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, A4v. 19 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, Cr. 20 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, C4r-v. 21 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, Ev. 22 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, Dv. In this case, we can see a clear line of development from Cecil’s instructions through Barlow’s sermon to Bacon’s pam- phlet. Cecil’s instructions required Barlow to include this detail to show that Essex must have expected blood to be shed if the plans had been carried out. Barlow repeated the information, using it to show how frightened the queen would have been, whereas Bacon uses it in a more damaging way to show intentionality, explaining that the men were to be in place before a signal was sent to Essex House for the earl to approach the palace.
Essex House, the real stage for this act is London, around which Essex pro- cesses in a parody of a royal progress or coronation procession as he seeks followers. Speeches and dialogue enliven the account as the Lord Keeper delivers the queen’s message, Essex is proclaimed traitor in the streets, and the earl negotiates the conditions of his surrender. This account characterizes Essex as a tragic hero whose flaw is ambi- tion, a manifestation of pride.23 God ‘often punisheth ingratitude by ambi- tion, and ambition by treason, and treason by finall ruine’ begins the text, enabling Bacon to avoid producing specific religious or political motives.24 Instead, the author emphasizes the providential course of events. When Essex returned from Ireland, ‘his heart thus fraughted with Treasons, and presented himselfe to her Maiestie: it pleased God, in his singular proui- dence ouer her Maiestie, to guide and hem in her proceeding towards him, in a narrow way of safetie betweene two perils,’ and she placed him under house arrest.25 Similarly, although the queen’s sending for Essex on 7 February may have seemed sudden to men, God ‘had in his diuine proui- dence long agoe cursed this action, with the Curse that the Psalme spea- keth of, That it should be like the vntimely fruit of a woman, brought foorth before it came to perfection,’26 and during the actual revolt, ‘it pleased God, that her Maiesties directions at Court, though in a case so strange and sud- den, were iudiciall and sound.’ Finally, providence turns Essex from a great man into ‘an example of disloyaltie.’27 The tragic mode suits Bacon’s secular and legal purposes—like Barlow he needs to acknowledge Essex’s greatness to satisfy his supporters and to justify his own earlier friendship, but unlike Barlow he is not required to assert the earl’s final redemption. Essex simply mounted to the top of Fortune’s wheel before beginning his inevitable decline. Bacon dismisses in a single paragraph Essex’s confession of his ‘great,’ his ‘bloudy’, his ‘cry- ing’, and his ‘infectious’ sins, which Barlow had lingered over.28 Bacon will only grudgingly admit that Essex seems to have experienced ‘a kind of remorse’ and quote his assertion that he has ‘become a new man’ since the trial.29 Whereas Barlow concentrates on Essex’s reconciliation with
23 Shakespeare and Fletcher describe the sin of the fallen angels as ambition in Henry VIII (3.2.441), quoted in the OED from the 1623 Folio. The first known performance of the play took place in 1613. 24 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, A4v. 25 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, Dr. 26 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, E3r-v. 27 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, F3v. 28 Bacon, A Declaration of the practises and treasons, I3r. 29 Bacon, A Declaration of the practices and treasons, I3r.
God, Bacon concludes somewhat acidly that he continued to blame his confederates and died without farewells to family or friends. In his Paul’s Cross sermon, then, Barlow shaped the Essex event into a Christian narrative of fall and redemption that Bacon rewrote as de casi- bus tragedy. Both sermon and pamphlet narratives were imaginative con- structions of motives and actions shaped by familiar literary patterns as well as by the events themselves. Both reflected official concerns with per- suading auditors and readers that Essex had sought, at the very least, to frighten the queen, and that he had only courted the common people for his own advancement. The strategy of relying upon men who had previ- ously supported Essex—Barlow by preaching the Cadiz victory sermon and Bacon through their earlier friendly relations—was entirely success- ful neither with Essex’s supporters nor with those who had commissioned their efforts. While Barlow lost Elizabeth’s favour, he rose to prominence again under James; conversely, in 1604 when Essex’s reputation had rebounded in the new reign, Bacon found himself compelled to justify his harsh stance against the earl by publishing his Apologie, in certaine impu- tations concerning the Late Earle of Essex.30 Only a few years later, Barlow’s interpretative skills were tested again, but this time by chance, since he had already been scheduled to preach on 10 November 1605 before the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. In his pref- ace to the printed sermon, the preacher’s friend explains that while Barlow had received detailed instructions for the Essex sermon, in this case ‘the late receiuing of the Instructions which in that short space could not bee many’ meant that he had obtained his information chiefly from the parlia- mentary speeches of James and Lord Chancellor Egerton the day before and his instructions from a conference with Salisbury later that evening.31
30 According to John Manningham, Elizabeth reprimanded Barlow in 1602 for attempt- ing to enter her presence and thereby reminding her of Essex’s death. The Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1976), 87. Bacon’s Apologie consists primarily of attempts to show that the author tried to act as a mediator between Essex and the queen; however, vestiges of his approach in the Declaration remain when he compares Essex to Icarus, and in his frequent use of the adjectives ‘fortu- nate’ and ‘unfortunate’ to describe the earl. Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie, in certaine impu- tations concerning the late Earle of Essex (London: F. Norton, 1604), B2r and passim. 31 William Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember being the next Sunday after the discouerie of this late horrible treason (London: John W[indet], 1606), A3v-A4r. No written instructions appear to have survived in this case. James’s speech was subsequently printed, and the outline of Egerton’s is recorded in the Journals of the House of Lords, vol. 2: 1578–1614, 357. Whether Barlow’s preface was in fact written by a ‘friend’ or by the preacher himself, the strategy indicates that he was still smarting over the reception of the Essex sermon, an indication reinforced by the defensive tone of the preface and its references to the previous occasion.
As on the former occasion, Barlow had apparently been told which aspects of the situation he was to emphasize but was left free to select an appro- priate text and to apply it within those guidelines. His choice of text, Psalm 18.50 (‘Great Deliuerances giueth he vnto his King, and sheweth mercy to his annointed Dauid and to his seede for euer’), complements James’s approach of focusing on his individual deliverance as the means by which the nation is delivered. Barlow makes his narrative more immediate, how- ever, by reminding his audience that they were among the plot’s intended victims. In opening his text, Barlow proposes a much more complex structure than he had employed in the earlier sermon. Rather than crumbling the text, he divides the Psalm into two parts, ‘intensive’ and ‘extensive’: the first refers to the nature of the deliverances (great deliverances); the sec- ond refers to how they are distributed or communicated (to David and his seed). The first part subdivides into their double nature (plurality of num- ber and greatness or magnitude) and their double quality (their internal or essential wholesomeness and their external or accidental magnificence or becomingness to God). The second or ‘extensive’ part is divided into the personal (the king’s deliverance as an eminent person, a sacred person, and a person approved by God) and the successive (undefined number and unlimited time of the deliverances). Although in the printed version he uses the headings ‘The First Part’ and ‘The Second Part,’ in fact these are the two subtopics of the first part. He does not actually approach the sec- ond part until after he has described the plot and its anticipated results, and only then to outline what he planned to say but cannot because he has run out of time. The printed sermon also indicates two breaks where Barlow had read first Fawkes’s confession and then ‘papers’ concerning the confession along with his own notes on them.32 In the first part, he catalogues both the number and magnitude of David’s deliverances and the honours he received from God. Moving from this part of the expli- cation into application, he declares that ‘All these of Dauids were great indeed, but compared to this of our gracious King: (the last, I trust, for a worse there cannot be) is but as a minium to a large, whether we
32 Fawkes’s confession was the only one available at this early date. Mark Nicholls sug- gests that the ‘papers’ alluded to might be an outline that had been presented to parlia- ment the previous day: Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 26. Lori Anne Ferrell argues that Barlow’s excuses regarding lack of preparation do not justify the disorganization and stylistic flaws of the printed edition, suggesting that Barlow wanted to maintain the sense of excitement and immediacy of the original deliv- ery. See Government by Polemic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 75.
33 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, C2v. 34 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, C3r. James had described the apocalypse with a similar emphasis upon the cruelty of Satan and the Antichrist in his Fruitefull Meditation, Containing a plaine and easie Exposition, or laying open of the 7. 8. 9. and 10. verses of the 20. chap. of the Reuelation, in forme and maner of a sermon, first published in Scotland in 1588 and reprinted in London in 1603. 35 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, C3r. 36 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, C3v. The poem is: I.H. [John Heath, Fellow of New College, Oxford], The Divell of the Vault or The Unmasking of Murder (London: E. A[llde] for Nathnaiell [sic] Butter, 1606). 37 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, C4r.
plot, Barlow develops the apocalyptic mode established by his allusion to Revelation 12.4. Here the preacher envisions the kind of reverse creation described in John’s prophecy by introducing a series of images in which the various lights of the kingdom are extinguished, leaving it in ‘Cimmerian dark- ness.’38 While most attempts to change government unfold slowly, this one would have occurred ‘in the twinkling of an eye,’ echoing Paul’s descrip- tion of the general resurrection in 1 Cor. 15.52.39 This benighted nation would then have been open to foreign invasion by the Catholic emissaries of Antichrist or a domestic usurper. Whereas James had emphasized his personal deliverance, Barlow demonstrated forcefully that none would have remained unaffected by this event had it taken place. If the king’s speech was a measured response to the discovery, designed to prevent panicked reprisals against domestic Catholics and to avoid jeopardizing the new peace with Spain, then Barlow’s sermon was the equivalent of tabloid journalism. Nevertheless, Barlow’s apocalyptic rendering was not merely the prod- uct of a vivid imagination. His methods were different than the king’s because his audience was not a select group of parliamentarians but the whole city of London; however, his underlying strategy was similar—to demonstrate that Guy Fawkes and the other plotters did not represent ordinary English Catholics.40 In his speech, James had insisted that ‘many honest men, seduced with some errors of Popery, may yet remaine good and faithfull Subiects.’41 By portraying Fawkes as Satan, Barlow insisted upon his singularity, not quite exonerating other Catholics but certainly suggesting that Fawkes did not represent the majority of his coreligionists. At the same time, Fawkes’s social status presented Barlow with a difficulty that became apparent as he contemplated the magnitude of the plot. The perpetrator of this averted catastrophe was not a great man but a man described several times by James as a ‘wretch,’ and reduced still further by Barlow to ‘vermine of the basest sorte’ working underground like a mole.42
38 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, D3r. 39 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, Dv. 40 At this point, Fawkes was still considered the most important of the plotters, or at least of those who had survived. 41 His Maiesties Speach speach in this last session of Parliament … Together with a dis- course of the maner of the discouery of this late intended Treason (London: Robert Barker, 1605), C2v. 42 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, Dr. The social status of the plotters continued to trouble the authorities. Convinced that a noble- man must be involved in such a horrendous scheme, they imprisoned Henry Percy, Earl of
After reading Fawkes’s confession, the preacher reiterates, in a dazzling display of accumulatio, his astonishment that this darkenes, this blindenes, this prophanes, this superstition, this weakenes, this lawles fury, had with this blowing vp bin blown in & ouer this whole nation, a thing which neither the greatest Potentate of the world, with his strongest inuasion, nor the most dangerous rebel, though most popular & powerfull, coulde haue brought to passe after many repulses, & in many years, namely, to take away at once, the hope of succession, the Oracles of wisedome, the Chariots of Israel, the Beau-peeres of Learning, the buttresses of strength, the guardians of iustice, the glory of the Nobilitie, and in one word, the Flower of the whole Kingdome. (D2r) Neither an Essex nor an Armada could have caused the destruction that a man of lowly birth has almost accomplished simply by stockpiling gun- powder and threatening to set a match to it. In the previous day’s speech, James had described the plot as ‘this great and horrible attempt, whereof the like was neuer either heard or read,’ and Barlow agrees that there are no adequate classical or biblical parallels, not only for the magnitude and cruelty of the design but also for the status of the perpetrators.43 As Paul Connerton suggests, naming something categorizes it, and the plot both requires and resists classification.44 Nevertheless, by emphasizing the fail- ure of the plot and the low social status of the man considered at this point to be the chief plotter, both the king and Barlow had already ges- tured towards another familiar literary genre that could be effectively used to shape plot narratives. By early December, a pamphlet containing the king’s 9 November speech and an anonymous ‘Discourse of the maner of this late intended treason’ had been rushed into print. In ‘The Printer to the Reader’, Robert Barker, the king’s printer, disingenously claimed that the ‘Discourse’ mys- teriously appeared when he was about to print the speech. Contemporaries seem to have attributed the narrative to James, and the entire pamphlet became known as ‘The King’s Book.’ In his Answer to certaine scandalous Papers, Salisbury praises ‘this Princely and religious worke’ in which his Maiestie (like to those kings of whome Seneca speaketh, that doe more good by Example then by Lawes) hath increased our obligation, by leauing
Northumberland, in the tower until 1621. In the absence of solid evidence against the earl, however, the authorities increasingly focused upon the Jesuits as the more important conspirators. 43 His Maiesties Speach, B2r. 44 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 27.
vnder his owne hand, such a plaine & perfect Record of his own true thanke- fulnes to Almighty God, for his so great and miraculous graces; as neither the present Time, nor ages to come can euer be so ingrate, as not to retaine the same in perpetual memorie.45 Based on its inclusion in James Montagu’s collection of the king’s writings, Thomas Bayley Howell, in his Collection of State Trials, also assumed James’s authorship.46 When David Jardine revised this work later in the century, however, he speculated that the ‘Discourse’ might be Francis Bacon’s work. More recently, Mark Nicholls has concurred that stylistic elements may support Jardine’s conclusion, although he recommends caution in attributing authorship.47 The pamphlet appeared before Barlow’s sermon, which had been entered in the Stationer’s Register on 11 December, but was not printed until 1606, and seems to have helped Barlow to resolve the dilemma of Fawkes’s status. In the preface to the sermon, likely written after December, Barlow or his friend calls the plot ‘this late Tragi-comical treason, (Tragical, in the dreadeful intention: Comicall in the happye and timely Detection thereof).’48 The writer of the ‘Discourse’ had similarly concluded that the plot was a ‘Tragedie to the Traytors, but tragicomedie to the King and all his true
45 Robert Cecil, An Answere to Certaine Scandalous Papers, scattered abroad vnder colour of a Catholicke Admonition (London: Robert Barker, 1606), A3v-A4r. Although this evidence seems fairly conclusive, it is possible that Salisbury was referring to the speech rather than the ‘Discourse.’ 46 Thomas Bayly Howell, Cobbett’s complete collection of state trials and proceedings for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors from the earliest period to the present time … : from the ninth year of the reign of King Henry, the Second, a.d. 1163, to … [George IV, a.d. 1820] (London : T.C. Hansard for R. Bagshaw, 1809–1828), vol. 2, 1809. 47 Nevertheless, Nicholls suggests that the author of the ‘Discourse’ used Bacon’s Essex pamphlet as a model. Dana Sutton proposes the pamphlet on Dr. Parry’s treason as a model. Sutton is correct that Parry’s was the first pamphlet in the genre that Bacon later developed. I would suggest, however, that the genre evolved not only through these two pamphlets, but also through James’s own narrative of the Gowrie conspiracy in Scotland. Mark Nicholls, ‘Discovering Gunpowder Plot: The King’s Book and the Dissemination of News,’ Recusant History 28.3 (2007), 401–02; Dana Sutton ‘Milton’s In Quintum Novembris, anno ætatis 17 (1626), Choices and Intentions,’ in Qui Miscvit vtile Dvlci: Festschrift Essays for Paul Lachlan MacKendrick, edited by Gareth Schmeling and Jon D. Mikalson, 349–75 (Waconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1998), 357; Howell, Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, 195; David Jardine, Criminal Trials supplying Copious Illustrations of the Important Periods in English History during the Reigns of Queene Elizabeth and James I, v. 2 (London: M.A. Nattali, 1847), 4–5; A True and Plaine Declaration of the Horrible Treasons, practised by William Parry the traitor, against the Queenes Maiestie (London: C[hristopher] B[arker], 1585); [James I], The Earle of Gowries conspiracie against the Kings Maiestie at Saint Ionstoun vpon Tuesday the fift day of August (London: Valentine Simmes, 1603). 48 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember, A3r.
Subiects.’49 Although this genre would shortly acquire a narrower defini- tion, at this time it still described any action that blended comic and tragic elements and in which high and low characters might both appear. The ‘Discourse’ begins in the comic mode, describing a ‘Vnited and truely happy Isle’ flourishing ‘in a most happie and plentifull Peace, as well at home as abroad, sustained and conducted by these two maine Pillars of all good Gouernement, Pietie and Ivstice, no forreine grudge, nor inward whispering of discontent any way appearing.’50 So secure was the king that he had gone hunting. Tragedy threatens in the form of ‘a blowing vp of powder, which might bee performed by one base knaue in a darke corner,’ but the plot is foiled thanks to James’s ability to decipher the cryptic warn- ing letter sent to Lord Monteagle.51 Representing the plot as a tragicomedy not only accounts for its failure and for Fawkes’s low social status, but it also suits James’s political purposes by looking back to the stability pro- vided by his peaceful accession and forward to the benefits of the political union that he wants to establish. The suppression of the Midlands revolt, which Barlow had treated briefly since the news had only filtered into London the night before his sermon, allows the writer to develop a comic denouement more fully. Although the rebellion presented a potential tragic hero in the young and dashing Sir Everard Digby, the writer dismissed Digby to concentrate instead on the rebels’ inglorious end. Like Barlow, the author sees their accidental burning with their own gunpowder as providential, for they ‘presently (see the wonderfull power of Gods Iustice vpon guiltie con- sciences) did all fall downe vpon their knees, praying God to pardon them for their bloody enterprize’ and they opened the gates to the sheriff, whereupon these resolute and high aspiring Catholikes, who dreamed of no lesse then the destruction of Kings and kingdomes and promised to themselues no lower state then the gouernment of great and ancient Monarchies; were miserably defeated, and quite ouerthrowne in an instant, falling in the pit which they had prepared for others.52 Their falls, however, are not tragic but merely humiliating—those not killed are ‘taken and led prisoners by the Sheriffe the ordinarie minister of Iustice, to the Gaole, the ordinarie place, euen of the basest malefactors’
49 His Maiesties Speach, M4r. 50 His Maiesties Speach, E2v, E4v. 51 His Maiesties Speach, F4v. 52 His Maiesties Speach, M3r, M3r–v.
and finally gaped at by crowds of women and ‘fools’ who regard them as monsters as they are transported back to London.53 This comic ending, however, in no way mitigates the plot’s potential for destruction. Echoing and expanding upon Barlow’s imagined catastrophe, the author represents the planned explosion as not merely the nation’s destruction, but its eradication: The hall of Iustice; The house of Parliament; The Church vsed for the Coronation of our Kings; The Monuments of our former Princes; The Crowne and other markes of Royaltie; All the Records, as well of Parliament, as of euery particular mans right, with a great number of Charters and such like, should all haue beene comprehended vnder that fearefull Chaos. And so the earth as it were opened, should haue sent forth of the bottome of the Stygian lake such sulphured smoke, furious flames, and fearefull thunder, as should haue by their diabolicall Domesday destroyed and defaced, in the twinckling of an eye, not onely our present liuing Princes and people, but euen our insensible Monuments.54 Here, James’s enumeration of the groups of people who would have been killed in the explosion, expanded by Barlow to a list of the national institu- tions that would have been destroyed, is further refined to express the threat of losing not only the nation but even the records and monuments verifying that it once existed. These retrospective apocalyptic imaginings serve political as well as rhetorical ends. Patricia Parker notes that The traditional function of Apocalypse is to portray the enemy as already defeated, in a vision of the end which places us outside the monsters we are still inside—as Job at the end of his trial is shown the externalized forms of behemoth and leviathan—and, by this act of identifying or naming, proleptically overcomes them.55 To imagine the apocalypse as James, Barlow and the anonymous author of the ‘Discourse’ do is to envision an end to Catholic plots, and at least for a time the Gunpowder Plot was seen as a conspiracy that could not be sur- passed in either scope or wickedness. These two examples suggest that Paul’s Cross sermons during political crises not only provided information to listeners, and later readers, but that they also shaped interpretations of these events that helped to create new texts. The political and religious authorities may have instructed
53 His Maiesties Speach, M3v. 54 His Maiesties Speach, E3v. 55 Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 77.
Barlow on what to say, but they allowed him to determine the best way to say it. Barlow’s response was to perform his own act of plotting, using tra- ditional genres to make Essex’s story one of fall and redemption and the Gunpowder Plot an averted apocalypse with overtones of tragicomedy. Secular writers took up these narratives and adapted them to their own purposes. In the first case, Bacon used Barlow’s cues to create a tragic nar- rative that, while unpopular, complemented the preacher’s story of fall and redemption; in the second, Barlow, working dialogically with James and the writer of the ‘Discourse’, helped to establish an interpretation of the Gunpowder Plot that has lasted, although not without challenges, into the twenty-first century. Paul’s Cross preachers, then, were not merely pas- sive conduits for information but vital to the creation of interpretations that turned news into narratives.
‘PAUL’S WORK’: REPAIR AND RENOVATION OF ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, 1561–16251
Roze Hentschell
A work so much stupendious that the people Thought it would nere finished be, therefore did call Imperfect Works ‘the building of St Paul.’ Search through the Universe and you’l not see Another pile so full of Majestie.
William Boghurst, ‘Londinologia, sive, Londini encomium’2
In the late 16th century, the phrase ‘to make Paul’s work’ of something became colloquial for a botched or an always unfinished project.3 The phrase has its origins in the sustained yet unsuccessful efforts to repair and renovate London’s St Paul’s Cathedral after the 1561 fire that destroyed the spire and damaged the roof. The church fell into disrepair in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and was the subject of several reconstruction attempts, none of which came to fruition. It was not until Charles I took the throne that a complete restoration of the church, led by Inigo Jones, was planned. This essay is an attempt to weave together the sometimes competing narratives surrounding the renovation efforts in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. I use those royal qualifiers deliber- ately, as the monarchs were generally involved in attempts at refurbishing. The question I attempt to answer is this: why, given the participation of
1 The writing of this essay was enabled by a Faculty Development Award from the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University. I would like to thank Barbara Sebek for her characteristically generous and helpful reading of earlier portions of this essay. I would also like to thank the participants at the ‘Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion’ confer- ence at McGill University as well as two anonymous readers. 2 William Boghurst, ‘Londinologia, sive, Londini encomium’ (1666), BL Sloane MS 904, fols. 53–68. 3 The OED notes that ‘The origin of Paul’s work … is unclear; it is perhaps connected with the phrase work of (St) Paul’s occurring in some wills … , referring to building works at the cathedral.’ ‘Paul’s, n.’ OED Online, Oxford University Press.
4 As Vaughan Hart explains, part of the Stuart interest in Paul’s stemmed from a desire to ‘restore the Cathedral’s eminence over that of’ Westminster Abbey and became the cen- tral symbol for ‘the celebration in classical terms of the king’s central Protestant role as Defender of the Faith.’ Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 80.
The Fire of 1561 and the Elizabethan Aftermath
While there had been a church on the site since the seventh century, the building that early-modern Londoners called St Paul’s was a grand Norman cathedral, completed in the early 14th century with a spire reaching 498 feet, taller than the top of Wren’s current dome.5 On 4 June 1561, between four and five in the afternoon, the spire was struck by lightning. As Bishop Pilkington of Durham wrote less than a week after the event, ‘smoke was espied by divers to breake oute under the bowle of the said shaf of Paules.’6 Within approximately fifteen minutes, the cross and eagle at the top of the spire had fallen onto the roof of the south transept and burning timbers lit the roof on fire.7 Several authorities—the lord mayor, the Bishop of London, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and the Lord Treasurer— immediately gathered to discuss strategies for dealing with the crisis. One proposition was to shoot down the remainder of the steeple with cannon fire. Rejecting that dangerous plan, they ‘thought beste to geat ladders & scale the churche & with axes to hew down a space of the roofe.’8 Before they could carry out this complicated scheme, ‘most of the part of the highest roofe of the churche’ was ‘likewise consumed.’9 The fire raged on until about ten o’clock. While the spire was completely destroyed and the steeple and roof sustained significant damage, the interior—aside from the communion table—was spared as were other buildings in the pre- cinct. Later that night, the civic and church authorities were joined by the queen herself, just in the third year of her reign. Pilkington reports that ‘assone [as soon] as the rage of fier was espied by her majestye and others in the court, of the pitifull inclinacion & love that her gracious highnesse dyd beare both to the said church & the citie, sent to assyst my Lord Mayor for the suppressing of the fyre, who with his wysdome, authority & dili- gent travayl did very much good therein.’10 Just as the queen exhibited
5 The spire previously had been struck by lightning in 1444; it was repaired by 1462. Maija Jansson, ‘The Impeachment of Inigo Jones and the Pulling Down of St Gregory’s by St Paul’s,’ Renaissance Studies 17 (2003), 716–46. 6 The main narrative of the fire, The True Report of the Burnyng of the Steple and Chruche of Poules in London, was written on 10 June by Pilkington. It is transcribed in W. Sparrow Simpson (ed.), Documents Illustrating the History of S. Paul’s Cathedral (London: Camden Society, 1880), 120–125. 7 Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal: 1519–1583 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979). 8 Pilkington, True Report, A3v. 9 Pilkington, True Report, A4r-v. 10 Pilkington, True Report, A5r-v.
‘pitifull inclinacion & love’ to the church, so too did the mayor exert his own ‘wysdome’ and ‘authority.’ Despite this initial show of cooperation, responsibility for the repairs was at issue. As Christopher Kitching explains, ‘[h]ow money should be raised was from the outset intimately associated with the question of whose responsibility the cathedral was: the nation’s, the City’s, that of the church at large, the clergy, the bishop or the dean and chapter.’11 Though the church fabric had generally been under the auspices of the clergy, the civic response was swift. On 10 June, the same day that Pilkington’s pam- phlet was published, the city voted to levy a tax on the citizens to raise 3000 marks (2000 pounds) toward the cost of rebuilding.12 All citizens— not only those who used or attended services at Paul’s—would shoulder the burden for its repair, indicating that the mayor saw the church as a civic responsibility. The mayor and bishop were summoned to court at Greenwich on 16 June13 and less than a week after the incident, Elizabeth asserted that ‘we think surely no private citizen or good subject can think any cost better bestowed upon their own private houses than upon that Temple.’14 She had William Cecil draft a letter on her behalf to the Archbishop of Canterbury and lord mayor. The letter required the lord mayor to exact a tax on citizens and a benevolence on London’s wealthy, while the archbishop was to get contributions from the clergy ‘by such means as he saw fit.’15 The queen herself gave a thousand gold marks (approximately 666 pounds) and 1,000 marks’ worth of timber for roof repairs.16 In the earliest written history of St Paul’s, William Dugdale makes mention several times of how the renovation of the fabric was always a combined effort between sovereign and citizen. After noting the queen’s contribution, he goes on to list contributions from citizens.17 Other funds came in from the City of London, Bishop Grindal, the dean and chapter, members of the Court of Common Pleas, the officers of the King’s Bench,
11 Christopher Kitching, ‘Re-Roofing Old St Paul’s Cathedral, 1561–66’, The London Journal 12.2 (1986), 123–33. 12 Kitching, ‘Re-Roofing’, 124. 13 Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 157. 14 Qu. in Kitching, ‘Re-Roofing’, 129. 15 Qu. in John Summerson, ‘The Works from 1547 to 1660’ in The History of the King’s Works, Vol. 3, 1485–1660, Part 1, (London: HMSO, 1975), 55–183. 16 See Summerson, ‘The Works,’ for a discussion of the procurement and payment of the timber for the project. See also Collinson, esp. ch. 8, for a thorough account of the raising of funds for the repair and Grindal’s role in it, both as bishop and archbishop. 17 William Dugdale, The History of St Pauls Cathedral in London (London: Thomas Warren, 1658).
and eighteen dioceses. Significant repairs were completed and significant money was spent and, by the first of November, in time for Lord Mayor’s Day, the cathedral was again usable.18 In 1566, after the transepts were reroofed,19 work on the church was halted and accounts were closed.20 Though sketches and perhaps models for a new spire were made, it was never reconstructed.21 The missing spire was only the most obvious of problems. By the end of the sixteenth century, the roof leaked and several sections of the masonry were cracked.22 The cellars of the shops and homes in the churchyard compromised the church’s foundations.23 The church interior was besmirched by smoke from the chimneys of the churchyard structures; children from Paul’s School broke windows while playing in the yard; and the stairs at the south door had been damaged by the cartwheels of a glass- maker who had rented out the chapel underneath the south aisle.24 A 1580 inquiry to look into the state of the repairs was set up by the lord mayor who concluded that since initial repairs of 1562, ‘walls [were] laid open and greatly spoiled with rain, the gutter leads cut off and other defaults permitted’.25 Another inquiry in 1584, this time led by Lord Chancellor Christopher Hatton, discovered that modest repairs had been carried out in the intervening years and that some money was put back into the general fund by selling off surplus timber.26 It turns out that the majority of the lumber given by the queen had not been used at all.27 Despite Elizabeth’s push for an inquiry, her interest in the project seems to have
18 Paul’s always served an important role in Lord Mayor’s Day and the inaugural pageant would include Paul’s in the day’s festivities. See Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 19 G.H. Cook, Old S. Paul’s Cathedral: A Lost Glory of Medieval London (London: Phoenix House, 1955). 20 Vaughan Hart, ‘Inigo Jones’s Site Organization at St Paul’s Cathedral: “Ponderous Masses Beheld Hanging in the Air”,’ The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53 (1994), 415. 21 The queen’s surveyor, Jon Revell, would have been involved in the project. He gave the queen a New Year’s gift in 1561/2 of ‘a marchpane [marzipan] with a model of Powle’s church and steeple in [the] paste.’ Summerson believes that this gift may have had refer- ence to a drawing or model of the new spire. ‘The Works’, 64. 22 Ann Saunders, St Paul’s: The Story of the Cathedral (London: Collins & Brown, 2001), 21. 23 Hart, Inigo Jones, 214. 24 David J. Crankshaw, ‘Community, City and Nation, 1540–1714’, in Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, Andrew Saint (eds.), St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604-2004 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 45–70. 25 Qtd. in Kitching, ‘Re-roofing’, 130. 26 Kitching, ‘Re-roofing’, 130. 27 Summerson, ‘Works,’ 66 n. 1.
28 L.W. Cowie, ‘Paul’s Walk’, History Today 24 (1977), 41–46. 29 Kitching, ‘Re-roofing’, 131. 30 Bishop Pilkington’s sermon, preached on 8 June, exhorted the auditory ‘to a general repentance’ of vicious behavior, which he remarks upon in The True Report. John Morwen, the Marian Prebendary of Paul’s, interpreted the fire as God’s disappointment in reform efforts in An Addition with an Apologie to the Causes of Burning of Paul’s Church (London: Richard Jugge, 1561). Pilkington responded with the massive Confutation of an Addition (London 1561). For the Protestant/Catholic debate, see also J. Newman, ‘Inigo Jones and the Politics of Architecture’, in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds.), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 229–255; Eamon Duffy, ‘Bare Ruined Choirs: remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare’s England’, in Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (eds.), Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), 40–57; and Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
too far removed from its sacred purposes to warrant the sort of wide-scale commitment needed to renovate it.31 Even by 1561, the nave of Paul’s and the surrounding precinct was infamous for the various secular and seem- ingly illicit activities that took place there. At least part of the problem was that it was not clear what Paul’s was or to whom it belonged. The nature of the church itself was problematic: Was it a Norman papist cathedral? Was it a London parish church? Was it a symbol of the queen, the Supreme Head of the Church of England? Further, its relationship to its immediate and civic surroundings was not clear. To what extent was it part of the larger precinct and its secular buildings and activities? How important was it to London and its suburbs? St Paul’s cathedral dominated the London skyline, and the precinct—covering twelve and a half acres— took up a significant portion of central London. To view it merely as a ‘temple’, as Elizabeth regarded it, simply underestimated its role in the larger urban landscape. The lack of organization surrounding the recon- struction was potentially a symptom of a lack of a cohesive narrative about the church, the precinct, and their significance to London and the nation at large.
The Early Jacobean Period: Henry Farley
After a period of complete neglect, in 1606 King James visited Paul’s in the company of Queen Anne’s brother, Christian IV, the King of Denmark and, like many other visitors to London, ascended the 300 stairs to the top of the steeple.32 The view from the steeple provided its visitors with a magnificent panorama of London and a royal visit signified a desire on the part of the king to display the glory of the city. However, in entering the cathedral and climbing its stairs, James would have experienced the dilapidated condition firsthand. Perhaps as a result of this visit, in 1608 James asked the bishop and lord mayor to carry out yet another survey of the cathedral to evaluate the cost of general repairs and a new spire,
31 ‘The Burning of Paul’s,’ a 1561 ballad, blames the immoral behavior of Londoners for the fire, a trope that would resonate for decades to come. In W. Sparrow Simpson (ed.), Documents Illustrating the History of S. Paul’s Cathedral (London: Camden Society, 1880), 126–7. 32 William Benchley Rye (ed.), England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1865; reissued 1965). Rye references but does not include a text by the German Valentin Arithmæus, called Notes on London and Westminster 1617, written in Latin. Christian IV was a patron of Inigo Jones, who attended him on this visit and also worked for a time in Denmark.
33 Jones’s main patron in 1608 was Robert Cecil. Gordon Higgott, ‘The Fabric to 1670’, in Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, Andrew Saint (eds.), St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604-2004 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 171–90. John Schofield tells us that Jones himself is not mentioned in the estimate of 1608 and ‘not much can be gleaned’ as to the ‘intentions or the nature of the dilapidations then apparent’ from the estimate for repairs (housed in Guildhall Library). John Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (Swindon: English Heritage, 2011), 193. 34 Higgott, ‘The Fabric,’ 147. 35 Higgott, ‘The Fabric,’ 174. 36 Also in 1608, Thomas Dekker’s The Dead Terme was printed. The imaginative text is a dialogue between the cities of London and Westminster, and is primarily a complaint of the ignominies suffered by the cities as a result of the vicious behavior of their inhabitants. It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss it at length, though it provides important insight in how Paul’s figured in literary texts of the period. 37 For a discussion of Farley’s sketchy biography, the diptych, and outer cover he com- missioned, see Pamela Tudor-Craig, Old St Paul’s: The Society of Antiquaries Diptych, 1616 (London: London Topographical Society, 2004). 38 Tudor-Craig, Old St Paul’s, 8.
Initially Farley locates the renovation of St Paul’s in a constellation of other projects deemed worthy by city and royal officials: I Poore Paules dejected and distressed, yet (being in the best prospect, and taller than al my fellows) do see or at least may see … many stately monu- ments, houses, and other things builded and done within these few yeeres, some for Honour, some for profit, some for Beautie, some for pleasure, some for health and recreation, some for Royall entertainments and sports, and many for charitable uses; And I have seen the Globe burnt, and quickly made a phoenix. Q. But who sees me? A. Who sees thee not?39 The personified Paul’s argues for reconstruction here based on his promi- nence in London’s cityscape; he is more visible and taller than all other buildings. Farley also suggests that if the London authorities can see fit to build secular structures, and even license the public Globe Theatre, which was burned down and repaired ‘quickly,’ then the ‘Christian souls’ among the court, clergy, and city—three of the pamphlet’s addressees—must also deem the repairs of Paul’s necessary and righteous. His concluding question ‘who sees me?’ suggests that Paul’s denigrated state has been ignored. But more, it suggests a phenomenological curiosity, suggested by the reply, ‘Who sees thee not?’: St Paul’s is such a fixture in the landscape, so naturally a part of London, that it has been rendered invisible. This is made manifest in the shape of the text, which is typeset in such a way to suggest the spireless shape of the steeple (Fig. 1). The steeple is represented by the white space of the page, a present absence. Farley’s text, then, is an attempt not only to give voice to, but also materialize the space of the church. The absence that the typescript and the missing steeple represent must nevertheless be felt as if it were a phantom limb. The long prologue of Paul’s Compliant consists of a series of verses in which Paul’s himself sends the book to the various audiences that he thinks needs to read it: the court, clergy, city, and country. Farley appears to understand that any efforts for renovations must necessarily be a multi- lateral affair. He first sends the book ‘to the court’ to ask for help among the noblest ‘and worthiest hearts,’ especially to James so that he would pittie me, And so to order, by His great command, That I may be repaired out of hand;
39 Henry Farley, The Complaint of Paul’s to All Christian Soules (London: Laurence L’isle, 1616), 1.
Fig. 1. A Complaint of Paules, page 3 (London, 1616).
Else I shall weare away and crack and fall, To my great sorrow and my lovers all.40 The aim to gain the attention of the King is bolstered by the argument that Paul’s is a national treasure, worthy of the sovereign’s notice. Paul’s further urges his book to tell the king that Although I ragged am, and torne, As if I were, to all the rest a scorne; Yet Christiandome thr’oughout can truely tell, That I for Name and Fame doe beare the Bell; And ner’thelesse that I am call’d poore Paules, I feed (with choicest delicates) more Soules, Then any Three (the greatest Churches) doe, In England, and in Great Britain too.41 Although portions of Paul’s have become secular urban spaces, there is still enough of the sacred to deem it worthy of attention and repairs; it continues to ‘feed … more soules’ than all the churches in England. This reminder of Paul’s national prominence as a sacred space sets the tone for the text. Farley not only argues for the repair of a London landmark; he sets Paul’s up as a symbol for London’s and England’s rectitude. While Farley’s principal audience is the King himself (as well as the royal family; Paul’s also sends his book to Queen Anne and Prince Charles), he understands that he must also have the ear or the clergy and of city officials. In his second verse ‘to the clergy,’ he makes a similar gesture. Paul’s tells his book to indicate to the clergy that
I am their church of greatest note, Although I weare a poore and ragged coate; And stand in fairest Citie of this Land, And with great state was builded to Their hand.42 If the clergy are deemed secondary in their importance as audience mem- bers to Paul’s Complaint, the argument that necessitates their attention is similar. Paul’s shabby exterior should not obscure the notion that the church is the gem in the crown of the great city of London. Paul’s also sends his book to ‘the city’, which will find innumerable many, That for my good, will do as much as any;
40 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 1. 41 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 2. 42 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 7.
No place so famous as that Royall Towne, For works of Worth, Honour, and Renowne.43 London is figured here not simply as a great urban center, but as a ‘Royall towne,’ worthy to be a national capital, filled with great civic achievements as well as with citizens who care to protect it. Finally, his book is sent to the country, where he believes that even the poorest rustic will ‘have a mite to spare’ for the renovation efforts.44 In his prologue, Farley makes the crucial gesture of knitting together country, city, church, and state as entities that must collaborate to save Paul’s from further abuse. The rebuilding of Paul’s requires private sacrifice for the public good. The reno- vation is cast in religious terms, as a new edifice will result in the edifica- tion of city, church, and nation. Because the text is chiefly an attempt to get James to pay attention to the decrepit cathedral, much of the poem is an argument for why its repair would glorify the king and his family. The text proper, which begins after nineteen pages of front matter, is a poem describing Paul’s unfortunate state as well as its importance as a church and civic structure. Paul’s laments a bygone era, when men worked for the benefit of the glorious church. By contrast, he expresses disappointment in the repeated unsuc- cessful efforts to revive renovations: Sometimes a view is made upon my wants, And then (twixt hope and fear) my heart it pants, But all in vaine I hope, (alas my grief,) Surveyours gone, then this is my relief: To undertake so high a work to mende, Great is the charge (saie some) and to no end, For (but to shew) to what use will I serve, Whereby such cost on mee, I should deserve?45 The surveys done on behalf of Paul’s were clearly well known, and here Paul’s is excited for the attention, just as he is disappointed in the knowl- edge that nothing will come of the ‘viewing.’ While Paul’s sees that the reasons for halting renovations are largely financial ones, Farley’s text aims to endow Paul’s with a value—to city, church, and nation—that moves far beyond the monetary. The poem ends with a long dream narrative in which Farley imagines what a renovated church would look like. It is here that Farley can fully
43 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 8. 44 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 11. 45 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 22.
integrate the several entities that he feels must participate if the renova- tion is to be successful. In particular, he lingers on the description of an imagined rebuilt spire. The dream presents a vision of four pinnacles beneath the spire, each with sculptures within. One depicting James is accompanied by the motto, ‘Evil come to ill intenders, / Good to all true faiths defenders’.46 A sculpture of a bishop is likewise imagined in his reverence and his commitment to a godly church: His motto reads, ‘To my savior Ile be true, / And this church shall have her due.’47 The third pinnacle contains a statue of the lord mayor, part of his motto saying, ‘So by our truth and industry / God makes our Citie multiply.’48 London’s secu- lar, civic achievements are cast as Godly. Finally, the fourth sculpture is of a farmer with the motto, ‘Plaine I am as you may see, / Yet the Best growe rich by me.’49 Without the country rustics, the nation cannot be wealthy. This glorious vision of the rebuilt spire becomes a restoration of God’s rightful place in London, a marriage of word and architecture to glorify the Almighty. But the special emphasis placed on several sectors of the realm, fixtures of the architecture themselves, is a crucial part of the vision. Rendered in stone, the monarch, the lord mayor, and the farmer are as much part of the church as is the bishop.50 While Farley’s Complaint has received little critical attention over the years, the painting he commissioned to attend the text, in the London Society of Antiquaries, has become one of the most important contempo- rary renditions of Old St Paul’s. Farley paid John Gipkyn, an artist for the Lord Mayor shows, to create a diptych presenting the church as it was and as it could be.51 The outer cover of the diptych depicts a spectacu- lar procession led by James, Anne, and Prince Charles, across London Bridge, along Cheapside, to St Paul’s (Fig. 2). In the top left of the painting, we see James enter the churchyard through a triumphal arch on the top of which is inscribed, ‘BEHOLD THE KINGE COMMETH WITH GREAT JOYE’ (Fig. 3). The left panel shows the king, queen, and other dignitaries
46 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 57. 47 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 58. 48 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 59. 49 Farley, Complaint of Paul’s, 68. Note that the paginating is not sequential. The text jumps from 59 to 68 to 62. 50 ‘All were seen to have an equal stake in the work.’ Hart, Inigo Jones, 109. Hart is one of the few scholars who has given careful attention to Farley’s text. 51 Each panel measures four feet two inches by three feet four inches. Tudor-Craig, Old St Paul’s, 1. The inscription around the procession panel says, ‘Amore, veritate, et reverential. So invented and at my cost made for me. H. Farley. 1616. Wrought by John Gipkyn. Fiat vol- untate Dei’. For a discussion of John Gipkyn, see Tudor-Craig, 18–25.
Fig. 2. Procession to St Paul’s from St Mary Overie, Society of Antiquaries Diptych, by Thomas Gipkyn for Henry Farley, 1616.
attending a sermon at Paul’s Cross as it would have appeared in 1616, replete with an auditory by turns attentive and distracted, and a church exterior much in need of repair (Fig. 4). The building speaks to the mon- arch: ‘view oh Kinge how my wall creepers / have made me worke for chimney sweepers.’ The right panel shows an imaginary drawing of a
Fig. 3. ‘Beholde the King commeth with great joye’, detail of James I entering St Paul’s, Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
Fig. 4. Bishop King preaching at Paul’s Cross, Society of Antiquaries Diptych. rebuilt spire—which correlates mostly to the dream narrative in The Complaint—, a restored façade, and angels blessing the church (Fig. 5). While the three panels are certainly interesting in and of themselves, taken together, they offer an important narrative and a visual argument that bolsters Farley’s textual one. Farley’s fantasy of legitimate royal inter- est in the cathedral, which here is depicted as a state visit to hear a ser- mon, has important and material consequences: a beautifully renovated church that is the glory of the nation. The diptych is important as it is a
Fig. 5. Paul’s spire rebuilt, Henry Farley’s imagined restoration of St Paul’s with celebratory angels blowing trumpets, Society of Antiquaries Diptych.
rare 17th-century painting commissioned by a commoner. But more than that, it serves as a guide for a king who would turn his attention to the church’s rebuilding. While Gordon Higgot asserts that Farley’s petition and tract ‘appears to have goaded the king into action’, and Tudor-Craig similarly suggests that the king was ‘perhaps worn down by Farley’s appeals’, Farley was not acknowledged as the impetus for any official state action. Nor is there
King James, Bishop King, and the 1620 Commission
Also in 1616, James addressed the Star Chamber on matters of civic impor- tance. While the subject of the speech was primarily the administration of law in England, he also discussed London’s rapid growth, which he regarded as a national concern. In this speech, James promotes an interest and a care for London that had not been hitherto displayed. In particular, James is troubled by how little the citizens of London regard the building and upkeep of the city. He is alarmed at ‘how scant men are in contribut- ing towards the amendment of High-wayes and Bridges: Therefore take a care of this, for that is done today with a penie, that will not be done here- after for an hundred pounds, and that will be mended now in a day, which hereafter will not be mended in a yeere; and that in a yeere, which will not be done in our time, as we may see by Paul’s Steeple.’53 He singles out Paul’s as an extreme example of civic neglect, indicating not only that he is aware of the cathedral’s plight, but, more importantly, that he sees Paul’s as part of a larger civic and national narrative. I would suggest that this speech represents a shift away from how Paul’s was regarded by Elizabeth (who described it as a ‘temple’) and sets the stage for what would become James’s deepening interest in the fate of the fabric of the church. It would also lay the groundwork for imagining Paul’s as an integral part of London and, by extension, imagining London as a Stuart Royal city, much as Farley had done. As James Robertson suggests, ‘as the Stuarts’ continuing involve- ment with St Paul’s … demonstrated, royal revivals of campaigns to rebuild London’s cathedral offered an un-military national cause that both James and Charles chose to direct their subjects’ energies towards: domestic
52 Higgot, ‘The Fabric’, 174; Tudor-Craig, Old St Paul’s, 12 The cause-effect assumptions may come from Dugdale who suggests that Farley’s ‘frequent’ solicitations are what ‘moved’ the king’s ‘heart’ to the plight of the church. Dugdale, The History, 134. Of course, Dugdale may have had access to records on the matter that no longer survive. 53 James I, ‘Speech in Star Chamber, 1616’, in Charles Howard McIlwain (ed.), The Political Works of James I (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 326–345.
piety would displace protestant politics.’54 James’s regard for the timeliness of civic repairs here indicates an interest in seeing urban progress happen in short order. Renovation efforts, however, never happened quickly when it came to Paul’s. Four years later, on 26 March 1620, in what many have seen as the materialization of Farley’s fantastical vision, the King was set to attend a sermon preached by Bishop King at Paul’s Cross. It was unclear to many why the King was to be in attendance or what the subject of the sermon would be. Speculation focused on the marriage negotiations between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta and on the conflict in Bohemia. In a 20 March letter to his friend, Sir Dudley Carleton, John Chamberlain men- tions these other possibilities, but surmises that ‘yf yt so fall out that he come I rather beleve yt is about the rapairing of Paules which indeed growes very ruinous.’55 Preparations for the king’s arrival were frantic. Less than a week before his visit, the Privy Council sent a letter informing the bishop, dean, and chapter that the King would enter through the west gate of the churchyard and they must ‘pull downe to the ground’ ‘a tippling house’ and ‘a tobacco house’ in that area.56 Ridding the procession route of unsightly structures was an important part of making way for the king and the entou- rage; later plans for renovating Paul’s would center on similar demolitions. On the day of the sermon, James walked from Whitehall along with Prince Charles and, according to Stow’s Annales, many of the chiefe nobility, and seaven or eight Bishops, and at Temple Barre, the Lord Maior, Aldermen, and Recorder, received him, and presented him with a purse of gold, and from thence attended him to Paules, the streets being rayled on both sides, and the Severall Companies of London in their severall places, in their Liveries and Banners, gave their attendance all the way to Paules.57 The reception of the royal party at Temple Bar—the traditional entrance into London through which other sovereigns had passed—by the city’s
54 James Robertson, ‘Stuart London and the Idea of a Royal Capital City’, Renaissance Studies 15 (2001), 37–58. For a discussion of the importance of London to court culture in James’s reign, see Malcolm R. Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), esp. ch. 3. 55 John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1939), 297. 56 ‘A Letter to the Lord Bishop of London and the Deane and Chapter of the Cathedrall Church of St Paule, 23 March 1620’, in J.V. Lyle (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol. 37, 1619–1621 (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1930), 165. 57 John Stow, Annales, or, A Generall Chronicle of England. Begun by John Stow: Continued and Augmented with matters Forraigne and Domestique, Ancient and Moderne, unto the end of the present yeere, 1631 by Edmund Howes, Gent (London: Richard Meighen, 1631).
58 Temple Bar would later be rebuilt—possibly by Christopher Wren—as a grand gate (recently relocated to Paternaster Row). 59 James and Cockayne had a close and reciprocal relationship, as the King supported then-Alderman Cockayne’s misguided scheme to revive the English cloth trade by export- ing dyed and dressed fabric. See Roze Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), Ch. six. 60 Peter E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 61 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 62 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 22. 63 Prior to the sermon, James ‘entered at the Great West dore of Paules where he kneeled, and having ended his Orisons, he was received by the Dean and the Chapter of that Church, being all in rich capes … and with solemne singing brought the King into the Quire.’ (Stow).
Once Bishop King began his sermon, he made it clear that James, not himself, was the key player in determining both the subject and the text. The king, King begins, is ‘part of your auditorie’ and ‘a principall part of my simple oratorie … He laid my foundation for me, and set me my patterne … to worke by.’64 Using metaphors of both textile and architec- ture, the emphasis on materiality is underscored. The text of the sermon comes from Psalm 102, a Prayer of the Afflicted, one of the penitential psalms:65 Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Sion, for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. The text was, according to King, ‘given me … by a voice from earth, that is next to heaven’ and the Bishop claims to be ‘girt and tied to a scripture by him.’66 By expressing James’s centrality in choosing the sermon’s text and topic, King authorizes the goals of the sermon—to raise awareness of and money for the repair of Paul’s fabric. As King reminds us in his concluding remarks, he is merely the conduit of the message, even as the bishop of London had always played a role in discussions surrounding the church fabric. James was in attendance to listen to an argument preached at his insistence and of his own design. He was there, in short, ‘to make a request to his subjects.’67 King’s exegesis focuses on two elements: God’s mercy towards Zion and the urgency of granting this mercy: ‘the set time has come.’ King indicates that the persuasion of his argument is quia tempus: ‘I say it is a strong per- swasion that floweth from time: and is as strongly enforced in my text, nayle after nayle, driven home to the head.’68 The presentation of mercy, then, is one that is an opportunity: ‘good is not good, mercy is not mercy, that commeth not in time’, he asserts. ‘Time yeeldeth a strong perswasion; when the time is past … our hope is gone.’69 King makes two important
64 John King, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, on behalf of Paules Church (London: Edward Griffin, 1620). 65 See Hannibal Hamlin for a discussion of the role of psalms in the early modern period. Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 66 King, A Sermon, 32, 33. 67 King, A Sermon, 58. While the king’s role in choosing the topic and text was no doubt a crucial one, the title of the sermon, which was published in short order, was A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, On Behalf of Paules Church. The emphasis here is deflected again, from the King to the personified beneficiary of financial support, the church itself. 68 King, A Sermon, 20–1. 69 King, A Sermon, 22.
70 Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1534–1570,’ Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Reforme 31.1 (2008), 3–29. 71 King, A Sermon, 35. 72 King, A Sermon, 36. 73 King, A Sermon, 39. 74 King, A Sermon, 37–8.
argument, King uses the ears and eyes of the audience. In his seminal work on human geography, Yi Fu Tuan says that ‘human spaces reflect the quality of the human senses and mentality. The mind frequently extrapo- lates beyond sensory evidence.’75 Once King appeals to the sensory, then he is able to move to the corner- stone of the application: making the case that Paul’s is part of London as a whole and, as importantly, the magnificence of London as the paragon of civilizations: A decaying cathedral reflects poorly on the city, and—in King’s formulation—the world: If England bee the ring of Europe, your City is the gemme. If England the bodie, your City the eye; if England the eye, your City the apple of it. Here is the Synopsis, and Summe of the whole Kingdome. Here the distillation and spirits of all the goodnesse it hath. Here the Chamber of our Brittish Empire … say I, give mee London in England, which is a Load-star to lead all the rest … There is yet one thing wanting unto you, if you will be perfit, perfit this Church: not by parting from all, but somewhat, not to the poore, but to God himself. This church is your Sion indeed.76 By emphasizing to the City’s great men what is righteous and powerful about London, King inspires them, a departure from the Jeremiad mode so often preached at Paul’s, which focused on shaming the auditory. His assertion that those who give money to the cause of Paul’s need not part with all they have, or even give to the poor, would appeal to the parsimoni- ous among them. King understands that St Paul’s cannot be rebuilt with- out the material assistance of those who have become wealthy in London’s secular realms and thus Paul’s is situated among a larger understanding of London: when I behold that forrest of masts upon your river for trafficke, and that more than miraculous bridge, which is the communis terminus, to joyne the two bankes of that river; your Royall Exchange for Merchants, your Halls for Companies, your gates for defence, your markets for victual, your aquae- ducts for water, your granaries for provision, your Hospitals for the poore, your Bridewells for the idle, your Chamber for Orphans, and your Churches for holy Assemblies; I cannot denie them to be magnificent workes, and your Citty to deserve the name of an Augustious and majesticall Citty.77 Like Farley, King contextualizes the project of Paul’s renovation in a larger web of civic projects and achievements. In so doing, he secularizes the
75 Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 16. 76 King, A Sermon, 43–4. 77 King, A Sermon, 45–6.
78 Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 7. 79 King, A Sermon, 49. 80 The sermon was published in short order ensuring an even wider audience. See Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 81 King, A Sermon, 54.
Cellars, & c. had been built neer it, to the annoyance and blemishing, either of it or the Church-yard.’82 The church, in other words, needed to be taken in context of the larger precinct. Further, the commission was required to assess the source and extent of funding for previous repairs that had not been used and to determine the ‘most fit and proper means to raise money for to carry on the said repair’ as well as appoint surveyors and other officers to proceed with the work.83 Importantly, the commis- sion determined just who was financially responsible for which parts of Paul’s: ‘the Bishop of London had peculiar care of the whole body of the Church, and the Dean and Chapter, of the Quire’84 But since these reli- gious entities did not have revenue enough to support the massive cost of repairs, the commission determined that it would be necessary to share the burden for this civic and national treasure: ‘as anciently it had been, so now, a generall Benevolence throughout the whole Kingdom, should be attempted, and that, for the better encouragement therof, the Nobility and Gentry, who stood best affected to so good a work, might be moved, to signifie, by Subscriptions, what they would contribute thereto.’85 As in Farley’s dream vision, the repairs and renovations could only be paid for by those across the economic spectrum, who would see that important symbolic role of renovating Paul’s. Thus, Paul’s was deemed a national responsibility whose repairs became a royal concern. ‘To give example unto others,’ James promised £2,000 for the efforts.86 Prince Charles pledged £500 and Bishop King £100 a year from his revenue. Portland stone was purchased and stored, while new glazing and the demolition of shops in the precinct had begun.87 What appeared to be a new dawn for the renovation of Paul’s fabric turned into ‘Paul’s work’ yet again. The raising of funds ‘went so slowly forward’ that the ‘prosecution of the work became wholly neglected.’88 The king, whose interest in the project was so crucial in allowing it to gain traction, had larger problems to contend with. As Higgot explains, ‘The King’s authority over Parliament and the country fell to a new ebb during 1621; his health was failing, and his finances were in ruins. With out visible royal support, interest in the restoration campaign quickly
82 King, A Sermon, 54. 83 King, A Sermon, 54. 84 King, A Sermon, 54. 85 King, A Sermon, 137. 86 King, A Sermon, 137. 87 Hart, ‘Inigo Jones,’ 417. 88 Dugdale, The History, 137.
89 Higgott, ‘The Fabric,’ 174. 90 Dugdale, The History, 137. 91 Chamberlain, Letters, 300. 92 Chamberlain, Letters, 301.
petition to the King at his being here, but he referred them back to the com- missioners saying that stat sentential they must downe, but wold have some meanes found to geve them satisfaction, which is a matter not so easily don as saide, for to begin with all the commissioners are faine to rate themselves at 20 li a man to defray the charge of pulling down the houses and filling up the sellars and holes. But for mine own part I must confesse I am so ten- der harted, that yf I must needs pay this monie I had rather yt go ad aedifica- tion than ad ruinam: but by the manner of proceedings I doubt we shall see hard courses taken, which will rather cause a crie and clamor then give contentment.93 Notwithstanding Chamberlain’s pity for the residents of the precinct who are to be turned out—he was a frequent visitor to Paul’s and likely person- ally knew some of its inhabitants—he emphasizes the lack of a solid plan for dealing with them. His skepticism that ‘some means’ will be ‘found’ for restitution of the 2,000 people involved is only matched by his doubt that the demolition will occur at all. He further laments that his own money will be put towards the pulling down of the buildings rather than for the renovation itself. Just over a week later, on 4 August, Chamberlain wrote another letter suggesting that the residents of the threatened structures were unwilling to cooperate with the work of the commission, even seeing it as somewhat of a joke: ‘The demolishment of the houses about Paules is threatened every day but the people either do not or will not seeme to believe yt, nor do not remove nor avoide, but some make jests as yf yt were not meant in earnest, and one knaverie wrote upon his doore stet quaeso candide lector’ [Let it stand, gentle reader].94 What had begun in earnest as an auspicious multilateral effort on the part of city, church, and nation to renovate the Cathedral had devolved into a debacle unforeseen by the commissioners who could not proceed with the grander work until the tenacious tenants were dealt with. While we do not hear more official word about the work of the survey (Dugdale tells us that it wasn’t until Laud became bishop that the cause got taken up again), it would be a mistake to think that the project halted entirely. In a letter of 22 June 1621, Chamberlain refers to a visit the lord mayor, Peter Probie, took to Greenwich Palace to meet with the Recorder of London who offered some few memorandums to the Lord Mayor and his brethren about Middletons water, the swarming of beggars, the cleansing and removing the shelves of sand out of the Thames, the building of Paules and the like, wherin
93 Chamberlain, Letters, 313–14. 94 Chamberlain, Letters, 315.
the bishop of London had great commendations for his care and forward- ness in that works: and for an example to lead them the way the King told them he had allotted 1000 li per annum for certain years, the Prince his sonne 500 li and most of the Lords their severall summes … to the perfection of that work.95 While the official story—or at least the story we can piece together from surviving records, as all of the charters for renovations were destroyed in the great fire—ends in 1620, the following summer money was still being raised and Paul’s was still regarded as part of a larger civic landscape of renovation. In 1625, Chamberlain further refers to a wealthy draper by the name of John Kenricke who had died and left ‘1000 to the reparation of Paules.’96 In the year of James’s death, his legacy for the continued efforts of the renovation of Paul’s was alive. Inigo Jones’s plans for the cathedral were not, as many believe, solely a Caroline project. Not only was he actively involved in plans for restoration throughout the first quarter of the 17th century, but the vision of a cathe- dral for Stuart London materialized as a result of the sustained and very public efforts of James I; and King James’s vision for Paul’s was a much more broad and cohesive one than his predecessor’s. Importantly, it laid the ground work for the much more successful plans for renovation by Archbishop Laud and Charles I. As the cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan puts it, ‘Architectural grandeur may reflect, simply, the fantasy of the pri- vate self. On the other hand, if this self is also the monarch with claims to embodying the dignity of the state, private indulgence is inextricably entwined with a more impersonal ideal.’97 The ‘impersonal ideal’ here is imagining a church worthy of the religious adulation that would occur within its walls, but also one that would stand as an impressive emblem for all London had become, and all to which it aspired.
95 Chamberlain, Letters, 441. 96 Chamberlain, Letters, 596. 97 Yi-Fu Tuan, ‘Oral Ambiguity in Architecture,’ Landscape 27.3 (1983), 14.
THE LOVE-SICK SPOUSE: JOHN STOUGHTON’S 1624 PAUL’S CROSS SERMON IN CONTEXT
Jeanne Shami
The Love-sick Spouse, a Paul’s Cross sermon by John Stoughton first printed—posthumously—in 1640, has received very little scholarly atten- tion. In part, this neglect is due to Millar MacLure’s dating of the sermon as ‘ante 1640’ (when it was first printed), thus rendering invisible its more precise religious and political features as a sermon preached in 1624.1 However, the sermon bears more detailed examination in light of the two manuscript forms in which it exists. The manuscript witnesses allow us to date the sermon and also enable a more exact understanding of how at least one preacher, in this case an alleged nonconformist, negotiated the rhetorical challenges of preaching high-profile, public sermons in that year. Moreover, the temper and effect of The Love-sick Spouse, preached early in 1623/4, are intimately entwined with a sermon, The Happinesse of Peace, preached by Stoughton ten months later in Cambridge, and com- parison of the two yields evidence of the pressures exerted on preachers by their public sermon performances. The extant manuscript evidence, then, allows this sermon to be understood within three contexts: the ser- mon’s delivery at Paul’s Cross, likely in March 1623/4; a sermon delivered by Stoughton ten months later in Cambridge; and the sermon’s publica- tion in 1640. Stoughton’s early biographer described him as ‘a Puritan preacher of exceptional eloquence,’ adding that ‘it is difficult to believe that greater pulpit orator ever jewelled a sentence to more curious beauty than Stough ton.’2 Despite these gifts, however, Stoughton is remembered primarily as
1 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 256. This essay develops arguments anticipated in brief in Jeanne Shami, John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 215–17. 2 J.C. Whitebrook, ‘Dr John Stoughton the Elder,’ Congregational History Society Transactions 6 (1913–15), 83, 91. Additional biographical information on Stoughton can be gleaned from the following sources: Benjamin Brook, The Lives of the Puritans (London: J. Black, 1813), vol. 3; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart
England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984); Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Round heads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); P.S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970); J. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigenienses, part 1, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); P.S. Seaver, ‘John Stoughton (bap. 1593 d. 1639),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004—accessed 28 April 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy .uregina.ca:2048/. 3 Stoughton was preceded at St. Mary Aldermanbury by Robert Harris (a future mem- ber of the Westminster Assembly) and Thomas Taylor, and succeeded in 1639 by Edmund Calamy who wrote the history of nonconformists after the Restoration. 4 Brook, Lives, 3: 527. 5 Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 63. 6 Seaver, Puritan Lectureships, 256–58. 7 Whitebrook, ‘John Stoughton,’ 93.
Trinity College, Cambridge (The Happinesse of Peace), sermons that expose political and religious views at least partially at odds with those of estab- lished authorities, and perhaps even his patrons. In 1913 Whitebrook believed that Stoughton’s opinions on affairs of his day were of little inter- est to his own, but contemporary readers disagree, and it is in this spirit that I have attempted to direct as much detailed attention as possible on Stoughton’s 1623/4 sermon at Paul’s Cross. The textual history of The Love-sick Spouse is both informative and puz- zling. Although it exists in two manuscript versions, neither seems to be the source for the sermon as it was printed posthumously in 1640 in a volume dedicated to Henry Rich, Earl of Holland.8 Both manuscripts appear to be copied from an identical source (perhaps from Stoughton’s papers, from which the printed sermons were apparently derived) with Rawlinson E. 148 providing a complete text of the sermon, and Emmanuel MS 96 a small fragment from the first half of the sermon. The manuscripts, while they appear to be copied from the same source, differ substantively from the printed source in terms of verbal variants, added or deleted pas- sages, and the disposition of Greek and Latin quotations. Two important kinds of historical and contextual information are pro- vided only by the manuscripts. The first is the sermon’s date (1623/4) and the second is the theological and political context in which the scribal copies circulated (indicated obliquely by the composition of both manu- script miscellanies, both of which contain Puritan, anti-Laudian materials emerging from Cambridge in the 1630s and focused on puritan Emmanuel College). Although MacLure had provided only the general date ‘ante 1640’ on the evidence of the 1640 printing, a manuscript of the full sermon in the Bodleian Library dates it in 1623 (i.e. between 25 March 1623 and 24 March 1623/4) and internal evidence suggests that it was delivered at Paul’s Cross after the Christmas season of 1623, and probably in February or March of 1623/4 while parliament was in session.9 The evidence for this precise dating is based on two passages in the sermon. Stoughton approaches the end of his sermon with references to the stability of the church founded upon the rock of Christ. In the printed version, Stoughton
8 The primary manuscript source for this sermon is Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS. E. 148, fols. 53r-90v. A fragment of the first section of the sermon is found in Cambridge University, Emmanuel College MS. 96. All further references to the manuscript will be taken from the Bodleian copy, and indicated in parentheses in the text. References to the printed version of the sermon are taken from XV. Choice Sermons (London: R. B[adger] for Iohn Bellamie et al, 1640) and indicated parenthetically in the text of this essay. 9 Emmanuel MS. 96 also dates the sermon 1623.
10 John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman. E. McLure (Philadel phia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), 2: 536.
to Emmanuel College and to its Puritan, non-conformist connections.11 The sermon on Canticles 5:8 is the fourth of eight documents. The first two are sermons by a Dr Garnons, likely John Garnons of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, whose commencement sermon on Psalms 84:1, the first in the manuscript, marked his proceeding DD in 1631.12 The second sermon in the collection, also by Garnons, is a Latin sermon ad clerum. The third sermon in the collection is by Richard Spinke on Romans 1:14, delivered in St John’s College Chapel 17 May 1632. This is likely Richard Spinke, who matriculated at John’s, Easter 1620, took his BA 1623–4, MA 1627, and died 9 October 1634, aged 29.13 Anthony Milton notes that ‘increasingly, those who discussed Church ceremonies [in the 1630s] found their motives questioned and their works censored.’ He further notes that Spinke was summoned and forced to recant this sermon because, among other things, it emphasized the spiritual beauty of holiness to the detriment of the physical.14 The sermon on Romans 1:14 (‘I am a debtor both to the Greekes & Barbarians, both to the wise & unwise’) recants various positions taken regarding the authority and vocation of preachers and ministers of the Gospel, the beauty of holiness, the role of the sacraments, the authority of bishops, and in particular the preacher’s ‘indiscreet and unadvised man- ner of expressing himself’ (fol. 50r). Item 4 is Stoughton’s sermon, dated at Paul’s Cross 1623. This is followed by an unidentified fragment of a Latin/ Greek discourse, a copy of a letter from John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, regarding the placement of a communion table, and a speech delivered at Norwich by Dr Corbet, Bishop of Norwich on 28 April 1634 to the clergy of the synod. The speech is a specific call for funds (a benevolence) for the reparation of St. Paul’s. The final item is part of a sermon by Dr Love, likely the anti-Laudian head at Cambridge, vice-chancellor of Corpus Christi College, later dean of Ely, in St. Mary’s on Christmas day, 1633, on 2 Cor. 8:9 (‘Ye knowe the grace of or Lord Jesus Xt that though he was rich, yet for yor sakes he became poore, that ye through his poverty might be rich’).15 Although not a coherent collection, the contents of the entire manuscript reflect the doctrinal and disciplinary debates of the 1630s in Cambridge, with an emphasis on nonconformist, anti-Laudian materials. The Emmanuel College fragment circulated in a similar manuscript mis cellany. It appears as the last item in a collection of manuscripts including
11 Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry, 92–3. 12 Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, part 1, 2: 196. 13 Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, part 1, 4: 136. 14 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 71. 15 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 73, 75.
16 Basil Greenslade, ‘John Hales’ (1584–1656), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004—accessed 28 April 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com .libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/. 17 C.S. Knighton, ‘Samuel Brooke,’ (c.1571–1631), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004—accessed 28 April 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com .libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/. 18 Published as Ephemerides, ed. John Russell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850). 19 M.R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Emmanuel College (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), 85.
Lord Kensington, had also intervened at about the time this sermon was delivered in the imprisonments of Dr Everard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields for indiscreet pulpit words regarding the Spanish Match. Comments by Anthony Burgess, also one of the St. John’s / Emmanuel Puritan axis and the editor of the 1640 edition in his epistle to the reader, tell us something of how Stoughton’s sermons were transmitted to us. Specifically, we are informed that ‘He left severall Sermons under his own hand, preached at speciall times, and in Auditories of greatest worth and estimation,’ and that the sermons in the 1640 volume encompass ‘the chiefe’ of these. In addi- tion, we are told, ‘others of his Sermons were only taken from his mouth,’but care has been taken to ‘publish them by, and compare them with the exactest copies that can be gotten.’ The Epistle asserts that in these sermons we have ‘the Author’s mind, as nearly as can be expressed in his own words, without additions or deletions’ (To the Reader). The promise to reproduce ‘the Author’s mind’ in the 1640 Sermons, and the identification of that mind with ‘his own words,’ is challenged by the existence of two, textually-different versions of this sermon, and creates some interesting complexities of interpretation. One of the very first dif- ferences between manuscript and print witnesses is in the version of Canticles 5:8, the sermon’s text, that they provide. Both manuscripts cite Canticles 5:8 as follows: ‘I charge ye o ye daughters of Ierusalem if you find my welbeloved, that you tell him I am sicke of love.’ The print version reads: ‘I charge you, o yee daughters of Jerusalem, if yee find my Well- beloved, what shalle yee tell him? that I am sicke of love.’ Both manu- scripts, then, cite the common reading of both the Geneva and King James versions, while the printed text uses a more literal translation, one that introduces the interrogative sense and rhetorical intensity of the Hebrew, but which is not found in any contemporary Bibles. Despite this intriguing Biblical crux in the sermon’s text, however, and despite its opening paragraph—an extended Scriptural quotation from 1 Corinthians 13, this sermon is one of the least Biblical early modern sermons I have encoun- tered. Although it quotes extensively from philosophers, poets, historians, the Greek Epigrams, and multiple Church Fathers, I counted fewer than ten direct biblical quotations over 110 printed pages. For the most part, the sermon develops its themes without recourse to Reformed practices of Biblical cross-referencing, the customary practice of analyzing dark or obscure places in light of clearer passages.20 While it is not the object of
20 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 53.
most significant are changes from ‘bough of myrrhe’ (fol. 61r) to ‘bough of Myrtle’ (71); ‘Bug-beggers’ (fol. 76v) to ‘Bul-beggers’ (112); ‘fair living on out- ward things’ (fol. 78r) to ‘fair liverie of outward things’ (117); ‘Rev. 21.18’ (fol. 79v) to ‘Rev. 21.8’ (122); ‘or p[ro]fession will remayne some blot’ (fol. 80v) to ‘lest our profession receive some blot’ (125); ‘& therefore is troubled’ (fol. 84r) to ‘and their soul is troubled’ (136); ‘Callidore’ (fol. 84v) to ‘Cassiodore’ (137); ‘flowing on’ (fol. 85r) to ‘floting in’ (138); ‘pearle of peace’ (fol. 88r) to ‘pearl of price’ (148). The differences between manuscript and print, while not my primary focus, nonetheless attest to the vagaries of sermon trans- mission, and the powerful impact of their moment of delivery on their subsequent iterations. While the manuscripts have enabled a date, and exposed a history of the sermon’s transmission suggestive of its political and theological reso- nance as well as its oral impact, the remainder of this essay will put more pressure on the sermon by situating the sermon thus dated and framed within three specific frameworks that will deepen the historical and rhe- torical analysis. The first is the interpretative history of the Song of Songs, and of this text in particular, in Reformed English sermons, treatises, com- mentaries, and versifications. The second is the fact of this sermon’s deliv- ery at Paul’s Cross following James’s Directions to Preachers (1622) preached in the context of the Spanish Match and the international Protestant cause. The third framework involves comparison of this sermon with a court sermon—The Happinesse of Peace—preached by Stoughton to ‘cel- ebrate’ the French Match before the King at Trinity College, Cambridge, and dated by Peter McCullough 13 December 1624, just 10 months after this occasion.21 Stoughton’s text comes from the narrative heart of the Song of Songs, with its dramatic account of the Bride’s separation from the beloved, absent because of the spouse’s failure of desire, and her persecution by the ‘watchmen’ of the community from whom she expected protection. It is not a theologically innocent text, but is freighted with a lengthy interpre- tative history, most of it invested in spiritual interpretation of a text that, taken literally, was carnal and erotic, a dialogue between two lovers with no explicit historical basis, and no textual reference to God, but which no interpretative community—Jewish, Catholic, or Reformed—was willing to reject as canonical. It was a text that most commentators insisted was
21 Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ‘Calendar,’ 295.
22 I am grateful to Victoria Brownlee for sharing unpublished work from her disserta- tion: ‘Reforming Figures: Biblical Interpretation and Literature in Early Modern England’ (PhD diss., Queen’s University Belfast, 2012). Her chapter on the Song of Songs is particu- larly strong on the literal/allegorical implications of the book. My account of the interpre- tative history of the Song of Songs also relies on the two most important publications dealing specifically with its interpretation in the early modern period: Noam Flinker, The Song of Songs in English Renaissance Literature: Kisses of Their Mouths (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000); Elizabeth Clarke, Politics, Religion and the Song of Songs in Seventeenth- Century England (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Clarke claims that ‘In many ways, the struggle over the identity of the Church of England in the seventeenth century is a conflict over the meaning of the Song of Songs (3). See also E.A. Matter, The Song of Songs in Western Mediaeval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 23 Among the extended commentaries, versifications, sermons, and paraphrases of the Song of Songs available in 1623/4, the following contribute significantly to the interpreta- tive tradition, but the list is by no means comprehensive: Bartimaeus Andrewes, Certaine verie worthie, godly and profitable sermons, vpon the fifth chapiter of the Songs of Solomon (London: Robert Waldegrave, 1583); Robert Aylett, The Song of Songs, which was Salomons metaphrased in English heroiks by way of dialogue. With certayne of the brides ornaments (London: William Stansby, 1621); William Baldwin, The canticles or balades of Salomon, phraselyke declared in Englysh metres (London: [Edward Whitchurche], 1549); Théodore de Béze, Master Bezaes sermons vpon the three chapters of the canticle of canticles (Oxford: printed by Joseph Barnes, and are to be sould [in London by T. Cooke] in Pauls Church-yard at the Tygers Head, 1587); Henoch Clapham, Three partes of Salomon his Song of Songs (London: Valentine Sims for Edmund Mutton dwelling in Pater-noster-Row at the signe of the Huntes-man, 1603); John Dove, The conuersion of Salomon A direction to holinesse of life; handled by way of commentarie vpon the whole booke of Canticles (London: W. Stansby for John Smethwick, 1613); Thomas Drant, Two sermons preached the one at S. Maries Spittle on Tuesday in Easter weeke 1570 and the other at the court at Windsor the Sonday after twelfth day, being the viij of Ianuary, before in the yeare 1569 (London: John Day, 1570); Michael Drayton, The harmonie of the church Containing, the spirituall songes and holy hymnes, of godly men, patriarkes and prophetes […] to be read or sung, for the solace and comfort of the godly (London: [T. Orwin for] Richard Ihones, 1591); Dudley Fenner, The Song of Songs, that is, the most excellent song which was Solomons (Middelburgh: Richard Schilders, 1594); George Gifford, Fifteene sermons upon the Song of Salmon (London: Barnard Alsop, 1620); William Gouge in Henry Finch, An exposition of the Song of Solomon: called Canticles Together with profitable obseruations, collected out of the same (London: John Beale, 1615); Joseph Hall, Salomons diuine arts […] Drawne into method, out of his Prouerbs & Ecclesiastes. With an open and plaine paraphrase, vpon the Song of songs (London: H[umphrey] L[ownes], 1609); William Loe, Songs of Sion Set for the ioy of gods deere ones (Hamburg: s.n., 1620); Jude Smith, A misticall deuise of the spirituall and godly loue betwene Christ the spouse,
allegorical imperative, argued that in this book, the allegorical meaning is the literal meaning: ‘I grant it hath a literal meaning, but I say, the literal meaning is not immediat, … but that which is spiritually and especially meant by these Allegorick and Figurative speeches, is the Literal meaning of this Song.’24 Durham further distinguished between allegoric exposi- tion of Scripture (which he rejected) and an exposition of an allegoric Scripture, which this book required: ‘The first is that, which many Fathers, and School-men fail in, that is, when they Allegorize plain Scriptures and Histories, seeking to draw out some secret meaning, other than appeareth in the words; and so will fasten many senses upon one Scripture. … An Exposition of an Allegorick Scripture, is, the opening and expounding of some dark Scripture […] making it plain and edifying.’25 In England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were over 500 commentaries on this book alone, an exegetical tradition surpassed only by commentary on the Psalms.26 Nor was the Song of Songs politically innocent. At least as early as Luther, who preached a series of sermons on the book, it had been made to comment on Church governance, and Elizabeth Clarke has demon- strated the extent to which, during the Stuart reign, it expressed theologi- cal and cultural opposition to the Crown, particularly among Puritans, and was aligned with anti-Catholic nationalism. Early in the Jacobean period, it was associated with members of the court of Prince Henry, and after that with the cause of international Protestantism epitomized by the religious and political struggles of the Palatinate in the 1620s. By the 1630s
and the church or congregation Firste made by the wise Prince Salomon […] (London: Henry Kirckham, and are to be solde at his shoppe, at the little northe doore of Paules, at the signe of the black Boie, 1575); George Wither, The hymnes and songs of the Church diuided into two parts (London: John Bill, 1623). 24 James Durham, Clavis cantici, or, An exposition of the Song of Solomon (Edinburgh: George Swintoun and James Glen, 1668), 6. This view was not exclusively applied to the Song of Songs, but to Scripture as a whole. See John Donne’s comments on the ‘literal sense’: ‘The literall sense is always to be preserved,’ Donne says, ‘but the literall sense is not always to be discerned, for the literall sense is not always that, which the very Letter and Grammer of the place presents, as where it is literally said, That Christ is a Vine, and liter- ally, That his flesh if bread, …’ concluding that the literal sense is ‘the principall intention of the Holy Ghost,’ but an intention that might be to express things ‘by allegories, by figures; so that in many places of Scripture, a figurative sense is the literall sense’ (The Sermons of John Donne, eds. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953–62], 6: 62). 25 Durham, Clavis cantici, 22–3. 26 Brownlee cites this figure provided by George L. Scheper, ‘Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association 89.3 (1974), 556. For evidence that this was not just an English phenomenon, see Clarke, Politics, Religion, 12.
27 See Clarke, Politics, Religion, esp. chapters 1 and 2. 28 In Politics, Religion, Clarke notes that ‘Commentaries on the Song of Songs are full of the adjective ‘love-sick’, represented as a desirable frame of mind for the Christian’ (18). She provides a reference to a sermon by William Gearing entitled The love-sick Spouse, or, The substance of four sermons preached on Canticles 2.5 (London: Nevill Simmons, 1665), but makes no reference to Stoughton’s sermon.
tradition of commentary suggests, lovesickness is the appropriate attitude for the lover (either the individual soul or the national Church) who seeks Christ, but it can also gesture towards lovesickness as idolatry, most pow- erfully evoked by Charles’s trip to Spain to court the Infanta in person, and, following his ‘escape’ from that Match, the opening of negotiations for the only slightly more tolerable French Match. Stoughton, whose patron Rich was enthusiastic about the French Match, seems to be express- ing the caution of those wary, if not absolutely opposed to, a marriage with one of the daughters of Antichrist, although the French Match held a stra- tegic advantage in a war to recover the Palatinate and support the cause of international Protestantism. Stoughton’s sermon invites strong topical application when he criti- cizes sermons that sing sweetly in the meditation, but fail in the applica- tion. In this case, the language of war, peace, and the dangers of security expresses the pressure to wage war with Spain, and to make parliamentary subsidies dependent on some say in foreign policy. In this context, Stoughton’s assertion that ‘the language of war is the best Rhetoricke to commend peace’ (56) registers dissatisfaction with James’s handling of both domestic and foreign policy, reinforced with statements indicating that England has been lulled into security and has not benefited from peace. The example of the French Protestant Church is a cautionary tale to England, as Stoughton concludes that ‘mourning France may tell merry England , sorrowful France may tell secure England thus much: Gods chil- dren must not look for any Paradise upon earth, that Vine must not think it grows in Paradise’ (85). In fact, the dangers of peace and security are a premise of the sermon. Stoughton comments, for example, that ‘The beau- tie of the world foils a Christian more than the strength, the Peace more than the war, the flattering Sunshine more then the blustring storm’ (94–5). In another section, Stoughton elaborates on the concept by saying that ‘the lap of prosperity upon the knees of peace’ have made us tender and delicate, and ‘both make faith effeminate’ (97). For Stoughton, one further use of the sermon is a caution about how to use peace and pros- perity: ‘wee sit rent-free upon the Gospell, it costs us nothing, and yet we grow verie beggars’ (131). In fact, in an association common in sermons of the period, Stoughton expresses his fears that peace will lead inevitably to a toleration of religion. This fear that a toleration of religion, and particu- larly of Catholicism, was ensuing as a natural consequence of negotiations for Charles’s match is expressed throughout the sermon in a large number of anti-Papist, and specifically Anti-Jesuit comparisons. Stoughton com- pares the spouse’s wounded conscience to the ‘chamber of meditation
(as the Jesuites call that where they tutor their Scholars to kill Princes)’ (62). Another passage contrasts the numberless tears of the Saints with the Papists numbering their beads, and counting out their prayers (75). Stoughton also contrasts the faulty Papist economy of the relationship between grace and merit with the right valuation of the work of grace. ‘I pray God,’ he says, ‘that Peace doe not play the Sophister in the world now adayes and partaking of the nature of cold, freeze Heterogeneals together, Papists and Protestants in the neerest bonds’ (138), upsetting the proper economy of grace. As he urges, ‘The acclamation at the founding of the Temple in Zachary, was Grace, Grace, not Merit, as the rough Pelagian; nor Merit and Grace, nor Grace and Merit, nor Merit at all, nor Free-will neither, but all Grace, Grace’ (80). And in an attack on the luxury and corruption of the Roman Church, Stoughton warns that though the Whore of Rome can clothe her family in scarlet, prosperity does not make a Christian (115). Moreover, peace that means ignoring the sufferings of Palatinate Christians is ‘unnaturall,’ and those who are not moved by these afflictions, but ‘sorry’ Christians. Finally, in specific application to the joint political future of England and the Palatinate, joined as they are by the families of Charles and his sister Elizabeth, Stoughton urges his hear- ers to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, that our daughters may be as corner-stones, pol- ished after the similitude of a Palace, that they may be Royall and Palatine stones’ (141). Three additional points can be made. The first is that the acknowledged (in fact, desirable) darkness and obscurity of Canticles is exacerbated in this sermon by its almost complete lack of Biblical cross-referencing or collation. Mary Morrissey has shown how preachers supported the doc- trines they derived from their texts by ‘comparing cryptic or troublesome passages with more perspicuous ones, so that a theologically sound under- standing would be established,’29 but it seems likely that preachers such as Stoughton chose texts from this book precisely because its instability allowed them to exploit it for their own purposes without being tied to a strict interpretation of the Biblical words or the obligation to support and clarify his interpretation from other Biblical places. The second point is that in this period of heightened sensitivity to the religious and political implications of dynastic marriages, reference to marriages, even those between Christ and the Church, were charged with
29 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 53.
political resonance. A year earlier, on 19 March 1623, royal chaplain James Rawlinson made a direct connection between Prince Charles’s ‘Amorous travels’ to gain a bride and the ‘Amatorious text’ of the Song of Songs in a sermon entitled The Bridegroome and his Bride.30 While ostensibly focus- ing on the ‘mystical marriage’ appropriate for the Lenten season, Rawlinson derives politically apposite lessons from it. The anti-Catholic tenor of the sermon, and the instruction that the Bride should abstain from fornica- tion with idols is only one such reference. The sermon also makes much of the father’s role in choosing the Bride, stressing divine election, one that sets in motion a complex hermeneutic critical of the father, James, for his choice of a non-elect bride for his son. As Elizabeth Clarke concludes: ‘the Song of Songs is being interpreted in the traditional framework of the mystical marriage, but lessons from it are being drawn in the opposite direction, from the spiritual phenomenon back to the projected marriage of Prince Charles.’31 Stoughton’s sermon a year later, after Charles had returned from Spain without a Spanish bride, also by implication makes James responsible for separation of the two lovers, Christ and his Church, by having sent his son away from England/ the Church of England, into the lascivious arms of Spain. The third point is that the sermon, preached in a particular context, would have appeared perhaps even more oppositional when it was printed in 1640, when the full impact of Laudian policies, royal marriages, and the failures of England to support international Protestantism had become more apparent, and when the labels of ‘puritan’ and ‘schismatic’ had been used so effectively to marginalize the godly. This impact is epitomized by the printed sermon’s naming of Edward Dering as the anonymous ‘exem- plary Xtian’ of the manuscript. In 1624 Stoughton’s tongue—unlike the exemplar to whom he alludes—is sufficiently bridled that he refers only obliquely to that person’s martyrdom in the anti-prelatical cause, a man who on his deathbed preferred the ‘golden beams’ of God’s countenance won through adversity to the ‘golden bags’ of worldly prosperity. Patrick Collinson makes clear that after his death, this outspoken and honest preacher became a ‘living legend, a mirror of exemplary godliness and evangelical ardour.’32 Stoughton’s reluctance to name Dering, perhaps
30 James Rawlinson, ‘The Bridegrome and his Bride,’ in Quadriga Salutis (London: John Lichfield and William Turner, 1625), sig. 2v. 31 Clarke, Politics, Religion, 40. 32 Patrick Collinson, ‘Edward Dering’ (c.1540–1576), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004—accessed 28 April 2013, http://www.oxforddnb .com.libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/.
33 McCullough, Sermons at Court, 306. 34 Whitebrook, ‘John Stoughton,’ 91. 35 John Stoughton, ‘The Happinesse of Peace’ in XV. Choice Sermons (London: Richard Hodgkinson, Thomas Cotes, and Richard Badger, 1640). All references to this sermon are taken from this edition and cited parenthetically in the text of the essay.
(4) to inform it of how the unity of peace and religion makes a people happy. Where the Paul’s Cross sermon had warned of the dangers of peace and security, this sermon sets out to show how peace is a great blessing to a nation. James is explicitly praised as a blessed peace-maker, while in the next breath he must hear that ‘war is Malum, but may be Necessarium, and it is good some times to hunt the wolfe, though it be better to fodder the sheep’ (11–12). While peace is extolled, however, the superiority of religion to peace occupies the heart of the sermon, and is expressed in terms that would have caught the attention of those gathered ostensibly to celebrate the French Match: ‘So that the fairest Kingdome without religion, which provides for the soule against death, is but a Paradise without a Tree of life, like a beautifull harlot (according to the French proverb) a Paradise for the eye, and a Purgatorie for the soule’ (17). The union of Charles and Henrietta Maria results in the joining of peace and religion, that ‘perfect felicitie: as when some skilfull hand hath made an happie marriage between perfect Red (suppose the Prince of the House of Roses) and purest White (suppose the Lady of the nation of the Lillies) they beget the sweetest colour’ (26). Nonetheless, this perfect felicity, the two-part song of the England Church in prosperity, is immediately undercut by an unseemly diatribe against the Whore of Babylon (27). More striking, however, is the verbatim repetition in each of Stoughton’s sermons of two passages that had struck a warning note at Paul’s Cross, and that constitute the thematic core and political thrust of both sermons. Stoughton observes, citing Jewish commentators, ‘that if you take the letters of the name Jehovah, out of the names of man and woman, Ish, Ishah, there remains nothing but Esh, Esh, fire, fire; to note that when marriage is not in the feare of the Lord, in the knot of true Religion, there is nothing in it but the fire of contention’ (Happinesse 33, emphasis mine).36 The second passage takes up once more the cause of interna- tional Protestantism, and specifically the fate of James’s daughter Elizabeth and the Palatinate. In both sermons the passages are identical: ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that our sons may be as plants growne up in their youth, that our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a Palace, that they may be Royall and Palatine stones’
36 The equivalent passage in The Love-sick Spouse is as follows: ‘and as the Cabbalists note of marriage, out of the words, … man and woman, that if thout take out Jod and He, the letters of the name of God, there remaines nothing but …, fire, fire; that when marriage is not in the feare of the Lord, in the knot of true Religion, there is nothing in it but the fire of contention, so it is betweene us and God without Christ’ (Love-sick Spouse, 58–9).
(Happinesse, 31; Love-sick Spouse, 141). At Paul’s Cross, this passage pre- cedes Stoughton’s passionate exhortation to grant a ‘subsidie of Sighs,’ ‘a presse of prayers,’ and a ‘benevolence of tears, toward a quenching of those flames, with which all the Churches of God round about us are on fire’ (Love-sick Spouse, 143). In the court sermon, this passage precedes more specifically anti-Catholic attacks on those ‘whose Religion is rebel- lion, whose faith is faction: that rends a Common-wealth often, as the sword cuts the scabberd. Peters Successour loves to fish in troubled waters, ever since he drew his Crowne out of them’ (Happinesse, 32). The point is punctuated in the court sermon, though Stoughton disclaims any ‘infer- ence’ (34), when he contrasts former times when Religion comprised ‘sons of the Coale’ ‘whose nature and delight it was to kindle the flames of Martyrdome’ with present times when the ‘sons of light’ walk by the light of the gospel. Then, he says, England was hell, but now it is heaven (34). The court sermon concludes with a wish that England may transmit these blessings as an inheritance to its children, no doubt alluding to the vexed issue of succession and to the education, both religious and political, of the royal offspring. Nobles, politicians, and especially the King are urged to maintain their zeal for religion and defence of the faith, the exhortations tasting of critique as much as praise, but the sermon ends with fulsome praise for James who, as sovereign defender of the faith, blesses the nation: ‘Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietnesse, and that verie worthy deeds are done unto this Nation (this gowned Nation) by thy providence, wee accept it alway, and will celebrate it in all places (most noble Felix, most happy Soveraigne) with all thankfulnesse’ (41). The notion that the French Match was the providential joining of peace and religion puts the best possible construction on the treaties, Stoughton’s dutiful ‘benevolences’ (40) of a golden tongue to the King who is Christ to Stoughton’s Zaccheus, and to whom he owes this tribute, but the unabashed anti-Catholicism of the sermon undercuts this posture. The audience at Paul’s Cross, no doubt larger and more diverse than the academic and courtly audience in Cambridge, was treated to a more overtly or consistently oppositional experience, in an exhortatory register. But despite the starstruck attitude exhibited by Stoughton in front of such an exalted court auditory, he managed to preach his core message—the importance of true religion in any union, and the compassionate duty to pray and even to intervene militarily on behalf of beleaguered continental Protestants. And despite the excesses of his praise of the pair to be mar- ried, and the Defender of the Faith, King James, he managed to convey his continuing anxiety about the state of true religion. The anti-Catholic
elements of the court sermon are, if anything, more biting than those spo- ken at Paul’s Cross, but Stoughton must have been relying at Court on the gilded frame of flattery of his sermon to soften the impact of the message at its core, an unhappy alliance of hope and warning that exposed the national anxieties underpinning this political marriage. James must have been relieved to hear the sermon end as it did because it offered him a face-saving way to celebrate the Match and to demonstrate the conformity of even his oppositional clergy even as it expressed national solidarity on issues of religion and conscience.37 But the tensions at its core belie its unctuous conclusion, and echo, literally, the anxieties that sermons had to negotiate in 1624 as the political and religious axes shifted around them.
37 Although there is little evidence of pre-sermon censorship, after the fact, court ser- mons could be censored by penal measures taken against preachers who had overstepped unwritten bounds. McCullough argues that these bounds were clearly defined early in the reign by James’s response to a sermon preached by John Burgess at Greenwich, 19 June 1604. From this example and the correspondence surrounding it, McCullough concludes that there was a de facto Golden Rule of the court pulpit: that is, ‘even if only in the last moments of one’s sermon, compliment the prince’ (Sermons at Court, 44). Any criticisms could also be defended by a disclaimer against application to the present audience. As McCullough suggests, ‘So fundamental was the preacher’s right to control meaning, that disavowals of a clearly intended meaning seem to have been deemed sufficient to exempt the preacher from the punishment that he would otherwise receive’ (Sermons at Court, 146).
APPENDIX A: Structure of The Love-sick Spouse
A. Proemium (45–50): Encomium of spiritual love B. Substance of Text: a. The affection – Love b. The intention – Sickness C. Circumstances of the Text: a. Absence of the beloved (50–85) i. Three effects 1. No outward wooing of his word 2. No inward working of his spirit 3. No comfort of his presence ii. Grounds of paradoxical effect 1. Nature of love 2. Nature of man 3. Nature of this absence iii. How absence leads the spouse to Christ 1. Discipline of law drives her to him iv. Reasons for his absence 1. For consolation 2. For exhortation a. If you enjoy him, wear him in your bosom b. If you perceive him going, exhort him to stay c. Be not impatient for another 3. For instruction a. To illustrate the cold entertainment of the Gospel occa- sioned by plenty b. The spouse’s afflictions (affliction is an incentive of divine affection) i. It abases the enticing loveliness of the world outside ii. It abates the lustiness of the flesh within that might incite us to folly iii. It abets the Spirit in his quarrel with the two former (the world and the flesh) 1. It does this by persuasion (lays us flat on our backs so we can see heaven) 2. It does this by necessity (affliction drives us to God) iv. Affliction interpreted as divine affection has three uses
1. For instruction: prosperity does not make a Christian 2. For encouragement: many people delight in deriding Chris tians for the afflictions they endure 3. For caution: affliction can cause coldness or untowardness a. Don’t forget the afflictions of others b. Don’t fall in love with God’s blessings and grow ‘key-cold’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SERMON, SALVATION, SPACE: JOHN DONNE’S PERFORMATIVE MODE AND THE POLITICS OF ACCOMMODATION
Kathleen O’Leary
Being called to this high place, in this great assembly, where is accustomed to be a concourse, not onley from all parts of the City, but almost of every nation under heaven.1
The clergyman Robert Sibthorpe’s description of Paul’s Cross in 1617 sug- gests both the sheer number and variety of types that gathered there. It is a site of multiplicity but can also be seen as a liminal place, ‘untidy’, dan- gerous. Its audience is non-elite, a heady mixture that lends to the place uncertainty and excitement and it is here that John Donne preached inter- mittently from 1616/7 to 1629. This chapter will examine how Donne uses his significant skills as a preacher to reach out to this large and unsettled congregation and how he uses language to coerce and awe his hearers. It will examine the visceral effects that the use of carefully selected diction, phrase, and rhythmic pattern can have on the listeners and how these effects can transform not only the congregation’s sense of their individual salvation but the preacher’s too. Donne’s particularly vibrant style of preaching is, of course, not confined to his Paul’s Cross sermons—his audiences and locations are many and varied—but his Paul’s Cross con- gregation form possibly the most interesting group as their collectivity and sheer size provide that sense of ambiguity, uncertainty and, maybe, disquiet. The performative mode of Donne will also be central to this chapter, not merely as an instance of acknowledging the connection between the preacher and the actor, for most in the congregation, one might assume, would also be theatre-goers, but more interestingly by examining the per- formance as spiritual device. By this I mean that Donne’s dramatic mode is not only a means of transfixing an audience but also of dislocating them
1 Robert Sibthorpe, A Counter-Plea to an Apostate’s Pardon, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse vpon Shroue-Sunday, February 15. 1617 (London: B.Alsop, for R.Fleming, 1618).
2 Bryan Crockett, ‘“Holy Cozenage” and the Renaissance Cult of the Ear’ Sixteenth Century Journal 24.1 (1993), 47. 3 John Donne, The Sermons of John Donne, ed. by George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols. (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), 3:259–260. All references to Donne’s sermons are taken from this edition. 4 Egidio da Viterbo in Bryan Crockett, ‘“Holy Cozenage” and the Renaissance Cult of the Ear,’ 54. 5 Louis A. Montrose, ‘The Purpose of Playing: Reflections on a Shakespeare Anthro pology,’ Helios 7 (1980), 63.
Donne’s approach to his role as preacher and the suggestive diction found in the sermons, calls to mind, in language highly vivid and incanta- tory, the pictorial and rhythmic entreaty of Catholic devotion. I would argue that this overlaying of one religious doctrine with another can re- define reverential practice and assuage doubts and fears that cannot always be theologically justified through the processes that accompany a new religion’s dogma. In short, a congregation may be more likely to receive that dogma when delivered with an attentive glance at its recent past. The evocative Word in the Sermons, sustained by a veiled Catholic aesthetic, can reconnect worshippers to an elegiac world of emblems and significations, which were arguably critical to a post-Reformation Protestant society that had undergone considerable change and was aware of a sense of cultural loss. Eamon Duffy remarks that ‘for most of the first Elizabethan adult generation, Reformation was a stripping away of famil- iar and beloved observances, the destruction of a vast and resonant world of symbols’.6 And even by Donne’s time, one might suggest that echoes of this fading tradition still resounded. Placing the memory of old obser- vances at the heart of the sermon keeps the scripture vibrant and alive in the immediacy of the spoken performance and also central to communal spirituality that engages with the art of preaching. Remembrance can answer our need for salvation: as Donne indicates: ‘But the memory is so familiar, and so present, and so ready a faculty, as will always answer’.7 And, more significantly, ‘The art of salvation, is but the art of memory’.8 Moreover, the bustle of the everyday, of quotidian habit and custom, lends to the idea of an individual experiencing a sense of ‘otherness’, a feeling of being removed from the commonplace when placed in these spiritual settings. That these sermons are heard on Sunday also comple- ments the idea of shifting away from ordinary time, allowing the imagina- tion to modify itself away from its workday pattern into a contemplation of eternity. Removed from the rigours imposed by a strong Protestant work-ethic, Sunday can offer the congregation a spiritual space that can accommodate a Catholic past that is still within its cultural memory and the two religions, past and present, can work on the individual and collective mind to create a sense of a divine world. The importance of this accommodation can implicitly legitimise a Catholicism that would
6 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992), 591. 7 Donne, Sermons 2:73. 8 Donne, Sermons 2:73.
9 Donne, Sermons, 7:17. 10 Donne, Sermons, 7:17. 11 Donne, Sermons, 7:17. 12 Donne, Sermons, 7:18. 13 Bryan Crockett, ‘“Holy Cozenage” and the Renaissance Cult of the Ear,’ 50. 14 Crockett, ‘“Holy Cozenage”,’ 51.
enhanced by a vivid image or paradoxical concept, can draw in the listener who is captured by a mixture of the linguistic, imagistic and the devo- tional, a ‘supra-rational rhetorical force’, all of which work upon him or her to create a sense of transcendence.15 And Donne is readily aware of this heady mixture, adroitly re-configur- ing unacceptable visual idolatry into a sort of spiritual linguistics, where the imagistic tradition is enfolded and made permissible. The image of the Church as an Ark on a stormy sea pervades the 1627 sermon as does the flagrant, if implied, use of St Sebastian shot through with arrows.16 In the same sermon, Donne cites Calvin’s tolerance of those inculcated into this representative style, arguing that there needs to be an easy transition from eye to ear: There are many that could not bee without those Bookes (as hee calls those Pictures) because then they had no other way of Instruction; but, that that might be supplied, if those things which were delivered in picture, to their eyes, were delivered in Sermons to their eares. And this is true, that where there is frequent preaching, there is no necessity of pictures. Remembrance ‘was one office of the Holy Ghost himself, that he should bring to their remembrance those things; which had been formerly taught them’.17 Thus, the ear replaces the eye directly through the power of the sermon though, implied in Calvin’s words, is the sense of transition as a moderate shift through the act of remembrance. William R. Mueller notes that Donne’s frequent use of bodily imagery to expound spiritual matters is effective because of its ‘concreteness and familiarity’ to a congregation.18 In an undated Whitsunday sermon (c. 1618–21), for example, Donne fore- grounds the importance of the ears as the route to salvation: The Eares are the Aqueducts of the water of life; and if we cut off those, that is, intermit our ordinary course of hearing, this is a castration of the soul, the soul becomes an Eunuch, and we grow to a rust, to a moss, to a barrenness, without fruit, without propagation.19 Here is the importance both of preaching and listening as a means to sal- vation through direct entry to the soul through the body, for if we do not use our ears to hear God’s word our souls will become withered. The soul
15 Crockett, ‘“Holy Cozenage”,’ 58. 16 Donne, Sermons, 7:23. 17 Donne, Sermons, 7:19. 18 William R. Mueller, John Donne: Preacher (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962), 123. 19 Donne, Sermons, 5: 55.
20 Rosalie Osmond, Mutual Accusation: Seventeenth-Century Body and Soul Dialogues in Their Literary and Theological Context (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 143. 21 Donne, Sermons, 2:84. 22 Crockett, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 39.
of discrimination in the audiences Donne faced’, a fact that reminds us of the actor’s hope to please the audience.23 The use of theatrical devices as a means to keeping the congregation’s attention at Paul’s Cross can be extended to other venues. Inside the run- down St Paul’s cathedral, Stubbs describes a huge congregation made up of aristocrats, lawyers, gentlemen, merchants and shopkeepers as well as those from the theatres and the taverns.24 Many would be found either worshipping in the choir and side chapels, whilst a noisy throng would be standing or walking along the passage of the nave, Paul’s Walk.25 Stubbs notes how Donne could use a venue to enhance his sermon. For example, the light through the Rose window shining on the congregation in St Paul’s was employed as a dramatic device to gather the crowd, bringing together, physically and metaphorically, diverse humanity before him.26 The power of Donne’s language to subdue, though, must be paramount, given the noise and general disarray in Stubbs’s descriptions of the groups of people at Paul’s Cross, or in the cathedral itself. It also raises the issue of how the preacher might deliver his sermon in order to bring about such a seemingly dramatic change in the congregation, for the preacher must ‘shake and shiver, and throw down the refractory and rebellious soul’.27 Bryan Crocket has noted the connection with the performative qualities of the sermon and argues that such a conflation between church and theatre can evoke in the congregation a sense of being possessed by the divine: the metaphysical sermon, like the drama, depends on an audience. Sermons and stage plays are very much public, communal occasions for the reception of the spoken word, Both modes achieve their effect in part by evoking a sense of wonder […] Since at the very heart of the Christian story is the mys- tery of divine immolation, the paradox invites on the hearer’s part a similar relinquishment of possessive power.28 The ‘possessive power’ here suggests a surrendering of the worldly to the ethereal world that the performance of the sermon evokes; and it is an act that is a remembrance of Christ’s surrender of his body on the cross. Such power of the sermon to evoke ecstasy is triggered by Donne’s own noted exhibitionism, conflated with the act of confession as he reveals himself
23 John Stubbs, Donne: The Reformed Soul (London: Viking, 2006), 325. 24 Stubbs, Donne, 378. 25 Stubbs, Donne, 373–374. 26 Stubbs, Donne, 379–380. 27 Donne, Sermons, 2:164. 28 Crockett, Play of Paradox, 58–59.
29 Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michel Foucault (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1984), 211. 30 See Bryan Crockett, Play of Paradox, 4. 31 Martin Bucer, A treatise declaryng [and] shewing dyuers causes take[n]out of the holy scriptur[es], of the sente[n]ces of holy faders, [and] of the decrees of deuout emperours, that pyctures [and] other ymages which were wont to be worshypped, ar i[n] no wise to be suffred in the temples or churches of Christen men (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535?), A2r-A3v. 32 A treatise declaring and showing that images are not to be suffered in churches, D2r.
over another, or intercession of one individual on behalf of another, which a cruciform style of church design encourages.33 Visual iconography is ‘an olde rooted custome / and the devyll agayne exercyseth and putteth forthe his craftes and disceyptes so busely’.34 To conclude, Paul’s Cross provides Donne with the physical space to join together a diverse selection of London life. His sermon of 1627 gathers them together to celebrate the importance of memory as a means to salva- tion. Though visual idolatry is gone, there is, nonetheless, in Donne’s ser- mons a re-connection, or translation of memorial agency into the Word, which offers a more complex view of Donne’s religious path. In his ‘Satire III’, he famously advised his readers to ‘Seeke true religion’ and the pursuit of what went before brings together past and present, creating a sense of kairos—eternal time—where not only do Catholic and Protestant aes- thetics combine, but where divine eternity and secular time may also come together in the moment of the sermon.
33 Crockett, Play of Paradox, 5. 34 Martin Bucer, A treatise declaring and showing that images are not to be suffered in churches, C4r.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE PAUL’S CROSS JEREMIAD AND OTHER SERMONS OF EXHORTATION
Mary Morrissey
Some discussion of the Jeremiads might be expected in a volume on the Paul’s Cross sermons, as they are the sermons most associated with that pulpit today. Here, I want to return to subject I first tried to disentangle ten years ago: the generic classification of the Paul’s Cross Jeremiads, and why it is significant.1 I will argue that the Jeremiads are sermons of exhortation, designed to rouse a complacent church into a more zealous response to the preacher’s message. As such, the Jeremiad is a sermon-genre particu- larly suited to very public pulpits like Paul’s Cross, because it concerns the Christian’s duty to fellow-members of a visible church: the duty to ‘edify’ the church by the means appropriate to one’s station. (The magistrate should punish wrong-doers; the minister should proclaim the threat of punishment over those who neglect God’s mercy; and every Christian was bound to admonish and support each other.) But the notion that the Jeremiad is a type of sermon that asserts the corporate basis of England’s religious culture runs counter to the scholarship on these texts to date, which finds in them an impulse among Calvinist preachers to separate the godly sheep from the reprobate goats. I argue that when studying the Jeremiads, we should not seek out expressions of the centrifugal force that is the doctrine of predestination, but rather see the numerous demonstra- tions of the centripetal force of the significance attributed to the visible church in English Protestantism. Perry Miller’s eloquent and persuasive writing on covenant theology and New England Puritanism has been the starting point for any discus- sion of the Jeremiad. Miller noted that the idea of a covenant with God, where God bound himself by particular terms into an agreement with man, provided a framework within which the deity could become knowable and predictable. The terms of our obligation to God (believe and be saved)
1 Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching: Types and Examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad,’ The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750, ed. Peter McCullough and Lori Anne Ferrell (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000).
2 Perry Miller, ‘The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,’ in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1956; repr. 1984), 50–98; The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 373–462. 3 James B. Torrance, ‘The Covenant Concept in Scottish Theology and Politics and its Legacy,’ Scottish Journal of Theology 34 (1951); Daniel J. Elazar, ‘From Biblical Covenant to Modern Federalism: The Federal Theology Bridge,’ in The Covenant Connection: from Federal Theology to Modern Federalism, ed. Daniel J. Elazar and John Kincaid (New York: Lexington Books, 2000), 1–13. 4 Miller, The New England Mind, 463–491, 477–8. 5 Francis Bremer’s ‘To Live Exemplary Lives: Puritans and Puritan Communities as Lofty Lights,’ The Seventeenth Century 7 (1992), 28. Bremer offers an elegant summary of the debates arising from Miller’s thesis as a preface to his own argument here.
important for our purposes are the problems that emerged when attempt- ing to explain how God might bind himself to a people for earthly benefits while simultaneously covenanting with his elect for salvation. The two- covenant pattern that Miller proposed was distinctive; previous, continen- tal European accounts of federal theology had not considered the possibility of a covenant made with a secular entity (the nation) for tem- poral goods. For Bullinger and Ursinus (the continental theologians most significant in the early stages of the development of covenant theology) the covenant of works was made with Adam in Paradise, and it promised eternal life on condition of continued obedience. After the Fall, the cove- nant of works continued in the form of the moral law contained in the Decalogue; but because man could not now fulfil the Law, the covenant of works serves only to demonstrate the Christian’s dependence on Christ.6 This covenant of works was superseded by the covenant of grace, in which faith that Christ fulfilled the conditions of the covenant is rewarded with salvation. This understanding of federal theology did not consider tempo- ral rewards and knew nothing of nations; only individual sinners and their collective approach to God in the church. So scholars went to Old England to find the origins of this peculiar phe- nomenon: the ‘communal’ or ‘national covenant’ for temporal prosperity that does not seem to appear in the work of continental theologians. In three important articles on the subject, Michael McGiffert suggested that the idea of the nation being in a covenant with God could be found in Elizabethan texts, but he also admits that it is not full articulated. In an article for Harvard Theological Review in 1982, McGiffert writes: We have here a problem in the history of ideas. The originators of covenant theory knew only the single post-lapsarian covenant of grace, which they found differently administered before and after the Incarnation, yet being one and the same in substance, having reference at all times to Christ alone. By the 1590s, however, theologians were beginning to speak of covenant in quite another form: the covenant of nature or works, embodying the moral law. These revisers retained the covenant of grace for the elect; they brought in the covenant of works to justify God’s way with the mass of humanity who were slated for spiritual execution for violations of the law, and who, in the calculations of ministers, had little if any chance of gaining sanctuary within the pale of grace. … The covenant of works, unlike the covenant of grace,
6 J. Wayne Baker, ‘Heinrich Bullinger, the Covenant, and the Reformed Tradition in Retrospect,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 29. 2 (1998), 359–76, and Baker’s Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1980); David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1–35.
became distinctive as a contract with the conditions of a legal quid pro quo relationship. It evidenced the tug of contractual principles upon the theo- logical mind of the era. The mutation has not been definitely traced through the continental lit- erature, but the English record, spotty though it is, proves informative.7 In an article primarily concerned with Jeremiads, McGiffert writes that preachers compare England to Israel by what he calls the ‘Israelite para- digm’, a ‘simple simile’ by which England ‘was like Israel in being God’s most favored nation, in superiority of spiritual and temporal goods, and accordingly in magnitude of debt’. The debt incurred was an obligation to observe the moral law, and ‘shortcomings would be penalized by afflic- tions proportioned to the default and dealt to the nation generally. The ultimate sanction was the doom of Lo-Ammi - not my people.’8 This com- parison between England and Israel is the basis for McGiffert’s argument that the Jeremiads are reaching towards a notion of ‘national covenant’ based on a covenant of works between God and the English nation. The national covenant provided preachers with the means to promise and threaten ‘mixed congregations’ (of godly and ungodly, reprobate and elect), because it allowed them to exhort the two parts of their congrega- tion differently. The covenant of grace was only available to the elect, and so excluded many of the preachers’ hearers. But the sermons were also concerned with temporal calamities (war, plague, famine), and those could be considered God’s punishment for failing to uphold the ‘national covenant’. To those not included in the covenant of grace, preachers could at least hold out the hope of temporal benefits that God had promised in the covenant of works. If God delays judgement he does so only for the sake of his elect within the English community. I have written that I think it is an error to treat the comparison with Israel as ‘a simple simile’, because Israel represents many things in the Bible: a nation that sins and is punished; a visible church, containing ‘true Israelites’ and hypocrites; typologically, it represented God’s invisible church, his elect. The comparison between Israel and England does not necessarily mean that England is ‘in a national covenant’ with God, because the Israelite’s covenant with God was usually treated as an aspect
7 Michael McGiffert, ‘Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism,’ Harvard Theological Review 75.4 (1982), 464; See also McGiffert, ‘Covenant, Crown, and Commons in Elizabethan Puritanism,’ Journal of British Studies 20 (1980), 35–52. 8 Michael McGiffert ‘God’s Controversy with Jacobean England,’ The American Historical Review 88.5 (1983), 1153.
of Israel’s function as a type of the church. There may be references to England being ‘in the covenant’, or to God having a covenant with England, but it is not Miller’s temporal national covenant, and it is not, indeed, a covenant between God and the nation. Elizabethan puritans do not talk about Miller’s ‘national covenant’, and without explicit mention of such a thing, any mention of the ‘covenant of works’ might be read as referring to the moral law (the Decalogue as a ‘schoolmaster’, teaching dependence on Christ), not as a separate arrangement for temporal prosperity that God makes with those he means to damn. What causes confusion is early mod- ern English preachers’ habits of treating the English people as synony- mous with the English Church, and our habit of reading the English people as a term synonymous with the English nation. The subject of clergymen’s ‘covenant doctrine’ is, I would contend, not the English nation (as McGiffert argues) but the English Church. England can claim to be ‘within the covenant of grace’ insofar as England is a church.9 Viewing the Jeremiad’s appeal to the community from the perspective of the church, not the elect minority, restores the inclusive force of the preachers’ exhortations to repentance. Patrick Collinson has suggested that we might see intimations of the break-up of the national church in the spread of covenant theology, and he wondered about the role of puri- tans in precipitating this break-up. There is, he explains, a tension in puri- tan thinking (and one that is transferred to separating and non-separating congregationalists) about the ‘cohabitation of the faithful and the unfaith- ful’. Their self-identification as godly and the perceived need to remain aloof from the ungodly majority might incline puritans to dissociate them- selves from their less godly neighbours and fellow-parishioners. Collinson was astute enough to see what awkward neighbours the puritans could be: the ‘very habits of life which Puritans condemned as a pernicious waste of time’ were ‘the ordinary and daily cement of local communities’.10
9 Commenting on my 1999 article, Edward Vallence notes that ‘some ministers clearly saw the connection between the two nations as being that both were in covenant with God’. He is right to point out these comparisons, but the preachers do not say that the nation qua nation is in the covenant of grace. Also, as I will discuss below, being ‘in the covenant’ could mean having access to the means of salvation. This is why, as Vallence rightly says ‘the idea of a national covenant presented by these ministers is more complex than simply the covenant of grace which bound only the elect’: Edward Vallence, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Cambridge: Boydell Press, 2005), 34–6. 10 Patrick Collinson, ‘The Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful,’ in From Persecution to Toleration, ed. Oleg Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 67.
The reasons for the puritans’ determination to distinguish themselves as the pious underdogs may be partly historical, a legacy of a hard-won reformation, but the ultimate source of this was the doctrine of predestination: The doctrine of saving grace, limited by election, was evidently a mental structure of binary discrimination, especially when held robustly as a full and balanced doctrine of double predestination. It elevated to a cosmic and divine principle that gross over-simplification which reduces the teeming variety of human conditions and types to just two: elect and reprobate. But since it was possible to hold the doctrine of election in an inclusive and non- pejorative form, to combine Calvinism with a churchly and conventional view of the nation or the city as Christian, it is far from clear that these doc- trines, taught in sermons and confirmed by a conditional reading of the Bible, caused the state of mind which we are investigating.11 This last point, that it was possible ‘to combine Calvinism with a churchly and conventional view of the nation or the city as Christian’, has been neglected by scholars. We have not examined the importance of the national, visible church to puritan writers, perhaps because these men were awkward, sometimes semi-detached members of it. Collinson him- self has argued that this tendency of puritans to see themselves as semi- detached from their fellow-parishioners was reinforced by the emphasis placed on predestination in puritan practical divinity and fostered by the preaching of Jeremiads. Preachers ‘seem to have known (for it was built into their biblical-prophetical sources)’ that not all of their hearers would respond, and that ‘Gods covenant would be honoured not by the whole nation but only by a remnant, a remnant which might for a time redeem and preserve the nation, but which would also survive the temporal ruin of the nation.’ Such preaching was, he concludes, ‘of necessity divisive’.12 But Collinson also sees the significance of the church, rather than the tem- poral nation, to the preachers’ address: Just as ‘country’ could be made to mean a number of things in early Stuart public rhetoric, so these preachers moved imperceptibly between their address to the individual, to the Church, to the nation, and to covenanted groups and remnants within both Church and nation. In principle, the entire baptized nation (and other Christian nations) stood covenanted in the same way, by the same gracious bond, as the individual is bound.13
11 Collinson, ‘The Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful,’ 54. 12 Patrick Collinson ‘Biblical Rhetoric,’ in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 20. 13 Patrick Collinson, ‘Biblical Rhetoric,’ 20, 27.
These reflexive movements of thought between individual and corporate spheres can make neat distinctions difficult for us, but ‘the essential point’, Collinson claims, is ‘the strong, organic connection between self and soci- ety’. However conditional their allegiance to the Church of England, English puritans were mostly men who chose to remain in the national church; they were not separatists, or semi-separatists, and they were not Congregationalists. We should look for the ideological basis of prophetic preaching in the kinds of communities that existed in English parishes, where the presence of the ‘true signs’ of the church (preaching and the sacraments) testified to the church’s soundness, not whether its members could claim to be elect. Jonathan Moore has written on hypothetical uni- versalism and discusses William Perkins as an example of the particularist position against which thinkers like John Davenant and John Preston wrote. Moore explains that Perkins’ theology needs the visible church to counterbalance his rather extreme version of limited atonement. For Perkins, the covenant promises are made by God to the elect but within the context of the church. The Gospel is preached to the church, and the prom- ises it contains are effective in the elect. But all members of the visible church have a duty to assume that these promises apply to them. Moore writes: We have already seen how Perkins asserts that the reprobate have no ‘title to the death of Christ’ whatsoever. However, it is necessary to appreciate an important qualification Perkins makes to this by way of his judicial ecclesiol- ogy and high sacramentology. The reprobate do not have any title to the death of Christ qua reprobate, but as those whom God has made outward members of church they do have such a title. … Just as ‘the ministers of God, not knowing his secret counsel, in charitie think al to be elect’, so all church members are to work out their salvation in fear and trembling as Christians and not in order that they might become Christians. They work out their sal- vation from within the covenant, not in order to enter it, and do so on the basis of their very real judicial standing and sacramental privileges. … Thus, within this ‘Evangelicall covenant with the church’ Perkins can say that ‘the Evangelical promises are indefinite and doe exclude no man, unless perad- venture any man do exclude himselfe’.14 So, for example, in his extensive Exposition of the Creed, Perkins writes that ‘we are charitably to think, that all those, that live in the Church of God, professing themselves to be members of Christ, are indeed elect to
14 Jonathan D. Moore, English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids MI: William B Eerdmans, 2007), 53–4. Moore here quotes Perkins’ Exposition of the Creed and A Golden Chain.
15 William Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, in Workes (London: John Haviland, 1631), I: 282. 16 Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, 301. 17 William Perkins, A Reformed Catholike, in Workes (1631), I: 583–4. 18 Kenneth A. Locke, The Church in Anglican Theology: A Historical, Theological and Ecumenical Exploration (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 6–27. 19 Arnold Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England,’ Past and Present 161 (1998), 39. See also, E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570–1720 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), 27–74. 20 See W. David Neelands, ‘Richard Hooker on the Identity of the Visible and Invisible Church,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003). See also Bryan D. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1999).
influential Jeremiad, and one that scholars have used to claim that puri- tans considered England to be in a ‘national covenant’ with God.21 Perkins’ A Faithful and Plaine Exposition upon the Two First Verses of the Second Chapter of Zephaniah is described as ‘containing a powerful exhortation to repentance’ on its title page, and this is the running title to the piece: ‘An Exhortation to Repentance’.22 The biblical text that Perkins chose to dis- cuss is characteristic of the Jeremiad: ‘Search your selves, even search you, O Nation, not worthy to be beloved: before the Decree come forth, and you bee as chaffe that passeth on a day’, and the Israelite nation in his text is frequently compared to England. But in doing so, Perkins inevitably slips between describing the Israelite people and the English Church. In describing the analogy with Israel, he explains:
God had blessed them above other Nations: He gave them his Covenant of grace, and thereby made them his people, and committed to their trust his holy Word and Oracles; but he dealt not so with other nations, neither had the Heathen knowledge of his lawes. Besides all this, they had a better land than others about them, it flowed with Milke and Honey (that is, with all commodities, and delights).23
Then Perkins presses the analogy home: England is blessed in the same way: it too is ‘covenanted’ because it has access to the means of salvation:
First, therefore the same mercies and far greater, have beene powred and heaped upon us; he hath called us out of the darkenesse: First of Heathenism, and then of Popery: his covenant of grace and salvation he hath confirmed with us, his treasures of his Word and Sacraments hee hath imparted unto us, his holy Word never better preached, and the mysteries thereof never more plainly opened since the time of the Apostles; and as we have Religion so we have it under a religious Prince, whereby it comes to passe, that these blessings of salvation we enjoy not in secret, or by stealth, but we have it countenanced by authority: so that Religion is not barely allowed, but even as it were thrust upon men. Besides all this, we have a land also that floweth with milk and honey.24
21 Michael McGiffert, ‘God’s Controversy with Jacobean England,’ 1163. 22 The sermon was delivered at Stourbridge fair, probably shortly after 1592. Perkins’ editor for the sermon (William Crashaw) writes in the dedicatory epistle that Perkins had discussed the doctrine of repentance in a treatise of 1592 and ‘shortly after,’ being asked to preach at Stourbridge Fair, he decided to discuss the same issue so that by this ‘exhortation’ his hearers would be ‘stirred up to the practice of it’: An Exhortation to Repentance, in Workes (1631), III: sig. 3O6v. 23 Perkins, An Exhortation to Repentance, in Workes (1631), III: 419. 24 Perkins, An Exhortation to Repentance, 420.
Perkins believed in predestination; all theologians of his time, be they Dominicans or Calvinists, believed in predestination in some form. The emphasis that Perkins placed on predestination did not make him inca- pable of combining ‘Calvinism with a churchly and conventional view of the nation or the city as Christian’, to quote Patrick Collinson again. Indeed, Perkins’ theology requires the visible church to be a body that is ‘covenanted’ with God, even if not every member of that body is indeed elected to salvation, because he can then explain biblical texts that make the promise of salvation open to all. (He interpreted them as referring cor- porately to the church, not to all of its individual members.) The church was instituted by God to provide access to preaching and the sacraments, because these were God’s chosen means to bring his elect to faith and repentance, and as long as the hearers are members of the church, exhor- tations to faith and repentance could be addressed to them in good faith. For this reason, Perkins’ Exhortation to Repentance, like other Jeremiads and sermons of exhortation, was designed to bring the whole of the English Church to knowledge of God’s covenant through the preaching and sacra- mental offices of visible churches. Perkins’ sermon is a Jeremiad, and it is also designated as an exhorta- tion. To understand the Jeremiad, we must examine what was understood by the term ‘exhortation’ in English Reformed preaching theory. The exhortation was part of the sermon’s ‘application’, where the preacher pulled out all the stops to convince his hearers to adopt what he had said and to live it after they left the sermon; its defining characteristic was vehemence, both rhetorical and argumentative. Richard Bernard advised preachers to use their rhetorical skill, and ‘all the engins of that Arte and grace in speaking’ in exhortation. Contrary to modern assumptions about ‘plain style preaching’, puritans were thought to place perhaps too much emphasis on exhortation, with its heightened, emotional style: Griffith Williams complained in his 1614 Paul’s Cross sermon, that ‘we have some men in our daies, that are alwaies moving and perswading, but never teach- ing; for notwithstanding all their great shew of doctrine, they have nothing in their doctrines, but meere exhortations’.25 This ‘moving and perswad- ing’ was a matter of argument as well as of style. Richard Bernard consid- ered the use of rhetoric as complementary to the emphatic elaboration of
25 Richard Bernard, The Faithfull Shepheard (London: Arnold Hatfield for Iohn Bill, 1607), 66; Gryffith Williams, The Resolution of Pilate in The Best Religion (London: George Miller, for Philemon Stephens and Christopher Meredith at the golden Lion in Pauls Church-yard, 1636), 399.
persuasive arguments: the preacher should ‘enforce and enlarge some of the waightiest [reasons] and stir up to the meanes’, showing the hearers how they could act on the preacher’s teaching as well as their motives for doing so. Examples of the means available to put teaching into practice included ‘Gods assistance, his promise to helpe, the excellency and good even in using the meanes’.26 The ‘Jeremiads’ concentrated on providing motives for greater piety and zeal: by castigated the hearer’s sinfulness and warning of the threat of temporal punishments from God, they reminded their hearers that disaster can be avoided through repentance; God will turn away his wrath as he did at Nineveh. This point is made by William Hampton in the ominously titled A Proclamation of War from the Lord of Hosts (1626):
Now for a conclusion: All that hath beene spoken, may serve as a strong motive, to stirre us up with speed to turne unto God, that hee may turne unto us, and turne from us this fearefull calamitie; Let us repent heartily, and cry unto him mightily, to spare us, to be mercifull unto us. … The sinnes of our Land like the sinns of Niniveh, are ascended up on high, and cry alowde for revenge to the GOD of heaven: but our religious King hath proclaim’d a Fast; hee and his Nobles have led the way; if we, with him, and them, send up repentance, and prayers, and teares, to cry alowd in Gods eares; they will dull the cry of our sinnes, that he shall not heare it; and dull the edge of his sword that it shall not wound us.27
Preachers threatened punishments, but in the context of exhortations that also stressed the possibility of mercy and God’s patience with sinners. In The Gallant’s Burden (1612) for example, Thomas Adams ends his exhor- tation with a lyrical evocation of the promise of mercy and a reminder that repentance is never too late:
There is a reservation to repentance, even to abhorred Edom: let the sonnes of the profanest Esau repent, and they shall not be forsaken of mercy: Return and come, and your night threatned shall be made a joyfull morning.28
That God’s justice will be executed when his mercy has been neglected is a theme that runs through prophetic preaching as consistently as the use
26 Richard Bernard, The Faithfull Shepheard, 65–6. 27 William Hampton, A Proclamation of Warre from the Lord of Hosts (London: Iohn Norton for Mathew Lawe and are to be sold for the signe of the Fox in Saint Paules Church- yard, neere Saint Austens Gate, 1627), 37–8. 28 Thomas Adams, The Gallant’s Burden, in Works (London: W. W[hite] for Clement Knight, and are to be sold at his shoppe in Pauls church-yard at the signe of the Holy Lambe, 1630), 29.
29 Nathaniel Cannon, The Cryer (London: Felix Kingston, 1613), 4–5; Lancelot Dawes, Gods Mercies and Jerusalems Miseries (London: John Windet, 1609), sigs. A6r-v; John Hoskins, A Sermon preached at Pauls Cross [on Zach. 5.4], in Sermons preached at Pauls Crosse and Elsewhere (London: William Stansby for Nathaniel Butter, 1615), 28; Robert Milles, Abrahams Suite for Sodome (London: William Hall for Mathew Lawe and are to be sold at his shop in Pauls Church yard at the signe of the Foxe, 1612), sigs. B5v-B8r; George Webbe, Gods Controversie with England (London: F. K[ingston] for William Leake, 1609), 19–20; Francis White, Londons Warning by Jerusalem (London: George Purslowe, for Richard Flemming: and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the three Flower-de-Luces, in Saint Pauls Alley, neere Saint Gregories Church, 1619), 28–9. 30 John Hoskins, A Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse [on Isaiah 28.1], in Sermons preached at Pauls Crosse and Elsewhere (1615), 34. The fullest use of this image is by Immanuel Bourne in The Rainebow (London: Thomas Adams, 1615). See also Sampson Price, Ephesus Warning before her Woe (London: G. Eld for Iohn Barnes, 1616), 47; John Jones, Londons Looking backe to Jerusalem (London: William Jones, 1633), 2; Thomas Sutton, Englands Summons, in Englands First and Second Summons (London: William Hall for Mathew Law, 1616), 29; Webbe, Gods Controversie, 17; Robert Milles, Abrahams Suite for Sodom, sig. B3r-v. 31 Adams, The Gallant’s Burden, 9.
preachers did not have to look far for examples of people that lost these signs of the true church. After the Old Testament prophets, the most often used biblical texts for the Jeremiad were taken from the second chapter of Revelations and the angels’ addresses to the churches of Asia. The preach- ers could remind their hearers that the seven churches were lost. In 1630, John Jones informs his hearers that ‘every place is so long (no longer) the Temple and habitation of God, as there shall be found in it true faith and holynesse of life.’ When that ceases ‘God will remove his kingdome of grace from such a place or people, and give it to a Nation that will bring forth the fruites of it’, and among the examples given are ‘the Easterne and African Churches, sometime glorious Sanctuaries of the most high’, but now given over to ‘Turkes and Infidels’. The same commonplaces (and indeed many of the same phrases) are used by Thomas Sutton in Englands Summons, preached in 1612.32 Sampson Price preached two prophetic ser- mons (in 1613 and 1616) on the second chapter of Revelations making the same comparison rather more extensively.33 A more recent and closer example was offered in the Thirty Years War, which at times threatened to return all of Germany to papal domination. Thomas Barnes makes this comparison in his Wise-man’s Forecast (1624): Yet the poynt in hand, intimateth that plagues may hang over places where Religion, and religious ones bee: Is it then a sufficient cause of derision to say, judgements may be approching OUR Kingdome? Foure yeeres agoe the Lord had a wise, and understanding people in the Palatinate, yet the evill which hath since befallen it, was even at that time imminent over it.34 It is possible that this is where the political significance of the Jeremiads lay, and why these sermons were so easily politicised when Charles I’s and Laud’s innovations appeared to lessen access to preaching and re- introduce idolatry. The covenant with God, to which England was party by virtue of her status as a true church, was threatened. Exhortation did not rely only on the use of such vivid examples (Sodom destroyed and Nineveh saved) and on a heightened, emotional style. Style and examples were meant to reinforce the preacher’s argument that the means to repentance and the motives for doing so were to hand. In Jeremiads, descriptions of the punishments visited on the Israelites
32 Jones, Londons Looking backe to Jerusalem, 28–9; Sutton, Englands Summons, 54–55. 33 Price, Ephesus Warning (1616); Price, Londons Warning by Laodicea’s Luke-warmnesse (London: G. Eld for Iohn Barnes, 1613). 34 Thomas Barnes, The Wise-mans Forecast against the Evill Time (London: I. D[awson] for Nathaniell Newbery, 1624), 10.
35 Daniel Price, The Marchant: A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse on Sunday the 24. of August, being the day before Bartholomew Faire, 1607 (London: Joseph Barnes, 1608), 29. 36 William Loe, The Joy of Jerusalem and Woe of Worldlings (London: T. Haueland for C. Knight and I. Harrison, and are to be sold [by C. Knight] in Pauls Church-yard at the signe of the holy Lambe, 1609), sigs. Cv, C3r-v.
Churches, not just individual saints, are units with which God was thought to deal through his covenant, and so parishes and national churches are the units that the Paul’s Cross preachers address, in Jeremiads and other sermons of exhortation. The biblical examples used by the preachers showed that God would punish whole communities for sin, and for the toleration of sin. What Harro Höpfl has described as ‘the “wrath- averting” view of [ecclesiastical] discipline’ stressed that the authorities, civil and religious, had a duty to regulate the community in order to pre- vent divine punishment for the sins that were allowed to happen.37 If God delayed punishment for the sake of his saints (‘Religion hath bred peace’, William Loe claims38), God would also punish those who did not look to their neighbours. We see this in one of the most common motifs of the Paul’s Cross sermons: exhortations addressed, in turn, to ministers, magis- trates, and householders to prevent sin and forestall judgement. Daniel Price’s sermon on The Merchant ends with an exhortation to the whole city to take a care of its trade: O London, thou that sittest like a Queene, al thy Citizens being as so manie Merchants, thy Merchants as so many Princes, nay, as so many polished cor- ners of the Temple. … They are unworthy to enjoie the lest of these blessings, unlesse they be like to the good Merchant here that seeketh good pearles, … Neither they, nor thou, shalt sinne with impunity, the mightines of thy state, singularitie of thy government, climing of thy wals, aspiring of thy Towers, multitude of thy people, cannot make they secure against the wrath of the Lord.39 These exhortations can be seen to do more than advance a ‘wrath-averting’ view of social regulation: we could claim that they present a positive duty belonging to minsters, magistrates and householders to promote godli- ness in their neighbours and themselves, for the good of all. Not punishing sins is a dereliction of duty by those with the responsibility to promoting godliness in their inferiors. Indeed, that duty is one of the main themes of Robert Milles’s Abrahams Suite for Sodome, preached on 25 August 1611. Milles takes Abraham’s bargaining with God over the fate of the city (God will save it if there are just five just men in the city) as indicative of the small number of the elect, and of the duty of the just to dissuade their neighbours from sin. (The sins of Sodom that Milles describes are those
37 Harro Höpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 118–9, 130. 38 Loe, The Joy of Jerusalem, sig. Hv. 39 Price, The Marchant, 34–5.
40 The Geneva Bible says ‘neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy’: Milles intensifies this to ‘contempt of the poor’. 41 Milles, Abrahams Suite for Sodome, sigs. E6r-v, E8r.
the Paul’s Cross sermons and a very definite objects, because collections for charitable purposes were often made after the sermons.42 The Paul’s Cross sermons were themselves the object of charity, and it was traditional to remember their benefactors during the sermons themselves. A charitable attitude extended to all of a Christians’ dealings with their fellows: there was an equal necessity to practise neither fraud nor oppres- sion in economic transactions. Those who covetously hoarded their goods or who were fraudulent in trade (a theme no doubt pertinent on the Sunday before Bartholomew Fair) were guilty of placing worldly goods above heavenly ones. Those who did not contribute to the church and commonwealth were equally guilty of a lack of charity to their neighbours. The true Christian laboured at his calling, and had a lawful calling (which did not include the ‘mimicall Comaedians’, according to Milles; he was particularly outraged that ‘the idle and scurrile invention of an illiterate bricklayer’, presumably Ben Jonson, should be compared to preaching).43 In this way, preachers told their hearers that the evidence of being among God’s chosen was to be found in diligent pursuit of a lawful calling for the good of church and commonwealth (and preachers of sermons near Bartholomew Fair refer to both when discussing charity and trading eth- ics). Daniel Price tells his hearers that a truly wise merchant will not risk heavenly treasures for the sake of gaining earthly goods; rather, he will give away his earthly goods, knowing that heaven will not be reached otherwise. And Price cites several examples of Londoners whose charity was famous: Sir Thomas White, founder of St John’s College Oxford, and Sir Thomas Gresham. ‘Nay I doubt not’ says Price, ‘but there be manie amongst you who having sought with this Merchant good Pearles, the glo- rie of God, and the blessing of his Church, and Commonwealth, have had your hands in the building of hospitals, spittlehouses, bridges, Schooles, and maintaining of poore Schollers at the University.’44 The ‘pearl’ that the merchants seek is here no longer a figure of salvation, or of faith (as it was earlier in the sermon); it here represents the good deeds that evidence faith in Christ. The sermons of exhortation preached near Bartholomew Fair stressed that the Christian ‘makes his election sure’ by working for the good of the church and commonwealth in which they find themselves, and neither
42 See my Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 7–8. 43 Milles, Abrahams Suite, sigs. D5v-6v. 44 Price, The Marchant, 20.
LOST AT PAUL’S CROSS: UNRECORDED SERMONS1
Susan Wabuda
The sermon has always been closely related to the life of the soul. From the very earliest times in the history of the Christian Church, building on Jewish antecedents, preaching has channeled the power of the Word of God as a moralizing force. For England in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, the sermon had an important role in the great effort of salvation. Its purpose was to lead as many souls as possible heavenward and to increase every believer’s understanding in the fundamentals of faith in the Ten Commandments, the Sacraments, and the Creed. In London, Sunday by Sunday, year by year, sermons were delivered in the cemetery next to St Paul’s Cathedral even before Bishop Thomas Kempe, towards the end of the 15th century, rebuilt the imposing little building that sheltered its pul- pit. Paul’s Cross was the premier pulpit in the realm, not only for its prox- imity next to the cathedral, but for its nearness to the royal court and parliament, and for its symbiotic relationship with the developing medium of the printing press and the booksellers’ stalls along Paternoster Row. The sermons that were delivered at Paul’s Cross were especially weighted, beyond any others, for they held the potential of being political exercises as well as religious addresses. At least that was the case from 22 June 1483, when the Cambridge- trained theologian Dr. Ralph Shaw, canon of St Paul’s, stood in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross and impugned the legitimacy of the boy king Edward V as an opening salvo in the successful effort to usurp the throne for Richard, duke of Gloucester. It has been suggested that Shaw drew some of his inspiration from the fast-approaching feast of the Nativity of St John Baptist to help along his intimations that the late King Edward IV had fallen prey to the same kind of sexual failings that beset King Herod. Neither the king nor his younger brother had been lawfully begotten, Shaw
1 The author wishes to express her thanks to the Cambridge University Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and to the participants of the Paul’s Cross conference for their helpful comments, especially Arnold Hunt.
2 The History of King Richard III in The Complete Words of St Thomas More, vol. 2, ed. Richard S. Sylvester (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1963), 66–8, 140–2, 246–7. See also the entry on Bishop Thomas Kempe by Rosemary C.E. Hayes in the ODNB. 3 For examples of the early use of concio, see the translation of Bishop John Fisher’s first sermon against Luther, which was made by Richard Pace: Contio qvam anglice hauit rever- endvs pater Johannes Roffensis Episcopvs in celeberrimo Nobilium Conventu Londini eo die, quo Martini Lutheri scripta public apparatus in ignem coniecta sunt (Cambridge: John Siberch, 1521, RSTC 10898). See John W. O’Malley, ‘Erasmus and the History of Sacred Rhetoric: the Ecclesiastes of 1535’, in Religious Culture in the Sixteenth Century: Preaching, Rhetoric, Spirituality and Reform (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), chapter VII; Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 66–71, 89–90. 4 Erasmus, Ecclesiastæ sive de ratione concionandi libri quatuor (Basel: Froben, 1535), and available also in a modern edition edited by Jacques Chomerat in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, series V (vol. IV (New York, 1991), books 1–2; vol. V (New York, 1994), books 3–4.
Historians and scholars of English literature for the Tudor and Stuart periods who have wished to explore the importance of the sermon in the political context of the Reformation have long wrestled with the difficul- ties that More’s story of Shaw’s sermon presents. The names of the preach- ers who appeared at Paul’s Cross have not always been recorded, much less the words they spoke. The reactions of audiences to sermons have offered their own problems.5 In relieving some portion of the difficulties, scholars owe a debt of gratitude to the late Millar MacLure, Professor of English Literature at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, for his pioneer- ing efforts to identity the preachers who spoke at Paul’s Cross. At the end of his study The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642, which was published as long ago as 1958, he produced a helpful finding aid in a ‘Register’ of refer- ences to all known sermons that were delivered at Paul’s Cross, which he compiled from a close reading of the first edition of The Short-Title Catalogue. Originally the ‘Register’ was simply an appendix, but MacLure amplified it in later years. Working with Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, it re-emerged as an independent publication in 1989, only a year before his death.6 With J.W. Blench’s Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, and G.R. Owst’s Preaching in Medieval England,7 MacLure’s work proved to be indispensable to a previous genera- tion of scholars, and it is still of enduring value in our present time.8 As a list, MacLure’s Register was reasonably comprehensive, but by ini- tiating his inquiries as late as 1534, the year of the passage of the Henrician Act of Royal Supremacy, MacLure could not take note of some of the most important trends that marked earlier changes in the life of Paul’s Cross. Some deficiencies were unavoidable, especially regarding doctrinal or
5 For a later period, see Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 6 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons 1534–1642, University of Toronto Department of English, Studies and Texts, no. 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1958); Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Cross 1534–1642, rev. and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Occasional Publications, vol. 6 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989). My thanks go to Jackson Campbell Boswell for his memories of Professor MacLure. 7 J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964); G.R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England: an Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts c. 1350–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926). 8 Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: University Press, 2011), ix, 1, 4, 99, and passim; The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, eds. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation; Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 248–65.
9 Owst, Preaching, 49. 10 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, ix, 5. Also Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 248–265; Peter E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: University Press, 1998).
Edward’s reign, the number of printed sermons by contemporary clergy- men was small. Bishops were well represented, including John Alcock of Ely;11 John Fisher of Rochester;12 Hugh Latimer of Worcester;13 and John Longland of Lincoln.14 Sermons appeared in print also by John Colet;15 Erasmus; William Chedsey and Cuthbert Scott; Simon Matthew; William Peryn; Robert Singleton; and Robert Whittington (the grammarian). They were delivered in a variety of pulpits: at court, at convocation, and on visi- tation. Peryn, the once and future Dominican friar, preached his series of three sermons at the Hospital of St Anthony’s in London in 1546.16 Few among this meager harvest were delivered at Paul’s Cross, but they included two sermons preached in 1544 by Chedsey and Scott. Chedsey’s included a rousing allusion to the dangerous journeys and the ‘vnspeak- able costs’ that Henry VIII had assumed in protecting his subjects from the ‘vsurped power of the byshop of Rome.’17 Part of the reason for that lack rests on the obvious observation that taking a stand in a sermon, in light of the shifting nature of the political and doctrinal situation, was fraught with risks that were even more dangerous for preachers than was nonconformity during the Vestiarian Controversy of the 1560s.18 Simon Matthew preached his sermon in
11 John Bale mentioned one book of Alcock’s ‘Homelias uulgares’, which may include Alcock’s English Sermo (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1497], RSTC 284); his sermon for Holy Innocents Day, In die Innocenciū (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde [1499?], RSTC 282); or his best known Exhortacyon made to Relygyouse systers (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1497?], RSTC 286). John Bale, Scriptorvm illustriū maioris Brytanniæ, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant: Catalogus … (Basel: Joannis Oporinum, 1557, 1559), 632. 12 The sermon of John the bysshop of Rochester made agayne the pernicious doctryn of Martin luther witin the octaues of the ascension (London: Wynkyn de Worde, [1521], RSTC 10894); Here after ensueth two fruytfull sermons, made & compiled by the ryghte Reuerende father in god John Fyssher/ Doctoure of Dyuynte and Byshop of Rochester (London: William Rastell, 1532, RSTC 10909). 13 Hugh Latimer, The Sermon that the Reuerende father in Christ, Hugh Latimer, byshop of worcester, made to the clergie, in the cōuocatiō. … (London: Thomas Berthelet, 23 November 1537, RSTC 15286). 14 A Sermond spoken before the kynge his maiestie at Grenwiche, vppon good fryday: the yere of our Lorde .MCCCCCxxxvi. (London: [s.n.], 1536, RSTC 16795); A Sermonde made before the Kinge, hys maiestye at grenewiche, vpon good Frydaye (London: Thomas Petyt, [1538], RSTC 16796. 15 The sermon of doctor Colete/ made to Conuocacion at Paulis ([London?: Thomas Berthelet, [1531], RSTC 5550.5). 16 William Peryn, Thre godlye and notable Sermons, of the moost honorable and blessed sacrament of the Aulter (London: John Herforde for Robert Toye, [1546], RSTC 19785.5. 17 William Chedsey and Cuthbert Scott, Two Notable Sermons (London: John Herford for Robert Toye, 1545 RSTC 5106.5), sig. E6v. 18 In his final book, Patrick Collinson took up once more the matter of the opposition to the surplice and the square cap as clerical garb required by the Elizabethan Church
St Paul’s on 27 June 1535, between the executions of Fisher on 22 June, and More on 6 July. His text was an exhortation to obedience, taken from 1 Peter 5:6: ‘Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.’19 The elim- ination of Fisher in particular was a warning that few preachers could afford to ignore. Robert Singleton was chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and her initial, with Henry’s, appears on the title page of his sermon, which was delivered in Lent 1535. When it was printed the following year, Singleton’s sermon may be understood as another example of the desperate efforts her chaplains took to protect her in the last chaotic weeks of her life. Singleton too was executed in 1544 for reasons that are still obscure: what Alec Ryrie calls ‘murkier matters’ that involved heresy in Kent.20 The deadly rivalry between Robert Barnes and Stephen Gardiner was displayed for all to see at Paul’s Cross in Lent 1540 as a telling part of the events that destroyed Thomas Cromwell. Barnes played to the crowd with foolhardy courage. He said he was a fighting cock, and he called Gardiner by name to come out from the audience and answer him. When Gardiner refused, Barnes insulted him by saying he had no spurs, and then he threw down his glove as a challenge. We know the details because Gardiner wrote of them with chilling precision five years later, when he wished to establish in the face of the world that he had not persecuted Barnes. Barnes had gone too far in his provocation, and Gardiner complained to the king. Henry expected Barnes to recant, but at his next sermon at the pulpit cross at the Hospital of St Mary’s, he bid Gardiner to hold up his hand to the audience in a sign that he forgave him. Later Gardiner would argue that he had forgiven Barnes before now, but he would not hold up his hand. Their horrifying competition culminated with Barnes’s fiery execution that summer at Smithfield.21 in Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Anti-Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15–20. 19 Simon Matthewe, A Sermon Made in the Cathedrall Churche of saynt Paule at London, the XXVII. daye of Iune, Anno .1535. (London: Thomas Berthelet, 30 July 1535, RSTC 17656). Matthewe does not appear in the ODNB. 20 Robert Singleton, A Sermon preached at Poules crosse the fourth sonday in lent the yere of our lorde god .1535. (London: Thomas Godfraye [1536], RSTC 22575). Lincoln Cathedral Library shelfmark Rr. 7. 11. For a transcription of the sermon see Torrance Kirby, ‘Robert Singleton’s sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1535: the “true church” and the Royal Supremacy,’ Reformation and Renaissance Review 10.3 (2008), 343–368. Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: ‘The Most Happy’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). For the quotation, see Alec Ryrie’s entry for him in the ODNB. 21 Gardiner’s letter to the reader in A Declaration of such true articles as George Ioye hath gone about to confute as false (London: John Herford, 1546, RSTC 11588) reprinted in The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. James Arthur Muller (Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 1933), 164–175.
Aside from the considerable dangers of speaking at cross-purposes to the royal supremacy or dynastic stability,22 did it pay to print a sermon? The costs of bringing a sermon to print could be prohibitive, and by Elizabeth’s reign, the printed sermon became a dependable commodity in a way that had not been possible before, or at least not in the same way.23 For from the end of the 15th century, there had been a thriving market for printed works that helped priests to prepare their homilies or sermons. Helpful collections of sermon material for Sundays and saints’ days were in steady use in the 16th century. Their compilers included John Herolt and John Myrk, among others, and they were the specialties of the printers William Caxton, his successor Wynkyn de Worde and Julian Notary.24 They represented only a small portion of a huge corpus of sermon and homiletic material that had been compiled over many centuries, whose full range in manuscript and print, is still not completely understood.25 Older sermons were eagerly collected by churchmen who referred to them from the pul- pit. Chedsey quoted from Bede. Archbishop Thomas Rotherham of York had in his possession manuscript sermons by the thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln Robert Grosseteste and many others which he bestowed on the library he built at his birthplace as a resource for the chantry priests he hoped would refer to them in their sermons.26 The sermon notes of Erasmus’s friend, the Cambridge scholar Robert Ridley, the uncle of Nicholas, consisted of selections from John Chrysostom, Laurentius Valla as well as an early cycle from the Benedictine monk William of Merula.27 The customers for printed sermon cycles were largely clerical, but not exclusively so, for the laity was also attracted to the stories of the saints, and some of them may have appealed to the same readership who enjoyed books of hours.28 Some of the same patrons, including the Lady Margaret
22 These subjects are the themes of G.R. Elton’s Policy and Police: Enforcement in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 23 Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 42. 24 John Herolt, Sermones discipuli de tempore de sanctis (London: Julian Notory, 1509, RSTC 13226); John Myrk, The festyuall (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1508, RSTC 17971); and Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, 33. 25 See, most helpfully, H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Siegfried Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and preaching in late-medieval England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 26 R.B. Dobson, ‘The educational patronage of Archbishop Thomas Rotherham of York’, Northern History, 31 (1995), 65–85. 27 Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. 5. 27. See also Damian Riehl Leader, A History of the University of Cambridge, vol. 1, The University to 1546 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 189–90, and Richard Rex on Ridley in the ODNB. 28 Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
Beaufort, who helped bring books of hours to the press, also helped the printers who produced the great sermon collections of the late 15th century.29 This was the sort of literature, however, that may have begun to seem out of date for priests once Erasmus began to raise standards for preachers in the Ecclesiastes, and it was castigated further by evangelicals like John Bale.30 From the reign of Edward VI the various editions of the Book of Homilies eventually replaced most older compilations,31 and the kind of cleric who needed to rely on such generic works to assist him as he read from a pulpit are out of our sightlines anyway, for the opportunity to preach at Paul’s Cross frequently represented a kind of pinnacle in a career. The men who climbed into the pulpit in Paul’s churchyard tended to be trained, invited, even stellar. Despite his fame and the astonishing erudition he displayed in the Ecclesiastes, Erasmus seems to have avoided the pulpit for much of his life. He also refused an opportunity to preach at Paul’s Cross when he suppli- cated the University of Cambridge in 1506 to take his much-desired doc- toral degree in theology. His request led to some curious entries in the record-books for Cambridge’s degrees about a unique set of agreements that were offered to him on the part of the university. The usual require- ments that a candidate for a doctorate in theology must engage in disputa- tions and also preach at Paul’s Cross were waived for him (probably at the request of Fisher, who was Cambridge’s chancellor). Instead, the univer- sity asked him to lecture and to deliver two sermons ad clerum at the uni- versity church, Great St Mary’s. Finding all of this onerous, Erasmus instead went to the University of Turin in summer 1506 to improve his Greek, and he had his degree in theology a year earlier than he would have done had he stayed at Cambridge.32 Erasmus placed new emphasis on a refreshed commitment to the apos- tolic model of preaching, which meant that the preacher should exhibit a
29 Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 30 John Harryson, [pseud. for John Bale], Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe ([Antwerp], 1543 RSTC 1309), fols. 54v-57r. 31 Among Cranmer’s numerous books, Bale recorded only the ‘Homelias Christianas’. Bale, Catalogus, 691. 32 See Grace Book B I, ed. Mary Bateson, Luard Memorial Series, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 222; Leader, Cambridge, 174, 292; O’Malley, ‘Erasmus and the history of sacred rhetoric’, VII, 21. Erasmus also wrote for use in Colet’s school at St Paul’s, The Concio de puero Jesu, which appears as ‘Homily on the child Jesus’, trans. Emily Kearns, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 7, eds. Elaine Fantham and Erika Rummel, vol. 29 (Toronto, 1989), 51–70.
deep reliance on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as well as possess an excellent memory. The humanists and the evangelicals committed to heart as much of the New Testament as possible, and especially the Epistles. This meant, in practical terms, that many mid-century preachers did not write their sermons in advance, or else they used abbreviated notes as an aide memoire.33 Did Latimer always speak from a prepared text? For the amanuensis who recorded the first sermon that Latimer preached before Edward’s court in 1549 lamented that he was not able ‘to write worde for worde as he dyd speake’, for like a great river did ‘eloquence and learnynge’ flow ‘most abundantly out of godly Latymers mouth’.34 Without the energetic efforts of his amanuenses, most notably his Swiss associate Augustine Bernher, we would have few of Latimer’s sermons at all.35 We know that he preached a series of at least four sermons at Paul’s Cross the year before he appeared at court, but without a good secretary; most of the details of what he said have been lost. Only one has come down to us, and it has become one of his most famous: his ‘Sermon on the Plough’, which was delivered in mid- January 1548 in the ‘Shrouds’ or undercroft of the chapter house of the cathedral, delivered there probably because the weather was too cold and foul to preach at the Cross.36 Some risks were ridden out because the preacher did not commit his words to paper in advance. How many preachers at Paul’s Cross spoke as they felt that they were directed to by the Holy Spirit, for which there was never any written text at all? We will not be able to answer this question with any certitude. A following for printed sermons by specific preachers was slow to develop in England. This was different than the experience on the conti- nent, where sermons by Luther or John Calvin among many others had a ready market early on.37 In England, by contrast, the print industry lagged behind that on the continent, and printers could not at first be certain of sales. The shifts that occurred among customers and their buying habits
33 Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, 66–72. 34 The fyrste sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer, whiche he preached before the Kinges grace wythin his graces palayce at Westmynster. M.D.XLIX. the viii. of March (London: John Day and William Seres, 1549, RSTC 15270.5), sig. A3r. 35 See Frvitfvll Sermons Preached by the right reuerend Father, and Constant Martyr of Iesus Christ M. Hvgh Latimer (London: John Daye, 1584 RSTC 15280). 36 A notable Sermon of the Reuerende father maister Hughe Latemer, which he preached in the Shrouds at Paules churche in London the .xviii. day of January (London: John Daye and William Seres, 1548, RSTC 15291); Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 11. 37 Andrew Pettegree, The Reformation an the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
38 The seconde [to the seuenth] Sermon of Maister Hughe Latimer (London: John Day and William Seres, 21 June, 1549, RSTC 5274.7). The quote is from the colophon. 39 For one example among many, see The fyrste sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer (RSTC 15270.5). 40 Latimer, Frvitfvll Sermons (RSTC 15280). See Andrew Pettegree’s entry for Day in the ODNB; Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: the Making of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). I am grateful for Elizabeth Evenden’s suggestions about the selling power of Latimer’s sermons. 41 Roger Edgeworth, Sermons very fruitfull, godly and learned (London: Robert Clay, 1557, RSTC 7482) which has been edited by Janet M. Wilson. See her entry on Edgeworth in the ODNB.
against Luther and against Latimer. Edgeworth’s collection of sermons was meant to remind his readers why Latimer was burnt in 1555. Edgeworth’s sermons included six on the gifts of the Holy Ghost, a hom- ily on the Creed, and a score on the first Epistle of Peter. Most of them were delivered in Bristol, but we would be mistaken if we thought that Edgeworth spent his entire career in the West Country, for he attended the legatine court at Blackfriars to consider the king’s Great Matter in 1529, and he was one of the theologians who prepared the King’s Book of 1543. He recounted that ‘besides these’ that he had delivered in Bristol, he had delivered ‘manie sermons’ before ‘verie solempe audiences’: at Oxford, or ‘at Paules cross in London’; or ‘at courte afore my mooste honourable Lorde and Maister kinge Henry the eighte’. These are the sermons that we would most like to have, but ‘I purpose (God willing) to set [them] forth hereafter, as I maye haue oportunitie.’ But a second volume did not appear. The queen died, and he followed soon afterwards. Edgeworth’s Paul’s Cross sermons are lost.42 Intriguing examples of this sort could be multiplied. For Colet, more sermons initially survived in manuscript than we now know, for John Bale’s Catalogue of 1559 listed ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ sermons as among his works.43 Archbishop Matthew Parker kept among his papers the letters he received from Cranmer and Cromwell that summoned him to preach at court or Paul’s Cross, as well as a roll that listed his ‘Conciones’.44 The Franciscan bishop Henry Standish of St Asaph kept his own manu- script collection of ‘Several Sermons preached to the people’, which was also noted by Bale as ‘Sermones ad vulgum’. It too is not now known to exist. This is particularly unfortunate, for Bale wrote that Standish preached sermons against both Colet and Erasmus. In 1519, Standish preached a sensational sermon at Paul’s Cross that denounced Erasmus’s translation of the New Testament, which Erasmus thought was a gratu- itous ad hominem attack against him. Then Standish compounded his remarks by repeating them at court. We know many of the details about this episode because More (with John Stokesley, future bishop of London)
42 Edgeworth, Sermons very fruitfull, godly and learned, contents page. Bale did not list Edgeworth in his Catalogus. 43 Bale, Catalogus, 649. Jonathan Arnold has asked for the rediscovery of a Colet manu- script, known to survive into the nineteenth century that dealt with matters of cathedral discipline: ‘John Colet and a lost manuscript of 1506’, History, vol. 89 (2004), 174–92. 44 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 114A, fols. 391r, 393, 395r, and MS 583 (a parch- ment role). Digital images of the manuscript in Parker’s Library have been made available at http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/parker. I wish to thank David Crankshaw for helpful advice concerning Archbishop Parker.
45 Bishop Standish ‘in quotidiana concione plura contra Coletum & Erasmum blater- auit.’ Bale, Catalogus, 706; Erasmus to Hermann Busch, written from Louvain, 31 July 1520: Opvs Epistolarvm Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P.S. Allen, vol. 4 (1922), no. 1126, Englished in CWE Correspondence, vol. 8, 7–17. See Andrew A. Chibi’s account of Standish’s life in the ODNB, and Erika Rummel, Erasmus and His Catholic Critics, vol. 1, 1515–1522 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1989), 122–7. 46 Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, 92. 47 Hugh Latimer, Frvtfvll Sermons (London: John Day, 1578, RSTC 15279) fol. 1. 48 Although a transcription of Singleton’s sermon was recently published. See Torrance Kirby, ‘Robert Singleton’s sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1535: the “true church” and the Royal Supremacy,’ Reformation and Renaissance Review 10.3 (2008), 343–368.
sight of a purple rift of crocuses growing wild. They discover a single previously-unknown letter to Erasmus from Charles V. In the midst of their visit, Allen found himself wondering how the great J.A. Froude had had the patience to spend so much time working there, and by his heavy labors make ‘his history real and living’ as he drew upon the inspiration of the actual letters and dispatches that ‘no English historian’, until then, ‘had ever seen’.49 It remains to be determined whether other scholars, our future col- leagues, will have to undertake the kind of research trips that all of us used to do. The electronic revolution has begun to bring the images of early printed books and manuscripts to desks and screens in ways that were almost unimaginable at the beginning of this present century, opening vast realms of material that were previously inaccessible to all but the most energetic.50 Perhaps the time has arrived to follow up the work of our predecessors, and to begin to build fresh, consolidated electronic search aids which would serve a new century in the engaging pursuit of the medieval and early modern sermon.
49 P.S. Allen, Erasmus: Lectures and Wayfaring Sketches (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), 179–92. 50 But see the caveats of William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 179–82.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscripts
Bodleian Library, Oxford Add. MS C. 303, fols. 67r-73r. more accurate, but incomplete copy of same account of Campion’s trial as BL Add. MS 6265. Rawlinson MS D.1349, item 7. This contains notes on Samuel Harsnet’s notorious anti-Calvinist sermon of 1584 (see Register of Sermons, 63). The Bodleian copy misdates the sermon to 1594. Tanner MS 50. ‘Short and summary nootes of some Sermons preached at Poulls crosse and ells whear not vnprofitable to be remembred.’ The volume contains notes on (39) sermons preached between June 1565 and September 1566, most of them preached at Paul’s Cross. There is much of interest here, particularly on the Jewel/Harding controversy. The original manuscript can’t be consulted because of its condition, but there is a microfilm available, and the Bodleian will make copies of the manuscript from that. Tanner MS 329. incomplete translation of Paolo Bombino, Vita et Martyrium Edmundi Campiani. Twyne MS 17, 157–167. Brian Twyne’s copy of Windsor’s ‘Receavinge of the Quenes Majestie’.
British Library Add. MS 6265, fols 14r-22v. Complete copy of unique account of Edmund Campion’s trial on 20 November 1581, which formed basis of Howell’s edition of State Trials, 1816. Add. MS 15891. Letters to Sir Christopher Hatton, mostly printed by Sir Harris Nicolas; letter of Bishop Aylmer to Hatton on subject of John Stubbe, 28 September 1579. Fols. 8r to 9r. Harl. MS 353, fol. 141r-v and Harl. MS 643, fol. 1r-v. Both manuscripts give accounts of the incident in 1553 when there was a riot following Dr Gilbert Bourne’s sermon (see MacLure, Register of Sermons, 34). Harl. MS 417, fol. 129r. vol. 2 of John Foxe’s papers: letter of John Foxe to Bishop Grindal. Harl. MS 422, fols. 136r–172v. vol. 7 of John Foxe’s papers: Copies of Edmund Campion’s last three disputations in the Tower, seized and annotated in house of William Carter by Richard Topcliffe, two veri- fied as in Stephen Vallenger’s hand, and coming from ‘Whyting’ of Lancashire. Harl. MS 425, fols. 131r–133v. ‘Mr [John] Foxe at paules crosse on good frydaye the xxiiith of February Anno 1570. notes gatherde by the parson of St agnes and corrected by master fox.’ This sermon was printed: A sermon of Christ crucified (1570) (see Register of Sermons, 50). See Foxe in 2.3 below. Harl. MS 1714, fol. 140r. ‘Certaine notes collectide out of the Parliament of Christ declaring the enactide and recyvide truthe of the presence of his body and blode in the blessed sacrament impugnide in a wickide sermon by master Juell collected and sett forthe by Thomas Hoskins doctor of divinitie 1566.’.
Lansdowne MS 33. Lord Burghley’s papers: Thomas Norton’s notes on last disputation of Campion, no. 61; Oliver Pluckett’s ward-mote for commending Campion, no. 63; drafts of Campion’s indictment, nos. 64 and 65. Sloane MS 2495. ‘Vita Henrici VIII’.
Cambridge University Library Add. MS 3117, fols. 160v–168v. Notes on Edwin Sandys’ Paul’s Cross sermon on his becoming bishop of London, taken from the printed edition of Edwin Sandys’ sermons (1585), and written out c. 1630. MS Dd. 5.27. Sermon notes of Robert Ridley.
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 106.175, fol. 487. ‘Letter from the duke of Somerset to Gardiner bishop of Winchester charging him not to meddle with any matter of controversy in his sermon, Syon June 28, 1548.’. MS 106, item 68. Letter of appointment to Paul’s Cross from Dr Haynes to an unknown recipient, undated. MS 114, item 129, fol. 393. ‘Letter from Thomas Cromwell vice-gerent to Mr. Parker dean of Stoke, appointing him to preach at St Paul’s-cross’. MS 114, item 133, fol. 401. ‘Letter from Ridley bishop of London to Dr. Parker, appointing him to preach at St Paul’s- cross, dated 29 July’. MS 114A. Matthew Parker, Correspondence. MS 119, item 14. A letter from Edmund Bonner exhorting members of Cambridge University to preach at Paul’s Cross. MS 127.5, fol. 7. ‘Letter from the duke of Somerset to the bishop of Winchester, repeating his command that he should not treat of the mass nor of other controversial points in his sermon: dated Syon June 28, 1548.’. MS 127.5, fols. 15–30. ‘The sermon of the bishop of Winchester [Stephen Gardiner] before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on Matthew XVI.13.’. MS 257. Miles Windsor, ‘An. Dni 1566. The Receavinge of the Quenes Majestie into Oxford’. fols. 104r–114r (fair copy, autograph); fols 115r–123r (draft, autograph with revisions). MS 583. A parchment role relating to Matthew Parker’s career.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC MS V.a.109. fols 1r–21r. John Bereblock, Commentarii sive Ephemerae actiones rerum illustrium Oxonii gestarum in adventu Serenissimae Principis Elizabethae. MS V.a.176. Bishop Robinson’s copy of Miles Windsor’s ‘A Brief Rehearsall’. MS V.a. 251. ‘A sermon preached at St Paules crosse the firste of June 1606, by John Dove, Doctour of Divinitye … of the Kinges prærogative.’.
MS V.a.459 to 461. Diaries of Richard Stonley; first vol. contains Campion’s trial and ‘drawing’.
Huntington Library Ellesmere MS 2079. A single sheet of notes on Jewel’s ‘Challenge’ sermon (see Register of Sermons, 42).
Inner Temple Library Petyt MS 538, vol 47, Item 242, fols. 459r–460v. ‘Answer to certain pieces of a sermon made at St Paul’s Cross 27 June 1572 by Thomas Cowper, Bishop of Lincoln.’ The sermon was not printed, but this gives a good idea of what it contained.
Lambeth Palace Library MS 374, fols. 115v–149r. Dr John Copcot’s Sermon at S. Paul’s Cross, 1584 on Psalm xxxiv.1. ‘wherein Answer is made to the Counterpoison’. This sermon was not printed: see Register of Sermons, 64. MS 2001. John Bale, unpublished holograph manuscript titled ‘A retourne of James Cancellers ray- linge boke upon hys owne heade’, dated 1561. Responds to Cancellar’s Path of Obedience (1556?). MS 2872, fols. 57–58. Papers mainly concerning Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
St Paul’s Cathedral Library MS 38.F.22. This manuscript contains most of the Easter sermons from 1588: the Passion sermon at Paul’s Cross and the three Spital sermons (but not the rehearsal sermon). It’s mostly of interest because it contains a version of Lancelot Andrewes’ 1588 Spital sermon (making this the only sermon where we have a manuscript witness independent of the LXXVI Sermons), a transcription of which can now be found in Peter McCullough, ed. Lancelot Andrewes, Selected Sermons and Lectures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Bibliography of Sermons
MacLure, Millar. Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642. Revised and aug- mented Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls. CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989.
Selected Primary Printed Sources
Alcock, John. Exhortacyon made to Relygyouse systers. Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1497?]. ———. In die Innocenciū. Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde [1499?]. ———. Sermo. Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1497]. Allen, William. A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of XII. Reverend Priests,executed within these twelvemonethes for confession and defence of the Catholike Faith. But under the false pretence of Treason. [Rheims: Foigny], 1582.
Anonymous. A reporte of maister doctor Redmans answeres, to questions propounded him before his death concernynge certaine poyntes of religion, now beyng with many in con- trouersye. Whervnto diuerse artycles be added, lately subscribed by Master Chedsey. [London: Thomas Raynalde in Paules churche yeard for Wylliam Seres, dwellyng at the west syde of Paules towarde Ludgate, at the signe of the hedge hog], 1551. ———. An apologie of priuate masse sediciously spredde abroade in writyng without name of the authour: as it semeth, against the offer and protestacion made in certain sermons by the reuerende father Byshop of Salesburie. With an answere and confutacion of the same, set forth for the defence and maintenance of the trueth. London: [Thomas Powell], 1562. ———. L’Histoire de la Mort que le R. P. Edmond Campion Prestre de la compagnie du nom de Iesus, & autres ont souffert en Angleterre pour la foy Catholique & Romaine le premier jour de Decembre, 1581. Paris: Chaudière, 4 January 1582. ———. An Advertisement and defence for Trueth against her Backbiters, and specially against the whispring Favourers, and Colourers of Campions, and the rest of his confeder- ats treasons. London: C. Barker, 1581. Anderson, Anthony. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the 23. of Aprill, being the Lords day, called Sonday. 1581. Londo[n]: [H. Bynneman? for] Ralph Nevvbery, 1581. Bale, John (pseud. John Harryson). Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe: A dysclosynge or ope- nynge of the Manne of synne, co[n]tayned in the late declaratyon of the Popes olde faythe made by Edmonde Boner bysshopp of London wherby Wyllyam Tolwyn was than newlye professed at Paules Crosse. Zurik [Antwerp]: Olyuer Iacobson [A. Goinus], 1543. ———. Scriptorvm illustriū maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant: Catalogus … Basel: Joannis Oporinum, 1557, 1559. Babington, Gervase. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the second Sunday in Mychaelmas tearme last. 1590. Not printed before this 23 day of August. 1591. London: Thomas Este, dwelling in Aldersgate streete, 1599. Bacon, Francis. A Declaration of the Practises & Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his complices. London, 1601. ———. Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie, in certaine imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex. London, 1604. Bancroft, Richard. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 9. of Februarie being the first Sunday in the Parleament, Anno. 1588 by Richard Bancroft D. of Divinitie, and Chaplaine to the right Honorable Sir Christopher Hatton Knight L. Chancelor of England. London: E. B[ollifant] for Gregorie Seton, 1588. Barlow, William. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, on the first Sunday in Lent: Martij 1. 1600 with a short discourse of the late Earle of Essex his confession, and penitence, before and at the time of his death. London: Mathew Law, dwelling in Paules Church- yard, 1601. ———. The sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the tenth day of Nouember being the next Sunday after the discouerie of this late horrible treason. London: John W[indet], 1606. Barnes, Robert. A supplicatyon made … vnto the most excellent and redoubted prince kinge henrye the eyght. London: John Byddell, at the signe of our lady of Pitie, nexte to flete bridge, 1531. Barne, Thomas. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the thirteenth of Iune, the second Sunday in trinitie tearme 1591. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1591. Bisse, James. Two sermons preached the one at Paules Crosse the eight of Ianuarie, 1580. the other at Christes Churche in London, the same day in the after-noone: by Iames Bisse maister of Arte, and fellowe of Magdalene Colledge in Oxenford. London: Robert walde- graue, for Thomas Woodcoke, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Beare, 1585. Bombino, Paolo. Vita et Martyrium Edmundi Campiani. Mantua: Osannas, 1620. Bonner, Edmund. Homelies sette forth by the righte reuerende father in God, Edmunde Byshop of London, not onely promised before in his booke, intituled, A necessary doctrine, but also now of late adioyned, and added thereunto, to be read within his diocesse of
London, of all persons, vycars, and curates, vnto theyr parishioners, vpon sondayes, & holy- dayes. London: in Poules churcheyarde, at the sygne of the holy Ghost by Ihon Cawodde, Prynter to the Kyng and Queenes Maiesties, [1555]. ———. Iniunctions geuen in the visitatio[n] of the Reuerend father in god Edmunde, bishop of London begunne and continued in his cathederal churche and dioces of London, from the thyrd day of September the yere of oure Lorde god, a thousand fiue hundreth fifty and foure, vntill the. viii. daye of October, the yeare of our Lord a thousand fiue hundreth fifty and fiue then nexte ensuyng. London: In Paules churcheyard, at the signe of the holy ghost, by Iohn Cawood, printer to the Kyng and Queenes highnesses, [1555]. Bradford, John. A sermon of repentaunce. Londo[n]: In Paules Churche yearde, at the signe of the Rose, by [S. Mierdman for] Iohn Wight, [1553]. Bray, Gerald, ed. Tudor Church Reform: the Henrician canons of 1535 and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press [for the] C of E Record Society, 2000. Bridges, John. A sermon, preached at Paules Crosse on the Monday in Whitson weeke Anno Domini. 1571 entreating on this sentence Sic deus dilexit mundum, vt daret vnigenitum fil- ium suum, vt omnis qui credit in eu[m] non pereat, sed habeat vitam æternam. So God loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that al that beleue on him shoulde not perysh, but haue eternall life. Iohn. 3. London: Henry Binneman for Humfrey Toy, [1571]. Broke, Thomas. A slaunderous libell (cast abroad) vnto an epitaph set forth vpon the death of D.E. Boner, with a reply to the same lying libell, by T. Brook. London: John Daye, [1569?]. Brooks, James. A sermon very notable, fruictefull, and godlie made at Paules crosse the. xii. daie of Noue[m]bre, in the first yere of the gracious reigne of our Souereigne ladie Quene Marie. London: Within the late dissolued house of the Graie friers, by Roberte Caly, 1553. Bush, Edward. A sermon preached at Pauls crosse on Trinity sunday, 1571. London: Iohn Awdely, 1576. Camden, William. Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum. London: Stansby, 1615. Campion, Edmund. Rationes Decem: quibus fretus, certamen adversarijs obtulit in causa fidei, Edmundus Campianus. [Stonor Park: Brinkley, 1581]. Cecil, Robert, of Salisbury. An Answere to Certaine Scandalous Papers, scattered abroad vnder colour of a Catholicke Admonition. London, 1606. Certain sermons or homilies appointed to be read in churches. Book 1. Certain sermones, or homelies, appoincted by the kynges Maiestie, to bee declared and read, by all persones, vic- ars, or curates, euery Sondaie in their churches, where thei haue cure. London: Richard Grafton, 1551. Certayne sermons appoynted by the Quenes Maiestie to be declared and read, by all persones, vycars, and curates, euery Sonday and holy daye, in theyr Churches: and by her graces aduyse perused a[nd] ouersene, for the better vnderstandyng of the simple people. London: Imprinted in Powles Churchyarde by Richarde Jugge and John Cawood printers to the Quenes Maiestie, 1559. Chronicle of the Grey friars of London, ed. John G. Nichols. London: Camden Society, 1852. Cartwright, Thomas. A Replye to An Answere made of M. doctor Whitgifte … Agaynste the Admonition. [Hemel Hempstead?: J. Stroud?], 1573. Chaderton, Laurence. An excellent and godly sermon most needefull for this time, wherein we liue in all securitie and sinne, to the great dishonour of God, and contempt of his holy word. Preached at Paules Crosse the xxvi. daye of October, an. 1578. London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes Maiestie, [1578?]. Chedsey, William and Cuthbert Scotte. Two notable sermones lately preached at Pauls Crosse Anno 1544. London: John Herford for Robert Toye dwellynge in Paules church yarde, 1545. Christopherson, John. An exhortation to all menne to take hede and beware of rebellion wherein are set forth the causes, that commonlye moue men to rebellion, and that no cause is there, that ought to moue any man there vnto. With a discourse of the miserable effectes,
that ensue thereof, and of the wretched ende, that all rebelles comme to, moste necessary to be redde in this seditiouse [and] troublesome tyme, made by Iohn Christoferson. At the ende whereof are ioyned two godlye prayers, one for the Quenes highnes, verye conuenient to be sayd dayly of all her louing and faythfull subiectes, and an other for the good [and] quiete estate of the whole realme. Read the whole, and then iudge. [London: In Paules churche- yarde, at the signe of the holy Ghost, by Iohn Cawood, prynter to the Queenes highnes, 1554]. Clarke, Thomas. The recantation of Thomas Clarke (sometime a Seminarie Priest of the English Colledge in Rhemes; and nowe by the great mercy of God conuerted vnto the profession of the gospell of Iesus Christ) made at Paules Crosse, after the sermon made by Master Buckeridge preacher, the first of Iuly, 1593. Whereunto is annexed a former recanta- tion made also by him in a publique assembly on Easter day, being the 15 of April, 1593. London: Deputies of Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1594. Colet, John. The sermon of doctor Colete/ made to Conuocacion at Paulis. [London?: Thomas Berthelet, [1531]. Crakanthorpe, Richard. A sermon at the solemnizing of the happie inauguration of our most gracious and religious soueraigne King Iames wherein is manifestly proued, that the souer- aignty of kings is immediatly from God, and second to no authority on earth whatsoeuer: preached at Paules Crosse, the 24 of March last 1608 … London: VV. Iaggard for Thomas Adams, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Blew Bell, 1609. Curteys, Richard. Tvvo sermons preached by the reuerend father in God the Bishop of Chichester the first at Paules Crosse on Sunday beeing the fourth day of March. And the second at VVestminster before [the] Queenes maiestie the iij. Sunday in Lent last past. 1576. London: [J. Allde?], 1576. ———. Two sermons preached by the reuerend father in God the Bishop of Chichester the first at Paules Crosse. The second at Westminster before the Queenes Maiestie. London: T. Man, and W. Brome, 1584. Davidson, John. D. Bancrofts rashnes in rayling against the Church of Scotland noted in an answere to a letter of a worthy person of England. Edinburgh: Robert VValde-graue, 1590. Deios, Laurence. That the pope is that Antichrist: and An answer to the obiections of sectaries, which condemne this Church of England: Two notably learned and profitable treatises or sermons vpon the 19. verse of the 19. chapter of the Reuelation: the first whereof was preached at Paules Crosse in Easter terme last, the other purposed also to haue bene there preached. By Lawrence Deios Bachelor in Diuinitie, and minister of Gods holy word. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1590. Donne, John, and Jeanne Shami, ed. John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel- Text Edition. Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne University Press, 1996. Dorman, Thomas. A proufe of certeyne articles in religion, denied by M. Iuell: sett furth in defence of the Catholyke beleef therein. Antwerp: J. Latius, 1564. ———. A request to M. Iewell, That he kepe his promise, made by solemne protestation in his late sermon at Pauls Crosse. Louvaine: John Fowler, 1567; repr. [Menston]: Scolar Press, 1973. Dove, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the sixt of February. 1596 in which are discussed these three conclusions. 1 It is not the will of God that all men should be saued. 2 The absolute will of God, and his secret decree from all eternitie is the cause why some are predestined to saluation, others to destruction, and not any foresight of faith, or good workes in the one, or infidelitie, neglect, or contempt in the other. 3 Christ died not effectually for all. By Iohn Doue, Doctor of Diuinitie. [London]: T. C[reede] for R. Dexter, 1597. ———. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, the 3 of Nouember 1594 intreating of the second comming of Christ, and the disclosing of Antichrist: With a confutation of diuerse coniec- tures concerning the end of the world, conteyned in a booke intituled, The second comming
of Christ. Preached by Iohn Dove. [S.l.]: Imprinted by V.S. for VVilliam Iaggard, and are to be sold at his shop in Fleetstreet in Saint Dunstans Churchyard, [1594?]. Dyos, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 19. of Iuli 1579 setting forth the excellencye of Gods heauenlye worde: The exceeding mercye of Christ our Sauior: the state of this world: A profe of the true Church: A detection of the false Church: or rather malignant rable: A confutation of sundry hæresies: and other thinges necessary to the vnskilfull to be knowen. London: Iohn Daye dwelling ouer Aldersgate, 1579. Edgeworth, Roger. Sermons very fruitfull, godly, and learned, preached and sette foorth by Maister Roger Edgeworth, doctoure of diuinitie, canon of the cathedrall churches of Sarisburie, Welles and Bristow, residentiary in the cathedrall churche of Welles, and chauncellour of the same churche: with a repertorie or table, directinge to many notable matters expressed in the same sermons. London: Roberti Caly, 1557. ———. Sermons very fruitfull, godly, and learned: preaching in the Reformation, c. 1535–c. 1553; edited by Janet Wilson. Cambridge; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1993. Erasmus, Desiderius. Ecclesiastae sive de ratione concionandi libri quatuor. Basel: Froben, 1535, and available also in a modern edition edited by Jacques Chomerat in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, series V, vol. IV, New York: 1991, books 1–2; vol. V, New York: 1994, books 3–4. ———. ‘Homily on the child Jesus’, trans. Emily Kearns, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 7, eds. Elaine Fantham and Erika Rummel, vol. 29, 51–70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. ———. Opvs Epistolarvm Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P.S. Allen, 12 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–1958. Feckenham, John de. Two homilies vpon the first, second, and third articles of the crede, made by maister Iohn Feknam Deane of Paules. [London: Roberti Caly, ca. 1555]. ———. A notable sermon made within S. Paules church in Lo[n]don in the presence of certen of the kinges and Quenes moost honorable priuie cou[n]sell at the celebration of the exe- quies of the right excellent and famous princesse, lady Ione, Quene of Spayne, Sicilie [and] Nauarre. [et]c. the xviij. of Iune, Anno. 1555. By maister Iohn Feckenam, deane of the sayd churche of Paules. Set furth at the request of some in auctoritie whose request could not be denayed. London: Robert Caly, 1555. Field, John and Thomas Wilcox. An Admonition to the Parliament. [Hemel Hempstead: J. Stroud], 1572. Fisher, John. Contio qvam anglice habuit reverendvs pater Johannes Roffensis Episcopvs in celeberrimo Nobilium Conventu Londini eo die, quo Martini Lutheri scripta public appara- tus in ignem coniecta sunt, trans. Richard Pace. Cambridge: John Siberch, 1521. ———. The sermon of Iohan the bysshop of Rochester made agayn the pernicious doctryn of Martin luther within the octaues of the ascensyon. London: Wynkyn de Worde, [1521]. ———. A sermon had at Paulis … concernynge certayne heretickes. London: T. Berthelet, [1526]. ———. Here after ensueth two fruytfull sermons, made & compyled by the ryghte Reuerende father in god Iohan Fyssher, Doctoure of Dyunyte and Byshop of Rochester. London: William Rastell, 1532. ———. A sermon very notable, fruicteful, and godlie made at Paules Crosse, in London, Anno domini. 1521. within the octaues of the Ascension … concerning the heresies of Martyne Luther. London: Robert Caly, 1554, 1556. Fisher, William. A sermon preached at Paules crosse the firste Sunday after Newyeeres day, beeing the thirde day of Ianuary. 1580. London: [by Thomas Dawson] for Edwarde Aggas [and] Thomas Chare [sic], 1580. ———. A Godly Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 31. Day of October 1591. London: 1592. Fotherby, Martin. Foure sermons, lately preached, by Martin Fotherby Doctor in Diuinity, and chaplain vnto the Kings Maiestie. The first at Cambridge, at the Masters Commencement. Iuly 7. anno 1607. The second at Canterbury, at the Lord Archbishops visitation. Septemb. 14.
anno 1607. The third at Paules Crosse, vpon the day of our deliuerance from the gun-powder treason. Nouemb. 5. anno 1607. The fourth at the court, before the Kings Maiestie. Nouemb. 15. anno 1607. Whereunto is added, an answere vnto certaine obiections of one vnresolued, as concerning the vse of the Crosse in baptisme: written by him in anno 1604. and now com- manded to be published. London: Henry Ballard, for C. K[night] and W. C[otton], 1608. Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments. London: John Day, 1563; new edn. Adam and Company, 1873. ———. A sermon of Christ crucified, preached at Paules Crosse the Friday before Easter, com- monly called Goodfryday. Written and dedicated to all such as labour, and be heauy laden in conscience, to be read for their spirituall comfort. By Iohn Foxe. Seene and allowed. Newly recognished by the author. London: John Daye, 1570. Repr. 1575, 1577, 1585, and 1609. Republished with a preface by George Whitefield. London: 1759. ———. De Christo crucifixo concio. London: John Day, 1571. Frank, Mark. LI sermons preached by the Reverend Dr. Mark Frank …: being a course of ser- mons, beginning at Advent, and so continued through the festivals: to which is added a sermon preached at St. Pauls Cross, in the year forty-one, and then commanded to be printed by King Charles the First. London: Andrew Clark for John Martyn, Henry Brome, and Richard Chiswell …, 1672. Gardiner, Stephen. A Declaration of such true articles as George Ioye hath gone about to con- fute as false. London: John Herford, 1546. ———. An explicatio[n] and assertion of the true Catholique fayth, touchyng the moost blessed sacrament of the aulter … [Rouen: R. Caly], 1551. ———. De vera obediencia: an oration made in Latine by the ryghte reuerend father in God Stephan B[ishop] of Winchestre, nowe lord Chau[n]cellour of England … nowe translated into english and printed by Michal Wood. Roane [Londonby authoritie. London: Henry Ballard, for C. K[night] and W. C[otton], 1608. ———. The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. James Arthur Muller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933. Gifford, George. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the thirtie day of May. 1591 by M. George Giffard, preacher of the worde of God at Maldon in Essex. London: I. Windet for Tobie Cooke, at the Tigers head in Paules Churchyard, 1591. Glasier, Hugh. A notable and very fruictefull Sermon made at Paules Crosse the XXV. day of August, by maister Hughe Glasier, Chapleyn to the Quenes most excellent maiestie, Perused by the reuerende father in god Edmond bishop of London, and by him approued, com- mended, and greatly liked: and therefore nowe set furth in print, by his auctoritie and com- maundement. Read, and iudge. Loke, and lyke. London: Robert Caly, within the precinct of the late dissolued house of the graye Freers, nowe conuerted to an hospital, called Christes hospitall. The XII. day of October, 1555. 8vo., London, 1555. [copy in St Paul’s Cathedral Library]. Godet, Giles. The city of London, as it was before the burning of St Pauls ste[eple]. [London?: G. Godet?, 1565?]. Gosson, Stephen. The trumpet of vvarre: A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the seuenth of Maie 1598. By M. Steph. Gosson parson of great Wigborow in Essex. London: V. S[immes] for I. O[xenbridge] dwelling in Paules churchyard at the signe of the parot, [1598]. ———. Pleasant quippes for upstart newfangled gentle women. London: Rich. Johnes, 1596; with Pickings & pleasantries from the trumpet of warre: a sermon preached at Paules crosse. Totham: Charles Clark’s private press, 1847. Grindal, Edmund. A sermon, at the funeral solemnitie of the most high and mighty Prince Ferdinandus, the late Emperour of most famous memorye holden in the Cathedrall Churche of saint Paule in London, the third of October. 1564. London: Iohn Day, dwelling ouer Aldersgate, beneath saint Martins. Cum gratia & priuilegio Regiæ Maiestatis, [1564]. Hacket, Roger. A sermon needfull for theese [sic] times wherein is shewed, the insolencies of Naash King of Ammon, against the men of Iabesh Gilead, and the succors of Saule, and his
people sent for their reliefe. Preached at Paules Crosse the 14 of Feb. 1590 by R.H. fellow of the New Colledge in Oxford. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes printer to the Vniuersitie, 1591. Hake, Edward. Newes out of Powles Churchyarde … otherwise entituled, syr Nummus. Written in English satyrs. London: Iohn Charlewood and Richard Ihones, 1579. Hall, Joseph. An holy panegyrick: a sermon preached at Paules Crosse vpon the anniuersarie solemnitie of the happie inauguration of our dread soueraigne Lord King James, Mar. 24, 1613 by J[oseph] H[all] D.D. London: Iohn Pindley for Samuel Macham, 1613. Hatt, Cecilia. English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469–1535): Sermons and Other Writings, 1520–1535. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Harding, Thomas. An ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge, by Doctor Harding. Louaine: John Bogard, at the Golden Bible, 1564. ———. A briefe answere of Thomas Harding Doctor of Diuinitie touching certaine vntruthes with which Maister Iohn Iuell charged him in his late sermon at Paules Crosse the VIII of Iuly, anno 1565. Antwerp: Ægidius Diest, [1565]. ———. A detection of sundrie foule errours, lies, sclaunders, corruptions, and other false dealinges,touching doctrine, and other matters. Louvain, 1568. ———. A Reioindre to M. Iewels replie. Antwerp, 1566. Harpsfield, John. A notable and learned sermon or homilie, made vpon saint Andrewes daye last past 1556 in the Cathedral churche of S. Paule in London, by Mayster Ihon Harpesfeild doctour of diuinitie and canon residenciary of the sayd churche, set furthe by the bishop of London. London: Robert Caly, within the precinct of the late dessolued house of the graye freers, nowe conuerted to an hospitall, called Christes Hospitall, 1556. Herolt, John. Sermones discipuli de tempore de sanctis. London: Julian Notory, 1509. Hill, Adam. The crie of England. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse in September 1593 … published at the request of the then Lord Maior of the citie of London, and others the alder- men his brethren. London: Ed[ward] Allde, for B. Norton, 1595. Hooker, Richard. The answere of Mr. Richard Hooker to a supplication preferred by Mr Walter Travers to the HH. Lords of the Privie Counsell. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612. [MS, 1586]. ———. Of the lavves of ecclesiasticall politie: Eyght bookes. London: John Windet, dwelling at the signe of the Crosse keyes neere Powles Wharffe, and are there to be soulde, [1593]. ———. Of the lavves of ecclesiasticall politie: The fift booke. London: John Windet dvvelling at Povvles wharfe at the signe of the Crosse Keyes and are there to be soulde, 1597. ———. Of the lavves of ecclesiasticall politie: the sixth and eighth books. A work long expected, and now published according to the most authentique copies. London: Richard Bishop, 1648. ———. The works of Mr. Richard Hooker (that learned and judicious divine), in eight books of ecclesiastical polity compleated out of his own manuscripts, never before pub- lished: with an account of his life and death … London: Thomas Newcomb for Andrew Crook, 1666. ———. A remedie against sorrow and feare, delivered in a funerall sermon, by Richard Hooker, sometimes fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, and are to be sold by John Barnes dwelling neere Holborne Conduit [London], 1612. ———. A learned and comfortable sermon of the certaintie and perpetuitie of faith in the elect especially of the prophet Habakkuks faith. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, and are to be sold by John Barnes dwelling neere Holborne Conduit [London], 1612. ———. A learned sermon of the nature of pride. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, and are to be sold by John Barnes dwelling neere Holborne Conduit [London], 1612. Howson, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 4. of December. 1597 Wherein is dis- coursed, that all buying and selling of spirituall promotion is vnlawfull. By Iohn Hovvson, student of Christes-Church in Oxford. Imprinted at London: By Arn. Hatfield for Thomas Adams, 1597. ———. A second sermon, preached at Paules Crosse, the 21. of May, 1598. vpon the 21. of Math. the 12. and 13. verses concluding a former sermon preached the 4. of December 1597. vpon the same text. By Iohn Hovvson, student of Christes-Church in Oxford. London: Arn[old]
Hatfield for Thomas Adams, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the signe of the white Lion, 1598. ———. A sermon preached at St Maries in Oxford, the 17. day of November, 1602. in defence of the festivities of the Church of England, and namely that of her Maiesties coronation. By Iohn Hovvson Doctor of Divinitie, one of her Highnes chaplaines, and vicechancellour of the Vniversitie of Oxforde. At Oxford: Joseph Barnes, and are to be sold in Fleete-streete at the signe of the Turkes head by Iohn Barnes, 1602. Hudson, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the ix. of Februarie. Anno Dom. 1583. By I. Hudson, Maister of Arte, of Oxon. London: Thomas Purfoote, and are to solde at his shop ouer against Sainte Sepulchres Church, 1584. James VI and I, King of England and Scotland. His Maiesties speach in this last session of Parliament … Together with a discourse of the maner of the discouery of this late intended Treason. London, 1605. James, William. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the IX. of Nouember, 1589. By William Iames D. of Diuinitie, and deane of Christes-church in Oxford. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1590. Jewel, John. Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ. London: [Reginald Wolfe], 1562. ———. An Apologie or answere in defence of the Church of England, with a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professed and vsed in the same. With a dedication by M[atthew] C[antuariensis] to the translator Ladie A[nne] B[acon]. London: Reginald Wolfe, 1564. ———. A Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande, an answeare to a certaine booke by M. [Thomas] Hardinge. London: H. Wykes, 1567. ———. Certaine sermons preached before the Queenes Maiestie, and at Paules crosse … whereunto is added a short Treatise of the sacraments. London: C. Barker, 1583. ———. The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole: vpon occasion of a sermon that the said Bishop preached before the Quenes Maiestie, and hir most honorable Counsel. 1560. London: John Day, 1560. Joye, George. The exposycion of Daniel the prophete, gathered out of Philip Melancthon, Iohan Ecola[m]padius, Chonrade Pellicane, [and] out of Iohan Draconite … A prophecye diligentely to be noted of al emperoures [and] kinges, in these laste dayes. London: In Paules Church yearde, at the signe of the Starre, by Thomas Raynalde, [1550]. ———. George Joye confuteth Winchesters false Articles. Wesill [Antwerp]: Widow of C. Ruremond, 1543. Knewstubs, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the Fryday before Easter, commonly called good Friday, in the yeere of our Lorde. 1579. London: At the three Cranes in the Vintree, by Thomas Dawson for Richard Sergier, 1579. ———. A confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies, taught by H[endrik] N[iclaes] and embraced of a number, who call themselues the Familie of Loue. Seene and allowed, accord- ing to the Queenes Maiesties iniunctions. London: Thomas Dawson, for Richard Sergier, 1579. Latimer, Hugh. Frvtfvll Sermons. London: John Day, 1578. ———. Frvitfvll Sermons Preached by the right reuerend Father, and Constant Martyr of Iesus Christ M. Hvgh Latimer. London: John Daye, 1584. ———. Fruitfull Sermons: Preached by the right Reverend Father, and constant Martyr of Iesus, Master Hugh Latimer, newly imprinted with others not heretofore set forth in print, to the edifying of all which will dispose themselves to the reading of the same. London: Thomas Cotes, 1635. ———. The fyrste sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer, whiche he preached before the Kinges grace wythin his graces palayce at Westmynster. M.D.XLIX. the viii. of March. London: John Day and William Seres, 1549. ———. The seconde [to the seuenth] Sermon of Maister Hughe Latimer. London: John Day and William Seres, 21 June, 1549.
———. The Sermon that the Reuerende father in Christ, Hugh Latimer, byshop of worcester, made to the clergie, in the cōuocatiō … London: Thomas Berthelet, 23 November 1537. ———. A notable sermo[n] of ye reuerende father Maister Hughe Latemer whiche he preached in ye Shrouds at Paules churche in Londo[n], on the xviii daye of Ianuary 1548 [‘Sermon on the ploughers’]. London: John Day and Wylliam Seres, 1548. Lever, Christopher. Queene Elizabeths teares: or, Her resolute bearing the Christian crosse inflicted on her by the persecuting hands of Steuen Gardner Bishop of Winchester, in the bloodie time of Queene Marie. London: V[alentine] S[immes] for Mathew Lownes dwell- ing in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Bishops head, 1607. Lever, Thomas. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the xiiii day of December. London: John Day, 1550. ———. A fruitfull sermon made in Poules churche at London in the Shroudes, the seconde daye of Februari. [London: Ihon Daie, dwelling ouer Aldersgate, and Wylliam Seres dwelling in Peter Colledge, 1550]. Longland, John. A sermonde made before the kynge his maiestye at grenewiche, vpon good frydaye. The yere of our Lorde God. M.D.xxxviij. By Ioh[a]n Longlonde, busshop of Lincolne. Ad gloriam Christi, & ad memoriam gloriosæ passionis eius. Cum priuilegio ad imprimen- dum solum. [London: In Paules Churche yearde at the sygne of the maydens heed by Thomas Petyt, 1538]. Machyn, Henry. The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols. London: Camden Society, J.B. Nichols, 1848. Martiall, John. A Replie to M. Calfhills Blasphemous Answer Made Against the Treatise of the Crosse. Louvain: Fowler, 1566. Matthewe, Simon. A Sermon Made in the Cathedrall Churche of saynt Paule at London, the XXVII. daye of Iune, Anno .1535. London: Thomas Berthelet, 30 July 1535. Mayer, John. A Treasury of ecclesiasticall expositions, vpon the difficult and doubtfull places of the Scriptures collected out of the best esteemed interpreters, both auncient and mod- erne, together with the authors judgement, and various observations. London, 1622. Milward, John. Iacobs great day of trouble, and deliuerance. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, the fifth of August 1607. vpon his Maiesties deliuerance from the Earle Gowries trea- son and conspiracie. London: [William Stansby] for Eleazar Edgar, and are to bee sold at his shop in Pauls Church-yard, at the signe of the Wind-mill, 1610. More, Thomas. The co[n]futacyon of Tyndales answere made by syr Thomas More knyght. London, 1532. ———. The History of King Richard III in The Complete Words of St Thomas More, vol. 2, ed. Richard S. Sylvester. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. ———. The second parte of the co[n]futacion of Tyndals answere in whyche is also confuted the chyrche that Tyndale deuyseth. London, 1533. M[unday], A[nthony]. A Discouerie of Edmund Campion, and his Confederates, their most horrible and traiterous practises, against her Maiesties most royall person, and the Realme. London: Edwarde White, 1582. Myrk, John The festyuall. London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1508. Nowell, Alexander. A confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last boke entituled a disproufe. London, 1567. ———. A reproufe, written by Alexander Nowell. London, 1565. ———. The reproufe of M. Dorman his proufe of certaine articles in religion &c. continued by Alexander Nowell. London, 1566. Penry, John. A briefe discouery of the vntruthes and slanders (against the true gouernement of the Church of Christ) contained in a sermon, preached the 8. [sic] of Februarie 1588. by D. Bancroft. [Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1590]. [See Bancroft above.]. Persons, Robert. De Persecutione Anglicana Epistola. Qua explicantur afflictiones, aerumna, & calamitates gravissimae, cruciatus etiam & tormenta, & acerbissima martyria, quae
Catholici nunc Angli, ob fidem patiuntur. Quae omnia in hac postrema editione aeneis typis ad vivum expressa sunt. Romae: George Ferrarius [English College], 1582. Peryn, William Thre godlye and notable Sermons, of the moost honorable and blessed sacra- ment of the Aulter. London: John Herforde for Robert Toye, [1546]. Pilkington, James. The burnynge of Paules church in London in the yeare of oure Lord 1561. and the iiii. day of Iune by lyghtnynge, at three of the clocke, at after noone, which contin- ued terrible and helplesse vnto nyght. London: Willyam Seres, dwellynge at the west ende of Powles, at the sygne of the Hedgehog, [1563]. Playfere, Thomas. The meane in mourning: A sermon preached at Saint Maryes Spittle in London on Tuesday in Easter weeke. 1595. By Thomas Playfere, Doctor of Diuinitie. London: Iames Roberts for Andrew VVise, dwelling in Paules church-yard, at the signe of the Angel, 1597. ———. Hearts delight: A sermon preached at Pauls crosse in London in Easter terme. 1593. By Thomas Playfere professour of diuinitie for the Ladie Margaret in Cambridge. [London]: Iohn Legat, printer to the Vniuersitie of Cambridge. 1603. And are to be sold in Pauls Church-yard at the signe of the Crowne by Simon Waterson, [1603]. Ponet, John. A notable sermon concerninge the ryght vse of the lordes supper and other thyn- ges very profitable for all men to knowe preached before the Kynges most excellent Mayestye and hys most honorable counsel in hys courte at Westmynster the 14. daye of Marche, by Mayster Iohn ponet Doctor of dyuinity. 1550. [London: [By S. Mierdman] for Gwalter Lynne, dwellynge on Somers Kaye, by Byllynges gate.] They be to be solde in Paules churche-yard, next the great Schole, at the signe of the sprede Egle, [1550]. Price, Daniel. The marchant: A sermon preached at Paules Crosse on Sunday the 24. of August, being the day before Bartholomew faire. 1607. By Daniell Price Master of Arts, of Exeter Colledge in Oxford. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1608. Rainolds, John. Dr. Reignolds [sic] his letter to that worthy councellor, Sir Francis Knolles: concerning some passages in Dr. Bancrofts sermon at Pavles Crosse, Feb. 9. 1588. in the Parliament time. London: W. I[ones?], 1641. [See Bancroft above.]. Rastell, John. A confutation of a sermon, pronou[n]ced by M. Iuell, at Paules crosse, the sec- ond Sondaie before Easter (which Catholikes doe call Passion Sondaie) A.D. MDLX. Antwerp: Diest, 1564. ———. A briefe shevv of the false vvares packt together in the named, Apology of the Churche of England. Louvain, 1567. Ridley, Nicholas. A brief declaracion of the Lordes Supper. [Emden: E. van der Erve], 1555. Robinson, Hastings, ed. The Zurich Letters or, the correspondence of several English bishops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846. ———. Original letters relative to the English reformation: written during the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary: chiefly from the archives of Zurich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847. Sanders, Nicholas. A treatise of the images of Christ: and his saints: and that it is vnlaufull to breake them, and lauful to honour them. With a confutation of such false doctrines as M. Iewel hath vttered in his Replie, concerning that matter. Louvain: John Fowler, 1567. Seton, Alexander. The declaracio[n] made at Poules Crosse in the cytye of London the fourth Sonday of Aduent by Alexander Seyton and Mayster Willyam Tolwyn, persone of S. Anthonynes in the sayd cytye of London, the yere of our Lord God M.D.XLJ. Imprinted at London in Saynt Sepulchres paryshe in the Olde Bayly by Rychard Lant, [1542?]. Singleton, Robert. A sermon preached at Poules crosse the fourth sonday in lent. The yere of our lorde God, 1535. London: Thomas Godfraye, [1536], STC 22575. The unique copy is in the possession of Lincoln Cathedral Library, shelfmark Rr. 7.11. Smyth, Richard. A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, the yeare of oure lorde God 1547, the 15 daye of May, by mayster Richard Smyth Doctor of diuinitye, and reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in Oxford. London: [R. Wolfe], 1547.
———. A playne declaration made at Oxforde the 24. daye of July, by mayster Richarde Smyth, Doctor of diuinite, vpon hys Retractation made [and] published at Paules crosse in London, in the yeare of our lorde God, D.D.xlvii. the xv. daye of May. London: [By Reynolde Wolfe], 1547. Spenser, John. A learned and gracious sermon preached at Paules Crosse by that famous and iudicious diuine, Iohn Spenser …; published for the benefite of Christs vineyard, by H.M. London: George Purslowe for Samuel Rande, and are to be solde at his shoppe neere Holborne Bridge, 1615. Standysshe, John. A lytle treatyse … againste the p[ro]testacion, of Robert Barnes at ye time of his deth. London: Robert Redman, 1540. Stapleton, Thomas. A fortresse of the faith: first planted amonge vs englishmen, and contin- ued hitherto in the vniuersall Church of Christ. Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1565. Stockwood, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse on Barthelmew day, being the 24. of August. 1578 wherin, besides many other profitable matters meete for all Christians to foll- ovv, is at large prooued, that it is the part of all those that are fathers, householders, and scholemaisters, to instruct all those vnder their gouernement, in the vvord and knovvledge of the Lorde. By Iohn Stockvvood scholemaister of Tunbridge. London: Henry Bynneman for George Byshop, [1578]. Stow, John. A Survay of London. London: John Wolfe, 1598. ______. The Survey of London: ‘now completely finished by A[nthony]. M[unday]. H[ugh]. D[yson]. London: Bourne, 1633. Tanner, John. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the first day of Iune. 1596. by I.T. minister of Gods Word. London: Printed by the Widow Orwin for Richard Ockold, and are to be sold [by J. Broome] at the signe of the Bible in Paules Church-yard, 1596. Tedder, William. The recantation made at Paules Crosse, by William Tedder seminarie priest the first of December, anno. 1588. VVherunto is adioyned: The recantation or abiura- tion of Anthonie Tyrell, (sometime prieste of the English Colledge in Rome,) pronounced by himselfe at Paules Crosse the next Sunday following, in the same yeere. Seene and allowed according to the order appointed. London: Iohn Charlewoode, and VVylliam Brome, 1588. Temple, Robert. A sermon teaching discretion in matters of religion, and touching certayne abuses nowe in the Churche preached at Paules Crosse the 21 of Nouember by Robert Temple Bachelor in Diuinitie sometimes of Magdalene Colledge in Oxforde. London: R. B[ourne] for Edward Aggas, 1592. Travers, Walter. A supplication made to the Priuy Counsel. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612. Ward, Richard. Theological questions, dogmaticall observations, and evangelicall essays, vpon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to St Matthew. London, 1640. Watson, Thomas. Twoo notable sermons made the thirde and fyfte Fridayes in Lent last past, before the Quenes highnes, concernynge the reall presence of Christes body and bloude in the blessed Sacrament: & also the Masse, which is the sacrifice of the newe Testament. London in Paules churche yarde, at the sygne of the holye Ghost: by Iohn Cawood, prynter to the Quenes highnes, 1554. White, Thomas. A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 17. of Nouember An. 1589 In ioyfull remembrance and thanksgiuing vnto God, for the peaceable yeres of her maiesties most gratious raigne ouer vs, now 32. By Thomas White professor in Diuinitie. [London]: [H. Bynneman for] Robert Robinson and Thomas Newman, 1589. Whitgift, John. A most godly and learned sermon preached at Pauls crosse the 17 of Nouember, in the yeare of our Lorde, 1583 [25th anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession]. London: Thos. Orwin, 1589. ———. The Works of John Whitgift, DD, ed. John Ayre for the Parker Society. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851–53. Willet, Andrew. A fruitfull and godly sermon preached at Paules crosse before the Honourable audience and assemblie there, this present yeare 1592. Vpon the 5. chapter of the prophesie of Zacharie. London: R. B[ourne] for Thomas Man, 1592.
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INDEX
Aaron 97, 146 Ambrose 97 Abell, Thomas 109 Ambrose of Milan 134 Abrahams Suite for Sodome amor, orientation of 164 (Milles) 435–436 amphitheatre playhouses 224, 243–244 Abram/Abraham 146–147, 163, 435–436 Anabaptists 318, 319, 331 academic politics 269 Anabaptistical separation 434 Accession Day sermons 333n25 anaphora 190–191 acclamations 69 Andrewes, Lancelot 14, 322, 323, 325 Ackworth, George 269 Anglicans and Puritans? (Lake) 338 Act against Appeals to Rome 112 Anglo-Saxon kings 23, 28 Actes and Monuments (Foxe) 169, 220, 448 Anjou marriage 277–278, 283 Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Annales (Stow) 379 Bishop of Rome 171n36 Anne of Denmark, Queen of Act in Restraint of Appeals to England 367, 371 Rome 171n36 Answere to the Admonition (Whitgift) 330 Act of Six Articles 8–9, 126, 130, 138, Answer to a Cavillation (Cranmer) 209 142, 150 Answer to certaine scandalous Papers Act of Succession 115n33 (Cecil) 356–357 Act of Supremacy 115n33, 171, 258–259, ‘Answer to Master Jewel’s Challenge’ 441–442. See also royal supremacy (Harding) 234 Act of Uniformity 253 anti-Catholicism 289 ff Acts 1:20 298n28 and Arminians 300 Acts 2:27 13, 293, 299 Antichrist 119, 355 Acts of English Votaries (Bale) 187 anti-Laudian materials 391, 392, 393, Adam 255, 423 399–400 Adams, Thomas 431, 432 antimetabole 190 ad hominem attack 449 Antioch 392 adiaphora 172–173, 331–332, 335, 337, 342. anti-theatre sermons 224 See also ‘things indifferent’ apocalypse 354–355, 359 Admonition controversy 2, 321 Apocrypha 154 Admonition to Parliament 57 Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ (Jewel) 232 Advertisements (Parker) 2 Apologie, in certaine imputations concern- Æpinus, John 136 ing the Late Earle of Essex (Bacon) 352 Æthelred the Unready 23, 366 Apostles’ Creed 255, 289 Aethiopian History 240, 243n61 apostles, equality of 123, 124 Albertus Magnus 98 apostolic succession 145–146 Alcock, John 443 apsidal chapel 25 Alexander 220 Arber, Edward 178 allegiance 322 arch-stones (voussoirs) 25–27 allegories 187–188, 189, 193, 398–399 Arden, Evan 281 Allen, Helen and P.S. 450–451 Are You Alone Wise? (Schreiner) 331 All Hallows, Bread Street 46 Ark 415 alliteration 151 Arminians 300 almoners 309, 311 Arminius 394 almonry boys 309–310 Armin, Robert 310 altars, desecration of 198 Arnold, Jonathan 449n43 ambition 351 art of hearing 234, 242
Arthur, Thomas 189 Gunpowder Plot sermon 15–16, Ascham, Roger 238, 305 352–356, 357 Ashton, Abdias 346 sermons as fodder 345, 350, 359, 360 Askew, Anne 150 Barnes, George 267 Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament Barnes, Robert 99–100, 101 of the Alter (Smith) 9 conflict with Gardiner 8, 129–139, 444 Assertio septem sacramentorum escape and return 132 (Henry VIII) 196 martyrdom 138–139 asyndeton 190 Barnes, Thomas 433 Athanasius 297 barracks 37 auditory London 226 Barrow, Henry 329, 330 Augustine 69, 97, 103, 147, 164, 170, 189, Bartholomew Fair 18, 311, 434, 437 317, 319 Bartholomew the Apostle, feast’s eve 274 City of God 18 Barton, Elizabeth (Holy Maid of Kent) 8, De doctrina christiana 10, 187, 193–194 112–113, 114 errors 254 Basil 319 glorification 256 Basil of Caesarea 188 ignorance and knowledge 336 Beal, Robert, Clerk of the Privy aural aesthetic 414–415 Council 252 authoritarianism 338 Beaufort, Margaret 95–96, 445–446 authority 323, 329 Becket, Thomas à 114n28, 197, 284 autonomy, vice of 335 Becket’s chapel 31 Aylmer, John Becon, Thomas 230, 231 Campion 254–256, 261 Bedyll, Thomas 116, 122n56 complaint to Privy Council 268 beheading 307 exile 257 belfries 32, 35 Hatton 277 Bell, the 281 Hooker 246, 247, 249–252, 258 Bellarmine, Robert 254n31 special worship 53 bells Whitgift and 48 belfry 32, 35 Azevedo, Matt 62n6, 85 passage of time 82, 84, 85–86 thanksgiving 55, 59 Babington Plot 48 Bel Savauge, public house theatre 235 Bacon, Francis 15, 345, 350–352, 357, 360 Bench, John 252 Bacon, Nicholas 35 Benedictine monks 442, 445 Bale, John 10, 187, 199, 200, 443n11, 446, benefit of clergy 108 449–450 Bernard, Richard 430 Bancroft, Richard Bernher, Augustine 154, 181n34, 182, 447 anti-puritan 295, 315, 319–320 Beza, Theodore 254, 255, 256, 285, 293, 299 conformist 14–15 Bible Disciplinarian Puritanism 2 adapting to plays 239–240 episcopal privilege 321 Bishops’ Bible 291, 293, 299 Hampton Court conference 297 English 232, 267, 294–295, 305–306 Penry 332–339 Geneva 232, 233, 291, 293, 297, 299, 305, royal prerogative 340–342 395, 436n40 translation 298 Great Bible 291 baptism 255, 316 Hebrew 395 baptism of children 146, 394 King James 13, 17, 290, 295, 297–300, 395 Barker, Christopher 305–306 Rheims 289–291, 293, 294, 299, 316 Barker, Robert 356 Bible reading 142, 186, 335–336 barley break 273 moral vs. literal meaning 10, 187–189, Barlow, William 43n7, 46, 143, 265 190, 194–195, 200 affinity 394 vernacular 211 Earl of Essex’s death 15–16, 346–349 biblical exegesis 10, 187, 200
Bilney, Thomas 176, 189 Bourne, Gilbert 228, 266 Bilson, Thomas 13, 289, 294–295 Bowes, Martin 275 on Christ’s descent to hell 13, 295–297, Brabantio (character) 241 299 Brachlow, Stephen 330–331, translation work 297–300 332, 340 Bird, John 123, 124, 125 Bradford, John 267 Bishop of Rome 111, 116, 124, 180 Bradocke, Richard 306 bishopric 298n28 Bradshaw, William 330 Bishop, Richard 247 Brandon, Catherine (née Willoughby, bishops Duchess of Suffolk) 154, 158, 176n5, authority to make laws 171 182, 448 complaints against 100 Break with Rome 8, 57, 119 fathers 323–324 Brevissima Institutio (Erasmus) 274 luxury of 251 Briant, Alexander 278 Bishops’ Bible 291, 293, 299 Bridegroome and his Bride bishop’s palace, St Paul’s Cathedral 31, (Rawlinson) 403 38–39 Briefe Discovery (Penry) 329 Black Rubric 142 A brief Treatyse (Booke of Traditions; blasphemy 347 Smyth) 170–171 Blayney, Peter M.W. 228, 229, 241 Brigden, Susan 117n43 Blench, J.W. 211, 441 Brook, Benjamin 390 blindness 102 Brooke, Samuel 394 Blount (Blunt), Christopher 350 Brooks, James 10, 187–200 Boccaccio, Giovanni 197 Browne, George 110, 117n43 bodily imagery 415 ‘Brownish’ separation 434 Bodleian Library 290, 391 Brownlee, Victoria 398n22 Boghurst, William 361 Bucer, Martin 142, 185, 321, 417 Bohemia 379, 386 Bullinger, Heinrich 135, 256n37, Boleyn, Anne 110, 113 257–261, 423 chaplain to 120, 444 Bull, John 307 fall of 121 Burgess, Anthony 395, 396 Bombino, Paolo 275–276, 279, 284 Burgess, John 407n37 bonfires 55, 59 Burghley, Lord Treasurer. of books 96, 107, 143 See Cecil, William of images 125 burials 35 Bonner, Edmund 47n25, 131, 132, 133, 266 Burnet, Gilbert 134 Booke of Traditions (A brief Treatyse; burning of heretics 273 Smyth) 170–171 Bury St Edmunds 25 Book of Common Prayer 54, 56, 233, 321 Butler, John 135 Office of Morning Prayer 74–75 buttresses 23, 29, 31 revisions 142 Byrd, William 312, 313 second (1552) 142, 158 social disorder 155, 156 cabala 98 Virtual Paul’s Cross 76–77, 88 Cadiz 46, 53, 302, 348, 352 Book of Homilies 54, 55, 141–142, 148, 446 Caesar 347–348, 349 Book of Martyrs (Foxe) 199, 230, 231, 448 Calamy, Edmund 390n3 books calendars 62n5, 120, 121 burning 9, 96, 107, 143 Calfhill, James 271 forbidden 109 Call to Order 74, 76 bookshops 4, 34–35, 183, 223, 225–226, 228 Calvinists acoustics and 229–230 betrayal by James 392 books of hours 445–446 hyperbole 256 Boswell, Jackson Campbell 441 predestination 18, 430 Bourbon, Antoine de 51 purgatory 292
Calvin, John love for England 190 Bancroft 337 metaphors 199–200 Beza 293 Scripture and 335–336 grace 258 Catholicism 50 hell 13, 255, 299 return to 187–200 hyperbole 255, 256, 260 catholicity 203, 215–216, 218, 220–221, Institutes of the Christian 294–295 Religion 331n19 Catholic restoration, sermons under 44 market for sermons 447 Catholics and John Fawkes 355 Penry 339 Catholic, term used by Fisher 102 texts 185, 254, 285, 337 Catholic University in Douai 169 ‘try the spirits’ 337, 339 causes, primary and secondary 259 Camden, William 245, 285 Cave (Plato) 161, 170 Cambridge, theologians from 108 Caxton, William 95, 96, 445 Trinity College 391, 397, 404 Cecil, Robert (Earl of Salisbury) 302–303, Campbell, Gordon 232 306 Campion, Edmund 253–256, 257, 261 Earl of Essex’s death 348, 350n22 ‘Challenge to the Privy Gunpowder Plot sermon Council’ 253–254 instructions 352 contemporaries 270 Inigo Jones’s patron 368n33 death of 278–281 Cecil, William (Lord Burghley) 45n18, 51, disputations 12, 275, 279, 281, 284 220, 254, 285, 315, 327n2, 364 Londoner 284–285 celibacy, clerical 9, 142, 143, 194–195 reluctance to speak 263–265, 268 cemeteries 32, 439 schooling 272–273, 286 censorship 282 speech and discourse 285 Certaine Prayers set foorth by trial for treason 278–279, 283 Authoritie 302–303, 306 upbringing 12, 265–266 certainty 332 Campion’s Brag 283, 291, 292 Chaderton, Laurence 297, 330 Canterbury Cathedral 37 challenge as rhetorical device 208–210 Canticles 5:8 393, 394, 395 Challenge Sermon Capon, John (Salcot) 109, 112–113, 114, 119 Bibles and 231–232 Cardinal College 165 communion 205–206, 211, 214–215 Carleton, Dudley 379, 392 influence of 216–217, 289 Cartwright, Thomas overview 10–11, 203–205 Confutation 299 pulpit event 270, 271 not seditious 330, 331 ‘Challenge to the Privy Council’ protégé 315 (Campion) 253–254 Queen’s jurisdiction 331 Chamberlain, John 362, 379, 386–388, 392 Rheims New Testament contro- Chambers, E.K. 239 versy 291, 293, 299 chantries 142, 157 Scripture interpretation 340n35 Chapel Royal 83, 154, 307, 312 sermons on 57 chapels 31, 417 ‘things indifferent’ 332n21, 333n26 apsidal chapel 25 translations 298 Chapel Royal 83, 154, 307, 312 Casaubon, Isaac 394 glassmaker using 365 Case, John 264–265 of Katherine Brandon 182 Catalogue (Bale) 449 Lady chapel 37 cathedrals, damage during Civil War and St. John’s College Chapel 393 Commonwealth 35 Tower chapel 275–276, 286 Catherine of Aragon 113, 131, 158, 196, 197 chapter house 23, 31, 35 death of 119 Convocation 122n56 Catholic Church facsimile 5 cross of Christ 296 St Albans Abbey 25 Jewell 206, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 218, 219 Chapuys, Eustace 110–111, 113
charity 157, 437 love for England 190 Charles I metaphors 199–200 family of 402 Scripture and 335–336 innovations 433 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 163–164 marriage 400, 405 City of God (Augustine) 18 Spanish Match 379, 401, 403 civil disobedience 157 presence at sermon 42n5 Civil War restoration of St Paul’s 361, 362, 371, breaking out 324 378, 385, 388 damage to cathedrals 35 sermons under 46 Clapham, Henoch 292 statue of 38 Clarke, Elizabeth 398n22, 399–400, 403 Charles II, birth of 42n5 Clement VII 2, 172 Charles V 451 Clementine Epistles 172 chastity 121 clerical vestments 217 Chaucer, Geoffrey 151 clergy Chavura, Stephen 217 authority of 298 Chedsey, William 46, 443, 445 examination of 251 Cheney, Richard 264, 282 Paul’s Complaint 371 Chester, Allan 175n4, 177, 178, 183 cloister 23, 30–31 Chester, William 263 arcade 25 Chevron design, St Paul’s 25–27 facsimile cloister 5, 31 children’s choir 76, 309–310, 311, Pardon Cloister 31, 35 312, 313 Shrouds 177n11, 447 choir cloth trade 380n59 bookshops 230 Cloyne, Cornelius 107 crypt beneath 177n11 Clyomon and Clamydes 239 Gothic 23, 28, 29 coats of arms 30 New Work 5, 28 Cochlaeus, Johannes 198–199 preaching place within 37 Cockayne, William 380 Romanesque 5, 28 cohabitation of faithful and unfaithful 425 tombs within 35 Coldock, Francis 240, 243n61 worship 382, 417 Cole, Henry 203, 209, 232, 233 Wren’s choir 34 Cole, Thomas 45, 51 Choir of St Paul’s 76, 311 Colet, John 162, 274, 443, 446n32, 449 chopping metaphor 188–189, 191 Collection of State Trials (Howell) 357 Christ Church, Oxford 165–166 collective worship 41–42 Christian IV 367 Collinson, Patrick 327n3, 403, 425, 426, Christian liberty 331–332, 335, 338, 430, 442n18 339, 342 Common Conditions 239 Christian Prayers and Meditations in Common Prayer, Book of 54–55, 56, 74–75, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, 76, 88, 142, 155, 156, 158, 321 and Latin 303, 306 Commonwealth period, damage to Christ’s Hospital 265, 272, 310, 311 cathedrals 35 Chudleigh, John 87 communal covenant 422, 423 church communal ownership 157 ability to err 339 communion congregation vs. 291, 299 Challenge Sermon 205–206, 211, God in covenant with 435 214–215 Jeremiads 438 Cloyne 107 Church Militant, Suffering commemoration 142, 206 and Triumphant 105 conscience 255 Church of Rome Hooker 256 cross of Christ 296 purity of 214–215 Jewell 206, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, real presence 124, 142, 185, 191–192 218, 219 Sacrifice of the Mass 124, 169, 171
transubstantiation 9, 142, 143, 147, 166, books published on behalf of 144, 148 168, 169, 205, 206 chaplain of 44, 59 under two kinds 316 commissary 143 universality 206, 211, 256 Cromwell 114, 119 Communion of Saints (Brachlow) 330–331 early sermons 18 Complaint of Paules to All Christian Soules Edwardian Reformation 169 (Farley) 368–378 Gardiner 137, 209–210 concio 440, 449 heresy 159, 169 A Conference abovt the next svccession to Hilsey 117, 119 the crowne of Ingland, divided into two Jewel 208 partes (Parsons) 347 Latin rite 142 confession 47–48, 51 Levitical law 112 confessional subscription 339 liturgy 9–10 Confutation (Cartwright) 299 Mallet 119 Confutation (More) 210 martyrdom 208 Confutation (Nowell) 270–271, 272 Parker 449 congregational responses to preaching 69 persuasion 59 congregation vs. church 291, 299 plot against 131, 132 Connerton, Paul 356 propaganda 2 Conrad, John 281 Reformed standards 167 conscience 217, 255, 329, 331–332, 335, sermons 18, 43n8, 59, 112 339–340, 342n40 Smith 159, 167, 169 conspiracy in partibus transmarinis 283 use of challenge 210 Constantine, emperor 200 Vermigli 9, 169 constitutionalism 251 Crockett, Bryan 412, 414, 416, 417 conversio 163–164 Crome, Edward 123, 124 Cooke, Laurence 109n11 Cromwell, Thomas Cooper, John 42n3 arrest and execution 131 Cooper, Thomas 265 Convocation of 1536 121–122 Copcot, John 14, 315–318, 322 Cranmer 114, 119 Corbet, Dr 393 encyclical 115n35 1 Corinthians 158 Harcocke 118 1 Corinthians 7:5 195 Hilsey 109, 117n43, 118–119, 122, 125–126 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 205–206 injunctions 122 1 Corinthians 15:52 355 legislative position 231 Coriolanus 349 letters to 109, 110, 116, 123 Corpus Christi College 191, 247 William Marshall 126 Council of Trent 220 Simon Matthew 123, 126 Counter-poison (Fenner) 14, 315, 317, 318 monastic visitations 121 Countrie Mans Comfort (Rhodes) 301–302, Parker 449 307n16 plot against 130, 132–133, 137–138, 444 courts power struggles over pulpit 108–109 books and 34 propaganda 2 folkmoot as 31 Stokesley 111, 117n43, 120 covenant theology 421–424 Cross Churchyard 34–35 in context of the church 425–427 cross of Christ 296 Jeremiads 422, 424, 432–433, 435, 438 crossing tower 28 Coverdale, Miles 189, 196 crowd size 66n13, 78–81 Cox, Richard 155 Crowley, Robert 157 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 199 crypts 25, 177n11 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop Shrouds 150, 177n11 Barnes 132–133 Wren construction 23, 35 Bishop of Winchester 130 Crystal, Ben 63, 72, 73n27, 80–81, 85, 88–89 Book of Common Prayer 142 Crystal, David 64n7
cult of the saints 120 Dekker, Thomas 368n36 ‘Cupid and Psyche’ 240, 241 deliverance 353, 355 cura religionis 331 ‘Deliver me, O Lord my God, from all my curiosity 336 foes that be’ (Elizabeth I) 301–302 Cyprian 254 De matrimonio serenissimi Regis Angliae, Cyril 297 Henrici Octavio, Congratulatio (Cochlaeus) 198–199 dagger thrown 266, 267 Demosthenes 188 Damascene 98 De praescriptionem haereticorum damnation 257 (Tertullian) 195 Dangerous Positions and Proceedings 328 De Ratione Studii (Erasmus) 273–274 Daniell, David 162n3, 232 Dering, Edward 220, 403–404 Davenant, John 427 Desdemona (character) 241 David 167, 255 De Vera Obedientia (Gardiner) 131 Day, George 108n7 de Vere, Edward (Earl of Oxford) 309–310, Day, John 312–313 Book of Martyrs 230 Devereux, Robert (Earl of Essex) 46, 302 bookshops and the pulpit 230–231 corruption of 347 Challenge Sermon 220, 232 fall and redemption 348, 352, 360 cheap print 237–238 justification of execution 345 Christian Prayers and Meditations 303 penitence of 348n7, 349, 351–352 commercial success 237, 448 plotting 350–351 Latimer 154, 158–159, 448 Devil, as bishop 180–181 printing complete works 243 devotion, levels of 213 psalms 233 Dialogue concerning heresies (More) 195 royal patentee 305 Diary (Machyn) 310 Sermon on the Ploughers 154, 181–182 Digby, Everard 358 dead, prayers for 117–118, 120, 136–137, 157, Dionysius 98 185n52 diptych Dead Terme (Dekker) 368n36 details from 63, 75, 76, 78, 79, 82, De Auxilio divinæ gratiæ (Brooke) 394 374–377 Decades (Bullinger) 257, 259 Farley 368, 373–378, 382 Decalogue 136, 422, 423, 425, 439 speaker 230 de casibus tragedy 352 theatre 235 De casibus virorum illustrium Directions for Preachers (James I) 56, (Boccaccio) 196 299, 397 deception 208–209, 215 Disciplinarian Puritanism 2, 315 Declaration of the Treasons of the late Earle discipline 318 of Essex, and his Complices (Bacon) 350 discourse, hierarchy of 282, 287 De Controversiis (Bellarmine) 254n31 ‘Discourse of the maner of this late Dedham Conference 59 intended treason’ 15–16, 356–360 De doctrina christiana (Augustine) 10, 187, A Discoverie of the Manifold Corruptions 193–194 of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretikes Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of of our Daies (Martin) 291, 293 Englande (Jewel) 272 disease 5, 41, 51, 52n49 320 Defence of the Sacrifice of the Masse leprosy 320 (Smith) 9 plague 45, 46, 49, 50, 51–52, 53, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning 243n61, 366 God’s Will in Tudor England smallpox 47, 304–305 (Eppley) 332n21 disembedded imaginary 105–106 Defense (Cranmer) 210 disembowelment 280 Defense of the Sincere and True Translations ‘Diuell of the Vault’ 354 of the Holy Scriptures (Fulke) 293 divine providence 47, 51 de heretico comburendo 8 divorce 8, 109–110, 112–113, 158, 196, 197
Emmanuel College 390, 391, 392, 393, 394 Evelyn, John 38 emotional appeal 207–208 Everard, John 395 Enchiridion militis Christiani evil 255 (Erasmus) 161–163, 164, 165, 170, 172–173 excommunication 2, 117 England, Nicholas 238 executions 127, 130, 282, 287 England as empire 171n36 Barnes 444 English Bibles 232, 267, 294–295, 305–306 Campion 278–280, 281, 285 episcopacy 14 Cromwell 131 jure divino 327 Devereux 15, 345, 346, 348n7 episcopal privilege 321, 328 Fisher 8, 444 episcopal reform 178–181, 183–185 More 8, 198, 444 episteme 163 Seymour 156 epistemological authority 332–333, spiritual 423 340–342 Thomas à Becket 197 epistemological conversion 161–163, 170 exegesis epistrophe 191 biblical 187, 194, 200, 294, 381–382 epizeuxis 191 dramatic 418 Eppley, Daniel 332n21, 340 Exhortation on Unitie and Obedience Erasmus, Desiderius 170, 172–173, 176 (Starkey) 337 attacks on 18–19, 442, 449–450 Exhortation to Repentance (Perkins) 430 Brevissima Institutio 274 exhortatory sermons 3, 18, 49–50, 55, 289 Charles V 451 Adams 431 concio 440 Bancroft 321, 335, 337 conversion 161–165 Erasmus 440 early sermons 18 Jeremiads 422, 425, 429–438 Ecclesiastes 440, 446 Matthew 443–444 educational programme design 273–274 Perkins 429–430 Enchiridion 161–163, 164, 165, 170, 172–173 Price 435 Handbook 162–163 Stoughton 406 humanism 161, 170, 176, 440 Exposition of the Creed (Perkins) 427–428 letters 450–451 eyes 382, 383, 405, 414–415 Paraphrases of the New Testament 142 Ezekiel 103 printed sermons 443 Ezekiel 16:49 435–436 refusal of sermon 18 Standish 449–450 faith 104, 120, 134 Erkenwald, shrine for 5, 28 covenant theology 423 Errorum Parisiis Condemnatorum 254 good works 18, 436, 437 Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, Robert measuring 213, 214 Essex’s Rebellion 53 works and 316 Esther 200 Faithful and Plaine Exposition upon the Ethelred the Unready 23, 366 Two First Verses of the Second Chapter of Eucharist Zephaniah (Perkins) 429 Challenge Sermon 205–206, 211, 214–215 Fall 423 Cloyne 107 fall and redemption 348, 352, 360 commemoration 142, 206 fallen angels 351n23 conscience 255 fallen nature 120, 124 Hooker 256 False Decretals 172 purity of 214–215 false prophets 319–320, 331–332, 333, real presence 124, 142, 185, 191–192 334, 339 Sacrifice of the Mass 124, 169, 171 famine 46, 48, 51 transubstantiation 9, 142, 143, 147, 166, Farley, Henry 362, 368–378, 380 168, 169, 205, 206 Farman, Thomas 109n11 under two kinds 316 Fasciculi Zizaniorum (Netter) 102–103 universality 206, 211, 256 fasts 41–42, 46, 143, 146
Fathers 204, 291, 292, 295, 297, 323, 395 on congregation 270 Fawkes, Guy 353–357 on Erasmus translation 162n3 Fawkner, Anthony 50 Gardiner 134, 168 fear 296, 297 invited to preach 270 federal theology 423 knife throwing 223 Felicity, feast of 114n28 printing complete works 243 Fenner, Dudley 14, 315, 317, 318 Seymour 168 Ferrell, Lori Anne 353n32 Richard Smith 167n25 Ficino 418 Tyndale 150, 162n3 fire France, peace treaty with 44, 158 bonfires 55, 59, 125 Francis I 110 cathedral 5, 361, 363, 366n30, 367n31 Francis II 366 death by 198, 416 Frank, Mark 14, 219, 322–325 Great Fire 23, 35, 38, 39, 62, 386, 388 free-standing sermons 47, 55 Gunpowder Plot 354 free will 259 fire of contention 405 French Match 397, 400, 401, 404, 405, first and second causes 259 406, 407 First Blast of the Trumpet against the friars 442 Monstrous Regiment of Women Froude, J.A. 451 (Knox) 253 Fulke, William 291, 299 1 Corinthians 158 on harrowing of hell 13, 291–292, 1 Corinthians 7:5 195 293–294 1 Corinthians 15:52 355 Rheims New Testament 1 Corinthians 17–34 205–206 controversy 293 1 John 4 319, 332–333 Vulgate 297 1 Peter 449 Fuller, Thomas 43n7, 46, 49, 245 1 Peter 5:5–11 115n36 1 Peter 5:6 444 Gadarn, Darvell 125 1 Timothy 5:17 315 ‘Gagger’ controversy 300 Fisher, John Gairdner, James 117n43 death of 8, 111, 115n36, 444 Gallant’s Burden (Adams) 431, 432 influence in St John’s College 114 Gaping Gulf (Stubbe) 277 opposition to royal will 117 Gardiner, George 252 Parable of the Sower 178 Gardiner, Stephen 45, 154–155 printed sermons 443 Bale on 199 sermon against heretics (1526) 7, conflict with Barnes 8, 129–139, 444 99–100, 101, 104–105 Cranmer and 209–210 sermon against Luther (1521) 7, 95–99, George Joye 130 100, 104, 107, 178, 440n3 Henry VIII 131–132 Fisher, William 268 orthodoxy 266 Five Members of Parliament 322 Smith’s retractation 149, 167–168 Fleming, Abraham 286 Garnet, Henry 308 folkmoot 31–32 Garnons, John 393, 394 Fool upon foole (Armin) 310 Gataker, Thomas 300 Forest, John 109–110, 125, 149–150 Gauden, John 245 Form of the Good 161 Gearing, William 400n28 Forty-two Articles 142, 257 gender confusion 241 foundations 35, 36, 61–62, 365 generations of reform 216–217 Foxe, John Genesis 14:17–20 146–147 Actes and Monuments 169, 220, 448 Geneva Bible 232, 233, 291, 293, 297, 299, Barnes 136, 137 305, 395, 436n40 Book of Martyrs 199, 230, 231, 448 Gerrard, Thomas 131, 137 Campion’s Brag 283 Gibson, Anthony 48–49, 50, 51 chronology 115, 118n44, 119 Gipkyn, John 32, 34, 61, 368
diptych 63, 75, 76, 78, 82, 373–377 Greenblatt, Stephen 217 Glasier, Hugh 143 Green Dragon bookshop 240, 243n61 Glasse of the Truthe 110 Greenwood, John 329 glassmaker 365 Gregory 97 Globe Theater 369 Gresham, Thomas 437 glorification 256 Grey, Lady Jane 159, 250, 257 God: two wills 248–249 Grindal, Edmund 45, 47n26, 47n27, 51, 175, godliness, sermons on 48–49 269–270, 364 godly prince 331. See also royal supremacy Grocers’ Company 12, 263, 264, 268, 282 ‘God’s Gift of Martyrdom’ (Kolb) 139 Grossteste, Robert 98 Godwin, Thomas 263, 269 Grotius, Hugo 394 Gold, Henry 114, 126 Gunnes, Gregory (alias Stone) 281–282 Golden Asse collection 240, 241 gunshot 268 Golden Rule of the court pulpit 407n37 Gunpowder Day sermon (Donne) 7, 63, 65 Golding, Arthur 238, 239, 240 congregational response to 88–91, 92 good earth 103 liturgical grounding 74–77 Good Friday 123–125, 231 text of 70–71, 72–74, 84–86 Good, Form of 161 Gunpowder Plot 15–16, 345, 352–360 Goodwin, John 390 Gurney, John Henry 301 good works 98, 105, 148 Gurney, Richard 322, 324 sign of grace 18, 185n52, 436 Gurr, Andrew 224, 236 unnecessary 134, 138 gutters 365 Goshawk in the Sun 242n54 Gospels 299 halberds 267 Gosson, Stephen 239, 240, 241–242 Hales, John 394 Gowrie conspiracy 357n47 Hall, Joseph 17–18 grace 104, 255, 256n26, 258–260 Hammond, Dr 286, 394 covenant theology 422, 423, 424 Hampton, William 43n7, 46, 47n27, 431 by faith 120, 184 Hampton Court conference 297 merit and 402 Hanson, John 308 grammar 274–275, 283 Happinesse of Peace (Stoughton) 389, Grand Remonstrance 322 391, 397 Gratian 254 Harcocke, Edmund 118 graven images 108. See also idolatry Harding, Thomas 207, 211, 214, 218–219, Gray, Jordan 61n3 220, 233–234 Great Bible 291 Jewel and 272 Great Controversy 271, 290. See also Nowell and 270 Challenge Sermon Harington, John 296, 306–307 Great Matter 449 Harley, Robert 390 Great Fire of 1666 23, 35, 38–39, 62, 388 Harpsfield, Nicholas 45 Great St Mary’s 446 Harris, Robert 390n3 Greek harrowing of hell 146, 289, 291, 293–294 Aylmer 250 Bilson on 13, 295–297 Bible text 291, 297 translation and 299 Campion 276 Harsnett, Samuel 247n9, 261 Elizabeth 305 Hartley, William 285 epigrams 395 Hart, Vaughan 362n4 Erasmus 446 Harvard Theological Review 423 metanoia 163n8 Hatton, Christopher 35, 277, 327, 365 prayers 303, 304 Haywell, John 394 quotations 391 Hayward, John 46n22 un-translated 396 Heal, Felicity 218 Wolfe 144 hearing, art of 234, 242 ‘Greek Maid, A’ 240 Hearne, Thomas 280
Heath, Nicholas 113 Hilary of Poitiers 134 Hebrew Bible 395 Hill, Adam 50 Hebrews 7:7 147 Hill, David 61n3 Hebrews 13:14 434 Hilsey, John 108–109, 117–119 Helen (mother of Constantine) 200 campaign against idolatry 125 Heneage, Thomas 35, 36 Easter week sermons 122–123, 124 Henrician Reformation 2, 8, 116, evangelical preaching 126 123–124, 198 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims 172n39 Henri II 148, 197 historical analysis 205–206 Henrietta Maria 400, 405 ‘History of Caesar and Pompey’ 242 Henry III 2, 32 Holinshed’s Chronicles 286 Henry VII 95, 129 Holland, Earl of. See Rich, Henry Henry VIII Hollar, Wenceslaus, engravings of 23, 26, Brooks on 195, 196 28n3, 29, 30, 35, 37, 38, 61, 64 campaign against Luther 107, 155 Holy Blood of Hailes 125 changes in religious politics 7, 108 Holy Maid of Kent (Elizabeth Barton) 8, critics of 195–199 112–113, 114 desire to control pulpit 7–8, 110 Holy Scriptures 163, 172 divorce 8, 109–113, 158, 196, 197 Holy Spirit doctrinal orthodoxy 165, 175 inspiration of 446–447 Gardiner 131–132, 444 in the world 97–99 inter-school competition under 275 descent of 146 monastic houses 151, 157 gifts of 449 Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus 130n2 guidance 178, 340n35 Persons on 197 literal intention 399n24 printed sermons during reign 442–443 Latimer 178 reformation 216 remembrance 415 religious beliefs 129–130 Whitgift 340n35 rule by proclamation 251 homeless people 386–387 St Paul’s belfry 32 Hooker, Richard Singleton 444 biographies 245–246 supremacy 231, 440 dating of sermon 247–248, 261 ‘vnspeakable costs’ 443 Elizabethan Settlement 318–319 Henry, Prince 399 Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie 249, 341 Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke 35, Puritan crisis of conscience 342n40 394 significance 12, 261 heresy subject of sermon 248–249, 256 death penalty 8–9, 142 theological errors 248–249 destabilization of society 101 visible and invisible church 428 omission of prayers for dead 117–118 Hooper, John 142, 258 as storm 97, 98–99 Hopkins, John 76n29, 77, 233 heretics 47n25 Horne, Robert 269 Andreas Osiander 338 Hosea 4 424, 432 Elizabeth Barton as 113 Howard, Lord Admiral Charles 46, execution as 126–127 280, 302 Hugh Latimer 159, 169 Howards’ arrests 132 Nicholas Ridley 159, 169 Howard, Thomas (Duke of Norfolk) 132 sincerity of 98 Howell, Thomas Bayley 357 Herod 198, 439 Huguenots 45, 366 Herodians 347 human reason 104 Herolt, John 445 Humfrey, Laurence 263, 265, 269, 272n49, Hierome 254 285 Higgot, Gordon 377, 385 Hunt, Arnold 219, 234, 428 High Commission 390 Hutchinson, William 53
Hus, Jan 100 Jardine, David 357 Huyssen, Andreas 384 Jefferay, Richard 50 Hyde, Margaret 273 Jena, Germany 255n34 hymns 233, 301–303, 308–313 Jenkins, Thomas 264 hyperboles 255–259, 261, 285 Jeremiads 18, 49–50, 152 covenants and 422, 424, 432–433, Icarus 352n30 435, 438 iconoclastic destruction 8, 37 exhortation 421, 425, 429–435, 437–438 iconography 418–419 inclusive 425 idolatry 50, 125, 143, 401, 414 Perkins 428–430 invisible 412, 415, 419 predestination 426 idols 291 zeal 431 ignorance 291 Jeremiah 35:18–19 322 Image of Both Churches (Bale) 199 Jeremiah 48:10 152 indulgences 125 Jerome 97, 336 Infanta, Spanish 17, 379, 401 Jerome, William 131, 137 Ingworth, Richard 118n46 Jesuits 290 injunctions 9, 122, 141–142, 146, 150, 183, Campion 253, 254, 278–280, 290–291 265 conspirators 355n42 Inns of Court 58 Garnet 308 institutional conversions 165–166 Gunpowder Plot 355n42 insults and invective 317 meditation 401–402 inter-school competitions 273–274 mission 253, 261, 276, 290–291 Invicta Veritas (Abell) 109 Persons 196 Irenaeus 319 Stoughton 401–402 Irish Rebellion 322 Jesus Christ 97 irreligion 347 blood of 136–137 Isaac 163 descent to hell 289, 292, 293–294, Israel 295–297, 299 England as 215, 216, 221, 424, 429 in the Garden 255 God divorcing 424, 432 Jairus’s daughter and 190 and monarchy 73–74 presence of 256n37 relationship to the Church 398, 400 Jacob, Henry 296 speech of 164 Jairus’s daughter 10, 190, 200 supremacy of 116 James 2:18 18, 436 traps set for 347 James VI and I 46 Jewel, John attendance at sermon 379–381, 382 anti-Arminian letter 394 Bancroft sermon 327, 328n4 audience for 231–233 Barlow 352 Challenge Sermon 10–11, 203–206, 211, Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon 70–71 214–217, 231–232, 270, 271, 289 Directions for Preachers 56, 299, 397 controversy 270, 271 ‘Discourse’ 356–357, 359 Defence of the Apologie 272 finances 385 eloquence of 219, 220 Gipkyn diptych 373–377 Harding 233–234 Gunpowder Plot 352–355, 360 influence of 216–217, 289 peace 404 messenger 205–206, 207, 211, 215 renovation of St Paul’s 16, 362, 367–368, negative method 210–212 369, 371–373, 378, 385, 388 rhetorical devices 207–210 royal commission 384 sermon popularity 1 sermon on 73–74 speaking to diversity 213–214, 216 statue of 38 Jewish cabala 98, 405 visit to St Paul’s 367 Jews, delivery from Europe 215 James, Thomas 290 John 1:29 192n26
John 11:45–46 394 knife throwing 223, 228 John 15:5 192n26 Knollys, William 281, 327 John 15:26 97 Knowles, Francis 280 1 John 4 319, 332–333 Knox, John 175, 250, 253 John Chrysostom 319, 445 John of Gaunt, chapel of 31 Lady chapel 37 John the Baptist 164, 440 Lake, Peter 224, 230, 236–237, 338, 342 Johnson, Craig 61n3 Lambeth Palace Library 14, 316, 348n7, Jolles, John 368 350n17 Jonadab 322, 323 Last Supper 147 Jones, Inigo Latimer, Hugh 119, 121, 122, 125, 155 Christian IV 367n32 bishopric 177 James 16, 367–368, 384–385, 388 Colet 450 new spire 367–368 colloquial 219 plans for cathedral renovation 16 Duchess of Suffolk 154, 158, 176n5, 182 portico 5, 31, 35–36, 37, 38 early sermons 18 redecoration 30, 31, 38 episcopal reform 178–181, 183–185 restoration under Charles I 361, 362 Erasmus 450 royal commission 384–385 heresy 159 Jones, John 433 nachleben 177n10 Jones, Norman 185 populism 183–184 Jonson, Ben 437 printed sermons 181–183, 230, 443, Josiah 73–74, 85, 120 447–448, 450 Joseph, John 43n7, 44, 51, 59 relicensing 175 Joye, George 130, 133 repetition 181 Joy of Jerusalem and the Woe of Worldlings sanitation 158 (Loe) 434 Sermon on the Ploughers 2, 9, 10, Judas 255, 298n28 150–154, 156, 447 judges 213–214 sermons 159 Judith 200 Shrouds 10 Julian the Apostate 198, 199 Laud, William 322, 387, 388, 390, 433 jure divino episcopacy 327 law, moral 423 justification 104, 184, 256 laws of nature 99 justification by faith 133–135, 136, 138, 142, laws of Old Testament 112 148, 167 lay cemetery 32 Juxon, William 390 Learned Discourse on Justification (Hooker) 256 kairos 419 learning, popularity of 276 Kempe, Thomas 32, 34, 439 Lee, Rowland 114n28 Kenricke, John 388 Leighton, Edward 126 Kett, Robert 155 Lenten Sermons Kett’s Rebellion 44, 155–156 1535 444 Kidderminster, Richard 107–108 1540 129–139, 444 King James Bible 13, 17, 290, 295, 1597 295–296 297–300, 395 Leo X 196 King, John 8, 16, 50, 63, 219, 230, 362, leprosy 320 379, 381–384, 385 ‘Letter to the Privy Council’ ‘King’s Book’ 356, 357n47, 449 (Campion’s Brag) 283, 291 King’s Printer 144, 155 Lever, Thomas 9, 155–159, 181n30 Kirby, Luke 278 Levitical law 112 Kirby, Torrance 217, 231, 331, 382 L’Histoire de la Mort 281 Kitching, Christopher 364, 366 libel 281, 282 Kolb, Robert 139 Liber Retractationum libri duo Knewstubs, John 297 (Augustine) 147, 170
liberties of the City 2 market for sermons 447 Life of Hooker (Walton) 12 September Testament 199 light, imagery of 103, 104, 105 sermon against 95–99, 178n12 lightning 35, 363 Song of Songs 399 Limbus Patrum 293, 294 Two Kingdoms 131 Lincoln Cathedral Library 450 writings of 100, 155 ‘lining out’ 233 Lutheran 7, 100, 102, 104, 105, 132, 134, listening 186 250, 337 literacy 4, 11–12, 226 Lyly, John 310 literal meanings vs. figurative 10, 152–153, Lyst, Richard 110 187–195, 200, 395, 398n22, 399 liturgical formats 54–55 Maas, Korey 132, 135 Livery Companies 267–268 Machyn, Henry 1n2, 233, 310 living water 163 MacLure, Millar 108, 114, 154, 175n4, Lo-Ammi 424, 432 219, 227 Loe, William 434, 435 dating of Stoughton’s sermon 389, 391 logos 412, 416 Mark Frank sermon 322n12 Londoners 284–285 on popular voice 2 London House 38–39 preacher identification 441 Longland, John 99, 119, 443 Register of Sermons 2, 42–43, 441–442, ‘Look and bow down thine ear, O Lord’ 450 (Elizabeth I) 301–302 theatricality 235 Lord Mayor’s Day 365 Madox, Richard 281 Lord’s Prayer 88 Magdalen College 263, 269, 272, 281 Loseby, Thomas 273 Mallet, Francis 119 lost and found 213, 215 Manningham, John 352n30 Louvain 197, 270, 271–272 Marbury, Francis 292 Love, Dr 393 Marcourt, Antoine de 185 Love, Harold 306 marginalia 109 love, orientation of 164 Marian persecutions 177, 208 lovesickness 400–401 burnings 285 Love-sick Spouse 389–392, 395–398, Markham, Ben 62n6, 80, 85 400–406, 408–409 Marprelate, Martin 251, 320, 333 Löwe, Andreas 167 Marprelate tracts 315, 318, 328, 333 Lucretius 161 Penry 329 Ludgate 368 marriage 255, 277–278 Ludgate Hill 39 marriage to a brother’s widow 110–112 Luke 8 102, 150 Marsh, Christopher 233 Luke 9:62 178 Marshall, William 126 Luke 18:35–43 102 Martial, John 271 Lombard, Peter 254 Martin, Gregory 13, 290–291, 293, 294, 299 lust 50 Martinism 328–329 Luther, Martin martyrs 208, 230, 403, 406 allegories 187–188 Barnes 138–139 attack on 135 Book of Martyrs 199, 231, 448 on Barnes 139 Bradford and Rogers 267 Campion 254 Campion 280, 284 connections to 132 Erasmus and Colet 450 conscience 331 Latimer 448 Erasmus 442 Mary I 44, 45, 47n25, 51, 142 Fisher 7, 95–99, 100, 104, 107, 178, 440n3 accession 10, 158, 169, 190 Henry VIII 196 attacked as woman 250–251 hyperbole 254, 255 Campion 284, 287 justification by faith 167 clergy of 187, 197
Jewel 208, 212 Moab 152 London 265–267 Molen, Andrew 390 marriage 266 monarchomach doctrine 330 Oxford 268–269 monarchy, sermon on 73–74 propaganda 200 monastic houses, dissolution 109–110, 151, reign of 165 157, 166, 198, 310 Mary, Queen of Scots 57, 58, 307, 366 monastic vows 120, 121 Massiglia, James 64n7 Montague, Richard 300 masonry 365 Montrose, Louis 412 materiality 381 Moore, Jonathan 427 Matheson, Peter 210 moral and mystery plays 236 Matthew 9:18 190 moral law 112 Matthew 13:24–30 102 More, Thomas 111, 115n36, 117, 195, 198, 200 Matthew 13:45–46 434 authority of church 10 Matthew 16:18 116 execution 8, 444 Matthew 22:21 346–347 Londoner 284 Matthew 24:28 192 Shaw and Richard III 440 Matthew, Simon 111, 115–116, 122, 123–125, Standish and Erasmus 449–450 126, 443–444 use of challenge 210 Maximilian the Emperor 392 Morrissey, Mary 57, 183, 218, 223, 237, 268 Mayer, John 346 Bancroft 328, 334n27 Mayne, Jasper 86–87 Bilson 296 McCaul, D.J. 64n7 comparison of passages 402 McCullough, Peter 68, 70, 310, 380, 397, surviving manuscripts 442 404, 407n37 wide audience of St Paul’s 380 McGiffert, Michael 423–424, 432 Morwen, John 366n30 McGrath, Patrick 204 Moses 97, 215 McRae, Andrew 183–184 mouldings 31 Melanchthon, Philip 176, 258, 337, 338, 339 Mueller, William R. 415 Melchiades 172n39 Muller, James 132 Melchizedek 146–147 Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus, Memoranda (Stow) 270 Henry VIII 130n2 memory 413 murder 50 mendicants 442 murder pamphlets 224, 236 Merchant (Price) 435 Myrk, John 445 Meriall, Thomas 118n44 merit 402 national covenant 422, 423–424, 429 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 238 National Maritime Museum 302 metanoia 161–162, 163, 164 national pulpit, notion dispelled 42 metaphors national warning, sermons of 49–50 Alexander 220 nature, laws of 99 battlefield 215 naves 23, 25, 26, 28 nursing mother 192 dilapidation 382 raising Jairus’s daughter 190 facsimile 5 sheep 213 Holy Communion and 142 storm 97, 99 Paul’s Walk 12, 237, 238, 417 trees 97–98 print marketplace within 237 Midlands revolt 358 secular activities 367 Midsummer Night’s Dream 241 Winchester 27 Miller, Perry 421–422 Wren 5, 31 Milles, Robert 50, 435–437 Nazianzen, Gregory 319, 336 Milton, Anthony 393 Nebo 152 Milton, John 317 Nebuchadnezzar 198 Mirandola, Pico della 161, 163 negative method 210–212
Neo-Platonist thought 418 orthodoxy 258–259 Nero 347 Osiander, Andreas 338 Netter, Thomas 102–103 Osmond, Rosalie 416 Neville, Henry 281 Othello (character) 241 New College, Oxford 269, 270, 271, 272, otherness 413 282–283, 290 Overall, John 394 New England 421–422 Ovid 238, 240 New England Mind (Miller) 422 Owst, G.R. 441 Newes from Rome (Campion) 265 Oxenbridge, John 306 New Learning 170 Oxford News from Spain (Persons) 197 Bilson 290 New Testament 154, 189 Bodleian Library 290, 391 English 232 Brooks 187, 191 glosses 193 Campion 253, 263, 264, 278, 284, Rheims 13, 289–291, 292, 299 285, 287 New Work 5, 28–31 clerical vestments 268–269 Nicene Creed 337 disputations 12, 284 Nicholas of Cusa 172 Edgeworth 448, 449 Nicholls, Mark 353n32, 357 Gunnes 281–282 Ninety-five Theses 155 Hooker 247n9, 247n10 Nineveh 431, 433 Jewel 204, 272 Ninevites 156 Leighton 126 Noah’s flood 354 Martin 290 non-conformity 318, 320, 331, 389–391, New College 269, 270, 271, 272, 392–393, 443 282–283, 290 Norden, John 32, 306 preaching at 9 Norfolk, Duke of (Thomas Howard) 132 Rainoldes 48 Northern Rebellion 307 Ridley 159 Norton, William 264 Smith 143–144, 145n13, 146, 147, 158, 159, Norwich cathedral, belfry 32 164–165, 169 Notary, Julian 445 St John’s College 263, 290, 393, 437 Nowell, Alexander 204, 220, 270, 272 theologians from 18, 108, 268, 282 disputation with Campion 275–276, translators 299 285–286 Vermigli 204, 250 Oxford, Earl of (Edward de Vere) 309–310, Oates, Rosamund 206 312–313 Oath of Supremacy 169 Obedience of a Christian Man Pace, Richard 95, 96 (Tyndale) 187–188 Page, William 278 obedience 9, 214, 319, 321, 323, 333, 348, Painter, William 11–12, 238–239, 240, 241 349 Palace of Pleasure (Painter) 11–12, 238, 240 Office of Morning Prayer 74–75 Palatinate 401, 402, 404 ‘Of Schooles and Houses of Learning’ Palmer, John 303 (Stow) 274–275 pamphlets Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie Anne Boleyn 121 (Hooker) 249, 261, 319, 341 Bacon 15, 350, 352 Old Testament 156, 179 Counter-Reformation 366 ‘Omnis homo mendax’ 144–145, 149, 167, 173 early modern murder pamphlets 225 O’Neill, Hugh (Earl of Tyrone) 350 Elizabeth I 302–303 optics 98 Farley 368–377 Oration on the Dignity of Man Gunpowder Plot 345, 356–357 (Mirandola) 161 Lake 225, 236–237 ordination 264 papists, execution of 126–127 Origen 98, 194–195 Parable of the Sower 150, 177–178
Parable of the Wicked Mammon Percy, Henry (Earl of (Tyndale) 158 Northumberland) 355n42 paradoxes 255, 258 performative mode 411–412 Paraphrases of the New Testament Perkins, Williams 427–428 (Erasmus) 142 Perpendicular style 29 Pardon Cloister 31, 35 Perpetua, feast of 114n28 Parker, Matthew 2, 108n7, 158, 175, 269, Perpetuitie of Faith in the Elect 333n26, 449 (Hooker) 256 Parker, Patricia 359 perseverance 255 Parker, William (Lord Monteagle) 358 Persons, Robert 196–197, 285 Parsons, Robert 347 persuasion, defining 59 Passion of Christ 124–125, 142, 146 Peryn, William 443 Paternoster Row 34 Peter, St 97 patristic authority 218 1 Peter 449 Paul 1 Peter 5:5–11 115n36 call of 255 1 Peter 5:6 444 on communion 205–206 Peter College 227 connected to English church 221 petitionary worship 47, 50, 52n49, 55 ‘made a spectacle’ 279–280 Pettegree, Andrew 216 purity of Eucharist 214 Petyt, Thomas 145n14, 265 Paul III 198 Phaedrus (Plato) 161 Paul’s Boys 76, 311 phainomena 163 Paul’s Cross phantasia 161, 163, 170, 172–173 acoustic modelling 61, 62–64, 65, Pharisees 347 77–81, 226n9, 228 Philip of Spain 47n25, 158, 266 architecture 4–5 Philistines 163 booksellers 228 philosophia Christi 161 Church of St Faith 177n11 pica roman 286 connection to belfry and folkmoot 32 Piers, John 13, 309, 313 damage and repair 32, 34 Piers Plowman (character) 150, 151 octagonal shape 34 pigeons of Paul’s 275 visual model 61–62 Pigg, Oliver 59 Paul’s Cross and accountability 218 pigs, Anthony 275 Paul’s Cross sermons Pilgrimage of Grace 121n54, 122 attendance at 67 pilgrimages 120, 141 organization of 66 Pilkington, James 363, 364, 366n30 requirement of 252 plague 45, 46, 49, 50, 51–52, 53, 243n61, 366 Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 Plantin, Christopher 284 (MacLure) 441 Plato 161–162, 418 Pauls, Peter 441 play-going condemned 236, 241, 243 Paul’s Walk 12, 237, 238, 417 Plays Confuted in Five Actions Paul’s work: colloquial meaning 361, (Gosson) 239 385, 386 pleasure reading 237–239, 241, 243 peace Pliny the Younger 163 blessing 403–404 Plotinus 418 dangers of 401 plowman 10, 150, 151, 153–154, 175–176, pearl of great price 434, 437 178–180 Pelagian controversy 256n36 Pluckett, Oliver 282 Pembroke Hall 14 Plutarch 349 penance 41, 418 Pole, Geoffrey 120 Pendleton, Henry 268, 273 Pole, Reginald 10, 197, 198 Penrose, Francis 34 polemic 14–15, 196, 197, 200, 206–207, 234 Penry, John 14–15, 327, 329, 332, Bibles 290 338–340, 340–342 Bilson 289 Pensive Mans Practise (Norden) 306 necessity of answering 209–210
not ‘mere rhetoric’ 328n6 Psalm 18:50 353 political obedience 116–117 Psalm 20 346 political sermons Psalm 82 346 defining 51–52, 58, 115–117 Psalm 84 (85) 316 Directions for Preachers 56, 299, 397 Psalm 84:1 393 pope Psalm 102 381 as Antichrist 119 Psalm 116:11 (Vulg. Ps. 115:2) 144, 167 Bishop of Rome 111, 116, 124, 180 Psalms, singing of 1, 76–77, 232–233, 312 head of universal church 203, 211 public sphere 16 Matthew’s sermon against 123, 124 Purfoot, Thomas 305 supremacy of 97, 272n50 purgatory 136–137, 142, 154, 206, 292–294 portico 5, 31, 35–36, 37, 38 Puritanism 159 Portland stone 385, 386 anti-popery and 289, 292 Portland Stone in Paul’s Churchyard Bancroft 328–330 (Farley) 368 crisis of conscience 342n40 Prayer Book Rebellion 142 descent into hell 293–294 prayers, Elizabeth 301–307 epistemological authority 340–342 prayers for the dead 117–118, 120, 136–137, false prophets 334 157, 185n52 false reform 317 Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth revolutionary impulse 330 and Sixteenth Centuries (Blench) 441 royal supremacy 329–330; 340–342 Preaching in Medieval England (Owst) 441 Scripture 336 Precationes priuat[æ] Regiæ E. R. 304–305 sedition 328–330, 331, 333, 335 ‘Precatio Reginae ad Dominum Iesum’ Pynson, Richard 155 (Elizabeth I) 306 Pyramus and Thisbe 240 ‘Precatio Reginae pro Subditis’ (Elizabeth I) 306 ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book’ predestination 248–249, 254, 256–257, (Palmer) 303 258–261, 421, 426, 428 ‘Queen of Ethiopia’ 240 prelates 150–151 quietism 338 Presbyterians 328n4, 330 Quintilian 163–164 Preston, John 427 Price, Daniel 434, 435, 437 rack 286 Price, Sampson 50, 433 rain, heavy 48, 50 pride 349, 351 Rainoldes, John 48, 247n11, 297 printed material, ready availability 223, Ramsey, Henry 273 226, 230–232, 234–235, 236, 237, 445 Ramsey, William 31 priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate 110 Rastell, John 214 Privy Council (Charles I) 42n5 Rationes Decem (Campion’s Brag) 283, Privy Council (Edward VI) 165 291, 292 Privy Council (Elizabeth I) 53, 277–278, Rattigan, Ian 64n7 282, 283, 285 Rawlinson, James 403 Privy Council (Mary I) 267, 268 reading, pleasure 237–238 Probie, Peter 387–388 real presence 124, 142, 185, 191–192 Proclamation of War from the Lord of Hosts rebellions of 1549 59 (Hampton) 431 recantation 41, vs. retractation 147 Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione Rechabites 322, 323 (Pole) 197 reconciliation to Rome 10, 45, 190–191, 200 profanity 50 recording studios 63–64 progression 414 redemption 348, 352, 360 prophecy 205 Red Lion theatre 224, 235, 239 prophetic sermons 49–50, 51–52, 57, 58. Reformations, multiple 141, 166 See also Jeremiads loss of symbols 413 prudence 100 reform, continental schools of 184–185, Psalm 16 293, 299 216, 219
Reformed Catholike (Perkins) 428 Romeo and Juliet 224, 241 Register of Sermons Preached at Paul’s Rood of Grace 125 Cross 1534–1642 (MacLure) 3, 42–43, roof 363, 365 441–442 rose windows 5, 28, 29, 30, 417 Regius Professorship of Divinity 9, 143, Rotherham, Thomas 445 158, 164, 169, 285 Royal Injunctions 9, 122, 141–142, 146, Regnans in Excelsis (papal bull, 1570) 253 150, 183, 265 relics 141 royal prerogative 328, 340 religious identity not a given 3 royal supremacy religious reform, Erasmus on 161–163 Act of Supremacy 115n33, 171, 258–259, remnant 426, 438 441–442 renovation cross-purposes to 445 Elizabethan period 362 Forest’s denial 149 Jacobean period 362 Gardiner’s defense of 131, 168 repentance 47–48, 51, 429n22, 431, 432 Harcocke 118 call to 179 Hooker 251 means and motives 433–434 Jewel 219 repetition 234 Latimer 149 Republic (Plato) 161 Lever 156 Restoration 324 no reconciliation with Rome 119–120 Retourne of James Cancellers raylinge boke Penry 329–330 (Bale) 187, 199 Pilgrimage of Grace 122 retractation vs. recantation 147 preaching of 114–116 Revelation 2 433 Puritanism 15, 328, 329–330, 332, Revelation 12:4 355 340–342 Revelation, book of 199, 299 royal agenda 121, 122 Revell, Jon 365n21 Smith’s support of 146, 171–172 Rheims Bible 316 unequal versions 331 Rheims New Testament 289–291, 293, Rudd, John 113–114 294, 299 Rudolf II 284, 287 rhetorical devices 190–191, 207, 430 Russell, Henry 264 Bancroft 328n6 Russell, John 155 challenge 208–210, 217 Ryrie, Alec 444 misused 242 Rhodes, John 301, 307, 312, 313 Sabbath, play going 236 rhyming prose 151 Sacks, Chelsea 61n3 Richard III 107, 439–440 sacramentarianism 138 Richardson, John 347 sacraments 155, 205 Rich, Henry (Earl of Holland) 390, 391, covenant of grace 428 394–395, 401, 404 deficiencies in 316 Ridley, Nicholas 143, 158, 159, 169, 321, 445 individual participation 206 Ridley, Robert 445 right use of 212 rituals 142–143, 162, 170–171, 172–173, 412, Sacred Oracles 163 418 Sacrifice of the Mass 124, 171. See also Robertson, James 378 Eucharist; transubstantiation Robinson, Robert 306 St Albans Abbey 25, 28 Rogers, John 267 archdeaconry 53 Romans 1:14 393 St Andrew’s Holborne 282 Romans 3:4 167 St-Denis (Paris) 29 Romans 13 332n21, 333 St Dunstan’s Church 311 Romans 14:5 255n33 St-Etienne (Caen) 25 Rome St Faith, Church of 177n11 Break with 8, 57, 119 St James (Compostella) 28 reconciliation to 10, 45, 190–191, 200 St Johns College 263, 290, 437
St John’s College Chapel 393 ‘Sermones ad vulgum’ (Standish) 449 St Margaret’s Old Fish Street 269 sermon-gadding 56 St Margaret’s Pattens 269 A Sermon of Christ Crucified (Foxe) 231 St Martin-in-the-Fields 395 Sermon on Behalf of Paul’s Church St Mary’s Hospital (Spital) 17, 122, 273, 296 (King) 16 St Paul’s Cathedral, images Sermon on the Ploughers (Latimer) 2, 9, 10, booksellers 228 150–154, 156, 175–176, 177, 447 exterior 24, 31, 33, 37, 227 sermons virtual 229 congregational response to 68–70, St Paul’s Cathedral, nature of 364, 367 88–91, 101, 269–270, 277 St Quentin 45 congregational size 66n13, 78–80 saints, stories of 445 control over 56, 237 St-Sernin (Toulouse) 28 Donne’s preparation of 67–68, 71–72 Salcot, John (Capon) 109, 112–113, 114, 119 Easter sermons 272–273, 296–297 Salisbury cathedral, belfry 32 funds for 251–252 Salisbury, Earl of. See Cecil, Robert integrated into special worship 54–55 Sampson, Charles 265, 269 liturgical grounding 74–77 Sampson, Richard 123, 137 market for 445, 447–448 Sancroft, William 394 marriage to a brother’s wife 110 sanctification 256 of national warning 49–50 Sander, Nicholas 270–271 parishes 52–54, 58 Sandys, Edwin 57 print genre 442–443, 445 Saxon kings 23, 28 purpose of 44–52 Schofield, John 64, 177n11, 368n33 register of 42–43 scholarships 263, 268, 282 similarity to theater 69–70 schooling 309–310 structures of 97–99, 102–104, 105 Schoolmaster, The (Ascham) 238 Temple Sermons 247 Schreiner, Susan 331, 333 timing of 81–86 Scory, John 108n7 Sermons very fruitfull, godly and learned Scotland 328, 329 (Edgeworth) 448–449 Scott, Cuthbert 443 ‘Several Sermons preached to the people’ Scottish Presbyterian Church 328n4 (Standish) 449 scribal publishers 306–307 Seymour, Edward (Protector Somerset) 35, scriptural integrity 316 141, 149, 156, 158, 167–168 scripture, infallibility 170 Shakespeare, William 70, 239, 240, 241, moral vs. literal meaning 10, 187–189, 243, 351n23 190, 194–195, 200 Shami, Jeanne 70–71, 87 reading 186, 335–336 shared memories invoked 95–96 vernacular 211 Shaw, Henry 264 Sebastian 415 Shaw, Ralph 107, 439–440 Sebba 23 Shaxton, Nicholas 108n7, 119 second and first causes 259 sheep 213 2 Timothy 3:16 178 Sherrington’s library 31 sedition, accusations of 328–330, 331, 333, Short-Title Catalogue 303, 441 335. See also treason shrines 120 seeds 103, 150 Shrouds 155, 177, 447 self-awareness 217 Sibthorpe, Robert 44 Selve, Odet de 148–149 Sidney, Phillip 239, 242 Seneca 347 sign (signum) 9 sentence fragments 72–74 Simons, Dr or Mr See Matthew, ‘Sententiæ’ 305 Simon separatism 329–330 Simpson, Sydrach 390 September Testament (Luther) 199 sincerity insufficient 98 Seres, William 154, 181–182, 238–239 Singleton, Robert 120–121, 231, 444, 450
Sutton, Thomas 433 chapel 275–276, 286 Swan, the 273 disputations 275, 279, 281, 285, 286 swearing 50 executions 279 syllogisms 274, 282 imprisonment in 109n11, 150, 355n42 symbolic signification 193 Latimer’s release from 175 Synod of Gerstungen 172n39 Queen’s Council 267 Townsend, Roger 118n46 Taylor, Charles 105–106 Toye, Humphrey 264, 265 Taylor, Thomas 390n3 Toye, Robert 265 Te Deum 45, 59, 75 traditions 162, 170–171, 172, 299 Temple Bar 379–380 tragicomedy 357–358, 360 Temple controversy 248 Traheron, Bartholomew 257–258 Temple Sermons 247 transepts 25, 30, 31, 34 temporality of space 383–384 acoustics 80, 230 Ten Commandments 136, 422, 423, fallen 35 425, 439 fire 363 Tertullian 195, 254, 297, 319, 334, 336 rebuilt 28, 365 thanksgivings 41–42, 45–46, 47, 53 translations: rules for 298–299 actions 55, 59 transubstantiation 9, 142, 143, 147, 166 Elizabeth’s recovery from smallpox 47 Gardiner on 168, 169 end of plague 54 Jewel 205, 206 not ordered 52n49 Travelling Fellowships 264 Spanish Armada defeat 45, 59, 366 Travers, Walter 246, 248, 250, 256 spread to other parishes 52–54 treason 347, 351. See also sedition, Theatre 224, 235, 239, 240, 242 accusations of theatre, likened to sermons 69–70, Treason Act 278, 283 411–412, 417 Treatise of three conversions of England trumpets 244 (Persons) 196–197 thing signified (res) 9 Treatise on the Penitential Psalm ‘things indifferent’ 255n33, 330–331, (Fisher) 95 332n21, 333n26, 340n35. See also Treaty of Boulogne 44, 158 adiaphora tree, analogy 97–98 Thirty Years’ War 433 Trinity, Holy 138, 146 Thomas Aquinas Trinity College, Cambridge 391, 397, 404 biblical exegesis 187 tropes 194 errors of 254 True Difference between Christian feast of 114n28 subjection and Unchristian Rebellion Summa 284 (Bilson) 13, 294 Thomas of Canterbury 114n28, 197, 284 trumpets 244 Thompson, Cargill 327n3, 333 ‘try the spirits’ 333, 334, 335, 336, 338 three-fold orders of ministry 321 Tuan, Yi-Fu 383, 388 Thyrtell, Thomas 273 Tudor authority 42n3 timber 364, 365 Tudor-Craig, Pamela 368n37, 373n51, 377 time, during sermons 81–86 Tunstall, Cuthbert 3, 119, 120 timeliness 382, 384 Turner, William 199, 450 Timoclea of Thebes 240 Two Kingdoms 131 1 Timothy 5:17 315 Tyburn 278, 279, 281, 285, 286 2 Timothy 3:16 178 Tyndale, William 150, 152, 154, 158 Titus 3 333 challenge by More 210 Titus 3:1–2 14, 318 in conversation with Brooks 191 toleration of religion 401 literal vs. figurative reading 10, 187–188, tombs 35 192, 194, 195, 200 Tottel, Richard 238 Obedience of a Christian Man 187–188 Tower of London translation of Erasmus 162
Tyndale’s New Testament 100, 115n36 visible church 213, 421, 424, 426–427, type 286, 369 430, 438 Typographus 305 Viterbo, Egidio da 412 Tyrone, Earl of (Hugh O’Neill) 350 voussoir 25–27 Vulgate 91, 192, 290, 297 Udall, Nicholas 162 uniformity 339 Wabuda, Susan 117, 178, 182, 185n52 universal church 203, 205, 206, Wall, John 6–7, 228, 229, 312 215–216, 220–221, 317 Walsham, Alexandra 217 University Church of St Mary the Walsingham, Francis 305 Virgin, Oxford 253 Walton, Izaak 12, 71–72, 86, 245–246, University of Louvain 169 248, 249, 261 University of Oxford 448 Walzer, Michael 330 University of Turin 446 Ward, Samuuel 394 unwritten tradition 145 war, sermons on 46, 48, 51 urban renewal 378–379 Wars of the Roses 129 water gate 386 Valens 188 Watson, Thomas 267 Valla, Lorenzo 172, 445 weather Vallence, Edward 425n9 historical 62n5, 65 Variae Meditationes et sermons on 48, 50 Preces piae 305–306 weeds 102–103, 105 Veale, Abraham 241 Wells Cathedral 448 verbosity 317–318 Wentworth, Thomas 322 Vere, Edward de (Earl of Oxford) 309–310, Westcott, Sebastian 311 312–313 Western Rebellion 44, 155–156 verger 74, 75 Westminster Abbey: 2 35, 362n4 Vermigli belfry 32 Aylmer 250, 257 Campion 278, 283, 284, 285, 286 Bancroft 321 Dead Terme (Dekker) 368n36 Cranmer 43n8 discourse 278, 286, 287 Hooker 250, 257 fasts 46 Jewel 1, 204, 213, 231, 232 post-Reformation monuments 5 Latimer 185 Regius Professorship of Divinity 143n7 prayer book criticism 142 royal associations 2, 28, 35, 366 Regius Professorship 9, 158, 169 St Paul’s preeminence 362n4 Smith 158, 169 tombs 35 vernacular 141, 275–276, 285 Westminster Hall 284, 285, 286 vernacular Bible 203, 211, 290 Whitaker, William 285 Vestiarian Controversy 291, Whitbie, Oliver 51–52 333n26, 443 White, Edward 307n16 vestments 217, 269, 291 White, John 263 (1568) via media 204, 219, 335 White, Thomas 51–52, 243n61, 268, 437 Villiers, George 386 (1554) Viner, John 390 Whitebrook, J.C. 391, 404 Viret, Pierre 154, 185 Whitgift, John virginity 255 adiaphora 331, 332n21, 333n26, 340n35 Virgin Mary 153, 298 Answere to the Admonition 330 Virtual Paul’s Cross authoritative interpretation 332n21 acoustic modelling 6–7, 61, 62–64, Barlow 348n7 65, 77–81, 228 Bible translation 297 design of 61–65 Cartwright 333n26, 340n35 preacher’s location 312 Disciplinarian Puritanism 2 visual model 61–62 Harsnett censored 256–257
Marprelate tracts 315 Word, power of 416 publication of Elizabeth’s Worde, Wynkyn de 7, 95–96, 445 prayer 302–303, 306 works 98, 316 special worship 48, 54 confusion over 184–185 submission 14, 318–319 covenant theology 423, 424 Temple controversy 249 good works 18, 98, 105, 148, 436 thanksgiving sermon 46 necessary vs. voluntary 184 Titus 14 unnecessary 134, 138 tradition 322 Woudhuysen, Henry 303 Whit Monday 269 Wren, Christopher Whitsunday 415 St Paul’s Cathedral 5, 35, 61 Whittington, Robert 443 choir 34 Whore of Babylon 199–200, 405 dome 363 Wigglesworth, Michael 422 measurements by 61 Wiggs, William 264 nave 5, 31 William of Merula 445 office of 31 Williams, Griffith 430 Temple Bar 380 Williams, John 393 Wriothesley, Charles 115, 125, William the Conqueror 28 148, 171 Willis, Francis 264 Wriothesley, Henry (Earl of Willoughby, Lady 307 Southampton) 350 Windet, John 306 Wycliffe, John 107 Wise-man’s Forecast (Barnes) 433 Wittenberg 185 York House 386 Wolfe, Reginald 143–144 Young, John 273 Wolsey, Thomas 96, 99, 100, 107, 132, 165, 166 Zaccheus 406 women Zedekiah 73–74, 85 profanation of Sacrament 339 Zurich 1, 185, 204, 250, 261 spiritual jurisdiction 250–251 Zwingli, Huldrych 100, 261