THROUGH FAITH UNFEIGNED:

RECANTATION AND SUBVERSION IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

by

Angela May Ranson

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Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) Table of Contents

Abstract v Acknowledgements vi

Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Creative Truth 22 Chapter Three: The Control of Conscience 58 Chapter Four: Until the End 91 Chapter Five: Conclusion 132 Bibliography 141

IV Abstract

During the religious conflict in sixteenth-century England, many people idealized the men and women who died for their faith, and associated recantation with shame, cowardice, and the rejection of God's truth. Modern scholarship maintains this association, focusing on the significance of the martyrs in the progress of the Reformation. This thesis studies recantation as a means of resistance to the changes in religious temporal authority that marked the English Reformation. It uses the writings of many of the major religious figures of the century to examine three key concepts: the truth, the conscience and the good death. Changes in these three concepts reflect a new individualization of faith that suggest reasons to recant other than fear or cowardice. Instead of being shameful, recantation could be a means to subvert authority or to promote God's truth. Recantation, like martyrdom, played a significant role in the progress of Reformation ideas.

v Acknowledgements The history department at Dalhousie contains some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Val and Tina in the office have been endlessly supportive, kind, and fun to work with. Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and for your willingness to help. Thanks to Dr. Jerry Bannister for the Masters' Seminar, and thanks to Dr. Justin Roberts for providing great advice and opportunities. Thank you as well to the other Masters students I met during this year: Ellie, for introducing me to the London Fog. Joanna and Charlene, for fascinating me with your incredible passion for your topics. Ken, for your devotion to the conference we worked on together. Your energy really carried the day. Alan, for introducing me to so many wonderful people. Thursday nights at Coburg Coffee proved as educational as any lectures or papers. I also want to thank Dr. Cynthia Neville for all her help and encouragement with this thesis, and especially for her skill in asking questions. You always helped me clarify my thoughts and defend my opinions, and I appreciate that. Thank you for lessons in historiography, and for a great class that included the quirky stuff of history, such as Charlemagne's moustache and the complicated medieval definition of "dead." Hearty thanks and a round of applause go to my supervisor, Dr. Krista Kesselring. Thank you for telling me the truth and letting me know when I was heading in the wrong direction. Thank you for your insight, since you often knew what I was trying to say better than I did. Thank you for a class that taught me so much about writing and reading at the graduate level and inspired this thesis. Thank you for your offers to help me move and for talking about celebrity gossip during our meetings. Thank you for the seminar evenings at your house, and for introducing me to Tim Stretton. Thank you to Tim, for acting as my third reader. I really appreciate your comments and thoughts. For Margarita Mondays, Gingergrass Fridays, and for enduring the mice with me, thank you to my roommate Colleen and my friend Rebecca. Mis amigas, gragias. For her 24-hour telephone support line, I thank my sister Sarah. For helping me move (over and over again) thank you to my brother Andrew. For driving and reading papers, thank you to my brother Paul. For his great advice and support, thank you to David Edwards. For great parties and fun times, thanks to Julia, Emily, Gregg, Jake, Dainis, Andrew, LingLing, Dorothy, Elaine, Kimberley, all my uncles and aunts, and my Nanny Symes. For teaching me about the truth of Romans 8:28 and Philippians 4:6-8, thanks to my mother Ruby. I love you all.

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And we cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." C.S. Lewis

VI 1

Chapter One: Introduction

As many historians of the English Reformation have noted, the conflict in

England during the reign of the Tudors was not solely a matter of religious dissent but also a fundamental change in the political and social structure of the country. The legitimacy of existing authorities came into question, and the debate splintered the cohesion of the medieval community, making faith a more individual decision than it had ever been before. This changed some fundamental cultural beliefs and loyalties in

England, and made the common people participants in politics in new and different ways.

Some participated by actively or passively resisting religious change, collaborating with authorities, or conforming despite differing internal beliefs.

Resistance, collaboration, and conformity can all be found in the renewed culture of martyrdom. In the context of this thesis, the culture of martyrdom refers to the revival of the medieval idealization of martyrdom in religious texts and in the records left by martyrologists, which described the experiences of the martyrs themselves. Many

Christian leaders and adherents held martyrdom up as an example of ideal behaviour for the faithful Christian, and the ultimate manifestation of faith. As Thomas S. Freeman notes in his book Martyrs and Martyrdom in England 1400-1700, "in early-modern

England, martyrs mattered", and their sacrifices were all the more significant due to the complexity of changing royal religious policy in England and the competition between differing religious beliefs.1 The martyrs both displayed and caused resistance, as they held firm to their faith even until death, and many studies of Reformation England focus

1 Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas Mayer, Martyrs and Martyrdom in England 1400-1700 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2007), 1. 2 on the significance of these martyrs. William Clebsch studies the martyrs who died under Henry VIII in his book England's Earliest Protestants. Seymour Byman examines the rituals and behaviour of the martyrs in his article about the patterns of

Tudor martyrdom. Robert Kolb looks at sixteenth-century views of the rewards of martyrdom in his article "God's Gift of Martyrdom: Early Modern Understanding of

Dying for the Faith." David Loades contributes to the study of sixteenth-century martyrs through one book about the role of John Foxe in the Reformation, and another called The

Oxford Martyrs. Susannah Monta writes about the influence the tradition of sixteenth- century martyrdom had on popular writings in her book Martyrdom and Literature in

Early Modern England.

It is easy to forget that the number of people who recanted during the sixteenth century is far greater than the number of martyrs. In fact, some martyrs recanted the first time the monarch or the church required them to do so. Thousands of people obeyed when ordered to abjure their beliefs, and this too was part of the culture of martyrdom.

Many did so out of fear, out of the desire for physical survival, or out of a hope for political gain. The culture of martyrdom did not support those motives for recantation; many tracts, treatises and sermons warned against the dangers and disgrace of recanting or abjuring religious beliefs. To reformers such as John Bale, recantation was shameful and dangerous because it denied God. He said that William Tolwyn was a laughingstock,

William Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 10. 3 Seymour Byman, "Ritualistic Acts and Compulsive Behavior: The Pattern of Tudor Martyrdom," The American Historical Review, 63, no 3 (June 1978), 625. Robert Kolb, "God's Gift of Martyrdom: The Early Reformation Understanding of Dying for the Faith," Church History, 64, no 3 (Sept, 1995), 399. David Loades, John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997). Also David Loades, The Oxford Martyrs (London: BT Batsford, Ltd, 1970). Susannah Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1. "blasphemed, disdained and abhorred," because he had recanted. John Bradford thought

o that recantation made people idolaters, because they put themselves above God. John

Hooper considered it a sign of inconstancy. When he heard rumours circulating that he had recanted while he was in prison, he immediately wrote a letter to discredit them.9

Not everyone shared in this condemnation of recantation, however. Many heretics of the sixteenth century recanted for reasons other than fear, the desire to survive, or political gain. This thesis will argue that their recantations did not necessarily reflect sincere submission to authority or the rejection of their beliefs, but a form of resistance to doctrines with which they did not agree. As Susan Wabuda notes in her article

"Equivocation and Recantation in Reformation England," the crown desired "full and sincere submissions," and used recantations to show what was and was not current religious policy.10 When people developed means of avoiding recantation or used recantation to further their own causes, they could subvert such policies and work toward their own goals. This form of subversion is similar to the "ordinary resistance" in James

Scott's Weapons of the Weak.11 The peasants of Scott's study employed such strategies as feigning ignorance and evading the authorities either physically or verbally. Many sixteenth-century heretics used the same strategies, but where Scott's peasants subverted authority for reasons of economics or power, the individuals of this study subverted authority as a reflection of passionate and personal religious conviction.

John Bale, Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe A dysclosynge or openynge of the Marine ofsynne (London, 1543), C4v. 8 John Bradford, Two notable sermons. Made by that worthy martyr of Christ Maister lohn Bradford, the one of repentance, and the other of the hordes supper (London, 1574), C5r. 9 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, (1583 edition), [online]. (hriOnline, Sheffield). Available from: http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe/, 1507-1508. 10 Susan Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The 'Subtle Shadows' of Dr Edward Crome." The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44, no 2 (April 1, 1993), 226-228. 11 James Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 29. 4

In his book Salvation at Stake, Brad Gregory notes that the martyrs were not unique in their beliefs but in their actions.12 They did not consider religion and faith social constructions, but revelations from God himself that had significance for eternity.13

This applies to the people who recanted at this time as much as it does to the martyrs.

Many recanted in order to maintain their salvation, using recantation to fulfill their duty to the sovereign who required them to recant, to obey their personal conscience, or to avoid suicide and eternal damnation. In all of these cases, recantation was a sign of the individualization of faith, for the people who recanted made personal choices regarding their religious and temporal loyalty, and did not necessarily assume that the same choices applied to everyone. Three major concepts formed an important background for the cultural beliefs that legitimized these choices to recant: the truth, the conscience, and the good death. The Reformation saw the development of contingent truth, a new emphasis on the individual's role in interpreting the promptings of conscience, and changes in the tradition of the medieval ars moriendi that made choices during life as important as the moment of death. The means by which the people justifying their recantations interpreted and re-interpreted these changing concepts can shed some light on the methods of participation in politics and religion used by common people during the

Reformation.

In sixteenth-century England, truth could be dictated. Henry VIII was not the first

English monarch to decide what was "true" doctrine, but he was the first to face such vast religious diversity. He vacillated between resisting, supporting, leading, and changing it.

Edward VI and his advisors then controlled it through legislation. When Mary I came to

Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 8. 13 Ibid, 12-13. 5 the throne, she enforced the doctrine of the Church of Rome, and Elizabeth I followed that by establishing the Church of England, which attempted to create a via media of truth, maintained by the will of the monarch. Throughout these years, the people of

England found themselves faced with the choice to accept or reject that dictated truth.

Most did not believe in the toleration of co-existing forms of Christianity, so a choice between one of the many possible truths had to be made. Scott Dixon calls this assumption that only one belief system could be right "the ideal of orthodoxy." In his book Living With Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, he says that this ideal greatly influenced the development of attitudes at the time. Most early modern intellectuals believed that order in society required a "uniform corpus of beliefs."1

Alexandra Walsham agrees that there was an ideal of uniformity, but she thinks that people of the sixteenth century showed a "deep-seated instinct for inclusion and compromise" and the ideal of uniformity helped people develop practical ways to live with each other despite very different beliefs. In contrast, Susan Bridgen suggests that the instinct for inclusion may have caused more conflict than it cured, for any attempt to blend in by an individual with differing views could be viewed as hypocrisy and a cause for damnation.16

Such opposing ideas struggled for prevalence within the ideal of orthodoxy, which helped create the unstable religious atmosphere that characterized the century.

Accepted doctrine could become heresy, defined as a defiant adherence to beliefs that differed from standard religious doctrine, almost overnight. In England, the heresy

14 Scott Dixon, "Introduction," Living With Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Scott Dixon et al (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 13. 15 Alexandra Walsham, "In Sickness and in Health," Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Scott Dixon et al (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 161. 16 Susan Bridgen, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 3. 6 statute De Heretico Comburendo was passed in 1401, and from that time relapsed heretics were sentenced to burning. Clayton Drees suggests that the purpose of the burnings was to provide "graphic reminders to all of the price of disobedience to the rulers of church and realm."17 Another heresy statute passed in 1414 after the Oldcastle uprising, and then in 1534 the Act for the Punishment of Heresy passed. It repealed the

De Heretico Comburendo and confirmed the 1414 heresy statute, which had allowed

secular courts to present suspected heretics to ecclesiastical courts. The 1534 Act of

Supremacy also gave Henry VIII the right to "visit, repress, redress, reform, order,

i o correct, restrain and amend" all errors and heresies, although the local bishop's consistory court actually conducted heresy trials. Preliminary examinations followed arrest, and then imprisonment and regular questioning by priests followed the preliminary examinations. The trials themselves began with official opening statements, then presentations of the articles of faith under dispute, witness statements, and the presentation of any evidence. Bishops interrogated the defendants, and allowed them to plead their case.19

During the reign of Edward VI, all heresy statutes were repealed. It was under common law that two people were executed for heresy during his reign. Mary I reinstated all heresy statutes and persecuted heretics in accordance with them. In 1559,

Elizabeth I' s Act of Supremacy returned the headship of the English church to the monarchy, and repealed the existing heresy statutes once again. The Act determined that heresy would be defined as: 17 Clayton Drees, Authority and Dissent in the English Church (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 35, 36. 18 Gerald Bray, Documents of the English Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 114. 19 Sarah Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2003), 107-108. 0 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 558. 7

...[0]nly such as heretofore have been determined, ordered or adjudged to be heresy by the authority of the canonical scriptures or by the first four general councils ...or such as hereafter shall be ordered ...by the High Court of Parliament of this realm, with the assent of the clergy in their convocation.21

Bridgen notes that "the history of heresy is often only the history of persecution; heretical enclaves are discovered only when the authorities seek them, and find them; the nature of their dissent revealed only in the light of the questions which the persecutors ask."22 The main focal points of religious dissent during the sixteenth century were transubstantiation, the nature of the Church, the role of the pope, the supremacy of the crown over the church, prayers for the dead, the existence of purgatory, and the role of pilgrimages and the saints. A strictly confessional divide developed later; for most of the . century, far more common than labels of Catholic and Protestant were labels like lollard, gospeller, known man, brethren, papist, or sacramentalist. These labels reflected particular beliefs within the established religious structure, not completely different religious structures. They also represented a challenge to established authority. Clayton

Drees notes in his book Authority and Dissent in the English Church that the people who challenged the official teachings of the church and its ability to secure salvation for its adherents threatened the hierarchy, and naturally incurred the resistance of those within it. Drees suggests that this is the real reason religious leaders "anathematized all forms of

Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, 327'. Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 84. 23 Three other labels that were frequently used were Anabaptist, Familist, and Puritan. This thesis does not study these dissidents in great detail, each for a different reason. Anabaptists' beliefs were so distinct from the others listed above that they represent a different religious structure, and therefore would need to be considered separately throughout. Familists, the adherents of the Family of Love, were not persecuted in the same way as other heretics, because their belief system allowed conformity to whatever religious structures were in place. Disputes with the Puritans focused on church governance rather than doctrine, which makes their experiences with persecution fall outside the scope of this study. 8 doctrinal and even social dissidence as heresy."24 That is an overstatement, but "heretic" was indeed one of the most common and most consistent labels established authorities applied to religious dissidents, whatever other label they used. As David Loewenstein says, "heretic [was a] pliable and accusatory term" that could be used for various opponents. Thus, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, this thesis will also use that term and refer to all people who stood against established authority on matters religious as heretics, regardless of what particular beliefs they challenged or advocated. This includes some Catholics who stood against the established Church of England after the

1559 settlement. They were persecuted as traitors, not heretics, but their treason arose from their particular religious beliefs and they employed the same strategies to deal with persecution as other sixteenth-century religious dissidents, so they are included in this definition of heretics.

Heresy was both a serious crime and a serious sin in early modern England, but it was considered more amenable to correction than other major sins. The correction of heresy involved the punishments of suspension, excommunication, penance, or all three.

Suspension removed heretics from church buildings, excommunication removed them from the community of Christians, and penance involved humiliation by public proclamations, including public recantation. Throughout the process of a heresy trial, accused heretics had the opportunity to choose to recant. The sheriff presented it first at the time of arrest, and then after the first night in prison. Priests offered it during the

Drees, Authority and Dissent, 1,2. 25 David Loewenstein, "Writing and the Persecution of Heretics in Henry VIII's England," in Heresy, Literature and Politics, edited by David Loewenstein and John Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 19. 26 Ralph Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People During the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 48. 9 imprisonment and interrogation stage. The bishop offered it during the trial, and repeated the offer both before and during the sentence of condemnation. If condemned heretics accepted none of these opportunities, the sheriff offered them the recantation option once again when he arrived at their cells on the execution day. Finally, the officiating priest at the execution site offered it immediately before the execution began.27 The choice to accept martyrdom can therefore be assumed to be a deliberate one, since the opportunity arose to make it so frequently. The choice to recant might be equally deliberate, and made with as much faith and devotion as the choice to die as a martyr.

Recantation involved revoking religious ideas that the heretic once held by making a public confession, which might include published statements, acts of penance, or public shame, such as bearing the faggots. Recantation might be partial or complete, and it might be expanded or withdrawn. Changing, revoking, or denouncing a recantation was common, and frequently frustrating for both the people and the authorities. Edward Crome's third recantation in 1546 took the form of a very convoluted and contradictory sermon, so one witness to the event called it "canting, recanting, decanting, or really double canting." Recantation was also frequently associated with apostasy, in which a person revoked all the beliefs of Christianity. Few people who recanted in Reformation England actually did that, but as the lines drawn between the confessions deepened, some people came to associate a recantation and new adherence to an opposing confession with rejecting Christianity itself. Some of the casuists, such as Azor and Azpilcueta, said that if a Catholic went to a Protestant service

Covington, Trail of Martyrdom, 150, 165. !Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 237. 10 it was apostasy, if the Catholic repudiated Catholicism.29 Calvin thought that

Nicodemism could lead to apostasy, for the Nicodemite might start to believe in the church he or she attended despite personal convictions.30 Thomas Beard wrote that apostasy could be compelled, voluntary or malicious, but any form of it involved repudiating Protestantism and adhering to the papal anti-Christ.31

Historians have studied the English Reformation from many different perspectives. Historians like G. R. Elton and A.G. Dickens focused their studies of the

Reformation on constitutional change, suggesting that the Reformation happened quickly and was enthusiastically embraced by the people of England who saw it as a sign of improvement. Christopher Haigh challenged that view with his Reformation and

Resistance in Tudor Lancashire in 1975, which influenced the revisionist view of the

Reformation that it was a long, slow, painful process forced on a reluctant populace.

Resistance and destruction became the common themes of Reformation study, along with the question of whether or not the Reformation, as an evangelical Protestant attempt to convert a nation, was a success or failure. Haigh, and other revisionist historians like

Eamon Duffy, decided that it was a failure because it ruined more than it built.

Other historians focus on the changes that occurred through conformity and collaboration during the Reformation. Norman Jones, in his The English Reformation:

Religion and Cultural Adaptation, thinks that rapid changes inspired the English people

Elliot Rose, Cases of Conscience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 87-88. Seth Skolnitsky, Come Out From Among Them: 'Anti-Nicodemite' Writings of John Calvin (Dallas: Protestant Heritage Press, 2001), 13. Thomas Beard, The Theatre of God's Judgements Wherein Is Represented the Justice of God Against All Sinners (London, 1642), 45-46. 11 to think and behave in new ways, and co-operate despite differing religious opinions.32

Mary Lavan thinks that the Reformation helped provide a new confessional identity for

Catholics, and specifically Catholic priests.33 Peter Marshall, in his Reformation

England, examines the conflict and co-operation between church and state.34 Alexandra

Walsham studies conformity as one of the major factors at work in the development of religious tolerance in Reformation England in her book Charitable Hatred.35

Some historians focus on the martyrs, some on the recusants, and some on the exiles. Although all three of these groups, in both major confessions, contain people who recanted, few historians consider recantation in their works. If recantation is mentioned, it is often accompanied by the implication that the recantation was a shameful act of cowardice, or a minor incident in the life of a martyr and a potential destroyer of his or her reputation. Peter Marshall mentions it as a impediment in the career of Thomas

Bilney. Eamon Duffy, in his Fires of Faith, suggests that only the weak recanted, and continued to recant until they were bolstered into accepting martyrdom by a fear of hellfire. Sarah Covington, in her The Trail of Martyrdom, considers recantation a small part of the "evasive world"38 of religious change, an inevitable side effect of the constantly changing definitions, authorities, and values. In her Charitable Hatred,

Alexandra Walsham considers recantation just one of many forms of religious vacillation

Norman Leslie Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2002), 3. 33 Diarmaid MacCulloch et al, "Recent Trends in the Study of Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Europe." Renaissance Quarterly, 59, no 3 (Fall, 2006), 715. 34 Peter Marshall, Reformation England (London: Hodder Education, 2003), 2. 35 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 60, 199-200. Marshall, Reformation England, 28. 37 Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 163. 38 Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom, 3. 12 that occurred in the sixteenth century.39 None of these or similar works analyze the full range of possible reasons to recant, or look at recantation as a means of working out faith.

This thesis examines four main reasons to recant from the perspective of working out faith. Fear is one reason to recant, one that has to be acknowledged since it played a role in the lives of many people involved in religious conflict. A sense of duty and obligation to the sovereign was another reason to recant. A third reason reflected the changing nature of authority, which made some people reject the legitimacy of the authorities requiring recantation. Fourthly, some people recanted due to prudence, since recantation could prevent greater sins or evils than it caused. From this perspective, recantation is part of the process of a living faith, not simply a sign of the suppression of particular religious beliefs.

The possibility that recantation could be a form of subversion is presented by

Susan Wabuda. She says that focusing on the martyrs "obscures the fact that persecuted reformers found other ways to testify to what they saw as the truth ...[and] used recantation as an opportunity to proclaim and affirm their faith."40 Brad Gregory suggests possible purposes for recantation in his Salvation at Stake, including using recantation to deflect the attention of the authorities before an escape attempt and seeing the opportunity to recant as God's deliverance. He also studies the role of Nicodemism in the culture of martyrdom.41 Susan Bridgen provides reasons why heretics would recant, focusing mainly on the usefulness of the public spectacle of recantation to spread the word of the faith.42 Mary Hampson Patterson and Derrick Sherwin Bailey note the

39 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 20. Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 225. 41 Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 101-103, 154-156. 42 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 191-193. 13 important role recantation played in the development of Thomas Becon's reputation and popularity,43 which suggests that recantation could be useful in other ways as well.

In his book Marian Protestantism, Andrew Pettegree says that concentrating on exiles and martyrs can present an oversimplified picture of the Reformation. It does not consider the people who gave in outwardly but were privately dedicated to their particular faith. He refers to this as a "genuine but flexible commitment," and notes that

"such behaviour has never really been regarded as an authentic expression of belief, partly, no doubt, because conduct of this sort was so emphatically deplored by the reformers themselves." John Calvin especially denounced conformity, and urged

Christians to witness openly for the faith. Pettegree thinks that many modern historians consider Calvin's viewpoint the basic standard of behaviour for the English Reformation.

However, Calvin's writings were controversial at the time, often resented, and sometimes even repudiated.44 Alternative courses of action were acceptable and even advocated by many of the major writers of the sixteenth century, and even Calvin himself placed limits on his urgings to witness openly. Clayton Drees presents a similar idea about the logic of a flexible commitment; he notes how it suits the experiences of believers in the English church during the upheaval of the sixteenth century, whose religious leadership underwent such rapid and continuous change. Drees also makes the point that flexible commitment meant that "ordinary believers turned to their own souls and consciences for the religious truth that the Supreme Head and his Church could no longer guarantee," and the result was "an individualization of faith in a population that now trusted its own

43 Mary Pearse Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Bestsellers, Private Devotion, and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 59; Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Thomas Becon and the Reformation of the Church in England (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1952), 44-45. 44 Andrew Pettegree, Marian Protestantism (Hants: Scolar Press, 1996), 6. 14 convictions."45 Susan Bridgen agrees that it was the personalized beliefs of individuals that made the difference in the English church. She says that the Reformation was made by individuals, not by social forces. "Though the Reformation was first imposed on the

English people, who were unknowing, unwilling, it became their particular creation."

This was due both to their acquiescence to royal command, and to their resistance.46

The individualization these historians discuss is distinct from individualism, which also developed from its medieval roots in the sixteenth century. In his Death,

Religion and the Family, Ralph Houlbrooke suggests that the development of individualism might have influenced the changing roles and rituals of death in sixteenth- century England.47 In The Origins of English Individualism, Alan Macfarlane treats individualism as a political and economic phenomenon of England and suggests that this was due to the common law system and the attitude of the English toward their own status as Englishmen. He thinks that individualism might have spilled over into religion, since "every Christian community was basically a confessional association of individual believers, not a ritual association of kinship groups,"48 but does not consider the role of the individual in religion. Colin Richmond, in his article "Report from a Stationary

Train," also distinguishes between individualization and individualism. He considers the actions of Henry VIII in making his own conscience more important than the well-being of the nation the supreme example of English individualism - in the sense of individualism as the supreme regard for the Self.49

Drees, Authority and Dissent, 3. 46 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 4, 5. 47 Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 2, 3. 48 Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1978), 50. Colin Richmond, "Report from a Stationary Train," Authority and Consent in Tudor England, edited by G.W. Bernard and S.J. Gunn (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), 98-99. 15

Individualization is not regard for the self; it is taking responsibility for the self.

In sixteenth-century England, individuals started taking on responsibility for their own salvation. They determined their own standards of truthfulness, took on a greater role in the operation of their consciences and replaced the church in the enactment of the final rituals preceding the good death. The difficulties and dilemmas that resulted reflect what

Norman Jones calls the "personal problem of a lived faith." As he says, "What does a fervent desire to obey the law of God demand of a believer, in the face of a church that has found compromise politique?''''50 The answer is similar to how John Watts described medieval sermons: the English people had to respond to the "mingled message of participation and yet obedience."51 Individuals had to legitimize authority for themselves during the Reformation, and determine where to place their loyalty.

Many studies of individualization and the individual conscience focus on the seventeenth century. Edmund Leites' Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe centres its study on the reign of James II and beyond. David Martin Jones examines the effects of oath-taking on the seventeenth-century conscience. Harald Braun and Edward

Vallance focus mainly on seventeenth-century forms of truth in their Contexts of

Conscience in Early Modern Europe. Keith Thomas studies the seventeenth century as

"the age of conscience."52 Lucinda McCray Beier focuses on the seventeenth century in

50 Norman Jones, "Introduction: Known From Their Works: Living and Writing Early Modern English Religious History," in Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson From His Students, edited by Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1992), 2. John Watts, "The Policie in Christen Remes: Bishop Russell's Parliamentary Sermons of 1483-1484," In Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C.S.L. Davis, edited by G.W. Bernard and S.J. Gunn (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), 51. 52 Keith Thomas, "Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth Century England," Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth Century England, edited by John Morrill et al (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 29. 16

CO her study of the good death. This thesis studies the sixteenth century, and thus reveals the foundations of these vital concepts for early modern England, which can be found in the culture of martyrdom. The heretics who wrote, preached, lived and died during this century provided role models for later religious sects both within and beyond the Church of England. Their debates over particular issues of the new faith clarified what was

Catholic and what was Protestant. As Kevin Sharpe notes, the commonweal and its associated concepts of public and private, individual and state, developed in the sixteenth century.54 Writers of the sixteenth century even influenced how later generations viewed the interactions between God and humanity.55

Context is of primary importance when studying the development of ideas such as the truth, the conscience and the good death. As Barbara Shapiro says in her The Culture of Fact, most studies in intellectual and cultural history raise the issue of context. Culture is affected by its material, political, religious and social environment, and "how developments in each discipline provided contexts for the other within the evolution of a general intellectual context."56 This thesis focuses on the religious environment, by studying the manuals, treatises, sermons, letters and declarations of heretics. Social and political environments also come into play due to the influence they had on the heretics and their religious convictions; notably, in their background sources. Background sources are used in this thesis when sixteenth-century writers specifically refer to them,

53 Lucinda McCray Beier, "The Good Death in Seventeenth Century England," in Death, Ritual and Bereavement, edited by Ralph Houlbrooke (London: Routledge, 1989), 45. Kevin Sharpe, "Private Conscience and Public Duty in the Writings of James VI and I," Public Duty, edited by Morrill et al, 77-78. See also Patricia Crawford, "Public Duty, Private Conscience, and Women," Public Duty, edited by Morrill et al, 58. A detailed study of this can be found in Alexandra Walsham's book Providence in Early Modern England. She argues that the idea of Providence modified old "popish" superstitions after the Reformation. 56 Barbara Shapiro, A Culture of Fact (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), 216,217. 17 or base their actions on them. An example of this is found in the discussion of the early

Christian martyrs. Although sixteenth-century heretics frequently held up the early martyrs as the standard of behaviour, it was commonly in the context of the good death.

The early martyrs' constancy and obedience in dying well became the goal to be reached.

In the context of playing with the truth when faced with the authorities, the early martyrs did not provide practical examples for sixteenth-century heretics. Thus, they do not come into the discussion in that context.

This thesis aims to reflect a balanced cross-confessional view of the religious environment, as advocated by Sean F. Hughes. He notes that the five points of Calvinism

- total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints - summarize the beliefs of the Reformers for many historians, although these points are not exclusive to Calvinism nor do they reflect the diversity of the beliefs found in the Reformation. This thesis uses the concepts of the truth, the conscience and the good death to study the diversity of Reformation beliefs, and the diversity of the sources available to discuss them. As Hughes says, "we need to keep in mind the sheer range of the tradition - taking in the formative impact of Peter Martyr,

Heinrich Bullinger and Martin Bucer as well as Calvin and Beza - and the often powerful

en but unacknowledged contribution of Roman Catholic ideas." Since the definition of heretic for the purposes of this study involves people of differing beliefs and different confessions, the chosen sources include writings from people of a wide range of beliefs - from John Calvin and Martin Luther to Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons. At the end of the century, the confessions were becoming clear, and that sometimes affected the 57 Sean F. Hughes, "The Problem of 'Calvinism:' English Theologies of Predestionation." In Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson From His Students, edited by Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1998), 232-233. 18 circumstances of recantation. In those situations, this thesis divides the authors by their confession. Otherwise, it refers to writers simply as heretics.

During the English Reformation, the people suffering persecution for their faith also wrote various sermons, treatises and manuals that taught people how to deal with it.

They examined the issues of faith that led to changes in cultural beliefs and in the concepts of the truth, the conscience and the good death. Their works influenced the changes, even as the changes influenced their work. This thesis uses the writings of the individuals who recanted, such as Dr. Edward Crome, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Becon, as well as the writings of those who did not recant, such as John Frith, John Bradford,

Nicolas Ridley, Thomas More, Robert Southwell and John Gerard. It includes the works of the men who provided the impetus for their beliefs, like Martin Luther and John

CO

Calvin, and uses John Foxe's Acts and Monuments and John Strype's Ecclesiastical

Memorials to provide chronological context and to show how the heretics acted out the faith of which they wrote.

The first chapter studies how heretics created their own truth in order to deal with persecution. Through the use of various methods of equivocation during examinations and recantations, heretics managed to recant or avoid recantation without denying their faith. In this chapter, Foxe and Strype provide much of the source material, for they record the ways in which heretics employed truth creatively to promote their own causes.

Foxe and Strype also provide many insights about the contemporary attitudes toward such creative truth, for they often expressed admiration for the cleverness of the heretics, Please note: Foxe expanded upon his narratives and added new stories in each edition of Acts and Monuments. Thomas Rose, for example, was merely mentioned in the 1563 and 1570 editions, but his full story and a record of his examinations appeared in the 1576 edition. I chose the most detailed and clearest account of each individual and situation in my study, while still taking into account ways that depiction changed over time, so this thesis uses all four editions of Acts and Monuments. 19 and described the growing division between the heretics and the authorities. Five of the most famous heretics of the sixteenth century are studied in more detail in this chapter, not only to show how they employed creative truth but also to provide a background for the chapters that follow. These five heretics greatly influenced the sixteenth-century beliefs in the truth, the conscience, and the good death through their actions and their writings.

A discussion of truth leads naturally into an examination of one of the main tools to interpret truth: the conscience. The second chapter studies its multiple roles as a guide, a leader, a comfort, and a judge. The power of the conscience grew over the course of the sixteenth century, but the belief in the universality of the conscience diminished. Individuals began to play a role in the operation of their consciences, and made personal decisions about how to interpret its judgements. The authority of the conscience and temporal authority thus came into conflict, further complicating the culture of martyrdom. Recantation itself became more controversial by the end of the century, as the crown's reasons for eliciting recantation and the methods of evasion used by those who recanted changed.

The third chapter examines how the interplay between death rituals, the truth and the conscience altered and enhanced the role of the ars moriendi in early modern

England. The heretics themselves brought a new form of the fifteenth-century ars moriendi into the culture of martyrdom, for they wrote many of the new manuals on the art of dying well. John Calvin, John Bradford and John Hooper all addressed the issue of the good death. Thomas Cranmer included exhortations about death in his Book of

Homilies. Thomas Becon's The Sick Man's Salve was one of the most popular manuals 20 of its kind in the sixteenth century. Thomas Lupset, although he was never actively persecuted for his faith, supported the new learning in his The Way of Dying Well. In

1578, when it was illegal to be a Catholic priest in England, priest Pedro de Soto's The

Manner to Die Well was published in London. This new form of the ars moriendi emphasized the role of the individual in establishing authority and securing salvation, and heretics applied its teachings both to recantation and to martyrdom.

In an atmosphere of religious turmoil, during the major changes in the structure and beliefs of the culture that occurred over the sixteenth century, the English people became more active participants in religion and politics. They had to choose when they would participate through acceptance, adaptation, resistance, collaboration or conformity.

What they chose reflected their reactions to particular points of doctrine or decisions of the sovereign, since the Reformation happened in incremental stages. In his Popular

Politics and the Reformation, Ethan Shagan disagrees with Christopher Haigh on a number of points, but concurs in saying that the Reformation did not descend on the

English people all at once but through small steps and changes.59 Norman Leslie Jones also notes the step-by-step formation of new beliefs and religious policies that forced people to choose how to respond to each one. He says that people made their choices based on the question of "what do I do now?," not "what do I believe now?," suggesting that people's personal faith did not change as often as official religious policy changed.

Through personal faith, people individualized their religion and determined whether or not to accept the legitimacy of particular authorities. For many heretics, this frequently resulted in resistance through subversion, based on their own interpretations of the truth,

Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 12. Jones, The English Reformation, 2. 21 the conscience and the good death. The following will examine the effects of this on the culture of martyrdom and the tradition of recantation. 22

Chapter Two: Creative Truth

As Nicholas Ridley once said to Thomas Cranmer, heretics in early modern

England had the choice to "turn or burn:"1 they could recant or die at the stake.

However, men such as Thomas Bilney, James Bainham, John Tewkesbury, Hugh Latimer and Robert Barnes chose to do both. All died as martyrs, and all recanted at least once during their lives. Some of these men suffered agonies of guilt after their recantations.

They believed that by recanting they had either denied their beliefs or they had sinned by lying, based on St. Augustine's definition of a lie: "a false statement made with the intention to deceive."2 Others felt no guilt at all, possibly because they believed that in some situations it was morally acceptable to lie or equivocate, or because they considered the motivation to deceive part of the definition of a lie. If part of the definition of a lie was the motivation to deceive, their own reasoning became an important element in dividing truth from falsehood.

In sixteenth-century England, some heretics employed this sort of creative truth to subvert and placate the authorities without denying their beliefs. People who managed to confuse or thwart their persecutors through various methods of creative truth were praised for their ability rather than condemned for their recourse to dishonesty. This chapter studies the theories behind creative truth-telling and how heretics of the sixteenth century applied them. It then examines five of the most famous heretics of the century, their methods of creative truth, and the attitudes people held toward them.

Seymour Byman, "Ritualistic Acts and Compulsive Behavior," 636. Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 20. See also St. Augustine, "On Lying," in Treatises on Various Subjects, edited by Roy Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc, 1952), 55. 23

Christian men and women were supposed to tell the truth. Various theologians and preachers frequently repeated this tenet of the faith. However, many of these same preachers and theologians also reported lying when faced with persecutors, either in their recantations or in situations where they were trying to avoid recantation. Anthony

Dalaber, George Joye, John Frith and John Careless all wrote against lying and deceitfulness, and yet in the following stories they all display behaviour that seem to contradict their writings. In 1526, Robert Garrett heard that he was about to be arrested.

His friend Anthony Dalaber sent him off to be a curate for his brother, under a false name and false papers. For some reason, Garrett returned, and Dalaber disguised him and sent him off again, this time to escape the country. Garrett was taken, and Dalaber was called in for questioning. He lied about when he had seen Garrett, what Garrett had said, and where he had gone. Even when a witness was called in to challenge what Dalaber said, he maintained his lie, gambling that the authorities were more likely to believe him than the witness, who was a young boy. In 1527, Wolsey's representatives accused George

Joye of sharing the heretical views of Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur. When presented with an opportunity to escape examination, Joye took it. Joye later told John

Ashwell that when the scribe tried to find out where Joye lived so he could be found for questioning, he told the scribe "a lie for his asking,"5 and fled the country. In 1533, when royal authorities pursued John Frith, he disguised himself as a common man and fled. He was captured in Reading and examined. Foxe relates that Frith "pretended unto the

3 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, (1563 edition), [online]. (hriOnline, Sheffield). Available from: http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe/, 608-614. Please note: the spelling and punctuation of all quotations from early modern sources has been modernized 4Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants, 207. George Joye, The letters whyche Iohan Ashwell priour of Newnham Abbey besydes Bedforde, sente secretely to the Byshope ofLyncolne (London, 1548), D2r. 24 magistrates that he was not the man, but another person."6 In 1556, Dr. Martin examined

John Careless about his writings and those of some other accused heretics, including a

Mr. Henry Hart. Martin asked Careless if he knew Hart, and Careless responded that he did not. In his record of the event, Careless said that "I lied falsely, for I knew him indeed, and his qualities too well."7

As S.R. Maitland notes, these men talked about their lies with openness and did not seem ashamed or even embarrassed about them.8 Careless returned to prison after this examination; there bothered by great "heaviness of mind and conscience," he wrote to his friend John Philpot, looking for advice and consolation. The two men exchanged letters, and Careless confessed that he was ashamed of his reluctance to be in prison and the despair that imprisonment caused him. Philpot encouraged Careless, praised Careless for his godliness and admired Careless' "manifest gifts of the Spirit."9 Neither man seemed at all concerned about Careless' lie to Martin. Foxe reported Frith's subterfuge with an equanimity that comes close to admiration, calling Frith "the simple man, which could not craftily enough colour himself."10 Dalaber's report of his lies showed only an attitude of determination and protectiveness toward Garrett, and a strong dislike of papists. Joye's attitude was simply one of distrust toward the authorities.

These lies reveal a common purpose. Careless lied to defend the religious beliefs of himself and Hart, even though he did not agree with Hart. Joye and Frith lied to save their lives. Dalaber lied to save a friend's life. None of these people lied because they

6 Foxe 1563, 502. 7 Ibid, 1530. S. R. Maitland, Essays on Subjects Connected with the Reformation in England. (London: Francis and John Rivington, 1849), 1. 9 Foxe 1563, 1535- 1537. 10 Ibid, 502. 25 took pleasure in deception; their intent was to prevent something. Deception could therefore be justified, and allow them to preach against lies even while they altered the truth.

Blending the theories of many of the classical and medieval studies of truth and lies made this distinction possible. Varying conclusions in the writings of St. Jerome, St.

Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and other church fathers and medieval theologians provided room for interpretation, which sixteenth-century theologians and canonists used to develop a new system of moral theology. Two treatises of St. Augustine formed its foundation: On Lying, which provided the basic definition of a lie, and Against Lying, which applied the theories of the first treatise to the persecution of heretics. Augustine claimed that there were no circumstances in which lying was not a sin, but that circumstances could influence the severity of the sin. In contrast, St. Jerome acknowledged some situations where lying might be acceptable, including lying in order to prevent something worse from happening, such as church dissention. Clement of

Alexandria, Origen and John Chrysostom agreed with this, for to them lying was acceptable in situations where telling the truth might be harmful. Thomas Aquinas looked at the practical difficulties of truth-telling more closely in his Summa Theologica and provided further distinctions and qualifications, such as the idea that "truth is principally in the intellect, and secondarily in things according as they are related to the intellect as their principle."11 This allowed for various definitions of truth based on the variables within human intellect. Aquinas also distinguished between truth and truthfulness. He called a person's inclination to be truthful veracity, and considered

1' Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952) vol 1, 95. 26 veracity to be a virtue. As John Finnis summarizes it, veracity was a matter of personal decency, honesty and uprightness, expressed through words or deeds that conformed to reality. Veracity did not require that all communicative expressions be true. In certain situations, it was acceptable to alter meaning or even lie.12

Sixteenth-century theologians used all these beliefs to re-define the lie and its eternal consequences. Calvin defined a lie as: "to do deceitfully ...to fail and break promise."13 Tyndale said that: "to lie for the intent to beguile is damnable of itself."14

Thomas More said that to practise deception broke the seventh commandment: thou shalt not steal.15 Miles Coverdale said that to deceive through lies abused the name of God.1

All of these theologians condemned particular kinds of lies and allowed others, based on the intention to deceive. Johann Sommerville summarizes their varied interpretations by saying that:

Few modern moral philosophers have been willing to follow Augustine ...in [his] doctrine that lying is always wrong. In the ...early modern period few allowed that it could ever be right. Some Protestants ...abided by Augustine's teaching, while a number took a third approach, redefining [his position] to exclude acts of justified untruthful intended deception.17

John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 156- 157. John Calvin, A commentarie ofM. Iohn Caluine, vpon the booke of Iosue finished a little before his death (London: 1578), Dlr, Dlv. 1 William Tyndale, An exposycyon vpon the v.vi.vii. chapters of Mathewe which thre chapters are the keye and the dore of the scrypture, and the restoring agayne of Moses lawe corrupt by ye scrybes and pharyses (London, 1536), F5v. 1 Sir Thomas More, A brief fourme of confession instructing all Christian folke how to confesse their sinnes (London, 1576), Dlv. Miles Coverdale, A Christen exhortacion vnto customable swearers What a right [and] lawfull othe is (London, 1543), B2r. 17 Johann Sommerville, "The New Art of Lying: Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Casuistry," in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, edited by Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 166. 27

Justification based on motivation became a key factor. To deceive in order to accomplish something that was right became acceptable, though never ideal. Calvin gave two examples of this, through the Biblical figures of Rahab and Rebecca. Rahab's deception was acceptable because it was meant "to help our brethren, to provide for their safety."

Rebecca lied to enable God's plan for her son Jacob. Both women showed faith in their deception, which provided a good motivation to deceive. Tyndale supported the same theory, using the story of King David deceiving King Achis the Philistine: he said that

David was justified because he deceived Achis as part of his campaign against the

Amalekites, who were enemies of the Jews. Tyndale considered deception acceptable for the sake of a higher purpose. As he said in his Exposition on Matthew:

To bear a sick man in hand that a wholesome bitter medicine is sweet to make him drink it is the duty of charity and no sin. To persuade him that pursueth his neighbour to hurt him or slay him, that his neighbour is gone another contrary way, is the duty of every Christian man by the law of charity and no sin, no though I confirmed it with an oath. But to lie for to deceive and hurt, that is damnable only.19

Theologians developed degrees of culpability for lies, and justified these degrees through careful application and expansion of the theories of the church fathers and medieval theologians. A general structure came from St. Augustine, who arranged lies into what Vernon Bourke calls "eight levels of seriousness," based on the amount of malice involved. Augustine placed lying to harm one's neighbour or for the pleasure of deception at a high level because of the high amount of malice in those sorts of lies. The lowest three levels were "lying to improve the morals or social relations of one's associates, lying to save someone's life, and lying to save a person from sexual

Calvin, Commentary on Joshua, Clr. Tyndale, An Exposition on Matthew, F7v. 28 defilement."20 These lies contained little malice. Thus, the motivation for the lie was the underlying factor that influenced the intent to deceive and so changed the level of

seriousness.

Augustine was the only one to rank lies in such detail, but others agreed with the idea. Jerome accepted that there were degrees of culpability. Gratian, in his Decretum, decreed that some lies were venial sins and others mortal,21 as did Erasmus in his Ratio seu Methodus.22 The French humanist, philosopher, biblical scholar and reformer

Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples believed that lying could be good if it educated or uplifted people, but bad if it worked against charity.23 Thomas More considered "swearing falsely" to be a mortal sin, but he did acknowledge that the circumstances surrounding the lie had an effect on whether the sin was mortal or venial. The "state or quality" of the person who sinned, the person against whom they sinned, the frequency of the sin, the damage it caused, and the place and time where it occurred all mattered.24

For sixteenth-century theologians, blasphemy bespoke a high degree of culpability. Heretics who seemed unashamed of their own lies spoke vehemently against blasphemy, by which they meant swearing falsely in God's name or teaching false doctrine. George Joye, in the same letter to John Ashwell in which he described how he lied to the scribe, also condemned people who lied about doctrine.25 Thomas Becon, who

20 Vernon J Bourke, Augustine's Love of Wisdom: An Introspective Philosophy. (Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1992), 188. 21 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 26, 27. 22 Toon van Houdt, "Introduction: Word Histories and Beyond: Toward a Conceptualization of Fraud and Deceit in Early-Modern Times," in On the Edge of Truth and Honesty: Principles and Strategies of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period, edited by Toon van Houdt et al (Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2002), 44. 23 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 35, 36. More, A Brief Form of Confession, 4-6. Joye, John Ashwell Letters, L3v. 29 recanted twice, wrote An Invective Against that Most Wicked and Damnable Vice of

Swearing, which equated swearing falsely using God's name with adultery, gluttony, fornication and covetousness.26 Martin Luther condemned the blasphemous lies of false teachers who advocated doctrine over faith. Tyndale said that a lie sworn to God dishonoured the name of God. Almost as bad as blasphemy was perjury; the two were connected because each involved swearing falsely using God's name. As Calvin and

More said, perjury broke both law and commandment, and so placed people under both

29 human and divine judgement.

At the other end of the scale, little culpability was applied to lying to save a life.

This can partly explain why so many heretics of the sixteenth century showed little shame or embarrassment about their lies. As Zagorin has noted, this is a logical aspect of a persecuted community. But if lying ...remains a universal possibility for any sort of human existence, it may sometimes also appear as a historically and socially determined phenomenon in those communities and societies in which pressures for religious or political conformity have impelled dissenting individuals or groups to lie ...in self-protection.

Not only did such an argument justify the sort of lies told by Careless, Joye, Frith and

Dalaber, it justified recanting to placate the authorities as well. In circumstances where recantation would not be blasphemy or perjury, heretics could recant in order to save lives - sometimes, their own. In some cases, heretics' friends advised them to recant to

Thomas Becon, An inuectyue agenst the moost wicked [and] detestable vyce of swearing (London, 1543), 4-4d. Martin Luther, A faithful admonition of a certeyne true pastor and prophete sent vnto the Germanes at such a time as certain great princes went about to bryng alienes into Germany (London, 1554), G6r, G6v. 28 Tyndale, Exposition on Matthew, F5v. 29 Calvin, Sermons of Jean Calvin 1579, 23d; More, A Form of Confession, 22d. 30 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, V. 30 save their own lives, even if they had to lie. Thomas Whyttell said when he signed his recantation that he had been "desired and counselled" so to do.31 Friends of Robert

Wisdom told him to recant, because they did not believe he could tolerate prison.

According to Foxe, Thomas Bilney consulted his friends Master Dancaster and Master

Farmer regarding his recantation in 1527, and recanted "through infirmity rather than

[inclination]," due to their persuasion.33

Subverting authority through recantation might also be justifiable to save a life.

When Robert Barnes was arrested for heresy, his friends advised him to recant. When he returned to his evangelism and was arrested, the same friends suggested that he flee the country while he still could. He escaped from jail, leaving behind a note that said that he intended to commit suicide by drowning himself in the river because he had seen that

Cardinal Wolsey was right and he was wrong. He wrote that he had tied a full recantation around his own neck, and it could be retrieved when his body was found.

Wolsey ordered a week long search to retrieve that recantation, while Barnes fled to

Antwerp unimpeded.34 In 1531, John Tewkesbury was arrested for heresy and sent to jail to await execution. Another heretic, James Bainham, was held in the same prison, and

Tewkesbury advised him to recant. In Sir Thomas More's view, Tewkesbury advised recantation because he would have chosen to recant again, had he that option.

Recantation was a standard punishment for first time offenders; after his second arrest

Tewkesbury was considered a contumacious heretic, a charge which often incurred the

31 Foxe 1563, 1454. 32 Susan Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 349. 33 Foxe 1563, 480. 34 Neelak Serawlook Tjernagel, Henry VIII and the Lutherans. (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1965), 54. 31 death penalty.35 Foxe does not mention this lack of choice; he says that Tewkesbury was compelled to recant the first time, and that he gained grace and strength in the Lord over the two intervening years and so bravely refused to recant a second time, accepting martyrdom in 1531. Susan Brigden implies that Foxe played down Tewkesbury's advice to Bainham because that advice shows that Tewkesbury regretted his heresy and would have avoided martyrdom if he could. However, it is equally legitimate to suggest that Tewkesbury was working within the laws of temporal authority in order to subvert that authority. This was Bainham's first arrest; why should he not take the opportunity offered through the law to recant and save his life, so he could go out and continue spreading the message? Tewkesbury was not the only person to advise Bainham to abjure. Hugh Latimer heard that Bainham had been arrested for discrediting Thomas

Becket and wrote to him saying that it was not an issue worth dying for.

Some people believed that the state of the liar's heart and mind also changed the degree of culpability in a lie, for if the lie came only from the mouth it was not as severe a sin. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia, said that Job was accused of lying because he claimed he was righteous in God's sight, but he was not lying because God agreed with what Job said, even if Job's friends did not. "The ears of men judge our words as they sound outwardly, but the divine judgement hears them as they are uttered from within.

Among men the heart is judged by the words; with God the words are judged by the heart." This text, referred to in later discussions of the Moralia as humanae aures, was an important development in the study of lies and the truth, for it allowed what Zagorin

35 Sir Thomas More, The co[n]futacyon ofTyndales answere made by syr Thomas More knyght lorde chau[n]cellour ofEnglonde (London, 1532), C2r, C2v. 36 Foxe 1563,493. Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 192. 38 Susan Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 240. 32 calls the distinction of "heart from word and inner state from its outward expression."

Gratian also included this argument in his Decretum, saying that the will and intention of words were the most important, "because the intention should not serve the words, but the words the intention."39 St. Thomas Aquinas' beliefs about veracity sometimes came into this argument, and Luther showed support for it in his commentary on Peter when he said: "By those words he is not made a liar, but he was a liar before that he uttered any lie, because that a lie must needs proceed from the heart into the mouth."40 Coverdale also supported it, saying that God excused lies when they were necessary, so long as the heart did not mean to deceive.41 However, this theory was not accepted by everyone, because it came dangerously close to the sort of lying which was not acceptable: namely, denying or rejecting God's truth through dissimulation and hypocrisy.

Zagorin divides dissimulation into natural dissimulation and the practice of dissimulation "as it has been rationalized and justified by theologians, casuists, philosophers, and political theorists." The practice of dissimulation, to sixteenth-century theologians, was what Zagorin calls:

a distinct and profoundly important historical phenomenon that is especially related to politics and, even more, to the persecution by states and churches of heretical and minority religious bodies and heterodox and dangerous ideas. In the case of those who are victims of either religious or intellectual intolerance, dissimulation is also associated with clandestinity, the maintenance of an underground existence and esotericism.

This form of dissimulation was not promoted among Protestant preachers or teachers.

Nicholas Ridley called it a double wickedness because it did not love the truth and it

Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 25. Luther, A commentarie or exposition vppon the twoo Epistles generall ofSainct Peter, and that ofSainct Jude (London, 1581), 25. 41 Coverdale, Lawful Oath, 8d. 42 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 2. 33 deceived people. Luther defined it as "when one shows himself another manner of man outwardly than he is inwardly in mind affected."44 Erasmus pleaded with people not to let their brethren dissimulate.45 John Whyttell condemned it because it denied the

"known verity."46 During the Oxford Disputation of 1554, John Philpot was offended by

Mary's representatives because of their dissimulation through dissembling, saying that:

[the] sight of you here, which hitherto have lurked in corners and dissembled with God and the world, are now gathered together to suppress the sincere truth of God's holy word, and to set forth every false devise, which by the Catholic doctrine of the scripture, you are not able to maintain.47

Other theologians connected dissimulation with the dishonest practices that kept

Christians from leading godly lives. Miles Coverdale listed the characteristics of a godly life as showing love, helping and comforting others, and treating others as well as they treated themselves. Shaming, oppressing, or cheating people, or making lying part of life, were some of the traits he condemned as dishonest practices. Similarly, Robert

Wisdom advocated charity, mildness, patience, and long suffering as the fruit of a godly life, and condemned hypocrisy, dissimulation, dishonesty, and malignancy.49 These opinions recall Aquinas' promotion of veracity once again - truthfulness as a personality trait. There was a difference between lying and being a liar, telling a lie and living a lie.

The motivation for the lie made the difference.

Ridley, A pituous lamentation of the miserable estate of the churche of Christ in Englande in the time of the late reuoltfrom the gospel (London, 1566), B6v. Luther, Commentary on Peter, J3v. 45 Erasmus, De immensa dei misericordia (London, 1526), D3v. 46Foxe 1563, 1457. 47Foxel563,912. 48 Coverdale, Lawful Oath, A5r. 49 Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials Appendix vol 1 ,318. 34

Denying God's truth might make a person a liar. Augustine spoke against denying God's truth in both On Lying and Against Lying.50 Heinrich Bullinger and

George Van Parris both spoke sternly against it. Calvin condemned it through his multiple denunciations of Nicodemism, which are discussed in detail in the next chapter.

Denying God's truth happened in one of two ways: concealing faith, or falling away from the faith. In concealing faith, heretics worshipped one way privately and another publicly. In falling away from the truth, heretics who had heard and accepted the truth of

God denied or ignored their knowledge. If not worded properly, recantation might fall into this category, which made creative truth telling while recanting a very touchy and delicate operation. The story of Francis Spira's disastrous recantation was often used to show just how awful it was to fall away from the truth. One of the stories of Spira, published by Matteo Gribaldi in 1570, began with an epigraph that included the following verse:

Let Spira be example to us all In these our days the like hath not been seen Of one that had from God, so great a fall, Not able once himself for grace to call. Because the wretch did set this worldly dross In place above Christ's gospel, truth, and cross.51

Latimer declared in a sermon before the king that "there is no sin which God doth so seldom nor so hardly forgive, as this sin of falling away from the truth, after that a man once knows it."52 Nicholas Ridley bemoaned the phenomenon in one of his sermons: "O

Saint Augustine, "Against Lying," in Saint Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, 139, 140. Matteo Gribaldi, A notable and marueilous epistle of the famous doctour, Matthewe Gribalde, Professor of the lawe (London, 1570), A4v. Hugh Latimer, A moste faithfull sermo[n] preached before the Kynges most excelle[n]te Maiestye (London, 1553), E8r. 35

what an array is this? That so many that know God's truth, will now turn again and

defile themselves in the filthy puddle of Antichrist's stinking religion."53

People did not deny God's truth when they employed what Zagorin calls natural

dissimulation. In his definition, natural dissimulation involves the misrepresentation of truth due to fear, self-interest, vanity, or unwillingness to inflict harm or pain.54 The lies

and creative truths that heretics told to help or save their friends might fall into this category, but they themselves did not label them as dissimulation, natural or otherwise.

Many sixteenth-century heretics denounced dissembling and dissimulation in the same examination or recantation as they employed creative truth, and promised not to dissemble or dissimulate. That suggests that the methods of creative truth used by these heretics were, in their own minds at least, different from dissimulation and dissembling.

Dissimulation and dissembling were first associated with sophistry and then with casuistry, which developed in the later sixteenth century and became quite popular in the seventeenth century. Many sixteenth-century heretics did not approve of casuistry, because they associated it with Catholic and Jesuitical traditions. Foxe referred to casuistry as "crafty and subtle sophistry" when discussing the methods of the

"adversaries of Christ's gospel,"55 and Thomas Bell thought that by using casuistry "men deny themselves to be Christians."56

The methods of creative truth employed by sixteenth-century heretics were not labelled as such by the heretics themselves, but for the sake of clarity this thesis will define them as equivocation. Equivocation is often considered part of casuistry in both

53 Ridley, Lamentation, F3r. 54 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 2. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments [...] (1576 edition), [online]. (hriOnline, Sheffield). Available from: http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe/, 1169. 56 Thomas Bell, Thomas Bels motiues concerning Romish faith and religion (London, 1593), 109. 36 modern scholarship and in sixteenth-century writings, but the two actually show distinct characteristics. Casuistry justifies action based on probability, plays with the interpretation of the truth, and often denies the authority of the law.57 Equivocation justifies action based on the particular situation, plays with the truthfulness of the individual, and works through the authority of the law. For sixteenth-century heretics, equivocation was especially helpful in situations where there was no obligation to tell the truth, and when the spirit of the law differed from the letter of the law. Johann

Sommerville uses the following example: a traveller comes to a city and the guards ask him if he has come from a particular town where they think there is plague. The traveller has come from that town, and knows that there is no plague. However, he is afraid that the guards will not believe him and that they will not let him in if he says that he is from that town. Also, their real question is not whether he is from that town but if he could be carrying the plague. So he can answer their question in the negative because he is really answering their real question, which is whether or not they are in danger from plague by letting him in.58 In another example, a person new to a city has heard that a particular butcher in that city is dishonest. He asks someone if the meat he is about to purchase is from that butcher. That person knows that the meat is from that butcher, but also knows that the butcher is not dishonest. He is unsure if the new person to the city will believe him, so he says "no." This is not a lie because the new person's real question is not whether or not the meat is from one particular butcher but if he can trust the meat he is about to buy.

For a more detailed definition of casuistry, see Meg Lota Brown's definition on page 79 in the third chapter of this thesis. 58 Sommerville, "The New Art of Lying," Conscience and Casuistry, 169. 37

Some of the most common methods of equivocation used humour, non-answers, or the ambiguity of language. These methods allowed heretics to safeguard their veracity, tell lies without living lies, and subvert the laws and institutions of the authorities who opposed them while they furthered their own causes. For example, records of the examinations of several accused heretics show a frequent refrain of "I do not remember," which might be legitimate or might show the use of selective memory to avoid self-incrimination. Thomas Rose equivocated many times when under examination by Bishop Gardiner, making statements that had many possible meanings.

He reported to Foxe that his final speech successfully convinced his examiners to "name it a recantation, which I never meant nor thought, as God knoweth," and saved him from execution. Gardiner decided that he would take Rose with him on his visitations, and

Rose agreed, then managed to escape and flee to the continent.60 In 1529, after Sir

Thomas More gave Bishop Tunstall the job of hunting book agents, Tunstall went after those who sold Tyndale's New Testament. He planned to hold a public burning of the

Bibles that he confiscated from them, but he did not manage to find as many copies as he wished. Augustine Packington offered to get Tunstall some Tyndale New Testaments to burn. Tunstall agreed, and actually paid for the books. Multiple copies of the New

Testament duly arrived, and More demanded to know who had supported the importation of banned books. George Constantine truthfully told him that Tunstall had, while

Packington gave Tyndale the money to pay for a fresh print run of the New Testament.61

Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials Appendix vol 1, 42. See also Foxe 1563, 244, 486, 566, 781, 808. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments [...] (1576 edition), [online]. (hriOnline, Sheffield). Available from: http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe, 1980. 61 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 181. 38

St. Augustine's teaching that "jocose" lies were not lies because, in theory, everyone was in on the joke may have been the foundation for the use of humour in equivocation. William Jerome, Robert Garrett and Robert Barnes used humour when they recanted at Paul's Cross with such light-heartedness and good cheer that witnesses to the event realized that they did not mean a word of it. A man named Silver once found himself under accusation of heresy by Sir Thomas More. More made a pun that silver needed to be refined by fire, and Silver retorted: "But Quicksilver cannot stand for it." According to John Strype, More was so delighted by such a "ready answer" that he dismissed him.64 John Bradford made sly comments about De Vera Obedientia when interrogated by Gardiner.65 Anne Askew feigned concern over the fate of mice sent to damnation because they ate the Host. John Philpot made several saucy retorts when examined by Queen's Commissioners Roper and Cooke, such as his response to Roper's statement that Philpot was an "unmeet man" to be an archdeacon: Philpot said that he was as meet as the man who currently held the position.67 Philpot also used humour when he responded to Roper's and Cooke's questioning with a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the effectiveness of their methods of interrogation. After Cooke's repeated threats that they would send him to prison for his impudence, Philpot responded simply, "Hold that argument fast, for it is the best you have."68

Providing non-answers was another popular method of equivocating. Non- answers included the answer of questions with questions, answering with so much excess

62 Saint Augustine, "On Lying," 54. 63 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 311-312. 64 Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 1, 205. 65Foxe 1576, 1523. Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 1, 387. 67Foxe 1563, 1391. 68 Ibid, 1347. 39 detail as to confuse the story, answering with statements that did not really say anything, and answering with silence. The strategic use of silence was very popular in the sixteenth century. Anne Askew used it, with the excuse that women were not expected to speak out in religious matters. Foxe reported that during John Lambert's trial against Henry

VIII, Lambert "held his peace, defending himself rather with silence, than with arguments which he saw would nothing at all prevail."69 In 1574, A Brief Advertisement was published for English people attempting to live as Catholics in Protestant England. It advised people to say nothing when common-law authorities asked "do you or will you come to church?," claiming that this was justified because the common law should be completely unconcerned about future intentions, and could not require a person to self- incriminate.70 This advice reflects the teachings of both Augustine and Aquinas.

Augustine said that: "it is not a lie when truth is passed over in silence, but when falsehood is brought forth in speech," and Aquinas distinguished between keeping silent about the truth and telling falsehoods in legal situations. The first was allowable, because an accused person had no obligation to admit to things that the judge could not legally ask about when proceeding from information based on rumour, partial proof, or even evidence. Hiding details was not lying or trickery but "prudent evasion."72

The opposite of responding with silence was responding with excess information in order to obfuscate the truth. Some men tore down the famous Rood at St Margarets

Pattens, and when arrested and accused the men used excess detail to confuse the story.

They said that Crome had said that Latimer had said that Cromwell had ordered its

69 Ibid, 537. Rose, Cases of Conscience, 60-61. 71 Saint Augustine, "Against Lying", 152. 72 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 29. 40 removal. This web of name dropping never unravelled, and so the men went unpunished.73 Thomas Cole also used confusion in his recantation, abjuring in a rambling and awkward sermon about stinking flowers which was so complicated that it was difficult to tell whether he was abjuring his beliefs or teaching people how not to garden.74

Answers that did not actually say anything also confused the story. William

Pykas, when asked if it was lawful to swear, provided a non-answer by saying merely that he could not tell,75 which could have meant that he could not distinguish the answer, or that he could not say the answer. When asked his opinions about Henry VIII's supremacy over the church, John Haughton the Carthusian prior answered only that the marriage of the king was the king's business, not his. Under interrogation, William

Rayland answered a whole list of questions with "yes," "no," and "it is so," without specifying the intent of his assertions.77 Alice Driver, John Fortune, and John Philpot all responded with non-answers at some point or another. Sir Thomas More preserved his life for months by answering the king with non-answers regarding the Oath of

Supremacy.78

Perhaps the best use of the non-answer method of equivocation can be found in

Foxe's account of John Bradford's experience before a commission in 1555.

Bradford: My Lords and masters, the Lord which is, and will be judge to us all, knoweth that as I am certain I stand now before

Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 290. Thomas Cole, A godly and frutefull sermon, made at Maydestone in the county of Kent thefyrst sonday in Lent (London, 1553). Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 1, 82. 76 Ibid, 195. 77 Ibid, 78. 78 Paul D. Green, "Suicide, Martyrdom, and Thomas More," Studies on the Renaissance, Vol 19 (1972), 154. 41

his majesty: so with reverence in his sight I stand before you, and unto you accordingly in words and gesture I desire to behave myself. If you otherwise take it, I doubt not but God in his time will reveal it. In the mean season I shall suffer with all due obedience your sayings and doings too, I hope.

Chancellor. These be gay glorious words of reverence, but as in all other things, so herein also thou doest nothing but lie.

Bradford. Well, I would God the author of truth and abhorrer of lies would pull my tongue out of my head before you all, and show a terrible judgement on me here present, if I have purposed, or do purpose to lie before you, whatsoever you shall ask me.

Chancellor. Why then doest thou not answer? Hast thou written such letters as here is objected against thee?

Bradford. As I said, my Lord, that I have written, I have written. I stand now before you, which either can lay my letters to my charge, or no: if you lay anything to my charge that I have written, if I deny it, I am then a liar.

Chancellor: We shall never have done with thee, I perceive now: be short, be short: wilt thou have mercy?

Bradford. I pray God give me his mercy, and if therewith you will extend yours, I will not refuse it, but otherwise I will none.

....Now after a little pausing, my lord Chancellor beginneth again to declare that the doctrine taught in King Edward's days was heresy, using for probation and demonstration thereof no scripture nor reason, but this: that it ended with treason and rebellion, so that the very end were enough to prove that doctrine to be naught.

Bradford: Ah my Lord, that you could enter into God's Sanctuary, and mark the end of this present doctrine that you now so magnify.

Chancellor. What meanest thou by that? I [suspect] we shall have a snatch of rebellion even now.

Bradford: My lord, I mean no such end as you would gather: I mean an end which no man seeth, but such as enter into God's Sanctuary. 70 If a man look on present things, he will soon deceive himself.

Foxe 1576, 1523. 42

In this passage, Bradford both spoke vehemently against lying and managed not to tell the truth. His claim that he did not "purpose" to lie to them reflected Augustine's definition of the lie, which required an intention to deceive, and so set up his non-answers as not technically lies. Bradford also placed himself firmly under God's authority, rather than that of the commission, when he implied that their mercy was less valuable to him than that of God. That suggests that he was aligning his statements to have one meaning in his heart and another in his words, which might reflect the hwnanae aures. None of those statements actually answered the questions presented to him, and Bradford also quoted from the Bible, which would be hard for the Chancellor to challenge. When

Bradford said "What I have written, I have written," he recalled the scene of Christ's examination before Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion, and specifically Pilate's defence of his choice of words for the sign placed above Christ's head on the cross. Since

Bradford was also in a place of judgement where execution was likely, this choice of quotation was doubly clever.

Using the ambiguity of language also became an important method of equivocation in sixteenth-century England. It was not a new idea; the Spanish

Dominican Raymund of Pennafort suggested it as a method of equivocation in his 1223

Summa. He used the example of a murderer asking someone where his victim was.

Raymund said that the person who knew that the victim was nearby could say "non est

hie" in Latin. Although this sentence is usually translated as "he is not here," Pennafort

said the sentence had two alternative meanings: either "he is not here" or "he is not eating

here." To Pennafort, it was not a lie to say the sentence that could mean "he is not eating 43

on here" and hope the murderer took it to mean "he is not here." This sort of example provided a foundation for equivocation through statements which possessed both true and false meanings. They were not lies because the speaker did not intend to deceive, but merely hoped that the other person believed the false meaning. In this method, playing with the conventions of meaning was essential. As Johann Sommerville says: A consequence of this ...was that a man's ability to avoid lying while at the same time preventing some disaster could depend upon such arbitrary factors as whether a deceptive ambiguity was available, and whether the speaker had the linguistic skills needed to notice it. Dexterity at punning became a virtue.

This was especially important because if questioners picked up on the equivocation, they could keep asking until they had a question so specific that it was impossible to hedge.

The ultimate goal was to equivocate so well that the questioner did not even notice the

01 equivocation. Heretics often played with words in order to satisfy temporal law without denying personal beliefs. Richard Smith read a retraction, not a recantation, in order to hedge around confessing his beliefs; similarly, Longworth gave a declaration, not a recantation. During Bradford's examination, the Chancellor asked Bradford if he was seditious. He said he was not, and when accused of lying he justified his actions partly through a re-definition of the term "seditious" that reflected the spirit of the word's meaning, and not the letter. During the Oxford disputation in 1554, Latimer confused the discussion on transubstantiation when he chose to use different meanings of the term

"the body of Christ," including Christ's literal body, his perfect body, and what could be interpreted to mean the body of Christ's believers.83 In 1556 Bishop Foster asked John

80 Sommerville, "The New Art of Lying," 167. 81 Ibid, 171. 82Foxe 1576, 1522. 83Foxel563, 940, 941. 44

Fortune if he believed in the Catholic church; Fortune chose to define the Catholic church as the church "whereof Christ is the head" and then said that he did believe in it.84 Also in 1556, a group of heretics underwent a mass trial and agreed to recant when the bishop phrased the recantation so that they had to say that they "believed in the catholic church."

They defined "catholic" differently than the bishop had, and accepted the recantation.85

When the Bishop of Chicester examined Richard Woodman in 1557, he challenged

Woodman with rejecting the Catholic church. Woodman said that he did not reject the

Catholic church, because he defined it as the "true church," which "he was in every day."

This could have referred either to himself as a temple for the Holy Spirit or to a group of believers with whom he met. John Frith did a similar sidestep during his examination regarding the definition of the term of the body of Christ.

[I]t was enquired of me, touching the sacrament of the altar, whether it was the very body of Christ or no. I answered that it was both Christ's body and ours also, as Saint Paul teacheth us in the first epistle to the Corinthians and tenth chapter for as one loaf is made of many corns which doth signify our body, which being diverse and many members, are associate and gathered together into one fellowship or body.87

During her examination, likewise, Alice Driver played on the word "sign" regarding the sacraments, and neatly set several well-educated divines in their places.88

Steven Gratwyck did a complicated dance around the terms "truth," "denying," and

"affirming" during his examination in 1557.89 Sir Thomas More once surprised a man named Petit in his house while the latter was in his closet reading. More said: "You say

lFoxe 1570,2100. 'Duffy, Fires of Faith, 140. 'Foxel563, 1588. ' Ibid, 505 - 506. ;Foxel576, 1942. 'Foxe 1570,2163. 45 you have none of these new [banned] books" and Petit equivocated by saying simply:

"Your lordship saw my books and my closet."90

Five heretics of the sixteenth century stand out in their use of equivocation before and during their recantations. They are Dr. Edward Crome, Anne Askew, Thomas

Becon, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer. Crome managed to recant three times without losing his status as a man of God; Anne Askew's trials are a study in the use of humour, silence, and non-answers; Becon recanted twice and yet remained one of the most respected and popular writers of sixteenth-century religious tracts; Latimer escaped the anger of Henry VIII through a spirited use of questions answering questions, and

Cranmer's recantations are useful not only because they show attempts at equivocation, but also because they show how events gradually made equivocation impossible.

As John Strype phrased it, Cranmer wrote his first recantation "which he thought to pen so favourably and dexterously for himself, that he might evade both the danger from the state, and the danger of his conscience too." The text of that first recantation shows how he used creative truth through equivocation.

For as much as the King's and Queen's majesties, by consent of Their Parliament, have received the pope's authority within this realm, I am content to submit myself to their laws herein, and to take the pope for chief head of this church of England, so far as God's laws, and the laws and customs of this realm will permit.91

What constituted God's laws was not defined, and the limitations created by saying "as far as the laws and customs of this realm will permit" allowed for the maintenance of belief, which is the opposite to a recantation of belief. At the same time, taken at face value, it could be interpreted to mean that Cranmer accepted papal authority and

90 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 1, 203. 91 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 3, 233. 46 submitted himself to the restoration of the Catholic faith. Neither Queen nor King took it in that sense, however - not surprisingly. That recantation was not accepted. In his second effort, Cranmer submitted himself to the Catholic Church of Christ, "and unto the pope, supreme head of the same church, and to the king's and queen's majesties, and unto all their laws and ordinances."92 This is a good example of subversion through creative truth. Submission to the church and the law did not necessarily mean belief in the church and the law, nor did it deny Cranmer's former beliefs.

Cranmer's third recantation saw him attempt to reconcile the weakness noted above, while still not denying his faith.

I am content to submit myself to the King's and Queen's majesties, and to all their laws and ordinances, as well concerning the pope's supremacy, as others. And I shall from time to time, move and stir all others to do the like to the uttermost of my power; and to live in quietness and obedience unto their majesties, most humbly without murmur, or grudging against any of their godly proceedings. And for my book which I have written, I am content to submit me to the judgement of the Catholic church, and of the next general council.93

This hinted at a retraction of his book, though not until the next general council and only if it told him to do so, and suggested that he would preach in a manner that followed royal religious policy. It still limited his obedience to only godly proceedings, however, and showed a remarkable lack of enthusiasm. Not surprisingly, this was not acceptable in the eyes of queen and council either. Cranmer tried again. In his fourth recantation he began to claim that his beliefs had changed and to retract certain unpopular statements, but it still took two more drafts before his recantation was accepted. His sixth recantation required not only acknowledgement of any heretical beliefs but also a condemnation of

Ibid, 233. Ibid, 234. 47 himself as a "persecutor, a blasphemer, a mischief-maker." Strype claims that this sixth recantation put words in Cranmer's mouth, and then notes with admiration how

Cranmer's last-minute rejection of the recantation in public and his dramatic death scene gave his enemies "a notable disappointment."94

Hugh Latimer combined a bold speaking style with equivocation, which helped him avoid or evade punishment for his heretical beliefs for many years. In 1526,

Cardinal Wolsey called Latimer before him to answer for his controversial preaching.

However, instead of punishing him, Wolsey enjoyed Latimer's "cut-and-thrust" exchange with his two chaplains, then gave him license to preach anywhere in England. In 1532,

Latimer was excommunicated and submitted to the authority of the king. His recantation, which Harold Darby suggests would have been "bitter to his taste," seems to be sweetened with careful equivocation.

My lords, I do confess that I have misordered myself very far, in that I have so presumptuously and boldly preached, reproving certain things by which the people that were infirm have taken occasion of ill. Wherefore I ask forgiveness of my misbehaviour; I will be glad to make amends; and I have spoken indiscreetly in vehemence of speaking, and have erred in some things, and in manner have been in a wrong way (as thus) lacking discretion in many things.95

This statement did not specify what in his preaching was "misordered," nor in which things he erred. Lack of discretion and misbehaviour were the sort of sins that could be confessed without denying God, and did not involve retracting or denying any beliefs.

Unfortunately, this statement was not effective. Further proceedings arose from it, and

Latimer was later forced to make a more complete submission. Then he was accepted

94 Ibid, 232. 95 Harold S. Darby, Hugh Latimer. (London: The Epworth Press, 1953), 34, 76. 48 back into the church and allowed to continue preaching. He returned almost at once to controversial topics, and continued to preach in the reforming style.

In 1534, Latimer offended some priests during a sermon before the king, who then brought him before Henry VIII and accused him of sedition. Henry asked Latimer how he responded to these accusations, and Latimer responded with skilful equivocation.

Latimer kneeled down, and turning him first to his accuser, asked him thus, 'What form of preaching would you appoint me to preach before a king? Would you have me preach nothing concerning a king, in the king's sermon? Have you any commission to appoint me, what I shall preach?' He asked him diverse other questions, but he would answer none at all Then he turned to the king, and submitting himself to his Grace, said, 'I never thought myself worthy nor ever sued to be a preacher before your Grace. But I was called to it: and would be willing, if you mislike me, to give my place to my betters. But if your Grace allow me for a preacher, I would desire your Grace, to discharge my conscience, give me leave to frame my discourse according to mine audience. I had been a very dolt to have preached so at the borders of your realm, as I preach before your Grace.'96

This reflects the non-answer method of equivocation, using questions to answer questions and making statements that do not actually answer the question. This time, his equivocation was effective; the king "turned to other communications," to the great relief of Latimer's friends, who had expected him to be sent to the Tower immediately.97

Latimer's preaching frequently stirred up controversy, and Latimer consistently managed to escape the consequences using clever equivocations. Once, a priest named

Richard Brown reported that Latimer was preaching "wretched abusions" and so Latimer was barred from preaching at Easter. He was brought before the priests and accused of several abuses, and in this incident his phrasing saved him. They accused him of saying

Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 1, 170. Ibid, 170. 49 that Mary was a sinner; he reminded them that he had not said that, but that Christ had saved Mary as he had everyone else. They accused him of saying that the saints should not be worshipped; he said that he had distinguished between the saints in heaven and the images of the saints, and said only that the images of the saints should not be worshipped, but "well used ...for remembrance of heavenly things."

Latimer was called before Archbishop Warham, Bishop Stokesly, and several other bishops after this controversy, and when he arrived one bishop asked that he "speak out, because he was thick of hearing." Latimer found that suspicious, and realized that they had someone hiding behind the hangings, writing down everything he said. Then

Warham and Stokesly asked him: "Master Latimer, do you not think in your conscience that you have been suspected of heresy?" Strype calls this a "subtle question," because to say nothing would have been an assent, and any response might have been self- incriminating. However, Latimer managed to equivocate again, and they could not find anything with which to hold him. He was allowed to go.98

Thomas Becon, alias Theodore Basil, was a prolific source of evangelical polemic in the sixteenth century. He recanted twice during the reign of Henry VIII; the first time on 29 January 1540, when he recanted his preaching that rejected praying to saints, priestly celibacy, and prayers for the dead. He recanted in an open sermon and then left the area and went into hiding in Kent," where he changed his clothing, his occupation

(from priest to tutor) and his style of evangelism. From that point on, Becon preached through his writing, producing some of the most popular tracts and treatises of the sixteenth century about the new faith. He was arrested again in 1543, and had to recant at

98 Ibid, 162-163. 99 Bailey, Thomas Becon, 14-17. 50

Paul's Cross in the same week as Robert Wisdom and John Singleton. Wisdom recanted and was immediately swamped with guilt; Becon recanted quite cheerfully and went immediately back to work as a print evangelist. Derrick Sherwin Bailey suggests that

Becon was a propagandist for the Protestant cause, and so "it may well have been understood that should he get into trouble, no questions would be asked as to his manner of extricating himself. As a martyr he would have been of little value to the Protestant cause; alive, he had proved usefulness and great potentialities."100 Bridgen believes that

Becon could recant so cheerfully because his recantation "was feigned and recognized as such by all who heard it."101 This suggests that Becon deliberately subverted authority through his recantation. As Wabuda puts it, recantation became an opportunity to affirm, not betray, his beliefs.

Becon's second recantation occurred the same year as he published his An

Invective Against the most Wicked [and] Detestable Vice of Swearing. In this treatise, he stated very clearly that Christians have a duty to be "faultless, as the stewards of God

...godly, temperate, and holding fast to that faithful word," and condemned dissimulation, placing it in context with hypocrisy and superstition. He called the vain swearing of oaths the sin which would bring destruction on England, and calls those who "bend their tongues" to lie "wicked blasphemers."103 Becon continued to hold these views about lying; he published letters in 1557 that spoke out against lying, even in the sort of situation in which Protestants found themselves under Mary. As he said: "...[F]or no cause men may lie or dissemble: and specially in matters of religion they may in no wise

100 Bailey, Thomas Becon, 46. Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 351. 102 Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 241. Becon, An Invective Against... Swearing, Alr-A4r. 51 do it. ...[L]iars and dissemblers maketh as much against idolatry and wicked doers. For in both of them the heart and the outward senses do not agree." Becon did not advocate the humanae aures but said over and over again that heart and mind must agree, for "God is no dissembler nor liar" and expected his people to rise to the same standard.104 Becon also defined the truth as follows: "The truth is Christ himself, the word of God, and whatsoever agrees with him, which can neither deceive, nor be deceived. ...[T]he civil truth is an agreement of words and deeds, to say as the thing is, and as we know it to

With this as a background, it is useful to examine Becon's recantation, as it was found in Bonner's Register. It begins as follows:

Worshipful audience, for declaration of my penitent heart and the testifying unto you of mine unfeigned conversion from error to truth, whereupon I have mercy and remission of further punishment due to mine offenses. I occupy this day the place of a penitent praying you to give credit to that I shall now say of myself and mine own misdemeanor, and pray God with me, that it may work discredit in you of such things as I have taught or written contrary to the truth. I am the man, worshipful audience, who by the name of Thomas Becon (by which name Thomas I was christened, and by which I took upon me the holy order of priesthood), I have in the countries of Norfolk and Suffolk three years past willingly and truly acknowledged in open sermons, that I had before that day preached and taught evil and false doctrine unto them....106

The first thing to note is its dramatic and fulsome tone; Becon's self-denunciations are so extravagant that they are amusing. In the space of two and a half pages, he accuses himself of singularity, vainglory, monstrousness, arrogance, folly, falsity, sedition, vanity

Thomas Becon, An answer to a certain godly man[n]es lettres desiring hisfrendes Iudgement (London, 1557),A7r,A8r. Thomas Becon, The demaundes of holy scripture, with answeres to the same wherein are defined, and declared the cheefe, and principall poyntes of Christian doctrine (London, 1577), B5r. 1 6 George Townsend, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe; With a Life of the Martyrologist, and Vindication of the Work (New York: AMS Press, 1965), Vol V Appendix. 52 and naughtiness. He describes the contents of eleven of his books and then cuts them up and throws them into the fire. He bemoans his own pride, which caused him to take on the "kingly" name of Theodore Basil. The detail and repetition in this recantation are plentiful. The text brings drama to the point of farce. In contrast, Robert Wisdom's recantation was less than half as long, and its tone far more subdued.

Worshipful audience, I am placed this day in the midst of these two penitents, as one who professes himself earnestly sorry that with my earnest countenance, gestures, behaviour and speech I have under the name of God's word and pretence of Christian charity so much slandered the true doctrine of our religion and defamed the charity of the public ministers of common justice.

Wisdom retracted his beliefs and repented of them all; Becon did very little actual repenting. Instead, most of his recantation was taken up by profuse apologies for his pride and vainglory. Once he accused himself of acting like he was learned. Since he was a trained priest, and so informed his audience at the beginning of his recantation, he was at least relatively learned, making that read as a slightly tongue-in-cheek apology. Then he used several methods of equivocation to avoid denying his beliefs. He asked a series of questions about how he could have dared name his book Treasure out of Heaven, but did not renounce any of the things he said in that book. When he started cutting up his books, he listed what parts of them were unacceptable, and condemned them as thoroughly as he did himself, but in a way that did not truly retract them. For example:

In my book of policy of war, I say, that as they persecuted the protests and true preachers of God's word, even so do they now; in which I seem to approve the cause of such as have been justly punished by the order of the king's majesty's laws. Which be only such as have preached or taught false doctrine, and therefore I cut my book here in pieces....

107 Ibid. 53

And in that book I exhort all men to marriage indifferently, making no difference whether they be priests or not. And therefore I cut that book here in pieces....

In my book also which I gloriously call a pleasant new nosegay, I say that as he ...that is endued by Christ's spirit with the light of holy scriptures wandereth not from Christ, ...in which words I turn the promise made by our savior Christ to his church unto every faithful man as though he were once faithful could no more be overcome with the devil ...falsely. And there I cut this book here before you all in pieces.108

Essentially, using a combination of humour, non-answers, exaggeration and ambiguity, Becon made his recantation one of those jocose lies allowed by St.

Augustine. As Mary Patterson remarks, Becon seemed to have been ready for a show.

"...[H]is smooth demeanor during what was supposed to be a humiliating public denunciation of his sworn faith suggests a strong confidence in his own reputation and in the understandings shared between himself and his followers."

Anne Askew equivocated not only by using silence and humour, but through non- answers, confusion, and answering questions with questions.110 In her first examination, she answered "I believe as the Scripture doth teach me" to a list of questions.111 She responded to Christopher Dare's question about the sacraments by asking why St.

Stephen was stoned to death, and when Dare could not answer said that she would not answer Dare's "vain question" either. Dare asked her what she thought of the King's

Book, and she responded that she had never seen it, which suggests that she deliberately took the question literally. She refused to answer one priest altogether because, as she

Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation, 89-90. Loewenstein, "Writing and the Persecution of Heretics," 13-14. Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 372. 54

117 said, "I perceived him as a papist." When the Bishop of Winchester pressed her for a direct answer, she said that she would not "sing a song to the Lord in a strange land."113

Considering her position in society and her position as a heretic, Askew showed remarkable presence of mind and skill with various methods of equivocation. She did give in and recant after her first examination, but she equivocated and so turned that false statement into a creative truth. A long recantation was written out for her, and she signed it, then added at the bottom: "I Anne Askew do believe this if God's word do agree to the same, and the true catholic church."114

A contemporary of Anne Askew, and another master equivocator, was Dr.

Edward Crome. As Andrew Pettegree notes in his book Marian Protestantism: The undisputed champion of recantation was Edward Crome, who recanted no fewer than three times between 1531 and 1546. [He] provided a gloss distancing himself from the prescribed words, ...and did what was necessary to live and fight another day. Crome can hardly be accused of cowardice, since at moments of crisis he invariably spoke up boldly as a champion of the new faith; in consequence, it is clear that, despite all Crome's slippery cavillations, he never forfeited the respect of other members of the evangelical elite.11

On 13 February 1531, Crome was forced to recant his belief that the Bible should be available for laypeople to read, that prayers for the dead were unimportant, and that "the authority of the church ...was not above scripture, but to the church was given authority to expound and explicate it." He recanted as ordered, but prefaced his articles of recantation with a "reforming sermon" and announced that he had been ordered to read ni Foxe 1563, 673. 113 Freeman, Thomas S. and Sarah Elizabeth Wall, "Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe's Book of Martyrs." Renaissance Quarterly, 54, No. 4, Part 1 (Winter, 2001), 1168. Anne Askew, The lattre examinacyon of Anne Askewe latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the wycked Synagoge of Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon oflohan Bale (London, 1547), C4v. 115 Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, 98. 55 them.116 In 1541, Crome was arrested again, and equivocated again. The king gave him another recantation and told him to preach it with his sermon. The next Sunday Crome preached his sermon, which presented his views as he always had, and then said: "There be some men that do say that I have been abjured, and some say that I am perjured, but the truth is that I am neither abjured, nor yet perjured."117 Then he read the document the king had given him, noting that it had been given to him, and few believed that he meant it. At the same time, he could defend himself to the king, because when challenged about making that statement he could equivocate by presenting a creative truth: that he had said that because he had not yet read the document that was his abjuration.

In 1546, Crome preached a controversial sermon and was arrested for heresy again, under the Act of Six Articles. On June 27, he read aloud a clear recantation, which admitted at the end that he had equivocated. In that recantation, Crome obediently preached in support of purgatory and prayers for the dead even while the monasteries were being dissolved, an irony his audience would not have missed. That, as well as some confusing testimony about what exactly had been equivocation and what had been truth in his recantation, made people question his sincerity. John Bale and some other contemporaries felt that this recantation was real and accused him of falling from grace; others thought that he was simply equivocating once again. It is interesting to note that

Crome had refused to recant at first, and gave in only after people in his circle had been interrogated and tortured. The timing of his recantation might reflect fear that the same thing would happen to him, but it also might have been a calculated move to save his friends. They had been implicated in what Bridgen calls a "shadowy plot," and after

Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 331, 332. 117 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol 3 Appendix, 19. 118 Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 230-235. 56

Crome's recantation the persecution against them ended.119 This might be another example of the importance of motivation in justifying a lie.

The influence of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many other theologians and canonists helped provide an authoritative foundation for the creative truth of Crome, Askew, Becon, Latimer, and Cranmer. In the changing atmosphere of the sixteenth century, which constantly challenged religious authority and re-established its limits, such a foundation was invaluable. It allowed individuals to determine their own truth, and gave them the tools to defend it, allowing them to further their own causes by working from within the systems set in place by temporal authority. Interpreting the truth became an important part of faith, and an important part of defending both the belief and the believer.

Of these five famous heretics, only Crome and Becon managed to escape burning.

Askew, Latimer and Cranmer all became equally famous for their deaths as for their lives. Askew's bravery under torture, Latimer's courage at the stake, and Cranmer's dramatic un-recantation became legendary examples of heroic martyrdom. Like Bilney,

Bainham, Tewkesbury, and Barnes, who also died for their faith, their recantations and equivocations became part of the veracity they showed in their lives. They managed to recant without fear of damnation by creating truth, and their creation of truth was not only accepted by their chroniclers but admired and expected.

The number of martyrs increased as the century progressed, reflecting both greater persecution of heresy and growing determination on the part of heretics.120

Robert Barnes noted the trend toward martyrdom in 1525. As he said: "We make

119 Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 368-370. 120 Kolb, "God's Gift of Martyrdom," 399-401. 57 nowadays many martyrs. I trust we shall have more shortly. For the verity could never be preached plainly, but persecution did follow."121 The response to this persecution was threefold: to turn, burn, or both. To die for the truth was held up as an ideal. At the same time, the examples of the people in this chapter show that heretics also desired to live for the truth. Records of the examinations, recantations and experiences of heretics, and their own sermons, letters and treatises, show that they did not passively accept or actively seek martyrdom. They argued their cases, presented their beliefs, and developed ways to best their persecutors. As this chapter has shown, creative truthfulness could be maintained by skirting around the edges of lies. It could also be authorized by an internal judge that grew stronger as the century progressed: the individualized conscience. The role of the conscience in sixteenth-century England will be the topic of the next chapter.

Louis A. Shuster et al, eds, "The Career of Robert Barnes," The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), Vol 8, part 3, 1380. 58

Chapter Three: The Control of Conscience

The Protestant challenge to papal authority during the sixteenth century not only changed beliefs about the universal church, but also beliefs about the universal conscience. Although Protestant writers never rejected the concept of an infallible internal guide to right and wrong that applied to all people, they began to restrict its authority. The religious, political, and social environment of the sixteenth century called its universality into question. Alexandra Walsham claims that collaboration with the crown individualized the conscience: people helped dismantle traditional religion, and so

"forged new consciences to navigate the unprecedented circumstances in which they found themselves." Resistance to the crown also had an influence, and sixteenth-century heretics played a role in this process through the many means of resistance they employed. Heretics' refusal to submit to earthly authority when it conflicted with the authority of their consciences was often partly why they were labelled heretics, and by the end of the century, religious dissidents had to deal with the added complication that the creation of the Church of England, under the Supreme Governor Queen Elizabeth, meant that refusing to acknowledge her authority could also mark them as recusants or traitors.

Heretics challenged the universality of both church and conscience through their advocation of beliefs that differed from the official policies of the time. Some determined the permissibility of recantation based on their particular circumstances, either by justifying their conformity to doctrines in which they did not believe, or when they decided that particular laws of church and state did not apply to them. This resulted

1 Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 13. 59 in a subversion of authority, and this chapter will examine the beliefs about conscience that provided the foundation for it; specifically, the application of personal faith and reason to conscience. Through this, an individualized conscience developed which determined the boundaries of creative truth, and in many cases authorized its use. This was especially true of a form of creative truth that arose from direct challenges to state and church authority and was justified through the application of the individualized conscience: casuistry.

In the Middle Ages, the church provided a single truth and a particular body of knowledge that claimed to inform all consciences, and acted as the arbiter of those consciences. That changed during the sixteenth century. As Lowell Gallagher puts it, conscience became an interpretive activity within the changing political and religious atmosphere of the time, and opening the conscience up to interpretation "performed a covert deconstructive operation on [the dominant idea of] conscience construed as the fixed locus of truth, as 'a little God sitting in the middle of men's hearts.'"3 As the shift took place over the course of the century, the writings of theologians and preachers show how they began to limit the power of the universal conscience. Early Protestant writers, such as Martin Luther, Miles Coverdale, and Thomas Becon, described the conscience and its importance to the Christian faith. Luther pointed out the conscience's role in providing awareness of sin and God in his 1538 exposition on Mary.4 Miles Coverdale made it part of his summary of the Christian faith in his A Goodly Treatise of Faith,

Hope, and Charity, saying that "The chief sum of the commandments is love of a pure

David Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1999), 35. Lowell Gallagher, Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 8. Martin Luther, An exposicion vpon the songe of the blessed virgine Mary (London: 1538), M5r. 60

heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."5 Becon connected the conscience with innocency and pureness of mind.6

In contrast, later Protestant writers, such as Alexander Hume and William

Perkins, defined the conscience in terms of its relation to the individual. In 1594,

Alexander Hume defined the conscience as follows in his A Treatise of Conscience:

Conscience is no more a substance, nor the thought, the reason, or the memory; but is only a function or office of the soul, like as they are: For man consists only of two substantial parts, to wit, the soul, and the body: All the rest of the parts of man are but accidents, even qualities and offices of the body, and of the soul. Conscience then, is a perfect knowledge, or a sure persuasion in the heart of man, that his thoughts, words, or deeds, are good, or that they are evil. ...[T]hat function and office of the soul whereby man is certified that he has done, said, or thought that which is good, or that which is evil, is called, Conscience.7

Hume did not treat the conscience as a little God sitting in the middle of men's hearts.

He broke it down into "only a function or office" and referred to it as merely an

Q accident. The individual thus had more control over the conscience, and could use it or

set it aside as if it was a tool. William Perkins also included the choice to use or ignore the conscience in his definition of the conscience: in 1596, he defined conscience as

"part of the understanding of all reasonable creatures, determining of particular actions either with them or against them." He divided it into two parts: understanding and will.

Understanding involved seeing the reason behind an action or belief; will was the choice

Miles Coverdale, A goodly treatise of faith, hope, and charite necessary for all Christe[n] me[n] to know and to exercyse themselues (London, 1537), 61. 6 Thomas Becon, Demands of Scripture, Civ. 7 Alexander Hume, Ane Treatise of Conscience (Edinburgh, 1594), 8-9. 8 "Accident." The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition 1989, OED Online, Oxford University Press. 5 June 2010. It states that the word 'accident' had several meanings in the late 1590s, which included 'that which was present by chance' and 'a property or quality not essential to our conception of a substance; an attribute'. 61

to accept or refuse what one saw.9 Perkins also said that the basic purpose for the judgement of conscience was to determine a man's actions, and to make him certain of

what he has said or done.10 In this definition, as well as in Hume's, the conscience does

not dictate right and wrong; instead, the conscience and the individual work together.

This does not necessarily eliminate the power of the conscience; instead, it enhances the

power of the individual. Obeying the conscience requires strength, especially when its

dictates differ from what others believe. Ignoring the conscience requires willpower,

since ignoring the conscience might incur other moral difficulties.

The enhancement of the individual's role in the operation of the conscience

derived from the circumstances of the sixteenth century. Religious conflict provided

multiple examples of different consciences reacting differently to the same situation, and

the ubiquitous appeal to people to "examine their consciences" as they made decisions

about faith did not have the desired result of unity of thought. Thus, something had to be

amiss. Kenneth Kirk summarizes the dilemma in his book Conscience and its Problems:

If we hold ...that moral truth is ultimately one and the same for all, it is clear that where two serious-minded men disagree in their moral judgements, or one and the same man recognizes as binding two principles which point toward contradictory courses of action in the same case, there must be error somewhere. Reason does not contradict itself.11

Errors and diversity were sometimes blamed on the concepts of synderesis and

conscientia, thought to make up the two parts of the conscience by such writers as

Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Philip the Chancellor. Douglas Langston summarizes

William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience wherein is set downe the nature, properties, and differences thereof: as also the way to get and keepe good conscience (London, 1596), 1-2. 10 Ibid, 4. 11 Kenneth Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 62. 62

Philip's treatment of the synderesis by saying that the synderesis was an "unerring intellectual dispositional potentiality;" in other words, synderesis was knowledge, the internal awareness of right and wrong.12 Conscientia was the application of that knowledge. The application of the conscientia and the source and content of the knowledge of synderesis was a matter of great controversy during the sixteenth century.

Both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism claimed that the synderesis contained the true knowledge of the beliefs of their confession and that it was only a matter of proper interpretation of the conscientia to prove that. As Alexandra Walsham says in her article

"Ordeals of Conscience:"

What distinguished the early modern understanding of conscience was the assumption that it was only a fit instructor if it conformed with divine law as objectively defined - in the case of Protestantism by Scripture alone and, in the case of Roman Catholicism, by the Bible in tandem with ecclesiastical tradition carried down through the ages by the Church. For Protestants, conscience was closely tied to a predestinarian theology of grace: the knowledge contained in the synderesis was a gift from God working through the Holy Spirit. For Catholics, it was a mental machine which had to be supervised by the priesthood to ensure that it did not stray from the orthodoxies laid down by the papacy.13

One great controversy caused by differing interpretations of the conscientia was the issue of Nicodemism. Nicodemites and anti-Nicodemites were divided along the lines of those who believed that it was acceptable to conform to the dominant religion despite personal beliefs and those who did not. Nicodemism existed throughout the sixteenth century, and it was what Andrew Pettegree called the "burning issue of the day"

Douglas C. Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 24. Alexandra Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500- 1700 edited by Harald E. Braun and Edward Vallance (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 33. 63 during the time of Mary I, when it was practised by some of the Protestants living under her Catholicism. It was also part of the crises of faith that happened during the Act of Six Articles persecutions under Henry VIII, and Catholics living under Elizabeth's

Church used Nicodemite arguments in their deliberations about recusancy, making

Nicodemism a phenomenon that encompassed all the major confessions in sixteenth- century England.

Nicodemites in sixteenth-century England followed the example of the Biblical

Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the night to learn about the kingdom of God and remained a Jewish Pharisee during the day. Thus, he lived a double life. He followed the rules and procedures of the Pharisees, and yet believed in the message of

Jesus. Nicodemus was saved because his heart was faithful even if his lips were not. As

John Hooper said in A Declaration of Christ in 1547:

The cause of [Nicodemus'] coming was the sin and sickness of man; ...the effect of his coming was the healing of his sickness: the use of his coming was to believe that [Jesus'] death upon the cross was and is sufficient for the remission of sins and to obtain eternal life. Here is the justification of man lively expressed. And how many things concur as necessary unto the remission of sin and yet man [is] only justified by faith. The word of God, the preacher of the word, Christ himself, the Holy Ghost that moved Nicodemus to come by night unto Christ, the consenting will of Nicodemus unto the words of Christ. Yet only was he delivered from sin by the faith that he had in the death of Christ.15

To Hooper, the faith that Nicodemus showed by coming to Christ was what saved him, and Nicodemus' consistent return to his life as a Pharisee was not really important.

Nicodemus learned from Christ, and accepted Christ in his heart, and that was enough.

Andrew Petegree, Marian Protestantism, 91. 15John Hooper, A declaration ofChriste and of his offyce compylyd, by Johan Hoper (Zurich: 1547), F7r- F7v. 64

The idea that individuals, like Nicodemus, did not have to proclaim their faith to hold it

was supported by Gregory the Great's Moralia. In it, he asked "what harm is there if in

the judgement of man our words differ superficially from the rectitude of truth when in

the heart they are in accord with it?"1 In John Bradford's The Hurt of Hearing Mass, he

noted that some people thought that since God was a spirit, worshipping him in spirit

only was acceptable, even if it was done during a service of the mass, as long as their

hearts and minds did not "consent to the wickedness."17 Henry Garnet made a distinction

between hiding faith and denying it, saying that as long as people loved God with their

whole hearts, it was acceptable to conceal the specifics of their beliefs.

Some Nicodemites claimed that their conformity to the dominant religion was

merely a political act, a mark of temporal loyalty. They defended this stance using the

case of Naaman the Syrian, a man of faith who bowed in the temple of Rimmon in order

to assist his king. Both the Protestants under Mary and the Catholics under Elizabeth

used this story to justify their attendance at church. Gregory Martin, in his A Treatise of

Schism, said that the reason why this example was used was that Naaman did not go to

worship, but to support his king, and it was his duty to support the king.19 Many

Nicodemites felt that this same reasoning should apply to them, including the legendary

turncoat Dr. Perne, who told Catholics wondering if they should go to church to "live in

16 Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," 39. John Bradford, The hurte ofhering masse. Set forth by the faithfull seruau[n]t of god [and] constant marter of Christ. Ihon Bradforth, whe[n] he was prisoner in the Tower of London (London, 1561), A3r - A4r. Henry Garnet, A treatise of c[hri]stian renunciation Compiled of excellent sentences [and] as it were diuerse homelies of ancient fathers (London: 1593), 30-31. 19 Gregory Martin, A Treatise ofSchisme Showing that All Catholics Should Abstain Altogether from Heretical Conventicles (Douai: 1578), Preface 3. 65 the religion which the Queen and the whole kingdom profess - but do not die in it."

Others thought that Naaman showed that compromise was logical and necessary. Philip

Melanchthon noted in his 1521 Loci Communes that laws should be endured "as we endure any injustice or tyranny, in accordance with Matt 5:41: 'If anyone forces you to

71 go one mile, go with him two miles.'" Alban Langdale, in his 1580 treatise Reasons

Why Catholics May Go to Church, claimed that fear of the authorities, born of a legitimate concern for their own lives, justified Catholics' attendance at a Protestant church. He advocated compromise, and said that everyone had to determine in what ways they compromised and how often. He used the authority of past examples to support his theory, saying: For good men and martyrs in time of persecution have gone amongst Protestants and idolaters and sometimes to their churches and temples without grudge of conscience, and were not defiled with their works of Protestantism or idolatry. And thus they did as circumstances moved them, 77

for circumstances do alter cases.

Other Nicodemites justified conformity and compromise by saying that they could conform and go to church because the liturgical elements of the different services were adiaphora.23 Henri Bullinger accepted this viewpoint, although with a notable lack of enthusiasm, when he said in a 1544 epistle that: As for things which be called mean and indifferent, we believe that a Christian man may use them in all times and places without scrupulosity of conscience, so that all things be done discreetly and according to charity. That is to say, to the glory of God and the edifying of our

Philip Caraman, trans, John Gerard: An Autobiography of An Elizabethan (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1951), 18. 21 Wilhelm Pauck, ed., Melanchthon and Bucer (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1969), 67-68. 22 Robert Miola, An Anthology of Early Modern Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 71-74. 23 Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," 39. 66

neighbours and the whole congregation.24

Bullinger accepted some aspects of liturgy as adiaphora, but he did not think that the

mass was one of them. Neither did Calvin, but he did acknowledge that some people

believed that it was better to take the Lord's Supper "torn and rent as it is" in the mass

than to do without it all together. Philip Melanchthon emphasized the motivation

behind the saying of the mass when determining its worth: "All Masses are godless,

therefore, except those by which consciences are encouraged for the strengthening of

faith. ...[T]he function of this sacrament is to strengthen us, ...whenever we have doubts

concerning God's will toward us."26 Other advocates of this belief in adiaphora had a

supporter in Martin Bucer. He spent many years trying to reconcile divergent beliefs, due

to his own convictions about the importance of church unity, and did not think that the

structures of the church as they existed were beyond redemption.27 He argued that the

Catholic church was a true church, and so it should not be completely rejected. This was

not a popular idea, but the stress he placed on the internal beliefs of individuals and their

personal piety was more widely appreciated.28 That individuals could decide for

themselves whether or not to conform to earthly authority fell in line with the idea that

the individual conscience could determine right and wrong in particular circumstances,

through the application of personal knowledge. As Bradford said, "it is the duty of every

Heinrich Bullinger, Two epistles one of Henri Bullinger, with the consent of all the lernid men of the Churche ofTiguri: another oflhon Caluin (London: 1544), A3v. 25 Ibid, A6v. Pauck, ed, Melanchthon and Bucer, 146. 27 Ibid, 155,284. 28 Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, 93. 67

Christian after their vocation to disallow all that he cannot obey and do with good conscience."

Nicodemites could assuage their consciences by applying their arguments for conformity to the issue of recantation. If someone recanted only with their lips, God would know the truth in their hearts like he had known Nicodemus' heart. In some cases, what a person had to recant could be considered adiaphora, especially if it had to do with a specific article of religion and not the Christian faith itself. Most commonly, the belief in temporal loyalty justified recantation for Nicodemites. They often emphasized a person's obligation to obey their sovereign, since God sanctioned royal power, and used the writings of many popular theologians and preachers to support that justification. In

1536, Richard Morison said that "obedience is the badge of a true Christian man,"30 and in 1554 John Christoferson wrote a treatise that declared that even the evil nature of the king did not excuse a lack of obedience in his subjects.

Anti-Nicodemites interpreted this information differently, and considered conformity to be dangerous and sinful. John Calvin thought that Nicodemism could lead to toleration, then dissimulation, then an open opposition to the truth.31 Calvin believed that Christians were bound "not only to worship God spiritually in [their] hearts, but also to testify the same outwardly." In his Short Treatise Setting Forth What the Faithful

Man Must Do he asked: "What at last became of such manner of people, who thus sought to deceive God and the world ...by wicked subtlety? God has let them stumble into an

Bradford, The Hurt of Hearing Mass, C4v. [my emphasis; a vocation was another word for a "calling," a requirement from God that was unique to the individual] Sir Richard Morison, A lamentation in which is showed what ruin and destruction cometh of seditious rebellion (London, 1536), A3r. 31 Skolnitsky, trans, Anti-Nicodemite Writings, 13. 32 Bullinger, Two Epistles, A4v, A5r. 68 abyss of darkness, depriving them of the knowledge which he had formerly given them."33 He noted that not everyone had to be a preacher, or literally stand up in public and declare their faith, but everyone had to live and behave like Christians. They were to be faithful by any means they had, considering their social condition and the grace God gave them.34 Bullinger agreed with Calvin, saying that the standard was whether or not the preaching followed the word of God. If it did not, by conscience and by Biblical authority, the Christian was to openly reject it.35

Nicholas Sander rejected Nicodemism for Catholics. In his A Treatise on the

Images of Christ, he said that "the said company of Christians must be not only believed in heart, but also confessed in mouth, and professed in all our deeds." To Sander, Christ redeemed the body and soul of a man, and thus the man had to confess Christ with both body and soul. Sander also said that to conform to a "heretical" church, which was for him the Church of England, could lead others to schism and heresy. Gregory Martin took this one step further, asking Catholic Nicodemites how they could expect God to trust them with godly things if He could not trust them to maintain their earthly tasks of faith.37 Martin noted the verse that said that God acknowledges those who acknowledge him, and claimed that it meant that being someone who does not acknowledge God or a

"corrupt Catholic" who only acknowledges God when it is convenient would result in a loss of God's favour.38 Garnet also warned against allowing the concealment of faith to

Skolnitsky, trans, Anti-Nicodemite Writings, 49. Ibid, 52. Bullinger, Two Epistles, Alv, A2r. Sander, A Treatise On Images (Louvain: 1567), Air. Martin, Treatise of Schism, Preface 2v. Ibid, A4r. turn into the loss of faith, saying that people had to beware of the "contagious pestilence, poisoning and infecting with evil opinions the hearers' minds."

Anti-Nicodemites tended to advocate resisting authority through martyrdom.

Luther considered martyrdom a reasonable price to be paid for the cause of furthering

Christ's truth. Calvin frequently emphasized the honour of being chosen to be a martyr, and the heavenly rewards and status martyrs received. John Bradford said that

"surely the coming of our savior will shortly appear in glory with innumerable martyrs which courageously adventured not goods but life, rather than they would be stained in

soul or body, to our shame and confusion if we become mere maids and seek to please men." However, anti-Nicodemites also acknowledged that not everyone was called to martyrdom, so they did accept escape and exile as a legitimate alternative to conformity, and did quite frequently employ creative truth in order to recant without sin. They also limited the duty of obedience to the sovereign, as shall be discussed later in the chapter.

Both anti-Nicodemites and Nicodemites relied on the individualized conscience to determine how to react to particular circumstances. The conscience was supposed to be grounded in the authority of the word of God for Protestants and in the word of God and the traditions of the church for Catholics, but it still could interpret similar situations differently. This further complicated the issue of Nicodemism and debates over other issues of faith and articles of religion, and these sorts of conflicts led to new, in-depth studies of the workings of the conscience. The definitions of conscience by Perkins and

Hume previously discussed show the sort of systematic deliberation about the conscience that marked the end of the sixteenth century. Their purpose was to clarify the roles and

Garnet, A Treatise of Renunciation, 33. Luther, Exposition on Mary, F6r. 41 Bradford, The Hurt of Hearing Mass, Clr. 70 functions of the conscience in order to determine how it could be legitimately applied in different ways in different situations. Writers like Perkins and Hume developed a theoretical background for what a century of heretics had already practically applied when faced with conflicts of conscience. In situations where it was necessary to interpret right and wrong, sixteenth-century heretics blended the perfect knowledge of the synderesis with their personal knowledge of the circumstances in order to justify their actions. This can partially explain heretics' differing views of their recantations. Thomas

Cranmer used various methods of equivocation throughout the process of his recantations to satisfy both his conscience and his queen; it was his final recantation, when he had to renounce all he had done, that finally made him abandon his allegiance to the authority of the queen and submit instead to the authority of his conscience. Robert Wisdom recanted after his first arrest for heresy. His conscience later bothered him that he had given in, so he wrote a lengthy revocation of his recantation and returned to preaching. Dr. Edward

Crome, however, recanted three times and never showed the slightest remorse. Robert

Garrett and William Jerome also recanted with an unconcern that manifested itself as merriment, and John Tyndale recanted at least twice and each time simply returned to his evangelism without recording so much as a word of regret.42

The personal knowledge applied to the conscience derived from two sources: faith and reason, each balanced with the other according to circumstances. Faith was important because God's purpose was to save, not condemn. Protestant writers repeated that basic message often, believing that ignoring or forgetting about the message of salvation could bring on a melancholy belief in unavoidable damnation. That melancholy could lead to the sin of desperation and despair, which could lead to suicide - a

42 Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 233. Also Bridgen, London and the Reformation, 191. 71 complication of faith that will be discussed in detail in chapter three. For this chapter, the focus remains on the recurring theme that salvation, not judgement, was the message to which to cling. Believing in the goodness of God provided the foundation for a healthy conscience. This was clearly shown in William Bonde's discussion of conscience in his

1534 A Devout Epistle for them that have been Timorous and Fearful in Conscience.

For they will form and make a great conscience of those things that be but trifles in comparison and light offenses and such venial sins without the which it is not possible this life to be continued. In such they will make such precise search and discuss of conscience that they will leave nothing unconfessed but make conscience of all their life and unwisely more weighting of their offenses in the balance of the justice of God than in the balance of his mercy.43

Not only does this passage show that Bonde rated sin, making some things "light offenses," it also shows that people were not slaves to their consciences. God's mercy had to be applied to the conscience, in order to put offenses in proportion. Bonde made a distinction between a conscience born of a servile fear of God that constantly fretted about offending him and doubting his mercy, and a healthy conscience. He often repeated that not every sin was damnable, and emphasized the importance of grace in salvation.

Bonde was not the only one to note the importance of faith to the properly operating conscience. George Joye said that: "Remission of sins and the Holy Ghost is given by Christ. ...[0]h, what consolation is ...set forth for feared and troubled consciences? Surely no one can express it, ...yet let us believe that for Christ's sake we are received freely into our Father's grace."44 Martin Luther said that "the conscience is so quieted by faith, that she now feareth neither the devil, death, nor hell. And because

Bonde, A Devout Epistle...in Conscience, 9-9d. 44 George Joye, John Ashewell Letters, B5r-B5v. 72 that the Holy Ghost is given by faith, therefore, whosoever hath the forgiveness of sins by faith, the same serveth the Lord quietly ...without any fear."45 Thomas Becon used the example of the repentant woman who washed Jesus' feet with her hair, saying that Jesus forgave her sins and let her go with a "free and merry conscience" because she had faith.4 Becon also defined a good conscience as "the peace of the mind, a spiritual joy, and a plain feeling and perceiving of the goodness of God towards us through faith in

Jesus Christ."47

Weak or "scrupulous" consciences, new and uncertain consciences, and bad consciences all lacked faith. John Philpot said that the true knowledge that guided the conscience had to be joined with "these three sisters, charity, a pure heart, and unfeigned faith." This message was consistent over the course of the century. Alexander Hume said that "all that is not of faith, ...that proceeds not of any upright conscience, is sin."49

He thought that conscience could bear witness for or against an action based on persuasion, which he called a "constant opinion." He acknowledged that the conscience could fail, and when and how it did so. It happened when faith was lacking, and the foundation of a knowledge of God's word was not there.50

Individual faith and the personal acceptance of grace and mercy became part of the individualized conscience and enabled heretics to make individual choices about whether or not they would recant. Robert Barnes' conscience allowed him to recant particular articles and accept penance after his first arrest. Richard Gibson's conscience

45 Luther, An Exposition of Mary, Mlv-M2r. 46 Thomas Becon, A Comfortable Epistle to God's Faithful People in England (London, 1542), B2r. 7 Becon, Demands of Scripture, B5r. 48 Foxe 1570, 2004. 49 Hume, A Treatise of Conscience, 8. 50 Ibid 16, 17. 73 allowed him to recant several times. He "salved his conscience" through equivocating, making his recantation as general as possible and then adding a further caveat by copying out a verse of Psalm 119: "The proud have laid a snare for me, and spread a net abroad with cords ....[M]y eyes look to thee, O Lord, my God ....[C]ast not out my soul. Keep me from the snare."51 John Careless' conscience allowed him to lie, but not to recant.

When under examination by Dr. Martin, Careless refused to recant, and when challenged that others had answered differently, he said he could answer for no other man's conscience than his own.52 When Sir Thomas More stood before the commissioners regarding the oath of supremacy which he would not take, he told them that he did not condemn their consciences, but was merely dissatisfied in his own. The archbishop tried to convince him using the logic that he was bound to obey the king, saying: '"And therefore are you bound to leave off the doubt of your unsure conscience, in refusing the oath, and take the sure way in obeying of your prince, who commands you to swear.'"

More still refused, because he thought that in that situation, his conscience took priority over his loyalty to his sovereign. As Strype put it: "In his conscience the truth seemed on the other side, wherein he had informed his conscience neither suddenly nor slightly, but by long leisure and diligent search for the matter."53 When Nicholas Ridley was in prison, he wrote to Mr. West, his former steward, and made it very clear that he had made the decisions that had led to his imprisonment based on what was right for him, and that his conscience helped him make those decisions. Ridley's conscience also led him to require West to fulfill some promises he had made to Ridley, and to give West the advice

51 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 3, 406. 52Foxe 1563, 1532. 53John Strype, Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer, edited by Philip Barnes (London: George Routledge and Co, 1853, vol 1), 38. 74 to "fear God, and love not the world." When John Marbecke was brought before

Winchester's representatives in 1544, he made it very clear that his loyalty and his conscience were both separate from each other and individual to him.

Well, quoth the Gentleman, thou must be plainer with my Lord than this, or else it will be wrong with thee, and that sooner than thou weenest. How plain will his Lordship have me to be Sir, quoth [Marbecke]? There is nothing that I can do and say with a safe conscience, but I am ready to do it at his Lordship's pleasure. What tellest thou me, quoth the Gentleman, of thy conscience? Thou mayest with a safe conscience utter those that be heretics, and so doing thou canst do God and the king no greater service. If I knew Sir, quoth [Marbecke], who were an heretic indeed, it were a thing: but if I should accuse him to be an heretic that is none, what a worm would that be in my conscience, so long as I lived: yea it were a great deal better for me to be out of this life, then to live in such torment.

Each of the above examples shows how the individualized conscience allowed heretics to make decisions based on their own circumstances and beliefs, and that they did not expect the dictates of their consciences to apply to other people. The dictates of their consciences did not necessarily even apply to themselves more than once: for example, both Bilney and Barnes accepted martyrdom instead of recanting after their second arrests. Their personal faith and individual reason worked with their consciences to solve each moral dilemma they faced, and the results differed according to the specific situation. As Anne Dillon argues, these heretics "displayed a rational intellect and an informed conscience." They studied the doctrines they defended, and determined when they could subvert authority, and when they had to resist authority and die for their beliefs. This can be illustrated by the story of Anthony Dalaber and Robert Garrett

Strype, Memorials of...Cranmer, 201. Foxe 1570, 1391. 75 mentioned in the first chapter. Dalaber lied for Garrett, and he did so repeatedly, in front of authority figures. He chose to do this because he had consulted with his conscience, and it allowed him to lie in order to save his friend.

Then did I walk up and down by the wall there, a whole hour before the gates were opened. In the meanwhile my musing had been full of forecasting cares, and my sorrowful heart flowing with doleful sighs, I fully determined in my conscience before God, that, if I should chance to be taken and be examined I would accuse no man, nor declare any thing further than I did already perceive was manifestly known before.

Similarly, after Latimer told James Bainham to recant his statements against Thomas

Becket, Latimer found out that Bainham had also been arrested for his denial of purgatory. He withdrew his advice to recant and advocated resistance. "In these articles, your conscience may be so stayed, that you may seem rather to die in the defence thereof, than to recant both against your conscience and the scriptures also."57

Through informed deliberation, both Dalaber and Latimer applied the second form of personal knowledge to the conscience: reason. AsM.W.F. Stone notes:

A person's genuine longing for Christian perfection was to be policed by more prosaic insights concerning the variability of human action, and the counsel that a pious individual ought not jeopardize his salvation by attempting to do the impossible. One was to do one's very best, and one was to work toward the goal of moral and spiritual amelioration by means of incremental CO

advance and considered practical judgement.

This practical judgement was a major part of the individualized conscience. John

Woolton said in 1576 that "Every man has his own mind and conscience, ...punishing the

56 Foxe 1563,611. 57 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol 3, 237. 58 M.W.F. Stone, "Scrupulosity and Conscience," in Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, edited by Harald Braun and Edward Vallance (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 5, 6. 76 guilty or acquitting the guiltless and innocent."59 Alexander Hume said, "Come then, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins were as crimson, they shall be made white as snow."60 Perkins made reason part of the process of determining justice through conscience,61 and he also noted that a defect of reason was one of the signs of an unhealthy conscience. As he said, when describing a dead conscience, "as a gulf of water swallows up the judgement and reason and hinders the conscience from accusing: for when reason cannot do his part, then conscience can do nothing." 2 William Bonde also noted that a defect in reason can lead to a weakness in conscience; he said that an over- zealous conscience put too much weight on fear and conjecture, and not enough on due deliberation and reason.63 John Bradford, when he was a prisoner awaiting execution, wrote about the mass and mentioned in the preamble that he intended to use reason to help quiet consciences.64 Thomas Cranmer, in the Book of Homilies, equated reason and conscience as methods of keeping men from sin.65 Martin Luther made reason part of faith, and "the chief light in this house" of the spirit.66 Miles Coverdale considered reason to be one way that humans were created in the image of God. 7

The proper application of reason can be shown through the example of Thomas

Becon, who was not tormented in conscience at all by his recantations. This may well be

59John Woolton, Of the Conscience (London: 1576), A2v. 60 Hume, A Treatise of Conscience, 91. Perkins, Discourse of Conscience, 20. Perkins, Discourse of Conscience, 150-151. Bonde, A Devout Epistle...in Conscience, 6. 64 Bradford, The Hurt of Hearing Mass, A2r. Thomas Cranmer, Certain Sermons or Homelies Appointed by the King (London: 1547), U2v. 66 Luther, An Exposition on Mary, Blv. 67 Miles Coverdale, A Goodly Treatise of Faith, Hope and Charity Necessary for All Men to Know (London: 1537), 30. 77 explained by a passage he wrote in his An Invective Against that Most Wicked and

Damnable Vice of Swearing, which came out the same year as his second recantation.

Therefore the oath, promise or vow, that is not grounded on truth, judgement, and righteousness, ought to be broken. It is grounded on truth when it is agreeable to God's word, which is the self truth. It is grounded on judgement, when it is not rashly, foolishly and childishly made, but advisedly and with high prudence and great deliberation. It is grounded on righteousness, when there shall rise up no evil of it, neither unto ourselves nor unto our neighbours. All oaths and promises thus taken and made ought to be observed and kept, but otherwise to be broken, refused and cast away without any scruple of conscience or veracion and trouble of mind. For this sentence of the preacher abideth always true: An unfaithful and foolish promise displeaseth God.68

Becon knew when he recanted that his statements were not grounded on righteousness or truth, and so did not consider the oath binding. As shown in the previous chapter, he also carefully arranged the words of his recantation so that he did not actually deny his faith.

Becon shows how the careful application of reason to faith could alter the eternal consequences of recantation. The key was not to lose one under the influence of the other. Bonde pointed this out, saying that conscience without reason could sometimes lead to consenting to something that was wrong. 9 Bradford also warned that zeal could lead to error, and reason could help keep conscience on track.

Applying reason to faith was an individual decision based on individual circumstances, and it formed a personalized authority that helped heretics determine their actions in times of religious conflict. As Jonsen and Toulin say in their book The Abuse of Casuistry, the Reformation forced people "to acknowledge the genuine problems of practical decision faced by agents in complex circumstances involving conflicts of

Becon, Invective Against...Swearing, 57d-58. Bonde, A Devout Epistle...in Conscience, lOd. Bradford, The Hurt of Hearing Mass, Civ. 78 principle."71 Conflicts of principle could result in the limitation or rejection of temporal authority by heretics, due to their rejection of particular social, religious, or political truths, or the rejection of universal truth in general. As Van Houdt notes, the situations that heretics faced in the sixteenth century were conducive to the development of contingent truth, which allowed for "strategic self-presentation in everyday life."72

Strategic self-presentation helped heretics determine how truthful they would be or had to be when faced with temporal authority.

One method of strategic self-presentation that developed from the formation of personal authority was casuistry. Casuistry was an organized and systematic form of creative truth that was described and taught through a series of treatises and training manuals. Lowell Gallagher calls its "golden age" the latter half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. First just a series of exercises in priestly confessional manuals, casuistry filtered from theory into practice and replaced or adapted earlier, less formal methods of creative truth, such as equivocation. Its purpose shifted during this time as well; it began as a method of directing consciences to adhere strictly to law, and became a method that, as Gallagher summarizes it, reflected "a more supple interpretation of the law in the face of the diversity of human temperament."73 Its

Catholic manifestation appeared first, and then a Protestant form of casuistry appeared at the very end of the century and developed in the seventeenth century.

Other terms for casuistry were practical divinity, case divinity, and moral theology, and the definitions of casuistry prove as diverse as the terminology. P.J.

71 Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 147, 148. 72 Toon van Houdt, "Word Histories and Beyond," 30. 73 Lowell Gallagher, Medusa's Gaze, 6. 79

Holmes considers casuistry to be the solutions that seminarians wrote to handle the sort of moral problems faced by clerics under persecution.74 Jonsen and Toulin note that it is difficult to find a definition of casuistry that is not tainted with the stain of sinister disrepute, but summarize it as the ethical system that resolves cases of conscience. Elliott

Rose suggests that it was a science which provided an alternative to puritan morality, although it did not necessarily disagree with it. All these definitions show the theoretical background behind casuistry, but fail to show how it applied to particular individuals. Therefore, this study will follow Meg Lota Brown's definition of casuistry:

...[CJasuistry is a method of adjudicating the conflicting claims of self and law. Its purposes are to address the tensions that arise from legal or ethical antinomies, and to respond to those who are uncertain about acceptable conduct [It] is a system of directives to reason and consciences that defines, interprets, and applies general laws according to the circumstances of a specific case [C]asuistry enables one, however precariously, to impose form on uncertainty, to justify action on the basis of probability and circumstantiality, to reason towards practical responses to the conflicting claims of absolutist authorities.76

Casuistry worked through the identification of particular types of conscience and the determination of the acceptability of its decisions. Doubtful, uncertain consciences and weak or "scrupulous" consciences were the ones that most concerned casuists, because they often complicated the issue to the point where the individual concerned could not make a decision. Situations where there was no course of action that was obviously right were when the individualized conscience could turn to casuistry.77 This was very helpful for some heretics, although different forms of casuistry had varying

P. J. Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry (Norfolk: Lowe and Brydone Printers Limited, 1981), 1. Rose, Cases of Conscience, 3. Meg Lota Brown, Donne and the Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England. (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1995),1,2. 77 Braun and Vallance, "Introduction," Contexts of Conscience, XVI. 80 degrees of usefulness. The tradition of tutiorism believed that the safer - and by that it meant stricter - course of action was the better choice. In many heresy trials, the

stricter course of action was to accept martyrdom, so that form of casuistry was less useful to those who hoped to survive the religious conflict in which they found themselves. More popular was the tradition of probabilism, which involved trying to find ways in which the moral law that seemed to apply to the situation did not apply directly to the individuals involved. Probabilism relied strongly on finding an authority to agree that it did not apply. This system worked with the individualized conscience very well, for it blended faith with the reason gleaned from particular authorities. John Gerard used the Biblical authority of Jesus' saying that he was not going to Jerusalem even though he intended to go to defend his justification of pretence, which was a probabilist method.80

Robert Southwell and Robert Parsons used probabilism when they developed exercises in casuistry that broached the question of whether it was lawful for priests to conceal their identities through disguise. Southwell and Parsons decided that it was, and used Biblical authority to support that. Specifically, they used Luke 24:28, which contained the story of Christ's behaviour on the road to Emmaus.81 Southwell, when on trial, expanded on the acceptability of pretence, saying that it was part of a man's right to keep his private thoughts secret.82 Edmund Campion's argument against Protestantism also provides an example of probabilism:

Rose, Cases of Conscience, 72. 79 Jonsen and Toulmin, Conscience and Allegiance, 164-165. Caramon, Philip, John Gerard, 126-127. Gerard and Southwell refer to their casuistry as equivocation, but since their equivocation is not a matter of personal truthfulness or the manipulation of language but based on their interpretation of the truth on legal/jurisdictional grounds, I consider it casuistry, not equivocation. 81 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 187. 82 Janelle Pierre, Robert Southwell: The Writer (Mamaroneck: Paul P. Appel, 1971), 81. 81

I averre, that the Word of God is wrongfully expounded by thee. I have for my witnesses hereof fifteen hundred years. Stand irrevocably to the judgement, neither of me, nor of thyself, but of the said fifteen hundred years Behold what circles, what meandrian turnings, the Adversary here maketh, and how unsteady he is in arguing. This trifter, being the architect of so many words and sophisms (his cause thus leaning upon the feeble crutches of deceit and calumny) cannot become formidable to any man; troublesome he may be. With your trouble your patience (I hope) will dispense; with the least touch of fear, the matter itself stands wholly incompatible.83

It was not difficult for Campion to find fifteen hundred years of witnesses to support his viewpoint, since he was arguing for traditional Catholicism. Also, he claimed that his opponents' position was powerless based on those witnesses he mentioned: not necessarily on what those witnesses said, just that they existed. Campion based the arguments that led up to this passage on his protests that the Protestant translations of particular words were incorrect, and that it did not matter that particular words, such as purgatory or the mass, were not in the Bible. None of these arguments fully supported his position. Instead, they tried to find ways in which the arguments of his opponents did not apply to his position, due to the existence of multiple witnesses to the contrary.

As noted before, casuistry shares some characteristics with equivocation, but it existed on a wider plane, for it involved not just the truthfulness of the individual but the interpretation of truth itself. An example of this can be found in the use of mental reservation. Mental reservation blurred the line between lying and dissimulation. It applied first to priests hearing confessions, because it was meant to reconcile the problem that lying was prohibited and yet there was an obligation to keep secrets. Eventually, it extended to anyone interrogated under oath who did not want to incriminate themselves

Edmund Campion, Campian Englished. Or A translation of the Ten reasons in which Edmund Campian (of the Societie of Iesus) priest insisted in his challenge (London, 1632), 153-154. 82 or lie. When a Catholic woman was about to be interrogated about whether or not she had seen priest Robert Southwell, Southwell told her it was acceptable to say "no" as long as she mentally added the phrase, "not in order to betray him."84 In 1606, priest

John Ward was asked whether he was a priest and whether he had ever been across the seas. He answered no to both, and when accused of lying he said that he had mentally added "of Apollo" to "no, I am not a priest" and put in "Indian" before "seas."85 Most of the Carthusians in the London Charter House who had protested Henry VIII's Oath of

Supremacy finally submitted in 1536, and used mental reservation to soothe their consciences.

At last many of them took the oath, having been threatened otherwise to have their house plucked down. But while they took the Oath, they said in their hearts, 'Thou knowest, O God, how false and unjust this oath is [B]but since thou knowest the hearts of all men, and how willingly we resist them, we beseech thy mercy not to respect the manner which we perform outwardly, ...nor take it, as if we were assenting to the king's will: but take this our outward dissimulation as our reverence to the sacred word written in the Gospel, for the preservation of our house, if it shall please thy Goodness.'86

Catholic casuistry had a solid purpose in England in the later sixteenth century: to enable the return of Catholicism to the country. To further that end, Catholic casuists often questioned or denied state authority. They based their denials on probability and circumstance, and therefore applied personal knowledge of particular circumstances to their conscience. In 1571, John Felton was on trial for treason. Nicolas Sander later reported that: "Being permitted to speak for himself, [Felton] only pleaded to the jurisdiction of the court, denying that the judges themselves had any power over him,

Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom, 145-147. Sommerville, "The New Art of Lying," 159-160. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials Vol 1, 277. 83 which was now no subject to the English Queen, but rather to the King Catholic."87

During his treason trial, Catholic William Parry used casuistry in an attempt to render his confession useless. He admitted that he had confessed, but claimed that the confession was not admissible because the officers of the queen had no legal authority over him.88

In some cases, Catholic casuists would limit the jurisdiction of the laws instead of denying them all together. Luke Kirby and Robert Johnson, when on trial for treason, said there were cases when the pope might have the authority to authorize subjects to take

on arms against their sovereign. The author of the tract A Brief Advertisement, published in

1574 to help Catholics avoid going to the Church of England, considered the Elizabethan laws against Catholics merely "penal laws." Since they had a set penalty, they had no higher purpose. Accepting the penalty equalled obedience to the law.90

Casuistry became part of what David Martin Jones calls "an English missionary context" after 1580 when Jesuit missionaries went to England. Priests such as Garnet,

Campion, Gerard and Southwell used casuistry to resist their persecutors. As Jones notes: "They contended that they could deceive crown officials with a safe conscience because they ...believed that the crown's claim that all subjects owed obedience to its authority in church and state was both unlawful and heretical." Preserving what they considered the true faith in England justified casuistry, recantation, and even the swearing of oaths without the intention to fulfil them.91 This is shown through records of Edmund

Edmund Campion, A particular declaration or testimony, of the vndutifull and traiterous affection borne against her Maiestie by Edmond Campion Iesuite (London: 1582), B3v. William Parry, A true and plain declaration of the horrible treasons practised by William Parry ... being a papist, against Queen Elizabeth (London: 1679), 6, 34. 89 Campion, Testimony, C2v, C4v. 90 Elliott Rose, Cases of Conscience, 67. David Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England. (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1999), 89. 84

Campion's trial. Campion refused to acknowledge Queen Elizabeth as a "true and lawful queen" and also refused to say that she had been deprived of her crown by a papal bull in

1570. Instead, he used casuistry to deny the authority of the officers questioning him and

"said that this question depended on the fact of Pius Quintus, whereof he [Campion] is not to judge, and therefore refuseth further to answer." John Gerard also believed that the law was not binding, and claimed that "it was lawful to throw the burden of proof on the prosecution." The Jesuits Leonardus Lessius and Francisco Suarez helped make the system of mental reservation common practice, when they introduced the notion of what van Houdt calls "implicit intention." It essentially gave someone making false statements the benefit of the doubt, saying that they were not liars if they added mental reservations, or even intended to add mental reservations. This led to a perversion of communication through language. As van Houdt put it, "there was no way left for human beings to discern truth from falsehood, deceit from honesty, as the speaker gave no clues whatsoever to make it clear to the listener that his statement should not be taken literally

- or rather vocally." Gallagher notes the basic problem that this system quickly created: "its inescapable involvement in political and ideological conflicts

...problematized the culture's received truths, making [them] susceptible to interpretation as an arbitrary construct, ...built on insoluble contradictions and upheld, moreover, by a massive suspension of disbelief."95 This caused casuistry to fall out of favour as a means of creative truth as the seventeenth century progressed, and also damaged the reputation of the Jesuits themselves. As Michael Questier notes, Jesuists were feared by English

92 Campion, Testimony, B4v. 93 Philip Caramon, ed, John Gerard, 80. 94 Van Houdt, "Word Histories and Beyond," 11-12. 95 Gallagher, Medusa's Gaze, 4. 85

Protestants more than any other Catholics, due in part to their reputation for "self- ingratiation, deception, and proselytisation" through casuistry and pretence.96

Protestant heretics did not have to employ casuistry to change the rules in particular circumstances. Their consciences could form their own personalized authority through the application of reason to faith. As Walsham says, every individual heretic had to determine how much they were bound to obey a sovereign "who espoused a religious creed contrary to [their] own."97 Generally, the sovereign wanted heretics to recant, either for the sake of the heretics' eternal souls or for the sake of social order. Some heretics faced with this royal request felt bound to recant, as Cranmer did in his initial attempts to obey both his queen and his conscience, or as many Nicodemites did. Other heretics felt bound to die for their beliefs. The deciding factor in whether or not to recant was the personal authority that came through the individualized conscience, not temporal authority. Both heretics and monarchs generally agreed that only legitimate authority had the right to "bind" the conscience, and only God's authority was legitimate. However, a fierce debate centred around the question of whose earthly authority represented God's authority and so could bind the conscience.

Philip Melanchthon said that Christian consciences were bound to temporal authority only where it did not take away their freedom in Christ and attempt to make them once again slaves to the law.98 He used St. Paul to support this, who said "Ye are bought at a price; be not ye the servants of men."99 Perkins said that the binder of a conscience was whoever had the authority to "urge, cause, and constrain it in every action

96 Michael Questier, "Like Locusts All Over the World," The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, edited by Thomas McCoog (Woolbridge: Boydell Press, 1996), 265. 97 Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," 35. 98 Pauck, Melanchthon and Bucer, 68. 99 1 Corinthians 7:23. 86 either to accuse for sin, or excuse for well doing: or to say this may be done or it may not be done," and he acknowledged only one legitimate binder for the conscience: the commandments of God. "Therefore the word of God alone by an absolute and sovereign power binds conscience."100 If a state law followed God's law directly - such as the laws against murder, which could be directly linked to the commandment "thou shalt not murder" - the Christian was fully bound by that law. If a law violated or twisted God's law, the obligation to obey was lessened, especially if it was a law that regulated the ceremonies and rituals of the church. Perkins believed that laws about ceremonies had ceased to bind consciences after the resurrection of Christ.101 On the other hand, Becon and Tyndale believed that the sovereign represented God's authority, and should be obeyed both because it was expedient and because it was healthy for the conscience.

Catholic writers such as Gerard, Feckenham and Campion believed that the pope represented God's authority, and recognized the authority of the pope over the authority of the monarch in church law, especially after the papal bull of 1570 that released

Elizabeth's subjects from their duty of obedience.

Robert Home and John Feckenham debated the lawful binding of consciences in a

1566 exchange of declarations. Feckenham considered himself bound by the laws of the

Roman Catholic Church, not Elizabeth's oaths of supremacy; Home considered himself bound by the laws of the catholic church, the universal church headed by Elizabeth.

Home also thought that people were bound by conscience to royal laws, due to the

1 CO obedience owed to the sovereign, more than they were bound to the laws of the church.

Perkins, Discourse of Conscience, 12-13. Ibid, 20-21. Richard Home, An Answer by the Bishop of Winchester (London: 1566), 98d-105. 87

Feckenham disagreed that the church was subject to the state, or in fact that they were one authority, but he agreed that people owed temporal obedience to the state.

For such as one chief purpose and intent of this oath is, for a more safeguard to be had of the queen's royal person and of her highness' most quiet and prosperous reign, I do here presently therefore offer myself to receive a corporal oath upon the Evangelists, that I do verily think and am so persuaded in my conscience, that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other her highness' dominions and countries according as the express words are at the beginning of the oath.103

This statement shows that Feckenham acted on an authority created by his individualized conscience, which altered or denied other authorities. Home did not agree with this distinction, saying it was hypocritical for Feckenham to call Elizabeth the ruler of

England if he only allowed her to rule what was not already ruled by a foreign church.

The individual conscience and its personal authority further complicated the issue of the legitimacy of temporal authority by limiting it when it conflicted with God's will or word. Anti-Nicodemites often did this. William Tyndale, in his Obedience of a

Christian Man, strongly advocated that men obey their sovereign both because of the consequences of disobedience and for the sake of their consciences. However, he also made conscience a limitation to their obedience. For example, he exhorted judges to sit and judge under the laws of God, and warned them "not to break up into the consciences of men" with false teaching.104 John Bradford applied the same sort of limitation during his commission before Winchester. He said that he would accept the queen's offer of mercy if he could live a quiet life "without clog of conscience," but since that was

WilliamTyndale, The obedie[n]ce of a Christen man and how Christe[n] rulers ought to governe (London, 1528), G4r. 88 impossible he could not accept it,105 which meant that he put a higher value on his conscience than on his obligation to the sovereign. John Careless defended his writings by saying that he had written as he believed, "as I am bound to do in conscience."

Careless' interrogator, Martin, demanded to know by whose authority he wrote, and

Careless said it was by the authority of God's word, which was a common authority that bound Parliament and the Crown as much as it bound Careless himself.10 Robert King was accused of heresy due to several of his beliefs, and one.of them was that it was not lawful to put a man to death for his conscience's sake. This essentially meant that King considered conscience to be a higher authority than the temporal powers.

This personalized authority meant that if heretics did not feel in their consciences that the temporal authority represented God's authority or will, they could recant without spiritual or temporal penalty. William Perkins noted in his Discourse of Conscience that even in the Old Testament God's will overruled law: the law said not to murder, but when God told Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham obeyed God and attempted to kill his son. God saved Isaac in time, but if Abraham had killed him, it

1 OR would not have been murder. Like Becon had a generation earlier, Perkins also distinguished particular circumstances when oaths were not binding: namely, when they were induced through fraud, fear, or compulsion; when they were against God's word or

God's will; and when they were made without an understanding of what was done, such as oaths made with children or the mentally incapable.109

105 Foxe 1576, 1523. 106 Foxe 1563, 1531. 107 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials Vol 3, 333. 1 Perkins, Discourse of Conscience, 16. 109 Ibid, 73-75. 89

As David Martin Jones notes, the number of individuals "prepared to suffer at the

hands of church and state for what they deemed to be conscience's cause" was significant enough to present a real moral problem for the church and a political problem for the

state. The personalization of authority through the individual conscience was partly the reason this was such a problem. It resulted in an ongoing debate about the legitimacy of particular authorities, one strongly influenced by the writings and the actions of heretics. Some heretics conformed to authority, as the Nicodemites did, and some resisted authority, as casuists did. Both conformity and resistance could manifest in many ways, but the justification of both relied heavily on the authority of the individual conscience and how it chose to obey earthly authority. Nicodemites tried to justify obedience to the state through specific interpretations of Biblical authority that allowed them to conform. They could recant as the sovereign wanted them to do because of the obligation to obey, the belief that the state of the heart was enough to secure salvation, and their designation of particular articles as adiaphora. They soothed their consciences through their own interpretations of Biblical authority, and despite the plethora of anti-

Nicodemite literature, Nicodemism remained a popular theory for many heretics. In contrast, casuistry tried to justify disobedience to the state by rejecting the legitimacy of its authority. It took legitimacy away from oaths or promises, including those of recantation. Also, casuistry involved deciding what was true based on probability, and it determined the morality of a particular action on a case-by-case basis. Recantation could be justified through such casuist methodology as mental reservation, which made recantation easy. There was no risk of denying God when the use of additional silent phrases could render a lie true.

11 Jones, Conscience and Allegiance, 76. 90

Through their lives and through their deaths, heretics influenced the development of the individualized conscience. Their application of reason to faith and their personal influence over their consciences show how they altered the traditional idea of the universal conscience. Alexandra Walsham considers this development one of the signs that English society was changing from a shame culture to a guilt culture, which used the individual conscience as a means of keeping social order. David Martin Jones thinks that this process made what he calls self-fashioning possible, an idea which reflects the new personal interaction between individuals and God that made individuals more responsible for the shaping of their own moral codes. The individual conscience did certainly form an individual authority, and thus challenge the universal church and the universal conscience. However, other factors influenced the shifts in English culture as well. One of these factors can be found in the changes to the traditional death and the rituals of the deathbed, which is the topic of the next chapter.

111 Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," 48. 112 Jones, Conscience and Allegiance, 10. 91

Chapter Four: Until the End

Some sixteenth-century heretics adapted the tradition of the ars moriendi to apply it to the types of death they could expect during religious conflict. Their desire to die

good deaths influenced how they resisted authority and how they lived out their faith, for they believed that the good death not only ensured passage to heaven but also provided a final witness about the truth of their faith. Many heretics supported this belief and desire through Biblical authority, especially Revelation 2:10: "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast ...you into prison, that ye may be tried: and ye shall have tribulation: ...be thou faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life." Modern scholarship often associates this verse with sixteenth-century martyrdom,

an association that leads to the assumption that the death to which the verse refers is execution, and that in order to be faithful, a believer had to die a martyr's death. This over-simplifies the meaning of the verse, and the complexity of the religious atmosphere of the sixteenth century. Being faithful unto death meant maintaining personal faith and living a life of obedience right up to the moment when the soul separated from the body.

It might involve dying for the faith, but it also might justify creative truth, the control of the conscience, and the subversion of authority to avoid dying for the faith. Thus, this verse could apply not only to the martyrdom of sixteenth-century heretics, but also to their avoidance of martyrdom through recantation.

This chapter will examine the major changes in the rituals of the good death that occurred over the sixteenth century through heretics' resistance of authority. This includes the new personal responsibility for salvation that replaced the emphasis on salvation through the church, and what Susan Karant-Nunn calls a shift from the ars 92 moriendi, the art of dying well, to the ars vivendi, the art of living well, or as she puts it:

"preparing throughout life to meet one's Maker."1 It will also discuss the ways in which heretics maintained particular beliefs of the ars moriendi, such as that the dying had to let go of the world, reject heresy, and resist particular temptations in order to die a good death and achieve salvation. The result was a new form of the ars moriendi, through which recantation could actually help heretics avoid bad deaths.

The rituals and beliefs inherent in the fifteenth-century ars moriendi provided the basic structure for the good deaths of the sixteenth century. Caxton published A Little

Treatise Called the Ars Moriendi in 1490, and it was re-published several times in the next decade. In 1498, The Doctrinal of Death was published, which followed the same format as the Ars Moriendi. These works were divided into distinct parts. They exhorted the dying to suffer patiently and die gladly, warned them of the five temptations which would torment them as they died, listed the questions which attendants should ask the dying, described the instructions the attendants gave to the dying, and provided prayers that the dying should say. As Nancy Beaty notes in her book The Craft of Dying, these early treatises treated death as something to be feared, and emphasized that death was

"difficult, dangerous, and horrible." They also focused more on instructing the attendant who led the deathbed scene, preferably a priest or cleric, than they did on comforting the dying person. Comfort was not the main message of these early treatises; they emphasized the supernatural struggle for the soul between angels and demons that took place on the deathbed and warned that eternal damnation resulted if the demons won.

Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), 149. Nancy Beaty, The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary Tradition of the Ars Moriendi in England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 7. 93

The Doctrinal of Death phrased it the most bluntly: its anonymous author said in its preamble that the treatise would show attendants how to fight for salvation, since "none shall have the kingdom of heaven but such as fightest for it."3 The dying person did not have a great role to play in these treatises, and had little say in the procedures of the deathbed. Alberto Tenenti describes the dying person in these treatises as just a witness in his own trial.4

In the sixteenth-century treatises of the ars moriendi, the first and most significant change was in the attitude toward death. Heretics resisted the religious authority that portrayed death as a terrifying and dangerous supernatural battle. In their writings about dying well, they admitted that death was painful and frightening, but advocated that dying people could reduce that fear through the power of prayer and through trust in the goodness of God. Instead of a fight for the soul between heaven and hell, death became simply the soul's passage from one life to a far better one. Those who died in the Lord were blessed, and could die gladly without fear. This was a consistent message in the writings of such men as John Calvin, Thomas Becon, Martin Luther,

Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Thomas Cranmer and John Bradford. In Bradford's case, both the stated purpose and tone of his sermon Against the Fear of Death shows the change: as he said, he intended to comfort and edify people who were concerned about their salvation. He did this by discussing the four kinds of death: natural, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. A natural death was the end of the physical life and the continuing life of the soul, and a temporal death was when "the body and affections [were] mortified that the spirit may live." Neither of those were something to fear, for if the dying

3 Anonymous, The Doctrynalle ofDethe (London, 1498), A3r. 4 Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our Death (New Jersey: Alfred A Knopf, 1977), 109-110. 94 accepted the sacrifice of Christ and the mercy of God, they could pass on to eternal life.

More frightening were the spiritual and eternal deaths: a spiritual death was "the body living when the soul is dead," and an eternal death was the death of the body and the damnation of the soul to hell.5 The only death that offered no hope for another life was the eternal death, so that was the one to fear the most, but fortunately the eternal death, as well as the spiritual, could be avoided. As Bradford said:

My dear brother, I would have thee answer me one question: that is, whether thou desirest pardon or no: whether thou doest repent or no: whether thou doest unfeignedly purpose, if thou shouldest live, to amend thy life or no. If thou doest even before God so purpose, and desirest his mercy, then harken (my good brother) what the Lord saith unto thee: I am he, I am he, that for my own sake will do away thine offences. If thy sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow, for I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner.6

Bradford was not the only writer to display this changing attitude. In Cranmer's

Book of Homilies, he included "An Exhortation Against the Fear of Death," which said that: "...[0]ur life is hidden with Christ in God Why then shall we fear to die?

Considering the manifold, and comfortable promises of the Gospel, and of holy

Scriptures? God the Father hath given us everlasting life."7 In 1534, Thomas Lupset wrote The Way of Dying Well, which expanded on the concept of a good death not for an audience of deathbed attendants, but for people thinking about their own deaths. This work combined the classical methods of dying well with the medieval traditions, and attempted to apply Christian principles to some of Lupset's heroes of the pre-Christian era, such as Canius. Canius was put to death by a cruel tyrant and showed himself

John Bradford, Afrutefull treatise andful ofheauenly consolation against thefeare of Death (London, 1564), A2v-A4r. 6 Ibid, Civ. 7 Cranmer, Book of Homilies, Dlv. 95

"worthy of eternal life" through his bravery, patience, and dignity in the face of death.

To Lupset, dying well meant focusing on the better life that was to come, and looking forward to the freeing of the soul from the heavy burden of the body. He considered dying well to be dying gladly, "for whosoever dies gladly, he departs from this life in a sure hope to live again."8

This new attitude toward death led to the other major changes in the ars moriendi tradition. In order to die a good death as people blessed in the Lord, Christians had to have a real, personal, and lifelong faith. No one and nothing else could save them. That change caused further resistance to religious authority, which resulted in the disappearance of the role of the church in the good death. The priest became unnecessary during the hour of death, and the rituals merely superstition. In the early treatises of the ars moriendi, the battle for the soul was won through prayer, exhortations, questions and other rituals, summarized as follows in Caxton's Ars Moriendi:

Remember the great benefits of God done for him unto that time and especially of the passion of our Lord and then is to be read some story of saints or the seven psalms with the litany of our lady ...in part or in whole with others. And ever the image of the crucifix is to be had in his sight with other. And holy water is oftimes to be cast upon and about him for the avoiding of evil spirits that then be full ready to take their advantage of the soul if they may. And then and ever make him cry for mercy and grace and for the help of our blessed lady and of other saints in whom before he had a singular trust and love, and thereupon to make his prayers if he may.9

The last moments of life determined salvation, and the dying person cried for mercy to influence the battle going on right then, not to ask forgiveness for any past transgressions.

Thomas Lupset, A compendious and a very fruteful treatyse, teachynge the waye ofdyenge well written to afrende, by theflowre oflerned men of his tyme (London, 1534), lid. 9 Anonymous, Ars Moriendi, A2r. 96

The attendants took the leading role by asking questions, performing rituals such as prayers to the saints and the Virgin, casting holy water about, and holding up the image of the crucifix.

These rituals changed as the sixteenth century progressed. In 1561, Thomas

Becon published what would become the most popular how-to-die manual of the century,

The Sick Man's Salve. The Salve was written as a dialogue between Philemon, some of his neighbours, and their dying friend Epaphroditus. It was much more detailed than

Lupset's work, and it was both a practical guide for sick people passing through their last hours and a guide for how to live a Christian life.11 The characters conducted a long and detailed discussion about living and dying in the Christian faith, and based it all on the authority of Scripture. In The Sick Man's Salve, the crucifix, faith in the saints and the

Virgin Mary, and the use of holy water were unnecessary, and in fact despised. When

Epaphroditus asked how he could resist the devil's temptations, Philemon responded scornfully, "Not as the superstitious papists were wont to do, with casting of holy water about your chamber, with laying holy bread in your window, with pinning a cross made of hallowed palms at your beds' head, nor with [bell] ringing, or such other devilish ceremonies." Epaphroditus plaintively asked, "How then?" and Philemon answered:

"With faith, with prayer, and with the word of God."12 Philemon, who was modelled after Becon himself, emphasized that Epaphroditus' life of faith would save him, not any prayers or dirges after his death. "So many as die are either faithful or unfaithful. If they

10 Nancy Beaty notes its popularity in her book The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary Tradition of the Ars Moriendi in England: it went through eleven editions between 1561 and 1600, and another seven betweeen 1600 and 1632. In his biography of Becon, Derrick Sherwin Bailey said that the Salve was popular enough to be mentioned in a play by Ben Jonson. 11 Beaty, The Craft of Dying, 115. 12 Thomas Becon, The sycke mans salue VVherin thefaithfull christians may learne both how to behaue them selues paciently and thankefully (London, 1561), 352. 97 be faithful, so have they in possession straightaway eternal life. If they be unfaithful, then does the wrath of God abide upon them, and they receive the reward of infidelity, which is everlasting damnation."13

This change in deathbed ritual spread even beyond the Protestant confession.

Pedro de Soto, a friend of Reginald Pole, worked at Oxford for a short time during the reign of Mary I. In 1578, his The Manner to Die Well was translated into English and published, and it aimed to strengthen Catholics who were dying under persecution for their faith. De Soto's treatment of the role of works in salvation and his emphasis on death as a punishment for original sin reflected traditional Catholic beliefs,14 but saints, holy water, crucifixes, masses, and bell ringing did not have a role to play in his new version of the ars moriendi. This might be a reflection of the beliefs of de Soto himself, the beliefs of the translator, or the work of the editor, but it shows that even those people who maintained the traditional faith accepted changes in the traditional rituals of death over the course of the sixteenth century.

De Soto's work included a list of questions to ask the dying person, but it did not assume that a priest would be asking them. In The Sick Man's Salve, Epaphroditus asked for his pious friends, not a priest. In William Bullein's Consolation and Comfort Against

Death (1564), friends gathered to help and mourn the dying, not a priest, and the same thing happened in Christopher Sutton's Learn to Die (1600). In many cases, the dying people themselves made the request for friends to gather, so that their friends could help them through their final hours. The construction of a good death became an individual task, as shown by a funeral sermon by John Hooper, published in 1549.

13 Ibid, 179. 14 Pedro De Soto, The Manner to Dye Well (London, 1578), 27. 98

We will more at large declare what it is to die in the Lord. To die in the Lord is to die in ...Christ, whom he sent into the world for the redemption thereof, which is done when four things are observed. First, if the sick man in his sickness call unto his remembrance what he has done all his life against the ...Lord's commandments. The second, if upon his examination he find his brother and neighbour hurt by him in goods or fame, he study unfeignedly to satisfy him as near as he can in both. The third, that the sick man acknowledge unto the Lord, as much as he has offended against the commandments ...with a detestation of them all. The fourth, that he ask of God ...remission of them all.... The assurance of faith by grace obtained is the sick man's part, and as many as be with him, religiously to pray, for the perseverance of the same.

In that sermon the sick man himself went through the steps that would allow him to die a good death, while the other people present played only a supportive role. Also, the sick man's personal faith played a role in helping him persevere. Personal faith was part of the good death in The Sick Man's Salve as well. The friends helped Epaphroditus prepare for his death by asking him questions about his faith and prompting him to list the articles of the faith and recite the creed. Epaphroditus went through the same steps as those listed in Hooper's sermon, and maintained a generally steady faith, although he occasionally allowed his pain and weakness to make him afraid. In those times he asked his friends to reassure him by reciting Scripture.

With this shift to personal responsibility for salvation, personal faith throughout life became part of dying well. As Lupset put it, no one could die well who did not live well.1 In 1584, Edmund Bunny's interpretation of Parsons' Christian Exercise summarized what people had to do to die a good death, and it required first that they live

John Hooper, Afunerall oratyon made the xiiij. day oflanuary by lohn Hoper, the yere of oursaluation, 1549 (London, 1549), A5v, A6r. 16 Lupset, The Way of Dying Well, 3. 99 a good life by flying from evil and doing good. In Sutton's Learn to Die, which was the longest and most detailed guide to the art of dying well since Becon's The Sick

Man's Salve, he made an interesting reversal that connected a good life to a good death even more closely. Instead of saying that living well would help people die well, he claimed that learning to die well would help people live well, because seeing what the good death required before death came would inspire people to live better lives. He emphasized that steadfast faith in life was the cornerstone for a good death, for it enabled

1 R the dying to endure pain patiently, and humbly ask for and receive God's mercy.

Many of the writers of the sixteenth-century guides to dying well were also the heretics who stood against established religious doctrine. Many of them were also martyred. It is not surprising, then, that they looked back to the early Christian martyrs and used them as exemplars for the dying. The deaths of the early Christian martyrs showed the steadfast faith that was so important in dying a good death, and was expected of later Christians whether they too were martyred or died natural deaths. Foxe's introduction to his 1563 Acts and Monuments held up the early martyrs as role models:

"we look upon the number of them that suffered, or the greatness of their torments, or their constancy in dying, or also consider the fruit that they brought to the amendment of men's lives, and the increase of the gospel,"19 and Foxe compared John Hooper to

Polycarpus due to his constancy of faith.20 Thomas Cranmer praised the early martyrs'

Edmund Bunny, A booke of Christian exercise appertaining to resolution, that is, shewing how that we should resolve our selves to become Christians indeed (London, 1584), 23. Christopher Sutton, Disce mori. = Learne to die A religious discourse, moouing euery Christian man to enter into a serious remembrance of his ende (London, 1600), 16, 142, 145. 19 Foxe 1563, 16. 20 Foxe 1570, 1685. constancy in faith and the patience and charity they showed in their deaths. Miles

Huggarde said that it was their patience, charity, love, constancy and modesty that made the early martyrs worthy of their calling.22 People with steadfast faith pleased God, followed the example of Christ, gained strength during persecution, and showed patience in suffering. They helped prove the truth of the faith for which, or in which, they died.

As Sutton put it, struggling throughout life to maintain a steadfast faith was not "beating the air" but earning the crown of glory. Steadfast faith came from God, who provided "a constant mind ...and [enabled people to] be faithful unto death."23 In Nicholas Ridley's farewell letter, he both claimed peace of mind due to his steadfast faith, and advocated a

94 steadfast faith for those he was leaving behind. Bishop John Fisher wrote a farewell letter to his sister in which he said that he feared that he had not been faithful enough, and that might affect his ability to die a good death. "For in this hangs all our wealth, for if a man dies well, he shall after his death nothing want that he would desire, but his appetite shall be satiated in every point at the full. And if he die amiss, no provision shall avail him that ever he made before."25

Consistently acknowledging the sovereignty of God was a sign of steadfast faith.

As Thomas Becon put it in his A Pleasant Nosegay: That ye may walk before God, certain things are to be observed, first that you have a sure, constant, steadfast, true and [living] faith, to believe that which the Holy Scriptures teach of God,

Thomas Cranmer, A confutatio[n] ofvnwritte[n] verities both bi the holye scriptures and moste auncient autors (London, 1556), B4v. 22 Miles Huggarde, The displaying of the Protestantes, [and] sondry their practises, with a description of diuers their abuses of late frequented (London, 1556), 50. 23 Sutton, Learn to Die, 196-197. Nicholas Ridley, A frendly farewel which Master Doctor Ridley, late Bishop of London didwrite beinge prisoner in Oxeforde (London, 1559), F4r-F5r. John Fisher, A spirituall consolation, written by Iohn Fyssher Bishoppe of Rochester, to hys sister Elizabeth, at suche tyme as hee was prisoner in the Tower of London (London, 1578), B3v. and of his works ....This must you believe undoubtedly, if you will walk before God. You heard also, that as God is able, so will he help so many as call on him in spirit and truth. This also must you believe without any hesitation or doubting. For without this faith no man can please God, nor come unto 96

him aright.

Becon returned to this theme in The Sick Man's Salve, when he said that God allowed suffering in order to test and strengthen the faith that people were supposed to develop 97 throughout their lives. He further illustrated it as his character Epaphroditus struggled patiently to accept God's will for him, protesting that the pain was too much and that it was too cruel that only two days before he had been perfectly healthy. Philemon insisted that Epaphroditus change his attitude to better reflect someone who has lived a Christian life. Neighbour Epaphroditus, God give you a patient heart, a quiet and contented mind. According to your request, I am come unto you with certain of my neighbours, being very desirous to see you, and notwithstanding not a little sorry to behold you in this case, not that you are visited of God with sickness, but that you so impatiently take this loving visitation of God, which chances unto you, not for your hurt and destruction, but for your commodity and salvation.28

John Calvin expanded this point in his The Life and Conversations of A Christian

Man, when he reminded his listeners that those who accepted Christ only with their lips were sophists and hypocrites, and to be faithful to God regardless was the mark of a true

Christian. He reminded them that "we are not our own, therefore, as nigh as we can, let us forget our own selves and all things that be ours. Again, we pertain unto the Lord, therefore let us live and die unto him: we pertain unto the Lord, therefore let his wisdom

Thomas Becon, A pleasaunt newe nosegaye full of many godly and swete floures (London, 1543), N2r. Becon, Sick Man's Salve, 15. Ibid, 12-13. 102 and will rule all our acts or deeds." To live or die did not matter; deliverance through life or through death was still the deliverance of God.

In his sermons on the book of Job, Calvin encouraged believers to submit to

God's will whether it meant death or life. He said that people who were sick or afflicted by physical sufferings (such as imprisonment) should pray for deliverance and accept it in whatever form God chose to provide it. Heaven might be preferable, but suffering on earth had a purpose and was part of God's plan. Thus, even while people longed for heaven, they should be willing to live on earth. Calvin said that Job did not do this, and that was where he fell into error and missed the point of all the suffering. Instead of making demands on God, he should have been following God's will.

Job then complained that God doth now execute such a rigour against him, and yet no action commenced against him. Thus you see the first point whereof he speaks. The second is, That God should call him. That is to say, that his case might be laid forth orderly, as when rigour ceases, and men deal by order of law. Well (says he) let the action be commenced, and I will no more hide me from thy sight: that is to say, I will not refuse any thing whatsoever it be: dispose of me as it shall please thee, and I will be patient, and obey thee in all points.

Job demanded to know why God would punish him when he did not deserve it, and pleaded for God to stop tormenting him and let him die in peace. Calvin pointed out that

God's servants did not have the right to make demands on God or ask him to explain his decisions, as Job was trying to do in this passage. Their task was to obey on earth until they were taken to heaven, to pray for deliverance, and to accept it in whatever form it took.

John Calvin, Of the life or conuersation of a Christen man, a right godly treatise, wyrtten[sic] in the latin tonge (London, 1549), C2v. John Calvin, Sermons of Master Iohn Caluin, vpon the booke of lob. Translated out of French by Arthur Golding (London, 1574), 262. 103

Sutton also brought out this message in his Learn to Die, saying that it did not matter how long someone lived but how well they lived, and that they maintained their faith in God's good will and protection. He emphasized that God had the power to provide life or death and that bowing to God's will was important, regardless of where that submission led. He said that:

To procure the continuance of life ...is allowable. To avoid things hurtful to the preservation thereof, is behoveful. Wilfully to hinder our own health is not only against the course of nature, but a way to tempt the very God of nature. To wish either to be gone sooner, or to stay longer in this earthly station, than it shall seem good unto Him, by whose appointment we all stand, is a part of great ingratitude.32

God decided when people left this earth, and it was wrong to try to hasten that decision or slow it down. Faithful believers bowed to God's will through their efforts to preserve life and health, while maintaining a steady willingness to die if God so willed it. As martyr

Richard Roth wrote in a letter to his friends: "O be joyful even unto death: fear it not.

....[B]e strong, let your hearts be of good comfort, and wait you still for the Lord. He is at hand...[he will] deliver you which way he sees best."33

For heretics, this part of the ars moriendi supported their manipulations of truth and circumstances and justified their escape and exile, for subverting authority in this way allowed them to save their own lives or the lives of others. It also legitimized their acceptance of the opportunity to recant. The authorities might consider gaining a recantation to be a sign of successful repression, but to some heretics it actually represented God's deliverance. God did deliver his people from persecution, and that deliverance had to be accepted with gratitude. Becon noted this in the Sick Man's Salve,

31 Sutton, Learn to Die, 160-161. 32 Ibid, 29-30. 33Foxel563, 1643. using the examples of St. Paul, Christ, and some Old Testament characters to prove the point. St. Paul said during his imprisonment that it did not matter to him if he lived or

died. If he lived, he could work for Christ, and if he died he could be with Christ. Jesus prayed for deliverance in the Garden of Gethsemane. Daniel was sent to the lions' den, but was delivered from that death. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were delivered from the fiery furnace. King Hezekiah prayed during his illness and God delivered him.3

Faith did not have to lead to martyrdom in order to be steadfast, and recantation was not automatically a sign of wavering faith. As noted in previous chapters, the purpose of the recantation depended on how the recantation was phrased, the circumstances surrounding it, the conscience of the person recanting, and the authority under which the recantation occurred. Most importantly, heretics had to remember that recanting ideas or actions was acceptable, but denying or disowning God was not. John

Foxe gave an example of this through the story of Richard Denton. Foxe describes him as "a shrinker from the Gospel" who refused martyrdom. His punishment: he suffered a bad death when he burned to death in a house fire.35 Whether or not this story is literally true, it illustrates the sixteenth-century conviction that it was not right to deny God. To deny or reject God was a sign of wavering faith that could lead to a bad death.

The admonitions of the anti-Nicodemites and some of the exiles of the sixteenth century can give the impression that the culture of the sixteenth century considered martyrdom the only certain path to heaven. It is true that anti-Nicodemites and some other writers certainly held up martyrdom as the ideal, and that their sermons and treatises frequently mentioned the rewards enjoyed by martyrs. However, they held up

34 Becon, Sick Man's Salve, 110-111. 35 Foxe 1583, 2103. martyrdom as the ideal because it provided clear examples of people following God's will to the end. The real goal was to not to be martyred, but to follow God's will and earn the crown of life by being faithful unto death. This might explain why people like

Bilney, Becon, Crome, Bainham and Latimer were still considered heroes of the faith despite their recantations. They recanted under advice or with a particular skill in creative truth, but did not deny their faith or shrink from the Gospel. They were willing to die for Christ when God willed it, but did not simply throw their lives away.

Recantation allowed them to continue spreading the word, and to continue strengthening their friends, family and converts. Barnes agreed to recant when people pointed out that he would be able to do much more in the future than he had already done, considering the vastness of his learning.36 John Tewkesbury returned to preaching a month after his recantation. Bilney used the time between his recantation and his martyrdom to preach and study, so that when a second opportunity came he would be ready to "go up to

Jerusalem," as he put it.37 Thus, their actions subverted the authority that had required them to recant.

Recantation might be a means of living out the sort of good Christian life that would lead to the good death. As the next part of this chapter will show, recantation might also be the way to avoid dying a bad death. Recantation might allow heretics to prepare for later martyrdom so that their deaths would promote the cause for which they died. It might provide time to repent sins and resist temptations, so that death would not endanger salvation. Finally, recantation might enable heretics to ensure that their deaths would not be suicide or false martyrdom. Some of the rituals and beliefs of the fifteenth-

36 Foxe 1563, 606. 37Foxel570, 1146. century ars moriendi tradition remained in force in the sixteenth century, and the three that affected heretics the most were that the dying had to let go of the world, reject heresy, and resist particular temptations in order to die a good death and achieve salvation. Heretics' recantations were justified if they were faced with martyrdom and felt that they could not fulfill these requirements, for failing to fulfill them could lead to the bad death that signified eternal damnation. The new emphasis on individual responsibility for salvation and the life of faith in the sixteenth-century ars moriendi did not remove the possibility of damnation, nor did it remove the dread of it.

It is difficult to reconcile the heretics' fear of a bad death with the belief that steadfast faith provided strength and power that flowed directly from God and erased all fear. However, just as there were different forms of death, there were different forms of fear. Servile fear of God was different from a healthy prudent fear, and as shown in the second chapter faith had to be balanced with reason. God was faithful and would not allow temptation beyond what a person could bear, as 1 Corinthians 10:13 promised.

John Scory emphasized this in a 1555 sermon, saying that anyone who called on God would be delivered, because God was merciful and promised to help people when they were in trouble.38 Thomas Becon said:

For God is faithful, which will not suffer us to be tempted above our strength, but shall in the midst of the temptation, make a way, that we may be able to bear it. For the Lord himself says: forasmuch as he has put his trust in me: I will deliver him, I will be good to him because he has known my name. He has cried unto me, and I graciously hear him, I am with him in trouble, I will deliver him and bring him to honour.39

John Scory, An Epistle Written by John Scory the late Bishop of Colchester Unto All the Faithful (London 1555), B3r. 39 Becon, Sick Man's Salve, 112. Recantation was justified if a temptation grew beyond what a person could bear, which could happen under the weight of additional burdens and difficulties, such as illness or injury. Recantation could also deliver heretics who were not yet ready for martyrdom and give them a chance to grow stronger. In Bilney's case, an incident just before his execution shows how much of a difference the time he gained through recanting made in his faith. Some of his friends came up to encourage him, and Bilney told them not to worry, for he did not feel weak and ill as he had at his first arrest. Instead, he was peaceful, strong and determined, and compared his faith to a once storm-tossed ship sailing calmly into a safe harbour.40

Prudent fear also lead some heretics to recant because a bad death could affect how others remembered them. Under the sixteenth-century form of the ars moriendi, the hour of death was not the time span for a supernatural battle, but it did show the people left behind whether the dying person gained eternal life or not. Good deaths meant that salvation was achieved; bad deaths indicated that the torments of hell had begun. A good death was quiet and calm, and the dying person was patient, accepting pain and torment meekly. They declared their faith, confessed their sins and made restitution if possible, distributed their worldly goods with justice, and spoke eloquently to those around them about faith and the assurance of salvation. They prayed constantly, asking for divine help in their time of need, and slipped away as if going to sleep. In contrast, raving, speechlessness, spasms, seizures, cursing God, or losing control marked a bad death.

It was important to "put on a good show," as Houlbrooke phrases it,41 and Beaty agrees. She thinks that this was the reason why so many people chose to publish

40Foxe 1583, 1012. 41 Houlbrooke, "Introduction," in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, 28. 108 accounts of the good deaths of their loved ones during the sixteenth century. With the assurances of the church and the rituals of prayers, donations, and masses gone, some other way had to be found to show the world that the dead person could be counted among the saints in heaven.42 This could explain why John Geninges wrote an account of the death in 1591 of his brother, priest Edmund Geninges. Some people claimed that

Edmund died a bad death because he cried out "oh, it smarts" while he was being dismembered, which showed a lack of quiet calm acceptance. In his account, John admitted that his brother had said "oh, it smarts," but emphasized that he also cried out to the saints for succour, praying continuously for strength and mercy and enduring pain with patience,43 which were signs of a good death. In 1592, Philip Stubbes published A

Crystal Glass for Christian Women, which described the "virtuous life and Christian death" of his wife Katherine Stubbes. She died of a fever two weeks after the birth of her first child, and both her life and her death showed that she died a good death. Stubbes describes how in her life she was faithful to him and her duties, lived a life of devotion and steadfastness of faith, rejected the pleasures of the earthly world in favour of the pleasures of heaven during the progression of her illness, and considered her attachment to God to be far more binding even than the joys of motherhood.44 Robert Southwell also described a good death when comforting a friend about the death of his sister:

In sum, she was an honour to her predecessors, a light to her age, and a pattern to her posterity; neither was her conclusion different from her premisses, or her death from her life, she showed no dismay, being warned of her danger, carrying in her conscience the safe conduct of innocency. But having sent

42 Beaty, The Craft of Dying, 154. John Geninges, The life and death of Mr. Edmund Geninges priest, crowned with martyrdome at London (London, 1614), 85-86. Philip Stubbes, A christal glassefor christian women containing, a most excellent discourse, of the godly life and Christian death of Mistresse Katherine Stubs (London, 1592), A2r. her desires before to heaven with a mild countenance, and a most calm mind, in more hope than fear, she expected her own passage, she commended both her duty and goodwill to all her friends, and cleared her heart from all grudge towards her enemies, wishing true happiness to them both. ...[S]he made open profession that she did die true to her religion, true to her husband, true to God and the world, she enjoyed her judgement as long as she breathed, her body earnestly offering its last devotions, supplying in thought what faintness suffered not her tongue to utter: in the end, when her glass was run out, and death began to challenge his interest, ...she desired them ...to let her go to God, and her hopes calling her to eternal kingdoms, as one rather falling asleep than dying.45

This account shows the particular elements that were important for a good death: to be able to speak, to confess and offer forgiveness, to submit to the will of God, and to die a calm, peaceful, and restful death. In Southwell's opinion, this was proof of the lady's salvation and placement in heaven, and he thought that knowledge should comfort the family she left behind.

This behavioural expectation for a good death also applied to heretics facing martyrdom. They too had to be able to put on a good show, and exhibit all the characteristics described above. Their behaviour was still more important, because illness, weakness due to torture, and any waverings in faith could destroy any chance that their death would be considered martyrdom. As Brad Gregory puts it in his Salvation at

Stake, "dying well remained important to both martyrs and martyrological writers.

Without it, fellow believers would not have been edified nor potential converts moved.

Moreover, to have ignored the martyrs' extraordinary courage would have slighted their witness."46 This explains why Foxe mentioned behaviours that reflected good deaths when describing the deaths of the martyrs. They all seemed to die peacefully and calmly,

Robert Southwell, The triumphs ouer death: or, A consolatorie epistle, for afflicted mindes, in the affects of dying friends (London, 1595), B4r-B4v. 46 Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 322. despite the various horrific pains they endured. He reported that Joyce Lewes spent the evening before her execution praying with her friends, went to execution with such patience and cheer on her face that it "passed man's reason," and died calmly, lifting her eyes up to heaven. He emphasized the piety of Alexander Gouch and Alice Driver, for they died peacefully and bravely, asking only that they be allowed to pray first.48 He mentioned that Richard Bayfield endured a slow fire for a half an hour, and still died

"manfully and joyfully," praying peacefully until he died.49

Foxe does not treat the martyrs who had previously recanted any differently. He uses the same language and proofs to show that they died good deaths, meaning that their sacrifice was accepted and their place in heaven was assured. Cecily Ormes kissed the stake when she was brought to the execution site and said '"welcome the sweet cross of

Christ.'" Then, "after the tormentors had kindled the fire to her, she said, 'my soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoice in God my saviour,' and then ...looked up to heaven, and ...yielded her life unto the lord as quietly as she had been in a slumber."50

James Bainham's death received special mention, due to Bainham's last words:

'O you papists, behold, you look for miracles, and here now you may see a miracle, for in this fire I feel no more pain, than if I were in a bed of down: but it is to me as sweet as a bed of roses.' These words spoke he in the midst of the flaming fire, when his legs and his arms (as I said) were half consumed.51

The joy that Bainham showed, as well as the actual miracle of his lack of pain, emphasized that this was a good death. The story of Anne Askew, who recanted after her

47 Foxe 1563, 1632. 48 Foxe 1576, 1942. 49 Foxe 1583, 1024. 50 Foxe 1563, 1631. 51 Foxe 1576, 1002. first examination, ends in the same fashion: "being compassed in with flames of fire, as a blessed sacrifice unto God, she slept in the Lord in 1546, leaving behind her a singular example of Christian constancy for all men to follow."52 Hugh Latimer, who had recanted once and equivocated many times, appeared to bathe in the fire as he died. He asked the Lord to receive his soul, and died quickly and peacefully.53 Thomas Cranmer recanted and then un-recanted immediately before his death, and Foxe uses that to emphasize the power of the story.

And when the wood was kindled, and the fire began to burn near him, stretching out his arm, he put his right hand in the flame, which he held so steadfast and immovable (saving that once with the same hand he wiped his face) that all men might see his hand burned before his body was touched. His body did so abide the burning of the flames, with such constancy and steadfastness, that standing always in one place without moving of his members, he seemed to move no more than the stake to which he was bound: his eyes were lifted up into heaven, and oftentimes he repeated his unworthy right hand, so long as his voice would suffer him: and using often the words of Stephen, 'Lord Jesus receive my spirit,' in the greatness of the flames he gave up the ghost.54

It was not those who recanted who died bad deaths, but those who denied God.

This included weak Christians, criminals, witches, persecutors and heretics. In his The

Way of Dying Well, Thomas Lupset contrasted his story of Canius' good death with the bad death of a criminal named Frances Philippe.

Frances Philippe, that within few years passed was put to execution with us for treason, the which died so cowardly, in so great pangs of fear, that he seemed extracted from his wits, scant for quaking and trembling the wretch could speak one word. The few words that he could with much stuttering sound, were only in the declaration of his despair, nor nothing was seen nor heard of him, but weeping, lamenting, wringing

Foxe 1563, 681. Foxe 1563, 1378. Ibid, 1502. of his hands, with banning the hour and day of his birth, continually sighing, as though his heart should have burst for sorrow.55

Cowardice, fear, the inability to speak, repenting not of sins but of birth, and overwhelming sorrow made this a bad death. Foxe made a point of including accounts of bad deaths in his later editions of Acts and Monuments, and in his examples those who died bad deaths had rejected the gospel, persecuted Protestant martyrs, or both. John

Apowel mocked William Mauldon for his beliefs, and Mauldon warned him he was not mocking him but God. Apowel continued, and only a few days later died raving and insane, strapped to his bed.56 A plowman named Leaur mocked Latimer's martyrdom in

1565, and soon after hanged himself. The tormentors of George Eagles, Harvey and

William Swallow, died awful deaths, as did Friar Campbell, who accused Patrick

Hamilton. The servant of the sheriff who led the execution of martyr James Abbes went into a frenzy during the execution and died slowly, raving that Abbes was saved and he himself was damned. Several other people died sudden, grotesque or miserable deaths, such as Alexander the Keeper of Newgate, who died by rotting from within.58

Foxe and Lupset had particular agendas to promote in their writing, which makes the modern reader question the accuracy of these stories. However, whether or not these stories were literally true is not as important as the elements within them. People who died bad deaths were persecutors of the faith, and persecutors died bad deaths. They suffered horribly, spasms and contortions wracked their bodies, or they died unable to speak, either to confess or to declare their faith. None of the peace, calm and assurance

55 Lupset, The Way to Die Well, lid. 56 Foxe 1583, 2102. 57 Ibid, 2103. 58 Ibid, 2101. 113 of the good death could be found in them. This shows the universality of the elements that marked good and bad deaths, and the strength of the desire to die well. In this, avoiding a bad death was as important as cultivating a good one. Recantation could be the safest option for individuals faced with a situation for which they were not prepared.

For example, according to the ars moriendi a dying person had to be willing to let go of the world and embrace the next in order to achieve a good death. Philip Stubbes used this point to further prove that his wife Katherine had died a good death; he emphasized that she was willing to let go of the world throughout her life, saying that her friends often asked her why she did not care more for the world. Her answer was: '"[I]f I should be a friend unto this world, I should be an enemy to God: for God and the world are two contraries. John biddeth me, love not the world, nor anything in the world: affirming, that if I love the world, the love of the father is not in me.'"59 Such surrender was not so easy for most people, including some heretics. Erasmus mourned that so many people could not let go of the world, including some priests who preferred the "vain and pleasant things of the world" over living for the Gospel.60

Being unable to let go of the world was often connected with the sin of avaritia, which Aries defined as "excessive attachment to temporalia or external things, to spouses or worldly friends or material wealth, or to other things that men have loved too much during their lives."61 James Bainham struggled with this sin while he was in prison and trying to decide whether or not to recant. When Hugh Latimer asked him if he had a wife, he started to cry, and said:

59 Stubbes, A Crystal Glass, A3r. Erasmus, An exhortation to the diligent studye of scripture, made by Erasmus Roterodamus. And tra[n]slated in to inglissh. An exposition in to the seventh chaptre of the first pistle to the Corinthians (London, 1529), A7v. 61 Aries, The Hour of Our Death, 131. O sir, ...you have touched me very nigh. I have a wife, as good a woman as ever man was joined unto; and I shall leave her now only without substance, or anything to live by, but for my sake she shall be an opprobie unto the world, to be pointed at of every man on this sort, 'Yonder goeth the heretic's wife.' And therefore shall she be defamed for my sake, which is no small grief unto me.

Latimer rebuked him for this attitude, reminding him that God was able to be a husband to his wife and a father to his children, and that it showed infidelity if he did not trust God to take care of them. Other admonitions against avaritia can be found in Bunny's

Christian Exercise, when he required that the dying let go of the world and everything in it. Thomas Cranmer wrote a letter just before his execution that was meant to edify the people he was leaving behind. He began it with: "Therefore this shall be my first exhortation, that you set not overmuch, by this present world, but upon the world to come, and upon God, and learn to know what this lesson means of Saint John: the love of this world ...is hatred unto God."63 In The Sick Man's Salve, Philemon had to encourage Epaphroditus to let go of his concerns for his family and his goods, which

Epaphroditus did by first making a will and then by saying goodbye to them all.

Epaphroditus later mourned the loss of his goods and all the things of the earth, and

Philemon reminded him that all of these things would pass away and decay, but the world to which he went would not. Sutton gave the same message in his Learn to Die:

For worldly possessions here we found them, and here we leave them. The time of our enjoying of them is uncertain, because we see them ebbing and flowing like the sea, and we do not possess them as we ought, unless we are ready at times best beseeming unto God to leave them. But the loss of friends cannot be but grievous unto flesh and blood; to leave wife and children cannot

Corrie, George Elwes, ed. Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1845, 224. Thomas Cranmer, All the submyssyons, and recantations of Thomas Cranmer, late Archebyshop of Canterburye truely set forth both in Latyn and Englysh (London, 1556), Blr. 64 Becon, Sick Man's Salve, 323-324. but go near the heart, where affection has been ruled. Yea, but if we open the other eye, and see whether we are going to Christ that redeemed us, and is nearer than all, we leave pleasant delights, but receive more pleasant by infinite degrees: wherefore to unburden ourselves of all earthly cares, we may observe this course, which is, to commend wife, children, friends, and such like in our humble prayers, unto his protection, who can better provide for them than ourselves.65

Jean L'Espine's gentle and encouraging treatise The Sick Man's Comfort, translated into English and published in 1590, also emphasized the importance of letting

go of the world and accepting God's mercy and salvation.

When we shall thus have exhorted the sick man to take a good heart and not to be afraid, neither of his sins, nor of death, nor of the Devil, nor of the judgement of God: if we see that he be loath to leave the world: and that his honours, riches, pleasures, ...and that he beareth yet to these earthly and corruptible things [that] make him loth to forgo them, and trouble his mind wonderfully, that it cannot resolve whether ...God doth call it. Then first must we make relation unto him, that this world is altogether set upon wickedness, and drenched in sin: that it shall pass away, and quickly be faded away with all her concupiscences: that it doth not know God at all: that we are no more children of this world: that God hath taken us clean out of this world ...that we cannot love this world, but we must needs be enemies unto God. That the Devil is the Prince of this world: and that by consequence, we cannot love this world, or the things that be in this world, but we must needs be vassals and slaves of the prince of darkness.66

L'Espine made an interesting connection in this passage. He says that it was the assurance of salvation that could give a dying person the ability to let go of the world, and since the world was in the grip of Satan, an elect person could not have too great ties to it. This message was doubly important for heretics facing execution: if they could not let go of the world, their sacrifice would mean only that they had fallen into temptation

Sutton, Learn to Die, 214-215. Jean L'Espine, The sicke-mans comfort against death and the deuill, the law and sinne, the wrath and iudgement of God (London, 1590), 130-131. 116 and they would die a bad death. Also, if they could not let go of the world, it suggested that they had not yet fully surrendered themselves to God and embraced the life to come.

In either case, it would be far more prudent to recant, repent of avaritia and prepare better for the end of life than it would be to risk eternal fire by dying in earthly fire.

Another situation that could cause doubt and fear in a heretic was the requirement to revoke all heresies before death. In The Doctrinal of Death, the attendant asked the dying person: "Believe you not in the law of God and in all the articles of the faith?

Despise ye not all heresies and errors, witchcrafts with all vain belief contrary to the doctrine of the church?" In The Sick Man's Salve Philemon warned Epaphroditus to avoid heresy.68 In his farewell letter, Ridley admonished that to live for Christ involved denying heresy.69 John Bradford, in his sermon about how Christians should not fear death, provided advice that would secure a good death and eternal life. Part of it involved self-examination, in order to make sure that the advice was being followed. "Again, look upon your soul: see how many vices you are in danger of, as heresy, hypocrisy, idolatry

...idleness, security, envy, ambition, pride, etc. How many temptations may you fall into?"70 That the weight of responsibility for salvation rested on the individual created a requirement for a very high level of personal certainty. For individuals charged with heresy, this could be a problem. They had to be strongly convinced that their resistance to authority was legitimate and their beliefs were not truly heretical before they could recite the articles of the faith and pray the final prayers that were required for the good death. As John Calvin put it in one of his sermons:

Anonymous, Doctrinal, Clr. 68 Becon, Sick Man's Salve, 457. 69 Ridley, Farewell, B7r. 70 Bradford, Fear of Death, A7r. All exhortations that a man may make to us, of suffering patiently For the name Jesus Christ ...shall have no place, if we be not very well assured of the cause for which we do contend, for when the question is of yielding the life, it is required that we be resolved and certain, wherefore it is. And such constancy cannot be in us, unless it be grounded on the certainty of faith. True it is, that a man will find some that will submit themselves foolishly to death, for to maintain certain fond opinions and fantasies which they shall conceive in their head, but such an earnestness delivereth rather to be counted for frenzy, than for a Christian zeal ... to suffer persecution for the Gospel, if there not be a true certainty of faith graven in our hearts, to hazard our life ...is not natural. And ...God will approve nothing at all that we shall do unless we be well persuaded, that it is for his sake, and for his cause, that men do molest us, and that the world is our enemy.

Even if individuals managed to fulfill the above requirements, they still had to face the danger of falling into one of the five temptations that could endanger salvation.

These five temptations remained virtually the same throughout the sixteenth century, and two of them applied directly to heretics facing imprisonment and torture: to despair, and to become complacent or vainglorious. Most dangerous was the temptation to despair, for it was brought on by desperation and impatience. In a 1571 sermon, John Bridges told people not to despair, because "the sure foundation of God standeth fast- having this seal, the Lord knoweth who are his." Not everyone was so positive when warning people about the sin of despair. William Bonde, in his A Devout Epistle for them that have been Timorous and Fearful in Conscience, admonished everyone not to despair, for that caused them to see only damnation, and that usurped the power of God. Bradford said that to despair caused doubt, which caused infidelity with God.74 In his The Exercise

71 Calvin, Sermon 1581, A2r-A2v. John Bridges, A sermon, preached at Paules Crosse on the Monday in Whitson weeke Anno Domini (London, 1571), 146. Bonde, A Devout Epistle... in Conscience, 25. 74 Bradford, Fear of Death, C8v-Dlv. of a Christian Life, Loarte said that despairing ignored God s mercies and offended him.75

Imprisoned heretics were susceptible to falling into the sin of desperation and despair, because they were subjected to the discomfort and diseases of prison life and torture. John Foxe commented on this when relating the story of martyrs John and

Robert Glover.

But this we see common among holy and blessed men, how the more devout and godly they are, having the fear of God before their eyes, the more suspicion and mistrust they have of themselves: whereby it comes to pass, that often they are so terrified and perplexed with small matters, as though they were huge mountains: where as contrary others there be, whom most heinous and very sore crimes indeed do nothing touch or stir at all.

In Arthur Golding's The Warfare of Christians Concerning the Conflict Against the

World, the Flesh and the Devil, he warned people "about to give up the ghost" that the devil would bring their sins to mind and so tempt them to despair.77 This sort of scenario can be seen in the letters of heretics, who often wrote to their friends asking for encouragement in times of despair, or offering encouragement when their friends suffered despair. William Tyndale wrote letters of encouragement to John Frith when the latter was in the Tower, and told him repeatedly to be courageous, to have hope, to hold strong in the faith.78 While in prison awaiting execution, Robert Glover wrote a letter to his wife encouraging her to keep believing, because "it was a fearful thing to fall into God's

75 Gaspar de Loarte, The exercise of a christian life (London, 1579), 162. 76 Foxe 1583, 1709. 7 Arthur Golding, The warfare of Christians concerning the conflict against thefleshe, the world, and the deuill (London, 1576), 67. 78 Foxe 1563, 524-525. 119 hands" by losing passion for the faith and being seduced away from true teaching.79

When a mistake in her name left Agnes Bongeor in prison as her fellow prisoners were led out to die, she fell into despair, thinking that God considered her unworthy of martyrdom. A friend of hers managed to help her see that there might be another reason for her reprieve, and this brought Bongeor back into the right mindset for martyrdom

SO when the opportunity came a second time.

If heretics fell into the temptation to despair, it was far better to recant, repent, and give themselves time to grow stronger in the faith than it was to accept a martyrdom that led only to hell, not to heavenly rewards. This was especially true because the sin of desperation and despair could bring on what Lucinda Becker called the ultimate bad 01 death: suicide. Preachers and theologians of the sixteenth century considered suicide to be a sin against the Holy Ghost, and most considered it an unforgivable sin. In a sermon in 1600, George Abbott told his congregants that "none should spill the blood, or destroy the life of himself, for any cause whatsoever, because that is a deed most unchristian, most damnable, and most wicked."82 John Foxe consistently referred to suicide as a sin, and commonly associated it with the bad deaths of persecutors, heretics, or fallen believers. One such fallen believer was Peter Moone, who through denial of his beliefs escaped punishment from the bishop, and afterward "saw where a sword of his did hang against a wall, [and] was earnestly allured by the enemy Satan to ...have slain himself: but God, who casts not away the penitent sinner repenting his fall with heart, defended

Foxe 1570, 1887. Foxe 1563, 1644-1645. Lucinda Becker, Death and the Early Modern Englishwoman (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 88. George Abbott, An Exposition on the Prophet Jonah (London 1600), 132. his unworthy servant from that temptation." Another fallen believer was Judge Hales, who in 1554 became so despondent about his abjuration that he tried to kill himself with a penknife. When that was unsuccessful, he drowned himself.84 Hales' status as a fallen believer is more complicated than that of many people like him, including Moone. When

Foxe related this story, he did not completely condemn Hales. This may be due in part to the controversy surrounding Hales' death, which started when Gardiner said that Hales' suicide was a sign that the Protestant faith was a religion of desperation. John Hooper responded by publishing a vindication of the Protestant faith, saying that many people had recently died in defense of that religion, and none of them were desperate. He also pointed out that Hales had suicided only after revoking his Protestant beliefs: "As long as he was constant in the truth, he endured." Hooper claimed that it was the torments of conscience caused by Hales' apostasy that caused his despair, and that Hales killed himself in anguish "for very desperation of God's mercy."85

This controversy made Hales' suicide a point of contention between the rival confessions, and it is understandable that Foxe would want to take a stance on the issue that would support his Protestant cause. Whatever his reason, Foxe did not completely excuse Hales; he pointed out that his intention was not "to excuse or to maintain the heinous fact of Master Hales," but he would leave the final judgement of Hales' case to

God because the grace and mercy of Christ is great and Hales may have had a chance to repent of his action before his death. Although Foxe was willing to give Hales the benefit of the doubt, he still acknowledged the sinfulness of suicide.

83 Foxe 1570, 2126. 84 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 3, 173. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 3, 68-70. 86 Foxe 1576, 1459. 121

The most famous example of the bad death through suicide was the story of

Francis Spira. Spira believed in the gospel, but then in 1548 he denied and rejected his beliefs and quickly fell into the temptation to despair. He became convinced of his own damnation, saw hallucinations, tried to stab himself, and finally starved himself to death.

This story had a profound effect on many Christians of the time. M.A. Overell notes that his story was used as a proof of the horrors caused by despair for several hundred years.

Even Lady Jane Grey used the story of Spira when admonishing Thomas Harding for his apostasy.88 Nathaniel Bacon wrote Spira's story ninety years after it happened, using the eyewitness accounts of Spira's death in his work, and noted that neither the eyewitnesses nor anyone who had heard the story since it happened failed to be affected. To Bacon,

Spira's story "should teach fear and reverence, and indeed among all those that come to

QQ see him, few or none return unshaken."

Spira recanted twice for his beliefs, and modern scholarship often assumes that

Spira's despair derived from his guilt over his recantation. However, a closer reading of the story shows that it was not his recantation that he regretted, but his denial of his beliefs. He had time between the first and second recantation to think about his motives for recanting, and told himself not to deny his faith, using as his standard the early martyrs and St. Peter himself. He even had divine aid, which reminded him to stand steadfast in the faith. Despite this, in the end he gave in to the authorities and denied the truth of the Gospel, and that is why he fell into the temptation to despair.

M.A. Overell, 'The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera'. The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 26,No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), 634. 88 Foxe 1563, 922. Nathaniel Bacon, A relation of the fearefull estate of Francis Spira in the yeare, 1548 (London, 1638), A2v. The first time he recanted before the Legate, who gave him the penance of paying a fine and recanting again at home in front of his friends and neighbours. On his way home, he had time to reflect on what he had done and an opportunity to repent and return to his faith. Bacon describes it by saying:

[On the way home, Spira] thought he heard a voice speaking unto him in this manner. 'Spira, What dost thou here? Whither goest thou? Hast thou unhappy man, given thy hand-writing to the Legate at Venice; yet see thou dost not seal it in thine own Country: dost thou indeed think eternal life so mean, as that thou preferrest this present life before it? Dost thou well in preferring wife and children before Christ? Is the windy applause of the people, better indeed than the glory of God; and the possession of this world's good more dear to thee, than the salvation of thine own soul? Is the small use of a moment of time more desirable, then eternal wrath is dreadful? Think with thyself what Christ endured for thy sake; is it not equal thou shouldst suffer somewhat for him? Remember, man, that the sufferings of this present life are not comparable to the glory that shall be revealed. If thou sufferest with him, thou shalt also reign with him: thou canst not answer for what thou hast already done; nevertheless, the gate of mercy is not quite shut, take heed that thou heapest not sin upon sin, lest thou repent when it will be too late.'

Whether Spira actually did hear a voice or this was a later literary embellishment of his internal conflict, this admonition shows how heretics were expected to resist the temptations described in the ars moriendi. It reflects the expectation to be faithful unto death, which in Spira's case included a call to martyrdom which he ignored. It speaks against the sin of avaritia and expects him to let go of the world. Most importantly, it does not condemn Spira for recanting but for holding the present life and the "applause of the people" above eternal life and the glory of God. It also requests specifically that

Spira not deny his faith again in front of his own people. Spira did not listen, and so committed the sin of denying and disowning God through disobedience to his will.

91 Ibid, 22-24. Bacon said that Spira allowed his faith to waver and ended up "in a wilderness of doubt" because he listened to his flesh and allowed his fear of dying and pain to override his trust in God.92 This resulted in a bad death, described figuratively by John Calvin as

"[he] fell into many traps, and entangled himself in many snares of desperation, til at length through his doting fantasies, striving in vain, like a beast in a snare, he strangled himself."93 Matteo Gribaldi said that:

But the most wretched fellow from that hour [of his recantation], and that suddenly, perceived himself to be stricken in heart, spirit and conscience, for God from that hour, sent into his heart a gnawing worm, an unquenchable fire, that suddenly he might be filled with error, confusion and desperation, which worm and fire, never since forsook him: in so much that he confessed himself to be in far worse estate, than if his soul were divided from his body, and he with Cain and other damned persons, desiring rather to be in the place of any dead and damned soul, than so to live in his body, and that death should be much more welcome to him.94

Spira's suicide followed the second of the two patterns of suicide distinguished by

Sir Thomas More. In the first, sin caused guilt and a fear of punishment, which led to despair and then to suicide, and in the second sin led to shame and despair, then suicide.

More used Judas as the example of the first pattern95 and Richard Hunne as an example of the second.96 Spira sinned, became ashamed of his sin, despaired and died. Hunne's case was similar, as More described it: he said that Hunne sinned by acting against the church, became ashamed of himself, and committed suicide out of "malice and

92 Ibid, 24. 93 Gribaldi, A Notable and Marvellous Epistle, A4r. 94 Ibid, B3r-B3v. 95 More, A Treatise To Receive the Blessed Body in A Brief Form of Confession, 54. Lawlor, Thomas et al eds. Complete Works of Thomas More Volume 6 Part I and II, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 327. 124 despair."97 It was important for heretics to determine whether or not their actions fell into either of these patterns. Suicide was a sin whether heretics did it actively, such as through hanging or drowning themselves, or passively, by allowing themselves to be executed simply because they wanted to die. As Brad Gregory notes in his Salvation at

Stake, there was a difference between wanting to die and wanting to die for Christ. Some

Christians died for their religious convictions; others provoked the authorities unnecessarily or rejected deliverance when it was available. Contemporaries viewed these two types of Christians very differently: "the former were martyrs, heroic witnesses rewarded by God with eternal joy; the latter were suicides, certain to be damned for rejecting God's gift of life."98

This complicated resistance in the culture of martyrdom. Authorities might use recantations for many reasons, such as to encourage social order and enforce religious policy. Some heretics subverted these goals and used recantation to publicize their faith, establish their own authority, soothe their personal consciences, or assist them in achieving good deaths. These individuals might also use the active resistance of martyrdom to promote their beliefs and assist them in achieving good deaths, but if they chose to be martyred through their own will, it would result in their eternal deaths. Thus, many heretics in this situation displayed resistance by recanting to avoid false martyrdom. An example of this can be found in the story of Thomas Hitton. In 1529, he refused to help the Archbishop of Canterbury gather evidence against him, because that

Ibid, 327. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 104-105. would make him "guilty of his own death." Hitton wanted to ensure that his death was because he was called to martyrdom, not because he wanted to die.

Sir Thomas More examined the connection between suicide and martyrdom very

closely. In his A Dialogue of Comfort, More's main character, Anthony, described how

the devil could tempt people to despair and kill themselves. "An horrible sore trouble it

is to any man or woman that the devil tempts therewith: many have I heard of, and with

some have I talked myself, that have been sore encumbered with that temptation."100 In

some cases, Anthony said, the devil could provide revelations that seemed to be from

God, then lead a person to suicide either when they found out that the revelations were not from God, or when the devil suggested that it would be beneficial to God for the person to die for the sake of their revelations. The devil could tempt people to die for a

false cause, and sometimes even convince them that they were dying for Christ or in imitation of his sacrifice, when it was really just suicide. For More, motivation was a key component. Sampson's act of suicide, for example, was led by God and enabled him to destroy the Philistines. Also, God led some of the ancient virgin martyrs to kill themselves in order to avoid violation. In those cases, the suicide was led by the spirit of

God for a particular reason.102

Heretics of the sixteenth century had to believe that the spirit of God was leading them to death in order to accept martyrdom. Many heretics thus made a point of saying that they were not suicidal, as Anne Askew did during her first examination: "Written by me Anne Askewe that neither wish death, nor yet fear his might, and as merry as one that

"Foxe 1583,2136. 10 Thomas More, Utopia with The Dialogue of Comfort (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1933), 69. 101 Ibid, 72-75. 102Ibid, 79-80. 126 is bound towards heaven." Bale supported her claim, saying that she was strengthened by

Christ's spirit, as the early Christian martyrs had been strengthened.103 At the martyrdom

of Ridley and Latimer, the officiating priest tried to say that their deaths were just suicide because they died outside of the church; Ridley and Latimer both tried to counter this

argument and were not allowed to do so.104 A bishop accused John Philpot of contemplating suicide when Philpot's guards found a knife inside a pig that had been sent to him; he was quick to deny that he had any impulses to kill himself. He said: "Who put [the knife] in, or for what purpose, I know not, unless it were because he that sent the meat thought I was without a knife, and so put him in. Your Lordship need not fear: for I was never without a knife, since I came into prison."

More himself had to determine if he was being led by the spirit of God into martyrdom. He was imprisoned for refusing to accept the oath of supremacy, and since he was one of very few people who decided to resist royal authority on this issue, he had to determine whether this was a false cause or not. As Paul Green says: "More was not ready to throw away his salvation ...and as long as he could preserve his life by answering the King's officers in equivocal terms, he intended to do so. To More's way of thinking, God did not require his death while there were still possibilities of escape."

More struggled with despair and fear during his imprisonment, and was especially afraid of physical torture and a painful death. He also worried that he was neither called to be a

Anne Askew, The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe lately martyred in Smythfelde, by the Romysh popes vpholders, with the elucydacyon oflohan Bale (London, 1546), K2v. 104Foxe 1563, 1377. 105 Foxe 1563, 1417. martyr nor worthy of it. If he went to the scaffold without being called or being worthy,

his death would be useless, and might endanger his salvation.106

Despair was not the only temptation into which one could fall that might lead to

suicide. More also connected the sin of suicide to the sin of vainglory, as he did in the

case of Thomas Phillips. When Phillips was arrested for heresy, More put him in the

Tower instead of the bishop's prison because:

I perceived in him a great vainglorious liking of himself, and a great spice of the same spirit of pride that I perceived before in Richard Hunne when I talked with him, and feared that if he were in the bishop's prison, his ghostly enemy the devil might make him there destroy himself.107

When heretics grew overly confident in their own opinions or in their status as God's

martyrs, they could fall into the sin of vainglory. Dr. Langall accused Richard Woodman

of vainglory when he examined Woodman for heresy in 1557.108 Pope Leo X connected

Luther's heretical beliefs with his vainglory.109 John Larke advised avoiding vainglory in

his Book of Wisdom, saying it was one of the sins that justified fearing death.110 In

Cranmer's Book of Homilies, the "Exhortation Against the Fear of Death" listed

vainglory as one of the sins that the devil uses to draw men away from their salvation.1

Nicholas Ridley warned against this sin in his Piteous Lamentation.

Happy is he that ever he was born, whom God his heavenly father hath vouchsafed to appoint to glorify him, and to edify his church by the effusion of his blood. To die in Christ's cause is an high honour, to the which no man certainly shall or can aspire, but to whom God vouchsafeth that dignity: for no man is allowed to presume for to take unto himself any office of honour, but he

Green, "Suicide, Martyrdom, and Thomas More," 154. 107 Thomas More, The apologye ofsyr Thomas More knyght (London, 1533) 212d. 108 Foxe 1563, 1605. 109 Foxe 1570, 1462. John Larke, The boke ofwisdome otherwise called the flower ofvertue (London, 1565), 56. 111 Cranmer, Homilies, D4r. 128

which is thereunto called of God. Therefore John says well, speaking of them which have obtained the victory by the blood of the lamb and by the word of his testimony, that they loved not their lives, even unto death. And our saviour Christ says, he that shall lose his life for my cause shall find it. And this manner of speech pertaineth not to one kind of Christians, as the worldly do wickedly dream, but to all that do truly pertain unto Christ.112

Vaingloriousness, like despair and suicide, could lead to an eternal death, and it could also lead to a spiritual death. Either would mean that the death was not martyrdom.

Thus, in order to avoid that sort of bad death, a convicted heretic either had to avoid falling into this temptation, or repent of it before it was too late. John Bradford took the second option in a letter he wrote before his execution.

For I have much grieved thee and transgressed thy holy precepts, not only before my professing the gospel, but since also: yea, even since my coming into prison. I do not excuse, but accuse myself before God and all his church, that I have grievously offended my Lord God, I have not lived his gospel as I should have done, I have sought myself, and not simply and only his glory and my brethren's commodity. I have been too unthankful, 1 1 ^

secure, carnal, hypocritical, vainglorious, etc.

Bradford went on to pray for God's mercy, and then he went through the steps of a good death. He submitted to God's will, and thanked God for allowing him to die as a martyr in Christ's cause. He repeated the articles of faith and prayed for his own salvation, then exhorted everyone reading the letter to turn to God while there was time, so that they too could be saved. Finally, he ended the letter by asking for forgiveness from anyone he may have wronged.

The last weeks of Bradford's life and the hours of his death provide an ideal example of the form of the ars moriendi that sixteenth-century heretics helped to create.

During his last weeks, Bradford wrote letters such as the one above that took personal Ridley, A Pituous Lamentation, E2r-E2v. 113 Foxe 1563, 1180. 129 responsibility for his sins and affirmed his belief in his salvation, based on the authority of Scripture, not the authority of the church. He provided advice and exhortation to the people he was leaving behind and relied on the help of his friends, not a priest. He displayed a steadfast faith right up to the end, as shown by Foxe's account of his last hours. Foxe said that the night before Bradford was executed, the wife of the keeper of his prison told him that he was going to be burned the next day. Bradford responded by

saying:

'I thank God for it. I have looked for the same a long time, and therefore it comes not now to me suddenly, but as a thing waited for every day and hour: the Lord make me worthy thereof:' and so thanking her for her gentleness, departed up into his chamber, and called his friend with him, which when he came there, he went secretly himself alone a long time and prayed.114

Foxe reported that Bradford showed joy and constancy at his execution the next day, and when in the fire held up his hands and endured the flames with quiet patience. Bradford achieved the good death, and managed through deliberate effort and planning to avoid falling into the temptations that would have led to a bad death.

Thomas Cranmer also followed the new version of the ars moriendi. He lived a life of prudence and piety and showed loyalty and faithfulness to his sovereign and his

God. His faith remained steadfast even after his arrest under Queen Mary, as shown by his repeated attempts to phrase his recantations in a way that did not deny or disown his beliefs. Although he did finally write a full submission, his actions at his execution show that the submission did not reflect wavering faith but wavering strength. As Strype put it, the strain of interrogations and pressure "put words in his mouth that this heart

Foxe 1563, 1175. abhorred." However, despite imprisonment in several places, in varying circumstances, he did not allow himself to despair or to become vainglorious. The temptation to do both was high, since he was humiliated through a ceremony that degraded him from his position of archbishop and then wooed through kind treatment, which showed how important his recantation was to the new regime.11 In the hours before his death, Cranmer disposed of his goods to the poor, confessed his sins, asked forgiveness, and exhorted the people listening to him to have faith and believe in

salvation. Just before he was taken to the stake, he declared his personal faith and asked for God's mercy and forgiveness. Then, in the midst of considerable tumult due to his denial of his recantation and his reaffirmation of his beliefs, he went quietly to the stake

and died with "constancy and steadfastness," according to Foxe.117

The lives and deaths of Cranmer, Bradford and many other sixteenth-century heretics show how the rituals of the ars moriendi both changed and stayed the same, and reflect the layers of resistance that marked the interaction of heretics with authorities.

Heretics took responsibility for their salvation, through the way they lived their lives and the way they orchestrated their deaths. They accepted particular traditions and rejected

others, in the interests of spreading the message of the importance of individual faith.

Philippe Aries thinks that this change reflects the development of individuality over the later middle ages and into the sixteenth century,118 and Susan Karant-Nunn notes that it changed the "perceptible points of prior contact between the human and the

Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials vol 3, 232. Foxe 1563, 1497. Ibid, 1502. Aries, The Hour of Our Death, 106. 131 divine" over the course of the Reformation.119 Clare Gittings suggests that the changes of the Reformation caused a fear of death, one which was greater for Protestants due to the loss of the safety net of purgatory and the emphasis on the doctrine of predestination.120

Certainly, heretics feared eternal death, as shown by the ways that the ars moriendi stayed the same: its emphasis that the dying had to let go of the world and reject heresy in order to be saved, and in its emphasis on the danger of falling into temptations.

Behavioural expectations remained high and exact, and it was a legitimate fear that a good death would prove an impossible goal. However, this shows a fear of the bad death more than it shows a fear of death, and the fear of the bad death came coupled with a new understanding of how to achieve eternal life. As Johann Sommerville and Jeffrey Watt say, the Reformation changed England from a religious culture to a religious faith,121 and it was this change that helped many individuals overcome their fears and stand up for their faith in the midst of uncertainty and persecution. Revelation 2:10 summarized the new beliefs that enabled them to alter the art of dying in order to suit their circumstances:

"be thou faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life." Whether heretics recanted, escaped, accepted martyrdom, or died quietly in their beds, they could achieve eternal life by being faithful to God until the end of their lives.

119 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, 127. Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 40. Jeffrey Watt, Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 307. Chapter Five: Conclusion

Ethan Shagan says in his Popular Politics and the English Reformation that the

sixteenth century was an age of faith. "So pervasive was religion, in fact, that the great

revolution of the early modern world was not a conflict over political philosophy or

economic resources but rather a dispute over the path to Christian salvation."122 Religion

encompassed such diverse aspects of life that it could not be rigid, and its flexibility

allowed new religious ideas "to penetrate English culture, seeping into the myriad

crevices in the dominant belief system where ideas and practices were not fully

aligned."123 These new ideas caused a shift from a church-centred universal religion to an

individualized faith. People took on personal responsibility for their own salvation,

which changed virtually all aspects of life. It enhanced the power of the conscience,

spawned a vast body of new devotional and religious texts, and changed the prevalent

attitude toward death. Susan Wabuda thinks that it turned each household into its own

little church, reducing the power of the universal church and the community life of the parish.124 Ralph Houlbrooke suggests that it "transformed officially approved

conceptions of the nature of the next life as well as the relationship between this world

and the hereafter."125

Shagan connects the development of new religious ideas to resistance and

collaboration in popular piety and politics. This thesis connects the same ideas to

resistance in the Reformation culture of martyrdom. As Scott Dixon suggests, the

122 Shagan, Popular Politics, 1. Shagan, Popular Politics, 7. 124 Susan Wabuda, "The Woman with the Rock: the Controversy On Women and Bible Reading," Belief and Practice, 58. Houlbrooke, Death, Ritual and the Family, 1. progress of the Reformation was "fashioned through negotiation, adaptation and resistance, the dissonance of change and continuity."126 Some individuals in England fought against the changes in religion set in place by the authorities through active resistance, and some through subversion. They based their choice of action on the specific situation and their personal beliefs, and that choice sometimes led to martyrdom or recantation. This was true whether their beliefs reflected the Catholic or Protestant confession; the heretics of the sixteenth century were remarkably uniform in their attitudes toward martyrdom and recantation. Brad Gregory notes this in his Salvation at

Stake: he says that sixteenth-century martyrdom "is better seen as one comprehensive story, ...linked by shared values as well as violent conflict."127

Susan Karant-Nunn calls for "practical realism" in historical study and advocates learning through the language of the people of the time in order to present an accurate view of their world.128 This thesis follows this approach in its focus on the truth, the conscience and the good death. Through the study of these common sixteenth-century terms it is possible to see how the religious thought of the major theologians, writers and preachers changed over the course of the century. This reflected both a response to change and a desire to cause change, and provides a clearer view of the role of recantation in the culture of martyrdom, and the four major reasons to recant.

The first reason is the most commonly found in studies of sixteenth-century martyrdom: people recanted because they were afraid. Examples of this reason to recant can be found in the stories of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and Sir John

Cheke. Cheke regretted his recantation with every repetition that the officials of Mary I

126 Scott Dixon, "Introduction," Living With Religious Diversity, 4. 127 Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 2. 128 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, 2. 134 required him to preach. Strype says that Cheke's recantations grated upon his heart, to the point where he was actually relieved to be sent to the Tower. Even the restoration of his lands did not help. "All these temporal accessions could not heal the wounds he had given his mind by his apostasy or hypocrisy, which so excessively dejected him that within less than a year it ended his life."129 D. M. Loades suggests that John Dudley recanted hoping that Queen Mary might grant him a pardon. Loades bases this on a letter which Dudley wrote to Arundel and Gardiner the night before his execution, begging for their intervention. Since both men had suffered at Dudley's hands, asking for their help

"can only be described as the triumph of optimism over both dignity and common sense.

...Perhaps after [Dudley's] co-operation over the mass he had expected reward, and sudden devastating disappointment had deprived him of his normal sense of reality."130

Dudley recanted from fear of death; Cheke recanted from fear of losing his lands and his life. Such fear is arguably a good reason to recant, but it was not promoted within the culture of martyrdom because it led people to dissimulation, hypocrisy and sometimes apostasy.

The second reason to recant came from a sense of duty to the sovereign. Many people believed that the king's will was supreme, as God's representative on earth. Some linked their salvation to the extent of their obedience to the monarchy: God himself sanctioned and ordained royal power, and as Lacey Baldwin Smith puts it, "every disobedient heart [was assured] a warm welcome in hell."131 John Cooper emphasizes the duty to obey in his article "O horde Save the Kynge: Tudor Royal Propaganda and the

John Strype, The life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt. first instructer, afterwards Secretary of State to King Edward VI. One of the great restorers of good (London, 1705), 169. D. M. Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 269. Lacey Baldwin Smith, "Henry VIII and the Protestant Triumph," The American Historical Review, vol 71, no 4 (July 1966), 125. 135

Power of Prayer:" "The wages of insurrection are epic indeed. Being swallowed whole by the earth, destroyed by sudden fire, struck down with leprosy and ...'stinged to death with wonderful strange fiery serpents' are ...reserved for those rebelling against authority."132 Due to this duty to obey, people could legitimize the decision to recant in several different ways. First, they could re-interpret recantation, making it a simple legal penalty instead of a denial of belief. Under heresy law, recantation was a method of penance similar to other forms of public shame, so to recant might be considered the same as accepting any other form of legal punishment. Second, they could re-interpret the concept of obedience. Many writers of the sixteenth century qualified and limited the obligation to obey the sovereign; as Sarah Covington noted in The Trail of Martyrdom,

"obedience carried different connotations and levels of commitment throughout the century."133 The Ars Moriendi, for example, described seven degrees of obedience.

Ungrudging obedience to the sovereign was the first degree, but taking that obedience to the point of death was the seventh degree. Between those two lay a range of behaviour that included delayed obedience, half-hearted obedience, and compelled obedience.1

Since obedience was not an absolute, people could phrase recantations vaguely, play with language and terminology, and interpret the requirements of the sovereign in ways that allowed them to reconcile their beliefs with their duty to obey. Third, they could recant with their mouths and believe differently in their hearts, and so satisfy both sovereign and

God. The example of Nicodemus, and the writings of Gregory the Great and many other

John Cooper, "O horde Save the Kynge: Tudor Royal Propaganda and the Power of Prayer," Authority and Consent, 187. 133 Covington, The Trail of Martyrdom, 104. 134 Anonymous, Ars Moriendi, A7v. 136

Nicodemites, supported outward loyalty and obedience, despite differing inward convictions.

In his introduction to Popular Politics and the Reformation, Ethan Shagan mentions some of the ethical dilemmas that faced the people of the sixteenth century.

1 1C

One of them was how an authority could de-legitimize itself. The legitimacy of particular authorities was frequently called into question in the sixteenth century, and that changed the nature of authority. This was the third reason to recant: casuists, for example, considered recantation acceptable due to the changing nature of authority. They rejected temporal authority based on their adherence to another authority, often papal, and so considered recantation to be nothing but empty words. Casuistry used the ambiguity of particular situations and the notion of contingent truth to apply moral laws differently in particular situations. This could involve recantation, pretence, conformity, or a blatant denial of the power of the sovereign.

For many Protestants, the changing nature of authority occurred through the blending of religious and state authority and the rejection of papal authority. It meant that each person had to choose what religious beliefs to follow. Some people believed that their personal convictions represented a higher authority than temporal authority, and supported that belief through the application of faith and reason to their consciences.

These people sometimes chose to recant because they believed that it was God's will that they do so. They saw the opportunity to recant as a sign of God's deliverance, or a chance to go out and continue to preach, write, and spread their beliefs. This might explain why some sermons of recantation, notably those by Dr. Edward Crome, Thomas

Shagan, Popular Politics, 12. Becon and William Jerome, presented the opposite message than the one required by the authorities.

Prudence was the fourth reason to recant. Prudent conformity could allow a heretic to maintain a clandestine, internal belief until the religious atmosphere changed again. The choice to turn instead of burn was not always the end of heretical beliefs. It often led to later martyrdom, and even more often it led to some form of conformity to the official religion. Some people justified this conformity through particular interpretation of Biblical authority, and some through living out their beliefs in secret.

They hid their beliefs and yet continued to further their chosen cause. Andrew Pettegree says that those who gave in and recanted or conformed did not necessarily prove themselves cowardly; many of those people were the ones who brought food and linen to the prisoners in the Tower, gathered money for the exiles, or helped others escape. He claims that Foxe acknowledged this sort of conformity in his 1563 edition of Acts and

Monuments because so many people would have identified with it. It was only in

Foxe's later editions that the stories of recantation and conformity faded in importance, as the narrative began to focus on the heroism of the martyrs and the cruelty of their persecutors.137 The main danger in prudent conformity was the fine line between withholding one's beliefs from the scrutiny of others and denying one's beliefs. It was not acceptable to deny God or ignore his will. Equivocating was acceptable; dissimulating and hypocrisy were not. Once again, the individualization of faith made walking such a fine line possible for sixteenth-century heretics. As Dr. Alban Langdale once declared, "Let every wise man weigh his own case." Alexandra Walsham notes that

136 Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, 101, 116. 137 Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 239-240. 138 the intention of the individual was used to defend occasional and limited conformity, and allowed writers to "move towards seeing the state of a sinner's mind as more important than the nature of the offense itself."138 Motivation became the key factor: prudent conformity followed God's will, and obeyed the authority of God's word.

Prudence could also be a reason to recant for people who were unsure if they were called to martyrdom. The heretics of the sixteenth century made an important change in the ars moriendi when they emphasized that the lives of Christians were as important as the moments of their death in securing salvation. This change justified prudent recantation because recantation allowed heretics to make another attempt to live in ways that would enable good deaths, which they could not do if they allowed themselves to be executed. To take the place of God and decide to die a martyr's death without his calling was not martyrdom but suicide, and it was not an acceptable sacrifice. It would not earn heavenly rewards; nor would dying while still in the grip of the sins of despair or vainglory. Either scenario would lead to a bad death, which signified eternal damnation.

Most heretics wanted to die a good death, not only because it meant they were accepted into heaven but because it benefitted the cause for which they died. Their time of death became a spectacle arranged to prove the truth of their personal beliefs. A good death was a sign of the goodness, grace, and power of God in granting eternal life.

The ways that some heretics interpreted the duty of obedience, responded to changing authority, showed prudent conformity and arranged the moment of death for the maximum benefit show how recantations were not always straightforward examples of submission and suppression. Although some recantations were the result of the successful repression of particular beliefs, others subverted such repression and assisted

138 Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience," 40. in the development of Reformation ideas. Loewenstein and Marshall say that when

spiritual and temporal authorities attacked heresy and heretical evangelical communities, they helped "limit and foster" the progress of the Reformation.139 The attacks of these authorities encouraged heretics both to stand against ecclesiastical and temporal authorities, and to work through established structures. As Shagan says, "the English

Reformation was not done to people; it was done with them."140 Patrick Collinson sees the Reformation as a fundamental change caused by individuals and local communities, and promoted through published books, sermons, treatises and letters. Instead of saying that the Reformation came from above or below, he considers it an exchange between both. As Norman Jones summarizes it, "Collinson ...confronts us with the reality that religion and politics are inseparable, and that 'below' and 'above' are parts of a loop."141

Casuistry and exile became two main ways to work around the authorities, and

Nicodemism and equivocation offered ways to work through them. Some heretics also used the system of public preaching, the rituals of execution, and the interrogation methods in heresy trials to subvert authority and spread the word of their own beliefs.

A common theme in studies of the English Reformation is that the constantly shifting religion brought new complications to life in the sixteenth century. Both temporal and eternal life stood on suddenly shaky ground, and only an intense personal faith could restore certainty. This is the sort of faith displayed by many of the men and women who were labelled as heretics. Their writings edified their contemporaries and helped solidify the beliefs of particular confessions. They emphasized the importance of personal motivation for behaviour, the power of the conscience, the concept of death as a

139 Loewenstein and Marshall, "Introduction," 3. 140 Shagan, Popular Politics, 25. 141 Jones, "Introduction: Known From their Works," Belief and Practice in Reformation England, 1-2. 140 joyous passage from one life to another, and the need to take personal responsibility for salvation. All these messages can be summarized into one basic tenet of the Christian faith: "be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." In living out that message, heretics within the culture of martyrdom showed the reality of a living faith. As

Thomas Becon said in 1547: "Thy cognisance and badge, whereby thy disciples are known ...cometh out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."142

Thomas Becon, The pomaunder of prayer, newly made by Thomas Becon (London, 1561), 30. Bibliography

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A particular declaration or testimony, of the vndutifull and traiterous affection borne against her Maiestie by Edmond Campion Iesuite, and other condemned priestes witnessed by their owne confessions: in reproofe of those slanderous bookes & libels deliuered out to the contrary by such as are malitiously affected towards her Maiestie and the state. Published by authoritie. London, 1582.

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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 andfaythfull subiectes, and an other for the good [and] quiete estate of the whole realme. Read the whole, and then iudge. London, 1554.

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A confutatio[n] of vnwritte[n] verities both bi the holye scriptures and moste auncient autors, and also probable arguments, and pithy reasons, withplaine aunswers to al (or at the least) to the moste part and strongest argumentes, which the aduersaries of gods truth, either haue, or can bryng forth for the profe and defence of the same vnwritten vanities. London, 1556.

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^ moste faithfull sermo[n] preached before the Kynges most excelle[n]te Maiestye, and hys most honorable Councel, in his court at Westminster. London, 1553.

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. An exposicion vpon the songe of the blessed virgine Mary, called Magnificat. Where vnto are added the songes ofSalue regina, Benedictus and Nu[n]c dimittis. Translated out oflatine into Englysh by Ihon Hollybush. London, 1538.

A faithful admonition of a certeyne true pastor and prophete sent vnto the Germanes at such a time as certain great princes went about to bryng alienes into Germany, [and] to restore the papacy; the kingdom of Antichrist. [Et]c Now tra[n] slated into English for a like admonicion vnto all true Englyshe harts; wherby they may learn and know how to consider [and] receiue the procedinges of the English magistrates and bishops. With a preface ofM. Philip Melancthon. London, 1554.

A treatice co[n]teining certain meditatio[n]s oftrew & perfect consolatio[n], Written in the Frenche tung, and translated in to Englishe by Robert Fills. London, 1564.

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