282 REVIEWS of BOOKS April Commons, Although at First He Shared This Duty with Such Other Privy Councillors As Were Members
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282 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April commons, although at first he shared this duty with such other privy councillors as were members. Foreign relations being more immediately the king's province, his secretary was the natural intermediary for con- veying instructions to our ambassadors and for conferring with those of foreign rulers. Similarly the secretary came to have the chief concern in maintaining the peace of the realm and guarding the person of the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/XXXIX/CLIV/282/536453 by guest on 01 October 2021 sovereign. It was held that he was a conservator of the peaoe and in the commission for all the counties of England. In this connexion Miss Evans discusses at length the secretary's authority to issue warrants for the seizure of papers, to commit suspected persons to prison, to issue passes and licences to persons desirous of quitting or entering the kingdom, and to exercise a censorship over the press. She also illustrates his concern with the affairs of Ireland and the colonies, with naval and military administration, and even with the treasury. To him came, in short, almost all tRe business not explicitly assigned to any other minister. A careful bibliography, lists of Stuart secretarial records and "of secre- taries of state, and a number of excerpts from manuscripts relating to the secretary's duties and emoluments add to the value of this solid and conscientious monograph. The text is disfigured by one or two slips, ' Republica Anglorum ' for' Respublica Anglorum' (p. 46); ' three more principal secretaries of state' for ' four more * (p. 150). When we remember the Star Chamber ordinances of Elizabeth, it seems hardly correct to say that the first attempts to regulate the press were made in the reign of Charles I (p. 8). In August 1640, it should be noted, King Charles was not in Scotland (p. 229), but in Yorkshire. F. C. MONTAGUE. KerkeraaAsyrotocoUen der Nederduilsche Vluchtdingenkerk te Londen, 1560-3. Uitgegeven door DR. A. A. VAN SCHELVEN. (Werken van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, III, no. 43. Amsterdam : Muller, 1921.) THE Dutch church in London, the old church of Austin Friars, which was given to the Dutch community by Edward VI, possesses rich archives, in which documents relating to the earliest times of the settlement in London of protestant refugees from the Netherlands have been preserved. The Dutch reformed church was openly organized abroad while the Netherlands were themselves under Spanish rule. The history of the refugee churches, of which London and Emden were the most important, is therefore of exceeding interest to students of the origins of the national church. Much has been published of the contents of the archives in Austin Friars from about 1870 onwards. Baptism, marriage, and burial books; acta of the colloquia of the Dutch churches in England; and especially the splendid collection of letters, published by J. H. Hessels under the title of Ecclcsiwf Londino-Batavae Archivum (1887-97). But much remains unpublished, even after Dr. van Schelven's new contribution. The volume under review contains the minutes of the consistory over a spacr of about three years. They are brief, hurried notes, partly in Dntch, partly in Latin, for the most part written by one of the ministers of the church, Petrus Detenus. For a knowledge of the spiritual as well 1924 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 283 as the moral life of a presbyterian community in those days they are invaluable. Theological disputes took up a large part of the attention of the members. Delenus's notes deal particularly with the case of his colleague Haemstede, who was excommunicated as early as 1560 for leanings towards anabaptism, but whose followers remained in a state of spiritual unrest. The bishop of London, who had powers of supervision over the church of the strangers, and the archdeacon of Westminster, to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/XXXIX/CLIV/282/536453 by guest on 01 October 2021 whom it had been reported that ' there is greate division, ranter' [? to. rancer] ' and malyce and sedicion among ' the brethren, were at different times called in to compose the quarrels. For the rest the consistory had mostly to deal with marital difficulties and moral delinquencies, distributing admonitions and punishments. There are many entries to show that close relations were entertained with the consistories which, in spite of the persecution, had been formed in the mother country, particularly with that of Antwerp. Of course ' Dutch church' is a misnomer, if' Dutch' is understood to mean (as it is understood nowadays) ' relating to the Northern Netherlands'. The Austin Friars congregation became Dutch in that sense only after the reconquest of the southern provinces by Parma had eradicated protestant- ism there. In the years 1560-3 it would appear as if a majority of the members of the Dutch community came from Antwerp and Flanders. P. GEYL. Correspondance de Bonaveniura Vukanius pendant son sejour A Cologne, Geneve et Bdlc (1573-1577). Publiec et annotee par H. DE VBIBS DE HEEKELINOEN. (La Haye : Nijhofl, 1923.) DE. DE VBIEB has interrupted his history of the incubation of Dutch Calvinism at Geneva in order to print an important collection of letters, written by and to Bonaventura Vulcanius during four years when his literary activity was great. The sources are original and authentio: Vulcanius's collections in the university library at Leiden, consisting of his own rough drafts and of the letters he received, so that all are auto- graph ; . and only a few have ever been printed before. Vulcanius (de Smet) was the son of a magistrate of Bruges, who in his youth had been a friend of Erasmus and had spent some time in an English household: The son (born in 1538), after completing his education at Louvain, sought his fortune in Spain, where for ten years he was secretary to Cardinal Hendoza, bishop of Burgos, and then to an archdeacon of Toledo: till in 1570 he returned to the Netherlands in the train of the duke of Medina Celi. The present correspondence opens with Vulcanius at Cologne, where he was for a short while professor of Greek, until a scandal—not apparently very serious—obliged him to retire hurriedly to Switzerland, in order to escape arrest and a fine. Till 1577 he remained at Geneva and Basle, working upon a translation of Arrian and an edition of one of the treatises of Cyril; and in 1578 he returned to Leiden, to spend the rest of his life there—he died in 1614—as professor of Greek and one of the leading personalities in the university. The letters are full of interest, in many directions. Europe was, aa.