'Because We Are Enemyes to Them and Their Gospell' a Comparative
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‘Because we are enemyes to them and their gospell’ A Comparative Study of English Catholic and Netherlandish Protestant Exiles in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century Rens Crevits Supervisor: prof. dr. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene Examiners: dr. Micol Long and drs. Marijn Vandenberghe Master thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy in order to obtain the degree of Master of Arts in History. 2014-2015 Table of Contents Preface ....................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................. v Maps and images ....................................................................................................................... vi I. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 II. “Lost in the clouds of theological dust”: a status quaestionis ......................................... 4 a. Exile as a theoretical concept .......................................................................................... 4 b. Confessional historiography ............................................................................................ 5 c. Exiles and the reformations of the sixteenth century ...................................................... 6 III. “One and the same societal need”: rationale behind exile .............................................. 9 a. Persecution of religious dissidents .................................................................................. 9 b. Religious vs. economic factors ...................................................................................... 17 c. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 19 IV. Prosopography of the English and Netherlandish exile communities ........................... 22 a. Numbers ........................................................................................................................ 22 b. Origins ........................................................................................................................... 24 c. Social composition ........................................................................................................ 28 d. Waves and stages of exile ............................................................................................. 32 V. Diversity and reception ................................................................................................. 38 a. Diversity within the exile community ........................................................................... 38 b. Reception of the exiles .................................................................................................. 41 VI. Displaced loyal subjects or foreign-based insurgents? ................................................. 48 a. “The infamyes that wilfull exyle doth bryng” ............................................................... 48 b. Espionage and insurgency ............................................................................................. 52 c. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 57 VII. Literary output and correspondence .............................................................................. 58 a. Self-representation and contemporary perception of the exiles .................................... 58 b. Correspondence ............................................................................................................. 60 VIII. Survival Strategies ..................................................................................................... 63 a. General prosperity ......................................................................................................... 63 b. Additional sources of income ........................................................................................ 65 c. Occupations ................................................................................................................... 68 i d. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 71 IX. Space ............................................................................................................................. 72 a. Settlement ...................................................................................................................... 72 b. “Strangers Within the Gates” ........................................................................................ 80 c. Mobility of the exiles .................................................................................................... 85 d. The public sphere: „International Calvinism‟ and… „International Catholicism‟? ....... 89 e. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 91 X. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 93 Nederlandse synthese ............................................................................................................... 97 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 99 a. Unpublished sources ..................................................................................................... 99 b. Bibliographies ............................................................................................................... 99 c. Published sources .......................................................................................................... 99 d. Literature ..................................................................................................................... 101 ii Preface “As early in Elizabeth‟s reign as the 1570s some exiles pressed the Pope and the King of Spain for a crusade against England and the forcible removal from power of Elizabeth and her government. English émigrés wrote plans for an invasion and worked with foreign powers to topple Elizabeth‟s government. That they were never successful does not mean the plans never existed – they most certainly did. Many were wildly implausible, concocted by men whose organizational ability was lamentable. Some, however, were truly threatening. […] The English Catholic exiles in Louvain, Antwerp, Rome, Rouen and Madrid wrote passionate books about Elizabeth‟s government of atheists suppressing God‟s Church as cruelly as the Romans had persecuted the first Christians.”1 On a murky, dark and dreary evening in late October 2012,2 I sat myself down for an evening of gratuitous bibliophile extravaganza. Only recently had I acquired a book, heaped with praise, which promised to explore the intricate web of subterfuge and conspiracy surrounding the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A factual political thriller, set during the sixteenth century. I was in for a treat. As I turned to page 16 of Stephen Alford‟s phenomenal The Watchers, my eyes fell on the excerpt quoted above. Although I was but an ignorant student of history at the time – and still am today – I had never heard about any English Catholic exiles, let alone their presence in a country whose history I was supposed to be marginally familiar with. Page 16 sparked an interest I have been trying to satisfy for closing on three years. As I gradually got less ignorant, I learnt that perhaps my not knowing of the English exiles was not entirely my fault. Their existence abroad proved somewhat of a mystery. Histories of the Catholic émigrés were alternatively filled with question or exclamation marks; the latter a result of the division they sowed among historians. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the equally fascinating Netherlandish strangers in sixteenth-century England. It came as a great surprise that they, to the contrary, had been fairly well-studied. Like the Elizabethan expats, I concocted a plan: to conduct a comparative study of both communities. My ambitions proved as audacious as those of the would-be assassins of Elizabeth. For the source of my ignorance, along with that of other historians, proved to be a general dearth of contemporary sources. Yet I hope that as you sit down, my dear reader, on a murky, dark and dreary evening or otherwise, that you may find some of the aforementioned question and exclamation marks have been replaced with answers. Ghent May 2015 1 S. Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, London: Allen Lane, 2012, p. 16. 2 Frankly I have no recollection of the weather at the time whatsoever, yet I believe that is how any foreword worth its weight is supposed to start. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost I owe thanks to my supervisor, prof. dr. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, who accepted my research proposal with more enthusiasm than I could have ever hoped for. Her support these last two years has been unremitting and undaunted. Had the roles been reversed – and I would have been the one suffering a constant barrage of puzzled e-mails