The Dilemma of Obedience: Persecution, Dissimulation, and Memory in Early Modern England, 1553-1603 By Robert Lee Harkins A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ethan Shagan, Chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan Professor David Bates Fall 2013 © Robert Lee Harkins 2013 All Rights Reserved 1 Abstract The Dilemma of Obedience: Persecution, Dissimulation, and Memory in Early Modern England, 1553-1603 by Robert Lee Harkins Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Ethan Shagan, Chair This study examines the problem of religious and political obedience in early modern England. Drawing upon extensive manuscript research, it focuses on the reign of Mary I (1553-1558), when the official return to Roman Catholicism was accompanied by the prosecution of Protestants for heresy, and the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), when the state religion again shifted to Protestantism. I argue that the cognitive dissonance created by these seesaw changes of official doctrine necessitated a society in which religious mutability became standard operating procedure. For most early modern men and women it was impossible to navigate between the competing and contradictory dictates of Tudor religion and politics without conforming, dissimulating, or changing important points of conscience and belief. Although early modern theologians and polemicists widely declared religious conformists to be shameless apostates, when we examine specific cases in context it becomes apparent that most individuals found ways to positively rationalize and justify their respective actions. This fraught history continued to have long-term effects on England’s religious, political, and intellectual culture. Therefore, this study also traces the ways in which the official commemoration of religious conflict, with its emphasis on a romanticized past of martyrdom and resistance, often contrasted sharply with the remembered history of capitulation and conformity. The decisions and rationalizations made during the Marian persecution did not simply disappear after Elizabeth’s accession, but continued to fundamentally shape the collective memory of early modern English society. i For Rachel ii CONTENTS Acknowledgments iii List of Abbreviations iv Introduction 1 Part I: Marian Conformity and the Rationalization of Obedience Chapter 1. Protestants Turned Persecutors: Religious Mutability and the Enforcement of the Marian Counter-Reformation 13 Chapter 2. The Wages of Recantation: Religious Conformity, Reputation, and the Marian Protestant Community 37 Chapter 3. The Imitation of Cicero: Persecution, Conformity, and Nicholas Grimald’s Duties 61 Chapter 4. Crisis, Constitutionalism, and the Exile Network of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk 87 Part II: Elizabethan Conformity and the Conflicts of Memory Chapter 5. Elizabethan Puritanism and the Politics of Memory in Post-Marian England 108 Chapter 6. “Persecutors under the Cloak of Policy”: Revenge, Retributive Justice, and Anti-Catholicism in Elizabethan England 131 Chapter 7. The Logic of Anti-Puritanism: Marian Sedition, the Elizabethan Settlement, and Late Tudor Conformity 166 Conclusion 187 Bibliography 190 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the encouragement and support that I received while writing this study. Many of the ideas in this dissertation were sparked by conversations with Ethan Shagan, and so it is fitting that I thank him first and foremost. Over the years he continually proved himself to be an ideal mentor, whose intellectual creativity and historical insights have never ceased to amaze me. Jonathan Sheehan deserves special mention and thanks for continually providing both helpful guidance and incisive criticism. David Bates always gave sage counsel, and challenged me to broaden my conceptual approach. Alexandra Walsham graciously agreed to supervise my research while I was in residence at the University of Cambridge, and her advice helped shape the project when it was in its formative stages. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the numerous scholars who offered encouragement and advice over the years. I would particularly like to thank Albert Ascoli, Thomas Brady, William Cavert, David Como, Ivan Ermakoff, Simon Grote, Karl Gunther, Carla Hesse, Stathis Kalyvas, Peter Lake, Tyler Lange, Carol Lansing, Thomas Laqueur, Sears McGee, Ed Muir, Hannah Murphy, Carlos Noreña, Howard Pashman, and Samuel Robinson. I am especially grateful to Hilary Bernstein for first encouraging me to pursue historical research. This study would not have been possible without considerable financial support from a wide range of institutions. Fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for British Studies at UC Berkeley, and the UC Berkeley History Department allowed me to perform extensive research at various archives in England. A Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation made it possible to devote an entire year to writing. A preliminary version of Chapter 2 was awarded the Kirk Underhill Graduate Prize from the Center for British Studies at UC Berkeley, and an early iteration of Chapter 3 received the George Romani Prize from the History Department at Northwestern University. The generous awards from these respective prizes were used to fund further research. I have also had the honor of presenting various portions of this study to scholarly groups in England and the United States. I would especially like to thank the audiences at the Reformation Studies Colloquium, the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities. I am also grateful to the assistance given to me by staff members at numerous archives and libraries over the years. Particularly helpful were the archivists at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the Library at King’s College, Cambridge, the London Metropolitan Archives, and the National Archives in Kew. I must also thank my family and friends, especially Christine Ferdinand and Matthew and Jenny Brack. I am indebted to David Aston for his unfailing friendship and hospitality. In addition to serving as a sounding board and sparring partner for many years, Derek Smith generously agreed to read the entire draft. Finally, I must express my deepest gratitude to those who mean so much to me: the Harkins, Ferdinand, Naccarati, and Perez families. Above all, I owe the most to Rachel. If not for her, none of this would have been possible. iv ABBREVIATIONS BL British Library Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford CCCC Corpus Christ College, Cambridge CCEd The Clergy of the Church of England Database, 1540–1835 CP The Cecil Papers, Hatfield House CUL Cambridge University Library Foxe The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online LPL Lambeth Palace Library ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography SP State Papers STC Short Title Catalogue, 2nd ed. TNA The National Archives 1 Introduction An authority on metaphorical monsters, Homeric and otherwise, Thomas Hobbes understood well that, contrary to the common use of the proverb by his contemporaries, there was no sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.1 As the goddess Circe explained in Book XII of the Odyssey, one could not safely circumvent both dangers: the only way Odysseus could avoid the loss of his entire crew in the monster Charybdis’ whirlpool was to intentionally steer his ship towards the ferocious Scylla, thereby sacrificing six of his men to her monstrous maw. Faced with this grim reality, Odysseus was forced to make the painful choice. The consequences of his decision were devastating: like watching a fisherman who spears fish, and then throws them, still gasping and flopping, onto land, so did Odysseus witness Scylla snatch up his men, sending “their sprauling arms and legs i’ th’ air, and heard them lamentably to me cry, and name me in their uttermost despair.”2 Odysseus’ memory of his companions “roaring and holding out their hands to me” while Scylla ate them alive, would be the most painful of his entire journey. “Of my mishaps,” Odysseus pitifully recalls, “this was the saddest I did ever see.”3 As a foremost translator of the Odyssey, Hobbes recognized that Scylla and Charybdis symbolized not a safe and sensible via media between two dangers, but rather a dire quandary that required an individual to make a painful choice. In his treatise on moral conflict, De Cive, Hobbes employed this powerful image when describing one of the central dilemmas of his own age: an individual’s crisis of obedience when caught between competing religious and political duties. This was a problem, Hobbes believed, that was particularly severe in Christian commonwealths, because the sovereign power held both temporal and spiritual authority. Since it was true that one must always “obey God rather than man,” crises of conscience were inevitable, because “a difficulty has arisen as to how obedience can be safely offered if an order is given to do something which CHRIST forbids.”4 Torn between these two competing obligations, citizens found 1 By contrast, most early modern authors used this proverb to signify the virtues of moderation. See, for example: Francis Bacon, “The Flight of Icarus; also Scylla and Charybdis; Or the Middle Way,” in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. John M. Robertson