This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Religion, Medicine and Confessional Identity in Early Modern England Mann, Sophie Liana Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 Religion, Medicine and Confessional Identity in Early Modern England by Sophie Liana Mann Department of History, King’s College London Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, March 2014 1 Abstract Early modern historians often frame ‘religion’ and ‘medicine’ as distinct categories of experience and conduct. They have also suggested that religious responses to illness were steadily supplanted by medical interventions during the period. This study calls these assumptions into question. Focusing on the regions of Yorkshire and Essex between approximately 1580 and 1720, it argues that religious beliefs and practices comprised an integral part of medical work, from household physic to the pursuits of university-trained physicians. It demonstrates that tending to the sick body was a religious as well as a medical act, couched in notions of divine favour, Christian duty and Christian charity. Moreover, in an age of profound and contested religious change, a sense of confessional identity shaped people’s medical behaviour in a number of ways. In particular, this study highlights how the exigencies of sickness and its treatment could have paradoxical outcomes, at times working to bolster a sense of religious distinctions, whilst at others working to foster forms of confessional coexistence. In the light of these complexities, this study resists the current tendency to draw schematic correlations between a person’s religious identity and their medical conduct. The thesis is divided into five chapters, each looking at healing practices from a different perspective, starting in the household, and steadily moving out into the wider community. Lay and qualified healers; the dynamics between practitioners and their clients; the treatment of ‘virtuous’ sufferers; and medical charity are all examined. How such practices fared in tense religio-political contexts will also be considered. By examining these issues I hope to shed fresh light on the ways in which medical practices were embedded in social relations and community experiences; and begin to unravel some of the complex channels through which confessional identity was experienced and expressed in relation to healing. Furthermore, this research highlights that religious beliefs and practices did not simply coexist alongside medicine, or provide alternatives to medicine, but rather, operated at its very heart. This requires us to think more carefully about the language we use to talk about things that were related in such extraordinarily subtle ways in the past. The very phrase ‘religion and medicine’ is problematic, since the two subjects are presented as separate spheres of activity. Adopting terms like ‘religion in, or as, medicine’, and vice versa, would provide more useful frames of reference. Employing the more expansive term ‘healing’ is equally helpful, since it constitutes something central to medical practice, as well as something deeply rooted in religious tradition. 2 Contents Acknowledgements – 4 List of Abbreviations – 5 Introduction 6 Historiography: Approaches and Assumptions 9 Context, Parameters, Framework 19 Structure 37 Sources 38 Chapter 1. “A Dose of Physic”: Medical Practice and Confessional Identity within the Family 43 Household Remedies 53 Lay Practices Around the Sickbed 60 Recourse to a Practitioner 64 Chapter 2. “The Office of a Physician”: Doctors and their Communities 75 Self-Presentation 83 Collaboration between Practitioners 91 Physicians and their Patients 98 Chapter 3. Diagnosing Sanctity 109 The Sickbed 121 The Deathbed 126 Following Death 133 Chapter 4. “A Double Care”: Medical Charity and Confessional Identity 141 Medical Charity within the Household 152 Visiting the Sick 157 Almshouses and Hospitals 161 Chapter 5. Medicine as a Conduit of Religious Identity 173 Medicine as a Form of Ministry 178 Practitioners as Proselytizers 184 “Under Pretence of Physic” 188 Conclusion 197 Bibliography 205 Manuscript Sources 205 Printed Primary Sources 210 Secondary Literature 220 Ma and PhD Dissertations 244 Unpublished Works 244 Websites Consulted 244 3 Acknowledgements My greatest debt is to my supervisors, Professor Ludmilla Jordanova and Dr Lucy Kosyanovsky. Without their unfailing support, endless generosity, and invaluable guidance this thesis would not have been achievable. I am truly grateful. My thanks also go to Dr Laura Gowing and Dr David Crankshaw for their advice at my upgrade, and to Dr Florence Grant, Dr Katherine Foxhall, and Dr Keren Hammerschlag for their help and encouragement throughout the process. I am deeply grateful to my PhD examiners Professor Alexandra Walsham and Dr Lauren Kassell, for their scrupulous reading of my thesis, and their invaluable suggestions about how my work could be developed further. I would also like to thank the King’s Graduate School for financially supporting my postgraduate study. I must equally record my appreciation of the assistance given by staff at the various institutions where this research was carried out. In particular, the British Library, the Wellcome Library, the Dr Williams’s Library, the Royal College of Physicians, the Essex Record Office, the Borthwick Institute, and the North Yorkshire County Record Office. Other historians to whom I am particularly grateful are Dr Andrew Cunningham, Dr Peter Elmer, Professor Miri Rubin, Professor Jonathan Barry, Dr Christina Benninghaus and Dr Stephen Brogan, for taking part in a seminar series on ‘religion and medicine’ that Ludmilla and I organised at King’s in 2013. The contributions, and the ensuing discussions, were immensely informative and stimulating. Special thanks also go to Dr Peter Elmer and Dr Lauren Kassell who kindly allowed me to consult works prior to publication. Finally, a big, heartfelt thank you to Mum, Dad, Zoë and Martin, for their encouragement, patience and love. 4 List of Abbreviations BI Borthwick Institute, York BL British Library, London DWL Dr Williams’s Library, London ERO Essex Record Office FSL Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. RCP Royal College of Physicians Archive, London WL Wellcome Library, London CHR Catholic Historical Review CRS Catholic Record Society CUAP The Catholic University of America Press BGSUP Bowling Green State University of America Press BJHS British Journal for the History of Science BoHM Bulletin of the History of Medicine ECL Eighteenth-Century Life ERS Essex Recusant Society FHS French Historical Studies GAU George Allen and Unwin LTD GH Gender and History HJ Historical Journal HoS History of Science JHBS Journal of History of the Behavioural Sciences JoBS Journal of British Studies JoIH Journal of Interdisciplinary History JoMH Journal of Military History JoSH Journal of Social History LPLS Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society MCH Midland Catholic History MH Medical History MR Munk’s Roll NCH Northern Catholic History NH Northern History ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography P&P Past and Present PoS Perspectives on Science RSLC Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal SHM Social History of Medicine TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TS Theory and Society UCP University of Chicago Press YBA Yorkshire Baptist Association All the quotations from contemporary manuscript and printed works retain original punctuation, capitalization, italics and spelling. Printed primary sources referenced were published in London, unless otherwise specified. 5 Introduction A prayer to be sayd at all tymes…In the name of Jesus, In the name of Jesus, In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus…Christ is mercifull and I am sinfull I beseache thee sweete Jesus forgive me my sines. Lady Frances Catchmay (d.1629), ‘A Book of Medicens,’ WL, MS 184a, f 1. * Almighty and Everlasting God, I prayse and magnifye thy holy name…stirre up my affections to al good workes…Give mee grace, to serve thee this day as ever with a pure heart infeighnedly and cheerfully to follow my calling here, in a good Conscience. The Journal of Edward Browne, M.D. (1644-1708), BL, MS Sloane 1906, f 16r-16v. *** This thesis