Puritans, papists, and the "public sphere" in early modern England: The Edmund Campion affair in context

Journal of Modern History

Volumn 72, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 587-627

  Lake, Peter ^a   Questier, Michael ^b  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b ST MARY'S UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749831319     PISSN: 00222801     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/316043     Document Type: Article

References (121)

1. See, e.g., Leo Hicks, An Elizabethan Problem (London, 1964);
2. Antony F. Allison and David M. Rogers, review of Elizabethan Problem, by Leo Hicks, Recusant History 8 (1965-66): 285-87.
3. Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham, 3 vols. (London, 1925), 2:278-79.
4. Christopher Haigh, "The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation," Past and Present 93 (1981): 37-69, at 55-57.
5. Christopher Haigh, "Continuity of Catholicism," and "From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modem England," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 31 (1981): 129-47,
6. English Reformations (Oxford, 1993), chaps. 15, 16.
7. Peter Lake and Michael Questier, "Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England," Past and Present 153 (1996): 64-107.
8. For a different view of the public sphere that emphasizes the emergence of a popular market for cheap pamphlets, see Alexandra Halasz, The Market Place of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997).
9. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
10. For recent discussion of Habermas's notion in historical and comparative contexts, see Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
11. For discussion of the ideological and practical applications of popery and antipopery, see Peter Lake, "Antipopery: The Structure of a Prejudice," in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Richard Cust and Anne Hughes (London, 1989), pp. 72-106;
12. Michael Questier, "Practical Anti-Papistry during the Reign of Elizabeth I," Journal of British Studies 36 (1997): 371-96.
13. Michael A. R. Graves, "Thomas Norton the Parliament Man: An Elizabethan M.P., 1559-1581," Historical Journal 23 (1980): 17-35,
14. "The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's 'Men of Business,'" Parliamentary History 2 (1983): 11-38,
15. "The Common Lawyers and the Privy Council's Parliamentary Menof-Business, 1584-1601," Parliamentary History 8 (1989): 189-215,
16. Thomas Norton: The Parliament Man (Oxford, 1994);
17. Simon L. Adams, "Eliza Enthroned? The Court and Its Politics," in The Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. Christopher Haigh (London, 1984), pp. 55-77;
18. Patrick Collinson, "Puritans, Men of Business and Elizabethan Parliaments," Parliamentary History 7 (1988): 189-211,
19. "The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester 69 (1987): 394-424,
20. "The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity," Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994): 51-92.
21. Adams; Collinson, "Monarchical Republic" and "Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis."
22. On the issues cited, see, e.g., Graves, "Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons";
23. Gerald Bowler, "'An Axe or an Acte': The Parliament of 1572 and Resistance Theory in Early Elizabethan England," Canadian Journal of History 19 (1984): 349-59.
24. On the issue of the queen's marriage, see Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony (London, 1996);
25. on the subscription crisis of 1584, see Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford, 1967), pt. 5.
26. On all these subjects much can still be profitably gleaned from a judicious reading of John Neale, Elizabeth and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (London, 1953, 1957) - i.e., one informed by recent revisionist strictures about the primacy and coherence he attributes to an oppositionist Puritan choir.
27. Questier, "Practical Anti-Papistry."
28. Doran, chaps. 1 and 7, p. 165; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, "The Anjou Match and the Making of Elizabethan Foreign Policy," in The English Commonwealth, 1547-1640, ed. Peter Clark, Alan Smith, and Nicholas Tyacke (Leicester, 1979), pp. 59-75;
29. Lloyd E. Berry, ed., John Stubbs's "Gaping Gulf" (Charlottesville, Va., 1968).
30. For the most recent and best account of the impact of the Anjou Match on the forward Protestant party at court, see Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue (London and New Haven, 1996), esp. chap. 6.
31. Collinson, "Monarchical Republic" and "Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis."
32. Bowler.
33. Worden, chap. 6.
34. Doran, p. 164.
35. Ibid., pp. 164-65; MacCaffrey; and Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court (Cambridge, 1998), p. 67.
36. See, e.g., Geoffrey Elton, "Parliament," in Haigh, ed., pp. 79-100,
37. the major arguments in which are massively documented in Elton's The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 (Cambridge, 1986).
38. Pauline Croft, "The Parliament of England," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 7 (1997): 217-34, esp. 225.
39. The distinction is elaborated in Collinson, "Puritans, Men of Business and Elizabethan Parliaments" (n. 8 above).
40. The classic account of the presbyterian agitation is, of course, Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement (n. 9 above).
41. Also see his article "John Field and Elizabethan Puritanism," in his Godly People (London, 1983).
42. For further discussions of presbyterian polemical tactics, see Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 3,
43. Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), chap. 2.
44. Thomas M. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541-1588: "Our Way of Proceeding?" (Leiden, 1996), pp. 126-28, 131-33, 136-39.
45. One version of Mercurian's instructions is printed in Robert Persons, Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, S.J., ed. Leo Hicks, Catholic Records Society Publications, vol. 39 (Catholic Record Society, 1942), pp. 316-21.
46. Also see Thomas M. McCoog, "'Playing the Champion': The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission," in The Reckoned Expense, ed. Thomas M. McCoog (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 119-39.
47. Robert Persons, "Of the Life and Martyrdom of Father Edmund Campion," Letters and Notices vol. 11 (1877): 219-42, 308-39,
48. Robert Persons, Letters and Notices vol. 12 (1878): 1-68, at p. 34;
49. William Allen, A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve Reverend Priests (London, 1908), p. 9.
50. Persons, "Of the Life," 12:45-46.
51. Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London, 1961), app. I, p. 201. Persons's declaration can be found in Hicks, ed., pp. 35-41.
52. For a discussion of these texts, see McCoog, Society of Jesus, pp. 146-48.
53. British Library (hereafter BL), Harleian MS 6265, fol. 15v (new foliation); Allen, A Briefe Historie, pp. 2-3.
54. For Persons's subsequent career as a plotter, see, most recently, John Bossy, "The Heart of Robert Persons," in McCoog, ed., pp. 141-58.
55. For Michael Carrafiello's argument that the avowedly political aims of the Jesuit mission were cunningly disguised by spiritual language, see his "English Catholicism and the Jesuit Mission of 1580-1581," Historical Journal 37 (1994): 761-74.
56. For a different account of the Jesuits' motives, see McCoog, Society of Jesus, pp. 179 ff., 266.
57. Waugh, p. 202.
58. Persons, "Of the Life," 12:50. Pounde was a first cousin of the Catholic second earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, and had been a thorn in the side of authority for some years in Hampshire, where he actively contested the legitimacy of the 1559 settlement of religion.
59. For Pounde, see H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols. (London, 1875-83), 3:567 ff.
60. Edmund Campion, Ten Reasons (London, 1914), p. 89.
61. Persons, "Of the Life," 11:334,
62. Persons, "Of the Life," 12:46.
63. Campion, pp. 89-91.
64. Persons, Letters (n. 21 above), pp. 66, 83.
65. Persons, Letters (Ibid., pp. 84-85;
66. William Charke, An Answere to a Seditious Pamphlet (London, 1580);
67. Meredith Hanmer, The Great Bragge and Challenge of M. Champion a Iesuite (London, 1581);
68. Robert Persons, A Briefe Censure uppon two bookes written in answere to M. Edmonde Campions offer of disputation (Douai [imprint false; printed at the "Greenstreet House" press, now in the house of Francis Browne], 1581),
69. A Brief Discours contayning certayne Reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church (Douai [imprint false; printed at Greenstreet House, East Ham], 1580).
70. William Allen, A True, Sincere and Modest Defence (Rouen, 1584), pp. 98-99;
71. Michael Questier, "Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance," Historical Journal 40 (1997): 311-29, at 320-21.
72. Campion, pp. 89-90.
73. Allen, A Briefe Historie (n. 22 above), pp. 9, 16.
74. McCoog, Society of Jesus (n. 21 above), p. 143;
75. Persons, "Of the Life," 12:21-22.
76. McCoog, Society of Jesus, pp. 135, 145, n. 56.
77. John C. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics (London, 1966), pp. 88-101.
78. Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists (Woodbridge, 1993), chaps. 3, 4.
79. McCoog, Society of Jesus, p. 144.
80. McCoog, Society of Jesus,Ibid., p. 145, n. 56, commenting on Walsham, pp. 70-71.
81. Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (London, 1979), pp. 213-14, 225.
82. See also Francis X. Walker, "The Implementation of the Elizabethan Statutes against Recusants, 1581-1603" (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1961), chaps. 1-4.
83. Persons, "Of the Life," 12:23-24.
84. McCoog, Society of Jesus, pp. 138-41,
85. "Playing the Champion," p. 125 (n. 21 above).
86. Thomas M. McCoog, "The English Jesuit Mission and the French Match." We are very grateful to Thomas McCoog for allowing us to see a draft of this unpublished article.
87. Persons, "Of the Life" (n. 22 above), 12:3-4, 5-7.
88. Persons, "Of the Life" Ibid., 12:5-9.
89. Lake and Questier (n. 5 above), pp. 77, 80.
90. Persons, Letters (n. 21 above), pp. 85-86.
91. Persons, Letters Ibid., p. 59.
92. Persons, Letters Ibid., p. 86.
93. Collinson, "John Field" (n. 20 above), Elizabethan Puritan Movement (n. 9 above), pts. 5, 6, quotation at p. 269.
94. John Bossy, "English Catholics and the French Marriage, 1577-81," Recusant History 5 (1959-60): 2-16. We are indebted to the insights in this article for what follows.
95. Doran (n. 9 above), p. 165; Bossy, "English Catholics and the French Marriage";
96. M. A. S. Hume, ed., Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas, vol. 3, Elizabeth, 1580-1586 (London, 1896), pp. 245-46.
97. Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion, 2d ed. (London, 1896), pp. 9, 12-16, 17;
98. Dwight C. Peck, ed., Leicester's Commonwealth: The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents (Athens, Ohio, and London, 1985), p. 73.
99. Colm Lennon, "Edmund Campion's Histories of Ireland and Reform in Tudor England," in McCoog, ed. (n. 21 above), pp. 67-83.
100. Katherine Duncan-Jones, "Sir Philip Sidney's Debt to Edmund Campion," in McCoog, ed., pp. 85-102.
101. Persons, "Of the Life" (n. 22 above), 12:22.
102. Doran (n. 9 above), pp. 173-74; Peter Hasler, ed., The House of Commons, 3 vols. (London, 1982), 1:657.
103. Bossy, "English Catholics and the French Match," p. 9.
104. Persons, A Brief Discours, dedicatory epistle to the queen, sigs. ‡iiir, ‡vir-v, ‡viiiv-‡‡v, ‡‡iir.
105. Simpson, pp. 339-40, 348-49. On the role of torture, see E. Hanson, "Torture and Truth in Renaissance England," Representations 34 (1991): 53-84.
106. McCoog, "Playing the Champion," pp. 134-36.
107. For the official published version of what happened, see Alexander Nowell and William Day, A true report of the Disputation or rather private Conference had in the Tower of London, with Ed. Campion Iesuite, the last of August. 1581. Set downe by the Reverend learned men them selves that dealt therein. Whereunto is ioyned also a true report of the other three dayes conferences had there with the same Iesuite. Which now are thought meete to be published in print by authoritie (London, 1583);
108. this tract incorporated a second work, by John Field, The three last dayes conferences had in the Tower with Edmund Campion Iesuite, the 18: 23: and 27. of September. 1581 Collected and faithfully set downe by M. Iohn Feilde. . . .
109. BL, Lansdowne MS 33, no. 24, fol. 48v, MS 33, no. 61, fol. 150r; Graves, "Thomas Norton" (n. 8 above), pp. 264-65.
110. BL, Lansdowne MS 33, no. 63, fol. 153v, cited in Graves, "Thomas Norton," p. 265.
111. Nowell and Day, sig. Aiir.
112. BL, Harleian MS 6265, fol. 15v.
113. Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age (London, 1977), pp. 53-54; Lake and Questier (n. 5 above), p. 88.
114. Leslie J. Ward, "The Law of Treason in the Reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1588" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1985), pp. 168-70, 248-51.
115. William Cecil Lord Burghley, The Execution of Justice in England (London, 1583); Lake and Questier. The afterlife of Campion and other martyrs in the literary underground of English Catholicism is currently the subject of important research by Margaret Sena. For Catholic manuscript accounts of the disputations in the Tower, see, e.g., BL, Harleian MS 422, fols. 136r-47r, 168r-72v; Additional MS 11055, fols. 188r-92v; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MS D 353, fols. 1r-35r. For a manuscript account of the trial, see BL, Harleian MS 6265, fols. 14r-22v.
116. BL, Lansdowne MS 33, no. 18, fol. 35r.
117. See, e.g., the outbreak of (sometimes semipublic) religious disputations between Catholics and Protestants that attended the seemingly imminent Spanish Match of the early 1620s; Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (London, 1978), pp. 220-25.
118. For the opening up of public discussion more generally, see Thomas Cogswell, "England and the Spanish Match," in Cust and Hughes, eds. (n. 7 above), pp. 107-33.
119. Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement (n. 9 above), pt. 8.
120. The Puritan agitation that greeted the new reign and culminated at Hampton Court can be usefully compared to a similar Catholic agitation for toleration directed at the new king; for printed manifestations of this, see Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, pp. 73-76.
121. Also see Albert J. Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy (Philadelphia, 1963).