Heresy, orthodoxy and english vernacular religion 1480-1525

Past and Present

Volumn 186, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 47-80

  McSheffrey, Shannon ^a  

^a Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering   (Canada)

Author keywords

CMV disease; CMV infection; CMV monitoring; CMV prophylaxis; Kidney transplantation

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750137685     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gti001     Document Type: Article

References (258)

1. Quoted in Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 5 vols. (Rolls ser., London, 1880), v, 400
2. see also Gratian, Decretum, C. 24, q. 3, cc. 27-31, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Aemilius Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1879-81), i, cols. 997-8.
3. Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 (Princeton, 2001), esp. 15-19, 141-51.
4. This approach to heresy draws from the influential work of scholars like Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972)
5. Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (London, 1983)
6. R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987). It challenges the 'intellectualist' (the word is Pegg's) approach of historians like Arno Borst, Les Cathares, trans. Charles Roy (Paris, 1978),
7. or Bernard Hamilton, for example his 'Wisdom from the East: The Reception by the Cathars of Eastern Dualist Texts', in Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (eds.), Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530 (Cambridge, 1994), who focus on the transmission of ideas.
8. As argued recently, for instance, by P. J. P. Goldberg, 'Coventry's "Lollard" Programme and the Making of Utopia', in Rosemary Horrox and Sarah Rees Jones (eds.), Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities, 1200-1630 (Cambridge, 2001), 103
9. also earlier by J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 6
10. R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 335.
11. See Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 5, 17-18, 278-81
12. Curtis Bostick, The Antichrist and the Lollards: Apocalypticism in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Leiden, 1998), esp. 176, 194.
13. Hudson's Premature Reformation, and Richard Rex's new short survey, The Lollards (Basingstoke, 2002), are the standard works on Lollardy; for a thorough and up-to-date bibliography, see Derrick G. Pitard, 'Bibliographies for Lollard Studies', (2003).
14. These dates respectively denote the revival of prosecution (and thus evidence) for Lollardy after a half-century hiatus and the approximate beginning of the Reformation in England.
15. Robert Parsons, A Treatise of Three Conuersions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion, 3 vols. ([St-Omer], 1603, STC 19416), ii, 408-9.
16. Parsons was commenting on Foxe's story of the '7 Godly Martyrs' of Coventry, the outlines of which Foxe first told in his Latin martyrology in 1559: John Foxe, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum (Basel, 1559), 116-17, repr. in Lollards of Coventry, 1486-1522, ed. and trans. Shannon McSheffrey and Norman Tanner (Camden Soc., 5th ser., xxiii, Cambridge, 2003), hereafter Lollards of Coventry, 295-6. It appeared in its vernacular version first in 1563: John Foxe, Actes & Monuments of These Latter & Perillous Dayes, Touching Matters of the Church (London, 1563, STC 11222), hereafter A&M (1563), 420-1
17. Lollards of Coventry, 296-308
18. and then in 1570 in its final revised form (read by Parsons): John Foxe, The First [Second] Volume of the Ecclesiasticall History Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes, Newly Recognised and Inlarged, 2 vols. continuously paginated (London, 1570, STC 11223), hereafter A&M (1570), 1107
19. Lollards of Coventry, 308-14. Subsequent editions of the Acts and Monuments repeated the same text without alteration. A nineteenth-century edition of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols. (London, 1843), hereafter A&M (1843), frequently cited by modern scholars, is largely a reprint of the 1570 and 1583 editions of Acts and Monuments, but it is not always strictly accurate in its transcription. It is, however, much more widely available than the sixteenth-century editions. Here I shall cite both the earliest sixteenth-century edition in which particular material appears and, for ease of reference, the nineteenth-century Townsend edition.
20. On John Foxe and his martyrologies, see Thomas S. Freeman, 'Fate, Faction, and Fiction in Foxe's Book of Martyrs', Hist. Fl, xliii (2000)
21. David Loades (ed.), John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 1997), esp. David Loades, 'Introduction: John Foxe and the Editors';
22. John King, 'Fiction and Fact in Foxe's Book of Martyrs'
23. and David Newcombe, 'Appendix: A Finding List of Extant Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Editions of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments'.
24. On Parsons and the Three Conversions, see Thomas H. Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-Reformation in England, 1572-1615 (Chicago, 1964), esp. 108, 133-4.
25. The debate regarding vernacular scriptures in the post-Reformation period is illuminated by Alexandra Walsham, '"Domme Preachers"? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print', Past and Present, no. 168 (Aug. 2000), esp. 75, 97.
26. Parsons, A Treatise of Three Conuersions, ii, 410-1. The italics in this quotation are original, indicating paraphrase from Foxe's work.
27. Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy', in her Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), 212-14, 216-17, repr. from History, lxii (1977)
28. Anne Hudson, 'Lollardy: The English Heresy?', in her Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), 162
29. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 31, 166, 472.
30. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (New Haven, 1992), esp. 53-87.
31. Lollards of Coventry, 72-3.
32. For similar concerns in the early fifteenth century, see Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31 (Camden Soc., 4th ser., xx, London, 1977), 73. Another man accused of heretical beliefs who abjured before Hales in 1490, Robert Clerke alias Teylour, confessed to having believed that it was damnable to say the Our Father or Hail Mary (Lollards of Coventry, 95-6); there is no evidence, however, of his connection with the Lollards of Coventry and I would argue that he was a religious eccentric rather than a member of the Lollard community.
33. John A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 (Oxford, 1965), 107, concurs, but cf. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 311.
34. On the overall question of Foxe's accuracy, see Freeman, 'Fate, Faction, and Fiction'; Loades (ed.), John Foxe and the English Reformation, esp. Loades, 'Introduction', 9-10
35. and King, 'Fiction and Fact in Foxe's Book of Martyrs'.
36. On Foxe as a source for Lollardy, see John A. F. Thomson, 'John Foxe and Some Sources for Lollard History: Notes for a Critical Appraisal', Studies in Church Hist., ii (1965), 251-7.
37. A&M (1570), 952
38. A&M (1843), iv, 228.
39. A&M (1570), 949
40. A&M (1843), iv, 225.
41. See also A&M (1563), 621
42. A&M (1570), 951-2, 957, 1117-19
43. A&M (1843), iv, 227-8, 235, 580-2, 584.
44. A&M (1563), 420
45. Lollards of Coventty, 297.
46. Foxe rewrote this somewhat in subsequent editions to say that English prayer was the 'principall cause': A&M (1570), 1107
47. Lollards of Coventry, 309.
48. Foxe tended to distinguish between his paraphrases from ecclesiastical records and his own commentaries or narratives by typeface, italics most often indicating a translation or paraphrase from original records; the Coventry material is not italicized, nor in any other way does it indicate that Foxe used ecclesiastical records. Foxe's source for the story may well have been his wife, Agnes Randall, or another member of her family; Agnes's father was a citizen of Coventry and Foxe himself stayed briefly in the city in the 1540s. J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and his Book (London, 1940), 27. The subsequent revisions of Foxe's account of the Coventry martyrs indicate that he made further enquiries in order to flesh out the original story, probably on his return to England with the accession of Elizabeth.
49. His naming of the mayor and sheriffs at the beginning of his 1563 account - A&M (1563), 420
50. Lollards of Coventry, 297 - suggests that he used a mayoral list or civic annal for some of his information, but the story as a whole is far more extensive than anything found in such a source for this period.
51. Foxe, or his agents, almost certainly gathered other parts of the story from local informants, one of whom was quite possibly the 'mother Halle' named in the 1570 and later versions - A&M (1570), 1107
52. Lollards of Coventry, 311
53. A&M (1843), iv, 558. As Tom Freeman has pointed out to me in private communication, after Catholic attacks on the accuracy of the 1563 edition of Acts and Monuments, Foxe was particularly concerned in 1570 to name his sources. He was especially sensitive about the issue of execution for the reading of vernacular bibles.
54. Nicholas Harpsfield, Dialogi sex contrasummi pontificatus, monasticae vitae, sanctorum Sacrarum imaginum oppugnatores et pseudomartyres (Antwerp, 1566), 827-8, 833, had called him a liar for making this charge.
55. John Foxe, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum (Basel, 1559), 116-17
56. Lollards of Coventry, 295-6.
57. For the story of Joan Smyth of Coventry, see Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities (Philadelphia, 1995), 34-7.
58. A&M (1563), 420-1
59. Lollards of Coventry, 297-9.
60. A&M (1570), 1107
61. Lollards of Coventry, 309-10
62. A&M (1843), iv, 557-8.
63. v
64. r
65. MS B/C/13: Court Book of Bishop Geoffrey Blyth of Coventry and Lichfield (the 'Lichfield Court Book'), 1511-12
66. r (Lollards of Coventry, 283-4), regarding the 1522 episode; our fullest accounts come from the various editions of Foxe's martyrologies.
67. David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols. (1737; repr. Brussels, 1964), iii, 314-19, esp. 317
68. Nicholas Watson, 'Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409', Speculum, lxx (1995)
69. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 431-6
70. Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy', 212-16
71. H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), ch. 4
72. Steven Justice, 'Lollardy', in David Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 1999), 676-8
73. Henry Ansgar Kelly, 'Lollard Inquisitions: Due and Undue Process', in Alberto Ferreiro (ed.), The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1998), 288, 296.
74. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 55-8.
75. Fiona Somerset, 'Professionalizing Translation at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century: Ullerston's Determinacio, Arundel's Constitutiones', in Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson (eds.), The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (College Park, Pa., 2003).
76. The Register of John Stafford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1425-1443, 2 vols., ed. Thomas S. Holmes (Somerset Record Soc., xxxi-xxxii, London, 1915-16), ii, 173-80.
77. The earliest reference to the Creed play is about 1446, while the Pater Noster play is first evinced about 1378 in John Wyclif's writing; both continued to be performed into the Reformation period: See Alexandra F. Johnston, 'The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: The Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play', Speculum, 1 (1975), esp. 57-9, 71.
78. H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1475 to 1557 (Cambridge, 1952), 57-8, 65-76
79. N. F. Blake, 'William Caxton', in M. C. Seymour (ed.), English Writers of the Late Middle Ages, 3 vols. (Aldershot, 1996), iii
80. Seth Lerer, 'William Caxton', in Wallace (ed.), Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature;
81. Barbara Belyea, 'Caxton's Reading Public', English Language Notes, xix (1981), 14-19
82. A. S. G. Edwards and Carol M. Meale, 'The Marketing of Printed Books in Late Medieval England', Library, xv (1993)
83. George R. Keiser, 'The Mystics and the Early English Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism', in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1987 (Cambridge, 1987), esp. 10-12.
84. Susan Powell, 'What Caxton Did to the Festial: The Festial from Manuscript to Printed Edition', Jl Early Book Soc., i (1997); Spencer, English Preaching, 182-3.
85. See, in its modern edition, John Mirk, Mirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies, ed. Theodor Erbe (Early Eng. Text Soc., extra ser., xcvi, London, 1905), pt 1, PP. 282, 299.
86. Powell, 'What Caxton Did to the Festial', 49.
87. Ibid., 48. The twenty-two editions of Mirk's Festial printed between 1483 and 1519 are now numbered STC 17957-17973.5.
88. Ibid., esp. 48-9.
89. John Mirk, Festial and Quattuor Sermones (Westminster, 1483, STC 17957), and subsequent editions (STC 17958-17973.5)
90. Powell, 'What Caxton Did to the Festial', 49-53.
91. The Crafte to Lyue Well (Westminster, 1505, STC 792)
92. Kalender of Shepherdes (London, 1506, STC 22408; see also STC 22409-22411).
93. On orthodox advocacy of vernacular prayer in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, ch. 2 (see pp. 81-3 for discussion of the books cited here).
94. Although, as David Loades notes in his 'Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558', in Jean-François Gilmont (ed.), The Reformation and the Book, trans. Karin Maag (Aldershot, 1998), 285, the printing of this style of religious literature abruptly ceased in the early 1530s, Protestant catechisms contained many of the same basic elements (instruction in the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Sacraments), if arranged in a different form.
95. On the latter, see Ian Green, The Christian's ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England, c. 1530-1740 (Oxford, 1996), chs. 7-12.
96. r.
97. r;
98. v. Pynson's woodcuts are virtually identical to those of Wynkyn de Worde. Reproductions of the woodcuts of the Our Father (from the Crafte) and the Hail Mary (from a later edition of the Kalender) can be seen in Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, plates 37, 39 (between pp. 116 and 117).
99. Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy', 213-14, 216-17. Hudson says several times that the possession of vernacular scriptures was 'primary' or 'sufficient' evidence of heresy (Premature Reformation, 211-12, 231, 383), although in other sections of her book she notes that English prayer or possession of English books was corroborative rather then primary evidence (pp. 166, 234).
100. r.
101. The importance of knowing the Latin words to the Our Father is emphasized, for instance, in A Lytell Geste How the Plowman Lerned his Pater Noster (Westminster, 1510, STC 20034).
102. A&M (1570), 949, 951
103. A&M (1843), iv, 225, 227.
104. Cf. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 31.
105. Lollards of Coventry, 140.
106. Old Testament: Lollards of Coventry, 116, 118, 125, 132
107. New Testament: Ibid., 117-18, 157
108. Psalter: Ibid., 155 (cf. 145)
109. Tobit: Ibid., 106, 116, 233, 241
110. Gospels: Ibid., 103, 106, 152, 156-7, 173
111. Matthew: Ibid., 117, 146
112. John: Ibid., 118, 146
113. Gospels and Epistles: Ibid., 72, 146, 182
114. Acts: Ibid., 117
115. Epistles of Paul: Ibid., 116-17, 130, 133, 147, 173
116. James: Ibid., 155
117. Revelation: Ibid., 146. Roger Landesdale mentioned a book 'of heretical depravity' that began: 'At the begynnyng whan God man' (ibid., 118). This may well have been Genesis (in the Wycliffite version, Gen. 1:1 is rendered: 'In the bigynnyng God made of nou3t heuene and erthe'), but equally it may have been a Lollard text or orthodox devotional work. The Lollards of the Chiltern Hills and London had similar reading habits: see A&M (1570), 940-1, 944, 947-62, 1117-19
118. A&M (1843), iv, 207-8, 215-16, 222-40, 580-4
119. r.
120. Lollards of Coventry, 106, 117, 128, 146, 155, 158, 179, 194, 207, 217, 241
121. r
122. r
123. v
124. r-v
125. v
126. A&M (1570), 940-1; 949, 952, 956-61
127. A&M (1843), iv, 207-8; 225, 228, 234-9. On the commentaries, see n. 71 below.
128. r
129. A&M (1570), 959
130. A&M (1843), iv, 237
131. The Treatys of Nycodemus Gospell (London, 1507, STC 18565).
132. On Lollards and the Bible, see Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (1920; repr. Cambridge, 1966)
133. Hudson, Premature Reformation, ch. 5
134. David Lawton, 'Englishing the Bible, 1066-1549', in Wallace (ed.), Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Debates about the appropriateness of scriptural translations were neither confined to England nor unknown among Protestants.
135. On vernacular Bibles in pre-Reformation Germany (where scriptures in the vernacular were printed frequently before 1522), see Bob Scribner, 'Heresy, Literacy and Print in the Early German Reformation', in Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (eds.), Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530 (Cambridge, 1994), 271-3.
136. For continued controversies about religious materials and print that straddled both sides of the confessional divide after the Reformation, see Walsham, '"Domme Preachers"?', 74-7
137. Jean-François Gilmont, 'Introduction', in Reformation and the Book, 2-4.
138. Spencer, English Preaching, ch. 4, esp. 175-83.
139. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 23-4, 205, 231-4
140. Deanesly, Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions, ch. 1
141. Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (London, 1993), 107-8.
142. See, for example, A&M (1570), 960
143. A&M (1843), iv, 239.
144. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 237-8. Note, however, that the book of Wycliffite scriptures held by Richard Hunne did include the Prologue: A&M (1570), 932-3
145. A&M (1843), iv, 184-6
146. r.
147. Lollards of Coventry, 72.
148. 'Pulcherrimos libros de heresi': Ibid., 185. It is, of course, possible that it was the scribe recording the deposition, not Bown, who designated the books as heretical.
149. 'Alicia Rowley habuit librum ad quinque vel sex annos preteritos de primario in Anglic', rubro velamine coopertum': Ibid., 145. This is probably the same book as the English psalter owned by Rowley: Ibid., 155.
150. See McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, 29-30, 123-4.
151. Edwards and Meale, 'Marketing of Printed Books', 117.
152. Interrogatus an novit effectum huiusmodi libri, dicit quod erat de huiusmodi perversis opinionibus quas Ricardus Gest et Johannes predicant et favent': Lollards of Coventry, 111.
153. 'Fatetur quod novit librum fuisse de et super heretica pravitate confectum': Ibid., 143.
154. Ibid., 146.
155. Roger Landesdale identified what was apparently the same book as a New Testament: Ibid., 117-18.
156. Ibid., 133, 142, 145, 147, 179, 202.
157. Primers and other books on the lives of saints, Christ's Passion, and the art of dying were common in the Late Middle Ages and were among the more popular early printed books; on these works, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 79, 209-86, 313-27
158. Margaret Aston, 'Devotional Literacy', in her Lollards and Reformers, 122-5.
159. Here Begynneth a Lytell Treatyse of the Dyenge Creature Enfected with Sykenes (Westminster, 1507, STC 6034).
160. A&M (1570), 949
161. A&M (1843), iv, 225. I have not identified this text.
162. A&M (1570), 954-5, 957-8
163. A&M (1843), iv, 230, 232, 235-6.
164. Now numbered STC 24873-24880.5.
165. A&M (1570), 1118
166. A&M (1843), iv, 582.
167. A&M (1570), 960
168. r, the author states: 'we receyue the sacrament of the auter in mynde of his passyon'.
169. For example Lollards of Coventry, 115
170. A&M (1570), 956-7
171. A&M (1843), iv, 233, 235
172. r
173. v
174. r.
175. See, for example, the works cited at n. 32 above, or Richard Pynson's treatise of about 1509, entitled In this Boke is Conteyned the Articles of oure Fayth. The .x. Commaundementis. The .vii. Works of Mercy. The. vii. Dedely Synnes. The .vii. Pryncypall Virtues. And the .vii. Sacramentis of Holy Chirche (London, [1509?], STC 3359).
176. A&M (1570), 949, 953, 956, 958, 960
177. A&M (1843), iv, 224, 229, 234, 236, 238.
178. A&M (1570), 960
179. A&M (1843), iv, 238.
180. Ibid.
181. Lawton, 'Englishing the Bible', 457, 460.
182. Lollards of Coventry, 205-6, 227, 235.
183. For example ibid., 65-6, 103, 150, 235.
184. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 4-5, 21 n. 75, 167. Wynkyn de Worde published treatises on the Ten Commandments in 1505 and 1510 (STC 23875.1 and 23876), but most frequently such commentaries on the decalogue were included in omnibus treatises on the Christian faith, such as Mirk's Festial (see n. 31 above); The Crafte to Lyue Well; The Kalender of Shepherdes (see n. 32 above); or the treatise by Pynson referred to in n. 64.
185. Lawton 'Englishing the Bible', 459, has made a similar point for the period before Arundel's Constitutions.
186. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vi, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc'hadour and Richard C. Marius, 2 pts (New Haven, 1981), Pt 1, pp. 316-17, 331, 337-41 (quotations at p. 317).
187. Lollards of Coventry, 117, 148. 156-8, 180, 185, 187-8; cf. 237, 251.
188. I make this argument at length in Gender and Heresy, 41-5. I disagree on the issue with a number of historians, who have hypothesized that a number of pivotal figures in the Coventry civic elite were Lollards. Alongside the artisan Lollards' suspicions, these scholars cite other evidence about those same men's interest in vernacular scripture and devotional works, and their involvement in moral reform and poverty relief movements in Coventry in the 1490s and 1500s (deemed by Jeremy Goldberg to be a 'Lollard programme' of reform). I would argue that these men's religious practices were congruent with mainstream orthodox piety of civic elites in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and that the elaborate bequests in these men's wills for obits and chantries make it unlikely they were much interested in Lollardy.
189. The case for heresy in the Coventry civic elite is most strongly made in Imogen Luxton, 'The Lichfield Court Book: A Postscript', Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, xliv (1971)
190. Goldberg, 'Coventry's "Lollard" Programme and the Making of Utopia'.
191. See also John Fines, 'Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, 1511-1512', Jl Eccles. Hist., xliv (1963), 166
192. Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 278 n.
193. 'An Acte for Thadvauncement of True Religion': 34 & 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1, Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (1810-28; repr. London, 1963), iii, 896.
194. Shannon McSheffrey, 'Literacy and the Gender Gap in the Late Middle Ages: Women and Reading in Lollard Communities', in Jane H. M. Taylor and Lesley Smith (eds.), Women, the Book and the Godly (Woodbridge, 1995).
195. See John H. Arnold, 'Margery's Trials: Heresy, Lollardy and Dissent', in John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe (Woodbridge, 2004), for an exploration of this issue in relation to the accusations of Lollardy made against Margery Kempe
196. see also Arnold's Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc (Philadelphia, 2001), 12-13, 157-63.
197. This argument is developed throughout Hudson's work: See esp. her Premature Reformation, 5, 17-18, 278-81. Curtis Bostick makes the argument for theological coherence (specifically apocalypticism) through texts even more strongly in his Antichrist and the Lollards, esp. 176, 194.
198. Rex has also challenged Hudson's view on the continuing theological influence of Wyclif (see his Lollards, 59-61, 74-8), briefly considering the issue of late Lollard reading of the Wycliffite corpus (pp. 76-7).
199. A&M (1570), 957, 960
200. A&M (1843), iv, 235, 238.
201. The Testimony of William Thorpe, 1407, in Two Wycliffite Texts, ed. Anne Hudson (Early Eng. Text Soc., original ser., ccci, Oxford, 1993).
202. r
203. for Stilman, see also A&M (1570), 940-1
204. r
205. A&M (1570), 940, 950, 957-8
206. A&M (1843), iv, 207, 226, 234-5.
207. On the Wicket, which was printed in 1546 (STC 25590), see Hudson, Premature Reformation, 451-2.
208. r.
209. r.
210. r.
211. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 18, 451-2.
212. Ibid, 17-18
213. Anne Hudson and Pamela Gradon (eds.), English Wycliffite Sermons, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1983-96), i, 53-97
214. iv, 19. The two exceptions are early sixteenth-century copies of the 'Thirty-Seven Conclusions' and the Latin sermon 'Omnis plantacio' (Hudson, Premature Reformation, 17-18), neither of which are attested in records of prosecution from the later period.
215. See, for instance, Hudson's discussion of medieval ownership of the Wycliffite sermon cycles: English Wycliffite Sermons, i, 53-97 passim. In the one case where there is an identifiable medieval owner of a manuscript, it was in the hands of a Dominican preacher, who had been given licence to own it by the prior of his convent: Ibid., 60-1.
216. In the records of prosecution of the Coventry Lollards between 1486 and 1522, Wyclif's name appears only once (Lollards of Coventry, 183), and in the records of Warham's prosecutions in Kent in 1511-12 it is never mentioned at all: Kent Heresy Proceedings, 1511-12, ed. Norman Tanner (Kent Records, xxvi, Maidstone, 1997), p. xv.
217. Euan Cameron comments that the later Waldenses, from what we can tell, also had little sense of the origin or putative founder of their dissent: See his Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2000), 168-9, 298.
218. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Anne Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), 27 (for the year 1395)
219. r-v (for the year 1486)
220. r passim (for the year 1499)
221. v (for the year 1508)
222. A&M (1570), 947, 956
223. and A&M (1843), iv, 221, 233 (for the years 1518-21).
224. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 5.
225. Ibid., 449-50, 467
226. McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, 77-9.
227. Much of my argument here accords with Thomson, Later Lollards, 239-50, although I disagree that Lollardy 'was essentially a negative movement' (ibid., 253), and I would emphasize more than Thomson does the late Lollards' scriptural fundamentalism.
228. Richard G. Davies, 'Lollardy and Locality', Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 6th ser., i (1991).
229. McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, 72-9, 87-107.
230. See Bryan Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford, 1982), 118
231. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, 'Networks of Faith: Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment to Cults and Sects', Amer. Jl Sociology, lxxxv (1980)
232. William Sims Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York and London, 1997)
233. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley, 2000), ch. 5.
234. Swanson, Church and Society, 335
235. Rex, Lollards, 81-2.
236. See Margaret Aston's illuminating discussion in her 'Were the Lollards a Sect?', in Peter Biller and Barrie Dobson (eds.), The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life (Studies in Church Hist., Subsidia xi, Woodbridge, 1999).
237. Ibid., 177-80.
238. For example Lollards of Coventry, 102, 108, 111, 115
239. Aston, 'Were the Lollards a Sect?', 168-75.
240. Thomson Later Lollards, 239-40.
241. Patrick Collinson, 'Night Schools, Conventicles and Churches: Continuities and Discontinuities in Early Protestant Ecclesiology', in Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (eds.), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), esp. 215-25
242. Rex, Lollards, 108, 131-2.
243. A&M (1570), 1107
244. Lollards of Coventry, 311.
245. Aston, 'Were the Lollards a Sect?', 191.
246. This represents a rethinking of my position since the publication of my Gender and Heresy in 1995. 218 One fascinating example of this is Joan Warde alias Wasshingburn, who in the 1490s fled from Coventry to Northampton, and thence travelled on to London. Through Lollard connections in the metropolis she married another heretic, and together they moved to Maidstone, Kent, where they were both prosecuted by the archbishop of Canterbury. Alone, perhaps widowed, Warde made her way back to Coventry sometime in the first decade of the sixteenth century, where she picked up once again with the heretics she had known there in the 1490s. Lollards of Coventry, 238.
247. Robert Silkby, Roger Landesdale and Alice Rowley: See Lollards of Coventry, passim.
248. Ibid., 124.
249. Ibid., 157, 160.
250. Frederick Bird and Bill Reimer, 'Participation Rates in New Religious and Para-Religious Movements', Jl Scientific Study of Religion, xxi (1982).
251. Lollards of Coventry, 203, 152-3.
252. Ibid., 169, 190.
253. K B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London, 1952), 168, 180, 184.
254. Scarisbrick, Reformation and the English People, 6.
255. As recently argued by Goldberg, 'Coventry's "Lollard" Programme and the Making of Utopia', esp. 103.
256. Swanson, Church and Society, 335; retracted (acknowledging that Hudson's work had caused him to rethink) in Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before the Reformation, ed. and trans. R. N. Swanson (Manchester, 1993), 35 n. 102.
257. Cameron, Waldenses, 176
258. see also pp. 96, 168. It is interesting to note the ways in which the Lollard 'style of dissent' differed from that of the Waldenses; as Cameron puts it, the Waldenses 'lived in the same world as the Catholics, characterized by ritual penance and mediated holiness' (p. 144), while Lollards rejected the penitential emphasis of Catholicism.