The politics of religion and the religion of politics in elizabethan england

Historical Research

Volumn 82, Issue 215, 2009, Pages 74-92

  Collinson, Patrick ^a  

^a TRINITY COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 65749273066     PISSN: 09503471     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00448.x     Document Type: Article

References (172)

1. S. E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn., 1972), p. 954.
2. State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, ed. A. Clifford (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1809), ii. 126.
3. John Parkhurst to Heinrich Bullinger, 21 May 1559 (Zurich Letters (Cambridge, 2 vols., 1842-5), i, no. XII;
4. see C Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (1969), pp. 23, 136-7).
5. J. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1:689 (Harlow, 2000), pp. 99-102, 114-15.
6. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England C.1400-C.1580 (New Haven and London, 1992).
7. P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967);
8. J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1559-81 (1953);
9. J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584-1601 (1957);
10. G. R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559-81 (Cambridge, 1986), chs. 8, 9;
11. G. R. Elton, 'Parliament in the :16th century: functions and fortunes', in G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, iii (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 15682.
12. See copious prime evidence of these activities in The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. A. Peel (2 vols., Cambridge, 1915) (hereafter The Seconde Part of a Register).
13. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: an Abridged Edition, ed. A. S. McGrade and B. Vickers (1975). P- 336.
14. P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society 1559-1625 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 273-8;
15. P. Collinson, 'The English conventicle', in P. Collinson, From Cranmer to Sancroft (2006), pp. 164-6.
16. S. Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven and London, 2007).
17. J. Boulton, 'The limits of formal religion: administration of holy communion, in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London', London Jour., x (1984), 135-54.
18. W. Reinhard, 'Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the early modern state: a reassessment', Catholic Historical Rev., lxxv (1989), 383-404;
19. H. Schilling, 'Confessional Europe', in Handbook of European History, 1400-1600, ed. T. A. Brady, H. A. Oberman and J. D. Tracy (2 vols., Leiden, 1995), ii 641-75;
20. H. Schilling, 'Confessionalisation in the empire: religious and societal change in Germany between 1555 and 1620', in H. Schilling Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modem Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden, 1992), pp. 205-45.
21. P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988), ch. I, 'What was the admonition controversy about?'.
22. Many trenchant examples of these allegations against the Presbyterians can be gathered from the polemical works by, or attributed to, the future Archbishop Richard Bancroft (see Tracts Ascribed to Richard Bancroft, ed. A. Peel (Cambridge, 1953)
23. and two books of 1593: Davngerovs positions and proceedings and A survay of the pretended Holy Discipline).
24. A. F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535-1603 (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 12-17;
25. A. F. Scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of 16th Century Puritanism (Cambridge, 1928), p. 2;
26. P. Collinson, 'Cartwright, Thomas (1534/5-1603)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) 〈http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/4820〉 [accessed 16 Oct. 2006].
27. Scott Pearson, Church and State, pp. 2-3.
28. Scott Pearson, Church and State, pp. 29, 23, 142-3;
29. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 55-64;
30. The Works of John Whitgift, ed. J. Ayre (Parker Soc., 3 vols., Cambridge, 1851), i. 393.
31. Scott Pearson, Church and State, pp. 128-9, 146.
32. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 56-7.
33. J. Guy, 'Introduction - the 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?', in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. J. Guy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1-19.
34. E. H. Shagan, 'The English inquisition: constitutional conflict and ecclesiastical law in the 1590s', Historical Jour., xlvii (2004), 541-65;
35. J. Guy, 'The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity', in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, pp. 126-49.
36. In the years that followed, the full implications of this reading of the royal supremacy were developed, especially in a 700-page book by the civil lawyer Richard Cosin, An apologie of, and for sundrie proceedings by jurisdiction ecclesiastical (1591).
37. Richard Hooker took a different view of these matters, less absolutist and more parliamentary, in his Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity: but only in bk. 8, which was not published until 1648, by which time the theocratic/absolutist ideology had backfired.
38. Bancroft, A survay of the pretended Holy Discipline and Davngerous positions and proceedings;
39. Richard Cosin, Conspiracie, for Pretended Reformation (1592);
40. P. Collinson, 'Separation in and out of the church: the consistency of Barrow and Greenwood', Jour. United Reformed Church History Soc., v (1994), 239-58.
41. J. Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971)
42. (trans. as Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (1978).
43. K. Ploger, 'Foreign policy in the late middle ages', German Historical Institute: London Bulletin, xxviii (2006), 35-46.
44. C. Z. Wiener, 'The beleaguered isle: a study of Elizabethan and early Jacobean anti-Catholicism', Past & Present, li (1971), 27-62;
45. P. Lake, 'Antipopery: the structure of a prejudice', in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-42, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (Harlow, 1989), pp. 72-106;
46. J. Miller, Popery and Politics in England, 1660-88 (Cambridge, 1973).
47. Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, iii: 1593-1601, ed. T. E. Hartley (Leicester, 1995), p. 71.
48. 'The printer to the reader', an appendix to The copie of a letter sent ovt of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza (1588).
49. P. Collinson, 'Windows in a woman's soul: questions about the religion of Queen Elizabeth I', in P. Collinson, Elizabethans (London and New York, 2003), pp. 87-117;
50. S. Doran, 'Elizabeth I's religion: the evidence of her letters', Jour. Eccles. Hist., li (2000), 699-720.
51. S. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: the Courtships of Elizabeth I (London and New York, 1996).
52. But see the judgment of J. E. Neale: 'Her financial principles were those of sound business: to pay what she owed and spend what she could afford . . . They were principles rare among princes in her day and explain that miracle of her age, the solvency of her government' (J. E. Neale, Essays in Elizabethan History (1958), pp. 200-1).
53. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1559-81, pp. 386-92.
54. P. Collinson, 'Pulling the strings: religion and politics in the progress of 1578', in The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I, ed. J. E. Archer, E. Goldring and S. Knight (Oxford, 2007);
55. Z. Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: the Queen's Journey into East Anglia, 1578 (Stroud, 1996);
56. D. MacCulloch, 'Catholic and puritan in Elizabethan Suffolk: a county community polarises', Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, lxxii (1981), 232-89;
57. D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500-1600 (Oxford, 1986);
58. A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk 1558-1603 (Oxford, 1974).
59. P. Collinson, Servants and Citizens: Robert Beale and other Elizabethans (St. Mary's College, 2006),
60. and Hist. Research, lxxix (2006), 488-511.
61. The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. S. A. Pears (1845), pp. 2, 43, 44, 48, 68.
62. Pears, pp. 478, 75, 91, 146; B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 56 and passim.
63. C. Read, Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (3 vols., Oxford, 1925), i. 239, 214; Worden, p. 56.
64. S. Adams, 'A godly peer? Leicester and the puritans' and 'A puritan crusade? The composition of the earl of Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands, 1585-6', both in S. Adams, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002);
65. P. Collinson, 'Letters of Thomas Wood, puritan, 1566-77', in P. Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (1983), pp. 45-107;
66. E. Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York, 1955).
67. C. Read, 'Walsingham and Burghley in Queen Elizabeth's privy council', Eng. Hist. Rev., xxviii (1913), 34-58.
68. S. Adams, 'Faction, clientage and party: English politics, 1550-1603' and 'Favourites and factions at the Elizabethan, court', both in Adams, Leicester and the Court.
69. S. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558-69 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 27-8, 53-5. For evidence of Burghley's support for a religiously motivated intervention in the Netherlands, and criticism of the queen for dragging her feet over this, see Collinson, 'Pulling the strings'.
70. The Execution of Justice in England By William Cecil and A True, Sincere and Modest Defense of English Catholics by William Allen, ed. R. M. Kingdon (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965)
71. (hereafter The Execution of Justice), pp. 56, 79.
72. P. Lake, 'From Leicester his Commonwealth to Sejanus his Fall: Ben Jonson and the politics of Roman [Catholic] virtue', in Catholics and the 'Protestant Nation': Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modem England, ed. E. Shagan (Manchester, 2005), pp. 128-61;
73. Leicester's Commonwealth: the Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents, ed. D. C. Peck (Athens, Oh. and London, 1985)
74. (hereafter Leicester's Commonwealth);
75. Collinson, Godly People, p. 62.
76. P. Collinson, 'William. Camden and the anti-myth of Elizabeth: setting the mould?', in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. S. Doran and T. S. Freeman (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 79-98.
77. Lake, 'From Leicester his Commonwealth to Sejanus his Fall'.
78. Tudor Royal Proclamations, iii: the Later Tudors (1588-1603), ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (New Haven and London, 1969), pp. 86-93.
79. For what lay behind this proclamation, see forthcoming work by Glyn Parry on John Dee, whose prophecy that the Armada would return in 1592 was exploited by Burghley as a means of outflanking Archbishop Whitgift and transferring the harassment of the puritans to the papists. See G. Parry, 'The context of John Shakespeare's "recusancy" re-examined', Shakespeare Yearbook, xvi: the Shakespeare Apocrypha (Lewiston, N.Y. and Lampeter, 2007).
80. P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: the Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, 1581-97 (Cambridge, 1999);
81. A. Gajda, 'Political culture and the circle of Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, C.1595-C.1601' (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 2005);
82. J. Scott-Warren, Sir John Haringtan and the Book as Gift (Oxford, 2001), pp. 57-98.
83. A. Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (1979), pp. 120-201;
84. J. Hurstfield, 'The succession struggle in late Elizabethan England', in Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, ed. S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C. H. Williams (1961), pp. 369-96;
85. The Struggle for the Succession in Late Elizabethan England: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representations, ed. J.-C. Mayer (Montpellier, 2004).
86. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1559-81, p. 93;
87. The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, ed. J. Ayre (Parker Soc., Cambridge, 1841), pp. 72-3.
88. For further evidence of Sandys's bloody-mindedness, see P. Collinson, 'Sandys, Edwin (1519?-1588)', O.D.N.B. 〈http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/24649〉 [accessed 16 Oct. 2006].
89. P. Marshall, 'Papist as heretic: the burning of John Forrest, 1538', Historical Jour., xli (1998), 351-74.
90. The Execution of Justice, pp. 7-9, 20.
91. See C. Read, 'William Cecil and Elizabethan public relations', in Bindoff, Hurstfield and Williams, pp. 21-55.
92. Shagan, 'The English inquisition', p. 549.
93. The Execution of Justice, pp. 9-13.
94. P. Lake and M. Questier, 'Agency, appropriation and rhetoric under the gallows: puritans, Romanists and the state in early modern England', Past & Present, cliii (1996), 64-107, at pp. 73-6.
95. The Execution of Justice, pp. 58-61, 70-1.
96. Topcliffe's copy of Allen's Defence is in San Marino, California, Huntington Library, C 373 60060. I owe this reference to Alex Walsham. Cf. Sir John Neale's reference to Topcliffe's copy of L'Historia Ecclesiastica della Revoluzton d'Inghllterra, in which his annotations were still more exuberant, including drawings of the gallows intended for Allen and the author, 'the viper', 'the villain', 'the bastard' (Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584-1601, p. 153).
97. Robert Parsons, A brief censvre vppon two bookes written in answere to M. Edmonde Campions offer of disputation (Douai, 1581), sig. Dviii.
98. Robert Parsons, A treatise tending to mitigation towardes Catholicke subiectes in England (St. Omer, 1607).
99. Leicester's Commonwealth, pp. 78-9, 65.
100. Stuart Royal Proclamations, i:
101. Royal Proclamations of King James I 1603-25, ed. J. F. Larkin and P. L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), pp. 184-5;
102. A. Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500-1700 (Manchester, 2006), p. 262.
103. Quoted in M. Questier, 'Elizabeth and the Catholics', in Shagan, Catholics and the 'Protestant Nation', pp. 64-94, at P. 70.
104. See M. L. Carafiello, 'English Catholicism and the Jesuit mission of 1580-1', Historical Jour., xxxvii (1994), 761-74.
105. Questier, 'Elizabeth and the Catholics'.
106. A. Walsham, "Domme Preachers"? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the culture of print', Past & Present, clxviii (2000), 72-123.
107. This is the message throughout the recent collection of essays, Shagan, Catholics and the 'Protestant Nation'.
108. A. Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1533-1603 (Aldershot, 2002).
109. A. Pettegree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies (Aldershot, 1996), p. 116;
110. T. S. Freeman, 'Providence and prescription: the account of Elizabeth in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs'", in Doran and Freeman, pp. 27-55.
111. Shagan, Catholics and the 'Protestant Nation', pp. 7-8, 14-16;
112. M. Questier, 'Conformity, Catholicism and the law', in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560-1660, ed. P. Lake and M. Questier (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 237-61.
113. J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (1975).
114. M. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2006).
115. J. Earle, The Autograph Manuscript of Microcosmographie (Leeds, 1966), pp. 41-4.
116. A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 1993; 2nd edn., 1999);
117. Questier, Catholicism and Community.
118. P. Lake and M. Questier, 'Introduction' and Questier, 'Conformity, Catholicism and the law', both in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp. xiv, 245.
119. A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (1962);
120. and The House of Commons, 1558-1603, ed. P. W. Hasler (History of Parliament, 3 vols., 1981), iii. 490-1.
121. Questier, 'Conformity, Catholicism, and the law', pp. 254-5.
122. Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 50-6.
123. The Other Face: Catholic Life under Elizabeth I, ed. P. Caraman (1960).
124. Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 68-206.
125. Questier, Catholicism and Community, p. 84.
126. Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 169-75.
127. Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 164-5.
128. Bossy.
129. A. Walsham, '"Yielding to the extremity of the time": conformity, orthodoxy and the post-Reformation Catholic community', in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy, pp. 211-36, at pp. 231-2;
130. Questier, 'Conformity, Catholicism and the law', p. 242.
131. F. X. Walker, 'The implementation of the Elizabethan statutes against recusants' (unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1961).
132. The Seconde Parte of a Register, ii. 33-4.
133. This account is based on observation. I often took students and visitors to Lynsted when living and teaching in Canterbury. And see the tomb monuments erected for John Caryll at Warnham and Sir John Gage at West Firle, both Sussex examples, and, at Wing, Buckinghamshire, for the Dormers (Questier, Catholicism and Community, illustrations 10-13).
134. E. Shagan, 'Introduction: English Catholic history in context', in Shagan, Catholics and the 'Protestant Nation'.
135. In the 18th century William Hawkins, following the 17th-century Sir Matthew Hale, pronounced that 'a Man's House is looked upon as his Castle' (Collinson, 'The English conventicle', p. 150).
136. Collinson, 'The English conventicle', p. 156; P. Collinson, 'Night schools, conventicles and churches: continuities and discontinuities in early Protestant ecclesiology', in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. P. Marshall and A. Ryrie (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 209-35, at pp. 221-5.
137. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 115-19.
138. D. Plumb, 'A gathered church? Lollards and their society', in The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725, ed. M. Spufford (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 132-63.
139. B. Stevenson, 'The social integration of post-Restoration dissenters, 1660-1725', in Spufford, pp. 361-87.
140. C. W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550-1630 (Cambridge, 1994).
141. P. Collinson, 'The religion of Elizabethan England and of its queen', in Giordano Bruno 1583-5: the English Experience, ed. M. Cilibertro and N. Mann (Firenze, 1997), pp. 20-1.
142. A. Bida, 'Papists in an Elizabethan parish: Linton Cambridgeshire C.1560-C.1600' (unpublished University of Cambridge Diploma in Historical Studies dissertation, Cambridge, 1992). I was privileged to supervise Mr. Bida's work, which should have led to a doctoral thesis, but for lack of funding from his native Poland.
143. P. Collinson, 'Critical conclusion', in Spufford, pp. 388-96.
144. See P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, The Religion of Protestants and many of the essays gathered in Godly People and From Cranmer to Sancroft.
145. P. Lake, The Boxmaker's Revenge: 'Orthodoxy'', 'Heterodoxy' and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001);
146. P. Lake with M. Questier, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in PostReformation England (New Haven and London, 2002).
147. T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan Movement c. 1620-43 (Cambridge, 1997).
148. P. Collinson, 'Elizabethan and Jacobean puritanism as forms of popular religious culture', in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700, ed. C. Durston and J. Eales (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 32-57;
149. P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Basingstoke, 1988).
150. P. Lake, '"A charitable Christian hatred": the godly and their enemies in the 1630s', in Durston and Eales, pp. 145-83.
151. Lake and Questier, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, pp. 425-38, 484-500.
152. Collinson, 'Puritanism as popular religious culture', p. 55.
153. See above, n. 77;
154. and the case of East Hanningfield in Essex, discussed in Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 349-50.
155. See what was said of those who gadded to hear William Dyke at St. Albans: 'Many of this gadding people came from far and went home late, both young men and young women together' (Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 373-4).
156. In a speech made in the 1628 parliament, Sir Henry Marten, dean of the court of arches, said that if a bishop were to trouble a man for going to another sermon when he had none at home, 'it is against law and I have upon appeals given good costs against the ordinary and I will ever do it' (B. P. Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603-42 (Oxford, 1973), p. 191).
157. Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 168-76;
158. P. Collinson, 'Lectures by combination: structures and characteristics of church life in 17th-century England', in Collinson, Godly People, pp. 467-98.
159. Collinson, Religion of Protestants, pp. 248-9, 264-7;
160. P. Collinson, 'The English conventicle', pp. 158-61.
161. Collinson, 'The English conventicle'.
162. J. Craig, Reformation, Politics and Polemics: the Growth of Protestantism in East Anglian Market Towns, 1500-1610 (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 133-51.
163. Collinson, 'Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism'; 'Introduction' and essays by P. Collinson and A. Fox in The Reformation in English Towns, 1500-1640, ed. P. Collinson and J. Craig (Basingstoke, 1998);
164. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-60 (Oxford, 1985). Copious source material relating to this subject will be found in virtually all volumes of the Toronto series Records of Early English Drama.
165. L. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth (Chicago, Ill., 1986);
166. P. Collinson, 'Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair: the theatre constructs puritanism' and L. Marcus, 'Of mire and authorship', both in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576-1649, ed. D. L. Smith, R. Strier and D. Bevington (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 157-81;
167. Lake and Questier, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat, pp. 583-608.
168. C. W. Marsh, 'The gravestone of Thomas Lawrence revisited (or the Family of Love and the local community in Balsham, 1560-1630)', in Spufford, pp. 208-34.
169. Questier, 'Conformity, Catholicism and the law'; Questier, Catholicism and Community.
170. Walsham, Charitable Hatred, esp. p. 301.
171. Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth (1659), pp. 456-7;
172. and see P. Collinson, 'Wars of religion', in The Birthpangs of Protestant England, pp. 127-55.