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Catholic Use of Anglo-Saxon Precedents, 1565–1625

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Donna B. Hamilton
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Extract

The study of antiquarianism and particularly of the use of Anglo-Saxon precedents in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has belonged primarily to historians of Protestantism and parliament, to their studies of English Protestant antiquarians and English Protestant theories of common law, royal absolutism, constitutionalism, Laudian Anglicanism, and non-conforming Protestant resistance. Although it has been clear to everyone that Protestant interest in Saxonism was part and parcel of an anti-Catholic agenda, the Catholic side of this discourse has been virtually unexamined. The focus almost exclusively on Protestant Saxonism has isolated even Protestant thought from some of the contexts within which it developed and, more obviously, has all but occluded the importance of Saxonism to a range of Catholic arguments.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 537 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2003

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References

1 See Veech, Thomas McNevin, Dr. Nicholas Sanders and The English Reformation, 1530–1581 (Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1935)Google Scholar; O’Connell, Marvin Richard, Thomas Stapleton and the Counter Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; R. W. Chambers, ‘A Life of Harpsfield’, in Chambers, An Introduction on the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School, A Life of Harpsfield, and Historical Notes in Harpsfield, Nicholas, The life and death of Sr Thomas Moore, knight, sometymes Lord high Chancellor of England (London: Oxford University Press, 1932)Google Scholar; Booty, John E., John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: S.P.C.K., 1963)Google Scholar. See also Loach, Jennifer, ‘Reformation Controversies’, in McConica, James, ed., The Collegiate University: III, in The History of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 363–96Google Scholar; Williams, Penry, ‘Elizabethan Oxford: State, Church and University’ in McConica, , ed., The Collegiate University, pp. 441–77.Google Scholar

For comments on and suggests for this paper, I am especially indebted to Paul Arblaster, Sabrina Baron, Thomas Freeman, Leo Gooch, Gary Hamilton, Caroline Hibbard, Pascal Majérus, and Robert Miola.

2 For bibliography, see Allison, A. F. and Rogers, D. M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, 2 vols, (v.l: Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989 Google Scholar; Brookfield, Vermont: Gower Publishing, 1989; v.2: Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994; Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1994); Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (London: Scolar Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978)Google Scholar. Among the most prolific of the authors whom I do not discuss is Richard White of Basingstoke, whose Historiarum Britanniae came out in several volumes 1598–1607; see Allison, and Rogers, , The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation, 1.1370–1375 Google Scholar. On White, see Binns, J. W., Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990), pp. 183–85.Google Scholar

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7 One might wonder whether Harpsfield was also at issue in Foxe’s reply. As Thomas Freeman has indicated to me in private correspondence, in Dialogi Sex, Harpsfield does not deal with the Anglo-Saxons, except to refer to ‘the double papal conversion of England, first under the auspices of Pope Eleutherius, then of Gregory the Great’. As for Harpsfield’s Historia anglicana ecclesiastica, Freeman has indicated that ‘there is no evidence that the work circulated before Harpsfield’s death, no evidence that Foxe saw a copy and no evidence that he saw a copy before he added the Saxon material to his 1570 edition’. Not printed until 1622 and with additions to the manuscript dated 1568, Historia anglicana ecclesiastica circulated in manuscript in England and on the continent, and remains untranslated; see Chambers, ‘A Life of Harpsfield’, pp. cxcviii-cxciv, and the later pages of this article.

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12 See Holmes, Peter, ‘The Authorship and Early Reception of A Conference about the next succession to the crown of England’, The Historical Journal 23 (1980): pp. 415–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 A conspicuous omission here is Persons, A Treatise of three conversions (1603), in which, answering the books of Francis Hastings, he again launched an all-out attack on Foxe that focused particularly on matters to do with emperors and popes. Toward that end, Persons constructed a far more detailed Saxon argument than he had previously used, and one focused not primarily on Saxon kings, as is his Conference, but on the benefits that accrued to England from papal intervention during the Saxon period, a move aimed especially at Foxian arguments regarding the early corruption of the papacy and the purity to which England clung despite that contamination. For discussion of Persons’s response to Foxe, see especially Aston, Margaret and Ingram, Elizabeth, ‘The Iconography of the Acts and Monuments’, in Loades, , ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation, pp. 66–142 Google Scholar; and Sullivan, Ceri, “Oppressed by the Force of Truth”: Robert Persons Edits John Foxe’, in John Foxe: An Historical Perspective, ed. Loades, David (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 154–66.Google Scholar

14 As Michael Carrafiello has shown, attacks on Persons’s Conference included the remark from the Appellant William Clarke that Persons was as bad as George Buchanan; see Carrafiello, Michael L., Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580–1610 (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), p. 75.Google Scholar

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16 Hamilton, , ‘Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’, p. 9.Google Scholar

17 On the place of consent in sixteenth-century Thomist and Jesuit thought, with an emphasis on the thought of Francesco Suárez, see Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modem Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 2: pp. 161–66 Google Scholar. For discussions of decentralized and constitutionalist practices in Habsburg rule, see also, Elliott, J. H., ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present, 137 (1992): pp. 48–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Thompson, I. A., War and Government in Habsburg Spain, 1560–1620 (London: Athlone Press, 1976), pp. 38–66, 146–62Google Scholar; W. Evans, R. J., The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 157–70Google Scholar; Franklin, Julian, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Hamilton, Bernice, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain: A study of the political ideas of Vitoria, DeSoto, Suárez, and Molina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 31–68 Google Scholar. For connections between Persons and ideas of election and consent held by the Catholic League and by the Huguenots, see Parmelee, Lisa Ferraro, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester: University of Rochester, 1996), pp. 76–96 Google Scholar. See also Carrafiello, Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, pp. 56–68.

18 Hamilton, , ‘Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’, pp. 26–28.Google Scholar

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20 See Patterson, W. B., James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 31–74.Google Scholar

21 For the assessment of the importance of Verstegan’s antiquarian arguments for later English antiquarians focused on parliament, see Burgess, Glenn, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1602–1642 (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1992) p. 101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Woolf, D. R., The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology, and the “Light of Truth” from the Accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990) p. 202 Google Scholar. For Heylyn’s praise of Verstegan see Hamilton, , ‘Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’, p. 28.Google Scholar

22 See Burgess, Glenn, Absolute Monarchy and The Stuart Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 200.Google Scholar

23 See Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), pp. 152–203, 203–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burgess, , Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution, pp. 204–05.Google Scholar

24 Cited by Burgess, , Absolute Monarchy and The Stuart Constitution, p. 200n.Google Scholar

25 The case of St. Chrysostom had been the cause of a major debate between Jewel and Harding and subsequently of a long discussion by Stapleton on papal supremacy; for a review of the debate, see Stapleton, Counterblast, sig. xlr-bblr.

26 All were laws which, Parsons said, had been ‘reiterated and ratified, in most of the insuring Parlaments for authorizing … exemptions and priviledges of Clergie-men [and] which were from time to time by al our Kings confirmed … untill the later times of K. Henry the eight’ (F3r). The significance of precedents set by these particular kings to later arguments on behalf of Parliamentary opposition to royal power are well known; see, for example, Greenberg, Janelle, ‘The Confessor’s Laws and the Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution’, English Historical Review, 104 (1989): pp. 611–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klein, William, ‘The Ancient Constitution revisited’, in Political Discourse in Early Modem Britain, ed. Phillipson, Nicholas and Skinner, Quentin, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

27 My view of Persons is consistent with that of Carrafiello, Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, pp. 115–16.

28 Englefield had moved to the continent in 1559. See Loomie, Albert J., ‘A Pensioner: Sir Francis Engelfield, 1522–1596’, The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (New York: Fordham University Press, 1963), pp. 14–51.Google Scholar

29 Ross, Richard J., ‘The Memorial Culture of Early Modem English Lawyers: Memory as Keyword, Shelter, and Identity, 1560–1640’, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 10 (1998) pp. 229–326.Google Scholar

30 See Russell, , Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629, pp. 152–203, 203–59Google Scholar. See also Ferrell, Lori, ‘Kneeling and the Body Politic’, in Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688, ed. Hamilton, Donna B. and Strier, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 78, 86, 70–92.Google Scholar

31 In Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus, or an apologie for the oath of allegiance (1608), King James cited Bede on the point that the religious emissaries sent by Pope Eleutherius to King Lucius ‘exercised no part of their function, but by the Kings leave and permission’; see Mcllwain, C. H., ed., The Political Works of James I (1918; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1965), p. 101 Google Scholar. On the Oath of Allegiance controversy, see Patterson, , James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, pp. 75–123 Google Scholar; Sommerville, J. P., ed., Political Writings, James VI and I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Sommerville, J. P., ‘Jacobean Political Thought and the Controversy over the Oath of Allegiance’, Cambridge University thesis, 1981; Mcllwain, ed.Google Scholar, The Political Works of James I, pp. xlviii-lxxx; and Hamilton, , Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (Hampstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1992), pp. 128–37.Google Scholar

32 Donne, John, Pseudo-Martyr, ed. Raspa, Anthony (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), p. 188.Google Scholar

33 See Cogswell, Thomas, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 20–21, 32–34Google Scholar; Patterson, , James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, pp. 339–56Google Scholar; Adams, S. L., ‘Foreign Policy and Parliaments of 1621 and 1624’, in Faction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 139–71Google Scholar; Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 58–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lake, Peter, ‘Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice’ in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642, ed. Cust, Richard and Hughes, Ann. (London: Longman, 1989), pp. 72–106.Google Scholar

34 Cogswell, , The Blessed Revolution, p. 4.Google Scholar

35 For bibliography and qualifications of this statement, see Milward, , Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, pp. 195–214.Google Scholar

36 For Broughton, see, Woolf, , The Idea of History in Early Stuart England, pp. 43–44 Google Scholar. In my essay on Verstegan, I speculated about who ‘R.B.’ might be, but did not consider Broughton; see Hamilton, ‘Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’, p. 3. Given the other historians who wrote liminary verses for Verstegan’s Restitution—Richard White, Richard Stanihurst, and Comelis (van) Kiel—surely Broughton is the best guess for ‘R.B.’.

37 Broughton also repeated ideas that Persons had emphasized in his Answere to … Coke, namely that Queen Elizabeth had held Catholic views, would not have shifted the country to Protestantism had she not feared the Pope’s charge of bastardy, and ‘would have lived a Catholike, but for her over-ruling Protestant Counsaile’ (A8v-Blr).

38 See Allison, A. F., ‘A group of political tracts, 1621–1623, by Richard Verstegan’, Recusant History 18 (1986): pp. 141, 128–42Google Scholar (these tracts include two on the Spanish match); Allison, A. F., ‘John Heigham of S. Omer (C.1568-C.1632), Recusant History 4 (1958): pp. 232, 226–42Google Scholar; Allison, A. F., ‘The later life and writings of Joseph Creswell, S. J. (1556–1623)’, Recusant History 15 (1979): pp. 130, 79–144Google Scholar. In 1620, Creswell dedicated his translation of Quis diues saluus, How a rich man may be saved to the Infanta Maria; in 1618, he had dedicated it to the English Catholics. See Allison, , ‘Later Life and Writing of Joseph Creswell’, pp. 123–25Google Scholar; Allison, and Rogers, , The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation, 1.280, 2.163.5.Google Scholar

39 Allison, , ‘John Heigham of S. Omer (c.1568-c.1632)’, pp. 226–42.Google Scholar

40 See Petti, A. G., ‘A Bibliography of the Writings of Richard Verstegan (c.1550–1641)’, Recusant History, 7 (1963): pp. 97, 82–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allison, and Rogers, , The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation, 2. pp. 411–428.Google Scholar

41 An important exception is Nicholas Sanders, De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani, ‘left unfinished by Sanders at his death’, then ‘edited and published, first in one book by Edward Rishton, then in three books by Robert Persons. It rapidly became the most popular book on England in sixteenth-century Europe, going into fifteen editions—including translations into French, Spanish, Italian and German—within ten years of its first appearance’; see Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, pp. 70–71.

42 In 1619 and 1625, Heigham also published A fortress of the faith, Stapleton’s companion piece to his translation of Bede’s History, while other presses printed some of his Latin works. For Stapleton’s Latin works printed in this period, see Allison, and Rogers, , The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation, 1. 1129, 1207, 1208, 1209.Google Scholar

43 Chambers, ‘A Life of Harpsfield’, pp. cxcviii-cxcix.

44 On Bristow’s Motives and Demaundes, see Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, pp. 39–46; on Sanders’s Rocke and Teatise of the images of Christ, pp. 12–13.

45 In this work, Lisle reprinted the sermon by ÆElfric (originally printed by Parker, and which Foxe had reprinted in Saxon characters in Acts and monuments), as well as another work he incorrectly assumed was by the jElfric that Leland, Parker, and Foxe had resurrected. Cogswell did not include Lisle’s The Saxon treatise in his study of responses to Charles’s return.

46 Broughton had also written An Ecclesiastical Protestant Historie, of the high pastoral and fatherly chardge and care of the popes of Rome over the church of Britanie, from the first planting of the Christian faith there by St. Peter (n. p., 1624), a history that began with St. Peter and ended just as the Saxons came into Britain, and was guided by the thesis that throughout British history archbishops had sought authority from Rome.

47 See Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 272–77; Kidd, Colin, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 112–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Broughton, Richard, The Ecclesiasticall Historie of Great Britaine (Douai, 1633)Google Scholar, sig. H4r. For a Simon Birckbek’s protestant version in The Protestants Evidence (1635), see Hamilton, Gary D., ‘Smectymnuans, Antiquarians, and Milton’, Prose Studies 23 (2000): pp. 55, 43–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 See Cust, Richard, ‘Catholicism, Antiquarianism and Gentry Honour: The Writings of Sir Thomas Shirley’, Midland History 23 (1998): pp. 46–47, 40–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Sabrina Baron for the reference.