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Stranger than fiction in the archives: The controversial death of William Cowbridge in 1538
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2015
Abstract
This essay considers the life, death, and afterlife of William Cowbridge a religious eccentric executed for heresy in 1538. It explores the significance of his religious beliefs, which became the source of a heated controversy between the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe and the Catholic polemicist Nicholas Harpsfield. The case casts light on a range of issues, including the dynamic between Protestant and Catholic controversialists, the use of the label of ‘madness’ in argument, and the value of archival documentation alongside the use of oral sources in Reformation-era polemic. It also yields insight into Thomas Cromwell’s authority over the English Church during the late 1530s, and highlights his position among Henrician evangelicals as a source of influence and aid. Finally, it offers a critique about interpretations of early modern belief and the designation of the label ‘Lollard’.
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- © Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
*
The authors wish to thank the members of the Early Modern British and Irish History Seminar at the University of Cambridge for their comments on this paper. Unless attributed, all Latin translations are our own. The Latin passages have been modernized, with i/j and u/v alterations, modernized punctuation and with all abbreviations extended.
References
1 ‘multa absona atque inconcinna, amentium more, effunderet’. John Foxe, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum…commentarii (Basel: J. Oporinus and N. Brylinger, 1559), 139.
2 ‘demum in mediis flammis Domini Jesu Christi saepe inclamato nomine magna cum tranquillitate vitam eum Domino comendasse vidimus’, Foxe, Rerum, 139.
3 For the English laws on heresy at the time, see More, Thomas, The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, eds. John Guy, Ralph Keen, Clarence H. Miller and Ruth McGugan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), xlvii–lxxvii Google Scholar.
4 Foxe, John, Actes and monuments of these latter and perilous dayes touching matters of the Church… (London: John Day, 1563): STC 11222, 570–571 Google Scholar. (Hereafter this edition will be cited as 1563).
5 1563, 570.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 1563, 570–1.
9 1563, 571.
10 Ibid; compare Isaiah 53:7.
11 Hope, Andrew, ‘Lollardy: the Stone the Builders Rejected?’ in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed. Peter Lake and Maria Dowling (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 5 Google Scholar.
12 The National Archive, PROB 11/17/332. (Hereafter the National Archive will be cited as TNA). William Cowbridge was bequeathed £20 and houses, woods, groves and land, in and out of Colchester.
13 The steeple of the church had just been finished when Robert Cowbridge died; see Essex Record Office D/ACR1/138. His bequest may well have been motivated more by civic pride than piety.
14 For Katherine Bardfield as well as the Bardfields and Colchester Lollards, see Hope, Andrew, ‘The Lady and the Bailiff: Lollardy Among the Gentry in Yorkist and Early Tudor England’ in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 262 Google Scholar. It should be noted that Shannon McSheffrey is less certain that the Bardfields were Lollards; see Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 133. We find Hope’s observations on this subject more convincing.
15 Strype, John, Ecclesiastical memorials…under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Mary I, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), 1:pt. 1, 121 Google Scholar and 129.
16 British Library, Harley MS 421, fo. 30r; printed in J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R.H. Brodie, eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47, 21 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts,1862–1910), 4:pt. 2, no. 4545. (Hereafter the Letters and Papers are cited as L&P).
17 A further indication of this is Foxe’s comment in his 1563 account that Thomas Audley, the Lord Chancellor at the time of Cowbridge’s execution, was ‘somewhat allied’ to the condemned man, 1563, 571. This is quite possible as Audley, the former town clerk of Colchester and a MP for the town could very easily have been linked to Cowbridge through marriage or even mutual friends. In any case, the comment does suggest that Foxe’s source had some knowledge of the Cowbridge family.
18 In the letter, Cowbridge states that he is 38 years old (TNA SP 1/104, fo. 256r). The letter is calendared (L&P 10: no. 1253) and the editor dated it to 1536. There is no date on the original letter and we do not how know the editor arrived at his date of 1536, but if it is correct, then William Cowbridge was born around 1498. There is further corroboration that this date is not far off. In his will, Richard Cowbridge describes his son William as a minor who had not yet come of age (TNA PROB 11/17/332).
19 1563: 570.
20 For Lollard activities in Wantage and the surrounding area as late as 1521, see Thomson, J. A. F., The Later Lollards 1414–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 80–81 Google Scholar and Plumb, J. H., ‘John Foxe and the Later Lollards of the Thames Valley’ (PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987), 78 Google Scholar.
21 Henry I had granted the parish church to the abbey of Bec. It, along with all the properties of Bec in England, was administered by the abbey’s daughter house at Ogbourne. In 1208, these properties were incorporated into the newly formed prebend of Ogbourne at Salisbury cathedral. During this time, however, the abbey of Ogbourne retained the right of presentment to the living. In 1414, Henry V dissolved the alien priories and his brother John, Duke of Bedford, farmed the property of Ogbourne abbey until 1421, at which point he gave the property and spirituality of Wantage to the warden and chaplains of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. St. George’s retained the advowson and the rectory manor of Wantage throughout the early modern period. See Ditchfield, P. H. and Page, W., eds., The Victoria History of the County of Berkshire, 4 vols (London: Victoria County History, 1906–1924)Google Scholar, 1:328 and 4:329, as well as Morgan, M. M., The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), 131–132 Google Scholar and 138–9.
22 TNA SP 1/104, fos. 256r–257r.
23 Dickens, A. G., Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York 1509–1558 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1982), 146 Google Scholar.
24 It is possible that the rent Cowbridge refers to can be identified. In 1351, William Fitz Waurin received a license to alienate property to the value of £15 to support three chaplains to celebrate mass daily in the church of Wantage for his soul and the souls of Edward III and his queen, H. C. Maxwell Lyte, ed. The Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward III 16 vols (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1891–1916), 9:108). In 1358, Fitz Waurin was granted permission to divert £10 per annum from the money for the chantry to a house of friars at Hounslow. 100 shillings a year were allotted to a chaplain to celebrate mass daily at Wantage (CPR Edward III, 11:44). Cowbridge was probably being paid a portion of this sum to act as a de facto curate at Wantage.
25 Cowbridge’s hopes were realistic. From 1534 onwards evangelicals were openly preaching and agitating for the abolition of chantries. Although they were, for the time being, unsuccessful, it looked as if chantries might be abolished by the 1536 Parliament. See Kreider, Alan, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 116–120 Google Scholar; also Lehmberg, Stanford E., The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 227 Google Scholar. In fact, Cowbridge’s hopes that Parliament would deal with chantries may be the reason why this letter was dated to 1536 in L&P (see note 18 above).
26 TNA SP 1/104, fo. 257r.
27 As will be seen, two men of Windsor would complain to Cromwell about the fairness of Cowbridge’s trial. They might have sent this letter to Cromwell in an attempt to win Cromwell’s sympathy by demonstrating Cowbridge’s hostility to monasticism, purgatory and chantries.
28 Lincoln Archives Office, Register 26, fo. 284v. Hereafter LAO.
29 When he was accused of heresy, it was charged that Cowbridge preached in the parish church (LAO, Register 26, fo. 284v). The circumstances are unknown as, thanks to a lack of surviving records from Standlake, is the question of whether the parish had a resident incumbent at the time.
30 Foxe, John, The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contayning the actes and monuments of thynges passed in every kynges tyme in this realme, especially in the Church of England 2 vols. (London: John Day, 1570), 2:957–960 Google Scholar. Hereafter this work will be cited as 1570.
31 TNA SP 1/13, fos. 222r–223r.
32 LAO, Register 26, fos. 284v–285r.
33 For an overview of Nicholas Harpsfield’s life and writings see Freeman, Thomas S., ‘Harpsfield, Nicholas (1519 –1575)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. Hereafter this work will be cited as ODNB.
34 Harpsfield, Nicholas, Dialogi sex contra summi pontificatus, moasticae vitae, sanctorum, sacrarum imaginum oppugnatores, et pseudomartyres (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1566)Google Scholar. Hereafter this work will be cited as DS.
35 ‘si cetera in eo omnia sarta pecta essent et illibata; vel ob hanc solam narrationem tam prodigiose deformatam ab omnibus piis foret explodendus’ DS, 853. Harpsfield’s discussion of Cowbridge is DS, 851–61.
36 DS, 854–5.
37 ‘ex certis piorum et gravium virorum narrationibus, qui non solum incendii, ut Foxus, sed partim eorum, quae Vincamiae, partim eorum, quae Oxonii cum Cowbrigio agebantur, oculati testes errant’ (DS, 856).
38 DS, 856–8.
39 DS, 858–9.
40 See TNA SP 1/134, fos. 222r–223r.
41 TNA SP 1/134, fo. 222r.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 TNA SP 1/134, fo. 222v.
46 TNA SP 1/134, fos. 222v–223r.
47 1570, 1425–38.
48 For two different versions of the case, which differ on the extent of Stokesley’s submission and the damage that the incident did to him, see Elton, G. R., Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 160–162 Google Scholar and Chibi, Andrew A., Henry VIII’s Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce, Royal Supremacy and Doctrinal Reform (Berne: Peter Lang, 1997), 152–154 Google Scholar. We would like to thank Dr Richard Rex for drawing our attention to this episode.
49 Bowker, Margaret, The Henrician Reformation: the Diocese of Lincoln Under John Longland 1521–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 74 Google Scholar.
50 LAO, Register 26, fos. 284v–285r. It was legally required that, if a heretic was to suffer execution, the church official who condemned the heretic send a writ of excommunication to Chancery. Upon receiving it, Chancery would send a writ, authorising the execution, to the local sheriff. This is the only case we know of where a writ of excommunication was copied into a bishop’s register.
51 ‘1) Ego…Guilelmus Coubrigius publice asservi, sacerdotes reos esse laesae majestatis divinae, qoud hostias in 3 particulas distribuant, et non integram more nostro recipiant.
2) Neminem debere jejuniis se macerare aut corpus castigare.
3) Nolle me confessionem apud sacerdotem edere, nisi meo arbitrio absoluat, et mihi praescribat, ut dicam, ‘Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori’ et ‘benedicat me Deus pater’.
4) Neque Apostolos, neque Evangelistas, neque 4 Ecclesiae doctors adhuc patefecisse, qua ratione peccatores salvi fiant.
5) Confessionem meam hoc septennio fuisse mihi inutilem.
6) Asservi neque vitam, pie actam, nec jenunia posse prodesse ad hominis salutem.
7) Asservi Christum non esse mundi redemptorem, sed futurum mundi deceptorem.
8) Arbitratus sum hanc vocem [Christus] esse foedum nomen illudque ubicunque in libris meis occurebat, plerunque dispunxi.
9) Christi nomen in Jesum commutavi. Et ubi habetur in Symbolo Apostolico ‘in Jesum Christum’, ego canebam et ‘in Jesum Jesum’. Hoc idem egi in precibus [et] in Paschate.
10) Asservi et scripsi universos qui in nomine Christi crediderunt in inferno damnatos.
11) Aperte negavi me unquam nomen Christi confessorum.
12) Haec praeterea Christi verba: ‘Accipite et manducate, hoc est corpus meum, quod pro verbis tradetur’ ad hunc modum intepretatus sum: ‘Hoc et corpus meum in quo populus circumvenietur et decipietur’
(DS, 859–60; the numbering of the articles follows Harpsfield).
52 ‘William Cowbridge erronie dixisse et affirmasse presbyteros frangentis hostiam consecratam in tres partes et eam integram non recipientes (ut laici recipiunt) fore Deo proditores.
Ac neminem jejunare aut corpus suum castigare sine punire debere.
Sequens nolle cuius sacerdoti confiteri peccata sua nisi voluisset talem absolucionem sibi qualem ipsem pecieret et eligeret videlicet ‘Deus pro potius [sic, ‘propitius’ is meant] esto mihi peccatori’ et ‘benedicat me Deus pater’ etc.
Nec apostolos Domini vestri Jhesum Christi nec quatuor Evangelistas neque quatuor doctors Ecclesiae quo modo peccatores solventur adhuc ullo unquam tempore ostendisse seu declarisse.
Errorieque et heretice palam et publice dixisse et affirmasse nullum pie juste vivendi modum aut abstinentiam sive jejunium posse juvare aut prodesse ad salvacionem anime sue.
Ac Christum non esse non redemptorem mundi sed deceptorem.
Atque nomen Christi nomen turpe et sordidum cogitasse, estimasse et vocasse. Illudque nomen Christi ex libro suo matitunali, in nonnullis et quasi omnibus partibus eiusdem obliterasse, delenisse et abolevisse.
Ac contra universalem ecclesiae Christi ordinem nomen Jhesum Christi in Jhesum Jhesum loquendo et cantando etiam publice in ecclesia sua parochia predicta mutasse, cantasse et divulgasse.
Illud etiam nomen Christi eloqui profiteri aut proferre expresse temere et heretice recusasse.
Omnesque in Christo credentes in inferno inane, erronie et heretice scripsisse, dixisse et publicasse.
Atque hec verba Christi videlicet ‘Accipite et manducate hoc est corpus meum quod per vobis et multis tradetur’, perverse, erronee et heretice interpretatum fuisse sub hac forma, ‘Take ye and eate, this is the body wherein the people shalbe deceyved’ (LAO, Register 26, fos. 284v–285r). The last sentence was probably left in the original English to underscore the outlandishness of the belief.
53 Harpsfield, Nicholas, The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, Knight, ed. E. V. Hitchcock and R. W. Chambers, Early English Text Society 186 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 41 Google Scholar.
54 For Draycot’s life and career see Gordon Goodwin and Andrew A. Chibi, ‘Draycot, Anthony (d. 1571)’, ODNB.
55 1563, 1548; also see 1563, 1706.
56 Goodwin and Chibi, ‘Draycot’, ODNB.
57 The Dialogi sex was published under the name of Alan Cope, a Catholic exile who saw the work to press in Antwerp. Foxe was writing in the belief that his nemesis is Cope.
58 1570, 1292.
59 1570, 1292.
60 See Gregory, Brad, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, especially chapters one, three, four and eight; Dillon, Anne, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1553–1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)Google Scholar, chapter one; Freeman, Thomas S., ‘Over Their Dead Bodies: Concepts of Martyrdom in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, in Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas F. Mayer, eds. Martyrs and Martyrdoms in England, c.1400–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 1–34 Google Scholar. For the widespread acceptance of the dictum (from Tertullian via Augustine) that the cause for which one died, and not the death itself, made one a true martyr, see Gregory, , Salvation at Stake, 329–339 Google Scholar.
61 Collinson, Patrick, ‘“A Magazine of Religious Patterns”: An Erasmian Topic Transposed in English Protestantism’, in Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, ed. Derek Baker, Studies in Church History 14 (1977), 258–272 Google Scholar and Freeman, Thomas S., ‘The Importance of Dying Earnestly: The Metamorphosis of the Account of James Bainham in ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, in Robert N. Swanson, ed. The Church Retrospective, Studies in Church History 33 (1997), 267–288 Google Scholar.
62 See, for example, Wizeman, William, ‘Martyrs and Anti-Martyrs and Mary Tudor’s Church’, in Martyrs and Martyrdom, 166–171 Google Scholar and Dillon, , Construction of Martyrdom, 45–52 Google Scholar and 345–55.
63 Gregory, , Salvation at Stake, 186 Google Scholar; Wabuda, Susan, Preaching During the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 15 Google Scholar.
64 Davis, John F., Heresy and Reformation in the South-East of England, 1520–1559 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983), 143 Google Scholar.
65 See Royal, Susan, ‘John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and the Lollard Legacy in the Long English Reformation’ (PhD thesis, University of Durham, 2014), 3–11 Google Scholar.
66 See Freeman, Thomas S. and Monta, Susannah, ‘The Style of Authorship in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments ’ in The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–1640, ed. Andrew Hadfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 522–543 Google Scholar.
67 McSheffrey, Shannon and Tanner, Norman, eds. Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522, Camden Fifth Series 23 (London: Royal Historical Society, 2003), 70 Google Scholar; see 1570, 943.
68 London Metropolitan Archives, Diocese of London, A/A/005/MS09531/009, fos. 4r–v; see 1570, 966.
69 Ibid., fo. 26v; see 1570, 939. On Pottier’s confusion stemming from a Lollard text, see Andrew Hope, ‘Lollardy: the Stone the Builders Rejected?’, 18.
70 1570, 572.
71 For instance, Foxe says of the London Lollards: ‘who in the fullness of that dark and misty times of ignorance, had also some portion of God’s good spirit which induced them to the knowledge of his truth and Gospel…’, 1570, 966. Among these men and women was William Pottier, whose confused and idiosyncratic beliefs forced Foxe to explain them.
72 For instance, Thomas Harding used Cowbridge’s story (among others) to offer some advice in his famous dispute with John Jewel, who defended the Church of England on the basis of its true martyrs, saying ‘Let M. Foxe make no martyrs. Or if ye will needs allow him for a Martyrmaker still, let him be warned to use…more discretion’. Harding, , A Rejoindre to M. Jewels Replie (Louvain: John Fowler, 1567)Google Scholar: STC 12761, fo. 181r.
73 Harpsfield, Nicholas, Historia Anglicana Ecclesiasica (Douai: Marc Wyon, 1622), 679–680 Google Scholar.
74 Persons, Robert, The vvarn-vvord to Sir Francis Hastinges wast-word (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1602)Google Scholar: STC 19418, fo. 88v.
75 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘“Frantick Hacket”: Prophecy, Sorcery, Insanity and the Elizabethan Puritan Movement’, Historical Journal 41 (1998): 27–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
76 Contrast Elton, G.R., Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar with Shagan, Ethan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
77 Especially Anne Hudson. See Hudson, , The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
78 For the ways Lollard communities were structured, see McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, especially chapter three. See also Susan Brigden’s account of the London Lollards, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chapter two.
79 Hudson, Anne, Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon, 1985) and Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google ScholarPubMed.
80 See especially the work of Jurkowski, Maureen; for example, ‘Heresy and Factionalism at Merton College in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997): 658–681 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Lollard Book Producers in London in 1414’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, eds. Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchinson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 201–228. See also the work of Andrew Hope: for instance, ‘The Lady and the Bailiff', 250–277. See also Spufford, Margaret, ed., The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
81 Forrest, Ian, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
82 Hornbeck, J. Patrick, ‘Theologies of Sexuality in English ‘Lollardy’’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009): 19–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Hornbeck, J. Patrick, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Disbelief in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rex, Richard, The Lollards (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
84 Havens, Jill C., ‘Shading the Grey Area: Determining Heresy in Middle English Texts’, in Text and Controversy, 337–352 Google Scholar; Hudson, Anne, ‘“Who is My Neighbour?” Some Problems of Definition on the Borders of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy’, in Wycliffite Controversies, eds. Mishtooni Bose and J. Patrick Hornbeck II (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 79–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lutton, Rob, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety (London: Royal Historical Society, 2006)Google Scholar.
85 On the emphasis of ‘continuum and spectrum rather than…dichotomy’ in recent scholarship, see Mishtooni Bose and J. Patrick Hornbeck II, ‘Introduction’, in Wycliffite Controversies, 6.
86 For a recent overview, see Marshall, Peter, ‘Lollards and Protestants Revisited,’ in Wycliffite Controversies, 295–318 Google Scholar.
87 Freeman, Thomas S., ‘The Power of Polemic: Catholic Attacks on the Calendar of Martyrs in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments ’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (2010): 475–495 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.