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Mischievous Information: Apostasy, Rituals of Telling, and the Sixteenth-Century Family of Love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2018

Douglas FitzHenry Jones
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Abstract

The Family of Love met with considerable controversy in Elizabethan England. This article examines a series of confessions given by members and ex-members of the group before Protestant authorities. Such testimonies are less straightforward than they seem. Specifically, Familists and their opponents used confessions as an opportunity to refine their religious identities. Both sides fought to establish themselves as simple, transparent Christians even as they indulged in the twists and turns of sixteenth-century polemics. Rather than dismissing such sources as distortions, this article explores the ideological diversity that results from the attempt to derive meaning from hostile attention.

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Church History , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 740 - 767
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the Ithaca/Central New York Early Modern Historians group, Jessie Reeder, and the editors of Church History for offering helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

1 Rogers, John, The Displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked heretiques (London, 1579)Google Scholar, fol. K4v. Rogers published The Displaying both in 1578 and 1579. I refer to both editions in this article.

2 David Como, for example, observes that Elizabethan Familism was known for “its strict and secretive ecclesiastical hierarchy, its careful devotion to the written word of [its founder] HN, and its closely knit networks of kinship and personal association.” Even after Familism proper waned during the reign of James I, its writings “continued their secret life.” Como, David, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 457Google Scholar. For more on the Family's secretive nature, see Smith, Nigel, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 146–147Google Scholar; and Marsh, Christopher, “The Gravestone of Thomas Lawrence revisited (or the Family of Love and the local community of Balsham),” in The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520–1725, ed. Spufford, Margaret (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 211–212Google Scholar.

3 Marsh, Christopher, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 195Google Scholar.

4 Lake, Peter, “Puritanism, Familism, and Heresy in Early Stuart England: The Case of John Etherington Revisited,” in Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture, ed. Loewenstein, David and Marshall, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 84Google Scholar; and Lake, Peter, The Boxmaker's Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy,’ ‘Heterodoxy,’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 97Google Scholar. See also Wootton, David, “Reginald Scot / Abraham Fleming / The Family of Love,” in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, ed. Clark, Stuart (London: Macmillan, 2001), 131Google Scholar; Wootton, , “John Donne's Religion of Love,” in Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion, ed. Brooke, John and Maclean, Ian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 43Google Scholar; and Loewnstein, David, Treacherous Faith: The Specter of Heresy in Early Modern English Literature & Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 177–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ryrie, Alec, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 4, 6–7Google Scholar, 291.

6 Como, Blown by the Spirit, 433. See also 8, 30–31, 172, and Como's entry on “Radical Puritanism, 1558–1660,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. Coffey, John and Lim, Paul C. H. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 243, 254.

7 Como, Blown by the Spirit, 171, 433, 40, 39. According to Como, seventeenth-century Puritans and Antinomians “each drew heavily on the reformed tradition, and (self-conscious Familists excepted) each claimed to be the true heir to that tradition.” Ibid., 433, emphasis mine.

8 See Wright, Stuart, “Disengagement and Apostasy in New Religious Movements,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. Rambo, Lewis and Farhadian, Charles E. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 706–735Google Scholar; Dallam, Marie W., “Women's Apostate Narratives,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14, no. 4 (May 2011): 105, 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davidman, Lynn and Greil, Arthur L., “Characters in Search of a Script: The Exit Narratives of Formerly Ultra-Orthodox Jews,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46, no. 2 (June 2007): 201–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bromley, David, “Linking Social Structure and the Exit Process in Religious Organizations: Defectors, Whistle-Blowers, and Apostates,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37, no. 1 (March 1998): 153–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, ed. Bromley, David G. (London: Praeger, 1998)Google Scholar.

9 Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 34. See also Konnert, Mark, “The Family of Love and the Church of England,” Renaissance et Réforme 15, no. 2 (Spring 1991)Google Scholar: 144; and Gibbons, Brian, who refers to Familist confessions as a “notoriously unreliable source” in Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought Behmenism and Its Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 13. For a general treatment of these issues with regard to Tudor England, see Marshall, Peter, “Evangelical conversion in the reign of Henry VIII,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Marshall, Peter and Ryrie, Alec (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 14–15Google Scholar.

10 Gonville and Caius College Library Cambridge (hereafter cited as G&C), MS 53/30, fol. 127r.

11 The confession of Bourne's apprentice Leonard Romsye has been reproduced in full in Moss, Jean Dietz, “Variations On a Theme: The Family of Love in Renaissance England,” Renaissance Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 186–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and is available in original at London, Public Record Office, SP 12/133. Romsye observed that Family members “make no conscience of lyinge and dissemblinge to all them that be not of their religion: for it beinge reported upon a time that a commission was granted forthe agaynst us of Wisbithe we had a letter from the family of love in the court from one Dorringeton and Zeale wherein we were advertised howe to behave our selffes befour the commissioners and charged that we should denye that we had sene any of the books of H.N. where upon all the books were conveyed.” Moss, “Variations On a Theme,” 191.

12 G&C, MS 53/30, fol. 127v.

13 Johnson, Daniel Carson, “Apostates Who Never Were: The Social Construction of Absque Facto Apostate Narratives,” in The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, ed. Bromley, David G. (London: Praeger, 1998), 116Google Scholar.

14 Hendrik Niclaes, Evangelium regni. A Joyful Message of the Kingdom, published by the holie Spirit of the Love of Iesu Christ, and sent-fourth unto all Nations of People, which love the Trueth in Iesu Christ. Set-fourth by HN, and by him perused a-new and more-distinctlie declared (Cologne, 1575); Niclaes, Hendrick, Exhortatio. I. The first exhortation of H.N. to his Children / ad to the Famelye of Love, by him newlye perused / and more distinctly declared (Cologne, 1574)Google Scholar; and Henrik Niclaes, Terra pacis: A true testification of the spirituall lande of peace; which is the spirituall lande of promyse, and the holy citee of peace or the heauenly Ierusalem; and of the holy and spirituall people that dwell therin: as also of the walking in the spirit, which leadeth therunto. Set-foorth by HN: and by him newly perused and more-playnly declared (Cologne, 1575).

15 See Moss, Jean Dietz, “‘Godded with God’: Hendrik Niclaes and His Family of Love,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 71, no. 8 (1981): 5Google Scholar.

16 Marsh, Christopher, “Piety and Persuasion in Elizabethan England: The Church of England Meets the Family of Love,” in England's Long Reformation, 1500–1800, ed. Tyacke, Nicholas (London: University College London, 1998), 143Google Scholar.

17 The term “loose organism” is adapted from the late scholar of religion, Smart, Ninian Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1996), 2Google Scholar. Inside Smart's “organism,” some ideas appear to form rigid constellations while others are content to float along the periphery. However, tug on one cluster of ideas and the whole tissue responds. Fold it and double it up, and previously remote concepts are combined in new ways to meet the demands of the present.

18 Wright, “Disengagement and Apostasy in New Religious Movements,” 719.

19 G&C, MS 53/30, fol. 126v–127r.

20 Ibid., fol. 127r.

21 Ibid., emphasis mine.

22 Ibid., fol. 127v–128r.

23 Rogers, The Displaying (1578), fol. E3r.

24 “Assertions of Anthony Randal, of the Family of Love, Minister of Lydford” is printed in Strype, John, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift (Oxford, 1822)Google Scholar, 3:159.

25 Moss, “Variations On a Theme,” 190.

26 British Museum, Harley MS 537, fol. 110. This charge is repeated in John Knewstub, A confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies, taught by H.N. and embraced by a number, who call themselves the Familie of Love (London, 1579), **3v. See below.

27 I, Elizabeth, By the Queen. A proclamation against the sectaries of the Family of Love (London, 1580)Google Scholar. See also Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, Loseley MS X.d.30, fol. 1v.

28 Knewstub, A confutation, *7v–*8r. For a discussion of Knewstub's redefinition of Familism as a “political issue,” see Carter, Christopher, “The Family of Love and Its Enemies,” Sixteenth Century Journal 37, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 665–666CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Hartley, T. E., ed., Proceedings in the parliaments of Elizabeth I (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, 536. See Marsh's discussion of the bill in The Family of Love in English Society, 131–132.

30 Society of Antiquities of London, Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity (London, 1855), 36:114.

31 Carter, “The Family of Love and Its Enemies,” 671. According to Patrick Collinson, John Whitgift, who rose to the position of archbishop of Canterbury in 1583, “began to emerge as the hand-picked general in a merciless war against the forward but often froward preaching ministry. The timing of this onslaught, to which the Queen was personally committed, could not have been more unfortunate, in the perception of the Protestant political nation. For it coincided with ever-growing threats to the safety of the queen and the realm, threats connected not with the little local difficulty of Puritanism but with the global menace of international popery.” Collinson, Patrick, Elizabethans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 77Google Scholar. Kenneth Fincham adds that one of Archbishop Whitgift's first orders of business was to “circulate twelve articles to reform the discipline and government of the Church. Article six proposed a strict uniformity, offensive to all shades of nonconformist clergy, which provoked a major crisis.” Fincham, Kenneth, “Clerical Conformity from Whitgift to Laud,” in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, ed. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael (Woodbrige: Boydell, 2000), 130–131Google Scholar. For Knewstub's particular role in the period leading up to the subscription crisis see Bremer, Francis, “Knewstub, John (1544–1624),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Bremer, Francis, Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006)Google Scholar, 2:151, 371.

32 Craig, John S., “The ‘Cambridge Boies’: Thomas Rogers and the ‘Brethren’ in Bury St. Edmunds” in Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson from his Students, ed. Wabuda, Susan and Litzenberger, Caroline (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 161–163Google Scholar. Interestingly, Laurence Chaderton had condemned the Family of Love in writing as early as 1578 in An Excellent and Godly Sermon most needefull for this time (London, 1578), C5r–C5v. Chaderton would again reference the Family in A fruitful sermon, vpon the 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. & 8. verses of the 12. chapter of the epistle of S. Paule to the Romanes (London, 1586), 74–76.

33 Bancroft, Richard, A Survay of the pretended holy discipline (London, 1593), 1–3Google Scholar. See Craig's discussion of Roger's possible collusion with Bancroft in “The ‘Cambridge Boies,’” 162n33, 167–168.

34 Knewstub, A confutation, **4r: “A number in this lande, vppon a false alarme, have beene in a vaine jealousie and feare of Puritanisme. Nowe the justice of GOD hath payed vs. For that which was spoken before in slaunder, nowe may bee spoken in tueth: and that which was beleeved, when it was not, is scarce suspected when it is. For if you seeke after Puritans, these they bee.”

35 British Library (hereafter cited as BL), Harley MS 367, fol. 17. Marsh notes this possibility in The Family of Love in English Society, 35n90.

36 See Craig, , “The Bury Stirs Revisited: An Analysis of the Townsmen” in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 37 (1991): 208–224Google Scholar.

37 BL, Harley MS 367, fol. 17.

38 See, for example, the threat reproduced by Rogers in The Displaying (1579), fol. I7v.

39 This opinion pervades the letters written by the “unkowen friend,” “ER,” and “FL” by way of response to the initial publication of the The Displaying in 1578. See especially fols. I6v–I8r, L4v–L5r, L7r, M6v–M7r, N1r–N1v.

40 Rogers, John, An Answere unto a wicked & infamous libel made by Christopher Vitel, one of the chiefe English elders of the pretended Family of Love (London, 1579)Google Scholar, G5r–G5v.

41 Ibid., K1v–K2r. The original manuscript of the 1561 confession is found in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, Loseley MS Lb. 98. An edited version first appeared in Rogers's The Displaying (1578), fols. I4v–K3v.

42 Rogers, The Displaying (1578), fol. I4v.

43 Rogers, An Answere, K2r.

44 Ibid., L2v–L3r.

45 The Confession and declaration of Robert Sharpe Clerke, and other of that secte, tearmed the Familie of Love, at Pawles Crosse in London the xij. of June. An. 1575 (London, 1575), broadside.

46 Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fols. N5v–N6r.

47 Rogers, The Displaying (1578), fols. F5v–F6r.

48 Ibid., (1578), fols. H4r–H4v.

49 The Confession and declaration of Robert Sharpe.

50 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v.

51 The Confession and declaration of Robert Sharpe

52 G&C, MS 53/30, fol. 127v. Moss, “Variations On a Theme,” 190.

53 Moss, “Variations On a Theme,” 190, emphasis mine.

54 Ibid. Cf. Knewstub, A confutation, **4r, emphasis mine.

55 Moss, “Variations On a Theme,” 190.

56 Ibid., 191.

57 Johnson, “Apostates Who Never Were,” 126.

58 See, for example, Simpson, James Reform and Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 458–462Google Scholar, 492–501; and an expanded version of similar material in Simpson, James Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 106–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Duffy, Eamon, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 177Google Scholar. See also Walsham, Alexandra, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 188Google Scholar.

60 Conti, Brooke, Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Bruner, Jerome, “Life as Narrative,” Social Science Research 71, no. 3 (2004): 694Google Scholar. For a slightly more recent discussion on a similar topic, see Barbour, John D., “Character and Characterization in Religious Autobiography,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 55, no. 2 (1987): 308Google Scholar.

62 Bruner, “Life as Narrative,” 693.

63 Conti, Confessions of Faith, 4.

64 Johnson, “Apostates Who Never Were.”

65 William Wilkinson, A confutation, **4r.

66 Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 56.

67 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v. While many of the Familists who spoke up in the 1570s and 1580s tended to concur with Vitells that predestination was far from a “blessed and comfortable” doctrine, they often nuanced this position a great deal. According to the pseudonymous “FL,” Rogers had been too quick to dismiss Familists as simple opponents of predestination. “Nowe for our minde concerning Gods predestination, take us not therein so short, for we allowe of it simplie and reverently, in his kinde: and yet further also, even as the holie Scriptures allowe the same.” Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. N2v. Later, FL admitted that, while Rogers tended to “take part overmuch with the sinne (as we thinke),” Familists had perhaps concerned themselves “overmuch with the righteousnesse.” Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. N3r.

68 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v.

69 Ibid.

70 Clapham, Henoch, Errour on the Right Hand, through a preposterous zeale acted by way of a dialogue (London, 1608), 53–55Google Scholar.

71 Marsh suggests that Wilkinson might have pumped Orinell for “some suitably sensational revelations for his book.” Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 57.

72 Wilkinson, A confutation, **2v.

73 Ibid., **3r.

74 Ibid., **4r.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid., A1r.

77 Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes (London, 1563)Google Scholar, 5:1692.

78 Ibid., 5:1679.

79 Ibid., 5:1704, 5:1678. According to Alexandra Walsham: “The language of conscience was in constant use in early modern England,” particularly among “members of religious minorities.” “What distinguished the early modern understanding of conscience was the assumption that it was only a fit instructor if it conformed with divine law as objectively defined—in the case of Protestantism by Scripture alone.” Familists, as well as their detractors, often used the term “conscience” in precisely this sense—as action in the world which accorded with the objective, unprejudiced order of both scripture and the political realm. Walsham, Alexandra, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 103–104Google Scholar.

80 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v–A1r.

81 Hammer, Carl I., “The Oxford Martyrs in Oxford: The Local History of their Confinements and their Keepers,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 50, no. 2 (April 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 236.

82 Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 57.

83 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 5:1604.

84 See Martin, J. W., Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London: Hambledon, 1989), 71–82Google Scholar; and Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 58–59.

85 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 5:1605.

86 Wilkinson, A confutation, **3v.

87 Ibid., **4v.

88 Ibid.

89 Marsh points to a letter in Oxford's Bodleian Library (MS 53, fols. 138–140) written by Barry and his master which “viewed the doctrine of complete, irrevocable double predestination as fundamentally untenable, since it made God the author of sin and left no scope for an individual's active participation in his or her own salvation.” Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 59.

90 Thomas Freeman has argued that any association between the Family of Love and the Freewillers is owing to the polemic from the period. Marsh, who has also speculated about the connection between the two groups, fails, he says, “to take into account the egregious anti-Nicodemism of the Freewillers.” Freeman, Thomas, “Dissenters from a Dissenting Church: the challenge of the Freewillers, 1550–1558,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, eds. Marshall, Peter and Ryrie, Alex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 130n3, 146–147Google Scholar. However, the assumption that Familists were Nicodemites is complicated by the continual efforts of Familist writers to either advertise their transparency or justify their secrecy in the face of unwarranted persecution; see, for example, Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. I6v–I7r.

91 Ramsey, interestingly, also accused Knewstub of this “licentious doctrine”: “They cannot synne that be predestinate to lyfe before the beginning of [the] world.” BL, Harley MS 367, fol. 17.

92 Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. 105v.

93 Ibid., fol. 106r.

94 Ibid., fol. 104v.

95 Ibid., fol. 106R.

96 Ibid., fol. 105v.

97 Marsh, too, notes the use of Philippians 2—“an idea of some importance within the Family”—in his discussion of Orinell and Barry. Marsh, The Family of Love, 54–55; see also 58–59 for the discussion of affinities between the Freewillers and Familists.

98 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v. Parallel accusations appear in other Familist sources. The 1561 Surrey confession, for instance, claims that members of the Family of Love “scorne all those [who] say, Good Lorde have mercie upon us miserable sinners: saying, they that so say, declare themselves never to amend, but still to be miserable sinners, whereas we doe live perfectly and sinne not.” Rogers, The Displaying (1578), fol. H5r. References to “miserable sinner” appear as well in the confession of John Bourne. G&C, MS 53/30, fol. 126v.

99 Wilkinson, A confutation, **4v.

100 Martin, Religious Radicals, 130.

101 Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. I6v.

102 Jones, Mike Rodman, Radical Pastoral, 1381–1594: Appropriation of the Writing of Religious Controversy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 58Google Scholar.

103 Anonymous, An Apology for The Service of Love and the people that own it, commonly called, the family of love (1656), 8. Marsh has demonstrated that the apology was composed in 1580. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 40, 133.

104 Temporis Filia Veritas (London, 1589). There are many similarities between the anonymous Temporis Filia Veritas and other explicitly Familist works. As mentioned below, the text begins with the common Familist citation of Ecclesiasticus 11. It also includes the Familist statement “this is very true” and generally recapitulates much the same argument made in the Apology of 1580. See also Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 181nn27–28, for further similarities.

105 Temporis Filia Veritas, B1v.

106 Ibid., A3r.

107 See the title page of the anonymous A Brief Rehersal of the belief of Good-willing England which are named the Family of Love, with the Confession of their upright Christian Religion, against the false accusation of their against-Speakers. Set fort Anno 1575 (London, 1656); as well as a paraphrased version in Elidad, A good and fruitfull exhortation unto the famelie of love (Cologne, 1574), A3r: “And in all your Talke & Dealing touching thesame Testimonies / suffer one-another to tell out his Tale: and so let all your Talke be don to Concord and Peace.”

108 Temporis Filia Veritas, B2r, B5r.

109 Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fols. M6v–M7r.

110 Ibid., fol. L7r.

111 See ibid., fols. N2v, I6r, M7v.

112 Rogers, An Answere, G4v.

113 Ibid., K1v.

114 Apology, 6.

115 This interpretation of the countryman's discussion makes sense in the context of an earlier confession with “the mark of Rob. Sharp Parson of Strethal,” given in 1574 before the Balsham parson Andrew Perne. Inner Temple Library, London, Petyt MS No. 538/vol. 47, fols. 492–493. This confession, unlike the later confession, is apologetic in orientation, defending rather than defaming the Family of Love in the area. Sharpe had, for some reason, changed his tune by 1575. A discussion of the earlier confession, along with Andrew Perne's more moderate tactics for extracting information about the Family, appears in Marsh, “Piety and Persuasion,” 152–157.

116 Rogers, The Displaying (1579), fol. N2v.