Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:59:25.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Eric Josef Carlson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The abolition of clerical celibacy in England was, according to its first great modern student, Henry Charles Lea, “a process of far more intricacy than in any other country which adopted the Reformation.” Since Lea wrote, historians have come to accept an outline of that process. According to this standard view, it was Henry VIII, acting out of his own personal conservatism, who retained and defended mandatory celibacy in the first stage of the English Reformation. Once the king had died and his leaden foot was removed from the brake, the clergy were able to overwhelm ineffective conservative opposition in the Edwardian government and legalize clerical marriage. The gains of the Edwardian years gave way before the reaction of the Marian period, and they were not reinstated after Mary's death because of the anticonnubial tastes and religious conservatism of Elizabeth I. Throughout this period, so the story goes, the clergy (a majority of them, at least) struggled for the right and privilege of marriage, only to find royal resistance (except briefly under Edward VI) impossible to overcome.

This traditional outline is misleading in several respects. Elizabeth I's attitude toward the marriage of the clergy is far more complex than has been recognized. Specific regulations of such unions developed from her desire to establish an ordered church worthy of popular respect and cannot simply be ascribed to a general, almost pathological, personal distaste for marriage or quirky personal religious views.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lea, H. C., History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, 2 vols. (London, 1907), 2:77Google Scholar.

2 This view has endured for over a century of modern scholarly historical writing on Elizabeth. Froude, James A. wrote, “Marriage, under all forms, was disagreeable to her; the marriage of the clergy was detestable; the marriage, and especially re-marriage of her prelates, approached incest” (History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, 12 vols. [New York, 1870], 9:383)Google Scholar. More recently, SirNeale, John wrote: “There can be no doubt that Elizabeth was strongly, nay bitterly, opposed to marriage of the clergy” (Essays in Elizabethan History [New York, 1958], p. 101)Google Scholar. In a very recent article, Spielmann, Richard assumed that Elizabeth, “detested clerical marriage almost as much as her half-sister Mary” (“The Beginning of Clerical Marriage in the English Reformation: The Reign of Edward and Mary,” Anglican and Episcopal History 56 [1987]: 251)Google Scholar.

3 London, British Library (BL), Cotton MS Cleopatra E.V, fol. 294v.

4 Brewer, J. S., Gardiner, J., and Brodie, R. H., eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII (LP), 21 vols. (London, 1862–1932), vol. 9, no. 812Google Scholar; vol. 10, no. 82; vol. 12, pt. 2, no. 450.

5 BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.V, fol. 299.

6 BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.IV, fol. 151. See MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Suffolk and the Tudors, Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 178–79Google Scholar.

7 LP, vol. 13, pt. 1, no. 147.

8 Hughes, Paul and Larkin, James F., eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1964–1969), no. 186Google Scholar. The original draft (BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.V, fol. 341) was altered by Henry to add references from Scripture and the Fathers on clerical marriage: BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.V, fol. 382.

9 LP, vol. 14, pt. 1, nos. 631, 666, 698.

10 BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.V, fols. 53–54.

11 Act of Six Articles, 31 Henry VIII c. 14 (1539).

12 Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 739–41Google Scholar. The statute was modified by 32 Henry VIII c. 10, which reduced penalties for incontinence from death (considered “very sore and too much extreme”) to forfeiture of benefices or life imprisonment (for a third offense). On the formulation of the statute, see Elton, G. R., “Thomas Cromwell's Decline and Fall,” in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1974), 1:206–11Google Scholar; Lehmberg, Stanford, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 65–74, 119Google Scholar; Redworth, Glyn, “A Study in the Formulation of Policy: The Genesis and Evolution of the Act of Six Articles,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986): 42–67Google Scholar. See also LP, vol. 14, pt. 1, nos. 971, 1068; and Stephen Gardiner to William Paget, Public Record Office (PRO), State Papers (SP) 1/210, fols. 22–25.

13 1 Edward VI, c. 12.

14 Jordan, Wilbur K., Edward VI: The Young King (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 309Google Scholar, reports a vote of 53–22 in Convocation in 1547. He gives no reference for this, and I can find none. In 1548, the motion passed 32–14 according to the list of voters in Corpus Christi College MS 113.

15 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 113, pp. 170–71.

16 Journals of the House of Commons (CJ) (London, 1803), 1:3–5, 8Google Scholar; Journals of the House of Lords (LJ) (London, 1888), 1:311, 323, 326, 339, 342–43Google Scholar. The discussion in Spielmann, , “Beginning of Clerical Marriage,” pp. 251–52Google Scholar, is marred by several errors and should be used cautiously.

17 2/3 Edward VI, c. 21.

18 5/6 Edward VI, c. 12.

19 Cardwell, Edward, ed. Synodalia (Oxford, 1842), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

20 He was cited by the bishop of Winchester to answer charges against him for marrying and then deprived: LP, vol. 14, pt. 1, nos. 120, 206, 890.

21 Baskerville, Geoffrey, English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (London, 1937), p. 138Google Scholar, n. 1, citing LP, vol. 9, no. 661; Wriothesley, Charles, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. Hamilton, W. D., Camden Society, n.s., vol. 11 (London, 1875), p. 63Google Scholar. See also LP, vol. 4, no. 6473, confession of John Lawrence, servant, to a robbery committed with a priest named Richard, “a sanctuary man of St. Martin's or else falsely professing priesthood,” who was married to a woman called Charity.

22 See above, p. 2.

23 See Houlbrooke, Ralph A., Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520–1570 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 180–81Google Scholar.

24 Carlson, Eric Josef, “The Marriage of William Turner,” Historical Research (1992, in press)Google Scholar. See also Jones, Whitney R. D., William Turner, Tudor Naturalist, Physician and Divine (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

25 BL, Cotton MS Cleopatra E.IV, fol. 116.

26 See Prior, Mary, “Reviled and Crucified Marriages: The Position of Tudor Bishops' Wives,” in Women in English Society, 1500–1800, ed. Prior, Mary (London, 1985), p. 122Google Scholar. Bishops Holbeach, Ferrar, and Bird all married, probably in Edward's reign. Archbishop Holgate married in 1549. His protests that he married only under pressure to prove his loyalty to Protestantism should not be taken seriously. His “Apology” was written in 1554, and he had every reason under the circumstances to protect himself. Dickens, A. G., in “Archbishop Holgate's Apology” (Reformation Studies [London, 1982], pp. 353–63Google Scholar [the text is PRO, SP 11/6/84]), argues the contrary; see also his “Robert Holgate, Archbishop of York and President of the King's Council in the North” (ibid., pp. 344–46). The best evidence to the contrary is published by Dickens himself (“Two Marian Petitions,” ibid., pp. 83–85, 89). The petition of John Houseman (PRO, SP 15/7/8) claims that he was refused holy orders in 1550 by Holgate for his objection to clerical marriage. The tone of the petition suggests a zeal on the part of Holgate wholly out of proportion for one who married reluctantly.

27 Any figures based solely on deprivations will be low since some of the married clergy fled abroad with their wives and some who remained probably escaped detection. Spielmann (n. 1 above, p. 259) estimates that the total must have been roughly 1,500, and that seems somewhat high since some parts of the country had so few. See Baskerville, G., “Married Clergy and Pensioned Religious in Norwich Diocese, 1555,” English Historical Review 48 (1933): 43–64Google Scholar; Grieve, H. E. P., “The Deprived Marian Clergy in Essex, 1553–61,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 22 (London, 1940): 142–43Google Scholar; Dickens, A. G., “The Marian Reaction in the Diocese of York: Part I, the Clergy,” Reformation Studies, pp. 93–130Google Scholar, esp. pp. 104, 112–121; Cross, Claire, “Priests into Ministers: The Establishment of Protestant Practice in the City of York, 1530–1630,” in Reformation Principle and Practice, ed. Brooks, Peter Newman (London, 1980), pp. 203–25Google Scholar, esp. p. 216; Haigh, Christopher, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 153, 179–81Google Scholar.

28 Barstow, Anne Llewellyn, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Debates (New York, 1982), pp. 87–96Google Scholar. See also Brooke, C. N. L., “Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England, 1050–1200,” Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. 12 (1956)Google Scholar; Frazee, Charles A., “The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church,” Church History 41 (1972): 149–67Google Scholar.

29 “A godly saying” in Ballads from Manuscripts, 2 vols., ed. Furnivall, F. J. (Ballad Society, 1868–1872), 1:314–15Google Scholar; see the alleged Lollard John Tyball, who confessed in April 1528 that “on Paul's authority … every priest and bishop ought to have a wife” (LP, vol. 4, no. 4218).

30 Frere, W. H., ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions, Alcuin Club (1910), 15:189, 292–93Google Scholar.

31 Cambridge, University Library, Ely Diocesan Records (EDR), B/2/3, p. 41.

32 Haigh, , Reformation and Resistance, p. 182Google Scholar.

33 Visitation Articles, p. 274. See “A Brief and Clean Confession of the Christian Faith” (1550), in Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, ed. Nevinson, Charles (Cambridge, 1852), no. 83, pp. 55–56Google Scholar.

34 Barnes, Robert, “That by God's word it is lawful for Priests that hath not the gift of chastity to marry Wives,” in The whole works of W. Tyndall, John Frith, and Doct. Barnes (London, 1573), pt. 2, pp. 303–39Google Scholar. See also the discussion in Yost, J., “The Reformation Defense of Clerical Marriage in the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI,” Church History 50 (1981): 155–58Google Scholar; Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, “The Sixteenth-Century Editions of A Supplication unto King Henry the Eighth by Robert Barnes, D.D.: A Footnote to the History of the Royal Supremacy,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 3 (1960): 133–42Google Scholar; Lusardi's, J. P. biography of Barnes, Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 16 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1973), vol. 8, pt. 3Google Scholar; Clebsch, W. A., England's Earliest Protestants, 1520–1535 (New Haven, Conn., 1964), pp. 58–77Google Scholar.

35 Barnes, pp. 309–10.

36 Ibid., pp. 311–16.

37 More, Thomas, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, ed. Lawler, Thomas M. C., Marc'hadour, Germain, and Marius, Richard C., vol. 6 of the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven, Conn., 1981), bk. 3, chap. 13, esp. pp. 303–9Google Scholar.

38 [Bullinger, Heinrich], The golden booke of Christian matrimony, most necessary and profitable for all them that intend to live quietly and godly in the Christian State of holy wedlock, trans. Becon, Thomas (London, 1542), pp. A3r–A6rGoogle Scholar.

39 This is not an exhaustive treatment of promarriage treatises. William Turner is actually an exception to the rule I have noted: a married deacon who wrote in defense of clerical marriage also. His discussion of the subject is buried in his two treatises against Gardiner, Stephen, written while he was in exile: The huntyng andfyndyng out of the Romishe fox (1543)Google Scholar, and The seconde course of the hunter at the Romishe fox (1545). They are discussed in Hughes, Celia, “Two Sixteenth-Century Northern Protestants: John Bradford and William Turner,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 66 (1983): 122–38Google Scholar; and Jones (n. 24 above), pp. 150–65. George Joye, also in exile, produced a translation of Melanchthon's defense of clerical marriage, which had been written specifically for Henry VIII in 1539. Joye also wrote (under the name James Sawtry) The defence of the marriage of Priests against Steven Gardiner, which focused on the opponents of marriage in the parliament that passed the Six Articles. The majority had been deceived by the lords spiritual (especially Gardiner and Repps). They had lied about the justification for celibacy because secretly they preferred using other men's wives; it was cheaper than marriage and brought no responsibilities: “For well know these idle, soft shaven sects what cares, charges and incommodities there follow and chance to true chaste and honorable wedlock.” Most of all, the bishops feared the financial responsibilities of family life, for which “their jolly peacock tails [would] be plucked.” See Sawtry [George Joye], esp. fols. A5–B2v, B8v, C1–C8v; Butterworth, Charles C. and Chester, Allan G., George Joye, 1495?–1533 (Philadelphia, 1962)Google Scholar. In 1549, the future bishop John Ponet published A defence for manage of priestes by scripture and aunciente wryters, which was also largely concerned with the fornication that resulted from mandatory celibacy.

40 More, , Dialoge, pp. 312–13Google Scholar.

41 More, Thomas, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, ed. Schuster, Louis A., Marius, Richard C., Lusardi, James P., and Schoeck, Richard J., vol. 8 of the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas More (New Haven, Conn., 1973), p. 207Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., p. 726.

43 Although written in 1546, this was not published until 1567 (Crowley, Robert, The opening of the wordes of the Prophet Joell, in his second and third Chapters, rehersed by Christ in Mathewe.xxiiii. Marke.xiii. Luke.xxi. and by Peter Actes.ii. concerning the Signes of the last day [1567]Google Scholar, fol. F8r).

44 Jones, Norman L., Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (London, 1982), p. 98Google Scholar.

45 Bruce, J. and Perowne, T. T., eds., Correspondence of Matthew Parker (Cambridge, 1853), no. xlixGoogle Scholar.

46 Haugaard, William P., Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 200–201Google Scholar.

47 Hudson, Winthrop S., John Ponet (1516?–1556): Advocate of Limited Monarchy (Chicago, 1942), pp. 94–95Google Scholar.

48 Dickens (“Holgate” [n. 26 above], pp. 345–46) discusses the marriage, though Dickens is incorrect in thinking that the material in Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York (BI), CP.G.404, is from the divorce suit. Internal evidence suggests that the divorce was in the past, and that this was a separate suit, most likely for restitution, considering the nature of the evidence. For the later suit, see Dasent, J. R., ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England (London, 1890–1907), 3:421, 427Google Scholar.

49 Hughes and Larkin, eds. (n. 8 above), no. 460. Note that this procedure was not necessary for a valid marriage. Marriages made without proper license were punishable but not voidable.

50 O'Day, Rosemary and Berlatsk, Joel, eds., The Letter Book of Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1560–1561, Camden Society, 4th ser., vol. 22 (1979)Google Scholar, no. 22 (October 28, 1560).

51 Read, Conyers, ed., William Lambarde and Local Government (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), p. 27Google Scholar; see also p. 17.

52 Kempe, Alfred, ed., The Loseley Manuscripts (London, 1836), pp. 254–55Google Scholar.

53 Foster, C. W., ed., The State of the Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, Lincoln Record Society (Lincoln, 1926), 23:xxiGoogle Scholar.

54 BI, PRY-J1, fol. 20v. I am grateful to Claire Cross for this reference.

55 EDR, G/2/18, fols. 46r, 86r, 90v, 123v, 126v, 155r, 162v, 166v, 167r, 174v, 190r, 194v.

56 BI, HC.AB.7, fols. 50r–51r, 66v, 75v–77r, 79v.

57 BI, CP.G.2329; BI, Cons.AB.43, fol. 205v.

58 Foster, , ed., State of the Church, pp. xxi–xxiiGoogle Scholar: cases of George Meriton (June 26, 1599) and Thomas Banks, vicar of South Elkington (March 7, 1602/3). Meriton married the daughter of the archdeacon's commissary, presumably a fit bride. See Fallow, T. M., “Some Elizabethan Visitations of the Churches Belonging to the Peculiar of the Dean of York,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 18 (1904–1905): 339Google Scholar: Wardens of Pickering v. Edward Mills, vicar (August 10, 1602). For an early case, see Willis, A. J., ed., Church Life in Kent (London, 1975), p. 13Google Scholar, no. 93 (Sir Thomas Langley, Parson of Boughton Malherbe presented for marrying a woman pregnant during the reign of Queen Mary, whose first husband was believed to be alive, without banns and without certificate from the J.P.s).

59 BI, HC.CP.1588/2; HC.AB.11, fol. 137v.

60 BI, HC.AB.4, fol. 84r, 94, 95v–96r, 115r, is a particularly striking incidence of that. James Layton, vicar of Helmsley had two children with Isabelle Richardson, which he confessed. When he and Richardson told the court that they intended to marry to avoid further sin and scandal, the judges “well [liked] this” and suspended their penance on proof of solemnization. Yet, Aylmer's visitation in 1586 inquired whether any minister had knowingly married a woman who was not a virgin.

61 EDR, B/2/5, pp. 199–200; BI, HC.AB.6, fol. 34r; EDR, B/2/20, fol. 35v.

62 BI, HC.AB.12, fol. 135r, 166r.

63 In 1592, Matthew Sutcliffe wrote, “I know of [no clergymen] which marrieth, but such as have allowance sufficient of their choice. If they have not, let the offenders be corrected, and not innocents be disgraced for others' offence” (An answere to a certaine libel supplicatorie, or rather Diffamatory, and also to certaine Calumnious Articles, and Interrogatories, both printed and scattered in secret corners, to the slander of the Ecclesiasticall state, and put forth under the name and title of a Petition directed to her Maiestie [London, 1592], pp. 129–30Google Scholar).

64 BI, HC.AB.12, fol. 38v. Other bigamy cases: BI, HC.CP.1573/2; HC.AB.7, fol. 99r, 109r, 112r, 115v, 118r, 131r, 163r; HC.AB.11, fol. 218r, 231r, 241r, 243v, 250r, 270v; Foster, C. H., ed., Lincoln Episcopal Records in the Time of Thomas Cooper, Lincoln Record Society (1912), 2:135Google Scholar; Foster, , ed., State of the Church (n. 53 above), p. xxxviiiGoogle Scholar.

65 BI, HC.AB.14, fol. 173v.

66 BI, CP.G.2302.

67 EDR, B/2/14, fol. 187v; BI, D/C.CP.1583/2; BI, HC.AB.5, fol. 148r–149r, 189v–190r.

68 EDR, D/2/10a, fol. 32v. She left Leverington and returned to her husband (fol. 49r).

69 Collinson, Patrick, “Cranbrook and the Fletchers: Popular and Unpopular Religion in the Kentish Weald,” Godly People (London, 1983), p. 412Google Scholar. The Scottish church was not immune: the wife of John Baron, minister of the kirk of Cawston, deserted her husband and moved to England. Scottish church officials tried to enlist Parker's aid in having her extradited to Scotland to be divorced from Baron: PRO, SP 12/33/56; Bruce and Perowne, eds. (n. 45 above), no. clvii.

70 Dictionary of National Biography 7:670–71Google Scholar, s.v. “Freake, Edmund”; White, F. O., Lives of the Elizabethan Bishops (London, 1898), pp. 194–95Google Scholar.

71 PRO, SP 15/24/8.

72 Williams, J. F., ed., Bishop Redman's Visitation, 1597, Norfolk Record Society, (1946), 18:154Google Scholar.

73 EDR, B/2/18, fols. 174v/175r.

74 Cambridge County RO, Cambridge, Parish Registers of Cottenham (1578), Croxton (1597), Dry Drayton (1569, 1573), Grantchester (1570), Orwell (1579), and Toft (1582, 1588). In the parish register for Coton is an Edwardian clerical marriage.

75 EDR, G/2/18-19.

76 John Veron addressed this in his contemporaneous work, A strange defence of the maryage ofpryestes agaynste the pope Eustachians made dialogue wise (pre-1563). He said that ministers without the gift of chastity ought to marry, and that if they did not, “Godly magistrates ought to compel them … lest by their incontinent living they be an offense and stumbling block unto the church and a slander unto the doctrine that they have taught and set forth” (fol. C2). See also Trigge, Francis, A Touchstone, whereby may easilie be discerned which is the true Catholike faith, of all them that professe the name ofCatholiques in the Church of Englande, that they bee not deceived (London, 1599), pp. 235–38Google Scholar. Trigge noted that the wives of the clergy brought the clergy into disrepute, and if the clergy expected anyone to listen to them, they had best put their own houses in order first. If the clergy had virtuous wives, he concluded, no one would speak ill of clerical marriage. In a letter to Robert Cecil, Archbishop Hutton noted that “the common cause of religion … hath received some disgrace” from the marital problems of the Archbishop of Limerick (Matthew Hutton to Robert Cecil, PRO, SP 12/270/75).

77 LP, vol. 14, pt. 1, no. 844. One of Mont's great skills was convincing the Germans that Protestantism had a future in England: Hildebrandt, Esther, “Christopher Mont, Anglo-German Diplomat” Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984): 287Google Scholar.

78 Based on: Berlatsky, Joel, “Marriage and Family in a Tudor Elite: Familial Patterns of Elizabethan Bishops,” Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 6–22Google Scholar; Prior (n. 26 above), pp. 118–48; White (n. 70 above).

79 Barnes, Blethin, N. Bullingham, H. Cotton, Cox, Fletcher, Godwin, Middleton, Overton, Sandys, Still, and Young married twice; Goldsborough and Hutton, three times; see Prior (n. 26 above), pp. 135, 147, n. 100.

80 Strype, J., Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (Oxford, 1820–1840), 2, pt. 1:515Google Scholar.

81 Carlson (n. 24 above).

82 Cox wrote a passionate defense to Cecil of his wife's character and his need to marry (Richard Cox to Cecil, PRO, SP 12/48/64).

83 His cringing protest to Cecil, Robert (Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honorable the Marquis of Salisbury, preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire 2:106–7)Google Scholar is in sharp contrast to the tone of Cox's to Cecil's father. A scathing poem, “On the Marriage of Lady Mary Baker to Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London,” has recently been attributed to Sir John Davies (Krueger, Robert, ed., The Poems of Sir John Davies [Oxford, 1975], pp. 177–79Google Scholar).

84 Hutton had been ordered by the queen to dispense Thornborough to marry again. He wrote to Cecil that although he believed that the law of God allowed pars innocens to marry again, it was “flat contrary to Her Majesty's ecclesiastical laws of this land and much misliked by most of the clergy of this realm” (PRO, SP 12/270/75). See Rowse, A. L., “Bishop Thornborough: A Clerical Careerist,” in For Veronica Wedgwood These, ed. Ollard, R. and Tudor-Craig, P. (London, 1986), pp. 89–108Google Scholar.

85 White (n. 70 above), p. 189.

86 Bliss, Philip, ed., Athenae Oxoniensis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1813–1815), 1:611Google Scholar.

87 Harington, J., A Briefe View of the State of the Church of England (London, 1653), pp. 111–15, 120–21Google Scholar.

88 Ibid., p. 4.

89 Neale (n. 2 above), p. 101.

90 Berlatsky (n. 78 above); Collinson, Patrick, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), pp. 70–79Google Scholar; Heal, Felicity, Of Prelates and Princes (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 203–327Google Scholar.

91 See Sandys's lavish provisions for his children, e.g., BL, Lansdowne MS 50.34. Another complaint was that they ignored their traditional responsibilities, “And … it is thought that divers of the clergy, now being married and having wives and children do overmuch alienate their minds from the honest and careful duty which they ought to bear towards the maintenance of good hospitality” (PRO, SP 15/24/8). On the expectation of hospitality, see Heal, Felicity, “Hospitality in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 102 (1984), pp. 66–93Google Scholar.

92 PRO, SP 12/259/47: “To move her majesty's compassion towards the poor orphans of the late bishop of London.” See also BL, Additional MS 33,410, fol. 13, a letter from the Privy Council to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1591 in favor of the wife and children of the queen's chaplain, Dr. Tomson, who pursued the “advancement of the Gospel” at the expense of his material advancement “so as thereby his wife and poor children are left in distressed estate” with £300 debts and no provision. The Privy Council asked Whitgift to provide for them.

93 London, Inner Temple, Petyt MS 47, fol. 373.

94 Haugaard, , Elizabeth (n. 46 above), p. 203Google Scholar.

95 Cecil to Parker, August 12, 1561, Inner Temple, Petyt MS 47, fol. 372.

96 The dean and chapter of Worcester were reportedly melting down the organ to provide dishes and bedsteads for the prebendaries' wives (Barstow, A. L., “The First Generation of Anglican Clergy Wives: Heroines or Whores?” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 52 [1983]: 11Google Scholar). This quixotic crusade was clearly not entirely, if at all, her own idea. In July 1561, Elizabeth was petitioned to take even more drastic action than she did (PRO, SP 15/11/24). See also BL, Lansdowne MS 487/7.

97 Richard Cox to Matthew Parker, n.d., Inner Temple, Petyt MS 47, fol. 378. In a ballad from the same period, a Cambridge student lamented that love and marriage had ruined his university life, and as he prepared to leave, he prayed that his fellows might be kept safe from beauty “whose bait hath brought me to my bain, and caught me from my books” (Robinson, Clement, A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, ed. Kershaw, Arnold [London, 1926], pp. 21–24Google Scholar).

98 Parker to Cecil, n.d., Inner Temple, Petyt MS 47, fol. 374.

99 Inner Temple, Petyt MS 47, fol. 372.

100 Haugaard, p. 204. Archbishop Young enjoined obedience to the order in his visitation of the cathedral in 1563 (Bodleian Library Ashmole MS 862, pp. 198–99). It cannot have been observed. One of the minster clergy, Anthony Blake, had been married since the reign of Edward and was a residentiary canon from 1565–70. Thomas Atkinson, another of the minster clergy, was also married during his tenure (Cross, Claire, ed., York Clergy Wills, 1520–1600:I. Minster Clergy, Borthwick Texts and Calendars [York, 1984], 10:110, 112Google Scholar). See also her “Priests into Ministers” (n. 27 above), pp. 203–25.

101 BI, HC.AB.5, fol. 190r.

102 BI, HC.AB.10, fol. 54r.

103 BI, HC.AB.11, fol. 51r.

104 BI, HC.AB.13, fol. 231 v; see the 1586 case of Anne Grecyan, cited in Dickens, A. G., Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York (London, 1982), p. 187Google Scholar.

105 Haigh, , Reformation and Resistance (n. 27 above), p. 221Google Scholar.

106 Haigh, Christopher, “The Church of England, the Catholics and the People,” in The Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. Haigh, Christopher (London, 1984), p. 216Google Scholar.

107 Collinson (n. 90 above), p. 106.

108 Houlbrooke, Ralph, ed., The Letter Book of John Parkhurst, Norfolk Record Society (1974), vol. 43Google Scholar, nos. 73 and 249.

109 Willis, A. J., ed., Winchester Consistory Court Depositions, 1561–1602 (Lyminge, Kent, 1960), pp. 4–11Google Scholar.

110 Corpus Christi College MSS 101, 110, 113.

111 Hudson, , Ponet (n. 47 above), pp. 80–89Google Scholar.

112 Veron (n. 76 above), dedicatory letter.

113 Jewel, John, A Defence of the Apologie of the Church of England (1567), in The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, ed. Ayre, John (Cambridge, 1848), 3:385–429Google Scholar; Pilkington, James, “The Burning of St. Pauls,” in The Works of Bishop Pilkington, ed. Scholefield, J. (Cambridge, 1842), pp. 564–78Google Scholar.

114 Up to the colon, the wording is that of Article 31 of the Edwardian Forty-two Articles. The clause after the colon was unnecessary in Edward's reign because of the statutory provisions for the same. Cardwell, , Synodalia (n. 19 above), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

115 13 Eliz., cap. 12. See Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559–1581 (London, 1953), pp. 166–68, 203–7Google Scholar.

116 The manuscript, John Rylands Library, English MS 524, has been edited for publication by Kenneth L. Parker and this author (hereafter referred to as Rylands MS 524).

117 Dry Drayton original parish register, Cambridge, County RO; Dictionary of National Biography 8:528Google Scholar, s.v. “Greenham, Richard.”

118 Clarke, Samuel, The Lives of Thirty-Two English Divines, 3d ed. (London, 1677), p. 13Google Scholar.

119 Rylands MS 524, fol. 38r.

120 Rylands MS 524, fol. 16v. In order to avoid concupiscence, Greenham suggested “a continual examination of yourselves by the law; a reverent and daily meditating of the word; a painful walking in our honest calling; an holy shaming of ourselves, and fearing of ourselves before our friends; a continual temperance in diet, sleep and apparel; a careful watching over our eyes and other parts of our bodies; a zealous jealousy to avoid all occasions of persons, times and places which might nourish in us concupiscence; a godly frequenting of times, persons, and places which breed in us mortification, together with an humbling of ourselves, with the shame of sins past, with the grief of sins present, and with the fear of sins to come. Lastly, a careful use of fasting, prayer and watching … are means to come to mortification herein, which being wisely and some convenient time used, with a moderate motion and exercise of the body, if they do not prevail, it is like the lord doth call a man to the holy use of marriage” (fol. 21v). For Greenham's pastoral counseling activities, see Carlson, Eric Josef, “Pastoral Ministry in Elizabethan Cambridgeshire” (paper presented to the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, March 1989)Google Scholar.

121 Herbert, George, A Priest to the Temple, or The Countrey Parson His Character, and Rule of Holy Life, in The Works of George Herbert, ed. Hutchinson, F. E. (Oxford, 1941), chap. 9Google Scholar.

122 Henson's letters are quoted in Howatch, Susan, Glittering Images (New York, 1987), pp. 23, 41Google Scholar.