The Authorship of A Brieff Discours off the Troubles Begonne at Franckford

Patrick Collinson

doi:10.1017/S0022046900066264

The Authorship of A Brieff Discours off the Troubles Begonne at Franckford

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

Patrick Collinson

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Patrick Collinson: Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, University of Khartoum

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The Brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford, an anonymous tract commonly ascribed to William Whittingham, dean of Durham, and printed in Heidelberg in 1574 and 1575, enjoys a unique reputation among the polemical writings of the Elizabethan puritans for its well-documented if partisan account of the controversies of the Marian exiles in their German and Swiss congregations. The importance of the Brieff discours as a source for the history of the Exile has hitherto tended to divert attention from the circumstances of its origin in the Elizabethan puritan controversy. This note is intended to introduce new evidence on the activities of a group of puritan propagandists responsible for organising the publication of this and other tracts in the early years of the Elizabethan Presbyterian Movement; to call in question the traditional attribution of the Brieff discours to Whittingham; and to suggest that the author may have been a relatively obscure exile, Thomas Wood.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , October 1958 , pp. 188 - 208

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900066264 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1958

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^{page 188 note 1} A brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford in Germany anno domini 1554 abowte the booke off off [sic] common prayer and ceremonies and continued by the Englishe men theyre to the ende off Q.. Maries raigne. Printed by Schirat of Heidelberg in two editions, 1574 and 1575 (see below, 209). The tract has been reprinted three times: in The Phoenix (ii. 1708), 44–204; in quasi-facsimile (preserving the original pagination) by John Petheram in 1846 with a critical introduction largely contributed by Thomas McCrie; and by Edward Arber in 1908 as the first volume of ‘A Christian Library’. The best modern text is Petheram's. Arber's suffers from his editorial idiosyncracies and is sometimes inaccurate. All references here are to the edition of 1575.

^{page 188 note 2} Noted by Pearson, A. F. Scott, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1553–1603, Cambridge 1925, 145.Google Scholar

^{page 188 note 3} For modern accounts of the Exile, see Knappen, M. M., Tudor Puritanism: a Chapter in the History of Idealism, Chicago 1939Google Scholar, and Garrett, Christina H., The Marian Exiles: a Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism, Cambridge 1938.Google Scholar

^{page 189 note 1} Brieff discours, lxii–clxxxi.

^{page 189 note 2} Besides giving the church an advanced congregational polity, the New Discipline directed that in the use of the 1552 Prayer Book ‘certaine rites and ceremonies’ were to be left out ‘as we at this present doo’. (Brieff discours, cxvii.).

^{page 189 note 3} Brieff discours, cxciiii.

^{page 189 note 4} Ibid., ccxii–ccxv.

^{page 189 note 5} Ibid., cxcix–ccxi.

^{page 189 note 6} See below, 216, for examples of the pirating of MSS. by the Elizabethan puritans. Tracts printed by these means had often been written some years before their publication and were furbished with a topical introduction by an anonymous editor (see, for example, the anonymously printed Dialogue concerning the strife of our Churche, 1584). It is important for the arguments to be developed here to establish that the Brief discours was not a composite production in this sense.

^{page 190 note 1} Brieff discours, clxxxi.

^{page 190 note 2} Miss Garrett, for example, is concerned to identify the exile ‘who continued Whittingham's narrative after the latter's departure’, (op. cit., 122.).

^{page 190 note 3} McCrie suggested Whitehead in his introduction to the 1846 edition; Miss Garrett (op. cit., 122) preferred Cole.

^{page 190 note 4} See the evidence on this point gathered on p. 216 below.

^{page 190 note 5} For most of our knowledge of these developments and for the Frankfort New Discipline itself we are entirely indebted to the Historie of that sturre and strife.

^{page 190 note 6} Brieff discours, lxii.

^{page 190 note 7} Where the New Discipline remarks that the pastor, Robert Home, later bishop of Winchester, may ‘wilfully and suddenly leave his flocke’ (cxxxviii), the margin notes with glee: ‘Yea; but though he did so then he will not doo so nowe I warrant yow.’ There is a reference to ‘the simple sutteltie of H[orne's] factious head’ (xc). Where Home hesitated to subscribe a certain article: ‘Yff maister Home tooke such deliberation before he would subscribe to that article: what meanethe this that poore ignorant men and wemen must thus subscribe upon the sudden or ells to newgate’ (xcv). The detachment of the Editor is best shown by a marginal note on p. cxii: ‘This article I find rased in the copie, what they ment by it, I know not.’.

^{page 191 note 1} The text of the Historie ends with this appeal: ‘In the meane time nothinge distrustinge the lordes mercie (how soever the deceites off men would let it) hopinge that neither livinge nor foode shall ever want to oure poore congregation, [through him] who also feedeth the ravens, and that he will allwaies be present by his spirit to us and to oure whole churche continually whiche thinge that it maie please him to bringe to passe, we beseche the good reader (who soever thow art) praie unto god, togither with us, and fare well!’ (Brieff discours, cv.).

^{page 191 note 2} In April 1557 the ministers were in debt to their landladies for four months’ rent. (Ibid., ciiii.).

^{page 191 note 3} Ibid., cv, clxxv.

^{page 191 note 4} Ibid., clxxiii–clxxxi.

^{page 191 note 5} On the evidence of a letter from Thomas Wood to William Whittingham (printed below) it appears that a letter of John Calvin written to the Frankfort congregation in holograph in January 1555 was in the possession of the Genevan congregation as late as 1559.

^{page 191 note 6} The documents described as ‘yet to be seen’ are an undated letter from Whittingham to a friend in England, recounting events in the Frankfort church; an undated letter of Thomas Cole sending on news of fresh quarrels in Frankfort to a former member of the congregation who had seceded to Geneva; and a letter of Richard Chambers dated from Strasbourg, 20 June 1557, to a number of Frankfort exiles. (Brieff discours, xlvii, lix, clxxxi–clxxxii.).

^{page 191 note 7} In any case he speaks of ‘keepinge of theis thinges almoste by the space off theis twentie yeares in secret.’ (Ibid., cxcviii.).

^{page 192 note 1} Garrett, op. cit., 335–6, 300–1, 343.

^{page 192 note 2} S.T.C., no. 14664. I am grateful to the Librarian of Sion College for granting facilities to inspect the only copy of this tract listed in the Short Title Catalogue (Sion College, press-mark Arc in Lib. A/69/.3/355).

^{page 192 note 3} Johnson was not a contemporary of Whittingham, but was born about the time of Whittingham's death. Against his attribution of the Brieff discours to Whittingham it should be said that the author of an anonymous life of Whittingham, written (but not printed) in the same year as Johnson's tract, who was a personal acquaintance of Whittingham, does not ascribe the Brieff discours to him, although he refers to it as ‘a large Discourse, in an ancient book’. (A Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort, ed. E. Arber, 1908, 3).

^{page 192 note 4} Brieff discours, 1575 edn., B.M. Press-mark 697. g.20, xlix.

^{page 192 note 5} A copy of the 1575 edition of the tract in the B.M. (press-mark 697.b.26) bears ‘By M.C.’ on the title-page and ‘M. Coverdale’ as a signature to the Preface, entered in a near-contemporary hand in imitation of the letter-press.

^{page 192 note 6} For example, the argument that private interviews in which Whittingham took part are fully reported and Whittingham's speeches given verbatim. Yet McCrie is not justified in saying that ‘none could have reported, or would have thought of reporting’ these transactions except Whittingham himself, since he could have communicated notes to another exile at the time.

^{page 193 note 1} McCrie's most plausible arguments concerned Whittingham's whereabouts and the events of which we know him to have had personal experience. Yet all arguments based on Whittingham's movements, both during and after the exile, apply equally to Thomas Wood.

^{page 193 note 2} It is not true, for example, that Whittingham is usually styled plain Whittingham while the other figures in the story are ‘Maister Knox, Maister Goodman, etc.’

^{page 193 note 3} Notably by Froude (Edinburgh Review, lxxxv. 424), R. W. Dixon (History of the Church of England, iv. 689n) and P. Hume Brown (John Knox, i. 67 n. 1).

^{page 193 note 4} D.N.B., art. Whittingham.

^{page 193 note 5} John Knox's Genevan Service Book, 1550, Edinburgh 1931, 10n.Google Scholar

^{page 193 note 6} Op. cit., 1 n. 1.

^{page 193 note 7} Op. cit., 119n.

^{page 193 note 8} Entry nos. 25442 and 25443.

^{page 193 note 9} The Life and Death of Master William Whittingham, Dean of Durham, who departed this life, Anno Domino 1579, June 10. Previously edited by M. A. E. Green as The Life of Mr William Whittingham, from a MS. in Anthony Wood's Collection in Camden Miscellany, vi (1870).Google Scholar

^{page 193 note 10} Op. cit., 135–48.

^{page 193 note 11} S.T.C., no. 24184.

^{page 193 note 12} S.T.C., no. 4714.

^{page 193 note 13} Johnson, A. F., ‘Books Printed at Heidelberg for Thomas Cartwright’, Library, 5th ser., II (1948), 284–6.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 193 note 14} Scott Pearson, op. cit., 130–5.

^{page 193 note 15} For information on the secret presses which produced presbyterian propaganda between June 1572 and June 1573, see Scott Pearson, op. cit., 81–7, 109–14; Puritan Manifestoes, ed. W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, Church Historical Society, reprinted 1954, xvii–xxv; The Seconde Parte of a Register: being a Calendar of Manuscripts under that title intended for publication by the Puritans about 1593, and now in Dr. Williams's Library, London, ed. Peel, Albert, Cambridge 1915, I. 108–14.Google Scholar

^{page 194 note 1} An Admonition to the Parliament and A Second Admonition to the Parliament are reprinted in Puritan Manifestoes, cited above (first published in 1907). Whitgift's Answer, Cartwright's Reply, Whitgift's Defence of the Answer and Cartwright's Second Replie and The Rest of the Second Replie are reprinted in a conflated text in The Works of John Whitgift, ed. Ayre, John, Parker Socy, 3 vols., Cambridge 1851–1853Google Scholar. An abbreviated conflated text of the whole controversy is printed in McGinn, D. J., The Admonition Controversy, Rutgers Studies in English v., New Brunswick 1949Google Scholar. The Explicatio and the Full and plaine declaration have not been reprinted.

^{page 194 note 2} Later bishop of Rochester.

^{page 194 note 3} Brieff discours, ii.

^{page 194 note 4} Ibid.

^{page 194 note 5} Ibid., iii.

^{page 194 note 6} Ibid., cxcvii.

^{page 194 note 7} For John Foxe and the appeal to history, see Haller, William, ‘John Foxe and the Puritan Revolution’, The Seventeenth Century: studies in the History of Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope, ed. Jones, R. F., Stanford, California 1951, 209–24. The Brieff discours acknowledged its indebtedness to Foxe and to earlier writers in the same tradition; the Preface claims that the tract follows ‘the steppes off such, whome god off his goodnes hath raised up at all tymes and amonge all nations, to commit thinges to memorye, whiche hath passed in commonweales, who have with great freedom and libertie byn suffred to make manifest to the whole worlde the ill dealinges even off Popes, Cardinalls, Emperours, Kinges and Princes, where as (in this discours) the highest that I touche (and that with great grieff of hart) are (to my knowledge) but certeine Bishopps, and therefore I hope the more to be borne withall.’ Specific reference is made in the margin to ‘Platina, Paulus Jovius, Sledein, Fox with many other’. (Brieff discours, iii.).Google Scholar

^{page 195 note 1} Brieff discours, cxciiii.

^{page 195 note 2} See below, 216–17.

^{page 195 note 3} See Scott Pearson, op. cit., 58–109; Puritan Manifestoes, xvii–xxv; my own unpublished Ph.D. thesis, ‘The Puritan Classical Movement in the Reign of Elizabeth I’, London 1957, 138–45.Google Scholar

^{page 195 note 4} Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, 1485–1714, ed. Steele, Robert, Oxford 1910, I. no. 687, 74.Google Scholar

^{page 195 note 5} See a memorandum by Parker, Inner Temple Library, MS. Petyt 538/47 f. 479 r and v; printed in part, Strype, J., The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, ed. Oxford 1821, II. 239–41.Google Scholar

^{page 195 note 6} See Bishop Sandys to Burghley, 2 July 1573, printed Puritan Manifestoes, 154–5.

^{page 195 note 7} Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, i. no. 689, 74.

^{page 195 note 8} Acts of the Privy Council, N.S., ed. J. R. Dasent, VIII. 1894, 140, 171;Google ScholarA Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 93–7.

^{page 195 note 9} See the printed charge delivered at Chelmsford, 15 December 1573, Inner Temple Library, MS. Petyt 538/47 f. 510; and the record of the indictment at the Middlesex Assize of Robert Johnson, preacher of St. Clement's without Temple Bar (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 124).

^{page 196 note 1} Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 92–7. See the private letters of puritans reporting on these events: the letter of Thomas Wood to William Whittingham, printed below; two letters of the puritan preacher Thomas Wilcox to Anthony Gilby, preacher of Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire, 21 December 1573 and 2 February 1573 [/4], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm.I.43 (Baker 32), 441–2, 439; Edward Dering, the famous preacher to his brother, Richard Dering, 24 December 1573, Dering, Certaine godly and comfortable letters, in Works (ed. 1597), Sig. A 4.

^{page 196 note 2} For a fuller account of these events, see my thesis (cited above), 160–72.

^{page 196 note 3} I have discussed this question at some length in my thesis, 111–22.

^{page 196 note 4} See his letters to Anthony Gilby, 17 January 1572 [/3], Cambridge Univ. Lib., MS. Mm. I. 43, 431–2; and to Burghley, 6 February 1576[/7], B.M. Lansd. MS. 24 no. 25 f. 52.

^{page 196 note 5} Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and His Book, 1940, 111–2;Google ScholarNashe, Thomas, Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, i (1904), 85.Google Scholar

^{page 196 note 6} Norton to John Whitgift, 20 October 1572, Inner Temple Library MS. Petyt 538/38 f. 65 r and v.

^{page 196 note 7} Zurich Letters, ed. Robinson, Hastings, Parker Socy., Cambridge 1842, 292; Sampson to Gilby, 8 March 1584[/5], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 433.Google Scholar

^{page 196 note 8} Peel, Albert, Robert Crowley, Manchester 1937, 22. John Field to Gilby, 28 February 1580[/1], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 446.Google Scholar

^{page 196 note 9} [William Fulke], The Examination of M. Doctor Whytgiftes Censures, 1573, Sig. Ai.

^{page 196 note 10} The Life of Mr William Whittingham, ed. M. A. E. Green, Camden Miscellany, vi (1870), 13–14.Google Scholar

^{page 196 note 11} See below, 219.

^{page 196 note 12} The Life of Mr William Whittingham, op. cit., 23 n. 1.

^{page 196 note 13} Whittingham to Leicester, 28 October 1564, printed Strype, Parker, iii. App. xxvii, 76–84.

^{page 197 note 1} See the evidence of the letter from Thomas Wood to Whittingham, printed below.

^{page 197 note 2} Life of Mr William Whittingham, op. cit., 22, n. 3.

^{page 197 note 3} See Wood's letter referred to in the next note and printed below.

^{page 197 note 4} Thomas Wood to William Whittingham, 15 February 1573[/4], MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143, ff. I5v-17r. My thanks are due to the Earl of Verulam for permission to print this letter and to the staff of the Hertfordshire Record Office, Hertford (where the MS. is deposited) for enabling me to transcribe it.

^{page 197 note 5} See below, 219.

^{page 197 note 6} Brieff discours, xxxiiii–xxxvi. The Latin original of Calvin's letter, preserved in Geneva, is printed in The Works of John Knox, ed. Laing, David, IV. Edinburgh 1855, 51–3.Google Scholar

^{page 198 note 1} Brieff discours, cxcv.

^{page 198 note 2} John Strowd, the printer-preacher who had printed Cartwright's Reply in June 1573, had a copy of the Explicatio as early as November 1574 and in that month passed it on to an acquaintance. (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 109.).

^{page 198 note 3} A Parte of a Register, Middelburg or Edinburgh ? 1593, 401–8; Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 136–43.

^{page 199 note 1} Brieff discours, ii–iii, and cxciiii–cxcv.

^{page 199 note 2} See Chapter ii of my thesis (cited above), passim.

^{page 199 note 3} P.R.O., Star Chamber 5 A 49/34. For a detailed analysis of the case in which this deposition was made, see my thesis Chapter xi. ii.

^{page 199 note 4} See references to his imprisonment in letters of Thomas Wilcox to Anthony Gilby, 21 December 1573 and 2 February 1573[/4], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 442, 439.

^{page 199 note 5} Edmunds's deposition.

^{page 199 note 6} For a discussion of the identity of these active lay puritans, see my thesis (cited above), 105–12.

^{page 199 note 7} See my thesis, Chapters iv, v, vi, xi, passim.

^{page 199 note 8} Field acknowledged to archbishop Parker's chaplain that the ‘bitterness of the stile’ was his and expressed his conviction that it was ‘no tyme to blench, nor to sewe cushens under mens elbowes, or to flatter them in their synnes’. (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 89.).

^{page 199 note 9} For his leading part in the organisation of the Puritan Classical Movement, see my thesis, especially Chapters iv–vi.

^{page 200 note 1} Field to Gilby, 22 November 1571, Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 447.

^{page 200 note 2} Edn. 1581, S.T.C., no. 11888.

^{page 200 note 3} Field to Gilby, 10 January 1571 [/2], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 447.

^{page 200 note 4} Quoted, Scott Pearson, op. cit., 273.

^{page 200 note 5} Printed as The iudgement of a most reverend and learned man from beyond the seas concerning a threefold order of bishops; S.T.C., no. 2021.

^{page 200 note 6} Edward Dering to Anne Lock, n.d., Kent County Record Office, Maidstone, MS. Dering CI/2 ff. 28v–29r; Mathews, Hazel, ‘Personnel of the Parliament of 1584–5’, unpublished London M.A. thesis 1948Google Scholar, biog. Prouze. For evidence of Anne Prouze's own literary activities, see Stenton, Doris Mary, The English Woman in History, 1957, 136.Google Scholar

^{page 200 note 7} Field's Epistle Dedicatorie to ‘The Vertuous and my very godly friend; Mrs Anne Prouze of Exeter’, A Notable and Comfortable exposition of M. Iohn Knoxe upon the Fourth of Mathew, Knox, Works, ed. Laing, David, Edinburgh 1855, IV. 91–4.Google Scholar

^{page 200 note 8} See a directive, probably emanating from a General Assembly held in London at the time of the 1586/7 Parliament, instructing the country conferences that the oppression of the bishops and their courts and officers both towards clergy and people ‘but especially towardes the mynisters’ are to be ‘registered and gathered’. (The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth as illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1582–1589, ed. Usher, R. G., Camden Socy., 3rd, ser., VIII., 1905, 93.) See also a note accompanying the account of his troubles by Ezechias Morley, an East Anglian preacher: ‘If yt will then any thinge help the common cause I pray yow then use your discretion.’ (Dr. Williams’ Library, MS. Morrice B.II. f. 91V.) For evidence that these documents were received by Field in London, see his attestation of a copy of the record of a Sussex minister's suspension: ‘Concordat cum originali ut ipsemet [the minister] testor. Joh. Fielde.’ (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 221.) In a MS. catalogue of these collections, dating perhaps from 1588, the items concerning Field and Thomas Wilcox are referred to in the first person—‘our offer to the Lords of the Councell’—‘our wives' supplication’. (B.M. Harl. MS. 360 ff. 87, 86, 85.).Google Scholar

^{page 201 note 1} A parte of a register, contayninge sundrie memorable matters, written by divers godly and learned in our time, which stande for and desire the reformation of our Church, in discipline and ceremonies, accordinge to the pure worde of God, and the Lawe of our Lande, Middelburg or Edinburgh ? 1593.

^{page 201 note 2} ‘The Seconde Parte of a Register’ and ‘Old Loose Papers’, Dr. Williams' Library MS. Morrice A and MS. Morrice B; calendared in 1915 by Dr. Albert Peel as The Seconde Parte of a Register and referred to above.

^{page 201 note 3} Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 16–17.

^{page 201 note 4} Brieff discours, cxciiii.

^{page 201 note 5} Some of the marginal comments, however (see above, 206 n. 7) are very reminiscent of his style and could conceivably have been added by him to the MS.

^{page 201 note 6} He referred to Robert Beaumont, Master of Trinity, who certainly came from Leicestershire, as ‘my country man’. (Wood to Anthony Gilby, 4 October 1565, B.M. Lansd. MS. 841 f. 52.).

^{page 201 note 7} In the letter to Gilby referred to above, he speaks of Beaumont's behaviour in Cambridge—‘a maner not used in our tyme you knowe’. There is no record of Wood in Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses.

^{page 201 note 8} Garrett, op. cit., 343.

^{page 202 note 1} Ibid. Miss Garrett thought this a fair presumption, but Thomas Wood is a not uncommon combination of names and our Thomas Wood had a cousin of these names. (Wood to Mr. Beaumont, 12 December 1573, MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143, f. 18r.).

^{page 202 note 2} Brieff discours, v.

^{page 202 note 3} In the letter printed below.

^{page 202 note 4} Garrett, op. cit., 343.

^{page 202 note 5} For example, his negotiations with the Frankfort magistrates.

^{page 202 note 6} Knox to Mrs. Lock, 2 September 1559, The Works of John Knox, op. cit., vi. 78.

^{page 202 note 7} Williams is described as Wood's son-in-law in his will of 1577. (Principal Probate Registry, Somerset House, P.C.C. wills, 16 Daughtry.).

^{page 202 note 8} There are frequent references in Wood's correspondence to his ‘good Lord’ the Earl of Warwick. He named his son Ambrose after his master, and in his will of 1577 bequeathed to him a memento which Warwick had given to him.

^{page 203 note 1} Letters from Wood to Cecil, Lord Robert Dudley and the Privy Council, and documents bearing his signature or referring to him are calendared in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign 1562, nos. 1012, 1060, 1127, 1214; Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1563, nos. 53, 307–9, 550, 552(3), 584(1). 605, 710(2), 835, 948, 968; a letter sent from Portsmouth to Lord Robert Dudley, reporting on Warwick's health on his return, occurs in the domestic series, Cal. State Papers Dom. 1547–1580, 229.

^{page 203 note 2} See the reference in the letter printed below to ‘procuring the letter whereof this inclosed maketh mention’. Attached to the letter, is a copy of Lord Robert Dudley's letter to his brother (already known to us from the Life of Mr. William Whittingham, op. cit., 13–14) in which he reports the signing of Whittingham's patent for Durham and acknowledges Warwick's letter written in support of Whittingham which alone persuaded the queen to agree to his appointment. Whittingham was a comparative late-comer to Le Havre. The original preachers in the English army had been Broadbridge and Viron and on their departure Warwick had expressed a preference for Christopher Goodman or Percival Wiburn. (Life of Mr. William Whittingham, 12.).

^{page 203 note 3} His correspondence includes letters written from London on 4 October 1565 and 29 March 1566. (B.M. Lansd. MS. 841 f. 52; MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143 ff. 13r-14v.).

^{page 203 note 4} The details of this purchase are in Wood's will, P.C.C. 16 Daughtry. The manor of Groby was leased from Lord Grey and the lease was purchased from a Mr. Henry Sekeford. Wood had evidently settled in Leicestershire as early as January 1572, when John Field refers to his presence there. (Field to Gilby, 10 January 1571 [/2], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 447.) It is worth noting that by settling at Groby, Wood escaped virtually all ordinary ecclesiastical discipline. Groby was a peculiar of the Court of Arches, visited only by a commissary appointed by the Lord of the Manor. (Nichols, John, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, I (1815), 624, IV (1811), 632.)Google Scholar In 1575 the Commissary was William Stoughton, a puritan civilian who as M.P. for Grampound introduced the puritan petitions from Leicestershire into the 1584 Parliament and later wrote An assertion for true Christian church-policie (S. T.C., no. 23318, Middelburg 1604) to prove that a presbyterian Church polity was not inconsistent with English law or custom. (Nichols, op. cit., iv. 632; Simonds D'Ewes, The Journal of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1682, 349.).

^{page 203 note 5} Wood's will of 1577, P.C.C. 16 Daughtry.

^{page 203 note 6} Ibid.

^{page 203 note 7} MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143, at present deposited in the Hertfordshire Record Office at Hertford, is a note-book in which Wood's son Ambrose has copied letters illustrative of the puritan cause from the Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods. These include a collection of his father's letters ‘to certaine noble personages and other his good freinds out of the copies under his owne hand: which, being in loose papers, I have here exemplified …”.

^{page 204 note 1} Or so one would deduce from a reference in a letter to Gilby to ‘the delivery of my letter to our good Erle'. (B.M. Lansd. MS. 841 f. 52.).

^{page 204 note 2} Reference in a letter from Wood to Leicester [20 August 1576], MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143 f. 7r.

^{page 204 note 3} Wood to Cecil, 29 March 1566, Cecil to Wood, 31 March 1566; MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143 ff. 13r–15r.

^{page 204 note 4} Wood to Gilby, 4 October 1565, B.M. Lansd. MS. 841 f. 52, (another copy) Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 430; Beaumont to Gilby, 25 January 1565 [/6], Ibid., 427–30.

^{page 204 note 5} See the letter printed below.

^{page 204 note 6} Wood to Warwick, 4 August 1576, MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143 f. 1; to Leicester, 4 August 1576, Ibid., ff. iv–2v.; to Warwick, 20 August 1576, Ibid., f. 6 r and v; to Leicester, [20 August 1576], Ibid., ff. 6v–10v; to Warwick, 7 September 1576, Ibid., ff. 4v–6r; to Warwick and Leicester [1577], Ibid., ff. 2v–13r.

^{page 204 note 7} Warwick to Wood, 16 August 1576, MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143, ff. 2v–4v; Leicester to Wood, 19 August 1576, Ibid., ff. 23r–27v.

^{page 204 note 8} This correspondence is particularly valuable for the light it sheds on Leicester's religious position and his attitude to the controversy between the bishops and the puritans. I hope to publish it elsewhere.

^{page 205 note 1} Field's auditory at the London Church of Aldermary, in a petition to Leicester of 1585, referred to Field having been ‘towards your Honorable brother these twenty yeares’. (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., i. 135). For my reasons for re-dating this document see my thesis (cited above) 372 n. 2.

^{page 205 note 2} Field to Gilby, 10 January 1571[/2], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43. 447.

^{page 205 note 3} See Wood to Sir Thomas Cave, 9 March 1572[/3]; ‘I purpose (God willing) with my wife to ride tomorrow towards London for the better recovery of my health, being thereunto advised by a godly phisition.’ (MS. Gorhambury VIII/B/143, f. 21r.)

^{page 205 note 4} Thomas McCrie, in his introduction to Petherham's edition of 1846, went too far when he wrote (ix) that the style is ‘clearly identical with the writings of Whittingham’. The characteristics he specifies are common to much puritan writing of the time.

^{page 205 note 5} Brieff discours, clxxxiii: ‘The brute thereoff was the cause that moo Englishe people in short time resorted thither.’ Cf. lxii.

^{page 205 note 6} Ibid., cxciiii–cxcv.

^{page 206 note 1} In this transcription I have preserved the original spelling, but have modernised the capitalisation and punctuation and have extended some abbreviations.

^{page 206 note 2} William Fuller, sometime of princess Elizabeth's household at Hatfield and an elder of Knox's congregation at Geneva. (Garrett, op. cit., 158–9.) In 1586 he presented the queen with a book in which he recalled her to repentance and recounted his own experiences during and after the Exile (Seconde Parte of a Register, op. cit., ii. 49–64). There are references to Fuller's imprisonment in the Counter and his removal to housearrest in March 1574 in letters of Thomas Wilcox to Gilby (Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 441–411). Wilcox speaks of ‘divers others … prisoners’ and names William White, a prominent puritan layman and Robert Johnson, preacher of St. Clement's without Temple Bar (Ibid.).

^{page 207 note 1} William Williams, sometime an elder of the Genevan congregation and Wood's son-in-law.

^{page 207 note 2} Whittingham to Leicester, 28 October 1564, printed in Strype, Life of Parker, iii. App. xxvii, 76–84.

^{page 207 note 3} This seems to have been an exaggeration, except perhaps in the case of Northamptonshire. For evidence that the ‘Inquisition’ was conducted with leniency elsewhere, see my thesis (cited above) 169–72.

^{page 207 note 4} Thomas Wilcox, who wrote to Gilby a fortnight before this, reports the same: ‘three of them that they have imprisoned’ were ‘dead allreadie’ (Wilcox to Gilby, 2 February 1573[/4], Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 439). These three did not include Robert Johnson, preacher of St. Clement's without Temple Bar who died in the Westminster Gatehouse in April (A Parte of a Register, op. cit., 94–118).

^{page 207 note 5} Was this Lewis Evans, a Catholic controversialist converted to Protestantism in the ‘sixties and author of a number of anti-Catholic pamphlets? (D.N.B., art. Evans; S.T.C., nos. 10588–10593.) Cf. Wilcox to Gilby, 2 February 1573[/4] ‘You shall receave by the bearer hereof … Beza his Epistles, and Lewis Evans his pamphlet.’ (Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 43, 439.).

^{page 207 note 6} Theodore Beza, A briefe and piththie [sic] summe of the Christian Faith made in the forme of a confession, transl. R[obert] F[ills], edns. 1562, [1566?], 1572, 1585.

^{page 207 note 7} I.e. Robert Fills, the translator. Fills, who was a member of Knox's Genevan congregation, also translated The Lawes and Statutes of Geneva, published in 1562 and dedicated to Lord Robert Dudley (S.T.C., no. 11725). (Garrett, op. cit. 152–3.) That Wood renders his name ‘Fitz’ is sufficient indication of the fancifulness of Miss Garrett's suggestion that, since he was registered in Geneva as ‘Fielde’ he may have been the father of John Field.

^{page 208 note 1} Until 1576 there was no edition of the Geneva Bible printed in England, although there had been three successive Genevan editions, of 1560, 1562 and 1570. The Brieff discours in its concluding pages (cxcii–cxciiii) gives prominence to an appeal for the reprinting and more general dispersal of the Geneva Bible.

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The Authorship of A Brieff Discours off the Troubles Begonne at Franckford

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