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John Ponet in Exile: a Ponet Letter to John Bale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

E. J. Baskerville
E. J. Baskerville
Affiliation:
Department of English, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA 17325
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Extract

Though the political ideas of JohnPonet, Edwardian bishop and Marian exile, continue to attract interest, the facts of Ponet's life and, especially, of his activities during his years of exile have excited no high degree of scholarly attention since the works of Christina Garrett and Winthrop S. Hudson. Yet one piece of evidence, unknown to both Garrett and Hudson, exists that tells us a few important things about his attitude toward and, particularly, his involvement in, the propaganda and polemical activities of Protestant exiles under Mary. The evidence in question is a letter from Ponet in Strasbourg to John Bale ‘at Frankfurt’; and since this document has appeared to date only in excerpts, it will be well to begin by offering a complete transcription of it.

Type
Notes and Documents
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 442 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Garrett, Christina, The Marian Exiles, Cambridge 1938, 253–8Google Scholar, supplied a compact but controversial sketch of Ponet's life; and Hudson, Winthrop S., John Ponet: advocate of limited monarchy, Chicago 1942Google Scholar, wrote the only full-lengthmodern biography. Hudsonincluded a lengthy analysis of Ponet's political theories, and these theories have also been dealt with by Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, London 1951, 118–20Google Scholar, and chapter vi in general; and also by Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge 1978, ii, chaptervn, and especially pp.221–38; byGoogle ScholarMorris, Christopher, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker, Oxford 1953, 152–5Google Scholar; and by Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints, Cambridge, Mass. 1965, 92–113Google Scholar, especially 102-3. The most recent studies of Ponet are Barbara Peardon, ‘The politics of polemic: JohnPonet's Short Treatise of Politic Power and contemporary circumstances,1553-1556’, Journal of British Studies, xxii (1982), 35-49; and Wollman, David H., ‘The Biblical justification for resistance to authority in Ponet's and Goodman's polemics’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, xiii (1982), 29–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Loades, D. M., The Reign of Mary Tudor, New York 1980, 360 n. 89Google Scholar, prints ten lines of the letter; King, John N., English Reformation Literature, Princeton 1982, 113, prints several lines from the end of the letter but provides an unsatisfactory transcriptGoogle Scholar.

3 B.L. Additional MS 29546, fo. 25. I have expanded the abbreviations and modernised the capitalisation; and I have kept Ponet's corrections of his text where these corrections have some stylistic import. The transcription is otherwise a faithfulcopy.

4 Fairfield, Leslie, John Bale: mythmaker for the English Reformation, West Lafayette, Ind. 1976, 202 n. 25Google Scholar. Fairfield also quotes sections of some four lines from the letter, as indicated in the paragraphbelow.

5 Bale's known works that are still extantare his Vocacyon(STC1307); Stephen Gardiner's De oera obedientia (STC 11585) which, it is now agreed, he translated and edited; and A Dialogue (STC 10383), which is credited to him by Fairfield, Mylhmaker, 169. Other works attributedto him are the edition and augmentation of Tyndale's Practyse of Prelates(STC 24465, 1530 edn) on the basis of Gardiner, De vera obedientia (STC 11587, Rome edn) sig. H ivr; The Champion of the Church, a lost work that is credited to Bale by Davies, W. T., ‘Bibliography of John Bale’, Oxford Bibliographical Society: Proceedings and Papers, v (1940), 276–8Google Scholar, and is also cited in , Ames, Typographical Antiquities, enlarged by William Herbert, London 1790, iii. 1578Google Scholar, and which seems to be the work referred to by Miles Hogarde, The displaying of the Prolestantes (STC 13558), sig. o6r and v; and A declaration of Edmonde Bonners Articles(STC1289, 1561 edn), a work dated from Basle in 1554 by Bale but not then printed.

6 We do not know exactly when Bale travelled to Basle. He was still in Frankfurt in November 1555, but his name appears in the Matrikel list for the university at Basle under 1555/56. See , Garrett, Marian Exiles, 78 and 357Google Scholar.

7 A Brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford (STC 25443), Sig- Fiiiv-Gir.

8 Collinson, Patrick, Archbishop Grindal,1519-1583, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1979, 73Google Scholar. In this paragraph, I have followed Collinson's account of the Frank furt affair on pp. 73-9.

9 Sir John Cheke, Sir Anthony Cooke, Richard Cox, Sir Richard Morison, Ponet, Sir Thomas Wroth. See Collinson, op. cit., 73.

10 , Garrett, Marian Exiles, 256Google Scholar.

11 The Works of JohnKnox, ed. DavidLaing, ,4 vols., Edinburgh, 1846-1855Google Scholar(The Bannetyne Club), iv. 47.

12 Garrett, op. cit., 49.

13 The Scriptorum Illuslrium maioris Britannic…Catalogus, first published at Basle in 1557, is a propagandist and polemical work, as well as a historical bibliographical exercise.

14 Ponet's sentence structure here makes it uncertain whether he is thinking of printed works that can be easily ‘born away’ to England or ‘born away’ by readers in England who acquire them.

15 For example, the Coxian faction at Frankfurt used Knox's A Faythfull admonition (STC 15069) to undermine him. They showed the Frankfurtmagistrates passages where Knox attacked Mary, the emperor and Philip (A Brief discours, sig. Fiiiv), and the magistrates, especially alarmed at the attacks on the emperor, told Knox to leave the city. The Coxians, defending their action in a letter to Calvin (Works of Knox, iv. 62-6), argued that Knox's language ‘addedmuch oil to the flame of persecution in England’. In another instance, James Haddon wrote to Henry Bullinger, the Zurich reformer, on 31 August 1554 to agree with Bullinger that a manuscript version of Lady Jane Grey's last words and letters ought not to be published because publication would endanger Haddon and also cause peril to others: ‘the present time is most unsuitable for such a measure, even if it were certain that the whole statement is correct. For we have too many matters of facts to make it necessary to collect mere rumours’, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, trans, and ed. Hastings Robinson (Parker Society, 1, 1846), 293-4. See also , Garrett, Marian Exiles, 169–70Google Scholar.

16 Loach, Jennifer, ‘Pamphlets and politics, 1553-1558’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xlviii (1975), 31-44 at 36–7Google Scholar.

17 See E. J. Baskerville, A Chronological Bibliography of Propaganda and Polemic published in English between 7533 and 1558 (AmericanPhilosophical Society, Memoirs, cxxxvi,1979), 6-16; for a listing of works published up to July 1555, see pp. 34-57.

18 , Hudson, Ponet, 77Google Scholar.

19 Garrett, Marian Exiles, 256.

20 Ibid. 254, 255.

21 , Collinson, Grindal, 73Google Scholar.