A Nursery of Elizabethan Nonconformity, 1567–72

H. Gareth Owen

doi:10.1017/S0022046900051356

A Nursery of Elizabethan Nonconformity, 1567–72

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

H. Gareth Owen

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H. Gareth Owen*: Affiliation:
University of Reading

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‘About that time [1567–8] there were many congregations of the Anabaptists in London, who called themselves Puritans or Unspotted Lambs of the Lord. They kept their church in the Minories without Aldgate’.

This paper is an attempt to develop the clue handed down to us by John Stow to the location of an early—if not the earliest—thoroughgoing nonconformist congregation within the Elizabethan Church. Considering the length of time it has been in print, it is a clue strangely neglected by historians both of nonconformity and of London during this period.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , April 1966 , pp. 65 - 76

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900051356 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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I am indebted to Dr. Patrick Collinson for his comments on this paper.

References

^{page 65 note 2} Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, ed. J. Gairdner, Camden Society N.S., xxviii 143. As with other quotations, I have modernised the spelling and capitalisation.

^{page 65 note 3} Terminologically it is a confused clue on account of Stow's readiness to equate ‘Puritan’ with ‘Anabaptist’. On the probability that anabaptists were at this time ‘generally unknown’ in England, cf. Burrage, C., The Early English Dissenters, Cambridge 1912, i. 64Google Scholar.

^{page 65 note 4} Tomlinson, E. M., A History of the Minories, London 1922Google Scholar. For instance, in his list ministers in the parish (220–1), Tomlinson does not identify any of a number of wellknown nonconformists who are named.

^{page 65 note 5} Victoria County History of London, ed. Page, W., London 1909, i. 313Google Scholar. The reference taken from Stow; hence the confusion between anabaptist and puritan.

^{page 65 note 6} E.g. Burrage, op. cit., i. 80–8.

^{page 65 note 7} Peel, A., The First Congregational Churches, Cambridge 1920.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 8} For instance, he identified two separatist preachers (Browne and Pattenson) as protégés of the dowager duchess of Suffolk, but did not point out her well-known connexions with the Minories (cf. Tomlinson, op. cit., 121).

^{page 66 note 1} Collinson, P., ‘The Elizabethan Puritans and the Foreign Reformed Churches in London’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, xx (1964), 542–3Google Scholar; Morgan, I., The Godly Preachers of the Elizabethan Church, London 1965, 45–8Google Scholar. See below (74–5), for a discussion of parochial privileges.

^{page 66 note 2} For our purpose, die major loss has been that of the Churchwardens' Accounts of Holy Trinity, Minories. These were available to Tomlinson who has voluminous extracts from the 1567–70 Accounts in his History. We are totally dependent on him for information from this source.

^{page 66 note 3} Peel, op. cit., 11–13; Tomlinson, op. cit., 220. Tomlinson gives no Christian names, and has ‘Bowman’ for Bonham in 1569.

^{page 66 note 4} Even ‘Mr. Bonham's aunt’ had 4s.: Peel, op. cit., 166, 196.

^{page 66 note 5} He was named in the spurious Undertree conspiracy of 1574: Strype, J., Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, Oxford 1821, ii. 368–72Google Scholar. The last date we have of his attendance at the Minories church is 15 October 1570: Tomlinson, op. cit., 360.

^{page 67 note 1} Registers (Guildhall Library MS. 9238–16 February 1578); Tomlinson, op. cit., 354.

^{page 67 note 2} The Writings of Henry Barrow, ed. Carlson, L. H., London 1962, 254Google Scholar.

^{page 67 note 3} Collinson, P., ‘John Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, in Elizabethan Government Society, ed. Bindoff, S. T., Hurstfield, J. and Williams, G. H., London 1961, 127–62.Google Scholar

^{page 67 note 4} Tomlinson, op. cit., 375.

^{page 67 note 5} Field to Gilby, 10 January 1572, quoted by Collinson, ‘Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, loc. cit., 133.

^{page 67 note 6} Tomlinson gives no Christian name. I identify him as Seth Jackson from information in that person's will of 1570, especially the legacies to Crane, Bonham and other Minories preachers: Guildhall Library MS. 9051/3, fol. 253^V.

^{page 67 note 7} Tomlinson, op. cit., 166.

^{page 67 note 8} His will is dated 2 July 1570, proved 6 August 1570. His last recorded parochial activity was on 9 May 1570, when he witnessed a will: Guildhall Library MS. 9051/3, fol. 254^v.

^{page 67 note 9} See below, 71–2.

^{page 68 note 1} Tomlinson, op. cit., 279; Garrett, C. H., The Marian Exiles, Cambridge 1938, 132–4Google Scholar. Coverdale's last recorded sermon there was on 23 October 1568. He died on 20 January 1569: Mozley, J. F., Coverdale and his Bibles, London 1953, 26–7.Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 2} Tomlinson has ‘Croubye’ in his list (220), but elsewhere ‘crouli’ (369).

^{page 68 note 3} Ibid., 280; cf. D.N.B., xxxi. 73.

^{page 68 note 4} I suggest this identification because of the known connexion of the duchess with the Minories in 1567. Browne is overlooked by Garrett; cf. Peel, op. cit., 29–30; Tomlinson, op. cit., 279.

^{page 68 note 5} An unusual feature of this Southwark ejection is that it was at the hands of the parish, not of the superior ecclesiastical authorities: G.L.C. Rec. Office, Vestry Minutes, St. Saviour's, 49; Garrett, op. cit., 203.

^{page 68 note 6} Coverdale, Kethe and Kelly: Garrett, op. cit., 132–3, 203–4. Browne is a fourth possible connexion.

^{page 68 note 7} Parish Registers: Guildhall Library MS. 9238, baptismal entries 25 May 1579, 26 June 1580; burials 24 September 1581, 7 September 1585; Tomlinson, op. cit., 354–5, 376.

^{page 69 note 1} G.L.C. Rec. Office, Vicar-General Book, Huick, fol. 116^r; Puritan Manifestoes, ed. Frere, W. H. and Douglas, C. E., London 1954, xxiGoogle Scholar; Strype, Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, ii. 371.

^{page 69 note 2} G.L.C. Rec. Office, Vicar-General Book, Huick, fol. 116^v; Tomlinson, op. cit., 220.

^{page 69 note 3} Collinson, P., ‘Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566–77’, in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement No. 5 (1960), xi–xiiGoogle Scholar; Hennessy, G., Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londiniense, London 1898, 375Google Scholar.

^{page 69 note 4} Dixon, R. W., History of the Church of England, Oxford 1902, vi. 178–80Google Scholar; Tomlinson, op. cit., 279. Pattenson died in prison some time before 1581, an early martyr of the separatist movement: Peel, op. cit., 36.

^{page 69 note 5} Cf. my article, ‘Tradition and Reform: Ecclesiastical Controversy in an Elizabethan London Parish’, Guildhall Miscellany, ii (2), 64–5.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 6} PRO, Star Chamber, 5A 49/34, fol. 4^a; The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. R. G. Usher, Camden Soc., 3rd series, viii. 5.1 am indebted to Dr. Collinson for the PRO reference.

^{page 69 note 7} Collinson, ‘Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, loc. cit., 131.

^{page 69 note 8} Field, Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Seyntcler, Crane and Edmunds: Presbyterian Movement, 5. Jackson's inclusion indicates that the group was already operating in 1570, the date of his death. Babbage's suggestion that this was another Jackson may be discounted: Babbage, S. B., Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, London 1962, 151Google Scholar.

^{page 69 note 9} Edmunds is the exception. Wilcox's connexions are tentative.

^{page 70 note 1} Guildhall Lib. MS. 9171/15, fol. 343^v. Gough and Browne were certainly on the fringes: Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. Bruce, J., Parker Soc., Cambridge 1853, 382, 390Google Scholar; Peel, op. cit., 29–30.

^{page 70 note 2} Guildhall Lib. MS. 9051/3, fol. 253^v.

^{page 70 note 3} Crowley, who had led the London clergy in the vestments controversy as recently as 1566, is the most conspicuous absentee.

^{page 70 note 4} Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 143.

^{page 70 note 5} Cf. Peel, op. cit., 20–7, 31–40, for a summary of these discussions.

^{page 70 note 6} The Plumbers' Hall and St. Martin in the Fields congregations provide the fullest documented example of this ‘circumstantial separatism’. Plumbers' Hall members admitted to private worship according to the Genevan order: Remains of Edmund Grindal, ed. Nicholson, W., Parker Soc., Cambridge 1843, 201–16Google Scholar.

^{page 70 note 7} Ibid., 203.

^{page 70 note 8} Crane, Bonham, Browne and Pattenson (only one sermon recorded to his name). The exception, significantly, was Fitz, leader of the only true ‘gathered church’ in the city: Peel, op. cit., 27, 46; Tomlinson, op. cit., 220, 279.

^{page 71 note 1} Dixon, op. cit., vi. 178–80.

^{page 71 note 2} London Corporation Rec. Office, Journals of Court of Common Council, 19, fol. 48^r; Tomlinson, op. cit., 279; Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 143.

^{page 71 note 3} Peel, op. cit., 10–11.

^{page 71 note 4} They were given lecturing positions, it was alleged, on the bishop's initiative as a means of inducing their followers to cease their separatist activities: Remains of Grindal, 316–18.

^{page 71 note 5} For Bonham's written pledge in May 1569 not to commit these offences, see ibid., 318.

^{page 71 note 6} The parish sources, as we have seen, confirm this point: Tomlinson, op. cit., 166; Peel, op. cit., 11.

^{page 71 note 7} Indeed, his puritan activities are only rescued from complete oblivion in the usual sources by a single reference in Thomas Earl's diary, where he is listed as one of those ministers who ‘impatient of the regiment of the English church became notorious preachers… of disciplinary Geneva forms and canons’: Cambridge Univ. Lib. MS. Mm. I. 29, fol. 59^v.

^{page 71 note 8} Dated 2 July 1570: Guildhall Lib. MS. 9051/3, fol. 253^v.

^{page 71 note 9} Cf. Carlson, L. H., The Writings of John Greenwood 1587–90, London 1962, 98–101Google Scholar.

^{page 71 note 10} W. Camden, Annales Rerum Anglicarum, 1717, i. 157.

^{page 71 note 11} Strype, J., Annals of the Reformation, Oxford 1824, i (ii). 350–2.Google Scholar

^{page 72 note 1} Burrage, op. cit., ii. 11–12.

^{page 72 note 2} Another semi-separatist contact may have been William Young, a prominent parishioner in the Minories at this time. Jackson left him ‘a Geneva bible and my second gown’. One of that name had been a member of the St. Martin in the Fields conventicle of March 1568: ibid., ii. 9; Tomlinson op. cit., 193–4, 250, 356.

^{page 72 note 3} Remains of Grindal, 203.

^{page 72 note 4} We know from parish sources that Bonham was there as preacher in that year; Crane certainly was in 1570: Tomlinson, op. cit., 220. Moreover, the evidence of Jackson's will seems conclusive.

^{page 72 note 5} Peel, op. cit., 11.

^{page 72 note 6} Ibid.

^{page 72 note 7} A reference to a remark, in an undated letter, in which Browne refers to his congregation as this ‘little vineyard or Church of God’. His criticisms of private assemblies and his known associations with the Minories are clues to the possible location of the ‘vineyard’: Seconde Parte of a Register, i. 59–61.

^{page 72 note 8} Peel, op. cit., 7.

^{page 73 note 1} There is, however, a significant entry in the parish books in 1570–a disastrous year in local puritan fortunes. The wardens paid out 5s. for ‘changing the service book’: Tomlinson, op. cit., 252.

^{page 73 note 2} An anti-surplice tract at Lambeth Palace (MS. 2007, fols. 145–6^r) criticises the service practised in an unnamed London chapel: ‘Resort to your chapel in London, and let me see in the whole form of your secret service one prayer for any that is in authority’. Could this have been the Minories? (I owe this reference to Dr. Collinson.)

^{page 73 note 3} ‘Return of Aliens … in London’, ed. Kirk, R. E. G. and Kirk, E. F., The Publications of the Huguenot Society of London (Quarto series), x. 383, 422–3Google Scholar. The 1567 certificate gives 31 ‘Dutchmen’, 10 French and 3 Italian residents.

^{page 73 note 4} 25 were of the French Church, 12 of the Dutch, 8 of the ‘English Church’, and the remaining 25 of ‘no church’: ibid., x. 423.

^{page 73 note 5} Guildhall Lib. MS. 9238, passim; Tomlinson, op. cit., 193, 250, 254.

^{page 73 note 6} For an indication of the respect shown by Elizabethan Puritans for these ‘stranger’ churches, see Collinson, ‘The Elizabethan Puritans and the Foreign Churches’, loc. cit., 539–40.

^{page 73 note 7} Publications of the Huguenot Society, x. 392.

^{page 73 note 8} Tomlinson, op. cit., 213. For the forms of worship and discipline practised in the Dutch church, see Lindeboom, J., Austin Friars, The Hague 1950, 29–87Google Scholar.

^{page 73 note 9} This was Robert Heas, minister there by 1574: Publications of the Huguenot Society, x. 390.

^{page 74 note 1} Tomlinson, op. cit., 116–18.

^{page 74 note 2} The recent biography by Read, Evelyn, Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, London 1962Google Scholar, barely touches on this theme.

^{page 74 note 3} Coverdale, Kethe, Kelly: Garrett, op. cit., 132–3, 203–4; Peel, Op. cit., 29.

^{page 74 note 4} H.M.C. Ancaster MSS., 459, 468.

^{page 74 note 5} Tomlinson, op. cit., 279.

^{page 74 note 6} Dixon, op. cit., vi. 179.

^{page 74 note 7} Peel, op. cit., 27–30; Parker Correspondence, 390.

^{page 74 note 8} The date of the foundation of the parish is not known. The earliest traced reference comes from a will dated 1550: PCC, 15 Coope. I owe this information to Dr. K. G. McDonnell.

^{page 74 note 9} Cal. Pat. Rolls, Ed. VI, iii (1549–51), 171. Cf. ibid., Philip and Mary, i. 121.

^{page 74 note 10} Guildhall Lib. MS. 9537/2, fol. 107^v.

^{page 74 note 11} E.g., Crowley, Standen, Gough.

^{page 74 note 12} Tomlinson, op. cit., 170.

^{page 74 note 13} Walter Haynes, curate there 1567, ordained 1568: Guildhall Lib. MS. 9535/1, fol. 137^f.

^{page 75 note 1} Cf. Tomlinson (op. cit., 198) for an example of such an agreement between incoming minister and parish vestry.

^{page 75 note 2} Its position in some respects seems curiously analogous to that advocated half a century later in Henry Jacob's brand of non-separatist Congregationalism: cf. Burrage, op. cit., i. 286–7.

^{page 75 note 3} Zurich Letters 1558–79, ed. Robinson, H., Parker Society, Cambridge 1842, 168Google Scholar.

^{page 75 note 4} Remains, 291.

^{page 75 note 5} Parker Correspondence, 390.

^{page 75 note 6} London Corp. Rec. Office, Journals 18, fol. 48^r (28 June 1567).

^{page 75 note 7} Browne and Standen.

^{page 75 note 8} Dixon, op. cit., vi. 178–80.

^{page 75 note 9} Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 143; Cal. State Papers (Spanish), 1568–79, vii. 11–12.

^{page 75 note 10} The day of the arrest of the St. Martin in the Fields assembly.

^{page 75 note 11} Lond. Corp. Rec. Office, Repertories, 16, fol. 334^v.

^{page 75 note 12} Ibid., 16, fol. 350^r (27 April 1568).

^{page 76 note 1} Zurich Letters 1558–79, 201–2.

^{page 76 note 2} Strype, J., The History of the Life and Acts of Edmund Grindal, Oxford 1821, 230Google Scholar. For the ‘comforts’ provided by Minories parishioners, cf. Tomlinson, op. cit., 166.

^{page 76 note 3} Guildhall Lib. MS. 9537/3 (not foliated). For the rest of the reign parochial representatives regularly attended the episcopal visitation, took their oaths of office and exhibited their bills of presentments: cf. the visitation Call Books, Guildhall Lib. MS. 9537/4–9, passim; Newcourt, R., Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londiniense, London 1708, i. 562–3Google Scholar.

^{page 76 note 4} For a more general discussion of the declining constitutional independence of the Minories during the Elizabethan period, cf. my forthcoming paper, ‘The Liberty of the Minories: a study in Elizabethan religious radicalism’, East London Papers, viii (2).

^{page 76 note 5} G.L.C. Rec. Office, V.-G. Book, Hamond, fol. 122^r; Burn, R., Ecclesiastical Law, London 1797, iii. 340–1.Google Scholar

^{page 76 note 6} Pearl, Valerie, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution, Oxford 1961, 162–3.Google Scholar

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A Nursery of Elizabethan Nonconformity, 1567–72

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