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Richard Bancroft's Submission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Owen Chadwick
Owen Chadwick
Affiliation:
Fellow and Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

Bancroft's celebrated sermon was delivered at St. Paul's Cross on 9 February 1588/9. Two editions appeared in England during the summer. The protests from English Puritans—Dr Reynolds of Oxford University, Sir Francis Knollys—soon died away. Bancroft was denouncing the puritan movement more forcibly than it had been denounced, but so far as England was concerned he was saying nothing which had not already been said by Anglican controversialists like John Whitgift, John Bridges, Thomas Cooper. The novelty of the sermon lay in its attitude to foreign churches. The presbyterian movement in England claimed the support of the protestant churches in Scotland, Holland, the Rhineland, Switzerland. Bancroft was not afraid to transform the denunciation of presbyterianism in England into a denunciation of Presbyterianism in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 1952 , pp. 58 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1952

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References

page 58 note 1 A Sermon preached at Paules Crosse the g of Februarie being the first Sunday in the Parliament, Anno. 1588 … wherein some thingis are now added, which then were omitted, either through want of time, or default in memorie. I. I. for Gregorie Seton. [also, E.B. for Gregorie Seton].

page 59 note 1 Minutes of the presbytery, extracted in Miscellany of the Wodrow Society, i. 470. For the king's whereabouts cf. Burghley's memorandum in SP Scot., x. no. 71.

page 59 note 2 Naunton's letter in B.M. Additional MSS. 32,092 f. 106, a holograph. The text is so faded that a number of phrases in it are indecipherable.

page 59 note 3 Cf. W. Pierce, John Penry, 263 ff. Pierce believed that the date of publication of A Briefe Discovery was early in 1590: but the letter of Bancroft to Robert Naunton, dated from Lambeth 23 December, shows that Bancroft had already heard of the publication of a book against him (SP Scot., x. no. 337). This book cannot be anything but A Briefe Discovery.

page 59 note 4 A new Discovery of Old Pontificall Practises (1643), 3.

page 59 note 5 SP Scot., x. no. 337 with two enclosures.

page 60 note 1 History, v. 72–3.

page 60 note 2 The reply to the questionnaire is still extant in the National Library of Scotland. The identity of the questionnaire in Calderwood (v. 77) with that in SP Scot., x. no. 337 proves that Calderwood's John Nortoun the stationer is an error for Robert Nauntoa.

page 60 note 3 D. Bancrofts Rashnes in Rayling, 2: cf. also R. Moffat Gillon, John Davidson of Prestonpans, 89 ff.

page 60 note 4 SP Scot., x. no. 482.

page 60 note 5 SP Scot., x. no. 492.

page 62 note 1 The sermon at Perth after the Ruthven raid was preached with violence on Sunday, 26 August 1582 by James Lawson, though the provost had requested him to be ‘spairing’, Calderwood, op. cit., iii. 642. Lawson was the successor of Knox at St. Giles, Edinburgh, and had been moderator of the General Assembly in July 1580. For his career see DNB.

page 64 note 1 The fugitive ministers in 1584 included James Lawson, James and Andrew Melville, John Davidson, Patrick Galloway, and Walter Balcanquall.

page 64 note 2 A dédaratioun of the Kings Maiesties intentioun toward the lait actes of parliament, Edinburgh, T. Vautroullier 1585. For this Huguenot refugee printer cf. DNB. His list of publications shows that he was printing in Edinburgh 1584–6, cf. Morrison, P. G., Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers in a Short Title Catalogue, Virginia, U.S.A., 1950Google Scholar. An Anglicized version of the declaration was inserted into the 1586–7 edition of Holinshed (ii. 433 ff.), as Bancroft later remarks.

page 65 note 1 November was the data when stirling fell to the Master of Gray and his party and the king issued three submissive clauses, cf. James Melville's Diary, 223 ff. (mainly omitted from Calderwood). But the effective ecclesiastical business in consequence of the coup was transacted a month later at the Parliament of Linlithgow.

page 66 note 1 Quoted from (Penry) A Briefe Discovery, 43.

page 66 note 2 Quoted from D. Bancrofts Rashnes in Rayling, ff. 4v–5r

page 67 note 1 From D. Bancrofts Rashnts in Rayling, 2 etc.

page 67 note 2 Vautrollier brought the manuscript of the history from Scotland in 1586–7 and from it printed the first (incomplete) edition of 1200 copies. The licence had not been obtained, the printer's name was not upon the title-page, and the Stationers suppressed the edition on Whitgift's instructions: but copies have survived and Bancroft uses it commonly: cf. Calderwood, op. cit., viii. 283: D. Laing, The Works of John Knox, i. pp. xxxix–xl.

page 68 note 1 On 3 February 1586–7 the king had ordered John Cowper out of the pulpit at Edinburgh: he did not descend without protest, was imprisoned but soon released. The king insisted to the October General Assembly in 1587 that he should submit and confess his offences: and under pressure he consented to be moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow; cf. Calderwood, iv. 606–7, etc.

page 68 note 2 James Gibson preached a sermon in Edinburgh denouncing the subscribing ministers and making an implied comparison of the king with Jeroboam. He was arrested on 21 December 1585 and brought before the king at Linlithgow. The account of the resulting interview, which was later inserted by Calderwood into his history (iv. 484 ff.) does not portray the king in a pleasing light. As with Cowper, Gibson's case was brought before the General Assembly of October 1587 (sessions 4–5), and the Assembly ordered him to confess his offence or to suffer deprivation. He agreed: but he later retracted and said that ‘he was induced to the said promise through infirmitie’. He failed to appear at the next examination and was suspended for contumacy. In August 1588 he purged himself before the Assembly and was restored. On 15 July 1590 the king had him proclaimed ‘rebell’—:he was not arrested immediately because he took refuge in England: but he returned to Scotland during the summer (cf. HMC Hatfield MSS., iv. 38) and was arrested on 21 November but on 22 December he submitted to the king and was released. He was in minor trouble again in February 1596–7: cf. Calderwood, iv. 763; v. 99: Diary of James Melville, 253. In selecting the names of Cowper and Gibson, Bancroft was thus drawing the attention of the King of Scotland to the two ministers whose actions he (the King) seemed to resent most strongly.

page 69 note 1 SP Scot., x. no. 499: Bowes to Burghley, 20 November.

page 70 note 1 SP Scot., x. no. 505.

page 70 note 2 SP Scot., x. no. 517.

page 70 note 3 Petyt MSS 538, xxxvii. f. 155: HMC XIth Report Appendix VII, 256: Strype Whitgift, ii. 386–8: Cambridge Univ. Lib. MSS Mm. i. 47 ff. 333–4: R. G. Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, i. 42, 68.

page 71 note 1 See especially the document in Lansdowne MSS lxviii. no. 50, printed by Scott Pearson Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 458, Appendix xxv.

page 71 note 2 Bancroft to Puckering, 20 February 1590/1: Harleian MSS, 6995, no. 48.

page 71 note 3 Whitgift ap. Camb. Univ. Lib. MSS Mm. i. 47, f. 332.

page 71 note 4 C.U.Lib. MSS Mm i. 47, f. 334: text of indictment printed in Burrage, John Penry the so-called Martyr of Congregationalism, 17 ff.

page 71 note 5 For examination by the lawyers see the evidence of Tomkins and others in the Harleian MSS 6848 (printed from Baker's transcription in Harleian MSS 7042 by Arber, Introductory Sketch of the Martin Marprelate Controversy, 84ff.): Udall's examination before a committee of the Privy Council on 13 January 1589–90, Arber, op. cit., 170 ff.: Sir Richard Knightley and the other harbourers of the press were first examined before a committee of the Privy Council, Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, xviii. 225: copy with variants, ibid., xix. 292.

page 72 note 1 Star Chamber 5 (Elizabeth), Bundle A xxx. 22.

page 72 note 2 Whitgift, loc. cit.

page 72 note 3 Bancroft to Puckering 20 February 1590/1, Harleian MSS. 6995 no. 48: for further communication between Bancroft and Puckering, this time on a purely business matter, cf Harleian MSS. 6994 no. 110 (30 September 1589).

page 72 note 4 Calderwood, v. 90.