Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
The title of this paper is taken from a work written in 434 A.D.: the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins. Leech considered this a ‘golden book’; we will see later the significance of Vincent for Leech, while Leech's life will perhaps illuminate his own age. Calling himself ‘Peregrinus’, Vincent wrote: ‘whereas I was at one time involved in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare, I have now at length, under Christ's auspices, cast anchor in the harbour of religion’. His aim was to pass on the teaching of the Fathers and to give guidance ‘for distinguishing the truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity.’
1 Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 11 (Oxford and New York, 1894), p. 131.
2 Leech, Humfrey, A triumph of truth (1609; STC 15363); Daniel Price, The Defence of Truth (Oxford, 1610; STC 20292), preface, page 3.Google Scholar
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17 Foley, Records, vol. 1, pp. 642–3.
18 Owen, H. and Blakeway, J. B., A History of Shrewsbury (2 vols, 1825), vol. 2, pp. 278–9.Google Scholar A letter to the bailiffs in 1603, from Lord Buckhurst, chancellor of Oxford University, refers to ‘the honest and literate person Humphrey Leache… commoner or student of Jesus College’; ‘one William Bright’ had brought a suit against him. This was probably the public preacher in Shrewsbury, but the cause is not stated. There is no record of Leech at Jesus College, but his presence as chaplain at Christ Church from 1603–4 to 1608 is recorded. I am grateful to archivists Rosemary Dunhill and Judith Curthoys for their help.
19 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 62–3. This interpretation seems more acceptable than Michael Questier's assertion that Leech ‘did not, initially, challenge Protestant predestinarian orthodoxies’: ‘The Phenomenon of Conversion: Change of Religion to and from Catholicism in England 1580–1625’, D. Phil. dissertation (University of Sussex, 1991) p. 120.
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75 Foley, Records, vol. 2, pp. 24–63; McCoog, part 1, p. 125, under Bradshaw: Arrowmith was born c. 1585 in Lancashire, ordained abroad as a secular priest, and entered the Society in 1623; in 1626 he joined the College of Blessed Aloysius, in Lancashire.
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