Besides those whose help is acknowledged at specific points below, I am grateful to A.G. Dickens, Jean Dietz Moss, and Lois G. Schwoerer, along with Marion and Irving Wechsler, for reading the manuscript (some in more than one version) and for counsel on the paper as a whole.

The title pages of sixteenth-century Familist works in English bear no place of publication and usually no date, but are now believed to have been published in Cologne. For other sixteenth-century works, the place of publication is London unless otherwise specified.

¹ Totaling printed entries for pre-1600 publications in the 1926 edition of the Short-Title Catalogue, one finds fifteen items credited to Hendrik Niclas and four to other Familist writers, as compared with two for Henry Hart, two for Robert Browne, two for Robert Harrison, nine for Henry Barrow, and three for John Greenwood. Similar numbered listings under Martin Marprelate total thirteen. For those writers listed in the revised Vol. II of the S.T.C. (London, 1976) the absolute numbers increase somewhat but the proportions are not much changed.

² Archbishop Sandys of York in his “Seventh Sermon,” Sermons, Ayre, J. (ed.) (Cambridge, 1841), p. 130Google Scholar; statements by Bishops Cox of Ely and Young of Rochester in prefaratory material of Wilkinson, William, A confutation of certaine articles delivered unto the Familye of Love (hereafter, Confutation of Articles) 1579Google Scholar.

³ Acts of the Privy Council, new series, Dasent, J.R. (ed.) (London, 1894–1896), VIII, p. 338Google Scholar; IX, p. 94; X, p. 332, 344; XI, p. 138, 139, 362, 386, 444, 445; XII, pp. 231-33, 250, 269, 317-18. The register has nineteen separate entries referring to Familists, some occurring in the same meeting.

⁴ Tudor Royal Proclamations, Hughes, P.L. and Larkin, J.F. (eds.) (New Haven, 1964–1969), II, pp. 474–75Google Scholar.

⁵ Nippold, F., “Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der Liebe,” Zeitschrift fuer die historische Theologie, XXXII (1862), pp. 323–562Google Scholar, remains the most extensive work. The modern authority is Verwey, H. de la Fontaine, “De Gescriften van Hendrik Niclaes,” Het Boek, XXVI (1942), pp. 161–211Google Scholar (with comprehensive bibliography 189-207); “Trois Heresiarchs dans les Pays-Bas du XVI^e Siècle,” Bibliotheque d'Humanism et Renaissance, XVI (1954), pp. 312–20Google Scholar; “The Family of Love,” Quaerendo, VI (1976), pp. 219–71Google Scholar. See also van Dorsten, Jan, Thomas Basson, 1555-1613, English Printer at Leiden (Leiden, 1961), pp. 61–69Google Scholar; The Radical Arts: First Decade of an Elizabethan Renaissance (Leiden, 1970), pp. 27–39Google Scholar; “Garter Knights and Familists,” Journal of European Studies, IV (1974), pp. 178–88Google Scholar; Voet, Leon, The Golden Compasses: A History of the Officina Plantiana at Antwerp (New York, 1969–1972), I, p. 22–30Google Scholar; Rekers, B., Benito Arias Montano (London, 1972), pp. 70–104Google Scholar; Kirsop, Wallace, “The Family of Love in France,” Journal of Religious Studies, II (1964–1965), pp. 103–18Google Scholar.

⁶ Separatists are excluded by the terms of reference from Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967)Google Scholar and Knappen, M.M., Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939)Google Scholar, but in fact the Familists are mentioned occasionally in each. Horst, I.B., The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieukoop, 1972)Google Scholar extends the terminal date of the study to discuss Familists briefly. Burrage, Champlin, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research, 1500-1641 (Cambridge, 1912)Google Scholar gives only glancing attention to the Familists; Williams, George H., The Radical Reformation (London, 1962)Google Scholar devotes two pages to the English Familists; White, B.R., The English Separatist Tradition from the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar does not mention them at all. The recent specialized studies of the English Familists include Heal, Felicity, “The Family of Love and the Diocese of Ely,” Studies in Church History, LXGoogle Scholar, Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, Baker, D. (ed.) (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 213–22Google Scholar; Moss, Jean Dietz, “The Family of Love and English Critics,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, VI (1975), pp. 35–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Variations on a Theme: the Family of Love in Renaissance England,” Renaissance Quarterly, XXXI (1978), pp. 186–95Google Scholar; Hitchcock, J., “A Confession of the Family of Love,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., XLIII (1970), pp. 85–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moss, , “Additional Light on the Family of Love,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., XLVII (1974), pp. 163–65Google Scholar; Ebel, Julia C., “The Family of Love: Sources of Their History in England,” Huntington Library Quarterly, XXX (1966–1967), pp. 331–43Google Scholar.

Quaker scholars, investigating various forerunners of mid-seventeenth century Friends, produced two of the earliest studies of Familism in English: Thomas, A.C., “The Family of Love: a Study in Church History,” Haverford College Studies, XII (1893), pp. 1–46Google Scholar, and Jones, Rufus M., Studies in Mystical Religion (London, 1909), pp. 428–48Google Scholar; but this interest has not been much pursued by more recent historians of Quakerism.

⁷ More, who inherited Loseley Hall near Guildford in 1549 and was knighted in 1576, sat in nearly all Elizabeth's parliaments and showed a special interest in keeping both Roman Catholic recusancy and Protestant separatism in check.

⁸ Folger Library (Washington) Losely MS. L. B. 98. The Familists' clerical antagonist, Rogers, John, in A displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked heretiques naming themselves the Familie of Love (hereafter, Displaying, 1579 ed.) (1578)Google Scholar printed fifty-three of the items as an appended “confession” (Sig. I 4 v -K 3 v); St.Hyland, G.K., A Century of Persecution Under Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns (London, 1920), pp. 103–12Google Scholar, printed more, but not all, of the sixty-six statements. The depositions do not use either the word “confession” or “Familist” at any point, and the latter omission reasonably raised the question of whether the Guildford congregation was indeed Familist. In paragraph 64, however (not printed by Rogers and not understood by Hyland), there is a clear reference to Niclas as top leader of the group. See Martin, J.W., “Elizabethan Familists and other Separatists in the Guildford Area,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., LI (1978), pp. 90–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Thus in the revised S.T.C.; the 1926 edition carried many Familist items as “[Amsterdam?].”

¹⁰ See Martin, J.W., “Christopher Vitel: an Elizabethan Mechanick Precher,” Sixteenth Cent. Jour., X (1979), pp. 15–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ The confession of Robert Sharpe at Paules Crosse, the xii of June 1575.

¹² A brief rehersall of the beleef of the goodwilling in England which are named the Familie of Love, 1575.

¹³ Chronicle (1580), p. 1184Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Rogers, Displaying, reprinted 1579, containing additionally Certaine letters sent from the same Family maintayning their opinions; also An answere unto a wicked & infamous libel made by Christopher Vitel, one of the chiefe English elders of the pretended Family of Love (hereafter, Answers to a Libel), 1579; Knewstub, , A confutation of monstrous heresies taught by H.N. (hereafter, Confutation of Heresies) (1579)Google Scholar; Wilkinson, Confutation of Articles. Stephen Bateman's 1577 tract, The golden book of the leaden goddes, gives only brief attention to the Family, but Familists apparently saw its author as a special foe.

¹⁵ A letter of October 14, 1579, from Antwerp by the Huguenot diplomat, Hubert Languet, is in evident response to an earlier query by his friend, Sir Philip Sidney, about the Family's continental antecedents: Huberti Langueti Epistolae Politicae et Historicae ad Philippum Sidnae (Leiden, 1646), pp. 397–99Google Scholar. I am grateful to Jan van Dorsten of Leiden University for this reference and for helpful discussions about Familists.

¹⁶ See the Jesuit tracts of Parsons, Robert, Brief discourse contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse togoe to church (1580), Sig. 3 rGoogle Scholar; and A brief censure upon two bookes (1581) Sig. E 6 r, v, plus such Puritan counterattacks as Charke, William, An answere to a seditious pamphlet (1580) Sig. A 1 vGoogle Scholar; Hanmer, Meredith, The Jesuites banner (1581) Sig. A 3 vGoogle Scholar; Fielde, John, A caveat for Parsons Howlet (1581) Sig. D 1 r, D 4 rGoogle Scholar. These books, along with Rich, Barnabe, Adventures of Don Simonides (1581) Sig.T 2 rGoogle Scholar, are among some of two dozen in which Doris Adler of Howard University kindly noted Familist references for me while pursuing a different investigation in English publications of 1579-81.

¹⁷ See n. 4 above.

¹⁸ A.P.C. XII, pp. 232-33.

¹⁹ Journals of the House of Commons, I, pp. 127–30Google Scholar.

²⁰ Archaeologia, XXXVI (1855), pp. 113–14Google Scholar. See also Strype, John, Life of Grindal (Oxford, 1821), pp. 283–84Google Scholar; Neale, J.E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581 (London, 1953), pp. 410–11Google Scholar.

²¹ Relevant documents are missing: there is the thirty-one month gap in the register starting in June 1582, and we do not know Lord Burleigh's response to a letter from the Bishop of Exeter on June 6, 1581 (Strype, , Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1824), III, ii, 180–81Google Scholar) about a Familist problem the council had discussed three times in the previous year.

²² Folger MS X. d. 30 (9).

²³ In June 1687, James II received a small delegation of Familists, who described themselves as “a sort of refin'd Quakers … chiefly belonging to the Isle of Ely.” Evelyn, John, Diary, Bray, W. (ed.) (London, n.d.), p. 644Google Scholar.

²⁴ Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Oxford, 1887), p. 148Google Scholar.

²⁵ Basilikon Doron (1603) Sig. B 2 v.

²⁶ See Thomas Middleton's early Jacobean comedy, The Family of Love, where two citizens' wives use secret meetings of the sect for rendezvous with their pursuing gallants; also Johnson, William G., “The Family of Love in Stuart Literature: A Chronology of Name-Crossed Lovers,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, VII (1977), pp. 95–112Google Scholar.

²⁷ Christianson, Paul, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out that the apocalyptic tradition, which he regards as including millenialism, “provides a vocabulary” for attacking the Church of England under Charles I, but was generally seen as supporting it in the first half of Elizabeth's reign. Christianson does not discuss Niclas and the Familists, nor does Firth, Katherine S., The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530-1645 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar. For the apocalyptic tradition and Foxe, see Haller, William, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963)Google Scholar, and Olson, Viggo Norskov, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar; for the earlier and radical tradition, see Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millenium (London, 1957)Google Scholar. Martin, Lynnewood F., “The Family of Love in England: Conforming Millenarians,” Sixteenth Cent. Jour., III (1972), pp. 99–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses this aspect of Niclas mainly on the basis of the “Evangelium regni” and without mentioning Bale and Foxe.

²⁸ The Wisbech glover's appretice, Leonard Romsye, asserted in the “confession” he made about 1580 in repudiating Familism that Familists believed that “their kyngdome, which they call Davides Kyngdome, is to be erected here uppon earth.” (Printed in Moss, , Renais. Quar., XXXI, 190–91Google Scholar.) But this literalist interpretation of H.N.'s words was rare among his English followers (Heal, , Studies in Church History, IX, 221Google Scholar) and quite contrary to the statement in the 1561 deposition that the Guildford congregation held strictly to the command in I Peter, 2:13-14, on submission to the secular powers.

²⁹ Dicta HN, f. 16 v.

³⁰ Confutation of heresies, f. 26 r; 82 r.

³¹ The first exhortation, f. 11 v-12 r.

³² Epistolae HN, pp. 11-12.

³³ Rogers, Answere to a libel, Sig. 7 r. See also H 3 v-4 r, and Knewstub, Confutation of heresies, 23 r-24 v.

³⁴ Epistolae HN, p. 324.

³⁵ Evangelium regni, 9 v.

³⁶ Knewstub, Confutation of Heresies, Si. 6 v-7 r; Wilkinson, Confutation of Articles, 23 r, 46 v, 48 r.

³⁷ “Notes upon Evangelium regni” in Wilkinson, , Confutation of Articles, Sig. A 2 rGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Introduction to the glasse of righteousnes, I, 17 v-18 rGoogle Scholar; II, 11 v; Evangelium regni, 10 v, 60 v. In his play Comoedia, the character “Good-thinking” is described as “attyred before like an hypocrite and behynde and downe to his feete like a devill.”

³⁹ Glasse of righteousnes, I, 8 v.

⁴⁰ Evangelium regni, 4 r v.

⁴¹ Dicta HN, 23 r. See also Epistolae HN, p. 134.

⁴² Dicta HN, 26 v-28 r.

⁴³ The first exhortation, 51 v-54 r; Dicta HN, 27 v.

⁴⁴ Dickens, A.G., The English Reformation (London, 1964), pp. 22–23Google Scholar; Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar; “Heresy and the Origins of English Protestantism,” Britain and the Netherlands, II, Bromly, J.S. and Kossman, E.H. (eds.) (Groeningen, 1964)Google Scholar; Thomson, J.A.F., The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; Aston, M.E., “Lollardy and Sedition, 1381-1431,” Past and Present, No. 17 (April 1960), pp. 1–44Google Scholar; “Lollardy and the Reformation: Survival or Revival?” History, XLIX (1964), pp. 149–70Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ The S.T.C. lists twenty editions of all or part of this work published in English through 1580.

⁴⁶ Epistolae HN, p. 65.

⁴⁷ Hudson, Anne, “Some Aspects of Lollard Book Production,” Studies in Church History, IX, pp. 148–49Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Fines, John, “Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, 1511-12,” Jour. Eccl. Hist., XIV (1963), p. 165Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Lollards and Protestants, pp. 38, 230-31, 244, 250.

⁵⁰ Interrogatories … by the kyng and quenes commissioners … inquiring … of all such things as now be … amysse, April 1558, Item 14.

⁵¹ Narratives of the Reformation, Nichols, J.G. (ed.) (London, 1859), p. 171Google Scholar.

⁵² Burrage, , Early English Dissenters, II, pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

⁵³ Folger MS. L. b. 99, printed by Martin, , Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., LI, pp. 92–93Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ A godly newe short treatyse, A 8 r.

⁵⁵ Various instances in Foxe, , Actes and Monuments, Pratt, J. (ed.) (London, 1877), II, p. 213Google Scholar; IV, pp. 178, 216, 221-40; Strype, , Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), I, i, pp. 115–16Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Burrage, , Early English Dissenters, II, pp. 9–18Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ For such groups in London, see Foxe, VIII, pp. 384, 444-61, 558-60; for Colchester, VIII, pp. 382-93. A Cambridgeshire Protestant, as quoted in Wilkinson, Confutation of Articles, 4 r-A 1 r, was shocked by jthe heresy he found talked in a Colchester religious meeting.

⁵⁸ Rose, Elliot, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth and James I (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Paragraph 45 of the 1561 deposition, as printed by Rogers in Displaying, states both the principle and cites the example. See also H.N.'s Comoedia, 31 v.

⁶⁰ Epistolae HN, pp. 160, 163.

⁶¹ Displaying, K 4 v.

⁶² Ibid., M6 v-7 r.

⁶³ Ibid., I 7v-8 r.

⁶⁴ Dicta HN, 26 r, v.

⁶⁵ Rogers, Dislaying, N 1 r.

⁶⁶ For Rogers's list, see Displaying, A 7-8 r; some items are not readily identifiable now. One, H.N.'s, A figure of the true and spiritual tabernacle, survives only in a 1655 edition printed by Giles Calvert. Also, a previously unknown Familist broadside in English (“Howie, o weepe, for the daye of the Lorde is at hand” (1575) was recently discovered by K.W. Swart of London University, who kindly made a copy available to me.

⁶⁷ As the convert Leonard Romsye describes his conversion by his employer in his “confession” printed in Moss, , Renais. Quar. XXXI, pp. 190–91Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Sir William More, though hostile to Familism, kept copies of two songs from Cantica among his papers (Folger MS. L. b. p. 589).

⁶⁹ Wilkinson, , Confutation of articles, 1 vGoogle Scholar. Also Rogers, , Displaying I 4 r-K 2 rGoogle Scholar, printing a long letter that defends the Family and is signed only “your unknown friend.”

⁷⁰ “Confession” as applied to Familists covers a variety of first-hand testimonies, all made under some degree of pressure. Some, like Sharpe's at Paul's Cross in 1575 and those of several members of the Queen's guard, are direct abjurations in terms considered appropriate by the authorities; a standard form for this purpose is printed in Cardwell, Edward, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England (Oxford, 1849), I, pp. 447–48Google Scholar. Romsye's “confession” apparently involved no more pressure than his knowledge of the arrest and interrogation of fellow members of the Wisbech congregation. The motives behind the Guildford deposition are not clear, but seem to have included the bitterness of one deponent, Thomas Chaundler, over the marriage that the sect had arranged for him.

⁷¹ Epistolae HN, pp. 212-13; Elidad, A good and fruitfull exhortation unto the Familie of Love, A 2 v-4 r.

⁷² Elidad, A good exhortation, A 2 v-A 3 r, suggests that H.N. intended this.

⁷³ I am grateful to Christopher Hill for suggesting this point in commenting on a preliminary draft of this paper. See also his essay, “The Many-Headed Monster in Late Tudor and Early Stuart Political Thinking,” From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation, Carter, C.H. (ed.) (New York, 1965), pp. 296–324Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Confutation of articles, 30 v.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 11 v.

⁷⁶ As far back as 1566 a royal letter had been sent to the Bishop of London about the danger of Roman Catholic books gaining entrance through the port of London (Cardwell, , Documentary Annals, I, pp. 332–33Google Scholar), and in a memorandum probably written in Rome around 1575, William Allen had boasted that it was easy to smuggle Roman Catholic tracts into London from the southern Netherlands (Catholic Record Society, Miscellanea (Aberdeen, 1911), II, pp. 64–65)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Sandys, , Sermons, p. 130Google Scholar; the dating I owe to Professor R.B. Pugh and Francis Edwards. S.J. Lord Burleigh had characterized the Family as “papistical” in an incidental remark in his letter to Walsingham of August 8, 1578 (Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1578-79, Butler, (ed.) (London, 1903), p. 126Google Scholar).

⁷⁸ Heal, , Studies on Church History, IX, pp. 220–21Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ See particularly Gifford, 's A brief discourse of certaine points of the religion which is among the common sort of Christians, 1581Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ The Familists seem to have been the first dissident religious group to have made this discovery for England. The Lollards had never controlled a printing press, and Protestant exiles using the press against the Marian regime generally wrote as members of a true national church temporarily ousted from power. The Free-will men in Edward VI's reign had enjoyed a relatively permissive climate for publication: the government saw menace in the meeting they held at Bocking in 1550, but one of the two tracts of their leader, Henry Hart, was issued by a printer (John Oswen) who held a royal monopoly for religious publishing in Wales.