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The Protestant Underground Congregations of Mary's Reign*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

J. W. Martin
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Extract

In contrast to the extensive research devoted to the Marian exiles, little detailed attention has been paid by modern historians to the Englishmen who simply tried to continue Protestant worship during 1553–8 within the country. Yet developments in these years provide unusual insights into mid-Tudor Protestantism at its grass roots, particularly into what remained after the Edwardian Church of England had suddenly had the power of the state not merely removed from its support but actively turned against it. Not surprisingly, the change from Edward to Mary is referred to in contemporary Protestant tracts in something of the tone used toward an inexplicable natural disaster like an outbreak of the plague, for Mary's measures to return England to Roman Catholicism were indeed radical in their impact. Among other things, most of the Protestant hierarchy was soon in prison or in exile, and men and women intent on continuing the communal worship of the Edwardian Church were in effect cast into the same boat with religious groups like the Freewillers which that Church had previously repressed. Legally, all of them were now religious separatists – that is, persons who persistently conducted worship apart from the established Church – and any gatherings for Protestant worship were mere conventicles – that is, periodic meetings of self-selected persons worshipping without the participation of an authorised cleric.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 519 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Cf. Thomson, J. A. F., The Later Lollards, 1414–1520, Oxford 1965Google Scholar, especially the three sketch maps of varied Lollard activity; also Rupp, Gordon, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition, Cambridge 1949, 4Google Scholar. In the 1570s the radical sect of Familists professed conformity to the Church of England while clinging to its own meetings and ceremonies; cf. Martin, J. W., ‘Elizabethan Familists and English separatism’, Journal of British Studies, xx, no. 1 (1980), 53–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Tudor Royal Proclamations (hereafter cited as Tudor Proclamations), Hughes, P. L. and Larkin, J. L. (eds.), New Haven 1964–9, i. 183Google Scholar.

3 Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments (hereafter cited as A. & M.), Pratt, J (ed.), London 1870–7, vi. 662–4Google Scholar; cf- also vii. 688 for a somewhat similar recommendation by John Philpot, Edwardian archdeacon of Winchester.

4 A. & M., viii. 558–9, 458.

5 Zurich Letters, Robinson, H. (ed.), Cambridge 1846, 57–9Google Scholar.

6 A. & M., viii. 332–77. Foxe also (viii. 553–7) tells, as worthy of celebration, how a group of Protestants in the Suffolk parish of Stoke-by-Nayland managed to avoid attending mass throughout Mary's reign and how two individual gentlewomen, in Norfolk and Sussex respectively, did likewise. Foxe's fondness for printing government documents and other primary material extensively somewhat compensates for his own attitude toward conventicles. For example, the five reports by government agents about the principal London congregation during Rough's pastorate run to greater length than Foxe's own account of the congregation's entire career.

7 A. & M., vi. 579, 584–7; cf. Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation (hereafter cited as Original Letters), Robinson, H. (ed.), Cambridge 1846, 773Google Scholar.

8 A. & M., viii. 562.

9 Cf. Ramsey's letter of 1561 to the congregation, as quoted in Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 21–2Google Scholar.

10 Documents on the Freewillers in Edward's reign are printed in Burrage, Champlin, The Early English Dissenters, Cambridge 1912, ii. 1–6Google Scholar. For a Freewiller account of the Marian prison controversy see Trew, John, ‘The cause of contention in the King's Bench as concerning sects in religion’, in Laurence, Richard (ed.), Authentic Documents Relative to the Predestinarian Controversy, Oxford 1819, 37–70Google Scholar. For the orthodox Protestant side, see Bradford, John, Writings, Townsend, A. (ed.), Cambridge 1853–8, i. 307–30Google Scholar, ii. passim. Cf. also Martin, J. W., ‘English Protestant separatism at its beginnings’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vii (1976), 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Depositions printed in Moss, J. D., ‘Godded with God’: Hendrik Niclaes and his Family of Love, Philadelphia 1981, appendix 1. (pp. 70–4)Google Scholar.

12 The Displaying of the Protestantes, 1556 (STC 13558), fo. 124.

13 A. & M., viii. 468–82.

14 Ibid., viii. 409–12.

15 Ibid., vii. 321–7.

16 William Wilkinson, A Confutation of Certaine Articles Delivered unto the Familye of Love, 1579 (STC 25665), prefatory historical material.

17 A. & M., viii. 383.

18 Trew, ‘Cause of contention’, 57–63.

19 A. & M., vi. 775.

20 Ibid., vii. 348.

21 Diary, ed. Nichols, J. G., London 1858, 79, 160Google Scholar. Cf. also the reference of the Roman Catholic John Standish to a recent epidemic of ‘teachers in corners and conventicles’, A Discourse Wherein is Debated…, 1554 (STC 23207), sig. F 2v–3r; also a magistrate's remark to a Protestant prisoner to the same effect, A. & M., vii. 119. Parliament's ‘Acte for the punishement of Traterous Woordes against the Quenes Majestie’ (I Philip and Mary 9) assumes the prayers offered in London conventicles to be a frequent occasion for such words.

22 A. & M., viii. 303–7.

23 Ibid., viii. 386–90, 411–14, 422–3.

24 Ibid., vii. 139–42.

25 Acts of the Privy Council (hereafter cited as APC), new series. Dasent, J. R. (ed.), London 1892, v. 334Google Scholar.

26 A. & M., viii. 598–600. One of these Protestants surfaced two years later as a member of the underground congregation at Islington.

27 Original Letters, 65–6, 86–7.

28 Zurich Letters, 39.

29 A. & M., vii. 371–80, viii. 107–21.

30 Ibid., vi. 676–81, viii. 731–6.

31 Ibid., viii. 405–6, 411.

32 Ibid., viii. 382, 409.

33 Ibid., viii. 391–2, 405.

34 Ibid., vi. 722–9, vii. 28–33. Cf. also viii. 102–5 for the case of William Maundrel, the Wiltshire husbandman who felt he must give testimony against the restored Roman Catholic ceremonies but could not read the Bible himself.

35 Printed in ‘Religion and politics in mid Tudor England’, Dowling, M. and Shakespeare, J. (eds.), Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lv (1982), 97–102Google Scholar.

36 A. & M., vii. 286–7.

37 Ibid., viii. 401–5, 429. For another incipient congregation see the account sent to Foxe, c. 1575, by ‘John Kempe, then of Godstone in Surrey, now Minister in the Isle of Wight’, telling how he was almost apprehended by an informer on ‘a Sondaye as hee conferred in Scripture with three or four of his neighbours’, A. & M., 1576 edn, p. 1975.

38 Ibid., vii. 738, viii, 384.

39 Ralph Allerton had sent farewell messages to ‘the congregation’ in Dedham and two other places, and a Dedham weaver had been one of the group arrested together in Colchester in August 1556, A. & M., viii. 411, 306.

40 E.g. Thomas Whittle, who was an itinerant minister between the time he was ousted from his Essex parish and the rime he was burned in early 1556, ibid., vii. 718ff.

41 Ibid., viii. 321–5.

42 Ibid., vii. 118–23.

43 Ibid., vii. 374ff. (Samuel), viii. 117–21 (Tyms), 414 (Ralph Allerton).

44 Ibid., viii. 727.

45 Richard Woodman, the itinerant lay preacher, strongly denied the charge ‘that I baptized children and married folks’, ibid., viii. 334.

46 Letter printed in Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials (hereafter cited as Eccl. Mem.), Oxford 1822, iii (ii). 133–5Google Scholar; cf. also Rough's counselling of a member of the congregation, A. & M., viii. 726.

47 Ibid., viii. 412.

48 Ibid., viii. 384.

49 Ibid., viii. 454, 458–60.

50 Ibid., viii. 454. I am grateful to John Fines for drawing my attention to the significance of Symson's title. That others bore the title also is indicated by a nearly contemporary reference to Symson as ‘one of the fyrst deacons of the congregation’ in Robert Crowley's 1559 edn of An epitome of cronicles (STC 15217.5), fo. 308v.

51 Ibid., viii. 450–1. In fact, one of the government's reports (viii. 459) came from James Mearing, her husband.

52 Ibid., viii. 727–8.

53 The Guildford congregation may have been ‘captured’ by the Familists from another group in the second year of Mary's reign. At about that time, according to die two ex-members’ account, the congregation relaxed its ban on participating in parish church services and decreed both attendance and complete outward conformity ‘although inwardly they did profess the contrary’. Familists were virtually unique at that time in taking such a position, and this explains much of the furore over them, reflected in the suppressive royal proclamation of 1580, n. 11 above and Tudor Proclamations, ii. 474–5.

54 A. & M., viii. 384.

55 Ibid., viii. 521–4, 536–48.

56 Ibid., viii. Appendix vi, which prints a passage which appeared only in the 1563 edn (at p. 1679).

57 Foxe remarks of a carpenter in rural Suffolk that he was ‘a harbourer of straungers that travailed for conscience’, A. & M., viii. 630, and makes similar statements about William Pikes, a tanner in Ipswich, viii. 481, and William Wood, a barber in Stroud who became a rector in Suffolk in Elizabeth's reign, viii. 729–30.

58 Ibid., 410–13. Similarly, the lay preacher Richard Woodman insisted to the bishop of Winchester in 1557 that the sheriff's men did not capture him ‘in the woods’ but at his own house, A. & M., viii. 364.

59 The conventicle reference, APC, v. 334, occurs part way through a series explicitly mentioning ‘Trudgeover’, v. 310, 312, 318; vi. 18, 129–30, 142, 215. The furore over ‘Trudgeover’ is also reflected in the Venetian ambassador's report of 25 August 1556, Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, ed. Brown, R., London, 1877, vi (i). 578–9Google Scholar, and in the account of the Protestant, Mowntayne, Thomas, Narratives of the Reformation, Nichols, J. G. (ed.), London 1859, 210–11Google Scholar. Though Foxe considers ‘Trudgeover’ a religious martyr the government executed him as a traitor, A. & M., viii. 393–7.

60 APC, iv. 369, 375, 377, 383, 387, 403, v. no.

61 Ibid., v. 86, 123–4, 126 for Rose, vi. 216 for Rough, iv. 321–2, 333, 340, 384–5, 389, 420–1, v. 17, 30, 77 for other Protestant clerics below the rank of bishop. The government apparently saw a political aspect to Rose's meeting in January 1555, A. & M., vi. 584, viii. 584–5, possibly suspecting that his prayers violated the recent statute (I Philip and Mary 9) against asking God to shorten Queen Mary's days.

62 Cardwell, Edward (ed.), Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England, 1546–1716, Oxford 1844, i. 139Google Scholar; Interrogatories…for search…of all such things as now be…amysse, 1558 (STC 10117). Cf. also Archbishop Pole's 1557 visitation articles, Cardwell, i. 203–8.

63 For lower clerics, APC, ii. 401, 451–2, 465, 483, iii. 137, 237, 287, 295, 305, 307, 316–17, 400, 404, 431, 476, 482, iv. 129, 136, 197–8, 225, 257, 268. For itinerant preachers, iii. 19, 20, 32, 81, 217, 228,413.

64 Ibid., iii. 196–9, 306–7, iv. 131, 138.

65 Card well, Annals, i. 89–93; cf. also Articles to be inquired of in.…the byshopricke of Norwyche, 1549 (STC 10285).

64 Cf. the royal proclamation of 27 December 1558 against unauthorised preaching, Tudor Proclamations, ii. 102–3, and the immediate action ordered against a perceived violation, APC, vi. 32.

67 Articles to Be Enquired, 1559 (STC 10019), sig. B 2v.

68 In the course of arguing against English Jesuits in 1581 that it is Rome which is responsible for the proliferation of sects, Percival Wilburn asserts that ‘in the late days of Poperie here’ England was overrun with ‘Arians, Anabaptistes, Libertines & c., though none in effect were persecuted but the poore Protestantes as ye call them. These mens peculiar heresies in examinations were commonly never touched; peruse the records: of these there was little or no accompt made in those dayes of ignorance and darkness.’ A Checke or Reproofe of M. Howlets, 1581 (STC 25286), fo. 15.

69 E.g. The Declaration of the Bishop of London to the Lay People, 1554, in Card well, i. 170–4; Hogarde, Displaying of the Protestantes, fos. 16–20, 116–25.

70 A. & M., viii. 333–4.

71 Ibid., viii. 384.

72 Bradford, Writings, i. 307–30; A. & M., viii. 164–5.

73 Though the Shakerly and South Molton congregations also survived, their sizes and levels of activity were much less.

74 Cf. John Philpot's prison tract, ‘Apology for spitting on an Arian’, in Eccl. Mem., iii (ii). 363–80.

75 Trew, ‘Cause of contention’, 56–7.

76 Bradford, Writings, ii. 180–1; Eccl. Mem., iii (ii). 325–34.

77 Ramsey writes in 1561 as one satisfied with the transition in South Molton. Foxe describes how Jeffrey Hurst until his untimely death worked with the Queen's commissioners to establish Protestantism more firmly in the Shakerly parish church, A. & M., viii. 564.

78 Archdeacon Harpsfield's Visitation, 1557, Sharp, W. and Whatmore, L. E. (eds.) (Catholic Records Society), London 1950, 120Google Scholar.

79 See n. 66 above.

80 ‘A nursery of Elizabethan nonconformity’, this Journal, xvii (1966), 65–76Google Scholar.

81 Grindal, Edmund, Remains, Nicholson, W. (ed.), Cambridge 1843, 203Google Scholar.

82 Burrage, Early English Dissenters, ii. 9–11.

83 Quoted from Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1659 (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxii, Boston 1920, 115ff.)Google Scholar, in White, B. R., The English Separatist Tradition, Oxford 1971Google Scholar, which devotes its first chapter to surveying a number of the Marian underground congregations.

84 Whiting, Robert, ‘Abominable idols: images and image-breaking under Henry VIII’, this Journal, xxxiii (1982), 30–47Google Scholar.