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The Authorship of ‘An Advertisement written to a Secretarie of M. L. Treasurer of England…’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Albert J. Loomie S.J.
Albert J. Loomie S.J.*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

In the Catalogue of the British Museum and the Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1558-1640, the book An Advertisement written to a Secretarie . . . is assigned to Joseph Creswell, S.J. The ascription does not come from the title page since it was published under the pen name of ‘An Inglishe Intelligencer as he passed through Germanic towards Italie' but instead from a misleading reference in Felipe Alegambe's Biblioteca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu. Alegambe noted: ‘Joseph Creswell: In English under the name John Perney, a book opposing the Edict of Queen Elizabeth against the Catholics, also unless it is the same book, (one) against the letters of Cecil. However it is highly probable that Alegambe composed his entry from secondhand information without having seen the books he described.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1962 , pp. 201 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1962

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References

1 Compiled by Allyson, A. F. and Rogers, D. M., Biographical Studies, III (1956)Google Scholar, nos. 3, and 4. The STC (no. 19885) ascribes it to John Philopatris. There are two copies of the advertisement in the British Museum: one a hand-written copy formerly part of the library of Horace Walpole (Add. MS. 12509), which offers no clue as to its authorship; other, the printed edition of Antwerp, once part of Thomas Grenville's library, in the cover of which Grenville wrote his opinion that Persons ‘being afraid of printing this is England made a translation of the greater and chief parts of the Latin and printed it abroad.’ Strathmann, E. A. in ‘Ralegh and the Catholic Polemicists’ (Huntington Library Quarterly VIII 1945), 356 Google Scholar ff.)believes that it is a work that Joseph Creswell ‘helped to translate’, i.e., that he finished an incomplete draft by Sir Francis Englefield and Father Henry Walpole. The source for this unlikely theory is Walpole's declaration tt, before his examiners in London on June 17, 1594: ‘Philopater's book was begun to be translated and augmented by Sir Francis Englefield who … gave me the residue to prosucute vvhich I did, following too much his [Person's] humor and stile'. (Text in Catholic Record Society, v, 256.) Englefield, who was blind at this time, was in Spain in 1592, and the Seventy-six pages of the Advertisement are by no means an ‘augmented’ Philopater. Moreover Walpole admitted that ‘at my departure this book was not half done’ (ibid.)..

2 Antwerp, 1643, p. 285: ‘Josephus Crcswellus, Anglice sub nomine Joannis Pernii contra edictum Reginae adversus Catholicos, item, nisi idem liber sit, adversus litteras Ceccilii... ’ Carlos Sommervogel's more authoritative Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus (Brussels, 1891) columns 1656-57, lists the works of Creswell but does not include the Advertisement.

3 Exemplar Litterarum missarum e Germania ad D. Gulielmum Cecilium, Rome, Vicenti Accolti.

4 Robert Persons (Philopater), Responsio ad Edictum Londini Promulgatum, Antwerp; Richard Versteghen, A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles, Antwerp; Thomas Stapleton, Apologia pro Rege Catholico Philippo II, Hispaniae et caet. Rege, Constance.

5 Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, I, nos. £37, 839; Strype, Annals of the Reformat'1“'’ 78 ff.

6 Catholic Record Society, v, 263.

7 Cadiolic Record Society, III, Introd.

8 The complete letter is included in Responsio ad Edictum, pp. 182 ff., and summarized in the Advertisement, pp. 34 ff.

9 H.M.C. Salisbury MSS. IV, 147 (letter of Oct. 12, 1591).

10 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1951-1594, p. 175.

11 J. H. Pollen ascribes it to Versteghen in Catholic Record Society, v, 262 ff.

12 Declaration of the True Causes, p. 10.

13 Ibid., pp. 37 ff.

14 Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, legajo 602, fol. 112.

15 Roman Archive of the Society of Jesus, Fondo Gesuitico, vol. 691; the letter of Persons to Aquaviva is dated Aug. 12, 1592, with enclosure, endorsed: ‘Al Factor General del Rey’, Aug. 11, 1592, copy.

16 For information about Acosta, Philip's agent in Rome for a projected alteration in the government of the Jesuits in Spain, see de la Pinta Llorente, M., Actividades Diplomatcas del P. Jose de Acosta, (Madrid, 1952)Google Scholar; William Crichton's previous meetings with persons can be traced in Catholic Record Society, xxxix, 96, 143-148, 217-218, 242-243, 251-254, 260-267; Rodrigo de Cabredo was the Rector of St. Alban's College in Valladolid for Englefield see DNB and Catholic Record Society, xxxix, 224-226, 249.

17 Catholic Record Society, LII, xli.

18 An Advertisement, p. 10.

19 Cal.S. P. Dom. 1591-94, p. 320.

20 Ibid., p. 204.

21 H. M. C. Salisbury MSS., IV, 617.

22 Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, legajo 1855, letter of Sept. 12, 1592.

23 Roman Archive of the Society of Jesus, Fondo Gesuitico, vol. 691, letter of Creswell dated Dec. 1, 1592.

24 Archivo Historico Nacional, Estado, libro 251, entry under date.

25 Catholic Record Society, LII, 63.

26 Ibid, pp. 86, 187.