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Anabaptism and English Sectarianism in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

David Loades
David Loades*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

From about 1528 onward radical protestants of various kinds from the Low Countries began to seek refuge in England from the pressures of persecution in their homelands. Until the advent of Thomas More as chancellor, persecution in England was sporadic and rather lax. The royal authority had not hitherto been invoked, and the lollards were not commonly of the stuff of martyrs, which induced a certain complacency in the English bishops when faced with the challenges of nascent protestantism. After More’s brief tenure of office was over, persecution under royal auspices continued, but on a very much smaller scale than in the Netherlands, so that the incentive for radicals to come to England, either permanently or temporarily, remained. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them lived in London, Norwich and other towns of the south-east over the next twenty years. A few, like Jan Mattijs, were burned in England, others, like Anneke Jans, met the same fate on their return home, but many lived and worked peacefully, attracting remarkably little attention. Considering their numbers, and the radical nature of their views, they seem to have made only a very slight impact upon their adopted country. A few Englishmen, like that ‘Henry’ who turned up as the sponsor of the Bocholt meeting in 1536, embraced their ideas wholeheartedly, but for the most part the effect seems to have been extremely piecemeal and diffuse, producing a wide variety of individual eccentricities rather than anything in the nature of a coherent movement. However, the presence of these radicals and their English sympathisers has always served to confuse students of the reformation, not least by appearing to justify contemporary conservative attempts to discredit protestantism as a Tower of Babel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 2: Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c1500-c1750 , 1979 , pp. 59 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1979 

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References

1 Krahn, Cornelius, Dutch Anabaptism, 1450-1600 (London 1968) p 215Google Scholar. In theory the English authorities remained consistently hostile, and in 1538 a proclamation denounced ‘Anabaptists and Sacramentaries who lurk secretly in divers corners and places’, but in practice the pressure was neither uniform nor severe. Hughes, P.L. and Larkin, J. F., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1 (London 1960) p 270Google Scholar.

2 Holy churches complayntfor her childrens disobedyance (Anon, nd) Lambeth Palace Library 1488 (4a).

3 [The] displayinge [of the protestantes] (London 1556) p 14.

4 Anabaptists proper were characterised by a belief in ‘believers baptism’, as it was preached by the Swiss leaders Grebel and Mantz, and this necessitated re-baptism, which was a specific renunciation of any orthodox church.

5 Horst, [I. B.], [The Radical Brethren] (Nieuwkoop 1972) pp 27 et seq.Google Scholar

6 Statutes of the Realm, 3, p 812.

7 Hooper, John to Henry, Bullinger, 25 June 1549. Original letters, PS (1846) I, pp 65–6Google Scholar.

8 Displayinge p 18.

9 Ibid p 18v.

10 [Thomson, J. A. F., The] Later Lollards (Oxford 1965) p 239Google Scholar.

11 Cranmer, Works, PS (1846) 2, p 191.

12 On the reluctance of puritans to separate, see particularly Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London 1967)Google Scholar.

13 Horst p 97.

14 A dialogue, or sum of a conference between some young men in New England, cited by Morton, N., New England’s Memorial (Boston 1855) pp 346–7Google Scholar.

15 The information of Roger Sergeant. Foxe, [John], [Acts and Monuments] (London 1580) ed Pratt, J. (London 1877) 8, p 458Google Scholar.

16 Horst.

17 Probably Herman Bastian, a printer who was arrested with several other Anabaptists in Hesse in 1536. Ibid pp 52-3.

18 Ciasen, C. P., Anabaptism, 1525-1618 (Ithaca 1972) pp 103Google Scholar et seq.

19 Burrage, [C], [The Early English Dissenters] (Cambridge 1912) 2, pp 5–6Google Scholar. There seem to have been two Thomas Coles involved with this group. Another man of the same name preached before Cranmer in lent 1553 at Maidstone, denouncing a long list of heretical errors which he ascribed to the local ‘anabaptists’. Horst p 123.

20 Martin, J. W., ‘English protestant separatism; Henry Hart and the freewillers’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 7, 2 (London 1976) pp 55–75Google Scholar.

21 This congregation moved its meeting place frequently, and varied greatly in size from one period to another, but it seems to have retained its identity throughout. Simpson was eventually burned in 1558. [White, B. R., The English] Separatist Tradition (Oxford 1971) pp 12–13Google Scholar.

22 Huggarde, M., A new treatyse which sheweth the excellency of mannes nature (London 1550) sig M, 3rGoogle Scholar.

23 Later Lollards p 19.

24 Hughes, Philip, The Reformation in England (London 1953) 2, p 262Google Scholar.

25 For some discussion of this problem, see Loades, D., ‘Subversion and security 1553-58’, unpubl Cambridge PhD thesis (1961) pp 118–58, 188Google Scholar et seq.

26 Foxe 7, pp 371-4.

27 Ibid p 324.

28 APC, 5 P 150.

29 Displayinge p 122.

30 Ibid p 124.

31 Ibid p 129. Browne’s response was to declare ‘I am of good chere … for I am cheryshed of suche good women as ye are …’.

32 Ibid p 130.

33 For instance Thomas Browne ‘who dwelled in Fleet Street’ and was burned in January 1556. Foxe 7, p 746.

34 Dteptayinge p 131.

35 Ibid p 79. Huggarde seems to have regarded female influence as characteristic of all heresy; ‘… in all ages at any time when one had devysed some folishe error or other, straight waye women were readye to applye to their fancies…’.

36 Although various attempts were made to keep the different English congregations in line, no serious attempt was made to impose episcopal authority. Cox and his followers at Frankfort used the 1552 prayer book to ‘maintain the face of an English Church’, but essentially each community was left to work out its own worship and discipline, in consultation with Calvin, Peter Martyr or Bullinger. There was, and could be, no ‘tarrying for the magistrate’.

37 Separatist Tradition p 24. Smith and his followers were part of the Plumbers Hall group. There were several such groups of non-conformists and semi-separatists in the aftermath of the vestiarian controversy.

38 Cox to Gualter, 12 February 1572. Zurich Letters, PS (1866) p 221. Burrage p 93. There has been considerable debate about exactly how sectarian Fitz’s congregation was. For a further discussion of this, and related problems of London non-conformity between 1567 and 1572, see Owen, H. G., ‘A nursery of Elizabethan non-conformity, 1567-1572’ (the Minories), JEH 17 (1966) pp 65–76Google Scholar.