¹ [Erasmus, Desiderius, Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings, ed Olin, John C.] (New York 1965) pp 92–106 Google Scholar. The Latin text of the Paraclesis has been reproduced in facsimile in Desiderius Erasmus, Prefaces to the Fathers, the New Testament, on Study, ed Peters, Robert (Menston 1970) pp 116-21Google Scholar.

² Letter to Jodocus Jonas on Vitrier and Colet, 13 June 1521, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, 4 ed, Allen, P. S. and Allen, H. M. (Oxford 1922) pp 507-27Google Scholar; English translation by Lupton, J. H. in The Lives of Jehan Vitrier and John Colet (London 1883)Google Scholar, reprinted, Olin, pp 164-91. See Bietenholz, Peter G., History and Biography in the Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance 87 (Geneva 1966)Google Scholar.

³ As an appendix to the edition by Smith, Thomas of A sermon . . . made to the convocation at S. Pauls church in London by John Colet D.D. . . . writ an hundred and fiftie years since (Cambridge 1661)Google Scholar; doubtless the source of the Life of Colet in The lives of thirty-two English divines, appended to Clarke, Samuel, A general martyrologie (London 1677)Google Scholar.

⁴ Watkins, [Owen C.], [The Puritan Experience] (London 1972)Google Scholar.

⁵ Abel redivivus. Or, the dead yet speaking. The Lives and deaths of the modern divines. Written by severall able and learned men (London 1651).

⁶ Fuller wrote of ‘Master Samuel Clarke, with whose pen mine never did, nor never shall interfere.’ Like the flocks of Jacob and Laban their styles were ‘set more than a Months journey asunder.’ Quoted Haller, [William], [The Rise of Puritanism] (ed New York 1957) p 107 Google Scholar.

⁷ The marrow [of ecclesiastical historie] (London 1650, 2 ed 1654, 3 ed in 2 pts 1675); [The] second part of the marrow (bk 1 1650, bk 2 1652); A generall martyrologie (London 1651, 2 ed 1660, 3 ed 1677); The lives of two and twenty English divines (London 1660); [A collection of the lives of] ten eminent divines [. . . and of some other eminent Christians] (London 1662); The lives and deaths of such worthies (London 1665); [The lives of the] thirty-two English divines (London 1667, another ed 1677); [The] lives and deaths of most of those eminent persons (London 1675); [The] lives of sundry eminent persons (London 1683). On the collaborative aspect, see the Life of Thomas Hill, who died in 1653: ‘He was a great friend to the publication of the lives of godly and eminent ministers and Christians.’ Thirty-two English divines (1677 ed) p 234.

⁸ Skinner, Quentin, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanations’, Philosophy 41 (London 1966) pp 199–215 Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8 (Middletown, Conn., 1969) pp 3–53 Google Scholar.

⁹ Reviewing McConica, J. K., English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford 1965)Google Scholar, which somewhat overstates the influence of ‘Erasmianism’, Dickens, A. G. wrote in History 52 (1967) pp 77-8Google Scholar: ‘After all, what educated man did not know at least some of the writings of Erasmus? Who had not breathed atmospheres subtly perfumed by his ubiquitous presence?’ Elton, G. R. wrote in HJ 10 (1967) pp 137-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘People did not read Erasmus . . . and say with a sudden inspiration: indeed, indeed, this is what we will do.’

¹⁰ Elizabethan Puritanism, ed Trinterud, L. J., Library of Protestant Thought (Oxford 1971) pp 19–39 Google Scholar.

¹¹ Olin p 106.

¹² First published 1938; Harper Torchbooks, New York 1957.

¹³ Haller, caps 1 and 2.

¹⁴ Haller told me in conversation in 1953 that he supposed that he was the only person who had seen every page of every edition of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. In Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London 1963) he identified (p 207) the Marian martyr John Bradford as ‘a prototype of all the physicians of the soul who would presently be undertaking the spiritual direction of more and more of Elizabeth’s subjects’, and developed the point.

¹⁵ Rupp, E.G., Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge 1966 ed) p 22 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Martyrs divine epistles, bound with The common places of Peter Martyr, tr Anthonie Marten (London 1583) pp 62-3; whence printed in Gorham, G.C., Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears During the Reformation in England (London 1857) pp 19–27 Google Scholar; original Latin text in Petri Martyri epistolae theologicae, appended to Loci communes (London 1583) p 1071. Reference was made to the letter by S.T. (Samuel Torshell of Bunbury, Cheshire) in a funeral sermon of 1639, ‘Gods esteeme of the death of his saints’, in Tlie house of mourning (1640). (See p 246 below.)

¹⁷ ‘Formula vivendi praescripta familiae suae a M. Bucero et propria manu revisa’, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 418 pp 627-33; printed and discussed, Wendel, François, ‘Un document inédit sur le sejour de Bucer en Angleterre’, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie réligieuses 34 (Strasbourg 1954) pp 223-33Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Harvey, A. E., Martin Bucer in England (Marburg 1906)Google Scholar; Constantin Hopf (Hope), Martin Bucer in England (Oxford 1946); Vogt, Herbert, Martin Bucer und die Kirche von England (Inaugural dissertation, Westfälischen Wilhelm-Universität zu Münster 1966)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Reformer and the Archbishop; Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian’, JRH 6 (1971) pp 305-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ John Rylands Library, Rylands English MS 874; partially and imperfectly published in Usher, R.G., The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, CSer, 3 ser 8 (1905)Google Scholar.

²¹ Original in Dr Williams’s Library; partially printed in Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, ed Knappen, M. M., American Society of Church History (Chicago 1933)Google Scholar.

²² Knappen p 64. Compare the passage (p 95) in which Rogers takes to heart the exemplary life of John Knewstub, rector of Cockfield, Suffolk, headed: ‘The example of Mr Knew[stubs]’.

²³ [A] general martyrologie (London 1677 ed) Sigs C2 -4.

^23a These resemble in length the mini-biographies of modern authors found in successive editions of Bale’s Catalogus which I distinguish from ‘edifying’ biography.

²⁴ Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London 1967)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Mozley, J.F., John Foxe and his Book (London 1940) pp 105-7Google Scholar.

²⁶ Ibid, pp 1-11. The Latin version of the Life is in BL MS Lansdowne 388.

²⁷ Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566-1577, ed Collinson, Patrick, BIHR Special Supplement 5 (1960) pp 20-1Google Scholar.

²⁸ Partially published in A parte of a register (n.p. 1593?); the remainder, comprising part of the Morrice MSS in Dr Williams’s Library, calendared in Peel, Albert (ed) The Seconde Parte of a Register 2 vols (Cambridge 1915)Google Scholar. See my ‘John Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, in Elizabethan Government and Society, ed Bindoff, S. T., Hurstfield, J., Williams, C. H. (London 1961) pp 127-62Google Scholar.

²⁹ The prototype was perhaps John Day’s publication The worckes of T. Becon, whiche he hath hytherto made and published, 3 pts (London 1560-4). The Works of William Perkins were published posthumously in eds of 1597, 1600, 1603, 1605, 1609 and 1613, this last the definitive three volume edition, several times reissued. Richard Greenham’s Works were published in 1599 and were in their fifth edition by 1612. The works of that late divine Mr T. Wilcocks were published in 1624. Wilcox had died in 1608.

³⁰ Collinson, [Patrick], A Mirror of Elizabethan Puritanism: [the Life and Letters of ‘Godly Master Dering’], Friends of Dr Williams’s Library 17th Lecture 1963 (London 1964)Google Scholar.

³¹ ‘Even biography was an undeveloped art during the reign of the first Elizabeth.’: Bottrall, Margaret, Every Man a Phoenix: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography (London 1958) p 1 Google Scholar.

³² Ten eminent divines p 453.

³³ ‘If the Word will not prevaile, the Cross will come, and make a Hooper, and a Ridley imbrace one another.’ (Ten eminent divines p 260.) The reference is to the letter from bishop Ridley to bishop Hooper, written from prison in 1555, Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, ed Cattley, S. R., 6 (London 1838) pp 642-3Google Scholar. In a codicil to his will made in 1636 Robert Harris told his wife: ‘You shall find the substance of that I would say to you printed in the Book of Martyrs vol. 2 p. 1744, to wit in John Careless his letter to his wife: keep the Book and often read the letter.’ (Ten eminent divines p 322.)

³⁴ Ibid pp 7-8, 114-15, 316; Lives of sundry eminent persons p 64.

³⁵ Haller, pp 100-6.

³⁶ The sayings of Richard Greenham were celebrated. Godly instructions for the due examination and direction of all men was printed in 1598 and Short rules sent to a gentlewoman in 1621. John Rylands Library, Rylands English MS 524 contains a large collection of Greenham’s sayings, apparently recorded by Arthur Hildersham. Ignatius Jourdain’s biographer records: ‘There is a somewhat like saying of Mr Greenhams, and possibly Mr Jurdaine might borrow it thence, it suiting so well the temper of his spirit.’ (Ten eminent divines p 481.) In 1659 Samuel Clarke published Golden apples. Or, seasonable and serious counsel from the sanctuary to the rulers of the earth, held forth in the resolution of sundry questions, and cases of conscience about divisions, schisms, heresies, and the tolleration of them, gathered from the writings of twenty divines.

³⁷ Ten eminent divines pp 11-12.

³⁸ Second part of the marrow (1675 ed) Sig A2V.

³⁹ Examples are Edward Dering’s Certaine godly and comfortable letters, printed in 1590 and also extant in manuscript in Kent Archive Office, MSS Dering U 350 C/1 and 2; and Thomas Wilcox’s A profitable, and comfortable letter for afflicted consciences: written and sent . . . 1582 (London 1584?) and Large letters. Three in number, for the instruction of such, as are distressed in conscience (London 1589). A large collection of Wilcox’s spiritual letters was still extant in manuscript in the late seventeenth century and is described in Dr Williams’s Library MS Morrice I pp 617(2), (4).

⁴⁰ Breward, [I.], [‘William Perkins and the Origins of Puritan Casuistry’], in Faith and a Good Conscience: (Papers Read at the Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference, 18th-19th December 1962)] (London 1963) pp 5–17 Google Scholar; The Work of William Perkins, ed Breward, I., Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics 3 (Appleford, Abingdon 1970)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Quoted, Breward, The Work of William Perkins, p 61.

⁴² Ten eminent divines Sig A3^r.

⁴³ Ibid p 30.

⁴⁴ Ibid p 303.

⁴⁵ Thirty-two English divines p 164.

⁴⁶ Quoted, Breward, Faith and a Good Conscience, p 11.

⁴⁷ Bennett, H.S., English Books and Readers 1558 to 1603 (Cambridge 1965) cap 4 Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Paule, George, The life of John Whitgift (London 1699 ed) pp 82 Google Scholar, 90, 108-9. Compare Stauffer, [D. A.], [English Biography before 1700] (Cambridge, Mass., 1930) p 67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ I follow the Townsend-Cattley ed of [The Acts and Monuments of John] Foxe, 8 vols (London 1837-41).

⁵⁰ Hardie, W. F. R., Aristotle’s Ethical Theory (Oxford 1968) cap 7 Google Scholar.

⁵¹ This narrative was reproduced as a discrete biography, ‘The Life of Mr Julines Palmer’, in Clarke’s General martyrologie pp 475-81.

⁵² Foxe, 8 p 202.

⁵³ Ibid pp 629, 633, 635, 637.

⁵⁴ See many passages in the account of Ridley and Larimer, Ibid, 7 pp 406-583.

⁵⁵ Ibid, 8 p 641.

^55a Chambers, R.W., Thomas More (London 1938) p 347 Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Foxe, 6 p 609.

⁵⁷ Ibid pp 700, 696.

⁵⁸ Ibid 7 p 32.

⁵⁹ Ibid, 6 p 611.

⁶⁰ Ibid p 612.

⁶¹ Ibid, 7 p 26.

⁶² Russell, D.A., Plutarch (London 1973) pp 84-5Google Scholar; Wardman, Alan, Plutarch’s Lives (London 1974) pp 107-8Google Scholar.

⁶³ Foxe, 7 p 656.

⁶⁴ Second part of the marrow, Sig B.

⁶⁵ Ten eminent divines p 44.

⁶⁶ Ibid p 8.

⁶⁷ Ibid pp 148-9.

⁶⁸ Ibid p 258.

⁶⁹ Ibid p 305.

⁷⁰ Thirty-two English divines p 200.

⁷¹ Ten eminent divines pp 419, 443.

⁷² Ibid p 156.

⁷³ Ibid p 27.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Thirty-two English divines p 177.

⁷⁶ Ten-eminent divines pp 310-11.

⁷⁷ Collinson, A Mirror of Elizabethan Puritanism, pp 4-6.

⁷⁸ Quoted, Watkins p 7. I am indebted to Mr John Morgan of Cambridge University for alerting me to this theme.

⁷⁹ Ten eminent divines pp 480-1, 464, 477.

⁸⁰ Lives and deaths of most of those eminent persons, Sig d^v.

⁸¹ Ten eminent divines, Sig A4^r.

⁸² Thirty-two English divines p 120.

⁸³ Ibid p 129.

⁸⁴ Lives of sundry eminent persons p 170.

⁸⁵ Haller pp 108-11.

⁸⁶ Conversion is a significant element in the following Lancashire and Cheshire lives: Robert Bolton (Lives and deaths of most of those eminent persons), Richard Rothwell (Thirty-two English divines), these two included by Haller among his examples, John Ball (Lives of thirty-two English divines), Richard Mather (Lives of sundry eminent persons) and John Bruen Esq of Bruen Stapleford, Cheshire (William Hinde, A faithfull remonstrance of the holy life and happy death of John Bruen (London 1641) and in Second part of the marrow). Haller’s third example, Samuel Fairclough, born at Haverhill in Suffolk, provides the most elaborate conversion narrative outside of the north-west.

⁸⁷ The story comes from A brief discourse of the Christian life and death of Mistris Katherine Brettargh. (See p 245 below.)

⁸⁸ Watkins pp 29-30. But non-sectarian puritans sometimes required a form of public renewal of baptismal vows as a condition of admission to the Lord’s Supper. (See the Life of Samuel Fairclough in Lives of sundry eminent persons p 169.) Mrs Elizabeth Wilkinson, no separatist, composed a lengthy ‘narrative’ of ’God’s gracious dealing with her soul’ and sent it to Dr Robert Harris in order to give account of herself before admission to the Lord’s Supper. But this was in the unusual circumstance of her regular parochial ministry being interrupted. (Ten eminent divines pp 515-24.)

⁸⁹ Thirty-two English divines pp 183-201.

⁹⁰ An admonition of the Parliament (London 1572), in Puritan Manifestoes, ed Frere, W. H. and Douglas, C. E. (London 1954 ed) p 28 Google Scholar; Seconde Parte of a Register, 1 pp 132, 259, 2 p 45; The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587-1590, ed Carlson, Leland H., E[lizabethan] Nonconformist] T[exts] 3 (London 1962) pp 459-62Google Scholar; The Writings of Henry Barrow 1590-1591, ed Carlson, Leland H., ENT 5 (1966) p 83 Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Maxwell, W.D., John Knox’s Genevan Service Book (London 1931) pp 56-7Google Scholar, 161-4. Variations in the Genevan tradition with respect to the burial service can be traced through The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland, ed Sprott, G. W. (London 1901) p 80 Google Scholar, The Middelburgh Prayer-Book (Middleburgh 1586) in Reliquiae Liturgicae 1, ed Hall, Peter (Bath 1847) p 69 Google Scholar, and A directory for the publique worship of God (London 1644) pp 73-4.

⁹² The Works of John Whitgift, ed Ayre, J., PS (1851) 1 pp 250-1Google Scholar, 3 pp 361-80.

⁹³ Works of Whitgift, 3 p 375.

⁹⁴ See, for example, the will of Basil Fielding, a Warwickshire gentleman (ob. 1584) which required that ‘at the daie of my burriall a godly sermon be made by some godly learned man, moving the people to prayse God for his mercies bestowed on me in my lyfe and the contynuance thereof to my deathe, and for his comforte and victorye of faythe in a Christian lief, and he to have for his payncs sixe shillings eight pence.’ (PRO P.C.C. Will Registers Brudenell 5.)

⁹⁵ See accounts of the Suffolk funeral of Robert Walsh of Little Waldingfield in 1605 in Winthrop Papers 1 1498-1628, Massachusetts Historical Society (1929) pp 89, 153; and of the Chelsea funeral of William Bradshaw, in Thirty-two English divines p 51.

⁹⁶ Ten eminent divines p 20.

⁹⁷ Shute, [Nathaniel], Corona charitatis. [The crowne ofcharitie] (London 1626) pp 25–46 Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Deaths advantage little regarded, and the soules solace against sorrow. Preched in two funerall sermons at Childwal in Lancashire at the buriall of Mistris Katherine Brettargh the third of Iune 1601. The preachers were William Harrison and William Leigh. The institution of two sermons, separated by dinner, seems to have been a north-country custom— see my article ‘Lectures by Combination: Structures and Characteristics of Church Life in the 17th-century England’, BIHR 48 (1975) pp 201-2. The second sermon is followed by a separate title: A brief discourse of the Christian life and death of Mistris Katherine Brettargh. There is also an engraved portrait of the lady.

⁹⁹ Hinde, William, A faithful remonstrance of the holy life and happy death of John Bruen of Bruen-Stapleford in the county of Chester, Esquire (London 1641)Google Scholar; reprinted in Second part of the marrow pp 80-104.

¹⁰⁰ John Barlow, The joy of the upright man; John Barlow, The true guide to glory; Samuel Crooke, Death subdued. Or, the death of death (for Queen Anne); Stephen Denison, The monument, or tombe-stone (for Mrs Elizabeth Juxon); Thomas Gataker, The benefit of a good name and a good end; Thomas Gataker, Pauls desire of dissolution and deaths advantage (for Mrs Rebekka Crisp); Timothy Oldmayne, Gods rebuke in taking from us Sir E. Lewkenor (of Denham, Suffolk); John Preston, The patriarchs portion (for Sir T. Reynell); John Preston, A sermon preached at the funeral of Mr Arthur Upton Esquire in Devon; William Sclater, Three sermons (including a funeral sermon).

¹⁰¹ This figure has been arrived at after a cursory perusal of STC and investigations in the British Library, Dr Williams’s Library and the library of New College, London (shortly before its dispersion). I am particularly grateful to the librarian of New College, the Reverend Dr G. F. Nuttall, for his kindness in enabling me to look into the remarkable collection of some 1900 funeral sermons amassed in the last century by Mr Charles Godwin of Bath and among the holdings of that Library.

¹⁰² Threnoikos. The house of mourning. Delivered in XLVII sermons, preached at funeralls of divers faithfull servants of Christ. By Daniel Featly Richard Sibbs Martin Day Thomas Taylor and other reverend divines (London 1640). However the subject of this collection is mortality. Few of the preachers and fewer still of the deceased are identified and the motive of ‘memorial’ or ‘testimonial’ is largely absent.

¹⁰³ See especially the epistles to two of Thomas Gataker’s publications: Two funeral sermons much of one and the same subiect: to wit, the benefit of death (London 1620); The decease of Lazarus Christs friend (for Mr John Parker) (London 1640). There are quotations from Nazianzus in I.F., A sermon preched at Ashby de la Zouch (for Elizabeth, countess of Huntingdon) (London 1635).

¹⁰⁴ See, for example, [Robert] Harris, in his funeral sermon for Sir Anthony Cope of Hanwell, Samuels funeral (London 1618) Sig A4: ‘Onely I could wish that our age would distinguish betwixt funerall orations and funeral sermons, as former ages have done, and not confound so different things.’

¹⁰⁵ William Leigh, The soules solace against sorrow, with Deaths advantage, p 69.

¹⁰⁶ Guy, Nicolas, Pieties pillar. Or, a sermon preched at the funerall of Mistresse Elizabeth Gouge (London 1626) p 37 Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Shute, Corona charitatis, p 24.

¹⁰⁸ Stock, Richard, The churches lamentation for the losse of the godly (for Lord John Harrington) (London 1614) p 61 Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ See, for example, Wilson, [Thomas], Christs farewell [to Jerusalem and last prophesie] (for Dr Colfe, sub-dean of Canterbury) (London 1614)Google Scholar Sig A4.

¹¹⁰ See, for example, the ‘short relation’ added by the husband of Mrs Mary Gunter to the funeral sermon preached by Taylor, Thomas, The pilgrims profession (London 1633)Google Scholar. From a much earlier date one may recall a similar office performed for his wife by the moralist Stubbs, Philip: A chrystal glass for Christian women. Containing a most excellent discourse of the godly life and death of Mrs Katherine Stubs, who departed this life in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire the 14th December (London 1591)Google Scholar. The fame of Stubbs suggests that he may have set the fashion followed a decade later with the elaborate commemoration of Mrs Brettergh.

¹¹¹ I may refer to my remarks on the tomb of Sir Edward Lewkenor of Denham, Suffolk (ob. 1605) in my essay ‘Magistracy and Ministry: a Suffolk Miniature’, to be published in 1977 as part of a Festschrift for Geoffrey Nuttall.

¹¹² Halier pp 101-2.

¹¹³ Harris, Samuells funerall, Sig A4^v.

¹¹⁴ Stauffer p 89.

¹¹⁵ Shute, Corona charitatis.

¹¹⁶ Gataker, The decease of Lazarus, p 33.

¹¹⁷ Bryan, John, The vertuous daughter (Mistress Cicely Puckering, ob. 1636) (London 1640) p 10 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Pecke, Richard, Christs watch word. Occasioned on the funerali of the truly reverend M. Laurence Bodley (London 1635) p 1 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Wilson, Christs farewell, Sig A5.

¹²⁰ Olin p 100.

¹²¹ I quote from the title of the book by Allison, C.F., The Rise of Moralism. The Proclamation of the Cospel from Hooker to Baxter (New York 1966)Google Scholar.

¹²² I am indebted to my colleague Miss Marion O’Connor for a number of helpful comments on this paper.