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The Problem of ‘Atheism’ in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Michael Hunter
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Extract

To speak of ‘atheism’ in the context of early modern England immediately invites confusion, and it is for this reason that I shall place the word in inverted commas throughout this paper. On the one hand, I intend to deal with what a twentieth-century reader might expect ‘atheism’ to imply, namely overt hostility to religion. On the other, I want to consider at some length the profuse writings on ‘atheism’ that survive from the period: in these, as we shall see, the word if often used to describe a much broader range of phenomena, in a manner typical of a genre which often appears frustratingly heightened and rhetorical. Some might argue that this juxtaposition displays—and will encourage—muddled thought. But, on the contrary, I think that it is precisely from such a combination that we stand to learn most. Not only are we likely to discover how contemporaries experienced and responded to the threat of irreligion in the society of their day. In addition, by re-examining the relationship between the real and the exaggerated in their perceptions of such heterodoxy, we may be able to draw broader conclusions about early modern thought.

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Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 35 , December 1985 , pp. 135 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1985

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References

1 For comments on an earlier draft of this paper I am indebted to various seminar audiences and to Stuart Clark, Patrick Collinson, Margaret Spufford and Keith Thomas.

2 See Michael Hunter, ‘Science and Heterodoxy: An Early Modern Problem Reconsidered’, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. D. C. Lindberg and R. S. Westman (forthcoming).

3 For example, the characterisation of ‘The Ranters’ in Pagitt, Ephraim, Heresiography (5th edn, 1654), 143–4Google Scholar, has many echoes of the stock figure of the ‘atheist’ outlined in this paper, and Pagitt's book shares other features with the anti-atheist literature.

4 Bacon's Essays, ed. Wright, W. A. (3rd edn., Cambridge and London, 1865), 64–70Google Scholar.

5 For shared opinions, see Rogers, Thomas, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, ed. Perowne, J.J. S. (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1854), 78, 147–8, 246Google Scholar. On heresy as a route to ‘atheism’, e.g. Heywood, Thomas, A True Discourse of the Two Infamous Upstart Prophets (1636), 7Google Scholar.

6 Beard, Thomas, The Theatre of Gods Iudgements (1597), 147–8Google Scholar; Vaughan, William, The Golden-groue, moralized in three books (1600)Google Scholar, sigs. C4V–5. The relevant papers from British Library, Harleian MSS 6848, 6849 and 6853, are printed in Danchin, F. C., ‘Etudes Critiques sur Christopher Marlowe’, Revue Germanique, 9 (1913), 566–87Google Scholar (with commentary in ibid., 10 (1914), 52–68), and Brooke, C. F. Tucker, The Life of Christopher Marlowe and the Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage (1930)Google Scholar (each has some material not included by the other). On the context of the accusations, see, in addition to these works, Bakeless, John, The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe (2 vols., Harvard, 1942)Google Scholar, chap. 5, and Kocher, P. H., Christopher Marlowe (Chapel Hill, 1946), chaps. 2–3Google Scholar.

7 This juxtaposition is made particularly plain by the transcripts and abstracts of the material by the antiquary Thomas Baker, from whom Harley acquired the documents, in British Library, Harleian MS 7042, ff. 193–236. For the material relating to the sectaries, see The Writings of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591–3, ed. Carlson, L. H. (Elizabethan Nonconformist Texts, vi, 1970)Google Scholar.

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55 Lyly, , Euphues, 150, 161–2Google Scholar; More, , Demonstration, 34Google Scholar.

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71 Ibid., 30n and chap. 3 passim.

72 Corderoy, Warning, sig. A6. For examples—though more of heretical than atheistic ideas—see the manuscript owned by Kyd in which an anti-Arian work was eviscerated for heretical opinions (Danchin, , ‘Etudes Critiques’, 568–70Google Scholar, and Briggs, W.D., ‘On a Document concerning Christopher Marlowe’, Studies in Philology, 20 (1923), 153–9)Google Scholar or the claim of the Sherborne shoemaker, Robert Hyde, at the Cerne Abbas hearing, to have derived his notions from reports of a local priest's sermon attacking sectarian views: Willobie his Avisa, 264, 269–70.

73 Ibid., 259. For the possibility that this was Charles Thynne, see Lefranc, , Ralegh, 387Google Scholar; on John Thynne, to whom Carew Ralegh was gentleman of horse and whose widow Carew married, see DNB s.v. ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’. Thynne's view was possibly heretical rather than atheistic: see the different positions distinguished in Gosson, Stephen, The Trumpet of Wane (1598), 52–4Google Scholar.

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75 Brooke, , Life, 98–100Google Scholar, 107. According to Simon Aldrich, Marlowe's ‘booke’ was ‘against the Scriptur’: Bakeless, , Tragicall History, i. 120Google Scholar.

76 PRO, STA 8/59/11, memb. 2. For the reference, I am indebted to Ingram, M.J., ‘Eccclesiastical Justice in Wiltshire, 1600–1640’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1977), 103–4Google Scholar.

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84 Ibid., 258, 260, 261, 262, 266. It is interesting that Ralegh's opinion on the godhead had been uttered on an earlier occasion, but was ‘shutt up’ till brought to light by the enquiry (ibid., 258).

85 Cf. the suggestive remarks in Febvre, Lucien, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: the Religion of Rabelais, trans. Gottlieb, Beatrice (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 142Google Scholarf, though my disagreement with the general thrust of Febvre's argument should have become apparent in the course of this paper.

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99 The word is used by Nichols, Josias in his Order of Houshold Instruction (1596)Google Scholar, sig. E7, although the earliest usage given in OED is Burton's of 1621; it is symptomatic, however, that Nichols uses the word as a synonym for ‘atheist’. On its (rare) use in sixteenth-century France, see Busson, , ‘Les Noms’, 278–9Google Scholar.

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