The archbishop Js mandate and the royal writ

[77 v] Iohannes Withers artiummagister, canonicus in ecclesiis cathedralibus Sancti Pauli Londoniensis et Sarum ac reverendissimi in Christo patris et domini Domini Christopheri, miseratione divina tituli Sanctae Praxedis sacrosanctae Romanae ecclesiae presbyteri cardinalis Eboracensis archiepiscopi, Angliae primatis et apostolicae sedis legati in remotis agentis vicarius in spiritualibus generalis ac custos spiritualitatis archiepiscopatus Eboracensis, reverendo in Christo patri et domino Domino Thomae, Deo gratia Dunelmensi episcopo, dicti reverendissimi patris suffraganeo aut eius vicario in spiritualibus generali salutem in Domino sempiternam. Breve regium nobis directum cum ea qua decuit reverentia nuper recepimus in haec verba:

Quocirca, reverende pater, auctoritate dicti reverendissimi patris nobis in hac parte specialiter commissa, tenore praesentium peremptorie vos citamus ac priorem ecclesiae vestrae cathedralis Dunelmensis et capitulum eiusdem universosque et singulos abbates, priores, alios etiam electivos, exemptos et non exemptos, archidiaconos, decanos et capitula, conventus et collegia, totumque clerum vestrarum civitatis et dioecesis per vos citari auctoritate praedicta mandamus quod vos, reverende pater, dictique abbates et priores, archidiaconi et decani personaliter, conventus vero, capitula et collegia huiusmodi per procuratores suos singulos, clerusque cuiuslibet archidiaconatus et iurisdictionis per duos sufficientes procuratores ab ipsis conventibus, capitulis, collegiis et clero sufficienter et legitime deputatos in ecclesia metropolitica Eboracensi die Lunae,

In 1150 CE, the tenets and structures of the Latin Church were far from established. So the ‘rules’ – what was and was not permitted behaviour for Christians – were anything but consistent, and were still being worked out as the Middle Ages progressed. Theologians in the universities that were growing in the twelfth century wrestled with a volume of often contradictory decisions from church councils that had taken place since the early days of Christianity, starting with Nicaea in 325 CE. Attempts were made to synthesise sprawling and inconsistent texts, and many of the edicts from such councils were clearly in response to very specific questions from the bishops in attendance. It is also important to bear in mind that, just because pious Christians were not supposed to do something, they refrained from doing so. Societies and the people within them have always been as diverse as they are today. People break the rules. Sometimes the rules vary from place to place. Sometimes nobody cares if you do something you’re not supposed to. Nevertheless, what we can broadly say is that onomantic divination was generally not approved of by medieval church authorities, but at the same time it does not seem that anybody caught in the act would have been punished particularly harshly.

Chapter 4 established that onomancies are extant in a large corpus of manuscripts produced in late medieval Britain. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, onomancy belongs in the category of divination, a practice which had been condemned since the time of the late Roman Empire. This had not always been the case: in ancient Greece and Rome the systems of divination and polytheistic religion were not at odds with one another. In fact, certain forms of divination were a key part of Greek and Roman religion. It was with the rise of monotheistic Christianity as the principal religion of the Latin West that the divinatory arts became problematic. The first part of this chapter will outline the changes in divination's status from the ancient to the medieval eras, and then discuss the main theological condemnations of divination of all kinds, from Augustine in the fourth century through to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth.

On 21 April 1654 the day that Oliver Cromwell signed the articles of peace ending the First Dutch War, the Commonwealth Navy ship Marigold was ordered to convoy the English fishing fleet to Iceland. The Marigold's captain, Humphrey Felstead, was further instructed to keep a journal of his voyage and send it to the Admiralty Commission on his return. This was duly done, so that his journal now survives among the State Papers of the Commonwealth. The journal is significant both for being an early survival of its type and for being one of the best contemporary sources available on the activities of the English in Iceland during the early modern period.

Both the decision of the Admiralty to send a convoy to Iceland and the timing of its decision can be explained. While few today are even aware that the English fished off Iceland at this time, it was regarded by contemporaries as one of England's most important fisheries. Indeed, in the 1630s the cod and ling fisheries off Iceland had been described as the ‘greatest fishing of the kingdom’ which, ‘exceedeth the Newfoundland & herring fishing’. And while this might have been a slight exaggeration, it was not much of one; for the Iceland fishing fleet, which came mostly from Norfolk and Suffolk, could contain as many as 160 ships of between 50 and 150 tons burden. The early seventeenth century proved, however, to be the high-water mark of this industry. The Iceland venture was hit hard by the maritime lawlessness of the Civil War and interregnum, so that when the Marigold began her convoy on 16 May 1654, she was accompanied by just 19 vessels. The Admiralty Commission might therefore have felt, with some justification, that if the remnants of the fishing fleet was not protected, an industry would be extinguished that had played a vital role in training men to sea. Moreover, if those in London ever forgot about the fishery, they were regularly reminded of its significance by Major William Burton of Great Yarmouth, who, besides being an alderman of the town on which the Iceland fishery was centred, was also an important Naval administrator for the Protectorate.

The archbishop’s mandate for the convocation

Robertas, permissione divina Eboracensis archiepiscopus, Angliae primas et metropolitanus, auctoritate illustrissmi in Christo principis et domini nostri Domini Edwardi sexti, Dei gratia Angliae, Franciae et Hiberniae regis, fidei defensoris et in terra Ecclesiae Anglicanae et Hibernicae supremi capitis legitime fulcitus, reverendo in Christo patri confratri nostro Domino Roberto, eadem gratia Carliolensi episcopo eiusve vicario in spiritualibus generali salutem, et fraternam in Domino caritatem. Breve domini nostri regis supradicti nobis directum cum ea qua decuit reverentia nuper recepimus in haec verba:

Quocirca reverende confrater, tenore praesentium peremptorie vos citamus ac decanum ecclesiae cathedralis Carliolensis et capitulum eiusdem, universosque et singulos collegiorum magistros, praepositos et gardianos ac alios electivos, exemptos et non exemptos, qui ab antiquo vocari, citari seu moneri solebant per vos in virtute oboedientiae citari volumus et mandamus quod vos, reverende confrater, dictique decani, archidiaconi, magistri, praepositi, gardiani ac alii electivi personaliter, capitulum vero ecclesiae Carliolensis huiusmodi per procuratorem suum sufficientem, clerusque Carliolensis dioecesis per duos sufficientes procuratores legitime deputatos in ecclesia nostra metropolitica Eboracensi quinto die Novembris proximo futuro post datum praesentium [5 November 1547] inter horas octavam et nonam ante meridiem eiusdem diei, cum continuatione et prorogatione dierum tune sequentium si opus fuerit, et locorum, coram nobis aut nostris locum tenentibus, commissariis sive commissario, pluribus aut uno, in ea parte deputatis aut deputandis, compareatis et compareat quilibet eorundem,

This is the final volume of a set of five. The first volume, Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1917–1919, was published in 1991, and the second, Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1919–1939, in 2010. Other publications (including three volumes for the Navy Records Society) have precluded the completion of the series. Mr Robin Brodhurst, author of a biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, is editing two volumes corresponding to Pound's time as First Sea Lord (June 1939– October 1943), one covering the years 1939–1941 and the second dealing with the period 1941–1943. The account in this volume begins with Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham's assumption of the First Sea Lordship on 5 October 1943 and concludes with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945. This volume is entitled Anglo–American-Canadian Naval Relations, 1943–1945, for the very good reason that, by the end of the war, the Royal Canadian Navy was the third largest in the world, after its two great partners, and Canadian naval and air forces played a major role in anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and rendered important service also in other theatres.

The period covered by this volume was the time in which victory was forged and the three major Allies enjoyed an almost unbroken series of maritime triumphs. In Part I , the relationships of the senior commanders, their services and their countries is discussed. Part II deals with the last stage of the fight against the U-boats, a war which by 1943 had spread to most of the world's seas. Part III deals with the Western Allies’ eventual return to north-west Europe. In Part IV, the final operations in the Mediterranean, including the landings in Southern France and at Anzio in Italy, are covered. Part V recounts the participation of the British Pacific Fleet in the concluding operations against Japan.

I have drawn on the Admiralty, Premiership and Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee papers at the National Archives, Kew, London. The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London, has permitted access to the papers of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fraser, C-in-C of the British Pacific Fleet. The Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cam-bridge, has allowed access to the papers of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the Allied Naval C-in-C for the invasion of north-west Europe.

IT was a pleasure to introduce the day conference in honour of Roger in which this collection of essays had its genesis, and to welcome everyone to it. It was also a pleasure to spend a day listening to the expertise of those engaging in discussion of subjects that Roger has made so much his own: Scottish historiography; humanism and literacy; Scottish political and religious thought; John Knox; George Buchanan; James VI and I; Scotland and England; Scotland and Europe; the Scottish Renaissance (if there was one); and the Declaration of Arbroath. We really needed a week rather than a day to do all of this justice.

Roger and I first met in the summer of 1985 in Edinburgh at a conference on sovereignty held by the Traditional Cosmology Society, where Roger was brave enough to be giving a paper and neither of us really had a clue about much else that was going on. The conference was largely dominated by anthropologists talking about incest and Louise Fradenburg talking about Lacan. The paper that Roger was giving was to become one of his most significant contributions to the literature of sovereignty and political thought in Scotland, and I estimate that hearing it held up the completion of my doctoral thesis by a good six months – but only for the better. This was ‘Kingship, Tyranny and the Right to Resist in Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, published first in SHR in 1987, and then published again in slightly revised form in Roger's magisterial Kingship and the Commonweal in 1998. (I have to say parenthetically here that I do – dimly – recall helping Roger celebrate the publication of that book at a conference Nicola Royan organised at St Andrews in 1999. The following day there was a total eclipse of the sun, and I have rarely been more grateful for one given the size of my hangover.)

‘Kingship, Tyranny and the Right to Resist’ showed many of the characteristics of Roger's subsequent writing, along with the qualities that have made his work so accessible and so important to literary scholars as well as his fellow historians.

This is the second volume of a projected set of five. The first volume, Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1917–1919, was published in 1991; since then, other studies have supervened. It is now intended to complete the series, down to 1945. The scheme is for Mr Robin Brodhurst, author of a biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, to edit the two volumes corresponding to Pound's time as First Sea Lord – June 1939 to October 1943. It is intended that I should edit the volume for 1943 to 1945.

The years between 1919 and 1939 were dominated by a series of naval arms limitation and disarmament conferences and the first four Parts of this volume acknowledge this. Part V, ‘The Sailors Meet’, deals with the encounters of serving officers and men of the two navies and their observations on each other's navy. Finally, Part VI, ‘Edging towards an Alliance’, details the hesitant and limited steps towards co-operation between 1937 and 1939 when a second world war looked increasingly likely.

The materials used for the Royal Navy have been drawn from the Admiralty papers at The National Archives, Kew, London; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London; and the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge. For the United States Navy, I have drawn on The National Archives, Washington, DC; the Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard; The Manuscripts Division of The Library of Congress, Washington; and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. I have avoided using diplomatic or political documents where possible; many of the documents on foreign policy have been published in the series Documents on British Foreign Policy (London: HMSO, various) and Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, various).

Punctuation marks have been inserted on occasion to clarify passages or to mark omissions. At times, numbered paragraphs in official communications have been omitted, resulting in breaks in their sequence. Missing words are indicated thus: [——]. If there is some doubt about a word it is expressed thus: [? word]. Place names are contemporaneous. Places and dates of origin, where known or where appropriate, are placed at the head of documents. All Admiralty communications originated from London.

CIRCUMSTANCES OF PUBLICATION

The Householder's Philosophy, the first complete English translation of a work by Torquato Tasso, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 6 February 1588 as ‘the Philosophicall Discourse of the householder’. It was printed by John Charlewood for Thomas Hacket in the same year (STC 23702.5). As Kirk Melnikoff points out, Hacket had a ‘career-long penchant for publishing translations’, which ‘would have distinguished him from many other Elizabethan publishers’. ‘As a distributor of translated material’, Melnikoff adds, ‘Hacket was able to capitalize not only on the extensive resources of continental, scholastic, and classical material but also on the ever-growing numbers of middle-class readers.’ Hacket's desire to cater to this segment of readership is evident in his repeatedly issuing ‘books oriented towards the concern of the middling classes with self-improvement’, books that all ‘present thinly-veiled conduct guides for a bourgeois audience’. From 1583 onwards, Hacket worked almost exclusively with Charlewood, who, as Jason Lawrence observes, was ‘responsible at this time for the most significant body of Italian books to be printed in London which do not originate from [John] Wolfe’, the foremost London specialist in the publication of Italian books, who had also published in 1584 an incomplete translation of Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1581) by Scipione Gentili in three separate volumes.5 Kyd's book was therefore placed at the perfect juncture of the printer's and the publisher's interests; in addition, as Erne remarks,