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The Curious Case of the Misplaced Eulogy: the Printing History of Matthew Parker's Sermon for Martin Bucer's Funeral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2023

N. SCOTT AMOS
N. SCOTT AMOS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Lynchburg, 1501 Lakeside Drive, Virginia 24501, USA
*
E-mail: amos.n@lynchburg.edu
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Abstract

The history of the sermon that Matthew Parker preached at the funeral of Martin Bucer is more complicated than has been thought. It is generally known that the first printing of 1551 was subsequently translated from English into Latin for a European audience in 1562 (printed in that year and again in 1577), and then published in English a second time, in a 1587 imprint that is thought to be a second edition. What is not generally known is that the second English printing was a translation of the 1562/1577 Latin version, and that in the process of translation and re-translation, Parker's original sermon was stripped of nearly 60 per cent of its content, as a eulogy that followed the sermon was misattributed to Walter Haddon at some point just prior to 1562. The present article seeks to explain how this came to pass, and argues that the 1551 imprint should replace the 1587 as the primary text for what Parker said of Bucer.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 61 - 73
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2023

Among the published works written by Matthew Parker (1504–75) that are found in the STC, the ESTC and the USTC, are two printings of a sermon that he preached on 3 March 1551 at the funeral of Martin Bucer (1491–1551).Footnote 1 The first was published not long after the funeral by Richard Jugge and is entitled Howe we ought to take the death of the godly, a sermon made in Cambrydge at the buriall of the noble clerck. D.M. Bucer: by Matthew Parkar D. of Diuinite (STC 19293; ESTC S94612; USTC 515422), London [1551].Footnote 2 The second printing, entitled A funerall sermon, both godlye, learned and comfortable, preached at S. Maries in Cambridge, Anno 1551. at the buriall of the reverend doctor, and faithfull pastor of the Churche of Christe, Martin Bucer, was published by Thomas Purfoot (1546–1615) in London in 1587 (STC 19293a; ESTC S109977; USTC 510814).Footnote 3 Though the language of both is English (which was, after all, the language in which Parker preached the sermon), the 1587 printing is an English translation by one Thomas Newton (1544/5–1607) of what the STC calls ‘an abridged Latin version printed abroad’.Footnote 4 This ‘abridged Latin version’ is almost certainly the one first found in the Historia vera of 1562 (an account of Bucer's time in England),Footnote 5 and subsequently included in the Scripta Anglicana of 1577 (a collection of Bucer's works that he had with him, or wrote, while he was in England).Footnote 6 Thus, it is not the case that the 1587 printing was a second edition, strictly speaking (as the STC record indicates), nor even an edited version of the 1551 original, but a different version.

However, upon closer examination, the publishing history of this sermon becomes more complicated. When Jugge's printing of Parker's sermon was translated into Latin for the Historia vera, a lengthy eulogy for Bucer given by Parker as part of the funeral, and which one finds in the 1551 printing immediately following his sermon and prayers (preces), does not appear.Footnote 7 Yet it was not the case that Parker's eulogy went untranslated and only the sermon and prayers were translated and printed in the Historia vera. Rather, the eulogy was translated into Latin and printed in the same volume, but separated from the sermon and attributed to Parker's fellow officiant at the funeral, Walter Haddon (1514/15–71).Footnote 8

To add to the confusion, Haddon did indeed deliver a Latin oration on Bucer, the words of which are found embedded in a letter of Nicholas Carr (1522/3–68) to John Cheke (1514–57) under the heading D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio. The letter was first printed in De obitu doctissimi et sanctissimi Theologi Doctoris Martini Buceri … Epistolae duae (STC 5108; ESTC 5116843; USTC 504587), London 1551, which was also subsequently incorporated into the Historia vera, Footnote 9 and later into the Scripta Anglicana.Footnote 10 Further, this oration appeared in a volume of Haddon's works published in 1567, G. Haddoni … lucubrationes passim collectae (STC 12596; ESTC S103603; UTSC 506652), London 1567.Footnote 11 A simple comparison shows that what can be regarded as Haddon's authentic oration (that is, D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio) is not a brief version of the 1562 Latin translation of Parker's eulogy now incorrectly attributed to Haddon (that is, Oratis funebris Gualteri Haddoni). The fact that G. Haddoni … lucubrationes does not include the oration/eulogy incorrectly attributed to him is noteworthy and should also prompt us to question his supposed authorship of this piece.Footnote 12

The consequence of all this is that Parker's original English eulogy has only rarely been cited, and for the most part remains unknown.Footnote 13 The version of his sermon to which reference is most commonly made is the 1587 English translation of the 1562 Latin translation of the 1551 English original. This confusing set of circumstances is not helped by the fact that the text furnished in Early English Books Online,Footnote 14 and before that in the University Microfilms International collection, is the 1587 printing. For now, the text of the 1551 printing is only available by visiting one of a handful of libraries in the United Kingdom.Footnote 15 This is a pity, as without the evidence of Parker's 1551 English original as printed by Jugge, historians have used what is effectively a truncated (not ‘abridged’) reverse-translation of what Parker had to say on that day in March 1551, which obscures a valuable contemporary perspective – Parker's eulogy – on the significance of Martin Bucer for the Reformation in mid-Tudor Cambridge. It is time that Parker's eulogy for Bucer be restored (in its original English) to its proper author and place and given greater visibility.

The starting point in 1551: Howe we ought to take the death of the godly

A brief description of the 1551 printing might be helpful, given that it is relatively unknown and not readily accessible.Footnote 16 The printer of Parker's sermon was Richard Jugge (c. 1514–77). The sermon is in an octavo volume, consisting of signatures A1r–F6v, for a total of 96 pages, two of which are blank, and one of which contains errata. There is no preface or dedicatory letter. Following the title page (sig. A1r), we find on sig. A2r the biblical text on the basis of which the sermon was preached, which is Wisdom of Solomon iv.7–19.Footnote 17 The sermon is on sigs A2v–B8r (twenty-seven pages), and the ‘preces’ on sigs B8r–C3r (seven pages). Printed in the margins are the biblical citations for references (either of quotations or allusions) made by Parker throughout his sermon.Footnote 18 The eulogy is on sigs C3v–F6r (fifty-four pages), beginning with ‘Iustus si morte preoccupatus fuerit, in refrigerio erit etc.’, the opening verse of the sermon text; thus, eulogy and sermon are not only physically linked together, but also textually.Footnote 19

The sermon and eulogy constituted an impassioned outpouring of praise for Bucer, and grief at his loss to Cambridge.Footnote 20 This is not the place to attempt a summary of the whole of what Parker proclaimed, but one gains a sense of its emotion and passion from what he said in this heartfelt declaration that comes towards the end of the eulogy: ‘There was much more in him [Bucer] than either his books, his readings [i.e., lectures] or disputations singularly considered was able to express him. Verily he was at one word, a singular gift of God, a treasure hidden, an incomparable ornament.’Footnote 21

Parker implored the mourners ‘to ponder what a treasure we had, what a loss we have’.Footnote 22 The scholarly consensus among those who study the genre of sermonic literature is that the sermon was an important work.Footnote 23 It is worth observing that this consensus is based on the 1587 text, with little or no reference to the 1551 original. Hence, Parker's eulogy for Bucer is lost to the discussion. This is no small detail, as Parker's eulogy makes up nearly 60 per cent of what he spoke on the day, and thus must have massively overshadowed Haddon's ‘genuine’ oration (D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio): if Haddon only spoke what he provided to Carr, his oration was roughly 800 words, versus the approximately 6,200 words of Parker's eulogy.Footnote 24 This points up the disservice to Parker in the later printings (the Latin [1562/1577], and then the English from the Latin [1587]) regarding the full extent of what he had to say about Bucer, and the impact the eulogy likely had upon its auditors.

But how did this ‘muddle’ come to pass?

Translation and confusion in 1562: the Historia vera

After Bucer's death, Konrad Hubert (1507–77), his faithful assistant in Strasbourg since 1531, began planning the publication of Bucer's collected works, a project which he envisioned would result in ten folio volumes.Footnote 25 In this connection, he sought manuscripts of what Bucer had written while in England.Footnote 26 However, the effort to meet his request was hampered to a significant degree by the restoration of Catholicism under Mary i in 1553, and in particular the burning of materials written by Bucer, along with his exhumed corpse, as the final act of a posthumous heresy trial held in 1557.Footnote 27 Thus, work in earnest on the gathering of Bucer's writings produced while he resided in England was delayed until after the accession of Elizabeth i in 1558.

Hubert's principal contact in pursuit of this part of his larger enterprise was Edmund Grindal (?1519–83), a close friend of Bucer during the Alsatian's sojourn in Cambridge and soon to become bishop of London in the first stage of a career in the episcopate.Footnote 28 Hubert and Grindal met while the latter spent part of his exile in Strasbourg during Mary's reign, and Grindal had promised Hubert that he would send Bucer's literary remains to him once he returned to England.Footnote 29 On 23 May 1559 Grindal wrote to Hubert of his progress in fulfilment of his promise: ‘I lately handed over to [Richard Hilles] some writings of Bucer, to be delivered to you. One was, his public disputation when he took his doctor's degree; another was concerning the entire controversy between himself and Yong [that is, John Young], whom you used to call fungus.’Footnote 30 Alas, although these and some of Bucer's other writings in England had survived, having been hidden away by his friends, several of them were in deteriorated condition when they were retrieved. In that same letter, Grindal wrote to Hubert:

Dr Parker, who sent me these manuscripts, wrote word that he had also some other fragments; but when he had them brought forth from the hiding-places, in which they had been concealed during the whole of these incendiary times, he found them gnawed by rats, and entirely spoiled … We have nothing more of Bucer's here that I know of.Footnote 31

Hubert's ambitions were in the end to be fulfilled only in part, with the publication of Scripta Anglicana in 1577 as the sole volume to come into print.

Hubert appears to have had a parallel project in hand as well, a collection of items relating to the history of Bucer's sojourn in England, including a narrative of his funeral and its later, strange aftermath. Again, Grindal undertook to send relevant materials. To that end, in a letter of 14 July 1559 Grindal promised to send Hubert ‘the account of the burning of Bucer's [bones]’,Footnote 32 without doubt what became the Historia accusatione, condemnatione, exhumatione, atque combustione excellentissimorum Theologorum D. Martini Buceri & Pauli Fagii, one of the better-known works included in the Historia vera.Footnote 33 According to the ecclesiastical historian and biographer, John Strype (1643–1737), by 1561 Grindal had sent many other of the works that are found in the first half of the Historia vera, to wit:

De obitu doctissimi & sanctissimi theologi doctoris, Martini Buceri, Johan. Checi ad D. Petrum Martyrum Vermilium. Epist. I.

De eadem prolixius, Nicolai Carri novocastrensis, ad Johann. Checum. Epist. II.

Oratio funebris Gualteri Haddoni LL. doctoris, academiae Cantabrigiensis oratoris.

Concio D. Matthaei Parkeri S. theologiae professoris, ibidem in funere Buceri habita, atque ex Anglico in Latinum versa.

Judicuim clariss. & doctiss. cuiusdam theologi, de D. Martino Bucero.

Johannis Checi ad D. Gualterum Haddonum LL.doctorem. Epist. III.

D. Petri Martyris Vermilii etiam de obitu D. Mart. Buceri ad Conradum Hubertum. Epist. IV.

Epigrammata varia cum Graece tum Latine conscripta, in Mortem D. Martini Buceri. Footnote 34

In fact, this is a list of the first eight items (in order) taken from the ‘Catalogus eorum quae hoc libello continentur’ of the Historia vera. Footnote 35

Several of these items (but not all) were in De obitu doctissimi of 1551: Cheke's letter to Peter Martyr Vermigli, Carr's letter to Cheke, Cheke's letter to Haddon and the epigrams.Footnote 36 These texts were all in Latin (with some parts in Greek in the case of the epigrams). Such was not the case with Parker's sermon, nor the eulogy that was subsequently attributed to Haddon. The original published text that included both sermon and eulogy (Howe we ought to take the death of the godly) was in English and in need of translation for a continental readership. Note that the Catalogus states that the text of the sermon presented in the Historia vera has been translated from English into Latin (‘atque ex Anglico in Latinum Versa’). However, there is no indication that the eulogy had also been translated from English into Latin. It was at this point that the confusion about the attribution of this latter piece began.

It would seem likely the work of translation was done in England and the result was then sent to Strasbourg in manuscript form, along with the printed Latin works.Footnote 37 However, there is simply no way of knowing how the two parts of Parker's contribution (sermon and eulogy) were presented in the translation: was it a single, continuous manuscript copy, with the eulogy perhaps beginning on the same sheet where the prayers ended? Or did the translator/copyist start the eulogy on a new sheet (which seems the most likely), thus making it all too easy for someone unfamiliar with the original to treat it as a separate document? One might have thought that anyone translating Jugge's volume would have known that the eulogy was a continuation of the sermon (after all the opening verse of the sermon text, Wisdom of Solomon iv.7, is cited at the outset of the eulogy), and would have sought to keep them clearly linked together in the Latin translation to be supplied to Hubert. What seems clear, though, is that the two parts were separated at some point, either in the process of translation, or upon their reception in Strasbourg, and this resulted in the ‘disappearance’ of Parker as eulogist.

There is another possibility that might go some way towards explaining the error, at least in part. Hubert and/or his assistants would have been aware of the sequence of the funeral from the descriptions of Bucer's funeral found in the letters of Cheke and Carr: Walter Haddon held forth in a Latin oration, and then Parker preached a sermon in English. It might have been assumed that the eulogy which Parker gave (now translated into Latin) was in fact Haddon's Latin oration, especially if it had become separated from the sermon.Footnote 38 If it was believed that the eulogy/oration was Haddon's, this would also explain why the oration that was in fact the words of Parker's eulogy precede the sermon in the Historia vera rather than follow it as in Howe we ought to take the death of the godly. Footnote 39

What is puzzling, even granting this scenario, is why, when the Historia vera was edited and prepared for printing in 1562, it was not noticed that the text of Haddon's Latin oration was also among the materials to be included in the volume. It was incorporated (as we have observed) into Carr's letter to Cheke, and thus one of the pieces also included in the Historia vera. A comparison of the Latin text quoted in Carr's letter with the Latin text now incorrectly attributed to Haddon indicates that it is not as if Carr's letter furnished a Latin paraphrase or summary of what Haddon delivered. Further, in his report to Cheke on Haddon's oration, Carr was clear that he was using Haddon's words from a copy Haddon had given him, not giving his own summary of them. And yet Hubert included in the Historia vera what he may have believed were two versions of the same oration: first, a short, condensed version of what Haddon said as ‘summarised’ in Carr's letter, a summary such as one might expect in the body of a letter describing the entire ceremony; and second, a long, full version (Hubert being unaware it was a Latin translation of Parker's English eulogy).Footnote 40

An error quietly observed

So far as we know, nobody at the time (and few since) realised the error that resulted in Parker's eulogy passing from general view as his work. Or, at least, not many people. It is clear that at a minimum one person, and one in the best position to know, saw the error, and made a comment about it that has escaped notice to this point. That person was Matthew Parker, who observed and commented on the error, possibly soon after the Historia vera was published, even if he did not appear to make any effort to correct it.

In the Parker Collection at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a copy of the Historia vera (CCCC, SP 405 [1]) in which there are marginal, hand-written notes on sig. F2v, adjacent to the opening lines of what we now know to be the Latin translation of Parker's eulogy. These notes clearly indicate an awareness that things are amiss in the published record of who said what on the occasion of Bucer's funeral. To engage in a bit of historical whimsy, one can imagine Parker leafing through the volume shortly after he acquired a copy; he would have read Cheke's letter to Vermigli, and then Carr's letter to Cheke (which included words of praise for Parker's sermon). This would have brought him to sig. F2r (fo. 34r), where the printed text reads thus on the lower half of the leaf, the title of what will follow on the next leaf: ‘Oratio fvnebris Gvalteri Haddoni, LL. doctoris academiae Cantabrigiensis oratoris praestantissim, in laudem D. Martini Buceri.’ One can imagine Parker's annoyance, as he turned to sig. F2v (fo. 34v), to find that the oration he read was not Haddon's, but the Latin translation of Parker's eulogy, now erroneously attributed to Haddon. At the top is a handwritten note in what is very likely Parker's hand, which states: ‘This is the latter part of the speech [sermon] of Doctor Parker after the prayers, not the oration of Doctor Haddon [… (?)], fo. 24.’Footnote 41 Also, on sig. F2v (fo. 34v), another jotting on the left margin goes on to say: ‘Clearly this speech/oration was translated into Latin.’Footnote 42

Parker states the obvious: this is not Haddon's oration (which needed no translation into Latin), but instead Parker's eulogy originally given in English (which did need to be translated into Latin for this volume), something anyone familiar with the funeral would have known to be the case.Footnote 43 If we turn back in the Historia vera to where Parker directs us, to sig. D8r (fo. 24r is the cross-reference he used), we find ourselves looking at D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio, which begins in the midst of Carr's letter to Cheke, and which is the actual oration given by Haddon. The end of Haddon's oration is indicated by a vertical stroke made by Parker or one of his assistants on sig. E3r (fo. 27r), just after the word ‘confugiunt’. At this point, Carr then goes on in his letter to summarise Parker's sermon, with words of high praise and with the fervent hope that the sermon will be printed and circulated among the people (sig. E4v [fo. 28v]).Footnote 44

Many, both at that time and in subsequent years, may have been unaware of the errors regarding who said what at Bucer's funeral, but Matthew Parker was not. All this notwithstanding, Parker does not appear to have made Hubert aware of what went wrong here, and when the materials of the Historia vera were included in the one volume that was the only fruit of Hubert's ambitious project for Bucer's writings, the Scripta Anglicana, the error remained, and has largely escaped notice until the present.Footnote 45

An error persists in 1587: A funerall sermon, both godlye, learned and comfortable

This brings us to the second English printing of Parker's sermon, published by Thomas Purfoot in 1587. Though identified as a second edition in the STC, it would be more accurate to say it is a second version. There is no evidence that Purfoot or the translator, Thomas Newton, had any awareness of the original 1551 printing.Footnote 46 Instead the 1587 volume is an English translation of the Latin translation of Parker's original English sermon. The intent in producing this English translation was strictly as a token of Newton's gratitude for two valued friends, James Taylor and Ranulph Barlow. He wrote:

Your manifold curtesies towards me, together also with the Reuerend account, that you euer made of that late worthy Archbishop, the Author hereof, moued me to translate & dedicate vnto you, this his godly and learned Sermon. Receiue it therefore euen for the Authors sake: [and] embrace it for the matter therein comprised: & let it remaine as a token of the vnfeined goodwill of your olde schoolefellow.Footnote 47

Remembering Bucer would not appear to have been of much account as a motivation for this exercise; rather, it was a shared esteem among friends for one another, and for Parker as a bishop and as an exemplar of a homilist that is most important here.Footnote 48

It is clear that much of the substance of Parker's original sermon is present in this version, but it is equally clear that the text has undergone such changes as one might expect in what was essentially a reverse-translation. And one of the most substantial changes with respect to the 1551 original is that Parker's eulogy is not included, because it had been separated from the sermon and attributed to Haddon some twenty-five years previously, a sad truth of which no one in 1587 seems to have been aware.

It is ironic (even if understandable) that the more readily available 1587 version of the sermon has become the default text for contemporary scholarship on what Parker had to say of Bucer, his friend and fellow pastor and leader of the Church reformed. Yet while the words of 1587 are in the English tongue he used to deliver it at the funeral, it is not Parker's English. Further, the 1587 printing presents only 40 per cent of what he had to say on that sombre day in March 1551, as the eulogy is absent. While the misattribution of Parker's eulogy is not a major error, the correction of which will cause a shift in the historiography of the English Reformation in Cambridge, still, an error is an error, and once brought to light should be corrected in some way. Parker, and his passionate and heartfelt eulogy for Bucer, deserve no less.

Table 1. Summary of the changes between 1551 and 1587

Footnotes

I would like to express my gratitude to the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for access to the riches of the Parker Library; to several generations of Parker librarians, in particular Gill Cannell, former Parker sublibrarian; and to those who assisted me at different times for their help in deciphering the marginal jottings found in CCCC, SP 405 (1) which are crucial to the article that follows: Catherine Hall, former archivist of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Dr David Crankshaw, Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Christianity at King's College, London. Dr Crankshaw also graciously provided some very useful feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 Bucer had been the long-time leader of reform in Strasbourg. After his exile from there in early 1549, he accepted Thomas Cranmer's long-standing invitation to come to England, arriving in April. He served as Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge from December 1549 until his death on 28 February/1 March 1551.

2 1551 is the likely date assigned by the STC; the volume imprint has no date.

3 Hopf, Constantin, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation, Oxford 1946, 29 n. 5Google Scholar, mentions another printing by Purfoot which he suggests can be dated to 1570: A funeral sermon preached 1551 at the burial of the noble clerck D.M. Bucer. Hopf is followed in this by Sean Floury, ‘How to remember thee? Problems of memorialization in English writing, 1558–1625’, unpubl. PhD diss. Louisiana State 2008, 57, at <https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/226/>. There is no evidence of such in the STC, ESTC or USTC.

4 Floury is wrong in his assertion that Parker preached the sermon in Latin: ‘How to remember thee?’, 58 n. 45.

5 Historia vera: de vita, obitu, sepultura, accusatione, condemnatione, exhumatione, combustione, honorificaque tandem restitutione beatorum atque doctiss. theologorum D. Martini Buceri & Pauli Fagii, Strasbourg 1562 (USTC 663264). The sermon title here is Concio Matthaei Parkeri sacrae theologiae professoris … in funere D. Martini Buceri, sigs H5r–Kv.

6 Concio Matthaei Parkeri … in Martini Buceri Scripta Anglicana fere omnia, Basel 1577, 892–9.

7 Perhaps the absence of the eulogy is why the reference is to an ‘abridged Latin version’. I say this because in fact the 1551 sermon and prayer total about 4,500 words, while in the 1587 version they total about 5,800 words. In other words, the 1587 version of sermon and prayer is a longer text, not an abridgement.

8 The eulogy was now given the title Oratis funebris Gualteri Haddoni, LL. doctoris, Academia Cantabrigiensis oratoris in laudem D. Martini Buceri, found in Historia vera, sigs F2r–H5r. It later appeared in Scripta Anglicana, 882–92.

9 Carr's letter in De obitu doctissimi is found at sigs B3r–I1v; in Historia vera, it is found at sigs B6v–F2r. The letter is a report to Cheke about Bucer's funeral, for Cheke was not in attendance. Note that as Carr turns to his account of Haddon's oration at sig. D8r, he states that he has a copy of Haddon's own words from Haddon himself, which he proceeds to incorporate into the letter in the place of a summary like that which he goes on to give in the same letter of Parker's sermon. Haddon's oration begins in the middle of Carr's letter at sig. D8r under the heading, D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio, and ends at sig. E3r at ‘confugiunt’ on the first line.

10 Scripta Anglicana, 867–82; D. Gualteri Haddoni oratio begins on p. 876 and ends on p. 878 at line 19.

11 G. Haddoni … lucubrationes, 83–9.

12 Hence, I cannot agree with John McDiarmid's suggestion that the text Haddon gave Carr was later ‘reworked’ into a longer version, namely into what is actually Parker's eulogy: McDiarmid, John F., ‘Classical epitaphs for heroes of faith: mid-Tudor neo-Latin memorial volumes and their Protestant humanist context’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition iii/1(Summer 1996), 23–47Google Scholar at p. 30 n. 30.

13 True, the evidence of his eulogy exists in Latin, but as noted it is erroneously attributed to Haddon and only those familiar with Parker's 1551 original would realise the error.

14 <https://www.proquest.com/eebo/>.

15 The ESTC and the USTC list only five copies: three in Cambridge (one in the University Library, two in the Parker Library), one in the library of Lincoln Cathedral and one held by the National Trust: <https://www.ustc.ac.uk/editions/515422>. There is one other copy of which I know, a manuscript found in the British Library (BL, ms Lansdowne, 931), written by someone who had to hand a copy of the Jugge volume as the source. This manuscript copy presents its own interesting set of problems which I address in a parallel article to this one: ‘BL, Lansdowne MS 931, ff. 1r–27r. and the disappearance (and rediscovery) of items in the Parker Library’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, forthcoming.

16 For this article, I have consulted the two copies found in the Parker Library: CCCC, SP 36 and SP 453(1).

17 The biblical text is in Latin, as are all biblical quotations in the body of the sermon.

18 There is one note printed in the margin at sig. B4r which quotes Deuteronomy i.37 (in Latin).

19 Note that in what follows the sermon is not identified as a eulogy per se, which may explain some of the confusion regarding the efforts in 1562 to assemble the evidence of the funeral and properly identify the extant materials.

20 For a lengthier treatment of the sermon and eulogy in the context of the funeral see Amos, N. Scott, ‘In memoriam Martini Buceri: the contested afterlife of Martin Bucer in England’, in Earngey, Mark and Tong, Stephen (eds), Reformation Anglicanism: essays on Tudor evangelicalism, London 2023, 161–82Google Scholar.

21 Howe we ought to take the death of the godly, sig. E3v.

22 Ibid. sig. E4r.

23 See, especially, Pigman, G. W., Grief and English renaissance elegy, Cambridge 1985, 29–30Google Scholar. See also Houlbrooke, Ralph, Death, religion, and the family in England, 1480–1750, Oxford 1998, 223Google Scholar.

24 Regarding Haddon's delivery, Cheke said he was ‘a dying man … discoursing on death’ and was suffering a severe attack of illness at the time, indeed on this occasion: Gleanings of a few scattered ears, ed. G. C. Gorham [London 1857], 239; Historia vera, sig. B4r. This circumstance could account for an abbreviated address.

25 Stupperich, Robert, ‘Hubert, Konrad’, in Neue Deutsche Biografie, ix, Berlin 1972, 702–3Google Scholar.

26 This request likely included works by Bucer written elsewhere but which Hubert had reason to believe were in Bucer's possession at his death. This is suggested by the range of works that appear in the one volume that came out of this project, Scripta Anglicana, and which pre-date Bucer's English sojourn.

27 For a recent treatment of this macabre event see Amos, ‘In memoriam Martini Buceri’, 161–82.

28 See Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Reformer and the archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian’, in Collinson, Patrick, Godly people: essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism, London 1983, 19–44Google Scholar.

29 Strype, John, The history of the life and acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal: to which is added an appendix of original MSS, Oxford 1821, 200Google Scholar.

30 The Zurich letters, comprising the correspondence of several English bishops and others with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Hastings Robinson, Cambridge 1842, i. 18. The items to which he refers are found in the Scripta Anglicana on, respectively, pp. 184–90 and pp. 712–862. These works serve as evidence of Bucer's writing, but also of his activities while in Cambridge. John Young (1514–81/2), of Trinity College, was a strong Catholic opponent of Bucer in Cambridge disputations in 1550.

31 Zurich letters, i. 18–19.

32 Ibid. i. 24. In fact, it was only in a letter of 13 October 1560 that Grindal could declare that he had finally sent the account (i. 51–2). In the same letter, Grindal indicates that he is sending a few more of Bucer's writings composed while in England that had ‘lain unnoticed among the papers of the most reverend Archbishop of Canterbury [Parker], and which he has given me for this purpose’ (i. 52). In the end, as a perusal of the contents of Scripta Anglicana shows, a fair number of works survived.

33 Historia vera, sigs Q1r–V6r.

34 Strype, Grindal, 201. However, Strype is not quite correct in what he says, as we shall see shortly.

35 Historia vera, sig. a4r–v. The Historia accusatione is the eleventh item in the Catalogus.

36 The following items were not in De obitu doctissimi: the letter of Peter Martyr Vermigli to Hubert, which was almost certainly supplied by Hubert himself (being the addressee); the ‘judgement of a certain theologian’, lines taken from Calvin's letter to Simon Grynaeus, which prefaced Calvin's commentary on Romans (Jean Calvin, Ioannes Calvini commentarii in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos [Strasbourg, 1540], sigs a4v–a5r); and, of course, Parker's sermon, and the eulogy that came to be attributed to Haddon.

37 Regarding the extent to which Parker was involved in this, it is not possible to say with any certainty, though it seems unlikely he had a direct part to play in the work of translation.

38 If Jugge's volume had been sent for translation in Strasbourg, then Hubert and his co-labourers would have seen that Parker's English eulogy was not Haddon's Latin oration (and, as noted earlier, Haddon was reported to have spoken his part at the funeral in Latin, not English); this makes it more likely the translation work was done in England and sent in manuscript.

39 It is worth noting that the title for this Latin oration (Oratio funebris Gualteri Haddoni LL. doctoris, Academiae Cantabrigiensis oratoris in laudem D. Martini Buceri) first appears with the Historia vera.

40 This is similar to what John McDiarmid suggested: ‘Classical epitaphs for heroes of faith’, 30 n. 30. Alas, it is untenable.

41 ‘Hoc est posterior pars concionis D. Parker post preces non oro. D. Haddoni [con h…?], fo. 24’: Historia vera, sig. F2v. Parts of these jottings defy decipherment.

42 ‘Hec concio translate Latine sz [i.e. scilicet] induis/indius [?]’: ibid.

43 That Parker is referred to in the third person in these marginal notes does not necessarily require that someone else wrote them.

44 This is a bit ironic since the larger part of Parker's contribution to Bucer's funeral was the eulogy that came to be attributed to Haddon.

45 In 1577 Parker's eulogy was still called Oratio fvnebris Gvalteri Haddoni, LL. doctoris Academiae Cantabrigiensis oratis praestantissim, in laudem D. Martini Buceri, found in Scripta Anglicana, 882–92. It is mildly amusing to observe that whoever set the type gave the running title at the head of the verso pages, in succession, as Oratio Gvalt. Had. on pp. 882 and 884, then Epistola Nicol. Carri on pp. 886 and 888, then Epistola Ioan. Checi on 890, and back to Epistola Nic. Carri on p. 892.

46 Newton was both a Church of England priest and a translator of a wide range of texts, both Classical and contemporary.

47 A Funerall sermon, both Godlye, learned and comfortable, sig. A2r.

48 If, as Sean Floury argues, this translation was an effort on the part of Newton to employ Parker and Bucer to mount an attack on John Whitgift's ecclesiastical policy, especially after Whitgift's suppression of Presbyterianism in the 1580s, it is not evident in the dedicatory epistle: Floury, ‘How to remember thee?’, 56, 60.

Figure 0

Table 1. Summary of the changes between 1551 and 1587