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‘A noughtye and a false lyeng boke’: William Barlow and the Lutheran Factions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrew M. McLean
Andrew M. McLean*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin - Parkside
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Extract

When Thomas Stokesley, Bishop of London, ‘commaunded Barlowes dyaloges to be preached of the curates through out all hys dyocese,’ he was recommending one of the most interesting English accounts of the Reformation in Germany: William Barlow's A dyaloge descrybyng the orygynall ground of these Lutheran faccyons and many of theyr abusys (1531). The interlocutor William, recently returned from the Continent, names to his friend Nicholas the leading reformers he has met and outlines Luther's controversies with Henry VIII, Carlstadt, and Zwingli. He discusses the quarrel between the Lutheran and Zwinglian factions over the eucharist and their subsequent meeting at Marburg (1529). His account of the ‘third faccyon,’ the Anabaptists, constitutes an early source for England's knowledge of Anabaptist beliefs and many of their startling practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Summer 1978 , pp. 173 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1978

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References

1 Bale, John, Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe (Zurich, 1543), p. 55 Google Scholar (sig. G7V), remarks that he knows this ‘the better’ because at the same time Stokesley suspended him ‘from preachynge in estsexe [Essex] because I wold not leave the gospell and be swaome to the observuacyon of hys injunccyons.’ Stokesley, who died in 1539, became Bishop of London in November 1530. In 1534 Bale was convened before the Archbishop of York to answer for his preaching against Roman uses; he fled England in 1540. I have expanded abbreviations and contractions and follow modern typographical conventions in respect to the use of i/j and u/v.

2 Printed by W. Rastell in London, STC 1461. A second edition, STC 1462, appeared in 1553 printed by J. Cawood. A facsimile of the unique 1531 copy in the Bodleian library was published by Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Amsterdam, 1974). John Lunn reprints the 1553 text in Bishop Barlow's Dialogue on the Lutheran Factions (London, 1897), and the present author's critical edition of the 1531 text will soon be available. References here are to the 1531 edition and the title has been shortened to the less cumbersome Lutheran Factions. The Bodleian copy of STC 1461 is the only complete copy; the Ushaw College (Durham) copy lacks signatures H-H4v while the Uscott College copy listed in Ramage, D., A Finding List of English Books (Durham, 1958), p. 7 Google Scholar, is actually STC 1462.

3 Williams, George, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 401–402 Google Scholar. William considers that the Anabaptists ‘issued’ from the Oecolampadians or Zwinglians and contain ‘about xl. sectes of dyvers heresyes and sondery opynyons’ (sig. G2). He explains that Anabaptists are so-called ‘because they are twyes chrystened, and wyll admytte none as theyr faythfull brotheren except they be rebaptyzed agayne. They suffre not theyrchyldren to be chrystened untyll they be of greate age, and have many straunge opynyons’ (sig. G4). He mentions Swiss laws condemning Anabaptists to death and enumerates the latter's sects: “There be some whych hold opynyon that all deuylles and damnyd sowles shall be savyd at the daye of dome. Some of them persuade that the serpent whyche dysceyved Eve was Christ. Some of them graunt to every man and woman two soules. Some affyrme lecherye to be no synne, and that one maye use a nother manes wyfe withoute offence. Some take apon them to be sooth sayers and prophetes of wonderfull thynges to come, and have prophecyed the daye of judgement to be at hande…. Some of them bothe men and women at theyre congregacyones for a mysterye shew them selfes naked, affyrmyng that they be in the state of innocencye. Also some hold that no man ought to be punysshed or suffere execucyon for any cryme or trespace be yt never so horryble …’ (sigs.H1v-H2).

4 The most recent biographical account of William Barlow, by Routh, C. R. W., Who's Who in History (Oxford, 1964), II, 110–112 Google Scholar, says the bishop is not the author of Lutheran Factions and ascribes it to Jerome Barlow, who had no connection with William. This follows E. G. Rupp's seminal article on Barlow's early career (see n. 5) which also inspired similar conclusions by Clebsch, William, England's Earliest Protestants (New Haven, 1964), p. 236nGoogle Scholar. Rupp corrected some confusions caused by Koszul, A., ‘Was Bishop William Barlow Friar Jerome Barlow?’ Review of English Studies, 4 (January 1928), 25–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose arguments were followed by Knappen, Marshall M., Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939)Google Scholar. Many earlier discussions, such as Herford, Charles H., Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany (Cambridge, 1886)Google Scholar, follow Edward Arber's introduction to his reprint of Rede mee and be nott wrothe (London, 1871) in loosely connecting Jerome with Dickens, William. A. G., The English Reformation (New York, 1964), p. 75 Google Scholar, attributes Lutheran Factions to Jerome after Wolsey's fall.

5 The starting point of any discussion about the early career of Bishop Barlow is Gordon Rupp, E., Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Mainly in the Reign of Henry VIII) (Cambridge, 1947), pp. 62–72 Google Scholar. He notes, p. 62, how the dictionary accounts ‘conflate the careers of two, three, and possibly four persons, besides being embellished with details proper to the career of his brothers John and Roger.’ Roger was a merchant in Spain, a famous traveler and companion of Sebastian Cabot, and later became the first squire of Slebech, Pembrokeshire. John was chaplain to Sir Thomas Boleyn. Charles, B. G., “The Records of Slebech,’ National Library of Wales Journal, 5 (1948), 185 Google Scholar, notes how the Barlows enjoyed the patronage of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell.

6 BM. Cotton, Cleop. E.IV, fol. 146, reprinted in Wright, Thomas, ed., Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of Monasteries (London, 1843; Camden Society, No. 26), pp. 6–7 Google Scholar.

7 Mozley, J. F., ‘Bishop William Barlow,’ The Times Literary Supplement, April 24, 1948, p. 233 Google Scholar, claims the handwriting of Cotton, Cleop. E.IV, fol. 146, and that of Caligula, B.III, fol. 195 (Barlow's report to Cromwell on a diplomatic mission to Scotland), are identical. I have compared the handwriting in the two manuscripts and have no reason to doubt Mozley. See also Horst, I. B., The Radical Brethrem (Nieuwkoop, 1972), p. 49nGoogle Scholar, for a similar conclusion.

8 Koszul's suggestion (see n. 4).

9 Anthea Hume, ‘A Study of the Writings of the English Protestant Exiles, 1525-35,’ unpublished University of London dissertation (1961), pp. 566-570. One untidy end for Rupp, p. 72, is that the author of Lutheran Factions, ‘like the diplomat Barlow, had visited Rome.’

10 As characterized by Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation, p. 75 Google Scholar.

11 Rogers, Elizabeth F., ed., The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947), p. 325 Google Scholar, 1-5 (Episde 143). Rogers supplies the context for More's reply in ‘Sir Thomas More's Letter to Bugenhagen,’ The Modem Churchman, 35 (1946), 350-360, reprinted in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, ed. R. S. Sylvester and G. P. Marc'hadour (Hamden, Conn., 1977), pp. 447-454. See also Pineas, Rainer, Thomas More and Tudor Polemics (Bloomington, 1968), pp. 30–35 Google Scholar.

12 The Field Is Won: Life and Death of St. Thomas More (Milwaukee, 1968), p. 389.

13 Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1539-1582 (London and Glasgow, 1950), p. 342 Google Scholar. Southern notes, p. 26, that between 1564 and 1568 some forty recusant publications issued from Louvain. On More's influence on recusant writing see pp. 81 and 135, and McConica, J. K., English Humanism and Reformation Politics (Oxford, 1965), pp. 285–294 Google Scholar; also “The Recusant Reputation of Thomas More,’ in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, pp. 136-149.

14 For more details see McLean, A., ’ “Detestynge Thabomynacyon“: William Barlow, Thomas More and the Anglican Episcopacy,’ Moreana, 49 (February 1976), 67–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stapleton was deprived on his return from the Continent where he had studied theology at Louvain and linguistics at Paris. He arrived at Douay from Louvain in 1569 to teach theology, moved to Reims in 1578, and in 1590 was a professor at Louvain for the next eight years. Even though Stapleton could include Barlow in 1588 among those ‘who rebelled against traditional authority,’ there seems to be no malice or embarrassment intended by Fuller in associating Barlow in 1568 (the year he died) with the orthodox More in 1526.

15 See Geisenhof, Georg, Bibliotheca Bugenhagiana (Leipzig, 1908), vol. 1, Bibliographie, pp. 215–220 Google Scholar. An English translation (STC 4021) was published in 1536.

16 On Lutheranism in England see Tjernagel, N. S., Henry VIII and the Lutherans: A Study in Anglo-Lutheran Relations from 1321 to 1547 (St. Louis, 1965), and Rupp, pp. 18–19 Google Scholar, 32, where he mentions some of those associated with the meetings held in the White Horse Inn. Bonini, Cissie R., ‘Lutheran Influences in the Early English Reformation: Richard Morison Re-examined,’ Archiv für Reformations geschichte, 64 (1973), 206–224 Google Scholar, discusses Morison's manuscript translation of Luther's sermon on Psalm 127 as evidence for a more thorough knowledge of Luther in England in the 1530's than has hitherto been acknowledged.

Concerning Barlow's formal education, Smith, L. B., Tudor Prelates and Politics, 1536-1558 (Princeton, 1953), p. 110 Google Scholar, observes that of the twenty-four bishops ‘twenty-two had degrees in divinity, while the status of William Barlow is unknown.’ Yet Lunn, p. 7, speculates that Barlow received his D.D. from a foreign university (which is unlikely) while noting his connection with both Oxford and Cambridge (on which see Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford [Oxford, 1974], p. 27 Google Scholar). Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation (London, 1725), p. 155 Google Scholar, identifies Barlow's D.D. as from Oxford, while Hembry, Phyllis M., The Bishops of Bath and Wells, 1340-1640 (London, 1967). p. 257 Google Scholar, notes that only Barlow of the twelve bishops under study ‘had not been through the university.’

17 Glanmor Williams, “The Protestant Experiment in the Diocese of St. David's, 1534-53,’ Bulletin of Celtic Studies, 25, iii, 212, says Barlow began a Protestant experiment which is ‘one of the most interesting episodes in the history of the Welsh Church’ and proceeds to describe the bishop's challenges to the more conservative clergy. When Barlow was translated to Bath and Wells (1548) ‘he was the first married bishop to come to Wells,’ according to Phyllis M. Hembry, p. 79.

18 Roper, William, The Lyfe of Sir Thomas More, knighte (1557), ed. Elsie V. Hitchcock (London: EETS, 1935), p. 21 Google Scholar.

19 The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, ed. L. A. Schuster, et al., vol. 8 in The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas More (New Haven, 1973), Book VI, p. 663. The Confutation was published in two parts, Books I-III in 1532 and Books IV-VIII in 1533. See p. 1250, and Pineas, R., ‘Tyndale's Accusation of Forgery against More,’ American Notes & Queries, 3, No. 5 (January 1965), 68–69 Google Scholar. Joye probably considered More the author of Lutheran Factions because it was published by More's nephew William Rastell and appeared at the same time as the second edition of More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies. Joye, and not Tyndale, is the probable author of the Supper of the Lord where the charge is made, on which see CW, 8, p. 1083, and Pineas, R., ‘George Joye's Controversy with Thomas More,’ Moreana, 38 (June 1973), 27–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the end of Pinea's letter to G. Marc'hadour in Moreana, 35 (September 1972), 76.

20 Rogers, , Correspondence, p. 387 Google Scholar, 19-21 (Ep. 160): ‘… in lingua nostra vernacula, sicut etiam in Latina, Demosthenem quendam praestare potes, et Catholice veritatis assertor acerrimus in omni congressu esse soles… .’

21 Letters & Papers: Henry VIII, IV.iii.5823.

22 More, Thomas, The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght … in the Englysh tonge (London, 1557)Google Scholar, III.9, p. 223E-F, and Supplycacyon, Book I, p. 310B.

23 Koszul (see n. 4), p. 31n.

24 Rupp, p. 67. Rupp is also troubled by the fact that an abjured heretic (and he cites the career of Robert Barnes) could rise to high office. I. B. Horst, p. 48, comments how Barnes was less compromising than Barlow and ‘wrote nothing comparable’ to Lutheran Factions which would earn the approval of More and Stokesley: ‘The reformers had to walk a tight rope, and in the reign of Henry VIII most of them recanted at least once.’ William Clebsch, pp. 58-73, has shown that Barnes’ 1534 Supplication softened many points made more stridently in the 1531 edition in order to gain royal appointment.

25 Barlow married an ex-nun, Agatha Wellesbourne, who bore him two sons and five daughters. He managed to marry his five daughters to five bishops (see Notes & Queries, 6th series, VIII (1883), 33-34). Lunn, p. 16, oversimplifies Barlow's position as a reform bishop when he says that ‘there seems to be no theological reason at all why he should not have retained his see under Queen Mary; his marriage alone was the professed obstacle.’

26 Barlow attempted to escape in April 1554 and was unsuccessful in his second attempt in November. See The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. G. Nicholas (London, 1848; Camden Society, No. 42), p. 75. Thomas Sampson mentions Barlow's submission in a letter to John Calvin, February 23, 1555, printed in Robinson, H., Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation (Parker Society, 1846-47), I, 171 Google Scholar.

27 Cardmaker had studied at Cambridge and Oxford. He became chancellor of the church of Wells in 1547 and lectured at St. Paul's Cathedral, where his abuse of Catholicism was met with hostility from the people assembled. He was convened with Barlow before Gardiner on January 28, 1554/5, and eventually was martyred at Smithfield, where he was burnt (May 30, 1555).

28 The editor describes the Reformers in the 1553 Preface thus: ‘here is shewed their monstrous maners and mutability, their cankered contentions, … their devilish devils, and bitter blasphemy, with infinite like relickes of that railing religioun, wherby the christian reader shall right well perceive what filthy fruit buddeth out of these frantic fraternities, and sinful synagoges of satan, infernally invented, to seduce simple soules’ (sigS. A2-A2v).

29 Written in an early eighteenth-century hand, this note is signed by a John Jeames whom I have been unable to identify. It is on the flyleaf in the Durham University copy of STC 1462. The original Latin:

‘Maria Regina 6 to Julii 1553 ad solium evecta Barlovius Episc[opus] Wellensis protinus captus est et cum Joh[ann]e Cantmaker, Ecclesiae suae praebendar[i]o, in carcerum coniectus. Uti vero a mortis periculo se liberaret nullum non Iapidem movit, nec dubitavit etiam cum conscientiae iactura saluti suae consulere.

‘Hinc primo Librum olim contra Lutheranos a se scriptum, dum adhuc Regularis esset Canonicus, Gardinero caeterisque Commissariis Regime, ut videtur, exhibuit, et vel ipse denuo imprimendum o uravit, vel iis, ut ilium imprimerent commisit.

‘Certe ante finem an[ni] 1553 Liber iste rursus editus fuit cum praefatione nova ad lectores contra Reformatos quos deterrimis coloribus Editor depingit, et furiosa rabie acriter perstringit.

‘Neque hoc contentus etiam petitionem Reginae exhibuit, qua omnes suos libros contra Relig[ionem] Catho[ficam] scriptos ipse simul damnat et revocat.’

30 Garret, Christina H., The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 80–81 Google Scholar.

31 Parker was consecrated by Bishops Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkin; much literature has been produced on Barlow's consecration as bishop and the subsequent validity of Anglican orders. The Catholic position argued by Barnes, Arthur S., Bishop Barlow and Anglican Orders: A Study of Original Documents (London, 1922)Google Scholar, receives careful scrutiny by Jenkins, Claude, ‘Bishop Barlow's Consecration and Archbishop Parker's Register,’ Journal of Theological Studies, 24 (1922), 1–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted as a monograph (London: SPCK, 1935). Whitebrook, J. C., who argues in the Consecration of the Most Reverend Matthew Parker (London, 1945)Google Scholar that Parker was consecrated according to the Sarum Pontifical and not the second Edwardine Ordinal on, or before, October 29, 1559, is refuted by Shirley, F. J., Elizabeth's First Archbishop (London: SPCK, 1948)Google Scholar, who establishes the traditional date of Parker's consecration, December 17, 1559. Anglican Orders (London: SPCK, 1954) contains an English translation of the bull of Pope Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican Orders ‘null and void,’ and the answer of the Archbishops of the Church of England. Older studies of interest include Bailey's, T. J. Ordinum Sacrorum in Ecclesia Anglicana Defesio (Parker, 1870)Google Scholar and Estcourt's, Canon E. E. The Question of Anglican Ordinations Discussed (London, 1873)Google Scholar. Shirley, p. 30, summarizes the case for Barlow: “The cumulative evidence of public documents… the fact that no voice was ever raised against Barlow in this matter either by “Catholic” colleague bishops, or men whom he consecrated or ordained over a long period of years, the fact that all his actions in regard to episcopal real property (as, e.g., in granting leases) passed unchallenged in life and after death, is overwhelming.’ For an account of Barlow as Bishop of Chichester, see Manning, R. B., Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969), pp. 50–59 Google Scholar.

32 Elton, G. R., The New Cambridge Modem History (Cambridge, 1958), II, 248 Google Scholar. See also Anderson, Marvin W., Peter Martyr: A Reformer in Exile 1542-1562 (Nieuwkoop, 1975), pp. 161–209 Google Scholar.

33 See Brett, John, ‘Narrative of the Pursuit of the English under Mary,’ ed. I. S. Leadham, Royal Historical Society Transactions, new series, 11 (1897), 125–127 Google Scholar, and Sir Dyer, James, Cy ensuont ascuns nouel cases, collectesper le iades transreuerend iudge … Iasaues Dyer … , ed. J. Dyer the Younger and R. Farewell (London, 1585)Google Scholar: ‘En que il aury declara, que Barlow iades Euesque de Bathe, & auters fugitiues, fueront la in le companie del dit Duchesse. Et que il auoit parle oue eur concernant la Duchesse, queur mult desiderabant a conuster silz fueront letters ou proces queur il port’ (fol. 176v). Barlow joined the Duchess when she later went to Poland at the invitation of John à Lasco.

34 See Pineas, R., ‘William Turner and Reformation Politics,’ Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 37 (1975), 193–200 Google Scholar. George Joye makes similar charges in his dispute with Gardiner between 1531 and 1549 which Pineas has examined in ‘George Joye's Polemical Use of History in His Controversy with Stephen Gardiner,’ Nederlands Archiefvoor Kerkgeschiedenis, 55, 1 (1974), 21-31.

35 Turner, William, A new booke of spirituall Physik for dyverse diseases of the nobilitie and gentlemen of England (Rome, 1555)Google Scholar, sig. F8. The imprint is fictitious. Gardiner, active during 1528-29 in securing a decretal commission from Clement VII, tried to win over Cambridge to favor the divorce in 1530 and was the compiler of the reply to the allegations made by Catherine's counsel in Rome. He argues in De Vera Obedientia (1535) that the Bishop of Rome has spiritual power only over those within his diocese and that because inhabitants of the realm are also members of the all-inclusive national church, he who is head of the first must be head of the second. Christ is Head of the Church and the prince is ‘the Supreme Head in earth.’ See Gardiner, , Obedience in Church and State, ed. Pierre Janelle (Cambridge, 1930)Google Scholar, which prints the Latin and English texts.

36 Goodman brought charges of praemunire against Barlow in the Court of King's Bench. Hembly, pp. 105-123, provides a detailed account of Barlow's collusion with Somerset which depleted the wealth of Bath and Wells.

37 Horst, (see n. 7), p. 47.

38 In the Lutheran Factions William observes: ‘I let passe my lord cardynalls act in pullyng down & suppressing of religious places he knoweth by thys tyme whyther he dyd well or euylT (sig. P4v). In the margin of the Ushaw College copy of STC 1461 a seventeenth-century hand has written: ‘This was cardinall Wollsey who to build his cledges [i.e., colleges] of Oxford and Ipswich did procure a licence from the pope to supress and pull downe certaine religioues houses from whom Henry the 8 as it is thought tooke his president to supres and destroy all the rest.’

39 Rupp, p. 71.

40 Lunn, pp. 5-6; but he does not give his source for this information.