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‘Satan's bludy clawses’: how religious persecution, exile and radicalisation moulded British Protestant identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2018

Jane E. A. Dawson
Jane E. A. Dawson*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LXj.dawson@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

The study examines the radicalisation experienced by one group of religious exiles in the middle of the sixteenth century. The English-speaking congregation in Geneva formed in 1555 produced a Bible, metrical psalter and order of worship that shaped the Anglophone Reformed tradition. Study of the congregation's output shows how watching the martyrdoms in England generated a dynamic anger and fresh interpretations of persecution, tyranny and resistance. Conveyed by the worship texts, this radical legacy passed into the identities of Reformed Protestants in the British Isles, the Atlantic world and subsequently across the globe.

Keywords

British ProtestantismMarian exilepersecutionradicalisationReformed identity
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 267 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 The John Foxe project has made available the online text of the versions of the Acts and Monuments published up to 1583 at <https://www.johnfoxe.org/>.

2 For a recent study discussing Mary's religious policy as a whole, Duffy, Eamon, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

3 Dawson, Jane E. A., ‘Knox, John, Christopher Goodman and the Example of Geneva’, in Ha, Polly and Collinson, Patrick (eds), The Reception of Continental Reformation in Britain, Proceedings of the British Academy, 164 (Oxford: OUP, 2010), pp. 107–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Scotland and the Example of Geneva’, Theology in Scotland 16/2 (2009), pp. 55–73.

4 Knox to Goodman, n.d. (c. late May or early June 1567), Denbighshire Record Office, Plas Power MSS DD/PP/839 85–7; printed in Dawson, Jane E. A. and Glassey, Lionel K. J., ‘Some Unpublished Letters from John Knox to Christopher Goodman’, Scottish Historical Review 84 (2005), p. 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For Knox's movements in exile and a description of the Genevan congregation, see Dawson, Jane, John Knox (London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 90–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 124–7, 147–54. For previously unknown evidence about the Marian exile, see Dawson's transcriptions from Goodman's papers, Letters from Exile, at <http://www.marianexile.div.ed.ac.uk/>.

6 Discussed in Wright, J., ‘Marian Exiles and the Legitimacy of Flight from Persecution’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001), pp. 220–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A list of exile writings can be found in Baskerville, E. J., A Chronological Bibliography of Propaganda and Polemic, 1553–8 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979)Google Scholar; and Pettegree, A., ‘The Latin Polemic of the Marian Exiles’, in his Marian Protestantism: Six Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996)Google Scholar.

7 Dawson, J., ‘The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles’, in Prophecy and Eschatology, Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 10, ed. Wilks, M. (Oxford: Ecclesiastical History Society, 1997), pp. 75–91Google Scholar.

8 Humphrey, Lawrence, De religionis conservatione et refomatione vera (Basel, 1559), pp. 9–10Google Scholar. Trans. by Janet Kemp in her thesis, ‘Laurence Humphrey, Elizabethan Puritan: His Life and Political Theories’, PhD diss. (West Virginia University, 1978), pp. 171–2.

9 Sir Cheke, John to Calvin, John, 20 Oct. 1555, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, ed. Robinson, H., 2 vols. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1846), vol. 1, pp. 142–5Google Scholar.

10 Sir Richard Morison to Henry Bullinger, 23 Aug. 1555, Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 150.

11 Prayer used in the persecution printed in J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, III/ii, pp. 315–19, no. XL.

12 Cameron, Euan, ‘Frankfurt and Geneva: The European Context of John Knox's Reformation’, in Mason, R. (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 51–73Google Scholar. The new material and chronology of the controversy are found in Duguid, Timothy, ‘The “Troubles at Frankfurt”: A New Chronology’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 12 (2013), pp. 243–68Google Scholar; and Letters from Exile.

13 For the ‘Troubles’ from Knox's perspective, see Dawson, Knox, pp. 90–108. In their letter to John Calvin, Knox's opponents accused him of provoking the start of the executions in England: ‘that outrageous pamphlet of Knox's added much oil to the flame of persecution in England’. Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 761.

14 The Genevan congregation and its records are discussed in Martin, C., Les Protestants Anglais réfugiés à Genève au temps de Calvin, 1555–60 (Geneva: Librairie A. Julien, 1915)Google Scholar.

15 Although the Forme contained key elements of one of the liturgies used in Frankfurt for Sunday Morning Prayer and Communion, it was compiled in Geneva in the winter of 1555–6 and reflected the experiences of that period rather than the earlier ones.

16 The Forme of Prayers (Geneva, 1556) printed in The Works of John Knox, ed. D. Laing, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1846–64), vol. 4, p. 160.

17 A theme present in Christopher Goodman's sermon at the first service, Manuscript notes of the sermon, 1 Nov. 1555, DD/PP/839, pp. 17–21.

18 Knox, Works, vol. 4, p. 168.

19 This prayer immediately followed the sermon in the order of service, taking the place of Prayer, Calvin's Long, Spinks, B. D., From the Lord and ‘The Best Reformed Churches’: A Study of Eucharistic Liturgy in the English Puritan and Separatist Traditions 1550–1633 (Rome: Centro Liturgico Vincenziano, 1984), p. 78Google Scholar. In this prayer the congregation prayed, ‘this seede of thy worde, nowe sowen amongest us, may take suche depe roote, that neither the burninge heate of persecution cause it to wither, nether the thorny cares of this lyfe do choke it’. Knox, Works, vol. 4, p. 182.

20 Knox, Works, vol. 4, p. 183. The image of the roaring lion came from 1 Pet 5:8 and was linked to Ps 22:13, and in the Geneva Bible the New Testament verse was cross-referenced to the pleas for deliverance in Pss 23 and 54.

21 Knox, Works, vol. 4, pp. 184–5.

22 Knox, Works, vol. 4, pp. 179–80; Spinks, From the Lord, pp. 77–8. This prayer written by Miles Coverdale was part of the liturgy used in the exile congregation in Wesel; Robin Leaver, ‘Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535–1566 (Oxford: OUP, 1991), pp. 195–215. Coverdale eventually settled in Geneva in 1558. The use of the Book of Daniel formed an essential part of the exiles’ apocalyptic framework; see the ‘Argument’ from the Geneva Bible quoted below at n. 35.

23 Duguid, Timothy, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c1547–1640 (Farnham: Routledge, 2014), ch. 1Google Scholar.

24 Geneva Bible A Facsimile of the 1560 edition (Madison and Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), fo. 235r. For a discussion of the Geneva trans. see Daniel, David, The Bible in English (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), chs. 16–17Google Scholar.

25 Geneva Bible, fo. 242r.

26 Geneva Bible, fo. 121r.

27 Geneva Bible, fo. 135v.

28 Geneva Bible, fo. 132v.

29 Geneva Bible, f. 135v.

30 E.g. Traheron, Bartholomew, A Warning to England to Repent (Wesel (?), 1558), p. 6Google Scholar.

31 Geneva Bible, fo. 169r. There was another commendation of Jehu's action and a cross-reference to the story in 2 Kings. This particularly annoyed King James VI/I because it was attached to 1 Sam 26:9, where it detracted from the story of David sparing Saul's life, because he was the Lord's anointed, by commenting, ‘To wit in his own private cause: for Jehu slew two Kings at Gods appointments, 2 Kings 9.24.’ Geneva Bible, fo. 133v.

32 Geneva Bible, fo. 169r.

33 Geneva Bible, title-page.

34 Geneva Bible, fo. 30v.

35 The ‘Argument’ for the book of Daniel explained how the prophecies it contained revealed ‘suche things as shulde come to the Church, even from the time that thei were in captivitie, to the last end of the worlde . . . And as from the beginning God ever exercised his people under the crosse, so he teachethe here, that after that Christ is offred, he wil stil leave this exercise to his Church until the dead rise againe, and Christ gather his into his kingdome in the heavens.’ Geneva Bible, fo. 357r.

36 Geneva Bible [new foliation for NT], fo. 96v.

37 Geneva Bible [NT], fo. 120r.

38 How Superior Powers Oght to be Obeyd of their Subiects: and Wherin They May Lawfully by God's Worde Be Disobeyed and Resisted (Geneva, 1558); hereafter HSP.

39 Knox's 1558 tracts are printed in Works, vol. 4, and John Knox: On Rebellion, ed. R. Mason (Cambridge: CUP, 1994). For a discussion of their content, Dawson, Knox, pp. 139–46, 154–63.

40 Whittingham and Kethe added material to Goodman's book, and Gilby appended his Admonition to England and Scotland to Repent to Knox's Admonition. Kethe's metrical version of Ps 94, ‘O Lord since vengeance doth to thee’, was appended to Knox's Appellation. See Dawson, Knox, p. 160.

41 Dawson, Knox, pp. 164–76; ‘Trumpeting Resistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox’, in Mason, R. (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 131–53Google Scholar; ‘Revolutionary Conclusions: The Case of the Marian Exiles’, History of Political Thought 11 (1990), pp. 257–72.

42 Acts 4:19 and Acts 5:29.

43 HSP, pp. 69–70.

44 HSP, pp. 187–8. ‘An open way to rebellion’ was how ‘Morley’, an owner of Goodman's book, which he had received from its author, laconically commented in the margin opposite this passage, Durham University Library copy of HSP. For a discussion of the private law argument, Skinner, Q., The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: CUP, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 189–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawson, J., ‘Resistance and Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Thought: The Case of Christopher Goodman’, in Van Den Berg, J. and Hoftijzer, P. (eds), The Church, Change and Revolution (Leiden: Brill, 1991), pp. 69–79Google Scholar.

45 HSP, p. 185. Archbishop Parker recognised the radicalism of the exiles’ writings and lamented to Nicholas Bacon in his letter of 1 Mar. 1559 that nobody would be safe riding in the streets or even in their bed. Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce and T. Perowne (Cambridge: CUP, 1853), p. 61.

46 Knox, Works, vol. 4, p. 507.

47 Knox, Works, vol. 2, p. 279.

48 Dawson, Knox, p. 176.

49 Written in 1566–7, Gilby, A., A pleasaunt dialogue betweene a souldier . . . and a chaplaine (London, 1581)Google Scholar, sig A8r. The Vestments controversy also split the unity of the former Genevan exiles with William Whittingham e.g. receiving harsh criticism for his eventual acceptance of vestments see Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566–1577’, in his Godly People (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), p. 57Google Scholar.

50 Kaufman, Peter Iver, ‘The Protestant Opposition to Elizabethan Religious Reform’, in Tittler, Robert and Jones, Norman (eds), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp. 271–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Dawson, Knox, pp. 286–304.

52 For a discussion of some of the strands within the National Covenant, Dawson, J., ‘Bonding, Religious Allegiance and Covenanting’, in Boardman, Steve and Goodare, Julian (eds), Kings, Lords and Men in Scotland and Britain, 1300–1625: Essays in Honour of Jenny Wormald (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), pp. 155–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.