Leicester Patron of Letters 9780231885508

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LEICESTER Patron of Letters

LEICESTER Patron of Letters

By E L E A N O R

ROSENBERG

N e w York 1955 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Copyright 1 9 5 5 Columbia University Press, N e w York Published in Great Britain, Canada, India, and Pakistan by Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press London, Toronto, Bombay, and Karachi Library

of Congress

Catalog

Card Number:

53-10262

Manufactured in the United States of America

To My Father and the memory of My Mother

Acknowledgments

T

H I S study took form while I was a member of the seminar of Professor Jefferson Butler Fletcher of Columbia University, working under the guidance of that wise and most urbane of scholars. T o the other members of the group as it was constituted during its final years I am indebted for continuing help and stimulation. W e have remained friends, and the memory of our older friend is green among us.

Later stages of my work were completed under the direction of Professor Maurice Valency of Columbia University, to whom I am deeply grateful for rich scholarship, good advice of all kinds, and the spur of sympathetic encouragement. All who know Professor Emeritus Oscar James Campbell of Columbia University will understand my affectionate respect for his lively mind and my appreciation of his acute and helpful comment. T o Professor Alfred Harbage, now of Harvard University, and to the other members of the Columbia University graduate faculty who read my manuscript, I express my thanks for valuable suggestions and criticism. T o Professor Emeritus William Haller of Barnard College I would acknowledge a special debt, for it was he who gave me that first glimpse of the world of men and ideas behind and beyond the printed page to which I owe the ultimate inspiration of this study, and his comments on my manuscript have again provided new insights. The fellowship of other workers has been one of the great pleasures of my research. T w o scholars in the field of Elizabethan patronage have been particularly generous—Professor Virgil B. Heltzel of Northwestern University who read my manuscript and provided suggestions which furthered the revision, and Professor Franklin B. Williams, Jr., of Georgetown University who more than once sent me information from his index of dedications and thus enabled me to include a number of items that I would otherwise have overlooked. The research in original sources on which this book is based was pursued chiefly at the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, the Henry E. Huntington Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Most of the secondary research was done at the Columbia University Libraries and the New York Public Library, while the libraries of Cornell University

viii

Acknowledgments

and Mount Holyokc College afforded me hospitality for summer work. It is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge my indebtedness to the officials of these libraries for their assistance. I am especially grateful to the Trustees of the Folger Shakespeare Library for providing a grantin-aid so that I might complete my research in the summer of 1950, and to its director, Dr. Louis B. Wright, for personal kindnesses and for creating an atmosphere in which those who like to read old books find themselves at home. For expert advice I wish to thank Dr. James G. McManaway, consultant in bibliography at the Folger, and for constant and friendly helpfulness its reference librarian, Miss Dorothy E. Mason. The two portraits of Leicester in this volume are reproduced, with permission, from books in the Folger Library. Mr. Henry Davis of London has graciously allowed me to have photostats made of the Palfreyman manuscript which he owns and granted me leave to quote from it. My thanks are due also to Messrs. Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., for their good offices in tracing that manuscript for me and supplying the photostats as well as a photograph of the binding. T o the Manchester University Press I am indebted for permission to quote from The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age by Phoebe Sheavyn. For their kind and efficient interest in my problems I am grateful to a number of persons at the Columbia University Press, and especially to Mrs. Agatha Cowan and Miss Vergene F. Leverenz for their cleverness and patience in editing the manuscript. My gratitude to personal friends is harder to express. Professor Ruth J. Dean of Mount Holyoke College has long been the companion of my research and the critic of my writing, and she has checked transcripts and traced information for me in English libraries to which I was unable to return. With Professor William Nelson of Columbia University I have explored ideas on the sixteenth century since our early days as students, so that it would be difficult to declare what my thinking owes to his; he has helped this book in all its incarnations. For perceptive reading of my manuscript and for sound advice I am indebted to them both and also to Professor Anne M. Trinsey of Hunter College and Mrs. Florette Henri of Yorktown Heights. Other good friends have helped in countless ways. My parents played a part in the making of this book. My mother nourished it with faith and hope. My father has assisted my every step,

Acknowledgments

ix

beginning long ago when he taught me to love books and the search for truth, to hate illogic, and to try to write cleanly—ending only with the reading of proofs. I still have much to learn from him. ELEANOR ROSENBERG

Barnard College, New Yor^ November

IJ, 1954

Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

vii Xlii

CHAPTER I

The Nature of Elizabethan Literary Patronage

CHAPTER 11

The Earl of Leicester as Patron: His Early Career

19

CHAPTER HI

The Historians

59

CHAPTER IV

Universities and Scholars

116

The Translators

152

CHAPTER VI

Puritans and Their Works

184

CHAPTER VII

Anti-Catholic Propaganda

230

CHAPTER VIII

The Last Decade of Leicester's Patronage

278

CHAPTER IX

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers: Harvey, Spenser, Florio 323

APPENDIX

A Chronological List of Works Dedicated to the Earl of Leicester 355

CHAPTER

v

3

LIST OF SOURCES

INDEX

Part I : Elizabethan Materials

363

Part II: Secondary Sources and Modern Editions

370 379

Illustrations Robert D u d l e y , Earl of Leicester, at about the age of E n g r a v i n g from Holland's Heroologia

Anglica,

fifty-four

1620.

By W i l l i a m van de Passe, after an earlier portrait

Frontispiece

Robert D u d l e y at about the age of thirty-one W o o d c u t f r o m verso of title page of The Philosophers

game, 1563

39

Introduction

T

H I S book deals with the relationships between an Elizabethan

patron—Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—and his protégés among

the writers and scholars of his time. It is presented primarily as a con-

tribution to our knowledge of literary motivation in the English Renaissance, and also as an illustration of the functioning of the patronage system in that age. A t least a hundred separate works were dedicated to Leicester between the opening of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1558 and his own death in 1588. 1 A m o n g the men of letters he befriended appear some wellknown authors, including the translators Blundeville and Golding, the historians Grafton, Stow, Campion, and Holinshed, the teachers Mulcaster and Florio, and in belles-lettres the writers Gascoigne, Whitney, Greene, Harvey, and Spenser. T h e roster of his protégés includes also some dozens of obscure names—names of men whose works are today generally unknown and whose significance even for their own time we have largely forgotten. Yet their productions, too, had value for their patron, and they too were encouraged and rewarded by him. T o discover the motives that prompted these men, great and small, to take up their tasks and their patron to sponsor them is the chief purpose of this book. I began with no such large intention. I wished at first, as an aid to my understanding of a poem I had been reading, merely to discover whether the terms of the poet's association with his patron were unique or could be considered conventional for the times. This desire led me to examine the existing literature on Elizabethan patronage. What I found seemed neither consistent with my own small knowledge of the field, nor, for reasons to be discussed in Chapter I, logical in itself. I therefore set myself to inquire independently into the subject, and in the course of the research my main interest shifted from the conventions of patronage to the motives underlying it. T h e "partisan" aspect of my materials—the idea that both writers and patrons were often engaged in the dissemination of what we today call propaganda—emerged only gradually, 1

F o r a chronological

list of the w o r k s

addressed

to Leicester that are discussed

or

m e n t i o n e d in this study, see the A p p e n d i x ; f o r s o m e additional titles, see footnote, p. 3 5 5 .

xiv

Introduction

and is a result of the study rather than part of its original purpoose. T h e approach to problems of literary motivation through investrigation of patronage relationships is not a new one. Despite all acciusations of ivory-towerism and the modicum of truth that may be in thaem, students of Elizabethan literature have long been aware of the s i g n i f i cance of religion and politics for their subject, nor have they failedi to recognize the importance of economic factors in literary history. T!"hey have, indeed, for the most part avoided the danger of regarding

the

"economic interpretation of history" as the only meaningful one. Witthin the general framework of social history, they have accepted as one ('but only one) of the basic ideas of Tudor studies the theory that sixteemthcentury men of letters were largely supported and controlled by thiose who had the riches and governmental authority of England in tlheir hands. It may, in truth, be said that the tradition for unquestioning acceptance of that theory goes back to the writers of the period thiemselves. T o them it seemed a proper and laudable part of the orderr of things, of the unchangeable hierarchy of the "chain of being,"

2

tthat

Maecenas should support them and their tribe and should exercise the functions of inspirer, critic, and (within reason) censor. N o reader of Shakespeare or Spenser can long resist the influence of this idea; no scholar fails to make it a part of his subconscious equipment. Yet perhaps because of the ease with which we have absorbed the Renaissance doctrine of aristocratic support, there has been to date no adequate effort to explore and analyze the conditions

governing

sixteenth-century literary patronage. Other periods have been examined with this end in view, but except for some discussions of the economic aspect of patronage and a f e w articles dealing with special cases, the sixteenth century has been neglected. 3 F r o m the researches of two scholars currently at work in this field we can now, however, expect clarifica2 E. M. W. Tillyard in The Elizabethan World Picture (New York, 1944) shows how profoundly this concept influenced Elizabethan thought but docs not mention patrona.ee. 3 Studies of patronage in other periods will be cited in the notes to Chapter I as will also the few existing discussions of Elizabethan patronage. T o the latter must now be added John Buxton's Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (London, 1 9 5 4 ) . a work which unfortunately appeared too late for my reference. This book presents a lively and informed picture of the part played by Leicester's nephew and other members of the Sidney family and circle in encouraging literature, and ascribes the late Elizabethan flowering of poetry largely to Philip Sidney's inspiration of his fellow poets. Buxton's emphasis is frankly upon belles-lettres; he is interested in the patron as friend and guide of poets rather than in formal relationships between patron and writer or general questions of literary motivation.

Introduction

XV

tion of the main problems. Professor Virgil B. Heltzel of Northwestern University is completing a survey of English literary patronage in the period 1550-1630 that will include a general study of the relationships between patrons and proteges as well as an examination of a number of representative patrons. Professor Franklin B. Williams, Jr., of Georgetown University has in preparation a classification under patrons of the books included in the Short-Title Catalogue, 1475-1640, that will at once provide an over-all picture of the field and furnish future students with an invaluable tool. In my own work, which brings still another method to the subject, I have considered the economic aspect of patronage only incidentally. The reader who looks for a statistical report of services rendered and rewards paid will be disappointed. Although the problem of how literature was financed is interesting in itself, men do not write merely for money—there have always been easier ways of getting a living. Nor do patrons usually give money away merely because they like to see their names at the head of dedications and hear verses sung in their praise. And because the profit motive does not furnish a sufficient explanation of literary activity, to regard the patronage relationship as no more than a financial arrangement between author and patron, as it so often has been regarded, is superficial and misleading. It does not explain why a young man skilled in translation from Latin would choose to dedicate his Englished versions of the classics to one noble patron rather than to another, nor yet why he toiled to acquire his skill in the first place. It leaves unanswered our desire to know why a particular group of wealthy men took an interest in Calvinist writings while another employed mathematicians and scientists as tutors. It fails, in short, to account for the influence exerted upon the forms, genres, content, and purpose of Elizabethan literature by patrons who consciously used their power to encourage or inhibit. Literary patronage under the Tudors can be understood only as a part of a pattern in which medieval and Renaissance traditions, the Reformation, growing national ambition, and changing social conditions must be reckoned as factors—factors that provided reasons for the patron's interest in the works dedicated to him and in the fate of their authors, and that directed the writer's choice of patron as well as of style and content. The relationship between patron and protege is often a collaboration for a cause to which both men have promised them-

xvi

Introduction

selves, and it sometimes amounts almost to a conspiracy to foist a certain point of view upon the reading public. Dedications are to be searched not merely for testimony of favors received but also for expositions of purpose and method. This, I believe, is a more fruitful approach to the subject of patronage than the narrow economic interpretation. Some of its implications are developed in the ensuing chapters. T h e first of these is concerned primarily with exposing the chief misconceptions regarding Elizabethan patronage, based upon our failure to understand the indirect nature of the Queen's support of literature and upon our modern preoccupation with belles-lettres. It sets forth the theory that Elizabeth delegated to her nobles the responsibility for encouraging authors and scholars, and calls attention to that vast neglected bulk of writings—translations, handbooks of information, historical compilations, works of piety and controversy—which were the main objects of aristocratic support in the first three decades of her reign. They were indeed the works in which all Elizabethans, writers and readers as well as patrons, took the keenest interest. Before that great flowering of poetry and drama in the latter part of the century which we call "Elizabethan literature" and carelessly identify with the whole period, there was comparatively little in the way of imaginative writing to attract a patron's or a publisher's eye, and that small amount was normally the product of "gentlemen" who sought neither publication nor the usual kind of patronage. T h e remaining chapters deal with the Earl of Leicester as an exemplification of the Elizabethan system of patronage. Early in the reign Leicester emerges as one of the most powerful and most generous protectors of those translators and compilers whose purpose it was, in spite of conservative opposition, to popularize learning and make it the possession of all who could read. Later in the period a number of special interests become dominant in the works that appear under his patronage and we are made aware also of more specific motives behind his support. Historians, for example, claim his protection on moral and patriotic grounds: in the name of Leicester, Privy Councillor, they offer lessons from the past as warnings against rebellion and as justifications of Elizabeth's Protestant rule. Scholars present their labors as part of an educational program which will, under the sponsorship of Leicester and other important dignitaries, raise the cultural level of England and provide her with a learned ministry and an enlightened ruling class.

Introduction

xvii

Other special groups—for example, physicians, authorities on horsemanship and military matters, students at the Inns of Court, religious refugees from Italy and elsewhere, anti-Jesuit propagandists—appeal to Leicester either because they have expert services to render or because they represent a cause closely allied to his interests; and sometimes both motives are present. Translators of Calvin and other Continental reformers address him as one of the leaders in the cause of religious reform—as a patron of the nascent Puritan party which demanded a more rigorous discipline in the church and which stood also for eradication of Roman Catholicism in England, for opposition to Spain and intervention in the Netherlands, and for a number of other policies backed by his group at court. And, since a goodly proportion of the nonreligious writers under Leicester's protection also betray Puritan sympathies, his patronage as a whole takes on that color—without, however, excluding the more conservative. Whether Puritan or not, Leicester's writers are usually careful in their dedications to emphasize their zeal for the public good and to stress the identity of their patron's interests with the welfare of the entire community; they frequently include as well a passage in fervent praise of Queen Elizabeth. Their tone carries conviction: faction there might be, but not yet separatism. Even those who are most passionately devoted to a cause are "mere Englishmen," loyal subjects of the Queen, before they are anything else. This is not to deny that loyalty paid—its rewards were solid enough. A patron's approval was undoubtedly a good shield against censorship before publication and carping criticism afterwards; it might also mean a gift of money, perhaps a pension. But more important than either of these would be the patron's willingness to back his protege in a career, and for such preferment loyalty was an important requirement. A s Chancellor of Oxford and sponsor of students in schools, colleges, and Inns of Court, Leicester was in part responsible for the generally successful effort of the Elizabethan authorities to improve educational opportunities, and he was active also in the simultaneous and related effort to staff the church, the universities, and die numerous offices of royal administration with men of proved sentiments and adequate ability. Candidates for office, many of them recent graduates, sought his influence; he had at his command openings for the well qualified. Translation, compilation, and other literary services provided a convenient

xviii

Introduction

means of testing qualifications, and writing became therefore an avocation practiced especially by those who were eager to demonstrate their skill in letters and their zeal for their patron's and the nation's welfare as evidence of their fitness for employment. This feature of the Elizabethan system of patronage has probably been less understood than any other. Yet numerous examples indicate that the writers themselves were more interested in obtaining preferments as the rewards of their labors than in gifts of money or other forms of direct support. Once appointed to a clerical or governmental post, a writer might utilize his leisure and security for further literary endeavor—and perhaps obtain further advancement as a result. Since composition was seldom merely an end in itself, an author would naturally adapt his production to the causes which his patron backed or else seek a patron reputedly devoted to the subject dear to his heart. T h e r e were, in short, temptations to hypocrisy, and it is a testimony of the high sincerity which characterized both writers and patrons that the books of this period are so often works of genuine scholarship, bringing to England in the rich idiom of the Elizabethans a whole new world of information and ideas. T o establish these points conclusively would require a detailed reexamination of the entire field of Elizabethan literature, including a number of areas which have never been systematically explored. Because of the vastness of that task, I have limited the main body of this study to the writers and scholars protected by the Earl of Leicester, almost certainly the greatest Maecenas of his age. Even within these boundaries I make no claim to exhaustive research, although I believe my materials sufficient to warrant the generalizations I have based upon them. I have selected Leicester's patronage for study because it touches men of letters in so many fields and genres and is so extensive that it may in some respects be considered representative: that is, it illustrates the methods and dynamics of the Elizabethan system of supporting and controlling literature, and, as well, most of the important intellectual trends of the time. In other respects, however, Leicester's protection of writers was far from typical. There were few Elizabethan nobles financially able to compete with him in attracting proteges and none who approached his eminence as Queen's favorite and political leader. His superior wealth and power as well as his personal and partisan interests must be borne in mind when any attempt is made to draw conclusions

Introduction

xix

concerning patronage in general from the activities of this one patron. I have therefore avoided such statements unless they were supported by my knowledge of the habits of other patrons besides Leicester. M y research has naturally led me to examine many Elizabethan books addressed to other worthies, and where I felt that the materials so gathered provided evidence for broader generalization I have indicated my findings in the text or in footnotes. One very important field of interest is scarcely represented among the areas of literary activity patronized by Leicester: the N e w World movement. This is the more surprising because Leicester was closely allied with the progressive leaders of that movement, which was really tangential to his political and religious policy. After a fairly thorough survey of the field, I have come to the conclusion that the writers and scientists associated with the patriotic cause of establishing England's empire in the Western world dedicated their works by common consent to its acknowledged leader, Sir Walter Ralegh, and to those openly associated with him in plans for exploring and colonizing America. 4 My original plans for this book included a separate discussion of N e w World literature, which would have been of value to the general purpose of my work because it represents a clearly defined propaganda campaign, and because, unlike the study of Leicester's patronage, it centers in a group of sponsors rather than in a single noble and thus provides a different kind of approach. Considerations of space, however, necessitate my excluding the subject from the present book. Another possible approach to the subject of patronage, the study of a single writer who enjoyed the protection of a number of dignitaries, has often been exemplified in biographies, some of which have been of great help in my work and will be cited in appropriate places. T h e reader will require some explanation of the principles followed in quotations from sixteenth-century texts and in citations of early book titles. In both, the original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been retained with as much accuracy as was possible for one not skilled in the arts of the expert bibliographer. Abbreviations and contractions, however, have usually been silently expanded, and other peculiarities 4 Some idea of the methods employed in the publicity campaign for the New World movement may be gathered from my article, "Giacopo Castelvetro: Italian Publisher in Elizabethan London and His Patrons," Huntington Library Quarterly, VI ( 1 9 4 2 - 4 3 ) , especially pp. 1 2 6 - 3 8 .

XX

Introduction

of Elizabethan printing (especially the use of several varieties of type) have been standardized. A few obvious misprints have been corrected without mention. These principles, while adopted for the reader's comfort within a general purpose of preserving the flavor of sixteenth-century books, have enforced some inconsistency in the reproduction of book titles, especially (for example) those of which a part was originally printed entirely in Roman capitals and the remainder in other types. Indeed, however reproduced, many Elizabethan titles are too long for complete transcription in a study of this sort. Such titles have been given in short form when convenient and more fully when the additional matter served to indicate the nature and purpose of the book. For books published before 1640 the place of publication has been omitted in both footnotes and bibliography except when the work was published elsewhere than at London. In cases of incomplete or forged imprints, and in instances of doubtful authorship, place of publication, or date, the information supplied by A Short-Title Catalogue of Boo\s Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1475-1640, compiled by A . W . Pollard and G . R. Redgrave (London, 1926), has been adopted as authoritative, except for a number of titles for which more accurate information could be supplied. The latter have been explicitly mentioned in either the text or the notes. T o avoid the encumbrance of unnecessary and repetitious footnotes, two works used as constant references have been mentioned in notes only when some special matter is called to the reader's attention. These are the Short-Title Catalogue, together with its American supplement, the "Bishop Checklist" (2d ed., Ann Arbor, 1950), and The Dictionary of National Biography—which is, despite its failings, the only biographical source available for some obscure writers. When cited these works are represented by familiar abbreviations (STC and DNB), as is also the practice for the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series and Foreign Series (C.S.P. Dom., and CS.P. For.). Since dedications appear regularly on the first few pages after the title page, citations of page and signature numbers for dedicatory material have been omitted from the notes, with some few exceptions as when the dedication appears elsewhere than in the usual place or the passage quoted is for some other reason difficult to find. The same practice has been followed for addresses to the reader, commendatory verses, and prefatory matter of all kinds.

LEICESTER Patron of Letters

CHAPTER I

The Nature of Elizabethan Literary Patronage . . . neither Princes maye Hue cleare and knowen to posteritie wythoute the penne and helping hande of learneds Arte: neyther men excelling in learning, woulde be eyther in lyje reputed or spoken of after death, u/ithoute the countenaunce, defence, and patronage of noble Peeres. —William Blandie, 1576 . . . some exercise which mighte tende both to my preferment and to the profite of my Countrey. —George Gascoigne, 1575 throne of Ean gtradition l a n d , sheofinherited Elizabeth came and to thegrandfather fHr oEmN her T u d o r Ifather literary patronage in which two theories were interwoven. T h e earlier, g o i n g back through the Middle Ages to ancient times, w a s the doctrine which decreed the obligation of the Prince to support minstrel and bard and scholar for the sake of the present f a m e and future remembrance they could bestow. T h e later theory, probably an outgrowth of the former and never entirely distinct from it, considered patronage an instrument for the formation and direction of public opinion. Writers and scholars were to be encouraged to serve the state by espousing and advertising the policies of the C r o w n and by e n g a g i n g in literary activities which would profit the commonwealth. In return they were to be provided with positions in the royal service or with some other suitable reward. T h i s system of influencing and controlling public opinion was not an invention of the T u d o r s ; in some respects their methods paralleled the tactics used by Augustus and Maecenas in R o m e , while more recent models were to be found in the stimulation and protection of art and letters by the potentates of Renaissance Italy. B u t in practice it became a new thing, a development of the new statecraft.

4

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

Rising upon the ruins of the feudal system, the Tudor dynasty attempted to establish itself firmly first within the realm and later as an important international force. T h e destruction of baronial power, the creation of a new aristocracy dependent upon the king, the development of the Privy Council and the Star Chamber, the renunciation of papal authority, the proclamation of a national church under royal governorship, and the cultivation of a nationalistic and imperialistic foreign policy are phases of Tudor progress toward centralization of power which are familiar to everyone. Less familiar, perhaps, are the accompanying changes in the patronage system which enabled the king and his agents to assume control of literature and learning. Under the new monarchy, conditions were far more favorable to royal direction of public opinion and royal employment of numerous faithful publicists than in the looser organization of the medieval kingdom. Patronage of writers and scholars whose services would strengthen the state, new endowments and new regulations at the universities, the protection and censorship of the infant press, the launching of propaganda campaigns, and the fostering of art and entertainment at the nation's court and capital kept pace with the aggrandizement of the Crown's authority—and, of course, contributed to that authority. What had been largely a matter of noblesse oblige became, in Tudor times, a matter of policy: patronage of letters was necessary. Probably the most important of the factors which made royal control of public opinion imperative as well as possible was the emergence of a literate middle class. Increasingly strong in number, wealth, and influence, and entrenched in the nation's capital where its members could readily bring their power to bear upon the government, this class was to be courted— both for its allegiance to the throne and as a guarantee against the resurgence of aristocratic or ecclesiastical authority. The printing press provided the means; fed by properly directed and patronized writers, themselves often of bourgeois origin, it would secure a large measure of support for the Crown's policies. A n d with the spread of education to the lower classes the power of the printed word was to become increasingly significant. 1 In developing the purposeful use of literary patronage as an instrument of policy the Tudors were guided by Renaissance habits which 1 For the development of the reading public in the early Tudor period, see H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 147; to 1 ;s7 (Cambridge, England, 1952).

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

5

they gradually adapted to new circumstances. From the lavish and cultivated princes of Europe they learned the value of classical learning as an ornament of the court, a necessary diplomatic tool, and a prop of true religion. As early as the reign of Henry VII, the demand for highly trained rhetoricians to serve as secretaries, emissaries, tutors, official orators, and court poets manifested itself in a conscious effort to import scholars from abroad and to produce native Latinists.2 In the next reign humanism was firmly established as an adjunct of the court and gained a wider prestige from the circle of Thomas More and from Henry VIIFs distinguished guests, Erasmus and Vives. When Henry cast off the supremacy of Rome, he turned for vindication of the social and political program entailed by that act to a group of native scholars trained and employed by his ministers for service to the state.3 Educated in England and Italy at the expense of the king and his agents, Henry's humanists used their learning to find in classical and scriptural literature a basis of traditional authority for his innovations in government. Humanism had become a support of royal power. The times demanded that theoretic justification such as theirs reach a large audience; therefore their pamphlets went forth from the King's presses in English—the first large-scale attempt to use the printed vernacular for propaganda purposes. Other departures marked Henry VIII's patronage. The study of civil law, history, and other secular subjects began to supplant theology as the means whereby a lowly scholar might hope to qualify for a public career. And, with the closing of the monasteries, a supply of clerics was released to the service of church and state, the obligation for their support being thrust upon the Crown. Since scholarship had proved its worth to the government, patronage was henceforth most significantly concerned with the protection of learned men for services which only they could render the commonwealth. Elizabeth was to take both traditions—the old aristocratic theory of noblesse oblige and the new Tudor system of harnessing scholarship to policy—and mould them to her own ends. ' W i l l i a m Nelson, John S^elton, Laureate (New York, 1939), chap, i, ' T h e Scholars of Henry VII." 3 W. Gordon Zeeveld, in his Foundations of Tudor Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), shows that all three of Henry's chief ministers—Wolsey, Cromwell, and Cranmer—were patrons of humanists and that Cromwell employed their talents in organized propaganda campaigns; see also Franklin L. V. Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship (New Haven, Conn., 1940), Appendix A.

6

Elizabethan Literary Patronage Beset at the beginning of her reign by civil and religious troubles,

Elizabeth faced the immediate problem of u n i f y i n g public opinion and of securing the continuance of popular support. L e a r n i n g had so effectively proved its value to earlier T u d o r policy, and Renaissance faith in the virtue of letters was now so firmly established in the thought of the ruling class that the Q u e e n and her advisers looked almost instinctively to the scholars for help. By providing sound information and wholesome doctrine for the people, learned men would destroy superstition and lead an enlightened nation to hail the values of Elizabeth's rule. A n d by bringing E n g l a n d abreast of the Renaissance world, they would enable her to take a place a m o n g the powers. T h e destruction or reorganization of educational foundations which accompanied the Dissolution under Henry V I I I and E d w a r d V I had, however, brought about a decline in formal learning; more recently Marian persecution and exile had further interrupted the course of humanism in E n g l a n d and reduced the ranks of the scholars. T h e state now required a new generation of educated men to produce books and to fill positions under the government. T h e y were needed in church, school, and university to teach the new doctrines, in the capital and in the provinces to carry on the T u d o r process of unifying governmental functions under the Crown, and abroad as envoys to impress upon foreign potentates the fact that Elizabeth's E n g l a n d was a power to c o m m a n d respect. T h e Elizabethan authorities therefore turned their attention to the reform and support of education and to the encouragement of utilitarian writings which would indoctrinate the people and, at the s a m e time, provide a means of training candidates for the royal service. Encouraged by noble patrons, writers enthusiastically cooperated in this program. Much of the literature they produced was hack work— translation and compilation—but it served to demonstrate their ability as linguists and scholars, and it was testimony of their zeal to serve their masters. A patriotic spirit characterizes their dedicatory epistles: they consistently justify their work in terms of its value for the nation, the government, and the established church—to use the Elizabethan phrase which covered all three, "the commodity of the common weal." In the same spirit, apparently, their patrons accepted the dedications, and by so doing guaranteed license for publication and protection against carping critics. Repeated statements of gratitude indicate that more material rewards were forthcoming; that these consisted largely in preferments to

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

7

posts in church, university, or other government service is indicated by records of appointments granted to writers shortly after publication. The books so patronized had a recognizable utility. Belles-lettres, on the other hand, seem to have been the last product of literary activity to be encouraged by the Elizabethan authorities. Until the latter part of the reign, poetry remained an avocation of gentlemen and was rarely produced for a reward, with some few exceptions as when a poet was employed to prepare an entertainment for the Queen. When lyrics, prose and verse romances, and dramatic writing did begin to appear in quantity, these compositions usually offered moral—and therefore utilitarian —justification. The old magnificent tradition of noblesse oblige, however, was too strong to be abandoned and too congenial to prevailing Elizabethan temper to be sacrificed to more obviously practical considerations. The patron's desire for fame and the writer's unique ability to bestow fame continued to appear in dedications as the primary explanation of patronage and of literary activity; only secondly, in many cases, did the protégé explain the utilitarian and patriotic value of the work he offered. As the reign wore on, there developed from this old tradition a new literary convention which has aptly been called the Legend of Eliza. 4 The new convention was to be of the greatest importance as a propaganda device. It advertised to the people of England the beauty, virtue, courage, and piety of their Queen, England's peerless prince, a woman more than woman, a saint, a goddess, the personification of Britannia and the reembodiment of Deborah. To the rest of the world it proclaimed England's zealous affection, amounting almost to religious devotion, for its ruler. Writers of all sorts—aristocratic poets, learned scholars, humble translators, down to the lowliest of anonymous hacks—contributed to the great national paean. It was a vigorous legend, consciously and lovingly created by Elizabethan writers to inflame their fellow subjects with a new patriotism. Its political value was beyond price. Through its action Elizabeth was enabled to use an apotheosis of herself as an instrument of government. But for all of this—for the creation of the Legend of Eliza as for the utilitarian writings—it was not Elizabeth herself who paid. Apparently 4 See E. C. Wilson, England's Eliza (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), for a thorough analysis of the legend, based upon examination of hundreds of books and manuscripts which celebrate Elizabeth.

8

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

she left the chief burden of patronage to her nobles: there are few testimonies to her generosity and little evidence that she personally contributed to the advancement of writers. Literary services were poured at her feet—dedications in her praise, translations of the finest fruits of the Italian and French Renaissance, learned tomes of history and theology, poems celebrating her virtues, plays for her delighting—and she accepted all as her due. Eliza's name was celebrated throughout the world by men most of whom seem to have received not one penny from the royal coffer. Propaganda campaigns for the support of her government, the defense of her church, and the implementation of her policies were launched and carried on apparently without her lifting a finger. It was not chiefly parsimony that kept her from the patron's trafficki n g ; her enriching of her favorite courtiers shows that she could be generous when she chose. Rather it was both temperament and policy. Her way was not the direct w a y : even more characteristic than her love of power and her fondness for flattery w a s her indirection. H o w much more magnificent to be the recipient of spontaneous praise than to bid for it in the market! A n d how m u c h more discreet to have her dearest causes served by propaganda which she herself did not sponsor than to appear openly as the motivator. If the thing went wrong, no one could blame her. If she changed her m i n d about it, she could withdraw. If it succeeded, she would get the credit after all. T h i s was also her policy of government. Within the framework of absolute monarchy, and retaining always the power of absolute decree, she chose to rest her power theoretically upon the will of the people. H e r parliaments were allowed great freedom—it was in this period that the H o u s e of C o m m o n s developed into a mature legislative body—but even when they were most critical of her policies they were loyal in act and intent. T h e actual administration of government she entrusted to the hands of her councillors, men of great personal ambition whose energies could be exploited for the benefit of the state and whose faithfulness was secured by their direct dependence upon her personal favor. Whenever possible, she avoided outright decision, playing councillor against councillor, and let circumstances shape the end. Yet her will remained sovereign. T h e ultimate control, the final decision, were hers—and hers the greater part of the glory. She both delegated authority and retained it. S o did she in the matter of patronage. T h e same men who served her as chiefs of state became the principal agents of royal patronage. She preferred to have others perform for her the sordid task of buying flat-

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

9

tcry, of employing patriotism. T h r o u g h their efforts public opinion was controlled and directed so that she could in fact make good her claim to rule by popular will. Their proteges—not her own—exhorted the reader to regard with wonder the virtues of his Queen. Their followers produced the works which supported her policies and controverted those of her enemies. Rewards, too, were supplied by indirection. T h o u g h their ultimate source was the Queen herself, this fact was not apparent in the transaction. Since the chief patrons were men high in the affairs of state, appointments of envoys, government agents, secretaries, and petty officials, and preferments to church livings and university positions were all within their gift or procurable through their influence. Their authority was sufficient to protect writers against censorship or harmful criticism. Monetary rewards—of which we have much less evidence than of other kinds of patronage—doubtless also came f r o m their pockets, as well as "exhibitions" providing for the support of scholars. T h o u g h Elizabeth sometimes allowed her name to head a dedication, much more frequent is the dedicatory epistle addressed to one of her nobles which nonetheless celebrates her fame. Of the books addressed directly to her, many were the work of writers already in the patronage of her nobles; indeed, the securing of her acceptance of a dedication seems to have been one of the services of a patron and a valuable form of reward for the writer. In thus assigning the patron's responsibility almost entirely to the men of wealth and power who formed her privy council and her court, as in the delegation of governmental functions, Elizabeth was merely carrying to a logical conclusion the policy of centralization and delegation of authority which she had inherited f r o m her father. Delegation of power became her, for she was a woman—and, when she came to the throne, the general belief was that women were not fitted to rule. She would at least appear to let the men do it for her. Stressing her femininity, she held her courtiers in thrall by silken strings and encouraged them in a game of platonic love which provided the manners of her court and furnished the basis for the Legend of Eliza. U n d e r such pleasant fictions she managed to establish a Regiment of W o m a n which gave the lie to John Knox. H e r dominion was the stronger because it was shot through with emotion. 5 As for her favorites, their functions as patrons were closely related to 5 For Elizabeth's use of her femininity in ruling the court, see J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1934), pp. 62-67.

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Elizabethan Literary Patronage

their positions as courtiers, in so far as they encouraged and paid for flattery of the Queen. Actually more important was the relationship between their duties as governors of the realm and their patronage in those fields in which national interest was involved. We may say that their official roles in the state obligated them to become patrons: it was incumbent upon them to control and direct public opinion. This tradition of governmental sponsorship of literature also had been laid down by Henry VIII, as we have noted. Elizabeth developed her father's system by greatly extending the field in which it operated and by using as her agents a much larger number of patrons; she changed it by removing herself, the person of the Crown, from a position of open responsibility. But we need not doubt that she was there, behind the gallants and the councillors, the ultimate court of decision in all matters of literary policy, the ultimate source of reward for patrons and protégés alike. T h e extent to which this delegation of Crown patronage was made explicit under Elizabeth is difficult to assess. It may be that the obligation to encourage and support literature was parceled out among the chief nobles in a fashion not unlike the division of administrative authority. This supposition of an orderly arrangement is supported by the fact that in certain well-defined fields literary patronage and control were officially institutionalized along lines developed by the earlier Tudors. Printing was still under royal protection, and new laws made conditions constantly better for those concerned in the book trade, while methods of censorship were also improved. T h e publication of proclamations and of the Bible continued to be royal privileges. The universities were controlled through their chancellors—for the greater part of the reign Lord Burghley and the Earl of Leicester—and were thus semiofficially regulated, since both were members of the Privy Council. The companies of actors, sponsored by the great lords of the court, were also subject to government regulation; for their protection royal power was more than once invoked, as when the Queen directed her Council to restrain the City Fathers from suppressing the theaters on the ground that public performances were necessary as rehearsals for production at court. F r o m the relatively undignified household office connected with the ancient custom of supporting poets, singers, and players for the entertainment of the court, the Mastership of the Revels became an important office under the Crown. In these fields, at least, the intent and methods of royally authorized patronage and control can be clearly discerned.

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

n

B u t once we touch upon areas where propaganda is involved, the picture becomes less clear. In at least two such fields—the anti-Jesuit campaign of the early 1580's and the publicity campaign for N e w World ventures of the latter part of that decade—we can find evidence of official delegation either by the Queen herself or by the Privy Council with the Queen's approval. Leicester and other members of the Council appear to have been selected for patronage of the former, and Ralegh of the latter; in both cases, Walsingham probably provided plan and organization. A n d the Privy Council as a whole may have undertaken the furtherance of the earlier translation movement. In other fields, however, we can find little to support the idea of explicit delegation. Sir Henry Sidney's interest in Welsh and Irish history may possibly have been associated with his governmental duties but it seems also personal to him and his family. Apparently Leicester was especially concerned to advance English history and Italianate culture, but many other Elizabethans shared these tastes; the great earl's popularity among writers in these fields was probably due to his superior wealth and influence rather than to an official arrangement which designated him their patron. On the whole, the evidence indicates that except for urgent propaganda campaigns in which the government took an active and unequivocal part, there was no organized parceling out of the areas of patronage, but rather a tacit agreement by which courtiers dependent upon the Queen's bounty would expend some of their wealth for her pleasure and benefit and for the welfare of the realm. T h e system had its defects. With the emergence of partisan politics in Elizabeth's court and council, new motives were appearing for the encouragement of writers. A patron might exploit the trusteeship granted him under this unofficial agreement by employing propagandists to support his own personal ambitions or the interests of his party rather than the larger causes of Queen and nation. Leicester's patronage of Puritans lays him open to just such a charge. We can, however, only doubtfully convict him of consciously abusing the system: his proteges consistently proclaim their loyalty to the Queen and their patriotic intention, and it is probable that he shared with them a sincere belief that they served the best interests of the state. Apparently Elizabeth was willing to run the risk of allowing her nobles occasionally to use the patronage system for their own ends. She accepted the writers' statements of loyalty at face value and, as usual, avoided awkward issues.

12

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

Elizabeth's policy of delegating patronage accomplished more, perhaps, than it intended. Instead of the narrow channeling of literary energies w h i c h direct royal patronage might have produced, it allowed for the development of a multiplicity of forms, genres, and subjects under the sponsorship of varied personalities. Great patrons arose to further the progress of learning and letters—Burghley, Leicester, Hatton, E s s e x , the Sidney and P e m b r o k e families, to n a m e but a f e w . E v e r y important noble had his f o l l o w i n g and to some extent rested his prestige upon his reputation as a patron. Writers competed for the attention of patrons; no doubt there was also some competition a m o n g patrons for the services of the better writers. T h e situation w a s stimulating. A s the number of writers increased, lesser patrons were also d r a w n into the g a m e , until mere knights and private citizens were involved, and city guilds a n d corporations. T h e total literary activity thus produced was far greater than any monarch could hope to support or control, yet over it all E n g l a n d ' s E l i z a reigned supreme, and through it ran consistently the theme of her virtue and her country's welfare. W i t h some notable recent exceptions the historians of literature have made little effort to account f o r the E n g l i s h Renaissance in its relationship to the rise of the T u d o r state; they have largely been content to study the sources and origins of its impulse and the contributions of individual writers. A s a result, we are only n o w becoming a w a r e of the importance of the patronage system in supporting the movement and g i v i n g it direction. Its f u l l scope will not be understood until the history of Elizabethan literature comes to be rewritten in its entirety against the political and religious background of the times. B e f o r e that can be done, the chief patrons of the age must be studied in detail, their motives and methods carefully scrutinized, their influence evaluated. T h e remaining chapters of this book—a study of Elizabethan patronage as it was practiced by one of the great nobles of the age, the E a r l of Leicester—are offered as a contribution to this task. T h e r e are certain ghosts to lay before w e can proceed to the main task. S o negligent has been our approach to the subject of Elizabethan patronage that a number of misconceptions have arisen and been given wide currency; unless destroyed, they will continue to falsify our thinking. T h e i r net result has been to characterize the entire system of patronage under Elizabeth as inadequate, degenerate, and moribund. 9 8

Tile chicf source of the theory that Elizabethan patronage was a disintegrating and

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

13

T h e most hoary of the fallacies responsible for our denigration of Elizabethan patronage is the notion that flattery in dedications is a sign of corruption—that a system which demanded extravagant praise of patrons was necessarily a degenerate institution. 7 Our distrust of "fulsome" and "servile" dedications is so great that we tend to disqualify all dedicatory material as a source of biographical and historical information; only recently have we begun to tap this rich mine of Elizabethan data. It is true that literary criticism has not yet devised a satisfactory test of the spontaneity of a piece of writing and that, in the Elizabethan period especially, it is difficult to distinguish between a writer's expression of his own feeling and those elements in his writing which derive from practiced skill in counterfeiting emotion, or from Renaissance tradition, or from some particular model. O n the other hand, it is perinadequate system is Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester, 1909), chap. i. Because of its great influence upon subsequent treatments of the subject, the most damaging statements in this work must be quoted: ". . . the immense output of literary work during the Elizabethan age was fostered very little by any enlightened encouragement; it was, in fact, produced in the face of the most serious and disheartening hindrances. Only an exceptionally robust literary class could have withstood the withering effects of poverty, official interference, unfair competition, and scorn. . . . It was the Elizabethan writer's vigorous vitality alone which overcame all obstacles . . . " (p. 7). "The reigns of Elizabeth and James mark a gradual disintegration of the aristocratic system of private literary patronage . . ." (pp. 1 0 - 1 1 ) . Sheavyn's conclusions have been accepted by most writers who touch on the general subject of Elizabethan patronage, including Clara Gebert, An Anthology of Elizabethan Dedications and Prefaces (Philadelphia, 1 9 3 3 ) , p. 10; and Karl J. Holzknecht, Literary Patronage in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1 9 2 3 ) , p. 60. D. Nichol Smith, in "Authors and Patrons," Shakespeare's England (Oxford, 1 9 1 7 ) , II, 1 8 2 - 2 1 1 , while not dissenting from Sheavyn, provides the best survey of the subject. Raymond W. Short, in "The Patronage of Poetry under James First" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1936), having accepted Sheavyn's theory of an Elizabethan breakdown, is forced to account for flourishing Jacobean conditions as "an Indian summer" (see p. 2 of published abstract). Margaret B. Pickel, in Charles I as Patron of Poetry and Drama (London, 1936), accepts Sheavyn's description of Elizabethan conditions (pp. 4 - 5 ) but declares that "The system of royal patronage in England reached its apex under Charles I " (p. 1 5 ) . F. P. Wilson, in "Some Notes on Authors and Patrons in Tudor and Stuart Times," fohn Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, D.C., 1948), follows the Sheavyn tradition in his declaration, "After the invention of printing the old system of patronage slowly broke down . . . " (p- 555)- Patricia Thomson in " T h e Literature of Patronage, 1 5 8 0 - 1 6 3 0 , " Essays in Criticism, II ( 1 9 5 2 ) , cites Sheavyn (p. 270, n. 2) but gives a much sounder analysis of the relationship between poet and patron. 7 Sheavyn's conclusions are based in part on the presence of extravagant flattery in Elizabethan dedications (op. cit., p. 22). The attitude is classically expressed in Johnson's definition of a patron: "commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery." Henry B. Wheatley, The Dedication of Booths to Patron and Friend (London, 1887), pp. v-vi and Introduction, established apparent sincerity as the touchstone for classifying dedications, and by the absence or presence of this quality in a predominant number of dedications claimcd to evaluate an age; he is quoted with approval by Mary E. Brown, Dedications (New York, 1 9 1 3 ) . pp. 2 - 3 .

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Elizabethan Literary Patronage

fectly possible for a writer to experience genuine feeling while expressing it in purely conventional terms. Flattery in dedications, in an age which expected and demanded it, cannot be taken as evidence of insincerity. All ages in which dedication implied reward necessarily developed a eulogistic manner of addressing patrons. T h e Elizabethans, trained from boyhood in the Renaissance art of rhetoric, naturally evolved an elaborate mode of address, studded with compliments and often heavy with learned allusion. It is our task to distinguish between dedications which are merely rhetorical exercises and those which carry within them evidence of a genuinely helpful relationship between patron and protégé. Remembering that in any case the expression of admiration was obligatory, we must extrude our own ethical and aesthetic concepts from a situation they can serve only to obscure. 8 T h e Elizabethan patron expected—and received—praise; this does not belie either his protégé's respect or his own generous interest in literature. It might even be argued that the rhetorical development of the dedicatory address is a sign of the flourishing of the patronage system. T o assume the opposite and to ignore the statements of gratitude, personal history, and purpose which are almost as characteristic of the lengthier dedications as are highflown compliments—these are habits of mind we have too long indulged. 9 More defensible as an excuse for regarding the Elizabethan system of patronage as a decadent institution is the belief that it represented an unsuccessful attempt to continue the medieval minstrel tradition. According to this view, patronage is an organic entity having three stages of evolution : a primitive or growing stage, a period of maturity, and a period of degeneration. In English literature the first stage of the cycle 8 T h e extent to which flattery was obligatory is indicated by William Fulwood in The Enimie of Idlenesse: Teaching the maner and stile how to endite, compose and write all sorts of Epistles and Letters ( 1 5 6 8 ) under his rules for a letter designed to "obtaine some dignity or preferment" for a person other than the writer (fol. i8r. and v . ) : " T h e first way to get beneuolence is in praising of him vnto whom we write, for hii liberalities, his bountifulnesse, his iustice, his vertue, etc. " T h e second waie . . . is to say that he is modest, gentle to euery one, and a man not voide of knowledge. " T h e third is, to make the demand honestly and modestly . . . for the which he vnto whom we write may haue either honor or profit by graunting it. " T h e fourth, to promise him all seruice and perpetuall obedience. . . . " If ordinary clients were expected to praise their patrons in this fashion, the trained writers w h o composed dedications would naturally be obligated to include the same matter and to couch it in more attractive language. B For a more extended discussion and defense of flattering Elizabethan dedications, see Gebert, op. cit., pp. 1 1 - 1 7 .

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

15

is found in Anglo-Saxon times, the period of mature and wholesome activity being coincident with the height of feudalism in the Middle Ages, while Elizabethan patronage is considered senescent. 10 In so far as the medieval minstrel tradition is concerned, w e can probably grant that it was less important in Tudor times than in the feudal period, but not because of neglect: the making of poetry had passed largely into the hands of educated gentlemen, while the development of the public theater encouraged the emergence of professional playwrights protected by nobles but supported chiefly by playgoers. Actually, as we have seen, Elizabethan literary patronage was largely concerned with other means and other ends than those represented by the minstrel tradition. Its chief beneficiaries were not entertainers but serious writers of utilitarian works, descendants of the medieval scholar rather than of the minstrel. Its coveted rewards were not gifts and pensions, but preferments to positions of some importance. It was an aspect of patronage in the larger, political, sense and "literary" only because the clients in whom we are interested sought to demonstrate their qualifications for advancement through the service of their pens rather than by some other means. Failure to understand the indirect nature of the patronage which stemmed from the Queen and to uncover its political motivation is at the root of this misinterpretation of the Elizabethan system. A related fallacy is the theory that Elizabeth through personal parsimony neglected the function of royal patronage. 1 1 If the biological analogy introduced by the critics of the "moribund" Elizabethan system had been developed by a broader application of evolutionary ideas, in terms of adaptation to new cultural environments rather than as a closed cycle, the conclusions might have been more illuminating. For the patronage impulse continues through the ages and can be examined in a variety of forms produced by changing conditions. 1 2 Even today, in endowments to colleges, libraries, and museums, in the Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and Guggenheim foundations, in 10 This belief is implicit in Sheavyn's argument, op. cit., pp. I O - I I ; it is developed as a cyclical theory by Holzknecht, op. cit., p. 16. 11 B. B. Gamzue, "Elizabeth and Literary Patronage," PMLA, XLIX ( 1 9 3 4 ) , 1041-49. 12 See, for example, Georges Mongredien, La Vie littéraire au xvii' siècle (Paris, 1947), pp. 2 6 1 - 7 1 , for the highly organized system of pension lists by which Colbert, minister of Louis XIV, created the legend representing that monarch as a prodigally generous patron of the Muses; see also Alexandre Beljame, Le Public et lei hommes de lettres en Angleterre au dix-huitième siècle, 1660-1744 (2d éd.; Paris, 1897), for the adaptation of English patronage to a new role in the service of partisan politics and the middle class.

16

Elizabethan Literary Patronage

innumerable awards, prizes, fellowships, and subventions, private patrons are still actively encouraging art, science, literature, and learning, while government patronage is expressed in the G . I . Bill of Rights, in the Fulbright Act, and in the employment of scientists, technical experts, ghost writers, and propagandists of American democracy. B u t students of the subject have usually confined themselves to belles-lettres, and it is quite true that comparatively little patronage of the literature of emotion and entertainment continued beyond the age of Johnson, by which time the reading and playgoing public had gradually taken over its support. It is, in fact, precisely because of our modern habit of emphasizing "pure literature" at the expense of "utilitarian writings" that we have been so ready to harbor misconceptions regarding the nature and extent of Elizabethan patronage. D r a m a , poetry, fiction—these to us constitute "literature"; and we apply the epithet "utilitarian" to that great body of historical, expository, and controversial writings which serve any purpose other than that of entertainment and aesthetic delight, as though in some abstract scheme of values the utility of a scientific textbook were greater than that of a sheaf of verses. Y e t at the same time we grant higher social prestige to the "artistic" forms; we tend to confine the term "authors" to those who produce the latter, whereas all other men of letters are mere "writers." T h e Elizabethans made no such sharp distinction between utilitarian and pure literature, but their reading, unlike ours, showed a marked preference for what we would term the utilitarian. A practical and hardheaded lot consciously striving for an enlarged national existence, they spent their money first on books which promised to improve their lives. T h i s was true not only of the middle class, strongly moralistic and keen for information, but also of the aristocracy. 1 3 Aside from their own interest in the subject matter, patrons found in utilitarian writing a ready means of influencing public opinion and a field in which candidates for royal employment might profitably demonstrate their talents. In our preoccupation with creative and imaginative forms, we have attempted to assess the Elizabethan patronage system without taking into account the great bulk of informational and didactic literature to 1 3 For the nature and extent of the literature designed especially for the middle class, see Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, N.C., ' 9 3 5 ) - The same writer, in his "Introduction to a Survey of Renaissance Studies," Modern Language Quarterly, II ( 1 9 4 1 ) , 3 5 5 - 6 2 , calls upon students to explore further the great neglected areas of Elizabethan literature.

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which both common reader and noble lord gave generous support. 1 4 Rarely studied in our literature courses, known even to scholars as "background material," most of it was the work of men who are not on the honor roll of Great Elizabethans—of

writers whose names are

scarcely known. Professional hacks, earnest compilers, learned controversialists, premature Puritans, young students who regarded literature merely as a preparation for a higher career, they have sunk into obscurity, and with them their books. Our neglect is natural enough. Many Elizabethan works have never been reprinted, either because they are concerned with subjects no longer interesting or because their information has been superseded by more accurate accounts. Where the content is still of value, often it has been excerpted or digested for us by editors w h o do not mention the original dedication or patron. Moreover, the books are frequently unattractive to the modern eye, whether they be large volumes with crowded margins or crabbed pocket editions. Of the more learned texts, some are in Latin and even those in the vernacular seem to us unnecessarily padded with classical and scriptural allusions. But to the Elizabethans these books seemed of great value, as their number and frequent reprinting indicate. A n d because of Renaissance faith in the written word, in information and education, in the power of good letters to bring about a higher morality and a sounder national health, their authors were suitably rewarded by those who held the power and the purse. Though our books look different, we have inherited that faith. W e should not, therefore, find it difficult to understand the spirit which fostered utilitarian literature, once we have disabused our minds of the notion that it is not literature at all. N o r should we overlook the importance of this aspect of literary patronage in preparing England for the great flowering of poetry and drama in which its Renaissance was consummated at the end of the 14 All of the discussions of patronage cited in n. 6 above are confined chiefly to writers of belles-lettres, excepting only Holzknecht's study of medieval patronage. Sheavyn acknowledges this limitation in her preface (op. at., p. vii) but in chap, v, "Authors and Supplementary Means of Livelihood," indicates that she considers the activities of learned writers, controversialists, translators, and the like, mere substitutes for a genuine literary vocation, outside the proper field of the writing profession. Her evaluation of Elizabethan patronage as an inadequate and moribund system is supported chiefly by the complaints of poets and playwrights. Bennett's recent study of the earlier Tudor period, based as it is on a survey of the whole field of book production, provides a picture of the patronage relationship which controverts Sheavyn by implication (op. cit., especially chap, iv, "Patronage").

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century. Encouraged by the success of the patronized writers who had gone before them, a generation of gifted young men trained largely at the universities appeared, to devote their main energies to the creation of imaginative literature. Source material and inspiration had been provided them by the labors of editors, translators, and compilers. T h e y were greeted by a public nourished on the huge body of utilitarian writings which the aristocracy had sponsored, and indoctrinated in the great platitudes and conventions of the age. W r i t i n g directly for publishers and producers, these authors were able to devote themselves to literature as a chief vocation and to establish a certain degree of independence from patrons, but the circumstances which made their success possible they owed to the functioning of the Elizabethan system of patronage. Even without benefit of statistics, the statement can be safely made that under Elizabeth the total amount of literary patronage was greater than at any previous time. T h e vast number of dedications constitutes a m o n u m e n t of proof that patronage flourished. If we doubt this testimony, we have independent evidence of a lively and appreciative interest in literature on the part of the Elizabethan aristocracy. T h e i r gifts and beneficences to writers, their employment of learned men as tutors and secretaries, their advancement of linguists and scholars to positions of responsibility, their encouragement of schools and universities, and their library collections all indicate a genuine esteem for literature and learning. Certainly, compared with the patrons of pre-Tudor times, a m o n g w h o m D u k e Humphrey stands out as the single important example of English aristocratic interest in the N e w Learning, the nobles of Elizabeth's court must be described as a highly cultivated group. F e w among them approached the ideal of Castiglione's Courtier, but most of them recognized the merits of that fashionable model, and the portraits of Sir Calidore and Prince H a m l e t were not drawn entirely from dreams. T h a t they also took a leaf f r o m the book of Machiavelli's Prince—that policy as well as appreciation motivated their encouragement of literature—this may detract from our admiration of them, but in fact it contributed to their achievement. Themselves imbued with Renaissance values, they based their policy on the assumption that an enlightened public would support their interests. T h e y accomplished no less than a broad popularization of learning.

C H A P T E R II

The Earl of Leicester as Patron His Early Career . . . vnder the shield of mighty Aiax. —William Cuningham, 1559

O

F Elizabethan patrons Leicester was the paragon, the Maecenas of England. His rapid rise to fame, accomplished despite the obstacle

of a family name twice attainted under the rule of the Tudors, and the

great wealth and power he enjoyed as Elizabeth's favorite and as a chief member of her Privy Council, made him the natural protector of a thousand clients. Writers, translators, chroniclers, preachers, and poets offered him the fruits of their labors, hailing him as champion of learning and virtue and promising him eternal glory as benefactor of the commonwealth. Doctors, lawyers, actors, soldiers, printers, all who had or claimed to have special services to render, stood ready at his command. That his response was gracious and generous there can be no question. In numerous statements of gratitude so detailed and specific that they cannot be interpreted as merely hopeful flattery, we have the testimony of his proteges; and there is, besides, a certain amount of corroborating documentary evidence. Perhaps even more significant than these proofs of his generosity, which will be discussed below, is the lack of evidence to the contrary. Nowhere among the many vilifications of his character which were published by his enemies has been found the charge that suitors for his favor found him wanting—and this in an age vociferous in such complaints. Let us not, however, attempt to hold a brief for the disinterestedness of his patronage. Leicester rewarded his servants because he needed them. His position was never secure, hanging from year to year on the Queen's whim, and though in fact he maintained her favor except for some brief periods of estrangement from before the beginning of her reign until

20

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

the end of his life, he had use for all the popular support he could obtain. Moreover, he was ambitious, always seeking greater personal power, neglecting no opportunity of self-aggrandizement. By attracting to himself the publicists of several important movements of the period he managed to fortify his own interests and to acquire the reputation of a progressive leader. A n d in every field of endeavor he planted his agents— men who made it their business to sustain and extend the influence to which they owed appointment. In all fairness to Leicester, however, it should be said at the outset that while he was not disinterested neither was he dishonest. For the most part he identified himself with the causes he represented, utilizing his protégés for the advancement of England's good as he and his party conceived that good. His greed for power was also a lust for glory—for that exalted and peculiarly Elizabethan variety of fame of which we have today only an intellectual understanding; he sought honor for its own sake as well as for the practical benefits it conferred. A n d he seems to have taken a genuine interest in many of the works he patronized. But we are not called upon, after all, to render a judgment upon his character —to choose between the cunning, unscrupulous rascal portrayed by his enemies and the altruistic, misunderstood hero depicted by his friends. Even if, in excess of caution, we assume that his generosity was carefully calculated, that he gave only when he thought it would profit him to give, still he will stand forth among the greatest of Elizabethan patrons. Our purpose, then, is not so much to show that Leicester was in fact an interested and liberal patron of literature, a conclusion which will necessarily follow from the mere mass of evidence, as to examine the particular motives which prompted his support of writers and scholars. For interpretation of these motives—and, incidentally, for evaluation of the rewards which he actually bestowed upon his protégés—we shall rely chiefly on the statements found in the dedications addressed to him. A s has been said in the preceding chapter, the language of the dedicatory epistle in this age, while fulsome, was not so meaningless as is usually supposed. T h e dedications of Leicester's protégés follow the conventions of the time, usually opening with a flowery and conceited address and closing with a humble and pious peroration, both replete with flattery of the patron; but in the central portion of the epistle, and easily dissociated from the purely complimentary material, we find the declarations of motive and the biographical details which are the real meat of Eliza-

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

21

bethan dedications. Whenever possible the dedicators will be allowed to speak for themselves in excerpts from these parts of their dedications. Naive acceptance of their statements is not required; our knowledge of the historical and literary background and of the biographies of the writers themselves will serve to support or correct them. From the total record Leicester's dominant motives will emerge. Unfortunately no definitive biography of Leicester, to which the reader might be referred both for the events of his life and for corroborative evidence concerning the motives of his patronage, has yet appeared. The earliest treatments, emanating from the pens of his religious and political enemies, were obviously violently prejudiced against him, yet their coloration has stained almost all discussion of Leicester for over three centuries. An exception is the admirably objective Elizabeth and Leicester by Milton Waldman, 1 but this, as the author declares in his foreword, is a "personal essay" rather than a biography. The only extensive modern account, Frederick Chamberlin's Elizabeth and Leycester,2 is a defense of Leicester's reputation, not a consecutive narrative of his life; it analyzes the libels which have been written into the record by previous historians and whitewashes rather than portrays its subject. Because of the unsatisfactory nature of Leicester biography, references to his life in the present work will be confined to the established facts—that is, to those accepted by most historical authorities.3 Robert Dudley, born about 1532, was the grandson of the notorious Edmund Dudley, minister and agent of Henry VII, whose unpopularity as an extortioner had resulted in his downfall and execution early in the reign of Henry VIII. Robert's father, John Dudley, was the great Duke of Northumberland who brought about the execution of Lord Protector Somerset and established himself as ruler of England during the final years of Edward VI. A vigorous supporter of the Reformation, he enriched his family with the spoils of the monasteries. He was also a patron of the New Learning, and was interested as well in schemes of exploration and colonization, so that his children were given a good education and an appreciation of the value of the sciences which would benefit the cause of English expansion. 1

Boston,

2

N e w Y o r k , 1 9 3 9 ; s o m e account of Leicester's p a t r o n a g e is g i v e n in c h a p . x x i x .

3

F o r the chief authorities consulted for this a n d other historical sections of m y

1945. work,

see the List of Sources, Part II. I shall cite references only w h e n m y i n f o r m a t i o n is d e r i v e d f r o m a special authority.

22

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

Upon the failure of Northumberland's plan to enthrone Lady Jane Grey, to whom he had married his youngest son, Guildford, both he and Guildford were executed. T h e rest of the family including his sons Robert and Ambrose (later Earl of W a r w i c k ) were imprisoned under a death sentence but were pardoned by Queen Mary. Robert Dudley and his brothers thereafter served her and Philip of Spain in military capacities. In reward for their gallantry—and for the life of a third brother, Henry, killed in action at St. Quentin—the family was restored in blood. A t the accession of Elizabeth, whose senior he was by no more than a year or two, Robert Dudley rose rapidly in power. Apparently Elizabeth forgave his service to Queen Mary and remembered only his gestures of aid and friendship in the time of her troubles, for he became Master of the Queen's Horse, was created a Knight of the Garter, and earned a place in the Privy Council, all by April, 1559. Rumors of more intimate favors spread through England and beyond, and Dudley was commonly considered the most likely candidate for the Queen's hand. In 1560 his wife A m y Robsart, to w h o m he had been married for ten years, died suddenly at Cumnor. Although Dudley's enemies suggested that he had himself brought about her death because she was an obstacle to his possible union with the Queen, Elizabeth neither heeded the report nor married the man; she merely continued to bestow her favor upon him. Probably she loved him, and passionately—but she wanted no master, and matrimony, a dynastic affair, could be postponed indefinitely. In 1564 she created him Baron of Denbigh and Earl of Leicester, and in the same year he became Chancellor of Oxford University. Leicester was now wealthy and powerful—a magnificent figure in the court, an acknowledged leader, an established member of the P r i v y Council. A t about this time he became known as a patron of those w h o favored a more radical reformation of the church than that represented by the Elizabethan Settlement—the faction later called Puritans. Nonetheless, in 1564 Elizabeth suggested him as a matrimonial possibility to Mary Queen of Scots, although it is possible that the offer was not intended to be taken seriously. Leicester remained in England, a leader at Elizabeth's court of a militantly Protestant, anti-Catholic group of nobles to most of whom he was related through the marriages of his brothers and sisters. His brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, had married A n n e Russell, daughter of the E a r l of Bedford who had been a leader of the Marian exiles. His sister Catherine had married the Earl of Huntingdon,

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

23

another well-known Protestant, whose name was later connected with the Marprelate group. His sister Mary had married Sir Henry Sidney; f r o m that union sprang Mary Sidney, who became Countess of Pembroke; Sir Philip, the peerless knight; and Sir Robert, who lived to inherit the title and estates of Leicester. Through these great families Leicester had other important connections—most notably that with Sir Francis Walsingham whose daughter became the wife of Philip Sidney, Leicester's favorite nephew. By the middle of the reign the family group was firmly entrenched and had something of the appearance of a political party. Against them was arrayed a shifting group of nobles, some of w h o m were motivated by allegiance to the old religion, some by natural conservatism, and others by fear and jealousy of Leicester's power. Several of Leicester's strongest rivals—for example, William Cecil, L o r d Burghley, and Sir Christopher Hatton—were not, however, consistently opposed to him but on occasion behaved as his friends and supported the causes which he represented. Besides family connections Leicester had many other sources of power in the form of monopolies, patents, stewardships, and the like. These favors bestowed by a complacent queen provided a large part of the splendid income he dispensed so lavishly, and greatly extended the area of his interests. In the latter regard the stewardships were particularly valuable. A s Lord High Steward of a number of parliamentary boroughs in various parts of England, Leicester represented those municipalities in their relations with the Crown, receiving in return such fees as the offices carried and the far more important privilege of exercising electoral influence. A s was customary, he attempted by request, command, or threat to control the nomination of members sent to the House of Commons by his boroughs, and with such success that he could count on a number of seats in that increasingly significant body. Indeed, J . E . Neale, the great authority on Elizabethan parliaments, estimates that Leicester far excelled any contemporary noble in the number of stewardships he held, and calls him, with reference to borough elections, the "supreme patron of high Elizabethan days." 4 It is of interest to our study of the analogous field of literary patronage that Neale finds the primary motive which impelled Leicester and other nobles to * The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1949), pp. 210 and 2 1 1 ; for other information from Neale referred to in this section see pp. 144, 196-98, 209-12, 241, 251-54.

24

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

seek stewardships not in the mercenary reward nor yet in political ambition in the modern sense—for party politics were not yet a feature of parliaments—but rather in the prestige and consciousness of power which the incumbents possessed. Yet Neale also draws attention to the precocious talent displayed by the Puritans in developing a party prog r a m and political tactics in Commons, and his evidence shows that Leicester and his aristocratic allies sometimes rigged elections in their behalf. A t least where Puritans were concerned, noble patrons can hardly be held innocent of political motivation. Leicester's influence in the state, however, was repeatedly endangered by matrimonial ventures, his own and Elizabeth's. By 1574 he had contracted some sort of union with Lady Douglas Sheffield—to whose son, born that year and called Robert Dudley, he willed his estate in 1587. 8 Elizabeth was presumably kept in ignorance of the alliance, and in 1575 he prepared for her the "princely entertainments" at Kenilworth in which many have seen a magnificent gesture of courtship. In 1578, however, he secretly married Lettice Knollys, widow of the Earl of Essex; later Leicester's enemies whispered of foul play, suggesting that he had had Essex poisoned. Meanwhile Elizabeth was being approached by emissaries of the House of Anjou, and in 1578 Simier, agent of the D u k e of Alen^on, arrived at Elizabeth's court to further the match between the Queen and his master. Since Alengon was a Catholic the projected union was opposed by the Protestants, and most vigorously by the Puritan faction. A t court Leicester used his influence to prevent the marriage. T o silence him Simier revealed to Elizabeth the fact of Leicester's secret marriage and thus brought about a temporary estrangement between the two. Leicester, however, was now proving himself of value as an enemy of the Jesuits; anti-Catholic opinion rallied to his support. B y 1582 Alengon, who had himself come to England, had been dismissed, the Jesuit mission had been largely destroyed, and Leicester's militant policy was in the ascendant. These were also the years of the Drake piracies against the Spanish, and of the Frobisher voyages, intended to establish England as a colonizing sea power in rivalry to Spain. Leicester backed both projects. 5 This Dudley's claim to the title was never legitimatized, and the title became extinct in i ; 8 8 upon Leicester's death. Knighted by Essex at Cadiz, Sir Robert Dudley was outlawed under K i n g James I and had a remarkable career of his own, chiefly in Italy. H i s estates were seized by the Sidneys of Penshurst; in 1 6 1 8 the title Earl of Leicester w a s revived in favor of Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

25

In 1584 the Privy Council found it necessary to suppress by letters patent a libelous work apparently from Jesuit sources entitled Leycesters Commonwealth

and also known as Father Parsons Greencoat. In the

following year, Leicester was appointed commander of an expedition to aid the L o w Countries in their revolt against Spain, a cause which had long been advocated by the Puritans and by the progressive party of which Leicester was a leader. In 1586 Leicester seriously angered the Queen by accepting the government of the Dutch states, an act which she had expressly forbidden. Although the quarrel between them was with great difficulty smoothed over by Leicester's friends at court, the English troops in the Netherlands were not supplied with funds adequate for the prosecution of the war, which dragged on with f e w successes for the English. Sir Philip Sidney was mortally wounded at Zutphen, and all England grieved. Defeats and disagreements followed, and before the end of 1586 Leicester was recalled. In 1588, however, Elizabeth reasserted her faith in Leicester's military leadership by appointing him her lieutenant general in command of all the land forces mustered against the arrival of the Spanish Armada. Shortly after the threat had passed, in September of the same year, Leicester died. H e was only fifty-six years old, but he had been in poor health for some time. H i s death was rapidly followed by that of his brother, the Earl of Warwick, and that of Sir Francis Walsingham, so that by 1590 the power of the progressive party was broken. Its chief heir, Leicester's stepson, the young Earl of Essex, now assumed its leadership. Leicester's career as patron may be said to have paralleled his political history, or perhaps it would be more accurate to regard his patronage merely as a function of political authority. Because of his peculiar position in the court of Elizabeth, Leicester played the patron in several roles, each related to the others, all parts of the same total personality. First, as a wealthy and cultivated gentleman, he had to assume the traditional obligation of nobility to foster learning and letters—a duty taken more seriously by the new T u d o r aristocracy to which he belonged than by most of the members of the old noble houses. Secondly, as a magistrate, a counselor of the Prince and an important agent of the government, he had an even greater responsibility, the sponsorship of works which conduced directly to the benefit of the nation. Thirdly, as a leader of the progressive party, he willingly cooperated with the propagandists who supported the policies of his group; naturally, his activity in this role

26

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

merged with his more official responsibilities. Finally, as the Queen's personal favorite, rumored her lover even after he had lost the chance of becoming her husband, he was royalty's proxy in bestowing patronage as in other matters. T h o u g h he cannot be called the power behind the throne—for Elizabeth was too canny to give control into the hands of a single individual and preferred to maintain a ticklish balance of power among the rival factions of her nobility—he was the one man in England who in all that time approached a king's estate. T h e r e is something regal in his largess, in his lavish support of a train of suitors, in his use of his influence to reward his followers with positions at court or in the church or universities. And because he, and to a lesser degree the other great nobles of the court, assumed the burdens of patronage, the Queen was endowed with an even more sublime regality, aloof f r o m the sordid trade in dedications. Throughout his career Leicester played these several roles of the patron with grace and tact. It is often possible to discern in which role he is being addressed. At the beginning of his rise to power a miscellaneous group of writers, chiefly compilers and translators of handbooks of information, called upon him to protect their works on the ground that such treatises would not merely be useful to him in his new activities but would benefit the entire commonwealth as well; they appealed to him as one who had already established a reputation for benevolent interest in learning, especially in the sciences. Soon afterwards, when he was advanced to an earldom and it became clear that he was to play an important part in the affairs of state, a more definable group, the historians, began to seek his sponsorship. Since chronicles were supposed to be valuable reading for men occupied in war and politics, the historians addressed him particularly in his role of Queen's counselor. As Chancellor of Oxford University, an honor which followed immediately upon the earldom, Leicester became the special patron of academic learning and gave his favor to the scholars of both universities and to the young writers and translators at the Inns of Court and elsewhere who sought advancement through the application of their studies. W h e n he became a recognized leader of the progressive party and the most powerful partisan of the rising Puritan movement, the reformers selected him as one of their special patrons and dedicated a large number of religious commentaries and treatises to him. Finally, in the last decade of his life, when his policy of aggression against Spain was dominant and he had

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

27

climbed to the greatest heights of his power, writers of all sorts—scholars, poets, linguists, legal and military authorities, publishers—claimed his attention. The books dedicated to Lord Robert Dudley in the first few years of his career under Elizabeth, before he was created Earl of Leicester in 1564, were symptomatic of the uncertain and experimental spirit of the times. Beginnings were in the air—a new reign, another change of religion, a different order of life. But direction, if not courage, was lacking. Still another change might soon impend, another upheaval in government and church. N o one could foresee that the new queen would reign uninterruptedly for forty-five years or that England was about to enjoy a period of peace and prosperity unparalleled in recent history. There were the gravest fears, but there was also determination to make the best of things, to control the future. Writers, like other men, attempted to contribute to this future in practical ways. It was not yet time to strike out for a new national literature. Other things were needed first: knowledge of the expanding world, methodological information in all fields, inspiration and guidance for Englishmen and their rulers. For these the writers searched in books imported from the Continent; from sources ancient and modern they produced translations, compilations, and adaptations intended to serve the purpose of the times. Most of the early works addressed to Dudley are of this sort. But even before knowledge a declaration of faith was required, and it is appropriate that the first publication dedicated to Elizabeth's rising young favorite was a propaganda pamphlet calling for loyalty to the new ruler. This early piece of Elizabethan publicity was occasioned by John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women which had appeared in Geneva a few months before Elizabeth's accession in 1558. Knox's timing was unfortunate, for, although his fulmination against women rulers was not intended as an attack upon Elizabeth, its full force was felt just in time to reinforce doubts concerning the new queen which had been raised by the unhappy example of her sister Mary. Elizabeth was furious. The answer, dedicated jointly to Francis, Earl of Bedford, and Lord Robert Dudley, was published anonymously in 1559 under a Strasbourg imprint and was entitled An Harborowe for Faithfvll and Trewe Sub-

28

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

iectes, agaynst the late blowne Blaste, concerninge the Gouernment of Wemen. w herin be confuted all such reasons as a straunger of late made in that behalje, with a briefe exhortation to obedienceIt employed historical reasoning and scriptural and classical authority to controvert Knox on the specific point of women's fitness to rule and ended with an impassioned appeal to Englishmen to support their queen. But its purpose was larger than its title implies; its real intention was to unite English Protestants and to close the gaps in their ranks which had resulted from the exposure of the Marian exiles to the influences and dissensions of the Continental reformers. At a time when the newly restored English Church was being erected on shifting foundations, unity seemed essential. Knox, a zealous Calvinist, had published his work in Calvin's own city; his arguments might serve to disaffect that strong body of English reformers who were themselves followers of Calvin, and to sway others as well. The Harborowe, though probably printed in London by John Day, was given a Strasbourg imprint so that it also might appear to emanate from an important center of reform and thereby gain prestige among the English Protestants, and the writer is careful to retain some of the principles dear to the radical reformers. The closing section, however, stresses national solidarity rather than religious doctrine and rises to a final climactic note when "Englandes voyce to hir children," calling for obedience to Queen Elizabeth, urges as chief among the reasons for England's greatness—and therefore for Englishmen's patriotic pride and loyalty—the fact that their country is the true and original home of the Reformation. 7 An additional motive may be discerned in this publication: the desire of the reformers themselves to dissociate their cause from the hated taint of Knox. Elizabeth's anger at the author of The First Blast was so violent that it included Knox's leader, Calvin—who attempted to exculpate him6 See STC 1 0 0 5 for identification of author and printer; the date there given, April 26, • 559. is taken from the title page of the pamphlet. T h e other work addressed to Dudley in ' 5 5 9 . Cuningham's Cosmographical Glasse (to be discussed), was entered in the Stationers' Register later that year, so that we may assume the priority of this work, especially since its nature demanded early publication. So far as I know, these are the first works extant to be dedicated to Dudley, both postdating Elizabeth's accession, although he apparently had achieved some reputation for patronage by this time. ' T h e closing section occupies sigs. R . i ,r.-R.2.!\ William Haller shows that this emphasis on England's part in the Reformation belongs in the tradition of The Book. 0/ Martyrs; see his article, "John Foxe and the Puritan Revolution," in The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of Thought and Literature jrom Bacon to Pope, by R . F. Jones and others (Stanford, Calif., 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 2 0 9 - 2 4 .

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

29

self in a letter to Cecil—and extended as well to all Calvinists.8 Her attitude endangered the hopes of those who wished to see the English Church established upon a pattern closer to the Genevan model. Since the Harborowe was written from a point of view obviously sympathetic with the aims of reform, in effect it announced to the Queen, to the nobles to whom it was addressed, and to all its readers that such aims were not evidence of disloyalty but, on the contrary, the proper heritage of trueborn Englishmen.9 The authorship of this pamphlet has been ascribed to John Aylmer, one of the returning Marian exiles, later Bishop of London and notorious for his severity against both Catholics and Puritans, but at this time still allied with the promoters of thoroughgoing reform. Aylmer's dedicatory epistle explains the purpose of the work—to correct error and establish truth—and modestly protests the writer's inadequacy for the undertaking. Of Bedford, who had suffered exile under Queen Mary, and of Dudley, whose father and brother had been executed by that ruler, Aylmer remarks that they have tasted the bitter cup of affliction which bringeth understanding, and he asks them to defend his "pore treatise." Their care for the state and the new sovereign and their zeal for Protestantism have made them worthy patrons of a work intended to serve the same causes: I coulde find none to whom I might commend these firste frutes of my labors, more mete, or worthier then your honors, bothe for that you be no les carefull for the quiet of the state, the safety of our soueraign, and the welth of the whole realme, than for your own life and preseruacion, but also, that it hath pleased the geuer of all good giftes, to endue you with a singulare fauoure and desire to aduaunce and promote the true doctrin of Christes crosse, which of late thorow the power of darknes, the membres of antichristes and Sathans garde, hath not onli ben obscured, but clene defaced . . . 10 Elizabeth's enemies, the Catholics, are identified with Antichrist, triumphant under the Romish rule of her sister Mary, while her Protestant nobles are seen as the defenders of true Christianity. In assuming 8 Elizabeth's reaction against Calvin because of the association with Knox is mentioned further on p. 192. 9 For a somewhat different interpretation of the motivation of this pamphlet, see M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939), pp. 173-74. 10 The principles followed in my transcription of Elizabethan spelling and punctuation and the absence of page references for quotations from dedications are discussed in the Introduction, pp. xix-xxii.

30

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

responsibility as a patron of this pamphlet, Dudley was anticipating his later role as a chief protector of the reformers and a leader of the antiCatholic movement. While the other writings addressed to Dudley during this early period—chiefly compilations and handbooks of information on miscellaneous subjects—do not to the same extent give promise of the types of patronage for which he became famous, they do bear witness to his increasing prestige as a member of the ruling group and as a supporter of learned men who offered their services for the welfare of the state. The works themselves are notable not for literary merit but as pioneering efforts in the movement to make English a language capable of conveying facts and ideas hitherto available only in Latin or foreign tongues. It is apparent from the statements of two of Dudley's earliest proteges —William Cuningham and Thomas Gale, medical men—that works of special learning, particularly books dealing with such scientific knowledge as had been presumed to be the peculiar possession of the professions, were in dire need of protection in these first years of the reign. Their dedications are motivated primarily by fear—fear on the one hand of the prejudice and intolerance of the unlearned, and on the other of the greedy conservatism of the educated, who sought to maintain their monopoly by jealously guarding the secrets of their lore. The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie, or Nauigation was published in 1559 as a testimony to Dudley from the author, William Cuningham, and the printer, John Day, both of whom were probably already under his protection.11 Cuningham's dedication acknowledges previous favors of a substantial kind: "your Lordshippes incoragement of me to knowledge, bothe in wordes and moost liberall rewardes." From this expression of gratitude we may perhaps infer that Dudley had used the services of this versatile man as a physician, tutor, adviser in scientific matters, or 11 Day's probable connection with the printing of Aylmer's Harborowe has already been mentioned. It is possible that Dudley had assisted Day to obtain the Queen's special privilege and license, which granted him sole rights to print The Cosmographical Glasse during his lifetime and also, for seven years, "all suche Bookes, and workes, as he hath Imprinted . . . or herafter shall Imprint, being diuised . . . by any learned man." From this patent, dated October 28, 1559, Day prints an excerpt just before the colophon of The Cosmographical Glasse; the title was entered in the Stationers' Register on November 6.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

31

astrologer—for Cuningham had studied at Heidelberg under the famous Erastus. T h e presentation of the volume constituted a handsome compliment from the printer as well, for it was an ambitious example of book production, carefully and expensively prepared, and embellished by tables, charts, and pictures. Dudley's arms appear on the back of the title page and again in the first initial of the dedication. Cuningham begins his epistle with an elaborate defense of scientific knowledge under the fable of Daedalus, whom it enabled to escape from the labyrinth of the monster Ignorance and to reach the heavens. T h e classical allusion and the whole tone of the dedication illustrate the pervasive influence of humanistic studies on all fields of learning at the time. But, he continues, Ignorance still has her friends, the enemies of Science, and therefore, . . . I haue no other refuge to kepe this my Glasse from perishing, then to be an humble suter vnto your honoure (which doth not only fauour Science, but also haue geuen her within your breast a reastinge place) that it may come forth vnder your noble protection: and be defended as Teucer was vnder the shield of mighty Aiax . . . As a student and sponsor of the sciences Dudley is expected to provide the protection of his name against the ignorant and arrogant critics who make it their business to dispraise the works of learned men. Dudley's reputation as a champion of the sciences seems to have been an inheritance from his father, the Duke of Northumberland, an active Protestant and a notable patron of learning. Northumberland had been a furtherer of the English voyagers who were the agents of imperialism under Edward V I and had shown a strong interest in the sciences connected with navigation, for the advancement of which he had given hospitality to the aged Sebastian Cabot. T h i s enthusiasm, transmitted to his son Robert, probably explains the latter's patronage of Cuningham and his book. The

Cosmographical

Glasse,

one of the first works

in English to include a description of America, was an early example of the scientific literature which flourished under the influence of the Elizabethan imperialist movement. 12 12

T h e passage on A m e r i c a is to be f o u n d o n pp. 2 0 0 - 2 0 2 , " A Perticvler

Description

of suche partes of A m e r i c a , as arc by trauaile f o u n d e o u t , " and is the c o n c l u d i n g portion of B k . V , w h i c h contains an account of the k n o w n w o r l d ; the f o u r p r e c e d i n g b o o k s are devoted

to g e o g r a p h y ,

astronomy,

cartography,

navigation, and

similar

topics.

In

at-

tributing the d i s c o v e r y of A m e r i c a to Vespucius, C u n i n g h a m d i f f e r e d f r o m accepted a u thority.

32

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

Although in his prcfacc to the reader Cuningham claims credit for introducing the subject of cosmography into the vernacular ("I am the firste that euer in oure tongue haue written of this argument"), he writes as a purveyor of information for curious readers rather than as a propagandist for imperialism, unlike later writers on geography. In explaining the usefulness of his material, he does indeed mention its value for merchants and for "Vesputius Americus, who (by his knowledge in Cosmographie) found out America, the .iiij. parte of the world, (vnknowne in all ages before our time) to the great benefites of all Europe," and for mariners and travelers, but only after he has discussed its application to military activities, the study of divinity, hygiene and medicine, law, grammar and poetry, and history. His dedicatory promise to make Dudley the patron of seven other works concerned with astronomy and other scientific topics was apparently not fulfilled. Perhaps, despite Dudley's protection, the enemies of science silenced him. Verses which he later published, attacking these adversaries as blind buzzards dwelling in clouds of ignorance, suggest that his book was violently criticized, as he had feared it would be. These verses are among the prefatory pieces printed in 1563 with Thomas Gale's Certaine Worses of Chirurgerie, from the press of Rowland Hall. They follow a letter from Cuningham to his friend Gale, encouraging him to publish his book despite "Sycophants and detracting tongues," of whose courtesy he declares he has himself tasted. Since Gale's book is also dedicated to Dudley, it is possible that Cuningham influenced the choice of patron and was perhaps instrumental in securing Dudley's favor for his friend. A physician himself, Cuningham would have made an excellent advocate for this great work on surgery. Gale had, however, an even more intimate connection with Dudley, for, as he mentions in his dedication, he had just compiled a treatise "conteyning the parfit cure of gonshot" for the use of surgeons "nowe at Newhaven, vnder the right honourable Lord Ambrose Earle of Warwicke, your honours moste deare brother." 1 3 This was a reference to the siege of Le Havre, where Warwick was in command of the English garrison; later in 1563 the English abandoned Le Havre as too costly in lives and bloodshed to maintain. The new methods of warfare, which had come in with the use of gunpowder, had greatly increased the num13 This treatise was probably identical with the third part of Certaine Chirurgerie, which deals with "the wounde made with gonneshote."

Wor{et

of

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

33

ber and severity of casualties, and Gale's work therefore had an immediate and patriotic utility. Gale's learning was derived, in part at least, from practical experience on the battlefield. H e was a London surgeon who had seen service abroad in the armies of Henry V I I I and Philip II. In 1561 he had become Master of the Company of Barbers and Surgeons. Shocked by the ignorance of English surgeons, he decided to use his knowledge and influence for the reformation of surgery in his own country by bringing out a book in the vernacular on the subject. His work is still hailed as a landmark in the history of British surgery. 1 4 Because he was conscious that his purpose would be opposed by the unlearned practitioners of his art, whose livelihood depended upon maintaining the ignorance of the public, he turned to Dudley for protection against the wrath of a vested interest. A s a military leader himself, Dudley was responsible for the treatment of soldiers wounded under his command. This fact, as well as his fame as a patron of the sciences, entitled him to the dedication of this very important work. Gale's dedication to Dudley is a dignified appeal for help. Defending the value of medicine and especially of surgery, the writer declares that it would have fewer enemies "if the Professours them selues . . . were lesse gredy of money, and moore diligent to learne their arte." T h e malice of others tempts him to hold his peace, yet if Dudley will grant him supportation in so vertuous an enterprise, I shall not cease to set oute some of the partes of Chirurgerie: that thereby the yong and studious Surgians may be made the abler both to know, and also to exercise their art. His emphasis throughout is upon learning. It is clear that he has no faith in the ability of older practitioners to change their ways, but hopes that young men will turn to books in this field as they were doing in other fields under the influence of the Renaissance. Before closing his dedication he appeals to his patron for protection against "the malyce of busye Detractours" and promises that he will follow this work, his first fruits, with other books which he has in preparation. 1 5 14 See Sir D'Arcy Power, "Epoch-Making Books in British Surgery," British Journal of Surgery, Vo!. X V , No. 58 (October, 1927), and the same writer's article on "The Elizabethan Revival of Surgery" (reprint from The Journal of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, X , 1902-3). 15 The reference to "first fruits" is apparently literally true in this case: although Gale was fifty-six years old, this was his first publication. The phrase is often interpreted as an

34

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

T h e history of Gale's second book, Certaine Worses of Galens, called Methodvs Medendi,

suggests that Dudley's patronage did not save Gale

from the malice he dreaded, and that his chief opponents were members of his own profession. Although ready for publication in 1566, as the date of the dedication (to Sir Henry Neville) indicates, the volume did not appear until 1586. Moreover, in his dedicatory epistle Gale reports that since the first time that I begänne to sette out anie parte of this arte in our English tongue, I haue both susteined great displeasure, and also lost manie profites, of those which were in times past my speciall friendes, and the greatest matter that they haue to saie against mee, is onelie that I goe about to make euerie bodie cunning in the arte of medicine, with setting foorth of these my workes in the English tongue . . . H e protests that he must nevertheless continue in his endeavor as a "bounden dutie, first to almightie God . . . and also my dutie to my naturall Countrie." T o the enemies of popular learning—those who "shall saie it is not good because it is in the English tongue"—he replies in a long defense of medical translations. That such complaints were not new—indeed, had been the subject of considerable controversy earlier in the century—he betrays by echoing the similar defense of Sir Thomas Elyot prefaced to the second edition ( 1 5 4 1 ) of his CasteI of helth. L i k e Elyot, Gale points out that since the ancients themselves—even Hippocrates and Galen, and the Arabs and the Latinists—wrote in their own tongues so that their meaning might be readily understood by their countrymen, the modern translator is merely following their example when he renders their ideas into his own vernacular. Translation, in short, is true to the humanistic tradition. As for himself, he declares that his work is intended chiefly for those apprentices to medicine who were not trained in the schools, for "tongues maketh not an Artist, but reasonable knowledge being ioyned with experience, maketh the Artist." Nonetheless, he believes that a surgeon should if possible have command of languages so as to avail himself of information in books which have not been translated. 16 expression of the youth of the writer but is not always a safe indication either of age or of lack of previous publications; it is merely a commonplace of dedications. 18 Similar defenses earlier in the century are discussed by H. S. Bennett, English Booths and Readers, 1475 to 7557 (Cambridge, England, 1 9 5 2 ) , pp. 1 0 1 - 7 . T h e value to surgeons of a knowledge of ancient tongues is illustrated by William Fulwood (whose dcdica-

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

35

A number of other writers on surgery and medicine sought Leicester's protection in the years that followed; there is, in fact, evidence of a concerted movement on the part of certain physicians patronized by Leicester and other nobles to make medical knowledge in the vernacular available to students of medicine and to the general public in spite of opposition from within the profession. The physician John Jones, for example, in 1566 dedicated to Leicester a work entitled A Dial for All Agves, Conteininge the names in Greeks, Latten, and Englyshe, with the diuersities of them . . . Very profitable for al men. This was a compendium of information on fevers drawn from twenty-four authorities ranging from Moses to Cardano. In his dedicatory epistle Jones attacks ignorance and emphasizes the value of study so that we may learn how to avoid miseries; he takes his theme, "knowe thyselfe," from Socrates whom he reverences as the fountainhead of philosophy and declares that for such self-knowledge men must turn to physicians as well as to professors of divinity and lawyers and magistrates. Medical knowledge has been neglected in recent times and the art of healing "merueilously abused." To Leicester, whose labors for the commonwealth rather than for any private gain have won him the good opinion of all, he addresses his treatise, "compiled . . . to the vse and profit of this my louing countremen." It is a small book, for "all men nowe a daies . . . be desirous to reade briefe workes," and he hopes that his patron will find leisure from the weighty affairs of the prince for its perusal, even though Leicester has at his command the services of "that famous phisition maister doctor Frauncis" and the knowledge and judgment of both universities and of the College of Physicians in London. He looks for affability in one descended of the "puisant progenie" of "warwike right rial." At a time when literature is flourishing—"As God be praised, in no age more by bookes than in ours"—Leicester is known "as a very Mecenas," famous for his "courteus bountie" and daily encouragement of those who strive for the common good. Therefore the writer trusts that his treatise, though "small and vulgar," will be accepted; it adtion to Dudley will be discussed later in this chapter). In Fulwood's Enimie of Idlenesse (1568), a work purporting to teach letter writing, we find among the examples provided of "Epistles of contention" the letter of a Barber concerning "his aduersary a Chirurgian" and the Chirurgian's answer (fols. 65P.-691'.). The Barber complains that the surgeons are attempting to establish a monopoly, to which the Chirurgian retorts that barbers are ignorant of Latin and Greek and therefore cannot inform themselves from books on surgery. Works such as Gale's would have made such knowledge available to the competing barbers.

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Leicester's Early Career as Patron

monishes men of "peri 11 and daunger" beforehand and warns them to seek remedies in time. Jones's position in the current controversy is indicated by a later work, Galens Bootes of Elementes (1574), specifically directed against the Paracelsians in support of the classical heritage of medicine, and by his writings on the history and value of medicinal baths. He was a practicing physician, numbering the Earls of Shrewsbury and Pembroke among his patients and patrons, and a proponent of the waters of Bath and Buxton, but he found authority when possible in ancient writings. The eclectic spirit which characterized this whole group of progressive medical men is better exemplified in the surgeon William Clowes. Like Thomas Gale, Clowes had been of service to the Earl of Warwick in 1563; he was later to attend Leicester in the Netherlands, an experience to which he alludes proudly in his book A prooued practise for all young Chirurgians, first published in the year of Leicester's death. 17 "Truth," said Clowes, "is truth from whome so euer it come, be it from Hipocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, or any other learned man." 1 8 His own writing is based largely on actual practice rather than on traditional learning, but his epistle to the reader excoriates those slandering and ignorant critics who attack the Galenists and oppose the dissemination of information. In various parts of his book he goes out of his way to praise medical men of his own time for their contributions to knowledge; he mentions Thomas Gale and he quotes a prescription for wounds given him by Dr. Richard Forster, another protege of Leicester. He felt that students who did not attend Forster's lectures at the College of Physicians were "wilfully bent to shrowde themselues under the dark wings of ignorance." 1 8 Forster himself, on the other hand, made little use of the press for the popularization of his knowledge. His only published work, the Ephemerides Meteorographicae, was a pocket-size collection of astronomical tables which appeared in 1575, the year of his admission as a fellow of the College of Physicians, of which he ultimately became president. It was not without a medical purpose, for Forster, like many 17 A prooued practise for all young Chirurgians, concerning burnings with Gunpowder, and woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, PHe, Launce, or such other . . . Published for the benefyte of his Country (1588; 2d eel., 1 5 9 1 ) ; the reference to Leicester appears on p. 36 of both editions. Clowes's service to the Dudleys was symbolized by their device, the Bear and Ragged Staff, on the lid of his surgical chest. 18 19 Ibid., sig. A.i.r. in both editions. Ibid., pp. 45-46 in both editions.

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others of his age, still considered astrology the handmaiden of physic. T h e dedication, couched in elegant Latin, addresses the work to the Earl of Leicester with grateful mention of Sir Henry Sidney who had been responsible for bringing Forster to Leicester's attention. A Latin poem on Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff follows the dedication. Forster had taken his M . D . degree at Oxford only two years before; he had still to make his name as lecturer on surgery in the London college and perhaps owed his appointment there to Leicester's influence. 20 T h e intention of these writers on medical subjects was not to supplant ancient authorities but to draw upon all sources of knowledge in their field for the benefit of fellow-practitioners, students, and interested laymen. They were themselves learned men: their writings and translations are utilitarian by-products of the Renaissance, the fruits of a classical education as well as of practical experience. They and men like them in other fields fought on behalf of learning against ignorance. Their demand for protection is one which we shall find frequently repeated by scholars and translators, especially in the earlier decades of Elizabeth's reign. It was, to be sure, a commonplace of ancient standing—writers had always complained of "detractors"—but it was no mere convention for these men. In this unacknowledged Battle of the Books, those who used their linguistic skill to interpret or translate for the unlearned the knowledge which had been stored in classical tongues or had only recently been set forth in the languages of other lands had constantly to defend themselves against charges that their labors vitiated the value of the originals, or made learning too common, or purveyed pagan and sinful ideas. Their nameless opponents rarely published these criticisms but apparently had real—and annoying—existence. 21 Because of their anonymity, the opponents of translation have not yet been identified, but it seems fairly clear that they were sponsored by the group that was conservative in both politics and religion. Those who still leaned toward the Roman Catholic doctrine and who hoped that 2 0 Forster seems to have had friends in court circles. The autograph of "J Wolley," Leicester's secretary, later Latin secretary to the Queen, appears on the title page of a copy of the Ephemerides which is in the Folger Shakespeare Library. 2 1 Later in the reign, however, when translation had becomc an accepted and common practice, the translators' defense docs seem to become a mere convention and is repeated as a matter of course in dedications and other prefatory matter. Nonetheless, there continued to be considerable opposition, and echoes of the controversy can still be heard in the Harvey-Nashe quarrel.

38

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

England would avoid open clashes with the Catholic powers of the Continent tended to oppose the dissemination of information in the vernacular, believing that it would serve the causes backed by the Protestants. 22 Writers who wished to publish learned works in English therefore demanded the support of the progressive Protestant nobility, among whom Dudley was rapidly assuming leadership. They declared in frequent pious and patriotic statements that their intention to make the learning of the past and of other countries available to the English public served a virtuous and worthy cause; to the enemies of progress, whose slanders they suffered, they gave the pagan names of Zoilus and Momus, following classical convention. Their efforts to survive and to propagate knowledge have a significance broader than that of any particular subject or period or religious doctrine; they are part of a perennial struggle which was passing through a critical stage in the sixteenth century. T h e translators were at least partially successful. But the battle was not won forever—nor has it yet been finally won. W e can assume, then, that when writers of this early period hail Dudley as the champion of learning and learned men, they are expressing gratitude especially for his doughty sponsorship of the translation movement. Their endeavors, however, were not entirely altruistic: for some translations there was an excellent market among "vulgar" readers who desired self-improvement. Among the translators who catered profitably to this demand we find William Fulwood, merchant, whose Castel of Memorie,

containing precepts both useful and curious for improving the

mind, was based upon a Latin work by one "Gulielmus Gratarolus," an Italian physician. T h e subject was a popular one. 2 3 Fulwood's book 22 Although it is difficult to find printed evidence of Roman Catholic opposition to the English translation movement, some of this animus is reflected by the anonymous author of Leycesters Commonwealth. As agents of Leicester in the university he names " t w o Phisitians" who were formerly Catholics "but now iuste of Galcns religion" (The Copie of a Leler, wryten by a Master of Arte of Cambridge, 1584, pp. 7 9 - 8 0 ) . Opponents of translation apparently attempted to justify their position by ascribing the beliefs of the pagans and "atheists" of ancient times to the writers who translated them and the readers who studied them. 23 Among Elizabethan treatises on memory, at least one other was dedicated to Leicester, Alexander Dickson's De vmbra rationis et ittdictj, sine de memoriae virtute Prosopopoeia ( 1 5 8 3 ) . In Dickson's case the printing of Leicester's name on the title page and the epistle to the earl failed to provide protection, for in 1584 " G . P." of Cambridge brought out two treatises entitled Anlidicsonus and Libellus de Memoria which attacked Dickson's ideas on "artificial memory" as impious and vain.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

39

was first printed in 1562 and had three editions in all, the two earlier being published by Rowland Hall, whose press was responsible for Gale's Chirurgerie

and, as will be seen, for an early example of Puritan

propaganda dedicated to Dudley during this period. In his verse dedica-

Sut valyant tee the rennet tbat,poJi(J)~s the inwardparte. Whych in no wife may paynteH be¿yet pUynely do appeare. and ¡bine alro. din entry (laet with beama muff bright it* ROBERT DUDLEY AT ABOUT T H E AGE OF THIRTY-ONE W o o d c u t f r o m verso of tide page of

The Philosophers game, 1563. tion to Dudley, Fulwood asks for protection against envious tongues, hailing him as "one who doth most men excell, in perfect clemencie," and praising his "forwardnes to all good works." By a natural but misleading error, the same translator has been identified with the " W . F . " who was one of the writers responsible for a work entitled The Most Noble auncient, and learned playe, called the Philosophers game, inuented for the honest recreation of students, and other

4°

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

sober persons, in passing the tediousnes of tyme, to the release of their labours, and the exercise of their witts. This little book was printed in 1563 by Rowland Hall for James Rowbothum and dedicated by the latter to Dudley. There were two issues dated 1563, of which one carries on its title page the information that it was set forth by W . F. while the other describes itself as "Set forth . . . by Rafe Leuer and augmented by W . F." 24 Both issues carry a portrait of Dudley on the back of the title page, facing the dedication. Behind the disagreement of the title pages lies a story which throws a good deal of light on the conditions of book production and dedication at this time. The mystery is unraveled in statements made by the two writers involved, Ralph Lever and William Fulke. Writing later in 1563 to dedicate to Dudley still another handbook of information—a work designed to eradicate popular superstitions concerning natural phenomena which he entitled A Goodly Gallerye with a Most Pleasaunt Prospect, into the garden of naturall contemplation—William Fulce or Fulke established himself as the W . F. of the two title pages. 25 He complained that the publisher Rowbothum, "a man of notable impudens," had recently abused Dudley's "singular humanitie and gentlenes" by dedicating to him a treatise on the philosopher's game which was not his own work but Fulke's, having been compiled by the latter from various sources. Rowbothum, moreover, had done this notwithstanding he was streightly commaunded to the contrary by the right honorable and reuerent father, my Lord of London [the Bishop of London, one of the official censors of the press], of whome also I was exhorted and encouraged to dedicate the same vnto your honour, my selfe. This action had resulted in two kinds of injustice, for not only had Rowbothum "through his importunitie and disobedience" intercepted Fulke's gift to his patron, offering it as his own, but he had also defaced 24 Cf. nos. 1 5 5 4 2 and 1 5 5 4 2 * in STC, where the ascription to Fulwood will be found. T h e word "noble" is omitted f r o m the title of the first item, and there are minor differences in spelling. 25 In the 1 5 6 3 and 1 5 7 1 editions of A Goodly Gallerye the author's name—found not on the title page but in the address to Dudley—is given as " F u l c e . " Identification of this Fulce with William Fulke, Leicester's protégé and an important theological writer, is made practically certain by later editions of the same work, printed in 1 6 0 2 and 1 6 4 0 , which give the author's name boldly on the title page as " W . Fulke, Doctor of Diuinitie." These later editions have the title A most pleasant Prospect into the Garden of naturall Contemplation. This popular and enduring little book, describing the wonders of inanimate nature "to the glory of God, and the profit of his creaturs," seems more characteristic of the future theologian than does The Philosophers game. For its neo-Aristotelian character, see Don Cameron Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance (Durham, N . C . , 1 9 4 1 ) , p. 1 0 7 .

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it with his "rude rythmcs and peuish verses." Fulke has set out the facts so that he may now offer The Philosophers game together with his new work as "an homely present" to Dudley and so that the patron will be warned against a repetition: . . . I thought best to geue your Lordeship vnderstanding that your honorable protection which is and should be the defence of learning and learned men, might no more be a boldening to such ignorant and vnhonest persones. If we are to believe Fulke and follow through all his implications, we must assume that Dudley had accepted Rowbothum's dedication before the work was "seen and allowed" by the Bishop of London; the publisher's "impudens" in deliberately defying the Bishop's order was exercised in the consciousness that Dudley was committed to his defense. Somehow the Bishop had learned of Fulke's authorship and therefore had approved the printing only on condition that the dedication be offered as from Fulke himself. But Rowbothum, emboldened by Dudley's patronage, had gone through with his original intention. So much for Fulke: by the end of 1563 he had publicly proclaimed his authorship of The Philosophers game and aired the injury done him by Rowbothum. What of Ralph Lever and his part in the production ? Almost a decade later we discover that he too had been wronged and that according to his version the villain in the piece was not Rowbothum, the publisher, but Fulke, the self-proclaimed compiler. Writing in November, 1572, Lever complained that the booke, named the Philosophers game, and printed about nine yeares ago, is entituled to bee set forth by Raphe Leuer, and to be augmented by one W. F. But I assure thee (gentle reader) that, the pamphlet or worke neuer passed from mee, with so many and so grosse ouersightes, as in the booke nowe printed are common to be sene . . . 26 He declared that the book was published "without my knowledge, or assent" and that W . F., whom he did not identify except by initials, was responsible for the introduction of the errors. His implication is that the original work was in large part his own. We can scarcely hope at this date to adjudicate this case of disputed authorship, but at least the puzzle of the two title pages seems to be solved. Apparently the book was first issued with Lever's name attached; when Lever protested that 29 T h e passage occurs in the "Forespeache," or preface, printed with Lever's Arte of Reason, rightly termed, Witcrajt ( 1 5 7 3 ) ; it is dated at Durham on November 24, 1 5 7 2 .

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his work had been spoiled by revision and augmentation, the ascription was withdrawn from later printings. It is amusing to find two learned divines of "advanced" views—for both Lever and Fuike were associated with Cartwright and other radical reformers at Cambridge—quarreling in this fashion about what seems to us an unimportant piece of literary property. Moreover, the publication of The Philosophers game in 1563 coincided very closely with affairs of much greater moment in their careers. In that year Lever—a returned Marian exile, a fellow of St. John's College, and the author of a bill against canon law and the English papists—became reader to Walter Devereux, later Earl of Essex; frequent preferments followed, leading to the degree of D.D. and the mastership of Sherburn Hospital at Durham. Fulke was at the threshold of an even more distinguished career. He had compiled The Philosophers game as well as A Goodly Gallerye and several other minor works in the interval between his B.A. and M.A., a period in which he had studied for the law at Clifford's Inn. But after 1563 he returned to Cambridge where he was appointed to a fellowship at St. John's in 1564; he became notorious as a leader of Puritan agitation at Cambridge, was expelled from and later readmitted to his fellowship, and was granted the B.D. in 1568. In 1569, having failed to obtain the headship of his college even though Leicester backed his nomination, he was appointed chaplain to that patron. The rest of his career (to which we shall return in a later chapter) was the tale of a successful protégé using his learning and his forceful style chiefly in theological writing and controversy. But his mind was still occupied on occasion with games of an intellectual variety; in 1578, for example—the year in which through Leicester's influence he obtained the mastership of Pembroke College—he dedicated to his sponsor a work entitled Metromachia sive Lvdvs GeometricvsP Naturally we wonder why men of learning—above should occupy themselves with games. The nature of described in The Philosophers game supplies a partial complicated arithmetical game known as rythmomachy

all, Puritans— the amusement answer. It is a and supposedly

27 Leicester's interest in mathematics, cspccially geometry, was well known. Apparently, however, the Metromachia was originally inspired by Burghley's request for a geometrical game, as Fulke acknowledges in his dedication to Leicester. This epistle occupies five pages of elegant Latinity largely devoted to extravagant praise of Leicester and the mathematical arts (including music) in which the writer displays his command of classical allusion. In the interim between A Goodly Gallerye ( 1 5 6 3 ) and this publication, Fulke had dedicated still another book to Leicester, In sacram Diui loannis Apocalypsim Praelectiones ( 1 5 7 3 ) ; this will be mentioned further on p. 256.

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originated by Pythagoras which is played with twenty-four men on a checkered board. 28 (An advertisement in verse—no doubt an example of Rowbothum's "rude rythmes"—at the end of the little treatise informs the reader that the equipment may be bought at the bookshop.) The full title, already quoted, indicates that the pastime would appeal to sober men whose puritanical tastes would perhaps be repelled by the frivolous amusements of the court and by the contention of the usual sort of games; and this suggestion is borne out in Rowbothum's verse dedication which offers this "godly game" to Dudley as a virtuous, friendly, and improving recreation suitable for a man occupied with affairs of force and weight. It is, we are told, good for mind and body and provides exercise in the three noble arts of arithmetic, geometry, and "proportion musicall." The dedication closes with several pious stanzas and a prayer. The same publisher, James Rowbothum, had in the previous year, 1562, brought out and dedicated to Dudley a work on chess under the title The Pleasaunt and wittie Playe of the Cheasts renewed. This "royal game," which had always fascinated the upper classes, reached a new peak of popularity in the sixteenth century, following certain radical changes in the rules. Although the "new chess" was known in England by 1550, no printed account of it had as yet appeared in English. Rowbothum's book is a translation, through a French intermediary, of a very influential Italian account of the revised game, written by Damiano and published in Rome in 1512. 29 It provided an analysis of the game, illustrative diagrams, and a collection of problems for which Damiano's name remained famous in Europe until recent times. Apparently the new work on chess enabled English players to master the revised rules, for there were three editions by the end of the century. Like The Castel of Memorie and The Philosophers game, it was offered as a means of improving the mind—"to the great sharpening of the ententiue partes of mannes vnderstanding." The special appropriateness of the game as recreation for members of the nobility who are occupied 28

See H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess (Oxford, 1 9 1 3 ) , p. 7 2 7 , n. 9. A work in French by C. de Boissiere, Le tresexccllcnt et ancien ieu Pythagorique diet Rythmomachia (Paris, 1 5 5 4 ) , probably was one of the books consulted by Fulke. 29 For the development of chess in this period see Murray, op. cit., chaps, xi-xiii; and for the works mentioned here consult especially pp. 779, 787, 8 3 8 - 3 9 . T h e work of Damiano of Odemira, a Portuguese, is entitled Qvesto libro e da imparare giocare a srachi et de It par.'iti. There was possibly an earlier edition than that of 1 5 1 2 ; seven later editions were published in the sixteenth century. T h e French translation by Claude Gruget from which Rowbothum's English version was made was published in 1 5 6 0 .

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with the grave and weighty matters of princes is emphasized by a comparison with the tourneys and displays of feats of arms in which they indulge for physical exercise. Moreover, as the dedicator points out, it is "not altogether vnprofitable for Captains, Conductours of armies, and common Soldiours," for it provides training in military strategy. These references and Rowbothum's remarks concerning the majesty of the game are intended as compliments to Dudley's high estate and influential positions. Although the patron is an expert at the game, the dedicator hopes that he will accept this first explanation of it in English as a token of the giver's good will, in accordance with his accustomed favor toward those who offer him their works. Rowbothum's Playe of Cheasts was printed by Rowland Hall, the same printer whose press had issued The Castel of Memorie and The Philosophers game. In his dedication Rowbothum mysteriously denies responsibility for the actual rendering of the work into English but offers no clue as to the identity of the translator.30 These treatises on games are of little significance in themselves, but they do suggest that the publisher Rowbothum was in these years exploiting his fortunate position as Dudley's protege by bringing out popular and profitable handbooks produced by the press of Hall. The latter had also apparently found favor with Dudley; his printing of Gale's Chirurgerie has already been remarked, and his share in the publication of religious works dedicated to Leicester will be mentioned in a later chapter. Another book dedicated to Dudley at about this time was Richard Rainolde's A boo\e called the Foundation of Rhetorike, published in 1563. Rainolde's work, a free adaptation in English of Aphthonius* Progymnasmata, the manual of Latin composition most widely used in the sixteenth century, represents a much higher level of instruction than the simple expositions we have been considering. 31 It was based on the extraordinarily popular edition of Aphthonius made by Lorich in 1546, of which hundreds of issues appeared in western Europe by the end of the seventeenth century. The first English printing of this Latin text 30 Although the title page declares that the treatise is "now set furth in Englishe by lames Rowbothum" the dedication tells us that Rowbothum had "found it translated out of French into Englishe after the forme and mancr in all poyntes as it is here printed." 31 The significance and relationships of Aphthonius' and Rainolde's manuals are discussed by Francis R. Johnson, " T w o Renaissance Textbooks of Rhetoric: Aphthonius' Progymnasmata and Rainolde's A bookt called the Foundation of Rhetorike," Huntington Library Quarterly, V I ( 1 9 4 2 - 4 3 ) , 4 2 7 - 4 4 .

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was in 1572, but the book was well known in England long before that time through editions published on the Continent. Rainolde's adaptation is an attempt to provide the student who wishes to apply the principles of rhetoric to his own language with certain exercises in eloquence and with illustrative models which have proved their worth in the teaching of Latin. Like Thomas Wilson (whose Arte of Rhetori/^e had been dedicated to John Dudley in 1553) and some other sixteenth-century writers on rhetoric, he believes that English can be used as an effective literary tool if it is properly taught. But he is thinking chiefly of the orator's rather than the writer's skill, and in his introduction he emphasizes the public value of rhetorical ability, which enables its possessor to be a leader of men and an influence in the state. In a passage headed marginally "The vertue of eloquence" he lists some of the ends that can be gained through its mastery: . . . to drawe vnto theim the hartes of a multitude, to plucke doune and extirpate affeccions and perturbacions of people, to moue pitee and compassion, to speake before Princes and rulers, and to perswade theim in good causes and enterprises, to animate and incense them, to godlie affaires and busines, to alter the counsaill of kynges, by their wisedome and eloquence, to a better state . . In his dedication to Dudley, however, Rainolde justifies his claim to a patriotic purpose on somewhat different grounds. After declaring that it was his "ende and purpose, to plante a worke profitable to all tymes, my countrie and common wealthe," he declares that the orations included in his book "are right profitable to bee redde, for knowledge also necessarie." They describe "The duetie of a subiecte, the worthie state of nobilitie, the preheminent dignitie and Maiestie of a Prince, the office of counsailors, worthie chiefe veneracion, the office of a Iudge or Magestrate." The content of the book, valuable for subjects and rulers alike, is felt to be as significant as the oratorical skill which it teaches, and both are defended under the name of "vertue," that greatest of Renaissance qualities, covering not only all the excellences of character and ability that an individual can possess but also and especially a burning zeal on behalf of the public good. Rainolde addresses his work to Dudley, "patrone and possessoure of this my booke," because "your Lordshippe studieth all singularitie to vertue, and wholie is incensed thereto." Moreover, in his address " T o the Reader," the author declares that his virtu32

Foundation

of Rhelorik.e,

sig. A.j.r.

46

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

ous matter will "defende my purpose againste the enuious, whiche seketh to depraue any good enterprise." Rainolde closes his dedication to Dudley with a statement in almost syllogistic form of the social contract by which members of the nobility are obligated in the name of "vertue" to foster learning and patronize writers : For the ende of all artes and sciences, and of all noble actes and enterprises is vertue, but also to fauour and vphold the studentes of learnyng, whiche also is a greate vertue. Whoso is adorned with nobilitie and vertue, of necessitie nobilitie and vertue will moue and allure them to fauour and support vertue in any other. . . . For the encrease of vertue, God dooeth nobilitate with honour worthie menne, to be aboue other in dignitie and state, thereupon vertue doeth encrease your Lordshipps honor, beyng a louer of vertue and nobilitie. Except for the utterances concerning his patron's "vertue" the writer gives no reason for addressing Dudley, nor any indication of a personal connection with him. There is no evidence that Leicester's protection defended him "againste the enuious" or furthered him in his career. His only other work, A Chronicle of all the noble Emperours of the Romaines, was published in 1571 with a dedication to Lord Burghley. Quite different was the patron-protégé relationship of Dudley with Thomas Blundeville, who supplied his patron with a series of handbooks and other translations, and was one of his most faithful followers during the first fifteen years of the reign. In return, Dudley was Blundeville's chief sponsor, apparently providing him with fairly regular employment. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Blundeville was a young student at the Inns of Court. He was later known for his interest in the sciences but in this early period of his career his reputation rested on his translation of three little essays from Plutarch's Moralia. Although his versification of Plutarch has a doggerel ring to the modern ear, Blundeville was a translator of versatility, and earned considerable fame in his own day. His earliest piece, The fruytes of Foes, came out in 1558—59 with complimentary verses by Roger Ascham, and perhaps was originally dedicated to Dudley; this edition is apparently no longer extant. The work was later reprinted, with a dedication to Elizabeth, in a volume incorporating two other translations from Plutarch under the general title Three Morall Treatises (1561 and 1580). 83 33 Blundeville's translation o£ Plutarch was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1 5 5 8 - 5 9 and again in 1 5 6 1 . T h e first recorded edition o£ The fruytes of Foes is that of 1 5 6 1 , when

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

47

Blundeville may have come to Dudley's attention through Ascham, the Queen's Latin secretary and himself a protégé of this patron, or through his connection with one of the Inns of Court. Dudley was a patron of the Inns and had many contacts with them; several of his translators, among whom Blundeville should probably be included, and perhaps Fulwood as well, were members of one or another of them. The patron was especially popular at the Inner Temple, for he had used his influence with Elizabeth to prevent the transference of one of the Inns from the Inner Temple to the Middle Temple, and in return the members of the Inner Temple had vowed that they would never be retained against him or his heirs and that they would always help him if he needed legal assistance.34 Since the Inns provided educated young men with residence and opportunity for further study while they were awaiting advancement, they were a likely breeding ground for literary protégés.35 And their increasing importance in the political life of the nation gave patrons a solid motive for befriending them. 36 Blundeville, however, had still another means of contact with Dudley —through William Cecil, who had already taken an interest in him. In dedicating to Dudley A newe boo\e containing the arte of ryding, and breakinge greate Horses (1560?), a work translated and adapted from it appears as Part II of Three Morall Treatises, bearing on its separate title page the information that it has been " N e w l y corrected and cleansed of manye faultes escaped in the former printing." Further evidence of an earlier edition is to be found in Jasper Heywood's reference, in 1 5 6 0 , to Blundeville as one of the fine wits of the Inns of Court and to his Trustes of Foes as though it had already appeared in print ( T h e Seconde Tragcdie of Seneca entituled Thyestes, sig. • viii.r.). Dudley is indicated as the original patron of the work by C. H . Conley, The First English Translators of the Classics ( N e w Haven, Conn., 1 9 2 7 ) , p. 140. 34 J. Bruce Williamson, The History of the Temple (London, 1 9 2 4 ) , pp. 170 ft.; see also F. A . Inderwick, A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records. I (London, 1 8 9 6 ) , Ixii— lxiv, 2 1 5 - 1 9 . T h e incident occurred in 1 5 6 1 ; besides passing the resolution already referred to, the members of the Inner Temple had Dudley's coat of arms set up in their hall, and dedicated their Christmas festivities to him in that year. Leicester continued in intimate relationship with the society throughout his life. He had one of their buildings extended at his expense, receiving in return the right to nominate three candidates for the new rooms, and he also had power to promote or inhibit calls to the bar; both privileges suggest that his literary protégés at the Inner Temple might have enjoyed really valuable benefits. As late as 1594 we find his widow using her influence to obtain an admission. For the details of his connections with the Inner Temple see Inderwick, op. cit., as indexed under "Leicester." 35 For an interesting thesis concerning the patronage of translators who resided at the Inns by members of the Privy Council and other Elizabethan worthies, see the work by Conley cited in n. 33 above; it is discussed in Chapter V . 36 See Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, pp. 3 0 2 - 8 ; Neale shows that a large and g r o w i n g number of M.P.'s were men w h o had been at the Inns and that other important positions in society and government were open to those who had studied law.

48

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

the Italian of Fcderico Grisone, Blundeville particularly acknowledges his debt to Cecil. T w o years before, Blundeville tells us, he had started to translate Grisone's work for presentation to Dudley, "as M. Secretarye Cycell can well testifie. W h o I thanke him of hys goodnes vouchesaued too peruse my firste draught, and misliked not the same." Cecil may have suggested that Dudley, now Master of the Queen's Horse, would be a suitable patron of the work, and perhaps recommended the translator to Dudley's attention. A fairly large number of Leicester's proteges, as we shall see, also dedicated books to William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Although the two patrons differed radically in character, reputation, and in some of their political policies, they had many interests in common. Moreover, as the two most important members of Elizabeth's government, they naturally received appeals from many writers who hoped for preferment in the royal service. Blundeville, however, once having made the connection with Dudley, considered the latter his special patron. In his dedication of The arte of ryding to Dudley, Blundeville tells us more about the circumstances of its composition. After completing two books of the translation which he had shown to Cecil, he decided that Grisone was a better "doer" than writer and abandoned his project in favor of a free adaptation of the work. His attitude toward his text is typical of the tribe of Elizabethan translators, who were more interested in making the information of the original available to the reading public than in preserving its letter. Their lack of accuracy laid them open to the criticism of those enemies about whom they are so constantly complaining. Whatever its worth as a translation, Blundeville's book, which concludes with a section of woodcuts showing a halter and many types of bits, is a solid and practical guide to horsemanship. In offering it to Dudley the dedicator emphasizes his patriotic motive. It is not his intention, he declares politely, to serve the personal use of his patron, whose skill in Italian would enable him to read the original, and whose mastery of the art of riding, "by knowledge as also by office," renders him a suitable judge and patron of the work rather than its student. T h e book is meant to serve the needs of esquires and riders of the Queen's stable who are under the command of Dudley as Master of the Queen's Horse. Moreover, Blundeville continues, he has at heart the good of the entire commonwealth, in most parts of which horsemanship has sadly decayed, and he hopes that the Queen's encouragement of the keeping of "great horses" will revive interest in an activity so profitable

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

49

to the national welfare. Before closing he promises Dudley "some other thing of more waight" as proof of his gratitude for the patron's acceptance of the work. Encouraged by the favorable reception accorded The arte of ryding both by Dudley and by the gentlemen of the realm, Blundeville kept his promise. In 1565-66 he dedicated to Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, a larger work on the same subject, entitled The fower chiefyst offices belongyng to Horsemanshippe. Besides an improved version of the treatise adapted from Grisone, the new compilation incorporated three other works on horses, and provided practical rules for the breeder, the rider, the keeper, and the farrier who seems to have served also as veterinarian. Each of the first three parts is separately dedicated to Leicester, while the fourth, addressed " T o the Ientilmen of Englande," calls attention to Leicester's helpfulness to the writer. In his opening dedication, intended to cover the work as a whole, Blundeville expresses his gratitude to Leicester, "by whom I was so much harted," and asks those who benefit from his writings also to thank the patron from whose generosity they have so profited. Thus Leicester's patronage of Blundeville's books is given a pointedly patriotic motivation, for it is interpreted as an indication of his care for the Queen's Horse. Further evidence of Leicester's conscientious management of his office is recorded in the translator's reference to Master Claudio Corte, an Italian authority on horsemanship whom Leicester employed as an assistant. Corte was the author of a book on riding, 11 Cavallerizzo (Venice, 1572 and 1573), which was partially translated in 1584 by Thomas Bedingfield, not without mention of the Earl of Leicester's excellence as a rider and as manager of the royal stable. 37 The importance of Leicester's position as Master of the Horse, which was by no means a sinecure, is emphasized by Blundeville's suggestions for improving the cavalry of the nation as a preparation against possible invasion. In his covering dedication he asks Leicester "to be a meane" in causing the Queen to put into execution statutes for the breeding of horses on the common lands, and suggests that the royal parks be used for raising horses as well as deer. His proposition includes a semiannual survey of breeding and quarterly musters of horses suitable for royal service: ". . . this realme shuld be of such force, as our enemies would alwayes be afrayde to attempt any enterprise against vs." 37 The Art of Riding . . . by Maister Claudio Corte . . . brieflie reduced, 1584; the translator's praise of Leicester appears in the epistle to the reader, sig. fl. ii. r. and v.

50

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

T h e subject to which the translator of Plutarch had turned his attention, with the encouragement of Cecil and Leicester, was no mere hack work. This revival of classical horsemanship, emanating from Italy, was of immediate significance to the commonwealth. Interest in the nation's cavalry, like the demand for a royal navy of which Hakluyt was to be the chief spokesman, was due to two related causes: rising national feeling and the increasing fear of foreign aggression. Leicester was one of the strongest voices to call for preparedness against a Spanish invasion, and when in 1588 that threat seemed about to be realized he was placed in command of all land forces for the defense of the realm. T h e six editions to which Blundeville's Horsemanshippe

ran by 1609

are testimony of its influence and continued usefulness. Blundeville also brought out as separate treatises The Order of Dietynge

of

Horses,

which appeared in 1565 with a portrait of Leicester as frontispiece, and The Order of Curing Horses Diseases in ig66.:lH His readers apparently included the nobility of the kingdom and many besides. A m o n g his more famous readers was Philip Sidney who, writing from Leicester House to his younger brother Robert in 1580, recommended the reading of Grisone's and Corte's books. 39 A n d in 1593 Gabriel Harvey praised Blundeville's "painfull and skillful bookes of Horsemanship," with other works of practical nature, as superior in value to the trifling pamphlets of Greene and Nashe. 4 0 Such an evaluation may help to explain why Blundeville and other translators were not ashamed to put their linguistic ability, the fruits of a Renaissance education, to utilitarian uses. Blundeville was not content with rendering service to Leicester, the Master of the Horse; to Leicester, the Privy Councillor, he wished also to bring guidance from foreign tongues. In 1570 the translator 38 1 have not seen either of these separate treatises, which were apparently identical in content with Parts III and IV of The fower chiefyst offices. According to a catalogue clipping pasted into the Bodleian's copy of the latter (Douce B . 2 1 8 ) , The Order of Dietynge as printed separately in 1 5 6 5 contained a "Curious Frontispiece and Head of Dudley, Earl of Leycestcr." STC records only one copy of The Order of Curing, no. 3 1 5 9 , and none of The Order of Dietynge. 35 The Complete Worlds of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. A. Feuillerat, III (Cambridge, E n g land, 1 9 2 3 ) , 1 3 3 : Sidney may be referring to the Italian originals, although it is more likely that he had recently seen the edition of Blundeville's book which appeared the same year. 40 Pierce's Supererogation, The Worths of Gabriel Harvey, ed. A . B. Grosart (London, 1 8 8 4 - 8 5 ) , II, 99. Among other practical works praised by Harvey is Digges' Stratioticos, also dedicated to Leicester.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

51

dedicated to his patron a work entitled A very briefe and profitable Treatise declaring howe many counsells and what maner of Counselers a Prince that will gouerne well ought to haue. This was an adaptation and abridgement of a book by Fadrique Furió Ceriol, written originally in Spanish but Englished by Blundeville from an Italian intermediary. 41 Furió's treatise, which had widespread and continued popularity in several languages, belongs to that important Renaissance stream of literature which attempted to set down rules of behavior for princes and their advisers. With the passing of feudalism and the emergence of the new centralized governments, statecraft had become a science. Its principles demanded study not only by the ruler himself but also by those upon whom he relied for the management of affairs. The books in which these principles were supposedly set forth had a broad appeal, and in England at least a more than academic value for the "common" reader. For in the Tudor state from the beginning of the dynasty the counselors of the prince had always included men risen from the ranks, and many were ambitious to be of that number. With that faith in books which was characteristic of the Renaissance, Englishmen believed that by reading and studying they could prepare themselves for important careers in the service of the state. In treatises such as Furió's they would find the rules epitomized, while in histories they would read the lessons of the past; and, as we have seen, even such a work as Rainolde's Rhetori\e would qualify them for the business of governing. Moreover, with the spread of education, there had developed an increasing curiosity concerning political matters and a critical attitude toward the government which controlled the fate of the nation. These interests were fed by reading the classics and further encouraged by Elizabethan statecraft as practiced. The Queen based her absolutism at least theoretically on popular support, continually asserting that she derived her power from the will of the people and intended to administer it for the common benefit, while her counselors frequently appealed to the populace to espouse their several policies. The general reading public therefore believed itself privileged to obtain an insight into the workings of government and developed a hearty appetite for books on public affairs. 41 Furió's work, El Concejo y consejeros del principe, was published at Antwerp in 1559. Blundeville's Italian exemplar was a translation by Alfonso d'Ulloa. Another Italian translation had been made in 1 5 6 0 by Dolce, and there were several Latin versions before the end of the century, including one printed at Cracow.

52

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

Furio's treatise, as translated by Blundeville, described the seven kinds of counsel required by the prince and established high standards of wisdom and altruism for the personnel of the government. Its usefulness for those who were ambitious of political careers is advertised on the title page, which carries a rimed address to "All you that Honors woulde atcheeue,/ A n d Counslers eke desire to bee." Fifteen qualities which the good counselor is presumed to have are outlined, and each is separately developed. In total they represent the ideal Renaissance m a n of state—a wise, eloquent, politic man, a traveler and a master of divers languages, a good historiographer and moral philosopher, and so forth. T h e twelfth quality, liberality, is discussed in a passage which has implications for the theory of patronage: . . . the lyberall counseler . . . regardeth onely the profite and honor of his Prince, and therefore it is the Princes part to make much of such, and to enriche them by giuing them both lands, fees, and offices, to the intent that they hauing sufficient to maintaine their callings, neede not seke any bie meanes to enrich themselues, and thereby fayle in doing their dutie eyther towards him, or the common wealth.42 This is a statement, on grounds somewhat different from Rainolde's, of the social contract which obliged members of the nobility to be generous of their patronage toward men of letters as toward all who could claim to be serving their ruler and their country. T h e phrase concerning enrichment by lands, fees, and offices fitted Leicester more nearly than any other of Elizabeth's counselors, for through her favor he had become one of the richest men in England. T h e singular appropriateness of the work as a whole for Leicester, the Queen's adviser, is emphasized by printing his device of the Bear and Ragged Staff on the reverse of the title page and by hailing him in the dedicatory address as "one of hir highnesse most Honorable, wise, and graue Counselers." In the dedication itself, Blundeville gratefully acknowledges his patron's favors in the past and explains the application of his present work to Leicester: For lack of better habilitie, I am bolde after my olde wonte, to present your Honor with Inke and Paper, more to doe my bounde dutie in shewing my selfe thankfull towardes you, for your great benifites bestowed on mee: than for any profite or pleasure, that I know your Honor can reape any waye of my rude wryting. And yet amongst al the tryfles that euer I wrote, there 42

Counsells and Countelcrs

of a Prince,

sig. K.2.P.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

53

was none in mine opinion that ought to please you better than this little Treatise, representing vnto you as it were in a glasse, manye of those good vertues and qualities that do raigne in you, and ought to raigne in cuery other good counseler. As the model counselor, according to Furio's treatise, Leicester had to possess an interest in historiography. Blundeville did not fail to present his patron with a handbook on this subject also, The true order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories, according to the precepts of Francisco Patricio, and Accontio Tridentino, two Italian writers.*3 This work, again a compilation rather than a direct translation, was published in 1574. As usual, the device of the Bear and Ragged Staff indicates Leicester's sponsorship. The dedication, after testifying to Leicester's interest in histories—a passage to be quoted in the next chapter—goes on to explain the sources of the work and to acknowledge the earl's continued favors: I that haue no other meane to shewe my thankfull myndc towardes your Honor from tyme to tyme, but with yncke and Paper, thought I coulde not wryte of anye thing more pleasing, or more gratefull, than of those preceptes that belong to the order of wryting and reading Hystories, which preceptes I partly collected out of the tenne Dialogues of Francisco Patricio, a Methodicall writer of such matter, and partly out of a little written Treatyse, which myne olde friende of good memorie, Acontio did not many yeares since present to your Honor in the Italian tongue, of whych my labour and good wyll, I most humbly beseech your Honour to allowe, wyth that fauourablie [sic] iudgement, which you haue alwayes heretofore vsed towards me, and therwith to continue my good Lord vntyll I shall deserue the contrary. With this work Blundeville brought to a close the series of books which he had dedicated to Leicester over a period of some fifteen or sixteen years. Despite his suggestion that he would continue in the earl's service, this is apparently his last dedication to that patron. There is, however, no evidence that Leicester withdrew the favor which had enabled the translator to launch himself upon a well-established career, and it is at least likely that Blundeville's later contacts were encouraged by the earl. Up to this time the writer had devoted himself to subjects which were especially suited to the needs and tastes of Leicester. In his later works, scientific subjects, especially astronomy and geography, occupied 43

Reprinted, with Introduction by H u g h G. Dick, "Thomas Blundeville's The true order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories ( 1 5 7 4 ) , " Huntington Library Quarterly, III ( 1 9 3 9 - 4 0 ) . 149-70.

54

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

chief places. Since Leicester did not fulfill his early promise as a patron of the sciences, Blundeville found other patrons to stand sponsor for his books. The "little written Treatyse" in Italian which Blundeville's "olde friende of good memorie" presented to Dudley was the work of Giacomo Concio (Jacobus Acontius), an Italian Protestant refugee who had become acquainted with the Marian exiles in Switzerland and had apparently been inspired by them to seek sanctuary and employment in England upon the accession of Elizabeth. 44 In 1559 he was interviewed by the English ambassador in Paris and commended to the Queen and Cecil for proper religious beliefs and skill in military engineering, a subject on which he had written a book. By the end of the same year he was in England and prosperously employed, for early in 1560 he was granted an annuity of sixty pounds by the Queen in recognition of his services as an engineer. Even before he became Leicester's protege he had powerful friends at court, numbering among them the returned Marian exile, the Earl of Bedford, with whose family Leicester was connected. In 1561 Concio received letters of naturalization; and in 1562, by an act of Parliament which styles him "servant of the Queen," he was granted half the lands to be reclaimed from the Thames by an extensive drainage project on which he was engaged. In 1563 he was again generously rewarded by the Queen for undertaking the fortification of the strategic border town of Berwick, of which Bedford was governor. Soon after this achievement Concio appears to have retired from active life to devote himself to literary labors, for besides the Italian manuscript treatise on historical method which he presented to Leicester in 1564, he produced in 1565 an apology for heresy entitled De strategematibus Satanae in religionis negotio. This work was published at Basel with a dedication to Queen Elizabeth expressing gratitude for the pension which had provided him with leisure for writing. Written to justify his defense of one of the clergymen of the Dutch Protestant Church in London to which he belonged, and which harbored expatriates from all over Europe who had fled from the terrors of the Inquisition, this treatise was in effect an argument for complete freedom in religion. Denying the possibility of ascertaining ultimate truth, Concio therefore denied also the right of Church or State to persecute for heresy. The 44 For biographical and other information on Concio, see DXB, s.r. Acontius; Dick, op. cit., pp. 1 5 2 - 5 3 , and " G i a c o m o Concio: A Renaissance Exile," Modern Language Forum, X X V I ( 1 9 4 1 ) , 1 2 - 1 8 .

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

55

multiplication of sects, he declared, was the work of Satan, who stirs men to such passionate convictions concerning small matters of doctrine that they fall into discord and controversy. As a solution for the religious problems which beset the age, he urged the reduction of essential Christian beliefs to a small number of central dogmas; with all religious groups aware of their fundamental agreement, he hoped for an end of intolerance. 45 Concio's thinking was noble and daring, but it constituted a direct challenge to the authority of the Elizabethan Settlement. That the English queen allowed her name to be associated with a work so heretical is indeed remarkable, and a token of the powerful influences which protected the writer. 48 His book, however, was not printed in England until 1631." Probably it was Concio's desire to obtain a strong patron who would protect him in his heterodox religious opinions which attracted him to Leicester at this time and which motivated his dedication to the earl of a pamphlet on historical theory. For in 1564, when Concio dedicated to him his treatise Delle osseruationi, et auuertimenti che hauer si debbono nel legger delle historie, Leicester was only beginning to show an interest in historical writings but had already acquired a reputation for being a loyal friend of the dissenters. And still another factor demands consideration : Leicester's position as a special patron of Italian works and of Italian exiles resident in England. Undoubtedly Leicester's interest in Italians and their literature was influenced by the increasing "Tuscanism" of Elizabeth's court, a phase of England's reaction to the Italian Renaissance. The printing of Tottel's Miscellany, so largely derived from Italian models, in 1557, the appearance of Hoby's translation of II Cortegiano in 1561, and the revival of interest in travel and study in the Italian cities are aspects of the Italianate fashion which prevailed in the earlier decades of Elizabeth's reign. Leicester's personal sponsorship of the Italians seems to have had a more practical turn, however, serving both his political needs and his demands for facts and ideas available only in Italian works. As we have seen, a large proportion of the works dedicated to Leicester during this early period were both informative in nature and Italian in 45 For a brief account of this work, see J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1 9 2 8 ) , pp. 9 8 - 1 0 0 ; and for a fuller analysis, W. K . Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, I (London, 1 9 3 2 ) . 3 1 7 - 6 4 . 40 According to Jordan (op. cit., p. 3 1 6 ) , Concio was "technically cxcommunicated" in 1562 as a result of his intervention on behalf of the heretical minister. But the record of his preferments during this period shows that he continued in favor. 47 Stralagemati m Satanae Lihri Octo (Oxford, 1 6 3 1 ) ; this edition reprinted the dedication to Queen Elizabeth.

56

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

origin. He seems to have employed Blundeville, who had traveled in Italy, for the special function of interpreting and epitomizing such works. Although Blundeville and other writers frequently compliment him on his skill in Italian, and specifically disclaim any intent to edify their patron, their remarks need not be taken seriously. Such flattery was conventional and was often accompanied by a humble request for correction and expert criticism. There is no reason to assume that Leicester had any such mastery of Italian as Blundeville's remarks imply. He undoubtedly studied the language, both as a fashionable tongue and as a tool of statecraft, but he always had learned secretaries at hand upon whom he could depend for diplomatic communications, and translators such as Blundeville ready to render into English any Italian book which might be of value to him. His patronage of works translated from the Italian continued through most of his life. Related to this interest in Italian writings was Leicester's employment of Italian expatriates, many of whom possessed skills highly appreciated in England. Claudio Corte, the Italian authority on horsemanship who assisted him in his office as Master of the Horse, has already been mentioned. Another Italian whom he probably befriended was the "Mayster Iohn Baptist Castiglion one of the Gromes of hir Highnesse priuie chamber" who, as Blundeville tells us in his dedication of Furio's treatise to Leicester, furnished the Italian copy of that work to the translator with the suggestion that he render it into English. This Giambattista Castiglione, who is mentioned as a groom of the Privy Chamber as early as 1561-62, 48 had been tutor in Italian to the Queen and was a physician by profession. Concio is associated with him as friend and business partner. As a military engineer Concio himself probably had some nonliterary contacts with Dudley before dedicating to him his work on historical method. Blundeville, Leicester's translator, appears to have mingled freely with these foreigners. From Concio he derived not only that writer's own treatise but also his enthusiasm for Patrizi's Delia Historia Diece Dialoghi (Venice, 1560), 49 and he utilized both works in making his compilation. 48 As "John Baptest" in John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823), I, 1 1 8 , 127. Dudley's friendship with this faithful follower of the Queen probably went back to Mary's reign; under Queen Mary, Castiglione had suffered repeated imprisonment for seditious actions on Elizabeth's behalf. See J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1934), pp. 48, 49. 19 Dick, Introduction to "Thomas Blundeville's . . . ," Huntington Library Quarterly, III, 152.

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

57

There seems, in fact, to have been quite a group of Italians, chiefly refugees from the terrors of the Inquisition, who were in one way or another associated with the Earl of Leicester during this period. Petruccio Ubaldini, who afterwards dedicated a work to the earl, and Pietro Bizari have been suggested as among the more distinguished members of the circle. 50 In later decades there were others; some of their connections with Leicester will be discussed in a further section of this study. 61 Italian Protestants were probably attracted to the earl primarily because of his sympathy for their religious position and his power as the recognized protector of the rising Puritan faction. His willingness to sponsor them derived from his need for their political support as well as from his interest in their skill and their writings. T h e works dedicated to Dudley in the first half-dozen years of Elizabeth's reign, before he was created Earl of Leicester, are chiefly compilations and translations from popular foreign sources. 82 T h e unsettled period in which they were produced is not distinguished by originality in literature; most writers, even purely utilitarian writers, still depended largely on inspiration from the classics or from the Continent. Moreover, Dudley was only beginning to emerge as one of the most powerful men in England, and his interests were not yet fixed or well known. Aylmer's Harborowe,

the earliest work to be discussed in this chapter,

is set apart from the rest by its special purpose and gives promise of Leicester's later sponsorship of religious and patriotic propaganda. T h e remaining writers, except for their dependence on foreign sources, seem to have in common only their desire to offer works of practical utility to their patron and their readers. Cuningham's Cosmographical

Glasse

was designed to satisfy the contemporaneous appetite for scientific knowledge; Fulke's Goodly

Gallerye

had a similar purpose. Jones's Dial

for

All Agves was one of a number of treatises testifying to Dudley's con50 51

Ibid., p. 153.

Besides those to be discussed, Giulio Borgarucci, physician to the Queen from 1 5 7 3 on, and Zuccaro, who painted his portrait, should be mentioned among Leicester's Italian protégés (cf. M. A. Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian [Boston, 1 9 1 6 ] , pp. lxii and Ixix). 52 The discussion in this chapter has sometimes transcended these chronological bounds for the sake of following through a series of works related in sub'ect or of pursuing the carcer of an early protégé. Moreover, not all titles addressed to Dudley during this period have been included, some few being reserved for treatment in the chapters on history and religious writing. For a chronological list of works dedicated to Leicester, see the Appendix.

58

Leicester's Early Career as Patron

tinuing interest in medicine. Gale's Chirurgerie, one of the most original works on our list, was of obvious use to a military leader responsible for the men wounded under his command, while Blundeville's treatises on horsemanship were likewise intended to be of immediate utility to the Master of the Queen's Horse. Blundeville's later books on statecraft and historiography, Concio's treatise on the reading of history, and Rainolde's Rhetori^e treated subjects which were considered necessary for a counselor of the Queen. Even the popular translations prepared by Fulwood, Fulke, and Rowbothum, dealing with the improvement of the mind through memory training and intellectual games, offered a similar excuse. The practical value of these works for Dudley himself and for the nation at large is the chief defense offered by their dedicators, and upon it rests their claim to a patriotic motivation. Other motives, however, which were to be prominent in Leicester's later career as a notable patron of many and varied fields, are already to be discerned. The sponsorship of translators, not only for the value of the information they purveyed but also for the training of linguists needed to serve the Crown as secretaries and on diplomatic missions, became one of the most important spheres of Leicester's activity in the years to follow. Related to this was the patron's protection of learned works against the anonymous critics, opponents of the progressive party to which Leicester belonged, who attacked all efforts to use the vernacular as a medium of popular education. Moreover, Leicester's encouragement of writers associated with the Inns of Court was to continue and to become a part of his policy of supporting academic learning as a whole. His consistent patronage of the translator and compiler, Thomas Blundeville, earliest of Elizabethan men of letters to become attached to Leicester's service, foreshadows a number of similar relationships. His protection of the presses of John Day and Rowland Hall was symptomatic of his later friendliness to Elizabethan printers and publishers who in return supplied him with a vehicle of publicity for special causes. And in extending encouragement to the Italian Protestants who found sanctuary in England, Leicester was giving expression to two of the motives which became important thereafter—his interest in Italians and other foreign scholars resident in England and his political support of the Puritan party. Finally, in revealing a concern for historical writing Leicester was initiating one of the most significant aspects of his career as patron.

C H A P T E R III

The Historians . . . the great loue you beare to the olde Recordes of dedes doone by famous and noble worthies. — J o h n Stow, 1565

I

N

the sixteenth century the w r i t i n g of history, like other f o r m s of

E n g l i s h literature a n d scholarship, achieved a n e w p r o m i n e n c e a n d

developed m a t u r e and effective techniques. It w a s sustained by interests both m o r e w i d e s p r e a d and m o r e p u r p o s e f u l than those w h i c h m o t i v a t e d most of the w o r k s discussed in the p r e c e d i n g chapter. T h e invention of p r i n t i n g had m a d e m e d i e v a l chronicles available to " c o m m o n r e a d e r s " — a public w h i c h in f o r m e r times h a d been conscious of the past chiefly as it w a s described by singers of ballads a n d r o m a n c e s — a n d this supply h a d created a p o p u l a r d e m a n d f o r m o r e and better accounts of history. S o m e of the w r i t e r s w h o met that d e m a n d w e r e m e n infected by the influences

of the Renaissance, m e n w h o investigated the forgotten periods

of national history w i t h the same k i n d of scholarly zeal as that w h i c h inspired c o n t e m p o r a r y researches in the antiquities of G r e e c e and R o m e . R e v i v e d classical histories provided models f o r imitation w h i c h

were

superior in o r g a n i z a t i o n and structure to those inherited f r o m the M i d d l e A g e s , a n d f a r m o r e interesting in interpretation of characters a n d events. A n d the d e v e l o p m e n t of scientific interest stimulated a desire to record the truth f o r its o w n sake. T h e g r o w t h of national f e e l i n g g a v e i m p e t u s to w h a t m i g h t otherw i s e h a v e been a combination of a n t i q u a r i a n activity a n d literary exercise. Q u i c k e n e d by patriotism, E n g l i s h m e n discovered in ancient British history a prophecy of their f u t u r e greatness a n d a justification of their claims to coveted lands in all parts of the g l o b e ; a n d in the legendary material c o n c e r n i n g K i n g A r t h u r they f o u n d evidence that their T u d o r rulers w e r e not m e r e W e l s h upstarts but c l a i m e d descent f r o m E n g l a n d ' s most g l o r i o u s hero of olden times. 1 B u t history had messages m o r e urgent 1

See Edwin Greenlaw, "The Battle of the Books," Studies in Spenser's Historical

Al-

6o

The Historians

still for the average Elizabethan, who was given to political thinking and theorizing to a much greater degTee than his forbears. In the records of recent times Elizabeth's subjects read the story of civil and religious upheaval of which the consequences were still apparent and the issues still alive. T h e Tudors, they found, had rescued them from both disastrous internal strife and the unrighteous rule of the papacy, and therefore their monarch, representing that royal house, deserved the gratitude and complete obedience of all men. A w a r e of England's continuing insecurity at home and abroad and encouraged by medieval habits of didacticism, Elizabethans sought in history for elucidation of current problems and for lessons which might be applied to their own times. 2 In descriptions of bygone rebellions they saw, as in a mirror, the dire effects of resistance to the ruler. Tyrants, they observed, had been sent as God's punishment to rule over sinful men, but good and loyal subjects were rewarded by the dominion of virtuous princes. Against neither type of monarch was revolution to be tolerated, for history demonstrated that wicked princes would meet with sudden and terrible destruction through the agency of Providence or Fortune, while rebellion always brought ruin to the land. T h u s histories served a double purpose, reminding the prince and his counselors of the necessity for reigning wisely and beneficently, and admonishing the populace against subversive action; each group was to remember its duty to the other and to the commonwealth. Historians did not hesitate to preach directly to both groups; but, at a time when national unity was felt to be of paramount importance both as the only means of preserving the still tentative experiment in Protestantism and as a bulwark against threats of invasion, it was the lesson against rebellion that they usually emphasized. T h e writing of history thus became an active part of the campaign for support of the ruling dynasty. 3 legory (Baltimore, 1932), and C. B. Millican, Spenser and the Table Round (Cambridge, Mass., 1932). Royalty was not alone in seeking to establish descent from the heroes of the past; the nobility, whether of old or new creation, also wished to trace their titles back to antique worthies. 2 That the Elizabethans regarded historical examples as lessons for the times and used them for political teaching is a theme which Lily B. Campbell has made peculiarly her own and to which she has devoted much fruitful study. See especially her article on "The Use of Historical Patterns in the Reign of Elizabeth," Huntington Library Quarterly, I ( 1 9 3 7 - 3 8 ) , 1 3 5 - 6 7 ; the introduction to her edition of The Mirror for Magistrates (Cambridge, England, 1938), pp. 48-55; and Part I, "History, Historiography and Politics," of her Shakespeare's "Histories": Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, Calif., 1947). 3 E . M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (New York, 1946), p. 69, points out

The Historians

61

The Protestant Reformation contributed its share independently to the historical movement, for, besides joining in with the demand for complete obedience to the "magistrate," which consorted well enough with the Calvinist ideal of a theocracy, the reformers appealed to the past for justifications of their program. The Scriptures supplied them with doctrinal reasons for the schism from Rome, the early Christian writers with a picture of the Apostolic Church unmarred by the later ritualism which they regarded as a heretical excrescence, while in AngloSaxon writings they found evidence of an ancient and uncorrupted English church from which their own might claim descent.4 In national history they discovered support for the theory of royal supremacy on which the whole structure of the Anglican establishment rested; their "reform" was thus no innovation but simply a restoration of the state of affairs before the papacy had "usurped" the spiritual authority of the king. 5 By habit of mind anxiously conservative they returned to hagiography, in the partially disguised form of Foxe's Boo^e of Martyrs, as a source of inspiration for renewed resistance to ungodly tyranny; from Foxe they learned that the true church had always been alive in that the reading of histories was specifically enjoined from the Elizabethan pulpit. In the long homily added after the rebellion of 1569 to the Book, of Homilies, the hearer was warned that the Papacy uses the ignorance of the simple as a tool and he was urged to arrive at an understanding of history; to see how God punished rebellions he was sent directly to English chronicles. Part I of Tillyard's study provides a valuable analysis of sixteenth-century historical patterns, with special emphasis on the "Tudor Myth" (the interpretation of history fostered by the rulers), where many of the ideas which I have been able merely to sketch are amplified and illustrated. * According to David C. Douglas, English Scholars (London, 1939), p. 61, "The beginnings of Old English scholarship derived from the English Reformation." Of Matthew Parker's antiquarian labors, Douglas remarks, ". . . the chief impulse which inspired his work was undoubtedly a polemical hope that he might find in the primitive ecclesiastical polity of the Anglo-Saxons a prototype of the reformed church over which he had been called to preside." Parker was himself a notable patron of historians. 5 The historical argument for royal supremacy is based on the theory that England was long ago established as an "empire," i.e., a sovereign state acknowledging no superior power in matters temporal or spiritual. Therefore the "See of Rome" has no authority within the realm, and all its past attempts to exercise authority constitute "usurpation"; evidence for this can be found in historical accounts of conflicts between English kings and popes. All this is explicitly stated in the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1 5 3 3 (24 Henry VIII, c. 12: The Statutes of the Realm [London, 1 8 1 0 - 2 8 ] , iii, 427) which legally established the king's authority over the church. The act begins with a reference to histories, "Where by dyvers sundrie olde autentike histories and cronicles it is manifestly declared . . . that this Realme of Englond is an Impire . . ." and includes specific mention of English kings who resisted the Pope's authority. For further discussion of the theory of royal supremacy, see Franklin L. V. Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship (New Haven, Conn., 1940), chap, ii; the statutory background is provided in J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents (Cambridge, England, 1948), pp. 1 3 - 9 8 .

62

The Historians

England though beset by Antichrist, that Wycliffe was the first great champion of the Reformation, and that Elizabeth's accession was an act of Providence indicative of God's special favor toward her nation.6 Their more radical and more modern tendencies sent them to reports of the contemporaneous religious wars of the Continent where they found arguments for national and international unity against the threat of Spain, Rome's champion. All of these motives stimulated the writing, reading, and patronizing of historical works—and were, in turn, restimulated by them. Some of the intense interest in historical themes which characterized the age spilled over into other literary mediums—for example, the new poetry of Spenser and Drayton, Marlowe's tragedies, and Shakespeare's history plays. Scholars, literary artists, patrons, and public were all stirringly aware of the pageant of history and of the moral and practical values in the lessons of the past. Because of the effectiveness of historical writings as propaganda for the political and religious causes of the age, historians received generous support and protection. In evaluating their works for patrons and readers, however, the writers of history do not usually give first place to arguments for a particular cause or policy. Although such motives were certainly conscious and were frequently mentioned with emphasis in dedications and prefaces, historians generally preferred to justify their labors primarily on didactic grounds, in accordance with medieval tradition and the moral tone of their own times. Thus Blundeville, in dedicating to Leicester The true order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories (1574), declares that he has prepared this treatise on historical theory because he knows his patron to delyght moste in reading of Hystories, the true Image and portrature of Mans lyfe, and that not as many doe, to passe away the tyme, but to gather thereof such iudgement and knowledge as you may therby be the more able, as well to direct your priuate actions, as to giue Counsell lyke a most prudent Counseller in publyke causes, be it matters of warre, or peace . . . In histories, the true image of man's life, readers were expected to find exempla, models of good and bad behavior from which they might profit in their own lives. In the prefatory matter attached to historical 8 Sec William Haller, "John Foxe and the Puritan Revolution," in The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope, by R. F. Jones and others (Stanford, Calif., 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 209-24.

The Historians

63

publications, Elizabethans found themselves constantly adjured to read history in this way. T h e patron is urged to note the parallels between past and present so that he may wisely fulfill his obligations as magistrate, counselor of the prince, and military leader; his own worthy deeds will earn him glorious remembrance in future histories. T h e common reader is warned that sinful acts, especially when they take the f o r m of civil disobedience, will meet with swift and cruel punishment. Both classes of readers are expected to apply the teachings of history to their "private actions." T h u s justified on the grounds of a universal and timeless morality, the historian was enabled to preserve his dignity as an objective scholar while urging the reader to embrace the political philosophy which he and his sponsor considered most suitable to the times. T h e transition from the general to the immediate was rendered plain and easy by the instructions to the reader which were often incorporated in prefatory material and by the interpretations of history with which the writer liberally interlarded his narrative. T h e reader was to compare his own rulers with the kings and princes of other times; he would then appreciate the government under which he lived and, thankful that he was not oppressed by tyrants, would patriotically and loyally support the Queen, the Privy Council, and the English Church. A n d in the patron of the book he would recognize one who followed the highest models provided by history and represented the causes most beneficial to the commonwealth. It would be his manifest duty to support that noble and his policies. Moreover, in histories the reader would find miscellaneous material of educational value. Writers frequently call the attention of their patrons to the descriptions of battles and stratagems, of cities and fortifications, of the phenomena of geography, and of varied forms of government which are contained in their books. Such information was especially recommended for the counselors of the Queen and for young men who hoped for a career in the royal service. F r o m history, in short, there was wisdom to be derived and practical knowledge as well, and both were to be studied, absorbed, and turned to the profit of the commonwealth. A n d because the reading and writing of history were so clearly endowed with moral and patriotic purpose, the patronage of historical writers became an obligation to be embraced especially by those in high public position. That both patrons and historians accepted this theory is indicated by the

64

The Historians

list of sponsors to whom were dedicated the several parts of Holinshed's Chronicles, the crowning accomplishment of the age so far as histories were concerned. It includes some of the most important nobles of Elizabeth's court.T Although Leicester was only one among the many powerful patrons of historians in his time, the works which he sponsored constitute a significant portion of the whole Elizabethan output. His interest in histories was recognized even before he achieved the earldom, and it continued strong. Grafton and Stow, the two most persevering of sixteenthcentury chroniclers, acknowledged him their special patron; he was one of the dignitaries whose names were honored in the Holinshed compilation; and several lesser historians were his protégés. The works that appeared under his protection furnish an index to the evolution of historical techniques during the period, as well as to the motives that inspired the composition and patronage of historical writing. The treatises of Blundeville and Concio, to which reference has already been made, furnish evidence of Leicester's early interest in the theory of history. They show also that the tendency to read history as a series of didactic anecdotes, while strictly harmonious with medieval tradition, encouraged rather than hindered the development of historical techniques inherited from classical models. Thus Blundeville, while emphasizing the didactic value of history, argues for a method very different from that of the medieval chronicle. From Patrizi he derives a concept of historical writing which would deal with good and evil actions in such a way as to emphasize most effectively both their moral value and their utility as exempla for men occupied in government and warfare. An individual or nation is to be presented in a single dramatic narrative which will trace the origin, development, climax, decline, and fall of its subject.8 Moreover, Patrizi insisted on the necessity of examining the sources of human action and suggested methods for analyzing the characters of historical personages so as to bring their motives into relief against the background of their times. Concio's treatise, which was written under Patrizi's influence and 7

There are six dedicatees: Burghlcy, Leicester, Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Cobham, Thomas Secford, and Ralegh (the last added in the second edition). 8 See Hugh G. Dick, "Thomas Blundeville's The true order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories ( 1 5 7 4 ) , " Huntington Library Quarterly, III ( 1 9 3 9 - 4 0 ) , 1 4 9 - 7 0 , especially the analysis of Patrizi's ideas, pp. 1 5 0 - 5 1 . Campbell, in Shakespeare's "Histories," pp. 4 9 - 5 1 , also discusses Blundeville's treatise.

The Historians

65

upon which Blundeville also drew, deals with the proper method of reading histories in order to obtain their full value. It suggests an orderly study which would enable the reader to secure three kinds of wisdom from the lessons of the past: knowledge of God's providence; the use of historical examples as patterns for those engaged in ordering affairs of state in peace or war and also as models of private behavior; and the ability to discriminate between good and evil.9 Other Renaissance writers expressed similar ideas. Eventually the continuous historical narrative, built up with careful interpretation of characters and events, came to be regarded as superior for didactic purposes as well as for the expression of partisan ideas to the disjointed chronological record on the annals plan that was still the normal pattern of English historians. Shortly after Concio's manuscript treatise was presented to Leicester, the same patron received the dedication of Thomas Danett's translation of Commines' Memoires, also in manuscript. Highly regarded in France, where it was first printed in 1524, and known to English historians as a source for fifteenth-century French history, Commines' work exemplified the new precepts by its vivid narrative style, its veracity as an eyewitness account, its careful analysis of the motives of political figures, and its striking portrait of Louis XI. Since Commines had himself been a counselor and ambassador of the French king, his observations were supposedly of especial value to those in similar positions of state. Danett's translation, made in or about the year 1566, remained in manuscript form for some three decades, during which time, however, it apparently circulated and achieved popularity on courtly levels. When it was published in 1596, eight years after Leicester's death, The Historic of Philip De Commines carried a new dedication addressed to Lord Burghley. 10 In this epistle Danett explains the circumstances in which his translation was made, declaring that the original version had been presented to his "Lord and Master," Leicester, and to Burghley "thirty yeeres since" and had later been revised at Hatton's request. Both Leicester and Hatton having predeceased Burghley, the dedication now belongs to Burghley by "the right of survivour." The work is published at this time because certaine gentlemen to whose hands the booke happened to come, tooke so great pleasure and delight therein, that they determined to put it to the presse, 9 10

Dick, op. at., pp. 165-70. The same dedication was printed with the editions of 1601 and 1614.

66

The Historians

supposing it a great dishonor to our nation, that so woorthy an historie being extant in all languages almost in Christendome, should be suppressed in ours. Despite the popularity of Commines' work, English historians were slow to follow his example, or that of Polydore Vergil or their own Thomas More, both of whom had furnished excellent models of the continued historical narrative. The two most important historians who appeared after the accession of Elizabeth and before the publication of Holinshed's Chronicles, Richard Grafton and John Stow, both clung to the annals form, though Stow later deserted it in favor of a more consecutive chronicle. Both Grafton and Stow were proteges of Leicester. Each sought the protection of this patron at the very beginning of the reign and with his continued encouragement produced a series of historical works of increasing scope and popularity. Although they acknowledged a common patron their rivalry was expressed in bitter controversy; their dedications and other prefatory pieces are replete with complaints and criticisms of each other. As historians they were of very different value: Grafton was a mere compiler, Stow an indefatigable and original scholar. 11 But there is no evidence that Leicester showed unequal favor— or attempted to make peace between them. The elder of the two, Richard Grafton, was the first to dedicate a historical work to Dudley—his Abridgement of the Chronicles of England, published in 1563. Grafton, a member of the Grocers' Company, had already had a long and successful career as a printer, to which trade he had apparently been drawn by his zeal for the reformed religion. 12 With Whitchurch he had been responsible for printing the Coverdale Bible in Antwerp, Paris, and London; as one of the printers of the Great Bible he achieved prosperity. He became the protege of Henry V I I I and Cromwell, receiving an exclusive patent for the printing of service books, and in 1545 was appointed "Printer to the Prince's Grace." Under Ed1 1 Cf. C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fijteenth Century (Oxford, ! 9 ' 3 ) . PP- 265-66. Chap, x of this work deals with sixteenth-century historians, and has been drawn upon for the discussion of historical techniques in the ensuing section. See also chap, viii of Campbell's Shakespeare's "Histories" for a survey of the purposes and methods of Tudor historians. 1 2 The account of Grafton in DNB is misleading; cf. the account of Stow (by the same hand) for discrepancies, perhaps intended as corrections.

The Historians

67

ward V I he functioned as royal printer, probably with the protection of the Duke of Northumberland, Leicester's father. When the latter succeeded in placing Lady Jane Grey upon her brief throne, Grafton printed her proclamation, in the colophon of which he appears as "reginae typographus." Queen Mary deprived him of the office of royal printer and he retired from the publishing business; he seems to have managed, however, to restore himself to favor, for he received several valuable grants during her reign. At the accession of Elizabeth, he resumed his allegiance to Protestantism and to the house of Dudley and soon managed to attach himself to Leicester, whose previous favors he acknowledges in his first published dedication to that patron. Long before the publication of his Abridgement Grafton had been interested in historical compilations. In 1543 he had published his own edition of Hardyng's Chronicle, supplying a prose continuation drawn from More's Richard III and Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia.13 In 1548, as publisher and continuator of the second edition of Hall's Union of the two Noble and lllustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yor\e, he had become intimately acquainted with the method of compiling chronicles from multiple sources of great variety and with the techniques of emphasis, distortion, and invention for partisan purposes, for it had been Hall's purpose to discourage rebellion and glorify the Tudors rather than to write veracious history. 14 Grafton's own work shows the results of this training. His Abridgement of the Chronicles of England of 1563 was an unambitious little work apparently intended to feel out the market for historical epitomes; its popular character is indicated by the inclusion of almanac material as well as by its compact, cheap format. The project was apparently successful, for there were two issues in 1563, a new edition in 1564, and revised and expanded versions in 1570 and 1572. All carried a dedication to Leicester. In his Abridgement Grafton makes little attempt to organize his material into a continued argument, contenting himself with recording events from earliest times down to the year of publication in the form of annals. His patriotism and loyalty to the Crown are advertised in enthusiastic laudations of Henry VIII and Elizabeth; his bias toward his patron's family is to be discerned in his reference to the notorious Edmund Dudley as a "graue Counsaylour," his attempt to smooth over 13 14

Kingsford, op. at., pp. 185-88, 259. Ibid., pp. 261-65. Grafton printed another edition of this work in 1550.

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The Historians

the Northumberland conspiracy, and his eulogies of the "innocent" L a d y Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford Dudley. Although Grafton remained faithful to the old annals form, his dedication of 1563 implies that history has a function higher than the mere recording of incidents. His epistle, which antedates Concio's treatise by a year, contains one of the earliest expressions in Elizabethan times of the didactic justification for history that the Renaissance had inherited from the Middle Ages, and it also includes the insistence on historical studies as a necessary part of the good counselor's equipment that was characteristic of the age. T h e relevant portion is short enough to be quoted in full: Beside many profitable causes (right honorable and my synguler good Lorde) for which histories haue bene written, the chiefest in polecie is this, that the examples in tymes passed are good lessons (or tyme to come: But the principall commoditie in the highest respecte is the settynge foorth of the course of Godds doinges, and in disposig [sic] the estates of men to the aduauncement of his glorye. As I vnderstand that your lordship for your owne honorable delite, and chiefly for the commoditie of this realme, (of whiche by the Queenes maiesties callynge amonge, other of her right honorable preuy counsayll you haue some greate parte of gouernaunce) haue furnished your self with knowledge gathered by studious readyng: so to the principall ende of all histories the world doth se by your owne godly doyngs, and by your fauour to all Godly and honest learnyng, that you haue not in readyng of hystoryes vnccrteynlye yelded your iudgement to fortune or nature, but Christianly acknoleged the mercifull prouidence of God. It is to be noted that Grafton, while testifying to his pious intention, neatly manages to advertise his patron's importance as a member of the Privy Council and to compliment him on his reputation as a patron of learning. T h e historian then proceeds to eulogize the Queen as the savior of England and to acknowledge his patron's previous favors: To the same end did I meane to directe the whole cause of my labours in this worke, beyng specially moued thereunto by the singuler goodnes of God towarde my natiue countrey in this, that he hath releued the ruinous estate of England, with the moost wise and Godly gouernement of our moost gracious souereigne Lady, whome he hath through infinite daungers preserued to defende vs from Iminent perilles and present destruction. The agreement of your lordships doings, with this my meaning, beside the speciall priuate causes

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of good wyll, whereby I am moost bounde vnto you, haue moued me to beseche your honour to be patrone of thys my worke, called the Abridgement of the Chronicles of Englande . . . After this there can be no mistaking Grafton's religious and patriotic motivation. He has succeeded in clearing himself from any accusations of disloyalty arising from his prosperity under Queen Mary by his references to the ruinous effects of her Catholic regime. The "speciall priuate causes of good wyll" by which he held himself bound to Dudley may refer to his previous service to his patron's father as well as to his more recent connections with the dedicatee. To refer with open commendation to that Duke of Northumberland who had been executed for conspiring to usurp the throne of the Tudors was still not politic. The same dedication was reprinted with the second edition, which appeared in the following year with additions and corrections. Grafton continued to enjoy Leicester's patronage while he went on with the preparation of historical compilations—a task to which he refers as "thys my trauayle in my later dayes for posterite." In the meantime, the value of his work was challenged by the appearance of a compilation of superior scholarship, John Stow's Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, which was published in 1565, also with a dedication to the Earl of Leicester.15 Stow was a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company who had developed antiquarian tastes and habits, with special interests in the fields of English poetry and English history. In 1560 or thereabouts, he retired from business to devote himself to research, a pursuit which eventually reduced him from prosperity to poverty. An assiduous collector of books, manuscripts, and legal and literary documents, he is said to have spent as much as two hundred pounds a year, a very large sum in those days, on his hobby. Unable to bear the expenses necessitated by his scholarly pastime, he was forced to seek patronage. In 1561 he brought out an edition of Chaucer, and at about the same time he called himself to the attention of Lord Robert Dudley by the presentation of a transcript, made in his own hand, of a manuscript treatise entitled The Tree of Commonwealth, which had been composed by the patron's grandfather, Edmund Dudley. 16 15 For Stow's high value as a historian, see Kingsford, op. cit., pp. 266-71, and the same writer's introduction to his edition of Stow's Survey of London (Oxford, 1908), Vol. I. The latter volume also includes a life of Stow, with an appendix of biographical documents, selected dedications, etc. 18 The Tree of Commonwealth is an allegorical work on the theory of government

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7°

F r o m this time forth, apparently until Leicester's death in 1588, Stow was a protege of the earl. W r i t i n g in 1604, l o n g after the occasion for flattery

was past, S t o w testified that it was Leicester w h o first en-

couraged h i m to devote himself to English history: It is now nigh 45. yeares since I seeing the confused order of our late English Chronicles, and the ignorant handling of auncient affaires, as also (by occasion) being pcrswaded by the Earle of Leicester, (leauing mine owne peculiar gaines) consecrated my selfe to the search of our famous Antiquities. 17 T h e result of this stimulation was Stow's Summarie,

w h i c h in its first

edition and in all subsequent editions published d u r i n g Leicester's lifetime carried a dedication to that patron. In the dedicatory epistle of the 1565 edition, S t o w testifies to his patron's reputation as a generous sponsor of writers, as proclaimed "by the vniuersall reporte of all m e n " and corroborated by the writer's o w n experience. T h e historian's modesty is rhetorically suggested in the anecdote of Artaxerxes and the poor Persian's "simple handfull of water," and in the apologetic description of the book as "these f e w first frutes," both commonplaces of Elizabethan dedications. Stow then sets forth the values of his w o r k , w h i c h he calls a " s u m m a r i e of the chiefest chances and accidentes, that haue happened in this Realme, frome the tyme of Brutus to this our age." H e claims that he has compiled it from chroniclers n e w and old and boasts that it includes many notable things " w h i c h e no man heretofore hath noted." T h e w o r k is offered to Leicester without the elaborate didactic justification used by G r a f t o n ; S t o w refers merely to "your lordships good inclination to al sortes of good k n o w l edges: and especially the great loue you beare to the olde Recordes of dedes doone by f a m o u s and noble worthies." H e does, however, state that his w o r k is performed only for his readers' profit. H e closes w i t h a which Dudley

w r o t e d u r i n g his i m p r i s o n m e n t

in the T o w e r

and

presented

to

Henry

VIII in 1 5 1 0 . Since it anticipates to s o m e extent the doctrine of royal s u p r e m a c y preaches nonresistance to royal and aristocratic authority, the reasons for its revival

and in

the early years of E l i z a b e t h ' s reign are obvious. For the significance of Dudley's ideas, see B a u m e r , op. at., pp. 1 8 - 2 0 , 104, 2 0 8 - 0 9 ; H . A . L . Fisher, The History

of England

(/4S5-

7 5 4 7 ) , ( L o n d o n , 1 9 1 0 ) , pp. 1 3 0 - 3 2 ; and the introduction of D. M . Brodie to her edition of The 17

Tree

of Commonwealth

A Summarie

of the

(Cambridge, England,

Chronicles

of England

1948).

( 1 6 0 4 ) , sig. B.6.r. In the m a r g i n S t o w

notes, of Leicester, "I g a u e h i m a b o o k e c o m p i l e d by his G r a n d f a t h e r , E d m o n d

Dudley."

T h e passage quoted a b o v e is a f o r m u l a used by S t o w f r o m 1570 on to emphasize his devotion to histories, b u t the r e m a r k about Leicester w a s not part of the original phrasing. It w a s inserted by S t o w w h e n h e prepared this last dedication of his digest, a fact w h i c h gives it a d d e d significance.

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request for their encouragement "to go forwarde in this my enterprise" —a promise of the larger, more ambitious undertaking he had already planned. The preface to the reader reveals even more clearly the fact that Stow's primary motivation was the student's zeal for establishing historical truth rather than a didactic purpose, but it must also be noted that his prestige as a scholar gave his partisan interpretations of history more weight than those of less reputable chroniclers. He cites his authorities, mentioning Fabian, Hall, and Hardyng among others, and declares that he has drawn also upon his own research and experience. He expresses the hope that the small size of his volume, as well as the novelty of some of its contents, will make it acceptable to the general reader, for whose approval he asks as a stimulus to further diligence. A full list of the authorities consulted follows this preface. The history itself begins with a brief description of England for which Polydore Vergil is cited as source and then proceeds chronologically, with the larger divisions arranged under the names of the reigning kings, down to the year of publication. According to the account which he later gave of the circumstances in which he compiled this Summarie, Stow had intended the historical work which he had begun with Dudley's encouragement to be executed on a larger scale, with more detailed and careful documentation than was possible within the limits of a small volume. He had been at work on this project for a year or two when Grafton's Abridgement of 1563 appeared. In order to correct the errors which he thought were being circulated by Grafton's work, and stirred by the complaints of many citizens who "misliked" it, Stow had changed his plan and prepared an epitome of the materials he had collected. Its small size had made it possible for him to get the true record into print quickly, and gave it, moreover, a claim to the same market for which Grafton's work was designed.18 Thus began the bitter controversy between the two historians, both Leicester's proteges. Its result was a popularization of English history on a scale far wider than would have otherwise been possible. Grafton took immediate measures to ensure himself against competition. Although his Abridgement, now in its second edition, showed signs of continuing success, he prepared a digest of it intended to appeal to an even more 18

For fuller details, see Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, ix-x.

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widespread audience—both more "portatiue" and cheaper than the former book, as he explains in his address to the reader. The new work, entitled A Manuell of the Chronicles of Englande (1565), was dedicated to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company. The aging author expresses his desire that after his death it will be printed for their benefit and kept corrected and up to date; he suggests, moreover, that they are to publish no other manual or abridgement of similar sort, "to thentent that the Quenes maiesties subiectes, which couet suche litle colleccions, for the helpyng of their memory maie not be abused, as heretofore thei haue been." A further slight on Stow's work is intended in Grafton's complaint, addressed to the reader, that others have benefited from the researches performed by him, the "firste gatherer," to the injury of printer as well as author. The whole undertaking represents an attempt to discredit Stow's Summarie and to prevent its further publication. The attempt was not successful. Probably because of Leicester's powerful protection, the Stationers did not accept Grafton's bribe, and Stow went on publishing. In 1566 he brought out a new and up-to-date edition of his Summarie which contained the same dedication to Leicester as the 1565 edition and also a promise of further revisions and enlargements. Moreover, in the same year, to compete with Grafton's Manuell, Stow issued his own digest, an abridgement of his Summarie.19 Following Grafton's example, Stow later dedicated this digest not to a noble patron but to a group of solid citizens—the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London and the Master, Warden, and Assistants of the Merchant Taylors (his own company), as well as "all the commons of the same citie." His array of dedicatees was more impressive and more representative of the "common wealth" than Grafton's; perhaps their influence was combined with that of Leicester to ensure Stow against the censorship his rival had demanded. At any rate, Stow's digest continued to appear, 19 This digest was entitled The Summarie of English Chronicles (Lately collected and published) nowe abridged and continued tyl this present moneth of Marche . . . i$66. Later editions ( 1 5 7 9 , 1598, and 1604) were entitled The Summarie of the Chronicles of England. Diligently collected, abridged and continued . . . (in the two later editions the title began with " A " instead of " T h e " ) . The similarity of this title to that of Stow's longer work, A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles (which title also had some small changes in later editions), is so confusing that I have refrained from using it in the text. I reserve the title Summarie for the longer work and refer to the shorter simply as "Stow's digest." As indicated in n. 20 below, the easiest way (aside from their size) to distinguish the two works is by the dedications.

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subsequent editions being dedicated to successive Lord Mayors. 20 That both writers chose to dedicate their smaller digests to bodies of commoners rather than to Leicester was indicative of the importance of the emerging middle class; it was, moreover, appropriate to the popular character of these inexpensive editions. They were attempting not merely to gain reward and recognition from those to whom they addressed themselves but also to protect what must have been valuable copyrights.21 Their quarrel now became openly rancorous. To Grafton's charge that Stow had benefited from his work, Stow replied with the countercharge that Grafton's Manuell was actually a digest not of his own Abridgement, as he claimed, but of Stow's Summarie.i2 The two writers openly accused each other of plagiarism in their dedications and prefaces, and Stow also criticized Grafton's scholarship. The controversy continued, with the odds on the side of Stow, the abler historian, until Grafton's death in »573-

In his remaining years, however, Grafton continued to set the pace in publications, and in 1569 he produced a full-sized history which he entitled A Chronicle at large and meere History of the aflayres of Englande and Kinges of the same. This ambitious compilation, in two folio volumes, was designed for that part of the reading public which demanded a fuller treatment of history than either of his two former works. Although Stow accused Grafton, apparently with justice,23 of having indiscriminately borrowed his materials from Fabian and Hall, the Chronicle at large was the most comprehensive history of England that had appeared since the accession of Elizabeth; moreover, it antic20 Cf. Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, lxxxii, where also will be found a good but incomplete attempt to unravel the bibliographical complications of the two works. The copies of the first ( 1 5 6 6 ) edition of Stow's digest which I have seen carry no dedication; the 1579, 1598, and 1604 editions carry the dedication to the list of worthies mentioned, utilizing for this purpose the Address to the Reader of the 1570 and 1573 editions of the Summarie. Apparently Stow consistently dedicated his digest to the Lord Mayor et al. and his larger Summarie to Leicester. DNB, ¡.v. Stow, confuses the two works, thus underestimating Leicester's patronage of Stow and the historian's continued loyalty to his original patron. STC also confuses the two works. 21 The Elizabethan author had no legal right to his copy, which became the property of the publisher by entry in the Stationers' Register. Dedications, however, seem to have offered some sort of protection to both authors and publishers, and apparently were reprinted with successive editions of the same work to ensure recognition of its identity. 22 This accusation is to be found in Stow's account of the quarrel written at a later date, but he almost certainly uttered it publicly at the time. For Stow's written account, which remained in manuscript until modern times, see Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, xlviii-liii. 23 Cf. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, p. 265.

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ipated Stow's own full-sized Chronicles by more than ten years. Grafton dedicated it to Sir William Cecil in a dignified epistle which nonetheless betrays some fear of criticism and which includes an appeal for defense. Although he calls attention to Cecil's customary favor for works of "honest purpose," he clearly implies that he has not himself formerly experienced this patron's generosity. Meanwhile Stow had also found a second patron—Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. He assisted Parker in the editing of the Flores Historiarum in 1567; he was later to render a similar service for Parker's editions of Matthew Paris (1571) and Walsingham (1574). Presumably under the sponsorship of the same patron, he became a member of the Society of Antiquaries which was formed in 1572. He did not, however, dedicate any of his works to Parker, but continued loyal to Leicester. Despite the dignity of his two powerful sponsors, in 1569 he was reported to the Council for having Popish books, and his house was searched by Bishop Grindal. The latter declared, however, that he had found no incriminating evidence but proof only that Stow had taken much travail for the writing of chronicles, and the case was rapidly dismissed. Although in the end the affair redounded to Stow's credit, it is an example of the perilous position in which a scholar might be placed by his enemies. For in his collecting of ancient manuscripts Stow must undoubtedly have acquired a good many "Popish books." We can safely hazard the guess that one or both of his patrons came to his assistance. In 1570 both Stow and Grafton reasserted their allegiance to their original sponsor, Leicester, by publishing dedications to him. Stow's Summarie appeared in a newly revised and enlarged edition which incorporated the results of his more recent researches. With it he reprinted the original dedication of the 1565 and 1566 editions, and the same epistle appeared with the editions of 1573 and 1575. Of this improved version of his Summarie Stow wrote later that it had been "first viewed by wise and learned worshipful personages, then dedicate and given to the right honourable my lord of Leicester, so to the whole common weal." 2 4 It was his most important publication and his most original work thus far. Stow had other reasons besides loyalty for continuing to reprint the dedication to Leicester. It served as a sort of trade-mark, identifying the work with previous editions and distinguish2

* Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, xl.

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ing it from his digest, with which it was likely to be confused. And it was a declaration of his rights of authorship, to some extent guaranteed by the name of his powerful protector. The work brought out by Grafton was also a newly corrected and augmented edition of his original work, the Abridgement, justified on the ground that it contained "lessons and examples" to deter men from rebellions like the recent rising under Norfolk in 1569, in the suppression of which Warwick, Leicester's brother, had distinguished himself. Although this edition did not represent as much of an improvement over earlier versions as we find in Stow's work, it was a real and sizable revision and its patriotic intention was unmistakable. Grafton took this opportunity to write a completely new dedication to Leicester which he devoted largely to a vicious attack on Stow. Without naming his opponent, he seems to designate him clearly enough among the authors of "certyn bookes, bearing the name and Tytle of Collection of Stories, or Summaries of Histories . . . lately suffered to be published." He charges that these works contain matter "to the defacing of Princes doinges, and wherein the gates are rather opened for crooked subiectes to enter into the fielde of Rebellion, then the hedges or gaps of the same stopped." Duty and necessity have therefore obliged him once more to labor for his country's good, by amending his previous edition and adding to it . . . some good lessons and examples to trayne subiectes to the obedience of their Prince, and thereby . . . not onely to stoppe the gappes, which other by theyr fond writing, haue opened to the hatefull spoyle and wyld wast of Rebellion: But also to geue a booke to my Countrey men, wherein they may truely note things passed (which is the chiefest benefite that cometh by readyng of Histories) vse the same as good lessons for tyme present, and also by meane thereof keepe them selues from readynge those fonde Bookes whiche are neyther commendable nor suflerable in a good comon weale. Recommending these thoughts—which amount to a charge of sedition against the unnamed writers—to Leicester's consideration, Grafton closes his dedication with a request for continued patronage and protection. The additions to which he refers, which would train subjects to obedience, include accounts of the recent risings, of the Pope's Bull against Elizabeth, and of the executions and punishments of rebels; the work ends with a prayer for Elizabeth's preservation. In the preface to the reader which accompanied this edition of 1570, Grafton indicates that he seeks defense against the attacks of Stow,

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whom he openly names and chides for having written an epistle against him, "stuffed with ragged eloquence and vncurteous termes, descanting and definying my name," and whose Summarie he accuses of containing "vntruthes whereof I will not here detect." He also makes some attempt to defend himself against Stow's charges of plagiarism and falsification. Before Stow had a chance to retort in print, Grafton brought out still another "corrected and augmented" edition in 1572, reprinting the preface to the reader of the 1570 edition but with another new dedication addressed to Leicester. In this epistle he gratefully advertises his patron's acceptance of the previous editions and claims that he has achieved popularity by reason of this assistance: ". . . and the same therby hath obteyned such fauourable enterteinement, as the Impression of those Bookes are caryed awaye and sparcled abroade among the good and worshipfull of this Realme." He is therefore emboldened to ask once again that Leicester accept the work into his "fauourable protection and defence." Stow answered Grafton's vague charges in 1573, in the address to the reader which he published with the new edition of his digest, as well as at the end of his Summarie in the same year. 25 He denounced Grafton's historical methods in some detail, going back to the latter's earlier publications for evidence of bad editing and condemning his competitor's recent work on the basis of the high standards of scholarship which he set in his own histories. He claimed that Grafton never saw some of the authorities he cited but merely lifted the references from Stow's Summarie. The controversy was brought to an end by the death of Grafton in the same year. No new editions of Grafton's works appeared, and the field was left clear for Stow. It is remarkable that throughout this bitter quarrel between Leicester's two protégés, neither writer publicly appealed to the patron against the other, nor did Leicester take any overt part. We may suspect him of protecting Stow when the latter was in trouble (possibly instigated by Grafton) with the Privy Council and Bishop Grindal, but there is nothing in either writer's published statements to indicate that Leicester ever interfered between them. Moreover, they were apparently equally free to address works to him. Although Grafton was clearly inferior to Stow by both the standards of 25 For the address in the digest, see Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, lxxviii-lxxix; in the Summarie the passage appears on fols. 436^.-4371/.

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the age and modern criteria, Leicester's policy of noninterference was probably a wise one. Grafton's compilations were hack work but they answered a popular need and they were good propaganda, fiercely loyal to the Tudors and the Protestant cause, and loud in praise of their patron's pious intentions. More important from our point of view, his mistakes seem to have sharpened the acumen and hastened the publications of the younger scholar. If Grafton had not provoked Stow to publish rival compilations, it is likely that England would have waited a considerable time before the conscientious Stow felt ready to send his work to the press. And, aside from Grafton's value as a propagandist and a spur to other historians, Leicester must have felt some obligation to befriend this man who had served the English Reformation in its earliest days and remained faithful to the house of Dudley for so long a period. Stow had obtained the valuable sponsorship of Archbishop Parker and had many years of activity before him; he could well afford the competition. After Grafton's death and without the stimulus of his rivalry, Stow produced no new work until 1580. In the interim he brought out several editions of his previous works and continued to collect materials for the great history he had planned. Undoubtedly he was heavily burdened by the expenses of his research (such as, for example, his purchase of part of Reyner Wolfe's historical collections, including some of Leland's papers, when Wolfe died in 1573) and needed financial help to sustain them. In 1579, when his labors were reaching a consummation, he received two grants probably intended to assist him during the final stages of his work. His services to the nation were appropriately recognized by an appointment as City Chronicler of London, and he also received a pension from the Merchant Taylors. In the same year he dedicated a new edition of his digest to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London and to the Merchant Taylors, no doubt as a token of gratitude. In addition, he almost certainly received some support from Leicester, to whom he dedicated the new work, his first full-scale history, under the title The Chronicles of England, from Brute vnto this present yeare of Christ. 1580. The patron's arms appear on the page opposite the dedication. The epistle begins with an acknowledgment of Leicester's generous reception of the 1575 edition of Stow's Summarie, and goes on to express the traditional patriotic and didactic motives of the historian as

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well as Stow's prevailing purpose, the recovery of the truth. It is brief enough to be quoted in full : The good acceptation of my Summarie dedicated to your Lordship fiue yeares since (right honorable and my singular good Lord) hathe so emboldened this Treatise, growne now to a greater Volume, that it presumeth with assured hope of like acceptance, to present it selfe to your Honor, and vnder the protection thereof, to venture into the world, and vie we of men: and that the more boldly, being an Historical Discourse of this oure natiue Countrie, setting before our eyes, to our instruction and profite, the incredible inconstancie, and continuait alterations of this transitorie world, wyth the worthie exploites of our Kings and Gouernors. What I haue performed herein to the common commoditie in searching out the truth: and what varietie of worthy matters I haue recouered, with no small coste and care, out of the graue of Obliuion, wherein they haue laine buried, I referre to your honorable censure, and the indifferent Reader, not doubting but your Lordship, whiche hath gotten grounded experience by the administration of most weighty affaires, and furnished your wisedome wyth diligent reading of sundry Histories, will both vouchesafe to accepte this Monument of my affectionate minde with your wonted curtesie, and shield it vnder the autorite of your name against those, whiche in this age requite honest endeuours with vnhonest speeches. The Almighty God preserue your Honor, with continual encrease of his benefit, to his glory, and your aduauncement. The language and most of the ideas are conventional, but somehow the dedication seems entirely sincere and characteristic of Stow. He is conscious of his worth and of the value of his work; as an accepted and permanent protégé of his patron, secure in the latter's approval, he can afford to be dignified. As he remarks to the reader, it was seventeen years since he had "consecrated" himself to the production of historical works. T o this undertaking Leicester had encouraged him from the very beginning, and throughout this period he had received the earl's constant support, as signified by the acceptance of the five editions of the Summarie. Now, in bringing out his Chronicles, which he regarded as his greatest accomplishment to date and not merely a better version of his Summarie, Stow gave his work a new title and a new dedication. But the patron was the same. Stow's dedication of this important history to Leicester was a testimony both of the continued loyalty of the protégé and of the consistent generosity of the patron. This was, however, the last work that Stow was to dedicate to Leicester, for he produced no new histories until after his patron's

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death, with the exception of "continuations" for the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles. In one of these continuations he gives an account of Leicester's campaign in the Netherlands, from which we can perhaps infer that he still enjoyed the earl's patronage. Besides assisting in the editing of this greatest of Elizabethan histories, Stow also provided materials for the use of Powel and Hakluyt in their chronicles and worked on an expansion and revision of his own book. In 1592, when the latter was finally published, Leicester had been dead for some four years. Stow therefore again gave his work a new title, Annales of England, and a new dedication, to Whitgift. He justified his choice of patron partly on the ground that he had formerly been the protege of another Archbishop of Canterbury, Parker, now deceased. Evidently the deaths of Parker and Leicester had left him without a powerful sponsor. Neither Whitgift's friendship nor the pension provided by the Merchant Taylors 2 8 was sufficient to sustain his expensive researches, and before long he experienced real penury. In 1603 and 1604 he appealed for charity to King James, who granted letters patent giving him the privilege of collecting alms for his support. Editions of his Annales and of his last work, A Survay of London, continued to appear but apparently without much profit to their author. In 1605 he died. Although the patronage system had failed to make him rich or even to relieve him from the poverty to which his scholarly expenditures had reduced him, it had given him protection against his enemies and a living sufficient to enable him to serve with distinction the cause to which he devoted himself. He did not fall upon real poverty, despite the great expenses of which he frequently complains, until after the death of Leicester. Had his great patron lived, Stow might have been spared the humility of pleading for alms in the last years of his life. He might even have produced the "History of this Island," the continued and integrated history which he regarded as his lifework but which never saw print, and thus fulfilled the demands of Renaissance historical theory as they had been set forth in Blundeville's treatise. He is remembered today not for his contributions to the structural development of historical writing but for the accuracy of his reports of contemporaneous history. Conyers Read, one of our greatest authorities on Tudor history, in 26 The Merchant Taylors paid him four (and later ten) pounds a year and he also received a fee as City Chronicler; Camden, whom he probably allowed the use of his manuscripts, is said to have given him an annuity of eight pounds. See Kingsford's edition of Stow's Survey, I, xxiii-xxv.

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commenting on the importance of Stow's contributions to the second edition of Holinshed, points out that for his chapters on the reign of Elizabeth, "Stow drew upon sources very close to the Government for some particulars of his story." 2 7 Since Leicester had been the chief and most influential patron of Stow's historical work, we can scarcely doubt that these official materials were placed at Stow's disposal through his agency. Without naming Leicester, Read goes on to suggest that it was Stow's value as a propagandist which won for him the special favor he enjoyed: It might even be asserted that the Government made use of his various Chronicles in something like the way in which modern governments make use of the press to influence public opinion. This is particularly observable in his accounts of the plots against Elizabeth's life . . . . Evidently the numerous editions of his Chronicles, Annals, Summaries, and Abridgements must have served contemporary Englishmen in something like the way they are served to-day by almanacs and annual registers. It may well be that, because Stow used history as a preachment against rebellion, sedition, and treasonous conspiracy, he was granted access to information in the possession of the government. Yet despite his support of their policies he was so scrupulous that his accounts are still of value to the student of history, and are corroborated by documentary evidence. Our debt is not to him alone; the patron who selected him as an instrument of propaganda also deserves our gratitude. Not very different in his origins from Grafton and Stow was the brilliant young scholar Edmund Campion, son of a London bookseller, destined to die a martyr for the Roman Catholic faith. Apparently Elizabethans of both the prosperous middle class and the aristocracy were eager to provide opportunities for men of comparatively humble birth whose gifts suggested that they could render valuable services to the state, for, like the two older historians, Campion in his youth enjoyed the patronage of one of the great London companies as well as of Lord Leicester. His maintenance at Oxford and probably his early education as well were provided by the Grocers' Company; while he was at the university Leicester opened to him the chance of a high calling. His early career is more typical of the academic scholars who are treated in 2T

Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Wahingham ford, 1925), III, 454-55.

and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth

(Ox-

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the following chapter than of the historians, but since the only work he dedicated to Leicester is a history he claims our attention here. During his formative period, Campion was famous for personal charm, great rhetorical ability, and diligent scholarship. 28 A t Oxford, where he became a fellow of St. John's College, he won honors and preferments and friends in all ranks. Undergraduate followers, known as "Campionists," imitated even his mannerisms of walk and talk, and he exerted a strong influence upon his pupils, one of whom, Richard Stanihurst, became a loyal friend. There is a legend that at twenty, already distinguished for his eloquence, he was chosen to deliver the oration in English at the interment of A m y Robsart, which took place at Oxford in 1560; perhaps this was the occasion on which he first attracted Dudley's attention. Some years later he pronounced the funeral oration of Sir Thomas White, benefactor of the Merchant Taylors' School, founder of his own college, St. John's, and one of his earliest friends among the great. Campion was being groomed for a career as brilliant as that of his friend Tobie Matthew, who was to become Archbishop of Y o r k . Y e t today he is remembered chiefly as the Jesuit " s p y " who was executed in 1581. Campion was at the height of his popularity in 1566, when Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford with Leicester, the new Lord Chancellor of the university, and other nobles in her train. Their purpose was to enlist the allegiance of the university by promising its scholars official recognition of diligence, and it was generally understood that golden opportunities awaited young men w h o succeeded in impressing them. In the ceremonies provided for the Queen's entertainment, Campion took a prominent part. H e was among those who welcomed her, in the name of the university, upon her entry into the city. Later he performed in a disputation before her, and adroitly utilized his opportunity by addressing Elizabeth and Leicester alternately with compliments which de28 For the biographical facts in the ensuing section, see especially Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion (London, 1 8 6 7 ) ; see also Paulus Bombinus, Vita et Martyrium Edmvndi Campiani (Mantua, 1620), and Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (New York, 1935). Of these, Simpson's account is the most informative and useful; it is apparently the chief source of most later accounts. Yet Simpson is occasionally inaccurate factually and his anti-Protestant bias is also misleading, especially since it prejudices him to accept the Catholic libels on Leicester. He cannot understand his hero's devotion to this patron: "Campion's admiration of Leicester is certainly a weak point in his character" (p. 1 3 ) . For a corrective to these martyrological accounts, see W. H. Stevenson and H. E. Salter, The Early History of St. fohn's College, Oxford (Oxford, 1939), pp. 1 8 0 - 9 1 , where Campion's Oxford years are discussed.

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lighted both. He mentioned especially Leicester's "godly and deathless benefactions" which were giving new life to the university. 29 In an extemporaneous disputation held later, he gave a brilliant performance, and after the Queen left Oxford he was summoned to her court at Woodstock and again distinguished himself. H e was exactly the kind of young man for whom governmental authorities were searching— skilled in oratory, clever, charming, and diplomatic. The university had pushed him to the fore as a sample of their best, and the visiting dignitaries were quick to seize upon him and promise him advancement. According to some accounts of Campion's life, it was Elizabeth herself who selected Campion as a favorite candidate for preferment and recommended him to Leicester; the earl thereupon sent for him and gave him a blanket promise of advancement. Cecil is said also to have offered him patronage, but Campion chose to become Leicester's follower. He apparently had the tact to ask for nothing at the time except friendship, leaving it to Leicester to take the initiative. This Leicester did. In the next few years the earl found many occasions to employ Campion's talents, to guide his career, and at the same time to keep him in the eye of the court—patronage which Campion acknowledged in grateful detail in his dedication in 1571 of the Historic of Ireland, which he addressed to Leicester: . . . there is none that knoweth mee familiarly, but he knoweth withall how many wayes I have beene beholding to your Lordship. The regard of your deserts and of my duty hath easily wonne at my hands this testimony of a thankefull minde. I might be thought ambitious, if I should recount in particular the times and places of your severall curtesies to mee. How often at Oxford, how often at the Court, how at Rycot, how at Windsore, how by letters, how by reportes, you have not ceased to further with advice and to countenance with authority, the hope and expectation of mee a single Student.30 29

Waugh, op. at., p. 9. Two Histories of Ireland: The one written by Edmund Campion, the other by Meredith Hanmer (Dublin, 1 6 3 3 ) ; the dedication occupies the seventh, eighth, and ninth pages (which bear neither signature nor pagination), with the passage quoted on the eighth. Campion's researches were utilized in Holinshed, but this was the first published edition of his Historie. T h e volume also includes the first edition of Spenser's View of the State of Ireland; another issue has the covering title The Historie of Ireland, collected by Three Learned Authors . . . . It is interesting to note that all three authors had been in Leicester's patronage; Hanmer and Spenser are to be discussed further. For a bibliographical description, see F. R. Johnson in A Critical Bibliography of the Worths of Edmund Spenser Printed before 1700 (Baltimore, 1 9 3 3 ) , pp. 4 8 - 5 3 . For a facsimile of the 1 6 3 3 text, see E d m u n d 30

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Evidently Leicester worked hard at patronage and, in this case at least, did not merely utilize his protege's abilities for his own profit but actually took a personal interest in his future. T h e references to Rycote and Windsor probably recall occasions on which Campion was summoned from Oxford to provide courtly entertainment for the Queen, 3 1 while the letters and reports suggest that Leicester corresponded with the young scholar and also endeavored to bring him to the attention of others in positions of power. In the passage immediately following this expression of personal gratitude, Campion gives further testimony of Leicester's generosity as a patron of learning in words which must be weighed for any final estimate of his protector's character: Thirtecne yeares to have lived in the eye and speciall credit of a Prince, yet never during all that space to have abused this ability to any mans harme, to be enriched with no mans overthrow, to be kindled neither with grudge nor emulation, to benefit an infinite resort of dayly sutors, to let downe your calling to the neede of meane subjects, to retaine so lowly a stomacke, such a facility, so milde a nature in so high a vocation, to undertake the tuition of learning and learned men . . . . This is the substance which maketh you worthy of these Ornaments wherewith you are attyred, and in respect of these good gifts I for my part have ever bin desirous to discover an officious and dutifull minde towards your Lordship, so will I never cease to betake the uttermost of my power and skill to your service . . . T h o u g h we remember that this dedication was written with the hope of future patronage in mind and by one noted for dexterous use of language, we must grant that its particularity and fervor are convincing. Campion wrote these words in 1571. Within a year he was a Catholic refugee at Douai, and ten years later he was a captive in the hands of the government of which Leicester was a part, yet he never recanted them so far as we know, nor is there any suggestion that he gave his sanction to the attacks on Leicester which were so loud in the mouths of his Catholic colleagues. There is little doubt that Campion had always tended toward Catholicism. A t St. John's College, under the protection of a founder whose own views were at least tolerant of the old religion, he seems to have been Campion, A Historic of Ireland (757/), with Introduction by Rudolf, B. Gottfried (New York, 1940). 31 Waugh, op. cit., p. 1 1 .

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free f r o m molestation. 32 After 1566, however, and throughout the period of Leicester's active patronage, Campion apparently experienced a severe internal conflict. His Catholicism was being reinforced by his theological studies, but if he remained a Catholic he had nothing to hope for. T h e brilliant future promised him, whether he elected to remain in an academic career or to aim for a high ecclesiastical position, lay within the bounds of the national church. Valued for his eloquence rather than his theology, he had only to conform to be advanced in either field. Probably Leicester was cognizant of his wavering and made a special effort to lure so gifted a man definitely into the fold of the English Church. For a time, at least, Campion was tempted. H e continued his university career, became a junior proctor in 1568, and, in preparation for ecclesiastical preferment and with the encouragement of the Bishop of Gloucester, was ordained deacon at about the same time. T h e crucial step —holy orders—he still evaded. But anti-Catholic feeling was increasing in these years, and with it the suspicion of anyone whose adherence to Protestantism was questionable. Shortly after Campion's ordination as deacon the Grocers' Company became uneasy concerning his beliefs and directed him to prove his orthodoxy in a public sermon at Paul's Cross. Campion at first postponed and then refused the engagement on the plea of being busily occupied with his duties at Oxford; when pressed he even offered to resign the scholarship provided him by the Grocers. A t this period of his life Campion seems to have had too many patrons. H i s middle-class protectors, in their zeal for the reformed religion, enforced upon him a decision which his more diplomatic noble patron would have delayed, perhaps avoided altogether. H e made up his mind to remain a Catholic and in 1570 left O x f o r d . 3 3 82 The Catholic accounts suggest that St. John's College secretly harbored Catholicism during its early years, and even the conservative statements of Stevenson and Salter concerning Sir Thomas White's religious beliefs indicate that he himself probably preferred the Roman ceremonies and customs (op. cit., p. 146). 83 A somewhat different interpretation of these facts is given by Stevenson and Salter (op. cit., pp. 180-89). They ascribe the action of the Grocers' Company merely to impatience because Campion had not yet taken holy orders, and point out that he continued to receive his scholarship after he had made the gesture of resigning it and even after he left England. They would date Campion's break with Oxford and the Church of England in the summer of 1 5 7 1 , after the writing of the dedication of Leicester. But Campion's departure—and renunciation of a brilliant career at Oxford—seem to the present writer significant of a decision of conscience, even though he may have hoped to retain Leicester's favor thereafter. The lenient actions of the Grocers' Company and of the college authorities were apparently intended to keep Campion in the fold if possible and to make return easy after he had broken away.

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His decisión may have been strengthened by the fact that an opportunity seemed to be opening for him in Dublin, where James Stanihurst, father of his pupil Richard, was energetically initiating preparations for the restoration of the University of Dublin. The elder Stanihurst was Recorder of Dublin and Speaker in the Irish House of Commons. As his protege, Campion would find employment suited to his abilities and ideals: he would have a share in shaping the new university, and he would (or so he believed) be free from religious interference. With Richard Stanihurst, through whom the invitation was probably conveyed, and at whose home in Dublin he became a guest, Campion left England for Ireland. Before departing he undoubtedly consulted his patron, Leicester, who would have been glad to provide a letter of recommendation to his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland and an active supporter of the projected university. Whether because of Leicester's intercession or for some other reason, Sidney, although a zealous Protestant, privately promised Stanihurst that his guest would be free from official persecution. T o judge from Campion's eulogy of Sidney at the end of A Historie of Ireland, the Lord Deputy must have been very friendly to the Catholic scholar, and certainly encouraged his ambition to be a directing spirit in the preparations for the new university.34 As part of these preparations, Campion composed a treatise on the ideal of a university education, De homine académico, and busied himself in collecting materials for his Historie of Ireland, a labor in which he was assisted by James Stanihurst. It has been claimed for this work that it can be read as a pamphlet in support of the theory that education would be the only means to bring "civility" to Ireland. 38 Although this claim ought not to be put forward to cover the narrative as a whole, it is certainly justified for the latter portion in which Campion records the events which occurred a few months before his composition of the work. By this time it was apparent that the plan for a university would not 31 There is an interesting parallel between the cases of Campion and Spenser. T h e latter, some ten years later, also left England for employment in Ireland. L i k e Campion, Spenser had been Leicester's protege, and possibly owed his position as secretary to the Lord Deputy (then Lord Grey de Wilton) to Leicester's influence. Again like Campion, Spenser may have recently experienced difficulties in England. A n d both wrote works on Ireland. It has been suggested that Spenser's residence in Ireland was an " e x i l e " imposed by an injured patron but Campion certainly did not so regard his Irish sojourn. Rather, he saw it as an opportunity for advancement and worthy service, and Spenser may have done likewise. 35 Simpson, op. cit., p. 30.

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come to immediate fruition. Campion must have shared the disappointment of his friends Stanihurst and Sidney, whose speeches in defense of Irish education on the occasion of the prorogation of the Irish Parliament in December, 1570, arc reported toward the end of his Historic.36 The tone and manner of these reports make it certain that Campion enthusiastically supported the theory that education would be the best method of reforming Ireland, and cherished the expectation that the plan for a University of Dublin would yet be realized. In dedicating his Historic to Leicester, Campion expressed the hope "that by the patronage of this Booke you may be induced to weigh the estate and become a patron to this noble Realme." He was asking Leicester's support for the policies of Sidney and Stanihurst, and intended his book to serve as propaganda for their ideas. Although the Historic was destined not to sec print in the form in which Campion wrote it until 1633, it was not without influence in Elizabethan times. Even before material from it had been incorporated in Holinshed's Chronicles (1577), there were several copies in circulation.37 It has been held that Spenser, in preparing his View of Ireland, drew upon Campion's history both in the Holinshed version and directly.38 The failure of the university project left Campion without the employment for which he had come to Dublin. Worse than that, it was a symptom of growing anti-Catholic feeling among the Dublin authorities, who opposed the policies of Sidney and Stanihurst and would no longer tolerate the presence of their Catholic protege. Shortly before his own departure for England, Sidney, powerless to prevent their persecution 38 Two Histories of Ireland (Dublin, 1 6 3 3 ) , pp. 1 3 1 - 3 4 . Stanihurst mentioned with keen regret the failure of his project for a university, asserted his belief that learning would be a ready way to reclaim the unquiet Irish, and asked that the law providing grammar schools be put into effect. Sidney spoke with some rancor of Parliament's opposition to the university (to which he had promised lands and money), answered the arguments against it, and pleaded that a beginning be made. He also defended the use of armed force by England to subdue Irish unruliness. The Historic closes (p. 1 3 8 ) with the departure of Sidney for England in March, 1 5 7 1 , and the aforementioned eulogy of Sidney. 37 At least two copies were used by the compilers of Holinshed's Ireland. As will be seen below, Holinshed himself had a copy supplied by Reyner Wolfe, and Stanihurst had his own copy on which he had been at work for some time before Holinshed's backers approached him; all this is told in some detail by the two writers in their separate dedications to Sir Henry Sidney, printed at the front of the section on Ireland. Stanihurst suggests that there was a good deal of interest in the manuscript: ". . . his historic in mitching wise wandred through sundrie hands." 38 See W. L. Renwick's edition of A View of the Present State of Ireland (London, 1 9 3 4 ) , pp. 242, 258, and especially 272.

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of Campion, sent him a midnight warning that arrest was imminent. The Stanihursts hastily smuggled their guest out of the city and found him a sanctuary with friends nearby. Here Campion set himself to complete the history for which he had been collecting materials, but he was soon forced to take flight again. Moving about and dodging pursuit, the writer continued work on his book, which he says he finished in ten weeks' time. Then, in disguise, he embarked for England at a small Irish port. Although he escaped detection, his manuscripts, including the Historic, were found and seized. Ultimately, by November, 1572, these papers were delivered into the hands of Archbishop Parker, who so much admired the Historic that he expressed the wish that its author might be reclaimed. Apparently a manuscript was regarded as the property of the patron to whom it was dedicated, for Parker sent the Historic to Leicester, using Burghley as an intermediary; his covering letter to Burghley betrays some nervousness lest the earl be angered by his interference in the matter.39 It was, perhaps, from copies of this manuscript that the compilers of Holinshed's Ireland worked. The original may have been copied while it was in the hands of Parker, who was keenly interested in antiquities, or again when Burghley had possession of it, or Leicester himself may have lent it for transcription. We can be certain that it was also seen by Sir Henry Sidney, who had a special interest in Irish history and who became the patron of all parts of Holinshed's 1577 edition of Ireland. That the Historic itself remained unpublished until 1633 is undoubtedly due to the bad odor which from 1572 on clung to the name of Campion the Papist. That so much of it proved usable in the Holinshed compilation is testimony of the earnest and relatively unbiased scholarship of its Catholic author. Internal evidence indicates that even while Campion was in flight from his Protestant persecutors in Ireland he still believed that his work would find acceptance in England and would open a new path for advancement to him there. His historical judgment is that of a loyal subject of Elizabeth. He asserts the ancient authority 38 See John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (Oxford, 1 8 2 1 ) , II, 164; for the text of the letter, see Stevenson and Salter, op. ext., p. 190. Parker mentions that he has already written to Leicester concerning the seized papers, and asks Burghley "to help to pacify him if he be offended." He sends "the boke of Ireland's history" with the suggestion that it be passed on to Leicester, "for it is dedicated to him; and if this Campion cowd be reclaymed or recovered, I see by his wyt that he were worthi to be made of [sic]." But Campion was by this date beyond reclamation, and it was the Jesuits who were to make much of him.

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of the British crown in Ireland, rejects the papal claim of overlordship there, and writes with respect of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, who should have been anathema to any Catholic.40 There is nothing in his history which would have prejudiced either the policies he supported or his own chances of preferment. There is, moreover, evidence in his dedication, dated from Dublin at the end of May, 1571, and therefore composed before he took flight from that city, that Campion still considered himself a protege of Leicester. His hope for continued patronage is revealed in the opening words of the epistle: That my travaile into Ireland, might seeme neither causlesse, nor fruitlesse, I have thought it expedient, being one member of your Lordships honorable charge to yeeld you this poore book, as an accompt of my poore voyage, happily not the last, nor the most beautifull present that is intended to your Honour by me . . . When he wrote these words he apparently believed that Leicester would acknowledge an obligation to find him employment when he presented himself with his completed manuscript in his patron's anteroom. But when he arrived in England he found that there too he was no better than a fugitive, and, his manuscript having been lost, it is doubtful that he ever again made a direct appeal to Leicester. Had his Historic reached the hands of Archbishop Parker and Leicester more promptly, his fate might have been different. That fate, however, was to bring him once again face to face with his old patron. Persuaded that he had no further chance for advancement under a Protestant rule, Campion decided to abandon England at least temporarily and fled to Douai, where he studied and taught in the English college for Catholics. In 1572, at Rome, he entered the Jesuit order and thereafter lived as student and teacher in various parts of Europe until 1580. In 1577, while teaching rhetoric at Prague, he was visited by Philip Sidney, Sir Henry's son and Leicester's nephew. The two had much conversation on religious matters, necessarily in private because Sidney's familiarity with Catholics on his travels had already provoked censure in England. Sidney gave Campion alms for the poor, and left him in the delusion that he had half persuaded the young courtier 40 The methods and value of Campion's Historic are discussed by Gottfried in his Introduction to the 1940 reprint, pp. iii-vi.

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to embrace Catholicism. A letter of Campion's describing the visit provides an interesting sidelight on his attitude toward his former patrons: If this young man, so wonderfully beloved and admired by his countrymen, chances to be converted, he will astonish his noble father, the Deputy of Ireland, his uncles the Dudleys, and all the young courtiers, and Cecil himself. Let it be kept secret.41 Campion obviously relished the idea of thus astonishing them. In 1580 Campion went to England as one of the Jesuit mission and for a year or so eluded pursuit. Traveling in disguise under various names, and preaching recusancy to Catholics who had been complying with the official demand for conformity, he naturally avoided contact with his old patron. Leicester was now actively engaged in rounding up Jesuit agents and in weakening by various means the force of Catholic opinion which their presence encouraged. Eventually Campion was captured and haled to a conference attended by the Earls of Leicester and Bedford and perhaps by Elizabeth herself. A n d now, at the eleventh hour, Campion's patron again attempted to befriend him. H e was questioned about his motives and given a chance to recant—offered not merely his life but riches and honor if he would renounce Catholicism. According to one authority, rapid preferment in the English Church was included in the promise. 42 Those w h o m he had impressed in his youth were still willing to advance him in the career they had opened to him at O x f o r d ; after all, he had justified their early enthusiasm for his eloquence by his remarkable success as a Jesuit preacher. If they could bring about a last-minute conversion, he would be of inestimable value for their side, but as an executed martyr he would still be a power for Catholicism. Campion refused the bait and chose martyrdom. H e asserted, however, that while he would not abjure his faith he nonetheless acknowledged Elizabeth his queen, and he denied all guilt of treason. Although his attitude made the situation as a w k w a r d as possible for his examiners, who in cases of this sort preferred to prosecute on political rather than on religious grounds, they showed him some leniency. After the conference Leicester sent word to the Tower that Campion was to be provided with 41 42

Simpson, op. at., p. 87. See also p. 81 for Parsons's account of the meeting in Prague. J. V. P. Thompson, Supreme Governor (London, 1940), p. 108.

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better accommodations and given more humane treatment, and for a while the Jesuit's lot was relatively easy. Popular indignation ran too high, however, for Leicester to dare more than this, and, indeed, as patron of the Puritan movement for vigorous persecution of the Jesuits, a cause which was intimately bound up (as will be shown in a later chapter) with his own political welfare, he could not consistently ask that his former protege be spared. After several public hearings, torture, and a formal trial, Campion went to his martyr's death. Events proved that Leicester had been, in fact, a chief mover in the action that brought him to the scaffold. The officially sponsored propaganda campaign against the Jesuits had been given new stimulus by the appearance of Campion's Decern rationes, a challenge to the English clergy which resulted in a heated controversy. Several of the Protestant champions who took up the gage were proteges of Leicester. Meredith Hanmer, for example—to be mentioned below for his dedication of a historical work to that patron—in 1581 issued two pamphlets against Campion and dedicated both of them to Leicester, among other members of the Privy Council. And Laurence Humphrey, the Oxford divine, in 1582 dedicated to Leicester his lesvitismi pars prima, the official learned answer to Campion's militant treatise. Moreover, John Feild, the radical Puritan preacher who served as notary at the hearings and whose report was later published, was also Leicester's protege, while another of his employees, the anti-Catholic spy Anthony Munday, was one of the main witnesses against Campion. The Jesuit was caught in the political machinery which his former patron had set in motion and could not check without irremediable damage to himself. Campion's career, with its brilliant opening and its tragic conclusion, exemplifies both the fair and foul sides of the Elizabethan patronage system. According to the logic of the system, there were honor and advancement in plenty for those who accepted its basic premises, but none at all for those who denied them. As an Anglican, Campion would have had open to him a life of distinguished service in one of the higher seats of the church. Even if he had been able to concede only outward conformity while adhering inwardly to his own beliefs, he would have achieved eminence in a university career. But he chose the way of his conscience, the hard way, and those who would have been his patrons became his persecutors.

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Somewhat surprising, in view of Campion's reputation as a Jesuit— and we must remember that good Elizabethans considered every Jesuit a limb of Satan and a would-be assassin of their Queen—is the good fame accorded him and his history through Holinshed's Chronicles. In both editions of Holinshed the value of Campion's work and the fact that it was originally dedicated to Leicester arc gratefully advertised. When Holinshed brought out his first edition of the Chronicles in 1577, the section devoted to the "description and Chronicles of Yrelande" contained Holinshed's Historic of Irelande, Stanihurst's Description, and Stanihurst's Continuation of the history. Each of these was separately dedicated to Sir Henry Sidney, who was once again serving as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and whose interest in Irish antiquities was well known. Both Stanihurst and Holinshed mention their debt to Campion in their dedications; moreover, Campion's name heads the list of sources printed on the verso of the title page of Holinshed's Historic. Since Campion's work was used extensively for both the Historic and the Continuation, and to some extent also for the Description, this was only just.43 What was not to be expected, however, was that a considerable amount of space would be devoted to warm praise of the runaway Catholic. By 1577 Campion's Jesuit activities on the Continent were certainly known to the authorities, including Cecil, to whom the volume as a whole was dedicated and who was therefore its special patron. Neither Cecil, Elizabeth's pious Lord Treasurer, nor Leicester, protector of Puritans, nor Sidney, champion of English Protestantism in Catholic Ireland, can have welcomed the association with Campion's name. For most of the space devoted to Campion, Stanihurst was responsible. His dedication of the Description to Sidney not only mentions, in explanation of his having been selected as a contributor to Holinshed's Ireland, that he had commenced enriching and enlarging Campion's work before he was assigned the task, but also includes a long, rhetorically embellished passage on "my fast friend, and inward companion, maister Edmund Campion," who is eulogized with unmistakable emphasis as "vpright in conscience . . . deepe in iudgement . . . ripe in eloquence." 44 This was curious enough in 1577; it must have been 43 For the use of Campion's work in the several parts of the Holinshed Ireland, see Gottfried, op. cit., pp. iv, v. 44 This dedication appears on sig. k.t,.r. and v. of The Description and Historic of Ire-

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more astonishing still when it was reprinted intact in the 1587 edition of Holinshed, in another part of which Campion's trial and execution were fully described.45 Moreover, Stanihurst had himself become a Catholic and had left England for the Continent by 1580.46 It was perhaps because of this conversion or in anticipation of it that, in addressing his Continuation to Sidney, he had asked protection "against the sinister glosing of malicious interpretors." 47 Apparently Sidney's acceptance of the works dedicated to him did serve to ensure their publication and reprinting, and perhaps the fact that Leicester had been the original patron of Campion's history also had some protective value. Holinshed himself, in his own dedication of The Chronicle of Ireland to Sidney, goes out of his way to emphasize Leicester's connection with Campion's work. 48 He tells us that Reyner Wolfe had supplied him with "a copie of two bookes of Irish histories, compiled by one Edmund Campion," and explains his method, which was to incorporate the original wording with some additions from other authors. He excuses himself from not presenting his work to Leicester, "to whom (as I haue heard) Campion made dedication of his booke," on the ground that he has dedicated his history of Scotland to that patron in lieu of the Irish history, and therefore feels free to offer the latter work to Sidney. Evidently his copy of Campion's work did not include the dedication to Leicester; he probably "heard" of it from Stanihurst and from the same source received the suggestion that he include in his own dedication an acknowledgment to the original patron. Holinshed's handling of the whole affair is rather awkward—for us, fortunately so, since it points to an interesting conclusion. We infer that a dedication, even if it had not appeared in print, gave the patron not merely the right to possess the manuscript but in fact some measure of proprietary right in the land (Vol. II of The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles) in the 1587 edition. All my quotations from Holinshed are from this edition, which reprinted the dedications of the 1577 edition without variation of text, though with some change in order and arrangement. 45 In the Continuation of the English history, pp. 1322-29; in the "castrated" edition, while the actual execution (pp. 1328-29) was suppressed, the account of the trial and of Campion's "hypocrisie" and vainglorious behavior was left undisturbed. 46 DNB suggests that Stanihurst was converted through Campion's influence. His interest in Irish antiquities, fostered by Campion, bore more fruit later, in his history De rebus in Hibernia gestis (1584) and his Vita S. Patricii ( 1 5 8 7 ) , both printed at Antwerp by Plantin. He also published a translation of the Aeneid at Leyden in 1582. His conversion must have been known in England; at least, in 1596, Spenser refers to it in his View, ed. Renwick, p. 72, 1. 17. 47 48 Holinshed's Ireland, p. 81. Ibid., sig. A.2.r. and v.

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text of the work addressed to him. At least, it gave the subsequent user a sense of obligation to the original patron. Holinshed's dedication of The Historie of Scotland to Leicester makes no direct reference to his substitution of this work for Campion's Ireland, but instead utilizes the memory of the patron's father as justification of his selection of Leicester to sponsor this particular chronicle: . . . I oiler this parcell of my trauels in this historie of Scotland, in regard of the honor due to your noble father, for his incomparable valure well knowne and aprooued, as well within that realme as else-where in seruice of two kings of most famous memorie, Henrie the eight and Edward the sixt, sounding so greatlie to his renowme, as the same cannot passe in silence, whitest any remembrance of those two most peerelesse princes shall remaine in written histories.49 Even in 1577 this open reference to the great Northumberland must have seemed inept: surely there were some for whom the memory of his ignominious end upon the scaffold was not obscured by the recollection of his valor on the battlefield.60 Holinshed seems to be casting about for a good excuse for his address to Leicester, with whom, as his next remarks indicate, he was not personally acquainted: I therefore most humblie beseech your Honor, to beare with my boldnesse in presenting you with so meane a gift, proceeding from one, although vnknowen to your Lordship, yet not without experience of your bountifull goodnesse extended towards those, to whome I reckon my selfe most beholden. Holinshed's somewhat mysterious reference to those proteges of Leicester to whom he considers himself "beholden" was probably intended to include, besides Campion, the historian Stow. 5 1 As purchaser of the historical collections gathered by Reyner Wolfe for his projected "universal history" which was the original of the Holinshed compilation, Stow had been in a position to give invaluable assistance to Holinshed 49 Holinshed's Scotland, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 . T h e dedication begins with Holinshed's explanation that he undertook the work at the request of the original compiler, Reyner Wolfe, w h o has since died. This passage follows. 50 Holinshed is apparently referring to Northumberland's part in the devastating expedition against Scotland in 1 5 4 2 and in the victory at Pinkie in 1 5 4 7 , which was ascribcd chiefly to him. Under Henry VIII he had been Lord Warden of the Scottish Marches, and under Edward V ! , Lord Warden General of the North. See DNB, s.v. Dudley, John. 51 That Holinshed intended the expression to convey indebtedness for source material is indicated by his use of a similar expression with regard to Wolfe. In his dedication to Burghley, who had been Wolfe's patron, Holinshed declares himself "singularly beholden" to that scholar.

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when the latter was selected to carry out the undertaking after Wolfe's death. Moreover, Stow's own Summarie was one of the chief sources of the Holinshed Chronicles, and Holinshed was apparently not unmindful that it had been dedicated to Leicester. He continues his epistle with a passage eulogizing Leicester's virtues as a patron: As what is he within this realme almost of anie degree, which findeth not himselfe bounden to your Honor, either in his owne causes or his friends? For such is your inclination to pleasure all men, as the same may seeme a peculiar vertue planted in your noble heart, mouing you so much to delight therein, as no time is thought by your Honor better spent, than that which you employ in dooing good to others. Among all seven of the dedications in the 1577 Holinshed (or among the eight in the 1587 edition) this is the strongest testimony of a patron's reputation for generosity. Indeed, for no other Elizabethan noble is the "peculiar vertue" of quantitative giving so frequently claimed in the dedications of the time. If it be said that Leicester's wealth exceeded that of most Elizabethan patrons, or that his motives were not disinterested, neither statement constitutes a denial of the claim. Before the second edition of the Chronicles appeared in 1587, Holinshed had died and a new general editor, John Hooker, had succeeded him. In the later edition all the original dedications were reprinted,82 but the whole work was reorganized and brought up to date. In the Continuation of the English history, supplied by John Stow and others, Leicester's activities were given prominence. Stow was himself responsible for the account of Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, which includes descriptions of the royal welcome given him upon his arrival, and of the "device" at "Donhage" in which Leicester was compared with Arthur of Britain. The report must have been written shortly after the events occurred, and was no doubt intended as propaganda for the campaign on which Leicester was still engaged. But, as will be recalled, Leicester's acceptance of the governorship of the provinces dangerously angered Elizabeth, and his campaign was a failure. Stow proved to have overreached himself in his enthusiasm for a patron whose power had seemed temporarily to rival that of Elizabeth herself. Because of this and other objectionable passages in the Continuation the authorities belatedly halted the publication of the edition, and, in the "castrated" 52 One dedication, Hooker's epistle to Ralegh offering him a new section of the Irish history, was added.

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copies which appeared when printing was resumed, Stow's account was suppressed as well as the description of the succession of the Earls of Leicester. 53 Nonetheless, a set of Latin verses composed to celebrate Leicester's return from the Low Countries in 1586 was allowed to stand.84 In 1588, the year of his death, Leicester received still another dedication which linked him with Scotland. Petruccio Ubaldini, an Italian scribe, illuminator, and translator who appears to have enjoyed considerable favor at the Elizabethan court, in that year addressed his Descrittione del Regno di Scotia to Hatton, Leicester, and Walsingham. The title page indicates publication at Antwerp, perhaps in recognition of Leicester's prestige in the Low Countries, but the book has been assigned to the press of John Wolfe, a specialist in forging impressive foreign imprints. 55 Ubaldini's work is largely dependent on the description of Scotland by Hector Boece which also furnished the material for a section of Holinshed's Scotland. As a historical source, therefore, the work is of little value. But it is a handsome, slim volume printed in italic letters, and the dedication, couched in flowery Italian, constitutes a pleasant compliment to Ubaldini's patrons. The epistle opens with a plea for protection against the envious enemies of science and the arts, moves on to an elaborate eulogy of Elizabeth's government, and thence to an acknowledgment of favors bestowed upon the writer by the three dignitaries addressed. Each of the three appears twice in the marginal notations—once as an example of the excellence of Elizabeth's administration and once as the object of Ubaldini's gratitude for patronage. The epistle closes on a note of prayer. Ubaldini seems to have been the kind of man who knew how to keep 53 In the uncastrated copies these passages appear on pp. 1 4 1 9 - 3 4 . In the 1590 edition of his Summarie Stow again recorded Leicester's reception in the Low Countries, with the comment that he had "written more at large in a larger volume, though the seruice be left out through the euill dealing of some" (p. 724). Stow remained faithful to his patron's memory; in this same edition he recorded Leicester's death and his bequests, including one of twenty pounds annually to each of two students at Oxford, forever (p. 752). Again in his Annates, 1592, Stow gave a fairly full account of Leicester's reception and campaign in the Netherlands (pp. 1 2 0 3 - 1 7 , 1239-59). 64 Continuation, pp. 1579-80, by " T . N.," probably Thomas Newton. 55 For the ascription see STC 24480. DNB is probably in error in attempting to establish a connection between this Antwerp imprint of 1588 and the fact that Ubaldini was granted a passport on October 3 1 , 1586, for travel in the Queen's service, but it is quite likely that Ubaldini's errand had something to do with Leicester's Netherlands campaign. For a reprint of the Descrittione see the Bannatyne Club edition, Edinburgh, 1829.

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himself in a patron's favor over an extended period, presenting frequent gifts to the Queen and her courtiers and receiving many small favors in return. He has an earlier connection with Leicester, for in 1581 he presented an elegantly bound copy of his Vita di Carlo Magno Imperadore to that patron, with an inscription in his own beautiful Italian hand on the flyleaf.5® While Leicester's historical interest, like that of his countrymen, was focused upon British antiquity, his patronage did not neglect writers who dealt with the events of current history or the records of other peoples. We have already seen that the narratives of Grafton, Stow, Campion, and Holinshed were carried up to the immediate present. Besides these chronicles, Leicester accepted the patronage of several historical works which reported on foreign wars of recent date. According to the theoretical justification of the age, such reports were held to be especially valuable for students of military science; it is perhaps needless to add that they also had value as propaganda. Like some of the war reports of our own day, they conveyed a partisan intention while purporting merely to supplement and correct the more rapid sources of international news, which in Elizabethan times consisted chiefly of brief bulletins and rumors sent by courier from English agents abroad. Lacking a newspaper service, the authorities sponsored the publication of such reports when they thought it expedient to inform and direct public opinion on matters of foreign policy—or, occasionally, when they wished to sound out the feeling of the public on an unsettled question. Probably a great many more of these tendentious accounts of current history actually received official protection than we can deduce, for not all of them bore dedications. The earliest of the reports dedicated to Leicester concerned a matter on which Elizabethan policy was not yet fixed. One of the most burning issues of European politics in the first two decades of Elizabeth's reign was the problem presented by the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power. Repeated attempts were made to unify the Christian powers in a last crusade against the infidel, but Europe was torn by the wars of religion and the Turks met little effective opposition to their encroach56 This inscription copy is described by M. A . Scott in Elizabethan Translations from the Italian (Boston, 1 9 1 6 ) , pp. 488-89. T h e book was published by John Wolfe, and according to DNB was the first Italian book published in England. Wolfe also printed Ubaldini's Le Vite dflU Donne lllustri ( 1 5 9 1 ) , dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.

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ment on the Mediterranean. England, just beginning to build up her valuable trade with the Levant, was naturally concerned. Most of her commerce from the Eastern Mediterranean was still carried in Venetian ships, and Venice bore the brunt of Turkish aggression. On the other hand, Turkey was the only single power that could offer a threat to Spain, and it was becoming increasingly clear that Spain was England's natural enemy. With vital interests in both camps, the Elizabethans bided their time and watched the turn of events. In 1570 the Turks landed on Cyprus, an important outpost of Venice, and, after conquering the rest of the island, laid siege to the town of Famagusta, which did not capitulate until August, 1571, after a gallant defense lasting almost a year. 57 During the siege, but too late to save Cyprus, a Triple Alliance against Turkey was concluded by Spain, the Pope, and Venice; naturally, the English took no part in this Catholic league. In October, 1571, the allied powers under Don John of Austria achieved the famous victory at Lepanto; the power of the Turks was scotched and the might of Spain seemed preeminent. But almost immediately after Lepanto the allies fell out among themselves over the division of spoils, the Turks rapidly repaired their losses, and Venice was once more in peril. If England wished to ally herself with Venice without being involved with Spain and the papacy, this was her opportunity. In March, 1572, Leicester received from his protege, William Malim, the dedication of a pamphlet entitled The true Report of all the successe of Famagosta . . . a Citie in Cyprus, which was a description of the conquest of Famagusta by the Turkish leader Mustapha Pasha. Translated from an Italian eye-witness report sent "by the noble Earle Nestor Martinengo vnto the renowmed Prince the Duke of Venice," it provides a detailed military account of the siege from the point of view of the Venetian defenders. 58 T o his translation of the Italian pamphlet, Malim 57 For the historical background of this section, see The Cambridge Modern History, III (Cambridge, England, 1934), 132-38; Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, III (Cambridge, England, 1948), 1 1 5 3 - 5 4 ; Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose ( N e w York, 1937). PP- I 0 4 . 125. Contemporary accounts appear in Thomas Newton, A Notable Historic of the Saracens (1575), fols. 141^.-1421'., and Richard Knolles, The Generall Historic of the Turves (1603), pp. 863-67. 58 Relatione di tutto il Successo di Famagosta (Venice, 1572). See E. M. Tenison, Elizabethan England, II (Royal Leamington Spa, 1933), 78, where a facsimile of Malim's title page is given, and III (1933), 13, where Malim is further discussed. John Day was the printer of Malim's translation, which was later included in Richard Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, II (1599), 1 1 7 - 3 1 .

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has added a description of the island, a Latin poem In Turchas precatio, and marginal explanations of Turkish words in the text, besides his dedication and preface to the reader. In the lengthy and learned dedication Malim makes clear his sympathy for the Venetian defenders and his animus against the Turks, among whom he tells us that he has lived. He argues for a new league of Christian princes to drive the "barborous Mahometistes" out of Europe. The work is obviously designed to enlist English help for the sorely beset Venetians. Since translations in French and German also appeared, it is perhaps significant of a movement to arouse the Protestant powers against the Moslems in a league which would exclude Spain. 59 Leicester's part in this campaign is very obscure, and there is reason to believe that his interest was financial rather than political or religious; that is, he probably had investments in the Venetian trade.60 If the pamphlet which appeared under his sponsorship was intended to stimulate English opinion in favor of an alliance with Venice, it came to nothing. In 1573 the Venetians were forced to accept a peace with the Turks confirming the conquest of Cyprus and other losses. Spain was still the key power; England could not move against the Ottoman Empire while it remained the only serious menace to the might of Philip II. Not many years later Elizabeth concluded an alliance with the Sultan, the Levant Company for trading directly with Turkish territories was founded, and England's first ambassador to Constantinople was instructed to negotiate for a Turkish attack on Spain in the event that 59

Among other works symptomatic of this movement may be pointed out Gascoigne's A devise of a Mask.e for . . . Viscount Mountacule ( 1 5 7 3 ) , which utilized Malim's account of Famagusta as well as reports of Lepanto for the double purpose of celebrating a wedding and expressing anti-Turkish sentiment; see Robert R. Cawley, "George Gascoigne and the Siege of Famagusta," Modern Language Notes, XLI1I (May, 1928), 296-300. (Gascoigne's relationship with Leicester will be discussed in a later chapter, as will also his own "current history," The Spoyle of Antwerp.) See also Pietro Bizari's work, translated by F. de Belle-Forest as Histoire de la Guerre . . . entre Us Venitiens et la saincte ligue, contre les Turcs pour ¡'Isle de Cypre (Paris, 1 5 7 3 ) . Thomas Newton's Historic of the Saracens ( 1 5 7 5 ) calls for concord and unity in "that litle porcion of Chrystendome yet left" against the Turks, utilizing both dedication and preface for that purpose; his report of Famagusta is obviously intended to stir up feeling against the Turks. 60 In 1575 Leicester used his influence to obtain from Elizabeth a monopoly of the import trade from Venetian dominions for one Acerbo Velutelli, who also obtained the export monopoly from the Venetian authorities. Later Leicester with Walsingham's backing thwarted efforts made through Burghley and the Privy Council to have this valuable monopoly canceled. It is altogether likely that Velutelli had Leicester's financial as well as his political backing, and that Leicester shared in the profits. See Conyers Read, op. at., Ill, 375-76, and J. T. Benn, ed., Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, Hakluyt Society Publications, 1st Series, L X X X V I I (London, 1893), vii.

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the English would go to the support of the Netherlands.* Since most of these proceedings appear to have been instigated by Walsingham, Leicester's strongest ally in the Privy Council, and since Leicester himself was a strong advocate of English intervention in the Netherlands, he probably abandoned his Venetian interests in favor of a Turkish alliance. When it was published, however, Malim's pamphlet treated a matter of greatest concern to the English. Malim was no mere hack writer. Like Campion, he belongs with the academic group, the university men and translators, and his career provides us with further insight into the motivation of the Elizabethan system of patronizing learning. Educated at Cambridge in the 1550's and appointed to a fellowship there, he apparently displayed unusual powers, for in 1561 he was made headmaster of Eton. Schoolmastering, however, does not seem to have been to his taste, and his linguistic ability qualified him for more adventurous tasks. He soon left Eton and in 1564 we find him in Constantinople, apparently well launched on his travels.62 What was Malim doing in the Near East? There is reason to believe that he was on some sort of mission for Leicester, "by whom," he writes in his dedication of the True Report, "I was much cherished in my trauell, and maintained since my returne here at home." 63 A clue to the nature of his activities is to be found in his mention of "ofte resorting (as occasion serued) to the right honourable Christian Ambassadors" at Constantinople.04 Probably he was a semiofficial representative of the English government, maintained partly and perhaps entirely at Leicester's expense, for the necessary dealings with the representatives of other European governments at the Turkish court and elsewhere in the Near East. England maintained no ambassador at the Porte until 1582, but Malim may have fulfilled some of the functions of 61 See Hakluyt, op. cit., II, 136-45, 160-65, for the trade treaty and the motivation of the Turkish trade; see also Conyers Read, op. cit.. Ill, 225-28, and Benn, op. cit., pp. viiviii. The Turks had encouraged the resistance of the Netherlands to Spain (Cambridge Modern History, III, 138). 82 DNB suggests that Malim's travels in the Near East were made during the tenure of his Cambridge fellowship and before his appointment to Eton. If so, then he made two trips, for his dedication indicates definitely that he was abroad between 1564 and 1567. CI. True Report, ". . . at my last being at Constantinople, in . . . 1 5 6 4 " (sig. A.iij.f.), and ". . . for these 5. yeares last past, since my returne from my trauell beyond the seas" (sig. A.iij.r.). His words imply that he had visited Constantinople more than once. The dedication is dated "From Lambheth the 23. of March. An. 1 5 7 2 " (sig. B.i.r.). 83 Sig. A.iv.r. 84 Sig. A.iij.e.; Malim specifies ambassadors of France, Venice, Florence, and Chios.

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a consul. T h e term of his service extended until 1567, for in 1572 he writes to Leicester that for the past five years, since returning from his travels abroad, he has been in constant attendance at "your Lordships lodging in the Court (where I through your vndeserued goodnesse to my great comfort do dayly frequent)." 6 5 His tone is that of a personal servant of Leicester, and, although he may have executed missions for Cecil and others of the Privy Council and perhaps for some of the merchant companies during his years in the Near East, it was Leicester who rewarded him with permanent employment on his return. H i s familiarity with Italian and his knowledge of Turkish and other strange tongues would have made him a useful follower in the court. T h a t other important people also valued his services we shall shortly see. In 1569 Malim was nominated to a prebend in Lincoln Cathedral, a preferment which does not seem to have interfered with his daily attendance upon Leicester. It was almost certainly obtained through that patron's influence, apparently

with the recommendation of

Cecil,

for there exists a letter from Malim to the latter, written in Italian and dated at London, March 17, 1569, in which the writer thanks him for "his influence with the Earl of Leicester on his behalf." 6 6 T h e same letter contains news of another protege of Leicester who has just been advanced. 67 Apparently Cecil was taking an interest in those of Leicester's followers who might be useful to him because of their inside knowledge of court affairs; Malim, fresh from court, retails information for Cecil's benefit. Malim's dedication of 1572 to Leicester was thus a token of gratitude for patronage extended over a considerable period. It is addressed to Leicester as his "onely Patrone," and, though the literalness of that expression may be questioned, 88 Leicester's arms and motto, surmounted by the Bear and Ragged Staff, appear on the reverse of the title page as an indication of his sponsorship. In the dedication itself, Malim explains the motivation of his w o r k : . . . being first moued therunto by the right worshipfull Maister D. Wilson Maister of her Maiesties Requests, your honors assured trusty frend, a great 65

66 Ibid., sig. A.iij.r.; cf. n. 62 above. C.S.P. Dom., 1547-80, p. 3 3 1 , no. 66. It reports that "Mr. Wolley is now well provided, having succeeded the late Mr. Ascham," and contains a copy of complimentary Latin verses. Woolley had been Leicester's secretary before he succeeded Ascham as the Queen's Latin secretary; Edward Dyer, another of Leicester's proteges, had also been a candidate for this important office. 68 Cf. the famous dedication to "Mr. W. H . " 67

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and painfull furthercr of learning, whom I, and many other for diuers respectes ought to reuerence: who remembring that I had bene at Cyprus, was willing that my penne should trauell about the Christian and Turkish affayres, which there lately haue happened: perswading him selfe, that somewhat therby I might benefite this our natiue countrey.69 Malim's friendship with Wilson, who occupied an important position at the court, and who dedicated his Discourse vppon Vsurye to Leicester in the selfsame year, may have dated back to his Cambridge years. Wilson's learned authority and altruistic sincerity were so widely recognized that his commendation of Malim's project served as a valuable guarantee of its patriotic value. Besides gratitude to his patron and the desire to benefit his country, the two motives acknowledged in his dedication, Malim almost certainly had a third—the hope of further advancement. New reward came to him in the following year, 1573, when he was appointed headmaster of St. Paul's School. From this date on we hear of no further connection with Leicester, and we can probably assume that Malim had passed entirely into the protection of Cecil, now Lord Burghley. In 1579 he edited, at Burghley's request and with a dedication to that patron, the De República Anglorvm Instavranda Libri Decern of Sir Thomas Chaloner. It was an important undertaking, to which Burghley himself and other well-known men contributed complimentary Latin poems. Perhaps on the strength of his accomplishment, he wrote to Burghley in the following year pleading to be relieved of the endless toil of his work at the school—schoolmastering still did not suit him. Burghley did not provide a better post, however, for Malim remained at St. Paul's until 1581, when he seems to have retired.70 69

Sig. A.iv.r. It should be mentioned that Burghley's interest in historical works and their writers was as great as Leicester's and probably similarly motivated. We have already noted that Danett's Commines of 1596, Grafton's Chronicle at large of 1569, and Holinshed's Chronicles of 1577 were dedicated to him. In addition, Burghley received the dedications of three historical translations by another protege of Leicester, Arthur Golding: History of Leonard Aretine, 1563; Histories of Trogus Pompeius, 1565?; and Caesar's Commentaries, 1565. He was also patron of Camden's Britannia, 1587. And perhaps the fame of Leicester and Burghley as sponsors of historical literature inspired the dedication to them, as co-patrons, of a work in four books of Latin verse entitled Britannia, sive de Apollonica Hvmilitatis, Virtvtis, et Honoris Porta (London, 1578). Its German author, Jacob Falckenburgk (Jacobus Falckenburgius), apparently was visiting London in 1578-79; his verse dedication praises Elizabeth and a number of her leading nobles, and he mentions also the Lord Mayor and the Master of the Hansa. But like Chaloner's work this effort is humanistic rather than historical in intention. 70

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So much for Malim himself. We must return, however, to his dedication of The true Report of Famagosta in 1572, for besides the portions referring to Malim's career and personal motives which have already been quoted, it contains statements of significance for our study of Leicester as a patron and also for our interpretation of the theory of patronage in Elizabethan times. Malim begins his dedication by ringing the changes on the ancient theme that books eternize the fame of noble personages. Men of wealth and power have always followed their natural instinct "to deliuer ouer their name to their posteritie," in early times by building sumptuous monuments, and later by utilizing the talents of learned writers, "By the which benefite of Letters (now reduced into Print) we see how easie a thing it is, and hath bene for noble persons, to Hue for euer." The heroes of the past "had bene long before this present quite forgotten, except Titus Liuius, or some such learned Historiographer had written of them in time." A series of examples illustrative of this point is cut short with the remark that Leicester, "being skilfull in histories" and famous for his custom of "intertaining learned men with all courtesie," needs no instruction in either: " I should seeme to light a candle at noone tyde, to put you in remembrance of one, or to exhort you to do the other, dayly being accustomed to performe the same." Then, writing as one who has had frequent opportunities to witness Leicester's actions, Malim gives a detailed description of his patron's efforts on behalf of learning and "true religion": . . . your Lordships lodging in the Court . . . hath bene a continuall receptacle or harbour for all learned men comming from both the eyes of this Realme, Cambridge, and Oxforde (of the which Uniuersitie your Lordship is Chauncellor) to their great satisfaction of minde, and ready dispatch of their sutes. Especially for Preachers and Ministers of true Religion: of the which you haue bene from time to time not onely a great fauourer, but an earnest furtherer, and protector . . . Therefore "these two nurseries of learning," in one of which the writer has studied, should labor to do honor to their patron, as indeed "many well learned gentlemen of them do." Their studies "certainly would sodainly decay and fall flat, if they were not helde up by such noble proppes, and had not some sure anckerholdes in their distresse to leane vnto." The whole world knows of Leicester's constant travail over a

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long period to foster those "in whom any sparke of vertue or honestie remaineth." L i k e Holinshed and Campion, Malim gives more emphasis to Leicester's patronage of learning than to his protection of historians. A s will be seen in the following chapter, the authorities were much concerned in the early decades of Elizabeth's reign about the decline of learning at the universities. T o these "nurseries of learning" they looked for the supply of clergymen for the insecure religious establishment, and for recruits to the allied learned professions—fledgling schoolmasters, dons, lawyers, and diplomatists. It was of urgent necessity to the State that the men who filled these strategic posts be well educated and properly indoctrinated. Hence the special care of such promising candidates as Malim and Campion, whose histories were accepted as evidence of their ability and willingness to serve their patron, not by the writing of further chronicles, but in the employment of the Crown. That Malim was thinking of Leicester the patron as an official representative of the State rather than as an individual is indicated by the line he takes in his moral justification of patronage. Those w h o spend their lives profiting others lead a perfect and very godly life, he states, and in support quotes Strabo: "Mortales turn demum Deos imitari, cum benefici fuerint." Perhaps Malim chose a classical rather than a scriptural text, as we might have expected, in order to avoid a Christian context, for he follows the quotation with an interesting perversion of the stewardship theory of possessions in which he substitutes the person of the sovereign for that of God as the source of all wealth. 7 1 Just as the Moon, he writes, sheds upon earth that light and brightness which she receives from the Sun, so the patron bestows "all that fauour and credite, which he hath gotten at the Princes handes, to the helpe and reliefe of the worthy and needy." Leicester's beneficence is merely a reflection of the generosity of Elizabeth, who is the source of his wealth and power. Here Malim was hitting very close to the core of the theory underlying Elizabethan patronage; it was not usually so clearly expressed. T h e remainder of Malim's dedication is less philosophic but contains, 71

For the importance of the stewardship theory in Elizabethan thinking, see Helen C. White, Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century ( N e w York, 1944). passim, especially pp. 263-65. Malim's version might be made consistent with the preachers' theory by adding that the sovereign was God's vicegerent.

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besides statements already cited in our discussion of Malim's career, several points of interest concerning Leicester. T w o of these refer to Leicester's patronage of Italians and their writings. When he was at Constantinople, Malim writes, he heard his patron praised by ambassadors from other lands for his "liberalitie, and courteous intreating of diuers of their frendes and countreymen, which vpon sundry occasions had bene here in this our Realme." Since the ambassadors from Florence and Venice are among those he mentions, it is probable that the rumors of Leicester's goodness to foreigners referred particularly to his protection of Italian refugees, although others may have been included. Later in the dedication Malim explains that his translation of "Italian Newes in our Englishe attyre" {The true Report of Famagosta) is not intended for his patron's profit, for of course Leicester is well acquainted with the Italian copy, but seeks his protection because it is "so necessary to be knowen for diuers of our Captaines and other our countreymen, which are ignoraunt in the Italian toung." This remark is followed by a passage in support of the defeated Italians. The dedication—in itself a considerable piece of writing—closes with a promise of "more to come," an appeal for protection against malicious critics whom Malim terms "Basiliskes," and the assurance that the writer has dedicated himself to Leicester and his family "by mine owne choise and election for euer." In 1583, Leicester received the dedication of another report of recent European events: A Tragicall Historie of the troubles and Ciuile Warres of the lowe Countries. Its purpose as propaganda was even more obvious than that of Malim's work, and of much more immediate significance to Leicester himself, for it was intended to serve as part of the campaign, organized chiefly by the Puritans, for English intervention against Spain in the L o w Countries. The successful result of this agitation was the expedition sent to the Netherlands in 1585 under Leicester's leadership. The English writer who offered the work to Leicester was Thomas Stocker, translator of French publications. His earliest book, A History of the Successors of Alexander the Great, had been dedicated in 1569 to Leicester's brother Warwick. 7 2 Except for this maiden attempt and the 72 Translated through a French compilation by Claude de Seyssel from Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch. T h e dedication contains a complimentary reference to the Duke of N o r thumberland, father of Warwick and Leicester. It develops the Fall of Princes theme, the profit of history for students of military science, and the value of history as a series of

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work dedicated to Leicester, Stocker's translations were in the religious field, several of them renderings of Calvin. Stocker's Puritan tendencies as well as his former service to Warwick would have recommended him to Leicester's protection. There can be little doubt that it was Stocker's sympathy with the Puritan policy calling for intervention on behalf of the Dutch Protestants which made him undertake his Tragicall Historic and dedicate it to Leicester, whose aggressive attitude toward Spain was now well known. The title page promises to set forth "the Barbarous crueltie and tyrannie of the Spaniard, and trecherous Hispaniolized Wallons," and the text includes a documented account of the recent wars in the Low Countries and a detailed picture of the Spanish occupation and the union formed to resist the conqueror. But the message is not merely political —it is also moral and religious, as is made clear by the dedicator of the original version in his address to the Lords of the States and other officers of the United Provinces. According to this anonymous writer, a civil and personal reformation is necessary before the commonwealth can be defended, and he therefore calls for administration of justice by learned judges, pure and sincere teaching of the word of God, excommunication of the sinful, and strict discipline in every household. Stocker, addressing his translation to Leicester, takes his keynote from this writer. His long epistle is primarily religious in content and hortatory in tone. Instead of calling directly for intervention in the Low Countries, Stocker deliberately avoids reference to this question and offers his work as an exemplum. God has punished the people of the Low Countries for their disobedience and their "contempte of the glorious Gospell." The Spaniards are "his roddes of corrections." Let this be a warning to the English, who also stand in need of reform. God has dealt more bountifully with them than with any nation in history: they enjoy a land flowing with milk and honey, and the "holie and blessed worde" has been bestowed among them. But the greater number contemn God's word, and therefore they too must expect to feel God's heavy hand upon them. This is Stocker's theme; he allows the necessity for intervention in the Netherlands to appear by implication, without direct statement. moral ezcmpla. It closes with a passage defining the noble or magnanimous man with a moral and religious emphasis which suggests that Stocker had already developed his Puritan leaning.

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That the implication is present is indicated by his identification of the religion of the Netherlands with "the state of Religion, whiche wee at this daie professe." He has, he declares, chosen Leicester "from amongest the rest of the right honourable" to be the patron of this translation because he feels that the earl is committed to the cause of true religion— the cause which is being defended in the Netherlands and which has been maintained in England ever since "the first blessed entraunce of her Maiesties most Godly and gracious gouernment, ouer this noble Realme of England." Leicester has demonstrated his "holie faithe, knowledge, zeale and obedience, in the truth of the same Religion," and has moreover earned a reputation for virtue "by reason of the aidyng of all those godly Ministers, whom Sathan, with his Impes and Suppostes, haue sought . . . to deface." Through his use of scriptural analogies in praise of his patron, Stocker further betrays his affiliation with the Puritan preachers defended by Leicester. He declares that in his "honourable and godlie dealyng, aswell towardes the worde, as also towardes the godlie Ministers," Leicester resembles "that valiaunt and milde leader of the children of Israeli, Moses." If he perseveres in his pious course, he will be like "that valiaunt Captaine Josua" and will lead the people away from false gods. (A portrait of Leicester had been printed on the title-leaf before the Book of Joshua, introducing part ii of the "Bishops' Bible" of 1568.) The dedication closes with a prayer for the continuance of Leicester's zeal for the Lord's glory and the preservation of church and commonwealth. Stocker worked from a French version, L'Histoire des Troubles et Guerres Civiles des Pays-Bas, published in 1582, which derived from a Dutch publication that had appeared at Norwich, England, in 1579. 73 This, in turn, claimed to have as its original a copy printed in Switzer73 Chronyc. Historic der Nederlandtscher Oorlogen Troublen eh oproeren. Gedrucl lot Noortwitz na da Copie van Basel. The title page ascribes the responsibility for the work to Adam Henricipetri, Doctor of Laws of Basel, and a mysterious "Raetshere te Bruessel." Both Tenison, Elizabethan England, V ( 1 9 3 6 ) , m , and STC 17450 suggest that the true author was Philip Marnix de St. Aldegonde, and the former believes that there was probably a Huguenot original, suppressed, from which the Dutch version was made. Henricipetri, however, is not necessarily a pseudonym, as STC indicates, nor the lost "copie van Basel" a fiction; perhaps Sebastian Henricpetri, printer of Basle (e.g., Petrarch's Opera appeared with his imprint in that city in 1 5 8 1 ) , had some connection with the publication. And the Dutch translator of the Norwich edition may possibly be identified with a troublesome preacher of the Dutch Church in Norwich who used the name "Theophilus" and who had been banished from the city in 1 5 7 1 (Strype, Parser, II, 82-84); the dedication of the Norwich edition is signed "Theophilus translator," a name which appears in Stocker's translation as "Theophile. D . L . "

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land. All of these publications followed the decision of a synod of Dutch Protestant churches in 1578 to advertise anew the reasons for their war against Spain so as to gain help from abroad and especially from England. The version published at Norwich contained open references to the St. Bartholomew massacre which are lacking from Stocker's version as from his French original. It seems clear that the Norwich printer was protected by some powerful patron, and the fact that the English translation appeared later under Leicester's aegis suggests that his influence was also behind the Dutch publication.74 A good deal of huggermugger necessarily surrounded the activities of what we may call the Protestant "underground" of the time. The circumstances which led to the appearance of Stocker's Tragicall Historic are characteristically obscure but make manifest, nonetheless, the spirit of international cooperation which bound together the more militant Protestants of the latter sixteenth century in a common purpose against Spain. Their campaign for intervention in the Netherlands suited Leicester's political purposes as well as those of his Puritan followers; in fact, it was beginning to be clear that England would have to gird herself to fight Spain or else be conquered by Spain, as Leicester had been suggesting for some time. The next work to be treated in this chapter is a compilation quite different in nature from any discussed thus far, though its religious intention is related to that of Stocker's translation. Toward the end of 1584, Meredith Hanmer dedicated to Leicester the second edition of The avncient Ecclesiasticall Histories of the First Six Hvndred Yeares after Christ, written in the Greece tongue by three learned Historiographers, Eusebius, Socrates, and Euagrius.75 Although, as its title purports, the book dealt with neither national history nor matters of immediate political interest, it belonged to a class of literature which was also considered "of profit to the common wealth," for in the records of the primitive church Elizabethans persuaded themselves 74 This suggestion is adumbrated by Tenison, who shows that the Norwich printer, Antoine de Solen (or Solempne, as in STC), had arrived in England from Brabant in 1 5 7 6 , and in 1580 was made freeman of Norwich and given liberty to print and to sell Rhenish wine. 75 Published in London, 1 5 8 5 ; the dedication is dated from Shoreditch, December 1 5 , 1584. The first edition had appeared in 1 5 7 7 with a dedication to the Countess of Lincoln. T h e dedication of the 1 5 8 5 edition to Leicester incorporates most of the original dedication, and was reprinted with the edition of 1607.

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that they found justification for their own Church of England, which in theory at least represented a restoration of the church as it was founded by Christ. T h e translator, a clergyman, indicates that he thinks of his work more as a book of divinity than as historical narrative; like Stocker, he reads history for its exemplary values. In addressing the book to his patron Hanmer describes the contents as follows: . . . the Hues of the Apostles and Disciples of our Sauiour; the martyrdome of Saínetes and such as serued God in trueth and vpright conuersation: the inuincible courage and constancie of zealous Christians: the Godly sayinges and sentences of true professours: the wise and politicke gouernemente of common weales by Catholicke Emperours and Christian Princes: the carefull ouersight of the flocke of Christ by reuerend Bishops and learned Prelats: the confutation and ouerthrow of heretickes with the confirmation of the trueth by holy Councells and sacred Assemblies . . . And in his preface "vnto the Christian Reader" he further explains the value of "these learned, zealous, and pleasaunt histories." 7 6 T h e emphasis is on doctrine—moral and religious teaching by precept and example, derived from the writings of ancient and weighty authorities not otherwise generally available. Nonetheless, the translator is careful to warn the reader that if he happens "to light vpon any storie that sauoureth of superstition" he must not take it for gospel—"I am sure there is no reader so foolish as to builde vpon the antiquitie and authori s e of these histories as if they were holy Scripture." H e betrays a reformer's zeal in commenting on "the difference that is in these our dayes betwene the Church and the Apostolicke times" in the matter of increased ceremonies, services, rites, and decrees; this decay of the Church is the work of the Devil, as foretold by the Savior. All of these points are adequately developed in the work itself, and for the reader who does not wish to peruse the entire great volume Hanmer supplies a "Chronographie" at the end, in which the main events of the six hundred years covered in his Histories

are summarized in parallel

columns. In the Preface to this part of his work Hanmer calls upon history to demonstrate the theory upon which Tudor supremacy in ecclesiastical matters rested—that the Pope has usurped powers belonging to lay rulers and separate national churches. Evidence is found, for ex76

T h i s address to the reader, occupying sigs. • i i i j . r . - « v j . r . , also contains some interesting

remarks on the literary styles of his originals and on the difficulties of translation.

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ample, in the ancient custom of s u m m o n i n g ecclesiastical councils without the consent of the Pope: . . . Emperours Princes and somtimes the bishops of some prouince or other within them selues, haue summoned councells, called bishops together and decided such matters as were called into controuersie without the aduise of the bishop of Rome. For saith Socrates the chiefest councells were summoned and are vnto his day called together by the commaundement and consent of the Emperours. 77 A n d at the end of his Chronographie and as his closing word to the reader, H a n m e r again asserts the reforming purpose of his historical studies: This trauell haue I taken that the trueth of the purest age after Christ might appeare, and the state of the most auncient Churches might be knowen of such as in these dayes seeke to ouerthrowe the state, bring the religion to contempt, the Christians to a lawlesse securitie, hoping that by the viewe of orderlie discipline things which be amisse may be redressed accordingly. I wish thee health, knowledge of the truth, feare of God, faith to beleue in him, thy souls health and saluation in the end. 78 H a n m e r ' s w o r k supplied chapter and verse in authorities second only to Scripture for controversialists engaged in a systematic attack upon the Pope's supremacy—and, later, for those whose target was episcopal usurpation. Its value for readers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is indicated by the fact that by 1709 it had gone through at least nine editions. H a n m e r begins his dedication to Leicester with the declaration that he is emboldened to present his w o r k by two considerations: "the great goodnesse proceeding f r o m right noble disposition, heretofore shewed towardes me, calling for thankefulnesse," and Leicester's reputation as a favorer of learning and learned men. T h e second of these, as w e have seen, had been a commonplace of dedications addressed to Leicester f o r over two decades; the first is an advertisement of benefits received to which we shall return shortly. Leicester is compared with patrons of the period covered in the translator's w o r k , and found no less worthy f o r " g r a u e and sage counsail . . . for studie and reading . . . for faithfull and profitable seruice in his countrey and common weale." A f t e r the passage outlining the contents of the histories which has already been 77

The avneient Ecclesiasticall Histories, p. 546.

78

Ibid., p. 600.

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quoted, the translator expatiates further on the value of its godly doctrine, and on the uses of history: to delight the reader, to occupy the time, and to remove the remembrance of recent calamities. T h e last of these provides him with the opportunity of extolling the reign of Elizabeth, which he finds remarkable for the absence of disaster. T h i s passage of praise is obviously inserted for its propaganda value, and is so characteristic of the approved interpretation of current history that it is worthy of quotation: . . . to speake of calamitie (vnlesse we beholde the miserie and lamentable estate of other Realmes and dominions) presently there is geuen no such occasion, for it can not be remembred that the subiectes within this Realme of England had the Gospell so freely preached, Clerkes so profoundely learned, Nobilitie so wise and politicke, all successes so prosperous, as in this happie raigne of our most vertuous and noble Princesse Queene Elizabeth, and therefore are we greatly bounde to prayse God for it. Yet if ye call to memorie the corruption of late dayes, the blindenesse of such as woulde be called Gods people, the lamentable persecution of the English Church, then may ye reade them after calamitie. I n comparison with the courts of early times, w h e n true religion w a s persecuted, Elizabeth's court is further lauded as a center of piety and virtue, a godly place—where the patron will be esteemed for reading such books as this one! T h e dedication concludes with a notable passage emphasizing the superior moral value of books of divinity as compared with the popular reading of the age in fiction and poetry, 7 0 and a final laudation of the achievements of the patron, w h o is urged to continue in well-doing. A s a last flourish H a n m e r adds the translator's usual plea for protection and defense against "Zoylous Sycophantes, which as Socrates sayeth, being obscure persons, and such as haue no pith or substance in them, goe about most commonly to purchase vnto them selues f a m e and credit by dispraising of others." H a n m e r has already been mentioned as one of the writers of antiCampionist literature in the campaign against the Jesuits of 1581. I n the light of what is k n o w n concerning his earlier career, we can assume that his service to this cause, of which Leicester w a s one of the chief movers, was responsible f o r his finally obtaining a preferment in the church. F o r his road had not been easy. A l t h o u g h he had been at O x f o r d in Campion's day and had received his B . A . in 1568, he was still seeking 70

Quoted by L. B. Campbell, Shakespeare's "Histories,"

pp. 87-88.

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a benefice in 1581. One obstacle in his path appears to have been the university's refusal to grant him the B.D. until that year. 80 But his pamphlets against Campion were rapidly rewarded, for by the end of 1581 he had not only received his bachelor's degree in divinity but had also been appointed vicar of Shoreditch; and in the following year he was made doctor of divinity by the university of which Leicester was Lord Chancellor. In the light of his words of gratitude for favors received in the opening of the 1584 dedication, we can scarcely doubt that his patron had used influence at Oxford for the advancement of this protege, or that Hanmer owed his benefice to the same sponsor. It is interesting to note that Hanmer's less brilliant talents, combined with puritanical zeal—for he became notorious as the vicar of Shoreditch who ordered the destruction of the brasses in that church—won him the success which was denied his contemporary at Oxford. Like Campion, he ultimately went to Ireland, where he filled a number of ecclesiastical positions and won some renown as a "bitter" preacher. Even after death, fate threw him into proximity with Campion, for the History of Ireland which he wrote as the result of his researches in that country was published in 1633 in the same volume with Campion's History. Before concluding our discussion of the historical works dedicated to Leicester, we must turn our attention to one remaining book, a curious little treatise entitled The Sajegarde

of Societie: describing the Institu-

tion of Lawes, and Policies to preserue euery Felowship Degrees of Ciuill Gouernemente

of People

by

(1576). Not a history itself, it neverthe-

less belongs in this group because it is, as the author John Barston explains in his dedication, the fruit of historical studies by one who was also a student of law. Barston was interested in tracing the principles of government back to their beginnings: For after I discontinued the vniuersitie, before I could apply to consider of the common lawes, to whiche I began to giue my selfe, I frequented, as I was 80

He had been granted the M.A. in 1572, and in 1 5 7 5 had been allowed to supplicate for the B.D., "being a nobleman's chaplain," although of less than customary standing, but the degree was not granted. See Register 0/ the University of Oxford, ed. C. W. Boase and A. Clark (Oxford, 1 8 8 5 - 8 9 ) , I, 272; II, Pt. I, 1 3 2 . He may possibly have been chaplain to the Earl of Lincoln, for the first edition of his translation was dedicated to the Countess of Lincoln in terms implying some familiarity, and in his Address to the Reader he speaks of having read the histories in Greek "vnto an honorable Ladie of this lande."

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wont before, to continue reading histories of many people, Lacedemons, Atheniens, Romanes and others: comparing by the way what I could obserue to grow of Philosophic . . . .

I gathered therehence also many common

places of the groundes of gouernement that policies had put in practise to begin societies for commencemente of a common weale: gaining therein pleasure, to confer the growths of our english lawes, howe farre they were excelling in equitie, godly prouisions, and approued order, the laws of other nations. W i t h o u t d w e l l i n g on this complacently patriotic note, Barston goes on to m a k e an even more important point, which gives h i m his title: "policies" (that is, polities or g o v e r n m e n t s ) are the safekeepers of societies, preventing through their laws the evil effects of "the spreading m a i m e s of vertue." T h o u g h Barston's language is cloudy, he formulates closely enough the theory of g o v e r n m e n t a l responsibility for the w e l f a r e of the state, and bases it on historical grounds. L i k e H a n m e r he finds in ancient records a justification of his o w n ideas. But he is not a r e f o r m e r ; he preaches obedience and respect for authority. N o t h i n g is k n o w n of Barston except what he tells us about himself in his dedicatory epistle, which is dated at T e w k s b u r y , F e b r u a r y 22, 1576. A p p e a l i n g to Leicester for protection, he disclaims "the yrckesome crime of adulation," supporting his thesis by several learned examples, and then proceeds immediately to praise his patron's "dayly exercise to conferre of all mens causes" and his great humanity and other virtues, f o r w h i c h he is promised everlasting f a m e . T h e " f a u o u r and affection" w h i c h Leicester bears to learning has animated many writers to present to h i m their "lettered trauelles," and n o w Barston, emboldened by remembrance of a f o r m e r f a v o r , is inspired to do likewise. T h e dedication then proceeds with the passage already quoted, in w h i c h Barston tells us that he has been at a university and studied l a w . T h e idea of dedicating his w o r k to Leicester he owes to a " f a m i l i a r friend, a gentleman towardes y o u r honors seruice," w h o encouraged h i m to address the earl by r e m i n d i n g h i m of a debt of gratitude he o w e d that patron: . . . to make conizaunce of the loyall hart, that eftsoones since your late being within your stewardship of Tewkisberie, I wished to vnfolde before your honor, for the greate humanitie you then vouchsafed among other noble personages to tarie my tedious and rude Oration, appoynted to your honor, besides your Lordshippes liberal reward and publike commendation . . .

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H i s friend h a v i n g died in the meantime, he thinks it his duty to "perimplishe" that which the deceased had urged. T h e dedication continues for several pages more of what the writer properly terms his "grosse and tedious stile" without adding anything to the subject except a request for special favor and support for T e w k s b u r y , of which Leicester was Lord H i g h Steward. If Barston's oratorical style was as w i n d y and a w k w a r d as his written one, we must indeed a d m i r e Leicester's m a g n a n i m o u s behavior on the occasion of his visit to T e w k s b u r y . Although he w a s only one of several important patrons of this field, Leicester's activity as a sponsor of historians contributed significantly to the development of the Elizabethan chronicle. A s patron of the treatises of Concio and Blundeville, he encouraged the promulgation of a Renaissance theory of historical continuity and integration which differed sharply from native English practice, and which w a s exemplified in the translation of Commines that Danett dedicated to h i m . T h e n e w ideas from France and Italy, however, did not markedly influence the mainstream of English history in Leicester's time. T h e English chronicle continued to take form as a loose narrative proceeding from year to year a n d reign to reign, and to depend upon sources of v a r y i n g authenticity which were neither completely digested nor smoothly assimilated. Nevertheless, in the hands of the Elizabethans this basically medieval technique was raised to a standard of historical scholarship and literary effectiveness far beyond that of the M i d d l e Ages; and for this advance, also, some of the credit must go to Leicester, since the three men who were most responsible for the character of the Elizabethan chronicle acknowledged his patronage. T w o of them, Grafton and Stow, were his special proteges and enjoyed his protection d u r i n g a long and productive period in their careers, w h i l e stimulated by their rivalry to greater efforts and more rapid publication. Grafton showed that the medieval technique of compilation from multiple sources could be adapted to the service of the T u d o r dynasty; moreover, he made his material intelligible and attractive to a large reading public. W i t h o u t sacrificing either popularity or patriotism, Stow, probably the greatest student of history in the reign of Elizabeth, brought a high degree of truth into the English chronicle, and in his larger w o r k s approached the continued history, or "historical discourse" as he calls it, which had been held up as a model by the Renaissance theoreticians.

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T h e Elizabethan chronicle, however, is remembered chiefly for Holinshed's great enterprise, in which Leicester is represented by a dedication from Holinshed himself, and by the inclusion of the Irish history prepared for him by Campion. In the field of current history also, Leicester appears as sponsor and protector. H i s protégés M a l i m and Stocker brought to England samples of European reporting which may have influenced English techniques, and which demonstrated the value of "news" as propaganda. In quite a different category, H a n m e r ' s work of compilation and translation from Greek historians of the early Christian period appeared under Leicester's aegis to remind readers of the virtue of the apostolic church and to furnish inspiration to the reformers for over a century. W h e n we consider the personal motives of the writers who dedicated historical works to Leicester, we find that they fall into two distinct groups: the professional chroniclers whose chief purpose was the production and profitable publication of history, and who sought patronage primarily for the protection and advertisement of their books; and the others, for w h o m the w o r k of compilation or translation was not an end in itself but rather a means to some other end. T h e forms they employed are closely related to their motives. Grafton, Stow, and Holinshed, the professionals, produced the k i n d of histories their public wanted, a k i n d which was better than but not very different from the traditional English chronicle. Campion, who resembled Grafton and Stow in being a protégé of one of the great London companies as well as of Leicester, shared their aims and methods but differed from them in that he regarded the writing of history not only as an end in itself but also as a means to preferment. In this respect he belongs with H a n m e r and M a l i m ; all three were university men of the younger generation who believed that scholarly and linguistic ability as demonstrated in their work would secure them honorable positions in the service of church or state. Of Danett we k n o w little but he probably also belongs to this academic group, while Barston represents the same ambition on a lower level. Ubaldini, illuminator and court protégé, produced Italian translations as a sideline, apparently, to other occupations. Stocker, primarily a propagandist, is more interested in the dissemination of ideas than in advancement; he is the true servant of a cause. Propaganda, however, w a s explicit in the works of all these men. De-

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spite the diversity of their personal aims and the variety of their subjects, as didactic writers they share a common ground, accepting without question the basic moral tenet of medieval and Elizabethan history— that the study of the past is valuable because it contains lessons for the present and the future. (Nor have even the most objective modern historians entirely abandoned this justification.) They agree that history illustrates the fickleness of Fortune, and that Fortune's chief business as an instrument of Providence is to bring about the fall of bad princes. They condemn tyrants, extol good rulers (especially their o w n ) , and hope that these judgments will inspire their readers to loyal and patriotic behavior. In urging the profit of history for magistrates and warriors, they add a new note, one that rings loudly in works devoted especially to British

history:

the trumpet

call of

England's

high

imperial

destiny. T o this nationalistic motive they relate, with some ingenuity, a number of themes as various as the necessity for defending true religion at home and abroad against recusant or T u r k or Spaniard, the desirability of bringing (English) civilization to Ireland, the glory of aristocratic family pride, and the value of scholarship for the commonwealth and for posterity. Whether we call them propagandists or didacticists matters little: their purpose is at once moral and patriotic, and they hail their patron as a benefactor of the nation because he enables them to make that purpose effective. Moreover, the same double motivation is asserted for works of all kinds and scopes—for the bulletin of recent news from abroad as for the laborious compilation of British history. Under its shield writer and patron were able to work together for the political and religious doctrines which served their ends—and in which we have every reason to think that they sincerely believed.

C H A P T E R IV

Universities and Scholars This one thing then I would have you all remember, that there will be no directer, no fitter course, either to ma\e your fortunes, or to procure the favor of your Prince, than, as you have begun, to ply your studies diligently.

—From Queen Elizabeth's Latin oration at Cambridge University, 1564

T

H E year 1564, which saw the creation of Robert Dudley as Baron of Denbigh and Earl of Leicester, marked also the launching of a

royal campaign for the encouragement of learning at the universities. This coincidence of events was not accidental, for one of the most important functions which Leicester was to assume with his new honors was the patronage of scholars, in token whereof he was named Chancellor of Oxford University in the same year. H e had already acquired a reputation as a benefactor of learned men; from this time forth his patronage was characterized by greater breadth and clearer purpose. His new honors and powers naturally attracted to him many additional protégés, and increased his normal obligation to reward and protect men of letters; and at first sight it would appear that this extension of his benefactions was merely a development of his initial interest in books and scholars, made possible by the acquisition of great wealth and influence. But as we read the dedications and examine the evidence w e discover that there was more to it than this. Leicester's patronage of academic learning, whether a duty voluntarily assumed or a task specifically assigned to him by the Crown, was part of a national program which included both the control and direction of public opinion and the full utilization of the country's best intellects. His burden was shared by Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), Chancellor of Cambridge, and to a lesser degree by other members of the nobility, especially Privy Councillors. In the present chapter it will be our purpose to consider Leicester's activities in this program and to analyze his motives and methods as special patron of university men.

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Despite our enthusiastic lip service to education and our at least theoretical recognition of its importance for democratic living, the Elizabethans probably had a more genuine respect for learning than we. W e are confused about its values, speaking of it sometimes as an end in itself, on other occasions as a public duty, most frequently as a vocational requirement. T h e Elizabethans had all these ideas but they kept them in separate categories. Although keenly aware of the pleasures of the intellectual life they rarely attempted to justify that life as an end in itself. T o them learning was almost always a means to an end. They defined its public value variously, in terms of morality or religion or good government, concepts which were closely associated in their minds and often subsumed under that covering phrase, "the commoditie of this realme," which we have already encountered in their justification of historical studies. For the individual who devoted himself to scholarship the goal was definite: a secure position in the employment of the Crown, as recognition both of his service to the commonwealth in having accomplished a work of learning, and of his qualifications for further service as demonstrated by that work. They had great faith in education. F r o m the tomes in the college libraries and from the new volumes pouring from the presses, the Englishman would learn the truth of the Scriptures and the lessons of history, the wisdom of the classics, and the nature of the great world beyond his shores. He would be taught to distrust the superstition and ignorance of the Middle Ages and of the Roman Catholic Church which had dominated that period. H e would come to appreciate the enlightened rule under which he lived and the Protestant Church which had freed him from the dark evils of the past. H e would be encouraged to think of himself as capable of independent reasoning, endowed with the ability to enjoy a this-worldly life, and obligated to improve that life for future generations. H e would be trained to minister the word of God, or to pass on to other students the knowledge he had acquired, and in either role he would be an invaluable instrument of propaganda for the established order. Or he might use his rhetorical and linguistic skills in the Queen's service as secretary or envoy, bringing to the Tudor court those Renaissance graces which were necessary for its prestige in the realm of international diplomacy. 1 H e might, if he were bold and gifted, find 1 During the earlier Tudor period the royal court had been largely dependent upon foreign scholars for international communications. William Nelson in John S^elton,

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more adventurous callings open to him. There was a new literature to be written, to rival in English the masterpieces of the ancient world and of Italy and France. There was a brave new world for his conquering, and in books he would find the methods of conquest. Skilled in oratory and strategy, he would be ripened for the leadership of England's statesmen, warriors, seamen. Pious or sceptical, studious or gallant, whatever his nature, let him but ply his studies diligently and his fortune would be made. Students of Elizabethan letters have long been familiar with various aspects of the educational program sponsored by the Crown without fully recognizing the conscious moral purpose which gave it impetus. In part, at least, the idea behind it was traditional, for the Elizabethans had inherited from the Middle A g e s the notion that learning was characteristic of the religious man—was, in fact, synonymous with both piety and wisdom. But in much of the medieval period a higher education had been the peculiar possession of clerics; in the Renaissance it was made available to laymen on a fairly large scale, and became a conventional attribute of the aristocracy. Moreover, in the later period the cause of learning was supported by a clearly enunciated theory which held that the pursuit and diffusion of knowledge would improve the state of mankind. 2 In broad form this idea was generally accepted in England from at least the beginning of the sixteenth century. This theory, given limited application by the early English humanists, was in practice narrowed and channeled after the Reformation. T h e mid-century Cambridge group, combining an ardent zeal for Protestantism with sound classical scholarship, informed the concept with religious and social purposes which, despite the interruption under Queen Mary, they transmitted to a new generation of scholars. In a state in which the Laureate (New York, 1939), pp. 2 9 - 3 1 , describes the use of imported secretaries and diplomats at the court of Henry VII; Henry VIII continued to use foreign emissaries, though to a lesser degree. Even Elizabeth had foreigners in her diplomatic service, among whom the Italian, Horatio Palavicino, was one of the most active. T o supplement or supplant this alien personnel by a supply of native scholars noted for eloquence in Latin and foreign tongues remained a goal throughout the sixteenth century. 2 Thus Thomas More, in his letter of 1 5 1 8 to the University of Oxford protesting against the current attack on Hellenism in the university, declares that although education is not required for salvation, nonetheless a humanistic education docs train the soul in virtue. It is, he writes, the only reason men come to Oxford; the university exists not primarily for theological studies but for the humanities, requisite as the right preparation for the law as well as for clergymen. For the Latin text see E. F. Rogers, ed„ The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, N.J., 1947), pp. 1 1 2 - 2 0 ; an English translation by T. S. K. ScottCraig is to be found in Renaissance News, I, No. 1 (Summer, 1948), 19-24.

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supreme authority in matters ecclesiastical was vested in the Crown, but in which by necessity the matter of conformity rested ultimately with the individual conscience, it was recognized that the education of laymen was essential to the success of the English Reformation. A population ignorant of the basis of its faith could not be safeguarded against the efforts of recusant priests to restore the old religion and undermine the throne, and every effort had to be made through pulpit, school, and printed book to teach the right religio-political doctrine. In Elizabeth's reign, the emphasis on the moral value of learning was intensified by the growth of national feeling, the threat of invasion, and religious troubles. T h e Queen and her aristocracy, themselves educated to unthinking acceptance of the basic Renaissance formula that education endows the soul with virtue, made the final logical step: they identified its purpose—the improvement of mankind—with their own political purposes, and they utilized its method—the diffusion of knowledge—as the medium of propaganda for those purposes. A l l learning, therefore, was interpreted in terms of Elizabethan doctrine; all knowledge, properly understood, supported the state. Scholars, translators, and writers were called upon to dedicate themselves to the patriotic task of enlightening the population. Since the energies of the Renaissance, flowing full and strong, were too powerful to be held back by a political philosophy which was still unsure and experimental, this failure to distinguish between education and indoctrination did not result in a stultification of learning such as we have witnessed in the totalitarian states of our own time. Rather, the reverse was the case, and the Elizabethans were forced to justify their policies in terms of prevailing intellectual forces. A s a result the Renaissance in its English development was idealistic and moralistic, as well as nationalistic and Protestant. A n d because the rulers of the Elizabethan state were constrained by the insecurity of their position to woo the support of public opinion, it was relatively liberal and in a sense democratic. In so far as the Queen and her nobles were conscious of the individualistic implications of the program they sponsored, they were apparently willing to take the consequences. T h e encouragement of learning at the universities was only a part of the broad educational program of the Elizabethan authorities, but at least at the beginning of the reign it was a most important part. W h e n Elizabeth came to the throne the first impulse of the Renaissance in

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England had spent itself; the second generation of humanists, strongly Protestant, had been silenced or driven into exile by the reinstitution of Catholicism under Queen M a r y ; and learning was at low ebb in the universities. 3 Cambridge, which had eclipsed its sister university by an early acceptance of the Reformation, had also suffered more keenly the effects of the Marian reaction. Oxford, which had shown a stubborn loyalty to the old religion, had been rewarded by greater patronage under Mary, but was also in greater disgrace when Protestantism was restored. In 1559 both universities were visited by commissions whose purpose it was to " r e f o r m " them, chiefly by the removal of the most notorious Romanists. But for the first few years of the reign no extreme changes could be made, for if all the university dons who had accepted Catholicism under Mary had been weeded out the universities would have been depopulated. A t both universities there was an alarming dearth of candidates for degrees. 4 T h e field in which the lack of graduates was most urgently felt was that of divinity: it was necessary to fill the pulpits of England as rapidly as possible with properly indoctrinated Protestant divines. But it was precisely to this field that it was proving most difficult to lure students. T h e unsettled religious conditions which prevailed at Elizabeth's accession were soon after aggravated by the return of the Marian exiles with radical religious opinions from which the Puritan movement was to develop. Even the youngest university scholar was old enough to remember two changes in religion, and probably intelligent enough to see that a third might be imminent, either by a reversion to Catholicism or by a reorganization of Protestantism. Recalling the difficulties endured by clergymen in recent years, young men naturally avoided this controversial and even dangerous field and turned to other pursuits, such as the study of law at the Inns of Court, in the hope of finding safer and more profitable careers in public affairs. In order to encourage the study of theology at Cambridge in 1560, Elizabeth sent a letter to the aus For conditions at the universities at the accession of Elizabeth, see James Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge from the Royal Injunctions of 1535 to the Accession of Charles the First (Cambridge, England, 1884), pp. 98, 152, 170, 1 7 3 - 7 5 , 182-83, and Charles Edward Mallet, A History of the University of Oxford (New York, 1924), II, 103-5* According to Mullinger (op. cit., pp. 170, 2 1 4 ) , at Cambridge in 1558-59 there were only twenty-eight proceeding to the B.A., a figure which rose to sixty in 1560. Mallet (op. cit., p. 107) gives an average of sixty to seventy supplications for degrees at Oxford during the first seven years of the reign.

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thoritics of the university in which she declared that all prebends in the royal gift and in the gift of the Keeper of the Great Seal would go to the most promising graduates in divinity. 5 T h e r e was a marked increase in the number of degrees as a result, but the demand for educated clergymen continued to be felt throughout the reign. Since the study of divinity and the production of clergymen were still considered the basic justifications for the existence of the universities, the cause of academic learning as a whole suffered from the decline in this discipline. T h e flight from the universities was general. Besides the urgent demand for recruits to the clergy, there were other pressing reasons for restoring the ancient prestige of Oxford and Cambridge. T h e educational program also required right-thinking and adequately trained teachers for schools and colleges, and a numerous staff of translators, compilers, and editors equipped to undertake the task of purveying information from works in Latin and foreign tongues. Here, too, the lack of candidates was especially felt in the early years of the reign, for scholarship itself had not yet recovered from the dissolution of the monasteries nor from the second blow dealt it by the reactionary policies of Queen Mary. Moreover, Renaissance standards of statecraft now demanded a high degree of learning for those who would serve the nation as diplomats and counselors; for this employment a training at the Inns was no longer adequate without a background in liberal arts acquired at a university. A n d for the royal court there was entertainment to be provided to meet the standards set by the learned and fashionable courts of the Continent. A s the potential breeding places of enlightened rulers and of scholars who would become the religious leaders, teachers, poets, and propagandists of England, the universities had to be saved. Soon after the beginning of her reign, therefore, Elizabeth and her nobles purposefully set out to woo the universities to their cause, granting in exchange such protection and patronage that conditions were bound to improve. A s a sign of her intention, Elizabeth gave her two chief nobles to the universities as their respective chancellors. In 1559, before the Queen had been on her throne a year, Cecil was made Chancellor of Cambridge. 6 Oxford had to wait until the end of 1564 to ob5

Mullinger, op. cit., pp. 1 8 2 - 8 3 . In theory the universities elected their chancellors, but undoubtedly their choices were governed both by a desire to follow the Crown's intention and by the hope that a chancellor of great political power would use his influence on their behalf. The election was an 8

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tain a chancellor of comparable dignity and power, but Leicester's acceptance of the chancellorship in that year of his elevation to the top rank of the nobility and at a moment when he was in the highest favor was a hopeful portent for the university. Neither Cecil nor Leicester limited his patronage to his own university; while attending with a good deal of diligence to the internal affairs of the institutions officially under their rule, both chancellors gave encouragement and reward to scholars in general. Cambridge, indeed, showed itself very anxious to cultivate Leicester's good will, perhaps because of his support of the cause of religious reform, which had been at home in that university for over a generation. Moreover, Leicester's earlier connections had been with Cambridge rather than Oxford: his father had been Chancellor of Cambridge in the last year of his life, and he himself had been elected L o r d H i g h Steward of the university in 1563, the year before the famous royal visit on which Elizabeth announced the beginning of the campaign for the encouragement of academic learning. It was as L o r d H i g h Steward of Cambridge that Dudley (not yet raised to the honors he was to receive in the same year) accompanied Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of her first state visit to that university in the summer of 1564. In advance of the event, Dudley wrote ahead to the Cambridge authorities thanking them for the position they had conferred upon him and promising that he would do anything within his power to increase the prosperity of the university: . . . with my frendshipp, every waye to furder you; with my pourse, to assiste and spend with youe; and myne owne selfe, att your commandements in all I may to honour and serve youe.7 In answer to their request that he serve as their intermediary to the Queen, he assured them that she would take all their offerings in good part. Apparently the university felt considerable anxiety concerning the visit. In the six years which had elapsed since the beginning of the reign, certain necessary changes had been instituted and an attempt had honor but not without great responsibilities. Cecil's first years in the position were so difficult that he soon offered to retire, and was persuaded to remain only by the promise of the Cambridge authorities to adopt certain reforms (Mullinger, op. cit., pp. 1 8 6 - 8 7 ) . 7 John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1 8 2 3 ) , I, 1 5 4 .

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been made to root out the remaining Catholics, but the reorganization was far from complete. Accordingly, some last-minute reforms were hastily accomplished. Cecil, the chancellor, arrived before Elizabeth to make sure that all was in readiness. 8 T h e event was to be celebrated with a good deal of fanfare, and every effort was to be made to give the royal mistress a strong impression of loyalty, diligence, and achievement in her scholars at Cambridge. Behind the elaborate preparations there was nervous anticipation, for the time of hope was still to come. Elizabeth, with her fine sense of the dramatic, intended to announce it in person, and delayed her announcement until the last day of the visit. F r o m the beginning, however, Elizabeth's gracious behavior more than made good the assurances given in advance by Dudley, and the visitation was a complete success. Throughout the proceedings her favorite seems to have remained close at her side, partaking in all the entertainments and repeatedly honored in the orations. Accompanied by members of her court, the Queen listened to disputations, lectures, and plays with interest and enthusiasm. She impressed the scholars by her friendliness when she spoke to them on familiar terms and by her erudition when she replied in Latin and Greek to the speeches made in her honor. On the last day of the celebration, when with apparent unwillingness she was prevailed upon to deliver a short oration in Latin, she found the opportunity to make the proclamation which was one of the main objects of her visit. She declared to the scholars that it was her intention actively to further the cause of learning, reinforcing her appeal for their cooperation by the emphatic promise of reward which is quoted at the head of this chapter. She also assured them that she would follow the example of her forebears by erecting colleges, adding that if she should die before completing her plan she would provide a monument in her memory by which others would be inspired to similar beneficences.9 T h e reviving effect of the Queen's announcement was felt at both universities. At Cambridge, reform proceeded apace and the number of students rapidly increased. 10 A t Oxford preparations were begun in expectation of a royal visit, similar to that bestowed on Cambridge, which appears to have been planned originally for the following year. 8

9 Mullinger, op. at., p. 188. Nichols, op. cit., p. 178. According to Mullinger (op. cit., p. 2 1 4 ) there were 1,267 students at Cambridge in 1564, and 1,630 five years later; the number of B.A.'s rose from 60 in 1560 to 1 1 4 in 1570. 10

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In 1564-65, Convocation, the governing body of Oxford, instituted a thoroughgoing reform, codified in a series of statutes of which the most important were the "Statuta pro Scholaribus." The rules for reading, disputations, and degrees were laid down; a new course was decreed for the B A . and also for the M.A.; and all academic matters were strictly regulated, with particular attention to the eradication of Romanist survivals. 11 Oxford's old chancellor, Sir John Mason, resigned, and on December 30, 1564, Convocation formally elected Leicester to the chancellorship.12 And in March, 1565, Thomas Cooper of Magdalen College, Oxford, in anticipation of the arrival of the Queen and Leicester, gave to the press his great Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae,13 destined to supplant the Bibliotheca Eliotae on which it was based and to become the standard Latin dictionary of Elizabethan England. In dedicating this important work to Leicester, Cooper took advantage of the opportunity to advertise in no uncertain terms Oxford's readiness to share in the royal promises as well as the royal reforms. His dedication served as a gloss upon the Queen's speech at Cambridge, clarifying and particularizing the assurances she had given, and reasserting in her name and Leicester's that learning had become the approved road to royal favor and high position. The dedication is addressed to Leicester as a member of the Privy Council and as Chancellor of Oxford. 14 Its first part is devoted to a complaint concerning the evil state of learning in England, for which Cooper blames the grievous events of times recently past and especially the changes in religion. As a result of these, he tells us, the bishops of the Church and the ministers of the word of God not only suffered contempt but were also placed in actual peril of their personal safety and their fortunes. Observing that a clerical vocation brought those who followed it nothing but disgrace and ruin, parents have prescribed other 11

Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 1 9 . Register of the University of Oxford, ed. C. W. Boase and A. Clark (Oxford, 1885-89), II, Pt. I (hereafter cited as Register), 240. Dr. Laurence Humphrey, known as one of the more extreme reformers, presided and a few days later led a delegation to announce the election to Leicester. On January 6 Leicester wrote to the university authorities to thank them for the election. 13 The date of publication, March 16, 1565, and Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff appear on the title page. 14 This dedication is translated in part and rather freely by Frederick Chamberlin, Elizabeth and Leycester (New York, 1939), pp. 389-91. 12

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ways of life for their sons. And young men of exceptional ability, unwilling to endure the toils of scholarship without the hope of reward, have abandoned the universities, so that there are no longer students who covet knowledge and eagerly penetrate the mysteries of higher learning, except for some few who study medicine or jurisprudence. The rest either flee to the life of the court, or study the institutions of the realm (presumably at the Inns of Court), or turn aside from their studies to pursue a profitable career. They know that sure honors and rewards await men in other roles of public life, while rectors and teachers can expect only poverty and ignominy. In his claim of special merit for those who continue to teach and preach in the face of these odds, we can perhaps detect the writer's intention to call his own case to his patron's notice. For, although he makes no use of autobiographical material in this dedication, Cooper's complaint was based on personal experience. Born a poor tailor's son, Cooper had made a brilliant start at Oxford, where he had become fellow of Magdalen College and master of the Magdalen College School. A confirmed Protestant, he had intended to take orders and seek advancement in the church, but with the restoration of Catholicism under Queen Mary he had changed his plans, taken a degree in medicine, and practiced as a physician in Oxford, his native city. Moreover, the two important works of scholarship upon which he had been engaged—his continuation of Lanquet's Chronicle and his enlarged edition of Elyot's Dictionary—had been interrupted, and he had published no new edition of either during Mary's reign. Soon after the accession of Elizabeth he had brought out revised editions of both works, and he had also been ordained and rapidly gained a reputation for his preaching. He was now, in 1565, nearing fifty, and conscious that his gifts had not received adequate recognition. His own career illustrated his plaint concerning the disastrous effects of religious upheaval on both scholarship and the clerical calling. Having developed his theme with a good deal of magniloquence, Cooper breaks off sharply to hail the new order of things, the reforms guaranteed by the Queen's promises at Cambridge in the previous year. It is now commonly known, he asserts, that because of Leicester's counsel especially, and Cecil's as well, the Queen has planned to restore the arts to their former glory and to stimulate indolent youths to take up once more the burdens of scholarship. This opinion was fixed in men's minds

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by Her Majesty's visit to Cambridge, where by her very presence she signified that those who cultivate learning are dear to her, and where by her oration she excited the minds of studious youths to the hope of most ample rewards for industry and virtue. After the tumult of war had settled, she conceived a plan for cultivating the arts of peace, that skill in languages and the humanistic disciplines might flourish and good teaching be rewarded. Leicester himself deserves no small part of the praise due this undertaking, since by his warnings and exhortations the industry of the Queen was stimulated. It was Divine Providence which caused two such patrons of the universities to appear in these times, to assume in their zeal for the commonwealth the defense and propagation of the liberal arts. T h e next section of the dedication is an essay on the general utility of learning. 1 5 It is significant that Cooper, abandoning the notion implied in his introductory passage that a university education is primarily a preparation for the ministry, realistically accepts the decline of theological studies and sets himself to define in good Renaissance terms the values of the humanistic discipline for the individual, the commonwealth as a whole, and the service of the Prince. Applied even to mediocre natures, he declares, learning produces an incredible force of prudence, judgment, and dignity for building up all parts of the commonwealth. For who does not see how much the inculcation of the humanities and arts can accomplish in promoting the true worship of Divine Will, in confirming religion, in cultivating manners, in carrying out diplomatic missions, in expounding the commands of the Prince or Council, in arguing legal matters, in dealing with councils, in public suits, judgments, and all the other activities upon which the administration of the commonwealth depends? With the decline of learning, all those things which are of utility to a great state fall into ruin. If education is neglected a shameful ignorance and superstition will take its place; barbarous savagery will invade human life. As patron of the liberal arts and a sharer in the plans for sustaining them, Leicester is conferring the greatest service upon the state, for he is assuring its future welfare. His fame will be immortal. T h e remainder of the epistle is devoted to the dedication proper. Cooper presents his work to Leicester in the name of Oxford. After explaining its use and value he declares that all the fruits of study at the 15

Omitted from Chamberlin's translation.

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university should be offered to Leicester alone, for if Oxonians today pursue learning more laboriously than in former times they do so because this patron zealously fosters their study and defends it in the royal council and by his authority. Leicester's acceptance of this work will add greatly to the prestige of humanistic education. Cooper's publication was exquisitely timed to signalize the new dispensation in Elizabethan learning. His dictionary was to become an indispensable tool for the translators and thus to perform a great service in the popularization of literature. And in his defense of education as a requisite for worldly as well as clerical careers,' he speaks with the tongue of a modern. He seizes upon the Queen's promise as a new justification for the existence of the universities. Henceforth, one of their most important functions will be the training of public servants. Even today Cooper's dedication seems a document of some significance. Its influence in Elizabethan times was undoubtedly widespread. Cooper himself now rose rapidly to fame and power. It is said that his Thesaurus so delighted Queen Elizabeth that she thenceforth endeavored to promote the author as high in the church as she could. 16 Doubtless she was impressed by its erudition, but we can be certain that Cooper's dedication, with its lavish compliments to his Queen and its effective publicity for her program, also played a part in convincing her that the lexicographer was a man who deserved promotion. In 1567 Cooper was made Dean of Christ Church and in the same year elected vice-chancellor of the university. There is direct evidence that Leicester was the agent through whom Elizabeth made effective her desire to see Cooper advanced, for in 1568, when the annual election of the vice-chancellor again took place, the earl insisted that Cooper retain the position. 17 With Leicester's backing, Cooper remained vice-chancellor of Oxford until he became Bishop of Lincoln in 1570. This latter honor had been preceded by the deanship of Gloucester Cathedral. As Bishop of Lincoln, Cooper devoted himself chiefly to doctrinal works and sermons, and in 1584 he was raised to the bishopric of Winchester. Right through the period of his advancement in the episcopacy, Cooper continued to bring out new and enlarged editions of his Thesaurus, always with Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff 18

Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1 8 1 3 ) , I, 6 1 1 . Mallet, op. cil., p. 1 1 6 . Leicester had at first allowed the masters of Oxford to elect their own vice-chancellor, but after this interference on Cooper's behalf he apparently controlled the nomination so that the office was filled by a man of his choice. 17

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on the title page and the original dedication to Leicester immediately thereafter. There were five editions in all. 18 Assuredly the dedication, though in Latin, reached a large audience, and its ideas continued to carry weight among the many whose habit it was in that age to read and discuss prefatory matter. Moreover, Cooper's rapid and generous preferment, once he had brought himself and his gifts to the attention of Leicester and the Queen, was as good evidence of the sincerity of Elizabeth's promise at Cambridge and of the new hope for scholars which he had hailed in his dedication of 1565, as the earlier part of his life had been of the neglect of learning during the period of religious upheaval. At the zenith of his career, in 1589, Cooper appeared as the champion of the Anglican episcopacy against Martin Marprelate, with the publication of his Admonition to the People of England. Among the Marprelate allegations which he denied in that work was the accusation that the Church of England maintained an unlearned ministry. Apparently he felt that the Elizabethan campaign for the advancement of learning had achieved a large measure of success, for he asserted that "there be so many learned and sufficient preachers in this land, as neuer were before in any age or time . . . and comparable to anie other Church refourmed in Europe." 1 9 After this publication Cooper became one of the special butts of the Marprelate writers, and thus was assured immortality even unto our day. Although Cooper in his dedication of 1565 announced to the world that under Leicester's encouragement learning had already improved at Oxford, the university had to wait until the following year for the official outward sign that the royal favor would embrace Oxford as well as Cambridge. Because of an outbreak of the plague the royal visit was postponed until 1566. In July of that year Leicester wrote to the authorities to prepare for the Queen's visit, and the summer term was extended so that the university would be well filled for the occasion.20 At the end of August, Leicester and Cecil having arrived a few days earlier, Elizabeth and her court made their visitation. 21 18

1 5 6 5 , 1 5 7 3 , 1 5 7 8 , 1 5 8 4 , and 1 5 8 7 . Thomas Cooper, An Admonition to the People of England (London, 1 8 4 7 ) , p. 9 1 ; see also pp. 88, 90, and 92 ff. Cooper admits that there are ignorant ministers in small chapels but defends this weakness of the Church on the ground that the stipends are too small to attract learned men. 20 Register, p. 234. 21 For accounts of the visit, see Mallet, op. cit., pp. 1 1 0 - 1 5 , and Nichols, op. cit., pp. 19

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T h e celebration got off to a bad start; possibly only Leicester's influence with the Queen averted a catastrophe for O x f o r d . Although Elizabeth had already taken a middle position in religious matters and had clearly indicated that she intended to discourage the extreme reformers, the University Orator, Dr. Kingsmill, tactlessly chose to give a Calvinist tone to part of his long Latin speech of greeting. H e praised her especially for having recalled the followers of Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer from exile, indirectly reminding her that she had appointed one of them, D r . Laurence Humphrey, to the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. Humphrey, who was also President of Magdalen College, had well-known sympathies with the more radical reformers, and probably because of them was already numbered among Leicester's protégés. 2 - In 1564, when cited before Archbishop Parker in the vestiarian controversy, he had written to the earl for assistance, and had been released after signing a paper which satisfied the authorities without committing him to the use of the priestly habits. Later that year he had presided over Convocation when that body elected Leicester chancellor of the university. Kingsmill's remark was calculated, therefore, to gratify Leicester, but unfortunately served to recall to the Queen that she had given encouragement to a troublesome faction. She was displeased. Humphrey, however, had already mollified her by permitting himself to wear his scarlet gown for the occasion of her visit, and she let D r . Kingsmill's remarks pass. With Leicester at her side, Elizabeth repressed her vexation. T h e next day, it is true, she spent resting—thus missing the Sunday sermons. But the festivities on the whole seem to have been at least as successful as those at Cambridge. Orations, lectures, disputations, and plays in Latin and English more than filled up the time and were graciously received by the Queen and her followers. Although Elizabeth did not repeat in so many words the promises she had made at the sister university, her manner gave Oxford equal encouragement. 2 3 Several of the scholars who took part in the entertainments are to be numbered among Leicester's special protégés. T h o m a s Cooper, who may 206-49. Contemporary descriptions of the occasion and some of the orations and poems presented to the Queen and her nobles are collected under the title "Queen Elizabeth at Oxford, 1566," in Elizabethan Oxford, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford, 1887), pp. 109-244. 22 For Humphrey sec, besides DNB, C. H. Garrett, The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, England, 1938), pp. 193-94. 23 Theoretically, at least, Elizabeth kept her promise (made at Cambridge) of becoming a founder of colleges by taking upon herself the title of Founder in the charter granted to Jesus College, Oxford, in 1571—the first Protestant foundation at Oxford. Her only con-

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originally have planned to present his Thesaurus to Leicester during the royal visit, delivered a Latin oration welcoming the Queen in his patron's name to the dwelling prepared for her in Christ Church. He also acted as moderator in one of the disputations. Dr. Humphrey delivered a lecture for which he received high praise and presented a prayer in Latin verses for the Queen's majesty. There are interesting parallels in the careers of these two distinguished scholars, both protected by Leicester—and interesting differences, the latter ascribable to their diverse attitudes toward the religious settlement. Cooper was an ardent champion of the Anglican establishment. Of Humphrey, on the other hand, Anthony á Wood declared that he stocked his college with nonconformists, sowed the seeds of Calvinism in the Divinity School, and showed such zeal against the Catholics that he earned the epithet "Papistomastix." Although there may be some malicious exaggeration in the report of this Restoration chatterbox, the description on the whole seems true enough. T h e records indicate that only constant pressure kept Humphrey in line in the matter of the vestments. One suspects that Leicester found his strict Puritan views more congenial than Cooper's orthodox Anglicanism; the earl undoubtedly fostered the growth of Puritanism at Oxford for political purposes if for no other.24 But, despite Leicester's probable preference and an initial headstart, Humphrey's extreme religious position proved an obstacle to his advancement from this time forth, and kept him always a step or so behind Cooper. Thus in 1567 it was actually Humphrey who had Leicester's first recommendation for the vice-chancellorship, but it was Cooper who won the election—and who, with Leicester's support, retained the position until he was elevated to a bishopric in 1570. Leicester then had Humphrey elected and kept him in office until at least 1575. Humphrey again followed in Cooper's footsteps when he became Dean of Gloucester in 1571. In 1572 and 1575 when the Queen visited Woodstock near Oxford, Humphrey had the honor of making orations before her on behalf of the university. On the earlier of these occasions he thanked her, as Cooper had done, for bestowing so fine a patron on Oxford, while in 1575 he tribution, however, appears to have been a grant of timber from the royal forests, and the evidence for this is mere tradition. See Ward, Lock and Co., Guide Book to Oxford (3d ed.; London, n.d.), p. 55, and for a different account, Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain (London, 1842), II, 406. 2 * See Mallet, op. cit., pp. 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 .

Universities and Scholars introduced a complimentary reference to the splendid entertainment which Leicester had recently provided for the Queen at Kenilworth. 25 As eloquent scholars there was probably little to choose between them, and only Humphrey's stubborn nonconformity (or so Burghley is reported to have told him) prevented his advance to a prelacy, while nothing blocked Cooper's progress. In 1580 Humphrey became Dean of Winchester, his last important preferment. His service to Leicester during the anti-Catholic campaign of the 1580's will be treated in some detail in a later chapter; it included two learned attacks on the Jesuits in 1582 and 1584, and a series of sermons against treason which were published under the title A View of the Romish Hydra in 1588, the year of his patron's death. Although his career cannot compare in brilliance with that of Cooper, he managed to obtain more than a modicum of success without seriously compromising his conscience, a difficult achievement in Elizabethan times, and for nonconformists possible only with the protection of a powerful patron. Both Cooper and Humphrey were recognized scholars at the time of Elizabeth's visit to Oxford. The program provided opportunities for younger men as well; in fact, one important reason for the royal visitations to the universities seems to have been the desire of the authorities to obtain a preliminary view of promising youths whose services might be of value to church or state. Among the younger candidates who performed in 1566 were John Woolley, later Latin secretary to Leicester and to the Queen, and Edmund Campion, the most brilliant and most promising of them all; both took part as respondents in the disputations.26 How Campion won the admiration of Elizabeth and Leicester and how he later sacrificed his golden hopes to his conscience has already been told. If Cooper's career demonstrates the degree to which an Elizabethan might succeed, granted a mighty patron and complete ac25 In both orations H u m p h r e y adroitly mingled compliments to the Queen on her p a t r o n age of education with loyal references to her g o v e r n m e n t a n d its t r i u m p h over R o m a n Catholic enemies at home a n d abroad. T h e earlier speech expresses g r a t i t u d e for Elizabeth's favor and patronage and for her appointment of Leicester, "beneficentissimum Cancellarium n o s t r u m " (Ad Elizabetham oratio Woodstochiae habita, 1572, sig. D . i . r . ) . T h e later one contains, besides a reference to the "Spectacula K e n e l w o r t h a e " (sig. B.iij.r.), a c o m p l i m e n t on Elizabeth's encouragement of learning a m o n g her courtiers, " q u o d Aula tua iam facta est Nova et Tertia Academia" (Oratio ad Elisabetham, in Aula Woodstochiensi habita, ' 5 7 5 . s 'g- C.ij.r.). STC errs in listing the 1575 publication as a later edition of the 1572 w o r k (see nos. 13959 and 13960). 26 Elizabethan Oxford, p. 174; the list of "disputatores in p h i l . " includes also Tobie Matthew, later bishop.

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ccptance of the religious settlement, and in Humphrey we have evidence that without conformity not even powerful patronage sufficed to achieve the highest rung, then Campion provides the third and fatal combination—defiance of authority followed by loss of patronage. Patronage there was, however, for those who understood and accepted the conditions on which it was offered. The best indication of the reviving effects of Elizabeth's encouragement of learning at Oxford is to be found, not in the careers of individual men who were present on the occasion of her visit, but in the increase of attendance at the university. The number of students supplicating for degrees, which had been averaging between sixty and seventy since the beginning of the reign, soared to a hundred and twelve in 1566, and to more than a hundred and fifty in i57o.2T At Oxford as at Cambridge, both the number of matriculations and the number of men proceeding to the B.A. continued to increase throughout the reign. And, as later chapters will sufficiently demonstrate, the universities became the chief supply of candidates for patronage and employment in every field to which learning brought advantage. Before leaving the subject of the Queen's visit to Oxford, we must take note of a little book prepared for her amusement and edification by the professor of Hebrew, Thomas Neale, who also presented her with a translation of the Prophets. The book in question, Academiae Oxoniensis Topographica Delineatio, contains drawings of the colleges and Latin verses in the form of a dialogue between Elizabeth and Leicester; the latter is represented as explaining to the Queen the chief points concerning the foundation of each of the colleges in turn, with passages in praise of learning and those who foster it.28 It is both an illustrated guidebook and a clever piece of propaganda. By giving Leicester the role of defender of Oxford, Neale emphasizes his responsibilities as chancellor and patron of the university. Although it is customary to represent Leicester as a passive patron who accepted dedications as his due without doing very much to advance the interests of his followers, the record of his activities as Chancellor of Oxford indicates that, at least with regard to university matters, he took his obligations very seriously and was both diligent and keenly interested 27

Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 0 7 ; see also pp. 1 2 2 - 2 3 . See Nichols, op. cit., pp. 2 1 0 - 1 1 , 2 1 7 - 2 9 , and Mallet, op. cit., pp. 1 1 3 - 1 5 . The text (without plates) is reprinted from Thomas Hcarne's edition of 1 7 1 3 in Elizabethan Oxford, pp. 1 5 1 - 6 8 . 28

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in discharging them. H e seems to have been anxious to please and to do the right thing, as well as to have his own way. Even small details secured his attention. For example, toward the end of 1566, Christ Church having complained to him that it had borne an excessively heavy share of the expenses for the entertainment of the Queen and her court, Leicester wrote to remind the university that the costs of the visit ought to be shared by all the colleges. 29 W e have already noticed that Leicester arrogated to himself the nomination of the vice-chancellor over a number of years. H e also used his influence to direct the appointment of other officers of the university; when the authorities protested he assured them that his interference was to their benefit, even though it involved a contravention of their statutes. 30 Since it soon became apparent that the chancellor's efforts were really advancing the welfare of Oxford, they learned to accept and even welcome his roughshod dealings. When in 1585 Leicester was about to depart from England for the campaign in the Netherlands, Convocation wrote thanking him for his defense of their statutes (which were subject to royal revision) and asking that he nominate a deputy to protect their interests in his absence. 31 Oxford had learned the value of having a powerful patron. Leicester appointed Sir Thomas Bromley, L o r d Chancellor of England, as deputy chancellor of the university. In one respect Leicester was able to teach the university authorities a lesson from his own practical experience in handling the affairs of the realm. Formerly the legislative and administrative problems of the university had been dealt with as they came up during the sessions of Convocation. A t Leicester's suggestion the business of Convocation was now arranged in advance of the actual meeting by a conference of the vice-chancellor with the doctors, heads of colleges, and proctors, so that policy-making and legislation could be controlled by those who were actually responsible for the administration of the university. 32 In thus centralizing power Oxford was merely following the example of the Tudor state. Since Leicester gradually took into his own hands the appointment of the vice-chancellor and also influenced the selection of other officers of the university, his personal authority became very great. D u r i n g his chancellorship the statutes were brought into order, new committees 29 32

Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 1 5 . Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 1 9 .

30

ibid., pp. 1 1 6 - 1 7 .

31

Register, p. 240.

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were created and new decrees promulgated, and ultimately the university as a whole was reorganized. 3 3 His influence was nowhere more evident than in the campaign against Catholicism. Supported by both the royal authorities and the Puritan faction in the university, Leicester insisted that Romanism be rooted out not only in the higher ranks of university officials but also among the tutors and everywhere. 3 4 Also significant of his allegiance to the cause of the extreme reformers was his complaint of the neglect of sermons, disputations, and lectures. H e charged that idleness and immorality were rampant, and accused both dons and scholars of "negligens and slackenesse." Most amusing in one who was famous for personal vanity and elaborate costume was his emphasis on the strict observance of the rules regarding dress: at Oxford there was to be no "excesse in apparell." Moreover, the Oxford statutes showed an increasing tendency to prescribe the use of Reformation books. This is particularly notable in the recommendations of Convocation in 1579, 3 5 a critical year in Leicester's political career and one which marked a high point in his sponsorship of Puritan publications. One effect of the root-and-branch policy against the Catholics which Leicester encouraged was the flight of many Oxonians to Douai, where with the Pope's approval a college was founded for the education of Catholic exiles. But, in spite of the loss of such talent as that of Parsons and Campion, the university prospered. 36 Indeed, the eradication of Romanism brought a new security to the university by removing those doubts and anxieties which, as Cooper had shown, had been largely responsible for the decline in learning. Protected by Leicester's influence and authority and assured a royal reward for diligent scholarship, students of the Protestant persuasion, whether loyal Anglicans or zealous reformers, flocked to the university. While Leicester was reshaping Oxford to his desire and to his political leanings, he did not hesitate to use his influence to obtain favors at the university for his proteges, including men who had had no previous con33

Mallet, op. cit., pp. 1 1 8 - 1 9 . One of the first results of the Queen's visit to Oxford came in the form of letters from her High Commissioners to the university ordering that the church plate be defaced and that Catholic books and other "monuments of superstition" be removed (Nichols, op. cit., pp. 247-50). Because of the strength of Catholicism at Oxford and the fear it inspired in official hearts, Leicester and the Puritans had a freer hand than might otherwise have been the case. But the campaign was never entirely successful and Catholics continued to find harbor in Oxford, especially at Gloucester Hall. 35 3i Mallet, op. cit., p. 120. Ibid., pp. 1 4 0 - 4 1 . 34

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ncction with Oxford. A number of cases are recorded in the registers, and there is evidence in dedications and other documents that such preferments were in the usual course of things.37 For example, in 1573 Leicester requested that a dispensation be granted his "very lovynge frend mr Treyvour professor of phisike," and in the following year he asked that John Drusius, a Fleming, be appointed lecturer in Syriac. The latter can probably be numbered among the religious refugees from the Continent for whom Leicester so often exerted special pressure. For one of these reformers in exile, the Spanish preacher Antonio Corrano (or de Corro), Leicester maintained a prolonged campaign of protection. The story in so far as it concerns Oxford begins in 1576 with the chancellor's request that Convocation excuse Corrano from inferior degrees and award him a doctorate without fee. Its antecedents go much farther back. Corrano had served as a minister in both France and Flanders and had fled to England upon Alva's arrival in Antwerp. Through the favor of Cecil and Leicester he was accepted as pastor of the Spanish congregation in London from 1568 to 1570 when Bishop Grindal suspended him. In 1571, probably with Leicester's backing, he became divinity lecturer at the Temple, only to find himself once again under suspicion of heresy. He seems to have been the center of a theological controversy wherever he went. In 1575, the year before Leicester's request on his behalf to Convocation, Corrano published a work entitled A Theological Dialogve, dedicated to Leicester in both Latin and English. 38 The dialogue itself— which presents St. Paul expounding his thought to a Roman—is followed by an appended section setting forth the articles of faith professed by the author, including specific denial both of the Pope's authority and of the better-known heresies. And indeed it is apparent from the prefatory material in the book that its chief purpose was to clear its author of those charges which had beset him at the Temple. In the dedicatory epistle Corrano thanks Leicester for receiving him "with singular fauour and good will" on his arrival in England eight years before, and for re37 For cases in the Oxford records, see Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 1 7 , and Register, pp. 149-50. Evidence from dedications and biographies is to be found in discussions of individual writers throughout this study. 38 A Theological Dialogve. Wherin the Epistle of S. Paul the Apostle to the Romanes is expounded. Gathered . . . out of the Readings of Antonie Corranus of Siuille, professor of Diuinitie. 1575. The work was a translation of a Latin treatise which had appeared the year before, but only the English version carries the dedication to Leicester.

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w a r d i n g h i m " w i t h very b o u n t i f u l l liberalitie." Since that time the earl has bestowed "innumerable benefites" upon h i m ; Leicester is a patron always w i l l i n g to befriend strangers, especially "suche as were commended to you for learning and R e l i g i o n , " without requiring " a n y other thanke or commendation f o r the same." T h e earl has protected him in his "cheefest distresses," r e f u s i n g to credit unsupported

accusations

against him, and, after g i v i n g ear to both sides alike, "perceyuing m y n e innocencie, voutchsafed alwayes since to imploy your authoritie and protection to m y defence." T h r o u g h Leicester's action the writer has been enabled to preserve his good name, the dearest thing possessed by " a Preacher of the doctrine of the gospell." T h e dedication closes with a petition for defense of the w o r k , which is itself described as being a "confession of m y f a y t h to be e x a m i n e d and iudged by the whole church of England"—obviously with reference to the appended section rather than to the dialogue between St. P a u l and the R o m a n . T h e r e follows a prefatory epistle addressed "to the G e n t l e m e n of both the T e m p l e s " which is largely autobiographical and constitutes another answer to the charges of heresy f r o m which the writer has suffered. Leicester's appeal to Convocation in the year f o l l o w i n g this publication resulted in Corrano's being granted the D . D . without fee on condition that he purge himself of heresy. A l t h o u g h it is not certain that the preacher ever satisfied the authorities on this score, the record indicates that he was admitted as a divinity reader at O x f o r d in 1579 and apparently Leicester's influence kept him at the university despite renewed doubts concerning his beliefs. 3 9 A g a i n , in 1 5 8 1 , Leicester w r o t e a letter of recommendation for a foreigner, asking that one F a b i a n N i p h u s , an Italian, " f a m o s e for his skill in phisike, philosophy and other learninges," be used w i t h all courtesy as a learned m a n and a stranger and that he be enabled to instruct others. In response, Convocation ordered that N i p h u s be incorporated M . D . and to him be granted " v e n i a legendi in aliquo loco publico." T w o 39

See Register, pp. 1 5 3 - 5 7 , where several of the events in Corrano's stormy carecr at Oxford are recorded. They include Leicester's letter to Convocation on his behalf ( 1 5 7 6 ) , Convocation's demand that he obtain letters of testimony from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London ( 1 5 7 6 ) , renewed accusations of heresy and Convocation's appointment of a committee to hear a declaration of his religious opinions ( 1 5 7 8 ) , his service as "lector catechismi" in three of the halls of Oxford ( 1 5 7 9 ) , a letter written by Leicester from court which indicates that the earl has undertaken personally and publicly to examine his protege, "having with me some of the French Church and others," with the manifest intention of clearing him finally of all charges ( 1 5 8 2 ) .

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later cases of recommendation both concern clergymen. In 1584, the chancellor asked that Thomas Munford, chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, "a good preacher and a good man," be granted the B.D. without taking the lower degrees and with moderated fees, and in the following year he requested the same degree for a Mr. Richardes, prebender of Chichester, with the suggestion that the candidate be tested by preaching in the university church. In such actions Leicester was apparently using his influence to supply the crying need for good clergymen which so highly agitated his Puritan followers in those years. 40 H e was also, of course, increasing his own power. In all justice to Leicester, however, we must admit that some of his appointments brought prestige to the university and helped restore its reputation for learning. The most famous of the scholars whom he recommended to Oxford was the great Alberico Gcntili, under whom the study of civil law revived and whose service to England included the promulgation of some of the first principles of international law. Gentili's relationship with Leicester will be treated in detail in Chapter V I I I . Oxford's prestige in the international world of learning was further enhanced by its chancellor's personal showmanship, for on more than one occasion Leicester brought foreign potentates to see the university. In 1579 he conducted John Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine, to Oxford, and four years later Albertus Alasco of Poland visited the university in his company. 4 1 These were visits of state, celebrated by formal entertainment. T h e description of the sermons, disputations, and plays which were produced for Alasco's delectation suggests that the event was considered not much less important than a royal visitation. A m o n g the pastimes provided were two Latin tragedies by William Gager, skillful writer of humanistic verse and already famous for his Meleager. 40

In 1585

Derogators of Leicester and other Puritan nobles charge them with battening on unfilled church livings while making a public show of enlightened patronage, but the specific examples usually break down under examination. Thus the oft-repeated story told by Sir John Harington, an anti-Puritan, concerning a "great person" who lived on the spoils of the bishopric of Oxford and in inadequate recompense endowed a lectureship at the university so that "the multitude was bleared with his bounty" (cf. Harington's Nugae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Park [London, 1 8 0 4 ] , II, 200) is identified with Leicester by William Pierce (An Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts [London, 1 9 0 8 ] , p. 1 0 3 and n. 3 ) and with Walsingham by Anthony a Wood (Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford, ed. A. Clark, II [Oxford, 1 8 9 0 ] , 1 0 - 1 1 ; cf. DNB.s.v., John Rainolds). But Harington's story is obviously inaccurate and malicious gossip, apparently motivated in part by his boredom at one of the lectures ( " w e were taught nihil et non"). 41

Mallet, op. cit., p. 1 4 9 .

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when Leicester again visited Oxford, accompanied by Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney, and other notables, there was yet another orgy of learned celebration, including a revival of Gager's Meleager.*2 All of these visits cemented the bond between the chancellor and his university, stimulated the efforts of polished orators and witty playwrights, and renewed the assurance in the hearts of the scholars that their talents would not be ignored. On the last of these visits Leicester's arrival was celebrated by the publication of broadsides from the newly established press of Joseph Barnes, the first official printer of Oxford University, and a personal protege of its chancellor. The establishment of a university press was one of Leicester's last acts as Chancellor of Oxford; later that year he went to the Netherlands, and the brief remaining period of his life was busily occupied with other matters. Although Leicester had no opportunity to interfere in the affairs of Cambridge comparable with his authority at Oxford, he had numerous proteges in the sister university. It is perhaps useless to conjecture what course he might have followed as Chancellor of Cambridge (if Cecil had not preempted that position) rather than of Oxford, but one cannot help feeling that in the early years at least he would have been more at home in its confirmed Protestant atmosphere than in the suppressed Romanism of his own university. In the long run the situation as it existed was probably fortunate for the equilibrium of the Elizabethan Settlement, and in it we can discern the Queen's canniness in the disposal of her counselors' talents and energies. For radical Protestantism was held in check at Cambridge by the moderate Cecil, while Leicester's Puritan sympathies, which might have proved a dangerous incitement to dissent at that university, were usefully engaged in the eradication of Catholicism at Oxford. The wisdom of the arrangement is illustrated by the tendency of some of the Cambridge enthusiasts to seek Leicester's patronage when they escaped or were expelled from the repressive influence of their university. 42

For this second performance Gager wrote a prologue and epilogue, both of which are addressed to the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester and mention also Sidney. These were printed with the play in 1592 when Gager added a dedication addressed to Essex in which he explained the circumstances of the two performances. ( D N B , s.v. Gager, is apparently in error in suggesting that Leicester and Sidney were present at the first performance.) Gager dedicated the Exequiae Sidnaei to Leicester in 1587, and according to DNB his unpublished verses include a Latin poem addressed to the same patron.

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Most notable is the case of Thomas Cartwright, professor of divinity at Cambridge, who lost his professorship and his Trinity scholarship through preaching of reform, and became one of the chief instigators of the presbyterian movement. Despite his recognized opposition to the Church of England, Cartwright was appointed master of Leicester's hospital for the poor at Warwick, with an annuity of fifty pounds from its founder. If Leicester had been Chancellor of Cambridge, Cartwright and his followers might well have converted the university into a center of intransigent Puritanism. Cartwright's connection with Leicester may possibly date f r o m the royal visit of 1564 to Cambridge, on which occasion he took an important part in one of the disputations. By that year, Leicester had already been recognized as a protector of the Puritans. T h e Cambridge scholars who were present and who can definitely be connected with him do not, however, emphasize that aspect of his patronage, but confine their compliments to his high position in the government and his sponsorship of learning. There are, for example, the witty and polished poems presented to him by Pietro Bizari within a year or so of the royal visit. 43 Bizari, one of the many Italian refugees w h o m w e find among Leicester's proteges, was a historian and poet who had sought sanctuary at Cambridge when his conversion to Protestantism forced him into exile from his native land. H i s verses, flavored with Virgilian echoes, ring the changes on his patron's fitness to rule. Writing at about the same time, another eminent scholar of Cambridge, Abraham Hartwell, fellow of King's College, chose rather to celebrate his f a m e as a patron of the university and of learning itself. 43 The poems were apparently first published in Petri Bizzari Varia Opvscvla (Venice, •565). PP- 94. 126- This volume opens with Bizari's treatise, "De optime principe," prepared for and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth; the second section is devoted to poems, chiefly in praise of great personages. This is the first of the two poems addressed to Leicester: Ad Robertum Dudlaeum, Anglum. Innvmeri regnant, quos hie seruire deceret, Permultis desunt Regna regenda viris. Tu regere, imperio dignus, vel maxima Regna; Et quamuis desint, mens tua digna viget. Haec laus est potior, quam si vel mille darentur Regna tibi, si non dignus honore fores. At cum sis dignus quam qui dignissimus omni Imperio, superos dent tibi regna precor. This poem was reprinted in Delitiae CC. Ualorum Poetarum (Frankfort, 1608), p. 437. Both poems were included in the second book, addressed to Leicester, of Gabriel Harvey's Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri Quatuor (1578), sigs. E.j.f,-E.ij.r., along with a number of other epigrams in his honor.

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Hartwell's praise of Leicester occurs in the dedicatory preface of the university's official and poetical account of the royal visit. 44 T h e work is dedicated to Walter Haddon, probably the most distinguished scholar among those who visited Cambridge in the Queen's train. Haddon was a friend of Leicester and, although he had already reached a position of great eminence, may be called a protege. They were connected by an early bond, for one of Haddon's first works, an exhortation to learning at Cambridge, had appeared in 1552 under the patronage of Leicester's father, the D u k e of Northumberland. L i k e his friend Ascham, Haddon had been Elizabeth's tutor; both belonged to the circle of Cheke and Cecil. Professor of civil law and expert in rhetoric, a Cantabrigian by training, Haddon had held important positions at both universities, and had served as a master of the Court of Requests and one of Elizabeth's commissioners for the reform of religious affairs. H e had recently achieved international f a m e as a defender of English Protestantism, for in 1563 he had been chosen as Elizabeth's champion in the controversy with Bishop Osorio, w h o represented the more enlightened Roman Catholic opposition of the Continent. Since Osorio was noted as a master of style throughout Europe, the selection of Haddon for this task was as much a compliment to his Latinism as to his theological knowledge. T h e controversy continued to engage his attention until his death in 1572. 4 5 A t about the time of the Cambridge visit, both Haddon and Ascham are found to be in correspondence with Leicester. Although the two scholars were closely associated with Cecil, they now turned their attention to the younger statesman whose star had just risen, offering him not dedications but advice about his education. Possibly Elizabeth had suggested to her old tutors that her chief favorite, whom she was grooming for even higher honors, would be grateful for their assistance in acquir44 Regina Literata Sitie De Elizabethae in Academiam Cantabrigiensem adventu Narratio ( 1 5 6 5 ) , sig. B.i.r. Hartwell describes Leicester in the following terms: "Permagnas autem officij nostri partes sibi, quasi iuro suo, asserit praeclarissimus Dominus Comes Lecestrensis, Academiae Tutor longé dignissimus, qui (vt est in omni humanitate facile Princeps) huic clientclac suae nunquam deerit, nec, quae Uteris ipsis debetur gratia et immunitas, earn a literarum studiosis vnquam sinet abiudicari." Harvey's Gratulationes drew upon Hartwell's book as well as upon Bizari's. 45 Hartwell, mentioned above, was responsible for the English translation of Haddon's first answer to Osorio, which was published under the title A sight of the Portuqall Pcarle ( 1 5 6 5 ? ) . T h e emphasis placed by both sides upon rhetoric as a weapon in religious controversy has significance for this study. A n important motive for the encouragement of learning may well have been the dearth of accomplished Latinists like Haddon to represent England in international debate. In the next century the state was to call upon the rhetorician John Milton to champion its cause in a comparable situation.

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ing the humanistic background necessary for his work as privy councillor and as Chancellor of Oxford, or the suggestion may have come from Leicester himself. The letters addressed to him by both educators take for granted the fact that his training is deficient, and assume also that their advice will be gratefully received. Despite the gravity of his task of reforming and defending the English Church, Haddon found time to busy himself with a course of readings for his patron. Writing in Latin from Bruges in 1565, he urges especially that the earl continue in the study of civil law, his own subject, and strongly recommends the reading of Plutarch's Lives, in Latin rather than in the difficult Greek original; the heroes of antiquity whose memory has been immortalized by the erudite will supply Leicester with examples for his own conduct. The writer's own erudition is obviously formidable, and his Latinity most elegant.48 One of Haddon's letters to Leicester on the subject of education was considered so extraordinary a model of epistolary form that it was included in Abraham Fleming's A Panoplie of Epistles, a handbook of rhetoric containing translations of famous letters for those who would learn to write in English on the Ciceronian pattern.47 It begins with an expression of gratitude because Leicester has found the writer's past services acceptable and has bestowed overgenerous praise on him. As a testimony of his love, Haddon promises to "set abroade in open viewe of the worlde, some singular monument," and to sound "in the eares of people, an especiall kynde of melodie, whereby it may . . . be knowne and vnderstoode . . . what benefits I haue receiued of your honour." He offers to be his patron's furtherer in learning, and hopes that Leicester will devote as much time to study as his duties for the "weale publique" allow. Quoting Cicero to the effect that noble men ought to be learned, he urges Leicester to acquaint himself with the arts and sciences, particularly "those whiche are most plausible, popular and prayseworthy, as are for example, eloquence, the civil lawe, and histories." The study of 46 Three of Haddon's letters to Leicester, all dated from Bruges, were published in the collection of his works edited by his friend and colleague Thomas Hatcher: G. Haddoni Legvm Doctoris, S. Reginae Elisabelhae a supplicum libellis, ¡ucukrationes passim colUctae (London, 1 5 6 7 ) , pp. 268-79. The volume was dedicated to Cecil. The first of these letters is chiefly concerned with news of the war against the Turks; the second (from which the passages about civil law and Plutarch are cited) and the third are laden with classical learning. 47 London. 1^76: Haddon's letter to Leicester appears on pp. 4 1 7 - 2 1 . It is the third of the letters mentioned in the note above.

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philosophy is selected for special praise, and as evidence of the value of learning in general Haddon provides a series of examples of learned persons famous in history. These include Elizabeth herself, whose zeal for knowledge is so great that even Haddon feels ashamed in her presence; for, he declares, in spite of her manifold duties, "so often as I haue recourse to her highnesse, I finde her commonly at her booke." Members of Leicester's own family arc not neglected: his father, the D u k e of Northumberland, not learned himself but a favorer of learned men, who had made much of Haddon; John of Warwick, who had been inflamed with love of learning; and the present Earl of Warwick, likewise a patron of scholars, are all praised. T h e letter closes with an adjuration to Leicester: as one who occupies a high place in the commonwealth, he is obliged to acquire learning. T h e advice to the same purpose offered by Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's Latin secretary, is couched in English, perhaps because the scholar wished to be sure that Dudley would read and understand it, and characterized by a greater familiarity of tone. Writing in 1564—in fact, during the festivities of the royal visit to Cambridge—Ascham reminds his patron of the latter's promise to stand godfather to the child whose birth, imminently expected, prevents him from attending the Queen on her progress. 48 T h e remainder of the letter is devoted to a stern lecture reproving Dudley for not having followed the scholar's advice, given on some previous occasion, to increase his knowledge of Latin. Mastery of languages, Ascham declares, is necessary to his patron's high calling, " a general instrument to have dealt with people of all nations." It is a gift which only the human race can share with God, and more valuable by far than the study of geometry to which Dudley has given himself: " I think you did yourself injury in changing Tully's wisdom with Euclid's pricks and lines." T h e letter is of some import for our study of Leicester's patronage, suggesting that his acceptance of scientific works, like Cuningham's book on cosmography and Gale's work on surgery, was motivated by genuine interest, while his encouragement of translators and other academic scholars was dictated by a recognition of the values of humanistic studies both for his progressive policies and for himself as a ruler of the state. H i s failure to command Latin, contrasted with 48 The Whole Work,s of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A . Giles (London, 1 8 6 4 - 6 5 ) , II, 1 0 1 - 4 ; the letter is dated from London, August 5, 1564. It antedates Haddon's letters from Bruges by over a year.

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Elizabeth's linguistic brilliance and with Cecil's careful scholarship, must have been a cause of embarrassment to him on such occasions as his visits to the universities when he had to endure Latin tragedies, comedies, and disputations for days on end. Ascham closes his lecture with an expression of hope that Dudley's current exposure to academic entertainment will stimulate his studies. A letter written some two years later in which Ascham asks Leicester to redress a wrong has given rise to accusations that the scholar was neglected by Elizabeth and her nobles. 49 Apparently Ascham had a legitimate reason for demanding better treatment, as the aftermath will indicate, but those w h o have taken this lengthy expression of self-pity at its face value have failed to recognize that irritability and skill in complaint were conventional attributes of the tribe of humanists. Ascham pulls out all the stops. H e deplores his poverty and his inability to ensure the future of his family; he describes his grey hairs and hollow eyes, the result of debt, anxiety, and grief. H e declares bitterly that after long and faithful service he has been ignored by Elizabeth; he was treated with more consideration under Mary. A n d his tone toward Leicester himself alternates from pitiful appeal to threat. Apparently Ascham held Leicester in part responsible for the wrong he had suffered. T h e letter is concerned with a prebend which Elizabeth had bestowed upon her old tutor and present Latin secretary, in addition to his pension, in 1559. Although Ascham had incurred heavy expenses in a lawsuit to clear the title, the Archbishop of Y o r k had bestowed the prebend upon another man, a follower of Leicester. With some irony the scholar describes Leicester's goodness as "open to all, both friend and foe," and his unwillingness "to say any man nay." H e declares that he has kept his complaint from the Queen and from Cecil but implies that unless Leicester takes positive action to reverse the injustice he will seek redress from them, thus exposing the earl's responsibility for his trouble. Leicester is to prevail upon the archbishop to find some other gift for his follower so that this prebend may guarantee the future of his own godson, named for him—"Dudley your son." F o r himself the scholar asks nothing; his whole thought is for his family. Whether or not through Leicester's instrumentality, Elizabeth soon after showed that she had not forgotten her old servant. She wrote herself to the Archbishop of Y o r k concerning the prebend promised to 48

Ibid., pp. 1 2 4 - 3 2 .

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Ascham and rebuked the prelate for dispensing patronage contrary to her intentions.50 She directed that a secure lease upon the prebend be given Ascham in recompense for the charges of the suit he had brought as well as for his service to his queen and his singular learning. Clearly she felt that he had been wronged and intended to lay the blame upon the archbishop, not upon Leicester. Elizabeth's letter reveals sincere concern for Ascham and should be weighed as testimony against those who interpret the scholar's complaints literally, as must also her exclamation upon hearing the news of Ascham's death in 1568, that she would sooner have cast ten thousand pounds into the sea than have lost him. The record of Ascham's posthumous publications, which appeared under the patronage of those who had befriended him in life, shows that he was given at least belated recognition. In 1570, Ascham's widow dedicated the first edition of The Scholemaster to Cecil, who had obtained a pension for the scholar's son Giles in the previous year. Elizabeth herself received the dedication of a collected edition of Ascham's letters, published in 1571 under the title Disertissimi Rogeri Aschami, with a biography of the scholar by its editor, Edward Grant, a protégé of Cecil. Leicester, as a former patron of Ascham, was also honored by Grant; acting as Ascham's literary executor, Grant dedicated to him a collection of the scholar's theological writings, Apologia pro caena Dominica, published in 1577. 01 Certainly Ascham was not quickly forgotten, and probably the extent to which he was neglected in his last years has been exaggerated. A few years after the letters which Haddon and Ascham addressed to Leicester on the subject of his studies, still a third member of their old Cambridge circle, the learned Dr. Thomas Wilson, in dedicating A Discourse vppon Vsurye 62 to the same patron, praised his diligence in following a course similar to that which they had recommended. Stressing the importance of good reading as part of the preparation of national leaders, Wilson comments as follows on Leicester's own knowledge of such literature: 60

Ibid.,

pp. 1 3 3 - 3 5 . Grant's dedication of this work to Leicester is discussed on pp. 2 3 0 - 3 1 . Printed in 1 5 7 2 , but the dedication is dated July 20, 1569, "From the Queenes maiesties hospital at saincte Katherynes" in the Tower, of which Wilson had been master since 1 5 6 0 . T h e dedication is relatively lengthy, running to seventeen pages in the 1 5 7 2 edition. It was reprinted in the 1 5 8 4 edition. 51

52

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I haue had sufficient proofe of youre carefull myndc, even in reading not onely of the latyn, but also of the Italian good and sound wryters, to knowe and to vnderstande the best vsed gouernement, and the chefe lawes that hauc ben made in all ages. This was high praise from the author of The Arte of Logtl^e and The Arte of Rhetorique. Like his good friend Haddon, Wilson was an ardent supporter of the Reformation and a careful scholar; both were called into prominent public life soon after the accession of Elizabeth and retained their early connections with the Dudley family. As a master of the Queen's Court of Requests, Wilson had become familiar with the sufferings of those brought into debt by the interest system, and in A Discourse vppon Vsurye he used the full weight of his academic learning against that system. He regarded the taking of interest as a sin, identical with usury, and responsible for most of the evil conditions which he saw about him in England. 53 His treatise takes the form of a dialogue in which the Preacher, who argues from scriptural and other traditional authority, and the Advocate, who cites cases drawn from life, try to persuade the Wrong Merchant and the pettifogging Lawyer of the sinfulness of taking interest. In his dedication of this work to Leicester, Wilson asks his patron in the name of his long attachment to the Dudley family for assistance in establishing a just ministering of the law, and especially in eradicating the interest system. He calls out against two groups in particular, represented by the "dissemblinge gospeller" who offends openly while professing true religion, and the "wilfull and indurate papiste" who practices usury in order that he may amass a fund of money against the time when he hopes to restore papism to England. H e warns Leicester personally against both groups: "Neyther doe either of these people followe you for youre persone or vertue, but for youre fortune and aucthority." He demands that Leicester use his power as a magistrate to chastise sin and thus assist the preachers and ministers of the gospel whose sermons are of no avail without legal support. Leicester's knowledge of Latin and Italian literature has prepared him for this great role in civil affairs. 53 Edward Hake's Newes out of Powles Churchyarde, dedicated to Leicester in 1 5 7 9 , and Thomas Lodge's An Alarum against Vsurers, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney in 1584, are among the many other works which attack interest-takers. Hake will be discussed on pp. 280-82.

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Neither Leicester nor anyone else of power seems to have undertaken the crusade so capably preached by the good doctor: the credit system was too firmly fixed in sixteenth-century economy. 54 But there is reason to believe that from this time forth Leicester increased his patronage of Wilson. 5 5 A s the earl's agent, Wilson is said to have participated in secret negotiations with the Spanish ambassador. From 1574 on he fulfilled many important embassies, including one to the Netherlands, and from 1577 until his death in 1581 he was a secretary of state. In his earlier political career, as a follower of the Duke of Northumberland, he had served the Dudley interests by supporting the Reformation; in his later career, as a staunch adherent of Leicester, he worked for interventionism against Spain in the Netherlands, one of the causes represented by Leicester's progressive party. H e was a political rather than a literary protégé; the dedication of the treatise against usury was merely an incident in his service—and yet it demonstrated the value of academic scholarship for those who would administer the affairs of the nation. Wilson is significant, from the point of view of this study, because his successful career as diplomat and public servant represents on a high level one of the goals toward which Leicester's younger protégés were striving, and for which they were taught to regard their training at the universities as preparatory. Despite the hectorings of Ascham and Haddon, and the testimony to his diligence of Wilson, it is doubtful that Leicester ever gained sufficient skill in Latin or modern tongues to write the letters and speeches which his position required, though he may in fact have achieved the ability to read languages well enough to become acquainted 54 Elizabeth's nobles, especially Leicester, were often heavily in debt to the Queen herself. There is, however, one small testimony to Leicester's encouragement of the anti-usury movement. Writing in 1578 to dedicate his translation from "Philippus Caesar" entitled A General Discourse Against the damnable sect of Vsurers to Sir Christopher Hatton, Thomas Rogers calls upon his patron to back the plan set forth by Dr. Thomas Wilson for enacting penal statutes to inhibit usury and mentions Leicester as a probable ally in such a project. Assuring Hatton that he will have the support of the poor Commons, the zealous Preachers, and the better sort of inferior persons, Rogers declares that there will also be nobles to assist him: " . . . others, like vnto your self, will aide you with god lie policie; the noble and famous Erie of Leicester hath been already a fauourer of this cause, anil no doubte will further it to the vttermoste of his power . . . " Rogers perhaps refers merely to Leicester's sponsorship of Wilson's Discourse but seems to imply an active interest in the cause. 55 For Wilson's biography, see DNB and R. H. Tawney's Introduction to his edition of A Discourse upon Usury (London, 1 9 2 5 ) .

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with any important books which had not yet been translated. Certainly he had in his possession a number of the most important dictionaries of the time, for he was a notable patron of dictionary makers. In 1581 Edward Grant, who has already been mentioned as the literary executor of Ascham, dedicated to Leicester his edition of the Lexicon Graecolatinvm, the Greek-Latin dictionary compiled by Crispinus (Crespin) from Constantinus. Leicester's arms are printed on the reverse of the title page followed by Latin verses. In the dedication Grant presents the work to Leicester as "maximo literarum literatorumque Patrono" and praises him for his support of pure Christian doctrine as well as of learning, promising him immortality despite the vain opinions of papists. We may wonder why Grant, a special protege of Burghley who had made him headmaster of Westminster School when he left Cambridge, sought Leicester's patronage for this learned work. Grant himself supplies the explanation, mentioning the earl's sponsorship of Cooper's great Thesaurus as a precedent for his putting this Greek lexicon under Leicester's protection. Apparently the continuing popularity of Cooper's Thesaurus kept Leicester before the public eye—the eye, that is, of an ever-increasing body of dictionary users—as a special protector of lexicons, for in 1583 the same justification was used by Richard Hutton in dedicating to that patron the great dictionary in Latin, Greek, and English compiled by Guilielmus Morellius (Morelio). Entitled Verborvm Latinorvm cvm Graecis Anglicisqve Conivnctorvm, locupletissimi Commentarij, this work appeared with Leicester's arms and crest on the back of the title page above Latin verses in his honor. Hutton, on whose "assignation" the book was printed, apparently had no particular call upon Leicester's beneficence; he mentions a desire for protection and the patron's high position as reasons for requesting his sponsorship.58 Like Grant, he goes out of his way to praise Cooper's Thesaurus and Leicester's patronage of that work. Leicester did not confine his patronage of classical dictionaries to the great standard lexicons but sponsored as well one of the most popular school books of the age, John Withals's Shorte Dictionarie—often called from its running title A little Dictionarie. Withals's frequently reprinted 58 This dedicator may perhaps be identified with the Richard Hutton in DNB who was at this time a member of Gray's Inn and still a very young man; he was called to the bar in 1586 and rose to considerable eminence in the next century.

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work had been in use by young students of Latin from about 1553 on. The version employed in Elizabethan grammar schools was an edition repeatedly revised and augmented by Lewis Evans, a Roman Catholic returned from exile and converted to the English Church. Evans's edition of 1568 was dedicated to Bishop Grindal, appropriately enough, but thereafter the work appeared under the protection of Leicester until well after that patron's death.57 In addressing his 1579 edition to the earl, Evans thanked him for generosity experienced in the past and praised him for the usual virtues—fidelity to the Queen, care of his native land, zeal for true religion, and encouragement of learning. Because his work is intended to profit young scholars he is certain, he declares, that it will be received in good part by Leicester. This dedication, which was reprinted with the editions of 1584 and 1586 (which were increased by the addition of six hundred verses of a proverbial nature by Abraham Fleming), closes with a prayer for Leicester and the rest of the Privy Council. Nor did Leicester's sponsorship of dictionaries exclude the modern tongues, now being studied under language masters and private tutors though not incorporated into formal education. In 1578, for example, John Florio dedicated to him his Firste Fruites, an Italian language book. But all of these dedications taken together are testimony rather of his desire to encourage learning in others than of his personal use of the works he sponsored and, as has already been suggested, the compliments to his linguistic ability which occur frequently in the dedications of his proteges must be considered a commonplace of dedicatory style. On the other hand, it is clear that he had the defects in his education brought forcibly to his attention and took practical measures to conceal if not to remedy them. Like many of the great executives of our own day, he perceived the advantage of employing experts to do the specialized work which he himself was not equipped to do, and for which in the press of his affairs he could not find the time. A passage in 57

For the importance of Withals's Shorte Diclionarie see T. W . Baldwin, William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greece (Urbana, 111., 1944), I, 527-28, 531. The earliest of Evans's editions seen by me is that of 1579, with the title A Shorte Diclionarie most profitable for yong Beginners, The Second time corrected, and augmented, with diuerse Vhrasys, and other things necessarie therevnto added. Apparently editions as early as 1572 or 1574 carried a dedication to Leicester (cf. Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities, ed. William Herbert [London, 1785-90], II, 996, and Baldwin, op. cit., I, 527). For the information that an edition as late as 1594 carried a Leicester dedication I am indebted to Franklin B. Williams.

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one of the letters from Haddon tells us that the earl had a scholarly secretary in his employ who was also qualified to serve as his tutor: . . . it is needelesse to giue you exquisite preceptes, bycause you haue attending vpon you, one for the same purpose, sufficiently furnished, the benefite of whose seruice you haue in vse . . . if he be suche a man indeede, as by your letters vnto me directed and deliuered, I doe gather. 58 Apparently this unnamed secretary had been responsible for the form of the letters addressed from Leicester to Haddon, and probably for the translation of them into Latin, since it was in the learned tongue that Haddon replied. Presumably this compliment would have come directly under the secretary's eye when Haddon's letter was received and handed to him for interpretation; and in making it Haddon may have been partly motivated by the desire to have a friend at court. T h e unidentified secretary was possibly E d w a r d Dyer, who entered Leicester's service at about the time of Haddon's letter—1565. 59 In that year the earl received permission to establish a retinue of a hundred followers, among whom Dyer soon became one of the more distinguished. Educated at Oxford, of gentle birth but small fortune, he sought to advance himself at court through his patron's influence. In 1566 he turned over to Leicester the rights to one of his manors, an action which we may interpret either as evidence of financial debt or as payment for his advantageous position in the earl's train. H i s services included much more than letter-writing; he was a confidential agent, entrusted with diplomatic messages for his patron's ear and with other duties which took him frequently into the presence of the Queen. By 1570 he began to see returns for his service: Elizabeth bestowed upon him for life the stewardship of Woodstock, a favor for which there had been some competition. Since this royal palace near Oxford was a preferred resort of the Queen, Dyer's official duties would keep him in her eye, and there were valuable revenues attached to the position. After 1570 he had a place of his own in the court and, though still attached to Leicester, probably no longer performed the lesser functions of secretary. 60 His 58

A Panoplie of Epistles (London, 1 5 7 6 ) , p. 4 1 8 . For Dyer's service as Leicester's secretary, see Ralph M. Sargent, At the Court of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer (Oxford, 1 9 3 5 ) , especially chap. ii. 60 An example of Dyer's later services demonstrates the value of his linguistic skills to the carl; it is recorded in a letter written by Leicester himself. Sent with Sidney as Leicester's proxy to stand godfather to a daughter of William of Orange in 1 5 7 7 , Dyer is recommended by his patron to Davison, the English agent at Antwerp, as one w h o can understand Italian 59

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patron continued to befriend him, and he remained a loyal partisan and diplomatic servant until Leicester's death. All through his life Leicester had in his employ one or more gifted secretaries to help him in his official duties, which brought him into conversation and correspondence with learned men of his own nation and with foreign dignitaries and envoys from the elegant courts of the Continent. Most of his secretaries were Oxford graduates, but Cambridge also was represented. Within a year or so of Haddon's letter, E d m u n d Campion was in his employ, resident at Oxford but often in personal attendance upon his patron. Another young man who took part in the Oxford festivities, John Woolley, became his secretary and later rose to some eminence as Latin secretary to the Queen, M.P., and ultimately Privy Councillor. Edmund Spenser filled the position of secretary to Leicester for a year or more, and was apparently succeeded for a short time by his friend Gabriel Harvey; both were Cambridge men. In the last decade of his life, Leicester was served by Arthur Atey, who had left the principalship of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, to become his secretary, 61 and by Jean Hotman, son of the famous Protestant publicist François Hotman. A l l of these men were expert Latinists, and skilled in other languages as well; most of them had additional gifts to qualify them for public service. T h e secretaryship was a coveted position because it gave a man of ability a foothold at court from which with his patron's help he could advance to more honorable service. B y employing a numerous and distinguished array of secretaries Leicester was able to compensate for well and speak Latin somewhat; the earl is excusing his envoy's ignorance of Dutch and apparently feels that the other languages will be adequate for the occasion. See Sargent, op. cit., p. 47. 61 Atey was probably Leicester's most valuable secretary. He was in the earl's service as early as September 9, 1 5 8 0 (see C.S.P. Dom., 1 ¡47-80. p. 6 7 5 ) , and as late as August 29, 1 5 8 7 (see C.S.P. For., j;87, p. 284). He is mentioned frequently as Leicester's confidential secretary in the Netherlands campaign (see Correspondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During His Government of the Low Countries, ed. John Bruce [London, 1 8 4 4 I , as indexed under " A t e y " ) . Atey was a person of some importance, a friend of Dr. Tobie Matthew (who wrote letters to him in 1 5 8 0 , for which see C.S.P. Dom., 1547-80, pp. 648, 6 5 1 ) and Sir Philip Sidney, w h o addressed an affectionate epistle to him at court (in March, 1 5 8 0 ; see The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. A . Feuillerat [Cambridge, England, 1 9 2 2 - 2 6 ! , I l l , 1 2 8 - 2 9 ) . That he was a man of substance is indicated by his being listed, after Leicester and Warwick, among the gentlemen and commoners to whom a patent was granted " f o r a trade to Barbarie" (see Richard Hakluvt, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoueries of the English Nation [ 1 5 8 9 ] , pp. 2 3 4 - 3 6 ) . In 1584 Alberico Gentili, Leicester's protégé, dedicated to Atey the fourth book of his Lectionum et Epistolarum quae ad ius ciuile pertinent, Libri IV.

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his deficiencies as a linguist and to hold his own in a Privy Council which included the learned Burghley and other nobles of superior education. His patronage of translators and language-masters was probably also motivated by his perception of the practical value of linguistic training. It was one of the purposes of the Elizabethan campaign for the encouragement of learning at the universities to produce a supply of such men. O f Leicester's part in this campaign we have n o w had some evidence; let us examine the record of his patronage of translators.

CHAPTER V

The Translators . . . a zeale and desyre too enryche their natiue language with thinges not hertoofore published in the same. —Arthur Golding, 1565 F all Elizabethan literary activities, probably the most general and most characteristic was translation. 1 It was a customary exercise of y o u n g university graduates w h o wished to establish a reputation f o r proficiency in tongues, but almost anyone might try his hand at it—lowly schoolboy, cultivated commoner, fashionable courtier, or royalty itself. N o r was the translator bound by the letter of the w o r d : free renderings, whether they took the f o r m of misinterpretation, adaptation, digest, interpolation, or moral application, f o u n d ready acceptance. Neither "creative w r i t e r " nor propagandist had to feel that he was confined by the limits of his original; on the other hand, much that was offered as the writer's o w n w o r k might actually be borrowed f r o m a source in another language. Translation reached into every field and category of writing—into science, practical knowledge, history, travel and exploration, religion, philosophy, into prose and poetry, romance and drama. It was an endeavor influenced strongly, like the age itself, by both medieval and Renaissance traditions. Y e t it was deeply tinged by the R e f o r m a tion, and its inroads upon all kinds of literature, including pagan and R o m a n Catholic writings, were encouraged by the interest of the most ardent Protestants. It was motivated first of all by curiosity, a thirst for the information and ideas contained in classical and foreign books. 1 A m o n g the many studies which bear on the translation movement of the sixteenth century, the following are especially valuable: F. O. Matthiessen, Translation, an Elizabethan Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1 9 3 1 ) , H. B. Lathrop, Translations from the Classics into English from Carton to Chapman (Madison, Wis., 1 9 3 3 ) , H. S. Bennett, English Book.s and Readers, 147S to 1557 (Cambridge, England, 1 9 5 2 ) , Gilbert Ilighet, The Classical Tradition (New York, 1 9 4 9 ) , J. G. Underhill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors ( N e w Y o r k , 1 8 9 9 ) , and M. A . Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian (Boston, 1 9 1 6 ) . A d d i tional studies, dealing with individual translators and special aspects of the movement, will b e mentioned below, passim.

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T h e desire to enrich the vernacular, to make English a language capable of expressing all the thoughts and emotions in man's experience, also inspired the translator, and he was conscious moreover of establishing models of literary form for imitation in his own tongue. T h e Elizabethan translator is commonly an arrant patriot; he is also democratic in so far as it is his intent to make knowledge available to every man; and he is a moralist. For all of these high intentions he demands credit. He boasts, in his dedications and prefaces, of serving the commonwealth by providing enlightenment for his unlearned countrymen; he envisions an England made virtuous and powerful by the dissemination of wisdom derived from other tongues. H e speaks of his eagerness to undertake further tasks for the public good, and calls attention to his linguistic skill by deprecating it with conventional modesty. In short, his work is usually offered not merely for its own sake but also as a demonstration of his zeal for his country and of his qualifications for employment in public service. 2 Patrons apparently accepted all of these protestations of good will at face value. T h a t there lies behind their support of translations much the same sort of religious and political purpose as motivated their encouragement of historical works and academic learning has already been suggested. From the days of Wyclif, the Reformation had depended upon an appeal to the intellect, and upon one translation in particular— the Bible. T h e Renaissance doctrine that knowledge of the classics would serve the cause of virtue—or, as we would put it, develop the ability to make sound value-judgments—had been extended to take in all knowledge. By making learning accessible in the native tongue, the translators, themselves university graduates, would be helping the common man to obtain many of the benefits of a formal education—that is, they would be making him accessible to indoctrination. Right-thinking in religious matters, moral virtue, and civic loyalty would all be nourished by English renderings of the works of ancient and modern authors. And to this general popularization of learning the members of the progressive Protestant nobility, many of whom shared with their proteges the experience of having been exposed to a university education, gave generous support. T h e translation movement is not, of course, confined to England but forms a part of the mainstream of the Renaissance everywhere. Despite 2 Most of these motives were already explicit in the earlier Tudor period; see Bennett, op. cit., especially chaps, iv and vii.

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the occasional opposition of the Church to translations which seemed to threaten its authority, the "vulgarization" of literature was given lively encouragement in all countries, Protestant and Catholic alike. (Even the Bible was given translation by Roman Catholic hands, although the Church had bitterly opposed vernacular versions earlier in the century.) This universal popularity of the movement must give us pause, lest we ascribe to the Protestant nobles of England the responsibility for a literary development which had its own m o m e n t u m and would have occurred without an organized effort on the part of patrons. Moreover, the case for a government-sponsored campaign cannot be made out so clearly for patronage of translators as for encouragement of universities because the circumstances did not call for the same kind of official pronouncements, and because the large number of translators clamoring for recognition and of patrons willing to accept dedications somewhat obscures the significance of their combined activities. Nonetheless, a case there is. T h e nucleus of the argument that we can discern in Elizabeth's England an organized effort for the encouragement of translation, emanating from the Privy Council and motivated by political and religious purposes, is to be found in C. H . Conley, The First English Translators of the Classics? In this study, based chiefly on the first decade and a half of Elizabeth's reign, Conley shows that the personnel of the classicaltranslation movement at this time consisted largely of young men resident at the Inns of Court w h o worked under the patronage of privy councillors and other nobles of Puritan leaning. H e analyzes the values of classical translations for the liberal political principles of this group, and concludes that the often-mentioned anonymous enemies of the translators were conservative Roman Catholics, favorers of the Spanish alliance. Although Conley's conclusions are based on evidence narrowly limited in time and confined in theory to classical translations only, they seem to furnish a key to the much larger problem of the patronage of translations in general d u r i n g the Elizabethan period. 4 T h e distinction between classical and other translations does not, in 3

N e w Haven, Conn., 1 9 2 7 . While Conley does not himself relate the classical-translation movement to this larger problem, much of his evidence actually falls outside the bounds which he sets for himself: for example, of the eight extant works dedicated to Leicester which he cites (The First English Translators 0/ the Classics, p. 40 and Appendix), only one is both translated from a classical source and associated with the Inns of Court. 4

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fact, seem to be a fruitful one in this period, nor do the Elizabethans themselves appear to have observed it. F o r them Latin was still a living language, the vehicle of modern information and controversy as well as of ancient literature; on the other hand it was often through a Romance intermediary that they received their knowledge of the classics of Greece and Rome. A s will be seen in the present chapter, the evidence concerning Leicester's patronage of translators supports Conley's conclusions but indicates that they ought to be extended to cover translations from other sources besides the classics and to refer to a period considerably longer than that to which Conley limits himself. Whether or not the Elizabethan translation movement would have flourished without the benefit of politically motivated patronage, at least in Leicester's case it is evident that translations from varied sources, offered always in terms of high moral and patriotic purpose, received generous acceptance. Leicester, however, is only one among a considerable number of patrons who favored the translators, and, while w e can say with some assurance that the motives which prompted his support of translations are closely related to those behind his sponsorship of academic learning, we cannot assume that the same kind of conscious motivation characterized the other progressive nobles to whom the translators turned. Our final analysis of the purposes of patronage in this field must await further spadework. Before we can safely extend Conley's conclusions to cover the whole translation movement in Elizabethan times, we must know more about other important patrons such as Burghley and Hatton, more about the political and religious leanings of the translators themselves, and more about the effects of their works as propaganda—if, indeed, the last of these is possible. In the meantime, however, Conley's theory is of value as a working hypothesis. T h e present chapter is confined to a discussion of the translators who were Leicester's protégés in the period 1565-77, exclusive of those already discussed and of the writers in the religious field ( w h o will be treated separately). A t this point it may be well to remark the importance of translations among the total number of works which appeared under Leicester's protection. Of the writers mentioned in Chapter II—those who addressed him in the early years of his career—Cuningham, Gale, and Fulke derived much of their information f r o m books in other languages; the writers of handbooks for improvement of the mind, including the treatises on serious games and rhetoric, likewise based their

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The Translators

works on foreign or Latin sources; and Blundeville, active translator and compiler, produced a whole series of useful publications drawn from Italian originals or intermediaries. Of the historians discussed in Chapter III, Danett, Malim, Stocker, and Hanmer are direct translators; the others of course drew on materials in tongues other than English, chiefly Latin. Most of the academic writers treated in Chapter IV naturally used Latin in their writing, but the dictionaries produced by the same group certainly assisted the translation movement. More than two-thirds of the religious writings to be discussed in Chapters V I and V I I are translations. Except in the last decade of Leicester's life, translations of all sorts bulk large among the works published under his aegis —as they do in Elizabethan literature generally. 5 The selection in the present chapter, therefore, represents only a small portion of the translations which appeared under Leicester's patronage. They are for the most part of the class that we call belles-lettres. Derived chiefly from Latin and Italian, they seem to be fairly representative of Renaissance interests in recreative literature in the period before 1580. One of the most distinguished among Leicester's literary proteges was the translator Arthur Golding. When Golding in 1564 wrote his first dedication to Leicester, he had already obtained the patronage of William Cecil in whose house he was living as an attendant upon his nephew, the Earl of Oxford, then Cecil's ward, later his son-in-law. Within the past year or two Golding had addressed dedications to both Cecil and Oxford. 6 Despite his lofty connections, Golding now sought the protection of the recently created Earl of Leicester, drawn to him perhaps as much because of the reputation that patron was then establishing as a friend of the Puritans as because of his fame as a protector of academic learning—for Golding belonged to the group of more radical reformers.7 Toward the end of December, writing from Cecil House, Golding dedicated to Leicester his translation of The Fyrst Fower Bootes of P. Ouidius Nasos wor\e, intitled Metamorphosis, as 5

See the chronological list provided in the Appendix of titles dedicated to Leicester. In 1 5 6 3 Golding dedicated his translation of Aretine's History of the Goths to Cecil, and in 1564 his Englished version of Justin's Abridgement of Trogus Pompeius to Oxford; his translation of Caesar's Commentaries, with dedication to Cecil, appeared in 1 5 6 5 . 7 Golding's first published work, The Burnynge of Bucer and Phagius at Cambrydge ( 1 5 6 2 ) , was a translation of a treatise concerning the burning under the Marian regime of the bodies of two Continental reformers. 6

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a g i f t for the n e w year of 1565. T h e first of a series of w o r k s dedicated to the same patron, this was destined to be also the most f a m o u s . T h e title page proclaims " A woorke very pleasaunt a n d delectable," but in addition delivers a stern w a r n i n g : With skill, heede, and iudgemcnt, thys woorke must bee red, For els too the reader it stands in small stead. T h e dedication accomplishes the double purpose of calling attention to the moral value of the pagan tales contained in the book, and of e m p h a s i z i n g Leicester's friendliness to writers, especially

translators.

G o l d i n g begins w i t h conventional m o d e s t y : If this woorke were fully performed with lyke eloquence and connyng of endyting by me in Englishe, as it was written by Thauthor thereof in his moother toonge, it might perchaunce delight your honor too bestowe some vacant tyme in the reading of it, for the nomber of excellent deuises and fyne inuentions contriued in the same, purporting outwardly moste pleasant tales and delectable histories, and fraughted inwardlye with most piththie instructions and wholsome examples, and conteynyng bothe wayes most exquisite connynge and deepe knowledge, wherefore too counteruayle my default, I request moste humblye the benefyte of your Lordships fauor, whereby you are wont not onlye too beare with the want of skill and rudenesse of suche as commit their dooinges to your protection, but also are woont to encourage them to proceede in their peynfull exercises attempted of a zeale and desyre too enryche their natiue language with thinges not hertoofore published in the same. 8 B e f o r e closing, G o l d i n g presents his " m a y m e d and vnperfect translation of the firste f o w e r bookes" of O v i d to Leicester as a "poore N e w e yeres g i f t , " w i t h a promise to regard his g o o d acceptance as encouragement for the completion of the w h o l e translation. T h e dedication is followed by an address " T o o the R e a d e r " in verse, in which G o l d i n g sets forth the conventional medieval theory that Ovid's tales m a y be allegorically interpreted and shown to contain f r u i t f u l w a r n i n g s f o r Christian readers. Evidently G o l d i n g w a s attempting here, as in the verse on the title page, to forestall the accusation that in translating O v i d 8 For reprints from the prefatory material of Golding's 1565 and 1567 editions of Ovid (which I quote from the original editions) see Shakespeare's Ovid, ed. W. H. D. Rouse (London, 1904), pp. iii, 1 - 1 3 , 1 5 - 1 9 . Lathrop, op. cit., pp. 126-27, quotes the earlier dedication and discusses the prefaces of the later edition. L. T. Golding, in An Elizabethan Puritan (New York, 1937), pp. 237-65, provides reprints from the 1567 edition.

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he was serving as a purveyor of immoral stories. He may also have been assuaging his own conscience. Apparently Leicester provided the necessary encouragement, for in 1567 Golding published the completed translation, The. xv. Bootes of P. Ouidius Naso, with Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff on the title page and with a new and lengthy dedication, in verse, to the same patron. The dedication is dated at Berwick, where Golding probably occupied a position in government service, perhaps gained through Leicester's efforts. Golding acknowledges that his first dedication met "with fauor and gentlenesse." That neither Leicester's protection nor the translator's attempts to emphasize the moral value of the tales had rendered him immune to criticism, however, is indicated by the fact that most of the dedication is concerned with an elaborate explanation of Ovid's allegorical meaning, a separate section being devoted to each of the fifteen books. This careful pointing of the hidden morals was intended both as an answer to his enemies and as a bait for new readers. Before closing, Golding includes among his good wishes for his patron a prayer that translators may continue to enjoy his favor, and England his counsel: . . . that all such students as Doo trauell too enrich our toong with knowledge heretofore Not common too our vulgar speech, may dayly more and more Proceede through thy good furtherance and fauor in the same. Too all mens profit and delyght, and thy eternall fame. And that (which is a greater thing) our natyue country may Long tyme enjoy thy counsell and thy trauell too her stay. Golding's patriotic intent is manifest in both parts of this wish; and by their proximity he manages to suggest that the patron's beneficence toward translation was related to his duties as a high official of the state. Although Golding's Ovid was to have six more editions by 1612, the translator did not again return to the work of Englishing the pagan classics.9 Diverted by the rising tide of Puritan opinion, Golding henceforth concerned himself with religious works, especially translations from Calvin and other continental writers, and controversial pamphlets. That he retained his old patrons may be interpreted as evidence not so much of their loyalty to him (though doubtless they recognized his 9 Unless his translation of Pomponius Mela, Concerninge dedicated to Cecil in 1 5 8 ; , may be counted an exception.

the Situation of the

World,

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worth) as of their interest in his new occupation, which served their political ends more directly than did classical translation. T h e three religious works which he dedicated to Leicester and his connections with the Inns of Court will be mentioned in later chapters. Leicester's munificence toward scholars, especially at the universities, is emphasized in the dedication of a translation of the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octauia, which Thomas Nuce addressed to him. 1 0 Like Golding, Nuce felt the need of protection against the critics of classical translation, and he saw in Leicester a sponsor who would undertake to shield him. Desiring, he tells us, as the common custome is, some Patron, that myght both bring aucthoritye to thys my little Booke, and also, if neede should be, defend it from the bitter taunts of enuious tongs, I haue not espied right honourable, any one, either for his bountiful goodnesse towardes my friends (which commonly men respect) or else for his fauourable, and gracious humanitie toward schollers (in whose numbre I am) vnto whome I might so iustly giue this smal combrous trifle, and especiall token of good wyll, as to your Lordship: whose honourable goodnesse or rather magnificence, both your honours nurcerie of learning, and, as I can boldcly say, the vniuersitie of Cambridge, with my pore friends, haue most abundantly tasted of . . . l l This published statement recording Leicester's generosity toward scholars at Cambridge as well as at Oxford, his own "nursery of learning," suggests that the earl was responsible for many small gifts of which there is no evidence in extant documents, a suggestion supported by later statements of the same general sort. T h e dedication also serves to connect Leicester's patronage of the universities with his encouragement of the translation movement, a suggestion emphasized by the translator's closing reference to the "rude and vnsauorie first fruits of my yong study." 10 Published without date, apparently in 1566 (cf. STC 22229). The title page gives the translator's name as " T . N. Student in Cambridge." DNB, arguing apparently from the fact that Nuce held the rectorship of Cley from 1563 on, dates the translation as of 1 5 6 1 , when Nuce was certainly a student in Cambridge. The dedication, however, was definitely written no earlier than the autumn of 1564, since it refers to Leicester's chancellorship of Oxford; it is not signed but the initials " T . N . " appear in the salutation. It should be remarked that these initials are not uncommon among Elizabethan translators (e.g., Thomas Newton, Thomas Norton, Thomas North), but the ascription of this translation to Nuce is made definite in the 1 5 8 1 publication of Seneca His Tenne Tragedies where Octauia appears as the ninth of the plays. The dedication to Leicester was not reprinted in the 1 5 8 1 collection. 11 The "pore friends" may well have included some of the other translators of Seneca (listed with Nuce, sig. A.4./'. of Seneca His Tenne Tragedies). T w o of them, the Latin poets Alexander Neville and Thomas Newton, were later to address verses to Leicester.

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Under the dedication there appears Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff, apparently as testimony of the patron's favorable acceptance. In his address to the reader, which follows the dedication, Nuce defends classical translation not so much for its own sake as because it provides an educational exercise. Begging the reader not to condemn " y o n g sprang" writers engaged in translating from Latin, he declares that they may "hereafter employ their labour to more serious and weyghty matters, both to their owne commoditie and thy learning, and especially, to the profit of our natiue countrie." His ascription of patriotic motive may apply either to the work of enriching the English tongue, the goal emphasized by Golding, or to the value of classical discipline as part of the training of leaders for church and state which the Queen herself had recently advocated at Cambridge. Nuce himself went on from the university to a modest career in the church, holding several rectorships and, from 1585 until his death in 1617, a prebend in Ely Cathedral. Sir Thomas North, the translator of Plutarch's Lives,

was another

of Leicester's proteges. A f t e r dedicating his "first fruits," a translation from Guevara entitled The Dial of Princes,

to Queen Mary in 1557,

North had remained silent until 1570, when he dedicated The Philosophic

of Doni

Morall

to Leicester. Although a Cambridge man, like

Golding and Nuce, and a member of Lincoln's Inn, North owed his connection with Leicester to neither of these institutions but rather to Leicester's friendship with his family. H e was the youngest son of the first Baron North, without fortune but gifted with scholarly tastes and talents. Both his father and his brother, the second Baron, were intimates of Leicester and owed him debts of gratitude which are acknowledged with deep and affectionate feeling in the dedication of Doni, as are also the patron's previous favors toward the writer himself. Against this background of respectful intimacy North addresses Leicester as "patrone and my only Mecenas." After expressing the thankfulness of his family at some length, North proceeds to devote the greater part of his lengthy dedication to an explanation of the value of the book. H e offers an interesting contrast with most translators, for, instead of boasting of the worthiness of translation as a patriotic activity which will advance the English language, he apologizes for not presenting an original work like the "graue and wise inuentions and discourses of their owne doings, excellently written

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in our owne tongue," of "the learned writers of our Englishe Nation." He acknowledges that "to translate onely is a farre lesse reputation than to be an Author of any good worke." His patriotism goes beyond that of the other translators; he is aware that the English language is coming into its own and is capable of producing a great literature. In defense of his "simple" gift he declares that those who examine it "shall finde it within full of Moralitie, examples, and gouemement." And against the charge that it is "superfluous" to offer a work translated from the Italian to Leicester, who "vnderstandeth the Italian tongue verie well, and can perfitely speake it," he answers with a graceful compliment: I haue committed no errour to dedicate to your Lordship . . . to thend that such as vnderstande not, may be pertakers of your gifts: and your Lordship that vnderstandeth, maye at your pleasure and leysure, conferring the one with the other, be iudge of the matter . . . The flattery is, of course, conventional, and need not be taken as evidence that Leicester had expert command of Italian; but with it North manages to interweave one of the basic themes of aristocratic patronage, that through his generosity the patron makes literature available to the common reader. T h e translator then proceeds to an exposition of the moral value of the work, which he declares he has carefully selected for translation. Before we examine his remarks on this subject, a brief explanation of his text is in order. His title, The Morall Philosophic of Doni, hides the real nature of the work, which is a version of the Fables of Bidpai, an ancient collection of tales which originated in India and had been translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish, achieving extremely widespread distribution before Antonio Francesco Doni gave them the Italian dress in which North found them. 1 2 In the original form the fables were arranged in a framework which made of them a "mirror for princes": they were narrated by the sage Bidpai to his king to incite him to virtue. In Doni's version, as translated by North, the part of the narrator is played by the philosopher Sendebar, who explains the moral application of the animal stories to "the Court of this Worlde," 12 A. F. Doni, La Moral' Filosophia (Venice, 1 5 5 2 ) ; North translated only the first part, corresponding to the first chapter in the original Sanskrit. For a discussion of the background of this work, see The Earliest English Version of the Fables of Bidpai (London, 1888), ed. Joseph Jacobs with Introduction. This edition of North's translation does not include the dedication to Leicester, which was dropped in the second ( 1 6 0 1 ) edition.

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w i t h emphasis on the deceits, dangers, treasons, and miseries of life. M a n y of the morals are pointedly d r a w n for the royal court; the manners and practices of false courtiers are especially castigated in a long discourse in the second section of the w o r k . T h e appeal of this material to a m a n of N o r t h ' s grave temperament is easy to understand. H e had f o u n d , ready to his hand and in attractive guise, a preachment in consonance with the Elizabethan doctrine of the necessity of observing " d e g r e e " and its corollary teaching, the avoidance of treason and rebellion. H e does not neglect, in his dedication, to point out just h o w valuable these lessons are for the court of Elizabeth: As concerning the morality and sense of this Philosophic, it is shadowed by the maner and speache of brute and dumbe beastes, and by the examples and gestes of their Hues . . . . Wherein you may my Lord, see into the Court, looke into the commonwealth, beholde the more part of all estates and degrees: and the inferiour and common sort also maye learne, discerne, and iudge what waye is to be taken in the trade of their life: but Courtyers aboue all others attending on the Princes presence. A Glasse it is for them to looke into, and also a meete schoole to reforme such schollers as by any maner of deuise, practise, or subtiltie, vniustlye seeke to aspire, or otherwise to abuse the Prince. A n i m a l stories have, of course, a perennial appeal, but N o r t h ' s choice of the Fables of B i d p a i for translation at this time was particularly designed to please Leicester and his circle, which understood the code of a n i m a l names and the application of fables to political situations. 1 3 Indeed, N o r t h apparently had reason to fear that some of his meanings m i g h t be too clearly and personally interpreted, for, despite his important f a m i l y connections, he felt constrained to ask Leicester's protection not only against carping critics but also against those w h o might fancy themselves satirized: . . . knowing my little labour herein to bee subiect to the censures and reproofe of many, that are readie to carpe at euery little fault, or finding themselues touched anye waye, will mislike a troth . . . T h e rebellion of 1569 was still vivid in men's minds w h e n N o r t h ' s translation was printed in 1570. W h e n it was published again in 1601, a reference to the folly of Essex may have been intended. 13

T h e old tradition of using animal allegory for political commentary and satire is

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Besides the dedication, the prefatory matter includes an address to the reader, instructing him to read the work in order, lest he miss the moral benefits; several sets of complimentary verses; and a lengthy prologue in which the moral applications are carefully explained. Like Golding, North was very careful to advertise the didactic intention of his apparently "vaine" tales. Although he never achieved great success in the affairs of the world, North seems to have continued to enjoy Leicester's favor. In 1574 he accompanied his brother, the second Baron North, on an embassy to Henri III, a journey Leicester may have been instrumental in arranging since he was the patron of both brothers. In 1579 the translator dedicated his third and last work, the Plutarch, to Elizabeth. Like his two previous translations, this was intended as a "mirror for magistrates," and the dedicatory address again emphasizes the value of the "examples" provided for the reader, stressing particularly the obligation of Elizabeth's subjects to support her as their Prince and the head of their church. Perhaps Leicester's influence helped North to obtain the Queen's acceptance of the work; certainly the patron showed a friendly interest, for shortly after the book's publication he wrote to Burghley asking favor for it and describing its author as "a very honest gentleman" who "hath many good things in him which are drowned only by poverty." 1 4 North received several preferments, was knighted in 1591, and in 1601 (the year of the second edition of Doni) obtained a pension of forty pounds from the Queen. One of Leicester's lesser proteges among the translators was the versatile linguist James Sanforde. 18 Sanforde's dedications provide the record of a search for patronage involving a considerable number of Elizabethan dignitaries. The Manttell of Epictetus, apparently his earliest work, was presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1566 during her visit to Oxford, and was published the following year "as a triall in the true trade of interpreting"—or so Sanforde describes it in his dedication to the Queen—and "a pledge of my bounden dutie towards your highnesse, and notably exemplified in Elizabethan times by Spenser's Mother Hubberds Talc, which may possibly be indebted to North's Doni; see the Variorum ed. of Edmund Spenser, The Minor Poems, II (Baltimore, 1 9 4 7 ) , 585. 14 Quoted in the DNB article on Sir Thomas North. 10 Or "Sandford." as the name is given in DNB. This article provides no details of his life although (as will be shown) a fair amount of information may be inferred from his dedicatory epistles.

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affection towardes my countrie." 1 6 His Amorous and TragicalI Tales of Plutarch, whereunto is annexed the Hystorie of Cariclea and Theagines also appeared in 1567, with a dedication to Sir Hugh Paulet. In 1569 Sanforde dedicated a translation entitled Henrie Cornelius Agrippa, of the Vanitie and vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, then at the height of his power as a leader of the disaffected faction in Elizabeth's government which was backing a projected match between him and Mary Stuart. Possibly the publication was intended to undermine the humanistic basis of militant Protestantism in England, for it inveighs against the "corrupt" use of learning to defend false religious beliefs and protests against the substitution of an ardent interest in arts and sciences for religion itself. Sanforde was singularly unhappy in the timing of this dedication. Shortly after it appeared Norfolk fell from grace, implicated in the Ridolfi Plot, and subsequently he was executed. Nonetheless, the translation seems to have enjoyed some popularity, and a second edition appeared in 1575. So far, Sanforde had either failed to find a permanent patron or for some other reason had chosen to address each publication to a new sponsor. The title of his next work, which he dedicated to Leicester in 1573, suggests that he was a language-master seeking employment, and perhaps finding it, among the noblemen to whom he addressed himself. It runs: The Garden of Pleasure: Contayninge most pleasante Tales, worthy deeds and witty sayings of noble Princes and learned Philosophers, Moralized. No lesse delectable than profitable . . . . Wherein are also set forth diuers Verses and Sentences in Italian, with the Englishe to the same, for the benefit of students in both tongs.11 Printed with Leicester's device on the verso of the title page, this seems to have been the first work of the nature of a language-book to appear under his aegis. Verses wishing universal fame and long life for the patron are given in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and English versions. The dedication tells us that the translator has recently found solace after misfortune by returning to his studies, and emphasizes through learned quotations and allusions the value of "good doctrin and reading of worthie authors" 18

T h e presentation is recorded in Elizabethan Oxford, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford, 1 8 8 7 ) , p. 1 8 3 . T h e dedication of the printed work contains an exposition of its moral value and a passage of extravagant praise of Elizabeth. 17 STC 12464, listed under "Guicciardini, Ludovico," whose L'Hore di Recreatione ( 1 5 6 8 ) , perhaps aided by Belle-Forest's French translation ( 1 5 7 1 ) , was Sanforde's chief source.

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as medicines for the ills of the mind. It represents a recantation of the attack on learning contained in his preceding translation. After long thought, he tells us, he has selected Leicester as patron of the work because of the earl's "credite and authoritie with those men vnto whom your godlinesse, goodnesse, and constancie (whiche you haue hitherto always shewed, and do yet shew in maintayning true religion) is thorowly knowen." The somewhat obscure wording of this statement suggests that Sanforde is thinking of a select group, probably the Puritans. Apparently he is seeking to lose the taint of his association with Norfolk by currying favor with the opposite group. Sanforde's difficulty in finding a sustaining patron is further illustrated by his rededication of this work, some three years later, to Sir Christopher Hatton. It was issued, with revision and enlargement, as Houres of recreation, or After dinners, Which may aptly be called The Garden of Pleasure, a title closer to that of its source, Guicciardini's compilation. The new edition was dedicated to Hatton as "Regiae Maiestatis Archisatellitem." A distich in five languages, very similar to the verses in which Leicester's renown had been celebrated, promises the new patron eternal fame. The dedication differs, however, from that addressed to the earlier patron, in that it is largely devoted to praise of Queen Elizabeth, whose learning, eloquence, and virtuous rule are discussed at length. Because of England's superior ruler, that nation is promised immunity from the world-wide upheaval prognosticated for 1588 by "Iohannes Regiomontanus" (Johann Mueller, the astrologer). That the book was intended as a bid for royal patronage, with Hatton's intercession, is suggested by the addition, at the end of the volume, of a division entitled "Certayne Poemes dedicated to the Queenes moste excellente Maiestie," separately addressed in a eulogistic Latin episde to Elizabeth. The verses, in several languages, display Sanforde's linguistic ability, and presumably his fitness for royal service. There is no evidence that Sanforde's ambition to serve the Queen was fulfilled. In 1582 he once again sought the patronage of Leicester with a translation, but this time in a different field. The Reuelation of S. Ihon reueled, a translation from Giacopo Brocardo's interpretation of the Apocalypse, was intended to feed anti-Catholic feeling and was therefore appropriately dedicated to Leicester as a "Pyller of Gods word." 1 8 Like Golding, Sanforde was of a pietistic nature and ultimately deserted 16

T h i s w o r k is m e n t i o n e d f u r t h e r on pp. 2 6 7 - 6 8 .

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belles-lettres for religious writing. If he is the same " M r . Sanford" who in 1586 became tutor to William Herbert, later Earl of Pembroke, 1 9 it may be that this attempt in the religious field won him the post in the family of Leicester's famous niece, the Countess of Pembroke. Although his repeated change of patrons suggests that he had difficulty supporting himself, the fact that he published a second work under Leicester's sponsorship indicates that his career was not entirely unsuccessful. Several of his patrons may, indeed, have been employers whom he served as tutor or in some other temporary capacity. T h e next author to be discussed, George Gascoigne, is remembered chiefly as an original writer, yet he will be included here, among the translators, because in training, literary taste, and ambition he was a product of the same tendencies of the Renaissance which explain them. Educated at Cambridge, a member of Gray's Inn, he sought advancement through the exercise of his linguistic and literary talents, which were directed primarily to belles-lettres rather than to utilitarian writings. His superior wit and originality ultimately earned him the preferment he desired, while lesser men like Sanforde remained obscure. With the exception of Dyer, whose poems were not produced for publication, he is the first Elizabethan creative writer of any stature to come under Leicester's shield. T h e relationship between Gascoigne and this patron illustrates better than most cases thus far mentioned the element of mutual assistance inherent in the unwritten contract between patron and protege. While advancing themselves at their different levels in the Queen's favor, the courtier and the poet each helped the other. In 1575, when Leicester commissioned Gascoigne to prepare a major part of the celebration of the Queen's visit to Kenilworth, the writer had already achieved fame as a poet, a translator of Ariosto, and an original dramatist. That same year saw the publication of the "corrected and augmented" edition of his Posies, and of his didactic play, The Glasse of Government.

T h e moralistic tone of the latter was one of the signs by

which he announced his intention to abandon both his frivolous verse and the worldly life to which he had heretofore devoted himself. For he was no longer young and he had behind him the gentleman's son's record of prodigality and adventure. Disinherited, he had escaped overseas from his creditors, served under the Prince of Orange, been taken prisoner by 19 T h e suggestion is made in D\'B, Classics, p. 147.

cf. Conlcy, The First English

Translators

oj the

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the Spanish, and, released, had returned to E n g l a n d to edit his poetry and begin his career anew. 2 0 A s the motto which he printed with his works proclaims, he thought of himself as military man as well as poet—"Tarn Marti quam Mercurio"—and it is clear that he sought active service under the C r o w n . T h r o u g h his ability as a writer he hoped—as he declared in the prefatory epistle which he addressed to those "reuerende Diuines," the censors of the press, along with the revised edition of his poems which he brought out in 1575 shortly before he entered Leicester's service—to attract the attention of a patron and thus gain employment "in some exercise which mighte tende both to my preferment and to the profite of my Countrey."

21

T o obtain the k i n d of post he wanted he

would have to find powerful backing, and obviously he required a new patron since his old sponsors, L o r d Grey and the Earl of Bedford, had not provided the necessary assistance. T h i s new and powerful patron he found in the Earl of Leicester. 2 2 It may have been through the good services of Bedford or G r e y that Gascoigne was brought to Leicester's notice, or Leicester may have seen and admired his Supposes

when it was presented at Gray's Inn in 1566,

or have been attracted by his later works. Once the connection had been made, Gascoigne's new patron appears to have given him every advantage in his attempt to win the Queen's favor, and in return the writer served Leicester loyally. T h e two accounts of the celebration at Kenilworth which survive indicate that Gascoigne was responsible for the major 20 For biographies, sec F. E. Schclling, The l-ife and Writings of George Gascoigne, Publication.', of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology and Literature, II, No. 4 [ 1 8 9 2 ] , and C. T . Proutv, George Gascoigne (New York, 19.32). 21 The Complete Wor^s of George Gascoigne, ed. J. W. Cunliffc (Cambridge, England, 1 9 0 7 - 1 0 ) , I, 5. This epistle was intended as a defense of his poetry which in its earlier edition had brought a series of venomous accusations down upon him. 22 T h e thesis that Gascoigne's literary career was motivated by a desire to obtain royal employment is not original with the present writer but was suggested many years ago by Schelling (op. cit.) and again recently by Prouty (op. cit., p. 58). Both writers, however, give credit for Gascoigne's advancement to Grey and Bedford, the patrons whom Gascoigne acknowledged in dedications, and minimize the importance of Leicester, who actually provided Gascoigne with his first great opportunity—that is, brought him to the attention of the Queen. It should be remarked that both Grey and Bedford had been Gascoigne's patrons before the period of his success, and had failed to advance him to the post he desired, whereas his connection with Leicester is the first clear indication that he was on the right road. Since the three nobles were intimates and shared political interests, it would be difficult to ascribe proprietary rights in the poet to any one of them; probably they cooperated in securing his advancement. As government agent he served the political interests which all three supported. Leicester was, however, the most powerful of the three, and his patronage the most valuable.

The Translators part of the literary preparations for this sumptuous entertainment. 23 Unfortunately, however, his pièce de résistance, the masque of Zabeta, was not performed—either because of inclement weather, the reason he himself gives, or because Elizabeth ordered that it be omitted on the suspicion that it contained beneath its allegory certain arguments urging her to marry the Earl of Leicester. But Gascoigne was to be given more than one chance. On the third day of the festivities there was presented a dialogue of Gascoigne's composition in which Echo explained to a "Savage Man" the occasion of the celebration at Kenilworth. The situation gave ample opportunity for speeches of compliment to both the Queen and her host, and this was of course its main purpose. Gascoigne, however, had written in a part suited to his own need—for he himself played the role of the Savage Man. In that role, when he was informed that the personage thus honored was no other than Elizabeth herself, he fell upon his knees before the Queen and offered her his services. No doubt if she failed to interpret his allegory literally, his patron was at her side to make its meaning clear. Leicester again pushed his poet to the fore by ordering him to prepare the farewell oration, spoken by Gascoigne in the person of Sylvanus. Then, the Queen taking her departure, Gascoigne ran at her bridle until she called a halt to give him kindly recognition of his services. He had made sure that he would be remembered. Elizabeth continued on her progress and Gascoigne apparently followed in her train, probably with Leicester's connivance, for when she arrived at Woodstock she was entertained by another of the poet's compositions, The Tale of Hemetes the Heremyte. Although the original of this prose pastoral has been claimed for the pen of Sir Edward Dyer, Leicester's protégé, who as steward of Woodstock was present at the entertainment and probably took some part in it, Gascoigne certainly had a large share in its appearance. 24 Like the masque of Zabeta, 23 Among others who took part were Hunnis, Master of the Chapel; Ferrers, who had been Lord of Misrule at the court; and Mulcaster, Master of the Merchant Taylors' School. Hunnis and Mulcaster will be discussed in later chapters. The two accounts are Robert Lancham's Letter unto his friend ( 1 5 7 5 ) and Gascoigne's own account, The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth ( 1 5 7 6 ) , both reprinted by John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1 8 2 3 ) , I, 4 2 6 - 5 2 3 . In addition to these my discussion is indebted to the studies of Schelling, op. cit., pp. 6 3 - 7 1 , and Prouty, op. cit., pp. 1 7 7 ff. 24 That Leicester had commissioned this work as well as Gascoigne's entertainments at Kenilworth, and that, whoever the author was, Gascoigne was largely responsible for the

The Translators Hemetes

169

utilized the matrimony theme, but instead of urging marriage

it recommended that marriage be avoided when reasons of state so decreed, a doctrine which suited the Queen's policies and predilections very well indeed. 25 It was warmly received, and the Queen asked "that the whole in order as it fell, should be brought to her in writing." Thus encouraged, Gascoigne prepared an expensive and elaborate manuscript of the work, with translations in French, Latin, and Italian appended to the English version, and carefully engrossed and illustrated the book with his own hand. A prefatory picture represents a poet offering his work to the Queen, to be emblematically interpreted as Gascoigne's request for royal employment on the basis of his skill in writing and his experience as a soldier in the Netherlands. 26 T h e dedication, addressed to the Queen, is a direct request for patronage. After rehearsing his vicious past and his recent repentance, Gascoigne begs that his frivolous posies may be forgotten, promises to write only profitable works in the future, and vows to be diligent, resolute, and faithful in Elizabeth's service. His remarks concerning his abilities imply that he hopes for some sort of employment abroad, and that his polyglot manuscript of Hemetes

was prepared as evidence of

linguistic accomplishment. Concerning himself he writes, modestly yet hopefully: Some newes may yt seeme vnto your maiestie that a poore gentleman of England withowt trauell or instruction (lattyne except) should any way be able to manuscript as it was later presented to Elizabeth, seems clear. For Gascoigne's part in its production, see Prouty, op. cit., pp. 8 9 - 9 1 , 2 2 1 - 2 8 , and the authorities there cited. For the arguments supporting the suggestion that Dyer had a hand in Hemetes, see Ralph M. Sargent, At the Court of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics 0/ Sir Edward Dyer (Oxford, 1 9 3 5 ) , pp. 3 2 , 1 5 8 - 5 9 . Sargent makes out a stronger case for Dyer's authorship of " T h e Songe in the Oke" which was sung at some time after the performance of Hemetes, perhaps by the voice of Dyer himself, and suggests that the occasion enabled the courtier to recover Elizabeth's favor, lost some years before (pp. 3 3 - 3 4 , 1 5 9 ) . Apparently Leicester arranged matters so that both his proteges would be called to Elizabeth's attention during the Woodstock festivities, which gave Gascoigne opportunity for public display while Dyer, as befitted his greater dignity, remained obscurely in the background. The oration delivered on this occasion at Woodstock by Dr. Humphrey of Oxford, also Leicester's protege, has been mentioned on pp. 1 3 0 - 3 1 . 25 Perhaps Gascoigne intended a specific reference to the Alen^on match which had been proposed as early as 1 5 7 2 but was being allowed to languish in these years; if so, Leicester's approval can be assumed. The suggestion that the antimatrimonial theme was directed against Leicester, originally made by Cunliffe, has been rejected by E. K . Chambers whose view is now apparently accepted; cf. Prouty, op. cit., pp. 2 2 3 - 2 4 . From the point of view of this study, the suggestion seems absurd. 20 See Prouty, op. cit., p. 223.

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deale with so manye straunge languages, more newes yt be to my friends if they heard that any virtue had aduanced me to your service.27 Gascoigne's activities in the ensuing year, 1576, indicate that he had found the road to success. He published several new works, including two pious and moralistic tracts which revealed an increasing tendency toward Puritanism, and, in addition, was the author of the prefatory epistle published with Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Discourse of a Discouerie for a new Passage to Cataia, a treatise urging the attempt of a northwest route to the Orient. In his epistle Gascoigne indicates a lively interest in the N e w World movement, mentioning Frobisher as his kinsman and Gilbert as an intimate friend, and asserting that he has caused the latter's Discourse "to be registred in print" because of his great faith in its value for the public. That he has not yet obtained the preferment he desires is very distinctly suggested by the terms in which he dates his writing: " F r o m my lodging where I march among the Muses for lacke of exercise in martiall exploytes, this 12. of April. 1576." It is not unlikely that Gascoigne's undertaking in this field had the encouragement of Leicester, who in that year invested fifty pounds in the Frobisher venture. The Frobisher voyages, like other enterprises for the exploration and exploitation of America and distant lands elsewhere, were most vigorously supported by Leicester's party at court, and, since they were made in defiance of Spain and had the effect of distracting and weakening that power on the Continent, they also had the backing of the militant anti-Spanish Puritans who looked to Leicester for protection and leadership. Both nobles and Puritan merchants shared the hope of gold and other profits from these ventures. Allied with Leicester in these policies were Gascoigne's earlier patrons, Lord Grey and the Earl of Bedford, who appear as the dedicatees of the other writings and translations he published in 1576. The writer's new and serious diligence cannot have failed to impress all three of them. He was soon rewarded. In August, 1576, Gascoigne obtained at last the royal employment for which he had asked. H e was sent as a government agent to observe affairs in the L o w Countries, writing his reports directly to Burghley; references to them by Walsingham and Sir Amyas Paulet indicate that they were deemed worthy of circulation among members of the Council. His return to England in November was re27

The Complete Worths of George Gascoigne, I, 477-78.

The Translators corded by Walsingham in his journal.

28

171

H e had achieved success in a

career which called for both martial courage and linguistic ability, and had served a cause close to his patrons' interests. H e had every reason to expect further employment of a similar nature. Before the end of the year Gascoigne had sent two more works to the press. T h e first of these, The Spoyle of Antwerp,

was an eye-witness re-

port of the sacking of that city during Gascoigne's sojourn there; it was prepared for publication and entered in the Stationers' Register within a few days of his return to England. 2 9 Apparently it was drawn up originally as an account to be submitted to the Privy Council by Gascoigne in his role of government agent; it was also intended to register the complaint of the English Merchant Adventurers stationed in Antwerp against the K i n g of Spain, who had guaranteed them protection from the kind of outrage they had suffered at the hands of his soldiery. But its public value was far greater than this. Anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic in intent, it describes the "barbarous cruelty, insolences, Rapes, spoyles, Incests and Sacriledges" perpetrated by the Spanish conquerors, piling horror upon horror in brief, vigorous, efficient terms. It emphasizes the "hipocriticall boasting of the catholique religion" of the Spanish troops, and their needless brutality and unquenchable greed. Yet Gascoigne is not without admiration for the victors or blame for the vanquished. H e admires the Spaniards' valor; for their barbarity he blames only the common soldiers, and he leaves the road open for the preservation of amity between England and Spain on condition that the losses of the English merchants be made good. H e mentions the disorder and lack of foresight of the Walloons, and regards their defeat as a scourging by Providence. H e concludes that Antwerp was punished for the sins of its people but also that the victors were more barbarous and cruel than may become a good Christian conqueror. In short, Gascoigne's pamphlet reflects accurately the ambivalence of Elizabeth herself and most of her Privy Council towards affairs in the Netherlands in 1576. 3 0 Even Walsingham and Leicester, the most ardent 23

For Gascoigne's mission, see Prouty. op. cit., pp. 9^—95. Gascoigne returned to England on November 2 1 , 1 5 7 6 (ibid., p. 9 3 ) . T h e date of composition is indicated in the colophon of The Spoyle of Antwerp as follows: "Wrytten the .xxv. daye of November. 1 5 7 6 . by a true English man, who was present at this pytteous massacre. Vt supra." On the following day, November 26, the work was entered in the Stationers' Register (cf. STC 1 1 6 4 4 ) . The publication was anonymous. For an account of English policy with respect to the Netherlands at this time, see 29

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The Translators

pro-Dutch interventionists in the government, were not yet sure enough of their case to hazard an open war with Spain. That is why agents such as Gascoigne were being sent over to report on conditions in the L o w Countries. On the whole his pamphlet, predominantly anti-Spanish, served their purpose well enough at a time when the Prince of Orange was growing to new power as a champion of Dutch independence while the Spanish armies had fallen into disorder and mutiny. It represents an argument and an excuse for intervention should the occasion arise. That The Spoyle of Antwerp was prepared for publication so rapidly after Gascoigne's return to England may be taken as an indication of its immediate importance as a piece of propaganda. Like Stocker's Tragicall Historie of 1583, it was a part of the campaign which led ultimately to Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands. The other work produced by Gascoigne in 1576 was a didactic tract entitled The Grief of Joye, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth as a New Year's gift for 1577, with a grateful reference to her employment of him. Gascoigne's death in the following year cut short a promising if belated career. Probably he had hoped to see action in the Netherlands under Leicester, a service for which his mission of 1576 had given him a useful background. T o distinguish himself in martial exploits had been his chief ambition; his "march among the Muses" was only a means to that end. 31 A similar road to a similar end was followed by a younger writer, William Blandie, whose dedication of a learned translation to Leicester in 1576 was followed, some years later, by service in the forces of Sir John Norris, Leicester's predecessor as a leader of English troops in the Low Countries. Described on his title page as "late of . . . Oxeford, and now fellow of the middle Temple in London," Blandie was the translator of a work by the renowned Bishop Osorio da Fonseca, which he entitled The Fiue Boo\es of the Famous, learned, and eloquent man, Hieronimus Osorius, contayninge a discourse of Ciuill, and Christian Nobilitie.32 Although Osorio was well known in England as a protagonist of the Catholic point of view, and his attacks on both Luther and Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary

>925). I. 336 ff-

31 Gascoigne's earlier Mas\e for the Viscount 32 T h e copy in the Bear and Ragged Staff,

Walsingham

and the Policy

of Queen Elizabeth

(Oxford,

use of current news and propaganda material in the anti-Turkish Mountacttte ( 1 5 7 3 ) has been mentioned above, p. 98. Folger Shakespeare Library has Leicester's armorial stamp, the on both covers,

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Q u e e n Elizabeth had been widely read, he w a s admired and respected f o r his classical learning and his brilliant c o m m a n d of Ciceronian eloq u e n c e . 3 3 T h e book selected for translation by Blandie deals with moral themes of general rather than special doctrine, and w o u l d have been considered as appropriate for a Protestant as for a Catholic audience, and especially suitable for aristocratic readers. Its lofty interpretation of the obligations of the Prince may be considered an answer to Machiavelli, and represents the theory (if not the practice) of aristocratic governm e n t as put forth by E n g l i s h writers of the Elizabethan period. Evidence that the w o r k was considered a valuable literary property is to be f o u n d in the " c u m privilegio" of Blandie's title page, as well as in the publication of the L a t i n edition at L o n d o n in 1580. Blandie's dedication of this w o r k to Leicester, one of the most powerf u l members of E n g l a n d ' s nobility, w a s intended as a high compliment. H i s epistle is devoted primarily to setting forth the Renaissance theory of the mutual obligation and dependence of patrons and proteges. Blandie begins this address with the conventional statement that "historyes of auncient m e m o r i e " bear testimony that m a n y men have been "commended to posteritie" f o r their gifts and virtues, and this theme he develops in some detail to show that those whose m e m o r y is most honored are the patrons of literature. H e then presents with a good deal of rhetorical power his formulation of the contract underlying literary patronage, which he summarizes in the f o l l o w i n g terms: . . . neither Princes maye liue cleare and knowen to posteritie wythoute the penne and helping hande of learneds Arte: neyther men excelling in learning, woulde be eyther in lyfe reputed or spoken of after death, withoute the countenaunce, defence, and patronage of noble Peeres. Since this relationship has existed " i n all ages," he writes, Leicester will of course accept the dedication of his w o r k , in which Osorio's discussion of nobility "seemeth to describe the worthines of your excellent nature and noble m i n d e . " F o r " n o gentle and noble nature wilbe blemished, much lesse those which are placed in the toppe of honour and dignitie," by refusing hospitality to a book which has been honorably received in so many foreign lands. T h e r e f o r e he places in Leicester's 33

A s has already been noted, Osorio's attacks on Elizabeth had been a n s w e r e d by H a d d o n ,

one of E n g l a n d ' s greatest Latinists. B l a n d i e , w h o had been r e m o v e d f e l l o w s h i p because of " s t r o n g popish l e a n i n g s "

(D.VB),

tracted to the Catholic apologist because of these leanings.

may

f r o m his

originally

Oxford

h a v e been

at-

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The Translators

protection not only Osorio but also himself, the author's "guide, conductour, and interpretour." T h e dedication concludes with an appeal for good treatment, and the somewhat old-fashioned closing, "your Honours most humble and daily Oratour."

34

Blandie's dedication is not modeled upon that of Osorio, a translation of which is given, but derives rather from the content of the work itself. Osorio's treatise is thoughtful, philosophical, and learnedly embellished by many references to the classics. A passage notable for its "eloquent" style and not without relevance to our subject concerns poets, who are defended as teachers of morality: The dutie . . . and parte of a Poet is no lesse truly, then trimly, not less vnfainedly, then finely, no lesse approuedly, then pikedly, as wyth a pensile to describe the maners of men, to descrie the fromphes of Fortune, and the whole estate and condition of mans life. Againe, to set forth elegantly and in most decent sort, the Nature of honestie and vertue, the deformitie of sinne and impietie, what is to be embraced and followed, what to bee detested vtterly and abhorred.35 There is no evidence that Blandie's dedication to Leicester was rewarded by anything beyond acceptance. It may, however, have earned him a recommendation to Sir John Norris under whom he served in the Netherlands in 1580, and it may even have attracted the attention of Philip Sidney, Leicester's nephew, whose views on the nature of nobility and the value of poetry were in consonance with those of Osorio, and who, in the closing passage of his Defence

of Poesie, gave support

to the theory of patronage set forth by Blandie. T o Sidney, at any rate, Blandie in 1581 dedicated his next work, The Castle of Pollicy,

which

dealt in the form of a dialogue with the duties and rewards of soldiering, at first in general terms but later with specific reference to the martial feats performed by Blandie and his fellow-campaigners. 36 It was intended to encourage "those causes which concerne the honor of our 34 This not uncommon Elizabethan form of closing, like the prayer for the patron's welfare which often concludes a dedication, was an inheritance from the Middle Ages when the clerical author or scribe naturally promised to pray for his patron's soul. 35 The Fine Booties of . . . Ciuill, and Christian Nobilitie ( 1 5 7 6 ) , fol. n r . 36 T h e nature of this work, apparently Blandie's only original composition, is further suggested by its title: The Castle, or picture of pollicy shewing forth most liuely, the face, body and partes of a commonwealth, the duety . . . of a perfect . . . Souldiar, the martiall feates . . . lately done by our . . . nation, Vnder the conduct of . . . lohn Koris Generall of the Army of the states in Friseland . . . in manner of a Dialogue betwixt Gefferay Gate and William Blandy, Souldiars.

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Prince, security and safegarde of the commonwealth," and thus to serve the purposes of the party led by Leicester and supported by Sidney which wished to place England in the position of champion of a Protestant league against Spain. 37 The honor of the Queen and the security of England demanded good soldiers for continued and active intervention in the L o w Countries. T h e dedication of The Castle of Pollicy contains an echo from Osorio in its allusion to Sidney's distinguished descent. By 1581, when Blandie addressed this work to Sidney, it was becoming apparent that Leicester was grooming his nephew to succeed him, if not in title and estate, at least in political leadership and in the obligations of literary patronage. Blandie was but one of a considerable number of writers who claimed both Leicester and Sidney as patrons. Another book dedicated to Leicester in 1576, which would have appealed as well to the tastes of his famous young nephew, was the Galateo of Maister lohn Delia Casa, Archebishop of Beneuenta. Or rather, A treatise of the manners and behauiours, it behoueth a man to vse and eschewe, in his familiar conuersation. A worke very necessary and profitable for all Gentlemen, or other.38 Robert Peterson, the translator, was (like Blandie) a member of one of the Inns of Court, for the title page indicates that he was "of Lincolnes Inne." Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff appears on the verso of the title page. This "treatise of courtesie," as the translator calls it in his dedication, ranked with Castiglione's Courtier as one of the most popular manners books of the sixteenth century. By 1600 it had been translated into almost every European language and had even been issued in a polyglot edition (Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish) published at Geneva in 1589. Peterson's dedication of the Englished version as his "first fruites" asks Leicester's protection for the book and indicates that the translator has already received evidence of the patron's beneficence: . . . I doubt not, but your countenance will so credit the Author, as wil embolden him to presse amongst the thickest throng of Courtiers: And herewithall beseeche your honour, to accept the humble and dutifull meaning rr.inde of him: who, not satisfied, till he might by some meanes giue shewe of his 37

Blandie's dedications to Leicester and S i d n e y , as w e l l as his service u n d e r Morris, in-

dicate that he had a b a n d o n e d his earlier religious opinions a n d become an adherent of the Protestant cause. 38

A m o d e r n edition of this w o r k , with Introduction by H e r b e r t J . R e i d , w a s privately

printed in

1892.

176

The Translators

thankefull mindc, for your honorable fauours shewed vnto him, hathe offered this small, though as faithfull a gyfte as Sinaetes did to Cyrus: Hoping, that your honour will take it as well in worth, as Artaxerxes did his poore Persians handfull of water.38 H e compliments Leicester as the model of manners described in his book —"not only the patrone to protect, but the patterne to expresse any courtesie therin conteined." Unfortunately, little is known of Peterson beyond the implications of this publication. F r o m it we learn that he was and had been a protégé of Leicester, that he was a member of Lincoln's Inn, and that he belonged to a literary circle which included such eminent scholars as Edward Cradock and Thomas Drant, who are among the writers of complimentary verses addressed to the translator and printed with the prefatory material. His only other work, another translation from the Italian, 40 was dedicated to Sir Thomas Egerton thirty years later in an epistle which suggests that he had reason to be grateful to that patron as well. H o w he fared in the intervening period, with or without Leicester's assistance, remains a mystery for the present. Perhaps, like others among the protégés of Leicester, he obtained some form of official employment for which his linguistic training fitted him. In 1577 still another translator who is remembered only for a single work, and who was also a member of one of the Inns of Court, addressed Leicester as patron. This was Timothe Kendall, "late of the Uniuersitie of Oxford: now student of Staple Inne." His work, published under the title Flowers of Epigrammes, ovt of sundrie the moste singular authours selected, as well auncient as late writers. Pleasant and profitable to the expert readers of quic\ capacitie, was a fashionable anthology of selections from the Latin authors ranging from classical times down to Erasmus, More, Ascham, Beza, and Haddon, translated into a short terse English line, witty and often alliterative, but frequently clumsy. Some of Kendall's original compositions were also included. 41 T h e address " T o 39 T h e reference to Artaxerxes and "his poor Persian" is one of the most common of all classical references used by dedicators, and almost as much of a cliché as the statement concerning "first fruits." 40 A Treatise concerning the Causes of the Magnificencie and Greatnes of Cities, translated from Giovanni Bolero ( 1 6 0 6 ) . 41 For a discussion of Kendall's sources and methods of using his sources, see Lathrop, op. cit., pp. 1 5 3 - 5 6 . Lathrop defends Kendall against the charge of plagiarism for his inclusion of some translations by other English writers by pointing out that the volume made no pretense to originality but was offered, as its title indicates, as an anthology or florHegitim.

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the courteous and frendly Reader" is of some interest, recommending poetry as a linking together of "profite and pleasure," with special praise for Martial as an epigrammatist—though the translator confesses that he has found it necessary to bowdlerize his original: " I haue weeded away all wanton and woorthlesse woordcs: I haue pared away all pernicious patches." T h e dedication to Leicester, couched in ornate and flowery language, pays homage to the "meruelous mildnesse" of the earl's nature and proclaims him the "speciall Patrone of learning and learned men." H e is praised for his courtesy to the less gifted writers—for accepting "their simple Poesies, whose Garden plots are not so gaily garnished either with such plenty or such varietie as others be." Emboldened by such magnanimity, the translator has conquered his fears and completed a work especially designed to please his patron: I yealded my will and my worke wholy to bryng that to accomplishment which I had purposed vppon a speciall opinion of your honours worthinesse concerned: trustyng that this my Manuell shall obteyne as good place in the dedication, and as muche grace in the acceptation . . . as the volumes of suche as haue discouered their skill in thinges of greater importaunce. Although Kendall at the end of his address to the reader promises that, if encouraged, he will publish either an augmented edition or a new collection of similar translations, The Flowers

of Epigrammes

is

apparently his only work. Like Peterson, he sinks into obscurity. W e know nothing of his personal life, although he was still remembered vividly enough in 1598 to be mentioned among the English epigrammatists. T h e contributors of the complimentary verses at the front of the volume include George Whetstone and Abraham

Fleming—names

which suggest that he, like Peterson, belonged to a literary circle. But if Leicester rewarded his dedication by furthering his career, it was not as a writer but in some other capacity that he found employment. T h e fact that, within a year or so, Leicester received dedications from three obscure translators associated with the Inns of Court does indeed suggest a definite intent on the part of the patron to cultivate the art of translation among the young men resident there. Whether or not his patronage of members of the Inns—which, as we have remarked in See also Hoyt H. Hudson, The Epigram in the English Renaissance passim, for references to Kendall as translator and anthologist.

(Princeton, N . J . , 1 9 4 7 ) ,

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Chapter II, dated from the early years of his career as a patron—was part of a larger concerted effort of the Privy Council, we can certainly associate it with his patronage of the universities and find in it similar motivation. For those informal seats of learning, the Inns of Court, which for some time had been traditionally devoted to legal studies, were now assuming an importance which almost entitled them to be described as a third English university—or, more accurately, as a graduate school, since most of the members had already received their B.A.'s. U n d e r the stimulus of official encouragement, the universities were producing increasingly large numbers of candidates for government posts, of w h o m only the most promising were absorbed into royal service, as secretaries, envoys, and the like, immediately upon receiving their degrees. Other bright y o u n g men were awarded fellowships so that they might be retained by their universities to train a n e w supply of candidates, while most of those who had prepared themselves for the clergy were sooner or later granted livings. Those who were not fortunate or diligent enough to find immediate employment, or who left before receiving the degree, or who really wished to read for the law, are the men w h o m we find at the Inns in London, continuing their studies and learning the w a y s of the nation's capital while seeking employment. T h e location of the Inns was convenient for m e n w h o wished to show themselves attendants upon this lord or that—Leicester House, for example, was right next door to the Temple, and other fashionable town houses were near by on the river front. A n d the activities centered in the Inns provided valuable contacts with those in power. T h e r e must have been constant intercommunication in the purely business way between the Inns and the great houses whence were controlled the estates of the rich in all parts of E n g l a n d with their involved legal affairs. Moreover, some of the men high in the affairs of government had spent their term at one of the Inns before finding a foothold, a n d would return from time to time to enjoy the atmosphere they had k n o w n in youth, while d u r i n g holiday seasons or on special occasions it w a s customary for members of the royal court to visit the Inns as spectators of the revels. Y o u n g m e n who wished to attract a patron's attention to their gifts could find no better jumping-off place for a career. If w e can judge from the type of entertainment provided and from the nature of the w r i t i n g s produced by members of the Inns, legal studies were considered less important as preparation for service to the C r o w n

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than translations f r o m the classics and modern languages or exercises in poetry and drama. Literary work was a demonstration of fitness for other vocations rather than an end in itself. Of the members of the Inns discussed in this chapter, only Golding may be said to be a professional writer, in the sense that he produced translations continually and as a profitable vocation; but he was also a man of affairs. 4 2 Gascoigne, gifted and prolific as he was, preferred military service; and T h o m a s North, the third and last of real literary distinction a m o n g these writers, sought the career at court and in diplomatic service to which his social position directed him. T h e three others were younger men, products of the new dispensation at the universities. Blandie had a military career; his only work besides the one which he dedicated to Leicester was the fruit of his experience in the field. In the period under consideration Peterson and Kendall produced only one work each; with what success in bettering themselves we cannot say, but from their very silence we can infer that they did find other employment. Once launched upon a career in the royal service, such men as these would have little time for writing —would abandon their academic exercises, especially if they had no exceptional literary talent. Their "first fruits" would remain their only fruits, their graduate theses. Moreover, being not professional writers but gentlemen, they might well regard publication as improper after they had served their novitiate at the Inns. 4 3 Although Leicester's name has been particularly associated with the Inner Temple, the earl did not confine his patronage to any one of the Inns of Court. Golding belonged to Gray's Inn and later the Inner Temple, Blandie to the Middle Temple, N o r t h and Peterson to Lincoln's Inn, Kendall to Staple Inn, and Gascoigne had been at Gray's Inn some years before he received Leicester's commission for the Kenilworth entertainment. Of the writers mentioned in Chapter II, Blundeville and Fulwood appear to have been associated with the Inns, although it is uncertain to which ones they belonged. 44 Edward Hake, w h o will be treated in a later chapter, was connected with both Gray's and Barnard's Inns. As far as writers were concerned, Leicester distributed his favor 42 Sanforde, who may also be considered a professional, was apparently not attached to the Inns. 43 Thus another member of the Inns, the satirist Hake, felt it necessary to protest that he had had no profit from his publication of Newes out of Powlcs Churchyardc ( 1 5 7 9 ed., Address to the Reader). 44 Cf. Conley, The First English Translators of the Classics, pp. 1 3 1 - 3 3 .

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without discrimination among the several Inns, encouraging talent where he found it, just as, in his relationships with the universities, he showed no special grace to protégés educated at Oxford, of which he was chancellor, as compared with scholars from Cambridge. At this point we must reconsider Conley's theory, discussed early in this chapter, that there was a concerted movement among Elizabethan nobles for encouraging classical translation at the Inns of Court, and examine its application to Leicester's patronage. Excluding Gascoigne, since we have discussed him only as an original writer, and including Blundeville and Fulwood, who were considered in Chapter II, we have a total of seven translators associated with the Inns who dedicated works to Leicester. Of these, four worked from Italian originals—Fulwood, Blundeville, North, and Peterson. T h e remaining three used Latin sources, but Blandie and Kendall both derived from Renaissance Latin works; only Golding of the whole number is entitled to be called a translator of the classics. There is, in short, more evidence in this group for a concerted movement for translation from Italian than for a classical translation movement. As was asserted before, however, the distinction is not a fruitful one; Elizabethans were interested in books of all sorts and from all sources. Translations from French, Spanish, and other tongues were also being printed in considerable number, although Leicester's protégés at the Inns did not happen to produce any of them under his protection. (North's Plutarch, for example, was translated from a French intermediary.) The writers whom we have been discussing in the present chapter are, nonetheless, in some sort a group apart. What distinguishes them is not, primarily, their membership in the Inns—apparently neither Nuce nor Sanforde was associated with an Inn—nor yet the particular sources of their work. Rather it is their fear of criticism, and their insistent and repetitious self-defense. More than any other group except the translators of medical works, who had to fight opposition from within their own professional ranks, these men justify themselves. Again and again they claim both patriotic and moral intention: they are enriching the language and furnishing examples of good and evil behavior. The latter, as we have seen, was also the justification offered for many historical works, and for other kinds of writing as well. And of course literary work of almost any sort might be said to be undertaken for the benefit of the commonwealth, in the sense that the dissemination of

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information and of good doctrine was a worthy endeavor. But it was the special claim of these writers that, in making available to the common reader their translations from other tongues, they were providing good doctrine in a most palatable form—"works no less delectable than profitable." The emphasis was on pleasure as well as on moral worth. Better far than sermons was Ovid moralized; better than a treatise on the duties of the Prince and his courtiers were the animal fables of Bidpai, the timely lesson against treason and rebellion cleverly sugarcoated. The very title The Garden of Pleasure tempts the reader to cull the delights of good literature, and in the Galateo he would find manners taught through amusing tales. And in truth most of these works seem to have been very popular indeed; ironically enough, several of the translators are remembered only because of the success and influence of their one or two endeavors in this field, while their labors in the direct service of the Crown are forgotten. The very fact that their works were pleasurable and not obviously utilitarian was what made this group especially vulnerable to criticism. Moreover, the literature which they selected for translation was for the most part non-Protestant—that is to say, pagan or Roman Catholic in origin—and this again made them anxious to forestall criticism, to explain the difficulties of their work and the moral value of their originals. Their anxiety is so unanimous that the reader is forced to believe in some special necessity behind their demand for protection, some organized body of opposition against which they too had to organize under the sponsorship of patrons. And, as we have noted, they have a tendency to desert the field, to turn away from their delectable materials to religious translations or utilitarian works. Golding is the most notable example, abandoning the classics after several major successes in that area to devote himself energetically to the translation of Calvinist works; Sanforde and Gascoigne betray a similar change of heart. Yet their enemies are not primarily the Protestant divines who were the censors of the press—curiously enough, among all these writers, it is only Gascoigne (and he as poet, not translator) who betrays a concern for pacifying the censors. The translators as a group fear chiefly those unnamed critics, the followers of Zoilus and Momus, notorious patrons of ignorance. The anonymity of these carpers—men of small repute apparently, yet sufficiently influential to make their victims highly sensitive—does support the theory advanced by Conley that the enemies of

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translation were R o m a n Catholics w h o eyed with m i s g i v i n g the w h o l e educational effort of the Protestant rulers, designed as it was to foster an enlightened public opinion, a codified morality based on the T u d o r myth and nourished by the humanities, w h i c h w o u l d be a b u l w a r k against the agents of the Pope. "Zoilus' sycophants" f o u n d their easiest targets in the translators, questioning the validity of their interpretations, the wholesomeness of their materials, the style of their handling of the new vernacular—this m u c h w e can guess f r o m the defenses erected by their victims in anticipation of attack. T o this extent, then, we can consider the translators of belles-lettres a group apart, and see in Leicester's patronage of them an interest separately motivated. T h e y required special protection because, as very successful popularizers of the learning and morality which it w a s official policy to encourage, they w e r e subject to special attack by the enemies of the state, and because the nature of their w o r k rendered them peculiarly vulnerable. T h e patron's n a m e would g u a r d them against both the interdictions of the censors and the envious tongues of the critics. In exchange they offered him f a m e and their demonstrated ability to serve him or the Queen in some other field of endeavor. T h a t Leicester f o u n d the bargain to his liking is indicated by his consistent support of their efforts, for they agree that he is generous, even to those a m o n g them w h o are obscure and of little skill. Apparently the earl had taken to heart the preachments on behalf of learning given him by the C a m b r i d g e scholars in the 1560's; he had not merely exposed himself to the humanities but had become a means whereby other men could enjoy their benefits. Y e t , encouraging as he was to the translators of Latin and modern literature, it was not in this field that the f u l l influence

of his patronage was felt. A s the Maecenas of linguists he is

benign and affable, but it is as a pillar of G o d ' s word that he is a force to be reckoned with. W e shall turn next to a consideration of his much more extensive activities as sponsor of religious writings. R e m e m b e r i n g that t w o of our translators, G o l d i n g and Sanforde, were d r a w n to it f r o m their more pleasant tasks in belles-lettres, we start with the suspicion that other gifted writers were siphoned off f r o m the humanities to serve the Protestant cause more directly. In this new field there w a s a more urgent need for disciplined scholars, and less necessity for them to justify and defend the morality of their works. T h e business of supplying transla-

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tions f r o m classical and Italian literature could be attended to by y o u n g m e n awaiting preferment at the Inns of Court, while more seasoned writers w o u l d be employed to translate the writings of C a l v i n and to a n s w e r R o m a n Catholic adversaries. T h e s e , too, were purposes for w h i c h learning at the universities was being fostered.

C H A P T E R VI

Puritans and Their Works The Earl of Leicester,

who set up for a patron of the

Puritans.

— S t r y p e , Life of

Parser

H E Elizabethan of our fancy is a dashing fellow with a feather in his bonnet, a witty epigram on his lips, a sword in his hand, and the romantic fire of love and adventure in his eye. So has he been depicted for us by playwrights and novelists, even by some historians. But when we examine the kinds of books prepared for the instruction and pleasure of the Renaissance Englishman, we receive a very different impression. H e was a ready buyer of primers, prayer books, psalters, and new editions of the Bible, a devoted reader of doctrinal discussions, controversial writings, sermons, and commentaries on the Scriptures. H e read more books on religious topics than on any other single subject. 1 So valuable was the trade in this type of book that printers were eager to obtain monopolies of certain standardized works, and tenacious in the possession of them once they had been granted. N o r was the taste for religion and morality limited to the traditionally pious middle class. Religious writers and translators received generous encouragement from many members of the aristocracy. T h e befeathered gallant apparently read sermons as well as sonnets; at least, he paid for them. T h e best evidence of the activity of the nobles in supporting the production of pious literary works is to be found in the dedications of these works. With the exception of the trade-staples—primers, prayer books, and the like—and some of the more militant Puritan works, 2 the majority of religious books carry a dedication. Moreover, many of the dedicators expressly declare that the patron has shown an active and generous interest in the work offered him, and quite a f e w show their gratitude by 1 Louis B. Wright, "Introduction to a Survey of Renaissance Studies," Modern Language Quarterly, II ( 1 9 4 1 ) , 361. 2 Works which were secretly printed, e.g., the two famous Admonitions to the Parliament of 1572 and the later Marprelate tracts, naturally lacked dedications, although they may have been assisted by sympathetic patrons.

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185

later addressing to h i m a second book of similar nature. T h e reasons for this aristocratic support of religious w r i t i n g are several, and worthy of separate analysis. T h e most obvious, and probably the least important, of the motives for aristocratic sponsorship of religious works w a s the medieval tradition by which, from Anglo-Saxon times down, the encouragement of "good works" had become an obligation of royalty and nobility, and a means whereby the layman might hope to further the salvation of his soul. T h i s motive continued to play a part in Elizabethan times, for there were patrons (such as the Earl and Countess of Bedford and the Countess of Pembroke) whose support of religious literature betokened a sincere personal piety. Probably, however, dedicators m a d e the gesture of appealing to pious motivation more often than the actual circumstances warranted. T h e continuance of the tradition is signalized by the dedicator's use of a formula more emphatically religious in tone than dedicatory conventions d e m a n d e d : he frequently closes with a formal prayer for the patron's continued virtue in this life and eternal r e w a r d in the life to come, and he sometimes signs himself "Your humble orator"—the Elizabethan flourish for the medieval signature, "Your bedesman." 3 A second motive for the nobility's support of religious writings is to be found in the patron's desire to fill clerical positions of varying importance with candidates whose doctrinal views he approved and whose political allegiance he had secured. A s in the case of the translators discussed in the previous chapter, students of divinity and other clerics seeking advancement might demonstrate their zeal and ability by offering their literary labors to an influential patron. T h e latter would interpret the dedication as a sign of the candidate's loyalty to his political interests, and the work itself as evidence of his qualifications. W h e n an opening appeared the patron would naturally recommend such a candidate rather than a m a n not k n o w n to h i m . In the ecclesiastical field this form of patronage was, like the support of "good works," a survival from the older tradition, but changing conditions had given it added significance. Because of the disappearance of the monastic institutions and the fact that a greater proportion of churchlivings were in the gift of the Crown and the laity than formerly, clerics were more than ever dependent upon the bounty of noble patrons. Gifts 3 As has already been remarked, both the prayer and the signature are sometimes f o u n d in dedications of nonreligious works.

Puritans and Their Works of money, payment of university fees, employment as family chaplain, pensions, and advances on further works of similar nature were all gratefully accepted, but more important than these for patron as well as protege was the preferment to a good living which a noble's influence with the Queen or a great prelate might enable him to obtain for his follower. Doctrinal differences had grown apace, and it had become necessary for members of the Privy Council and higher ecclesiastics to control and supervise the personnel of the divine calling in E n g l a n d — and therefore to keep a fairly strict watch on the younger recruits in the field. F r o m the point of view of the candidate for preferment the acceptance of a dedication implied his patron's seal of approval and strengthened his hope of receiving a benefice more than usually valuable, a coveted prebend, or an honorable position at the university. A n d with important differences of opinion emerging among the authorities themselves, the candidate's need for a powerful patron who would back h i m against a rival claimant was intensified, while the patron became more eager to fill pulpits with m e n of his own choosing. All this ferment stimulated the production of religious literature. A s the reign wore on, the nobility's sponsorship of favored divines became a cause of conflict between the pro-Puritan patrons and the more conservative prelates, with the former attempting to protect their preachers and writers from episcopal interference. In fact, in the religious field at least, protection was of even greater importance than reward or preferment to those who sought patronage. Reading dedications, we often feel that the writer is primarily interested in disseminating what he considers the truth. O f course he desires advancement and not merely because it will enable him to speak truth more securely and to a wider audience, but his appeal to his patron is based on something else—on the assumption that together they share a zeal for God's word. It is his natural duty to set forth that word and his patron's to sponsor and protect it. T o this assumption, if we may judge from its continual reappearance, the patron gave assent; like the writer, he was chiefly interested in the book itself—in its effect upon the public. T o say that his interests were basically political rather than religious is to say little: so closely was politics interwoven with religion that they might be considered the same thing. In short, the dissemination of propaganda was the most powerful single purpose behind the production of patronized religious writing

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in this period. All of it was of course propaganda for the Protestant cause, which was generally interpreted as being identical with the cause of Elizabeth and England. In its effect, however, a considerable portion of the material involved in this propaganda was Puritan rather than Anglican—that is, instead of strengthening the Elizabethan Settlement it served to reinforce the views of those who desired a more thorough reformation of the church. T h e more radical element among the reformers was also the more articulate, and the more zealous in addressing patrons whose partisan interests could be served effectively by its work. Acting together under a banner which proclaimed loyalty to God, queen, and country as their common purpose, the Puritan writers and their noble sponsors were able to obtain publicity for ideas which were by no means generally accepted. T o understand why they were allowed to proceed in this fashion it is necessary to examine the background of their activities. Elizabeth had inherited from her father's reign, chiefly from the policy of Cromwell and Cranmer, the idea that the power of the press was a useful instrument for the formation of public opinion, especially in the religious field. Upon her accession to the throne, she reestablished the Church of England more or less upon the basis it had occupied before the regime of her sister Mary—that is, she instituted a national church which denied the authority of Rome but which shared few of the other features which the progress of the Reformation on the Continent had made characteristic of Protestantism. However, she allowed many important positions in church and state to be filled by men who leaned toward a more radical reformation than that of her Established Church. These men eagerly espoused her cause, hoping to make it their own, and brought to her defense against Rome the scholarship and ardor of the writers of their party, a goodly number of whom had imbibed their religious convictions as exiles in Switzerland during the Marian regime. For the time being, at least, she accepted their support. Although personally unsympathetic to their ideals, she had no desire to suppress works which conduced on the whole to the prestige of the Crown and which certainly struck at the cause of her chiefest enemies, the Roman Catholics, nor was she willing, in her initial weakness, to discourage the belief that hopes for further reform might see fruition under her reign. Since the reformers acknowledged her as the supreme

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governor of the church (the term "supreme head," used by Henry V I I I , was dropped so that conscientious objectors might take the oath of allegiance), she tolerated their criticism and rewarded their advocacy of her cause through the patronage of her nobles, some of whom were themselves actively in sympathy with the more reformed movement. A s in other fields of literary activity, for the most part she avoided direct participation in the patronage relationship herself; she could not be held responsible if the reformers went too far. Some of the writers whose efforts for the Protestant cause were thus accepted held beliefs so radical that they can properly be termed Puritans. 4 Under the influence of Continental religious leaders, especially Calvin, these men wished to reform their church from within, stripping it of elaborate ceremonialism, reducing the wealth and power of the bishops, and regulating the character of the lower clergy. T h e most zealous of them thought they had merely substituted the authority of the Queen and her bishops for that of the Pope, without achieving real reformation; and, although they gave their complete allegiance to the Queen in civil matters, they deemed their own judgment, based on scriptural and learned authority (including that of foreign religious leaders still alive), better in matters of religion and morality. T h u s it came about that Leicester and other important personages of the court gave their support to writers and translators whose program actually had implications which threatened the sovereignty of the Crown.® T h e wisdom of the patrons' policy—quite aside from their sympathies with the writers whom they protected—was that it enabled them to control and exploit Puritan propaganda, directing it when possible against Rome rather than against their own church. A n d the same policy helped to keep the reformers within the bounds of the Established Church. So long as the extremists could hope to recast the Elizabethan Settlement, they had a stake in national unity and would use their energies and their scholarship to defend the larger cause of English Protestantism. 4 In using the term "Puritan" to refer to the several varieties of Elizabethan reformers who wished to "purify" the usage of the Established Church, I follow such authorities as Peel, Pearson, and Knappen (all to be cited). For a definition of terminology, see M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939), Appendix II, pp. 487 ff. 5 These implications, consistently and vigorously denied by the Puritans themselves, arc discussed in A. F. Scott Pearson's study of the political aspects of sixteenth-century Puritanism, Church and State (Cambridge, England, 1928); see also J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1934), pp. 3 0 6 - 1 5 .

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The political aspect of the Puritan program served to strengthen the bond between the extreme reformers and their patrons in the progressive anti-Spanish party. Looking always to the Continent for spiritual and moral inspiration, the Puritans felt themselves a part of an international Protestantism in which the Elizabethan establishment was but a member. They proclaimed an identity of interests with the other Protestant powers of Europe which appealed strongly to those nobles who maintained that England could not stand alone in the world conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, who distrusted all overtures from the Catholic powers, and who favored an aggressive policy toward Spain, Catholicism's mightiest champion. As England's prowess increased and the rift with Spain became more clearly marked, Continental reformers hailed Elizabeth as the leader of Protestantism in Europe, and their English followers echoed the praise. Under pressure from the press and from such progressive leaders as Walsingham and Leicester, Elizabeth ultimately accepted the responsibility, and English nationalism became for a time the bulwark of international Protestantism, defying Spain in the Netherlands, on the high seas, and in the New World. But while the interventionist policies of the Puritans and their patrons flourished, the extremists by their very vociferousness provoked increasing opposition to their program of ecclesiastical reform. As the years passed, Elizabeth herself became more reluctant to tolerate the reformers' agitation; moreover, the longer her bishops enjoyed their offices, the more conservative they became, and the more antagonistic to Puritans. The very existence of episcopacy was threatened by the rise of the presbyterian movement. With the Queen for the most part on their side, the bishops repeatedly instituted measures for a stricter conformity and a sterner repression, but the reformers, protected by powerful patrons, and assisted by their highly developed secret organization, continued to gain ground and to enlarge their influence in Parliament. In the meantime the infiltration of England by Jesuit missionaries and the revelations of plots upon the Queen's life provided Puritan writers with constantly renewed opportunities to assert their patriotism. They took a leading part in the propaganda campaign against recusancy and Catholic sedition, assisted by their patrons in efforts which made them appear indispensable. Although Elizabeth checked Parliamentary

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legislation in support of the Puritans, a n d thus effectively kept the m o v e m e n t f r o m m a k i n g p e r m a n e n t gains, she had to continue some m e a s u r e of toleration for the sake of a united Protestant f r o n t against the Catholics at h o m e a n d abroad. Therefore, until M a r y of Scotland h a d been put out of the way and the threat of the Invincible A r m a d a h a d passed, she allowed the progressive party at court to protect the P u r i t a n s against excessive interference and to encourage their f u l m i n a tions against "papists" everywhere. W h e n the Spanish danger

was

averted, an event followed shortly by the death of the t w o strongest leaders of the progressives, Leicester a n d W a l s i n g h a m , she gave free rein to the suppression of P u r i t a n i s m . T h u s international political events played into the h a n d s of

the

P u r i t a n s a n d allowed the idea of f r e e d o m of expression to take root a n d g r o w . It was, in truth, at best a limited freedom, controlled a n d directed by those w h o were the State. But the fact remains that so long as the P u r i t a n s enjoyed the protection of noble patrons they continued to produce their publications a n d to preach their sermons without serious interference. In the earlier part of the reign, especially, there was little a t t e m p t to inhibit the publication of the more advanced Protestant writings, a n d a good deal of semiofficial encouragement to stimulate it. T h e licensing acts in force before W h i t g i f t became Archbishop of C a n t e r b u r y , while they provided the means for official regulation of the press, 6 were liberal in their application, a n d f r o m the lists of books permitted to appear it is obvious that no great restraint was exercised u p o n works of P u r i t a n color. Moreover, the relative sparseness of secret printings by t h e P u r i t a n s until fairly late in the reign betokens a lack of repression. E v e n w h e n m o r e stringent regulations were enacted, chiefly at the instance of the bishops, the P u r i t a n s still f o u n d a measure of protection in sympathetic nobles, some of w h o m were openly anti-prelatical. W h e n repressive measures were actually taken, Elizabeth and her officials consistently n a r r o w e d the exercise of intolerance to works subversive to the state, declaring that they did not wish to deprive anyone of liberty of conscience. 7 T h e bishops, especially W h i t g i f t , tried to i m p l e m e n t their attacks by stressing t h e subversive elements of P u r i t a n doctrine, b u t t h e reformers retorted with vigorous protests of their loyalty to q u e e n 8 See, for example, the Queen's injunctions of 1 5 5 9 (A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, ed. E d w a r d Arbcr [ L o n d o n , 1 8 7 5 ) , I, x x x v i i i - x x x i x ) . 7 See W . K . Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, Vol. 1 (Lond o n , 1 9 3 2 ) , f o r a documented study of this aspect of Elizabethan history.

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a n d c o m m o n w e a l t h , and w e r e backed by their patrons. F o r tactical reasons both sides emphasized the sanctity of the state rather than that of the church. S o long as religious discussions did not openly threaten the foundations of Elizabeth's government, they could be allowed to continue; indeed, some of the nobles were themselves sincerely interested in questions of religion, and enjoyed the controversies they provoked. Liberty of discussion had other values: it served as a safety valve, lessening the d a n g e r of outright rebellion, and it further weakened the cause of the nonconformists by encouraging them to disagree a m o n g themselves. W i t h national uniformity

firmly

established on a patriotic if not a

religious basis, E n g l i s h m e n were being allowed to develop habits of individualism and of intellectual independence. It is easy to argue, after the event, that Elizabeth's policy was one of weakness, not of strength, since it fostered the g r o w t h of a rupture which in the next century became the open breach of civil w a r . But her prog r a m , for all its apparent inconsistencies, united the nation to withstand the immediate danger of Spanish invasion, and created a patriotism which was to survive both Stuart despotism and revolution. T h i s national loyalty breathes fiercely through the dedications of the religious writers; it is as characteristic of them as their piety. T o foster and to advertise it were a m o n g the purposes of the patrons. 8 T h e bulk of the religious writings which appeared under the sponsorship of the progressive patrons falls into two classes, which may be roughly designated as ( 1 ) translations f r o m the commentaries, sermons, and treatises of Continental religious leaders, and some f e w original writings of the same sort produced in E n g l a n d , and ( 2 ) anti-Catholic propaganda. Sometimes a w o r k belongs to both classes, but usually the distinction is fairly clear. Writers, however, frequently engaged in both kinds of w o r k , often dedicating them to the same patron. C a l v i n is undoubtedly the dominant force in the first group, not only because he was the most p o w e r f u l religious leader alive at the beginning 8 This brief summary, necessarily over-simplified, gives an inadequate impression of the many shifts, compromises, and conflicts of Elizabethan religious policy; it is intended only to illuminate the background of Leicester's patronage in this field. The reader is referred to the authorities mentioned in notes 4 and 5 above, to A . F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, England, 1 9 2 5 ) , to William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism ( N e w York, 1 9 3 8 ) , and to Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans (London, 1 9 4 8 ) .

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of the reign and a very prolific writer, but also because his views had directly influenced the Marian exiles during their sojourn in Switzerland. Besides, his followers in Scotland were providing violent opposition to Roman Catholic rule there. With him must be grouped Peter Martyr, Bullinger, and Beza as authorities with whom the returning exiles had had contact and whose convictions continued to influence Elizabethan religious thought. Under their sway had come some of the nobles (most notably the Earl of Bedford), the majority of bishops consecrated soon after Elizabeth's accession, and many of the writers who were later responsible for translations of their sermons, commentaries, and other works. Most of these people had brought back to England the hope that the new Elizabethan Settlement would incorporate the main features of the Continental churches they had attended—a hope which was disappointed but which served to nourish the Puritan movement. Moreover, to assure the continuance of their influence upon English thought, the Continental reformers had been quick to give their support to Elizabeth's rule. Shortly after her accession, Calvin had himself dedicated to her his commentaries upon Isaiah, a gift which was but coldly received because Elizabeth held him in some sort responsible for the publication, at Geneva, of John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment and Empire of Women (1558)® Calvin thereupon wrote an anxious letter to Cecil, dissociating himself from Knox and his conclusions, and protesting that he had defended government by women—if they were divinely inspired, as presumably Elizabeth was—and would continue to reverence the Queen despite her unkind reception of his book. 10 Believing that Elizabeth was bound to the Protestant cause because the legitimacy of her birth and her claim to the throne depended upon her father's establishment of a reformed church in England, Calvin and the other religious leaders decided on the whole to overlook those Anglican practices with which they were in disagreement in the hope that their English followers would eventually eradicate them. In general, they instructed their disciples to conform rather than to resist, advocating a policy of "tarrying for the magis8 Aylmer's Harbor owe for Faith ft/11 and Trewe Subiectes, produced in answer to this work, and probably the first book to be dedicated to Dudley, has been discusscd above, pp. 2 7 - 2 9 . 10 Zurich Letters, edited by Hastings Robinson for the Parker Society, 2d Series (Cambridge, England, 1 8 4 5 ) , pp. 3 4 - 3 6 .

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11

trate" —a mode of attack which in practice was not dissimilar to the method more recently termed "boring from within." At the same time, they maintained a friendly correspondence with many of the English ecclesiastical authorities and with some of the nobility as well. Elizabeth and her government could not reject their support against the common enemy, the Roman Catholics. Nonetheless, the strong bond between these men and the English Puritans met with a certain amount of ecclesiastical disapproval, and the extremists were sometimes labeled "Genevans" as a term of opprobrium. Preferring the Protestant polities of the Continent to their own form of church government, and regarding Swiss practices as superior both spiritually and morally, the Puritans appealed to the authority of Calvin and the other religious leaders in their refusal to subscribe to the Elizabethan discipline and in their rejection of episcopal authority. Thus, in 1583 or 1584, they declined to follow the practice enjoined by the Book of Common Prayer on the ground that "by subscribing . . . we should dissent from other Churches which at this daie professe the Gospell, by allowing some things which thei disalow, and allso from the most excellent instrument of God in these daies, whose writings are put into our hands by publique authoritie." 1 2 The "instrument of God" referred to was Calvin, whose writings—especially The Institution of Christian Religion, the summa of Protestantism to which these nonconformists were appealing—had appeared in many officially sanctioned English editions by this time. 13 The Anglican authorities thus found themselves in the curious position of giving authorization to publications which could be used as Puritan propaganda. "True religion" for the Puritans consisted exclusively in those beliefs, practices, and institutions specifically enjoined by Scripture; the individual conscience was called upon to reject as "impure" the traditional aspects of Anglicanism for which no Biblical warrant could be found. As a support and guide for private judgment, the scriptural commentaries, interpretive sermons, and doctrinal treatises 11

For this phrase, see Pearson, Church and Stale, p. 7 1 . The Seconde Parte of a Register, cd. Albert Peel (Cambridge, England, 1 9 1 5 ) , I, 226. 13 Thomas Norton's English translation of Calvin's Institution had been printed with the following words on the title page: "Seen and allowed according to the order appointed in the Quenes maiesties iniunctions. Imprinted at London by Reinolde Wolfe and Richarde Harison. Anno. 1 5 6 1 . Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum." By 1584 six editions of this translation had been published in England, as well as the Latin text and two editions of a Latin epitome. Sec STC 4 4 1 4 - 2 1 , 4427-28. 12

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of the Continental reformers provided a valuable body of reference. There can be little doubt that English translations of these and other writings of the Protestant leaders of the Continent were chiefly inspired by the Puritan hope of reforming the English church. In effect, as Hooker later pointed out, the translators were publicizing the authority of these men in all church matters, including ecclesiastical polity and Christian morality: they were attempting to erect a court of appeal outside the bounds of the independent English communion. Yet, since Anglicanism differed little from Calvinism in essential dogma, and since the English bishops had produced no theologian to challenge the leadership of Calvin, Beza, and Bullinger in Protestant thought, the censors could hardly object to the printing of their works. Apparently noncontroversial, pious in intent, and prefaced by patriotic dedications, the Puritan translations were immune to censorship and often appeared under the highest auspices. T h e reforming tendencies of the translators are usually betrayed in their dedicatory epistles. T o further their desire to recast the English church along the lines of Geneva, these writers constantly endeavor to emphasize the identity of their religion with the Protestant movement of the Continent. As we have seen, this international aspect of Puritanism appealed for political reasons to most of the progressive patrons whom they were addressing, and translations from Calvin became a part of the patrons' campaign for a policy of aggression against Spain. Thus, although neither the translation nor the patronage of a Calvinist work is ipso facto evidence of the Puritanism of the writer or patron involved, in most such publications their sympathies are fairly obvious. And their adherence to the Puritan cause can usually be proved by outside testimony. T h e second group of religious writings to receive official encouragement, works of propaganda aimed directly against the Roman Catholics, was also sponsored by Puritan patrons and produced largely by Puritan writers. The two movements are of course closely related. For the grave translators of Calvin were also the most bitter opponents of Rome, the most anxious to arouse the public to the dangers of Catholicism at home and abroad; and, besides, the Puritans relished the opportunity to display their patriotism and their ability in defense of the Crown. In dedications they stress the unified purpose of their activities, often hailing the patron of an anti-Catholic work as the champion of "true religion," or

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the protector of a Puritan translation as the enemy of the Pope. T h e y w i s h e d to identify the two causes in the minds of the public. T h e y did not, h o w e v e r , have a monopoly of anti-Catholic writing. T h e field w a s open to all. Most of the anti-Catholic writing was controversial; that is, it w a s produced for a special occasion and in answer to a specific attack. Despite the existence of laws for the suppression a n d destruction of dangerous and seditious publications, a certain a m o u n t of writing designed to u n d e r m i n e f a i t h in the Queen's legitimacy, in the status of her church, a n d in the character of her court m a n a g e d to achieve circulation. T h e arrival of the Jesuit mission and their acquisition of a secret press intensified the need for defense. Elizabeth's apologists in reply got patriotic pamphlets against the Romanists, and produced

out

weightier

books in which the charges w e r e answered with the f u l l panoply of scholarship. O n e of the features most notable in these controversial w o r k s is their carefulness in repeating the charges to w h i c h they g i v e a n s w e r ; for it was both traditional humanistic usage and g o o d policy to w o o the support of public opinion by at least appearing to put readers in possession of the facts instead of keeping them in uneasy and vulnerable ignorance. T h e reader is adjured to ponder the a r g u m e n t s on both sides a n d is referred to Scripture, history, and learned authority f o r proof that the church and government of E n g l a n d are righteous and benevolent. Internal religious dissension, the repeated alarms of Catholic plots, and the spectacle of the religious wars across the Channel kept up the public's interest in pietistic writings of all kinds. T h i s active and immediate concern is reflected in the dedications, which are likely to be more lively and more hortatory as well as longer than the usual prefatory epistle. T h e translators, especially, tend to utilize their dedications for the expression of personal points of view for which there w o u l d be no place within the limits of the w o r k itself. T h e epistle becomes a vehicle for the exposition of the work's value for English readers, emphasizing and pointing current issues and s h o w i n g the particular application of general principles to recent events and problems. W h e n the writer thinks he has important material to add to the subject, beyond what w a s said by the original author, he m a y run off into an extended digression. B u t he usually returns at the end to the thesis c o m m o n to dedications of religious books as to most books, that the production of

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them is of benefit to the nation and the patronage of them a patriotic obligation. Among the patrons of these two groups of religious writings, the proPuritan and the anti-Catholic, Leicester was the most powerful; he was probably also one of the most actively interested. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted primarily to a discussion of Leicester's encouragement of translations from Continental reformers and other aspects of Puritan activity; his patronage of the closely related antiCatholic campaign will be treated in the chapter next following. It is one of the most curious circumstances of that most curious of histories, the development of Leicester's reputation, that many authorities are unwilling to credit Leicester's adherence to the Elizabethan Puritans. Despite the evidence of dedications and other contemporaneous documents, the fact that Elizabeth's most important favorite gave generous support and sorely needed protection to the cause of the advanced reformers has often been disregarded or suggested only grudgingly. 14 The libels published against Leicester by his Roman Catholic enemies, including charges as extravagant and absurd as those rehearsed in Leycesters Commonwealth, have been handed down for three and a half centuries, but we are rarely called upon to note that the Catholics themselves thought him a Calvinist and regarded his vigorous protection of the reformers as a chief obstacle in their path. 15 14 Examples of this attitude are numerous. For evidence of what amounts to a conspiracy of historians to vilify Leicester's name, see Frederick Chamberlin, Elizabeth and Leycester ( N e w York, 1 9 3 9 ) , passim and Appendices 1 - 1 0 . T o cite one of the more recent examples, M. M. Knappen in Tudor Puritanism, while recording Leicester's services to the Puritans, declares that "there is no evidence that he ever had a sincere religious thought" (p. 1 9 1 ) , and further states that "Vacillating Leicester's value to the party probably has been exaggerated by the historians" (p. 2 9 3 ) . A . F. Scott Pearson in Thomas Cartu/right and Elizabethan Puritanism, pp. 2 6 6 - 6 7 , g > v « an adequate summary and defense of Leicester's reputation as a Puritan leader, but in Church and State, pp. 1 1 9 , 1 2 0 , implies that his motives were primarily "mercenary." 15 The Catholic attacks, printed abroad as religious and political propaganda, pictured Leicester as a vile tyrant who with his allies in the court dominated the English government for their own ends and encouraged the spread of Puritanism and Calvinism. T h e legend of Leicester's murders and other crimes was repeated ad nauseam. Most of the attacks derive from the anonymous Leycesters Commonwealth, published in 1 5 8 4 under the title The Copie of a Leter, wryten by a Master of Arte of Cambridge, and also known as Father Parsons Greencoat, which apparently circulated in manuscript before publication and may have had a Latin original. They include a contemporary French translation and a Latin adaptation, the Flores Calvinistici (Naples, 1 5 8 5 ) , by Julius Brieger. Similar charges against Leicester were used by Cardinal Allen in his Admonition to England of 1588. The influence of these libels is discussed by Chamberlin, op. cit., chaps, i and ii.

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In the present case the matter of Leicester's personal religious beliefs is for the main part irrelevant, but it is important that we recognize the significance of his service to the Puritan cause. As we have seen, Leicester was connected by ties of blood or marriage with most of the more advanced Protestant nobility of his age. W i t h their political allegiance and through the long-continued favor of Elizabeth, he wielded an enormous influence which he repeatedly brought to the assistance of his Puritan adherents. H e had proteges among the higher authorities at the universities and in the church from w h o m he could also demand favors. His political opinions, closely allied to those of Walsingham, were vigorously progressive, and in his opposition to Rome, his defiance of Spain, his sympathy with imperialist plans for the N e w World, and his defense of the Netherlands, he was consistently in harmony with the views of the reformers at home and abroad. H i s support of political, military, and naval plans for achieving the goals most ardently desired by the radical Protestants was much more daring and far-sighted than the moderate policies of Burghley. T h e latter, associated by bonds of marriage and friendship with such reformers as Cheke and Sir Anthony Cooke, and confirmed in advanced Protestantism by early training, was perhaps more sympathetic in his private beliefs with the religious aims of the Puritans than Leicester himself, but his sponsorship of their domestic program was inconsistent, betraying a certain nervousness, and he distrusted and opposed their foreign policy. Perhaps he recognized, as Leicester apparently did not, the dangers to the security of the state inherent in their doctrine, a n d obviously he feared the risks and expenses of war with Spain. It may be that our reluctance to recognize the elegant Leicester, Elizabeth's courtier, as a Puritan is the result of our long preoccupation with the Roundheads and the Pilgrim Fathers—the psalm-singers and rigid doctrinaires of the seventeenth century. In applying the term "Puritan" to such men as Leicester, Warwick, Huntingdon, Bedford, the Sidneys, and Walsingham, we must be careful to distinguish between Elizabethan Puritanism and the separatist Puritanism of the next century. Elizabethan Puritanism was on the whole broad, idealistic, humane in its purposes. 16 T h e reformers and their noble patrons put loyalty to the Crown before small matters of observance or doctrine, hoping always to purify the church from within; most of them regarded the surplice, for ex18

For the character of the Puritan party at Elizabeth's court, see Haller, op. at., p. 3 3 0 .

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ample, as a vestige of papism, foreign and un-English, and looked upon the hierarchy of the prelates in somewhat the same unsympathetic but tolerant way, becoming intolerant and recalcitrant only when ecclesiastical authority attempted to impose uniformity of religious practice. Their real intolerance was aimed against the Catholics as subverters of the state, and against heretics and infidels as destroyers of the very basis of Christianity. The movement was individualistic, granting to each man the right of forming his opinion by personal examination of Scripture, and it was, for the times, democratic, embracing all classes and desiring a form of church government at least theoretically more representative of the will of the people than the Anglican system. It wished to achieve its reforms through Parliamentary legislation and with the support of public opinion. It clamored for an educated and enlightened clergy because it held that the nation's well-being required good preaching instead of the leadership of "blind mouths." 17 It was not yet revolutionary. There can be no implication, in the sponsorship of Puritanism by Leicester and his party at court, of an attack upon the established order, for they were the established order. They were committed to the defense of Anglicanism. It is equally illogical to accuse these aristocratic patrons of hypocrisy. Even if we granted that they encouraged the Puritans only because they needed the support of that vociferous group for their aggressive foreign policies (a concession at variance with the evidence presented below of their efforts on behalf of the preachers) it would still be true that they acted for the welfare of the nation as a whole, according to their view of it. The suggestion that their patronage had an ulterior motive, the mercenary hope that they would be enriched by the alienation of the lands and revenues of the bishops, has indeed been entertained by A. F. Scott Pearson, one of the most careful and philosophic students of sixteenth-century Puritanism, but, as he himself shows, the plans of Thomas Cartwright, Leicester's most distinguished Puritan protégé, proposed a different use for the wealth of the prelates: their revenues were to be diverted for the maintenance of the poor, the ministers, and 17 This particular pica for reform was supported by the results of a well-organized census, taken by the Puritans, of the lower clergy; it revealed ignorance, corruption, neglect, and vestiges of "papism"; see " A Survey of the Ministry" under the date 1586 in Peel, The Seconde Parle of a Register, II, 8 8 - 1 7 4 . The demand for an educated clergy is found in Puritan writings as far apart in method as Spenser's Shepheardes Calender and the Marprelate tracts.

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18

the universities. Moreover, even if these revenues had gone directly into the pockets of the nobles, the result eventually would have been the aggrandizement of the state at the expense of the church. Greedy and ambitious as Elizabeth's courtiers were, they usually identified themselves in their lust for power with the state of which they were a part and spent a large portion of their fortunes on projects of national importance. This was particularly true of the progressives, whose money went into the endowment of colleges, the financing of New World ventures, the war in the Netherlands, and the defense of the realm against Spain, as well as into extravagant clothes—and literary patronage. If they were jealous of the power and wealth of episcopacy, it was because they thought they could put that power and wealth to a better use for the nation. Their greed was for fame and glory rather than for gain. 19 That Leicester's patronage of the Puritans was not merely the passive acceptance of dedications which would increase his prestige and serve his political interests, but included as well the active defense of the Puritan domestic program, is a matter of record. Only a few instances of his efforts on behalf of the reform movement can be given here, but they will suffice when taken in conjunction with his sponsorship of Puritan writings. One of the ways in which Leicester could use his influence and that of his party to befriend the Puritans was to intercede on behalf of nonconforming ministers who had been deprived of their livings. So successful was he that Archbishop Parker complained bitterly, saying that his attempts to secure uniformity were negated by Leicester's encouragement of the dissenters.20 T o the earl personally wrote the radical preachers John Feild and Thomas Wilcox, imprisoned for their authorship of the first Admonition to the Parliament of 1572, asking that he intercede with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their release, and that he sue the Privy Council to the same end, and their wives drew up a separate petition asking him to use his influence with the Queen.21 That he ob18

Pearson, Church and Slate, pp. 1 1 9 , 1 2 0 . This is not to deny that they hoped to increase their fortunes by various ventures. They needed money because they were always in debt. Leicester beggared himself in the Netherlands campaign, Ralegh in the Virginia venture, and Walsingham died a poor man. 20 John Strype, The Life and Actt of Matthew Parser (Oxford, 1 8 2 1 ) , II, 3 9 3 - 9 5 , 423, 529; Strype provides instances of Leicester's interference for the protection of Puritan clergymen who appealed to him, e.g.. I, 3 2 6 - 2 8 , 4 3 7 ; II, 1 9 1 , 273. 21 Peel, The Seconde Parte of a Register, I, 9 1 . 19

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tained their freedom is indicated by the fact that again, in 1577, the parishioners of Aldemary petitioned Leicester, as one who has "procured the libertie and restoring againe of sundrie learned and painfull prechers to their places that were dismissed," to secure for them the return of their suspended preacher, John Feild, pointing out that the latter had been in the service of Leicester's brother Warwick for over twenty years. 22 A n undated letter addressed by Leicester to the Bishop of Lincoln throws an interesting light on the methods employed by the earl on behalf of his protégés. H e demands the restoration of a leading Puritan, one Arthur Wake, in terms which suggest a kind of blackmail: the bishop is enjoined to cease molesting Wake, "as you intende to have me favorable in anye of your requests hereafter, and as you will gyve me cause to contynue your frende and thinke well of you."

23

If, as seems

certain, the letter was written between 1570 and 1584, the Bishop of Lincoln addressed was none other than Thomas Cooper, who, as we have seen, had reason to be grateful to Leicester. Leicester's continued patronage of such strongly Anglican ecclesiastics as Bishops Cooper and Chaderton (once the earl's chaplain), despite their enmity to the Puritans, may have as its explanation his desire to use his influence with them in defense of the radical preachers under his protection. Of Leicester's personal interest in controversial matters there are also records extant. His assistance was repeatedly sought in the recurring and troublesome vestiarian controversy, and in 1573 he had his protégé, Sir John Woolley (who had succeeded Ascham as Latin Secretary to the Queen), write a letter to Sturmius requesting that the opinions on this subject of Beza, Gualter, and other Continental authorities be collected and sent to the universities of England. T h e writer describes himself and his patron as booted for a journey—they were on progress with the Queen—but so anxious to find a means of allaying the dispute that they have postponed their departure for the composition of the letter. 24 In appealing to the Swiss reformers Leicester probably hoped for a decision which would either reinforce the position of the Puritans or 2

-lbid., pp. 1 3 5 , 1 3 6 . Fcild's dedications to Leicester are discussed in the next chapter. Quoted by Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 1 6 2 , from S.P. Dom. Eliz. Add. No. 52. 1. 24 Zurich Letters, 2d Series, pp. 2 2 0 - 2 1 . According to Strype (Parser, I, 3 1 4 ) , Leicester in 1 5 6 4 had used his influence to prevent the Privy Council from authorizing the Advertisements of the Ecclesiastical Commission prescribing uniformity in vestments and in the ministration of the sacrament». 23

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allow them conscientiously to conform. His scrvice to the Puritan cause in persuading the Queen to moderate the severity of Archbishop Parker in the matter of the ministration of the communion was gratefully remembered by the reformers in their later troubles under the sterner Archbishop Whitgift. Writing in 1584 to ask for similar leniency regarding vestments, a Puritan writer declares: . . . my Lord of Leicester . . . knoweth this cause more certainlie: the peace of our Church in this point is a monument of his honourable service to God at that time, for which I doubt not but he shall finde his just reward." That Leicester's attempts to serve as moderator between the Puritans and the bishops were motivated by a sympathetic and informed interest in their problems is demonstrated by an event which occurred about this time of which the Puritans left a full record. 26 T h e Puritans having refused, as we have seen, to subscribe to the use required by the Prayer Book, at Leicester's request a conference was called for discussion of "things needfull to be reformed in the booke of Common prayer" before the extremists would accept it. Leicester asked "for his satisfaction" that he might hear "what the mynisters did reprove, and how such things were to be awnswered" by the ecclesiastical authorities. Accordingly Whitgift, assisted by Cooper, now Bishop of Winchester, summoned to Lambeth two of the Puritan ministers, and allowed them to present their case before Leicester, Grey, and Walsingham, nobles known to be Puritan sympathizers. 27 Leicester took an intelligent part in the discussion, showing his Puritan sympathies by occasionally reminding one of the ministers of an important controversial matter which had not been raised. His moderating influence is seen in a remark he made concerning the Puritans' objection to the use of the sign of the cross: Here my Lord of Leicester saide it was a pitifull thing that so many of the best mynisters and painfull in their preching, stood to be deprived for these things.28 T h e disputation continued for two days without much being gained by either side, although Walsingham later prevailed upon Whitgift not to 25

Peel, The Seconde Parte of a Register, I, 187. Ibid., pp. 275-83; see also Knappen, op. cit., p. 280. On the second day of the conference Burghley was also present, and Sandys, Archbishop of York, took Cooper's place. 28 Peel, The Seconde Parte of a Register, I, 282. 26

27

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suspend or deprive clergymen who denied scriptural authority to the Book of Common Prayer, so long as they agreed to use it. D u r i n g the years 1583-86, repeated appeals from Leicester and other members of the Privy Council to Whitgift, demanding the restoration of deprived Puritan preachers, constantly emphasize the necessity of retaining a learned and respected ministry to offset the dangerous activities of the R o m a n Catholics. Petitions from the people and from the L o r d Mayor and Aldermen, supplications in prose and verse to the Queen and to Parliament, all give additional evidence that the growth of Puritanism as a popular movement was being stimulated by increasing fear of Catholicism. 2 9 F r o m the point of view of the civil authorities, the zeal of the Puritans in anti-Jesuit propaganda was extremely valuable; if it were rejected, the Spanish might find a fifth column ready to assist them in a war with England. Moreover, it was necessary to consolidate the people at this time of national emergency. T h e latter point is stressed by Leicester in a letter to Whitgift on behalf of Thomas Cartwright, who had been in exile in the Netherlands since 1577 and had been imprisoned on his return to England in 1585. Writing later that year, Leicester solicits the archbishop to grant Cartwright a license to preach, guaranteeing his protege's loyalty to the Church of England, and urging that such a concession would help bring the nonconformists to obedience. 30 Although Whitgift refused to grant the license at this time, Leicester apparently effected some sort of compromise by the next year, for in 1586 he appointed Cartwright Master of L o r d Leicester's Hospital in W a r w i c k . There, under the protection of both Leicester and Warwick, Cartwright continued his Puritan activities until death removed his two patrons and he was committed to the Fleet. 3 1 These records of Leicester's willingness to use his influence on behalf of the Puritans furnish the background against which we can understand his patronage of religious writings, and they corroborate the statements concerning his service to "true religion" which appear in the dedications. Leicester's career as a patron of Puritan-inclined writings began even before he was raised to the earldom. In 1561 there appeared under his protection a work from the pen of the French refugee writer and preacher, Jean Veron. Its lengthy title gives a fair idea of its purpose and 29 30

Ibid., pp. 157 ff. passim; see also Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, pp. 243-44. 31 Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 2 3 1 . Ibid., pp. 290 ff.

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of the author's tone: A moste necessary treatise of free wil, not onlye against the Papistes, but also against the Anabaptistes, which in these our daies, go about to rentie the detestable heresies of Pelagius, and of the other Luciferians, whiche say and affirm, that we be able by our own natural strength to fulfil the law and commaundementes of God. Made dialoge wyse by Ihon Veron, in a manner word by woorde, as he did set it forth in his lectures at Paules. Veron's case against the doctrine of free will, here set forth in a dialogue in which four speakers participate, was in harmony with Calvinist teachings and served to reinforce the position of the more radical Protestants in the new Elizabethan church. As the writer reminds Dudley in his very long epistle, he had earlier that year published A fruteful treatise of predestination, in which he had demonstrated the Calvinist doctrine of predestined grace from Scriptures and from ancient authorities; that it appeared in a second edition in the same year, enlarged by an "apology" or further argument, indicates that it provoked considerable interest. T o that work the present Treatise of free wil is offered as a natural sequel. Most of the dedication is devoted to exposition of purpose and serves as an author's preface. Towards the end, however, the writer addresses Dudley directly as "the Mecenas and patron of all godlye learninge and true religion." He closes with a prayer, "beseching almighty God the authoure of al goodnesse, to prosper al your godlye enterprises to his honoure and glorye, and to the common wealth of this floryshynge realme." There is no evidence that the writer was personally known to Dudley, but Veron must have been a preacher of some note in London in these last years of his life. He had lived in England ever since the establishment of the Reformation under Henry VIII. Apparently he had supported himself in that earlier period as a tutor in Latin and perhaps also in French; today he is remembered chiefly for his Dictionarie in Latine and English (1575 and 1584), an adaptation of the Latin-French dictionary of Estienne which he prepared for the use of English schoolboys by the addition of English meanings, and which was revised before its posthumous publication by the removal of the French definitions. Shortly after the accession of Edward VI, Veron took advantage of the new religious climate by publishing the first series of his religious pamphlets, directed chiefly against the mass, and in 1551 he entered holy orders, receiving an appointment to a London rectory the following year.

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With the accession of Queen Mary his radical religious views—and perhaps also his allegiance to the party of Northumberland, Leicester's father—got him into trouble. Almost immediately (in August, 1553) he was arrested as a seditious preacher. Deprived of his benefice, he was imprisoned for the duration of the Catholic regime. When Elizabeth came to the throne he was freed and restored; his recent troubles were rewarded by the bestowal of a number of preferments in London. He died early in 1563. During the last two years of his life he sent no less than six of his controversial religious treatises to the press, attacking such Roman Catholic doctrines as justification by works and the adoration of saints, and supporting such Protestant teachings as predestination and the marriage of clergy. T o this series belongs the work addressed to Dudley. A number of his published writings appeared as dialogues, that form beloved of Tudor schoolmasters for their textbooks, and it is clear that his early work as a teacher prepared him for his later career as a bold and effective expositor of religious doctrine. When his Dictionarie was published, some twelve years after his death, Veron was memorialized in the editor's address to the reader as "a painfull preacher of Gods gospell here amongst vs." T h e next work of a Puritan nature to appear under Dudley's sponsorship aligned him even more closely with the radical reformers, for it emanated from the group of returned Marian exiles who had imbibed Calvin's teaching at the fount. In 1562 there was published under Dudley's protection a translation from the French of The Lawes and Statutes of Geneua, of which the full title ran on significantly: as well concerning ecclesiastical Discipline, as ciuill regiment, with certeine Proclamations duly executed, whereby Gods religion is most purelie mainteined, and their common wealth quietli gouerncd. It was printed in London by Rowland Hall, who was closely associated with the advanced reformers, having printed the Calvinist Bible in Geneva in 1560 and issued several of Calvin's works in translation after his return to London. He used the arms of Geneva as his device. 32 Calvin's city was the Utopia of the Elizabethan Puritans, a theocratic government which served as model for their ideas of wholesome rule. That Dudley 32 E . Gordon Duff. A Century of the English Book Trade (London, 1 9 0 s ) , pp. 64, 65. These arms appear on the title page of the book under discussion. Other books printed by Hall and dedicated to Dudley in the 1560's include Certaine Worses of Chirurgerie. The Castel of Memorie, The Philosophers game, and The Playe of the Cheasts, all discussed in Chapter II.

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lent his n a m e to a b o o k describing its benefits advertised his early adherence to the P u r i t a n c a u s e . 3 3 T h e dedication is addressed to L o r d Robert D u d l e y by the translator, R o b e r t F i l l s ( F y l l ) , w h o as an exile returned f r o m G e n e v a was a disciple o f C a l v i n and B e z a . 3 4 H i s words leave n o doubt that he intended his translation to serve as p r o p a g a n d a for the cause of radical r e f o r m and that he regarded D u d l e y as a protector of that cause. H e opens w i t h testimony to the patron's " z e a l e . . .

to the a d u a u n c e m e n t o f

gods

glorye in this realme, and the singuler gentlines and f a u o u r that you usually shewe to the f u r t h e r e r s thereof," which, he says, h a s encouraged h i m to seek the " d e f e n c e a n d c o m m e n d a c i o n " of Dudley's n a m e , and to a c k n o w l e d g e h i m as " a w o r t h i e patrone of good and godlye m e a n i n g s . " T h e dedicator then devotes a rather heated passage to an attack upon those enemies o f all translators, the carping critics whose " m a l i c i o u s and slaunderous t o n g u e " distills a "pestilent poyson." T o " p r e v e n t and c u r e " their attempts to m i s c o n s t r u e his w o r k , he will explain " b o t h e the purport and substaunce o f the boke, and the m i n d e and m e a n i n g o f m y selfe the t r a n s l a t o u r , " so that D u d l e y

may be a r m e d w i t h " a

trew

apologie and d e f e n c e " of the treatise under his protection. T h e w o r k contains laws and statutes, without which a c o m m o n w e a l t h c a n n o t endure, taken out o f the register book o f G e n e v a — a Citie counted of all godly men singularly well ordered, as well for good policie, as also for the gouernemente of the Churche in all estates, orders, and vocations, where sincere religion is wonderfullye aduaunced, erroure mightely beaten downe, vertue excedingly maynteyned, vice seuerelye repressed: suche is the execution of those lawes, such straight discipline is practised, that not only grosse crimes are punished, but common (faultes as men take them) are narowlye seene vnto, as blasphemye, heresye, straunge and pestiferous doctrine, fornication spirituall and corporall, swearinge, sclaunderinge and suche lyke, so that in dede that place maye be a lantarne to manye other . . . It is " t h e intent a n d m i n d e o f the translatour" to present E n g l i s h m e n with a faithful translation of " t h i s treasure" as a model f o r their o w n government, 33 Strypc (Parser, I. 3 1 1 ) dates his patronage of the Puritans from 1564, but this dedication supplies evidence for a date at least two years earlier. 3< Fills is listed in the "Census" of C. H. Garrett's Marian Exiles (Cambridge, England, 1 9 3 8 ) , pp. 1 5 2 - 5 3 , where the suggestion is made that he was the father of John Feild, the famous Puritan. C. 1565 Fills dedicated A Brirje and piththie [sic] Summr of the Christian Faith, a translation from Bcza, to Huntingdon, Leicester's brother-in-law and him-

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that thereby they may beholde as in a glasse, a christian reformation, and employe them selues to the imitation as farre forthe as they see best for them, as shalbe most conuenient. A n d here f o l l o w s an interesting disclaimer of subversive purpose, showi n g h o w conscious even the early Puritans were that their doctrine m i g h t be considered inimical to the authorities: Hereby maye not bee gathered that the Translatour is a newe lawe maker, or author of any innouacion, or that his industrie and diligence is in any wyse preiudiciall to the lawes of this our realme, which are laudable, good, and godlye . . . H e offers this w o r k to be read as we read all histories, so that we m a y learn " t h y n g e s profitable, pleasaunte, and necessarye," but he believes also that in comparison with accounts of the Jews, Grecians, and R o m a n s this picture "not only of a wel instituted c o m m o n weale but of a w e l l r e f o r m e d churche" provides a better pattern for Christians

to

follow. T h e dedication continues at some length. T h e translator prays that the fruit of his labor may redound to the glory of G o d by producing " t r e w repentaunce and amendment of lyfe." Further, he hopes that the w o r k will serve as a refutation of those w h o attack " m e n of our profession," claiming that they went into exile in order to enjoy liberty a n d licentiousness; the rigid discipline practiced in G e n e v a is proof that " s m a l l lycence is in oure reformed churches left to synne." T h i s r e m a r k provides him with opportunity for an attack on Catholic countries— " r e a l m e s d r o w n e d in their superstición, where their truste in mans pard o n hathe quenched the feare of gods displeasure, and where horrible synnes are dispensable for m o n e y " — w i t h whose cause he apparently identifies the slanderers. T h e dedication closes with the usual translator's apology, this time for over-literal interpretation, and with a prayer f o r the continuance and increase of the patron's " g o d l y zeale and Christian affection." T o j u d g e f r o m the flow of dedications, Dudley's zeal did continue. N o w o r k w a s more suitable than this outline of the G e n e v a n discipline, held u p as a model by those w h o wished to make E n g l a n d over, to m a r k h i m as a patron of Puritanism. It was followed, in 1564, the year in self a notable patron of Puritans; Fills's epistle attacked the corrupt clergy. This work had at least five editions by 1 5 8 9 (STC 2 0 0 7 - 1 3 ) .

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which he was raised to the titles of Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester, by the dedication to him of a much more impressive work—the anonymous translation of Peter Martyr's Commentaries on Judges—addressed to the earl by its printer and publisher, John Day. 3 5 Leicester's arms and motto are printed on the reverse of the title page; indeed, the publication as a whole seems to have been designed by Day to greet him in his new honors, since it was apparently the first to be dedicated to him after his creation, and since the epistle emphasizes his new responsibilities as "a Iudge and Ruler of this my natiue countrye and people" who may be compared with the Judges of Israel. Day was one of the most important printers of early Elizabethan times, holder of the Queen's patent for the valuable monopoly of printing and selling ABC's and catechisms, publisher of Foxe's Actes and Monuments and of many other works, including several dedicated to Leicester himself. 30 Imprisoned under Queen Mary, he had escaped to the Continent, where he had probably worked with Foxe in the preparation of the Actes and Monuments, a project which his epitaph credits him with initiating—"He set a Fox to wright how martyrs runne." 3 7 His part in the production of this influential Protestant work and his publication of many translations from the Swiss reformers place him definitely in the Puritan group. So also does the patronage of Leicester, whom he calls "the owner of me" in his dedication of 1564. Nonetheless, he later became the protege and private printer of the relatively conservative Archbishop Parker. In selecting Martyr's Commentaries for the large and ambitious printing project which he dedicated to Leicester, Day made a safe choice. For Pietro Martire Vermigli, to give him his full name, had long been an authority for the English Church. As a religious refugee in Eng35 Most fruit full and learned Commentaries of Doctor Peter Martir Vermil Florentine, Professor of Deuinitie, in the Uniuersitye of Tygure, with a very profitable tract of the matter and places . . . Set forth and allowed, accordyng to thorder appointed in the Quenes maiesties injunctions. Imprinted by fohn Day . . . . The date of printing is established in the colophon as 28 September 1564, the day before Leicester's creation. In the copy at the Folger Shakespeare Library, this colophon, which also carries a portrait of John Day, is bound facing the title page. 36 Day's probable connection with Aylmer's Harborowe and his printing of Cuningham's Cosmographical Glasse have been mentioned in Chapter II. For his monopoly of catechisms, etc., see Arber's Transcript, I, 1 1 1 . 37 See Garrett's Marian Exiles, pp. 142-43, for Day's connections with the reformers abroad; the epitaph is quoted in T. F. Dibdin's edition of Typographical Antiquities (London, 1 8 1 0 - 1 9 ) , IV. 45-

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land, he had been influential in the revision of the English prayer book and in the reforms carried through under Leicester's father, the D u k e of Northumberland. A t the accession of Queen Mary, he had fled to Strasbourg and later taught at Zurich, where he died in 1562. 38 Many of the Marian exiles had known him both in England and on the Continent, so that his works might be expected to appeal to the more radical as well as to the more conservative element among the English Protestants. Day begins his dedication by stressing the patriotic purpose of his labors, performed "for the profit of my vniuersal country men." It has pleased God, he continues, "to geue me leaue (by your Lordships meane, vnder the lisence of my most dread soueraigne Lady

and

Prince) to publish and set out to the glory of Gods Maiestie chieflie." N o w he offers this work of Peter Martyr, which has been turned into English at the request of the learned, because he believes it was Martyr's own intention that his writing "shoulde be deliuered to all men generally (Christians or other) to whom it maye doo good." H e foresees the fruits of Martyr's labors going forth "to many countries, nacions, and languages." Day continues in this strain at some length, developing the theme into a laudation of Peter Martyr, from which by an easy transition he passes into praise of his patron. H e does not indulge in elaborate flattery, but chooses instead to draw a parallel between England and Israel. Just as Martyr, he declares, thought it most meete f o r his part, to v n f o l d e the secretes of that c o m m o n w e a l t h in the time of the I u d g e s . . .

S o haue I t h o u g h t it meete f o r m e , and

m y very duty to your honor, h u m b l y to present a n d offer the same ( b y m e n o w p u b l i s h e d ) vnto y o u r honorable hands, as f r o m the Iudges of Israel and h i m , to one a I u d g e and R u l e r of this m y natiue countrye a n d people, v n d e r o u r s u p r e m e I u d g e , our most d r e a d s o u e r a i g n e L a d y the Q u e e n e s Maiestie.

H e closes with an appeal for kind acceptance of his work and a prayer for God's continued favor toward Leicester, "to hys glorye, to the comfort of your selfe, and hope that this your Countrye of Israeli (whereof you are a Iudge) hath conceaued of you." T h e comparison of England with Israel, and of English rulers with 38

Vermigli's career is described in The Cambridge Modern History, II (Cambridge, England, 1907), 391, 392; sec also p. 503.

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Biblical personages, is in the pattern of dedications of religious works, whose writers do not hesitate to use such analogies freely. Like the historians, they were offering "examples" from other times and places for the benefit of their own time and nation. Here, of course, the meaning of the examples would be brought out by the commentary, and the work had the basic purpose, so important in the development of Puritan thought, of sending men directly to the authority of the Scriptures for moral judgments on civil as well as religious matters.39 While Day emphasizes the international character of Christian wisdom, he regards himself as patriotic in making this portion of it available to English readers. He therefore offers it to Leicester, through whose influence he has obtained the Queen's license for publications of a religious nature, as to one who is a ruler of the nation. The same idea that Leicester's position in the state obligated him to take religious works under his protection is to be found in the dedication of another work from the press of John Day, The firste parte of the Christian Instruction, published in 1565 with the Bear and Ragged Staff on the title page. This book was, again, a part of the patriotic program for making the wisdom of the Swiss reformers available to Englishmen, for it was a translation from Pierre Viret of Lausanne, a friend of Calvin. Its special interest lies in the character of the translator, John Shute, who in his dedication to Leicester describes himself as "a simple souldior better practised abrode in martiall matters, then furnished at home with cunnyng of the scoole." Where he served we do not know, but it seems likely that he acquired both his religious convictions and his knowledge of armies by fighting in the religious wars in France. Moreover, to judge from his classical and scriptural references rather than from his conventional apology for the "boystrous and rude termes" of his translation, he had some scholarly training. But it is in the character of a soldier that he addresses Leicester. After declaring his work a testimony of his "good will employed to profite others," Shute continues, yet do I not thincke it a matter vnmeete for my profession and callyng, to knowe the truthe of Gods holy worde, and to further in the same as many as I may. For requisite it is (as your honor and wisedome right well vnderstandeth) all Christians to knowe their God . . . . A souldior is not ex86

A table of references to the Geneva Bible is provided before the text.

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eluded from this band, he must nccdcs in this battell keepc his order and do (by grace) his vttermost endeuoure: Leaste the muster maister, Christe do calle him, and so with great reproche deualize him. H e cries out against the immorality rife in modern armies, the blasphemy, incontinency, and outrage which he holds responsible for the dreadful plagues which light upon nations. F o r the benefit of England he desires to see true religion spread a m o n g her armies: Wherfore that we may continew in quiet peace, and when occasion shall require, obtaine Godly victories, expedient it wer, and for my countreys sake I wish, that our souldiors may be well instructed, in the knowledge and feare of God . . . . I would thinck my self surerer [i/f] in the company of fiue hundred well trayned souldiors, whiche were instructed in the feare and loue of God: then in that of xv. hundred whiche are as well trayned and exercised in the vse of their weapons as they, and doe want the other chief instruction. F o r his part, he declares, "beyng a simple one," he is not ashamed to be exercised in the study of God's book. H e has received great profit and comfort of conscience from reading works of divinity, and in order not to deny his countrymen "the commoditie of the s a m e " he has translated the first part of a work by V i r e t . 4 0 T h i s he now dedicates to Leicester, doubting not that "some shall receiue such fruite of it, as they shall like well my labour, and pray for your Lordship, vnder whose name it is published. A n d so shall my desire in Christ be satisfied." H e closes with a prayer for Leicester's welfare and for the increase of his faith and fear of G o d . T h e translator's patriotic purpose is, of course, based upon the premise that G o d is on the side of the righteous. Leicester's obligation to patronize so profitable a work is implicit not only in his reputation for piety but also in his national role. L i k e an earlier Oliver Cromwell, he is to lead his God-fearing soldiers to victory. According to our traditional ideas of the Queen's favorite, the picture seems absurd, but there is good reason for believing that the religious zeal (if not the pious behavior) fostered by the Puritan movement played its part in the victories of English soldiers and sailors over their "godless" enemies, the Spanish. T h e next work of a religious nature to be dedicated to Leicester brings 40

This "first part" contained four dialogues by Viret: the remaining dialogues were translated by Shute under the title A Christian Instruction, conteyning the Law and the Gospel!, and dedicated to the Countess of Lincoln in 1 5 7 3 .

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us back to his lesser but still significant role as defender of reforming preachers. In 1566, the year following Shute's dedication, Leicester stood sponsor to The Pedegrewe of Heretiques. Wherein is truely and plainely set out, the first roote of Heretiques begon in the Church, since the time and passage of the Gospell, together with an example of the ofspring of the same. This book, printed with the Bear and Ragged Staff on its title page, was addressed to Leicester by its author, John Barthlet. Controversial by nature, intended as an answer to a Roman Catholic pamphlet attacking the Protestant doctrines, the treatise represents the industrious scholarship of an earnest and probably youthful reformer. Complimentary Latin verses by Cambridge men suggest identification of the author with the John Barthlet who was a fellow of Jesus College in 1562-63. 41 Bound at the end of the volume is a folded leaf bearing a woodcut of a tree with branches and leaves, each leaf labeled as a heresy. The epistle to Leicester begins with a salutation from Barthlet, "minister of the Lord Jesus Christ his poore Church," wishing the patron "Zealous loue of God in Christ." The dedication proper is notable for setting out a theory of patronage in keeping with the Renaissance emphasis on fame. Barthlet speaks of dedicating as a laudable custom by which writers "not onley shield and succour their cause, but also aduaunce their Patrones name, with high renoume, thorowout al posteritie." Of Leicester's reputation he has heard only commendation: For hauing compassion on the distressed: for pardoning of your foes: for succouring of the nedefull: for furthering poore suters . . . you are a special Mecaenas, to euery student. The which the Uniuersitie of Oxforde . . . euidentely declareth: but especially for that your Lordship is so fauorable and zelous a friend to the ministerie. The last of these points—Leicester's befriending of the lower clergy—is developed at some length. Barthlet asks for protection against Zoilus, and signs himself "Your Lordships humble Orator." Beyond this dedication there is nothing to connect Barthlet with Leicester, but if our writer is to be identified with a certain Bartlett, divinity lecturer of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and one of the most troublesome of the reformed ministry, it is to be hoped that the patron stood by him in his time of need that same year. The incident is an amusing one and 41 For notice of Barthlet see, besides DNB, John and J. A. Venn, Alumni Part I, Vol. I (Cambridge, England, 1922), p. 99.

Cantabrigienses,

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worth recording here as illustration of the boisterous background against which the dignified dedicatory epistles of Leicester's Puritan writers should be read. T h e story is told in a letter from Bishop Grindal appealing to the Privy Council for help. T h e bishop complains of one Bartlett or Barthlett who, though suspended from preaching, "took upon him to read again without licence." 4 2 When Grindal once more ordered him to stop, he refused to promise silence, "alleging that in conscience he was forced to instruct the ignorant desirous to learn." T h e bishop thereupon committed him to his own (Grindal's) house, thinking to keep an eye on him, but word got out to the preacher's faithful followers, especially those of the female persuasion, with whom, apparently, he was very popular. A n d so, writes Grindal in deep embarrassment, " T h i s day before noon came into my house three-score women of the same parish to make suit for him." T h o u g h Grindal sent them away, saying he would deal instead with half a dozen of their husbands, they refused to depart until requested to do so by Mr. Philpot, another suspended reader. M r . Philpot seems to have had more authority with them than the bishop himself. T h e records are silent concerning the advice sent by the Council to Grindal in his dilemma. Spenser's good Bishop Algrind found it difficult to be severe and repressive in his dealings with overzealous preachers. If the writer and the suspended preacher were, in fact, identical, Leicester may have come to the rescue—and Barthlet's dedication of the same year, with its emphasis on the earl's friendship to the ministry, may be a token of gratitude. Leicester's position as a champion of Protestantism was so well established by 1572 that the authorities selected him to be patron of a work of greatest significance as official propaganda for the Elizabethan Settlement. This was the English translation of Bullinger's refutation of the bull of Pope Pius V against Elizabeth. T h e Pope's proclamation, dated 1570, had made it incumbent upon all Roman Catholics in England to resist their excommunicated queen. Desiring that the refutation carry greater prestige than could be con42 Grindal's letter of May 4, 1566, recording this incident, is to be found in The Remains of Edmund Grindal, D. D„ edited by William Nicholson for the Parker Society (Cambridge, England, 1 8 4 3 ) , pp. 288-89. See also C.S.P. Dom,, 1547-80, p. 2 7 1 , where the preacher's name is spelled "Barthlett."

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ferrcd by any English writer, Archbishop Grindal and Bishops Cox and Jewel had requested Henry Bullinger, the Zurich reformer whose word stood for Protestant opinion in many parts of Europe, to compose it. His answer in Latin, with its prefatory epistle to the three bishops, had been printed by John Day in 1571. 4 3 Bullinger's letter is significant chiefly because he utilizes the occasion to advertise the bond between the English Church and himself. He laments the separation of distance, but declares that the English bishops often write to him to maintain friendship and brotherhood. He is glad to be able to do something for the welfare of the Church in England against Rome; by requesting him to answer the Pope's Bull, the bishops have provided him with an occasion to further a good cause. In closing, he sends salutations to a number of their colleagues in the church, "somtime companions of your exile in Swicerland and Germany," and greetings from Zurich—"And all the Ministers and brethren that be here, wish all prosperitie to you all, in our Lord Iesus Christ." The epistle is intended to persuade readers that the reformed faiths were united in support of Elizabeth and against Roman Catholicism, and at the same time to draw English Protestants closer to the churches of Switzerland. Bullinger maintained his influence in England by taking a moderate line in his advice to the English clergy : the Puritans regarded him as an authority, but he was also in good repute with the Anglican bishops.44 Leicester's patronage of the English version of Bullinger's work may therefore be considered a part of the broad program of the progressive party, which sought the support of the Puritans and emphasized the internationalism of the Protestant cause. The translation, entitled A Confvtation Of the Popes Bull . . . against Elizabeth . . . and against the noble Realme of England: together with a defence of the sayd true Christian Queene, and of the whole Realme of England, was published 43

Bullae Papisticae ante biennium contra . . . Reginam Elizabetham, et contra indytum Angliae regnum promulgatae, refutatio, Orthodoxaeque Reginae, et vniversi Regni AngUae dejensio. (A copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library is stamped on both covers with Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff.) The epistle to the English bishops, dated at Zurich, appears on sig. A.ij.r. and v. The quotations below follow the translation of Arthur Golding, A Confutation Of the Popes Bull (London, 1 5 7 2 ) , sig. A.ij.r. and v. A translation of the epistle appears also in Zurich Letters (2d Series), pp. 1 7 8 - 7 9 . 44 For example, Bullinger had asserted himself on the side of conformity when appealed to in the vestiarian controversy: see his letter to Humphrey and Sampson urging the Puritans to conform rather than desert their posts (Zurich Letters, edited by Hastings Robinson for the Parker Society, 1st Series [Cambridge, England, 1 8 4 2 ] , pp. 3 4 5 - 5 5 ) . This letter had been published by the bishops in 1566 (see Knappen, op. cit., p. 205).

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in 1572, with the familiar Bear and Ragged Staff of Leicester's device on the reverse of the title page. T h e printer was once more John D a y , whose acknowledgment of Leicester's patronage has already been discussed. T h e volume is addressed to Leicester by Arthur Golding, whose dedications of translations from Ovid are mentioned in the preceding chapter. T h u s it was the product of two of Leicester's established protégés. When we consider the elaborate machinery that had gone into the preparation of this piece of official propaganda, and its great contemporary importance, it is clear that the decision to make Leicester its patron was not lightly taken. For the evidence indicates that the whole project had been arranged officially by authorities other than himself, and that the book was dedicated to him in recognition of his popularity as a leader of the Protestant cause. 45 Golding is, of course, best known for his Ovid, but by far the greater bulk of his work was in the religious field. By this date he had already published two translations from Calvin and one from Beza, besides several less-known works of piety, and he was to produce many hundreds of pages more of similar translation before the close of his laborious career. 46 Combining classical scholarship with religious and patriotic fervor, he was perhaps the most effective of all the religious writers. H i s dedication of the Confutation

to Leicester provides a good example of

the force of his rhetoric. Although it is too long to be quoted in

extenso,

selected passages will serve to demonstrate its intent and style. Without preamble, Golding broaches the theme of his epistle, the seditious purpose of the Pope's Bull, which he holds responsible for the rebellion of 1569: What mischiefe hath of late yeares bene attempted against this Realme, and how great a flame hath bene kindled against the walles of the Church, through 45 Strypc declares that Archbishop Parker, acting with the advice of Cecil, procured the printing of both the Latin and the English versions (Purser, II, 7 8 ) . And Day, in a letter to Bullinger, said that he had received the copy from Cox, one of the bishops to whom it had been originally addressed (Zurich Letters, 2d Series, pp. 1 8 3 - 8 4 ) . Since Day was Parker's protégé as well as Leicester's, and Golding served Cecil as well as Leicester, the whole plan may well have been conceived without Leicester's being consulted, until it was determined to make him the official patron of the work. 46 See L. T . Golding, An Elizabethan Puritan (New York, 1 9 3 7 ) ; chap, xii contains a list of Arthur Golding's works. His earlier religious translations included Calvin's C o n ' cernynge Offences, dedicated to Bedford in 1 5 6 7 ; Calvin's Commentaries on Daniel, 1 5 7 0 , prepared "especially for the use of the family of . . . Huntingdon"; and Beza's Boo\ of Christian Questions, 1 5 7 2 , dedicated to Huntingdon. Known as "Beza's Catechism," the last of these works achieved six editions by 1 5 8 6 .

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the great Treasons that haue bene practised to confound the whole state, by reason of the Popes most pestilent Bull: your Lordship right well knoweth: yea and it is euen yet still so apparant (or rather present) in all mens eyes, as there is no wise man but he trembleth at the dreadfull remembraunce, nor simple and godly minded man, but he wondreth at the marueilous disappointing of the daungers, which were sundry times ready to haue ouerwhelmed vs, euen in one moment, had not God reached out his mercifull hand from heauen in the open face of the world to defend vs. For it can not be denied, but that therby, open defiance hath bene made to faythfulnesse and allegeance: honestie and vertue were shamefully defaced: Religion and Iustice were openly assaulted: neiborod and charitie were trecherously despised: God and godlinesse were wickedly impugned: our most vertuous and renoumed Princes Maiestie was traiterously impeached, her rightfull preheminence diuersly assailed, her vnblameable doinges causelesse diffamed, her gracious clemencie scornfully abused, her noble person priuily pricked at, the welfare of the whole Realme daungerously hazarded, and the state thereof either intitled to inward Competitors, or profered as a pray to forreine enemies . . . F e w writers could c o m m a n d so f o r c e f u l a flow of l a n g u a g e for the service of the C r o w n : here indeed were the dividends of investment in the encouragement of learning! G o l d i n g ' s readers, moreover, were in a mood to react readily to his minatory thunderings, for they were still shuddering not only f r o m the rising of the Northern earls but also f r o m the R i d o l f i plot of 1 5 7 1 . In b l a m i n g the Pope's Bull f o r the rising of 1569, although the B u l l itself had not been published until 1570, Golding was setting a pattern for later historians. 4 7 T h e distortion enabled him to exploit to the f u l l the patriotic a l a r m and indignation which had f o l l o w e d the rebellion and had stimulated renewed persecution of the Catholics. T h e s e emotions were to be directed against the B u l l itself. H a v i n g developed this theme at some length, G o l d i n g next emphasizes the lesson f r o m history that G o d is on the side of the Protestants, and proceeds to explain h o w a foreigner came to be Elizabeth's defender, with careful stress on the international character of true religion: Let the Papistes still feele, and let all the world still see, how it is thou onely that fightest for vs O Lord God of Hostes. N o w albeit that the brunt of that 47 Golding took his cue from the Latin edition of 1 5 7 1 , which indicated that the Bull had been promulgated in 1569; see its title as quoted in n. 43. H. N. Birt in The Elizabethan Religious Settlement (London, 1907), pp. 488-89, writing from a Catholic position, holds that historians have falsified the sequence of events in much the same way. Golding's presentation, however, may have had a basis of truth. Theodore Maynard in Queen Elizabeth (Milwaukee, 1940), p. 193, while also presenting a Catholic inter-

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abhominablc Bull, were bent directly at our most gracious soueraigne Lady Queenc Elizabeth, and at her Maiesties Realme and faythfull subiectes: yet notwithstanding forasmuch as the matter doth implyingly concerne the whole state of Christes Church, which the Romishe Antichrist laboureth to draw away from the obedience and loue of her true husband Christ, to the adulterous imbracing of Sathan: Henry Bullinger the Elder, that godly and painfull minister of Christes Gospell in the Church of Zurike, being by nation a mere straunger, but by Christen Religion a deare brother vnto vs, hath . . . written this present confutation therof in Latin, at the request or motion of certeine of our right reuerend and godly Bishops. By meanes wherof, the case which otherwise had bene more peculiar to our selues, is now become common to all true worshippers of Christ . . . Bullinger's use of Latin, the universal language, for his refutation, has set the Bull in its real light, an offense against all of Christendom rather than against a single nation. All true churches are members of one body, allied against the Pope. Golding goes on to summarize the content of Bullinger's work, emphasizing its defense of " t h e Religion n o w stablished by publike aut h o r i s e of this R e a l m e , " and its attack on "the horrible crueltie and outrage of the Popes, in maintaining their wrongfull and vnmeasurable power." Finally, he comes to an exposition of his own motives in producing the translation and dedicating it to Leicester. Since Bullinger desired his treatise to profit as many as possible, the translator by turning it into his mother tongue hopes to make it " m o r e largely and plenteously" available to Englishmen, in whose behalf it was chiefly written. It is, he declares, a worke right necessary and profitable for all such as mind to keep them selues true seruauntes to God, and faithfull subiectes to their prince, or can finde in their hartes to loke vpon the light of the truth to their own benefite and incomparable comfort. T h e last phrase implies that he hopes to reach some Catholics capable of conversion. After dwelling further on the benefits to be derived from the work, Golding dedicates it to Leicester in his double role of ruler of the realm and protector of religion, presuming upon the apparant signes of your Lordships former fauour and great good will towardes me: but specially forasmuch as you are of that most pretation, states that some of the rebels had private information that the Bull would soon be issued. Golding may have had knowledge that this was so.

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honourable number, vpon whose wisedome, foresight, trustinesse, pollicie, and stoutnes, God hath ordained the securitie of our most gracious soueraigne Lady, and of her Maiesties Realme and subiectes, and (which more is) of his owne Religion and holy word to rest and depend: I haue taken boldnes to dedicate this my trauell vnto you, assuring my selfe that your good liking and well accepting of the same, shall cause it to be the more readily receaued, and willingly imbraced of all others . . . In concluding, the translator commits his patron to the protection of God. Golding's expectation of continued favor and his desire to utilize the prestige of his patron in order to secure a ready reception from readers were also the factors which he declared motivated his dedication to Leicester of Calvin's Sermons on fob, two years later. 48 This large volume was one of Golding's enormous labors in the service of religion —more especially, in the furthering of Puritanism. It was very popular, running to five editions by 1584. 40 T h e dedication develops at length the theme of man's miseries and afflictions, and explains the value of the work in teaching acceptance and obedience. Golding then writes, in words reminiscent of his earlier dedication: I haue presumed vpon your Lordships patience to set downe this foresayd breef abstract of this woork, to the intent your honour and all other noble men (to whom cheefly vnder our most graciouse soueraine La die Queene Elizabeth, the care of Gods religion and of this common weale helongeth) beholding the groundwork . . . might like the better of the booke . . . and by your wellyking cause it too bee the more imbraced of others. Apparently the approval of noblemen helped to spread the Gospel. Golding counts upon Leicester's assistance, he says, because he has had previous experience of the patron's "good accustomed fauour"— wherof I haue had so often trial heretofore in accepting of diuers works of mine, though conteyning good, commendable, and godly matters, yet not of like substance, importance, and trauell vnto this. He seems to regard his translation from Calvin as of moral worth superior to both his moralized Ovid and his translation of the

Confutation,

and certainly the volume provides evidence of prodigious industry. T h e 48 Sermons of Master lohn Caluin, vpon the Bookie of lob. Translated out of French by Arthur Golding . . . I¡74. « STC 4444-47-

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translation is presented as a N e w Year's gift, and the dedication closes fittingly with the wish that Leicester will see many happy and prosperous years "vpon this Realme, and vpon the Churche of G o d furthered and aduaunced by your good counsell and indeuer." It was probably due to the influence of Leicester that Golding was in this year admitted a member of the Inner Temple without payment. 50 T h e translator continued to serve the cause of true religion by producing translations from Calvin and other sources, but he did not again address a work to Leicester until 1587. Unfortunately Golding does not particularize the kinds of favor which he received at the hands of Leicester and his other patrons, and we can only infer from his vague statements of gratitude that they befriended him in ways more material than the acceptance of dedications, valuable though this was in terms of prestige and protection. More detailed evidence of patronage, however, is provided in the dedications of lesser religious writers, most notably in those of John Harmar, one of Leicester's protégés at Oxford. In 1579 Harmar addressed to Leicester a translation of Calvin's Sermons

vpon the x. Commandements,

which, like Golding's translation of Calvin's Sermons

a work

on Job, was ap-

parently a best-seller in its day. 5 1 Harmar offers his work with the modesty becoming a novice, calling it "the beginning of small abilitie . . . yet due to your Lordship, vnto whom I owe all thankefullnesse and humble duetie." H e then proceeds, with a candor we could wish more common to dedicators, to thank Leicester for gaining him admission to the famous school, and then the college, founded by William of W y k e h a m : Your Honours good procurement of her Maiesties gracious fauour, whereby I first became a Scholer in Winchester Colledge, afterward to bee remoued to the Newe Colledge of Oxford, whereof at this present I am a poore member, I coulde neuer since forget . . . 52 50 This was called a "spécial admission"; cited from the Inner Temple Records by L . T . Golding, op. cit., p. 266. 51 It appeared in at least five issues by 1 5 8 1 ( STC 4 4 5 2 - 5 6 ) . My quotations are from an issue of the 1 5 8 1 edition with the imprint "by Thomas Dawson, for lohn Harison" (Huntington Library copy); the same dedication appears in the 1 5 7 9 edition and in other issues of the 1 5 8 1 edition. 52 Actual maintenance and payment of fees are probably implied by Harmar's reference to himself as a "scholer" at Winchester; at New College also (see DNB) he had obtained a scholarship in this sense.

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His work is offered as a "signification . . . of a gratefull minde" as well as for "the profite of many the simpler sort." Like other translators, Harmar fears the anonymous critics, and asks Leicester's protection to counteruaile the contrary endeuours of such euill disposed persons as seeke euen vnder the colour of greatest truth, to pull out the eyes of knowledge, and to bring a palpable darkenessc vppon the face of the earth, a darkenesse to be brought in by the grosse myst of deuout ignorance as more perillous, so more lamentable than the temporarie darkenesse of Aegypt.

This Old Testament reference (Exod. 10:21-23) would indicate to Elizabethan readers, taught to identify themselves with the children of Israel to whom alone light was granted, that those critics who strove to produce the darkness of devout ignorance were the Roman Catholics, the Egyptians of their own times. This work of Calvin, "who striketh euer at the originall and roote of sinne, and bringeth the commandement to his olde, first, and true meaning," will restore knowledge of God's law. The remainder of the dedication is devoted chiefly to the theme that the Commandments must be obeyed, especially in England. Harmar closes with the usual prayer for God's protection of his patron, "to the benefite and commoditie of our countrie, and to the profite of his Churche." Harmar was apparently one of those young men of humble birth whose distinguished scholarship won them the encouragement of the Elizabethan authorities. When he wrote this dedication, in 1579, he was a "perpetual fellow" of New College, where he had been granted the B.A. some two years earlier. In 1582 he received the M.A.; afterwards, with Leicester's assistance, he went abroad to continue his studies, attending the lectures of Beza at Geneva, among other adventures. In 1585 Leicester obtained for him the regius professorship of Greek at Oxford. T w o years later Harmar again acknowledged his gratitude to his patron by dedicating to him a translation of Beza's Sermons vpon the Canticle of Canticles, which Was published from the press of Joseph Barnes, the Oxford printer who was another of Leicester's protégés.53 53 Master Bezaes Sermons vpon the three first chapters oj the Canticle of Canticles: Wherein are handled the chiejest points of religion controversed and debated betweene vs and the adversarie at this day . . . . Translated ovt of French into English by lohn Harmar, Her Highnes Professor in the Greece Tovng in the vniversitie of Oxford, and felowe of the Newe College there. At Oxford, Printed by loseph Barnes . . . / 5 S 7 . Harmar's increase in prestige since his earlier publication, which had borne only his initials on the title page, is betokened by the space given his name and titles here.

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In his dedication, H a r m a r declares that at the request of many friends he undertook to produce this translation during his last vacation, having recently received the French copy from the Frankfort book mart. H e was enforced to assume the painful burden of translation chiefly because he wished to promote the glory of G o d , which is especially increased and furthered when his word "is no longer a sealed booke vnto the simple and ignorant, but a volume laid open in clear and capital letters." H e was the more willing to employ his time to this end because he wished to present to his patron a monument of gratitude for the " v n deserued benefits" which Leicester had "heaped from time to t i m e " upon him. T h e s e he recalls in a passage even more significant of the patron's continued interest and generosity than the one quoted above. H e writes: For extend I the cogitation of my mind to the farthest part of my infancy and childhoode, and drawe it foorth as in a continuall and euen threed vnto this present time, what part of my age hath not beene honored with the patronage of your Lordships fauor and goodwil towardes meP T h e ground and foundation of my first studies laid in Winchester by your honours onely meanes, in obtaining her highnesse letters for my preferment vnto that schoole; the rearing of the farther frame of them in this Colledge, wherein placed by your Lordships fauor, I yet continu; my time spent to my great desire and contentment in the parts beyond the Seas by your Honours intercession; my roome and degree I doe nowe enioie in the Vniuersitie beeing one of her Maiesties publique professors, purchased by your Lordships fauourable mediation, doe euerie of them in particular deserue a volume of acknowledgements in al thankfulnes and humble deuotion towards your honour. Evidently Leicester's patronage consisted chiefly of the use of his influence rather than direct support, though from the protege's point of view the scholarships at Winchester and N e w College, and the fellowship and regius professorship which Leicester as chancellor of O x f o r d had been able to obtain for him, were very valuable gifts indeed. Moreover, it is likely that Leicester saw to the payment of his traveling expenses while he was abroad, perhaps by getting him employment as a government agent of some sort. Since his duties in such a capacity would have been confidential, and cloaked by his activities as a student, they would not be mentioned in a dedication. As for the rest, the whole tone of this epistle indicates that the use of "pull" was a matter for ad-

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vertisement and boasting on the protege's part, and involved no sense of shame. It was the proper way to get ahead. The rest of the lengthy dedication is devoted chiefly to explaining "what common profit and emolument the worke it selfe maie bring vnto the Church of God among vs," and to praise of its author, Beza, who was "no lesse then a father vnto me in curtesie and good will, when I liued as a stranger in Geneua, and enioyed the benefite of hearing of him in lectures and sermons." The value of Beza's sermons in controverting "the vsurped tiranny of the Church of Rome" is particularly emphasized. The usual prayer for the patron's continuance of good works concludes the dedication, distinguished in this case by being printed in italics, and by the addition of the words "the patronage of our Vniuersitie" to the list of his services for the church and the commonwealth. Whether in recognition of this work or not, Harmar was in 1587 elected proctor of the university, and in 1588 he became headmaster of Winchester. Although his patron died in the latter year, he continued to achieve honors and rewards, and in the next reign was one of the scholars selected for the preparation of the King James Bible. He appears, on his own account, to have been unusually favored. For Leicester's share in advancing him we can discern no motive in these dedications except the patron's desire to utilize his rare gifts in learning for the academic world. On the other hand, Harmar's devotion to Calvin and Beza suggests that he was of Puritan tendencies, and probably Leicester was glad enough to have so respectable a scholar represent his party in the university. Before concluding the tale of the Calvinist translators who addressed dedications to Leicester in the late 1570's and the decade following, we must notice briefly a number of other religious writings which appeared under his sponsorship during this period. The most interesting of these is a work entitled A Hyve Fvll of Honye: Contayning the Firste Boo\e of Moses, called Genesis. Tvrned into English Meetre. Published in 1578 with the Bear and Ragged Staff on the reverse of the title page, this was an attempt to versify scriptural material by William Hunnis, whose name is punned upon in the title. Hunnis was well known as a musician and poet—as early as 1550 he had begun versifying psalms—and as

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Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal he had also written and produced interludes. Leicester had employed him to provide part of the entertainment for Elizabeth on the occasion of her visit to K e n i l w o r t h in 1575, and had apparently bestowed other favors upon him, gifts of money and the like, in appreciation of the performances of the Children. T h e s e are acknowledged in the dedication, which (like the text) is written in rimed fourteeners: Your Honors Bountie towardes mee, more than I heere confesse, Compelleth mee in humble sort my dutie to expresse. A s i d e f r o m this acknowledgment, the dedication contains little of interest; it begins with the familiar reference to the poor Persian and his h a n d f u l of water, symbolic of the patron's generous acceptance of gifts of small value, and it ends w i t h a blessing and the somber w a r n i n g that " D e a t h w y l haue his fee." Its f o r m is more arresting than its content: in compliment to the patron it is written as an acrostic, the initial letter of each line representing a letter in the name "Robert Leycestre." T h e text is prefaced by complimentary verses addressed to the author, including a " C o m m e n d a t i o n " by the poet T h o m a s N e w t o n which is in effect a brief history of the development of Hunnis as a writer, tracing his literary activity f r o m the "Sonets sweete" of youth to the sacred lore contained in the present volume. W i t h respect to the latter, H u n n i s is praised for reducing the tough meat of Scripture to a digestible f o r m : " S y t h thus thou Minced hast the Foode, which G o o d m e n al embrace." A n d indeed, as the text reveals, H u n n i s went to considerable trouble to m a k e his material palatable to a c o m m o n reader. T h e neatly versified fourteeners are clear and intelligible, and there are also tables of generations as well as marginal notes of an interpretive and explanatory nature. A l t h o u g h H u n n i s is usually mentioned in connection with dramatic entertainment and for a handful of poems printed in Elizabethan anthologies, he had an honorable record in the cause of religion w h i c h entitles h i m to a place a m o n g Leicester's more pious followers. H e had been arrested for conspiring against Queen Mary in 1555 and deprived of his position as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. O n Elizabeth's accession this honor was quickly restored to h i m and other preferments followed, including the mastership of the Children. His printed works are chiefly of a religious nature, including a very popular versification of the

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penitential psalms, which appeared first in 1583 and ran to ten editions by 1629, and a volume entitled Hunnies Recreations: conteining foure godlie discourses which was published in 1595, two years before his death. As a royal servant Hunnis was not dependent upon patrons' favors except in the sense that Elizabeth's courtiers formed the most distinguished audience for which his company of children performed. Among them all he was apparently most intimately connected with Leicester. At about the same time (c.1580) as the Hunnis dedication to Leicester, that patron was the recipient of a handsome book of devotions in manuscript prepared for him by Thomas Palfreyman, who like Hunnis was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, appointed originally under Edward V I , and a musician. N o doubt the two were known to each other; perhaps Hunnis was responsible for Palfreyman's connection with the earl. Unlike Hunnis, Palfreyman was no poet, but his bent was even more markedly theological. His three published works were all of a religious and meditative nature. Today he is remembered chiefly for his revisions and expansions of William Baldwin's enormously popular Treatise of Morall Phylosophie which he edited four times from 1557 on, and which in his version is dedicated to the Earl of Huntingdon, another notable patron of Puritans. The manuscript which Palfreyman presented to Leicester was a very attractive gift, beautifully written in an Italian hand, ruled in red, and specially bound in gilt-ornamented calf for the earl, whose initials "R D " form a part of the elaborate stamping on both covers.54 The title runs as follows: Certeine selected Praires, of diuers and sondrie matters, Verie Godlie and necessarie, to bee Dailie accustomed of the Reuerente and right faithful Christian, to the purchacinge vnto him selfe (thorowe Christe) the grace and favoure of God. The dedication to Leicester, from "his humble and dailie Oratoure Thomas Paulfreyman," occupies six pages and is largely a religious exhortation. That Palfreyman was probably of Puritan leanings is indicated by his wording in a passage in which he enrolls his patron among the Elect. This compliment he develops in the course of a declaration that Leicester is devoted to the service of the Lord, 64

I wish to a c k n o w l e d g e m o s t g r a t e f u l l y the generosity of the o w n e r of this m a n u s c r i p t ,

M r . H e n r y D a v i s , of L o n d o n , w h o a l l o w e d m c to h a v e photostats m a d e of it and h a t granted m e permission to quote f r o m it.

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our true guide and capiteine Jhesus Christe: Vnder whose banner we haue promised to fight for victorie: and into whose misticall bodie, the whole cornpanic of goddes Electe are onelie incorporate, and receiue their nourishemente to true lyfe, perfecte healthe, strength and glorie: and into whose nombre also and heauenlie fealoweship, I doubte not but that your honoure, by approoued significations, is moste gratiouselie engrafted . . . Perhaps the writer would not have expressed himself so positively on this matter in print. T h a t he had previously enjoyed Leicester's patronage is suggested by his reference to "mi bounden dutie towardes your honoure" and his hope "ageine not to bee voide of your Lordshippes fauoure." T h e dedication closes with a prayer for Leicester's welfare. On the verso of the next leaf, facing the first page of the text proper, a large coroneted garter has been d r a w n containing a clever and fanciful monogram of the name "Robert Dudley." T h e prayers range from ordinary morning and evening devotions to those appropriate in special situations, and include a whole set of reverent petitions to be offered on behalf of particular individuals and groups—for the Queen's Majesty, for her honorable Council, for bishops, spiritual pastors, and ministers of God's word, for noblemen and gentlemen, for such as are unmarried, and for poor people. W e wonder whether Leicester found them useful. W h e t h e r or not he did, no doubt he appreciated the gift, so carefully a n d lovingly prepared—probably at the author's expense by a professional scribe and binder—and so earnestly presented. T h e next of the religious writers to be discussed, John Garbrande (alias H e r k s ) , can be more positively identified with the Puritans than either of the two Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal just mentioned. Garbrande was the son of a Dutch Protestant refugee w h o settled in England and became a prosperous bookseller and a friend of the more radical reformers. It is said that during the reign of Queen Mary the Garbrande home served as a meeting place for obdurate Protestants, and the Garbrande cellar as a place of worship. T h r o u g h the influence of Bishop Jewel, one of the most pro-Puritan of Elizabeth's bishops and a friend of his father, Garbrande on receiving his M . A . f r o m Oxford w a s presented to a prebend in Salisbury Cathedral and a living in Buckinghamshire. Other preferments followed but apparently did not interfere with a successful academic career, for Garbrande also received an M . A . from Cambridge and went on to the B.D. a n d D . D . at Oxford. W h e n

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Jewel died in 1571 he bequeathed his manuscripts to his protege, who later edited them in three volumes. One of these volumes, containing Certaine Sermons preached before the Queenes Maiestie, and at Paules crosse, together with A Short Treatise of the Sacraments, appeared in 1583 with a dedication from the editor to Leicester and Burghley; another in the same year, Jewel's Exposition vpon the two Epistles of the Apostle S. Paul to the Thessalonians, was dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham. Garbrande's dedication of Certaine Sermons to Leicester and Burghley begins with a defense of Bishop Jewel's memory, rejecting the "Vntrue reportes and sclaunders" of which Jewel has been a victim, and referring the reader to his biography as truly written by Dr. Laurence Humphrey, whom we have already mentioned as a protege of Leicester at Oxford. Garbrande goes on to discuss the great ideals of Jewel's life, the things he wanted to see accomplished, with special emphasis on the necessity for furnishing all churches with learned and godly ministers. This point, which Garbrande develops at some length, was one of the most publicized parts of the Puritan campaign in those years; the nascent presbyterian movement was making capital out of its charge that the lower Anglican clergy included many ignorant and godless men. Garbrande declares that he has selected these two patrons to sponsor this volume of Jewel's works because they are doing good service to a cause cherished by his old patron. As chancellors of the universities they are encouraging the education of young men who will become ministers. Leicester's library must have been crammed with sermons and expositions of Scripture, to judge from the volumes presented to him in these years. Among them was a little book from the pen of John Tomkys containing A Sermon Preached the 26. day of May. 1584. in S. Maries Church in Shrewesbury: Before the right honorable the Earle of Leicester, published in 1586. The author is described on the title page as "publick preacher of Gods word there." Apparently nothing is known of him except what he tells us in his dedication to Leicester—that he prefers to serve the Church through "laborious translations, the learning of other" rather than through offering his own work to the public, that in this case he has been persuaded by an unnamed person of great authority to break his custom and commit this sermon to print, that he owes a debt of gratitude to Leicester "for the manifold benefites by me

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vndeserued, w h i c h vpon m e you h a u e largely bestowed," and that he was privileged upon an earlier occasion to preach before the earl " i n the countie of Stafford, where I was b o r n e . " M o r e interesting than either the author or his relationship with his patron is the description he provides of Leicester's gracious behavior on the occasion of this visit to Shrewsbury: Our memory cannot commit to obliuion, how curteously you accepted that meane, and yet wel meant intertainment, which the towne of Shrewsburie in dutie gaue vnto you[r] Lordship. And the posteritie, no doubt, shall heare of your thankefull accepting of many wel-comes, your cheerful hearing of many orations, your circumspect view of the situation and buildings of the towne, your graue conference with the Magistrates in the gouernment there of: your comfortable going into the free Grammer schoole, to experience the towardlinesse of the youth there, your Christian presence in the Church at the Sermon, your painefull trauell in arbitrating controuersies, your large giftes vnto maister Bayliffes officers, your liberall rewardes vnto the scholemaisters, your charitable almes vnto the poore, all the whiche vertues did then shine in you, as in a moste cleare mirrour of true nobilitie. Apparently Leicester worked h a r d a n d bestowed gifts with a lavish h a n d o n these visits of state. A p p a r e n t l y also he m a d e a good show o f listening attentively to the sermons, for the next passage is devoted to a delighted description o f Leicester " a s a prouident p e r e g r i n e " feeding upon the word of G o d preached before h i m . N o doubt the earl stopped for a m o m e n t after the service to c o m p l i m e n t the preacher, perhaps to r e w a r d h i m financially as well, and thus stimulated this publication two years later. C l e r g y m e n such as G a r b r a n d e and T o m k y s were obviously well within the bounds of respectable A n g l i c a n i s m in their public utterances, t h o u g h their private sympathies may have been w i t h the Puritans. Leicester's literary proteges, however, included also s o m e of the m o r e radical and notorious P u r i t a n s — t h e obstreperous preachers whose efforts to reform the C h u r c h involved t h e m in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. T w o dedications to h i m by a certain C h r i s t o p h e r F e t h e r s t o n e provide evidence that he did not object to the p u b l i c i z i n g o f his efforts on behalf o f these extremists; if he had objected, there w o u l d have been at most one dedication. T h e pious and strongly puritanical tone of Fetherstone's "first fruits,"

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published in 1582 under the title A Dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lasciuious daunting, had announced his allegiance to the group of radical reformers. 55 His next three works were translations from Calvin, of which the earliest, The holy Gospel according to Iohn, was dedicated to Leicester; it was published in 1584 as the second part of a volume of Calvin's commentaries, the first part of which had been translated by the Puritan minister Eusebius Paget, protege of the Earl of Bedford. The title page of Fetherstone's translation describes him as a "student in Diuinitie," and the terms of his dedication to Leicester leave little doubt of his intimacy with the active Puritans. 56 After declaring that the value of the work he has translated requires no commendation, Fetherstone comes to the more personal part of his dedication. He admits that he is "altogether vnknowen" to Leicester, but defends himself from charges of presumption by protesting that the earl's "greate aboundance of most heroicall vertues" has drawn him as does a lodestone. He mentions "that rare report" of Leicester's "vnfeigned religion which resoundeth euery where," his faithfulness to the Queen, his zeal in maintaining the truth, defending the realm, and subduing "those proud aspiring papists." But his strongest emphasis is reserved for Leicester's protection of the Puritans: That great and earnest care which your honour hath alwaies had, and euen now hath to support the poore ministers of the word, and gospell of Iesus Christ in Gods cause, and in good causes, hath in it selfe sufficient force, to enforce not only mee, but all thankfull heartes by word and writing to bewray all thankfulnesse and dutifulnesse towards your good honor. As this, so that singuler liberalise vsed at all times by your Lordship towards my friends, hath caused me in dedicating of this booke to your honour, to testifie some part of my thankfull minde in their bchalfe. The dedication concludes with the translator's apology for faithful rather than elegant interpretation, and with a long and fervent prayer for Leicester and England. 55 Fetherstone is not included in DXB. He may have been related to the Leonard Fetherstone who is listed as a member of the Warwick "classis," of which Cartwright was also a member. See R. G . Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1 9 0 5 ) , pp. xxix and xl; also Peel, The Seconde Parte of a Register, II, 1 7 4 . In dedicating his translation of Calvin's Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles to Huntingdon in 1 5 8 5 , Fetherstone mentions that he was brought up in Carlisle and that his brother was Huntingdon's servant. 59 Fetherstone's part of the volume is separately paginated, the dedication appearing on sigs. i y . - f 4 r .

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Fcthcrstonc's reference to Leicester's support of his friends, "the poore ministers of the word," was written at a time when the earl, as we have seen, was exceptionally active in protecting the Puritans against official interference. At the end of 1583, Whitgift, recently elevated to the archbishopric of Canterbury, had instituted his program for bringing uniformity into the church. Besides Feild, Wilcox, Cartwright, and other "preachers of innovations" in whose defense Leicester was a bulwark against the bishops, the writer probably intends a specific reminder of the current case of Eusebius Paget, whose work was published in this very volume. For Paget, who had been deprived of a Northamptonshire living at the same time as Leicester's protégé Arthur Wake (on whose behalf Leicester had threatened the Bishop of Lincoln), was again in trouble.57 He was the protégé of Leicester's brother-in-law the Earl of Huntingdon, and it is not unlikely that the latter induced Leicester to intercede for him on one or both of these occasions. That Leicester, far from resenting such published advertisement of his activities on behalf of the reformers, actually welcomed it, is evidenced by Fetherstone's own words telling us that the work was graciously received: T h e experience of your honorable acceptation of my last simple trauell in translating Maister Caluins Commentaries vpon Saint Iohns Gospell, hath imboldened me further to present your Honor with another slender fruit of the same.

This acknowledgment occurs in Fetherstone's dedication to Leicester in 1586 of The Brutish Thunderbolt, an anti-Catholic work to be discussed in the next chapter. Leicester's acceptance of dedications from such outright Puritans as Fills, Shute, Fetherstone, and several writers to be discussed in the next chapter was only an aspect of his protection of radical reformers, but it was a very public and obvious aspect. Their addresses constitute both an acknowledgment of his loyalty to their cause and an advertisement of it. If we confine our attention to this single patron, we may well wonder at his boldness in assuming responsibility for a movement frowned upon by the Queen and her ecclesiastical authorities. There is, however, ample evidence that he was, in fact, only one of a group of powerful 57

For the deprivation of Wake and Paget, 1 5 7 3 - 7 5 , s e e Peel, op. cit., I, 1 2 1 - 2 3 ; for Paget's trouble here referred to, see the records of his examination in 1585, ibid., pp. 285-91.

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nobles who backed the Puritans and protected their writings. Of the extent and organization of the party they served, the dedicators give no hint: they are careful always to address each protector as a personal patron rather than as a representative of a group. But when we follow the trail of their successive works, it becomes clear that they recognized and served a number of aristocratic patrons who were related to one another by ties of blood or marriage and who had the same political interests. Prominent in this group was the Earl of Huntingdon, Leicester's brother-in-law, to whom Fills, Golding, Feild, and Fetherstone addressed dedications, as well as Anthony Gilby, another well-known Puritan, and the reformer Beza himself. The Earl and Countess of Bedford, also related to the Dudleys, included among their proteges the indefatigable Golding and the less respectable Feild, Paget, and Wilcox. Sir Francis Walsingham, though usually circumspect in his exploitation of propaganda techniques, also openly sponsored several undoubted Puritans, as did Leicester's brother, the Earl of Warwick. While the translators addressed Calvinist works to a host of other dignitaries, including Burghley and even some of the bishops, Leicester and his allies emerge as the favorite patrons of the more radical reformers. Together they shared the burden of protecting Puritan works and of directing Puritan energies to serve the best interests of their party. They were able to defend the reformers against ecclesiastical interference and to secure publication for their Calvinist translations largely because the Puritans took upon themselves so large a share i'n the campaign against the Romanists, as will appear in the next chapter.

C H A P T E R VII

Anti-Catholic Propaganda . . . enemies to God, and to her royall maiestie. —John Feild, 1581 H A T Leicester was recognized as a champion of Protestantism against Roman Catholics at home and abroad is advertised by the Puritan writers discussed in the last chapter. The anti-Catholic note is sounded by his earliest protégés in the religious field—by the preacher Vcron in 1561, and by the translator Fills in 1562. By 1572, with the publication of Golding's translation, A Confutation Of the Popes Bull, it has become shrill and clear. The extremists, however, were not above ascribing to their patrons motives which they hoped rather than believed to be characteristic of those worthies, and it is therefore important to note that we have evidence from another source which indicates that at least by 1577 Leicester's enmity to the cause of Rome was a matter of public knowledge. In that year Edward Grant, headmaster of Westminster School and a protege of Cecil, dedicated to Leicester his edition of an attack on the mass, written long since by his intimate friend Roger Ascham, and now published under the title Apologia doctissimi viri Rogeri Aschami, Angli, pro caena Dominica, contra Missam et eius prestigias: in Academia olim Cantabrigiensi exercitationis gratia inchoata. Other theological papers were included in the little volume, which appears to be a by-product of Grant's work as Ascham's literary executor. In dedicating the work to Leicester, Grant addresses the patron by all his titles, including Chancellor of Oxford, and hails him as the greatest patron of learning and learned men. After a brief formal presentation Grant celebrates Leicester's fame in Latin verses entitled "In Symbolum Gentilitium" which are headed by Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff within the Garter. 1 There are no specific references to a religious or controver1 Gabriel Harvey reprinted these verses in his Gratulationum Quatuor ( 1 5 7 8 ) , in the section devoted to praise of Leicester.

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sial purpose, a n d every attempt is made to g i v e the publication an air of elegance and dignity. Nonetheless, there is significance in the fact that G r a n t selected the theological portion of the w o r k s of Queen Elizabeth's schoolmaster and Latin Secretary to present to the patron of the Puritans, a n d in his choice of a particularly anti-Catholic w o r k for the title-piece. G r a n t ' s o w n theological interests were apparently increasing at this time, despite his mastership of the school and his classical studies, f o r he h a d himself licensed as a preacher in 1580 and later abandoned his academic career for advancement in the church. A l t h o u g h A s c h a m ' s treatise against the M a s s w a s composed for an earlier generation, its appearance in 1577 was timely, and in a quiet w a y signalized the initiation of a new phase of the anti-Catholic c a m p a i g n , a phase which was to reach heights of violence exceeding even G o l d i n g ' s outburst of 1572. T h e Catholics themselves p r o v i d e d the occasion. Beg i n n i n g with the arrival of Cuthbert M a y n e in 1576, perhaps earlier, E n g l a n d w a s invaded by a stream of E n g l i s h seminary priests trained abroad w h o attempted to revive the old faith by preaching and celebrating the Mass wherever and whenever they could escape the vigilant eye of the authorities. In 1580 the advent of the Jesuit mission led by C a m p i o n and Parsons g a v e renewed vigor to this m o v e m e n t . A l t h o u g h the mission was nonpolitical in nature, specifically rejecting rebellion as one of its purposes, its proselytizing activities w e r e seditious by i m plication. F o r Elizabeth's rule rested on the double foundation of political allegiance and religious conformity, and by u n d e r m i n i n g the latter the Jesuits threatened the former as well. A l a r m e d by their success, Protestant propagandists brought this implication into the open, proc l a i m i n g w i t h vigorous insistence that the Catholic p r o g r a m w a s only ostensibly pacific, that it disguised a subversive purpose under a religious cloak. W h i l e the authors of the anti-Jesuit pamphlets w h i c h n o w began to pour f r o m the presses w e r e by no means exclusively P u r i t a n , the extreme reformers, eager to j u s t i f y themselves as enemies of Antichrist and to enlarge their popular f o l l o w i n g , took a leading part in the c a m p a i g n . C o m i n g just at a time w h e n the episcopal authorities were attempting to enforce severe restrictions on their preaching, the Jesuit mission played directly into their hands, providing them with occasions f o r loud support of the g o v e r n m e n t against the Catholic "seducers." M o r e o v e r , in consideration of their valuable service to a cause whose virtue none

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could safely deny, their noble patrons were enabled to provide them more freely with protection and encouragement. Anti-Catholic propaganda, in contrast with pro-Puritan writings, was in large part officially supported, and this was especially true of the campaign against the Jesuits. The motives which inspired Leicester, Walsingham, and their political allies to back the campaign against the Jesuits were personal as well as religious and patriotic. The position of the progressive party at this time was threatened by several factors for which the time-serving policies of Burghley could to a certain extent be held responsible. The two most important obstacles to its success were the influence of the Spanish agents who were still delicately maneuvering to secure Elizabeth's friendship for Philip II and the intention of the French agents, notably Simier, to bring to a close the long negotiations for a match between Elizabeth and Alen^on. In both cases the enemy was Roman Catholic. The situation came to a head in the years between 1579 and 1581, during which Leicester showed himself openly opposed to both factions, while Burghley continued to play for time. Convinced of Leicester's enmity, both Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, and Simier, Alen^on's agent, endeavored to destroy his influence, the latter temporarily succeeding in 1579 by revealing to Elizabeth the fact of Leicester's secret marriage with the Countess of Essex. Leicester's encouragement of the violently anti-Catholic Puritan press was part of his answer to his political enemies. Because of Elizabeth's enjoyment of the Alengon situation, it was dangerous to be too direct in revealing political animosity. Those who expressed open disapproval of the match—the Puritans who preached against it and the Puritan writer John Stubbs, author of the pamphlet entitled The Gaping Gulf whereinto England is li/{e to be swallowed (1579)—felt the penalty of the law, while Sidney's letter to Elizabeth injured rather than helped the cause of his uncle and brought temporary disgrace upon himself. It was far safer, and in the long run more effective, to attack Catholicism in general—to arouse public opinion against all Catholics to such an extent that Elizabeth would not dare to foist the French alliance upon her people. The missionary efforts of the English Jesuits furnished just the right occasion for whipping up popular resistance to the Catholics. Pulpit and press were used to alarm the people. The Puritans, backed by their noble

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patrons, led the attack with a cry of sedition, an accusation somewhat justified by the Spanish ambassador's protection of Father Parsons. Ferreting out the tracts which issued from the secret press of Parsons or were smuggled in from abroad, they entered into controversy with the Catholic writers, endeavoring to expose the insincerity of Catholic protestations of loyalty to Elizabeth. Mounting panic was expressed in various ways, most sensationally in the executions of the Jesuits and the wholesale imprisonment of recusants for which Walsingham furnished the machinery. T o the spate of controversial pamphlets was added a series of journalistic accounts of the arrests, trials, and executions, all driving home the warning against Catholic hypocrisy and treachery. By the end of the campaign, both French and Spanish causes were defeated, and the policies of the progressive party were in the ascendant. Several of Leicester's proteges took a prominent part in the antiCatholic campaign. A m o n g them was Anthony Munday, who between 1581 and 1584 produced a series of pamphlets designed to reveal the wickedness of the Catholics and to provoke Englishmen through fear and anger to defend their queen against "Romish plots."

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in this field are apparently the fruits of his experience as one of the secret agents employed at home and abroad by Walsingham and other officials to supply information which would enable them to check the flow of Jesuits and seminary priests into England. 3 H e had furnished evidence which furthered the arrest and conviction of Campion and other Catholic missionaries and he had testified at their trials. N o w he was to use his pen in justification of Campion's execution with the additional purpose of keeping alive popular indignation against the continuing missions. T w o of the pamphlets written by Munday for this campaign were addressed to the Privy Council, naming Leicester as a dedicatee among others. T h e earlier of these appeared soon after the execution of Campion and was dated January 29, 1582. This work is fairly described by its 2 Besides the three pamphlets to be discussed, Munday's series included A Breefe Discourse of the taking of Edmund Campion ( 1 5 8 1 ) , A breefe and true reporte, of the Execution of certaine Traytours ( 1 5 8 2 ) , and A Watch-Woord to England (1584). 3 For the use of spies and secret agents by Walsingham and other members of the government in the business of capturing priests from abroad, see Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 1 9 2 5 ) , II, 3 1 7 - 3 9 . Read mentions Munday among those employed by the government but not definitely connected with Walsingham's special service (p. 3 2 3 ) .

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title: A Discouerie of Edmund Campion, and his Confederates, their most horrible and traiterous practises, against her Maiesties most royall person, and the Realme . . . whereto is added, the Execution of Edmund Campion, Raphe Sherwin, and Alexander Brian, executed at Tiborne the i. of December. Published by A. M. sometime the Popes Scholler. In the text itself Munday makes some show of rehearsing Campion's arguments and answering them, but his chief intent is to identify the activities of the Jesuits with subversive practices, in accord with the Parliamentary statute of 1581 which had declared that all priests coming from abroad who tried to convert Englishmen were guilty of high treason, as were their proselytes. His description of a vainglorious Campion is also prejudiced and his account of the execution is obviously designed to feed the curiosity of a sensation-seeking public. Munday dedicated this pamphlet to Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord Chancellor; Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer; the Earl of Leicester; Thomas, the Lord Chamberlain; and Francis, Earl of Bedford, "with the rest of her Maiesties moste Honourable Councell." Whether or not the work was actually commissioned by the government, this address gave it an official appearance. In an affair of such moment we may assume at least that the dedication was accepted and the printing sanctioned by the members of the Council who were named. T h e dedication opens with a general statement concerning the defamation of the Queen by the Catholics, and the writer then proceeds to justify his pamphlet as a necessary sequel to the part he had played in the trial of Campion and his colleagues: It is not vnknowen to your Honours, how not long since I witnessed my faithfull seruice to her Maiestic, to the disproouing of such, as were bothe her professed and sworne aduersaries: at which tyme . . . they were approued guiltie of euerie obiection, bothe by their owne writinges, sufficient euidence, and vnreprooueable witnesses . . . Since that time . . . there hath beene cast abroade, by the secrete fauourers and freends, of these so sufficiendy conuicted . . . reports, Lybels, and trayterous speeches in the behalfe of the aforenamed, both against me, and other of the witnesses . . . T o answer these slanders and to prove his credibility as a witness, Munday has set forth the information printed in this work, for which he asks his patrons' defense. This is ostensibly the only purpose of his book

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but he makes no effort to conceal his underlying intention of inflaming his readers against the Catholics. While Munday was writing his Discouerie he already had in mind (and probably in manuscript) another anti-Romanist pamphlet to which he refers as shortly forthcoming. This was an account of his adventures in the English seminary at Rome where he had studied either as a disciple or as a spy. Embellished by pictures showing Roman Catholic rites and tortures, it was published early in the same year, 1582, under the title The English Romayne Lyfe. Discouering: The Hues of the Englishmen at Roome . . . Written by A. M. sometime the Popes Scholler in the Seminarie among them* Besides further establishing Munday's reliability as a witness against the Jesuits, the work served to fill in the background of the current campaign against the missionary priests by showing how they were trained in the seminaries abroad for their task of subverting their countrymen. Like the Discouerie, this propaganda treatise was dedicated to the Privy Council, although only Bromley, Burghley, and Leicester are specifically named. Munday's short epistle declares two chief motives for addressing that august body: their names will certify to his truthfulness and will protect him against enemies. In the meantime the publication of the Discourie had given rise to two pamphlets attacking him and the validity of his evidence. His response was a new counterattack, promptly produced under the date March 22, 1582, and entitled A brcefc Aunswer made vnto two seditious Pamphlets, the one printed in French, and the other in English. Contayning a defence of Edmund Campion and his complices, their moste horrible and unnatural Treasons, against her Maiestie and the Realme. It is dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham, who may well have been the chief sponsor of Munday's whole anti-Romanist series as well as his employer in the secret service. At least, it is to him that Munday declares his gratitude for rewards bestowed by an appreciative government. A n d the terms he uses indicate that Walsingham was intimately aware of the writer's role in the arrest and conviction of the Jesuits: It is not vnknowen to your Honour, in what occasions passed, foretelling an vnlooked for cause of daunger, to my gracious Soueraigne and her Realme: 4

Reprinted in the Bodley Head Quartos, with Introduction by G . B. Harrison (London,

1925).

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how not I alone, but I cheefely as one, gaue foorth such vnreprooueablc notice of ensuing harmes, as bewrayed their secret trayterous intent, and also notably conuicted the aduersary. For which seruice, beyond my desert, I haue found the plentifull measure, of my Princesse fauoure and goodnes, as also the noble goodwill of her Honourable Counsell, of which high calling as God and her Maiesty hath created you one: so am I in dutie to pray for your continuall welfare, whose Honourable freendship hath exceeded my poore demerit. Thus Munday advertised that his patriotic activities had not lacked official recognition. N o doubt his efforts as a pamphleteer during the spring of 1582 were in part stimulated by a desire to exploit a profitable literary market but government encouragement seems to have been his chief reason for writing in this genre. Most of his other productions are of a different nature though all are directed to popular tastes. And, although his usefulness as a spy was lost as soon as he revealed himself in public as a "discoverer" of Jesuits, he apparently had earned some sort of permanent employment in Elizabeth's service. In 1588 he was able to call himself "Servaunt to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie" and "Messenger of Her Maiesties Chamber." 5 It was, perhaps, merely as further evidence of the Council's "noble goodwill" toward Munday that Leicester in 1584 accepted from him the dedication of a translation from Calvin entitled Two godly and learned Sermons, made by that famous and woorthy instrument in Gods church . . . Caluin . . . long since translated . . . by M. Robert Home late Byshop of Winchester . . . now published by A. M. For, though its content had relevance for the anti-Catholic campaign, the work was no new thing—as indeed its title declared. The translation had originally been made in 1553 by Robert H o m e soon after his flight into a troubled exile in Switzerland and had been sent back to England for secret printing under a forged imprint. 6 The work is prefaced by a lengthy "apologie" (reprinted in Munday's edition) in which H o m e defends himself against the charge that he had deserted his flock in time of trouble and vividly describes what happened at Durham Cathedral when Queen 5 Celeste Turner, Anthony Mundy, an Elizabethan Man of Letters, University of California Publications in English, II (Berkeley, Calif., 1 9 2 8 ) , 76. 8 Certaine homilies of. m. Joan Calvine/ conteining profitable and necessarie/ admonition for this time/ u/ith an Apologie of Robert Horn. Imprinted at Rome/ before the castle of. s. Angel/ at the signe of. S. Peter. Anno. M. D. Liij. T h e imprint is obviously satirical. According to STC 4392 the printer was Hugh Singleton of London. STC lists Munday's edition as a separate work (no. 4 4 6 1 ) although the DNB article on H o m e correctly identifies it with its original. My quotations from H o m e are taken from the 1 5 5 3 edition.

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Mary took the throne—the Bible removed, common prayer in English discontinued, and prayer in Latin substituted, "farced ful of superstition/ idolatrye/ and false fables." A n d the Catholics, H o m e tells us, "returned to their abhominable/ blasphemouse/ and idolatrous masse as dogges to their vomit." His account of his arbitrary trial at London and his secret departure from England is followed by a passage in which he attacks the Catholics with untrammeled fury. H e has dedicated himself, he declares, to the task of saving the "lordes shepe" by warning them of the sword hanging over their heads. A n d for this purpose he can find no words harsh enough to describe the enemy. Munday must have selected this work of a previous generation for reprinting as much for the virulence of Home's anti-Catholic tirade as for the value of the sermons by Calvin which follow it. H o m e calls the clergymen who assembled in Convocation after Mary's accession "a sorte of blinde prestes"; they are "vnlerned asses/and filthy whormongers." H e predicts that they will not leave alive in the realm a single learned man not of their sect. T o reassert their dominance over the laity they will turn on the nobility and chop off their heads. For they see that the whole youth of the nation, and especially of the noble and worshipful classes, are infected with Protestantism and its new learning. T o the readers of 1584, alarmed by reports of threats to Elizabeth's life and fearful of growing Catholic power, Home's preface provided an ominous and lurid picture of what might happen to England if their queen were supplanted by another Catholic Mary. T h e sermons themselves contain Calvin's teaching against conformity with Catholic practices. T h e first is an admonition "to flye the outward Idolatrie," proclaiming it unlawful to observe Catholic rites, especially the mass, even when refusal to do so means peril of life. Calvin argues that outward observance involves inward assent. T h e second is an exhortation to suffer persecution for the testimony of the gospel, in the example of Christ himself. Except for their generally anti-Catholic tone it is difficult to see any special application in these sermons to the case of Englishmen under Elizabeth—unless, of course, the preachments are intended to encourage Puritans in their dissent from Anglican practices. A n d possibly Munday's dedication of this work to Leicester was meant as a gesture to the special protector of Puritans. This suggestion is supported by the reputation of Bishop H o m e , the translator, who had died as recently as 1580. After his flight to Switzerland, H o m e had been

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f o r a time pastor of the E n g l i s h congregation at F r a n k f o r t . 7 U p o n his return to E n g l a n d at the accession of E l i z a b e t h he had distinguished himself as one of the more militant Protestants, rising to a bishopric in 1 5 6 1 . H e had befriended the nonconformist L a u r e n c e

Humphrey,

and he had displayed a zealot's fanaticism in his " p u r g e s " of O x f o r d and C a m b r i d g e colleges for the removal of traces of R o m a n i s m . A s late as five years before his death he was f o u n d to be fostering presbyterianism on the island of Guernsey, w h i c h lay within his see. 8 Bishop though he was, his sympathies on the w h o l e were with the Puritans. M u n d a y ' s edition carried Leicester's device of the Bear and R a g g e d Staff on the reverse of the title page under the motto, " T h e glory of the Honourable, is the feare of G o d . " T h e dedication hails Leicester as " a certaine freend to all godly and vertuous exercises" a n d asks protection against "the malicious cauiles of the enemies of G o d s trueth." H e r e again w e find the suggestion that the a n o n y m o u s critics are Catholics. T h e writer declares that Leicester's reputation will be his defense: . . . so much the lesse shall the enemie boast of his wickednesse, when he seeth stampt in the forehead of this little Booke, the noble name of him, who is and euer hath beene a refuge to the Godly, and from time to time a ready defender, to imbolden them in such excellent studies. H e implies the probability that H o m e w a s personally k n o w n to Leicester. A s for himself, he m a n a g e s to convey the feeling that he is one of the earl's accepted protégés, speaking of "the v n f a i n e d duety I o w e to your H o n o u r " and "the affection I haue continually borne to your honour." H e closes with a prayer f o r G o d ' s blessing on Leicester. T h e editing itself is not without propaganda. In the original edition the marginalia had been confined to scriptural references, but in the 1584 version w e find that the editor (doubtless M u n d a y h i m s e l f ) has pointed up H o m e ' s apology with m a r g i n a l headings and comments. Several of these are probably intended to be read with reference to the Catholic libels and slanders currently directed against the Elizabethan court and especially Leicester. T h u s , in a comment next to H o m e ' s remark that his escape f r o m E n g l a n d w o u l d be attacked even f r o m the pulpits, the editor writes, " I t is the nature of the Papists, to slander and speake euill of the godlie." A n o t h e r m a r g i n a l note merely points out 7

C. H. Garrett, The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, England, 1938), pp. 189-90. A. F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, England, 1 9 2 5 ) , pp. J 58-59. 8

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"The Papists slaundering of the godly." Catholics are equated with Pharisees in the comment, "The slaundering speeches of the Phariseis against Christ . . ." and again in "The Papists would rayle against Christe himselfe, if they durst." Despite Munday's anti-Catholic writings and his venture into the field of Calvinist publications, his sincerity is suspect. Certainly he was no Puritan zealot, like other religious writers protected by Leicester. His later activities in purveying chivalric romances, plays, city pageants, ballads, and chronicles to the public reveal him rather as a canny businessman of letters; moreover, they include several genres of which the Puritans outspokenly disapproved.9 Even in the religious field he seems to have been an opportunist, for in 1586 he published a book of devotions (now lost) whose title, Ant. Monday, His Godly Exercises for Christian Families, suggests an attempt to exploit the Puritan book market, yet soon after he accepted employment as an anti-Martinist. His habit of following the mode gives added point to his dedications to Leicester, indicating that he regarded that patron as a special protector of Calvinist translations, but as only one of a group of officials responsible for anti-Catholic propaganda. Although the arrest and conviction of Campion and the disputes concerning the justice of his execution kept more writers busy than any other single case in the government's campaign against the Catholic missions, he was not the only captured priest to engage the attention of the pamphleteers and controversialists. T o the examinations of the Jesuits and seminary priests apprehended by the authorities were summoned experts in theology to debate with the accused and attempt both to obtain confessions from them and to convert them. Full notes were taken at such conferences and these were sometimes published, especially when the testimony would prove of value as propaganda or would justify the government's action with respect to the prisoner. One case of this sort involved the priest John Hart who gained a reprieve for turning Queen's evidence, furnished information to Walsingham, but ultimately was banished. 10 At the command of his university the learned Dr. John Rainolds of Oxford, a protege of Leicester, handled Hart's examination. 9 For a study of Munday's career, which had both patronized and independent aspects, see Turner, op. cit.; the full list of his works (pp. 2 0 1 - 5 ) gives an excellent idea of his versatility in pandering to the reading public. 10 See Conyers Read, op. cit., II, 3 2 1 , and C.S.P. Dot»., 1581-90, p. 223.

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As on the occasion of Campion's questioning, the process was prolonged, apparently in the hope of gaining a conversion. The debate lasted for weeks and was reported in a volume of over seven hundred pages which Rainolds published in 1584 and which he dedicated to Leicester under the title The Svmme of the Conference betwene lohn Rainoldes and lohn Hart: Touching the Head and the Faith of the Chvrch. While the immediate occasion of the publication was probably the banishment of Hart, for which, after using his services, the government needed justification, Rainolds utilizes this opportunity also for a reply to two Catholic controversialists, Thomas Stapleton and Gregory Martin, whom he refutes in a separate treatise appended to the main work. The chief purpose of the volume, however, is to report the dialogue between Hart and Rainolds. Hart was questioned and argued with on all the chief points of disagreement between English Catholics and Protestants but especially on the crucial point of the Pope's supremacy. According to Hart's own address to the reader, dated from the Tower and published among the prefatory epistles, he was treated with great consideration, especially by Walsingham. He was supplied with books so that he could prepare his arguments. He was asked to write out his points and, before they were taken from him for later printing, he was allowed to suggest alterations. He acknowledges this a true report. And though he still regards the Pope as the father of the church he makes the damaging admission, probably regarded as the chief result of the examination, that in his opinion the Pope does not possess the power to depose rulers and ought not to meddle in civil affairs. He asks the Queen's pardon for plain dealing in the conferences and, still stubbornly Catholic, implies that she ought to refrain from meddling in religious affairs. This implication alone would have sufficed to justify his exile. Hart's address is followed by Rainold's epistle to the students of the English seminaries at Rome and Rheims urging them to return to the faith of their nation, and this in turn by the full report of the debate. The dedication of this weighty tome to Leicester begins appropriately with a bitter attack upon the Catholic seminaries. Like Stephen disputing with some of the Synagogue, Rainolds feels called upon by God to answer these perverters of truth, but he hopes to prevail more effectively than did Stephen and by his arguments to convert the English papists. The reference to Stephen reminds him of St. Luke and he gracefully turns his theme toward the presentation of the book by drawing

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a parallel between his patron and Theophilus, to whom St. Luke offered his own writings—a parallel which had been used by Calvin himself to justify literary dedication. Rainolds also thanks Leicester for benefits conferred publicly upon the universities "and priuately to me ward, a member thereof," and asks patronage for his book because its intent is to reclaim those Popish proselytes whose existence, he knows, has been a grief to the earl. If Leicester continues in his care for "our nurserie" of Oxford, he will leave a monument worthy of a noble Theophilus, and "the remembrance shall rest in the Christian Church and common wealth of England, to your eternall praise throughout all posteritie." Although Rainolds was a notable preacher and theologian, he is remembered today chiefly for upholding the Puritan position in a controversy with the Latin dramatist William Gager, published in 1599 under the title Th'ouerthrow of Stage-Playes. While clearly of Puritan sympathies, he was apparently not a radical reformer. Compared with that of the extremists his tone is moderate, and he seems genuinely interested in making converts from Catholicism as they do not. His Svmme of the Conference proved to be his most popular work; a second edition followed in 1588, two more in 1598, a fourth in 1611, and the Latin version was printed in 1610 and 1611. His services to the antiCatholic cause were rewarded by his appointment to a special lectureship at Oxford which was founded in 1586 by Walsingham for confutation of the Roman Catholic doctrines. Still another renegade priest. John Nichols, is involved in the next work to be discussed among the anti-Catholic tracts sponsored by Leicester. A seminary priest, Nichols had been captured and imprisoned in the Tower where he had uttered a recantation that quite possibly was trumped up. For apparently he had served Walsingham as a spy. 1 1 The results of his examination were published in two books, both of which appeared in 1581. The first of these, A declaration of the recantation of lo/in Nichols (for the space almost of two yeeres the Popes Scholer in the English Seminarie or Colledge at Rome) which desireth to be reconciled, and receiued as a member into the true Church of Christ in England, was composed chiefly of generalizations against Catholicism, spiced with references to the Pope's son, to Shrovetide excesses of lust 11 Nichols is mentioned in the same list with Munday by Conyers Read, op. at., II, 3 2 3 , but as his first name is not given the identification is uncertain. Since his value as a secrct agent would have been lost once his recantation was published, such service would have preceded the printing of his books.

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and murder, and so forth. Of an even more popular nature was its sequel, presented as dialogues introduced by a discourse between a son who wishes to travel abroad and his father who grudgingly grants permission and funds but warns him against the perils to his soul from the Roman Catholics among whom he will find himself. Its title will give some notion of its tone: lohn Niccols Pilgrimage, whrein is displaied the liues of the proude Popes, ambitious Cardinals, lecherous Bishops, fat bellied Monies, and hypocriticall Iesuites. The sixth dialogue describes the English seminary at Rome. This work was dedicated in Latin to Queen Elizabeth. It is apparent that Nichols bears comparison with Anthony Munday for the popular level of his attacks upon the Catholics. Naturally enough, the Catholics abroad were provoked to reply. 1 2 Before the end of the year there appeared, probably from the pen of Father Parsons himself, A Discouerie of I. Nicols, misreported a Iesuite, latelye recanted in the Tower of London. And this reply in turn demanded refutation. One of the answers it stimulated was Thomas Lupton's The Christian against the Iesuite, published in 1582 with a dedication to Walsingham. The other, by Dudley Fenner, a preacher of extreme Puritan views, appeared in 1583 with a dedication to the Earl of Leicester under the title An Answere vnto the confutation of lohn Nichols his Recantation. Fenner's Puritanism is immediately obvious in his dedication. After asking Leicester's favor for his book because of "the true cause it defendeth," the writer proceeds to remind his patron of the necessity for godly preachers to fight against the Catholics. His book, he declares, . . . shall be a profitable remembraunce vnto your Honor, how necessarie it shall be for you to labour day and night, for the beautifying of the Church, with teachers sufficientlie to conuince the gainesaier. H e also acknowledges a "band of dutie from me vnto your Honor, even in regard of many incoragements in those things which are good." And with Puritan canniness he presents his work not to Leicester as an 12 The Catholic answers to these attacks on their seminaries included two by William Allen (later Cardinal), the founder of the college at Douay which had been transferred to Rheims in 1578. In 1 5 8 1 Allen published An Apology and true Declaration of the institution and endeavours of the two English colleges, the one at Rome, the other now resident in Rheims, and in 1 5 8 3 a treatise in Latin, Duo edicta Elizabethan Reginae Angliae contra sacerdotes Soc. Jesu et alumnos seminariorum, apparently an answer to the royal proclamations of 1 5 8 1 and 1 5 8 2 against the Jesuits. I have not seen these works.

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individual but "vnto the church of England, and your Honor as a principall member of the same." Fenner was undoubtedly one of the more recalcitrant preachers under Leicester's protection during these years. In this same year of 1583 he served as leader and spokesman for seventeen ministers of Kent who refused to subscribe to Whitgift's articles, and in the following year he was suspended from preaching. Although he appealed to the Privy Council for help his case was apparently too extreme to be overlooked and neither Leicester nor Walsingham came to his assistance. Imprisoned, he finally subscribed to the hated articles in order to regain his freedom and then fled abroad to serve as minister in the reformed church at Middleburg. Here he produced, among other books, a treatise on The Artes of Logice and Rhetori\e (1584), and his most famous work, A Defence of the godlie Ministers, against the slaunders of D. Bridges (1587), in which he asserted the loyalty of the Puritans to the Queen, defended the ministers' right to refuse to subscribe to Whitgift's articles, and proved "Sillogisticallie" that the presbyterian form of church government is the best. This treatise, which entitles Fenner to a place among the early Marprelate writers, was treasured by the Puritans in England, and the gist of it was printed for them later in A parte of a register.13 He died soon after its composition. Fenner was an excellent propagandist, utilizing to the full those arts of rhetoric and especially logic about which he had written. In this work as in his answer to Parsons in the Nichols controversy, he turns the tables against his adversary and while refuting him proceeds to give a tightly reasoned defense of his own position. His flight abroad and his early death deprived his party of a strong voice and a clever head. There is no indication of any connection between him and Leicester after his dedication of 1583. Even more conclusive evidence of the Puritans' part in the antiCatholic campaign is furnished in the work of John Feild. Like Fenner, Feild was one of the most open and radical of Puritan preachers, but unlike him he was a consistent and untiring opponent of Catholicism who refused to be drawn away from his theme by his other interests. Feild's campaign against the Catholics was no mere flurry in his career 13 A parte of a register, contayninge sundrie memorable matters, written by diuers godly and learned in our time, which stande for, and desire the reformation of our Church . . . (Middleburg, 1593), pp. 387-93.

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but pervades almost every aspect of his work. During these years when the deprived ministers were drawing into themselves and using their energies in underground mutterings against the bishops, Feild's influence maintained anti-Catholicism as a chief part of the grand strategy of professing Puritans to secure themselves an unassailable foothold. For, so long as England had anything to fear from Rome, Spain, the Catholics of France, Jesuit missionaries, or recusant conspirators, Puritanism would not be extirpated. The sincerity of the dissenters' hatred of Rome was their strength. They uttered it with violently effective rhetoric in patriotic diatribes that were excellent propaganda for the English Protestant cause in general. Sincere but also shrewd, they knew that it was to their interest to keep alive the fear of Catholicism—to make the most of every plot, every event, that threatened the safety and peace of the nation—for as the fear grew so also did the demand for their services as propagandists. Moreover, by backing patrons whose political purposes were allied to their own, by supporting them loyally in time of need (as they did Leicester during the Alengon crisis), they armed themselves with friends who would protect them against the bishops. Men like Feild, in the forefront of the movement, saw all this clearly, and consciously exploited every situation that would add to their power. 14 John Feild was a chief organizer as well as propagandist, secretary, and historian of the Elizabethan Puritans. Although he was repeatedly in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities—imprisoned for his part in the authorship of the first Admonition to the Parliament in 1572 and several times suspended from preaching—his powerful patrons secured him from effective suppression. Besides Leicester, whose efforts on his behalf have already been mentioned, his benefactors included the Earls of Warwick, Bedford, and Huntingdon, and Lady Bacon. With their help and a great following especially among the lower clergy, he was enabled to continue his daring opposition to episcopacy, organizing the presbyterian movement in London and elsewhere, and constantly stiffening his fellow ministers against conformity. He was the bitter enemy of the bishops. Of all Leicester's protégés, including Cartwright, he was the most openly and aggressively Puritan in all his actions. 15 14 For the effect of the Catholic crises of these years in temporarily strengthening the Puritans' position, see Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, pp. 2 54-36. 15 For Feild (or Field) sec especially Albert Peel, ed., The Seconds Parte of a Register (Cambridge, England, 1 9 1 5 ) , Introduction, pp. 1 4 - 1 8 , and the many records of his activities in the register itself, as indexed. See also the account in DNB, Supplement, ¡.v.

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Bishop Aylmer feared his influence among the nobility, and in 1577 complained that he "had entered into great houses, and taught . . . God knows what." 1 8 Inhibited from preaching at this time, Feild engaged in literary activity by publishing a series of translations from the Continental reformers, and he took care to advertise his connections among the great by dedicating these works to them. Markedly Puritan in character, his publications include two volumes of translations from Calvin's sermons, both dated 1579 and dedicated respectively to the Earls of Bedford and Huntingdon, a translation from Mornay dedicated in the same year to the Earl of Leicester, several translations from Beza, and a translation from Olevian dedicated in 1581 to the Earl of Warwick. But these efforts in Puritan propaganda, tolerated by the authorities, were mild compared with his preachings, which he was enabled to resume at some time before 1584. Of the vigorous tone of his sermons we can form some idea from contemporaneous reports, and also from such a work as his Godly Exhortation by occasion of the late judgement of God shewed at Parris-Garden (1583), a tract for the righteous keeping of the Sabbath in which he calls for the suppression of idle entertainments such as bear-baiting and the stage. As an anti-Catholic propagandist Feild was no less effective than as a Puritan agitator. Even the unsympathetic Bishop Aylmer recognized his value as a counter-missionary in the conflict with Rome: as early as 1577, when he had Feild inhibited from preaching, he suggested that the troublesome Puritan agitators, among whom he named Feild and Wilcox, should be transferred from London to outlying counties to draw the people from papism and gross ignorance. 17 His advice was not followed, but Feild's entrance into the literary arena to engage in controversy with the Catholics was an open gesture of cooperation with the authorities. His attacks on the Jesuits are to be found in the dedications of his translations and also in separate pamphlets devoted entirely to that purpose. Feild's translation from the great French Huguenot leader Philippe de Mornay du Plessis, published in 1579 under the title A treatise of the Feilde, and references passim in Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, and M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939). Feild is also represented in A parte of a register (cited above in note 1 3 ) , pp. 528-46, by a tract written in collaboration with Thomas Wilcox which provides an excellent summary of the position of the extreme radicals. 18 John Strype, The Life and Acts of John Aylmer (Oxford, 1 8 2 1 ) , p. 36. 17 Ibid., pp. 36, 37.

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Chvrch, and dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, provides an excellent example of his skill in combining Puritan teaching with anti-Catholic propaganda. 1 8 Mornay's work, originally dedicated to Henry of Navarre, had as its purpose the definition and defense of the Protestant faith in terms of a single and universal church comprised of all true reformed churches, as against the false church of Rome. Much of its argument was in harmony with the doctrines of the Puritans, as some of the chapter headings indicate: That of the visible and vniuersall Church, some partes are pure, and other some impure . . . That the holy Scripture is the vndoubted touchstone, to proue the puritie of doctrine, which doctrine is the marke of the pure Churches. That the pope in calling himselfe the head of the Church, and not beyng head, is the Antichrist in the Church . . . That euery one is bound to separate himselfe from the communion of Antichrist, and that the Romanists are Schismatikes, and not they which separate themselues from the same. That the ministers of the reformed Churches haue a lawfull vocation to redresse and reforme the Church. Here we have both the emphasis on the international character of the Reformation and the insistence on the danger of tolerating Catholicism which are typical of Puritan political thought, while in the reliance upon Scripture as the sole ultimate authority and the assertion that impurities within the Protestant churches must be reformed we have the main tenets of the Puritan religious program. Four editions of Feild's translation, published within a period of three years, testify to its popularity and influence. Feild's dedication, addressing this work to Leicester as to a defender of Protestantism in England, opens with a declaration of his desire "to leaue some publique testimonie" of his good will and duty towards his patron, and with a request for protection. H e modestly protests that his translation is not worthy of such a patron but asserts that the work itself is entitled to the defense of the highest, "yea of the greatest Princes in 18 My references are to STC 1 8 1 5 8 . Another edition of the same year bears the title A notable treatise of the Chvrch. T w o more editions followed in 1580 and 1 5 8 1 and a revised edition was published in 1606.

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the world, if they wil answere their calling, and holde of G o d to mainteine his Church and trueth." Mornay, the author, is a man "employed in waightie affayres" who set forth this treatise "amiddest all his busines, whilest he lay here" in E n g l a n d . 1 9 So great are his learning, judgment, and sincerity that he has produced a work uniquely valuable " t o the edifying of the Church of God, and confuting the aduersarie." T h i s treatise Feild has translated in a plain and simple style, as literally as possible. H a v i n g got past the preliminaries with relative speed, Feild n o w offers the work to Leicester, using a form of dedication which explicitly identifies his patron, by virtue of his position in the state, with the church itself: Wherefore . . . I most humbly beseech your Honor to accept this my humble and bounden duetie: and as by your Honor I dedicate it to the Church of England, so I humbly craue that it may be defended: for hereunto is your Honour called of God, and therefore hath he giuen you your aucthoritie, that you shoulde maintaine his Church, loue his religion, set your selfe against Poperie, and Hue and die to his glorie. Feild regards these duties and obligations as the necessary functions of men of high estate and assumes that Leicester's protection of religious writings, like other aspects of his defense of the church, belongs to his office as a member of the governing body. Praise and gratitude are notably lacking in this dedication: it is evident that Feild regards his patron not as a generous benefactor but as an instrument of God who has been granted power for the sole purpose of advancing true religion. T o ignore his obligation of sponsoring such works as Mornay's treatise would be sin; a man does not deserve thanks for merely doing his duty. On the other hand, Feild does use humility in addressing his patron: he honors the office rather than the man. F r o m this point on, Feild frankly abandons the dedicator's conventions and reverts to being pure preacher. T h e remaining three-quarters of this lengthy epistle is a sermon. Starting with the theme, " H e hath honored you, that you shoulde honor h i m , and hath set you vp that you shoulde maintaine h i m , " Feild harangues his patron on the obligations 19 Mornay made a number of trips to England in the interests of the Huguenots and as the ambassador of Henry of Navarre. This reference probably concerns his visit of 1577 when he solicited aid for Henry's wars against the Catholics of France, a cause which had the earnest support of Walsingham and Leicester. See Conyers Read, op. at., I, 298-303.

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of his position in the state. First of all, he is to practice true religion, defined as righteous living, pure worship of G o d "according to his worde," and sincere brotherly love. Leicester is adjured to beware of this vain world and of putting his trust in man rather than G o d ; and especially is he warned against the Catholics: . . . stoppe your eares against the enchaunting and fawning whisperings of hollowe harted Papists, and dissolute professors: for there can be no greater trespasse against the Lord, then to leane vpon Assyria, to rest in the strength of Egypt, to goe downe into Ethiopia. Apparently in 1579, when this was written, the Puritans feared that if the Queen continued to countenance and even encourage the Catholic agents in her court, Leicester might still be won over to the cause of Alen^on or Philip of Spain. Feild exhorts his patron instead to put his faith in God, for what, he asks, "is the strength of an hoaste, or the fauour of all the princes of the worlde in comparison of G o d ? " T h e preacher turns next to Leicester's duties to the church itself. Leicester is to pray "that the deceiuable glorie of your prosperitie and high aucthoritie, make you not forget your greatest dutie," the advancement of the church and the defense of "Christ his poore members" against all adversaries. It is evident that Feild is thinking chiefly of the lower clergy and especially of the Puritan preachers w h o m he regards as the most effective opponents of heresy and Romanism: O (my Lorde) God asketh this at your Honors hands, and this Church of England craues it, that his ministerie may be mainteyned, his trueth may be preserued and continued, the poore people may be taught and enstructed, wicked heretikes may be confuted and abandoned, which (alas) encrease and grow to infinite nombers daily amongst vs. Feild has the Puritan's characteristic intolerance of other creeds; he decries the Elizabethan policy of not inquiring into men's consciences. F o r if, he asks, "through impunitie men may professe what they list, and no trial and examination is had, according to God his worde," is it any marvel that papists and heretics of all sorts do daily increase? H e points out that, in spite of the fact that the Gospel has for many peacef u l years been preached in England, "the Papistes, those enemies of God, and of her royall Maiestie," are now more numerous, more obstinate and froward, and more malicious than they were at Elizabeth's accession. A t the beginning of the reign, many more people went to

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church and at least showed their conformity. T h r o u g h negligence chiefly, the Catholics have been "winked at, fauoured, and spared," and have so profited that they have been able to engage in treasonable practices, f r o m which only the hand of God has saved England. Confuting them by learned treatises such as Mornay's book, entreating them gently and courteously—these things do no good. Feild therefore calls for strong action. It is more than high time, he declares, that this "spreading poyson be restrayned," lest it endanger not only the Church of God in England but also "this florishing commonweale, and her Maiesties most royall person, crown and dignitie." Leicester in his wisdom and great experience must k n o w the dangers engendered by Catholic practices. T h e Holy Tridentine League, "for the dispatch of all Christians," has had lamentable effects in all Protestant countries—in France, Spain, Flanders, Germany, Scotland, and even in England "amiddest our owne bowels." T h e known intention of the Holy League to encourage treason in England has stimulated the production of "pestiferous and traiterous bookes, defacing Gods holy trueth, the Queene her royall Maiestie, many of her honorable Councell, and sundry of her louing and faithfull subiects"—books written by English Catholic fugitives. T h e League has discharged Englishmen from their vows of obedience to the Queen, has denied the legality of her reign, and sown the seed of rebellion, encouraging many to conspire against the throne. T h e rebellion in the north was but one example—and here Feild lists the names of a number of Catholic agents, ending with that of Cuthbert Mayne, about whom he recounts a typical "propaganda story": . . . one Maine lately executed in Deuonshire (amongst whose papers mention was made of certayne halowed graines, to be giuen to timeseruing Papists, as tokens for a passeouer, in the day of our general execution, when we should haue bene al slaine and murthered) . . . H e mentions also their divinations, sorceries, witchcrafts, charms, and conferences with the devil, and finishes his description of the Catholic menace in high ironic style: . . . only let this witnesse their loyaltie and fidelitie to their naturall Prince, that to haue their superstitious idolatrie and cursed religion, their pompeous glorie and proud Hierarchie, they woulde haue her Maiesties life, and aduenture not onely their bodies, goodes and lands, but euen their soules, to bring about their malicious purposes.

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The dedication concludes with a brief passage on heresy, mentioning Arians, Anabaptists, and Libertines or the "Family of Love," and promising to discuss them in another treatise. Leicester is once more asked for protection, "that I lose not my labours by Satans malice," and exhorted to have a special care for the Church of God, for if the Gospel is freely preached all papism and heresy will be wiped out. If Leicester fails to discharge this duty to the utmost of his power, he will be punished: "your sinne lieth before the doore ready to deuoure you." A prayer that the Lord will make him "zealous and faithful for the Gospel" so that he will achieve the reforms demanded by his protege brings the epistle to a close. Feild brought to anti-Catholic writing the preacher's gift of rousing emotion, but he also used logic. In his summary of the treasonous practices of the Catholics, he put his finger on their weakest defense—the claim of the English Jesuits that they remained loyal to Elizabeth. H e showed that they were in fact carrying out the program of the Holy League, which avowedly intended the destruction of Protestant rulers, including Queen Elizabeth. A n d on this demonstration he based his demand for an end of the policy of easy toleration, asking in effect for stern repression of the recusants and a loosing of the Puritan preachers upon the countryside. His fearsome description of the Catholic threat was apparently influential enough (published, as it was, in the front of his very popular translation from Mornay) to require an answering salvo from the secret press of Father Parsons himself, and thus it precipitated a direct controversy with the Catholics. Parsons had originally established his underground press for publication of devotional tracts. In 1580, however, stung by Feild's attack and by other works against the Catholics, he decided to use it for counterpropaganda, and therefore published a work entitled A Brief Discours contayning certayne Reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church. Written by a learned and vertuous man to a friend of his in England and dedicated by I. H. to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie.20 Produced in England under a Douay imprint, it was intended chiefly to discourage conformity on the part of the recusants and to further their separation from the Protestants in religious matters. Prefaced to the tract itself, which was apparently from the hand of Parsons, there was For an account of this work see A. O. Meyer, England under Queen Elizabeth (London, 1 9 1 6 ) , pp. 200-202.

and the Catholic

Church

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a dedication addressed to Queen Elizabeth by one John Howlet, a Jesuit colleaigue of Parsons and Campion. 2 1 The dedication reiterated the Jesuits' claim that the Catholics were innocent of disloyalty to their queen, and accused their enemies of persecution on false grounds, specifically pointing to the Puritan Feild as one of those responsible. T h e work seems to have attained a fairly wide circulation, gaining such notoriety that at least two other writers besides Feild arose to controvert it in 1581. 2 2 FeUd's answering pamphlet was dedicated to Leicester. Its title is characteristic of the tone taken by the anti-Catholic propagandists: A Caueat for Parsons Howlet . . . necessarie for him and all the rest of that dar\e broode and uncleane cage of papistes, who with their untimely booses, see\e the discredite of the trueth, and the disquiet of this Churche of England. In other circumstances, the Puritans were themselves accused of seeking the "disquiet" of the Established Church, but against the common enemy they identified themselves with it. T h e punning reference to Howlet as "Parsons' Owlet," one of the "dark brood" in the Catholic seminaries, is intended to show that Feild has punctured the Jesuit leader's veil of anonymity, a suggestion emphasized by his remark to Howlet in the text, that "the matter" was not his own. 2 3 Feild begins his dedication by reminding Leicester that the controversy was set off by his dedication of Mornay's A treatise of the Chvrch to that patron: Hauing of late according to my bounden duty (right Honourable and my very good Lord) testified my pore affection to the Churche of God, and to your honoure a principall member thereof, by translating that worthic worke concerning the Churche: I finde that one H O W L E T (If I bee not deceiued) nowe lying in Rutlandshire or thereaboutes: one of mine old acquaintance, a scholler in my time, hath taken the matter in great greefe, for that to your honor, I 21 Both STC and The British Museum Catalogue of Primed Bool(S list the work as b y Parsons, the latter cross-indexing " H o w l e t " as a pseudonym of Parsons. Meyer, op. cit., p. 2 0 0 , and the DNB account of Parsons also consider it one of the assumed names of the Jesuit leader. Howlet w a s , however, a real person w h o left records of his attendance a t O x f o r d and of his entrance into the Society of Jesus; he is so treated in the brief DNB entry under his name. Feild in his Caueat gives evidence of personal knowledge of the m a n , as will be shown. 22 T h e two other writers were " P . W . " (identified as Perceval W i b u r n ) , author of A Cheese or reproofe of M. Howlets untimely shreeching in her Maiesties eares, and William F u l k e , w h o will be mentioned again later in this chapter. All three published in 1 5 8 1 . 23 Sig. A.iiij.r.

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hauc insinuated the Papists to be enemies to God, and to her royall maiestie. This he saith, I haue done to excite your honour to persecution. Having set the stage and incidentally advertised his translation (which had its fourth edition in this year), Feild acknowledges the charge that he has urged Leicester to stamp out Catholicism, and defends his action: The truth is, I did it to youre honour, because, that as God hath set you in a cheefe place ouer this his church, so you and all the rest of his calling, might watch against suche enemies, and discharge that trust he hath committed vnto you, both to stoppe them from farther vndermining the Church of God . . . and also stande for the preseruation of the Queene . . . vpon whome, howsoeuer now they flatter and faune for fauour and commodity, they haue bene, are, and shal be, found her most dangerous enemies, suche as . . . haue gone about to seeke her highnes vtter subuersion. H e adds that he did but touch upon this argument in his dedication of the Mornay but now feels provoked to develop it further. H e apologizes for the rough style of his discourse, which is different from his usual manner and "which perhaps some delicate eares will hardly beare, supposing it not fit for the spirite of the gospell," declaring that he has used it advisedly to beat down the haughty presumption of his adversary: " I think I know the man, and also his gifts." For the use of "round speeche" against the enemies of God's truth he gives Biblical warrant, noting examples in the margin. A n d , indeed, much of his own vituperation depends upon scriptural allusion for its effect. H e disclaims hatred o£ the persons of these enemies but acknowledges that he hates "their idolatrous and abhominable superstitions," and proclaims that they will find "many in Israel" to march against them and "with their own swords to cut off their owne heades." Although by August 30, 1581, when this dedication was written, Feild should have been sufficiently convinced that the Queen and her councillors were alert to the Catholic threat, the preacher rises to his greatest rhetorical power when he warns Leicester and Elizabeth against the seduction of fawning enemies. One suspects that he hoped to keep alive that popular fear of the Romanists which justified toleration of the Puritans, their most vociferous enemies. H e returns, therefore, with renewed energy, to the message he had already delivered in his earlier dedication:

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Beware of the flatteryes of these double tongs, their mouths are ful of guile, and the poison of Aspes is vnder their lips. As low as they croutch, and as fast as they weep, if they mighte but creepe in and haue oportunitie to shewe their nature, you shoulde try (as God forbid) what Crocadiles they are. Her maiesty, and al that professe the glorious Gospell of Christe, vnder her gratious gouernment, should feel then the sword, which now, they haue so annointed with hony. It were much better for vs that professe the gospell, to fall among Rauens, if necessity should constraine vs, then into the hands of these mealimouthed flatterers, for the one wold neuer light on vs, til we were dead, wheras the other would deuour vs whilest we are liuing. For they haue hony in their mouths, and death in their harts. In passages such as this we feel an oratorical skill and fervor which account for Feild's great influence as a popular preacher. Naming no one directly, he utters a general warning which could be applied as well to the Spanish and French flatterers as to the Jesuit missionaries, probably intending his noble patron and his queen to associate it chiefly with Alen^on and the latter's party at court. H e develops this theme at some length, illustrating it with examples from Scripture and reiterating its value for Leicester, whom he urges to "continue circumspect." The dedication closes with a characteristic prayer against the opponents as well as for the cause he represents: The Lord Iesus send these Parasitical Papists their iust reward, keepe her maiestie, and this whole state, from their craftie vnderminings, continue his Gospell, that we may euermore serue him, and Hue in obedience of his name, till we obteine that euerlasting inheritance. Amen. Feild wrote this dedication some six weeks after the capture of Campion. There can be little doubt that at the time he enjoyed the favor of Leicester and other high-placed patrons. In 1579, perhaps as a reward for his literary activities of that year, perhaps to find him a living out of London (where, as we have seen, his preaching had been suppressed by Aylmer), he had been given a post at Henley and Leicester's influence had obtained for him a license to preach granted by Oxford University. 24 But by 1581 he appears to have returned to London, for he served as notary at the conferences which the ecclesiastical authorities held with Campion before the trial, contributing his report to the 24 A n entry of July 1 4 , 1 5 7 9 , in the Register of the University of Oxford, ed. C. W. Boase and A . Clark (Oxford, 1 8 8 4 - 8 9 ) , II, Part I, 149, indicates that Lord Norris and Sir Francis Knollys, intending to place " M r . John Feelde in a lecture at Henlye," had asked the Chancellor (i.e., Leicester) to obtain a license for him and that it was granted.

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flood of anti-Jesuit literature w h i c h publicized the government's action against the Catholic mission. 2 5 T o w a r d the end of 1581—the year was a busy one for Feild—the preacher found occasion to address his patron on a matter very different f r o m the anti-Jesuit campaign but perhaps as near to his puritanical heart: he adjures Leicester to desist from the patronage of stage plays. Since the letter w h i c h contains this exhortation provides a rare opportunity to observe the private aspect of a patronage relationship, the text will be given. 2 * It begins w i t h the writer's expression of gratitude for Leicester's intercession to release h i m f r o m imprisonment and restore his license to preach: T h e gracious grace of our Lord Jesus Christe be with you and fulfill with his spirite all the holy desiers of your hearte Amen H o w e shoulde I, forgeate you (my good lord) to whom I ame so many waies bounde in Christe, sith not onely I, but the whole Church do owe thankfulnes vnto you as the instrument both of my peace and libertie, and of that poore blessinge it enioyeth by my preachinge? Sutch a benefytte as I do preferre before my lyfe, without which my lyfe shoulde be vnprofitable? This is the cause (my good lord) that I watch all oportunities, of doinge that dewtie, wherwith I stande specially bounde vnto you; still to stirre you vp, amiddest the manyfolde incombrances that followe your lyfe, howe glorious soever it seme to be, yet compassed with many feares, miseries and daungers. But if you stand fast, and fainte not in that excellent hope, if you walke with your God, with an vprighte a single hearte, and syncere affection to the Gospell of your God; in a plaine profession and full practise: doubte not (my lord) but he that hath hitherto so mercyfully supported you, wilbe your gratious and good God to th'ende. A n d howesoeuer he trye your patience by sundry crosses and afflictions, yet these trialls so many as they are and may be; shalbe so many arguments of the comfortable experience of his goodnes and favoure towards you. Onelie praye that you may stand fast, and so I will praye for you, that to ease your selfe, you vse no other meanes then are agreable to his will T h e more Sathan rageth, the more valiaunte be you vnder the standert of him 25

A true report of the disputation

Whereunto

is joyned

a true report

. . . with E. Campion of the other

[by Deans N o w e l l and D a y e ] ,

three dayes conferences

[by John F e i l d ] ,

1583. 26

F r o m M S Cotton T i t u s B. V I I , fol. 22 r.; the address to "the Earle of Leicester" is on

fol. 1 3 v., w h i c h served as envelope. T h e passage b e g i n n i n g " T h e more Sathan rageth . . . " has been printed by J. P. Collier, The the Stage

History

of English

Dramatic

Poetry and Annals

( L o n d o n , 1 8 3 1 ) , I, 253 n., and by E. K . C h a m b e r s , The Elizabethan

f o r d , 1 9 2 3 ) , I V , 284; the full text is reproduced by R. F . Brinkley, Nathan Actor-Playwright

( N e w H a v e n , 1 9 2 8 ) , pp. 1 4 8 - 4 9 .

Stage Field,

of

(Oxthe

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w h o will not be foylcd. And I humblic besech your honour to take heede howe you gyve your hande either in euill causes, or in the behalfe of euill men as of late you did for players to the greate greif of all the Godly; but as you haue shewed your forwardnes for the Ministery of the Gospell, so followe that course still. Our Cyttie hath binn well eased of the Pester of those wickednesses and abuses, that were wonte to be nourished by those impure enterludes and playes that were in vse. Surely the schooles of as greate wickednesses as can be: I truste your honour will herein ioyne with them that haue longe out of the word cryed out against them, and I ame perswaded that if your honour knewe what sincks of synne they are, you woulde never looke once towards them T h e lord Jesus blesse you. Novemb. 25. 1581 your good lordshippes most bounden JOHN

FEILDE

H e r e w e find gratitude but no h u m i l i t y ; in fact, the writer seems to feel that the best return he can m a k e to his patron f o r valuable favors received is to deliver a personal sermon to h i m . T h e patronage relationship not only permits but actually obliges h i m to remind his benefactor of the illusiveness of earthly glory and the true m e a n i n g of earthly tribulation. B u t there can be little doubt that the m a i n body of the letter is merely preamble to its concluding message. Leicester has been encouraging the players, to the horror of their Puritan opponents; he must stop. T h e r e is even a suggestion that if he persists in such "euill causes" he will lose the support of the Puritan ministry. Feild's loathing of " i m pure enterludes and playes" was so intense that perhaps it was as well that he did not live to see the career of his son N a t h a n Field, actor and p l a y w r i g h t in the reign of James I. A l t h o u g h Feild published no f u r t h e r dedications to Leicester, and although the patron did apparently continue his support of the players, w e have every reason to believe that the relationship between them continued friendly. In 1583 Feild's report on the C a m p i o n hearings was published and in the same year appeared his tract on the Paris G a r d e n catastrophe which, as has already been mentioned, threatened with G o d ' s j u d g m e n t those w h o indulged in such sinful entertainments as bearbaiting a n d stage plays. T h e latter w o r k was published "by authoritie" and the writer is called "minister of G o d s w o r d " on the title page, so that apparently Feild was at this time being allowed to preach in L o n don, in return for his propaganda w o r k against Parsons, H o w l e t , and

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Campion. In 1584 he was again suspended from preaching for holding an assembly of ministers in his house—perhaps a meeting of the "London Classis" which he headed—and, although Leicester in that year interceded on behalf of deprived Puritans, there seems to be no further record of his activities. He died in 1588, as did his patron. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the champions of the Protestant cause who rose up in these years to controvert the Catholic writers included William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and one of Leicester's chaplains. Fulke's early dedications to Leicester have been discussed in Chapter II. In 1569 or thereabouts Leicester summoned Fulke from academic life to serve him at court and to assume the responsibilities of an active theologian. This Fulke explains in his dedication to Leicester of his In sacrarn Diui Ioannis Apocalypsim Praelectiones (1573) where, speaking of himself, he declares, "quem ab vmbra académica venientem, non ad otium aulicum inuitasti, sed ad fructuosum laborem serio admouisti." His fruitful labor commenced soon after Leicester's action with the publication of A Confutation of a Popishe Libelle (1571), and from then on he seems to have been largely occupied in anti-Catholic controversy, culminating his work by a detailed critique of the Rheims New Testament in 1589. Like Feild, Fulke issued a pamphlet against Howlet. Entitled A briefe Confutation, of a Popish Discourse (1581), it was but one of a number of direct attacks upon Catholic writers from his pen. Since none of these appeared under Leicester's open sponsorship they need not detain us here, except to remark that the earl appears to have been personally responsible for directing this man's litigious energies into anti-Catholic channels. Still another of Leicester's proteges to take up his pen in the antiJesuit propaganda campaign of these years was Meredith Hanmer, who has already been mentioned as the translator who dedicated The auncient Ecclesiasticall Histories to that patron in 1585. When Hanmer entered the lists against the Jesuits, he was still an obscure figure who signed himself "Master of Art, and Student in Diuinitie" upon his title pages; as was suggested in our earlier discussion, the benefits which he received soon after, and for which he expressed gratitude to Leicester, were probably bestowed in reward for his two tracts against the Catholics. These tracts were published early in 1581. They have all the appearance of officially encouraged propaganda, including dedications to a group

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of Privy Councillors of whom Leicester is one. 2 7 T h e second work is an answer to the Jesuits' confutation of the first treatise, for, like Feild, Hanmer embroiled himself in controversy. T h e earlier work is an attempt to answer the "nine articles," a letter which Campion had addressed to the Privy Council in support of the Catholics' claim to right of private worship without offense against the Crown, petitioning the Council to allow him to dispute the cause openly and challenging the Protestant clergy to answer him logically. It was, in effect, the manifesto of the Jesuit mission. Hanmer entitled his

treatise The Great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a lesuite, commonlye called Edmunde Campion, latelye arriued in Englande, contayninge nyne articles here seuerallye laide dotvne, directed by him to the hordes

of the Counsaile,

confuted

and aunswered.

As the title indicates,

Hanmer followed accepted controversial practice by printing and countering the Catholic arguments, a stratagem designed to convince the reading public that it was hearing both sides of the question and that the Catholics were being fairly answered. And presumably the individual reader was thereby prepared to argue with anyone who tried to convert him. Hanmer's chief weapons in argument are scorn and weight of learning. In dedicating this work to the members of the Privy Council, Hanmer implies that he has official sanction. 28 Indeed, since Campion's challenge to the clergy had been addressed through the Council, it is scarcely conceivable that Hanmer would have taken upon himself to write an answer without the permission, if not the actual commission, of both the Council itself and the ecclesiastical authorities. H e avoids, however, a direct statement concerning the sponsorship of his publication, saying that the copy had lately come into his hands, and since it was directed to the Council, I thought it my duty vnder your Lordships fauourc and correction . . . to answeare his bragges and challenge, as far forth as it concernes my degree, and the common weale of the Clergie of England. His petition is to your honours for fauour, his quarel is to the Clergie for religion, and his drift . . . 27 They are addressed, in identical words (with unimportant differences in spelling and punctuation), " T o the Right Honorable Sir Thomas Bromley knight, Lord Chancellor of Englande: William, Lord Burleigh and Lorde Treasorer: Robert, Earle of Leicester: Edward, Earle of Lyncolne: with the rest of her Maiesties most Honorable counsell." If this address be compared with that of Munday's English Romayne Lyje it will be seen that Hanmer's list of dedicatees is the same, except that he also includes the Earl of Lincoln, who was probably an earlier patron. 28 The dedication is dated from London, January 2, 1580 (i.e., 1 5 8 1 ) .

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is to seduce her Maiesties louing and faithful subiects, with showe of Catholike Priesthode and profession. He writes in doubly official capacity, speaking as a clergyman for his "bretherne of the clergie," but dedicating his work to the Council because Campion has recognized their authority over the whole matter. In the name of the Protestant ministry of England, he gives thanks for the "vertuous, peaceable, and prosperous raigne" of Elizabeth under which they have been sheltered and encouraged: "Her temperall swerd aduanceth the swerd of the Spirite, which is the word of God." He and his fellow clergymen bless God also for providing councillors who will, they hope, encourage the preaching of God's word, command the building of His church, and root out His enemies. They refer the determination of Campion's petition to the judgment of the Council but ask that, if it is granted, "he shalbc disputed with all." The dedication closes with an appeal to the general public "not lightly to credit such insolent brags: not vnaduisedly to receiue such wanderers from Rome" and urges them "to behold, what is and hath bene sayd for the truth, and to cleaue fast vnto the word of God." Campion's request that he be allowed to dispute openly with Protestant clergymen was not, of course, granted, although after his arrest some form of debate was allowed in the conferences reported by Feild. But this was still to follow. Within a few weeks of Hanmer's publication the Jesuits replied to the charges against them by issuing, from their secret press in England, a work entitled A brief censure vppon two booses written in answere to E. Campions offer of disputation,29 In response, Hanmer rapidly composed a solid and learned treatise entitled The lesuites Banner, and addressed it to the Privy Council in a dedication which fully explained the occasion and purpose of the work. 30 He begins by calling attention to the service he has rendered the Council in 29 Published with a Douay imprint, 1 5 8 1 , and ascribed to Parsons (see STC 19393 but compare STC 4534 where the same work is listed as anonymous). The "two bookes" mentioned in this title apparently include, besides Hanmer's Great bragge, a work by William Charke entitled An answere to a seditious pamphlet by a Jesuite, published without dedication in 1580 and again in 1581. Like Hanmer, Charke responded with a second work, A replie to a censure, etc. ( 1 5 8 1 ) , and when this in turn was answered, with a third and a fourth (see STC 5005-9). The controversy was kept alive until 1586. 30 The lesuites Banner. Displaying their original and successes their vow and othe: their hypocrisie and superstition: their doctrine and positions: with A Confutation of a late Pamphlet secretly imprinted and entituled: A Brief Censure . . . 1581. The dedication is dated March 3.

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answering Campion's petition for "such things as were not to be graunted." T h e present work, he declares, provides "a further viewe of this Iesuiticall sect," to the writing of which he has been inspired by the appearance of an anonymous pamphlet, "secretly imprinted, (no doubt in E n g l a n d ) . " After giving the title, he describes the work as "containing very dangerous doctrine, vnreuerent speaches against particular persons, tending therby . . . to discredite the Gospel and the professors thereof." His answer, which is designed to expose the hypocrisy and false doctrine of the Jesuits, he now addresses to the same patrons who had accepted the dedication of his previous work. A s in the latter, he undertakes to present his opponents' case, "heere inserted (as occasion hath beene geuen) and also largely confuted." T h e remainder of the dedication is devoted to exhorting the Council to stamp out Romanism by positive action. While Hanmer's language is much milder and less vigorous than Feild's his purpose is much the same, and he uses similar arguments. H e warns the authorities against accepting at face value the pacific offers of the Jesuits: "they seeke not after peace . . . they yeelde not vnto her Maiesties proceedinges . . ." nor do they penitently embrace the Gospel. H e rejects the notion of extending toleration to such hypocrites: "let there continue . . . betweene vs and them, the rather a conflict for the defense of the trueth, then with them in falshood a concorde." Speaking once more in the name of the Protestant ministry, he appeals to the Council to initiate parliamentary action for the suppression of the Jesuits: . . . my selfe with the rest of my fellow labourers . . . desire your Lordships, to bee a meane vnto the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, that at this present summons, and noble assembly, in the most honorable and high court of parliament, there be a vew had of this dangerous sort of people, that their rouing be restrained, that their religion be reformed . . . T h e repressive legislation he calls for was in fact enacted by the Parliament of 1581. Although Hanmer knows the dangers of clemency, yet he favors the attempt to convert by fair and patient means "such as are to be woon." But against those who resist conversion he quotes Scripture: The Prophete Dauid speaking of the Lorde, saith: . . . if the sinner will not turne, he will bend his bowe, he will gird himselfe, he will whet his sword, and shaue the hearie scalpe of the enimie.

2Óo

Anti-Catholic Propaganda

Like Feild, he disclaims hatred of the persons of the Jesuits, declaring that he embraces them "in tender loue"; it is their religion he desires reformed, "and their Romish practises detested and abhorred." Having given lip service to the doctrine of brotherly love, he proceeds to list with obvious relish the worst offenses of the Romanists: their success in countries abroad, their secret mission into England, "how slylie they inueigle the simple, and snare them in error," their treachery against the Realm and the Crown. They bring their false religion from Rome to the people and keep the word of God unpreached from them. They swear obedience to the Pope and deny princes the loyalty and subjection which are their due. They worship idols and images. For all these reasons, Hanmer urges the Councillors, who are "indued with the spirite of wisedome and counsell, from aboue," to encourage true religion and the preaching of the Gospel and to root out sects, schisms, and heresies, so that uniformity of belief and obedience to the Prince may prevail. Despite Hanmer's similarity to Feild in his utterly intolerant attitude toward the Catholics and in his emphasis on the preaching of the Gospel, it is evident from his tone that he does not belong to the most extreme wing of the reformers. He exhorts but does not hector his patrons; he points out their duty to them with some humility instead of threatening them with divine punishment if they fail to discharge it. Stressing uniformity and obedience, he is no enemy of the bishops or of the established order. He hopes for advancement within that order. As we have seen, his efforts were rewarded, and he was given the opportunity to exercise his puritanical zeal as vicar of Shoreditch and in other appointments. In the campaign against the Jesuits the authorities did not content themselves with the pamphlets of Hanmer and other writers of the vernacular but sponsored as well two writers who were accomplished Latinists—for the tongue of learning was also the language of serious religious controversy, and only in Latin could the case against the missionary priests be publicized on the Continent. In 1581, William Whitaker of Trinity College, Cambridge, issued two Latin pamphlets in answer to Campion's Decern rationes, the Jesuit leader's famous defense of his own position. 31 In the following year the distinguished 31

Ad rationes decern E. Campiani, responsio ( 1 5 8 1 ) ; the second edition appeared the

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regius professor of theology Laurence Humphrey, now Dean of Winchester Cathedral, published his lesvitismi pars prima: sive de praxi Romanae curiae contra Respublicas et Principes, with a dedication to the Earl of Leicester. As we have seen, Humphrey had been president of Magdalen College at Oxford and had later under Leicester's patronage filled the office of vice-chancellor of the university; his stubborn Puritanism has also been mentioned. The work published in 1582 was intended to bring all the weight of his academic authority against the Catholic cause and to justify the persecution of the English Jesuits on the ground that they had seditiously acted against the Crown in the interests of the Pope. Leicester's Bear and Ragged Staff faces the beginning of the dedication, which is addressed to the earl as Chancellor of Oxford as well as Privy Councillor in emphasis of the learned character of the argument. The epistle itself is a lengthy treatise or Apologetica Praefatio, as the author entitles it, which begins with a defense against the calumnies of his enemies—the "mocking grimaces of the Zoilists." The writer then explains that he is answering the infamous little books which claim that Campion and other Jesuits died as martyrs, innocent of the charges against them. Several of the remaining pages are devoted to a scholarly and logical argument directed against the papacy and the Jesuits, considering one after another of the Pope's bulls against Protestant rulers including Elizabeth, and demolishing the Catholic position by historical, Biblical, and scholastic references. The Jesuits are accused of disseminating lies concerning such English Protestants as Huntingdon, Leicester, Walsingham, and the writer himself. Because Campion was an alumnus of Oxford, Humphrey feels called upon to defend his university at some length; he claims Chaucer as an Oxonian, boasts of the relations between Hus and Oxford, and holds up Colet, Tyndale, and Oxford's Protestant heroes as examples to be followed in the present generation. By way of contrast he attacks the iniquities of Allen's seminary to which Campion and other English Catholic students migrated for training. When at length Humphrey turns to the dedication proper he offers his work to Leicester both as chancellor of Oxford and as the writer's special patron—"Moecenati meo singulari dedicare volui." All same year, and the work was revived in an English translation in 1606, when the fear of Catholicism was again very strong. Whitaker's second work, Responsionis ad decern rationes dejcnsio, was published in 1 5 8 1 and 1 5 8 3 .

illat

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that Leicester has done to encourage learning and religious truth at the university is rehearsed and warmly praised. The text itself is in several parts, of which the longest is an admonition against the Pope and the Jesuit mission. This is followed by a collection of "sentences" concerning the obedience that is owed to Princes and magistrates, and two sets of Latin verses praising Elizabeth and defending her against the Pope's Bull. The volume closes with an Ash Wednesday sermon separately dedicated to Leicester under the title Pharisaismvs vetvs et novvs: sive de Fermento Pharisaeorvm Et Iesvitarvm. This piece opens with an interesting reference to comedies and tragedies played at Oxford in February, 1582, from which secular delights the speaker would win his audience to the contemplation of the religious crisis. It is really a treatise upon heresies of various sorts, "vain and mixed religion," directed especially against Campion, and pleads for the restoration of true religion. As we have seen, Campion's death did not bring an end to the controversies provoked by his Decern rationes and by his conviction as a traitor. Like other writers on the Protestant side of the argument, Humphrey found it necessary to follow his first treatise by a second which answered the Catholic refutations. This he entitled Iesvitismi Pars Secunda and published in 1584 with a dedication to Burghley and Leicester in which he appeals to both chancellors to assist in clearing religious controversy out of the universities. The epistle is, however, far from pacific in nature. Humphrey applies the term "Puritanopapists" to the Jesuits because of their claim that they alone are pious and erudite. He accuses them of conspiracy and sedition, and calls for love of country and loyalty to the ruler. The text itself is much more systematic—and very much longer—than that of the 1582 book. In the two intervening years Humphrey had devoted himself to composing a solid theological treatise which would at once confute the Campionists and assert the fundamental bases of the Reformation. He produced a weighty tome which did not put an end to controversy but which entitles him to be ranked high among Elizabethan theologians before Hooker. Humphrey's zeal against the Catholics, which in his earlier days in the university had earned him the sobriquet of "Papistomastix," was not confined to the language of scholarship but found expression also in the pulpit. In the year 1587, stimulated anew by recent plots against the life of Elizabeth and by the threat of the Armada, he began preaching upon

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the text "The Lord keepe me from laying mine hand vppon the Lordes annointed" (I Sam. 26:11). The seven sermons on that theme which he delivered at Oxford, in several parts of Hampshire, and at Paul's Cross in London, were collected under the title A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster, Traison, and published early in 1588 with a dedication to Leicester offering him the work as a gift for the New Year. 3 2 This small volume was the Oxford scholar's only original work to be printed in English; all his other publications except one translation are in Latin. Humphrey opens his dedication to Leicester with a direct attack on the "Romish Religion" in which he finds two aspects, both drawn from Satan himself—"corrupt Opinions, and outragious Actions." With the first of these, the sowing of pernicious doctrine, he is not now occupied. The second, which is bloody and full of cruelty and seeks our destruction, is the many-headed Monster Treason, whose actions are encouraged by the Pope in Rome. Humphrey then proceeds to describe the seven heads or actions of Treason which form the chief matter of his sermons and which in fact provide an excellent summary of the Protestant case against the Pope. First and foremost, he accuses the Pope of usurping the temporal power of kings, sometimes in his own person and sometimes by inciting kings to fight against one another. He finds his chief example in the Council of Trent, and repeats the old charge that the Council had urged all Catholic princes to prepare against England and other countries of the reformed religion. The second head he calls "a trumpet of ciuil warre," and here he claims that the Pope has stirred up rebellion and dissension in England and Ireland. His third point concerns excommunication, the Pope's weapon against all rulers who refuse him obedience, and with it he connects his fourth, the deposition of a Christian Prince by a papal bull, as in the case of the Bull against Elizabeth which released people from loyalty and obedience to their sovereign and gave full license to rebellion. Under his fifth heading, "Priuie practises," he describes the murders of a number of Protestant leaders ending with the assassination of the Prince of Orange and the story that the blood price was twenty-five thousand crowns, the rank of a gentleman, and full pardon. His sixth heading, "craft and periurie, Original of the 32 Printed at Oxford by Leicester's protege Joseph Barnes and apparently the same work as that mentioned in the DNB account of Humphrey under the title Seven Sermons against Treason.

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rest," describes the activities of the Jesuits, commissioned by Rome to teach perjury and disobedience to Princes. In his lively development of this point Humphrey claims that there is no part of the Christian world to which the Jesuits have failed to reach. His position with reference to his seventh heading, Witchcraft, is not entirely clear; he does not deny belief in sorcery but declares that kings are safe against it, protected by Providence. All seven of these actions, Humphrey asserts, are continually practiced in the realm of England. In offering this work to Leicester, Humphrey reminds his patron of his other books against popery and states that present perils have moved him to use all his means of persuasion to call his countrymen to "conformity and due obedience to the Prince, and to the loue of their owne country, for the common safety and preseruation of vs all, in body and soul." He laments that Englishmen, having lived so long under a gracious and peaceable government, should need such urging. Attacking those who mutter against the Prince, he asks if they would prefer to return to conditions under Queen Mary. D o they wish a religion stained with blood and a government of tyranny ? But he feels that "God wil be a Buckler" and that all men, recognizing their peril, will unite together to strive against the adversary. And if we are dutiful towards God and obedient towards our Prince, No diuelish witchcraft, no Ruffians dag or dagger, no inuasion of forreiners, no craft or art of any enemies, no nor this seuen-headed beast shall annoy Prince, Peare, or People. He can, he will send twelue legions of Angels. Then shalbe truly verified that which long ago was prophecied: The Kingdome of Englande, shalbe the Kingdome of God. Moreover, all who conspire against the Lord's anointed will be punished by providential death—as were the conspirators against Julius Caesar! Drawing this dedication to a close, Humphrey declares that just as Leicester and the Council, in the present crisis, "make euery way a politick preparation, and euery man seeketh his piece, and his furniture," so he also would fight the enemy with his only weapons, his tongue and pen. H e then relates how he has delivered these sermons in several parts of England and appeals to Leicester for patronage of his book, which he offers "as a poore scholasticall New-yeares-gift, and as a gratulation of your prosperous returne"—a reference to the earl's recent expedition in the Netherlands—as well as a signification of his bounden duty to his

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lord and special patron of his university. T h e epistle concludes with a prayer for Leicester, the Council, and the whole realm, in which Leicester is identified with the David of Scripture. T a k e n together, the works of Fulke, Feild, Hanmer, and H u m phrey (to mention only those writers who can be called proteges of Leicester by virtue of other connections with him) are evidence of a wellorganized campaign to weaken the cause of Catholicism in England. It is notable that the three last named were Puritans, though in varying degree. T h e campaign appears in full force in 1581, but actually the year before had seen the turning point in the policy of England. By 1580, Leicester and Walsingham, their arguments reinforced by the arrival of Drake with enormous booty taken from the Spanish, had succeeded in forcing Elizabeth into a position of open defiance of Spain, despite the reluctance of Burghley and the honeyed words of Philip's envoys. T h e Puritans then exploited the presence of the Jesuit missionaries to demonstrate the necessity, if Crown and Church were to be preserved, for a consistent and comprehensive policy against all Catholic powers, at home and abroad. A n d the progressive party, backed by public opinion, proceeded to make this policy fact by acting upon it: English recusants were subjected to the most severe persecution they had yet endured, the Jesuits were hunted down and executed, and the French marriage plan was threatened by dissension in the Council. By 1582, when Humphrey published his learned apology for the government's action in persecuting Jesuitism in England, the immediate crisis was over. Campion and several other missionary priests had suffered martyrdom; Parsons had retired from England to take part in plots for enthroning Mary as Queen of England and to urge Philip to attempt invasion. T h e Council, led by Leicester, had expressed its opposition to the Alen^on match, and Alen^on himself, having been bought off, had left England early in 1582 under Leicester's escort. T h e Puritans had won their points, and Leicester and his party were in the ascendant. Within the next few years the progressives saw the fulfillment of several of their most cherished plans: the establishment of the first English colony in the N e w World, the intervention of England against Spain in the Netherlands, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and the destruction of Spanish sea power by an English navy—and a heaven-sent storm. In the meantime the behavior of the Catholics in England justified

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the worst predictions of their Puritan enemies. With Spanish collaboration Catholic agents resorted to a definitely subversive policy, and revealed their "crocadile" nature by issuing a series of vilifying pamphlets against those whom they had failed to conciliate. Their most poisonous vituperation was expended against Leicester himself, in the infamous Leycesters Commonwealth of 1584, ascribed to the pen of Parsons but repudiated by him. But Leicester, as leader of the now successful antiCatholic policy advocated by the Puritans, remained in the ascendancy, and his proteges continued to hail him in frequent dedications as the pillar of church and state. A number of writers not specifically concerned with the Jesuit controversy but equally anti-Catholic in intention also addressed works to Leicester during these years. There was, for example, William Chauncie, "Esquire," neither a preacher nor a university man but a gentleman of some culture who wished to bear testimony against the Catholics from the point of view of a converted recusant. In 1580 Chauncie dedicated to Leicester a treatise entitled The rooting out of the Romishe Supremacie which was reprinted in 1587 with a more meaningful title, The Conuersion of a Gentleman long tyme misled in Poperie, to the sincere and true profession of the Gospell of Christ Iesus.33 In his dedication Chauncie apologizes for his lack of learning and explains that his book is based upon his private reading in Scripture and "other lawes" and histories, commenced some three years before when he began to see the light of true religion. He has gathered together those things which moved him to see the truth of the Gospel and the falseness of the Pope's claim to supremacy. Apparently Chauncie was previously known to Leicester and had shown him the book in manuscript, for the dedication includes the statement that he would not have thought of publishing the work "had not your honour so earnestly required to haue a copie of it." Perhaps he had been brought before the earl for investigation on suspicion of recusancy and thus made his acquaintance. This suggestion is supported by his emphasis on Leicester's lack of vengefulness toward his enemies, and his statement that he has personally experienced the earl's magnanimity: 53 STC lists these titles as separate works instead of recognizing them as different editions of the same work; see nos. 5102 and 5103.

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. . . wherefore I my selfe (in the time of my great aduersities, thorough most iniurious vexations and troubles of some enuious persons) haue felt and tasted, to my great comfort and relief, as I can not but remember as long as I liue. He speaks also of Leicester's reputation for maintaining true religion and suppressing Romish superstition. The earl may well have furthered the publication of the treatise as the price of his leniency, recognizing that as the work of a former Catholic it would have the power of special pleading among recusants open to a similar conversion. The fact that it had a second edition in the critical year 1587 indicates that it was thought to have some value as propaganda. Among those who contributed both to Leicester's prestige and to the alarums of the times during these years was his former protege James Sanforde. Influenced perhaps by the moralistic bent and the belief in prophecies which we have already noted as characteristic of him, Sanforde turned from his more "literary" labors to the translation of a work by Giacopo Brocardo, the Italian visionary who claimed to have received a revelation of the mystical application of the Scriptures to the personages and events of his own day. From Brocardo's several works on separate books of the Bible, Sanforde selected for translation his Interpretatio et paraphrases libri Apocalypseos, which had been published at Ley den under Calvinist patronage in 1580. Brocardo's prophecies included the prediction that the Church of Rome would be destroyed, and other ideas calculated to nourish the wishful thinking of the Protestants. Sanforde's translation, under the title The Reuelation of S. Ihon reueled, or A Paraphrase opening by conference of time and place such things as are both necessary, and profitable for the tyme present, was published in 1582, and addressed to Leicester as chancellor of Oxford, a member of the Privy Council, and "a great Mecoenas, and Mayntayner of the Learned." The dedication is anti-Catholic in tone, stressing the "stryfe, and vayne ostentation" of the times as against the value of the things of the spirit, and censuring the "outwarde shewe" of papist ceremonies. As a panacea for current ills, Sanforde urges close reading of the Bible: Neyther is there any way more meete, and necessary to dissoluc, and ende all outward, and inward controuersies then the true examination of the holy Scriptures . . . Therefore he offers this paraphrase of the Book of Revelation, a part of the Bible which he says has too often been neglected, to Leicester, with an appeal for protection, presumably against anonymous Catholic critics,

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as to a great Prop, and Pyllcr of Gods word in this common wealth, and whose Patronage I most humblye craue agaynst all malicious detractours. Although Sanforde repeats the Puritan doctrine that the Scriptures constitute the ultimate authority, and although his work is dedicated to the patron of the Puritans, it is difficult to decide whether or not we can ascribe his zeal in translating this work to the influence of the more advanced reformers. The Book of Revelation was not popular with the reformers; both Calvin and Beza denied its validity. 34 On the other hand, apocalyptic material had been included in the anti-Catholic Theatre of Worldlings of the Calvinist Jan van der Noot, for the English edition of which Spenser is thought to have done the verse translation. Sanforde's other works place him among the writers of belles-lettres rather than among the directly propagandist writers, and we can suspect him in this case of exploiting the popular interest in allegory and prophecies of which we have evidence in the Theatre and in Spenser's later "visions." Published at a time when the fears of the populace were being roused by the dire forebodings of the anti-Catholic publicists, Sanforde's work can hardly have served the purpose of settling controversies, which he claimed for it, but it may well have been influential in increasing the general panic. A n d in these years the way out of controversy that appealed to the progressive party and their Puritan adherents was to bring things to a head. T h e religious writers who dedicated works to Leicester during the last few years of his life were for the most part concerned with the event which occupied a central position in their patron's life during that period—the war against Spain in the Netherlands. Since both the patron and his proteges were equally convinced of the righteousness of this cause, and wished to see a militant England championing Protestant Europe against the Catholic powers, it is impossible to ascribe responsibility for their propaganda campaign to the one rather than the other. Leicester's personal ambition—to crown his career by leading the English armies to victory in the L o w Countries—certainly disposed him to encourage all writings which would make military action seem inevitable and which, once he was in the field, would support continued intervention in spite of defeat and mounting costs. Against the caution, parsi34 Bullinger, however, had prepared a hundred sermons on the Apocalypse, printed in England in 1 5 6 1 . Fulke's Praelectiones on the same subject, dedicated to Leicester in 1 5 7 3 , has already been mentioned.

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mony, and jealousy of the Queen, Burghley, and the conservative nobles, he needed the backing of public opinion. The Puritans, on the other hand, were committed to the ideal of an international Protestant church in which their English church would be considered but a member, and to which they hoped to draw the practices and polity of the Elizabethan Settlement; moreover, they were aware that they were tolerated chiefly for the sake of their opposition to Catholicism, and in a national war against Spain they would find renewed occasion for advertising their value to the state. Of the numerous writers under Leicester's protection who engaged in propaganda for the Netherlands campaign, three were clearly Puritans. Thomas Stocker, whose Troubles and Ciuile Warres of the lowe Countries, published in 1583, has already been discussed as a historical work, was a zealous translator of Calvin's sermons and probably a preacher himself. As we have seen, the circumstances behind his translation of The Troubles and Ciuile Warres indicate that the work was in fact inspired by Dutch propagandists and that Leicester backed it because he hoped to take an English force to relieve the conditions which it described. The two other writers have also been mentioned previously. One was Christopher Fetherstone, the radical reformer who dedicated Calvin's Commentary upon John to Leicester in 1584, and the other, Arthur Golding, was likewise a translator of Calvin, though his earliest dedications to Leicester were of classical translations. Like Stocker, Fetherstone turned to the Continental propagandists for the source of his contribution to the Netherlands campaign. His work, entitled The Brutish Thunderbolt: or rather Feeble Fier-flash of Pope Sixtus the fift, against Henrie the most excellent King of Nauarre, and the most noble Henrie Borbon, Prince of Condie, was a translation from the Latin of a satirical refutation of the Pope's bull against the Protestant Henrys of France, written by the Huguenot scholar and publicist, François Hotman. 38 When it appeared, in 1586, Leicester was in the Netherlands and with him, in the capacity of secretary, was François Hotman's son, Jean. The connections between Leicester and the Hotmans serve to emphasize the international character of Leicester's allegiance to the Puritan cause. The many interesting relationships between the younger Hotman 3papae principem

sixti V, ftifmen hrittum in Henricum regem Nararrae et Henricum Borbonium ConJaeum vibratum, cujus multiplex nullitas ex protestatione patet, 1 5 8 5 .

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and members of the Leicester circle, including Sidney, fall outside the limits of this study, but they do indicate that the group had an enlightened interest in the affairs of northern Europe and they suggest that the earl himself was the object of a propaganda effort on the part of the Huguenot leaders and Protestant princes of Germany. 3 6 Leicester's correspondence, as preserved and annotated by his Huguenot secretary, show him cast for the role of protector of the reformed religion in Europe. With the exception of a short period in 1585 under Henri I V in Paris, Jean Hotman had been in Leicester's service since 1582. When Leicester departed for the Netherlands late in 1585, the younger Hotman rejoined him and served him as secretary until his death. Undoubtedly Leicester had good use, in England and more especially in the Dutch towns where he held court as supreme civil and military ruler of the Netherlands, for the services of a well-trained linguist and legalist who knew the Protestant world of the Continent. But in Jean Hotman's willingness to serve the English lord we may also discern a recognition of Leicester's importance to that Protestant world, and a desire on the part of the elder Hotman and his party to have near Leicester one who would have their cause at heart. Fetherstone's dedication of a work translated from the great Hotman was therefore particularly appropriate at this time. Perhaps it was suggested to him by Jean Hotman, or by Leicester himself. T h e dedicatory epistle provides an interesting study in the Puritan techniques of propaganda for the cause of intervention, and shows how close these methods were to those of the pulpit. 37 Fetherstone explains that the author, a skillful scholar, has drawn together in this work a great many arguments which reveal the "vsurpations, villainies, and outrages" of the Pope, whom he calls "that Abaddon, or destroieng enimie, the sonne of perdition." But the book will serve to fortify those who have already embraced the idea of a holy war against the Pope, rather than to convert opponents, for, as Fetherstone declares, it is not muche to be hoped for, that the Italianate atheists and discontented Papists (of which there are such swarmes amongst vs) will any thing at all be 38 For these relationships and Leicester's correspondence during this period see "Correspondance inédite de Robert Dudley . . . et de François et Jean Hotman," edited by P. J. Blok, Archives du Musée Teyler, 2d Series, XII, Part II (Harlem, 1 9 1 1 ) , 79 ff. 37 The title page of The Brutish Thunderbolt describes Fetherstone as "Minister of Gods word" whereas on the 1584 title page of his Commentary upon John he had appeared merely as "student in Diuinitie." Despite his close connections with the radical Puritan preachers, he had apparently been granted a living—perhaps through Leicester's influence.

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mooued with the cleere light of these most euident demonstrations, to reforme their iudgements and preiudicate opinions. . . T h e righteous, having decided to unite and by force of arms to execute the Lord's decree against the enemy, will find themselves blessed; and Leicester is especially fortunate in being selected a leader in one part of that war against "Babylon": Thrise blessed are they, that band themselues togither, and bend their whole forces to execute these iudgements of the Lord . . . . In which respect your Honor hath great cause to magnifie the Lord for his gracious mercies toward you, in that he hath vouchsafed you this honor, to stand in armes against one of hir principall louers, in so iust and holie a quarell, as is the maintenance of his sacred religion, and the deliuering of the helplessc out of the hands of the oppressor, so aduisedly and necessarily vndertaken by hir excellent maiestie . . . Since the Puritans themselves had been loudest in agitating for intervention against the Spanish and for relief of the Protestant Netherlands, it is not surprising to find Fetherstone approving Elizabeth's decision to send an expedition under Leicester. T h e remainder of the dedication is an exhortation to Leicester "to fight the Lords battels with courage." H e cannot fail to win because God is his ally: He is on your side . . . . The garde of his holie Angels shall be a surer protection vnto you, than any trench, bulwarke, or fortresse you can deuise. The praiers of all the godlie in the land being deeply touched with an inward sympathie and fellow-feeling of their neighbors calamities, are powred out continually for your safetie and happie successe . . . they shall procure more fauour to you at the hands of the Lord, than any either aduersarie forces, or associations of the holy Tridentine league shal be able to preuaile to the contrarie. T o strengthen Leicester's fortitude still further, Fetherstone reminds his patron that his enemies are "deuowed vassals to that beast, which is described in this booke: whose power (God be thanked) hath been found too weake to shake the throne of our gratious Souereigne, not withstanding his often assaults." Leicester must "neuer faint nor give ouer" before he sees a blessed end of his labors. T h e dedication closes with a prayer which envisions Leicester returning home victorious to be received "with such ioifull acclamations and songs of triumph, as Dauid was by the daughters of Israel."

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The epistle is dated October 3, 1586, by which time Elizabeth had become lukewarm to the whole project and Leicester himself discouraged by her lack of support and his own failure to meet the enemy in open and triumphant battle. N o doubt the patron welcomed Fetherstone's attempt to revive enthusiasm for his cause. We cannot, however, acquit the writer of still another motive: he is clearly informing Leicester that the Puritans back home expect him to continue his campaign until a decisive victory is achieved. And for a while, despite the loss of his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and other bitter troubles, Leicester did carry on his fruitless efforts in the Netherlands. The preacher's techniques and the preacher's intention are betrayed throughout Fetherstone's dedication; like so many of the epistles addressed to Leicester by Puritan divines, it is essentially a sermon. That the writing and translating of religious works was not, however, confined to clergymen and professing Puritans is one of the points emphasized by Arthur Golding, the dedicator of the next (and last) work to be considered in this chapter. Speaking of the value of the book he now offers his patron—a translation from the French of Philippe de Mornay —Golding declares that the taste for pious works is so strong in England at this time that many gentlemen at the Court and in the country, as well as students in both universities, have purposed its Englishing. Impressed by the Huguenot leader's learning in divinity and philosophy, and by the great significance of the work as an instrument of reformation, they have undertaken the labor of translation in the hope of gaining adherents to true Christianity. Among these would-be translators Sir Philip Sidney was one, and in his name Golding now presents the book to Leicester. Golding's title also explains and advertises Sidney's part in the project: A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion . . . Against Atheists, Epicures, Paynims, lewes, Mahumetists, and other Infidels . . . Begunne to be translated into English by Sir Philip Sidney Knight, and at his request finished by Arthur Golding. Despite the philosophical nature of the work, Golding's selection of a Huguenot original and his emphasis on the part played in the translation by Sir Philip Sidney both indicate that he was at least partly motivated to dedicate this book to Leicester by a desire to support that patron's campaign in the Netherlands. The work appeared in 1587, with a long and eloquent dedicatory epistle dated May 13 of that year. The address to Leicester includes, besides the usual titles, those of "Lord Generall of her

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Maiesties Forces in the Lowe Countries, and Gouernor Generall of the vnited Prouinces, and of their Associates." Apparently the work was presented to the earl during his temporary return to London from the Netherlands. As has been mentioned, Golding had addressed his two editions of translations from Ovid to Leicester in the 1560's and had dedicated two religious works to him in the following decade, but in the thirteen years which had elapsed between his last address and this one the translator had turned to other patrons. Like many of Golding's translations, The trewnesse of the Christian Religion was a large and ambitious project, and we may be sure that Golding had a very good reason for addressing it to his old patron at this time. The conclusion is inescapable that he intended his dedication to increase the prestige of Leicester and to assist the Netherlands cause at a moment when the Queen and the Council were debating the withdrawal of the English forces. He accomplished his object largely by shifting the responsibility for the work itself to Sir Philip Sidney, whose recent death in the Netherlands campaign had plunged England into deepest mourning. After the passage in the dedication concerning the value of the work and its popularity among gentlemen and students, Golding turns to a long eulogy of Sir Philip, Leicester's heroic nephew. He states that before passing "from the companie of the Muses to the Campe of Mars" Sidney had completed the translation of "certeyne Chapters" of Mornay's work, turning the remainder over to Golding for completion: Beeing thus determined to followe the affayres of Chiualrie; it was his pleasure to commit the performance of this peece of seruice which he had intended to the Muses or rather to Christes Church and his natiue Countrie, vnto my charge; declaring vnto me how it was his meaning, that the same being accomplished should bee dedicated vnto your Honor . . . . In his name therefore and as an executor of his will in that behalf, I humbly offer this excellent worke vnto your good Lordship, as his and not myne.38 Golding thus explicitly declares that the dedication is made in Sidney's name, not in his own. Without throwing doubt on the veracity of 39

G o l d i n g ' s discrimination between w o r k s "intended to the M u s e s " and those of religious

a n d patriotic motivation should be noted. Related to it is his apology f o r his v o c a b u l a r y , which f o l l o w s in the dedication. T h e translator explains that he has c a r e f u l l y chosen w o r d s of native derivation as f a r as possible, a v o i d i n g those of L a t i n and f o r e i g n origin, because the matter is mystical e n o u g h by reason of its p r o f o u n d n e s s , w i t h o u t b e i n g rendered m o r e obscure to the unlearned.

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Golding's account, wc should remark that his emphasis on Sidney's leading part in the project was of great advantage to the work itself and to the patron of the work. A t the time of publication, English pens were busy, especially at the universities, upon eulogies of Sidney, most of them dedicated to the Earl of Leicester whose heir he would have been. Moreover, Leicester's progressive policies had been dear to Sidney's heart: he had lost his life in serving them, as everybody knew. Everybody would have remembered, too, the splendid public funeral provided by Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law, from the remnants of his fortune, to engrave upon the mind of the people not only the memory of England's ideal knight but also the significance of the war in which he had died. Was this life to have been given in vain ? T h e appearance at this time, and in Sidney's name, of a work which the great Mornay du Plessis had prepared for Henry of Navarre gave strength to the cause of Protestant internationalism—the cause now openly championed by England under Leicester's leadership in the Netherlands. There can be little doubt that it was so intended by its Puritan translator. And we can be certain that its patron, beset by difficulties in securing Elizabeth's consistent and effective aid for his campaign, valued Golding's propaganda and promoted its publication during his preparations for return to the scene of action. Both in quantity of individual works and in number of proteges, religious writings occupy a more important place in the sum of Leicester's patronage than any other category. In the thirty-three religious works dedicated to him by more than two score separate writers which have been discussed in this and the preceding chapter (and undoubtedly there are others which have escaped attention, besides those mentioned in earlier chapters), we have evidence of a consistently protective attitude toward pious literature, extending from 1561 to 1588. That the Puritan translations and anti-Catholic propaganda which he sponsored served his political purposes we cannot doubt, but let us not in our modern cynicism ignore the probability that he was interested in the books themselves—that he shared the characteristic Elizabethan enthusiasm for sermons and controversial writing. Puritan writers predominate in both fields, and in both utilize England's endemic fear of Rome as the basis of their appeal. It was a real fear, proved in the event. It reached into the heart of every loyal subject,

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whether or not he was satisfied with the Elizabethan Settlement, and stirred in him the gravest concern for his sovereign's safety and the security which he and his family enjoyed under her rule. Yet at the same time it made him conscious of the bonds which connected his country with the other Protestant nations, and aware of the differences which separated his church from "other Churches which at this daie professe the Gospell." If the common enemy was Rome, should not the peoples arrayed against the Pope take as their model "the best reformed churches" of the Continent and by agreement strengthen themselves? While he wondered, and read the works which urged reform and war, Elizabeth continued on her Erastian path, retaining control of her church and its policy of compromise, preferring national unity to dubious and expensive alliances which would commit her to leadership of a Protestant league, sending money and troops when emergencies developed, but resting more and more on naval power as the best means of defending England and harrying the enemy. In religious matters she remained firm; in foreign policy she yielded just enough to convince her people that she understood the danger from Spain, and by yielding wedded them to her in an intense loyalty which transcended dissatisfaction with bishops and vestments and ceremonies. Over two-thirds of the religious works sponsored by Leicester appeared in the decade which began with Alençon's renewed wooing in 1579 and culminated in the defeat of the Armada—the period when danger from Romanist sedition seemed gravest and when Leicester's political objectives were most clearly tied up with the defeat of French Catholic and Spanish ambitions. It was also the period of his greatest prestige as a patron: as we shall see in the final chapters, the religious writers were not the only ones who in this decade stepped up the pace of their service to him. During these years he required defense as well as support, for in the cold war waged by the Catholics against the rulers of England, the "Calvinist" Leicester was selected for most venomous attack. Foremost among Leicester's protégés, the Puritans hit back, throwing themselves into the campaign against the Jesuits, again into propaganda for relief of the Netherlands, and utilizing the anti-Catholic theme in their other works. A s antagonists of the Jesuits, they enjoyed semiofficial encouragement; in their other writings they served not the government but Leicester and his war party. Little need be added to the analyses of dedications included in these

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two chapters to show that, though they gratefully acknowledge assistance, Leicester's religious writers were conscious of a purpose beyond the hope of reward. They emphasize the dual obligation of patriotism and religion as the chief motivation of both their writings and his patronage. Not content with praising his zeal for pious works, they preach his duty to him, exhorting him to greater efforts for true religion and the commonwealth. They pray for his continued welfare but even more fervently for the continuance of his virtue. T h e more radical Puritans address him as protector of deprived ministers and pillar of godliness, those of a less narrow partisanism stress his high offices and his service to the state, but all agree in regarding him as the representative of a cause rather than as a mere individual, a personal patron. Leicester's sponsorship of this motley group of protégés—ranging f r o m humble preacher and soldier through pamphleteer, publisher, and professional translator to university don, college president, and even (if we include Sidney) knight—was not accidental but purposeful. T h r e e of them had previously served him in some other field—Golding as translator of classics, Sanforde as translator of Italian literature, Day as publisher of a scientific work. Another half dozen—Fetherstone, H a r mar, Munday, Feild, H a n m e r , and Humphrey—became his accepted protégés in the sense that they were encouraged to dedicate a second work to him. Moreover, each was used according to his lights, and among them they reached a wide and varied audience. T h e translators employed their talents to turn into the vernacular a considerable body of didactic and propagandistic material from the Continent. T h e preachers brought their pulpit rhetoric to bear in controversy and in lively prefatory epistles, stirring the reader by strong scriptural allusion and ironic emphasis. T h e Latinists aimed at a different audience, international and learned, and lent scholarly prestige to the cause they served. Whether they wrote for a cultivated or for a simple public, most of these writers applied to their work the skills developed by a university education. T h e humanistic tradition of the early reformers had not entirely died out, and now aristocratic patronage of classical translation and of the Renaissance movement in general was yielding a second harvest for the Reformation. In the religious field particularly, Leicester needed his protégés as much as they needed him. At times, especially when the extremists are hectoring him concerning his duty, we suspect them of recognizing his dependence

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and of exploiting the situation. They gained much from the relationship: an approved medium of publicity in the works which he sponsored; a limited amount of freedom of speech through his intercession against the bishops. O n the other hand, we must remember that ultimately it was the political aspect of their program—the cause of militant intervention against the Catholic powers—which survived, and that this was the aspect which served Leicester's personal ambitions. Except in so far as it was connected with the issue of Elizabeth's marriage and with foreign policy, he had no great stake in the Puritans' plan to recast the English church, nor did the destruction of their organization, which followed soon upon his death, impede the program of his party. Elizabethan England and Spain remained mortal enemies. It would appear that he had the better of the bargain. Viewing the movement in retrospect, however, we can see that it was larger than patron or protege, larger than party. By deflecting some of their energies f r o m the goal of church reform to the larger purpose of maintaining England's independence f r o m the Catholic powers, the Puritans identified themselves with a broader Protestantism and with their own nation. Their panic fear of Catholic sedition at home and Spanish aggression abroad imbued their religious internationalism with simple English patriotism, fervently expressed as loyalty to queen and commonwealth. T h a t this national consciousness of the Puritan writers, rather than their separatist tendencies, was cultivated by Leicester and his political allies is one of the triumphs of the Elizabethan patronage system, and a key to the working of Elizabeth's monarchy—theoretically absolute but actually dependent upon public opinion and national unity.

CHAPTER

Vili

The Last Decade of Leicester's Patronage . . . a bountifull Mecoenas to all the professors of worthie artes, and sciences. —Geoffrey Whitney, 1585

I

N the last ten years of Leicester's life the English Renaissance was moving toward its great flowering in poetry and drama. T h e Eliza-

bethan system of patronage, of which he is an example, had now reached its period of greatest activity and effectiveness: this decade was to see the appearance of gifted writers too numerous for the system to support, and the development of professionalism in the drama and other popular

fields of writing. F o r the remarkable increase in quality and tempo of literary activity, and for the originality which characterized much of the work produced in the remaining years of the reign, patronage had prepared the way. W i t h o u t aristocratic nurture of literature and learning, neither poets nor public would have been ready to accept the creative impulse. Although Leicester was to die before the Elizabethan glory reached the fullness of its development, he lived long enough to take under his protection a number of men who heralded its approach—writers who had something to say in their own right. A m o n g them we find some of the better known Elizabethan

names—Mulcaster, Greene,

Whitney,

Harvey, Florio, and Spenser. T o these writers, and to other aspects of Leicester's patronage which occupied his attention during this period, the remaining chapters will be devoted. 1 Leicester was now regarded not merely as an independent patron of great wealth and good will but also as a representative of progressive policies in the government and as an instrument through which the 1 T h e reader is reminded that Leicester's patronage of the fields discussed in preceding chapters continued throughout this period. For the full count of works dedicated to him between 1578 and 1 5 8 8 , see that portion of the chronological list in the Appendix.

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Crown itself sought to support literature and learning. H e was at the height of his political power, but his tenure was at best precarious. In 1578, at the beginning of the decade, and before Elizabeth's proposed union with Alen^on seriously threatened his supremacy at court, Leicester's authority seemed unrivaled. N o w or never, people thought, he would be accepted as Elizabeth's consort—and some, not wise in the ways of the Queen's heart, thought it would be now. T h e Puritans were strong at his back, gaining vociferousness as the value of their antiCatholic propaganda became clear to a government threatened by the advance guard of the Jesuit mission. Their support of his policy of aggression against Spain, and the additional strength gained by his party from the rising expansionist movement—for almost all classes saw in the gold of the N e w World a good reason for antagonizing K i n g Philip— gave him more influence than he had ever held before. H e held it only for the moment. His power depended always upon the whim of his royal mistress, whose favor he lost in 1579 when his secret marriage to the Countess of Essex was revealed to her by Simier, Alen^on's agent. Although he managed to climb back into the Queen's graces, the fall made him vulnerable both to the opposition of conservatives like Burghley and Crofts, and to the libelous attacks of the Roman Catholics. T h e remaining nine years of his life had in them much bitterness and conflict. H e was, indeed, to see the Alen^on marriage defeated by the will of the people and the opinion of the Privy Council, and, as leader of the English expedition to the Netherlands, to witness the triumph of his policy against Spain. But the campaigns in the Netherlands brought about the death of his beloved nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, produced a new breach in his relationship with the Queen, and ended in failure. In the year of the Armada he returned to power as the leader of the land forces prepared against a Spanish invasion, and shortly thereafter died, having known the satisfaction of the English naval victory. A s we look back across the decade we can see that the policies of his party dominated the period. From year to year, however, his ascendancy was constantly threatened, and always he had need for the supporting voices of his adherents. Fortunately his reputation for bountiful patronage was so fully developed that he did not lack writers to defend his name. A m o n g the writers who now justified Leicester's long record of generous patronage by addressing original compositions (as distinct from

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translations and compilations) to his name, we find the satirist E d w a r d Hake, who in 1579 dedicated to him the work entitled Newes Powles Churchyarde.2

out of

A t the time of publication Hake was understew-

ard of the royal borough of Windsor of which Leicester himself was high steward. L i k e so many of the earl's adherents, he was a man of Puritan sympathies. T h e circumstances of his life suggest that he had come to Leicester's attention long before, and that the patron's sponsorship of these provocative satires, published with his device as a sign of approval, was a reward for previous service. T h e work bears on its title page the statement that it has been "newly renued and amplifyed according to the accidents of the present time," and external evidence supports the theory of an edition in 1567 or 1568. 3 In his address to the reader, which betrays a nervous recognition that he is no great poet, Hake tells us that he resided in the Inns of Court for some three years preceding his first publication, and that while there he had time (as he has not had since) for reading poetry and practicing his writing. Since we know of Leicester's interest in young writers at the Inns during this period, and since it is unlikely that a work of this sort could have been published without an influential patron, it is probable that the earl stood sponsor to the first as well as to the second edition. Moreover, in 1573 H a k e was mentioned in company with Fulwood, another protégé of Leicester. 4 H e appears to have practiced in the Courts of Chancery for a while before retiring to the country and to have written a number of works during the dozen years between the two editions of the Newes, several of them of clearly Puritan intent. 5 In one of these, a poem published in 1575 to commemorate Elizabeth's accession to the throne, he exhorts the queen to reform the evils of the commonwealth, laying particular stress upon bad conditions in the church, and violently attacking the "papists."

6

H e has a forthright, thumping style,

and a goodly store of alliterative epithets, both effective in their way. H e 2 Edited with a biographical introduction by Charles Edmonds (London, 1 8 7 2 ) . My references are to the 1579 edition. 3 See Edmonds's Introduction, p. xvii. Leicester's interest at the time of this earlier edition in the subject of usury, one of Hake's themes, may perhaps be dcduced from Wilson's dedication to him in 1569 of A Discourse vppon Vsurye, as previously mentioned; like Hake's work it is in dialogue form though in prose. 4 5 Edmonds, p. ix. See the list of his writings, ibid., pp. x v i i - x x x v i . 6 A Commemoration of the most prosperous and peaceable raigne of . . . Elizabeth; Hake published a Continuance of this work in 1 5 7 8 .

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was, in short, just such a man as Leicester could use to further his Puritan program. The Netves itself increases the impression, gained from Hake's other works, that its author should have been a preacher but for the chance that made him a student of the law—and that he would have made a better preacher than lawyer. The dedication, which is in verse, asks protection against "such as lie in waite," promises further compositions if this one is encouraged, and closes with a pious prayer. Among the prefatory matter we find complimentary verses in Latin and English by two ministers of London; above Leicester's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff is the motto "The Glory of the Honorable, is the feare of God." The eight satires are written in fourteeners—printed as alternating fourand three-foot lines—and take the form of dialogues spoken by two young men walking in the aisles of St. Paul's. Although the subjects treated range through all the classes and professions, they are held together by the figure of Syr Nummus (Syr Monye), the source of all evil. Corruption in the church and in Hake's own profession of the law is severely chastised; greedy physicians, apothecaries and surgeons, brokers and usurers and bawds receive a sound drubbing. Extravagant living, the abuse of the sabbath, and the custom of frequenting St. Paul's for impious meetings and conversations, are especially castigated. Of particular interest is the passage in the first satire in which Hake selects for attack the "pompous Prelates" and "Chaplens of degree" and excepts the industrious clergy, the "poore ministers" who have been denied livings and robbed of their meed. In the sixth satire Hake develops this theme at length, and makes clear the identification in his mind of the corrupt clergy and the Roman Catholics. He tells first of the topics of conversation in the Papists' walk in St. Paul's—of the Catholics' rejoicing when they hear of the union of the Pope with Spain, of the deaths of Gospellers in Flanders, of the landing of Jesuit missionaries in Ireland, and of the slaughter of "the Sheepe" everywhere. His indignation burns even more fiercely when he discusses the hypocrisy of those English Catholics who pass themselves off for "true professors" and give lying assent to the Queen's supremacy over the church, using money to buy themselves immunity. Against them he is ruthless, advocating extirpation without show of mercy. Finally he shows how they employ their wealth to undermine the church, procuring pluralities and preb-

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ends for "popish jacks" who ncglcct their duties and keep true preachers from obtaining livings. There can be little doubt that Hake's Newes out of Powles Churchyarde is a Puritan work, sharing objectives with Feild's treatises and with Spenser's moral eclogues. Protected by Leicester's name at the head of his book, the poet suffered no ill results from his publication; rather, he appears to have prospered. He retained his position at Windsor and was active in the town's affairs, rising to be deputy steward, and, in 1586, mayor; in 1588 he was elected M.P. for Windsor. As mayor, he delivered an oration in the guildhall at Windsor on the occasion of the Queen's birthday in 1586, in which he rebuked her subjects for their lack of grateful recognition of the blessings they had enjoyed under her reign, and remonstrated with disloyal persons, especially Catholics. His grim and pious speech gained point from the recently discovered Babington conspiracy, which must have been present in everyone's mind. At the close he asked the audience to pray for "the good estate of that Noble Lorde the Erie of Leicester nowe in her Maiesties service in the Lowe Countrey," a request significant not only of his patriotism but also of his gratitude to Leicester and to the Earl and Countess of Warwick, whose patronage he had been enjoying. In the following year he published this speech with a dedication to the Countess of Warwick, "as by whom . . . both in my sicknesse and my health I haue bene often reuiued and singulerly comforted." 7 Leicester's patronage of original thinkers during this period was not confined to poets and propagandists but included as well a number of learned men who served him as experts in their chosen fields. In the latter group we find the great mathematician, astronomer, and experimental scientist, Thomas Digges. 8 This gifted man had already earned fame by his support of the Copernican hypothesis and by his practical applications of mathematics and astronomy. From 1577 to 1587 he devoted himself chiefly to the improvement of England's coastal defenses, the modernization of her methods of warfare, and other matters anticipating Spanish aggression. Throughout this period, which 7

An Oration conteyning an Expostulation . . . ( 1 5 8 7 ) . For the significance of Digges's work see Francis R. Johnson and Sanford V . Larkey, "Thomas Digges, the Copernican System, and the Idea of the Infinity of the Universe in 1 5 7 6 , " Huntington Library Bulletin, V ( 1 9 3 4 ) , 69 ff.; and F. R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (Baltimore, 1 9 3 7 ) , especially chap. vi. 8

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included important service in the Netherlands expedition, he seems to have enjoyed Leicester's patronage. He had previously found in Burghley a sympathetic admirer of his pursuit of knowledge, but both his professional interest in seeing that knowledge applied to the service of his country and his Puritan leanings drew him to the more progressive leader. In 1579 he dedicated to Leicester a work designed to revolutionize the science of warfare, under the title Stratioticos.9 His dedication is testimony of Leicester's interest in military affairs, and of his careful encouragement of men whose special knowledge was of value to the nation. In his opening sentence, Digges acknowledges himself deeply bound to Leicester, "as well for my preferment to hir Maiesties seruice, as for sundrie other fauoures continuallye powred on me." 1 0 He declares that for many years, as a service to Prince and Country, he has been engaged in making mathematics a practical instead of a theoretical science; he mentions his treatises on navigation, fortification, "pyrotechnic," and ballistics. Pointing to England's prosperity and enlightenment under Elizabeth, he calls for defensive preparations so that these gains may be protected. Finally, he tells us that this work was begun for the purpose of assisting a campaign to be conducted by Leicester, to whom he presented the original work and now dedicates this revised version. His reference is almost certainly to the expedition organized (but not dispatched) in 1577 to assist the Netherlands against Spain: the States had asked that the English forces be led by Leicester himself, but Sir John Norris was named in the earl's stead, as at the beginning of the 1585 campaign. At the end of his "Preface to the Reader," Digges again acknowledges his debt to Leicester, asking his readers to yield thanks for any benefit 9 T h e full title of this treatise gives an indication of its scope and intention: An Arithmetical! Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos. Compendiously teaching the Science of Numbers, as well in Fractions as Integers, and so much of the Rules and Aequations Algebraicall and Arte of Numbers Cossicall, as are requisite for the Profession of a Souldiour. Together with the Moderne Militate Discipline, Offices, Lawes and Dueties in euery weI gouerned Campe and Armie to be obserued: Long since attempted by Leonard Digges Gentleman, Augmented, digested, and lately finished, by Thomas Digges. his Sonne. (See STC 6848, where the work is misleadingly attributed to Leonard Digges, the father, himself a teacher and student of mathematics.) Leicester's arms, surmounted by his device, are printed on the reverse of the title page. 10 The reference to an apparently recent preferment is perhaps connected with Digges's work of surveying Winchelsea Harbor for the government; see C.S.P. Dom., 1;47-80, P- 577. under date " 1 5 7 7 ? "

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they may derive f r o m the book to its patron, "whose honourable disposition in fauouring and aduauncing all Vertue, and chiefelie the studious of these Liberall Sciences, wyth many especall fauoures vppon my selfe, hath prouoked, or rather enforced me, to take in hande this presente W o r k e . " T h e text itself is a highly technical application of mathematical methods to various military problems, and suggests that the day of scientific warfare was dawning. It also describes the duties of all members of an army, from common soldier to general, and sets forth plans for a camp and a battle, illustrated with diagrams at the end of the book. After the publication of this work, Digges was engaged for several years in supervising the repair of the fortifications at Dover Harbor, a key to England's defense. In 1583 Leicester apparently stood godfather to his son—who lived to shed renown on the name of Dudley Digges in the next century. In the Parliament of 1584-85, on Leicester's nomination, Digges served actively as M . P . for Southampton, and soon after the mathematician sent his patron a "platt of militare ordinance" with a covering letter in which he encouraged the earl to lead a force to the Netherlands and offered his services for the campaign. 1 1 A n d when, after many delays, Leicester was appointed lieutenant general (chief in command) of an expedition to the L o w Countries, Thomas Digges went with him as mustermaster general of the English forces. T h e position assigned to Digges was one of great responsibility and increasing hardship. T h e money for the soldiers' pay was held back by Elizabeth and her council, Leicester's personal funds were rapidly exhausted, and under these conditions Digges had to sustain the health and morale of his troops as well as he could. His reports to the authorities in England were of great value and are carefully preserved in the archives. 1 2 Despite insuperable difficulties in his work, Digges remained faithful to his patron, praising Leicester in his bulletins to Walsingham, and pleading for adequate support of the expedition. Leicester, writing to the latter purpose, finds occasion to say of Digges, "he wyll save hir majesty a good deall . . . a very wyse stout fellow . . . and very care11 For Digges's service as M.P. see J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1949), pp. 2 1 2 n., 4 1 1 . The letter, dated June 23, 1585, is quoted by E. M. Tenison, Elizabethan England (Royal Leamington Spa, 1 9 3 3 - 5 0 ) , VI, 1 2 - 1 3 , from Harleian MS 6993, fol. 91. Elizabeth did not announce her intention of sending an expedition until August 10. 12 CS.P. For., 1585-86, 43, 1 7 5 , 177, 1 9 1 , etc.

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13

full to serve thorouly hir majesty." Master and servant were mindful of each other's honor. In 1590, two years after Leicester's death, Digges published a second edition of Stratioticos which was revised and augmented but loyally retained the original dedication to Leicester. The additions give some indication of the varied kinds of services rendered by the mathematician as Leicester's aide in the field. Among them are the "Lawes and Ordinances Militarie" established by the earl for his forces, including provisions for divine service, and prohibitions against blaspheming, unlawful games, the company of vagrant women, and drunkenness, which indicate that Puritan influences were at work. 1 4 There are also the "Articles of Instruction" prescribed by Digges himself and confirmed by Leicester and the military council of the United Provinces; these had been published in English, Dutch, and French. 1 5 Digges included these additions in the 1590 publication not so much for their military value as because, by revealing the care with which he and his general had conducted the war, they enabled him to defend his dead patron against the charge of mismanagement. Some copies of the 1590 edition apparently include a section entitled " A briefe and true Report of the Proceedings of the Earle of Leycestre, for the Reliefe of the Towne of Sluce . . . Whereby it shall plainlie appeare his Excellencie was not in anie Fault for the Losse of that Towne." 1 6 Digges may possibly be the author, also, of a pamphlet published in 1587, A Briefe Report of the Militarie Services done in the Low Countries, by the Erie of Leicester: written by one that serued in a good place there, which was composed in the form of a letter by one " T . D . " When, in 1587, shortly after his second and final return from the Netherlands, Leicester was placed in command of all land preparations to defend England against the invading troops borne by the expected Armada, he may again have consulted Digges. For in the last section of 13 J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands (New York, 1 8 6 1 ) , I, 392-93, quotes from Digges's reports; Leicester's letter is to be found in John Bruce, ed., Correspondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During His Government of the Low Countries (London, 1844), p. 1 3 5 . 14 Stratioticos (1590), Book III, chap, xxii; these ordinances had been published at Leyden and London in January, 1586. 15 Ibid., pp. 237 if. 19 See DNB, s.v. Thomas Digges. This report was not included in the copies I have seen. It was also published separately, as apparently were other papers used by Digges in preparing his revised edition of Stratioticos; see STC 7284, 7285, 7288.

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the 1590 edition of Stratioticos we find a treatise entitled " A briefe Discourse what orders were best for repulsing of forraine force, if at any time they should inuade vs by sea in Kent, or elsewhere." A heading informs the reader that this work had been "long since by the Author exhibited in writing to the Patrone of this Stratioticos." Considered together the additions included in 1590 constitute a defense of Leicester's memory in answer to the attacks of his enemies—the more valuable because Digges, a recognized authority, was in a position to give detailed evidence of his patron's efficiency as a military leader. Despite the fact that he had not been fully paid for his services, Digges remained a "stout fellow," jealous of his leader's reputation even after death. 17 Even more distinguished, in his own field of learning, was the great legal authority of international reputation, Alberico Gentili, who gained Leicester's protection in 1580, soon after his arrival in England. Because of Leicester's recognition of Gentili's worth, Oxford University fostered a revival of the study of civil and Roman law, and England was able to claim a leading role in the development of international law. 1 8 Gentili was one of the numerous Italian Protestants who found a refuge in England. When he arrived in London at the age of twentyeight, he had already acquired a reputation for legal knowledge in his 17 In 1590 Digges wrote to Burghley requesting payment of a thousand pounds still outstanding ( D N B ) . Another writer named Thomas Digges was mindful of Leicester's greatness as late as 1 6 0 1 , when he published two strongly anti-Catholic and pro-Puritan papers under the title Humble Motives for Association to \laintame Religion Established. In the second of these, addressed to the archbishops and bishops, the writer pleads for an established religion which would embrace two sorts of "best Christians," the conforming Anglicans and the Puritans, between whom the papists "indevour to make ciuill warr." He reminds his reverend readers "that when the Earle of Leicester liued, it went for currant, that all Papists were Traitors in action, of affection. He was no sooner dead, But . . . Puritans were trounced, and traduced as troublers of the state." This Digges calls for a return to Leicester's policy and pleads with the bishops to allow a reconciliation with the Puritans. Since these papers were written after the Essex Rebellion, they were probably the work of a younger member of the family. There is good evidence that our Thomas Digges died in 1 5 9 5 (see Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, I [Oxford, 1 8 1 3 column 638, note 2 ) . 18 For Gentili's significance and also for his biography, the chief authority is Thomas Erskine Holland, whose inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1874 was responsible for the resurrection of Gentili's fame; see Holland's Introduction to his edition of Gentili's De iure belli libri ires (Oxford, 1 8 7 7 ) and his article on Gentili in DXB. Later writers on Gentili include H. Nezard, "Albericus Gentilis," in Les Fondateurs dn droit international, ed. A . Pillet (Paris, 1904), pp. 3 7 - 9 3 ; G. H. J. van der Molen, Alberico Gentili and the Development of International Law (Amsterdam, 1 9 3 7 ) : Ernest Nys, Introduction to De legationibus libri ires ( N e w Y o r k , 1 9 2 4 ) , Vol. II; and Coleman Phillipson, Introduction to De iure belli (Oxford, 1 9 3 3 ) , Vol. II. ( T h e two latter works form part of the Classics of International L a w published by the Carnegie Endowment.)

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own country, where he had been granted the D . C . L . by the University of Perugia eight years before. H e carried with h i m an introduction to Giambattista Castiglione, language-master and groom of the Chamber to Queen Elizabeth. A s has been mentioned,

Privy

Castiglione

was one of the group of Italian exiles w h o m Leicester had befriended early in his career; it was through his good offices that Gentili came to the patron's attention. W i t h i n a few months of his arrival the legalist was on his way to Oxford armed with a letter addressed by Leicester " T o my lovinge friends the V i c e Chancellor the Doctors and Proctors and Heades of Howses of the University of O x f o r d . "

19

As Chancellor

of Oxford, Leicester had decided to monopolize the services of the young scholar for his own university while rendering a favor to one whose religious sympathies made him a partisan of the earl's cause. H e therefore phrased his recommendation in no uncertain terms: This gentleman the bearer heare of Albertus Gentilis an Italian borne is, as I ham informed, by profession a Doctor of the Civile lawes, and beinge forced as I ham all so informid to leve his cuntry for religion is desierose to be incorporat in yor Universitye and to bestow sum time in readinge and other exercises of his profession theare. Because he is a stranger and learned and an exile for religion I have thought good to commend him and theese his honest requestes unto you, hartely prayinge of you for his incorporatinge theare that you will shewe him the favore that accordinge to your statutes and orders you may and do use in like cases and for the exercises of his profession if any waye may be taken that he maye reade and exercise otherwise that you will do it and generally that you will shewe him favore and curtesye as his occasions shall require. It shall be well dunne and I will thanke you for it. Fare you well. 20 T h i s request was, of course, tantamount to a command. T h e letter was publicly read in the convocation of the university, and, as a result, early in the new year Gentili was incorporated as a doctor of civil laws at O x f o r d . 2 1 By granting him the same degree he had earned at Perugia, that of doctor, Oxford enabled Gentili to take up his profession of teach19 Among these worthies the vice-chancellor, Tobie Matthew (later Archbishop of Y o r k ) , apparently showed special friendship to Gentili, who made g r a t e f u l acknowledgment of his favor in dedications dated 1 5 9 7 and 1 5 9 9 , printed with Dtspvtationes dvac (Hanover, 1 5 9 9 ) . sigs. A.2.r.-A.3.r., and pp. 1 2 4 - 2 6 . 20 Dated November 24, 1 5 8 0 : quoted from the Register of the University of Oxford, ed. C. W. Boase and A . Clark (Oxford. 1 8 8 5 - 8 9 ) , II, Part I, 149. 21 Ibid., pp. 1 4 9 - 5 0 . The grant, dated January 14, 1 5 8 1 , ends with a note of sympathy for the foreigner: "Causa est quod peregrinetur neque nostram linguam intelligere possit. Conceditur."

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ing and thus to earn a living. He was admitted to New Inn Hall and gave his first lecture at St. John's; the records show that Merton and Magdalen also contributed to his support and that he received a grant from the university chest. That he appreciated the unusual favors received through Leicester's intercession is demonstrated in the letters and dedications which he addressed to that patron. 22 Gentili's first public expression of gratitude is to be found in the dedication to Leicester of his De luris Interpretibus Dialogi Sex (1582). Here he acknowledges his debt to that patron, offering him the first fruits of the work he has been able to do under his sponsorship, but careful also to record his appreciation of the friendship of Castiglione and of Matthew, Oxford's vice-chancellor. He writes with feeling of what Leicester has done for him: T u me sesquianno abhinc hominem peregrinum, & incognitum penitus ( q u a e tuae est singularis naturae benignitas) sic suscepisti, vt& commendatione tua hie in celeberrima Oxoniensi A c a d e m i a cooptatus sim in splendidissimum Doctorum ordinem, & profitear etiam Iura Ciuilia.

He goes on to say that he knows of no greater good that could be bestowed on one in his situation than to be nourished with other scholars by this wonderful Oxford. Here, despite exile from his own country and the memory of his persecutions, he is happy and contented, thanks entirely to Leicester's favor. In the course of the work itself, an attack on the new humanistic school of law led by Alciati and Cujas, he reveals that he is serving as tutor to the scholars working under the guidance of Griffin Lloyd, regius professor of law. Although his position was still comparatively humble, his reputation must soon have exceeded that of his superior, for in 1584 he was called in as a consultant on the very important case of Don Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador who had been tried and condemned for conspiracy. Jean Hotman, who had received his Oxford law degree on the same day as Gentili and was now in Leicester's service, was also summoned.23 With the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, the two legal authorities and other learned men discussed the problem of 22 On December 28 and January 27, Gentili addressed letters of gratitude to the earl through his secretary, Arthur Atey; the first of these mentions Castiglione as bearer of previous communications (C.S.P. Dom., 1547-80, p. 6 9 1 ; 1581—90, p. 3 ) . 23 Hotman's services as Leicester's secretary have been mentioned above; see pp. 269-70. For his Oxford L L . D . see the Register of the University of Oxford, II, Part I, 379.

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the disposition of Mendoza's case. Despite the violence of feeling against him, the ambassador was at last merely deported, his life spared on the principle of diplomatic immunity as enunciated by Gentili. Some time later, when Leicester and Sidney visited Oxford, Gentili chose the subject of the Mendoza case for a disputation, out of which grew his work on the rights of ambassadors. This he published in 1585, under the title De Legationibus Libri Tres, with a dedication to Sir Philip Sidney. Although Sidney receives praise amounting almost to adulation both in the dedication itself and at the end of the treatise (where for the second time he is hailed as the "perfect ambassador"), a disproportionate part of the dedicatory matter is given over to his uncle, Leicester. Gentili mentions his debt of gratitude to Leicester, who has not only made possible his first publication but has also inspired this present one by requesting, on the occasion of his visit to Oxford, that the Italian scholar be allowed to speak. But Gentili's praise of his first patron is motivated, at this time, by something more than personal feeling: it is a direct answer to Leycesters Commonwealth and other Roman Catholic attacks on Leicester's name and morality. Leycesters Commonwealth had appeared in 1584, the year before Gentili's dedication.24 Circulated by the Jesuits and their recusant allies, it rapidly achieved so great a distribution that the government moved officially to suppress and counteract it. A royal proclamation against seditious books was published on October 12,1584. On June 26,1585, the Privy Council wrote from Greenwich to communicate to the Lord Mayor of London the Queen's indignation that the libels against Leicester were allowed to continue. She testified his innocence of their most malicious and wicked imputations, so infamous that "only the devil could believe them true." 2 5 At about the same time a similar document, also from the Privy Council and in the name of the Queen, was sent to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Lancaster and Chester (whence, it was suspected, the libels emanated) holding them strictly responsible for the execution of the laws against seditious and traitorous books.26 Both Queen and Councillors asserted their belief in Leicester's virtue 24

For the influence of Leycesters Commonwealth in England and on the Continent, see above, p. 196, n. 15. 25 C.S.P. Dom., i;81-90, p. 248. 28 Quoted in extenso by Frederick Chamberlin, Elizabeth and Leycester (New York, 1939), pp. 433-34; the phrase "such as none but a . . . devill could dreame to be trewe" occurs in this document also.

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and in his innocence of all the accusations, and declared that such detractions were intended to discredit Elizabeth, who interpreted them "as abuse to be offred to her owne self" and her government. Nonetheless, Leycesters Commonwealth continued to be circulated, and it was deemed advisable to answer it in print. With this end in view, Sir Philip Sidney prepared a denial of some of the imputations of the Catholic pamphlet, particularly those which stained the honor of his own ancestors, giving the anonymous author the lie and challenging him to render satisfaction: "And from the date of this wryting, emprinted and published I will three monthes expect thyne answer." 2 7 Like the documents of the Privy Council, Sidney's defense points out that the real intention of the libels is subversive: Leicester's "faith is so lynked to her Majesties service, that who goes about to undermyne the one, resolvs withall to overthrow the other . . . who hates England, and the Queen, must also withall hate the Earl of Lester." Thomas Lupton, a popular Puritan propagandist, also prepared an answer to the "slanderous reports" of the Catholics, which took the form of a celebration of Leicester's excellent qualities, under the title Vertue and the Vertuous Life.28 For reasons unknown, neither of these works was published. Perhaps Sidney could not bring himself, after all, to break the rule which inhibited a gentleman from print. Perhaps he was sent to Flushing before he could prepare his work for the press. Nonetheless, a defense of Leicester did appear under his name—in the dedication of the De Legationibus Libri Tres addressed to him by Gentili. The Italian scholar devotes a long passage to extravagant praise of Leicester, "his pre-eminent wisdom, transcendant love of country, exceptional loyalty to his sovereign, and notable piety," lauding him especially as the counselor of the Queen and therefore in part responsible for England's present welfare. 29 A counselor, he declares, should be respected as part of the person of the sovereign. He castigates the "infamous howling against a good man and true" of unscrupulous persons "disqualified by law from giving 27 The Complete \Vor!;s of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. A. Fcuillcrat (Cambridge, England, 1 9 2 2 - 2 6 ) , III, 6 1 - 7 1 . Perhaps this incident is related to Sir Calidore's pursuit of the Blatant Beast ( T h e Faerie Qtieene, Bk. V I ) : cf. Josephine W. Bennett, The Evolution of "The Faerie Queene" (Chicago, 1942), p. 2 1 3 . 26 This work, which is in the Longleat Dudley MSS, III, fols. 206-9, is described by Tenison, op. cit., V , 1 6 1 - 6 3 . Among other virtues Leicester's generosity to suitors, especially learned men, receives high praise. Lupton also took part in the anti-Catholic campaign described in the preceding chapter, with treatises published in 1581 and 1582. 29 De legationibus (1924 ed.), II, iv-v.

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evidence"—the legalist's point against the outlawed Jesuits. T h e rage of the wicked, he asserts, attests Leicester's virtue just as much as the praise of the good. F i n a l l y he speaks of Leicester as identified with E n g l a n d , with the Queen, and with the religion he so zealously safeguards: an attack on him is an attack on them. O f special interest is Gentili's remark that he writes as an E n g l i s h m a n , by reason of his g r o w i n g affection for his adopted country. A n d in his promise to "speak elsewhere and at far greater length about Leicester," there is evidence that he planned a separate treatise, also in L a t i n , to defend his patron's name. Indeed, he had probably written or at least outlined such a w o r k , f o r the material about Leicester in this dedication seems to consist of the chief headings of a m u c h more extensive argument. If either Leicester or Sidney had been asked to suggest a writer capable of preparing an official publication in answer to the Catholic libels and for circulation abroad, they could have f o u n d no more skillful, cogent, and emphatic an apologist than Gentili. Moreover, there are so many parallels between his defense of Leicester and the documents issued by the P r i v y Council that w e suspect the dedication itself of being officially inspired, the passage on Leicester inserted to serve as a stopgap until the treatise was ready f o r the press. It is dated July 2 1 , 1 5 8 5 , less than a month after the Council's action. Written in L a t i n a n d appended to a w o r k associated w i t h the f a m o u s case of the Spanish ambassador, it was calculated to reach a learned and influential international audience. Similarities between Gentili's argument and the opening section of Sidney's defense of his uncle indicate that the two writers had been in consultation, or that one had followed the other's lead in a combined effort to give coherence and emphasis to the official position expressed by the P r i v y Council. If Sidney's treatise and Gentili's more extended argument had been given official publication, the f o r m e r w o u l d have appeared as the E n g l i s h companion to the latter—for Gentili w o u l d again have used L a t i n . Perhaps the chief explanation of the failure of these w o r k s to see print is that, by the time they w e r e ready f o r the press, Leicester required a different k i n d of propaganda. D u r i n g the s u m m e r Elizabeth announced her intention of sending a force to the relief of the Netherlands, and Leicester, soon k n o w n as the leader of that expedition, bccame the hero of Protestant Europe. T h e chief energies of his publicists were n o w devoted to support of his c a m p a i g n ,

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while the Catholic libelists, though not suppressed, became more interested in solidifying opinion against Leicester in their home territories, whither English counterpropaganda could scarcely hope to follow them. N o doubt in partial recognition of his loyal and effective service to Leicester, in 1586 Gentili was sent to Germany with Horatio Palavicino, an important and wealthy member of the Italian Protestant colony in England who served Elizabeth as a political and financial agent. Gentili returned to Oxford in 1587 and in that year was made regius professor of law. The influence of Walsingham, Leicester's political ally and Sidney's father-in-law, has been discerned in both these preferments.30 But when, writing from Oxford in August, 1587, Gentili dedicated his Disputationum Dicas Prima to Walsingham, he did not forget to mention Leicester, his first patron, with his usual gratitude. The deaths of Sidney, Leicester, and Walsingham apparently did not harm Gentili's career; his reputation as a legal authority was now great enough to survive the loss of his protectors. And in the young Earl of Essex, the remaining hope of the progressive party, he found a new patron. In 1589 he dedicated his De lure Belli Commentationes duae to Essex, who stood godfather to his son in the following year. It is perhaps significant of Gentili's connection with the progressive party represented by his four chief patrons that in his great work, De lure Belli, he identifies the "natural law" of Protestant legal scholars with the consent of the majority of nations, thus enunciating a principle of international law which perfectly suited the purpose of England, champion of the Protestant states of the late sixteenth century. 31 In a modified form that principle has come down to us, to be tested in the crucible of global war, embodied in the charter of the United Nations, and given juridical application as the law of humanity at the Nuremberg trials. If justification of the Elizabethan system of patronage were needed, it could be found in this single example of the great international jurist who had come to England as a religious refugee and in the at30 Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 1 9 2 5 ) , III, 4 3 8 - 3 9 ; Phillipson, op. cit., II, 1 4 a ; and DNB. Walsingham was, of course, Gentili's employer in the foreign service; to him Palavicino wrote from Frankfort in May, 1 5 8 6 , mentioning Dr. Gentili's assistance in the Latin tongue ( C . S . P . For., i;8;-86, p. 6 5 2 ) . In 1584 Gentili had dedicated the third book of his Lectionum et Epistolarum quae ad ins ciuile pertinent to Palavicino. 31 For the importance of Gentili's contribution in this area, see Holland's article on Gentili in DNB; Molen, op. cit., pp. 1 1 5 , 2 4 0 - 4 5 . It might, perhaps, be fruitful to study Gentili's concepts of justice and the law of nations with reference to their possible influence upon the thought of Spenser, especially in Book V of The Faerie Queene.

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mosphere of its gracious hospitality had been cncouragcd to set forth some of the fundamental laws of modern civilization. In 1582, the year of Gentili's first published expression of gratitude to Leicester, Richard Mulcaster gave eloquent testimony of that patron's support of learning and learned men. Mulcaster, who had been headmaster of the Merchant Taylors' School since its foundation in 1561, was the leading spirit in a program of educational reform directed particularly to the lower schools. In his first book, Positions (1581), he had expounded the general outline of his program, laying down the "first principles" of education, and proposing among other reforms a standardization of textbooks and the establishment of a normal college. This book he had dedicated to Queen Elizabeth on the ground that his project concerned the welfare of the entire nation, which she had in her keeping. He did not, however, ask her to do more than "taste" the contents, suggesting that she submit it to a "referendarie" of competent minds who would report on it to her. In dedicating his second work, The First Part of the Elementarie which entreateth chefelie of the right writing of our English tung (1582), to Leicester, Mulcaster indicates that chief among the sponsors of education to whom he wished his program submitted was Leicester himself. In fact, his epistle opens with a kind of apology for his having offered his first fruits to Elizabeth whose high place demanded primary recognition and whose favor was necessary to the success of his project. He goes on to explain that the logical protector of his program is Leicester, who has already shown him favor and who is the foremost patron of learning in the court of Elizabeth: Now my dewtie in that behalf towards hir maiestie being so discharged, whom the presenting of my book makes priuie to my purpos, doth not the verie stream of dewtie, and the force of desert carie me streight from hir highnesse vnto your honor, whether I haue in eie your general goodnesse towards all them, which be learned themselues, or your particular fauor towards my trauell, which teach others to learn? For in common iudgement is not he to take place next after the prince in the honor of learning, which allwaie by the prince most preferreth learning? wherein I do not se, that there is anie one about hir maiestie (without offence be it spoken, either to your honor, if you desire not to hear it, or to anie other person, which deserues well that waie) which either iustlie can, or vniustlie will compare with your honor, either for the encouraging of students to the attainment of learning, or for helping the

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learned to aduancement of liuing. Which two points, I take to be most euident proufs of generall patronage to all learning, to nurish it being grene, to cherish it being grown. Of which your honors both first nurishing, and last cherishing of ech kinde of learning, there is no one corner in all our cuntrie but it feleth the frute, and thriues by the effect. For how manie singular men haue bene worthilie placed, how manie nedefull places haue bene singularlie appointed by your either onelie or most honorable means? Coming from one in Mulcaster's position, this passage provides unimpeachable evidence of Leicester's importance in the patronage of learning, stressing both his encouragement of education and his activity in preferring learned men to the queen. Mulcaster includes himself among those who have benefited from Leicester's generosity, declaring himself "excedinglie indetted" to him for "speciall goodnesse, and most fauorable countenance these manie years." The Elementarie, a development of part of the general program he had announced in his Positions, includes an introductory section of practical principles (with much that today we would label "educational psychology"), and an analysis of reformed English spelling. The latter, the major portion of the book, proclaims the author's adherence to the patriotic movement of improving the vernacular. Both parts deal almost exclusively with elementary education. In his dedication Mulcaster explains the purpose of the work at some length and then, before closing, appeals to Leicester, who is known as protector of the universities, to include the lower schools in the sphere of his patronage: . . . further our schools: that euen the young infant thorough this hole realm, maie learn to know, how much he is bound to your honorable furtherance for his good bringing vp in the Elementarie principles of all learning, before he do remoue to anie vniuersitie: as all those students, which ar of the vniuersities, do both praise and praie for your honorable prosperitie, for that great encouragement, which theie receiue by you, both while theie studie there, and when they serue abrode in publike functions of the common weal. The passage is interesting both for its emphasis on Leicester's use of patronage to secure the adherence of the literate, and in its adumbration, by an educator, of the theoretic justification of the English public school system. It implies that a chief purpose of government-sponsored education is to provide qualified men for "publike functions of the common weal," a service which was to take on greater significance with the

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development of the British Empire, but which Leicester and other patrons had already appreciated. Although Mulcaster's promise of " m o offerings of the like sort" was not kept, and we have no evidence that his proposals succeeded in revolutionizing education on a national scale, he apparently continued to enjoy Leicester's favor and royal approval. H e served as headmaster of the Merchant Taylors' School until 1586, after which he obtained further preferments, including the headmastership of St. Paul's School, to which he was appointed in 1596. T w o years later Elizabeth presented him with a rectory in Essex, where he died in 1 6 1 1 . Despite Mulcaster's appeal, Leicester's interest in education continued to be primarily concerned with universities, and in particular with his own university of Oxford. One of his greatest benefactions to Oxford was his patronage of the first official university press. Although there had been a small flurry of printing at Oxford in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this had died down by 1520, and the rapidly growing industry had been concentrated in London. 3 2 Under Elizabeth the Stationers' Company operated to stifle near-by competition, with the obvious intention of establishing a local monopoly. 3 3 T o obtain official sanction for the establishment of a press as near London as was Oxford, and to defend that press thereafter, powerful influence was required. As chancellor of the university Leicester was the logical person to obtain royal permission for the Oxford press established in 1584. 34 H e provided the necessary protection and support for the new venture and in addition became the patron of several of its early publications. In August, 1584, as chancellor of the university, Leicester advanced the sum of one hundred pounds to Joseph Barnes, a wine merchant, for the purpose of establishing a press at Oxford. 3 5 Barnes became sole printer to the university, a post which he retained until 1617. T h e official 32 For the first years of printing at Oxford see Falconer Madan, Oxford Boo^s, V o l . I : The Early Oxford Press (Oxford, 1 8 9 5 ) , pp. 1 - 7 . 33 For example, in 1 5 8 3 tlie Wardens of the Stationers' Company demanded orders for the restriction of printing, complaining that a "prophane and blasphemous t o y " had been printed by stealth at a Cambridge press (C.S.P. Dom., 1581-90, p. 1 1 1 ) . A n example of the rivalry between the Oxford press and the London printers is given below. 34 For the probability that Leicester's favorable reception of a petition from the university addressed to him as chancellor was responsible for the grant of royal permission, sec S. Gibson and D. M. Rogers, " T h e Earl of Leicester and Printing at O x f o r d , " Bodleian Library Record, II ( 1 9 4 9 ) , 240-45. 33 Madan, op. cit., pp. vi and 275.

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nature of the press was recognized by the university in 1585/6, when a Committee of Convocation was appointed to consider titles for printing, and it was probably because he was under university regulation that Barnes was free from the obligation of registering his copies with the Stationers' Company. 36 That his press was under royal sanction, as well, was announced by a Star Chamber decree of 1586 which limited the number of presses outside of London to two, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. Leicester's influence can be discerned in these arrangements. And, despite his activities in the Netherlands, the earl served as special patron of the Oxford press for the few remaining years of his life—long enough to establish it on a firm basis. Suitably enough, the first pieces of printing to be issued by the press were probably the single-sheet "carmina gratulatoria" celebrating Leicester's visit to Oxford at the beginning of 1585. 37 T o him also was addressed the first book to be published by the press, Specvlvm moralivm quaestionvm in vniversam ethicen Aristotelis, which appeared in the same year, with dedications from both the author and the printer. The author of this work was John Case, fellow of St. John's College, and student of Aristotelian philosophy. He had already established himself as a protege of Leicester and the year before had presented to him his first fruits, as he mentions in the dedication of his Specvlvm,38 In this, his second epistle to the earl, he sets forth three chief justifications for selecting Leicester as the patron of his new work: the fact that it was through him ("te authore") that the university was enabled to have the privilege of a press; Leicester's affection for the university, 56 Barnes did not begin to register his copies with the Stationers' Company until 1 6 0 2 when his son entered a dozen titles at a single time; see Edward Arber, ed., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, 1$54-1640 (London, 1 8 7 5 - 9 4 ) , III, 207; see also V , lxxxiii. 37 In Adventvm illvstrissimi lecestrensis comitis ad Collegium Lincolniense, and a similar greeting from the university as a whole, both published in January. 38 This earlier work, Svmma vetervm interpretvm in vniversam dialecticam Aristotelis, had been published in London in 1 5 8 4 ; the later editions of 1 5 9 2 and 1598 were printed by Barnes at Oxford. The title page indicates that the purpose of the work is to improve the application of Aristotelian logic to scriptural interpretation ("ad omnia genera quaestionum, quae in Uteris Sacris sunt"). In his dedication Case mentions that he has heard from Dr. Humphrey of Leicester's good opinion of him and therefore he offers this work in gratitude. He asks that it go forth into the light under his patron's name, as under the shield of Achilles, and promises further studies if it is approved. Much of the epistle is devoted to a plea that Leicester continue in his care for the university where, according to Case, the study of liberal arts is threatened. T h e prefatory pages include a complimentary poem by Laurence Humphrey; if Humphrey was his friend it is difficult to believe Wood's statement, repeated in DNB, that Case was "popishly affected."

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as confirmed by his recent visit; and his encouragement of Case's studies. T h e last of these is made more specific toward the end of the dedication, where the writer thanks his patron for twice honoring him with personal interviews—once in London, when Case presented his book, and again in Oxford, when he was being examined in medicine. Leicester's kind words, he writes, have acted as a golden spur to his studies. Case devotes a long passage to Leicester's care of the university. H e tells us that the patron has several times saved Oxford from misfortune and has obtained many great privileges for it. Emphasizing the benefits which the whole commonwealth enjoys as the result of the protection of the universities by Leicester and Burghley, the scholar declares—in a passage reminiscent of Cooper's appeal for encouragement of academic learning, written thirty years before 3 8 —that the ruin of the state would follow upon the abandonment of their program. T h e theme is pointed by a marginal rubric, "Defectio Academiarum est Mater ignorantiae Barbaritatis et seditionis." For Case the threat to the educational program consists primarily in the failure of the universities to maintain Aristotelian learning against the Ramists and other enemies of true wisdom. T h e two books he dedicated to Leicester were part of a revival of Aristotelianism at Oxford to which the university gave its sanction in 1585 by ordering that all authors be eschewed except those who followed Aristotle. T h u s would dissension be ended and virtue restored. Indeed, the need for Aristotelian texts to serve this revival was probably one of the motives for the establishment of a press at Oxford in the same year. T h e printer's dedication to Leicester is shorter and less conventional. Addressing the patron as "Maecenas amplissime," Barnes briefly traces the history of printing, mentioning its invention in 1450 by "Iohannes Faustus Moguntiae" and its introduction into England by Caxton. T h e art has long flourished in London, he tells us, and now the universities will take it up so that wisdom may be published at the fountainhead. H e promises that from his press will issue no trifles, no fables, no sharptoothed criticism, but only works approved by the wise. Finally, he acknowledges his debt to Leicester, and the benefits and privileges obtained through his influence, and dedicates the book as a pledge of his labor to his patron. 39 Cooper's great Thesaurus, with the dedication to Leicester in which this appeal occurs, had had its fourth edition in 1584.

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With some exceptions, the books issued from Barnes's Oxford press in the next few years were of a religious nature—the works of wisdom he had promised.40 Besides Case, who continued to publish Aristotelian works at Oxford, several other writers under Leicester's protection had their books printed by Barnes. Antonio Corrano (or de Corro), the Spanish preacher to whom Convocation, at Leicester's request, had granted the doctorate in 1576, had published a Latin paraphrase of Ecclesiastes in 1579; in 1586 Barnes brought out an English translation of this work, with a dedication to Lady Mary Dudley. Although now a professor of divinity, Corrano was apparently interested as well in the teaching of languages, for his Reglas Gramaticales Para Aprender la lengua Española y Francesa was also printed by Barnes in 1586. John Harmar, regius professor of Greek and one of Leicester's favored protégés, edited the homilies of St. John Chrysostom for Barnes in 1586, and in the following year dedicated a translation from Beza's sermons to Leicester. This dedication, and that of another work issued from Barnes's press, Laurence Humphrey's View of the Romish Hydra (1588), which was likewise addressed to Leicester, have been mentioned above. Barnes also printed an Oratio gratulatoria addressed to the Earls of Leicester and Warwick by the Dean of Bristol in 1587, and, in the same year, the two volumes of Latin verses produced by Oxford to celebrate the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, one of which carried a dedication to Leicester. Although a good many of the works printed by Barnes were the productions of Leicester's protégés at the university, the earl's interest in the establishment of the Oxford press should not be associated too strictly with his official obligations as chancellor of the university. Doubtless the powers he derived from that position played a chief part in enabling Barnes to commence business, but he had long since shown a more general intention of encouraging the printing craft. Besides Barnes, the list of printers and publishers who obtained his assistance includes John Day, Rowland Hall, James Rowbothum, and John Harrison. Recognizing the power of the printed word, Leicester gave his patronage to the press and in return received support of his protégés and loyalty to the causes he represented. As has already been suggested, the Oxford press, while retaining an academic tone, was not above engaging in propaganda for Leicester's 40

Sec Madan's list, op. cit., pp. 1 4 - 2 7 .

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policies. In 1585, the first year of its existence, Barnes published two books of current importance which were so valuable as printers' properties that his rights to them were contested. One of these, The True difference betweene christian subiection and vnchristian rebellion, by Dr. (later Bishop) Thomas Bilson, in effect both defended the Queen's temporal power against the threat of rebellion and at the same time justified the revolt in the Netherlands which English troops, under Leicester's leadership, were about to support. Dedicated to Elizabeth herself, it was popular and timely propaganda. Apparently the edition produced by the London printers was a pirated version of Barnes's copy, for he successfully brought suit against them. They sent an appeal to the Privy Council for restitution of their property seized at his suit, and in the same document complained that he had reprinted "the book called Resolution" which belonged to them. 41 This was the Protestant adaptation of Father Parsons's famous Booke of Christian Exercise appertaining to Resolvtion, with a treatise by Edmund Bunny and a dedication to the Archbishop of York. Appearing first in 1584, it was published again in 1585 as a kind of joint venture by several separate London printing houses. Valuable as devotional literature, it achieved additional popularity when Parsons locked horns with Bunny in a controversy provoked by the latter's distortion of the text, and the London printers profitably reissued it many times. 42 Barnes printed it twicc at least in 1585 but not again thereafter: the countersuit of the London printers was successful. That his press was maintained in the troubles of these first years is evidence that Leicester's influence was sufficient, on the whole, to offset the hostility of the Stationers' Company. From the Oxford press, also, was published one of the works of John Penry which anticipated the Marprelate controversy: A Supplication to Elizabeth and Parliament for Wales, that some order be fallen for the preaching of the Gospel there (1587). 4 3 Apparently in the religious field Barnes did not confine himself to works which were in complete conformity with the Established Church but, like his patron, had some sympathy for the Puritan point of view. The fact that the publishing house of which Leicester was chief patron was actively engaged in C.S.P. Dom., 1581-90, p. 296. N e w editions and revisions appeared frequently up to 1 6 3 3 ; see STC 1 9 3 5 3 - 9 0 . For the value of the work see Helen C. White, "Some Continuing Traditions in English Devotional Literature." PMLA, L V I I (19.42). 978-80. 4:1 Listed by Madan, op. cit., p. 23, and by him attributed to Penry. 42

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feeding the religious controversies of the day seems significant. Despite the tempting profits offered by this field, we should have expected from the first Oxford press a greater preponderance of philosophical and "literary" works than it in fact produced. While Leicester's proteges were occupying themselves in learned and propagandistic works, the younger generation of university men had been discovering a new field for their talents in the production of tales and plays for popular consumption—the trifles and fables which Barnes had promised not to send forth over his imprint. Leicester apparently took little interest in their "idle" publications, but at least one of their number, Robert Greene, managed temporarily to attract the earl's attention. Signing himself "Student in Phisicke," Greene in 1585 dedicated to Leicester one of his lesser romances, a work entitled Planetomachia, in which a quarrel of the planets is used as a framework for "tragicall histories" which illustrate the influences of Venus and Saturn, thus pleasantly combining astrology with narrative fiction. In his epistle, Greene praises Leicester as a "Maecenas of learning" whose virtues have inspired many writers to present him with the fruits of their learning, and thus motivated readers to extol him from whose bounty they also have profited. Emboldened by Leicester's generosity, Greene modestly offers his "friuolous trash" to the patron, justifying it as a work which will make astronomical information available in popular form—"young minds can reap the learned harvest together with delightful pains." Included in the prefatory matter is a section entitled " A briefe Apologie of the sacred Science of Astronomie." Perhaps Greene's interest in this field had been stimulated by his medical studies—for medicine had not yet freed itself from astrology—and perhaps Leicester, who with Elizabeth and other nobles of the court occasionally consulted Dr. John Dee concerning the influence of the heavenly bodies, found the pamphlet amusing. Greene may at this time have been seeking patronage for the medical career he contemplated, for the earl was known as a patron of physicians. If, as seems likely, Leicester failed to give him a substantial and lasting reward for this trivial piece, the patron can hardly be blamed; nor, in fact, does the writer seem to have expected much in return. There is no evidence that Greene seriously pursued the study of medicine or devoted himself to any other field which Leicester might have considered

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a qualification for public servicc. On the other hand, the writer's long list of popular works, produced in a brief span of literary activity and addressed to a large number of temporary patrons, indicates that he depended for his livelihood directly upon the reading public rather than upon a sustaining patron. Nashe tells us that Greene wrote rapidly and profitably—"Glad was that printer that might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit"

44

—so that apparently he could

have afforded independence from any sort of patronage had he been less of a spendthrift. H e was one of the new crop of professional writers. Leicester's lack of interest in popular fiction may possibly be associated with his desire to maintain a following among the Puritans, who sternly disapproved of "light and lewd" writings. T h e influence of his pietistic friends did not, however, restrain him from active support of the drama. Throughout the major part of his career he maintained a company of players, the actors known as Leicester's M e n ; indeed his efforts in their behalf seem to have been largely directed toward protecting them against the interference of puritan-minded City fathers. 4 5 H e also befriended the children's companies and encouraged Latin plays at Oxford. That Leicester retained an acting company of his own as early as 1559 is attested by a letter addressed by him to the Earl of Shrewsbury requesting the latter's license for Dudley's actors to play in that county. 46 During the Christmas seasons of 1560, 1561, and 1562 they performed at court, and on all three occasions shared the stage with the children's company of St. Paul's, a group in which Dudley may also have had some interest, perhaps financial, perhaps merely genial. His connection with this children's company can be inferred from his championship of their choirmaster and manager, the recusant Sebastian Westcote. T h e incident involving Westcote suggests that Leicester was actually more concerned about the drama than about religious convictions—a 44 Strange Newes ( 1 5 9 2 ) ; see The IVork.s of Thomas Nashe, edited by R. B. McKerrow (London, 1 9 0 4 - 1 0 ) , I, 287. 45 Since the subject of Leicester's patronage of acting companies has been investigated with some thoroughness, it will be treated only summarily here. See especially E. K . Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1 9 2 3 ) , II, 8 5 - 9 1 , and other references passim; also J. T . Murray, English Dramatic Companies (Boston, 1 9 1 0 ) , I, 2 6 - 4 2 , and T . W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, N.J., 1 9 2 7 ) , pp. 4 ff., 74 ff., 289 ff. 46 The letter is quoted by Murray, op. at., II, 1 1 9 .

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conclusion reinforced by his other activities in behalf of the acting profession. Westcote had been Master of St. Paul's Children for some ten years when he was cited to Bishop Grindal, in 1561, for refusing the communion. Grindal delayed excommunication for over two years, hoping to reform Westcote and perhaps influenced also by the choirmaster's friends at court. T h e n , in July, 1563, the bishop finally pronounced judgment. Dudley interceded for the Catholic, apparently arguing that his stubborn recusancy was evidence of a kind of zeal, whereupon Grindal wrote at length to explain and apologize for his action. T h e bishop's most telling point is that children cannot be entrusted to a man of such obstinate popishness. H e refuses to suspend his sentence but agrees to delay prosecution for a few months, though with little hope of accomplishing a sincere reform. 4 7 Apparently Grindal, though true to his conscience, felt some qualms about refusing Dudley's request, for he protected himself by sending a copy of his letter to Burghley. Dudley's influence proved strong enough, however, to keep Westcote in his position, even though he continued to resist conformity. Despite further complaints about him— including a very strong charge of papism by the City council in 1575, and a conviction and imprisonment for heresy in 1577/8—the choirmaster continued to stage performances at court and at his playhouse for the rest of his life. H i s activities were profitable as well as popular; at least, when he died in 1582, he left property of considerable value. Leicester also took a benevolent interest in the activities of the Children of the Chapel Royal. A s has been previously mentioned, their master, William Hunnis, was employed by the earl in connection with the festivities at Kenilworth in 1575, and in 1578 dedicated a religious work to him under the title A Hyve Fvll of Honye. During these years the Children had been giving public performances at Blackfriars under the direction of William Farrant, a substitute for Hunnis, who had leased the property from Sir William Moore. After Farrant's death in 1580 Hunnis, with the intention of resuming his mastership and continuing the public performances, took a sublet on this property from the widow. But Moore, who had originally leased the house on the understanding that it would be used as a school, not a theater, took this 47 See H . N . Hillebrand, The Child Actors, University of Illinois Studies in L a n g u a g e a n d Literature, XI. i and 2 ( U r b a n a , 111., 1 9 2 6 ) , pp. 1 2 0 - 2 2 , 127, for the details of this incident, i n c l u d i n g G r i n d a l ' s letter.

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opportunity to object to the arrangement. T h e r e u p o n H u n n i s turned to his patron for assistance and in 1581 Leicester wrote a letter f r o m court to Moore in which he declared that H u n n i s wished "to practise" the Children at Blackfriars by means of public performances " f o r the better travning them to do her Maiestie service"—an "honest request" which the writer heartily endorsed. T h e letter is m a g n a n i m o u s l y signed " Y o u r verie louing f r e n d . " In this f o r m the request could hardly be denied. 4 8 T h e Children continued their performances and in time were supplanted at Blackfriars by St. Paul's C h i l d r e n , n o w under the direction of H e n r y E v a n s , a friend of Leicester's protege Westcote, the latter having recently died. Moore, however, continued to m a k e trouble for the child actors, b r i n g i n g pressure upon H u n n i s f o r the rent and then attempting to evict his successor. Despite Leicester's friendliness to both companies, after considerable litigation M o o r e succeeded in getting possession of his property and in b r i n g i n g to an end the history of the first Blackfriars Theater. W h i l e Leicester was protecting the children's companies

against

religious and private interference, his o w n actors were m a k i n g repeated demands upon him f o r defense against legal prohibitions to acting, largely of Puritan motivation. T h e privilege of retaining actors was being gradually restricted to the highest ranks of society. By a proclamation of January 3, 1572, aimed at strict enforcement of the laws limiting the

number

of

a

nobleman's

retainers,

their

very

existence

was

threatened. Leicester's M e n therefore petitioned him to retain them as his "houshold Servaunts and daylie wayters," without increase of stipend or other benefit. 4 9 A s members of his household, w e a r i n g his livery and bearing his name, they were protected f r o m arrest as vagabonds; his license enabled them to play freely in the territories under his control, and his influence secured permission f o r them to tour in other provinces. U n l i k e his ordinary servants, they apparently did not receive wages, depending for their livelihood on profits f r o m provincial tours and city performances, and on gifts f r o m their patron and the royal and noble audiences before w h o m they played at his c o m m a n d . T h e relationship w a s almost a contractual one, an exchange of services by which the actors obtained protection while the patron received entertainment f o r 48

Ibid., pp. 9 1 - 9 5 ; Leicester's letter is quoted on p. 91. The text of their letter is given by Chambers, op. cit., II, 86, and Murray, op. cit., II, 119-20. 49

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himself and his guests as well as the reputation of maintaining a good company. In 1574 Leicester's Men received an additional and very valuable proof of their patron's interest and influence in the grant to them of the first royal patent for an acting company, issued in the Queen's name and signed by the Privy Council, including Leicester. 50 It was a privilege not frequently bestowed by Elizabeth, and by her successor restricted to the companies of the royal family. It permitted the company to perform in London and throughout England despite previous regulations and present enactments; they were no longer limited to the territory of their patron or dependent upon the favor of other nobles in whose provinces they wished to tour, nor could local authorities interfere with them. Moreover, the grant contained a unique clause, not included in later patents, which made their right to perform provisional upon their plays' having been "seen and allowed" by the Master of the Revels. This was a novel extension of the functions of the Revels office, designed to protect the players against mayors and other local officials who wished to inhibit their performances on the ground that the plays were improper. Such "censorship"—equivalent to a license for the plays which were passed—later became a part of the Master's regular duties but was not again reserved for a particular company. Its true purpose is revealed by the fact that the patent of 1574 was granted during a period when the City authorities were attempting to arrogate the right of censorship to themselves. In 1573 and in the earlier part of 1574 the Privy Council had had to intervene on behalf of the players; and in the autumn after the grant was made the City council retaliated by passing a new act regulating performances and demanding that plays be submitted in advance, for licensing by the corporation. 51 Probably to avoid this impasse, Leicester's Men removed to the newly built Theatre, outside City jurisdiction, in 1576. T h e dodge was not entirely successful. T h e Puritan campaign against the players rose to a crisis again in 1581. On November 18 the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor pointing out that the usual excuse for closing the theaters during the summer, the plague, had outlived its validity, yet the theaters remained closed. T h e Council asked that the 50

For the text of this patent see Chambers, op. at., II, 8 7 - 8 8 . E. K . Chambers, Notes on the History of the Ret/els Office under the Tudors don, 1 9 0 6 ) , pp. 7 2 - 7 4 . 61

(Lon-

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players be permitted to resume their performances to relieve their o w n want and to make themselves ready to solace the Queen w i t h entertainment at Christmas. 5 2 Feild's letter to Leicester, which has been quoted earlier, followed within a w e e k : its protest against the earl's encouragement of players was no doubt inspired by that patron's share in the Council's action. In December of the same year the duties of the Master of the Revels were extended to include the censorship of plays for all the companies. Apparently this act was not sufficient to offset the restrictions of the City authorities, f o r in the f o l l o w i n g A p r i l the P r i v y Council again had to protest in behalf of the players. Probably as a result of all these clashes between City and C o u r t , the Queen in 1583 f o r m e d her o w n company, the protection of her n a m e g u a r a n t e e i n g a security not provided f o r other players. 5 3 A t some time before 1582, Leicester's musicians, w h o had been specially mentioned in the royal patent granted to Leicester's M e n , w e r e organized into a separate company. 5 4 W h e n the Queen initiated her o w n company in the f o l l o w i n g year, she took over the best of Leicester's actors. T h e remnants of the original acting company thereupon reorganized, perhaps accompanying their patron to the N e t h e r l a n d s in 1585, but returning to tour E n g l a n d in the f o l l o w i n g year. T h e musicians and tumblers left for a tour of the northern part of the Continent, beari n g their patron's letter of recommendation to the K i n g of D e n m a r k and presumably to other potentates w h o m they visited. W i t h them w e n t W i l l K e m p , "the lord of Leicester's jesting player" w h o properly belonged with the actors. K e m p f o u n d his w a y to D u n k i r k by a u t u m n , and it is possible that the whole troupe was reunited in the L o w Countries by the end of the year, in time to greet Leicester and by their presence add to the effect of royal magnificence that he assumed as G o v e r n o r of those states. T h e musicians were again in D e n m a r k in J u n e of the f o l l o w i n g year; thence they ventured into Saxony and remained in the service of Christian I until J u l y , 1587, returning home probably by w a y of D a n z i g . 5 3 In all of these territories the influence of their patron no doubt served to smooth their path. 52

Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, I, 288. Apparently the various companies had been in the habit of calling themselves "Her Majesty's Servants" during their London seasons, probably with the same end; cf. Murray, op. cit., I, 5. 54 5S Baldwin, op. cit., p. 25. Ibid., pp. 7 4 - 7 5 . 53

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Although their annual performances before Elizabeth seem to have been discontinued when the Queen formed her own company, Leicester's Men probably retained a good deal of prestige: they were the oldest company under royal patent and the one which had enjoyed the highest favor. For some time after their patron's death they went on using his name, and then apparently found their way into the company organized by Lord Strange.58 Since this was the group with which Shakespeare was associated, it has been suggested that originally he was one of Leicester's Men—that he might have joined the company when they played in Stratford in 1587.57 And from this slender thread has been inferred a patronage relationship with Leicester himself, leading to connections with Essex and Southampton. But the argument is, at best, tenuous. Of Leicester's patronage of playwrights, as distinct from actors, we have only scattered evidence. We know that Latin plays were presented before him at Oxford and Cambridge, that he protected the Inns of Court from which came a good deal of the inspiration for the Elizabethan drama, that several of the translators of Seneca enjoyed his encouragement, and that Gascoigne helped him to prepare the celebrations at Kenilworth and Woodstock. And in 1592, when William Gager published his Latin tragedy of Meleager, it bore both prologue and epilogue addressed to the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, while the dedication to Essex included a statement that the play had been performed before them.58 Gager is, in fact, the playwright whom we can most easily connect with this patron. In 1583, when the earl brought Alasco, the Polish prince, to Oxford, the entertainment included Gager's Rivales and Dido, and in 1587, as will be mentioned, the scholar acknowledged a debt of gratitude to Leicester. Moreover, as Chancellor of Oxford he is on record in defense of university plays.59 But the record is 56 Although Chambers doubts that Leicester's Men passed directly into the service of Lord Strange (Elizabethan Stage, II, 9 1 ) , Baldwin holds that Strange's group was formed by the combination and reorganization of Leicester's two companies (op. cit., pp.

79-8o).

57 Murray, op. cit., I, 36; Baldwin, op. cit., pp. 2 8 9 - 9 2 . An even more fanciful theory, now a century old, argues for the presence of Shakespeare among Leicester's players in the Low Countries in 1 5 8 5 - 8 6 ; see John Bruce, " W h o was 'Will, my Lord of Levcester's Jesting P l a y e r ? ' " in Papers of the Shakespeare Society (London, 1 8 5 3 ) , pp. 88-95. More plausible is the suggestion that during this period Shakespeare saw service in Leicester's forces: see Sir Alfred Duff Cooper, Sergeant Shakespeare (London, 1 9 4 9 ) . s ' On its second performance, i.e., in 1 5 8 5 ; see above, p. 138 and n. 42. 50 Most of Leicester's connections with dramatic activities at Oxford are mentioned by

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academic and courtly; it does not include the authors of the popular plays produced by his company. The chief playwrights of the age were just beginning to be known at the time of his death. We can only say that by his protection of acting companies he helped to furnish the essential medium for their existence. The year or so of Leicester's lifetime during which young Shakespeare might have come to his attention was, in fact, busily occupied with other matters—with the end of the Netherlands campaign and with preparations in England against Spanish invasion. Most of Leicester's patronage from 1585 on reflects in one way or another his preoccupation with the critical international situation. His literary protégés, keenly aware of the progress of events, utilized their talents to increase his prestige as a man and as a war-leader. Among the works adapted to this purpose, one of the more obvious concoctions is A Choice of Emblemes and other devises, published at Leyden in 1586 by the house of Plantin, and dedicated to Leicester by its author, Geoffrey Whitney. This collection of symbolic pictures accompanied by versified "moralizations" at first sight seems designed merely to bring to fashionable English readers a taste of the great body of Continental emblem literature. Many of Whitney's poems are translations or adaptations from the more popular emblem books, some of which had also been printed at the house of Plantin, and the devices, too, were for the most part reproduced from illustrations already on hand there.00 Leicester's arms appear opposite the dedication, as evidence of high patronage. The first emblem, a spire on which an ivy vine ascends, with the motto " T e stante, virebo," is interpreted as a symbol of the dependence of the Church of England upon Elizabeth. Frederick S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1 9 1 4 ) , as indexed. For Leicester's approval of academic plays as educational exercises, see especially, pp. 1 9 2 , 2 2 7 - 2 9 , where his defense of such plays in 1584 against a university decree banning them is recorded; apparently, however, he favored allowing the decree to stand against ordinary stage plays. Boas points out that this distinction between academic exercises and regular stage plays is supported by John Case in Book IV of his Specvlvm moralivm; as has been mentioned, this work was dedicated to Leicester in 1 5 8 5 . He remarks also that Case and Gager were friends (p. 1 7 7 , n. 3 ) . When Gager entered into the controversy of 1 5 9 2 with John Rainolds (published in 1 5 9 9 as Th'ouerthrow of Slage-Playes), he was backed in his defense of the academic stage by Alberico Gentili, who wrote commendatory verses for Gager's Vlysses Redux the same year. All three of the participants in this controversy were former protégés of Leicester. 60 Henry Green, Introduction to A Choice of Emblemes (London, 1 8 6 6 ) , p. lxviii.

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A s i d e f r o m this, h o w e v e r , and an emblem addressed to Sir Philip Sidney, " G o u e r n o r of the Garrison and towne of V l i s s i n g , " most of the emblems in the first part have little reference to Leicester's immediate situation, except in so f a r as morality is always applicable. A f a i r number of t h e m are addressed to W h i t n e y ' s relatives and friends, and apparently were composed as literary exercises without propaganda intent. Part II, on the other hand, seems designed to celebrate Leicester and his supporters. It has a separate title page bearing Leicester's device, and opens w i t h a p o e m celebrating the " t w o bears," Leicester and W a r w i c k . T h i s is immediately f o l l o w e d by t w o poems to Leicester alone, to w h o m also is addressed the closing piece o f f e r i n g the book and ending with a prayer f o r his w e l f a r e . A m o n g the worthies represented in the second part, S i d n e y , D y e r , D r a k e , Sir Robert J e r m y n , and D r . W i l l i a m M a l i m are all intimately associated w i t h Leicester and his cause. T h e dedication, like the first part, seems innocent of any specific intention beyond the usual one of celebrating Leicester's name. A long, erudite, a n d eloquent epistle adorned with anecdotes f r o m Scripture and the classics, it is chiefly devoted to praise of patronage. W h i t n e y acknowledges his gratitude to Leicester for previous generosity, " h a u i n g so ofte, a n d so largelie tasted of your honourable bountie and f a u o r . " A f t e r l a u d i n g his patron's virtues, which have already been eternized by many g r a v e and learned men, W h i t n e y calls attention to Leicester's international f a m e : For leauinge your natiue countrie, where so manie goodlie and vertuous are countenanced: So manie learned aduaunced, and so manie studious incoraged by your honour. What other countrie in Christendome, but knoweth that your lordship is a Noble, and moste faithfull counsellor to her excellent Maiestie, a zelous fauorer of the Gospell, and of the godlie Preachers thereof, a louinge patron of learninge, and a bountifull Mecoenas to all the professors of worthie artes, and sciences: whereof my selfe is a witnes, who haue often harde the same in other countries, to your euerlastinge memorie. T h e writer then turns to the general subject of patronage, citing m a n y examples f r o m the classics and more recent history to demonstrate that the great have at all times earned immortality through their protection of learning. H e emphasizes the idea, common in dedications addressed to Leicester in these last years of his life, that the patron has already lived to see the fruits of his generosity. T h e r e are, he writes,

Last Decade of Leicester's Patronage

309

"diuers, who are nowe famous men, had bin throughe pouertie, longe since discouraged from their studies: if they had not founde your honour, so prone to bee their patron." This dedication is dated at London, November 28, 1585. In an address to the reader, dated at Leyden, May 4, 1586, Whitney tells us that the book was presented to Leicester in manuscript just before the earl embarked for the Netherlands, and also that he had had no intention of printing it until his friends persuaded him, almost against his will, to do so. Apparently Whitney accompanied or followed Leicester to the L o w Countries and there, urged on by others w h o convinced him that the publication of a handsomely printed and illustrated volume of this sort would increase Leicester's prestige in the Netherlands as well as in England, prepared his copy at the printing house of Plantin, adding materials which would enhance the propaganda value of the work. Although Whitney declares his book the same, except for minor changes, as the manuscript originally presented, we need not take his protestation very seriously. A m o n g the complimentary poems prefaced to the volume are verses by three eminent scholars of the Netherlands—Jan Dousa, governor of Leyden and curator of the recently founded university there; Bonaventura Vulcanius of Bruges, professor of Greek at Leyden; and Peter Colvius, also of Bruges, whose poem includes great praise of Leicester. Presumably they were among the "friends" who had encouraged his undertaking; Whitney would have found opportunity for making their acquaintance at the university where, as we know, he attended lectures during his sojourn at Leyden. 6 1 Their contributions added luster to his publication and also to Leicester's cause, which was their own. 6 2 Indeed, it is probable that Whitney's services to Leicester in the 61

For Whitney's biography see Green's memoir, op. cit., pp. xxvi-lxxiv. Similar in intention, no doubt, was Dousa's Odae Britannicae, addressed to Queen Elizabeth and published at Leyden in 1586. To it Whitney contributed commendatory verses and also an English translation of a poem addressed to Leicester by Dousa's son. Some of Dousa's verses may have been presented originally during the years preceding Leicester's expedition when Dutch dignitaries, Dousa among them, were visiting London in order to secure English support. The humanistic performances of the Dutch scholars included also an Elogium Roberti Comitis Leycestrii, Belgiae Gubernatoris Generalis. Cum Elogio Philippi Sidnei ten de vera nobilitate. This elaborate little book, honoring Leicester and Sidney in imitations of Horatian odes, was the work of Arnoldus Eickius. Like Dousa's Odae, it was addressed to Elizabeth and published in 1586 (at Utrecht), obviously with the purpose of celebrating the arrival of "Princeps Lycester, Marte potens graui," in the Netherlands. 62

3io

Last Decade of Leicester's Patronage

Netherlands included the furthering of just such important relationships with Dutch scholars and dignitaries. H e had been underbailiff of Great Yarmouth, of which Leicester was high steward, since 1580 or earlier, and there had become familiar with Dutch refugees. The frequent favors which he gratefully acknowledges in his dedication indicate a previous connection with Leicester which may have included service abroad, for he also mentions travel in other countries; perhaps, like William Malim, he had had his expenses paid by the earl. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, skillful in languages, and with a record of administrative experience under Leicester, he would have made an excellent liaison officer. Although he was fitted for diplomatic work, there is evidence that the permanent reward which Whitney sought at this time consisted of nothing higher than a lucrative post in the civil service at home— specifically, the understewardship of Great Yarmouth which he had recently filled on a temporary basis. The same evidence provides insight into Leicester's methods of securing preferments for his protégés. It consists of a letter written by William le Grys, M.P. for Great Yarmouth, to the bailiffs and assembly of the town, in answer to their accusation that he had promised Leicester to obtain the position of understeward, with an annuity of forty pounds for life, for Whitney. 83 Although Leicester was high steward of the town, the election of the understeward rested with the bailiffs, and it is evident from the tone of L e Grys' letter that they indignantly resented the earl's interference and felt that Le Grys had compromised his honor by making the promise. The letter is a lame and confused apology in which Le Grys attempts to deny their allegations but finally admits that he has promised the position and the annuity, but not for life—"no time limited nor day set." He was not forgiven: neither he nor Damett, the other M.P. for Great Yarmouth, who had also promised Leicester the post for his protégé, was reelected in 1588. The promise, however, must have been binding, for, although the bailiffs refused to elect Whitney, they had to buy him off. In 1587 Whitney settled for forty-five pounds, guaranteeing that he would certify his full satisfaction to Leicester. The post was filled by John Stubbs, author of The Gaping Gulf, whose appoint63

T h e full text of the letter, dated at L o n d o n " t h e last of F e b r u a r y , 1 5 8 6 , " is printed by

C h a r l e s J. P a l m e r , A History

of Great

Yarmouth

( G r e a t Y a r m o u t h , 1 8 5 6 ) , pp. 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 .

A l t h o u g h in all references to the incident the c h r o n o l o g y seems hopelessly confused, the year is probably 1 5 8 7 by the m o r e m o d e r n system of d a t i n g .

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ment was ratified in 1588 after Leicester had died and Burghley had succeeded to the high-stewardship. 64 What became of Whitney after he accepted the settlement is not known. T h e incident, now buried in provincial history, is significant of the independence of the local authorities and of Leicester's occasional difficulties in placing the writers and scholars under his protection. In the case of Edward Hake, as we have seen, his protege successfully obtained the understewardship of a town of which he was high steward; the patron's failure in Whitney's case was probably due to the pressure of duties in the Netherlands campaign. In neither instance can we suspect that Leicester used his influence to secure preferments for unsuitable candidates, for both men have records of conscientious service to their respective boroughs. At Great Yarmouth the trouble seems to have been political rather than personal: the bailiffs bring no charges against Whitney, so far as L e Grys' letter indicates, but simply want their own way. 6 5 It is clear that Leicester took a good deal of trouble for the writers who eternized him in their dedications. Whitney's book was but one of the publications directly connected with Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands. His journey was accompanied by all the ceremonies characteristic of an extensive royal progress. In a letter to Walsingham he mentions the pageants and orations which celebrated his embarkation, dwelling tactfully on the praise of Elizabeth they expressed. 00 From the moment of his arrival in the L o w Countries he received the attentions due a mighty potentate. The ceremonies of his reception at The Hague were preserved in a series of twelve engravings, published under the title Delineatio pompae triumphalis qua Robertus Dudlaeus comes Leicestrensis Hagae Comitis fuit receptus. Proclamations and declarations of all sorts were published at frequent intervals, some by his official printer, Jan Cornelius. 67 Long 04 For the details, see Charles J. Palmer, The Perlustralion of Great "Yarmouth (Great Yarmouth, 1 8 7 2 - 7 5 ) , I, 1 1 2 ; II, 9 1 , 2 1 3 . 65 T h e stubborn resistance of Great Yarmouth to the interference of high stewards in their political affairs and the borough's probable resentment of Leicester's parliamentary patronage are noted by Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, pp. 1 7 9 - 8 0 , 2 1 0 . 80 Bruce, Correspondence of Leycester, p. 46. 67 See Catalogus ran de Pamfletlen-Verzameling berustende in de Koninkl'ik* Bibliotheek^ ( T h e Hague, 1 8 8 9 ) , pp. 149 ff. No. 783 was printed " A Vtrecht Chez Jan Corneille jmprimcur . . . de son Excellence," and the name of Cornelius (or Corneliszoon) appears on other official publications. Leicester apparently dispensed his "privilege" in the manner of royalty. In 1 5 8 6 there appeared at Leyden, from the press of Jacobszoon and Bouwenszoon, as published by T h o m a s Basson with a special privilege from Leicester, an edition of

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Last Decade of Leicester's Patronage

years of experience in the manipulation of mass psychology motivated his cultivation of splendor and he did not neglect the power of the press in his stimulation of wartime propaganda. Early in 1586, Leicester accepted the supreme governorship of the States. Although by this action, taken against the wish of Elizabeth, he enraged the Queen and thus made a mistake which was at least partly responsible for the ultimate failure of his campaign, for the time being he was hailed as the savior of the Dutch and treated as their monarch. On his visits to the towns of the Netherlands he was feasted, entertained, and celebrated in erudite orations and flowery verses. T o his impressive inaugural at T h e H a g u e the learned D r . Bartholomew Clarke contributed a Latin oration. 68 T h e compositions presented to him on one of these triumphal occasions, his arrival at Utrecht in March, 1586, were collected and published in a pamphlet from whose pages we get a staggering impression of the amount of humanistic adulation to which the earl was subjected during his occupation of the Dutch states.®9 Dedicated to Leicester in an extravagant epistle by one Jacobus Chrysopolitanus, the volume consists chiefly of complimentary verses in Latin, of which Leicester is the hero although Elizabeth is not entirely forgotten. Utrecht was also the scene of one of the most magnificent of Leicester's princely celebrations, presented on the feast of St. George and chronicled by the earl's own herald, Segar. 7 0 During the summer of 1586 Leicester and his friends in the Netherlands were disturbed by violent news from home. T h e Babington Plot had been discovered and the complicity of Mary Queen of Scots revealed. One of the propaganda pamphlets dedicated to the earl during this period was connected with the ensuing crisis and the events leading George Whetstone's The Honorable Repvtation of a Souldier, the original having been printed at London in 1 5 8 5 . Addressed to Sir William Russell, who served in Leicester's forces, this work praised the expedition as a "most Christian and charitable succour," and " a quarrell . . . grounded vpon compassion and Justice, and pulliticke iudgement, for the safetie of your owne Countrey." T h e Leyden edition was printed in parallel columns of English and Dutch, and included poems by Jan Dousa and his son and by Geoffrey Whitney. 68 Motley, op. cit., I, 39. 89 Brevis Narratio Triumphi quo a Senatu populoque Traiectensi lUustrissimus princeps Robertas Dudlaeus Comes Leicestrius . . . Traiecti Batauorum exceptus est (Utrecht, 1586). 70 Bruce, Correspondence of Leycester, pp. 3 2 , 238n.; Segar's account was later incorporated in Stow's Annates of England (1592).

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up to Mary's execution. In order to understand its significance a brief review of the affair will be necessary. 71 T h e chief result of Leicester's unsuccessful expedition to "protect" the L o w Countries was that it made war with Spain practically inevitable. Recognizing that the English war party had at last driven Elizabeth into open hostility and that he could no longer count upon her caution and indecision, Philip resolved upon the offensive and began preparations for his Invincible A r m a d a . H e also gave his approval to the longcherished plan of the exiled Catholics for the "Enterprise of England," a plan which envisioned their native land invaded by the armies of the Catholic powers of Europe while Catholics within the realm would rise to free Mary of Scotland from Elizabeth's grasp and set her upon the throne of England. Walsingham through his spies had been fully aware of the project and in 1583 had managed to scotch it by uncovering the Throckmorton Plot. In 1586 conspiracy drew to a head again. With England's Protestant troops away from the country, the time seemed ripe for synchronized invasion and rebellion. A n d this time the plot included the assassination of Elizabeth. Mary herself, now kept under strict watch and denied correspondence, was the focus of the plan. While she lived she constituted a threat to England's welfare and Elizabeth's safety. But Elizabeth could not be persuaded to her removal by murder or execution without proof positive of her complicity in treason. Walsingham therefore prepared an elaborate death trap which encouraged Mary to exchange secret letters with the conspirators—letters which were not delivered until they had passed beneath his eye. W h e n the trap was sprung, he had evidence of the Scottish queen's readiness to accept a plot which included the murder of Elizabeth. During this preliminary stage of the affair only Leicester, of all the members of the government, was in his confidence, apprised of the news by post. In August, 1586, the conspirators were apprehended and in September they were executed while Londoners rejoiced and sang psalms in celebration of England's escape from destruction. But with characteristic hesitation Elizabeth, loath even now to bring a crowned head to the block, postponed the trial of Mary until October. In the meantime she summoned Parliament to be ready to ratify the decision of the court, acting upon the 71 Sec especially Conyers Read, op. cit., Ill, chap, xii; see also J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1934), chap. xvi.

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advice of her Council, for she and they wanted the full backing of the l a w and public opinion. In mid-October M a r y was tried and f o u n d guilty of plotting against Elizabeth's life, and again the English queen delayed action, postponing the formal sentence until the twenty-fifth of the month. M e a n w h i l e Leicester was summoned back to L o n d o n , partly because Elizabeth disapproved of his policies in the Netherlands

and

partly because W a l s i n g h a m and other members of the Council hoped that he would strengthen the Queen's resolution with regard to M a r y . 7 2 H e returned late in N o v e m b e r to find D u t c h affairs forgotten in the necessity for disposing of the Scottish q u e e n . 7 3 Parliament had assembled; the two houses in joint session had presented a petition to the Queen a s k i n g f o r the speedy execution of M a r y on the ground that she represented a menace to the life of their sovereign, an incitement to invasion, a n d an excuse for the overthrow of religion—all in all, a source of i m m i n e n t peril to the nation. But Elizabeth had returned a noncommittal a n s w e r and even w h e n pressed had not been able to bring herself to promise a death warrant. Undoubtedly Leicester added his influence to W a l s i n g h a m ' s to force Elizabeth to a conclusion. A l l that their Puritan followers had claimed concerning the treasonous intentions of the Catholic missions, their threat to the very life of the sovereign, and the danger of alliance between the English Catholics and Spain, was n o w demonstrated in the guilty person of M a r y . But only when W a l s i n g h a m m a n a g e d to produce evidence of continuing foreign plots against her life did Elizabeth, on F e b r u a r y 1 , 1 5 8 7 , put her signature to the fatal document. M a r y was executed a week later, and died gallantly. A g a i n in L o n d o n the bells were rung and bonfires lighted and the citizens rejoiced. But Elizabeth w a s overcome with grief and remorse. A n d f r o m F r a n c e and Scotland came w o r d of great popular clamor, of horror and indignation, when the news was received of Mary's end. Elizabeth needed exculpation. She f o u n d some excuse for herself by victimizing her secretary, Davison, w h o m she charged with having ex72 On October 1 5 when Walsingham had received the Queen's secret order countermanding an immediate sentence, he wrote to Leicester in the Netherlands to report the verdict against Mary and to complain of Elizabeth's lack of resolution: "I see this wicked creature ordained of God to punish us for our sins and unthankfulncss. for her Majesty hath no power to proceed against her as her own safety requircth" (quoted by Conycrs Read, op. cit., Ill, 54). 73 Ibid., Ill, 230, 2 3 3 - 3 4 . Here Read dates Leicester's return early in December but other evidence points to late November.

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ceeded her intention by dispatching the signed death warrant without her explicit order. And her people, remembering her hesitations all during the previous fall and winter, and especially the indecisive answers she had returned to their representatives in Parliament, may well have believed that she had never really meant Mary to be put to death. The materials of that unpromising exchange of speeches with the Parliamentary representatives form the content of the pamphlet dedicated to Leicester and published late in 1586 under the title The copie of a Icter to the right honourable the Earle of Leycester, Lieutenant generall of all her Maiesties forces in the vnited Provinces of the ¡owe Countreys, written before, but deliuered at his returne from thence: With a report of certeine petitions . . . . And her Maiesties answeres thereunto. The Lord Chancellor's speech is reported, as is the joint petition from the Lords and Commons mentioned above. Elizabeth's first answer, which had drawn tears from her hearers by its pity and mercy for the condemned, is also given. We read as well her request for some remedy other than execution and Parliament's rejoinder that only the speedy removal of Mary would secure religion, the Queen's life, and the realm itself. And finally we have Elizabeth's second noncommittal answer, thanking them for their care but refusing to promise a warrant of death. 74 The dedication of this work, dated November 25, 1586, is the "leter" of the title. It is signed with the initials " R . C . " and its authorship has been reasonably ascribed to Richard Crompton who was later to publish legal books in French and English. It is obviously the work of a protege of Leicester at the Middle Temple (whence is dated Crompton's pamphlet of the year following, shortly to be discussed) to whom he has shown particular favor. The writer declares that he has always desired to perform some acceptable service in gratitude "for the honour you first vouchsafed me from beyond my cradel" and afterwards confirmed with encouragement "even thus farre onward on my daies," but his parents by their "ouermuch tendring" of him would not let him follow his patron to the L o w Countries. He has tried to think of something worthy to offer Leicester and hit upon the idea of sending him these reports because he knows that his patron has always admired the 74 Elizabeth's speeches are described by Neale, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 2 7 4 - 7 5 , and reported in full in George P. Rice, The Public Speaking of Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 8 8 - 9 5 .

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Queen's mind. Several passages are devoted to praise of Elizabeth and her speeches, and the copies are offered in celebration of the earl's safe return to England. This dedication offers small clue to the writer's real intention. Ostensibly the speeches are being sent merely as examples of the Queen's oratory. If, however, we take at its face value the statement in the title that the letter and the copies of the speeches were prepared before Leicester's return, we see that the writer's original purpose was to keep his patron abreast of developments in London and provide him with a reason for hurrying back—to help Elizabeth make up her mind to sign the death warrant. Why, then, was the pamphlet sent to the press? Possibly only because there was a public eager to read their Queen's fine speeches. But if we remember the whole shady background of Mary's trial—the revelation of the Babington Plot, Walsingham's underhanded dealing in obtaining evidence against Mary, and the government's ignorance of the affair until it was brought to a head—we can discern a more important intention. This pamphlet would justify the trial and make the public aware both of sound reasons for hastening the execution and of their queen's honorable and womanly desire to be merciful and forgiving. 73 Moreover, an edition in French published the following year suggests a still broader purpose, which may have occurred as an afterthought following the execution. It was an answer to Mary's sympathizers abroad, especially in France and Scotland, which demonstrated Elizabeth's entire lack of vengefulness and cruelty and showed that necessity alone had driven her to the act. These suggestions are supported by Crompton's second pamphlet which appeared with his full name and designation, "an Apprentice of the common lawes," and with a dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury dated from the Middle Temple on February 12, 1587—four days after Mary's execution. Its lengthy title describes its contents and clearly proclaims its purpose: A short declaration of the ende of Tray tors, and false Conspirators against the state, and of the duetie of Subiectes to theyr soueraigne Gouernour: and wythall, howe necessarie, Lawes and execution of Iustice are, for the presentation of the Prince and Common wealth. Wherein are also breefely touched, sundry offences of the S. 75

If publication f o l l o w e d shortly a f t e r the date of dedication ( N o v e m b e r 2 5 ) , as seems

l i k e l y , the p a m p h l e t w o u l d h a v e been w e l l timed to prepare the populace f o r the public p r o c l a m a t i o n of sentence, m a d e in the Queen's n a m e and dated D e c e m b e r 4.

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Queene . . . and the manner of the honorable proceding for her conuiction thereof, and also the reasons and causes alledged and allowed in Parliament, why it was thought dangerous to the state, if she should haue liued. This work was almost certainly put forth with official backing. It constitutes the full legal defense of the most important political execution of Elizabeth's reign, and provides moral justification for an act which historical and philosophical doctrine had declared contrary to the laws of God and nature, the killing of a monarch. It is therefore dedicated not to Crompton's own patron or some other secular lord but to the Primate of England, the official representative of religious and moral authority in the realm. Events moved so fast in 1587 and 1588 that Leicester had little time for theoretical justifications. Mary's execution removed the chief motive for rebellion but with the worsening of conditions in the Netherlands the threat from outside was intensified. In 1587 Leicester made a second trip to the Low Countries, an expedition notable chiefly for his failure to save the important port of Sluys, which fell to the Spaniards. The nation prepared for war and braced itself against invasion. In these preparations, as has been mentioned, the mathematician and engineer Thomas Digges, mustermaster general of Leicester's Netherlands expedition, was active. And it may well have been at his suggestion that a new book on the science of warfare was brought out in England by the publisher John Harrison and dedicated to the earl. Prepared in 1587 while Leicester's forces were still in the Low Countries, this work would have been considered equally useful for his purposes as military leader in England when it appeared in 1588 under the title Three Bootes of Colloqvies concerning the Arte of Shooting. It really consists of two parts: the dialogues of Nicholas Tartaglia, originally presented to Henry VIII, and now translated by Cyprian Lucar; and an appendix in which Lucar has gathered information out of many other authorities, including Leicester's proteges William Cuningham and Thomas Digges. Plans, figures, tables, and pictures testify to the practical value of the compilation, for which the publisher provided an attractive and expensive format. The dedication was composed not by the translator but by the publisher, Harrison. In it Leicester read a eulogy of his character and accomplishments which he might have been glad to have preached over

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h i m as a f u n e r a l oration; indeed, it has the tone of a sermon. H a r r i s o n hails Leicester as a m a n distinguished not by any single virtue b u t by the combination of all virtues, a n d these "wholly dedicated to the glory of G o d , the good of the C h u r c h a n d c o m m o n wealth." H e compares his p a t r o n with various Biblical heroes: . . . if it appeare that you haue imployed your wealth to the good of Gods Church . . . you are like the wise rulers of Israel . . . so farre as you haue vsed your honorable estate to countenance the Gospel, you are like Ioseph . . . wherein your Lordship hath vsed her Maiesties fauour to the building vp of the walles of Gods Church, therein you haue liuely represented the right noble Courtier Nehemiah . . . T h a t H a r r i s o n ' s motivation is at least partly to be explained as the Puritan's zeal is betrayed by his emphasis on Leicester's service to t h e church a n d by his use of O l d T e s t a m e n t analogies. O f f e r i n g his w o r k as profitable for the present time, he reveals himself further as a strong advocate of Leicester's aggressive policy against Spain: Your Lordship her Maiesties liefetenant in the loe countries hath endured great trauailes in the cause of God, and your Prince, and can any thing be more acceptable to your Honor than that which may be both for chiefe defence of the friends, and greatest anoyance of the enemies of God and your Prince. Such a w o r k as this, he remarks, is especially necessary n o w , " w h e n so m a n y Princes have conspired against the L o r d a n d our Prince, t h e L o r d s anointed." H e exhorts his patron to "astonish them with lighteni n g g u n p o w d e r a n d t h u n d e r i n g C a n n o n , " a n d makes quite clear his identification of the Lord's righteous thunderbolts with the artillery of English soldiers. H i s closing prayers for Prince a n d country, a n d for the preservation of Leicester "to the maintenance of our happie peace, propagation of true religion, defence of the holy C h u r c h , the Gospel, a n d the glorie of G o d , " are entirely true to the patriotic P u r i t a n tradition. W r i t t e n w h e n the English campaign in the N e t h e r l a n d s was d r a w i n g to an ineffectual close a n d Leicester's political enemies at h o m e were negotiating for peace w i t h Philip, 7 6 this dedication was intended to revive faith in the cause a n d to reestablish the prestige of its leader. 74

T h e w o r k w a s entered in the Stationers' Register on October 3 0 , 1 5 8 7 ; the w o r d i n g of

the dedication suggests that hostilities w e r e still active w h e n it w a s written.

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And, despite the condition of the returning troops, ill-paid and decimated by a long campaign, the Puritans remained loyal to the war party of Leicester and his political allies. The approach of the Armada and the victory at sea justified his policies—justified also the expenditure of gunpowder and prayers. The death of his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, in October, 1586, was one of the saddest events of Leicester's unfortunate expedition. A letter written a few days later to Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law, expresses his grief at the loss of one whom he calls "my dere sonne" and "the comfort of my life," and whom he expected to succeed him in family titles and royal favor. 77 Returning to England in November— his arrival celebrated in a Latin poem by " T . N . " (probably Thomas Newton, the classical scholar) 78 —he was in London for Sidney's funeral which was celebrated with much pomp in February. Among the published literary efforts evoked by this solemn occasion— for the whole nation mourned Sidney's passing—and dedicated to Leicester for his consolation, the collection of Cambridge University verse was first in time. Under the title Academiae Cantabrigiensis Lachrymae, it was addressed to Leicester on February 16, 1587, by Alexander Neville, an eminent alumnus who had filled the post of secretary to three successive archbishops of Canterbury. In his formal address Neville does not fail to include Leicester's honors as commander in the Netherlands and leader of the English forces, while the dedication contains praise of the patron and his dead nephew, and also of many of their relatives. This epistle is, indeed, a prose elegy in itself, and Neville entitles it "Tvmvlo." Prefaced to the verses of the Cambridge men there are some additional poems, including two by the King of Scotland, in memory of Sidney. The book proper begins with a long poem by "G. H."; the same initials are signed to a poem addressed directly to Leicester, and probably represent the name of Gabriel Harvey. There are some eightysix pages of poems by different hands, chiefly in Latin, but also in Greek and Hebrew. Oxford took longer, publishing its volume, Exequiae Sidnaei, at 77

Brucc, Correspondence of Leycester, pp. 4 4 5 - 4 7 . 7s jsjewton has been mentioned before in connection with Leicester's proteges. He was a friend of Stow (cf. C. L. Kinpsford's edition of The Surrey of London [Oxford, 1908 ], I, Ixxi) who included these verses in his Continuation in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587 edition), pp. 1 5 7 9 - 8 0 .

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Barnes's press in November, 1587. It was addressed to Leicester by William Gager, whose Latin tragedy of Meleager had been performed before Leicester in 1585, and who apparently had other claims upon the earl's patronage, for in his dedication the scholar takes the opportunity to express gratitude for favors previously bestowed, implying that he had received assistance as an undergraduate. 79 Like Neville, Gager recognizes Leicester's titles from the Netherlands campaign in his address, and also includes the title of Chancellor of Oxford. The epistle, aside from its personal message, describes the grief of all Oxford for the death of Sidney and expresses sympathy for the bereaved uncle. It mentions the fact that many tributes have had to be left out, including verses in Hebrew, Greek, French, and Italian as well as Latin. The volume as a whole represents a somewhat more ambitious undertaking than that of Cambridge, for there are several fairly long classical eclogues and some eminent contributors. Laurence Humphrey is represented by several poems, Gager himself by the eclogue "Daphnis," and there are verses by William Camden, Matthew Gwinn, and many others. Although this was the official Oxford publication in commemoration of Sidney, and was published with the arms of Oxford on its title page, it was not the only tribute from the university. A collection of memorial verses entitled Peplus, also issued by the Oxford press, anticipated it by a month or so. The contributors are all members of New College, and the dedication is addressed to the Earl of Pembroke, Sidney's brotherin-law, who was an alumnus of that college. It seems strange to us, as it did to the friends of Spenser whom he mentions in his dedication of The Ruines of Time, that this former protege of Leicester did not add his voice to the hymn of mourning of 1587, especially if the poems of " G . H.," mentioned above, were written by Harvey, his friend and companion in Leicester's service. By 1591, when Spenser published his Ruines with a dedication to the Countess of Pembroke, Leicester and several other members of the family had also died. The poet therefore devoted this lament to the memory of five 79 " . . . pro singular! illo tuo in me beneficio, quo adhuc Collegij nostri alumnus sum." Gager also speaks of the earl's benevolence toward his two unclcs, one of whom was Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls. Gager's miscellaneous verse from this period includes a number of poems addressed to Queen Elizabeth in celebration of her escapc from Catholic plots upon her life, in one of which she is urged to have good courage, and the Dudleys (Leicester and Warwick) are mentioned with Cecil as her chicf protectors; sec Tucker Brooke, "William Gager to Queen Elizabeth," Studies in Philology, X X I X (1932),169.

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recently deceased and related persons, including both Sidney and Leicester among them. His chief elegy of Sidney he reserved for a separate poem, Astrophel, published in 1595 and dedicated to Sir Philip's widow, now the Countess of Essex. Poems on the same theme by several other writers are printed in this volume including three which had appeared in The Phoenix Nest in 1593. Some of them may have been composed in the year following Sidney's death, and perhaps at that time were presented to Leicester. Judging from the dedications of these volumes of memorial verse, it is clear that their writers attempted to preserve a certain decorum, addressing themselves to close relatives of the deceased, and offering their works as tokens of sympathy. For the individual contributors to the university collections there can have been little hope of reward beyond the patron's acceptance of the address and perhaps his financial assistance in meeting the costs of publication. Nor do they seem motivated by selfish ambitions. Despite their formality of tone, their adherence to classical Latin, these elegies express a genuine and deep sense of loss. For Sidney had been expected to succeed his uncle not only in title, estate, and political power but also as patron of literature and learning. In spite of poverty, Sir Philip was a friend of writers in a more personal and perhaps, in the long run, more helpful way than Leicester could ever be, hailing them as brothers—for he too was a writer—and assisting them directly or through his influence with his uncle and other powerful nobles. Quite a number of Leicester's proteges dedicated works to him as well as to their greater patron, often addressing him after they had found a protector in his uncle, as though in gratitude for his influence; and one can suspect that Leicester himself on occasion suggested this transfer of allegiance to the nephew whom he was grooming for succession to his high estate. Moreover, Sidney's interests extended into all the fields sponsored by Leicester, except possibly the popular drama, while in appreciation of the new English poetry he of course went far beyond his uncle. With Philip Sidney's death, Elizabethan writers lost a great patron; they had good reason to mourn. After Leicester there was now no one to carry the full burden. The older generation of the interlocking families was passing, as the deaths of the Earl of Warwick, Sir Henry Sidney, and Sir Francis Walsingham followed rapidly upon those of young Sidney and his uncle. The mantle of progressive leadership fell to the Earl of

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Essex, soon to die upon the scaffold, while the family tradition was carried into the next century by the Pembroke and Russell circles. But to Leicester, the great Maecenas, there was no true successor. Leicester's own death evoked no such outburst of grief from the many writers whom he had befriended as that which had greeted the passing of his nephew. T h e reason may be merely that there was no great patron to whom they could address their elegies. A more charitable explanation is to be found in the date, for the earl died in a season of great rejoicing. T h e Armada had been defeated—defeated by English gunnery and destroyed by God's providence. With psalms and sermons, ballads and bonfires, England exulted, and for the moment there was no one to hymn adequately the memory of Leicester.

CHAPTER IX

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers Harvey, Spenser, Florio . . . my hope of such preferment

and honour . . . fayled

me.

—John Florio, 1591 " D E F O R E we grant Leicester, unequivocally, the title of "bountifull J - ' M e c o e n a s , " it remains to consider the case against him. For the obscure writers who sued for his favor and found him wanting, there is none to speak: they have left no trace in literary history. Y e t it would seem that in at least three cases of undeniable competence—the scholar Gabriel Harvey, the poet Edmund Spenser, the language-master and translator John Florio—Leicester neglected his obligations as patron. All of these writers came to his attention early in their careers; to all he gave some mark of his patronage, and then withdrew it, allowing them to fulfill themselves without his help. Or, so it seems. T h e facts concerning Gabriel Harvey's relationship with Leicester are well known, partly because Spenser was involved in that relationship, and also because Harvey was unfortunate enough to draw the fire of Nashe's satirical pen. 1 For students of patronage they have an additional interest in that they provide an insight into the trials and frustrations of one whom the patronage system rejected, and at the same time they afford an explanation of that rejection. Matriculating at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1566, Harvey must have taken literally the words uttered there by Elizabeth two years before: ". . . there will be no directer, no fitter course, either to make your 1 For Harvey's life, see especially the introduction by G . C . Moore Smith to his edition of Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1 9 1 3 ) ; sec also A. B. Grosart's memorial introduction to The Worths of Gabriel Hart'ey (London, 1 8 8 4 - 8 5 ) , Vol. I, and R. B. McKerrow's edition of The Wor^s of Thomas Nashe (London, 1 9 0 4 - 1 0 ) , III, 5 5 102; V, 6 5 - 1 1 0 .

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fortunes, or to procure the favor of your Prince, than . . . to ply your studies diligently." His whole career was devoted to an attempt to advance himself to a position of importance in the royal service for which he prepared himself by zealous and unflagging scholarship. Yet he never went far beyond the walls of his own university; despite undoubted ability and high patronage at the beginning of his course he failed to reach the goal he set himself. In his early years at the university Harvey achieved considerable success. Assisted financially by Sir Thomas Smith, with whom he claimed relationship, and Sir Walter Mildmay, he received his bachelor's degree in 1570 and was awarded a fellowship at Pembroke Hall. He devoted himself especially to rhetoric and civil law, subjects which beyond all others would be of advantage for a career in the Queen's service. Obtaining his master's degree despite the opposition of some of the fellows of his college, he became college lecturer in Greek, and from 1574 to 1576 served as university lecturer in rhetoric—greeted, according to his own account, by enthusiastic throngs. Academic success, however, merely whetted his ambitions for a more public career, and he now turned to patrons who could help him further his plans. In 1577 he dedicated his inaugural lectures on rhetoric, Ciceronianus and Rhetor, to Dr. William Lewin and Dr. Bartholomew Clarke respectively. Cambridge scholars who had become doctors of civil law and were now high in Elizabeth's service, they were such men as Harvey wished to emulate. Sir Thomas Smith, another of his models, died in the same year after a distinguished career as Principal Secretary. Harvey exploited the occasion by dedicating an elaborate and learned eulogy of his protector to Sir Walter Mildmay. Under the title Smithus; vel musarum lachrymae, it was published in 1578. With three learned publications behind him, Harvey determined to use all his influence, all his power, to secure political advancement. Probably through the friendship of Smith or Mildmay, he had already succeeded in attaching himself to the fringe of greatness: two years before, in 1576, he had presented poems to Leicester and Warwick. 2 He now hailed Leicester as his special patron and claimed to have obtained from him the promise of a mission to Italy and France. 3 He was 2 "Epigramma in Effigiem Nobilissimi Comitis Leiccstrensis, duobus abhinc annis Londini conscriptum," and a similar work on Warwick; published by Harvey in 1578 in his Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri Quatuor, Bk. II, sig. F.ij.r. and v. 3 Ibid., Bk. I, sig. C.ij.r. (quoted in n. 6). Apparently there really was some thought of using Harvey in foreign service at about this time; cf. Moore Smith, op. at., p. 21, n. 1 .

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thus at the summit of his hope in July, 1578, when the Queen, on progress with her chief nobles, visited Audley End, very near his home at SafTron Walden and not far from Cambridge. There she held court and received the attentions of the scholars of the neighboring university. Leicester, the most brilliant figure in her train, was at her side. Numerous suitors flocked at his heels, waiting to catch his eye, hopeful of advancing themselves through his influence to lucrative and honorable posts in the royal service. Among them appeared Gabriel Harvey, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to make a splendid public showing. Harvey's behavior at Audley End, as described by himself in the Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri Quatuor published later that year, and as afterwards satirized by Thomas Nashe, 4 reached heights of absurdity possible only in a man who lacked a sense of propriety. The scholar had coldly studied the workings of the patronage system and had carefully planned to use it to his own ends. His marginal notes upon his reading, made at various times during his life, reveal a consistent philosophy of self-advancement. Their cynicism should not be mistaken for irony. Harvey was a Machiavellian, in the popular sense of the word, and Machiavelli was indeed one of the writers he most admired. Reason was his guide, action his principle, oratorical ability the skill he most admired. His heroes were most often orators and men of action. He knew his goal, and wrote, "The Prince's court the only mart of preferment and honour." And he had supreme confidence in his ability to reach that goal: "Give me entrance and lett me alone. Give me footing, and I will find elbow room." In his egregious conceit he thought that by being bolder and more showy than the rest he would outstrip his competitors. He would not depend upon his writings: "Little or no writing now will serve. All writing laid abed as tedious and needless. All is now in bold courtly speaking: and bold industrious doing." With boldness he would combine flattery and self-abasement: "Learn from the dog how skilfully to treat a Lord or King. Endure anything in the way of wrongs, and fawn none the less." And yet he would be subtle in his fawning: "Visible flattery is abject and unworthy of a gentleman; invisible flattery a matter of skill and suited for men of affairs." 5 He had achieved a footing and now intended to make elbow room for himself; the Queen's visit to Audley End would give him his chance. He had everything in his favor—the great good fortune of being chosen 4

McKerrow, op. cit., Ill, 7 3 - 7 7 .

5

Moore Smith, op. cit., pp. 55, 56.

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to take part in a formal disputation and the presence of a powerful sponsor in Leicester, who himself introduced the scholar to Elizabeth. But he did not know how to draw the line between abject flattery and the fawning that is a matter of skill—and he made a fool of himself. Instead of allowing his true gifts of scholarship and originality of mind to reveal themselves naturally, he acted a part which he thought suitable to the occasion. His extravagant oratory—or, perhaps, his behavior and costume, for according to Nashe he dressed himself in the Italian mode, ogled and jested with the ladies, and thrust himself into the conversations of the courtiers—provoked the attention of the Queen. She asked, " W h o is that m a n ? " Upon Leicester's presenting him, she offered her hand to be kissed, and inquired if this was the person w h o m the earl intended sending to Italy and France. Leicester replied affirmatively, and Elizabeth lightly remarked that it was well done because he had "the look of an Italian." Her further remark that she could scarcely believe him an Englishman indicates that she and Leicester were enjoying a little joke at poor Harvey's expense. 6 It is clear that they had no serious intention of employing this buffoon upon a diplomatic mission. If he had had any chances, he had unconsciously ruined them. But the scholar apparently took all in good faith, and both the kiss and the remarks became the subjects of rhapsodic Latin verse in the volume rapidly prepared by Harvey to commemorate the occasion. 7 T h e high-flown compliments and shameless boasting included in this work do much to corroborate the witty picture drawn by Nashe, years later, of Harvey's outlandish and overbearing manners. T h e book was in print within six weeks of the Queen's visit to Audley E n d ; Harvey 6 The joke seems richer in Harvey's own, unwittingly funny, account of the scene (Gratulationum Valdinensium, Bk. I, sig. C.ij.p.): Protinus et Dominum alloqueris (meminisse iuuabit, D u m potero meminisse aliquid) Die, Hunccine in oras llalicas, Francasque libi transmitiere eertum est? Certum, inquit Dominus; bene factum, lam iam habet ille Vultum halt, jaciemque hominis: vix esse Britannum Crediderim, potiusque hospes quídam esse videtur. 7 T h e manuscript of the Gratulationes was, according to E. K.'s gloss on Spenser's September eclogue (Shepheardes Calender), presented to the Queen at Audley; before committing it to print Harvey added an epilogue (to the first book) which consisted of the two poems, " D e Regiae Manus osculatione" and " D e vultu Itali." Included in the latter poem is a passage in praise of Italians which is so extravagant that it has been interpreted as an ironic attack on Alcnjon's emissaries ( T . H. Jameson, " T h e 'Machiavellianism' of Gabriel H a r v e y , " PMLA, L V I [ 1 9 4 1 ] , 6 4 5 - 5 6 ) . If it is, we must add this to the evidence of Harvey's tactless blundering.

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followed in her train to present it at another stop on her progress. 8 It was designed to remind Elizabeth of what the author considered his triumph at Audley End and to emphasize his qualifications for service to the Crown. T h e royal arms appear on the title page; on its reverse there is a portrait of the Queen enthroned, her three chief councillors at her right. T h e four books of "gratulations" are preceded by a dedicatory poem by Harvey in which he asks favor as her new bard and offers her the entire work. Although only Book I is specifically concerned with poems in her praise, the remaining books are hers by right, since they are devoted to the glories of her chief favorites. 9 T h e second book contains praise of Leicester, the third eulogizes Burghley, while the fourth is divided among Oxford, Hatton, and Philip Sidney. 10 In each part Harvey includes epigrammata composed by distinguished scholars at home and abroad in praise of the noble to whom that section is devoted, as well as several of his own pieces. Next to Elizabeth, Leicester is the hero of the occasion. In the book separately addressed to him there are verses by Edward Grant (who had recently dedicated Ascham's Apologia pro caena Dominica to the same patron), Walter Haddon, Abraham Hartwell, and Pietro Bizari, all famous Cambridge classicists; others by the Vidame of Chartres and Charles Utenhove indicate Leicester's fame among foreign scholars. Some of this material had already appeared in print. 1 1 Harvey was not too proud to swell his volume with second-hand material. Apparently, not knowing that his patron was married to the Countess of Essex, Harvey intended the book addressed to Leicester to glorify his hero so that the earl might appear a suitable candidate for the hand of a queen who was being wooed by kings and princes. T h e scholar's indiscretions include some untimely references to Leicester's possible 8 According to E. K . (as cited in n. 7 ) the printed book was presented at "Maister Capells in Hertfordshire"; this was Hadham Hall, where Elizabeth stopped on September 1 5 (John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth [London, 1 8 2 3 ) , II, 222). The copy was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 20, 1 5 7 8 , and published on September 1 . 9 By similar logic Spenser dedicated the whole of The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth, although the greater share of the narrative is devoted to celebration of the virtues of her courtiers and warriors and there arc also dedicatory sonnets addressed to some of the chief worthies of the age. 10 A very misleading impression of the nature of the Cratiilationes is conveyed by the only modern reprint, which includes merely excerpts, with English translations, from the epilogue to Rk. I and from the address to Sidney (Grosart, op. dr., I, x x x v - x l i i i ) . 11 Bizari's epigrams, for example, had been published in his Varia Opvscvla (Venice, • 5 ^ 5 ) ; one of them has been quoted on p. 1 3 9 , n. 43.

328

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

union with Elizabeth. 1 2 And there is a good deal of advertisement of the high aristocratic origins of the Dudley line. T h e earl's device of the Bear and Ragged Staff appears on the title page and his full armorial bearings with sixteen quarterings on the next leaf, followed by Grant's verses, "Corollarium . . . in Symbolum Gentilium Honoratissimi Leicestrensis."

13

By beginning his own verses in praise of Leicester with

the line, "Eia Dudleiae clarissima gloria gentis," Harvey makes certain that the reader will not overlook his patron's distinguished family name. 1 4 Harvey's attempt to extol the Dudley family, in defiance of the taint upon their blood, was designed to please Philip Sidney as well as Leicester. T h e separate section devoted to Sidney stresses the young courtier's worldwide reputation for learning and all virtue, and hails him as the worthy successor of Leicester and Warwick, his uncles. 1 5 Sidney, we know, took an active interest in genealogy and a particular pride in his Dudley relationship. 16 Perhaps, by such appeals to their vanity, the scholar did manage to give these patrons a feeling of obligation to him. Though they did not secure him the advancement he wished, they remained friendly to him, and Leicester, at least, tried to help him in other ways. When the promised mission to France and Italy escaped him, Harvey 12

The following will serve as an example of Harvey's ambiguous way of urging the match: Nemo tibi non regificos impertit honores Exspectat Capiti non Diadema tuo. Fata illis ignota Deum: sed quisque precatur Regalis tandem Sponsus vt esse queas. Moreover, if Jameson's interpretation (op. cit., pp. 6 5 1 - 5 3 ) is correct, one of the "noua carmina" added to the book on Leicester is to be read as a satire directed against Alen^on, whom Harvey regarded as his patron's rival for Elizabeth's hand. 13 This description is based on one of the Bodleian copies (Tanner 7 3 4 ) . In some issues of the Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri Qualuor Leicester's arms and Grant's poem (which are printed on conjugate leaves, sigs. D.5. and D.6.) are erroneously bound at the end of the section on Leicester (cf. McKerrow, op. cit., V , 1 6 5 , and Nichols, op. cit., II, H I n.); at least one variant issue, in the Folger Shakespeare Library, has them bound before the title page of that section. T h e printing of this material on a separate bifolium and the apparently haphazard placement suggest an "afterthought," conceived while the book was in production with the intent of providing additional luster for the patron's name. Grant's verses "In Symbolum Gentilitium" had appeared in his edition of Ascham the year before. 14 15 Sig. E.j.r. Sig. K.iij.r. and v. 16 In his defense of Leicester ( 1 5 8 5 ? ) , Sidney declared that his "cheefest honor is to be a Dudlei," supporting his claim by a genealogical and heraldic account of the noble house from which he descended through his mother ( A . Fcuillerat, cd., The Complete Worths of Sir Philip Sidney [Cambridge, England, 1 9 2 2 - 2 6 ] , III, 6 6 - 7 0 ) .

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found himself in immediate embarrassment, for his fellowship at Pembroke was expiring and he had no other means of livelihood. In this emergency, which developed in the summer of 1578, within a month of the events at Audley, he appealed to Leicester for help. The earl tried to compensate Harvey for the loss of his foreign appointment by requesting an extension of his fellowship from William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall. Since Fulke, one of Leicester's earliest proteges, had been the earl's domestic chaplain, probably owed his recent election to the mastership at least partly to Leicester's influence, and was emerging under that patron's sponsorship as one of the most important of the Protestant writers, he had every reason to accede to the request. He wrote to the fellows of his college, reporting Leicester's intercession on Harvey's behalf and adding his own earnest plea to the same purpose. 17 But the fellows of Pembroke continued hostile to Harvey and refused to renew the fellowship. Harvey was not placed until December 18 of that year, when he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall, perhaps with Leicester's assistance. But Harvey did not resign himself to an academic career, or remove himself from Leicester's train of suitors. T w o days after the granting of the Trinity fellowship he was in London, apparendy in the company of Edmund Spenser. 18 The poet had been serving as secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester, formerly master of Pembroke Hall where, as an undergraduate, he had probably first made Harvey's acquaintance. During the coming year, 1579, Spenser was to be in attendance upon Leicester, perhaps in the same capacity in which he had served Young, and at its end to publish his Shepheardes Calender, with a dedication to Sidney and a prefatory letter addressed to Harvey by " E . K." That letter, the notes appended to the text by E. K., and some of the content of the eclogues, provide evidence of a literary friendship between Harvey and Spenser, while their correspondence during this period shows that they discussed not only literary matters but also their prospects of advancement through Leicester's favor. 1 9 17 Fulke's letter, dated from Norwich on August 22, 1 5 7 8 , is printed in the Letter-Boo^ of Gabriel Harvey, ed. E. J. L . Scott (Camden Society, n.s., X X X I I I , 1 8 8 4 ) , p. 88. 18 Moore Smith, op. at., p. 23. 18 Three proper and wittie familiar letters . . . Two other very commendable Letters (London, 1 5 8 0 ) , reprinted by Grosart in Worths of Harvey, Vol. I; these letters are to be found also in the Letter-Boo\ of Gabriel Harvey and in complete editions of the works of Spenser. T h e correspondence has been closely studied by many Spenserians; some scholars regard it as bogus. For this period of Spenser's carcer, including his relationship with

330

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

Unfortunately, however, the evidence is neither clear nor reliable. T h e letters were published anonymously and with a good deal of huggermugger in 1580; it seems likely that Harvey did some elaborate editing in the preparation of the copy, and Spenser may possibly have connived in the project. Similar mystification attended the publication of the Calender. W e cannot, therefore, take in good faith the statements concerning patronage contained in these writings; some of them, indeed, seem to have been motivated by the writers' desire to advertise their familiarity with Leicester, Sidney, and Dyer in order to impress the world with their high connections. On the other hand, we cannot ignore them: though they reflect hopes and fancies rather than biographical fact, they are nonetheless valuable for our understanding of the system as it appeared to writers dependent on it. The epistolary record actually begins in the spring preceding the earliest of the published letters. In April, 1579, Harvey wrote a long private letter to Leicester from Cambridge which reveals him as very anxious to exchange his university post for employment by the earl. H e asks for "any kynde of travayle (either at home or abroade, by speaking, wrytinge, or doinge, on way or other) that maye anywayes seem avaylable either towards the strentheninge of his Lordshippes estate or the advauncyng of his most Honorable name." 2 0 The tone is much less confident than that of the boastful Gratulationes of the previous year. Probably at about the same time, Harvey sent Leicester a work newly dedicated to him, under the title Anticosmopolita or Britanniae Apologia, which was almost certainly never published. 21 Apparently the patron refused to sponsor it and neglected to find a reward for its author. In October, if the published correspondence may be trusted, Harvey was still seeking preferment but Spenser believed himself well on the road to advancement. Dating his first letter from Leicester House, Spenser announces that he may be about to leave for France in Leicester's Leicester as reflected in the letters, see Alexander C. Judson, The Life of Edmund Spenser (Baltimore, 1 9 4 5 ) , chap. viii. 20 Quoted by E. M. Tenison, Elizabethan England, V (Royal Leamington Spa, 1 9 3 6 ) , 1 5 2 , n. 1 , from the Longleat MS, II, fol. 202. 21 The work was entered in the Stationers' Register in June, 1579; in the following April Harvey wrote to Spenser, "My Anticosmopolita remayning still in statu quo, and neither an inch more forward nor backwarde, than he was fully a tweluemonth since in the Courte, at his last attendance vppon my Lorde there." (Cf. McKerrow, op. cit., V , 163, and Moore Smith, op. cit., p. 26.) It is mentioned in the gloss on Spenser's September eclogue.

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

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scrvice. "I goe thither," he writes, "as sent by him, and maintained most what of him: and there am to employ my time, my body, my minde, to his Honours service." Ten days later he writes again, without mention of the proposed trip. He asks Harvey's advice concerning a poem—clearly The Shepheardes Calender—which he has been thinking of offering to Leicester, for he fears that he has already cloyed the ears of his noble patrons and may be suspected of writing to obtain further rewards; besides, he has doubts concerning the propriety of the contents. But he urges Harvey to strike now for patronage: ". . . call your wits and senses togither . . . when occasion is so fairely offered of Estimation and Preferment. For, whiles the yron is hote, it is good striking, and minds of Nobles varie, as their Estates." He has been exchanging poems and discussing quantitative verse with Sidney and Dyer—"they haue me, I thanke them, in some vse of familiarity"—and out of his unfeigned affection for Harvey he has spoken to them of his friend's talents. Airy references to his seeing the Queen, to the "Areopagus," to frequent visits to court, give an impression of great busyness and prosperity. He is so well placed that he hopes for important preferment for himself and intends to use his influence on his friend's behalf. T o this letter Harvey replied about a week later, dating his letter from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Not to be outdone in hopefulness, he declares that he has been active in his own interests: "I am at this instant, very busilye, and hotly employed in certaine greate and serious affayres" —but he is going to keep his plans a secret until something comes of them. After a long passage on quantitative verse, he drops a hint of what those plans are, promising to return Spenser's flowery compliments in kind "by that time I haue been resident a yeare or twoo in Italy." He rallies his friend on the subject of the proposed journey to France, prophesying that he will not have sailed within a fortnight, and vowing to read him such a lecture in Homer and Virgil that Spenser will be able to sustain his patron's honor and his friends' expectations by being "a verie liuelye and absolute picture of Vlysses and Aeneas." 2 2 Whether Spenser actually went to France or not, and what the exact nature of Harvey's hopes for preferment was, we do not know. Since there is no evidence that either of them made a trip to the Continent, 2 2 These letters, dated October 5 (enclosed with a letter of October 15/16) and October 23, I579> a r c reprinted by Grosart in Worlds of Harvey, I, 5 ff. and 18 if.

332

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

both projects may have existed only in their imaginations. The letters, however, indicate the form their hopes were taking, and advertised to the public the fact that they believed themselves in line for coveted positions in the foreign service. The three other published letters are dated in April, 1580, some six months later. In the interim, Spenser's Shepheardes Calender had appeared, anonymously, and with an opening address placing the work under the protection of Philip Sidney. Spenser seems to have survived, without loss of his chief patron's favor, any protest that may have followed immediately upon publication. His next letter to Harvey is dated from Westminster, an indication that he was still in attendance upon Leicester; moreover, in his reference to his master's health ( " H i s Honoure neuer better") and his dark allusion to "that olde greate matter"—presumably the Alengon affair—we have evidence of his continued service to the earl. References to Sidney and Dyer convey the impression that Spenser is still on terms of familiarity with the great. He has been busy on his poems, some of which were advertised in the Calender; he mentions several as completed, and asks Harvey to return the draft of his great heroic poem, The Faerie Queene, which he had sent him for criticism. Of a Latin poem he had prepared, apparently in honor of Leicester, he writes cautiously, "Of my Stemmata Dudleiana, and especially of the sundry Apostrophes therein, addressed you knowe to whome, must more aduisement be had, then so lightly to sende them abroade." Perhaps he had begun the Stemmata, a celebration of the Dudley line, under much the same inspiration as that which seems to have motivated Harvey's praise of the family in the Gratulationes: that is, a general desire to ingratiate himself with Leicester and Sidney, and a special intention to advertise the high descent of the one Englishman who was commonly considered a candidate for the royal marriage— Leicester himself. If so, the original draft must have been started before the previous summer, when Leicester's secret marriage was revealed to the Queen and to the world. It would now have to be changed and adapted to Leicester's present state or to some other purpose. The two other letters, both by Harvey, contain few references to his hopes and indicate that he is in a mood more sour than that of the previous October. His discourse upon the earthquake is, to be sure, robust enough, but he writes disconsolately of his Anticosmopolita, which

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

333

Leicester had not undertaken to sponsor, and satirically of the state of learning at Cambridge, where the thirst for news has supplanted the thirst for knowledge and everybody is talking about the French match. His displeasure with religious matters—and, incidentally, his sympathies with the Puritans—is indicated by his remark that Cartwright, once the soul of the Puritan movement at Cambridge, is "nighe forgotten." H e tells Spenser of the egregious hopes of Cambridge youth: "every yonker to speak of as politique, and as great a Commonwealth man as Bishoppe Gardner, or Doctur Wuttun at the least." Here we may perhaps discern the bitterness of a man conscious of failure while those younger and less able are moving up in the world. His resentment of his fate is expressed in a passage of pure spite directed against Dr. Perne, who had recently defeated his candidacy for the post of university orator despite Burghley's "most honourable and extraordinarye commendation." 2 3 Since Perne is referred to only as "your old Controller," this passage was interpreted by some as an attack on Sir James Crofts, Controller of Her Majesty's Household and a member of the proSpanish faction which opposed the policies of Leicester's party. In the next letter, Harvey's satirical vein burst forth again in his versified Speculum Tuscanismi, or "bolde Satyriall Libell" of the Italianate Englishman. Here again Harvey laid himself open to misinterpretation, for the picture of the Italianate Englishman was considered an attack upon the Earl of Oxford, whose recent quarrel with Sidney no doubt prepared him to see offense in one of Sidney's protégés. Both of these passages were to get Harvey into trouble, nor were the Cambridge authorities to overlook his description of the parlous state of learning he found there. But in the meantime, as this second April letter of Harvey's suggests, he was still not without hope of preferment at court. He tells Spenser that he has "alreadie addressed a certaine pleasurable and Morall Politique Naturall mixte deuise, to his most Honourable Lordshippe," and that he has been studying Justinian, apparently with an eye to a political career. He is disillusioned in poetry as a means of advancement, and, after speaking of his young brother John's experiments in verse and of Spenser as the model new poet, he suddenly breaks into a cynical evaluation of literary endeavor: 23 Harvey's account of this incident and his claim that he had Burghley's recommendation are part of an answer to Nashe included in the Foure Letters of 1592 (Grosart, op. cit.,

I, 179)-

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Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

I haue little ioy to animate, and encourage either you or him to goe forward, vnlesse ye might make account of some certaine ordinarie wages, or at the leastwise haue your meate, and drinke for your dayes workes. As for my selfe, howsoeuer I haue toyed, and trifled heretofore, I am now taught, and I truste I shall shortly learne, (no remedie, I must of meere necessitie giue you ouer in the playne fielde) to employ my trauayle, and tyme wholly, or chiefely on those studies and practizes, that carrie as they saye, meate in their mouth, hauing euermore their eye vppon the Title De pane lucrando, and their hand vpon their halfpenny. Harvey then quotes the second and third stanzas of the October eclogue, in which Cuddie complains that, like the grasshopper, he has spent his store while singing and finds himself none the better for his efforts. T h e letter proceeds with the ironical prediction that Spenser, because of his superiority in poetry and "some personall priuiledge," will "purchase great landes, and Lordshippes, with the money" his verses will bring him. 2 4 Whatever Spenser's plans were in April, 1580, they were soon changed: a few months later he was in Ireland with Lord Grey. Harvey apparently succeeded to the vacant secretaryship but held the position for only a short time. T h e publication of the five letters, although supposedly effected without their writers' knowledge, brought down a storm on the poor scholar's head. Sir James Crofts, the Earl of Oxford, and Cambridge University all felt they had good reason to seek his destruction. According to the satirical account of the affair given by Nashe, Harvey was given sanctuary in the house of a nobleman—almost certainly the Earl of Leicester—who protected him until Crofts himself took him in custody to the Fleet. 2 5 Answering Nashe, Harvey denied that he had ever been in the Fleet but admitted that he had been forced to apologize to the university. 26 H e claimed that he had been spared further punishment through the intervention of Sir Thomas Wilson and Sir Walter Mildmay; apparently Leicester, tired of his indiscretions, had not bestirred himself to intercede. Nashe tells us that soon after this episode Harvey gave his patron a motive for ridding himself of the scholar's services by appearing at court in a multicolored suit with his 24 This letter also contains Harvey's now famous stricture on the draft of The Faerie Queene. For the letters of April 2, 7, and 23, 1580, see Grosart, op. cit., I, 34 ff., 40 ff., and 75 ff. 25 McKerrow, op. cit., Ill, 78. 26 Foure Letters ( 1 5 9 2 ) ; see the third letter, Grosart, op. cit., I, 1 7 6 ff.

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mustache "like a black horse tayle tyde vp in a knot, with two tuffts sticking out on each side," creating the impression of a madman. Whereupon, He that most patronizd him, prying more searchingly into him, and finding that he was more meete to make sport with than anie way deeply to be employd, with faire words shooke him of, and told him he was fitter for the Vniuersitie than for the Court or his turne, and so bad God prosper his studies, and sent for another Secretarie to Oxford. 27 Making due allowance for Nashe's venomous and boisterous humor, we can still understand why Leicester wanted about him someone who was less of an original. Sidney, too, Nashe tells us, after encouraging and assisting Harvey in his ambitious course, soon became disgusted with his pride and vanity, his ridiculous behavior in public, and his boastfulness in print, and tried to get rid of him, "though vtterly shake him off he could not, hee would so fawne and hang upon him." Thus came to an end Gabriel Harvey's hopes of preferment at court. H e returned to his college to find himself openly burlesqued in the title role of the Latin play Pedantius.28 His appearance, his manner, his vocabulary, his boasting of familiarity with the great, his ambitions for a career in civil law and for royal employment, were all satirized with merry effectiveness—and Cambridge rocked with laughter, a fitting close to Harvey's brief career as a man of affairs. Thenceforth, even his academic ambitions were frustrated. His attempt to obtain the mastership of Trinity Hall, vacated in 1585, was a failure despite his appeal to Burghley, the university's chancellor. He apparently continued to claim Leicester as his patron, 29 and it was probably through Leicester's influence that he was enabled to take the degree of doctor of civil law at Ox21 McKerrow, op. cit.. Ill, 79. The new secretary was probably Arthur Atey, summoned from his position as principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. As has been indicated (p. 150, n. 6 1 ) , Atey was at court and in correspondence with Sidney in March, 1580; by September 9 he was in Leicester's employ. Possibly Sidney recommended him to Leicester when it became apparent that Harvey was not suited for the position and that Spenser would go to Ireland. Atcy's subsequent record of difficult and continued service justifies his being selected in preference to either Spenser or Harvcv. 28 Probably cnacted in February, 1 5 8 1 ; see Moore Smith, op. cit., p. 40. 29 Writing to Burghley in 1585 concerning his suit for the mastership, Harvey said that he had reposed all his hope in Burghley himself, "with consideration not vsing Mine owne Lord in so great an affaire of your Vniuersity" (ibid., p. 47). By "Mine owne L o r d " Harvey surely meant Leicester; there was no one else in the realm whose influence in this matter, which involved obtaining the Queen's approval, might have been considered greater than Burghley's.

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f o r d in 1585, after failing to receive it at his o w n university. E v e n t u a l l y he retired to S a f f r o n W a l d e n and an obscurity relieved only by the literary quarrel with N a s h e . 3 0 Lesser men than H a r v e y , ardent with desire to serve Q u e e n

and

country, succeeded better. H a r v e y ' s lack of sincere purpose is revealed in the list of his published writings which, except for his maiden efforts on rhetoric, are all personal in character, designed to serve his o w n interest through flattery of patron or advertisement of self or controversy w i t h an enemy. H e made little use of his scholarship. Fortunately, he is a sport, not a type: he reflects the patronage system only as a rare e x a m p l e of failure. W h a t of Spenser? D i d Leicester consider him a nuisance, too, and must w e interpret the mission to Ireland as an exile, a punishment for some tactless, even dangerous expression of the poet's thought

and

f e e l i n g ? T h e strong case for an affirmative answer to this question was set

forth

many

years

ago

by

Greenlaw,

and,

although

seriously

challenged, it has had a p o w e r f u l influence on Spenserian studies ever since. 3 1 V a r i o u s angles of the question, and of other aspects of the poet's relationship with Leicester, have been debated with results that d i f f e r according to the individual critic's dating of Spenser's poems and interpretation of his allegory. A l t h o u g h the present study cannot pretend to o f f e r an original contribution to this highly controversial field, it can perhaps throw upon the problems involved the light of its general conclusions regarding Leicester's patronage. 30 T h e initials " G . H . , " h o w e v e r , a p p e n d e d to t w o poems in the C a m b r i d g e memorial v o l u m e of 1587 on Sidney (Academiae Cantabrigiensis Lachrymae), probably indicate that H a r v e y was invited to contribute to this w o r k which honored his f o r m e r p a t r o n s and also f u r n i s h evidence of his c o n t i n u i n g gratitude. N a s h e in the course of their q u a r r e l w a s not above suggesting that Harvey joined in the chorus of reaction that followed Leicester's d e a t h : " T h e ragged cognizance on the sleeue, I may say to thee, carried meate in the m o u t h w h e n time was: doe not dispraise it yet" ( M c K e r r o w , op. cit., I, 3 2 2 ) . T h i s suggestion seems negated by the lines w h i c h Spenser in 1591 gave to Hobbinol, or H a r v e y , in r e m e m b r a n c e of Leicester's p a t r o n a g e (to be q u o t e d later in this c h a p t e r ) . 31 E d w i n G r e e n l a w , "Spenser a n d the Earl of Leicester," PMLA, X X V ( 1 9 1 0 ) , 5 3 5 - 6 1 ; reprinted as chap, iii of Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory ( B a l t i m o r e , 1 9 3 2 ) . For a n e x a m p l e of a dissenting view see H a r o l d Stein, Studies in Spenser's Complaints ( N e w Y o r k , • 9 3 4 ) ; Judson, in his Life of Edmund Spenser, takes a neutral position ( p p . 70, 7 1 ) . I n the section that follows, there will be n o a t t e m p t to cite systematically the contributions of t h e m a n y students w h o have taken part in the controversies concerning Spenser's relationship w i t h Leicester; the reader is referred to the sections on Spenser scholarship in The Year's Work, in English Studies a n d to the Variorum Spenser (cd. G r e e n l a w et al., Baltimore, 1 5 3 2 - 4 9 ) .

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337

It can be granted that the parallels between Harvey's career and that of Spenser, in the crucial years 1578-80 when both were under Leicester's protection, can be made to serve the theory that at the end of that period Leicester cast Spenser off as a punishment for some tactless action. Both men had the same goal, a brilliant career at court and in the diplomatic service under their patron's sponsorship. Both had prepared themselves for public service at Cambridge University. Having succeeded in attracting Leicester's attention, both attempted to better their chances of promotion by writing poetry in Latin and English. They were alike in their hopes of voyaging to the Continent as Leicester's emissary, and in the disappointment of those hopes. Apparently both served him as secretary, and both achieved the additional advantage of Sidney's interest in their literary efforts. And, although Spenser soon displayed his superiority in poetry, while Harvey turned to the study of civil law as a more effective means of advancement, there are also certain parallels in their literary productions. Spenser's lost Stemmata Dudleiana

was probably a celebration of the

Dudley line, a theme used by Harvey in his Gratulationes his "bad courtier" in Mother Hubberds

Valdinenses;

Tale, whether modeled on the

example of Simier, Alen$on's agent, or not, belongs to the same family as the Italianate Englishman depicted in Harvey's Speculum

Tuscanismi.

There is even a suggestion, in a letter written long afterwards by Harvey, that the scholar had attempted a poem on the order of The

Faerie

Queene, and, like Spenser, had had Sidney's encouragement. 32 Other similarities in the unpublished works of these writers—of which there were a goodly number, according to the testimony of their letters, E. K.'s statements, and Ponsonby's preface to Spenser's

Complaints—

may be suspected. Then, in the midst of their ambitious strivings, but not before they had conceived doubts of success through poetry alone, both men were dismissed from the service of Lord Leicester, the one to the disappointments of an unsuccessful academic career, the other to "savadge soyle, far from Parnassomount." Harvey's offenses we know—his troubles consequent upon the publication of the Letters, his absurd appear32 Harvey spoke of having composed "sundry royal cantos (nigh as much in quantity as Ariosto) in cclcbration of her Majesty's most glorious government, some of them devised many years past at the instance of the excellent knight and my inestimable dear friend Sir Philip Sidney" (Moore Smith, op. at., p. 7 3 ) . Possibly this early effort is to be identified with the Anticosmopolita, or Britanniae Apologia presented by Harvey to Leicester.

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ance at court, both sources of embarrassment to his patron. The theory that Spenser's appointment as Lord Grey's secretary in Ireland was a punishment and not a promotion depends upon our finding that he too had offended his patron and disqualified himself as a candidate for advancement. It is unlikely that the publication of the Letters implicated Spenser. Although the anonymous editor, "Wellwiller," indicated that he had obtained the copy indirectly from Spenser's hands, the major share of the work was Harvey's and all the indiscreet passages occur in his letters. Spenser's youthful boasting of familiarity with the great seems innocent enough. T h e chief support for the notion of Spenser's "guilt by association" with Harvey comes from a remark made by Nashe in 1592 to bait the scholar. " Y o u will neuer," wrote Nashe, "leaue your olde trickes of drawing M. Spencer into euerie pybold thing you do." 3 3 But even this implies that everyone regarded the responsibility as Harvey's. Moreover, since the Letters were published at some time later than June 30, 1580 (when the work was entered in the Stationers' Register), we must suppose an extraordinarily quick retribution in order to account for Spenser's departure with Lord Grey's party at the end of July. 34 According to all the evidence we have, Leicester did not dismiss Harvey until some time after the affair of the Letters; indeed, Harvey's employment as secretary probably followed Spenser's dismissal from that post. W e cannot believe that the patron first punished the lesser criminal, then appointed the greater to his place, and only afterwards decided to have none of either of them. The Letters apparently had nothing at all to do with the relationship between Leicester and Spenser. Students of Spenser more usually associate Spenser's dismissal with the allegory of Virgils Gnat, a translation of the Virgilian Culex which Spenser published in the 1591 Complaints volume with a note to the effect that it had been "long since dedicated to the most noble and excellent lord, the Earle of Leicester, late deceased." So far as we know it was the only published work of Spenser to carry an address to this patron. In the dedicatory sonnet the poet complains of some wrong inflicted upon him by Leicester and seems to confess that he has been guilty of a "fault" which is presumably the reason for his patron's un33

McKerrow, op. cit., I, 3 2 3 . The book may, of course, have been printed before the copy was licensed, or Spenser may have followed rather than accompanicd Grey, but neither seems probable. For the date of Grey's sailing, see Judson, op. cit., p. 72. 34

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kind act. Leicester is directed to read Virgils Gnat as an allegory of Spenser's own case, but any other reader who chances to divine the secret of the riddle is adj ured not to seek "to glose upon the text." According to the Greenlaw theory—which is, in effect, a defiance of Spenser's behest—the poet's "fault" was the writing and circulation of Mother Httbberds Tale in 1579/80 as a warning against Elizabeth's proposed union with Alencon. For his boldness, which Leicester found embarrassing although it was intended to serve him, Spenser was sent to exile in Ireland just as the gnat in Virgil's poem was crushed and its spirit banished to a waste wilderness as reward for its attempt to warn the shepherd of an approaching danger. Now, there is on first consideration nothing unlikely in this interpretation of Mother Httbberds Tale. As we have seen, Leicester's Puritan followers were constantly warning him of Catholic dangers, and in 1579 the preacher John Feild was particularly vehement against the "fawning whisperings of hollowe harted Papists," very possibly a reference to the Alencon matchmakers. Moreover, there are other evidences of punishment: the clergy who preached against the marriage were restrained by royal edict; John Stubbs, author of The Discouerie of a Gaping Gulf, an open protest against the Alencon match which appeared in the summer of 1579, lost his right hand for his boldness, his printer narrowly escaping the same penalty; and Sidney, who had addressed a letter against the union to Elizabeth herself, was exiled from the court. These punishments, however, did not express the disapproval of Leicester but only that of the Queen and the faction opposed to Leicester who backed the marriage. It was rumored in Paris that Walsingham had inspired Stubbs's pamphlet; the printer's escape from the penalty was probably due to the influence of the Leicester-Walsingham party. 35 Leicester's reaction to his followers' efforts against the A l e n ^ n match was much more likely to be one of gratitude than resentment, especially if they managed to keep themselves out of trouble with the authorities. Feild, careful not to make his allusion specific, went unscathed; in fact, during these years he enjoyed Leicester's special favor and was employed as a publicist against the Jesuits. Nor is Spenser's allegory so pellucid that we must assume his intention apparent to the 35 See H. J. Byrom, "Edmund Spenser's First Printer, Hugh Singleton," The Library, 4th Series, X I V ( 1 9 3 3 ) , 1 2 1 - 5 6 , for an account of this printer, notable for his production of Puritan literature and for his printing of The Shepheardes Calender, which he entered in the Stationers' Register within a few weeks of the Stubbs incident.

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reading public and therefore offensive to the Queen—if, in fact, his poem was read outside of the circle of Leicester's followers. Indeed, the chief trouble with the Greenlaw theory is that Spenser took good care to make his allegory obscure in both Mother Hubberds Tale and Virgils Gnat. The latter is too close a translation of Cit lex to be of value as a biographical account; and the former may equally well be interpreted as an allegory of the political situation in 1590/91, shortly before it was published.38 Some students agree that Virgils Gnat contains a reference to a punishment or injury inflicted on Spenser by Leicester, but reject Greenlaw's explanation of Spenser's fault. Many of the arguments advanced in support of the theory concerning the dangerous matter in the as yet unpublished Mother Hubberds Tale can be transferred to the perhaps equally offensive contents of The Shepheardes Calender, published late in 1579 or early in 1580. Greenlaw himself interpreted the "moral eclogues" as a warning to Elizabeth and Leicester about the political and ecclesiastical situation.37 Others have given the Calender a more strictly Puritan interpretation, associating it with the ideas advanced by the radical preachers of the day. 38 The latter point of view is in accord with the findings of this study. As has been shown, Leicester gave his support and protection to Puritan agitators of the most violent stamp. During the period of Spenser's service to the earl, the poet almost certainly made the acquaintance at Leicester House of the earl's Puritan followers, including Feild. We know that he shared with them a violent antagonism to the Catholics. His attack on the "proud prelates" and "unlearned priestes" (as developed in the May, July, and September eclogues) indicates that he also agreed in substance with their program of reform. E. K.'s disclaimer of any rebellious intention on the part of the poet need not mislead us: it is an echo of a common Puritan defense.39 This is not to argue that the 36 Stein, op. cit., pp. 7 5 - 1 0 0 . It is not necessary to accept all the details of either Greenlaw's or Stein's exposition in order to grant the general cogency of their arguments, directly opposed though they be. 37 Greenlaw held that the "moral eclogues" constituted a warning that papal propaganda together with factional troubles in the government would lead to Catholic supremacy and perhaps the overthrow of Elizabeth (Studies, p. 1 3 3 ) . 38 See, for example, J. J. Higginson, Spenser's "Shepherd's Calender" (New York, 1 9 1 2 ) , especially valuable for the exposition of the historical background (pp. 1 - 3 8 ) , although many of the details of allegorical interpretation are untenable in the light of more recent research. 39 A m o n g other instances of Puritan influence at work in the Calender, special mention

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poet was an aggressive and openly militant reformer on the pattern of Cartwright and Feild. Certainly in his maturity he was a Puritan only in the limited sense in which his patrons, Leicester, Sidney, and Grey, were Puritans, resenting the power and wealth of episcopacy and encouraging the radicals chiefly for the sake of their allegiance against the Catholics, though not without real respect for their religious program. His own Christianity, imbued with Platonism and with the philosophic ideal of moderation, was individualized beyond the simple doctrines preached by the popular Puritan clergy. But in The Shepheardes Calender, produced in youth, he declared himself on their side. Since Leicester was, in these very years, protecting reformers of a far more vehement character than that of his secretary, it is highly improbable that the veiled Puritanism of the Calender offended him. Moreover, it was published anonymously, and dedicated not to Leicester but to Sidney. 40 That he was still in favor after the work appeared is indicated by his letter to Harvey in April, 1580, as we have already noticed, nor would it have achieved a second edition in 1581 if it had proved a source of annoyance to Leicester. Probably Spenser's employer approved of the Calender's bold criticism of ecclesiastical conditions, while in its anti-Catholicism and its patriotic eulogy of Elizabeth it was calculated to serve the best interests of the party to which Leicester and Sidney belonged. If The Shepheardes Calender seems even less likely to have caused Leicester's resentment than Mother Hubberds Tale, we are still left with the possibility that one of Spenser's unpublished poems contained perilous stuff. Circulated in manuscript, they might have fallen into unfriendly hands as easily as Mother Hubberd. As soon as we grant that Spenser was interested in poetry as a vehicle of propaganda, as well as for its artistic value, it becomes clear that there were a great many ways in which he might have offended the authorities. But it is difficult to believe that Leicester would have punished the poet for an overzealous expression of partisanship. He might, indeed, have rewarded him; or, should be made of Spenser's ideal prelate, Archbishop Grindal, who fell from power in 1 5 7 6 for stubbornly refusing to suppress the "prophesyings" of the reforming ministers; upon his fall the persecutions of Bishop Aylmer (Spenser's "proud Morrell") brought about the suspension of Fcild and other preachers. 40 The dedication to Sidney almost certainly had that patron's approval; only recently Spenser had remarked Gosson's folly in dedicating his Schoolc of Abuse to Sidney without permission. For both this remark and Spenser's disinclination to dedicate to Leicester, see his letter to Harvey of October 1 5 / 1 6 , 1 5 7 9 (Grosart, op. cit., I, 5 if.).

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if we assume an indiscretion so heinous that it involved discharging his secretary to avoid further embarrassment, he would at least have sought to compensate his protégé for the lost position. From what we know of Leicester's care for other writers under his protection, either of these explanations of Spenser's appointment as Lord Grey's secretary seems more reasonable than the notion of a penalty—for all that it leaves unsolved the puzzle of Virgils Gnat.41 Leicester, whatever else he was, was neither a fool nor a conscienceless administrator. His first obligation was to the commonwealth, of which Ireland formed an unwholesome and troublesome part. Undoubtedly he shared to some extent the serious interest in Irish welfare of his friends and near connections, the Sidneys; one of his own former protégés, Edmund Campion, had dedicated to him an Irish history which told of Sir Henry Sidney's idealistic plan for reforming Ireland through education. Recognizing Spenser's ability and valuing his high principles, was he not in duty bound both to the Irish cause and to his protégé to recommend the latter (perhaps through Sir Henry Sidney) for an honorable position under Lord Grey, the new governor? The placing of protégés was part of his day's work; his continuing influence depended in part on his making sound recommendations, and he could afford to indulge neither excessive partiality nor spite in his performance of this task. As we know from the Letters, Spenser hoped—as did his friend Harvey and many other educated young men—for a post in the foreign service. We may, if we wish, imagine him disappointed when he heard the form his preferment was to take—he had been keen for France, perhaps because the new poetry flourished there. But if he had been really loath to accompany Lord Grey, he could have refused the Irish mission. Probably he could hope for nothing better, in this year of his patron's disgrace at court. 42 Probably he was to some degree interested in it, and fancied himself taking a part in the hopeful plans for Ireland of which he had heard from his friend Philip Sidney. 43 Though not what he had 41 Stein's suggestion (op. cil., pp. 76, 7 7 ) that Leicester was not sufficiently interested in Spenser even to take the trouble of getting rid of him by giving him a job in Ireland is utterly untenable from the point of view of this study. 42 That Leicester had not yet been restored to favor is indicated in his letter of July 20, 1580, asking Burghley to intercede for him with the Queen ( C . S . P . Dom., 1$47-80, p. 666). 43 Sidney's interest in Ireland is in part witnessed by his Discourse on Irish Affairs (Feuillerat, op. cit., Ill, 4 6 - 5 0 ) , a fragment written apparently after his father's return in 1578.

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sought, it was important royal service and might serve as training for a more attractive berth. If, later, he came to regard his prolonged residence in Ireland as "exile," his Veue of the Present State of Ireland indicates that he developed a profound concern for the unfortunate land where he passed most of his days. And the life had its compensations in usefulness, interesting friends, a measure of honor and wealth, and withal some leisure for poetry. There is no trace of disloyalty in the poet's subsequent attitude toward his former patron. He left for Ireland taking with him the draft of his Faerie Queene, and leaving behind him in the October eclogue of his Shepheardes Calender some hint that its matter would include Leicester as well as Elizabeth. This reference to Spenser's plans for his great poem is occasioned by Cuddie's complaint that he has failed to receive due reward for his rustic songs. Piers proposes that he sing of higher matters, "of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts"—of knights and "those that weld the awful crowne." Then he goes on to a more specific suggestion, pointing directly to Leicester: Whither thou list in fayre Elisa rest, Or if thee please in bigger notes to sing, Advaunce the worthy whome shee loveth best, That first the white beare to the stake did bring. Cuddie's reply—that it is no longer possible to revive such heroic poetry as Virgil wrote with the encouragement of Maecenas and Augustus, for the age of great patrons and heroes is dead—is a merely conventional lament. Spenser had embarked hopefully upon the new poem, probably intending Elizabeth for his Augustus, and Leicester for his Maecenas as well as for the role of one of the chief heroes. If we can believe the complimentary poem by " W . L . " printed with the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, it was Philip Sidney who had encouraged him to the undertaking. Perhaps, as has been suggested, The Faerie Queene was to be used by Leicester to make his peace with Elizabeth, 44 and therefore had an immediate practical value, but we cannot doubt that Sidney was motivated chiefly by his admiration of Spenser's poetic gift. Spenser's celebration of the virtues of Gloriana and her court was intended as a compliment more profound than the elaborately flattering devices prepared for her entertainment on such occasions as the visit 44

Janet Spens, Spenser's "Faerie Queene"

(London, 1934), p. 13.

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to Kenilworth, to which it bore superficial resemblance. 45 If we can judge from the poem as it was finally published, it was to be both an idealization of the Queen and an argument in support of the progressive policies which Leicester and his party represented. It offered moral justification for English Protestantism as a militant anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish national program. All the aspects of that program to which the work gave encouragement—repression of Roman Catholicism at home, assertion of English dominance in Ireland, English intervention against Spain in the Protestant Netherlands, and English expansion in the N e w World—were platforms of the patriotic Puritan party of which Leicester was the acknowledged leader. In so far as The Faerie Queene can be read as a tract for these policies, Spenser's voice is one with the chorus of Leicester's translators, historians, and religious writers. Like them, he glorifies the Queen as the symbol of all he believes in, and identifies the causes he serves with the good of the entire commonwealth. W h e n the poem was planned, most of these policies were still for the future: it was the purpose of Puritan propaganda to unite all of Protestant England against the crusading Romanism of Spain. While Spenser worked upon it, adding, changing, revising, England under the leadership of Leicester and other progressives committed herself to intervention in the Netherlands and aggression on the high seas, and it became Spenser's task to justify action that had been and was being taken, rather than to call for the initiation of new actions. England was to be kept united. Moreover, he had to discourage the idea of a negotiated peace with Spain, which the conservative party of Burghley was always ready to consider, especially during Leicester's costly and ineffectual campaign in the Netherlands. F r o m Spenser's point of view, as from Leicester's, such a peace would be premature, dangerous, and a betrayal of the Protestant cause on the Continent. Many critics have found Leicester's person and actions, as well as his policies, in The Faerie Queene. Although here again we are entering into the vexed controversies concerned with the interpretation of Spenser's allegory, it is safe to say that in the poem as originally conceived the knight of the "white beare" had an important role; probably this is true also of those parts which were completed in tentative form before Leicester's death. While the theory once held by some students of the poem 45 H. W. Hintz, "The Elizabethan Entertainment and 'The Faerie Queene,' " Philological Quarterly, XIV ( 1 9 3 5 ) .

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that Spenser intended the central figure of Arthur to represent Leicester, and Arthur's quest of Gloriana to recall Leicester's love (platonic or otherwise) for Elizabeth, is generally rejected today, the concession is often made that this may have been Spenser's plan in 1580.46 The habits of Leicester's other protégés support the conclusion that Spenser would have intended for Leicester a prominence only less than Elizabeth's, nor does it seem indecorous to the present writer to suppose Spenser capable of presenting his patron's loyalty to his sovereign under the guise of a platonic love quest.47 In the poem as we have it today, however, Arthur apparently represents no single hero of Elizabeth's court but rather the power and virtue of the English nation as reflected in all her heroes. The effort to identify Arthur with Leicester throughout the poem must be abandoned, along with the theory that Spenser intended a continued historical allegory to be read in his narrative. As representative of England's heroic power, however, Arthur may on occasion represent a single hero. Thus, in Book V, which most clearly sets forth the policies of the progressive party, the Beige episode recalls Leicester's intercession in the Netherlands, and Arthur may for the moment represent Leicester himself. 48 Although against this identification it has been argued that Leicester did not in fact save the Netherlands, it is hard to believe that Spenser could have written of this cause without having his early patron in mind; perhaps the episode had its inception in the years 1585-86 when Leicester was actually being hailed as the savior of the Netherlands. As late as 1590 or 1591, Spenser in his Ruines of Time wrote of his dead patron as an English hero, and he 46 H. E. Cory, for example, in his Edmund Spenser (Berkeley, Calif., 1 9 1 7 ) , pp. 5 6 - 5 9 , held that Arthur was Leicester and that the death of the actual hero in 1 5 8 8 was responsible for the failure of the poem as a whole. Greenlaw, in his review of Cory and in Studies, pp. 65, i o i , denied the identification but conceded that Spenser may originally have planned it; see also Isabel E. Rathborne, The Meaning of Spenser's Fairyland (New York, 1 9 3 7 ) , pp. 2 3 5 - 3 6 . On the ground that Arthur was a late addition to the poem, the identification is entirely rrjected by Josephine W . Bennett, The Evolution of "The Faerie Queene" (Chicago, 1 9 4 2 ) , pp. 54, 80. 47 Bennett (op. cit., p. 9 5 ) claims, and with reason, that no sane or decent man would have tried to promote Leicester's marriage with Elizabeth after the news of his marriage with the Countess of Essex had been revealed. But Leicester might not have been averse to a poetic déclaration of his love for the Queen, especially if he hoped that it would regain her favor, as in 1580 or ¡^86. A comparable situation is found in Ralegh's declaration of love in The Book, of the Orcan to Cynthia, the last part of which vvas probably written after his marriage had estranged him from the Queen. In both eases the declaration would have been read in the light of the neoplatonic conventions of fashionable poetry. 48 Greenlaw, Studies, chap. iv. Bennett, however, reads the episode as referring to a later expedition, after Leicester's death (op. cit., p. 1 9 3 ) .

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may have reworked the Beige episode in those years or even later, intending it both as a memorial to Leicester and as an answer to those of the peace party who wished to betray the cause for which Leicester had fought. Even without Arthur, The Faerie Queene contains suggestions that Spenser originally intended Leicester to occupy an important place in his poem. According to a plausible theory which develops these hints, the knights Arthegall and Guyon were introduced into an early version of the poem to satisfy Spenser's desire to celebrate his patron. 49 Named for famous legendary earls of Warwick, they were designed to serve as a genealogical compliment to the Dudleys rather than as representatives of either Warwick or Leicester, but even in the final reworking of the earlier books they retained allusions which contemporaries would interpret as tributes to Spenser's first great patron. The same theory holds that the chronicle of the line of British kings was derived by successive revisions from the materials gathered by Spenser for his Stem mata Dudleiana

and suggests that the story of Britomart and

Arthegall, into which this chronicle is inserted, was inspired by Spenser's renewed desire to praise Leicester in the period of the Netherlands campaign. Both the genealogical and the heroic aspects of this hypothesis are supported by parallel efforts on the part of Leicester's other protégés, as we have seen. At Leicester's death in 1588, the stream of praise and defense which his protégés had maintained for almost three decades suddenly ceased. Within two years the other great leaders of the progressive party followed him to the grave and for a time the power of the Cecils seemed undisputed. In the reaction, Leicester's name was forgotten or mentioned only in the dispraise kept alive by his enemies. Among the few faithful servants who belatedly sought to clear his reputation, the voice of his "neglected" poet, Edmund Spenser, was the strongest. In his Ruines of Time, that lament for the recently deceased relatives of the Countess of Pembroke, to whom it is dedicated, Spenser bitterly rebukes those who now dishonor his great patron's name, not without a bold glance at Burghley: Spite bites the dead, that living never baid. He now is gone, the whiles the foxe is crept Into the hole the which the badger swept. 49

Bennett, op. cit., pp. 8 1 - 9 5 .

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He also chidcs those who have forgotten Leicester's greatness—the "manie poets who honourd him alive"—and calls upon these other former protégés of Leicester to add their voices to his. In thus eulogizing the members of the Dudley family and others for whose memory he felt gratitude and reverence, Spenser was being true to the traditional justification of patronage—the power of writers to confer immortality. Later in the poem he gives this tradition one of its most classic utterances.50 And, before closing, he again remembers Leicester and Warwick in his "vision" of the two white bears. The Ruines appeared in the Complaints volume of 1591. That Spenser was at that time thinking ruefully and gratefully of his old patron is demonstrated by some lines in his Colin Clouts Come Home Again which he composed in the same year although it was not published until 1595. The passage is remarkable for its emphasis on the earl's encouragement, not of poets, but of learned men. In the dialogue this speech is credited to Hobbinol (Harvey), who, doubting the veracity of Colin's description of the follies of the court, recalls the throng of sober scholars who attended Lobbin (Leicester) : For well I wot, sith I my selfe was there, To wait on Lobbin (Lobbin well thou knewest) Full many worthie ones then waiting were, As ever else in princes court thou vewest. Of which among you many yet remaine, Whose names I cannot readily now ghesse: Those that poore sutors papers do retaine, And those that skill of medicine professe, And those that do to Cynthia expound The ledden of straunge languages in charge: For Cynthia doth in sciences abound, And gives to their professors stipends large. This defense of learning at the court of Elizabeth—to which Colin assents—seems to be introduced chiefly to recall the role of Leicester as a chief patron of legal students, physicians, translators, and other scholars. Spenser's protector had been responsible for the advancement of learned men in the Queen's service. Now that he is dead, many of his former protégés remain in royal employment and are well taken care of. These remembrances do not give the impression that the man who »0 Ruines, II. 3 5 8 - 7 1 .

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uttered them had been summarily cast off and banished to exile. If Spenser had ever felt any resentment toward Leicester, he had by now outgrown it. Perhaps in 1591, shortly after he had been awarded the Queen's not ungenerous pension of fifty pounds a year, he looked back across the years and saw himself as he truly was—a poet. In his youth, as Leicester's secretary, he had hoped for advancement not as a writer but as a civil servant, and that had been granted him. H e had had better luck than many another who knew "What hell it is, in suing long to bide," and he had made the best of his position and been as much of a success as his gifts and the circumstances allowed. For he was not a firstrate administrator; he was only a first-rate poet. In 1580 that had not meant so much as it did in 1591. In 1580, though conscious of his powers, he could not have hoped for a career in poetry: a gentleman might practice poetry as an avocation but his first duty was to the state. But now, as the century and the reign and his own life were drawing to a close, poetry itself was seen as a high form of service to the commonwealth. More than other men, he and his friend Philip Sidney had brought this to be. 5 1 Not without effect was Spenser's challenge to the many other poets who had honored Leicester during his life but neglected to mourn his death. In 1593 the remarkably fine anthology of elegies, sonnets, and other poetical compositions entitled The Phoenix

Nest appeared, open-

ing with a prose piece in vindication of Leicester's memory. 52 T h e anonymous author of this defense, perhaps to be identified with 'R. S. of the Inner Temple Gentleman" whom the title page credits with compiling the collection, explains in a brief preface that his purpose is neither flattery nor gain, since his subject is dead. He writes "to admonish, and (if it might be) to amend vile and enuious toongs: if not, I seeke no other hire nor glorie than the satisfaction of mine own conscience, by dis51 As late as 1596, in the Prothalamion, Spenser again memorialized his debt to Leicester. As the bridal procession on its river journey approaches Essex House, the poet recills that this mansion was formerly Leicester House, . . . a stately place, Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace Of that great lord which therein wont to dwell, Whose want too well now feeles my freendles case. Spenser's plaint of friendlessness in 1596 is, of course, conventional but in this ccntext it may indicate his feeling that Essex was not an adequate substitute for his former patron. 52

For a modern edition, see The Phoenix

1930-

Nest, cd. H. E. Rollins (Cambridgt. Mass.,

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charging the dutie of a Christian." The vindication itself, under the title "The dead mans Right. Written vpon the death of the Right Honourable the Earle of Leicester," opens with a general attack upon "wicked Libellors"—who, the writer points out, are always anonymous because of their fear of "Authority." And, he remarks, perhaps (like Spenser) with a glance at Burghley, the libelers could easily be answered if Authority chose to employ the pens and presses and power to patronize which it has at command. No one, he tells us, has been more vilely slandered than Leicester, against whom his enemies have "forged millions of impieties," borne meekly during his life but since his death grown over-scandalous, without fear of control. The worst charge against Leicester, that of "ambition and aspiring mind," is rejected out of hand: the earl never assumed title or power unlawfully but purchased his honors by his virtues; he was favored above all others by the Queen because of his merit. Unlike truly ambitious men he never sacrificed the good of others to lust for power. Leicester's merits are then memorialized under four main heads. The author's Puritan sympathies are betrayed by his placing "first and principall" the dead earl's religion—his defense of his faith in arms and action, and his succor and relief of distressed members of the church. Then his loyalty to the Queen is celebrated and his wisdom in managing affairs of state proclaimed. Finally his valor and affection to his country's peace are praised; the writer summons in testimony "the trauels his aged bodie vndertooke, and dangers . . . in the warres of the Low Countries." While the writer may have some particular recent libel in mind, he directs his animus most vigorously against the gossips in "alehouses, faires, markets, and such assemblies" who repeat dangerous and illfounded accusations in the hope of breeding disaffection toward the state. He closes with another lively attack upon these envious slanderers and a stanza of verse glorifying his subject: Leicester he liu'd, of all the world admir'd, Not as a man, though he in shape exceld: But as a God, whose heauenlie wit inspir'd, Wrought hie effects, yet vertues courses held, His wisedome honored his Countries name, His valure was the vanguard of the same. This opening piece is followed by three elegies on Sir Philip Sidney, probably by Matthew Roydon, Ralegh, and Dyer, which were reprinted

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in 1595 with Astrophel, Spenser's elegy on Sidney, in the same volume with Colin Clouts Come Home Again. Neither these nor the remaining poems in The Phoenix Nest are signed, except by initials, and the collection as a whole has a distinctly aristocratic tone, enhanced by the proclamation on the title page that the contributors are "noblemen, worthy knights, gallant gentlemen, masters of arts, and brave scholars." These poets have for the most part been identified with Oxford, the university of which Leicester had been chancellor, and may include a number of his former protégés, notably Dyer and Gager. Perhaps the publication is to be taken merely as one of the university's belated gestures of mourning for the two dead worthies, Leicester and Sidney. Its later association with Spenser's Astrophel, however, indicates that it was part of a larger movement to revive the memory of the Dudleys and Sidneys and to celebrate the Countess of Pembroke as the chief surviving member of the line. And certainly the prose vindication of Leicester's memory has little excuse for being where it is—at the head of a notable collection of verse—unless we interpret it as inspired by Spenser's rebuke of his fellow poets. In 1591, the year in which Spenser's Ruines of Time appeared, John Florio, another former protégé of Leicester, also wrote in defense of his dead patron. His statement, which forms a passage in his dedication of his Second Frvtes to Nicholas Saunder, shows that he has been newly inspired by Spenser to recall his debt to one who had befriended him at the beginning of his career.53 Florio's tribute to Leicester is the more remarkable because, as he makes clear further on in this dedication, he had not received the rewards he anticipated as the result of addressing his Firste Fruités to Leicester in 1578. Writing of his disinclination to appear in print a second time, he declares, ". . . my hope of such preferment and honour as my first had, fayled me." Here, then, we have the neglected writer rising up to praise his now-neglected patron. John Florio owed his connection with the Dudley family to his father, an Italian Protestant refugee who had become a preacher and languagemaster in London. Born in England but educated abroad—for his father had gone into exile under Queen Mary—John had returned to London to 53 Although Florios Second Frvtes was entered in the April 30, 1 5 9 1 , Florio would still have had time to read was apparently printed in the first quarter of the year (cf. sage in which Florio defends Leicester's memory is quoted

Stationers' Register as early as the Complaints volume, which Stein, op. cit., p. 1 0 ) . T h e pasat the end of this chapter.

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

351

take up the profession of language-teaching himself. In this vocation he continued for the greater part of his life, serving in noble homes as tutor and occasionally employed for other purposes. His language books, his great translation of Montaigne, and his dictionary have secured him a fame greater than that of most private teachers of the period.54 His Firste Fruiles, a language book consisting chiefly of dialogues on informative and moral topics but containing as well a section on grammar and some proverbs, vocabulary, and the like, had appeared with Leicester's device on the reverse of the title page and two dedications to him, one in Italian and one in English. 85 In the first Florio had reminded Leicester of his father's faithful services to the Dudley family and had asked the patron to continue this family tradition by accepting the book and by admitting him to the number of his loving servants. In the second he had appealed most fervently for defense of his book against "carping, blustering, and malignious tongues." Proclaiming his experience of the earl's "continuall delight in setting foorth of good letters, and earnest zeale in maintaining of languages," he had hailed him as "the onely furtherer, maintayner, and supporter of all well disposed mindes toward any kinde of studie." He had declared that, lacking such patronage, writers would not dare to defy the "taunting broode" by employing their labors to the profit of their country. His desire for protection was probably motivated by some bitter experience of his own, for in his twenty-seventh dialogue, devoted primarily to praise of literature, he attacks at some length those who mock writers and defame books, causing potential men of letters to "leaue of" instead of risking envious criticism. If he was in Leicester's service at about this time (the dedication is dated in August, 1578) he would, like Spenser a little later, have been exposed to the Puritan influence of the earl's friends, the preachers; his own Protestant background would have prepared him for their doctrines. 54 For details of Florio's life, ctc., see Frances A. Yates, John Florio (Cambridge, England, 1934), to which the section that follows is indebted, and Florio's First Fruites, ed. Arundell del Re (Formosa, 1936), Part II, Introduction. 55 Florio His firste Fruites: which yeelde familiar speech, merie Prouerbes, wittie Sentences, and golden sayings. Also a perfect Induction to the Italian, and English tongues, as in the Table appeareth. The li^e heretofore, neuer by any man published. Florio's two dedications to Leicester are followed by addresses in Italian and English to several classes of readers and then by the complimentary verses of his friends (including a poem "in prayse of the Booke" from his pupil Stephen Gosson). These poems, while concerned chiefly with Florio and his work, are headed by one in Italian addressed to the Earl oi Leicester by " I . P."

352

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers

His Puritanism is reflected in some of the dialogues; indeed, his book, with its references to the Queen's skill in speaking Italian to her musicians, its prayers in Italian, and its general tone of morality, represents an attempt to advertise an Italianate culture which is free from the wickedness usually associated with "Tuscanism." His

acquaintance

with Stephen Gosson forms another link with the Puritans. A n d perhaps his excessive fear of carping critics can be interpreted as a reference to Catholic opposition to learning. W e may possibly suspect Florio of harboring still another reason for that fear—the plagiarizer's guilt. For some of his dialogues are drawn from Guevara and Ludovico Guicciardini, writers translated by two of Leicester's other proteges, Sir Thomas North and James Sanforde. H e supplies his own translation from Guevara, independent of North's version, but there are suspicious resemblances between his renderings of Guicciardini and Sanforde's Garden of Pleasure, which had been dedicated to Leicester in 1573. Here we have, perhaps an explanation of Leicester's failure to reward him as he expected. It does not seem a sufficient explanation—for such materials were usually regarded as common property and would naturally be used by a language-master. A more likely reason is to be found in the failure of the book itself to reach the fashionable level for which it was intended. Florio's superior tone and highly critical attitude toward certain English customs—faults corrected in his Second Frvtes—were

not calculated either to please an aristocratic

audience or to flatter such middle-class readers as wished to acquire a modish facility in Italian. And these very faults exposed him to the mockery he dreaded. N o r is it entirely clear that his patron refused him all help. In the years following the appearance of the Firste Fruites

we find him at

Oxford, Leicester's own university, teaching Italian to the scholars and working as a translator for Hakluyt, and then as a poor scholar at Magdalen. During this period also he apparently made the acquaintance of Dyer and Gentili, both attached to Leicester's service. Later, in 1583, he was employed in the French embassy; and since it is believed that he was placed there as a spy by Walsingham, this position may have come to him through Leicester's influence. From statements in his address to the reader of 1591 we discover, however, that Leicester's name had not been sufficient to protect him from destructive criticism. T w o years later we find his work frankly ridiculed

Leicester's "Neglected" Writers in John Eliot's Ortho-epia

353

Gallic a, a satire on refugee language-masters.

T h e parody on Florio extends even to his original patron, for Eliot's work, like Florio's Time

Fruites, was addressed in Italian to "Roberto

Dudleio"; in 1593 the only person of that name was Leicester's littlerespected natural son. Nonetheless, Florio remained faithful to Leicester, mentioning him in the dedication of his Worlde

of Wordes

(1598)

as "an Earle of Excellence." Like Spenser, Florio in 1578 found his first great patron in Leicester, and hoped for preferment and honor as a result of the connection. Even more clearly than Spenser, he was disappointed. But in 1591, when Leicester was dead and his name maligned, both poet and language-master came to his defense. If he had indeed neglected them, it is a curious irony that makes them his last important defenders. T o Florio, then, because he forgot neither Leicester's fame nor Spenser's part in eternizing that fame, we shall give the last word: T h e maiden-head of my industrie I yeelded to a noble Mecenas (renoumed Lecester) the honor of England, whom thogh like Hector euery miscreant Mirmidón dare strik being dead, yet sing Homer or Virgil, write frend or foe, of Troy, or Troyes issue, that Hector must haue his desert, the General of his Prince, the Paragon of his Peeres, the watchman of our peace, Non so se miglior Duce o Caualliero. as Petrar\e hath in his triumph of fame; and to conclude, the supporter of his friends, the terror of his foes, and the Britton Patron of the Muses. Dardanias light, and Troyans faithfulst hope. But nor I, nor this place may halfe suffice for his praise, which the sweetest singer of all our westerne shepheards hath so exquisitely depainted, that as Achilles by Alexander was counted happy for hauing such a rare emblazoner of his magnanimitie, as the Meonian Poete; so I account him thrice-fortunate in hauing such a herauld of his vertues as Spenser; Curteous Lord, Curteous Spenser, I knowe not which hath purchast more fame, either he in deseruing so well of so famous a scholler, or so famous a scholler in being so thankfull without hope of requitall to so famous a Lord.

Appendix A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS DEDICATED TO T H E EARL OF LEICESTER THIS LIST includes all extant works dedicated to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, that are mentioned in the text or footnotes of this study.1 When later editions of a given title are known to repeat the dedication to Leicester, this information is supplied (as are the Short-Title Catalogue numbers) under the date of the original entry. Since, however, it has not been possible to obtain information concerning all editions of all titles, the absence of later dates does not signify that the dedication was dropped in later printings.

Titles are listed under the dedicator's name. If this name is other than that of the author or translator, or if a work is addressed to more than one patron, the pertinent information is given following the title. Place of publication is stated only for books published elsewhere than at London. Titles lacking STC numbers are either manuscripts or foreign books. An Harbor owe for Faithfvll and Trewe Subiectes, agaynst the late blowne Blaste, concerninge the Gouernment of Wemen. Strasburg [London]. Dedicated to Bedford and Dudley. STC 1005.

1.

1559.

JOHN AYLMER.

2.

1559.

WILLIAM CUNINGHAM.

3.

1560?

THOMAS B L U N D E V I L L E ,

4.

1561.

J E A N VERON.

1

The Cosmographical Glasse. STC 6119.

translator. A newe booke, containing the arte of ryding, and brea\inge greate Horses. Adapted from Grisone. STC 3158 (cf. 12387). A moste necessary treatise of free wil. STC 24684.

There has been no attempt to make a systematic check of STC titles or to present an exhaustive list of works dedicated to Leicester, although all major works so addressed have presumably been included. Through the courtesy of Franklin B. Williams, who has in preparation a classification of STC titles under patrons, I have learned of a number of items dedicated to Leicester but omitted from my study. These include: STC 10868, Robert Fills, translator, A Treatise of Trew and Perfect Consolation, 1564; STC 4558, James Cancellar, An A.B.C. [The Alphabet o] Prayers], 1 5 6 5 and all later editions; STC 5952, Edward Cradocke, The Shippe of Assured Safetie, 1 5 7 2 ; and STC 20870, Remedies for Diseases in Horses, 1 5 7 6 and editions as late as 1594, dedicated by the publisher, Thomas Purfoote. An emblem book by Thomas Palmer in Sloane Ms. 3794 is also dedicated to Leicester.

Appendix 1562

ROBERT

FILLS

(FYLL),

Geneua. STC 1562.

translator. The

JAMES ROWBOTHUM,

Translated

publisher. The Pleasaunt and wittie Playe of

the Cheasts renewed.

Anonymous translation from Damiano 6214.

WILLIAM FULKE (FULCE). A Goodly Gallerye with a Most Pleasaunt Prospect, into the garden of naturall contemplation. dedication appears also in the edition of 1571. STC

1563. 1563.

of

12191.

through a French intermediary. STC 1563.

and Statutes

WILLIAM FULWOOD, translator. The Castel of Memorie. from Gratarolo. STC

1562.

Lawes

11725.

Certaine Worses of Chirurgerie.

THOMAS GALE.

STC

11529.

An abridgement of the Chronicles of

RICHARD GRAFTON.

The

11435-36.

England.

T h e two issues of 1563 and the 1564 edition all carried the same dedication. There were new dedications to Leicester in 1570 and 1572. STC 1563.

12148-52. A boo\e called the Foundacion

RICHARD RAINOLDE.

of

Rhetori^e.

Adaptation from Aphthonius. STC 20604. 1563.

JAMES

ROWBOTHUM,

publisher. The

Most Noble

learned playe, called the Philosophers

auncient,

and

game. Translation and

adaptation by William Fulke and Ralph Lever. T w o issues. STC 1564.

15542,15542a. Delle osseruationi, et

auuertimenti

nel legger delle historic.

Manuscript

CIACOMO CONCIO ( A C O N T I U S ) .

che hauer si debbono treatise. 1564.

JOHN DAY, publisher. Most fruitfull and learned Commentaries Doctor

Peter Martir

Vermil.

Anonymous translation.

of STC

24670. 1565.

PIETRO

BIZARI

(BIZZARUS).

Two

poems

"Ad

Robertum

Dud-

laeum," in Van a Opvscvla, published at Venice. 1565.

THOMAS

COOPER.

Thesaurus

Linguae

Romanae

et

Britannicae.

T h e editions of 1573, 1578, 1584, and 1587 were also dedicated to Leicester. STC 1565.

ARTHUR

GOLDING,

Ouidius 1565

5686-90.

translator. The

Fyrst

Fower

Nasos wor\e, intitled Metamorphosis.

J O H N SHUTE,

Boo\es STC

translator. The firste parte of the Christian

tion. Translated from Pierre Viret. STC

24777.

of

P.

18955. instruc-

Works Dedicated to Leicester 19.

1565.

J O H N STOW.

20.

1565 -66.

THOMAS

21.

1566.

JOHN BARTHLET.

22.

1566.

THOMAS D A N E T T ,

23.

1566.

JOHN JONES.

24.

1566.

25.

1567.

A R T H U R GOLDING,

26.

1570.

THOMAS

27.

1570.

THOMAS

28.

1571-

EDMUND CAMPION.

29.

1572.

ARTHUR

30.

1572.

WILLIAM MALIM,

31.

1572.

THOMAS W I L S O N .

32.

1573.

WILLIAM

357

A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles. The same dedication appears in the editions of 1565, 1566, 1570, 1573, and 1575. STC 23319-20, 23322, 23323.1, 23325.

B L U N D E V I L L E . The fower chiejyst offices belongyng to Horsemanshippe. Besides the opening dedication, the second and third parts are separately dedicated to Leicester. The editions of 1570?, 1580, and 1597 also carry these dedications. STC 3152-54, 3156.

The Pedegrewe of Heretiques. STC 1534.

translator. The Historic of Philip De Commines. Not printed until 1596; dedicated originally to Leicester and Burghley. Editions of 1596, 1601, and 1614 all carry this statement. STC 5602-04. A Dial for All Agves. STC 14726.

translator. The ninth Tragedie of Seneca called Octauia. STC 22229.

THOMAS N U C E ,

translator. The .xv. Bootes of P. Ouidius Naso; entytuled Metamorphosis. STC 18956.

B L U N D E V I L L E , translator. A very briefe and profitable Treatise declaring howe many counsells and what maner of Counselers a Prince ought to haue. Translated from Furio Ceriol through an Italian intermediary. STC 11488.

N O R T H , translator. The Mora.ll Philosophic of Doni. Translation of "The Fables of Bidpai" through an Italian intermediary. STC 3053.

A Historic of Ireland. Not printed until 1633 when it carried the original dedication to Leicester of 1571. Published at Dublin. STC 25067. GOLDING, translator. A Confvtation Of the Popes Bull against Elizabeth. Translated from Bullinger. STC 4044.

translator. The true Report of all the successe of Famagosta. Translated from Martinengo. STC 17520.

A Discourse vppon Vsurye. The dedication is dated in 1569. It appears also in the 1584 edition. STC 2580708. In sacram Diui Ioannis Apocalypsim 11442.

FULKE.

tiones. STC

Praelec-

358

Appendix

33.

1573.

J A M E S SANFORDE,

translator. The Garden of Pleasure. Translated from Ludovico Guicciardini. STC 12464.

34.

1574.

THOMAS BLUNDEVILLE,

35.

1574.

L E W I S EVANS,

36.

1574.

ARTHUR coLDiNG,

37.

1575.

A N T O N I O CORRANO ( D E C O R R O ) .

translator. The true order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories. Translated and adapted from Patrizio and Concio. STC 3 1 6 1 . editor. A Shorte Dictionarie most profitable for yong beginners. Edition of John Withals' "Little Dictionarie." The dedication to Leicester appeared also in the editions of 1579, 1584, 1586, and 1594, and probably in intervening editions as well. STC 25879, 25879.1, 25880.1, 25881, 25882. translator. Sermons of Master lohn Caluin, vpon the Bootee of lob. STC 4444. A Theological

Dialogue.

Wherin

the Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes is expounded. STC 5786. 38.

1575.

RICHARD

39.

1576.

J O H N BARSTON.

40.

1576.

WILLIAM

41.

1576.

ROBERT PETERSON,

FORSTER.

Ephemerides

Meteorographicae.

The Safegarde of Societie. STC

STC

11190.

1532.

B L A N D I E , translator. The Fiue Bootes of Ciuill, Christian Nobilitie. Translated from Osorio. STC 18886.

STC

and

translator. Galateo of Maister lohn Delia Casa.

4738.

42.

1577.

43.

1577.

44.

1577.

TIMOTHE

45.

1578.

JACOBUS FALCKENBURGIUS.

46. 47.

1578. 1578.

J O H N FLORIO.

editor. Apologia pro caena Dominica, Missam. By Roger Ascham. STC 825.

EDWARD G R A N T ,

contra

The Historie of Scotland, in The firste volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and lrelande. Same dedication in the 1587 edition. STC 13568-69.

R A P H A E L HOLINSHED.

K E N D A L L , translator. Flowers of Epigrammes. lated from Latin sources. STC 14927.

Trans-

Britannia, sive de Apollonica Hvmilitatis, Virtvtis, et Honoris Porta. Dedicated to Leicester and Burghley. STC 10674.

WILLIAM

Florio His firste Fruites. STC 11096. Metromachia sive Lvdvs Geometricvs.

FULKE.

STC

11444. 48.

1578.

H A R V E Y . Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri Quatuor. Book II is addressed to Leicester by Harvey and includes verses to that patron written by Edward Grant, Walter Haddon,

CABRIEL

Works Dedicated to Leicester

359

Abraham Hartwell, Pietro Bizari, Charles Utenhovc, and the Vidame of Chartres. STC 1 2 9 0 1 . 49.

1578.

A Hyve Fvll of Honye: Contayning the Firste Boo^e of Moses, called Genesis. Tvrned into English Meetre.

WILLIAM HUNNIS.

STC 50.

1579.

13974.

An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos. The edition of 1590 carries the same dedication. STC

THOMAS DIGGES.

6848-49. 51.

1579.

translator. A Treatise of the Chvrch. Translated from Mornay. The two editions of 1579 and the later editions of 1580 and 1581 all carry the same dedication. STC

JOHN FEILD ( F I E L D ) ,

18158-61.

Newes out of Powles Churchyarde.

52.

1579.

EDWARD H A K E .

53.

1579.

JOHN HARMAR,

54.

1579

EDMUND SPENSER.

-80?

STC

12606.

translator. Sermons vpon the x. Commandements. Translated from Calvin. The edition of 1581 carries the same dedication. STC 4 4 5 2 - 5 6 . Virgiis Gnat. Not published until 1 5 9 1 when it appeared in Spenser's Complaints as "long since" dedicated to Leicester. STC 2 3 0 7 8 .

55.

c. 1 5 8 0 .

56.

1580.

WILLIAM CHAUNCIE.

57.

1580.

J O H N STOW.

THOMAS P A L F R E Y M A N .

Certeine selected Praires. Manuscript.

The rooting out of the Romish Supremacie. The same dedication appeared in the edition of 1587, which is entitled The Conuersion of a Gentleman long tyme misled in Poperie. STC 5103, 5102. The Chronicles of England, from Brute vnto this

present yeare 1580. STC

23333.

A Caueat for Parsons Howlet. STC

58.

1581.

J O H N FEILD ( F I E L D ) .

59.

1581.

EDWARD G R A N T ,

60.

1581.

MEREDITH HANMER.

61.

1581.

MEREDITH HANMER.

62.

1582.

ALBERICO GENTILI ( G E N T I L I S ) .

10844.

editor. Lexicon Graecolatinvm. By Jean Crespin (Crispinus). STC 6 0 3 7 .

The Great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a lesuite. Dedicated to Leicester among other members of the Privy Council. STC 1 2 7 4 5 . The lesuites Banner. Dedicated to Leicester among other members of the Privy Council. STC 1 2 7 4 6 .

STC

11736.

De luris Interpretibus Dialogi Sex.

Appendix

360 63.

1582. LAURENCE HUMPHREY, lesvitismi saismvs

vetvs

et novvs,

Leicester. STC

pars prima.

Includes

1582. RICHARD MULCASTER. The First Part of the Elementarie. 18250.

65.

1582.

A Discouerie

ANTHONY MUNDAY.

1582.

ANTHONY

of Edmund

Campion,

STC and his

Dedicated to Leicester among other members of

the Privy Council. STC 66.

to

13961.

64.

Confederates.

Phari-

with an additional dedication

MUNDAY.

18270.

The English

Romayne

Lyfe.

Dedicated to

Leicester among other members of the Privy Council.

STC

18272. 67.

1582.

J A M E S SANFORDE,

translator. The Reuelation

Translated from Brocardo. STC 68.

1583.

ALEXANDUR DICKSON.

69.

1583.

DUDLEY

1583.

reueled.

Alcxandri Dicsoni Arelii de vmbra rationis et iudicij, siue de memoriae virtute Prosopopoeia. STC 6823. FENNER.

Nichols 70.

of S. Ihon

3810.

An

Answere

his Recantation.

J O H N CARBRANDE,

vnto

STC

the confutation

of

lohn

10764.

editor. Certaine Sermons preached

before

the

Queenes Maiestie. By Bishop John Jewel. Dedicated to Leicester and Burghley. STC 71.

72.

1583.

1583.

RICHARD H U T T O N ,

14596.

publisher. Verborvm

Anglicisqve

Conivnctorvm,

elio). STC

18101.

THOMAS STOCKER,

and Ciuile

translator. A Tragicall

1584.

J O H N CASE.

Svmma vetervm interpretvm cam Aristotelis. STC 4762.

74.

1584.

CHRISTOPHER F E T H E R S T O N E ,

cvm

Historie of the troubles STC

23945.

in vniversam

translator. The holy Gospel

with the Commentary

Graecis

By Morellius (Mor-

Warres of the lowe Countries.

73.

to lohn,

Latinorvm

Commentarij.

of Caluine.

STC

dialectiaccording 2964 (cf.

2962). 75.

1584.

LAURENCE

HUMPHREY.

lesvitismi

Burghley and Leicester. STC 76.

1584.

ANTHONY MUNDAY,

Pars Secunda.

editor. Two godly and learned Sermons

lohn Caluin. Translated by Robert Home. STC 77.

1584.

JOHN

RAINOLDS.

Dedicated to

13962.

The Svmme

of the Conference

by

4461. betwene

lohn

Works Dedicated to Leicester

361

Rainoldes and lohn Hart: Tovching the Head and the Faith of the Chvrch. STC 20626. 78.

1585.

J O H N CASE,

author, and J O S E P H B A R N E S , printer. Specvlvm moralivm qvaestionvm in vniversam ethicen Aristotelis. Published at Oxford. Separate dedications by Case and Barnes. STC 4759.

79.

1585.

W I L L I A M GACER.

80.

1585.

ROBERT C R E E N E .

81.

1585.

MEREDITH HANMER,

82.

1586.

JACOBUS

83.

1586.

RICHARD C R O M P T O N .

84.

1586.

ARNOLDUS

85.

1586.

CHRISTOPHER

86.

1586.

JOHN TOMKYS.

Meleager: Tragoedia noua. Prologue and epilogue addressed to Pembroke and Leicester before whom the play was performed in 1585. Published in 1592 at Oxford. STC 1 1 5 1 5 . Planetomachia. STC 12299.

translator. The avneient Ecclesiastica.il Histories of the First Six Hvndred Yeares after Christ. Dedication dated December 15, 1584. STC 10573.

C H R Y S O P O L I T A N U S . Brevis Narratio Triumphi quo Robertas Dudlaeus Comes Leicestrius Trajecti Batauorum exceptus est. Published at Utrecht.

The copie of a leter to the Earle of Leycester. The French translation of 1587 is similarly addressed. STC 6052-53.

E I C K I U S . Elogium Roberti Comitis Leycestrii. Cum Elogio Philippi Sidnei. Published at Utrecht, with an address to Queen Elizabeth.

F E T H E R S T O N E , translator. The Brutish Thunderbolt of Pope Sixtus the fift. Translated from Hotman. STC 22589.

A Sermon Preached the 26. day of May.

1584.

STC 24110. 87.

1586.

GEOFFREY WHITNEY.

STC

A Choice of Emblemes. Published at Leyden.

25438.

88.

1587.

W I L L I A M CAGER,

editor. Exequiae Philippi Sidnaei. Published at Oxford. STC 22551.

89.

1587.

A R T H U R GOLDING,

90.

1587.

JOHN

translator. A Woor\e concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion. Translated from Mornay. STC 18149. H A R M A R , translator. Master Bezaes Sermons vpon Canticle of Canticles. Published at Oxford. STC 2025.

the

362

Appendix Academiac Cantabrigiensis mae: Tvmvlo Philippi Sidneij Sacratae. STC 4473.

91.

1587.

ALEXANDER NEVILLE, e d i t o r .

92.

1588.

JOHN HARRISON,

Lachry-

publisher. Three Bootes of Colloquies concerning the Arte of Shooting. Translated from Tartaglia by Cyprian Lucar. STC

23689.

A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster, Traison. Published at Oxford. STC 13966.

93.

1588.

LAURENCE H U M P H R E Y .

94.

1588.

PETRUCC10 24480.

UBALDINI.

Descrittione del Regno

di Scotia.

STC

List of Sources Consulted P A R T I. E L I Z A B E T H A N MATERIALS MANUSCRIPTS Feild ( F i e l d ) , John. Letter to the Earl of Leicester, November 25, 1581. Cotton Titus B. V I I , fol. i v . Palfreyman, T h o m a s . "Certeine selected Praires" (c.1580). In the collection of M r . Henry D a v i s of London.

PRINTED BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS Note.—This

list represents a selection of the books printed before 1640 which

were used in the preparation of this study; only works referred to directly or indirectly have been included. Titles are listed alphabetically under the name of the contemporary author, editor, or translator, except for some few anonymous works listed by title. T h i s means that translations usually do not appear under the original author's name. Place of publication is omitted for books published in L o n d o n . For modern editions and reprints see the list following (Part II). A s c h a m , Roger. Apologia

pro caena Dominica,

contra Missam. Ed. E d w a r d

G r a n t . 1577. A y l m e r , John. An Harborowe

for Faith fvll and Trewe

the late blowne Blaste, concerninge

the Gouernment

Subicctcs,

of Wemen.

agaynst Strasburg

[ L o n d o n ] , 1559. Rarston, John. The Safegarde of Societie. Barthlet, John. The Pedegrewe

1576.

of Heretiques.

1566.

Bedingfield, T h o m a s . The Art of Riding by Maister Claudio Bible. TheHolie

Corte. 1584.

Bible. [Bishops' Bible.] 1568.

Bizari ( B i z z a r u s ) , Pietro. Varia Opvscvta. Venice, 1565. Blandie, W i l l i a m . The Castle, or picture of Pollicy. The

Fiue

Osorio. 1576.

Bootes

of Ciuill,

and Christian

1581. Nobilitie.

Trans, from

364

List of Sources

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Schelling, F. E. The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, II, No. 4 [1892]. Scott, M. A. Elizabethan Translations from the Italian. Boston, 1916. Sheavyn, Phoebe, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age. Manchester, 1909. Short, Raymond W. The Patronage of Poetry under James First. Abstract of Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1936. A Short-Title Catalogue of Boo\s Printed in England, Scotland, &• Ireland, and of English Boo\s Printed Abroad, 1475-1640. Compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave. London, 1926. Sidney, Sir Philip. The Complete Worlds of Sir Philip Sidney. Ed. Albert Feuillerat. Cambridge, England, 1922-26. Simpson, Richard. Edmund Campion. London, 1867. Smith, D. Nichol. "Authors and Patrons." Shakespeare's England, Vol. II, ch. xxii. Oxford, 1917. Spens, Janet, Spenser's "Faerie Queene." London, 1934. Spenser, Edmund. The Poetical Wor\s of Edmund Spenser. Ed. J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt. London, 1924. The Worlds of Edmund Spenser, a Variorum Edition. Ed. Edwin A. Greenlaw and Others. Baltimore, 1932-49. A View of the Present State of Ireland. Ed. W. L. Renwick. London, 1934Spenser Society. Seneca His Tenne Tragedies. Spenser Society Publications, Nos. 43-44 (1887).

Modern Sources and Editions

377

The Statutes of the Realm. London, 1810-28. Stein, Harold. Studies in Spenser's Complaints. New York, 1934. Stevenson, W. H., and Salter, H. E. The Early History of St. John's College, Oxford. Oxford, 1939. Strype, John. The Life and Acts of John Aylmer. Oxford, 1821. The Ltfe and Acts of Matthew Parser. Oxford, 1821. Tanner, J. R. Tudor Constitutional Documents. Cambridge, England, 1948. Tenison, E. M. Elizabethan England. Royal Leamington Spa, 1933-50. Thompson, J. V. P. Supreme Governor: A Study of Elizabethan Ecclesiastical Policy and Circumstance. London, 1940. Thomson, Patricia. "The Literature of Patronage, 1580-1630," Essays in Criticism, II (1952). Till yard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. New York, 1944. Shakespeare's History Plays. New York, 1946. Turner, Celeste. Anthony Mundy, an Elizabethan Man of Letters. University of California Publications in English, II, No. 1. Berkeley, Calif., 1928. Ubaldini, Petruccio. Descrittione del Regno di Scotia. Edited for the Bannatyne Club. Edinburgh, 1829. Underhill, J. G. Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors. New York, 1899. Usher, R. G. The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. London, 1905. The Reconstruction of the English Church. New York, 1910. Venn, John and J. A. Venn. Alumni Cantabrigiensis. Part I. Cambridge, England, 1922-27. Waldman, Milton. Elizabeth and Leicester. Boston, 1945. Ward, Lock, and Co. A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to Oxford. 3d ed., London, n.d. Waugh, Evelyn. Edmund Campion. New York, 1935. Wheatley, Henry B. The Dedication of Bool^s to Patron and Friend. London, 1887. White, Helen C. Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century. New York, 1944. "Some Continuing Traditions in English Devotional Literature," PMLA, L V I I (1942). Whitney, Goeffrey. A Choice of Emblemes. With Introduction by Henry Green. London, 1866. Williamson, J. Bruce. The History of the Temple, London. London, 1924. Wilson, E. C. England's Eliza. Cambridge, Mass., 1939. Wilson, F. P. "Some Notes on Authors and Patrons in Tudor and Stuart

378

List of Sources

Times," in John Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, Washington, D.C., 1948. Wilson, Thomas. A Discourse upon Usury. With Introduction by R. H. Tawney. London, 1925. Wood, Anthony a. Athenae Oxonienses. Vol. I. London, 1813. Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford. Vol. II. Ed. Andrew Clark. Oxford, 1890. Wright, Louis B. "Introduction to a Survey of Renaissance Studies," Modern Language Quarterly, II (1941). Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England. Chapel Hill, N . C., I

935Yates, Frances A . John Florio. Cambridge, England, 1934. Zeeveld, W. Gordon. Foundations of Tudor Policy. Cambridge, Mass., 1948.

Index Abridgement

of the Chronicles

oj Eng-

land ( G r a f t o n ) , 66, 67, 71, 75, 76 Academiae

Cantabrigiensis

Lachrymae,

3'9 Academiae Oxoniensis Topographica Delineatio ( N e a l e ) , 132 Acontius, Jacobus, see Concio, Giacomo A c t in Restraint of Appeals, 6 i n Actors: royal and noble protection of, 10; Puritan opposition to, 254 f.; protected by Leicester, 301-6; see also Plays and playwrights Admonition to the Parliament (Feild and W i l c o x ) , 184», 199, 244 Admonition to the People of England ( C o o p e r ) , 128 Alarum against Vsurers ( L o d g e ) , 145« Alasco, Albertus, 137, 306 A l e n j o n and A n j o u , Francis, duke of: opposed by Leicester, 24, 232, 265, 279; writers' warnings against, 248, 339 A l l e n , William, 242« Amorous and Tragicall Tales oj Plutarch (Sanforde, trans.), 164 Annates 0} England ( S t o w ) , 79 Answere vnto the confvtation of John Nichols ( F e n n e r ) , 242 Anti-Catholic propaganda, 29 f., 60-62 passim, 108 f., 140, 171, 212-16, 230-77, 281, 289-92, 316 f., 344; officially sponsored, 11, 232; Puritan activity in, 187-91 passim, 194 ff., 202, 279; see also Jesuits; Spain Anticosmopolita ( H a r v e y ) , 330, 332,

337» Antidicsonus ( " G . P . " ) , 380 Anti-usury movement, 145 £., 280», 281

146»,

Ant. Monday, His Godly Exercises ( M u n d a y ) , 239 Apocalypse, see Book of Revelation Apologia pro caena Dominica ( A s c h a m ) , 144, 230, 327 Aristotelianism, revived at Oxford, 297

Arithmetical games, 42 ff. Arte of Rhétorique ( W i l s o n ) , 45, 145 Artcs of hogike and Rhetoril^e (Fenner), 243 Ascham, Dudley, 143 Ascham, Giles, 144 Ascham, Roger, 46, 47, 1 oon, 140; advice to Leicester, 142 f.; allegedly neglected, 143 f-; posthumous w o r k , 230 f. Astrology, 37, 300 Astronomical tables, Forster's, 36 Astrophel (Spenser), 321, 350 Atey, Arthur, 150, 288», 335» Augustus, as patron, 3, 343 Avncient Ecclesiasticall Histories (Hanmer, trans.), 107 ff., 256 A y l m e r , John, bp., 29, 57, 245, 3 4 m ; answer to John K n o x , 27 ff. Babington Plot, 282, 312, 316 Baldwin, W i l l i a m , 223 Barnes, Joseph, 138, 219, 263»; establishment of press at O x f o r d , 295-300, 320 Barston, John, m ff., 114 Barthlet, John, 211 f. Basson, Thomas, 3 1 1 » Bear and Ragged Staff, 36n, 37; other references, passim Bedford, Francis Russell, earl of, 22, 54; co-patron of Aylmer's Harborowe, 27, 29; patron of Gascoigne, 167, 170; Puritan sympathies, 185, 192; sponsorship of Puritan and anti-Catholic writers, 214», 229, 234, 245 Bedingfield, T h o m a s , 49 Belles-lettres, as related to theories of patronage, xivn, xvi, 7, 16, 17n, 156, 182, 278 Beza, Theodore, 192, 194, 200, 205«, 229, 245, 268; "Beza's Catechism," 214»; sermons translated, 219 Bible: publication of, a royal privilege, 10; printers of Coverdale and Great

3

8O

Index

Bible (Continued) Bible, 66; Leicester's portrait in "Bishops Bible" of 1568, 106; translation of, 153, 154; see also titles of paraphrases, commentaries, and sermons on Bibliotheca Eliotae, 124 Bidpai, Fables of, 181; The Moral I Philosophic oj Doni, a version of, 161 Bilson, Thomas, 299 Bizari, Pietro, 57, 139, 327; poems to Leicester, 1390 Blackfriars Theater, 302 f. Blandie, William, 3, 172-75, 179, 180; on theory of patronage, 173 Blundeville, Thomas, 56, 58, 62, 64, 79, 156, 179, 180; translations by, 46-53 Boccc, Hcctor, 95 Booke called the Foundacion oj Rhetorike (Rainolde), 44, 51, 58 Boofe of Christian Exercise appertaining to Resolvtion (Parsons), 299 Book of Common Prayer, rejected by Puritans, 193, 201 Bool^ oj the Courtier (Castiglione's 11 Cortegiano), 18, 55, 175 Book, oj Homilies, 61« Booke oj Martyrs (Foxe's Actes and Monuments), 61, 207 Book of Revelation: Sanforde's translation of Brocado's interpretation, 165, 267 f.; other writers on, 268 Book oj the Ocean to Cynthia, (Ralegh), 34571 Book trade, 10; see also Press; Printers and Printing Borgarucci, Giulio, 57n Breeje Aunswer (Munday), 235 Brief censure t/ppon two booses (Parsons), 258 Brief Discours (Parsons), 250 Briefe Confutation (Fulke), 256 Br'tefe Report of the Militarie Services (Digges?), 285 Britannia (Falckenburgk), 101 n Brocardo, Giacopo, 165, 267 Bromley, Sir Thomas, 133; dedications to, 234, 235, 257n

Brutish Thunderbolt (Fetherstone's trans, of Hotman), 228, 269, 270 Bucer, Martin, 129 Bullinger, Heinrich, 192, 194, 268«; refutation of Bull against Elizabeth, 212 ff. Bunny, Edmund, 299 Burghley, William Cecil, lord, 143, 283, 3 1 1 , 346, 349; chancellor of Cambridge, 10, 121, 138; patronage, 12, 46, 47 f., 65, 74, 82, 101, 116, 156, 234, 2 35> 2 57 n > 3 2 7>333. 335". relations with Leicester, 23, 87, 100; conservative policies, 197, 232, 265, 344 Buxton, John, xivn Cabot, Sebastian, 31 Calvin, John: Elizabeth's resentment of, 28 f., 192; influence in England, 188, 191-94; authority for Puritans, 193, 268; anti-Catholicism, 194, 237; translators of, 193/1, 214, 217, 218, 227, 236, 245,269 Cambridge University: reforms encouraged by Elizabeth, 120 f.; Cecil as chancellor, 121, 138; Leicester's relations with, 122, 138 ff., 319, 327, 329; Elizabeth's visit to, 1 2 2 f . ; effect of her oration, 123; press sanctioned, 296; scholars at Audley End, 325; see also Universities Camden, William, 79«, 320 Campion, Edmund, 80-90, 114, 131 f., 150, 265; history of Ireland, 82, 85-88, 91-93, 342; anti-Campionist campaign, 90, u o f . , 231-34, 239, 253-62 passim; memorialized in Holinshed's Chronicles, 91 f. Cartwright, Thomas: Puritan agitator, 42, 198. 333; Leicester's protégé, 139, 202, 228 Case, John, 296 ff., 3070 Casimir, John, 137 Castel of helth (Elyot), 34 Castel of Memorie (Fulwood), 38, 44 C;istiglione, Giambattista, 56, 287, 288 Castle of Pollicy (Blandie), 174 Caueat for Parsons Howlet (Feild), 251 Cavallcrizzo (Corte), 49

Index Cavalry, improvement of, for national defense, 49 f. Caxton, William, 297 Cecil, William. See Burghley, William Cecil, lord Censorship: of books, 10,92n, 94 f , 190, 289; of plays, 304 Certaine homilies of m. Joan Calvine ( H o m e ' s trans, of Calvin), 236» Certaine Sermons (Jewel), 225 Certaine Worses of Chirurgerie (Gale), 32, 58 Certaine Worses of Galens, called Method vs Medendi (Gale), 34 Certeine selected Praires (Palfreyman), 223 Chaderton, William, 200 Cha loner, Sir Thomas, 101 Chamberlin, Frederick, 21, 124» Charke, William, 258« Chauncie, William, 266 Chess, work on, 43 f. Children of the Chapel Royal, 222, 302 f. Children's companies, 301 ff. Choice of Emblemes (Whitney), 307 Christian against the lesuite ( L u p t o n ) , 242 Chronicle at large ( G r a f t o n ) , 73 Chronicle, Elizabethan, 113 Chronicle of all the noble Emperours of the Romaines (Rainolde), 46 Chronicles (Holinshed), 64, 66, 114; Stow's "continuations" for, 79, 80, 94; Ireland, 86, 87, 91, 92; Scotland, 93. 95 Chronicles of England (Stow), 74, 77 f., 80 Chrysopolitanus, Jacobus, 3 1 2 Church government: Puritan views of, 188 {., 192-94, 198, 204 f., 243, 244 Church of England, 187-91; royal supremacy over, 4; dearth of educated clergy in. 6, 120 f., 125, 128, 137, 198, 202; authority challenged, 55; historical basis of defended, 61 f., 107 ff.; religious conditions under, at universities, 138; preferment in as a f o r m of literary patronage, 185 f.; and Puritan propaganda, 187, 193 f.; noble

38l

patrons committed to, 198; papal bull refuted on behalf of, 212; Bullinger's influence on, 213; see also AntiCatholic propaganda; Puritan movem e n t ; Religious writings Ciceronianus (Harvey), 324 Clarke, Bartholomew, 312, 324 Classical learning: encouraged by T u dor rulers, 5, 6; influence on history, 59; value defended by More, ii8n; recommended to Leicester, 141 f.; other references, passim Classical-translation movement, 153 f., 180; see also Translation movement Clowes, William, 36 Colbert, Jean Bapdste, 15/1 Colin Clouts Come Home Again (Spenser). 347 College of Physicians, 35, 36 Colvius, Peter, 309 Commentaries on fudges (Peter Martyr), 207 Commentary upon John (Calvin), 269 Commines, Philip de, Danett's translation of, 65, 113 Complaints (Spenser), 337, 338, 347 Concejo y consejeros del principe ( F u r i ò ) , 51» Concio, Giacomo (Jacobus Acontius), 53, 54 f., 56; concept of historical writing, 64 f. Confutation of a Popishe Libelle (Fulke), 256 Confutation of the Popes Bull against Elizabeth (Golding's trans, of Bullinger), 213 ff. Conley, C. H., 154-56; theory concerning classical-translation movement, 154,180 Conversion of a Gentleman (Chauncie), 266 Cooper, Thomas, bp., 129 ff.; Thesaurus, 124-28, 147, 297; anti-Puritan, 128, 200, 201 Copie of a leter to Leycester (Crompton), 315 Copie of a Leter, wryten by a Master of Arte, see Leycesters Commonwealth Copyrights, 73

382

Index

Cordell, Sir William, 320» Cornelius, Jan, 311 Corrano (or de C o r r o ) , Antonio, 135 f., 298 Corte, Claudio, 49, 50, 56 Cosmographical Glasse ( C u n i n g h a m ) , 30 ff., 57 Cox, Richard, bp., 213, 214» Cradock, Edward, 176 Cranmer, Thomas, abp., 5n, 187 Crispinus (Crespin), 147 Critics: writers' fear of anonymous, 30, 37 £., 48, 158, i8ofT.; other references, passim Crofts, Sir James, 333, 334 Crompton, Richard, 315 ff. Cromwell, Thomas, 5n, 66, 187 Culex (Virgil, attr.), Spenser's translation of, 338, 340 Cuningham, William, 30 ff., 57, 142, 155. 317 Cyprus, Turkish conquest of, 97 Damiano of Odemira, 43 Danett, Thomas, 114; translation of Commines' Memoires, 65, 113, 156 "Daphnis" ( G a g e r ) , 320 Davis, Henry, 223», 363 Davison, William, 314 f. Day, John, 28, 30, 58, 207 ff., 209, 213, 214, 298 Decern rationes ( C a m p i o n ) , 90; answers to, 260-62 Declaration of the recantation of lohn Nichols, 241 Dedications: value for literary history, xvi, 7, 13 f., 18, 20 f.; as expression of loyalty to Elizabeth, xvii, 6, 9; as protection against censorship and criticism, 6; flattery and rhetoric in, 13 f., 20; fear of criticism expressed in, 30, 37 f., 180 ff.; conventional formulas in, 33», 70, 117, 174, 176», 185, 222; as declarations of motive, 62 f., 153, 180 ff., 184 f., 194 f.; as declarations of patron's proprietary right, 65, 87, 92 f.; as a form of copyright, 73»; works dedicated to Leicester (list), 355-62

Dee, John, 300 Defence of Poesie (Sidney), 174 Defence of the godlie Ministers (Fenner), 243 De homine academico ( C a m p i o n ) , 85 De lure Belli Commentationes duae (Gentili), 292 luris Interpretibus Dialogi Sex (Gentili), 288 De Legationibus Libri Tres (Gentili), 289 De

Delineatio pompae triumphalis, 311 Della Historia Diece Dialoghi (Patrizi), 56 Delle osseruationi . . . ( C o n c i o ) , 55 De Repvblica Anglorvm Instavranda (Chaloner), 101 Description of Ireland (Stanihurst), 9l Descrittone del Regno di Scotia (Ubaldini), 95 De strategematibus Satanae in religionis negotio (Concio), 54 Devereux, Robert, see Essex, Robert Devereux, earl of Devereux, Walter, see Essex, Walter Devereux, earl of De vmbra rationis et iudicij (Dickson), 38» Dial for All Agves (Jones), 35, 57 Dial of Princes ( G u e v a r a ) , 160 Dialogue agaynst dauncing (Fetherstone), 227 Dickson, Alexander, 38» Dictionarie in Latine and

English

(Veron, comp.), 203, 204 Dictionaries, 124, 127 f., 147 f. Dido ( G a g e r ) , 306 Digges, Dudley, 284 Digges, T h o m a s (d. 1595), 282-86, 317; defense of Leicester, 286 Digges, T h o m a s (fl. 1601), 286« Diodorus Siculus, 104» Discouerie of a Gaping Gulf (Stubbs), 232, 310, 339 Discouerie of Edmund day), 234

Campion

(Mun-

Discouerie of I. Nicols, misreported fesuite (Parsons?), 242

a

Index Discourse of a Discouerie (Gilbert), Gascoignc's prefatory epistle to, 170 Discourse vppon Vsurye (Wilson), 101, 144. 145 Disertissimi Rogcri Aschami, Disputationum Dicas Prima

144 (Gentili),

292

Doni, Antonio Francesco, 161 Douai, Roman Catholic college for exiles, 134, 242/1 Dousa, Jan, 309 Drake, Sir Francis, 24, 265, 308 Drama, 17,62, 301,306 f.; see also Belleslettres; Plays and playwrights Drant, Thomas, 176 Drayton, Michael, 62 Drusius, John, 135 Dublin, University of, 85, 86 Dudley, Ambrose, see Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, earl of Dudley, Catherine (countess of Huntingdon), 22 Dudley, Edmund, 21, 67; treatise on theory of government, 69 Dudley, Guildford, 22, 68 Dudley, Henry, 22 Dudley, John, see Northumberland, John Dudley, duke of Dudley, John (John of Warwick), 45, 142 Dudley, Mary (Lady Sidney), 23 Dudley, Robert, lord, see Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of Dudley, Sir Robert, 24, 353 Dudley family, 22 f.; Spenser's eulogies of, 320 f., 332, 337, 346 f.; Harvey's attempt to extol, 328 Dutch Protestant Church (London), 54 Dutch states, see Netherlands Dyer, Edward, ioon, 149, 168, 308, 349, 35° Education, 6, 117 ff.; Mulcaster's program, 293 ff.; see also Learning Egerton, Sir Thomas, 176 Eickius, Arnoldus, 309» "E.K.," 329, 340 Eliot, John, 353 Elizabeth I, queen: position in patron-

383

age system, xvi, xix, 5-12; alleged neglect of patronage, 15, 143 f.; favors bestowed upon Leicester, 22; breaches in relationship with Leicester, 24, 25, 94, 232, 279, 312; defended against Knox, 27 f.; dedications to, 46, 54, 132, 139n, 163(2), 165, 169, 192, 251, 293. 299> 3°9 n ( 2 )> 3 2 0 n > 3 2 7. 3 2 7 " ; rebellions and plots against, 75, 164, 189, 262, 263, 282, 312, 313, 314; patronage of, and visits to, universities, 121 f f , 128 ff.; oration encouraging learning, 123 (quoted, 116); favor for Cooper, 127; visits to Woodstock, 130, 168, 306; defended against Osorio, 140; visit to Kenilworth, 166 ff., 222, 306; Netherlands policy, 171, 265, 272, 313, 314; religious policy, 187-91; supported by Continental reformers, 192 f.; sovereignty threatened by Catholics, 195, 231; defended against Bull of Pius V, 212-15, 2 3°> 262, 263; negotiations for Alenson match, 232, 265, 279, 339; defiance of Spain, 265, 313; defense of Leicester by royal proclamation, 289 f.; Queen's Company of actors, 305; delays in trial, sentence, and execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 313 f.; action against Mary justified in pamphlets, 315 ff.; visit to Audlcy End, 325 f.; celebrated by Harvey, 326 f.; Spenser's eulogies of. 34'. 343 f-> 347'. pension to Spenser, 348 Elizabeth and Leicester (Waldman), 21 Elizabeth and Leicester (Chamberlin), 21 Elizabethan Settlement, see Church of England; Puritan movement Elogium Roberti Comitis Leycestrii (Eickius), 3090 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 34, 125 Emblem literature, 307 English language: used for propaganda purposes under Henry VIII, 5; enrichment of the vernacular, 30, 153, 158; as a medium of popular education, 34, 35. 37 f-> 58.153; writers' faith in literary effectiveness of, 45, 161; used for

3

84

Index

English language ( C o n t i n u e d ) didactic purposes and propaganda by religious writers, 276; spelling reform, 294 English Romayne Lyfe (Munday), 235 Enimie of Idlenesse (Fulwood), 35«; excerpt, 14« Ephemerides Meteorographicae (Forster), 36 Erasmus, 5 Essex, Frances, countess of, 321 Essex, Lettice, countess of, see Knollys, Lettice Essex, Robert Devereux, earl of: patron of letters, 12, 292, 348«; succeeded Leicester as progressive leader, 25, 321 f. Essex, Walter Devereux, earl of, 24, 42 Evans, Henry, 303 Evans, Lewis, 148 Exequiae Sidnaei, 319 Exposition vpon two Epistles of Paul (Jewel), 225

Fables, 162, 181 Faerie Queene (Spenser), 290«, 292«, 327», 332; possible references to Leicester, 343-46 Falckenburgk, Jacob, 10m Famagusta (Cyprus), Turkish conquest of, 97, 98« Farrant, William, 302 Feild, John, 90, 205/2, 228, 229, 230, 276; Puritan activities, 199 f., 244 ff., 25356; anti-Catholic propaganda, 243-56 passim, 265; patrons, 244; letter to Leicester against actors, 254 f., 305; possible connection with Spenser, 340, 341« Fenner, Dudley, 242 f. Fetherstone, Christopher, 226 fi., 229, 269-72 Field, John, see Feild, John Field, Nathan, 255 XV. Boo\es of P. Ouidius Naso (Golding, trans.), 158 Fills (Fyll), Robert, 205 f., 228, 229, 230

First Blast of the Trumpet (Knox), 27 f., 192 First English Translators of the Classics (Conley), 154 Firste Fruites (Florio), 148, 350; appeal for defense of book, 351 Firste parte of the Christian Instruction (Viret), 209 First Part of the Elementarie (Mulcaster), 293, 294 Fiue Bootes of Ciuill, and Christian Nobilitie (Blandie, trans.), 172 ff. Fleming, Abraham, 141, 148, 177 Flores Historiarum (Parker, ed.), 74 Florio, John, 148, 323, 350-53; praise of Leicester and Spenser, 353 Foxe, John, 61, 207 Flowers of Epigrammes (Kendall, trans.), 176 f. Folger Shakespeare Library, 37n, 328n Forster, Richard, 36 Fou/er chiefyst offices belongyng to Horsemanshippe (Blundeville), 49, 5° Frobisher, Sir Martin, 24, 170 Fruteful treatise of predestination (Veron), 203 Fruytes of Foes (Blundeville), 46 Fulke (Fulce), William, 39-42, 57, 58, J 55. 329; anti-Catholic writing, 25m, 256, 265 Fulwood, William, 34«, 38, 47, 58, 179, 180; rules for writing to a patron, 14« Furio Ceriol, Fadrique, treatise for princes, 51 ff. Fyrst Fower Boo\es of Metamorphosis (Golding, trans.), 156

Gager, William, 241, 307«, 350; Latin tragedies, 137 f., 306; Exequiae Sidnaei, 319 f. Galateo of Maister lohn Delia Casa (Peterson, trans.), 175 f., 181 Gale, Thomas, 30, 36, 58, 142, 155; works on surgery and medicine, 32 ff. Galens Bootes of Elementes (Jones), 36 Games, treatises on, 42 ff. Garbrande (alias Herks), John, 224 f.

Index Garden of Pleasure (Sanforde, trans. )> 164 f., 181, 352 Gascoigne, George, 3, 179, 181, 306; efforts to obtain royal employment, 166-70; mission to Low Countries, 170; description of sacking of Antwerp, 171 f. Gentili, Alberico, 137, 150«, 307«; at Oxford, 286 ff. ; defense of Leicester, 289 ft.; contributions to international law, 292 f. "G.H." (Gabriel Harvey?), 319, 320, 336a G. Haddoni lucubrationes (Hatcher, ed.), 1 4 m Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 170 Gilby, Anthony, 229 Glasse of Government (Gascoigne), 166 Godly Exhortation (Feild), 245 Golding, Arthur, 152, 163, 179-82 passim, 229, 230, 269; translation of Ovid, 156 ff.; of Bullinger's refutation of the Bull against Elizabeth, 213-18; of Mornay, 272 ff. Goodly Gallerye (Fulke), 39, 42, 43, 57 Gosson, Stephen, 35 m, 352 "G.P.," 38« Grafton, Richard, 64, 66-69, r l 3> " 4 ! controversy with Stow, 71-77 passim Grant, Edward, 144, 147, 230, 327 Gratarolus (Gratarolo), Gulielmus, 38 Gratulationum Valdinensium Libri IV (Harvey), 1391, 14WJ, 230n, 324n, 325-28, 330, 332, 337 Great bragge and challenge of M. Champion (Hanmer), 257 Great Yarmouth, officials' resentment of Leicester's interference, 310 f. Greene, Robert, 50, 300 Greenlaw, Edwin A., 336, 339, 340 Grey, Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton: Spenser's employer in Ireland, 85«, 334. 33 8 . 34r> 34^; patron of Gascoigne, 167, 170 Grey, Lady Jane, 22, 67, 68 Grief of Joye (Gascoigne), 172 Grindal, Edmund, bp., 148, 2 1 3 ; investigations of Stow, 74, 76; of Corrano, 135; of Barthlet, 212; of West-

385

cote, 302; as Spenser's "Algrind," ideal prelate, 212, 34m Grisone, Federico, 48, 49, 50 Grocers' Company, 66; patronage of Campion, 80, 84 Guevara, Antonio de, 160, 352 Guicciardini, Ludovico, 165, 352 Gwinn, Matthew, 320 Haddon, Walter, 140 ff., 145, 146, 149, 327; letters to Leicester, 141 f. Hague, The, Leicester's reception in, 311, 312 Hake, Edward, 145«, 179, 3 1 1 ; dedication to Leicester, 280 ff. Hakluyt, Richard, 50 Hall, Edward, 67, 71, 73 Hall, Rowland, 32, 39, 44, 58, 298; Calvinist associations, 204 Hanmer, Meredith, 90, 112, 114, 156; translation of early church histories, 107 ff.; dedication to Leicester, 109 f.; career, 110 f.; Irish history, 82», i n ; anti-Jesuit propaganda, 256-60, 265 Harborowe for Faith full and Trewe Subiectes (Aylmer), 27 ff., 57 Hardyng, John, 67, 71 Harmar, John, 298; honors and rewards resulting from Leicester's patronage, 218-21 Harrison, John, 298, 317 f. Hart, John, 239 f. Hartwell, Abraham, 139 f., 327 Harvey, Gabriel, 37n, 50, 1391, 140B, 150, 230«, 319, 320, 347; relationship with Leicester, 323-36; ambitions, 324 f.; indiscretions at Audley, 325 f.; Gratulationes, 326 ff.; friendship with Spenser: the Letters, 329-34, 338; rejected by patrons, 335; parallels and contrasts with Spenser, 337 f., 342 Hatcher, Thomas, 141« Hatton, Sir Christopher, 23; as patron of letters, 12, 65, 95, 146«, 165, 327 Heltzel, Virgil B., xvii Hemetes the Heremyte (Gascoigne), 168 f. Henricipetri, Adam, io6n

3 86

Index

Henry VII, employment of foreign scholars, 5, 118» Henry VIII: development of literary patronage under, 3 fî-, io, 118«; royal supremacy, 6m, yon, 188; Grafton his protégé, 66; other references, passim Henry of Navarre, king, 246, 247«, 274 Herbert, Henry, see Pembroke, Henry Herbert, earl of Herbert, William, see Pembroke, William Herbert, earl of Heywood, Jasper, 47» Historié of Ireland (Campion), 82, 8588 passim; used in Holinshed's Chronicles, 91 ff. Historié of Philip De Commines (Danett), 65 Historié o) Scotland (Holinshed), 93,

95

History: patronage of, 11, 62, 63 f.; by Leicester, 58, 64-115; theory and methods of, 53, 55, 58, 59-115 passim; reports of current events, 86, 92, 94, 96 f., 104, 114, 171; methods and motives (summary), 113 ff. History of Ireland (Hanmer), 82n, 111 History of the Successors of Alexander the Great (Stocker, trans.), 104 Hoby, Sir Thomas, 55 Holinshed, Raphael, 66; patrons of his chronicles, 64, 87, 91, 92, 93 f., 94», 114; Stow's contributions to his work, 79, 80, 93 f.; debt to Campion, 86, 87, 91 f.; second edition, 94; purged, 95; purpose and method, 114 Holy Gospel according to John (Fetherstone's trans, of Calvin), 227 Hooker (alias Vowell), John, 94 Hooker, Richard, 194 Home, Robert, bp., 236 ff. Horsemanship: Blundeville's treatises on, 47-50, 58; other writers on, 48, 49 Hotman, François, 150, 269 f. Hotman, Jean, 150, 269 f., 288 Houres of recreation, or After-dinners, called The Garden of Pleasure (Sanforde, trans.), 165

Howlet, John, pamphlets against, 251, 256 Humanism, see Classical learning Hvmble Motives for Association (Digges), 286« Humphrey, Laurence, 90,124«, 225,238, 296 n, 298, 320; nonconformist protégé of Leicester, 129 if.; antiCatholic propaganda, 261-65, 276 Hunnies Recreation (Hunnis), 223 Hunnis, William: at Kenilworth, i68b; versification of Genesis and other writings, 221 ff.; his child actors protected by Leicester, 302 f. Huntingdon, Henry Hastings, earl of, patron of Puritans, 22 f., 205«, 214», 223, 227», 228, 229, 245 Hutton, Richard, 147 Hystorie of Cariclea and Theagines (Sanforde, trans.), 164 Hyve Fvll of Honye (Hunnis), 221, 302 le suites Banner (Hanmer), 258 lesvitismi pars prima (Humphrey), 90, 261 lesvitismi Pars Secunda (Humphrey), 262 Inner Temple, 179, 218; Leicester's connections with, 47 Inns of Court, xvii, 47, 58, 121, 125, 135, 178 ff., 306; writers associated with, 42, 46, 159, 160, 166, 172, 175, 176, 179 f., 218, 280, 315; theory concerning translation movement at, 154 f., 177-80 In sacratn Diui loannis Apocalypsim (Fulke), 256 Institution of Christian Religion (Calvin), 193 "In Symbolum Gentilitium" (Grant), 230, 328» Interpretatio et paraphrases libri Apocalypseos (Sanforde's trans, of Brocardo), 267 lohn Niccols Pilgrimage, 242 Ireland, works on, 85-88, 91, 92«, 111, 342», 343, 344 Isaiah, Calvin's commentaries upon, 192 Italians and Italian interests, 55 ff., 58,

Index 1 0 4 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 8 , 1 5 6 , 1 6 1 , 1 8 0 , 2 8 6 f., 326, 333.337.350.352 Jacobszoon and Bouwenszoon, 3 1 m James I, king, 24», 79 Jermyn, Sir Robert, 308 Jesuits: campaign against, 189, 195, 23136, 239-42, 245, 250-54, 255, 256-66; sponsored by Leicester, xvii, 1 1 , 24, 90, n o , 232; see also Anti-Catholic propaganda; Campion, Edmund; Roman Catholics Jewel, John, bp., 213, 224; Garbrande's defense of memory of, 225 John Chrysostom, Saint, 298 Jones, John, 35 f., 57 Kemp, Will, 305 Kendall, Timothe, 176 f., 179, 180 Kenilworth, Gascoigne's part in celebration of Queen's visit to, 166 ff., 222, 306 Kingsmill, Dr., 129 Knollys, Sir Francis, 253« Knollys, Lettice, Countess of Essex, 24, 232. 327. 345" Knox, John, 9, 27, 28, 192 Languages: knowledge of as qualification for advancement, 5, 6, 58, 99, 114, 117, 140, 150 f., 153, 169, 179, 182 f.; value for medical men, 34; for popularization of learning, 37, 38, 153; for Leicester, 142, 145; see also Translation movement Language-books, 148, 164, 298, 351 ff. Latin plays, 306 Law, civil: knowledge of as qualification for advancement, 5, 125, 324; recommended to Leicester, 141, 145; studied at the Inns, 178; revived at Oxford, 286 Lau/es and Statutes of Gcneua (Fills, trans.), 204 ff. Learning: encouragement of, 5, 58, 102, 116, 119, 121 ff.; recent decline of, 6, 103, 120 f., 124 f.; values of, 6, 117 ff., 121, 123, 126, 153; popularization of, 18, 38, 119; Spenser's defense of, in

387

Elizabeth's court, 347; other references, passim Le Grys, William, 310, 3 1 1 Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of: portraits, frontispiece, 39; device (Bear and Ragged Staff), iii patronage, xiii, xvi-xix, 19 ff., 25 ff.; of miscellaneous writers during his rise to power, 57 f.; of historians, i i 3 f f . ; of universities and scholars, 116; of dictionary-makers, 147 f.; of secretaries, 150 f.; of translators, 58, 155 f., 180-83; religious writers and controversialists, 196-99, 274-77; of miscellaneous writers during his final decade (1579-88), 278; of printers, 298; of actors, 301; of playwrights, 306 f.; of elegists of Sidney, 321; of writers allegedly neglected, 323; chronological list of works dedicated to him, 355-62 Life: main events, 21-25; birth and descent, 21; education, 21, 140-51 passim; attainted under Mary Tudor: restored, 22; Elizabeth's favorite, 22, 52, 83, 103; Master of the Queen's Horse, 22, 48, 49; Privy Councillor, 22, 234, 235, 257; considered candidate for marriage with Elizabeth, 22, 168, 327 f., 332, 345«; created earl, 22,116,207; chancellor of Oxford University, 22, 26, n 6 , 122, 124, 132-38, 261, 287, 295; progressive political leader, 22, 197, 344; pro-Puritan policy, 22, 138, 188 ff., 196 ff., 277; antiCatholic policy, 22, 30, 89, 197, 230, 232, 266, 275; slanders, 22, 24, 25, 196, 266, 275, 285 f., 289-92 passim, 346, 349; family connections, 22 f.; political rivals, 23; power, wealth, influence, 23 f., 26, 197; matrimonial ventures, 24; natural son, 24, 353; secret marriage to Lettice Knollys, 24, 232, 279; temporary estrangements from Elizabeth, 24, 25, 94, 232, 279, 312, 342«; libel suppressed by royal proclamation, 25, 289 f.; Netherlands policy, 25, 107, 171 f., 268, 272, 313, 344; commander of expedition to

3 88

Index

Leicester, life (Continued) Netherlands, 25, 94, 270, 279, 284 f., 307, 3 1 1 f., 314, 317, 345; governor general of Dutch states, 25, 94, 95», 3 1 2 ; commander of land forces against Armada, 25, 279, 285; death of, 25, 322; political career reflected in literary patronage, 26 f.; connections with Inns of Court, 47, 177-80; Leicester House, 50, 178, 340, 348»; interest in Italian expatriates, 55 ff., 286; reputation abroad, 94, 104, 270, 308,311 f., 327; endowment of Oxford scholarships, 95«; interest in Venetian trade, Turkish policy, 98 f.; high stewardships: of Tewksbury, 113, of Cambridge, 122, of Windsor, 280, of Great Yarmouth, 310; protection of Puritan agitators, 139, 199-202, 253, 339, 340; Philip Sidney his intended successor, 175, 319, 3 2 1 ; period of political ascendancy, 265 f., 275, 279; posthumous reputation, 285, 286, 346, 347» 349. 353! urged execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 314 Leicester's Hospital, 139, 202 Leicester's Men, 301, 303-6 Leland, John, 77 Levant Company, 98 Lever, Ralph, 39, 41, 42 Lew in, William, 324 Lexicon Graecolatinvm (Crispinus, comp., Grant, ed.), 147 Leycesters Commonwealth (Parsons, attr.), 25, 38«, 196, 266, 289 f. Ubellus de Memoria ("G.P."), 38« Licensing acts, 190 Lincoln, Countess of, patroness of religious works, 107, 1 1 1 « , 2ion Literary Projession in the Elizabethan Age (Sheavyn), 15«, 17»; excerpt, 13" Little Dictionarie (Evans's ed. of Withals), 147 f. Lives (North's trans, of Plutarch), 160, 163 Lloyd, Griffin, 288 Lodge, Thomas, 145» "London Classis," 256

Lord Mayors of London, works dedicated to, 72, 73 Low Countries, see Netherlands Lucar, Cyprian, 317 Lupton, Thomas, 242, 290 Luther, Martin, 172

Machiavelli, 18, 173, 325 Maecenas, as patron, 3, 343 Malim, William, 97-104, 114, 156, 308, 310; agent in the Near East, 99 f.; remarks on theory of patronage, 102, 103 Manuell of Epictetus (Sanforde, trans.), 163 Manuell of the Chronicles of Englande (Grafton), 72, 73 Marian exiles, 22, 28, 29, 187, 192, 204, 207, 236 Marlowe, Christopher, 62 Marprelate tracts, 128, 1841, 243, 299 Martin, Gregory, 240 Martinengo, Nestor, 97 Martyr, Peter (Pietro Martire Vermigli), 129, 192, 207, 208 Mary I (Tudor), queen, 22, 27, 29, 56», 67, 69, 160, 207, 222, 237; effect of her policies on the universities, 120, 121 Mary (Stuart), Queen of Scots, 22, 164, 190, 237, 265; events leading to execution of, 312 ff.; pamphlets justifying execution of, 315 ff. Master of the Revels, 10, 304, 305 Mathematicians: William Cuningham, 30 f.; Thomas Digges, 282 f. Mathematics, 42 ff.; 142 Matthew, Tobie, abp., 81, 150», 288 Mayne, Cuthbert, 231, 249 Medicine: necessity for protection of works on, 32-37, 38n, 57 f., 180; Leicester's patronage of medical men, 35, 36 f „ 57«, 135, 300 Meleager (Gager), 137, 306, 320 Memoires (Commines), 65 Memory, treatises on, 38 Mendoza, Bernardino de, 232; the Mendoza case, 288 f. Merchant Adventurers, 171

Index Merchant Taylors' Company, 69, 77, 79; works dedicated to officials of, 72 Merchant Taylors' School, 81, 293 Metromachia sive Lvdvs Geometricvs (Fulke), 42 Mildmay, Sir Walter, 324, 334 Military science: as taught by chess, 44; books on, 54, 283-86, 317 Milton, John, 140» Minstrel tradition, 15 "Momus," 38, 181 Moore, Sir William, 302 f. Moralia (Plutarch), 46 Morall Philosophie of Doni (North, trans.), 160 f., 181 More, Sir Thomas, 5, 66, 67; defense of humanistic education, 118/j Morellius (Morelio), Guilielmus, 147 Mornay du Plessis, Philippe de, translations from, 245 ff., 251, 272 ff. Moslems, see Turks Most Noble auncient, and learned playe, called the Philosophers game (Fulke), 39 ff. Most pleasant Prospect (Fulke), 39«; see also Goodly Gallerye Mother Hubberds Tale (Spenser), 163«, 337. 339. 340 Mueller, Johann (Regiomontanus), 165 Mulcaster, Richard, i68n, 293-95 Munday, Anthony, 90, 233-39 Munford, Thomas, 137 Musicians, Leicester's, 305 Nashe, Thomas, 37n, 50, 301; satirical picture of Harvey, 323, 325, 326, 334 f., 33 6 . 338 Nationalism, see Patriotism Navy, English, 50, 264 Neale, J. E., 23 Neale, Thomas, 132 Netherlands: England's policies toward, 25. 99. 171. 197- 265, 272, 277, 313; Leicester's expedition to, 25, 270, 279, 283, 284, 285, 291, 307, 313, 314, 317; royal welcome given Leicester, 94, 3 1 1 f.; writers' propaganda for intervention in, 94, 104-7, 171 f-. 174 f., 268-71, 272 ff., 282, 283, 299, 309,

389

317 f., 344, 345; William of Orange, 172, 263; Leicester's actors in, 305; Shakespeare in, 306»; scholars of, 309, 310, 312 Neville, Alexander, 319 Neville, Sir Henry, 34 Newe booke containing the arte of ryding (Blundeville), 47 ff. Newes out of Powles Churchyarde (Hake), 145», 280 ff. News, international: value as propaganda, 96, 114; see also History Newton, Thomas, 95«, 159«, 222,319 New World movement, xix, 11, 21, 31, 170, 279 Nichols, John, 241 f. Niphus, Fabian, 136 Nobility: Elizabeth's delegation of patronage to, 8ff.; esteem for literature and learning, 18; sponsorship of histories, 64; of translations, 154, 155; of religious writings, 184 ff., 191, 229; Osorio's book on nature of (Blandie, trans.), 172 f.; laws limiting number of retainers of, 303 Noblesse oblige, tradition of, in patronage. 4. 5. 7 Noot, Jan van der, 268 Norfolk, Thomas Howard, duke of, 164, 165 Norris, Sir John, 172, 174, 253a, 283 North, Roger, baron, 160, 163 North, Sir Thomas, 160-63, '79. 180, 352 Northumberland, John Dudley, duke of, 68, 69, 93, 122, 208; patronage, 21, 31, 67, 140, 142 Norton, Thomas, translator of Calvin's Institution, 193« Nuce, Thomas, 159-60, 180 Octauia (Nuce, trans.), 159 Of the Vanitie and vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences (Sanforde's trans, of Agrippa), 164 Orange, William of Nassau, prince of, 172, 263 Oratio gratvlatoria (Dean of Bristol), 298

390

Index

Order of Curing Horses Diseases (Blundeville), 50 Order of Dietynge of Horses (Blundeville), 50 Ortho-epia Gallica (Eliot), 353 Osorio da Fonscca, bp., 1 4 0 , 1 7 2 ff. Ovid, Golding's translation of, 156 ff. Oxford, Edward de Vere, earl of, 156, 327. 333. 334 Oxford University: Leicester as chancellor of, 22, 26, 1 1 6 , 122, 124, 132-38, 261, 287, 295; conditions at Elizabeth's accession, 120, 121 f.; reforms in, 123 f.; royal visit to, 128-32 passim; Leicester's reorganization of, 133 f.; his preferments to, 134-37; revival of civil law in, 137, 286 ff.; visits of state to, 137 f.; first official university press, 138, 295-300; revival of Aristotelianism in, 297; Latin drama, 306; elegies on Sidney, 319 f.; poets of The Phoenix Nest, 350; see also Universities

Paget, Eusebius, 227, 228, 229 Palavicino, Horatio, 118«, 292 Palfreyman, Thomas, 223 Panoplte of Epistles (Fleming), 141 Papal bulls, 212-15, 263. 269 Parker, Matthew, abp., 6in, 74, 77, 79, 199, 201, 207, 214« Parliament, 8, 189 {., 314; Leicester's influence in elections to, 23 f. Parsons (Persons), Robert, 231, 233, 242,250 f., 258», 265, 266, 299; see also Jesuits; Leycesters Commonwealth Parte of a register, 243 Patriotism: as literary motivation, xvii, xix, 6, 7, i i , 12, 28, 38, 49, 57; of historians, 59 f., 63, 1 1 5 ; of scholars, 1 1 9 ; of translators, 153, 155, 180; of religious writers, 187, 189, 191, 194, 196, 197 f., 232, 244, 275 f., 277, 318; of Spenser, 341, 344 Patrizi, Francesco, 53, 56, 64 Patronage: Elizabethan system of, xiiixix, 3-18; Leicester's importance in, xiii, xvi, xviii, 19, 25; Leicester's sponsorship of well-known writers, xiii,

278; of obscure writers, xiii, 323; motives of writers and patrons, xiii, xiv, xv, 6, 15, 20; indoctrination and propaganda encouraged by, xiii, 4, 5, 6, 1 1 ; other studies of the Elizabethan system of, xiv, xv, 12n, 13/j, 1 5 « ; influence of patrons on form and content of literature, x v ; medieval traditions of, xv, 3, 15, 185; Tudor tradition of, xv, 3 ff.; Renaissance influences on, xv, 3-5, 6, 118, 1 1 9 ; Reformation influences on, xv, xvii, 5, 6, u 8 f . , 184-87; patriotic motives in, xv, xvii, 6, 7, 59 f., 119, 153, 187, 277; responsibilities of, delegated to nobles by Elizabeth, xvi, 8 ff.; importance of utilitarian writings, xvi, 7, 15, 16, 17; relative unimportance of belleslettres, xvi, 7, 15; categories sponsored by Leicester, xvi-xvii, 26 f.; nature of rewards, xvii, xviii, 6 f., 9, 15, 185 f.; literary endeavor as qualification for preferment, xviii-xix, 6 f . ; important Elizabethan patrons, xix, 1 1 , 12, 229; encouraged popularization of learning, 4, 18, 119, 153; role of Elizabeth in, 7-10, 15; fame as the reward of patrons, 7, 20; officially sponsored fields, 10; abuse of the system, 1 1 ; stimulating effects, 12; misconceptions concerning, 12-17; c o m " pared with modern patronage, 15 f.; significance in preparing for late Elizabethan flowering of literature, 17 f. 278; success of the system, 18, 278; theories of patronage as expressed by Elizabethan writers, 31, 46, 52, 102, 103, 167, 173, 325; moral justifications, 62 f., n 8 f . , 185; conformity imposed on protégés, 90, 131 f., 1 9 1 ; see also Dedications Paulet, Sir Hugh, dedication to, 164 Pearson, A. F. Scott, 198 Pedantius, 335 Pedegrewe of Heretiques (Barthlet), 211 Pembroke family, patrons of letters, 12, 322 Pembroke, Henry Herbert, earl of, 138, 288, 320

Index Pembroke, Mary Sidney, countess of, 23, 166, 185; Spenser's dedication to, 320 Pembroke, William Herbert, earl of, 166 Penry, John, 299 Peplus, 320 Perne, Dr., 333 Peterson, Robert, 175 f., 177, 179, 180 Pharisaismvs vetvs et now s (Humphrey), 262 Philip II, king of Spain, 171, 232, 248, 265, 313, 318; see also Spain Philpot, Mr., 212 Phoenix Nest (ed. "R.S."), 321, 350; vindication of Leicester's memory, 348 Physicians, see Medicine Pius V, pope: Bull against Elizabeth, 212-15, 262, 263 Plagiarism, 39 ff., 72 f. Planetomachia (Greene), 300 Plantin, press of, 92», 307, 309 Plays and playwrights, 15, 137 f., 167 ff., 301, 304, 306 f.; stage-plays controversy, 307/» ; see also Actors Pleasaunt and wittie Playe of the Cheasts (Damiano), 43 f. Plutarch, 141; translations from, 46, 104», 160, 163, 164, 180 Poetry: complaints of inadequate patronage of, 334, 343; sec also Belleslettres Pope, the: "usurpation" of power by, 61, 108 f., 240, 263; see also Papal bulls; Anti-Catholic propaganda Posies (Gascoigne), 166 Positions (Mulcaster), 293, 294 Presbyterian movement, 189, 225, 244; see also Church government; Puritan movement Press: as an instrument of propaganda, 4, 5,187, 232,312; secret Puritan press, 184», 190; secret Catholic press, 233, 250; Dutch press, 3 1 1 f. Printers and printing: under royal protection and regulation, 10, 66 f., 92n, 94 f., 190, 207, 295, 296; under Leicester's patronage, 58, 107, 138, 207 ff., 298; Oxford press, 138, 295-300; Dutch printers, 3 1 1 ; history of, by

391

Barnes, 297; see also Press; Publishers' dedications; Stationers' Company Privy Council, 4, 10,11, 19, 212, 265, 289, 291; dedications to, 234 f., 235, 257; protection of actors by, 304, 305 Professionalism, of writers, 17«, 18, 114, 278 Progressive party, xix, 25, 38, 154, 199, 232, 233, 265, 344, 345, 346 Progymnasmata (Aphthonius), 44 Prooued practise jor all young Chirurgians (Clowes), 36 Propaganda, xiii, xvii, 4, 62, 114, 115, 119, 153, 186 f., 193 ff., 270, 275 ff.; campaigns and special causes, xvii, 7, 8, 11, 104, 189, 191, 212 f., 225, 231 ff., 239, 260, 265, 289 f., 312 f., 341, 344 Protestant Reformation: English translations from Continental reformers, 191, 194, 204-21 passim, 227 ff., 245 f , 269, 272 f.; see also Church of England; Puritan movement Prothalatnion (Spenser), 348« Public opinion: development and control of, 3, 4, 6, 10, 16, 96, 116, 187; see also Propaganda Publishers' dedications to Leicester, 39 ff-. 43. 147. 207 f., 297, 317 f. Puritan movement, 188-96; Leicester as patron of, xvii, 11, 22, 24, 26, 196-99; his protection of preachers in, 199202, 243, 244; his sponsorship of Puritan writings, 202-29 passim, 242-54 passim, 261-65, 269-77; reformers' policy of aggression against Spain, 104, 105, 189, 265, 268 ff., 274, 275, 277> 344; Puritanism at the universities, 120, 129, 130, 134, 137, 138 f.; anti-Catholic campaign supported by, 187-91 passim, 194 ff., 231, 242 f., 24354 passim, 261-65, 269-77, 344; campaign for ecclesiastical reform, 188, 189, 192-94, 198, 199.202, 243, 244, 299, 340; opposition to dancing, 227; to sabbath-breaking, 245; to plays and actors, 254 f., 262, 301, 304 f. Rainolde, Richard, 44 ff., 51, 58 Rainolds, John, 239-41, 307» Ralegh, Sir Walter, 199«, 345«, 349;

392

Index

Ralegh, Sir Walter ( C o n t i n u e d ) patron of N e w W o r l d publicity, xxi, ii Read, Conyers, 79 f. Reading public, xvi, 4; attitudes toward belles-lettres, 16, 18, 278, 300; utilitarian tastes, 16 ff., 57 f.; interest in statecraft, 51; demand for historical writings, 59, 62, 63, 73; interest in translations, 152, 181; consumption of religious writings, 184, 195, 274, 2 9 9 ! Reglas Gramaticales (Corrano), 298 Regiomontanus, Johannes (Johann Mueller), 165 Religious policy: Elizabethan, 187-91; see also Church of England Religious writings, 184-229, 230-77; addressed to Leicester as Puritan patron, xvii, 26; Elizabethan interest in, 184, 274; aristocratic protection of, 184-87; two classes sponsored, 191; see also Anti-Catholic propaganda; Protestant Reformation; Puritan movement Renaissance: in England, xiii, xiv, xv, 4 f . , 12, 118, 119; consummation in poetry and drama, 17, 278; see also Classical learning Reuelation of S. Ihon reueled (Sanforde's trans, of Brocardo), 165, 267 Rhetor ( H a r v e y ) , 324 Rhetorical training: values of, 5, 51, 58, 82, 89, 140, 215, 243, 253, 276, 324; quotation from Rainolde on, 45 Richard III ( M o r e ) , 67 Ridolfi Plot, 164, 215 Rivales ( G a g e r ) , 306 Robsart, A m y , 22, 81 Rogers, Thomas, 146« Roman Catholics: intolerance toward, 29, 198, 234; opposition to translation movement, 37, 154, 182; persecutions of, 86, 89 f., 215, 233; flight of Oxonians to Douai, 134; libels against Leicester, 196, 289, 292; subversive actions, 265 f., 313; see also AntiCatholic propaganda; Jesuits; Spain Romances, 7, 300 Rooting out of the Romishe (Chauncie), 266

Supremacie

Rowbothum, James, 39-46 passim, 298 Royal supremacy, theory of, 61 Roydon, Matthew, 349 "R.S.," 348

58,

Ruines of Time (Spenser), 320, 345, 346, 347. 35° Russell, A n n e (countess of W a r w i c k ) , 22 Russell, Sir William, 312« Safegarde of Societie (Barston), 111 St. Aldegonde, Philip de Marnix de, 106» St. Paul's Children, 301, 303 Sanforde (or Sandford), James, 163-66, 179n, 180, 181, 182, 267 f., 352 Saunder, Nicholas, 350 Scholarship, see Learning Scholemaster ( A s c h a m ) , 144 Sciences, xix, 21, 30 ff.; see also Medicine; Military science Scotland, 192, 314, 316; histories of, 93, 95 Second Frvtes (Florio), 350, 352 Seditious books, proclamations against, 289 Seminaries, Roman Catholic, attacks on, 235, 240 ff. Sermon Preached in S. Maries Church in Shrewesbury ( T o m k y s ) , 225 Sermons on Job (Calvin), Golding's translation of, 217, 218 Sermons vpon the Canticle of Canticles ( B e z a ) , Harmar's translation of, 219 Sermons vpon the x. Commandements (Calvin), Harmar's translation of, 218 Seyssel, Claude de, 104n Shakespeare, William, 62, 306, 307 Sheavyn, Phoebe, 130 (quoted), 15«, lyn Sheffield, Lady Douglas, 24 Shepheardes Calender (Spenser), 32932 passim, 340 f.; October eclogue, 334. 343 Short declaration of the ende of Traytors ( C r o m p t o n ) , 316 Short Treatise of the Sacraments, (Jewel), 225

Index Shute, John, 209 (., 228 Sidney family: patronage, xivn, 11, 12, 321 f.; "Puritanism," 197 Sidney, Sir Henry, 23, 37, 321; patron of Irish histories, n , 87, 91, 92; sponsor of Irish education, 85, 86, 342 Sidney, Mary, see Pembroke, Mary Sidney, countess of Sidney, Mary Dudley, lady, 23 Sidney, Sir Philip, 23, 50,138, 150«, 289; patronage, xivn, 174 f., 289, 308, 321, 327, 328, 335, 341, 348; death of, 25, 274, 279, 319; visit to Campion, 88 f.; opposition to Alcnijon match, 232, 339; translation of Mornay, concluded by Golding, 272 ff.; answer to Leycesters Commonwealth, 290, 291; elegies on, 298, 319-21, 349 f.; associations with Spenser, 320 f., 329-43 passim Simier, Jean de, 24, 232, 279 Singleton, Hugh, 236n, 339*1 Smith, Sir Thomas, 324 Smithus (Harvey), 324 Society of Antiquaries, 74 Solen, Antoine de, 107« Spain: anti-Spanish policy of Leicester's party, xvii, 26, 107, 171 f., 197, 265, 277, 313, 344; power in New World threatened by English, 24, 170; English expeditions against, in Netherlands, 25, 174, 268, 283, 284, 317; Armada defeated, 25, 322; viewed as threat to England, 50, 107, 244, 282; champion of Catholicism, 62, 189, 281; Anglo-Turkish alliance against, proposed, 97 ff.; books on anti-Spanish rebellion in Netherlands, 104-7, 171; England as champion of Protestant world against, 175, 189, 268; Puritan propaganda against, 189, 194, 210; peace negotiations with, 232, 318, 344; collaboration in seditious plots of English Catholics, 233, 265, 266, 288, 313.314 Speculum

Tuscanismi

(Harvey), 333,

337 Specvlvm mordlivm (Case), 307»; first Oxford press book, 296 Spelling, reform of, 294

393

Spenser, Edmund, 62, 86, 150, 163», 268, 292s; career compared with Campion's, 85*1; laments for Sidney, 320 f., 350; allegedly neglected by Leicester, 323; tributes to Elizabeth, 327», 341, 343 f., 347; correspondence with Harvey, 329-34; in attendance on Leicester, 329-32; plans for trip to France in Leicester's service, 330 f.; friendship with Philip Sidney, 330, 331, 332, 342, 343. 348; in Ireland as Grey's secretary, 334, 342; relationship with Leicester, 336-48; was mission to Ireland an exile? 336 ff.; parallels and contrasts with Harvey, 337 f. ; writings considered for possible offensiveness, 338-41; the Greenlaw theory, 339 f. ; ideas compared with those of Leicester's Puritan followers, 339, 340 f.; rewarded rather than punished by appointment to Ireland, 341 ff.; subsequent loyalty to Leicester, in Faerie Queene, 343-46; poems reviving Leicester's memory, 346 f., 348» ; pension from Elizabeth: career evaluated, 348; praised by Florio for gratitude to dead patron, 353 Spoyle of Antwerp (Gascoigne), 171 f. Stage, see Actors; Plays Stanihurst, James, 85, 86 Stanihurst, Richard, 81, 85; contributions to Holinshed's Chronicle of Ireland, 86n, 9r, 92; eulogy of Campion, 91; other works, 92n Stapleton, Thomas, 240 Statecraft, 51, 121 Stationers' Company: Grafton's dedication to, 72; register of, 73/1, 296; monopoly, 295; suit against Oxford printer, 299 Stemmata Dudleiana (Spenser), 332, 337. 346 Stewardship theory of possessions, 103 Stocker, Thomas, 104 ff., 114, 156, 172, 269 Stow, John, 64, 66, 69-80 passim, 94 f., 95n; controversy with Grafton, 66, 71 ff., 75 ff.; other patrons, 72 f., 74, 77, 79; contributions to Holinshed,

Index

394 S t o w , John ( C o n t i n u e d )

and

necessity f o r protection o f ,

34,

79, 80, 93 f., 94 f.; v a l u e as historian

37 f., 154, 181 f . ; associated w i t h Inns

and

of C o u r t , 47, 154, 177-80; sponsored by

propagandist,

80; m e t h o d

and

Leicester, 58, 152-83; extent of, 1 5 5 f . ;

p u r p o s e , 113, 114 Stratioticos

( D i g g e s ) , 283; sccond edi-

of

Englyshe

( S t o w ) , 69-78 passim, ment

to

jor

Supposes

Chronicles

Elizabeth

Wales

and

Parlia-

( P e n r y ) , 299

vetervm

noldcs

and Hart

194; see

of,

Aristotelis

of Hemetes

between

Rai-

( R a i n o l d s ) , 240, 241 the

Heremyte

(Gas-

of Worldlings

Theological

preachments

of free

Treatise

of Morall

wil

( V e r o n ) , 203 Phylosophie

(Bald-

w i n ) , ed. P a l f r c y m a n , 223 of the Church

(Feild's trans, of

M o r n a y ) , 245 ff., 251 (Edmund Dud-

tine L e a g u e , " 249, 250

Dialogue

(Corrano),

135

Linguae

et

Britan-

124, 127, 130,

147,

297n\ n e w a n d e n l a r g e d editions, 127 Th'ouerthrow

of

Stage-Playes

and

betweene

christian

vnchristian

rebellion

( B i l s o n ) , 299 reading

Romanae

(Cooper),

difference

subiection

True order and Methode

a g e study o f , at C a m b r i d g e , 120 f. " T h e o p h i l u s translator," 106/1

(Rain-

o l d s ) , 241

Hystories

of wryting

and

( B l u n d e v i l l e ) , 53,

62 True Report of Famagosta

( M a l i m ) , 97,

99, 102 ff. T u d o r dynasty: d e v e l o p m e n t of patrona g e system by, 3-6, 10; supported by

Bootes

Shooting

concerning (Lucar's

the

trans,

of

Arte

of

Tarta-

teaching of historians, 60 T u r k e y : E l i z a b e t h a n policy c o n c e r n i n g , 96-99; conquest

g l i a ) , 317 Three

rebellion,

299, 316 f.

True

( N o o t ) , 268

T h e o l o g y , E l i z a b e t h ' s e f f o r t t o encour-

Three

lan-

T r e n t , C o u n c i l of, 263; " H o l y T r i d e n -

" T . D . , " 285

nicae

motiva-

English

l e y ) , Stow's transcript of, 69

T h e a t e r s , 10, 15, 302 f., 304

Thesaurus

also

Tree of Commonwealth

c o i g n e ) , 168 f. Tartaglia, Nicholas, 317

Theatre

and

Treatise

Treatise Tale

1 9 1 ; Puritan

against, 60, 75, 162, 181, 214 f., 263 f.,

interpretvm

of the Conference

field,

tion Treason

( S t o w ) , 79

( C a s e ) , 296« Svmme

religious

g u a g e ; Protestant R e f o r m a t i o n

S u r g e r y , w r i t e r s on, 32 ff., 36 Surf ay of London

180; e n g a g e m e n t in to d e m o n s t r a t e fitness for other vocations, 179; i n the

94

( G a s c o i g n e ) , 167

Svmma

motiva-

not confined to classical sources, 154 f.,

S t u r m i u s , 200

Supplication

152 f.;

tions and justifications of, 153, 180 f.;

Stubbs, John, 232, 310, 339 Summarie

in belles-lettres, special protection o f , 182; significance o f ,

tion, 285, 286

Morall

Treatises

(Blundeville),

of

Cyprus

by,

97;

E n g l i s h agent at C o n s t a n t i n o p l e , 99 f. Sermons

. . .

" T . N . , " 95/1, 159/1, 319

Two

( M u n d a y ' s edition of H o m e ' s

trans,

T h r o c k m o r t o n Plot, 3 1 3

of C a l v i n ) , 236 ff.

46

godly

and

learned

T o m k y s , John, 225 T o t t e l ' s Miscellany,

55

U b a l d i n i , Petruccio, 57, 95, 114

T r a d e a r r a n g e m e n t s , 98, 171 Tragicall

Historie

the lowe 104-7,

of Ciuile

Countries

Union Warres

of

Yor\e

( S t o c k e r , trans.),

United

1 7 2 > 2(>9

Translation

movement:

of the Famehes

of Lancastre

and

( H a l l ) , 67 States, patronage of

literature

and learning in, 15 f. opposition

to

Universities: control o f , 10; patronage

Index

395

thies of, 190, 201, 229; anti-Catholic activities of, 233, 235, 239, 240, 241, 313, 339, 352; founded Oxford lectureship, 137», 241; and execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 313, 314, 316 Warfare, see Military science Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, earl of, 22, 2 5> I 37. 197, 229, 321, 328, 346; as military leader, 32, 36, 75; works addressed to, 104, 245, 298, 308; other patronage connections of, 142, 202, 282 Warwick, John of, 45, 142 Varia Opvscvla (Bizari), 139» Westcote, Sebastian, Master of St. Paul's Velutelli, Acerbo, monopoly of Venetian Children, 301, 302,303 trade, 98» "W.F.," see Fulke, William Venice: loss of Cyprus by, 97; English Whetstone, George, 177 policy toward, 98 f. Whitaker, William, 260 Verborvm Latinorvm cvm Graecis White, Sir Thomas, 81, 84» Anglicisqve Conivnctorvm ComWhitgift, John, abp., 79; efforts to immentarij (Morellius, comp.), 147 pose uniformity on Puritans, 190, 201, Vergil, Polydore, 66, 67, 71 202, 228, 243 Vermigli, Pietro Martire, see Martyr, Whitney, Geoffrey: emblem book, 307Peter 11; suit for understewardship of Great Vernacular movement, see English Yarmouth, 310 f. language; Translation movement Wilcox, Thomas, 199, 228, 229, 245» Veron, Jean, 202 ff. Williams, Franklin B., Jr., xvii, 148«, Vertue and the Vertuous Life (Lupton), 355» 290 Wilson, Dr. Thomas, 45, 100, 101, 334; Very brieje and profitable Treatise treatise against usury, 144-46, 280» (Blundeville's trans, of work by "W.L.," 343 Furio), 51 f. Wolfe, John, 95, 96n Veue of the Present State of Ireland Wolfe, Reyner, 77; historical collections, (Spenser), 86, 343 Vestiarian controversy, 200 f. 92, 93 Vidame of Chartres, 327 Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal, 5n View of the Romish Hydra (HumWoodstock, Elizabeth's visits to, 130, phrey), 131, 263, 298 168, 306 Viret, Pierre, translation from, 209 f. Woolley, Sir John, 100», 131, 150, 200 Virgils Gnat (Spenser), 338 f., 340, 342 Woor\e concerning the trewnesse of Vita di Carlo Magno Imperadore the Christian Religion (Mornay, (Ubaldini), 96 trans, by Sidney and Golding), 272 ff. Worlde of Wordes (Florio), 353 Vives, Juan Luis, 5 Wycliffe, John, 62 Wake, Arthur, 200, 228 Young, John, bp., 329 Waldman, Milton, 21 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 11, 170 f., Zabeta (Gascoigne), 168 199«, 243, 274, 284, 319; political ally "Zoilus," 38, 181, 182, 211; "Zoilists," of Leicester, 23, 99, 171, 232, 265; 261 death of, 25, 321; dedications to, 95, Zuccaro, Federigo, 57n 225, 235, 242, 292; Puritan sympa-

of, 116-51; motives of patrons of, 117 fi.; conditions in, at beginning of reign, 119-22, 124 f.; revival following Elizabeth's encouragement, 123, 132, 178; see also Cambridge University; Oxford University University presses, 295, 296 Usury, crusade against, 145 f., 146«, 2800, 281 Utenhove, Charles, 327 Utrecht, Leicester in, 312