The Family of Love and Its Enemies

The Family of Love and Its EnemiesAuthor(s): Christopher CarterSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 651-672Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477986 .

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVII/3 (2006)

The Family of Love and Its Enemies Christopher Carter

Gui!ford College

This article examines the Family of Love in sixteenth-century England, especially the period of intense hostility it engendered from 1578 to 1581. During these years, foes attacked this minor sect as a significant threat to the English church and state. The decline in the assault upon the Family has been attributed by many historians to a concurrent decline in the sect. However, recent research has demonstrated that the Family survived even after 1581, requiring a new explanation for the end of the attacks. The outburst of hostility was an element in a wider struggle for political influence which began with the fall of Archbishop Gnrndal in 1577. Puritans sought to magnify the threat posed by the apparently Catholic Family to indirectly assail their conservative enemies. The attacks ended not because of the elimination of the Family, but due to a political shift which allowed conservatives to silence their puri tan foes.

"Two related questions arise concerning the small religious sect calling itself the Family of Love," Joseph Martin, a Tudor historian studying religious radicals in England, has claimed. First, "why did it attract so much public attention in the England of the 1570s?" Secondly, "why did the Elizabethan establishment become, for a time, so disturbed about it?"1 The religious doctrines of the Family's founder, Hendrik Niclaes, became known in England through translations of his major works in 1574 and 1575. These books detailed his belief in the perfectibility of humanity, the possibility of mystical experiences, and the organization and structure of the "Household" or Family of Love. Starting in 1578, there was a savage attack against Familism in England, beginning with pamphlets directed at the Family's teachings and culminating with a royal condemnation of the sect. This vehement reaction was incongruous both with the actual menace posed by the Faniily and with comparable reactions against other sectarian groups of the period. After 1581, however, these venomous attacks abruptly ceased. The outburst of hostility and its abrupt conclusion remain to be fully explained. This essay investi gates the reasons for both the assault and its cessation, arguing that the attacks upon the Family of Love reflected a struggle within England between reformed and con servative factions competing for influence on English state policy during this period.

Studies on the Family of Love in England have tended to concentrate on the Family's seventeenth-century incarnation during the civil war and interregnum.2

Joseph W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London: Hambleton, 1989), 179. 2See Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (New York: Penguin, 1972); A. G. Dickens,

The English Reformation (London: Schocken, 1964); Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed (Oxford: Claren

don, 1989); Rufus Jones, Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1914); George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1992); A. L. Morton, The World of the Ranters (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970).

651



652 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVIJ/3 (2006)

Only in recent decades has enough research been done on the English Family to separate them from other sixteenth-century sectarian movements. In 1965, Henry Clark still considered the Tudor Family to be an "Anabaptist sect."3 Although Julia Ebel labeled Familists as Anabaptists, she provided a starting point for studying the sixteenth-century Family in England with her 1967 article.4 Clearly the Family's

unorthodoxy was a major factor contributing to its persecution. The Family's beliefs were "a prelude to spiritual anarchy.... Such teachings could not but tempt the ignorant and the weak to fall into grievous sin," concludes Jean Dietz Moss.5 The Family was also accused of libertinism and was rumored to engage in all forms of sexual deviancy. Kristen Poole argues that the "intense anxieties aroused by the Family of Love ... stemmed largely from the perceived social and discursive impli cations of its perfectionist doctrine."6 If Familists could not sin, then no social or cultural norms applied to them.

Since such heterodox beliefs could create the same reaction at any point, why was the attack on the Family of Love largely limited to the period between 1578 and 1581? The Family had existed in England for some years by this point and had already attracted public notice. As early as 1561, the Family of Love was rumored to be established in six counties, London, and the Isle of Ely.7 John Knewstub had preached against the sect at St. Paul's Cross in 1576.8 Nor was the Family of Love the only sectarian group active in sixteenth-century England.9 Existing explana tions for the persecution of the Family also fail to successfully account for its sudden conclusion. Alastair Hamilton attributes the lapse to the "lethargic attitude of many members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy" who were simply lax in punishing heretics.10 Joseph Martin believes that the cessation of the attack was the result of the government's discovery that there were fewer Familists than previously thought, but admits that it is a matter about which "we can only guess." 11

The attack upon the Family of Love must be set within the social and religious context of England in the late 1570s. This assault against the Family can be seen as part of a larger competition between religious and political factions in England.

Mark Konnert has pointed out that many of the Family's most vocal critics during this period were men who could be considered "the hotter sort of Protestants called the Puritanes," those divines who favored the further reformation of the

3Henry Clark, History of English Nonconformity (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 1:129.

4Julia Ebel, "The Family of Love: Sources of Its History in England," Huntington Library Quarterly 30 (1967): 331-43.

5Jean Dietz Moss, "The Family of Love and English Critics," Sixteenth Century Journal 6, no. 1

(April 1975): 51.

6Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 76.

7Jean Dietz Moss, "Godded with God": Hendrick Niclaes and His Family of Love (Philadelphia: Amer ican Philosophical Society, 1981), 74.

8Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981), 128.

9Martin, Religious Radicals, 179.

10Hamilton, Family of Love, 130. 1

Martin, Religious Radicals, 197.



Carter / The Family of Love and Its Enemies 653

English church.12 A faction at Elizabeth's court was sympathetic to the goals of these religious reformers and found themselves struggling against court conserva tives for political influence. Christopher Marsh, who has extensively studied the Family in England, concludes that "the campaign against the Family of Love coin cided with a period during which England's 'puritans' were experiencing a series of deep and interrelated tensions."13 This context helps to explain the timing of the attacks on the Family. The year 1577 was a turning point for both the reform ers and the Family of Love. It marked the suspension of Archbishop Grindal, who had sympathized with the reformers, and the beginning of a vigorous struggle between the reforming and conservative factions at court to influence policy related to Elizabeth's last marriage negotiation and the war in the Netherlands. It also opened the most severe period of attacks on the Family of Love.

This article explores the connections between attacks on the Family and con current struggles over state policy, particularly considering the way that the Fam ily's role as a Catholic sect could be used to the advantage of the reforming party. Expanding on Marsh's conclusion, it argues that reformers made this attack on the Family a key part of their battle with conservatives in this critical period. By tar geting the heresy of the Family of Love, reformers sought to separate themselves from radicalism and to indirectly attack their conservative enemies for failing to recognize the apparent threat posed by this dangerous sect. The reformers tried to transform the Family from a menace to religious peace into a threat to civil peace and to portray Familists, like Catholics, as a subversive group of potential traitors. The result was an exaggeration of both the magnitude and the menace of the Family of Love. Through their own actions, the reformers created an illusion of danger in this period, which then evaporated when the conservative faction tri

umphed and silenced the reformers' attacks. When studying any dissident sect, the historian must accept that most of the

available sources will be hostile, and indeed the bulk of the surviving texts from this period come from authors antagonistic to the Family. In addition to published sermons and pamphlets which include references to the Family, there are also offi cial publications directed against the sect or advertising the conversion of suspected Familists. Fortunately, a few printed works sympathetic to the Family have also survived, sometimes in seventeenth-century editions, allowing for a more balanced view. At least one Familist work even seems to be a direct response to the ongoing attacks of the 1570s.

FAMILISM IN ENGLAND

Hendrik Niclaes, the self-proclaimed prophet of the Family of Love, first taught in Germany and the Netherlands. Questioning the necessity of sin, he stressed the

12William Fulke,^ Brief Confutation (London, 1581), fol. 35r; Mark Konnert, "The Family of Love and the Church of England," Renaissance and Reformation 26 (1991): 155.

13Christopher Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550-1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 126.



654 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXVII/3 (2006)

possibility of human perfection, holding that since the death of Christ any human could live a sinless life. He wrote numerous works detailing his beliefs, signing them with the initials H. N. Some believed that he was claiming to be Homo

Novus, or a new-made man, one who lived without sin. John Rogers held that "H. N. without any distinction does affirm, that he can no more err than Christ." 14 Such a view was heretical, as only Christ could claim such a distinction. Fundamentally, H. N. had revived a positive Pelagian view of the capacities of the human will, one which came into conflict with the more Augustinian view of English puritans on the home island of Pelagius.

The Family was probably established in England during the 1550s and was concentrated in East Anglia.15 It passed through the early years of Elizabeth's reign relatively unmolested. John Jewel did not mention the Family among the "new and very strange sects" in his Apology of 1561 16 In the 1570s, Familists smuggled editions of at least nineteen separate tracts, probably printed at Cologne, into England. The sheer number of surviving copies gives an indication of their contemporary availability and there is ample evidence of their use.17 In 1578

Rogers claimed to have seen eleven of H. N.'s books himself and to have heard about two others from his Familist acquaintances.18 In 1580, John Bourne confessed to having "hidden many books of H. N. behind a chimney in his

kitchen, some in his dye house under a hassock, [and] others in a wool chamber between a bench and a wall."19 These hidden books included at least ten titles. In

addition, a number of Bourne's fellow Familists admitted to having read or seen the works of H. N.20

Up until 1575, there had been only scattered references to the Family in England, and nothing which inspired the violent response of the late 1570s.21 In

14John Rogers, The displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked h?r?tiques, naming themselves the Familie of Love (London, 1578), sig. Dlv. Niclaes himself held that H. N. stood for Helie Nazarenus, or

Elijah the Nazarene. Moss, Godded, 7. 15Two Familists questioned in 1561 claimed that the sect had existed "in the beginning of Queen

Mary's reign." Moss, Godded, 71. The English Family may have begun as early as the reign of Edward VI. Ebel, "Family of Love," 332, 337.

16John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. J. E. Booty (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1963), 42.

17There is some debate about the levels of literacy among Familists. T. Wilson Hayes claims that Familist publications encouraged literacy among the sect. However, the testimony of contemporary Familists casts doubt on this conclusion. In 1561, two Familists maintained that members of the Family "be all unlearned, saving that some of them can read English and that not perfectly. "The evidence sug gests that only the Familist hierarchy ("bishops, elders and deacons") were literate and that they read the works of H. N. to the other members. T.Wilson Hayes, "The Peaceful Apocalypse," Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (Summer 1986): 131-43; Moss, Godded, 70.

18Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. B8v.

19Moss, Godded, 76.

20Moss, Godded, 70, 77. 21A 1561 "Deposition" of two Familists gives evidence of the early activity of the Family in

England. However, many of their beliefs are not representative of Familism, implying an imperfect knowledge of the sect at this point. Moss, Godded, 70-74. John Stow mentions "congregations of Ana

baptists in London, who called themselves Puritans or Unspotted Lambs of the Lord" in 1567, possibly a reference to the perfectionist beliefs of the Family. Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles with Historical




June 1575 though, several Familists were forced to make a public confession at St. Paul's Cross of their "grosse errours," condemning the "damnable errours and her esies" of "the author of that sect H. N."22 That same year, other members of the Family published a defense of their beliefs, A brief rehersall of the belief of the good-will ing in England. This pamphlet tried to allay any fears mainstream society might have of the Family, maintaining that they "live and walk in all dutiful obedience" to the queen and confirming their belief in Trinitarian Christianity.23 There were some negative references to the Family of Love in connection with other sectarian groups in Stephen Bateman's 1577 work The golden book of the leaden goddes, but he did not concentrate upon Familism to the extent of later authors.24

Although religious persecution during Elizabeth's reign did not reach the extremes it had under her sister, the 1570s were a dangerous period for dissent. Religious nonconformity was still a crime in Elizabethan England, punishable by imprisonment or death. In April 1575, a congregation of Dutch Anabaptists was discovered in London and imprisoned. While four of them recanted their heretical beliefs at St. Paul's Cross on 15 May, eleven others were condemned to be burnt later that month. However, these Anabaptists (mostly women) were spared death and merely banished from England on 21 May. Although some received lenient treatment, two members of the congregation were finally burnt at Smithfield on 22 July. Another accused heretic, Matthew Hamont of Hithersey, was burnt on 14 April 1579 for "denying Christ to be our Saviour and publishing divers other horrible heresies." Denying the queen's position as supreme governor of the church was also a capital offense. John Nelson was executed on 3 February 1577/ 8 for refusing to recognize Elizabeth's supremacy.25

Despite the dangers posed by a hostile state, Familist organization spread in the 1570s, possibly building upon the roots of earlier nonconformists.26 John Rogers, a prominent opponent of the Family of Love, claimed in 1578 that "there are in England, at least 1,000 in divers partes of this realm, which do hold this vain & monstrous opinion of H. N."27 He saw a "daily increase ofthis errour," which was

Memoranda by John Stow, the Antiquary, and Contemporary notes of Occurrences, ed. James Gairdner (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965), 143.

22The Confession and Declaration of Robert Sharpe Clerke, and other ofthat Secte, tearmed the Familie of Love, at Pawles Crosse in London (London, 1575); John Stow, The Abridgement or Summary of the English Chronicle (London, 1607), 397. The Privy Council also recorded a reference to actions to be taken

against "Anabaptists and those of the Familie of Love" at this time. Acts of the Privy Council of England (London: HMSO, 1890-1946), 13 June 1575; hereafter APC.

2^A Brief Rehersall of the Belief of the good-willing in England, which are named the Family of Love (Lon don, 1656). Only copies of the seventeenth-century edition of this 1575 work have survived. Moss, "Critics," 41.

24Stephen Bateman, The golden book of the leaden goddes (London, 1577; STC 1586), fol. 33.

25Stow, Chronicle, 393-94, 397, 408, 410. 26M. T. Pearse argues that Familism put down roots where Arianism had earlier been established,

noting that the most prominent English Familist, Christopher Vitel ("their Elder and chief patriarch"), had been an Arian before he found the works of H. N. Even before the introduction of H. N.'s works, perfectionist beliefs appear to have been held by some Arians. M. T. Pearse, From Known Men to Visible Saints (London: Associated University Press, 1994), 154, 157.

27Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. C8r.



656 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVII/3 (2006)

evidence of "our own sloth and negligence" in combating it.28 The next year Wil liam Wilkinson echoed Rogers's fear that "the increase of this Familie is great, & that dayly, because the withstanders are not many."29 Whether Rogers and Wil kinson were correct in their dire reports of the Family's extent and popularity, they reinforced the perception that "those swarmes" of the Family of Love were a growing threat.30 Additionally, the Family's tendency to outwardly conform to established religion, while practicing their own beliefs behind closed doors, made them appear particularly sinister and inspired scurrilous rumors about the nature of their secret meetings.

ATTACKS ON FAMILISM

The assault on Familism began in earnest in 1578, with the publication of John

Rogers's Displaying of an horrible secte ofgrosse and wicked heretiques, naming themselves the Familie of Love (1578) and a public attack on the Family by Lawrence Chaderton at St. Paul's Cross.31 From here the attack escalated: 1579 saw the printing of

Knewstub's A confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies and William Wilkinson's A confutation of certain articles, both of which targeted the Family of Love and its beliefs. John Dyos also condemned the Family in a sermon preached that same year.32 In May 1579, the Privy Council received letters from three Suffolk knights "touchinge the increase of such Sectaries within that countie as pretende to be of the Familie of Love." As a result, the bishop of Norwich was warned to be wary of this "dangerous Sect."33

By 1580, Robert Parsons could declare to Elizabeth I that "there are this day in your Majestites Realme, foure known religions ... the Catholikes, the Protestants, the Puritans and the householders [family] of love."34 In April 1580, the Privy Council recorded the discovery of Familists in Devon and Bedfordshire and sent letters to the sheriff and justice of the peace in Devon, ordering them to assist the bishop of Exeter in dealing with the sect.35 Familism even existed at court; an author claiming to be "one of her Majesty's menial servants, who was in no small esteem with Her" penned a defense of the Family which was presented to Parliament.36

In October 1580 the Elizabethan state formally joined the Family's opponents with a royal proclamation against "certain persons who do secretly in corners make

28Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. A3 v.

29William Wilkinson, A Confutation of certain articles (London, 1579), "Epistle Dedicatorie."

30Wilkinson, "Epistle Dedicatorie." 31Lawrence Chaderton, An Excellent and Godly Sermon (London, 1578).

32John Dyos, A Sermon Preached at St. Paul's Cross (London, 1579). 33APC, 25 May 1579. 34Robert Parsons, A brief discourse containing certain reasons why Catholics refuse to go to Church (Lon

don, 1580), "Epistle Dedicatorie."

35APC,13 April 1580. ^An Apology for the Service of Love, and the people that own it, commonly called, the Family of Love (Lon

don, 1656). Although only a copy from the seventeenth-century edition has survived, the original work dates from the time of Elizabeth.




privy assemblies ... [and] name themselves to be the Family of Love," making the Family the only sect explicitly condemned under Elizabeth.37 That same month the council ordered the imprisonment of two yeomen of the guard, Robert Seale and Thomas Matthew, in Marshallsea for holding "certaine erroneous and false articles gathered out of the bookes of one H. N."38 Meanwhile, the bishop of Ely examined six suspected Familists in Wisbech.39

By late 1580 the Familist threat seemed to have reached its height and the Family of Love its greatest extent. In January 1580/1 the Privy Council heard reports of Familists in Cambridge, Ely, Norfolk, Suffolk, Devon, and Bedford. Additionally, the Family of Love was no longer being seen as just an erroneous sect, but as "tending to the disturbance of the peaceable estate of this Realme."40 Rumors of a Familist-inspired rebellion began to emerge. The situation could not have been improved by the "confession" of Leonard Romsey, a former Familist, who warned of a rebellion "to be looked for ere it be long." Romsey claimed that the Family of Love intended to set up the kingdom of God on earth where "there should be no magistrate, prince, nor palace." This rebellion would begin "when they shall have gotten a complete number of disciples or at least shall be persuaded by their fantastical spirit that they are of sufficient number to undertake the mat ter. "41 Again, whether or not the Family of Love was truly the menace it was made out to be, its appearance was one of a dangerous and subversive group. By 1581, Convocation had recommended the total annihilation of the sect.42 On 15 Febru ary 1580/1, a bill "that the professors of the Family of Love may for the first offence be whipped and for the second branded with this letter H.N., and the third time adjudged a felon" was introduced into the Commons.43

Yet at this moment, when the Family of Love appeared to be at its most threatening, persecution abruptly ended. The new legislation died in parliamentary committee and official oppression stopped. Moss comments that although the anti Familist legislation went through two readings, it did not pass; "for what reason is

37Quoted in Moss, Godded, 74?75. Although dated 3 October, before the imprisonment of the

guards, Stow records that the proclamation was not published in London until 19 October. Stow, Chron

icle, 416.

38APC, 9 October 1580. Both of these guards, along with three others, had been sent before the

bishop of London in 1578 "to conferre with them for their reformation in Religion." APC, 28 Sep tember 1578. One of the imprisoned guards may have been the anonymous author ofAn Apology for the Service of Love. Moss, Godded, 75. A third guard, Anthony Enscombe, was "suspected to be one of the sect of the Familie of Love," but "denied the same before their Lordships." APC, 10 and 11 October 1580.

39Moss, Godded, 75-80.

40APC, 25 January 1580/1. 41 Quoted in Jean Dietz Moss, "Variations on a Theme: The Family of Love in Renaissance

England," Renaissance Quarterly 31 (Summer 1978): 190-91. Given the Family's quiescent nature, it is difficult to believe that such a rebellion was ever planned.

42Moss, Godded, 53. 43T. E. Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (Leicester: Leicester University Press,

1981), 536.



658 Sixteenth CenturyjJotrnal XXXVIJ/3 (2006)

not clear."44 The Acts of the Privy Council record no further mention of the Family of Love as a threat for the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. By 1582, the council had ordered the release of Familists who had been imprisoned in Cam bridgeshire, and it appears that the imprisoned yeomen of the guard had also returned to service.45

One possible explanation of the sudden end of the attacks would be that the Family of Love effectively ceased to exist in England by the 1580s. Indeed, Francis Bacon claimed in 1592 that the Family "by the good blessing of God and by the

good strength of our church, is vanished. "46 Historians tend to concur with this opinion. Felicity Heal believes that the Family of Love began to decline after 1580, but notes that the actual effects of the government's campaign against them "are difficult to determine."47 Moss calls the state campaign against the Family "highly successful on the surface" and finds "no real evidence" of the Family's existence in the later years of Elizabeth's reign.48 Hamilton sees a slow decline in the Family late in the Tudor age, with its final demise occurring around 1606.49

Although there is less evidence of Familist activity in the later years of Eliza beth's reign, there is no indication that the Family ceased to exist, or indeed that it was any weaker after 1580 than it had been before.50 East Anglia continued to be

a stronghold for Familist activity. Marsh has discovered that by the 1590s more than half of the land in Balsham (Cambridgeshire) was held by Familists and their relations.51 Marsh does note, however, that while the Family survived, it "gener ally failed to achieve conspicuous expansion. "52

Certainly from the view of the established religion, Familism continued to be a threat. William Allen mentioned the sects which plagued England in 1584 as "Puritans, Anabaptists, [and the] Brethern of Love."53 In 1585 Archbishop Sandys decried the Family of Love in his "Seventh Sermon."54 Thomas Rogers's Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (1607) contained more references to the Family of Love than to either the Anabaptists or the Brownists.55 Several anti-Familist tracts

44Moss, Godded, 53. The last mention of the bill in Hartley indicates that it was recommitted on

27 February 1581. There had been a debate ("long argued") five days earlier over "whether pains of death might be inflicted to an h?r?tique." Hartley, Proceedings, 539, 540.

45Moss, Godded, 53; Marsh, Family, 198, 204. At least one of the guards was still on the job at the time of Elizabeth's death.

46Quoted in Marsh, Family, 169. 47

Felicity Heal, "The Family of Love and the Diocese of Ely," Studies in Church History 9 (1972): 222.

48Moss, Godded, 53.

49Hamilton, Family of Love, 132.

50Marsh, Family, 196.

51Christopher Marsh, "The gravestone ofThomas Lawrence revisited," in The World of Rural Dis

senters, 1520-1725, ed. Margaret Spufford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 212.

52Christopher Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England (New York: St. Martin's,

1998), 177.

53WilliamAllen,^4 Defense of English Catholics, ed. Robert M. Kingdon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 235.

54John Ayre, ed., Sermons of Edwin Sandys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841), 130.

55Thomas Rogers, Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1854).




also appeared in the early years of the Stuart era.56 King James VI of Scotland had already joined the attack on the Family in his Basilikon Doron, which labeled the Family "a vile sect among the Anabaptists."57

Familist tracts also continued to appear in the late Tudor and early Stuart peri ods, mostly new books along with one printing of a work by H. N. that had existed in manuscript since 1579.58 Most intriguing of all was a "Supplication" from Familists to King James I in 1604 protesting their loyalty to the crown and asking religious toleration for the Family of Love.59 Public awareness of the Family was significant enough during the reign of KingJames for references to it to appear in several popular plays. Charles Cathcart argues that a play called Club Law con tained "oblique allusions to the religious sect," while Robert Schwartz finds refer ences to the Family of Love in Shakespeare's As You Like It.60 By 1608, a play entitled The Family of Love, offering a satirical view of the sect, was produced, and Ben Jonson included an obscure reference to H. N. in his 1610 play The Alche mist.61 Clearly in the early Stuart era, the Family was still well known. While the furor around the Family had died down by the end of the sixteenth century, it does not seem that the Family itself had died out. Indeed, Familism continued to spread into the north of England. By 1627, a new group of Familists had been identified at Grindleton in Yorkshire.62 It is clear from this evidence that Familism did not suddenly disappear after 1580.

PURITANS AND FAMILISM

Explanations for the sudden increase and decrease in attacks on Familism must take into account the overall religious context. Since 1559, the English church had

witnessed struggles between those conservative churchmen who accepted the Elizabethan settlement and the more radical reformers who sought purification of the Church of England along Calvinist lines. Doctrinally, puritans shared much in common with their conservative opponents. While both were suspicious of Catholicism and many believed in predestination, the reformers were more intense and allowed their beliefs to influence other aspects of their political and social lives. For conservatives, conformity and civil order were important goals of religion, but puritans resisted conforming to the established church. They wanted a truly

56y4 Discovery of the Abhominable Delusions of those who call themselves the Family of Love (London, 1622);/! Discovery of the Errors of the English Anabaptists (London, 1623).

57JamesVI/I, Basilikon Doron (Edinburgh, 1603), sig. A4v.

5STemporis filia verita (London, 1589); An Epistle sent unto two daughters of Warwick (London, 1608); The lastTrumpet (London, n.d.); Hamilton, Family of Love, 125.

59Reprinted in A Supplication of the Family of Love (London, 1606). 60Charles Carthcart, uClub Law, the Family of Love and the Familist Sect," Notes and Queries 50

(March 2003): 66; Robert Schwartz, "Rosalynde Among the Familists: As You Like It and an Expanded View of Its Sources," Sixteenth Century Journal 20 (1989): 69-76.

61[Thomas Middleton], The Family of Love (London, 1608); Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (London, 1610), act 5, scene 5.

62Stephen Denison, The White Wolf (London, 1627), 39. This group oP'Grindletonians" may have

merged with early Quakers during the civil war period, although Hamilton expresses doubts that they were true Familists. Hamilton, Family of Love, 135.




reformed church and a Protestant state policy that would influence England's foreign affairs.

Elizabeth's first archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, had tried to con tain the purifying tendencies of the reformers, but by the 1570s the reformers were growing in strength and increasingly pushed their own goals. In 1572 reformers in the House of Commons had been worrisome enough for Elizabeth to prorogue Parliament after an attack on the existing church contained in The First and Second Admonitions to Parliament.63 In 1572 Parker compared the reformers to the Anabap tists at Miinster and feared that "the more they [puritans] write, the more they shame our religion; the more they be applauded too."64 Reformers were even more threatening because they had powerful allies supporting them at court, including patrons such as Francis Knollys and Francis Walsingham as well as the earls of Leicester, Bedford, Warwick, and Huntington.

By the mid-1570s, the reformers seemed to be well placed and growing in

strength. Their position may have influenced the surprising choice in 1575 of the archbishop of York, Edmund Grindal, to succeed Parker at Canterbury. Walsing ham, as well as other supporters of the reformed faction at court, strongly favored this election.65 Although not a puritan himself, Grindal was certainly sympathetic to the goals of the reformers. A former Marian exile, he had encouraged the "prophesyings" in northern England while at York.66 He even opposed the impo sition of the new Gregorian calendar because he found it too popish.67 Grindal's elevation to the primacy was seen by many reformers as a positive sign and as the beginning of more radical reforms in the English church.68 Puritans expected him to embrace the Geneva Bible, enact modest reforms, and lift the pressure for con

formity.69 Reformers such as Josias Nichols later remembered Grindal's period of office as "a golden time, full of godly fruit [when] many thousands were converted from atheism and popery and became notable Christians."70

Grindal's rise reflected the ascendancy of the reformed faction at court and in the English state.71 Yet within eighteen months Grindal was suspended, dashing the hopes of the reformers. Grindal's fall from power in 1577 marked the begin ning of a new struggle between reformers and conservatives at court in which the former found themselves at a disadvantage because of their sympathy with the puritans' nonconformity and innovation.

63 Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy: 1572-1588 (Princeton: Princ eton University Press, 1981), 65.

64Quoted in MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth, 77. 65Patrick Collinson, "The Downfall of Archbishop Grindal and Its Place in Elizabethan Political

and Ecclesiastical History," in The English Commonwealth: 1547?1640: Essays in Politics and Society, ed. Peter Clark, Alan Smith, and Nicholas Tyacke (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), 52.

66Moss, Godded, 29. 67Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 270.

68Collinson, "Downfall," 43.

69MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth, 82.

70Quoted in Collinson, Grindal, 287.

71Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), 191.




The immediate cause of Grindal's fall was his refusal to suppress the prophesy ings favored by puritans as a means of education and disputation. Reformers viewed the free debate of religious topics among clerics and even laity as beneficial to spreading the true religion, building on the reformed assumption that Christian truths could be learned from the scriptures without any need of papal or clerical authority. However, by 1576 such prophesyings had become too radical for Eliza beth and the church establishment, providing an arena for radical preachers and deprived ministers.72 The suspension of Grindal and the suppression of the proph esyings by more conservative clerics also marked the beginning of a general reac tion against the reformers and their political influence at court. Patrick Collinson argues that Grindal's suspension reflected an ongoing debate not only in religion but also in state policy, foreign and domestic.73

In the late 1570s, the succession was a dominant issue. By 1578, the question of Elizabeth's successor had become acute as Elizabeth (now forty-five years old) was beyond childbearing years.74 That year marked a blow to the hopes of the reforming cause with the death of Elizabeth's Tudor cousin and heir presumptive, Lady Mary Keyes (nee Grey), the most plausible Protestant successor to the English throne. Unless Elizabeth were to marry and produce an heir of her own, it was inevitable that her crown would pass to a successor who was foreign, Catholic, or both.75 Yet to the dismay of the reformers, who were hostile to the suggestion of a Catholic match for Elizabeth, in 1578 the council reopened marriage negotia tions with the Duke of Anjou.76 The possibility of a Catholic prince on the throne of England horrified the reformers, who could not help but remember the reign of Philip and Mary. Some even feared that England might be reduced to a province of France should the marnrage take place. Opposition to the potential Anjou mar

riage was expressed byJohn Stubbs in his Discoverie of agapinggu!f whereinto England is like to be swallowed by an other French marriage (1579), which appealed to both

English religion and nationalism. "We shall find the Church undermined by the Pope," warned Stubbs, and "the very foundations of our commonweal danger ously digged at by the French."77 Elizabeth condemned this "seditious book of late rashly compiled" and ordered all copies of it destroyed, while Stubbs's right hand was cut off as punishment for authoring the text.78


73Collinson, Grindal, 258.

74The average age for menopause in this period was around forty. Williams, The Later Tudors

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 506.

75Ignoring distant descendants of Edward III, Elizabeth's closest adult heirs were her cousins Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) and Margaret Stanley (n?e Clifford, Countess of Derby), both of whom were

Catholic and unacceptable to puritans. 76See Wallace T. MacCaffrey, "The Anjou Match and the Making of Elizabethan Foreign Policy,"

in The English Commonwealth, ed. Clarke, 59-76.

77John Stubbs, Discovery of a Gaping GulfWhereinto England is Like to be Swallowed by Another French

Marriage, ed. Lloyd Berry (Charlottesville: University ofVirginia Press, 1968), 4.

78Stubbs, Discovery of a Gaping Gulf, 148.




The reformed position was further weakened when two of their court sup porters, Leicester and Walsingham, fell out of favor with the queen in 1580.79 Sir Christopher Hatton, a staunch conservative and supporter of the faction that had helped to bring down Grindal, took Leicester's place as the queen's favorite.80 Abroad, the situation was also becoming grim. In Scotland, the Catholic duke of Lennox had become the dominant figure at the court ofJames VI, and reformers feared he would renew Scotland's connection with France and overturn the reformed religion.81 Additionally, in 1580, the Jesuits Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion arrived in England, reinforcing the danger of a Catholic threat to which the reformers were extremely sensitive.82 Thus the years leading up to 1580 were increasingly troubled ones for the reformed faction.

These years also marked the beginning of the most vehement attacks on the Family of Love. The campaign against the Family resulted from the actions of reformers who were anxious to highlight the continued dangers of Catholicism and to stress their own position as a bulwark against it. Most of the prominent opponents of the Family of Love were committed reformers. William Charke was a leading puritan divine known for his polemics against the Jesuits. John Knewstub (an associate of Stubbs) was a staunch foe of Catholicism who tumed his rectory of

Cockfield into a puritan center.83 John Rogers divided humanity into "the reprobate, who indeed feel in this life a hell in their conscience, [and] God's children [who] do feel themselves wounded with sin, even to death, but by grace given from above, they do apply that sovereign salve, that wholesome medicine, Christ Jesus."84 Several of their works contained dedications which showed affinity towards members of the reforming faction at court. Rogers dedicated one of his works to Walsingham, while Knewstub's book was dedicated to the earl of

Warwick, Leicester's brother. Wilkinson's contained a foreword by Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, hoping "that our Church of England might be well weeded from to[o] to[o] gross errors, for it is high time."85 Thus the most prominent of the Family of Love's enemies were aligned with the reformed movement within English society.86

79Collinson, Elizabethan, 200. Leicester had married Lettice Knollys but kept the wedding secret

from Elizabeth.

80Collinson, "Downfall," 47.


82Williams, Later Tudors, 296.

83Stubbs mentions Knewstub in a letter to Lord Willoughby dated 1586. Stubbs, Discovery of a

Gaping Gulf, 127.

84Rogers, Displaying of an horrible secte, sig. E7v.

85Wilkinson, "Epistle Dedicatorie." Cox is a difficult figure to locate on a simple reformer conservative scale. Although he was a Marian exile and was seen as sympathetic to the reformers early in his career, by the 1570s he was generally known as a conservative cleric who opposed the puritans.

Although he tried to aid Grindal after his suspension, he was also a target for puritan preachers in

Cambridgeshire. Collinson, "Downfall," 52; Eugene Bourgeois, "The Queen, a Bishop and a Peer: A

Clash for Power in Mid-Elizabethan Cambridgeshire," Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995): 3-15.

86Heal, "Family of Love and the Diocese of Ely," 222.




Reacting to the twin threats of aggressive Catholicism abroad and the possi bility of a Catholic marriage at home, these reformers attempted to present the Family of Love as a dangerous crypto-Catholic force within England. Their writ ings were largely responsible for the disproportionate amount of attention which the Family received. These attacks appear to have been calculated to help the reformers in their struggle against the conservatives by demonstrating the laxity of the conservative faction in dealing with eminent danger, while separating the reforming puritans from the true radicals.87 The Family's enemies may have felt they had something to fear from a conservative victory. Charke had already been expelled from Peterhouse, Cambridge, for his antiepiscopal beliefs. (He was later deprived by Whitgift.) The reformers sought to emphasize the danger papists posed to England at a time when the threat of Catholicism was growing stronger from France, Spain, Scotland, and even the queen's own potential husband.88 The reformers also hoped to distance themselves from the tinge of radicalism by target ing the heretical Family.

Why should these reformers choose an indirect attack on the Family of Love instead of simply attacking the English Catholic population directly? The views of several of the reformers indicated that this choice was not an either/or proposition. Charke was well known for his polemics against Edmund Campion, a prominent Jesuit captured in this period. Knewstub demonstrated his dual convictions in 1579 when he published not only A Confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies against the Family of Love but also A Confutation of the Principle Points of Popery. Other reformers may have concentrated upon Familists because of their local environ

ment. Familism appears to have been strongest in East Anglia, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely, counties which were also home to the Familists' strongest oppo nents. Knewstub held his rectory in Suffolk while Wilkinson and Charke were at Cambridge. Perhaps the prevalence of Familism in their immediate locality made it appear to be a more prominent threat to these reformers. Both Knewstub and Rogers also personally encountered Familists and engaged them in debate. Rogers claimed that he had been "familiar with some of them of long time, and have had large discourses and conference with many of them."89 Additionally, Familism was a relatively new sect; unlike Catholicism, it was not well known in the 1570s and thus may have appeared more insidious. In 1578 Rogers bemoaned the fact that "there are many deligent and godly teachers, which in places convenient do invey and impugn the doctrine of the family of Love, and yet are not thoroughly acquainted therewith."90 Thus reformers sought to promote the poorly known Family as a dangerous force.


88Wallace Kirsop even suggested that Anjou's circle contained members of the continental branch of the Family of Love. Wallace Kirsop, "The Family of Love in France," Journal of Religious History 3

(December 1964): 103-18.

89Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. A4v.

90Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. A2v.




Once they had created a menace, the reformers found that they could use the failure of state and church representatives to repress the Family of Love as a way of indirectly attacking or discrediting their conservative enemies. In 1579 the Family became a political issue in the struggle between reformers and conservatives in Norfolk. Edmund Freke, the bishop of Norwich, "that most puritan of sees," was a former reformer who had in recent years become more conservative, and who was responsible for the suspension of several Norwich preachers in 1576.91 Reformers blamed Freke's actions and the subsequently vacant benefices for an upsurge of separatism in the county, which included the beginning of Robert Browne's ministry.92 The Acts of the Privy Council recorded that Familist activity also began to increase in Suffolk, a county known for its puritan leanings. Instructed by the Privy Council to look into matters, Freke reported that there was no Familist activity, claiming that he was being targeted by reformers in Suffolk as revenge for his actions.93 "I have not heard of any other [Familists] than those that be in prison at Norwich and Burie, and therefore do thinke that the information given in that behalf is but officiosa guadam seduulitas in some, cunningly to accuse me of negligence."94 Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, was another reforming cleric who had become more conservative with age. His diocese of Ely was well known for Familist activity, and Cox himself was a favorite target for local puritans.95

The discovery of Familists among the yeomen of the guard also provided an opportunity for an attack upon the rising conservative powers at court. Familists appeared to have established a position for themselves in Elizabeth's court, com fortable enough for one of them (referred to only as E. R.) to write a defense of the Family.96 In October 1580, the council had imprisoned three guards when it found that they were Familists.97 The discovery of Familism so close to Elizabeth was embarrassing enough, but even worse, the same men had been earlier ques tioned and found "in all pointes of religion verie sound" by the conservative bishop of London, John Aylmer!98 Reformers could now paint the conservative court faction as soft on heresy, ignorant even of the sectarian threat at court. Thus

91MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth, 84; Collinson, Grindal, 284.

92Collinson, Elizabethan, 202-4.

93APC, 25 May 1579.

94Quoted in Marsh, Family, 129.

95Bourgeois, "The Queen, a Bishop and a Peer," 9.

96Marsh identifies E. R. as Robert Seale, who as one of the yeomen of the guard, wore the

queen's emblem "E[lizabeth] R[egina]." Marsh argues that Seale may have considered himself under

royal protection, implying that "his own religious position bore similarities to the Queen." However, this patronage (real or imagined) could not have been responsible for the Family's lenient treatment after

1581, given Elizabeth's hostile reaction to them in 1580. While Marsh further speculates about the pos sible existence of a group of court Familists, he admits that it is difficult to identify members of the

Family at court with any certainty. Marsh, Family, 108, 121-22, 133.

97APC, 9 October 1580; 10 and 11 October 1580. Also imprisoned (in November) was a

Thomas Seal, for "certen lewde and unreverent speeches of the Council, tending to charge them with

injustice in the punishing of certen persons whom they had committed for their heresies and opinions." Thomas was probably the brother of Robert Seale, one of the imprisoned guards. APC, 30 November 1580.

98APC, 12 October 1578.




in the period around 1580, the persecution of the Family of Love took on a polit ical character. Reformers began to use suspicion of the Family as a method of pro

moting their own position and attacking their opponents for dereliction of duty. By examining the politicization of the anti-Familist campaign under one of

their opponents, John Knewstub, it is easy to see how the attacks on the Family of Love fit into the wider context of the Elizabethan state. Knewstub became the most prominent voice against the Family of Love during the height of its suppres sion. His background is unmistakably that of a puritan. The rector at Cockfield, he led a group of Suffolk preachers who supported the prophesyings. He also sup ported fasting, another practice looked upon with suspicion by the state, and he had links to the Dedham Conference.99 In 1582 he took part in an assembly of sixty ministers at Cockfield who debated the validity of the Book of Common Prayer. Later he served as one of Leicester's chaplains in the Netherlands and was one of the four puritan representatives at the Hampton Court Conference.100 Knewstub concerned himself with both preserving the reputation of the reformers and attacking the Family of Love. He was especially determined to separate godly reformers from heretical sectaries in the minds of the people. Knewstub knew that "a number in this land, upon false alarm, have been in a vain jealousy and fear of Puritanism."101 In this period, "puritan" could be interpreted to mean free from sin or perfect, and many suspected that the reformers might believe in the same sort of radical perfectionism as some of the sectarians. Charke echoed this fear that "all [the godly] in England [will] either be charged with the odious name of Puritanes, or with the most execrable abominations of the Family of Love."102

Thus reformers sought to distance themselves from the charge that they were radical perfectionists by labeling Familists as the true "puritans." Knewstub redirected criticism of the reformers towards the Family of Love: "brag they of all perfection, even unto a very deifying of themselves, what mischief therefore you fear might come from Puritans, that look for assuredly at their hands.... If you seek after Puritans, these they be."103 Knewstub also reprinted a letter by Charke, who reached the same conclusion, holding that the Family of Love was the "true succession of those ancient Catharists & Puritans, who thought themselves not to sin, but actually to be possessed with absolute holiness and pureness."104 Later, in a preface to his Basilikon Doron, James VI claimed that the term puritan "doth

"Konnert, "Family of Love and Church of England," 160.

100Collinson, Elizabethan, 386.

101John Knewstub, A Confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies (London, 1579), fol. **4r. 102William Charke, A replie to a censure (London, 1581), sig. Plr.

103Knewstub, Confutation, fol. **4r.

104Knewstub, "The judgement of a godly learned man." In response, the Family of Love appears to have attacked the puritan's doctrine of predestination because it allowed reprobates, having no

chance at salvation, to behave however they wished. "Your licentious doctrine of Predestination and free election [is enough to] fill all the prisons almost in England." Quoted in Wilkinson, "Epistle Ded

icatorie," fol. 4r.




properly belong only to ... the Family of Love; because they think themselves only pure, and in a manner, without sin."105

Knewstub sought to make the Family into a political issue, not just a religious one. He wanted the state to see Familists as a civil threat, a domestic underground movement already established inside England.106 Just as court reformers attacked English Catholics as a way of pushing their anti-Catholic foreign policy, so Knew stub attacked the Family of Love as a way of bringing attention to the reformers' domestic policy. Knewstub began his Confutation by warning that "civil war is always more dangerous than foreign force." He attacked the Family's tendency to dissemble and their outward conformity as "the continuance of friendship as they pretend unto religion."107 In An Answer unto a Wicked and Infamous Libel in 1579, John Rogers had warned the Family of Love "that if you take not better heed, you will fall from heresy to treason." 108 Now Knewstub portrayed the Family of Love as a direct threat to not only the church or the faithful, but to the state as well. Like the English Catholics, members of the Family of Love should be seen as traitors,

who owed their loyalty to a foreign power. He appealed to Elizabeth to draw the sword of state "upon these horrible treasons, which are in a high hand committed directly against [her] own person."109 Following Knewstub, the reformers sought to transform the Familists from heretics into traitors, thus making a religious issue a political asset in their struggle.

The Family did not passively accept these attacks. Throughout the same period, Familist tracts appeared that gave their side of the story. In 1579, the pref ace of a Familist book specifically denounced the attacks on the Family by Bate man, Rogers, and Knewstub.110 Most effective was An Apology for the Service of Love, written at Elizabeth's court as a kind of Socratic dialog discussing the beliefs of the Family. The anonymous author sympathetically presented Familists as loyal subjects of the queen, wrongfully defamed by "envious and blasphemous tongues."

While their enemies accuse them of denying the Trinity and the Lord's Prayer and of libertinism, the Family maintained that they truly kept the Lord's command ments. Those who attacked the Family were merely "they that such as presume to teach others the way of eternal life, before ever they have walked therein them selves. "111 Even H. N. contributed to the defense of his Family, sending a letter "unto the right reverend bishops" of England in which he argued that the Family was composed of law-abiding, loyal people who were no threat to the state.112

105JamesVI/I, Basilikon Down, sig. A4v.

106Moss, Godded, 47.

107Knewstub, Confutation, fol. *2.

108John Rogers, An answer unto a wicked and infamous libel (London, 1579), "A reply to CV"

109Knewstub, Confutation, fol. **6r. 110Nazarenus Abia, A Reproof Spoken and Given forth against all False Christians (London, 1579).

Martin suggests that this work was written by Christopher Vitel, who was responsible for translating H. N.'s works into English. J. W Martin, "ChristopherVitel: An Elizabethan Meckanick Preacher," Six

teenth Century Journal 10, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 20.

111Apology for the Service of Love, 4, 18, 54.

112Hamilton, Family of Love, 129.




In their attacks, the reformers began to blur the distinction between Familists and Catholics, portraying both of them as threats to civil and religious peace. Could the Family of Love be viewed as a Catholic sectarian movement? The tra ditional view of sects is that they were the result of the division of the church during the Protestant Reformation. Catholics found it pleasantly ironic that "the unity of Christ's church once broken ... the Protestants themselves should [now] be cumbered of sects and opinions." 113 However, many reformers had no problem in seeing the possibility of Catholic sectarians. William Fulke maintained that "no heresy could spring ... out of the doctrine of Luther so far as it was consonant to the word of God." 114 Charke denied that "all the former heresies join against the

Romish Church." 115 Knewstub went further, claiming that while "papists pretend great enmity" towards the sectarians, they did little to oppose them. "For twenty of our fields fought against them, they are not able to show two: for a hundred strokes given by us, they are scarce able to show one."116 Later, Francis Knollys associated the Family with the Jesuits, while Thomas Cartwright (Stubbs's brother in-law) defended puritan teachings as a way to combat the spread of both popery and the Family of Love.117

The association of Catholicism with the Family in the 1570s originated in the first major anti-Familist work of the period, Rogers's Displaying of an horrible secte. In order to discredit the Family, he attacked their encouragement of Catholi cism.118 Rogers charged that the Family "commend the Pope and Cardinals, and allow the Mass & other ceremonies," while H. N. spoke "with the same lying spirit that is in the Pope, affirming the self same thing."119 "He extolls the Pope to be the great Priest of the West" and was, in Rogers's opinion, "a right chicken of the Church of Rome."120 Charke also maintained that the Family "acknowledge the ministrie of the word to come from the Pope."121 Indeed, H. N. did consider the pope to be the "chief-annointed" elder of the Family.122 John Bourne, a Wis bech Familist, confessed in 1580 that H. N. "defendeth the Church of Rome as the true Catholic Church and accurseth those which have forsaken the same."123 Later writers followed Rogers's lead, accusing the Family of Love of crypto Catholicism. Knewstub declared that "the Papists hav[e] mo[r]e things in common with them than we."124 Because Niclaes had started from a Catholic position, his

113Allen, Defense of English Catholics, 234.

114Fulke, Briefe Confutation, fol. 13v.

115Charke, A replie to a censure, sig. PI v.

116Knewstub, Confutation, fol. **2r.

117Hamilton, Family of Love, 134; Moss, Godded, 53.

118The Family had also been associated with Catholicism by their continental enemies. Hamilton,

Family of Love, 134.

119John Rogers, Horrible secte, sigs. B8, Dir.

120John Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. D2v.

121Charke, A replie to a censure, sig. P3r.

122Quoted in Ebel, "Family of Love," 335.

123Quoted in Moss, Godded, 79.

124Knewstub, Confutation, fol.**2v.



668 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXV11/3 (2006)

Family could certainly be seen as a Catholic sectarian movement. Familists were also sympathetic to some points of Catholic theology.

There were three major points of contention between the reformers and the Familists: religious authority versus scriptural authority, the efficacy of good works versus predestination, and the nature of humanity. In each case, the Family took a position that could be interpreted as Catholic. For reformers, scripture alone was sufficient; it needed no other authoritative interpretation.125 Yet Familism held

that the authority of H. N. was as great as that of the scriptures, and that he was "a new authority to preach a new gospel to the world."126 Rogers claimed that

Familists held that H. N.'s "bookes are of equal authoritie with the holie scripture, and are written in the same spirit. "127 In addition, Familism derided the ability of the scripture-learned to teach religious truth; such knowledge was irrelevant to salvation.128 H. N. dismissed as "all false and lies" that which the "ungodly and unilluminated men out of the imagination of their knowledge & out of their learnedness of the scripture bring forth, institute, preach and teach." He held that "they preach indeed the letter, but not the word of the living God."129 The Family of Love believed that "no man be never so learned or godly, can understand or interpret the Scripture, but only the Elders in the Family."130 Knewstub raged against Familists who felt that "they have the sense, and we nothing but the words, they have the spirit, and we nothing but the letter, that they have the life, and we the body, they have the kernel and we the shell, they have the sword, and we the

scabbard."'131 This new authority claimed by H. N. challenged the reformers' religious practice in a way that was not dissimilar to the Catholic authority against

which they struggled. The reformers and the Family also disagreed over the role of good works in

salvation. Rogers contrasted the two viewpoints: The Family of Love "agrees with the Papists, in extolling works as efficient causes of our salvation," while the reformers held that "ChristJesus is ... the immediate and only cause of our salva tion ... the true use of works is placed, not as any cause, but as the fruits of our jus tification."132 For the reformers, good works served to demonstrate the elected status of an individual, not as a means of election. While the elect were destined to salvation, even they were not without sin. "A faithful man can never be without good works, no more than fire can be without heat. And yet a faithful man is not without sin, as H. N. does avow of his regenerate man."133 Unlike the reformers, the Familists held a positive view of salvation; it was possible for an individual to



127Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. B8r.

128Martin, Religious Radicals, 189.

129Quoted in Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. D7r.

130John Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. Ilr.

131Knewstub, Confutation, fol.*4v.

132Rogers, Horrible secte, sigs. C2, D2v.

133Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. E7r.




merit salvation, to do good works which counted towards election, and even to improve the self to the point of divinity.

Thus the Family of Love challenged the reformers on their most characteristic belief: predestination. Following Calvin, reformers thought that salvation or dam nation was predetennined by a process of double election: some were destined to be saved, others condemned. Familist notions challenged such a viewpoint, and could not accept predestination.134 Instead, they believed that "the godly have in themselves free will to do good."l135 Rogers held that the Family of Love "despised all manner of religion, especially those of Calvin and Luther, affirming that of all others they were the worst."136 Wilkinson agreed that "this lovely Family [cannot] abide the most blessed and comfortable doctrine of predestination."137 The self improving soteriology of the Family of Love was seen by the reformers as reminis cent of Catholicism and as a danger to the social stability mandated by God. This positive theory of salvation was another point of contention which the reformers viewed as evidence of Catholicism.

The final point of conflict was over the very nature of humanity. Reformers held that even the elect were intrinsically imperfect and sinful. Familists, however, believed in the possibility of the perfection of all individuals. While the elders of the Family may appear to have been simply a Familist elect, there was a difference. For the reformers, the elect were determined by God from the beginning. For the Family of Love, all individuals were potentially perfect. This belief in the possibil ity of perfectionism was the essence of the Family of Love. H. N. had declared that humans could become so perfect that they would experience apotheosis and become divine, literally being "Godded with God."'138 Members of the Family believed that they "live perfectly and sin not." "He which is one of their congre gation, is either as perfect as Christ or else a very devil."'139 Familists even held that every man is his owne Savior and a Christ for him selfe," a process which Knew

stub feared would "turn religion up side downe, and build heaven heere upon earth, make God, man: and man, God: heaven, hell & hell heaven."140 The reformers viewed this optimism with distrust. For them, the Familists were claim ing the impossible, agreeing "with the Papists, namely in the possibility of the Law to be kept of every one that will seek to perform the same."141

Notably, the Family of Love were often compared to other sectarians who shared this view in the possibility of free will and radical self-improvement, such as the Freewill men and the Pelagians. Rogers claimed that the Family of Love

134Pearse, From Known Men to Visible Saints, 164. In Apology (35), the author suggests that only two have been predestined in history: Christ (to salvation) and the Antichrist (to condemnation).

135Quoted in Wilkinson, "Epistle Dedicatorie," fol. 4r.

136John Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. B6r.

137Wilkinson, "Epistle Dedicatorie," fol. 4r. 138H. N. used the phrase "mit Gode vorgodet" to describe this process. Quoted in Ebel, "Family

of Love," 333-34.


140Knewstub, Confutation, fol. *4v.

141Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. D3r.




"follow the steps of the Pelagians and Papists directly," and that the English church faced the danger of papists "on the one side and the Anabaptists, Free will men,

Arians, Pelagians and the Family of Love on the other."142 While some may have

held the view that the individual could lead a blameless life, the reformers could

not accept this positive philosophy of humanity. These conflicts in practice and

doctrine give an idea of why the reformers reacted to the Family of Love and how

they were able to see the Family as a Catholic threat to sixteenth-century England.

Knewstub seemed to have had some success in politicizing the struggle against

the Family of Love. He already had some connections at court, as evidenced by his

presentation to the rectory of Cockfield by Sir William Spring in 1579 and a letter

which he reprinted the same year from his "poore friend always assured, L. T."

from the court at Whitehall.143 After 1579, the campaign against the Family

reached its most intense stage, and many believed that the Familists represented a

very real danger. In this period of heightened fears, Romsey's confession of an

"infinite number" of Familists planning an insurrection "in all the countries of

Christendom" was not dismissed as lightly as it might have been.144 The reformers had successfully portrayed the Family of Love as a danger out

of all proportion to the actual threat it presented. This minor sect was now discov ered to exist across southem England, from Cambridgeshire to Devonshire.145 In

October 1580, Bishop Cox of Ely rounded up and questioned several suspected Familists, an action approved by a grateful Privy Council.146 Also in 1580, Eliza

beth issued her proclamation against the Family of Love, ordering that "all her

officers and ministers temporal ... [should] assist the archbishops and bishops of her realm ... to search out all persons duly suspected to be either teachers or professors of the foresaid damnable sects, and by all good means to proceed severely against them."147 In January 1581, at the height of the campaign, the Acts of the Privy Council for the first time found the Family of Love to be not just a heretical sect, but a real danger to the state. Thus the reformers had succeeded in highlighting the

Catholic elements of the Family of Love. Like English Catholics, the Familists were now viewed as potential traitors and conspirators. Knewstub's position in this

politicization of the Family was clear. Having "discovered divers of the said sect in

the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Elye, and induced sondrie of them to the acknowledgment of their fault," the Privy Council on 25 January 1580/1 appointed Knewstub "to attende upon them herewith, praying them to

enform themselves more amplie and particularly touching the said matter."148

Knewstub became the council's point man on Familism.

142Rogers, Horrible secte, sig. F7r.

143Knewstub, Confutation, fol. 94v.

144Moss, "Variations," 190-91; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "John Knewstub

(1544-1624)," ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 145

APC, 13 April 1580.

146APC, 31 October 1580.

147Quoted in Moss, Godded, 74-75.

148APC, 25 January 1580/1.




END OF THE ATTACKS

Just as the increase in attacks on the Family was linked to the efforts of the reform ers, so the decline in the attacks coincided with the growing power of conserva tives at the court. The parliament of 1581 was the point at which conservatives, such as Sir Christopher Hatton and John Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, reached their ascendancy. During that parliament conservatives played prominent roles;

Whitgift was prolocutor of the lower house, and conservative bishops held a strong position in the Lords.149 Frustrating the goals of the reformers, court and church officials stymied attempts to put through bills against the Family of Love and English Catholics.150 By 1581 John Aylmer, bishop of London, had turned the Ecclesiastical Commnission into a conservative force, using it to harass nonconform ists and to suppress conventicles.151 Additionally, the deaths of many Elizabethan bishops in the 1580s allowed the older generation of Marian exiles to be replaced by younger, more conservative men.152

The early 1580s signaled an end to the campaign against the Family and the rise of a conservative reaction against the reformers. The election of Whitgift to Canterbury after Grindal's death in 1583 merely confirmed the conservative vic tory. Whitgift's policies began the suppression of the reformers and the puritan clerics, while largely ignoring the Family of Love which had attracted so much attention earlier.153 In the 1580s, radical puritanism was more worrisome to the Elizabethan state than Roman Catholicism or Familism.154 As the conflict came to a resolution, the Family ceased to appear to be the threat which reformers had made it during their struggle with the conservatives. Whitgift's actions to force preachers to conform weakened the reformers and prevented them from continu ing to publish their attacks against the Family of Love. Although puritans might protest the deprivation of so many godly ministers at a time "whenJesuits, those of the Family of Love and others of all sorts swarm," the conservatives had tri umphed.155 Even Knewstub himself conformed in 1584 rather than lose his job.156

In the early 1580s the apparent threat of the Family of Love to the state ebbed. A major reason for this change in perception was the ascendancy of the conserva tive faction. Conservatives were not as rabidly anti-Catholic as the reformers and did not perceive the Family of Love (whether Catholic or sectarian) to be much of


150Collinson, "Downfall," 55.Williams, Later Tudors, 290. The committee to which the anti Familist legislation was recommitted was composed of James Croft, Christopher Hatton, Walter Mild

may, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Heneage. Marsh, Family, 132.


152MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth, 95. 153Viviene Sanders, "John Whitgift: Primate, Privy Councilor and Propagandist," Anglican and

Episcopal History 56 (1987): 385. Whitgift s actions helped to inspire the Martin Marprelate tracts.

154Sanders, "John Whitgift," 403.

155Quoted in Collinson, Elizabethan, 247.





a threat.157 Indeed, some characteristics of the Familists may have even appealed to the conservatives. The Family of Love's outward conformity to the state religion

may have been more acceptable than the reformers' blatant challenges to the reli gious settlement.158 The Elizabethan settlement respected religious conscience and perhaps quiet Familists were more attractive subjects than outspoken puritans.159 Cecil later wrote (in defense of English treatment of Catholicism) that some Cath olics were not "for their contrary opinions in religion prosecuted." Similarly, after the early 1580s, the Family of Love was not "willingly searched in their con sciences for their contrary opinions that savor not of treason."160

CONCLUSIONS

The attacks mounted against the Family of Love in the period 1578-81 cannot be understood separately from the ongoing domestic struggle within England. From the dismissal of Archbishop Grindal, reformers were on the defensive against con servative factions both in the English church and at court. At stake was influence over issues of state and foreign policy as well as church reform. Attacks against the Family of Love appear to have been efforts by reformed clerics who sought to highlight the dangers of the Family as a Catholic sectarian force in England. The apparent sympathy of the Family to Catholic practices and doctrines only height ened the hostility of the reformers during this period when the reformed cause was under assault, and Protestant foreign policy was threatened by Catholics abroad and Elizabeth's courtship of the Duke of Anjou. The actual Family of Love was too small to have posed the kind of dangers with which it was charged. Reformers exaggerated the threat of the Family of Love in order to create a domestic, Cath olic target for their campaign against the conservatives, who appeared to have been less concerned about Catholicism than the nonconformity of the puritans. Seen in this context, it should come as no surprise that this artificially created threat quickly dispersed with the end of the struggle and the rise of the conservative faction.


158On the outward conformity of the Family see Lynnewood Martin, "The Family of Love in

England: Conforming Millenarians," Sixteenth Century Journal 3, no. 2 (Oct 1972): 99-108.


160William Cecil, The Execution of Justice in England, ed. Robert McCune Kingdon (Ithaca: Cor nell University Press, 1965), 9-10.



Documents

The Family of Love and Its Enemies