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Reformation Reputations: The Power of
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Reformation Reputations
The Power of the Individual in
English Reformation History
Edited by
David J. Crankshaw · George W. C. Gross
Reformation Reputations
David J. Crankshaw · George W. C. Gross
Editors
Reformation
Reputations
The Power of the Individual in English
Reformation History
Editors
David J. Crankshaw George W. C. Gross
Department of Theology Department of Theology
and Religious Studies and Religious Studies
King’s College London King’s College London
London, UK London, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-55433-0 ISBN 978-3-030-55434-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55434-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel,
1527: The Frick Collection, New York, USA, Accession Number 1912.1.77 (© Alamy
Stock Photo)
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To the Institute of Historical Research seminar on
‘The Religious History of Britain 1500–1800’
this book is dedicated by the editors
being two of its convenors
Preface and Acknowledgments
One of our contributors has remarked, though elsewhere, that ‘we are
living in a golden age for scholarship on the Tudor dynasty and on the
Reformation’.1 Much of the current efflorescence lies in historians exam-
ining the social dimension to religious change in the sixteenth century,
particularly the question of how ideas were communicated, and to whom.
Indeed, it is perfectly legitimate, and far from anachronistic, to speak of
the marketing of both evangelical concepts and evangelical personalities.
Building upon the seminal work of R. W. Scribner, Andrew Pettegree
has, for instance, recently entitled a book ‘BrandLuther’.2 More or less
running in parallel with research into modes of transmission has been
investigation of impact, leading to debate about the criteria (then and
now) according to which ‘The Protestant Reformation’ might be judged
a ‘success’.3 There is no need to engage with that controversy here, except
to say that just as the topic of ‘impact’ can be seen as a corollary to that
of ‘communication’, so (it seems to us) the topic of ‘memorialization’
might be recognized as a corollary to that of ‘impact’, since only things
that have made an impact—for good or ill—are usually deemed worthy
of remembrance. How, in short, have subsequent eras remembered the
momentous splitting asunder of western Christendom in the early modern
period? From a 2016 standpoint, the impending quincentenary of Martin
Luther’s famous protest against indulgences could be expected to bring
forth a tidal-wave of commemorative publications. And, in fact, a high-
light proved to be Peter Marshall’s short book which not only inquired
vii
viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
into what had happened in October 1517, but also probed the anniver-
saries of 1617, 1817 and 1917.4 Yet there seemed to be some merit
in demonstrating that, for all its importance, Luther’s was not the only
show in town, even if, compared to the German Reformation, the English
Reformation—hugely indebted to Luther’s doctrines in its initial phases
as it was—lacked an obvious starting date; we would have to improvise.
An opportunity to mark the quincentenary, albeit from an English
perspective, arose fortuitously, in that the editors assumed responsibility
for organizing the 2017–2018 programme of the postgraduate seminar on
‘The Religious History of Britain 1500–1800’ convened at the Institute of
Historical Research, part of the School of Advanced Study of the Univer-
sity of London. Moreover, another notable birthday soon appeared on
the horizon, for 2017 would be the twenty-fifth year since the seminar’s
foundation by Kenneth Fincham, Susan Hardman Moore and Nicholas
Tyacke. Contemplating how the celebration of these two anniversaries
could be combined, we hit upon the notion of ‘reputations’, given that
the imminent Luther-fest would, to a large extent, be predicated upon
the reformer’s enduring renown—and was bound to give rise to schol-
arly re-assessment of his character, role and status. What, in other words,
could be said about the lives, and especially the after-lives, of selected
figures who, in one way or another, influenced England’s extraordinarily
convoluted Reformation? Thus was born Reformation Reputations. In
constructing the seminar programme, we encouraged potential speakers
to embrace that theme, and can report, with delight, that four chapters
printed below originated as papers delivered in 2017–2018,5 while a fifth
was read early in the following academic year.6 Reasonably enough, not
all of those invited to present papers wished to alter the focus of what
they already had in hand. We therefore took advantage of gaps in the
seminar series to commission four chapters that would help us to meet
one of our main objectives, namely to achieve both temporal evenness
across the sixteenth century and balance between Protestants and Roman
Catholics, clergy and laity. On gender, the editors were keen to secure
parity too, but women are badly under-represented in the primary sources,
and those achieving prominence have rightly received considerable atten-
tion in other works published over the last decade. Nevertheless, Susan
Wabuda takes as her subject one of the outstanding women of the whole
sixteenth century—Anne Askew—and Rachel Basch is to be applauded for
ambitiously establishing the reputations of no fewer than three members
of that much neglected category: bishops’ wives. Women are certainly not
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
absent from the remaining chapters. No doubt other editors would have
picked different figures, but we believe that an illuminating selection is
treated in this volume, and our choices are explained in more detail in
the Introduction. Whether it was for accepting a seminar invitation, or
for fulfilling a later commission, we thank each of our essayists.
Inevitably, the making of a book is a collaborative venture beyond
the work of the author(s). In this case, we wish to thank Professor
Maurice Whitehead, Schwarzenbach research fellow at the Venerable
English College in Rome, for answering inquiries and for sending scans
of material unavailable in the United Kingdom; Claire Welford-Elkin, rare
books superintendent in Cambridge University Library, for bibliograph-
ical assistance at a critical juncture; Mary Allen, deputy archivist at the
Jesuit archives in London, for clarifying a number of mysteries concerning
particular sources; and Emma Butterfield and Lisa Olrichs of the National
Portrait Gallery, Deirdre O’Hanlon of Alamy, Sian Phillips of Bridgeman
Images and Lucia Rinolfi of the British Museum for their co-operation in
supplying and licensing illustrations.
To Lady Gross, we are hugely grateful for checking the typescript prior
to submission.
Above all, we are indebted to three people in the History section
at Palgrave Macmillan without whom this project would not have been
possible and with whom it has been a pleasure to work: Molly Beck,
commissioning editor, and Maeve Sinnott and Joseph Johnson, successive
assistant editors.
London, UK David J. Crankshaw

June 2020 George W. C. Gross
Notes
1. S. Wabuda, Thomas Cranmer (Abingdon, 2017), p. 249.
2. R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the
German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981); A. Pettegree, Brand Luther:
1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (New York, 2015).
3. Landmark publications include G. Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning:
Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, Mary-
land, and London, 1978) and G. Parker, ‘Success and Failure During
the First Century of the Reformation’, Past and Present, 136 (1992),
pp. 43–82.
x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
4. P. Marshall, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation

(Oxford, 2017).
5. Chapters 2 (9 January 2018), 3 (6 March 2018), 7 (24 April 2018) and 9
(31 October 2017).
6. Chapter 6 (23 October 2018, in the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace).
Conventions
With reference to the early modern period, dates are Old Style, i.e.
in accordance with the Julian Calendar, but with the beginning of the
calendar year taken to have been 1 January. Dates after September 1752
are New Style (i.e. follow the Gregorian Calendar).
Where individuals mentioned here receive an entry in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, the spelling of personal names has been
standardized to usage there; life-dates also conform to what is given in
that work.
If they exist, then English forms of foreign place-names are used.
Original spelling has been retained in quotations, except that, in
English text, ‘i’ and ‘j’ and ‘u’ and ‘v’ have silently been brought into line
with modern practice. Capitalization has been modernized, save where
an author intended it for emphasis. Generally speaking, punctuation has
been preserved, unless it hampers understanding, in which case problem-
atic punctuation marks have silently been suppressed, while editorial inser-
tions are enclosed by square brackets. A change in the type of punctuation
mark is signalled in the same way. Foreign words have been italicized,
regardless of whether or not they are so distinguished in the source of
the quotation. Since book titles also appear in italics, those written in a
foreign language are, in addition, underlined; the same rule applies to
foreign-language words included in book titles that are otherwise given
in English.
xi
Contents
1 Introduction: Reformation, Life-Writing

and the Commemorative Impulse—The Power
of the Individual 1
David J. Crankshaw and George W. C. Gross
2 1535 in 1935: Catholic Saints and English Identity:

The Canonization of Thomas More and John Fisher 159
William Sheils
3 Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered 189

Ashley Null
4 ‘Agents of the Reformation’: Margaret Cranmer,

Anne Hooper and Elizabeth Coverdale 223
Rachel Basch
5 Anne Askew 255

Susan Wabuda
6 ‘A Man of Stomach’: Matthew Parker’s Reputation 291

David J. Crankshaw
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
7 John Whitgift Redivivus: Reconsidering

the Reputation of Elizabeth’s Last Archbishop
of Canterbury 337
Felicity Heal
8 Anthony Munday: Eloquent Equivocator

or Contemptible Turncoat? 363
Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon
9 Polemic, Memory and Emotion: John Gerard

and the Writing of the Counter-Reformation
in England 393
Peter Lake and Michael Questier
10 Rehabilitating Robert Persons: Then and Now 421

Victor Houliston
Index 449
Notes on Contributors
Dr. Rachel Basch completed a B.A. degree in History and an M.A.

degree in Early Modern History at the University of York before moving
to Royal Holloway, University of London, for doctoral study. Her Ph.D.
thesis is entitled ‘The Changing Status and Identity of English Bishops’
Wives c.1549–1625’ (2016) and was supervised by Dr. Anna Whitelock.
She has been a Visiting Lecturer and Graduate Teaching Assistant at both
Royal Holloway and King’s College London, and now works as a policy
adviser for the Civil Service.
Dr. David J. Crankshaw is Lecturer in the History of Early Modern
Christianity at King’s College London. He has published on the Court
of Faculties, St. Paul’s Cathedral and ecclesiastical statesmanship. Recent
publications include ‘Chaplains to the Elizabethan Nobility: Activities,
Categories and Patterns’, in H. Adlington et al. (eds), Chaplains in
Early Modern England: Patronage, Literature and Religion (Manchester,
2013), pp. 36–63. An essay ‘Overt, Covert and Collectible: Luther’s
Works in England and English’ has been submitted for publication in
the proceedings of the Reformation quincentenary symposium held at St.
Margaret’s Church, Westminster, on 31 October 2017. In 2020, he will
publish an edition of newly discovered government correspondence enti-
tled Proceedings of the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth I, 1582–1583, 2
volumes (Woodbridge). He is writing a biography of Archbishop Parker.
xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon is currently a Holland Fellow at the

University of Durham and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of
Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. She special-
izes in the history of the book trade in England, Portugal and Spain,
and in the rise of nationalism, hate speech and Islamophobia in print,
as well as in methodologies for counteracting them. She is the author
of Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade
(Aldershot, 2008), co-author with T. S. Freeman of Religion and the
Book in Early Modern England: The Making of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’
(Cambridge, 2011) and has written Amadís and Palmeirim in England:
Anglo-Iberian Relations and the Uses of Medieval and Early Modern
Arthuriana (forthcoming).
Dr. George W. C. Gross is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College
London, where he wrote his doctoral thesis entitled ‘“The Lord’s
Anointed”: British Coronations in Religious, Political and Social
Contexts, c.1661–c.1714’ (2017). He has read papers at the Institute of
Historical Research in London, at Westminster Abbey and at the Univer-
sity of Kent, and is currently preparing his coronation research for publica-
tion. Some of his work takes an Anglo-Russian view: a recent publication
is (trans. Ju. S. Frolova) ‘From London to Moscow Coronations: Percep-
tions of Monarchy’, Systems Psychology and Sociology, 2 (26) (Moscow,
2018), pp. 97–110; an article on Tsar Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’) and Queen
Elizabeth I is forthcoming.
Dr. Felicity Heal is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She
was a lecturer in History at the University of Oxford from 1980 to 2011.
She has published on many aspects of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Britain, with especial focus on religious, social and cultural history. Her
books include Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990),
Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2003) and The Power
of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2014). She
became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.
Victor Houliston, who obtained his doctorate from Oxford University
in 1986, is a Professor of English Literature at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published exten-
sively on the career of Robert Persons, including Catholic Resistance in
Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Alder-
shot, 2007). He is the director of an international project to prepare a
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii
multi-volume, multi-lingual edition of Persons’s correspondence: The

Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, SJ: Volume I:
1574–1588, co-edited with Ginevra Crosignani and Thomas M. McCoog,
SJ, was published in Toronto in 2017.
Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History, Professor
of the History of Christianity and Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History
at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of seven
books, including Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Poli-
tics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2016), based
upon the Ford Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford, and How
Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History
Plays (New Haven, Connecticut, and London, 2016). He has collabo-
rated with Michael Questier in several publications, most notably The
Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of
Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London, 2011).
Ashley Null, a B.D. of the University of Cambridge, is the Canon
Theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas and the Anglican
Diocese of Egypt. His research on Thomas Cranmer has been awarded
Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim and
German Research Council grants. He is currently a Visiting Fellow of
the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge and of St. John’s
College, Durham. He also serves as the Chairman of the Board of
Governors of the Alexandria School of Theology in Egypt.
Michael Questier is Research Professor, Department of History, Vander-
bilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Honorary Chair of History
at the University of Durham. His many publications include Conver-
sion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996),
Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristo-
cratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006) and (with
Peter Lake) The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom
and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London, 2011). He
recently brought out (with P. D. Clarke) an edition of documents under
the title Papal Authority and the Limits of the Law in Tudor England,
Camden Miscellany XXXVI, Camden Society, 5th Series, 48 (Cambridge,
2015). Professor Questier’s latest books are: Dynastic Politics and the
British Reformations, 1558–1630 (Oxford, 2019) and (with Peter Lake)
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics
of Publicity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford, 2019).
William Sheils is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of
York. He has published widely on post-Reformation English reli-
gious and social history and received a festschrift: N. Lewycky and
A. Morton (eds), Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional
Relations in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of Professor W.
J. Sheils (Farnham, 2012). He continues to work across confessional
boundaries, having recently contributed essays to Oxford University Press
volumes on the histories of Anglicanism and The Protestant Tradition,
and an essay for a book on British Catholicism since the Reformation to
be published by Brill.
Susan Wabuda, Professor of History at Fordham University in New York,
is the author of Thomas Cranmer (Abingdon, 2017) in the series Rout-
ledge Historical Biographies, Preaching During the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 2002) and articles and essays on many aspects of the English
Reformation and early modern English History. She is currently engaged
on a biography of Hugh Latimer.
Abbreviations
ABSI Archivum Britannicum Societatis Iesu, London

Anstruther, Seminary Priests G. Anstruther, The Seminary Priests: A Dictio-
nary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales
1558–1850, 4 vols (Ware, Durham and Great
Wakering, [1968]–1977)
APC J. R. Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of
England, New Series, 32 vols (London, 1890–
1907)
ASV Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome
b. born
bap. baptized
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
BL The British Library, London
BM The British Museum, London
Bodl. The Bodleian Library, Oxford
Bray, Documents G. Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Refor-
mation (Cambridge, 1994)
c. circa
Caraman, Gerard P. Caraman (ed. and trans.), John Gerard:
The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (London,
1951)
CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
CHR The Catholic Historical Review
col./cols column/columns
Cox, Writings & Letters J. E. Cox (ed.), Miscellaneous Writings and
Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of
xix
xx ABBREVIATIONS
Canterbury, Martyr, 1556, PS (Cambridge,

1846)
CS The Camden Society
CUL Cambridge University Library
d. died
edn edition
EEBO Early English Books Online
EHR The English Historical Review
fl. floruit
fol./fols folio/folios
HJ The Historical Journal
HLQ The Huntington Library Quarterly
JBS Journal of British Studies
JEH The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JRH Journal of Religious History
LP J. S. Brewer et al. (eds), Letters and Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry
VIII. Preserved in the Public Record Office, the
British Museum, and Elsewhere in England, 23
vols in 37 parts (London, 1862–1932)
LPL Lambeth Palace Library, London
MacCulloch, Cranmer D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1st
edn, New Haven, Connecticut, and London,
1996)
Marshall, Heretics & Believers P. Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History
of the English Reformation (New Haven,
Connecticut, and London, 2017)
McCoog, Building the Faith T. M. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland,
Scotland, and England, 1589–1597: Building the
Faith of Saint Peter upon the King’s of Spain’s
Monarchy (Farnham, 2012)
McCoog, ‘Our Lamp’ T. M. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland,
Scotland, and England, 1598–1606: ‘Lest Our
Lamp be Entirely Extinguished’ (Leiden, 2017)
MP Modern Philology
n.p. no place
Nichols, Narratives J. G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of
the Reformation, Chiefly from the Manuscripts of
John Foxe the Martyrologist; with Two Contem-
porary Biographies of Archbishop Cranmer, CS,
First (Old) Series, LXXVII ([London], 1859)
NPG National Portrait Gallery, London
ABBREVIATIONS xxi
ODNB H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds),

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From
the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, 61 vols
(Oxford, 2004) [NB that only contributor
name, subject name and subject life-dates are
cited, on the ground that many readers will
probably access the online edn, and entries are
easy enough to find in the printed edn]
OED J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (preparers),
The Oxford English Dictionary, 20 vols (2nd
edn, Oxford, 1989)
P&P Past and Present
PCRS Publications of the Catholic Record Society
PL The Parker Library
Porter, Cambridge H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in
Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958)
PS The Parker Society
RQ Renaissance Quarterly
RS Renaissance Studies
SCJ The Sixteenth Century Journal
sig./sigs signature/signatures
STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in
England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English
Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640, eds A. W.
Pollard et al., 3 vols, I: A–H (2nd edn, London,
1986); II: I–Z (2nd edn, London, 1976); III:
A Printers’ and Publishers’ Index; other Indexes
& Appendices; Cumulative Addenda & Corri-
genda (1st edn, London, 1991)
Strype, Parker J. Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker,
The First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign
of Queen Elizabeth … (London, 1711)
TNA The National Archives, Kew
trans. translator/translators
Trapp & Herbrüggen, More J. B. Trapp and H. S. Herbrüggen, ‘The King’s
Good Servant’: Sir Thomas More 1477/8–1535
(London, 1977)
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
v. versus
vols volumes
Watson, Decacordon W. Watson, ADecacordonof Ten Quodlibeticall
Questions Concerning Religion and State …
([London], 1602) [STC, 25123]
xxii ABBREVIATIONS
Wing Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in

England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British
America, and of English Books Printed in Other
Countries, 1641–1700, eds D. G. Wing et al., 3
vols (2nd edn, New York, 1972–1988)
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Portrait of John Strype, by George Vertue, after an

unknown artist, line engraving, engraved 1721: NPG
D8897 (© National Portrait Gallery, London) 48
Fig. 1.2 The Martyrs’ Memorial, St. Giles’s Street, Oxford,
designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, 1841, by an
unknown photographer, photograph, c.1897 (© Chris
Howes/Wild Places Photography/Alamy Stock Photo) 49
Fig. 1.3 ‘The Clouds That Gather Round the Setting Sun or
Cardinal Wolsey in Disgrace’, by John Seymour Lucas, oil
on canvas, 1901: Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham,
Greater London, Accession LDORL 00887 (© The
History Emporium/Alamy Stock Photo) 98
Fig. 2.1 Medal commemorating the canonization of Cardinal
John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, showing (obverse)
Pope Pius XI, by Aurelio Mistruzzi, bronze, 1935: NPG
D7201 (© National Portrait Gallery, London) 160
Fig. 2.2 Medal commemorating the canonization of Cardinal
John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, showing (reverse)
Fisher and More, by Aurelio Mistruzzi, bronze, 1935:
NPG D7201 (© National Portrait Gallery, London) 161
Fig. 3.1 Portrait of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury,
by Gerlach Flicke, oil on panel, 1545–1546: NPG 535
(© National Portrait Gallery, London) 190
xxiii
xxiv LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 3.2 Portrait of Johannes Oecolampadius by Hans Asper,

mixed media on panel, c.1531–1550: Kunstmuseum
Basel Inv. 12 (© The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock
Photo) 204
Fig. 4.1 Maison Kammerzell, Place de la Cathédrale, Strasbourg,
France, fifteenth century, altered in 1589, by an
unknown photographer, photograph, c.1895 (© Historic
Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 231
Fig. 4.2 Original letter from Anne Hooper to Heinrich Bullinger,
Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany, 22 September 1554: State
Archive of the canton of Zürich, StAZH, E II 343a Item
469 (© State Archive of the canton of Zürich) 233
Fig. 5.1 Portrait of John Bale, by an unknown engraver, after
an unknown artist, woodcut, c.1557, printed in John
Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie Quam
Nunc Angliam & Scotiam Vocant: Catalogus …, 2 vols
(Basel, 1557–1559) [STC, 1296 Variant], I frontispiece:
BM, Item O,8.30 (misdated 1548 in catalogue) (© The
Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved) 256
Fig. 5.2 The burning of Anne Askew, by an unknown engraver,
after an unknown artist, woodcut, [c.1548], first printed
in Robert Crowley, The Confutation of XIII Articles,
Wherunto Nicolas Shaxton, Late Byshop of Salilburye
[ sic] Subscribed and Caused be Set Forthe in Print the
Yere … MCXLVI [ sic] When he Recanted in Smithfielde
at London at the Burning of Mestres Anne Askue
… (London, [1548]) [STC, 6083], frontispiece and
reprinted (the source here) in John Foxe, Actes and
Monuments … (1st edition, London, 1563) [STC,
11222], p. 666 (© Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy Stock
Photo) 272
Fig. 5.3 Portrait of an unknown lady, formerly thought to be
Anne Askew, by Hans Eworth, oil on panel, 1560: The
National Trust, Item 1298241, Tatton Park, Cheshire (©
Art Collection 2/Alamy Stock Photo) 277
Fig. 6.1 Portrait of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury,
by Remigius Hogenbergh, after [Richard Lyne], line
engraving, 1573: NPG D25183 (© National Portrait
Gallery, London) 292
LIST OF FIGURES xxv
Fig. 6.2 Anne Boleyn, queen of England, commending the

Princess Elizabeth to the care of Matthew Parker, by
Thomas Williams, after John Callcott Horsley, letterpress
wood-engraving, c.1866, printed in Anon. (ed.), Pictures
of Society … (London, 1866), unpaginated plate opposite
p. 110: BM, Item 1922.0209.29 (© The Trustees of the
British Museum. All rights reserved) 295
Fig. 6.3 Interior of The Parker Library, part of New Court,
by William Wilkins, completed 1827, Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, showing one of Archbishop Parker’s
MSS (MS 4: The Dover Bible, Volume II) open in the
foreground, by an unknown photographer, photograph,
2015 (© Brian Harris/Alamy Stock Photo) 297
Fig. 7.1 Portrait of John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury,
by an unknown artist, oil on canvas, c.1600: The Old
Schools, University of Cambridge (© University of
Cambridge) 355
Fig. 8.1 Panorama of the city of London from Southwark, by an
unknown artist, Dutch School, oil on wood, c.1630:
Museum of London, Item 92.7 (© Heritage Image
Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo) 365
Fig. 8.2 The English College, Rome, by an unknown engraver,
after an unknown artist, woodcut, [c.1596], printed
in Marc’ Antonio Ciappi, Compendio delle Heroiche, et
Gloriose Attioni, et Santa Vita di Papa Greg. XIII …
(Rome, 1596), p. 27 (© Reproduced by kind permission
of the rector of the Venerable English College, Rome) 367
xxvi LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 9.1 A Roman Catholic priest on The Rack, by an unknown

engraver, after an unknown artist, engraving, [c.1582],
seemingly first printed in [Robert Persons], De
Persecvtione Anglicana Libellvs … (Rome, 1582), [Plate
4] in unpaginated end section and reprinted (the source
here) in Anon. (trans.), Historia del Glorioso Martirio
di Sedici Sacerdoti Martirizati in Inghilterra per la
Confessione … della Fede Catolica, Fanno 1581[,] 1582
& 1583 … (Macerata, 1583), [Plate 4] in unpaginated
end section (NB present in copy at Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, Rome, but omitted from some copies
elsewhere), an Italian translation of [William Allen]
(ed.), A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of XII
Reverend Priests, Executed Within These Twelvemonethes
for Confession and Defence of the Catholike Faith. But
Under the False Pretence of Treason ... (n.p. [Rheims],
1582) [STC, 369.5, which does not contain this image]:
The British Library, London (© The British Library
Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images) 394
Fig. 9.2 Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, mostly fifteenth
century and later, showing the west side, in the outer
wall of which is the drainage passage probably used to
conceal John Gerard and other Roman Catholic priests
in October 1591, The National Trust, by an unknown
photographer, photograph, 2008 (© Panther Media
GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo) 403
Fig. 10.1 Title-page of The First Booke of the Christian Exercise,
Appertayning to Resolution …, by R.[obert] P.[ersons]
([Rouen], 1582) [STC, 19353]: The Bodleian Libraries,
The University of Oxford, Shelfmark Mar. 392, title-page
(© Reproduced by permission of The Bodleian Libraries,
The University of Oxford) 425
Fig. 10.2 Portrait of Robert Persons, by Charles Weld, after
an unknown artist, drawing, c.1857, probably from
an original image then in Rome: Stonyhurst College,
Lancashire (© Reproduced by kind permission of the
governors of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire) 427
List of Tables
Table 1.1 A provisional conspectus of non-anthology

autobiographies and biographies of figures connected
with the English Reformation, written up to 1718 52
Table 1.2 English reformation ‘lives’ anthologized: Collected
biographies and biographical sketches published in works
other than martyrologies up to 1692 76
xxvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Reformation, Life-Writing

and the Commemorative Impulse—The
Power of the Individual
David J. Crankshaw and George W. C. Gross
Prologue
It is a cliché that we live in a ‘celebrity culture’. The noun ‘celebrity’—
‘the state or fact of being well known, widely discussed, or publicly
esteemed’—is often taken to refer to an ephemeral condition, to
be contrasted with ‘fame’, yet the oldest attestation, dating from
Chaucer’s time, suggests synonymity.1 Nevertheless, ‘fame’ (‘the char-
acter attributed to a person or thing by report or generally entertained’)2
was probably more common in early-modern usage than ‘celebrity’3 and
shared with ‘reputation’—first recorded c.1390 in the phrase ‘of reputa-
cioun’, meaning ‘of high esteem’4 —the possible connotation of longevity,
a connotation inadequately acknowledged by the Oxford English Dictio-
nary, for had not Shakespeare’s Cassio cried out ‘Reputation, reputation,
D. J. Crankshaw · G. W. C. Gross (B)

King’s College London, London, UK
e-mail: george.gross@kcl.ac.uk
D. J. Crankshaw
e-mail: david.crankshaw@kcl.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2021 1

D. J. Crankshaw and G. W. C. Gross (eds.), Reformation Reputations,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55434-7_1
2 D. J. CRANKSHAW AND G. W. C. GROSS
reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of

myself, and what remains is bestial’?5
‘Celebrity’, Tillyard declares, ‘appears to have been made in the eigh-
teenth century’.6 Barry, introducing a special periodical issue devoted to
that theme, seems to agree, remarking, however, that ‘fame and celebrity
have coexisted for centuries’ and that the latter phenomenon has a ‘pre-
history’ that ‘can be traced to coins and portraits, iconic representations
of the famous in Western culture since Roman times’. Why that ‘prehis-
tory’ should be linked exclusively to the visual is far from clear, but then
her overview is full of untested assumptions, culminating in the baffling
statement that the ensuing essays chart ‘the history of the privatization
and commodification of individual subjectivity’.7 The muddle continues
in a recent book by Antoine Lilti, who (according to Cowan)
finds the invention of celebrity in the century of Romanticism and Revo-

lution from 1750 to 1850[.] … Lilti argues that celebrity should be
distinguished from other forms of notoriety, most notably glory (gloire)
and reputation. Glory is the judgement of posterity, reserved for those who
have achieved great things and have been remembered as such; reputation
is a localized form of notoriety in which a person’s character is known and
judged by his or her peers.
Since when were ‘glory’ and ‘reputation’ forms of ‘notoriety’? Is Lilti (or
his translator) unaware of that word’s usual pejorative meaning? Strangely,
Cowan fails to comment on this linguistic perversity and in glossing Lilti
accepts much of his taxonomy:
Early modern scholars will recognize glory as a ‘keyword’ of the era[.] …

Reputation was also key to understanding the honor culture that was so
crucial to the maintenance of the pre-modern social order: reputation was
the essence of one’s place within the social order and it was key to the
maintenance of identity within that order. Unlike glory, reputation was
important for everyone: it was not the preserve of magistrates and other
elites. Women and commoners were equally invested in maintaining their
sense of honor amongst their peers.8
While ‘reputation’ certainly could have a narrowly contemporaneous

and localized application,9 its usage is likely to have been far more
fluid than either Lilti or Cowan allow, and it is telling that both Barry
and Cowan occasionally use ‘fame’, ‘renown’ and ‘reputation’ with no
1 INTRODUCTION: REFORMATION, LIFE-WRITING … 3
obvious distinction. Definitional tangles do not, however, vitiate Cowan’s

piece, which is valuable in questioning the supposed conceptual novelty
of ‘celebrity’ and, relatedly, in challenging ‘the chronology of its puta-
tive emergence’—i.e. the Habermas-inspired fixation with the eighteenth
century. Instead, he insists, ‘the history of modern celebrity needs to be
placed within a much longer durée history of fame’.10 The present volume
is, in part, a contribution to just such a history.
But fame for whom? Like beauty, reputation is in the eye of the
beholder, and it mattered a great deal to the denizens of Tudor England
whose eye that was. For the author of a tract on gentility, there could be
no doubt
that true honor consisteth not in the admiration of common people, but in
the vertue of him that therwith is indued. And that the reputation which
a few wise men do give unto a gentleman is of more worth then that of
the multitude, wherupon is inferred that the respect which is borne to any
man by them of the Court and citie (beeing the best and wisest sort) is
more estimable then that which is borne by the common people.11
What we might regard as snobbery was an indelible feature of the mind-

set; ‘popularity’ was a dirty word.12 Then there was the calculation, and
sheer chutzpah, that could be involved in the quest for renown. No
stranger to ambition, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) drew attention to those
aspects when he wrote that
the winning of honour is but the revealing of a mans vertue and worth
without disadvantage, for some in their actions doe affect honour and
reputation, which sort of men are commonly much talked of, but inwardly
little admired: and some darken their vertue in the shew of it, so as they be
under-valewed in opinion. ¶ If a man performe that which hath not beene
attempted before, or attempted and given over, or hath beene atchieved,
but not with so good circumstance, he shall purchase more honour then
by effecting a matter of greater difficultie or vertue, wherein he is but a
follower. ¶ If a man so temper his actions as in some one of them hee
doe content everie faction or combination of people, the musicke will be
the fuller. ¶ A man is an ill husband of his honour that entereth into any
action, the failing wherein may disgrace him more then the carrying of
it through can honour him. ¶ Discreete followers helpe much to repu-
tation. ¶ Envie[,] which is the canker of honour, is best extinguished by
declaring a mans selfe in his ends, rather to seeke merite then fame, and
by attributing a mans successes rather to divine providence & felicitie then

to his vertue or pollicie.13
Bacon’s aphorisms brilliantly capture what would be essential charac-

teristics of the reputable English gentleman for the next four hundred
years.
Although it is important to know how the sixteenth century under-
stood ‘reputation’, the definition adopted in this volume is necessarily
much broader, for the essays collected here explore, in different ways, the
interplay between the concept of ‘reputation’, the agency of the individual
and the complex processes of religious change and resistance, central
to the period, that are conventionally designated ‘The Reformation’, or
(acknowledging revisionism) ‘Reformations’. On one level, our contribu-
tors’ brief was simple: what were, and are, the Reformation reputations of
their chosen figures, all men and women of undisputed significance, if of
uneven scholarly coverage? But that basic question opened up many more,
on deeper levels. How far did those individuals seek to create a repu-
tation—so-called Renaissance ‘self-fashioning’14 —and, moreover, one of
pronounced religious inflection? If reputations were forged externally to
the subject, then how and by whom? As a series of contested movements,
did the Reformation (the shorthand term that we shall continue to use
despite its defects) provide a suitable seed-bed for the emergence not only
of distinctive reputations, but also of distinctive types of reputation? To
what extent were reputations fabricated according to pre-existing models,
and the fruits intended to be exemplary? In what ways were reputations
perpetuated by succeeding generations and why? Were those reputations
manipulated polemically? If so, then to what effect? At a time when
even texts and manuscripts (inanimate objects after all) are deemed to
have ‘after-lives’,15 it seems appropriate to shine the spotlight on what
really had once breathed—on the lives, and especially the after-lives, of
those flesh and blood human beings whose outstanding characters and
deeds make the Tudor age one of such perennial fascination. Although a
comprehensive analysis of these issues is impossible within the compass of
an Introduction, we aim to touch upon some of them here, indicating as
we go how the following essays mesh with our overall theme. But before
embarking upon that task, it is critical to probe a still more fundamental
conundrum: what did it mean to possess a ‘reputation’, religious or other-
wise? Was a ‘reputation’ invariably a good thing? In short, we are led to
consider the mixture of chivalric culture and Roman Catholic piety that
flourished in England as the fifteenth century turned into the sixteenth—

a mixture whose twin components would come under attack from one
wing of a modish Renaissance humanism. By undermining the standards
by which ‘fame’ had traditionally been conceived, that wing’s leading
intellectuals created a new context within which Reformation reputations
would ultimately have to be fabricated.
Heroes and Heroines

The celebrities of pre-Reformation England may crudely be divided into
kings, knights, saints and the mythogenic outlaw Robin Hood. Following
the work of various scholars, nothing need be said here about Henry
VII’s energetic and inventive exploitation of ‘the politics of display and
symbol’, or rather of princely magnificence, even if Sharpe does damn
him with faint praise for having been nowhere near as ‘successful’ at it
as his only surviving son and three English grandchildren. Yet the verdict
offered in Francis Bacon’s 1622 Historie, and a fortiori Sharpe’s ‘post-
card recognition test’, are bizarrely anachronistic criteria for measuring
the achievements of the usurper who launched what he calls ‘the Tudor
theatricalization of monarchy’ and ‘the increasing publicization of regal-
ity’.16 Taking as his subject ‘representations of early modern rule’, Sharpe
explains that his purpose was ‘to study all the means by which rulers
from Henry VIII to Queen Anne sought to establish and sustain their
authority, enhance their … reputation, and refute or neuter criticism
and opposition, through changing and often difficult circumstances’.17
Absorbing though his book is in its detail, there is no escaping the conclu-
sion that, like the influential output of the Warburg School which he
assails, the story is overwhelmingly one of production at the expense
of any serious consideration of consumption. That approach is to ignore
Sydney Anglo’s sage scepticism of 1992, for Anglo had asked: ‘who actu-
ally saw the architectural embellishments, illuminated manuscripts, gems
and paintings that are constantly before our eyes as evidence of Tudor
iconography? None of these things was intended for the uncouth gaze
of the multitude’. The same problem arises in relation to royal events.
Progresses were relatively few and far between, and left vast swathes of the
realm unvisited. York, he notes, ‘had to wait until 1541 for its first and
only view of Henry VIII’. Elizabeth’s ceremonial entries to the capital
numbered two: one in 1559 immediately before her coronation and
another (omitted by Anglo) to the Armada victory thanksgiving service
at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1588. It is all very well for historians to scruti-
nize a foreign observer’s account of the 1595 Garter ceremony in which
he reported that ‘there was a great crush in the chapel, as many of the
common people had thronged thither’, but (wonders Anglo) ‘what was
the population of England in 1595, and what proportion managed to
squeeze into the chapel and courtyard of Windsor Castle?’. On tourna-
ments, he is scathing. Sir Roy Strong’s claim that ‘everyone knew about
them, everyone had seen them’ provokes the acid retort ‘everyone who
was a somebody, perhaps: but not everyone who was a nobody’. Anglo
continues in similar vein:
Some historians write as though Renaissance neoplatonic magic actually

worked; or they give the impression that, all over England, Elizabethan
fans were following the tournaments as if glued to television sets, sitting
enthralled while expert commentators described the lists, interpreted the
sexual and political significance of the queen’s apparel, analysed the courtly
imprese, and assessed the prowess of the tilters. Yet how could the great
mass of the queen’s subjects share in the spectacle, devices and verses which
would have been largely incomprehensible and inaudible even to those
actually present? Some of the citizens of London may have enjoyed these
emasculated neochivalric spectacles but, apart from the fact that Elizabeth’s
Accession Day had become a national holiday, it is difficult to see how the
rest of England would have been affected.
Nobody denies that ‘artistic and intellectual ingenuity was deployed in

the closed circuit of clambering courtiership’, but historians have (he
thinks) become ‘both too sophisticated and too gullible’: ‘we treat the
web-spinning subtleties of sixteenth-century scholars and the intricate
flattery of courtiers alike with too much respect’. Modern exegesis falls
down because it ‘fails to acknowledge the immense distance between
what a writer or artist may have intended, and what an ordinary reader
or viewer might have understood’.18 And there lies the nub of the
problem, since even exhaustive investigation of consumption will not tell
us what we ideally wish to know, which is the nature of the percep-
tions and/or commitments engendered by consumption of the materials
examined by Anglo and Sharpe. Where does this situation leave students
of monarchical reputations? It implies, of course, that there must have
been gradations. How sovereigns were generally reputed among their
courtiers, who could observe many of their doings at first-hand, will
surely have differed from how they were reputed by people geographically
remote from the Court and in their everyday lives cut off from political
society. If people in the latter category thought about the ruler at all, then
was that mostly (or entirely) in stereotypical terms: they assumed that the
king was doing whatever kings were traditionally expected to do, in much
the same way as we talk of ‘The Government’ with only a hazy notion of
its composition and activities at any one time? A third category, one might
imagine, was constituted by outsiders whose opinions were coloured by
hearing (or hearing of) royal proclamations, or by experiencing (or being
told about) Crown intervention in local affairs or by reading (or having
read to them) manuscript newsletters and/or printed chronicles. Lastly,
there are the impressions formed by foreigners. Yet should native contem-
poraries have arrived at an unflattering appraisal of their sovereign, there
was, ordinarily, a formidable obstacle to its free expression, namely the
law. 1534 saw the first major revision of treason legislation since 1352.
Whereas the medieval Act had declared as treason any attempt to cause
the death of the king, queen or heirs to the throne by an overt action,
the new law extended the definition to encompass any wish and any
attempt to cause bodily harm to the personages specified, even if that wish
was only expressed maliciously either in speech or in writing. To render
oral assertions susceptible to treasonous construction was bad enough,
but another passage reveals the kinds of epithets probably already being
uttered, for it states that from henceforth it would be deemed treason to
call the king, either by word of mouth or on the page, a heretic, infidel,
schismatic, tyrant or usurper.19 Moreover, a 1554 statute defined sedition
sweepingly. It now became a crime to originate slanderous talk (i.e. news
or rumours) about the king or queen, to spread such talk as might have
been originated by someone else or maliciously to ‘devise write printe or
set forthe any maner of booke rime ballade letter or writing, conteining
any false matter … of sclander reproche and dishonour of the king and
quenes Majesties or of either of them’.20 The statute was re-enacted in
1559 and replaced by a tougher one in 1581.21 When John Massee, a
Kentish tailor, was indicted at the assizes in 1591 for having exclaimed
‘by God’s wounds, the queene ys a whore’, it was probably under that
Act.22 Granted: Strong, Anglo and Sharpe have taught us a huge amount
about what Tudor monarchs wished their reputations to be. Neverthe-
less, what their popular reputations really were, during their lifetimes,
lies for the most part hidden beyond recovery, unless humble folk such
as Massee were sufficiently incautious to fall foul of the law and suffi-
ciently unlucky to be delated to the authorities. As Burke puts it: ‘kings
inherited considerable reserves of popular goodwill’ and ‘were presumed

benevolent, even heroic, until they were proved to be otherwise’. ‘Criti-
cism’, he adds, ‘was inhibited’ not only by ‘the fear of punishment’, but
also by ‘a self-censorship’ which possibly operated unconsciously.23 Can
the nachleben of each of the Tudor sovereigns be reconstructed? Yes,
it can—albeit chiefly on the basis of literary and artistic survivals that
may, or may not, be representative of earlier and wider feeling.24 The
tricky nature of domestic evidence is presumably one reason why some
historians have looked abroad for their sources, which are, inevitably, not
without interpretative hazards of their own.25
Royal celebrity, then, is deeply problematic. In turning to knights, by
contrast, we are on much firmer ground. ‘A chivalrous society’, contends
Saul, ‘was in a very real sense a community of memory’:
The valorous deeds performed by knights lived on in the recollection of

friends, family and descendants. Chivalrous men recognized that deeds of
the highest valour could be inspirational to generations to come and so
their memory would be perpetuated.
This species of memory, he says, ‘is perhaps best seen as a form of family
memory’, though one can argue that it ‘also belonged to the chivalric
class as a whole’. Of the many things keeping knightly remembrance
going, the role of the heralds, in Saul’s opinion, was pivotal. Emerging
in the second half of the twelfth century in conjunction with the inven-
tion of the tournament as an institution for learning and practising feats
of arms, the heralds served as ‘witnesses to chivalric achievement’ by
compiling colourful rolls of arms and sometimes, if talented in minstrelsy,
by composing verse narratives to accompany them. During the thir-
teenth century, heraldry became an important signifier of ownership
and patronage. Coats of arms appeared on castle gatehouses, on house-
hold chattels and on fixtures and fittings (including vestments) given
to churches. Heraldry was attractive to the knightly strata, Saul avers,
because of ‘its ability to articulate in bold visual form their military and
cultural concerns’. To be plain: ‘heraldry, memory and identity were
all closely associated’. It was the heralds who oversaw grand aristo-
cratic and gentry funerals, the purpose of which on one hand was ‘to
demonstrate the honour and immortality of the deceased’s family’ and
on the other ‘to emphasize the religious dimension to Christian knight-
hood’. The trappings—banners and helms—might even be left behind
in churches, where they remain today. Grave coverings were initially

comparatively modest brasses, but gradually gave way to elaborate tomb
monuments surmounted by recumbent effigies in attitudes of prayer, the
subjects shown impressively clad in the latest armour. In surviving exam-
ples, the surrounding surfaces are typically a riot of self-projection, with
armorials and inscriptions testifying (in shifting proportions) to martial
distinction and illustrious birth, though pedigrees are not necessarily
wholly authentic. The display could continue on donor panels, murals
and stained-glass windows. Non-literary objects and emblematic codes
were especially important for memorialization in the predominantly oral
cultures of the early and central Middle Ages. However, the subsequent
spread of literacy caused them to be supplemented by texts in the shape
of family histories, cartularies and chivalric ‘biographies’. Focusing on the
Beauchamp earls of Warwick, Saul’s discussion of the last of those cate-
gories is particularly helpful. One of the Beaumonts, earlier holders of
the title, had commissioned the writing of a romance, ‘Guy of Warwick’,
about a legendary ancestor who had performed deeds of exceptional
valour in the Holy Land. By the fourteenth century, the Beauchamps
were enthusiastically appropriating him as a genuine forbear and some of
his alleged effects, notably a massive sword, could be seen at Warwick
Castle. So successful did Guy’s cult become that two new ‘Lives’ were
written in the 1420s: a French prose version produced at the behest
of the then earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp (1382–1439), and a
verse version penned by John Lydgate (c.1370–1449/1450?) under the
patronage of Margaret, one of that earl’s daughters. This keenness to
foster a proud chivalric reputation persisted to the last of the line: Earl
Richard’s youngest daughter, Anne. In the 1480s, she commissioned two
works designed to glorify the family history: the ‘Rous Roll’ is an account
of the earls and countesses of Warwick decorated with their coats of arms,
while the ‘Beauchamp Pageant’ is a wide-ranging illustrated ‘Life’ of her
father that must draw upon older biographical material sadly now lost.
Commenting on the Beauchamps’ penchant for dynastic self-promotion,
Saul has this to say: ‘that we think so well of them today is due in no
small part to their own efforts to ensure that we do’. They understood
that although brave acts might win fame for a knight
that fame could pass away. If a reputation were to live on, it had to be
… cherished. It had to find permanent witness in writing or art. Much
the same point can be made in respect of the reputations of some of the
knights who had made their names in the earlier stages of the Hundred
Years War. Then, as later, great reputations were not the spontaneous
outcome of great deeds of arms; they were the result of careful nurturing
and manipulation by those who controlled the flow of information.26
People watching tournaments or attending elite funerals or encoun-

tering heraldic symbols may well have interpreted their experiences
in the light of knightly behaviour held up as exemplary in the late-
medieval chivalric literature that was created in surprising quantities and is
known to have circulated extensively within polite society.27 The earliest
such texts had been written either in French or in Anglo-Norman,
but from the close of the thirteenth century many English adaptations
were being made: some in verse, others in prose. Twenty-three separate
Arthurian romances have survived from 1300 to 1500, often in multiple
manuscripts. One distinctive feature of these English redactions is the
elevation of Sir Gawain to a position of prominence almost rivalling that
of King Arthur. Saul identifies three major anonymous poems of the late
fourteenth century in which, building upon his long-standing idealization
as ‘the model of masculinity, a hero dedicated to fighting’ at the hands of
Chrétien de Troyes (fl. c.1160–1181), Sir Gawain finally achieves a ‘star-
ring role’: the stanzaic ‘Morte Arthur’, the alliterative ‘Morte Arthure’
and the masterpiece ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. For Saul, the
last of that trio is a ‘penetrating work’ which makes its main protago-
nist ‘a vehicle for the exploration of the conflicts and dilemmas inherent
in the knightly ideal itself’. Yet another superlative contribution to the
genre was still to come: in the late 1460s, Sir Thomas Malory (1415×
18–1471) would finish writing his ambitious ‘Morte Darthur’—an epic
re-casting of the traditional tales into a cycle comprising eight lengthy
English romances. William Caxton published a heavily tidied-up version
in 1485, and Wynkyn de Worde reprinted it (with changes) in 1498 and
1529, to speak only of the decades before the Break with Rome. Although
Sir Lancelot’s profile had hardly been slight in Malory’s sources, it was he
who brought him to the forefront as the personification of perfect knight-
hood, putting even Arthur into the shade. Interestingly, Saul argues that
Malory portrayed chivalry ‘as an essentially non-religious institution’. In
his re-telling, ‘the notion of the questing knight of French romance was
in the process of being superseded by a knighthood committed to serving
the common weal’.
Complementing this efflorescence of chivalric fiction (much of which

would have been read as the history of remote times) was the emer-
gence of the secular chronicle. Prior to the mid fourteenth century,
chronicles had been monastic productions whose pious compilers inter-
preted the past through the prism of God’s providence. But increasing
literary patronage by the nobility and gentry encouraged the growth
of a new style of historical reconstruction that adopted a distinctively
chivalric perspective. Infused with a powerful moral dimension and
didactic purpose, the French prose chronicle had its roots in the knightly
culture of the small continental state of Hainault. The pioneer was Jean le
Bel (c.1290–1370). He began work on his compilation in 1352, eventu-
ally covering the period from the late thirteenth century down to 1361.
Jean Froissart (1337?–c.1404) was his eminent successor. Extant in three
main recensions, Froissart’s chronicle initially traversed the same chrono-
logical span as had le Bel, but the author then continued independently
thereafter, bequeathing to posterity the principal French narrative of the
Hundred Years War as far as 1400. It was immensely popular, estab-
lishing the fame, as war heroes, of Edward III; The Black Prince; Henry,
duke of Lancaster; Reginald, Lord Cobham; Sir John Chandos; Sir Fulk
Harley; and Sir Walter Mauny. We have already mentioned the chivalric
‘biography’ in connection with Beauchamp family memorialization; there
can be little doubt, however, that the proliferation of chronicles cham-
pioning martial valour prompted heralds to essay biographical accounts.
That descriptor is chosen with care because those texts are scarcely biogra-
phies as the concept is generally understood nowadays, not that it has ever
been monolithic,28 for (to quote Saul) ‘the essence … was to present
the person as knight and not the knight as person’. Chandos Herald’s
‘Life of the Black Prince’ (written c.1376–1387 in Anglo-Norman verse)
is seemingly the only such work celebrating an English knight of that
period of which scholars are aware, though Saul is surely correct in
presuming other examples to have been lost. Since Chandos Herald’s
‘Life’ exists in just two medieval manuscripts,29 and remained unpub-
lished until 1842,30 students are up against the same problem of exposure
as Anglo has emphasized with regard to Tudor royal extravaganzas and
iconography. If readers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
found their role-models in chivalric history, then it would almost certainly
have been among the pages of Froissart’s chronicle—over 150 widely
scattered manuscripts have come down to us and a two-volume English
translation was printed (ostensibly at Henry VIII’s behest) in London in

1523–1525 [STC, 11396, 11397].31
Obviously, the apotheosis of the stereotypical knight, and the celebrity
accorded to specific knights, is unlikely to have been meaningful to the
great mass of the uneducated. Altogether different, though, was the
veneration of the saints. That the saints bulked large in medieval piety,
owing chiefly to their intercessory function in the economy of salvation,
is a commonplace observation.32 Yet it is easy to forget, at this distance,
just how pervasive they were otherwise. For a start, their huge number
ought to be acknowledged, a number running into the thousands. The
task of counting them is perhaps best left to insomniac historians—and,
indeed, several attempts have been made.33 How worthwhile they were
must be a moot point in view of Bartlett’s qualification:
There is not, and cannot be, a definitive list of Christian saints. This is
because sanctity is not an objectively identifiable feature but an attribute:
saints are people who are treated as saints. Hence someone might be a
saint in one time and place and not in another, a saint for some people
but not for others.34
During the early Middle Ages, cults sprang up spontaneously; in so far as

there was any official ecclesiastical scrutiny, it came from the local bishop.
The pope (as bishop of Rome) was merely one among many prelates
who could formally designate somebody a saint, and the earliest attested
papal canonization dates from 993. The years around 1200, however, saw
what Bartlett calls the ‘crystallization’ of the pontifical claim to enjoy a
monopoly over canonization. Inevitably, the bureaucratic process evolved,
particularly in the first half of the thirteenth century, but it normally began
with the dispatch of a ‘postulation’ (i.e. petition) to the pope, that request
for an inquiry being supplemented by letters of support submitted by
powerful figures. If the pope was persuaded of the existence of a prima
facie case, then he appointed commissioners to hold hearings (‘inquests’)
in the area in which the candidate had been active. A questionnaire was
compiled in order to shape the examination of witnesses. Giving as an
example the document prepared for the 1307 inquest into the sanctity
of Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, Bartlett explains that the
questions are grouped under three headings: Thomas’s life and the virtues
that he had exhibited in living it; his reputation; and his miracles. Having
outlined the topics gathered under the first heading, Bartlett goes on:
The second heading addressed the … question ‘whether it was public

knowledge and general report and opinion or belief of the people that
the said lord Thomas was a saint’, then probing into who had been heard
asserting this, when and where and by what kind of person, and then,
even more searchingly, what the witness understood by the phrase ‘public
knowledge’.
Such inquiries about reputation (‘fama’) suggest, he argues, something

critical:
If there was evidence that someone was being regarded as a saint, this
strengthened the case. The canonization process thus required evidence
that the candidate was being treated as a saint: invocation, miracles, fama,
and so on. It did not seek to ban these until it had issued a verdict. Hence
pre-canonization cult was not only licit, but essential.
Once depositions under oath had been taken, the dossiers were forwarded
to Rome for the ‘curial phase’—evaluation by a committee of three cardi-
nals. Of course, many cases fell by the wayside at one stage or another; the
success rate was only 50 per cent. Nevertheless, should the papal curia be
convinced by the accumulated proofs, then the candidate was declared a
saint in a special Mass, presided over by the pope himself, during which
the new saint’s feast-day was proclaimed. Publicity was also given via
the promulgation of a Bull. Significant though papal canonization was
in creating the top tier of saints—and we must certainly not underesti-
mate the tenacity and cost involved in propelling each cause—it is crucial
to see the outcome in proportion. Bartlett remarks that there were about
thirty-eight papal canonizations 993–1198 and no more than forty 1198–
1500. Narrowing our gaze within the latter period, forty-seven people
are known to have been the subject of canonization inquests (including
unsuccessful ones) during the thirteenth century. By contrast, Michael
Goodich found that 518 new saints were being venerated in that same
100 years. Clearly, then, Rome might say what it liked, but (to borrow
Bartlett’s apt metaphor) ‘the great stream of the cult of the saints flowed
on’, at least throughout the Middle Ages.35
Instead of enumerating saints, or distinguishing between canonized
and non-canonized ones, it is more useful to appreciate the many other
ways in which they can be classified. Bartlett discusses nine main cate-
gories; a list of his sub-headings and sub-sub-headings will suffice: ‘The
Queen of Heaven’, i.e. the Virgin Mary; ‘Angels’; ‘Apostles and Evan-
gelists’; ‘Martyrs’; ‘Confessors’, further divided into ‘Doctors of the
Church’, ‘Bishops’, ‘Abbots’ and ‘Hermits’; ‘Virgins’; ‘Old Testament

Saints’; ‘Lay Saints’; and ‘Royal Saints’, with a sub-section on ‘Female
Royal Saints’.36 How did this vast celestial community impinge upon
the lives of ordinary Christians? Unlike us, whose high mobility perhaps
encourages inattention to place-name etymology, medieval people were
deeply rooted geographically, especially in the countryside, and it is hard
to imagine that long-standing residence did not foster some pride in a
settlement’s nominal association with a saint. One thinks of St. Bees in
Cumberland, named after the (mythical) Irish virgin princess St. Bega; St.
David’s in Pembrokeshire, named after the sixth-century Welsh bishop;
and St. Neot’s in Huntingdonshire, so named following the translation
there (c.980) of the relics of the ninth-century Cornish monk and hermit.
Where villages bore an identical name, reference to a saint could be a
helpful distinction, as with Somerset’s Hinton St. George (the dedica-
tion of the parish church) and Dorset’s Hinton St. Mary (acknowledging
its then ownership by St. Mary’s Abbey, Shaftesbury). Towns and cities
pursued the same strategy. London’s most basic administrative unit was
the parish, repeated church dedications to specific saints giving rise to
memorable topographical locators, such as ‘St. Michael Cornhill’, ‘St.
Michael Crooked Lane’ and so forth.37 In his widely circulated didactic
manual ‘Festial ’, probably written in the later 1380s and first printed in
1483, the Augustinian canon John Mirk explained the rationale behind
dedications:
For ryght as a temporall lord helpyth and defendyth all that byn parechons
or tenantys, ryght soo the saynt that ys patron of the chyrche helpyth
and defendyth all that byn paryschons to hym, and don hym worschyp
halowyng his day, and offyrne to hym.38
Folk unmoved by place-names and church dedications surely cannot have

been indifferent to baptismal names. Bartlett relates that the naming
of children after the saints was ‘a Christian practice even before the
time of Constantine’. The idea was that it established a special bond
between them, bringing down upon the recipient some measure of divine
approbation. Across western Christendom, saints’ names became far more
common in the later Middle Ages, largely displacing ‘earlier local vernac-
ular name repertoires’, in Bartlett’s description. As illustration, he traces
the growing popularity of ‘John’ (with equivalent ‘Johannes’ and its
abbreviation ‘Hans’) and notes the diffusion of ‘Francis’ in response to
the canonization of St. Francis of Assisi in 1228. Strongly advocating the

choice of saints’ names, Antoninus, a mid fifteenth-century archbishop of
Florence, condemned resort to ‘Lancelot’ and other ‘names of pagans’.
The evidence seems incontrovertible:
The names of biblical saints, like John, James, Peter and Mary, and the
great universal martyr-saints, like Catherine and Margaret, as well as a select
few of the confessors, such as Antony and Nicholas, came to predominate.
Alongside this change, went two other developments: the reduction in the
variety of names used and the adoption of hereditary family surnames.
These processes were not uniform, but they were clear, and sometimes
fairly dramatic, producing a European naming pattern in 1500 radically
different from that of 1100.39
Even if the possible influence of nomenclature is dismissed as circum-

stantial, since historians cannot apprehend the resonances in individual
minds, the fact is that church-goers—which by law everyone had to be—
were bombarded by reminders of the saints. Some cults were only local,
others regional and the greatest supra-regional, yet it would have been
a rare medieval church indeed that did not confront the visitor with
striking images of a selection of saints. Rood-screen dado panels provided
one favoured locus for display,40 stained-glass windows another.41 To the
visual was added the aural, although the number of name-checks varied
depending upon the liturgy. Every Latin Mass invoked certain saints
because their names were recited in two prayers embedded in the Canon,
its centrepiece. The first prayer (‘Communicantes ’) recalled the apostles,
St. Paul, five early popes and seven early martyrs, while the second (‘Nobis
quoque peccatoribus ’) mentioned four New Testament figures, four post-
biblical male martyrs and seven female martyrs. Unsurprisingly, Mass was
suitably elaborated when said on a saint’s feast-day. It was not, however,
the vehicle for the most extensive treatment; that honour fell to the
Office, i.e. the daily round of services (incorporating hymns, prayers,
Psalms and readings) comprising Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None
and Vespers. On feast-days, much more time would have been allocated,
in the Office, to the commemoration of the saint momentarily in the
frame. Matins, for instance, might have included readings from a ‘Life’ or
perhaps from an account of the saint’s miracles. ‘There was’, says Bartlett,
‘a complex interplay between the texts of the liturgy and hagiographic
writing’. And how frequently must parishioners have been summoned for
such solemn acts of remembrance! The ecclesiastical year, already replete

with seasonal rituals,42 became so stuffed with saints’ feast-days (albeit
not all observed universally) that sophisticated grading systems emerged,
resulting in the most important days (either those dedicated to major
saints or those dedicated to saints of local significance) being marked out
by preparatory vigils and succeeding Octaves. Liturgical Kalendars, typi-
cally prefacing Psalters, reveal which saints were generally venerated in any
particular community, for their feast-days are usually categorized in eye-
catching fashion, as it might be by the use of gold leaf or red ink—the
origin of the expression ‘red-letter day’.43
We have been sketching some of the means by which saints entered
the consciousness of the average Christian through regular church atten-
dance. Yet for enthusiastic believers, not least seekers after miraculous
cures, routine parochial worship will have constituted the minimum of
their spiritual witness. As Rosser demonstrates, voluntarism had long
existed within the institutional structure of the medieval parish,44 and
it flourished outside the parish too. Thanks to Chaucer, among others,
pilgrimage is perhaps the best-known form.45 But not everyone could
afford to travel, or travel very far. A more modest outlet for volun-
taristic impulses was membership of a religious gild, normally obtainable
upon payment of an annual subscription. Established and administered by
the laity, though employing priests principally to say Mass for deceased
members, gilds proliferated enormously in pre-Reformation England.
Several might be accommodated in a single parish. Alternatively, they
might be attached to a cathedral or to a religious house—and it was
possible to join any number of them, wherever located.46 Gilds are inter-
esting from our perspective because their dedications (to the extent that
those may be recovered from references in wills, church wardens’ accounts
and other sources) indicate the relative popularity of the saints. Studying
the diocese of Bath and Wells, French found that the Virgin Mary easily
bore the palm; at the bottom of the league-table, with one dedication
apiece, were smaller fry like ‘St. Dubricius’ (properly St. Dyfrig), ‘St.
Etheldrede’ (properly St. Æthelthryth) and ‘St. Olave’ (properly St. Olaf,
quondam king of Norway as Olaf II Haraldsson).47 The city of Norwich
boasted many gilds, including those named after SS Barbara, Botulph and
George.48 The devotional focus for such societies would have been a side
altar dedicated correspondingly and almost certainly furnished with an
image of the dedicatee. Importantly, however, gild membership did not
preclude wider loyalties. When John Thrale of Luton made his will in
1505, for instance, he remembered not only the gild of the Holy Trinity
there and the gild of St. Mary at Boston in Lincolnshire, but also SS
John the Baptist and Katherine, leaving money to maintain lights burning
before their images, which seemingly adorned his parish church.49 The
intriguing question, then, is how personal preferences such as those arose.
Rarely is a reason revealed: we know that (c.1450) an unnamed woman
commissioned the learned Augustinian friar John Capgrave to write a
‘Life’ of St. Augustine of Hippo because she had been born on his feast-
day. Capgrave also wrote ‘Lives’ of SS Gilbert of Sempringham, Katherine
and Norbert.50 Otherwise, could it have been true that, to an unfath-
omable degree, individual preferences actually stemmed from exposure
(not necessarily directly) to precisely the kind of literature that Capgrave
was producing?51
If so, then the prime candidate for exerting the widest influence
must be the ‘Legenda Aurea’ (or ‘Golden Legend’) assembled between
1252 and 1265 by the Italian Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine
(c.1229–1298). The compiler classified his material as either ‘temporale’
or ‘sanctorale’. Of the 182 chapters in the standard modern English
edition, twenty-two belong to the former category, sixteen being a
systematic exposition of soteriological doctrine arranged in a Christo-
centric progression from Advent to ‘The Exaltation of the Holy Cross’.
Three ancillary chapters deal with Marian feasts, two with the feasts of All
Saints and All Souls, respectively, and another with ‘The Dedication of
a Church’.52 The remaining 160 chapters, mostly saints’ ‘Lives’,53 make
up the ‘sanctorale’ category. But instead of grouping chapters into two
discrete and unequal blocs consistent with the basic conceptual division,
Jacobus disposed everything into a single sequence according to the litur-
gical calendar, thereby assigning fixed positions to what in some cases
must be moveable feasts and interspersing expository chapters and hagio-
graphical ones. This pattern, at first glance slightly odd, is explained by
the fact that the book was intended for the instruction of priests and
preachers, who could quarry it (in Duffy’s words) ‘to bulk out their
sermons and catecheses’. Yet Jacobus’s coverage is idiosyncratic. In the
‘temporale’ bracket, Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday are strangely
absent. So too is the feast of Corpus Christi, established as recently as
1264. For Duffy, an ‘impression of old-fashionedness’ slides into one of
‘archaism’ when he considers the selection of saints: apart from just five
figures chosen from among the illustrious men and women canonized in
the previous 100 years,54 Jacobus confined his attention to people who
had been venerated for aeons. Major New Testament personages obvi-
ously had to be included, as did the Fathers, the Doctors and certain
popes, monks and hermits of the Early Church. The compiler’s greatest
enthusiasm, however, seems to have been reserved for the martyr-saints
of the first four centuries of Christian history. Those ‘Lives’, writes Duffy,
‘filled as they are with lurid detail of gruesome sufferings, with defi-
ance and rejection of the world, and larded with spectacular miracles,
undoubtedly appeal[ed] to a medieval taste for romance, excitement and
pious entertainment’. That the ‘Legenda Aurea’ was quickly appreciated
beyond ecclesiastical circles is suggested by the extraordinary number of
extant manuscripts: over 950 of the Latin original (plus more than 80 of
selections) and about 500 containing either all or part of Jacobus’s text
translated into one or another of the main European vernaculars.55
Its onward march is astonishing. The first of many French renditions
(this by Jean Belet) was effected around the beginning of the fourteenth
century56 ; another (by Jean de Vignay) was probably completed some
years before 1348 (the date appearing on the best manuscript) and is
known as Version (a) of the ‘Légende Dorée’. In 1401–1402, Jean Golein
added forty-six items, the so-called ‘Festes nouvelles ’ remembering saints
with French connections, to create Version (b). Somewhere in Flan-
ders, perhaps c.1472–1475, Version (b) was revised as Version (c)—the
contents were re-organized, new ‘Lives’ of saints possessing north Euro-
pean links were incorporated and different texts were substituted for
several originals.57 Meanwhile, the anonymous ‘synfulle wretche’ (once
wrongly conjectured to have been Osbern Bokenham) had translated an
early version of the ‘Légende Dorée’ into English. Dated 1438 in the
colophon of Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Douce 372, one of at least
seven surviving manuscripts, this translation, conventionally designated
the ‘Gilte Legende’, omits de Voragine’s fanciful ‘etymology’ prefacing
each biography and eight of the biographies themselves. As though to
compensate for those excisions, however, copies contain varying numbers
of extra chapters, mostly ‘Lives’ of English saints.58 Responding from
1443 to a series of elite commissions, Bokenham (b. 1392/1393, d.
in or after 1464) wrote thirteen verse ‘Lives’ of female saints, the texts
being gathered and transcribed into a unique manuscript in 1447. A
tantalizing statement in another of his works indicates that Bokenham’s
hagiography had been far more extensive than Legends of Holy Women,
the modern editorial title, yet it was only in 2007 that Horobin discov-
ered the missing volume at Abbotsford House in Scotland. Now scholars
could see that the Augustinian friar had translated the whole of the
‘Legenda Aurea’ directly from de Voragine’s Latin prototype, albeit with
frequent changes designed to meet the perceived needs of his reader-
ship/audience. In particular, argues Horobin, Bokenham sought to cast
his saints ‘as examples to be followed rather than revered’, which meant
(contrary to Jacobus’s aims) accentuating their humanity and deliber-
ately downplaying ‘miraculous interventions’.59 The ‘synfulle wretche’
and the prolific Bokenham were not alone in making English adaptations
of the ‘Legenda Aurea’: its influence has been traced (controversially)
in the much-reproduced ‘South English Legendary’ of either 1276 or
127960 and Rydel has lately detected Jacobus’s prologue discussion of
the liturgical calendar (a prologue ignored by other medieval translators
into English) lurking behind thirty-eight lines of an anonymous poem
attributable to the third quarter of the fifteenth century.61
By that stage, of course, the running was increasingly being made by
printed books. Seybolt lists ninety-seven Latin editions of the ‘Legenda
Aurea’ published 1470–1500 across such printing centres as Cologne,
Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Basel, Paris, Augsburg, Toulouse, Ulm, Lyon,
Venice, Deventer, Geneva, Reutlingen, Brussels, Louvain and Hagenau.
With little delay, vernacular translations rolled off the presses in impres-
sive quantities: in High German from 1472, in French from 1475, in
Italian from [1475], in Czech from c.1475–1479, in Dutch from 1478
and in Low German from c.1480. There may be some justification for
Seybolt’s assertion that ‘the Legenda Aurea led the Bible in the number
of editions issued in the fifteenth century’.62 Unsurprisingly, Caxton,
having re-located from the continent to Westminster, mobilized himself
to serve the Anglophone market, producing in [1483–1484] what Jeremy
hails as a ‘monumental edition’ constituting ‘his most ambitious under-
taking as translator, editor, and printer’. The massive folio book, she
explains, surpasses every other version of the ‘Legenda Aurea’ in its
scope, for the original Latin text has been augmented by about a third.
How the expansion was achieved is complex. Caxton cut four of de
Voragine’s chapters entirely.63 On the other hand, he added ten chap-
ters on feasts ‘represented’ by accretions to Jacobus’s work and fifty-nine
‘Lives’ not found in the Latin anthology at all.64 This manipulation was
prompted by the fact that, as Caxton himself admitted, he had before him
three discrepant exemplars: Jacobus’s original Latin compilation, a French
translation (now identified as Version (c) of the ‘Légende Dorée’) and an
English translation (now known to have been the ‘Gilte Legende’). As
might be expected of one exhibiting magpie tendencies, Caxton was no

painstaking craftsman in his treatment of the principal sources: in Jeremy’s
view, the resulting first edition of The Golden Legend [STC, 24874] is
‘marked by omission, condensation, distortion, and error’. But the great
entrepreneur was not an unskilful hack either—he inserted some short
passages of his own authorship, a large section ultimately derived from the
Bible and a ‘Life’ of St. Roche (external to both the ‘Legenda Aurea’ and
its redactions) which, he claimed, he had translated from Latin person-
ally.65 Recent research has shed considerable light on Caxton’s working
methods,66 and much more will surely become clear upon the appear-
ance of the first volume of a critical edition.67 A second impression of
The Golden Legend of [1483–1484] came out in 1487, with new editions
(printed by De Worde at Westminster) following in 1493, 1498, 1504,
1507, 1512, 1521 and 1527, each analysed by Coatesworth.68 Regard-
less of format, de Voragine’s legendary was evidently an international
best-seller, and Ring’s study offers an interesting insight into how some
early-modern readers interacted with their copies of Caxton’s recension.69
Indeed, so highly prized was the work that it is mentioned specifically in
wills: given the date, 1411, John Pakenham, a priest, could only have
been referring to a manuscript, but the book bequeathed in 1491 by the
layman William Stenyng may well have been a Caxton.70
The categories ‘knight’ and ‘saint’ were not always as distinct as we
might imagine, since embellishments to the story of St. Martin of Tours
(316–397) changed the former imperial guard in the Roman army into
‘the archetypal Christian soldier’, whose fictitious knightly investiture
ceremony was appropriated (argues Hoch) in order to fulfil ‘an expressly
Franciscan need for a chivalric surrogate’—the point being to portray St.
Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226) as the new St. Martin.71 Closer to
home, though perhaps equally famous for helping the deserving, was the
considerably more mythogenic Robin Hood. In tackling this complex
topic for our purposes, it is crucial to ignore the outlaw’s Tudor gentrifi-
cation, and other accretions to the medieval legend, while recognizing the
force of Knight’s claim that he is ‘only exceeded in Anglophone culture
by King Arthur for the length of time when the hero has been in public
memory’.72 Mainstream historians have been liberated from the futile
quest for ‘the real-life Robin’ by the discovery that tales in one shape or
form were already circulating by 1262, such that a fugitive from justice
whose true name is known could be re-described in official records as
William ‘Robehod’.73 Clearly, what would later in the thirteenth century
Another random document with
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Davies smiled. He was always pleased to be sent out of town. It
was a mark of appreciation. The city editor rarely sent any of the
other men on these big stories. What a nice ride he would have!
As he went along, however, a few minutes later he began to
meditate on this. Perhaps, as the city editor had suggested, he might
be compelled to witness an actual lynching. That was by no means
so pleasant in itself. In his fixed code of rewards and punishments he
had no particular place for lynchings, even for crimes of the nature
described, especially if he had to witness the lynching. It was too
horrible a kind of reward or punishment. Once, in line of duty, he had
been compelled to witness a hanging, and that had made him sick—
deathly so—even though carried out as a part of the due process of
law of his day and place. Now, as he looked at this fine day and his
excellent clothes, he was not so sure that this was a worthwhile
assignment. Why should he always be selected for such things—just
because he could write? There were others—lots of men on the
staff. He began to hope as he went along that nothing really serious
would come of it, that they would catch the man before he got there
and put him in jail—or, if the worst had to be—painful thought!—that
it would be all over by the time he got there. Let’s see—the telegram
had been filed at nine a.m. It was now one-thirty and would be three
by the time he got out there, all of that. That would give them time
enough, and then, if all were well, or ill, as it were, he could just
gather the details of the crime and the—aftermath—and return. The
mere thought of an approaching lynching troubled him greatly, and
the farther he went the less he liked it.
He found the village of Pleasant Valley a very small affair indeed,
just a few dozen houses nestling between green slopes of low hills,
with one small business corner and a rambling array of lanes. One or
two merchants of K——, the city from which he had just arrived, lived
out here, but otherwise it was very rural. He took notes of the
whiteness of the little houses, the shimmering beauty of the small
stream one had to cross in going from the depot. At the one main
corner a few men were gathered about a typical village barroom.
Davies headed for this as being the most likely source of information.
In mingling with this company at first he said nothing about his
being a newspaper man, being very doubtful as to its effect upon
them, their freedom of speech and manner.
The whole company was apparently tense with interest in the
crime which still remained unpunished, seemingly craving
excitement and desirous of seeing something done about it. No such
opportunity to work up wrath and vent their stored-up animal
propensities had probably occurred here in years. He took this
occasion to inquire into the exact details of the attack, where it had
occurred, where the Whitakers lived. Then, seeing that mere talk
prevailed here, he went away thinking that he had best find out for
himself how the victim was. As yet she had not been described, and
it was necessary to know a little something about her. Accordingly,
he sought an old man who kept a stable in the village, and procured
a horse. No carriage was to be had. Davies was not an excellent
rider, but he made a shift of it. The Whitaker home was not so very
far away—about four miles out—and before long he was knocking at
its front door, set back a hundred feet from the rough country road.
“I’m from the Times,” he said to the tall, rawboned woman who
opened the door, with an attempt at being impressive. His position as
reporter in this matter was a little dubious; he might be welcome, and
he might not. Then he asked if this were Mrs. Whitaker, and how
Miss Whitaker was by now.
“She’s doing very well,” answered the woman, who seemed
decidedly stern, if repressed and nervous, a Spartan type. “Won’t
you come in? She’s rather feverish, but the doctor says she’ll
probably be all right later on.” She said no more.
Davies acknowledged the invitation by entering. He was very
anxious to see the girl, but she was sleeping under the influence of
an opiate, and he did not care to press the matter at once.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
“About eight o’clock this morning,” said the woman. “She started to
go over to our next door neighbor here, Mr. Edmonds, and this negro
met her. We didn’t know anything about it until she came crying
through the gate and dropped down in here.”
“Were you the first one to meet her?” asked Davies.
“Yes, I was the only one,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “The men had all
gone to the fields.”
Davies listened to more of the details, the type and history of the
man, and then rose to go. Before doing so he was allowed to have a
look at the girl, who was still sleeping. She was young and rather
pretty. In the yard he met a country man who was just coming to get
home news. The latter imparted more information.
“They’re lookin’ all around south of here,” he said, speaking of a
crowd which was supposed to be searching. “I expect they’ll make
short work of him if they get him. He can’t get away very well, for
he’s on foot, wherever he is. The sheriff’s after him too, with a deputy
or two, I believe. He’ll be tryin’ to save him an’ take him over to
Clayton, but I don’t believe he’ll be able to do it, not if the crowd
catches him first.”
So, thought Davies, he would probably have to witness a lynching
after all. The prospect was most unhappy.
“Does any one know where this negro lived?” he asked heavily, a
growing sense of his duty weighing upon him.
“Oh, right down here a little way,” replied the farmer. “Jeff Ingalls
was his name. We all know him around here. He worked for one and
another of the farmers hereabouts, and don’t appear to have had
such a bad record, either, except for drinkin’ a little now and then.
Miss Ada recognized him, all right. You follow this road to the next
crossing and turn to the right. It’s a little log house that sets back off
the road—something like that one you see down the lane there, only
it’s got lots o’ chips scattered about.”
Davies decided to go there first, but changed his mind. It was
growing late, and he thought he had better return to the village.
Perhaps by now developments in connection with the sheriff or the
posse were to be learned.
Accordingly, he rode back and put the horse in the hands of its
owner, hoping that all had been concluded and that he might learn of
it here. At the principal corner much the same company was still
present, arguing, fomenting, gesticulating. They seemed parts of
different companies that earlier in the day had been out searching.
He wondered what they had been doing since, and then decided to
ingratiate himself by telling them he had just come from the
Whitakers and what he had learned there of the present condition of
the girl and the movements of the sheriff.
Just then a young farmer came galloping up. He was coatless,
hatless, breathless.
“They’ve got him!” he shouted excitedly. “They’ve got him!”
A chorus of “whos,” “wheres” and “whens” greeted this information
as the crowd gathered about the rider.
“Why, Mathews caught him up here at his own house!” exclaimed
the latter, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping his face. “He must ’a’
gone back there for something. Mathews’s takin’ him over to
Clayton, so they think, but they don’t project he’ll ever get there.
They’re after him now, but Mathews says he’ll shoot the first man
that tries to take him away.”
“Which way’d he go?” exclaimed the men in chorus, stirring as if to
make an attack.
“’Cross Sellers’ Lane,” said the rider. “The boys think he’s goin’ by
way of Baldwin.”
“Whoopee!” yelled one of the listeners. “We’ll get him away from
him, all right! Are you goin’, Sam?”
“You bet!” said the latter. “Wait’ll I get my horse!”
“Lord!” thought Davies. “To think of being (perforce) one of a
lynching party—a hired spectator!”
He delayed no longer, however, but hastened to secure his horse
again. He saw that the crowd would be off in a minute to catch up
with the sheriff. There would be information in that quarter, drama
very likely.
“What’s doin’?” inquired the liveryman as he noted Davies’ excited
appearance.
“They’re after him,” replied the latter nervously. “The sheriff’s
caught him. They’re going now to try to take him away from him, or
that’s what they say. The sheriff is taking him over to Clayton, by way
of Baldwin. I want to get over there if I can. Give me the horse again,
and I’ll give you a couple of dollars more.”
The liveryman led the horse out, but not without many provisionary
cautions as to the care which was to be taken of him, the damages
which would ensue if it were not. He was not to be ridden beyond
midnight. If one were wanted for longer than that Davies must get
him elsewhere or come and get another, to all of which Davies
promptly agreed. He then mounted and rode away.
When he reached the corner again several of the men who had
gone for their horses were already there, ready to start. The young
man who had brought the news had long since dashed off to other
parts.
Davies waited to see which road this new company would take.
Then through as pleasant a country as one would wish to see, up hill
and down dale, with charming vistas breaking upon the gaze at
every turn, he did the riding of his life. So disturbed was the reporter
by the grim turn things had taken that he scarcely noted the beauty
that was stretched before him, save to note that it was so. Death!
Death! The proximity of involuntary and enforced death was what
weighed upon him now.
In about an hour the company had come in sight of the sheriff,
who, with two other men, was driving a wagon he had borrowed
along a lone country road. The latter was sitting at the back, a
revolver in each hand, his face toward the group, which at sight of
him trailed after at a respectful distance. Excited as every one was,
there was no disposition, for the time being at least, to halt the
progress of the law.
“He’s in that wagon,” Davies heard one man say. “Don’t you see
they’ve got him in there tied and laid down?”
Davies looked.
“That’s right,” said another. “I see him now.”
“What we ought to do,” said a third, who was riding near the front,
“is to take him away and hang him. That’s just what he deserves,
and that’s what he’ll get before we’re through to-day.”
“Yes!” called the sheriff, who seemed to have heard this. “You’re
not goin’ to do any hangin’ this day, so you just might as well go on
back.” He did not appear to be much troubled by the appearance of
the crowd.
“Where’s old man Whitaker?” asked one of the men who seemed
to feel that they needed a leader. “He’d get him quick enough!”
“He’s with the other crowd, down below Olney,” was the reply.
“Somebody ought to go an’ tell him.”
“Clark’s gone,” assured another, who hoped for the worst.
Davies rode among the company a prey to mingled and singular
feelings. He was very much excited and yet depressed by the
character of the crowd which, in so far as he could see, was largely
impelled to its jaunt by curiosity and yet also able under sufficient
motivation on the part of some one—any one, really—to kill too.
There was not so much daring as a desire to gain daring from
others, an unconscious wish or impulse to organize the total strength
or will of those present into one strength or one will, sufficient to
overcome the sheriff and inflict death upon his charge. It was strange
—almost intellectually incomprehensible—and yet so it was. The
men were plainly afraid of the determined sheriff. They thought
something ought to be done, but they did not feel like getting into
trouble.
Mathews, a large solemn, sage, brown man in worn clothes and a
faded brown hat, contemplated the recent addition to his trailers with
apparent indifference. Seemingly he was determined to protect his
man and avoid mob justice, come what may. A mob should not have
him if he had to shoot, and if he shot it would be to kill. Finally, since
the company thus added to did not dash upon him, he seemingly
decided to scare them off. Apparently he thought he could do this,
since they trailed like calves.
“Stop a minute!” he called to his driver.
The latter pulled up. So did the crowd behind. Then the sheriff
stood over the prostrate body of the negro, who lay in the jolting
wagon beneath him, and called back:
“Go ’way from here, you people! Go on, now! I won’t have you
follerin’ after me!”
“Give us the nigger!” yelled one in a half-bantering, half-derisive
tone of voice.
“I’ll give ye just two minutes to go on back out o’ this road,”
returned the sheriff grimly, pulling out his watch and looking at it.
They were about a hundred feet apart. “If you don’t, I’ll clear you
out!”
“Give us the nigger!”
“I know you, Scott,” answered Mathews, recognizing the voice. “I’ll
arrest every last one of ye to-morrow. Mark my word!”
The company listened in silence, the horses champing and
twisting.
“We’ve got a right to foller,” answered one of the men.
“I give ye fair warning,” said the sheriff, jumping from his wagon
and leveling his pistols as he approached. “When I count five I’ll
begin to shoot!”
He was a serious and stalwart figure as he approached, and the
crowd fell back a little.
“Git out o’ this now!” he yelled. “One—Two——”
The company turned completely and retreated, Davies among
them.
“We’ll foller him when he gits further on,” said one of the men in
explanation.
“He’s got to do it,” said another. “Let him git a little ways ahead.”
The sheriff returned to his wagon and drove on. He seemed,
however, to realize that he would not be obeyed and that safety lay
in haste alone. His wagon was traveling fast. If only he could lose
them or get a good start he might possibly get to Clayton and the
strong county jail by morning. His followers, however, trailed him
swiftly as might be, determined not to be left behind.
“He’s goin’ to Baldwin,” said one of the company of which Davies
was a member.
“Where’s that?” asked Davies.
“Over west o’ here, about four miles.”
“Why is he going there?”
“That’s where he lives. I guess he thinks if he kin git ’im over there
he kin purtect ’im till he kin git more help from Clayton. I cal’late he’ll
try an’ take ’im over yet to-night, or early in the mornin’ shore.”
Davies smiled at the man’s English. This countryside lingo always
fascinated him.
Yet the men lagged, hesitating as to what to do. They did not want
to lose sight of Matthews, and yet cowardice controlled them. They
did not want to get into direct altercation with the law. It wasn’t their
place to hang the man, although plainly they felt that he ought to be
hanged, and that it would be a stirring and exciting thing if he were.
Consequently they desired to watch and be on hand—to get old
Whitaker and his son Jake, if they could, who were out looking
elsewhere. They wanted to see what the father and brother would
do.
The quandary was solved by one of the men, who suggested that
they could get to Baldwin by going back to Pleasant Valley and
taking the Sand River pike, and that in the meantime they might
come upon Whitaker and his son en route, or leave word at his
house. It was a shorter cut than this the sheriff was taking, although
he would get there first now. Possibly they could beat him at least to
Clayton, if he attempted to go on. The Clayton road was back via
Pleasant Valley, or near it, and easily intercepted. Therefore, while
one or two remained to trail the sheriff and give the alarm in case he
did attempt to go on to Clayton, the rest, followed by Davies, set off
at a gallop to Pleasant Valley. It was nearly dusk now when they
arrived and stopped at the corner store—supper time. The fires of
evening meals were marked by upcurling smoke from chimneys.
Here, somehow, the zest to follow seemed to depart. Evidently the
sheriff had worsted them for the night. Morg Whitaker, the father, had
not been found; neither had Jake. Perhaps they had better eat. Two
or three had already secretly fallen away.
They were telling the news of what had occurred so far to one of
the two storekeepers who kept the place, when suddenly Jake
Whitaker, the girl’s brother, and several companions came riding up.
They had been scouring the territory to the north of the town, and
were hot and tired. Plainly they were unaware of the developments
of which the crowd had been a part.
“The sheriff’s got ’im!” exclaimed one of the company, with that
blatance which always accompanies the telling of great news in
small rural companies. “He taken him over to Baldwin in a wagon a
coupla hours ago.”
“Which way did he go?” asked the son, whose hardy figure, worn,
hand-me-down clothes and rakish hat showed up picturesquely as
he turned here and there on his horse.
“’Cross Sellers’ Lane. You won’t git ’em that-a-way, though, Jake.
He’s already over there by now. Better take the short cut.”
A babble of voices now made the scene more interesting. One told
how the negro had been caught, another that the sheriff was defiant,
a third that men were still tracking him or over there watching, until
all the chief points of the drama had been spoken if not heard.
Instantly suppers were forgotten. The whole customary order of
the evening was overturned once more. The company started off on
another excited jaunt, up hill and down dale, through the lovely
country that lay between Baldwin and Pleasant Valley.
By now Davies was very weary of this procedure and of his
saddle. He wondered when, if ever, this story was to culminate, let
alone he write it. Tragic as it might prove, he could not nevertheless
spend an indefinite period trailing a possibility, and yet, so great was
the potentiality of the present situation, he dared not leave. By
contrast with the horror impending, as he now noted, the night was
so beautiful that it was all but poignant. Stars were already beginning
to shine. Distant lamps twinkled like yellow eyes from the cottages in
the valleys and on the hillsides. The air was fresh and tender. Some
peafowls were crying afar off, and the east promised a golden moon.
Silently the assembled company trotted on—no more than a score
in all. In the dusk, and with Jake ahead, it seemed too grim a
pilgrimage for joking. Young Jake, riding silently toward the front,
looked as if tragedy were all he craved. His friends seemed
considerately to withdraw from him, seeing that he was the
aggrieved.
After an hour’s riding Baldwin came into view, lying in a sheltering
cup of low hills. Already its lights were twinkling softly and there was
still an air of honest firesides and cheery suppers about it which
appealed to Davies in his hungry state. Still, he had no thought now
of anything save this pursuit.
Once in the village, the company was greeted by calls of
recognition. Everybody seemed to know what they had come for.
The sheriff and his charge were still there, so a dozen citizens
volunteered. The local storekeepers and loungers followed the
cavalcade up the street to the sheriff’s house, for the riders had now
fallen into a solemn walk.
“You won’t get him though, boys,” said one whom Davies later
learned was Seavey, the village postmaster and telegraph operator,
a rather youthful person of between twenty-five and thirty, as they
passed his door. “He’s got two deputies in there with him, or did
have, and they say he’s going to take him over to Clayton.”
At the first street corner they were joined by the several men who
had followed the sheriff.
“He tried to give us the slip,” they volunteered excitedly, “but he’s
got the nigger in the house, there, down in the cellar. The deputies
ain’t with him. They’ve gone somewhere for help—Clayton, maybe.”
“How do you know?”
“We saw ’em go out that back way. We think we did, anyhow.”
A hundred feet from the sheriff’s little white cottage, which backed
up against a sloping field, the men parleyed. Then Jake announced
that he proposed to go boldly up to the sheriff’s door and demand
the negro.
“If he don’t turn him out I’ll break in the door an’ take him!” he said.
“That’s right! We’ll stand by you, Whitaker,” commented several.
By now the throng of unmounted natives had gathered. The whole
village was up and about, its one street alive and running with
people. Heads appeared at doors and windows. Riders pranced up
and down, hallooing. A few revolver shots were heard. Presently the
mob gathered even closer to the sheriff’s gate, and Jake stepped
forward as leader. Instead, however, of going boldly up to the door
as at first it appeared he would, he stopped at the gate, calling to the
sheriff.
“Hello, Mathews!”
“Eh, eh, eh!” bellowed the crowd.
The call was repeated. Still no answer. Apparently to the sheriff
delay appeared to be his one best weapon.
Their coming, however, was not as unexpected as some might
have thought. The figure of the sheriff was plainly to be seen close to
one of the front windows. He appeared to be holding a double-
barreled shotgun. The negro, as it developed later, was cowering
and chattering in the darkest corner of the cellar, hearkening no
doubt to the voices and firing of the revolvers outside.
Suddenly, and just as Jake was about to go forward, the front door
of the house flew open, and in the glow of a single lamp inside
appeared first the double-barreled end of the gun, followed
immediately by the form of Mathews, who held the weapon poised
ready for a quick throw to the shoulder. All except Jake fell back.
“Mr. Mathews,” he called deliberately, “we want that nigger!”
“Well, you can’t git ’im!” replied the sheriff. “He’s not here.”
“Then what you got that gun fer?” yelled a voice.
Mathews made no answer.
“Better give him up, Mathews,” called another, who was safe in the
crowd, “or we’ll come in an’ take him!”
“No you won’t,” said the sheriff defiantly. “I said the man wasn’t
here. I say it ag’in. You couldn’t have him if he was, an’ you can’t
come in my house! Now if you people don’t want trouble you’d better
go on away.”
“He’s down in the cellar!” yelled another.
“Why don’t you let us see?” asked another.
Mathews waved his gun slightly.
“You’d better go away from here now,” cautioned the sheriff. “I’m
tellin’ ye! I’ll have warrants out for the lot o’ ye, if ye don’t mind!”
The crowd continued to simmer and stew, while Jake stood as
before. He was very pale and tense, but lacked initiative.
“He won’t shoot,” called some one at the back of the crowd. “Why
don’t you go in, Jake, an’ git him?”
“Sure! Rush in. That’s it!” observed a second.
“He won’t, eh?” replied the sheriff softly. Then he added in a lower
tone, “The first man that comes inside that gate takes the
consequences.”
No one ventured inside the gate; many even fell back. It seemed
as if the planned assault had come to nothing.
“Why not go around the back way?” called some one else.
“Try it!” replied the sheriff. “See what you find on that side! I told
you you couldn’t come inside. You’d better go away from here now
before ye git into trouble,” he repeated. “You can’t come in, an’ it’ll
only mean bloodshed.”
There was more chattering and jesting while the sheriff stood on
guard. He, however, said no more. Nor did he allow the banter,
turmoil and lust for tragedy to disturb him. Only, he kept his eye on
Jake, on whose movements the crowd seemed to hang.
Time passed, and still nothing was done. The truth was that young
Jake, put to the test, was not sufficiently courageous himself, for all
his daring, and felt the weakness of the crowd behind him. To all
intents and purposes he was alone, for he did not inspire confidence.
He finally fell back a little, observing, “I’ll git ’im before mornin’, all
right,” and now the crowd itself began to disperse, returning to its
stores and homes or standing about the postoffice and the one
village drugstore. Finally, Davies smiled and came away. He was
sure he had the story of a defeated mob. The sheriff was to be his
great hero. He proposed to interview him later. For the present, he
meant to seek out Seavey, the telegraph operator, and arrange to file
a message, then see if something to eat was not to be had
somewhere.
After a time he found the operator and told him what he wanted—
to write and file a story as he wrote it. The latter indicated a table in
the little postoffice and telegraph station which he could use. He
became very much interested in the reporter when he learned he
was from the Times, and when Davies asked where he could get
something to eat said he would run across the street and tell the
proprietor of the only boarding house to fix him something which he
could consume as he wrote. He appeared to be interested in how a
newspaper man would go about telling a story of this kind over a
wire.
“You start your story,” he said, “and I’ll come back and see if I can
get the Times on the wire.”
Davies sat down and began his account. He was intent on
describing things to date, the uncertainty and turmoil, the apparent
victory of the sheriff. Plainly the courage of the latter had won, and it
was all so picturesque. “A foiled lynching,” he began, and as he
wrote the obliging postmaster, who had by now returned, picked up
the pages and carefully deciphered them for himself.
“That’s all right. I’ll see if I can get the Times now,” he commented.
“Very obliging postmaster,” thought Davies as he wrote, but he had
so often encountered pleasant and obliging people on his rounds
that he soon dropped that thought.
The food was brought, and still Davies wrote on, munching as he
did so. In a little while the Times answered an often-repeated call.
“Davies at Baldwin,” ticked the postmaster, “get ready for quite a
story!”
“Let ’er go!” answered the operator at the Times, who had been
expecting this dispatch.
As the events of the day formulated themselves in his mind,
Davies wrote and turned over page after page. Between whiles he
looked out through the small window before him where afar off he
could see a lonely light twinkling against a hillside. Not infrequently
he stopped his work to see if anything new was happening, whether
the situation was in any danger of changing, but apparently it was
not. He then proposed to remain until all possibility of a tragedy, this
night anyhow, was eliminated. The operator also wandered about,
waiting for an accumulation of pages upon which he could work but
making sure to keep up with the writer. The two became quite
friendly.
Finally, his dispatch nearly finished, he asked the postmaster to
caution the night editor at K—— to the effect, that if anything more
happened before one in the morning he would file it, but not to
expect anything more as nothing might happen. The reply came that
he was to remain and await developments. Then he and the
postmaster sat down to talk.
About eleven o’clock, when both had about convinced themselves
that all was over for this night anyhow, and the lights in the village
had all but vanished, a stillness of the purest, summery-est, country-
est quality having settled down, a faint beating of hoofs, which
seemed to suggest the approach of a large cavalcade, could be
heard out on the Sand River pike as Davies by now had come to
learn it was, back or northwest of the postoffice. At the sound the
postmaster got up, as did Davies, both stepping outside and
listening. On it came, and as the volume increased, the former said,
“Might be help for the sheriff, but I doubt it. I telegraphed Clayton six
times to-day. They wouldn’t come that way, though. It’s the wrong
road.” Now, thought Davies nervously, after all there might be
something to add to his story, and he had so wished that it was all
over! Lynchings, as he now felt, were horrible things. He wished
people wouldn’t do such things—take the law, which now more than
ever he respected, into their own hands. It was too brutal, cruel. That
negro cowering there in the dark probably, and the sheriff all taut and
tense, worrying over his charge and his duty, were not happy things
to contemplate in the face of such a thing as this. It was true that the
crime which had been committed was dreadful, but still why couldn’t
people allow the law to take its course? It was so much better. The
law was powerful enough to deal with cases of this kind.
“They’re comin’ back, all right,” said the postmaster solemnly, as
he and Davies stared in the direction of the sound which grew louder
from moment to moment.
“It’s not any help from Clayton, I’m afraid.”
“By George, I think you’re right!” answered the reporter, something
telling him that more trouble was at hand. “Here they come!”
As he spoke there was a clattering of hoofs and crunching of
saddle girths as a large company of men dashed up the road and
turned into the narrow street of the village, the figure of Jake
Whitaker and an older bearded man in a wide black hat riding side
by side in front.
“There’s Jake,” said the postmaster, “and that’s his father riding
beside him there. The old man’s a terror when he gets his dander
up. Sompin’s sure to happen now.”
Davies realized that in his absence writing a new turn had been
given to things. Evidently the son had returned to Pleasant Valley
and organized a new posse or gone out to meet his father.
Instantly the place was astir again. Lights appeared in doorways
and windows, and both were thrown open. People were leaning or
gazing out to see what new movement was afoot. Davies noted at
once that there was none of the brash enthusiasm about this
company such as had characterized the previous descent. There
was grimness everywhere, and he now began to feel that this was
the beginning of the end. After the cavalcade had passed down the
street toward the sheriff’s house, which was quite dark now, he ran
after it, arriving a few moments after the former which was already in
part dismounted. The townspeople followed. The sheriff, as it now
developed, had not relaxed any of his vigilance, however; he was not
sleeping, and as the crowd reappeared the light inside reappeared.
By the light of the moon, which was almost overhead, Davies was
able to make out several of his companions of the afternoon, and
Jake, the son. There were many more, though, now, whom he did
not know, and foremost among them this old man.
The latter was strong, iron-gray, and wore a full beard. He looked
very much like a blacksmith.
“Keep your eye on the old man,” advised the postmaster, who had
by now come up and was standing by.
While they were still looking, the old man went boldly forward to
the little front porch of the house and knocked at the door. Some one
lifted a curtain at the window and peeped out.
“Hello, in there!” cried the old man, knocking again.
“What do you want?” asked a voice.
“I want that nigger!”
“Well, you can’t have him! I’ve told you people that once.”
“Bring him out or I’ll break down the door!” said the old man.
“If you do it’s at your own risk. I know you, Whitaker, an’ you know
me. I’ll give ye two minutes to get off that porch!”
“I want that nigger, I tell ye!”
“If ye don’t git off that porch I’ll fire through the door,” said the
voice solemnly. “One—Two——”
The old man backed cautiously away.
“Come out, Mathews!” yelled the crowd. “You’ve got to give him up
this time. We ain’t goin’ back without him.”
Slowly the door opened, as if the individual within were very well
satisfied as to his power to handle the mob. He had done it once
before this night, why not again? It revealed his tall form, armed with
his shotgun. He looked around very stolidly, and then addressed the
old man as one would a friend.
“Ye can’t have him, Morgan,” he said. “It’s ag’in’ the law. You know
that as well as I do.”
“Law or no law,” said the old man, “I want that nigger!”
“I tell you I can’t let you have him, Morgan. It’s ag’in’ the law. You
know you oughtn’t to be comin’ around here at this time o’ night
actin’ so.”
“Well, I’ll take him then,” said the old man, making a move.
“Stand back!” shouted the sheriff, leveling his gun on the instant.
“I’ll blow ye into kingdom come, sure as hell!”
A noticeable movement on the part of the crowd ceased. The
sheriff lowered his weapon as if he thought the danger were once
more over.
“You-all ought to be ashamed of yerselves,” he went on, his voice
sinking to a gentle neighborly reproof, “tryin’ to upset the law this
way.”
“The nigger didn’t upset no law, did he?” asked one derisively.
“Well, the law’s goin’ to take care of the nigger now,” Mathews
made answer.
“Give us that scoundrel, Mathews; you’d better do it,” said the old
man. “It’ll save a heap o’ trouble.”
“I’ll not argue with ye, Morgan. I said ye couldn’t have him, an’ ye
can’t. If ye want bloodshed, all right. But don’t blame me. I’ll kill the
first man that tries to make a move this way.”
He shifted his gun handily and waited. The crowd stood outside
his little fence murmuring.
Presently the old man retired and spoke to several others. There
was more murmuring, and then he came back to the dead line.
“We don’t want to cause trouble, Mathews,” he began
explanatively, moving his hand oratorically, “but we think you ought
to see that it won’t do any good to stand out. We think that——”
Davies and the postmaster were watching young Jake, whose
peculiar attitude attracted their attention. The latter was standing
poised at the edge of the crowd, evidently seeking to remain
unobserved. His eyes were on the sheriff, who was hearkening to
the old man. Suddenly, as the father talked and when the sheriff
seemed for a moment mollified and unsuspecting, he made a quick
run for the porch. There was an intense movement all along the line
as the life and death of the deed became apparent. Quickly the
sheriff drew his gun to his shoulder. Both triggers were pressed at
the same time, and the gun spoke, but not before Jake was in and
under him. The latter had been in sufficient time to knock the gun
barrel upward and fall upon his man. Both shots blazed harmlessly
over the heads of the crowd in red puffs, and then followed a general
onslaught. Men leaped the fence by tens and crowded upon the little
cottage. They swarmed about every side of the house and crowded
upon the porch, where four men were scuffling with the sheriff. The
latter soon gave up, vowing vengeance and the law. Torches were
brought, and a rope. A wagon drove up and was backed into the
yard. Then began the calls for the negro.
As Davies contemplated all this he could not help thinking of the
negro who during all this turmoil must have been crouching in his
corner in the cellar, trembling for his fate. Now indeed he must
realize that his end was near. He could not have dozed or lost
consciousness during the intervening hours, but must have been
cowering there, wondering and praying. All the while he must have
been terrified lest the sheriff might not get him away in time. Now, at
the sound of horses’ feet and the new murmurs of contention, how
must his body quake and his teeth chatter!
“I’d hate to be that nigger,” commented the postmaster grimly, “but
you can’t do anything with ’em. The county oughta sent help.”
“It’s horrible, horrible!” was all Davies could say.
He moved closer to the house, with the crowd, eager to observe
every detail of the procedure. Now it was that a number of the men,
as eager in their search as bloodhounds, appeared at a low cellar
entryway at the side of the house carrying a rope. Others followed
with torches. Headed by father and son they began to descend into
the dark hole. With impressive daring, Davies, who was by no means
sure that he would be allowed but who was also determined if
possible to see, followed.
Suddenly, in the farthest corner, he espied Ingalls. The latter in his
fear and agony had worked himself into a crouching position, as if he
were about to spring. His nails were apparently forced into the earth.
His eyes were rolling, his mouth foaming.
“Oh, my Lawd, boss,” he moaned, gazing almost as one blind, at
the lights, “oh, my Lawd, boss, don’t kill me! I won’t do it no mo’. I
didn’t go to do it. I didn’t mean to dis time. I was just drunk, boss. Oh,
my Lawd! My Lawd!” His teeth chattered the while his mouth seemed
to gape open. He was no longer sane really, but kept repeating
monotonously, “Oh, my Lawd!”
“Here he is, boys! Pull him out,” cried the father.
The negro now gave one yell of terror and collapsed, falling prone.
He quite bounded as he did so, coming down with a dead chug on
the earthen floor. Reason had forsaken him. He was by now a
groveling, foaming brute. The last gleam of intelligence was that
which notified him of the set eyes of his pursuers.
Davies, who by now had retreated to the grass outside before this
sight, was standing but ten feet back when they began to reappear
after seizing and binding him. Although shaken to the roots of his
being, he still had all the cool observing powers of the trained and
relentless reporter. Even now he noted the color values of the scene,
the red, smoky heads of the torches, the disheveled appearance of
the men, the scuffling and pulling. Then all at once he clapped his
hands over his mouth, almost unconscious of what he was doing.
“Oh, my God!” he whispered, his voice losing power.
The sickening sight was that of the negro, foaming at the mouth,
bloodshot as to his eyes, his hands working convulsively, being
dragged up the cellar steps feet foremost. They had tied a rope
about his waist and feet, and so had hauled him out, leaving his
head to hang and drag. The black face was distorted beyond all
human semblance.
“Oh, my God!” said Davies again, biting his fingers unconsciously.
The crowd gathered about now more closely than ever, more
horror-stricken than gleeful at their own work. None apparently had
either the courage or the charity to gainsay what was being done.
With a kind of mechanical deftness now the negro was rudely lifted
and like a sack of wheat thrown into the wagon. Father and son now
mounted in front to drive and the crowd took to their horses, content
to clatter, a silent cavalcade, behind. As Davies afterwards
concluded, they were not so much hardened lynchers perhaps as
curious spectators, the majority of them, eager for any variation—
any excuse for one—to the dreary commonplaces of their
existences. The task to most—all indeed—was entirely new. Wide-
eyed and nerve-racked, Davies ran for his own horse and mounting
followed. He was so excited he scarcely knew what he was doing.
Slowly the silent company now took its way up the Sand River pike
whence it had come. The moon was still high, pouring down a wash
of silvery light. As Davies rode he wondered how he was to complete
his telegram, but decided that he could not. When this was over
there would be no time. How long would it be before they would
really hang him? And would they? The whole procedure seemed so
unreal, so barbaric that he could scarcely believe it—that he was a
part of it. Still they rode on.

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Reformation Reputations: The Power of

the Individual in English Reformation

The Oxford History of the Reformation Peter Marshall

How the English Reformation was Named: The Politics of

The Saved and the Damned: A History of the Reformation

The Oxford History Of Protestant Dissenting Traditions,

At the Edge of Reformation: Iberia before the Black

Debating the Sacraments: Print and Authority in the

Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological

Shi'ism Revisited: Ijtihad and Reformation in

ISBN 978-3-030-55433-0 ISBN 978-3-030-55434-7 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

London, UK David J. Crankshaw

4. P. Marshall, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation

1 Introduction: Reformation, Life-Writing

2 1535 in 1935: Catholic Saints and English Identity:

3 Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered 189

4 ‘Agents of the Reformation’: Margaret Cranmer,

5 Anne Askew 255

6 ‘A Man of Stomach’: Matthew Parker’s Reputation 291

7 John Whitgift Redivivus: Reconsidering

8 Anthony Munday: Eloquent Equivocator

9 Polemic, Memory and Emotion: John Gerard

10 Rehabilitating Robert Persons: Then and Now 421

Dr. Rachel Basch completed a B.A. degree in History and an M.A.

Dr. Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon is currently a Holland Fellow at the

multi-volume, multi-lingual edition of Persons’s correspondence: The

ABSI Archivum Britannicum Societatis Iesu, London

Canterbury, Martyr, 1556, PS (Cambridge,

ODNB H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds),

Wing Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in

Fig. 1.1 Portrait of John Strype, by George Vertue, after an

Fig. 3.2 Portrait of Johannes Oecolampadius by Hans Asper,

Fig. 6.2 Anne Boleyn, queen of England, commending the

Fig. 9.1 A Roman Catholic priest on The Rack, by an unknown

Table 1.1 A provisional conspectus of non-anthology

Introduction: Reformation, Life-Writing

David J. Crankshaw and George W. C. Gross

D. J. Crankshaw · G. W. C. Gross (B)

© The Author(s) 2021 1

reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of

finds the invention of celebrity in the century of Romanticism and Revo-

Early modern scholars will recognize glory as a ‘keyword’ of the era[.] …

While ‘reputation’ certainly could have a narrowly contemporaneous

obvious distinction. Definitional tangles do not, however, vitiate Cowan’s

What we might regard as snobbery was an indelible feature of the mind-

by attributing a mans successes rather to divine providence & felicitie then

Bacon’s aphorisms brilliantly capture what would be essential charac-

flourished in England as the fifteenth century turned into the sixteenth—

Heroes and Heroines

Some historians write as though Renaissance neoplatonic magic actually

Nobody denies that ‘artistic and intellectual ingenuity was deployed in

inherited considerable reserves of popular goodwill’ and ‘were presumed

The valorous deeds performed by knights lived on in the recollection of

in churches, where they remain today. Grave coverings were initially

People watching tournaments or attending elite funerals or encoun-

Complementing this efflorescence of chivalric fiction (much of which

translation was printed (ostensibly at Henry VIII’s behest) in London in