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William Bishop as Roman Catholic Theologian and Polemicist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

W. Brown Patterson
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Extract

In a vigorous theological controversy, William Bishop, English Roman Catholic theologian educated at Oxford, Rheims, Rome, and Paris, took on William Perkins, the best-selling English Protestant writer of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The two writers were formidable champions of their respective religious traditions. As I will argue, this was a significant exchange, though the dispute has been little noticed by historians of the period. The issues the two writers discussed and the way they discussed them throw considerable light on the state of English religion in the early seventeenth century. Bishop emerges as a more powerful and effective spokesman for the Roman Catholicism of his day than has been heretofore recognised.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , October 2006 , pp. 209 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2006

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References

Notes

1 For Perkins's life and career, see Fuller, Thomas, The Holy State (Cambridge: Roger Daniel for John Williams, 1642), pp. 89–93;Google Scholar Breward, Ian, introduction to The Work of William Perkins, ed. Breward (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), pp. 3–131;Google Scholar and Spinks, Bryan D., Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999),Google Scholar Drew University Studies in Liturgy, 9, pp. 1–92. For specific aspects of his thought, see Merrill, Thomas F., William Perkins, 1558–1602, English Puritanist: His Pioneer Works on Casuistry (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1966);Google Scholar Pettit, Norman, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 5–6,Google Scholar 14, 61–79, 130–132, 181, 185–188, 204, 218; Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 1–9, 51–76, 209–213;Google Scholar Wallace, Dewey D. Jr.,, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 55–65, 76, 81–82, 122–123, 129, 197;Google Scholar Muller, Richard A., Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1986), pp. 130–173;Google Scholar Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 18, 129, 133, 144, 148, 177, 220, 230–231, 234, 266, 280, 400, 539–540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 McKitterick, David, A History of Cambridge University Press, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992–98), Vol. I, pp. 125–129, 133, 137, 139, 231–233.Google Scholar For the popularity and influence of Perkins's books, see also Green, Ian, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 8, 17–18, 106, 211, 215, 223, 241, 266, 308, 311, 479, 498, 556, 566, 647–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For editions and translations of Perkins's books, see The Work of William Perkins, ed. Breward, pp. 613–632. The Spanish translation of A Reformed Catholike (see below) was Catholico Reformando: O una declaration que muestra quanta nos podamus conformar con la Iglesia Romana, tal, qual es el dia de hoy, en diversos puntos de las religion ([London]: Ricardo del Campo [Richard Field], 1599); the Spanish translation also appeared in a second edition (Amsterdam: J. Wachter, 1624).

4 Patterson, W. B., ‘William Perkins as Apologist for the Church of England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 57, 2 (2006), 252–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Other recent treatments of Perkins include Spinks (above), Schaefer, Paul R., ‘Protestant “Scholasticism” at Elizabethan Cambridge: William Perkins and a Reformed Theology of the Heart’, in Trueman, Carl R. and Scott, R., eds., Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), pp. 147–164;Google Scholar Walsham, Alexandra, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 18, 23, 26–28, 32, 53, 60, 104–105, 128, 154, 179, 186, 206, 297, 316, 319;Google Scholar Lares, Jamela, Milton and the Preaching Arts (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2001), pp. 12, 49, 68, 77–79, 83–84, 86, 90–94, 101, 104, 106, 144–145, 160, 166, 191;Google Scholar Ferrell, Lori Anne, ‘Transfiguring Theology: William Perkins and Calvinist Aesthetics’, in Highley, Christopher and King, John N., eds., John Foxe and His World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 160–179;Google Scholar Bruhn, Karen, ‘Pastoral Polemic: William Perkins, the Godly Evangelicals, and the Shaping of a Protestant Community in Early Modern England’, Anglican and Episcopal History, LXXII, 1 (March 2003), 102–127.Google Scholar

5 Benedict, Philip, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 319;Google Scholar see also for Perkins, pp. 299, 302, 305, 318–321, 328–329, 518, 522–523.

6 à Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Educations in the University of Oxford, third edition ed. Bliss, Philip, 5 vols. (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, et al., 1815–20), Vol. II, col. 356;Google Scholar see also cols 356–357, 862. Wood's work was first published in 1691–92. See also Anstruther, Godfrey, The Seminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales, 1558–1850, 4 vols. (Durham: Ushaw College, and Ware: St. Edmund's College, 1969–77), Vol. I, pp. 36–39;Google Scholar Allison, A. F. and Rogers, D. M., eds, A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1558–1640 (London: Wm. Dawson, 1968), p. 151.Google Scholar For the later Catholic activities of the Bishop family, see Haydon, Colin, ‘“The Mouth of Hell”: Religious Discord at Brailes, Warwickshire, c. 1660–c. 1800’, The Historian, 68 (Winter 2000), pp. 23–27.Google Scholar

7 Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, Vol. I, p. 37.

8 Ibidem.

9 Po-Chia Hsia, R., The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 81.Google Scholar

10 Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, p. 31.

11 Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, pp. 81–83; McGrath, Patrick, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London: Blandford Press, 1967), pp. 100–124, 161–204, 253–299.Google Scholar For conditions in thefollowing half-century, see Caraman, Philip, ed., The Years of Siege: Catholic Life from James I to Cromwell (London: Longmans, 1966).Google Scholar

12 Hughes, Philip, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England (London: Burns and Oates, 1942), p. 272.Google Scholar

13 Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), pp. 162–188;Google Scholar Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 585–593;Google Scholar Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 285–295;Google Scholar Tyacke, Nicholas, ed., England's Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998),Google Scholar passim; Heal, Felicity, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 463–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, pp. 295–297. For the appointment of an archpriest andthe ensuing appellant controversy, see Questier, Michael C., Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 250–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, p. 297.

16 Ibidem, pp. 299–300.

17 Ibidem, pp. 300–301; Edwards, Francis, Robert Persons: The Biography of an Elizabethan Jesuit, 1546–1610 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), pp. 230–238, 249, 256.Google Scholar

18 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, pp. 301–303; Edwards, Robert Persons, pp. 262–265; Bossy, John, ‘Henri IV, the Appellants and the Jesuits’, Recusant History, 8, 2 (April 1965), pp. 80–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Bishop enlisted Persons's aid in getting the order prohibiting his return to England lifted; Persons undertook to help Bishop in mid-May 1602. Edwards, Robert Persons, p. 276.

20 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, p. 304; Hughes, Paul L. and Larkin, James F., eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964–69), Vol. III, pp. 250–255 Google Scholar—the quotation is on p. 254.

21 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, pp. 305–306.

22 Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, Vol. I, p. 37.

23 Patterson, W. B., King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 34–43, 49–74.Google Scholar On Queen Anne's religious faith, see Loomie, Albert J., ‘King James I's Catholic Consort’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 34 (1971), pp. 303–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Bruce, John (London: Camden Society, 1861), p. 37.Google Scholar

25 King James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. Sommerville, Johann P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 139–140.Google Scholar

26 Loomie, Albert J., ed., Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, 2 vols. (London: Catholic Record Society, 1973–78), Vol. I, p. 43.Google Scholar

27 Patterson, King James Viand I, pp. 75–123. For the inconsistent and unpredictable enforcement of the harsh anti-Catholic legislation enacted by Parliament, see La Rocca, James J., ‘James I and His Catholic Subjects, 1606–1612: Some Financial Implications’, Recusant History, 18, 3 (May 1987), pp. 251–262.Google Scholar

28 The subtitle continued, with an Advertisement to All Fauourers of the Romane Religion, Shewing That the Said Religion Is against the Catholike Principles and Grounds of the Cathecisme (Cambridge: John Legat, Printer to the University of Cambridge, 1597).Google Scholar There were other editions in 1598, 1604, 1611, 1619, and 1634.

29 Perkins, A Golden Chaine: or, The Description of Theologie, Herunto Is Adioyned the Order Which M. Theodore Beza Vsed in Comforting Troubled Consciences (Cambridge: J. Legat, 1591).Google Scholar Other editions were published in 1592, 1595, 1597, 1612, and 1621. This was a translation of Perkins, Armilla aurea, id est, theologiae descriptio mirandum seriem causarum & salutis & damnationis hominum (Cambridge: J. Legat, 1590).Google Scholar Perkins, An Exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles, According to the Tenovr of the Scriptures and the Consent of Orthodoxe Fathers of the Church (Cambridge: John Legat, 1595).Google Scholar There were other editions in 1596, 1597, 1611, 1616, and 1631.

30 Perkins, A Reformed Catholike, pp. 11–218.

31 Ibidem, pp. 243–258.

32 Bruhn, ‘Pastoral Polemic: William Perkins, the Godly Evangelicals, and the Shaping of a Protestant Community in Early Modern England’, passim.

33 Perkins, A Reformed Catholike, Dedication, Sig. ¶ 2.

34 Ibidem, pp. 327–328, 350–371. Jewel, John, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. Booty, J. E. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1963), pp. 17–21.Google Scholar Jewel's Apology appeared first in Latin in 1562 and then in an authorised English translation by Lady Ann Bacon in 1564.

35 Perkins, An Exposition of the Symbole or Creed, pp. 501–503. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books V and VII, in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, gen. ed. Speed Hill, W., 7 vols, in 8 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977–90;Google Scholar Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993–98), Vols. II, passim, and III, pp. 141–312. See also the introductions to Book V by John E. Booty and to Book VII by Arthur Stephen McGrade in Vol. VI, Part One, pp. 183–247, 309–336. Book V of Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was first published in 1597; Book VII was first published in 1662.

36 The Former Part (n.p.: [English secret press], 1604); The Second Part of the Reformation of a Catholike Deformed by Master W. Perkins (n.p.: [English secret press], 1607). The author's name is given as D.B.P. on the title-page of the first volume, presumably standing for Dr. Bishop, Priest.

37 Bishop, A Reformation of a Catholike Deformed, Sig. * iii verso.

38 Ibidem, Sig. * iv.

39 Ibidem, Sig. * iv.

40 Ibidem, Sig. * iv. The statement was made on the second day of the Hampton Court Conference (16 January 1604) and was published in Barlow's, William The Svmme and Svbstance of the Conference (London: Mathew Law, 1604).Google Scholar See Ashton, Robert, ed., James I by His Contemporaries (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 181–182.Google Scholar

41 Bishop, A Reformation of a Catholike Deformed, Sig. *iv.

42 Ibidem, Sig. * * * ii.

43 Ibidem, Sig. * * * ii.

44 Ibidem, Sig. * * * ii verso.

45 Ibidem, p. 19.

46 Ibidem, p. 19.

47 Ibidem, p. 20.

48 Ibidem, pp. 22–23.

49 Ibidem, part 2, p. 5.

50 Ibidem, part 2, p. 6.

51 Ibidem, part 2, p. 7.

52 Ibidem, part 2, p. 7.

53 Ibidem, part 2, p. 17.

54 Ibidem, part 2, p. 17.

55 Ibidem, part 2, p. 18.

56 Ibidem, part 2, p. 18.

57 Bishop, The Second Part of the Reformation, Sig. A i verso.

58 Ibidem, p. 111.

59 Ibidem, p. 127.

60 Ibidem, p. 139.

61 Ibidem, p. 129.

62 Ibidem, p. 20.

63 Ibidem, p. 20.

64 Ibidem, p. 20.

65 Ibidem, p. 21.

66 Ibidem, p. 21.

67 Ibidem, pp. 21–22. Liberts seems to be a variant of libards or leopards.

68 See Brodrick, James, Robert Bellarmine, 1542–1621, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1950), Vol. II, pp. 169–260;Google Scholar Johann Peter Sommerville, ‘Jacobean Political Thought and the Controversy over the Oath of Allegiance’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1981; Patterson, King James VI and I, pp. 100–111, 120–123.

69 The First Part (London: George Bishop, 1606);Google ScholarPubMed The Second Part of the Defence of the Reformed Catholicke (London: George Bishop, 1607).Google Scholar

70 Bass Mullinger, J., life of Robert Abbot in the Dictionary of National Biography, 22 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1885–1901), Vol. I, p. 24.Google Scholar

71 The First Part (n.p.: [English secret press], 1608).

72 (London: Ambrose Garbrand, 1611).

73 (Paris: Claude Morell, 1614).

74 Beales, A. C. F., Education under Penalty: English Catholic Education from the Reformation to the Fall of James II, 1547–1689 (London: Athlone Press, 1963), pp. 190–193.Google Scholar See also Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 374–379.

75 (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1606).

76 Bede, The History of the Chvrch of Englande, Compiled by Venerable Bede, Englishman, trans. Thomas Stapleton (Antwerp: J. Laet, 1565), Sig. * 2 verso-3.

77 Stapleton, A Fortresse of the Faith, First Planted amonge Vs Englishmen, and Continued Hitherto in the Vniversall Church of Christ, the Faith of Which Time Protestants Call Papistry (Antwerp: J. Laet, 1565).Google Scholar

78 Patterson, W. B., ‘The Recusant View of the English Past’, in Baker, Derek, ed., The Materials, Sourcesand Methods of Ecclesiastical History, Studies in Church History, 11 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), pp. 249–162Google Scholar, esp. pp. 256–260. For the larger context and a fuller discussion, see Wooding, Lucy E. C., Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 117, 132–135, 162–165, 173, 184–212, 235, 238–239, 244–247, 251, 266–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England, pp. 8–10, 16–48, 82–86.

80 Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, pp. 315–322.

81 Patterson, King James VI and I, pp. 305–338.

82 ‘A Summary of the doings of the Very Reverend William Bishop, Bishop of Chalcedon, the first Ordinary of England and Scotland after the Schism’, in The Douay College Diaries, Third, Fourth, and Fifth, 1598–1654, ed. Burton, Edwin H. and Williams, Thomas L., Catholic Record Society, 10 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1911), p. 401.Google Scholar For Bishop's work as Bishop of Chalcedon, see Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 400–414.

83 ‘A Summary’, pp. 401–405; Hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, pp. 323–325; Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, pp. 37–38.

84 ‘A Summary’, p. 404.

85 Allison, A. F., ‘Richard Smith, Richelieu and the French Marriage: The Political Context of Smith's Appointment as Bishop for England in 1624’, Recusant History, 7 (1964), pp. 148–211;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lunn, Maurus, ‘Benedictine Opposition to Bishop Richard Smith (1625–1629)’, Recusant History, 11 (1971), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar

86 For a perceptive analysis of the strengths and influence of Roman Catholicism in England in this period, see Hibbard, Caroline M., ‘Early Stuart Catholicism: Revisions and Re-Revisions’, Journal of Modern History, 52 (March 1980), pp. 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For changes, tensions, and new directions within English Catholicism, see Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman& Todd, 1975), pp. 77–192.Google Scholar

87 Questier, Michael, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1–9 Google Scholar and passim. See also Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, eds. Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), introduction, pp. ix–xx,Google Scholar and chapters by Alexandra Walsham, pp. 211–236, Michael Questier, pp. 237–261, and Pauline Croft, pp. 262–281.