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The Freewillers in the English Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

O. T. Hargrave
O. T. Hargrave
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Southern Methodist University
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Extract

In searching for the sources and origins of the liberal theology which toward the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century came to occupy an increasingly important position in English religious thought, historians invariably have turned their attention toward the Continent. Indeed, the impact of this approach suggested by the very label—“Arminianism”—which historically has attached itself to the new theological tendency. But in the preoccupation with continental influences some significant indigenous sources and precedents have been overlooked. The purpose of this article is to call attention to one such precedent—the activities and opinions of an obscure though important religious group which flourished during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I and which were known to their contemporaries as the “Freewillers.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 1968 , pp. 271 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1968

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References

1. The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549, and A.D. 1552; with Other Documents Set Forth by Authority in the Reign of King Edward VI, ed. Ketley, Joseph (Parker Society Publications; Cambridge, Eng., 1844), p. 530.Google Scholar

2. Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, and the Emergencies of the Church of England, Under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I (3 vols. in 6 pts.; Oxford, 1822), II, i, 369ffGoogle Scholar; and Burrage, Champlin, The Early English Dissenters, in the Light of Recent Research (1550–1641) (2 vos.; Cambridge, Eng., 1912), 1, 51.Google Scholar

3. Burrage, , The Early English Dissenters, I, 53.Google Scholar

4. British Museum, Harleian MS. 421.64, fols. 133–134. Burrage has printed this document in The Early English Dissenters, II, 1–4.Google Scholar

5. Included in Strype, , Ecclesiastical Memorials, III, ii, 325–327.Google Scholar

6. A Worke of the Predestination of Saints, Wrytten by the Famous Doctor S. Augustine Byshop of Carthage (London, 1550)Google Scholar, sigs. Aiir–Aivv.

7. The primary source of information concerning the controversy is a manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Bodleian MS. 53) which contains several of the tracts and treatises issued during the course of the dispute. Some of the more important of these have been transcribed and printed at various times, notably in Authentic Documents Relative to the Presdestinarian Controversy, Which Took Place Among Those Who Were Imprisoned for Their Adherence to the Doctrines of the Reformation by Queen Mary, ed. Laurence, Richard (Oxford, 1819)Google Scholar. But while such documents make fairly clear the distinctive doctrinal positions of the two parties involved, they are not conclusive as to the particulars of the controversy, since most of them were written from the point of view of partisan considerations.

8. John Bradford's “Defense of Election” was the most important treatise to survive, although there is reason to believe Nicholas Ridley, at Bradford's urging, may also have contributed a major (but now lost treatise from his prison cell at Oxford. See The Writings of John Bradford, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and Prebendary of St. Paul's, ed. Townsend, Aubrey (Parker Society Publications; 2 vols.; Cambridge, Eng., 1848, 1853), I, 307–330, II, 214.Google Scholar

9. The Writings of John Bradford, II, 170.Google Scholar

10. As suggested above, Ridley may have acceded to Bradford's appeal and directed a now lost treatise against the Freewillers. But on the whole the Protestant leadership was far too deeply absorbed in the debate with the Catholics to be bothered with what must have seemed to them under the circumstances a trivial matter.

11. Witness the letter cited above from a former Freewiller, converted to predestinarian views while in prison in the time of Mary.

12. Henry Hart's tract was the immediate occasion for Bradford's “Defense of Election”; indeed it is only through Bradford's treatise that Hart's work can be reconstructed at all. Bradford included the text of Hart's tract in his reply, “not leaving out one tittle,” as he observed, “of every word as he hath put it abroad.” The Writings of John Bradford, I, 309.Google Scholar

13. The Writings of John Bradford, I, 319–329.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 318, 319, 330.

15. Laurence has included John Trewe's entire treatise in his Authentic Documents Relative to the Predestinarian Controversy, pp. 37–70.

16. Authentic Documents Relative to the Predestinarion Controversy, pp. 56–57. Exclamation mark is mine.

17. Ibid., p. 39.

18. Ibid., pp. 41, 42, 44.

19. Ibid., pp. 45, 46.

20. Ibid., pp. 48–50.

21. Ibid., pp. 52–54.

22. Ibid., p. 66.

23. Notably Williams, George H., The Radical Reformation (London, 1962), p. 780.Google Scholar

24. Knappen, Marshall M., Tudor Puritanism: A Chapter in the History of Idealism (Chicago, 1939), p. 149Google Scholar; Strype, , Ecclesiastical Memorials, II, i, 369Google Scholar; and Burrage, , The Early English Dissenters, I, 52.Google Scholar

25. The Writings of John Bradford, II, 197.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 180.

27. Tudor Puritanism, p. 151.