There are those who would deny a distinction between England and the continent of Europe, alleging that the island is in every respect—politically, socially, culturally—a part of Europe. This is an opinion that could be held only by those whose knowledge of the continent is derived from books and from visits, anyone who has actually ever lived there knows how fundamental those differences are. Or perhaps one should say, how fundamental they were; possibly they have in the last thirty years been disappearing together with an England that was real, and apparently unchangeable, at any rate down to 1939. It may also be argued that those differences have not always existed, time out of memory: medieval England, part of one European church, may have displayed more likeness to the rest of Christendom than difference. An island ruled for so many centuries by Danish, Norman and Angevin princes perhaps demands to be treated as part of those continental dominions. I am certainly familiar with arguments of this kind from historians concerned to understand the medieval English church or the Norman Conquest and its consequences. Yet even then there were real differences, and if the novel (and very persuasive) thesis that England never knew a ‘true’ peasantry survives detailed scrutiny those differences may well come to matter more throughout English history than any superficial resemblances in religion, in language, or in the social habits of the upper classes.

Strype tells the story of how Henry VIII is said to have remarked, on being given a copy of Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man by Anne Boleyn, ‘For this book is for me, and all kings to read.’ Whether or not the story is true—and it is perhaps safest to regard it as apocryphal—it has generally been held to be ben trovato in the sense that Tyndale’s teaching on authority and obedience was such as would have had an obvious appeal to Henry VIII, and it has frequently been assumed that Tyndale’s doctrine anticipated the legislation of the reformation parliament. But what precisely was Tyndale’s political teaching and where does he stand in the history of sixteenth-century political thought? It is a curious fact that although Tyndale’s importance as the first English protestam political thinker of the sixteenth century has been widely recognised, there has been little detailed investigation of his political thought and no attempt to set it in the context of contemporary continental protestam thinking. By and large, Tyndale has been accepted simply as an extreme exponent of Luther’s teaching on non-resistance and the divine right of authority, or as a precursor of the royal supremacy, without any effort being made to analyse the precise character of his views.

Recent studies have demonstrated the insularity of Oxford and, by inference, Cambridge in the later middle ages; far from the two universities being regarded as centres of international scholarship the presence there of students from the continent seems to have been something of a rarity. In the sixteenth century a series of only loosely connected events, Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, and, somewhat later, the explicitly protestant government of Edward VI which happened to coincide with the victory of the imperial forces in Germany brought about a major change in the university world: continental protestant theologians now looked at England with new eyes, seeing it not only, as is well known, as a haven for persecuted protestant leaders, but also as a suitable centre of education for their young men. The first English exiles who went abroad for the sake of their religion in the reign of Henry VIII reinforced by the far greater number who fled from the Marian persecution made no secret of their belief in the vast superiority for the advancement of protestantism of the continental schools, especially those of Strassburg, Zurich and Geneva, but a group of contemporary Swiss, German, and French students adopted a rather different attitude. To them the English universities offered opportunities they did not have at home. One or two aspired to even higher realms and nourished ambitions of influencing thecourseof the religious settlement in England. A fresh account of their experiences in England from the later years of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I may reveal new information on a rather less familiar aspect of the relationship between the great continental reformers and the English reformation.

From about 1528 onward radical protestants of various kinds from the Low Countries began to seek refuge in England from the pressures of persecution in their homelands. Until the advent of Thomas More as chancellor, persecution in England was sporadic and rather lax. The royal authority had not hitherto been invoked, and the lollards were not commonly of the stuff of martyrs, which induced a certain complacency in the English bishops when faced with the challenges of nascent protestantism. After More’s brief tenure of office was over, persecution under royal auspices continued, but on a very much smaller scale than in the Netherlands, so that the incentive for radicals to come to England, either permanently or temporarily, remained. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them lived in London, Norwich and other towns of the south-east over the next twenty years. A few, like Jan Mattijs, were burned in England, others, like Anneke Jans, met the same fate on their return home, but many lived and worked peacefully, attracting remarkably little attention. Considering their numbers, and the radical nature of their views, they seem to have made only a very slight impact upon their adopted country. A few Englishmen, like that ‘Henry’ who turned up as the sponsor of the Bocholt meeting in 1536, embraced their ideas wholeheartedly, but for the most part the effect seems to have been extremely piecemeal and diffuse, producing a wide variety of individual eccentricities rather than anything in the nature of a coherent movement. However, the presence of these radicals and their English sympathisers has always served to confuse students of the reformation, not least by appearing to justify contemporary conservative attempts to discredit protestantism as a Tower of Babel.

Sometimes a useful point is scored by reminding students whose Latin is rusty that John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglkanae is not an apology for the Church of England, still less for a newly invented religion called Anglicanism, but an apology of the Church of England, in defence of a religion deemed to be universal, catholic and of a primitive character. But one is in danger of being caught out by the alert and troublesome pupil who may know that the English version of the Apologia was entitled An apologie or aunswer in defence of the Church of England. There is ambiguity in the very construction of Jewel’s title, as there will prove to be inany attempt to reconcile the various senses in which the post-reformation English churchwas and was not considered to be a distinct and self-sufficient entity.

Bishop Gardiner, whom the polemical John Bale had described as ‘the great Caiaphas of Winchester’, sharply drew the attention of the lord protector, Seymour, to ‘two seditious books’ not long after the death of Henry VIII in 1547, showing his anxiety to oppose the advance of protestantism which he saw as leading to civil as well as religious rebellion; both books were by Bale, at this time in exile abroad.

On account of the spread ‘in diverse countries’ of the heresies of Luther the Scottish parliament enacted in 1525 that ‘na manner of persouns, strangears that hapnis to arrive with their schippis within ony part of this realm bring with thaim ony bukes or workes of the said Lutheris, his disciples or servandes, desputt or reherss his heresies or opunzeounns bot geif it be to the confusion thereof and that be clerkis in the sculis alainerlie, under the pane of escheting of their schippis and gudes and putting of their persons in presounn. And that this act be publist and proclamit out throw this realme at all ports and burrowis of the same’. Twenty six months later this act was extended to include all the king’s lieges who were ‘assistars to sic opunzeouns’. The act of parliament of 1525 expressed the nation’s concern: it does not specifically state that Luther’s writings had already been finding their way into the Scottish east coast ports, but the extension of the act in the following year to include the king’s lieges, makes it clear that heresy was beginning to take hold. By the spring of another year Lutheranism had its first Scottish martyr, the young Patrick Hamilton, titular abbot of Fern, former student at Paris, Louvain, St Andrews, and Marburg. Support for the heretical views could not, despite oppression and persecution, be held in check. Within a decade of the passing of the act, parliament found it necessary not only to have it re-enacted but extended still farther. None was to ‘have, use, kepe or consele ony bukes of the said heretic, or contenand their doctrine and opinions bot that they deliver the samin to the ordinaries within xl days’.

Adrianus Saravia is not very well-known. Most outlines of his life and work, in biographical dictionaries and short articles in periodicals, are not critically or scientifically adequate. His correspondence has not been published nor has it been made the subject of historical research and there is still no biography. It is therefore necessary to begin with a short biographical sketch, before commenting on Saravia’s significance as an eirenical churchman.

At the end of 1598 or the beginning of 1599 an English separatist congregation at Amsterdam sent its confession of faith to the theological faculty of Leiden University for judgment. This resulted in a correspondence between the professor primarius of the faculty, Franciscus Junius, and the congregation. It is with this correspondence, and with Junius’s point of view, considered in the context of his book Le Paisible Chrestien, in which he sets forth his eirenical ecclesiology, that this paper is concerned.

If one wishes to investigate the history of the development of an idea, two approaches are possible. One is to begin at the beginning, following the development step by step until one reaches the stage at which the idea attains its fullest flowering. The other approach is precisely the reverse. One chooses a point of departure in the final phase and then works backwards to the moment at which the idea first appeared. This latter method has many practical advantages in research. One can see the phenomenon in its most mature form, and thus more easily recognise its components and their earlier relationship.

When, some years ago, I decided to devote a lecture to eirenism in the sixteenth century, my preparation followed the second approach. I chose as my starting point the work of a renowned eirenist of a later generation, Hugo Grotius. Leafing through the fourth volume of the Basel edition of his Opera Theologica, my attention was drawn to an entry Via ad pacem ecclesiasticam. It proved to comprise a number of miscellaneous documents, some of them by Grotius himself, some of them his annotations on the work of others, and yet others evidently added to the dossier because they fitted into the framework of eirensim. I decided to delve more deeply into this collection, which was first published as a separate work in 1642.

Few contemporaries and fewer historians have seen fit to praise the diplomacy of James I, least of all in its religious aspects. Oldenbarnevelt found it impossible to follow James’s apparent tergiversation on the Dutch religious issue between 1613 and 1618, while historians have tended to look no further than a purely theological interest to explain James’s intervention. This paper does not set out to ‘rehabilitate’ James, but it does attempt to show that his actions were more coherent and had a more respectable political motive, than was hitherto believed.

On Tuesday, 6 November 1618, at a crowded gathering of the states general in The Hague at which the prince of Orange, and count William of Nassau were present, George Carleton, bishop of Llandaff and leader of the Anglican delegation to the forthcoming synod of Dort, opened his address thus, ‘Our Lord and King, Christ Jesus, being about to go to his Father, and being desirous to leave his followers whom he loved, the greatest good that is to be found in this life, bequeathed them Peace. Neither could men desire a better gift from Heaven, nor the Angels declare better tidings from thence, than glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace. This band, by which Heaven is united to Earth and Earth to Heaven has bound the heart of the most illustrious King of Great Britain, in such a manner from Heaven, that in consequence of the great care with which he is obliged to protect and defend the true Religion (as also to promote Peace and Unity among Christian Princes through the whole world; and particularly, most illustrious Lords, the tranquility of your Republic, to which he looks upon his kingdom to be allied by very ancient; and consequently the stricter ties) he has deputed us hither, to the end that we should labour to the utmost of our power for your welfare, and for the peace of your church.’

Richard Baxter admired many of Grotius’s writings. On several subjects, he writes, ‘I must in Gratitude Profess that I have learnt more from Grotius, then from almost any Writer … that ever I read’. The De Imperio he called ‘exact and judicious’; the De ventate he counted among the best defences of Christianity against atheists and infidels; the De satisfactione he thought ‘extraordinary clear and sound’ and fit to be in ‘the Poorest Library’. These and other pieces by Grotius, together with his Opera in four folio volumes, were in Baxter’s own collectionxs.

Throughout the last quarter of the seventeenth century a spectre was haunting Europe, the spectre of Catholicism. The Savoyard invasion of the Vaudois, the accession of a catholic elector in the Palatinate, the ill-judged policies of James II in England, above all the revocation of the edict of Nantes in France, served to persuade protestants of the dangers besetting the reformation. The nine years war, therefore, could be looked on as a crusade, and William III as God’s instrument for the preservation of the Gospel, Ezechias Alterus, Europae totius tutelaris Pater, Hostium veritatis Flagellum. The peace which followed the treaty of Ryswick did not materially alter this view; refugees from France, Orange and Piedmont provided uncomfortable reminders that the Beast was not dead, but sleeping.

Fifty years ago it was possible to write with a good conscience about relations between pietism and enlightenment; everyone knew what these spiritual entities were, and knew also that it was not proper (in the German-speaking world at least) to talk of religious revival until the enlightenment was almost spent. It is only in the historiography of the German Democratic Republic that any of these certainties seems to remain; there the enlightenment retains pride of place as the progenitor of progress and human liberation, with an honourable pedigree extending deep into the middle ages, its relations with ständisch politics or with pietist religion capable in principle of rational discussion. Contrast with this the sneer of A. J. P. Taylor in England that the enlightenment is now only of interest to those who are still worried about Christianity, and with the problems of definition encountered by historians in America and West Germany. To Henry May, the enlightenment in America is capable of structural analysis which reveals stages of development, each with its own objectives. The notion that enlightenment was a simple concept, patient of blanket condemnation, was a calumny put about by frightened conservatives, including many of evangelical views at the end of the eighteenth century.