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The ‘nott conformytye’ of the young John Whitgift
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
Cambridge University in the early 1570s, according to John Strype, ‘ran now much divided into two factions, whereof the younger sort, which were the majority, was much for innovations, and such were followers of Cartwright's principles; which the graver sort, especially the Heads, laboured to restrain’. It has been pointed out that the differences of age between ‘grave’ conformists and ‘rash’ non-conformists in the Cambridge of Cartwright and Whitgift were not so obvious and extreme as the authorities of the time liked to pretend. John Whitgift as master of Trinity and vice-chancellor was no more than thirty-eight; his opponent, Thomas Cartwright, was perhaps three years younger; and most of Cartwright's supporters were in their late twenties. Yet such seemingly small differences in seniority were not without significance in the hot-house of university politics and religious faction, especially when the ‘seniors’ were themselves such comparatively young men. Only four years before he set himself against the Cambridge Puritans as the very personification of authority and Anglican discipline, Whitgift, as fellow of Peterhouse and Lady Margaret professor of divinity, was openly sympathetic to the party of younger dons who were refusing to wear the surplices and square caps required by their own statutes and the ordinances of the Church.
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References
page 192 note 1 Strype, John, Whitgift, Oxford 1822, i. 50–1Google Scholar.
page 192 note 2 Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge 1958, 213–15.Google Scholar
page 193 note 1 Whitgift to Cecil, 17 June 1567: P.R.O., S.P. 12/43/8; printed, Whitgift, , Works, ed. Ayre, J. (Parker Soc., Cambridge 1853), iii. 597–8.Google Scholar
page 193 note 2 For example, Dawley, P. M., John Whitgift and the Reformation, London 1955, 74–5Google Scholar.
page 193 note 3 The letter is printed in Strype's, Parker, Oxford 1821, iiiGoogle Scholar. App. no. XXXIX, 125–6. Strype's reference is ‘MSS. penes me’, but I have been unable to trace the original document. The operative sentence runs as follows: ‘Qua quidem in re, cum nobiscum ipsi quotidie recordamur, quanta sit apud nos et piorum et eruditorum multitudo, qui testimonio conscientiae usum omnem ornatus hujusmodi sibi illegitimum ducant, et quorum discessu (si vis edicti urgeat) omnino est periculum, ne Academia nostra orba fuerit: nostri esse officii putamus imprimis, ut ea conditione fratrum ac nostratium tibi patefacta, vehementer a tua prudentia per literas contendamus, ut pro ea turn fide, tum gratia, quam apud serenissimam regiam Majestatem obtines, ad remittendam promulgationem ejusmodi, teipsum intercessorem interponas.’
page 193 note 4 Dixon, R. W., History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, Oxford 1878–1902, vi. 68Google Scholar.
page 193 note 5 Beaumont to Cecil, 6 December 1565: P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/10 (1).
page 194 note 1 Paule, G., Life of John Whitgift, 2nd. ed., London 1699, 7Google Scholar.
page 194 note 2 See my Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566–1577 (Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement no. 5, November 1960), 24–5.
page 195 note 1 Cambridge University Library MS. Mm. 1.43 (Baker 32), pp. 427–30; there are extensive quotations from this letter in Porter, op. cit., 115–18.
page 195 note 2 See John Welles to Cecil, 20 January 1565 (16): ‘It is demanded of Mr. Beamont, who ys verie deligent in observinge the order prescribed by your Honour, by what authoritie he can (for not weringe of a surples) deprive anye man of his lyvinge’: P.R.O., S.P. 12/39/14.
page 195 note 3 Beaumont to Cecil, 6 December 1565: P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/10 (1).
page 195 note 4 Ibid.
page 195 note 5 Parker to Cecil, 8 December 1565: B.M. MS. Lansdowne 8, fol. 144; printed in Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. Bruce, J. (Parker Soc., Cambridge 1853), 245–6Google Scholar.
page 195 note 6 Parker to Cecil, 13 December 1565: B.M. MS. Lansdowne 8, fol. 146.
page 195 note 7 The fullest account of these troubles is in Porter, op. cit., 119–35.
page 195 note 8 P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/11.
page 196 note 1 P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/1.
page 196 note 2 Drafts of these letters in the hand of Cecil's secretary and amended in Cecil's own hand are in P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/13. Strype (Parker, iii. 128–31) used copies of the letters now in the Inner Temple Library (MS. Petyt 538/37, no. 20, fol. 55).
page 196 note 3 Quoted by Strype (Annals, Oxford 1824, I. ii. 159) from a copy in MS. Petyt 538/37, no. 20, fol. 55.
page 196 note 4 He was vice-chancellor in Mary's reign when the remains of Bucer and Fagius were exhumed and burned and, again, when their names were restored to honour under Elizabeth.
page 197 note 1 John Welles to Cecil, 20 January 1565(/6): P.R.O., S.P. 12/39/14.
page 197 note 2 Curteys to Cecil, 28 January 1565(/6): P.R.O., S.P. 12/39/19.
page 197 note 8 Whitgift to Cecil, 17 June 1567: P.R.O., S.P. 12/43/8.
page 197 note 4 Dering to Cecil, 18 November 1570: B.M. MS. Lansdowne 12, fol. 190v; printed, Strype, Parker, iii. 22.
page 198 note 1 Pearson, A. F. Scott, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535–1603, Cambridge 1925, 19–20Google Scholar.
page 198 note 2 P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/10.
page 198 note 3 This was a marginal comment in a pirated translation of Parker's official biography, the Matthaeus, printed in 1574 (at Heidelberg?) under the title, The life off the 70 archbishope off Canterbury presentlye sittinge Englished. It occurs at Sig. Ciir.
page 198 note 4 Curtis, M. H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558–1642, Oxford 1959, 168Google Scholar.
page 198 note 5 Cecil.
page 199 note 1 Andrew Deane was a fellow of Gonville Hall from 1532 to 1547 and later of Corpus Christi (Parker's college). He held the sixth prebendal stall at Ely and the rectory of Downham from 1559 until his death on 16 December 1565. John Bell was a fellow of Peterhouse in 1554, university preacher in 1567, master of Jesus from 1579 to 1585 and vice-chancellor 1582–3. He held his prebend at Ely from 1566 until he resigned on becoming dean of Ely in 1589. (Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge I. ii. 1922 *Google Scholar, 25, I. i. 128; Le Neve, J., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglkanae, Oxford 1854, 359–60.Google Scholar) Nothing seems to be known about Thomas Aywarde (Hayward?), and he is not in the register of either university.
page 199 note 2 I.e. ‘undiscreet’.
page 199 note 3 The quarrel between Dr. Caius and a faction of the fellows of Gonville and Caius College and the efforts of Parker and Cecil to resolve it are documented in P.R.O., S.P. 12/38/26, 39/4, 5 and 7, and in Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 248–50. The affair is discussed by Dr.Venn, John in his biographical sketch of John Caius, Cambridge 1910, 22–7Google Scholar.
page 199 note 4 John Parker matriculated a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse in 1562. There is no record of his residence after 1565, or that he took a degree. He was later married to a daughter of bishop Cox. His father provided him with offices in the administration of the diocese of Canterbury. In 1570 Parker was told by the puritan, Edward Dering: ‘Againe your sonnes … I would that they should be more moderate in their apparell; let them use honest and comely clothes, leaving gawdy garmentes to others.’ (J. A. Venn, op. cit, I. iii. (1924), 306; Walker, T. A., A Biographical Register of Peterhouse Men, i. (Cambridge 1927) 226Google Scholar; Brook, V. J. K., A Life of Archbishop Parker, Oxford 1962, 342Google Scholar; B.M. MS. Stowe 743, fol. 6v).
page 199 note * Cantabrigienses, Cambridge 1922–47, I. ii. 25, I. 28.