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The Authorship of ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Peter Holmes
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The authorship of The copy of a letter written by a Master of Art of Cambridge, or ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ as it became known, was successfully kept secret when it appeared in 1584. It was common policy for Catholic writers to publish their books anonymously during this period, especially political works, but with one as libellous and seditious as ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ it was necessary to take every precaution to conceal theidentity of the author. The Earl of Leicester, grossly insulted in the pamphlet, tried hard to find out in France – where the book was known to have been printed – who had written it, and it was reported that he had sent an assassin to the continent to deal with the author. When the book first came to light in London, Walsingham confidently ascribed it – ‘the most malicious written thing that ever was penned sithence the beginning of the world’ – to Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary Stuart in France, assisted by three other Catholic exiles, Lord Paget, Charles Arundell and William Tresham, but this was no more than a guess and did not convince Leicester. It was not until fifteen years later that the authorship of'Leicester's Commonwealth’ again aroused interest, when a group of English Catholic writers known as the Appellants began to ascribe it to their enemy, the Jesuit Robert Persons. Persons refused to acknowledge authorship, but it was generally accepted that the book was his, and when in 1641 it was republished by a Protestant it was clearly ascribed to the Jesuit. Less certainty was entertained by later historians, but the difficulty remained: if Persons had not written the book, who had? This problem was solved in 1957 in an article by the Jesuit historian, Leo Hicks, who, developing an idea of his older colleague, J. H. Pollen, ascribed the book to a Catholic exile named Charles Arundell and denied that Persons had played any part in its composition. This ascription has been unanimously accepted by later scholars. I wish in this brief paper to question Fr Hicks's findings and to argue that Persons played the major part in the compilation of the book.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1982 , pp. 424 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Hicks, L., ‘The growth of a myth: Fr Robert Persons, SJ. and Leicester's Commonwealth’, Studies. An Irish Quarterly, xlvi (1957), 94–5Google Scholar; Peck, D. C., ’Government suppression of Elizabethan Catholic books: the case of “Leicester's Commonwealth”’, Library Quarterly (University of Chicago) (1977), 163–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks are due to Professor G. R. Elton and Dr B. I. Bradshaw for help in preparing this note for publication.

2 B.L., MS Titus B VII, fo. 10; Hicks, loc. cit.

3 W. Watson, dedication to T. Bluet, Important Considerations, London 1601, sig. + + 3v; W. Clarke, A Reply, London 1603, 71–71V; H. Ely, Certain Brief Notes, Paris 1602, i6v (2nd pagination); Mush, J., A Dialogue, London 1601, 91Google Scholar; Watson, W., A Decacordon, London 1602, 11Google Scholar.

4 Burgoyne, F. J., History of Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, and the Earl of Leicester, London 1904Google Scholar, Introduction; a reprint of the 1641 edition.

5 Burgoyne, loc. cit.; Dictionary of National Biography (s.v. Persons); Code, J. B., Queen Elizabeth and the English Catholic Historians, London 1935, 73Google Scholar.

6 Hicks, ‘Growth of a myth’, 91–105; cf. Hotson, L., ‘Who wrote “Leicester's Commonwealth?”’, The Listener (1950), 431–3Google Scholar.

7 Pollen, J. H., in Pollen and MacMahon (eds), The Ven. Philip Howard (Catholic Record Society, xxi, 1919), 57Google Scholarff. Pollen accepted, however, that Persons had played some part in the book's composition.

8 Bossy, J. A., ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, Past and Present, xxi (1962), 55Google Scholar; Clancy, T., Papist Pamphleteers, Chicago 1964, 24–5Google Scholar; Lecler, J., Toleration and the Reformation, trans. Westow, T. L., London 1960, ii. 374Google Scholar; Allison, A. F. and Rogers, D. M., A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1580–1640, London 1968, art. 261Google Scholar; Peck, D. C., ‘An alleged early draft of “Leicester's Commonwealth ”’, Notes and Queries, 220 (1975), 295CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Code, Queen Elizabeth, 73.

9 P.R.O., S.P. 12/267/67, 68; Westminster Cathedral Archives, 848/18 ; Stonyhurst Archives, Anglia n, n. 46.

10 P.R.O., 31/9/86A (transcript of Vatican Archives, Nunz. Diverse 264, fo. 205); Hicks, ‘Growth of a myth’, 97.

11 ‘sed quicumque manum ultimam libro imposuerit (nam per multas transisse noscitur) nihil agitur in eo de rebus status, neque si P. Personius partem aliquam in eo habuisset, magis ei vitio vertendum esset, quam Sanctis Nazianzeno ac Basilio, quod in Julianum, aut Sancto Hilario, quod in Constantium Imperatores inimicos scripserint.’

12 The Archpriest Controversy, ed. Law, T. G. (Camden Society, 1898), ii. 52Google Scholar, 99–100.

13 ‘confessio D'ni Caroli Arundelij qui se confessus est huic libro subiectum et materiem subministrasse, P. autem Personium methodum, stilum, et formam.’

14 Sutcliffe, M., A Challenge Concerning the Romish Church, London 1602, 193Google Scholarff.

15 R. Persons, The Warn-word, Antwerp 1602, iff.; cf. A Manifestation, Antwerp 1602, 51 v, where Persons, in answer to the Appellants, said he had not heard of the ‘Greencoat’, as they called the book from its green cover.

16 Holmes, P., ‘The authorship and early reception of A Conference about the next succession to the crown of England’, Historical Journal, xxiii (1980Google Scholar), 415ff.

17 Hicks, ‘Growth of a myth’, 98–9.

18 Morris, J., The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers (series II), London 1875, 42–4Google Scholar; Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere MSS, ed. Petti, A. G. (Catholic Record Society, LX, 1968), 57Google Scholar; The Letters and Memorials of Fr Persons, i, ed. L. Hicks (Catholic Record Society, xxxix. 1942), 227, 234–5, 24'. 245, 252, 256.

19 Letters of Persons, pp. lxviii, 260 an d I, 271; Giralomo Ragazzoni nonce en France, correspondence 1583–1586, ed. Blet, P. (Paris 1962), 319Google Scholar.

20 Hicks, ‘Growth of a myth’, 94–5; Historical MSS Commission, Calendar of the MSS of the Marquis of Salisbury (hereafter cited as HMC, Salisbury), 1889, iii. 129.

21 Burgoyne, ‘History’, 116–213.

22 J. Leslie, A Defence of the Honour of the Right High, Mighty and Noble Princess Mary Queen of Scotland, Rheims 1569 ; reprinted as A Treatise Concerning the Defence, Louvai n 1571, and A Treatise Touching the Right, Title and Interest, Rouen 1584, and in French an d Latin.

23 Boothe, N., The Right of Succession to the Crown of England, London 1723, 33–93Google Scholar; B.L., MS Harle y 555, fos. 11–47V. Cf. Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, London 1950, 442–3Google Scholar; Levine, M., The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, Stanford 1966Google Scholar, esp. chap. 6; Axton, M., ‘The influence of Edmund Plowden's succession treatise’, Huntinglon Library Quarterly, xxxvi (1974), 209CrossRefGoogle Scholarff.; de, G.Parminter, C., ‘Edmund Plowden as advocate for Mary Queen of Scots’, Innes Review, xxx (1979), 35–53Google Scholar.

24 Burgoyne, History, 20–115.

25 Pollen, in Ven. Philip Howard, 57–66 ; ‘A letter of estate sen t to his friend H. R. in Gracious Street wherein is laid open the practices and devices of Robert Sutton alias Dudley, Earl of Leicester’, P.R.O., S.P. 15/28/fos. 369–388V and 12/175/101 ; Peck, ‘An alleged early draft’, 295. For another early draft see H.M.C. Salisbury, xi. 165–71, cited in Pollard, A. F., The History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth, London 1923, 374Google Scholar, 1.

26 Burgoyne, History, 9–19, 218–24.

27 Allen, W., A True, Sincere and Modest Defence, ed. Kingdon, R. M., Ithaca 1965, 259–68Google Scholar

28 Republished in 1641 (2editions), 1706 (2 editions), 1708, 1721; see Burgoyne, History, Introduction.

29 On Arundell's life see Hicks, L., An Elizabethan Problem, London 1964Google Scholar, 33ff, 128, 173, 206, 216ff; Pollen, Ven. Philip Howard. His name is variously spelt ‘Arundell’ or ‘Arundel'; he is sometimes referred to as a knight and was apparently a cousin of Queen Elizabeth 1.

30 Bossy, J., ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, in Ashton, T. (ed.), Crisis in Europe, London 1965Google Scholar, 242, 244. I might in passing express my doubts about the usefulness of the term ‘courtly Catholicism’ with reference to so early a period of English history as the reign of Elizabeth.

31 Bossy, loc. cit.; Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England: the Beginning of the English Reformation to the Death of Queen Elizabeth, London 1932, 404Google Scholar. Clancy, T., Papist Pamphleteers, Chicago 1964, 57, 148Google Scholar; Lecler, Toleration, i. 375.

32 Burgoyne, History, 17–19, 218–24.

33 Allen, A Defence, 260ff; Persons, R., An Epistle of the Persecution, Rouen 1582Google Scholar, 9, 27–41, 163–4; idem, News from Spain and Holland, Antwerp 1593, 25V-30; idem, A Temperate Ward-Word, Antwerp 1599, 119–29Google Scholar; idem, The Judgment of a Catholic, ed. Costello, W. (Gainesville, Fla., 1957), t28Google Scholar. It is worth notin g that Persons ‘News from Spain and Holland, mentioned above, was like ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ addressed to someone in Gracious Street, London.

34 There are two politique arguments: on e for a minority religion, another for a majority religion. The former says, we must conform; the latter, we must tolerate. To call ‘Leicester's Commonwealth' politique is to confuse these two arguments. Cf. T. Stapleton, Oratio academica: an politici horum temporum in numero Christianorum sint habendi, Munich 1608, 13.