SO HELP ME GOD:

OATHS AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Jonathan Michael Gray

June 2008
 UMI Number: 3313580

Copyright 2008 by
Gray, Jonathan Michael

All rights reserved.

INFORMATION TO USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy
submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and
photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper
alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized
copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI
UMI Microform 3313580
Copyright 2008 by ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC
789 E. Eisenhower Parkway
PO Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
 Copyright by Jonathan Michael Gray 2008
All Rights Reserved
I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in
scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

tJ*
(David Como) Principal Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in
scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

(Carolyn Loi^gee) (/

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in
scope and in quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

(Barbara Pitkin)

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies.

111
 Abstract

This dissertation addresses the question of how the English reformation was
accomplished. Through an exploration of fifteenth and sixteenth-century theological
manuscripts, popular published tracts, sermons, state papers, court proceedings, and
episcopal registers, it argues that oaths were crucial to the implementation of the
Henrician and Elizabethan reformations and to the confessionalization of England.
Using oaths as a lens of inquiry, this dissertation sheds new light on the strategies and
interworkings of the Henrician and Elizabethan regimes, the implementation of the
settlements of 1534 and 1559 on the ground, and the response of the English populace
to these settlements. It also examines the employment of oaths in heresy trials to
elucidate the process through which a distinct Protestant identity coalesced in
England. It concludes that even as the English state increasingly turned to oaths to
enforce its religious policy, the English people likewise employed oaths to resist this
religious policy. Oaths thus became the primary device through which the state and
people negotiated the reformation in England.

IV
 Acknowledgments
It is neither possible nor desirable to earn a PhD in history without
accumulating a vast array of debts of gratitude. It is with nothing but pleasure that I
acknowledge those individuals who have invested in me and contributed to this
project.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the resources of
numerous libraries. I am grateful to the following English institutions who opened
their doors to me and allowed me to consult their manuscripts: the British Library, the
National Archives, Lambeth Palace Library, Cambridge University Library, the
Bodleian Library, Corpus Christi College Library (Cambridge), Emmanuel College
Library, Corpus Christi College Library (Oxford), Christ Church Library, Guildhall
Library, Inner Temple Library, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, the Centre for Kentish
Studies at Maidstone, and the Lancashire Record Office. The staff of Green Library,
Stanford has gone the extra mile to accommodate my research. Special thanks are due
to Mary Munill in the interlibrary loan department and Benjamin Stone, the British
studies curator who made my life much easier by arranging the purchase of SP1 for
Stanford.
I have had the great fortune of working under truly excellent advisors and
mentors at every stage of my academic development. Eric Carlson kindly agreed to
supervise the undergraduate honors thesis of a student with whom he had no previous
experience. He has continued to follow my academic career at each subsequent stage
and has offered much valued advice and friendship. I am grateful to Jeff Watt for
overseeing my masters' thesis, helping me learn sixteenth-century French, and
providing a model of a balanced history professor who has finds time to enjoy life,
serve his family, and work-out while still doing excellent work. Jeff has also read
portions of this dissertation and provided feedback. Special thanks go out to Joe Ward
who talked me out of quitting graduate school during my first few trying months in
Mississippi, and then convinced me to apply to Stanford's PhD program when I was
ready to stop with an M. A. At Stanford, Paul Seaver taught me paleography and
guided me as I sought out a dissertation topic. I have never encountered a better

v
listener than Professor Seaver! Barbara Pitkin welcomed a history student into
religious studies and oversaw my field on Reformation theology and practice. She has
always been free with her expertise and time and graciously agreed to serve on my
committee and read my dissertation. When I first arrived at Stanford, Carolyn Lougee
accepted me as an orphaned advisee. My conception of the field of early modern
Europe is a result of her patient tutelage and teaching. I also thank her for reading and
commenting on my dissertation. My largest academic debt is to David Como.
Professor Como is a paragon of a learned, professional advisor. He taught me the
history of Tudor-Stuart England, guided this dissertation from inception to
completion, strengthened my raw skills as a teacher, and mentored me in all aspects of
the discipline of history. To all of these professors I offer my sincerest gratitude.
No matter how excellent the professional guidance, I would not have
completed graduate school without the amazing support of friends and family. Toby
Bates and J. R. Duke offered their friendship to a lonely westerner in Mississippi.
Their hospitality was a manifestation of Southern culture at its best. At Stanford, the
members of Inter-Varsity Graduate Christian Fellowship provided essential
community without which scholarship dries out. My best memories of Stanford are of
the good times shared on IV-Grad retreats, ski trips, and in small group meetings.
Special thanks go out to Paul Leu and Pete Sommer. Throughout my entire
development as a scholar, Ashley Jensen has been there for me. He has listened to
countless phone diatribes in which I lamented on the travails of being a graduate
student. His own much harder journey through medical school and residency provided
me with a model of perseverance and balance. He also introduced me to my
incredible wife, who quickly became my biggest cheer-leader. Even after our
marriage removed ulterior motives for flattery, Karin has continued to encourage me
in every way! Yet no one can equal the positive influence of my parents. Their
supportfinancial, emotional, and spiritualhas molded me into the scholar and
person who I am today. It is to them that I gratefully dedicate this dissertation.
Praise the Lord, for He is good. Omnia ad Dei gloriam.

VI
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Section I: The Ideological Underpinnings of Oaths

Chapter 1: The Theological and Social Importance of Swearing in Medieval

And Early Modern Europe 19

Chapter 2: Vows, Oaths, and the Formulation of a Subversive Ideology 73

Section II: 'Kings Be Not Kinges of Tongues'?: Oaths and the Henrician Religious
Revolution

Prologue 111

Chapter 3: Oaths, Subscriptions, and the Implementation of the Parliamentary

Reforms of 1534 117

Chapter 4: The Origin and Motivation of Henry's Use of Oaths and

Subscriptions to Enforce His Reformation 159

Chapter 5: Responses to the Professions of Succession and Supremacy 212

Chapter 6: Oaths and the Pilgrimage of Grace 240

Conclusion of Section 2: How Effective Were the Henrician Professions? 276

Section III: Confessionalization and Truth: Perjury, Equivocation, and Dissimulation

in Protestant Heresy Trials, 1525-1559

Prologue 287

Chapter 7: Oaths, Lollards, and Early English Protestants 293

Chapter 8: A Time of Transition: Truth and Equivocation in the 1530s

and 1540s 321

Chapter 9: Oaths, Recantations, and Propaganda in Marian England 343

vii
Section IV: Oaths and Religion under Elizabeth I

Prologue 375

Chapter 10: The Administration of the Elizabethan Oath of Supremacy 382

Chapter 11: Elizabethan State Oaths Excluding the Oath of Supremacy 446

Chapter 12: Conscience, the Word of God, and the Sanctity of Oaths:
the Religious Opposition to Elizabethan State Oaths 508

Conclusion 534

Appendix 542

Bibliography 569

viii
 Introduction
"No naturall chyldren of God are they/ regenerate of the spretet/ but verye bastardes/
borne of fleshe & blood. Not the chyldren of promes are they with Isaac/ but the
carnall chyldren of bondage with Ismael/ to whom belongeth no heretage in Christ.
These be no natural poyntes of a louynge sonne to buffett & beate his father/ or to
teare the fleshe from his bones. To name him in his most angre and spyght/ or to
spytte hym out of his mouthe with cruelte and vengeaunce. But they are the frutes of
an unreasonable beast/ of an outragious wode dogge/ of a furious serpent/ of an ympe
of helle/ and a verye lymme of the deuyll."1
So wrote the English Protestant exile John Bale in 1543 about people who
swear vainly. Bale's passionate denunciation of oath abusers was not exceptional in
late medieval and early modern religious writings. The English Evangelical Thomas
Becon, for example, wrote of perjury, "O wyckednesse, more than can be expressed.
O shameful synne worthy [of] all kynd of punyshment. O incomparable vice worthy
to be reuenged not with papers wearyng only, but wyth the moost byter & intolerable
paynes, that are prepared in hell for Satan and hys ministers."2 Perjury, often defined
by religious writers simply as the misuse of oaths, was a mortal sin that, left
unconfessed, would send the swearer strait to hell, claimed John Fisher.3 Moreover, it
was not just any mortal sin. It was one of the worst. Homicide was better, for it killed
only the body while perjury murdered the soul.4 Becon, Thomas Wygenhale (a
medieval monk who wrote a lengthy manuscript treatise on oaths), and John Bradford
proclaimed that it was the second worst sin possible, after idolatry.5 According to
Thomas Wygenhale, one should choose the hardest death rather than offend God by

[John Bale], A Christen exhortation vnto customable swearers. What a ryght and lawfull othe is:
whan, and before whom, it owght to be. Item. The maner ofsayinge grace, or geuynge thankes vnto
Goc/([Antwerp], [1543?]), sig. D2r.
2
Thomas Basille [Thomas Becon], An inuectyue agenst the moost wicked and detestable vyce of
swearing ([1543]), sig. F2r.
Cecilia A. Hatt (ed.), English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469-1535): Sermons and
Other Writings, 1520-1535 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 248. For different definitions of
perjury, see note 109 of chapter one of this dissertation.
4
This statement was often repeated in late medieval writings on oaths and was usually attributed to
Augustine. See for example CIC, C. 22 q. 4 c. 1, Friedberg, 1:883-884; Priscilla Heath Barnum (ed.),
Dives and Pauper, EETS, o.s., 275 (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 252; Bale, Christen
exhortation, sig. Cl v .
5
Becon, An inuectyue, sig. Clr; John Bradford, The Writings of John Bradford, ed. Aubrey Townsend,
PS, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 11; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 4V.

1
perjury.6 Andrew Chertsay, the early sixteenth-century compiler of The arte or crafte
to lyue well, asserted that only a bishop could absolve perjury, while canon law
maintained that unconfessed perjurers should be expelled from the community of the
faithful.7 Clearly the abuse of oaths was serious business.
The significance of oaths is highlighted not only by the vehement quality of
diatribes against the misuse of oaths, but also by the sheer quantity of works dealing
with oaths. Any perusal of English religious writings of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries will reveal the great importance of oaths to the devout. In the later Middle
Ages, oaths were discussed in Latin systematic theological treatises, in vernacular
instructions for parish priests, in devotional literature aimed at laymen, in sermons
delivered to laymen, in popular poetry and stories, and even in the commonplace
books of the nascent middle class.8 Religious works on oaths thus targeted every level

"Maiore ratione omnes christian! citius deberent mortem durissimam eligere quam deum offenderent
periurando"; CU MS. Ii. i. 39 (Thomas Wygenhale's Speculum iuratoris), fol. 86v. Wygenhale (also
known as Wignhal or Wygnale) was a canon of the Monastery of the Blessed Mary of West-Durham
(Norwich) and perpetual vicar of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge; Ibid., fol. 2r.
Wygenhale's treatise is the only full length medieval work dedicated to swearing, as far as I am aware.
It survives only in manuscript. In addition to the copy at Cambridge University Library, copies of it
survive in the British Library (Harleian MS. 148) and the National Library of Wales (MS. 22688B).
7
[Andrew Chertsey], [The crafte to lyue well and to dye well], ([Westminters?], [1505]), fol. 31 v ; C1C,
C. 22, q. 1 c.17, Friedberg, 1: 866.
8
For systematic theology see, Thomas Aquinas, "Question 89," Religion and Worship, ed. and trans.
Kevin D. O'Rourke, vol. 39 of Summa Theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Gulielmus
Peraldus, Sumarium summe virtutum et vitiorum per figures ([Lyons?], 1500), fols. 167v-179r; John
Wycliffe, Johannis Wyclif tractatus de mandatis divinis : accedit tractatus de statu innocencie. . . ., ed.
Johann Loserth and F. D. Matthew (1922; reprint, New York : Johnson Reprint, 1966), 187-206;
Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum morale, vol. 3 of Speculum quadruplex sive speculum maius (1624;
reprint, Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck, 1964), 1181-1191, 1281-1282. Many vernacular
instructions for parish priests were guides on how to conduct confession. As such, they also targeted
lay audiences, instructing the laity how to confess. One very popular treatise in this vein which
contained a bit on oaths was Lorens d'Orleans' Somme le roi. Derivatives of the Somme le roi include
Domincian Laurent, The Book of Vices and Virtues: A Fourteenth Century English Translation of the
"Somme le roi" of Lorens d'Orleans, ed. W. Nelson Francis, EETS, o.s., 217 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1942); A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A prose version of the Speculum Vitae,
ed.from B.L. MS Harley 45, ed. Venetia Nelson (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1981); Dan Michel's
Ayenbite oflnwy : or, Remorse of Conscience, ed. Richard Morris, EETS, o.s., 23 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1965); [Domincian Laurent], This book was compyled and made atte requeste ofkyng
Phelyp ofFraunce . . . whyche book is callyd infrensshe. le liure Royall that is to say the ryal book, or
a book for a kyng. . .. [Craxton's Royal Book] ([Westminster], 1485 or 1486); Arthur Brandeis (ed.)
Jacob's Well, An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man's Conscience, EETS, o.s., 115 (London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1900); F.N.M. Diekstra (ed.), Book for a Simple and Devout Woman: A
Late Middle English Adaptation of Peraldus' Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus and Friar Laurent's
Somme le Roi, (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998). For a very substantial section on oaths, see Dives
and Pauper, 221-262. Other examples of treatises designed for a lay audience with sections on oaths

2
of society. The coming of the Reformation did nothing to stem the tide of writings on
oaths. Protestant heavyweights like Thomas Becon and John Bale wrote whole
treatises on the issue.9 Swearing was important enough to warrant Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer allotting an entire sermon (one of only twelve) to it in his 1547 Book
of Homilies.10 Likewise, the 1553 primer dedicated one of its fourteen lessons (one
for every day of the week, morning and evening) to teaching about swearing oaths.''
The works of John Hooper, John Bradford, Henry Bullinger, and Hugh Latimer also
contained sections on oaths and swearing.12 Oaths were thus an issue of considerable
consequence to religious writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

include Richard Whitford, A werke for Householders, vol. 5 of Richard Whytford's Thepype or tonne of
the lyfe of perfection, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Univsitat
Salzburg, 1979); Andrew Chertsey, Ihesus. Thefloure of the commaundementes of god with many
examples and auctorytees extracte and drawen as well of holy scryptures as of other doctours and good
auncient faders, the whiche is moche vtyle and prouffytable vnto all people. The. x. commaundementes
of the lawe. Thou shalt worshyp one god onely. And loue hym with thy herte perfytely . . . Thefyue
commaundementes of the chyrche. The sondayes here thou masse and thefestes of commaundement. . . .
The foureymbres vigyles thou shaltefaste, and the lente entyerly ([1510]). For sermons dealing with
oaths, see Woodburn O. Ross (ed.), Middle English Sermons: Editedfrom British Museum MS. Royal
18 B. xxiii, EETS, o.s, 209 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1940), 22-23, 99-
109, 117; Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 750, fols.42v-48; John Mirk, Mirk's Festival: A Collection of
Homilies, ed. Theodore Erbe, EETS, e.s., 96 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1905), 113-114,
300-301. For popular poetry on swearing, see Stephen Hawes, The conuersyon ofswerers (1509);
Robert Mannying, Robert ofBrunne 's 'Handlyng Synne,' AD 1303, with Those Parts of the Anglo-
French Treatise on Which It Was Founded, William of Wadington 's 'Manuel des Pechiez, ed. Frederick
J. Furnivall, EETS, o.s. 119 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1901), 23-29, 96-102. A fifteenth-
century adaptation of Handlyng Synne is included in Peter ldley 's Instructions to his Son, ed. Charlotte
D'Evelyn (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1935). For commonplace books with sections on oaths, see The
Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes ofAcle: An Edition of Tanner MS 407, ed. Cameron Louis (New
York and London: Garland, 1980), 143-146; A Common-place Book of the Fifteenth Century,
Containing A Religious Play and Poetry, Legal Forms, and Local Accounts (from Brome Hall), ed.
Lucy Toulmin Smith (London: Triibner, 1886), 79; Richard Hill, Songs, Carols, and Other
Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS 354, Richard Hill's Commonpace-Book, ed. Roman
Dyboski, EETS, e.s. 101 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1907), 43-44, 70. Finally, the sheer
volume of late medieval sources that deal with swearing is made abundantly manifest in G. R. Owst,
Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 414-425.
9
Becon, An inuectyue; Bale, Christen exhortacion.
10
[Thomas Cranmer?], "Against Swearyng and Perjurie," in Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A
Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570), ed. Ronald B. Bond (Toronto, Buffalo, and
London: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 128-136.
11
Joseph Ketley (ed.), The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549, A.D. 1552: with Other Documents Set Forth by
Authority in the Reign of King Edward VI, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), 425.
12
John Hooper, Early Writings of John Hooper, ed. Samuel Carr, PS, vol. 20 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1843), 323-325,476-479,482-483; Bradford, Writings of John Bradford, 9-11; Henry
Bullinger, The Decades of Henry Bullinger, trans. H.I., ed. Thomas Harding, PS, vol. 7 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1849), 238-252; Hugh Latimer, Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. George
Elwes Corrie, PS, vol. 27 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), 345-346, 380, 407; Hugh

3
 Sources on oaths from the sixteenth century are not confined, however, to
religious works. The Henrician and Elizabethan State Papers are filled with
correspondences, commissions, and official documents relating to oaths, for oaths
were an important vehicle through which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I implemented
their religious settlements. Henry enforced his split from Rome with the oath of
succession and numerous oaths of supremacy, he retaliated against the Catholic rebels
of the Pilgrimage of Grace with another oath of allegiance, and Elizabeth enforced her
Protestant religious settlement with her own oath of supremacy. Oaths were also
integral to the Tudor church's prosecution of heresy, papistry (after 1534), and
nonconformity. Bishops and other ecclesiastical judges forced those suspected of
heterodoxy and heteropraxy to disclose their beliefs and reveal their associates by
tendering the suspects the ex officio oath, an oath of inquisition that bound the swearer
to answer truthfully each and every question asked by the judge. This oath became a
great matter of controversy during the sixteenth century; manuscripts (and a few
printed works) attacking this oath survive in abundance.
Thus, the large quantity and strong quality of sources on oathsreligious,
governmental, and legalattest to the importance of swearing oaths in early modern
England. Yet surprisingly, no historian has yet attempted a systematic study of oaths
in sixteenth-century England. This dissertation is an attempt to correct this
historiographical oversight, to bring into focus the role played by oaths in the political
and religious reformations that rocked England from 1534 to 1603. It will argue that
oaths were crucial to the implementation of the Henrician and Elizabethan
reformations and to the confessionalization of England. Oaths were not only essential
to the enforcement of the settlements of 1534 and 1559: they were also a primary
means through which the English people resisted, acquiesced in, or negotiated the
Reformation. And because oaths were so significant to the development of the
Reformation, an elucidation of the theory, practice, and employment of oaths in
sixteenth-century England will also shed light on other important issues in early
modern English history such as the internal workings and dynamics of the Henrician

Latimer, Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, ed. George Elwes Corrie, PS, vol. 28 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1845), 64, 70, 134.

4
and Elizabethan regimes, the formation and solidification of confessional identities,
and the role of conscience in an individual's attempt to come to terms with the
religious and political changes of the sixteenth century.
Furthermore, although this dissertation is source-based and not driven by the
desire to answer a pressing historiographical question, the importance of oaths in
sixteenth-century England means that the study of them will speak to a variety of
issues of current historiographical debate. For example, one of the knottiest questions
of English Reformation historiography in the past ten years is the so-called riddle of
compliance. Revisionist historians have convincingly demonstrated that most
medieval Englishmen were happy with their religion. The medieval Catholic church
was thriving in England. The few Englishmen who questioned its doctrine or opposed
its practices were isolated and not influential. The Protestant Reformation thus
received very little popular support in England. In general, it was pushed on the
English populace by a government that enacted reforms because of the capricious will
of the sovereign or because a minority of reformers played a disproportionate role in
1^

the determination of royal policy. As J. J. Scarisbrick has famously proclaimed, "On

the whole, English men and women did not want the Reformation and most of them
were slow to accept it when it came." The problem with this interpretation is that it
fails to explain how, in the end, most Englishmen did accept and even embrace the
Reformation.15 The simple assertion that the crown pushed the Reformation on the
people is insufficient, for, in the words of Ethan Shagan, "the Tudor government

1
The essential works of revisionism are J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in
England, C.1400-C.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Christopher Haigh, English
Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For a
more moderate restatement of the revisionist theses articulated in a digestible case-study, see Eamon
Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2001).
14
Scarisbrick, Reformation and the English People, 1.
15
Duffy has long admitted that the Reformation was eventually successful in England. Christopher
Haigh originally opposed Duffy on this point. Haigh maintained that at best, the Reformation de-
catholicized the English laity without protestantizing them in return. More recently, however, Haigh
has modified his position and confessed that the Reformation was a success, at least in forcing the laity
to learn their catechism and in imbuing the populace with anti-Catholic sentiment; Haigh, "Success and
Failure in the English Reformation," Past and Present 173 (2001): 28-49; Haigh, "Why did it happen?"
The Tablet, April 20, 2002, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/archive_db.cgi7tablet-00623.

5
possessed no bureaucracy, no police force, no standing army, and was utterly reliant
upon local collaborationfrom the haughtiest justice of the peace to the lowliest
village constablefor the maintenance of ordinary administration."16 For the English
Reformation to have been a success, the English people had to cooperate with it; they
had to go along with the reforms enacted by the government without raising extensive
opposition. Yet if they were largely content with Catholicism, why did they do so?
This is the riddle of compliance. Christopher Marsh put it succinctly, "If England's
people were, in Scarisbrick's phrase, 'profoundly addicted to the old ways', why were
their withdrawal symptoms not more agonizing?"17
One of the chief ways historians have answered the riddle of compliance has
been to stress the continuity of evangelical Protestant religion with traditional
Catholicism. Historians who advanced this argument believed that the English laity
accepted the Reformation because it was not an abrupt, revolutionary rupture with the
past. It was "a gradual, practical, piecemeal, and often reluctant affair."18 These
historians emphasized the similarities between evangelical Protestantism and
traditional Catholicism. They of course recognized that Protestantism changed many
facets of doctrine and practice, but they maintained that these changes were grounded
in an underlying bedrock of continuity that provided reassurance to the laity and made
the changes seem less alien. Marsh, for example, claimed that the heart of sixteenth-
century parish religion was Christian charity, community, and peace. The basic
Christian teachings of love and forgiveness not only gave the laity a sense of
familiarity amidst evangelical change: they also encouraged the laity to "hold their

16
Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 2.
17
Christopher Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding Their Peace (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 198.
18
Marsh, Popular Religion, 88. Marsh's Popular Religion was one of the first books to emphasize the
continuity of the English Reformation. It is a balanced, insightful, and well-argued book. As such, it
seems odd that Marsh is rarely cited by other post-revisionists. The actual continuity thesis, to my
knowledge, has its origins in the scholarship of Robert Scribner, who first espoused it in the 1980s.
Scribner, however, studied the German Reformation. See Scribner, "Ritual and Reformation," in The
German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-shia Hsia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988):
122-144; Scribner, "The Impact of the Reformation on Daily Life," in Mensch und Objekt im
Mittelalter und in der Fruhen Neuzeit: LebenAlltagKultur, ed. Gerhard Jaritz (Vienna: Verlag der
Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990): 315-343.

6
peace" in the face of divisive issues. ' 9 Similarly, Alexandra Walsham focused on the
doctrine of providence and the continuity it provided. Providence helped "anchor the
Reformation" in that it downplayed complex Protestant theological issues like
predestination and fit into "pre-existing convictions about divine intervention in the
earthly world."20 Moreover, providence offered the English laity with a sort of
functionalism, since implicit in the doctrine was the belief that prayers and good
behavior caused God to respond favorably, while sin provoked his wrath. This
functionalism served as a recognizable replacement to the mechanical efficacy of the
sacraments and the practice of magic repressed by the reformers.
Tessa Watt has found that the content of popular cheap print in the later
sixteenth century also highlighted beliefs and practices continuous with the Catholic
past. Heroic figures (martyrs instead of saints), visions of hell, miraculous tales,
pictures, and basic lessons of morality were prevalent. "Religion is about the same
fear of death and personal judgment which preoccupied medieval Catholics; it is about
practical lists of good and bad behavior; and about stories of miracles, a virgin birth,
heroism and even love and trickery."22 Instead of showing how Protestant religiosity
was similar to older Catholic traditions, Susan Wabuda emphasized the "proto-
Protestant" practices in late medieval Catholicism. Not only were Christo-centric
devotions increasing at the end of the fifteenth century, but preaching was becoming
more widespread as well. Quarterly sermons preached by mendicants, Paul's Cross
sermons, commemorative sermons funded by endowments, and even regular homilies
in English by the parish priest all contributed to the increasing centrality of preaching
in late medieval Catholicism. The Protestant emphasis on the Word, then, was less
foreign to many parishioners than had been thought.23 By stressing the continuities
between late medieval Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism, Marsh, Walsham,

19
Marsh, Popular Religion, passim.
20
Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
106.
21
Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, 95, 149-165, 328-331, 334.
22
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 126.
3
Susan Wabuda, Preaching During the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002).

7
Watt, and Wabuda thus offered explanations for why the English populace cooperated
with the religious change. The English laity complied because the changes were not
too drastic and were implemented within a recognizable framework.
Chapter one of this dissertation will test the answers to the riddle of
compliance offered by Marsh, Walsham, Watt, and Wabuda by determining whether
the continuity thesis holds true for oaths. In this chapter, I will show that oaths were
considered essential to the proper worship of God and the maintenance of society.
Their great religious significance meant that any change in the theory or practice of
oath-taking had the potential to disrupt the religiosity of the English people. Flushing
out the theory and practice of oath-taking in England before, during, and after the
Reformation will reveal how contiguous the Protestant theory and practice of swearing
oaths was with that of medieval Catholicism. While it would be ludicrous to assert
that the English people chose to accept or reject the Protestant Reformation solely on
this basis, the great importance of oaths in sixteenth-century religion suggests
nonetheless that this issue had the potential to affect considerably the reception of
Protestantism. Oaths could provide links with the past or make the novelty of
Protestantism more apparent.
Of course, there are many other answers to the riddle of compliance besides
emphasizing the continuity between medieval Catholicism and Reformation
Protestantism. Diarmaid MacCulloch, for example, has explored the possible appeal
of Protestantism to the English populace. MacCulloch noted the attraction of the
Protestant message of liberty, especially insofar as this message reverberated with the
socially oppressed, who seized on the fact that many Evangelical advocates of
religious reform also supported social reform. Protestant calls for justice and poor
relief, and their denunciations of practices such as enclosing common land, raising
rents, forestalling (deliberately withholding goods until a scarcity drives up market
prices), and corruption within the legal system appealed to those with a sense of social
grievance. MacCulloch also observed that the Protestant allowance of clerical

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York:
Palgrave, 1999), 121-126. For similar arguments, see Shagan, Popular Politics, 273-280; Alec Ryrie,

8
marriage and divorce contributed to a message of sexual liberty, while the attack on
papal history seemed freeing to young people.25 Other historians have likewise
emphasized non-theological reasons for accepting reform. Norman Jones wrote,
"Property was the great sweetener of the Reformation," while "Religion was relative
when family solidarity was involved."26 Ethan Shagan structured his entire
explanation of the English Reformation around the premise that Englishmen and
women accepted the Reformation because they stood to gain something, and that
something was often not spiritual. A minor official might accept royal supremacy in
order to gain the support of the crown for his cause in a local dispute. A humble
parishioner might participate in the dissolution of the monasteries by secretly
"appropriating" monastic property for the ostensible reason of preventing its seizure
by the government. These actions undertaken for familial, political, or economic
advancement did not amount to Evangelical conversion, but they did provide a "point
of entry" through which Protestantism could slowly gain acceptance by the English
people.27
The sum of all these answers to the riddle of compliance is that individuals
chose to cooperate with the state and accept the Reformation for a variety of
idiosyncratic and personal reasons. One person may have accepted royal supremacy
of the church in order to gain patronage. Another may not have considered the
changes in the liturgy of 1549 to be particularly drastic. No single answer to the riddle
of compliance will ever suffice since the motivations for a group as large as the
English populace to accept or reject the Reformation are as variegated as the number
of individuals within the group. Recognizing this principle, this dissertation (chapter
one excepted) will not use oaths as a lens for offering yet another answer to the riddle

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 146-153.
MacCulloch, Boy King, 129-140. For more on the appeal of the Reformation to youth, see Susan
Brigden, "Youth and the English Reformation," in The Impact of the English Reformation 1500-1640,
ed. Peter Marshall (London: Arnold, 1997), 55-84.
26
Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell,
2002), 4, 198.
Shagan, Popular Politics. For Shagan's explanation of the English populace's acceptance of royal
supremacy, see pages 29-60. For a case-study on the dissolution of the monasteries, see pages 162-196.
For his use of the term "point of contact" (originally employed in a different manner by Geoffrey
Elton), seepage 15.

9
of compliance. Instead, it will shift the question from Why the majority of the English
population complied with the religious changes instituted by the state to How the
English Reformation was accomplished. The focus of this dissertation, then, is not the
reasons why the crown enacted reform or why the populace accepted it but rather the
processes and mechanisms through which that reform was executed and established.
This is the subject of sections two and four of this dissertation. Section two examines
the role of oaths in the accomplishment of the Henrician Reformation, notably the
rejection of papal authority and the establishment of royal supremacy in the 1530s.
Section four illuminates the same process in Elizabeth's reign. In seeking to answer
how these reformations were accomplished, we will touch on three related subthemes,
each of which has historiographical implications.
First, chapters three, ten, and eleven look at how the crown implemented the
settlements of 1534 and 1559 on the ground and in the parish. Historians have already
utilized wills, churchwardens' accounts, official propaganda, and sources relating to
treason trials to explore the implementation of the Henrician Reformation.28 Oaths,
however, are also an ideal lens through which to examine this process, for Henry VIII
famously required all his adult male subjects to swear an oath in support of his new
marriage in 1534 and forced those who held clerical or political office to swear
another oath renouncing papal authority and acknowledging royal supremacy of the
church. Oaths were thus a central component in the implementation of the Henrician
Reformation. Of course, historians have long recognized the importance of these
oaths, yet their accounts of the actual implementation of these oaths at the parish level
have remained surprisingly short, simple, and vague.29 As we shall see in chapter
three, the administration of oaths in the mid-1530s was significantly more complex
than has previously been thought. This complexity, in turn, further illuminates the

28
For the story of the implementation of the Henrician Reformation as revealed by a study of wills, see
Robert Whiting, '"For the Health of My Soul': Prayers for the Dead in the Tudor South-West," in
Marshall (ed.), Impact of the English Reformation, 121-142. For a similar story through the use of
churchwardens' accounts, see Ronald Hutton, "The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations," in Ibid.,
142-167. For a classic study on the crown's use of propaganda and force (such as treason trials) to
implement the reforms of the 1530s, see G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the
Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
29
An exception to this rule is Elton's Policy and Police, 224-230. Nevertheless, Elton's account still
fails to do full justice to the use of oaths to implement the settlement of 1534.

10
strategy that Henry pursued in implementing his reforms. Likewise, an oath of
supremacy was key to the implementation of the Elizabethan settlement. Chapter ten
shows that the administration of the Elizabethan oath of supremacy was no less
complex than that of her father's oaths, though again historical oversimplification of
this process has masked the ramifications of the administration of this oath. Chapter
eleven then examines how the Elizabethan regime employed other oaths besides the
oath of supremacy as a means of strengthening the Elizabethan Protestant settlement.
Secondly, chapters four, ten, and eleven address the question of how the Tudor
monarchs decided to use oaths in the way they did. These chapters provide insight
into the inner operations of the Henrician and Elizabethan regimes. A key issue of
historiographical debate here is the extent to which the policies of Henry and Elizabeth
were controlled by dynamics at court. Eric Ives, for example, is a leading proponent
of the position that many of the policies of the 1530s came about through the influence
of competing court factions.30 By contrast, George Bernard has vehemently
maintained that the influence of faction was limited; Henry was very much his own
master.31 As for Elizabeth's reign, a previous generation of historians such as Conyers
Read and J. E. Neale depicted a Privy Council bitterly divided over policy or
patronage and manipulated by the queen, while more recent accounts by Simon
Adams, Patrick Collinson, and Stephen Alford have painted a different picture, one
where a relatively united Council (often supported by Parliament) was at loggerheads
with a recalcitrant queen.32 Tracing the formation and implementation of Tudor policy
on the administration and non-administration of oaths serves as a detailed case-study

Eric Ives, "Stress, Faction and Ideology in Early-Tudor England,' HistoricalJournal 34 (1991): 196-
197; Eric Ives, "Henry VIII: the Political Perspective," in The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and
Piety, ed. Diarmaid MacCulloch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 29-33.
31
G. W. Bernard, Power and Politics in Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 7-10.
Conyers Read, "Faction in the English Privy Council under Elizabeth," Annual Report of the
American Historical Association 28 (1911): 111-119; J.E. Neale, "The Elizabethan Political Scene," in
his Essays in Elizabethan History (London: J. Cape, 1958), 59-74; Simon Adams, Leicester and the
Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 13-19, 28-33,
30-40; Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 39-42; Stephen
Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558-1569
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 28-33, 57-59, 213-219. In contrast to Adams and
Alford, Susan Doran has reasserted the importance of faction in the 1560s insofar as it relates to the
Hapsburg marriage; Susan Doran, "Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Hapsburg
Marriage Negotiations of 1559-1567," English Historical Review 104 (1989): 909-926.

11
of the process of governing. As such, chapters four, ten, and eleven not only
contribute to the debate on faction: they also explore the exact role of the monarch,
councilors, Parliament, and lesser local authorities in influencing, determining, and
executing royal policy.
Finally, chapters five, six, and twelve examine how the English people
responded to the state oaths of the Reformation. The main contention of these
chapters is that the English did not respond to the Reformation passively. They did not
restrict themselves to the two options presented to them in Tudor state oaths: fully
accepting a policy by swearing an oath or fully opposing it by refusing to swear.
Chapter five explores the variety of techniques people employed to mitigate the full
force of an oath without overtly refusing to swear. Equivocation, conditional
protestations, and even mental reservation were all utilized by Englishmen in the
1530s who did not fully agree with the content of the oath but also did not want to face
the consequences of refusing to swear. Englishmen in the North went even further in
swearing their own oaths during the 1536 rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Chapter six explores these rebellion oaths and argues that the pilgrims swore them in
part as a response to the oath of succession. By declaring the people's interpretation
of the oath of succession, the pilgrims publicly commented on the king's recent
religious policy and set the parameters of their allegiance. Chapter twelve shifts the
spotlight to the refusal of Roman Catholics and Puritans to swear the Elizabethan state
oaths. This refusal was not passive. Catholics and Puritans constructed a powerful
rationale to justify their refusal to swear by appropriating and then intensifying the
state's own propaganda on the sanctity of oaths. Each of these chapters thus
demonstrates that the English people used oaths to negotiate the Reformation.
This emphasis on oaths as means by which the English people commented on
the crown's religious policy and negotiated the Reformation supplements the recent
historiographical trend of acknowledging the role of humble members of society in the
political process. Historians (mostly of seventeenth-century England) have been
increasingly concerned with popular politics, which, in the words of Ethan Shagan,
"simply refers to the presence of ordinary, non-elite subjects as the audience for or

12
interlocutors with a political action." Of course, the majority of English people were
not able to participate in the standard vehicles of national politics such as Parliament
or the court, so the bestowal of a political voice on the masses has necessarily
involved a widening of the definition of politics. Tim Harris and John Walter explored
crowd violence as a form of popular political awareness and agency. Walter has also
contended that grumbling, cursing, appeals, petitions, threats, and shaming were all
"means by which 'ordinary people' could influence the exercise of power." Alastair
Bellany demonstrated that the growth in news media, especially scribal and oral news,
constituted a forum that allowed an ever wider number of people to access and
comment on national politics. Steve Hindle maintained that the institution of parish
vestries and the mechanisms of law that developed from the increase of litigation in
the seventeenth century demonstrate "the widespread participation in the processes of
governance" by the middling sort.37 Indeed, the number and variety of methods
employed by common people to participate in and influence national politics has
caused some leading historians to posit the existence of a public sphere in early
modern England, albeit not a public sphere of the classic definition of Jiirgen
Habermas. David Zaret argued that in revolutionary England, "Communication
change propelled by commerce and textual reproduction led to novel political
practices that constituted a public sphere in which participants issued reasons to
defend opinions on setting a legislative agenda." More recently Peter Lake, Michael

Shagan, Popular Politics, 19.

34
Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the
Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); John Walter,
Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
35
John Walter, "Public Transcripts, Popular Agency and the Politics of Subsistence in Early Modern
England," in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in
Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 123-148 (quotation from 128).
Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the
Over bury Affair, 1603-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 74-135. For the ground-
breaking article on the political relevance of news, see Richard Cust, "News and Politics in Early
Seventeenth-Century England," Past and Present 112 (1986): 60-90.
7
Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550-1640 (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2000), quotation from 23.
38
David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-
Modern England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 278.

13
Questier, and Steve Pincus contended that a public spherethat is, "spaces or modes
of communication or making pitches in which appeals to a general audience were
made through a variety of media appealing to a notion of the public good (or religious
truth)"originated in Elizabethan England as a result of efforts from those at the
center of the regime to combat the threat of Catholicism and to influence the queen to
take a certain action.39 This dissertation contributes to the historiography of popular
politics and the public sphere in two ways. Firstly, it adds swearing oaths to the
widening canon of popular political actions.40 As we shall see, the oath of succession
and the Elizabethan bond of association provided a mechanism for a non-elite subject
to declare his support or opposition to the Henrician and Elizabethan settlements,
while the pilgrims' oaths were a popular attempt to influence the relio-political policy
of the Henrician regime. Secondly, by tracing the origin of the Elizabethan oaths of
allegiance and the opposition to the ex officio oath, chapter eleven delineates the exact
roles of councilors, members of Parliament, and various lesser local officials in their
attempts to use oaths to mold public opinion and shape national policy. In essence, we
will tell how a particular activity of the public sphere (namely, swearing oaths) came
about in sixteenth-century England.
Sections two and four of this dissertation thus provide insight into how the
Reformation was accomplished in England by using oaths to elucidate how the
Henrician and Elizabethan regimes formulated specific policies, how Henry and
Elizabeth implemented the political and religious reforms of 1534 and 1559, and how
the English people responded to these reforms. Section three addresses another
important theme of the English Reformation: how an English Protestant identity
coalesced under the persecution of a hostile state. Recent historiography has stressed

9
Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, "Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England," Journal of
British Studies 45 (2006): 270-292, quotation from 277. An early version of Lake's thesis is Peter Lake
and Michael Questier, "Puritans, Papists, and the 'Public Sphere' in Early Modern England: The
Edmund Campion Affair in Context," Journal of Modern History 12 (2000): 587-627.
The only historian who has approached oaths as a means for common people to gain agency is Steve
Hindle. Hindle explored the phenomenon of "swearing the peace" wherein individuals could place
bonds of good behavior on one another by appearing before a judge and swearing that they were afraid
that a certain person would slay or physically harm them; Hindle, State and Society, 97-115. Hindle's
account of oaths in the process of "binding over" is excellent. We shall see, however, that swearing the
peace was by no means the only way in which common people could play a role in politics through the
swearing of oaths.

14
the inchoate, varied, and indefinite nature of early English Protestantism. Historians
have come to recognize that in the 1520s, 1530s, and (to a lesser extent) the early
1540s, the "religious situation itself was fluid and indeterminate. Boundaries were
unclear, where they existed at all, and identities were nascent and contested."
Indeed, most historians prefer to eschew the term "Protestant" altogether when
describing the religious movements of the first two decades of the English
Reformation, preferring the vaguer term "Evangelical." 2 By the middle of the
sixteenth century, however, there clearly was a group of people in England who could
be described as Protestant in the full sense of the word. So one of the chief tasks of
the historian of the early English Reformation is to illuminate, in the words of Peter
Marshall and Alec Ryrie, "the highly complex and multifaceted processes through
which an English Protestant movement was formed and sustained, and a distinctive
Protestant identity created, in these crucial years." Section two sheds light on one of
these processes of confessionalization: the swearing or avoiding of oaths in heresy
trials. Oaths were an integral part of the public prosecution of heretics. As such,
swearing was a means through which Protestants articulated, renounced, or hid their
beliefs. Chapter seven shows how English "Protestants" of the 1520s and 1530s
inherited a legacy of Lollardy that led them to perjure themselves and to dissimulate
their faith. Although this practice allowed them to save their lives and to arouse a
significant amount of popular sympathy, it prevented the formation of a strong
confessional identity since it cast doubt upon Protestant doctrine and limited the extent
of proselytization. Chapter eight tells a story of transition. It explores how Protestants
in the 1530s and 1540s employed strategies such as equivocated or oathless
abjurations in order to appease the Henrician regime without committing perjury or

41
Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, "Introduction: Protestantisms and their beginnings," The Beginnings
of English Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), 6.
42
The use of the term Evangelical instead of Protestant to describe the English reformers of the 1520s,
1530s, and 1540s was first advocated by Diarmaid MacCulloch. For MacCulloch, the central rallying
point of Evangelicalism was "the need to reconstruct religion out of the scriptural text of the Good
News"; Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church," in MacCulloch, The Reign
ofHenry VIII, 169. A belief in justification by faith alone and a rejection of purgatory and the cult of
the dead on this basis is usually considered another defining aspect of English Evangelicalism. See
Peter Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 7.
43
Marshall and Ryrie, "Introduction," in Beginnings of English Protestantism, 12-13.

15
betraying their true beliefs. The Protestant practice of equivocation has received much
historiographical emphasis,44 but the role of oaths in this processespecially the
apparent collaboration of conservative prelates like Bishop Edmund Bonner in
tolerating oathless abjurationshas hitherto escaped historians' notice. Chapter nine
then deals with the Protestant usage of oaths in Marian heresy trials. In contrast to
earlier practice, many Marian Protestants refused to recant and used oaths as a means
to justify their behavior and attack the integrity of their opponents. Dissimulation and
perjury, then, corresponded with a period of confessional fluidity, while transparency
and an emphasis on swearing truthfully corresponded with the solidification of a
Protestant identity. The practice of swearing, avoiding, or explaining oaths during
Protestant heresy trials was thus a significant component in the confessionalization of
England.
If oaths therefore played a crucial role in the accomplishment of the English
Reformation and the confessionalization of England, then it follows that any
examination of oaths in the English Reformation will have relevance not only to
historiographical debates about the English Reformation and Tudor polity in general
but also to more specific debates about the power of oaths in early modern England.
Some historians have contended that oaths became less effective in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as English men and women lost faith in the power of an oath to
bind one's conscience. There are three theories as to why this happened. First,
Christopher Hill has argued that oaths began to be replaced in the seventeenth century
by the tendency to speak the truth simply because such a practice was better suited to
success in a capitalist economy in which a untarnished reputation was essential to the
establishment of good credit.45 Hill, however, provided no real evidence to
substantiate this claim, and the sources examined in this dissertation are likewise

See Susan Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The 'Subtle
Shadows' of Dr Edward Crome," Journal ofEcclesiastical History 44 (1993): 224-242; Megan
Hickerson, "Ways of Lying: Anne Askew and the Examinations," Gender and History 18 (2006): 50-65;
Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500-1700
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 194-195.
45
Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken
Books, 1964), 397, 399, 417-418. Keith Thomas also endorsed this theory in Religion and the Decline
of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 68.

16
insufficient to test this hypothesis. Second, some historians have claimed that the
Reformation's curtailment of the sacramental and "magical" power of the medieval
priesthood led to a general disenchantment of the world that was specifically
manifested in (among other things) a waning belief that God would or could punish
perjurers. Keith Thomas, for example, declared that "the oath became less important
because the terrors of supernatural vengeance had steadily receded."46 Chapter one of
this dissertation will test this theory by analyzing Protestant rhetoric on oaths to see if
it was indeed shorn of the threat of divine wrath on abusers of God's name. Finally,
some historians of the seventeenth century have argued that the multiplicity of
contradictory oaths of the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the Glorious
Revolution undermined the validity of oaths by making perjury common and virtually
unavoidable.47 In opposition to this theory, Edward Vallance has contended that the
strategies many Englishmen employed to navigate the maze of oaths in the English
Revolution were based on a desire to avoid perjury and thus indicate a continued
belief in the sanctity of oaths.48 Of relevance here is the fact that the same
circumstances that supposedly led to the deterioration of the efficacy of oaths in the
seventeenth centurynamely, the state successively imposing conflicting oaths on the
populacewere also present in sixteenth-century England. Henry VIII, for example,
demanded that all the clergy of the realm take an oath of supremacy to him that
explicitly opposed the oath to the pope sworn by all prelates. 9 Henry also
administered an oath to the rebels of 1536 that deliberately invalidated the oaths they
had sworn in the Pilgrimage of Grace.50 Indeed, one of the recurring themes of this
dissertation is the dilemma created by the succession of oaths: how to act when faced

46
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 67. For more background on this theory see John Spurr,
"A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, 11
(2001): 40-41.
Hill, Society and Puritanism, 409-418; John Spurr, "Perjury, Profanity and Politics," The Seventeenth
Century 8 (1993): 29-50. Even though Spurr contended that the prevalence of perjury in seventeenth-
century England was a reaction to the official abuse of oaths by the state, he has also maintained that
there never was a golden age where oaths were taken with absolute sincerity and functioned as an
ultimate guarantee of the truth. See Spurr, "A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths," 61-62.
Edward Vallance, "Protestation, Vow, Covenant and Engagement: Swearing Allegiance in the
English Civil War," Historical Research 75 (2002): 408-424.
49
See chapter four of this dissertation.
See chapter six of this dissertation.

17
with the demand to swear an oath that conflicted with a previous promise sworn
before God. This dissertation thus concludes with an inquiry into whether the
experience of swearing oaths in the English Reformation resulted in a general loss of
faith among the English populace in the power of an oath to bind one's conscience.

18
 Chapter 1: The Theological and Social Importance of Swearing in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
Late medieval and early modern religious writers placed great emphasis on the
importance of oaths. Why? The most obvious answer is that oaths were integral in
the foundational text of Christianity, the Bible. From the very beginning of Yahweh's
relationship with his chosen people, he declared: "Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vayne. For the Lorde shal not holde him vngiltie, that taketh his
name in vayne."' This precept was not only one of the Ten Commandments, but,
along with the commandment against idolatry, one of only two that contained a clause
expressing God's displeasure with violators of his ordinance. This was the
justification of Becon and Bradford for claiming that vain swearing was the second
worst sin after idolatry. Moreover, the Ten Commandments were also key to the
Catholic Church's drive to educate the laity. The Lateran Council of 1215 made
annual confession compulsory for the laity. But for confession to function as it
should, priests had to be educated and the laity needed to be able to recognize their
sins. So the Lambeth Constitutions of 1281 specified that all parish priests must teach
their parishioners four times a year on the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the two
evangelical precepts of love, as well as on the seven sacraments, deadly sins, principal
virtues, and works of mercy.2 This educational drive formed the primary impetus for
the many late medieval religious writings with sections on the Ten Commandments,
which in turn meant an emphasis on oaths.3

'Exod. 20:7, Deut. 5:11.

Phyllis Hodgson, "Ignorancia Sacerdotum: A Fifteenth-Century Discourse on the Lambeth
Constitutions," Review of English Studies 24 (1948): 1-2.
3
John Bossy has contended that late medieval piety placed more emphasis on the seven deadly sins
than it did on the Ten Commandments; John Bossy, "Moral arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten
Commandments," Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214-234. A focus on the seven deadly sins, however, did not
marginalize oaths, for manuals on confession contained substantial discussions of oaths in sections on
the seven deadly sins as well. The misuse of oaths, usually labeled as perjury or blasphemy, was often
a branch of one of the seven deadly sins, though which sin it fell under varied. Peraldus divided his
treatise into eight sins, adding sins of the tongue (under which he discussed oaths) to the standard seven.
The Book for Simple and Devout Women, an English adaptation of Peraldus, and The Book of Vices and
Virtues instead esteemed sins of the mouth as one of the seven, including both gluttony and evil speech
as subsets of this sin. Jacob's Well simply placed swearing under gluttony. The Destructorium
vicorium classified evil oaths under greed, while the Fasciculus Morum put them under envy.

19
 But the Ten Commandments were not the only part of the Bible that discussed
oaths. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught:
Agayne ye have herde howe it was sayd to them off olde tyme/ thou shalt not
forswere thy silfe/ but shaltt performe thyne othe to God. But 1 say vnto you
swere not at all: nether by heven for hit ys goddes seate: nor yet by the erth/
ffor it ys hys fote stole: Nether by Ierusalem/ ffor hit ys the cite of the grete
kynge: nether shalt thou sweare by thy heed/ be cause thou canst not make one
heer whyte/ or blacke: But your communicacion shalbe/ ye/ ye: nay nay. For
what soever is more then that/ cometh off yvell.4
It appears that Jesus taught simply to tell the truth at all times and cease swearing
oaths. Thus, since most Christians would acknowledge that Jesus's teaching took
priority over the old law, the devout should have ceased swearing altogether. Some
fathers of the early Church (Origen, Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil) seem to
have adopted this position.5 Chrysostom most vehemently decried oaths, dedicating
an entire Lenten sermon series to the eradication of all swearing in Antioch.6 Other
fathers, however, did not interpret Jesus's teaching as completely forbidding the
practice of swearing. Jerome construed Jesus's command in Matthew 5 to mean that
one should not swear by creatures since Jesus qualified his statement to "swear not at
all" by disallowing oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, or one's head.7 Augustine
reasoned that Matthew 5 could not be taken literally since the Apostle Paul swore in
his epistles (Rom. 9.1, Gal. 1.20, Phil. 1.8). Swearing was a necessary evil; it could be
done to convince others of the truth in light of their weakness. According to

4
Matt. 5:33-37, Tyndale's New Testament of 1526. For a similar statement, see James 5:12.
5
Origen, De Principiis, trans. Frederick Crombie, in Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part
Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts, James
Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (1885, repr., Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995), 368,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.html; Cyprian, "On the Morality," The Treatises of Cyprian,
trans. Ernest Wallis, in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatiam, Appendix,
ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (1886, repr., Peabody, MA:
Henrickson, 1995), 470, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.html; Gregory Nazianzus, "The Second
Oration on Easter," in Cyril ofJerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
(1894, repr.,Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995), 429, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.html;
Basil, St. Basil: Letters and Selected Works, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1895, repr., Peabody,
MA: Henrickson, 1995), 128, 238, 239, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff7npnf208.html.
6
John Chrysostom, The Homilies on the Statutes to the People ofAntioch, ed. W.R.W. Stephens, in St.
Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises; Select Homilies and Letters; Homiles on the
Statutes, ed. Philip Schaff (1889, repr., Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995), 317-489.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfl 09.html.
7
Jerome, S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars 1, 7: Commentariorvm in Mathevm, Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 77 (Turnholti: Brepols, 1969), 32-33.

20
Augustine, Matthew 5 should be understood "as a precaution, lest by swearing one
should acquire facility in so doing, then from this facility he should acquire a habit,
and, finally, as a result of the habit, he should fall into perjury."8
The interpretations of Matthew 5 by Jerome and Augustine won the day in
medieval and early modern Europe. They were incorporated into the standard gloss of
Matthew 5 in the Vulgate, codified in canon law, and replicated in medieval sermons
and manuscripts.9 Apart from a handful of Lollards and some sects of Anabaptists,
Christians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not eschew swearing altogether.
They rejected a literal understanding of Jesus's words and upheld swearing oaths in
particular situations. Something beyond a literal reading of the Bible, then, came into
the considerations of later medieval and early modern religious writers who stressed
the importance of oaths. The Bible was certainly foundational, but it had to be
interpreted in light of other conditions that necessitated the swearing of oaths.
The question then remains: why did religious writers emphasize oaths? What
caused them to reject a literal interpretation of Matthew 5? I will argue in this chapter
that medieval and early modern writers believed oaths were indispensable to both
theology and society. Oaths were a vital gateway through which human society was
able to experience God. They were a kind of ark whereby human beings gained
access to God's power and could harness his omniscience and omnipotence as a
guarantor of the truth of their statements. Yet like the ark of the Hebrews, oaths as
manifestations of God's power and majesty had to be approached with reverence and
awe, lest the majesty of God be insulted and he punish his people. Oaths could be
sworn only in specific circumstances in certain ways. The more one valued the
majesty of God's name and, as a result, oaths, the stricter one constrained the use of

Augustine, Lying (De mendacio), trans. Sarah Muldowney, in St Augustine: Treatises on Various
Subjects, ed. Roy J. Deferred (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 1952), 90. See also
Augustine, Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, trans. William Findlay, ed. D. S. Schaff, in St. Augustin:
Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philp Schaff (1888, repr.,
Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995), 22, http://www
.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfl06.html.
Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria : facsimile reprint of the editio princeps Adolph Rusch of
Strassburg 1480/81, intra. Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson (Brepols: Turnhout, 1992);
CIC, C. 22 q. 1 c. 2-8, Friedberg, 1:861-863; C1C, X.2.24.26, Friedberg, 2:369-371; Barnum, Dives and
Pauper, 231; Ross, Middle English Sermons, 23.

21
oaths. The people who most esteemed oaths were the same ones who most
condemned swearing. Yet very few people condemned swearing oaths altogether, for
to do so would deprive God of a form of worship and humans of a crucial way to
access God. Furthermore, oaths were the divine glue that bound society together.
Without God as a guarantor of truth, society would degenerate into chaos, an apolitical
Hobbesian state of nature without distinction or order. Thus, oaths not only were
absolutely essential for society, but they also attest to the paramount importance of
religion in medieval and early modern society. Politics and society could not be
divorced from religion.
An additional issue this chapter will examine is how views of oaths changed
during the sixteenth century. The sixteenth century was a time of radical religious
change. The Protestant Reformation transformed the religious world of the English
people, though not beyond all recognition. Areas of continuity with medieval religion
remained. How did the Reformation affect the religious theory of oaths? Did the
sixteenth-century reformers adopt the same position toward oaths as their predecessors
or did they institute new doctrines? As we discuss the religious and social theory
underlying the swearing of oaths, answers to this questions will become clear.

The Theological Significance of Oaths

A. Oaths as a Form of Worship of God
An oath, most simply and universally defined, is citing someone (or
something) as witness to the truth of one's statement. Yet because the purpose of an
oath is to make the person to whom it is sworn believe that the swearer's statement is
true, the person or being cited as witness must possess greater authority than the
swearer, otherwise the witness adds nothing to the credibility of the swearer. For
example, if I attempt to convince my friend that I did indeed lock the door by citing
my dog as witness, this oath does not make my statement any more believable, for my
dog lacks both the ability to recognize the locking of a door and the power
communicate to my friend the truthfulness of my statement. So as Hebrews 6:16 says,

22
men "sweare by him that is greater then them seines."10 For medieval and early
modern religious writers, the person cited as witness in an oath wasor at least should
bealways God. Why? The simplest answer would be that God commanded that
oaths be sworn in his name.'' But there were deeper reasons for swearing by God,
reasons that explain why God would command his people to swear by him. First, the
person whom one cited as witness had to have the ability to discern whether the
swearer's declaration was true or false. Who but God had the capacity always to know
the veracity of any statement? Thus, by swearing by God, the swearer recognized
God's omniscience. Second, the person by whom one swore had to have the power to
punish the swearer if his or her statement was false: otherwise there would be no
incentive for the swearer to be truthful. Some oaths included an explicit malediction,
"as when one obliges himself or someone close to him to punishment if what he
alleges be not true."13 Even if such a curse was not vocalized in an oath, it was
nevertheless always implied. Edward VI's most vocal Protestant bishop, John Hooper,
believed that every oath contained an "execration," while John Bale specified that
when you swear, "thou makeste him iudge of thinge to auenge it of the yf it be false
but in the leaste pointe."14 Calvin agreed: "we cannot call God to be the witness of
our words without asking him to be the avenger of our perjury if we deceive."15
Furthermore, works on swearing were full of examples of God wrathfully punishing
those who falsely, vainly, or incorrectly invoked his name in an oath. Thus, in

10
Coverdale Bible of 1535.
11
"Thou shalt feare the Lorde thy God, and him onely shale thou serue, and sweare by his name"; Deut.
6:13; "Thou shalt feare the Lorde thy God, him onely shale thou serue, vnto him shalt thou cleue, &
sweare by his name"; Deut. 10:20, Coverdale Bible of 1535.
12
Frequently quoted passages are 1 Chron. 28:9 and Jer. 17:10.
13
Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, II-II, q. 89, a. 1.
14
Hooper, Early Works, Ml; Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. B5V.
15
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles
(London: S.C.M. Press, 1961), book 2, chap. 8, para. 24. For a similar quotes by other reformers, see
William Tyndale, The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John Frith, ed. Thomas
Russell (London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1831), 2: 291; Edmond Bicknoll, A Swoord agaynst swearyng,
conteining these principal poyntes. 1 That there is a lawful vse of an oth, contrary to the assertion of the
Manichees and Anabaptistes. 2 Howe great a sinne it is to sweare falsly, vainely, rashly, or customably.
3 That common or vsual swearing leadeth vnto periurie. 4 Examples of Gods iuste and visyble
punishment vpon blasphemers, periurers, and such as haue procured Gods wrath by cursyng and
bannyng, whiche we call execration (1579), fol. 12r.
16
For more on this, see below, pages 54-57 of this dissertation.

23
swearing by God the swearer recognized his omnipotence. Finally, the person whom
the swearers cited as a witness had himself to be always truthful, otherwise his
credibility as a witness was tarnished. Unfortunately, the psalmist declared that "all
men are lyers." 7 God, however, was always truthful, "for if he could be false, he
were not God."18 By citing God as witness in an oath, one recognized his essence as
truth. Thus, by calling on God in an oath, one proclaimed and acknowledged that he
was indeed God.19
If by citing God as witness, the swearer acknowledged his omniscience, his
omnipotence, and his essence as truth, then in the very act of taking an oath the
swearer actually worshiped God. The Swiss reformer Henry Bullinger and the English
Protestant minister Roger Hutchinson averred that one gave honor to the person by
whom one swore.20 The ecclesiastical lawyer Richard Cosin likewise declared:
"Swearing is a kinde of religious acte, whereby wee giue worship to God, as most
true, most iust, and knowing all thinges." Thomas Aquinas claimed that oaths were
latia (supreme worship that is due to God alone), while the author of Dives and
Pauper, as well as John Calvin (a century later) stated simply that oaths were a kind of

17
Ps. 115:11 (116:11 in modern Bibles), Coverdale Bible of 1535.
18
The Institution of Christian Man (The Bishop's Book), in Formularies of Faith Put Forth By
Authority During the Reign of Henry VIII. viz Articles About Religion, 1536. The Institution of a
Christian man, 1537. A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition For any Christian Man, 1543. ed. Charles
Lloyd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1856), 139.
9
Thomas Wygenhale, citing Jerome, wrote that perjurers denied God: "Sed quocienscumque nomen
dei in vanum assumimus vel sine tribus comitibus iuramus tociens vincunr [vincuntur?] a viciis atque
peccatis. Ergo quocienscumque nomen dei in vanum assumimus vel sine tribus comitibus iuramus
tociens mortalier peccamus cum deum negemus"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 5r. Alexander Carpenter
implied the same idea when he asserted that false swearers deny Christ's divinity: "patet quod omnis
periurias quantum in se est deum falsum facit & mendacem & inquitum in se est tollit a deo etiam
veritatem: & cum deus sit Veritas quantum in se est aufert illi diuinitatem suam"; Alexander Carpenter,
Destructorium viciorum (Paris, 1521), sig. G5r. This same idea is repeated in the Bishop's Book: "And
so such perjured men, as much as is in them, make God no God"; Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, 139.
Finally, Edmond Bicknoll applied the idea to Anabaptists, saying that they deny that God is God
because they refuse to swear oaths; Bicknoll, SwoOrd agaynst swearyng, 12v. Thus, this idea was
constant from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century.
0
Roger Hutchinson, The Works of Roger Hutchinson, ed. John Bruce, PS, vol. 22 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1848), 21; Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 7, 248.
Richard Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, of late times by
some chalenged, and also diuersly by them impugned. . . . Whereunto . . . I haue presumed to adionie
that right excellent and sound determination (concerning oaths) which was made by M. Lancelot
Androwes (1593), part 3, 33.

24
divine worship. The medieval priest Thomas Wygenhale proclaimed that one
venerated, loved, and feared whatever one swore by.23 Bale and John Downame went
so far as to say that one deified whatever one swore by.24 Indeed, the idea that
swearing is a form of worship lay behind the extremely common denunciation of oaths
by creatures. To swear by a creature was to give that creature the honor, worship, and
glory that belonged only to God. It was a kind of idolatry. Virtually every medieval
and early modern treatise that discussed oaths condemned swearing by creatures. As
we have noted, many writers followed Jerome and explained that Jesus's rejection of
oaths in Matthew 5 forbade oaths by creatures.26 Oaths by creatures were a serious
sin. According to canon law, clerics who continued to use them should be
excommunicated. Hooper declared: "Before all things beware of an oath by any
creature, except ye will be glad to have God's displeasure."28 Oaths were a form of
worship, and worship should be given to God alone. Downame summarized:
"whatever we sweare by, that we deifie, in communicating vnto it Gods
incommunicable attributes, as his omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, whereby
he can powerfully protect his truth, and punish al falsehood; al which are so peculiar
to God as that they cannot be communicated with a creature."29
Oaths, then, were the calling of God as witness to the truth of one's statement.
Every medieval and early modern definition of an oath emphasized the importance of

22
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 89, a. 4; Barnum, Dives and Pauper, lll-l'i'h; Calvin,
Institutes, bk. 2, ch. 8, para. 23.
23
"hoc per quod iurat quilibet veneratur hoc amat hoc timet"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 86r.
Bale, Christian exhortation, sig. C3r; John Downame Foure treatises, tending to disswade all
Christians from foure no lesse hainous then common sinnes; namely, the abuses of swaering,
Drunkenesse, Whoredome, and Briberie (1608), 12.
Brandeis, Jacob's Well, 154; Book for a Simple and Devout Woman, 1, 62; Barnum, Dives and
Pauper, 226, 232-233; Chertsey, floure of the commaundements, fol. 28v; Carpenter, Destructorium
viciorum, sig. G4V; Wycliffe, Tractatis de mandatis, 201; Lilian M. Swinburn (ed.), Laterne ofLi^t,
EETS, o.s., 109 (London, Kegan Paul and Humpfrey Milford, 1917), 89; Christopher White, Ofoathes
their obiect, forme, and bond: the punishment of periurie, and the impietie of papall dispensations. . . .
(1627), 5; "Against Swearyng and Perjurie," in Bond, Certain Sermons, 130; Bullinger, Decades, PS,
vol. 7, 248; Bale, Christian exhortation, sigs. B3V, C2v-3r; Downame, Foure treatises, 12. This list is
not exhaustive, but the idea should be clear.
26
See page 20 of this dissertation.
27
C1C, C. 22 q. 1 c. 9, Friedberg, 1:863.
28
Hooper, Early Works, 479.
29
Downame, Foure treatises, 12.

25
God's name. In fact, the use of God's name was what separated an oath from a
simple promise. Hooper wrote: "To swear is to protest and promise the thing we
swear to be true before him that knoweth the thoughts and cogitations of the heart: that
knoweth onely and solely God."31 Downame claimed that while the person to whom
you made a promise could release you from your obligation, he could not release you
from a promissory oath since an oath invoked the unchanging name of God. Oaths
were thus placed on a higher plain than promises. The standard medieval gloss on
Hebrews 6 read, "just as men [are bound] profusely by promises, [they are bound]
more profusely by oaths."33 Augustine recognized that while some people allowed
simple lies in certain circumstances, no one condoned confirming a lie with an oath:
Only in the worship of God may they grant that we must not lie; only from
perjuries and blasphemies may they restrain themselves; only where God's
name, God's testimony, God's oath is introduced, only where talk of divine
religion is brought forth, may no one lie, or praise or teach or enjoin lying or
say that lying is just. . . . By no means should they [lies] be permitted to mount
so high that they reach unto perjuries and blasphemies. No cause ought ever
be pleaded as an excuse for perjury or for what is more execrable, namely,
blaspheming God.34

A few examples will suffice: "To call God as witness is called 'swearing' (jurare), because almost as
a principle of law (jure), that which is said under the invocation of a divine witness is held to be true";
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 89, a. 1; "An oath is the calling or taking to witness of God's
name, to confirm the truth of that we say"; Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 7, 246; "Notandum igitur
imprimis quod iurare est Deum vel eius creaturam in testem accipere quod fit intrinsecus vel extrinsecus
per voces vel signa quecimque sensibilia"; Wycliffe, Tractatus de mandatis, 194. Wycliffe's definition
highlights that fact that oaths by creatures were still considered oaths and therefore binding, even
though forbidden as idolatry and thus unlawful.
31
Hooper, Early Works, All.
Downame, Foure treatises, 65-66. It is worth pointing out that Downame was exceptional in
claiming that promissory oaths could never be dissolved by the party to whom the promise was sworn.
The author of Dives and Pauper, for example, claimed that the person to whom the oath was sworn
could dispense with the oath depending on the content of the oath. If the oath was to perform some act
of worship to God, he could not release you from the oath. But if the oath was made in favor of the
person to whom it was sworn, he then could release you from your oath; Barnum, Dives and Pauper,
245-246. Christopher White explicitly rejected Downame's understanding of dispensation. White, like
Downame, saw a promissory oath as creating an obligation both to the person to whom it was sworn
and to God, but White maintained that "it is plaine, that both obligations are but conditional; that to
God, as the swearer stands bound to man; and that to man alwayes implyes voluntatem recipiendi, if he
to whom the premise is made, will accept the thing promised"; White, Ofoathes, 52.
33
"sicut inter homines abundenter per promissiones: sed abudantius per iuramentum"; Biblia Latina
cum glossa ordinaria.
Augustine, Contra mendacium, in St Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, 173, 175. A similar
though truncated statement is found in Andrew Chertsey's The crafte to lyue well and to dye well: "and

26
Lying with an oath was more horrible to Augustine because an oath involved the
naming of God. It is clear that this invocation of God was what made an oath so
important to medieval and early modern writers.
B. What to Swear by: Oaths and the Sacred in Medieval England
Because an oath was a form of worship of God, oaths became associated with
the sacred in medieval Europe. Oaths were often sworn before or by relics. For
example, in 1538 Thomas Hore, prior of Cardigan, narrated the story of the finding of
an image of the Virgin Mary. No matter how many times the image was brought to the
church of Cardigan, it returned to the spot of its discovery. When the Church of Our
Lady was build on the spot of its discovery to house the image, a taper was lit before
the image that burned for nine years continuously without using wax until someone
swore falsely on the taper. Thenceforth, the taper was "enclosed and taken for a greate
rely que, and so worshipped and kyssed of pylgremes, and used of men to sweare by in
difficill and harde matters." 5 Crosses and altars were common relics upon which
oaths were often made. The vicar of Halywell recounted the story of a man who
swore falsely on a "holy rood," after which he was unable to remove his hands. When
he applied more force in the effort, he lost his footing and hung suspended on the cross
for three days until he repented his perjury.36 Similarly, included in the Alphabet of
Tales was a story emphasizing the gravity of swearing by relics. When a justice of the
peace could not determine which party was truthful in a local dispute, he made both
parties swear an oath before the altar. The guilty party "bagan to wax all seke & ill at
ease." The justice, not totally satisfied, then took both parties to St. Pancras's grave
and made them swear again. This time, the perjurer was not able to remove his hand
from the grave, and his hand began to swell up. Thus, "so yit vtno bis day in bat
contrey bai swer yit vppon Saynt Pancras tombe, and any bing be in varyan emang

yet it shole be worse yf a man affermed ye lesynge by othe for than a ma[n] sholde forswere hym"; fol.
31v.
Thomas Wright (ed.), Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of Monasteries,
(London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1843), 186 {LP, XIII (i) 634).
36
Whitford, Werkefor HousHolders, 27-28.

27
bairn." In the absence of saints' relics, oaths were sometimes sworn simply by saints
themselves. "By Saint Mary," (often shorted to "Mary") was so common an oath that
even the zealous reformer Hugh Latimer confessed to using it.38 Hence, even though
oaths were theoretically restricted to the worship of God alone, medieval people often
connected them to the more accessible, tangible manifestations of God's power in the
world: relics and saints.
Yet, the most tangible manifestation of God's presence in the world was of
course the corporal body of Christ transubstantiated from bread during the mass. So
medieval people naturally associated oaths with the mass. Indeed the Latin word
sacramentum, from which we derive the English word "sacrament," originally meant
"oath." Just as soldiers professed their loyalty to and bound themselves under their
captains in the Roman Empire with an oath of allegiance, so Christians professed their
loyalty and allegiance to Christ through the sacraments.39 Yet the connection between
oaths and the sacrament of the altar was not merely etymological, it was also practical.
Treaty oaths between sovereigns, for example, were usually sworn immediately
following the mass.40 William Tyndale lamented how oaths sworn on the holy
sacrament were so lightly broken. After the Gospels, the most common book used
to solemnize an oath was the mass book. The mass also had relevance to sinful oaths.
Some medieval writers believed that God would forgive light or forgotten oaths when
2
the offender heard mass. Conversely, the author of Dives and Pauper assured that a

Mary Macleod Banks (ed.), An Alphabet of Tales: an English 15' Century Translation of the
"Alphabetum Narrationum " ofEtienne de Besancon, EETS, o.s., 127 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Triibner, 1905), 286-287. This story is also recounted by Wygenhale; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 38v.
Latimer, Sermons and Remains, 79.
Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 7, 235; Heinrich Zwingli, Exposition of False Faith, in Zwingli and
Bullinger: Selected Translations with Introductions and Notes, ed. G. W. Bromiley (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1953), 265. Medieval writers sometimes used sacramentum to refer to an oath, but
usually they employed iusiurandum or, even more commonly, iuramentum.
40
Cal SP Venice, VII 76.
"If the kings of the earth, when they break that sacrament between them, do say on thiswise: The
body of our Savior . . . be broke unto my damnation, if I break this oath; then is it a terrible oath, and
they had need to take heed how they make it; and if it be lawfully made, not to break it at all. But as
they care for their oaths, which they make in wedlock, so they care for this"; Tyndale, The Practice of
Prelates, in Works of the English Reformers, 1:446-447.
Thomas Frederick Simmons (ed.), The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass with
Rubrics and Devotions for the People in Four Texts and Offices in English according to the Use of York
From Manuscripts oftheXth to theXVth Century, EETS, o.s., 41 (London: N. Triibner, 1879), 367;

28
forswearer was "vnable for to reseyuyn J?e sacrament of be auter ]3at is Crist hymself,
souereyn trewbe, vndyr forme of bred."43 It makes sense that people would associate
the calling forth of God as their witness with the "making" of God since in both
activities, God was made accessible to the common person. Indeed, since Christ was
corporally present in the consecrated host, swearing by the mass was equivalent to
swearing by God to some medieval Christians. For instance, a commonplace book
written in the start of Henry VIII's reign contained a song against swearing by the
mass. It commenced:
The mass is of so high dignytee,
bat no thyng to it comprehendid may be;
For ther is present in the trynyte,
On God in persones thre.
(Refrain) I consaill you both more & lesse,
[Beware of sweryng by be masse.]44
It is clear that the writer discouraged swearing by the mass not because it was a
creature, but because it was so holy that it should be approached only with reverence
and solemnity. The writer's concern was that the mass (like the name of God) should
not be taken in vain! By contrast, sacramentarian Protestants were believed to reject
oaths by the mass based on their denial of the real presence. In 1536, Robert Wymond
was accused of saying "that any man may swere by the masse for the masse was not of
godes makyng."45 Ten years later, Richard More allegedly proclaimed, "If he swear
by the Mass he sweareth by none oath, for God was not in the Sacrament of the
Altar."46 These examples demonstrate that the connection between oaths and the mass
was based on the presence of God in the mass.
Although the holiness of relics, saints, and the mass led to their association
with oaths, no sacred object was more connected to oaths than the Gospels. The
majority of solemn oaths in medieval and early modern England were sworn on the
Gospels. Charles V swore his treaty oath to Henry VIII "by God our creator in the

Hill, Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, 70; Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 13.
43
Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 235.
Hill, Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, 42.
45
Wymond, however, denied the accusations made against him; NA SP1/113, fol. 90r {LP, XI 1424).
46
Richard More admitted this, but repented of his heresy. Bishop Bonner concluded that he was a
"simple man" and had learned the opinion from others; NA SP1/218, fol.l40r {LP, XXI (i) 836).

29
word of the king on our faith and honor and the holy Gospels of God corporally
touched."47 Fifteenth-century jurors in criminal and civil cases placed their hands on
the Gospels when they swore, afterwards kissing the book. Oaths of canonical
obedience usually ended with the phrase "God help me and the holy Gospels of
God."49 Recantation oaths like that of Christopher Grevill in 1512 included the
expression "I swer by theis holy euangelies by me bodely here touched."50 Oaths of
office almost always concluded with similar phrases such as "so god helpe you and the
holie euangelies," or "by the holy contents of this book."51 Examples of swearing on
or by the Gospels could be continued endlessly, but it should be clear that a book of
the Gospels was the most common accoutrement to a solemn oath.
But why were oaths sworn so often on or by the Gospels? Put simply, the
Gospels were the word of God. Since the word of God incarnate was Jesus Christ, the
Gospels were in a sense God.52 Archbishop Arundel, in his attempt to make the
Lollard William Thorpe swear on the Gospels, declared: "it is all one to swear by the
word of God, and by God himself."53 The Gospels were also tangible witnesses of the
incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus and his promise that those who believe in

"a dieu nostre createur en parolle de Roy sur nre foy et honneur et les sain[t]s euangilles de dieu
corporellement toucheee"; BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C vii, fol. 23r.
Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes, 143-144.
49
"sic me deus adiuvet et hec sancta dei euangelia"; Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol.
2V. This is Archbishop Warham's oath of canonical obedience to the pope, but virtually every oath by a
bishop, prior, abbot, or simple parish priest ends in a similarif not identicalform, as can be seen in
any medieval episcopal register. Almost all canonical oaths before the Reformation were sworn in
Latin. The exceptions were those of nuns, who evidently were not expected to understand Latin. For
example, Isabell Sakefeld's oath of canonical obedience as prioress of the House and Priory of the
Blessed Lady in Clerkenwell ended with "So god me helpe and this booke and the holy contentes of the
same"; Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol.50r.
50
Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol. 159r.
51
For some examples of common oaths of office, see BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C xiv, fols. 425r-444r;
BL Royal MS. 9 A xiv, fols.l5v-20v; BL Lansdowne MS. 155, fols. 50v-51r, 286r-290v; BL Lansdowne
MS. 621, fols. 105r-112v;BL Lansdowne MS. 762, fols. 40r-45v; BL Harleian MS. 160, fols. 185r-199r;
BL Harleian MS. 433, fols. 301r-305v; BL Harleian MS. 785, fols. 90v-93v; BL Harleian MS. 6873, fols.
2r-15v. Although this list is not comprehensive, it certainly will provide the reader with a sense of the
standard forms of oaths of office.
52
"In the begynnynge was that worde/ and that worde was with god: and god was thatt worde"; John
1:1; Tyndale's New Testament of 1526.
John Bale (ed.), The Examination of William Thorpe, in Select Works of John Bale, ed. Henry
Christmas, PS, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 113. Bale edited and published
this treatise during the Reformation, but it is originally a fifteenth-century Lollard work.

30
him will have eternal life. By swearing on the Gospels, then, the swearer called the
second person of the Trinity (Christ) as his or her witness since it was in the Gospels
that Jesus Christ's divinity was revealed. The Gospels were the means through which
people came to know Christ. As a consequence, when one forswore himself on the
Gospels, he denied their contents and forsook their benefits.55 The sermon on perjury
in Cranmer's Book of Homilies expanded:
So that whosoever wilfully forsweareth hymself upon Christes holy evangely,
thei utterly forsake Gods mercy, goodnes and truth, the merites of our savior
Christes nativitie, lyfe, passion, death, resurrection and ascencion. They refuse
the forgevenesse of synnes promised to all penitent sinners, the joyes of
heaven, the company with angels and sainctes for ever, all whiche benefites
and comfortes are promised unto true Christian persones in the gospel.
The same held true for swearing by the missal, by the saints, or by relics. When one
swore falsely by them, one forsook their benefits: "Unless in truth do I here swear,
have I never the help of mass, nor the prayers of the saints never help me, and that I
lose forever the bliss of heaven and am damned into the pit of hell."57 Medieval and
early modern writers also believed that the act of laying one's hand on a book (or
relic) re-enforced this idea in a tangible, corporal way. The Fasciculus Morum taught:
And one should notice here that a person who knowingly lies with perjury first
of all commits himself to the devil; and when he touches the Book or some
sacred object with his hand, by this hand the devil holds him until he returns to
penance, to the extent that when he takes food, he takes it from the devil's
hand; likewise, if he crosses himself or does something of this sort, it all is
done from the devil's hand.58

For a thoughtful, detailed sixteenth-century definition of the Gospel, see Martin Luther, A Brief
Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels, in Martin Luther's Basic Theological
Writings, ed. Timothy Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 104-111.
55
Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, fol. G5r.
56
"Against Swearyng and Perjuie," in Bond, Certain Sermons, 133. For a similar quote from a
fifteenth-century source, see Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 235.
57
This is from a middle English adaption of Peraldus and the Somme le roi made around 1400. I have
modernized the spelling and syntax of this quote. The original reads, "pan is pis pe vnderstondynge of
his ope pat him forswerep: 'Bot if his sop be bat I here swere, haue I neuer helpe of masse, ne [prayers]
of alle halwes neuer pey me helpe, and pat I lese foreuer pe blisse of heuene and dampned be into pe
pyne of helle bot I ri?t"; Book for Simple and Devout Women, 279. Also see Carpenter, Destructorium
viciorum, fol. G5r.
Siegfried Wenzel (ed. and trans.) Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher's Handbook,
(University Park, PN: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 165-167.

31
The swearer's physical contact with the Gospels while taking his oath was the means
through which the devil took hold of him. Hence, medieval and early modern
Christians swore on or by the Gospels (as on or by relics or saints) because they were
a kind of window to God, a way in which God's divinity and power could be
understood and accessed in the everyday human world.
Although relics, the mass, and the Gospels all reflected and mediated God's
power, they did not all do so equally. It followed that not all oaths were equally
solemn or potent. The more a particular object on or by which one swore had access
to God, the more convincing and binding was one's oath. When Richard Duke of
York was forced to swear loyalty to Henry VI after his capitulation at Dartford in
1452, Richard emphasized the power of his oath by covering all the bases. He swore
"by the holy Evangelies conteyned in this Boke that I lay my hande upon, and by the
holy Crosse that I here touche, and by the blessed Sacrament of oure Lordes body that
I shall nowe with his mercy receyve."59 Andrew Chertsey would have approved, for
he maintained that an oath by God and the evangelists is more binding than an oath
just by God, which in turn was more binding than an oath by the evangelists alone.60
Most people, however, considered oaths upon the Gospels ("book oaths") to be of
greater weight than simple oaths. For example, when John Danyell in 1556 asked
Edward Horsey to divulge information which Horsey had sworn to secrecy "on a
testament," Horsey replied, "I wyll not breake my nothe [oath] on a boke for all the
good [gold?] yn yngland, how wolde you or any man trust me whan I swear a symple
othe yf I break my boke othe?"61 The profusion of oaths by the Gospels and relics in
medieval England was a result of the belief that these kinds of oaths were more
powerful since the book or relic gave one more direct access to God, and that access to

Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et petitiones, etplacita in Parliamento tempore Edwardi R.I -[adflnem

HenriciR.VI1.J (1767-1777), 5:346-347.
60
Chertsey, Floure of the commaimdments, fol. 25v.
61
NA SP 11/8, no. 36, fol. 61r; calendared in C.S. Knighton (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic
Series of the reign of Mary I, 1553-1558 (London: PRO, 1998), #405.

32
God (specifically his knowledge of truth and his ability to punish falsehood) was the
primary end of an oath.
Yet the access to God made possible through the invocation of a part of his
deity in an oath could also be abused. Medieval clerical writers strongly attacked the
practice of swearing oaths by Christ's members such as his blood, his bones, or his
feet. They classified such practices as blasphemous oaths. Blasphemy, according to
its foremost historian Edwin Craun, was "speech which misrepresents God's nature by
somehow falsifying his properties."63 Swearing an oath by a creature was wrong
because it bestowed on that creature the attributes of God: his omniscience and
omnipotence. Even though a blasphemous swearer invoked Christ's corporal and thus
his human characteristics, no medieval writer was heterodox enough to suggest that
Christ was a creature. Rather, swearing an oath by Christ's members was
blasphemous because it treated God with contempt and irreverence, "for to swear
oathes per membra is to treat God as a created thing, to speak of God as if he were
another human being or a physical object, not the transcendent God of Christian
tradition."64
Medieval clerical writers, however, went beyond decrying oaths by Christ's
members as blasphemy, suggesting that such oaths physically mutilated Christ's
corporal body. The reason for this assertion is not completely clear. Two Scriptural
references were occasionally cited in conjunction with this claim. The first was Psalm
21:17 (Psalm 22:16 in modern versions of the Bible): "quoniam circumdederunt me
canes multi / concilium malignantium obsedit me foderunt manus meas et pedes
meos." (For many dogs have surrounded me, a gathering of evil men has besieged me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.)65 The second, more common reference was

By way of contrast, Thomas Wygenhale wrote that perjury in common speech was just as serious and
solemn as perjury upon a book, for in both cases the perjurer cited God as witness and was thus
doomed"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fols. 22v-23r.
63
E. D. Craun, '"Inordinata Locutio': Blasphemy in Pastoral Literature, 1200-1500," Traditio 39
(1983): 143.
64
Craun, '"Inordinata Locutio'," 151.
65
The most salient example of this comes from a medieval English sermon: "Almyghty God
conpleyneb hym of pise grett swerers be be holy profhete, seying on pis wyse, 'Circumdederunt me
canes multi, et consilium malignancium obsedit memany houndes,' seyb Crist, 'hast goyn a-bowte
me and be counsell of wicked men hath blynded me. tei haue revysed and bridlyd my hondes and my

33
Hebrews 6:6: "et prolapsi sunt renovari rursus ad paenitentiam rursum crucifigentes
sibimet ipsis Filium Dei et ostentui habentes." ([It is impossible for] those who fall
away to be restored again to repentance while they crucify for themselves the son of
God afresh and expose him to public shame.) For example, the author of Dives and
Pauper wrote: "Of swiche foule swereris spekith Sent Powyl & seyth as mychil as is
in hem bey don Godys sone eft upon be cros & han but a iape and a scorne of his
passioun, rursum crucifigentes sibimet ipsis filium Dei et ostentui, id est, irrisioni
habentes, ad Hebreos vi."66 Yet the problem with this connection was that the writer
of Hebrews did not specifically mention that blasphemous swearers crucified Christ
again, but more generally that those who had fallen away re-crucified Christ. So the
question remains, why did medieval writers claim that blasphemous oaths rent Christ's
body?
Perhaps the original idea behind the connection of blasphemous oaths by
Christ's body to his crucifixion was to tap into the powerful devotional impulse in
medieval Europe that emphasized Christ's passion and then use it for a didactic
purpose.67 Meditation upon Christ's passion might logically lead to an abhorrence of
the sins for which Christ sufferedand still suffers according to some of the more
vivid medieval writers. And blasphemous oaths were especially keen candidates for
such an application because the exact nature of the sin (speaking of Christ's members
in an irreverent way) called to mind the suffering these same members underwent on

fete, and bei haue nowmbred all my bones, for som caches my hede, som my bonys in is mowthe, like
as he wold burste hem all to morcels.' A-nobur caches al be blessed bodye in is mowthe, like as he
wold swalowe it vp and make an ende bere-of. Som be be blode, some be be herte, som be be sides,
som be be fote, som be be nayles, and he bat can reken vp moste grett othes holdes hym-selfe moste
vurthye amonge bese grett swerers"; Ross, Middle English Sermons, 99-100. This quote is also
included in Owst, Literature and the Pulpit, 422. For other examples of allusions of Psalm 22 in this
context, see Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex, 3:1189; Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium,
sig. G6V.
Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 239. Tyndale's translation of Hebrews 6 is as follows: "For it is nott
possible that thye/ which wer eonce lyghted/ and have tasted of the hevenly gyft/ and are become
parttakers of the holy goost/ and have tasted of the good worde of god/ and off the power off the wordle
to come: yf they faule/ shulde be renued agayne vnto repentaunce: for as moche as they have (as
concernynge themselves) crucified the sonne of god a fresshe/ makynge a mocke of hym"; Tyndale's
New Testament of 1526.
For the importance of the devotional impulse on Christ's passion in late medieval Europe, see Duffy,
The Stripping of the Altars, 234-238; Lucien Febvre, "The Origins of the French Reformation: A Badly-
Put Question?" in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. Peter Burke, trans. K. Folca
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 61.

34
the cross. This association is obvious in a fifteenth-century homily on swearing
preserved at the Bodleian Library. The preacher first claimed that blasphemous oaths
hurt God "asmeche as is in hem be dou god[e]s sone est [christ] vp on pe cros." He
then elaborated:
and ne hadde he [Christ] wepte salt water with his eyne for our gilt & nou3t for
his own shulde we neuer ell asworny be godes ey3in. And ne hadde he be
stougyn to the herte & schad his precious blod to washe vs from our synys
shulde we neuer ell asworn be godes herte ne be godes blod. And ne hade he
suffrid the depe wondes & bitter peynys yn his bodi & in his bonys to sauyn vs
from helle pyne shuld we neuer ells sworn be his wondes bodi blod ne
bonys."68
The idea was to call a person's mind to the suffering of Christ's body on the cross and
then suggest that blasphemous oaths were just as painful to Christ as his passion. Of
course, the implication of this is that the mutilation of Christ's body by blasphemous
oaths was more figurative than literal. The more theologically astute medieval writers
shared this figurative interpretation of blasphemous oaths. For example, Vincent of
Beauvais wrote: "The third [kind of blasphemy] is shamefully and irreverently to take
the holy members which Christ offered up for our redemption as if to tear him
outrageously limb by limb."69 Thomas Wygenhale claimed that these oaths crucified
Christ "quantum in ipsis est."7 Using the English equivalent of the same phrase, the
Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen taught that "it semep bat suche eche day doth him
on be rode & departep & terep him lyme mele, and schedeb his blood eche day newe
in as moche as in hem is."1 "As i f and "seemeth" were the words that connected an
oath by Christ's members to his crucifixion. Thus, the connection of blasphemous
oaths to the dismemberment of Christ was sometimes more of a simile than a literal
equation.
Yet the representations of popular piety from the fifteenth century were less
nuanced and more literal in their depiction of the dismemberment of Christ through

6S
Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 750, fol. 47 rv .
69
"Tertius est turpiter & irreuerenter assumere sacra membra, qui Christus pro nostra redemptione
suscepit, ipsumque quasi membratim enormiter lacerare"; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex,
3:1181-1182. My italics.
70
CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 89r.
Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, 217. My italics.

35
blasphemous oaths. First, some of the didactic books aimed at the laity eschewed all
figurative language and suggested that blasphemous oaths rent Christ's body afresh
each time they were uttered. Andrew Chertsey wrote that blasphemous swearers were
worse than the Jews, who, ignorant of his divinity, crucified Christ once, while a
blasphemous swearer knowingly "crucyfyeth hym and beteth him wt his tongue as
many tymes as he swereth."72 The author of Jacob s Well asserted that when you
swear by God's (or his saints') soul, body, heart, flesh, bones, pain, death, feet, nails,
or other limbs, "panne bei rende god iche lyme fro ober, and arn werse ban iewys, for
bei rentyn hym but onys, and swiche swereys rendyn him iche day newe."1 The Book
of Vices and Virtues simply stated that "suche sweres hewen hym as smale or smaller
ban men dob a swyn in a bucherie."74 These books did not simply compare
blasphemous oaths to Christ's past passion: they depicted the oaths as causing his
passion again whenever they were sworn.
Second, the visual juxtaposition of blasphemous oaths with Christ's
dismemberment also suggested a more literal association. For example, at Broughton
church, Buckinghamshire, a wall painting depicts a Pieta scene in which Christ is
missing some of his members. Surrounding the virgin and Christ are a group of well-
dressed, armed figures (obviously gentlemen) holding Christ's various missing body
parts like a foot, a hand, bones, or a heart. Similarly, in Corby Church, Lincolnshire,
the remnants of a wall painting show the virgin holding the crucified Christ.
Surrounding this pieta scene are seven fashionably dressed men and their demons with
little caption boxes above the men's heads. Although most of the text has faded, the
bit that is still legible reads " ones," and it is likely that the full box contained the
phrase "by God's bones." Furthermore, demons are piercing the hand, foot, and side
of three of the men respectively. It seems clear that both of these paintings visually
represented that the swearing of blasphemous oaths dismembered Christ's body.

72
Chertsey, Floure of the commaundements, fol. 26r. My italics.
73
Brandeis, Jacob's Well, 153. My italics.
74
Laurent, Book of Vice and Virtues, 62.
75
Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 397; E.
Clive Rouse, "Wall Paintings in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Corby, Lincolnshire,"
Archaeological Journal 100 (1943): 157-163 (Doc: 160-176); Christopher Woodforde, The Norwich
School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 185-186.

36
 Finally, the most common and forceful examples of the belief that
blasphemous oaths actually dismembered Christ are contained in the poetry and
illustrative stories of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Robert Mannyng's
influential poem Handlyng Synne has a poignant stanza on Christ's members being
mutilated by blasphemous oaths.76 The entire premise of Stephen Hawes' poem The
conuersyon ofswerers was Jesus writing a letter to the princes of the world, explaining
how "cruell swerers whiche do god assayle / On euery syde his swete body to tere /
With terryble othes as often as they swere."77 The Destructorium vicorium and
Wygendale's Speculum iuratoris contain a story of a man who did not know which of
his three "sons" was truly his own because of his wife's infidelity. After his death, his
executor called together the three boys and said that the one who could best hit the
deceased body of the father with an arrow would inherit the estate. One boy, utterly
disgusted, refused to shoot his father's body. The executor heralded him as the true
son. The point of the story was to emphasize that blasphemous swearers were "sons
of the devil without any compassion in as much as with arrows of disgraces, they
wounded Christ as much as they could, tearing his members to pieces with so many
horrible oaths."78 A more common story described a man of upright character (usually
labeled as a justice of the peace) devoted to the virgin Mary. This man's only vice was
blasphemously swearing. One day, this man had a vision of the virgin. In the virgin's
arms was a mutilated, bloody infant. Mary asked the man what judgment he would
give on the malefactor who so harmed her child. Indignant, the protagonist cried that
the offender should be hanged. He then inquired who did this brutal crime. Mary
replied: "Thysilff,.. . hast thus hym yshent / And al to-drawe my deere, blessed
76
Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, 25.
77
Hawes, Conversyon ofswerers, sig. A2r.78 "filij diaboli sine aliqua compassione tot flagittiarum
ictibus quantum in se est vulnerant christum: quot horribilibus iuramentis membra sua dilacerant";
Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, sig. G6r. This story is also in Wygenhale's Speculum iuratoris with
the following conclusion: "Et sicut Bastardi vulnerabant corpus patris eorum scilicet putatim propriis
sagittis ita filii diaboli cotidie sagittant & vulnerant corpus Jhu Christi suis linguis per membra sua
iurantes"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 89r.

37
childe, / And with grete othes his lyemes al to-rent / And all his noble bodye thus hast
bou defoiled."79 A final story recounted Christ himself accusing vain swearers of
tearing his body. Christ appeared on the day of judgment displaying his wounds and
accusing:
Man, thow mayist here the soth se,
What I haue suffyr for the,
3e wer woll lef for to swere,
Be myn eyne and be myn ere,
Be my flesse and be my blode,
Be my leuer and be my lowde;
Man, yt was to the woll ryffe,
To sweryn be my wondys fyve,
Be my brayn and be my hede,
My sowle wos full oftyn rede;
Yt wos to the grete ondoyng,
So oftyn to make sweryng.
Thow woldyste me neuer clothe nor fede,
Thow woldyst me helpyn at no nede,
Oftyn thow woldyst for-swere the,
Man, wat sufferyste thow for me.80
These stories suggest that many medieval people believed that oaths by Christ's
members really did tear into his body.
The representations of blasphemous oaths in popular piety thus moved beyond
comparing blasphemous oaths to Christ's passion and suggested that blasphemous
oaths caused Christ's passion anew. In doing so, they highlighted the special, sacred
power of oaths. Medieval theologians taught that when one swore by the mass, by

Quote from Peter Idley, 119. For other sources that contain this story, see Bodleian Library MS.
Ashmole 750, fols. 47v"48r; Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 240-241; Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, 26-27;
Mirk, Mirk's Festival, 113-114.
80
Smith, A Common-Place Book of the Fifteenth Century (Brome), 79. For a similar quote see, The
Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes ofAcle, 281-283. What is interesting about both of these quotes
is that they are embedded in the famous poem "The Fifteen Signs before Doomsday" within the
fifteenth-century commonplace books of two middle-class men. As far as I can tell, the standard
versions of the "The Fifteen Signs before Doomsday" did not contain a speech by Christ condemning
swearers. For example, the version of the poem found in Cursor Mundi and in Chertsey's The crafte to
lyue well contain no allusion to swearers. Indeed, in his analysis of ninety-six versions of the poem,
William W. Heist did not ever mention a speech by Christ condemning swearers; William W. Heist,
The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday (East Lansing MI: Michigan State College Press, 1952). Why the
version of the poem in the Reynes and Brome commonplace books is different is unknown to me.
Perhaps they demonstrate that the connection of oaths by Christ's members to his literal mutilation was
particularly salient in the fifteenth century, or among the middle-class? Or perhaps Robert Reynes and
the compiler of the Brome book had access to another, now lost version of the poem?

38
saints, by relics, or by the Gospels, the swearer gained access to the particular quality
of God manifested in the process, person, or thing by which he swore. That is why
oaths by items that more directly mediated God's holiness (such as the Gospels) were
more powerful than oaths by items that less directly reflected God's holiness (such as
minor relics). The popular belief that oaths by Christ's members allowed the swearer
to access and mutilate Christ's body is simply an extension of this logic. Christ's body
was certainly a direct manifestation of God's holiness, but to call it as witness in
common conversation (oaths by Christ's members were never required in formal or
legal situations) in an irreverent way as if it were a creature was to scorn it. Just as
perjurous oaths by the mass, saints, relics, or the Gospels abused the aspect of divinity
mediated through it, so did blasphemous oaths by Christ's body abuse his members.
Oaths gave the swearer the ability to contact God, either gloriously through the proper
worldly embodiments of God's divinity or blasphemously through the worldly
embodiments of Christ's humanity.81
C. What to Swear by: Oaths and the Sacred in Protestant England
The Protestant Reformation changed the way one worshiped God. Protestants
favored a more direct approach to God through the word; the mediation of the saints
was unnecessary and derogated the power of Christ. Moreover, the adoration of the
host was idolatry and the veneration of relics was superstition. And since oaths were a
form of worship, the Protestant Reformation affected oaths as well. More specifically,
Protestants restricted the acceptable nouns by which one could swear, rejecting oaths
by relics, saints, the mass, and the mass book. Although John Bale had been
clamoring against oaths by these objects throughout the 1540s, the issue rose to
national prominence when John Hooper was elected bishop of Gloucester in 1550.
Like Bale, Hooper considered oaths by saints and by the mass to violate God's
commandment on swearing. He was particularly angered by the ordinal of the first
Edwardian prayer book of 1549 since in it all clergymen at their ordination were
required to swear the oath of supremacy, which ended with the phrase "so help me

For more on the claim that blasphemous oaths gave the swearer the power to mutilate Christ's body,
see Melissa Mohr, "Strong Language: Oaths, Obscenities, and Performative Literature in Early Modern
England," (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2003), 19-26.

39
God, all saints and the holy Evangelist." As a result of this offending clause (and his
distaste for ecclesiastical vestments), Hooper initially refused to be ordained as bishop.
In July of 1550, Hooper explained his reasoning before Edward VI and his Privy
Council, whereupon the king conceded to Hooper's wisdom and struck out the
concluding clause of the oath that had displeased Hooper. In the second Edwardian
prayer book, the oath of supremacy closed with the phrase "so help me God through
Jesus Christ." After 1550, English Protestant condemnations of oaths by the mass
and saints were common. Hutchinson, for example, specified that swearing by the
mass or by saints was idolatry.83 Likewise, Downame condemned all "Papisticall
oathes, by the Angels, Saints, and their reliques; by their Idols, the Masses, Roode, and
such like." Indeed, the revised code of ecclesiastical law (the Reformatio legum
ecclesiasticarum) drafted in the later years of Edward's reign summed up this change
in oath-swearing when it declared: "It is our will that a lawful oath shall be taken in
these words and no others: 'May God so help me through our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
The Protestant condemnation of oaths by saints, relics, and the mass, however,
was not as discontinuous with medieval tradition as it may seem. The dividing point
was not whether people could lawfully swear oaths by creatures, but what exactly
counted as a creature. Everyone condemned oaths by creatures, but some medieval
writers, as we saw above, maintained that when oaths were sworn by relics, saints, and
the mass, they did not operate as creatures but rather reflected or channeled God's
power. Other medieval writers, such as Peraldus, condemned oaths by creatures
without adding a qualification allowing oaths by relics, saints, or the mass. St. Jerome
had gone even further by explicitly condemning oaths by saints.86 Furthermore,

82
Henry G. Russell, "Lollard Opposition to Oaths by Creatures," American Historical Review 51
(1946): 680-683. Also see Calvin's letter to Edward VI, where Calvin wrote, "Now there are manifest
abuses which are not to be endured; as, for instance, prayer for the dead, placing before God in our
prayers the intercession of the saints, and adding their names to his in taking an oath"; Hastings
Robinson (ed. and trans.), Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, Written During the
Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary: Chiefly from the Archives of Zurich,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), 709.
83
Hutchinson, Works, 21.
8
Downame, Foure treatises, 14.
Gerald Bray (ed.), Tudor Church Reform: The Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum
Ecclesiasticarum (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000), 550-551.
Ross, Middle English Sermons, 23.

40
Protestants who rejected oaths by saints, relics, and the mass did so for the same
reasons as medieval Catholics had forbidden oaths by creatures in general: such oaths
deified creatures and robbed God of his glory.87 As such, Protestants inherited and
repeated the medieval Catholic view that oaths were a form of worship to be given to
God alone. What Protestants disputed was how God should be worshiped. Medieval
Catholics worshiped God (in oaths and otherwise) through saints, relics, and the mass.
For Protestants these practices were idolatry and superstition. In oaths, as in all forms
of worship, humans should approach God directly.
The other consideration that mitigated any discontinuity in the Protestant
rejection of oaths by specific creatures was the fact that English Protestants were
ambiguous about swearing on and by the Gospels. Some sects of medieval Lollards
had taken a firm stance against book oaths. The Laterne ofLi^t clearly stated, "But
neithir on bookis schullen swere neithir bi Goddis creaturis . . . But we mai in no case
swere bi bookis as we han seide aforne/ neithir bi lyueli [lively] creaturis as bi seyntis
or ony such othir."88 Similarly, William Thorpe refused to swear upon a book before
Archbishop Arundel, saying, "Sir, a book is nothing else but a thing coupled together
of divers creatures; and to swear by any creature, both God's law and man's law is
against."89 When Arundel argued that the Gospels, as the word of God, were God,
Thorpe responded, "that the holy gospel of god may not be touched with man's
hand."90 John Bale, the sixteenth-century editor of Thorpe's examination, took an
identical stance: "A dampnable vse haue ye brought into the worlde amonge manye
other, to sweare vpon a boke whych ys but a creature, where as mennys othes ought to
be vpon God onlye."91 Yet despite this opinion, the Homily against Swearing and
Perjury issued by Cranmer allowed book oaths, even emphasizing their gravity.92 The
Elizabethan oath of supremacy ended with the phrase, "So helpe me God and by the
Contentes of this Booke," as did many of the official oaths of office during Elizabeth's

87
See for example Downame, Foure treatises, 12.
88
Swinburn, The Laterne ofLijt, 89.
89
Bale, Examination of William Thorpe, in Bale, Select Works, 74. See a similar quote on 111.
Bale, Examination of William Thorpe, in Bale, Select Works, 114.
91
Johan Harryson [John Bale], Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe . . . (Zurich [Antwerp], 1543), fol. 90v.
See also Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. C3V.
92
See the above quote on page 31 of this chapter.

41
reign. Witnesses and jurors continued to swear oaths on the Gospels in court as
well, evidently with no objection. It was not until the rise of Separatism that we see
this practice being called into question again. The Separatist leaders Henry Barrow
and John Greenwood, for example, refused to swear an oath upon a Bible because they
considered it an oath by a creature. Barrow boldly proclaimed to Archbishop Whitgift
"that that book was not the eternal word of God, that eternal God himselfe, by whom
onely I must sweare, and not by any bookes or Bibles."94 Likewise, Francis Johnson's
Brownist congregation was examined by a special commission in 1593 and tendered
the ex officio oath. Not only did many of them refuse to take the oath, but some of
them also specified that they "denieth to swear vpon any booke."95 These objections
did little good, for oaths upon the Gospels continued to be the predominant manner of
swearing in seventeenth-century England.96
Why did English Protestants continue to swear upon the Gospels? Perhaps
swearing "on" something did not necessary mean one swore "by" the thing, even if the
phrase "by the contents of this book" was common. After all, Downame and White
pointed out that swearing "by my faith" or "by my soul" should not be interpreted as
calling one's faith or soul as witness to the truth. Rather, it pledged the object to God

9i
Statutes of the Realm, 4:352; NA C 254/179; NA C 254/179. In this last source, oaths number 4 and
11 end "as god help you and hys Saints", which suggests that oaths by saints were still sometimes
employed in Elizabethan England. This could be due to the laziness of the scribe. After having read
scores of collections of oaths of office, I believe that the standard practice was for the secretary to copy
the oath from another book. My guess is that scribes sometimes copied mechanically from medieval
forms without noticing certain outdated clauses. But the phrase "by the contents of this book" was not a
scribal error since it was ratified by an act of Parliament and promulgated throughout England.
94
Henry Barrow, The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587-1590, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1962), 194. For similar statements, see pages, 93-94, 656; John Greenwood, The
Writings of John Greenwood 1587-1590, Together with the Joint Writings of Henry Barrow and John
Greenwood, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), 22, 170-171.
95
BL Harleian MS. 6848, fols. 32r-36r, quote from fol. 33v. See also BL Harleian MS. 6849, fols. 181r-
182r; BL Harleian MS. 7042, fols. 36v-38v; John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, The Writings of John
Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591-93, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1970), 377, 380.
96
John Spurr, "A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths," Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 61 ser., 11 (2001), 46. By way of comparison, it is worth mentioning that Gerard ter Borch's
portrait "The Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Minister" (1648) shows that in
contrast to the Catholics, who had their hands on a book, the Protestants swore with their hand raised
when swearing the Treaty of Westphalia. This suggests that some continental Protestants did not like to
swear upon a book.

42
as a surety and bound it to undergo punishment if the oath was false. While the
swearer could not pledge the Gospel in the same way, he or she did implicitly admit to
forfeiting the promises within the Gospel if the oath was false, a practice somewhat
similar to Downame and White's position. Alternatively, perhaps English Protestants
continued to allow oaths upon the Gospels because of their heightened esteem for the
Word of God. The fact that people traditionally saw book oaths as more binding
probably contributed to their persistence as well, for Elizabeth and the Stuarts had no
desire to give any excuse for the assertion that their state oaths were less binding than
earlier ones. This was Richard Cosin's explanation for the continuation of book oaths
in Elizabethan England: "The vse of this [a book of the Gospels] in particular; is to
strike a more aduised feare & reuerence into vs: when wee consider the reuerence due
to an oathe, as it is described in that booke; & the curses there threatened against
those, that for sweare themselues, or shall take the name of god vainely." Yet Cosin
also went on to cite Aquinas, Bonaventure, and other scholastics' assertion that oaths
by the Gospels were not oaths by creatures since the Gospels were a transparent
window of God's majesty." No matter why Protestants approved of book oaths, the
continued use of them doubtlessly provided another link to the pre-Reformation era of
oath-swearing.
The Protestant condemnation of blasphemous oaths by Christ's members as
mutilating his body also proved continuous with medieval rhetoric. In some sense,
this was counterintuitive. After all, Reformed Protestants denied the "making" of
Christ's body in transubstantiation. They averred that Christ's corporal body remained
inaccessible at the right hand of the Father in heaven. As such, should they not also
have denied the tearing of his body by blasphemous oaths? Melissa Mohr thought so,
arguing that "post-Reformation swearing has lost its ability to access and control
God's physical body," undergoing a spiritualization like that of the Lord's Supper.100
It is true that English Protestants placed less emphasis on the dismemberment of Christ
through blasphemous oaths. For example, this belief was not mentioned at all in
97
Downame, Foure treatises, 2; White, Of oaths, 5.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrieproceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 29.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 34-35.
100
Mohr, "Strong Language," 30.

43
Cranmer's Homily against Swearing and Perjury. The story of the virgin and the
bloody child was also completely absent from Protestant rhetoric. Furthermore, Roger
Hutchinson contended that oaths by God's members reflected a belief in heretical
anthropomorphism. He averred that the laity must learn that these attributes of God
were metaphorical. God's heart signified his wisdom, for example. People who swore
by God's members swore by creatures, and oaths by creatures were forbidden.
Hutchinson thus implied that blasphemous oaths had no power to tear Christ's body.
Many English Protestants, however, continued to depict blasphemous oaths as
mutilating Christ's body. For example, the draft of an Elizabethan Parliamentary bill
proposed that at every quarter session, "there shall be inquirie made the Iustices
charging the grand inquest for commen blasphemers of the most reverent name of god
that is which teare god as it were in peaces swearing by the heart, nayles, feet, or any
other true or imagined part of god, or by his death, life, or any like thing."102 Bale
claimed that if thou swore by Christ's body, thou "doest as moche as in the lyeth (lyke
as the holye doctours confesse) to plucke him oute of heauen with violence / & to
crucifie him agayne a fresh."103 Bale later told the story of the three sons, asserting
that like the illegitimate sons who shot their father with arrows, blasphemous swearers
were not legitimate sons of God, for it was not natural for "a louynge sonne to buffett
& beate his father / or to teare the fleshe from his bones. To [sic] name him in his
most angre and spyght / or to spytte hym our of his mouthe with cruelte and
vengeaunce." Like Vincent of Beauvais, the author of the parliamentary bill and
Bale connected oaths by Christ's members to his passion figuratively with the phrases
"as it were," and "in as much as."105 Thomas Becon's language, however, was more
direct. Becon simply declared: "these wicked caytiffes crucify him dayly with theyr
vnlawfull oothes."106 John Downame also used vivid, unqualified language implying
the actual dismemberment of Christ by vain oaths. For example, Downame wrote:

101
Hutchinson, Works, 20-21.
102
BL Lansdowne MS. 105, fol. 200v.
103
Bale, Christen exhortacyon, sig. B6V.
Bale, Christen exhortacyon, sig. D2r.
105
For another clearly figurative equation of oaths by Christ's body with the tearing of his members, see
Foxe,^M(1583), 2103.
106
Becon, An inuectyue, sig. C2V. My italics.

44
"but most of all [they] blaspheme our Sauiour christ himselfe, pulling his soule from
his bodie, and tearing peecemeale his precious members one from another, diuerifying
their oathes according to the diuers parts of his sacred bodie."1 7 There was nothing
spiritualized in this mutilation of Christ's body.
In general, Protestants continued to suggest that blasphemous oaths had the
power to mutilate Christ's body not because they wanted to make a theological
statement on the exact accessibility of Christ's corporal body after the resurrection, but
because such stories emphasized the gravity of these oaths and warned the laity
against employing them. For both medieval Catholics and sixteenth-century
Protestants, the depiction of Christ being wounded by blasphemous oaths served a
useful didactic purpose. It stressed the serious nature of misusing oaths and provided
the laity with a vivid image which religious writers hoped would prevent them from
uttering blasphemous oaths in the future. Protestants shared with medieval Catholics
the belief that oaths, as a form of worship, must never be uttered in an irreverent
manner. Indeed, the changes they made concerning how an oath could be sworn only
served to increase the sanctity of oaths. Whereas medieval Catholics allowed the
swearing of oaths by the mass, by relics, and by saints as manifestations of God's
divinity, Protestants rejected this practice and claimed that such oaths scorned God by
bestowing upon a creature the glory owed only to him. It follows that Protestants
would be just as zealousif not morein using any strategy open to them to decry
the use of blasphemous oaths that scorned God by treating the second person of the
Trinity as a creature.

Downame, Foure treatises, 24. See a similar quote on 28. Melissa Mohr overlooked these
quotations by Downame and instead emphasized that Downame interpreted the dismemberment of
Christ's body spiritually because of his sentence, "As much as in them lyeth, they teare the precious
body of Jesus Christ in pieces and crucify him afresh"; Mohr, "Strong Language," 31. Mohr admitted
that Robert Mannyng used a similar qualifier ("all that we may") in his description of Christ's
mutilation in Hanndlyn Synne. Yet she argued that Mannyng's phrase "all that we may" signifies that
swearers can rent Christ's body, while Downame's phrase "as much as in them lyeth" means swearers
cannot tear Christ's body. I agree with her interpretation of Mannyng, for other evidence (like the
Virgin and bloody child story) in Hanndlyng Synne suggest a literal mutilation of Christ. I see no
reason, however, why the same should not be true of Downame's qualifier, especially since other
evidence in Downame's treatise (especially on pages 24 and 28) also supports a literal mutilation.

45
D. The Conditions of a Lawful Oath
So far, we have examined the theological theory behind swearing oaths. We
learned what an oath was, how it worked, and the importance of the words and manner
in which one swore. Because an oath invoked the name of the one holy, omniscient,
and omnipotent God, it was not something to be taken lightly. Religious writers of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries thus developed a fairly standard exposition on the
conditions under which one could swear a lawful oath: that is, an oath that would not
provoke the wrath of God. Inevitably, religious writers based their account on
Jeremiah 4:2: "et iurabis vivit Dominus in veritate et in iudicio et in iustitia." They
usually glossed swearing "the Lord liveth" as meaning that one should swear by the
name of God alone, a point already discussed. But they also specified that for an oath
to be lawful, one had to swear in truth (without deception or guile), in judgment (not
rashly, unadvisedly, or vainly), and injustice (not for an evil purpose or end). They
often called these three conditions the "companions" of a lawful oath.
The first condition of a lawful oath was that the oath must be sworn in truth.
At its most basic level, religious writers used this companion to attack perjury.
Although perjury could mean the abuse of oaths in a general sense, it also had the
specific meaning of confirming a lie with an oath.109 Swearing in truth meant both not
confirming an objective falsehood with an oath and also avoiding using an oath to

Vulgate. Coverdale translated this verse as follows: "And shalt swear: The Lorde lyueth: in treuth,
in equite and righteousness;" Coverdale Bible of 1535. I, however, will use the nouns "truth,"
"judgment," and "justice," which, as we will see, is a translation more in line with the interpretation of
this verse in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The ambiguity in the definition of perjury is best illustrated by Thomas Wygenhale, who first gave
the specific definition of perjury and a few sentences later gave a more general definition: periurium est
mendacium iuramento firmatum. vnde quibusdam placet non esse periurium vbi non est mendacium &
sicut dicitur falsum sine mendacio ita iurari falsum sine perurio nee esse periuium nisi mens ab ore
diffenceat. . . . iuramentum tres habere comites veritatem & iudicium & iusticiam vbi ista defunt. non
est iuramentum sed periurium"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 39r. Alexander Carpenter defined perjury as
"veritatis abnegatio fraudulenta cum diuine attestationis acceptione"; Carpenter, Destructorium
viciorium, sig. G3V. Downame defined perjury as "nothing else but false swearing. Or more fullie, It is
a knowne or imagined vntruth, confirmed by oath, ioyned with deceit, which was either purposed and
intended before the oath was made, or resolued on aftewards"; Downane, Foure treatises, 47. Bale,
however, used the more general definition of perjury, saying it was simply "to abuse the name of God";
Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. B2r. The standard gloss to Jeremiah 4:2 in the Vulgate defined perjury
as any oath missing the standard three companions; Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria.

46
deceive someone, even if the content of the oath was objectively true. This idea
sprang from the Augustinian theory of lying, which defined a lie "as a false statement
made with the desire to deceive."1'' Although all lying was wrong, the actual false
nature of the statement mattered less than the "intention of the mind." The main fault
in a lie was "the desire to deceive.""2 Since late medieval religious rhetoric was
"overwhelmingly Augustinian," and since perjury was simply a lie confirmed with an
oath, religious writers decried any deception through oaths.] 13 Gratian believed that
the person who thought "to go around" [circumuenire] his oath by using "cunning of
words" [verborum calliditate] was guilty of perjury.'14 The Book of Vices and Virtues
condemned swearing "bi art, or bi sophymme [sophistry]," while an anonymous
fifteenth-century sermon decried swearing "for defect and gile."115 The author of
Dives and Pauper wrote that if one "swere soth in gylous wordys & slye wordis for to
begylyn his euene cristene . . . God bat knowyth bi bou3t & bin conscience takit it
nout as bu menyst but as he vndirstondyt it to whome bu sweryst so in deseyt.""6
Such an oath was a double sin, for the shifty swearer both took God's name in vain
and deceived his fellow Christian. " 7 The author of Dives and Pauper brought this
point home with a story. Once a Christian borrowed some gold from a Jew and
refused to pay him back, claiming he had already repaid the gold. The Jew took him

"Potest igitur dici periurium iuramentum quod sit de falso vel cum dolo vel sine dolo. & de vero cum
dolo"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 29, fol. 39v.
' Augustine, Lying (De mendacio), in St Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, 60.
112
Augustine, Lying (De mendacio), 55-56. For a general discussion of Augustine's theory on lying put
in the context of dissimulation, see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and
Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), 19-25.
113
For the Augustinian nature of the late medieval thought on lying, see E. D. Craum, Lies, Slander,
and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977), 40-46.
"Queritur de eo, qui verborum calliditate se circumuenire putat ilium, cui iuramentum defert, an sit
reus periurii, nisi seruauerit quod iurasse creditur. . . . Quamcumque arte uerborum quis iuret, Deus
tamen, qui conscientiae testis est, ita hoc accipit, sicut ille, cui iuratur, intelligit. Dupliciter autem reus
fit, qui et nomen Dei in unanum assumit, et proximum dolo capit"; CIC, C. 22 q. 5 c. 8-9, Friedberg,
1:885.
115
Laurent, Book of Vices and Virtues, 62; Bodleian Library MS. Ashole 750, fol. 46v.
116
Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 235.
117
Both the claim that God understands oaths in the same way as the person to whom the oath is sworn
and the argument that using equivocation (ambiguity of words) in an oath for deception is a double sin
are repeated often throughout late medieval writings. See for example: Laurent, Book of Vices and
Virtues, 63; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 89, a. 7; Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, 98; Chertsey,
Floure of the commaundements, fol. 24v; CIC, C. 22 q. 5 c. 8, Friedberg, 1:886; Brandeis, Jacob's Well,
153.

47
to court, and the judge made the Christian swear an oath on a book that he had repaid
the Jew. In order to place his hand on the book, the Christian swindler handed his staff
to the Jew. Unbeknownst to the Jew, the staff was hollow and contained all his gold.
The Christian swore: "Be God, and be Sent Nicolas, and so helpe me God at pe
holydoom, Ye tok be al pat monye bat bu chalangist & more berto," which was
technically true since he had handed the Jew his gold-filled staff. But God would not
allow such an oath to stand. On his way home from court, the Christian grew weary
and took a nap by the side of the road. While he slept, a cart ran over the Christian,
killing him, breaking open his staff, and scattering the gold.118 Thus, to swear in truth
meant to swear truly without equivocation, deception, or guile.
As in most aspects of medieval oath theory, English Protestantson the
surface at leastaccepted the medieval claim that oaths sworn in truth precluded
deception or equivocation. The Henrician canons held true to medieval canon law and
stated that oaths must be understood according to the hearer.'19 The Protestant-
informed Edwardian Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum was more overt in its
denunciation of deceptive swearing:
A perjurer is defined as someone who knowingly and cleverly cheats someone
with an oath designed to deceive, or who willingly violates a lawful oath, or
who twists his words when swearing in such a complicated way that the
meaning of the oath is not clear. Against this deceit we want this rule to be
always maintained, that what the person to whom the oath is sworn
understands by it according to the normal custom of speech, is what will be
believed as having been sworn.120
Radical Protestants like John Bale and John Hooper also decried the use of guile when
swearing.121 By Elizabeth's reign, both Puritans like James Morice and their
conformist opponents like Richard Cosin could agree that no one should use
equivocation or deception when swearing.122 Of course, as we shall see in chapter

118
Bamum, Dives and Pauper, 235-237.
119
Bray, Tudor Church Reform, 25.
120
Bray, Tudor Church Reform, 550-551.
121
Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. A8V; Hooper, Early Writings, All. Bale's and Hooper's thoughts on
deceptive swearing are discussed in more detail in chapter seven.
"there can not be a greater dishonour or indignitie offred to the sacred Maiestie of God, then to make
his mos fearfull and reuerende name, a witnesse of falshoode or deceipt, neither let any man thinke that
by craftie or subtill swearing he can auoyde the detestable sinne of perjurie"; James Morice, A briefe

48
seven, Protestant practice did not always live up to the theory espoused here.
England's first Protestants did not hesitate to equivocate and perjure themselves, even
while continuing to decry such practices. For now, however, it is sufficient to
emphasize that English Protestants outwardly agreed with medieval writers that oaths
must be sworn in truth and that this condition precluded the use of guile or deception
when swearing.
Yet even if one swore truthfully without any intention of deception, oaths were
still illicit if one swore without necessity. These were oaths "against judgment,"
which writers often referred to as vain oaths. Although it was possible to take the
Lord's name in vain in many ways without an oath, religious writers usually described
vain oaths as customable, idle, frivolous, light, trifling, rash, unadvised, of sport, for
nought, or without necessity. It is clear that vain oaths were common oaths sworn in
everyday conversation and not in a solemn liturgical, legal, political, or otherwise
serious setting. Fifteenth and sixteenth-century religious writings are full of
denunciations of vain oaths.123 Some medieval writers considered vain oaths to be
only a venial sin, while perjury was a mortal sin. m But the general trend was to
emphasize the gravity of vain oaths, to impress upon the listener or reader the severity
of the sin of vain swearing.I25 This was because vain oaths, like oaths by Christ's
members, were a form of blasphemy. They were a way to despise or scorn the name

treatise ofoathes exacted by ordinaries and ecclesiastical iudges, to answere generallie to all such
articles or interrogatories, as pleaseth them to propound And of their forced and constrained oathes ex
officio, wherein isproued that the same are vnlawfull ([Middelburg], [1590?]), 5. For Cosin's rejection
of deceptive swearing, see Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall,
part 3, 12-13.
123
Virtually every religious treatise that mentioned oaths condemned vain swearing to some extent.
Citations of this could make up a chapter of their own, but I will give some examples as a place to start:
CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 119v; Brandeis, Jacob's Well, 153; Simmons, Lay Folks Catechism, 37-39;
Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, sig. G4r; Wycliffe, De mandatis, 187, 192, 195; Wycliff, "The Ten
Commandments" in Select English Works of John Wyclifi vol 3, ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1871), 84-85; Swinburn, Laterne of Lift 89; Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 7, 240-241;
Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, 139; Becon, An inuectyue, sigs. C1V-FT; Bale, Christen exhortacion,
passim; Bicknoll, Swoordagaynst swearyng, fol. 20v; Downame, Foure treatises, 19-23.
124
Laurent, Book of Vices and Virtues, 1-2.
125
Wygenhale went to great lengths to show that every oathno matter how slightuttered without all
of the three companions is a mortal sin that kills the swearer's soul and will send him or her to hell
unless repented; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fols. 6r, 20r, 36r, etc. Protestants, of course, rejected the distinction
between venial and mortal sins.

49
of God by not treating it with majesty. To swear vainly was to rob the name of God of
its reverence.
The other reason vain oaths were denounced so fervently was because they
were thought to lead to perjury. Augustine famously preached: "Swearing is a narrow
ledge, perjury a precipice. If you swear, you're near the edge; if you don't swear,
7
you're far away from it." Henceforth it became common to the point of banality to
write that the more you swear, the greater your chances of perjury. To swear vainly
and customably was sooner or later (usually sooner) to fall into the pit of perjury. This
raises the greatest paradox of late medieval and early modern rhetoric on swearing: the
more a writer esteemed swearing, the more he discouraged it. For example, John
Bale, arguably the hottest, most aggressive, and least compromising Henrician
Protestant, a man greatly concerned about the sanctity of oaths, forbade all manner of
private oaths. Unlike other English Protestants who allowed private oaths in weighty
matters, Bale declared that only oaths sworn before a magistrate or for a public
function beneficial to the commonwealth were licit.129 Oaths were a sacred gateway
whereby humans could call on the omniscience and omnipotence of God, but the very
sanctity, holiness, and majesty of God restricted the use of oaths to special
circumstances. Because medieval and early modern religious writers took oaths
seriously, they proclaimed that oaths must be sworn with discreet judgment, not
vainly.

Diekstra, Bookfor a Simple Women, 266-268; John Bradford, Writings, 10-11; Tyndale, Works of
the English Reformers, 2:292; Bicknoll, Swoordagainst swearyng, fol. 20v.
127
Augustine, "Sermon 180," in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21s' Century, pt. 3,
vol. 5, Sermons on the New Testament (148-183), trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rostelle (New
Rochelle and New York: New City Press, 1992), 316.
128
Again, examples of this statement are too common to cite fully. The following examples should
suffice: Diekstra, Book for a Simple and Devout Woman, 278; Carpenter, Destructorium viciorum, sig.
G5V; Vulgate Gloss on Matt. 5, Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria; Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 227;
Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. B8V.
1
Bale, Christen exhortacion, sigs. B5r-B6r. For a comparison to other English Protestants see Becon,
An inuectiue, sigs. I4r-I5v; Downame, Foure treatises, 10. Tyndale seems to have approached a similar
level as Bale: Tyndale, Works of the English Reformers, 2:292-293. The extent to which private
swearing was allowed also varied among continental Protestants. Zwingli, for example, condemned all
private oaths, as did Calvin in the 1536 edition of the Institutes. By 1559, however, Calvin had changed
his mind and allowed private swearing in grave matters; Calvin, Institutes, pg. 393, n. 34.

50
 Thus, both medieval Catholics and sixteenth-century Protestants vehemently
opposed vain oaths. This statement stands in opposition to the claim that the
Reformation led to a stricter, more vocal opposition to vain oaths. John Bossy's
contention that the transition from medieval Christianity to the Reformation (both
Protestant and Catholic) was accompanied by a transition from the seven deadly sins
to the Decalogue, and from obligations to one's neighbor to obligations to God does
not apply to vain oaths, for, as we noted above (see footnote 3), medieval expositions
on the seven deadly sins also strongly decried vain oaths. Norman Jones, however,
has recently applied Bossy's insight to vain oaths and argued: "By late in Elizabeth's
reign the national sensitivity to the sin of blasphemy, to the once petty crime of
swearing oaths, and to the problem of drunkenness had increased along the general
concern about personal conduct."130 As far as this statement relates to oaths, it simply
is not true. Any perusal of medieval pastoral writings reveals a significant concern
over the sin of swearing vainly, a point that John Spurr has justly stressed. There was
basic continuity between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries when it came to
clerical denunciations of vain swearing.1
The belief that Protestants showed more concern over the misuse of God's holy
name than Catholics has its origin in sixteenth-century Protestant propaganda and thus
should be taken with a grain of salt. Bale, for one, delighted in depicting Roman
Catholics as vain and blasphemous swearers. In his play King Johan, the Roman
Catholic character Sedicyon swears profusely.132 The same is true for the Roman
Catholic character Infidelitas in Bale's Three Laws, and the behavior of Infidelitas
stands in contrast to the Protestant character Evangelium. The following example is
representative:
INFIDELITAS: Naye ser, by the roode, not yet a wholsom teacher.
EVANGELIUM: After what maner dyd he speake of me?tell
INFIDELITAS: He swore lyke a man, by all contentes of the Gospell;
He swore and better swore, yea, he ded sweare and sweare agayne
EVANGELIUM: That speakynge is soch as procureth eternall payne.

130
Jones, The English Reformation, 166. My italics.
131
Spurr, "A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths," 58.
132
See for example, John Bale, King Johan, in The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. Peter Happe
(Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985), 1:93.

51
 Wyll not the people leave that most wycked folye,
And it so dampnable? To heare it I am sorye.133
The most influential work of Protestant propaganda, Foxe's Acts and Monuments,
added flesh and bones to Bale's fictional Catholics by depicting the leading Marian
Catholics such as Stephen Gardiner, Edmund Bonner, John Christopherson, and John
Story as blasphemous and vain swearers. For example, when Gardiner swore "by our
lordes body," Foxe added in the margin: "Well sworne and like a right Papist."134
Foxe also described the chastising of vain and blasphemous swearers as grounds for
suspicion of Lutheranism. Foxe used these portrayals of vain swearing to contrast
the godly behavior of Protestants with the depraved behavior of Catholics. In the end,
however, these depictions were propaganda and should not be taken at face value.
The visitation records of Edmund Bonner and Cardinal Pole, for instance, show a due
concern with the sin of vain swearing among these Marian Catholic bishops.
Furthermore, the Edwardian Protestant John Bradford admitted that both "papists" and
"carnal Gospellers" accused each other of vain and blasphemous swearing. All the
devout, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, shared in the assumption that oaths
against judgment were wrong. Indeed, it was because this assumption could be taken
for granted that propagandists like John Bale and John Foxe could slander their
Catholic opponents' characters through the depiction of them as vain or blasphemous
swearers.
The final component to a permissible oath was justice. Religious writers
uniformly condemned oaths that were unjust, illicit, or against the law. Indeed, if the
oath was not lawful, breaking it was not perjury.I38 An oath administered improperly

Bale, Three Laws, in The Complete Plays of John Bale, 2:102.

134
Foxe, AM(1583), 1215. For similar anecdotes concerning Bonner, Bishop Christopherson, Dr.
Story, and John Apowel, see pages 1474, 1693, 1990, 2060, 2102-2103.
135
Foxe,^M(1583), 904, 909.
136
For Bonner's 1542 injunction against vain and blasphemous swearing, see Guildhall MS. 9531/vol
12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 38Y, printed in David Wilkins (ed.), Concilia Magnae Britanniae et
Hiberniae . . . [MDJCCXVII (Henceforth cited as Concilia), (London, 1737) 3:866 {LP, XVII 282). For
Pole's visitation articles for Kent, see Foxe, AM(1583), 1969.
137
Bradford, Writings of John Bradford, 9-11.
8
"But I think that perjury is a violation of a lawful oath. . . . should he lie, he is not guilty of perjury
because he is not violating a lawful oath"; Thomas More, A Dialogue concerning Heresies, ed. Thomas
M.C. Lawler et. al., vol. 6, pt. 2 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1981), 765.

52
was sometimes considered to be unlawful. For example, the Court of Star Chamber
ruled that when a person lied under oath after the oath had been tendered to him by
another without authority, such a lie was not technically perjury. But when
religious writers spoke of an unlawful oath, they usually referred to an oath to commit
an evil or unjust act. Latimer, for instance, declared that if a group of thieves make an
evil oath not to disclose each other and then one of them gets caught, it is better for
him to break his oath and betray his fellows than keep his oath and thus facilitate
future robberies.140 However, the most common examples of evil oaths were Biblical:
David's oath to Nabal, Jephthah's vow to slay the first thing that he saw upon
returning home, Herod's oath to Herodias, and Joshua's oath to the Gibeonites.141
Such oaths, religious writers uniformly declared, should be broken rather than kept.
Most people would have agreed with William Tyndale's statement: "to swear to do
evil is damnable, and to perform that thing is double damnation."143 The sin of
swearing an illicit oath should not be compounded with the further sin of fulfilling it.
Nevertheless, the breaking of an evil oath was not always as straightforward as
it might seem. The story of Joshua's oath to the Gibeonites was particularly thorny for
religious writers. On the one hand, the oath clearly was illicit. God had commanded
the Israelites to destroy all the pagan tribes of Canaan. In spite of the Gibeonites'
deception of claiming not to live in Canaan, Joshua's sworn peace treaty with them
clearly violated this divine command. On the other hand, Israel kept this oath and God

This conclusion comes from a case from that took place in Michaelmass, Anno 23 and 24 of
Elizabeth. The plaintiff Robert Ruckell accused Robert Bridges and William Lockett of lying under
oath. Lockett was able to demonstrate that a town clerk of London had tendered him his oath, a man
who "had noo Aucthoritie to give an oath." So Lockett was not found guilty of perjury but rather a
misdemeanor, while Bridges was found guilty of perjury; BL Harleian MS. 2143, fol. 1 l v .
140
Latimer, Sermons, 519.
1
' 1 Sam. 25; Judg. 11; Matt. 14; Mark 6; Josh. 9. Joshua's oath to the Gibeonites was the only
ambiguous example.
1
This axiom held true for all religious writers, Catholic or Protestant, fifteenth or sixteenth-century.
For a representative example, see Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, sig. G3V; Peter Idley, 153-154;
Chertsey, Floure of the commaundements, fol. 24v; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 19v; "Against Swearying and
Perjurie," in Bond, Certain Sermons, 132; Bale, Christen exhortacion, sigs. A7V-A8V; Becon, An
inuectiue, sigs. G4r-H3r; Gardiner, De vera obedientia, in Obedience in Church & State: Three Political
Tracts by Stephen Gardiner, ed. intro. and trans. Pierre Janelle (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1930), 163.
Tyndale, An Exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of Matthew, in Works of the
English Reformers, 2:293.

53
approved of it, for later, when Saul executed the Gibeonites, God punished Israel for
breaking its oath.' This led to the distinction in canon law between an oath made
illicit because of what was sworn and an oath made illicit because of the manner of
5
swearing.' The former, such as homicide or adultery, was illicit in its nature [in sui
natura] and should always be broken. The latter, such as swearing to marry after
having vowed chastity, was not inherently illicit but made so because of the particular
circumstances of the swearer. This kind of evil oath could still be kept, though
penance must be done for breaking it. The other example Gratian mentioned was that
of swearing not to do something expedient to one's salvation. As long as the person
could still be saved without impediment, he or she was not prohibited from fulfilling
this oath even though it should not have been sworn in the first place.146 Thus, while
everyone agreed with the simple statement that an oath sworn without justice should
be broken, there was an underlying haziness concerning what actually made an oath
unjust and when an unjust oath could still be fulfilled. Thomas More was certainly
right when he wrote: "Mary trouth it is that a mannes oth receyueth interpretacyon."147
As we shall see in chapter two, this ambiguity became important in the English
Reformation.
For an oath to glorify God, then, the oath had be sworn in the name of God (or
one of the corporal manifestations of his divinity for Catholics) and it had to be sworn
truthfully without an intention to deceive, gravely before a magistrate or in some other
equally solemn circumstance, and justly so that what one swore to do was not wrong.
Medieval Catholics and sixteenth-century Protestants agreed on these basic guidelines.
Oaths that lacked any of these conditions were sinful and a serious offense to the
majesty of God.
E. God's Wrath against Illicit Swearing
In medieval and early modern England, God did not take insults to his majesty
lightly. In order to protect his honor and reputation, God kept careful watch over the

144
Josh. 9; 2 Sam. 21.
145
"Iuramentum itaque multipliciter illicitum intelligitur. Est enim illicitum aliquando ex eo, quod
iuratur, aliquando ex modo iurandi"; CIC, C. 22 q. 4 c. 23, Friedberg, 1: 882.
146
CIC, C. 22 q. 4 c. 23, Friedberg, 1:882.
147
Thomas More, A Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, 6:281.

54
use and abuse of oaths. Any person who swore falsely or vainly implied that God
either could not or would not punish his transgression, for otherwise the person would
not have sworn the illicit oath. Thus, he was denying either God's power or his nature
as truth. In essence, the swearer was denying God was God, a claim that God would
simply not tolerate. The Lord himself proclaimed that a curse (manifested to
Zachariah as a large flying book) "shal come to the house of the thefe, & to the house
of him, that falsely sweareth by my name: & shal remayne in his house, & consume it,
eith [both] the tymbre & stones therof"148 Medieval religious writers were keen to
authenticate this claim. Richard Whitford, for example, declared: "For his othe [God]
may slee or infecte your chylde/ or stryke your beestes in the feeldes / destroy your
corne and graynes / and cause pryuely many myscheues." To prove this was indeed
true, medieval authors often peppered their writings about oaths with stories of
providential punishment on false and vain swearers. Robert Mannyng told a tale a rich
man who, in his attempt to defraud a poor one, swore a false oath. The rich man bent
down to kiss the book to confirm his oath and was struck down by God, never to rise
again.15 Another common story was that of a blasphemous boy who, accustomed to
vain oaths, was carried away by demons before the eyes of his father. Sometimes
God tailored the punishment to suit the specific way in which the swearer abused his
name. Peraldus told the story of a knight playing chess who swore "by God's eyes."
5
Immediately, his eyes burst forth from his head and fell unto the board. Whitford
narrated a tale about one "maister Baryngton" who was a great swearer by God's
blood. One day in a tavern, Baryngton swore "By goddes blode this day is vnhappy."
He soon started to bleed through his nose. This aggravated him to the point that he
swore in anger by the different parts of Christ's body. Each time he named a new
body part of Christ, that part of his own body began to bleed until Baryngton finally

148
Zach. 5:1-3; Coverdale Bible of 1535.
149
Whitford, WerkeforHousholders, 23-24.
150
Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, 96. For a similar story see Peter ldley, 152.
15
Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, sig. G5V; Peter ldley, 161. This story seems to have its origin in
St Gregory.
Peraldus, Sumarium summe virtutum et vitiorum, fol. 168r; Diekstra, Book for a Simple and Devout
Woman, 267.

55
expired. Many more examples could be given. Melissa Mohr made an astute
observation when she wrote: "The God of anti-swearing tracts is a great fan of poetic
justice."154
Did the emphasis on God's punishment for vain or false oaths wane with the
coming of the Reformation? Did Protestants dismiss all these stories as superstition
just as they swept aside stories of miracles done by saints and relics? Keith Thomas
believed so, arguing that Protestants "diminished the role of supernatural sanctions in
daily life." Thomas continued: "The Protestant emphasis upon the individual
conscience inevitably shifted the ultimate sanction for truthfulness from the external
fear of divine punishment to the godly man's internal sense of responsibility."155 This
statement is not true, not at least in the sixteenth century. Protestant tracts against
swearing are just as full of stories of providential punishment as the tracts of the
fifteenth century. Perhaps the most famous and influential example of this is the last
section of Acts and Monuments, which John Foxe devoted to narrating stories of
providential punishment. Many of the victims of divine wrath mentioned by Foxe
were Roman Catholic persecutors of Protestants (thereby showing God's approval of
Protestantism) but a good number of them were perjurers and vain swearers of
unspecified doctrinal leaning.156 Similarly, Edward Bicknoll dedicated a full fourth of
his treatise against vain and false swearing to telling stories of providential
punishment.157 Moreover, he not only narrated contemporary stories of providential
punishment, but he also interpreted various pivotal events in English history as being
the result of God's punishment of perjurers.15 Not content to stop there, both
Edmond Bicknoll and Christopher White included stories from the continent of
providential punishment on vain and false swearers. White concluded: "It is a large
common place, and all parts of the world can administer examples of gods publike and

153
Whitford, Werke for Housholders, 25-26.
154
Mohr, "Strong Language," 12.
155
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 67.
156
See for example the story of M. Burton on 2101, John Apowel and the blasphemous girl on 2102-
2103, or the Cornish gentleman under Edward VI on 2105; Foxe, AM(1583), 2101-2105.
Bicknoll, Swoord agaynst swearyng, fols. 30v-47r.
158
For example, Bicknoll claimed that the fact that none of Edward VI's descendants sat on the English
throne was divine punishment for Edward having violated his oath to Henry VI to hold himself content
with only his Duchy of York; Bicknoll, Swoord against swearyng, fol. 32r.

56
priuate reuenging hand on periur'd persons."159 John Downame went as far as to
assert that God does not limit his punishment to individual swearers but will visit the
entire community with his wrath. Like sixteenth-century Parisian Catholics who
believed that they had to purify their communities of all heretics to avoid God's anger,
Downame averred that God would punish the entire realm unless vain swearers were
stopped. The compilers of these stories took pains to specify that these stories were
not mere hyperbole. Whitford, Foxe, and Bicknoll all provided the locations of these
events and names of witnesses so the reader could verify for himself that these stories
were indeed true. '61 Clearly, stories of providential punishment were an essential part
of both medieval and early modern oath theory. These stories were so important
because they illustrated in graphic terms the theological significance of oaths. Foxe
hit the nail on the head when he wrote:
Fourthly and lastly, heere may also be a spectacle for all them which be
blasphemous and abhominable swearers, or rather tearers of God, abusing his
glorious name in suche contemptuous and despitefull sort as they vse to do.
Whome if neither the woorde and commaundemente of God, nor the calling of
the preachers, nor remorse of conscience, nor rule of reason, nor theyr
wytheringe age, nor hory haires will admonish: yet let these terrible examples
of Gods districte Judgement, somewhat mooue them to take heede tothem
semes.162
Stories of providential punishment reminded the reader or listener that no matter how
grave or light the social and legal ramifications of one's oath might appear, an oath
was an invocation of the power and majesty of God, and God would not allow his
name to be abused.I63

159
White, Ofoathes, 18.
1
Downame, Foure treatises, 34. Wygenhale espoused a similar doctrine; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 84r.
For an account of the sixteenth-century Parisian fear of the consequences of heretical pollution, see
Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 37-38, 178.
161
Whitford, Werke for householders, 26-28; Foxe, AM (1583), 2105; Bicknoll, Swoord agaynst
swearyng, fol. 36v.
162
Foxe,^M(1583), 2103.
This paragraph confirms the more general conclusions of Alexandra Walsham on Protestant
providentialism in her Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

57
 The Social Importance of Oaths
Oaths, then, were of great theological importance to the devout of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. They were a means to worship God and to access his power
and knowledge for the purpose of affirming the truth of one's statement or to
guaranteeing the fulfillment of one's promise. But because God would punish
swearers who lied or broke their promises (even to the point of eternal damnation),
oaths became the best way to compel someone to tell the truth or discharge his or her
obligation. Oaths thus were foundational to early modern society. Indeed, oaths had
four crucial social functions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: they were the
basis of a just legal system, they ensured the faithful discharge of a person's office or
occupation, they confirmed political and ecclesiastical obedience and the ruler's
obligation to his or her subjects, and they helped denote social distinction and
hierarchy.164
Of course, since religious writers were usually clergy members, their main
focus was the theological significance of oaths, and they often did not discuss the
social importance of oaths in their treatises. There were exceptions, however. An
anonymous preacher in the early seventeenth century started out his assize sermon on
Jeremiah 4:2 by defining an oath as:
the last resolution (within the compasse of mans braine) in the search of trueth,
the strongest ligament in the body politicke for knitting the members to the
head and themselves among themselves, the safest groundworke for all lawfull
proceedinges in publicke Iustice, and lastly the most living and vndboutted
assurance for the ratifying either the testimonyes of actions past or the
promises of deedes to come.165
After establishing how important oaths were for a healthy commonwealth, the
preacher's "second search was for a fitt scripture which might serve as a piller or

Edward Vallance identified three of these four functions of oaths: "Oaths in early modern England
were used to underpin almost every element of church and state relations. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries oaths fulfilled three basic roles: they bound those invested with public or spiritual office to
carry out their obligations faithfully; they gave the assurance of truthfulness to statements given in
court; and they tied subjects to giving obedience to their rulers"; Edward Vallance, Revolutionary
England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553-1682
(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005), 19.
165
Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 1284, fol. 78r.

58
foundation for the underpropping of this building." In other words, the preacher
first examined the role of oaths in society to determine their consequence and then,
afterwards, searched through Scripture to find some Biblical grounds for his
predetermined argument. For him, oaths were more important as social instruments
than as theological invocations. The Homily against Swearing and Perjury from
Edward's reign also stressed the social significance of oaths:
By lawfull othes which kynges, princes, judges and magistrates doo sweare,
common lawes are kept inviolate, justice is indifferently ministered, innocent
persones, orphanes, widdowes and poore men are defended from murtherers,
oppressors and thiefs, that they suffre no wrong, nor take any harme. By
lawfull othes, mutuall societie, amitie and good order is kepte continually in all
commonalties, as boroughtes, citees, tounes and villages. And by lawful othes,
malefactors are searched out, wrongdoers are punished, and thei whiche
sustein wrong are restored to their righte. Therefore, lawfull swearyng cannot
be evill whiche bryngeth unto us so many godly, good and necessarie
commodities.167
Here quite explicitly was a rejection of the literal interpretation of Matthew 5 based
upon the social and political value of oaths.
Of all the social functions of oaths, their importance in the legal system was
the clearest. After all, there was and is no more effective way to subvert a legal
system than to lie. Then, as now, legal systems attempted to prevent lying by
administering oaths.168 The anonymous author of the 1594 manuscript treatise entitled
"A Pitfall for Perjurers" demonstrated the importance of this when he wrote:
[Perjury tendeth] also on [to the] vnavoydeable Overthrowe to the comon right
of euery good Subiect by vniuste losse of his goodes landes life Libertie
Creddit or what els soeuer yea and finally yt tendeth to thutter Subuersyon of
all good Lawe and Iustice be reson that vpon true or false othes all verdictes
Iudgement and decrees whatsoever are grounded.169

166
Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 1284, fol. 78r.
"Against Swearying and Perjurie," in Bond, Certain Sermons, 130.
The main difference in the administration of oaths in the modern American legal system is that
people generally no longer believe in the theological significance of oaths. If one does not believe in
God, one does not believe that an oath can call him to witness to the truth of one's statement. An oath
in court now simply allows the swearer to be charged with the formal crime of perjury if caught lying
"under oath." Courts can no longer assume that fear of divine punishment pressures the swearer to be
truthful. For the atheist or agnostic, only the legal ramifications of exposed perjury now serve as a
preventative for lying in court.
"A new Yeres Guyte ffor an Old Yeres Grief, called a Pitfall for Perjuros, or a Spectacle for
Brokesmouth called Rougecrosse and his perjured Compagnyons," BL Lansdowne MS. 77, fol. 210v.

59
Oaths were tendered not just to witnesses but to every person who had any role in the
trial. Defendants often swore an oath of purgation: that is, an oath that they were
innocent of the specific crime charged to them. But the word of the defendant alone
was usually deemed insufficient, so the accused gathered a number of compurgators to
confirm his oath. These people were usually acquaintances of the defendant and
shared his or her rank, profession, and sex. They then swore an oath to confirm the
truth of the defendant's oath.170 Furthermore, defendants in ecclesiastical courts
sometimes swore an oath to answer truthfully all questions offered to them by their
ordinary (commonly known as an ex officio oath), and both defendants and plaintiffs
swore an oath of calumny in which they declared the purity of their motives and their
avoidance of corruption.171 Jurors also had to swear oaths to judge the case
objectively and honestly.172 Latimer vehemently denounced jurors who violated their
oaths and "sold their souls unto the devil" by rigging verdicts for money.173 Even
judges took oaths to avoid corruption and judge justly.174 The document that best
exemplifies the importance of oaths in the legal system is an anonymous guide to the
courts leet and baron written under Elizabeth. Unlike earlier treatises on the courts
leet and baron by Anthony Fitzherbert, this treatise contained a considerable section on
oaths. First, the writer addressed what an oath was, the danger of breaking an oath,
when one should swear, by whom one should swear, and for what one should swear.

John Endell Tyler, Oaths; Their Origin, Nature and History (London: John W. Parker, 1834), 265-
267; Brigden, London and the Reformation, 148; C1C, X.5.34.1-16, Friedberg, 2:869-877. For English
ecclesiastical statutes on the process of purgation, see Tudor Church Reform, 45, 311. For a sixteenth-
century example of a purgation oath, see W.H. Frere (ed. and intro.) Registrum Matthei Parker diocesis
cantuariensis, A.D. 1559-1575, transcribed by E. Margaret Thompson, Canterbury and York Societies,
vols. 35-36, 38 ([Oxford]: Oxford University Press, 1928-33), 512. For Thomas More's insight on the
use of compurgation oaths in heresy trials, see Thomas More, The Devellation of Salem and Bizance,
ed. John Guy et al., vol. 10 of his Complete Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1987), 112-113.
The use of the ex officio oath against Elizabethan Catholics and Puritans is treated in chapters nine
and ten of this dissertation. For details on the oath of calumny, see Bray, Tudor Church Reform, 556-
557.
172
For the forms of oaths of jurors in the fifteenth century, see The Commonplace Book of Robert
Reynes ofAcle, 143-144.
173
Latimer, Sermons, 380.
174
This was a version of the oath of calumny. Both the author of Dives and Pauper and Thomas Becon
emphasized the importance of the oath of a judge in the legal system: Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 253;
Becon, An inuectyve, sigs. F7r-G2v.

60
He then added a vivid description of the fires of hell prepared for perjurers.I75 Finally,
he included the forms of oaths of every officer or functionary connected to these
courts. The oath of the foreman was so substantial that it included an entire summary
7
of the theory on oaths delineated in the previous section of the treatise. Clearly, the
goal of this extended discussion of oaths was to impress upon all the participants of
the court the great weight and meaning of court oaths.
While oaths were essential to the just operation of the legal system, they also
contributed to the smooth running of quotidian society. This was because every
occupation or office with even the slightest degree of public responsibility had an oath
attached to it. From high-ranking crown officials in London to provincial justices to
city aldermen to masters of a craft to parish churchwardens to a humble midwife,
every person whose occupation or position included any obligation to society swore an
1nn ino

oath. Even the local ale-taster had his oath! These oaths detailed the specific
responsibilities of the particular office or occupation and bound the swearer to fulfill
the obligations of his position honestly, carefully, and to the best of his or her ability
with the help of God. As Susan Brigden recognized, they "signified both assent to the
duty and the belief that divine sanction had been given to the office-holder."179 Oaths
of office or occupation thus served to safeguard society against corruption or laziness.

175
CUL MS. Gg. vi. 1, fols. 152v-153r.
176
CUL MS. Gg. vi. 1, fol. 172r. For a printed example of another treatise on the courts leet and baron
that emphasized the importance of oaths, see lonas Adams, The order of keeping a court leet, and court
baron with the charges appertayning to the same: truely andplaynly deliuered in the English tongue,
for the profile of all men, and most commodious for young students of the lawes, and all others within
the iurisdiction of those courtes (1593), fols. A3'-B1V.
177
For a representative (but not comprehensive) list of manuscript sources of oaths of office and
occupation at the British Library, see footnote 51 of this chapter. Also see The book of oaths, and the
severall forms thereof, both antient and modern. Faithfully collected out of sundry authentike books and
records, not heretofore extant, compiled in one volume. Very useful for all persons whatsoever,
especially those that undertake any office of magistracie orpublique imployment in the Common-
wealth. Whereunto is added a perfect table (1649). For a fifteenth-century commonplace book that
includes oaths of masters of a craft, see The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes ofAcle, 318-320.
Bonner's register contains an exhortation to ecclesiastical visitors explaining their oaths; Guildhall
Library MS. 9531/12, fols. 370v-371r. For examples of the oath of a midwife, see Guildhall Library
MS. 9531/12, fol. 34r; Frere, Diocesis Cantuariensis Registrum Matthei Parker, 470-471.
178
BL Harleian MS. 6676, fol. lv.
179
Susan Brigden, "Religion and Social Obligation in Early Sixteenth-Century London," Past and
Present 103 (1984): 87.

61
 If one's office included direct service to the crown or church, oaths of
obedience were required as well. Oaths thus confirmed the political hierarchy.
Inferiors professed their loyalty and obedience to their superiors, and the highest
superior of all, the king, swore to govern lawfully and justly. For example, at a late
medieval English coronation, the new king swore to keep the laws and customs of
England (specifically the privileges and liberties granted to the clergy by Edward the
Confessor), to keep peace for the church and people, to execute justice, law,
discretion, mercy, and truth in his judgments, and to respect and protect just laws and
customs.180 After the king's coronation, the bishops and archbishops of the realm
swore fealty to the king for the lands they held in the name of the church. They were
followed by the temporal lords, who swore an oath of homage to serve the king.181
Like the state, the medieval church established its hierarchy of obedience
through oaths. At their institutions, newly ordained priests swore an oath of canonical
obedience to their bishop. Sometimes they also swore an oath of continual residence
and an oath to observe the customs of their cathedral.182 Heads of monasteries or
convents swore more detailed oaths with additional clauses specifying obedience to
their rule, their duty in an episcopal visitation, and their refusal to alienate monastic
property without the bishop's consent.183 A flurry of oaths accompanied the
consecration of a new bishop. The new bishop first swore an oath of fealty to the pope
(an archbishop swore this twice-once upon his consecration and once when he
received the pallium), then he swore an oath of canonical obedience to his
archbishop.184 Next the bishop-elect swore an oath (or oaths) to the king renouncing
any clauses in his papal bull of consecration that might be prejudicial to royal

Leopold G. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (Westminster: Archibald Constable,
1901), xxix, 87-88; BL Cotton MS. Tiberius E viii, fol. 100r_v; BL Lansdowne MS. 470, fol. l v ; BL
Lansdowne MS 870, fol. 9r; BL Harleian MS. 785, fol. 91 r .
Legg, English Coronation Records, lv-lvi.
For some examples, see Lambeth Palace Library, Reginald Pole's Register, fols. 67r-82r; Gladys
Hinde (ed.), The Registers ofCuthbert Tunstall Bishop of Durham 1530-59 and James Pilkington
Bishop of Durham 1561-76, Surtees Society, vol. 161 (1946) (Durham: Andrews & Co; London:
Bernard Quaritch, 1952), xxiii, 5, 8, 74, 121, 140, passim.
183
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fols. 49v-50r, 57r, 6 3 \ 113r, 117r, 119r, 130r,
passim; Guildhall Library, MS 9531/11 (Stokesley's Register), fols. 61 r v , 67r"v, 97v.
184
Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fols. 2r-26v; Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's
Register, fols. l v -5 r ; Lambeth Palace Library, Pole's Register, 3V-12V; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:154-155,
647.

62
authority, professing fealty to the king, and requesting restoration of the bishopric's
temporalities, which the bishop declared to hold from the king alone. At the new
bishop's enthronement, the members of the chapter of his cathedral, the clergy in his
city and diocese, and all his vassals would swear canonical obedience to him. As
we shall see, both oaths of royal obedience and oaths of canonical obedience would be
greatly changed during the Reformation. The point here is to establish the
significance of oaths as bonds wherein inferiors were obliged to obey their superiors.
Hence, oaths buttressed the social and political hierarchy.
The fact that oaths were used to buttress a hierarchy of obedience and to usher
in a new holder of a public office meant that they were also a means to accentuate
social distinction. Charles Phythian-Adams has shown that oaths accompanied every
rung of the social ladder in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Coventry life. The public
ceremony of taking an oath of office thus served as a kind of social coming of age rite
that signified the swearer's graduation from his previous social category and entry into
his new, higher social group.187 James Lee similarly analyzed the oaths of office of
the city of Bristol and concluded that they were a mechanism through which the city
elite maintained their monopoly of power.I88 Furthermore, not having to swear an
oath in certain circumstances was a mark of the highest elite. The idea behind this
privilege was that these people were so honorable that their mere word was as binding

Gilbert Bumet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. Nicolas Pocock (1865;
reprint, Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg International Publishers, 1969), 1:37,4:3-7;
Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle; containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the
Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth, in Which Are
Particularly Described the Manner and Customs of Those Periods (London: J. Johnson et al., 1809),
788-789; Book of Oaths, 243-244; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:755; Thomas Rymer (ed.), Foedera,
conventiones, literae, et cujuscunque generis acta publico, inter reges Anglice et alios quosvis
imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates, ab ineunte sceculo duo-decimo, viz ab anno
1101, ad nostra usque tempore habita aut tractata; ex autographis, infra secretiores Archivorum
regiorum thesaurarias, per multa sazecula reconditis, fideliter exscripta (1726-35) 14:428-429.
Henceforth cited simply as Foedera.
186
Herbert Chitty (ed.), Registra Stephani Gardiner et Johannis Poynet, intro. Henry Elliott Maiden and
Herbert Chitty, Canterbury and York Society, vol. 37 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), 1-5;
W.H. Frere (ed.), Registrum Johannis Whyte, Episcopi Wintoniensis, A.D. MDLV1-MDE1X, Canterbury
and York Society, vol. 16 (London, 1914), 5-6.
187
Charles Phythian-Adams, "Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450-
1550," in Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History, ed. Peter Clark and
Paul Slack (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 59-62.
188
James Lee, '"Ye Shall Disturbe Noe Mans Right': Oath-Taking and Oath-Breaking in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Bristol," Urban History 34 (2007): 27-38.

63
to them as an oath. For example, writing from the Tower in the wake of Wyatt's
Rebellion, Princess Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary: "If any euer did try this olde
saynge that a kinges worde was more than nother mans othe I most humbly beseche
your M. to verefae it in me."189 Throughout Elizabeth's reign, peers were still
claiming the privilege of giving their word of honor in lieu of an oath in court. In
1581, Lord Vaux was granted this favor in the Court of Star Chamber, but later in
Elizabeth's reign, the Star Chamber refused Henry Earl of Lincoln this privilege and
forced him to swear.1 Finally, the swearing of vain oaths was sometimes employed
by gentlemen as a mark of social distinction. John Spurr has demonstrated that
Charles II's lackeys used creative vain oaths to show off their wit, indicate their status,
and offend the bourgeois.191 This practice, however, was not a novel development of
the later seventeenth century. Many late medieval and sixteenth-century religious
treatises decried the detestable fashion among gentlemen of swearing vainly. Thus,
whether through the oath-taking ceremony of a new office, the privilege of not having
to swear an oath in court, or the creative use of vain oaths, oaths helped define and
underscore social distinction.
Court oaths and oaths of office and obedience were so ubiquitous in early
modern England that it was commonplace to designate a proctor or proxy to swear an
oath in another's name. The basis of this practice was supposedly an ancient group of
German ecclesiastics who interpreted Matthew 5 literally and thus felt that they could
not swear an oath without endangering their souls. (But the ecclesiastics evidently had
little scruple of letting others endanger their souls on behalf of the ecclesiastics!) A
more likely explanation for the prevalence of this practice was the time and expense

NA SP11/4, no. 2; fol. 3Ar, catalogued in Knighton (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series
of the Reign of Mary 11553-1558, #107.
190
John Bruce, "Observations upon Certain Proceedings in the Star-chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir
Thomas Tresham, Sir William Catesy, and Others, for Refusing to Swear That They Had Not
Harboured Campion the Jesuit," Archaeologia 30 (1844): 67-68, 83; William Hudson, Treatise of the
Court of Star Chamber, ed. Francis Halgrave and Thomas Garden Barnes (1792, repr., Birmingham:
Legal Classics Library, 1986), 167. William Petyt claimed that barons did not have to take oaths in the
Court of Star Chamber or the Court of Wards until the end of Elizabeth's reign; Inner Temple Library,
Miscellaneous MS. 149, 154-155.
191
Spurr, "Perjury, Profanity and Politics," 40.
192
See for example: Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, 28; Peter Idley, 161; Foxe,/4M(1583), 2104;
Downame, Foure treatises, 19.
193
Tyler, Oaths: Their Origin, Nature and History, 30, 281-283.

64
involved in early modern travel. Treaty oaths, for example, were usually sworn twice:
once in the country of one monarch and once in the country of his opposite. Each
9
monarch would send ambassadors to the other to swear the oath by proxy. Bishops
often swore oaths of canonical obedience and (after 1534) supremacy through proxies
as well. Of all the oaths of supremacy sworn by Elizabethan bishops documented in
Matthew Parker's archiepiscopal register, only three were not sworn by proctors.195
Proctors swore oaths for people in court as well. The archiepiscopal Court of Arches,
for example, had a body of professional proctors whose occupation it was to represent
litigants and defendants. One of their duties was clearly swearing oaths.196 The use of
proctors to swear oaths in someone else's name suggests that oaths were so frequent in
early modern society that it was physically impossible for one always to swear the
oath in person.
If oaths were of great importance to late medieval and early modern society,
should not the rulers of that society have taken measures to insure oaths were
respected and perjury discouraged? In fact, they did. Becon, for example, closed his
work by collecting various medieval historical examples of severe punishments of
perjurers and vain swearers (like perpetual excommunication and capital punishment)
in England and abroad.I97 The chronicles of the sixteenth century are full of
observations of the punishment of perjurers. Wriothesley noted the case of seven

For an example of this see Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fols. 14r-15r.
195
Frere, Diocesis Cantuariensis Registrum Matthei Parker, 110 (Thomas Young), 134-135 (Richard
Curteys), 136-143 (Edmond GrindalYork). The rest of the oaths by bishops-elect in Parker's register
were sworn by proctors. It appears that bishops often swore the oath of supremacy at least twice: once
at their confirmation and once at their election. Parker, it seems, had a proctor swear for him at his
confirmation but was present himself at his consecration; Frere, Diocesis Cantuariensis Registrum
Matthei Parker, 4, 8-9, 29-32. The same thing happened at Bonner's confirmation and consecration;
Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols. 241r, 259v.
196
See for example the bill to redress the number of proctors in the Court of Arches that argued that the
proctors should take a single comprehensive "juramentum calumpniae" rather than multiple oaths at
various stages of the trial; BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra F i, fols. 91-95. The bill is printed in John Strype,
Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God Thomas Cranmer, Sometime Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1812), 717-728. Strype believed that this bill was from 1536.
Stanford Lehmberg, however, placed the bill in 1529; Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation
Parliament, 1529-1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 83-84. For a specific
example of a proctor swearing an oath for a defendant in an ecclesiastical court, see Frere, Diocesis
Cantuariensis Registrum Matthei Parker, 361-362. For the Henrician canons authorizing proctors to
take the oath of calumny in a party's stead, see Bray, Tudor Church Reform, 558-559.
197
Becon An inuectyue, sigs. M8v-N3r.

65
perjurers in the 1540s who were punished by standing upon the pillory, by having P
burned into their left cheek and their right ears cut, and by being imprisoned until they
could pay their fine.198 The punishments noted by Henry Machyn were typically
much milder, such as simply standing on the pillory and sometimes wearing papers.'"
In the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign, Parliament passed an act against perjurers that
punished convicted perjurers with the fine of twenty pounds, six months imprisonment
without bail, and a sentence of perpetual infamy that prevented their oaths from being
valid in court for the rest of their lives. If they could not pay the fine, they had to
stand on the pillory and have both of their ears nailed.200 Of course, these
punishments were not always carried out to the letter of the law. An anonymous
Elizabethan compiler of a guide to the courts leet and baron explained that while
perjurers should lawfully suffer time on the pillory, slit nostrils, cut ears, and
imprisonment, "our maistye of her wonderful clemency doth appease and mitegate the
punishment." Nevertheless, perjury was a crime that sixteenth-century rulers took
seriously and punished accordingly.
In fact, the sixteenth century was a time when the English state became more
active in punishing perjury and vain swearing. The Elizabethan statute against perjury
was the first actual statute to codify the exact punishment of perjurous individuals.
Previous statutes relating to perjury focused exclusively on corrupt juries who gave a
false verdict.202 The sixteenth century also witnessed a strong push to enforce a
stronger, uniform measure against vain swearing. The overtly Protestant committee
that meant to reform ecclesiastical law in 1551 recommended that those who swore
rashly should be compelled to pay twelve pence to the poor box the following Sunday
and to stand bareheaded in front of the congregation during the sermon. 3 Attempts
were made in 1553, 1559, and 1571 to push this new form of discipline through

198
Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, From A.D. 1485 to
1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, Camden Society, n.s., vol. 11 (Westminster, 1875), 1:150.
199
John Gough Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London,
From A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563, Camden Society, vol. 42 (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1868), 74, 250.
200
Statutes of the Realm, 5 Eliz 1, c. 9, 4:437.
201
CUL MS. Gg. vi. 1, fol. 152v.
202
See for example, Statutes of the Realm, 11 Hen. 7, c. 21, 2:584-585; 11 Hen. 7, c. 25, 2:589-590; 12
Hen. 7, c. 2, 2:636; 1 Hen. 8, c. 11, 3:6; 23 Hen. 8, c. 3, 3:365-366.
203
Bray, Tudor Church Reform, 548-549.

66
Parliament, though they failed for various reasons.204 In 1601, an independent bill
(independent from the attempt to reform ecclesiastical law) against usual and common
swearing passed the House of Commons but was killed by prorogation because of the
dispute between ecclesiastical and secular courts under whose jurisdiction swearing
fell.205 In 1624, Parliament finally passed a temporary act against profane swearing
that levied the twelve pence fine on a person each time he or she swore vainly, and
substituted time in the stocks and whipping if the offender was not able to pay.
Norman Jones was right to stress that this Parliamentary emphasis on vain swearing
was new. Yet such an emphasis did not arise out of a greater concern for the sin of
vain swearing among the devout, but out of a greater concern for the abuse of oaths
among ecclesiastical and royal authorities. Devout writers and preachers had been
decrying vain swearing for centuries. What was new in the sixteenth century was the
number of oaths imposed by the state on its subjects. Because it was a common belief
that vain swearing led to perjury, it was in the state's best interest to take a more active
role in policing vain oaths.
Of course, in a time such as the sixteenth century when the church and state
were inextricably interwoven, it is impossible to separate completely the social and
political motives for policing illicit oaths from the religious motives. Religious
writers certainly applauded any effort by the authorities to crack down on illicit
swearing. Thomas Wygenhale, for example, included a long diatribe against bishops
and secular rulers who neglected to punish perjurers and blasphemous swearers.
Thomas Becon more overtly recognized the dual significance of oaths when he
proclaimed that it was the duty of a ruler "no less to tender the glory of God, and to
make actes concerynyng the same, then to se that publique tranquilite & all thyngs
decent & comely for an honest outward order be mayntayned, preserued & kepte."
Both for theological and for socio-political reasons, oaths were of the utmost
importance in early modern England.

Bray, "Introduction," in Tudor Church Reform, lxxxviii-xcix; Jones, English Reformation, 163.
Jones, English Reformation, 168.
206
Statutes of the Realm, 21. Jac, c. 20, 4:1230-1231.
207
CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fols. 79r-82r. See especially Wygenhale's story of Henry III on fols. 79v-80r.
208
Becon An inuectyue, sig. N2V.

67
 Conclusions
Oaths, then, were essential for the maintenance of justice, duty, obedience, and
hierarchy in society. As Daniel Featly recognized in the middle of the seventeenth
century:
Oaths are necessary for the execution of the magistrate's office and the
preservation of human society. For without such oaths the commonwealth
hath no surety upon public officers and ministers: nor kings upon their
subjects; nor lords upon their tenants; neither can men's titles be cleared in
causes civil, nor justice done in causes criminal; nor dangerous plots and
conspiracies be discovered against the state.209
But of equal importance was the theological significance of oaths. Oaths were a form
of worship. In calling God as witness, the swearer acknowledged God's divinity and
glorified his name. Oaths also gave human beings the power to access God's
omniscience and his omnipotence, the ability to summon to one's cause the only being
who could always search the hearts of men to determine the veracity of their words
and the only judge who could always punish swearers if they lied or failed to fulfill
their oaths. It was this belief that oaths allowed the swearer to access God that made
them a matter of controversy in the sixteenth century in two ways.
First, Protestants challenged the traditional medieval practice of how oaths
were sworn. Yet this challenge was not about oaths per se or their ability to access
God, but rather the extent to which God diffused himself in the material world.
Medieval Catholics believed that "creatures" like saints, their relics, the mass, the
mass book, and the Gospels were permeated with the divine presence and thus were
earthly conduits of God's sacred power. Accordingly, they swore on and by these
quasi-divine creatures. Protestants, conversely, argued that giving veneration or
worship to any created thing, no matter how holy or closely connected to God, was a
form of idolatry that robbed God of the honor due to his name. As such, all
Protestants rejected swearing by relics, saints, and the mass, while the most radical
Protestants such as John Bale and the Elizabethan Separatists also condemned
swearing on the Gospels. These changes were a matter of degree rather than of

209
Daniel Featly, Dippers Dipt (1646), 142; quoted in Hill, Society and Puritanism, 383.

68
fundamental nature, and they reflected the broader theological debates of the sixteenth
century over how to worship God.
Second, the belief that oaths gave one the ability to access a holy, powerful,
and jealous God meant that oaths were not to be taken lightly. Although perhaps not
to the same extent, Protestants echoed the medieval popular belief that oaths by
Christ's members mutilated his body in order to emphasize the gravity of the sin of
blasphemous swearing. Moreover, stories of God visiting his wrath upon false, vain,
and blasphemous swearers were legion. To abuse the access to God's holy nature and
to blaspheme his name were serious sins that led to the death of the body and the soul.
Oaths should be sworn only in solemn circumstances with the utmost reverence. This
created the almost paradoxical belief that oaths were so sacred that they should be
sworn as little as possible. Swearing an oath was a form of worship, but because this
particular form of worship gave one direct contact with God, it was especially
dangerous to fallen, sinful man. So almost every religious writer averred that oaths
should be sworn only when three conditions were met: truth, judgment, and justice.
But the specific circumstances in which these three general conditions were fulfilled
was a matter of substantial debate. The high esteem in which nearly all early modern
Christians held oaths served to magnify any debate over the exact conditions of a
lawful oath and made it into a matter of considerable importance. As we will see in
chapters two and twelve, controversy over what particular oaths were evil (against
justice) and vain (against judgment) contributed significantly to confessional conflict
in sixteenth-century England. Furthermore, we shall see in chapters five and seven
that different understandings of how a statement was truthful led to the practice of
dissimulation by both Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth-century England.
Hence, the religious controversies of the sixteenth century did not challenge
the fundamental theory behind oaths. The application of oath theoryhow one should
swear and the exact circumstances that fulfilled the three conditions for a lawful
oathbecame disputed, but the foundational beliefs that oaths were a means to call
forth God's knowledge and power in support of the truth of one's statement and that
this practice was crucial to the worship of God and to the preservation of society were

69
not challenged in England. There were of course exceptions to this rule. Some sects
of Lollards appear to have completely rejected the swearing of oaths. Yet it seems that
most Lollards who refused to swear an oath did so not because they had a
fundamentally different opinion of oaths, but because they thought the particular oath
tendered to them was unlawful. We have seen that Lollards like William Thorpe
refused to swear because they believed the book on which the oath was tendered was a
creature. Insofar as some of the Lollards who appeared before Bishop Cuthbert
Tunstall in 1527 refused to swear an oath, their refusal seems to have stemmed from
opposition to the ex officio oathan oath against judgmentrather than to all oaths in
general.21 Many Lollards thus anticipated sixteenth-century Protestant concerns over
particular kinds of oaths (ex officio) and manners of swearing (on creatures), but these
concerns were a heightened extension of the same general theory of oaths as espoused
by mainstream medieval Catholics.21' Of course, some continental Anabaptists
interpreted Matthew 5 literally and rejected all oaths, but this particular Anabaptist

These Lollards were tendered the ex officio oath, an oath at the beginning of a trial in an
ecclesiastical court whereby the defendant swore to answer truthfully whatever question his judge might
ask him. It should be emphasized that most of these Lollards did swear this oath. William Pykas
refused to swear and when asked whether it was lawful to swear, he responded that he did not know
("Et deinde comperit William Pykas quem dominus missit se subire luramentum de fideliter
respondendo qui sic missus recusavit. Iterrogatus an liceat Jurare dicit quod nescit"); BL Harleian MS.
421, fol. 19v. Like Pykas, John Bradley, John Hubbert, John Girlyng, and Robert Best, all refused to
swear at first, but eventually gave in and swore; BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 19v-20v. Best's initial
response to the tendering of the oath is telling, for Best informed Tunstall that he would not swear until
Tunstall declared to him the articles against him ("dixit quod si idem Reverendus pater declarabit
articles super quibus, Jurarit/ libenter subire luramentum hoc et tunc recitatis articulis per dictem
Reverendum patrem super quibus subiret luramentum et denuo missus tactis sacrosanctis dei evangeliis
Iuravit de fideliter respondendo"); BL Harleian MS. 421, fol. 20r. A common complaint against the ex
officio oath was that it was against judgment, for the defendant did not know the content of the
questions the oath bound him to answer. Thus, Best's response to Tunstall and then Best's willingness
to swear after Tunstall read him the articles against him indicates that Best's problem was not with
swearing per se, but with swearing the ex officio oath. The records of the Tunstall's 1527 campaign
against Lollards are in Foxe's manuscripts, BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 1 lr-35r. Many of these have
been accurately summarized in John Strype, 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 the First.. .. (London: John Wyat, 1721) 1:74-87.
211
For further discussion on tension among Lollards between rejecting all oaths and only oaths by
creatures, see Russell, "Lollard Opposition to Oaths by Creatures," 668-684; Anne Hudson, The
Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clardendon, 1988), 371-374. I
will address the Lollards' use of oaths in equivocation and dissimulation in chapter seven.

70
claim appears not to have been prominent in England until the 1570s at the earliest.
Thus, there was a consensus among English religious writers of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that oaths were sacred forms of worship and a means for human
beings to access God, and consequently of great social and religious significance.
But if there was basic agreement among the clergy about oaths, to what extent
did the laity accept the teachings of religious writers on oaths? Did the practice of
swearing oaths line up with the theory behind it? Did most people actually believe
that oaths were sacred theological gateways through which God was worshiped and
society upheld? On one hand, the same religious writings that expound on the
theological and social significance of oaths betray the perception that many people did
not take oaths seriously. It was commonplace in literature on oaths to lament how
widespread perjury and vain swearing were in society.213 Moreover, the sheer amount
of ink spilled by the clergy on oaths suggests that their writings were an attempt to
convince and convert people away from their wrong opinions about oaths. They were
prescription rather than description. The fact that Thomas Wygenhale noted and
answered twenty-two common excuses for swearing illicitly illustrates the existence of
ideological justification for the casual treatment of oaths.214 Even if one mentally
accepted the standard religious rhetoric on oaths, practice could deviate from belief.

For a concise example of a continental Anabaptist rejection of oaths, see Michael Sattler's
Schleitheim Articles, in Michael G. Baylor (ed. and trans.), The Radical Reformation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 178. The best study of English Anabaptism is Irvin Buckwalter
Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop: B. de
Graaf, 1972). Horst did not find any evidence of English Anabaptists actively refusing to swear oaths.
It is possible that the "Anabaptist Confession" discovered in England contained the Schleitheim Articles
with its rejection of swearing, but this confession has unfortunately not survived. See Horst, 50-51,
183-189. For an older, less comprehensive treatment of English Anabaptism, see Duncan B. Heriot,
"Anabaptism in England during the 16th and 17th Centuries," Transactions of the Congregational
Historical Society 12(1933):256-271; 13 (1939): 312-320. In the 1570s, the Lord North accused some
English sectarians of denying the lawfulness of all oaths; John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew
Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth . . . To which is Added, an
Appendix, Containing Various Transcripts of Records, Letters . . . and Other Secret Papers. . . .
(London: John Wyat, 1711), 437.
A couple of examples will suffice. "Sed heu modernis temporibus ne dum laici ymmo clerici non in
vanum assumunt & sine tribus comitibus cotidi iurant deum tota die eciam blasphemant & execubiliter
[exsecrabiliter?] periurant"; CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 9r'\ "What perjuries, swearing and cursing is
everywhere, in every corner!"; Latiner, Sermons by Hugh Latimer, 380.
214
CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fols. 3v-34r.

71
Jacque de Vitry told the story of a priest who exhorted a penitent woman in confession
to cease swearing customably:
She replied: "Sir, God help me, I'll not swear again." The priest said: "You
have just sworn." "By God, I'll refrain from it again." The priest told her her
speech should be "yea, yea," and "nay, nay," as the Lord had commanded, for
more than this was wrong. She replied: "Sir, you are right, and I tell you by
the blessed Virgin, and all the saints, that I will do as you command me, and
you shall never hear me swear."
But can Vitry's confused lay woman really be taken as representative of the laity?
Should clerical lamentations about the prevalence of vain and false swearing in society
really be taken at face value? As Alec Ryrie has demonstrated about the number of
Protestants or Catholics in pre-Elizabethan sixteenth-century England, clerical
statements about popular practice were often exaggerated and polemically biased, and
therefore cannot be taken as an accurate assessment popular practice. So to
discover whether the laity of England truly did share the opinions of the clergy
regarding oaths, we need to examine their actions when taking oaths. The Henrician
and Elizabethan oaths of supremacy, the oaths of Pilgrimage of Grace, and the oaths of
heresy trials provide us with a lens for determining if the practice of swearing oaths
lined up with its theory. Before we do all this, we need to look at the debate over
monastic vows in England and the subsequent establishment of a different ideology
that justified the breaking of oaths.

" 5 Jacques de Vitry, The Exempla or Ilustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de
Vitry, ed. and trans. Thomas Frederick Crane, Folklore Society, vol. 26 (1890, reprt.,
Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967), 91-92, 222.
216
Alec Ryrie, "Counting sheep, counting shepherds: the problem of allegiance in the English
Reformation," in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 87-91.

72
 Chapter 2: Vows, Oaths, and the Formulation of a Subversive Ideology
In 1527, Henry VIII translated and printed a letter he had written to Martin
Luther wherein he defended the teaching of the Holy Catholic Church and
demonstrated to "all his faythfull and welbeloued subiectes" that Luther was an
abominable heretic. Henry began his attack on Luther by castigating Luther for
breaking his monastic vow of celibacy:
ye that so moche bost your selfe of holy scripture/1 marueyle ye can set so
lytell by your vowe/ whan ye rede therin this holy sayeng: If thou haue any
thynge vowed to god/ delay nat the performyng therof:for an vnfaithfull
promyse displeaseth god. Rede ye nat also there these wordes: To your lorde
god make ye vowes/ and fulfyll them? What say ye by these words/whan thou
hast made a vowe to thy lorde god/ come of and performe it: for thy lorde god
will haue a reknyng therof. And if thou dye/ it wyll by layde to thy charge for
a syn?

Henry then continued by refuting Luther's claim that vows were part of the Mosaic
ceremonial law from which Christ's death set us free. After all, did not the prophet
Isaiah declare that in a future time God's people should make vows to the Lord and
fulfill them, "shewing that vowes shulde haue in Christes lawe more strength/ & be
better kept/ than in the olde law"?2 Indeed, God struck down Ananias in the early
church because he had broken his vow to donate all the profits of the sale of his field
to God. Yet Luther showed contempt for these scriptures, setting his "owne
sensualyte" against them and continuing to "rayle agaynst all vowes (so manifest and
heynous an heresy/ that there neyther hath been herde a greatter or a more open
[heresy])." Henry clearly held vows in high esteem. To break them openly was a
mark of manifest irreligion and heinous heresy.
A decade later, however, the situation had changed. The dissolution of the
monasteries called into question the validity of monastic vows, for what became of a
monk's or nun's vows of poverty and obedience to a monastic rule and governor when

1
Henry VIII, A copy of the letters, wherin the most redouted & mighty prince, our souerayne lorde kyng
Henry the eight, kyng of Englande . . . made answere vnto a certayne letter of Martyn Luther, sent vnto
him by the same and also the copy of the foresaid Luthers letter, in such order, as here after foloweth
(1527), sig. C2r. The scriptures Henry quoted were: Ecc. 5:4, Ps. 76:11, Deut. 23:21.
2
Henry VIII, A copy of the letters, sig. C2V.
3
Henry VIII, A copy of the letters, sig. C3V.

73
they no longer were able to live in a monastic community and follow the precepts of
their rule? Henry was in an awkward position. He vehemently maintained the validity
of the monks' and nuns' vows of celibacy, but the dissolution had ispo facto rendered
void their vows of poverty and obedience.4 This ambiguity is captured well by an act
of Parliament in 1539. On one hand, the act decreed that religious persons "hereafter
shalbe put at their liberties from the daunger servitude and condicion of their Religion
and profession wherunto they were professed" and allowed to purchase, own, and
enjoy goods and land. On the other hand, the act maintained that those who had
voluntarily vowed celibacy were still forbidden to "marrie or take any wife or wyves;
but that they and everie of them be clerelie excluded and put from the same to all
intentes and purposes."5 Likewise, the Act of Six Articles of 1539 made it crystal
clear that vows of chastity or widowhood "advisedly made to God . . . shalbe alonely
taken and expounded and interpreted to bynde suche person or persons" as long as the
vow was made at the age of twenty-one or older.
To justify his release of English monks and nuns from some vows but not
others, Henry probably felt that another treatise was necessary. In fact, an anonymous
manuscript on religious vows among the state papers of 1539 most likely demonstrates
the crown's official policy on vows. The writer began by emphasizing that Scripture
declared that vows made to God must be fulfilled. Thus, monks, nuns, friars, and
secular priests who vowed celibacy were "bownden under the payne of mortall synne
& eternall damnacion to lyve so continually still unmaryed and never to take them
mates voluntarily in deide." But the writer did not stop the treatise there. Most likely
foreseeing the objection that Henry had dispensed monks' and nuns' vows of poverty
and obedience, the writer also proclaimed:
nevertheleisse hitt is to be knowon & understande that their is no suiche
manner vowe of perpetuall chaistitye, or eny other vowe that men do
commynly use to make, or maye make in eny lefull matter that is so

4
For examples from the 1530s of Henry strongly defending vows of chastity, see CCCC MS. 109, 48-
49; BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E v, fols. 215, printed in Burnet, History of Reformation, 4:390-391; BL
Cotton MS. Cleopatra E v, fols. 312v-313r, 315 (Henry VIII editing of the Six Articles).
5
Statutes of the Realm, 31 Hen. VIII c. 6, 3:724-725.
6
Statutes of the Realm, 31 Hen. VII c. 14, 3:743.
7
NA SP1/152, fol. 25rCLPXIV (i) 1068 no. 2).

74
 indifferent/ that the vower thereof before his vowe maye be saved withowt hitt:
of suiche firme bondayge & streynthe butt that a mans supreme sufferayn lorde
vnder God, his prince maye dispence with the same att all tyme when it shall
seem to hym ether necessary or verey expedient for the commyn weilthe.
Henry, then, wanted to uphold the binding nature of vows, though he also felt that he,
as sovereign lord of the realm and supreme head of the church, had the power to
dispense with them as he saw fit.
Yet this distinction between abrogating vows of poverty and obedience but
keeping celibacy was lost on some of Henry's subjects. The Evangelical radical John
Bale consciously rejected the logic that Henry could absolve monks from two of their
monastic vows but leave the third as binding:
Whan the kyngs grace of England by the autoryte of Gods wurd, discharged
the monkish sects of his realme, from their vowed obedience to the byshop of
Rome, ded he not also discharge them in conscience of that vowe of
Sodometry, whyche altogether made them Antichrists creaturs? If he dyd not so
minde it, why altered he their relygions?9
Others made the same mistake out of ignorance. Already in 1535, the commissioners
in the royal visitation of the monasteries, Thomas Legh and John Ap Rice,
encountered members of religious orders at Deny Abbey seeking to be freed from their
monastic vows, and Rice admitted that they had dismissed many religious people over
the age of twenty before they knew the king's wishes to the contrary. In 1540, the
Duke of Norfolk rebuked a man for marrying a nun. The man replied that he knew of
"no nuns nor religious folk in this realm, nor no such bondage, seeing God and the
king have made them free."'' Up to the very moment of the passing of the Six
Articles, Christopher Mont, Henry's ambassador to the German Lutheran princes,
could claim:
although he knewe not your graces consyderacions in that behalf, yet he might

8
NA SP1/152, fol. 25r (LP XIV (i) 1068 no. 2).
John Bale, The apology oflohan Bale agaynste a ranke papyst aunswering both hym and hys
doctours, that neyther their vowes nor yet their priesthode are of the Gospell, but ofAntichrist (1550),
sig. D2r' For a similar statement, see Robert Crowley, The confutation of xiii. articles, wherunto
Nicolas Shaxton, late byshop ofSaulburye subscribed and caused be setforthe in print the yere of our
Lord. M.L.xlvi. when he recanted in Smithfielde at London at the burning ofmestres Anne Askue, which
is liuely set forth in the figure folowynge (1548), sig. H6V.
10
NA SP1/98, fols. 40 r -41\ 48 rv (LPIX 651, 661).
11
NA SP1/163, fol. 38r (LP XVI 101).

75
 well affirme that your highnes is not to scrupulouse in the matier de votis and
that sundry nonnes and religiouse women have ben discharged oute of their
houses with honest pensions during their lyves and not forbidden but suffred to
marye.12
Thus, even though Henry tried to maintain the binding nature of the vow of celibacy
throughout his reign, his dissolution of the monasteries and absolution of English
religious from their vows of poverty and obedience had the effect in some of his
subjects' minds of releasing them from all their monastic vows.
Henry's condemnation of Luther because of Luther's violation of his vow of
celibacy and the resulting controversy over vows after Henry's dissolution of the
monasteries aptly introduce the two themes of this chapter: the English Protestant
attack on monastic vows and the unsuccessful attempt to prevent the attacks on vows
from applying to other forms of divine promises. First, monastic vows were a huge
issue in the English Reformation. Although the debate over monastic vows
commenced in the 1520s with Henry's letter against Luther, the royal dissolution of
the monasteries and the subsequent ambiguity over vows that it engendered propelled
vows into the limelight of English religious polemic. The back-and-forth nature of
England's reformations ensured that vows would remain a hot topic. Edward VI
eliminated the inconsistency of Henry's position by abnegating the vow of celibacy.
Mary re-established it. Elizabethan once again rejected it, though grudgingly. In an
attempt either to influence royal policy (under Henry) or to defend it (under Edward
and Elizabeth), Protestant reformers like William Tyndale, John Bale, George Joye,
John Ponet, Matthew Parker, and Peter Martyr Vermigli (who lectured on the topic
while a professor at Oxford) attacked vows.13 Conservatives like Thomas More,

12
Thomas Cromwell to Henry VIII, 24 April 1539, The Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, ed. R.B.
Merriman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), 2:220.
13
William Tyndale, A prologue to the first five books of Moses, in Works of the English Reformers,
1:38-49; Bale, The apology oflohan Bale agaynste a rankepapyst anuswering both hym and hys
doctours, that neyther their vowes nor yet their priesthode areofthe Gospell, but ofAntichrist (1550);
George Joye, The defence of the mariage ofpreists: agenst Steuen Gardiner . . . with a confutacion of
their vnaduysed vowes vnaduysedly diffined: whereby they haue so wykedly separated them whom God
cowpled in lawful! mariage (Auryk [Antwerp], [1541]), sigs. A8r-B8r, C3v-C8r; John Ponet, A defence
for mariage of pries tes by Scripture and aunciente wryters (1549), sigs. D7r-F6v; Matthew Parker, A
defence ofpriestes manages stablysshed by the imperiall lawes of the realme of Englande, agaynst a
ciuilian, namyng hym selfe Thomas Martin doctour of the ciuile lawes, goyng about to disproue the
saide manages, lawful! by the eternall worde of God, and by the hygh court of parliament, only

76
Richard Whitford, Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Martin, and Richard Smyth responded
to Protestant reformers and defended vows. Indeed, after justification and the nature
of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, vows were the most debated topic of the English
Reformation. To start, then, this chapter will explore the Protestant arguments against
the taking and keeping of monastic vows.
Second, this chapter will explore the wider ramifications of the Protestant
attack on monastic vows. Just as the dissolution of the monasteries and the abrogation
of vows of poverty and obedience allowed some to justify breaking their vows of
celibacy despite royal rhetoric to the contrary, so did the Protestant attack on vows of
celibacy propagate a set of arguments that could be easily adapted to substantiate the
transgression of any vow or promise. English Protestants were aware of this danger
and sought to prevent it. Henry's printed letter against Luther had publicly established
the image of Protestants as dishonest promise-breakers driven by lust, an image that
Protestants obviously disapproved. Furthermore, as we shall see in chapters three
through six, oaths were the primary means through which the English crown
implemented England's separation from Rome, and English Protestants had no desire
to undermine the validity of the various oaths of succession and supremacy. The

forbydden by forayne lawes and canons of the Pope, coloured with the visour of the Churche. Whiche
lawes and canons, were extynguyshed by the sayde parliament (1567), 181-185, 209-210, 224-246,
253-254, 268-269. The exact content of Vermigli's Oxford lectures is not known. The conservative
Oxford scholar Richard Smyth wrote a treatise, however, attacking Vermigli's teaching on vows at
Oxford. In response, Vermigli composed a long tract defending himself, in which it is safe to assume
that Vermigli articulated the same doctrine on vows that he taught in his Oxford lectures. Peter Martyr
Vermigli, Defensio D. Petri Martyris Vermiglii Florentini diuinarum literarum in schola Tigurina
professoris, ad Riccardi Smythaei Angli, olim theologiae professoris Oxoniensis duos libellos de
caelibatu sacerdotum, et votis monasticis (Basel, 1559), henceforth cited as Vermigli, De votis.
Thomas More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, 165, 360, 366; More, The Confutation ofTyndale's
Answer, eds. L.A. Schuster et. al., vol. 8 ofThe Complete Works of Thomas More (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1973), 51, 573, 725; Richard Whitford, Here begynneth the boke called the Pype,
or tonne, of the lyfe of perfection The reason or cause wherof dothe playnely appere in the processe
([1532]),fols. 2r-43r; Stephan Gardiner, Stephani Winton. episcopi Angli, ad Matrinvm Bvcerum, de
impudenti eiusdempseudologia conquestio (Louvain, 1544), fols. Gl r v ; Thomas Martin [Stephen
Gardiner?], A traictise declaryng and plainly prouyng, that the pretensed marriage ofpriestes, and
professedpersones, is no mariage, but altogether vnlawful, and in all ages, and al countreies of
Christendome, bothe forbidden, and alsopunyshed. . . . (1554), sigs. N3v-P3r, CC1V-CC3V, LLl r ;
Richard Smyth, Eivsdem D. Richardi Smythei confvtatio qvorundam articulorum de votis monasticis
Petri Martyris Itali, Oxoniae in Anglia theologiam profitentis, in Celeberrunu sacrae theologiae
professoris D. Richari Smythei, in achademia Oxoniensi sacras literas profitentis de coelibatu
sacerdotum liber vnus. Eiusdem de votis monasticis liber alter, nunc primum typis excusi (Louvain,
1550), hereafter cited as Smyth, Confutatio.

11
catch, then, for Protestants was that they had to challenge the validity of monastic
vows without calling into question the validity of other kinds of divine promises such
as oaths. The thesis of this chapter is that such an enterprise was impossible. The
debate over monastic vows provided an ideological arsenal from which later sixteenth-
century Protestants and Catholics drew in order to justify the breaking of their oaths.

The Denial that Secular Priests Took Vows

One way later English Protestants sought to defend themselves against the
accusation of vow-breaking and maintain the validity of certain kinds of divine
promises while at the same time upholding the validity of clerical marriage was simply
to assert that secular priests did not actually take vows of chastity in England. This
argument was very convenient, but it conflicted with years of tradition. According to
canon law, every member of the secular clergy of the degree of subdeacon or higher
was supposed to make a promise of chastity to his bishop upon ordination.' During
the first half of the sixteenth century, everyone assumed that the secular clergy in
England followed this precept. The medieval monk Denis the Carthusian, for
example, claimed that all men promoted to the priesthood or to an inferior order
vowed and promised both outwardly and inwardly at their consecration to live
chastely.16 In the early English debates over clerical marriage, both Protestants like
Martin Bucer, William Turner, and Peter Martyr Vermigli and conservatives like
Stephen Gardiner and Richard Smyth took for granted that secular priests in England
made a vow of chastity.17 George Joye, while also assuming that seculars took vows

15
"Nullum facere subdiaconum presumant epicopi, nisi qui se uicturum caste promiserit: quia nullus
debet ad ministerium altaris accedere, nisi cuius castitas ante susceptum ministerium fuerit approbata";
C/C,D.28c. 1, Friedberg, 1:100. "Quandopresbiteri etdiaconesperparrochias constituuntur, oportet
eos professionem episcopo suo facere, ut caste et pure uiuant sub timore Dei, ut dum eos talis professio
obligat, uitae sanctae disciplinam retineant"; CIC, D. 28 c. 3, Friedberg, 1:101. It seems that deacons
were originally allowed to have wives if they protested during their ordination that they could not
remain celibate (CIC, D. 28, c. 8, Friedberg, 1:102-103), but a later canon (CIC, D. 31 c. 1, Friedberg,
1:111) specified that bishops were no longer allowed to ordain deacons unless they promised chastity.
16
Denis the Carthusian, The lyfe ofPrestes. .. . ([1533?]), sigs. B1V-B2V.
Martin Bucer, The gratulation of the mooste famous clerke M. Martin Bucer. . . And hys answere
vnto the two rafylinge epistles ofSteuen, Bisshoppe of Winchester, concerninge the vnmaried state of
preestes and cloysterars, wherein is euidently declared, that it is against the lawes of God. . . to refrain
from holye matrimonie ([1549]), sig. E2V; William Turner, The rescuynge of the romishefox other wyse
called the examination of the hunter deuised by Steuen Gardiner. . . . (Winchester [Bonn], [1545]), sigs.

78
in England, noted that Peter Lombard called these vows "vota tacita / dome or not
expressed vowes."
The first person to question whether secular priests in England actually took
vows of chastity was the Erasmian theologian Dr. John Redman. On December 17,
1547 the Convocation of the Clergy voted on a decree (eventually passed) that
condemned all canons, statutes, laws, or customs wherein the contract of marriage was
disallowed because of "any vow or promise of Priesthood Chastity or
Widdowhood."19 Dr. Redman was absent from the proceedings so Convocation
solicited his opinion in writing. Redman wrote that while he believed the Word of
God exhorted chastity for priests, priests in England were bound only by the canons of
the church "and not by any precept of God's worde; as in that they should be bound by
reason of any vowe, which (in as far as my conscience is) priestes in this churche of
England do not make."20 In 1549, the Protestant John Ponet incorporated this into his
argument for clerical marriage. Ponet claimed that the ordinal used by bishops in
England to consecrate priests did not contain the phrase "Accipe iugum castitatis"
(receive the yoke of chastity) but rather "Accipe iugem domini" (receive the yoke of
the Lord). Secular priests, then, never made a vow of chastity.
In 1554, the Catholic Thomas Martin responded to Ponet's agrument. Martin
averred that even though secular priests might not verbally express a vow at their
ordination, it was nonetheless attached to the priesthood. After a handful of examples
from the early church, Martin concluded: "althoughe there be neuer a woorde spoken
of the prieste or Deacon: yet if that he taketh the holy orders at the Bishopps handes,
he hath vowed & professed chastitie by the iudgement and sentence of this most
auncient counsel."22 In 1567, Matthew Parker refuted Martin's argument of
"tatiturnitie", agreeing with Ponet that there was no promise nor profession in the

M2v-M4r; Vermigli, De votis, 380, 418; Smyth, Confutatio, sigs. D4v-D5r.

1
Joye, The defence of the mariage ofpreists, sig. B7r.
19
Christ Church, Oxford, Wake MS. 306 (Records of Convocation), 81.
20
Parker, A defence of priestes manages, 268-269; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:697; Burnet, History of the
Reformation, 5:231; Gerald Bray (ed.), Records of Convocation (Woodbridge, Boydell, 2006), 7:296-
297.
21
John Ponet, A defence for mariage of priestes, sigs. D7r-D8r.
22
Martin,^ traictise, sig. 03 v .

79
ordination of an English secular Priest that suggested they vowed chastity. Even
Richard Smyth eventually admitted that English secular priests did not take vows.
Writing to Matthew Parker in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, Smyth expressed
regret for having written a book supporting clerical marriage: "Wold god, I had never
made it, becausse I toke theyn for my cheiff ground that priestes of Englande made a
vowe, when they were made, which I nowe perceave, is not true." So it appears that
English secular priests did not actually take an explicit vow of chastity.25 Protestants
exploited this fact to argue for clerical marriage in a way that did not advocate the

Parker, A defence ofpriestes manages, 181, 183-185.

24
CCCC, MS. 119, 109. This letter by Smyth must, however, be taken with a grain of salt. At this
time, Smyth was in trouble for his refusal to swear the Elizabethan oath of supremacy and was trying to
get into the good graces of Archbishop Parker. Accordingly, Smyth strove to convince Parker that he
was a good Protestant who repented of his past behavior. But this was most likely dissimulation, for at
his first opportunity, Smyth fled England and established himself as a staunch Roman Catholic
theologian in the Low Countries.
25
Other evidence confirms that English secular priests did not explicitly make verbal vows upon their
ordinations. No bishop's register in the sixteenth century that 1 have seen contains a reference to
secular priests vowing chastity, though the registers usually do indicate that priests took oaths of
canonical obedience and (after the Act of Supremacy) the oath of supremacy during their ordinations.
Moreover, Bishop John Fisher's register specifically noted vows of chastity in the profession of a
religious clergyman or a hermit, but again made no mention of them in the institutions of secular
priests; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Drb/A/r/1/13, Microfilm Z3 (John Fisher's Register),
fols. 78r' 162v, 179v-180'. The official legalization of clerical marriage in 1549 did not mention vows at
all. If secular priests had made a vow of chastity, one would expect some government propaganda
addressing the issue (like what was issued after the dissolution of the monasteries) so as not give cause
to the English people to break their vows in imitation; Henry Gee and William John Hardy (ed.),
Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London: MacMillan, 1896), 367-368. The Marian
Injunction which re-established clerical celibacy mentioned vows only of the religious clergy: "Item,
that every bishop, and all persons aforesaid, do foresee that they suffer not any religious man, having
solemnly professed chastity, to continue with his woman or wife; but that all such persons, after
deprivation of their benefice or ecclesiastical promotion, be also divorced every one from his said
woman, and due punishment otherwise taken for the offence therein"; Gee and Hardy, Documents
Illustrative, 382. Secular clergy were deprived for marrying "contrary to the state of their order and the
laudable custom of the Church"; Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, 38. The evidence from the
prosecutions of married priests under Mary is ambiguous. On one hand, Richard Karsen, late curate of
Bedington, confessed to Cardinal Pole that his marriage was "contrary to the estate of myne order,
decrees of the Churche and laudable Customes of the same," making no mention of any vow; Lambeth
Palace Library, Pole's Register, fols. 41v-42r. On the other hand, among Foxe's manuscripts exists
articles against William Wayne and other married priests that explicitly mention vows: "iuxtaque et
secundum sacres canones et conscituciones ac ordinaciones et laudabiles consuetudines ecclesiascicas
ab ipsa ecclia catholica et presertim ab ecclia latina et occientali relligiose pie et continue obseruatas
solemne votum castitatis et continencie fecistis et emisistis sicque fecit et emisit vestrum quilibet hoc
que fuit et est verum publicum notorium manifesteum periter et famolsum et ponimus ut supra"; BL
Harleian MS. 421, fols. 53r-54r. The evidence can be reconciled if we acknowledge that although vows
of chastity were probably not verbalized by English secular priests, it does appear that Thomas Martin
was right that most English people assumed they were nevertheless tacitly attached to the office of the
priesthood.

80
breaking of vows. But, of course, everyone acknowledged that religious clergy did
take vows of chastity, so English Protestants were not able to avoid the issue
completely. In the end, they, like their continental counterparts, had to argue that
monastic vows should be broken.

The Theological Attack on Vows and the Distinction between Oaths and Vows
The most radical Protestant attack against monastic vows condemned vows
because they were against the doctrine of justification by faith alone. To understand
this argument, one must comprehend Luther's teaching on faith and works. Luther
averred that everything not of faith is sin.26 "Faith alone is necessary" for salvation.27
Works flowed naturally from faith. Works that stemmed from counsels like chastity
were obviously not necessary for salvation, but what about works that stemmed from
precepts? "These works," Luther argued rhetorically, "are still commandments, just as
the fruits of righteousness, even though they are not necessary for the attainment of
righteousness which is of faith alone."28 Luther replied that we should still do the
works of the Ten Commandments, but freely, for no reward, only for the benefit and
advantage of our neighbor.29 We were not obliged to do these works to be justified.
Instead, resting confident that our justification came solely from the grace given
through faith in Christ's promises, we did these works out of a spirit of freedom.
Vows, however, were contrary to this freedom. Luther declared that vows are "not
faith, nor do they issue from faith, for what else is a vow but some kind of law."

The situation was slightly more complex for Reformed theologians like Peter
Martyr Vermigli and John Bale (though it is indeed a stretch to bestow on Bale the title
of theologian), for they accepted the famous third use of the law. Whereas Luther said
the law's only functions were to awaken us to the state of our sinfulness (theological

Martin Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows (1521), trans. James Atkinson, in
The Christian in Society I, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44 of Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1966), 273.
27
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 286.
28
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 298.
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 301.
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 309.
31
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 280.

81
use) and to restrain the wicked (civil use), theologians following in Zwingli's and
Calvin's footsteps claimed that the moral law was both a guide for the elect on how to
live and a spur to action.32 Although Vermigli and Bale held that believers fulfilled
the moral law out of the freedom and grace given through faith in Christ (not through
their own effort), the elect were still to a certain extent bound to do the deeds of the
moral law.33 Vermigli and Bale thus had to articulate how vows fit in with the moral
law. First, they maintained that the elect should not be bound or restrained to do the
acts of the moral law from vows. The elect already owed these acts to God without
vows. Indeed, Vermigli argued that since all power to fulfill the moral law came from
God in the first place, all our good works were already God's without a vow. Bale
wrote: "All the goodnesse we haue, is farre to lytle for that we already owe him for
our creacion and redempcyon. What wyll we than paye hym besydes our dewty . . . As
God is wholy ours in Christ without vowe, so are we hys wholly agayne without
vowe."35 Secondand more importantlyVermigli and Bale argued that vows were
part of the ceremonial law. Richard Smyth averred fervently that vows were binding
because they were part of the moral law.3 Conversely, Bale and Vermigli argued that

For Luther on the first use of the law, see Martin Luther, "Prefaces to the Old Testament," in Martin
Luther's Basic Theological Writings, 125-129. For Luther on the second use of the law, see Martin
Luther, On Secular Authority: how far does the Obedience owed to it extend? in Luther and Calvin on
Secular Authority, ed. Harro Hopfl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 9-14. For Luther's
rejection of the third use of the law, see David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings: From Geiler von
Kaysersberg to Theodore Beza, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 52. For the third use
of the law among Reformed theologians, see John Calvin, Institutes, bk. II, ch. 7, para. 12-14; Francois
Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New
York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1950), 198-201; Bernard M. G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the
Reformation (London: Longman, 1981), 183.
33
Vermigli, De votis, 239, 274.
34
"Asserui equidem, nee muto, sed ratum habeo, Vota Christianos minime decere: quia quum iam certo
intelligant, & se, & sua omnia pertinere ad Deum, debent absque Voto, & libere, non modo seipsos,
uerum etiam omnia quae habent in sua potestate, in honorem & gloriam eius impendere. Vnde si quis
uouerit, actum agit, quum id offerat Deo, quod iam illi debitum est, & obligatum"; Vermigli, De votis,
91.
35
Bale, Apology, sigs. U4v-U5r.
36
"Impudenter quoque inficians illud psalmi 75. Vouete, & reddite, ad nos Christianos quicquam
pertinere, sed ad Iudaeos tantum, & Iudaica uota: quasi uero uouere Deo quippian, caeremoniale
quiddam esset, ac Iudaeis peculiare, & non potius morale, pertinens ad Dei cultum, ac omnibus proinde
commune omnis aetatis, omnisque hominibus"; Smyth quoted in Vermigli, De votis, 302. See also: "ad
haec ergo vouenda nos inuitat, non praecipit vt voueamus, sed vt vota reddamus, vouere enim voluntati
consulitur, sed post voti promisione necessario redditio exigitur. Ideo non ait simpliciter vouete vel
nolite vouere, sed vouete & reddite, id est, si voueritis, reddite, alioque damnationem habent"; Smyth,
Confutatio, sig. H7V.

82
in the Old Testament, vows were part of Jewish ceremonial worship. Jews vowed to
sacrifice an animal or present some other kind of guilt offering. These sacrifices were
shadows of what was to come. When Christ offered himself as a once and final
sacrifice for our sins, vowslike all aspects of the Jewish ceremonial lawlost their
significance and relevance.37 The contention that vows were not part of the moral law
was proved to Vermigli and Bale by the fact that there were neither exhortations to,
nor examples of, vows in the New Testament.38 Since faith was founded upon the
Gospel (which was espoused primarily in the New Testament), and vows were not
found in the Gospel, vows were not from faith but from the law. And whatever was
not from faith was sin.39 Hence, because vows were part of the abrogated Jewish
ceremonial law, Vermigli and Bale maintained that they should not bind Christians.40
As such, although Lutheran and Reformed theologians disagreed about the
third use of the law, they both agreed that vows were acts of the law abrogated by the
coming of Christ that did not stem from faith. Indeed, the very nature of a vowthe
fact that it made an act obligatory or necessarywas contrary to the Evangelical
liberty of a Christian. Luther first used this line of reasoning to target vows of
chastity. For the sake of argument, Luther hypothetically granted that the Gospel
could be divided into two classes: precepts that were commanded to all and necessary
for salvation, and counsels that were exhorted to a few and not necessary for
salvation.41 Chastity, everyone agreed, was definitely a counsel. Had not the apostle
Paul specifically told the Corinthians that he had no commandment from the Lord

37
Vermigli, De votis, 52-53, 92, 303-305; Bale, Apology, sigs. B l ' - \ B8r, G7r-V, K6v-K7r.
38
This point was of course contended by Catholics. Both Smyth and Vermigli spilled considerable ink
in arguing whether vows were in the New Testament or not. See Smyth, Confutatio, sigs. F2r-F4r, H3V-
H6V; Vermigli, De votis, 10-51; Bale, Apology, C2v-C3r.
39
"Nam qui possunt fide impelli ad nuncupanda Vota, quum scriptura noua de huiuscemodi cultus
genere nee vllum verbum eis faciat? Et fidei ea est natura, vt absque uerbo Dei minime consistat. Vnde
confectaneum quoque est, hos homines uouendo peccare"; Vermigli, De votis, 62. See as well Bale,
Apology, sigs. M3v-M5r.
40
Indeed, Bale's opponent claimed that if he could show that vows were part of the moral law and not
the ceremonial law, Bale's entire argument would crumble. Bale agreed: "Take that grounde awaye (ye
saye) and than wyl al the rest fal, which is knylded therupon. And it is truth in dede I am glad we haue
broughte yow to that conclusyon"; Bale, Apology, sig. M4v.
41
In reality, Luther rejected this "sacrilegious and blasphemous" division of the gospel, but he was
willing temporarily to "degrade to their level;" Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic
Vows, 257-259. As we shall see below, Luther did not believe any commands were necessary for
salvation.

83
concerning virgins?42 But a vow transformed the status of chastity: "What was a
matter of choice before the vow, is a matter of obligation after the vow: it is no longer
a counsel but a precept."43 This transformation, wrote Luther, was wrong: "By divine
decree these things [counsels] are optional, but by human decree you make them
obligatory."44 Moreover, monks often violated God's true preceptit is better to
marry than to burnin order to keep this counsel (celibacy) that their vows have
wrongly transformed into a precept.45 What else was this but placing human law over
divine law? Peter Martyr Vermigli concurred with Luther's judgment: "And so you do
not suffer this Christian liberty to remain intact in every kind of men: you bring forth
the reason that by a vow, which you yourselves fabricate, the thing that ought to be
free by the decree of sacred letters is made necessary."46 Virginity, wrote Vermigli,
was like circumcision. Both were indifferent, but once either was made obligatory
by a vow or some other meansthey must be opposed, just as Paul opposed the
practice of mandatory circumcision among the Galatian Church. In a vow of
chastity, the offending aspect for Vermigli was less celibacy than the vow that made it
obligatory. Luther declared:
For the two statementsthat a vow is not necessary for righteousness and
salvation, and that a vow cannot be set aside without endangering
righteousness and salvation, are clearly at odds with each other. If a vow
cannot be set aside, it is necessary; if it is not a matter of necessity, it can be set
aside.49
Echoing Luther, John Bale wrote: "If we nowe do anythyng to God, it must come of a

42
1 Cor. 7:25.
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 280.
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 310.
45
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 262. Compare to Peter Martyr Vermigli's
accusation: "Vos autem facitis Deum, quae minus ad nostram perfectionem attinent, legis rigore
imperasse: ac ilia, quae nos perfectissime reddunt Euangelicos, non exegisse, sed reliquisse libera";
Vermigli, De votis, 113.
46
"Ideoque hanc libertatem Christianem non patimini saluam in omni hominum genere: & rationem
initis, ut per Votum, quod ipsi finxistis, necessarium efficiatur, quod sacrarum literarum decreto liberum
esse debuit"; Vermigli, De votis, 105.
47
Vermigli, De votis, 327.
8
"Docui enim licere illis qui caelibatum uouerunt, licet non recte egerint in voto nuncupando, caelibes
uiuere;" Vermigli, De votis, 327.
49
Vermigli, De votis, 297.

84
love in fredome, & not of a vowe or an othe in bondage." At the end of his Apology,
Bale concluded: "He doth no great act than, which offereth himselfe in bondage by
vowe. To a godly man are vowes nothynge necessary, for he serueth God in lyberte of
sprete."51 Peter Martyr agreed:
But they who vow things which were free now force them to be kept from the
law, and establish a precept. And therefore they do not depart from the burden
of the commandments, but rather entangle themselves more on purpose. . . .
Since they who do not want to do these kinds of good works unless they are
bound with a law declare themselves to be under the law rather than under
grace and faith.52
Hence, for Luther, Vermigli, and Bale, the fact that a vow bound or forced one to do an
action for God was what made monastic vows wrong.
Yet if Luther, Vermigli, and Bale criticized monastic vows for their binding
nature, how could they accept any kind of vows? For what else was a vow but a
binding promise made to God? At points in his treatise, Luther did indeed suggest that
all vows were wrong. For example, he wrote: "In fact, we are proving that evangelical
freedom forbids vows."53 Thomas More certainly thought that this was Luther's
conclusion. According to More, Luther taught:
theyr vowes coulde not bynde them. . . . He techeth also that no man or woman
ys bounded to kepe and obserue eny vowe that he hath made to god of
vyrgynyte / or wydowhed / or other chastyte out of maryage / but that they
maye mary at theyr lyberte theyr vowe not wythstondyng. . . . And sone after
he wrote yt no vowe could bynde eny man but that euery man may boldely
breke theym of hys owne hed.
In the end, however, Luther rejected this stance, arguing that only vows that were
totally and perpetually binding were wrong. As long as the action vowed was not
necessary and the vow could be set aside, Luther allowed it: "Indeed, you may take
and keep all the vows you like, as long as you do no violence to the freedom

Bale, Apology, sig. M8v.

51
Bale, Apology, sig. U5r.
52
"Sed qui uouent ea, quae libera erant, iam sibi obseruanda ex lege, ac praecepto constituunt: quare se
non exuunt onere mandatorum: sed potius de industria se magis impediunt. .. . Quoniam illi, qui nisi
lege astringantur, haec bonorum genera facere nolunt, se declarant sub lege potius esse, quam sub
gratia, & fide"; Vermigli, De votis, 239-240.
53
Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 309.
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, 165, 360, 366. Also see Idem., The Confutation ofTyndale's
Answer, 51,573,725.

85
commanded by God.. . . The vow to chastity and the whole monasticism, if godly,
ought necessarily to include the freedom to retract the vow."55 But was it really a vow
if the vower had the freedom to break it? Luther even admitted this: "At this point
someone will perhaps laugh, and deride a vow of this kind as ridiculous. They will
say it is some sort of a sham vow." Nevertheless, Luther considered some vows
were valuable if they were only temporarily binding. Even more ambiguous than
Luther was John Bale. Although Bale's argument clearly added up to a rejection of all
vows, Bale never expressly voiced this opinion. He never explicitly extended his
arguments outside of the context of his attack on monastic vows, despite the obvious
connotations. Vermigli was more consistent. He admitted that his arguments led to
the complete rejection of vowing even while allowing that many would not support his
conclusion: "From these things it is demonstrated, firstly that it does not belong to
Christian men to vow. Which point, although I consider it to apply in general, perhaps
not everyone will think thus, and neither will I resolve to oppose them very much."57
But if no vows should be perpetually binding since such vows offended
Evangelical liberty, were not other forms of binding promises also wrong? If one
should always be free to break a vow, should not that freedom also extend to oaths?
For example, could not marriage vows be broken, for they were also perpetually
binding promises? Luther replied, "The freedom of the gospel is valid only for
matters relating to the relationship between you and God, and not for matters between
you and your neighbors."58 Monastic vows, vows to go on pilgrimage, and similar
vows were wrong because they were binding promises made to God. They were thus
made coram deo, and they pertained to matters of salvation. Luther upheld marriage
vows and oaths, however, because they were binding,promises made to another

Luther, The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 311.

Luther, The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic, 312
57
"Ex quibus demonstratum est, primum ad Christianos homines non pertinere vt voueant. Quod licet
in vniuersum ergo intellexerim, & fortasse non omnes ita existiment, neque cum illis nimium pugnare
statuerim"; Vermigli, De votis, 378.
58
See a similar quotation in Luther's slightly earlier Theses of Vows: "Libertas Euangelii non tollit res et
corpora et debita hominum. . .. Coniunx non est deo coniunx, sed homini, similiter et servus homini
servus est. Voventes vero non homini, sed deo sese captivant et tradunt. Quos ipse tamen in eadem
re liberat et liberos esse iubet"; Luther, lvdicivm Martini Lvtheri de Votis [Themata de Votis] in D.
Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1889), 334.

86
person with God as witness. "Otherwise," Luther admitted, "it would even be
permissible to make and break all contracts agreements, and treaties at will."
Vermigli had to make a similar distinction. He rejected Richard Smyth's claim that
"first faith" in 1 Timothy 5 referred to a vow and held it instead to be a kind of exterior
pact, just as when soldiers bind themselves with a promise or oath to serve in the
military without making any vow. Like Luther, Vermigli stressed the social
importance of oaths: "Neither is it doubtful that oaths, stipulations, and promises from
which we are put under obligation to something are pleasing and useful to our
neighbors on account of civil necessities and for the sake of human life. For if these
bonds were not imposed, human society could not be preserved." Evangelical
liberty should not lead to social liberty.
Luther and Vermigli thus relied on the distinction between vows and oaths in
order to prevent their attack on monastic vows from carrying over into the realm of
oaths and other forms of social promises. They were, to an extent, justified in doing
this since vows and oaths were indeed not identical. According to most definitions, a
vow was an advisable, willing promise made to God for his honor or glory.62 A

Luther, The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 314.

60
"Ideo non potuit hoc uoto nuncupari: at de honestate uitae, atque conuersationis externae pactione
conueniebant cum Ecclesia: ut milites cum authorantur, promissione, uel sacramento militari ad haec,
uel ilia facienda, uel cauenda sese astringunt, quoad fuerint in ea militia: cum tame Votum nullum
edant"; Vermigli, De votis, 37.
61
"Neque dubium est iuramenta, stipulationes, & promissa, quibus ad aliqua obligamur, & grata, &
utilia esse proximis, ob ciuiles necessitates, & humanae uitae casus. Nisi enim haec vincula
intercederent, humana societas conseruari non posset"; Vermigli, De votis, 66.
62
Unlike an oath, there was not one simple, universally acknowledged definition of a vow in the late
medieval and early modern era. Peter Martyr Vermigli and John Bale both recognized that a vow had
many definitions. Some writers defined it as a passionate desire, others claimed it was an ardent prayer,
others believed it was a holy promise of some offering to be made to God, still others averred that it was
something consecrated to God from the obligation of a holy promise. Vermigli, De votis, 7. John Bale
included an extensive list of different scholastic definitions of a vows in his Apology. Bale, Apology,
sigs. C6r-C7r. After listing all these different definitions of a vow, Bale later defined a vow as "an
earnest promyse to do those thynges whyche God hath ordayned and commaunded"; Bale, Apology, sig.
D6r. Although not all scholastic definitions of a vow were identical, they were of course related. A
passionate desire would naturally lead to an ardent prayer, which in turn would lead to a holy promise.
Vermigli, De votis, 8. While not everyone agreed that the vow itself was the actual act of promising
something to God, making a promise to God was almost always part of the process of vowing. For
example, Richard Smyth claimed that according the oldest writers, a vow was "testificatio quaedam
promissionis spontaneaeque deo"; Smyth, Confutatio, sig. F4r. For most sixteenth-century writers,
however, a vow was the promise itself. The Carthusian monk Richard Whitford defined a vow as "an
acte of promyse / that dothe apperteyne vnto the due honour of god. for it is a promyse made vnto god
of those thynges that done by longe vnto his honour/ wherby a persone dothe bynde hymselfe vnto that

87
promissory oath was an advisable, willing promise made before God to men for the
glory and honor of God and for the assurance of men. Yet the problem with this
distinction was that beneath it lay another theological assumption that most Protestants
found distasteful: the idea of works of supererogationacts over and above the basic
requirements of a Christian life that earned the vower merit. This is clear in Thomas
Aquinas's explanation of the difference between an oath and a vow:
A vow and an oath are not the same; through a vow we direct an act to God's
honour, and thus what we do under vow becomes an act of religion. An oath,
on the other hand, shows reverence for the divine name by confirming a
promise, but what is confirmed by the oath does not for that reason become an
act of religion, because moral acts get their specific nature from their
purpose.63
In other words, an oath glorified God only by invoking and venerating God's name.
The actual behavior promised before God in an oath was not an act of worship. By
contrast, the condition or activity promised to God in a vow was of its own accord an
act of religion or worship. A vow was inherently pleasing to God because in a vow,
the condition or act vowed was made to God and not men.
Yet since Protestants rejected the whole concept of works of supererogation as
works righteousness, they sometimes tended to conflate the distinction between oaths
and vows. Some English Protestants assumed that oaths and valid vows were made to
God. For example, in his debate with Stephen Gardiner during his Marian heresy trial,
Dr. Taylor proclaimed: "an othe is an other maner of obligation made to God, then is a
Papisticall vow made to man."64 An anonymous Elizabethan treatise recognized that
it was "commonly obiected that a vow is an act of religion owed to God in which it is
both an oath and a sacrifice," but then went on to claim that vows of obedience to

thyng that byfore that vowe was in his owne libertis/ and he nothynge bounde there vnto"; Whitford,
Thepype or tonne of the lyfe of perfection, fol. 3 lv. The Marian Catholic Thomas Martin described a
vow as "a deliberate or aduised promes made vnto God, in thynges not commaunded of God for a better
entente and purpose, for or concernyng some thing to be done, or not to be done"; Martin, A Traictise,
sig. N4r. The Reformed Protestant Peter Martyr Vermigli gave a similar definition: "Votum non
incommode definiretur, quasi si, sancta, & spontanea promissio, qua homines Deo aliquid se oblaturos
obstringunt, quod ad eius cultum, & honorem facere, certo nouerint"; Vermigli, De votis, 9-10. Most
definitions thus specified that the promise made to God must be advisable or deliberate, voluntary or
willing, and that it must serve to the honor or glory of God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Il-II, q. 89, a. 5.
64
Foxe,^M(1583), 1522.

88
prelates were real vows because they were made to God while vows to saints to go on
pilgrimage and made to honor saints and thus were wrong.65 For some Protestants,
vows had a social component. Henry Bullinger stated: "To vow is to promise anything
with an oath solemnly, either for our own or for another's welfare."66 As such, the
distinction between a vow and an oath was thus not always apparent. Both vows and
oaths were sacred promises that followed the same rules. For example, Numbers 30
a passage that delineated the regulations for daughters, wives, and widows when
making sacred promisesemployed both the words vow (votum) and oath
(iuramentum). The Elizabethan Archbishop Matthew Parker wrote: "how strong so
ever the bonde of a vowe is: yet it followeth the nature of an oath, for thei both walke
after one sort, votum & iuramentum pari passu ambulant, saieth the Lawiers." As
such, the theological distinction between an oath and a vow was not emphasized in
England.

The English Protestant Attack on Monastic Vows as Unlawful

The lack of distinction between an oath and a vow among English Protestant
writers affected their attack on monastic vows. Because Luther and Vermigli
considered vows to be made only to God and oaths to be made only to men, they could
challenge all perpetual vows on the grounds that vows made necessary an action that
should be free. Yet wherever the line between vows and oaths was blurredwherever
an vow was perceived as having a human obligation or an oath a divine obligation
then it would be dangerous to attack vows based on their obligatory nature, for such an
attack would also call into question the other form of obligatory divine promise, oaths.
This must be why in England, no other Protestant reformers outside of Vermigli and
Bale challenged vows per se because of their binding nature. Indeed, Matthew Parker,
Robert Crowley, and the author of an anonymous manuscript on vows preserved in
Parker's library all explicitly stated that they upheld the taking and fulfilling of lawful

NA SP12/240, fol. 249r (Cal SP Dom, CCXL 145).

Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 8, 206.
Matthew Parker, A defence ofpriestes manages, 228.

89
vows. Instead of attacking vows in general and then drawing a qualitative
distinction between oaths and vows, most English Protestants focused their attack on
monastic vows and then drew a qualitative distinction between monastic vows and
lawful, binding vows. For example, the English Protestant Robert Crowley wrote:
"Take me not here (good master Shaxton) as one that regardeth not an oth or vow. But
take me as one that wyll nether keepe othe nor vowe, the perfourmance wherof is
against the commaundement of God."69 English Protestants attacked monastic vows
as unlawful based on the nature of the activity or condition vowed, the way it was
vowed, or the circumstances in which it was vowed.
The basis of the English Protestant attack on monastic vows as unlawful was
the axiom that unlawful vows should not be kept. Just as with oaths, the Biblical
examples of David's vow to slay Nabal, Jephthah's vow of sacrifice, Herod's vow to
grant any request of Herodias, or the Jews' vow to kill Paul showed that unlawful
vows should be broken. Again and again, Protestants averred that an unlawful vow
71

should not be kept. Catholics of course also recognized this principle. In his letter
against the Six Articles, Melanchthon accurately claimed: "Vowes that be wicked,
fayned, and impossible, are not to be kept. There is no doubt, but thys is the common
perswasion of all men touching vowes."72 But while Catholics also recognized that
vows against God's law were wrong, they maintained that monastic vows were in
accordance with God's law.73 So Protestants had to demonstrate the unlawfulness of
monastic vows.

8
Parker, A defence ofpriestes manages, 12; Crowley, The confutation of. xiii. articles, sig. G8V;
CCCC MS. 109, 103.
69
Crowley, The confutation of. xiii. articles, sig. H4r.
70
1 Sam. 25; Judg. 11; Matt. 14; Mark 6; Acts 23:12-22. These same examples were often quoted in
justification of breaking evil oaths, thereby further blurring the lines between an oath and a vow. For
example, in his Christen exhortacion, Bale spoke of David's "oath" and Herod's "oath," but in his Yet a
course, Bale mentioned Herod's "vow" and David's "vow"; Bale, Christen exhortacion, sig. A7v; Bale,
Yet a course at the Romyshefoxe, fol. 73v.
71
See for example: Hooper, Early Writings, 488-489; Joye, George, The defence of the Mariage of
Preists, sig. C5r; Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 8, 207; CCCC MS. 109, 115; Philipp Melanchthon, A
very godly defense, full oflerning, defending the mariage ofpreistes, gathered by Philip Melancthon, &
sent vnto the kyng of Englond, Henry the aight, translated out oflatyne into englishe, by Lewes
Beuchame (Lipse [Antwerp], [1541]), sig. B8r; Bale, Apology, sigs. F7V, H3V, 03 v .
72
Foxe, ^ M ( 1583), 1175.
73
Smyth, Confutatio, sig. H2V.

90
 The first way they did this was by focusing on the three things vowed when
making a religious profession: chastity, obedience, and poverty. English Protestants
argued that vows of chastity were unlawful because God had ordained that it was
better to marry than to burn.74 Priests and monks who took a vow of chastity (which
God had not ordained) transgressed his command when they elected to burn with lust
rather than marry. Their vow was thus against God's law since fulfilling it meant
transgressing God's ordinance. Moreover, was this idea not behind Paul's
exhortation to Timothy to forbid widows under the age of sixty from receiving church
aid?76 Protestants claimed that vows of obedience to a monastic rule and ruler were
against God's law because they caused vowers to place their obedience to a monastic
rule and ruler above their obedience to their parents, husbands, and secular lords.
They would thus disobey the superiors to whom God's Word had explicitly
77

commanded submission in deference to a kind of superior unmentioned in Scripture.

Vows of poverty, according to Protestants, were feigned. They were an excuse to be

74
1 Cor. 7:9.
Bale, Apology, sig. B3V; [Martin Luther], An exposition in to the seventh chapter of the first epistle to
the Corinthians [trans. William Roy], included in Erasmus, An exhortation to the diligent studye of
scripture. ... ([Antwerp], [1529]), sig. B3 r v ; Melancthon, A very godly defense, sig. B7r"v; Ponet, A
defence for mariage ofpriestes, sig. F3r_v; Bullinger, Decades, PS vol. 7, 252.
7
Widows that received church aid were expected to remain celibate. Paul claimed that the sensual
desires of younger widows would cause them to want to marry and to break their "first pledge"; 1 Tim.
5: 9-15. This was a key passage in the debate over monastic vows. Protestants interpreted this as
commanding that no one under sixty should take a vow of celibacy since they would most likely break
it. Catholics focused on Paul's statement that the widows "brought judgment upon themselves" for
breaking their first pledge, thereby claiming that the breaking of a vow of celibacy brought damnation
upon the vow breaker. In response, some Protestants argued that "first pledge" did not refer to a vow of
celibacy but rather to an initial profession of Christianity or a baptism promise. Vermigli, De votis, 33-
48; Smyth, Confutatio, sigs. H2V-H6V, 3IV; Melanchthon, A very godly defense, sig D5 r v ; Ponet, A
defence for mariage ofpriestes, sigs. El r -E2 v ; Martin, A traictise, sigs. CC2r-CC3v; CCCC MS. 109,
117-119; Joye, The defence of the mariage ofpreists, sig. B3 r v ; Helen Parish, Clerical Marriage and the
English Reformation: Precedent, Policy, and Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 147-148; J. Andreas
Lowe, Richard Smyth and the Language of Orthodoxy: Re-Imagining Tudor Catholic Polemicism
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 164-168.
77
Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 10, 519; Tyndale, Works of the English Reformers, 1:39; Henricus
Bomelius, The summe of the holye scripture and ordinarye of the Christen teachyng, the true Christen
faithe, by the whiche we be all iustified. And of the verture ofbaptesme, after the teaching of the
Gospel! and of the Apostles, with an informacyon howe all estatesshulde lyve accordynge to the
Gospell, [trans. Simon Fish] ([Antwerp, [1529]), sig. J4 rv ; Vermigli, De votis, 61. Of course, English
Protestants were very careful to say that oaths of obedience to one's sovereign were perfectly legit. For
more on this issue, see chapter three.

91
lazy, idle, and well-fed. In these arguments, then, the key was not the vow itself but
the nature of the thing vowed.
English Protestants also specifically attacked the vow of chastity because of its
impossible nature. The basis of this claim was the oft-cited maxim "he that voweth
must be such a one as is able to pay and satisfy his vow."79 This maxim had two
ramifications. Following Numbers 30, both Catholics and Protestants affirmed that
people in positions of social dependency could vow only if their social masters
allowed the vow. The vow of an unmarried daughter, wife, or monk was valid only if
their respective father, husband, or superior supported the vow, for otherwise the vow
was not in the inferior's power to fulfill.80 As canon law stated, "An oath sworn in
prejudice of the right of a superior is not valid."81 In addition to possessing the
authority to fulfill the vow, the vower must also have the ability to fulfill his vow. If
the vow became impossible, the vower was discharged of his or her obligation, though
if the impossibility of the vow stemmed from the vower's own actions, he or she had
to do penance for the evil vow.82 Protestants applied this logic by repeatedly asserting
that chastity was a state usually not within man's power to fulfill. Basing their
argument on 1 Corinthians 7:7-9, they claimed that chastity was a special gift from
God not granted to many people.83 Robert Barnes typically claimed: "It is as much in
our power to vowe chastitie, and to keepe it, if wee haue not the gift of God, as it is to
vowe that wee wyll neyther hunger nor thyrst: for they are both inclinations of nature,

Tyndale, Works of the English Reformers, 1:43-46; Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol 10., 519; Bomelius,
The summe of the holye scripture, sig. J4r v.
79
Hooper, Early Writings, 488-489.
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Il-II, q. 88, a. 8-9.
81
CIC, X.2.24.19, Friedberg, 2:366.
82
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 88, a. 3.
83
"This I saye of faveour / not of commaundement. For I wolde that all men were as 1 mysilfe am: but
every man hath his proper gifte off god / won after this manner / a nother after that. 1 saye vnto the
vnmaried men / and widdowes: it is good for them yf they abyde even as I do: but and yf they cannot
abstayne / let them mary For it is better to Mary then to bourne"; 1 Cor. 7:7-9, Tyndales New Testament
of 1526. The Lollard John Purvey anticipated the argument that chastity was a gift of God and therefore
could not be vowed. See [Thomas Netter of Walden?], Fasciculi zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wyclif
cum tritico, ed. Walter Waddington Shirley (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts,
1858), 404-405. For typical English Protestant espousals of this argument, see Tyndale, Works of the
English Reformers, 1:38, 47; Bale, Apology, sigs. E2v-E3r; Joye, The defence of the mariage ofpreists,
sigs. C5v-C6r; Parish, Clerical Marriage, 145-146. For a similar example from Luther, see Luther, The
Estate of Marriage [1522], trans. Walther I. Brandt, in The Christian in Society II, vol. 45 of Luther s
Works, ed. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962), 19.

92
implanted of God." Religious conservatives like Richard Smyth accepted that
chastity was a gift from God, but they did not see why that should prevent one from
vowing it. Did not all Christians vow to flee sin at their baptism, another activity that
was clearly outside of human power without God's grace? Smyth agreed that vows
should be within one's power to fulfill, but he and other Catholics maintained that
chastity could be attained through prayer. God would grant this gift if the vower
prayed hard enough. Thus, the lawfulness of the vow of chastity depended on
whether the writer viewed it to be within man's power to fulfill.
In addition to exploring the nature of the thing vowed, English Protestants
contended that certain vows were unlawful because of the way in which they were
made. First, English Protestants echoed continental Protestants in their claim that all
Catholic vows, from monastic vows to vows to saints to go on pilgrimage, were
unlawful because they were made for earning merit. Since justification by faith alone
did away with the concept of works of supererogation, Protestants attacked Catholic
vows as a form of works righteousness and even idolatry.87 The Wittenberg Articles
of 1536 summarized this position well:
For we consider that those opinions are godless which hold that monastic vows
merit the remission of sins and eternal life, or that they constitute righteousness
or Christian perfection. And although proper vows should be kept,
nevertheless monastic vows are illicit if they are made under the false
conviction that those works which have been invented without God's command
are not matters of indifference, but worship of God, and that they merit
remission of sins and eternal life. Therefore they are vows (that are) not
binding.88
Vows, counseled Tyndale, should be made only to tame one's members or to help to

Robert Barnes, That by Gods laws it is lawfullfor Priestes that hath not the gift ofchastiie to marry
wives, in The whole workes ofW. Tyndall, John Frith, and Doct. Barnes, three worth martyrs, and
principall teachers of this Churche ofEnglande (1573), 323.
85
Vermigli, De votis, 64-65, 273.
86
Smyth, Confutatio, sigs. C3r'v, G5V; Whitford, Thepype or tonne of the lyfe ofperfection, fol. 42r;
Martin, A traictise, sig. Z4r; Parish, Clerical Marriage, 144-145.
87
For English recapitulations of this argument see CCCC MS. 109, 131; Tyndale, Works of the English
Reformers, 1:39, 42-43, 415; Vermigli, De votis, 63, 107; Parish, Clerical Marriage, 143-144. For the
association of vows with idolatry, see Melanchthon, A very godly defense, sig. D6 rv ; Parish, Clerical
Marriage, 151-158.
88
Gerald Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1994), 155.

93
edify one's neighbor. Vows made for any other reasons were unlawful. In arguing
that monastic vows were a form of works righteousness against faith, English
Protestants were making a theological argument similar to that of Luther and Vermigli,
but English Protestants did not extend the argument as far as Luther and Vermigli did.
English Protestants simply argued that monastic vows were unlawful and against faith
because they were made for earning salvation. Luther and Vermigli certainly agreed
with that statement, but they also maintained that all perpetual vows were against faith
because the binding nature of the vow was contrary to Evangelical liberty, a point
absent from all English arguments except those of Bale. In England, the theological
emphasis was on how the vow was made, not the obligatory nature of the vow itself.
The second way in which English Protestants attacked monastic vows by
emphasizing the way in which they were made was by highlighting the conditional
nature of monastic vows. Because unlawful oaths or vows did not bind, canon law
specified that a general oath ought to be understood as having been made with the
following condition attached: so long as it is not against the law nor obliges others to
act against the law.90 Thomas Wygenhale had expanded on this idea, stating that
promises understood with a tacit condition could be justly revoked if that condition
were not met.91 English Protestants exploited this canon to argue that monastic vows
were made conditionally. William Tyndale counseled his readers to vow chastity only
with the condition that thou "wilt continue chaste so long as God giveth thee that gift,
and as long as neither thine own necessity, neither charity toward thy neighbour, nor
the authority of them under whose power those art, drive thee unto the contrary."
Indeed, Tyndale said that all vows should be interpreted with these conditions, even
"though thou madest no mention of them at the making of thy vow." Lewes
Beuchame's translation of Melanchthon contended that some priests had taken
Tyndale's advice to heart, vowing chastity with the phrase: "I promise chastite so farre

Tyndale, Works of the English Reformers, 1:43, 48-49.

90
"Iuramentum generale debet ita intelligi, si fieri potest, ut non obviet iuri; alias tanquam temerarium
non obligat contra iuris observantiam"; CIC, X.2.24.21, Friedberg, 2:367.
91
CUL MS. Ii. i. 39, fol. 29v.
92
Tyndale, Works of the English Reformers, 1:48.
Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas More, in Works of the English Reformers, 2:197.

94
as mans fraylte permitteth me." "These men," continued Melanchthon, "dowtlesse
promise not themselues neuer to marye: for this is but a promise vpon a condicion
which condicion not graunted/ the vowe is voyd."94 George Joye took it one step
further, claiming "There is noman" who when becoming a priest vowed "in clere
wordes simply virginal chastite . . . But vpon this condicion/ quantum permiserit
humana fragilitas/ that is to saye/1 vowe chastite as farre as mans fraylte will suffer
me/ and no farther do I vowe."95 Ponet expanded by citing James 4 (supplemented
with a few examples from Romans 15 and John 13) in support of the contention that
"If God wyll, if I lyue, if I can, be included in all vowes and othes, so that all suche as
can iustly challenge the exception, maie not be impeached as breakers of their vowe or
bargain."96 Even if the condition was not voiced, it was attached to all Christian
vows, either "expressed or included."97 Parker reiterated that even the blindest of
lawyers and schoolmen held that in every vow "this generall condition is implied and
no

annexed.'" Some English Protestants thus claimed that all lawful vows were made
conditionally. If God did not will it, or if the vower was not able, he was therefore
justly allowed to transgress his vow since the conditions implied in his vow were not
met.
After exploring the nature of the thing vowed and the way the vow was made,
English Protestants attacked monastic vows as unlawful because of the circumstances
in which they were made. The most common deployment of this argument was the
claim that the vow of chastity was made in ignorance of one's gift. The basis of this
argument was the well-established principle (taken from Jeremiah 4:2) that for a
promise to be lawful and in accordance with judgment, the promisor had to have
Melanchthon, A very godly defense, sig. B6V. For a similar quotation by Luther, see Luther, The
Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, 337.
5
Joye, The defence of the mariage ofpreists, sig. B7r~v. My italics.
96
Ponet, A defence for mariage ofpriestes, sigs. E4r-E5r, quotation from sig. E5r. James 4 read: "Go to
nowe ye that sayez to daye and to morowe let vs go into soche a citie and continue there a yeare and
beye / and sell / and wynne: and yet cannot tell what shall happen to morowe. For what thinge is youre
lyfe? Hit is even a vapoure that apereth for a lytell tyme / and then vanyssheth awaye: For that ye ought
to saye: yff the lorde will and yf we live/let vs do this or thatt"; Tyndale's New Testament of 1526. The
example from Romans 15 was Paul's promise to visit the Romans when traveling through Spain. John
13 was Peter's promise to Jesus that he would never allow Jesus to wash his feet. Ponet claimed that
both of these promises contained implicit conditions.
Ponet, A defence for mariage ofpriestes, sig. F6V.
98
Parker, A defence ofpriestes manages, 149. My italics.

95
knowledge of the matter promised. English Protestants maintained that even if a
person received the special gift of chastity from God, the recipient did not know for
certain or for how long the gift had been granted. Those who vowed chastity were
therefore ignorant of their ability to remain chaste throughout their entire lives. It
logically followed that a vow made in ignorance was against judgment and should be
broken:
That vowe therfore is made vnaduysedly (of what age so euer the persone be)
which is made without good aduyement knowledge or consyderacion of his
owne power and strengthe to performe it: and so for his owne weaknes is
compelled to breke it / of whiche kynde of vowes ar al the wyueless and
howsbondlesse vowes of al preistes and nonnes/ and of all suche as haue not
the gift to lyue sole."
And monastic vows were always made in ignorance because they lasted for the
vower's entire life and yet no one could know whether he or she would always have
the gift of chastity.100 For example, when a slave married believing himself to be free
but discovered at a later time that he was still a slave, his marriage was immediately
broken. The same logic should apply to monastic vows, claimed Vermigli. Even if the
promise appeared just at the time of the vow, once the vower found out that the vow
had been unjustly made or realized a change in circumstances has subsequently
rendered the vow unjust, it should break it.101 The claim that vows made in ignorance
were not binding was therefore key to the Protestant attack on monastic vows.
Richard Smyth responded to this argument by claiming that the Church did not allow
professing clergy to vow until after they had tested their strength, thereby also

Joye, The defence of the manage ofpreists, sig. B2r"v. See the following similar statements by other
Protestants: Luther, An exposition in to the seventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, sig.
B2r; Bale, Apology, sigs. Dl v -D2 r ; CCCC MS. 109, 113.
100
The anonymous Protestant writer of the manuscript treatise on vows in the Parker Library
particularly attacked monastic vows for their perpetual nature: "lam de votis, que similia monasticis
sunt, quibus se alij ad perpetuam abdicationem coniugij, alij ad alias abstinentias vel actiones
astringunt, etiam si se nulli singulari hominum imperio addicant, vt sit in monastice, idem sentimus,
Nam et his votis quoniam ad ea homines in omnem etatem obligantur, ad que non habent diuinam
vocationem"; CCCC MS. 109, 101. My italics. Also see Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on
Monastic Vows, 330; Vermigli, De votis, 54-55, 340.
101
"Et duo in hoc genere promissionum mala simul concurrunt, quas illas irritas faciunt, primum est
ignoratio, qua non animaduertimus id, quod pollicemur, aut esse tunc iniustum, aut mutatis rebus
iniustum fieri. Atque hoc genus ignorationis tanti est in matrimonio contrahendo, vt, si, qui putabatur
liber, postea deprehendatur seruus, matrimonium statim irritum fiat. Quare non mirum si accidat idem
in voto"; Vermigli, De votis, 310.

96
admitting that a vow made in ignorance of one's power was of dubious legality.
The claim that a vow made in ignorance was not binding naturally led to
another contention central to the Protestant attack on monastic vows: that a forced vow
was not a valid vow. Vermigli wrote:
I certainly accept. .. that when we promise or vow both knowledge of the
nature of the vow and knowledge of our strength is required. Anyone who
does not know if what he vows pertains to the honor of God and the salvation
of his soul is ignorant and thus does not vow willingly. Since to be willing . . .
we must have knowledge.103
As with a vow made in ignorance, the claim that a promise secured through force or
intimidation was invalid had precedent. Medieval canon law explained that the church
was accustomed to absolve people from oaths extorted by fear, and if someone broke
an oath obtained by force, the transgressor (even if he had not been formally absolved
from his oath) was not to be punished as a mortal sinner.104 A vow, by definition, had
to be voluntary, for a work of supererogation would not gain the doer any merit if not
done willingly. When a group of nuns at Romsey Abbey professed their vows in
1534, they specifically mentioned that they were not forced or coerced in any way.'
The 1539 Act of Parliament that allowed former monks to purchase land stated that
they could not marry unless they could prove "by witnes or other laufull meanes some
unlaufull cohercion or compulsion done to them or any of them for makinge of any
suche vowe or contrayninge them to remayne in their Religion."107
Both Protestants and Catholic thus agreed that a vow made unwillingly under

" "Nempe nee hinc permitti, ut quis uoueat, antequam dicat, se explorasse uires suas, ac profiteatur
nihil dubitare, se posses quod uouerite, Deo bona fide praestare"; Smyth quoted in Vermigli, De votis,
364-365.
0
"Quod ego accepi, minime dubito pios lectores facile daturos: nempe quae ultro promittimus, aut
uouemus, iustam notitiam requirere, tam naturae uoti, quam nostrarum uirium. Si enim quis nesciat, an
ad honorem Dei vergat, & ad salutem suam faciat, quod pollicetur, idemque ignoret, an queat praestare
quod promittit, non promisit uolens. Quandoquidem uoluntarium, ut docui, testibus uel ipsis
philosophis, requirit notitiam"; Vermigli, De votis, 322.
104
CIC, X.2.24.15, Friedberg, 2:364.
105
Carpenter, Destructorium vicorium, sig. G4r; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 88, a. 2; Parish,
Clerical Marriage, 139-141.
106
"perpetuam castitatem vouentes, asserentesque quod sunt immunes ab omni contractu matrimoniali
ac insuper quod neque vi metu dolo aut fraude ad premissa faciendum sunt inducte neque blandis aut
ausperis dictis seu factis parentorum [sic] suorum aut alterius persone secularis aut regularis
cuiuscumque sunt coacte"; Registra Stephani Gardiner et Johannis Poynet, 39.
107
Statutes of the Realm, 31 Hen. 8, c. 6, 3:725.

97
compulsion was invalid. In opposition to Catholics, however, English Protestants
argued that monastic vows were forced. Robert Barnes declared that the pope
compelled his priests to vow chastity.10B William Turner deduced that since God
decreed that there must be priests and the pope (or king, in this case) decreed that
priests must take vows of chastity, these vows were not voluntary. George Joye
averred that no vow was free that was "so intricately and vngodly wrapped in another
thinge and ther to so wykedly annexed that whoso wil receyue the one/ he shalbe
stinged with the tother agenst his wyll."110 The author of an anonymous manuscript
treatise in defense of the Reformation admitted that if a vow of chastity was made
freely it was binding. The problem, the author continued, was that only each
individual's conscience could judge whether the person vowed freely or vowed
because the vow was required of all ministers. Since no outward proofs would allow
men to ascertain whether a particular priest's vow was free or compelled, priests
should be allowed to marry.''' Thus, Protestants appealed to the axiom that a forced
or unwilling vow was not binding in order to demonstrate the unlawfulness of
monastic vows.' 12
In addition to vows taken in ignorance or under compulsion, the final
circumstance that Protestants claimed would invalidate a vow was when one's vow
conflicted with an established lawful vow or promise. If one vow contradicted another
vow made earlier, one vow would have to be broken in order to keep the other. The
vow breaker could then claim he broke his vow because he needed to keep a higher,
more binding vow. The most common application of this reasoning by Protestants
was the contention that one's baptism vow took precedence over the subsequent
profession of monastic vows. Simon Fish's translation of Henricus Bomelius's The
summe of the holye scripture read: "All be it that no monke can promyse more then he
hath promysed at the baptesme. And we be moche more bounde vnto oure promyse

lus
Barnes, That by Gods laws, 316, 322.
109
Turner, The rescuynge of the romishefox, sigs. M3V-N1V.
110
Joye, The defence of the manage ofpreists, sigs. C3v-C4r.
111
NA SP6/3, fols. 78v-79r(APXIV (i) 376 no. 3).
112
For a more detailed summary of Protestant claims that vows of chastity were forced and of the
Catholic rebuttal, see Parish, Clerical Marriage, 139-142.

98
made at the baptesme / then [ ] eny religious vnto his professyon. For we make no
promyse vnto man/ but vnto god."113 Even though godparents made the baptism
promise on the infant's behalf, the promise to forsake the devil, the world, and the
lusts of the flesh, to believe all the articles of the Christian faith, and to keep God's
commandments was still binding. When monks and nuns initially made their
profession, they thought that it would help them to keep their baptism promise. When
they realized their monastic vows actually impeded the keeping of their baptism
promise, it was better to reject their monastic vows in order to fulfill their higher
obligation.'15 The anonymous author of the manuscript on vows now found in
Matthew Parker's papers agreed, arguing that a baptism vow was before all other
vows.116 In 1531, the Evangelical James Bainham also cited this argument when
asked in his interrogation what he thought of vows. U1 Indeed, this claim became so
common that the Council of Trent explicitly rejected the idea that one's baptism vow
1 1&

invalidated subsequent vows. Along with ignorance and compulsion, the existence
of a prior vow of greater significance was an extenuating circumstance that, according
to Protestants, made monastic vows unlawful and invalid.
In sum, the majority of English Protestant opinion did not attack monastic
vows because, as perpetually binding promises, they violated Evangelical liberty but
because the three specific vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty were unlawful.
Protestants argued that the nature of the thing vowed, the way that it was vowed (to
earn merit or conditionally), or the circumstances in which it was vowed (in ignorance,
through force, or in derogation of a previous, higher vow) were the determining
factors in making a vow unlawful. The implication in all these arguments was that any
vow or promise that was lawful and taken properly was indeed binding. Protestant
13
Bomelius, The summe of the holye scripture, sig. B7r.
114
Bomelius, The summe of the holye scripture, sigs. B7v-B8r. For the actual content of what was
promised during a sixteenth-century baptism, see Ketley, The Two Liturgies, 112, 121.
115
Bomelius, The summe of holye scripture, sig. I7V.
,16
CCCCMS. 109, 106.
117
Foxe,^M(1583), 1028.
1,8
"If anyone says that the remembrance of the baptism received is to be so impressed on men that they
may understand that all the vows made after baptism are void in virtue of the promise already made in
that baptism, as if by those vows they detracted from the faith which they professed and from the
baptism itself, let him be anathema"; H. J. Schroeder (ed.), Canon and Decrees of the Council of Trent
(St. Louis: B. Herder, 1941), 54.

99
writers hoped that this would safeguard the power of oaths, especially the oaths
imposed in the English Reformation.

Ramifications
The debate over monastic vows was simultaneous to the flurry of state oaths
tendered (and eventually broken) in sixteenth-century England. Despite the efforts of
most English Protestants to disprove their reputation as vow-breakers and maintain the
binding nature of oaths, the Protestant attack on monastic vows provided an
ideological framework upon which those wanting to break their oaths could draw. The
relationship was not a direct one. The condemnation of monastic vows did not cause
Englishmen to break their oaths. But the debate on monastic vows did propagate and
popularize a discourse which could, with a little manipulation, be used to justify and
legitimize the breaking of oaths. One simply had to transfer and apply the logic
Protestants employed to attack monastic vows to the oaths of the English Reformation.
Because oaths and vows were similar forms of divine promises that followed the same
rules on the ground, this transference was not difficult. Furthermore, the arguments
employed by Protestants against monastic vows were themselves based on canon law
principles of oaths. The fact that Protestants applied these established principles in a
novel way to monastic vowsa way most canonists would have rejectedfreed these
arguments from their specific context. If Protestants could lift general principles on
oaths from canon law and apply them to monastic vows, could not others lift these
principles from the specific context of monastic vows and apply them to oaths of
obedience or allegiance? The rest of this chapter will argue that the Protestant
discourse against monastic vows could easily be, and indeed was, adapted to apply to
the oaths of the English Reformation.
The argument that vows that were not in one's power to keep should be
discarded had potential to undermine the oaths of sixteenth-century England. First,
the question of whether it was in one's authority to make a vow was relevant. If
daughters, wives, or servants could not make a binding promise without the consent of
their respective father, husband, or master, could subjects make an oath to a foreign

100
power without the consent of their sovereign? After all, the sovereign was the father
and master of the realm; his subjects were subordinate to him in same way as wives
and children were subordinate to the head of the family. In fact, Henry VIII's attack
on the episcopal oath on canonical obedience to the pope meant that this issue gained
prominence in the early 1530s. Second, the claim that conditions might change
which could prevent an individual from fulfilling his or her vow was of obvious
consequence to sixteenth-century England. Did, for example, the changes
accompanying the Marian counter-reformation release bishops from the obligations to
which they swore in the Henrician oath of supremacy because the oath was no longer
in their power to fulfill? What was in one's power to fulfill was a highly ambiguous
area. Finally, the claim that vows sworn in ignorance of one's power or lacking
knowledge were wrong was picked up and modified by the Puritan opponents of the
ex officio oath in the later sixteenth century. They contended that they could not
lawfully swear to answer truthfully all questions that would be offered when they were
ignorant of the content of the questions.120 Although perhaps not as overtly as other
Protestant arguments against monastic vows, the argument that vows not in one's
power must be broken also entered into the ideological discourse used to validate the
breaking of an offending oath.
A more obviously subversive argument in sixteenth-century England was the
claim that since vows of chastity were forced or not made willingly, they were not
binding. It required very little imagination to extend this argument to the oath of
supremacy. This is especially clear when we consider William Turner's articulation of
this argument. Turner surmised that just as poor peasants who must cross a bridge in
order to sell their goods at a market had no choice but to vow payment of an
unexpected toll suddenly demanded, so those whom God called to the priesthood had
no choice but to vow chastity since it was attached to the office of the priesthood. Yet
the person Turner claimed commanded the vow to be attached to the priesthood was
not the pope but the king.121 Turner provided another metaphor as well. On the brink

1,9
See chapter three of this dissertation.
120
See chapter ten of this dissertation.
121
Turner, The rescuynge of the romishe fox, sigs. M3r-M4r.

101
of starvation, a besieged city finally surrendered. The opposing captain gave the city
an ultimatum: either one hundred men of the city had to swear to be his bondsmen, or
his army would slaughter all the inhabitants of the city. The city chose the former
option, but was this really a choice? Was "theyr one among al thes that can chuse but
he must be a bondman? Non at all/ so can no more the prestes of Englond auoyd the
vow of chastite?"122 The similarities between the oaths of supremacy and Turner's
analogies are striking. After all, the oath of supremacy was a promise attached to all
religious and political offices commanded by the king wherein the penalty for refusal,
as the examples of John Fisher and Thomas More illustrate, was death.123 Turner of
course did not intend his argument to be applied to the oath of supremacy, but his
analogies demonstrated how simple it would be to apply the claim that a forced
promise did not bind to the oath of supremacy.,24 Indeed, as the sixteenth century
progressed, Protestants undoubtedly noticed the subversive potential of this argument.
Richard Cosin, for example, in 1593 rejected Tyndale's claim that a superior could
never compel or force an inferior to swear an oath. Cosin admitted that Tyndale's
doctrine was generally good, but maintained that "his iudgement in this matter of
oaths (though otherwise a godly martyr) is much lightened." By the start of the
seventeenth century, John Downame would claim that unless an oath was
unambiguously evil, a forced oath still bound the conscience of the swearer. This was
because the oath was never completely forced; the swearer always consented to some
degree in every oath.126 Christopher White (another seventeenth-century Protestant)

122
Turner, The rescuynge of the romishe fox, sig. Nl r .
123
Legally, the refusal of the oath was not declared treason until the 1536 Act Extinguishing the
Authority of the Bishop of Rome. Fisher and More were imprisoned for refusing the oath of succession
and officially executed not for refusing the oath of supremacy but for actively denying Henry's
supremacy. As we shall see, however, this was simply subtle legal manipulation on the part of the
crown. If Fisher or More had sworn the oath of succession or supremacy, they would not have been
imprisoned or executed.
124
It may also be observed that canon law defined an oath extorted through fear (which was not
binding) as one taken "unwillingly on behalf of one's life and the keeping of his things" (inviti pro vita
et rebus servandis); C1C, X.2.24.15, Friedberg, 2:364. This could easily be applied to the oath of
supremacy as well.
125
Richard Cosin, An apologiefor sundrieproceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical!, part 3, 174.
126
"howsoeuer wee doe not with absolute consent of will, take such an oath, yet wee cannot be said to
haue sworne vnwillingly, or against our wils; seeing we will it though not absolutely and simply, yet
accidentally, and conditionally, for the safeguard of our liues, and for the auoiding of a greater euill";
Downame, Foure treatises, 60.

102
agreed, arguing that oaths extorted through force still bound one's conscience, even if
they might not be binding in all courts.127 The claim that a vow extorted through fear
or force was not binding thus opened up a Pandora's Box in an era of prolific state
oaths.
The argument that vows of chastity should be and were taken conditionally
also had a corollary in the practice of oath-taking, for the practice of conditional
swearing was extremely common in sixteenth-century England. When faced with an
oath or set of articles offensive to one's conscience, a frequent response was to swear
or subscribe with a vocal or written condition that nullified the objectionable parts of
the oath or articles. Thomas Cranmer, John Fisher, Stephen Gardiner, and Edmond
Bonner all employed this technique.128 As long as the person who tendered the oath
accepted the conditional response (and they usually did not), swearing conditionally
seems to have been accepted as a suitable way to salve one's conscience. The
problem, however, arose when the condition was unexpressed. Tyndale, Ponet, and
Parker argued that vows of chastity were taken conditionally even if the condition was
not voiced but only implied. This was perhaps permissible if everyone knew the
condition was implied. But once the unexpressed condition was known only to the
swearer and not to the person tendering the oath, the practice became mental
reservation, a form of swearing vehemently decried by English Protestants. Historians
traditionally have depicted mental reservation entering England with the Jesuit
missionaries of the late sixteenth century.129 Yet we shall see that Henrician religious
conservatives such as the monks of the London Charterhouse, Friar Forest, and Abbot
Hugh Cook also employed it to free their consciences from the oath of supremacy. 13
Although it is impossible to establish a direct link between mental reservation and the

127
White, Ofoathes, 30-34.
128
For Cranmer's use of conditional swearing, see chapter four of this dissertation. For Fisher, see F.
van Ortroy (ed), "Vie du bienheureux martyr Jean Fisher Cardinal, eveque de Rochester," Analecta
Bollandiana 12 (1893): 136. For Bonner and Gardiner, see T. B. Howell, A Complete Collection of
State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest
Period to the Year 1783, With Notes and Other Illustrations (London: Londman et al, 1816), 1:615-618
(Gardiner), 631-634 (Bonner).
Johann P. Sommerville, "The 'New Art of Lying': Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Casuistry"
in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern England, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988): 159-184; Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 186-220.
130
See chapter five of this dissertation.

103
argument that vows of chastity taken with an unexpressed condition could be violated,
it is not inconceivable that the latter led to the former. It is certainly true that
arguments like those of Tyndale and Parker which advocated the taking of monastic
vows with an unexpressed condition mirrored what was actually happening on the
ground with oaths and subscriptions.
Finally, the underlying reasoning used by Protestants in their arguments against
monastic vowsthat the vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience were unlawful, and
that unlawful vows should be brokenwas potentially quite destabilizing if taken out
of the context of monastic vows. This reasoning was just a reworking of the well-
established maxim that an oath against truth or justice must be broken. The
ramifications of this logic to the oaths of the English Reformation go beyond the fact
that this logic held true for both vows and oaths. Also significant here was that the
Protestant emphasis on the nature of the thing vowed (namely chastity) shifted the
basis of the obligation in a vow away from the binding nature of the promise itself and
toward the worth of the thing vowed. Neither Protestants nor Catholics admitted
arguing this. In theory, both Protestants and Catholics agreed with Luther's statement
"You ought to obey the vow not because of what you vowed but because you made the
vow."131 Yet both sides observed that the arguments of their opponents undermined
this principle. Richard Smyth, for example, claimed that if Protestants evaluated vows
based on their binding nature rather than the worth of the thing vowed, vows of
chastity would have to be kept (even if they did not value chastity) just like all other
vows. Peter Martyr Vermigli retorted that if Catholics evaluated vows based on
their binding nature rather than the worth of the thing vowed, they would not dispense
some vows (simple) but make others (solemn) indispensable.133 Furthermore, the

Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther against Monastic Vows, 351.

"Pro te nihil prorsus facti, quod ais tandem, non ex natura rei, aut dignitate eius pendere obligandi
vim sed ex promissione facta, ut patet de Adam & Saul, inquis, qui ob reculas minime acerbas dederunt
Deo poenas, ut prodit Scriptura. Haec inquam nihil prorsus iuuant tuam causam, sed catholicam potius
prouehunt. Nam ideo uota uirginitatis & celibatus obligare asseueramus, quod qui promiserunt Deo ea
praestare, & persoluere, obligentur ad standum promissis. Et ideo uis obligandi pendet a promissione,
nedum a promissae rei dignitate"; Smyth quoted in Vermigli, De votis, 346. Also see Smyth,
Confutatio, sig. K5r
"Alia uota relaxari non potes negare, uel, ut aiunt, permutari. Quare apud uos promissionis ius non
est inuiolabile. Ed ad rei promissae dignitatem confugere non potestis. Primum quia uirginitas non

104
Protestant argument that monastic vows should be discarded because they conflicted
with a Christian's baptism vow also relied on making a value judgment about the
nature of the thing vowed. Protestants argued that the vows one made in baptism were
more important than monastic vows. Catholics could just as easily turn the tables.
John Fisher, for instance, averred that Luther's vow of chastity took precedence over
Luther's marriage vow and therefore the latter was invalid.' The arguments of both
Catholics and Protestants thus placed more emphasis on the worth of the thing vowed
in evaluating whether the vow should be kept.
Of course, the worth of the thing vowed depended on the Word of God. The
author of the manuscript on vows in the Parker Library made an honest and astute
observation:
If we vow to God to do something, the necessity of doing it does not depend on
our vow, much less on the vow's manner and solemnity, but on the
commandment of God. Thus, if a vow agrees with the Word of God it must be
fulfilled . . . If it does not, it must not be fulfilled, however great the solemnity
used in the process of vowing.135
The debate over monastic vows in England moved the emphasis away from the
obligation of the vow itself and towards the lawfulness of the thing vowed according
to the Word of God. But because the proper interpretation of the Word of God was in
dispute in the sixteenth century, vows (or oaths) that concerned contentious subjects
lost their binding nature. In an era of great division and contention over the worth of

omnibus rebus praestat: deinde quia ex dignitate rei ids obligationis non pendet, si qua ibi ponenda sit:
quod idcirco dico, quia nos modo sub Euangelio in uotis nullam uim ponimus. Vos autem qui uim
tantem in uotis esse uultus, nullum debueratis uotum remittere. Verum cum uota passim & commutetis,
& relaxetis, dum postea implacabiles estis in uoto caelibatus, uestram cum hypocrisim, turn tyrannidem
retegitis"; Vermigli, De votis, 348. As this quote illustrates, Vermigli also responded to Smyth's
criticism by asserting that he held that vows were not binding under the gospel. Once again, the
significance of Vermigli's distinction between vows and oaths was important to his defense. Yet if the
line was blurred between a vow and oath, the radical nature of Vermigli's argument is clear. For other
Protestant writings attacking the Catholic distinction between simple and solemn vows, see Parker, A
defence ofpriestes manages, 230; Bucer, The gratulation, sig. F4V.
1
Fisher gave three reasons why Luther's vow of chastity took precedence over his marriage vow.
First, Luther's vow of chastity came before his marriage vow. Second, his vow of chastity was for the
health of his soul while his marriage vow was for carnal pleasure. Third, his vow of chastity was made
solemnly with great deliberation while his marriage vow was made rashly "in a corner"; John Fisher, "A
sermon . . . made concernynge certayne heretickes," in English Works of John Fisher, 171.
"Si quid igiter horum etiam deo facturos nos vouimus, necescitas tamen eius faciendi, non ex voto
nostro, nedum ex modo et solempnitate eius, sed ex ipso domini precepto pendet, proinde si votum cum
verbo dei congruit, servandum est, siue emissum sit simpliciter, siue cum solemnitate. Si minus, non est
servandum, quantauis adhibita sit in vouendo solemitas"; CCCC MS. 109, 127.

105
certain religious beliefs and practices, vows and oaths to adhere to these beliefs or
fulfill these practices could easily be disregarded once the swearer became convinced
these beliefs or practices were unworthy or from the Anti-Christ. For a vow or oath to
be binding, the promise had to be in agreement with truth and justice, but since truth
and justice were in dispute in the sixteenth century, what was binding for one religious
group was not binding for another.
Let us conclude by looking at a few examples that demonstrate that the
Protestant arguments against monastic vows were indeed adapted and applied to oaths
in sixteenth-century England. The first example comes from Bishop Stephen
Gardiner's treatise De vera obediencia, originally published in 1535 in Latin but then
reissued in English in 1553 by Protestant exiles. At the end of this treatise, Gardiner
addressed the criticism that he was a perjurer for breaking his oath of canonical
obedience to the pope and swearing the oath of supremacy. First, Gardiner claimed
that his oath of canonical obedience had been unlawful and thus should be broken
because the unlawfulness of the thing sworn took precedence over the obligation
inherent in an oath:
ffor in othes or promises/ the forme ought not so muche to be respected/ as that
mater. But let a man/ say/ sweare/ or promise as faithfully as he can/ that thing
that he ought not to doo nor performe/ that promise shal not be aboue the
nature of the mater self... for the othe ought to be a seruaunt of truth/ & can
not, nor ought to be preiudiciall vnto the truth.... he that maketh an unlawful
othe/ and goeth on styll to put it in execution/ thrusteth downe him selfe deper
and deper/ from whence he can neuer escape/ except he com out arseward. 3
In 1553, the Protestant translator of this work (perhaps John Bale ) wrote in the
margin, "Me thinketh you shoulde be ashamed to speak against priestes ma[r]iage/ if
this reason be true/ as it is in dede that ye make here." Second, Gardiner cited his
baptism vow in rationalizing his violation of the oath of obedience to the pope.

Stephen Gardiner, De vera obediencia: An oration made in Latine, by the right reuerende father in
God Stephan bishop of Winchestre, now lord chauncelour of England. With the preface of Edmunde
Boner . . . touching true obedience (Rome [Wesel?], 1553), sigs. G7r, Hl v -H2 r .
137
Michael Riordan and Alec Ryrie believe that John Bale prepared, edited, and published the 1553
Wesel edition of De vera obediencia; Michael Riordan and Alec Ryrie, "Stephen Gardiner and the
Making of a Protestant Villain," Sixteenth-Century Journal 34 (2003): 1056. Pierre Janelle, however,
has drawn attention to the chronological difficulties in attributing this edition to Bale; Pierre Janelle
(ed.), Obedience in Church & State, xxxiv-xxxviii.
138
Gardiner, De vera obediencia (1553), sig. H2r v

106
Gardiner told the story of a man whose wife disappeared for many years. Thinking
her deceased, he remarried. But when his previous wife suddenly reappeared, he at
first rejected her and fought for the right to stay married to his second wife. After the
church ruled against him, however, he sent away his second wife and welcomed back
his first wife. The parents of the second wife attacked the man for breaking his
covenant with his second wife, but the church maintained that the man was bound
more by his first vow than by his second. This man, Gardiner claimed, was himself:
ffor in dede II seing I beleved/ that no suche truthe of obedience/ had ben/ or if
it had ben sought for/1 wolde neuer haue founde it: I coupled myselfe in
seconde couenaunt/ & therto plighted my trouthe/ with whom I thought I
had laufully dwelt & and kept lawfull company withall: But whan the truthe
came/ which is euery mannes furst wyfe/ maried to him in baptisme/ which
will require the furst promyse/ at all mennes handes to her I applyed/ to her I
cleaved: & from my seconde knotte/ as of non affecte/ by the iudgment of my
churche/1 departed.139
And once again the Protestant translator wrote in the margin that this argument should
set priests free from their vows of chastity.M0 Brought to bear just as easily against an
oath of obedience as against a vow of chastity, the argument that an unlawful promise
could be broken was thus a double-edged sword that could be used by both Protestants
and Catholics to break an offensive vow or oath.
If the arguments that any promise that was unlawful or violated one's baptism
vow could applied just as easily to an oath of canonical obedience as to a vow of
celibacy, could not the argument also be applied to the Henrician oaths of succession
and supremacy? Edward Foxe, the Henrician bishop of Hertford, certainly thought so.
When he first read Gardiner's manuscript of De vera obediencia in 1535, he wrote to
Thomas Cromwell:
Oon thing i thinke necessarie to be observed in the booke whiche I beseche
youe to kepe to yourself or eles secretly as of yourself to advertise the kinges
highnes therof whiche is the excuse my lorde makethe for his oothe whiche if it
might be lawfull for every man to make the like and to draw the same in to
exemple youe know and considre how the malice of men might elude soche
oothes as we have now lately made. And therfore althought this excuse be

Gardiner, De vera obediencia (1553), sig. Hl r .

140
"& so doo maried priestes goo from their seconde knotte & folowe ye judgement of Goddes wrode
[sic]/ wherby his churche is gouerned: wc sayth To avoide fornicacion let euery man haue his owne
wife. Hearken to your owne reason my lorde"; Gardiner, De vera obediencia (1553), sigs Hl v -H2 r .

107
 sufficient and valleable ynough against my lorde for his own deade yet
paradventure som hurte might com therof yn tyme comyng in case it shuld be
invulged or spredd abrode.Hl
The "oothes we have now lately made" were obviously the oaths of succession and
supremacy, which Henry had been tendering throughout the realm in 1534 and 1535.
Foxe thus feared that the publication of Gardiner's excuse for breaking his oath of
canonical obedience would provide Englishmen hostile to Henry's religious settlement
a ready-made justification for the breaking of their recent oaths to the king.
Gardiner's De vera obediencia and Foxe's letter to Cromwell thus demonstrate the
ease with which arguments employed to justify the breaking of one form of divine
promise could be and were transfered to justify the breaking of another form of divine
promise.
One more example of this phenomenon will suffice. In Thomas Cranmer's
heresy trial of January, 1556, Cranmer got into a debate with Dr. Thomas Martin (the
same one whose book on clerical marriage responded to the Protestant attack on vows
of celibacy) over the keeping of oaths. Both men accused the other of breaking an
oath, and both men used arguments originally voiced in the Protestant attack on
monastic vows to defend their own behavior:
MARTIN: Mayster Cranmer, yee haue tolde here a long glorious tale, pretending some
matter of conscience in apparaunce, but in veritye you haue no conscience at
all. You saye that you haue sworne once to Kynge Henrye the eyght agaynste
the popes iurisdiction, and therefore yee may neuer forsweare the same, and so
yee make a greate matter of conscience in the breache of the sayde othe. Here
will I aske you a question or two. What if ye made on oth to an hartlot to liue
with her in continuall adultery ought you to keepe it?
CRANMER: I thinke no.
MARTIN: What if you did sweare neuer to lende a poore man one penny, ought you to
keepe it?
CRANMER: I thinke not.
MARTIN: Herode did sweare what soeuer his harlot asked of him, he would geue her,
and gaue her Iohn Baptistes head: did he well in keeping his oth?
CRANMER: I thinke not.
MARTIN: Iehpthe one of the Iudges of Israeli did sweare vnto God: that if he would
geue hym victorye ouer hys enemies, hee woulde offer vnto GOD the firste
soule that came forth of hys house: it happened that hys owne daughter came
first, and he slue her to saue his othe. Did he well?
141
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 201r {LP IX 403).

108
CRANMER: I thinke not.
MARTIN: SO sayth S. Ambrose de officijs. That is, it is a miserable necessity which is
payed with parricide. Miserabilis necessitas qua? soluitur parricidio. Then
maister Cranmer, you can no lesse confesse by the premisses but that you
oughte not to haue conscience of euery othe, but if it be iust, lawful and
aduisedly taken.
CRANMER: SO was that othe.
MARTIN: That is not so, for first it was vniuste, for it tended to the taking away of an
other mans right. It was not lawfull, for the lawes of God and the Churche were
agaynst it. Besides, it was not voluntary, for euerye man and woman were
compelled to take it.
CRANMER: It pleaseth you to say so.
MARTIN: Let all the world be iudge. But sir, you that pretend to haue suche a
conscience to breake an othe, I praye you did you neuer sweare and breake the
same?
CRANMER: I remember not.
MARTIN: I will helpe your memory. Did you neuer sweare obedience to the sea of
Rome?
CRANMER: In deede I did once sweare vnto the same.
MARTIN: Yea that ye did twise, as appeareth by recordes & writinges here ready to be
shewed.
CRANMER: But I remember I saued al by protestation that I made by the counsayle of
the best learned men I coulde get at that time.
MARTIN: Harken good people what this man saythe. Hee made a protestation one day,
to keepe neuer a whitte of that whiche he woulde sweare the next day, was thys
the part of a christian man? . . . And this haue I spoken as touching your
conscience you make for breaking youre hereticall othe made to the king. But
to breake youre former othe made at two sundry times bothe to God and hys
Churche, you haue no conscience at all.I42
Both Cranmer and Martin agreed that an unlawful oath should be broken, but they
disagreed whether the oath of canonical obedience to the pope or the oath of
supremacy to king was the unlawful oath. Martin claimed that the oath of supremacy
was forced. Cranmer contended that he took his oath of canonical obedience
conditionally. Both agreed that these two oaths conflicted with each other, and one
must be discarded. All of these arguments were of a parallel structure to the ones
Protestants used to attack monastic vows.
In sixteenth-century England, then, two discourses of divine promises existed
side by side. On one hand, Protestants adopted the traditional medieval Catholic
rhetoric on oaths that depicted them as sacred promises, essential to the proper

Foxe,^M(1583), 1876.

109
worship of God and maintenance of society, and thus binding to the point of
inviolability. On the other hand, Protestants condemned monastic vows, claiming that
any vow that was unlawful, beyond one's power, taken in ignorance or conditionally,
or conflicted with a higher vow or oath, could and should be broken. By emphasizing
the qualitative difference between vows and oaths or between monastic vows and
other, lawful promises, English Protestants attempted to prevent the extension of their
arguments against monastic vows to the oaths of English Reformation. In the end,
however, this attempt failed. Vows were simply too similar to promissory oaths. This
is not to argue that the Protestant attack on monastic vows directly led to the breaking
of oaths. I do maintain, however, that the debate over monastic vows in Englanda
debate that engendered huge amounts of polemic in printwas a conduit through
which the subversive discourse on vows seeped into the broader thinking regarding
oaths. These two discourses could exist separately and simultaneously in a world of
consensus over the nature of truth and lawful behavior. But in the world of the
Reformation, where truth and God's decree of lawful behavior were so bitterly
contested, these two discourses were bound to overlap and clash. The prevalence of
the first discourse meant that oaths were an ideal means through which the English
crown strove to bind the consciences of its subjects and implement its religious and
political objectives. The existence and adaptability of the second discourse meant that
many of these state oaths failed to achieve the crown's objectives and bind the
consciences of dissident subjects. How this story played out is the subject of the rest
of this dissertation.

110
Section II: 'Kings Be Not Kings of Tongues'?: Oaths and the Henrician Religious
Revolution

Prologue
Oaths were the undoing of the London Charterhouse. On May 4, 1534, royal
commissioners visited this famously austere Carthusian monastery to tender them the
oath of succession. According to a recently passed act of Parliament, all English
subjects must swear fidelity to Henry, to Henry's new wife Anne Boleyn, and to their
heirs. They also had to swear to observe and maintain the whole contents of the act,
and these contents explicitly declared Henry's first marriage to Katherine of Aragon
unlawful. When the commissioners arrived, the prior of the Charterhouse, John
Houghton, attempted to turn them away. Houghton argued that it was not his business
to meddle with the affairs of kings. The king could repudiate and marry whomever he
wanted without the Charterhouse's consent. But the commissioners held firm,
responding:
We require you without disguise, evasion or sophistry to swear obedience to
the King's law and laying your hands upon Christ's Holy Gospelswe shall
stand by and administer the oathto declare without qualification that the
former marriage was unlawful and therefore rightly annulled; that the later
marriage shall be held lawful and in accord with divine law and therefore
rightly entitled to the approval of all.x
Houghton refused the commissioners' demand. He could not see how a marriage
"celebrated according to the rite of the church and observed for so long" could be
declared void.2 The commissioners then took Houghton and the procurator of the
house, Humphrey Middlemore, to the Tower. After about three weeks of captivity,
Houghton and Middlemore were persuaded that the oath of succession was not a

Maurice Chauncy, The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers: The Short
Narration, ed. G.W.S. Curtis, trans. A.F. Radcliffe, intro. E. Margaret Thompson, (London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1935), 61. This is printed from a manuscript edition of 1570. All
English quotations from the 1570 version are the translation of A.F. Radcliffe. I will also make use of
the first printed edition of the work: Chauncy, Historia aliqvot nostri saecvli martyrum cum pia, turn
lectu iucunda, nunquam antehac typis excusa (Mainz, 1550). All English quotations cited from this
version are my translation. The Latin text will be provided in the footnotes.
"Venerabili tunc patre nostra respondente, se non posse capere, quo pacto priores nuptiae secundum
ritum Ecclesiae celebratae et tarn diu obseruatae irrirarentur"; Chauncy, Historia aliqvot (1550), sig.
M3V.

Ill
matter of faith, nor worth dying for, and they agreed to submit. Yet the rest of the
Charterhouse was not convinced. At the next visit of the royal commissioners, the
monks all stoutly refused to swear. During a third visit, Houghton and half a dozen
other brothers took the oath. Finally, after a speech by Houghton and under threat of
imprisonment, the rest of the house swore the oath, "but only under the condition 'as
far as it was lawful'."3 We do not know the exact form of their oath nor how they
attached this condition. All that survive today are notarial attestations verifying that
the monks took their "oaths and fidelities."4
Swearing the oath of succession did not end the troubles of the London
Charterhouse. In the summer of 1534, the London Carthusians seem to have been
tendered an acknowledgment of royal supremacy. At that time, Henry was
administering an oath to all clerical institutions wherein each had to acknowledge that
Henry was the supreme head of the church in England and that the pope had no more
power in England than any other foreign bishop. The actual profession of the
Charterhouse does not survive, and our main source for the events at the London
Charterhouse, Maurice Chauncy (a monk of the Charterhouse in the 1530s who in the
reign of Edward VI wrote an account of the trials of the London Charterhouse), was
strangely silent on the events of the summer of 1534. However, a list of various
clerical institutions that professed the royal supremacy at that time survives. Under -
the heading of London, it reads, "nine Carthusians contumaciously refused to
undertake the oath."5 There is no record of Henry taking any punitive action against
the nine Charterhouse monks who refused the oath.
The plot thickened in November of 1534, when Parliament passed the Act of
Supremacy. Despite the fact that no oath was prescribed by the act, Houghton along
with Robert Laurence and Augustine Webster (the priors of the Charterhouses of
Beauvale and Axholme respectively) "anticipated" the coming of another royal

3
"Et sic demum in uerba regis iurauimus, sub conditione tamen, quatenus licitum esset"; Chauncy,
Historia aliqvot (1550), sig. M4r. Only the 1550 version of Chauncy's narrative notes that the
Charterhouse swore the oath of succession conditionally.
4
The original notarial attestations are NA E 25 82/3 (LP, VII 728). They are printed correctly in
Rymer, Foedera, 14:491-492. The first one is from May 29, and the second from June 6, 1534.
5
"Nouem Carthusiani contumacit recusarunt luramentum subire"; BL Cottom MS. E vi, fol. 209v (LP,
VII 891 (ii)). This document will be discussed in more detail below.

112
commission and sought an interview with Secretary Thomas Cromwell to forestall the
visit in the spring of 1535. Cromwell first declined to meet with them, but eventually
he demanded that they reject the authority of the pope and abnegate "all other external
powers, jurisdictions, obediences to whatever person or order they had owed or
promised" and affirm that Henry alone was the supreme head of the church. The
priors replied evasively that "they would do all that true Christians, dutiful and loyal
subjects, ought to do for their prince; in all things they would willingly obey the King
as far as divine law permitted."8 But Cromwell would not accept such an equivocal
answer. He allegedly retorted:
No reservation whatever shall be accepted by me. My will and command is
that without delay before this honorable assembly you shall make the simple
declaration without addition or disguise, confirming and approving all that is
submitted to you. Moreoverfor fear lest heart and voice be not in accordI
require you to testify by a solemn oath that you believe and firmly hold to be
true the very wordsmy decision is irrevocablewhich we propound to you
for an honest confession of faith.9
The priors were unwilling to make this oath. After a show trial at the end of April,
Houghton, Laurence, and Webster were executed on May 4, 1535. Six weeks later, on
June 4, Henry executed three other leaders of the London Charterhouse (Humphrey
Middlemore, William Exmew, and Sebastian Newdigate) for refusing to acknowledge
his supremacy. For the next two years, the brethren of the London Charterhouse
endured extreme pressure. Henry reduced their rations, subjected them to systematic
sermons in favor of his supremacy, and sent some of the brothers to monasteries
supportive of Henry's supremacy.10 Finally, under the threat of dissolution, twenty-
one brethren of the London Charterhouse gave in and took the oath of supremacy on

1
"illi anticiparent & praeoccuparent tempus expectati aduentus Consiliariorum Regis, eundo ad dictum
Dominum Thomam Crouwell"; Chauncy, Historia aliqvot (1550), sigs. N4 v -01 r .
"Vt authoritatie domini Papae abrenunciarent, ipsumque false, uiolenter ac extorte usurpasse suma
primariam potestatem faterentur, & omnes alias externas potestates, iurisditiones & obedientias
abnegarent, cuicunque etiam personae uel ordini debitae essent aut promissae : Soli regi suisque
obtemperarent, & ipsum Regem supremum caput Ecclesiae, tam in spiritualibus quam temporalibus,
acceptarent, crederent, & affirmarent"; Chauncy, Historia aliqvot (1550), sig. 0 1 r .
8
Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom (1570), 79.
9
Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom (1570), 79.
10
For a detailed account of these two years, see E. Margaret Thompson, The Carthusian Order in
England (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930), 411-435.

113
May 18, 1537. Yet while they swore outwardly, according to Chauncy "in their
hearts" they prayed to the Lord:
We beseech your mercy, so that you may not regard this way which we act
externally in placing our hands on the book of the holy Gospels and kissing it,
and neither accept it as if we are confirming or consenting to the will of the
king, but rather in veneration of the sacred words described in the gospel you
may receive this our external pretense as made for the preservation of our
house.12
Their oath did not end the matter. On November 15, 1538, the London Charterhouse
was suppressed. As for the ten monks who refused to swear in May 1537, they were
imprisoned at Newgate and systematically starved to death.
The story of the Henrician regime's attempt to coerce the London
Charterhouse into accepting the Boleyn marriage and Henry's supremacy of the
church illustrates the key question of this section: how did Henry VIII and his
councilors implement the parliamentary reforms of 1534? That is, how did the regime
get its subjects to accept Henry's divorce and remarriage, the rejection of papal
authority, and the establishment of royal supremacy? Three subsidiary questions
underlie this overarching question. First, what happened on the ground in England
from 1534 to 1537? The London Charterhouse seems to have been tendered at least
four different professions: an oath of succession in the spring of 1534, an institutional
profession of Henry's supremacy in the summer of 1534, another oath of supremacy in
the spring of 1535, and yet another form of the oath of supremacy in 1537. Our
knowledge of the events surrounding the London Charterhouse is generally greater
than our knowledge of other clerical institutions, but even with the Charterhouse,
mystery surrounds the events of the summer of 1534. Moreover, the London
Charterhouse cannot be taken as representative of the rest of the realm. What kind of

1
' The form of this oath with the monks' original subscriptions and a notarial attestation survives. It is
NA E 25 82/2 (LP, XII (i) 1233). It is printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:588-589.
12
"Cum corda omnium nostri, & quam libenter reniteremur eis, obsecramus clementiam tuam, ut
modum istum, quem exequimur forinsecus in positione manuum nostrarum supre librum sancti
Euangelij, & eum osculando, non respicias, neque accipias quasi affirmantes simus siue consentientes
regiae uoluntati, sed tamcummodo suscipias in uenerationem sacrorum uerborum in Euangelio
descriptorum, hanc externam nostram simulationem, ob praeseruationem domus, si tuae bonitati
placuerit"; Chauncy, Historia aliqvot (1550), sig. Q2V.

114
professions did Henry tender to his bishops, to the universities, to the secular clergy,
and to the laity? These questions form the basis of chapter three.
Having established how Henry implemented his reformation in the mid 1530s,
we can then move on to the second subsidiary of this section: why did Henry choose
to implement his reformation in the manner that he did? Why did Henry employ a
variety of different kinds of professions that varied according to who was making the
profession? Why did Henry exert more pressure on some groups of his subjects (like
the London Charterhouse) than others? These questions are addressed in chapter four.
Exploring them will take us back into the conflicts of the early 1530s between Henry
and his clergy. In turn, this chapter provides us with insight into how the regime
formulated new policy: that is when and from where tactical decisions came about.
Finally, the variety of responses of the London Charterhouse brothers to their
oathsfrom outright refusal, to swearing with a vocalized condition, to swearing with
a secret mental reservationraises the question of how Henry's subjects received the
professions of the 1530s. Did most of them take the oaths and subscriptions tendered
to them? If so, how did they take them? Did they interpret them in the same way as
the government or did they subvert them through dissimulation, equivocation, and
novel declarations? Chapter five examines the lay response to the oath of succession,
the clerical response to the oaths of supremacy, and the use (or at least the suspicion of
the use) of dissimulation by Princess Mary and Henry's conservative bishops. Chapter
six then examines the Pilgrimage of Gracea substantial popular rebellion against
Henry's recent religious policy in the north of England during the fall of 1536 and
winter of 1537as the lay response to the oath of succession. In particular, it
explores what the prolific oaths sworn in the Pilgrimage tell us about lay perception of
the oath of succession.
Investigating these three subsidiary questions as to how the Henrician
government implemented its Parliamentary revolution of 1534 will reveal in a detailed
manner the process through which the government sought to implement its
reformation. Oaths were key to this process and therefore are an ideal lens through
which to examine it. This section will thus shed light on the goals of the government

115
in implementing its policy, and by showing how the English people responded to the
oaths and subscriptions of the 1530s, it will explore how successful the government
was in achieving these goals.

116
 Chapter 3: Oaths, Subscriptions, and the Implementation of the Parliamentary
Reforms of 1534
Before we explore the policy objectives of the Henrician regime in enforcing
its reformation or how effective its policy was, we must explore the policy itself. We
must examine what steps the crown took between 1533 and 1537 to propagate, coerce,
and enforce its reformation on the ground. The textbook answer that Henry tendered
two oathsan oath of succession in the spring and summer of 1534 to all males over
the age of twelve and an oath of supremacy sometime in 1534 or 1535 to all clergy
and political office holdersis clearly wrong.' Furthermore, it is often assumed that
the monasteries were tendered their oath of supremacy during one of the two royal
visitations of the monasteries in 1535.2 These claims are a vast oversimplification of
what happened. Historians such as John Guy and Geoffrey Elton presented more
nuanced accounts. Guy noted that the subscription signed by the parish clergy
differed from the oath of the diocesan clergy, while the oath sworn by ecclesiastical
and lay office holders differed from either of the purely clerical professions.3 Elton
went further, observing that the secular clergy simply subscribed to a rejection of
papal authority, that the institutional clergy and the bishops swore a comprehensive
oath concerning Henry's supremacy of the English church, that the Parliament of 1536
devised new forms of both the oath of succession and the oath of supremacy, and that
these two new forms were rarely administered. Yet even Elton's account fails to do
justice to the plethora of different professions Henry employed to gain adherence to
his divorce, new succession, and royal supremacy. Indeed, the attempt to summarize
such a complex situation in one paragraph (Guy) or in a handful of pages (Elton) leads
more to confusion than to clarity. No historian has yet mapped out the exact number
and order of the different professions Henry employed and compared the professions
to each other in a detailed manner. This chapter seeks to correct this historiographical

1
For an example of such a textbook account of these two oaths, see Jasper Ridley, The Tudor Age
(London: Constable, 1988), 287,
2
See for example David Knowles, The Tudor Age, vol. 3 of The Religious Orders in England,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 230; Thompson, Carthusian Order, 467. G. W.
Bernard operated under a similar assumption. For more on this, see page 141 of this chapter.
3
John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 136.
4
Elton, Policy and Police, 228-230.

117
oversight by reconstructing the step-by-step process whereby Henry administered to
his subjects professions in support of his reformations of 1534. This reconstruction
reveals that Henry tendered to his subjects a variety of distinct professions of different
strength depending on the exact position of each subject group.

The Relationship between Oaths and Subscriptions

Before delving into our narrative, we need to examine the relationship between
oaths and subscriptions. Since an oath was simply a declaration or promise in which
one cited God as witness to the truth of one's statement, it did not need to be
accompanied by a written subscription. Undoubtedly, most common oaths employed
in quotidian conversation did not include a written subscription. Yet the majority of
public oaths in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were indeed endorsed by some
kind of subscription. William Allen claimed that at the coronation of Philip I of
France in 1060 (which Allen saw as the basis for the English coronation tradition),
Philip's "othe was brought vnto him, wherunto he must sweare, which he tooke and
read with a loud yoyce, and signed it with his owne hand." Treaty oaths were also
confirmed by subscriptions, as evidenced by the Anglo-French treaty of 1510. If the
swearer was important or if an entire institution swore an oath, the swearers often
attached their seal below their subscriptions. When Richard Duke of York took his
oath of fealty to Henry VI in 1456, he wrote at the bottom of his oath, "In witness of
all the which thynges abovewriten, I Richard Duke of York abovewritten, subscribe
me with myne owne hande, and seall this with myne owne Seall &c."7 If the swearer
was not able to sign his or her own name, he or she could make a mark as a substitute.
This was common in oaths of abjuration since heresy sometimes infiltrated the ranks
of the illiterate. The purpose of a subscription was to serve as evidence for anyone
not actually present at the oath-taking that the person did indeed swear the oath. For
the same reason, notaries were often present to witness these oaths. When Francis

5
R. Doleman [William Allen, Sir Francis Englefield, and Robert Parsons?],^ conference about the next
succession to the crowne oflngland, diuided into two parts. . . .(N. [Antwerp], 1594 [1595]), 104.
6
Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fols. 14r-15r.
Rotuli Parliamentorum, 5:346-347.
8
See for example BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 175r-176r, 181r.

118
Mylles took his oath of office as a clerk of the privy seal, Lord Burghley wrote under
his oath: "The foresayd Fra. Mylles hath taken the othe aboue expressed and
subscribed the same with his hand & name before mee the Lord Burghley Keeper of
the privie Seale. W. Burghley." The practice of subscribing one's name after
swearing a public oath was thus well established in the sixteenth century. Brian
Cummings' interpretation of the dual nature of the succession acknowledgmentboth
an oath and a subscriptionas an "official ambiguity" that meant that the "oath itself
was insufficient as a gaurantee" fails to recognize the general context of public oath-
taking in early modern England.10
But if public oaths were often accompanied by subscriptions, subscriptions
themselves did not necessarily signify that an oath had been sworn. Subscriptions by
the Elizabethan clergy to Archbishop Parker's Advertisements in 1566 or to
Archbishop Whitgift's Three Articles of 1584 did not include an oath. It was possible
to indicate one's assent to a doctrine or belief without actually swearing an oath by
simply signing one's name after a written profession or acknowledgment. These
oathless subscriptions, while still formal documents, lacked the spiritual muscle that
made oaths so binding. Although God of course still considered plain lying a sin, a
false subscription was not a sin that encroached upon the honor and majesty of God
himself as perjury did. It was the calling forth of God as witness to the truth of one's
statement that gave an oath its great weight. Subscribed professions, where God was
not summoned as a witness, were less solemn and less binding. Historians who
overlook the distinction between an oath and an oathless subscription risk losing sight
of a significant variable that certainly factored into the decisions of many early
modern people concerning whether to accept or resist a particular profession.'' The
essential point, then, is to determine whether a signed profession was accompanied by

9
BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C xiv, fol. 443r.
10
Brian Cummings, "Swearing in Public: More and Shakespeare," English Literary Renaissance 27
(1997), 212.
11
For example, in his account of Calvin's attempt to administer the citizens of Geneva a confession of
faith in 1537, Robert Kingdon started out writing about a subscription and then suddenly referred to the
same profession as an oath without delineating the exact relationship between an oath and a written
subscription in this confession of faith; Robert Kingdom, "Confessionalism in Calvin's Geneva," Archiv
fur Reformationgeschichte 96 (2005): 109-116.

119
an oath or not. If the content of the profession contained the words "so help me God"
or some variant, we can assume an oath was sworn, since God had been called as
witness. The issue is trickier when a list of subscriptions exists without the actual
profession accompanying the signatures. In such cases, we cannot assume an oath was
sworn unless corroborating evidence exists for an oath, such as a notarial instrument
mentioning the "oath" or "juramentum" or an explicit commission that demanded the
tendering of an oath to the people whose signatures survive.

The Use of Oaths and Subscriptions to Enforce the Succession and Supremacy
The drive to gather documented acknowledgments of the positions codified by
the acts of Parliament in 1534 had begun well before 1534. As we will see below, the
Convocations of the Clergy of Canterbury and York in 1531 had granted Henry the
title of supreme head of the church of England, albeit with a significant conditional
clause. The Submission of the Clergy of 1532 also contained the subscriptions of
some members of the upper house of the Convocation of Canterbury. In February of
1533, Ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote to Charles V that Henry had asked the
archbishops of York and Canterbury and the bishops of London, Winchester, and
Lincoln "to subscribe a document he has drawn up to his taste, of a very strange
nature, as you will see."12 Chapuys reported that while Edward Lee (York) and
Stephen Gardiner (Winchester) had not yet agreed to do this, Cranmer (elect of
Canterbury) had gleefully subscribed. The actual document to which Cranmer
subscribed does not survive, and no other evidence exists of this strange subscription.
The document obviously was about the divorce, considering the context in which
Chapuys mentioned it, and Andrew Chibi has suggested that the document stated that
the prohibition of marriage to the widow of a deceased brother was a divine law with
which the pope could not dispense, a conclusion that Henry had wrested (not without
great effort) from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in 1529.13 Chibi has
also proposed that this document referred to the power of the English clergy to decide

12
LP, VI 180.
13
Andrew A. Chibi, Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce, Royal
Supremacy and Doctrinal Reform (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 82-83.

120
the divorce themselves.14 Whatever the content of the document, it was soon made
irrelevant, for Cranmer officially granted Henry his annulment from his marriage with
Katherine of Aragon in the spring of 1533, and Anne Boelyn was crowned queen in
June 1533.
On July 5, 1533, Henry issued a royal proclamation declaring that his first
marriage had been annulled and that, as a result, Katherine no longer possessed the
title of queen. Anyone who continued to call Katherine queen instead of the new style
"princess dowager" would be guilty of praemunire and suffer the penalties of
imprisonment and loss of goods.15 This royal proclamation was met with considerable
opposition by Katherine's long-time servants. Henry sent Lord Mountjoy to inquire
about this opposition in October, 1533. On October 10, both Mountjoy and Thomas
Bedyll wrote letters to Thomas Cromwell explaining that many of Katherine's
household continued to call her queen and refused to call her princess dowager,
particularly her chaplains, serving women, and other household servants. By
December, Henry had decided to respond to this situation by making Katherine's
servants swear a "new othe." The text of this oath has not survived, but internal
evidence from the Duke of Suffolk's letters suggests that this oath was an oath of
loyalty sworn to Katherine as princess dowager that was designed to replace her
household's previous oath of loyalty to her as queen.17 Katherine's servants refused
this oath at first, though by December 27 Chapuys reported that all of them had sworn
this new oath except Katherine's Spanish entourage: her confessor, apothecary, and
physician. ' 8 These same servants continued in their obstinacy, again refusing to swear

14
Andrew A. Chibi, Henry VIII's Bishops: Diplomants, Administrators, Scholars and Shepherds
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 2003), 115.
5
Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin (ed.), Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, The Early Tudors
(1485-1553) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 209-210.
16
NA SP1/79, fol. 158 (LP, VI 1252); BL Cotton MS. Ortho C x, fols. 213r-214v (LP, VI 1253).
We will examine why Katherine's household refused to call her princess dowager below.
17
BL Cotton MS. Ortho C x, fols. 210r-212r (LP, VI 1541). This letter is an original but it is mutilated.
A complete copy of the letter is BL Harleian MS. 283, fol. 102'"Y, and the letter has been transcribed in
Stat Pap Pub, 1:415. See also Stat Pap Pub, 1:418 (LP, VI1542) and NA SP1/81, fol. 3 r (LP, VI
1543).
18
LP, IV 1571. A list of the members of Katherine's household who swore this new oath and who
refused it is NA SP1/82, fol. 127r (LP, VII 135).

121
the oath of succession in May, 1534.19 This episode is significant because it shows
that in the fall of 1533, Henry had already employed an oath to force obedience from a
select group of subjects who opposed the ramifications of his divorce and remarriage.
At the same time that Henry was using an oath to enforce his marriage
settlement on Katherine's household, he may have circulated among select bishops his
first device seeking an explicit rejection of papal authority in England. In a letter
dated December 9, 1533, Chapuys told Charles V that "of late the King has solicited
certain bishops to consent to the abrogation of papal authority." With the exception of
Cranmer, all of them refused to consent to it.20 No other evidence for this device
exists. Yet even if Chapuys was mistaken about what actually happened, his letter
surely indicates that at the very least, a rumor of a device requiring the abrogation of
papal authority was in the air at the end of 1533.
At the start of 1534, the crown again targeted a select group of subjects and
sought their documented adherence to the Boleyn marriage. This time, however, it
was John Stokesley, Bishop of London, and Syon Abbey who were tendered a
subscription. Syon was an influential Bridgettine abbey at Isleworth on the Thames
that was famous for its learning and austerity. On January 4, Stokesley wrote to
Thomas Bedyll, one of Cromwell's men, that he (Stokesley) had received from
Bedyll's servant letters "subscribed vpon condition with thands [the hands] of
~) 1

thabbesse and systers of Syon." Stokesley wrote that he would not subscribe to this
letter because the clergy had never expressly given any kind of judgment about
Henry's second marriage. They had only declared Henry's first marriage invalid.
Although it is not absolutely clear what was going on here, it appears that Cromwell
had sent a profession to the sisters and abbess of Syon containing a statement that the
clergy of the realm (presumably in Convocation) had declared the king's first marriage
invalid and his second legitimate. The sisters subscribed with a condition, but
Stokesley refused to subscribe because he recognized that the English clergy had not
yet made an official statement concerning Henry's marriage to Anne. Stokesley then
19
NA SP1/84, fols. 66r-70v (LP, VII 696); BL Cotton MS. Ortho C x, fols. 206r-208r (LP, VII 786); LP,
VII 809.
20
LP, VI 1510.
21
NA SP1/82, fol. 1 l r (LP, VII 15).

122
wrote that if he subscribed to the letter as it was worded now, he would seem to do so
out of affection rather than truth. Before the letter was published with subscriptions,
Stokesley observed that this oversight should be reformed. He said he would
77

subscribe to a clean copy of the letter once the indicated changes had been made.
A day later, Stokesley signed a new letter, most probably an altered but related
profession that had taken into account his suggested changes, and then wrote Syon to
encourage their subscription to this new letter. The sisters of Syon, however, probably
never signed this new letter because their communication with their confessors caused
them to regret their initial subscription. We can infer this from a confusing letter
written by James Mores, a servant of Bedyll, to Bedyll on January 6. Mores wrote that
he had delivered Bedyll's letter to Stokesley the preceding afternoon. Stokesley then
"subscribed the coppy that I delyuered hym in maner of a letter dyrected to my lady
Abbas" and then wrote to the confessor and brethren of Syon that they should
subscribe to "kynges new devysed letter."23 Mores had not yet disclosed this turn of
events to the abbess because in the interim the sisters of Syon had communed with
their male confessors, which "brought them in suche scrupulosite that I thyncke
assurydly they wolde neuer agre to subscribe thes new devysed letter. And if the other
letter where to subscbe itt wold be herd now to bryng them to itt." Mores then
explained that if Cromwell thought Henry would be content with the first letter, Bedyll
should have Stokesley subscribe to the copy enclosed (of the first letter) and then send
it to Mores at Syon. Mores concluded by observing that the abbess believed that
Bedyll had only the first letter and that he would do what he could to get them to
subscribe to the second.24
22
NA SP1/82, fols. 1 lr-12r (LP, VII 15). Bernard claimed that this letter should be placed in January
1536; G. W. Bernard, The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 170, 634. However, the original letter in the National
Archives clearly says "4 Jan 1533," which is of course 1534 according to the old calendar. Moreover,
by 1536, the issue at stake for Syon was not the king's new marriage but his supremacy. Andrew Chibi
(Stokesley's biographer) as well as N.D. Tait (an expert on Syon) have kept the letter in 1534; Chibi,
Henry VIII 's Conservative Scholar, 86; N.D. Tait, "The Brigittine Monastery of Syon (Middlesex) with
Special Reference to Its Monastic Usage" (D. Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1975), 74.
23
NA SP1/82, fol. 37r (LP VII 22).
24
NA SP1/82, fol. 37r (LP VII 22). I have summarized this letter extensively because the account is
confusing and I am unhappy with synopses of it in current secondary literature. Bernard, as we have
seen, placed the whole episode in 1536. Knowles' summary was exceedingly brief; Knowles, Religious

123
 Thus far, every episode examined took place before the passage of the Act of
Succession in the spring of 1534. In many ways, these episodes foreshadowed the
policy that the regime would pursue after the Act of Succession. The crown was
putting out feelers, giving their policy a test run before the real campaign was
launched with the Act of Succession. The crown targeted a select yet influential
group of subjectsthe most important bishops of the realm (Canterbury, York,
London, and Winchester) and a well-esteemed abbey close to Londonand tendered
them some kind of acknowledgment of Henry's divorce and remarriage. That the
crown was tentative in this initiative is supported by the fact that it took no punitive
steps against those (everyone but Cranmer) who refused to subscribe. On the other
hand, that this was more than a simple test run is evident by the apparent plan of the
regime to publish the subscription of Stokesley and Syon, a document that the crown
probably hoped would influence others to follow in Stokesley's and Syon's lead and
accept the Boleyn marriage. The resistance the regime encountered to its initial
attempts to obtain adherence to the Boleyn marriage taught it valuable lessons. The
resistance of Katherine's household to her new title of princess dowager taught the
regime that where a simple proclamation failed, an oath could succeed, while
Stokesley's initial evasion taught the regime that it had to be very careful about the
exact wording of a profession. Of course, there is no proof of any direct connection
between the episodes discussed above and the Act of Succession, but at the very least,
they indicate that the crown had been experimenting with both oaths and subscriptions
as a means to enforce the divorce well before the passage of the Act of Succession.
The Act of Succession itself passed Parliament at the end of March 1534. It
declared that Prince Arthur had carnally known Katherine and thus that Henry's
marriage to Katherine was against God's law, a law with which no one could dispense.
It then proclaimed Henry's marriage to Anne valid and rejected the power of the pope
to interfere with the succession of any realm. The act set the succession through the
male heirs of Henry and Anne or, failing them, a subsequent wife. If Henry had no
male heirs, the throne was to pass to Elizabeth. The act also established penal

Orders, 3:216. Chibi's discussion of this incident was misleading and based on incorrect citations;
Chibi, Henry VIII's Conservative Scholar, 86-87; Chibi, Henry VIWs Bishops, 117-118.

124
measures against those who violated it. Anyone who wrote or published anything
against the act was guilty of treason, for which the penalty was death. Anyone who
spoke against the act was guilty of misprision of treason, for which the penalty was
imprisonment and loss of goods. "And for the more sure establishment of the
succession," the act further decreed:
that as well all the nobles of your Realme spirituall and temporall, as all other
your subjectes now lyvyng and being or that hereafter shalbe at theire full ages,
by the commaundement of your Majestie or of your heires at all tymes
hereafter frome tyme to tyme when it shall please your Highnes or your heires
to appoynt, shall make a corporall othe in the presence of your Highness or
your heires, or before suche other as your Majestie or your heires wyll depute
for the same, that they shall truly firmely and constantly without fraud or gyle
observe fulfyll maynteyne defende and kepe to theyre cunnyng wytte and
uttermoste of theire powers the hole effectes and contentes of this present
acte.25
Accordingly, on March 30, Henry commissioned Archbishop Cranmer, Thomas
Audley (the lord chancellor), and the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk to tender the oath.
A day later, at the close of the session, these four tendered the oath of succession to all
the present members of Parliament.
After Parliament, the first group of subjects to take the oath of succession was
the clergy of London. On April 13, the commissioners tendered the oath of succession
to the London clergy at Lambeth Palace.27 We do not know the actual form of the
oath of succession tendered on this day. The commission that was granted to
Cranmer, Audley, Norfolk, and Suffolk and read in the House of Lords at the end of
March authorized them to take an "oath and faithfulness" of all the king's subjects
"according to the power, form, and effect of this statute, made and put forth in the
current Parliament concerning our security, position, and succession, and according to

25
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 22, 3:471-474 (quote from 474).
26
Journal of the House of Lords (London, 1802), 1:82; Hall's Chronicle, 814. Hall claims that
Parliament took the oath on March 30. For the text of the oath, see Appendix D, 1.
~ Strype, Cranmer, 36-37. As we will discuss in chapter five, Thomas More was also tendered the oath
on April 13. The king singled out More from the rest of the laity probably because he knew that More
opposed his divorce. The king's first strike was thus against those whom he knew disliked his divorce
and remarriage. The clergy's opposition to Henry's divorce is discussed in more detail in chapter four.

125
the tenor of the oath annexed to the present" documents. As such, it is likely that the
form of the oath tendered on April 13 was the same as the form sworn by Parliament
at the end of March. Moreover, the form of the oath of succession included in the
commission for its tendering in Sussex (sent on April 20) is similar to the one sworn in
Parliament, which suggests that the form of the oath sworn throughout the realm in the
spring of 1534 was analogous to the one sworn in the House of Lords.
Yet the oath of succession was not the only controversial device put forward in
March and tendered in April of 1534. On March 31, Radulphus Pexall, a royal clerk,
read in Convocation a document concerning the response of the "lower house" {domus
inferioris30) to the question "Whether the Roman high priest has any greater
jurisdiction conferred to him in Holy Scripture in this realm of England than any other
foreign bishop?"31 Thirty-two denied that the pope had greater jurisdiction than any
other foreign bishop, four affirmed that he did, and one was doubtful. No other
details from the Convocation of the spring of 1534 have survived so we know nothing
else about the origin or development of this statement in Convocation. The statement
may be related to the act of Parliament abolishing Peter's Pence, also passed in March
1534. In addition to abolishing Peter's Pence (a small annual tribute to the pope
theoretically paid by laymen) and all other papal payments, this act also explicitly
attacked the pope's jurisdictional power. Specifically, it rejected the pope's power to
dispense "with all humayne lawes, uses, and customes of all Realmes, in all causes
which be called spirituall." This "usurpacion of the seid Bishop of Rome" was a
"great derogacion of your imperiall crowne and auctorytie royall." Although this act

"assignavimus vos . . . plenam Potestatem et Auctoritatem capiend. et recipiend. Sacramentum et

Fidelitatem omnium et singulorum . . . juxta vim, formam et effectum, cujusdam Statuti, in presenti
Parliamento Nostro, Securitatem, Statum et Successionem Nostram concernentem editi et provisi, ac
juxta tenorem Sacramenti presentibus annexi"; Journal of the House of Lords, 1:82.
29
BL Harleian MS. 7571, fol. 25r. This document is a copy and thus must be taken with a grain of salt.
It is possible that the original commission did not contain a copy of the oath of succession and the
copyist added it from another source. See also Appendix D, II.
30
In this case, the "lower house" probably refers to the lower house of Convocation. The same phrase,
however, is used in the records of Convocation to refer to the House of Commons of Parliament, which
makes the reference in this case rather ambiguous.
31
"An Romanus pontifex habeat aliquam maiorem iurisdictionem collatam sibi adeo in Sacra Scriptura
in hoc regno Angliae quam alius quivis externus episcopus"; Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:199-200.
32
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:200.
33
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 21, 3:464-471; quotes from 464-465.

126
focused on the pope's dispensing power, it may have been interpreted more broadly as
a rejection of papal power in general. In the Journal of the House of Lords, the act
was originally referred to as the bill for "the abrogation of the payment of money
called Peter Pence and of dispensations granted by the Roman high priest."34 From
March 14, however, the bill was referred to more generally as the bill "concerning the
abrogation of the authority exercised {usurpate) by the Roman high priest." It is
therefore possible that the question about papal jurisdiction read and voted on in
Convocation at the end of March 1534 was a subscription designed to gain the
Convocation's endorsement for the act against Peter's Pence in the same way as the
oath of succession sought to gain the endorsement of the whole realm for the act of
succession.
Regardless of its origin, the question read in Convocation on March 31 became
the basis of a statement rejecting papal authority tendered in one form or another to
every member of the English clergy by the end of 1534. For example, a document
preserved in the British Library commences with the phrase "Romanus episcopus non
habet maiorem aliquam iurisdictionem collatam sibi a deo in sacra scriptura in hoc
regno Angliae quam alius quiuis externus episcopus." The original signatures of
many of the top clergy of the realm follow this statement, including signatures by both
archbishops, the bishops Carlisle, Chichester, Coventry and Litchfield, Durham, Ely,
Exeter, Lincoln, London, and Winchester, five archdeacons, the provincials of the
orders of Carmelites and Franciscans, twenty-two abbots, eleven priors, one warden
and fifty-two others. The document is undated, but it must be from between April
19 (the date of the consecration of Thomas Goodrick and Roland Lee as bishops of
Ely and of Coventry and Litchfield respectively) and May 27 (the date of the death of
Richard Sydnor), 1534.37 On May 2, the University of Cambridge issued a similar
declaration. This document, however, contained no signatures but simply the seal of

"Abrogationem Solutionis Pecuniarum vocatarum Peter Pence, et Concessionis Dispensationum per

Romanum Pontificem"; Journal of the House of Lords, 1:73.
35
"concernens Abrogatoinem usurpate Auctoritatis Romani Pontificis"; Journal of the House of Lords,
1:75-81.
36
BL Additional MS. 38656, fols. 3r-4r.
J. P. Gilson (ed.), Catalogue ofAdditions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years
MDCCCCX1-MDCCCCXV (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1925), 186.

127
the university. Three days later, the Convocation of the Clergy of York arrived at
the same conclusion.39 Finally, the University of Oxford as a corporate body rejected
papal jurisdiction in England with the same statement on June 27, 1534.40 But it was
not just the Convocations, the universities, and the top prelates of the realm who
signed such documents. Two books of signatures of parish priests and other members
of the secular clergy from various dioceses in the province of Canterbury exist in the
National Archives. At the head of each page is the familiar statement that the pope
has no greater power in England than any other foreign bishop. Below each statement
are the name of a location (usually a deanery) and the subscriptions of the clergy
associated with that location. Most of the pages have no dates, but the few that do are
from July 1534.41 Some of these subscriptions may have been collected as early as
April 1534, perhaps even at the same time as the tendering of the oath of succession.
On April 28, for example, Cranmer wrote to Cromwell:
Mr. Roodd hath also been with me at Croydon and there hath subscribed the
book of the king's grace's succession, and also the conclusion 'quod Romanus
Episcopus non habet maiorem authoritatem a Deo sibi collatam in hoc regno
Anglie quam quivis alius externus Episcopus;' and hath promised me that he
will at all times hereafter so conforme himself.42
Thus, it is possible that at least some of the secular clergy simultaneously rejected both
papal authority and swore to the new succession. Even if some of the secular clergy
rejected papal authority on a different day than they swore the oath of succession, the
fact that both professions were in circulation at the same time suggests that they were
closely tied. There is one important distinction between these two professions. Unlike
the oath and subscription to the succession, there is no evidence that the secular

J8
NA E 25/24 (LP VII 602), also printed in Concilia, 3:771-772.
9
The fullest certification of the Convocation of York's decision that the pope has no greater
jurisdiction in England than any other foreign bishop is BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol, 207r (LP,
VII 769). This document also contains many signatures, but it is a copy. An abbreviated report of
York's decision without any signatures is NA E 25, 45. Also see Rymer, Foedera, 14:492-493 and
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:782-783.
40
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 209r (LP, VII 891). This, like the Convocation of York's
attestation, is a copy without any signatures. It is printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:775-776.
41
NA E 36/63, E 36/64 (LP, VII 1025).
42
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 287.

128
clergy's rejection of papal authority was ever accompanied by an oath. Secular clergy
merely signed their names after a simple profession.43
This was not the case, however, for the mendicant orders in England. They
were tendered a long, detailed, and explicit profession of royal supremacy and
acknowledgment of the succession accompanied by an oath. On April 13the same
day when the London clergy took the oath of successionHenry issued a grant to
George Browne, Provincial Prior of the Friars Hermits, and to John Hilsey, Provincial
Prior of the Friars Preachers, to visit all the houses of friars of whatever order, to make
inquiry into their morals and fealty to the king, to instruct them how to conduct
themselves with safety, and to reduce them to uniformity.44 Two undated sets of
instructions that relate to this visitation also survive: one for the friars in general and
another specifically for the Observant Franciscans. The instructions ordered the friars
to "exhibit" (exhibere) fidelity to the king, to swear an oath to discharge faith and
obedience to the king, Anne, and their children, to confess Henry's marriage to Anne
was lawful and legitimate, to confirm that Henry was the supreme head of the church
of England, and "to confess that the Roman bishop who uses the name pope in his
bulls and who claims for himself the first position of supreme high priest, has no more
dignity or authority than other bishops" in England or elsewhere.45 Thus, the
profession of the friars went further than both the oath of succession and the clerical
subscription against papal authority (though both of these were incorporated into the
friars' profession) in that it explicitly acknowledged Henry's supremacy over the
church of England. Although the only explicit oath mentioned in the body of the
instructions was the oath of fidelity to the king, queen, and their offspring, the
instructions to the friars in general ended with the command that all the priors,

43
Elton recognized this fact; Elton, Policy and Police, 229.
44
NA C 66/663, m. 6d {LP, VII 587 (18)).
45
The instructions also explained how the friars should refer to the king and pope in their preaching and
prayer, as well as other general business of the visitation. The document of instructions to the friars in
general is BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 11 r v (LP, VII 590). The document of instructions to the
Observants Franciscans is printed in Henry De Vocht (ed.) Acta Thomae Mori: History of the Reports
of His Trial and Death with an Unedited Contemporary Narrative (Louvain: Publications of the
Institute for Economics of the University, 1947). 208-209. I have included both of these instructions as
well as the form of profession qf the friars and of other clerical institutions in Appendix E. Appendix E
also highlights the differences in the two sets of instructions and demonstrates how they relate to the
actual profession of the friars and other clerical institutions.

129
convents, and their successors "bind themselves with an oath . . . to observe faithfully
all and singular of the aforesaid [articles] forever." Furthermore, we have the actual
professions of the friars, which closely parallel the instructions for visitation and
conclude with the prescribed oath to observe all the aforesaid articles.
The first of these professions was made on April 17 by the Franciscans,
Augustinians, Carmelites, and Crutched Friars of London. The Friars Preachers of
Langley Regis, the Minors of Alisbury, the Preachers of Dunstable, the Minors of
Bedford, the Carmelites of Hechynge and the Minors of Ware made an identical
profession on May 5.48 These professions were signed only by the various heads of
houses, who a few days later acknowledged their professions in the Chancery. Yet it
is likely that each friar took his oath individually, for the instructions command that
"all and singular of the brothers . . . personally present be gathered" and "examined
apart and separately."49 Moreover, their professions specifically state that "we the
priors and convents of brothers . . . with one mouth and voice and with unanimous
consent and assent of all and singular . . . do profess, witness, and faithfully
promise."50 Hence, Henry forced each of the friars to acknowledge his new marriage,
his succession, his supremacy and to confirm these professions with an oath.
Henry soon extended the friars' profession to all clerical institutions of the
realm. On May 14, 1534, the prioress and convent of the Priory of Dartford in Kent
made a profession identical to that of the friars, except that it omitted the articles on
how to interpret Scripture and how to exhort people to pray when preaching.51 The

"Vt omnia et singula cenobia ac fratres in eisdem aut poy. . . [manuscript ripped] quovis viuentes sese
et successores suos conscientia ac iurisiurandi sacramento obligent, et suo quique conuentuali sigillo in
domibus suis capitularibus date confirment, quatenus omnia et singula praedicta fideliter obseruent";
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 1 lv.
47
NA C 54/402, m 33d, printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:487 (LP VII 665(1)).
48
NA C 54/403, m 18d, printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:489-490 (LP VII 665(2)).
9
"Primum vt omnes et singuli fratres vnius cuiusque cenobii intra regnum Angliae in domo sua
capitulari (vt vocat) personaliter praesentes vna congregentur. Deinde vt seorsum et separatim singuli
examinentur super quibus visum fuerit"; BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 1 l r .
50
"Noverint universi ad quos praesens scriptum pervenerit quod nos, priores & conventus fratrum,...
uno ore & voce at que unanimi omnium & singulorum consensu & assensu, . . . profitemur testamur ac
fideliter promittimus & spondemus;" NA C 54/402, m 33d, printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:487 {LP VII
665(1)).
51
NA E 25 39/2; Rymer, Foedera, 490-491 (LP VII 921(1)). The articles on preaching were probably
omitted because nuns did not preach in public. See Appendix E for the exact content of the omitted
articles.

130
profession of the Priory of Dartford, however, is exceptional in its form and in its early
date. The next institutional profession dates from June 13, and the form is again
slightly altered. This new form is essentially the same as the friars' original
professioneach person promises fealty and obedience to Henry, Anne, and their
offspring, recognizes Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England, rejects
papal authority, and confirms all the articles of profession with an oathbut the new
profession omits the section about Parliament, Convocation, and Cranmer having
declared Henry's marriage to Anne as legitimate, abbreviates the clause about
renouncing the pope's laws and canons, and adds a clause about calling the pope the
bishop of Rome rather than pope or high priest.52 This form of the institutional
profession effectively remained constant for the duration of 1534 into the first months
of 1535; variations were negligible. Well over one hundred of these professions
survive from all over the realm.54 Most of them are from between June 13 and
October 22, 1534. Ten professions from Kent are from December, 1534 and January,
1535. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge made this profession on March 9, 1535, and
the last recorded profession in this form was made at Calais on March 27,1535.55
Unlike the friars' profession, no sets of instructions survive for this profession. We do
have, however, two identical letters from Henry VIII on June 25, 1534 which
authorize Dr. Peter Ligham and Dr. Gwent (Dean of the Arches) as part of Archbishop
Cranmer's metropolitan visitation to "procure the chapter seale of euery Spirituall
incorporacyon that you shall come vnto/ And the subscription of euery man of that
chapter to be putt to this writynge devysed by vs and oure consaill that conter paine
wherof subscribyd by my lord of Canterbury ye shall herewith receive."56 This letter

52
See Appendix E, IV for the form of this institutional profession as well as a comparison to the friars'
profession.
3
Again, see Appendix E.
5
The original professions (mixed in with the bishop's oaths of supremacy) are preserved at the
National Archives in E 25. They are printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14: 487-527 and (alphabetically) in
Deputy Keeper's Reports, vii (1846), App. 2: 279-306. The are arranged by date in LP. See for
example, LP VII 921, 1024, 1121, 1216, 1347, 1594.
55
BL Lansdowne MS. 989, fols. 131v-133r (LP, VIII 360); NA E 25 23/2 (LP, VIII 458).
5
' The letter also commissioned these men to take the subscriptions of every secular priest to the
familiar statement against papal authority, for the letter continued: "and further that you shall procure
the subscription of every prieste by you vysytede to the artycle concernynge the bisshopp of Roome his
Aucthoryte within this realme"; Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 1729, fol. 2r (LP, VII 876); Margaret

131
must refer to this institutional profession, for the signatures of the members of the
institution follow the text of each profession, and wax seals are also connected to each
document. Many of the signatures appear to be original, though some are written in
the same hand. The professions exist for a variety of "Spirituall incorporyons," both
regular and secular. Monasteries, convents, cathedral chapters, colleges, and hospitals
are all included. Although the professions of each and every monastery and institution
of the realm do not survive, enough of them do survive to suggest that the tendering of
this institutional profession was comprehensive. The absence of a profession from a
specific monastery should not be taken as evidence that this monastery did not make
its profession, but rather that its profession has been lost. Thus, in contrast to parish
priests, Henry forced every member of the clergy associated with any institution to
make a detailed profession of his succession and supremacy, and to confirm it with an
oath. The fact that Henry targeted his institutional clergy with a much stronger and
detailed profession is significant. Henry was clearly making an important distinction
between his secular clergy and his institutional clergy.
Two final forms of clerical professions survive from the spring of 1534. On
April 19, 1534, Thomas Goodrick, Roland Lee, and John Salcot (alias Capon) were
consecrated bishop of Ely, Litchfield and Coventry, and Bangor respectively. Days
before their consecration, they swore a new oath to the king that replaced the previous
oath new bishops had taken to receive their temporalities from the king. In this oath,
they promised to maintain the king's "preemynence and proragative" and jurisdiction
of his "ymperiall Croune of thesame afore and ayenst all manner of persons power and
authorites," they recognized the king "ymiediatly vnder almyghtye god to be chyef
and supreme hedd of the churche of England," they offered to maintain and defend all
statutes of the realm made against the pope, andechoing the oath of succession
they pledged to keep and defend the entire contents of the Act of Succession and all
other statutes to be made in confirmation of the same.57 In addition to these new

Bowker, "The Supremacy and the Episcopate: The Struggle for Control, 1534-1540," Historical
Journal 18 (1975): 229.
57
NA SP1/83, fol. 54r {LP, VII 427). Goodrick's oath is dated April 2, 1534. Burnet gives an identical
text for Roland Lee oath: Burnet, History of the Reformation, 6:290-291. Lee's oath does not contain a
date, but must be sometime between March 19 and April 19, 1534. For the model form of this oath, see

132
bishops, there is also suggestive evidence that some of the old bishops may have made
another new oath to the king in the spring of 1534. On April 20, John Husee wrote to
Lord Lisle, "The bishops of Durham, Winchester, and York are now sent for, to what
intent God knoweth. Some thinketh they shall to [sic] the Tower."58 In May 1534,
Bishop Roland Lee wrote to Cromwell:
Plesseyth you to take the payne to speke with thys berer whoo hathe browght
the ijn answer frome the Bishope of Chechister whereby And by the
informacion of thys berer hee presaue [perceives?] not a littill dissimulacion
wiche is not to be foegotten In Remuneracion of the same it whold right well
agre hee callyd in hys owne person hether ad praestandum Sacramentum [to
swear the oath] & is as other Bishopes be.59
Both of these letters could of course refer to the oath of succession. But they also
could refer to a mysterious profession entitled "The promise of the bishops to
renounce the pope and his bulls." Whereas the oath made by Goodrick and Lee was
an elaboration of the old oath bishops made to the king for their temporalities, updated
with clauses on the succession and supremacy, this profession was a detailed rejection
of the oath that all new bishops swore to the pope until the spring of 1534. In addition
to a detailed renunciation of their oath to the pope and all bulls they had received from
him, the profession also contained the now familiar clause that "the bishop of Rome
had and has no more authority or jurisdiction in this your kingdom of England by
divine right than any other foreign bishop."60 There is no direct evidence that anyone
ever made this profession, nor is there a date on the profession itself. It does,
however, seem to fit here, and there are some tantalizing suggestions that Henry's old
bishops may indeed have sworn this oath. In this profession, the bishop promised to

NA C 82/690, no. 2 (LP, VII 1379). For a transcription of the entire text of this oath, see Appendix B,
V.
58
Muriel St. Clare Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 2:129-
130 (LP, VII 522).
59
NA SP1/84, fol. 101r (LP, VII 759). This letter is undated but it must be after Lee' s consecration.
Moreover, in the letter, Lee said he was traveling towards Syon, which allows us to establish the month
as May. LP, VII 622 shows that Lee was at Sion on May 7, 1534. Except for LP, VII, 758 (which
clearly belongs at the end of May because of the reference to the London Charterhouse), there is no
other evidence that Lee was at Syon at any other time in 1534.
"Preterea confiteor dictum Romanum episcopum non plus autoritatis, aut iurisditionis habuisse aut
habere in hoc vestro regno Anglie de iure diuino quam alius quiuis externum episcopum" NA SP6/3,
fols. 63r-64r. This profession will be discussed in greater detail below. Its complete form is transcribed
in Appendix C.

133
turn over all the bulls he had received from the pope to the king and to hold his
bishopric henceforth only from the king. William Rastell, in a fragment that is the
basis of much of our information on both John Fisher and Thomas More, claimed that
"The king caused al his bushopes [and?] the bishop of Rochester to surrender al theire
bulles to hym, whereby they were made bushopes, and they toke the king's lettres
Pattents to be bushopes [all] onley by hym."61 This statement immediately preceded a
sentence describing the tendering of the oath of succession to the London clergy in
1534. Furthermore, in a letter dated January 24 (with no year), Bishop Tunstall wrote
to Cromwell asking to be excused from handing over his bulls of confirmation to the
king in person.62 These sources suggest that we cannot rule out the possibility that
some of the bishops consecrated before 1534 actually made this profession. Finally,
there is evidence that at least some of Henry's bishops took the institutional profession
in the summer of 1534, for institutional professions by the bishop of St. Davids and
the bishop of Bath and Wells survive.64
During all these clerical professions, the commissioners for the oath of
succession were engaged in tendering this oath throughout the realm. On April 20, the
5
majority of the city of London took the oath of succession. That same day, a
commission went out to Lord Thomas West, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and others to
tender the oath in Sussex.66 The administrative effort in tendering the oath of
succession throughout the realm was Herculean, and many letters survive describing
the process. On May 5, Bishop Stephen Gardiner wrote to Cromwell explaining the
process in Winchester. Gardiner had received his commission on April 29. Five days
later, he assembled at the castle of Lord Audley the commissioners, a great number of
local gentlemen, and all the abbots, priors, wardens of friars, and curates of the shire.
After everyone present took the oath, the abbots and priors presented Gardiner with a

61
F. van Ortroy (ed), "Vie du bienheureux martyr Jean Fisher Cardinal, eveque de Rochester,"
Analecta Bollandiana 12 (1893): 253.
62
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 245r-246r (LP, X 202). LP places this letter in 1536, but could it
not be from 1534?
63
If this profession does not belong in 1534, it may be from 1536.
64
N A E 2 5 85;NAE25 119.
65
Muriel St. Clare Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, 2: 129-130 (LP, VII 522).
66
BL Harleian MS. 7571, fol. 25r.

134
list of names of all those in their houses, while the curates provided the names of all
male parishioners over the age of fourteen in their parish. Gardiner then divided up
the county and assigned specific areas of coverage to each commissioner. Gardiner
warned Cromwell that the whole process would not be accomplished quickly:
"Wherein ye shall perceive [is] a long work and will require a long tracte of ty[me],
and it be not divided among many commissioner[s], considering specially that every
man's name mus[t] be written as our commission purporteth and certified]." 67 Lord
Thomas Audley wrote to Lord Lisle in Calais on June 9 with similar instructions.
After taking the oath himself, Lisle was to divide the commissioners into groups of
two or three, give each group a copy of the oath, three or four "of the books of the
acts", and a roll of parchment on which every person who took the oath was to
subscribe his name. Audley excused the actual town of Calais from this tedious task,
asserting that if the mayor made a "little schedule mentioning that the whole
inhabitants of the town be sworn, and the day, year, and place, and afore whom they
were sworn, and put their common seal to that schedule, this were a good sufficient
declaration for the Town without any particular name to be written."68 The
requirement that all those taking the oath subscribe their names certainly contributed
to the administrative headache. Cranmer was unsure of what to do with those who
could not sign their names. He decided provisionally to have them make their mark
and then have his secretaries subscribe the swearer's name next to the mark, but he
wondered if he should not take their seals instead of their subscriptions.69 The sheer

Gardiner also informed Cromwell that they planned to take the oaths only of males, yet he was unsure
enough to suggest that if the king desired females to swear as well, they would alter their course; BL
Cotton MS. Otho C x, fol. 171; printed in Nicolas Pocock (ed.), Records of the Reformation; the
Divorce J527-1533. . . . (Oxford: Clarendon, 1870), 2: 536-537 and in Stephen Gardiner, Letters of
Stephen Gardiner, ed. James Arthur Miiller (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1933), 57.
68
Byrne, Lisle Letters, 2:178-179 (LP, Add., 941).
69
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 291. A roll of these subscriptions to the
oath succession has survived from Lancashire. The roll is headed "These be the names and syrnames of
all the persens aswell spirituall as temperall that Mr Thomas Halsall knight and I[ ]mies Ecares[ ] of
Bicurseath esquier Commissioners and Iustices of peax in the Countie of lane have swone afore vs
according to the o[the] to vs in writing delyuered aftur the forme & effect of the statuts made by Acte of
parlyament for the Kinges Succession as souerigne lord dwellin in all these . . . [cownties?] to vs alloted
in the wapentate of derbiss/ [Derbyshire] vs and ou'felowes commissioners in the said Countie of
lancastre." After this heading, a long list of names follows, well over one thousand. The names are
organized by location, usually by parish. Each new parish commences with original signatures, usually

135
scope of the task of tendering the oath to every adult male in the realm also stretched
the royal bureaucracy to its limit. More than one area of the realm was overlooked
when the initial commissions went out.70 Nevertheless, the great number of surviving
letters about the tendering of the oath of succession from the spring and summer of
1534 attest to the fact that in the end, the regime managed to accomplish it.
The multiplicity of overlapping professions in the spring and summer of 1534
must have created a great deal of confusion. After all, at one and the same time, the
commissioners were tendering the oath of succession, the clerical subscription against
papal power, the friars' profession, the institutional profession, and at least one new
bishops' oath as well. Cranmer himself was puzzled at times, as he revealed in an
undated letter to an unidentified member of the central bureaucracy (probably Lord
Audley):
where you have sent forth commissions to justices of the peace to take the
same oath [of succession], I pray you send me word, whether you have given
them commission to take oaths as well of priests as of other. And if so, then I
trust my labours be abbreviate, for in a short time the oaths (hereby) shall be
taken through all England; which seemeth to me very expedient so to be;
trusting this expedition shall discharge your lordship, me, and other of much
travail in this behalf; but yet I would gladly know who shall take the oaths at
the religious of Syon, which is specially to be observed, and also the charter
houses, and observants, and other religious exempt.71
And if Cranmer was confused in 1534, any historian writing in the twenty-first century
is bound to encounter enigmas when attempting to determine which letters relate to
which professions. For example, when the prior of the Charterhouse of Henton wrote
to Henry VIII on September 1 of having been "enstructyd by master Layton of your
gracis pleasure concernyng the subscrybyng and sealyng of a certeyn profession in
wrytyn," we simply do know if this profession was the oath of succession, the
subscription against papal authority, or the institutional profession.72

by gentlemen, priests, or other clergymen. Following these original signatures, the rest of the names
from that parish (by far the majority) are all written in the same hand; NA DL 41/1182.
70
NA SP1/84, fol. 19r (LP, VII 656); NA SP1/88, fols.l41'-143r (LP, VII App. 23 & 24); Elton, Policy
and Police, 225.
71
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 291-292. The "religious exempt" were
institutions that were exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary of their diocese and instead answered
directly to a higher power, usually either the monarch or a prelate in Rome.
72
NA SP1/85, fo!.136r (LP, VII 1127), printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 447-448.

136
 In order to summarize the multiplicity of professions of 1534, let us examine
the story of the universities. As we have seen, both universities first signed the
declaration that the bishop of Rome has no greater authority in England than any other
foreign bishop. Cambridge did so on May 2, Oxford on June 27. On May 31, Henry
wrote to Cambridge University to reassure them that even though he commanded them
to give their oaths of succession to the mayor of the town and to the bishop of Ely, he
intended nothing against the privileges of the university. Three days later, Lord
Audley wrote to the mayor of Cambridge, commissioning him to tender the oath of
succession to the town and university separately.7 No such letters survive for Oxford,
but a similar process must have taken place there as evidenced by Dr. London's claim
that he "wasse the second person who toke a corporrall ooth in Oxford befor my lord
of Lincoln and the mayer, then commissionars, to maytayne the same [defense of this
matrimony] to the vttermost of my power."75 The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge
were clerical institutions, and five institutional professions survive for Oxford
Colleges. Oriel College made their profession on July 27, Brasenose on July 31,
Balliol on August 1, and Merton and All Souls' on September 28. 76 The only
institutional profession to survive from Cambridge is from Corpus Christi College.
This profession is exceptional not only in its isolation, but also in its extremely late
date of March 9, 1535.77 I have no explanation for either exception. But it is clear
that over the course of 1534, the universities first rejected papal authority, then swore
the oath of succession, and finally made their institutional professions, the last of
which included an acknowledgment of Henry's supremacy.
After the flurry of professions in the spring and summer, 1534 closed more
quietly. Parliament met again in November and passed the Act of Supremacy, which
confirmed that Henry was indeed "the onely supreme [heed] in erthe of the Churche of

" CCCC MS. 106, #257 (pg. 566).

74
CCCC MS. 106, #42 (pg. 123). The reason Henry and Audley were so careful is because oaths were
a flash-point of conflict between the university and town throughout the sixteenth century.
75
NA SP1/77, fol.l07r (LP, VI 739). LP mistakenly places this letter in 1533.
76
Oriel College: NA E 25 102/8 (LP, VII 1024(26)); Brasenose College: E 25 102/7 (LP, VII
1024(35)); Balliol College: NA E 25 102/3 (LP, VII 1121(1)); Merton College: NA E 25 102/1 (LP, VII
1216(34)); All Souls' College: NA E 25 102/4 (LP, VII 1216(32)).
77
BL Lansdowne MS. 989, Ms. 131v-133r (LP, VIII 360).

137
England callyd Anglicana Ecclesia." No profession, however, was attached to this
statute, though of course all the institutions and at least some of Henry's bishops had
already sworn oaths acknowledging Henry's headship. Parliament also passed a
second Act of Succession, retroactively setting the form of the oath of succession and
claiming that all oaths of succession taken earlier in the year should be interpreted as
this form. This form was essentially the same as the one sent to the commissioners
in Sussex on April 20. Finally, Parliament passed the Treason Act, which declared
that anyone who did "malicyously wyshe will or desyre by wordes or writinge or by
crafte ymagen invent practyse or attempte, any bodely harme to be donne or
commytted to the Kynges moste royall personee, the Quenes, or their heires apparaunt,
or to depryve theym or any of theym of the dignitie title or name of their royall
estates" was a traitor, and as such, to be punished with death.81 The refusal of the oath
of succession was not specifically mentioned as treason. In order to bring the full
force of the act against those such as Fisher and More who had refused the oath, the
regime thus had to gather evidence that Fisher and More had expressed some "words
or writings" against the king.
At the start of 1535, then, only the oath of succession was backed by an act of
Parliament. Yet this did not stop Henry from pressing even more professions on his
clergy. Once again, Henry first targeted his bishops. Starting on February 10, 1535,
Henry made all his bishops and his two archbishops make and sign a new profession.
This profession contained familiar elements. The bishops promised faith and
obedience to Henry and to his heirs as the supreme head(s) of the English church,
rejected papal authority, pledged never to call the bishop of Rome the pope, and
promised to observe all the laws in the kingdom for the extirpation of papal authority.
Yet the profession added new clauses wherein the bishops pledged never to give faith
or obedience to the pope despite any earlier profession, never to enter into a treaty
with anyone who was attempting to restore papal jurisdiction, never to appeal to the
pope, to reveal any letters they received from him to the king, never to send letters to
78
Statutes of the Realm, 26 Hen. 8, c. 1, 3:492.
79
Statutes of the Realm, 26 Hen. 8, c. 2, 3:492-493.
80
See Appendix D.
81
Statutes of the Realm, 26 Hen. 8, c. 13, 3:508.

138
the pope in return without the consent of the king, never to seek or consent to any
papal bulls or dispensations, never to seek or keep a dispensation or exception to this
profession, and finally to revoke all protestations previously made that were in conflict
with this current profession. Virtually all of these professions were made in
February and March of 1535.83 Unlike the friars' profession and the institutional
profession, this new profession of the bishops was not confirmed by an oath. It was
also the first profession since before the Act of Succession not to mention explicitly
Henry's marriage to Anne and his new succession.
Also in March of 1535, Cromwell wrote the following remembrance to
himself: "to delyuer the othe and profession of the Bisshoppes to the pry or of
Augustyne ffreers and the provincyall of the black ffreers to thentent they may practise
the obseruacion of the same thorough out all the orders of ffreers." No evidence
exists of the friars actually making this profession, though a modified form of this
profession was made by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and their colleges
in the fall of 1535. During the first part of September, Richard Layton and John
Tregonwell made a visitation of the University of Oxford. On September 12,
Tregonwell wrote to Cromwell to inform him that they had completed their work. He
also informed Cromwell that they had obtained professionsone from the university
and one from each collegeand that every scholar had made these professions, as
well as taking the oath of succession again.85 The only profession to survive from this
visitation is a copy of the profession of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, made on
September 9, 1535. A similar visitation must have taken place at Cambridge at the

These professions are collected in NA E 25 and interspersed among the institutional professions of
1534. For the complete text of this profession, see Appendix F, I.
83
The exceptions to this statement are the Welsh professions. The bishop of St. David's profession
(NA E 25 84/1), bears the date of April 4, 1534, though it is almost certainly a scribal error and should
read 1535. The bishop of St. Alsaph's profession (NA E 25 4/2) bears the date of June 1, 1535.
84
NA SP1/91, fol. 58r (LP, VIII 345).
85
NASPl/96, fol. 1 3 8 ' ^ , IX 351). See also Stat Pap Pub, 1:425-426 (LP, VII 1148incorrectly
put in 1534 by LP) where on September 14 Oxford University informed Henry VIII: "Sed de ijs
hactenus narrabant nobis praefacti duo eximij viri [Layton and Tregonwell], mandasse Majestatem
Tuam, uti non tam Romani Ponficis autoritati, quem in hoc regno nullam habere constat, scriptis (ut
vulgari modo loquamur) renunciaremus, sigillo communi obsignatis, quam in tua ac tuorum succesorum
verba fideliter juraremus. Quae tametsi antea semel fecimus, attamen ne videremur parum mandatis
tuis obtemperantes, denuo quoque facere non sumus gravati."
86
BL Lansdowne MS. 989, Ms.' 134r-136v (LP, IX 306).

139
end of October, for the profession of the University of Cambridge survives from
October 23, as does the profession of Gonville Hall made on October 25.87 The final
profession of this sort to survive is from Cobham College, Kent, made on October
on

27. These professions differed from the bishops' professions made earlier in the
year in that they had a new preamble and an altered wording in clause twelve. These
new sections made the profession stronger by explicitly turning the profession into an
oath and more carefully guarding against taking the profession with equivocation or
dissimulation. In addition, these new university professions contained three
additional clauses not found in the professions of the bishops: one clause renouncing
all exemptions, grants, privileges, and gifts conferred by the pope, another professing
to be subjects of the king alone, and a third promising not to pay any money to the
pope or his representatives.90 Finally, the professions of Gonville Hall and Cambridge
University added yet another clause, pledging to observe faithfully the statute of
succession.91 Besides this added clause on the succession, all of the pledges made as
part of the visitation of the universities in the fall of 1535 were essentially the same.92
If the bishops and the universities made another profession of loyalty to Henry
VIII in 1535, did not the monasteries do so as well? After all, Henry sent out two
commissions to the monasteries in 1535. The purpose of the first, known as Valor
Ecclesiasticus, was to document church wealth, while the second's purpose was to
The university's original profession is BL Additional Charter 12827. A copy of it is BL Harleian
MS. 7041, fol. 193 (LP, IX 666). The profession of Gonville Hall was printed in Thomas Fuller, The
History of the University of Cambridge, andofWaltham Abbey with the Appeal of Injured Innocence,
ed. James Nicols (London: Thomas Tegg, 1840), 164-166.
88
1 have no explanation why Cobham College made this profession. It was a college of secular priests,
but to my knowledge, it was not officially part of either university.
89
"Noverit majestas vestra regia quod nos Magister et Socii predicti, non vi aut metu coacti, dolove aut
aliqua alia sinistra machinatione, ad haec inducti sive seducti, sed ex nostris certis scientiis, animis
deliberatis, merisque et spontaneis voluntatibus; pure sponte et absolute, in verbo sacerdotii,
profitemur, spondemus ac ad sancta Dei Evangelia, per nos corporaliter tacta, juramus vestrae
illustrissimae regiae majestati"; Fuller, History, 164. Also see Appendix F for the change in wording in
clause 12.
90
See Appendix F, II.
91
The additional clause on the succession in the profession of Cambridge University and Gonville Hall
was redundant, for both the letters from the visitation at Oxford and the instructions for the visitation at
Cambridge indicate that the oath of succession was once again tendered in addition to this profession.
See footnote 85 above as well as LP, IX 615, printed in Charles Henry Cooper, Annals of Cambridge
(Cambridge: Warwick and Co, 1842), 1:375 and LP, IX 616.
There are negligible differences among them. Consult Appendix F, II for the text of this profession
where these differences are highlighted.

140
examine the morals and behavior of the monks and nuns. Generally, historians of the
Tudor period have assumed that Henry indeed made the monasteries swear an oath of
supremacy in 1535. Perhaps the earliest historiographical claim of this sort was
written in the short annals of a monk of St. Augustine's in Canterbury. Concerning
the visitation of the monasteries, he wrote: "In this visitation, all men vtterly
renounced the name of the pope, hys priuilegies and exempt places & c."93 Modern
historians have echoed this assertion. David Knowles, for example, claimed:
In the spring of 1535 commissioners were appointed to require
acknowledgment of the king's headship of the Church, and this was usually
obtained by administering an oath upon the gospels in general terms of
acceptance of the king's headship. All religious houses were visited for this
purpose in due course.94
G. W. Bernard operated under a similar assumption in his recent magisterial work on
the Henrician Reformation.95 Yet this claim that the monasteries swore the oath of
supremacy in 1535, while not completely unfounded, lacks the necessary documentary
evidence to prove its occurrence.
The best evidence for the monasteries taking an oath in 1535 comes from a
draft of the commission for general visitation (not Valor Ecclesiasticus) in January of
1535. In it, the visitors are instructed "to show and demand an oath of fidelity and
obedience to us and our heirs from the same and from anyone else of the said
monasteries and from those present and serving at other places."9 Of course, an oath
of "fidelity and obedience" was a general term for any oath in which the swearer
promised to be "faithful and true" and "obedient" to a social superior. While clauses
of fidelity were included in circulating professions like the oath of succession, such a
description of the oath gives us little idea of the content of the oath, for it was possible
to swear an oath of fidelity without making any reference to the supremacy or the

" BL Harleian MS. 419, fol. H3 r .

94
Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:230. This is also the assumption of Thompson, Carthusian Order, 467.
"They [the Charterhouses of England] had been required to swear & series of oaths committing them
to the royal supremacy;" Bernard, King's Reformation, 166 (my italics). Also see page 168, where
Bernard reports that the king was trying to get the nuns and monks of Syon abbey to swear an oath in
the spring of 1535. For more on Syon, see below.
96
"Ac Juramentum fidelitatis, et obedientiae nobis et hereditorum nostris exhibende ab eisdem et
quibusuis alijs dictorum mon [abbr for monasteries?] et aliorum locorum presidentibus et ministris
exigende"; NA E 36 116, fol. 15v {LP, VIII 76).

141
succession. The royal injunctions that accompanied this visitation exhorted the monks
to observe, keep, and teach "all the singular contents, as well in the oath of the king's
succession, given heretofore by them, as in a certain profession lately sealed with the
common seal, and subscribed and signed with their own hands." This obviously
referred to the oath of succession and to the institutional profession made in 1534.
The injunctions did not instruct the monks to make another new profession in 1535.
They simply commanded the monks to observe all the statutes made or to be made for
the extirpation of papal authority and to preach and teach that the pope's authority was
not established by Scripture but rather that the king was supreme under God on earth.
Moreover, the eighty-six articles of inquisition relating to this visitation contain no
reference to an oath or profession of any kind. And in this regard, the injunctions for
the visitation of the monasteries contrast sharply with those for the visitation of the
universities in the fall of 1535. Although the first article for the visitation of
Cambridge is very similar to the first injunction for the visitation of the monasteries
(commanding them to observe the oath of succession and institutional profession
already sworn), Cromwell issued an additional set of injunctions to the universities,
the first of which specified "that by a writing to be sealed with the common seal of the
University, and subscribed with their hands, they should swear to the King's
succession, and to obey the statutes of the realm made or to be made, for the
extirpation of the papal usurpation, and for the assertion and confirmation of the
King's jurisdiction, prerogative, and preeminence."99 Thus, despite the fact that a
draft of the initial commission spoke of an oath of fidelity, none of the actual
instructions or injunctions for the visitation of the monasteriesin contrast to those
for the universitiesspecified the making of a new profession.
The actual general visitation of the monasteries did not commence until the
end of the summer in 1535. In the meantime, the commissioners for Valor
Ecclesiasticus did visit the monasteries. The commissioners sometimes took the

97
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:789; Burnet, History ofthe Reformation, 4:217.
8
These articles are printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:786-789 and Burnet, History of the Reformation,
4:207-216.
The original articles of visitation for Cambridge are LP, VIII 616. Cromwell's injunctions are printed
in Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:375.

142
opportunity to advocate royal supremacy, observe the monks' response, and report any
opposition, but there is no evidence that they ever tendered a specific profession. For
example, while collecting information on the worth and possessions of Beauvale
Charterhouse, "an exortacion frendly was showyd that the kynges of Englond by good
juste title ought to be supreme hede of the churche of the same." The proctor of the
house William Trafford replied, "I beleve fermely that the Pope of Rome is supreme
hede of the Church Catholyk," and the commissioners duly reported this to
Cromwell.' Another commissioner for Valor Ecclesiasticus, Thomas Magnus,
simply recounted to Cromwell that the prior and brethren of the Charterhouse at Hull
were "conformable to the king's pleasure."101 Yet if the commissioners for Valor
Ecclesiasticus did not tender any oath or profession to the monasteries in the spring
and summer of 1535, some monasteries certainly anticipated that the regime was about
to tender them a new oath of supremacy. The best evidence for this is that John
Houghton, Robert Laurence, and Augustine Webster, the priors of the Charterhouses
of London, Beauvale, and Axholme respectively, sought an interview with Cromwell
in the spring of 1535 to forestall the commission and seek exemption from swearing
"the diabolical decree."10 It was only after this interview that the government began
pushing an oath of supremacy on these priors and the members of the London
Charterhouse. Hence, the whole struggle with the London Charterhouse over the
oath of supremacy that started in 1535 was instigated by the Charterhouse itself! The
regime responded with an oath only after it discovered the obstinacy of the
Charterhouse in refusing to swear an oath not yet demanded of them.
Thus, in the spring and early summer of 1535, Henry was pushing the
supremacy on his monasteries in an unsystematic manner, generally without an oath or

LP, VIII 560; printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 457.

101
LP, VIII 968; Thompson, Carthusian Order, 462.
102
Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, 75 (Chauncy erroneously reported that an oath was attached to
the act of supremacy); Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:231.
" The priors were executed that spring, not for refusing to swear an oath of supremacy (though this
undoubtedly played a role), but officially for vocally denying royal supremacy, which was in violation
of the Treason Act as a "desyre by wordes or writinge . . . to depryve theym [the king, queen, or their
heirs] of any of theym of the dignitie, title or name of their royall estates.." For the interrogations and
trials of the priors, see LP, VIII 565, 566, 609. The quotation comes from Statutes of the Realm, 26
Hen. I, c. 2, 3:492-493.

143
profession. Of course, many monasteries and probably individuals had sworn to
Henry's supremacy in the institutional profession of 1534, and rumors of another
device were clearly in the air in 1535. This is best illustrated by examining in detail
the situation of the Carthusian Abbey of Mountgrace in the summer of 1535. Two
monks of Mountgrace had refused the oath of succession in 1534, and the monastery
was accordingly monitored closely by the regime. In June of 1535, Edmund Lee,
the archbishop of York, sent Dr. Langrige, the archdeacon of Cleveland, to preach the
king's new title and to deliver books on the king's supremacy around Yorkshire.
When Langrige stopped at Mountgrace, the prior John Wilson "received the booke,
but he alowed not the thinge, and saide he trusted that none of his broderne wolde
alowe anie suche things, the said Archideacon did his best to alure hym, but he coulde
not bringe it to pass." Looking back, Lee confirmed that the priors of Mountgrace
and Hull were "ready to die than to yield to your royal style."106 So Lee sent Wilson a
letter and Wilson then had interviews with both Tunstall (the bishop of Durham) and
Lee. Lee persuaded Wilson that the "kinges Majestie was supreme heed immediately
vnder Christ of this Churche of Ingland," and by July 9, Lee wrote Cromwell that
Wilson "holdethe hym selfe well content, and full wieselie considerethe that it
besemethe not hym to stonde in anie opinion againse so manie, not onlie beeing of
good lernynge, but also some of goode livenge."107 Although Wilson was convinced,
he freely admitted that he had "muche troble with certyen of his breythern whome by
cause they wold not acknolege ther dwtes vnto the kinges Majestie and vtterly expell
the bishop of Rome out of ther hartes."108 On July 13, the Earl of Northumberland
wrote Henry that Richard Marshall and Jamys Neweye, a priest and laybrother of
Mountgrace, had tried to flee to Scotland "by cause they wold not be sworne vnto

104
NA SP1/85, fol. 20r {LP, VII 932).
105
BL Cotton Cleopatra E iv, fol. 239' (LP, VIII 963), printed in Henry Ellis, Original Letters,
Illustrative of English History, Series III, (London, Harding and Lepard, 1846), 2:341-342.
106
LP, X 99^ printed in Ellis, Original Letters, Ser. Ill, 2:372-375.
107
LP, XV 125, printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, A12-A1A; LP, V1I1 1011, printed in Ellis,
Original Letters, Ser. Ill, 2:344. Also see LP, XI 75, partially printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order,
468.
108
LP, XV 125, printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 472-474.

144
suche articles as they were bounde according to youre highnes most dradde lawes."109
On July 20, Sir Francis Bigod also wrote to Cromwell, recounting, "The Prior of
Mountgrace praide me not to moave ne to vex any of his brethern for he had sente to
yower mastership his mynde concernyng boith hym self and his brethern; therfor 1
wolde ther meddle no farther, yit this I well parsaive by the prior that moste parte of
his brether be as yit traitors."'10 Finally on August 8, Archbishop Lee again wrote to
Cromwell, repeating that "the priour of Mountgrace is yelded," though some of his
"simple brodren" still held needed alluring. ] ' ] After August 8, we hear nothing more
of Mountgrace until Thomas Legh visited it in early February, 1536 as part of the
general visitation. Legh simply reported they were ready to fulfill the king's
pleasure.' l2 Mountgrace's story makes it clear that the regime was pushing them to
recognize Henry's supremacy in the summer of 1535, but it is also significant that the
language describing this submission is quite general. They simply "yielded" or
"conformed." The only time an oath was mentioned was when Marshall and Neweye
fled in order to avoid swearing to "suche articles." Yet like the London Charterhouse,
these monks probably anticipated the tendering of an oath, for surely if an oath was
tendered there it would have been noted in the other letters documenting Mountgrace's
story.
The greatest support, however, for the argument that the monasteries were not
comprehensively tendered the oath of supremacy or some new profession in 1535 is
the fact that not one monastic profession exists to either of the two visitations of 1535.
This stands in marked contrast from the bishops' professions, all of which survive, and
the university professions, some of which survive. Moreover, when the general
visitation of the monasteries finally commenced at the end of July, 1535, it proved to
be an extensive affair that generated many documents. Copious letters and reports
remain from the four visitors: Richard Layton, Thomas Legh, John Ap Rice, and John

lm
LP, VIII 1038, printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 468-470. My italics.
" LP, VIII 1069, the relevant part of this letter is printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 470.
1.1
LP, IX 49, printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 470-471.
1.2
LP, X 288.

145
Tregonwell.' ' 3 Yet in this myriad of letters, nary a mention is made of any profession
of royal supremacy. There are a few exceptions to this rule. First, in a letter from
Richard Layton to Cromwell on August 24, Layton wrote that Witham Charterhouse
"hath professide and done althynges accordyng as I shall declare yow at large to
morrowe erly."114 In addition, Thomas Legh wrote that Axholme Charterhouse "have
sealyd the profession concerning the kyng," while the proctor of Axholme, Thomas
Bernyngham also spoke of "a profession to be assigned wyth owr handis and sealled
with owr Covent seall and other letters."'15 Yet the context of this profession of
Axholme was the election of a new prior after the execution of Augustine Webster.
Except for the phrase "concerning the king," there is no indication that this profession
had anything to do with the supremacy or succession, though that remains a
possibility. When we compare the visitation of the monasteries to the visitation of the
universities, these two hints of a monastic profession appear even slighter. The
visitation of the universities produced vastly fewer letters, yet in the few that we have,
it is clear that the universities' profession was worthy of comment. The University of
Oxford wrote Henry VIII, relating how the visitors had required them to renounce
papal authority under their common seal and swear fealty to him. At the same time,
the visitor John Tregonwell wrote Cromwell, explaining that professions had been
taken from the university as a whole and from every college individually. Hence,
not only the lack of any surviving monastic professions, but also the comparatively
scant references to a monastic profession in the letters of the visitors suggest that the
visitors of the monasteries in 1535 did not demand from them an oath or profession of
the supremacy, at least not in any systematic manner. Perhaps because the professions
of 1534 had accomplished their purpose, Henry no longer felt that he had to issue
another profession to be made comprehensively by all the monasteries of the realm.

113
These letters can be followed in LP, VIII-IX. Many of them were printed in Wright (ed), Three
Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of Monasteries. A table of the progress of the visitors
can be found in Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:476-477.
Wright, Three Chapters, 59 (LP, IX 168). Also see Thompson, Carthusian Order, AA1.
1,5
LP, X 50, 104, both of which are printed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, 451-452.
116
See footnote 85 above.

146
 Although it seems that Henry did not force the English monasteries to make a
new profession in 1535, he certainly continued to coerce some of them into some kind
of acceptance of royal supremacy. The pressure the crown exerted here was focused
on select monasteries with a history of opposition to Henry, and the acknowledgment
required of them was less formal than a solemn oath. The example of the Mountgrace
Charterhouse appropriately illustrates this, but Mountgrace was not the only
monastery to undergo pressure for some type of informal acceptance of royal
supremacy. In 1535, John Pysent cryptically wrote to Sir John Alyn that some of the
monks of the Shene Charterhouse "wyll gladly obbey the kyngis grace in thys poynt
for as moche as yt ys not agaynst the scrypture off God," but others would rather dye
because of "a lytyll scrypulostye off conscyence."117 Neil Beckett, a historian of
Shene Charterhouse, assumed this referred to the oath of supremacy, but nothing in
Pysent's letter explicitly supports the assumption that he was referring to an oath. " 8
Even more compelling is a simple unaddressed letter by Dan Everade Digby and Dan
Thomas Johnsen in which they claim that they:
be content to folow and acordynge vnto thesame simpliciter & plainly we [are]
content to accepte & take the kynges grace for the supreme hede of the churche
of Inglande accordynge vnto the statute & date of parliament made & passede
theropon In witnes wherof we have subscripbed our names.'19
We do not know the situation of these two monks or their monastery, but it seems they
made some form of simple profession to the royal supremacy.
The example of Syon Abbey also warrants attention. Syon, which was the first
place where a subscription to the king's marriage to Anne was tendered, again fell
under royal pressure in 1535. Henry executed Richard Reynolds, a monk of Syon who
denied royal supremacy, ' 20 on May 4, 1535 with the Carthusian priors Houghton,

1,7
NA SP1/85, fols .125r-126r {LP, VII 1091incorrectly placed in 1534 by LP), printed in full in
Thompson, Carthursian Order, 441-442.
Neil Beckett, "Sheen Charterhouse: From Its Foundation to Its Dissolution" (Ph.D. diss., Oxford
University, 1992), 173.
119
NA SP1/98, fol. 32r(Z,P,IX 638).
120
No documentation of Reynolds being tendered an oath of supremacy exists. John Leek, a clerk of
Syon, reported that Reynolds had spoken that Katherine was the true queen of England and that he
would not accept Henry as the supreme head of the church; LP VIII 565, 566. Interrogated by the lord
chancellor, Reynolds defiantly upheld his rejection of royal supremacy and for this reason was executed
under the Treason Act; LP, VIII 661.

147
Lawerence, and Webster. On July 25, Thomas Bedyll wrote to Cromwell that the
abbess and sisters of Syon were "as conformable in every thing as myght be
devised."121 A month later, he wrote that while a number of the brethren resisted
preaching and being preached the king's title, the confessor general John Fewterer,
some of his brethren, and all the sisters "be wel contented with the Kinges Grace said
title, and wolbe redy to declare thair consentes to the same, when so ever they shalbe
1 99

required." Yet the sisters were not immediately required to give their consent.
Instead, the regime focused its attention on the obstinate brothers, especially the
monks Copynger, Whytford, Lache, and Little. On December 17, Bedyll wrote
Cromwell that he, Bishop Stokesley, and Fewterer visited the sisters in their
chapterhouse and:
wylled al suche as consented to the kinges title to syt styll, and al suche as
wold not consent to depart out of the chapter-house, there was found none
emong thaim whiche departed. Albeit I was informed this nyght that one
Agnes Smith, a sturdy dame and a sylful, hath labored diverse of her susters to
stop that we shuld not have thair convent seal; but we trust we shal have it this
mornyng, with the subscription of thabbes for her self and al her susters,
whiche is the best fassion that we can bring it to.123
No subscription survives from the abbess, and it seems that most of the sisters of Syon
acknowledged the royal supremacy simply by sitting still. This is a far cry from a
corporal oath or solemn profession. A month later, Copynger and Lachetwo of the
more obstinate brethren of Syonwrote to the London Charterhouse explaining that
they had "resolved our concyens from the opynion that ye yete rest in, and conformed
our selfes to vnitie and vniform decree and ordre of this Realme in the cause."124 Yet
again, this letter narrating their submission mentioned no profession or oath. Knowles
was indeed correct when he observed that "there is no record as to whether all the

121
Wright, Three Chapters, 44 (LP, VIII 1125).441-442.
122
LP, VII 1090 (incorrectly placed in 1534 by LP), printed in George James Aungier, The History and
Antiquities of Syon Monastery, the Parish oflsleworth, and the Chaperly ofHounslow (London: J.B.
Nicols and Son, 1840), 436-437.
123
Wright, Three Chapters, 48-49 (LP, IX 986).
LP, VII 78 (incorrectly calendared under 1535 by LP), printed in full in Aungier, Syon Monastery,
430-434.

148
nuns and brethren [of Syon] formally took an oath to maintain 'the king's new
title.'"125
Thus, we can tentatively conclude that although Henry continued to demand
that specific monasteries acknowledge his title of supreme head of the church in some
manner, he did not tender a uniform and methodical profession or oath of supremacy
to them in 1535 as he did to the bishops and universities. If they did take an oath or
make a profession, it was not supported by a subscription or a notarial attestation.
These instruments, as we have seen, were common accompaniments to such public
devices and to tender an oath or profession without them would have been atypical.
Neil Beckett's statement that "there is no proof that it [the oath to the act of
supremacy] was required at Sheen or at any other Charterhouse other than London"
applies equally to the monasteries in general in 1535.126
After the flurry of oaths and professions in 1534 and the continued but more
selective use of them in 1535, things began to settle down administratively in 1536.
Parliament met again in the spring of 1536 and updated its legislation on the
succession and the supremacy. It passed a new Act of Succession, which like the
previous one, required all adult English subjects to take a corporal oath for the
succession "by the commaundement of your Majestie or of your heires at all tymes
hereafter frome tyme to tyme when it shall please your Highnes or your heires to
appoynt."127 The oath attached to this act was similar to the original oath of
succession, but it diverged in three ways. First, Henry's new wife Jane Seymour was
substituted for Anne. Second, the initial clause swearing fidelity to Henry specified
that he was "supreme hede in erthe under God of the Churche of Englonde." Finally,
125
Knowles, Religious Orders, 221. Knowles' account of Syon's struggle over royal supremacy
remains the best. For greater details on this story, see Knowles, Religious Orders, 215-221. 1 have
dwelt on Syon at length because historians read too much into the language of its letters and assume
that the focus of the struggle of 1535 was the oath of supremacy. In particular, I am unhappy with
Bernard's account of Syon. First, he claimed that in May of 1535, Bedyll "reported that they hoped to
have king's pleasure concerning oaths obeyed." The letter Bernard cited in support of this statement
{LP, VII 622) is clearly from 1534 and refers to the oath of succession, a fact which Bernard himself
admitted when discussing the letter in a different context. The same letter cannot be from two different
years! See Bernard, King's Reformation, 168 and 634 (note 561), 157-158 and 632 (note 468). Second,
Bernard places the dispute of the subscription to the succession in 1536, whereas I maintain there is
solid evidence for keeping it in 1534. See footnote 22 of this chapter.
126
Beckett, "Sheen Chaterhouse," 175.
127
Statutes of the Realm, 28 Hen. 8, c. 7, 3:661-662.

149
the oath promised that in the event of a lack of heirs through Henry and Jane, the
swearer would be loyal to whatever person or persons Henry appointed to succeed to
the crown. The act then specified that any person doing knight's service to the king
should swear this oath. It ended, in contrast to the first act of succession, by
stipulating that whoever refused this oath was guilty of high treason.
Despite the fact that this new Act of Succession authorized Henry to command
all his adult subjects to take the new oath of succession, there is no substantial
evidence that anyone actually took this oath. Two references to it survive. The first,
pointed out by Elton years ago, is a few spare leaves from an ancient manuscript
gospel. These leaves contain two oaths, both of which commence by swearing loyalty
to Henry as supreme head and to his heirs from Jane according to the limitation of the
statute. But then the oaths depart from the text stipulated in the act and from each
other. The first oath continues: "And you shall do no felonye, nor treasones, nor
consent therunto; and if you here or knowe of any, you shall shewe the Kyng and his
Councell thereof So God you hellp and all Saynts Etc." The second oath instead
states: "and also shall bere faith and truth to our said Soveraign Lorde his heires and
pay all suche rent and do such servyce as is due to his grace for the Manour of Bthat
ye hold of our said Soveraign Lorde, So God help and all Saynts."129 These
differences suggest that even if Henry used this oath occasionally, he felt free to
modify and simplify its contents. The second reference to this oath comes from
Edward Lee's archiepiscopal register of York. On March 27, 1538, Thomas Legh
issued an inhibition to the clergy of the York province in lieu of a planned general
visitation of the province. In addition to other matters of visitation, all clergy,
churchwardens, and two or three people from each parish were to swear fealty and
obedience to the king, renounce the pope and his jurisdiction according to the Act of
Succession, and subscribe their names. Except for a scant reference concerning a
matrimonial dispute from May 7, 1538, no further documentation of this visitation
survives, though it evidently was complete by July 7 when the inhibition was

128
Statutes of the Realm, 28 Hen. 8, c. 7, 3:661-662. See also Appendix D, 111 for the text of this new
oath of succession as well as a comparison to the former oath of succession.
129
BL Additional MS. 4507, fols. 5r, 7-9'.

150
relaxed. I3 In the end, Elton was correct in his observation concerning this oath: "the
signs that anyone took notice or action are extraordinarily slight and dubious
nonexistent by comparison with the evidence for 1534."
In addition to the new Act of Succession, the Parliament of 1536 also passed
the Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome. This act declared that
all ecclesiastical persons (religious or secular), all laymen holding any office or
position of authority or holding land from Henry, all persons taking a university
degree, and whoever else it pleased Henry to specify must take a new corporal oath
against the pope upon assuming office, position, or degree. Embedded in the act was
the actual form of this new oath. Like the bishops' oath of 1535, this oath did not
mention the succession at all. It commenced with two new clauses rejecting the
authority and jurisdiction of the pope and agreeing never to consent but rather to resist
such authority and jurisdiction. The swearer then promised to repute and take the king
as the "oonly supreme hedd in erth of the Church of Englond," the familiar clause
updated with the addition of the word "only." The final three clauses were direct
(though updated and slightly modified) derivations from the first oath of succession
and the oath new bishops had been taking since the spring of 1534 upon their
consecration. In these clauses, the swearer pledged to observe and defend all statutes
made and to be made for the extirpation of papal authority and corroboration of the
king's supremacy, neither to attempt nor suffer to be attempted anything to the
damage, derogation or hindrance of these statutes, and to reject any previous oath
made to or in favor of the pope and his power. Like the new Act of Succession, this
act also specified that anyone who refused this take this oath was guilty of treason, the
penalty for which was execution.132
Unlike the new oath of succession, there is evidence for the tendering of this
oath, at least for ecclesiastical persons. To begin with, this was the form of the oath

C. J., Kitching (ed.), The Royal Visitation of 1559: Act Book for the Northern Province, vol. 187 of
the Surtees Society (Gateshead: Northumberland Press, 1975), xiv.
Elton, Policy and Police, 226.
Statutes of the Realm, 28 Hen. 8, c. 10, 3:665. For the complete form of this oath and notes
comparing it to previous oaths, see Appendix G, I.

151
that the London Charterhouse took when they finally capitulated on May 18, 1537.
Moreover, all new bishops consecrated after July 31, 1536 took this oath, for many of
these oaths are included in Cranmer's archiepiscopal register alongside other
documents relating to the election and confirmation of new bishops.134 It is less clear
exactly when new parish priests and other holders of lower benefices began taking this
oath. Already in July of 1535, Thomas Goodrich Bishop of Ely had written Cromwell
proposing a new form of the oath of canonical obedience for new priests entering a
benefice that included clauses renouncing the pope. Yet the lists of institutions for
new benefices contained in the episcopal registers I have examined do not include
Goodrich's suggested oath or the oath stipulated by the act of Parliament. Indeed,
there is no mention of an oath against the pope in any of these institutions until
1543.136 After that year, however, most institutions note that the person being
promoted "undertake an oath on the holy Gospels of God concerning the renouncing,
refuting, and refusing the authority and jurisdiction exercised by the Roman high
priest according to the meaning, force, and effect of the statutes of Parliament."137 It
is also likely that this oath was tendered regularly at the universities. A copy of the
exact oath stipulated by the act (with the marginal note "and Ireland" often added after
the phrase "the churche of England") follows the heading "The othe takyn byfore
admyttyng any to the college for renounsing thauthoritie of the busshop of Rome" in a
British Library manusript.138 Furthermore, when condemning Cambridge

133
NA E 25 82/2 (LP, XII (1) 1233), printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:588-589.
134
See for example the oaths of Nicholas Heath (Rochester) or Edmund Bonner (London) in Lambeth
Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols. 259r, 260v. Identical oaths follow throughout Cranmer's
register. This oath replaced the one sworn by Roland Lee and Thomas Goodrick in the spring of 1534.
135
Stat Pap Pub, 1:436-438 (LP, IX 1131).
136
1 have not read every episcopal register from Henry's reign so there is a strong possibility that lists
of institutions in some registers contain a reference to the oath against the pope before 1543. Even in
the registers whose institutions do not mention the oath renouncing the pope until 1543, it is feasible
that these oaths were still sworn upon institution but not recorded in the register. Finally, although the
institutions in Bonner's register do not mention this oath until 1543, it is noted in the section on
ordinations starting in 1541; Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 171v.
137
"Necnon de renunciando refutando et recusando Romano pontifici eiusque aucte et Iurisdictione
vsurpatis iuxta vim formam et effectum statutorum parliamenti huius Rem anglie in hac parte editorum
et prouisofum ad sancta dei Evangelia luratum instituit in eadem &c"; Lambeth Palace Library,
Cranmer's Register, fol. 388r. Also see Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 145r;
Registers ofCuthbert Tunstall Bishop of Durham, 102.
138
BL Additional MS. 39235, fol. 50 v .'

152
University's acceptance of Mary's counter-reformation, James Pilkington proclaimed:
"As oft as they had anye liuinge in anye college of the universites, as oft as they tooke
degree in the scholes, as oft as they tooke any benefice, and when they were made
priests or byshoppes, so ofte they sweare and forsweare all that nowe they denye."139
Excluding the text of the act itself, there is not much corroborating evidence that lay
holders of political office took this oath. In a letter from February of 1537, John
Butler wrote to Cranmer from Calais:
please it your grace to be advertised that at dyuers tymes here tofor I haue
openly declared vnto my Lord deputie / the Mayor / & all other of the kynges
Counsell here the othe of renouncynge the busshopp of Romes pretensid
power: which was stablysshed in the last parlyament of the kynges maiestie
holden at Westminster But suche othe is ther noon take / used or spoken of
amonge them / for lack wherof moche papistrye dothe rayne styll / and chiefely
amonge them that be Ruelars. Wherfor your grace myght do the kyinges
maiestie high service to procure a Commyssion for to be sent vnto my Lorde
deputie / with some other to be ioyned with him in the said Commyssion that
were not of the papisticall sort (which were hard to be found amonge the
Counsell here) to se the said othe put in execution from tyme to tyme as est
[best?] as my officer shalbe admytted / accordinge to the kinges statute.140
Whether Butler's experience in Calais was common or not, we do not know. It is
possible that lay office holders made this oath without making any documentary
reference to it. Regardless, it is apparent from episcopal registers and from
Pilkington's comment that all persons promoted to an ecclesiastical benefice
eventually took this oath.
One more oath from the Henrician Reformation remains. In 1544, Parliament
passed the Act concerning the Establishment of the King's Majesty's Succession in
the Imperial Crown of the Realm. This act began by rehashing the two oaths set forth
in the Parliamentary session of 1536. Yet because "bothe the saide Othes mencioned

James Pilkington, Of the cause of burning Paul's Church, quoted in James Bass Mullinger, From the
Royal Injunctisons of 1535 to the Accession of Charles First, vol. 2 of The University of Cambridge
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884), 121.
140
NA SP1/102, fol. 24r (LP, X 292). The letter contains the date February 11, but has no year. LP
places it in 1535, but Butler's words demonstrate that the letter cannot be earlier than 1537. Butler
wrote of the oath renouncing the pope "stablysshed in the last parlyament." The first oath explicitly
renouncing the pope to be backed by a parliamentary statute was the oath stipulated in the Act for
Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome of 1536. Since the Parliamentary session of 1536
did not commence until February 14, Butler's letter from February 11 must be from 1537.

153
in the saide severall Actes there lacketh full and sufficent wordes, wherby some
doubtes myght arise," this act issued a new oath "in lewe and place of those two
othes."141 The text of this oath was basically a much expanded version of the oath of
supremacy mandated in the 1536 Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of
Rome with the addition of a new preamble and a clause promising fealty and
obedience to Henry and to his heirs and successors as stipulated by the 1536 Act of
Succession. The oath also emphasized Henry's imperial status by stressing that
Henry's supreme headship applied not only to England but also to Ireland and to his
other dominions. The act of 1544 ended by declaring that the same people formerly
required to take the oath attached to the Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the
Bishop of Rome must now take this one instead. Cranmer's register shows that after
1544 some new bishops took this new oath at their consecrations. Yet his register also
contains examples after 1544 of the old oath for the extinguishing of the authority of
the bishop of Rome, which suggests that implementation of this new oath was not
uniform.142

Conclusions
What conclusions can we draw from this overview of Henry VIII 's use of
professions and oaths to secure his succession and supremacy? Throughout our
narrative, it has become apparent that three factors affected the power of a device:
what kind of device it was, the content of the device, and the extent of its
administration. As for the first factor, Henry tendered a mixture of oathless
subscriptions and formal oaths to his subjects. This may be just a negligible
coincidence, but the clear hierarchy between oaths and promises in the sixteenth
century suggest otherwise. It was not a coincidence that the parish clergy were
required to take only a simple subscription while the institutional clergy were bound
with a solemn oath. Henry knew what he was doing. He must have felt that certain of
his subjects needed to be bound more strongly than others. Furthermore, the

Statutes of the Realm, 35 Hen. 8, c. 1. 3:956.

142
Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols. 315r-316\ 326r_v, 328r-v, 3 3 1 " , 332v, 333", 334v-
335r.

154
professions Henry employed after 1534 were stronger not only in being oaths, but also
in more explicitly rejecting any kind of equivocation. The question that arises, then, is
why Henry tendered different kinds of professions (of varying strength) to different
groups of his subjects.
The second factor in determining the power of a particular profession was the
content of that profession. Here there were three different themes: the recognition of
the Boleyn (and later Seymour) marriage and succession, the rejection of papal
jurisdiction, and the establishment of royal supremacy. In 1533 and the first part of
1534, Henry focused on the first two issues and separated them into distinct
professions. The subscription tendered to Syon in January of 1534 exclusively dealt
with Henry's marriages. The oath of successionon the surface at leastreferred
only to the succession. The statement to which Henry forced all his bishops and
secular clergy to subscribe concerned solely the authority of the bishop of Rome. Yet
even though Henry initially separated these issues into different professions, the fact
that he circulated professions on both of these issues at the same time (perhaps even
tendering them to some subjects simultaneously) shows that the two were interrelated.
Indeed, the professions of the friars and the institutional professions of 1534 combined
the first two issues and added the third, Henry's supremacy. By 1535, the supremacy
clearly had taken precedence since the new profession of the bishops did not even
mention the succession. Likewise in the oath from the statute of 1544, the succession
was an afterthought; the vast majority of that oathwhich Parliament claimed to be a
combination of the oaths of succession and supremacydealt with the rejection of
papal authority and establishment of royal supremacy. Was Henry's initial separation
of the Boleyn marriage and succession from the rejection of papal authority and
acceptance of his supremacy a calculated move?
Central to this question is the matter of how radical in content the oath of
succession really was. Ostensibly, this oath made no reference to papal authority or
royal supremacy. This is why Houghton and Middlemore (the prior and procurator of
the London Charterhouse) finally decided to take the oath of succession in 1534. They
recognized that it was not a matter of faith, nor worth dying for. On the other hand,

155
Thomas More and John Fisher did consider it a matter of faith worth dying for. After
all, the acceptance of the Boleyn marriage implied the rejection of the Aragon
marriage, and the rejection of the Aragon marriage implied the derogation of papal
authorityeither the pope's power to dispense with Katherine's first marriage to
Arthur or the pope's power to maintain a marriage he saw as lawful in defiance of the
king. The key issue, then, is how Henry's subjects interpreted the oath of succession.
Did they see it as binding them only to the Boleyn marriage and succession, or to
Henry's jurisdictional revolution as well?
The third factor contributing to the power of an oath was the scope of its
administration. In this regard, the oath of succession was by far the most radical of the
Henrician professions. Henry tendered this oath to every adult subject in his realm
regardless of social status. The administrative effort for such an undertaking in the
sixteenth century was massive and unprecedented. The quantity of letters from the
summer of 1534 that testify to the confusion the tendering of the oath of succession
engendered demonstrate that the regime was indeed in uncharted waters. Yet why all
this administrative effort for an oath that on the surface made no reference to papal
authority or royal supremacy but merely involved the king's choice of a wife and heir?
How did the regime itself interpret the content of the oath of succession?
If the oath of succession was radical in scope but ambiguous in content, what
about the oath of supremacy? Another conclusion of this chapter is that the term "oath
of supremacy" is a misnomer. There was no single oath of supremacy. Instead, there
was a plethora of professions rejecting papal authority and acknowledging Henry's
supremacy circulating after 1534, some confirmed with oaths, some without. Unlike
the oath of succession, these professions had no Parliamentary backing; the Act of
Supremacy contained no reference to an oath or profession of any kind, so Henry was
free to adapt and modify these professions as he saw fit. Furthermore, when most
historians refer to "the oath of supremacy," they usually mean the oath tendered to the
monasteries during the visitations of 1535. Yet we have seen that it is doubtful that
most of the monasteries took an oath in 1535. A few of them may have, but evidence
indicates that some kind of informal acknowledgment of Henry's supremacy was

156
much more common. And while any sort of rejection of papal authority and
recognition of royal supremacy was radical in content, the acknowledgments of the
supremacy were much less radical in scope than the oath of succession. Elton was
quite right in his observation that "the realm as a whole was never sworn to the
supremacy."143 It was not until the 1536 Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the
Bishop of Rome that Henry even bothered to demand that a layman acknowledge his
supremacy, with the possible exception of Thomas More. And this act required an
oath of supremacy from laymen only if they assumed some office or position of
authority. This was not particularly radical, for an oath of office was traditionally
required for everyone newly assuming a position of authority. Henry simply tacked
on clauses about his supremacy to an already established oath. The supremacy then
unlike the oath of successionwas radical in content but not in scope.
But what of those subjects from whom Henry did demand a profession of his
supremacy? It is overwhelmingly clear that Henry focused on his clergy. Yet among
his clergy, Henry targeted certain groups over others. The bishops were hit hardest in
Henry's campaign. Already in 1533, the regime solicited certain bishops to abrogate
papal authority. The bishops all swore the oath of succession in the House of Lords in
the spring of 1534. They may have also agreed to the statement that the pope had no
greater jurisdiction in England than any other foreign bishop in Convocation at the end
of March, and they certainly signed this statement one to two months later. The new
bishops Goodrick, Lee, and Capon swore an oath to the king in April 1534, an oath
that explicitly rejected papal authority and acknowledged Henry's supremacy. The
rest of the bishops may have been forced to make another profession renouncing the
pope and his bulls at this time as well. In the summer of 1534, some of Henry's
bishops took the institutional profession, while every single bishop was again hit with
a new, detailed profession of the supremacy in February and March of 1535. That
means that there were eight separate professions circulating from 1533 to 1535 that
specifically targeted or at least included Henry's bishops! Even though we cannot
prove that every bishop made each of these professions, the sheer number and variety

Elton, Policy and Police, 230.

157
of the professions is significant. After the bishops, the universities also received
careful royal scrutiny. They agreed to the statement against papal jurisdiction, swore
to the succession, made the institutional profession of 1534, and then were hit again in
the fall of 1535 with a new profession of the supremacy combined with another
tendering of the oath of succession. The professions made by the friars and
institutions of the clergy in 1534 were also formidable in that they included an
acknowledgment of Henry's royal supremacy and were confirmed with an oath. This
was not true of the subscriptions of the non-institutional secular clergy. All this raises
the question: why? Why did Henry concentrate his campaign exclusively on the
clergy? Why did Henry obsessively target his bishops? Why the special focus on the
universities? Why did he attach an oath to the professions of the institutions and
friaries but not to those of the secular clergy?
In the end, this conclusion has raised more questions than it has answered. The
rest of this section will seek to answer the questions raised by our examination of
Henry's use of oaths and professions to enforce his succession and supremacy.

158
 Chapter 4: The Origin and Motivation of Henry's Use of Oaths and
Subscriptions to Enforce His Reformation
Now that we know how Henry used subscriptions and oaths to implement his
reformation in the 1530s, the next logical step is to determine why Henry acted as he
did. The goal of this chapter is to ascertain how the regime's policy on using oaths
and subscriptions came into being. We will do this by reconstructing the context of
the early 1530s in order to elucidate the rationale behind Henry's policy decisions.
Three contexts are relevant in explaining Henry's employment of the oaths, especially
the oath of supremacy. The struggle between Henry and Katherine of Aragon over
whether Katherine was a virgin when they married demonstrates that Henry was well
aware of the binding power of an oath. The conflicts between Henry and the
Convocation of the Clergy in 1531 and 1532 revealed to Henry the extent of clerical
opposition to his divorce and to the extension of royal authority over the church.
These conflicts also taught Henry that his clergy were adept at utilizing equivocation
and verbal manipulation to mitigate the full power of an acknowledgment or
submission. This context explains both why the professions Henry employed from
1534 focused predominantly on his clergy and why the majority of the professions that
he administered to them were oaths (as opposed to oathless acknowledgments) that
were progressively more rigorous in including language designed to preclude
equivocation. Finally, the conundrum of dual loyalties raised by the contradictory
oaths a bishop-elect swore to the pope and to the king and Henry's growing awareness
of the fact that the upper echelons of his clergy had sworn oaths in derogation of royal
authority explain why Henry bound certain members of his clergy (such as the bishops
and the universities) with stronger and more numerous professions. Using the insight
gained by a detailed reconstruction of these three contexts, this chapter will close with
a discussion of the principal determining factors of the crown's use of oaths and
subscriptions to enforce its reformation.

159
 Prelude to 1534: Henry's Awareness of Oaths
Even before Henry's struggle with the papacy to secure his divorce reached its
culmination in 1534, the power of an oath was a key issue in the conflict. Yet
ironically, it was not Henry but Katherine of Aragon who first utilized oaths to
advance her cause. In the fall of 1528, after a brief had surfaced that stated that
Katherine's marriage to Arthur had been "perhaps consummated," Katherine took a
corporal oath in the presence of witnesses that she had been unaware of the brief and
that it thus did not bind her.' Multiple times in confessions to the papal legate
Cardinal Campeggio between 1528 and 1529 Katherine swore an oath that she entered
her marriage to Henry as a virgin. According to Campeggio, this oath raised "some
scruple in the King's mind."2 It is likely that in the legatine trial of 1529, Katherine
again declared her virginity under oath and challenged Henry to deny it.3 The queen
continued to stand by her oath that she had never consummated her marriage with
Arthur. In July, 1531, Ambassador Chapuys believed that Katherine's best course of
action was to swear again a solemn oath in a court of law that she had never been
known carnally by Arthur and then bring forth compurgators to prove her character.4
Henry's case rested on the claim that Katherine had consummated her marriage with
Arthur, for Henry's argument that no one (including the pope) could dispense with
God's law would have no teeth if it could be proved that Katherine and Arthur were
never married in the eyes of God.
As a result, Henry needed to confront the challenge of Katherine's oath in
some way. On July 31, 1531, Chapuys reported that Henry had not attempted to refute
the queen's arguments but rather declared her "pertinacious in her oath that she had

1
"nihilo minus tamen dicta serenissma Catherina Regina, tunc ibidem protestabatur et declaravit, ac
deinde non rogata, neque requisita, sed sponte, pure, simpliciter et absolute, sacrosanctis Dei Evangeliis
per earn corporaliter tactis, in testium infrascriptorum praesentia, juravit, quod ilia verba in dicto Brevi
inserta, copulam carnelem intervenisse, de facto narrantia, per impetrantes dictum Breve, absque scitu
et sciatia suis, fuerunt apposita;" Pocock, Records of the Reformation, 2:432. For background on this
document see Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry V1I1 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1976), 64.
2
LP, IV 5681. See also LP, VI 160 and Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 60.
3
Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 86-87.
4
Cal SP Spain, IV (2) 765 (LP, V 340).

160
never been carnally known by Prince Arthur, as likewise in publicly making such an
assertion. She was very much mistaken if she trusted in such a statement, for he
would evidently prove the contrary by means of good and competent witnesses."5 The
final response to Katherine's oath came in Cranmer's book in support of the divorce, a
book of which Henry greatly approved. Article ten of this book declared: "The most
serene Katherine, with such constant and vehement presumption, cannot prove her
virginity, especially with a public oath."6 Article eleven stated that a judge could not
allow Katherine's oath to stand in court considering the circumstances. Cranmer
proved both of these articles by using canon law to establish that no oath should be
allowed to stand in court if stronger evidence clearly demonstrated the contrary.
What is significant here is that Henry felt he must confront Katherine's oath by
establishing the consummation of her marriage with Arthur with other evidence; he
was not able simply to dismiss or ignore her oath.
Yet Katherine not only buttressed her own position with an oath: she also
challenged the king to do the same for his position. In a mandate Katherine sent to the
pope in 1529, she declared her virginity upon her marriage to Henry and Henry's
knowledge of this fact, going so far as to proclaim that if Henry would swear a public
oath that Katherine did not come to him as a virgin, she would drop her case and
acquiesce to Henry's will. This challenge made a great impression on Pope Clement
VII. Jerome Ghinucci, the auditor of the papal chamber and bishop of Worcester,
reported: "the pope seems always to persevere in the opinion that the offer of an oath
Q

that the queen has made to Your Majesty gives great justification to her cause."
Henry, significantly, never took Katherine up on her challenge. Indeed, Henry
carefully guarded himself throughout his whole campaign from making a public
statement under oath on Katherine's virginity. In the legatine trial of 1529, Henry

5
"Quelle estoit bien obstinee davoer iure quelle navoit este cognue du prince Arthur, et ausy de ce
quelle lalloit disant et preschant a tout le monde, et quelle estoit bien decue celle (si elle) se fondoit sure
cella, car yl feroit apparoystre evidentement par bons tegmoins tout le contraigre"; Cal SP Spain, IV (2)
775 {LP, V 361). The English translation quoted above is that of Cal SP Spain.
6
"Seremissima Katherina, praesumptione violenta hujusmodi constante, virginitatem suam, juramento
praesertim publico, probare nequit"; Pocock, Records of the Reformation, 1:397.
Pocock, Records of the Reformation, 1:397-399; Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 237.
8
Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 136-144 (quotation from 144).

161
probably had to address this issue under oath, but in the notarial record of this trial
(compiled in 1533), the clause about the consummation of Katherine's first marriage
has been suspiciously deleted. Either Henry admitted under oath that Katherine was a
virgin and felt that this declaration needed to be suppressed, or he maintained that
Katherine was not a virgin but then had his answer destroyed to cover his perjury.
Either way, this suggests that Henry valued his oath. Moreover, at the Dunstable trial
of 1533 where the issue of Katherine's virginity was again raised, Henry did not
appear himself but appointed Dr. John Bell as his proxy. According to Thomas
Bedyll, Bell did not make his replies in consultation with Henry, nor did he respond
under oath. Considering all the resources and time Henry expended trying to secure
his divorce, it is revealing that Henry never took God as witness to the truth of his
cause, which would have been a simple andif Katherine really was willing to abide
by Henry's oatheffective solution. This indicates that Henry was well aware of the
special binding nature of oaths; his conscience would not allow him to swear publicly
that Katherine was not a virgin when married him. Whether this was because Henry
feared the eternal consequences of perjury or because Henry did not want to appear
perjured in the eyes of others, Henry's behavior betrays his awareness of the special
esteem granted oaths in the sixteenth century.
If Henry was aware how strongly an oath bound one's conscience, he was also
aware that one could mitigate the effect of an odious oath on one's conscience by
adding a few well-placed saving clauses. Sometime after 1527, Henry modified his
coronation oath.10 By adding a few conditions to his oath, he deftly altered its nature.
When swearing to uphold the rights and liberties of the church, Henry added "nott
9
Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 207.
10
Although the document which contains changes to the royal coronation oath in Henry's hand is
undated, the basic form of the oath that Henry modified suggests that Henry changed his coronation
oath after 1527'. The text of the original oath that Henry modified comes from the well established
shorter rubric of coronation, but it contains two additional clauses not found in the standard shorter
rubric. The first record of this rubric oath with the two additional clauses is in The Statutes. Prohemium
Johannis Rastell of 1527. This suggests that Henry took the base form of the coronation oath from this
work and thus did not make the alteration to the coronation oath until after 1527; Thomas F. Mayer,
"On the Road to 1534: the Occupation of Tournai and Henry VIII's Theory of Sovereignty," in Tudor
Political Culture, ed. Dale Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 29 (note 91). This
revises Glyn Redworth's supposition that Henry modified his coronation oath upon his accession in
1509; Glyn Redworth, "Whatever Happened to the English Reformation?" History Today 37 (October
1987): 30.

162
prejudyciall to hys Jurydyction and Dignitie royall." When swearing to uphold the
laws and customs of the realm, he added "lawfull and not preiudiciall to hys crowne or
Imperial! duty."" Of course, these retrospective changes did not modify the content
of the oath Henry had actually sworn at his coronation, but they do demonstrate that
the king was well aware of the power of saving clauses to subvert the original meaning
of an oath. Henry's clashes with his clergy in the 1530s would further reinforce this
lesson.12 All of this indicates that the myriad of mixed (some with oaths, some
without) professions of 1534 and 1535 was no coincidence. Henry knew that an oath
was more binding than a simple profession. He also knew that the wording of a
profession had to be chosen carefully, for the addition of a few saving clauses could
subvert the original meaning of an oath.

Prelude to 1534: Henry's Clash with the English Clergy in 1531 and 1532
In 1531, Henry attempted to get the Convocations of the Clergy of Canterbury
and York to recognize him as supreme head of the church. In 1532, Henry required
that his clergy submit all their constitutions to him, alter the ones prejudicial to royal
authority, and agree never to make any more laws or constitutions without the king's
consent, effectively handing over to the crown their jurisdictional power. The conflict
between Henry and his clergy engendered by these two royal demands set the template
for the course of events relating to the professions of 1534 and beyond. Not only did
these two conflicts reveal to Henry that his clergy strongly opposed any move to
increase royal authority at the expense of clerical autonomy, but these conflicts also
brought to light the variety of ways that one could ostensibly make an offending
profession while at the same time extricating one's conscience from the ramifications
of that profession. These subtle devices were to be used in response to the Henrician
professions of succession and supremacy, as well as in response to the other coercive
oaths of the sixteenth century.

" BL Cotton MS. Tiberius E viii, fol. 100rv, printed with a facsimile of the original in Ellis, Original
Letters, ser. II, 1:176-177.
12
See below.

163
 The story of Henry's clash with the Convocation of Canterbury in 1531 has
been told many times. Yet historians have not yet recognized the significance of the
events of 1531 in setting the template for the tendering of and response to the
Henrician professions of the 1530s. This is partly because the historiographical debate
has centered on the issue of praemunire and Henry's motivation for threatening his
clergy.13 Also obscuring the significance of the 1531 Convocation regarding oaths is
the confusion generated by the discrepancies between the two main sources about this
Convocation. The first source is the formal records of Convocation. These records
provide an itemized, day-by-day summary of what happened in Convocation. The
description in the records, however, is often vague. For example, the records
sometimes refer to a "secret communication" or a "long disputation," leaving no clue
as to what was said in these conferences. The second source is the hagiographic "Life
and Death of that Renowned John Fisher", written sometime in the middle of Queen
Elizabeth's reign. Although G. W. Bernard called this work a "doubtful source," the
consensus among historians is that it is basically accurate.I4 Philip Hughes has shown
that the source of the information on 1531 in "The Life of Fisher" was William
Rastall, a distinguished legal thinker and contemporary eye-witness (also the nephew
of Thomas More), while Fr. Van Ortroy has painstakingly reconstructed the sources of
"The Life of Fisher" and the process through which it was made.I5 Indeed, every
scholar, from Stanford Lehmberg to Bernard himself, utilized "The Life of Fisher" in
their narratives of the events of 1531. The problem is that even though the content of
the narrative of 1531 in "The Life of Fisher" includes much more detail on what was
said and who said it, it contains no dates and probably distills the narrative down to the
13
J. J. Scarisbrick, "The Pardon of the Clergy" Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1956): 22-39; John
Guy, "Henry VIII and the Praemunire Manoeuvres of 1530-1531," English Historical Review 97
(1982): 481-503; G.W. Bernard, "The Pardon of the Clergy Reconsidered," Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 37 (1986): 258-282; Guy, "The Pardon of the Clergy: a Reply," Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 37 (1986): 283-284; Bernard, "A Comment on Dr Guy's reply," Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 37 (1986): 284-287.
14
Bernard, "Pardon of the Clergy Reconsidered," 259.
15
Philip Hughes, "The Earliest Life of John Fisher," Blackfriars 16 (1935): 414-418; F. van Ortroy
(ed), "Vie du bienheureux martyr Jean Fisher Cardinal, eveque de Rochester," Analecta Bollandiana 10
(1891): 121-365; 12 (1893): 97-283. See especially Ortroy's excellent introduction; 10:121-142.
Ortroy then printed "The Life of Fisher" along with all its sources in a critical edition. All subsequent
citations of this source will come from this version and will be cited as "The Life of Fisher," with the
volume of Analecta and page numbers following this title.

164
core issues. It is not a comprehensive, step-by-step account of all that happened.
Thus, we are not sure when a certain speech by Henry or Fisher fits into the day-by-
day accounts of many "long disputations" that are sparingly but methodically
chronicled in the records. As a result, the previous accounts of the 1531 Convocation
have omitted some important details from "The Life of Fisher" on oaths. It is thus
appropriate to retell the story of the 1531 Convocation with a special emphasis on the
role of oaths and equivocation in the story.
The conflict between the clergy and the king commenced with Henry accusing
the clergy of exercising illegal spiritual jurisdiction. In exchange for a pardon, the
clergy of Canterbury agreed to pay Henry a subsidy of 100,000, though negotiations
broke down over the exact timetable of payment of this subsidy and the concessions
the clergy demanded in exchange for it.17 By early February, 1531, Henry demanded
that five articles be attached to the prologue of the clerical subsidy, the most explosive
of which was the concession that Henry was "the sole protector and supreme head of
the church and clergy of England."18 On Tuesday, February 7, after a secret meeting
with the king's councilors, Archbishop William Warham introduced these demands
into Convocation. During the next two days, both houses of Convocation debated
these issues, often in conversation with the king's councilors.1 According to "The
Life of Fisher," Fisher successfully led a campaign to oppose these articles and in
response, Henry called some bishops and other leaders of Convocation to Westminster
for a secret conference. There the king swore an oath never to take any more power,
jurisdiction, or authority than any of his predecessors had exercised and never to
meddle himself with spiritual jurisdiction or business. "Therefore havinge now made
you," Henry continued, "this franke promisse, I do expect that you shall deale with me
as frankely againe: wherby agreement may the better continewe betweene us."20

Readers who want a more general account of the events of 1531 may consult the many accounts
indicated in previous footnotes.
17
Scarisbrick, "Pardon of the Clergy," 22-33; Guy, "Praemunire Manoeuvres," 481-495; Bernard,
"The Pardon of the Clergy Reconsidered," 275-280; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 110-113.
18
"videlicet ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani (cuius protector et supremum caput is solus est)"; Bray,
Records of Convocation, 7:133.
19
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:132-133.
20
"The Life of Fisher," 10:359-360.

165
When the clergy remained obstinate, Henry called another secret meeting, "saying
further that yf any man would sticke nowe against his Maiestie in this pointe, it must
needes declare a great mistrustfullnes they had in his Highnes wordes, seeing he had
made so solemne and high an oath."21 Henry had hoped that his solemn oath would
settle the matter.
On Thursday, February 9, the plot thickened. After a morning debate over the
article on the supremacy, royal councilors entered Convocation, asked whether
Convocation had decided on the article of supremacy, and "affirmed that the lord king
did not want to admit any qualification about the same."22 "The Life of Fisher" once
again provides more detail on this cryptic statement. Evidently when the royal
councilors first entered Parliament, they urged Convocation to consent simply to "his
[the king's] demaunde, and credit him in [his] protestacion and othe."2 Fisher,
however, gave a stirring speech opposing a simple and absolute acceptance of the
supremacy. After all, what if the king changed his mind and decided to exercise
spiritual jurisdiction over the bishops and clergy of the realm? The royal councilors
responded that Henry had no such intention, "alledginge his royal protestacion and
othe [in] the worde of a Prince." Furthermore, even if though the Convocation should
grant the article of supremacy "absolutely [and] simpliciter according to the king's
demaunde, yet it shulde and muste nedes have imployed in yt this condicion and
playne meninge that he wolde have no furder [auctori]te by it then QUANTUM PER
LEGEM DEI LICET."24 Fisher then picked up on this concession and argued that if the
clergy had to accept the article of supremacy, they should make this condition explicit
and add it expressly to the prologue of the subsidy instead of passing it absolutely with
an implied condition. The royal councilors rejected adding this condition explicitly,
again clamoring "to have the graunt passe absolutely and to credit the kings honor in

21
"The Life of Fisher," 10:361.
22
"affirmantes quod dominus rex noluit admittere ullam qualificationem supre eadem"; Bray, Records
of Convocation, 7:133.
23
"The Life of Fisher," 12:251 (Rastall fragment).
24
"The Life of Fisher," 12:251. The Latin means "as far as it is allowed by the law of God."

166
geving them so solemne a protestacion and oath." Yet the Convocation refused to
give in, and a deadlock ensued for the next two days.26
Finally, on Saturday morning February 11, Archbishop Warham entered
Convocation late, presumably having been at court securing royal acquiescence to the
conditional clause. He then asked if the Convocation would consent to having the
following words entered into the prologue of the subsidy: "we recognize his majesty to
be the singular protector, only supreme lord, and, as far as it is allowed by the law of
Christ, the supreme head of the church and clergy of England." Despite getting its
way, the Convocation was still hesitant to consent vocally. Silence reigned throughout
the chapterhouse. So Warham posed the question again, adding "he who remains
silent seems to consent." At this point, an unidentified cleric uttered the famous words
"and thus we all remain silent."28 This form of acknowledgment was weak to say the
least; it was a far cry from a solemn oath or even an oathless subscription. So in the
afternoon, Warham asked the consent of the upper house of Convocation a third time
and, after much debate, all of the upper house "more expressly" consented and
admitted the same by subscribing.29 Later that afternoon, the lower house presented
some form of a subscription as well.
We should not underestimate the significance of the conditional clause
attached to the Convocation's 1531 acknowledgment of royal supremacy. As
Chapuys reported, Henry may have considered the condition "null and void" from the
start, but he took it seriously enough to make sure it was not part of the Act of
Supremacy of 1534.30 For the clergy, the conditional clause allowed them to interpret

25
"The Life of Fisher," 10:364-365, 12:251-252.
26
For further information on what happened during the course of this deadlock, see Bray, Records of
Convocation, 7: 133-134; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 114-115.
27
"ecclesiae et cleri Anglicanae, cuius singulae protectorem unicum et supremem dominum et quantum
per Christi legem licet etiam supremum caput ipsius maiestatem recognoscimus"; Bray, Records of
Convocation, 7:134.
"et idem reverendissimus interrogavit supre consensu suorum fratrum, dicens qui tacet consentire
videtur. Ad quod dictum quidam respondebat, itaque tacemus omnes"; Bray, Records of Convocation,
7:134.
29
"Qua hora, rursus interrogavit de consensu, et deinde post multa communicata, omnes superioris
domus expressius consenserunt ed admiserunt eundem, videlicet archiepiscopus Cantuariensis, episcopi
Londoniensis, Coventrensis, Roffensis, Eliensis, Exoniensis, Lincolniensis, Asaphensis, Bathonensis,
etc., idem abbates et priores qui ibi inscribuntur"; Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:134.
30
Cal SP Spain, IV (2) 635 {LP, V 105). Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 202.

167
the king's new title of supreme head as being purely symbolic, lacking all teeth or
power, for if the law of God did not allow the king to be the supreme head of the
church then the clergy had conceded nothing. We know this is how at least some of
the clergy interpreted this clause because two protestations from the southern
Convocation signed by seventeen members of the lower house survive.
The first opened with a preamble claiming that the clergy were first slaves to
God, the holy Roman Church, and the pope, and second to Caesar, citing Matthew
22:21 and Romans 13:1-4 in justification. It then quoted Ezechial 34:23 to
demonstrate that there was only one supreme head of the church. The preamble ended
by declaring that the signatories did not intend to depart from the unity of the church
and therefore refuted all novelty contrary to their professions as error and schism. In
the body of this protestation, written by Peter Ligham, the signatories declared that
they would not consent to any order or concessions which obviate the holy sacrosanct
Apostolic seat, and that they did not want to depart from this protestation in any way,
but to adhere to the same firmly in all things.
The second protestation was even more direct in claiming that the conditional
clause added to the clergy's acknowledgment of the article of supremacy invalidated
Henry's new title. It opened by proclaiming that when they subscribed to the
document recognizing Henry as supreme head of the church as far as the law of God
allows, they neither intended nor ever will intend anything that could detract in any
way from the primacy of the Roman pontiff or the authority of the sacred canons.
They then affirmed that they made this statement "in the presence of God and men,"
clearly indicating an oath. Finally, they declared:
But if this clause [on the king's supremacy] from a perverse interpretation of
whatever kind seems to bear in itself any understanding contrary to this our
understanding (which however the thing itself does not), with God as our
witness and in our consciences, we testify by our names here subscribed with
our own hands that we never acknowledged nor will ever acknowledge this

31
These protestations were first discovered by J.J. Scarisbrick in Vienna. They have been printed for
the first time in Bray's Records of Convocation, 7:134-136.
32
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:134-136.
33
"Idem nunc variis scriptis nominibus nostris coram Deo et hominibus his scriptis testamur"; Bray,
Records of Convocation, 7:136.

168
 understanding, which we condemn sincerely and curse as both error and
schism.34
Obviously, the clergy who made this protestation considered that if the conditional
clause was understood simply and directly, it prevented Henry from using his new title
to do anything in derogation of the papacy. And just in case anyone understood it in a
different manner, they swore an oath to protest that this different understanding was
never their intention!
The Convocation of Canterbury was not the only body of clergy to resist
Henry's claim to supreme headship. Although no records survive from the
Convocation of York, we know that some of its members also made some sort of
protestation against Henry's title. In a letter to Cromwell dated May 7, 1531, Roland
Lee wrote that he had been with Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham, twice and had
tried to get him to subscribe to an instrument like the order taken in the province of
Canterbury, presumably a reference to the article on the supremacy. Tunstall,
however, refused, saying that he would not open his mind but send his opinion to the
king directly by his own servant.35 On May 14, Chapuys reported that "Four days ago
the clergy of the archbishopric of York and bishopric of Durein [Durham] addressed to
the King a protest remonstrating against the sovereignty which he claims over
them."3 A small portion of this protestation survives in Tunstall's register and the
rest of it can be surmised from the letter Henry wrote in response to it.37 Tunstallif
he indeed was the author of this protestationobjected that he could not accept the
words "sole and supreme lord" as they were written, lest they cause scandal to those
with an evil or small mind. Instead, he took Henry to be "the sole and supreme lord in
temporal things." From Henry's reply, we can gather that the protestation also

34
"Quod si clausula ilia contraria intelligentia qualiscunque sinistra interpretatione pro se ferre videatur
(quod tamen reipsa minime facit), illam nos intelligentiam, Deo teste et conscientiis nostris, perque
nostra hie subscripta manibus propriis nomina testamur, nunquam agnovisse, nee agnituros fore, quam
illam ex animo damnamus, et veluti errorem ac schismaticam prorsus execramus"; Bray, Records of
Convocation, 7:136.
35
NA SP1/76, fol. 23'{LP, VI 451).
36
Cal SP Spain, IV (2) 721 (LP V 251).
37
Both the surviving portion of this protestation and Henry's response to it are printed in Wilkins,
Concilia, 3:745, 762-765.
38
"Et ne verba sub ea forma, qua scribunter, non declarata prodeant, ne scandala malignis aut pusillis
sensu generare possint, expresse in hiis scriptis dissentio; et similiter declarandeum et exprimendum

169
directly opposed Henry's dominion over "spiritual things" and contested his claim to
be the supreme head of the "church." Finally, the protestation rejected the conditional
clause "quantum per legem Christi licit" as redundant. Claiming that Henry was
supreme head of the church as far as the law of Christ allowed was tantamount to
stating that man was immortal as far as the law of nature allowed. The implication
was that just as the law of nature clearly allowed no man to be immortal so the law of
Christ allowed no king to be the supreme head of the church.
Henry's reply to this protestation is revealing.40 First of all, he explained his
understanding of his new title. He maintained that he was the supreme lord of the
church, but admitted that the "church" in this context was not the mystical body of
Christ but rather the clergy of England.41 He admitted that he was not lord over
spiritual things, but qualified this assertion by equating spiritual with sacramental.
Conversely, if spiritual was taken to mean priests, their laws, their acts, and their order
of living, Henry did claim dominion over them, for he considered these things to be
temporal.43 This was also how Henry interpreted the conditional clause "as far as the
law of Christ allows." Far from totally denying his headship, the law of Christ merely
prevented him from exercising spiritualthat is, sacramentalauthority.4 This
illustrates that while Henry had now accepted the addition of the conditional clause to
his title, he held a vastly different interpretation of it than did his clergy.

puto verba ilia (scil. unicum et supremum dominum) in temporalibus post Christum accipi"; Wilkins,
Concilia, 3:745.
39
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:764.
40
The letter is full of sophisticated theological and linguistic arguments which suggest that Henry
probably did not compose the letter on his own. Graham David Nicholson's claim the Edward Fox,
Henry's almoner, was the primary author of this letter may be correct; Graham David Nicholson, "The
Nature and Function of Historical Argument in the Henrician Reformation," (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge
University, 1977), 130. Nevertheless, Henry was no slouch when it came to theological argument and
since the letter is written in his name, we can assume he approved its content before allowing it to be
sent.
41
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:763.
2
This was why Henry could in good conscience swear an oath to the Convocation of Canterbury that
he had no intention of exercising "spiritual jurisdiction." Henry never claimed he possessed sacradotal
power, so according his defintion of "spiritual," he kept his oath.
43
For a further discussion of Henry's definition of spiritual, see Walter Ullmann, "The Realm of
England is an Empire," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979): 181-200.
44
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:764-765.

170
 In addition to giving his interpretation of his new title, Henry also revealed
what he thought about the use of equivocation (exploiting the ambiguity in language)
by his clergy. Scarisbrick called this section of Henry's letter "a largely irrelevant
5
display of semantics," but for our purposes it is full of significance. Henry boldly
proclaimed: "The truth cannot be changed by words."4 Words signified things, and
no matter how sinister the interpretation of the words, the truth could not be altered by
them. Language, however, was inherently ambiguous. There were many idiomatic
expressions where the literal "speech may be a lie," but we "take it in that wherein it
signifieth truth," such as when we "call a man dead, of whom the soul, which is the
chief and best part, yet liveth."47 Words should be understood to signify the truth.
Yet no matter how carefully the speaker chooses his words, "nothing can be so cleerly
and plainly written, spoken, and ordered, but that subtile wit hath been able to subvert
the same."48 Heretics' use of Scripture was a prime example. So "in using words, we
ought onely to regard and consider the expression of the truth in convenient speech
and sentences, without overmuch scruple of superperverse interpretations."49 Since "it
is not supposed men would abuse words," the qualification that Henry was the head of
the church "in temporal things" was unnecessary. The pope has been called '"Caput
ecclesiae,' and who hath put addition to it?"50 Henry concluded by restating, "we be,
as God's law suffereth us to be, whereunto we do and must conform our selves."5'
Henry's conflict with his clergy over their recognition of him as supreme head
of the church was thus important for setting the stage for the events of 1534. Henry
had tried to settle the whole matter by making a solemn oath. He expected that this
"frank promise" would satisfy his clergy. But far from being satisfied, the clergy
brushed it aside and insisted on adding the conditional clause "as far as the law of
Christ allows" to their acknowledgment of Henry's supremacy. When Henry
conceded this clause two days later, they still did not at first actively recognize the

45
J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 278.
46
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:765.
47
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:762-763.
48
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:762.
49
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:762.
5
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:765.
51
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:765.

171
king's headship, but instead passively consented to it by remaining silent. Only after
the third demand by Warham did they sign a document acknowledging the king's new
title with the conditional clause. To add insult to injury, the clergy made three
protestations declaring that they interpreted the conditional clause as essentially
nullifying Henry's headship. Some even confirmed this with an oath! Henry was
severely displeased with these machinations. He expressly condemned the "abuse of
words" to support "superperverse interpretations." Henry had hoped his oath would
allow the acceptance of his new title "simply and absolutely." Instead, he encountered
a clergy who used equivocation to free their consciences from a principle they
ostensibly admitted.
In 1532, the clergy used many of the same techniques to resist Henry's new
demands. This time, however, Henry was less willing to tolerate their use of
conditional clauses. The Parliament of 1532 was filled with anticlerical sentiment,
and tensions had increased between Henry and Archbishop Warham. On February 24,
Warham had added his name to the list of clergy issuing a formal protestation. In a
document subscribed by him in the presence of a notary, Warham publicly declared
that he disassociated himself from all acts made or to be made in Parliament since its
opening in 1529 which were prejudicial to papal authority or in derogation of the
rights, customs, and privileges of the metropolitan church of Canterbury.52 On March
15, Warham and Henry openly exchanged hot words in the House of Lords.53 It was
in this environment that the famous Supplication of the Commons was made to the
king, though Warham did not present the Supplication to Convocation until April
12. The Supplication in its final form included a preamble and nine articles

Warham's protestation is printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:746. In Concilia, Wilkins claimed that the
protestation is from Warham's register, but this is not true. Wilkins might have taken the document
from Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation, or he may have seen the original manuscript which is
now lost. I have found a sixteenth-century copy of Warham's protestation among the papers of Robert
Beale: BL Additional MS. 48022, fols. 142v-143v.
53
For more details on the mounting tensions between Henry and Warham in 1532, see Michael Kelly,
"The Submission of the Clergy," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5ih ser., 15 (1965): 102-
103; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 144.
54
This origin of the Supplication of the Commons has been an issue of debate. See Geoffrey Elton,
"The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII," English
Historical Review 66 (1951): 507-534; J. P. Cooper, "The Supplication against the Ordinaries
Reconsidered," English Historical Review 72 (1957): 616-641.

172
attacking the clergy, the first of which challenged the clergy's right to make
ecclesiastical laws and ordinances without the consent of the king or the laity. This
was the article that most offended the clergy, and on April 15 Bishop Stephen
Gardiner presented before the upper house of Convocation an uncompromising
defense of the clergy's authority to make ecclesiastical laws. This power, Gardiner
claimed, was "grounded upon the Scripture of God," and the clergy could not in good
conscience submit the execution of their charges and duties to the king's assent.5
Both of the houses of Convocation soon approved Gardiner's defense, and on April 27
Henry received from his clergy a response to the entire Supplication voiced in more
conciliatory language yet just as obdurate in its assertion that the clergy's authority to
make ecclesiastical statutes rested upon holy Scripture and in its refusal to submit their
canons to the judgment of the king.57 This stringent response could hardly have
pleased Henry and sometime between April 29 and May 10, Convocation prepared a
second answer. This answer again defended the clergy's right to make ecclesiastical
laws without consent of the prince, but it conceded that in the future the clergy would
submit all new ecclesiastical laws and ordinance to their king for his approval before
publishing them:
except they be such as shall concern the maintenance of the faith and good
manners in Christ's church, and such as shall be for the reformation and
correction of sin, after the commandments of Almighty God, according unto
such laws of the church and laudable customs as hath been heretofore made
and hitherto received and used within your realm.
As for laws previously made contrary to Henry's royal prerogative, the clergy would
gladly declare them void as long as they did "not concern the faith nor reformation of
sin."59 So once again, the clergy adopted a strategy of ostensibly giving into the
king's demands, but doing so with a conditional clause that could be interpreted as

The Supplication is printed in Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, 145-153. It is well
summarized in Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 139-140.
Gardiner's response is printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:750-752, quotation from 751.
57
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:181-183; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 145-147; Kelly,
"Submission of the Clergy," 109-111. The full text of the clergy's response to the Supplication is
printed in Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, 154-176, see especially 156-160.
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:187. Bray incorrectly placed this document under May 15 as part of
the final submission of the clergy to the king.
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:187.

173
invalidating the heart of the actual concession. All the clergy had to do was affirm
that a particular ecclesiastical law pertained to the maintenance of faith and correction
of sina quite broad and vague categoryand then that law would be exempt from
royal oversight.
This time around, however, Henry was not so easily duped. On May 10,
Henry countered by demanding that the clergy of Convocation sign a document
containing three articles. In this document, the clergy renounced their right to make
canons and laws without royal approval, agreed to submit all their laws and ordinances
to the judgment of a panel of thirty-two (sixteen clergymen and sixteen laymen from
Parliament), to abandon all laws the panel found offensive, and to recognize that the
canons accepted were retained only by the king's consent.60 Convocation refused to
subscribe to this document. Instead, on May 13, they drafted yet another submission
to the king couched in equivocal language. This time, the clergy agreed not to make
any new laws or ordinances without the king's consent "during your highness' natural
life." Concerning laws and ordinances already made, the clergy consented to commit
them to the judgment of the king alone (not a committee of thirty-two) and to reject
any such law the king felt was contrary to his royal prerogative, "saving to us always
all such immunities and liberties of this Church of England, as hath been granted unto
the same by the goodness and benignity of your highness, and of others your most
l
noble progenitors." This was yet another conditional submission.
At this point, Henry got fed up with his clergy. On May 15, he presented the
Convocation with another submission. This final form contained no conditional
clauses. It once again stated that the clergy could not make any new laws or
ordinances without royal approval, and that all existing ecclesiastical laws and
ordinances must be submitted to the judgment of a committee of thirty-two. Finally,

60
Bray, Records of Convocation, 184-185; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 149-150; Kelly,
"Submission of the Clergy," 113. The document of three articles is printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:749.
61
Three drafts of this submission survive, all of which are printed in Francis Atterbury, The rights,
powers, and priviledges, of an English convocation, stated and vindicated in answer to a late book ofD.
Wake's, entituled, The authority of Christian princes over their ecclesiastical synods asserted, &c. and
to several other pieces (London, 1700), 464-471. The final of these three drafts is printed in Wilkins,
Concilia, 3:752-753 and Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:182-183. 1 have quoted from the version in
Records of Convocation. It should be noted that Bray, the editor of Records of Convocation, incorrectly
placed this submission under the date of April 19, 1532.

174
this last submission declared that Convocation could not meet without the command
of the king. Henry backed up this demand with a show of force, sending the leading
temporal lords of the realm into Convocation to make sure that the clergy cooperated
and signed this submission. After dinner on May 15, the Convocation of the Clergy
gave in and subscribed. Yet even this submission was not complete nor unequivocal.
The primary historian of this Convocation, Michael Kelly, estimated that "at least one-
third and probably as much as a majority of the clergy then present refused to ratify
/TO

the Submission." Only seven bishops remained in Convocation at the time. Of

these seven, John Clerk, the bishop of Bath and Wells, refused to consent. The
bishops of St. Asaph, Lincoln, and London (Standish, Longland, and Stokesley)
subscribed only with reservations. Standish subscribed "provided that our most
excellent king permit the provincial constitutions not contrary to divine law and to the
law of the realm to remain in execution as before." Longland added the condition
"that the king permit these other constitutions made by the ordinaries [to remain in
force] until the said business be examined." Stokesley consented as long as the "said
document is neither against divine law nor contrary to general councils." Only three
bishopsWarham, West and Veyseysubscribed unequivocally. Moreover, the
wording of this submission deliberately excluded the lower house of Convocation.
Presumably opposition to the submission was so great there to preclude even the
attempt to gather the lower house's consent. Kelly famously concluded that this
"epochal decision in the history of the English Church was enacted by a rump
Convocation."65

This final form of submission is printed in Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, 176-178.
63
Kelly, "Submission of the Clergy," 116.
"In domo superiori tres episcopi conditionaliter assentiebantur; unus plane dissentiit: episcopus
Assavensis articulis regiis et submissioni cleri assensum praebuit, 'dummodo excellentissimus rex
noster permittat illas constitutiones provinciales, quae non sunt contrariae juri divino, nee juri regni,
poni in executione, sicut prius.' Episcopus Lincoln, hanc adjecit conditionem, 'sic quod rex permittat
illas constitutiones alias factas exequi per ordinarios, quousque dictum negotium sit examinatum.'
Episcopus London, 'sic quod dicta schedula non sit contra jus divinium, nee contraria conciliis
generalibus.' Episcopus Bath, et Wellen. plane dissentiit articulis."; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:749.
65
Kelly, "Submission of the Clergy," 117. The final submission was officially subscribed a day later by
a select group of representatives. Warham, Standish, Longland, and Clerk signed for the bishops,
which is strange since on the day before, Clerk had dissented and Longland and Standish had assented
conditionally; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 152.

175
 In 1532, then, Henry again experienced considerable resistance to his program
from the English clergy. As in 1531, the primary means of resistance employed by the
clergy was the use of conditional clauses and ambiguous language. Unlike 1532,
Henry refused to allow the clergy to indulge in such machinations. He demanded that
the clergy subscribe to the exact submission of his wording, a submission that was
plain and to the point, without equivocal language. Henry had learned his lesson. Yet
even then, some of his clergy managed to save their consciences and subvert his intent
by not showing up at the time of the final submission or by subscribing conditionally.
If the communal subscription to a set document had not worked, what could be done
in the future? The next logical step of escalation for Henry would have been to make
his clergy individually swear a solemn oath in confirmation of a set text, for if the
clergy used equivocation with this, then they would face the wrath of God.

Prelude to 1534: the Election of a New Bishop and a Conflict of Oaths

Henry's clashes with his clergy in 1531 and 1532 and his conflict with
Katherine over oaths go a long way toward explaining the events of 1534. Henry
targeted his clergy in 1534 because they had a recent history of resisting royal will.
Oaths were a logical method of securing their loyalty. First, the use of equivocation
by his clergy in 1531 and 1532 meant that Henry needed a device stronger than a mere
profession or subscription, both of which the clergy had subverted through the use of
conditional phrases. Second, Henry was well aware of the power of an oath thanks to
Katherine. But neither of these episodes explain why Henry used oaths to secure
adherence to his supremacy from some members of his clergy but let his secular parish
priests get away with a mere subscription. Furthermore, why did Henry obsessively
tender multiple professions to his bishops and, to a lesser extent, the universities?
A clue to thes questions lies in the 1532 clash between Henry and his clergy.
On May 11, 1532, right amidst Henry's struggle to secure the submission of his clergy
and their repeated resistance through conditional submissions, Henry called into his
presence the Speaker of the House of Commons Thomas Audley and twelve

176
representatives from that house. Edward Hall probably numbered among the twelve.
According to Hall, Henry then delivered this speech:
welbeloued subiectes, we thought that the clergie of our realme, had been our
subiectes wholy, but now wee haue well perceived, that they bee but halfe our
subiectes, yea, and scarce our subiectes: for all the Prelates at their
consecracion, make an othe to the Pope, clene contrary to the othe that they
make to vs, so that they seme to be his subiectes, and not ours, the copie of
bothe the othes I deliuer here to you, requiryng you to inuent some ordre, that
we bee not thus deluded, of our Spirituall subiectes.66
Audley and the representatives then returned to the House of Commons, where Audley
read to the House the two oaths a new bishop made: one to the pope, and one to the
king.67
Although this story is familiar to historians, its full significance has never been
realized. Previous historians have glossed over this story as another attempt by Henry
to intimidate his clergy into submission, which it certainly was. These historians
have also observed that the most likely response to Henry's speech was a proposed
statute of Parliament that never was passed, two drafts of which survive.69 Yet while
this proposed statute clearly belongs in 1532, since it declared that no ecclesiastical
law or ordinance in derogation of royal authority could be valid unless ratified by
Parliament, there was nothing in these drafts about oaths. Henry had required his
Parliament "to invent some ordre" between the two oaths, and this statute did not do
that. So what was the real response to Henry's speech? Also of significance is the
fact that both Hall and John Foxe placed much more weight on this story than modern
historians, who simply mention it in passing while focusing on the submission of the
clergy. Hall believed: "The openyng of these othes, was one of the occasions, why the
Pope within two yeres folowyng, lost all his iurisdiccion in Englande, as you shall
70

here afterward." Foxe, who erroneously placed the narrative in 1530 and gave credit
to Cromwell, made an even stronger statement, claiming that the opening of these

bb
Hall's Chronicle, 788.
67
Hall printed the form of both oaths. They are included in here in Appendix A, IV and B, IV.
68
Kelly, "Submission of the Clergy," 113; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 150-151; Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII, 299.
69
NA SP2/P, Ms. 17-19 (LP 7.57(2)) and NA SP2/L, fols. 78-80 (LP 5.721(1)).
10
Hall's Chronicle, 789.

177
 oaths to the people was "the occasion that the Pope lost al his interest and jurisdiction
heere in Englande."71 Although Foxe's statement is undoubtedly an exaggeration, he
and Hall were right to emphasize this episode. The oaths of 1534 and 1535 were, to a
great extent, a response to previous oaths sworn by the clergy. Henry used oaths in
1534 and 1535 because fire had to be fought with fire. As we shall see, the two
contradictory oaths sworn by a new bishop in the process of his institution and
consecration brought this issue to the forefront of Henry's campaign against the pope.
A. The evolution of the episcopal oaths to the pope and to the king
Before we explore why Henry brought up the issue of contradictory oaths in
the Parliament of 1532, we need to determine what oaths new bishops actually swore
to the pope and to the king. According to Robert Barnes (a leading English
Evangelical in the 1530s who, as we shall see, greatly emphasized the contradictory
nature of the oaths sworn by new bishops) and Thomas Earl (a minister of S.
Mildred's, Bread Street whose commonplace books contains various notes on issues
of the sixteenth century), new bishops first swore an oath in 759 under Pope Gregory
III. This was a simple, five-clause oath wherein the bishop-elect swore to the pope to
keep the faith of Catholic church, to abide in the unity of that faith and not consent to
the contrary, to seek the profits and honor of the church of Rome, to have no
conversation with any bishops who lived against the statutes of the holy fathers, and to
oppose these bishops and report them to the pope. This oath (which we will
designate oath A I) was innocuous enough; there was not even a clause pledging
loyalty to the pope. Yet I am unsure whether this oath in its above form was actually
sworn. Our sources for this oath are Barnes and Earl, two sixteenth-century English
Protestants, who were certainly biased.
If bishops-elect did take the oath prescribed by Gregory III in the early middle
ages, this oath was eventually discarded in favor of a stronger, more detailed oath.
This stronger oath (oath A II), codified in canon law, had seven clauses. The bishop-
elect first swore fidelity to St. Peter, to the holy church of Rome, and to the pope and

71
Foxe,^M(1583), 1054. My italics.
72
Robert Barnes, A supplication vnto the most gracyousprynce H. the v/'y (1534), fol. Dl v ; CUL MS.
' Mm. i. 29, fol. 29r. See Appendix A, I.

178
his lawful successors. He then promised never to consent to the pope losing life or
limb or being taken in any trap. He pledged to keep the pope's counsel secret and to
defend and maintain the papacy and the rules of the holy fathers. In the final clauses,
the bishop-elect agreed to attend a council when summoned, to treat the pope's legate
honorably, and to visit the see of Rome, either personally or by a representative, on a
regular basis.73 The emphasis in this new oath (oath A II) was clearly loyalty to the
papacy. According to Barnes, this form of oath A II came out of the conflict between
the holy roman emperor and the pope. Oath A I was discarded "bicause that by it, the
bysshoppes were not bounde to betraye them prynces / nore to reuelate theyr
councelles to the Pope."74
I have found no evidence that the exact form of oath A II was ever tendered in
England, though I have not made a comprehensive search of all medieval source
materials. Instead, an expanded version of oath A II (which we shall call oath A III)
was tendered to English bishops and archbishops in the fourteenth century.
Archbishop-elect William Courtenay took oath A III in 1382 upon receiving the
pallium, Thomas Arundel took the oath in 1396 when he ascended to the see of
Canterbury, and the bishop-elect of St. Asaph took this oath in the time of Arundel.
Oath A III included all the same clauses as oath A II, but some of these clauses were
greatly expanded. Furthermore, oath A III contained four new clauses not in oath A
II. In these clauses, the bishop-elect swore to avoid plotting against the pope in word
or deed, to reveal to the pope anyone he knew to be involved in such a plot, and never
to sell, alienate, or give away any of the possessions belonging to the bishopric. The
final new clause concerned the papal schism. The bishop-elect swore never to support
but rather to persecute the antipope Clement VII and all of his followers.7 Hence,

C1C, X.2.24.4, Friedberg, 2:360. This is the same oath recorded in the Collectanea satis copiosa
under the heading "The prelates olde othe made to the pope"; BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 53r.
Barnes believed (incorrectly) that this oath was the form used by bishops-elect in England in the 1530s.
He thus included an English translation of this oath in his Supplication of 1534, fol. Dl v . For the exact
form of this oath, see Appendix A, II.
74
Barnes, A supplication (1534), fol. Dl v .
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:154-155; Lambeth Palace Library, ArundelPs Register, fols. 3', 12v
76
The full text of this oath can be found in Appendix A, III.

179
oath A III continued the trend of oath A II and placed even more emphasis on loyalty
to the papacy.
The evolution of episcopal oaths to the pope had one more step before arriving
at the stage at which it remained until the Henrician Reformation. During the fifteenth
century and down to 1534, English bishops and archbishops swore an oath of
canonical obedience to the pope at their consecration.77 This new oath (which we
shall call oath A IV) was once again different from previous episcopal oaths to the
pope. Oath AIV contained all the same clauses as oath A III (excluding the final
clause against the antipope Clement VII), but many of these clauses were simplified as
in oath A II. More important, however, was the addition of three new clauses. In the
first of these new clauses, the bishop-elect swore to promote, increase, and defend the
rights, honors, privileges and authority of the Church of Rome and the pope. In the
second, the bishop-elect swore to observe and cause all men to observe the rules of the
holy fathers and the apostolic decrees, ordinances, sentences, dispensations and
commands. Finally, the bishop-elect swore to persecute all heretics, schismatics, and
rebels. In addition to this oath of canonical obedience to the pope, English bishops-
elect also swore a simple, two-part oath of canonical obedience to their archbishop at
7Q

their consecrations. Like their bishops, English archbishops-elect swore oath A IV

to the pope at their consecration, but they also swore another oath to the pope upon the
reception of their pallium.80 This oath (which we shall call oath A V) omitted all the
new clauses of oath A IV and most of the new clauses of oath A III. In content, it was
See footnote 4 of the Appendix.
78
The full text of oath IV, along with notes comparing it to the other episcopal oaths to the pope, can be
found in Appendix A, IV.
In this oath, the bishop-elect promised canonical obedience, reverence, and subjection to this
archbishop. He also swore to defend the rights of the church of Canterbury or York, depending on the
province. Examples of this oath are A. C. Wood (ed.), Registrant Simonis de Langham cantuariensis
archiepiscopi, Canterbury and York Society, vol. 53 ([Oxford]: Oxford University Press, 1956), 264-
265; E. F. Jacob (ed.), The Register of Henry Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury 1414-1443, (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1943), 1:14-15 (John Catterick); Christopher Harper-Bill (ed.), The Register of John Morton
Archbishop of Canterbury 1486-1500, Canterbury and York Society, vol. 75 (Leeds: Duffield Printers,
1987), 14 (Richard of Exeter); Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol. 3V; Lambeth Palace
Library, CM 51, #22 (Tunstall).
0
For specific references to the pallium oath among English archiepiscopal registers, see footnote 11 of
the Appendix. Exceptionally, Stephen Patryngton bishop-elect of St David's under Archbishop
Chichele also took this oath at his consecration instead of oath IV; Jacob, Register of Henry Chichele,
24.

180
basically oath A 11 with the addition of the clause from oath A 111 on not alienating
archiepiscopal possessions.81 While oath A V was thus a regression from oaths A III
and A IV, it must be stressed that archbishops-elect swore oath A V in addition to oath
A IV. Thus, the general trend in the evolution of episcopal oaths to the pope was to
strengthen the obedience bishops owed to pope by increasing the quantity and quality
of clauses outlining that obedience as time passed.
It is more difficult to reconstruct the evolution of the oaths bishops-elect made
the king for the restitution of their temporalities. These oaths were not written down
in the episcopal registers. Yet a few of them survive in undated manuscripts in the
British Library. It is likely that these illustrate the basic form of the oath in the
fifteenth century (which we shall call oath B I). This oath was divided into two parts.
The first "oath of renunciation of a bishop" was not an oath at all but rather a
proclamation in which the bishop-elect renounced all words in his papal bull of
consecration contrary and prejudicial to the king and then asked the king for the
restitution of his temporalities. In the second part, the "oath of fidelity," the bishop-
elect swore fealty to the king, promised to be attendant to the king's business and to
keep his counsel secret (an echo of the bishop-elect's oath to the pope), acknowledged
that he held the temporalities of his bishopric from the king, and promised to be
obedient to the king's commands that pertained to these temporalities.82 The primary
purpose of this oath, then, was to insure that the bishop-elect acknowledged that all the
temporalities (land, income, etc.) of his bishopric were granted by the king and not the
pope. The king, not the pope, was thus his overlord. It was similar to the oath a
vassal to whom the king had granted land would swear upon receiving that land. This
oath did not mention the "spiritualities" of the bishopric. These were bestowed by
God through the power of the Church and granted more specifically by the bishop-

81
The order of the clauses in oath V also differed from oath II. Consult Appendix A, V for the exact
form and order of this oath.
82
BL Harleian MS. 433, fol. 304v; BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C xiv, fols. 436r-437r. For the full text of
this oath, see Appendix B, I.
The exact clause is "I shall knowlage and do ye seruices due of ye temporalities of my Bisshoprice of
C. the whiche I clayme to hold of my said soueragyn lord the king/ and the whiche he yeveth and
yeldeth me." The clause is thus ambiguous. Is the bishop-elect claiming to hold the temporalities of
the bishopric or the bishopric itself from the king?

181
elect's papal bulls of consecration. Of course, Henry VIII's redefinition of "spiritual"
as "sacramental" meant that the temporalities the bishop held from the king
encompassed much more than just land and income and included the bishop's
jurisdictional power as well. Hence, the oath of a bishop-elect to the pope bound him
as the vassal of the pope, while at the same time the oath of a bishop-elect to the king
bound him as a vassal to the king. Which lord was superior?
The oath that a bishop-elect swore to the king was also malleable. It could be
changed depending on the situation. The oath of fidelity Cardinal Adrian made to
Henry VII for the bishopric of Bath and Wells demonstrates this principle. This oath
(oath B II) had oath B I as its base, but the clauses from oath B I were greatly
expanded in B II. These expansions emphasized that Henry VII was Adrian's
"supreme lord." Oath B II also contained four new clauses not found in B I. In two of
these new clauses, Adrian declared that he would not attempt nor consent to be
attempted anything harmful or prejudicial to the king, his heirs, and the privileges,
rights, prerogatives, and customs of the realm. If he became aware of any such action,
he would let the king know immediately. Significantly, a bishop-elect swore the same
two clauses to the pope in his oath of canonical obedience. Perhaps this part of
Adrian's oath to the king was a response to his oath to the pope. In the other two new
clauses, Adrian swore to attend faithfully and diligently to the business committed to
him by the king, and to seek papal bulls and apostolic letters pertaining to royal
business and send them to the king when received. The changes in Adrian's oath thus
reflected his special status as a cardinal in Rome. Perhaps Henry VII felt that as a
foreigner who resided at the papal curia, Adrian's loyalty might be unbalanced in
favor of the pope. Thus, Henry made Adrian call him his "supreme lord" and bound
him to protect the prerogatives and rights of Henry and England.84
Adrian's expanded oath to the king was exceptional. The form of the oath for
restitution of temporalities that Henry VIII tendered to Stephen Gardiner (bishop-elect
of Winchester) and Edward Lee (archbishop-elect of York) in 1531 was much
simplified. Indeed, this oath (oath B III) was even simpler than oath B I, omitting the

84
Burnet has preserved for us Adrian's oath to the Henry VII; Burnet, History of the Reformation, 4:3-
7. I have included the full text of this oath in Appendix B, II.

182
clauses from B I on being attendant to the king's business and keeping his counsel
secret. Oath B III was, however, stronger in that it eliminated the ambiguity as to
whether the bishop-elect held merely the temporalities of his bishopric or the bishopric
itself from the king. Oath B III explicitly proclaimed the bishop-elect held "the said
busshoprick immediately and only of your Hignes."85 Yet another form of the oath of
a bishop-elect to the king survives from the early 1530s. This oath (oath B IV) is
included in the collection of documents known as the Collectanea satis copiosa that
was put together for Henry VIII by Edward Fox and Thomas Cranmer, and a similar
form is copied down in Hall's Chronicle. Oath B IV brought back the clauses from
oath B I not in oath B III. Oath B IV, however, divided clause one into two parts and
then rearranged the order of the clauses. In content, the only novel part of oath B IV
was that the bishop-elect swore fidelity to the king "above all creatures"probably
another attempt to prioritize loyalty to the king over loyalty to the pope. Although
there is no evidence that this exact form of the oath was ever taken, it is significant (as
we shall see) because it is the form of the oath that Henry believed his bishops swore
to him.
B. Henry's awareness of the oaths of a bishop-elect and the evolution of these oaths
Both of the oaths taken by a bishop-elect had thus evolved by the early 1530s
to intensify the bonds of loyalty the bishop owed to his overload, the pope or king
depending on the oath. This dual intensification served to highlight the contradictory
nature of these oaths. Yet more important for our purposes than the actual evolution
of these oaths is Henry VIII's knowledge of the evolution of these oaths. How much
did Henry know? From where did he get the information that led to his speech on
May 12, 1532? According to John Foxe, the king's informant was Thomas Cromwell.
Foxe wrote that sometime in 1530, before Cromwell was a servant of the king,
Cromwell had secured an interview with Henry and presented him with a copy of the

85
For Gardiner's oath, see BL Additional MS. 34319, fol. 2\\ printed in Mttller, The Letters of Stephen
Gardiner, 479-480. For Lee's oath, see Rymer, Foedera, 14:428-429. I have included the full text of
this oath in Appendix B, III.
86
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 53v-54v; Hall's Chronicle, 789. Foxe replicated the oath printed
inHall's Chronicle in his retelling of the episode of May 12; Foxe, AM (1583), 1053. I have included
the text of this oath in Appendix B, IV.

183
two contradictory oaths. These oaths greatly impressed Henry, who then took
Cromwell into his service and sent him to Convocation to expose to the bishops their
treachery in swearing contradictory oaths. After displaying these oaths in
Convocation, Cromwell charged the clergy with praemunire, and this led to the
on

struggle of 1531. According to this story, then, Henry was ignorant of these oaths
until 1530. Once enlightened by Cromwell, he knew the two oaths only in their
contemporary form. Yet Foxe's story has too many holes in it for us to accept it at
face value. If Cromwell did enlighten the king in 1530, why did Henry wait to raise
the issue until 1532? Why is there no note in the records of Convocation of Cromwell,
then a little known upstart, charging into Convocation, presenting the clergy with the
two contradictory oaths and then accusing the bishops of praemunire! Surely that
would have created a stir! Furthermore, in a different section of Acts and Monuments,
Foxe lifted his account of the events of May 12, 1532 directly from Hall's Chronicle,
on

without making any reference to the episode with Cromwell in 1530. I suggest,
therefore, that Foxe was incorrect in his claim that Cromwell brought the two
contradictory oaths of a bishop-elect to the attention of the king in 1530.
Instead, I propose that Henry learned about these oaths by reading the
Collectanea satis copiosa. The Collectanea was a collection of writings from
Scripture and ancient authors that dealt with royal and ecclesiastical power. It was
compiled as part of Henry's effort in 1530 to establish his claim that the realm of
England was an empire and thus immune from papal jurisdiction because of the
ancient privileges of the realm. (This, of course, was part of Henry's larger campaign
to secure a divorce from Katherine.) As John Guy noted, the compilers of the
Collectanea "were seeking to establish three basic principles of English regal power:
secular imperium, spiritual supremacy and the right of the English Church to
provincial self-determination, i.e. national independence from Rome and the

Foxe, AM( 1583), 1179.

Foxe, AM{ 1583), 1053.
The Collectanea satis copiosa is BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 16-135.

184
papacy." It is clear that Henry read the Collectanea, for marginal notes in his hand
are scattered in forty-six places throughout the manuscript. Indeed, Graham
Nicholson, the historian who first alerted the historical community to the importance
of the Collectanea, has convincingly argued that the Collectanea was the basis of the
famous preamble of the Act of Appeals of 1533.9I Yet neither Nicholson nor any
other historian has observed that a small section on the oaths of a bishop-elect to the
pope and to the king is nestled in the middle of the Collectanea. This section
contains the text of the old oath of a bishop-elect to the pope as prescribed by canon
law (oath AII), the standard oath of canonical obedience to the pope of a bishop-elect
in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (oath A IV) with a slight but significant
variation, a version of the oath to the king by a bishop-elect (oath B IV), and a short
commentary on how to interpret the contradictions between these oaths.93
My argument that it was the Collectanea that influenced Henry to give his
speech to Audley on May 12, 1532 is further substantiated by a comparison of the
form of the oaths in the Collectanea with the forms of the oaths Henry presented to
Audley as recorded by Hall. The second oath recorded in the Collectanea was the
standard oath of canonical obedience to the pope prevalent in the early sixteenth
century but with three differences. First, whereas in all the other oaths of canonical
obedience I have seen, the bishop-elect swore to defend the Roman papacy and either
"the regalia of holy Peter" or "the rules of the holy fathers," the oath in the
Collectanea exceptionally included both clauses. The form of the oath to the pope that
Henry presented to Audley (as preserved by Hall) also had both clauses. Second, the
oath in the Collectanea differed from the standard oath of canonical obedience in
90
John Guy, "Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution," in
Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500-1550, ed. Alistair Fox and John
Guy (New York: Blackwell, 1986), 159.
Graham Nicholson, "The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation," in Law and Government
under the Tudors, ed. Claire Cross, David Loades and J.J. Scarisbrick (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 19-30. For a general analysis of the Collectanea, see Nicholson, "Nature and
Function of Historical Argument," 81-92. Nicholson also convincingly argued that Edward Fox, the
king's almoner, was the primary compiler of the Collectanea; Nicholson, "Nature and Function of
Historical Argument," 114-119.
92
In his dissertation, Nicholson did not mention the section of the Collectanea on the oaths of a bishop-
elect. He simply glossed over this section with the assertion that these folios were the "less important
parts of the compilation"; Nicholson, "Nature and Function of Historical Argument," 292.
93
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 53r-54v.

185
episcopal registers in that the oath in the Collectanea substituted the word "scitatem"
for "noticiam". Again, the form of the oath in Hall's Chronicle used the word
"knowledge," which is a literal translation of "scitatem," not "noticiam" (fame,
acqaintance). Finally, the last two clauses of the episcopal oath to the king were
omitted from the form copied in the Collectanea, which simply contained the
abbreviation "Etc". While these two clauses were in the form of the oath in Hall's
Chronicle, they differed from the form of the oath in episcopal registers in that Hall's
clauses were much simpler and abbreviated. All of this strongly suggests that Henry
took the oath (which Hall then copied down) from the Collectanea.,94
Likewise, the oath to the king in the Collectanea is extraordinary in three
ways. It divided the first clause into two sections and then moved the second section
to a later part of the oath, it altered the general order of all the clauses, and it included
the new words "above all creatures." Once again, all these peculiarities were also
present in the oath to the king that Henry presented to Audley.95 The fact that the
same textual oddities which distinguishing the oaths in the Collectanea from the
standard oaths circulating at the time were replicated in the oaths Henry presented to
Audley suggests that the oaths Henry presented to Audley on May 12, 1532 were
copies of the oaths from the Collectanea. The Collectanea was Henry's source.
Yet the Collectanea contained more than the two oaths Henry presented to
Audley. The section started with "The prelates olde othe made to the pope."96 This
was the original oath as prescribed by canon law (oath A II), a shorter and less detailed
oath of canonical obedience. Immediately following this "olde othe" was "new othe
of the prelates made to the pope" (oath A IV), a more detailed oath that included three
additional clauses. Henry noticed these changes. In the Collectanea, someone
presumably Henry since the marginal notes throughout the manuscript are in his

94
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 53r"v; Hall's Chronicle, 788-789. See Appendix A, IV of this
dissertation for a detailed mapping of the differences between the form of this oath in episcopal
registers and the forms contained in the Collectanea and Hall's Chronicle.
95
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 53v-54v; Hall's Chronicle, 789. The exact wording of the oath in
Hall's Chronicle varies at points from that in the Collectanea. See Appendix B, IV for more
information on these variations.
96
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 53r.

186
handunderlined four clauses of the "new othe." Two of these clauses were the
additional ones not in oath A II. These were the clauses in which the bishop-elect
swore to defend the rights, honors, privileges, and authorities of the pope and Roman
church, and to observe and cause to be observed by all men the rules of the holy
fathers and the ordinances, sentences, provisions, and commands of Rome. These
clauses help explain why Henry brought the contradictory oaths to the attention of
Parliament in the spring of 1532 and not earlier. At just the same time as the clergy
obstinately refused to submit their ecclesiastical ordinances and laws to royal
judgment, Henry produced evidence that the clergy had actually sworn to defend and
observe these same ecclesiastical rights, honors, sentences, and ordinances! The fact
that these clauses were not in the old oath probably heightened Henry's indignation,
for it suggested that these clauses had been deviously added at some point in English
history. Here was evidence of the Roman church having unjustly increased its own
power over Henry's clerical subjects! The other two clauses Henry underlined, while
not new, were even more significant. In these clauses, the bishop-elect swore never to
do in counsel or deed anything contrary or prejudicial to the pope, and to report
anyone who contemplated or did such an action to the pope. At a time when Henry
was certainly contemplating acting against the pope to secure his divorce, these
clauses must have struck him as treasonous. If Henry did indeed gain his knowledge
of the oaths of a bishop-elect from the Collectanea, he was also well aware that the
oath of canonical obedience had evolved to intensify the loyalty owed to the pope, an
evolution of which he did not approve.
The section of the Collectanea on oaths concluded with a short explanation of
how to interpret the contradictions between the oath to the pope and the oath to the
king. It cited two canons, each of which suggested a different interpretation of the
contradictions. The first canon was "One cannot swear an oath in prejudice to the
rights a superior."98 If this canon guided the interpretation of the oaths, Henry had
nothing to worry about. This canon suggested that all oathstheoretically including

97
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 53v.
98
"Non valet iuramentum praestitum in praeiudicium iuris superioris," CIC, X.2.24.19, Friedberg,
2:366.

187
the oath of a bishop-elect to the popewere taken with the tacit condition "if it is not
prejudicial to the rights of a superior." Henry underlined this condition. The other
canon, however, suggested a more troubling interpretation. This canon was "Whoever
swears not to act against someone is able to act against him in his own causes and
causes of the church." The basis for this canon was a letter from Pope Honorius III.
One Prince Antiochenus had evidently caused some of his prelates to swear an oath
never to act against him. The prelates wrote a letter to Honorius asking what they
should do if Antiochenus made any move against them or their churches. Honorius
replied that the prelates "were not held to this oath but were able to stand freely for the
rights and honors of this church and also able to defend their particulars against this
prince."100 If this canon were applied to the two oaths of a bishop-elect, then that
Henry's bishops could indeed violate their oath to the king and act against Henry if
their actions were in defense of the church. This section of the Collectanea concluded
by asserting that the proper interpretation of the two oaths should be that a clerical
subject without violation of any oath sworn beforehand (to the pope) ought to adhere
to his prince in the prince's just causes. Although this interpretation was certainly
favorable to the king, it probably did little to set Henry's mind at ease, for Henry was
now aware not only of the contradictions between the two oaths of a bishop-elect but
also that canon law allowed two opposing interpretations of these oaths. This was
why Henry ordered Parliament "to inuent some ordre" between the two oaths.

"Qui iurat non esse contra aliquem, potest in causis propriis et ecclesiae suae contra eum"; CIC,
X.2.24.31,Friedberg, 2:372
100
"Interpretatione congrua declaramus, vos iuramento huiusmodi non teneri, quin pro iurisbus et
honoribus ipsius ecclesiae, ac etiam specialibus vestris legitime defendendis contra ipsum principem
stare libere valeatis"; CIC, X.2.24.31, Friedberg, 2:372. The letter supporting this canon (and thus this
particular quote) was not included in the Collectanea. See the following footnote.
101
The section of the Collectanea on the interpretation of the two oaths is written in convoluted and
abbreviated Latin. Although I believe my summary above is correct, I will include the original Latin so
that readers may come to their own conclusions. It is as follows: "Iuramentum, si quod prestitum fuerit,
prout in schedula presentibus annexa continetur, non obligat subditum iurantem, vt aliquid faciat contra
ius et preeminentiam regie maiestatis Nam in huiusmodi iuramento inest ex iuris interpretatione tacita
conditio, vidlt [videlicet] si non sit in priudicium iuris superiores vt expresse habetur in textu, et
prescribentes in ca. venientes, de iureiurando pro quo etiam facti ca. petitio in eodem titulo ubi habetur
que clericus iuras [iuramentas?] cont[ra] aliquem non esse: Nihilomin[u]s cont[ra] eundem agere pot
[potuit?] tam pro iure et honore sue ealie que 'in casa propria. Quin igitur canones tam fauorabilem
iuramenti interpretacionem admittunt in casis predictis multo fortius conadere [contradere?] videntur vt
sine aliqua iuramenti violatione antea prestiti pot [potuit?] debet clericus subditus principi ei in causis

188
C. The polemical context for Henry's attack on the oath of a bishop-elect to the pope
The direct source of Henry's information on the contradictory oaths of a
bishop-elect and the resulting threat of his bishops placing their loyalty to the pope
above their loyalty to him was the Collectanea. Yet the information compiled in the
Collectanea had not been gathered in a vacuum. Attacks on episcopal oaths of
canonical obedience were not new in 1532. Neither did the development of the
Reformation stifle these attacks. Indeed, the episcopal oath of canonical obedience
suffered criticism throughout the sixteenth century by reformers from various
countries. Although these polemics cannot be shown to have influenced Henry
directly, they are still important because they demonstrate the wider significance of
this issue. By establishing a deeper ideological context from which Henry moved to
attack the episcopal oath to the pope, we are able to understand better the logic behind
Henry's actions.
Perhaps the earliest attack on the episcopal oath of canonical obedience came
from a Wycliffite writer at the end of the fourteenth century. This anonymous writer
commenced his manuscript treatise by transcribing (and translating into Middle
English) the episcopal oath to the pope common in the later middle ages, oath A III.
The oath is to Urban VI, a detail which along with the reference to the papal schism,
date the manuscript from 1378 to 1389. Although the author opened the treatise by
citing Chrysostom's interpretation of Matthew to suggest that all swearing was evil, he
spent the body of the treatise arguing why each clause of the bishop's oath to the pope
was wrong. Two greater arguments emerged from his clause-by-clause attack. The
first was that the oath to the pope put the pope above God. Swearing to the pope as
lord placed the pope above Christ. Swearing to give the pope worship was idolatry.
By swearing to go to Rome regularly, the bishop put his body under the control of the
pope rather than God.103 The second argument, more important for our purposes, was
that the oath to the pope made the pope a greater earthly lord than the king. The
king's lordship was an ordinance of God but the pope's lordship was not. Inasmuch as

suis iustis et pro regni vtilitate adherere pro quorum descusione aram etiam sumere dicti canones
clericus permittunt"; BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 54 rv .
102
BL Additional MS. 24202, fol. T v .
103
BL Additional MS. 24202, fols. 2\ 6\ 1 lv.

189
the pope had any power, it was a ghostly or spiritual power that God alone could
defend. The mere act of swearing an oath to the pope gave him earthly power, and
God had ordained that all earthly power belonged to kings.I04 Thus, by swearing an
oath to the pope, bishops committed treason against all kings, against God's
ordinances, and against God himself.105 Already at the end of the fourteenth century,
then, the episcopal oath of canonical obedience was being depicted as in derogation of
royal authority.
In 1534, that wonder year of Henrician professions, the English Evangelical
Robert Barnes published an updated version of his Supplicatyon . . . to the most
excellent and redoubted prince kinge henrye the eyght. Unlike his Supplicatyon of
1531, which had only a small section attacking the pope's power to dispense oaths, the
Supplicatyon of 1534 contained a large diatribe against the episcopal oath of canonical
obedience. Like the Wycliffite writer, Barnes first transcribed the text of the episcopal
oaths to the pope (oaths A I and A II in this case) and then proceeded to attack each
clause of the oath. Barnes' conclusions were also similar to the tract from the
fourteenth century. The oath did not agree with God's word. From where did the
pope get the dignity of a lord? Speaking to the bishops directly, Barnes proclaimed
that the "cause of your othe" was "to betraye your prynces."106 The oath was an
excuse for treason, "for nowe yf he be a traytour, he is to be execused. Why? For he
is sworne to it."107 Barnes went beyond the Wycliffite writer, however, by comparing
the oath to the pope to the episcopal oath to the king. Barnes reminded the bishops of
England:
For the very truthe is, that the kynges grace, and his counsell, consyderyng
your othe made to the pope to be preiudiciall to his regall power, causeth you,
in your othe afterwarde made vnto hym, to reuoke those thynges, that you had
afore sworne to the pope, and to declare that his grace and his counsell, dyd
recken your othe made to the pope, to be agaynste hym, therfore he maketh
you to revoke it by name, namynge the same othe, & also the same pope.I08

BL Additional MS. 24202, fols. T\ 4 \ 5r, 1', 9r, 12r.

BL Additional MS. 24202, fol. 5r.
Barnes, A supplicacion (1534), fol. D3r.
Barnes, A supplicacion (1534), fol. D2V.
Barnes, A supplicacion (1534), fol. D4r.

190
No one could swear allegiance to two people. The bishops were in a predicament in
which no matter what they did, they were perjured. But which of the two oaths would
the bishops chose to break? Why, their oaths to their prince of course! The pope
could always absolve the bishops from their oaths to their prince, "but of your othe
made vnto the Pope, there is no absoluton, neither in heuen, nor erthe."'09 Thus, in the
same year when Henry began circulating professions renouncing the pope and
acknowledging the king's supremacy, Barnes published a treatise that not only
reminded Henry of the dangers of the episcopal oath to the pope but also warned
Henry that the bishops could subvert their oath to the king by breaking it and seeking
papal absolution after the fact.
Barnes was not the only one to worry about the pope's dispensing power in
regard to oaths. James Bass Mullinger, the nineteenth-century historian of the
University of Cambridge, noted that among the statutes for the founding of Christ's
College in 1506 was the following clause: "1 will at no time seek for a dispensation
with respect to any one of the statutes of our foundation, or this my oath, neither will 1
take any steps for the obtaining of such dispensation or in any way accept it if
obtained by others."" 0 The statutes also required the master of Christ's College to be
placed under a bond of 200 not to seek any papal dispensation from his oath, nor
allow anyone under his charge to do so.'" More relevant to our topic, however, was a
manuscript drawn up by Cranmer referred to as "The collection of tenets extracted
from the canon law, shewing the extravagant pretentions of the church of Rome."112
According to some interpretations of canon law, the clergy did not have to give an
oath to their temporal rulers unless the clergy held temporalities from them.' l3 The
pope claimed the power "to judge which oaths ought to be kept, and which not."" 4
As a result, the pope "may absolve subjects from their oath of fidelity, and absolve

Barnes, A supplication (1534), fol. El v .

Mullinger, From the Earliest Times to the Royal Injunctions of 1535, vol. 1 of The University of
Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884), 456.
111
Mullinger, From the Earliest Times, 458.
Strype dated this manuscript from 1533. Burnet dated it from 1544. See Miscellaneous Writings
and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 68 (note 1).
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 73.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 70.

191
from other oaths that ought to be kept."115 Finally, and perhaps most frighteningly to
Henry, the pope claimed the right to "excommunicate emperors and princes, despose
them from their states, and assoil their subjects from their oath of obedience to them,
and so constrain them to rebellion." ' If the pope did indeed have these powers, then
the episcopal oath of loyalty to the king was worthless; the pope could easily subvert it
by absolving the bishops of their oath to the king.
The polemical attack on the episcopal oath to the pope was not limited to
England. In his famous Address to the German Nobility in 1520, Luther proclaimed:
"The harsh and terrible oaths which the bishops are wrongfully compelled to swear to
1 17

the pope should be abolished." Bullinger in his Decades called the episcopal oath
of canonical obedience to the pope a "wicked oath" whereupon a bishop did "renounce
and forsake the friendship of Christ, and humble himself to become the bond-slave
and footstool of the pope of Rome." Conversely, the Council of Trent extended the
oath of canonical obedience beyond prelates, decreeing that every person entering into
a new benefice must within two months "promise solemnly and swear that they will
preserve in their obedience to the Roman Church."119 Clearly, the episcopal oath of
canonical obedience to the pope was an issue of some importance. In this context,
Henry's presentation of the two contrary episcopal oaths to Audley and his claim that
the oath of canonical obedience "deluded" him of his "spirituall subiectes" was not
without justification.
D. Rising tension: oaths of a bishop-elect from 1532 to March, 1534
After Henry's speech to Audley on May 12, 1532, Parliament did not
immediately "inuent some ordre" between the oaths of a bishop-elect as Henry had
charged. Nevertheless, while the issue was put on the back burner for the rest of 1532,
it was not completely forgotten. The first draft of the Act of Appeals, mostly likely
written sometime at the end of 1532 or the beginning of 1533, proclaimed that the
pope desired "a corporall othe of obedience and subieccion to the see Appostolik

115
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 70.
1
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 69.
117
Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), in Luther's Works, 44:164.
118
Bullinger, Decades, PS, vol. 10, 141-143.
1
Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 201.

192
contrary to their natural dutie of obedience and alegiance that they shold and own to
he to the kinges of this ralme having the imperiall crowne of the same." Perhaps
more important was Henry's response to Archbishop Warham's protestation of
February 24, 1532, and his open clash with the king on March 15. Henry charged
Warham with praemunire and based his charge on the claim that Warham had
consecrated Henry Standish as bishop of St. Asaph before Standish had done homage
to Henry, taken his oath of fidelity to the king, and sued for the restitution of his
temporalities.121 Was it a coincidence that the material for Henry's accusation
centered on the oaths of a bishop-elect? In the speech Warham prepared for his
defense (which he must have prepared sometime before his death on August 23,
1532), Warham prioritized the episcopal oath to the pope over the episcopal oath to
the king: "it wer according that a spiritual man shuld first give his othe of obedience to
the spiritual hed which is the Pope . . . and not to preferr the temporal Prince to the
Pope in a spiritual matter."12 Moreover, Warham asserted that his own oath to the
pope, especially the clause where he swore to observe the apostolic commandments,
bound him to consecrate Standish immediately upon receiving the papal bulls.
Otherwise, he would have been guilty of perjury. If Warham had to choose between
incurring the guilt of perjury for breaking his oath to the pope or incurring the penalty
of praemunire for acting without Henry's approval, Warham declared he would accept
the later without hesitation.123 We do not know whether Henry ever knew of
Warham's prepared defense. If so, it would have infuriated him, for Warham not only
placed the episcopal oath to the pope above the episcopal oath to the king but also
justified his actions by citing his own oath to the pope.
Ironically, the same event that prevented Warham from publicly articulating
his defense, namely his death, led to the most dramatic display of the contradictions
between the oaths of a bishop-elect in the sixteenth century. With Warham gone,

120
NA SP2 N, fol. 74r; Geoffrey Elton, "The Evolution of a Reformation Statute," English Historical
Review 64 (1949): 179-180.
121
Kelly, "Submission of the Clergy," 103.
122
The draft of Warham's defense is printed in J. Moyes, "Warham: An English Prelate on the Eve of
the Reformation," Dublin Review 114 (1894): 401-414 {LP, V 1247). The page numbers for this
particular quote are 405-406.
123
Moyes, "Warham: An English Prelate," 406.

193
Henry needed a new archbishop of Canterbury. Henry's primary concern was to
select one who would grant him his divorce, but the person Henry selected, Thomas
Cranmer, had concerns about the episcopal oath of canonical obedience to the pope.
According to John Foxe (who based his account on Cranmer's answer to Bishop
Brakes during Cranmer's treason trial under Mary), Cranmer initially refused Henry's
summons to return to England from Germany in order to accept the archbishopric
because Cranmer considered that "the means he must have it," notably the oath of
canonical obedience to the pope, "was clean against his conscience."124 When Henry
persisted in his desire to make Cranmer archbishop, Cranmer explained to the king
that his conscience forbade him to take the archbishopric at the pope's hand, for Henry
was the supreme governor of the church in England. After a few more conversations
with Henry, "the king himself," according to Cranmer, "called doctor Oliver and other
civil lawyers, and devised with them how he might bestow it upon me, enforcing me
to do nothing against my conscience." Henry then informed Cranmer that he could
receive the archbishopric "by the way of protestation, and so one to be sent to Rome,
who might take the oath, and do every thing in my name."126
The appointment of a proctor to go to Rome to take the oath of canonical
obedience before the pope was neither novel nor radical. Proctors often took oaths on
behalf of someone else. Because of the distance between Rome and England, English
bishops-elect rarely if ever journeyed to Rome themselves to make the oath in the
pope's presence. The making of a protestation before an oath, however, was quite
controversial. How did Dr. Oliver and the other civil lawyers arrive at such a
strategy? It is possible that the protestation of Francis I, king of France, was the
template for their advice. On August 22, 1525, after months of captivity under
Charles V, Francis secretly but solemnly before witnesses protested that if he ceded
the lands of the duchy of Burgundy to Charles V in exchange for his liberty, this
cessation would have no effect since Francis would have made it under force and
duress. Again on the morning of January 13, 1526, the same day that Francis signed

Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 223.

12
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 224.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 224.

194
and swore to the Treaty of Madrid, Francis made a formal protestation before God and
other witnesses that the Treaty of Madrid would in no way bind him. These secret
protestations were soon highly publicized, as Francis and Charles engaged in an
international polemical debate over the validity of Francis's action. The episode
was certainly known in England since Hall made a reference to it in his Chronicle, and
it is conceivable that it formed the precedent for the civil lawyers' recommendation to
Cranmer.129
Yet no matter what the source of the recommendation of the civil lawyers,
Cranmer decided that what they recommended was a valid course of action, stipulating
only that Henry "should do it super animam suam."130 Accordingly, on March 30,
1533, in the chapterhouse of the College of St. Stephens at Westminster, in the
presence of the notary John Clerk and witnesses Thomas Bedyll, Richard Gwent, and
John Cocks, Cranmer made the following protestation:
In the name of God Amen. In the presence of you witnesses here present of
authentic character and worthy of faith, I Thomas, bishop-elect of the
archbishopric of Canterbury, allege, say and protest, openly, publicly, and
expressly with these writings, that since an oath or oaths are accustomed to be
sworn by the archbishop-elect of Canterbury to the highest pontiff... it is not
nor will it be my will or intention by such oath or oaths, no matter how the
words placed in these oaths seem to sound, to bind myself on account of the
same to say, do or attempt anything afterwards which will be or seems to be
contrary to the law of God or against our most illustrious king of England, the
commonwealth of his kingdom of England, or the laws and prerogatives of the
same. And that I do not intend by such an oath or oaths to bind myself in any
way that prevents me from freely speaking, counseling and consenting to all
and singular things concerning the reformation of the Christian religion, the
government of the church of England, the prerogative of the same crown, and
that prevents me from carrying out and reforming these things in the Church of

For the text of these two protestations, see M. Aime Champollion-Figeac (ed.), Collection de
documents inedits sur I'histoire de France publies par ordre du roi etpar les soins du ministre de
I'instructionpublique (Paris: Imprimerie Royal, 1847), 300-304, 466-478.
128
Francis's apology for his actions as well as Charles's reponse are printed in Pro divo Carolo
Romanorum Imperatore Invictissimo, pio, felice, semper Augusto, Patrepatriae, in satisfactionem
quidem sine talione eorum quae in ilium scripta, ac pleraque etiam in uulgum aediat fuere, Apologetici
libri duo nuper ex Hispaniis allati cum alijs nonnullis, quorum catalogos ante cuiusque exordium
reperies (Anvers, 1527), 113-122, 125-182. For background on this episode, see Henri Hauser, "Le
traite de Madrid et la cession de la Bourgogne a Charles-Quint: etude sur le sentiment national
Bourguignon en 1525-1526," Revue Bourguignonne 22 (1912): 1-180.
Hall's Chronicle, 712.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 224.

195
 England which seem to me to need reformation. And I protest and profess that
I will swear the said oaths according to this interpretation and this
understanding and not otherwise nor in another way. And furthermore I
protest that whatever oath my proctor swore formerly to the highest pontiff in
my name, that it was not my intention or will to give him any power by virtue
of which he could have sworn any oath in my name contrary or repugnant to
the oath sworn by me or to be sworn by me henceforward to the most
illustrious king of England. And in case he [my proctor] swore any such
contrary and repugnant oath, I protest that he swore it without my knowledge
or authority and I want it to be null and invalid. I want these protestations to
be repeated and reiterated in all clauses and sentences of the said oaths, and
from these [protestations] I do not intend to withdraw nor will I withdraw in
any way by anything done or said by me, but I want these to always remain in
effect for me.131
Immediately after taking this protestation, Cranmer left the chapterhouse and
proceeded to the high altar of the same college to receive his consecration at the hands
of the bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St Asaph. After John Longland, Bishop of
Lincoln, read Cranmer his consecration oath (oath A IV), Cranmer declared he would
take the oath only according to the protestation he had just made. He then swore the
oath. Again, before taking his oath upon reception of the pallium (oath A V), Cranmer

"In Dei Nomine Amen, Coram vobis autentica persona et testibus fide dignis hie presentibus ego
Thomas in Cant' archiepiscopum elctus dico, allego et in hiis scriptis palam, publice et exprese
protestor quod cum iuramentum sive iuramenta ab electis in Cant' archipiecopus summo pontific
prestari solita, me ante meam consecratione aut tempore eisdem pro forma potius quam pro esse aut re
obligatoria ad illam obtinenda oporteat. Non est nee erit mea voluntatis aut intentionis per huiusmodi
iuramentum vel iuramenta, qualitercunque verba in ipsis posita sonare videbunter, me obligare ad
aliquod ratione eorundem posthac dicendum, faciendum aut attemptandum quod erit aut esse videbitur
contra legem Dei vel contra illustrissimum Regem nostrum Anglie aut rempublicam huius sui regni
Anglie legesve aut prerogativas eiusdem; et quod non intendo per huiusmodi iuramentum aut iuramenta
quovismodo me obligare quominus libere loqui, consulere et consentire valeam in omnibus et singulis
reformationem religionis cristiane, guvernationem ecclesie anglicane aut prerogatviam concernentibus
et ea ubique exequei et reformare que mihi in ecclesia anglicana reformanda videbuntur; et secundum
hance interpretationem et intellectum hunce et non aliter neque alio modo dicta iuramenta me
prestiturm protestor et profiteor. Protestorque insuper, quodcumque iuramentum sit quod meus
procurator summo pontifici meo nomine antehac prestitit, quod non erat intentionis aut voluntatis mee
sibi aliquam dare potestatem cuius vigore aliquod iuramentum meo nomine prestare potuerit contrarium
aut repugnans iuramento per me prestito aut imposterum prestando prefato illustrissimo Anglie Regi; et
casu quo aliquod tale contrarium aut repugnans iuramentum meo nomine prestit, protestor quod illud
me incio et absque mea auctoritate prestitum pro nullo et invalido esse volo. Quas protestatioens in
omnibus clausulis et sentenciis dictorum iuramentorum repetitas et reiteratas volo; a quibus per aliquod
meum factum vel dictum quovismodo recedere non intendo nee receam, se eas mihi semper salvas esse
volo"; Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fol. 5r. Strype printed the Latin of this profession
in his Cranmer, 2:683-684. It is also included with a few errors of transcription in the "Process contra
Thomam Cranmer," Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 560. I have quoted this
protestation at length because of its great importance and because no previous historian has bothered to
translate the protestation into English.

196
reiterated that he swore this oath under the protestations made in the chapterhouse.
Finally, a third time, he required those present to bear witness that he took these oaths
according to his protestation.
Although Cranmer's use of a protestation allowed him to take his oaths to the
pope in a manner that did not offend his conscience or clash with his oath to the king,
this method of swearing was dubious to say the least. Within six weeks, Ambassador
Chapuys labeled Cranmer "as a violater of his recent oath of obedience to the Pope"
for his pronunciation of Henry's divorce.13 It was perhaps acceptable to make a pre-
oath protestation declaring how one interpreted the oath, but when one's interpretation
directly negated the oath, was that not perjury? Reginald Pole certainly thought so.
He accused Cranmer of having sworne "but for a countenance, nothing meaning to
3
observe that you promised by the oath; that is a door that every thief may enter by."
Cranmer entered into his archbishopric "by a feigned oath, by fraud, and
dissimulation." What else did Cranmer's protestation serve "but to testify a double
perjury, which is to be forsworn afore you did swear? Other perjurers be wont to
break their oath after they have sworn, you break it afore." In Cranmer's treason
trial under Mary, Roger Martin boldly announced: "Hee [Cranmer] made a
protestation one day, to keepe neuer a whitte of that whiche he woulde sweare the next
day, was thys the part of a christian man?"136 At the same time, the bishop of
Gloucester derisively compared Cranmer to a man who killed another but thought
himself safe because he had protested before the deed that it was not his will to kill.137
How openly one made a protestation before an oath also affected its legitimacy. A
completely secret, internal protestation was of course mental reservation, but even a
protestation made before witnessesif this protestation was not completely public

132
The source for this episode is a copy of the notarial instrument of the proceedings in Cranmer's
Register; Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols. 4r-5v.
133
LP, VI 465.
13
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 534.
135
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 538.
l36
Foxe,^M(1583), 1876.
137
"Cranmerum porro qui Papae nihil deberi arbitraretur, propterea quod ante praedixisset ex animo se
minime juraturum, perinde facere ac si quis quando se hominem occidere concedi sibi (veniam)
contenderet oportere, quoniam praefatus esset, sua voluntate nequaquam id fieri"; [Nicolas
Harpsfield?], Bishop Cranmer's Recantacyons, ed. Lord Houghton, intro. J. Gairdner (Philobiblon
Society Miscellanies 15, 1877-84), 33-34.

197
was questionable. For example, Charles V attacked Francis Fs protestation because it
had been made unbeknownst to Charles.' Cranmer of course publicly declared three
times at his consecration that he took his oaths to the pope according to his
protestation, but the notarial instrument documenting the episode does not state that
Cranmer read the actual contents of his protestation (made earlier in the chapterhouse)
at his consecration. Pole again lambasted Cranmer for this practice, accusing Cranmer
of having brought forth "a privy protestation, made with privy witnesses."139 Finally,
Francis 1 could at least excuse himself with the contention that his oath to the Treaty
of Madrid was taken in fear under constraint and force. Cranmer, however, could not
claim even this "delusion," for as Pole observed in his letter to Cranmer: "Whereunto
you were not driven, neither vi, nor metu, as you were not in this your case."140
Cranmer's protestation was thus not without controversy.
Yet the controversy surrounding Cranmer's protestation probably served to
emphasize to Henry the conundrum of the episcopal oath to the pope. In order to
receive consecration through the instrument of a papal bull, all new bishops had to
swear an oath to the pope. But from 1532 on, Henry was aware that this oath
conflicted with the episcopal oath to the king and provided a convenient excuse for
episcopal resistance to the crown. Hence, after 1532 Henry did not allow any of his
bishops to take an unqualified oath of canonical obedience to the pope. Cranmer's
case famously illustrated this, but Cranmer was not the only one to make such a
protestation during this time. On January 17, 1534 at Cranmer's manor at Lambeth in
the presence of the witnesses Thomas Argall, Richard Gwent, Roger Taunestud,
William Potkin [Hotkin? Sotkin?] and John Hering, Christopher Bord, Abbot of the
Monastery of Newsey, made the exact same protestation before his consecration as

"Nusquam tamen constare poterit, quod coram Caesare facta fuerit protestatio, quae ex aduerso
narratur: quae si in ipsius Caesaris notitiam deuenisset, melius forsan, ac securius rebus suis consultum
fuisset, quamuis etiam aliunde talis protestatio roburnon obtineret ad inualidandum actum
indesequutum, quinimmo per ipsum actum contrarium ex longo interuallo tolleretur talis protestationis
effectus, prout iura disponunt"; Apologiae Madritiae conventionis dissuasoriae pro Francisco
Francorum Regie emissae refutatio, in Pro divo Carolo Romanorum Imperatore Invictissimo, 154.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 538.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 539. For similar claims by Pole that
Cranmer's protestation was not made in fear under constraint and force, see [Harpsfield?], Bishop
Cranmer's Recantacyons, 46.

198
suffragan bishop of Sidon that Cranmer had made before his consecration as
archbishop.141 Whether this was at the instigation of Cranmer or Henry, we do not
know. Either way, Bord's protestation highlights the fact that the problem of the
episcopal oath to the pope was not going away. Unless Henry wanted his bishops-
elect to continue making controversial protestations nullifying their oath of canonical
obedience to the pope, he needed to establish a more lasting precedent. He did this
with the Act Restraining the Payment of Annates, which Parliament passed in mid
March 1534. In addition to forbidding the payment of annates absolutely (a
conditional restraint had been in effect for a year), the act outlined a new procedure for
the election and consecration of English bishops. No one was to procure any papal
bulls for his consecration, the chapter and dean or prior and convent had to elect a
bishop of the king's choosing, and the bishop-elect was to make "a corporall othe to
the Kynges Hyghnes and to none other.'"142 No longer did English bishops have to
swear before almighty God oaths of loyalty to two different powers, powers that had
the potential to conflict. They no longer had to choose which oath to break. Henry
had solved the problem that had worried him since he had read the Collectanea. Or
had he? The Act Restraining the Payment of Annates concerned only future bishops.
What about all Henry's current bishops who were sworn to the pope? How was he to
guarantee their loyalty? And what about the rest of his clergy? Were any of them
bound by a corporal oath to some power or authority prejudicial to royal will? We
shall see that the professions of 1534 and 1535 were designed to address these
questions. Henry forced specific groups of the English clergy to swear loyalty to him
because these same groups had taken an oath that bound them to act in a way
potentially prejudicial to Henry's authority.

1
A copy of the notarial instrument of this protestation is preserved in the papers of Robert Beale, an
Elizabethan lawyer and civil servant. Until now, historians have not noticed this protestation. See BL
Additional MS. 48022, fols. 165v-166r. Sidon was an area of Phoenicia. After 1291, the bishopric, also
known as the suffragen of Tyre, was titular. Bord obviously had no power in Sidon. For another
independent source verifying that Bord was indeed consecrated as bishop of Sidon during this time, see
Konrad Eubel et al. (ed.), Hierarchia catholica medii aevi. . ., (Monasterii, 1898- ), 299. I am unsure
of the spellings of the names of all the witnesses.
142
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 20, 3:463-464 (quote from 464). My italics.

199
 1534-35: A Response to Influence, Prior Intransigence, and Previous Oaths
We are now in a position to explain why Henry tendered different professions
of varying degrees of strength to different groups of his subjects. In 1534, Henry
needed to cancel out previous bonds of loyalty to a foreign authority, rebind the
consciences of his subjects to him and his policies, and determine which of his
subjects would oppose his reformation. Henry thus formulated his policy of oaths and
subscriptions as a response to three factors: the degree of his subjects' influence and
power, the extent of their recent history of resistance to his designs, and the possibility
of their consciences having been bound by a prior oath contrary to royal authority.
The more these three factors applied to a particular group of subjectsthat is, the
greater their influence, the more extensive their history of resistance, and the degree to
which their consciences had already been bound by oaths in opposition to Henry's
authoritythe greater the number and strength of professions that Henry administered
to them. Henry administered strong and repeated professions to the groups of his
subjects who had a history of, reason for, and/or potential to offer resistance. The
groups that Henry targeted and the nature of the professions he tendered to them
confirms this hypothesis.
Let us start with the bishops. First, bishops were the leaders of the English
church. They had wealth and power. Every priest swore an oath of canonical
obedience to his diocesan bishop. As such, bishops were, at least theoretically, in
control of their diocesan clergy. They had influence. If they choose to resist the royal
will, they could create problems for Henry. Second, they had demonstrated in the
early 1530s that they were not afraid to use their influence to resist royal will. Fisher,
Tunstall, and Leeall bishopswere ^Catherine's chief counselors and advocates.
The bishops had led the opposition to Henry in the Convocations of 1531 and 1532.
Then, they had showed themselves to be adroit at using equivocation and saving
clauses to appear to submit to Henry while really conceding nothing of importance.
How was Henry to know whether they were truly loyal to him? As we shall see,
Henry continued to suspect his bishops of dissimulation throughout 1534 and 1535
and this partly explains why he tendered them repeated professions. Finally, and most

200
importantly, Henry targeted his bishops because they were bound by a solemn oath to
be obedient to the pope, an oath which contradicted their oath to the king and provided
a potential springboard for resistance to Henry's schism. The professions tendered the
bishops were thus designed primarily to negate their episcopal oath of obedience to the
pope.
An examination of the content of the bishops' professions of 1534 to 1535 also
demonstrates that these professions were chiefly intended to nullify the bishops' oath
of canonical obedience to the pope. To begin with, this was true of the new oath to the
king that a bishop-elect took after 1534 (oath B V), though of course these new
bishops never took an oath to the pope during their consecration in the first place.
This new oath to the king was almost twice the size of the old episcopal oaths to the
king. In this new oath, the bishop-elect claimed to take both his temporal and spiritual
profits of his bishopric "all onlye of your maiestie and of your heyres kynges of this
Realme and of none other." The bishop-elect acknowledged Henry "ymiediatly vnder
almyghtye god to be chyef and supreme hedd of the churche of England," and swore
to sustain his preeminence, prerogatives, and imperial jurisdiction "afore and ayenst
all manner of persons powers and authorities whatsoeuer they be." Most revealingly,
the bishop-elect promised never to "accepte any othe or make any promyse pacte or
covenante secreatlye or apertly by any manner of [means] or by any color of pretence
to the contrarye of this myne othe or any parte therof." Finally, the bishop-elect
promised to observe and defend the statutes of the realm made against the pope and
made for the surety of Henry's succession. The goal of oath B V was thus to articulate
that the bishop-elect owed loyalty solely to the king and not to the pope. To make this
loyalty more secure, it expressly forbade any future oath that contradicted this present
oath.143
The "profession of the bishops to renounce the pope and his bulls" (oath C)
was even more directly devised in opposition to the episcopal oath of canonical
obedience to the pope. This was Henry's solution to the fact that all his bishops
consecrated before 1533 had sworn loyalty to the pope. In this profession, the bishop

NA SP1/83, fol. 54r (LP, VII 427). My italics. For the full text of his oath, see Appendix B, V.

201
confessed that "against God and his order which wants all men to be subject to their
princes," he had wronged his king by taking an oath to the pope and swearing "to be
faithful" to him, "to defend the papacy against all men, your majesty not excepted,"
and "to observe his commands, ordinances, decrees, and provisions." The bishop then
admitted that this oath was "unlawful" and "unjust." He declared that this oath was
"broken," "void," and "not to be observed," and humbly sought pardon from the king
for the offense of swearing to the pope. After reiterating that the pope had no power
or jurisdiction in England, the bishop renounced his papal bulls and promised to hand
over to the king all papal bulls in his possession. More than any other profession of
1534 or 1535, this profession reveals the level of the king's concern over the episcopal
oath of canonical obedience to the pope.144
Although Henry's bishops may or may not have taken the "promise of the
bishops to renounce the pope and his bulls,"145 all of Henry's bishops did
unquestionably make a profession to his supremacy in February and March of 1535.
This profession (see Appendix F, I) also contained clauses formulated in response to
the oath of canonical obedience to the pope. In the second clause of this profession,
the bishop pledged never to promise or give any fidelity or obedience, "simply or
under oath," to any external power, including the pope. The profession then lifted a
few clauses from the episcopal oath of canonical obedience to the pope and either
caused the bishop to promise the opposite or applied the clauses to the king. For
example, the bishop promised "to defend against all men" the king and his successors.
Likewise, the bishop pledged to reveal to the king all papal counsel delivered to him
by papal nuncios or letters. These clauses were direct negations of clauses from the
episcopal oath to the pope. After some standard clauses renouncing papal authority
and acknowledging Henry's supremacy, the bishop closed his profession by promising
never to seek "a dispensation, exception, or remedy of law or deed against this my
foresaid profession and promise." Finally, he declared that "if I made any protestation
in prejudice to this my profession and promise, I revoke it now and for all times to

144
NA SP 6/3, fols. 63r-64r. The profession is in Latin so the quoted text above is my translation. For
the text of this profession in its entirety, see Appendix C.
145
For a discussion of evidence for its tendering, see chapter three, pages 133-134.

202
come." "Protestation" (protestatio) here could mean either "declaration" or
"protestation." It was a general term that covered not only the episcopal oath of
canonical obedience to the pope but also the protestations made by the Convocations
of 1531 when they acknowledged Henry's supremacy. In sum, the episcopal
profession of supremacy of 1535 negated specific clauses from the oath to the pope,
rejected previous declarations in support of the pope, and promised neither to make an
oath of loyalty to the pope in the future nor seek any papal dispensation from this
current profession.
The influence, recent demonstrations of opposition, and previous professions
of the institutional clergy also help to explain why Henry bound them with a stronger
form of profession than he did his secular, parish clergy. As the primary preachers to
the people, the friars possessed power.146 It was no coincidence that instructions
accompanying the visitation of the friaries required the friars to preach in favor of the
king's succession and supremacy and against the authority of the pope. The
professions of the friars and other institutional clergy had clauses in which one swore
not to twist Scripture when preaching, not to call the bishop of Rome the pope when
preaching, and to name the king as supreme head of the church and Anne as his queen
when preaching or praying. Some of the monasteries, while not places of preaching,
also had influence. The houses to which Henry took the most care in tendering
professionsSyon Abbey, the London and Sheen Charterhouses, the London and
Richmond houses of Observant Franciscanswere the wealthiest, most austere, most
learned, and thus most influential houses of the realm. The power of the friars and
monastic institutions, however, went beyond their role as preachers and their wealth
and reputation. The structure of these orders provided them with a potential network
for the organization of resistance. Unlike the secular clergy, who were isolated in
their parishes, the institutional clergy were part of an extensive order that transcended
their specific location. The friars had the additional advantage of being mobile. This

See Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:177.

203
organizational network meant that their influence was greater in that it extended
beyond the constraints of location.
Second, the friaries and key monasteries which Henry targeted were ones that
had opposed him in the early 1530s. Two leaders of the Franciscans Observants,
William Peto and Henry Elston, were vocal supporters of Katherine, going so far as to
publish books in her defense. The Observant Franciscan Friars Hugh Rich and
Richard Risby as well as Syon Abbey and the Sheen Charterhouse were implicated in
supporting Elizabeth Barton, the prophetic Nun of Ken who decried Henry's divorce
and prophesied against him.149 The London Charterhouse was the first monastery to
resist the oath of succession, an action that doubtless singled them out as an institution
that was exceedingly unlikely to cooperate with Henry's more radical moves: the
abrogation of papal jurisdiction and the establishment of royal supremacy.
Finally, friars and monks had professed allegiance to a foreign authority.
Abbots and priors, like bishops, often took an oath of canonical obedience to the pope
directly. The Act for the Exoneration from Exactions Paid to the See of Rome
accordingly forbade abbots and priors from making an oath to the pope.150 The
regular friars and monks did not make a specific oath to the pope, and this probably
explains why there is nothing in the text of the professions of the institutions and the
friars explicitly in response to an oath to the pope. Regular friars and monks did,
however, vow obedience to their prior or abbot and to their monastic rule. This vow
also could conflict with obedience to king. Recall that Cromwell demanded that
Houghton, Laurence, and Webster reject "obediences to whatever person or order they
had owed or promised." Moreover, some monks used their vow of obedience to
justify resistance. This may have been the profession referred to by those who made
one of the protestations of the lower house of Convocation against Henry's new title in
1531 when they refuted "all novelty contrary to their profession."151 The convent of

I am grateful to Professor David Como who brought this point to my attention.

148
Bernard, King's Reformation, 152-156.
149
Bernard, King's Reformation, 155, 167; Beckett, "Sheen Charthouse," 166-168.
150
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 21, 3:470.
151
"ac propterea omnem novitatem huic nostrae professioni contrariam tanquam errorem et
schismaticam reputamus"; Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:135.

204
Observant Friars at Greenwich refused to take their oath because they believed the
clause about the bishop of Rome having no greater authority in England than any other
foreign bishop "was clerely agaynst their professyon and the rules of sayncte
Frauncis."152 The Cordelier Franciscans of Guernsey used a similar excuse, "saying
howe that they had heretofore made an Othe, whiche othe they wold not change, but
rather forsake the Convent and Countrey than to make any outher." Henry and
Cromwell were certainly aware of the potential node of resistance in monastic vows of
obedience. One of Cromwell's injunctions for the visitation of the monasteries in
1535 read:
Also, that the abbot, prior, or president, and brethren may be declared by the
king's supreme power and authority ecclesiastical to be absolved and loosed
from all manner of obedience, oath, and profession by them heretofore
(perchance) promised or made to the said bishop of Rome, or to any other in
his stead, or occupying his authority, or to any other foreign prince, or person;
and nevertheless let it be enjoyned to them, that they shall not promise or give
such oath or profession to any such foreign potentate hereafter; and if the
statute of the said order religious, or place, seem to bind them to obedience or
subjection, or any other foreign power potentate, person, or place, by any
ways, such statutes by the king's grace's visitors be utterly annihilate, broken,
and declared void and of none effect, and that they be in no case bounden or
obligate to the same; and such statutes to be forthwith utterly put forth and
abolished out of the books or muniments of that religion, order, or place by the
president and his brethren.IM
In Henry's proclamation of June 9, 1535 enforcing the statutes for abolishing papal
authority, he claimed that "both the bishops and clergy of this our realm" had
renounced papal authority, "utterly renouncing all other oaths and obedience to any
foreign potentate." Thus, bishops were not the only ones who had made a
profession that conflicted with loyalty to Henry. A combination of these factorsthe
influence of the friars and monks, their recent history of opposition to Henry, and their

The article from the rule of St Francis the Greenwich Franciscans cited was as follows: "Ad hec per
obedientiam injungo ministris ut petant a domino papa unum de sancte Romane ecclesie cardinalibus,
qui sit gubernator, protector, et corrector istius fraternitatis, ut semper subditi et subjecti pedibus sancte
ecclesie ejusdem stabiles in fide catholica paupertatem et humilitatem, et secundum Evangelium
Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quod firmiter promisimus observemus"; Wright, Three Chapters, 41-42 {LP,
VII 841).
153
Ellis, Original Letters, Ser. II, 2:92.
154
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:790; Burnet, History of the Reformation, 4:217-218.
153
Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:230.

205
vows of obedience to a foreign superior or ruleled Henry to tender his religious
clergy a more detailed profession confirmed with an oath.
The institutions that Henry targeted most were the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. Again, these three factors help us understand why. As the primary place
where new clergymen received their instruction, the universities possessed power over
the next generation of the church. They also held a considerable amount of cultural
authority. After all, one of Henry's primary strategies in pursuing his divorce had
been to solicit the universities of Europe to give him a favorable judgment. Henry's
own universities had proved embarrassingly obstinate. In 1529, Henry asked them to
give a judgment on whether divine and natural law allowed one to marry the widow of
a deceased husband. The junior members of the universities (the lower house of the
Convocation of the universities) stood their ground, claiming that such a marriage was
licit by divine and natural law. This was not the response Henry wanted. After the
exertion of royal pressure, Cambridge delegated the decision to a group of sixty, who
gave Henry the opinion for which he was looking. The juniors of Oxford, however,
refused to do this and remained intransigent in the face of numerous delegations from
the king. At last, the chancellor of Oxford decreed that the juniors of the university
were unworthy to make this decision. The chancellor then appointed a select group,
which deferred to the king.I5 Henry thus had reason to suspect the universities in
1534. Finally, the universities were places where oaths had been sworn. The
inhabitants of most colleges had to take an oath to follow the statutes of their
college.157 These statutes undoubtedly made references to obedience to the Roman
church and the pope. In 1531, after the trial of Nicolas Shaxton, the vice-chancellor of
Cambridge of the University imposed an oath to renounce a long list of heretical
"errors" on all those taking degrees in divinity from the university. The fact that the
oath was abolished within a year indicates its controversial nature. Other oaths were
occasionally tendered there as well. Writing from exile, Richard Marshall excused his

156
Anthony a Wood, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, in Two Books, ed. John
Gutch (Oxford, 1792), 41-44.
157
Mullinger, University of Cambridge, 1:455.
158
H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1958), 61.

206
refusal to preach Henry's supremacy on grounds that it was against scripture and the
doctrine of the church as revealed in the Decretals, "which I was sworn openly in the
University of Oxford to declare and stick unto."159 As influential and obstinate
institutions where many potentially subversive oaths had been sworn, the universities
were places that merited special attention.
The issue of whether one swore an oath that could conflict with royal authority
also explains why Henry made some of his secular clergy take the institutional
profession while others, his parish priests, only had to sign an oathless statement
against the power of the pope. The sole members of the secular clergy who possessed
any substantial power were deans of cathedrals. All members of a cathedral, as well
as members of other secular institutions like college or hospitals, usually made an oath
to follow the customs and statutes of their institution.160 Again, the customs and
statutes to which these secular priests were sworn may have contained material
offensive to Henry. Henry's struggle in 1532 to force the clergy to submit these
statutes to him illustrates his concern over these statutes. If these institutional secular
priests were sworn to observe a statute prejudicial to royal authority, Henry needed
another oath to ensure that they remained loyal to him. By contrast, secular parish
priests typically took no oaths to observe a set of statutes. The only oath they swore
upon their institution was an oath of canonical obedience to their bishop. So once
Henry gained the obedience of his bishops, the secular parish clergy also owed their
allegiance to him through their oath to the bishops. No oath nullifying a previous
promise was needed. On the other hand, all the orders of friars and some of the
monastic orders were outside of episcopal jurisdiction; their superiors resided in
Rome. They were exempt from episcopal oversight, which also explains Henry's
heightened concern over them.' '

[
^LP,X 594.
160
Any cursory glance at the list of institutions preserved in late medieval and early modern episcopal
registers will demonstrate the prevalence of this oath among priests serving at a secular institution. For
examples of the forms of these oaths, see Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS. B 167, fols. 110r-l 13r.
1
' Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:177. Cranmer was concerned about the jurisdictional independence of
certain houses and orders: "yet 1 would gladly known who shall take the oaths at the religious of Syon,
which is specially to be observed, and also the charter houses, and observants, and other religious
exempt"; Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 292. My italics.

207
 The only profession of 1534 and 1535 that the three characteristics of
influence, a recent history of conflict with Henry VIII, and past oaths prejudicial to
royal authority do not elucidate is the oath of succession. The oath of succession was
tendered to all adult males, regardless of their influence or track record of opposition
to royal policies. But the oath was still designed in part to nullify previous oaths
conflicting with royal authority. Henry's struggle with Katherine's household over
her title had raised this issue. As we saw in chapter one, in October of 1533
Katherine's chaplains and servants refused to comply with the royal order to call
Katherine princess dowager because "they coulde not see, howe the Kynges Grace
coulde discharge their conscyences to calle her Pryncesse, they beyng sworne to her as
Quene." When Henry decided to fight fire with fire, that is, to invalidate this oath
by making Katherine's servants swear another oath to her as princess dowager,
Katherine's servants argued that "they myght not be sworen . . . consydering there first
othe made to her as Queane, they myght not take the seconde othe without
perjurye."163 Eventually, all of Katherine's servants, other than those from Spain,
took this new oath, but Henry had learned his lesson. Just in case any other person
tried to cite a previous oath as grounds for resisting the Boleyn marriage and
succession, the oath of succession explicitly stated that each person give obedience or
faith "not to any other within this Realm [such as Queen Katherine?], nor foreign
Authority, Prince or Potentate; and in case any Oath be made, or hath been made, by
you, to any other Person or Persons, that then you to repute the same as vain and
annihilate." These clauses were significant enough to be replicated without change
in all subsequent Henrician oaths of succession, excluding the oath preserved on the
leaves of a manuscript gospel.165 Even though the majority of Henry's subjects had
not sworn an oath to a foreign authority, he wanted to make sure that if they had, their
oath would be invalidated by the oath of succession.

162
NA SP1/79, fol.l58r (LP, VI1252) Stat Pap Pub, 1:408. Also see BL Cotton MS. Otho C x, fol. 213
(LP, VI 1253).
163
Stat Pap Pub, 1:416 (LP, VI 1541).
16
Journal of the House of Lords, 1:82.
165
See Appendix D.

208
 Yet if the oath of succession did not arise out of the previous conflicts between
Henry and his clergy as the various oaths of supremacy did, what was its origin and
the motivation for its use? The main purpose of the oath of succession was, as the text
of the oath indicates, to swear allegiance to Henry and his offspring through Anne. It
was essentially an enhanced oath of fidelity, and there actually was precedent for the
tendering of an oath of fidelity to every adult male in England. The most recent
precedent was the oath of allegiance Henry VIII forced all inhabitants of Touraai to
swear when he conquered the region in 1513.166 Yet another oath was even more
widespread in late medieval England. According to an Elizabethan manuscript on the
court leet, in medieval England "it was ordeyned that every person of the age of xii
yeres and haue beene resident in a place a yeare & a day shalbe sworne to be true and
faythfull to the prince and also that the people might be kept in obedience."167 This
was part of the normal business of the courts leet and tourn. Writing in the early
seventeenth century, Sir Edward Coke agreed, adding that these courts continued to
tender this oath in his time. Coke then provided the text of the oath, which he claimed
to take from the works of Bracton and Britton:
You shall swear, that from this day forward, you shall be true and faithfull to
our Soveregn Lord , and his heires, and truth and faith shall bear of
life and member, and terrene honour, and you shall neither know nor hear of
any ill or damage intended unto him, that you shall not defend. So help you
Almighty God.169
Clauses one, two, and seven of the oath of succession seem to be expanded versions of
this oath. Of course, the tendering of this oath in the courts leet and tourn was a
regular affair whereupon each resident of an area was probably called upon to swear
this oath only once in his life, either when he turned twelve or moved into a new area.
Thus, the procedure was different from the large-scale administrative effort of the oath
of succession to mobilize the entire realm to swear at the same time. Yet the fact that

166
Mayer, "On the road to 1534," 14-15; C. G. Cruickshank, The English Occupation ofTournai 1513-
1519 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 40. For a draft of this oath, see NA SP 1/230, Ms. 60r-62r (LP, I
2319).
167
CULMS. Gg. vi. l,fol. 150r.
David Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: The Political
Significance of Oaths and Engagements (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1999), 17.
169
Sir Edward Coke, The reports of Sir Edward Coke (London, 1659), 589; printed in Jones,
Conscience and Allegiance, 269.

209
the entire adult male populace of England had in theory already sworn fealty to Henry
and his heirs remains significant. In this light, the oath of succession
was simply an effort to update the traditional oath of fidelity by specifying to which
heirs Henry's subjects owed loyalty.
The chief problem with interpreting the oath of succession primarily as an
updated oath of fealty (with a few clauses thrown in nullifying any previous oaths to a
foreign authority) is that this interpretation tends to separate the oath of succession
from the clerical professions of 1534 and 1535, whose purpose was to reject papal
authority, confirm royal supremacy, and bind the consciences of particular groups of
clergy who had influence, a history of opposition, and a record of having taken oaths
conflicting with royal authority. Although the conservative text of the oath of
succession seems to warrant such a separation, the events of the 1530s warn us against
making so simple a dichotomy. Henry's divorce and remarriage to Anne was
intricately connected to his rejection of papal authority. The clerical professions with
clauses on both the succession and the supremacy illustrate this connection.
Moreover, the oath of succession was being tendered throughout the realm at the same
time as the professions against papal jurisdiction and the acknowledgments of royal
supremacy. As a consequence of this, Geoffrey Elton wrote that the purpose of the
oath of succession was to gain the country's adherence "not so much of the legitimacy
of the issue to be expected from the Boleyn marriage, but rather of the major policy
which that marriage symbolizedthe political revolution and religious schism."170
Bernard agreed, arguing that the oath of succession was made "in effect, in support of
the break with Rome." If this is true, why did the text of the oath of succession not
include explicit references to papal jurisdiction or royal supremacy? It may be that the
regime designed the conservative text of the oath of succession to serve as a

170
Elton, Policy and Police, 227.
G. W. Bernard, "The Tyranny of Henry VIII," in Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays
Presented to C. S. L. Davies, eds. G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 119. My
italics. Even stronger is C. S. L. Davies' assertion that the oath of succession "committed the individual
not merely to observe the law to positive approval of the entire legislation of the Reformation
Parliament"; C. S. L. Davies, "The Cromwellian Decade: Authority and Consent," Transaction of the
Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 7 (1997): 185. Davies' comment is too extreme, for, as we shall see,
many people did not believe the oath of succession bound them to approve the entire legislation of the
Reformation Parliament.

210
sweetener, a sugar coating that masked the bitterness of schism concealed at the core
of the oath and made it easier to swallow. Or alternatively, perhaps the regime did not
feel it necessary to mention papal jurisdiction or royal supremacy since the majority of
the people to whom the oath of succession was tendered lacked influence and a history
of opposition. All it needed was to remind them of the loyalty they owed to the
sovereign, a loyalty to which they were bound no matter what policies the sovereign
pursued. Either way, the fact that Henry tendered the oath of succession at the same
time as other professions rejecting papal authority and acknowledging royal
supremacy does suggest that the Henrician regime's true aim with the outwardly mild
oath of succession was to secure acquiescence to its reformation.
But the government's intentions in the oath of succession are less important
than the English people's perceptions of the oath. If the pill looked like sugar and
tasted like sugar, people may have deduced that it was sugar. If the text of the oath of
succession seemed like an innocuous adaptation of the traditional oath of fealty,
people may have sworn it believing in their consciences that they did nothing in
derogation of papal authority. If this was the case, the oath was ineffective, for the
oath could not coerce people's conscience if they did not believe in their consciences
that the oath applied to the issues of controversy. A concealed stick is useless to an
aggressor if the victim is unaware of its existence. Hence, now that we have explained
why the Henrician regime tendered the many professions of 1534 and 1535, the next
logical question is how people responded to these professions. Their responses will
provide insight into their perception of the professions, and that, in turn, will give us a
clue as to whether the oaths and professions were effective: that is, whether they
achieved the goals for which the regime designed and implemented them.

211
 Chapter 5: Responses to the Professions of Succession and Supremacy
We have now made significant progress in determining how the Henrician
Regime implemented its reformation through the use of oaths and subscriptions. We
have determined what the regime's policy was and why it was pursued. Yet to
complete our study on the implementation of royal policy, we must also look at the
reception of this policy. Accordingly, this chapter asks three questions. First, who
took the Henrician oaths of succession and supremacy, and who refused to take them?
Second, for those who refused to take them, why did they refuse? Third, for those
who took them, how did they take them? More than any other chapter of this
dissertation, here we are confronted with a paucity of evidence. The surviving sources
are simply insufficient to provide us with a definitive answer to these questions.
Nevertheless, both the general silence of our sources and the scant information they do
impart are significant. The fact that there is very little documentation on people
refusing the oaths of succession and supremacy, for example, suggests either that most
people cooperated with the regime and took these oaths or that the government did not
take action against them if they refused. The few glimpses we do get of why some
people refused the oath of succession provides us with clues on how they perceived
the oath of succession. Finally, although we will never know the quantity of the
English populace who took their oaths with dissimulation, both the quality of this
dissimulation and the government's knowledge of this dissimulation serve to
illuminate the regime's strategy for implementing its reformation and the success of
this strategy. As such, we do not ask these questions in vain.

Who Swore and Why Those Who Refused Did So

The overwhelming majority of Englishmen took the oath of succession. Only
a handful refused to swear. This is the most striking feature of the response to the oath
of succession. Of more importance than the decision to take or refuse the oath of
succession is the question of why people decided to accept or decline the oath. The
justification behind their action elucidates how they perceived the oath, more
particularly whether or not they considered the oath of succession to bind their

212
consciences to the controversial rejection of papal jurisdiction and the establishment of
royal supremacy. Unfortunately, except for a few hints that came out during the
Pilgrimage of Grace (discussed in chapter six), the surviving sources give us no
insight into the rationale behind the decision of the majority of the English populace to
take the oath of succession. The more extensive documents concerning those few who
refused the oath are also often silent on the motivation behind the refusal. For
example, we do not know why Dr. Nicholas Wilson (Henry's one time confessor),
James Holywell (a scrivener), or Thomas Leighton and Jeffray Hodeshon (two monks
of the Mountgrace Charterhouse) initially refused to swear to the succession.
Yet we are fortunate in that the reasons for refusing the oath can be
reconstructed for a few high profile nonjurors. It is apparent that some of the people
who declined to swear the oath of succession did so because they believed that
Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was valid. Katherine and Mary obviously
refused the oath for this reason. Katherine had no desire to declare her marriage to
Henry illegitimate. Mary did not want to declare herself a bastard. We can safely
deduce that those associated with these two women, such as Kathrine's Spanish
servants, Richard Barker (a priest in Lincoln who was a protege of Katherine), Mary's
maid Anne Husee, and Mary's longtime schoolmaster Richard Featherstone, refused
the oath in defense of Katherine and Mary. The king's rejection of his marriage to
Katherine was also the sticking point in the London Charterhouse's initial refusal of
the oath of succession. Prior John Houghton told the commissioners that he did not
know how Henry's long-standing marriage to Katherine, which was approved by
canon law, could be declared invalid. Eventually, royal agents convinced Houghton

1
For information on the refusal of the oath of succession by Wilson, see Hall's Chronicle, 815; Statutes
of the Realm, 26 Hen. 8, c. 22, 3:527. For Holywell, see NA SP1/92, fol. 172r (LP, VIII 763). For
Leighton and Hodeshon, see NA SP1/85, fol. 20r (LP, VII 932).
2
For information on the refusal of the oath of succession by Katherine's Spanish servants, see LP, VII
690, 696, 726, 786, 809. For Richard Barker, see Margaret Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The
Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521-1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
138. For Husee, see LP, VII 530, 662, 1036, 1497. For Featherstone, see Statutes of the Realm, 26
Hen. 8, c. 22, 3:537; Bernard, King's Reformation, 574-575.

213
and his house "that no matter of faith was involved" in the oath of succession. One
Gervase Shelby cited a similar excuse in his refusal to swear the oath:
That his Conscience grevid hym sore/ to take the othe . . . Sainge/ that his
grace hath broken the Sacrament of matrimonie/ also sainge When his grace/
went ouer the Sees/ that he went to Rome vnto the pope/ to haue his fauoure/ to
marie with oure Soueraigne ladie quen Anne/ & the pope wolde gyue hym no
licence/ nere his councell/ Wherfor me thynkith it apittiefull case to be sworne
&c4
Thus, although we cannot be sure of all the reasons why those who refused the oath of
succession made their stand, Henry's renunciation of his marriage to Katherine comes
forth as one motive.
Disapproval of Henry's divorce was also one of the reasons why Henry's two
greatest opponents, Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, refused to take the oath
of succession, though the cases of Fisher and More are complicated by many other
possible explanations. What is clear is that the altered succession alone did not offend
the consciences of Fisher and More. In a letter to Cromwell recounting his refusal of
the oath, Fisher averred that any prince could with the consent of his commons appoint
any succession he wanted. Accordingly, Fisher recounted: "I was content to be sworn
unto that part of the othe ass concernyng the succession. This is a veray trowth, ass
God help my sowl att my most neede. All be itt I refused to swear to sum other
parcels, bycause that my conscience wold not serve me so to doo."5 The author of
"The Life of Fisher" confirmed that Fisher was prepared to swear "some part therof'
but not the oath of succession in its entirety unless he could "frame yt with other
condicions and in other sort then it now standeth."6 In a letter to his daughter
Margaret Roper on April 17, 1534, Thomas More expressed a similar sentiment:
But as for myself in good faith my conscience so moved me in the matter, that
though I would not deny to swear to the succession, yet unto the oath that there

3
Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom (1570), 63. Thompson andKnowles' supposition that the London
Charterhouse did not see the preamble to the act of succession is pure speculation; Thompson,
Carthusian Order, 382; Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:229.
4
NA SP1/76, fol. 200r (LP, VI 634incorrectly placed in 1533 by LP). Also see Elton, Policy and
Police, 279-280.
5
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 172 (LP, VII 1563). This letter is printed in Strype, Cranmer, 692
and in John Bruce, "Observations on the Circumstances which Occasioned the Death of Fisher, Bishop
of Rochester, "A rchaeologia 25 (1834): 93.
6
The Life of Fisher, 12:136.

214
 was offered me I could not swear without the jeoparding of my soul to
perpetual damnation. . . . Surely as to swear to the succession 1 see no peril, but
I thought and think it reason, that to mine own oath I look well myself, and be
of counsel also in the fashion, and never intended to swear for a piece [part],
and set my hand to the whole oath.
Clearly, there was something else in the oath of succession besides the succession
itself that offended More and Fisher.
But what was it in the oath that so upset More and Fisher's consciences?
William Rastall, a nephew of Thomas More who was also a lawyer, reported that
More and Fisher were wrongfully imprisoned "bycause the othe contaigned more
thinges then were warranted by the acte of succession."8 According to William
Roper, More's son-in-law, More himself wrote that he was committed to the Tower
"for refusing of this oath not agreeable to the statute."9 Of course, our main problem
here is that the first Act of Succession did not stipulate the exact form of the oath.
Since we do not know what form of the oath of succession More and Fisher were
tendered, we are unable to make a definitive judgment on what part of the oath went
beyond the act and offended More and Fisher. It is possible and even likely that More
and Fisher were tendered the same form of the oath as taken in the House of Lords on
March 31 or the form of the oath attached to the Commissioners in Sussex dated on
April 20.10 The section of these two oaths that most clearly departs from the Act of
Succession is the now familiar rejection of any previous oath to the pope or to any
other foreign body. Fisher certainly might have had qualms about this section of the
oath of succession considering his episcopal oath of canonical obedience to the pope,
but why would More, a layman, have troubled his conscience over an oath to the pope
that he had almost certainly never sworn?
In answer to this question, Stanford Lehmberg has proposed that in the oath of
succession, the person swore not only to repudiate previous oaths sworn to the pope or
any other foreign authority but also to "renounce the power of any 'foreign authority

7
Thomas More, The Last Letters of Thomas More, ed. Alvaro de Silva (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2000), 58, 61.
8
The Life of Fisher, 12:253.
William Roper, A Man of Singular Virtue: Being a Life of Sir Thomas More by His Son-In-Law
William Roper and a Selection of More's Letters, ed. A.L. Rowse (London: Folio Society, 1980), 81.
1
Both of these oaths are in Appendix D.

215
or potentate.'"" The equivocal wording of the oath of succession makes Lehmberg's
claim hard to substantiate. The oath reads:
Ye shall swear to bear your Faith, Truth, and Obedience, alonely to the King's
Majesty And to the Heirs of his Body, according to the Limitation and
Rehearsal within this Statute of Succession above specified, and not to any
other within this Realm, nor foreign Authority, Prince or Potentate; And in
case any Oath be made, or hath been made, by you, to any other Person or
Persons, that then you to repute the same as vain and annihilate;
The syntax of the oath makes it ambiguous whether one is to swear "not to any other .
. ." or whether one is to swear to bear obedience "not to any other . . ." If the clause
starting with "not to any other" is modifying the verb "to swear", then the person
taking the oath is renouncing only a previous oath to the pope. If this clause is
modifying the verb "to bear", then the person taking the oath is renouncing all
obedience to the pope. The rest of the oath of succession seems to suggest (in
opposition to Lehmberg) that the former interpretation is correct. The clause
preceding "not to any other . . ." ("according to the Limitation and Rehearsal within
this Statute of Succession above specified") is clearly modifying the verb "to swear",
and the clause following "not to any other . . ." also refers to the swearing of an oath to
the pope. In the end, however, it is impossible to make a definitive judgment on this.
The language of the oath of succession (perhaps by design) is simply too opaque.
Geoffrey Elton observed that another section of the form of the oath of
succession administered in the House of Lords that may have offended More and
Fisher was the promise to observe "all other Acts and Statutes made since the
Beginning of this present Parliament, in Confirmation or for due Execution of the
same [act of succession]."13 If More and Fisher interpreted this clause as binding their
consciences to all Parliamentary statutes passed since 1529, there was much at which
to take offense. For example, the act forbidding papal dispensations and the payment
of Peter's Pence of March, 1534 referred to Henry as the "supreme hede of the Church
Englonde," recognizing "noo superior under God but only your Grace," and it attacked
the pope for his "usurpacion" and his "abusyng," "begylyng," "pretendyng and

Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 203.

12
Journal of the House of Lords, 1:82.
13
Elton, Policy and Police, 224.

216
perswadyng" the English people "that he hath full power to dispence with all humayne
lawes uses and customes of all Realmes."14 Yet Elton's point is mitigated by the fact
that the text of the oath from the House of Lords did not simply bind the swearer to
"all other Acts and Statutes made since the Beginning of this present Parliament," but
rather to "all other Acts and Statutes made since the Beginning of this present
Parliament, in Confirmation or for due Execution of the sameT This qualifying phrase
made the oath less inclusive, for was the act against Peter's Pence really "made in
confirmation" of the Act of Succession? Hence, this qualifying phrase makes it less
likely that More, a brilliant lawyer well aware of the power of qualifying phrase, was
offended by this section of the oath.15
Cranmer provides us with another possible reason why More and Fisher
rejected the oath of succession. Cranmer reminded Cromwell "that my lord Rochester
and master More were contented to be sworn to the Act of the king's succession, but
not the preamble of the same."1 Cranmer then asked Cromwell if Henry would be
satisfied to swear them simply to the act and not to the preamble. Elton dismissed this
observation, arguing that since More claimed "the oath went beyond the demands of
the act" and "the act plainly states that an oath to 'its whole effects and contents'
17

(which includes the preamble) was required," Cranmer had misunderstood More.
Yet Cranmer's letter contained another supposition. While Cranmer admitted he was
ignorant of "the cause of their refusal," he deduced "it must needs be either the
diminution of the authority of the bishop of Rome, or else the reprobation of the king's
first pretensed matrimony."18 Again, Elton pointed out that the preamble to the oath
of succession "has nothing very anti-papal to say."19 This is certainly true, but we

14
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 21, 3:464-465.
15
Elton's claim that in the oath of succession legislated by the November, 1534 session of Parliament
"the dubious clause about the other acts is missing: takers of the oath are to swear only to the Act of
Succession and other acts 'made in confirmation or for the execution of the same'" is thus misleading;
Elton, Policy and Police, 224. Both the oath taken in the House of Lords in March and the oath
legislated in November contained the phrase "made in confirmation or for the execution of the same."
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 285-286.
1
Elton, Policy and Police, 223.
1
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 286.
1
Elton, Policy and Police, 223.

217
cannot so easily dismiss Cranmer's observation, especially since Cromwell wrote back
to Cranmer that the king thought:
that if their othe should be so taken [without the preamble] it were an occasion
to all men to refuse the hole or at the lest the lyke ffor in case they be sworn to
the succession and not to the preamble it is to be thought that it might be taken
not onlie as a confirmacion of the Bishop of Rome his auctoryte and but also as
a reprobacion of the fringes second mariage.
Why could swearing to the succession without the preamble be taken as a
confirmation of the pope's authority if the preamble was not anti-papal?
One possible answer to this question is that More and Fisher may have been
shown a version of the "preamble" that contained text not in the "preamble" of the
actual statute. It is even possible that the "preamble" shown More and Fisher
contained references to Henry's supremacy or the famous clause "the bishop of Rome
had no greater authority in England than any other foreign bishop." This clause was
first raised at the end of March in Convocation. Henry asked his leading prelates to
subscribe to it sometime in April or May, and he tendered it to all his secular clergy
throughout the summer of 1534. Moreover, on April 28, Cranmer wrote that Mr.
Roodd "hath subscribed the book of the king's grace's succession, and also the
conclusion ' quod Romanus Episcopus non habet majorem auctoritatem a Deo sibi
collatam in hoc regno Angliae quam quivis alius externus episcopus.'" Therefore,
since the clergy of the realm were being tendered this clause simultaneously as the
oath of the succession, it is certainly in the realm of possibility that Fisher, a leading
prelate, had this clause attached to his oath of succession. But More was a layman.
Would this clause also have been added to his oath of succession? It is perhaps
significant that the clergy of London were tendered the oath of succession on April 13,
a week before the rest of the city. The only layman tendered the oath on April 13 was
none other than Thomas More, a point which Nicholas Harpsfield astutely emphasized

NA SP1/83, fol. 88r (LP, VII 500).

Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 287.

218
in his Life and Death ofSr Thomas Moore. Harpsfield also contended:
And albeit in the beginning they were resolued that with an othe, not to be
acknowen whether he had to the Supremacie beene sworne, or what he thought
thereof, he should be discharged, yet did Queene Anne by her importunate
clamaur so sore exasperate the king against him that, contrary to his former
resolution, he caused the saide othe of the Supremacie to be ministred vnto
him; who albeit he made a discrete qualified answere, neuertheless was
forthwith committed to the towre.23
Harpsfield also referred to the Act of Succession as the "Statute for the othe of the
Supremacie and matrimonie," which suggests he cannot be trusted completely.
Nevertheless, it remains within the realm of possibility that Fisher and More refused to
take the oath of succession because their version of the oath or preamble of the act
contained references either to Henry's supremacy or to the abrogation of papal
authority.
Cranmer's other guess, that it was "the reprobation of the king's first pretensed
matrimony" that offended Fisher and More, has even more evidence in its support.
Although the oath of succession tendered in the House of Lords made no mention of
Katherine or Anne, the preamble of the Act of Succession did "diffyntyvly clerely and
absolutely" declare and adjudge the king's first marriage to Katherine to be "agaynst
the lawes of Almyghty God" and "of noo value ne effecte, but utterlie voyde and
adnychyled." Moreover, the oath of succession attached to the commission to
Sussex, in contrast to the one taken in the House of Lords, did mention Henry's "most
dere & intyerly belouyd lawfull wyff quen anne."2 We know that both Fisher and
More had problems reconciling their conscience to the argument that Henry's first
marriage was against God's law. Roland Lee reported to Cromwell that Fisher was
"ready to make hys othe for the Succession" and to swear never to meddle more in the
validity of the king's first marriage, "but as for the case of the prohibition Leviticall,

Nicholas Harpsfield, The Life and Death ofSr Thomas Moore, Knight, Someymes Lord high
Chancellor of England, Written in the Tyme of Queene Marie . . ., ed. Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock, EETS,
o.s., 186 (London:Oxford University Press, 1932), 166. Harpsfield composed this work during the
reign of Mary. For independent verification of More being tendered the oath before the rest of the
laymen of London, see Chapuys' letter of April 16: LP, VII490.
23
Harpsfield, Life and Death ofSr Thomas Moore, 169.
24
Harpsfield, Life and Death ofSr Thomas Moore, 166.
25
Statutes of the Realm, 25 Hen. 8, c. 22, 3:472.
26
See Appendix D, II.

219
hys conscience is soe kyntt, that he cannot put it off frome him, whatsoeever betyde
hym." Moreover, in both of their trials, Fisher and More were asked whether they
would
consent, approve, and affirme [the Kinges] Highnes mariage with the moste
noble Quene Anne, [that now] is, to be good and laufull; and affirme, saye, and
pr[onounce] thother pretended mariage betwene the Kinges said High[nes and]
Lady Catherine, Princesse Dowager, was and is [unlawful], nought, and of
no[none effect] or no?28
Fisher responded that he would obey all the parts of the act of succession "saving
allweys his conscience" and swear to them, "Albe it to answer absolutely to this
interrogatorie, ye or naie, he desireth to be pardoned." More simply avoided the
question, replying "that he did never speke nor medle ayenst the same, nor therunto
make no aunswere." The fact that Fisher and More could not reconcile their
consciences with admitting Henry's marriage to Katherine was "unlawful" does not
necessarily mean that this was what offended them in the oath or preamble to the Act
of Succession, for again we do not know the exact form of the oath or preamble
tendered to Fisher and More. Nevertheless, it is the most likely option since the
Boleyn succession was connected to the invalidity of Henry's first marriage even more
intricately than it was connected to the abrogation of papal authority or rejection of
oaths to the pope.
Thus, Houghton, Shelby, Fisher, and More all rejected the oath of succession
to some extent because of its implicit or explicit (depending on the form of the oath
and one's knowledge of the preamble of the act) condemnation of Henry's marriage to
Katherine. By accepting Cranmer's verdict on the divorce and rejecting the power of
the pope to dispense with Katherine's marriage to Arthur, the oath of succession can
be seen as denying "papal authority in England" and supporting the "wholesale
renunciation in practice of papal authority." Shelby appears to have almost made
this connection, since he cited the fact that the pope had refused to give Henry a

27
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 165 (LP, VII 498), printed in Strype, Cranmer, 692-693. This
letter is placed in April, 1534 by LP.
28
Stat Pap Pub, 1:432 (LP, VIII 867).
29
Stat Pap Pub, 1:432.
30
Stat Pap Pub, 1:436 (LP, VIII 867 (iii)).
' Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 197; Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:177.

220
license for his divorce to Katherine. Yet modern historians can make this judgment of
the oath of succession because they know what happened after the spring of 1534.
Hindsight highlights the connections between the rejection of Henry's marriage to
Katherine and Henry's religious schism. This would not have been clear to the
average English laymen in 1534. The various clerical professions that combined the
oath of succession with the clauses on papal jurisdiction and royal supremacy would
of course make this connection apparent to the clergy, but unless they were involved
in tendering these professions to the clergy, the laity would have not had knowledge of
this overlap. With the possible exception of Shelby, there is no hard evidence (simply
suggestions with Fisher and More) that anyone tendered the oath of succession took it
or refused it with the understanding that they were making a value judgment on papal
authority and royal supremacy. Indeed, we shall see in chapter six that the oaths of the
Pilgrimage of Grace were to some extent the laity's declaration that they did not
interpret the oath of succession as binding them to Henry's reformation. Knowles was
right in his observation: "Ostensibly, however, and even plausibly to contemporaries,
it [the oath of succession] was concerned solely with domestic issues, in particular the
(to the lay mind) inextricably tangled question of the divorce, and the purely practical
matter of the succession."32
If very few members of the English populace refused the oath of succession,
what was the response of the English clergy to their professions of 1534? After all,
these professions explicitly rejected papal authority and acknowledged Henry's
supremacy. Here, even more than with the oath of succession, we are faced with a
paucity of evidence. To start, it is often impossible to tell what oath is being referred
to in an offhand reference to an oath from the summer of 1534. For example, when
Edward Lord Stourton wrote to Cromwell that in the Charterhouse near Bonham seven
monks refused to take "the oath" until their prior returned from pilgrimage, we do not
know whether the oath in question was the oath of succession or the institutional
profession, much less why these monks desired to wait for the return of their prior

Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:177.

221
before swearing/ Our knowledge of Dr. Richard Boorde is exceptional in that we
can infer why he refused the oath, and from this can infer that he was probably
referring to the institutional profession of 1534. Boorde declared, "he would rather be
toren with woeld horsses then to assent or consent to the dyminisshinge of any one
iote of the bisshopp of Rome his aucthorite of old tyme. . . . Moreouer sayenge that if
any Iurament & othe shuld be reqired of hym to the contrarie then to flee hys cowntre,
and so hathe he don."34 There are, however, very few references to the responses of
the clergy to their professions of 1534. Particularly strange is the lack of information
on places where we would expect the institutional profession of 1534 to have
engendered vocal opposition. For instance, there is no information extant from Syon
Abbey from May, 1534 to April, 1535.35 Likewise, Chauncy's detailed narration of
the London Charterhouse skips right from the tendering of the oath of succession in
May, 1534 to the spring of 1535. Although well over one hundred institutional
professions survive from the summer and fall of 1534, we do not have a profession
from Syon, the London Charterhouse or the Mountgrace Charterhouse. One
possibility is that the king simply decided not to tender the institutional profession to
the houses where he knew he would encounter resistance. This possibility is unlikely,
for there is external evidence not in Chauncy that the London Charterhouse was
tendered the institutional profession. An incomplete table in the British Library
contains a list of various clerical institutions with a number following each institution.
By comparing the numbers listed after the institution in this document with the
surviving profession of that institution, it is clear that the list refers to the number of
clergymen who signed the institutional profession at their respective college, hospital
or monastery. (The numbers match up.) In this document, under the heading "London
dioc." the table reads "Nine Carthusians contumaciously refused to take the oath."36

33
NA SP1/84, fol. 172r (LP, VII 834).
34
NA SP1/99, fol. 198r (LP, IX 1066).
35
Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:216.
36
"Nouem Carthusiani contumacit recusarunt Iuramentum subire"; BL Cottom MS. E vi, fol. 209v (LP,
VII 891 (ii)). See also an undated letter from Peter Wattes to Cromwell in which Watts claimed that the
monks of the London Charterhouse "iuged it extreme heresie to swere vnto the maynteynyng of the
kynges gracious & helthsome actes in preiudice of the popes poere"; NA SP1/83, fol. 172' (LP, VII
577). LP placed this letter at the end of April, 1534, implying that Watts was referring to the oath of

222
As such, it seems that the London Charterhouse was tendered the institutional
profession of 1534, but we do not know how they responded besides other than nine of
them declined to take it.
Although this paucity of evidence prevents us from drawing any conclusions
about the response to the clerical professions of 1534, this same lack of evidence
implies that the Henrician regime was not particularly harsh in punishing those who
refused the clerical professions of 1534. With the exception of Fisher and the houses
of Franciscan Observants, the Henrician regime did not come down hard on clerical
opposition in the summer and fall of 1534. Indeed, it was not until 1535when there
is no hard evidence that any clerical institution besides the universities and the London
Charterhouse were tendered an oaththat Henry began to enforce his supremacy on
the monasteries and crack down on opposition. No statute of Parliament supported the
clerical professions of 1534, and it appears that the regime was hesitant to punish
those who refused these professions at this time. Either that or the clergy simply
cooperated docilely, an unlikely option considering their history of dissent and the
clearly radical language in their professions of 1534. The most likely explanation is
that the regime was using the clerical professions of 1534 to feel out resistance and
that it used the knowledge gained from the clerical responses to the professions of
1534 (that is, who resisted them) to select which institutions and clergymen to take
further action against in the later 1530s.

How People Took the Oaths of the Henrician Reformation

Our examination of the response to the oaths and professions of 1534 needs to
go beyond who took the oaths, who refused, and why they refused. Equally important
is how people took the oaths. According to the reports of the commissioners for the
oath of succession, most people took the oath of succession with alacrity and devotion.
John Johnson (alias Antony) reported that "moest part or all Kent have taken ther oth a

succession. Thompson, however, might also be correct in her assumption that the letter belongs in the
fall of 1534; Thompson, Carthusian Order, 385. If the letter was from the fall of 1534, Wattes was
most likely referring to the institutional profession.

223
cordyng to the kynges commyssyon," saving two Observant friars/ Reynold
Lytylprow glowingly described the reception of the oath in the city of Norwich: "1
thynke they wer never sen pepyll off swyche [such] wyll & delygens." Lytylprow was
particularly impressed with those under the age of sixteen: "1 thynke neber [never]
man ded se ffor they wold be swornne off ffre ffors [free force]," one to two hundred
of them even kissing the book "ffor the safyty [safety] [of] ther lobyng [loving]
myndys."38 The commissioners gave similar news from the North of England, a place
soon to be infamous for its opposition to the Henrician Reformation in the Pilgrimage
of Grace. Sir George Lawson, Treasurer of Berwick, claimed that the inhabitants of
his county "be most willyng diligent & redye to appere & to make ther othes acording
to the act of parliament & the kinges commissions." Sir William Gascoygne,
writing from Yorkshire, boasted: "the people in ther mooste humbly maner haith
resceved & taken ther othes even according to ther dewties lyke trew subgettes."40
Likewise, William Maunsell, Under Sheriff of Yorkshire, wrote to the Cromwell that
the king's subject in Yorkshire had taken their oaths "with as humble obedience &
ffeithfull myn[d]es as eue[er] did any subiectes holy."41
The commissioners for the oath of succession, however, were probably biased.
It was in their best interests to show how loyal their county was rather than to disclose
foot dragging and risk a reprimand for poor government. Ambassador Chapuys
painted a very different picture of how the English people swore the oath of
succession. Chapuys wrote that the oath Henry forced upon his subjects to observe the
laws against Katherine in favor of Anne "only irritates them the more."42 He claimed
that "the whole people had given [their oaths of succession] with great ill will."43 Of
course, Chapuys was even more biased than the commissioners but in the opposite
direction. (One of Chapuys' main goals was to persuade Charles V to invade England.
It made sense for Chapuys to depict the English people as detesting Henry's

37
NA SP1/88, fol. 146' (LP, VII App. 27).
38
NA SP1/88, fol. 148r (LP, VII App. 29).
39
NA SP1/88, fol. 141r (LP, VII App. 23).
40
NA SP1/88, fol. 145r (LP, VII App. 26).
41
NA SP1/88, fol. 143r (LP, VII App. 24).
42
LP, VII 530.
43
LP, VII 690.

224
innovations, for then Chapuys could more easily persuade Charles that the English
people would flock to his banner once Charles landed.) The truth probably lies
somewhere between the reports of the commissioners and Chapuys. Most people
probably took the oath of succession simply and sincerely since it was ostensibly
rather innocuous, but a small number of them undoubtedly did take it "with great ill
will." Friar John Hylsey, Henry's commissioner to tender the friars their profession,
recognized this when he wrote: "1 haue not founde anny rellygyas persons in my
vysytacon that hathe utterly denyede and refusyde the othe to be obedyente trew/ and
agreable un to the kyngs hyghe pleasure and wyll/ yett I haue fownde some that hathe
sworne wythe an evyll wyll and slenderly hathe takyn an othe to be obedyent."
What did it mean to take an oath "wythe an evyll wyll and slenderly"? Hylsey
was probably referring to swearing the oath with some kind of machination that
allowed the swearer to save his conscience from the full force of the oath. We have
seen that the use of conditional clauses and protestations nullifying the content of a
oath or profession were well established in the early 1530s. It is likely that some tried
to use the same machinations when taking the oaths and professions of 1534. For
example, Balliol College, Oxford attached the following protestation to their
institutional profession: "With the said contents having been made (praehabita) with
the protestation that we intend to do nothing against the divine law nor against the
norm of orthodox faith nor against the doctrine of our sacrosanct mother the catholic
church."45 Similarly, when Edward Field, the Master of Whittington College,
subscribed to the statement rejecting papal authority, he wrote: "I Edward Feld,
Professor of Sacred Theology, remit myself to the opinion and judgment of the
archbishop of Canterbury my ordinary" thereby placing the responsibility for his
action on Cranmer and mitigating the burden on his own conscience.46 According to

44
NA SP1/84, fol. 198r (LP, VII 869).
45
"lsta Protestatione praehabita quod nos nihil agere intendimus contra legem divinam nee contra
orthodoxae fidei normam nee contra sacrosanctae matris ecclesiae catholicae doctrinam"; NA E 25
102/3, printed in Foedera, 14:498.
46
"Ego, Edwardus Feld, Sanctae Tehologiae Professor, remitto me sententiae et judicio Cantuariae
Archipraesulis ordinarii mei"; NA E 36/63, pg. 102 (LP, VII 1025(H))). Brigden's claim that Feld
subscribed "with the proviso that he blamed Cranmer for this treachery" strikes me as an exaggeration;
Brigden, London and the Reformation, 226.

225
one version of Chauncy's narrative, the London Charterhouse took the oath of
succession with the condition "as far as was lawful."47 Equivocation, that is, the
exploitation of the ambiguity of language, may also have been attempted. According
the exiled Carthusian John Suertis, when the sacrist of the Beauvale Charterhouse
Nicolas Dugmer was offered an acknowledgment of the royal supremacy and asked
how he took the king, Dugmer replied, "I take him as God and the Holy Church take
him: and I am sure he taketh himself none otherwise."48 Yet this kind of open use of
protestations, conditional clauses, and equivocation is exceedingly rare in the
documentation of the oaths and professions of 1534. The form of the oaths and
professions of 1534 was set in advance and it is unlikely that many commissioners
would have accepted additions to the set text if these additions openly mitigated the
force of the professions.
It would have been much easier to get away with secret dissimulation since the
commissioners could not know the opinions of the swearers' hearts. The simplest
form of dissimulation was premeditated perjury, the swearing of an oath that one had
no intention of keeping. Bishop Stephen Gardiner defended himself against such an
accusation when he wrote to Cromwell: "I shuld otherwise taken thenne I am, that is
to saye, openly to swere oon thinge and pryvely to worke, saye, or doo otherwise,
wherof I was never gylty." But not everyone's conscience was as clear as
Gardiner's. Fisher's servant counseled him to take the oath of supremacy, adding "me
thinketh that is not great matter, for you lordshipp may still thinke as you list."5 Hall
reported that Nicholas Wilson, Henry's onetime confessor who was put in the Tower
at the same time as More and Fisher for refusing the oath of succession, eventually
"dissembled with the matter and so escaped."51 One John Yong highlighted the

Chauncy, Historia aliqvot (1550), sig. M4r.

48
Knowles, Religious Orders, 3:292. Although he did not cite his exact source, it appears Knowles
gathered this information from Leon Le Vasseur, Ephemerides ordinis Cartusiensis (Monstrolii, 1890),
265. The original Latin reads as follows: "Et cum accersitum ad se Comissarii regii examinarent, quid
sentiret de Rege supremam in causis ecclesiasticis protestatem sibis vendicante, respondit: 'Sentio de
eo, quod Deus cum sua Sancta Ecclesia sentit, et mihi persuadeo ipsusm non melius sentire de se.'
Commissarii hac responsione contenti, Patrem libertum dimiserunt."
Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 66.
50
The Life of Fisher, 12:159.
5X
Hall's Chronicle, 815.

226
difference between the Carthusians who refused the oath and died for their constancy
and the dissimulation of the curate of Rye, Sir William Inold. Yong testified "that as
good men as true men & better then the same Inold ys weer hanged within this moneth
forasmoch as they wuld not be sworne but the kynges highnes & that the same Inold
was sworne & hath done to the Contrary."52 The subprior of the monastery of
Woburn admitted that the rejection of papal authority "causede repugnance in my
herte." He initially wanted to refuse the oath (presumably the institutional profession
of 1534), but a combination of counsel and threats by his abbot convinced him "to be
contente to swere." In spite of his oath, the subprior remained in a "blynde
scrupulositie of conscience" which led him to cite writings of the doctors in defense of
the pope and, as he confessed, "causede me many tymes to modifye my declaracions
of your [Henry's] iustlye recognishede Suppremitie and also of the Bishopp of rome
uniust therin vsurpacion thynkynge so to haue excusede my conscience before godde."
The subprior eventually became convinced that through his actions against his oath, he
"endangerde bothe body and sowle and brought my self in ieopardye."53 Indeed, the
kind of dissimulated swearing practiced by Wilson, Inold, and the subprior of Woburn
was almost universally decried by Catholics and Protestants alike. Committing
perjury by swearing to something against one's conscience was certainly believed "to
endanger both body and soul."
So if some Englishmen practiced dissimulation in swearing the oaths of 1530s,
how did they justify it in their consciences? Thomas More provides us with a clue in
one of his letters to his daughter Margaret Roper on his refusal to swear the oath of
succession:
And some might hap to frame himself a conscience and think that while he did
it for fear God would forgive it. And some may peradventure think that they
will repent, and be shriven thereof, and that so God shall remit it them. And
some may be peradventure of that mind, that if they say one thing and think the
while the contrary, God more regardeth their heart than their tongue, and that
therefore their oath goeth upon that they think, and not upon that they say, as a
women reasoned once, I trow, Daughter, you were by.54

52
NA SP1/92, fol. 183r (LP, VIII 776).
53
NA SP1/104, fol. 227r-228r (LP, X 1239).
Last Letters of Thomas More, 79.

227
In other words, some people believed that God judged them by what they thought, no
matter how contrary the words they actually swore were to their hearts. This opinion
was clearly divergent from the standard Augustinian belief that "He lies, moreover,
who holds one opinion in his mind and who gives expression to another through words
or any other outward manifestation."55 This use of dissimulation was first defended
by the Spanish theologian Sylvester in his Summa summarum of 1515, but the kind of
swearing to which More referred was not vocally espoused in England until the use of
mental reservation by the English Jesuits after 1580.5
Nevertheless, if no one in England in the 1530s openly condoned the practice
of swearing one thing with one's words and another with one's mind, some certainly
practiced it at this time. When the remaining monks of the London Charterhouse
finally gave in and swore the oath of supremacy in May, 1537, they first prayed to
God:
Nor is it hidden from thee, O God, Thou searcher of hearts, how contrary to the
law of our mind is the consent which we are constrained to give. . . . We
beseech thee therefore of thy inexhaustible goodness mercifully to pardon thy
servants for the sin which, though heart and conscience resist, we are about to
commit with our lips.57
When John Stanton confessed to the priest Sir George Roland that "we be sworn vnto
the kynges grace & hath all Redy abiured the pope," Roland replied, "an othe Losly
made may losly be brokyn." Roland gave the analogy of when a friend makes him
share a drink of reconciliation with his enemy. Although he may drink with his
enemy, he does not actually forgive his enemy in his heart. Roland concluded: "And
so in lyke wyse vppon this othe concerning the abiuracyon of the pope I wyll not
abiure hym in my harte."58 Likewise, the Observant Franciscan Friar Forest
infamously confessed that "he had denyed the busshop of Rome by an othe, geven by

Augustine, Lying (De mendacio), trans. Sarah Muldowney, in St Augustine: Treatises on Various
Subjects, 55.
Sommerville, "New Art of Lying," 172.
57
Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom (1570), 121.
58
NA SP1/102, fol. 67v (LP, X 346).

228
his outwarde man but not in thinwarde man." An anonymous writer from the time
of Henry VIII accused Hugh Cook, Abbot of Reading, of using a similar shift.
Allegedly, when "the Spiritualitie were swore to take the kynges grace for the supreme
hed immedately next vnder god of this church of yngland," Cook took the oath but
added "pretyly in his owne conscience these words following of the Temporall church
. . . but not of the spirituall church."10 Dan Laurance Bloneham used another kind of
dissimulation. When his fellows monks of Woburn reported to the Henrician regime
that Bloneham claimed that he "was never sworne to forsake the pope to owr hed and
never wilbe," Bloneham confessed: "At the first tyme that I whas sworne I dyd not ley
my hande apon the booke & kyse yt but whas ouer passyde by resone of mouche
company. & afterward sayd onwhysely I whas not sworne."61 We do not know if the
machinations used by the London Carthusians, Roland, Forest, Cook, and Bloneham
were exceptional or merely the tip of a submerged iceberg. Dissimulation is by
definition secret. Nevertheless, these examples do demonstrate that not everyone took
the professions of 1534 in a straightforward, honest manner.
Obscure monks and parish priests were not the only ones to use dissimulation
when making their professions. There are indications that none other than Mary
Tudor, the future monarch of England, utilized such shifts. Although Mary's story is
so convoluted that we cannot be certain what actually happened, the letters relating to
her submission illustrate the variety of ways one could submit while still saving one's
conscience. Her story is thus worth a detailed examination.
After Henry received his divorce in 1533, he quickly began trying to get Mary
to renounce her title of princess. Mary staunchly resisted. The passage of the Act of
Succession upped the ante, for now Henry had statutory authorization to tender Mary
an official oath and to charge her with misprision of treason if she refused. Sometime
in April, Cromwell wrote a remembrance to himself "to send the copy of the act of the

59
NA SP1/132, fol. 124' (LP, XIII 1043). For an excellent contextualization of this episode, see Peter
Marshall, "Papist as Heretic: The Burning of John Forest, 1538," Historical Journal 41 (1998): 351-
374.
60
NA SP1/155, fol. 61 r (LP, XIV (ii) 613).
61
NA SP1/132, fols. 11', 78v-79r, \ 56'(LP, XIII 981, 1086).
62
See for example LP, VI 1249, 1296, 1594; LP, VII 296, 393.

229
King's succession to the princess and the lady Mary, with special commandment that
it may be read in their presence and their answer taken."63 Also in April, pressure was
brought to bear on Mary by restricting her to her chamber and imprisoning her maid in
the Tower until her maid, under duress, took the oath of succession.64 Although
Chapuys wrote on May 19 that if Mary continued to resist, Henry would bring the
penalties of the statute of succession against her, she was evidently not officially
tendered the oath at this time.65 On January 1, 1535, Chapuys recounted:
The Princess has been informed that, by virtue of the statute lately passed,
which has been made more severe against those who refuse to swear and
acknowledge the second marriage, after these holydays she must renounce her
title and take the oath, and that on pain of her life she must not call herself
Princess or her mother Queen, but that if ever she does she will be sent to the
Tower. She will never change her purpose, not the Queen either.66
Chapuys was probably referring to the Treason Act, which did not actually prescribe a
specific penalty for refusing the oath of succession. Nevertheless, sometime at the end
of January or the beginning of February, Mary wrote to Chapuys that she "was
informed on good authority that the King was determined again to attempt to make the
Princess swear to the statutes passed against her mother and herself, and, on her
7
refusal, would immediately put her to death, or at least to prison for life." Again, the
king was apparently bluffing. As in 1534, Mary was not administered an oath in 1535
and stood firm in her resistance without any sign of dissimulation.
Matters began to heat up again at the end of 1535 and beginning of 1536. This
time, Mary began to contemplate dissimulation. At the end of December, Emperor
Charles V wrote Chapuys a letter detailing the reasons why Mary and Katherine
should continue to avoid swearing to Henry's statutes. Charles also counseled,
however, that they should take their oaths rather than lose their lives, while protesting
that they did so out of fear. Charles claimed that such a form of protestational
swearing would not prejudice their rights, and he promised to see to it that a

LP, V I I 420.
LP, VII 530, 662.
LP, VII 690; David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 89-90.
LP, V I I I 1.
LP, VIII 189.

230
protestation to this effect would be made for them in Rome.' By January of 1536,
Mary again informed Chapuys that Henry was about to summon her before royal
councilors to give her oath and begged Chapuys' advice. At this time, Chapuys told
her to declare "that she was a poor and simple orphan" without understanding of laws
and canons and to beg them to "have pity on her weakness and ignorance." She could
also argue that it was not customary to swear fealty to queens. Soon, however,
Chapuys passed on Charles' advice and counseled Mary:
to save her life, on which depended the peace of the realm and the redress of
the great disorders which prevail her, she must do everything and dissemble for
some time, especially as the protestations made and the cruel violence shown
her preserved her rights inviolate and likewise her conscience, seeing that
nothing was required expressly against God or the articles of Faith, and God
regarded more the intention than the act.70
Yet Mary was saved from having to choose between swearing with dissimulation or
forfeiting her life. Henry again backed down. On February 10, Chapuys reported that
the king had dropped the issue of the oath and began to treat Mary more favorably.
By the spring of 1536, Mary felt confident seeking the favor of Cromwell and
the king. Katherine had passed away in January, and on May 18, Henry executed
Anne Boleyn. One of the main points of conflict between Mary and Henry was now
moot. On June 1, Mary wrote to Henry, beseeching his forgiveness for general
offenses and confessing that "next unto God, I do and will submit me in all things to
your goodness and pleasure to do with me whatsoever shall please your Grace."72
Mary had chosen her words carefully. She framed them in a way that avoided giving
judgment on Henry's first marriage or the king's supremacy. The condition "next to
God" was also significant. On June 10, she again wrote the king begging his
forgiveness and submitting to him "next to Almighty God."73 She also wrote to

M
LP, v m 1035.
69
LP,X 141.
70
LP, XI 7.
71
Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, 93 {LP, X 282).
72
BL Cotton MS Ortho C x, fol. 278 {LP, X 1022). The correspondence between Mary, Henry, and
Cromwell of 1536 are collected in this manuscript. Most of them are printed in Thomas Hearne (ed.),
Sylloge epistolarum a variis Angliae principibus scriptarum, in Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis vita Henrici
Quinti, regis Angliae (Oxford, 1716). This particular letter is on pages 147-148 of Hearne.
73
Hearne, Sylloge, 124-125 {LP, X 1109).

231
Cromwell that she would do her duty to the king "God and my conscience not
offended." She claimed:
I have done the uttermost, that my conscience will suffer me; and I do neither
desire nor intend to do less than 1 have done. But if I be put to any more, (I am
plain with you as with my great friend) my said conscience will in no wayes
suffer me to consent thereunto. And this point except, you nor any other shall
be so much desirous to have me obey the King in all things, as I shall be ready
to fullfill the same.74
Cromwell evidently believed that Mary had deliberately inserted these conditional
clauses so as to maintain her obstinate opinions on Henry's first marriage and his
supremacy while ostensibly submitting to the king. Mary retorted:
And whereas I do perceive by your letters, that you do mislike mine exception
in my letter to the King's Grace, I assure you, I did not mean as you do take it.
For I do not mistrust, that the King's goodness will move me to any thing,
which should offend God and my Conscience. But that which I did write was
only by the reason of continual custome. For I have allwayes used both in
writing and speaking to except God in all things.75
It seems clear that Mary was trying to mitigate her submission through the use of
conditional clauses and equivocation.
Henry, by now well versed in the use of conditional clauses and equivocation,
would have none of it. He responded by drawing up a set of "greate and weightye"
questions and articles and demanding that Mary respond to them in writing. In these
articles, Mary was to recognize Henry as the sovereign emperor of the realm as well as
all his laws and statutes. She was to acknowledge him as "supreme hedde in erthe
vnder chr[ist of the] churche of England" and to renounce the usurped jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Rome as well as all his laws and decrees. Finally, she was to admit that
Henry's marriage to Katherine had been incestuous and unlawful.7 There was no
room for vague, equivocal submissions with conditional clauses in this document.

74
Hearne, Sylloge, 125 (LP, X 1108).
75
Hearne, Sylloge, 126-127 (LP, X 1129).
76
1 believe that BL Cotton MS. Ortho C x, fols. 257Ar-257Bv (263r -264v pencil) is a copy of these
articles. Loades, as far as I can tell, agrees: Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government,
and Religion in England, 1553-1558 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), 19.

232
When the royal commissioners (the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, and the
77

bishop of Chichester) disclosed this document to Mary, she angrily refused to sign it.
When Cromwell got word of Mary's refusal, he was exasperated and
composed a scathing rebuke, emphasizing Mary's equivocation. Cromwell disclosed
that he had often assured the king that Mary would submit "in all things, without
exception and qualification, to obey to his [Henry's] pleasure and laws." Cromwell
was now ashamed of what he had told Henry about Mary. In frustration, he vented:
"Wherefore, Madam, to be plain with you, as God is my witnes, like as I think you the
most obstinate woman, all things considered, that ever was." He would give her one
last chance. Enclosed with his letter, Cromwell set Mary a sent of articles to which he
desired her subscription, adding "so as you will in semblable manner conceive it in
your heart without dissimulation." Moreover, he required her to write a letter
"declaring, that you think in heart, that you have subscribed with hand."78 Cromwell
wanted an unambiguous submission with no hint of dissimulation.
Finally, on June 22, Mary submitted. She subscribed to a set of articles that
explicitly recognized Henry as the supreme head of the church, rejected papal
authority and jurisdiction, and declared Henry's first marriage incestuous and
unlawful. Furthermore, complying with Cromwell's instructions, she wrote an
accompanying letter to Henry. This letter was extremely obsequious and servile. In it,
Mary confessed that she wrote "of the bottom my heart and stomack." She
acknowledged that she had offended Henry for not submitting to his just and virtuous
laws, and she put herself entirely at Henry's mercy. Concerning the articles to which
she had subscribed, she wrote: "I shall never beseech your Grace to have pity and
compassion of me, if ever you shall perceive, that I shall prevyly or apertly vary or
alter from one piece of that I have written and subscribed, or refuse to comfirm, ratifie,
or declare the same, where your Majestie shall appoint me." Finally, she professed to

Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, 101; The chronology here is somewhat confused. See Loades, Reign of
Mary Tudor, 19-20.
78
Hearne, Sylloge, 137-138 (LP, X 1110). Loades suggests that this letter may never have been sent;
Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, 102.
79
A copy of Mary's submission is BL Harleian MS. 283, fols. 11 l v -l 12r. It is printed in Hearne,
Sylloge, 142-143 (LP, X 1137).

233
"put my soul into your direction, and by the same hath and will in all things from
henceforth direct my conscience." On June 26, Mary sent another letter to Henry in
which she declared that her heart would "never altar, vary, or change from that
confession and submission, which 1 have made unto your Highness in the presence of
Q 1

your council and other attending upon the same." For the rest of 1536, Mary
continued to submit humbly to Henry and repeatedly profess her devotion. For
example, on July 21, she wrote that Henry would always find her "true, faithfull, and
obedient to you and yours, as your Majestie and your lawes have and shall limit unto
me without alteration, till the hour of my death."82
Mary's final submission and her subsequent letters of 1536 suggest that Mary
had utterly capitulated to Henry. She had abandoned all forms of equivocation or
dissimulation and had submitted herself simply and wholly. But was Mary's
capitulation genuine? Her behavior for the rest of Henry's reign suggested that it was.
Mary's household was restored, she found favor at court, and she became friends with
Henry's later wives, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr. If Mary's submission was
made with a feigned heart, she threw herself into her role of the penitent daughter with
a convincing zeal that appears to have satisfied those around her.
Ambassador Chapuys, however, had a different opinion of Mary's submission.
Chapuys reported that Mary signed her submission without reading it. Moreover,
Chapuys narrated:
For her better excuse I had previously sent her the form of the protestation she
must make apart. I had also warned her that she must in the first place
endeavor to secure the King's pardon (grace), and, if possible, not give her
approval to the said statutes except so far as she could do so agreeably to God
and her conscience, or that she should promise only not to infringe the said
statutes without expressing approval. 3
Mary had apparently put these strategies into practice with her first submissions. We
know, however, that neither the king nor Cromwell would tolerate them. The articles

Hearne, Sylloge, 140-142 (LP, X 1136).

Hearne, Sylloge, 128-129 (LP, X 1203).
Hearne, Sylloge, 131 (LP, XI 132).
LP, XI 7.

234
Mary signed were unequivocal. Chapuys continued:
After the Princess had signed the document she was much dejected, but I
immediately relieved her of every doubt, even of conscience, assuring her that
the Pope would not only not impute to her any blame, but would hold it rightly
done. . . . She has also desired me to write to your Majesty's ambassador at
Rome to procure a secret absolution from the Pope, otherwise her conscience
could not be at perfect ease.84
Then on October 7 and 8, Chapuys wrote that Henry, concerned about imperial or
papal support of the new rebellion in Lincolnshire, was now forcing Mary to write
letters to Charles, Mary of Hungary, and the pope that "she had of her own free will,
without compulsion or fear of any sort, suggestion, impression, respect, or regard for
any person whomsoever" submitted sincerely to Henry.85 Chapuys assured Charles V
and Cifuentes (Charles' ambassador in Rome) that Mary herself had told him she
wrote these letters for fear of her life and that there was "no truth whatsoever in them."
Mary had again safeguarded her conscience:
If your Lordship [Cifuentes] does not know of it already, I can tell you that for
a long time back Her Highness has, by my advice, applied such a remedy and
drawn such protests for the safeguarding of her right that I do not think any
more are required. To the protest formerly made the Princess herself has since
added, after consulting over the matter with me, certain clauses and words
which render all other precautions perfectly useless.
It is clear that both Chapuys and Charles believed that Mary's submission was
dissimulated.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that Mary's submission of 1536 contained no
oath. She never swore the oath of succession nor any oath of supremacy. Whenever
Mary believed Henry was going to tender her an oath, she had stood firm, resisting
absolutely. It was only when the matter of oaths was dropped that she began to use
equivocation and conditional clauses. Her final submission, while unequivocal, was
not made before God. If Mary's final submission was made with a feigned heart,
perhaps this contributed to Mary's willingness to dissimulate and subscribe to the

LP, XI 7. Mary did not receive her secret papal absolution. The Imperial ambassador in Rome
(Cifuentes) reported to Chapuys that he would not approach the pope for it, since if the pope knew that
Mary desired absolution, the French would soon know as well. The French, in turn, would inform
Henry, and then Mary's life would be in danger; Cal SP Spain, V (II), 106.
85
Cal. SP Spain, V (II), 104, 105.
86
Ca/. SP Spain, V(U), 105.

235
articles. Even if Mary did submit genuinely with a true heart, her story illustrates that
dissimulation was certainly an option when faced with the oaths and professions of the
1530s. It was counseled by no less than the most powerful monarch in the Christian
world, and Henry and Cromwell's response to Mary's initial, vague, and conditional
submissions indicates that they were well aware of its practice.
Mary was not the only person of rank to be suspected of dissimulation.
Rumors were rampant concerning Henry's bishops. Roland Lee Bishop of Coventry
and Litchfield reported that Robert Sherborne Bishop of Chichester used "not a littill
dissimulacion" and recommended that Sherborne be summoned to court to swear the
oath in person.87 Chapuys reported that Cuthbert Tunstall Bishop of Durham "has
been forced to swear like the others, although he spoke with certain restrictions and
reservations." The king was certainly suspicious of Tunstall. Once the Act of
Succession passed, Tunstall was ordered to come to court to swear the oath of
succession in person. At the same time, royal agents ransacked his residence in search
of incriminating letters. After Tunstall had sworn, the king wrote to him a letter
accusing him of looking "for a newe world or mutation," that is, a time when the
Henry would be laid low and papal authority reestablished in England.90 The same
writer who attacked Friar Forest and Abbot Cook for their use of mental reservation
accused Bishop Stokesley of London of the same practice:
I cannot think the contrary but the old bishop of londen whan he was a ly ve,
used the pretty medicine that his fellow fryer forest was wont to use and to
work with an inward man and an outward man that is to say to speake one
thing with theyr mowth and th[en] another thing with theyr hart.
Henry also suspected the influential humanists Thomas Starkey and Reginald Pole
(eventually Henry's arch-nemesis) of using dissimulation, though of course Pole never
swore any oath to Henry. Starkey wrote to Cromwell: "loth I wold be that any other

NA SP1/84, fol. 101r (LP, VII 759). See above, page 133 of chapter three for more exposition on this
letter.
88
"II a este contrainct de jurer comme les autres, bien que Ion dit que avec certainnes restrictions et
reservations"; Cal SP Spain, V (1) 58 (LP, VII 690).
89
Chibi, Henry VIII's Bishops, 169.
Henry's letter does not survive, but Tunstall's letter in his defense leaves us no doubt of the content
of the king's letter. For Tunstall's letter, see BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 247r-248r.
91
NA SP1/155, fol. 6 0 " (LP, XIV (2) 613).

236
man schold hire or perceyue that the kyng schold have me in suspycyon of any
dyssymilutyor wyth hym, the wych thyng I perceyvyd." Starkey pledged to
Cromwell: "to you I am open & playn I promyse you, that you schal neuer fynd me
faynyd man and of thys one thyng I schal assur you."92 Starkey also assured Henry
and Cromwell that no matter what Henry had heard, Pole would disclose his mind to
Henry on the royal supremacy without dissimulation: "I boldly haue asfyrmyd, both to
the kyngys hyghnes so also to Maistur secretory, that hyt [Pole's answer] schalbe
vnfaynyd & pure, wythout cloke of dyssymulatyon, of the wych syncere lugement in
you the kyng ys desyouse, by cause per auentur in some other hys grace hath byn
therin deceyuyd."93 Although there is no supporting evidence that any of these
bishops or humanists actually used dissimulation, the fact that peopleeven Henry
himselfsuspected them of it is nonetheless significant.
Indeed, by the summer of 1535, it seems that Henry and his leading advisers
were keenly aware of the practice of dissimulation. This probably helps to explain
why he tendered all his bishops another profession in February and March of 1535. In
his proclamation enforcing the statutes abolishing papal authority of June, 1535,
Henry ordered all his sheriffs to watch their bishops closely to make sure they
preached Henry's supremacy "truly, sincerely, and without all manner cloak, color, or
dissimulation." If any bishop or ecclesiastical person did "omit and leave undone any
part or parcel of the premises, or else in the execution and setting forth of the same do
coldly and unfeignedly use any manner sinister addition, wrong interpretation, or
painted colors," the sheriffs were to inform the crown immediately. When Henry
tendered the universities their new profession in the fall of 1535, he added the clause
to the oath whereupon the person made his oath "persuaded and seduced to this, not
coerced by force or fear, nor with any trick or other sinister machination, but from our
certain knowledge, with resolved minds and just and voluntary wills, purely, willingly,

NA'SPl/92, fols. 45r-46' (LP, VIII 575).

BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 358r (LP, VIII 801). My italics.
Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:231-232.

237
and absolutely." This clause was clearly designed to prevent taking the oath with
dissimulation. Henry was suspicious. Chapuys was right in his observation at the end
of 1534 that "the king does not trust greatly the oath that he has forced people to make
about the validity of his last marriage and the succession."

Conclusion
We are now better able to answer the question of how people responded to the
oaths and professions of 1534. The overwhelming majority of the English people took
the oath of succession, probably because there was nothing explicit in the text of the
oath on the rejection of papal authority or the establishment of royal supremacy. What
little information we have on those who did refuse the oath suggests that they refused
it because they were not willing to bind their consciences to the statement that Henry's
first marriage to Katherine was unlawful. Although the clerical professions of 1534
unambiguously renounced the papacy and acknowledged Henry's supremacy, there
are likewise very few signs of resistance to these professions. This indicates either
that the clergy were willing to reject the papacy in favor of Henry's supremacy or that
the Henrician regime was unwilling to crack down on those who balked at these
professions in 1534. It was probably a combination of both these reasons.
Furthermore, whereas the English people and clergy generally took the oaths and
professions of 1534, the manner in which some of them took these professions
allowed them to comply ostensibly while dissenting in their consciences. Some
people made their professions with conditional clauses or equivocal additions. Others
dissimulated their true opinions through a variety of devious machinations. We do not
know how prevalent these practices were, but the anxiety of the Henrician regime over
their use signifies that they were important enough to warrant royal concern.
This chapter has raised questions about the efficacy of the professions of the
Henrician Reformation. On one hand, the vast majority of English subjects took them.
On the other hand, it appears that some of them practiced dissimulation when they
95
"non vi aut metu coacti, dolove aut aliqua alia sinistra machinatione, ad haec inducti sive seducti, sed
ex nostris certis scientiis, animis deliberatis, merisque et spontaneis voluntatibus; pure sponte et
absolute, in verbo sacerdotii, profitemur"; See Appendix E, IV and V.
96
LP, Vll 1554.

238
took them. So how effective were the professions in accomplishing the regime's
goals? Before answering that question, we will look at one more response to the oath
of succession, the Pilgrimage of Grace. Both the actions of and the oaths sworn by the
rebels in the Pilgrimage declared their interpretation of the oath of succession. This
provides us further insight into whether the laity interpreted the oath in the same way
as the regime, which in turn allows us to evaluate better the effectiveness of the
crown's use of oaths and subscriptions to implement its reformation.

239
 Chapter 6: Oaths and the Pilgrimage of Grace
On Monday, October 2, 1536, the clamor of the church bells in the town of
Louth, Lincolnshire shattered the morning peace. A day earlier, the townsmen of
Louth had seized the keys of the church treasure house in response to a rumor that the
impending royal visitation would lead to the confiscation of their church jewels. Now
the appearance of John Henneage, an official of the bishop of Lincoln, had spurred the
town into action. When William Moreland, late monk of the dissolved monastery of
Louth Park, arrived on the scene, he found that "a great nombre of the comyners" had
seized Henneage and were leading him to the parish church. Moreland and other
"honeste men" thrust themselves into the crowd and "with force strengthe and also
with fayre woordes" managed to rescue Henneage, get him inside the church, and lock
the choir door between Henneage and the mob. The crowd, however, refused to
disperse and shouted "that they wold haue hym [Henneage] sworne vnto theim and so
at lengthe he was sworne, and after him all other persones whiche had contraried
theym the night before were in like maner sworne," including Moreland himself. A
short time later, the town bells again rang out when John Frankishe, the bishop of
Lincoln's registrar, arrived. The crowd seized Frankishe and forced him and
Moreland to burn Frankishe's papers. Much of the rest of the day was occupied with
the swearing of oaths. The commons compelled the sixty priests who had gathered at
Louth for the royal visitation to swear "to be true to god, to the king, and to the
Commons" and also to ring the common bells in their parishes. The commons
likewise summoned the heads of the town to appear at the town hall to swear a similar
oath.3 According to Nicolas Melton (alias Captain Cobbler), "many othe moo honest
men of the paryshe" soon came forth, "whom they [the commons] sware likewise."4
The gentlemen of the region were the final prey. On Monday, the commons brought
Sir William Skipwith of Ornsby to Louth "very rigorously" and compelled him to take
their oath. The next day, the commons forced Sir William Askew, Sir Edward

1
NA E36/119, fol. 48v {LP, XII (i) 380).
2
NA SP1/110, fol. 143r {LP, XI 970). Also see LP, XII (i) 70 (1).
3
LP, X I 854.
4
NA SP1/110, fol. 134r {LP, XI 967).
5
LP, XI 854; NA SP1/110, fol. 143r {LP, XI 970).

240
Madeson, his brother John Madeson, Sir Robert Tyrwhit, Thomas Portington, and
John Booth to swear "to be true to god and the king and to doo as they did."6 The
rebellion in the North had begun.
Oaths were central to the beginning of the revolt in Lincolnshire. As the
rebellion spread into the counties north of Lincolnshire and adopted the name
"Pilgrimage of Grace", it grew in numbers and strength, and became the largest
religious and social uprising in England between the Peasants' Rebellion of 1381 and
the English Civil War of the 1640s. At one point, anywhere from thirty thousand to
fifty thousand men were in the field for the rebels.8 The revolt was essentially
religious and popular, though social and political grievances also played a role in
motivating the rebels, and many gentlemen and nobles went along with the commons.9
To a large extent, the Pilgrimage was a popular response to the Henrician Reformation
of the 1530s. And just as oaths were essential in the implementation of the Henrician
Reformation, they were also central to the popular response to the Henrician
Reformation: the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Historians have long recognized the importance of oaths in the Pilgrimage of
Grace. In general, oaths factor into their analyses of the Pilgrimage in three ways.
First, historians have stressed that oaths were the primary means the rebels used to
mobilize, disseminate, and solidify support for their movement.10 Second, historians
have explained the singular and extraordinary role of oaths in the Pilgrimage as an

6
NA SP1/106, fol. 295r (LP, XI 568); NA E36/118, fol. 54r(LP, XI 853); NA E36/119, fol. 54r (LP, XII
(i) 380).
7
Shagan, Popular Politics, 89.
8
Bernard estimates the rebel force at thirty thousand; Bernard, King's Reformation, 293. Shagan claims
it was up to fifty thousand; Shagan, Popular Politics, 89.
9
The above statement seems to be the current historiographical consensus. However much modern
historians bicker over the specific motivations of the rebels, the success or failure of the Pilgrimage, and
the king's strategy in dealing with the rebels, they now agree that the revolt was predominantly popular
and religious. See Michael Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October
1536 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 407-417; R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of
Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17 and passim; Shagan,
Popular Politics, 89-128; Bernard, King's Reformation, 293-404.
10
Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 12, 29, 83, 114, 145, 224, 227-228, 252, 298, 329, 345; Madeleine Hope
Dodds and Ruth Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536-1537 and The Exeter Conspiracy 1538
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915) 1:94, 145, 181-182, 184, 199, 217, 221, 227; Hoyle,
Pilgrimage of Grace, 439-441.

241
imitation of the Henrician regime's administration of the oath of succession."
Finally, historians have analyzed the language of the various rebel oaths in order to
determine the predominant goals and grievances of the rebellion. They use the
pilgrims' oaths to argue that the rebellion was primarily about securing social or
constitutional reforms or alternatively (and more persuasively) that it was about
resisting the Henrician Reformation.12 Yet in all the current accounts of the
Pilgrimage of Grace the relationship between these three strands has not been made
clear. If the purpose of the pilgrims' oath was to mobilized and solidify their
rebellion, how were their actions an imitation of the oath of succession? If the
language of the oaths of the Pilgrimage demonstrates the opposition of the pilgrims to
the Henrician Reformation, how did this language relate to the oath of succession, one
of the main devices Henry used to implement his Reformation? How did the pilgrims'
oaths both imitate and oppose the Henrician Reformation?
This chapter seeks to answer these questions and integrate the three separate
strands of analysis of the role of oaths in the Pilgrimage of Grace into one cohesive
whole. It begins by establishing that the pilgrims did indeed use oaths as a means of
association, organization, and coercion. Yet by comparing the Pilgrimage of Grace to
the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the German Peasants' War of 1525, it shows
that this usage of oaths by the pilgrims was not simply an imitation of the oath of
succession, though the experience of the oath of succession probably was a factor.
The pilgrims swore oaths not because they were imitating the administrative
revolution of the crown but because they were responding to the oath of succession
and the religious policy for which the oath of succession stood. In particular, the
pilgrims' oath declared their interpretation of the oath of succession and bound their
consciences to it, an interpretation consonant with the wording of the oath of
succession but dissonant with the crown's religious policy. The relationship between
the oath of succession and the pilgrims' oath, or more precisely the loyalty sworn to

11
Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, 5th ed. (Harlow, England: Pearson,
2004), 39; Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 12.
Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 92, 196-197; Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:182; Hoyle, Pilgrimage of
Grace, 205-207, 209; Bernard, King's Reformation, 306-307, 329-330

242
the king in both oaths, became a recurrent theme of the rebellion. The Pilgrimage of
Grace was a battle of oaths.

Oaths as a Means of Association, Organization, and Coercion

Oaths were absolutely central to the mobilization and consolidation of the rebel
armies. The pattern first established at Louththe mass swearing of the commons,
who then forced the oath on individual clergymen and gentlemenwas replicated
throughout the entirety of northern England in October, 1536. The revolt quickly
spread from Louth to other areas of Lincolnshire. On Tuesday, October 3, William
Leache, who had been in Louth a day earlier when the uprising commenced, brought
word of the rebellion to the town of Horncastle. Immediately, Leache gathered a force
of 100 men, and they compelled the sheriff and other gentlemen of Horncastle to
swear "for saue garde of ther lyffes that they schuld be true to [god] the kyng and the
commons and the ffayth of the church."13 On Wednesday, Richard Dylcoke of
Humberston arrived in Louth. The rebels at Louth forced Dylcoke to swear their oath
and then sent him back to Humberston to raise and summon the people there to do
likewise.14 That same week, the rebels of Lincolnshire stopped the Yorkshire lawyer
Robert Aske at Ferriby and required him to swear an oath to be "trew to God and the
king and the comyn welth."15 Aske swore, and by October 6 he was back in the East
Riding spreading news of the revolt. The first town to rise north of Lincolnshire was
Beverley. A letter had arrived supposedly from Robert Aske instructing the town to
swear the commons' oath. Accordingly, on Sunday, October 8 one Richard Newdyke
"made proclamation for euerye man to come in and take his oathe to the comons apon
payn of deathe and one Richard Wilson, with the othe in thone hand and a book in the
other, swering them."16 On Monday, the rest of the town assembled on the green to
swear the oath, eventually intimidating the local gentry familythe Stapletonsto

13
NA SP1/110, fol. 124v (LP, XI 967).
14
NA SP1/110, fol. 173r (LP, XI 974).
Aske's narrative is printed in Mary Bateson (ed.), "The Pilgrimage of Grace," English Historical
Review 5 (1890): 332.
16
J. Charles Cox (ed.), "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace," Transactions of the East
Riding Antiquarian Society 10 (1903), 84 (LPXU (i) 392).

243
swear as well and become their captains.17 That same day, Aske issued a
proclamation ordering men to assemble at Skypwithe Morre to appoint captains and
take an oath to be true "to the king's issue and the noble blood," "to preserve the
church of God from spoiling" and to safeguard "the commons and their wealths."1
As the revolt spread west and north, oaths remained a prominent feature. On
Sunday, October 15, "diuers men" led by Thomas Dockwary and Brian Jobson
assembled the whole town of Kendal at Tarney Bankes "and sware thaym in a crofte
by to be trewe to god & the king & their auncyent laudable customes." The gentlemen
of Kendal, especially Sir James Leyborne, resisted the oath at first but were eventually
coerced into taking it with the help of a force from the neighboring town of Dent.' A
similar process took place in Westmoreland and Cumberland.20 On October 18, the
earls of Shrewsbury, Rutland, and Huntingdon reported to the Duke of Suffolk that the
rebels had reached Doncaster and "there ronge the common bell and swere the mayre
and comons of the same, who right gladly received their othe."21 In Northumberland,
it was not the commons but Sir Ingram Percy himself who led the drive to swear the
gentlemen of the region.22 As the major urban centers of the North fell to the rebels,
more and more gentlemen took the pilgrims' oath. When Aske's host took the city of
York, Aske devised a new oath, the so-called "oath of honorable men." This oath was
sent throughout the country while the gentlemen of York departed into the countryside
to tender the oath to their friends. A proclamation accompanied the oath declaring that
any who refused the oath had a twenty-four hour grace period before their goods
would be seized. The greatest nobles of the regionincluding Lord Darcy and the
Archbishop of York Edward Leetook Aske's oath on October 21 when Pontefract
castle surrendered to the rebels. Aske reported: "the said castel was yelded, and the

17
Cox, "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace," 85-86 {LP XII (i) 392).
18
Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 83 {LP, XI 622).
19
NA E36/119, fols. 114v-l 15v {LP, XII (i) 914).
20
NA SP1/117, fols. 43'-44v, 50v-52v {LP, XII (i) 687). See also Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:220-
222.
21
NA SP1/108, fol. 169r {LP, XI 774).
22
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:199-200.
23
LP, XII (i) 901 (28);Bateson, "Aske's Examination," English Historical Review 5 (1890) 560;
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:181-182; Bush, Pilgrimage ofGrace, 114-115.

244
lordes spirituall and temporall and knightes and escueres ther being swhorn." Even
after the December pardon of the rebels and the subsequent truce, oaths continued to
be a key method of mobilizing support for the uprising. When John Hallom and Sir
Francis Bigod decided to raise the commons again in January, 1537, one of the first
moves Hallom made was to swear Hugh Langdale "leaste he shulde bewaraye theym
or saide any worde from them to the prior of Watton his master being than at
london."25 Bigod then devised a new form of the commons' oath which he sent
throughout the countryside. When George Lumley took the town of Scarborough on
January 17, 1537, he spoke "with the baylyfs & other officers of the towne and sware
theym according to Sir Fraunces Bygods letter."27 Thus, the spread of the revolt
throughout England was accompanied by the spread of rebel oath-taking. Indeed,
with the exception of Hull and some of the residents of Carlisle, every town or region
that joined the rebel army in 1536 swore some sort of oath of loyalty to the cause.
In general, it appears that every male in the region took an oath, regardless of
their social status. Writing on October 17 before he capitulated to the rebels, Lord
Darcy reported to the king that the commons "swere everie man preeste and ooder."
William Breyar confessed that in Beverley a proclamation was made "that euery man
shulde be there sworn . . . & so accordynaly he & euery man there beyng toke the
same othe." Likewise, the Preston husbandman William Nycholson testified that
"there every man toke his othe." This phenomenon of mass oath-taking
demonstrates that one of the functions of the rebel oath was to promote association
and organization. The act of swearing joined the commons together. It united them to
each other and to their common (as opposed to individual) grievances. This is why the
oaths explicitly bound the swearer either to the commons (each other) or the

Bateson, "Pilgrimage of Grace," 336; Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 94.

25
NA E36/119, fol 28r (LP, XII (i) 201).
26
NA SP1/114, fols. 181r, 183r (LP, XII (i) 147); LP, XII (i) 148.
27
Edith Milner and Edith Benham (ed.), Records of the Lumleys of Lumley Castle (London: George
Bell and Sons, 1904), 40 (LP, XII (i) 369).
2
For more details on the exact timing of the various hosts' oath-taking, see Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace,
29, 114-115, 145, 196-197, 224, 227-228, 252-253, 298, 323-324, 345.
29
NA SP1/108, fol. 144v (LP, XI 760).
30
NA SP1/109, fol. 39v (LP, XI 841).
31
NA E36/119, fol. 34v (LP, XII (i) 201 (v)).

245
commonwealth (the governing of the realm in the way which would benefit everyone).
Furthermore, the practice of swearing en masse contributed to the organization and
dissemination of the rebellion. Gathering a large group together to take an oath
provided an ideal opportunity to spread the message of revolt and to take stock of the
available fighting force of a region. Oaths were thus significant to the rebels as a
means of association and mobilization.
While every male thus took the oath in some form, special emphasis was
placed on swearing priests and gentlemen individually.32 Thomas Kendall, the vicar
of Louth, noted especially that all the parsons, vicars, and other priests, both of the
town and country, were sworn.33 Aske admitted that he put his oath of honorable men
into writing "to swere the gentlemen by the same."34 Priests and gentlemen received
special attention because they occupied positions of power and influence. They thus
had the potential to sabotage the uprising, and the commons needed their support. It
was essential that they be bound with the commons in association. This was why one
of the most widespread forms of the oath tendered by the commons of Lincolnshire
was "do as they did," or "to take suche perte as they toke."35
In fact, it was so important to gain the support of the gentlemen for the
rebellion that the commons often resorted to coercion in order to obtain the oaths of
the gentlemen. For example, when Sir William Fairfax declined to take the oath in the
town of Wakefield on October 22 and took off on horseback, the entire town with a
host of six hundred men pursued him all the way to Millthrop Hall. There, the host
pulled him out of his bed, intimidated him "to the great fear and danger of his life,"
and compelled him to take their oath instantly.36 The commons often employed death
threats to get gentlemen to swear. Darcy reported to Henry VIII that the commons
"threten to put them to deathe" who will not swear and thus "no resistence hath been
made or can be made against them."37 Henry Sais, a servant of Christopher Askew,

32
Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 114-115.
33
NA SP1/110, fol. 143r (LP, XI 970).
34
Mary Bateson (ed), "Aske's Examination," 572 (LP, XII (i) 945).
35
NA SP1/106, fol. 295r {LP, XI 568); NA SP1/110, fol. 124r 295r (LP, XI 967); NA SP1/110, fol. 173r
295r (LP, XI 974).
36
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:237.
37
NA SP1/108, fol. 144v (LP, XI 760).

246
claimed that one of the rebels said to him: "if ye do not swere thus / to be trewe to god
& to the king & to the comens, then shalt lose thy hedde."38 Robert Sotheby testified
that William Leache declared to the sheriff and gentlemen of Horncastle: "be sworne
to do as we doo or ells it schall cost you your lyffe and as man[y as?] wyll not
swere."39 The proclamation of the commons of the barony of Kendal ordered that
"any lord that denyeth the lawfull oath, se you that he suffer death at that present
time." Families of those refusing to swear were also subject to intimidation. When
Nicholas Tempest fled into hiding to avoid the rebel host, a group of the commons
seized his child John and threatened to strike off the boy's head if Nicolas did not
return and take his oath.41 Likewise, a new form of the rebel oath circulating in
Richmondshire in January, 1537 explicitly proclaimed: "If eney lorde or gentyllman
do deny to take thys hothe then to put thaym to dethe & put the next of hys blode in
hys place & if he do denny put hym to dethe in lyke case so on after anoder to on of
the blode wyll take the hothe." The commons were clearly serious about enforcing
oath-taking.
Although the commons sometimes used death threats to get gentlemen to
swear, a more usual method of coercion was the menace of property confiscation. An
anonymous gentleman of Holland in Lincolnshire wrote to Lord Audley that he and
other gentlemen were "constrained" to swear by a band of commons because the
sheriff had ordered that the goods of all those who refused to swear be seized for the
maintenance of the rebel army.43 This became the official policy of the rebel army
under the control of Aske, though Aske ordered "that no man should spoil no man"
unless two members of the rebel council consented and the nonjuror was given
twenty-four hours to conform.44 Numerous examples of the threat of spoilage survive.
Lord Monteagle informed Henry VIII that several of his servants and tenants "be

38
NA SP1/109, fol. 200v (LP, XI 879).
39
NA SP1/110, fol. 124v (LP, XI 967 (i)).
40
R. W. Hoyle and A. J. L. Winchester, "A Lost Source for the Rising of 1536 in North-West England,"
English Historical Review, 118(2003): 129.
41
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:210 (LP, XII (i) 1014).
42
NA SP1/114, fol. 201 r (LP, XII (i) 163).
43
NA E36/121, fol. 72r (LP, XI 585).
44
Bateson, "Pilgrimage of Grace," 335; Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 114, 118.

247
sworn to the said rebellyons" because "in case they had not byn sworn they wold haue
spoyled all theyre howses and goodes." 5 The commons approached Sir Marmaduke
Constable at his house and declared, "how they wold eyther haue him swhorn or els
spool him." John Dakyn, vicar-general of the diocese of York, originally fled the
rebels of Richmondshire, but returned to his house and swore his oath when he heard
the commons were going to destroy his goods.47 Although not as drastic as the wish
to avoid death, the desire to protect their property was enough to convince most
gentlemen to take the rebel oath.
Even though the commons sometimes resorted to threats and displays of force
to get the gentlemen of their region to swear, once the gentlemen had taken their oaths,
the commons were placated. For example, William Moreland of Louth reported:
"And after the swering of thes gentilmen there was great ioye and moche gladnes
made amongis the commons of and vpon the same." This shows that to the rebels,
the oaths themselves were a means of coercion. The commons needed to use force
and intimidation against the gentlemen only until they had sworn. Afterwards, the
gentlemen's oaths would bind their consciences and compel them to remain loyal to
the commons. Oaths took the place of threats of death and property confiscation as a
means of compulsion. For example, when Captain Poverty sought to gain the support
of the town of Kendal for the new uprising at Carlisle in February, 1537, he cited
Kendal's oath: "Wherfor we desyre you for ayde and helpe accordyng to your othes
and as ye wyll have helpe of us if your cause requyre, as god forbede."4 Yet did this
same exercise of force against those who were reluctant to swear not adulterate the
oaths of the gentlemen? After all, we have seen that oaths taken under duress were of
dubious legality. Parties as diverse as Gratian, Protestants attacking monastic vows,
Francis I, and Ambassador Chapuys all claimed that a forced oath was not necessarily
binding on one's conscience. The behavior of the pilgrims, however, demonstrates
that they (like Henry VIII) believed that a forced oath still had the power to bind one's

45
NA SP1/112, fol. 94r (LP, XI 1232).
46
Bateson, "Pilgrimage of Grace," 338.
47
Dodds, Pilgrimage ofGrace, 1:201-202.
48
NA E36/119, fol. 54r (LP, XII (i) 380).
49
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 2:113 (LP, XII (i) 411).

248
conscience. Oaths were powerful, whether taken freely or under threat. William
Stapleton's opinion "that the oathe did no good for it wolde make a man neither better
nor wourse" was clearly not shared by the majority of the rebels.
Oaths, then, were used by the rebels to bind themselves together, to mobilize
their forces, and to vitiate and overcome opposition. Yet, could it not be argued that
oaths served different functions depending on the social standing of the swearer?
Could one argue that the function of swearing the commons was to promote
association and mobilization but the function of the swearing the gentlemen was
simply to coerce them to join (or at least not oppose) the rebellion? In this
interpretation, the gentlemen of the revolt did not place much weight on oaths but
rather took them only to escape spoilage and death. This is a plausible hypothesis that
probably holds true for some of the gentlemen of the revolt, yet it should not be
extended too far.
First, not all depositions from the Pilgrimage depict gentry opposition to the
rebels' oath. Many witnesses claimed the gentlemen took their oaths freely and
willingly. Philip Trotter deposed that when William Leache and his band of
Lincolnshire commons approached Sheriff Edward Dymmoke, Sir William Sandon,
and other gentlemen of Lincolnshire and demanded that they take the rebels' oath, the
gentlemen responded "ffurthwithe withoute any Resistens or denyall with a good will
and so they were sworne accordingly."51 A witness to the oath-taking ceremony at
Doncaster exclaimed that the inhabitants there swore so "gladly" and "that never
shepe ranne fastir a mornyng oute of their folde; then they did to receive the said
othe."JZ There was no way that Sir Ingram Percy could claim that he took the oath
under duress since when a single messenger presented him with the commons' oath,
the nearest host was over fifty miles away and Percy himself immediately began
coercing other gentlemen in the region to swear. After his capture, Robert Aske
confessed that "he sware none but gentlemen and they toke their othe vp willingly, as
semed to hym, after that they were ones taken & brought in, and saith he offred them
50
Cox, "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace," 97 (LP, XII (i) 392).
51
NA E36/119, fol. 13r (LP, XII (i) 70).
52
NA SP1/108, fol. 169r (LP, XI 774).
53
Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:200.

249
that othe voluntary." Some gentlemen must have taken the rebel oath
enthusiastically.
Second, there were also some gentlemen loyal to the king who placed enough
significance on their oaths to refuse to swear even when put under duress. Lord
Scrope decided to abandon his house and wife rather than swear to the commons.55
Likewise, an unidentified man of Dent fled to Sir Marmaduke Tunstall to avoid
swearing. When Thomas Maunsell, the vicar of Brayton, heard that his brother was
in great danger for refusing to swear Aske's oath, Thomas received permission from
Aske to tender the oath to his brother in person. When his brother saw Thomas,
however, he "did smyte at hym [Thomas] and with greate violence did dryve hym out
of his house being vnsworne."57 Both Sir Ralph Ellerker the younger and the elder
CO

refused to swear the commons' oath despite pressure from the Stapleton host. The
town of Hull agreed to surrender to the Stapleton host only under the condition that
they would not have to take the pilgrims' oath. Stapleton agreed.59 Thus, not all
gentlemen of the north gave in and swore the rebels' oath when pressured by the
commons. This indicates that it was possible to resist the rebels' oath, and thus some
degree of consent was involved in the choice of a gentleman to swear.
Finally, it was in the gentlemen's best interest to claim that they had taken their
oaths involuntarily. Many of the details of the Pilgrimage emerged after it was over,
when Henry sought information on whom to punish for the rebellion. Many of the
participants in the revolt thus attempted to portray their oath-taking as reluctant in
order to escape royal wrath. We do not know how many of these reports were colored
in such a manner, but the existence of a few contradictory reports demonstrates that
not all the stories of unwilling but coerced swearers can be trusted. For example, the
Earl of Shrewsbury wrote to Lord Darcy that he had heard that Darcy's servant

Bateson, "Aske's Examination," 572. Aske also claimed "that no man was nother hurt nor wounded
to his knowlege, for refusing the othe, nor no other violence offred theym, but that they shulde lose their
goodes if they cam not in within xxiiii houres after they were warned"; Bateson, "Aske's Examination,"
572.
55
LP, XI 667.
56
NA SP1/109, fol. 37v (LP, XI 841).
57
NA SP1/113, fol. 55r (LP, XI 1402).
58
Cox, "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace," 85, 89, 97 (LP, XII (i) 392).
59
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:164, 166.

250
Thomas Grice had compelled Brian Bradford (a servant to Shrewsbury's cousin Henry
Savell) and "put in feare divers oders to be sworne contrary to their myndes and
wylles by reason wherof they dare not abyde at home in there owne houses" but had
fled to Sheffield, Rotherham, and other places.60 Grice, however, replied that
Bradford "was sworne with his gud wyll openly before suffiaent witnesses] and
Recorde for I did reherce vnto hym that ther shuld no man [be] Compellyd to swer
contraie to thar fre myndes and willes nor ne[ver?] was." ' Even more compelling is
the story of a late night oath-tendering in Lancashire. After a few pints at the local
alehouse, John Piper, John Yate, and Hugh Parker (only sixteen years old) decided to
have a little fun by blackening their faces, dressing in harness, and testing the resolve
of a few neighbors who had boasted "that they wold not be sworn to the common to
dye for it." According to Robert Banks, who was the group's first victim, John Yate
rushed into Banks' house "and said he must swere to be true to the commons and sayd
if he wold not swere he shuld dye." "For fear of his liff and of his children," Banks
3
delivered him his harness. By contrast, Yate's deposition mentioned no threats but
rather claimed Banks "was content to be sworn."64 The next victim of the group,
William Charnocke, stated that Parker, Yate, and Piper "with force brake his dore/ and
manasced [menaced] hym to kyll hym" unless he was sworn.65 Conversely, Hugh
Parker and John Yate contended Charnocke opened the door for themthey did not
break it downand makes no mention of threats.66 Likewise, Percival Saunders (the
third victim of the group) claimed that Parker, Yate, and Piper broke down his door
"clapped a boke to his mouth," and demanded he be sworn. When Saunders refused,
"one of theym tok hym on the backe with a malle and stroke hym down And said if he
wold not be sworn he shuld see his own blud befor his own eyes / And so the said
percyvall for feare of his liff was sworn vnto theym."67 John Yate, on the other hand,

NASPl/lll,fol. 172r(ZJ>,XI1112).
NA SP1/111 fol. \ll\LP, XI 1113).
NA SP1/112, fol. 89v (LP, XI 1230).
NA SP1/112, fol. 90r (LP, XI 1230).
NA SP1/112, fol. 90r (LP, XI 1230).
NA SP1/112, fol. 89r (LP, XI 1230).
NA SP1/112, fols. 89v-90r (LP, XI 1230).
NA SP1/112, fol. 89r. (LP, XI 1230).

251
testified that he swore Saunders, Charaocke, and other "without compulcon /of any of
/TO

theym." Parker argued that he took part in the whole escapade "thynking no hurt nor
intending noo yll bot thought they had gon to make pastym."69 Clearly, both those
who tendered the oath and those who took it were trying to present themselves in as
favorable a light as possible. What is significant for our purpose is that the dispute
centered over whether the oaths that Parker, Yate, and Piper took were coerced or not.
The conflicting depositions illustrate that not all those who averred they had taken the
rebels' oath unwillingly were necessarily telling the truth.
Oaths, then, were a means of association and organization for both the
commons and for some of the gentlemen. Oaths were also means of coercion against
those who resisted the movement, but we cannot neatly divide theses two functions of
the rebel oaths along social lines. Many of the gentlemen who swore undoubtedly did
so out of fear for their lives or property, but the depositions of these gentlemen were
biased, and it is evident that some gentlemen took the oath quite willingly. Some of
the gentlemen shared in the grievances of the Commons and thus were keen to bind
themselves to the rebel program, while others cooperated only after their consciences
were compelled with an oath.70 The two functions of the rebels' oath raised here
that of association/organization and of coercionare not necessarily dependent on the
specific circumstances of England in the 1530s. It seems plausible that any medieval
or early modern popular uprising might employ oaths for similar ends. How was the
Pilgrimage of Grace unique? How was the pilgrims' use of oaths related to the
Henrician Reformation and the oath of succession? To answer these questions, we
need to place the Pilgrimage of Grace in the context of other medieval and early
modern popular uprisings. Only after such a contextualization can we determine

68
NA SP1/112, fol. 90'. (LP, XI 1230).
69
NA SP1/112, fol. 89v. (LP, XI 1230).
70
My interpretation of how the gentlemen took the rebels' oath dovetails nicely with Bush and
Bernard's general argument on the role of the gentry and the nobility in the rebellion. Bush and
Bernard argued that while the commons were the instigators and driving force behind the uprising, the
gentlemen and nobility were sympathetic to the commons' grievances and thus went along with the
rebellion with little resistance; Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 409-410; Bernard, King's Reformation, 321-
326.

252
which aspects of the pilgrims' use of oaths were truly a response to the Henrician
Reformation.

The Use of Oaths in Other Medieval and Early Modern Popular Uprisings
Among English historians of the Pilgrimage of Grace, it is assumed that the
pilgrims' employment of oaths was unique in comparison to other popular uprisings.
For example, in their quite successful volume on Tudor rebellions, Anthony Fletcher
and Diarmaid MacCulloch mention oaths only in their chapter on the Pilgrimage of
Grace. Even more direct is Michael Bush's assertation that "Both the Lincolnshire
uprising and the pilgrimage of grace were distinguished from the other risings of the
commons in the emphasis each placed on taking oaths of allegiance to the rebellion."71
And because the pilgrims' use of oaths is seen as anomalous, explanation for the
phenomenon is sought in the unique events in England leading up to the rebellion,
notably Henry's imposition of the oath of succession. Fletcher and MacCulloch note
that "the example had been set by the national campaign of oath-swearing to the new
royal succession in 1534."72 Bush went further, claiming that "the business of taking
oaths, however, was simply in imitation of the Succession Act of 1534." Bush
observed that the government had sworn every male subject to accept the Boleyn
marriage and succession and that it backed up the drive with ample compulsion
against those who resisted. The action of the commons was thus one of "creating and
applying the commons' oath in the manner of the king's oath." In other words, Bush
believed that the pilgrims' use of the oath as a means of both association and coercion
was a direct result of the administration of the oath of succession.73 If no other
popular rebellion used oaths a means of association and coercion, Bush's theory would
be valid.
At first, it appears that Bush is correct. Neither the rebels of the religiously
conservative 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion in the west nor the more evangelical
"commonwealth" rebels of the north and east swore oaths as part of their uprisings.

71
Bush, Pilgrimage ofGrace, 12.
72
Fletcher and MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, 39.
3
Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 12. My italics.

253
Oaths played no significant role in the Cornish rising of 1497, the movement against
the Amicable Grant in 1525, the revolt of Sir Thomas Wyatt under Mary Tudor, or the
Rebellion of the Northern Earls of 1569. Although there is a hint that the Kentish
insurgents of Cade's Revolt of 1450 may have sworn some sort of oath of association
to each other, the total lack of references to it among contemporary accounts of Cade's
Revolt suggest that even if some sort of oath of association was sworn by the rebels,
this was of very minor significance.74 It was certainly possible to raise and sustain a
rebellion without the use of oaths. Cade, for example, raised his army by exploiting
the system of the county militia and the constables of the hundred already in place to
protect England against a foreign invasion. The 1569 rebellion was aristocratic in
nature and made use of the Percy and Neville affinities to raise support. More
research needs to be done on how the various Tudor rebellions mobilized and
solidified their forces, but what is clear is that in the immediate context of fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century England, the Pilgrimage of Grace stands alone as the only
instance of mass oath-taking as part of a popular rebellion.
Yet when we widen our net chronologically and geographically, we do find
examples analogous to the Pilgrimage of Grace. The first is the English Peasants'
Revolt of 1381. This rebellion commenced in almost the same way as the
Lincolnshire rising of 1536. In 1381, when Sir Robert Belknape (Chief Justice of
Common Pleas) arrived in Brentwood, Essex to investigate and punish the refusal of
the locals to pay the poll tax, the commons of the town seized him "and made him
swear on the Bible that never again would he hold such a session, nor act as a justice
in such inquests."76 As the revolt gained momentum, the rebels swore oaths of
association that bound them to each other and to common grievances. For example,

74
The only reference to an oath in Cade's Revolt is the mention of "sworn brothers" in NA E403/785
m. 2; Ralph A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422-1461
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 623, 656 (nt. 97). The foremost
historian of the Cade's Revolt writes, "it is possible that the rebels of May 1450 may have sworn oaths
of allegiance binding themselves to one another in their shared cause"; I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade's
Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 75. I have gone through all the major chronicle
accounts of Cade's Revolt and found no reference to this oath.
75
Montgomery Bohna, "Armed Force and Civic Legitimacy in Jack Cade's Revolt, 1450," English
Historical Review 118 (2003): 563-583.
76
The Anonimal Chronicle of St. Mary's, York, printed in R. B. Dobson (ed.), The Peasants 'Revolt of
1381 (London: Macmillan, 1970), 125.

254
the peasants of Scarborough "gathered together at least five hundred men, allied with
one another by means of an oath and the livery of many hoods."77 Likewise, they
"unanimously swore to maintain each of their individual complaints in common."7
Oaths were also key to the dissemination of the revolt throughout England. The rebels
of Kent blocked all the pilgrimage routes into Canterbury, stopped all pilgrims, and
forced them to swear that they would be faithful to King Richard and to the commons,
that they would never consent to any taxation outside of the fifteenths, "that they
would come and join the rebels whenever they were sent for, and that they would
induce their fellow citizens or villagers to join them."79 Finally, the peasants of 1381
employed oaths as a way to coerce their social superiors. With threats of death to all
who refused, the peasants compelled groups of knights they encountered to take their
oath. They did the same for the major, bailiffs, and residents of the major towns
they captured.81 In short, like the pilgrims of 1536, the peasants of 1381 used oaths as
a means of association, mobilization, and compulsion.
Closer to the Pilgrimage of Grace chronologically and contextually was the
German Peasants' War of 1525. The German peasants formed leagues by swearing
oaths of brotherhood and allegiance to each other, oaths that also bound them to
pursue their common grievances. The peasants then used oaths to compel the towns
and nobles of their region to be loyal to the peasants and to their program. For
example, the oath that the peasants of Franconia forced on the lords and towns of their
region bound the swearers to observe and implement the Twelve Articles (the famous
document that summarized peasant grievances and how they were to be addressed), to
give military assistance to the peasants if so ordered, to warn their band of possible
threats, to supply the peasants with provisions whenever demanded, and to release

Accounts of the riots of Scarborough from a Coram Rege roll, printed in Dobson, Peasants ' Revolt of
1381, 290.
78
Dobson, Peasants' Revolt of 1381, 291.
79
Walsingham's Chronicle, printed in Dobson, Peasants' Revolt of 1381, 133.
80
Dobson, Peasants' Revolt of 1381, 190, 258.
81
Dobson, Peasants'Revolt of 1381, 127 (Canterbury), 285-286 (York). The account of Canterbury
comes from the Anominal Chronicle, while that of York is from a Parliamentary petition.
82
Tom Scott and Bob Scribner (ed.), The German Peasants' War: A History in Documents, (New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1991), 16. For examples of these oaths, see 126-127, 132-133.

255
those imprisoned or placed under bail. The Gentian peasants' use of oaths, however,
differed in two ways from the English Peasants' Revolt of 1581. First, there was a
religious element to the German peasants' oaths. The spread of the Protestant
Reformation had influenced the peasants and they demanded that their lords
implement religious reform and rule according to the tenets of Gospel. For example,
the town of Hersfeld swore to "support and hold to the Word of God" while the "oath
of the Christian union" declared a desire for "men of skill and understanding in holy
Scripture to preach and teach us the holy Gospel and Word of God, purely and clearly,
with all its fruits and without the addition of human teaching."84
Second, a common theme of the German Peasants' War was the relationship of
the peasants' oaths to previous oaths of allegiance and loyalty swore to overlords.
Some peasants saw their oaths as abnegating and superseding previous oaths of
allegiance. For example, when the peasants captured the town of Erfurt, they released
the council and guardians of the town of the oath they had made to their lord and
caused the town swear a new oath without any reference to their lord.85 Other
peasants attempted to portray their oaths as being reconcilable with previous oaths of
allegiance. When the peasants arrived at the town of Altdorf, the town initially
resisted swearing the peasants' oath "to help uphold the holy Gospel and the Word of
God and the godly Christian law," citing their oath of allegiance to Archduke
Ferdinand as their excuse. The peasants, however, refused to back down, claiming
their oath would not prejudice the town's oath of allegiance. Finally, the town swore
the peasants' oath, but not without making a formal, notarized protestation that they

Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 200. For examples of the peasants compelling other
towns and nobles to take similar oaths, see 138-139, 183, 189, 193.
84
Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 132, 183.
Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 186. Another example is that of Hans Fischer, a preacher
at Vipiteno [Sterzing]. He was charged with preaching that the peasants' "oath and whatever they had
sworn to their territorial prince was not valid before God, and that they should not be at all concerned at
not keeping it"; Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 107. Luther, conversely, declared that the
first sin of the peasants was the breaking of their oath fidelity: "they have sworn to be true and faithful,
submissive and obedient, to their rulers, as Christ commands . . . because they are breaking this
obedience, and setting themselves against the higher powers . . .[they are] faithless, perjured, lying,
disobedient knaves and scoundrels"; Martin Luther, "Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of
Peasants," in Culture and Belief in Europe, 1450-1600: An Anthology of Sources, ed. David Englander
et al., (Oxford: Basil Blackweli, 1990), 191.

256
had done all they could to avoid a conflict of oaths. ' The lords of Germany certainly
considered the peasants' oaths to be in derogation of their oaths of allegiance. A key
step in the repression of the revolt was the imposition of new oaths of homage and
loyalty throughout Germany, oaths that abnegated the oaths that the peasants had
sworn during the rebellion.87 Oaths therefore played a major role in the German
Peasants' War of 1525.
The English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the German Peasants' War of 1525
demonstrated that the peasants' use of oaths as a means of association, mobilization,
and coercion was not necessarily and totally a result of the Henrician regime's use of
the oath of succession. The rebels of 1536 might have employed oaths for these
purposes even without the tendering of the oath of succession two years earlier. The
immediate example of the oath of succession probably did function as a reminder of
the potential power of an oath to create bonds of loyally, but the pattern of using oaths
as a means to bind the aggravated commons together and to ensure the loyalty of those
who might oppose the commons' goals had been established before 1534. This does
not mean, however, that the oath of succession is not essential in the explanation of the
pilgrims' employment of oaths. The Pilgrimage of Grace was certainly a reaction to
the oath of succession, but this reaction was less an imitation of the administration of
the oath of succession and more a response to the content of the oath of succession.
Just as the peasants of Germany used oaths as a reaction to religious reforms and to
previous oaths of allegiance, so did the pilgrims of England employ oaths to declare
their opinion both of the Henrician Reformation and of the oath Henry had tendered
them in support of it. Association, mobilization, and compulsion were not the only
functions of the pilgrims'oaths.

The Pilgrims' Oath as a Response to and Interpretation of the Oath of Succession

The commons' use of oaths in 1536 was intricately connected to the fact that
they had all sworn the oath of succession two years earlier. In addition to being a
standard means of association and compulsion, the pilgrims' oath was a response to

6
Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 138-139,
87
Scott and Scribner, German Peasants' War, 17, 293-294, 297, 302, 303-305.

257
the oath a succession, a response that recognized the binding power of the oath of
succession but opposed Henry's religious policy. Indeed, the pilgrims' decision to
employ oaths as opposed to some other form of mobilization and compulsion was
probably necessitated by Henry's administration of oaths. Because Henry had bound
his subjects to be loyal to him with an oaththe strongest bond of consciencethe
commons had to use an equally strong bond to secure the gentry's loyalty to their
cause, lest the gentry turn against the commons and cite their oath to the king as
stronger than their bond to the commons. Just as Henry had to employ oaths to cancel
out previous oaths of loyalty that his subjects had taken to the pope, the pilgrims
needed to use an oath to emphasize that they were as serious about their pilgrimage as
Henry had been about establishing his heirs through Anne Boleyn. The oath of
succession had upped the ante. Nevertheless, unlike the Henrician oaths of 1534 and
1535, which were designed to contradict and directly invalidate oaths to the pope or
other foreign powers or bodies, the rebels' oath was designed simply to force a certain
interpretation on the oath of succession, not to invalidate or contradict it. The genius
of the pilgrims' oath was that it exploited the ambiguities in the oath of succession so
as to allow the pilgrims to maintain that their oathindeed, their uprising in general
was perfectly in line with the fidelity they had sworn to Henry in the oath of
succession. Of course, not everyone accepted the commons' interpretation of the oath
of succession, and one of the reoccurring themes of the rebellion was the relationship
of the pilgrims' oath to the oath of succession, a theme that indicates the close
connections between the two.
As we saw in the last chapter, the oath of succession wasin form if not in
intentessentially an oath of fidelity. This meant that the commons of England had
bound themselves to be loyal to Henry. The oath of succession had not, however,
explicitly bound the swearer to support the break with Rome or the establishment of
royal supremacy of the church, a supremacy that Henry had exercised at the start of
1536 with the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. The pilgrims of 1536 were
aware of these circumstances when they formulated their oaths. This is clear when
we look at the forms of the oaths sworn by the rebels. The Lincolnshire rebels who

258
started the uprising swore to be true to God, the king, and the commons (or the
commonwealth).88 In this oath, the swearers declared that they were loyal to the king,
not rebels at all. Yet the fact that the pilgrims also swore to be true to God and the
commons placed limits on their loyalty to the king. It is significant that the pilgrims
swore to God before they swore to the king. Moreover, by swearing obedience to
three bodies, the pilgrims declared that God's policy should coincide with the king's
policy, which in turn must coincide with the commons' policy, for the only way to be
loyal to all three of these bodies simultaneously was for the three bodies to be in
agreement. The pilgrims thus declared their loyalty to the king while at the same time
binding their consciences to a particular kind of princely rule, a rule in line with the
will of God and the commons. After summarizing the rebels' oath, Lord Darcy
remarked: "For they be sure as they say that such acts against God the king and his
common's wealth is not his grace's pleasure."89
As the revolt spread, the pilgrims further qualified the oath by swearing loyalty
to "the church" in addition to God, the king, and the commons.9 The band of
commons led by William Leache swore a group of gentleman to "be true to [god] the
kyng and the commons and theffayth of the church.'"91 The town of Beverley was
sworn "to maynteyn holi church," while the Richmondshire oath of January, 1537,
proclaimed that all gentlemen must swear "to manten the profet of Hoyle churche
wyche wase the howpholldyng [upholding?] of the crysten faythe."92 Some of the
oaths from Yorkshire also specified which aspects of God's church the commons were
rising to support. In his letter to his son before his capitulation to the rebels, Lord
Darcy claimed that the men of Dent, Sedbergh, and Wenslaydale swore that "they will
suffer no spoils nor suppression of abbeys, parish churches nor of. . . jewels and
ornaments. Nor also more money they will not pay for commissioners nor others."

88
NA E36/121, fol. 72r {LP, XI 585); NA SP1/109, fol. 2V {LP, XI 828); NA SP1/110, fol. 124v {LP, XI
967); NA SP1/110, fol. 134r {LP, XI 968); NA SP1/110, fol. 143r {LP, XI 970); Bateson, "Pilgrimage of
Grace," 332; Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 12.
89
NA SP1/196, fol. 286r {LP, XI 563 (2)), quoted in Bernard, King's Reformation, 320.
90
NA SP1/117, fol. 43r {LP, XII (i) 687).
91
NA SP1/110, fol. 124v {LP, XI967). My italics.
92
NA SP1/109, fol. 39v {LP, XI 841); NA SP1/114, fol. 201' {LP, XII (i) 163).
93
NA SP1/196, fol. 286r {LP, XI 563 (2)), quoted in Bernard, King's Reformation, 320.

259
Some versions of the rebel oath bound the pilgrims "to resist al them" who did not
"maynteyn holi church" but rather "willeth the contrary."94 The Richmondshire oath
explicitly singled out Thomas Cromwell, binding the gentlemen to swear "to put
downe the lorde crownwell that heretyke & hall hys sekthewyche [sect the which]
mayde the kyng put downe prayng & fastyng."95 The town of Beverley swore to
oppose the "concellores inventars & procurars" who were attempting "vtterlye to
vndoo boithe the Churche & the commynalte of the reamlme."96 This oath also
highlights that the maintenance of the church was connected to the maintenance of the
commonwealth. Accordingly, some forms of the rebel oath delineated specific
economic grievances as well. The Richmondshire oath proclaimed that "no lorde nor
gentyllman shall take nothyng of thare tennandes but gonle [only] their Rentes."
Likewise the commons of Kendal forced their gentlemen to swear an oath to be "trewe
to god & the king & their auncyent laudable customesT The Richmondshire and
Kendal oaths referred to the exacting and raising of gressums: that is, "payments that
fell due upon change of either tenant or lord." These exact grievances, however,
were particular to Richmondshire and Kendal, and even these grievances were
connected to the church in that the rebels there made their lords swear never to impose
them as an "unlawfull act that is against the faith of Christ, the church profitt and
commonwealth."100 In general, when the Yorkshire pilgrims expanded on the
Lincolnshire oath, they added clauses relating to the church. Thus, when the
Yorkshire rebels swore their oath, they pledged loyalty to a king who would maintain
the church, uphold the faith, restore the monasteries and eject heretics like Thomas
Cromwell from his council. At the same time as the rebels were declaring their
continual fidelity to Henrya fidelity solidified in the oath of successionthey were
rejecting the recent religious policy of the crown.

94
NA SP1/109, fol. 39v (LP, XI 841).
95
NA SP1/114, fol. 201r (LP, XII (i) 163).
96
NA SP1/107, fol. 136r (LP, XI 645).
97
NA SP1/114, fol. 201r (LP, XII (i) 163).
98
NA E36/119, fol. 1\4\LP, XII (i) 914). My italics.
99
For more on gressums in the Pilgrimage of Grace, see Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 196-197, 255-258.
(Quote from 256.)
100
Hoyle Winchester, "A Lost Source for the Rising of 1536 in North-West England," 128-129.

260
 The three fullest forms of the pilgrims' oath support the argument that one of
the primary purposes of the oath was to proclaim the commons' belief that the oath of
succession had not bound them to support the religious changes of the 1530s. The
oath from Beverley read:
we shall be trewe to god & owr prince & his lawfull actes & demandes & that
we shall be trew & faithfulle to yowe & other, the comyns of the reallme &
yowe & them to aide & mantein to the vttermeste of owr power boithe with
bodye & goodes ayenste all them that [are?] his concellores inventars &
procurars vtterlye to vndoo boithe the Churche & the commynalte of the
reamlme so helpe vs gode.101
The oath Aske composed for Sawley Abbey began:
Ye shall swere to bere trew faith & fauor unto god his faith & church
matenaunyce and the kynges grace to subdue & expulse all villayn blod from
the sayd kynges grace & his privey councell/ and to suppress all herisei and
1 09
ther openions to the best of your power for the comon welth.
Finally, Aske's famous oath of honorable men read:
Ye shall not entre to this our pilgramaige of grace for the common wealth but
oonly for the love ye bere to goddes faithe and churche myltant and the
maynetenance therof The preseruacyon of the kinges persone his Issue and the
purifieng of the nobilitie and to expulse all vilaynes bloode and evill
councesailours against the comen welth of the same / And that ye shall not
entre into our said pylgremaige for no peculiar profuyte to our selves ne to do
no displeasure to no private persoune but by counsaile of the commene wealthe
nor sle nor murder for no envye but in your hertes to put awaye all feare for the
commune welthe And to take before you the crosse of cryste and your hertes
faithe to the restitucyon of his churche and to the suppressyon of hertykes
opynyons by the holy contentes of thys boke.I03

101
NA SPl/107, fol. 136r (LP, XI 645). My italics.
102
NA SP1/109, fol. 110v (LP, XI 872).
103
NA SP1/108, fol. 48r (LP, XI 705). This version is printed in Bernard, King's Reformation, 330.
For another version of this oath with very slight differences see T. Northcote Toller (ed.),
Correspondence of Edward, Third Earl of Derby, During the Years 24 to 31 Henry VIII, Chetham
Society, n.s., vol. 19 (Manchester, 1890), 50-51; Hoyle, Pilgrimage of Grace, 457-458. For a more
altered version of this oath that adds clauses about the pilgrims being unable to depart the host without
license from their captains and about keeping their communication secret, see NA SP1/109, fol. 248r
(LP, XI 902), printed in Hoyle, Pilgrimage of Grace, 458-459. A miniature historiographical debate
exists on whether Aske's oath of honorable men was a departure from the rebels' grievances of
Lincolnshire. Hoyle, following Madeleine and Ruth Dodds, suggested that Aske's oath should be read
as follows: You shall not enter to this our Pilgrimage of grace for the commonwealth but only for the
love you bear to God's faith and Church militant, etc. Aske's goal, then, was to point out that the
rebellion was not about tax grievances or the commonwealth but about the church; Hoyle, Pilgrimage
ofGrace, 206-207. See also Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:139. Bernard disagreed. Bernard argued
that Aske's oath should be read as follows: You shall not enter to this our-Pilgrimage-of-Grace-for-the-

261
Two features stand out in these oaths. The first is how similar the first two oaths are
to a standard oath of fidelity. The juxtaposition of "faith" with "truth" and the
emphasis on serving to the "best" or "uttermost" of one's power were standard clauses
in an oath of fidelity, clauses that could have been lifted directly from the oath of
succession.104 The second is that these oaths qualified the pilgrims' fidelity to the
king by swearing to maintain and restore the church, and to suppress heretics and
expel villain blood. The Beverley oath even added the modifier "lawful," suggesting
the rebels were not bound to be true to the king's unlawful acts and demands. Yet
while the rebels' oath restricted their loyalty to Henry, nothing in the rebels' oath
contradicted the oath of succession. There was nothing in the rebels' oath against the
Boleyn marriage or succession. Indeed, Aske's oath of honorable men expressly
bound the swearer to maintain the king's issue. Neither was there anything in the
rebels' oath on the pope or previous oaths of loyalty to foreign powers. The rebels'
oath certainly challenged the thrust of the king's religious policy, but the actual text of
the oath of succession had not bound Henry's subjects to the specific features of this
policy. By swearing an oath that combined fidelity to the king with defense of the
church and repression of heresy, the rebels were declaring their interpretation of the
fidelity they had sworn to Henry in the oath of succession and binding their
conscience to this interpretation. And because the actual text of the oath of succession
was conservative, this interpretation was technically valid.

commonwealth for any reason (especially not for any particular profit to yourselves) but only for the
love your bear to God's faith and Church militant, etc. Bernard claimed, "What the religious
concerns'but only for the maintenance of God's faith and Church militant'are being contrasted
with is not the commonwealth but rather the later instruction (which Hoyle fails to quote) 'not to enter
into our pilgrimage for private profit or displeasure to an private person, but by counsel of the
commonwealth.'" The commonwealth thus remained an integral part of the Yorkshire uprising;
Bernard, King's Reformation, 229-330. In general, I agree with Bernard's reading of the oath. Both the
later section of Aske's oath of honorable men and the other versions of the rebel oath circulating in
Yorkshire at this time continue to make references to the commonwealth. Aske was not seeking to cut
the commonwealth out of the pilgrims' program. Hoyle was correct, however, in emphasizing that
Aske's concern was not tax grievances but the maintenance of the Church. These two opinions can be
reconciled if we recognize that the term 'commonwealth' did not refer simply to tax grievances but the
general health of the realm in which the maintenance of the Church played a major role. For the rebels,
to have a strong commonwealth was to maintain the Church.
104
See Appendix D for the oath of succession.

262
 The rebels' oath was thus a response to the oath of succession, a response in
which the pilgrims reaffirmed their loyalty to the king while at the same time binding
themselves to a religious policy that opposed the recent religious innovations of the
Henrician regime. Numerous contemporaries connected the oaths of the rebels to the
oath of succession, though not everyone concluded the pilgrims' oath was a valid
interpretation of the oath of succession. As we have argued, the commons and their
leaders believed that the two oaths were conciliatory. When Robert Aske was first
stopped by the Lincolnshire rebels and commanded to swear, Aske replied "that he
was ons sworn to the Kinges hignes and issue, and that he wold not be sworn agayn to
any other intent." Upon learning the content of the rebels' oath, however, he
responded, "in this oth is ther no treson, but standing with his first oth."105 When John
Hallom tendered the rebels' oath to Hugh Langdale, Hallom asked Langdale, "whether
there was any thing therin that a man might not lawfully swere." Langdale replied,
"that he thought not."106 Those who were lukewarm in their support of the rebells
used the overlap between the oath of succession and the pilgrim's oath as a way of
avoiding the latter oath. They argued that since they had already sworn fidelity to the
king in the oath of succession, there was no need for them to swear it again in the
rebels' oath. When the commons instructed Bernard Towneley, Chancellor of the
diocese of Carlisle, and his group to swear their oath to "be true to almyghty god his
chyrche the kynges maieste & the comon welthe," Towneley answered that they "were
bounde to allrede." Likewise, when William Leache demanded that the sheriff of
Lincolnshire Edward Dymmoke take the rebels' oath, Dymmoke responded,
"wherefore should I swear? I am sworn to the king already."108 Those who directly
opposed the rebels saw the pilgrims' oath as against their previous oath of fidelity to
the king. When the Stapleton host instructed Sir Ralph Ellerker the younger to take
the rebels' oath, Ellerker refused, claiming "he was sworne to the Kinges personne,

Aske confessed when interrogated by the crown after his capture. His confession is printed in
Bateson, "Pilgrimage of Grace," 332.
106
NA E36/119, fol. 22v (LP, XII (i) 201 (ii)).
107
NA SP1/117, fol. 43r (LP, XII (i) 687).
108
NA SP1/110, fol. 124v (LP, XI 967), quoted in Hoyle, Pilgrimage of Grace, 440.

263
and other oathe he woulde take none without the Kinges pleasure."109 Similarly, when
the commons commanded Harry Sais, servant of Christopher Askew, to swear to be
"trewe to god & to the king," he was content to swear. But when one of the commons
added "and not to vs?" Sais replied, "anon yf ye be trewe to the king or els I wolde be
lothe to swere."'10 Sais recognized that an oath of loyalty to the commons would be
lawful only if it did not conflict with the loyalty he owed (and had sworn to) the king.
These examples highlight, first, that the players involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace
considered the rebels' oath in light of their previous oath to the king (the oath of
succession) and second, the ambiguity of the rebels' oath. It could be interpreted as
reconcilable to the oath of succession or contradictory to it depending on one's view
of the rebellion in general.
Perhaps the strongest indication that the pilgrims formulated their oath in light
of the oath of succession and that the relationship between these two oaths was a
matter of debate during the rebellion comes from an untitled, unsigned, and much-
mutilated list of propositions. These propositions contained material on Henry's
supreme headship, heretical bishops, parliamentary procedure, and English customs.
The list of propositions was most likely drawn up as a guide to what was to be
discussed at the conference of leading northern divines at Pontefract castle since most
of the propositions on the list were indeed discussed at the rebel-controlled Pontefract
council at the end of 1536.''' Among the propositions we find the following:
Item, if one othe be .. . the same may be adnulled or noo. Item, if one othe be
made, [an]d after one oder othe to the contrary, and by the latter othe the partie
is sw[orn to] repute and take the first othe voyde, wheder it may be soo by . . .
lawe or noo. Item, if a kyng by his law w[ill] wyll hys realme after hys deith
& in especially furth of the righte lyne of in heritaunce yeroff / whedder the
subiectes of the same realme be bounde by godes lawes to obey & performe
the same wyll or noo.' n

109
Cox, "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace," 85 (LP, XII (i) 392).
110
NA SP1/109, fol. 200v (LP, XI 879).
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:342. We know that Aske sent Archbishop Lee a list of propositions
to be discussed at Pontefract: LP, Xll (i) 1022, 698 (3), 901 (107). It is possible that the list discussed
in this paragraph was the one Aske sent to Lee.
112
NA SP1/112, fol. 24v (LP, XI 1182 (2)).

264
These particular articles were never discussed at the Pontefract conference. Madeleine
and Ruth Dodds suggested that the northern clergy chose to ignore these points
because they were well aware that their oaths of supremacy had contradicted their
oaths of canonical obedience to the pope, and they were uncomfortable addressing that
1 1 "^

contradiction. This may be true. Nevertheless, the fact that the propositions on
oaths are immediately followed by a proposition on whether subjects are bound to the
will of a king who altered the line of his inheritance implies, in my opinion, that the
rebels were primarily referring to the relationship of the pilgrims' oath to the oath of
succession. The writer of this manuscript probably hoped that the northern divines
would clarify the exact relationship between these oaths. Alternatively, the writer
might be referring to the relationship of their pilgrims' oath to a new oath Henry VIII
was demanding that all the rebels swear, an oath that explicitly repudiated the rebels'
oath. (Although this oath was not yet being tendered among the Yorkshire rebels at
the time of the Pontefract conference, the rebels would probably have known of its
existence since, the Duke of Suffolk had tendered a version of it to the rebels of
Lincolnshire in October after the uprising there had collapsed.'l4) Regardless of
whether these articles concerned the relationship of the pilgrims' oath to the oath of
succession or to the oath newly devised by the crown, the articles demonstrate that the
relationship of the pilgrims' oath to an oath of fidelity to the king was a key issue, an
issue made more important by the rebels contentious claim that their oath did not
conflict with their loyalty to the king.
The genius of the pilgrims' oaththat it responded to the Henrician
Reformation by combining the fidelity sworn in the oath of succession with a rejection
of the recent religious policywas also its greatest weakness. Once it became
apparent that the king did not support the commons or the commons' rejection of the
reformation of the 1530s, it became much harder to maintain that the loyalty the
pilgrims swore to the commons or commonwealth was reconcilable with the loyalty
sworn to the king. This came out in January and February of 1537 when Hallom,
Bigod, and others re-ignited local rebellions in repudiation of the king's December
113
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 1:342-343.
' 14 For more on this, see below.

265
pardon. Bigod made such an observation in a speech he gave on a hillock at
Setterington to rouse support for his new uprising: "And yet the same is no pardon.
Also here ye are called Rebells, by the which ye shall knowledge yourself to have
I5
doon ageinst the king which is contrarie to yourothe." Bigod's response was to
devise and tender a new oath, "theffect wherof was in all things like the former othe
with this addicion. that no man shulde geve counsaill to any man to sitt still untill
suche tyme as they had obteyned their former articles."1' In essence, Bigod was
asserting that only by refusing the December pardon and staying in the field could the
pilgrims remain unperjured and keep their oath to be true to the God, the king, and the
commonwealth. Other pilgrims, however, construed Bigod's rebellion as being
contrary to that same oath. Even though George Lumley was a participant
(unwillingly?) in Bigod's rebellion, when the commons of the same rebellion
pressured him to occupy Scarborough castle, Lumley replied, "he would not be of
their counsel to enter into the castle, for it was the King's house, and there had they
nor he nothing to do. And their oath was to do no thing against the King."117
Similarly, when a messenger arrived in the town of Durham bearing a copy of Bigod's
new oath and a letter exhorting them to rise, the officers of the town responded that
they had sworn an oath to rise and take up arms only if commanded by the Earl of
Westmoreland or by the king, so they would abide by the king's pardon. Indeed,
the majority of the gentlemen of the north who had joined the Pilgrimage in October
and December of 1536 rejected Bigod's logic and stayed loyal to the king in January
and February of 1537. The split among the pilgrims engendered by Bigod's revolt

115
LP, VII (i) 369, printed in full in Milner and Benham, Records of the Lumleys, quotation from 38.
116
Milner and Benham, Records of the Lumleys, 40. The text of Bigod's new oath was as follows: "Ye
shall swere to kepe trewlie all these articles contened in the othe lately gevenn yow by the Commons at
ther last assemblyng as well towchyng crist churche & faithe ther of as the kynges grace & all the
faithfull commons of this realme / morouer ye shall not counsell or perswade by noo meanes any
persone to take order in this matter or stay but ernestlie & in the name of John to [pre]pare your selfe to
batell agaynst all thoyse which are the vndoers of Christ Churche & of the Commons welth & not
retorne bake from or good Jornay whils all or petioones be graunted soo helpe yow god your
holidomme & by this boke. God save the kyng & all the trew commons"; NA SP1/114, fol. 181r {LP,
XII (i) 147). For slightly different version of this oath, see NA SP1/114, fol. 183r.
117
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 2:70.
118
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 2:78; Michael Bush and David Bownes, The Defeat of the Pilgrimage
of Grace: A Study of the Postpardon Revolts of December 1536 to March 1537 and Their Effect (Hull:
University of Hull Press, 1999), 223.

266
therefore illustrates the conundrum inherent in the rebels' oath: how the commons
who had sworn to be loyal to the king could maintain their integrity once it became
apparent that the king opposed them.
The king himself clearly connected the pilgrims' oath to the oath of succession,
and he left no doubt that he considered the former to be in direct derogation of the
latter. When Henry heard that his commissioners for the subsidy had not resisted the
commons of Lincolnshire, he marveled that they, "being our sworne seruauntes . . .
wold be so fonde to put your self in to their handes and not acording to your
dewties."119 In a letter to Ellerker and Bowes chastising them and others for
becoming party to the commons, Henry claimed that the Pilgrimage was against God's
command and the allegiance his subjects had sworn to him: "ffor god commaundeth
them to obeye their prince what soeuer he be yee though he shuld not directe them
lustly and their othe of Alleageance which passeth all othes and is the foundacion
without the keping of whiche al other othes be but nought and vayne."' 20 To Henry,
the pilgrims' oath was "nought and vayne" because it contradicted the oath of
succession.
Henry thus saw the pilgrims' oath as compromising his subjects' loyalty to
him. By swearing oaths to be loyal to each other and to a platform that opposed the
king's religious policy, the pilgrims vitiated the allegiance they had sworn to him in
the oath of succession. By responding to the oath of succession with their own oath,
the bonds of the first oath had been weakened. As such, Henry did not allow the
rebels' oath to stand unchallenged. In the aftermath of the revolt, Henry had his
commissionersthe Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury
tender a new oath to all those involved in the rebellion, an oath that expressly nullified
the rebels' oath. This oath was not originally Henry's idea. When the revolt in
Lincolnshire collapsed in mid-October, Henry sent Suffolk and Shrewsbury to
Lincolnshire to cause the gentlemen to make a submission and make the commons

119
NA SP1/106, fol. 301r (LP, XI 569).
120
NA E 36/121, fol. 25r (LP, XI, 1175).

267
 I91

perform a set of articles. Suffolk, however, turned these articles into an oath on his
own and tendered it to the Lincolnshire rebels, as evidenced by Henry's letter to
Suffolk on October 22:
And wheras you doo signifie vnto vs in your said Lres that you haue sworn
certan gentlimen and others according to the tenor of [the] commission Ye
shall vnderstand we remember not that we haue sent vnto you for that purpose
any other commission thenne certain Articles signed with the our hande / and
therfor require you to signifie vnto vs whither you haue ministered that othe
according to the said Articles or otherwise.1
That same day, Suffolk wrote to Henry VIII that the rebels of Lincolnshire had "taken
their oaths according to instructions."123
Although Henry was not the originator of the idea of making the rebels swear a
new oath, he quickly approved of it. When he sent the Duke of Norfolk and Lord
Admiral William Fitzwilliam up to Doncaster at the end of November to deliver the
king's response to the rebel grievances, to issue the king's pardon, and to demand their
submission, Henry added: "And the said Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Admyrall, in cace
this men growe to a submission, not onely cause them, that shalbe presente, to receyve
suche othe, as the Licolnshir men have sworn and receyved." Indeed, the original
proclamation for pardon for Yorkshire on December 2 seems to have been an exact
and thus outdated replication of the proclamation for Lincolnshire, for it declared that
all rebels should come to the city of Lincoln and in the presence of Suffolk (lord
lieutenant of Lincolnshire) "submitte them selfes to his highnes Renoncyng their late
rebellious othe and taking shuch a newe Othe as his grace hath prescribed for the same
their genrall and free pardon."125 Unlike Suffolk, however, Norfolk and Fitzwilliam
were not in a position of strength compared to the rebel host. In the end, after Henry
grudgingly consented, they ended up proclaiming the king's free pardon without
tendering the rebels an oath.I26

The articles Henry sent to Suffolk and Shrewsbury do not survive, though they are clearly mentioned
as being included in the letters Henry sent to Suffolk and Shrewsbury; LP, XI 715, 717.
122
NA SP1/109, fol. 22v (LP, XI 833).
123
LP, XI 838.
124
Stat Pap Pub, 1:504 (LP, XI 1064).
125
NAE36/119, fol. 84r.
126
Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 2:1-23.

268
 But Henry had not abandoned the idea. After the rebels had for the most part
dispersed, Henry sent Norfolk and the Earl of Sussex back to the north in February,
1537, instructing them to visit all the major areas of the uprising and tender the rebels
the king's new oath. Henry instructed them to assemble all the gentlemen and
notables of the area, and after they had sworn them, to proceed to administer the oath
to the commons. Furthermore, after the gentlemen had sworn to the king, the
gentlemen were to return to the countryside and tender the new oath to the rest of the
commons. Anyone who refused the oath was to be exempted from the king's pardon
and, if Norfolk or Sussex were in a position of strength, those who refused the oath
were to be apprehended and sentenced to execution.127 As we shall see, this time
Norfolk and Sussex carried out Henry's instructions, and the whole of the North again
swore another oath to the king.
This new oath that Henry had his commissioners tender to all rebels was
formulated to contradict directly the pilgrims' oath. Unfortunately, we do not know
the exact contents of the oath that Suffolk tendered to the Lincolnshire rebels in
October or that Norfolk and Sussex tendered to the rest of rebels in February. Three
versions of a draft of an oath to be tendered to the rebels survive, along with two
almost identical sets of specific instructions on how to tender this oath that parallel the
actual oath in many clauses. Some versions of this oath are stronger than others, but
none of them are dated. Bush and Bownes have assigned each oath to a different time
during the uprisings, but in the end, their assignments lack supportive evidence and
their claims remain pure supposition.I28 Yet no matter what form of the oath was

l27
NASPl/114,fols. 108 v -109 r (IP,XII(i)98(l));NASPl/115,fols. 145", 147r-148r(LP,XII (i)
302); NA SP1/115, fol. 206" (LP, XII (i) 362).
128
Bush and Bownes claimed that the set of specific instructions on tendering the oath (NA E36/118,
fols. 61r"v, LP, XII (i) 98 (3)) form the content of the oath Suffolk first devised for the Lincolnshire
rebels in October. Their only evidence for this claim, however, is that this "oath" is written in the third
person. Of course, if this "oath" is not an oath at all but a set of instructions on how to tender the oath
that summarizes the oath's content (my position), we can account for the use of the third person without
making any unsupported claims about it being the oath devised by Suffolk from the king's articles.
Second, Bush and Bownes argued that the strongest and harshest oaths (NA SP1/113, fols. 117r-120v,
LP, XII (i) 98 (4-6)) were the ones the king initially ordered Norfolk to tender to the rebels at the
beginning of December in Doncaster in connection with the king's pardon. These oaths were the ones
the rebels never swore because Norfolk was forced to grant to the rebels the king's pardon without a
submission. Finally, Bush and Bownes asserted that the weakest oath (NA SP1/113, fol. 122r, LP, XII
(i) 98 (7)) was the one Norfolk and Sussex actually tendered the rebels in February and March of 1537.

269
actually tendered, it is clear that the oath was designed as a response to the rebels'
oath. The instructions for the tendering of the oath read:
wher as they haue heretofore within the tyme of this Rebellyon conspired
together and haue made certain othes and promyses contrary to their dueties of
alleagance and to the grete offence of god and their owne contience they shall
nowe by their othes taken before our lieutenante and counsaill swere and make
sure faithe and promise vtterly to refuse and renounce all their said former
othes.'29
The strongest oath opened with the clause:
ffirst ye shall swere that ye be hertely sorye that ye haue offended the kings
hieghness in this Rebellion and that ye shall repute and take all othes
heretofore made to any personne or personnes for or towching the saide
Rebellion to be vayne vnlawfull and of none effect and also that ye haue
offended god and his hieghnes in taking of suche othe as youe haue Receyved
for that purpose.130
Another version of the oath repeated this information but added that the rebels' oath
1^1

had been "taken against your dieuties of Alleagiance." Even the weakest form of
the oath, while omitting material on the rebels' oath being unlawful and offensive to
God and the rebels' own consciences, still declared: "And you shall vtterly renounce
all such othes as you haue made during the time of this commotion, and repute the
same to be voyde and of non effect."132 Moreover, all the forms of the oath also
included some variation on the standard phrase of fidelity where the swearer pledged

The government toned down this oath in comparison to the previous oaths, supposed Bush and Bownes,
out of fear of inciting the rebels into further rebellion if the rebels found the oath too offensive. See
Bush and Bownes, Defeat of the Pilgrimage, 369-370. Although Bush and Bownes' argument does
make logical sense, there is no historical evidence to support it. Nothing in the surviving
correspondences from the period suggests that the oath Henry sent up with Norfolk at the end of 1536
was any different from the oath tendered to the Lincolnshire rebels. Nor is there any direct evidence
that the government caused Norfolk and Sussex to tender a weaker oath because they feared further
rebellion, though I will argue below from indirect evidence that Bush and Bownes are right in this
claim. Bernard has thus recognized that in the end, it is impossible to know what forms of the oath
were tendered when, or indeed what forms of the oath were tendered at all; Bernard, King's
Reformation, 389-390.
129
NA E36/118, fol. 61 r (LP, XII (i) 98 (3)). See also an almost identical clause is the other set of
instructions: NA SP1/114, fol. 123r (LP, XII (i) 98 (8)).
130
N A SP1/114, fol. 117r (LP, XII (i) 98 (4)).
131
NA SP1/114, fol. 120r (LP, XII (i) 98 (6)).
132
NA SP1/114, fol. 122r (LP, XII (i) 98 (7)).

270
to be a "true and ffaythful subgyet vnto the king."133 Henry thus considered the
rebels' oath to be contrary to the loyalty they owed him as faithful subjects. Just as in
his response to the bishops' oath of canonical obedience to the pope, Henry reacted by
tendering the rebels another oath, an oath that explicitly nullified the oath the rebels'
swore in the Pilgrimage and re-established their loyalty to Henry.
The differences between the various forms of the king's new oath do become
significant, however, when we consider whether Henry bound the rebels to be loyal
simply to him (as in the oath of succession) or whether he bound them to be loyal to
him and his specific religious policy (as in the various oaths of supremacy). Some of
the forms of the oath have the rebels swear to be faithful and true to Henry "in Erthe
Supreme hed of the churche of Englande," while the instructions for the oath and the
weakest form of the oath make no mention of Henry's supremacy.,34 Again, the
strongest form of the oath binds the swearer to assist, to the best of his power, all the
commissioners appointed for the suppression of the monasteries.135 Other forms of
the oath omit any reference to the monasteries. Indeed, the weakest form of the oath
does not contain any express allusion to Henry's religious changes. It simply binds
the swearer to be faithful to the king, to reject all oaths made in the insurrection, to do
no treason or felony, not to rise up in commotion again, and to be obedient to the king,
his lieutenant, and his laws.I36 These differences are important because the
suppression of the monasteries was a major grievance of the rebels. The rebel oath
summarized by Lord Darcy even included a clause in which the rebels bound
themselves to suffer no spoiling or suppression of the monasteries.I37 The royal
supremacy was also a hot issue, though the rebels never swore an oath about it and

133
NA SP1/114, fols. 117\ 118r, 120r, 123r {LP, XII (i) 98 (4-6, 8)). The weakest form of the oath
changed the wording but the sense was the same. It read, "you shall swere to be true liegeman to the
king our souereign lorde henry the eight"; NA SP1/114, fol. 122r {LP, XII (i) 98 (7)).
134
For oaths mentioning Henry's supremacy, see NA SP1/114, fols. 117', 118r, 120r {LP, XII (i) 98 (4-
6)). For the oath and instructions that do not mention Henry's supremacy, see NA SP1/114, fols. 122r,
123r {LP, XII (i) 98 (7-8)).
135
For the oath (in two almost identical versions) that mentions the monasteries, see NA SP1/114, fols.
117r, 118rv {LP, XII (i) 98 (4-5)).
136
NA SP1/114, fol. 122r {LP, XII (i) 98 (7)).
137
NA SP1/196, fol. 286r {LP, XI 563 (2)).

271
were not in complete agreement over it. ' Some of these forms of the king's new
oath thus would have been more offensive to the rebels' consciences than others.
Which form of the oath, then, did the kings' commissioners administer to the
pilgrims? Madeleine and Ruth Dodds guessed that they tendered the weakest form of
the oath since that was the simplest.139 Bush and Bownes agreed, claiming that the
regime feared that the stronger oaths "might incite further revolt."1 Bernard,
conversely, has proposed that the stronger oath was more likely tendered since it was
more in agreement with the tone of the instructions sent to Suffolk and Norfolk, and
with Henry's insistence on the suppression of the monasteries.141 There is no way we
can know for sure which form of the oath Henry's commissioners administered. Yet if
we examine the responses of the pilgrims to this new royal oath, they suggest that the
weakest form of the oath was indeed used. According to the reports of the
commissioners, the response of the pilgrims to the tendering of this new oath to the
king was overwhelmingly positive. On February 7, Norfolk reported that he had
tendered the oath to the Ridings of Yorkshire and the city of York itself, "not fyndyng
ani man makyng any maner of yll cowntenaunce against the same." On February
28, the Earls of Sussex and Derby and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert informed Henry that
the gentlemen of Lancashire swore their new oaths "with as good willes prompt/ redy
and g[. . . as?] was possible," and that "they wolld defend and maytein their said
othe." The commons of Lancashire, the commissioners continued, "ioyously" and
"with most gl[ad] and redye mynde toke their said othe contynually praying for your
highnes and cursing all other that were of contrary myndes."143 The same earls wrote
to Norfolk that the men of Lancashire took their oaths and could not be more
sorrowful of their offenses or glad of the earls' coming.144 Finally, Sir Anthony
Brown observed that Henry's subjects in Ryedale and Tynedale took the oath

Shagan, Popular Politics, 101 -106.

Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, 2:101.
Bush and Bownes, Defeat of the Pilgrimage, 370.
Bernard, King's Reformation, 390.
NA SP1/115, fol. 206r (LP, XII (i) 362).
NA SP1/116, fol. 13l rv (LP, XII (i) 520).
NA SP1/116, fol. 2 5 3 " (LP, XII (i) 632).

272
obediently. Even if the commissioners exaggerated the pilgrim's enthusiasm in
taking the oath, the willingness of the pilgrims to take a new oath to the king suggests
that the commissioners administered the weakest version of the oath.14' The rebels
had risen, in large part, for the defense of the monasteries, and any oath that included a
clause about maintaining the king's commissioners in support of the monasteries'
suppression would most likely have engendered more opposition among the rebels.
That the pilgrims complied with the tendering of the new oaths is a strong indication
that the content of the oath was not particularly harsh.

Conclusions
Three conclusions stand out from our examination of the role of oaths in the
Lincolnshire Revolt and the Pilgrimage of Grace. The first is the complex and
variegated nature of the pilgrims' employment of oaths. On one hand, the pilgrims
used oaths to bind themselves to each other and to their common grievances, and to
force their social superiors to cooperate with their rebellion. This use of oaths
paralleled that of the English peasants in 1381 and the German peasants in 1525. It
thus was not necessarily an imitation of the oath of succession. On the other hand, the
pilgrims used oaths to respond to the Henrician Reformation and the oath of
succession. In this regard, the pilgrims' use of oaths was very much a result of the
Henrician regime's implementation of the reforms of the last two years.
Our second conclusion is that the rebels' oath revealed their interpretation of
the oath of succession. It showed that while the commons believed themselves bound
to be true to the king, the oath of succession had not bound them to be obedient to the
king's recent religious policy. If Henry had intended (as Elton argued) the oath of
succession to bind his subjects "not so much of the legitimacy of the issue to be
expected from the Boleyn marriage, but rather of the major policy which that marriage

145
NA SP1/116, fol. 178r (LP, XII (i) 552).
146
Of course, we must take these reports with a grain of salt, since it was in the best interest of local
officials to claim that people in their regions had cooperated enthusiastically with royal orders.
Nevertheless, although it is possible (and even likely) that the commissioners for Henry's new oath
exaggerated the degree of enthusiasm with which most pilgrims took their oaths, it is unlikely that these
commissioners would have hidden outright refusal to swear or rebellion.

273
symbolizedthe political revolution and the religious schism," then the oath of
succession had failed.1 7
While a few of the participants in the uprisings of 1536
posited that the rebels' oath conflicted with their oath to the king, the majority of the
participantsespecially the commons who took the oath enthusiasticallybelieved
that the content of rebels' oath with its insistence on maintaining the holy Church was
perfectly consonant with the oath of succession. The rebels' oath demonstrated that
the commons of the North did not perceive themselves as having consented to Henry's
religious innovations when they swore the oath of succession. As the uprising
dragged out into 1537, it became increasingly more difficult to uphold that the loyalty
the commons had sworn to the king in the oath of succession was reconcilable with the
loyalty the rebels had sworn to God, the church, and the commons in the revolt.
Nevertheless, the vagueness and ambiguity of both the oath of succession and the
rebels' oath allowed the rebels to assert initially that they were acting out of loyalty to
God, the king, and the commonwealth.
Our third conclusion concerns the Henrician regime's response to the pilgrims'
oath. The fact that Henry forced all his northern subjects to swear another oath
negating the oath taken in the rebellion demonstrates that oaths had become a regular,
even essential weapon in the crown's campaign to enforce its policy and discipline its
subjects. Far from cheapening oaths, Henry's tendering of the oath of succession to
all his male subjects in 1534 led to an escalation in their use and valuation among his
subjects. Henry's conflict with his clergy in the 1530s had resulted in a kind of arms
race where the king sought ever more powerful ways to secure the clergy's adherence
to his innovations, and the clergy sought more slippery ways to free their consciences
from the bonds Henry cast on them. The strongest bond was an oath. Once the
conflict had escalated to point of using oaths, there was no going back, for the only
way to counteract an oath was with another oath. When the commons responded to
the oath of succession with another oath binding them to a certain interpretation of the
oath of succession, Henry had no choice but to tender them another oath invalidating
the rebels' oath. Yet while the regime's retaliatory oath clearly was designed to

The quotation is from Elton, Policy and Police, 227'.

274
nullify the rebels' oath, the form of the oath tendered throughout the North in 1537
probably did not bind the swearers to acknowledge Henry's supremacy or assist in the
dissolution of the monasteries. Although the vague and ambiguous nature of the oath
of succession had allowed the participants in the uprising to swear the rebels' oath in
good conscience, the complete lack of any resistance by the pilgrims to the regime's
retaliatory oath indicates it was also quite likely vague and ambiguous. Had Henry not
learned his lesson? Or was this simply a subtle admission by the crown that the
regime was not strong enough in 1537 to risk tendering a detailed, explicitand thus
potentially more offensiveoath in support of Henry's religious policies to a huge
group of subjects who had just powerfully expressed their discontent? Of course, even
the weakest version of the oath still bound the swearer to be true to Henry and "all his
lawes and preceptes as a true leigemen ought to be."148 So according to a
straightforward interpretation of this clause, the pilgrims were now bound to be true to
the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Suppression. Yet as these last chapters have
shown, interpretation was not always a straightforward exercise. When oaths became
common weapons, the refuge of a varied interpretation became a common defense.

148
NA SP1/114, fol. 122'' (LP, XII (i) 98 (7)).

275
 Conclusion of Section II: How Effective Were the Henrician Professions?
Before we can comment on the effectiveness of the Henrician professions, we
must deal with two underlying questions that form the base for any evaluation of the
success or failure of these professions: who was behind the employment of oaths and
subscriptions as a means of implementing the reforms of 1534 and what was the
purpose of the professions and subscriptions of the 1530s?
As to the first, this section has alternatively referred to the main actor as either
the Henrician regime or Henry. This dual usage corresponds to one of the main issues
of contention among the historians of Henry VIII and his reign. The term "Henrician
regime" gives a nod to the theory that court faction played a significant role in
determining the policies of Henry VIII. John Foxe was the original author of this
view, but Eric Ives and others have today championed a more sophisticated
articulation of the significance of faction.' Ives and his supporters argue that while
Henry was dominant, he was also vulnerable to the manipulation of various court
factions.2 Various factions, in turn, explain the nature of the Henrician Reformation,
which (according to this view) was hesitant, oscillating, contradictory, and
ineffectual.3 The use of simply Henry as the subject gives a nod to the theory of a
strong personal monarchy. This theory, whose leading proponent is G. W. Bernard,
asserts that faction played little role in the determination of Henrician policy. Henry
himself was always in control; his servants were just that, servants. Accordingly,
Bernard interprets the Henrician Reformation as being a consistent and unified
movement of which the king was the principal architect.5 My references to both the
Henician regime and Henry recognizes that both of these theories have a certain
degree of validity. At times, Henry clearly was captaining the ship, yet figures such as

For the origin of the theory of faction in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, see G.W. Bernard, "The Making
of Religious Policy, 1533-1546: Henry VII and the Search for the Middle Way," Historical Journal, 41
(1998): 321.
Ives, "Stress, Faction and Ideology in Early-Tudor England," 196-197; Ives, "Henry VIII: the Political
Perspective," in The Reign of Henry VIII, 29-33.
3
The example of this view of the English Reformation is Haigh, English Reformations: Religion,
Politics, and Society under the Tudors.
Bernard, Power and Politics, 7-10.
5
For this argument in short form, see Bernard, "The Making of Religious Policy, 1533-1546," 321-349.
For the full articulation of this argument, see Bernard, King's Reformation.

276
Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, or Stephen Gardiner sometimes greatly
influenced the course of navigation.
Despite this ambiguity, the general thrust of this section has tended to support
the interpretation of Bernard over Ives. As far as it pertains to the implementation of
reform through oaths and subscriptions, the king was the central actor and the policy
unified and consistent. Henry became aware of the power of oaths through his conflict
with Katherine. He was the one who struggled with Convocation over his new title of
supreme head and the independence of clerical jurisdiction in the early 1530s. He had
hoped his oath would convince Convocation to agree to his new title without
qualification, and it was he who wrote a letter to Tunstall condemning the clergy's use
of equivocation. Henry was the one who went before Parliament demanding the
invention of some order concerning the contradictory oaths of a new bishop. Foxe's
story about Cromwell's role in this episode is probably fabricated. Henry was the
person who accepted responsibility for Cranmer taking his oath of canonical
obedience with protestation. As for the multiple professions of 1534 and 1535, they
followed a consistent pattern. The kind of device used, the content of its device, and
the extent of its administration did vary, but this variation corresponded to the
differences among those to whom the professions were tendered, specifically the
degree of their influence and power, the extent of their recent history of resistance to
Henry's designs, and the possibility of their consciences having been bound by a prior
oath, an oath contrary to royal authority. There was a clear rationale behind the
variety of professions of the 1534 and 1535, a rationale consistent with Henry's
experiences in the early 1530s. Finally, when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out,
Henry refused to accept the pilgrims' ploy of claiming loyalty to him and blaming the
recent religious policy on Cromwell and Cranmer. He saw their rebellion and their
oaths as an affront to him, and he was the one who insisted that those who had
rebelled be bound again with a new oath of loyalty to him. Henry himself thus
appears in this account as the main actor.
Of course, my analysis of the use of oaths and subscriptions as a means of
implementing the reforms of 1534 cannot speak to the subsequent course of the

277
Henrician Reformation. It sheds no real light on the formulations of faith, the
dissolution of the monasteries, the end of pilgrimages, the Six Articles, and the
acceptance and then restriction of vernacular Scripture. None of these policies were
accompanied by professions, and outside of the issue of papal authority and royal
supremacy, none of the professions in circulation in the 1530s dealt with matters of
faith. While this fact does allow the possibility that faction may have played a greater
role in the development of these later policies, it also supports Richard Rex's
argument that the Henrician Reformation was unified and consistent in that its core
was always the doctrine of obedience.6 Henry was greatest concern was the issue of
loyalty and allegiance, and his concern with it explains why it was the core theme of
all the professions of the 1530s. The other changes of the Henrician Reformation were
not as central of a concern to Henry, which explains why they were not enforced with
oaths.
The primary purpose of the Henrician professions, then, was to ensure Henry
of the loyalty of his subjects, especially the loyalty of those in the realm whom Henry
had reason to suspect of disloyalty. The oaths of succession and supremacy had two
functions. First, they were loyalty tests designed to weed out political recalcitrants
and isolate them before they caused trouble. After such a radical break with tradition
as the repudiation of papal authority, Henry needed to test the allegiance of all his
subjects. That is why the oath of succession (which in form was an oath of fidelity)
went out to every male subject of the realm. Yet Henry did not need to test the
allegiance of all his subjects equally. Henry's conflicts with his clergy in the 1530s
had revealed to him their questionable loyalty and their slippery intransigence. Hence,
he tested them with stronger professions and more numerous devices. And the claim
that these professions were in part a test is supported by the fact that the general
professions of 1534 were followed by the exertion of royal pressure in 1535 against
specific institutions and individuals, institutions and individuals who had or at least
were suspected of having resisted or side-stepped the professions of 1534.

6
Richard Rex, "The Crisis of Obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation," Historical Journal 39
(1996): 863-894.

278
 Second, the Henrician oaths were also binding mechanisms which, because of
the spiritual importance attached to solemn oaths, could actually push men into
situations where violating their loyalty to the king was to endanger seriously their
souls. The fact that oaths were a form of spiritual coercion also explains why Henry
tendered a corporal oath of supremacy to those members of his clergy who had sworn
an oath of loyalty and allegiance to the pope or to some other foreign authority or rule.
These clergymen had taken God as their witness and bound the fate of their eternal
soul to their loyalty to the pope or their rule. There was no greater bond than an oath.
If Henry wanted to negate their loyalty to the pope, Henry had to use an oath as well,
for no mere subscription to the supremacy could compare to the power of an oath.
Oaths intensified the loyalty owed to a temporal lord because they accessed the power
of God, an omnipotent and omniscient being. Oaths were the best test of loyalty
because in an oath, God was both the proctor and grader of the test. Only a fool would
attempt to cheat (i.e. dissimulate) during a test in which God was the proctor. And
because the person who swore was answerable to God, the oath created a spiritual
pressure on his or her conscience. Once one had sworn to a statement, any subsequent
action or utterance against that oath would trouble one's conscience. For example,
George Croft, the rector of Broughton and chancellor of Chichester who was executed
in December of 1538 for speaking against the king's supremacy, declared, "There
[was] none act or thing that ever he did more grieve his conscience than the oath
which he took to renounce the bishop of Rome's authority."7
Yet Henry potentially undermined the spiritual power of his state oaths by
backing these spiritual bonds with temporal punishments. Those who refused the oath
of succession were guilty of misprision of treason, the penalty for which was perpetual
imprisonment and loss of land and goods. After 1536, the refusal of the oath was
treason, the penalty for which was execution. Furthermore, Richard Rex has theorized
that Henry tendered the oath of succession to the laymen of London on the same day
as he executed Elizabeth Barton and her followers because he wanted the executions

7
Quoted from Bowker, Henrician Reformation, 139.

279
 Q

to intimidate his subjects into taking the oath of succession. These oaths were thus to
a great extent forced. We have already learned that English Protestants rejected the
validity of vows of celibacy because they were forced. Could not the same logic apply
to the oaths of succession and supremacy? Chapuys and Charles V certainly thought
so. We have already seen that Charles counseled Mary to take an oath to Henry rather
than forfeiting her life. Charles knew from his experience with Francis I over the
Treaty of Madrid that Mary could later wiggle out of her oath by claiming she swore
out of fear and compulsion. Chapuys applied the same reasoning to the oath of
succession in general:
The King himself could not show better the invalidity of his own statute than
by compelling, as he was actually doing, people to swear to it, which was a
compulsory act much condemned by the best jurists, whose authority I then
and there quoted. I said further I maintained that the rudest people in England
had been heard to say that evidently the statute had no force at all, since they
were called upon and obliged to swear beforehand a thing which had not yet
been examined and tried. . . . People swore because they dared not offer
opposition, the penalty being the forfeiture of life and property, and no one in
these times wished to become a martyr; besides which, several reconciled
themselves to the idea, by the notion that oaths taken by force, against morality
(bonnes meurs), were not binding, and that even if the oath was a true and
legitimate one they could contravene it more honourably than the archbishop
of Canterbury there present, who, the day after swearing fidelity and obedience
to the Pope, had issued a summons against the Queen.
Henry was probably aware of this argument since the institutional professions of
supremacy in 1534 stipulated that the monk or friar taking the oath swear "most
freely" [libentissime]. Yet the oath of succession had no such qualifier. As such, it is
possible that Chapuys was right that the English people did not consider their
consciences bound by the oath of succession because it was forced. The rebels' use of
oaths during the Pilgrimage of Grace, however, demonstrates both that they did
consider their consciences bound by the oath of succession (that is why they had to
respond to it with their own oath) and that they themselves put faith in the power of
forced oath in that they compelled many gentlemen to take the pilgrims' oath under
duress. Hence, although the enforcement of oaths of succession and supremacy with

8
Richard Rex, "The Execution of the Holy Maid of Kent," Historical Research 64 (1991): 218-219.
9
Cal SP Spain, V (1) 58 (LP, VII 690).

280
temporal force may have diminished the power of these oaths to some, it did not
completely nullify the effectiveness of these oaths since others still considered a
forced oath to contain spiritual power.
Of course, the use of dissimulation also inhibited the effectiveness of the
Henrician state oaths. We do not know the extent of dissimulated swearing, but we do
know that it was practiced. The strongest form of dissimulation, mental reservation,
was almost impossible to detect. This form of dissimulation, however, had no real
legitimate ideological justification in England in the 1530s. It was condemned by
Protestants and Catholics alike as perjury. Thus, the extent to which it was practiced
depends on the extent to which the English people internalized the clergy's teaching
on the absolute sacred nature of oaths. Those people who believed both that oaths
were sacred contracts that tightly bound one's conscience and that Henry's royal
supremacy was wrong could not swear with dissimulation without endangering the
fate of their souls. This was the case with More and Fisher. Harpsfield emphasized
this point in his narrative on More:
And farther [More] saide that if they doubted whether he did refuse the othe
onely for the grudge of his conscience, or for any other phantasie, he was ready
therein to satisfie them by his othe. Which, if they trusted not, what should
they be the better to geue him [any] othe? And if they trusted that he would
therein sweare true, then trusted he that of their godnes they would not moue
him to sweare the othe that they offred him, perceaving that for to sweare it
was against his conscience.
If More had not seriously believed in the sacred nature of oaths, why would did he die
rather than swear? Oaths therefore were less effective in guaranteeing the loyalty of
those who truly believed Henry's actions were wrong. These people either refused the
oath outright like More and Fisher orif they valued their temporal life more than
their eternal soulthey took the oath with dissimulation. Edward Placknay was
correct in his general observation: "The kyng hys grace may well optayne hys tounge:
but suarly in this matter he shall neuer wyne hys harte."1'

Harpsfield, life and death ofSr Thomas Moore, 167. For verification of this episode by More
himself, see The Last Letters of Thomas More, 79.
11
NA SP1/91, fol. 179r (LP, VIII 506).

281
 Yet while the belief that God would not punish the perjurous swearer could
undermine the spiritual pressure of an oath, spiritual bonds were not the only (though
it was the greatest) form of pressure Henry employed in order to solidify the loyalty of
his subjects to him and to his reforms. Another form of pressure was intellectual, but
oaths were not integral to this aspect of Henry's strategy. The text itself of Henry's
oaths probably did little to persuade anyone of the legitimacy of Henry's actions. The
oaths themselves were mere declarations; they did not include arguments to
substantiate the statements they expressed. In this regard, the printed works and
sermons justifying the divorce and supremacy as well as the opinions of the
universities were more effective than oaths.' This explains why Henry placed such
great emphasis on the regular preaching of his supremacy. Oaths were simply one part
in the strategy Henry used to implement his Reformation. Oaths, however, did create
a form of social pressure in addition to their spiritual pressure. Even if one took an
oath equivocally, his action provided a example to others. And if the person who took
the oath were influential, his example was powerful and would have served to soften if
not wholly defuse potential resistance.
Furthermore, the general public assumption on the binding power of oaths
created a form of social pressure on the swearer himself, for even if the swearer's own
conscience was not grieved by perjury, his neighbors knew that perjury was wrong.
The oaths of succession and supremacy thus created watchdogs of one's neighbors.
When someone spoke or acted in a way contrary to their oath, their neighbors
chastised them for it and, sometimes, reported them to the authorities. For example,
when Dr. Benger of Wingham affirmed the authority of pope at the table of the
archdeacon of Canterbury in 1535, the archdeacon and other observers reminded him
that such an affirmation was against their oath and then communicated the discussion
to Cranmer. Likewise, when Master Brown the Parson Chesterton showed his
fellow priest Thomas Arundell a prophecy contrary to Brown's oath of supremacy,

12
Tunstall, for example, confessed to Katherine that it was the arguments of the universities that turned
his mind from Katherine's opinion to the king's; Stat Pap Pub, 1:420-421, {LP, VII 695).
13
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 300-302.

282
Arandell promptly informed Cromwell.I4 Indeed, the only reason we know that
anyone dissimulated when taking a Henrician profession is because the dissimulators
eventually engaged in careless conversation with their neighbors, who then snitched
on them. Dr. John London's claim to Thomas Bedyll that he "wold not be so vnwise
to say to thys yong man [London's kinsman] any wordes soundyng contrary to myn
own p[rov]en and corporall othe" tells us more about the social pressures of perceived
perjury than it does about the genuineness of Dr. London's oath of succession.
Thus, the oaths of succession and supremacy created both an internal pressure on
one's conscience and an external social pressure on one's speech and behavior that
helped to secure the loyalty of the English people.
To conclude our discussion on the effectiveness of oaths and subscriptions as a
means to implementing the Henrician Reformation, let us compare Henry's use of
oaths to that of another state that was also seeking to enforce upon its subjects a
radical religious reformation in the 1530s. In May 1536, the city-state of Geneva had
just rejected Roman Catholicism and adopted a Reformed Protestant service.
Guillaume Farel had spearheaded the city's religious reform, and his subsequent
efforts to establish a new faith were greatly assisted by a young theologian, John
Calvin, who arrived in France some months later. In the early months of 1537, Farel
and Calvin drafted a new confession of faith. This confession not only required
acceptance to basic Christian doctrines such as the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed,
and the Ten Commandments, it also contained denunciations of the mass as diabolical
idolatry and a renunciation of certain Catholic beliefs as the doctrine of Satan. '6 Farel
and Calvin then mounted a campaign to gather subscriptions to this confession from
every male in Geneva. Farel and Calvin won the support of the ruling councils of
Geneva who on July 29 declared that every dizennier (district official) gather their
constituents district by district into St. Peter's Cathedral (the main Cathedral of the

14
NA SP1/88, fol. 49r (LP, VII 1624).
15
NA SP1/77, fol. 107r (LP, VI 739).
"Confession de la foy laquelle tous bourgeois et habitans de Geneve et subiects du pays doibvent
hirer de garder et tenir," in vol. 22 of Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Guilielmus
Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, and Eduardus Reuss, vol. 50 of Corpus Reformatorum (Braunschweig: C.A.
Schwetschke et sons, 1880), cols. 85-96.

283
city). There the district officials were to ask the people if they wanted to hold to the
confession and then tender them an oath of fidelity to the city.17 The subscription to
the confession was being combined with an oath of fidelity to the city. It appears that
the rulings councils of Geneva soon ordered that this subscription to the new
confession be sealed with an oath as well.I8 Despite proclamations that those who
refused the oath would be exiled from the city, this confessional oath engendered
much opposition among the inhabitants of Geneva. The entire "rue des Allamans"
(German street) refused to come and swear.19 After a turnover of leadership in
Geneva's city councils, Farel and Calvin were dismissed in 1538. Although their
campaign to bind Genevans with a confessional oath was not an explicit reason for
their dismissal, Robert Kingdon has legitimately surmised that it was probably a
factor. When Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541, he never again imposed a
confessional oath on the entire population. Instead, he employed confessional oaths
more selectively to new residents or students at the Geneva Academy.
When seen in the light of Farel and Calvin's confessional oath, Henry's
professions were relatively effective. We do not know all the exact reasons why Farel
and Calvin's confessional oath failed, but the few surviving hints are instructive. The
religious elements in the oath were clearly crucial. Some Genevois objected to
swearing to "the new reformation" (la nouvelle reformation), which suggests they
preferred traditional Catholicism.21 Others, notably George de Lesclefz and Jaques de
Lescure "had already sworn to certain articles concerning the reformation made at
Berne, but they did not know how they could swear to the ten commandments as much

17
"De la confession, que Ton donne ordre faire que tous les dizenniers amerront leurs gens, dizenne par
dizenne, en l'esglise de Dieu et seront interrogues s'il veulent cela tenir. Aussi sera faict le serment de
fidelite a la ville"; Paule Hochuli Dubuis and Sandra Coram-Mekkey (ed.), Registres du Conseil de
Geneve a I'epoque de Calvin, (Geneva, Droz, 2004), tm. 2, vol. 1, 273.
Dubuis and Coram-Mekkey, Registres du Conseil de Geneve, tm. 2, vol. 1: 329, 340, 366, 383.
19
Dubuis and Coram-Mekkey, Registres du Conseil de Geneve, tm. 2, vol. 1:382.
20
This paragraph is based on Kingdon, "Confessionalism in Calvin's Geneva," 109-116. I have,
however, consulted the original city council registers because Kingdon is not clear on the relationship
between the confessional subscription to the confessional oath or the relationship between the
confessional oath and that oath of fidelity to the city. Unfortunately, the original register does not make
a particularly clear distinction either, and the above paragraph is my reconstruction of what happened
taking into consideration both the original registers and Kingdon's interpretation of them.
21
Dubuis and Coram-Mekkey, Registres du Conseil de Geneve, tm. 2, vol. 1:340.

284
as they were hard to keep." Notably, the Henrician professions did not bind the
swearer to any doctrinal reformation or any behavioral standard. According to
Kingdon, still other Genevois protested to the confessional oath because they had
already sworn an oath of fidelity to the city. They thought the loyalty sworn in that
oath should suffice since by it they were implicitly bound to respect the decision
regarding religion of the city council. They did not want to be sworn explicitly to the
all details of the new religious settlement itself. Significantly, Henry's use of the
oath of succession would have pleased these Genevois, for in it Henry bound his
subjects to be loyal to him without going into details of his specific religious policy.
Finally, the wide administration of the confessional oath to all the inhabitants of
Geneva probably contributed to its failure since Calvin's more select and restrained
use of the oath when he returned appears to have engendered no opposition. In this
regard, Henry's policy of reserving oaths explicitly rejecting papal jurisdiction and
establishing royal supremacy for a select group of his subjects appears quite wise.
The oaths of succession and supremacy, then, were effective to some extent.
In comparison to Calvin and Farel's ordeal in 1537, Henry's deliberate policy of
varying the kind of device used, the content of the device, and the extent of its
administration was successful both in identifying and isolating potential resistors and
in preventing mass opposition to the professions. Of course the probable reason why
most of his subjects accepted the oath of successionits conservative appearance as a
simple oath of fidelityalso undercut its effectiveness in securing the loyalty of
English subjects to the reformation of 1534. This was revealed in 1536 with the
pilgrims claim that they could be loyal to him and simultaneously reject the recent
religious reforms. As for the more general effectiveness of the Henrician oaths, our
conclusion is ambiguous. Insofar as it was possible, they negated previous oaths of
loyalty to the pope. They also imposed a spiritual bond on the swearer's conscience
whichif the swear esteemed his oath and valued his soul obliged the swearer to

22
"Icy, ledict Lullin a diet que George de Lesclefz diet que luy et son serviteur [Jaques de Lescure] sont
prest jure certain articles de refformation faict a Berne, mais qu'il ne scauroyent entrer jurer les dix
commandement de Dieu, d'aultant qu'il sont fort a gardez"; Dubuis and Coram-Mekkey, Registres du
Conseil de Geneve, tm. 2, vol. 1: 328.
23
Kingdon, "Confessionalism in Calvin's Geneva," 112.

285
remain loyal to Henry and (in the various clerical professions) accept the break with
Rome and the royal supremacy. To some, the temporal punishment threatened on
those who refused the Henrician state oaths weakened this spiritual bond, though
many of Henry's subjects continued to believe in the efficacy of a forced oath. The
practice of taking oaths with dissimulation also undercut the spiritual efficacy of the
oaths of succession and supremacy. Yet even if the swearer dissimulated, the
Henrician oaths created a nexus of social pressure that forced dissimulators to guard
carefully their true opinions among less sympathetic neighbors. Considering the
extent of outward cooperation to the oaths of succession and supremacy, Henry was
justified in disputing the veracity of Charles V's quip to Ambassador Thomas Wyatt
that "kynges be not kinges of tonges."24 A more accurate axiom would have been
"kings be not kings of hearts."

BL Harleian MS. 282, fol 102v.

286
 Section III: Confessionalization and Truth: Perjury, Equivocation, and
Dissimulation in Protestant Heresy Trials, 1525-1559
Section one of this dissertation argued that in theory, sixteenth-century English
Protestants continued the medieval Catholic tradition of emphasizing the sanctity of
oaths. Section two demonstrated that the practice of oath-taking in sixteenth-century
England did not always match up with the theory. Section two, however, focused
exclusively on traditional Catholic subjects. The pilgrims of 1536 were almost all
supporters of the old religion. Likewise, virtually all the actors who resisted,
equivocated, or dissimulated when tendered the oaths of succession or supremacy in
the mid 1530s were those who held conservative religious beliefs. Evangelicals and
outright Protestants had no reason to hesitate when asked to swear these oaths, for
Anne Boleyn was a patron of Evangelicals, and Protestants, by definition, were
opposed to papal authority. Upholding the sanctity of oaths was easy when the
swearer completely agreed with the content of the oath. To discover how Protestants
acted when tendered an oath offensive to their consciences, we will now shift focus
and examine how the Tudors' more religiously radical subjects responded to the
demand to swear an oath as part of the church's prosecution of them as heretics.
These heresy trials and recantations under Henry VIII and Mary Tudor are an
ideal way to access the Protestant practice of swearing because oaths were an integral
part of the prosecution of heresy. First, the opening procedure of an ecclesiastical
court in a heresy trial was the tendering of an oath to the defendant. This oath was
originally called the oath of calumny (jurisjurandum calumniae), but because this kind
of oath was used in other kinds of ex officio mero trials, it became commonly known
as the ex officio oath.' When taking this oath, the defendant swore to answer
truthfully every question posed by the court, and he typically swore this oath before he

The oath of calumny was also imposed in other trials in which the judge did not proceed ex officio
mero: that is, by virtue of their office alone. For example, the judge could still tender the defendant an
oath to answer questions truthfully if the trial had been initiated by witnesses accusing the defendant.
In an ex officio trial, the judge could initiate the trial based on "common fame," and during the trial he
acted as the prosecutor, judge, and jury. In these cases the oath of calumny was of even more
importance since it was the only way to gather evidence against the defendants in the absence of
witnesses. Accordingly, the oath because associated with ex officio mero trials and began to be referred
to as the ex officio oath. The ex officio oath became a major issue of controversy at the end of the
sixteenth century in England. Opposition to it is the subject of chapter twelve.

287
had seen the articles prepared against him. For example, in Archbishop Warham's
prosecutions against suspected Lollards in 1511 and 1512, Warham forced the
defendants "to swear on the holy gospels of God by him corporally touched to answer
faithfully the articles written below objected to him by the office of the said most
revered father."2 Likewise, in Thomas Bilney's first heresy trial, Cardinal Wolsey
"made the said Master Thomas Bilney swear to respond fully and faithfully . . . to all
articles and errors preached and set forth by him without any mingling of falsity or
omission or qualification of the truth."3 Once the defendant had sworn this oath, he
was bound both to tell the truth and to respond to all the articles objected against him,
which were then disclosed. Neither lying nor silence was a viable option for him after
he had sworn his oath. Witnesses called by the court swore a similar oath to tell the
truth. Of course, not all examinations of heretics were conducted in court under oath.
Unofficial, private examinations were not uncommon, but examiners still chose at
times to employ oaths in private investigations.4
The second prominent oath in heresy prosecutions was the oath of
compurgation. If a defendant denied the charges, and no firm outside proof existed of
his guilt, he was sometimes allowed to "purge" himself by swearing an oath to his
innocence and then calling a certain number of compurgators to swear an oath

"pater tunc ibidem ad sancta dei euangelia per eum corpaliter tacta Iurari fecit de fideliter respondendo
Articulis infrascriptis contra eum ex officio dicti Rx,r" patris obiectis"; Lambeth Palace Library,
Warham's Register, fol. 170r. For the tendering of the ex officio oath in the heresy trials of the Coventry
Lollards, see Shannon McSheffrey and Norman Tanner (ed.), Lollards of Coventry 1486-1522, Camden
Society, 5th ser, vol. 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 73, 77, 88, 92, 102, passim.
"prefatus Reverendissimus pater prefatum magistrum thomam Bylney de plene et fideliter
respondendo articulis sive erroribus per eum tam in Civitate et dioc. london. quam in dioc. norwicen.
aliisque locis assertis et predicatis absque alicujus falsitatis intermixtione, veritatisve omissione aut
qualificacione, per venerabilem virum magistrum brianumHigdon, decretorum doctorem decanum
ecclesiae metropolitanae Eborac, tactis per eum sacrosanctis dei evangeliis, jurari fecit"; Guildhall
Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 130v. The entire process against Bilney from Tunstall's
Register is printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 4, Appendix. Henceforth, however, I will cite only
the original from Tunstall's Register.
4
This is evident from Thomas More's administration of oaths to suspected heretics during his private
examinations of them. For example, when John Brit wrote a letter to the suspected heretic George
Constantine to "go bakke wyth the trouth," More argued that Brit was encouraging Constantine to
commit perjury, "for Byrt wyste well I were not lykely to leue and beleue hym [Constantine] at hys bare
worde"; More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 19-20.

288
affirming the truth of his purgation oath.5 For example, Matthew Parker's register
notes that on March 19, 1569 a group of suspected priests purged themselves "with an
oath having been sworn on the holy gospels of God corporally touched by them not
only by the same clerics . . . that they were innocent of the crimes attributed to them . .
. but also by the said compurgators concerning the truth of the oath sworn by the same
charged clerics according to the credulity of them." Purgation was not, however,
always an option for suspected heretics. If significant evidence (usually provided by
sworn witnesses) existed in contradiction of the defendant's plea of innocence, the
defendant was not allowed to swear an oath of purgation.7 Moreover, the
compurgators had to be of the same rank as the defendant. When Robert Barnes, a
doctor of divinity, attempted to purge himself of charges of heresy before Wolsey, he
was unable to do so because Wolsey required that Barnes call forth six to ten other
doctors of divinity to attest to Barnes' innocence. Yet only two doctors of divinity
were present at the sermon at which Barnes supposedly preached heretically.8
The final part of a heresy prosecution in which an oath played a conspicuous
role was the abjuration of the heretic. After recanting the specific heresies charged to
him, the penitent usually concluded his abjuration with an oath. Although these oaths
varied slightly depending on the ordinary, they usually included three clauses. The
abjurer swore never to hold, teach, or return to his heresies, never to conceal heresies
or heretics from the church, and never to associate with suspected heretics but rather to

5
"Infamatus, contra quem crimen probari non potest, debet se purgare iuramento de veritate,
compurgatores vero de credulitate"; CIC, X.5.34.5, Friedberg, 2:870-871. "De testibus, Illi vero, qui ad
purgandam alicuius infamiam inducuntur, id solum tenetur iuramento firmare, quod veritatem credunt
eum iuramento dicere, qui purgatur"; CIC, X.5.34.13, Friedberg, 2:875.
6
"prestito tarn per eosdem laicos [scribal error for "clericos"] juramento corporali ad sancta dei
Evangelia per eos et eorum quemlibet respective corporaliter tacta, sese et eorum quemlibet innocentes
fore criminum eis et eorum cuilibet respective impositorum sub modo et forma specificatis in
indictaminibus predectis, et etiam per dictos compurgatores de veritate juramenti prestiti per eosdem
convictos justa eorum credulitatem"; Diocesis Cantuariensis Registrum Matthei Parker, 512. For
examples of suspected Lollards purging themselves, see Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Heresy Trials in the
Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31, Camden Society, ser. 4, vol. 20 (London: Royal Historical Society,
1977), 191-193,210-216.
We have already seen an example of this situation. Cranmer argued that Katherine of Aragon was not
allowed to swear an oath to purge herself of the accusation that she had been carnally known by Prince
Arthur because overwhelming evidence existed establishing her guilt. See pages 2-3 of chapter four.
Robert Barnes, The supplication ofdoctour Barnes unto the moost gracyous kynge Henry the eyght,
with the declaration of his articles condemnedfor heresy by the hyshops (London, [1548]), relevant
section printed in Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:319.

289
detect them to his ordinary. Sometimes the abjurer also swore to fulfill whatever
penance his ordinary deemed fit to prescribe to him.9 The author of the abjuration was
typically the heretic's ordinary, not the heretic himself. The abjurations themselves
(including the oaths in them) were usually formulaic. For example, all of the
abjurations of Lollards from 1511 and 1512 preserved in Warham's Register
commenced the same way and concluded with the same oath. Between the beginning
and the end of these abjurations, the registrar would leave a blank space in which he
would later copy down the specific heresies being abjured by the particular Lollard.
Likewise, among the abjurations of Protestants during the reign of Mary Tudor
preserved in Foxe's manuscripts, an anonymous abjuration survives with boilerplate
language, a standard concluding oath, and blank spaces for the name and exact
heresies of the person accused.11
Oaths, then, were central to every step of a heresy trial. This meant that the
already torturous decision of choosing between renouncing one's beliefs or being
burned at the stake was further complicated by issues of perjury. To escape execution,
heretics had to perjure themselves, either by taking the ex officio oath and then
denying the heterodox articles against them or swearing an oath of purgation that they
were innocent of heresy or (if purgation was not an option because of the
overwhelming evidence against them) by abjuring their beliefs and swearing an oath
in their recantation against their consciences. This of course assumes that the heretics
had not changed their minds concerning their true beliefs. It was always a possibility
that during the trial, the church authorities were able to convert the heretic back to
orthodoxy, thereby allowing the defendant to swear his abjuration oath in good
conscience. But if the heretic relapsed (and many of them did), it is safe to assume

9
For a smattering of examples of oaths of abjuration, see BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 7r-8r, 10", 21''",
29r, 8 1 " , 83r, 84r, 85'-86r, 88 r , 91 r , 129r-130r, 146", 154", 173r-174r, 175r-176v, 183r-184r; Lambeth
Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol. 176"; Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register),
fol. 137r; Henry Maxwell-Lyte (ed.), The Registers of Thomas Wolsey Bishop of Bath and Wells 1518-
1523, John Clerke . . . William Knyght . . . and Gilbert Bourne, Somerset Record Society, vol. 55
(1940), 3.
' We can deduce this because the registrar did not always use up all the blank space he initially allotted
in the abjuration for the Lollard's specific heresies; Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol.
161r.
11
BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 183r-184r.

290
that their initial abjuration was feignedthus perjured. Heresy trials were therefore
an intense and strenuous test of the theory of oath-taking. The heretic could choose to
maintain the sanctity of oaths, refuse to swear (in order to uphold the truth as his
conscience defined it), and thereby incriminate himself as heterodox, suffering the
penalties of such behavior. Or conversely, he could compromise the sanctity of oaths,
swear against his conscience or with some sort of dissimulation, and thus escape
temporal punishment while gambling whether God would truly punish such perjury.
This section will proceed by reconstructing the heresy trials of Henry V11I and
Mary Tudor to determine how religious radicals (be they Lollard, Evangelical, or
Protestant) took and manipulated oaths in practice. In doing so, it will build upon the
work of other Tudor historians. Susan Brigden, for example, has suggested that the
Evangelical brethren of London during Thomas More's chancellorship were willing to
perjure themselves to escape punishment for heresy. Likewise, Alec Ryrie has
argued that Henrician Evangelicals of the 1540s were much more likely to dissimulate
and abjure their beliefs than to stand firm under pressure. Ryrie wrote of a "culture of
recantation" in late Henrician England.13 In addition to these general histories,
excellent case studies exist of the trials and recantations of Thomas Bilney, Edward
Crome, and Anne Askew. Greg Walker has argued that Bilney was a perjuror, while
Susan Wabuda and Megan Hickerson have shown that Crome and Askew used
equivocation as a form of compromise: that is, Crome and Askew exploited the
ambiguities in language to placate church authorities without explicitly renouncing
their true beliefs.14 This section differs from these previous accounts in two ways.
First, rather than studying the practice of an individual reformer or multiple reformers
during a brief span of years, this section examines the use of oaths during heresy trials
from pre-Reformation Lollardy to the accession of Elizabeth I. It thus integrates
previous studies into a larger framework and seeks to chart change over time during
England's various reformations. Second, this section pays much greater attention to

12
Brigden, London and the Reformation, 190-191.
13
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, 69-89, quotation from 87.
14
Greg Walker, "Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered," Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 40 (1989): 219-238; Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 224-242;
Megan Hickerson, "Ways of Lying: Anne Askew and the Examinations," 50-65.

291
the role of oaths in these trials and recantations. It asks questions such as what was
the role of oaths in Lollard or Protestant strategies of equivocation, and how did
Protestants reconcile their recantations with their propaganda on the sanctity of oaths
and the significance of truth. And since oaths were the touchstone of most
recantations, answering these questions will provide insight into what (besides
escaping the flames) English Protestants hoped to accomplish through their
recantations.

292
 Chapter 7: Oaths, Lollards, and Early English Protestants
The greatest heresimach in England in the early 1530s was Sir Thomas More.
As lord chancellor of England, More took part in the examination of many suspected
heretics. He was also licensed to read and then to reply in print to the heretical
writings of William Tyndale, Robert Barnes, John Frith, and other English followers
of Martin Luther. With vituperation uncharacteristic of either his earlier Humanist
works or his later Tower works, More comprehensively attacked Protestant doctrine.
Yet More did not stop at condemning the beliefs of Protestants: he also proclaimed
that the "hole secte is nothyng els but lyes."1 Indeed, More contended that because
their doctrine was false, their behavior was also deceptive. Protestants did not hesitate
to lie and perjure themselves: "And syth they be fallen frome god and hys true fayth /
they haue no greate care of trouth / nor be very scrupulouse in the lendynge of an othe
tyll they neede in lyke case to be payed agayne."2 Protestants had no esteem for the
sanctity of oaths: "For neuer coulde I fynde heretyke yet, that any conscyence had in
any othe."3 In his numerous examinations of heretics, More found that they were
much more likely to commit perjuryeither by denying their heretical activities under
oath or by abjuring their heretical beliefs with an oath against their consciencesthan
they were to honor their oaths and face the penalties for their beliefs and practices:
Nor yet so moche as any constaunce in theyr doctryne / but & yf they were
ones founde out and examyned / we se them alwaye fyrst redy to lye and
forswere them selfe yf that wyll serue. And whan that wyll not helpe but they
flashed and periury proued in theyr faces / than redy be they to abiure &
forsake it / as longe as that may saue theyr lyues. Nor neuer yet founde I any
one /but he wolde ones abiure thoughe he neuer entended to kepe his othe. So
holy wolde he be & so wyse therwith / that he wolde with periury kyll his
soule for euer / to saue his body for a whyle.4
In short, More contended that unlike orthodox medieval Catholic preachers who
believed that the calling of God as witness to the truth of one's statement was a
sacrosanct and eternally binding convent never to be abused, early English Protestants
had no qualms about swearing untruthfully to suit their worldly, carnal objectives.

' More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 20.

More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in
3
More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer,
4
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in
Complete Works, vol. 6, 266.
in Complete Works, vol. 8, 14.
Complete Works, vol. 6, 422.

293
 Was Thomas More right? Were early English Protestants perjurers? This
chapter will attempt to answer this question by examining the usage of oaths by
English heretics up to the early 1530s. Because there may have been significant
overlap between Lollardy and early English Protestantism, we will start by looking at
the Lollard theory of oaths and the Lollard practice of dissimulation and recantation.
By comparing Lollard practice to early English Protestant practice, we shall see that
there was substantial overlap, which suggests Lollardy did have a significant influence
on early English Protestantism.5 We shall also see, however, that the employment of
oaths by early English Protestants was not always simply an attempt to avoid
punishment. Some early English Protestants manipulated the public esteem for oaths

5
1 am aware that it is historiographically unfashionable to use the term Protestant when speaking of
religious dissidents in the reign of Henry VIII. Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out that such use is
anachronistic. When an Englishman used the term "Protestant" under Henry VIII and Edward IV, he
referred to those German princes and their subjects who opposed Charles V's religious policy. No
matter how similar their doctrines were to German Protestants, Englishmen did not refer to themselves
as "Protestant" until the reign of Mary Tudor; MacCulloch, The Boy King, 2. Moreover, many English
"Protestants" under Henry VIII did not hold all the same doctrines traditionally associated with
continental Protestantism. For example, the rejection of transubstantiation was not common among
English "Protestants" in the 1530s. Accordingly, MacCulloch, along with other leading scholars of the
English Reformation such as Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, refer to the religious reformers of the reign
of Henry VIII as "Evangelicals". According to Marshall, two beliefs defined Evangelicalism: first, a
fervent Biblicalism that rejected "unwritten verities" and sought to reform the church based on
Scripture alone; second, a rejection of purgatory and a strong belief in justification by faith alone;
Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England, 7. Despite its growing acceptance as a term, I
will not refer to religious dissidents under Henry VIII as Evangelicals because many of the dissidents
prosecuted for heresy that I will examine in this chapter were not Evangelical according to Marshall's
definition. First, the line between Lollardy and Evangelicalism was by no means clear in the late 1520s
and early 1530s. We do not know whether many of the heretics More examined took their inspiration
from Wyclif or Luther. While Lollardy of course shared the same Biblicalism as Evangelicalism, it did
not share the sola fideism so characteristic of Evangelicalism. Second, it is impossible to pinpoint with
exact accuracy the true beliefs of many of these dissidents. As we shall see, it was part of their initial
strategy to portray themselves as thoroughly orthodox, thereby hiding what they really believed on key
issues. Many of these dissidents portrayed themselves as critical of the abuses in the church but not of
the doctrines of the church. Although this was oftentimes a smoke-screen, an anti-clerical attack on
abuses was one of the defining aspects of Henrician reformers who were in trouble with the clerical
authorities. In the end, I have decided to continue to use the term "Protestant" for Henrician religious
reformers and dissidents. I do not, however, mean that the term should signify any doctrinal consensus
with continental Protestantism. Instead, I use it to refer to any Englishman during the reign of Henry
VIII who protested some belief, practice, or abuse in orthodox medieval Catholicism and was
prosecuted for heresy by the English church because of his protestation. The authorities themselves
referred to these people simply as heretics, and I will use that word interchangeably with Protestant,
though I do not intend by such usage to imply anything about the true nature of orthodoxy and
heterodoxy. By the reign of Mary Tudor, the heretics of Henry VIII's reign had become, for the most
part, true Protestants in the continental definition of the word. Thus, the meaning of the word Protestant
in this section changes temporally just as Protestant views of oaths changed over time.

294
not only to escape the flames but also to arouse public sympathy by portraying
themselves as doctrinally orthodox persons oppressed by a corrupt prelacy.

Lollardy, Oaths, and Dissimulation

The relationship between Lollardy and English Protestantism is complex. To
what extent did Protestantism spring forth from Lollard roots? How influential was
Lollardy in the growth of English Protestantism? This question has a rich
historiographical tradition dating back to the sixteenth century when John Bale and
John Foxe cited Lollardy as the answer to the great question of Roman Catholic
apologists: where was your church before Luther? Modern historians have continued
to grapple with the relationship between the two phenomena. A. G. Dickens saw
Lollardy as "the spring-board of critical dissent" from which English Protestantism
launched itself.6 Andrew Hope demonstrated that some of the Lollard circles of the
1520s willingly accepted Tyndale's translation of the New Testament and
enthusiastically embraced the teaching of early English Evangelicals like Bilney,
Barnes, and Frith, while these same Evangelicals sought to foster links with
established Lollards.7 Margaret Aston has observed that Lollard texts were certainly
possessed and read by many early English Protestants.8 Anne Hudson argued that
leading early English "Protestants" such as Simon Fish and Thomas Bilney were
essentially Lollards, and that Lollardy accounts for the differences in William
Tyndale's theology from that of Martin Luther.9 The strongest advocate of a
connection between Lollardy and English Protestantism was J. F. Davies, who argued
that there were both doctrinal and geographical continuities linking the two groups.I0
Richard Rex, conversely, contended that the orthodox Catholic background of most
early English Protestants and the geographical discontinuity between Lollardy and

6
A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd edition (London: B. T. Batsford, 1989), 59.
7
Andrew Hope, "Lollardy: The Stone the Builders Rejected?" in Protestantism and the National
Church in Sixteenth-Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 21-25.
8
Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London:
Hambledon Press, 1984), see especially 220-234.
9
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 500-504.
10
J. F. Davies, "Lollardy and the Reformation in England," in Marshall, Impact of the English
Reformation, 37-54.

295
Protestantism demonstrate that Lollardy played very little role in the development of
English Protestantism.'' Patrick Collinson likewise stressed that the Protestant vision
of their conventicles as true churches was a critical departure from Lollard precedent,
though Collison did explore some lesser "cultural continuities" between the two
10

groups. In an argument relevant to our topic. Alec Ryrie posited that the tendency of
Lollards to abjure and recant their beliefs when detected for heresy "probably
informed the early Evangelical practice of the same."13 If Ryrie is correct, Lollards'
view of oaths and how these views played out when tested by heresy prosecutions are
of great relevance to our study of English Protestants' use of dissimulation and oaths
in heresy trials. Accordingly, this section will examine the Lollard theory and practice
of oaths, particularly their use of equivocation, dissimulation, and prevarication under
oath.
To begin with, it is clear that Lollards were adept at practicing equivocation:
that is, the manipulation of the ambiguity of words to satisfy the authorities without
offending their consciences. The presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar was a
subject about which Lollards often sought to equivocate. For example, when John
Aston, one of the first followers of Wyclif, was examined on his beliefs concerning
the real presence, he confessed "that the bread which the priest holds in his hands
becomes or is made, by virtue of the sacramental words, truly and really the same
body of Christ in reckoning that was made and born of the virgin." Aston had in mind
the spiritual presence of Christ in the bread, for when asked further whether the
material bread remained in the sacrament after the words of consecration, Aston
protested that he was never able to preach this proposition, for it transcended his
understanding. Aston did, however, try to equivocate again (now making use of the
ambiguity of Scriptural interpretation) by claiming that he believed of the bread what
sacred Scripture expressly taught must be believed.14 The "church" was another term
11
Richard Rex, The Lollards (Houndmills, Basingstroke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002), 115-142.
12
Patrick Collinson, "Night schools, Conventicles and Churches: Continuities and Discontinuities in
Early Protestant Ecclesiology," in Marshall and Ryrie, Beginnings of English Protestantism, 209-235.
13
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, 80-81.
"Confessus sum, et adhuc confiteor, quod panis quem tenet sacerdos in manibus suis, fit vel efficitur,
virtute verborum sacramentalium, vere et realiter, idem corpus Christi numero, quod fuit sumptum and
natum de Virgine... . Propterea requisitus specialiter dicere quid senserim de ilia propositione, Panis

296
open to Lollard equivocation. When a Lollard spoke of the church, he did not
necessarily mean the Roman Catholic church, its doctrine, and its hierarchy. Instead,
the Lollard often meant the invisible church of the elect. Similarly, one Lollard taught
that when asked by a judge whether one believed in the church, one could justly
respond yes, understanding by this response that one believed in the church that was
the temple of God in man.15 Indeed, Anne Hudson, the foremost scholar of Lollardy
today, has recognized that "the evasion of difficult questions by returning an
ambiguous answer was a skill apparently taught in the Lollard schools."16 Because
many of these questions were tendered under oath, it is apparent that Lollards were not
hesitant to practice equivocation under oath, and though equivocation was generally
decried in medieval tracts on swearing, it was still one degree removed from outright
perjury.
Yet when equivocation did not work and Lollards were pressed to choose
between abjuration and death, the overwhelming majority (ninety-eight percent by
Hudson's estimate) chose to abjure and recant.17 It would be naive of us to assume
that all of these abjurations were undertaken in good conscience, especially since some
of these Lollards later relapsed. So was the perjury committed during their abjurations
a result simply of a desire to avoid the flames or did it have some ideological
underpinning based on Lollard valuation or devaluation of oaths? The leading
historians of Lollardy have posited the later. Hudson argued:
There is, it seems to me, a good deal of evidence to suggest that their rejection
of oaths had considerable bearing upon the significance Lollards attached to
those promises, and indeed to indicate that many did not hesitate to take the
oath when forced but regarded it, because any oath was illicit, as no account
and certainly as having no bearing upon the future behavior or beliefs.'

materialis remanet in sacramento altaris post consecrationem, protestatus sum quod istam
propositionem nunquam posui, docui vel praedicavi. Scio enim quod ista materia, seu ejus speculatio,
transcendit intellectuam meum; et ideo quantum de ilia Scriptura sacra docet expresse credendum esse,
credo"; Netter, Fasciculi zizaniorum, 330.
15
"Item quod quilibet homodicitur ecclesia Dei, adeo quod si quemquam illorum coram iudice
ecclesiastico euocatum, ad hanc questionem respondere contingeret 'An in ecclesiam credis?', tute tunc
respondere posset quod sic, per hoc intelligens quod in ecclesia credit quid in homine qui est templum
Dei"; quoted in Hudson, Premature Reformation, 159.
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 159.
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 158.
18
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 373.

297
Aston agreed, claiming: "Lollards certainly had their own philosophy about oaths,
which helped them to disclaim the charge of perjury."19 But did the Lollard
philosophy on oaths really support perjury?
Lollards differed from orthodox medieval Catholics in that they often had a
more exclusive definition of lawful oaths. We have seen that some Lollards opposed
the ex officio oath as illicit.20 Perhaps the most distinctly Lollard position on swearing
was the rejection of book oaths as unlawful because Lollards considered swearing on a
book to be swearing by a creature and therefore idolatry.21 Since the ex officio oath
was usually tendered in heresy trials and oaths of abjuration were taken on books,
many Lollards thus considered the oaths required of them in a heresy prosecution to be
unlawful. Did this position allow Lollards to justify their perjury? Hudson thought
so, asserting that Lollard texts on oaths cited the Biblical precedents of Jephthah's
vow to slay the first thing that he saw upon returning home and Herod's oath to
Herodias as authorization to break unlawful oaths.22 Yet we have seen that the claim
that it was better to break than to keep an unlawful oath was a universal assertion
shared by Lollards, medieval Catholics, and sixteenth-century Protestants alike. The
usual corollary to this assertion was not that one could take an unlawful oath and then
break it without damage to one's conscience but rather that one should avoid taking
the unlawful oath in the first place. Indeed, the examples of William Thorpe and other
Lollards demonstrate that the refusal to swear was a common response of Lollards in
heresy trials when the authorities administered an oath that they considered
unlawful.
Margaret Aston has also suggested that Lollards could place the blame for their
perjury on the judges who forced them to swear the unlawful oath, thereby excusing
their consciences.24 Aston's evidence is a quotation of Chrysostom in an influential
Lollard tract called the Latern ofLi^t: "whepir is not he bat settib an hous on

19
Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 110.
20
See page 70 of this dissertation.
21
See page 41 of this dissertation.
2
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 374.
23
Russell, "Lollard Opposition to Oaths by Creatures," 674 and passim.
2
Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 111.

298
brennyng. gilti of bis brennyng? whebir is not he bat bringib a swerid wib whiche
manslau3tir is don gilti of bis manslau^tir? So bei bat bryngen forbe bookis. on
whiche men forsweren hem be gilti of bis forswering." While this hint from
Chrysostom is tantalizing, the tract never excuses perjury based on such reasoning.
Indeed, the The Laterne ofLi^t continues by asserting that oaths can be taken only
with "troube in the conscience of him bat swerb wibouten ony gile."26 Wyclif himself
quoted Jeremiah to argue that oaths must be sworn in truth. In the end, it seems that
the Lollard theory on oaths would lead to a higher esteem of oaths than was common
in orthodox Catholicism. Far from encouraging perjury, Lollards adopted the standard
medieval reverence for oaths as a base and then intensified this reverence by further
restricting the manner in which one could swear lawfully. It is antithetical that the
same reasoning that considered an oath on a book to be against God's honor would
also excuse premeditated perjury, for nothing (excluding perhaps idolatry) was more
offensive to God's honor than perjury.
When we turn from Lollard writings to their actual utterances and behavior in
heresy trials, what do we see? Margaret Baxter abjured of the article that "oaths are
ordained only to preserve one's reputation in the presence of a judge."28 Hudson and
Aston claimed that this allowed Baxter to excuse her perjury. Nevertheless, John
Clifland deposed that Baxter taught him: "quod nullo modo iurarent, dicens in lingua
materna [that they might in no way swear, saying in the vernacular]: 'dame, bewar of
the bee, for every bee wil stynnge, and therfor loke that >e swer nother be Godd ne be
Our Ladi ne be non other seynt, and if I>e do the contrarie the bee will styngge your
tunge and veneme your sowle."30 This suggests that Baxter thought that any oath
would "venom her soul," whether before a judge to preserve her reputation or not.
John Burrell confessed to believing that it was never licit to swear unless one's life or

Swinburn, The Laterne of Li^t, 88.

26
Swinburn, The Laterne ofLijt, 89.
27
Wyclif, "The Ten Commandments" in Select English Works of John Wyclif, 3:84.
28
"Item quod iuramenta sunt solum ordinata ad servandam famam coram iudice"; Tanner, Heresy
Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 42.
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 373; Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 111.
30
Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 44.

299
the life of another was in danger.31 While Burrell's life was certainly in danger in a
heresy trial, it does not follow that this reasoning allowed him to swear falsely. By far
the most common article concerning oaths the Norwich Lollards abjured was "that it is
not lawful to swear in any case."32 We do not find any theoretical justification for
perjury among their depositions. We do, however, find that some of them abjured
multiple times. John Fynche even confessed to having sworn falsely on a mass book
two years earlier when he had denied that he believed in the heresies charged to him
then.33 Other Lollards such as William White, Thomas Drayton, Robert Hook, and
William Taylor returned to their heresies after their abjuration oaths as well, a fact
which suggests they swore falsely.34
In Lollardy, then, we see two dissonant trends. On one hand, Lollard theory
concerning oaths was stricter than the medieval norm. Lollards placed greater
emphasis on the sanctity of God's name than did the average Catholic. For example,
Foxe wrote of the Lollards of Coventry: "This is certeine, that in godlynes of life they
differed from al the rest of the Citie: Neither in their occupying they would vse any
othe: nor could abyde it in them that occupyed with them."35 On the other hand,
Lollards did not hesitate to equivocate under oath, and when faced with the choice
between recantation and perjury or death, the overwhelming majority chose the
former. And contrary to the standard historiographical interpretation, it does not seem
that the Lollard theory on oaths would lead to the practice of perjury but rather the
opposite.

Burrel confessed that his father taught him "quod non est licitum in aliquo casu iurare nisi cum homo
fuerit in periculoso casu concerente vitam suam." He later abjured to believing "quod nullo modo licet
iurare nisi in casu periculoso concernente vitam alicuius"; Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of
Norwich, 74-78.
32
Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 53, 64, 71, 87, 112, 116, 122, 127, 135, 142, 148,
153, 158, 160, 183, 190, 194, 197, 199, 203.
"Ac super librum missalem per ipsusm corporaliter tactum iuravit, licet falso, quod ipse nunquam
tenuit, credidit nee affirmavit aliquos hereses vel errores. Et tamen, ut asseruit, contrarium fuit verum.
Et insuper prefatus Johannes Fynche coram dicto reverendo patre fatebatur iudicialiter et recognovit
quod post tempus quo idem Johannes Fynche se sic falso periuravit super librum missalem coram dicto
commissario, ut prefertur, ipse Johannes Fynche diversis temporibus audivit, didicit et reportavit ac
tenuit, credidit et affirmavit dictos hereses et errores quos ipse iuravit, licet falso, ut premittitur, se
nunquam tenuisse, credidisse nee affirmasse"; Tanner, Heresy Trials in theDiocese of Norwich, 183-
184. Fynche admitted the same in his vernacular abjuration on page 186.
34
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 373; Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 110-111.
35
Foxe, AM (1570), quoted in McSheffrey and Tanner, Lollards of Coventry, 311.

300
 The trial of the Lollard Richard Wyche is an excellent illustration of the
ambiguity present in the Lollard theory and practice of oath-taking. Wyche is
exceptional because an extensive first-person account of his trial exists, a rarity among
medieval heresy trials.36 Wyche composed a narrative of his examinations while in
prison, a narrative he then secreted out to his Lollard brethren, probably in order to
encourage them to stand firm in their beliefs. At the beginning of Wyche's trial in
December 1402, Bishop Walter Skirlaw of Durham demanded three times that Wyche
swear an oath "to be obedient to the laws and constitutions in the Decretum, Decretals,
Sext and Clementines to which a Catholic is held strongly and precisely."38 Wyche
refused the oath upon each demand. When asked by the archdeacon why he would not
take the oath, Wyche replied that he did not believe that a priest in mortal sin could
consecrate the sacrament. When the archdeacon glossed the canon that offended
Wyche, Wyche replied that "he is held by virtue of the oath to obey the law and not
the gloss": that is, that the oath they wanted him to swear would bind him to the laws
-in

and not to the gloss on the laws. When Bishop Skirlaw later asked Wyche why he
refused to swear, Wyche replied, "We esteem our souls just as greatly as you."40
Wyche's initial response to the tendering of an oath thus indicates that he valued his
oath highly.
After letting Wyche stew in prison for a time, Bishop Skirlaw sent to him an
unidentified knight. Wyche showed to the knight the three parts of canon law that
Wyche did not think were consonant with the law of God. To each, the knight
responded that this particular part of the law did not pertain to Wyche's oath. The
knight next asked Wyche if he could square it with his conscience to obey the law of
the Catholic Church insofar as it pertained to him. Wyche responded affirmatively.
Then the knight said, "Take custody of this in your heart, and let this be your oath, and

It would be nice to supplement our account of Wyche's trial with other Lollard trials, but the scarcity
of sources makes such an endeavor futile.
37
Wyche's narrative is printed in F. D. Matthew (ed.), "The Trial of Richard Wyche," English
Historical Review 5 (1890): 530-544.
38
Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 531.
"Tunc magister glosavit textum, tamen ex virtute iuramenti ipse tenetur obedire legi et non glose";
Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 532.
40
"Et nos diligimus animas nostras tam bene sicut et tu"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 533.

301
take the oath with reservations in your heart."41 Wyche, however, was initially
hesitant. He replied, "But you know w e l l . . . that if I receive an oath from a judge, it
is necessary for me to receive it according to the intention of the judge and not
according to my intention."42 The knight assured Wyche that Bishop Skirlaw would
accept Wyche's limited oath and absolve him from any other oath. When Wyche was
called before the bishop, Skirlaw administered to him an oath to obey the laws and
constitutions of the church "as far as it pertained to him," to confess himself guilty of
heresy if he ever preached anything against these constitutions, and to turn over any
books Wyche might have against the laws and constitutions of the church.43 Wyche at
first refused to swear this oath, claiming that it was not the oath he had agreed with the
knight to swear. The knight reminded him that he could take the oath with restrictions
in his heart. But before swearing, Wyche approached the bishop and sought assurance
that he could swear with restrictions in his heart: "if you are willing, I will swear the
oath of the agreement but only as delimited for me for swearing in the heart by my
master [this] knight."44 Skirlaw communicated his consent, and Wyche swore the
oath accordingly. Although it is surely significant that Wyche was willing to swear
with mental reservation, the idea did not originate with him. Moreover, he clearly was
not employing mental reservation as a way to deceive his judges. He protested that
oaths must be sworn in the manner understood by the judge and he explicitly
explained to Bishop Skirlaw how he was swearing before taking the oath. It seems
that Wyche felt that swearing with guile or deceptive equivocation was wrong.

"Custodias istud in corde tuo et sit istud iuramentum tuum, et iures tu istud in corde tuo limitatum";
Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 534. The particular translation quoted is that of Rita Copeland,
Pedagogy, Intellecutals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 164.
42
"Sed scitis bene, dixi, si reciperem iuramentum a iudice, oportet me recipere secundum intentum
iudicis et non secundum meum"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 534.
43
The form of the oath was as follows: "Ego Richardus Vicz Virgoniensis diocesis iuro quod quilibet
catholicus tenetur firmiter et precise legibus et constitucionibus in Decretis, Decretalibus, Sexto et
Clementinis contentis et, quantum ad me attinet, volo obedire eisdem et si contingat me in posterum
aliquid contra easdem predicare me in heresim lapsum confiteor, eciam, si quos contra eos libros habeo,
circa diem Pasce ad episcopum destinare"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 535.
44
"Et dixi episcopo: Domine, iuramentum pacti mihi modo limitatum in corde a magistro meo hie
milite ad iurandum volo iurare si volueritis. At ille: lures tunc"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche,"
535. The particular translation quoted above is that of Christina von Nolcken, "Richard Wyche, a
Certain Knight, and the Beginning of the End," in Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (ed.), Lollardy
and the Gentry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 139.

302
 Immediately after swearing his oath, Bishop Skirlaw tendered him two further,
more specific oaths on the Eucharist and confession. These oaths were offensive to
Wyche's conscience, and he refused to swear them. The bishop, however, interpreted
Wyche's earlier oath as a kind of ex officio oath, an oath binding him to swear all
further oaths offered to him. An old friar exclaimed to Wyche, "You are held by
virtue of your oath to swear this." This sent Wyche into a crisis of conscience. He
lamented in prison that his spirit was in "great tribulation and affliction" because of
the "toxic oath" he had sworn. Wyche was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand, he felt bound by his oath to swear the specific oaths on confession and
the Eucharist. On the other hand, these specific oaths offended his conscience.
Wyche's inner struggle again demonstrates that he esteemed his oath. He considered
himself bound by it and was unwilling simply to perjure himself to escape persecution.
Finally, Wyche remembered that he had taken his oath with reservations in his heart,
and these reservations freed him from the obligation to swear the subsequent
offending oaths. He boldly declared this to Skirlaw, even calling God and all his
saints to witness that it never was his intention to bind himself against his conscience
when he initially swore.47 Wyche's narrative ended with him remaining in prison for
his continual refusal to swear the oath on the Eucharist.
To this point, it seems that Wyche held oaths in great esteem. The charge of
perjury seriously offended his conscience, and insofar as he swore with mental
reservation, he did so with full disclosure of his intent. Yet there are hints that Wyche
was prepared to use equivocation under oath. Wyche did not specify in his letter
whether he swore the oath on confession, but he did admit that he agreed that auricular
confession was necessary for the salvation of one's soul. Wyche added this caveat for
his readers: "Although the good Wyclif denies it, we did not however disagree in faith

"Et ille vetus magister frater Minor dixit: Tu teneris ex virtute iuramenti tui istud iurare"; Matthew,
"Trial of Richard Wyche," 535. For a nice exposition on the significance of Skirlaw's interpretation of
the oath Wyche swore as an ex officio oath, see Copeland, Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent, 166-
170.
46
"Et missus in carcerem fui per tres dies in magna tribulacione et affliccione spiritus super illo
iuramento intoxicato, nesciens quodammodo quid facerem, si episcopus non teneret veritatem pacti in
illo iuramento"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 536.
47
Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 539-540.

303
because he denied it speaking sophistically. And I conceded it speaking
scripturally." The meaning of this statement is not entirely clear, but Christina von
Nolcken was probably right in claiming that Wyche was exploiting the ambiguity of
the necessity of confession, stating to his followers that whereas Wyclif was referring
to the necessity of confession to the institutional church, Wyche was referring to the
necessity of the members of the elect "to acknowledge their own sinfulness."49 Even
more significant, however, was the fact that Wyche eventually made a full abjuration
and recantation of his heresies sometime between October 1404 and March 1406.50 In
this abjuration, Wyche unambiguously renounced his Lollard beliefs "without trick or
fraud" and sealed his abjuration with an oath.51 He obviously did not stick to his oath.
On September 8, 1410 Wyche wrote a letter to the Bohemian theologian Jan Hus
indicating that he (Wyche) shared the unorthodox views of Hus. Moreover, a letter on
the same date from the Lollard Knight Sir John Oldcastle to Hus's supporter Sir John
Woksa of Waldstein suggests that Wyche was connected to Oldcastle's entourage.52
Finally, Wyche was burned for heresy in 1440.53 So even though Wyche's own
narrative portrays him as a man who valued his oath, he was willing to commit perjury
by recanting his beliefs under oath and then relapsing as a heretic.
This opens up the possibility that Wyche's narrative was less a faithful
recitation of Wyche's behavior and more a piece of propaganda designed to convince
his Lollard brethren that he highly esteemed his oath and refused to abandon the truth
of his beliefs by forswearing himself. Yet even this is significant. It shows that
Wyche felt it necessary to project an image of himself as one who greatly valued the
name of God. When push came to shove, Wyche was willing to commit perjury to
save himself but he did not want his fellow Lollards to know this. The desire of

"Et licet bonus Wicleff illud negat, tamen in fide on discrepavimus, quia ille negavit ad modum
loquendi sophistarum. Et ego concessi ad modum scripture"; Matthew, "Trial of Richard Wyche," 536.
49
Nolcken, "Richard Wyche, a Certain Knight, and the Beginning of the End," 137.
50
For the dating of this abjuration, see Anne Hudson, "Which Wyche? The Framing of the Lollard
Heretic and / or Saint," in Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter
Biller, York Studies in Medieval Theology, vol. 4 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2003),
222-223.
5
' The abjuration is printed in Netter, Fasciculi zizaniorvm, 501-505.
52
Hudson, "Which Wyche?" 229-230.
53
Hudson, "Which Wyche?" 225.

304
Wyche to excuse his deceptive swearing and hide his eventual perjury indicates that
even if such practices were common in Lollardy, they were not considered
theoretically justifiable.
The Lollard heritage on oaths was thus full of inherent ambiguities and
tensions. On one hand, Lollards intensified the sacredness of oaths. They denounced
certain oaths considered legitimate by orthodox Catholics as unlawful and prejudicial
to God's honor, and they taught that perjury was wrong. On the other hand, Lollards
did not hesitate to employ equivocation, and when threatened with death, most
Lollards were willing to abjure their beliefs under oath. Far from allowing Lollards to
perjure themselves, the Lollard theory on oath-taking theoretically precluded the
practice of dissimulated recantations. This indicates that it was not the beliefs about
oaths but the instinct of self-preservation that led to their practice of perjury. During
their heresy trials, Lollards were not living out their abstract theories. They were
trying to save their lives. The Lollard tradition of oaths was thus dissonant. Lollards
increased the sanctity of oaths rhetorically while undermining the sanctity of oaths
practically.54

It is worth pointing out that the contradictory relationship between Lollard theories on oath-taking
and their behavior in heresy trials was not exceptional among medieval heretics. The Cathars and
Waldenses seem to have shared a similar pattern of behavior. Numerous inquisitors commented on this
tension. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of the heretics he encountered: "Finally, its members are reported
to have arranged for themselves secret hiding places; 'they are resolute in wickedness': 'Swear, truly or
falsely, but betray not the secret.' They say, to be sure, that they do not otherwise consent, under any
circumstances, to take an oath, because of that precept of the Gospel, 'Swear not at all, neither by
heaven nor by earth,' and so on. 'O foolish and slow of heart,' clearly filled with the spirit of the
Pharisees, 'who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel'! Is it unlawful to swear, but lawful to swear
falsely? Is it permissible in the one case alone and not in the other? From what passage of the Gospel,
pray, do you draw this exception, you who, by your false boast, pass over not a single iota? It is evident
that you are both superstitiously careful about an oath and shamefully ready with perjury. O perversity!
What was given as cautionary advice, namely, not to swear, these people observe as obstinately as if it
were a commandment; what was ordained as unchangeable law, namely, not to swear falsely, they
dispense with by their own choice, as if it were a matter of no importance." Likewise, Stephen of
Bourbon wrote the following of the Waldenses based on his experience as an inquisitor in Lyon: "They
believe that every lie is a mortal sin and an oath is the same. However, I have heard some of them say
that under fear of death it is permissible for those who are not perfected to lie and to take oaths. They
themselves do not lie and commit perjury, nor do they think it a sin, since they excuse and disguise their
lies by wiles and sophistries." Finally, Bernard Gui wrote that the Waldenses "hold and teach that
every oath, in or out of court, without exception or qualification, has been forbidden by God as
unlawful and sinful. . . . However, in the event that they are forced to swear, through fear of death, then
they are to take the oath verbally, in words alone, but with the mental reservation that they are bound to
tell the truth in nothing but what is contained in so many words in the articles of faith or in God's
commandments. If they are questioned about other things, they may tell lies without sin. In order to

305
 Perjury and Propaganda: The Early English Protestant Usage of Oaths
How much of the Lollard tradition concerning oaths did early English
Protestants inherit? As we have seen, Thomas More argued that early English
Protestants were exceedingly willing to abjure falsely and perjure themselves to avoid
punishment. Yet More did not limit himself to general accusations, he also provided
specific instances of Protestant perjury. For example, More narrated the story of
Richard Webbe and Robert Necton. After being detected for heresy, Webbe and
Necton secretly agreed on how they would answer More's questions in order to make
sure their stories were consistent. Necton, however, lost his cool and sent More word
of their agreement unbeknownst to Webbe. When More examined Webbe the next
day, Webbe "answered on his othe many a false answere." When More exposed
Webbe's perjury, Webbe "sayd he sware for no ferther then he remembred."55 This
same pattern was repeated again. More concluded: "so thought Webbe hym selfe
surely defended from any reprofe of periury, bycause I coulde not loke into his breste
to se whether he remembred the counsayle so studyousely taken wyth Necton the daye
byfore or no."56
Can More's account be trusted? In the case of Webbe and Necton, no other
evidence on their heresy trials exists from which to verify More's accusation. John
Foxe sometimes sought to undermine More's accusations about the behavior of early
English Protestants. The case of Richard Bayfield is a good example. Bayfield
abjured his heresy in 1528. By November of 1531, however, he had been caught
smuggling and selling William Tyndale's books in England. More wrote of Bayfield:
"but that after he was taken, all the whyle that he was not in vtter dyspayre of perdon /

escape the power of the inquisitor they may deny the truth about their sect with their tongues, provided
they keep it in their hearts. In their replies they should color the truth, deny it, gloss it over in any way
they can devise"; Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans (ed. and trans.), Heresies of the High
Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 133-134, 346, 388, 407.
55
More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 814.
5
More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 816. The claim that a defendant
could justly forswear himself before a judge if the crime the defendant committed was secret may have
been a common belief of early English Protestants. More put this argument into the mouth of the
messenger in his Dialogue and then spent three pages refuting it; More, Dialogue concerning Heresies,
in Complete Works, vol. 6, pt. 1, 280-284.

306
he was well contente to haue forsworen yt agayne, and letted not to vtter hys
euangelicall brethern both in England and ellys where, causynge some of them to be
taken."57 Foxe denied this, claiming that Bayfield refused to abjure his beliefs upon
his second detection and that he accused no one else of heresy.58 But even if Foxe
was correct that Bayfield did not forswear himself in his 1531 trial, it is clear that
Bayfield did do so in 1528. Among the articles administered to Bayfield in 1531 were
the following accusations: in 1528 he swore an oath to renounce his heresies and never
to return to them, he swore another oath at that time on the gospels to fulfill whatever
penance was adjoined to him, and he fled beyond the sea before fulfilling his penance,
thereby breaking his oath. Bayfield admitted that all these articles were true, which of
course was tantamount to confessing his perjury.59 Although Foxe challenged the
specific details of More's testimony, Foxe could not hide that Bayfield had committed
perjury.
There are other cases of early Protestant perjury confessed by the Protestants
themselves independent of any accusation of Thomas More. In a letter to Cromwell in
1532, George Gower admitted having committed perjury before More. Gower
claimed that Bishop Stokesley and his chancellor had sworn him against his will to
answer questions about John Purser and another unnamed suspected heretic. The first
day that More questioned him under oath, Gower denied any acquaintance with the
unnamed heretic, but a day later he modified his story, confessing that he had spoken
with this heretic four times. Likewise, Gower originally said that Purser had no
acquaintance with the unnamed heretic, but later Gower admitted that he had seen the
unnamed heretic at Purser's house. Gower professed that he never intended to be
forsworn or hurt anyone, and he pleaded with Cromwell not to make him wear a paper
for his perjury, since the oath was forced and not taken willingly.60
Adam Dalaber was even bolder in acknowledging his perjury to the world. He
recounted the events of 1528 at Oxford to Foxe. Dalaber, a student at Oxford who had
received heretical books from Master Thomas Garret, helped Garret escape out of

More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 18.

58
Foxe, ^M(Townsend), 4:681-682, 688.
59
Foxe,^M(Townsend), 4:682, 684.
60
NASPl/70, fols. 163rv (LP, V 1176); Bxigden, London and the Reformation, 190-191.

307
Oxford when Garret became suspected of heresy. Garret was soon apprehended and
brought back to Oxford. Distraught, Garret picked the lock of his chamber, found a
young man to guide him to Dalaber's new room, and in the guide's presence exposed
to Dalaber the narrative of his capture and how he was undone for heresy. Dalaber
quickly realized Garret's error of talking in front of the guide, dismissed the guide,
lent Garret some clothes, and sent him off to escape in exile to Germany. The guide
told all, and Dalaber was brought before the authorities. Anthony Dunstan, a monk of
Westminster and prior of the students, asked Dalaber whether he had seen Garret and
whether he knew where Garret went. Dalaber responded that Garret had stopped by
his place to borrow a hat and shoes on his way to a Shrovetide celebration at
Woodstock. Dalaber admitted to his readers: "This tale I thought meetest, though it
were nothing so."61 Shortly thereafter, Dalaber's lie escalated into perjury. He was
brought before Master Cottisfords, Dr. Higdon, and Dr. London and made to lay his
right hand on a mass book, swear that he "should truly answer to such articles and
interrogatories" as they offered him, and kiss the book.62 After his oath, Dalaber
repeated his false story. The commissioners eventually brought forth the guide who
testified of Garret and Dalaber's meeting. Dalaber denied the guide's story,
confessing to his readers: "for I thought my 'nay' to be as good as his 'yea,' seeing it
was to rid and deliver my godly brother out of trouble and peril of his life."63
Dalaber's story did not hold water. He and Garret ended up abjuring in 1528, though
both returned to their heresies.64
Thus far, the cases we have examined depict early English Protestants as
simple perjurers. Like Lollards, these early Protestants were prepared to perjure
themselves to escape the flames. Yet unlike Wyche, none of these early Protestants
claimed perjury was wrong or pretended to value their oaths in the least. Neither did
they manipulate their oaths through the use of equivocation or mental reservation.
They simply lied as an attempt to save their lives or the lives of their brethren. Yet

61
Foxe,^M(Townsend), 5:425.
62
Foxe, ^M(Townsend), 5:425-426.
63
Foxe,^M(Townsend), 5:426.
64
S. R. Maitland has retold Foxe's story, laying special emphasis on the duplicity of Dalaber. See S. R.
Maitland, The Reformation in England (London: John Lane, 1906), 11-14.

308
this picture of a crude and uncomplicated usage of oaths by early English Protestants
may be the result of one-dimensional sources. It also may be significant that
Protestants like Webbe, Bayfield, and Gower were relatively unlearned laymen and
not the primary writers and teachers of Protestant theology in England. An
examination of the employment of oaths by other, more prominent English Protestants
in the late 1520s and early 1530s reveals a more sophisticated usage of oaths.
Although these Protestants did not hesitate to commit perjury, they were well aware
that oaths were held in high esteem by the general populace. They thus manipulated
their oaths not only to escape punishment for heresy but also to present an image of
themselves as orthodox victims unjustly oppressed by a corrupt and deceitful church
hierarchy. Whether a premeditated strategy or an improvised response, this kind of
manipulation of oaths suggests that the early English Protestant practice of oath-taking
was more than just an effort to save their lives: it was sometimes a propaganda device.
One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the 1527 heresy trial of
Thomas Bilney. The trial records (preserved in Bishop Tunstall's register) make it
clear that Bilney committed perjury. When the trial commenced, Cardinal Wolsey
first asked Bilney whether Bilney had sworn an oath in Wolsey's presence months
earlier not to preach or defend Lutheran opinions. Bilney responded that he had sworn
such an oath "but not judicially."65 Bilney probably meant that the oath he had sworn
was not part of a formal, legal abjuration, so if convicted for heresy this time, he could
6
not be judged as re-lapsed. It shows that Bilney was less concerned with whether he
had broken the oath and more concerned with his official legal status. Wolsey then
tendered Bilney the ex officio oath; Bilney was now bound to respond truthfully to the
questions and articles administered to him.67 After Bilney submitted an ambiguous
written response to the articles held against him, Bishop Tunstall (Wolsey had been
called away on official business) began calling forth witnesses who testified under

"Item prefatus Reverendissimus pater interrogavit eundem magistrum Thomam bylney, an olim
praestitit Juramentum coram eodem quod nullas lutheri opiniones predicaret recitaret et defenderet sed
easdem ubique impugnaret; respondent quod praestitit Juramentum hujusmodi, non tamen iudicialiter";
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 130v.
66
Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 233.
67
See page 288 above.

309
oath that Bilney had preached heresy. At first (also under oath), Bilney simply denied
these accusations. His only evidence for this denial, according to Thomas More, was
his own oath: "that by other meanes than the onely othe of the partye that is accused/
sweryng alone agaynst them all."68 About halfway through the trial, however, Bilney
switched his strategy and suddenly claimed that he could not remember what he had
preached, requesting the trial be halted. Bilney's abrupt amnesia was almost
certainly feigned since he had never displayed memory problems before and indeed
provided a detailed report of his sermons in private letters to Tunstall.70 The
combination of his initial denial of the testimony of multiple witnesses with his
sudden assertion of forgetfulness suggests that Bilney was lying under oath. Thomas
More recognized this: "must it not nedes be that in his [Bilney's] denyenge in verture
of his othe / the thynges which they coulde not but byleue true / they must nedes
therwith beyleue hym all that wyle to lye & be periured?".71 And the assertion that
Bilney perjured himself is not farfetched. After all, in Bilney's copy of the Vulgate,
he had noted in the margin that the prophet Jeremiah had made a "pious lie."72
Moreover, at his death speech at the stake three years later, Bilney, according to
Edward Rede, confessed another instance of perjury: "And where as I was sworne not
to preche withoute licens Afterwardys I thought I myght preche without licens of myn
ordinary and in so doyng to comytte non offence before God to preche the worde of
God where as amongys the people lakked preching notwithstanding myn othe." All
these examples demonstrate that Bilney was not hesitant to violate his oath.
Yet Bilney was not willing to forswear himself on all occasions merely to
escape punishment. If so, he would have simply sworn whatever abjuration oath
Tunstall administered to him with little resistance or few qualms of conscience.

68
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, pt. 1, 276.
69
"Respondit non occurrere memoriae an dixerti ut objicitur, et petit terminum ad deliberandum: quod
si ad memoriam reducere non possit, paratus erat stare depositionibus testium et quasi a se dictum
agnoscere quod illi testificabunt"; Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 134r;
Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 220-221.
70
Walter, "Saint or Schemer?" 221.
71
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, 277.
72
J. Y. Batley, On a Reformer's Latin Bible: Being an Essay on the 'Adversaria' in the Vulgate of
Thomas Bilney (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, & Co., 1940), 47-48, quoted in Walker, "Saint or
Schemer?" 234 and in Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 229.
73
LP, V 372 (3), printed in Foxe, AM(Townsend), vol. 4, Appendix III.

310
Instead, over and over again, Bilney refused to abjure, even when the evidence against
him was overwhelming. For almost a week he denied Tunstall's admonitions to
abjure and answered by saying "let justice be done" or that "he wanted to stand by his
conscience." Finally, when pressed with the ultimate threat of death, Bilney
capitulated. Even then, his abjuration was extraordinary. Bilney condemned the
specific heresies (mostly a rejection of the cult of the saints but also of merit-based
salvation and the authority of a corrupt pope) of which he was accused and convicted,
admitted that whoever taught them should be excommunicated, promised never to
preach these heresies, and sealed his abjuration with an oath.75 What Bilney did not
do, however, was admit that he had preached or held these heretical opinions himself.
More immediately picked up that this abjuration was singular; it was "a forme of
abiuratcyon / wherof I neuer sawe the lyke / nor in so playne a case neuer wolde were
I the iudge / suffer the lyke here after." The historian Greg Walker has seconded
More's opinion, highlighting that Bilney's fellow heretic Thomas Arthur admitted
preaching heresy in his abjuration.77
Throughout his entire trial, Bilney's use of oathswhile perjurouswas
consistent and hence powerful. From the very beginning, Bilney had admitted that the
articles leveled against him were heretical. He did not try to argue that point.78 But
whenever someone accused him of preaching these heretical articles, Bilney denied it
with an oath. Bilney protected the value of his oath and prevented opening himself up
to charges of perjury by refusing Tunstall's initial requests to make a normal
abjuration, for if Bilney had made a normal abjuration in which he confessed to
holding heretical opinions, Bilney would have admitted his perjury of denying the
accusations of heresy brought against him by witnesses. By standing by his oath again
and again, Bilney was able to present an image of himself as truthful and thus exploit
his judges' high valuation of oaths in order to cause them to doubt (at least a little)

74
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 131 rv .
75
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 135'.
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6,271.
77
Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 224-225.
78
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 130v; More, Dialogue concerning Heresies,
in Complete Works, vol. 6, 256; Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 233.

311
whether he actually preached the heretical opinions charged against him. This was
why he won a favorable form of abjuration. More recognized this: "but as clerely as
his faute was proued / and by as many / yet wolde he [Bilney] not to dye therefore
confesse hym self fauty / but alway stode styll vpon it in vertue of his othe that all
7Q

they belyved hym.'"

In addition to securing himself a favorable abjuration, Bilney's strategy
regarding oaths had the added benefit of winning him and other English Protestants
popular support. It was a propaganda coup. Until Thomas More published his
Dialogue concerning Heresies four years later, the English public was not aware of
Bilney's manipulation of oaths during the trial itself (which of course was never
proven perjurous anyway). The only public part of his heresy trial was his abjuration.
In his abjuration, Bilney seemed suspiciously orthodox. He condemned the articles
against him as heretical but did not admit to having ever preached them. Why then
was he persecuted? Based on his abjuration alone, the church did not have much of a
case. Greg Walker was surely right in his conclusion:
On the issue of the abjuration it can only be inferred that the oath was taken,
pious lie included, because it allowed Bilney to maintain the fiction that he was
an orthodox Catholic who was condemned for views which he did not hold, in
order to silence him. And the value for Bilney of such a fiction was the
embarrassment which it caused the authorities and the popular sympathy which
it aroused for the defendant himself, his fellow evangelicals and their cause.80
In his heresy trial of 1527, Bilney was not concerned with proclaiming the truth of the
Gospel. Neither was he concerned about violating his oath. He was most concerned
o i

about his reputation. But it was through his consistent employment of oaths and his
manipulation of the general esteem in which oaths were held that he managed to
depict himself as an orthodox, innocent victim.

More,, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, 271. My italics.

80
Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 234.
81
Of course, both Bilney's rejection of Evangelical doctrine and his perjury did burden his conscience.
The former troubled him so much that he eventually began preaching heresy again, and this led to his
execution in 1531. Yet even during his execution, it is unclear whether Bilney recanted clearly or made
use of some form of dissimulation such as the deliberate reading of his recantation in a quiet voice. For
more on the ambiguous nature of Bilney's second recantation (in which oaths did not play a role), see
More, Confutation ofTyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 23; Foxe, AM(1583), 1008-1010;
LP, V 372, 522, 560, 569. For more information on Bilney's perjury grieving his conscience, see page
321 below.

312
 Bilney was not the only one to use the strategy of declaring his innocence by
oath (probably falsely) and then appealing to others for justice. The heretic Thomas
Phillips made use of the same tactic. Phillips was a London pointmaker and a chief
reader in the Lollard sect of "known men" in the 1520s. At the end of 1529 and
beginning of 1530 he was tried for heresy. He admitted to possessing a vernacular
translation of the New Testament and answered equivocally to an article on the
Eucharist, but to the rest of the heresies charged to him (the rejection of purgatory,
pilgrimages, fasting, vows, holy days, prayer to the saints, auricular confession, and
pardons) Phillips responded that he "beleveth tharticle not to be trewere nor any parte
therof." More considered Phillips's responses to be false. More claimed that in
Phillips, he found "no trouth, neyther in his worde nor his othe."83 Phillips, however,
stood by his oath and continued to deny the heresies charged to him. One Stacy was
brought as a witness against Phillips, but Stacy later protested that he had testified out
of fear. Bishop Stokesley eventually entreated Phillips to submit "and to swear never
to hold any opinion contrary to the determination of holy church."84 Phillips replied
that he would read to himself the form of the abjuration given to him by Stokesley.
But when Stokesley demanded that Phillips read the abjuration "openly" Phillips
refused and appealed to the king as supreme head of the church. The bishop again
asked him to abjure. Phillips answered that "he would be obedient as a christian man
should, and that he would swear never to hold any heresy during his life, nor to favour
any heretics."85 Twice more, Stokesley exhorted him to read the abjuration conceived
for him by the church. Twice more, Phillips said that "he would forswear all heresies,
and that he would maintain no heresies, nor favour any heretics."8 Finally, Stokesley
excommunicated Phillips and sent him back to the Tower where Phillips remained for
four years. The king ignored his appeal. Three years after his trial, Phillips petitioned
Parliament. He complained that nothing had been proved against him in court; he was

Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix II.

83
Thomas More, The Apology, ed. J. B. Trapp, in Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 9 (1979),
126.
84
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 5:29.
85
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 5:30.
86
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 5:30.

313
held prisoner only upon the suspicion of common fame. He declared that he was
innocent and that it was an affront to his conscience that he "shuld abjure as though
there were no defference betewne an innocent and a nocent, betewne one gyltye and
one not gyltye."87 On February 7, 1534, Phillips's petition came before the House of
Lords. Two days later, they dismissed it as beneath their dignity to consider. The
Commons, however, took a greater interest in the petition, and it eventually led to the
repeal of the heresy legislation of 1401.89
In Phillips's trial, then, we see a similar pattern. Phillips probably did lie under
oath in denying the specific heresies charged to him, but he stuck by his position
which made it difficult for Stokesley to prove any heresy against him without
witnesses. Phillips was willing to abjure, but not openly, which demonstrates his
concern for his public image. Instead Phillips proclaimed that he would swear an oath
against all heresies, but he was never willing to admit publicly to holding any specific
heretical positions. Phillips's offer to swear this oath was a ploy designed to convince
others that he was orthodox while at the same time taking advantage of the vagueness
and ambiguity of the term "heresy". What was heretical to Stokesley and the London
populace was not necessarily heretical to Philips, so Philips' oath had the dual purpose
of projecting an orthodox image of himself while saving his conscience. Although it
took four years, Phillips's strategy (like that of Bilney's) worked.
Although we do not know as much about the trials of John Tewkesbury and
Nicholas Shaxton, their cases show a similar willingness to commit perjury combined
with a manipulation of oaths to project themselves as innocent before the public.
Tewkesbury was a London leather-seller and a longtime member of the Lollard
underground who embraced Protestant doctrine in the late 1520s upon reading Luther
and Tyndale. In 1529, he was tried for heresy. He initially held firm, but after a
month of pressure he gave in and abjured. Detected again in 1531, he was tried as a
relapsed heretic. Significantly, one of the articles held against Tewkesbury in 1531
was "that the abjuration oath and subscription that he made before Cuthbert [Tunstall],

87
Foxe, ,4M(Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix II.
88
Journal of the House of Lords, 1:65-66.
89
Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 187.

314
late bishop of London, was done by compulsion." This suggests that Tewkesbury
had been employing the argument against the validity of a forced oathan argument
which became common in England later in the reign of Henry V1I1to declare to
those around him that his abjuration oath was invalid. Thomas More examined
Tewkesbury in 1531 and declared that he was full of guile and falsity. More accused
Tewkesbury of being willing to abjure again if it would have saved his life. Moreover,
More admitted that Tewkesbury did his best to deny that he ever held heretical
opinions, "as he wolde fayne leue an opynyon amonge the people that hys iudges had
borne hym wrong in hande & condempned hym for such heresyes as he neuer
helde."91 Tewkesbury went to the stake on December 20, 1531.
The story of Nicholas Shaxton, a master at Cambridge, ended more favorably.
During Lent of 1531, Shaxton was accused of holding three heresies: first, that he
preached that it was evil and dangerous to declare publicly that there was no
purgatory, but it was not damnable to doubt its existence; second, that he preached that
no matter how much one fasted, prayed, and abstained from evil company, thoughts,
and sights, it was impossible for a man to remain chaste unless he received a gift from
God; finally, that he prayed during mass that the burden of celibacy might be lifted
from the clergy, and they might be allowed to wed. During his initial examinations,
Shaxton refused to forsake these points. At length a compromise was reached.
Bishop Nix of Norwich reported that "to avoid an open abjuration," Shaxton was
content to swear an oath devised by the vice-chancellor of the University of
Cambridge.92 Nowhere in this oath did Shaxton admit that he had held or preached
heresy. The oath, however, was extremely strict and comprehensive in its rejection of
Protestantism and included clauses explicitly accepting the Roman Catholic
interpretation of both purgatory and celibacy.93 Shaxton's oath worked. A letter

yu
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 4:693.
More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, in Complete Works, vol. 8, 22.
92
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 4:680. My italics.
93
The exact form of the oath was as follows: "You shall swear by the holy contents of this book, that
thou shalt not keep, hold, maintain, and defend at any time during your life, any opinion erroneous, or
error of Wickliff, Huss, Luther, or any other condemned of heresy; and that ye shall keep, hold,
maintain, and defend, generally and specially, all such articles and points as the catholic church of
Rome believeth, holdeth, or maintaineth at this time; and that ye shall allow and accept, maintain and

315
survives, probably from the vice-chancellor of Cambridge to an anonymous lord, in
which the writer vouched for the orthodoxy of Shaxton because Shaxton was willing
"to swere to such an othe as 1 dede excogytate for quyetnes in theis trobyllows
tymes."94 Shaxton was eventually promoted to Bishop of Salisbury, though he
resigned upon the passing of the Six Articles. In 1546, he infamously abjured at
Paul's Cross for holding sacramentarian opinions, though this abjuration did not
include an oath. The fact that Shaxton continued to hold Protestant doctrines after
swearing his oath in 1531 suggests that he was willing to commit perjury. His main
concern was to escape an open abjuration. He did so by swearing an oath refuting the
very heretical opinions he held without actually admitting to holding them.
Many early English Protestants, then, were perjurers. They inherited from
their Lollard predecessors a willingness to lie under oath and to renounce their beliefs.
Yet their perjury was not always simple. Many of them were well aware of the power
of an oath. They knew that years of church teaching had ingrained in the populace the
belief that oaths were sacred and binding contracts. It was hard to believe that anyone
would willingly commit perjury, and they exploited this belief. They consistently and
strategically proclaimed under oath that they did not hold the heretical opinions
charged to them, and at the same time they swore oaths decrying the same heresy of
which they were charged (and almost certainly guilty). Because oaths were powerful
and esteemed, this allowed them to portray themselves as orthodox victims unjustly
prosecuted for heresy. Their propaganda seems to have worked, at least to some
extent. It is impossible to ascertain the exact degree of public sympathy for the
persecuted English Protestants, but Thomas More (acting with the support of the

defend, for your power, all traditions, institutions, rites, ceremoneis, and laudable customs of the
church, as the said church of Rome taketh them, alloweth them, and approveth them; and that you shall
namely and especially hold, as the said catholic church holdeth, in all these articles, wherein lately hath
been controversy, dissension, and error; as, 'De fide et operibus, de gratia et libero artibrio, de peccato
in bono opere, de sacrificio Novi Testamenti, de sacerdotio novae legis, de communione sub utraque
specie, de baptismo et libertate Christiana, de votis monasticis, de jejunio et delectu ciborum, de
celibatu sacerdotum, de ecclesia, de libris canonicis, de non expressis in scripturis firmiter tenendis, de
conciliorum generalium indeviabilitate in fide et moribus, de postestate ecclesiae ad condendas leges,
de sacramentis ecclesiasticis et eorum efficatia, de potestate excommunicandi collata ecclesiae, de
hereticis puniendis, de sacrificio missae, de purgatorio, de veneratione sanctorum eisque orandis, de
imaginibus sanctorum venerandis, de peregringationibus, de praeceptis et consiliis evangelicis"; Foxe,
^M(Townsend), 4:680.
94
The letter is printed in Foxe, ^AZ(Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix XVII (LP, V 271).

316
church and the crown) believed this sympathy was extensive enough to warrant
explicit rebuttals in his works. For example, at the beginning of his Dialogue
concerning Heresies, More admitted that the people of London spoke and wrote that
Bilney was forced to abjure for heresies he did not hold because of the "malyce and
enuye" of the friars, and because he had decried the clergy's "pompe & pryde and
other inordaynate lyuynge." More continued:
And surely syr quod he some folke that thynke this dealynge of the clargye to
be thus (and good men to be myshandlyd for declarynge the trouth / and the
scrypture selfe to be pulled owt of the peoples handys / lest they shold
perceyue the trouth) be ledde in theyr myndys / to dowte whyther Luther
hymselfe (of whose oppynyons or at the lest of whose workys all these
busynesse bygan) wrote in dede so euyll as he is borne in hande96
Similarly, the lawyer Christopher St. Germain wrote: "certayne it is that there is a
great rumour amonge the peple, that it is so / & that spiritual men punysshe nat
heresye onely for zele of the fayth, and of a loue & a zele to the people . . . but that
they do it rather to oppresse them that speketh any thynge agaynste the worldlye
power or ryches of spyrytuall men." It should be emphasized that the sympathy
persecuted Protestants received was thus a result of the perception of them as
orthodox, a largely inaccurate perception that Protestants were able to strengthen
through their clever and perjurous use of oaths. Of course, not all early English
Protestants employed oaths in such a manner. The Protestant leader John Frith elected
to die rather than swear against his conscience that transubstantiation was an article of
no

faith. Frith, however, appears to be the exception. In general, Thomas More was
right.

More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, 28.

96
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, 29.
Christopher Saint Germain, A Treatise concernynge the Diuision Betwene the Spirytualtie and
Temporalitie, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 9, 191. For More's rebuttal of this, see
his Apology, 111-116. It is also probable that the attack on the unjust proceedings in heresy trials in the
1532 Supplication of the Commons was partly a result of the success of Protestant propaganda. See
Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative, 151-152.
98
Frith declared: "The cause of my death is this, because I cannot in conscience abjure and swear, that
our prelates' opinion of the sacrament (that is that the substance of the bread and wine is verily changed
into the flesh and blood of our saviour Jesus Christ) is an undoubted article of the faith, necessary to be
believed under pain of damnation"; quoted from Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 102.

317
 This conclusion has a few historiographical ramifications. First, it contributes
to the continuing debate concerning the relationship between Lollardy and
Protestantism. Richard Rex has recently argued that there was a strong moral contrast
between Lollards and Protestants. Lollards were quietest and internal. They elected to
dissimulate their beliefs and to participate in Catholic worship rather than to
evangelize openly. Protestants, by contrast, were evangelical, outward, and
missionary driven. They boldly preached their beliefs. According to Rex, Protestants
"scorned hypocrisy. Where Lollards had invariably recanted as often as was necessary
or possible rather than bear witness to their beliefs with the ultimate sacrifice, the early
Protestants soon showed that they were made of sterner stuff."99 My narrative
challenges Rex's moral contrast between Lollards and early English Protestants.
Rex's distinction holds true when comparing Lollards to Marian Protestants, but not to
the heretics of the 1520s and early 1530s. Alec Ryrie's examination of Henrician
Protestants in the 1540s led him to theorize tentatively that English Evangelicals were
heirs to the Lollard tradition of recantation.100 My analysis of English Protestantism
in the 1520s and 1530s confirms Ryrie's suspicion. Rex supported his argument by
claiming that "Those Protestants who did abjure against their consciences, like Bilney
and Bainham, experienced pangs of guilt which they sought to allay by public
reaffirmation of their beliefs and consequent martyrdom."101 It may be true that some
early English Protestants felt guilty for their dissimulated recantations, but this can be
accounted for by the discrepancy between theories of truthful oath-taking and actual
behavior, a discrepancy also present in Lollardy. For example, Richard Wyche also
felt guilty when he believed himself bound by an oath to betray his beliefs.
Rex could of course defend himself by asserting that the heretics of the 1520s
and early 1530s were more Lollard than Protestant. Yet then we are thrown into the
dangerous quagmire of language games, foolishly trying to label each individual
heretic as either Lollard, Protestant, or Evangelical in a time when beliefs were

Rex, The Lollards, 131-132, quotation from 132.

100
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VJJJ, 80-81.
101
Rex, The Lollards, 132.

318
 1 07

constantly in flux and confessional boundaries had not yet crystallized. What
separated a Lollard from a Protestant? Rex admitted that they were quite similar
doctrinally. His "moral contrast" was an attempt to draw a different distinction
between the two.I03 I argue that this distinction will not hold either. Indeed, the early
English Protestant practice of dissimulation helps account for modern historians'
conundrum of figuring out who actually was a Protestant. If early English Protestants
regularly dissimulated, how are we to know their true beliefs? Hugh Latimer, for
example, appears much more Protestant under Edward VI than he does under Henry
VIII, but it is unclear whether Latimer changed his beliefs or carefully hid them under
Henry VIII? This is not to argue that Lollardy paved the way for Protestantism or that
all Lollards simply morphed into Protestants when Luther appeared on the scene. Rex
was clearly correct in emphasizing the geographical discontinuity between Lollardy
and Protestantism and the fact that many of the most fervent early English Protestants
came from devout Catholic backgrounds.104 Yet this chapter has shown that in
addition to sharing certain doctrines, early English Protestants also shared with the
Lollards a willingness to dissimulate and perjure themselves.
The tendency among early English Protestants to hide their true beliefs also
helps explain the muted nature of confessional conflict in England in the 1520s and
1530s. Heretics like Bilney, Phillips, Tewkesbury, and Shaxton did not admit to
holding heretical beliefs. Indeed, they condemned the very heresy of which they were
accused in their recantations. This of course made them appear less threatening to
orthodox Catholics. It also caused people to wonder why they were persecuted at all.
According to the Protestants, it was because they had made anticlerical statements. In
order to arouse popular support, Protestants thus portrayed themselves as doctrinally
orthodox Catholics opposed to clerical abuses. This coincides with Ethan Shagan's
claim that anticlericalism was a "point of contact" between religious radicals and the
populace at large: "Evangelicals co-opted the genre of popular anticlericalism as a
means of legitimating their complaints and winning support among their conservative
102
See footnote 5 above for my position on these terms.
1J
"Despite the undeniable doctrinal overlap between Lollardy and Protestantism, there was a
significant difference in ethos between later Lollardy and early Protestantism"; Rex, The Lollards, 131.
104
Rex, The Lollards, 118-130.

319
neighbours."105 Yet such a practice also limited the spread of Protestantism. The
majority of the conversions to Protestantism in England in the late 1520s were the
result of reading Protestant vernacular books imported from the continent or of
private, personal interaction. (Bilney in particular was masterful at converting people
in private.) If one reads Foxe carefully, one will find that preaching played very little
role in the conversion of England's first Protestants. Of course, Protestant clerics like
Bilney, Barnes, and Shaxton did preach their beliefs on occasion, but this preaching
led to their immediate prosecution for heresy. After their heresy trials, they could no
longer preach their beliefs publicly without exposing their perjury and being detected
for relapse of heresy.

105
Shagan, Popular Politics, 146-147.

320
Chapter 8: A Time of Transition: Truth and Equivocation in the 1530s and 1540s
Although the early English Protestant usage of oaths allowed them to escape
the full rigors of heresy punishment and to rouse popular sympathy for their plight, it
had two major drawbacks. First, it did not allow them to proclaim their beliefswhat
they considered the truth of the gospelas openly as they would have liked. Instead
of using their heresy trials and executions as a platform to disseminate Protestant
doctrine, they admitted and swore that the specific articles charged against them were
heretical and wrong. Second, it made them perjurers. This could pose a problem for
their consciences. No matter how Machiavellian their employment of oaths was in
practice, they were not completely immune from the standard dominant discourse on
the sanctity of oaths and the gravity of perjury. Bilney, according to Latimer and
Foxe, was thrust into "anguish and agony" after his first trial and "pierced with sorrow
and remorse for his abjuration."1 Greg Walker has surmised that "it was his
[Bilney's] decision to ground his defense upon subtlety and untruth rather than a
straightforward exposition of the evangelical position which so tormented him."2
Walker may be right, for during his execution speech Bilney did apologize for his
commission of perjury and ask for prayers from his auditors because of it, though he
did not explicitly connect his perjury to his heresy trial of 1527.3 Beyond the peril
perjury posed to their consciences, it was also a dangerous card to play in the game of
public relations. It worked initially precisely because people trusted the Protestants'
oaths and took them at their word that they did not hold heretical doctrine. Yet if it
came out that they were perjurersand Thomas More did his best in the early 1530s
to propagate this viewtheir lying could easily create a popular backlash.
It was these factors that likely contributed to a subtle shift in Protestant
strategy in the 1530s and early 1540s. First, Protestants began to preach and defend
their "heretical" doctrines more openly. This undoubtedly was in part a result of the
safer atmosphere of the mid 1530s created by Henry's patronage of cryto-Protestants
like Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. Yet Protestants also began to preach

1
Foxe,,4A/(Townsend), 4:641-642.
2
Walker, "Saint or Schemer?" 233.
3
LP, V 372 (3), printed in Foxe, /4M(Townsend), vol. 4, Appendix III.

321
their views even during their prosecutions for heresy, a dangerous practice. Second,
Protestants began to shy away from direct perjury: that is, lying under oath. They still
dissimulated and deceived the authorities through equivocation, but their practice of
this rarely included an oath. Finally, Protestants started to turn the tables on their
Catholic persecutors and accuse them of being deceptive perjurers.
This transition is first evident in heresy prosecutions of Robert Barnes, whose
troubles with the church authorities extended from the late 1520s to 1540. Barnes, a
doctor of divinity and the prior of Augustinian friars at Cambridge, was initially
accused of heresy for a sermon he preached on Christmas day in 1525. The articles
alleged against him indicate that the sermon was not particularly Protestant. It was
mostly an anticlerical diatribe against the wealth, pride, and abuses of the prelates,
though Barnes did challenge the superstitious observance of holy days.4 Much of our
data on Barnes' subsequent heresy trial comes from Barnes himself, who narrated his
version of events from his prison cell in a supplication to Henry VIII. Called before
the vice-chancellor of the Cambridge University, Barnes admitted to preaching the
words contained in the articles against him, but he insisted that the form of the articles
twisted the meaning of his words to imply a position that Barnes had never meant to
espouse. The doctors who had charged Barnes with heresy eventually convinced him
that it was better to abide by the decision of the vice-chancellor than to have the case
follow the normal course of law. Barnes explained that they persuaded him to take an
oath: "Than made they me to be sworene, to stande to the Vicechancelours
determinacyon. At that I stopped a great whyle, but at the last I graunted to abyde by
his determynation, yf it were not agaynst lernyng & charitye."5 Like Wyche's oath,
this oath was a trap. Barnes' accusers then drew up a set of revocation articles that
made Barnes sound more heretical and seditious than he was. When the vice-
chancellor asked Barnes to read this revocation publicly, Barnes refused, citing the
condition of his oath that these articles were not agreeable to learning or standing with

4
For the articles see Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:312-315.
Barnes, The Supplication of doctour Barnes [1548], in Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:317.

322
charity. As a result, there:
was a greate tragidie amonge them [the doctors of Cambridge], For some
saide, that I was pariured by the reason I was sworne to abyde the
determination of the vicechauncelour. And the other parte rekened, that my
othe bounde me not, by the reson that it was so uncharitably made, the whiche
was not their promyse to do."6
Barnes was eventually brought before Wolsey and then John Clerk Bishop of Bath and
Wells. After many disputations, the prelates finally drew up an abjuration for Barnes
in which he admitted to preaching heresy. The abjuration, however, did not specify
what heresy exactly Barnes had preached. Barnes was unhappy with this arrangement
and at first elected to die rather than to read it openly. Stephen Gardiner and Edmund
Foxe changed his mind. Barnes made his abjuration, but instead of absolving him
immediately, the bishop of Bath required that Barnes first swear an oath to fulfill his
penance. "Not yet suspectynge, but these men had had some crom of charitie within
them," Barnes swore. The bishops then used his oath to make him do a highly
incriminating open penance at St. Paul's (while Fisher preached a sermon against
Lutheranism). The bishops then returned Barnes to prison, where he still remained two
and half years later when he wrote his supplication.7
At first glance, Barnes appears to have been innocent and honest, while his
captors were the ones who manipulated and abused oaths. It is essential to remember,
however, that Barnes was the one writing the narrative. It was his goal to portray a
favorable image of himself and a disfavorable image of the prelates to Henry VIII. It
was part of his propaganda strategy, a policy he continued with his attack on English
bishops as perjurers for their contradictory oaths to the pope and king in his 1534
Supplicatyon and with his protestation at the stake in 1540 that "the abominable
swearers may be punished and straightly looked upon; for the vengeance of God will
Q

come on them for their mischievous oaths." Barnes' narrative also has many

6
Barnes, The Supplication of doctour Barnes [1548], in Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:318.
Barnes, The Supplication of doctour Barnes [1548], in Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1:318-323
(quotation from 322); Foxe, ^_M (Townsend), 416-419.
8
For more on Barnes 1534 Supplicatyon, see chapter four of this dissertation, page 190-191. For his
quotation at the stake in 1540, see Foxe, AM (Townsend), 5:436. Foxe here was lifting the story from
Miles Coverdale's Confutation of John Standish. See Remains ofMyles Coverdale, ed. George
Pearson, PS, vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), 440.

323
parallels with Wyche's depiction of his own heresy trial. Both men were tricked into
swearing an oath. Both wiggled out of their oaths using conditional clauses. Both
sought to portray their captors rather than themselves as deceptive. How much of this
was a common rhetorical strategy? Moreover, Barnesagain, like Wychewas not
as honest as he would have us believe. When Barnes, then a free prisoner at the
Augustine friary in London, finally got word of Wolsey's plan to burn him, Barnes
"feigned himself to be drowned." He wrote one letter to Wolsey full of desperation,
another letter explaining his suicide, and a third to the mayor indicating where to
search for his body in the water. This trick bought him enough time to flee into exile
on the continent.9 While in exile, Barnes proclaimed in print that Stephen Gardiner
had duped him into submitting in 1526 by showing him only part of a quotation by
Augustine. But when Barnes returned to England he admitted to Gardiner that this
was a false ploy, and he desired Gardiner to forgive him of this lie.' In other words,
Barnes had lied in print to make his opponent appear to be the real trickster. A final
tantalizing but unverifiable attestation of Barnes' duplicity survives. After Barnes'
execution in 1540, an anonymous fictional dialogue between Barnes and Powel
(executed the same day as Barnes for denying royal supremacy) was printed.
Although the writer of this dialogue generally seems to have been more sympathetic to
Barnes than to Powel, the writer still put the following words into Barnes mouth: "In
that my godly Jornye / euer some popishe trayne / out of a byshoppes brayne / dyd
turne me backe agayne / cleane besyde the waye / so for the verye trothe /1 fasyd wyth
manye an othe / and susteyninge muche wrothe / my dewtye coulde not doo."1 All
this suggests that Barnes, like many other Protestants in trouble for heresy in the late
1520s and early 1530s, manipulated oaths to present an idealized but largely untrue
image of himself to the king and populace. Unlike Bilney and Phillips, however,
Barnes did not use oaths to verify his innocence but rather employed them to
demonstrate the deceptiveness of his persecutors.

9
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 419.
Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 167.
1
The metynge of Doctor Barons and doctor Powell at paradise gate [and] oftheyr communication
bothe drawen to Smithfylde from the towar. The one burnedfor heresye as the papistes do saye truly
and the other quarteredfor popery and all within one houre ([1548]), sig. A2r.

324
 Barnes was again in trouble in 1540, but this time his response to his
persecution was subtly different. He preached a Lenten sermon at Paul's Cross that
blatantly attacked Bishop Gardiner and openly put forth a highly Lutheran
understanding of the doctrine of justification. When Gardiner complained to the king,
Henry instructed Barnes to reconcile with Gardiner. Barnes initially ingratiated
himself before Gardiner, but it soon became clear that this was a ploy. Gardiner again
complained to the king. Henry then instructed Barnes to preach a sermon recanting
his previous sermon in which he had espoused the Lutheran understanding of
justification and had attacked Gardiner. Barnes dutifully recanted his Lutheran
opinions in this sermon, but then he proceeded to call out Gardiner again. At the end
of this sermon, according to Gardiner, Barnes "playnlye and directlye preacheth the
contrarye of that he had recanted; so evidentley as the May our, of hym self, asked
whither he shuld from the pulpete send him to warde, to be fourth commynge to
aunswer for his contemptuouse behaviour, to preache in the same place to the same
people the contrarye of his recantacion."12 His fellow Protestants Thomas Garret and
William Jerome used the same kind of machinations in their recantation sermons,
which directly followed Barnes' sermon.I3 Barnes, Garret, and Jerome went to the
stake for such connived and double-faceted recantations. Although Barnes' response
to his persecution had still included much deception, there were two differences in his

12
Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 174. Foxe replicated Gardiner's story; Foxe, AM (Townsend), 5:433.
The first part of Barnes' sermon where he recanted his beliefs is preserved in Guildhall Library MS.
9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 37\ printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix VII.
13
We do not know exactly what Garret preached, but Gardiner reported that he contradicted his
recantation in his sermon just like Barnes; Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 174. The abjuration part of
Jerome's recantation sermon is printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix VIII. Jerome
retracted his beliefs in free justification and that magistrates do not have the power to make indifferent
things become necessary. According to Henry Dowes, a witness of Jerome's sermon, Jerome prefaced
his abjuration by "prayenge theime all nott to be to hasty in takynge his wordes but to ioyne theime with
the sentences that cometh cometh either before or after, wherby that shall appere playne and many
testely trewe, whiche otherwise might seme false and erroneus." After Jerome made his recantation
according to the form drawn up for him, "takynge orrasion sumwhat to talke of his recantynge he saide
that allthowgh he were perplexed yet was he nott utterly confounded, nor thowgh he was browght vnto
suche straytie that he was compelled to denye himselfe, yett was he nott the firste that so had donne, for
to denye himself is no more, but when adversitie shall come, as losse of goodes, infamyes, and other
like trubles, then to denye his owne will and call vppon the lorde sayenge, fiat voluntas tua, and so
Abraham was compellyd to denye himself, and tobe also wt many other / wishinge that sume menne
nowe adaies wolde lerae to do the same, and then wolde they nott contrary to the order of charytie,
wtowte any reconcyliation, so malitiusly brynge theire neighbours into infamyes and slaunders"; BL
Cotton MS. Cleopatra E v, fols. 374r-375r.

325
behavior in 1540. First, Barnes now felt it was his duty to preach the true doctrine of
justification. Unlike his abjuration in 1526 that decried the heretical opinions of
Lutherans, Barnes used his recantation of 1540 as a stage to proclaim his Protestant
views. Jerome did likewise, preaching pure sola fideism during his speech at the
stake.14 Indeed, one Protestant wrote of the 1540 recantations of Barnes, Garret, and
Jerome: "howe gayly they had all handled the matter, both to satisfie the recantacion
and also in the same sermons to utter out the truth, that it myght sprede without let of
the worlde."15 Second, none of Barnes' deceptions in 1540 involved oaths. Likewise,
none of the abjurations that Barnes, Garret, and Jerome read in the first part of their
sermons included oaths. When they continued their sermons by preaching doctrine
contrary to their recantations, they thus did not commit perjury. This may seem at first
like a mere coincidence, a point of little importance. Yet if we compare this to the
other abjurations of the 1530s and 1540s, an important pattern emerges.
To understand this better, let us backtrack to Hugh Latimer's heresy indictment
in 1532. Like the other Protestants in trouble for heresy at this time, Latimer refused
to admit that he had preached heresy. He insisted that he was orthodox. Unlike many
other Protestants, however, Latimer did not employ oaths to convince others of his
orthodoxy. Instead, he relied on slippery language and on manipulation of the king's
growing antipathy towards the papacy. Latimer was summoned to appear before
Bishop Stokesley in January of 1532 to answer to the charges of preaching heresy.
Throughout his examinations in the winter of 1532 (about which very little is known),
it appears that Latimer consistently asserted that he had not condemned Catholic
practices or doctrines but merely abuses of them.16 On March 11, 1532, Latimer was
summoned before the Convocation of the Clergy. Three times they demanded that he
t7

subscribe to a document of articles. Three times Latimer refused. The articles,

preserved in Tunstall's register, do not specify that Latimer held heretical beliefs at all.
They are simply a list of positive beliefs on the existence of purgatory, the cult of the
saints, the efficacy of pilgrimages, the binding nature of vows of chastity, the power of
14
Foxe,^A/(Townsend), 5:437.
15
Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 174.
16
Alan G. Chester, Hugh Latimer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 76.
17
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:179.

326
good works to earn merit, the continuity of Apostolic succession, the efficacy of the
sacraments to communicate the merits of Christ's passion, the usefulness of images,
and a few other side issues. If Latimer's sole goal was to project an image of
himself as orthodox without admitting his heresy, he should have signed these articles.
According to the Spanish ambassador in England, Latimer then appealed to the Privy
Council, before which he "propounded heresy enough." Next, Latimer appealed to the
king himself. When brought before the king to dispute with the bishops, the king
noticed that one of the primary articles against Latimer was that he had preached that
the pope was not the sovereign chief of the church. This article pleased Henry, who
ordered Latimer to be released on the condition that he preach a sermon retracting
some of his less orthodox opinions. On March 21, Latimer again appeared before
Convocation. Probably on account of the intervention of the king, the bishops of
Convocation decided that they would absolve Latimer from excommunication if he
subscribed to articles eleven and fourteen, two innocuous and uncontroversial articles
on the power of bishops to inhibit preachers and the usefulness of consecrations and
benedictions of the church. Latimer submitted and admitted that he had erred in
preaching against the aforesaid articles. Yet his submission was shifty:
My Lords, I do confess, that I have misordered myself very farre, in that I have
so presumptuously and boldly preached, reproving certain things, by which the
people that were infirm hath taken occasion of ill. Wherefore I ask forgiveness
of my misbehaviour; I will be glad to make amends; and I have spoken
indiscreetly in vehemence of speaking, and have err'd in some things, and in
manner have been in a wrong way (as thus) lacking discretion in many
things.20
Latimer admitted that he erred in "discretion" and preached "indiscreetly," but he did
not admit to preaching heresies. In response, Stokesley, sitting in for Archbishop
Warham, "delayed the oath to subscribe to the aforesaid articles" until April 10 when
Latimer was to appear before Warham. Then (it is not clear whether this happened on
March 21 or April 10) Latimer subscribed voluntarily to the selected articles eleven

18
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 142v, printed in Foxe, ^M(Townsend), vol.
7, Appendix VI.
19
Cal SP Spain, IV (2) 664 (LP, V 148).
20
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:747.

327
and fourteen and was told to appear on April 15.21 The records do not indicate that he
took any oath. At this stage, Latimer had refused to admit preaching heresy, he had
avoided signing any orthodox articles that offended his conscience (unlike other
Protestants), and he had evaded swearing any oath.
Latimer was not out of hot water yet. He had foolishly written a letter to his
opponent Master Greenwood declaring that he had not preached any errors, nor
admitted them publicly, but rather he would continue to preach as he always had.22 In
other words, Latimer had exposed his equivocation. On April 19 Latimer appeared
before Convocation and was ordered "to swear an oath to answer faithfully next
Monday." Was Convocation trying to use an oath to insure Latimer did not
equivocate this time? Latimer may have thought so, for instead of swearing this oath
of calumny, Latimer responded that he had appealed to the king. Warham ignored this
response and again told him he must "appear [that is, be present] to swear the oath."
The appeal to the king did not work quite so well for Latimer this time; the king
communicated that he wanted Latimer to be judged by Warham and the Convocation.

21
The records of Convocation are confusing here and deserve to be quoted in full: "et postea differebat
dominus locum tenens iuramentum ad subsribendum articulis praedictis, et ad praestandum se coram
reverendissimo decimo quinto Aprilis . . . Et tunc, praedictus Latimer, exceptis articulis undecimo et
decimo quarto subscripsit voluntarie et assignavit sua manu propria unde praedictus Latimer fuit
absolutus a sentencia excommunicationis, et monitus ad comparendum decimo quinto Aprilis, ad
audiendum multeriorem processum etc., quorum articuluorum verus tenor exprimitur articulatim";
Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:180; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:747. Gerald Bray, the editor of the Records
of Convocation, kept Latimer's subscription under March 21. Most historians, however, have assumed
that the "tunc" meant that it happened on April 10. There has also been disagreement over the
definition of "exceptis." Alan Chester asserted that Latimer signed all the articles on April 10; Chester,
Hugh Latimer, 80-81. Robert Demaus claimed that on April 10, Latimer signed all the articles except
the eleventh and fourteen, which he claimed Latimer had signed on March 21; Robert Demaus, Hugh
Latimer: A Biography (London: Religious Tract Society, 1903), 150. Harold Darby and Susan
Wabuda, by contrast, declared that Latimer signed only articles eleven and fourteen on April 10; Harold
S. Darby, Hugh Latimer (London: Epwroth Press, 1953); Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation,"
231. All of these statementsthough opposingare based solely on the records of Convocation. I
agree with the interpretation of Darby and Wabuda that Latimer signed only articles eleven and
fourteen, though it is not clear whether he did so on March 21 or April 10.
22
The letter is in Latimer, Sermons and Remains, 356-357.
23
"Deinde comparuit Magister Latimer et mandavit ut praestet iuramentum, respondendo fideliter die
Lunae proximo et respondit quod appellavit ad regem, cui appellationi voluit stare. Deinde monuit
reverendissimus eundem Latimer ad comparendum ad praestandum iuramentum, ut prius"; Bray,
Records of Convocation, 7:181-182. "Quo tempore jussus ut 'praestaret juramentum de respondendo
fideliter die Lunae proximo, respondit, quod appellavit ad serenissimum dominum nostrum regem: cui
appellationi voluit stare.'"; Wilkins, Concilia, 3:749.

328
Accordingly, Latimer appeared before them again on April 22 and confessed his
equivocation:
That where he had aforetime confessed, that he hath heretofore erred, and that
he meaned then it was onely error of discretion, he hath sythen better seen his
own acts, and searched them more deeply, and doth knowledge, that he hath
not erred only in discretion, but also in doctrine; and said, that he was not
called afore the said lords, but upon good and just ground, and hath been by
them charitably and favourably intreated. And where he had afore time
misreported of the lords, he knowlegeth, that he hath done yll in it, and desired
them, humbly on his knees, to forgive him: and where he is not of ability to
make them recompence, he said, he would pray for them.
So this time around Latimer admitted that he had erred in doctrine. Yet his
submission was still favorable and extraordinary. The records of Convocation admit
that Latimer was then "received into grace upon the special request of the king."25
Latimer did not specify what heretical doctrines he had preached, he made no formal
abjuration, and he was not requireddespite Warham's threatsever to swear an
oath. Latimer had equivocated and admitted to preaching heretically, but he had not
perjured himself.
The master of this technique was Edward Crome. Crome was first in trouble
for heresy in March of 1531. Henry ordered Crome to recant his opinions, and the
bishops drew up a set of fourteen positive articles of orthodox Catholic belief that
Crome was to read in a sermon at Paul's Cross.2 At his recantation sermon Crome
prefaced these articles by proclaiming: "There be some men that do say 1 have been
abjured, nor yet perjured, but the truth is, that I am neither abjured, nor yet
77

perjured." Indeed, Crome was technically correct. The fourteen articles included
neither an admittance of having held heretical opinions nor an oath of abjuration.
After reading each article Crome glossed each one in such a way as to deny their

24
Wilkins, Concilia, 3:749.
25
"unde receptus est in gratiam ad specialem requisitionem domini regis"; Bray, Records of
Convocation, 7:183.
These articles were very similar to the ones drawn up for Latimer a year later. They are preserved in
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/10 (Tunstall's Register), fol. 138v, printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5,
Appendix XVI.
27
Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 230.

329
content without actually putting forth a heretical opinion. Crome was in trouble
again in 1541 for an advent sermon of the previous year in which he, among other
things, denounced the mass. Henry drew up an explicit yet oathless abjuration in
which Crome admitted his errors and reaffirmed proper Catholic doctrine. Crome
dutifully read the abjuration, but he read it in the third person and did not integrate it
into his sermon. Richard Hilles reported:
Now when the Sunday came, on which he was to recant, he preached a godly
discourse, and at the end of it told the people, that he had received a written
document from the king's majesty which he was ordered to read to them. And
after he had read it, he committed the congregation to God in a short prayer,
and so went away: whereas the king certainly intended him to receive that
writing as a specimen of the doctrine which he was to follow in his sermon.
In the words of Susam Wabuda, Crome "preached reform as usual, and presented the
articles of submission as if they were a list of doctrines that Henry wanted
announced."31 On April 11, 1546, Crome preached a sermon attacking
transubstantiation and putting forth a commemorative interpretation of the mass.
Once again, Crome was ordered to recant. Once again, he made an oathless
recantation which was ambiguous, adding at the end of his sermon: "Worshipful
audience, I come not hither to recant nor yet am 1 commanded to recant nor God
willing I will not recant yet."32 Henry finally had enough. He applied extreme
pressure on Crome and on June 27, 1546, Crome preached another recantation sermon
in which he espoused an unambiguously orthodox interpretation of the mass and
admitted to his previous equivocation:
I dyd not nor intended not to sette foorthe the same with a symple mynde
according to the true sense and meaning of them but having one meanynge
secreateley in myne harte knowinge in my conscience the sense and meanynge
of thartycles to be contrarie to the same. I dyd use collusion and colour of my
hole proceedings conceraynge the declaration of the saide Articles whereby I

For the exact words of Crome's sermon, including his glosses, see Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials,
vol. 3, Appendix, 19-27. For a nice evaluation of this sermon, see Wabuda, "Equivocation and
Recantation," 230.
29
The abjuration is Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 25 rv , printed in Foxe, AM
(Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix XVI.
30
Robinson, Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, 215.
31
Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 234.
32
Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 235. For the actual recantation, see Guildhall Library MS.
9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 101v, printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5, Appendix XVI.

330
 might appeare boothe to mantayne myne own former evyl opynyon and
nevertheless to satysfie my promyse in setting foorthe of Thartycles
aforsaide.33
Crome's use of equivocation has been well-documented by Susan Wabuda. What
Wabuda has not noticed, however, is that none of Crome's machinations included
oaths. Oaths were absent from all his recantations, and he never employed them to
demonstrate his innocence or attack his enemies.
One follower of Crome was the gentlewomen Anne Askew. In 1545, Askew
was prosecuted under the Six Articles for sacramentarian doctrine. In her
examinations before a jury, before the lord mayor of London, and before Bishop
Bonner of London, Askew consistently responded equivocally. She refused to answer
incriminating questions outright but gave responses that were neither technically
heretical according to the letter of the law nor contrary to Protestant doctrine.
Eventually Bonner drew up a recantation for her to sign that explicitly stated that the
communicant received the corporal body of Christ during the Eucharist. Two
accounts of this subscription survive. The recantation preserved in Bonner's register
indicates that Askew subscribed absolutely, while Askew herself claimed that she had
subscribed with the qualification that she consented to the recantation only so far as it
agreed with God's word and the true Catholic church, a qualification that according to
her interpretation of Scripture and the true church nullified the content of the
recantation.35 We do not know if Askew was telling the truth here, but it is
nonetheless significant that Askew felt it necessary to refute the rumor (undoubtedly
fueled by her subscription) that she had renounced her beliefs. She did so by claiming

33
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 101\ printed in Foxe, ^M(Townsend), vol.
5, Appendix XVI; Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 236.
34
Anne Askew, The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the Romysh
popes vpholders, with the Elucydacyon ofJohan Bale (London [Marburg?], 1546 [1547]); Megan
Hickerson, "Ways of Lying: Anne Askew and the Examinations," Gender and History 18, no 1 (April
2006): 55, 59; Hickerson, "Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England: Anne Askew and the Bishop of
London," Journal of British Studies 46 (2007): 785-790.
35
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 101r; Anne Askew, first examinacyon, fols.
35v-39r; Anne Askew, The lattre examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the
wycked Synagoge of Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon ofJohan Bale (Marburg [Wesel], 1547), fols. 51 v -
52v.

331
that she had subscribed conditionally. Askew's use of equivocation and her attempt
to portray herself as not having renounced her sacramentarian beliefs have been
expertly examined by Megan Hickerson.37 Yet what Hickerson has not explored is the
role of oaths in Askew's story. Neither the recantation preserved in Bonner's register
nor the one embedded in Askew's own account contained an oath. Furthermore, there
is no record of Askew ever taking the ex officio oath as part of her trial, which is why
she could get away with giving partial and equivocal responses to the questions asked
her. By contrast, Askew did employ oaths in her apology in order to demonstrate to
the reader the veracity of her own version of the events. She proclaimed "as sure as
the lorde lyueth" that she never meant to recant, she took "the same most mercyfull
God . . . whych hath made both heauen and earthe, to recorde" that she held "no
opynyons contrarye to hysmost holye worde," and she again took "hym to witnesse"
that she had and would until the end of her life "vtterlye abhorre" the evil opinions
contrary to God's blessed verity. The sharp contrast between Askew's oathless trial
and abjuration and her oath-laden defense of her conduct during her trial and
abjuration is striking. It suggests that Askew was well aware of the power of an oath;
she was hesitant to swear them as part of her strategy of equivocation but she had no
qualms about using oaths to validate the narrative of events that she had prepared for
fellow Protestants.
The last example of a recantation that we shall examine in this chapter is that
of Robert Wisdom, parish priest of St. Margaret's in Lothbury. Wisdom recanted his
errors at Paul's Cross on July 14, 1543, along with Robert Singleton and the great
Protestant propagandist Thomas Beacon. Unlike Barnes, Crome, or Askew, Wisdom
did not employ any techniques of equivocation. Indeed, the author of Wisdom's

Askew wrote a manuscript account of her 1545 trial and recantation and her 1546 ordeal while in
prison again in 1546 for heresy. The purpose of her writing was "To satisfie your expectation good
people"; Askew, first examinacyon, fol. l v . She was evidently aware that some of her fellow
Protestants had heard that she had apostatized, and she wrote up her story to refute that rumor. Askew's
manuscript eventually found its way into the hands of John Bale on the continent. Bale published
Askew's account in two parts in 1547. Askew was burned at the end of 1546 for heresy after refusing
to recant or give the names of fellow Protestant gentlewomen. Bale's publication and elucidation of
Askew's trial and death has the distinction of being the first English Protestant martyrology.
37
Hickerson, "Ways of Lying," 50-65.
38
Askew, lattre examinacyon, fols. 5l v , 54r, 55r.

332
recantation, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, preempted such a move by placing the
following words in Wisdom's recantation: "howesoever I have counterfett before,
thyncke not that 1 counterfett nowe, for 1 declare playnely what I am."39 Wisdom
admitted that he had wrongly preached against free will, prayers to the saints, and the
charity of public ministers for putting people into prison for preaching the truth.
Indeed, establishing the falsity of Protestants and their doctrine in contrast to the truth
of the conservative doctrine of the established Henrician church was a key theme in
the recantation. Gardiner made Wisdom declare: "Wherein I knowledge my self to
have offended the true doctryne of oure Religion and to have spoken therein untruyle."
Wisdom confessed that he had "untruyly" "slaundered comon justyce," for he knew
"noo man partycularlye to have been persecuted for the truyth." Garret and Jerome
had been executed for their "false and untrue doctryne." Wisdom concluded by
exhorting his audience to "folowe the truythe taughte us" by England's prelates.40
Despite all this rhetoric of truth, Wisdom did not seal his abjuration with the ultimate
attestation of truth, an oath.
Wisdom's unequivocal betrayal of the truth bitterly grieved his conscience. In
1545 he penned a revocation of his recantation in which he narrated the events leading
up to his recantation and vehemently decried his abjuration. He averred that he was
"ernestlie repentaunte and sorye of that gret slaunder and occasion of evill that he then
comytted aginste the congregation of god."41 His recantation had been made out of
fear of death, but now he was determined to proclaim again "the trouthe of gods
worde," even though he recognized "that this my revocation shall cooste me my
life."42 Obviously, Wisdom felt that his duty to preach Evangelical truth now trumped
his fear of punishment. Much of Wisdom's revocation was concerned with defending
the real "truth" of Scripture. Unlike his recantation, oaths played an important
rhetorical role in Wisdom's defense. First, like Askew, Wisdom used oaths as proof

39
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 43r, printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5,
Appendix XII; Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recantation," 228.
40
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 43r, printed in Foxe, AM (Townsend), vol. 5,
Appendix XII.
41
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 88'.
42
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 90r_v.

333
of the truth of his revocation. When he dealt with the part of his recantation in which
he had admitted to having counterfeited before in his preaching, Wisdom denied this
and swore "afore god and our lord Jesus Christe that shall in his gloryouse kingdome
Iudge the quicke and deade" that he had always preached the truth and the Gospel of
Scripture.43 At the end of his revocation, Wisdom again swore: "And 1 testify to all
men by this boke that I will vnfainedlie the same to be taken iuste devised by the
byshope of Winchester and for feare of dethe consented vnto subscribed and redde by
me vnfaithfull and wicked wretche."44
Second, Wisdom used oaths to show how his Catholic persecutors were
perjurers and thus the doctrine they taught was also false. Wisdom recounted how,
after his initial denunciation for heresy, Bishop Bonner called Wisdom into his
presence and asked Wisdom to confess. Wisdom refused, pointing out that Bonner
was not his ordinary and had no jurisdiction over him. When neither threats nor
flattery worked, Bonner began "to swear unto me by God and by his faith and by his
baptism, that if 1 would confess myself faulty, he would dismiss me so free that 1
should never more hear of it, nor never more be troubled for it."45 Although Wisdom
thought "baptism a great oath, and believing that a bishop never would have been
perjured," he still refused to submit.46 Bonner again swore a similiar oath. Finally,
Wisdom's uncle scared him with an exposition on the horrors of imprisonment and
convinced him to submit. Wisdom recounted:
I hearing this and afraid of these perils, agreed unto them especially touching
the Bishop's oath, made first to me, and now again unto them; and so came
before the bishop and confessed, and wrote whatsoever the bishop's scribe
bade me, and then delivered it unto the bishop. This bill (for all his baptism)
the Bishop of London laid up in store.47

43
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 107r.
44
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 130r.
45
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 92v. Bonner's promise to be kind to the heretic and not
to use their confession against them seems to have been a common strategy. Bonner made a similar
promise to Askew's cousin Christopher Brittain; Askew, first examinacyon, fol. 18v. Bonner seems to
have kept his promise concerning Askew in 1545 since she was initially set free with a favorable
abjuration; Hickerson, "Negotiating Heresy," 774, 783. In Wisdom's case, however, Bonner evidently
passed on Wisdom's confession to Gardiner who used it against him; Emmanuel College, Cambridge
MS. 261, fol. 93v.
46
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 92v.
47
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 93v.

334
Bonner then passed on Wisdom's submission to Gardiner, who used it as evidence
against Wisdom. Bonner's betrayal of his oath gave Wisdom ample opportunity to
expostulate on the perjury of his captors. Wisdom declared that there was more truth
in "a womans talle . . . then in the byshoppe of londons othe that sticked not to periure
his baptisem so he might deteine me."48 Such deception was not limited to Bonner
but was common among England's Catholic prelates: "They care neither for perjury
nor for other mischief, so they may deface the truth and put preachers to silence."
Their perjury was just one proof of "their paynted hypocrisie falsly called religion
where in deade yt ys but an owtwarde glisteringe falslie pretensed holynes."50
Wisdom thus used oaths both to establish the truth of Protestant doctrine and to call
into question the veracity of England's Catholic bishops.
In the 1530s and early 1540s, then, English Protestants began to display a
slightly different form of behavior than that which had been dominant in the late
1520s. Protestants still generally recanted to save their lives. They also remained
concerned with projecting a favorable public image of themselves. At the same time,
however, they grew more concerned about proclaiming the truth of the gospel and less
quietist. They often reconciled these opposing forces through equivocation and other
subtle forms of manipulation and verbal dissimulation. These shifts allowed them to
satisfy ostensibly their superiors' insistence that they recant without causing them to
betray fully the truth of the Gospel. Their use of dissimulation was different from that
of early Protestants like Bilney, Dalaber, Gower, and Shaxton in that it did not involve
perjury. Protestants like Latimer, Crome, Barnes, and Wisdom did not seek to trick
their captors by forswearing themselves. Neither did they perjure themselves when
they returned to their Protestant beliefs after their abjurations, for their abjurations had
not included oaths.
This point becomes even more significant when we realize that almost none of
the abjurations by Evangelical Protestants in the last thirteen years of the reign of
Henry VIII included an oath. This was clearly a departure from precedent. Canon law

48
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 124v. See a similar declaration on fol. 101v.
49
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 93v.
50
Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 95r.

335
prescribed an "oath of those returning from schism," which had formed the basis of
the standard oath of abjuration in medieval England.51 All the Lollards who abjured
in Norwich from 1428-1431, in Coventry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, and under Warham from 1511 to 1512 swore an oath, as did all the heretics
who abjured while Tunstall was bishop of London.52 All the abjurations made in front
of John Fisher likewise included a clear oath.53 The last Protestant abjuration with an
oath made under Henry VIII that I have found was that of Robert Cook, a Protestant
who abjured under Gardiner in 1534.54 After Henry's death, the majority of the
abjurations once again contained oaths. Many of the Protestant abjurations under
Mary had explicit oaths.55 Even the abjurations of John Champnes (an Anabaptist)
and John Assheton (an anti-Trinitarian) in 1548 and of Michael Thombe (a radical
who like Joan Kent denied that Christ took any flesh from the virgin Mary) in 1550
under Thomas Cranmer included oaths, as did the Catholic abjuration of William
Phelps under Bishop John Hooper in 1551.56 The fact that virtually all abjurations
before 1534 and after 1547 included oaths suggests that it was no simple coincidence
that most of the Protestants during the last thirteen years of Henry's reign avoided
sealing their abjurations with an oath. Something was going on.
Most significantly, none of the abjurations by Protestants under the jurisdiction
of Edmund Bonner while he was bishop of London during the last years of Henry's
reign included an oath. Since the vast majority of all abjurations took place in

51
C1C, C. 1 q. 7 c. 9, Friedberg, 1:431-432.
52
Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of'Norwich, 42, 57, 59, 97, 117, 123, passim; McSheffrey and
Tanner, Lollards of Coventry, 74, 75, 89, 93, 98, 261, 264, 267-268, 271-275; Lambath Palace Library,
Warham's Register, fols. 159r-167v, 176rv; Guildhall Library Ms. 9531/10 (TunstalFs Register), fols.
135r, 136r, 137r, 138r; Hinde, Registers ofCuthbert Tunstall Bishop of Durham 1530-59, 35-36.
53
John Fisher's Register, Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Microfilm Z3, fols. 4 1 \ 47 rv , 62r, 74r,
107v, 127r. Curiously, the two abjurations before Fisher's commissioner Robert Johnson do not include
an oath. See for example, fol. 133r.
Chitty, Registra Stephani Gardiner et Johannis Poynet, 31-32. The abjuration Gardiner wrote for
Wisdom in 1545 did not contain an oath. Also, it must be stressed that I have not made an exhaustive
search of every episcopal register from the sixteenth century. My search has been limited to important
dioceses like London, Winchester, Rochester, and Canterbury. Yet because the majority of those
prosecuted for heresy lived in these dioceses, I am confident that any perusal of other registers would
not greatly alter my conclusion that the majority of those Protestants who abjured in the last thirteen
years of the reign of Henry VIII did not swear oaths.
55
BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 81 M , 83r, 84r, 85r-86r, 88r, 91 r , 146'"v, 154M, 173'-174r, 175r-176v, 183r-
184r.
56
Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols. 72r-74v; BL Harleian MS. 425, fols. 71'-72r.

336
London, this goes a long way towards accounting for the extraordinary lack of oaths in
Protestant abjurations in the 1530s and 1540s. (Almost no Protestants abjured for
heresy between 1534 and 1539 when Cromwell and Cranmer were at the height of
their power.) It must have been part of Bonner's deliberate policy to avoid making a
suspected heretic seal his abjuration with an oath. We get hints of this in the published
recantations of Alexander Seton and William Towlyn. Seton declared that Bonner
could "haue compelled me/ accordyng to the Ecclesiastical lawes of this Realme to
abiure & also might haue extremly punyshed me for the same offence" but he was
"and is contented with this onely penaunce/ (that is to say) That I make here this open
declaracyon unto you of my sayde offences/ & that I do not hereafter prech or teach"
any heresy against the holy church again.57 Similarly, Towlyn stated in his abjuration:
"I haue found such charytable goodnes and mercy in my Lorde byshop of London/
vpon my submission and sute vnto him/ that vpon only this declaration here made of
my offens vnto you/ with promyse that I wyll endeuer my selfe to the best of my
power to lyue" as a Catholic, never to preach or teach any heresies, and to detect
heresies and their maintainers, "his lordshyp is content to respyt the rest of my
penaunce and doyng accordyng to my seyd promyfe to forgyue all togyther."58 In
other words, Bonner was most likely prescribing milder forms of abjuration without
oaths to suspected heretics in his diocese as an attempt to convince those with tender
consciences to abjure!
This insight supports Alec Ryrie's contention that rather than being a
bloodthirsty and oppressive regime as depicted by John Foxe, the Henrician prelacy
much preferred recantations to burnings and exploited these recantations as a form of
propaganda.59 It is true that Bonner's policy of allowing abjurations without oaths
made these abjurations weaker in that they were not made with God as witness, but
they were still of great propaganda value for the conservative prelacy in that the
abjurer publicly admitted to holding specific Protestant tenets, denounced these tenets

5
Alexander Seton and William Tolwyn, The declaration made at Ponies Crosse in the cytye of
London the fourth Sonday ofAduent by Alexander Seyton and Mayster Willyam Tolwyn, persone ofS.
Anthonynes in the sayd cytye of London, the yere ofour Lord God M.D.XLJ. ([1542]), sig. A3V.
Seton and Tolwyn, The declaration made at Poules Crosse, sig. B3r.
59
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, 82-84.

337
as heretical, and then praised the benevolence and mercy of the prelacy. For
propagandsa purposes, it mattered less that the abjuration was before God and more
that it was before men. Of course, the use of equivocation during a recantation would
lessen its propaganda value significantly, but the conservative prelacy (namely Bonner
and Gardiner) appear to have been less likely to allow equivocal abjurations than
oathless abjurations. The equivocal recantations of Latimer, Barnes, and Crome were
not approved by the prelacy. Latimer and Crome were eventually caught equivocating
and had to confess and retract their equivocation in 1532 and 1546 respectively, while
Barnes' recantation in 1540 was completely rejected, and he was burned at the stake.
The abjurations that were hand-prepared by the prelates were actually designed to
preclude equivocation. We have seen that this was the case with Wisdom, and Crome
was likewise made to declare in 1541 that he was "resolued and fully perswadid in his
harte and conscience" to remain loyal to his new-found orthodoxy.60 Askew may
have gotten away with equivocation in 1545, but it was she not Bonner who made this
public. The abjuration set forth by Bonner did not contain the conditional phrase
Askew supposedly added but rather denied it by commencing: "to thentent the
woorlde may see what credence ys nowe to be gyven vnto the same woman whome
shorte tyme hathe rnqost dampnablye altered and chaunged her opynyon and beleaf
and therefore rightfullie in opyn Courte arrayned and condempned."61 Thus, Bonner's
willingness to allow oathless abjurations but not equivocal ones demonstrates that one
of the primary purposes of these abjurations to Bonner was to influence public
opinion.
The fact that there are few if any Protestant abjurations with an oath in the last
thirteen years of Henry's reign also modifies Alec Ryrie's supposition that Protestant

' Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 25r, quoted from Ryrie, Gospel and Henry
VIII, 82.
1
Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12 (Bonner's Register), fol. 101r. By contrast, Megan Hickerson has
suggested that Bonner cooperated with Askew's equivocal recantation in 1545; Hickerson, "Negotiating
Heresy," 774-795. Hickerson is correct in her assertion that Bonner was aware of Askew's
equivocation in 1545 and let her go, but it is not clear that he let her subscribe conditionally. Moreover,
Bonner did not make Askew's recantation public until 1546. (The wording of this clause quoted above
suggests that Bonner set forth his version of Askew's recantation in 1546 as a justification for her
forthcoming execution.) Thus, Bonner never publicly supported Askew's equivocation. He may have
been prepared to tolerate it, but he was not prepared to publicize it.

338
rhetoric about the duty to break an evil vow or oath made it easier for English
Protestants to recant in the 1540s, since they would have almost certainly considered
an oath of abjuration to be evil.62 Chapter two has demonstrated that Ryrie's instinct
was correct insofar as arguments for the breaking of unlawful vows did indeed provide
an ideological context for the breaking of offensive oaths. Yet Ryrie's axiom that
"any process of recantation involved the swearing of an oath" does not hold true for
most of the recantations of the 1540s. The abjurations from this time do not include
oaths. Furthermore, none of the episcopal registers or printed accounts of heresy trials
from this time that I have examinedincluding Bonner's registermention the
tendering of the ex officio oath. This also stands in sharp contrast to the standard
procedure before 1534 and after 1547 when the tendering of the ex officio oath is
almost always noted. It seems that the Privy Council did administer this oath to
Latimer in 1546 as part of their investigation against Crome, but that is the only
reference to it that I have come across in all the heresy prosecutions conducted during
the last thirteen years of Henry's reign.64 In contrast to earlier heretics like the
Lollards and Bilney, late Henrician Protestants could equivocate, lie, and abjure their
beliefs without technically committing perjury.
We are thus left with the conclusion that during the heresy trials of the 1530s
and 1540s, Protestants continued to equivocate, dissimulate, and recant, but they rarely
perjured themselves. Was this solely a result of Edmund Bonner's lenient policy?
Although Bonner was probably mostly responsible for the lack of abjuration oaths in
Protestant recantations in the later third of Henry's reign, we cannot discount the
possibility that the recanting Protestants themselves also contributed to the temporary
disappearance of oaths of abjuration. After all, Bonner would not have omitted oaths
from their abjurations if he did not believe that such an omission would more easily
convince them to recant. Furthermore, freedom from swearing an oath of abjuration

62
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, 77-78.
63
Indeed, the foremost historian of the ex officio oath recognized this but offered no explanation. He
simply wrote that the ex officio oath "appears to have fallen into disuse after 1534"; Leonard W. Levy,
Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-incrimination (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1968),
72.
M
LP, XXI (I), 823.

339
dovetailed nicely with nascent Protestant propaganda on oaths. From the very
beginning of English Protestantism, some English Protestants sought to portray
themselves as keepers of their oaths and their Catholics persecutors as violators of
their oaths. In his Practice of Prelates of 1530, William Tyndale blasted England's
Catholic prelates (especially Wolsey) for their perjury and devious manipulation of
oaths. The papal power of dispensation, Tyndale contended, was the root of their
blatant disregard of oaths: "For of perjury they make as much conscience, as a dog for
a bone; for they have power to dispense with all things, think they."65 The attempts of
Protestants like Barnes and Wisdom to portray themselves as honest, innocent victims
of persecuting bishops who abused oaths and perjured themselves was a continuation
of this strategy. Moreover, it was during the first half of the 1540s that the first two
full-length English Protestant works on oaths were printed: A Christen exhortation
vnto customable swearers (1543) by John Bale, and An inuectyue agenst the moost
wicked & detestable vyce of swearing (1543) by Thomas Beacon, who himself made
two oathless recantations before and after the publication of his book. These works
emphasized the gravity of the sin of perjury. It was thus extremely convenient for
Protestants making recantations to evade an oath, for then they were not open to the
charge of perjury if and when they went back on their recantation and began preaching
Protestant doctrine. Not swearing a recantation oath allowed Protestants to avoid
contradicting their propaganda against perjury with incongruous practice. It is quite
conceivable that Protestantsespecially those like Latimer who made oathless
recantations outside the jurisdiction of Bonnerbegan to refuse to abjure under oath
as a matter of principle.
But what a principle! Was it not inconsistent for Protestants to have little
problem practicing equivocation and dissimulation in their heresy processes but shun
practicing dissimulation under oath? Did English Protestants actually advocate that
oathless dissimulation was licit but perjury illicit? They never openly taught this
doctrine. In public, Protestants took the moral high ground on oaths and condemned
perjury. Concerning general, oathless dissimulation, they either avoided discussing it

William Tyndale, The Practice of Prelates: Whether the King's Grace May Be Separatedfrom His
Queen, Because She Was His Brother's Wife, in Works of the English Reformers, 1:488-489.

340
or condemned it as wrong. The exception to this rule was William Tyndale, who
taught that to dissemble and deceive for the good of one's neighbor was not only licit
but commendable, even if sealed with an oath: "To persuade him that pursueth his
neighbour, to hurt him or slay him, that his neighbour is gone another contrary way, is
the duty of every Christian man by the law of charity, and no sin; no, though I confirm
6
it with an oath." The more radical Henrician Protestants who chose to go into exile
after the passage of the Six Articles rather than to compromise their beliefs naturally
took a harder line on general dissimulation. John Bale wrote of Tolwyn's recantation:
For if he belieueth, that [by] denyenge the verite with mouthe onlye, he ys out
of that parell of sowle so longe as he styll retayneth yt in hys hart, he is sore
deceyued. . . . Manye are now in englande which walke vndre these subtile
shadowes, but yf they thynke so to auoyde the daungers of gods indygnacion,
they sore deceyue themslues.67
George Joye likewise proclaimed:
Trewth it is, that it is all one thynge, not to defende the trewth and to denye the
trewth . . . Let men beware how they dissemble with the trewth in this worlde,
lest in soche an vngodly securite they pluke the synne of the holy ghost into
theyr bosoms. . . . No, not so did Daniel, for he knewe that the trewe religion
and worship must be farre from all colourable dissembling without any lyng
shyftis of hypocricie
Yet Alec Ryrie has convincingly argued that exiled Protestants like Bale and Joye
were more radical than the majority of Henrician English Protestants and thus cannot

William Tyndale, An Exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of Matthew, in Works of
the English Reformers, 2:293-294.
67
Bale, Yet a course at the Romyshefoxe, fol. 3v-4r, quoted in Wabuda, "Equivocation and Recanation,"
239-240. It should be noted that despite the fact that Tolwyn's abjuration did not include an oath (and
Bale faithfully printed Tolwyn's abjuration), Bale still acted like it did. Bale attacked Bonner for "so
cruelly exacinge soche a shamefull profession and abhomynable othe as thys is here"; Bale, Yet a
course at the Romyshefoxe, fol. 14r.
68
George Joye, The exposicion of Daniel the prophete gathered oute of Philip Melanchton, lohan
Ecolampadius, Chonrade Pellicane [and] out of lohan Draconite. . . . ([Antwerp], [1545]), fols. 33r,
84v, quoted in Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VI11, 70. It is worth noting that despite this quote, Joye did not
hesitate to lie when attempting to flee England to escape persecution. He unashamedly confessed this
dissimulation in his Ashwell Letters: "Then sayd the scribe where is your lodgig &. here I was so bold
to make the scribe a lye for hys askyng, telling him that I laye at the grene drogon toward Bishops gate
when I laye a myle of, euen a contrary waye, for I neuer trusted Scribes nor pharisais, & 1 perceyued he
asked me not for any good"; George Joye, The letters whyche lohan Ashwellpriour ofNewnham Abbey
besydes Bedforde, sente secretely to the Byshope ofLyncolne in theyeare of our Lord M.D.xxvii. Where
in the sayde pryour accuseth George loye that tyme beyngfelow of Peter college in Cambrydge, of
fower opinyons: wyth the answere of the sayde George vn to the same opynyons. ([1548?]), fol. D2r.

341
be taken as representative. The majority of early English Protestants, especially
ones like Barnes, Latimer, and Crome who all made use of it, are silent on the theme
of non-perjurous dissimulation.70 Nevertheless, although they never officially taught
that one could honorably equivocate as a form of dissimulation in times of trouble as
long as it was not confirmed with an oath, this was what they did in practice. In this
regard, late Henrician Protestants were similar to the Catholic recusants at the end of
Elizabeth's reign described by Alexandra Walsham. In all their public, printed works,
these recusants took a strong line against dissimulation and outward conformity with
Protestantism, for they had to reconcile their teachings on this subject with their
propaganda that the Church of England was completely heretical and depraved. Yet in
their unprinted casuistical manuals for priests and private interactions, recusant priests
sometimes allowed conformity with Protestant worship as a means to escape
71

persecution. Although the issue for Henrician Protestants was public recantations as
opposed to church attendance, their practice suggests that they were also willing to
tolerate a certain degree of compromise with the regime as long as it did not clash with
their open propaganda. In the latter years of Henry's reign, however, that compromise
stopped at the commission of perjury.
They were thus able to reconcile the two previously contradictory principles
inherited from Lollardsthe tendency to dissimulate and recant and the tendency to
take a harder, more strict line against the abuse of oaths. Because their abjurations did
not include an oath, Protestants in the 1530s and 1540s could have their cake and eat it
too. Of course, as Wisdom's revocation illustrates, their cake was still bitter since
they publicly recanted and denied the truth of the Gospel. If Protestants truly desired
the conversion of the English populace, this was not useful propaganda.

w
Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, 93-112.
70
It is commonly known that Latimer preached harshly against all forms of lies. See Latimer, Sermons
by Hugh Latimer, 501-503. This sermon, however, was given under Edward VI when times had
changed.
Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early
Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1993), 29-30, 71.

342
 Chapter 9: Oaths, Recantations, and Propaganda in Marian England
Under Edward VI, Protestant propaganda against perjury (and the persecuting
prelates who practiced it) more fully entered into mainstream English Protestant
rhetoric. In 1547, under the guidance of Thomas Cranmer, the Edwardian regime
issued Certain sermons or homilies. The regime decreed that every parish church
must be furnished with one such book and that every priest should read the homilies to
his flock in a regular fashion. One of the twelve homilies was entitled "Against
Swearyng and Perjurie." The purpose of this homily was that each parishioner
"should knowe how great and grevuous an offence again God this wilfull perjurie is."1
In 1549, an English translation of Calvin's Short instruction against Anabaptistes
appeared. In this work, Calvin not only defended the legitimacy of lawful oaths
before magistrates but also strongly attacked vain and false swearing.2 No less than
three editions of John Hooper's A declaration of the ten holy commandments of
almighty God came out during Edward's reign, and they of course included an
exposition on the taking of the Lord's name in vain. Furthermore, in his extremely
popular 1550 sermons on the prophet Jonah (preached originally before Edward VI
but then went through two or three printed editions before the close of the year!),
Hooper strongly vituperated against swearing by creatures and false swearing.4
Finally, Bale's Christen exhortacion vnto customable swearers also went through at
least three editions in 1552.5 It was in the reign of Edward VI, then, that the mature
Protestant theory on oathsa theory that vehemently decried perjury and deceptive
swearingwas fully achieved in England.
This flowering of Protestant discourse on the sanctity of oaths can be explained
by the fact that for the first time in English history, Protestants were in no danger of

' "Against Swearyng and Perjurie," in Bond, Certain Sermons, 133. This sermon contained the
standard Christian rhetoric against false and vain swearing. For a further discussion of it, see chapter
one of this dissertation.
2
John Calvin, A short instruction for to arme all good Christian people agaynst the pestiferous errours
of the common secte of Anabaptistes. (1549), sigs. E7 r -F7 v .
3
English Short-Title Catalogue (2 nd ed.), numbers 13746, 13749, 13759.
4
English Short-Title Catalogue (2 nd ed.), numbers 13763, 13764, 13765. The date of the last edition is
uncertain, but Samuel Carr, the editor of the Parker Society edition of Hooper's works, assumed that it
was also 1550.
5
English Short-Title Catalogue (2 nd ed.), numbers 1280.5, 1281, 1282, 1283.

343
being tendered an oath contrary to their consciences. The Edwardian regime was
openly Protestant. Except for a few trials of extreme radicals (in which oaths were not
an issue), there were no heresy trials. Protestants did not have to choose between
swearing an oath that violated their consciences or facing the penalty of death. They
were thus free to affirm openly and publicly the sanctity of oaths without having their
propaganda tested by practice. Yet during the reign of Edward's Roman Catholic
half-sister Mary Tudor from 1553 to 1558, Protestants were again faced with the
difficult decision of recantation and perjury or death. And unlike the later years of
Henry's reign, the Marian regime was more insistent that heresy trials be accompanied
by the ex officio oath and abjurations be confirmed with an oath. This time around,
however, Protestant behavior was more consistent with their theory. Many Protestants
broke from the culture of recantation that they had inherited from the Lollards.
Although some continued to abjure to save their lives, Protestant leaders like Latimer,
Ridley, Hooper, Bradford, and (eventually) Cranmer, as well as approximately three
hundred others, elected to suffer the flames rather than to abjure their beliefs and
forswear their consciences. And in defense of their beliefs, Protestants emphasized
the sanctity of oaths. For the first time, they explicitly cited oaths as a reason why
they could not recant. They also began openly and vehemently to decry general,
oathless dissimulation. Of course, some Protestants continued the established pattern
of oathless dissimulation or equivocation, but these kinds of recantations became
heavily contested modes of propaganda. Recanting Protestants not only attempted to
water down their recantations by avoiding oaths and making use of ambiguous
language: they also felt the pressure to spin their recantations in a way that rejected
dissimulation. As confessional boundaries crystallized in England, it became
progressively harder to practice perjury and dissimulation without being shunned as an
apostate.

Martyrs and Exiles

The reestablishment of papal authority in England was the primary event that
led to the Marian martyrs' emphasis on the sanctity of oaths. Citing the sanctity of

344
oaths and the gravity of perjury became a convenient way for Marian Protestants to
justify their religious disobedience, for had they not sworn to reject papal authority in
the past?6 It was so convenient that it became a common if not standard excuse of
Marian Protestants. For example, an anonymous manuscript among Foxe's papers
narrated how in 1555 the papal legate Cardinal Reginald Pole willed everyone in
Parliament to bow their knees to receive absolution from schism and become
reconciled to the Church of Rome. One Sir Raulf Bagnall, presumably a member of
the House of Commons, refused to bow, claiming: "he was sworne the contrary to
king henry the eight, which was a wort[hy] prince, & labourid xxv" yeres before he
could abolishe him."7 John Hooper, the bishop of Gloucester under Edward VI whose
fiery preaching led to the abolition of oaths by saints, also cited his oath of supremacy
as an apology for his refusal to accept papal authority: "This oath (by God's help) 1
will not violate nor break, let the wicked perjured men, that be the wicked pope's
adherents, say what they will, and do what God shall permit them." In his heresy
trial, John Philpot noted of his oath of supremacy: "which oath I think that I am bound
in my conscience to keep, 'quia teneor reddere Domino juramentum' [because I am
held to fulfill an oath to the Lord]."9 One of the six reasons that Cranmer gave for
refusing papal authority in his appeal to a general council of his degradation was his
oath sworn under Henry VIII.I0 Cranmer made the same case in his explanation to
Queen Mary of why he refused the Bishop of Gloucester as his judge:
But forasmuch as in the time of the prince of most famous memory king Henry
the Eighth, your grace's father, I was sworn never to consent that the bishop of
Rome should have or exercise any authority or jurisdiction in this realm of

6
Of course, as we have demonstrated in chapter three, the only group of Henrician subjects who took
the oath of supremacy for certain were the institutional clergy and any other clergyman who had
graduated, been ordained, or taken a new charge after 1536. All the martyrs discussed in this chapter,
however, clearly fell into this category and had sworn the oath of supremacy, a fact they themselves
emphasized. (See below.) Furthermore, the oath of succession could be read as rejecting papal
authority as well depending on one's interpretation, and everyone took that oath.
7
BL Harleian MS. 419, fols. 13 lr-132r, printed in Nichols, Narratives of the Days of the Reformation,
290-291.
John Hooper, Apology, in Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, Together with His Letters and Other
Pieces, ed. Charles Nevinson, P.S., vol. 21 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), 566.
9
Foxe,y4M(Townsend), 7:677-678.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 226.

345
 England; therefore, lest 1 should allow his authority contrary to mine oath, I
refused to make answer to the bishop of Gloucester, sitting here in judgment
by the pope's authority, lest I should run into perjury.
Cranmer even went so far as to suggest that Mary herself had unwittingly committed
perjury because of the contradictions between her coronation oath and her oath to the
pope, an excuse also used by the Dudley conspirators and by John Ponet in his book of
resistance theory A shorte treatise ofpolitike power.n In his heresy trial, the
Protestant leader John Bradford claimed this excuse for his refusal to respond to
Bishop Gardiner's questions: "that for fear lest I should be perjured, 1 dare not make
answer to any thing you shall demand of me, if my answering should consent to the
confirming or practising of any jurisdiction for the bishop of Rome here in
England." Nicholas Ridley, the Edwardian bishop of London who was burned with
Latimer, wholeheartedly approved of Bradford's defense, writing to him: "And
blessed be God again and again, which gave you so good a mind and remembrance of
your oath, once made against the bishop of Rome, lest you should be partaker of the
common perjury, which all men almost are no fallen into, in bring in again that wicked
usurped power of his."' By emphasizing the sanctity of their oaths of supremacy,
Marian Protestants could claim that they were morally bound to resist papal authority.
But what was so special about the oath of supremacy? After all, we have seen
that no matter how strong an oath was, it could be subverted by a devious
interpretation or by another oath that invalidated it. What made the oath of supremacy
stronger than an oath of abjuration or an oath of canonical obedience to the pope?
First, the frequency, openness, and explicitness of the oath of supremacy made it
prominent in Protestant consciences. Bradford claimed that he had taken an oath

Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 447'. For a confirmation of this episode
according to the Catholic version of Cranmer's trial, see [Nicholas Harpsfield?], Bishop Cranmer's
Recantacyons ([London?], [1884?]), 31. This extremely rare book is a reprint of a Latin manuscript
preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
12
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 454. For the Dudley conspirators and
Ponet, see Norman Jones, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (London:
Royal Historical Society, 1982), 86-87.
13
Foxe,,4M(Townsend), 7:154.
14
Nicholas Ridley, The Works of Nicholas Ridley, ed. Henry Christmas, P.S., vol. 39 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1841), 369.

346
against the pope six times:
Forsooth I was thrice sworn in Cambridge, when I was admitted master of arts;
when I was admitted fellow of Pembroke hall; and when I was there, the
visitors cam thither, and sware the university. Again, I was sworn when I
entered the ministry; when I had a prebend given me; and when I was sworn to
serve the king, a little before his death."15
Likewise, Philpot averred: "I have been many times sworn . . . against the usurped
power of the bishop of Rome."16 Cranmer emphasized how the bishop of Gloucester
was "more than once perjured. First, for that he being divers times sworn never to
consent that the bishop of Rome should have any jurisdiction within this realm."
Cranmer also contended that the bishop of Gloucester was openly perjured because of
the contradictions in his oath of canonical obedience to the pope and his oath of fealty
to the queen for the restitution of his temporalities.18 In this case, the contradictory
nature of these two oaths was very evident to Cranmer due to his own previous
experience. Furthermore, in the oath of the supremacy, Protestants had not only
pledged loyalty to royal jurisdiction over the church, they had also explicitly sworn
never again to swear loyalty to the pope. Indeed, the entire realm had sworn likewise
in the oath of succession! This point came out in the debate between Gardiner and
Bradford. When Bradford cited his oath to the king, Gardiner exclaimed: "No, no, all
men may see your meaning well enough. There is no man, though he be sworn to the
king, that doth therefore break his oath, if he afterwards be sworn to the French king
and to the emperor." Bradford responded: "It is true, my lord, but the cases be not
like. For here is an exception: 'Thou shalt not swear to the bishop of Rome at any
time.' If, in like manner, we were sworn; 'Thou shalt not serve the emperor,' etc. you
see there were some alteration and more doubt."19 Protestants chose to stand by their
oaths of supremacy, in part, because of its specific and unambiguous rejection of papal

15
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 7:151.
16
Foxe, ,4.M (Townsend), 7:677. My italics.
17
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 454. My italics.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 454. Marian episcopal registers indicate
that new bishops under Mary once again took an oath of canonical obedience to the pope in the standard
form upon their consecration.
19
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 7:156. My italics.

347
authority and because its frequent tendering as part of the clerical ladder had ingrained
it in their consciences.
Yet more important to the Marian Protestants' high esteem for their oaths of
supremacy was the content of the oath itself. Again, we have seen in chapter two that
the real debate over oaths was not whether oaths should bind one's conscience (both
sides asserted this) but rather what oaths were lawful. The easiest way to justify the
breaking of an oath was to claim that the oath had been unlawful. Indeed, the debate
on oaths between Thomas Martin and Cranmer during Cranmer's heresy trial focused
on the lawfulness of the oath of supremacy.20 Likewise, Gardiner responded to
Bradford's citation of the various oaths of supremacy that Gardiner had sworn by
exclaiming: "Tush, Herod's oaths a man should make conscience at."21 Protestants,
however, insisted that their oaths of supremacy had been lawful. Ridley declared that
the oath of supremacy "was made according to the prophet in judgment, in
righteousness, and in truth; and therefore cannot without perjury be revoked, let Satan
roar and rage, and practise all the cruelty he can." Dr. Rowland Taylor claimed that
one of the assertions he made for which was condemned to the flames was "that the
oath against the supremacy of the bishop of Rome, was a lawful oath, and so was the
oath made by us all, touching the king's or queen's pre-eminence."23 Philpot declared
that he would yield to his captors only if they could "by God's word persuade me that
my said oath was unlawful."24 Royal supremacy was probably the most fundamental
tenet of English Protestantism. It had been at the center of Henry's educational
campaign, and it was the linchpin of Cranmer's own theology. Cranmer was thus
greatly offended by the pope's "assoiling the subjects [of England] as well of their
obedience as of their lawful oaths made unto their true kings and princes, directly
contrary to God's commandment, who commandeth all subjects to obey their kings, or
their rulers under them." The same centrality of royal supremacy is evident in

20
See the end of chapter two of this dissertation.
21
Foxe, ^4M (Townsend), 7:151. See also Gardiner's debate with Dr. Rowland Taylor, Foxe, AM
(Townsend), 6:682.
22
Ridley, Works, 369-370.
23
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 6:688. My italics.
24
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 6:678.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 451. My italics.

348
Bradford's debate with Gardiner (the lord chancellor in addition to being bishop of
Winchester) over the lawfulness of an oath:
BRADFORD: . .. And sauing mine oth, 1 will aunswere you in this behalf that the oth
agaynst the Bishop of Rome was not, nor is not against charity.
L. CHAN.: HOW proue you that?
BRADFORD: Forsooth, 1 proue it thus:
Argument
Nothing is agaynst charity, which is with Goddes word, and not agaynst it.
The othe agaynst the Bishop of Romes authoritye in England, is with Gods
word, and is not agaynst it: Ergo, The othe against the Bishop of Romes
authority in England is not agaynst charity.
L. CHAN : Is it not agaynst Goddes worde that a manne should take a king to be
supreme head of the church in his Realme?
BRADFORD: NO sauing still myne othe, it is not agaynst Gods word, but with it, being
taken in suche sense, as it may well bee taken: that is, attributing to the kinges
power the soueraignty in all his dominion.
L. CHAN.: I pray you, where finde you that?
26
BRADFORD: I finde it in manye places, but specially in the 13. to the Romanes . ..

Because royal supremacy was the central, Scriptural feature of English Protestantism,
the oath of supremacy was completely lawful and thus absolutely binding. There was
no room for ambiguity or subtle interpretations.
Finally, it was convenient for Marian Protestants to accentuate the sanctity of
oathsspecifically the oath of supremacybecause such a practice meshed
beautifully with their continuing campaign to present religious conservatives and
Roman Catholics as perjurers. Gardiner certainly suspected that this was Bradford's
motivation, contending: "O Lord God! what a fellow art thou! Thou wouldest go
about to bring into the people's heads, that weall the lords of the parliament house,
the knights and burgesses, and all the whole realmbe perjured." Whereas before
the 1550s Protestants like Barnes and Wisdom had to rely on broadcasting the
individual instances of episcopal perjury done in private heresy trials, now the whole
realm could attest that the conservative bishops had forsworn themselves by accepting
papal authority in England. "Swear, forswear:" this was one of the "notable decrees of

Foxe,,4Af(1583), 1608.
Foxe, AM(Townsend), 7:160.

349
the church of Rome," according to John Philpot.28 Gardiner was an especially prime
target, for in his book De vera obedientia of 1535, Gardiner had justified his oath of
supremacy by arguing against his oath of canonical obedience to the pope. Protestants
translated and printed this work in 1553 as an extremely clever and effective way to
point out Gardiner's inconsistency and perjury.29 Yet every "papist" who had sworn
the oath of supremacy was perjured. Hooper decried those under Edward VI who
"dissembled outwardly, and yet in the heart they lie hid, tarrying for a time when they
may be put abroad to do mischief, and to work the destruction of the godly." Papists
lied because they were of the devil, the father of lies.31 Dr. Taylor made a similar
connection. Immediately after Taylor criticized Gardiner for the violation of his oath
of supremacy, Gardiner retorted, "Ye are false, and liars all the sort of you." Taylor
turned the tables: "Nay . . . we are true men, and know that it is written. 'That mouth
that lieth, slayeth the soul.' And again, Lord God, though shalt destroy all that speak
lies. And therefore we abide by the truth of God's word, which ye, contrary to your
own consciences, deny and forsake." By connecting the perjury of prelates like
Gardiner to the assertion that lies came from the devil, Protestants were able to come
full circle from Thomas More's accusation: "And syth they be fallen frome god and
hys true fayth / they haue no greate care of trouth / nor be very scrupulouse in the
lendynge of an othe tyll they neede in lyke case to be payed agayne." Now it was
Catholic perjury that proved that Roman Catholics had fallen from God and the true
faith.34

28
John Philpot, The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, ed. Robert Eden, P.S., vol. 34
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), 426. This was from Philpot's translation of Coelius
Secundus Curio's Pro vera et antiqua ecclesiae Christi aittoritate in Ant. Florebelhim, which was
issued under Edward VI. Furthermore, Philpot's translation survived only in manuscript (BL Royal
MS. 17 C, ix) until published by the Parker Society.
29
Gardiner, De vera obediencia (Rome [Wesel?], 1553), sigs. G6'-H2V. See also chapter two of this
dissertation.
Hooper, Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, 270.
31
Hooper, Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, 270.
32
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 6:682-683.
33
More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, in Complete Works, vol. 6, 266.
34
Perhaps the best example of this propaganda comes not from Mary's reign but from Elizabeth's.
Writing in 1565 against the Roman Catholic propagandist Thomas Dorman, Alexander Nowell (the
dean of St. Paul's Cathedral) wrote, "But there shall you finde an huge numbre of Papistes, who by their
writing, not onely saiyng: by their othe, not woorde onely, reiected all that false vsurped supremacie of
the Pope . . . there shall you finde who they were that so falsely dissembled . . . there shall you finde,

350
 The most poignant attack on England's Catholic clergy for committing perjury
came in a manuscript tract of 1555. The tract boldly proclaimed:
For what Land or People doth not know, that the whole Popish Clergy of this
Realm have not only lived perjured, as they themselves confess; and compelled
al the People, many against their Conscience, to confes the same, these twenty
Years last past, and above; but also have compelled al them, that in these Years
have been admitted Priests, to perjure themselves in like Maner.
Although the clergy now declared that such an oath was unlawful, they nevertheless
had caused the nobility, gentlemen, and magistrates of the realm to swear never to
accept the bishop of Rome as head of the people of England. The merchants of
London also had just grounds for complaint, for their honesty and credence had
perished because their creditors now knew them to be perjured. Indeed, "Al the whole
People have Cause justly to bear Wrath towards the Wickedness of that Clergy, not
only for their own Perjury, but also for theirs."36 Everyone who had received the
pope's pardon and did penance was perjured. On one hand, those who truly believed
in papal supremacy had perjured themselves in taking their oaths under Henry VIII
-1-7

and Edward VI. On the other hand, those who believed their oaths under Henry and
Edward were lawful (and thus believed that they had honestly rejected papal authority)
perjured themselves by accepting the pope's pardon.38 The latter group were more
hateful to God, for they perjured themselves "contrary to their own Knowledge, and
their Conscience," that is, knowingly.39 Such perjurous dissimulation stood in marked
contrast to the "little Sort, that know they were not perjured, but lawfully sware the
Oath [of supremacy], that is a Part of God's Glory; and are contented rather to dye by

who they were, that so falsely sware, resware, triesware, forsware them selues and not content therwith,
did so cruelly by all most terrible torments and dreadfull deathes, compell others to periurie with them";
Alexander Nowell, A repronfe written by Alexander Nowell of a booke entituled A proufe ofcertayne
articles in religion denied by M. Jnell, setfurth by Thomas Dorman, bachelor ofdiuinitie (1565), fols.
116v-117r.
BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol. 29r, printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Appendix to vol. 3,
123.
36
BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol. 29v; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, App. to vol. 3, 124.
37
The author of this tract did not make any distinction between the oath of succession and the oath of
supremacy. The author simply referred to the oath "never to receive the Bishop of Rome, nor no other
Potentate or Power in Earth, to be Head of the People of England, under God but only the King's
Majesty, and his Sucessor for ever" and assumed the entire realm took it; BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol.
29v; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, App. to vol. 3, 123-124.
8
BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol. 31v; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, App. to vol. 3, 126.
39
BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol. 32r; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, App. to vol. 3, 126.

351
the Pope's Sword, than to slander thy Truth." The writer ended his tract with a
rousing call for the dissemblers (those who knew papal authority was wrong but went
along with it nonetheless) to acknowledge their fault and declare the truth so that those
in ignorance of the sin of acknowledging papal authority might receive light and
understanding.
Marian Protestants, then, placed great emphasis on the absolute binding nature
of oaths because they had frequently sworn an open and explicit oath against papal
authority, because royal supremacy was at the heart of their theology and thus was
utterly lawful, and because it dovetailed nicely with their propaganda campaign to
paint Catholics as perjurers. The re-establishment of papal supremacy was at the heart
of all three of these reasons. Just as the restoration of England into the Roman fold
pushed Protestants to accentuate oaths, so did the restitution of the Roman Catholic
mass lead Protestants to a stronger rejection of oathless dissimulation. During the
reign of Edward VI, the majority of English Protestants had embraced a
sacramentarian view of the Eucharist. According to this view, the mass was not an
innocuous religious ceremony; it was blasphemy and idolatry, blasphemy in the sense
that the priest claimed to offer up another sacrifice for the congregation's sins in direct
derogation to Christ's one and only sacrifice on the cross, and idolatry in the sense that
the congregation worshiped the mere elements of the bread and wine instead of giving
glory to Christ's true corporal body that remained in heaven at the right hand of God.
Participation in such a blasphemous and idolatrous ceremony was tantamount to
abandoning Christ. Hence, hard-line Protestants adamantly decried that anyone could
attend mass without sin, and they condemned "Nicodemites" who went to the mass
out of fear of punishment.41 In the context of the sixteenth century, a "Nicodemite"
came to refer to a Protestant living in a Catholic country who kept his or her Protestant
beliefs secret and outwardly conformed to Catholic worship. When Mary restored the
mass, English Protestants began importing anti-Nicodemite propaganda from the
continent and writing their own. Andrew Pettegree has estimated that as much as two-
40
BL Lansdowne MS. 389, fol. 32r; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, App. to vol. 3, 126.
41
The term Nicodemite was a reference to Nicodemus, a Jewish Pharisee who approached Jesus
privately at night because he feared the repercussions of associating himself with Jesus publicly. See
John 3:1-21.

352
thirds of all original English Protestant tracts written from exile during Mary's reign
addressed the problem of Nicodemism.42 In this propaganda, Protestants averred that
it was not licit to dissimulate one's views and attend mass. The only proper response
to the re-establishment of the mass was to flee in exile or refuse to attend and suffer
the penalties.43
Although the primary purpose of anti-Nicodemite writings was to persuade
English Protestants not to dissimulate their beliefs by attending mass, the rhetoric they
employed had the effect of precluding verbal dissimulation in matters of faith as well.
The exiled Protestant minister Thomas Sampson wrote: "For we are taught, that to
believe with the Heart, and to confess with the Mouth maketh a Man safe. Both
Heart-belief, and Mouth-Confession, must go together. Which doth not so in you,
when inwardly ye are Gospellers, and outwardly Dissemblers with Papists." 4 The
Swiss Protestant leader Henry Bullinger, whose work against Nicodemism was
translated into English by exiles on the continent in 1555, preached:
Thow dost clearely heare that thow takest awaye saluacion if thow dost cut of
the confession of the mouthe from the beleif of the hart. Yea and the beleif of
the harte is of that nature that it can not lye hydd/ but must of necessite breake
forth to be confessed with the mouthe. Yf the confession of the mouthe
neadieth not/ neyther then shall ther neade ony preachinge of the truthe.
Hooper, writing from prison, agreed, arguing that faith of the heart must be
proclaimed by the mouth with an open, true declaration. Hooper proclaimed: "god
lovithe not / if the inward man knowe the treuthe, why doith the outwarde man

42
Andrew Pettegree, "Nicodemism and the English Reformation" in his Marian Protestantism: Six
Studies (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 88.
For an excellent example of continental Reformed views on Nicodemism, see John Calvin, The
mynde of the godly and excellent lerned man M. Ihon Cahtyne, what afaithfull man, whiche is instructe
in the Worde of God, ought to do, dwellinge amongest the papists (Ipswich, 1548). For a lucid general
discussion of anti-Nicodemism, see Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 63-82. For anti-Nicodemism in the French
context, see E. William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century
Parlements (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 85-114. For the English context, see
Pettegree, "Nicodemism and the English Reformation," 86-117. For examples of primary texts written
by Marian Protestants against Nicodemism, see Foxe, AM(1583), 1647, 1782, 1831.
44
Thomas Sampson to his former Parish in London, in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol III,
Appendix, 53.
Bullinger, A sermon made of the confessing ofChriste, and the truithe of the gospell: and ofthefbule
denyinge of the same, made in the conuocaion of the clergie at Zurich the 28. daye ofJanuarie in the
yeare of the lorde (1555), included in [Vermigli, Peter Martyr], A Treatise of the cohabitacyon of the
faithfull with the vnfaithfull. Wherunto is added. A Sermon made of the confessing ofChriste and his
gospel, and of the denyinge of the same (1565), fol. 77r"v.

353
confesse falshede." Hooper's juxtaposition of the inward and outward man may
even have been a deliberate reference to Friar Forest's mental reservation when taking
the oath of supremacy under Henry VIII.47 Bullinger certainly made sure his audience
understood that his condemnation of dissimulation in matters of faith extended to
verbal equivocation:
Ther is also a coloured denyinge when we playyng the fores with fores do
confes verely sumwhat of our religion/ yet we do so enwrapp it with such
darke wordes and doutfull sentences/ that vnto them which are most subtill and
conning in quidities/ it shall not playnly appeare what we do thincke. But the
confession shuld be simple/ and playne.48
The Protestant martyr Nicholas Ridley took this advice to heart. When asked whether
he believed that Christ was really present in the Eucharist, Ridley replied: "My Lorde,
you know that whence anye aequiuocation (whiche is a woorde hauyng two
significations) is, excepte distinction bee geuen, no direct aunswere can be made."
Ridley then proceeded to expound on how his beliefs of the real presence differed
from those of his Catholic captors, answering directly and not attempting to trick his
captors by making ambiguous statements on Christ's spiritual presence in the
sacrament.4 The Protestant attack on Nicodemism, then, seemed to extend naturally
to the condemnation of all verbal dissimulation.
One objection may be raised to all of this. It is well and good to point out that
Marian martyrs and exiles emphasized the sanctity of oaths and condemned all forms
of verbal dissimulation, but if this was really part of a propaganda campaign, did not
their very status as prisoners or exiles limit the dissemination of this propaganda?
Many of the Protestant exclamations on the sanctity of oaths and on the perjury of
Marian prelates were part of their examinations. While some of these examinations
were public, some were private as well, and the account of them survives only because
the martyrs themselves wrote it up in prison. The martyr's letters and anti-Nicodemite
writings were also prison manuscripts, and the tract against perjury remained in

John Hooper, "Wether Christian faythe may be kepte in the harte without confession," in Emmanuel
College, Cambridge MS. 261, fol. 154v.
47
See chapter five of this dissertation for more on Forest's dissimulation.
48
Bullinger, A Sermon made of the confessing ofChriste, fols. 71v-72r.
49
Foxe,^M(1583), 1761.

354
manuscript until Strype printed it in the eighteenth century. The works of English
Protestant exiles were of course printed during Mary's reign, but they were printed on
the continent, not in England. Thus, it is valid to ask how widely disseminated in
England were these prison manuscripts and foreign printed texts. Although it is of
course impossible to give a full answer, the work of Thomas Freeman and Andrew
Pettegree have demonstrated that the dissemination of these texts was surprisingly
extensive. The structure of the prison system allowed imprisoned Protestant clerics
(funded by merchants and sympathetic aristocrats) like Cranmer and Bradford to pay
or bribe their gaolers in exchange for privileges like ink and paper and access to the
outside world. Protestant manuscripts were smuggled out of prison, hand-copied
frequently, and then sent to other imprisoned Protestants or to underground Protestants
throughout England.50 Although not many of these manuscripts were printed in
Mary's reign, some important ones dealing with oaths such as Philpot's examinations
or Cranmer's letter to Mary were then printed on the continent within months of their
composition.51 As for the exiles' printed works, these were smuggled into England
and carried to Protestant sympathizers by a network of colporteurs, who sometimes
carried letters from imprisoned Protestants and other texts back to the exiles on the
continent, who could then print them.52 In short, the works described in this chapter
did reach an audience in England. They were thus, to a real extent, propaganda.

Equivocators
Thus far, our examination of Marian Protestants has focused exclusively on
martyrs and exiles. Virtually all explicit references to the sanctity of oaths came from
martyrs: that is, those who refused to compromise their consciences and abjure.
Likewise, the propaganda against Nicodemism came mostly from martyrs or those
who chose to flee England as exiles rather than dissemble their beliefs. What about
those Marian Protestants who chose to abjure? We can divide these Protestants into

50
Thomas S. Freeman, "Publish and Perish: the Scribal Culture of the Marian Martyrs," in The Uses of
Script and Print, 1300-1700, ed. Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 235-254.
51
Andrew Pettegree, "The English Church at Emden," in Marian Protestantism, 28.
52
Pettegree, "The English Church at Emden," in Marian Protestantism, 30.

355
two groups. The first were those who dissimulated purely and did not make use of
equivocation or any other method of saving their consciences. If charged with heresy,
they abjured in a straightforward, clear manner, usually with an oath. We know very
little about this group. Most of those who would have chosen to act in such a manner
were never caught in the first place, for they were exceedingly hard to detect. They
would have had to act out their beliefs in order to be detected, but such action was not
pure dissimulation. Accordingly, they have not left us any detailed information from
which to construct a paradigm. The second group was made up of those Protestants
who used equivocation or some other form of verbal dissimulation that fell short of
outright perjury into order to escape the full rigor of the law. We do not know much
about this group either. Our primary source on Marian Protestantism, John Foxe, was
ashamed of Protestants who elected to practice such machinations rather than to stand
firm to the death. Foxe did not write much about them, but some information survives
in Foxe if we read between the lines. This group was more likely to get caught since
they wanted to remain living in England while maintaining their Protestant faith and
ritual. The only way to have their cake and eat it too was to practice some sort of
deception. How did they do this?
The Protestants who equivocated under Mary employed many of the same
techniques practiced under Henry. Their submissions were often oathless
subscriptions (sometimes not even read publicly but done in private) that were made
conditionally. They sometimes made use of the ambiguity in the meaning of the
"Catholic church" or the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. One aspect of
their equivocation was new under Mary: after and even during their equivocal
submission, they continued to espouse a propaganda of anti-Nicodemism and truth.
Indeed, they spun their equivocal submissions so as not to seem like dissimulation or
the abandoning of the truth. They felt burdened to justify themselves. The Marian
regime, in turn, usually disallowed equivocal submissions because they were of lesser
propaganda value. When all the regime had was an equivocal submission, they
attempted to spin the submission against the Protestant interpretation and depict it as a

356
true capitulation to Roman Catholicism. Equivocal submissions therefore became the
wild card of polemical religious propaganda.
The Marian Protestant equivocator about whom we know the most is Richard
Gibson. Gibson was a member of London's urban elite. His grandfather had been
lord mayor. He was also an active member of the sect of freewillers, but he converted
to mainstream predestinarian Protestantism in 1556.53 Although in prison for debt
earlier in Mary's reign, he was re-arrested and charged with heresy around Easter of
1557. His first response, according to Foxe, was that he "semed to make a certayne
submission."54 Foxe then referenced another document from early April 1557 signed
by twenty-eight Protestants from Colchester. In this document, the subscribers
professed that the sacrament of the altar was Christ's true body and blood and
submitted themselves to the Catholic church of Christ. Yet the submission did not
specify whether Christ's presence in the sacrament was corporal or spiritual, nor
whether the Catholic church of Christ was the Roman Catholic Church or the invisible
church of the elect. It was thus highly ambiguous.55 It also did not include any oath.
Gibson's name was not on this submission, but Foxe must be implying (though at the
same time trying to gloss over it) that Gibson made a similar submission.
This equivocal submission, however, did not please Bonner. Bonner then
ministered to Gibson nine articles explicitly accusing Gibson of heresies such as the
rejection of auricular confession, prayers to the saints, prayers for the dead, mandatory
fasting, and the adoration of the host.56 The fifth article accused Gibson of affirming
that:
the religion and fayth commonly obserued, kept, and vsed nowe here in thys
realme of Englande, is not good nor laudable nor in any wise agreable and
consonant vnto gods woorde and commaundement, and that he will not be

M. T. Pearse, Between Known Men and Visible Saints: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Dissent
(Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994), 49-50; Thomas Freeman, "Dissenters from a
Dissenting Church: The Challenge of the Freewillers, 1550-1558," in Beginnings of English
Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 140-
141, 149.
54
Foxe, AM{ 1563), 1567.
The original submission is preserved among Foxe's manuscripts, BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 3r. It
was printed in Foxe, AM (1583), 1974.
56
For the exact articles, see Foxe,^M(1563), 1652-1653.

357
 conformable and agreable in all pointes to the said fayth and religion, without
any murmuryng, grudging, or scruple of conscience therin.
The last half of this article implied that Gibson was willing to conform to Roman
Catholic religion and faith with some murmuring, grudging, or scruple of conscience.
It probably indicates that Bonner knew Gibson was attempting to equivocate. This
interpretation is strengthened by the fact that the italicized part of this article is printed
only in the 1563 edition of Acts and Monuments. Foxe edited the text in all
subsequent editions to remove signs of Gibson's equivocation. Gibson's
equivocation, however, was limited. When Bonner tendered these articles to him,
Bonner demanded Gibson swear an oath to answer them fully and truthfully. Gibson,
significantly, refused. Instead, Gibson mockingly wrote up two sets of nine articles
to be tendered to Bonner. The first dealt with Scriptural authority, the power of the
church, the identity of the beast and whore of Babylon from the book of Revelation,
and the nature of royal supremacy. It was clearly an act of Protestant defiance.5 The
second set of articles delineated how a good bishop ought to act, thereby suggesting
that Bonner was not acting as a good bishop. The fourth article stated: "He may not
walke in craftynes, neither vse the cloke of vnhonestye, neyther handle the word of
God disceitfully, neither choppe nor chaunge with the same, but in the synglenesse
therof so open the truth, to the aduauncement of the truth thereby, as that he may
reporte himselfe to euery mans conscience in the sight of God."60 Now Gibson was
claiming the moral high ground, contending that Bonner was the one who was acting
deceitfully against the truth.
Bonner was not pleased with Gibson's response and let him stew in prison for
the summer. By fall, Gibson was evidently ready to compromise and equivocate once
more. Three more equivocal submissions are extant. Only one is dated, but Strype
placed them all in the autumn of 1557. Although two of the three still survive in
Foxe's manuscripts (and the one not there must have been contained in Foxe's

57
Foxe, AM (1563), 1653. My italics.
38
Foxe, AM( 1563), 1653. Also seey4M(1583), 2027.
9
These articles are printed in all four editions of Acts and Monuments. See for example, Foxe, AM
(Townsend), 8:441-442.
60
This set of articles is printed only in the 1563 edition of Foxe's Acts and Monuments; Foxe, AM
(1563), 1657. It is also printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:411-412.

358
manuscripts when Strype viewed them in the seventeenth century), none of these
submissions were printed in Acts and Monuments. The first submission, dated
October 27, 1557, is similar to the one made by the Colchester Protestants at the
beginning of April that Foxe suggested Gibson had earlier put forth. It admitted that
the sacrament of the altar was the real body and blood of Christ, but it did not define
whether Christ's presence in the sacrament was spiritual or corporal. It also had no
oath. This time, however, Gibson opened his submission by proclaiming that he held
his beliefs "for an infallible and undoubted Truth" from God, "without whose power
no man can speak the Truth: And therefore without it, must nedes be Lyers."61 After
making his statement on the presence of Christ in the sacrament, Gibson promised to
submit himself to the "Catholic Church of Christ" and be obedient to the king, queen,
and their officers "So far as I may lawfully be without Offence either to God or
Man."62 Hence, in this submission Gibson intensified his loyalty to the truth while at
the same time weakening an already equivocal submission by adding a conditional
clause.
Gibson's second submission was longer and more detailed, but it followed a
similar pattern. It was evidently a response to thirteen articles that Bonner had drawn
up for him. In it, Gibson admitted that the faith, religion, and service used then in
England "of them which are in part of the Church of Christ, and Members of his
Body" was lawful and just. This could be read either as a reference to the official
Marian church or to the underground Protestant churches depending on one's
definition of the true members of Christ. Gibson acknowledged that the service used
during Edward's reign was not perfect, but he added that he wished the services in
England under Mary "were also Faultless." He contended that auricular confession
was useful but not necessary. He allowed prayer to the saints, but he redefined saints
as "the which, through Faith, are sanctified in the Cloud of Jesus Christ, by the Holy
Ghost, and none other; and that as they are all Members of one Body, so have they
nede of Help one another." Concerning purgatory, he wrote: "if there be a People
departed, which are neither good nor bad; and so to be, are allowed of God, whereof as

61
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 122r, printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:402.
62
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 122r, printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:403.

359
yet I am ignorant, I protest then, I think them to abyde, til they be allowed of God,
either as good or bad, in such a Place as is neither good nor bad; 'till otherwise to be,
they are allowed of God." Rulers had power to designate fasting days "So that they do
it to the Edifying of their Church, and not to snare them withal." Rulers also had
power to punish their subjects, but not "for that which is not spoken, nor done."
Therefore, "how can he excuse himself of Fault, that use unlawful Rigour to any Man
for the secrecy of his Conscience?" Gibson concluded this submission by quoting
from Psalm 140 and 141:
The Proud have laid a Snare for me, and spred a Net abrode with Cordes; yea,
and set Trapps in my Way. But myne Eyes loke unto thee, O Lord, my God.
For in thee is my Trust. Oh! Cast not out my Soul. Keep me from the Snare,
which they have laid for me, and from the Trapps of wicked Doers. And let
the ungodly fall into their own Nets together, until I be gone by them.
Once again, Gibson was offering an oathless submission full of equivocal phrases and
conditions that allowed him to maintain his loyalty to the truth.
Gibson's third submission was probably his last. It mirrored his previous
submission but all the equivocal phrases and conditional clauses were absent. It was a
straightforward, clear espousal of Roman Catholic belief and practice. It seems
Bonner had demanded Gibson respond to his thirteen articles without addition but
with a simple yes or no. The submission again was oathless, though in the last
article Gibson retracted his earlier position on the ex officio oath:
I have likewise thought, believed and spoken, that a Person offending or
trespassing by Words, or otherwise in Matter of Religion, Belief and Faith,
within any Bishop's Diocess of this Realm, and being called for the same
before the said Bishop, within whose Diocess he doth so offend or trespass,
though he were not there Originally born, is bound to make Answer thereunto,
yea, upon his Oath, if he be by the said Bishop or Ordinary so required.

This submission is printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:403-406. I have taken all
quotations from this printed version since the original manuscript is now, to my knowledge, lost.
64
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 99r. Strype printed this entire submission as well: Strype, Ecclesiastical
Memorials, 3: 407-409.
65
The submission opened, "Articles Given by the Bishop of London, to be confessed or denyed by
Richard Gybson, in his Answer to be made therunto, Yea or nay"; BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 99';
Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:407.
66
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 99r; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:409.

360
As was his practice, Gibson bookended the submission with quotations from the
psalms. Gibson opened this submission with Psalm 4: "O ye Sons, why will ye
blaspheme mine Honour? Why haue ye such Pleasure in Vanity, and seek after
fin

Lyes." Gibson concluded this submission by quoting Psalm 12: "O! that the Lord
would root out all deceitful Lips, and the Tongue that Speaketh proud Things. Which
say, our Tongue should prevail: We are they that ought to speak: Who is Lord over
us?"68 Could not the selection of these particular verses have been a device Gibson
employed to negate in his conscience the Roman Catholic doctrine that he confessed
in the body of this submission? Strype thought so, and he was probably right, for
Bonner was not satisfied with this submission either.6
Bonner officially recommenced the heresy proceedings against Gibson on
November 6, 1557. Bonner accused Gibson of heresy and of "refusying also to geue
an othe on a booke, and to make aunswere to such artcyles, as by thy sayd Ordinary
wer lawfully and duely obiected agaynst thee, concerning thy said heresies." Bonner
then called forth witnesses to attest to Gibson's heresy. Gibson, however, declined to
submit or acknowledge his guilt. A few days later, when Chancellor Darbishire
tendered him the ex officio oath, he again refused to swear "to aunswere vnto all
thinges the Byshoopes should commaunde him as Ordinarye. For he [Bonner] is not,
saith he [Gibson], mine Ordinary."71 At last, Bonner read his final sentence against
Gibson. Before turning Gibson over to the secular arm to be burned, Bonner gave him
one last exhortation to repent and save his soul. In response, Gibson "boldly"
protested that "he was contrary, and an enemy to them al in his mind and opinion,
although he had afore time kepte it secrete in minde for feare of the lawe."72 Gibson
thus admitted his previous use of equivocation and dissimulation but elected to stand

7
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 99r. Strype's version, however, commences, "O ye Sons of men"; Strype,
Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:407.
68
BL Harleian MS. 425, fol. 99r; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:409.
69
Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:407.
70
Foxe,^M(1563), 1653.
71
Foxe,/lM(1563), 1655.
72
Foxe,^M(1563), 1655.

361
firm and suffer death rather than compromise his conscience any more. He was
burned at the end of November.73
Richard Gibson is an example of a Marian Protestant who was willing to
dissimulate and hide his true beliefs, but only to a certain extent. He was willing to
make use of equivocal words, conditional clauses, and verses that nullified the content
of his submission. He was not, however, willing to lie directly even if that meant
forfeiting his life. Indeed, at the same time as he was practicing dissimulation, he
continued to defend the sanctity of the truth and to condemn lying. Moreover, Gibson
was unwilling to practice his equivocal dissimulation under oath. Like the Henrician
Protestants of the 1540s, none of his submissions included an oath. Each time Bonner
attempted to administer to Gibson the ex officio oath that would have bound him to
answer fully and truthfully, Gibson simply refused. This was probably because
Gibson knew that once he was bound under oath, it would be much harder to practice
equivocation without eventually violating his oath. Yet Gibson's motivation for
refusing to take the ex officio oath was most likely not only a fear of perjury, but also a
stalling strategy. By not swearing the oath, Gibson was free to refuse to respond to
Bonner's questions on his beliefs. Bonner thus had no evidence with which to
condemn Gibson until Bonner rounded up witnesses a half a year later. It is
significant that in Gibson's penultimate submission, he never denied that he held
heretical beliefs. He attacked Bonner for imprisoning him for "that which is not
spoken, nor done" but held simply in "the secrecy of his conscience." Gibson was
willing to conceal his beliefs but not to admit or deny them. Equivocation allowed
him to put forth a set of beliefs that were neither heretical nor offensive to his
conscience. The ex officio oath was so dangerous to Gibson because it would have
forced him to reveal his beliefs under constraints that precluded equivocation. He
would have had to respond fully and truthfully to the specific, unambiguous questions
of Bonner, thereby having to choose between admitting his beliefs and denying the
truth or denying his beliefs and forswearing himself.
73
Foxe wrote that Gibson and two others, "being thus appointed to the slaughter, wer the xii. day after
theyr condemnation (whiche was the xviii. day of the said moneth of Nouember) burnt in Smithfield in
London"; Foxe, ^M(1563), 1656. The wording of the phrase makes it uncertain whether Gibson was
burned on November 18 or November 30.

362
 The other noteworthy aspect of Gibson's example is that his dissimulation did
not work. Bonner did not allow it. Bonner was well aware of the power of
equivocation and conditional clauses. Indeed, under Edward VI, Bonner himself had
(unsuccessfully) attempted to use a conditional protestation to placate the Protestant
regime while at the same time saving his conscience.7 Other Marian prelates were
also aware of the practice of equivocation. For example, the abjurations made before
Dr. Michael Dunning in Norwich contained a phrase obviously designed to preclude
equivocation: "In whiche wordes by me now spoken & meane ne vnderstonde anye
other sence then hathe been here expounded and declared."75 Any self-respecting
Catholic prelate could not in good conscience allow an abjuration that he knew was
equivocal, for the equivocation signified that the heretic had not really repented his
heresy. The heretic was still a threat to rest of the flock and his own soul remained in
danger of damnation. Moreover, a mild or ambiguous abjuration was of little
propaganda value. The English Catholic hierarchy had learned the lesson taught to
them by Bilney and Crome.
This is clear when we examine the example of Sir John Cheke. Cheke was a
learned Protestant scholar who had been the chief tutor of Edward VI. When Mary
first ascended to power, he fled into exile but was eventually captured on the continent
and returned to England for trial. He initially refused to recant, but then he decided to
compromise. On July 15, 1556, Cheke gathered together a collection of quotations
from the church fathers that suggested the carnal presence of Christ in the sacrament.
At the bottom of this collection Cheke wrote: "in this cause and in all the rest I profess
myself to say and believe what the holy and Catholic Church of Christ holds."76 He
then signed this oathless submission. At the same time he wrote a letter to Queen
Mary and a letter to Cardinal Pole professing his loyalty and begging that this

Burnet, History of the Reformation, 2:86-87. Foxe wrote that Bonner exclaimed: "I do receiue these
Injunctions and Homilies with this protestation, that I will obserue them, if they be not contrarye and
repugnaunt to Gods lawe, and the statutes and ordinaunce of the Church, and immediately added with
an othe, that he neuer reade the sayde Homilies and Iniunctions"; Foxe, AM(1583), 1309.
75
BL Harleian MS. 421, fols. 173v, 175v, 183r-184r.
76
"Itaque in hac Causa, & in reliquis omnibus idem me profiteor dicere & sentire, quod Sancta Christi
& Catholica tenet Ecclesia"; BL Lansdowne MS. 3, fol. 115r, printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical
Memorials, vol. 3, App., 186-187.

363
submission would suffice. It did not. On October 4, Cheke was forced to make a
humiliating recantation before the queen at St. James' Court. John Feckenham, Dean
of St. Paul's Cathedral, opened the proceedings with a sermon preaching how Cheke,
in contrast to the Protestant martyrs, was the only Protestant to do a true penance
before God "in pluckinge of the visirde of all fayned and counterteite penaunce."78
Cheke then made his recantation, an abject, detailed, and unambiguous admittance of
guilt that included an explicit acknowledgment of the corporal presence of Christ in
the sacrament and of papal authority.79 John Mason reported that this recantation was
"a playne, and honnest, and a clere declaracon of his Religion."80 But even this was
not enough. According to Strype, Cardinal Pole wrote yet another recantation for
Cheke and made him read it at court, for Cheke had been instrumental in spreading
Protestantism at court under Henry and Edward.81 This recantation was exceedingly
long and tedious. It recounted Cheke's fall from Catholicism into heresy and then
narrated his return. Next, "for an assur'ed token, that I say with my Mouth, that which
I thinke with my Heart," Cheke read the same abjuration (including a strong oath)
Berengarius had made rejecting a strictly spiritual interpretation of Christ's presence
in the sacrament. Cheke concluded this recantation with a warning against a certain
pernicious counsel:
which to follow is more odious to God, than to profess openly the false
opinion; that is, if they should, for policy sake, shew themselves to follow the
Prince's opinion, which is Catholic; and to think otherwise in their mind of
God: which we have seen hath lighted upon some already: for nihil est
occultum, quod non revelabitur. [nothing is secret that will not be revealed]
The government was using Cheke's recantations as a form of propaganda. The regime
rejected Cheke's plea for a private, equivocal submission and forced him to make
multiple public recantations that were unambiguous and explicitly rejected any kind of
77
BL Additional MS. 32091, fol. 150r; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 3, App., 188-189.
78
BL Harleian MS 353, fol. 181r v.
79
BL Harleian MS 353, fols. 18T-183r.
80
BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C vii, fol. 200r.
81
Strype, The Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, Kt. First Instructor, Afterwards Secretary of State, to
King Edward VI. One of the Great Restorers of Good Learning and True Religion in this Kingdom.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), 120.
82
Strype, Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke 123. The original recantation of Berengarius is C1C, De
cons. D. 2 c. 42, Friedberg, 1:1328-1329.
83
Strype, Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, 126.

364
equivocation. They even used Cheke's recantations as a platform to warn other
Nicodemites of the dangers of dissimulation! Cheke's recantations were, in a sense,
the government's answer to the barrage of propaganda generated through the
martyrdoms of the leading Protestants.84
Gibson and Cheke had attempted to win their liberty through vague and
equivocal submissions, but their attempts had failed. Gibson faced the flames and
Cheke gave in completely. What about those who were successful in their
equivocation? How did they deal with the moral ramifications of their dissimulation?
Robert Watson clearly felt he had to justify his behavior. Watson was an imprisoned
Protestant pastor from Norwich who secured his release in 1555 by making an
equivocal submission. When the authorities sought him out a second time, he fled to
the continent and wrote a Latin account of his ordeal.85 From the very beginning of
his narrative, Watson stressed his opposition to dissimulation. When Mary first
ascended, Watson refused to go to mass. When asked why, he first responded that he
was busy with his prayers but then, "not wanting to dissimulate further," he declared
that he was unable to be at mass without being a partner of impiety. Thrown into
prison, he initially refused to recant. When Dr. Barret attempted to convince him to
attend mass, Watson accused Barret of dissimulation and claimed, "I and those like me
. . . professing the one truth of his [Christ's] gospel. . . can not deceive the eyes of

After his recantations, Cheke was released from prison and given a substantial grant of freehold land
in Devon and Somerset in exchange for his other lands. He died on September 13, 1557. In the
margins of one of his recantations, Archbishop Parker later wrote, "Homines sumus,"[We are but men];
Strype, Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, 128.
85
Robert Watson, Aetiologi a Roberti Watsoni Angli, in qua explicatur, quare deprehensus annum
vnum & menses pene quatur, propter Euangelium incarceratus fuit: quenam inter ipsum & eius
Antagonistas in carcere habita fuit disceptatio, de Transubstantiatione & reali Christi praesentia in
Sacramento: & quo pacto corpore incolumi & illibata conscientia tandem expediuit eum Dominus
(tEmdem], [1556]). I am grateful to Dr. Thomas Freeman for pointing out this source to me and
suggesting its relevance to my dissertation. The fact that Watson published his account in Latin and not
English means that he sought to justify his behavior before an international audience of divines. It was
propaganda but propaganda aimed at his fellow exiles; Pettegree, "The English Church at Emden," in
his Marian Protestantism, 26.
86
"Et ego diutius dissimulare nequiens, dixi, me non posses Missae interesse, illam approbando, nisi
eius impietatis particeps essem, & eo grauiori sceleri me obnoxium fore putabam, quo conscienta mea
verbo Dei instructa, ei tantopere renitebatur"; Watson, Aetiologi, sig. A7r.

365
God with a trick, neither can we ridicule his law with impunity." Watson added that
God provided them with the strength to "stand firm, and not forsake the burden of the
8
cross under words." John Christopherson, the dean of Norwich, eventually asked
him to subscribe to the following statement:
I beleve and confesse that the bread and wyne in the Eucharist, throughe the
omnipotencye of God's woord, pronounced by the Priest, are turned into the
body and bloud of Christ; and after consecration under the formes of bread and
wyne remaineth the true body and bloud of Christ, and no other substance
besides the substance of the body and bloud above said.
This statement was unambiguously Catholic and Watson refused to sign it three times.
Finally, he subscribed, but not simply. He added the condition: "To al these I doo
assent and subscribe, so far as they are grounded upon God's woord, and in such sense
as they are understanded of the catholike church, and the holy fathers." Foxe must
have recognized the equivocal nature of this submission, for he wrote: "Whether this
was a recantation or subscription, here I doo not discusse." ' Watson, however,
averred that this submission was not detrimental to the truth: "And I believed my
subscription to have nothing of trickery or impiety, nor of the denial of Peter . . .
unless the infirmity of judgment deceives me." After his subscription, Watson was
released. Yet John Young, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, realized that Watson's
subscription "was not simple, but partly and in a certain way" and secured orders for

"Ego & mei similes inepti, vnicam fidem, vnicam conscientiam habentes, vnum solum ac verum
Deum, et quem misit Iesum Christi, atque vnicam Euangelij eius veritatem profitentes multiformi
conscientia destituti, fidem nostram ingenue fatemur interrogati nee dissimulamus veriti ne nobis
obuemat quod quod ait Christus. . . . quoquo nullo fuco oculos Dei queamus fallere, nee legem eius
ludificare impune: bonitate eius freti, quid sibi fidentes non deferit, veritatem eius intrepide fatemur";
Watson, Aetiologi, sigs. B3v-B4r.
88
"Ineffabili haud dubie gaudio perfundimur, quam tantum diuinitus nobis suppetat roboris, vt
valeamus consistere, nee sub verbi crucis onere deficere"; Watson, Aetiologi, sig. B4V.
89
"Credo & confiteor, panem & vinum, omnipotentia berbi diuini ex ore sacerdotis prolati, in verum
corpus Christi & verum eius sanguinem mutari, & eadem post consecrationem, vere & essetialiter sub
speciebus panis & vini contineri, nullamque aliam in eucharistia substantiam, quam ipsius coporis &
sanguinis Christi remanere"; Watson, Aetiologi, sig. G3r. The above translation is that of John Foxe,
^M(1563), 1679.
90
"His eatenus assentior, quatenus verbo Dei nituntur, eoque sensu quo sunt ab Ecclesia catholic, &
Sanctis patribus intellecta"; Watson, Aetiologi, sig. G3V. The above translation is that of Foxe, AM
(1563), 1679.
91
Foxe, ^M(1563), 1679.
92
"Hanc itaq; meam subscriptionem, nihil credidi habere fuci aut impietatis, nihilve Petrinae
abnegationis, vt ne nunc quidem, nisi me prorsus fallat indicij infirmitas, credere debeo"; Watson,
Aetiologi, sig. G4r.

366
his re-arrest. When Young realized that Watson had fled and that he would no
longer be able to win a stronger recantation from Watson, Young preached a sermon
in which he read Watson's recantation and exclaimed that no matter what Watson's
friends said, Watson had truly recanted his beliefs.94 Young spun Watson's
conditional submission as a true abjuration. The primary purpose of Watson's
narrative was to refute Young's claim. Accordingly, he spent the rest of Aetiologi
showing that God's word, the Catholic Church, and holy fathers did not support
transubstantiation in order to demonstrate that his conditional subscription was not a
recantation. Watson's Aetiologi shows how equivocal recantations were important to
the propaganda campaigns of both Protestants and Catholics but for opposite reasons.
Watson felt bound to prove that his subscription had not betrayed the truth of the
Gospel. Young, conversely, used Watson's subscription to argue that another
prominent Protestant had recanted his beliefs.
Thus, for Protestants, equivocal recantations were a liability, if not to their
consciences, at least to their propaganda campaign. They had to spin the story of their
recantation in such a way as to show that they had not betrayed their beliefs. This also
comes out in the story of the recantation of Thomas Rose. Rose was a zealous
Protestant preacher who traced his Evangelical leanings all the way back to Thomas
Bilney.95 On January 1, 1555 Rose (along with many members of his underground
Protestant congregation) were arrested for heresy. After four months in the Tower and
a confrontation with Bishop Gardiner, Rose was sent up to Norwich to be tried by
Bishop John Hopton. On June 13, 1555, Rose signed the following submission that is
preserved in the Norfolk Record office: "That I from the botompe of my hart do
confesse that after the wordes of consecracion spoken by the ministre that in the St.
blyssed Sacrament of thaltar Christ is the secunde person is [sic] reallye present. Per
me Thomam Rose." This submission won Rose a temporary release of which he

93
"non fuerit simplex, sed ex parte & quodam modo"; Watson, Aetiologi, sig. G5r.
"Haec est watsoni palinodia, sed amici eius aiunt, ilium palinodiam non cecinisses sung: at re vera es
calculi reductio: quod vel hoc argumento vobis probauero. Sic enim subscripsit"; Watson, Aetiologi,
sig. G6r.
95
For information on Rose's early career, see John Fines, "Rose, Thomas (b. 1499/1500, d. in or after
1576)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
96
Norfolk Record Office, DN/ACT 7, book 8, fol. 267r.

367
took advantage and fled to the continent. His submission was mild. It contained no
oath and allowed for a strictly spiritual interpretation of Christ's presence in the
sacrament. Yet some Roman Catholics evidently claimed that Rose had recanted.9
Rose thus felt it necessary to justify himself further, and in Elizabeth's reign he wrote
a letter to John Foxe narrating the events of 1555, which Foxe included in the 1576
and 1583 versions of Acts and Monuments .10
In his narration, Rose attempted to present an idealized version of events, a
version in which he stood firm in the truth. For example, he boldly proclaimed to the
Hopton's chancellor: "I have not come hither to lie, but to die (if God see it good), in
defense of that which I have said." He also forthrightly admitted to preaching "that
the real, natural, and substantial presence of Christ is not in the sacrament of the
altar."1 He admitted that he had promised to submit to the laws for the
"establishment of Christ's true religion" but made sure that his readers understood that
he did so insofar as they were according to the "faith and doctrine of the holy
patriarchs and prophetes, Jesus Christ, and his holy apostles, with the faithful fathers
of Christ's primitive Church."102 Concerning his submission, Rose justified it by
explaining how he was able to convince Hopton's chaplains and Dr. Barret that the
presence of Christ in the sacrament did not consist of blood, bones, hair, and nails.
Rose felt this was a victory and decided to make a submission in order to encourage
the chaplains and Dr. Barret in this conclusion: "And the more quietly to bring them to
confess that openly, which unto me had granted privately, I granted them according
the Scriptures, and my former protestation, a presence, although not as they
supposed." This was all Rose told about his submission. From his account, we
would assume that Rose's submission was full of conditional clauses, which of course

97
According to Rose, Bishop Hopton of Norwich was not particularly keen to execute him and may
have deliberately given Rose an opportunity to escape; Foxe, AM (1576), 1980.
98
John Fines is incorrect in his assertion that Rose's abjuration involved "an oath of belief in the real
presence"; John Fines, A Biographical Register of Early English Protestants and Others Opposed to the
Roman Catholic Church (Sutton Courteney Press, 1985), 2:R12.
99
Rose admitted this. See the quotation by him on this page.
100
Foxe, AM (1576), 1978-1981, (1583), 2083-2086.
101
Foxe, J M (Townsend), 8:586.
" This satisfied Hopton, but the bishop's chancellor saw through Watson's protestation and exclaimed,
"I think you do but feign"; Foxe, AM (Townsend), 8:586
103
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 8:588. See a similar quote on 589.

368
it was not. Rose ended his account by averring: "And thus I ended; which the papists
most maliciously and slanderously named a recantation; which 1 never meant, nor
thought (as God knoweth)."104 So even though Rose's submission did not violate his
conscience and conceded only a spiritual presence in the sacrament, the fact that he
had to explain his actions (and in an incomplete and careful manner!) and refute
Roman Catholic interpretations of it shows how an equivocal recantation was
potentially dangerous to the Protestant claim that they held firm to the truth.
The last set of recantations we will examine are those of Thomas Cranmer.
Cranmer's example is significant not only because he was the archbishop of
Canterbury and leader of English Protestantism, but also because his recantations
illustrate the prevalent themes of this chapter: a willingness to equivocate but not with
oaths, and the importance of such dissimulated recantations in the propaganda
campaigns of both Protestants and Catholics. Cranmer signed six different
recantations, the first dating from the end of January, 1556. In his first recantation, he
acknowledged papal authority "so far as God's laws and the laws and customs of this
realm will permit."105 This conditional clause, probably an echo of the proviso the
Convocation of Canterbury had attached to Henry VIII's title of supreme head in
1531, clearly mitigated the force of the submission. Yet even this conditional
submission troubled Cranmer, and he nullified it within twenty-four hours. His
second submission lacked any condition. It was vague and simple. He merely
submitted to the catholic church of Christ, the pope as supreme head, the king and
queen, and their laws. This submission also troubled Cranmer's conscience, and he
soon backed down, appealing at his degradation to a general council and citing reasons
why he could not accept papal authority.I07 In his third submission, he promised to be
obedient to the king and queen and all their laws (including papal supremacy) but
again commended his "book"that is, his appealto the judgment of the next general

104
Foxe,^M(Townsend), 8:589.
All the Submissions and Recantations of Thomas Cranmer, late Archbishop of Canterbury, truly set
forth both in Latin and English, agreeable to the Originals, written and subscribed with his own hand,
in Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 563.
106
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996),
590.
107
MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 590-593.

369
council.108 Bonner rejected this submission. Cranmer's fourth submission was once
again highly equivocal and exploited the ambiguity of the term "Catholic church".
Cranmer promised to believe all points and articles of the Christian religion, including
the sacraments, "as the said catholic church doth and hath believed from the beginning
of christian religion."109 Again, this submission was unsatisfactory to the Marian
prelacy.
Thus far, Cranmer himself had composed all his submissions. They were
equivocal but none of them included an oath. Indeed, in Cranmer's appeal to the
general council after his second submission, he had cited his oath of supremacy to
Henry VIII as a reason why he could not accept papal supremacy.'10 Cranmer's fifth
recantation, conversely, was almost certainly composed by the Spanish Dominican
friar Villagarcia.''' This recantation was clear and detailed. It rejected the heresies of
Luther and Zwingli and acknowledged papal authority, transubstantiation, and
purgatory. Moreover, it concluded with an unequivocal oath: "And God is my
witness, that I have not done this for favour or fear of any person, but willingly, and of
mine own mind, as well to the discharge of mine own conscience, as to the instruction
of others."" 2 The friars were so happy with this submission that they immediately
published a text of it, but its fate was short lived. This time it was the Privy Council
who revoked this recantation, most likely because the inclusion of the names of two
foreigners (Friars de Soto and Villagarcia) on the printed recantation caused a stir in
the highly xenophobic atmosphere of Marian London. " 3 Cranmer's sixth submission
was the most prolix and abject. We do not know who wrote it, but it was probably not
14
Cranmer. In it, Cranmer compared himself to the thief who repented to Christ on
the cross, Cranmer confessed his crimes (specifically his role in securing Henry's

1 8
MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 593; Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 563.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 563.
See above.
1
'' This point is convincingly argued by MacCulloch in his Thomas Cranmer, 594.
112
The translation quoted above is that of Foxe, AM(Townsend), 8:82. The original Latin reads, "et
testor Deum optimum maximumque, haec in nullius gratiam, nullius metu a me confessa, sed ex animo
et libentissime, ut meae et aliorum simul conscientiis consulam et prospiciam"; Miscellaneous Writings
and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 564.
MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 596.
MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 598. Strype very plausibly suggested that Cardinal Pole drew it up.
The prolix and tortuous Latin of the recantation is certainly reminiscent of Pole's style.

370
divorce and his book denying the real presence in the Eucharist), and he asked
forgiveness of the pope and pardon of the king and queen. It included no oath.
Indeed, it read more like a confession designed to edify the public than a standard
abjuration. Yet even this submission was not read publicly by Cranmer.
The piece de resistance of Cranmer's submission was the public discourse he
gave just before his execution. Cranmer drew it up in advance, and it is likely that the
regime proof-read the text and approved it. The climax of this discourse dealt
squarely with Cranmer's practice of dissimulation. Cranmer first confessed: "And
now, forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life . . . I shall therefore declare
unto you my very faith how I believe, without any colour of dissimulation; for now is
no time to dissemble, whatsoever I have said or written in the past."116 After briefly
stating that he believed in God and all the articles of Christian faith, Cranmer
continued: "And now I come to the great thing, which so much troubleth my
conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life, and that is the
setting abroad a writing contrary to the truth."" 7 The original discourse Cranmer
drew up and the one published by the regime as propaganda specified that it was all of
Cranmer's writings on the Eucharist published after the death of Henry VIII that so
troubled his conscience and were contrary to the truth.' l8 But Cranmer departed from
his written text. In his actual speech, Cranmer declared:
now here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand, contrary to the
truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my
life if it might be; and that is, all such bills and papers which I have written or
signed with my hand since my degradation; wherein I have written many
things untrue.119
Cranmer revoked all his recantations. He had dissembled when writing them in an
attempt to save his life. The similarities and differences between the text published by
the regime and the words Cranmer actually said are revealing. On one hand, both

115
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 564-565.
116
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 566; Foxe, AM (Townsend), 8:88.
117
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 8:88. The original document Cranmer drew up for the authorities varied in
that it read: "setting abroad untrue books and writings"; Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas
Cranmer, 566.
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, 566.
119
Foxe, AM (Townsend), 8:88.

371
versions decried dissimulation and stressed the importance of remaining loyal to the
truth. On the other hand, the two versions diverged over the nature of Cranmer's
dissimulation and the substance of the truth. The Marian regime declared that
Cranmer's Protestantism under Henry VIII and Edward VI was dissimulated and
untrue. Cranmer proclaimed that his capitulations to Roman Catholicism were
dissimulated and untrue. For both sides, however, it was essential to connect their
beliefs and practices to truth and deprecate their opponents as deceptive and false. By
the reign of Mary Tudor, both Protestants and Catholics had come to the realization of
the immense propaganda value immanent in the public spectacle (be it a burning or a
recantation) that concluded a heresy trial.

Conclusion
The final development in the Protestant employment of oaths and
dissimulation in heresy trials came after the death of Henry VIII. Under Edward VI,
Protestant theory on the sanctity of oaths had achieved its mature position. Under
Mary, Protestant practice, at least among the martyrs and exiles, finally lined up with
their theory. Far from forswearing themselves to save their lives, the Marian martyrs
cited the sanctity of the oath of supremacy as a reason why they could not submit to
the re-establishment of papal authority. Furthermore, taking the moral high ground oh
oaths allowed them to paint their Roman Catholic counterparts as perjurers. These
Protestants boldly proclaimed the truth of the gospel and refused to compromise their
message through the practice of any kind of dissimulation, including oathless
equivocation. Other Marian Protestants, however, continued to practice equivocation,
but just like during the end of Henry's reign, they did not do so under oath. What had
changed was that under Mary, Protestant equivocators felt bound to explain and
excuse their equivocation in order to demonstrate that they had not actually abandoned
the truth of the gospel. Apostasy became associated with false religion. When one
recanted a set of beliefs, even if the recantation was dissimulated, the abjuration
revealed the falsity of the recanted beliefs. Recantations were thus major vehicles of
propaganda. Catholics sought to exploit them and Protestants sought to spin them in

372
ways that minimized their damage. In an atmosphere of crystallized confessional
boundaries, perjury was deadly and any kind of dissimulationeven oathless
equivocationwas dangerous.
The development of the Protestant employment of oaths and dissimulation in
heresy trials, particularly Protestants practical elevation of oaths and increasingly
hostile attitude toward dissimulation, thus paralleled the confessionalization of
England. Fluidity and ambiguity coincided with the practice of perjury and
dissimulation. As religious boundaries became more definite, truth became more solid
and the duty to uphold the truth without compromise became more pressing. It is no
coincidence that the quantity of and references to oathsthe strongest guarantor of the
truthincreased during the sixteenth century, a time when the very nature of the truth
of God was most contested.
Upon the death of Mary in 1557, the stage was set for a religious confrontation
between Protestants and Roman Catholics wherein oaths were a primary weapon. The
confessional battle lines had been drawn, and the experiences of the last twenty-five
years had brought oaths to the forefront of the minds of sixteenth-century Englishmen.
Protestant propaganda had progressively placed more and more emphasis on the
sanctity of oaths. Under Mary, this propaganda had been backed up by practice.
Tactically experienced in the administrative capacity of oaths as a means to bind the
political nation under Henry, armed with arguments on the gravity of perjury that
blossomed under Edward, and fortified with examples of Marian martyrs electing the
stake rather than deciding to forswear their beliefs, Protestants were well prepared to
wield that "strongest bond of conscience" against their enemies once they had arrived
in a position of power. On the other side, Catholics were also aware of the strength of
oaths and the hazards of perjury. Their experience negotiating Protestant abjurations
had taught them the power of a public confession, especially one confirmed by an
oath. Furthermore, the embarrassment under Mary of their obvious perjury in
swearing the Henrician oath of supremacya perjury well publicized by Protestants
cautioned them against publicly swearing against their faith again in the future. As the
Reformation in England entered a new phrase, Protestants were primed to attack and

373
Catholics were prepared for defense. Let us now examine the role of oaths in the
Elizabethan battle.

374
 Section IV: Oaths and Religion under Elizabeth I
On June 15, 1570 Elizabeth issued a royal proclamation: "Whereas certain
rumours are carried and spread abroad among sundry her majesty's subjects, that her
majesty hath caused, or will hereafter cause, inquisition and examination to be had of
men's consciences in matters of religion; her majesty would have it known, that such
reports are utterly untrue." Elizabeth admitted that some people had indeed been
called before the Privy Council and "treated withal upon some matter of religion," but
these people brought it upon themselves "in that they have first manifestly broken the
laws established for religion, in not coming at all to the church, to common prayer, and
divine service." As long her subjects followed her laws and went to church,
Elizabeth's intent was "not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or
examination of their consciences in causes of religion; but will accept and entreat them
as her good and obedient subjects."1 Francis Bacon echoed Elizabeth's proclamation
when he summarized her policy regarding the enforcement of religion:
I find her Majesty's proceedings generally to have been grounded upon two
principles: the one, That consciences are not to be forced, but to be won and
reduced by force of truth, by the aid of time, and the use of all good means of
instruction or persuasion: the other, that causes of conscience when they
exceed their bounds, and prove to be matter of faction, lose their nature.
Bacon then famously declared: "Her majesty not liking to make windows into men's
hearts and secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt
express acts and affirmations."2
Elizabeth, then, claimed to eschew the practice of coercing people's
consciences. She allowed liberty of conscience, just not liberty of practice. As long as
her subjects went to church and kept their mouths shut, they could believe whatever
they wanted. Yet when her subjects broke her laws and refused to go to church, then
and only then was she willing to inquire into their consciences. Elizabeth would not

1
Elizabeth's royal proclamation is printed in John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment
of Religion, and Other Various Occurrences in the Church of England, During Queen Elizabeth's
Happy Reign: Together with an Appendix of Original Papers of State, Records, and Letters, vol. 13 of
Strype's Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 2:371-372. A manuscript version of this proclamation
is N ASP 12/72, fol. 3T V .
" Francis Bacon, Works, 5:428-429, quoted in William P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English
Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1968), 329-330.

375
search the minds of her subjects concerning their faith, but she did insist that they
attend the services of the Church of England. Historians have pointed out the
hypocrisy of this logic. Wallace MacCaffrey wrote: "What Burghley and his mistress
refused to admit was that, for Catholics, liturgy gave voice to the central doctrines of
the faith." Alexandra Walsham echoed MacCaffrey's point: "For individuals
committed to a religion which hinged upon the performance of ritual, the obligation to
participate in Protestant worship was itself 'a very touchstone of triall', a kind of oath
which they were required to swear not with their lips but with their limbs."
Walsham's quote raises an even knottier challenge to Elizabeth's logic than
simply the point that attendance at a Protestant church service was in and of itself a
matter of conscience, for Elizabeth also famously required many of her subjects to
swear religious oaths during her reign. Oaths were, almost by definition, matters of
conscience. Edward Sandys, for example, called an oath "the strongest bond of
conscience."5 Sir Edward Coke agreed, claiming that "an oath is so sacred and so
deeply concerneth the consciences of Christian men."6 Elizabeth certainly knew that
an oath gave access to the secrets of one's conscience. Indeed, the Elizabethan oath of
supremacy commenced, "I do utter, testify and declare in my conscience, that your
Majesty is the only Supreme Governor of this realm."7 So how did Elizabeth
reconcile the tendering of oaths with her claim that she did not intend to molest her
subjects "by any inquisition or examination of their consciences in causes of
religion"?
The most common oath that the Elizabethan regime employed was the oath of
supremacy. Parliament sanctioned the oath of supremacy in 1559 and proclaimed that
all current and future clergymen and lay officer holders must take it. In the oath of
supremacy, the swearer gave allegiance to Elizabeth and her heirs, acknowledged that

3
Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), 332.
4
Alexandra Walsham, "Ordeals of Conscience: Casuistry, Conformity and Confessional Identity in
Post-Reformation England," in Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, ed. Harald
E. Braun and Edward Vallance (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 36.
5
[E. Sandys], Enropae speculum (1629), 45, quoted in Spurr, '"The Strongest Bond of Concience':
Oaths and the Limits of Toleration in Early Modern England," in Contexts of Conscience, 151.
6
E. Coke, Institutes 77/(1648), c. 15, 165, quoted in Spurr, '"The Strongest Bond of Conscience'," 151.
7
See Appendix H, I. My italics.

376
Elizabeth was supreme governor of the realm, renounced all foreign jurisdictions, and
declared that no foreign prince or potentate had any "ecclesiasticall or spirituall"
authority in the realm. To reconcile the oath of supremacy to the Elizabeth's
propaganda, the Elizabethan regime maintained that the oath of supremacywhile
clearly a matter of consciencedid not deal with matters of religion. This was the
crown's policy from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. It is first evident in "An
admonition to simple men deceived by the malicious." Elizabeth attached this
admonition to the royal injunctions of 1559, which were then read and disseminated
during the royal visitation of the clergy of 1559 at the same time as the crown was
beginning to tender the oath of supremacy to select subjects. The admonition was
evidently the work of Sir William Cecil, since a draft of it survives in his hand among
the state papers. In this admonition, Elizabeth, having been informed that certain of
her subjects "by sinister persuasion and perverse construction induced to find some
scruple in the form of an oath," declared that she did not intend the oath of supremacy
to bestow on her any other powers than had been exercised by Henry and Edward.
Specifically, Elizabeth rejected that "the words of the said oath" allowed her to
"challenge authority and power of ministry of divine offices in the church." The oath
simply granted her "sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons" in her dominions
"of what estate, either ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be, so as no other foreign
power shall or ought to have superiority over them." Elizabeth was content that her
subjects "shall accept the same oath with this interpretation, sense, or meaning."9
In other words, Elizabeth was proclaiming that the oath of supremacy did not
give her any novel religious power. Rather, it confirmed her sovereignty over all her
subjects, some of whom happened to be ecclesiastical. Bishop Home of Winchester
was, according to Abbot Feckenham, even more specific in his gloss of the
admonition. Home claimed that the oath of supremacy did not grant Elizabeth the

8
NA SP12/15, fol. 42r (Cal SP Dom, XV 27); Correspondence of Matthew Parker, D.D. Archbishop of
Canterbury. Comprising Letters Written by and to Him, From A.D. 1535, to His Death, A.D. 1575, ed.
John Bruce, PS, vol. 33 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853) 479; Henry Gee, Elizabethan
Clergy and the Settlement of Religion, 1558-1564 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1898), 43.
9
The "admonition" is printed in Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 62-63 and Walter Howard Frere (ed.),
Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation (London: Longman, Green, and
Co., 1910), 3:25-27.

377
power to preach the word of God, administer the sacraments, or excommunicate,
though Home did allow Elizabeth power to correct "al maner errours, heresies,
schismes, abuses, offences, contemptes, and enormities."10 The admonition, then,
limited the extent to which the oath of supremacy authorized Elizabeth to deal in
religious matters. Not all Catholics bought this argument. Thomas Stapleton, for
example, observed that the admonition clashed with the oath of supremacy since the
oath named Elizabeth to be supreme governor in causes ecclesiastical in general, while
the admonition then claimed there were some ecclesiastical causes in which Elizabeth
could not interfere.1' But regardless of whether the interpretation of the oath of
supremacy put forth in the admonition and espoused by Home legitimately agreed
with the text of the oath of supremacy, it seems clear that the purpose of the
admonition was to limit the religious significance of the oath of supremacy and
portray it as a political device, thereby making it more acceptable to those who had
issues of conscience.
This same interpretation of the oath of supremacy was declared in the
Parliament of 1563. When a bill was presented increasing the penalties for refusing
the oath of supremacy, Lord Montague and Sir Robert Atkinson gave speeches against
it in the House of Lords and Commons respectively. Montague claimed that because
the doctrine of Protestants was uncertain, men should not be forced to take it as
certain, and thus Protestants were "not to seek to force and strain men to do, or
believe, by compulsion, that they believe not; and not to swear, and make God witness
of their lie."12 Similarly, Atkinson argued that "it was yet never seene that a man in
such case was bound to discover his conscience upon his othe." Since the coming of
Christ, the worst punishment for a religious matter was excommunication, "For

Robert Home, An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe ofWynchester, to a booke entituled, "The
Declaration ofsvche scruples, and states of conscience, touchinge the othe of supremacy, as M. lohn
Fekenham, by wrytinge did deliuer vnto the L. Bishop of Winchester, with his resolutions made
thereunto (1566), fols. 102v-103r.
Thomas Stapleton, A counterblast to M. Homes vayne blaste against M. Fekenham : Wherein is set
forthe: a full reply to M. Homes Answer, and to euery part therof made, against the declaration of my
L. Abbat of Westminster, M. Fekenham, touching, the Othe of Supremacy (Louvrain, 1567), fol. 84r"v.
12
Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 1:443.

378
religion, say they, must sinke in by perswasion; it cannot be pressed in by violence."
To these speeches, an unidentified member of Parliament responded: "the contents of
the oath is an acknowledging of the superiority in the prince, and promise of
allegiance; which is the duty of every subject, as a subject, in temporal causes, and
toucheth no spiritual thing. . . . There is no other thing, in effect, comprised in the
oath" than to acknowledge Elizabeth "queen of England over all her people." Any
person who refused to swear the oath was a traitor, and the oath was "not matter of
heresy or doctrine."14 The majority of the members of Parliament must have accepted
this argument since they passed the bill. The official position was that the oath of
supremacy was strictly a political matter. Swearers were not forced in it to disclose
the secrets of their conscience in matters of religion.
If this was the case, we would expect the Elizabethan regime to have tendered
the oath of supremacy widely. Indeed, most historians have assumed that Elizabeth
did administer it to all clergymen and lay office holders. Chapter ten, however,
contends that the oath of supremacy was actually used quite sparingly during
Elizabeth's reign. A careful reading of the surviving sources suggests that Elizabeth
tendered an oathless subscription rather than the oath of supremacy to many of her
subjects. Why did Elizabeth not administer the oath of supremacy extensively? Was it
because of issues of religion or conscience? By reconstructing exactly how Elizabeth
employed the oath of supremacy, namely to whom the regime administered it and
when, the Elizabethan regime's strategy (why the regime did what it did) in using the
oath of supremacy will become apparent. As we shall see, the plan of Parliament and
the Privy Council for the oath of supremacy was not necessarily shared by Elizabeth.
Chapter eleven then explores the other state oaths of Elizabeth's reign. After
the oath of supremacy, the most prevalent oath was the ex officio oath, an oath of
interrogation that bound the swearer to answer truthfully whatever questions followed
the oath. We have seen that this oath was a prominent part of Henrician and Marian
heresy trials, and Elizabeth continued the trend by employing it against religious
1
T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, Vol 1 1558-1581 (Leicester:
Leicester University Press, 1981), 1:97-98.
This speech is preserved in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 1:458-459. He does not specify if it
was delivered in the House of Lords or the House of Commons.

379
dissidents. The Elizabethan regime tendered the ex officio oath to Roman Catholic
priests and obstinate recusants. After 1584, Archbishop Whitgift and the Court of
High Commission likewise administered it to Puritan nonconformists. In addition to
the two official oaths of Elizabeth's reign (supremacy and ex officio), the Elizabethan
regime employed two other, unofficial oaths, a bond of association and an oath of
allegiance. These oaths were partly a response to the perceived insufficiency of the
oath of supremacy, especially the need to devise an oath that more clearly separated
religious preference from political loyalty and thus guaranteed allegiance to the queen
no matter what the swearer thought of Protestant doctrine and liturgy. (Those who
advocated the use of these oaths implicitly recognized that the oath of supremacy
could be interpreted as dealing in matters of religion.) All three of these oathsthe ex
officio oath, the bond of association, and the oath of allegiancewere controversial.
Chapter eleven explores the struggles within the Elizabethan regime over the use of
these oaths. In doing so, it confirms the hypothesis raised in chapter ten about the
discrepancy between Elizabeth's strategy of employing oaths and that of her chief
councilors and lesser magistrates.
Chapter twelve concludes the dissertation by exploring the opposition to the
Elizabethan state oaths from outside the regime. As with the oath of supremacy, the
Elizabethan regime tried to maintain that the ex officio oath did not inquire into the
swearer's conscience in matters of religion. For example, in his great work of
propaganda The Execution of Justice, Sir William Cecil wrote of the government's
interrogation (under oath) of seminary priests: "yet without charging them in their
consciences or otherwise by any inquisition to bring them into danger of any capital
law, so as no one was called to any capital or bloody question upon matters of
religion."15 Nevertheless, both Roman Catholics who eschewed the oath of

15
William Cecil and William Allen, The Execution of Justice in England by William Cecil and A True,
Sincere, and Modest Defense of English Catholics by William Allen, ed. Robert M. Kingdon (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), 11. My italics. A similar concern is evident in Elizabeth's
instructions to commissioners of recusants in 1591: "you shall not presse any person to answeare to any
questions of their conscience for matters of Religion, otherwise then to cause them answere, whether
they doe vsually come to the Church, and why they doe not and if you shall perceive that they are
wilfull Recusants"; SP12/240, fol. 72r (Cal SP Dom, CCXL43). The commissioners were instructed to

380
supremacy and Puritan opponents of the ex officio oath built their religious arguments
against these oaths around the concept of conscience. But by citing the sanctity of
conscience, these Catholic and Puritan writers were not contending that these oaths
wrongfully inquired into their consciences in religious matters. Instead, they
proclaimed that they could not take these oaths because their consciences so valued
the majesty of God's name. Rather than refuting the government's propaganda on the
oath of supremacy and the ex officio oath, these opponents assimilated, intensified, and
then redeployed in their own offensive another strain of the government's propaganda
on oaths: the claim that oaths were sacrosanct contracts that if broken or abused would
endanger the fate of the swearer's eternal soul. As such, this dissertation ends as it
began in chapter one by exploring sixteenth-century perceptions of oaths as rituals so
holy that the abuse of them would call down the wrath or God.

ask only about recusants' allegiance to the queen, devotion to the pope and king of Spain, and their
maintenance of any Jesuit or seminary priest.

381
 Chapter 10: The Administration of the Elizabethan Oath of Supremacy
How did the Elizabethan regime use the oath of supremacy? This seemingly
simple and straightforward question is the basis of this long, convoluted chapter. The
Elizabethan regime employed the oath of supremacy in a complex and sometimes
conflicting manner. In tracing the regime's employment of the oath of supremacy to
the clergy, the laity, and Roman Catholic recusants, it will become clear that the
administration of the oath of supremacy was not entirely consistent; it varied
according to the status of the person supposed to take the oath, the context of the
specific year of Elizabeth's reign that it was being tendered, and the conflicting goals
of those within the regime concerning the oath. Yet out of this quagmire of
complexity, one conclusion is apparent: the Elizbethan regime did not employ the
oath of supremacy as much as the Parliamentary statutes that undergirded the oath
mandated. Of equal or greater significance as the administration of the oath of
supremacy is the non-administration of the oath.
The second question of this chapter is why. Why did the Elizabethan regime
use the oath so sparingly and what accounts for the instances of its actual
employment? There are three possible answers to this question. First, the question
could be dodged by maintaining that the regime did administer the oath of supremacy
widely but that the sources documenting this effort have been lost or were not
extensive in the first place. This has been the assumption of many modern historians.
It is an assumption that can never be wholly disproved, since the lack of
documentation of an event does not necessarily mean that it did not happen.
Nevertheless, this is the least likely answer to our question, for it is based in part on a
careless reading of the documents that have survived, a reading that does not
recognize the distinction between a solemn oath and a mere subscription. Second, it
could be argued that the haphazard and minimal administration of the oath of
supremacy was not the original plan of the regime but rather the result of the
reluctance of local magistrates to carry out the regime's orders and of the initial
resistance to the oath which convinced the regime to back off its campaign to enforce
the oath. Third, it could be argued that the limited administration of the oath was the

382
result of a careful, thought-out strategy and thus was the original intention of the
regime. The paucity of evidence prevents us from unequivocally declaring one answer
as correct. For example, our account of the administration of the oath of supremacy to
the clergy and to Roman Catholic recusants largely privileges the third answer, while
the documents on the tendering of the oath to lay officials suggest the veracity of the
second. The situation is further complicated by the possibility of conflicting agendas
for the oath within the regime. If the Elizabethan regime was following a
predetermined strategy in its administration of the oath, who was responsible for this
strategy? Since Elizabeth was the supreme governor of the church and queen of the
realm, the ultimate responsibility lies with her. As such, the tentative argument of this
chapter is that during the first part of her reign, Elizabeth favored a cautious
employment of the oath of supremacy that targeted the upper echelons of the clerical
and political hierarchy and all incoming clergymen. For more general purposes,
Elizabeth preferred the more flexible, less stringent device of an oathless subscription,
especially since she opposed some of the penal measures attached to the oath of
supremacy by Parliament. In the later years of her reign, she grew less hesitant to
administer the oath (especially to the laity), though she never allowed the full
implementation of the oath as outlined by Parliament. While the Privy Council
yielded to Elizabeth's wishes to restrict the employment of the oath, her chief
councilors (especially Sir William Cecil) favored a more extensive use of the oath.

The Clergy and the Oath of Supremacy

How many priests were deprived at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign for
refusing to swear the oath of supremacy? In his excellent study of the clergy and the
settlement of religion, Henry Gee concluded that not many more than two hundred
were deprived.' Henry Birt, however, disputed Gee's numbers and claimed that at the
very least five hundred were deprived.2 Other historians have been content to repeat
Gee's claims. Yet Gee, Birt, and other historians writing after them have agreed that

1
Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy, 247, 251.
Henry Norbert Birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement: A Study of Contemporary Documents
(London: George Bell and Sons, 1907), 125, 202-203.

383
the clergy were deprived for refusing to swear the oath of supremacy. Indeed, it is
commonly assumed that all of the clergy of the realm were made to swear the oath of
supremacy in the first year of Elizabeth's reign. This section will call that assumption
into question. Although it cannot be proved conclusively that the Elizabethan regime
did not tender the oath of supremacy to all its clergymen in 1559, evidence suggests
that Elizabeth used the oath selectively. It was tendered to Marian bishops, monks,
and scholars at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. When royal commissioners
toured the realm in the late summer and fall of 1559, the principle device given to the
clergy was a subscription to the Elizabethan religious settlementnot the oath of
supremacy. Some priests who refused to subscribe in the royal visitation were
eventually called before an ecclesiastical commission and tendered the oath, but it
appears that these priests were almost always members of a cathedral church or in
some other position of authority. There is scant record of established (as opposed to
those ordained under Elizabeth) parish priests having to take the oath of supremacy.
Rather than tendering the oath of supremacy wholesale, the regime used the oath
against only those clerics who had influence or who had refused initially to subscribe
to the Elizabethan settlement.
The story of the Elizabethan oath of supremacy begins with the Parliament of
1559. The passage of the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity has been a subject
of intense scholarship, but we will focus solely on the sources relevant to the oath of
supremacy. A bill for restoring the supremacy of the Church of England to the crown
was first discussed in the House of Commons on February 9, 1559. It was sent to a
committee led by Sir Francis Knollys and Sir Anthony Cooke on February 15, and a
new bill emerged on February 21 that was eventually passed by the Commons on
February 25. 4 We do not know the key players in the debates over these two bills, but
the Spanish ambassador Count de Feria reported that Sir William Cecil (Elizabeth's
chief Privy Councillor) was integral in securing the passage of the second supremacy

For two excellent reconstructions of how the Act of Supremacy evolved, see J. E. Neale, "The
Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity," English Historical Review 65 (1950): 302-332; Jones,
Faith by Statute, 89-103, 129-134, 140-144.
Journal of the House of Commons, 1:54-55.

384
bill through the Commons.5 We do not know the exact contents of either of these
bills, though the bill that passed the House of Commons on February 25 did contain
material on the imposition of an oath of supremacy. On February 29, Feria reported:
"yesterday the House of Commons decided that the supreme ecclesiastical power was
attached to the crown of England. . . . they [the heretics] wish to make all the country
swear to respect this enactment, and those who do not are to be held as traitors as they
were in King Henry's time."6 The Venetian ambassador II Schifanoya suggested that
the penalties attached to the refusal of the oath were slightly milder in the February
bills. In praising the changes that the House of Lords made to the Commons' bill in
March, II Schifanoya noted "still greater good is anticipated, and most especially the
removal of the penalty of losing property belonging to the Crown, and benefices and
bishoprics in the case of prelates, by any person refusing the oath for the first time,
and for the second time, private property and life."7 It is clear that the Lords did make
the Commons' bill more moderate. Bishop Scot of Chester, for example, gave a
speech in the House of Lords in which he thanked the house: "for that their charitie
and pittie towards the poor clargie of this realme doth appeare in mytygatinge the
Q

extreme penalties mentioned in this bill for the gayne-sayers of the same." On March
19, Feria claimed that the Lords had modified the Commons' bill so that now the oath
"was to be sworn by all who hold any office or benefice from the Queen, and in case
of refusal they were to be deprived. In the same manner all ecclesiastics, the graduates
5
Cal SP Simances, I 16. For a better translation of the sentence relating to Cecil as well as Feria's
original Spanish, see Jones, Faith by Statute, 94. Neale believed that Elizabeth wanted a moderate
settlement but that "Puritans" in the House of Commons pushed a more radically Protestant settlement
on her; Neale, "The Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity," 302-332. Jones, by contrast,
contended that Elizabeth desired an overtly Protestant religious settlement and that the real conflict was
not Elizabeth and a docile House of Lords against a radical House of Commons but Elizabeth and her
Protestant supporters against powerful Catholics in the House of Lords; Jones, Faith by Statute. The
historiographical consensus is that Jones's account is more accurate. The sources on the Parliament
1559, however, shed no light on who was behind the push to enforce the supremacy with an oath. Did
Elizabeth support the Commons' bill in February that mandated a wide administration of the oath and
draconian penalties against those who refused it or did she prefer a less extensive administration of the
oath and milder penalties for recusants? I will argue below that the actual administration of the oath in
1559 and the events of the Parliament of 1563 suggest that the latter interpretation of Elizabeth's
position is most likely. Elizabeth wanted to restrict the use of the oath of supremacy, but the House of
Commons and some of her chief ministers (such as Cecil) did not agree with her in this regard.
1
Cal SP Simances, I 16. My italics.
7
Cal SP Venice, VII 45.
8
Jones, Faith by Statute, 100-101, originally in Strype, Annals, 2:408.

385
of the universities and the scholars would lose all the rights, places and profits they
held."9 In other words, the Lords changed the parts of the Commons' bill relating to
the oath in two ways: the penalty for refusing to swear was mitigated from treason to
mere deprivation, that is, the loss of office, benefice, or position; and "all the country"
was no longer required to swear.
Although the modified supremacy bill the Lords' sent back to the Commons in
March was eventually abandoned in favor of a third bill, the section relating to the
oath of supremacy in this third bill (which became law) was essentially the same as
that of the bill the Lords sent to the Commons in March. The Act Restoring to the
Crown the Ancient Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual and
Abolishing Foreign Power Repugnant to the Same (commonly known as the
Elizabethan Act of Supremacy) mandated that all current clergymen and lay office
holders take an oath of supremacy:
all and every Archebishoppe Bishoppe and all and every other Ecclesiasticall
Person, and other Ecclesiasticall Officer and Minister, of what Estate Dignitie
Preheminence or Degree soever he or they bee or shalbee, all and every
Temporall Judge Justice Mayor and other Laye or Temporall Officer and
Minister, and every other person having your Highnes Fee or Wagys within
this Realme, or any your Hignes Dominions, shall make take and receyve a
corporall Othe upon the Evangelist, before suche person or persons as shall
please your Highnes your Heires or Successoures under the Great Seale of
Englande to assigne and name taccepte and take the same, according to the
Tenour and Effect hereafter following."10
Those who refused to take the oath were to be deprived of their benefice or office.
The act also declared that all clergymen entering into a new benefice, all laymen
assuming a new political office, all those doing homage to the crown, and all persons
taking orders or degrees at a university must take this oath. Those who refused the
oath were disqualified from receiving their benefice or exercising their office.'' Thus,
while the Elizabethan Act of Supremacy did not require that the oath of supremacy be
administered to everyone in the realm (as the initial bill in the House of Commons

L
Cal SP Simances, I 18.
Statutes of the Realm, 1 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:352. For the actual text of the oath, see Appendix H, 1.
" Statutes of the Realm, 1 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:353.

386
may have proposed), the final act did state that all clerical and lay office holders, both
present and future, had to take the oath.
On May 23, 1559, Elizabeth commissioned the members of her Privy Council
to receive the oath from any ecclesiastical person in the realm.12 The Privy Council
did not, however, begin immediately tendering the oath to all clergymen in England.
Instead, it targeted the bishops of the realm and the few monasteries that Mary had re-
established during her reign. Yet even before Parliament had adjourned and Elizabeth
had commissioned her Privy Council to administer the oath, rumors circulated about
the tendering of the oath of supremacy to the members of religious orders in England.
On May 2, 1559, II Schifanoya reported to the Castellan of Mantua that Parliament
had decreed that "all the convents and monasteries of friars, monks, nuns, and
Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem" are to be suppressed and their members
deprived. Those who would take the oath of supremacy would receive a pension, "but
the greater part of them have left the kingdom in order not to take such oath." The
monks of Westminster Abbey were offered a sweeter deal. If they agreed to celebrate
the reformed service, administer the sacraments according to the new form, and take
the oath of supremacy, they could keep their positions. Abbot Feckenham and his
monks were given time to consider this offer, but on June 27 II Schifanoya reported
that they too had been deprived. ' 4 We do not know for certain that they were deprived
by members of the Privy Council for refusing the oath, but that is likely. Likewise,
Strype claimed that the friars of Greenwich were discharged on June 12, though he did
not specify if this was for refusing the oath.I5 Friar Hargrave, the Dominican
confessor to the nuns at Dartford, did write that three members of the Privy Council
arrived at Dartford in early July and tendered the oath of supremacy to its inmates, all

12
The commission replicated the language of the act of Parliament, though it translated it into Latin.
The commission thus authorized the tendering of the oath to "omnibus & singulis Archiepischopis
Episcopis & aliis Personis Ecclesiasticis, ac aliis Officiariis & Ministris Ecclesiasticis, cujuscumque
Status Dignitatis Praeeminentiae seu Gradus fuerint"; Rymer, Foedera, 15:519; Gee, Elizabethan
Clergy, 39.
13
CalSP Venice, VII 68.
u
Cal SP Venice, VII 78, 82.
15
Strype, Annals ofthe Reformation, 1:210.

387
of whom refused.16 This suggests that the monasteries of the realm were indeed
tendered the oath of supremacy by members of the Privy Council under the
commission of May 23, and that they were deprived for refusing it.
The Privy Council also administered the oath of supremacy to some of the
Marian bishops in the early summer of 1559. Ten sees (including the archbishopric of
Canterbury) were vacant by death at the start of 1559 so the number of bishops with
which the Council had to deal was reduced. Bonner, the infamous bishop of London,
was the first to go. He was deprived at the end of May or beginning of June.17 The
bishops of Carlisle, Chester, Lichfield, Worcester, St. Asaph, Lincoln, and Winchester
were deprived at the end of June, while Archbishop Heath of York and Bishop Thirlby
of Ely lost their sees in early July.18 These bishops were almost certainly deprived by
the Privy Council for refusing the oath. After writing about the deprivation of five of
these bishops, II Schifanoya claimed that the queen's ministers would continue
depriving every prelate who would "not consent to their abuses, nor take the oath." In
the same letter, II Schifanoya asserted that the bishop of Lincoln (Watson) had been
granted "ten days to decide about taking the oath or being deprived."19 Likewise,
Bishop Quadra of Aquila wrote to Philip II on June 27, 1559:
Last week they summoned five bishops to the Council and proffered them the
oath with great promises and threats as well, but none of them would swear
and they were ordered yesterday to return to the house of the sheriff of London
whither they brought also the two bishops from the Tower (Winchester and
Lincoln) and again tried to persuade them to swear, but they would not. . . .
The two were taken back to prison and both they and the others deprived of the
preferments de facto.

16
Birt, Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 133.
17
Henry Machyn recorded Bonner's deprivation on May 29; Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn, 200.
Gee claimed that Bonner was deprived on May 20; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 34. In a letter dated June
6, II Schifanoya suggested that Bonner had already been deprived; Cal SP Venice, VII 78. On June 16,
Paulo Tiepolo confirmed this news, as did Bishop Quadra of Aquila on June 19; Cal SP Venice, VII 81;
Cal SP Simances, I 36. The government was so keen to deprive Bonner that they tendered the oath to
him before June 8, the date that the penal statutes of the Act of Supremacy were to go in effect; David
Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000), 300.
18
Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn, 200-201; Cal SP Venice, VII 82; Cal SP Simances, I 39, 45;
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 35-36.
19
Cal SP Venice, VII 82.
Cal SP Simances, I 39.

388
These letters indicate that the Privy Council was using the authority granted them by
the commission of May 23 to tender the oath to bishops and deprive them when they
refused it.
Yet the Privy Council was neither uncompromising nor systematic in its
administration of the oath of supremacy to the bishops. If we believe Bishop Quadra,
the archbishop of York and others were given an opportunity to avoid the oath but still
keep their livings. Quadra informed Philip II: "They have offered the archbishop of
York all his revenue, and will not administer the oath to him on the condition that he
consents to the appointment of a heretic vicar-general, but neither he nor others to
01

whom similar offers have been made have consented." Other bishops were granted
more time to consider the oath. On July 18, 1559, Anthony Kitchin, Bishop of
Llandaff, wrote to Matthew Parker:
Where the Queenes Majesty of her bountifull grace tenderinge the quyet of my
conscience, hathe differredd the renderinge of thothe of her Supremacie to my
further consultacon within my selfe in theppendinge of goddes learnynge 1 do
assure her grace by thes presentes subscrybed by my hande that as a true &
faythfull subiecte to her aucthoritie I shall for my powre connynge and
habilitie set forth in myn owne persone and cawse all other vnder my
iurisdiction to accept and obey the whole cawse of religion nowe approved in
the state of her graces Ralme, And shall also requyre the sayd othe of others,
Receyving office ecclesiasticall or temporall as is in the statute thereof
provyded. In witnes whereof I have subscrybed this with myn owne haunde.
Because Kitchen was the only Marian bishop not eventually deprived, most historians
have assumed that he did eventually take the oath of supremacy. John Lamb, using
this letter as evidence, contended that Kitchin was allowed to maintain his living
without swearing the oath in return for tendering it throughout his dioceses and
accepting the reformed service.23 William Haugaard rejected Lamb's argument,
observing that this signed letter by Kitchin was not necessary a substitute for the
supremacy oath and that the acceptance of "the whole cawse of religion nowe

21
Cal SP Simances, I 36.
22
CCCC, MS. 114, #184.
John Lamb, An Historical Account of the Thirty-nine Articles from the First Promulgation of Them in
M.D.LIII. to Their Final Establishment in M.D.LXX1. with Exact Copies of the Latin and English
Manuscripts, and Facsimiles of the Signatures of the Archbishops and Bishops, etc. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1829), 11.

389
approved" would include the oath. In absence of any other evidence proving that
Kitchin swore the actual oath, we cannot conclude decisively either way. But even if
Kitchin did not escape the oath, it is significant that he was allowed more time to
consider it. He was not alone. The bishops of St. Davids and Exeter were not
deprived until August 10, while the venerable Bishop Tunstall of Durham held his see
until September 28. Bishop Bourne of Bath and Wells was even allowed to return to
his diocese without taking the oath, for a commission was issued on October 18 to
four Somerset justices to tender the oath of supremacy to him. Bishop Poole of
Peterborough also held his see until the end of 1559.25 Thus, while the Privy Council
moved immediately to tender the oath to specific bishops like Bonner, they were
willing to compromise and delay with other bishops in hopes of winning their
conformity.
After the members of religious orders and the bishops, the next group of
English clergy to receive the oath of supremacy was the officials, heads of colleges,
and fellows of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A royal writ commissioning
the visitation of Cambridge and Eton went out on June 20, 1559. The writ authorized
a general visitation to investigate and correct abuses in the university, but it also gave
the commissioners power to punish and deprive all "who decisively and obstinately
refuse to subscribe to the religion now established correctly." In addition to this
subscription, the writ authorized the visitors:
to demand and receive the oath over and above obedience and fidelity owed to
us and our heirs concerning the renouncing, denying, and absolutely refusing
any external power, and [to demand and receive] whatever other oaths required
by the statutes of this aforesaid kingdom from all those appointed in the
aforesaid places."27

Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation, 38.

25
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 38; Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation, 41; Rymer,
Foedera, 15:545.
26
"qui susceptae jam emendate religioni subscribere obstinate ac peremptorie recusent"; Gee,
Elizabethan Clergy, 134.
27
"Juramentum insuper obedientiae et fidelitatis nobis et heredibus debitae, deque renuntianda,
renuenda, ac penitus abneganda, extranea potestate quacunque, et quaecunque alia juramenta ex statutis
hujus regni praedicti requisita ab omnibus intra loca praedicta constitutis exigendum et recipiendum";
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 135.

390
The complimentary writ for Oxford does not survive, but it must have been identical,
for the visitors began their work at Oxford at the end of June. The visitation of
Cambridge happened after Oxford. Mullinger believed that it took place in
September, while Porter contended that it happened in July. Although very little
information on these visitations survives, it is clear that the visitors did administer the
oath to at least some of the heads of colleges and fellows and did deprive them when
they refused.30 Yet the oath was not strictly and comprehensively enforced on all. Dr.
Nicolas Sanders, an Oxford professor of canon law who was either deprived or
resigned sometime in 1559, documented what happened during the visitation at New
College. After the departure often priests who were chaplains, six senior fellows
professed their adherence to Roman Catholicism and were placed in custody by the
visitors. "The visitors," Sanders continued, "were unwilling to call more, because
they heard that they would find the same constancy in fifty others. So, having
recourse to flattery, they begged them merely to go to church, doing which they should
be free from the oath, subscription and all penalties."31 Bishop Home's account of his
visitation to certain Oxford colleges in 1561 confirms that many fellows must have
either avoided or escaped the penalties of refusing the oath in 1559. Home narrated to
Cecil that after he propounded Elizabeth's supremacy, the order of service as
established by the Book of Common Prayer, and the royal injunctions of 1559:
I founde at the fyrst wholly bent and ded in effect refuse to aknowledge them
with thesubscripcion of their handes, in suche wise as if I had as I might
peremptorily haue proceded 1 sholde not skarly haue left twayn in some one
house, and fynally with suche tolleration as I vsed in respecting them some
tyme to be advised had veray fewe ded it, and yeat not without some
protestacion.

28
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 131.
29
Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, 2:177; Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor
Cambridge, 104.
30
Strype, Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, 103; Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, 2:177; Penry
Williams, "Elizabethan Oxford: State, Church and University 1558-1603," in The Collegiate University,
vol. Ill of The History of the University of Oxford, ed. James McConica (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986), 406, 410; Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558-1642: An Essay on
Changing Relations between English Universities and English Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959),
168; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 131-133, 136.
31
Sanders, "Dr. Sander's Report to Cardinal Moroni," in Miscellanea 1, ed. John Hungerford Pollen,
Catholic Record Society, vol. 1 (London, 1905), 43.
32
NA SP12/19, fol. 110r (CalSPDom, XIX 56).

391
Modern historians have also asserted that the visitation of the universities in 1559 was
mild. Gee, echoing Wood, alleged that the visitors must have decided "to make a mild
and gentle, not rigorous reformation."33 Birt agreed, claiming that in the first few
years of Elizabeth's reign, the oath of supremacy was "not strictly enforced in the
4
Universities, and non-compliance was openly winked at, indeed, even tolerated."
Porter concluded that at Cambridge: "There was no suggestion of a 'clean sweep'
about the Visitation of 1559."35 If we believe Sanders, the laxity in depriving those
who refused the oath seems to have been the result of the visitors backing off once
they met resistance, but we do not know if their decision not to enforce the oath
strictly was made independently or sanctioned by Elizabeth.
So far we have learned that the Elizabethan regime tendered the oath of
supremacy in the summer of 1559 to the religious clergy, the bishops, and the
universitiesthough the regime was willing to overlook laxities in the oath's
administration in the universities. But what of the rest of the English clergy at large?
When did they take the oath of supremacy? Historians have assumed that the rest of
the English clergy swore to Elizabeth's supremacy during the royal visitation of the
clergy, which took place from early August to early November 1559. Although there
are hints that some of the clergy may have sworn to the supremacy during the royal
visitation, the preponderance of surviving documents suggest that instead of swearing,
the clergy simply subscribed to a summary statement endorsing the royal supremacy,
the new reformed service, and the royal injunctions.
The royal visitation of the clergy was split into six sections. One set of
commissioners visited the northern province of York, while the more populous
southern province of Canterbury was divided between five distinct groups of
commissioners.36 Letters patent authorizing these visitations went out on June 24,

Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 131.

3
Birt, Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 190.
Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, 107.
36
The southern province was divided as follows: group one included the dioceses of London, Norwich,
and Ely; group two contained Oxford, Lincoln, Peterborough, and Coventry and Lichfield; group three
was Salisbury, Bristol, Exeter, Bath and Wells, and Gloucester; group four included Canterbury,
Rochester, Winchester, and Chichester; and the final group consisted of the Welsh dioceses as well as
Hereford and Winchester.

392
1559. They survive for the northern province, for the circuit of London, Norwich, and
Ely, and for the midland circuit (Canterbury, Rochester, Winchester, Chichester) of the
southern province.37 All three writs are identical. In them, Elizabeth gave her visitors
power to visit all churches, clergy, and people, to inquire about and correct all abuses,
to punish aberrant clergymen through sequestration and deprivation, to proclaim her
royal injunctions, to restore those unlawfully deprived, and to carry out the standard
business of visitation. Like the commission to visit the universities, this writ
authorized the visitors to punish all those who "obstinately and finally refuse to
subscribe to the established religion."38 Yet unlike the commission to the universities,
this writ did not explicitly grant the royal visitors power to tender the oath of
supremacy. Indeed, no oath was mentioned in the letters patent. So unless Elizabeth
also granted some separate commission to her visitors of the clergy to tender the oath
of supremacy (which if it existed, all records of it have been lost), those commissioned
for a general visitation of the clergy in 1559 were not authorized to administer the oath
of supremacy. To our knowledge, the only people granted the authority to tender the
oath of supremacy in the summer of 1559 were Elizabeth's Privy Councilors and the
visitors of the universities.
When we examine the official records documenting the royal visitation of the
clergy, we again find scant evidence for the general tendering of the oath of
supremacy. Just as the writ commissioned the visitors to punish those clergymen
refusing "to subscribe to the established religion," it is apparent that the visitors
administered a subscription to every cleric during their visitation. To begin with, from
the southern visitation there are preserved lists of original signatures of clerics
organized by diocese for the dioceses of London, Norwich, Ely, Coventry and

The original letter patent for the northern province is NA SP12/10, fols. l r -3 v , printed in Gee,
Elizabethan Clergy, 89-93. For the commission to London, Norwich, and Ely, see Lambeth Palace
Library MS. 2686, fols. 15r-16v. For a copy of the commission to the midland circuit preserved in the
papers of Robert Beale, see BL Additional MS. 48064, fols. 224'-225v.
38
"susceptae religioni subscribere obstiante et peremptorie recusantes"; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 90;
BL Additional MS. 48064, fol. 224v; Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 2686, fol. 15v.

393
Lichfield, Oxford, and Lincoln. At the head of every new page, above the original
signatures, is the following text:
We do confesse and acknowledge the Restoryng agayn of the aunciente
Iurisdiccione over the state ecclesiasticall and spirituall of this Realme of
yngland and the abolysshing of all forayn power repugnante to the same
according to an acte therof made in the late parliament begon at Westminster
the xxiijth daye of January in the firste yere of the Reign of our soueraigne
Lady Quene Elizabeth and there contynuyng and kepte to the eighte of maye
then nexte ensuyeng. [We also do confesse and acknowledge]
Thadmynystracion of the sacramentes thuse and ordre of the divyne sarvice in
maner and forme as it is set furthe in the Booke comonly called the boke of
common prayer Etc establisshed by the same acte And thorders and Rules
conteyned in the Iniunctions geven by the Quenes maiestie and exhibited in
this presente visitacion to be accordyng to the worde of god and agreable withe
the doctryne and vse of the prymatyve and Apostollique churche. In wytnes
wherof wee haue herunto subscribed our Names.
This text is not an oath. It is rather a summary acknowledgment of adherence to the
Act of Supremacy, the new reformed service as set forth in the Act of Uniformity, and
the royal injunctions. We cannot say if the visitors in the southern province tendered
the oath of supremacy in addition to this subscription, for no documents survive
illuminating the process of the southern visitation. Strype, however, had access to a
now lost register of St. Paul's Cathedral documenting the visitation there. Strype
noted that on August 11, John and Nicolas Harpsfield and John Willerton were
deprived because they rejected the royal injunctions and "refused to subscribe to the
said religion, protesting nevertheless, that they refused them animis non maliciousis
aut obstinatis, sed ex ea tantum causa, quod conscientiis non salvis ad hunc in ea
parte non plene instructis in receptionem Injunctionum aut subscriptionem religionis,
&c. consentire non potuerunt."4] The issue for Willerton and the Harpsfields was the

Lambeth Palace Library MS. CM XIII/57, CM XIII/58. The subscriptions has been transcribed and
alphabetized by Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 102-129.
40
This heading is constant through out MS. CM XIII/57. The headings are the same in CM XIII/58,
except that they end there, "In wittnes of the premisses to be trew we haue vnfaynedly her vnto
subscribed our names," obviously an effort to discourage dissimulation. The text in brackets is supplied
from the subscription of the cathedral of York in the northern visitation, NA SP12/10, fol. 16'.
41
Strype accurately translated the Latin as follows: "not with malicious or obstinate minds; but for this
cause only, that they could not consent, their consciences not safe, nor as yet fully instructed for the
receiving of the injunctions, or for subscribing to the religion"; Strype, Annals of the Reformation,
1:250-251.

394
royal injunctions and the subscription. The fact that they did not complain about the
oath of supremacy as well suggests that it was not tendered.
This hypothesis is further supported by the official documents of the northern
visitation. We are fortunate that the act book recording the process of the northern
visitation has been preserved.43 In the act book, we see again and again that the
visitors required the clergy to make a subscription to the "established religion" or to
"the articles of religion."44 None of the actual registers of original subscriptions from
the northern visitation survive, but the text to which the visitors demanded the
northern clergy to subscribe was the same as that to which the southern clergy
subscribed, for the act book records the subscription of the clergy of the cathedral of
York, and this subscription is almost identical to the text of the subscription of the
southern province. In addition to cleaning up the syntax of the text to make it more
intelligible, the York subscription differed from the subscription of the southern
province only in that the notary accidentally omitted a word so that the following
clause read: "And the abolishing of all forreyn power repugnaunte to the same
according to an Therof made in the late parlyament Begon at Westminster the
5
xxiij' day of Ianuarye." The text from the southern visitation makes it clear that the
missing word should be "act," but Gee erroneously transcribed the word "oath," an
error that has perpetuated the assumption that the clergy swore the oath of supremacy
during the royal visitation of 1559. This has been compounded by Birt's claim that

Strype seems to agree with my interpretation. He wrote: "In this visitation it was, that all the
beneficed clergymen were required to make a subscription with their hands to what the parliament,
anno 1558 [1559 in the modern calendar], had enacted, concerning restoring the supremacy to the
queen, and the book of divine service, to be according to the word of God: and that was done in this
form, as I found it in the MS. library at the palace in Lambeth"; Strype, Annals of the Reformation,
1:255.
43
It is NA SP12/10. It has been transcribed in its entirety by C. J. Kitching (ed.), The Royal Visitation
of 1559: Act Book for the Northern Province, vol. 187 of the Surtees Society (Gateshead:
Northumberland Press, 1975). Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent footnotes will refer to the
published version.
44
A few examples should suffice: "requisitus per Dominos Commissarios ut Suscepte Religioni
subscribat expresse et obstinate recusavit"; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 10; "Quos prefati
Domini Commissarij iteratis vicibus requisiverunt Suscepte religioni suscribere"; Kitching, Royal
Visitation of 1559, 10-11; "Et illico clericis examinatis omnes voluntarie suscepte Religionis Articulis
subscripserunt &c"; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 44.
45
NA SP12/10, fols. 15v-16r; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 11-12.
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 78.

395
certain clergymen in the northern visitation (Thomas Sigiswicke, Thomas Robertson,
and William Todde) refused "the oaths."47 Birt's source for this claim is the act book
of the northern visitation, yet the act book itself specifies only that Sigiswicke,
Robertson, and Todde "refused to subscribe to the articles of the established religion."
It said nothing about any "oaths." Furthermore, the various responses of the
northern clergy refusing to subscribe indicate that it was a summary acknowledgment
of the royal supremacy, royal injunctions, and administration of the sacraments
according to the Book of Common Prayer. Many of these recusant clergy explained
that they refused to subscribe because they thought that the pope had some jurisdiction
in England, especially spiritual.49 Others objected to the Book of Common Prayer and
royal injunctions without mentioning the royal supremacy at all.50 Still others, such as
John Crauforthe, Robert Bekinsope, and John Peerson explicitly recognized
Elizabeth's supremacy, but refused to subscribe to the established religion.51 All of
this suggests that the royal visitors tendered the clergy a simple, summary subscription
rather than the specific oath of supremacy.
Yet the act book from the northern visitation did mention the tendering of one
oath. At the chapterhouse of the Cathedral of Durham, the visitors required "both the
prebendaries and all ministers of the said church to swear touching the Gospels of God
concerning the making of an inquisition and presentation and concerning the above
general articles of visitation just now both read and handed over."52 Likewise, the
visitors later "burdened" Lancelot Salkeld, the dean of the cathedral of Carlisle, with
"an oath concerning the making of a presentation to the common articles of visitation

Birt, Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 153, 155-156.

48
Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 21 (Sigiswicke), 24 (Robertson), 26-27 (Todde).
49
Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 21-22 (Robert Dalton), 24-26 (Thomas Robertson, John Tuttyn,
Nicolas Marley, George Bullock, and George Cliffe).
50
Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 12-13 (Galrid Downes and Robert Purseglove).
51
John Crauforthe, after initially refusing to subscribe altogether, finally "recognovit supremitatem
Domine Regine et deinde religioni subscribere recusavit." Robert Bekinsop and John Peerson refused
to subscribe to the articles, "attamen fate[n]tur supremitatem"; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 24,
27.
52
"Deinde, lecta publice Commissione, tam prebendarios quam dicte ecclesie omnes ministros ad tacta
dei evangelia iurari fecerunt de inquisitione et presentacione facienda de et super articulis visitacionis
generalibus eis adtunc etiam lectis et traditis &c"; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 23.

396
given to him, and to exhibit them tomorrow." Similar oaths were tendered
elsewhere in the northern province. The oath mentioned in the act book seems to be a
variation on the standard oath required of ministers and churchwardens during an
episcopal visitation, an oath designed to insure that ministers and church wardens
report truthfully the condition of the clergy and laity in their parish. The actual text
of this particular oath fortunately survives at the beginning of one of the books of
subscriptions from the visitation of the southern province under the heading "The Othe
for the clergie." Perhaps because the visitation is royal as opposed to episcopal, a
clause of fidelity was added to the standard clauses of inquiry and presentation, which
were simplified and abbreviated. The oath read:
You shall sweare that you shalbe faithhfull and obedient unto the Quenes
Majestie, her heires and successours, and to the uttermost of your power
understanding and learning you shall maintein and set furth all statutes and
lawes and the religion received by her Grace or her heires or successours and
the Iniunctions at this present time exhibited by her Grace, her officers or
Commissioners, and that you shall make presentment of all soch thinges as arr
to be presented in this visitacion, so helpe you God and by the contentes of the
booke.55
Although swearing "to maintain and set forth all statutes and laws and the religion
received by her Grace" obviously included the Act of Supremacy, this oath was still a

"Deinde Domini Commissarij oneraverunt eum iuramento de presentacione facienda ad communes

articulos visitacionis sibi traditos, et ad exhibendum crastino hora secunda a meridie & c"; Kitching,
Royal Visitation of 1559, 33.
54
The exact text of this oath varied according to each bishop. The oath of inquisition Bishop Grindal
administered in his visitation of the province of York in 1571 was fairly straightforward: "Ye shall
swear by Almighty God that ye shall diligently consider all and every the Articles given to you in
charge and make a true answer unto the same in writing, presenting all and every such person and
persons, dwelling within your parish, as have committed any offence or fault, or made any default
mentioned in any of the same articles, or which are vehemently suspected or defamed of any such
offence, fault, or default; wherein ye shall not present any person or persons of any evil will, malice, or
hatred, contrary to the truth; nor shall for love, favour, mede, dread, or any corrupt affection, spare to
present any that be offenders, suspected or defamed in any of these cases, but shall do uprightly, as men
having the fear of God before your eye, and desirous to maintain virtue and supress vice. So God help
you"; Frere, Visitation Articles, 3:272-273. A much more elaborate variation of the same oath was
employed by Bishop Bonner in his visitation of London in 1554. See Guildhall Library MS. 9531/12
(Bonner's Register), fols. 370v-371r. For other examples, see Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's
Register, fol. 40r (Cranmer's visitation of All Souls' College, Oxford in 1541); Frere, Diocesis
Cantuariensis Registrum Matthei Parker, 538-539 (Parker's visitation to Christchurch, Canterbury in
1570).
55
Lambeth Palace MS. CM X1II/58, fol. 2', printed in Appendix II of Kitching, Royal Visitation of
1559, xxxii.

397
far cry from the actual oath of supremacy legislated by Parliament. This oath was
general and vague. It made no explicit mention of the papacy, any foreign jurisdiction,
or royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. Moreover, the potentially offending
clause on statutes and laws was attached to the standard, innocuous oath of inquiry and
presentation.5' It was as if the Elizabethan regime was trying not to draw attention to
it. Thus, the official documents from the royal visitation of 1559 offer no evidence of
the tendering of the oath of supremacy. The clergy at large were required to
acknowledge her supremacy directly in a summary subscription and indirectly in an
oath of inquiry, presentation, and fidelity, but they were not specifically asked to
swear that Elizabeth was the supreme governor of England in causes ecclesiastical and
temporal.
Although there is no evidence in the official records of the royal visitation of
1559 of any administration of the oath of supremacy to the clergy at large, there are a
few outside sources that do suggest that the oath of supremacy was being tendered to
the clergy at this time. In a letter dated July 13, 1559, but almost certainly from
August 13, 1559, based on internal evidence, Bishop Quadra of Aquila wrote to Philip
II:
They have appointed six Visitors who examine everybody, to whom, by law of
Parliament, they have to administer the oath, deprive those who will not take it,
and proceed against those who are found to be disobedient. They have just
removed from St. Paul's and all the other churches of London the crosses and
altars. As regards the oath, they find resistance as ever; for the rest, they do as
they please; but it is thought that outside London they will not proceed without
opposition.

1
Some astute, conscientious clerics were undoubtedly able to perceive the undertones of royal
supremacy in this oath. In 1561, Parkhurst must have administered a similar oath in his episcopal
visitation. He narrated to Cecil the response of one cleric: "the last daie off mi visitation a yong prist
being called with his church warden to take his othe as the rest, to present such fautes as were amisse
according to the Quenes Iniunctions, refused to swere bicause he said these Iniunctions hang on forther
authorite, which he cold not alow, this he spake openli afor all the people reioising much at his owne
doings after in comication afore a grete number he said, he thought that non ther [neither] temporal
mane nor woman cold haue power in spirituall maters but onely the pope off Ro[me]"; NA SP12/20,
fol. 63r (Cal SP Dom, XX 25). Gee incorrectly assumed that this letter referred to the oath of
supremacy; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 169.
57
This is the translation of Birt, Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 176. Martin Hume's translation is:
"They are now carrying out the law of Parliament respecting the religion with great rigour, and have
appointed six visitors who examine all persons to whom the law decrees that the oath has to be
administered, and they proceed against those who disobey. They have just taken away the crosses,

398
How do we account for this quote? One way is to assume that as a foreign
ambassador of the Spanish crown and not a direct participate of the actual royal
visitation, Quadra was simply misinformed and basing his information upon rumor.
Alternatively, we could suppose, based on information at end of Quadra's passage, that
while the oath of supremacy was tendered initially in London at the beginning of
August, the strong resistance to it the visitors encountered caused them to drop the
oath during the rest of the visitation. If this was the case, the non-administration of the
oath of supremacy in the royal visitation of 1559 does not appear to have been the
original strategy of the crown but rather a response to early signs of opposition, much
like the visitation of Oxford as described by Sanders. Yet this interpretation of
Quadra's letter seems less likely since we have no commission authorizing the visitors
to tender the oath of supremacy at all, and the deprivation of Willerton and the
Harpsfields from St. Paul's Cathedral also in mid August made no mention of an oath
but only referred to a subscription.
The second piece of outside evidence on the oath of supremacy in the royal
visitation comes from the submission of Robert Raynolds, the prebendary of Milton
church in Lincolnshire and the rector of Falley. Raynolds wrote to the queen:
I, Robert Raynolds, clerk, do in my most humble ways desire the queen's most
excellent majesty to take these my former doings not to be of disobedience or
contempt, but of the persuading and leading of my poor and simple conscience:
and yet do I in the like humble manner require and ask her most gracious
pardon and remission for the same. And 1 shall be most willing to embrace,
advance, and set forth all such good and godly laws and ordinances as be made
and provided by her high court of parliament. And will from henceforth be
ready, with all obedience, to take and receive the oath of me required; and will
use the service of the churche, which is by the said laws provided, as to me
shall appertain. For the testimony whereof I have made this my humble
CO

submission, and thereunto set my hand the 16th of August, 1559.

Although Raynolds did not specify exactly what his "former doings" were, his
willingness "to take and receive the oath of me required" implies that he had refused

images, and altars, from St. Paul's and all the other London churches, but encounter resistance as usual
in the matter of the oath. In all else they do as they please, but it is thought that outside of London they
will not have it all their own way"; Cal SP Simancas, 1:54.
58
The original of this letter no longer survives. It is transcribed in Strype, Annals of the Reformation,
1:255.

399
the oath of supremacy. The date of this letter places it at the start of the royal
visitation, but we do not know if Raynolds was indeed tendered the oath during the
royal visitation. Raynolds' submission said nothing about the royal injunctions, an
integral part of the visitation that was offensive to the consciences of other Roman
Catholics like the Harpsfields. It is possible that like the bishops and members of
religious orders, Raynolds was specifically targeted by a member of the Privy Council
to take the oath of supremacy, and thus was not offered it as part of the royal visitation
of the clergy.
The situation is further complicated by other outside sources that emphasize
the clerical subscription butlike the official documents from the royal visitation
make no mention of the oath of supremacy. For example, Robert Parsons in his A
Storie of Domestical! Difficultie narrated how in 1559 the Marian bishops were
deprived because they "would not subscribe to that wicked Decree, and sweare against
the Pope." When speaking of the inferior clergy, however, Parsons made no mention
of an oath but simply stated that they had to decide whether "to subscribe unto the
Statute for chang of Religion or noe, and for banishinge the Popes supremaice."59
Another piece of tantalizing evidence comes from the doctor of divinity John Barret.
Preserved in Parker's manuscripts is Barret's submission. It commences: "According
as I have subscribed in the quenes Majestie hir visitacion." Then follows the exact
text of the oath supremacy minus the concluding clause: "So help me God," the clause
that made the oath of supremacy an oath.60 Although Barret's submission thus
contained a version of the oath of supremacy, he stated that he subscribed (rather than
swore) to it in the royal visitation, and his exclusion of the final clause of the oath
again saved him from swearing in this submission. Yet perhaps the most interesting
piece of evidence comes from a letter from Archbishop-elect Matthew Parker to the

Robert Parsons, "The Memoirs of Father Robert Persons," in Miscellanea II, vol. 2 of Catholic
Records Society (London, 1906), 59-60.
60
CCCC MS. 114, #305, pg. 837. Barret's submission concluded with a statement that the Book of
Common Prayer, the administration of the sacraments in English, the taking of communion in both
kinds, and the royal injunctions were profitable and agreeable to the Word of God and the apostolic
church. His submission thus included the basic text of the oath of supremacy, the summary articles
subscribed to in the royal visitation, and additional material on the use of the vernacular and
communion of both kinds.

400
Privy Council on August 27, 1559, concerning Dr. Richard Smyth. The Council sent
Smyth, the same Oxford doctor who disputed with Peter Martyr Vermigli on the
validity of monastic vows, to Parker in hopes that Parker could convince him to
conform to the Elizabethan settlement.61 Parker reported back to the Council that after
conference with himself, Smyth had more expressly weighed "the form of the oath of
the Queen's Majesty's supremacy by the exposition inserted in the [royal]
injunctions," and was now "contended to take it." Yet Parker did not immediately
tender him the oath of supremacy. Instead, in order to procure "some declaration of
his conformity," Parker "offered him to consider the form of subscription which we
devised to be used in the order of visitation; wherewith he hath, as your lordships see,
subscribed gladly." Finally, Parker asked what he should do next with Smyth.62
Smyth, as a leading Oxford fellow and canon of Christ Church, was supposed to have
taken the oath of supremacy during the visitation of the universities, and his
conference with Parker obviously centered on the oath. Yet Parker, as neither a
member of the Privy Council nor a visitor to the universities, lacked the authority to
tender the oath to Smyth on his own. The fact that Parker offered Smyth the form of
the subscription used in the royal visitation as an interim measure suggests that the
oath of supremacy was not tendered in the royal visitation of the clergy.
In sum, the balance of evidence suggests that the clergy in general were not
made to swear the oath of supremacy in the royal visitation of 1559. The clergy were
made to subscribe to a summary statement rejecting foreign authority, restoring the
crown's "ancient jurisdiction" in matters ecclesiastical, and acknowledging the
legitimacy of the reformed service and the royal injunctions. Although this
subscription was certainly offensive to many Roman Catholics, it was not made before
God and thus lacked the spiritual muscle of an oath. The clergy were made to swear
an oath in the visitation, but it was an oath of fidelity to Elizabeth, her laws, and
statutes. This oath certainly implied adherence to the royal supremacy since the
supremacy was established by statute, but the oath itself made no mention of the
61
Smyth had fled Oxford for Scotland earlier that summer, perhaps to avoid swearing the oath of
supremacy tendered to the heads of the universities. See Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker,
72-73.
62
Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 73-74.

401
supremacy, was couched in general language, and was tendered as a standard,
inoffensive oath of inquiry and presentation. Elizabeth's strategy (if indeed it was her
strategywe have no documents indicating that she was the mastermind of the
visitation of 1559, though of course she was the one who signed the commissions) for
securing the allegiance of the lesser clergy in 1559 thus resembled Henry VIU's
strategy in 1534. Neither monarch administered the oath of supremacy to the clergy in
general. Both monarchs caused their clergy to subscribe to an oathless statement
directly rejecting foreign (i.e. papal) authority and establishing royal supremacy. Both
monarchs also tendered their clergy an oath which on the surface appeared to be a
typical statement of fidelity but could be interpreted as an indirect acknowledgment of
the royal supremacy. For Henry, this was the oath of succession. For Elizabeth, this
was the oath of inquiry and presentation. The key is that neither monarch forced the
lower members of the Church to swear directly to the royal supremacy.
After the royal visitation of the clergy ended around the end of October or
/TO

beginning of November 1559, the story of the administration of the oath of

supremacy to the English clergy becomes muddled and confused. It appears that the
regime did tender the oath of supremacy to select members of the clergy in the winter
of 1559/1560, but the exact process through which this was accomplished is unclear.
Pieces of evidence survive from which we can attempt to reconstruct what happened,
but this reconstruction remains a hypothesis. The most likely scenario is that the
regime used the royal visitation and the summary subscription tendered in it as a
means to identify the members of the clergy who opposed the regime, and then
followed up on the important clergymen who had refused to subscribe by calling them
before an ecclesiastical commission that had the power to tender them the oath of
supremacy and to deprive them. Of course, the royal commissioners for the visitation
of 1559 had the power to deprive clergymen simply for not subscribing to the
established religion, but the act book from the northern province indicates that this

63
Jewel returned to London from his visitation of the western dioceses of the southern province by
November 2. Sandys wrote that he was occupied with the visitation of the northern province until the
beginning of November. See The Zurich Letters: Comprising the Correspondence of Several English
Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, During the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth,
ed. Hastings Robinson, P.S., vol. 50 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), 44, 72-73.

402
was rarely done. Although the royal visitors in the northern province did deprive five
recusant clerics, their usual response to a refusal to subscribe was to sequester the
livings of the recusant clergy and take recognizances (that is, bind them with sureties)
to appear later before unspecified commissioners at York, London, or elsewhere.
The regime deprived so few during the royal visitation of 1559 probably because it
hoped to bring those initially hostile to the religious settlement into conformity
through the arguments and intimidation of learned ecclesiastics.
Our information on the events in London in November, 1559 is the most
complete. During the royal visitation of the northern province, William Boyes, the
rector of Guiseley, was bound personally to:
appere bifore the quenes Majestis Commissioners at London appoincted for
ecclesiastical matters, either in the consistory of Pauls at London or at such
other place and places as the said Commissioners shall fortune to sytte and be
in or aboute the said Citie of London, then and ther to aunswer to all suche
matters as shalbe obicted ageinst him, betwixt the first and the vijth daies of
Novembre next commynge. 5
This refers to the first ecclesiastical commission, the body which eventually evolved
into the Court of High Commission. Elizabeth issued a writ for the establishment of
this commission on July 19, 1559. She appointed nineteen people to serve on this
commission, notably Parker (archbishop-elect of Canterbury), Grindal (bishop-elect of
London), prominent laymen like Sir Francis Knowles and Ambrose Cave, and a
handful of doctors of law. Although the commission was given power to investigate
and punish clerics who violated the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, it was not
expressly authorized to tender the oath of supremacy, and we have already noted that

1
The commissioners in the northern province deprived the following clerics: George Palmes
(archdeacon of York and commissary to the Exchequer Court there), Roger Mershall (sub-dean of
York), Thomas Sedgwick (Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and vicar of Gainsford), Anthony
Salvyn (master of Sherburn Hospital and vicar-general of the Durham diocese), and William Carter
(archdeacon of Northumberland); Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, xxiii. In the narration of the act
book itself, most of those whose livings were sequestered were bound "cum condicione quod ipse
personaliter comparebit quandocunque ad id fuerat monitus sue requisitus." The act book did not
specify where or by whom they were bound to appear; Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 12-14, 17-19,
passim.. In the calendar of the remaining recognisances, which is now bound with the act book, those
whose livings were sequestered were bound simply "to appear before these or other commissioners";
Kitching, Royal Visitation of 1559, 107-108.
65
Kitching, Royal Visitation of the 1559, 106; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 140.

403
Parker was not able to tender the oath to Richard Smyth in August 1559.' It is
unclear whether this was simply an oversight or part of a plan by Elizabeth to limit the
extent of the administration of the oath of supremacy, though the fact that the writs for
the visitation of the universities did authorize the tendering of the oath and the writs
for royal visitation did not authorize it suggest that its omission in the commission of
July 19 was not the result of a slip of the pen or a one-time memory lapse by Elizabeth
or one of her advisers.
On October 20, 1559, Elizabeth issued another writ, granted to the same
nineteen individuals as the commission of July 19 (with the addition of Richard Cox,
Bishop-Elect of Ely), which now allowed this group to administer the oath. The writ
read:
Since we have heard faithfully that in the last visitation taken by our
commissioners who were recently assigned by us into diverse parts of our
kingdom, certain ecclesiastical persons appearing in their presence refused to
observe the rites, ceremonies, and divine services ordained and provided by
our laws, statutes, and injunctions inside our said kingdom and other
dominions . . . we assign you our commissioners . . . full power and authority
to receive from all and singular archbishops, bishops, and other ecclesiastical
persons, officers, and ministers of whatever status, dignity, preeminence, or
degree . . . a certain oath corporally sworn on the holy gospels of God . . .
declared and specified in a certain act of our Parliament... in the first year of
our reign according to the strength, form and effect of the act.
In other words, Elizabeth was authorizing a new commission to tender the oath to the
clergy in response to the obstinacy revealed in the royal visitation. Gee was
undoubtedly right in his assertion that this commission did not tour the realm
tendering the oath to the clergy. Rather, it administered the oath to clerics like William
Boyes who had been sent to the ecclesiastical commission in London for refusing to

For the writ establishing the ecclesiastical commission, see Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 147-152.
67
"Quandoquidem nos fideliter accepimus, quod in postrema visitatione accepta per Commissionarios
nostras per nos nuper in diversis regni nostri partibus assignatos, quaedam personae ecclesiasticae
coram eis comparentes, qui ritus, ceremonia, ac divina servitia infra dictum regnum nostrum et alia
dominia nostra, per leges, statuta, et injunctiones nostras ordinata et proviso, observare recusabunt: . . .
assignavimus vos Commissionarios nostras . . . plenam potestatem et auctoritatem recipiendi de
omnibus et singulis Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, et aliis personis ecclesiasticis, ac aliis officiariis et
ministries ecclesiasticis, cujuscumque status, dignitatis, praeeminentiae, seu gradus fuerit. . . quoddam
Sacramentum corporaliter super sacrosancta Dei Evangelia . . . declaratum et specificatum in quodam
Actu Parliamenti nostri. . . anno regni nostri primo, tenti, edito, juxta vim formam et effectum ejusdem
Actus"; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 152; Rymer, Foedera, 15:546-547.

404
subscribe during the royal visitation. Another bit of evidence comes from a letter
from Cecil and Sir Thomas Parry to Parker on November 2. Cecil and Parry
instructed Parker to proceed "with Mr Boxall, [dean of Windsor] whom we send unto
you, according to the form of the statute and your commission, offering him the oath."
If Boxall refused the oath, Parker was to deprive him. No matter what Boxall decided,
Parker was to signify to the various "commissioners of several circuits within the
which any part or parcel of his livings lieth, that he be no more molested or troubled
for not appearance, or any other cause whatsoever growing by reason of his said
livings or their particular visitations."69 Because Boxall was a pluralist, he was in
trouble with commissioners in multiple circuits and visitations. Parker, as an
ecclesiastical commissioner, was to decide his case once and for all by tendering him
the oath of supremacy. Unfortunately, we know little more of the proceedings of the
ecclesiastical commission in London. From information preserved in Strype, Gee has
posited that the commissioners sat in London in November, heard cases from London
and from the rest of the country, gathered subscriptions from at least forty-six
clerymen, and eventually deprived an unknown number of those who refused the oath
of supremacy.70
Information on the tendering of the oath outside of London is even more
deficient. Many of the clergy who refused subscription during the royal visitation of
the northern province were bound to appear before unspecified commissioners, but no
royal writ similar to the ecclesiastical commission of October 20 survives authorizing
the tendering of the oath of supremacy in the northern province until 1561. Yet a
commission was probably established earlier. On November 9, 1559, the members of
the Privy Council wrote to Parker and the other ecclesiastical commissioners in
London: "Where as Dr Carter and Dr Seggiswick having refused before our very good
lord the Earl of Westmoreland and other commissioners in the north parts to receive
the oath and service by law established, were by them bound to appear personally

Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 142.

CCCC, MS. 114, #287, pg. 795; partially printed in Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 104.
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 143, 154-155.

405
before us," we have decided to send them to you.71 Seggiswick (aka Sigiswicke), as
we have noted, refused the subscription during the royal visitation of the northern
province. Yet the earl of Westmoreland was not part of the royal visitation, which
suggests another commission, instituted" after the royal visitation, was established to
tender the oath of supremacy to the recusant clerics identified by the royal visitation.
On February 18, 1560, Robert Home, then dean of Durham, informed Cecil that "thre
prabendaries of the cath. churche of duresme [Durham], Rob. Dalton, Nic. Merley, &
Jo. Tutting dothe refuse the othe, 1 think Anto. Salline will do the same."7 These
same prebendaries had refused to subscribe during the royal visitation of 1559. That
Home had been commissioned to tender the oath is further supported by a note in
Cecil's hand on March 25, 1560, that read: "The two commissions, whereof one at
Carlisle, the other at Newcastle: Dean of Durham in the commission." Another
commission may have been granted to the west country, for Thomas Stapleton, the
fellow of New College who fled to Louvain sometime late in 1559 or early in 1560,
wrote that he had been deprived of his prebend of Chichester by Bishop Barlow (who
was instituted in December, 1559) for refusing part of the oath of supremacy. In a
letter most likely from February of 1563, Barlow himself implied that he had pressed
Stapleton and another prebendary of Chichester, Edward Goddehalffe, "to subscrybe
to the supremacye" in the winter of 1560.75 If we believe Stapleton that this
subscription included the oath of supremacy, Barlow must also have been granted a
commission to tender the oath.
We know for certain that a commission was granted on May 5, 1561, to the
earl of Rutland (president of the Council of the North), Archbishop Young (York),
Bishop Pilkington (Durham), Bishop Best (Carlisle) and a handful of knights,
archdeacons, and leading aldermen, authorizing them to take the oaths of supremacy
of all ecclesiastical persons in the northern province. The writ is very similar to the
writ of October 20, 1559, authorizing the first ecclesiastical commission in London to

71
Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 105-106.
72
NA SP12/11, fol. 41 v (Cal SP Dom, XI 16); Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 166.
73
NA SP12/11, fol. 85v {Cal SP Dom, XI 36); Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 166.
Stapleton, A Counterblast to M. Homes vayne Blaste against M. Fekenham, fol. 424v.
75
NA SP12//11, fol. 61 r {Cal SP Dom, XI 25); Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 157.

406
tender the oath. The wording of the writ of May 5 suggests that the purpose of this
commission was to tender the oath of supremacy to all northern clergymen who had
absented themselves from the royal visitation or had refused to observe the rites,
ceremonies, and order of the reformed service.76 Gee supposed that Bishops Best and
Pilkington implemented this commission by tendering the oath of supremacy to the
7
priests in their dioceses in their episcopal visitations of 1561. Yet if we read
carefully the letters on which Gee based this assertion, we find that the explicit
reference to the oath of supremacy refer to lay officials, an oddity since the
commission of May 5 did not authorize the bishops to tender the oath to the laity.78
Best did complain of clergymen who absented themselves from his visitation "because
they wolde not subsribe" and others who refused to "acknowleadge ye Queenes
majestie['s] Suppremacie," while Pilkington described a young priest who refused to
take his oath of inquiry and presentation, but neither of these allusions necessarily
imply that the bishops were administering the oath of supremacy to their parish
clergy.79 We simply do not know if these clerical subscriptions and acknowledgments
were accompanied by the oath of supremacy. I think it unlikely. First, it was common
for reforming bishops to make their parish clergy subscribe to a set of doctrinal
articles (among which was an article on the supremacy) during their episcopal
visitations.80 Best's comments probably refer to this. Second, if Best and Pilkington
were tendering the oath during their episcopal visitations, the bishops must have had at
least three other commissioners with them, for the writ of May 5 stated that at least
four of the seventeen designated commissioners had to be present to tender the oath.
The bishops were not allowed to tender the oath of supremacy on their own authority
until after the Parliament of 1563.81 It thus seems more likely that the commission to
the north established by the writ on May 5, 1561, like its counterpart in London, did

76
The original source of the writ is the Elizabethan Patent Rolls: N A C66/972, m. 34d (Cal Pat Rolls
Eliz, 2:171). It is printed in Rymer, Foedera, 15:611 and in Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 172-173.
77
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 167-169.
78
NA SP12/20, fol. 1 l r (Cal SP Dom, XX 5); NA SP12/20, fol. 62r (Cal SP Dom, XX 25).
79
NA SP12/18, fol. 11 l r (Cal SP Dom, XVIII 21); NA SP12/21, fol. 29' (Cal SP Dom, XXI 13); NA
SP12/20, fol. 63r (Cal SP Dom, XX 25).
W. M. Kennedy, The 'Interpretations' of the Bishops and Their Influence on Elizabethan Episcopal
Policy (London: Longmans, Green Co, 1908), 18-23; Frere, Visitation Articles, 3:66, 131.
81
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 169.

407
not tour the province tendering the oath to every priest. Instead, it was a stationary
body that tendered the oath to individual clerics referred to the commission, clerics
whose obstinacy had been revealed by the royal visitation of 1559 or episcopal
visitations.
After the first few months of 1560, there is very little indication that the oath of
supremacy continued to be tendered to established clergymen. The ecclesiastical
commission in London continued to sit (its license was renewed on July 20, 1562),
and it occasionally tendered the oath to specific persons in exceptional
circumstances.82 Its primary function, however, was more general.83 After 1559,
there was never a unified, systematic effort to the tour the realm in order to tender the
oath of supremacy to the clergy.
Although the Elizabethan regime never systematically tendered the oath of
supremacy to all established clerics of the realm, the regime did administer it to every
new clergymen upon their institution. The Sede Vacante register for the province of
Canterbury from November 1558 to December 1559 (the time between the death of
Pole and formal institution of Parker) reveals that no new clergymen took the oath of
supremacy before June 1559 (the time that the Act of Supremacy went into effect), a
few scribal errors excluded.84 Yet almost all the institutions after the beginning of
June 1559 note that the new clergyman swore an oath "expressly according to the
statute of Parliament."85 The lists of institutions preserved in Grindal's register also
show that new ministers took the oath of supremacy upon their institution. No
commission exists authorizing Elizabethan bishops to tender the oath to new
clergymen upon their institution, butin contrast to the requirements for the
82
See for example Elliot Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans
under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 35-36; Parker,
Correspondence of Matthew Parker. 154-156.
83
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 174-179.
84
Robert Paine was noted as taking the oath "according to the statute of Parliament" on December 28,
1558. The scribe recorded that the same oath according to the statute of Parliament was taken by
Christopher James on January 23, 1559, by Henry Harvey on January 27, 1559, by Thomas Webbe on
February 1, 1559, by Mamaduke Wood on February 6, 1559; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc,
Register U2, fols. 22r-v, 23v, 56v. These are obviously scribal errors because the first supremacy bill
was not even introduced in Parliament until February 9, 1559, and the final bill did not pass until April.
85
There are variations on this phrase. Sometimes the register reads "according to the form of the
statute," while occasionally it is described as the oath "renouncing all foreign power according to the
form of the statute of Parliament"; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, DCc, Register U2, fols. 14r-105r.

408
administration of the oath to existing clergymenno commission was required. In the
case of existing clergymen, the Act of Supremacy stated that they should take the oath
"before suche person or persons as shall please your Highnes your Heires or
Successoures under the Greate Seale of Englande to assigne and name taccepte and
take the same," thereby implying that the oath was to be taken only before someone
who had received a commission from Elizabeth.86 In the case of those clergymen
"hereafter . . . preferred promoted or collated" to a new office or benefice, the Act of
Supremacy stated that they should take the oath "before suche persons as have or shall
have aucthoritye tadmitte any suche person to anye suche Office Ministerye or
Service" or before any others person who Elizabeth had commissioned to take the
oath.87 In other words, in addition to those who had received a commission from
Elizabeth, anyone who had the authority to admit a cleric to a new benefice (such as a
bishop) also had the authority to tender the new cleric the oath of supremacy
regardless of whether that person had received a specific commission from Elizabeth.
This explains why the episcopal registers of Elizabeth's reign show that the oath of
supremacy was administered to all new clergymen upon their institution after June
1559.
During the first years of Elizabeth's reign, then, there was a certain pattern to
the imposition of the oath of supremacy. First, the Elizabethan regime tendered the
oath to the more powerful members of the clerical hierarchy. The regime's first targets
were the Marian bishops, the few members of religious orders that had re-established
themselves during Mary's brief reign, and the universities. One of the first references
(outside of Parliamentary sources) to the oath of supremacy comes from a letter from
Edmund Grindal to Conrad Hubertus. Grindal wrote: "If any bishops or other prelates
(praelati) shall decline to take the oath concerning the renouncing of the power of the
bishop of Rome, they will be deposed and deprived of every ecclesiastical function."

i6
Statutes of the Realm, 1 Eliz. l,c. 1,4:352.
87
Statutes of the Realm, 1 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:353.
88
"Si qui episcopi aut alii praelati de renuncianda episcopi Romani potestate juramentum suscipere
noluerint, illi omni functione ecclesiastica priventur et deponantur."; Hastings Robinson (ed.), The
Zurich Letters: Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with some of
the Helvetian Reformers, During the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth (2nd Ser.), P.S., vol. 51 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1845), 11.

409
The editor of the Zurich Letters, Hastings Robinson, has translated praelati as
"beneficed clergymen," but this is a misleading translation. According the
Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, the noun praelatus refers to "a cleric, either
diocesan or a member of an institute of consecrated life, who possesses jurisdiction in
the external forum." Grindal was saying that the oath was to be tendered to those
who exercised jurisdiction, to those who held power. II Schifanoya made a similar
observation on June 27, 1559, when, after noting the deprivation of a handful of
Marian bishops, he wrote: "Thus they will continue depriving every one, not only the
bishops, but the deans, archdeacons, and other prelates who will not consent to their
abuses, nor take the oath."91 The observations of Grindal and 11 Schifanoya seem to
have been fulfilled during the rest of the year. Of the few examples we gathered from
the correspondences of Parker, Cecil, and others of specific clergymen being called
before some ecclesiastical commission to take the oath in the winter of 1559/1560
(Boxall, Carter, Sigiswicke, Dalton, Merley, Tutting, Stapleton, and Goddehalfe) all of
them were prebendaries or higher: that is, they held an elevated position within a
cathedral church or university college. In Boxall's case, his elevated position is
especially highlighted, almost as if it were the reason for offering him the oath. Cecil
and Parry's letter instructing Parker to tender the oath of supremacy to Boxall (a
holder of multiple prebends and a secretary under Mary) ended: "We doo also requyre
yow, in preceding with hym to haue in remembrance what place he hath had in this
"07

Comenweale and to haue regard thereunto. Boxall and other prebendaries were
targeted because of their special power and influence. The fellows of the universities
did not exercise any real jurisdiction over other clerics, but their intellectual authority,
power over their students (who were future clerics), and central role in the
dissemination of knowledge gave them influence as well. Hence, the regime

89
Robinson, Zurich Letters, P.S., vol. 51, 19.
90
Leo F. Stelten (ed.), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, (Peabody, MA; Hendrickson Publishers,
1995), 319.
91
Cal SP Venice, VII 82. My italics.
92
CCCC, MS. 114, #287, pg. 795. This endnote is not included in the printed edition of this letter in
Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 104.

410
employed the oath of supremacy against those clerics who possessed power and
influence.
Concerning the parish clergy, the regime took a more flexible, gradual
approach. During the royal visitation of 1559, it tendered all existing clerics a
subscription to the supremacy and to the new church order and an oath of fidelity, but
it did not require them to swear the oath mandated by Parliament. The majority of the
established parish clergy did not have to take God as witness to the truth of Elizabeth's
supremacy over the English church. The writ of October 20 certainly granted the
ecclesiastical commission in London the power to tender them the oath, as did the writ
granted to the northern commission on May 5, 1562. As such, these commissions
probably did tender the oath of supremacy to established parish priests on occasion,
but it is also significant that we have no record of them doing so. In general, the
regime seems to have been content to let the established parish clergy get away with a
milder form of acknowledgment and focus their efforts on administering the oath of
supremacy to all incoming clerics. Eventually, as all the Marian clergy retired or
passed away, the parish churches would be filled with more priests who had taken the
oath of supremacy.
The final pattern evident in the administration of the oath of supremacy during
the first years of Elizabeth's reign was that the regime was reluctant to enforce the Act
of Supremacy to the full extent of the law. It gave many of the Marian bishops time
before depriving them. No clean sweep was made of the universities despite the
prevalence of resistance to the oath there. Most of the cathedral clergy were not
immediately deprived for refusing to subscribe to the supremacy in the royal
visitation, but rather called before ecclesiastical commissions who tried to convince
them to take the oath before depriving them. As for the established parish clergy, it is
possible that no action was taken against many of them if they refused to subscribe
during the royal visitation. The patent rolls of 1559 and 1560 suggest that not many of
the parish clergy were deprived. Whenever a roll specifies that a benefice had become
vacant because of deprivation, the benefice was usually a canonry, prebend, deanery,

411
or some other high benefice. Of the rectories and vicarages vacant because of
deprivation, they were almost all held by pluralists who held higher benefices
elsewhere.94 By contrast, the overwhelming majority of new institutions for vicarages
and rectories were not vacant because of deprivation, but rather because of death,
resignation, or some other reason unspecified in the rolls. This of course does not
prove that no parish priests were called before an ecclesiastical commission and
deprived for refusing to swear the oath of supremacy, but it does lend further credence
to the claim that the Elizabethan regime was not keen to make a clean sweep of the
church through the use of the oath of supremacy.
Thus far, it has not been clear who was responsible for this pattern of
employment of the oath supremacy during the first year of Elizabeth's reign.
Parliament passed the act, Elizabeth signed the commissions, the Privy Council carried
out the initial administration of the oath to the bishops and monasteries, and the royal
visitors cooperated with their writs of visitation. There is little evidence of conflict
within the Elizabethan regime over the administration and non-administration of the
oath of supremacy. Starting in 1563, however, certain fault lines begin to appear.
First, Parliament must have been dissatisfied with the limited use of the oath of
supremacy since it passed the Act for the Assurance of the Queen's Majesty's Royal
Power over All Estates and Subjects within Her Highness' Dominions. This act
reiterated that "all maner of persons expressed and appointed in and by thact made in
the first yere of the Quenes Majesties Raign that no we ys . . . as all other persons
whiche have taken or shal take Orders . . . shall take and pronounce a Corporall othe
upon the Evangelistes" before taking any kind of educational degree, or entering into
any benefice, office, or position of authority. In order to ensure the tendering of the
oath to the established clergy, the act granted bishops the authority to tender the oath
to any ecclesiastic dwelling in their diocese. Moreover, the act authorized the lord

93
Cal Pat Rolls Eliz, 1:4,5, 18,21,28,39,40,45,46, 111,252-253-259,429.
94
The roll stated that rectories and vicarages belonging to William Charter, William Taylor, Anthony
Salvin, Alban Langdale, J. Seeton, Dr. Anthony Draycotte, Thomas Reynolds, John Erie, William
Hales, Owen Oglethorpe, John Boxell, John Sigiswicke, and Cuthbert Scott were vacant because of
deprivation. Eleven of these thirteen people (only Erie and Hales excluded) were pluralists who also
held prebends, deanries, bishoprics, or other high positions; Cal Pat Rolls Eliz, 1:21, 28, 40, 46, 252,
254-257, 259.

412
chancellor to commission anyone he desired to tender the oath. In theory, this had the
effect of freeing the ecclesiastical hierarchy of their dependence on the queen. No
longer did bishops have to wait for a commission from the queen in order to tender the
oath of supremacy to priests in their diocese.95
Of even more concern to Parliament than the non-administration of the oath of
supremacy was the lax enforcement of the oath. Parliament addressed this problem by
reviving the penal measures proposed in the first bill of supremacy of 1559. The act
of 1563 decreed that anyone who refused the oath upon its first tendering should not
only be deprived, but also suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for committing
praemunire. If the person again declined to take the oath three months later, he was
guilty of treason and sentenced to execution. This measure created much controversy
in Parliament. We do not know for certain who was behind these harsh measures, for,
like the bill of 1559, the bill of 1563 was altered. The original bill was sent to a
subcommittee of the House of Commons which changed the bill to such an extent that
the clerk described what emerged as "the new byll."96 Neale theorized that the
original bill proposed by the government had been much milder, and that the
Commons' committee added the teeth to the bill to the chagrin of Elizabeth and Sir
William Cecil. Neale based his argument on a letter by Cecil in which Cecil wrote
that the penal measures of the act had aroused controversy and then stated: "but such
be the humours of the Commons House, as they think nothing sharp enough against
Papists."97 Norman Jones, conversely, contended that the original bill proposed by the
government contained the draconian penal measures. Jones observed that the Earl of
Northumberland knew of the penal measure two weeks before the bill was introduced,
that Bishop Quadra noted a speech by Cecil in support of the bill, and that Quadra
reported that the House of Commons modified the bill so that members of the House
of Lords would not be constrained to swear "for fear the Upper House would throw it

Statutes of the Realm, 5 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:403-405.

Jones, Faith by Statute, 172.
J. E. Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581 (London: J. Cape, 1953), 117.
Jones, Faith by Statute, 172-175. The Quadra quote comes from Cal SP Simances, 1213.

413
 And the bill was indeed harshly opposed by the Catholic members of the
House of Lords. Although the House of Lords eventually passed the bill, they further
amended it. Most notably, they added a proviso limiting the number of people who
could be tendered the oath a second time. The proviso stated that only ecclesiastical
persons who held a benefice or office under Henry, Mary, or Edward, or who refused
to observe the reformed rites and orders after having been admonished by their
ordinary, or who publicly attacked the reformed service with words or writings, or
who said or heard private masses were eligible for a second tendering." This strongly
curtailed the number of people who could be executed for refusing the oath.
Thus, we know that some people in power in 1563 sought to widen the oath of
supremacy and strengthen its enforcement, while others (certainly the Catholic
members of the House of Lords) opposed the harsh penal measures attached to the
statute. Yet we do not know the exact actors in the drama. Neale believed that the
House of Commons was the main force behind the bill, and that Cecil and Elizabeth
opposed the penal measures of the bill. Jones contended that Cecil and "the
government" had supportedindeed writtenthe bill in its entirety from the bill's
inception. There is no real evidence from Parliamentary sources about Elizabeth's role
in supporting or opposing the bill. Nevertheless, when we examine the actual
tendering of the oath of supremacy after 1563, it becomes apparent that while Cecil
and Elizabeth's leading councilors and bishops were in favor of the bill, Elizabeth
herself staunchly opposed it. And because of Elizabeth's opposition to it, the bill was
never fully implemented.
When the Spanish ambassador Bishop Quadra first heard of the proposed bill
in mid-February 1563, he wrote: "really the provisions are so severe that they appear
impossible of execution, and I fancy a good many of those who voted the Act do not
like it."100 Although Quadra's initial observation proved to be true, five days later he
had changed his tune. He then reported: "they say that on the 1st April they will
demand the oath of the bishops who are in the Tower, and that those who will not take

Statutes of the Realm, 5 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:405; Jones, Faith by Statute, 176.

Cal SP Simances, I 212.

414
it must die."101 Quadra was not alone in this belief. As the bill was debated in
Parliament, John Feckenham (the abbot ofWestminister under Mary) and other
religious prisoners in the Tower believed that a commission would be immediately
issued to tender the oath to them a second time and upon their refusal, they would be
executed. Feckenham hastily composed "The answeare made by M. John Fekenham
Priest, and prisoner in the Tower, to the Queenes hignes commissioners, touchyng the
Othe of the Supremacie."102 Although Feckenham's own fears did not materialize, a
process was commenced against four other prominent Marian Catholics. On April 24,
1563, Quadra recounted: "This week they began to demand the oath from the catholic
Bishops in accordance with the new Act passed in Parliament recently, and the bishops
of London and Lincoln and Doctors Cole and Storey have been summoned for
Monday next."103 By the beginning of May, a commission had been drafted for the
trial of these four Catholics. On May 9, Quadra wrote that the queen had been
presented with the commission but had not yet signed it, claiming that she would sign
it another day at her convenience. Storey, disturbed by this news, had managed to
escape from the Tower and flee to the continent, stopping by Quadra's residence
during his flight.104 The queen evidently never signed the commission. After May 9,
Quadra and others are suddenly silent on the plan to tender the oath a second time to
Bonner, Watson, Cole, and Storey. When the process against them reached the desk of
the queen, it immediately and mysteriously stopped.
A tantalizing hint as to why the process against these four Catholics ceased is
found in a draft of a letter from Archbishop Parker to his suffragan bishops written
sometime in April, 1563. Parker instructed his suffragans that if they tendered the
oath of supremacy to anyone under their charge and this person refused to take it, then
"immediately upon such refusal of any person ye do address your letters to me,
expressing the disorders of such one who is fallen into such danger, and that ye
proceed not to offer the said oath a second time, until your lordship shall have my

Cal SP Simances, 1213.

Home, An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe ofWynchester, fols. lv-2r.
Cal SP Simances, I 221.
Cal SP Simances, I 223.

415
answer returned again in writing."105 Parker seemed uncomfortable with these
instructions, for he added: "praying your lordship also not to interpret mine
advertisement, as tending to shew myself a patron for the easing of such evil-hearted
subjects."106 At the end of the letter, William Cecil added the following paragraph for
Parker to include:
And I also pray you to assure and persuade yourself, that this manner of my
sudden writing at this time is grounded upon great and necessary
consideration, for the weal and credit of us that are governors in the church
under the Queen's Majesty, and yet for divers respects meet to be kept secret to
yourselves, as I doubt not but your wisdoms will easily see and judge.
Cecil's additions indicate that Parker was not issuing the letter under his own
authority. Neale has plausibly claimed that Elizabeth was the true authority behind
this draft, and that Parker did not mention her because he did not want to discourage
"honest Protestants."108 This would explain Parker's discomfort and Cecil's cryptic
reference to the "great and necessary consideration for the weal and credit of us that
are governors."
The hypothesis that Elizabeth opposed the tendering of the oath of supremacy
to the clergy a second time and that Parker and Cecil were her reluctant servants in
this is further supported by the attempt to tender Bonner the oath of supremacy a
second time in 1564. Geoffrey de C. Parmiter has expertly reconstructed the story of
the administration of the oath to Bonner in 1564, emphasizing how Bonner's defense
strategy effectively called into question the legal foundation of the entire Elizabethan
prelacy and led to the passing of an act of Parliament in 1566/67 that retroactively
invalidated any tendering of the oath of supremacy by a bishop before the passage of
the act. Yet Parmiter has not observed the apparent attempt by the leading members
of the regime to keep the process against Bonner secret from the queen. On April 26,
1564, Bishop Home of Winchester, exercising the power given him by the statute of
1563, called Bonner from his prison at Marshalea (which was located in his diocese)

Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 174.

6
Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 174-175.
Parker, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 175.
8
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581,121.
9
Geoffrey de C. Parmiter, "Bishop Bonner and the Oath," Recusant History 11 (1972): 215-236.

416
and tendered him the oath of supremacy a second time. Bonner refused to take it.
Bishop Grindal of London was also involved in the plot. On May 2, he wrote to Cecil:
For D Bon[ner's] othe, I dyd off purpose nott troble you with it aforehande,
that iff anie myslyked the matter, ye mighte Liquido iurare, ye wer nott privie
off it. Nottwithstandynge I hadde my L. of Canterbury approvation by letters,
& I vsed goode advise off the learned in the Lawes: 1 cowlde wisshe that the
Juges wer mooved, that expedition maye be vsed before them. / A thinge
obteyned with suche difficultie, wolde nott be letten lye withowte all
execution: and no more meete man to begyone withall, then thatt persone.
Hence, three of the highest prelates of the realm, Parker, Grindal, and Home, had
contrived to begin the process of tendering the oath of supremacy a second time by
starting with Bonner. The fact that they wished the judges would use expedition
suggests that they foresaw difficulties in carrying their design out. Could it be that
this difficulty was the queen? Notice also that Grindal purposely kept this process
secret from Cecil not because he feared Cecil himself would disapprove of their
proceedings, but because "if any misliked the manner," Cecil could swear that he had
no knowledge of the plot. What other person was in a position to chastise Cecil
because he or she "misliked the manner" than the queen?
Cecil must not have opposed tendering the oath to Bonner, for the process
against Bonner continued. On October 3, 1564, Bonner appeared before the Court of
the King's Bench to answer to his indictment.'12 The Spanish ambassador Guzman de
Silva described these summons as "secret" and "underhand," though his account
contains holes.113 It does appear, however, that the proceedings were a "secret" to the
queen. When de Silva expressed his surprise to Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester,
that Dudley and the queen, whom de Silva considered protectors of the Marian
bishops, would condone the process against Bonner, Dudley himself harshly criticized
Bonner but "replied that the Queen had not known what was being done against the

110
Cal SP Simances, I 250; Parmiter, "Bishop Bonner and the Oath," 219.
111
NA SP12/34, fol. l r (CalSPDom, XXXIV 1).
112
Parmiter, "Bishop Bonner and the Oath," 225-226.
113
Silva claimed that Bonner's opponents tried to keep his summons secret from him so that Bonner
could be indicted for contempt after his non-appearance. According to Silva, a "Catholic" informed
Bonner in the knick of time, and Bonner hastily made his appearance; Cal SP Simancas, I 271. The
problem with this account is that Bonner was not at liberty at this time. He was imprisoned in the
Marshalsea and must have been brought to the King's Bench by his marshals of the Marshalsea, Sir
Ralph Hopton and Robert Hopton.

417
Bishop at first.""4 Certainly by the end of October the queen knew of the plot, for
Bonner wrote to her a letter on October 26, 1564, explaining the reasons why he
refused to take the oath. Tellingly, the process against Bonner was suspended in
November. Parmiter is clearly correct in claiming that the legal difficulties arising
from Bonner's questioning of the validity of Home's consecration account (at least in
part) for the suspension of the proceedings against Bonner.'16 It is also significant,
however, that the suspension of the trial corresponded with the queen's knowledge of
it. Furthermore, this episode shows that Parker, Grindal, Home, Cecil, and Dudley
the most influential ecclesiastical and lay councilors of the first part of Elizabeth's
reignconnived or at least approved of the attempt to tender the oath to Bonner a
second time, and that this plot was kept secret from the queen.
After Bonner, there was no other attempt in Elizabeth's reign to tender the oath
of supremacy to a cleric a second time. The penalties outlined in the 1563 act of
Parliament were never implemented; no one was executed for treason for refusing the
oath of supremacy. Elliot Rose was almost certainly correct in his observation that the
act of 1563 "was nearly unenforcable against anybody in Elizabeth's reign because of
Elizabeth's own distaste for it."" 7 After 1563, the oath of supremacy was used on the
clergy of England only as a test device for new clergymen and new ecclesiastical
promotions. Since Elizabeth was the one responsible for the lack of implementation
of the act of 1563, it is not unreasonable to assume that the earlier restriction of the
administration of the oath of supremacy to the upper echelons of the clergy was also
her doing. By limiting the number of commissioners authorized to tender the oath,
Elizaberth did not allow it to be tendered to the majority of the established parish

Cal SP Simancas, I 272.

115
Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, Vol 47, fol. 2r_v; accurately transcribed in Strype, The History
of the Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal, the First Bishop of London,
and the Second Archbishop of York and Canterbury Successively, in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol.
5 of Strype's Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), 487-489.
' l 6 Parmiter, "Bishop Bonner and the Oath," 226-230. Furthermore, if Elizabeth did have a role in
halting the proceedings against Bonner, it was not because she feared that Bonner's defense would
expose the dubious legal foundation of her Protestant prelates, for in his letter to the queen Bonner did
not make the argument that the administration of the oath of supremacy to him was illegal because
Home, not having been consecrated according to canon law, was illegitimate. (This was Bonner's
standard argument in 1564.) Instead, Bonner simply explained in his letter to Elizabeth why the oath of
supremacy violated his conscience. For more on Bonner's reasoning in this letter, see chapter twelve.
" Rose, Cases of Conscience, 68.

418
clergy, nor did she rigorously enforce the penalties of the 1559 Act of Supremacy
against all those who refused the oath. Despite the intentions of Parliament, some
Privy Councilors, and Elizabeth's leading Protestant bishops, she did not allow her
servants to use the oath of supremacy as a means to purge completely all Roman
Catholic sympathizers from the church or to push the leading Marian clerics into
deciding between swearing to her supremacy or forfeiting their lives.

The Oath of Supremacy and the Laity

The story of the administration of the oath of supremacy to the laity is similar
to that of the clergy insofar as its most striking characteristic is the scarcity of the
oath's administration and the laxity of the oath's enforcement. The regime did make
an effort to tender the oath to some of the chief lay officials of the realm during the
first few years of Elizabeth's reign, but this effort was half-hearted and desultory. The
administration of the oath varied greatly from locality to locality. When the regime
encountered resistance to the oath, it backed off. The regime did tender the oath of
supremacy to lay officials in the North who sought pardon for their part in the
Rebellion of the Northern Earls of 1569, but the first uniform drive to administer the
oath comprehensively to all justices of the peace of the realm was not until 1579.
Evidence for the tendering of the oath of supremacy before 1579 to lay officials below
the rank of justice of the peace is even slimmer. Furthermore, the surviving sources
concerning the oath of supremacy and lay officials do not provide us with any insight
as to whether the limited use of the oath was a deliberate government policy and if so,
who was behind it. All that can be said for certain is that the regime's employment of
the oath fell well short of the parameters established by Parliament, and that the Privy
Council (perhaps acting under the orders of Elizabeth) did very little to rectify this
until the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign.

The Elizabethan Act of Supremacy proclaimed that every judge, justice, mayor
or other lay official should take the oath of supremacy before those Elizabeth
commissioned and that all incoming lay officials must take the oath before assuming
their position. On May 23, 1559, Elizabeth authorized the members of her Privy

419
Council to receive the oath not only from all ecclesiastical persons but also from all
1 1 Q

temporal judges, mayors, and other lay officers and ministers. Yet by the beginning
of June, there were already rumors of the regime wavering in its commitment to tender
the oath to its great lay subjects. On June 6, II Schifanoya reported to the Castellan of
Mantua that the constant refusal of the Marian bishops to take the oath of supremacy
had caused the regime to proceed "more adroitly" in tendering the oath, and that many
would now "perhaps be exempted from it, most especially the nobility." On June
19, the Bishop of Aquila verified that the regime was unwilling to enforce strictly the
oath on the laity. He wrote to Philip II: "The judges of England, as they are called,
who have come here for the terms have refused to swear and have gone to their homes
as they have not dared to press them about it. The same thing will happen to many
others, and it is thought they will not dare to press anyone as they had intended."120
Writing two years later from exile, the Oxford scholar Dr. Nicolas Sanders, confirmed
this story:
All the judges who act in criminal cases asked the queen with one voice to be
absolved from the necessity of abjuring the supremacy of the Pope, otherwise
as the oath was against their conscience they could not discharge the duties of
their office. The queen, having none among her Lutherans to supply this very
important class, was obliged to dispense them from the oath.
Thus, the news from the urban centers of London and Oxford suggested that the
government lost its nerve in the summer of 1559 and opted not to tender the oath to its
chief judicial lay officers.
The letters from the localities show that while the regime did make some
attempt to administer the oath to lay officials in the first years of Elizabeth's reign, the
oath was administered there haphazardly. An undated set of instructions (placed by
Robert Lemon in 1559) survive for Henry FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel and lord

118
The commission replicated the language of the act of Parliament, though it translated it into Latin.
Hence, the commission authorized the tendering of the oath to "omnibus & singulis Judicious
temporalibus Justiciariis Majoribus, ac aliis Laicis seu temporalibus Officiariis et Ministris, ac aliis
quibuscumque Personis habentibus Feoda seu Vadia nostra infra Regnum nostrum Angliae, aut aliqua
Dominia nostra"; Rymer, Foedera, 15:519; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 39-40.
U9
Cal SP Venice, VII 78.
Cal SP Simancas, I 36.
1
' Sanders, "Dr. Sander's Report to Cardinal Moroni," (May, 1561), in Hungerford, Miscellanea, vol. 1
of Catholic Records Society (London, 1905), 44.

420
lieutenant of Sussex and Surrey, in which Arundel is told to make sure that no one
execute the office of a justice of the peace or be appointed as one "exepte accordinge
to the lawes of the Realme he do take a corporall othe therfore provided."122 Arundel
seems to have followed through on these instructions, for on July 5, 1559, he sent a
circular letter to all justices of the peace in Surrey which, among other things,
commanded all justices to take the required oath.123 Similarly, the earl of Oxford
wrote to Cecil that in accordance with the queen's commission of oyer and terminer,
he had held a session at Chelmsford on August 21, 1559, and summoned the local
justices of the peace "to thintente that they and euery of them shuld then and there
haue Receyued at my handes suche othe concernynge the renowncinge and
abolesshinge of all forreyng power and superiorite as my comission touchinge the
same and the scedule therunto annexed gaue me aucthoritie."124 In the patent rolls
there is a commission from December 27, 1559, to the Earl of Derby and others to
take a corporal oath of all escheators and other officers in the county palatine of
Chester. Furthermore, it appears that Bishop Pilkington tendered the oath to the
chief lay officials of Durham in the fall of 1561. In a letter to Cecil, he lamented: "I
am growne into such displeasure with theim [the people], part for religion & part for
ministring the othe off the Quenes superiorite." That Pilkington referred to the laity is
evident by his reference to Sergeant Menel and other lay officials who refused the oath
but (to Pilkington's chagrin) maintained their positions and power. Finally, on
December 16, 1561, the bishop of St. Davids and Sir Henry Jones reported to the
president and council of the marches of Wales that, according to the queen's writ, they
had taken the oath "for theacknwledgement of the Quenes highnes Supremacie

122
NA SP12/93, fol. i00v (Cal SPDom, XCIII 18). This is letter is copied down among other letters
for the taking of the general musters of the realm from 1544 to 1573. Although it has no date, it is
mostly likely from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign since it is addressed to Arundel as the lieutenant
of Sussex and Surrey (Arundel was lieutenant from 1559 to 1569) and contained a reference to the "late
lawe made for the vniformitie of comon prayer and divine service." Arundel's instructions on July 5,
1559, suggest that this letter was received before that date.
123
Surrey History Centre, LM/COR/3/22.
124
NA SP12/6, fol. 64r (CalSPDom, VI 29).
125
NA C66/954, m. Id (Cal Pat Rolls Eliz, 1:354). Gee erroneously dated this commission as February
27, 1561; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 170.
126
NA SP12/20, fol. 62r (CalSPDom, XX 25). See also NA SP12/20, fol. 1 l r (CalSPDom, XX 5);
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 168-169.

421
according to the forme of the Statute made Anno primo of her Majesties raigne" of
several new sheriffs.' ~7
Outside of Sussex, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Chester, Durham, and Wales, there is
no evidence of other lay officials taking the oath of supremacy in their localities in the
first years of Elizabeth's reign. Indeed, it is clear that the oath of supremacy was not
tendered to any lay officials in certain localities until later in Elizabeth's reign. At the
beginning of 1562, Archbishop Young of York received a commission of the peace
containing a writ authorizing him to tender the oath of supremacy to new justices of
the peace. When Young attempted to execute this commission, he found that "the
saide othes were a straunge thing vnto the lustices of peace in yorkeshire, and as
diuers of worshippe being present affirmed there was no soche thing required nor
gyven before." Young surmised that "there hathe byn some synister practyses
thouching that othe here tofore." Unaware how many if any lay officials had taken the
oath, Young recommended "that a commission were directed into theis partes to
mynister and receyue the othe aswell of all lustices of peaxe as of other mynisters &
officers of the Layitee."128 Two years later, the Privy Council asked every bishop to
classify all the justices of the peace, local officials, and gentlemen in their dioceses as
favorable to the established religion, opposed to it, or indifferent. Not only did the
bishops classify many officials as 'Adversaires" or "mislikers" of true religion, but a
few bishops also proposed that the oath of supremacy be tendered in their dioceses.
Edwin Sandys, the bishop of Worcester, claimed that the realm would be honored and
God glorified "Yf the othe for the quenes maiesties Supremacie were tenderid to all
Such as beare rule or be of auctoritie in their Countreie and yet knowen to be
adversaries to true religion." Sandys also recommended that "Such as be put in
Commission for the peace or are callid to other offices in the commen wealth Should
take their othes openlie at the Session or some other publique place for the Quenes

NASP46/27, fol. 81r.

NA SP12/21, fol. 56r (CalSPDom, XII 27).

422
Supremacie."129 Likewise, Gilbert Berkeley, the bishop of Bath and Wells, advised
the Privy Council:
that for the better performans of dewtie it might please youe to take Order, that
every one that nowe ys, or hereafter shal be, called to the Office of a Justice,
maie personallie take a solemne Othe before such as please your honors to
appointe. And further if it be thought good to your honors, that they shall
subscrybe their names to that Commission, that shall first be geven out to the
Sheriff of everie Sheyre. I iudge verelie God shuld be better served.130
These letters imply that, in the dioceses of Worcester and Bath and Wells, justices of
the peace had not yet taken the oath of supremacy. Hence, the tendering of the oath of
supremacy on the laity varied from region to region.
Even if a commission was issued in a particular region for the tendering of the
oath of supremacy to lay officials, we cannot necessarily conclude that all lay officials
in that locality were administered the oath. We do know that the Earl of Oxford
administered the oath at Chelmsford. Yet the earl also reported that some of the
justices of the peace ignored his summons and thus avoided the oath.131 When John
Scudamore, a justice of the peace for Kenwich, refused to subscribe to an instrument
upholding the Book of Common Prayer and reformed administration of the sacraments
in 1569, it came out by his own confession "that he never tooke the othe when he was
1 ^7

sheryffe of this countie, affirminge the said [oath] to be perdoned." Other justices
were administered the oath, refused to take it, and nonetheless remained on the
commission of the peace. In the fall of 1561, Bishop Pilkington complained to Cecil
that "sergeant Menel (& others whose names be retayned to mi Lo keper that refused
to swere their allegeance to the quenes highens)" remained "on the consel at Yorke &
suche grete authoritees."133 Even though the Earl of Arundel instructed all the justices
of the peace in Sussex and Surrey to take the oath in the summer of 1559, we do not

" Mary Bateson (ed.), "A Collection of Original Letters from the Bishops to the Privy Council, 1564,
with Returns of the Justices of the Peace and Others Classified According to Their Religious
Convictions" in Camden Miscellany, Volume the Ninth, Camden Society, n.s. vol. 53 (Westminster,
1895), 2.
130
Bateson, "A Collection of Original Letters," 64.
131
NA SP12/6, fol. 64r {CalSPDom, VI 29).
132
NA SP12/60, fol. 63r {CalSPDom, LX 12).
133
NA SP12/20, fol. 62r (CalSPDom, XX 25). See also NA SP12/20, fol. 11' (Cal SPDom, XX 5);
Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 168-169.

423
know how many actually took the oath nor if any repercussions were taken against
those who refused. In the undated letter to Arundel from sometime in the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign instructing him to tender the oath to justices of the peace, the Privy
Council admitted that the oath "of late tyme hathe bene muche neglected."134
Moreover, some justices in Sussex obviously escaped the oath, for as late as 1577,
Bishop Curteys of Chichester (Sussex and Chichester are basically coterminous) wrote
to Sir Francis Walsingham claiming that many gentlemen of perverse religion still
served on the commission of the peace. He asked Walsingham "that there might be a
dedimus potestatem to some, to take there othes openly at the nexte Sessions to the
Queenes Supremacye . . . ffor it is comonly and crediblye thoughte, that some of them
never tooke that othe, althoughe it be otherwise returned."135 Indeed, the Sussex
historian Roger Manning claimed: "For several years after the passing of the
Elizabethan Act of Supremacy, it was common knowledge that the oath of supremacy
was being evaded."
The administration of the oath of supremacy to lay officials was thus desultory.
The general trend of the first few years of Elizabeth's reign was that the regime tried
to tender the oath of supremacy to justices of the peace in certain counties, but local
authorities subverted the regime's plans. In this light, the non-administration of the
oath of supremacy to the laity does not appear to have been the plan of the regime.
Yet the regime did not respond to reports of laxity in the localities by taking steps to
ensure the administration of the oath. For example, in response to the returns of the
bishops in 1564, the Privy Council did purge many "perverse" justices of the peace,
but there is no evidence of them carrying out the recommendations of the bishops of
Worcester and Bath and Wells to re-tender the oath.13? Even more significant is the
fact that no uniform commission went out to tender the oath of supremacy to all lay

134
NA SP12/93, fol. 100v (Cal SP Dom, XCIII 18).
135
NA SP12/111, fol. 113' {Cal SP Dom, CXI 45); Roger B. Manning, Religion and Society in
Elizabethan Sussex: A Study in the Enforcement of the Religious Settlement, 1558-1603 (Bristol:
Leicester University Press, 1969), 81.
136
Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex, 241.
137
The dismissal Catholic justices of the peace in 1564 is based on the claims of Alison Wall, '"The
Greatest Disgrace': The Making and Unmaking of JPs in Elizabethan and Jacobean England," English
Historical Review 119 (2004): 320.

424
officials during the first years of Elizabeth's reign. Some counties received
commissions to tender it, others did not. Unlike the royal visitation of the clergy in
1559, there was no nationwide campaign to assess the loyalty of local lay officials.
It was not until ten years laterwhen the Rebellion of the Northern Earls
awakened the regime to the danger of disloyal lay officialsthat Elizabeth's
government issued such a commission. Yet contrary to the common historiographical
assumption, the regime still did not tender the oath of supremacy to all its lay officials
in 1569.138 On November 6, 1569, at Windsor, the Privy Council sent out letters to
bishops, peers, and other local governors, ordering them to assemble all current and
past justices of the peace and sheriffs and cause them to subscribe to an instrument
enclosed with the letter.139 The instrument was a promise to observe the Act of
Uniformity of 1559, to attend church, and to take the sacraments. It contained neither
an oath nor any mention of royal or papal supremacy.140 This commission was
enforced, for numerous subscribed instruments from all over the realm survive in
volumes fifty-nine and sixty of the Elizabethan state papers domestic. The
instruments were often returned to the Privy Council with a cover letter explaining the
administration of the subscription. None of these cover letters mentioned the swearing
of an oath. The only exception to this rule was a letter from Lord Cobham to the Privy

Manning in particular erroneously claimed that all Elizabethan justices of the peace were called upon
to swear the oath of supremacy in 1569; Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex, 244,
249, 263.
139
The original letter from November 6 has not survived. Its contents, however, can be reconstructed
easily from the many responses to it that are preserved in volumes fifty-nine and sixty of the
Elizabethan state papers domestic.
0
The instrument read as follows: "This is to signify to the same, that wee whose names ar by our
sellves vnderwritten, doo knowledge that it is our bounded duty to observe the contentes of the act of
parlement entytled an act for the vniformitie of the common prayer and service in the churche, and the
due administration of the sacraments. And for observation of the same lawe; we doo hereby firmely
promys that every of vs and our families will and shall repayre and resorte at all tymes convenient to
our paryshe churches, or vppon reasonable impediment to other vsusall chappelles or places for the
same common prayers, and there shall devoutly and duly heare and take parte of the same common
prayers and all other divine services, and shall all receyve the holly sacramentes from tyme to tyme,
according to the tenour of the sayd act of parlement. Nether shall any of vs that hath subscribed doo or
say, or assent, or suffer any thing to bee don or sayd by our procurement or allowance in contempt,
hurte or reproofe of any parte of relligion establisshed by the presayd act / In wytnes whereof we have
subscribed this present writing at Westminster the xiiij"1 day of Novembre, 1569 and in the xith yere of
the regne of our Soveraigne lady Quene Elizabeth"; NA SP12/59, fols. 108v-109r (Cal SP Dom, LIX,
21(2)). This is the subscription of Edmund Grindal, the bishop of London. Other subscriptions of
course varied in place and date.

425
Council. Cobham reported that the city of Canterbury, "hearinge the general order that
is lately taken ffor the sweringe of suche as are and hathe benne Justyces of peax of
this contey ffor the observinge of the acte of parliament sett fourthe in the ffirst yeare
of her maiestyes Raynye touchign common prayer, have of them selves ffreley sworne
& sette there hands as apperethe by a Instrument." This is an example of an
overzealous magistrate acting independently upon rumor. Canterbury had not yet
received the actual letter from the Privy Council. When Canterbury did receive the
letter of November 6, the local officials simply subscribed to the standard, oathless
instrument like the rest of the realm.I42 It is curious that the initial response of the
Privy Council to the outbreak of rebellion was not to make Elizabeth's greatest
subjects swear an oath of fealty but rather to make them subscribe to an instrument
upholding the reformed religion.
By contrast, after the revolt had been suppressed, the regime did impose the
oath of supremacy widely in the counties involved in the rebellion. A draft of a
memorial to the Earl of Sussex dated February 7, 1570, contains instructions on how
the commissioners to the North should fine the penitent rebels before granting them a
royal pardon. Secretary Cecil added the following words to the draft: "to receive the
4
oath due to the Queen by statute of 1 Eliz. And to sue for their pardon." Another
draft of instructions from March commands Sussex and the other commissioners,
before they give the rebels warrants for a pardon, to:
cawse them all to receave such an othe as is proscribed by vs, and annexed to
these our Instructions. And for the better observation of the same by them,
yow may consider how the same othe may be sent to certen principall towns
wher the greatest nombre of offenders have ben, & ther fixed vpp in open
places ether in the markeet playces or in the Churches.' 4
Despite what this letter says, there is no oath attached to this draft. Strype, however,
found a copy of this oath when he was writing in the seventeenth century. The oath
commenced with a clause rejecting all previous oaths or promises sworn in the
rebellion as unlawful and offensive to God and promising to obey all laws and assist

141
NA SP12/59, fol. 164' (Cal SP Dom, LIX 42).
142
NA SP12/60, fol. 45r (Cal SP Dom, LX 17).
143
NA SP15/17, fol. 192'' (Cal SP Dom Addenda XVII 80).
144
NA SP15/18, fol. 16r (Cal SP Dom Addenda XVIII 7).

426
the queen's commissioners. The rebels of 1569 had not bound themselves together
with an oath like the pilgrims of 1536. As such, this superfluous clause suggests that
Elizabeth modeled the oath of 1570 on the one Henry tendered to the Pilgrims in 1537.
The oath continued by renouncing unlawful assemblies and binding the swearer not to
commit future treason but rather to report to the queen's officials any treasons or
seditious talk. Finally, the oath concluded with the Elizabethan oath of supremacy.
It appears that this oath was tendered to the rebels. A commission was issued in mid-
March to take the "submissions" of the rebels, and the commissioners assembled an
entire book of submissions, which is now evidently lost.14 That these "submissions"
were an oath is evident by a letter from Attorney General Gerard to Cecil on April 1,
1570. Gerard described the poverty of the peasants and farmers who appeared before
him desiring pardon and explained how they both faithfully promised to be dutiful and
obedient subjects and "doe very wyllyngly receyve the oythe."1 7
Thus, many of the
laity did take the oath of supremacy in 1570. The tendering it, however, was limited to
those living in the North seeking a pardon for the rebellion. The oath of supremacy
had still not been uniformly tendered to all lay officials of the realm.
The first real example of a comprehensive tendering of the oath of supremacy
to lay officials was in 1579. In July of that year, the Privy Council sent letters to all
justices of the assize in England to tender the oath of supremacy to all justices of the
peace in their circuits. Similar letters went out to the lord president and council of
the marches in Wales and to the justices of the assize in the palatinate of Chester.149
The justices of the assize dutifully obeyed these orders. Both a book of writs for the
administration of oaths of justices of the peace in 1579 as well as their actual oaths
survive in the National Archives. 15 Moreover, in October and November 1579,

John Strype, The Annals of the Reformation, 2:321-322. I have included the oath in full in Appendix
H, II.
146
Cuthbert Sharp (ed.), The Rising in the North: The 1569 Rebellion Being a Reprint of the Memorials
of the Rebellion of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, foreword by Robert Wood
(Durham City: Shotten, 1975), 187, 225-226, 229 (note *).
147
NA SP15/18 fol. 77r (Cal SP Dom Addenda, XVIII 26).
18
J. R. Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of England (London: H. M. Stationery Office by Eyre
and Spottiswoode, 1890-1907), 11:178.
149
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 11:208.
150
NAC 202/1.

427
diverse justices of the assize sent letters to the Privy Council with lists of the justices
of the peace that had in their presence sworn the oath of supremacy and all the justices
of the peace who were absent from the assize, often including a short excuse of why a
5
particular justice of the peace was absent and unsworn. The most common excuses
were that the absentee was away on business or was sick. The Privy Council followed
up on some of these absentee justices and ordered that they take the oath at the next
quarter session.I52 Beyond these orders, however, it is not apparent whether the Privy
Council strictly enforced the deprivation of all those who avoided swearing, though
they did make a series of purges of the bench in 1580 and 1582.153
The year 1579 is also significant because it is the year when the Elizabethan
regime began to get serious about tendering the oath to all new lay officials upon the
assumption of their office. It is certainly possible that many new lay officials took the
oath of supremacy before this date, but no commissions to tender the oath survive in
the National Archives before this date. After 1579, however, there survive many
examples of oaths of supremacy and oaths of office for newly appointed justices of the
peace, sheriffs, and escheators complete with commissions to tender these two oaths to
the new appointee.I54 Although more research needs to be done in local archives to
determine if this trend stands, our initial conclusion is that the Elizabethan regime was
lax on demanding the oath of supremacy from new lay office-holders until 1579.
So why 1579? The late 1570s witnessed both a heightened concern over the
threat of Roman Catholics within the realm and over the potential of religiously
motivated war with the Catholic powers of Europe. Catholic missionary priests
trained at Douay Seminary began entering the realm in 1574, and their appearance
worried the regime. In 1577, the Privy Council asked every bishop of the realm to

151
NA SP12/132, fols. 85r, 86r, 87'', 165r, 180r (Cal SP Dom, CXXXII 38, 39, 40, 64, 72); NA
SP12/133, fols. 15r-18r, 19v-23v, 25r-27v, 29r-31v (Cal SP Dom, CXXXIII 10-13).
152
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 11:292; NA SP12/132, fol. 83r, 165r (Cal SP Dom, CXXXII 37,
64).
153
The claim that the Privy Council purged the bench in 1580 and 1582 is from Wall, '"The Greatest
Disgrace'," 320. More research is necessary to determine whether the purges of 1580 were a response
to the information gathered from the administration of the oath of supremacy in 1579. If it could be
proved that the justices purged in 1580 were ones who had not sworn the oath of supremacy in 1579,
then a connection can be established here.
154
NA C 212/23/4; NA C 254/179, 190, 202, 208, 232, 233, 234, 235, 235A; NA E 199/59/1.

428
provide them with a list of the names of all Catholic recusants within their diocese as
well as the worth of their lands and goods. The first execution of a Roman Catholic
priest took place on November 29, 1579, and more followed in 1578.155
Internationally, the situation was no less grim. Elizabeth had pledged support to the
rebellion of the Protestant Estates General in the Low Countries against Spanish
Catholic rule in 1578. Although she withdrew her support when the Estates negotiated
a treaty with the Duke of Anjou, Spanish retaliation was still very much a possibility.
In France, the ultra-Catholic Guise family had formed the Catholic League and was in
a state of war with Henry III and the Huguenots. The Guise family was related to
Mary Queen of Scots, and if they emerged victorious, it was thought that they would
support Mary's claim to the English throne and raise another rebellion within England.
Furthermore, the Catholic Duke of Lennox became the dominant figure at the Scottish
court of James VI at this time, and English Protestants feared that he would renew the
Scottish alliance with France and overturn the Reformed religion.I56 In Ireland,
rumors circulated in the spring of 1579 of James Fitzmaurice's departure for Spain to
assemble an invasion force to stir that island into rebellion against her English
1 57

overlords. Elizabeth's concern over a possible alliance of Catholic powers against

England is evident by the revival of her pursuit of a marriage alliance with the Duke of
Anjou in 1579 as a means of defusing foreign Catholic hostilities against England.
Thus, the renewed attempt to swear all current justices of the peace and incoming
justices and sheriffs in 1579 may have been an attempt to ensure their loyalty in the
case of a domestic Catholic rebellion or a foreign Catholic invasion.
This theory is weakened, however, by the fact that the Elizabethan regime did
not send out renewed commissions to swear all existing lay officials when these same
threats became graver in the 1580s. The work of the seminary priests was
overshadowed in significance by the arrival in 1580 of the first English Jesuits:

John Hungerford Pollen, The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: A Study of Their
Politics Civil Life and Government (London: Longmans, Green and Co: 1920), 261-263.
156
Christopher Carter, "The Family of Love and Its Enemies," Sixteenth-Century Journal 37 (2006):
662.
157
Cal SP Ireland, LXVI 2, 12, 13-14.
158
MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 199-200.

429
Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons. James Fitmaurice's rebellion in Ireland did
materialize, but not until after the Privy Council had sent their letters to the justices of
the assize in early June, 1579. Furthermore, England did descend into open war with
Spain in the late 1580s, but no new commission was issued in the 1580s to swear all
current justices and sheriffs.
Yet the regime did issue another commission in 1592. On October 20, 1592,
the Privy Council sent a circular letter to the chief gentlemen of every county. The
letter opened with the only direct evidence we have of Elizabeth's own concern over
unsworn justices:
The Quene's Majestite being latelie informed that sondry persons in many of
the counties of the realme, beinge placed to be Justices of the Peace, have not
taken soche othes as by lawes and statutes they ought to have taken before they
mighte exercyse suche office, hath therefore thought it very necessary to have
spedy remedy thereof.
Because Elizabeth was unaware of who had taken their oaths and who had avoided
them, the Privy Council charged the recipients of this letter to hold a sessions of the
peace by November 20 (or within fifteen days of their reception of the letter) in which
every justice of the peace within their country was to appear and swear personally
their oath of office and the oath of supremacy. Lists were then to be returned to the
Chancery certifying who had taken their oaths and who had refused. Moreover, this
time the Privy Council added teeth to the commission. Any person who refused to
swear their oaths or who was absent from the sessions for any reason whatsoever was
to be suspended from his office as a justice until he took his oaths or until he certified
either to the gentlemen to which the letter was directed or to the lord keeper himself
that he had sworn his oaths elsewhere. The gentlemen to which the letters were
directed were to open this special session by themselves swearing the oath of
supremacy. The only exception to this rule were the peers of the realm, who by the act
of 1563 were freed from the obligation of swearing to Elizabeth's supremacy.159 A
month later, on November 21, the Privy Council also ordered the lord keeper to ensure

Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 23:253-261. An example of this letter addressed to Lord
Buckhurst (the high Sheriff of the County of Sussex), Sir Thomas Palmer, Sir Walter Covert, Sir
Nicholas Parker, and Sir Henry Nevill is BL Harleian MS. 703, fols. 70r v.

430
"that all officers and under officers belonging to anie the Courtes of Recordes should
likwize take the like oath of Supremacie, because a great part of them are not Justices
of the Peace." To accomplish this, the lord keeper was to order the judges of both
benches, the chief baron of the Exchequer, and the heads of the other courts to cause
the oath to be tendered to all the officers and under-officers of the courts.160 We do
not know how effective these measures were. Yet two things are evident from this
order. First, the oath of supremacy had not been enforced strictly on the laity in the
first part of Elizabeth's reign. Second, the Privy Council (with the blessing of
Elizabeth) was moving to change that in the later half of Elizabeth's reign.
But what about other lay officials besides justices of the peace? The 1563 Act
of Assurance of the Queen's Majesty's Royal Power, perhaps in tacit recognition that
many lay officials had not been tendered the oath of supremacy, expressly stated that
all sheriffs, escheators, members of the House of Commons, anyone taking a
university or common law degree, anyone associated with the practice of law such as
barristers, benchers, attorneys and treasures of the Inns of the Chancery, and all school
!
teachers must also take the oath of supremacy.' Yet a uniform commission never
went out to tour the realm in order to administer the oath to all such persons. We do
know that a commission went out to swear escheators and other officers of Chester on
December 27, 1559, and that the bishop of St David's received a commission to tender
the oath of supremacy to a couple of new sheriffs in 1561, but no actual commission
or oath survives in the National Archives for sheriffs or escheators from 1561 to 1579.
After 1579, oaths of office and supremacy survive for many new sheriffs and
escheators. In 1585, Parliament passed An Act for the Swearing of Under Sheriffs and
Other Under Officers and Ministers, which declared that all undersheriffs and any
other officer having power "to empanell or return inquest Jurie or tales" must take an
oath of supremacy and an oath of office within forty days or pay the penalty of forty
2
pounds.' We do not have similar records of oaths from university graduates, but
Robert Parsons confessed that despite his schemes to avoid it, he took the oath of
160
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 23:295-296.
161
Statutes of the Realm, 5 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:403.
Statutes of the Realm, 27 Eliz. I, c. 12, 4:719-720. 1 have not found evidence of the implementation
of this statute, though of course it is possible that it was put into action.

431
supremacy twice in the 1560s upon reception of his bachelor's and master's degrees at
Oxford.163 I have found no evidence of the oath being taken by graduates and
practitioners of the Inns of Court and the Chancery, nor by school teachers. These
people may have taken the oath when elevated to their position, but the fact that the
House of Commons proposed a bill to tender the oath of supremacy to school masters
and to students in houses of law again in 1581 suggests that the statute of 1563 was
not enforced upon these two groups very strictly.164 In short, although our sources are
slim, the pattern of the administration of the oath of supremacy to lower lay officials
seems consistent with that of its administration to the justices of the peace: the regime
did authorize its tendering in some localities during the first years of Elizabeth's reign
but did not aggressively enforce it until after 1579.
And even the more aggressive enforcement of the oath after 1579 did not
satisfy all members of the Elizabethan regime. For example, sometime between 1584
and his death in 1595, the mathematician, member of Parliament, and "man-of-
business" Thomas Digges penned a manuscript in which he advocated the extension of
the oath of supremacy. In addition to proposing that an oath of association "for the
defence and perpetuation of religion" be tendered to "all gentlemen, magistrats, and
possessioners within this realme," Digges recommended that "maiors and gouerners of
cities, townes, and corporations & . . . stewardes and other officers in mannors and
lordships in their countries" administer the oath of supremacy to every male over the
age of sixteen twice a year. Those who refused to swear the oath were to be disabled
from office, have all their weapons taken from them, and pay one-fourth of the value
of their lands to Elizabeth annually.165 Thus, Digges not only advocated the extension

163
Robert Parsons, "The Memoirs of Father Robert Persons," in Miscellanea II, vol. 2 of Catholic
Records Society (London, 1906), 15, 19.
164
NA SP12/83, fols. 65r, 66r {Cal SP Dom, LXXXII1 29); NA SP12/147, fols. 69v, 72v, 92v (Cal SP
Dom CXLVII 33, 34, 46); NA SP12/148, fols. 50r"v, 53r_v {Cal SP Dom, CXLVII1 10); Neale, Elizabeth
1 and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, 386-387,390. For more on these bills, see chapter eleven of this
dissertation.
165
Multiple manuscripts of Digges's treatise survive in the British Library. For details on these as well
as a general summary of the manuscript as it relates to oaths, see Edward Vallance, "Loyal or
Rebellious? Protestant Associations in England 1584-1696," Seventeenth Century 17 (2002): 4.
Digges's manuscript was printed in 1601 in [W. Bradshaw and T. Digges], Hvmble motives for
association to maintaine religion established. The quotations above are taken from pages 6-7 of the
printed version of Digges's treatise.

432
of the oath of supremacy to all adult males, he also proposed the exacting of stronger
penalties against those who refused to swear it. There is no indication, however, that
Digges's plan was ever considered by Elizabeth or other members of the regime.'
The conclusion of our survey of the tendering of the oath of supremacy to the
laity mostly coincides with the conclusion of our examination of the administration of
the oath of supremacy to the clergy in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. First, the
regime focused its efforts on those who held power: the bishops, university scholars,
and cathedral members in the case of the clergy, the justices of the peace and sheriffs
in the case of the laity. In a hierarchical society, this strategy makes sense. Second,
the extent to which the oath was tendered varied from region to region. Both the
chance survival of sources and the inevitable discrepancies of enthusiasm among
different local officials account for this variation. Third, the enforcement of the oath
of supremacy was far from strict, especially during the first years of Elizabeth's reign.
Elizabeth did not employ the oath of supremacy as a means to attack and deprive
Marian lay officials. The Privy Council did make numerous purges of the bench, but
this was not accomplished through the device of the oath of supremacy, and the purges
were largely ineffective. Finally, the initial response to the outbreak of the
Rebellion of the Northern Earls in the fall of 1569 shows that the regime sometimes
employed oathless subscriptions as the preferred means of verifying loyalty, and these
subscriptions dealt more explicitly with matters of religion. The story of the
administration of the oath of supremacy to the laity differs from the account of its
administration to the clergy in that none of our sources suggest that Elizabeth was
behind the restricted use of the oath, though this remains a possibility during the first
years of her reign.

The Oath of Supremacy and Recusants

Recusants were the group of English subjects to whom we would expect
Elizabeth to have tendered the oath of supremacy. After all, in her royal proclamation
of 1570, Elizabeth declared that she would inquire into the consciences of those

166
Alison Wall contended that most of the justices of the peace the Privy Council deprived made it back
onto the bench within a few years: Wall, '"The Greatest Disgrace,'" 320-321, 325-326.

433
subjects only if they broke her laws. In refusing to attend church, recusants clearly
violated the Act of Uniformity, so Elizabeth could test their consciences with an oath
without having to violate her professed principles. Furthermore, although most
recusants outwardly claimed loyalty to Elizabeth even though they refused to attend
church, many Protestant councilors and members of Parliament suspected that the
majority of recusants were secretly more loyal to the pope than to Elizabeth. What
better way to test their loyalty than to tender them an oath which, according to official
rhetoric, was exclusively political and did not deal with matters of religion? Indeed,
both Parliament and the Privy Council advocated the use of the oath of supremacy
against recusants. Despite this urging, the administration of the oath of supremacy to
recusants never became an official policy of the Elizabethan regime, probably because
of Elizabeth's own reluctance.
There is evidence that the Privy Council first advocated the use of the oath of
supremacy against recusants in 1577. A document survives among the state papers
labeled "how such as are backward and corrupt in religion may be reduced to
conformity, and others stayed from like corruption." This document was probably
written either by a member of the Privy Council or for it since it includes a suggestion
that Watson, Feckenham, and others be banished or further restrained, and the Privy
Council then ordered the restraining of Watson and Feckenham in July 1577.168 The
document also recommended that the Council send letters to the bishops ordering
them to identify all the recusants in their diocese and hold conference with them. If
the recusants remained obstinate in their refusal to attend church, the bishops were to
restrain their liberty. Finally, "And in case by theise said meanes they shall not be
reduced to conformitie after the space of then to proceed to the offeringe vnto
them the othe accordinge to the lawes of the Realme."169 This plan was in part
implemented. On October 15, 1577, the Privy Council sent the bishops of the realm a

167
NA SP12/45, pgs. 10 and 11 {CalSPDom, CXIV, page 553).
168
The order for the restraining of Watson and Feckenham is NA SP12/114, fol. 1 5 1 " (Cal SP Dom,
CXIV 69).
169
NA SP12/45, page 10 (Cal SP Dom, CXIV, page 553). Michael Questier believes that this strategy
was settled upon in a conference between the Privy Council and the bishops; Michael C. Questier,
Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580-J625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), 151.

434
letter ordering them to name all recusants within their dioceses and estimate the value
of their lands and goods. Yet the part on administering the oath must have been
dropped, for there is no mention of it in the initial letter of the Privy Council to the
1 -7A

bishops or among any of the letters the bishops returned to the Privy Council.
In 1581, Parliament joined the push to extend the use of the oath of supremacy
against recusants. The House of Commons first proposed a bill against "persons
m
fauoring the Church of Rome, & not acknoledging the obedience to her Majestic"
The bill delineated a progressive set of fines and terms of imprisonment the longer a
person refused to attend church. It also stated that both public and private
schoolmasters "shall take the othe of obedience" and acknowledge the thirty-nine
articles. Those schoolmasters who refused were to be imprisoned for two years and
disqualified from ever teaching youth again. Furthermore, all students of law had to
take the oath upon pain of losing their fellowships.I72 Finally, "If any counseller
towards the law absent himselfe in such sorte or refuse the oath of the Queene's
supremacy, to be disabled to be a counseller and from thence forth reputed a
maintainer [of the bishop of Rome]." The Lords independently proposed a similar
bill against recusants. Their bill, however, contained nothing on oaths and focused
4
solely on penalizing those who refused to attend church.' To reconcile the two bills,
a committee made of up of members of both houses met several times.I75 The bill that
emerged from this committee, which was endorsed by Burghley, was more explicit
than either of the two previous bills in requiring the oath of supremacy. This bill
clearly put forth that the oath of supremacy should be tendered to all recusants. It
stated that any recusant who refused to attend to church for a month, was duly
convicted, "and at the time of his or her conviccion or before iudgement shal not
170
A draft of the original letter from the Privy Council is NA SP12/116, fol. 45r_v (Cal SP Dom, CXV1
15). Most of the bishops' responses are in NA SP12/117. This particular plan of fining the richer
recusants was evidently first suggested by Bishop Aylmer of London on June 21, 1577. See his letter to
Walsingham (Cal SP Dom, CXIV 22) printed in Miscellanea XII, vol. 22 of Catholic Record Society
(London, 1921), 1-2.
171
NA SP12/147, fol. 69r {Cal SP Dom, CXLVIII 33).
172
NA SP12/83, fols. 65v-66' {Cal SP Dom, LXXXI1I 29misplaced in 1571); NA SP12/147, fols. 69\
v
72 (Cal SP Dom, CXLVII 33, 34); Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, 386.
173
Cromwell's journal is in Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 1:533-534.
174
NA SP12/147, fols. 92'-93'' (Cal SP Dom CXLVII 46).
175
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, 387,

435
acknowledge by his or her othe of obedience the Quenes Majesty to be supreme
gouvernor in causes Ecclesiasticall in hir dominions acording to the forme prescribed
in the statute therof made in the first year of hir Majestie's reigne" shall forfeit twenty
pounds.I76 For each month the recusant refused to go to church and declined to take
the oath, the fines became progressively greater. After three months, the recusant was
guilty of praemunire. The bill also incorporated the material from the Commons'
original bill relating to the disablement of any lawyer (whether civil or canon) who
refused to swear the oath and concerning the administration of the oath of supremacy
to all schoolmasters and students of law.177 Despite the fact that the House of
Commons, Lords, and members of the Privy Council approved of this bill, it was
suddenly replaced by a new bill on March 4, 1581, a bill which eventually became
"An Acte to reteine the Queenes Majesties Subjectes in their due Obedience."178 The
penalties prescribed in this bill were milder than those of the previous bills. Of more
importance to us is the fact that this bill made absolutely no mention of the
employment of the oath of supremacy against recusants, lawyers, schoolmasters,
students of law, or anyone else. Neale theorized that the earlier bills against recusants
disappeared because "the Queen had intervened to scale down the severities."179
Could it not be that Elizabeth also opposed the extension of the oath of supremacy?
In 1585, Parliament was finally able to extend the use of the oath of supremacy
against known Roman Catholics. Yet this extension was limited to Jesuits, seminary
priests, and those studying to become Jesuits or seminary priests. The Act against
Jesuits Seminary Priests and Such Other Like Disobedient Persons decreed that all
Jesuits and seminary priests must depart the realm within forty day or face charges of
treason. A Jesuit or seminary priest could remain in the realm and not be judged a

176
NA SP12/148, fol. 46r (Cal SP Dom CXLVIII 10).
177
NA SP12/148, fols. 50r-53v (Cal SP Dom CXLVIII 10).

Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, 388. For the official act, see Statutes of the
Realm, 23 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:657-658.
179
Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, 388.

436
traitor only if in the next forty days or within three days of his entering the realm from
abroad he:
submit himselfe to some Archbyshop or Bishop of this Realme, or to some
Justice of Peace within the Countie where he shall arive or land, and doe
thereupon truly and sincerely, before the same Archbyshop Bishop or such
Justice of Peace, take the saide Othe set foorth in Anno primo, and by writing
under his Hande confesse and acknowledg, and from thencefoorth continewe
his due obedience unto her Highnesse Lawes Statutes and Ordinance made and
1 KO

provided, or to be made or provided in causes of Religion.

The act also stated that any person studying to become a Jesuit or Roman Catholic
priest at any foreign seminary must return to England within six months of their
hearing of this statute and swear the oath of supremacy within two days of their
entrance into the realm. Any Catholic priest who entered the realm and did not take
the oath of supremacy would be judged de facto a traitor. Thus, the oath of
supremacy was to be used as a test in order to determine the political loyalty of Jesuits
and seminary priests. The act did not make any mention, however, of tendering the
oath of supremacy to general recusants.
Yet some members of the regime clearly wanted to employ an oath against
general recusants. Among Lord Burghley 's papers is preserved the draft of an act of
Parliament from 1586, a year later. This "acte for the preservation of the Queenes
Majesties moste roiall person" authorized provincial officials to tender a doctrinal oath
to all those they suspected of disloyalty. The oath was much harsher than the oath of
supremacy and explicitly dealt with matters of religion. The person taking the oath
renounced the Church of Rome and acknowledged that it was "an Antichristian and
hereticall Churche, and that it hath erred, and can and doth erre." The swearer also
professed that he would not "be directed by" the Church of Rome in matters of faith.
Those who refused to swear the oath were to be banished from England. Needless
to say, this bill did not become law. It stood in overt opposition to Elizabeth's claim
that she would not inquire into her subjects' consciences in matters of religion.

18U
Statutes of the Realm, 27 Eliz. 1, c. 2,4:707.
181
Statutes of the Realm, 27 Eliz. 1, c. 2, 4:706-707.
182
Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion, 114-115 (summarizing BL Lansdowne MS. 47, #33).

437
 At last in 1593, Parliament was able to authorize the use of a device of
obedience against general recusants. The Act against Popish Recusants decreed that
all those who were over sixteen and had been lawfully convicted of not going to
church must return to their place of residence and henceforth be restricted to within
five miles of their home unless they received a special license to depart. In order to be
freed from the penalties prescribed in this act, the recusant had to make a submission:
I A.B. doe humblie confesse and acknowledge that I have grevouslie offended
God in contempninge her Majesties godlie and laufull Government and
Auctoritie, by absenting myself from Church and from hearinge Devine
Service contrarie to the godlie Lawes and Statutes of this Realme, and I am
hartelye sorie for the same, and doe acknowledge and testifye in my
conscience that the Bysshoppe or Sea of Rome hathe not nor oughte to have
any Power or Auctorities over her Majestie or within any her Majesties
Realmes or Dominions: And I doe promyse and proteste, without any
Dissimulation or any Colour or Meanes of any Dispenscon, that from
henceforth I will from tyme to tyme obey and performe her Majesties Lawes
and Statutes in repayringe to the Churche and hearing Devine Service, and doe
I on

my uttermost Endevor to maynteyne and defende the same.

This submission was similar to the oath of supremacy in that the recusant confessed in
his conscience that the Pope had no authority in Elizabeth's dominions. It differed
from the oath of supremacy in that the submission was not a true oath. It was not
made before God. It was thus similar to the subscription offered to the clergy in the
royal visitation of 1559 in that it was a direct acknowledgment of royal supremacy that
lacked the power of an oath. Indeed, this act fits into Elizabeth's general strategy in
employing the oath of supremacy. Just as Elizabeth tendered the oath of supremacy in
the early years of her reign to the leading members of the clergy (prelates, members of
cathedral churches, and university scholars) but employed a mere subscription for
parish priests, so did she authorize the use of the oath of supremacy against the leading
recusants (Jesuits and priests) but employed a mere submission for general lay
recusants. General lay recusants did not have to take the oath of supremacy during
their submissions until the first year of James's reign.1

I!
" Statutes of the Realm, 35 Eliz. 1, c. 2, 4:845-846.
They also had to swear the oath of allegiance; Statutes of the Realm, 1 James 1, c. 4, 4:1075;
Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion, 105.

438
 So much for the official policy concerning the oath of supremacy and
recusants. But did practice agree with policy? Is there evidence of the regime
tendering the oath of supremacy to recusants? There is certainly much of evidence of
the administration of the oath of supremacy to Jesuits and missionary priests. It seems
to have been part of the standard practice of proceeding against them after 1585.
The evidence for the tendering of the oath of supremacy to lay recusants is less
copious. In 1577, when one John Laithwood of Wigan was asked if he would "sweare
to the supremacie," Laithwood refused, claiming that his examiners "had noe
aucthorite to aske him such questions."186 Likewise in 1580, the obstinate recusants
Cottaem, Lucas Kirkby, and Robert Johnson were charged with refusing to answer six
interrogatories on whether the oath of supremacy was lawful.187 It is perhaps
significant that these recusants were not tendered the oath of supremacy but simply
asked whether they would take it or whether it was lawful. But some later suspected
lay recusants were administered the oath of supremacy. In June 1585 three Catholic
laymen (John Byue, John Luttrelle, and William Legge) who had just returned from
the continent were offered the oath of supremacy.188 Walsingham wrote to the mayor
and jurats of Rye in 1582, instructing them to tender the oath of supremacy to John
Hammond (servant of the late Roman Catholic exile Sir Thomas Copley) and set
Hammond free if he swore the oath and signed a document renouncing the Roman
religion.189 In his undated petition to Burghley, Walter Powtherell, who was
implicated in the Star Chamber for hosting the notorious Jesuit Edmund Campion,
explained that he had conformed and taken the oath of supremacy. Similarly, the
Privy Council set the recusant Thomas Lovell, esquire, free in May 1592 upon his
promise of conformity and assurance to them that he had taken the oath of

For examples of Jesuits and Roman Catholic priests being tendered the oath of supremacy, see NA
SP12/178,fols. 108r, 122\ 124\ 135' (Cal SP Dom, CLXXV111 51, 57); NA SP12/217, fols. 3V-4V (Cal
SPDom, CCXVII 1); NA SP 12/229, fol. 15r (Cal SP Dom, CCXX1X 5); NA SP 12/244, fol. 6V (Cal SP
Dom, CCXLIV 5).
186
NA SP12/118, fol. 59' (Cal SP Dom, CXVIII 20).
187
NA SP12/140, fols. 90r-v, 92r (CalSPDom, CXL 43).
188
NA SP12/179. fols. 62v-63r (Cal SP Dom, CLXXIX 30).
189
East Sussex Record Office, Archives of Rye Corporation, RYE/47/29/3.
190
NA SP46/35, fol. 116r.

439
supremacy.191 All this demonstrates that lay recusants were occasionally tendered the
oath of supremacy. Yet these references to recusants taking the oath of supremacy
make up an exceedingly small proportion of the documents relating to recusancy in
Elizabeth's reign. The vast majority of recusants were not tendered the oath of
supremacy. Recusants were identified by their refusal to attend churchnot by their
refusal to swear an oath. They signified their conformity by attending churchnot by
swearing the oath of supremacy. In contrast to the prosecution of Jesuits and seminary
priests, the oath of supremacy was not part of the standard procedure taken against
recusants.
There is no direct evidence that Elizabeth herself actively endorsed a policy
that generally avoided administering the oath of supremacy to recusants. Yet it is clear
that many within her regime approved of or even advocated the employment of the
oath of supremacy against recusants. We have already noted that the Privy Council
advocated its use against obstinate recusants in 1577, and that both houses of
Parliament proposed a bill in 1581 that would have authorized its administration to all
convicted recusants. The evidence in the preceding paragraph demonstrates that
Walsingham approved of its administration to a suspected recusant in 1582, and the
members of the Privy Council in 1592 were not averse to it. Furthermore, other local
officials exceeded their jurisdiction by tendering the oath of supremacy. On August
11, 1599, George Snigg, the recorder of Bristol, wrote a revealing letter to Secretary
Robert Cecil. Snigg reported that since a great number of recusants left Bristol for
Ireland under the pretense of being undertakers, he had given orders to the officers of
the port to allow none but known merchants and undertakers to depart for Ireland
without first notifying him or the mayor of Bristol. "For the better tryall of them"
whom Snigg did not know, he "either ministred, or caused to be mynistred vnto them
the oath to the Supremaci, whereof I receavid allowance of your honors Right ho:
ffather, And therebie did that servic whereof his honor in his wisdome had good
likinge." Snigg concluded his letter by asking that if Sir Robert Cecil believed, like
his father had, that Snigg's course of action was agreeable, Snigg might receive Sir

191
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 22:454.

440
Robert Cecil's protection concerning his actions.192 In other words, Snigg was
admitting that William Cecil Lord Burghley had sanctioned and protected Snigg's
independent administration of the oath of supremacy to recusants. Now that Burghley
had died, Snigg was seeking the same protection over his actions from Burghley's son!
If Burghley, Walsingham, other privy councilors, members of both houses of
Parliament, and other local lay officials supported the use of the oath of supremacy
against lay recusants, why were not more recusants tendered the oath? Elizabeth
appears to be the likely reason.

Conclusions
What conclusions can we draw from this chapter? First, the actual
employment of the oath of supremacy was restricted and fell short of the parameters
outlined by statute. The Elizabethan regime tendered the oath to the upper echelons of
the clergy (bishops, university fellows, members of cathedrals) and to new clergymen
but did not make established parish priests take it. The regime administered the oath
haphazardly to some justices of the peace and sheriffs during the first years of
Elizabeth's reign but did not make a comprehensive effort to swear these officials until
1579. There is little evidence that students, schoolmasters, and practitioners of law
took the oath. Jesuits and seminary priests were tendered the oath after 1585, but lay
recusants were generally not required to take the oath. Second, the penalties for
refusing the oath were not enforced according to the letter of the law. The crown
granted the Marian prelates an extended amount of time to consider the oath and even
offered deals to some of them that would have allowed them to maintain their
positions without taking the oath. Many of the fellows of the universities avoided
swearing the oath and kept their positions for years. When the lay judges of London
declined the oath in June 1559, the regime backed down. Many justices of the peace
avoided swearing the oath and retained their offices. Third, after administering the
oath selectively during the first few years of Elizabeth's reign, the regime did not
proactively employ the oath until they felt threatened by Catholic rebellions and

" NA SP12/272, fol. 57r (Cal SP Dom, CCLXXII 32).

441
invasions. The Rebellion of the Northern Earls resulted in the administration of the
oath in the North in 1570, but it was not until the end of the 1570s that the influx of
seminary priests and England's precarious international situation caused the regime to
make a more consistent effort to tender the oath. Finally, the regime often preferred
the device of an oathless subscription to the solemn oath of supremacy. The
subscription of the royal visitation of 1559, the doctrinal subscriptions of various
episcopal visitations, the subscription tendered to all justices of the peace in the fall of
1569, the various different subscriptions forced on the clergy to eradicate
nonconformity (such as Parker's Advertisements or Whitgift's Three Articles), and the
submission prescribed for recusants in 1593 all attest to the frequency that Elizabeth
employed oathless professions.
Was the pattern outlined above the result of a conscious strategy of the
Elizabethan regime or of piecemeal compromises and ad-hoc responses to changing
circumstances? On one hand, the lax enforcement of the oath of supremacy on lay
officials and university scholars during the first years of Elizabeth's reign seems to
have been a compromise engendered by initial resistance to the oath, while the
intensification of the administration of the oath of supremacy to lay officials in the
later years of Elizabeth's reign was a response to changing circumstances. On the
other hand, the amount of time granted to Marian prelates to decide on the oath, the
lack of any authorization to tender the oath in the commissions for the royal visitation
of 1559, the absence of any unified and realm-wide commission to administer the oath
to all lay officials in the first two decades of Elizabeth's reign, and the failure to pass
any Parliamentary statute imposing an oath on lay recusants suggest that the
Elizabethan regime (or at least powerful forces within it) envisioned and preferred a
more limited employment of the oath from the outset.
It is not always clear who was responsible for this strategy, though in the few
occasions when the curtain is pulled back it appears that Elizabeth was the one pulling
the strings. Parliament, or at least the House of Commons, clearly wanted the oath to
be used more extensively and those who refused it punished more severely. The
House of Lords did moderate the radical measures in the Commons' bills during the

442
first five years of Elizabeth's reign, but in the later years of her reign they also
advocated the use of the oath against lay recusants. The plot to tender the oath to
Bonner a second time and the multiple letters to the Privy Council advocating the
extension of the oath among lay officials demonstrate that Elizabeth's bishops also
desired that the oath be used to a greater extent. Elizabeth's chief councilors
supported a wider implementation of the oath of supremacy as well. William Cecil
(Lord Burghley after 1571) approved of the plot to execute Bonner for refusing the
oath a second time, endorsed multiple bills that would have authorized the
administration of the oath to lay recusants, and (along with the rest of the Privy
Council) approved of the tendering of the oath to certain lay recusants even though
such a tendering was not authorized by statute. Indeed, although our sources are
admittedly thin, the picture that emerges is consonant with the political culture of
Elizabeth's reign described by Stephan Alford, Simon Adams, and Patrick Collinson: a
largely unified Council (at least until the mid 1580s) led by Cecil and Leicester and
backed by Elizabeth's bishops and the more radically Protestant members of the
House of Commons that often found itself at loggerheads with Elizabeth herself over
policy, especially as it related to the reform of the church.193 In our account, the Privy
Council (especially Cecil), Elizabeth's bishops, and the House of Commons all
advocated a wider administration and enforcement of the oath of supremacy than
Elizabeth allowed. We will come back to this theme in chapter eleven as we examine
the other oaths of Elizabeth's reign.
Why did Elizabeth restrict the administration and enforcement of the oath of
supremacy? I propose that it was because she wanted a more moderate settlement
than her closest advisers, her bishops, and the Protestant members of the House of
Commons desired. The moderation of Elizabeth is not a new historiographical topic.
Previous debates, however, have centered upon Elizabeth's own religion and the
extent to which her settlement reflected her religious preferences: that is, how

Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, 28-33, 213-219; Adams, Leicester and the Court, 13-19, 30-
40; Collinson, Elizabethan Essays, 39-42.

443
moderate was Elizabeth's Protestantism.I94 Yet this chapter has not dealt with the
moderation of Elizabeth's doctrine or liturgy but rather the moderation of how she
enforced her settlement. Indeed, Elizabeth's tendency to substitute an oathless
subscription for the oath of supremacy was actually more radical when it came to
doctrine and liturgy. The subscription of the royal visitation of 1559 and the
subscription tendered in the fall of 1569 to justices of the peace contained clauses
explicitly affirming the Act of Uniformity and the Protestant liturgy of the Book of
Common Prayer.195 These more clearly dealt with matters of religion than did the
oath of supremacy, but because they were not made before God, they did not
technically violate Elizabeth's propaganda that she would not inquire into peoples'
consciences concerning religion. Thus, while these oathless subscriptions were not
moderate in content, they were in form. Subscriptions were easier to swallow. They
were not made in the presence of God and thus did not put one's soul at risk to the
same extent. When faced with a subscription, there was more room for equivocation
and negotiation. Whitgiftthat scourge of the Puritanslamented this difference and
proclaimed: "So the othe which is to be taken before a magistrate must be receaved in
that sense . . . so likewise these thinges [Whitgift's articles to which he was demanding
subscription] which are sett forthe by authoritie must be taken in that meaninge which
those that be in authority & have the same comitted vnto them doe sett downe and not

As we have noted, John Neale believed that Elizabeth preferred a Henrician Church (Catholicism
without the pope) and that the settlement of 1559 was not her preference but rather pushed upon her by
a radical House of Commons. Jones, in Faith by Statute, contended that Elizabeth was basically
Protestant and the true opposition to her settlement came from Catholics in the House of Lords. Jones's
claim that Elizabeth was a Protestant who wanted the settlement of 1559 has generally won the day as
can be seen in Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth 1, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, 1988), 32-37. Patrick
Collinson has stirred up the waters by calling into question how true and heart-felt Elizabeth's
Protestantism really was; Collinson, "Windows in a Woman's Soul: Questions about the Religion of
Queen Elizabeth I," in his Elizabethan Essays, 87-118. Susan Doran has reestablished Elizabeth's
dedication to Protestantism, though Doran admits that Elizabeth's Protestantism was more of the
Erasmian Lutheran variety than Reformed; Doran, "Elizabeth I's Religion: The Evidence of Her Letters
," 699-720.
195
Hence, Adams was correct in spirit if not in letter when he wrote: "Apart from the oath of
supremacy, she [Elizabeth] always resisted pressure from Parliament and Council for the establishment
of a narrower religious test"; Adams, Leicester and the Court, 36. Elizabeth did allow a narrower
religious test, just not under oath. She did, however, resist the pressure from Parliament and Council to
extend the oath of supremacy.

444
in that sense which every one shall imagine."196 But Whitgift's words were
ineffective, for Peter Lake has shown that modified, conditional subscriptions were a
primary way in which moderate Puritans and the ecclesiastical establishment agreed to
7
compromise in order to coexist.' So by preferring subscriptions to oaths, Elizabeth
gave her subjects more wiggle room in their consciences while still securing their
consent to her policies. It is certainly feasible that Elizabeth's preference for an
oathless subscription over the oath of supremacy was a deliberate part of a moderate
policy which, in the words of Christhoper Haigh, "tried to comprehend Catholics
within the nation."198
Besides her restriction of the administration of the oath of supremacy and
substitution of an oathless subscription, this chapter has revealed other ways in which
Elizabeth's policy was moderate. She did not allow the penal measure of the statute of
1563 to be implemented. In the early years of her reign, she winked at or at the very
least tolerated the continued service of lay judges and university scholars who resisted
swearing the oath. Her enforcement of the oath was thus moderate. Furthermore,
Louise Campell has alleged that one facet of Elizabeth's moderation was her attempt
to control the pace of reform, to slow it down so as not to offend too many. This
theme has also been prevalent in this chapter. Elizabeth gave the Marian bishops an
extended period of time to ponder the oath and did not step up the administration of
the oath to lay officials until the later years of her reign. In sum, Elizabeth's limited
administration of the oath of supremacy and her lax enforcement of it were part of her
strategy of moderation.

196
BL Additional MS. 48064, fol. 165 rv .
197
Peter Lake, "Moving the Goal Posts? Modified Subscription and the Construction of Conformity in
the Early Stuart Church," in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560-1660, ed. Peter
Lake and Michael C. Questier (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 179-205.
198
Haigh, Elizabeth 7,41.
1
Louise Campbell, "A Diagnosis of Religious Moderation: Matthew Parker and the 1559 Settlement,"
in Moderate Voices in the European Reformation, ed. Luc Racaut and Alex Ryrie (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2005), 39-42.

445
 Chapter 11: Elizabethan State Oaths Excluding the Oath of Supremacy
The Parliament of 1584-1585 was the Parliament of oaths. In no other
Parliament in English history were there as many debates and bills about oaths. First,
there was the matter of the bond of association. In the fall of 1584, the majority of the
English political nation had sworn a vendetta-style oath to hunt down and slay any
person in any way connected with a plot on Elizabeth's life. Once Parliament was in
session, most of its members wanted to pass an act for Elizabeth's safety that would
confirm the oath they had sworn in the bond of association, but othersincluding
Elizabeth herselfviewed the oath as unlawful and sought to side-step the oath.
Second, there was the bill written by Lord Burghley that authorized the administration
of a new oath on the entire political nation, an oath to follow a specific contingency
plan in the event of a successful assassination against Elizabeth. Third, there was the
issue of Jesuits, seminary priests, and other subversive Roman Catholics. The House
of Lords proposed an amendment to a bill declaring Jesuits and Catholic priests
traitors that pardoned them if they submitted themselves and took the oath of
supremacy, but Thomas Digges, following in the footsteps of the recently deceased
Thomas Norton, expressed doubts about the efficacy of the oath of supremacy in
restraining Roman Catholics.' Fourth, there was a bill that extended the
administration of the oath of supremacy to under-sheriffs and other lower officers.
Fifth, there was an organized campaign in the House of Commons opposing the oaths
Whitgift had recently begun to use against Puritans. The Commons petitioned the
queen and the House of Lords to abolish the ex officio oath and the oath of canonical
obedience. Finally, the House of Commons also put forth a bill that would require all
bishops and archbishops of the realm to swear a new oath. The Parliament of 1584-
1585 thus demonstrates that oaths were a major concern of the Elizabethan regime!

If oaths were a major concern of the Elizabethan regime, then how did the
regime use them? This is the subject of this chapter. We will tell the stories of three

Digges's objection was as follows: "I like not that they [Jesuits and priests] may submytt them selves
to a bishop or justice of peace and take the othe; who sees not, they have dispensations to lose them.
Parry took the othe, yet dyed a catholick as he cald him self; Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments
of Elizabeth I, 2:108. All the other examples mentioned in this opening paragraph will be discussed
substantially below.

446
oaths: the bond of association, the Elizabethan oath of allegiance, and the ex officio
oath, though in narrating these stories we will also touch on other oaths such as the
oath of canonical obedience and an oath to uphold the Protestant religion. Our focus
in recounting these stories will be the internal debate within the Elizabethan regime
surrounding oaths. We will look at who supported these oaths, who opposed them,
and how they were implemented. These three case studies, in turn, will provide
insight into the operation of the "monarchical republic" of Elizabeth. By tracing the
roles of Elizabeth, her Privy Council, Parliament, and local authorities (both elite and
middling) in establishing or opposing these oaths, we will illuminate the process
through which the Elizabethan regime negotiated power and governed the realm.

The Bond of Association

The bond of association was the brainchild of Sir William Cecil. In June 1569,
Cecil (through his clerk Bernard Hampton) composed "A necessary consideration of
the perillous state of this tyme." "A necessary consideration" delineated the
precarious state of the Protestant Elizabethan settlement. Internally divided over
matters of religion, surrounded by hostile Catholic powers, faced with an unstable
situation in Scotland, and brought to the point of crisis because the heir to the throne in
the event of the death of Elizabeth (still unmarried and childless) was the Roman
Catholic Mary Queen of Scots who was imprisoned on English soil, England and its
Protestant rulers were far from secure. Cecil outlined his plan to overcome these
challenges in "A necessary consideration." Mary Stuart was to be re-settled in
Scotland with constitutional checks placed on her power, alliances were to be formed
with other Protestant nations, a scheme for the collection of money was to be set up,
and most importantly, the political nation was to bind themselves "by promise and
othe" to associate "them selves with all estates of their degrees at all tymes and places
to defend the Quenes Majesties most royall person, and the comen peace of the
Realme," including the Protestant settlement. The "noblemen, Bishops, Knights and
other head genttlmen in every shire" were highlighted to take the oath, but the
association was also to include "an other second choyse" of "other inferior gentlemen,

447
ecclesiastical persons, merchants, clothyers, farmors, howsholders and such lyke."
The plans of "A necessary consideration" were not put into practice in 1569, perhaps
because other members of the Privy Council pursued an alternative solution to
England's problems: negotiating a marriage between Mary Stuart and the Duke of
Norfolk.2
Cecil, however, had not forgotten his plan to bind the consciences of the
political nation to Elizabeth with another oath separate from the oath of supremacy.
Many of the same threats on England's security (especially the possibility of a foreign
invasion or internal rebellion to place Mary Stuart on the English throne and restore
Roman Catholicism) were still pressing in 1584. Accordingly, on October 19 of this
year at Hampton Court, acting independently of the queen and undoubtedly led by
Cecil (now Lord Burghley), the members of the Privy Council "vppon a common
consent amongvst themselves . . . devised a certaine instrument of Associacion . . .
whervnto they haue sette their handes and seales and taken a corporal othe vppon the
holie evangelistes for the due observacon of the contentes of the same."3 This
instrument of association, commonly known as the bond of association, was based on
Cecil's original proposal of 1569. It bound the person subscribing to it to pursue to
the death any person who attempted to harm Elizabeth, including anyone who claimed
the throne of England as a result of Elizabeth's death by assassination and any heirs of
this claimant. The bond was clearly aimed at excluding Mary Queen of Scots from the
English throne and preventing further plots on Elizabeth's life on behalf of Mary,
though it also excluded James from the throne since it disbarred "any that may any
way claime by or from such a person or pretended successor as is aforesaid, by whom
or for whom such an act shalbe attempted or committed."4 The Privy Council, led by
Walsingham, disseminated the bond throughout the provinces. Although subscription

2
"A necessary consideration" is NA SP12, fol. 12r. All the above quotations are taken from Alford,
Early Elizabethan Polity, 196-197. Alford's summary and analysis of the document are excellent.
3
NA SP12/174, fol. 8r (CalSPDom, CLXXIV 2).
The actual bond is printed in A treatise containing M. Wentworth his Dislodgement of the heire
apparent, 17-21, in Peter Wentworth, A pithie exhortation on to her Maiestie for establishing her
svccussor to the crowne (1598). For an entire volume of original manuscript instruments and
subscriptions to the bond, see NA SP12/174.

448
to the instrument was voluntary, the Privy Councilors applied a great deal of informal
pressure to ensure its wide administration.5
The instrument itself was very clearly an oath. Those who signed it, "first
calling to minde the holie name of the Almighty God," did "sweare and promise
before the Maiesty of Almighty God." The instrument concluded: "And to the better
corroboration of this our loyall Bond and Association, Wee doe also testifie by this
Writing, that Wee doe confirme the contents hereof, by our oaths corporall taken
vppon the holie Euangelistes."6 It is also clear that those who signed the instrument
did indeed swear an oath as the instrument directed. The Earl of Derby wrote to
Leicester that he "moste reuerentlie vppon my knnes bar headed in the Churche toke
my oathe firste" and then administered the oath in a like manner to the gentlemen of
Lancashire and Cheshire. After this oath-taking ceremony, the gentlemen set their
subscriptions and marks to the instrument.7 Huge numbers of local notables swore the
oath and signed the instrument. The Privy Council initially intended that only justices
of the peace and gentlemen should take the bond, but popular enthusiasm was so high
for the measure that sometimes the tendering of it spilled down the social ladder to
include townsmen. The extension of the bond to the middling sorts of society was a
result both of the initiatives of local elites and of popular patriotism among the
middling sort. The bond of association thus demonstrates the zeal of both the Privy
Council and the political nation at large to use a solemn oath in defense and support of
Elizabeth.
The bond of association, however popular and widespread, had no official or
legal foundation. Neither a Parliamentary statute nor a royal proclamation backed it.
It was a device devised and advocated solely by the Privy Council and undertaken
through the enthusiasm of local elites and zealous townsmen. The decision to swear it

5
David Cressy, "Binding the Nation: the Bonds of Association, 1584 and 1696," in Tudor Rule and
Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from His American Friends, ed. Delloyd J. Guth and John W.
McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 220-222; Patrick Collinson, "The
Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of
Manchester, 69 (1987), 415-416.
6
A treatise concerning M. Wentworth, in Wentworth, A pithie exhortacion, 19,21.
7
NA SP12/175, fol. 6 " (CalSPDom, CLXXV 4).
8
Cressy, "Binding the nation," 222-224.

449
was voluntary; no penalties were imposed on those who refused to take it. Since the
majority of the political nation (and even some outside the political nation) has sworn
it, it was in Parliament's best interest to gain some official, legal basis for the
proceedings to which the political nation had sworn in the bond of association. When
Parliament assembled in November 1584, it set about to do just this. A committee
met in the beginning of December and prepared a bill for the queen's safety. The bill
authorized that in the event of an unsuccessful rebellion or invasion, a commission
would investigate the role of any claimant of the throne and, if found guilty, formally
disbar the claimant and his or her heirs from the succession. In the event of an attempt
on Elizabeth's life to advance a claimant to the throne, both the claimant and his or her
successors were disqualified from inheriting the crown. Like the bond, the bill
authorized any private person to pursue to the death the claimant and all those
involved in the plot. Unlike the bond, the bill did not authorize this same bloody
pursuit of the claimant's heirs. Moreover, a proviso was added allowing Elizabeth the
right to restore the title of the heir of the claimant if she did not consider him guilty.
In other words, the bill authorized the process sworn to in the bond relating to Mary
Stuart, but mitigated the penalties against James/
The discrepancies between the proceedings sworn to in the bond and the
proceedings outlined in the bill caused a "great argument" in the committee. The
proviso especially generated controversy, for how could Parliament allow Elizabeth to
restore the title of an heir of the claimant when they had sworn in the bond to pursue
the claimant and his or her heirs to their deaths? The oath had been taken
"advisedlye," so it "coulde not bee dispensed with [by] hir Majestic" Other members
of the committee (Privy Councilors according to Neale) responded that it was the
intent rather than the letter of the oath that should be considered. The intent of the
oath was the queen's safety. This did not satisfy one anonymous committee member.
Another responded to him that the bill and the oath were not "contraria" but
"diversia." It was not "so muche the strictnes of the letter in the othe" that one should
consider "as the equitie of th'othe, which is to punishe the offender onelie." If the

9
J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584-1601 (London: J. Cape, 1957), 33.

450
oath bound one to punish an innocent person, that part of the oath was unlawful and
thus should be broken.I0 When the committee finally read the proposed bill to the
House of Commons, many members of Parliament were also displeased with its
conflict with the bond of association. At this point, Elizabeth intervened, conceding
that the proviso allowing her to restore the heir of a claimant be "clean dashed out,"
and saying that she did not desire "eny thinge should passe in that Acte that shoulde be
repugnant to the Lawe of God or the Lawe of Nature or greevouse to the conscience of
eny of hir good suiectes." On the other hand, Elizabeth maintained that the heir of the
claimant be tried before being disbarred and that the penalties of the act not extend "to
the issue of the offender."" This, however, still clashed with the oath of the bond of
association.
When the committee for the bill reconvened, the conflict between the oath
sworn in the bond of association with the provisions delineated in the bill again was
the central issue. Some of the committee members who had sworn the oath averred
that the statute must reach "as fair as the oath; thinking it to be the onlie meane to
solve their oathe." Some agreed with the queen that no public statute "shoulde
contyne any matter not warranted, by the word of god, or repugnant to the lawes of
nature or onlie to salve their error." Some members again noted that the since the
intent of the oath was Elizabeth's safety, "her Majestie might dispence withsuche
partes of their oathe as were grevous to their consciences & most earnestlie desyred to
have her Majestie moved therin." There were others who were fundamentally
opposed to the oath of the bond of association. They claimed that the oath was
unlawful and thus was already void, "inferring that vnlawfull oathes bynd not." For
example, Thomas Digges, the member of Parliament for Southampton, argued that the
oath was unlawful not only because of the unjustness of pursuing to the death the
innocent heir of the claimant, but also because fathers and masters had sworn for their
children and servants (something not in their power), and because Digges foresaw the
violent chaos that would result from authorizing any private person to exact revenge

These debates are documented in Sir William Fitzwilliam's journal, in Hartley, Proceedings in the
Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:146-152.
" BL Lansdowne MS. 98, fol. 15r; BL Lansdowne MS. 113, fol. 156''; Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her
Parliaments, 1584-1601, 35-36.

451
on suspected plotters. To those who argued that the oath should be dispensed or
declared void, others responded that such an action might open "a gapp . . . to make
men careles of all oathes." These members maintained that "no mortall achtoritie
could dispence with their oathe," so "they thought them selves bound to perform their
oathe plainlie & truli as they had made it without excuse; of coulor or prettext
whatsoever." The debate in the committee was abruptly cut off just before
Christmas "by the commaundement from hir Majestie to hir Councell that were
members of the Lower House."13
It was now clear that the bill for the queen's safety must in some way address
the issue of the oath of the bond of association. During the Christmas recess of
Parliament, Lord Burghley devised a couple of strategies to meet this challenge. On
January 15, 1585, he drafted a long addition to the bill for the queen's safety. The
addition commenced by explaining that various libels and plots caused many to fear
for the queen's safety and, as a result of this fear, to "consent to ioien themselves
together in one Bond of Associacion." The addition then replicated the language of
the bond, highlighting that those who had taken it had sworn to pursue any person who
should attempt or consent to harm Elizabeth and, in the event of a successful
assassination, they had sworn "never to accept or favor anie such pretended successor,
by or for whome such detestable act should be attempted, or anie that should claime
by such a pretended sucessor, as persone unwoorthie of anie such Christian
Gouernement; but did also vowe to prosecute such wicked person or persons to the
death." The addition then stressed that since the intent of the bond of association was
the same as the intent of the bill for the queen's safety:
Be it thearefore enacted and declared by authority of this present Parlement,
that the said association, and all partes therof tending to the savetye of hir
Majesties person, to the pursuite and Revenge of hir wicked ennemies and to
the disallowing of anie pretended successor, seeking to attaine to this crowne
by such wicked attemptes is and shall be approved and deceed as lust and

12
This paragraph is based on the report of Thomas Digges, BL Lansdowne MS. 98, fols. 14r-18r; BL
Lansdowne MS. 113, fols. 156r-157v; BL Additional MS. 38823, fols. 14r-16r. Unfortunately, Digges
does not provide us with the identities (himself excepted) of the various committee members who held
the divergent positions on the oath of association.
13
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth /, 2:152.

452
 Lawfull to all Intentes therein expressed for hir Majesties savetie, as if the
same had been before ordeined, decreed and stablished by anie forme Lawe, or
Act of Parlament.
The addition closed by maintaining that those who had sworn the oath should "be
taken, estemed, and allowed in their so doinge, for naturall, Loyall, Loving, carefull,
and devoted subientes." Burghley was clever in the wording of this addition. On
one hand, this addition expressly validated the oath of association. Those who swore
it could rest with a safe conscience. It was not unlawful. On the other hand, the
addition skillfully avoided any direct mention of the heir of the claimant for which the
assassination had been committed and added the vague conditional clause that the oath
was lawful "to all Intentes therein expressed for hir Majesties savetie."
Burghley's second strategy was to supersede the oath of association altogether
by binding the political nation with another oath that would transcend the bond of
association. This of course was reminiscent of the strategy adopted by Henry VIII.
Through a series of notes, Burghley eventually arrived at a full draft bill to be added to
the existing bill for the queen's safety.15 In this draft Burghley delineated in great
detail the process to be taken in the event of a successful assassination of Elizabeth.
All Privy Councilors were to maintain their positions and with "the great officers of
the realm" form a "Grand Council," which was to possess all executive, royal power.
The council was also charged with hunting, trying, and executing all those involved in
the assassination. The council would then summon a Parliament made up of the same
members of the most recent Parliament, which would take over much of the business
of government and finally determine to whom the crown should pass. I6 The
possibility of a sovereign Parliament has captured the imaginations of historians like
Neale and Collinson.17 WhatNeale and Collinson have omitted to mention is that
Burghley sought to carry out his plans for an interregnum by binding the political

14
NA SP12/176, fols. 20r-21r {Cat SP Dom, CLXXVI 11).
15
Burghley's notes leading up to the draft bill are NA SP12/176, #28, 29, and 30. The draft bill itself is
NA SP 12/176, fols. 40r-47r (Cal SP Dom, CLXXVI 22). See Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments,
1584-1601, 45.
16
Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments, 1584-1601, 45-46.
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584-1601, 47-48; Collinson, "The monarchical republic of
Queen Elizabeth I," 418-422.

453
nation with an oath. Burghley's draft bill ended:
finally for the parfect execucion of this statute to all good purposes be it
enacted by the authorite aforesayd that all persons nowe in this present
parlement, and in the convocaion assembled shall corporally take solemne
oathes in thes Parlement and convocacion howse to observe and keape everie
part of the same to the vttermost of their powers whelest theie shall live.
Writs were to be issued to make sure that all absentee members of Parliament also
took this oath. Furthermore, the bill decreed that "in theare oathes" members of
Parliament "shall also vowe that thei shall before the times of their deathe charge and
commaund in as ernest manner as theie can theire heires, and children to observe the
same after theire deathe as cause shall require." The oath was not, however, limited to
Parliament. Writs were to be issued to swear all "Justices of the peace, all head
officers in Townes, all ecclesiasticall persons vnder the degree of Busshops, havinge
Benefices with care of soles, or places of dignitie in any Cathedrall Churches, or being
masters of presidents in colleges." Those who refused to swear it were to lose their
office and suffer one year's imprisonment. Finally, no person was allowed to assume
the office of archbishop, bishop, any ecclesiastical dignity, justice of any bench, or
head officer of any town unless he swore this oath.I8 In other words, Burghley was
co-opting the process through which the oath of supremacy had been tendered. The
consciences of political nationthat is, those who had been asked to take the oath of
supremacywere again to be bound with an oath, this time to follow the step-by-step
process outlined in the bill in the event of an interregnum.
Neither of Burghley's strategies were implemented. His first strategy received
some support. On February 15, 1585, one member of the Commons moved that "there
mighte be an explanation of the othe of Assocyation inserted to the same, such as
everye bodie shoulde stande unto for the exequutinge thearof." When this explanation
was rejected on the grounds that "men havinge sworne to the stricte wordes thereof
coulde not satisfie them selves by an other man's exposition," others wished that the
oath itself should be made law or an addition to the current bill added saying that
anyone who put into practice what he had sworn in his oath of association would not
be in danger of losing life, land, or goods. This engendered more debate in the
18
NA SP12/176, fols. 46v-47r (Cal SP Dom, clxxvi 22).

454
Commons, and it was finally decided to send a committee of seven people (including
Sir Francis Knowles and Sir Walter Mildmay) to the queen to seek her opinion on the
matter.19 Elizabeth must have opposed any express validation of the oath of
association, for the final statute that emerged at the end of this Parliament differed
from the oath. The statute decreed that in the event of an invasion or rebellion,
Elizabeth's subjects could pursue to the death any person involved in the plot only
after commissioners had pronounced judgment upon them. In the event of a
successful assassination, the claimant for whom the assassination was committed was
to be disbarred from the throne, as were their heirs "being in anie wise assenting &
privie to the same." This conflicted with the oath of association's blanket rejection of
all the claimant's heirs. To address this discrepancy, the statute concluded by
mentioning the oath of association and then proclaiming:
Nowe for the full explayning of all such Ambiguities and Questions as
otherwyse might happen to growe, by reason of any senester or wrong
Construccion or Interpretation to be made or inferred of or uppon the Wordes
of Meaning thereof, Be it declared and enacted by the Aucthoritie of this
present Parliament, That the same Association, and every Article and Sentence
therein conteyned, aswell concerning the disallowing excluding or dishabling
of any Person that may or shall pretende any Title to come to the Crowne of
this Realme, and also for the pursuing and taking revenge of any Person for
any such wicked Acte or Attempt as it mentioned in the same Association, shall
and ought to be in all Thinges expounded and adjudged according to the true
Intente and Meaning of this Acte, and not otherwise nor against any other
Person or Persons.20
In other words, the statute imposed an interpretation of the oath contrary to the actual
words of the oath. There was no validation of the oath, only a subtle rejection of the
controversial part of the oath. Burghley's second strategy fared no better. The final
statute did authorize the establishment of a commission to determine the guilt of a
party, but nothing was mentioned of a grand council, of a sovereign parliament
authorized to determine the succession, or of a widespread oath designed to bind the
political nation to this scheme.

Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 2:177-178.

20
Statutes of the Realm, 27 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:705.

455
 The bond of association and ensuing debate in Parliament thus reveal a conflict
of opinion between the political nation and Elizabeth concerning the employment of
oaths as a means to secure the safety of the Elizabethan regime. Independent of
Elizabeth, the Privy Council devised an oath designed to discourage rebellion and
protect the queen. It became astoundingly popular. The political nation not only took
it but also argued hard in Parliament that any statute subsequently passed must agree
with the oath they had sworn. Burghley even went so far as to suggest the tendering
of another oath, a tendering on par with the administration of the oath of supremacy.
Elizabeth, however, rejected the exact design sworn to in the oath of association. She
insisted that the final statute mitigate the penalties against the heir of a claimant to the
throne even though this conflicted with the oath of association. The final statute
mentioned the oath but did not endorse it. Indeed, at the close of Parliament, neither
the oath of association nor any other oath concerning the queen's safety (such as the
one proposed by Burghley) had received any official royal or parliamentary backing.
As with the oath of supremacy, the zeal of the political nation to employ an oath for
the queen's safety exceeded the willingness of the sovereign to allow its
implementation.

Oaths of Allegiance
The Jacobean oath of allegiance is a matter of significant historical interest.
The oath, approved by Parliament in 1605 as a response to the Gunpowder Plot and
robustly defended by King James himself in print, set off a long-lasting, European-
wide religio-political debate over the relationship between spiritual and temporal
authority. Book after book streamed off the presses as the brightest minds in
Europeboth Protestant and Catholicengaged the issues raised by the oath.21
Because the Jacobean oath of allegiance was a matter of such controversy for
seventeenth-century intellectuals, it also has been the focus of much modern

For a step-by-step account of the development of this debate, see Charles Howard Mcllwain's
introduction to The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), lix-
lxxx.

456
historiographical attention and debate. By contrast, very little work has been done
on Elizabethan oaths of allegiance. A few historians have explored the professions of
allegiance that came out of the controversy between English Jesuits and the
"Appellant" secular priests, but these analyses have not extended beyond the last few
years of Elizabeth's reign.23 There is, however, a much richer legacy of Elizabethan
professions of allegiance, a legacy that dates back to 1570. This section will examine
the emergence and nature of these professions. Unlike the Jacobean oath approved by
Parliament and defended by the king, the genesis of the Elizabethan oaths of
allegiance was more organic. The professions of allegiance from Elizabeth's reign
emerged as a result of combined initiatives by those at the center the regime, by those
on its periphery, and by those excluded from the regime, namely imprisoned English
Roman Catholics. These professions provided the basic template for the Jacobean
oath of allegiance, though, as we shall see, the Jacobean oath also contained important
innovations as well.
The Elizabethan oaths of allegiance grew out of the dissatisfaction of Roman
Catholics and of some English Protestants over the oath of supremacy's lack of a clear
distinction between spiritual and temporal loyalty. The oath of supremacy named
Elizabeth supreme governor "as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as
temporal" and renounced foreign authority, particularly the "ecclesiastical or spiritual"
authority of any foreign potentate. Elizabeth's temporal authority was thus connected
to her spiritual authority in the oath; it was not possible to uphold Elizabeth's temporal
authority and refuse her spiritual authority. One simply had to swear the oath to both
kinds of her authority or refuse the oath altogether. To make the oath more palatable,

22
The most recent debate is between Michael C. Questier and Johann P. Sommerville: M. C. Questier,
"Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean
Oath of Allegiance," Historical Journal 40 (1997): 311-329; Johann P. Sommerville, "Papalist Political
Thought and the Controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance," in Catholics and the 'Protestant
nation': Religion Politics and Identity in Early Modern England, ed. Ethan Shagan (Manchester and
New York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 162-184. Although she does not directly engage the
debate between Questier and Sommerville, Stefania Tutino's Law and Conscience: Catholicism in
Early-Modern England, 1570-1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) also has a substantial section on the
controversy over the oath of allegiance.
Roland G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church (New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1910), 1:164-168, 181-186, 2:99-109, 310-321; John Bossy, "Henri IV, the Appelants and the Jesuits,"
Recusant History 8 (1965): 89-90, 95-100.

457
Elizabeth, in her admonition of 1559, declared that the oath of supremacy did not give
her sacerdotal power. She claimed that the oath of supremacy was merely a test of
political loyalty and did not force people to expose their consciences in matters of
religion. Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath, such as Abbot Feckenham or
Bishop Bonner, rejected this logic and contended that since the oath required them to
acknowledge Elizabeth as supreme governor in all ecclesiastical causes, the oath did
bind their consciences in matters of faith. They challenged Elizabeth's spiritual and
ecclesiastical jurisdiction but declared that they had no qualms about swearing to
Elizabeth's supremacy in temporal matters.2 Despite the claims of the government,
then, the oath of supremacy did combine temporal and ecclesiastical authority.
Until 1570, this lack of distinction within the oath of supremacy did not
particularly trouble the regime. The oath of supremacy was a relatively indiscriminate
weapon, but it nonetheless proved sufficient to deprive the leading Marian clerics from
their positions. It was not essential to determine why exactly these clerics refused to
swear the oath. All of this changed when Pope Pius V in his bull Regnans in excelsis
excommunicated Elizabeth, declared her deprived of her title and throne, and absolved
all English subjects of their oaths of obedience to her. The bull, coming shortly after
the Rebellion of the Northern Earls (which Regnans in excelsis was meant to support)
alerted the regime of the politically subversive potential of Roman Catholics.
Suddenly, the pope's spiritual authority became a threat to Elizabeth's temporal
authority. No longer could English Roman Catholics like Feckenham fully uphold the
pope's spiritual jurisdiction while maintaining that they owed temporal allegiance to
the queen, for the pope had now used his spiritual jurisdiction to release English
subjects from their temporal obedience.25 The pope's spiritual authority, of course,
consisted of more than just the (disputed) power to excommunicate and deprive a
prince; it also extended to matters of doctrine and liturgy. Just as many modern

24
Home, An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe of Wynchester, fols. 3V-5V, 6V, 91v-92v; BL Royal MS. 7
B xii, fol. 2r; Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, Vol. 47, fol. T\ printed in Strype, Grindal, 487-
488. As Stefania Tutino has cogently argued, the main debate "concerned the need to establish the
exact point in which the jurisdiction of the temporal authority ended, and that of the spiritual authority
began, excluding areas of intersection between the two"; Tutino, Law and Conscience, 16. I am
grateful to Professor Tutino for allowing me to read her work before it was published.
25
Tutino, Law and Conscience, 19-21.

458
Roman Catholics ignore the pope's authority on matters of birth control but accept it
in other matters of theology and ecclesiology, it was possible for sixteenth-century
English Roman Catholics to accept the pope's spiritual jurisdiction but claim that this
spiritual jurisdiction did not bind them to rebel against their temporal sovereign
Elizabeth. The problem was that the oath of supremacy, in rejecting the power of any
foreign potentate and acknowledging Elizabeth as supreme governor in ecclesiastical
and temporal things, did not allow the swearer to make this crucial distinction on the
limits of the pope's spiritual jurisdiction. This was a problem for some English
Roman Catholics who wanted to demonstrate their temporal loyalty to Elizabeth
without rejecting other matters of Catholic worship and faith. This was also a problem
for some members of the regime who, while certainly opposing Roman Catholic
worship and faith, now desired an additional, more detailed and probing device that
would allow them to identify the more dangerous rebels from among the general pool
of Catholic nonjurors of the oath of supremacy.
Thomas Norton, a lawyer, poet, pamphleteer, and member of Parliament, was
the first to recognize the insufficiency of the oath of supremacy in light of the papal
bull of deposition. In his tract A warning agaynst the dangerous practises ofPapistes,
and specially the parteners of the late Rebellion, Norton realized that some Roman
Catholics who refused the oath of supremacy "coloured with pretense of conscience
for ecclesiastical causes" may in fact now consider Elizabeth a heretic deposed of her
temporal throne.26 He counseled that "the pretenses, colors, and causes of such
77

refusailes [of the oath of supremacy] would be well examined." As for the form of
these examinations, Norton proposed that recusants should "be opposed" with a few
interrogatories, namely whether "they thynke our Queene lawfully Queene of thys
realme before God, notwithstandyng the Popes sentence," whether the pope's sentence
pertained to the queen and if so, to what extent, and whether the pope had "judicially

"6 Thomas Norton, A warning agaynst the dangerous practices ofPapistes, and specially the parteners
of the late rebellion (1570?), sig. E3V. The English Short Title Catalogue suggests this work was
published in 1569, but Norton obviously wrote it partly in response to Regnans in excelsis.
27
Norton, A warning agaynst the dangerous practices ofPapistes, sig. E4V.

459
erred, & in matter both of fact & doctrine passed hys boundes or no" in issuing the
bull Regnans in excelsis.
It did not take Norton long to reformulate the first of these questions as an
oath, for in the Parliament of 1571, Norton "moved that all suspected of papistrie
might make this oath, that they did acknowledge the Queen to be Queen for anie
thinge the Pope in anie respecte might doe, noting some inperfection in the former
oath." At this time, however, Norton's proposition came to nothing; Parliament did
not put Norton's recommendation into practice. Yet there survives among a cache
manuscripts originally belonging to Archbishop Parker (now in the Petyt Collection) a
"protestation for Papists" that reads:
I do profess and confess before God, that I do firmly believe in my
Conscience, that Queen Elizabeth, my Sovereign Lady, now reigning in
England, is rightfully, and ought to be and continue Queen, and lawfully
beareth the Regal Crown and Power of this Realm: And so to be obeyed,
notwithstanding any Act or Sentence, that any Pope or Bishop hath done or
given, or can do or give: And that if any Pope or other say, or judge the
contrary, whether he say it as Pope, or howsoever, he erreth, holdeth and
teacheth Error.
This protestation is undated, but Strype believed that it was discussed in the
Convocation of Canterbury of 1571.3I The protestation neatly corresponds to the first
and third interrogatories for recusants suggested by Norton in 1570. It differs from
Norton's proposition in the House of Commons in 1571 in that it is not an oath, but its
existence in Parker's papers nevertheless shows that Norton's proposal for a device of
allegiance separate from the oath of supremacy received some consideration in 1571.
The Elizabethan regime did not put into practice Norton's suggestions until the
arrival of the Jesuit Edmund Campion into England. In 1581, the government began
to use a series of interrogatories to test Jesuits and seminary priests on their allegiance
to Elizabeth, interrogatories similar to those Norton had proposed. Early in Campion's
captivity, he was called before the queen and asked whether he acknowledged her to

Norton, A warning agaynst the dangerous practices ofPapistes, sigs. Fl v -F2'; Michael A. R. Graves,
Thomas Norton: The Parliament Man (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) 166-168.
29
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 1:214.
30
Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, vol. 47, fol. 456r, printed in Strype, Parker, 324.
31
There is no reference to these protestations in the surviving documents of the Convocation of 1571.
See Bray, Records of Convocation, 7:463-485.

460
be his queen and whether he thought that the pope might lawfully excommunicate
her. On July 30, 1581, the Privy Council ordered Sir Owen Hopton (the lieutenant
of the Tower), Thomas Norton, Doctor Hammond, and Robert Beale to pose to
Campion and two other priests questions "of their allegiance to her Majestic"
Further details on these questions came to light in a pamphlet printed in 1582
justifying the execution of Campion and containing information on the examinations
of Campion and twelve other priests from 1580 and 1581. This pamphlet explained
that the government used six questions to test the allegiance of these priests. Two of
the questions were the ones Norton had suggested in 1570: whether Elizabeth was a
lawful queen notwithstanding the papal bull of excommunication and whether the bull
itself was lawful. The other four were whether the pope had the power to authorize
English subjects to take up arms against the queen, whether the pope could discharge
English subjects of their oath of obedience to Elizabeth, whether Sanders' De
monorchia ecclesiae and Bristowe's Motives (books written in support of the bull)
taught truth, and which side the priests would take if a foreign army invaded the realm
to depose Elizabeth on behalf of the pope. The government published this pamphlet
to illustrate that Campion and his fellows were executed for treason, not for "certaine
points of religion that concerneth only matters of conscience."35 These six
interrogatories were still not a full-blown oath of allegiance.
Oaths, however, did play a role in determining the allegiance of these priests.
Before tendering these questions to Campion, the Privy Council ordered that Hopton,
Norton, Hammond, and Beale "minister unto him [Campion] a corporall othe upon a
Bible of St. Hieromes translacion . . . to answer trulie and directlie to sucke thinges as

This came out in Campion's trial; Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion: Jesuit Protomartyr of
England (London: Burns and Oates, 1907), 418.
33
Dasent,^cte of the Privy Council, 13:144-145.
3
A particular declaration or testimony, of the vndutifull and traiterous affection borne against her
Maiestie by Edmond Campion lesuite, and other condemnedpriestes witnessed by their owne
confessions: in reproofe of those slanderous bookes and libels deliuered out to the contrary by such as
are malitiously affected towards her Maiestie and the state (1582), sig. C2r"v, printed in M. A. Tierney
(ed.), Dodd's Church History of England From the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century to the
Revolution in 1688 (1839; repr., New York, Ams Press, 1971), 3:iv-v.
35
Tierney, Dodd's Church History, 3:vi.

461
by them shalbe damunded of him." ' Furthermore, these questions were somehow
connected to the oath of supremacy, for in Campion's trial the queen's counsel claimed
that Campion did "refuse to swear to the supremacy . . . insomuch as, being demanded
by the commissioners whether the Bull wherein Pius Quintus had excommunicated her
Majesty were in your opinion of force, and the excommunication of effect or no,"
Campion declined to answer."37 Curiously, it seems that Campion's silence when
asked these "bloody questions" was taken as a refusal to swear to Elizabeth's
supremacy.
Norton benefited from his role as an examinant of Campion by refining his
plan in the winter of 1581/1582. At this time Norton was in the Tower for having
aroused the queen's displeasure for some errant speaking concerning the proposed
marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, but this did not keep Secretary
Walsingham from seeking Norton's opinion on how to reform the universities, create a
learned Protestant clergy, and eradicate Catholicism from public schools, private
schoolmasters, and the nns of the court and chancery. Norton responded with a series
of letters that became known as his "Devices."38 In his Devices, Norton proposed the
tendering of two new oaths. One of the oaths was the same as that which he had
advocated in 1571. It dealt exclusively in matters of temporal allegiance. Norton
acknowledged that Elizabeth's "subiectes holding popish heresies vpon persuasion of
conscience were to be borne with all" as long as they did not disturb the church or
reject their allegiance and loyalty to the queen.39 Yet some Catholics were in fact
disloyal so it was "necessaire for the Quenes safetie" to know "which of them be
allredy so far gone as they do not aknowlege the Quene their lawfull soueraine euen in
the right and possession of her crowne, speaking nothing of her ecclesiastical

Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 13:144.

37
Simpson.Edmund Campion, 417-418. My italics.
38
Norton's original letter-book is BL Additional MS. 48023, fols. 41v-58v. The letters have been
rearranged (presumably by one of Walsingham's clerks) into a continuous essay in NA SP12/177, fols.
145-166 (Cal SP Dom, CXXV1I 59). Another copy of Norton's Devices is in the collection of Sir
Julius Caesar, BL Lansdowne MS. 155, fols. 87r-l 13v. This bibliographical information comes from
Graves, Thomas Norton, 216, note 50.
39
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 48v.

462
power. " So Norton proposed that all recusants be examined "upon othe" to three
articles: whether Elizabeth is "de iure" the "soueraine Ladie and Q[ueen] of this realm
. . . notwithstanding any act or sentence that any pope, chirch, or bodi hath or done or
geuen or can do or geue," whether Pius V's bull is and shalbe "false and erroneous and
of no validitie," and whether the taking of arms by any Englishman against the queen
is and shall be unlawful rebellion and damnable sin, notwithstanding anything the
pope or church has or may do, give, or say.41 These questions were simply updated
versions of the interrogatories Norton proposed in 1570 supplemented by material on
rebellion from the six questions of 1581. Unlike the six questions administered to
the priests in 1581 but like Norton's proposition in the Parliament of 1571, Norton
advocated that these questions "would bee acknowledged by oth" and thus drafted two
appropriate professions. Finally, in his device "For keping out of Jesuits and
Seminarians from infecting the Chirch," Norton counseled that orders be given at
every port "that no Englishman Landing in England be suffred to depart further into
the land, vntill he declare by othe before some hed officer of the port or other," that

40
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 58r. My italics.
41
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 58".
Norton acknowledged the connection of these questions to the interrogation of Edmund Campion
when he asserted that these questions "choked Campion and them all in examinations and at the barre";
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 48v.
43
In his original letter-book, Norton devised the following form of submission: "1 do acknowlege and
declare in my conscience that the R M Q El oure soueraine ladie now reigning in England, is and while
she shal hue ought so to be holden and obeyed, the true and lawful Q of this realme, and ought to
possesse and enioy the royal croune and kingly gouerance therof, and that all the people of the nations
of England and Ireland do and shal owe and ought to beare to her the allegeance and obedience of
subiects, notwithstaning any act or sentence that any pope or other persone chirch or bodie hath done or
geuen or can do or geue. Etc"; BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 48v. In the edition of the Devices found
in the state papers, Norton recommend the following, expanded oath: I acknowledge that our
Soueraigne Ladie Queene Elizabeth nowe reignyng in England is the true and lawfull Queene of this
Realme and whilest she liveth ought to possesse and enioy the Crowne and kingly governance thereof,
and I and all other of the nation of England are hir liege subiects and owe and shall owe to beare to hir
the allegiance and obedience of subiects, notwithstanding any act or sentence that anie Pope or other
person church or bodie hath done or given or can doe or give And that the pretended excomunication,
sentence or bull of Pius the Vth declaring hir Majestie an heretique and deprived of hir Crowne, and hir
subiects dischardged of their allegiance to hir, and everie like iudgement or sentence that hath been
shall or may be had by anie pope or other, is and shall be false and erronious and of no validitie toward
hir Majestie or hir suibects: And that all risinges and taking of armes and perswasions thervnto against
hir Majestie by the late rebels in the North, or Sanders and any other in Ireland, or anie other hir
subiects were and be vnlawful and vngodly doyngs and damnable treasons, notwithstanding anie
warrant, exommuication, bull commandment, absolution, or other matter whatosoever had or pretened
or that may be had from or by anie Pope or other bodie or person, or anie regard or pretence of anie
church called Catholique, or other matter whatsoever"; NA SP12/177, fol. 157r.

463
Elizabeth is the lawful queen of the realm notwithstanding any sentence of the pope,
and that "he cometh not into this realme with mynde to holde or publish any doctrine
of faith repugnant to that which is taught by her Majesties authorite."44 With the
exception of this last clause on publishing faith, both versions of this oath (to recusants
and to those entering an English port) were similar in that they explicitly avoided
matters of religion and sought simply to determine which recusants disregarded Pius's
bull and were politically loyal to the queen.
The other oath Norton suggested, however, did purposefully deal in matters of
religion. Norton noted first that the oath of supremacy (and perhaps his oath of
allegiance as well) were insufficient. Speaking of schoolmasters, Norton avowed that
"simple conformite and taking of the vsual othe is not enough without approued and
well testified zele in a mater of such special trust."45 Likewise, in his device for the
universities, Norton noted that the "othe of allegeance . . . alone is no sufficent prof
and tryall of conformitie in religion, but there is requesite some further extending to
the doctrine of the chirch of England wherin it varyeth from the chirch of Rome."46
Reversing the claims of Bonner and Feckenham, Norton believed that these oaths were
insufficient because they dealt too much with matters of fact and enough not with
matters of faith. In his examination of Jesuits like Campion, Norton had discovered
that Roman Catholic casuistry allowed seminary priests and Jesuits to equivocate and
dissimulate in matters of fact but not in matters of faith.47 Capitalizing on this

44
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 53v.
45
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 49v.
46
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 46r. It is unclear here whether Norton meant the oath of supremacy
when he referred to the oath of allegiance. Graves assumed that he did: Graves, Thomas Norton, 256.
Graves may be right, for some contemporary writers do occasionally refer to the oath of supremacy as
the oath of allegiance. For an example of this, see Perceval Wiburn, A checke or reproofe of M.
Howlets vntimely shreeching in her Majesties eares with an answeare to the reasons alleadged in a
discourse therunto annexed, why Catholikes (as they are called) refuse to goe to church: wherein
(among other things) the papists traiterous and treacherous doctrine and demeanour towardes our
Soueraigne and the state, is somewhat at large vpon occasion vnfolded: their diuelish pretended
conscience also examined, and the foundation thereof vndermined. And lastly shewed thatit [sic] is the
duety of all true Christians and subiectes to haunt publike church assemblies (1581), fols. 5r, 21 v ', 53r-
53v. On the other hand, Norton did advocate a test of allegiance that was separate from the oath of
supremacy so we cannot rule out the possibility that Norton was referring to this test when he wrote of
the "oath of allegiance."
7
Norton was right about this point. See P. J. Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, Catholic Records
Society, vol. 67 (1981), 52-55, 64-66, 77,

464
distinction, the city of London required every person who exercised any function of
law to subscribe to the following article:
I do confesse and declare before God and this court that I am throughly
persuaded in my conscience that the doctrine of religion publikely taught in
this realme by the Q. Majesties autoritie, is good and sound doctrine agreing
with the word of God; and that the doctrine comonly called papistrie, varieng
from the sayd doctrine taught by her Majesties autoritie, is false blasphemous
and heretical.
Norton suggested that this profession be tendered "by othe or subscription or both" at
least once a year to everyone within the universities. He also advised that it be
attached to the oath to follow the statutes of a particular college (which was
administered upon matriculation to a college) and administered at all admissions,
preferments, and conferrals of degrees. 9 Furthermore, Norton suggested that all
schoolmasters, those who held cure of churches, and practitioners in the inns of the
court and chancery should make a similar profession, while all tutors should be bound
with an oath to bring their students up in this faith.50 Perhaps anticipating the queen's
criticism of this plan, Norton recognized that this oath would "be uerie hard to urge
the Quenes subiectes so fair in their conscience." Although he did not see the harm in
requiring every parishioner to make such an acknowledgment of faith before receiving
communion, in the end he conceded: "though it be not required of all, yet in good
congruitie it may be required of those that in the pollicie of the realme are brought
vppe in place purpose and hope not only to vnderstand them selves but also to be
teachers of others, namely in the vniuersities and in the cure of churches."51 Probably
because it required men to expose their consciences in matters of religion, the
Elizabethan regime never implemented Norton's scheme concerning this oath, though
it did require ministers to subscribe to a series of doctrinal articles during ordinations
and episcopal visitations.

8
BL Additional MS. 48023, fol. 46r. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any other information
on this subscription outside of Norton's Devices. Norton did also mention that one "Eden" was
deprived of his office for subscribing to this profession and then later speaking contrary to it, and that
the city of London charitably distributed funds among the scholars of the universities but only if the
scholars subscribed to this article.
49
BL Additional MS. 48023, fols. 46r_v, 57r.
50
BL Additional MS. 48023, fols. 47v, 50r, 51 v .
51
NA SP12/177, fol. 160 v -161 r (Ca/5P>ow,CXXVII59).

465
 By contrast, Norton's plan for an oath of allegiance did receive support among
the Elizabethan regime. Initially, however, this support was neither official nor overt.
Certainly there was no official government legislation, proclamation, or injunction
ordering the implementation of Norton's schemes. Yet in the 1580s, we start to see
evidence of English Roman Catholics making professions of allegiance remarkably
similar to those Norton had advocated. In 1583 and 1584, two Catholic doctors of
law, Andrew Oxenbrege and Edmund Windham, made such professions. Windam's
profession commenced: "Where dowghte seemyth to be made whether suche as I
holding the Catholick faithe contynie at this daye on our dutye of obedience towardes
the Quenes Majestie."52 Both doctors then spelled out that they acknowledged
Elizabeth as their rightful and lawful queen notwithstanding any bull or deposition of
the pope.53 Oxenbrege went on to protest that if the pope deposed Elizabeth or
dispensed with her subjects "othe of Loialltie," he held this action as "a Trayterous
article" and would hazard his life to defend Elizabeth against any "invador, distarbor,
or vndermyner" who sought to act on the pope's or another's authority. Oxenbrege
also concluded his protestation with a strong clause rejecting "all hidden sophisticalie
and dissembled reservation of private sence or . . . interpretation," a point which calls
to mind Norton's concern that Roman Catholics sometimes dissembled in matters of
fact.54
Two similar yet more acute protestations also exist from the end of the 1580s.
John Gifford made one in November of 1588, and George Napper made one in June of
1589. Both of these protestations commenced acknowledging Elizabeth as the true,
undoubted, and lawful sovereign of England, and the protestation of Gifford included
the standard clause "notwithstandinge any Bull, sentence, excommunication, or
whatsoever pretence to the Contraye." Both protestations also contained clauses in
which the person avowed to hazard his goods and life to resist any person who sought
to invade, depose, or harm Elizabeth. Gifford claimed that he would "prosecute" such
invaders or rebels "to all extremilites," while Napper would "with all my endevoir

52
NA SP12/172, fol. 8r, (Cal SP Dom, CLXXII 5).
53
NA SP12/172, fol. 8r; NA SP12/160, fol. 101r (Cal SP Dom, CLX 44).
54
NASP12/160,fol. 101r.

466
seeke to ouerthrow & presectue" them "even to the very death." These clauses were
reminiscent of the bond of association. Gifford's and Napper's protestations were also
stronger in that they included modified clauses adapted from the oath of supremacy.
Gifford recognized that Elizabeth had "Regall Auctoritie, power and Iurisdiction, over
all persons of her subiectes both sperituall and Temporall." Napper averred that "noo
forrayne prince, prelate, estate, or potentate maye or oughte in any waye to preindicate
the saide superioritie, Iurisdiction, preheminence or authoritie within her maiesties
dominions." These protestations were thus idiosyncratic, intensified adaptations of the
basic template outlined by Norton.55
Oxenbrege, Windham, Gifford, and Napper's protestations differed from
Norton's scheme, however, in that they were not oaths but rather simple subscriptions.
Furthermore, although the details are sketchy, it appears that at least some of these
were not made at the instigation of the Elizabethan regime but originated from the
Catholic recusants themselves. For example, Windam admitted that he was "moved
by my frendes to set down herein my opinion and mynde as a thing that wolde serve to
help to mitigate the mysliking that is conceyved against me for matters of religion."56
These protestations were an attempt by imprisoned Catholics to appease the regime
without compromising their religious beliefs or swearing the oath of supremacy with
its clause on Elizabeth's supremacy in causes ecclesiastical. A glimpse of this process
is offered in the 1585 examination of John Byue, who had recently returned to
England from abroad and was suspected of being a seminary priest. Byue, "beynyg
offered the oth of Supremacye refysed for that he taketh the statute doth not bynde
hym to take the oth but wold so sweren that he hath byn ys & shylbe a trewe subiect
vnto the queenys maiestye that now ys."57 Independent of Norton, then, some Roman
Catholics adopted a strategy of making subscriptions (or in Byue's case, an oath)
acknowledging Elizabeth's temporal power notwithstanding papal deposition or

55
Gifford's submission is NA SP12/218, fol. 73r (Cal SP Dom, CCXVIII 48). Napper's submission is
NA SP12/224, fol. 166r (Cal SP Dom, CCXXIV 109).
56
NASP12/172, fols. 8 r ,9 r .
57
NA SP12/179, fol. 62v (Cal SP Dom, CLXXIX 30). This handwriting of this account is difficult and
my transcription may contain minor errors.

467
invasion in hopes of winning the government's favor without actually articulating or
renouncing their religious beliefs.
Yet it appears that local officials of the Elizabethan regime also designed and
tendered analogous professions to Catholics they suspected of disloyalty either in
addition to the oath of supremacybecause, like Norton, they thought the oath of
supremacy insufficient in light of Pius V's bullor in substitute for the oath of
supremacybecause they wanted some more acceptable way to determine whether
the person's Catholicism extended as far as opposing the queen without making an
inquiry into their conscience in matters of religion. This is evident in the trial of John
Oven and Francis Edwards, two seminary priests, in October of 1588. Oven and
Edwards had been sentenced to execution, but Oven yielded and declared his
willingness "to take the oath appoynted by the statut of Anno primo." The justices of
the peace in Chichester and the under-sheriff then gave him a temporary respite
hoping to obtain his pardon, but Thomas Bowyer (the prosecuting attorney for the
state) then moved the justices that in addition to his oath of supremacy, Oven should
"frely and from his hart declare openly these articles folowinge devised then by him
for that purpose and subscribe the same." In these articles, Oven did "vtterly renounce
and for sacke that paynt of doctrine holden by the pope and his adherentes as a
doctrine trayterous whereby he cleaymeth . . . to absolve the subiectes of that prince
that he shall denounce to be an heretique of their tydlyte to that prince and to gyve the
realme or Land of that prince to Catholicks (as he calleth them) whoe should without
controversy possesse the same." The article also included a rejection of Pope Greogry
XIII's absolution to be temporarily obedient to Elizabeth, and a clause pledging to
assist in the preservation of the queen against all those who sought to take her life.
The justices of the peace approved of Bowyer's suggestion, and both Oven and
Edward eventually signed these professions.58
Another example of local initiative comes from the city of Dover. In
December of 1589, the authorities at Dover conducted examinations of two suspected
seminary priests, Francis Dickinson and Miles Gerard. Gerard (also known as

NA SP12/217, fols. 3V-4V (Cal SP Dom, CCXV1I 1).

468
William Richardson) "denyeth to take his oath" that his examination was true "and
also the Oath of Supremacie."5 The authorities then asked the two men whether
Elizabeth was the lawful ruler of England, whether the pope had the power to deprive
Elizabeth of her throne, whether Pius's deprivation was legitimate, and whether they
would support an army the pope sent to invade the realm. Although Dickinson and
Gerard answered these questions in a way that indicated that they did believe that the
pope could and had lawfully deprived Elizabeth, the authorities still tried to convince
Gerard to take an oath of allegiance: "And being demanded whether he will take the
oth of Allegiance, he sayeth he is not resolved therin."60 It is not clear what the exact
contents of this oath of allegiance were, but it probably was related to the questions on
the lawfulness of Elizabeth and the pope's deprivation. What is clear is that the
authorities used some combination of the oath supremacy, interrogatories taken under
oath, and a signed profession or oath of allegiance to determine the loyalty of
suspected priests like Dickinson and Gerard.
Furthermore, at the end of the 1580s and beginning of 1590s, rumors did
circulate about the Elizabethan regime requiring all imprisoned seminary priests and
Jesuits to take an oath of obedience to her. A document, probably from July 1589,
preserved in the State Papers entitled "Certaine notes to be remembred," which seems
to have been written based on information from an English spy in Spain, reads:
[It is reported that] all the Catholiques that were in prison in England were
inlarged, havinge taken a solempne othvnto her Majestie, that if the kinge of
Spaine or any other forrein Prince shold offer to make any Invasion that they
shold resist them to the vttermnost of thir powers. The Jesuittes and Semnary
Preistes hold this othe very preiudiciall to the Comen Cawse: and therfore
there is by the Pope and Cardinall Allen provision made both att Rome and att
Remes, to send ouer priestes and Jesuittes to perswade theire friendes that this
oth is vnlawfull and vngodly and also to dispence with them for the same for
whose arrivall I hope your honnor will provide.61
In May 1591, John Cecil (alias Snowden), a Roman Catholic priest whom Lord
Burghley turned into a spy, wrote to Burghley and referenced a planevidently

59
NA SP12/229, fol. 15r (Cal SP Dom, CCXXIX 5).
60
NA SP 12/229, fols. 45r-47r (Cal SP Dom, CCXXIX 27), quotation from fol. 47r.
61
NA SP12/225, fol. 82r (Cal SP Dom, CCXXV 51). The bulk of the document contains information
about Sir William Stanley's recommendations to Philip II of how to invade Ireland. Stanley was in
Spain in 1589.

469
already known to Burghleyfor Burghley to set up a community of priests either in or
outside of England who would wear priestly attire and "take some othe not to heare or
suffer eny practise of treason, or deale in matter of state."62 Finally in 1592, Robert
Robinson reported to Thomas Phelippes (Walsingham's cryptographer and chief
intelligence gatherer) that he heard in Spain that Elizabeth had made all Catholics in
England "take an othe of Loyaltie against all invasiones and invadors, which as is
sayed the[y] haue done willingly." Robinson continued, claiming that the oath had
come out in print and that much favor was being shown to Catholics who took it. He
also noted, however, that many of the Englishmen in Spain denied this news. 3
These rumors were not without some basis of truth. In addition to the
professions, oaths, and interrogatories occasionally used by local officials, Elizabeth
herself finally approved the limited use of an oath when interrogating recusants on
their allegiance. In the articles Elizabeth attached to the commission for recusants in
1591, she stated that she did not want her commissioners to "presse any person to
answeare to any questions of their conscience for matters of Religion" other than
whether they usually came to church and if not, why. If they were found to be willful
recusants, Elizabeth authorized the commissioners to inquire "concerning their
allegieance to her Maiestie, and of their deuotion to the Pope, or to the King of Spaine,
or vpon their mainteance of any Jesuit, Seminarie preist or other person" who sought
to dissuade Englishmen away from their loyalty to the queen. To give the
commissioners more instruction on how to do this, she empowered them to observe
the following form of examination. One question was "to be answered by othe" by
those suspected of aiding the forces of the pope or the king of Spain, namely whether,
when, and by whom they have been moved to give aid to the forces of the pope or to
the king of Spain if they should happen to invade the realm. The rest of the
questionswhether they were Jesuits or priests, whether they had been at a seminary
i
college, whether they had been at Rome, Rheims, or Spain, and if so, how long and for

NA SP12/238, fol. 259' (CalSPDom, CCXXXVII1 168).

NA SP12/242, fol. 74r (Cal SP Dom, CCXLII 37).

470
what purposewere "to be ministered without othe."' Thus, Elizabeth did authorize
her commissioners to examine recusants upon their oaths whether and by whom they
had been moved to assist a foreign, Catholic invasion, but she did not authorize them
to tender recusants a specific oath of allegiance. Furthermore, Elizabeth was careful to
limit the number of questions to be asked on oath, and she did not mention anything
about the papal bull of deposition or the pope's deposing power in general.
Yet like the initiative taken by the Chichester justices of the peace and the
Dover authorities, local officials elaborated and extended the commission of 1591.
For example, no less a person than the Earl of Derby went beyond Elizabeth's
instructions. In February 1592, the Earl of Derby wrote a letter to the rest of the
commissioners for recusants in Lancashire in which he outlined the procedure that
they were to follow when examining recusants. Derby instructed the commissioners
that recusants should "not only haue ther oathe tendred which ys sette downe in the
enstrucions annexed to the commisione but also be demaunded to answear opon ther
oathes these questions enclosed which only concerne ther alleageance to her Majestie,
And no matters of religione or conscience." The additional questions Derby devised
to be answered upon oath were whether they considered Elizabeth to be the lawful
queen of her dominions, whether they thought she has as much power over her
subjects' goods and lives as any other previous monarch has had, and which side they
would take if the pope or king of Spain went to war with England.65 Derby thus asked
more questions upon oath than Elizabeth's commission authorized.
An even more poignant example comes from the examination of imprisoned
recusants in and around London in the spring of 1593. This time, however, the
commission originated from the Privy Council rather than Elizabeth herself. On
March 3, 1593, the Privy Council commissioned Sir Robert Cecil, Sir John Wolley, Sir
John Fortescue, and others to call before them both Catholic and Protestant recusants

64
NA SP12/240, fol. 72' (Cal SP Dom, CCXL 43) which is the printed proclamation Articles annexed
to the Commission for a further instruction to the commissioners how to proceede in the execution
thereof'(London, 1591).
Lancashire Record Office, DDKE/Box 122/1, fols. 112rv, calendared (with incorrect page numbers)
in The Manuscripts of the Lord Kenyon, edited by William John Hardy, Historical Manuscripts
Commission, 14* Report (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894), 603. I have viewed the actual
manuscript at the Lancashire Record Office.

471
and "to take theire examynacions and certefie the same unto us," but the register of the
Privy Council provides us with no details on how that commission was to be carried
out. Fortunately, both the notes from these examinations and the prepared
summaries of them survive.67 In them we see that the commissioners sometimes
asked the following questions: Are you a priest or do you know one? Have you been
overseas? Have you been reconciled to the Catholic Church? Can the pope lawfully
excommunicate the queen and free her subjects from their oath of allegiance and
obedience to the queen? What side would you support if a Catholic army invaded
England? Stefania Tutino has emphasized that Thomas Egerton Lord Ellesmere (one
of the chief examinants) employed questions on the pope's power to excommunicate
and the attitude of the exarninate in the event of an invasion of papal troops
selectively: that is, Egerton asked these questions only if the examinate's past or
behavior caused Egerton to be suspicious of the loyalty of the particular exarninate.68
What Tutinto has not observed, however, is the role of oaths in these examinations.
All of these questions were usually prefaced with a kind of ex officio oath whereby the
commissioners required the recusants to swear that they would answer the questions
asked of them truthfully.69 The commissioners also sometimes charged the recusants
to swear to these questions individually: that is, to verify their response by swearing an
oath that the answer they had just given was true.70 Finally, the commissioners
tendered an oath of allegiance to some recusants. For example, Raffe Emeasone was
"urged to take the othe of allegiance to her Majesty," William Thornburye was
likewise "urged to take the othe of allegiance," Richard Webster was "demanded
whether he will at this preseant denounce the Pope and his aucthoritye, and take an
66
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 24:145.
67
These have been printed in Anthony G. Petti (ed.), Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts,
Catholic Record Society, vol. 60 (1968), 42-90. The originals are in the Ellesmere manuscripts at the
Huntington Library, but I have yet to see them.
68
Tutino, Law and Conscience, 110-113. I am not convinced that Tutino is correct here. There are
many examples of these questions being asked of people whose past and behavior were not particularly
suspicious. See Petti, Recusant Docments from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 53, 60-62, 71, 76.
69
For example, Robert Jackson, a merchant from Newcastle, "denythe to take his othe to her Majesty to
answer to any matar"; Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 89. The majority of
recusants refused to swear this oath. For the few examples of recusants actually taking this oath, see
Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 43, 45-46, 50, 56-57, 63.
See for example, Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 47, 52, 54-55, 61, 64, 67,
72,79. :

472
othe therto," and Christopher Roche was "requerid to sware whedar he will take the
Quene's part agayn the Pope. "7I The occasional discrepancies between the notes of
the examinations and the summaries of them indicate that the content of this oath was
related to the commissioners' initial questions. For example, the actual examination of
William Coke does not mention any oath but simply describes Coke's response to
questions concerning the pope's power to excommunicate and absolve subjects from
their allegiance and concerning which side Coke would take in the event of an
invading Catholic army. Yet the summary of Coke's examination reads, "being
required [to] take an othe to the Queen's Majesty to take the Quene's part agyn the
Pope, he refuse[th] so to dow."72 This oath of allegiance was also separate from the
oath of supremacy, for when Thomas Symson (alias Hygate) decided to apostatize
from his Roman Catholicism and become a Protestant, the recorder of his examination
noted that Smyson "hath nowe voluntarilie taken the othe of allegiance unto her
Majesty, and is readye to take the othe of supremacye."73 Finally, probably in
reference to this commission, the imprisoned priest William Harrington wrote to Lord
Keeper Puckering in the summer of 1593 offering to swear that he was not privy to
any plot against Elizabeth and stating that if he did have knowledge of any plot, he
was bound to reveal it "by my oathe of Allegiance taken before the Commissioners."
All of this demonstrates that the commissioners who examined imprisoned recusants
in the spring of 1593 used a variety of oaths against recusants, including a form of an
oath of allegiance.
We do not know the extent to which these commissioners were acting on their
own authority when administering oaths to imprisoned recusants in 1593 since no
details of the original commission of the Privy Council survive. Even if the Privy
Council did not order the use of oaths of allegiance in the examinations, the scope of
the examinations make it unlikely that they were ignorant of commissioners'

71
Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 58-59, 69, 85.
72
Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 60. 83. See the similar case of Robert
Goldsborow on 75, 86.
Petti, Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, 78.
74
NA SP12/245, fol. 99v (Cal SP Dom, CCXLV 66). This letter is undated so we cannot be positive
that Harrington was referring to this commission.

473
employment of them. Certainly the Privy Council was aware of the existence and
general benefits of such oaths of allegiance at this time. On August 14, 1592, Mr.
Gerald Aylmer, a member of the Irish elite of the Pale who had been imprisoned by the
Privy Council for his unauthorized departure from Ireland and his backwardness in
religion, swore an oath in which he acknowledged Elizabeth to be his "Soveraign
Queen and naturall Princes," protested before God that he would hazard his life to
defend the queen against the pope and king of Spain "in all causes and quarrels
whatsoever, spirituall or temporall," and pledged to be Elizabeth's true and faithful
subject "in hart, minde and soule" and to pray never to live under the government of
any but Elizabeth and her heirs.75 Although this oath seems to have been devised by
Alymer himself, it was similar to the oaths of allegiance circulating at this time and
the Privy Council approved of it and released Alymer from prison on the conditions
that he returned to Ireland, went to church, and took the same "oath for his loyalty and
obedience to her Majestie and the State" before the lord deputy of Ireland. As such,
the swearing of oaths of allegiance by imprisoned recusants was not being done
behind the backs of Elizabeth's Privy Council.
The final development of the Elizabethan oath of allegiance happened as a
result of the controversy within English Catholicism between the Appellants and
Jesuits. The Appellants were a group of English secular priests at the end of
Elizabeth's reign who resented the Jesuit dominance of English Catholicism and
appealed the papal appointment of George Blackwell as arch-priest of England
because they saw Blackwell as a pawn of the Jesuits. Two notable features of the
Appellants were their disavowal of the use of force (be it invasion, rebellion, or
assassination) to reestablish Catholicism in England and their claim of full temporal
obedience to Elizabeth. As such, rumors of an Appellant oath of allegiance circulated
as early as 1601.77 The real impetus for an Appellant profession of allegiance,
however, was the royal proclamation of November 5, 1602, which declared that in
spite of the Appellants' rejection of all Catholic invasions and rebellions, they must

75
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 23:119-120.
76
Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 23:126-127.
77
Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, 2:104.

474
leave the realm by February 1 (the Jesuits had only thirty days to leave) unless they
presented themselves before the Privy Council, the bishop of their diocese, or the lord
president of Wales or York and acknowledged "sincerely their duty and allegiance"
no

unto Elizabeth and submitted themselves to her mercy. In response, the Appellants
set about to devise some kind of profession of allegiance to Elizabeth that they hoped
would grant them exemption from the proclamation. There was evidently much
debate among the Appellants over the form and content of this profession: "every one
insisted on his own device, and so they could conclude nothing."79 A draft of a
profession from this time by English Catholic priests survives among the Petyt
manuscripts, and it is probably a specimen of one of the professions debated among
the Appellants. It is a simple oath of loyalty in which the Catholic priest swears
obedience to Elizabeth as his lawful queen and protests that he will hold no
intelligence with any foreign potentate in prejudice to Elizabeth's authority, person, or
estate.80 The profession finally agreed upon by thirteen of the Appellant priests and
presented to Bishop Bancroft on January 31, 1603, was much longer. In it the priests
acknowledged Elizabeth's "full auctority power & soveraignetye" in all civil and
temporal matters, denounced all conspiracies and invasions that had been made under
the pretense of restoring Catholicism by the sword, and averred that if a foreign
invasion of England happened, they would remain loyal to Elizabeth even if
excommunicated by the pope. This protestation, however, did not contain a solemn
oath. Moreover, it differed from previous professions of allegiance of the 1580s and
1590s in that it did not explicitly reject Pius V's bull of excommunication or challenge
papal deposing power in general. The priests who took this profession also very
clearly limited Elizabeth's sovereignty to civil and temporal matters, going so far as to
articulate that they would obey the Pope as the true successor of St. Peter "so fair

The proclamation is printed in Tierney, Dodd's Church History, 3:clxxxiv-clxxxviii, quotation from
clxxxvii.
79
This quotation comes from a letter from Bishop Bancroft to Sir William Cecil on February 1, 1603,
which explains the Appellant profession of allegiance; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar
of Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (London:
Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1883-1976), 12:632.
80
Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, vol. 54, fol. 392, printed in Usher, Reconstruction of the
English Church, 2:312.

475
fourthe as we are bound by the Lawes of god to doe," a clear sign that this was written
O 1

by the priests themselves and not the Elizabethan regime.

Of course, some members of the Elizabethan regime were also involved in the
formulation of the Appellant profession of allegiance. The Appellants' primary liaison
with the regime was Bishop Bancroft of London. Also among the Petyt manuscripts is
another profession of allegiance. Although it is endorsed "An oath of allegiance
thought up by some Catholics," Bossy plausibly suggested that this profession was
written by Bancroft to be given to the Appellants as an example of what he considered
an acceptable profession of allegiance.82 It certainly was stronger than the final
profession of the Appellants in that it was a solemn oath, was couched in more direct
language, contained nothing on the priests' spiritual loyalty to the pope, and more
overtly bound the swearer to disregard any former or future papal bull that declares
Elizabeth deprived from her throne and discharges her subjects of their oath of
allegiance to her.83 In addition to Bancroft, some members of Elizabeth's Privy
Council were also aware of the Appellants' designs. Bancroft wrote to Sir Robert
Cecil that the Appellant priests composed their profession of allegiance in response to
a meeting between some of the Appellants with Cecil, Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, and
Lord Chief Justice Popham in which these magistrates told the Appellants that they

81
There are multiple surviving versions of this profession. The one quoted above is the most complete
version and is contained in the Elizabethan state papers domentic: NA SP12/287, fols. 23r-24r (Cal SP
Dom, CCLXXVI1 14). This version is printed in Tierney, Dodd's Church History, 3:clxxxviii-cxci. An
earlier version of this oath from the Petyt manuscripts is printed in Usher, Reconstruction of the English
Church, 2:313-315. It should be noted that some English Jesuits were also willing to swear a version of
an oath of allegiance, though they never formally approached the regime with a signed profession like
the Appellants. In an anonymous treatise from 1601 written either by an English Jesuit or in support of
them (one of the author's main goals was to defend the Jesuits against accusations of treason and
plotting), the author proposed that instead of tendering them the oath of supremacy or an oath of
association to defend the Reformed religion, the English crown should tender all Jesuits and priests an
oath "of temporall and ciuill duty, and obedience." If Elizabeth then received "all Catholikes into her
protection, which will take such oath, which is so much as we euer gaue to former Prince, or our lawes
require, or her Maiesty (will as I hope) needeth to demande," then she never would have to worry about
Catholic rebellion or traffic with Spain again; A briefe censvre vpon the pvritane pamphlet: entitvled,
(Hvmble motyves, for association to maintayne religion established.) Reprooving it of so many
vntruthes, as there beleaues in the same ([1601]), 76-79.
82
Bossy, "Henri IV, the Appelants and the Jesuits," 90.
83
Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, vol. 38, fol. 168', printed in Usher, Reconstruction of the
English Church, 2:312-313.

476
could remain in England if they promised not to exercise their priestly functions.
Thus, although Bancroft and some of Elizabeth's Privy Council proposed a much
stricter submission that that devised by the Appellants, they also were willing to
consider tolerating the Appellant priests if the Appellants made a form of a profession
of allegiance.

Conclusion and Comparison to the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance

The protestations, interrogations, and oaths of allegiance in the latter years of
Elizabeth's reign had much in common. All of them acknowledged Elizabeth to be the
rightful and lawful queen of England notwithstanding any papal act, sentence, or bull
of excommunication or deprivation. This was the most basic clause of all the
professions. The majority of the professions also included a pledge to defend
Elizabeth and take her part against any who might oppose her with force. In the 1570s
and early 1580s, these clauses were aimed at internal rebellions (like the Rebellion of
the Northern Earls) and conspiracies to assassinate Elizabeth and put Mary Stuart on
the throne. In the late 1580s and 1590s, these clauses focused on the threat of a papal-
supported Spanish or Irish invasion. The next most common element in the
professions was a rejection of the power of the pope to depose Elizabeth and dispense
and absolve English subjects from their allegiance and oaths of loyalty to Elizabeth.
This clause appeared in the professions of Norton, Oxenbrege, the articles devised by
Bowyer, and the questions posed by the 1593 London commissioners. Finally, some
of the professions, notably Oxenbrege's, Napper's, Bowyer's, and the profession in the
Petyt manuscripts probably written by Bancroft, contained sections rejecting any kind
of dissimulation or equivocation.

All of these common elements in the Elizabethan professions and

interrogations were integrated into the Jacobean oath of allegiance. The Jacobean oath
commenced with a clause acknowledging James as the "lawfull and rightful King of
this Realme" and rejecting the power of the pope "to depose the King," "to authorize
any Forraigne Prince to invade," "to discharge any of his Subjectes of their

Historical Manuscript Commission, Calendar of Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquis of
Salisbury, 12:631; Bossy, "Henri IV, the Appellants and the Jesuits," 89.

477
Allegiaunce," or "to give Licence or Leave to any of them to beare Armes raise
Tumults or to offer any violence or hurte to his Majesties Royall Person." The person
taking the oath then swore fidelity to James "notwithstanding any Declaracion or
Sentence of Excommunicacion or Deprivacion made or graunted or to be made or
graunted by the Pope or his Successors." Next, he pledged to defend the king "against
all Conspiracies and Attemptes whatsoever" and to make known to James all treasons
and traitorous conspiracies. The clause to make known to James treasons was much
more prevalent in the Henrician oaths than in the Elizabethan professions of
allegiance, though William Harrington's oath of allegiance in 1593 clearly contained
such a clause. The most novel part of the Jacobean oath was the clause wherein the
swearer rejected "as impious and hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position" that
princes who were excommunicated or deprived by the pope could be deposed and
murdered by their subjects or others. There is no clear precedent for this clause in the
Elizabethan professions. The closest precedents are in Norton's oath where Pius V's
bull is declared "false and erroneous" or the profession designed by Bowyer that
renounced "that paynt of doctrine" that the pope can give the kingdom of an
excommunicated prince to a Catholic, but neither of theses professions classified this
belief as heretical. The Jacobean oath concluded with a strong statement against
dissimulation and equivocation.85 Hence, it is clear that almost all of the clauses of
the Jacobean oath of allegiance had their roots in Elizabeth's reign, a point overlooked
in the historiography of the Jacobean oath. '
Yet unlike the Jacobean oath of allegiance in which James clearly had an active
role in designing and defending, there is no indication that Elizabeth had a major role
in formulating or administering the protestations, interrogations, and oaths of
allegiance of her reign. The emergence of an Elizabethan oath of allegiance was much
more organic; it was not a top-down process. It came about through the combined

85
The Jacobean oath of allegiance is printed in Statutes of the Realm, 3 Jac. 1, c. 4, 4:1074.
6
The Elizabethan origin of most of the clauses of the Jacobean oath have not been emphasized in
modern historiography primarily because the few works that cover the origin of the oath limit
themselves to a discussion of the Appellant Controversy. See for example Usher, Reconstruction of the
English Church, 1:164-168, 181-186, 2:99-109, 310-321; Bossy, "Henri IV, the Appelants and the
Jesuits," 89-90, 95-100; Sommerville, "Papalist Political Thought and the Controversy over the
Jacobean Oath of Allegiance," 164-165.

478
initiatives of local authorities, commissioners for examining recusants, imprisoned
Roman Catholics, and, eventually, powerful figures such as the Earl of Derby, Bishop
Bancroft, and members of Elizabeth's Privy Council. The idea for interrogations and
professions of allegiance probably originated with Thomas Norton. The Privy Council
approved of the administration of the "bloody questions" to Campion under oath, but
the actual professions of allegiance of the 1580s were devised either by imprisoned
Roman Catholics seeking to mitigate their punishment without abjuring their faith or
by lesser local officials such as the lawyer Thomas Bowyer or the Dover magistrates.
Although decisive evidence is lacking in the 1580s, these local authorities may have
been backed by figures closer to the center of the regime. Certainly by the 1590s we
are on a surer foundation in asserting the involvement of some of the key figures of
state. The Earl of Derby went beyond his commission in 1592 in asking more
questions concerning allegiance under oath, and the London commissioners of 1593
also employed a version of the oath of allegiance. Walsingham, Burghley, and the
1592 Privy Council were aware of at least some of these professions and did nothing
to stop them. Finally, the Appellants' proposition of 1603 demonstrates that these
professions of allegiance sometimes came about as result of negotiation between
Catholic priests and members of the regime, in this case Bishop Bancroft and Sir
Robert Cecil. The observation that the Elizabethan professions of allegiance emerged
through the efforts of a hogde-podge of figures without official direction from
Elizabeth explains not only the idiosyncratic variations in content of the professions
themselves, but also the different forms of professions, from oathless subscriptions to
interrogatories on oaths to sworn protestations. It must not be a coincidence that all
the professions designed by recusants (with the exception of Aylmer) were mere
subscriptions while the majority of the professions designed by the Elizabethan regime
contained oaths. Like the bond of association, the Elizabethan professions of
allegiance demonstrate that the members of regime were keen to employ oaths as a
means to protect Elizabeth from the threat of Roman Catholic dethronementkeener
to employ oaths than Elizabeth herself.

479
 The purpose of the Elizabethan professions of allegiance did, however,
coincide neatly with Elizabeth's declared aim not to inquire into her subjects'
consciences in matters of religion. The professions of allegiance were employed
predominately as a political test, as a means of discriminating between Roman
Catholics who actively opposed Elizabeth's reign and Roman Catholics who were
loyal to her but simply opposed the beliefs and practices of the Church of England.
This is the reason that it did not matter whether the authorities used interrogatories
taken under oath or sworn protestations. The primary purpose of these oaths was not
to bind the swearers to behave in a certain way in the future (although some of the
oaths did have the aim of preventing the swearer from assisting future rebels or
foreign invaders) but to ascertain what the swearer believed concerning Elizabeth's
sovereignty and the papal bull of deposition. The oath of supremacy was insufficient
for this task, partly because it did not explicitly address Pius's bull of deposition, and
partly because many English Roman Catholics maintained that it dealt in matters of
faith and religion. That is why Norton made sure his interrogatories and oaths of
allegiance contained "nothing of her ecclesiastical power" and the thirteen secular
priests were careful to distinguish Elizabeth's "civil and temporal power" from the
pope's spiritual headship. The Elizabethan professions of allegiance thus show that at
least some members of the Elizabethan regime accepted to some extent the Roman
Catholic claim that the oath of supremacy did inquire into their consciences in matters
of religion.
The purpose of the Jacobean oath of allegiance, officially at least, was the
same as that of the Elizabethan oaths. King James strongly denied that "this oath of
Allegiance was deuised for deceiuing and intrapping of Papists in points of
conscience." James averred that nothing was "contained in this Oath, except the
profession of naturall Allegiance, and ciuill and temporall obedience."87 Yet Michael
Questier has argued that the Jacobean oath of allegiance was not a simple political test
designed to distinguish loyal Roman Catholics from subversive ones. Rather, it was a
87
The quoted material is from James I, An for the oath of allegiance first set forth without a name, and
now by the author, the right high and prince, by the grace of God, King of great Britaine, France and
Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. Together, with a premonition of his to all most mightie monarches,
kings, free princes and states of Christendome (1609), 9.

480
"diabolically effective polemical cocktail" purposely designed by the Jacobean regime
to wreak havoc on the Roman Catholic community by hiding a lethal religious kick
beneath the surface of an ostensibly political drink.88 According to Questier, the key
to the oath was the clause wherein the swearer judged as "impious or heretical" the
doctrine or position that stated that one could depose or murder a prince who had been
excommunicated or deprived by the pope. This, argued Questier, was a matter of faith
and religion that could be implied as a renunciation of one of the central doctrines of
the Roman Catholic religion: papal primacy. It was, in essence, a thinly veiled
recapitulation of the oath of supremacy. By blurring the lines between the political
and the religious, the Jacobean government splintered the English Roman Catholic
community. Our account of the Elizabethan oaths of allegiance seems to support
Questier's argument. The lack of precedents of a "heresy" clause in the Elizabethan
oaths of allegiance (Norton excepted) suggest that this was a conscious innovation of
James; it was not there by accident. Furthermore, the tradition of Elizabethan oaths of
allegiance lent credence to James's (probably mendacious) claim that his oath
concerned only temporal matters. By lifting the majority of the content of his oath of
allegiance from Elizabethan antecedents (ones that were generally more strictly
political) James may have hoped to camouflage the radical implications of his
"heresy" clause in much the same way as Henry VIII cloaked the radical nature of
royal supremacy by hiding it in the oath of succession, an oath that was, on the surface
at least, similar to a standard oath of fidelity.
In opposition to Questier, Johann R Sommerville has contended that the
purpose of the Jacobean oath was to determine which of James's Roman Catholic
subjects were most dangerous. To Sommerville, the key to the oath was not the
"impious and heretical" clause but the rejection of papal deposing power in general,
which Sommerville considered to be a Jacobean innovation resulting from the
Gunpowder Plot, and which Roman Catholic opponents of the oath claimed was a

Questier, "Loyalty, Religion and State Power," 311.

Questier, "Loyalty, Religion and State Power," 319-321.

481
matter of faith. We have seen, however, that the rejection of papal deposing power
was an element in some of the Elizabethan oaths of allegiance. It is true that not all of
the Elizabethan professions included this clause and that the Jacobean oath was more
direct in asserting that neither the pope nor the Roman Catholic church had "any
power or authority to depose the king," but the professions of Norton, Oxenbrege, and
Bowyer also clearly rejected the general power of a pope depose a secular ruler. If
Sommerville is right about the heart of the Jacobean oath, then the Jacobean oath was
novel less in content than in emphasis.
Of course, the Roman Catholics who opposed the Jacobean oath of allegiance
because of its rejection of papal deposing power might have just as strongly opposed
the Elizabethan professions of Norton, Oxenbrege, and Bowyer. This raises perhaps
the most salient innovation of the Jacobean oath: its official nature, public
dissemination, and widespread administration. Because the Elizabethan oaths of
allegiance were not an official policy of the regime but rather emerged as a result of
local magistrates and imprisoned Catholics, they were employed idiosyncratically and
covertly rather than systematically and openly. The Jacobean oath of allegiance,
however, was a highly public oath backed by a Parliamentary statute, defended by the
king in print, and (after 1610) administered widely.91 Regardless of whether it was the
"impious and heretical" clause or the emphasized rejection of papal deposing power in
general that so divided Catholics over the Jacobean oath of allegiance, neither of these
components of the Jacobean oath would have created such a stir if they had not been
part of comprehensive, propagandized campaign of the Jacobean regime. In the end,
there were many reasons why an individual Jacobean Catholic elected to take or to
refuse the Jacobean oath of allegiance,92 but our examination of the Elizabethan oaths

Sommerville, "Papalist Political Thought and the Controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,"
162-178.
1
For information on the administration of the Jacobean oath of allegiance, see C. J. Ryan, "The
Jacobean Oath of Allegiance and English Lay Catholics," Catholic Historical Review 28 (1942): 159-
183; Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 148-149.
92
In his most recent book, Questier suggested that the Roman Catholic controversy over the oath of
allegiance was predominately a bid between Catholic factions to gain leadership of the English Catholic
community; Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics,
Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),

482
of allegiance suggests that the controversy surrounding the Jacobean oath was just as
much a result of the method of its dissemination and administration as the content of
the oath itself.

The Use of Inquisitive Oaths against Roman Catholics

In addition to the oath of supremacy and the oath of allegiance, the third form
of oath the Elizabethan regime used against Roman Catholics was a variation on the ex
officio oath. As we have seen, the ex officio oath was an oath traditionally employed
in heresy trials or other ecclesiastical courts in which the judge (usually a bishop)
proceeded ex officio mero: that is, by virtue of his office alone. In these trials, there
were no prosecutors to initiate the trials or witnesses to accuse the defendant; the
judge simply initiated the process based upon "fame" and then tendered the defendant
an oath to answer truthfully all questions the judge might ask. This oath was
necessary in such trials because with neither accusers nor witnesses, the only way for
the judge to obtain incriminating evidence was from the defendant himself. The
history of opposition to such a manner of proceeding was rich. For our purposes, the
exact manner of proceeding by office alone without witnesses is less significant than
the oath administered to a defendant to tell the truth, for a suspected person could be
tendered an oath to answer truthfully in a trial with witnesses, a trial conducted by a
different authority (such as the queen), or outside a trial altogether. In these cases, the
oath was not technically an ex officio oath, but the oath was still potentially offensive
because the defendant or suspect was bound to divulge possibly incriminating
evidence after swearing. The oath was an inquisitive oath, an oath designed by the
authorities to inquire into the beliefs or practices of the suspect.
As with the oaths and professions of allegiance, the Elizabethan regime did not
employ this type of device against Roman Catholics very often at the beginning of

343-378. This point is well argued and, in my opinion, also explains why the Jacobean oath of
allegiance was much more controversial than the Elizabethan oaths of allegiance.
93
For the basic narrative, see Mary Hume Maguire, "Attack of the Common Lawyers on the Oath Ex
Officio as Administered in the Ecclesiastical Courts in England," in Essays in History and Political
Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 199-
229; Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 22-28, 43-82; H. Ansgar Kelly, "The Right to Remain
Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc," Speculum 68 (1993): 1005-1007.

483
Elizabeth's reign. The ecclesiastical commissions Elizabeth established in York and
London (which evolved into the Court of High Commission) were in fact empowered
to examine suspects "upon their corporal oath, for the better trial and opening of the
premises," but there is little evidence of the commissioners using the oath to obtain
incriminating evidence from suspected Roman Catholics.94 Richard Cosin made an
allusion to a time when Grindal, then still bishop of London, complained to the Privy
Council that he could not fulfill his commission and proceed against recusants
"because som Ciuilliams & common lawyers (supposed then by him to be like
affected) did sinisterely animate and aduise them not to take oath, to answer vnto any
articles obiected ex officio. "95 Cosin may have been referring to an episode in
September 1562 when Grindal and the bishop of Ely reported to the Privy Council that
they had been unable to obtain information on a mass said by priest named Haverd at
Lady Carew's house because, they explained, "neyther the Prieste nor anye of his
Auditours, nott so moche as the Kitchen Mayde will receive any Othe before us, to
answer to Articles, butt stoulie saye they will nott sweare." There is also evidence of
the commissioners using an inquisitive oath in 1568 against Thomas Leigh, an
attorney of the Court of Common Pleas suspected of hearing mass, and in 1577 against
one Meredith, a Roman Catholic priest from the continent.97 In general, however,
inquisition by oath into the beliefs or practices of Roman Catholics under suspicion
was not a practice in which the Elizabethan regime greatly engaged in the 1560s and
1570s.
The regime began to use inquisitorial oaths more in the 1580s. The reports
documenting the proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission in Yorkshire in the
summer of 1580 make it clear that the commissioners examined recusants (or the

94
Quotation from Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 95.
95
Richard Cosin, An apologie for sundrieproceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall (1593), part 3, 107.
96
Samuel Haynes (ed.), A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reigns of King Henry
VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth From the Year 1542 to 1570. Transcribed
from Original Letters and other Authentick Memorials Never before Publish 'd, Left by William Cecil
Lord Burghley, and Now Remaining at the Hatfield House, in the Library of the Right Honourable the
Present Earl of Salisbury (London: William Bowyer, 1740), 395; Levy, Origins of the Fifth
Amendment, 94.
97
Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 95-96; Strype, The Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father
in God, John Aylmer, Lord Bp. of London in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1821),
24-25.

484
servants of recusants if the recusants themselves had fled) upon oath. For example,
the registrar noted that Lucy Sedgewick of Richmond "appeared and refused to take an
othe to be examined upon certein articles" and Christopher Baynes "beinge rquired to
no

take an othe to answer as by lawe he was bounde refused twise." It was in the 1580s
that the regime also started to use inquisitive oaths when examining suspected
seminary priests and Jesuits." By this time, the regime clearly recognized the
heightened value of demanding answers upon oath. When the Court of the Star
Chamber summoned the recusants Sir Thomas Tresham, Lord Vaux, Sir William
Catesby, Mr. Powdrell, Ambrose Gryffyth, and Mrs. Gryffyth before them in 1581 and
demanded they answer upon their oaths certain interrogatories concerning whether
they had hosted the infamous Jesuit Edmund Campion, Tresham and his companions
denied harboring Campion but refused to confirm their testimony with an oath. The
Star Chamber did not tolerate such a testimony (believing it to be false since Tresham
and his companions refused to swear to it) and punished them for contempt.10
Similarly, when Francis Hastings reported to the Earl of Leicester his failure to gain
any incriminating evidence after having searched the house of the notorious recusant
Francis Beaumont in 1581, Hastings offered the following excuse: "1 thinke our
authority was hardly large enough in that we coulde minister no othe to her, nor
examine any servat in the house besides, which if we might haue done I am perswaded
we should have understood more then now we doe."101 By the beginning of the
1590s, it was commonplace to examine recusants or priests suspected of political
disaffection with interrogatories upon oath, as is evident by the proceedings of the
London commission in 1593 described above. As Elizabeth's reign progressed, then,
the use of an inquisitive oath against Roman Catholics increased.

98
NA SP12/141, Ms. 8r, 69r (Cal SP Dom, CXL1 3, 28).
99
For some examples see NA SP12/140, fols. 90r-92v (Cal SP Dom, CXL 43); NA SP12/177, fol. 4r
(Cal SP Dom, CLXXVII 3).
100
A contemporary account of Tresham's trial is BL Harleian MS. 859, fols. 44-51, printed in John
Bruce (ed.), "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham,
Sir William Catesby, and Others, for a Contempt in Refusing to Swear That They Had Not Harboured
Campion the Jesuit," Archaeologia 30 (1844): 80-110. I will examine Tresham's arguments for
refusing to swear in chapter twelve.
101
SP12/150, fol. 10'(Cal SP Dom, CL 6).

485
 What is striking about the Elizabethan regime's employment of an inquisitive
oath against Roman Catholics is the complete lack of any internal debate within the
regime regarding its use. Unlike the oath of supremacy or the bond of association,
there were no parliamentary bills advocating its extension or Privy Councilors covertly
authorizing its use behind Elizabeth's back. It was not an issue of contention.
Elizabeth authorized its use when she established her ecclesiastical commissions in the
early 1560s. The ecclesiastical commissioners did not initially make greater use of it
not because Elizabeth or another person close to the center of power objected to its
use, but because the ecclesiastical commissioners were not particularly active against
recusants in the 1560s and 1570s. It was a time of relative tolerance. When the
threats of Roman Catholic rebellion, invasion, and deposition arose, Elizabeth's
ecclesiastical commissioners became more active in repressing suspicious recusants,
and increased activity resulted in a greater use of the inquisitive oath. Elizabeth's only
concern was that her commissioners not ask questions "of their conscience for matters
of Religion" except whether they went to church, but there is no evidence of her
opposing the tendering of a general ex officid-style oath to recusants before examining
them on questions of fact or matters of political obedience.102

The Use of the Ex Officio Oath against Puritans and the Parliamentary
Opposition to It
The use of the ex officio oath against Puritans, by contrast, engendered huge
amounts of debate within the Elizabethan regime. The controversy did not begin until
1584. Prior to 1584, the ecclesiastical commission of London had not generally
employed the ex officio oath against Puritans. Most of the records of the commission
that survive from before 1584 that relate to Puritans do not mention inquiry upon oath,
and when the oath is mentioned, it is clear that it was optional.103 WhenWhitgift
ascended to the position of archbishop of Canterbury in the fall of 1583, he secured a
new commission from Elizabeth and insisted that all proceedings conducted by this

102
Quotation from Elizabeth's ecclesiastical commission of 1591: SP12/240, fol. 72r (Cal SP Dom,
CCXL 43).
Roland G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission, intro. Philip Tyler (Oxford: Clarendon,
1913), 56-57, 76-77; Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 131-132.

486
High Commission commence with the tendering of an ex officio oath to the
defendant.I04 Initially, however, Whitgift did not employ the High Commission and
the ex officio oath as the primary means of enforcing uniformity in the Church of
England. Instead, he utilized an oathless subscription, which was the default device of
the Elizabethan regime and the one utilized by his predecessor Matthew Parker. In the
fall of 1583, Whitgift unveiled his three articlesan endorsement of royal supremacy
and the doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and an affirmation that the Book of
Common Prayer contained in it nothing contrary to the Word of Godand demanded
that every clergymen subscribe to these articles. The article on the Book of Common
Prayer offended Puritan consciences, and many of them were suspended for refusing
to subscribe. Yet Whitgift's subscription campaign was not, in the end, successful.
Many of the suspended ministers eventually compromised and made a limited
subscription with a protestation declaring their opinion of the Book of Common
Prayer.1 5
By June 1584, Whitgift bowed to pressure from Burghley and Walsingham
and grudgingly accepted conditional subscriptions from ministers who professed a
desire to preserve the peace of the church.106 The more flexible, less binding bond of
an oathless subscription once again proved ineffective in achieving unambiguous
adherence to the stated policy.
In response, Whitgift turned to the High Commission and the ex officio oath as
a stronger weapon with which he could enforce unity and separate the moderate from
the recalcitrant Puritans. In May 1584, Whitgift issued twenty-four articles framed as
interrogatories designed to inquire into the beliefs and practices of Puritan ministers.
The High Commission was to tender these articles to defiant Puritans after they had
taken an ex officio oath to respond truthfully to the questions. The articles were quite

Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 125-127.

105
For an excellent example of the negotiation between Puritan ministers and Whitgift which resulted in
a limited subscription, see Albert Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register: Being a Calendar of
Manuscripts under That Title Intendedfor Publication by the Puritans about 1593, and Now in Dr
Williams's Library, London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 1:209-219.
106
William Joseph Sheils, "Whitgift, John (1530/317-1604)," Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29311, accessed 31 Oct 2007].

487
specific and afforded no room for equivocation or protestation. The ex officio oath
precluded Puritans from refusing to answer some of the incriminating interrogatories.
Moreover, Whitgift also buttressed the twenty-four articles by harnessing the power of
other oaths: the oaths of supremacy and canonical obedience. The third article read:
"Item objicimus, ponimus, & articulamur, That youe haue sworne aswell at the tyme
of your orderinge, as Institution, Dutie, and Allegiance to the Quenes majestie, and
Canonicall obedience to your Ordinarie, and his Successor, and to the Metropolitane,
and his Successors, or to some of them."108 By placing a reference to these oaths at
the beginning of his articles, Whitgift was asserting that the Puritan ministers were
bound by their oaths of supremacy and canonical obedience to obey Whitgift and other
bishops as their lawful ordinaries and commissioners of the queen. When the High
Commission interrogated a Puritan minister, his conscience thus had no refuge. The
ex officio oath prevented him from equivocating or refusing to respond; he was bound
to disclose his beliefs about the Book of Common Prayer and his practices in
officiating services. And according to the oath of canonical obedience, he was also
bound to obey his ordinary.
Opposition to the ex officio oath was immediate. After having been cited for
contempt by Whitgift for refusing to take the ex officio oath before answering the
twenty-four articles, the Puritan minister Edward Bayne appealed to Lord Burghley.
When Burghley obtained a copy of the twenty-four articles, he wrote Whitgift a
scathing letter at the beginning of July, 1584 in which Burghley denounced the twenty-
four articles as "so full of branches and circumstances, as I think the Inquistors of
Spayne vse not so many questions to comprehend and trap their preyes." Burghley
disparaged the form of proceeding ex officio as "to much favouring of the Romnish
inquistion."109 Whitgift, however, stood his ground, insisting that the ex officio oath
was used by other courts of the realm, had been used by ecclesiastical courts against

The twenty-four articles are printed in John Strype, The Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father
in God, John Whitgift, D.D. The Third and Last Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, In the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth; Who, Under Her Majesty, in That Station, Governed the Church of England for the Space of
Twenty Years (London: 1718), Appendix, 49-52.
108
Strype, Whitgift, Appendix, 49.
109
NA SP'12/172', fol. T v (CalSPDom, CLXX1I 1), printed in Strype, Whitgift, Appendix, 63-64.

488
papists since Edward VI's reign, was not against the law of charity, and was necessary
in order to detect nonconformity in the Church of England since other judicial forms
of proceeding would be ineffective against scattered, organized, and protected
10
Puritans. The clerk of Privy Council, Robert Beale, also attacked Whitgift's use of
the ex officio oath. In the spring of 1584, Beale was already involved in a bitter
dispute with Whitgift over the authority of the bishops to enforce ceremonial
conformity.''' By July of that year, Beale widened his attack to include the ex officio
oath, arguing that Whitgift's use of the oath "savourethe more of a Spainshe
Inquisition" and was against the customs and laws of England.112 In October, Beale
drew up some notes for Walsingham to give to Whitgift on how to reform the church.
In the first article, Beale argued that the ex officio oath was "against the Lawe and
Libertie of the Land" and conflicted with the Act of Supremacy.'13 Beale's objections
to the ex officio oath had no more effect on Whitgift than had Burghley's.
When Parliament met in November 1584, the abolition of the ex officio oath
was one of the goals of the Puritan members of the House of Commons. Already in
October of 1584, Beale had warned Whitgift that the "Commons in the Lower house
would be earnest about the reformation of suche disorders as were in the Churche."114
On December 14, Sir Thomas Lucy, Sir Edward Dymock, and Mr. Geoffrey Gates all
submitted petitions for the reform of the church in the House of Commons. On
December 16, Sir Walter Mildmay suggested that a committee be appointed to
combine the grievances of the three petitions into a new petition to be submitted to the
House of Lords. Significantly, the Commons nominated Robert Beale and James
Moricethe two most vocal and capable opponents of the ex officio oath during

For Whitgift's letters to Burghley, see Strype, Whitgift, Appendix, 65; BL Lansdowne MS. 42, fols.
197r"198r, printed in Strype, Whitgift, 160-163.
For Beale's initial treatise on this subject, which he submitted to Whitgift in April 1584, see BL
Additional MS. 48039, fols. lr-39v. For Beale's account of the controversy between him and Whitgift
following this treatise, see BL Additional MS. 48039, fols. 40r-56r. For Whitgift's version of one of the
meetings between Beale and him, see Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, vol. 52, fol. 18 rv .
112
BL Additional MS. 48039, fols. 49v-50r.
113
BL Additional MS. 48039, fol. 57r. The first ten articles of Beale's petition to Whitgift, along with
Whitgift's response, are printed in Strype, Whitgift, Appendix, 79-82.
114
BL Additional MS. 48039, fol. 56v.

489
Elizabeth's reignto sit on the committee. " 5 It is no surprise, then, that the petition
the committee drafted included a clause advocating the abolition of "examinacions ex
officio mew of godly and learned preachers" not detected of amoral behavior or open
errors of doctrine. Furthermore, the petition stated: "hereafter no othe or subscription
be tendered to any that is to enter into the ministerye, or to any benefice with cure or
to any place of preachinge but such onely as be expresslie prescribed by the statutes of
this realme," an oath against simony excluded.116 This was clearly an attack on the
oath of canonical obedience since only the oath of supremacy was prescribed by
statute.117 Thus, recognizing the dangerous nature of the High Commission's use of
the ex officio oath against Puritans and the oath of canonical obedience, the House of
Commons sought to abolish both oaths as part of their general platform of reform.
The Commons' committee, led by Mildmay and Sir Francis Knollys, passed the
petition onto a committee of the House of Lords, who responded by saying that while
they could not act in this matter without the consent of the queen, they would acquaint
her with its particulars.'18
Parliament was adjourned from December 21,1584, to February 4, 1585, for a
Christmas recess. On February 15, William Stoughton, Edward Lewkenor, and John
Moore all presented petitions in the House of Commons to reform abuses in the
church. One of these petitions has survived. The petition chastised English bishops
for requiring new ministers to swear an oath of canonical obedience to their ordinary
"contrary to the oath which they have taken to the Queenes Prerogative" and attacked
the ex officio oath as being against the laws and customs of the realm. Instead of
accepting the petitions, Mildmay advised that the Commons simply wait for the Lords'

115
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 62-63.
1
' Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:162-163.
117
This petition may also have been an attack against the subscription to the ceremonies prescribed by
the Book of Common Prayer that bishops had been administering to new clerics since 1571.
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:79; Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments
1584-1601, 64.
119
NA SP12/176, fols. 223r-224r (Cal SP Dom CLXXV1 72); Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments
ofElizabeth 7,2:45-46.

490
 1 70

response to their previous petition made in December. The Lords finally gave their
response to the Commons' committee on February 22. Burghley spoke first,
expressing to the Commons' committee the queen's general response to their petition.
Unfortunately, he did not address the articles on the oath of canonical obedience and
171

the ex officio oath. Whitgift, however, spoke after Burghley and addressed the
Commons' petition point by point. He explicitly upheld the legality of both the oath
of canonical obedience and the ex officio oath, going so far as to say that the ex officio
oath was "misliked first by Jesuites, and seminaries, and from them derived to other
that mislike government, and would bringe the Churche to an anarchie."122 Later that
afternoon, Mildmay gave the House of Commons a preliminary report of the
committee's meeting with the Lords, though he deferred to give details of Whitgift's
response until he could check his memory with the other committee members. 23
Yet the House of Commons must have received some initial word of Whitgift's
response to their petition, for on the same day as the Commons' committee met with
the Lords, the House of Commons initiated a new strategy to combat Whitgift's use of
the oaths ex officio and of canonical obedience. Before February 25, the Commons'
strategy had been purely defensive: that is, they sought simply to curtail the usage of
the two oaths against Puritan ministers. Now the Commons went on the offensive as
well. In his journal entry for February 25, the parliamentary diarist Thomas Cromwell
wrote: "Abyll that everye archebishop and bishop do in the Chawncery take an othe
for his dewe obedience to the Qweene and for eqwall and dewe administration of such
thinges as aperteygne to his office; that no bishoppe shal sweare anye canonicall
obedience to anye archebishope: first red."12 The bill itself has not survived, but a
relevant document exists among the archiepiscopal papers of Lambeth Palace Library
Simonds D'Ewes, A Compleat Journal of the Votes, Speeches and Debates, Both of the House of
Lords and House of Commons Throughout the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Of Glorious Memory (1693;
repr., Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1974), 349. Henceforth cited as D 'Ewes' Journal.
121
F o r a n i c e summary of Burghley's speech, see Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601,
65.
122
This quote is from Fitzwilliam's account of Whitgift's speech: Hartley, Proceedings of the
Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:169. For Whitgift's version of this speech, see Inner Temple Library,
PetytMS 538, vol. 38, fols. 79-82; printed in Strype, Whitgift, 180-183
123
D 'Ewes' Journal, 354; Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 66.
24
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:83.

491
that has been overlooked by Neale and other parliamentary historians. This document
consists of twelve points against "The Bill for swearing of Bishopps and
Archbishopps" from which the content of the bill can be reconstructed. The preamble
of the bill evidently implied that the bishops and archbishops of the realm claimed
"exemption frome bonde of oathe." The body of the bill repealed the oath of
canonical obedience that bishops swore to their metropolitan upon their consecration
and decreed that all bishops and archbishops of the realm must swear a new oath
before the Court of the Chancery. In this new oath, the bishops and archbishops were
to swear "all due reverence and obedience to the Quene," "to obey all the lawes,
Statutes and customes of this Realme," to implement or cause to be implemented the
"true and indifferent administration of Iustice," andmost importantly"to execute
their Iurisdiction according to the true meaning of the Lawes, Statutes, and Customes
of this Land," which according to experts in common law like Beale and Morice
precluded the use of the ex officio oath. Any bishop or archbishop who refused to
swear this oath within twenty days (or three months if the bishop was sick) was to be
disabled forever from the office of bishop or archbishop.125 The significance of this
bill is that the Commons had decided to give the bishops a taste of their own medicine.
In addition to abolishing the oath of canonical obedience, they sought to use an oath to
bind the bishops' own consciences, an oath which according to their interpretation of
the laws, statutes, and customs of the land, would prevent the bishops from tendering
the ex officio oath.
On February 25, Sir Francis Knollys finally read to the House of Commons the
full responses to their petition of Whitgift and the Lords. According to D'Ewes,
"divers Motions and sundry long Speeches were made" as a result of these
responses. A tale-carrier noted that Henry Blagge, Lawrence Tomson, Edward
Lewkenor, and Robert Beale made speeches.127 Among Beale's papers from 1585 are
drafts of two speeches. One is an exceedingly long speech in which Beale attacked
the oath of canonical obedience and gave detailed constitutional and historical

125
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2002, fol. 61r"v.
D'Ewes' Journal, 360.
127
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 66, citing NA SP12/175, #51.

492
arguments against the ex officio oath.128 The second (much shorter) speech contains a
few articles attacking the ex officio oath and then advances an argument that the oath
of canonical obedience conflicted with the oath of supremacy. This was another
instance of the strategy of using one oath to fight another.129 It is likely that Beale's
speech on February 25 drew on material from one of these two speeches. After the
speeches, the House decided that the original Commons' committee, supplemented by
experts in common law and canon law, would reconvene to draft a rebuttal of
Whitgift's answer. Finally, a day later on February 26, "The Bill for swearing of
Bishops and Archbishops was read the second time."130
On Saturday, February 27, the Commons' committee finished their response to
Whitgift. They maintained that the oath of canonical obedience was not licensed by
any common law or statute law, but simply canon law, which was "not to be allowed."
As for the ex officio oath, they denied that the Courts of Star Chamber and Chancery
employed the same oath, they argued that the oath was not warranted by the laws of
the realm but was rather against common law, contented that Jesuits and seminary
priests disliked the oath for other reasons, and concluded by proclaiming that
examinations ex officio mero "semeth to savour of the Spanishe inquisition."1 ' The
Committee's response, however, did not even make it back to the House of Commons.
On March 1, Elizabeth summoned Speaker Puckering (who had canceled the session
that day because of illness) to her and strongly chastised the Commons. She reiterated
that she would attend to the reformation of the church herself, and she declared that

Concerning the oath of canonical obedience, Beale argued that the book of ordinations did not
authorize an oath of canonical obedience, but "only a promise to followe the Ordinaryes godlie
admonitions." Furthermore, this promise should be demanded only to those ministers charged with care
of souls and not to simple preachers licensed by the universities; BL Additional MS. 48116, fols. 177v-
178r. Concerning the ex officio oath, Beale used the "Register of Writs," Fitzherbert's New Natitra
Brevium, and the statutes of the realm, to argue that the ex officio oath was to be tendered only in cases
concerning matrimony and testamentsin all other cases it was illegal; BL Additional MS. 48116, fols.
163v-166r. This speech extends to over fifty folios and Neale must be right in his assertion that it is too
long to be a speech actually given in Parliament. For a general summary of Beale's treatise, see Neale,
Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 66-68; Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 145-146.
129
Under the heading "disorders against Actes of parlament," Beale wrote: "they sweare ministers vnto
canonicall obedience to the Archb: B: and their successors contrary to the othe which they haue taken to
the Queenes prerogatiue"; BL Additional MS. 48064, fols. 42v-43r.
D 'Ewes' Journal, 361.
131
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:174.

493
she would accept no motion for the alteration or innovation of religion from the
Commons.132 On March 2, Puckering passed on Elizabeth's wishes to the Commons.
Significantly, in the brief summaries of this report in both Thomas Cromwell's journal
and the anonymous journal, the focus was on the bill for swearing bishops and
archbishops. Cromwell reported that Elizabeth "was greatley agrieved that we still
proceeded in such cawses as we understood her pleasure to be that we sholde not
deale, namely owr petitions, the byll for swearinge of archebishoppes and bishoppes,
and the bill concerninge bishoppes visitations."133 The anonymous journalist stated
that Elizabeth "sent us admonition the second tyme and did resolutly comande us to
meddell no farther and to call in the bill of swearing of bishoppes."134 This episode
shows not only that Elizabeth herself was the one who intervened to stop the
Commons' attack on the oaths ex officio and of canonical obedience, but also that she
realized that bill for swearing of bishops and archbishops was the means through
which the Commons sought to eliminate the offending oaths and seek the general
reform of the church.
In the Parliament of 1586/1587, the House of Commons took a more moderate
strategy. They abandoned their tactic of imposing a new oath on the bishops and
focused on the abolishment of the ex officio oath and the oath of canonical obedience.
In November 1586, Puritans delivered a prolix supplication to Parliament, a section of
which attacked the ex officio oath. The supplication claimed that the part of the
bishops' proceedings against ministers "more grievous then all the rest" was the use of
the ex officio oath, for an oath "to a conscience that feareth God is more violent than
anie racke." This manner of proceeding was "against all law of God and of this land,
and of all nations in Christendome except it be in Spaigne by the Inquisition."1 5

When the House of Commons finally got around to discussing religion at the end of
February 1587, the debate initially centered on the more radical bill to declare void all
existing ecclesiastical statues, customs, and constitutions and to establish a new Book

132
For a general summary of Elizabeth's speech, see Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-
1601,73-75.
133
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 2:90-91.
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth /, 2:118.
1
Peel, Seconde Parte of a Register, 2:82.

494
of Common Prayer. "' When the hubbub that came in the wake of this bill finally
subsided, Sir John Higham broached the subject of oaths and proposed "that it were
convenient to have the Amendment of some things whereunto Ministers are required
to be sworn, and that some good course might be taken to have a learned Ministry."
The Commons appointed a committeeon which sat Beale and Moriceto draw up a
motion to submit to Elizabeth concerning this topic, but it went nowhere. We do not
know for certain what derailed the committee, but Neale has convincingly argued that
the queen herself intervened to silence it.
The Puritan attempt to use the House of Commons to bring about an end to the
imposition of the oaths ex officio and of canonical obedience was again frustrated in
1589. On February 25 of that year, Humphrey Davenport, a twenty-two year old
lawyer who was still a student at the Inns of Court, presented the House of Commons
with a document entitled "Certain motions for a conference on religion." Beale was
the likely author of this document since a copy of it exists in his papers. The
document asked whether the ex officio oath was not against "the canon lawe, the
libertie of England, and commission ecclesiastical."14 The document also revived the
strategy of making bishops and other ecclesiastical commissioners swear another oath:
Whether it be not meant to have the sayd ecclesiasticall commissioners, and all
other ecclesiasticall judges, sworne to maynteyne the law of England and to
iudge accordingly as the statutes require, and as the bishops were sworne in the
time of King Henry 8: and whether besides the oath of/ her Majestie's
supremacie, they ought not to take an other othe, as all other judges and
justices doe: and whether this be not the meaning of the statute of 25 Henry 8
concerning their oath of fealtie there mentioned.
Davenport's motions immediately stalled. As soon as he proposed that the document
be read, Mr. Secretary Wolley reminded the House of Elizabeth's prohibition of
dealing in any ecclesiastical matters, and Davenport's document was received but not

136
See Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 148-162.
137
D 'Ewes' Journal, 413.
138
Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 163-164.
139
BL Additional MS. 48064, fols. 96v-99v. For another copy, see BL Lansdowne MS. 119, fols. 94r-
101v. For a version of this petition supplemented with a response (likely from Whitgift), see Hartley,
Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:439-469.
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:442.
141
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1, 2:458.

495
read, being returned to him on March 17.142 Another Commons' petition survives
from Marchl589 attacking the ex officio oath. Unlike Davenport's motions which
claimed the oath was against canon law, this petition admitted that the oath was
founded upon canon law, but then observed that canon laws in conflict with royal
prerogative and laws and liberties of the realm were no longer in force. The ex officio
oath fell under this category, and thus it had been abolished by the statute passed in the
twenty-third year of Henry VIII's reign.1 No record exists of the reading of this
petition. Like Davenport's motions, it must have been cut off at its launch.
The Puritan attempts in the 1580s to use the House of Commons to bring about
the abolishment of the ex officio oath had failed. On the ground, Whitgift's High
Commission continued to employ the oath against Puritans. It was an effective
weapon. Throughout the latter half of the 1580s the High Commission imprisoned
many Puritan leaders for contempt for refusing to swear the oath. The ex officio oath
worked against both radical and moderate Puritans. Giles Wigginton, Thomas Carew,
John Udall, John Wilson, Henry Barrow, and John Greenwood were just a few of the
Puritan leaders imprisoned for refusing the oath in the 1580s.I44 When the Cambridge
preachers Cuthbert Bainbrigg and Francis Johnson were imprisoned in 1589 for
refusing the oath, they flooded Lord Burghley with petitions and supplemented the
now standard constitutional arguments against the oath with Biblical and religious
5
claims.' The ex officio oath became even more controversial in the fall of 1590
when Thomas Cartwright and his companions refused to take it before the High
Commission. Rather than engaging directly the religious issues of which they were
accused, they organized their entire defense around the immorality and illegality of the
oath and continued to argue against the oath when brought before the Court of Star

,4/
D 'Ewes' Journal, 438-439.
1
Hartley, Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 2:487-489. For the statute to which this
petition referred see, Statutes of the Realm, 23 Hen. 8, c. 9, 3:377-378.
14
Levy, Origins oj the Fifth Amendment, 142-168.
145
BL Lansdowne MS. 6i, fols. 1 lr-57r; BL Harleian MS. 358, fols. 201r-203r; CUL CUR Guard Book
6.1, #4-23; Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, 157-163; Peter Lake, "The Dilemma
of the Establishment Puritan: the Cambridge Heads and the Case of Francis Johnson and Cuthbert
Bainbrigg," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978): 23-35. 1 will examine the religious arguments
of Johnson and Bainbrigg in chapter twelve of this dissertation.

496
 6
Chamber in 1591.' Meanwhile, Robert Beale went on composing voluminous
manuscript treatises against the oath, while James Morice finished his influential A
briefe treatise ofoathes exacted by ordinaries and ecclesiasticall judges in 1589 or
1590.147 Both Beale and Morice acted as council for Cartwright and his companions.
In response to Beale and Morice, Bishop Bancroft's protege Richard Cosin revised and
enlarged his own long-winded defense of the ex officio oath, which he printed just
before the start of the Parliament of 1593.148 Between the Parliaments of 1589 and
1593, then, the controversy over the ex officio oath grew in quantity and quality. It
was no longer simply one among many Puritan grievances; it had developed into one
of the primary concerns of the Puritan movement.
The stage was set, then, for a vigorous attack on the ex officio oath in the
Parliament of 1593. On the second full day of business (February 27), James Morice
rose to address the House of Commons.' His speech, more than any previous
parliamentary oration, emphasized the importance of oaths. He opened by asking if

For a nice summary of Cartwright's trial, see Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment, 173-188; A. F.
Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535-1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1925), 317-320, 328-336, 347-358. I will examine the religious arguments of
Cartwright and his companions in chapter twelve.
147
In 1589 or 1590, Beale penned what was probably his more influential manuscript treatise: "A
Collection shewinge what Jurisdiction the clergie hathe heretofore laufully vsed and may laufully vse in
the Realme of Englande. Wherin it is manifestly proued that the Prelates or Eccleiasticall Judges neuer
had anye authoritie to compell anie subiect of the Lande to an othe, unles yt were in causes
Testamentaire or Matrimoniall, or therto appertayinge: with a confutation of suche friolous and
vnlearned surmises as saue bene made for the maintenaunce of the Clergies unlawfull proceedinges in
these dayes to the contraye: wherby they haue sondrye wayes incurred the penalites of the Statutes of
Proiusion and Praemunire." A draft of this manuscript with corrections in Beale's hand is BL
Additional MS. 48039, fols. 99r-202'. The completed version of the manuscript is BL Cotton MS.
Cleopatra F i, fols. lr-49r. The many copies of this manuscript include BL Additional MS. 28843, fols.
7-90; BL Lansdowne MS. 421, #1; Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 511, vol. 16, 1-63; Lambeth Palace
Library MS. 2026, fols. 1-61; Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS. B 202, fols. 1-42. In 1591, Beale
composed yet another address against the ex officio oath to send to Whitgift: BL Additional MS. 48039,
fols. 77r-86v. An earlyperhaps the originalmanuscript of Morice's A brief treatise ofoathes
exacted by ordinaries and ecclesiasticall judges is BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra F i, fols. 50r-69r. Copies
of it include Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 511, vol. 16, 64-94; Lambeth Palace Library MS, 2026,
fols. 62-96; Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS. B 202, fols. 43-81. Morice's treatise was printed in
Middelburg by Richard Schilders, but the year of its printing is uncertain.
148
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall. . . (1593).
149
Morice's own account of the events of February 27, 1593 is CUL MS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40), 105-
134. An account of the events taken down for Whitgift's benefit by a member of the Commons is
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2019, fols. 3r-4v. Another account is BL Cotton MS. Titus F ii, fols. 30v-
34r. An excellent summary of the events that takes into consideration each source is Neale, Elizabeth 1
and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 268-276.

497
there was "any thinge more precious or excellent" than "the sacred name of Majestie
of Allmightie God, the Crown of Regality of our Soueriegn," the laws of justice, and
the liberty of subjects.150 He professed that "the maine oathes I haue taken for the
maintenaunce of her supremecie" did cause him to speak, thereby attempting to co-opt
the oath of supremacy for his own cause and use it as a base from which to challenge
the offending devices used against Puritans.I51 In the body of his speech, he attacked
three practices: the ex officio oath, "lawless subscriptions" imposed by Whitgift on the
clergy, and "binding absolution." His third point was a novel attack on the oath of
canonical obedience different from the ones vocalized in the Parliaments of the 1580s.
Rather than attacking the clerical oath of canonical obedience, Morice assailed the
"Oathe to be obedient to all the Lawes ecclesiasticall & the lawfull commandment of
the B. their Ordinarie" imposed on all excommunicated persons before absolution.
Who gave the bishops the authority to impose an oath of canonical obedience on the
laity? The imposition of this "prophane Oath" was "worse then the censure it selfe"
and was "suche a burden to the Subiect, and to his conscience as nothing can bee
more." Morice then claimed that these two oaths and Whitgift's compulsory
subscriptions were against the constitution of England and in derogation of the
jurisdiction and prerogative of the queen. In conclusion, he again contrasted the
offending devices with the proper oaths used to buttress royal authority: "Let oaths be
to defend the authority, jurisdiction and privileges of the crown."154
After his speech, Morice delivered two bills to the speaker of the house and
requested that they be read immediately. Both bills were written in the form of a
petition to the queen. The first was built upon his speech and was entitled "An Act
agenst unlawfull Oathes, Inquisitions, and Subscriptions." The second bill was against

150
CUL MS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40), 106.
151
BL Cotton MS. Titus F ii, fol. 30v. When examined by the Privy Council a day later, Morice
claimed that the "oath of defendinge & manyteynigne hir Majesties Rights & prerogatives" drove him
to make his speech; CUL MS. Mm. i. 51 (Bake 40), 120.
152
CULMS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker40), 108.
153
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2019, fol. 3r.
154
CUL MS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40), 112.

498
unlawful imprisonments. The preamble of the first bill aptly summarized its content:
That whereas oathes, in which Allmightie God, or his most sacred & Reverent
name is called or taken to Record, ought to be ministered by majestrates &
such as are in aucthoritye, with great discretion, to the glorie of God
furtheraunce of lustice, benefytt of the Common wealth, according to the lawe;
& to be taken by such as depose uppon go[o]d advisement, in truth, Justice, &
Judgment.
In the body of the bill, Morice argued that proceeding ex officio mero was against the
laws of the realm and was offensive to God, and that the deprivation of ministers for
refusing to subscribe to articles was against the Magna Carta. The bill proposed that
any ecclesiastical officer or judge who continued to proceed ex officio or who deprived
a minister for refusing to subscribe should be guilty of praemunire. Unlawful oaths
were not a matter to be taken lightly.155
The response to Morice's speech and bills was swift, polarizing, and vigorous.
James Dalton, Sir John Wolley, and Dr. William Lewin all rebutted Morice and
opposed the reading of his bills. Sir Francis Knollys and Henry Finch defended
Morice and supported the reading of his bills. One Mr. Stephens was also "somewhat
affected to the bill." Sir Robert Cecil wanted the reading of the bill to be delayed a
day until the queen could be consulted. The House of Commons in general, however,
called for its immediate reading. Speaker Coke responded by claiming that the bill
was too long to be read in the time remaining. He promised to keep it secret until the
following day, and the House denied requests to allow Coke to appoint a committee or
to confer with the Privy Council regarding the bill.I56 That afternoon, Elizabeth
summoned Coke and gave him an express command to pass onto the Commons. The
next day, February 28, Coke relayed Elizabeth's message to the house, which was
basically that Parliament was to deal only with matters regarding her safety and the
defense of the realm and not to "intermeddle at all with any other matter of state or
touching causes ecclesiastical." If Morice's bills concerned such things, they were not
to be read.157 Also on February 28, Morice himself was summoned to appear before

155
CULMS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker40), 112-117.
156
CULMS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40), 117-118; Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2019, fol. 3 \ Neale,
Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 270-273.
157
Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 274-275.

499
the Privy Council, who passed on Elizabeth's order that he "should be sharpley
chidden, yea, and committed also." Lord Burghley, however, expressed his support
for the content of the bills, saying "Good matter they contayne, your fault is onlie in
forme," though the lord keeper eventually added "and somewhat in matter." In the
end, Morice was committed into the custody of Sir John Fortescue, where Morice
remained restrained for about eight weeks. Parliament, following the queen's
command, discarded Morice's bills and progressed to other business. The failure of
Morice's bills is 1593 was the end of the Elizabethan Puritan Parliamentary campaign
against the oaths ex officio and of canonical obedience.I59
Despite their failure in Parliament, stalwarts like James Morice continued to
oppose the ex officio oath. One example from the mid-1590s is salient in that it once
again demonstrates the opinions of Morice, Whitgift, Burghley, and Elizabeth
concerning the ex officio oath. In 1594, Morice completed a long manuscript refuting
Cosin's ^4n apologie for svndrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastically which had
argued against Morice's A briefe treatise ofoathes exacted by ordinaries and
ecclesiastical! judges.]60 Morice's reply to Cosin, entitled "A just and necessarie

This anecdote comes from Morice's own account what happened during his meeting with the Privy
Council; CUL MS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40), 119-121; Neale, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments 1584-1601,
275.
159
Strangely, Robert Beale was silent during the business surrounding Morice. D'Ewes indicated that
he was present in the House of Commons on February 26 and 28, and March 2, 3, and 5. After that, he
disappeared from the Parliamentary record. In a letter from Beale to Burghely on March 17, 1593,
Beale disclosed that Elizabeth had ordered him to forbear coming to court and Parliament. He referred
to a speech he gave in Parliament concerning the subsidy that offended Elizabeth, but he also explained
that he believed that the primary cause of his restraint was the queen's belief that he was "a plotter of a
newe Eccleasticall gouernment." He spent the rest of the letter defending himself, outlining his
arguments against the ex officio oath, and refuting Cosin's Apologie. The final version of Beale's letter
is BL Lansdowne MS. 73, fols. 4r-13r. A draft of this letter remains in Beale's papers: BL Additional
MS. 48064, fols. 106r-115v. The letter is summarized in great detail in Strype, Whitgift, 393-396. Neale
has also asserted that Beale gave a speech against the ex officio oath in the Parliament of 1593; Neale,
Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 211-21%. This assertion, however, is incorrect, for it is
based on an undated document by Whitgift itemizing charges against an unnamed member of
Parliament. Neale, following Strype, assumed that this member was Beale, but internal evidence of the
actual document proves that the member was Morice and that the speech to which Whitgift made
reference was actually the one Morice gave on February 27, 1593. For Whitgift's letter, see Strype,
Whitgift, 211-212. For more on this letter, see below.
160
The first version of Cosin's work was An apologies: of, and for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction
ecclesiasticall, of late times by some challenged, and also diuersly by them impugned (1591). Cosin
wrote it before he had seen Morice's A briefe treatise ofoathes exacted by ordinaries and
ecclesiasticall judges. After reading Morice's work, Cosin published a second, greatly expanded

500
Defence . . ." is undoubtedly the longest, most detailed exposition on the constitutional
and religious arguments against the ex officio oath of Elizabeth's reign. On August
22, 1595, Morice sent his manuscript defense to Whitgift, hoping that it would
convince Whitgift of the illegality of the ex officio oath.I62 According to what Morice
wrote later to Burghley, Morice had been loath to send his manuscript to Whigift and
only agreed to do so "vppon theis Cawtions or Condicions, one that no way I myght
receyue any hurte or hinderaunce therby."16 Whitgift initially kept his agreement,
even going so far as to converse amiably with Morice in Easterterm of 1596 and
suggest a conference be held between Morice and Cosin. Some time in the later half
of 1596, Elizabeth sent for Whitgift to ask his opinion of Morice. Whitgift reminded
Elizabeth that Morice had attacked the ex officio proceedings of the High Commission
in his A briefe treatise and in the Parliament of 1593. Elizabeth said that she had
heard that Morice was now "well reformed." Whitgift explained that Elizabeth was
misinformed and cited as evidence Morice's continual opposition to the ex officio oath
in his "A just and necessarie Defence." In fact, Whitgift drew up a series of fourteen
charges against Morice, the majority of which he drew from Morice's "A just and
necessarie defence." Morice's continual opposition to the ex officio oath displeased
Elizabeth, and she sent the fourteen charges against him to a member of the Privy

edition of his work, now entitled An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical!, of
late times by some challenged, and also diuersly by them impugned in 1593 in order to refute Morice.
The full title of Morice's manuscript reply to Cosin is "A just and necessarie Defence of a brief
Treatise made against general! oathes exacted by Orindaries & Judges Ecclesiastical to answer all to
such articles as pleaseth them to propounde, & against their forced oaths ex officio mero. And
Consequently a justification of the lawes, liberties, and Iustice of England impugned by Richard Cosyn,
doctor of the ciuill lawe, in his Apologie for sondrie procedings by lurisdictional Ecclesiasticall." It is
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 234. Morice's religious arguments are explored in chapter twelve of this
dissertation.
162
The letter accompanying Morice's manuscript defense is Lambeth Palace Library MS. 3470, fol.
166rv. It is mis-cataloged as a letter from Morice to Burghley, but it is obvious addressed to Whitgift,
since Morice refers to the recipient as "your grace" and "most reuerend father."
163
BL Lansdowne MS. 82, fol. 150r.
164
This document was printed by Strype in his Whitgift, 211-212. The document was undated and did
not contain the name of the person it attacked. Strype erroneously placed it in 1584 and believed it was
written against Beale. Neale recognized that the document belonged after 1593, but he followed
Strype's claim that it was directed against Beale; Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601,
277-278. For anyone who has taken the time to slog through Morice's "A just and necessarie defence",
it is abundantly clear that Whitgift's charges are drawn from this work, for many of Strype's charges
(such as his reference to Thorp, the author's opposition to the rack, or the practice of torture in Wales)
come directly from Morice's "A just and necessarie defence" and are not found in any of Beale's
works.

501
Council (apparently Lord Burghley) and instructed him to examine Morice upon them.
When Morice informed Burghley of the circumstances under which he had sent "A
just and necessarie defence" to Whitgift, Burghley was incensed at Whitgift's betrayal
of Morice's trust insofar as Whitgift had denounced Morice to the queen. In a heated
and vehement exchange, Burghley accused Whitgift of being responsible for the
increase of papists, nonresidents, and pluralities through his proceedings against
Puritans in the High Commission. Burghley even went so far as to compare Whitgift
to the pope, claiming that no pope could do more than him. Never one to back down,
Whitgift retorted that he had no fear of Burghley and defended himself against
Burghley's charges.165 Burghley's confrontation with Whitgift was ineffective in that
it did not bring about the abolition of ex officio oath, but this episode is instructive in
that it confirms Burghley's opposition to the oath and Elizabeth's support of it.
The pattern that emerges from our study of the Elizabethan regime's use of the
ex officio oath is as follows. From 1584 on, Archbishop Whitgift employed the ex
officio oath as a means to force Puritans to divulge their beliefs on the Book of
Common Prayer, their practices in officiating services, and their secret meetings and
plots to establish a new form of discipline. The oath was effective, for once a Puritan
had sworn it, he had to answer all questions truthfully or commit perjury by violating
his oath. It was such a dangerous weapon that many Puritan leaders elected to refuse
to swear it and, as a result, suffered imprisonment for contempt. To combat the use of
the ex officio oath, Puritans proposed petitions and bills in the House of Commons that
would have abolished the oath, as well as the oath of canonical obedience which,
according to Whitgift's interpretation, bound Puritan ministers to obey their ordinaries.
Moreover, the Commons decided to fight fire with fire. Well aware of the iron power
of an oath to bind one's conscience, the Commons put forth a bill which would impose
another oath on all bishops and archbishops, an oath that would preclude the use of the
ex officio oath. Yet their bills and petitions failed. Whenever they reached a certain
stage, Elizabeth intervened to quash them. In 1584, these bills had the support of the
165
1 have reconstructed this narrative from the heavily corrected draft of a letter from Whitgift to Lord
Buckhurst in which Whitgift recounted these events; Lambeth Palace Library MS. 3470, fols. 174r-175r.
For corroborating evidence, see Morice's letter to Burghley defending his "A just and necessarie
defence"; BL Lansdowne MS. 82, fol. 150"

502
majority of the House of Commons. In later Parliaments the Commons were more
divided, though it seems that these bills still had substantial support in this house.
Lord Burghley shared in the Commons' distaste for the ex officio oath, but his appeals
to Whitgift had no greater effect than those of the Commons, in the end, Whitgift had
the support of his sovereign for the use of the ex officio oath, and neither he nor
Elizabeth was willing to back down on this issue.

Conclusions
The most obvious conclusion of this chapter is the importance of oaths to the
Elizabethan regime. Subscriptions may have been the default device of the regime,
but everyone knew that oaths were stronger and more certain bonds. Whenever an
issue reached the level of utmost importancesuch as the safety of the queen in light
of Catholic assassination attempts, the political loyalty of English Roman Catholics in
light of the papal bull Regnans in excelsis, or the subversive practices of Puritans in
light of the classis movementthe regime turned to oaths. Even when the Puritan
members of the House of Commons sought to abolish the ex officio oath, one of their
primary strategies was to make the bishops and archbishops of England swear another
oath that would have precluded the use of the ex officio oath. Oaths were the surest
way both to gain information from a suspect and to compel someone to act or not to
act in a particular manner in the future. They were the sixteenth-century equivalent of
nuclear arms: they were dangerous and not to be used lightly, but their great power
made them the supreme weapon to which the regime turned whenever the situation
became critical.
Another conclusion of this chapter is that Elizabeth was not the moving force
behind the oaths employed during her reign. The bond of association and the various
oaths of allegiance were independently implemented, as far as we can tell without the
queen's knowledge, and Whitgift was the mastermind of the campaign to use the ex
officio oath against Puritans. Indeed, it seems that the queen generally endorsed a
more moderate usage of oaths (against Roman Catholics, at least) than what some of
her Protestant councilors and members of Parliament advocated. We have already

503
seen that Elizabeth limited the administration and enforcement of the oath of
supremacy and that the House of Commons, Elizabeth's bishops, and William Cecil
were far from pleased with this restricted employment of the oath of supremacy. A
similar pattern is visible with the bond of association and the oaths of allegiance.
Elizabeth refused to allow Parliament to pass a statute officially endorsing the oath of
association. Although there is no evidence of the queen actively opposing the various
oaths of allegiance of her reign, it is surely significant that Elizabeth never
implemented a formal royal policy on these professions in spite of the fact that some
of the most powerful figures of her regimeBurghley, Walsingham, Sir Robert Cecil,
and Bancroftapproved of their use at one time or another. If Elizabeth approved of
these professions of allegiance, she did not support them enough to endorse them
openly or initiate an official royal procedure utilizing them. The situation was
reversed when it came to using the ex officio oath against Puritans. Here Elizabeth
clearly supported Whitgift and intervened to cut-off the Parliamentary bills of 1584
and 1593 aimed at abolishing its devastating deployment against Puritans.
Our exploration of oaths in Elizabeth's reign has also revealed the fault-lines
within the Elizabethan regime and how it operated. Like chapter ten, this chapter has
provided evidence in support of the model of Elizabethan politics put forth by Adams,
Collinson, and Graves: that is, a largely unified court and Privy Council (at least until
the late 1580s), often supported by and utilizing elements in Parliament, all trying to
push an apathetic or antipathetic queen to take action to shore up the Protestant
establishment.166 Members of Elizabeth's Privy Council were certainly crucial actors
in the regime's use of oaths. William Cecil Lord Burghley was the original force
behind the bond of association and the whole Privy Council, especially Walsingham,
was involved in its implementation in 1584. Burghley was also the one who drafted a
bill to reconcile the oath of association to the bill for the queen's safety and another
bill proposing the administration of a completely new oath to the entire political
nation. Furthermore, Burghley, Walsingham, and Hatton were patrons of Thomas
166
Adams, Leicester and the Court, 13-19, 30-40; Collinson, Elizabethan Essays, 39-42; M. A. R.
Graves, "Thomas Norton the Parliament Man: An Elizabethan M.P., 1559-1581," Historical Journal 23
(1980): 35; Graves, "The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's 'Men-of-
Business'," Parliamentary History 2 (1983): 18.

504
Norton, and they may have had a role in Norton's schemes to develop of an oath of
allegiance and an oath in support of the Protestant faith. Norton did, after all,
compose his famous "Devices" at the request of Walsingham. At the very least,
Burghley, Walsingham, and the rest of the Privy Council knew of the existence of
various oaths of allegiance by the early 1590s and approved of them, while Sir Robert
Cecil and Bishop Bancroft were integral to the Appellants' proposed profession of
allegiance. As for the ex officio oath, Burghley clearly disapproved of its use against
Puritans and was not afraid to confront Whitgift on it numerous times. Likewise, Sir
Walter Mildmay and Sir Francis Knollys were supporters of the Commons' campaign
to abolish the ex officio oath in 1584 and 1593. All of these examples show members
of Elizabeth's Privy Council acting independently of the queen, often in support of a
policy to which she was opposed.
Yet this chapter has also demonstrated that much of the initiative for these
policies came from lesser figures, who were prepared to go beyond the cautious plans
of the Privy Council. First, the Privy Council's design for the bond of association was
that it was to be taken by only justices of the peace and gentlemen. The enthusiasm of
local elites and townsmen for the bond was so high, however, that it ended up being
taken by a wider selection of society. Second, the lawyer Thomas Bowyer, the city
authorities of Dover, and imprisoned Catholics such as Andrew Oxenbrege and
Edmund Windham devised professions of allegiance in the 1580s independent of the
Privy Council. We do not encounter any direct evidence of the Privy Council
approving the use of oaths of allegiance until the 1590s. Finally, the Commons'
campaign against the ex officio oath was led by James Morice and Robert Beale.
While Burghley certainly sympathized with their goals (intervening at least once for
Morice), there is no indication that the Privy Council supported the vigorous, radical,
and highly publicized bills proposed by the Commons against the ex officio oath, bills
that certainly offended the queen and led to the imprisonment of Morice and Beale in
1593. Of course, building on the work of Graves, Lake, and Questier, it could be
objected that the Privy Council was behind Norton's proposal to establish an oath of
allegiance and the Parliamentary campaign of Morice and Beale against the ex officio

505
oath, but that the Council discretely, even secretly used these lesser men to further
their objectives in order to distance themselves from any royal backlash against these
policies.167 Until evidence comes to light of the Privy Council's direct involvement in
the professions of allegiance of the 1580s or the bills of Morice and Beale, this
position cannot be proved. Instead, the model that has emerged in this chapter is more
akin to that described by Steve Hindle, a model wherein governance was not merely
exerted by the queen, her Privy Council, and Parliament but also extended down the
social ladder to include local authorities and the middling sort. Governance was not
just a central institution but rather "a process, a series of multilateral initiatives to be
negotiated across space and through the social order."168 Although the interests of
these lesser local authorities often "intersected with the centralised policies of church
and state," the actions that the local authorities took in support of these interests were
sometimes undertaken independent of the centralized institutional bodies.' With this
model, we can account for the opinions and actions of the Privy Council regarding the
bond of association, the oaths of allegiance, and the ex officio oath while at the same
time recognizing that local authorities were seminal to the extension of the bond of
association and the emergence of the Elizabethan oaths of allegiance, and that
Parliamentary men of a more overtly Puritan bent were the impetus behind the
opposition to the ex officio oath.
In sum, this chapter has used the story of three oaths to illustrate how, in part,
the "monarchical republic" of Elizabeth operated. Elizabeth was obviously the
ultimate authority in the realm. Her intervention halted all the attempts by Parliament
and Burghley to reconcile the oath of association to the bill for the queen's safety. Her
support of the ex officio oath made all the attempts by Morice and Beale in Parliament

167
None of the three authorities mentioned above directly discuss the oath of allegiance or the ex officio
oath. Graves's general account of Norton, however, stressed that "men-of-business" were useful to the
Privy Council because they had no official connection to it. Furthermore, Graves emphasized Norton's
own claim, "All that I have done I did by comaundement of the House, and specially of the Quenes
Counsell there, and my chefest care was in all thinges to be directed by the Counsell"; Graves, "The
Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons," 31, passim. Lake and Questier have suggested
that the Privy Council was behind Stubb's publication of The Gaping Gulf as a way to rouse popular
opinion against the Anjou match without taking the blame when the queen went on the war-path; Lake
and Questier, "Puritans, Papists, and the 'Public Sphere' in Early Modern England," 596.
Hindle, State and Social Change, 23.
Hindle, State and Social Change, 237.

506
futile. Yet Elizabeth's authority did not preclude her Privy Council from
independently considering and pursuing policies that were not necessarily the will of
the sovereign. Previous accounts of this process have emphasized how the Privy
Council used various forms of public opinion to attempt to pressure the queen to take a
certain action such as settling the succession, dealing with Mary Queen of Scots, or
rejecting the Anjou match. Our account, however, has highlighted that the Privy
Council sometimes circumvented the queen altogether and employed oaths like the
bond of association or the oaths of allegiance as a way to insure the safety of the queen
and the stability of the Protestant establishment. Moreover, members of the Privy
Council were not the only actors in this drama. In the cases of the bond of association
and the treatment of Roman Catholic recusants, local innovation led to the
amplification of orders from above and possibility even the ultimate emergence of the
oath of allegiance. Of course, these local authorities (both humble town governors and
great magnates like the Earl of Derby) who made innovations believed (probably
correctly) that they had the sympathy of the Privy Council and the best interests of the
queen in mind. As such, they felt they had license to push things in more extreme
directions. The Privy Council seems to have tolerated and even welcomed these
innovations when in came to the bond of association and the oaths of allegiance, but
the Parliamentary campaign of Puritans like Morice and Beale against the ex officio
oath went too far and was too strongly opposed by the queen for members of the Privy
Council like Burghley to support it openly and vigorously, even if they were
sympathetic to its goals. Thus, the willingness of the Privy Council to pursue
policies independent of the queen opened the door for other, sometimes lesser
members of the regime to innovate these policies or pursue their own, but the success
of these policies ultimately depended on the extent of the queen's opposition to them.

Here it may be worthwhile to note that all of Burghley's actions opposing the ex officio oath were
directed to Whitgift, not the queen herself.

507
 Chapter 12: Conscience, the Word of God, and the Sanctity of Oaths: the
Religious Opposition to Elizabethan State Oaths
In the spring of 1563, just as Parliament was passing the Act for the Assurance
of the Queen's Majesty's Royal Power that made the second refusal of the oath of
supremacy treason, Abbot John Feckenham penned the following excuse for his
continual obstinacy in refusing the oath of supremacy: "So that of the premises ye may
well vnderstand, that there is in me no other cause of state, touchinge the later parte of
this othe, then very Conscience."1 In the fall of 1581, the Roman Catholic recusant
Mrs. Gryffyth offered the following reason to the Court of Star Chamber why she
refused to take an oath of inquisition to answer to the charges of harboring the Jesuit
Edmund Campion: "My lordes, an othe ys a thinge of great importance, and I do not
knowe the danger therof; therefore, as one scrupulous in conscience, and being afraied
to sweare for offending my conscience, indeed I refused to sweare, which I
acknowledge." Nine years later, the Puritan leader Thomas Cartwright and his
companions explained to Lord Burghley that their refusal to take the ex officio oath
before the High Commission "proceedeth not in us from anie contempt of authoritie,
(in reverence and obedience whereunto, we desire to be examples unto others) but of
fear, to take the name of God in vayn, and to ensnare our consciences, in binding our
selves thereby, to the doing of anie thing which god hath forbidden."3 The common
lawyer James Morice likewise advised Puritans to give the following justification to
the High Commission for refusing the ex officio oath: "I dare not for woundinge of my
soule and conscience entangle my selfe thus in oathes."4 So whether it was the oath of
supremacy, an inquisitive oath before the Star Chamber, or the ex officio oath before

1
Feckenham wrote the manuscript "The Declaration of svche Scruples, and staies of Conscience,
touchinge the Othe of Supremacy" (Bodleian Library MS. 46533, 851-853) to justify himself in fear of
the penalty of the 1563 act. He eventually delivered the treatise to Bishop Robert Home, who published
it within the text of his refutation of Feckenham's treastise: An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe of
Wynchester, to a booke entituled, "The Declaration of svche Scruples, and staies of Conscience,
touchinge the Othe of Supremacy ", as M. John Fekenham, by wrytinge did deliuer vnto the L. Bishop of
Winchester, with his resolutions made thereunto (1566). The quotation is from fol. 101v.
Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 97. Printed from BL Harleian MS. 859, fols. 44-51.
3
BL Lansdowne MS. 72, fol. 132r.
James Morice, "A just and necessarie defence of a brief treatise made against generall oaths,"
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 234, fol. 41 r . Hereafter cited as "A just and necessarie defence".

508
the High Commission, both Catholics and Protestants based their opposition to
Elizabethan state oaths on conscience.
Conscience is currently a hot word in the historiography of early modern
England. Norman Jones centered his entire analysis of Elizabethan religion around the
concept, arguing that one version of conscience empowered individuals to resist the
social and political structures of their day, while the other version "identified the
highest virtue with obedience to God's ordained state and system."5 Harald E. Braun
and Edward Vallance have recently edited a volume of essays entitled Contexts of
Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 6 In their discussions of conscience,
historians have not overlooked oaths. John Spurr in particular has written an excellent
general essay exploring issues of oaths and conscience. Spurr's essay highlighted the
irony that oaths depended on the very thing they sought to bind, conscience.7 Yet
historians have not adequately examined the opposition to Elizabethan state oaths
based on conscience. In her new book Law and Conscience, Stephania Tutino touched
on Roman Catholic opposition to the Elizabethan oath of supremacy, but her primary
focus was the Jacobean oath of allegiance. Similarly, John Spurr wrote his article on
the seventeenth century, though his conclusion that an individual's conscience was
often behind the many different reasons to oppose an oath surely applies to the
sixteenth century as well.9 Of course, historians have written excellent works on the
Elizabethan opposition to the ex officio oath, but their analyses have always focused
on the legal opposition to the oath. Mary Hume Maguire and Leonard W. Levy
explored the common law opposition to the ex officio oath in which figures like Robert
Beale and Sir Edward Coke constructed historical and constitutional arguments.10

5
Jones, The English Reformation, 187.
6
Harald E. Braun and Edward Vallance (ed.), Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-
1700 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
7
John Spurr, '"The Strongest Bond of Conscience'," 151-165.
8
For Tutino's comments on the debate between Feckenham and Home, see Law and Conscience, 11-
16. The oath of allegiance is the subject of the second half of Tutino's book. Her focus, however, is
not on the relationship between oaths and conscience but on the relationship between religion and
politics raised by the oath of allegiance.
9
Spurr, '"The Strongest Bond of Conscience'," 161.
10
Maguire, "Attack of the Common Lawyers on the Oath Ex Officio as Administered in the
Ecclesiastical Courts in England," 199-229; Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment. For the Elizabethan
section of Levy, see chapters three through six. Levy did briefly touch on the religious opposition to

509
More recently, R. H. Helmholz has stressed the importance of canon and Roman law
in resisting the oath.'' Yet arguments from conscience did not play a significant role
in any of these examinations of opposition to the ex officio oath, despite the fact that
many Puritans based their cases on this word.12 Indeed, the Elizabethan regime's
chief justifier of the ex officio oath, Richard Cosin, recognized that many of his
opponents refused the oath "vnder pretence of conscience, and of a religious care not
to offend God thereby."13 Furthermore, in his essay on Cosin's book, Ethan Shagan
acknowledged that Cosin's justification of the ex officio oath widened the extent to
which the Elizabethan regime could claim control over men's consciences.14 It is thus
clear that conscience was important to the opposition of Elizabethan state oaths and
that an examination of conscience-based opposition is necessary and relevant.
Thus, the theme of this chapter is the religious opposition to the oath of
supremacy and the ex officio oath based upon conscience. The key players are
Edmund Bonner and John Feckenham, two Marian prelates who refused the oath of
supremacy and penned works in defense of their actions; Sir Thomas Tresham, Lord
Vaux, Sir William Catesby and their party (including Mrs. Gryffyth), a group of
Roman Catholic recusants whom the Jesuit Edmund Campion confessed had hosted
him and who refused to take an inquisitive oath (in effect, an ex officio oath) before
the Star Chamber in 1581; Cuthbert Bainbrigg and Francis Johnson, two fellows at
Christ's College, Cambridge who were imprisoned for refusing the ex officio oath in
1589; and Thomas Cartwright, Edmund Snape, and their fellow ministers, a group of
clerical Puritan leaders of the classis movement who declined to take the oath before
the High Commission and before the Star Chamber in 1590 and 1591. We will also

the ex officio oath based on conscience on pages 177 to 179, but his summary here was neither detailed
nor comprehensive.
" R . H. Helmholz, "Origins of the Privilege Against Self-incrimination: the Role of the European his
Commune" New York University Law Review 65 (1990): 962-990.
12
Eliiot Rose has even declared: "the objections to the oath were basically an appeal to the contrary
tradition of the Common Law which lay behind it. .. . Religious writers who wanted to denounce the ex
officio oath were content, on the whole, to talk in vague terms about the immemorial liberties of
Englishmen and the abstract unkindness of asking anyone to accuse himself; Rose, Cases of
Conscience, 136-137.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrieproceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 132.
Ethan Shagan, "The English Inquisition: Constitutional Conflict and Ecclesiastical Law in the
1590s," Historical Journal 47 (2004): 560-561.

510
consider some arguments of James Morice, the attorney of the Court of Wards and
Parliamentary man who incorporated some religious arguments into his treatises
against the ex officio oath. The goal of this chapter is to discover what the above
actors meant when they opposed an oath "from conscience." Such an exercise will
shed light into the sixteenth-century meaning of conscience, further our understanding
of the reasons behind Elizabeth's employment of particular state oaths, and provide
insight into religiously motivated resistance to the crown. It will become clear that
religious opposition to state oaths was based on the majesty of God's name, the
sanctity of oaths, and law of God, and that this resistance was especially potent
because it hijacked the Elizabethan regime's own rhetoric on oaths and turned it
against the regime.

Persuaded in Conscience: the Religious Opposition to the Oath of Supremacy

In 1564, Bishop Home tendered the oath of supremacy a second time to the
former bishop of London Edmund Bonner. When Bonner refused, Home certified him
before the Court of the Queen's Bench. The clerk who documented Bonner's response
noted (among Bonner's other arguments on the legality of Home's status as bishop)
that in reference to the oath of supremacy, "the defendent in his conscience and leming
thinketh he ought not to give: forasmuch as he cannot give it without committing of
deadly sin." Bonner continued: "the said oath, like as all other oaths, ought to have
three companions, appointed in scripture to be Veritas, judicium, et justiciar The oath
of supremacy, claimed Bonner, did not have these three companions, so he could not
take it, trusting that the queen "myndeth not her subjects to ronne into perjury, but to
keep to their conscience and bounden duty."15 Later that year, Bonner wrote a letter to
Elizabeth in which he elaborated on his reasons for not taking the oath. He contended
that an oath could be sworn "without danger of eternal salvation" only if it had three
companions, "namely truth of conscience, judgment of discretion or deliberation, and
justice; so that what is sworn is lawful and just." Bonner then cited Romans 14:23
that "all that is not from faith is sin" and observed that "he who acts against his

15
BL Harleian MS. 421, fol. 5r~v, printed in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 2:5-6.

511
conscience, is considered to build to hell." He concluded by asserting that he was
certain that Elizabeth did not want to ensnare her subjects in "deadly sin or perjury."
In essence, Bonner was arguing that for him, the oath of supremacy lacked truth,
judgment, and justice because he was not personally convinced in his conscience of
the truth of Elizabeth's supremacy, and to swear to something of which one was
unsure was perjury and a mortal sin.
Abbot John Feckenham used a similar argument when he wrote to William
Cecil in March 1566. Feckenham claimed that his continued resistance to the oath of
supremacy "is of conscyence, and not of will stobernly sett: but only of dreade and
feare to commytt periury therby to procure and purchace perpetuall deathe."17 In his
debate with Bishop Home, Feckenham explained himself further. He observed that to
swear to something of which one does not have knowledge is perjury. Feckenham
claimed that he did not have knowledge that Elizabeth was supreme governor of the
realm in both ecclesiastical and temporal causes since the Gospels, doctors, and
ecclesiastical councils did not attest to this.18 Thus he concluded:
But vpon a booke othe to make any such declaration in conscience, it may not
possible be without periury, before that a mans conscience be perswaded
thereunto: and therefore (my conscience beynge not as yet perswaded
thereunto) I cannot praesently without most plaine and manifeste periury,
receiue this Othe.
Feckenham also objected to the clause in the oath of supremacy upholding the
jurisdiction of Elizabeth's successors, for what if (like Mary) Elizabeth's successor
rejected royal ecclesiastical jurisdiction and restored the English church to the Roman
fold? Then everyone who had sworn the oath of supremacy would have to choose

16
"Praestandum esse turn demum censeo juramentum, quando absque periculo salutis aeternae praestari
et observari possit: praestandum esse, si suos habeat comites, nempe veritatem conscientiae, judicium
discretionis, sive deliberationis, et justitiam; ut licitum et justum sit quod juratur. Non praestandum
vero, quando res ita non se habeat. . . . Porro, quando scriptum sit, juramentum non ut vinculum sit
iniquitatis inventum esse; deinde, quando omne quod non est de fide, attestante Apostolo, peccatum est;
et qui contra suam conscientiam facit, aedificare censetur ad gehennam; denique cum certum sit, tuam
pietatem (quantumvis urgeant alii) nolle subditos tuos illaqueare aut peccato mortali au perjurio"; Inner
Temple Library, Petyt MS. 538, vol. 47, fols. 2'~\ printed in Strype, Grindal, 488-489.
17
NA SP12/36, fol. 45v, partially printed in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 2:182.
18
Feckenham, "The Declaration of svche Scruples, and staies of Conscience, in Home," in Home, An
answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe of Wynchester, fols. 6v-7r.
1
Feckenham, "Declaration of svche Scruptles," in Home, An answear, fol. 91 v .

512
between disobeying their sovereign or committing perjury. Fear of perjury was
therefore at the heart of Feckenham's rejection of the oath, either perjury by swearing
to something of which he was not persuaded or fear of swearing to something which
was uncertain in the future.
When Bonner and Feckenham stated that they resisted the oath of supremacy
from conscience, their statements had two meanings. First, their consciences were not
persuaded of the truth of Elizabeth's ecclesiastical supremacy. Second, their
consciences valued oaths and thus feared perjury greatly. The foundation of their
argument was the accepted teaching that to swear to something of which one was not
certain was perjury, and that perjury was a serious sin that would endanger their souls.
It was because Bonner's and Feckenham's consciences valued oaths so highly that
they refused to swear to anything of which their consciences were not fully convinced.
Against this kind of reasoning, intimidation and force alone were powerless. Neither
the strength of a statute nor the harshest of penalties prescribed for nonjurors could
persuade one's conscience. At best, intimidation simply led one to take the oath
against his conscience (and to commit perjury), but it did not persuade it. Thomas
Stapleton highlighted this conundrum:
Though therefore a man may be perswaded as many (the more pitie) are,
through pretence of obedience, through feare of displeasure, to take the othe:
yet to declare the same in conscience no man can possibly (as Maister
Fekenham most trulye reasoneth) without manifest periury, except his
conscience be persuaded thereunto. Now to persuade the conscience, requireth
either a soden reuelation, or miraculouse inspiration from God (which is not to
be presumed without some euident signe thereof), informed and taught that
which we neuer lerned before.21
"External respects of force, feare, or fraylty" could persuade one to take the oath of
supremacy, but the true binding of one's conscience required "internall persuastion
and consent (whiche no power of Princes, no force of acts, no law or statut worldly
can euer make)."22 For those who had real doubts of Elizabeth's supremacy and truly
valued oaths, the oath of supremacy alone could not persuade their consciences.

" Feckenham, "Declaration of svche Scruptles," in Home, An answear, fol. 10lr.

Thomas Stapleton, A counterblast to M. Homes vayne blaste against M. Fekenham, fol. 94v.
22
Stapleton, A counterblast to M. Homes vayne blaste, fols. 94v-95r.

513
 Elizabeth recognized this inability of the oath of supremacy to persuade one's
conscience. That may be a reason why she elected not to implement the 1563 act for
the assurance of her power and exact draconian penalties for refusing the oath of
supremacy. Instead of executing those who refused the oath based on conscience,
Elizabeth placed the Marian prelates who refused to swear the oath of supremacy
(such as Bonner and Feckenham) into the custody of her bishops and ordered her
bishops to use their learning of Scripture and law to convince the consciences of the
Marian Catholics of the truth of her supremacy. It was only after they had become
convinced of the Elizabeth's supremacy in their consciences that Elizabeth sanctioned
the second tendering of the oath of supremacy to them. Of course, this convincing
proved to be a slow and arduous task. The inherent problem of the oath of supremacy
vis-a-vis one's conscience was that the oath of supremacy was a declarative oath.
Before one could declare the truth of something, one had to be persuaded of it. This
also provides us with an explanation of why in the later years of her reign, Elizabeth
employed the ex officio oath against Roman Catholics more often than she did the oath
of supremacy. The ex officio oath was a promissory oath. One did not have to be
persuaded in conscience of the truth of the content of the ex officio oath, for the ex
officio oath contained no other content than the promise to respond truthfully. On the
surface, then, the ex officio oath seemed less likely to engender opposition based on
conscience.

The Secrets of One's Conscience: The Minor Strand in the Opposition to the Ex
Officio Oath
One potential strand of resistance from conscience to the ex officio oath or to
any form of an inquisitive oath was the claim of the inviolability of one's conscience
in certain matters. To a limited extent Elizabeth acknowledged the inviolability of an
individual's conscience since she proclaimed that as long as her subjects behaved
themselves and followed her laws, she would not search their consciences in matters
of religion. In theory, Elizabeth recognized a sphere of conscience that was free (as
long as it did not engender open action) and not subject to the state's coercion. Some

514
Elizabethan Catholics exploited Elizabeth's rhetoric here and justified their refusal to
take an oath of inquisition on the grounds that the questions asked of them after they
had taken the oath would concern matters of religion. For example, Lord Vaux
refused to take an oath of inquisition before the Star Chamber in 1581 because he
objected that this was not merely a temporal cause. The articles read to him concerned
more than just whether Edmund Campion was at Vaux's house, but whether Campion
had said mass there, which Vaux considered a matter of religion and conscience.23
Catesby likewise refused to take the oath of inquisition and offered instead "to sweare
to my alleageance, or to any thinge concerninge her majestie or estate, or any other
thing whatsoeuer, other then to discover matters of conscience, which I maye not doe
without offence of my conscience."24 Most Catholics, however, did not object to the
ex officio oath on grounds that it searched their consciences in matters of religion.
Puritans also avoided this argument, though a few of them did advance a
somewhat analogous contention. Edmund Snape, for example, objected to the ex
officio oath because it "transferred the glory of God vnto man, by serchinge mens
consciences." The ex officio oath was "of the nature of Auricular confession."25 An
anonymous discourse against the oath preserved in Lambeth Palace Library and most
likely drawn up by Bainbrigg and Johnson or Cartwright and Snape expanded on this
point, arguing that if auricular confession had been abrogated because of the violence
it did to people's consciences, how much more should forced confessions upon an oath
be removed. Morice attacked the oath since it forced men to reveal their "most
secret and inward thoughtes," while Cartwright and his companions avowed that "a
mans private faults should remayne to god & himself."27 Implicit in these arguments
was the idea that no person could use an oath to violate another's conscience by
searching it to discover secret, private sinswhether they had to do with religion or

Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 94-95.
Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 98.
25
Lambeth Palace MS. 2004, fol. 85 r .
26
Lambeth Palace MS. 445, 442.
27
Morice, A briefe treatise, 10; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 391, printed in Thomas
Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, ed. Albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson, Elizabethan Non-conformist Texts,
vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2003), 37.

515
not. Yet Puritans did not bolster these arguments by building a case on the
inviolability of private conscience. This was not their emphasis. As we shall see, they
justified their refusal to swear with the law of God, not the secrecy of their personal
consciences. Accordingly, the modern idea that each individual has his or her own
private conscience of which no state or authority has the right to search was not a
major ingredient in the recipes against the ex officio oath of either sixteenth-century
Catholics or Protestants.

Conscience of Oaths: the Majesty of God, the Word of God, and the Major
Strand in the Opposition to the Ex Officio Oath
The majority of English Catholics and Puritans who cited conscience as
grounds for their resistance to the ex officio oath meant the great esteem their
consciences placed on the majesty of God's name and the sacredness of oaths.
Because oaths concerned the holy name of God and were a form of worship, there
were few activities that had greater potential to trigger one's conscience. To swear
incorrectly was a grave sin, and since an individual's conscience bore witness to his
sins, swearing was a great matter of conscience. When an Elizabethan claimed that he
could not swear the ex officio for conscience sake, he usually meant that his
conscience would not allow him to swear because it considered the ex officio oath to
be an evil or blasphemous oath against God's law. The key, then, was to demonstrate
that the ex officio oath clashed with God's divine ordinance for the use of his name as
revealed in his Word.
One of the earliest and most basic religious arguments against an oath of
inquisition was put forth by the Roman Catholic lawyer Sir Thomas Tresham in 1581
during his Star Chamber trial. The Jesuit Edmund Campion had confessed on the rack
to being at Tresham's residence, and the Star Chamber administered an oath of
inquisition to Tresham in order to gain supporting evidence for Campion's accusation.
Tresham refused to swear the oath and, like Bonner, quoted Jeremiah 4:2: a lawful
oath must have truth, judgment (iiidicium), and justice. The oath of inquisition,
contended Tresham, lacked iudicium. The prosecuting attorney explained to the court

516
that Tresham must be implying that in light of the papal bull Regnas in excelsis,
Tresham did not consider the judges of the Star Chamber (who were members of the
Privy Council) to be lawful judges, and therefore it was the Star Chamber who did
"want iudicium in mynistring of an othe." Tresham, however, denied this was the
case. It was not the judges who wanted iudicium but Tresham himself, for every
person must have "iudicium iurantis" (judgment of swearing) to take an oath.
Tresham argued that "to sweare to such a lawfull acte against the iudgment of his
concience, ys unlawfull, and a great synne." It was Tresham's own conscience that
judged that the oath lacked iudicium. Sir Walter Mildmay immediately observed that
by this logic, "everie deponent maye refuse, yf he see iudicium to be wantinge in the
thinge that he should depose unto."28 This would elevate the authority of the
subjective conscience above that of God's lawful magistrates. Yet the subjectivity of
conscience was not a recognized concept in the sixteenth century. For a conscience to
be valid, it had to be based on the Word of God. The burden fell on Tresham to show
why his conscience believed that the oath of inquisition lacked judgment.
Tresham grounded his conscience on the sanctity of God's name and the
seriousness of the offense of perjury. Tresham noted that no matter how he swore he
would open himself up to perjury: "yf I dyd sweare falselie I were periured, and yf I
dyd sweare trulie, I should laye myselfe wyde open to periurie, because Mr. Campion
had affirmatyvly accused me." Because Tresham did not believe that Campion had
been at his house (though he admitted that he could not be sure of that since he might
not have recognized Campion), to swear that Campion had been at his house would be
to swear falsely against his conscience. Yet because Campion had asserted that he was
at Tresham's house, to swear that Campion had not been there would be to appear
perjured since Campion's testimony provided evidence against him. Thus, whether
Tresham swore that Campion had or had not been at his house, he "would call false

Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 88-89.
29
Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 92.

517
witness to his conscience."' Furthermore, Tresham believed that it was against God's
law to accuse himself.31 If he swore that Campion was at his house he would open
himself up to charges of treason. If he swore that Campion was not at his house he
would open himself up to charges of perjury. Hence, Tresham's conscience judged
that the oath of inquisition lacked judgment or discretion because no matter how he
swore, he would have to confront perjury (either actual or perceived) and open himself
up to further charges (either treason or perjury).32
Tresham's argument that he could not take the oath of inquisition because he
feared perjury was not an argument that Puritans could adopt for their own, for while
Tresham had an accuser (Campion) whose testimony he feared to contradict, the High
Commission proceeded against Puritans ex officio mero on basis of common fame
alone. There was no official testimony that could serve as a base for an accusation of
perjury if Puritans took the ex officio oath and then answered questions in a way that
contradicted the report of common fame. The Puritan lawyer James Morice, however,
constructed a different argument based on the same foundation, the majesty of God's
name and the fear of perjury. Morice noted that "as concerning th'offence to God by
the abuse of his Name and Maiestie, Have we not learned before" that to offer an oath
to a person of defamed life and conversation is "a lightnes and wante of good
discretion in the Magistrate, who thereby wittinglie doethe minister an occasion of
periurie."33 Morice reasoned that whenever the guilt or innocence of a man depended
solely on his oath (be it an ex officio oath or an oath of canonical purgation), that is,

Tresham's exact words were, "perhiberem meae conscientiae falsum testimonium"; Bruce, "Narrative
of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir William Catesby, and
Others," 93.
31
The argument that it was against God's law to accuse oneself was not developed at length by
Tresham in his Star Chamber Trial. In the private notes he prepared for his trial, however, Tresham did
observe that both Jesus and Paul required witnesses to accuse them before they responded, and that
Jesus did not reject Judas even though he knew Judas was a thief because no one had accused Judas; BL
Additional MS. 39830, fols. 49r-50r. Perhaps Tresham did not articulate this argument during his Star
Chamber trial because it would have been easy to reply that Tresham did have an accuser in Edmund
Campion. Nevertheless, Tresham's argument here was quite similar to the one made by the Puritans in
1589 through 1591, which we will examine in depth below.
Bruce, "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir
William Catesby, and Others," 92-93. For Catesby also justifying his refusal of the oath on grounds of
fear of being accused of perjury, see page 98.
33
Morice, A brief treatise, 23.

518
whenever there was no evidence based on the testimony of other witnesses from which
to check the truth of the defendant's sworn statement, then many men would rather
hazard their souls by committing perjury "then put their bodies to shame and
reproach." The ex officio oath was wrong because it encouraged perjury, a serious
offense. If ecclesiastical judges really cared for the majesty of God and the state of
deponents' souls, they would not require such oaths.35
Morice could make this argument because he was a common lawyer and was
not himself on trial before the High Commission. The actual Puritan ministers could
not challenge the ex officio oath on the basis that it encouraged perjury, for by doing so
they would suggest to their judges that they themselves might be willing to commit
perjury rather than answer incriminating questions truthfully. They could, however,
still claim that the ex officio oath lacked judgment upon different grounds. Puritan
ministers like Cartwright, Snape, and their companions (as well as Morice who
employed pretty much every argument possible against the ex officio oath) argued that
the ex officio oath lacked judgment because it was a general oath. The ex officio oath
was a general oath because deponents had to swear to answer truthfully whatever
questions were to be offered to them without knowing in advance the content of the
questions. (This is what separated the ex officio oath from the oath of inquisition
employed by the Star Chamber. In a Star Chamber trial the defendant was given a bill
of complaint before he swore his oath, and his oath bound him to answer only the
questions which related to the bill of complaint.36) Taking a general oath was like
putting one's conscience on a rack.37 It could not be done "without great offence to
his [God's] diuine Maiestie."38 First, an oath was a form of worship. "As all other
dewties of the worship of God," an oath must have faith, for "whatsoeuer is not of

Morice, A brief treatise, 24.

Morice, A brief treatise, 24. For a restatement of this argument focusing more on the oath of
canonical purgation, see Morice, "A just and necessarie defence," fols. 33r, 50v, 107r-109r.
36
Morice, A brief treatise, 39.
37
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 383-384, printed in Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 33.
38
Morice, A brief treatise, 10.

519
faith is sinne."39 Yet how could one take an oath in faith if one did not know to what
one was swearing? Cartwright and his companions did therefore "in this oth iustly
condempe this popish conceit & blynd devotion that god will accept any good purpose
in a service of his worshypp, wherin I walke by the light & leading of other men,
myself being therin blynd & voyd of Iudgment."40 Second, general oaths were against
Scripture. According to Morice and Cartwright, there were no examples in all of
Scripture of a general oath.4' Bainbrigg and Johnson averred that in Scripture, "the
difficulties and ambiguites are debated before the oath be tacken." Snapp noted that
Abraham's servant Eleazar did not take his oath to Abraham "tyll hee sawe the matter
hee was sworne vnto; neyther then tyl hee knew when his oath tooke an ende."
Finally, in a general oath, the "conscyence can have noe staye wheron to rest."44
Cartwright and his companions wanted the oath to be limited so that their
"consciences may be delivered from fear of shipwracke, doubting lest that generall
5
bond should hyde some speciall matter of perill." What if, by taking a general oath,
the swearer bound his conscience to do something unlawful? Such was Herod's oath
to Herodias, which resulted in the beheading of John the Baptist, and Jephthah's vow
to slay the first thing that he saw upon returning home, which resulted in the sacrifice
of his daughter.46 These oaths were clearly wrong and by extension, so was the ex
officio oath. For all these reasons, the ex officio oath lacked judgment.
The Puritan argument that the ex officio oath was against judgment because it
was a general oath that might bind them to do something unlawful was validated by

39
The first quote is from Cartwright and his companions: Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 29. The second
quote is from Edmund Snape: Lambeth Palace Library MS 2004, fol. 86v. Snape was quoting Rom.
14:23.
40
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 383, printed in Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 32.
41
Morice, A brief treatise, 11-12; Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 33. Morice dedicated the majority of the
second chapter of his "A just and necessarie defence" to showing (against the assertions of Cosin) that
none of the oaths approved in Scripture were general oaths like the ex officio oath. See Morice, "A just
and necessarie defence," fols. 58v-62r, 68v-83r.
42
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 445, 440.
43
Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2004, fol. 87r.
44
Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 29.
45
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 384, printed in Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 33.
6
Morice, A brief treatise, 11; Morice, "A just and necessarie defence," fol. AT; Lambeth Palace
Library MS. 445, 440; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 383-384, printed in Cartwright,
Cartwrightiana, 33. For the Scriptural references, see Judg. 11, Matt. 14, and Mark 6.

520
the questions asked by the High Commission after the party had sworn their oath. In
their investigation of the classis movement, the High Commission asked for names
and deeds of other Puritan classis members. In essence, the party taken before the
High Commission was asked to rat out his companions. This, according to
Cartwright's imprisoned associates, was in violation of the law of charity or love:
"This othe is againste the lawe of righteousnesse and of love, wherby I am bounde to
doe noe hurt to the innocent and just in ther well doinge, but rather to defend them for
this othe contrarie therto, is vsed as an inquestion [sic] against the Churche and the
teachers."47 Humfrey Fen, Edmund Snape, and the rest of their companions grounded
this law of charity on Scripture. They cited Proverbs 11:13: "He that goeth abowt as a
slaunderer, discoverethe a secret but he that is of a faithfull harte concealeth a matter."
They noted that Rehab was commended for not telling the king of Jericho where the
Israelite spies were, that the Egyptian midwives hid Moses because they feared the
Lord, that Jonathan refused to hand over David to King Saul, that Obadiah concealed
one hundred of the Lord's prophets from the unjust wrath of Jezebel, and that Saul
(who became Paul) wrongly consented to the stoning of Stephen.48 All these
precedents established the law of charitythat one should not betray his innocent
friends or even his guilty friends as long as their offenses were not capital such as
murder, idolatry, or treason.49 To swear an oath that would force one to violate this
law was wrong. William Tyndale had argued that if one swore an oath before a judge
to answer all his questions truthfully and then the judge asked the party to disclose
information harmful to one's neighbor, the party should break his oath in order not to

Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 30.

48
The quotation from Prov. 11:13 is taken the 1560 edition of the Geneva Bible. For Humfrey Fen's
list of Scriptural examples against the ex officio oath based on the law charity, see Lambeth Palace
Library MS. 2004, fol. 83'"v. For a similar list of examples drawn up by Whitgift's party to show how
Puritans "shamefully abuse the scriptures for their defence of their pertinacie," see BL Lansdowne MS.
120, fol. 40r. The Scriptural examples are Josh. 2, Heb. 11:31, Exod. 1:17, 1 Sam. 19-20, 1 Kings
18:13, and Acts 22:20.
The Puritans never observed that Rehab's protection of the Israelite spies, Jonathan's protection of
David, and Obadiah's protection of the prophets could be construed as treason (and thus a capital
offense) by the rulers of Jericho, Saul, and Jezebel respectively. They avoided this issue. Indeed, the
Puritans strictly believed that their behavior was righteous and in no way qualified as a capital offense.

521
break charity with his neighbors. Yet the problem with this solution was that it still
offended one's conscience since it involved the breaking of an oath. Once a person
had sworn the ex officio oath, reasoned Morice, his conscience was stuck between a
rock and a hard place, for then he had to violate either the law against perjury or the
law of charity.51 A much better solution was not to swear in the first place.
Cartwright and his companions agreed, observing that the only example in Scripture of
a magistrate employing an oath to compel "men to depose for the discovery of a
righteous man" was that of Ahab and Elijah. Yet Ahab was an evil ruler who was not
to be imitated so this example demonstrated that the Puritans (like all of humankind)
were "expressly forbidden to be a wittnes against or neyghbour without cause."
Once again, then, Scripture had proved that the ex officio oath was against judgment.
In addition to claiming that the ex officio oath was against truth in that it
encouraged perjury and against judgment in that it was general and bound one to
transgress the law of charity, Puritans cited many other general rules of swearing to
prove that the ex officio oath was against the law of God. Hebrews 6:16 taught that an
oath was ordained to end all controversy. Puritans maintained that the ex officio oath
did not end controversy and was thus unlawful. For example, when Cartwright partly
answered some of the High Commission's questions in writing and offered to make
the same answer unsworn before the Commission, the Commission urged him to take
the ex officio oath, and then they would inform him where his answer needed
expansion. Cartwright refused to swear, retorting: "So shall not th'othe make an End
of the Controversy: Which notwithstanding is the proper Use of an Oath." Another
prohibition of Scripture was to swear an oath outside one's power to fulfill. Bainbrigg
and Johnson applied this rule to their case: "Yt is vnconscionable to tye the conscience

50
The Puritans quoted Tyndale in Lambeth Palace MS. 2004, fol. 17. For Tyndale's original
expression of this idea, see William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, ed. Henry
Walter, P.S., vol. 44 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850), 147.
51
Morice, ,4 brief treatise, 10-11.
52
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 395, printed in Cartwrightiana, 40. For Ahab and Elijah,
see 1 Kings 18.
53
BL Lansdowne MS. 68, fol. 116r, printed in Strype, Whitgift, 365. For other citations in Puritan
writings claiming that the ex officio oath was unlawful because it did not end all controversy, see
Morice, ,4 brief treatise, 9-10; Lambeth Palace MS. 2004, fol. 53r; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS.
294, 388-389, printed in Carwright, Cartwrightiana, 35-36.

522
of a man, to take the holie name of god in Witnes of that which him selfe knowethe
before he speake he can not performe." More specifically, the questions Bainbrigg
and Johnson would be asked after taking the oath would concern what they had
preached months ago, and they claimed that it exceeded the power of their memory to
report faithfully all they had said.54 Scripture also forbade rash, unadvised swearing.
Cartwright and his companions maintained that the ex officio oath was rash and
unadvised because they had been granted neither "tyme of deliberation" nor advice of
5
counsel. Finally, Scripture commanded that no one should take an oath in trivial
matters. According to Cartwright and his companions, "in this othe comonly mene are
examined of some matters not worth a question muche lesse worthe an othe."
Considering "how harshly God will punish those that take his name in vain and how
light triffles and small matters" were asked after the ex officio oath had been sworn,
Cartwright and his companions elected "for the peace of oure consciences to be held
guiltie of men" for refusing the oath than to "become guiltie of synne before God."
In all these arguments Puritans used basic, accepted theory of oath-taking to contend
that they could not swear the ex officio oath without offense to God.
The most common religious argument against the ex officio oath also exploited
that axiom that one should not take the Lord's name in vain, and again Puritans based
their argument on Scripture. The first Puritans to make this argument were Bainbrigg
and Johnson in 1589, though Snape replicated their argument exactly in 1591.

54
BL Lansdowne MS. 61, fol. 48r.
55
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 385.
56
Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 29.
57
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 386; Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 34.
58
The fact that Snapp utilized identical arguments as Bainbrigg and Johnson brings up the question of
the social context of the elaboration of the religious arguments against the ex officio oath. There is no
direct evidence that Snape had any contact with Bainbrigg and Johnson or consciously borrowed ideas
from them. Nevertheless, the realization that many of the religious arguments discussed in this chapter
were espoused by multiple different Puritans suggests some sort of dissemination of ideas between
Puritans. It does not appear that Puritan ministers themselves circulated manuscript separates of their
opinions against the oath. They articulated their arguments in manuscripts designed to justify to the
authorities their refusal of the oath. For example, Bainbrigg and Johnson espoused their arguments in
petitions to Lord Burghley and to the Cambridge authorities (see footnote 59 below). Likewise, most of
the arguments espoused by Cartwright and his companions were contained in petitions, letters, and
appeals to Whitgift, Burghley, or the Star Chamber. The authorities were, however, certainly
suspicious of some sort of interchange of ideas concerning the oath among Puritans. A common
interrogatory administered to Cartwright and his companion ministers by the Star Chamber was

523
According to these three, the law of God ordained only two ways of judicial
proceedings. The first was by the examination of two or more witnesses. This was the
common way of proceeding as evident by Deuteronomy 13:12-15, 17:2-7, 19:15,
Numbers 35:30, John 18:19-21, and 1 Timothy 5:19. Only if there were no witnesses
to be found could a magistrate lawfully proceed according to the second way: the
examination of the party himself. This could be done without an oath as was the case
with Achan (Joshua 7:18-19) or with an oath as evident by Exodus 22:10-11 or
Numbers 5:19 (the "law of jealousy"). Yet where there were witnessesas was the
case for Bainbrigg and Johnson who were in trouble for public sermons delivered at
St. Mary's Church in Cambridgethen magistrates were bound by the law of God to
proceed by calling witnesses to testify against the party.59 Robert Beale articulated a
similar argument in 1591 when he claimed that the law of Moses authorized
proceeding by inquisition of the party only in two cases: when the crime was murder
and the criminal not known, and when anyone attempted to seduce others away from

"whether youe or anye other to your knowledge have perswaded or moved anye not to take an oathe
before the sayde comyssioners or anye other magistrate or officer in some partyculer cases."
Cartwright, Fenn, King, Jewell, Wight, and Payne all denied having persuaded anyone not to take the
oath. Snape and Proudlove refused to answer this question; NA STAC 5 A56/1; Lambeth Palace
Library, CM 4/191. It did, however, come out that Snape had sent arguments against the oath to
Thomas Stone in order that Stone might confirm that Snape was doing the right thing in refusing to take
the oath; NA STAC 5 A39/23. It is possible that Puritans had discussed their strategy of refusing to
swear the oath at their classis meetings. John Johnson deposed before the Star Chamber: "yt was the
generall opynionof all the Classies & assembly whereat the deponent was present as aforesd that no
man was bownd to take an othe before the highe Comissyoners to accuse themselfes or otherwise then
as wyttnesses to accuse other man. And more he cannott say to the Interrogatory"; NA STAC 5 A49/34.
For other hints of conversations regarding the ex officio oath in classis meetings, see Roland G. Usher
(ed.), The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth as Illustrated by the Minute Book of
the Dedham Classis 1582-1589, Camden Society, ser. 3, vol. 8 (London: Royal Historical Society,
1905), 37; Richard Bancroft, Dangerous positions and proceedings published and practised within this
Hand ofBritaine, under pretence of reformation, and for the presbyteriall discipline (1640), 94. In
contrast to the writings of Puritan ministers against the oath, the manuscripts of the clerk of the Privy
Council Robert Beale and the common lawyer James Morice were circulated widely; see footnote 147
of chapter eleven.
Bainbrigg and Johnson put forth their argument in a series of petitions in March 1589. The most
developed petition (probably to Lord Burghley) is BL Lansdowne MS. 61, #7, especially fols. 25v-26v.
An early version of this petition from March 11, 1589, addressed to Tindall (the Head of Christ's
College, Cambridge) is CU CUR Guard Book 6.1, #17. Another one addressed to the vice-chancellor
of Cambridge from March 12 is Bodleian Library, Tanner MS. 84, #4. For Snape's recapitulation of
this argument (including a visual mapping of it), see Lambeth Palace Library MS. 2004, fols. 85r-86v.

524
God's true religion. Cartwright and his companions shifted the emphasis away from
the law of Moses to New Testament practice, contending that Jesus's refusal to answer
Caiaphas's questions about his teachings when witnesses could be called (John 18:19-
24) and Paul's similar demand that his Jewish accusers be brought forth in his trials
before Felix and Festus (Acts 24 and 25) demonstrated that this was the only divinely
sanctioned way of judicial proceeding if witnesses existed.' The key behind all these
variations was the claim that where human witnesses could be found, God should not
be called as witness, for such an oath was an unnecessary oath, and unnecessary oaths
were vain and blasphemous. Bainbrigg and Johnson wrote: "Where the calling of God
to witnes is merely and altogether nedeles; there it can not be doon but the Name of
God wil be taken in Vain." As such, they claimed that in their case, the ex officio oath
"can not be used without sin." Likewise, Cartwright and his companions gave the
following excuse for refusing the ex officio oath: "we hold it a takinge of the name of
God in vaine to sweare when the matter maybe tryed and found out, eyther by
witnesse or the parties vollontarie confession but the moste thinges vsually inquired in
this othe are suche."' Thus, by a clever application of Biblical precedents, Puritans
were able cite the third commandment in justification for their refusal of the ex officio
oath.

Conclusion: Conscience, the Word of God, and the Sanctity of Oaths

When sixteenth-century opponents of the oath of supremacy and the ex officio
oath referred to conscience, they did not mean the subjectivity of personal conscience
but rather conscience grounded upon the Word of God. For example, in his Apologie
Richard Cosin refuted Morice's argument that one should take an oath only insofar as
one's conscience allowed because, Cosin rightly claimed, Anabaptists used the same
argument as a pretext to reject all oaths. Morice retorted that the validity of one's

60
BL Additional MS. 48039, fol. 81r v. The same argument exists in Lambeth Palace Library MS.
2004, fols. 52v-53r, which perhaps suggests that this anonymous portion of the manuscript was by
Beale.
61
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 294, 386-388, 409; Cartwrightiana, 35.
62
BL Lansdowne MS. 61, fol. 28r.
63
Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 29-30.

525
conscience depended on the Word of God. His conscience was valid if it prevented
him from taking an oath that would infringe on royal prerogative or cause him to break
God's law.64 Scripture was thus central to the religious arguments against the ex
officio oath. And for Puritans like Bainbrigg, Johnson, and Cartwright, it was a strict
Scriptural literalism that demanded the direct application of Biblical precedents to
sixteenth-century society. Sixteenth-century society should reflect Biblical society.
"Whatsoever God will not have used," proclaimed Bainbrigg and Johnson, "ought
none either to use, or to urge others unto."65 The ex officio oath was wrong because
there were no examples of it in Scripture. Cosin aptly grasped Bainbrigg's and
Johnson's mode of argumentation: "there is no colour, nor shadowe in either of them:
except they haue learned to reason out of euery single place of Scripture, both
affirmatiuely and negatiuely thus, viz. This may be done in that case: and therefore,
nothing else may be done."66 Indeed, the strict application of Biblical precedent to
sixteenth-century society that characterized the arguments of Bainbrigg, Johnson, and
Cartwright actually inhibited personal liberty of conscience. For these Puritans, there
was very little concept of adiaphora. Few and far between were the practices that
were so indifferent that they could be equally approved or disapproved depending on
the conscience of a particular individual. Because oaths involved the worship of God,
there was absolutely no room for variation of conscience. To these Puritans, if one's
conscience approved of swearing an oath that they perceived was against the Word of
God, they condemned this person's conscience and declared it invalid and not binding.
The Elizabethan regime countered these arguments in two ways, both of which
were articulated in Cosin's An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction
ecclesiasticall, which was the regime's official defense of the ex officio oath. The first
was to reject strict Biblicalism and widen the concept of adiaphora. In his Apologie,
Cosin attacked the claim of Bainbrigg and Johnson that man could do nothing not
explicitly commended in the Word of God.67 The ex officio oath, Cosin averred, fell
under the category of adiaphora: it was a thing indifferent. Yet in light of Romans 13,
64
Morice, "A just and necessary defence," fol. 86 rv .
65
BL Lansdowne MS, 61, fol. 26v.
' Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 193.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 134-135, 186.

526
all indifferent things became matters of conscience when commanded by a magistrate.
So those who truly had a godly conscience would take the ex officio oath out of
deference to God's divinely ordained magistrate. Ethan Shagan has explored Cosin's
argument in this regard and emphasized the radical ramifications of Cosin's logic in
extending the power of the crown over the private consciences of subjects.68 Shagan
has not observed, however, that Cosin was not content to leave the ex officio oath as a
matter of adiaphora and emphasize conscience only insofar as it pertained to
obedience to God's ordained magistrate. In the last section of his Apologie, Cosin
addressed the Biblical arguments of the Puritans and then himself used Scripture to
establish the lawfulness of the ex officio oath. He applied 1 Peter 3:15"be ready to
giue an account of euery one that asketh vs a reason of the hope that is in vs with
meeknes and feare"to the ex officio oath.69 He went through Old Testament
examples such as 1 Samuel 14:24-28, 1 Kings 8:31-32, Ezra 10:5, andNehemiah 5:11-
13 to show that both magistrates and priests could compel one to swear. In opposition
to Bainbrigg and Johnson, Cosin maintained that the Biblical precedents of Achan
(Joshua 7:19), the law of atonement for an unsolved murder (Deuteronomy 21) and the
law of jealousy (Numbers 5) all established that an inquisition by the oath of the party
was a standard, God-ordained way of judicial proceeding. Cosin glossed Leviticus 5:1
to show that one could indeed testify against one's self. Finally, he cited the New
Testament examples of Peter, John, and Stephen answering questions before the
Sanhedrin (Acts 4:7-8, 7:1-53) as evidence that it was unlawful to refuse to answer the
questions of a magistrate.70 All these Biblical examples supported Cosin's conclusion:
"when an oathe is duely imposed, there is a necessitie enioyned the subiect to take it;
doeth appeare by the commandement of God himselfe."71 Cosin, then, was playing
the same game as the Puritans. He was employing a strict Biblicalism (Peter, John,
and Stephen did this so we cannot do anything else) not only to establish the
lawfulness of the ex officio oath but also to argue that subjects were bound by the law
of God to take it.
68
Shagan, "The English Inquisition," 551-555.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by jurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 97.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by jurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 135-156.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by jurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 135.

527
 Yet not all of the arguments against the state oaths of the Elizabethan regime
employed a strict Biblical literalism. More important than the direct application to the
sixteenth century of the practice of swearing in the Bible was the general theory of
oath-taking revealed in the Bible. Examples of swearing in the Bible were less
relevant than God's commands about swearing. Bonner, Feckenham, and Tresham did
not cite the judicial practice of swearing in Hebrew or Roman Israel as evidence for
refusing an oath. Both Roman Catholics and Puritans, however, founded their
respective arguments on the third commandment: You shall not misuse the name of the
Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
The greatest misuse of God's name was perjury, so swearing against one's conscience
was to be avoided at all costs. In addition to swearing in truth, Jeremiah 4:2 also
taught that judgment and justice also had to accompany all lawful oaths. To swear an
oath that could lead to an accusation of perjury or to swear an oath without knowledge
showed a lack of judgment. Furthermore, vain swearing was an abuse of God's name,
so no one should take an oath when it was unnecessary or when it concerned light or
trivial matters. These basic Biblical rules for oath-taking were the foundation of the
Elizabethan religious opposition to the oath of supremacy and the ex officio oath.
When Catholics or Puritans refused to swear a state oath out of conscience, it was a
conscience of the majesty of God's name and the sanctity of oaths as revealed by the
Word of God. For example, the first and most important reason that Cartwright and
his companions gave for their resistance of the ex officio oath was:
wee fynde oure selves much moved in conscience to refuse it in that aboue a
dutie of Gods worshippe (such as is an oath whearein whosoever taketh his
name in vaine shall not be guiltlesse) desiringe for warrant and securitie to
oure consciences, some proofe oute of the worde of God by the mouthe of his
servants the ministers yett are not thearein satisfied.
Catholics opposed the oath of supremacy and Puritans opposed the ex officio oath
because they maintained that the particular qualities of the oath or their particular
circumstances rendered the oath perjurous or vain, and that they esteemed the name of
God too much to swear a perjurous or vain oath.

" Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 31.

528
 Of course, it may be objected that the arguments discussed above were not
sincere but rather window dressing employed to justify the refusal of the oath.
Perhaps Puritans and Catholics refused the state oaths of Elizabeth's reign less out of a
conscience of oaths, and more because they did not want to acknowledge Elizabeth's
supremacy, disclose details on illegal activities (such as hosting Edmund Campion or
holding class is meetings), or rat out their compatriots. To some extent, this is
certainly true. The very fact that Puritans (and Bonner) used both legal and religious
arguments to justify their refusal to take an oath suggests that their sole concern was
not merely a conscience of the majesty of God's name. This is especially true of
Bainbrigg, Johnson, and Morice, who employed every argument in the book (indeed,
Morice wrote the book!) to excuse their refusal to swear. Bainbrigg, Johnson, and
others formulated religious arguments against the ex officio oath after they had refused
to take it as a way to legitimize their behavior. Nevertheless, even though the original
motivation for refusing Elizabethan state oaths may not have been a conscience for the
majesty of God's name, it is hard to escape the conclusion that characters like
Bainbrigg, Cartwright, Snape, Morice, and Beale did eventually believe that the ex
officio oath was offensive to God. Just as Henry Vlil's conscience came to believe
that his marriage with Katherine of Aragon was truly against God's law (even though
his initial motivation to seek a divorce was his infatuation with Anne Boleyn), so did
the consciences of some Puritans and Catholics come to believe that the Elizabethan
state oaths were against God's law.
Furthermore, even if the majesty of God's name and the sanctity of oaths were
not the real reason behind the refusal of Elizabethan state oaths, these arguments were
still a powerful card to play because it was the same card that the Elizabethan regime
itself often played. In fact, Cartwright and his companions brilliantly concluded their
petition against the ex officio oath by demonstrating that the general theory of oath-
taking upon which they founded their objections to the ex officio oath was the same
theory espoused by the pillars of English Protestantism. They noted the exposition of
Jeremiah 4:2 in the Book of Homilies, they showed that Nowell in his catechism
rejected swearing in unnecessary or trivial matters as vain swearing, they observed

529
that John Foxe had cautioned judges to require oaths sparingly lest they give an
occasion for perjury, and they quoted the condemnation of vain and rash swearing in
the Thirty-Nine Articles.73 What works were more seminal in the determination of
English Protestant orthodoxy than the Book of Homilies, Nowell's Catechism, Foxe's
Acts and Monuments, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563? In this regard, it did not
matter whether the religious arguments against taking these oaths were sincere or just
window dressing. Because the arguments employed by Bonner, Feckenham, Tresham,
and the Puritan opponents of the ex officio oath were founded on the same general
theory of oaths espoused by the Elizabethan regime, the regime could not simply
dismiss them out of hand. Cosin could reject the strict Biblicalism of Bainbrigg and
Johnson or he could employ his own version of it, mining the Bible for examples of
oath-taking that seemed to support the ex officio oath. Yet Cosin could not reject or
alter God's general commands about the majesty of his name and oath-taking. For
example, Cosin conceded to Morice that general oaths were wrong, but then he denied
that the ex officio oath was a general oath.74 Similarly, Cosin agreed that perjury was
a heinous sin and that judges should not administer an oath to a man when they feared
that perjury would be the result of that oath, but Cosin maintained that in the case of
the ex officio oath, the fear of perjury would trump the party's desire to escape
punishment:
Indeede we all confesse, that where there is great & apparant probabilitie, that
the party is such a man, who wil rather for sweare, then confesse a truefh
against himself; vpon such a man, an oath should not be imposed: But where
the penaltie is not capitall, nor of mutilation, nor none other particular strong
presumption to induce such suspition touching the partie; and especially where
he stands afore charged vpon good, and probable grounds, to haue (in deede)
committed such a fact; there the law will not intend, or presume; but that he
will make further dicouery, rather than to be forsworne: quia nemo
praesumitur immemor salutis aeternae [because no one is presumed to be
unmindful of his eternal salvation].75
The best Cosin could do, then, was to assert that God's prohibition against misusing
his name did not apply to the ex officio oath. He could challenge only the application

Cartwright, Cartwrightiana, 44-45.

Cosin, An apologie for sundrieproceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical], part 3, 217-220.
Cosin, An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiasticall, part 3, 174. For similar
statements, see part 3, 38-39,48-49, 79-81.

530
of the Puritan theory of oath-taking; he could not challenge the theory itself because
the crown needed its subjects to respect oaths. To undermine the sanctity of oaths
would be to undermine the entire judicial system, not to mention the oath of
supremacy and the ex officio oath in particular. The Elizabethan regime had to place a
high esteem on the majesty of God's name, for it was through oaths that it sought to
shore up its power. Thus, the Catholic and Puritan claims that they could not take the
oath of supremacy or the ex officio oath out of a conscience for the majesty of God's
name was a powerful argument.
Rather than calling into question the theory behind the Puritan opposition to
the ex officio oath, the Elizabethan regime denigrated Puritan arguments by claiming
that Puritans had learned their arguments from Jesuits and seminary priests. On one
hand, this association was justified, for Roman Catholics like Bonner, Feckenham, and
Tresham based their refusal to take the oath of supremacy or (in Tresham's case) the
oath of inquisition of the Star Chamber on general Biblical theory of oath-taking and
the majesty of God's name. Both these early Elizabethan Roman Catholics and the
Puritans of the 1580s and 1590s employed the same basic argument: we cannot take
this oath because it is a misuse of God's name, and we value the sacredness of God's
name and the salvation of our souls too much to misuse God's name. On the other
hand, the response of early Elizabethan Catholics and of Puritans to the oaths
employed against them by the crown stood in bold contrast to those of later
Elizabethan Jesuits and seminary priests. Jesuits like Robert Parsons and Henry
Garnet and the priests trained at Douay Seminary developed elaborate theories of
equivocation and mental reservation that allowed them to dissimulate under oath.
Their casuistry allowed them to take an oath of inquisition and then to respond to
questions deceptively. Their consciences placed a higher value on the mission to
restore and perpetuate Catholicism in England than they did on the sanctity of oaths.

76
For primary sources by later Elizabethan Catholics justifying dissimulated oath-taking, see Robert
Parsons, A treatise tending to mitigation towardes Catholike-subiectes in England Wherin is declared,
that it is not impossible for subjects of different religion, (especially Catholikes and Protestantes) to
Hue togeather in dutifull obedience and subiection, vnder the gouernment of his Maiesty of Great
Britany. Against the seditions wrytings of Thomas Morton minister, & some others to the contrary.
Whose two false and slaunderous groundes, pretended to be dravvne from Catholike doctrine &
practice, concerning rebellion and equivocation, are ouerthrowne, and cast vpon himselfe. Dedicated

531
Conversely, the protagonists of this chapter accepted and intensified the regime's own
rhetoric on the sanctity of oaths as the grounds for their outright refusal to take the
offensive oaths.
To conclude, the Elizabethan religious opposition to the oath of supremacy and
the ex officio oath was founded upon a conscience of the majesty of God's name and
the sanctity of oaths. Puritans and early Elizabethan Catholics based their reasoning
either upon a strict Biblicalism that allowed no other form of swearing except that
found in Scripture or upon the application of God's general commandment against
false or vain swearing to the specific circumstances wherein they were tendered an
oath. This religious opposition to the Elizabethan state oaths was more potent than the
constitutional opposition to the oath of supremacy and the ex officio oath for two
reasons. First, divine law took precedence over temporal law. By making their refusal
to swear a matter of the worship of God and the holiness of his name, Puritans and
early Elizabethan Catholics constructed their arguments upon a law that no temporal
ruler could abnegate or alter. A conscience grounded in the Word of Godhowever
erroneouscould only be changed only by reasoning from the Word of God, a fact
that Cosin well recognized. There was no greater authority than the Word of God and
no greater activity than the worship of God. Constitutional arguments based on
Magna Carta and English customs of personal liberty paled in significance. Second,
by justifying their refusal to swear through a conscientious upholding of the majesty of
God's name and the sanctity of oaths, Puritans and early Elizabethan Catholics relied
on a theory of oath-taking that was not only widely recognized but also essential to the
Elizabethan regime. The regime needed its subjects to value oaths highly and to take
them with the utmost gravity. Perjury and vain swearing had to be condemned, for

to the learned schoole-deuines, cyulll and canon lawyers of the two vniuersities of England. By P.R.
([Saint-Omer], 1607); [Henry Garnet], A Treatise of Equivocation: wherein is largely discussed the
questions whether a Catholic or any other person before a magistrate beyng demaunded uppon his oath
whether Preiste were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary)
without Perlury and securely in conscience answere, No, with this secreat meanlgn resented in his
mynde, That he was not there so that any man is bounde to detect it, ed. David Jardine (London:
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851); Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, Catholic Record
Society, vol. 67 (1981). For secondary sources exploring these arguments, see Zagorin, Ways of Lying,
186-220; Michael L. Carrafiello, "Robert Parsons and Equivocation," Catholic Historical Review 79
(1993): 671-680; Stefania Tutino, "Between Nicodemism and 'Honest' Dissimulation: The Society of
Jesus in England," Historical Research 79 (2006): 534-553.

532
otherwise the oath of supremacy and the ex officio oath would lose their efficacy.
Puritans and early Elizabethan Catholics simply adopted this same rhetoric and
intensified it so as to claim that the oath of supremacy and the ex officio oath were
vain oaths or would lead to perjury. (They could thus claim that they had a greater
conscience of oaths than did the Elizabethan regime.) Such an argument was powerful
because, unlike constitutional arguments, the regime could not easily contradict it
without calling into question the very mechanism upon which they relied: oaths.

533
 Conclusion
In the spring of 1613, the justices of the assize of Tipperary county, Ireland,
administered an oath to the members of the grand jury of the Court of Assize to make
a diligent investigation into all matters charged of them, specifically to inquire into all
treasons, felonies, and other crimes, and to present before the court all recusants who
had absented themselves from church in violation of the Elizabethan Act of
Uniformity. The jury members swore their oath, but when the parish curates of
Tipperary delivered them bills of indictment naming the recusants of their cures, the
jury refused to present any of these recusants before the justices of the assize, saying
that it was against their conscience to accuse anyone of their own religion for causes
relating to religion. The justices reminded the jury that they were bound by oath. In
response, the leader of the jury declared that "when they tooke that generall oathe,
they had a speciall reservacion or exception in theire mindes of all such thinges as
should touch theire conscience or religion."1 The justices were not pleased with this
excuse and bound the jurymen to appear before the Castle Chamber (the Irish
equivalent of the Court of Star Chamber) to answer for their offense. James's Irish
council censored the jurymen and convicted them of perjury. The court declared that
an oath was "the fastest knott of civill societie," the foundation of the legal system,
and the basis of each subject's allegiance to his sovereign. Indeed, because "every
man's estate in particular, and the state of the realme in general, doth depend uppon
the truthe and sincerity of men's oathes," the court proclaimed that "a greater
mischeefe cannot arise in this state and common weale then that the subjects should be
perswaded that it is lawful for them to mocke and dallie with an oathe under pretence
or colour of aequivocation or mentall reservacion."2 Mental reservation was nothing
but perjury, it judged. The court observed that while "Forest the frier" had been
condemned in the reign of Henry VIII for taking the oath of supremacy in this way,
none of the Protestants examined by Bishop Bonner in Queen Mary's days "were ever
found to aequivocate or to use anie mentall reservacion; but they aunswered truly and

"The Case of Concealment or Mental Reservation," in Petti, Recusant Documents from the EUesmere
Manuscripts, 246.
"The Case of Concealment or Mental Reservation," in Petti, Recusant Documents from the EUesmere
Manuscripts, 250.

534
directly, though they paid the price of theire lives for it." By way of conclusion, the
court "resolved that the commonwealth cannot possibly stand if this wicked doctrine
bee not beaten downe and suppressed."
The ruling of the Irish Council of James I neatly illustrates the thesis of this
dissertation: that oaths were essential to the accomplishment of the English
Reformation and the confessionalization of England. The Council grounded its
decision in the past. It noted the administration of the Henrician oath of supremacy. It
contrasted the mental reservation of Friar Forest with the steadfastness of Marian
Protestants, thereby highlighting the importance of oaths in the formation of a
Protestant confessional identity. The whole purpose of the trial was to insure that oaths
functioned as a means to prosecute Roman Catholic recusants as outlined in the
Elizabethan Act of Uniformity. And although the Council did not specifically mention
other examples of oaths undergirding the Reformation in England, it did imply their
existence when it declared that "the law and civill policy in England, being cheifely
founded uppon religion and the feare of God, doth use the religious ceremonie of an
oathe not onely in legall proceedinges, but in other transaccions and affaires of most
importance in the common wealthe."5 We have seen that oaths were employed in
"affaires of most importance in the common wealthe" such as the establishment of the
Boleyn marriage and succession, the rejection of papal authority, the raising and then
quelling of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the institution of Elizabeth's supremacy, the
creation of a society to protect the queen and the Protestant establishment, and the
disciplining of Puritan nonconformists. Indeed, oaths were so important to the
formation, implementation, and enforcement of the English Reformation that the
practice of perjury threatened to undermine the whole settlement. The employment of
mental reservation by the grand jury of Tipperary county raised a disturbing question:
to what extent did the imposition of oaths as a means to accomplish the English

"The Case of Concealment or Mental Reservation," in Petti, Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere
Manuscripts, 253-254.
"The Case of Concealment or Mental Reservation," in Petti, Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere
Manuscripts, 254.
5
"The Case of Concealment or Mental Reservation," in Petti, Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere
Manuscripts, 249.

535
Reformation vitiate the power of oaths themselves as a means to bind an individual's
conscience? Or put another way, did the recurrent demands to swear an oath in
support of a religious policy often repugnant to an individual's conscience lead to a
devaluation of oaths as sacred contracts in the eyes of sixteenth-century English
people?
We have seen in chapter two that the content rather than the form of a promise
was the true determinant of the ability of an oath to bind one's conscience. An oath
continued to be valid only as long as the swearer considered the content of the oath to
be lawful. Once the swearer considered the oath to be unlawful, a variety of excuses
and shifts including mental reservation could be employed to justify the breaking of
the oath (if it had already been sworn) or to mitigate its force (if it was about to be
sworn). Sections two and three demonstrated the extent that these shifts were indeed
put to use. Cranmer and other Henrician bishops broke their oath to the pope.
Princess Mary, Friar Forest, Abbot Cooke, and unknown number of others
dissimulated when taking the oath of supremacy. Early English Protestants like
Bilney, Phillips, and Shaxton swore oaths of abjuration against their true beliefs in
order to avoid the flames. Whether these figures committed simple perjury or
employed techniques like conditional swearing, equivocation, or mental reservation,
the result was the same: an oath lost its binding power on them.
But while the changes and conflicts of the Reformation led to the subversion of
many of the oaths of the sixteenth century, the evidence covered in this dissertation
points to a continued belief in the efficacy of oaths. To start, the frequent failure of
oaths to accomplish their purpose did not prevent the Tudor regime and it subjects
from turning to them progressively more in the sixteenth century as a means to test
belief and coerce behavior. This was not perhaps the original intention of Henry VIII.
Yet Henry's conflicts with his clergy in the early 1530sespecially his realization
that many of them had sworn an oath to the pope in derogation of his royal authority
caused him to adopt the oath of supremacy as the only device strong enough to
proscribe dissimulation and equivocation and nullify previous oaths. And while
Henry was selective in his administration of the oath of supremacy, his comprehensive

536
tendering of the oath of succession led to the proliferation of oaths in the Pilgrimage of
Grace, which then caused Henry to force his northern subjects to swear yet another
oath of allegiance to him invalidating the oaths of the rebellion. A similar situation
took place in Elizabeth's reign. Whenever a crisis threatened the Elizabethan
Protestant regimebe it the Rebellion of the Northern Earls, the papal bull of
excommunication, the influx of Jesuits and seminary priests, or the challenge of an
alternative Protestant ecclesiology in the Puritan classis movement, the regime
responded with an oath. Of course, Henry and Elizabeth were not solely responsible
for this development. Our accounts of the Elizabethan oaths of supremacy,
association, and allegiance have shown that other members of the regime like the
Privy Council, Parliament, or local officials were often more inclined to employ oaths
than Elizabeth herself. Furthermore, the Pilgrimage of Grace and the response to the
bond of association demonstrate the enthusiasm of the greater populace to participate
in politics through the swearing of oaths. The increasing popularity of oaths across the
entire social spectrum of sixteenth-century England attests to the continued faith
placed in the power of an oath to bind an individual's conscience.
In addition to the sheer rise in the number of oaths tendered, we have
encountered many instances of individuals behaving in a manner that took for granted
that oaths were effective bonds on the conscience of the swearer. For example, the
pilgrims of 1536 had no qualms about coercing gentlemen into swearing their oath.
They evidently believed that a forced oath was a valid oath, for once a gentleman had
sworn, the pilgrims abandoned other forms of intimidation and assumed the gentlemen
would remain loyal to their uprising. The controversy in the Parliament of 1584 over
the bill for the queen's safety was also fueled by the desire of certain members of the
House of Commons to keep the oath of association. These members opposed the bill
for the queen's safety endorsed by Elizabeth herself because it proposed an order of
proceeding in the event of her assassination that conflicted with that sworn to in the
bond of association. They clearly considered the oath of association to be binding.
The use of oaths by Protestants during their heresy trials is another example of
the special esteem granted an oath by sixteenth-century Englishmen. Although the

537
earliest English Protestants did not hesitate to commit perjury, they did so in a
consistent and calculated way in order to present an image of themselves as basically
orthodox and honest. This image was effective precisely because the general public
held oaths in such high respect that it trusted the oaths of these Protestants. As
Henry's reign progressed, English Protestants continued to equivocate and recant, but
they ceased to do so under oath, thereby tacitly admitting that perjury was a more
serious sin than simple deception and lying. By Mary's reign, many English
Protestants not only refused to abjure and perjure themselves, they also cited the
sanctity of oaths as a reason why they could not accept the reestablishment of papal
authority in England and emphasized that their Catholic oppressors were the true
perjurors. Of just as much importance as Protestants' own private esteem of oaths in
all of these developments was the public perception of oaths as binding. Protestants
did not want to appear to be perjured. They recognized that since the majority of
English people valued oaths and considered them as binding on one's conscience, any
public performance of Protestant perjury would reflect badly on their probity and lead
to doubts about the truth of their message. So even if a particular Protestant did not
personally value the keeping his oath, there was significant social pressure to maintain
a high estimation of oaths, or at least to appear to hold such an estimation. This social
pressure of oaths also contributed to the effectiveness of the Henrician state oaths, for
the process of publicly swearing an oath created the expectation to behave according
to one's promise. The dissimulation of Catholics like Dr. Benger and Dan Laurance
Bloneham when taking the oath of supremacy came to the knowledge of the
authorities only because their colleagues snitched them out after Benger and
Bloneham had foolishly spoken out against their oaths. Thus, both the Protestant
manipulation of oaths in heresy trials and the detection of dissimulated oath-taking
among Henrician Roman Catholics demonstrate that the general English populace did
value oaths highly as the strongest bonds of conscience.
Finally, the refusal of Roman Catholics like Bonner and Feckenham to swear
the oath of supremacy and of Puritans like Bainbrigg, Johnson, Cartwright, and Snape
to swear the ex officio oath in Elizabeth's reign represent the culmination of the trend

538
of publicly upholding the sanctity of oaths. Instead of devaluing an oath by swearing
deceptively, these figures declined to swear and justified their actions by citing the
majesty of God's name and the gravity of swearing against their consciences. Indeed,
these men assimilated and intensified the state's own rhetoric on oaths (which was
simply the standard religious line) in order to claim that they valued the holy nature of
God's name too much to swear the illicit oaths demanded of them. Other factors
undoubtedly contributed to their refusal to swear, factors such as a belief in the pope's
ecclesiastical supremacy (in the case of Bonner and Feckenham) or a desire to avoid
ratting on their compatriots (in the case of the Puritans). Yet the decision to ground
their defense on the sanctity of oaths is significant. It shows that they believed that the
best way to win the favor of their judges (be it the queen, the Privy Council, or the
court of public opinion) was to claim to hold oaths in high esteem in their consciences.
And this claim was surely true to a certain extent. If they had not valued oaths, they
would have simply sworn the oath of supremacy against their consciences or taken the
ex officio oath and then lied when interrogated. Hence, both the Catholic and Puritan
refusal to swear certain Elizabethan state oaths and the defense of this refusal indicate
that these Englishmen and their judges valued oaths.
The preponderance of examples discussed in this dissertation thus suggest that
the majority of sixteenth-century Englishmen, in theory if not always in practice,
continued to respect oaths as special bonds binding before God. Of course, many
exceptions to this trend could be cited. The most obvious one is the Roman Catholic
practice of mental reservation that increased at the end of Elizabeth's reign as a result
of the casuistical theory of English Jesuits such as Henry Garnet. There were also
men in early modern England like Peter Norris of Middlewich who supposedly
exclaimed in 1604 that "oathes were but wordes, wordes were but wynde and wynde is
mutable." Although Norris lacked the theoretical sophistication of men like Garnet,
he nonetheless could maintain that it was "a chyldishe tricke to make account of an
oathe." John Spurr is surely correct to point out that along side the world of religious
reformers, court proceedings, and state oaths where the sanctity of oaths was

6
Quoted in Hindle, State and Social Change, 111-112.

539
emphasized, there existed a whole demi-monde of literature that delighted in false
oaths, trickery of oaths, and customable swearing. These worlds could co-exist
simultaneously in sixteenth-century England because "people used oaths in many
different, and even mutually inconsistent contexts."7 Even in a solemn setting like the
court room oaths were sometime called into question. David Harris Sacks, for
example, has shown how social changes like the development of a body of
professional London compurgators who served as oath-helpers for hire and cultural
changes stressing the privacy of conscience and the human proclivity to sin caused
figures such as Sir Edward Coke to doubt the efficacy of oaths in certain common law
proceedings at the turn of the century.8 Yet none of these examples of Englishmen
doubting the power of an oath (with the possible exception of the development of
Jesuit casuistry) were a result of the Tudor state's increased usage of oaths as a means
to implement and enforce the English Reformation. The words and actions of many of
the players of the Reformation indicate that they considered the oaths of the English
Reformation as binding on their consciences.
Furthermore, skepticism of the power of oaths never reached a high enough
level to reverse the trend of the English state employing oaths as tests of loyalty and
belief and as bonds of future obedience. From the Jacobean oath of allegiance to the
manifold oaths and counter-oaths of the English Civil War to the oath of allegiance of
William and Mary, the seventeenth century was the century of English state oaths.
The seventeenth-century, post-Reformation employment of oaths was a continuation
of the sixteenth-century, Reformation employment of oaths. (Likewise, the
controversies that raged over oaths in the seventeenth centurythe Quaker rejection
of all swearing, the conflicting nature of the oaths of the English Civil War, the attack
on the ex officio oath, and the refusal of many of James II's bishops to abnegate their
loyalty to him by swearing an oath of allegiance to William of Orangeall of these

7
Spurr, "A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths," 62.
8
David Harris Sacks, "The Promise and Contract in Early Modern England: Slade's Case in
Perspective," in Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. V. Kahn and L. Hutson (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 34, 38-40.

540
controversies were simply updated versions of those of the sixteenth century. ) In the
end, then, of more importance than whether the Reformation led to an increased or
decreased esteem for oaths was the fact that through the experience of the English
Reformation, oaths became more central to the process of governing and the
enforcement of confessional identities. Oaths had been prominent in the
implementation of the Reformation, the participation of the English people in the
Reformation, and the formation of a distinct English Protestant (or Puritan) identity.
This meant that seventeenth-century England inherited not only a legacy of religious
and political conflict but also a tradition of using the oath as a primary weapon in this
conflict.

9
The Lollard and Anabaptist rejection of all swearing foreshadowed the Quaker position. The
conflicting oaths to the pope and to the king in Henry's reign engendered the same basic arguments as
those raised over the conflicting oaths of the English Civil War. The seventeenth-century attack on the
ex officio oath was obviously a continuation of the campaign of the sixteenth century. Finally, just as
the the Marian Protestant martyrs refused to accept the restoration of papal authority because they had
sworn the oath of supremacy, so did the episcopal nonjurors of the end of the seventeenth-century
refuse to recognize the authority of William and Mary because they had sworn allegiance to James II.

541
 Appendix

The purpose of this Appendix is to allow the reader to trace the development of
oaths over time and to see how various oaths are related to each other. The appendix
is divided into sections based on different kinds of oaths. Within each section, the
alpha-numerals in parenthesis indicate parallel passages shared by other oaths in that
section. Italicized and underlined text is also used to highlight connections between
oaths. The exact meaning of the use of italicized and underlined text is explained at
the beginning of each section or oath, and it varies depending on the oath.

A: The Oaths of a Bishop Elect to the Pope

I. Oath taken to Gregory HI in 759'

I byshopp of (N) do swere to my lord the pope That I shall keep the ffaithe of
the Catholique Churche
And that I wyle abydd yn the vnytity of the said ffayth and not consent for Any
mans pleasure to contrary the same
I do Bynd me in faith full promyss to seale the honnor commodity and
proffites of the churche of Rome
And yf any Bysshop or Byshopres say or doo agaynst the old statutes of holy
fathers with him or them, I shall have, no conversatyon
But Rather By all meanes forbydd the same and shall trewly geve warning
therof vnto my Lord the pope.
So God shall me helpe All sayntes and holy dom.

II. Oath of a bishop-elect as prescribed by canon law

(1) Ego N. episcopus ab hac hora in antea fidelis ero sancto Petro, sanctaeque
apostolicae Romanae ecclesiae, dominoque meo Papae C. eiusque successoribus
canonice intrantibus.
(2) Non ero neque in consilio neque in facto, ut vitam perdat aut membrum,
vel capiatur mala captione.
(3) Consilium quod mihi aut per se, aut per literas, aut per nuncium
manifestabit, ad eius damnum nulli pandam.
(4) Papatum Romanae ecclesiae et regulas sanctorum Patrum adiutor ero ad
defendendum et retinendum, salvo ordine meo, contra omnes homines.
(5) Vocatus ad synodum veniam, nisi praepeditus fuero canonica
praepeditione.

1
The text of this oath is taken from Thomas Earl's Commonplace book, CU MS. Mm. i. 29, fol. 29r.
Robert Barnes also gives the text of this oath in his Supplicatyon of 1534, fol. Dl v .
2
The text of this oath is taken from C1C, X.2.24.4, Frieclberg, 2:360. This is the same oath recorded in
the Collectanea satis copiosa under the heading "The prelates olde othe made to the pope"; BL Cotton
MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 53r. Barnes believed (incorrectly) that this oath was the form used by bishops-
elect in England in the 1530s. He thus included an English translation of this oath in his Supplicatyon
of 1534, fol. Dl v .

542
 (6) Legatum apostolicae sedis, quem certum legatum esse cognovero, in eundo
et redeundo honorifice tractabo, et in suis necessitatibus adiuvabo.
(7) Apostolorum limina singulis annis aut per me aut per certum nuncium
meum visitabo, nisi eorum absolvar licentia.
Sic me Deus adiuvet et haec sancta evangelia.

III. Oath to the pope used in England in the later middle ages 3 (Text not underlined
but in italics indicates words not in oath II or IV. Text that is both italicized and
underlined indicates words not in oath II but in oath IV.)
(1) Ego Willelmus, episcopus olim Londoniensis, in archiepiscopum
Cantuariensem electus, promitto etjuro, quod ab hac hora inantea, quamdiu vixero,
fidelis et obediens ero beato Petro, sanctaeque apostolicae Romanae ecclesiae, et
domino meo Urbano, divina providentia papae sexto, suisque successoribus canonice
intrantibus
(2) Non ero in consilio, consensu, vel facto, ut vitam perdant aut membrum,
aut capiantur mala captione
(3) Consilium yew, quod mihi credituri sunt per se, aut per nuncios, sive per
literas, nulli manifestabo ad eorum damnum, me sciente;
(4) Papatum Romanun, et regalia sancti petri adjutor ero ad retinendum,
defendendum, et recuperandum, salvo ordine meo, contra omnem hominem ac
honorem et statum ipsorum, quantum in me fuerit, conservabo, ipsisque adhaerebo, et
pro posse favebo
(6) Legatos et nuncios sedis apostolicae benigne in terris meis
archiepiscopatus suscipiam, et dirigam, et defendam, securumque ducatum praestabo
eisdem, ac in eundo et reduendo honorifice tractabo, et in suis necessitatibus adjuvabo,
nee, in quantum in me fuerit, permittam eis aliquam injuriam fieri vel inferri, et
quibuscunque, qui contra praemisa vel eorum aliquod conarentur aliquid attemptare,
quantum potero me opponam, eosque pro posse impediam
(8) Offensiones et damna praedicti domini nostri papae, et dictae Romanae
ecclesiae, quantum potero, evitabo, nee ero in consilio, vel in facto, seu tractatu, in
quibus contra ipsum, vel eandem Romanam ecclesiam aliqua sinistra vel
praejudicialia machinentur
(9) Et si talia a quibusvis procurari novero vel tractari, impediam hoc pro
posse; et, quanto citius potero, commode significabo alteri, per quem possit ad eorum
notitiam pervenire.
(5) Vocatus ex quacunque causa ad synodum, seu ad eos accedam, nisi
praepeditus fuero canonica praepeditione, eisque obedientiam et reverentiam debitas
exhibebo et praestabo.

The text of this oath is taken from William Courtenay's oath to the pope upon becoming archbishop of
Canterbury in 1382. It is printed in Wilkins, Concilia, 3:154-155. The same oath, translated into
Middle English, is included in the late fourteenth-century Lollard tract attacking this oath; BL
Additional MS. 24202, fol. l rv . Moreover, Thomas Arundel took this oath when he became archbishop
of Canterbury in 1396, and the bishop-elect of Worcester took it as well while Arundel was archbishop;
Lambeth Palace Library, Arundell's Register, fols. 3\ 12v.

543
 (7) Apostolorum liminia, Romana curia existente citra vel ultra monies,
singulis trienniis visitabo, aut per me, aut per nuncium meum, nisi apostolica licentia
remaneam.
(10) Possessiones ad mensam mei archiepiscopatus pertinentes non vendam,
nee donabo, neque impignorabo, neque de novo infeudabo, vel aliquo modo alienabo,
inconsulto Romano pontifice.
11. Item, Robert, olim Basilicae duodecim apostolorum dicto Gebennensi,
nunc antipapae, qui se Clementem septimum nominat, Johanni olim tit. sancti marcelli
dicto Ambiavensi, Geraldo, olim. tit. sancti dementis dicto majoris monasterii
presbyteris, dictae ecclesiae cardinalibus, perditionis Jiliis, justo Deijudicio,
auctoritate apostolica condemnatis, et eorum alteri auxilium, consilium, vel favorem,
cujuscunque fuerintpraeminentiae, ordinis, religionis, conditionis, seu status, etiamsi
pontijicali, regali, vel reginali, vel quavis alia praefulgeant dignitate; etiamsi fuerint
romanae ecclesiae cardinales, seu aliis quibuscunque per ecclesiam denotatis, vel
inposterum denotandis, quamdiu extra gratiam et communionem sedis praedictae
permanebunt, non dabo quovismodo, per me vel alium, directe vel indirecte, publice
vel occulte, auxilium, consilium, vel favorem, nee ab aliis, quantum in me fuerit, et
impedire potero, dari permittam, sed eos secundum posse meum, donee convertantur,
juxta processus apostolicos, et prout justum fuerit, persequar.
Sic me Deus adjuvet, et haec sancta Dei evangelia.

IV. The standard oath of canoncial obedience to the pope of a bishop elect in the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries 4 (Normal text is where this oath overlaps with
oath III. Underlined text is more similar to oath II than to oath III. Italicized text is
new, that is, not in oath II or III.)
(1) Ego Guillermus ^4rc/n'episcopus Cantuarien ab hac hora inantea fidelius et
obediens ero beato petro sanctae que apostolicae Romanae ecclesiae ac domino nostro
domino Julio papae ij. suisque successoribus canonice intrantibus
(2) Non ero in consilio aut consensu vel facto vt vitam perdant aut membrum,
seu capiantur aut in eos manus violenter quomodolibet ingerantur vel injuriae aliqaue
inferantur quouis quaesito colore
(3) Consilium vero quod mihi credituri sunt per se aut per nuncios seu literas
ad eorum damnum me sciente nemini pandam

The text of this oath is taken from Archbishop William Warham's consecration oath printed
inWilkins, Concilia, 3:647. I have verified Wilkins' transcription with the original in Warham's
register; Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol. 2V. This also seems to be the same oath
with extremely negligible differences in wordingtaken by all archbishops and bishops at their
consecration in fifteenth and sixteenth-century England. For example, the same oath was taken by the
bishop-elect of St Asph in 1444 (Lambeth Palace Library, Stafford's Register, fols. 15v-16r), by Cuthert
Tunstall Bishop-Elect of London in 1522 (Lambeth Palace Library, CM 51, #23), and by Thomas
Cranmer Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury in 1533 (Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fols.
lv-2r). This is also the basic form of the oathwith a slight modification noted belowin the
Collectanea satis copoisa (BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fol. 53r_v) and Hall's Chronicle, 788-789.
Finally, this is the form of the oath taken by Archbishop Stafford in 1443 upon his reception of the
pallium; Lambeth Palace Library, Stafford's Register, fols. 4v-5r. Stafford's oath is exceptional because
the rest of the forms of the pallium oaths I have encountered are like either oath III or oath V.

544
 (4) Papatum romanum et regalia sancti petri adiutor eis ero ad retinendum &
defendum contra omnem hominem 5
(6) Legatum apostolicae sedis in eundo et redeundo honorifice tractabo et in
suis necessitatibus adiuvabo 6
(*) Iura honores privilegia et auctoritatem Romanae ecclesiae domini nostri
papae et
successorum predictorum conseruare defendere augere & promovere curabo
(8) Nee ero in consilio facto vel tractatu in quibus contra ipsum dominum
nostrum vel eandem Romanam ecclesiam aliqua sinistra vel praeiudicialia
personarum, Iuris honoris status et potestatis eorum machinentur
(9) Et si talia a quibuscunque procurari novero vel tractari impediam hoc pro
posse et quantocius potero commode significabo eidem domino nostro vel alteri per
quern ad ipsius noticiam pervenire possit 7
($) Regulas sanctorum patrum decreta ordinationes sentencias dispositiones
reseruationes provisiones et mandata apostolica totis viribus observabo etfaciam ab
alijs obseruari
(#) Hereticos scismaticos et rebelles domino nostro et successoribus
praedictis pro posse prosequar et impugnabo
(5) Vocatus ad sinodum veniam nisi praepeditus fuero canonica
praepeditione
(7) Apostolorum limina Romana Curia existente citra singulis Annis, vltra
vero montes, singulis biennijs visitabo aut per me aut per meum nuncium nisi
apostolica absolvar licentia
(10) Possessiones vero ad mensam meam pertinentes non vendam nee donabo
nee impugnorabo nee de novo infeudabo vel aliquo modo alienabo etiam cum
consensu Capituli ecclesiae meae inconsulto Romano pontifice:
Sic me deus adiuvet et haec sancta dei euangelia

The version of this oath in the Collectanea satis copiosa and in Hall's Chronicle adds the phrase "et
regulas sanctorum patrum" after "regalia sancti petri".
Although the actual text in this clause is included in both oaths 11 and 111, it lacks the expansion of oath
III and thus is closest to oath II.
7
The oath in the Collectanea satis copiosa substituted "scitatem" for "noticiam". Hall's translation of
the oath uses the English word "knowledge," which again demonstrates that his source was the
Collectanea.
Although the actual text in this clause is included in both oaths II and III, it lacks the expansion of oath
III and thus is closest to oath II. The version of this oath in the Collectanea satis copiosa simply reads:
"vocatus ad synodum venia etc." This means that clauses (7) and (10) are not included in the oath in the
Collectanea satis copiosa, though it is probable that the "etc" referred to them.
The oath in Hall's Chronicle varies here. It reads: "the lightes of the Apostles I shall visite yerely
personally, or by my deputie."
The oath in Hall's Chronicle varies here. It reads: "1 shall not alien nor sell my possessions, without
the Popes Counsaill: so God me helpe and the holy Euangelistes."

545
V. The archiepiscopal oath upon the reception of the pallium in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries'' (Text in normal font is identical to oath IV. Text in italics is like
oath III. All the text, excluding the order of the clauses and the final clause, comes
from oath II.)
(1) Ego Guillermus Archiepiscopus Cantuarien ab hac hora inantea fidelis et
obediens ero beato petro sanctaeque Romanae ecclesiae et domino meo domino Juli
papae ij siusque successoribus canonice intrantibus
(2) Non ero in consilio aut consensu vel facto vt vitam perdant aut membrum
seu capiantur mala captione
(3) Consilium vero quod mihi credituri sunt per se aut nuncios seu literas ad
eorum damnum me sciente neminij paridam
(4) Papatum romanum et regulia sancti Petri adiutor eis ero ad retinendum et
defendendum saluo meo ordine contra omnem hominem
(6) Legatum apostolicae sedis in eundo et redeundo honorifice tractabo et in
suis necessitatibus adiuvabo
(5) Vocatus ad sinodum veniam nisi praepeditus fuero canonica praepeditione
(7) Apostolorum limina Roman Curia existente citra singulis annis vltra vero
montes singulis biennijs visitabo per me aut per nuncium meum nisi apostolica
absolvar licencia
(10) Possessiones vero ad mens am mei Archiepatus pertinentes non vendam
neque donabo neque impignorabo neque de non infeudabo vel aliquo modo alienabo,
inconsulto Romano pontifice:
Sic me deus adiuvet et haec sancta dei euangelia

" The text of this oath is from William Warham's oath upon his reception of the pallium, printed in
Wilkins, Concilia, 3: 647-648. I have verified Wilkins' transciption by consulting the original in
Lambeth Palace Library, Warham's Register, fol. 3r. This same oath (with slight differences noted
below) was sworn by Archbishops-Elect Langham, Chichele, and Cranmer upon their reception of the
pallium. See Wood, Registrum Simonis de Langham, 115; Jacob, Register of Henry Chichele, 17;
Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's Register, fol. 5r'v. Exceptionally, Stephen Patryngton Bishop-Elect
of St David's under Chichele also took this oath instead of oath IV; Jacob, Register of Henry Chichele,
24.
'" This phrase was quite variable. Langham swore to visit Rome every three years if he resided beyond
the mountains, and every two years if he resided on this side of the mountains. Chichele just swore to
visit Rome every three years. Stephen Patryngton, bishop-elect of St David's under Chichele and
Cranmer, like Warham, swore to visit Rome every two years if he was beyond the mountains, but every
year if he was on the Italian side of the Alps.

546
 B: The Oaths of a Bishop-Elect to the King in Restitution for Their
Temporalities

I. The basic form of the oath of a bishop-elect for the restitution of their temporalities
1^

in the fifteenth century

Sacramentum de renunciatione Episcopi:
(1) I renunce all the Wordes comprosed in the popes bull made vnto me of this
Busshopricke of B the whiche be contrarie & preiudiciell to the king our souerayn lord
and to his Corowne/
(2) And of that I putte me humblement in his grace praying to haue restitucion
of the temporalties of my churche of C
Sacramentum de fidelitate Episcopi:
(3) Also I shalbe feithfull & true and feith & trouth shall bere to the king oure
soueragyn lord and to his heires kinges of England of lyff & lymne and of erthely
worship forto lyve & dye ayenst all people/
(4) And diligently I shalbe attendant vnto the kinges nedes and besorgnes [sic]
after my witte and power
(5) And the kinges Counsell I shall kepe and layne
(6) And truly I shall knowlage and do the seruices due of the temporalites of
my Bisshopriche of C. the whichce 1 clayme to holde of my said soueragyn lord the
king/ and the whiche he yeveth and yeldeth me
(7) And to his commaundementes in that/ that to me atteyneth and belongeth
for my tempaltees/1 shalbe obbeisaunt/
As god me help and his seintes
II. Cardinal Adrian's oath of fidelity to Henry VII for the bishopric of Bath and
Wells14 (Text in italics has no precedent in oath I.)
(1) Expresse renuncio, et in hiis scriptis manu et sigillo meis in praesentia
notariorum et testium subcriptorum munitis, totaliter cedo omnibus et quibuscumque
verbis, clausulis et sententiis, in bullis apostolicis michi factis de praedicto episcopatu
Bathoniensi et Wellensi contentis et descriptis, quae sunt vel quovis modo infuturum
esse poterunt praejudicialia sive dampnosa praefacto serenissimo regi, domino meo
supremo, haeredicbus suis de corpore suo legittime procreatis Angliae regibus,
coronae aut regno suae majestatis juribusve, consuetudinibus, aut praerogativis
ejusdem regni, et quoad hoc me integraliter submitto etpono in gratia suae
celsitudinis.
(2) Humillime supplicans suam majestatem, dignetur michi concedere
temporalia dicti episcopates Bathoniensis et Wellensis quae recognosco tenere a sua
majestate tanquam a domino meo supremo
(3) Et ego idem Adrianus cardinalis praedictus juro ad haec sancta Dei
evangelia per me corporaliter tacta, quod ab hac dei in antea, vita mea naturali durante,
ero fidelis et verus ligeus, ac fidelitatem in ligeantia mea pure et sincere servabo;

The text of this oath is taken from BL Harleian MS. 433, fol. 304v. An oath that uses many
synonyms but is the same in structure and content is BL Cotton MS. Vespasian C xiv, fols. 436r-437r.
1
From Burnet, History of the Reformation, 4:3-7.

547
 Fideleque et verum obsequium secundum optimum posse meum faciam et impendam
serenissimo principi Henrico ejus nominis septimo, Dei gratia Angliae et Franciae regi
ac domino Hiberniae domino meo supremo, et haeredibus suis de corpore suo legittime
procreatis Angliae regibus, contra quas cumque personas cujuscumque status,
gradus, praeeminentiae aut conditionis extiterint.
(8) Nee quicquam faciam aut attemptabo fierive aut attemptari consentiam,
quod in damnpnum, incommodum, autpraejudicium, ipsius serenissimi regis aut
haeredum suorum praedictorum, jurium, libertatum, praerogativarum, privilegiorum
et consuetudinum sui incliti regni, quovis modo cedere poterit.
(9) Sed mone id quod jam scio, vel imposterum cognoscam inhonorabile,
dampnosum aut praejudiciale suae serenitati, aut regno suo, seu contrarium honori
aut securitati suae majestatis, aut haeredum suorum praedictorum, non solum
impediam ad extremum potentiae meae, sed etiam cum omni possibili diligentid id
ostendam et significabo, ostendive out significari faciam eidem serenissimo regi, omni
favore, metu, promisso aut jurejurando cuicumque personae aut quibusque personis
cujuscumque status, gradus, ordinis, praeeminentiae conditionisve extiterint, antehac
per me factis aut interpositis seu imposterum fiendis aut interponendis, penitus
sublatis et non obstantibus.
(4) Honorem insuper suae majestatis ad extremum potentiae meae servabo.
(5) Parliamentis quoquo et aliis conciliis suae celsitudinis cum in ejus regno
fuero diligenter attendam; consilium quod sua serenitas per se seu literas aut nuncium
suum michi manifestabit, nemini pandam, nisi hiis quibus ipse jusserit: et si consilium
meum super aliquo facto majestas sua postulaverit, fideliter sibi consulam,, et quod
magis suae serenitati videbitur expediere, et conducere juxta opinionem et scire
meum, dicam et aperiam, atque id si sua serenitas mandaverit pro posse meo
diligenter faciam.
(10) Causas insuper et negotita omnia sua serenitatis mihi commissa, seu
imposterum committenda, in curia Romand prosequenda, pertractanda et solicitanda,
fideliter, accurate et diligenter, cum omnimodd desteritate prosequar, pertractabo et
solicitabo
(11) Bullasque ac alias literas apostolicas validas et efficaces, in debitd juris
forma, super eisdem causis et negotiis impetrari expediri et obtineri absque fraude,
dolo aut sinistra qudvis machinatione quantum in me erit, cum omni effectu enitar,
operam dabo et conabor: ac easdem taliter expeditas, cum ed quam res expostulat
diligentid, suae serenitati transmittam, aut per alios transimitti, tradi et liberari
curabo.
(6) Et faciam servitia quoque et homagia pro temporalibus dicti episcopatus,
quae recognosco tenere a sua celsitudine tanquam a domino meo supremo, fideliter
faciam et implebo.
Ita me Deus adjuvet et sancta Dei evangelia.

548
III. Gardiner's oath at Hampton Court on November 29, 153115 (Words in italics have
no precedent in oath I.)
(1) I, Steven Gardener, principall secretarie to your Highnes, and clerk,
Busshop of Winchester, renounce and clerely forsake all such clauses, wordes,
sentences, and grauntes which I have or shall have herafter of the Popes Holines of
the busshoprick off Winchester that in any wise is or may be prejudiciall to your
Highnes, your heires, successours dignitie or estate roiall, knowledging my self to take
and hold the said busshoprick immediately and only ofyour Highnes,
(2) Most lowly beseching your Grace the same for restituicion of the
temporalities of the said busshoprick,
(3) Promising as afore that I shalbe faithfull, true, and obedient subject to your
said Highnes, your heires and successours during my life.
(6) And the service and other thinges due unto your Highnes for the
restituicion of the said temporalities of the said busshoprick, I shall truly do and
performe,
So help me God and the holie Evangelistes.

IV. Oath from Collectania satis copiosa and Hall's Chronicle^ (Words in italics are
new. Of the words not in italics, clauses (3), (4), and (5) are from oath I, while clauses
(1), (lb), (2), and (6) are more similar to oath III.)
(1) I A. B. clerke vtterly renounce and clerely forsake all suche clauses wordes
sentences & grauntes whiche 1 haue or shall haue hereafter of the popes holynes of and
for the Archbishopriche or bishopryche of N. that in any wyse haue bene is or herafter
may be hurtfull or preiudiciall to youre highnes your heires, successours, dignite
priuiledge or estate royall.17
(3) And ferthermore I doo swere that I shall be faythefull and trewe, and
faithe and treuthe I shall bere vtno you my soueragne lorde and kyng And to youre
heires kinges of the same, of lief and lymme and erthelie worship aboue all creatures
for to lyve and die with you and yours agaynste all people.I8
(4) And diligentlie I shalbe attendaunte vnto all your nedes and busynes after
my witte and power
(5) And youre counsaill I shall kepe and layne19
(lb) Knowleding myself to take and holde the said Archbishorpche or
bishopryche immediately and onely vpon your grace.20
(2) Moste lowly beseching the same for restitution of the temporalties of the
said Archbishopriche or bishopryche.21

15
BL Additional MS. 34,319, fol. 21 v , printed in Midler (ed), The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, 479-
480. Edward Lee took this same oath for the archbishopric of York in 1531, the only variation being
"Grace" for "highness" in clause (1). See Rymer, Foedera, 14:428-429.
16
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi, fols. 53v-54v; Hall's Chronicle, 789. The oath in Hall's Chronicle
varies slightly from that in the Collectanea. See the footnotes below.
1
The oath in Hall's Chronicle is missing "Archbishopriche or".
Hall substitutes "And Also" for "Furthermore" and "to" for "unto" and does not have the words "and
kyng".
19
Hall has "holde" instead of "layne".
20
This clause in Hall reads: "knowlegyng my self to hold my bishopricke of you onely".

549
 (6) promysyng as afore that I shal be faythfull trewe and obedient subgyet to
your said highnes heires and successours during my lyef and the seruyces and other
thinges due vnto your highnes for the restitution of the temporalities of the said
Archbishopriche or bishopriche I shall treulie do and obedientlie performe.
So helpe me god and thes holy Evangelies.

V. Oath of a bishop-elect to the king from April, 1534 to 1536 24 (Text in italics has
no precedent in previous oaths of a bishop-elect to the king.)
(3) Ye shall say and swere as followith I shalbe faithfull and true and faith and
trowth I shall bere vnto your maiestie and to your heyres kynges of this Realme And
with lyef and lyme and erthely honor for to lyue and dye as your faithfull subiecte
ayenste all parsons of what degree estate or condicion so euer they be
(12) AndIshall preferr mayntayn and sustayne the ho [nor] suertie right
preemynence andprorogatife of your maiestie and of your heyres kynges of this Realm
and iurisdicion of your ymperiall Croune of the same afore and ayenst all manner of
persons powers and authorities whatsoeuer they be
(8) And I shall not wetyngly do or attempte nor to my power suffer to be done
or attemptid any thyng or thynges privilye or apertly that may be to the dymynycion or
derogacion of your Croune of this Realme or of the lawes liberties rightes and
prerogatives belongyng to the same
(13) But put my hole effectual] endevor from tyme to tyme as the case shall
require to advaunce and encrease thesame to my wytt and vttermoste of my power.
And in no wyse herafter I shall accepte any othe or make any promyse pacte or
covenante secreatlye or apertly by any manner of [means] or by any color of pretence
to the contrarye of this myne othe or any parte therof.
(4) And I shalbe diligently attendaunte to your maiestie and to your heyres
kynges of this Realme in all your commaundmentes causes and Busyneses 25
(14) And also I knowledge and recognyse your maiestie ymiediatly vnder
almyghtye god to be chyef and supreme hedd of the churche of England
(6) and clayme to haue the Busshopriche of Elye holy and all onelye of your
gyft and to hold the proffetes temporall and Spirituall of the same all onlye of your
maiestie and of your heyres kynges of this Realme and of none other
(15) And in that so[rt] and none other I shall take my restitucon out of your
hand accordyngly, utterlye renouncsynge any other sute to be had therfore to any
other creature levynge or here after to be excepte [sic] your heyres.

21
This clause in Hall reads: "besechyng you of restitucion of the temporalities of the same".
22
Hall substitutes "before" for "afore", "to" for "unto", and "for the same bishopric" for "of the said
Archbishopric or bishopriche".
23
Hall has "so God me helpe and all sainctes".
24
"This is the othe that euery person elected or presentid to any archebisshopriche or Bishopriche
within this Realme or within any other the kynges domynyons shold swere to the kynges maiestie"; NA
SP1/83, fol. 54r (LP, VII427). The text of the oath itself shows that it is the oath of Thomas Goodrick,
Bishop Elect of Ely. For the oath of Roland Lee upon taking the bishopric of Coventry and
Litchfieldwhich is identical to this oathsee, Burnet, History of the Reformation, 6:290-291.
25
This seems to be a mix of clauses (4) and (7) from oath B I.

550
 (16) And I shall to my wytt and vttermoste of my power obserue kepe
maynteyne and defend all the statutes of this Realme made ayenste reseruacions and
prouysions of the Busshop of Rome called the pope of any the Archebusshopriches or
Busshopriches of this Realme or of other within your domynyons.
(17) And also I shall obserue fulfyll defend maynteyne and kepe to the
vttermost of my power all the hole effectes andcontentes of the statute made for the
suertie of your succession in the croune of this Realme and all clauses and articles
mencioned and conteyned in the said statute and also other statutes made in
confirmacion or for the due execucion of the same.
(18) And all thynges I shall do with out color fraunde or any other vndue
meane ayefnst all] persones powers and auctorities of the worlde what so euer they
be, And in no wise for any m[anner of] cause color respecte or pretence privilie or
apertly I shall move do or attempt or to my powefr suffer any] thyng or thynges to be
done or attempted to the contrary herof
So helpe me god all sainctes and the hollye Evanngelistes

C: Promise of the bishops to renounce the pope and his bulls 26

(1) Ego N. Archiepiscopus vel episcopus pure sponte et absolute coram vestra
Regia Maiestate Anglie confiteor quod contra deum et ordinationem eius, qua vult
omnes homines suis principibus et Regibus esse subiectos et subditos, et subinde
etiam contra vestram celsitudonem, meum solum ac supremum dominum in terris,
grauiter deliqui precipue in eo quod episcopum Romanum (quern papa vocant) loco
summi dommini mei habui et reputam et in eo quod iuramentum prestiti, semper illi,
me fore fidelem, et quod iuraui, me, papatam eius contra omnem hominem vestra
Maiestate minime excepta) defensurum qoud que iuraui me mandata illius
ordinationes, decreta et prouisiones obserua, curum [transcription uncertain] et
eiusmodi cetera me fasturum, que in dicto iuramento continentur.
(2) Quod sane iuramentum, illegitimum et iniustum et in in [sic] vestri
Maiestatis potestatem a deo collatam, iniuriosum esse indico, et profiteor, et proinde
illud detestor irritum que et inane esse censeo, et minime obseruandum duco
(3) Quocirca vestram illustrissimam Maiestatem supplex et ex animo deprecor
ut has grauissimas offensas mihi ante pedes vestrae Maiestatis prostrato remittere ac
condonare dignetur
(4) Preterea confiteor dictum Romarum episcopum non plus autoritatis, aut
iurisditionis habuisse aut habere in hoc vestro regno Angliae de iure diuino: quam
alius [corrected to "alium" by someone with a different hand] quiuis externus
episcopus [corrected to externum episcopum].
(5) Et si quam maiorem auctoritatem ac iurisdictionem, in hoc vestro regno
exercuit, tam iniuste vsurpauit quia illam a deo se accepisse profitebat et praecedebat
quam a deo verum non accepit.
(6) Et ob id merito tale potestate, in hoc vestro regno vsurpata priuatus est.

NA SP 6/3, fols. 63r-64r.

/

551
 (7) Et quod paptum autoritatem et iurisdictionem, quam in hoc vestro regno
exercuit, et vsupauit, a deo non accepitum pro virili mea defendam contra omnem
hominem atque ob id euis mandata, decreta ordinationes prouisiones et cetera similia
posthac me non obseruaturum, nee me eisdem vllo modo paritutum in verbo pontificio
promitto
(8) Ceterum omnibus bullis ac breuibus cuiuscumque tenoris fuerint, a
quorumque Romane pontifice, mini aut ecclie meae concessis, atque omnibus
priuelegijs et indultis in eisdem contentis, expresse in his scriptis renuncio,
recognostens me tenere Archiepicopatum vel episcopatum meum, iura, iurisdistionem
ac possessiones ad eamdem pertinentia de vestra sola Maiestate cui me fidelem et pro
omnia obedientem sub deo fore, profiteor protestor atque promitto,
(9) Quotcumque autem et quascumque bullas originales aut breuia originalia
mihi aut ecclie meae a quocumque Romane pontifice concessas aut concessa, habere
consequi potero: intra quadraguita dies nunc immedrate sequentes, illuc deferri
curabo, quo vestra Maiestas iusserit, illic que relinqui seruanda vel cancellanda
secundum vestrae illustrissimae Maiestatie beneplacitum.
(10) Et quotcunque bullarum aut breuium transcripta que in regestris meis
inserta, ita alijs actis intermixta sunt, vt ab inuicem seperari non possunt quamprimum
commode fieri possit cancellanda curabo.
(11) Que vero sine preiudicio aliorum monumentorum extrahi et separari
possint: intra quadraginto dies praedictis illuc trasmitti faciam, quo vestra Maiestas
iusserit, vt praedict[um] est.
(12) humillime prouolutus in genua postulas a vestra illustrissima regia
Maiestate vti dignetur fut vestro diplomate, vestro que Regio magno que sigillo, mihi
et eccesliae meae talia priuilegia et indulta concedere qualia in dictis bullis
continentur, vt nos episcopalia omnia, quam habemus a vestre Maiestatis bonitate
accepise gaudeamus et a vestra Maiestate integre pendere, et eidem soli sub deo
seruires teneamur.

D: The Oaths of Succession

In general, text in italics has no precedent in earlier oaths of succession. Italics

signify something new. For oath I, text in italics is not in oath II.

I. The oath of succession of 1534 as recorded in the Journal of the House of Lords21
(1) Ye shall swear to bear your Faith, Truth, and Obedience, alonely to the
King's Majesty,
(2) And to the Heirs of his Body,
(3) According to the Limitation and Rehearsal within this Statute of
Succession above specified,
(4) And not to any other within this Realm, nor foreign Authority, Prince or
Potentate;
(5) And in case any Oath be made, or hath been made, by you, to any other
Person or Persons, that then you to repute the same as vain and annihilate;
27
Journal of the House of Lords, 1:82.

552
 (6) And that, to your Cunning, Wit, and uttermost of your Power, without
Guile, Fraud, or other undue Means, ye shall observe, keep, maintain, and defend, this
Act above specified, and all the whole Contents and Effects thereof, and all other Acts
and Statutes made since the Beginning of this present Parliament, in Confirmation or
for due Execution of the same, or of any thing therein contained;
(7) And thus ye shall do against all Manner of Persons, of what Estate,
Dignity, Degree, or Condition soever they be, and in no wise do or attempt, nor to
your Power suffer to be done or attempted, directly or indirectly, any Thing or Things,
privily or apertly, to the Let, Hindrance, Damage, or Derogation thereof, or of any Part
no

of the same, by any Manner of Means, or for any Manner of Pretence or Cause.
So help you God and all Saints
II. The oath attached to the commission to Sussex on April 20, 153429
(1) Ye shall swere to bere ffayth troyth & obedyence alonlye to the kynges
maiestye
(2) and vnto his heyres of his bodye of his most dere & intyerly belovyd
lawfull wyffe quen Anne begoton & to begoton Andfferther to the heyres of our Sayd
Soueraygn lord
(3) accordyng to the lymytacion in the Statute made for Suerte of his
Successyon of the Crown of the Realme mencyoned and conteynyd
(4) & nott to any other within the Realme nor fforen auctoryte or potentate /
(5) And in Case any othe be made or hath byn made by youe to any other
person or persons that then youe to repute the same as vayn and adnychillate/31
(6) And that to your connyng wytt & vttermoste of your powre without Guyle
ffraude or other vndue mean ye shall obserue kepe mayntayn & defend the sayd act of
Successyon & all the hole effectes & contentes of thereof And all other Actes &
Statutes made in Confyracion or for due execucion of the same or of any thing therein
conteynyed
(7) And thus ye shall doo ayenst all maner of persons of what Estate dyngnyte
or Condycion so euer they be And in no wyse do or attempte dyrectly any thing or
thinges prevely or apertly to the lett hynderance damage or derogacion therof or of any
part of the same by any maner of meanes or for any maner of pretence
So helpp ye god all sayntes & the holy Euangelystes.

While the text in italics in this clause is omitted from oath B II, it is in the oath of succession
stipulated by the act of Parliament from November 1534.
29
BL Harleian MS. 7,571, fol. 25v. This oath is also exceedingly similar to the oath as recorded in the
act of November 1534 ratifying the oath of succession; Statutes of the Realm, 26 Hen. 8, c. 2, 3:493. It
is also like the oath Cromwell tendered George Cotes on September 2, 1535; NA SP1/96, fol. 59r.
Differences between these three oaths will be noted in the footnotes below.
30
Cotes' oath reads: "in the Croun" instead of "of the Crown".
31
The oath from the act of November 1534 and Cotes' oath omit the word "other" in this clause.
2
Cotes' oath omits "your counyng wytt & vttermost". It also substitutes "under an conformation" for
"made in conformation".
33
The oath from the act of November 1534 and Cotes' oath add "degree" after the word "dignitie", add
"nor to your power suffer to be done or attempted" after the word "attempte", and add "or indirectly"
after "directly". Thus, in these two oaths this clause is like oath D I rather than oath D II.

553
III. The oath of succession from the act of succession of 1536
(1) Ye shall swere to bere faith truth and obedience all onely to the Kynges
Majestie, supreme hede in erthe under God of the Churche ofEnglonde, duryng his
lyfe
(2) And to his heires of his bodye of his moste dere and entierly beloved laufull
Wife Queue Jane begoten and to be begoten and procreated and further to their heires
of our said Soveraigne Lorde,
(3) Accordynge to the lymytacion in the Statute made for suretie of his
succession in the Crowne of this Realme, in the parliament begonne and holden at
Westmynster in the viij day of June in the xxviij yere of the Kynges moste gracious
reign
(8) And also for lack of such heires, to suche person and persones as the
Kynges Highnes shall lymytt and apoynte to succede to the Crowne, by vertue and
auctorite of the same acte,
(4) And not to eny other within this Realme, nor forayne auctorite power or
potentate,
(5) And in case eny other othe be made or hath be made by you to eny persone
or persones that then ye to repute the same as vayne and adnychilate
(6) And that to your connyng witt and uttermoste of your power, without gile
fruade or other undew [maner] ye shall observe kepe mayntene and defende the said
acte of succession, made in the saidparliamente begon and holden at Westmynster in
the said viij day of June in the said xxviij yere of the Kynges most royal! reign, and all
the hole effects and contentes therof, and all thynges that shalbe done by the Kynges
Highnes by auctorite of the same, and all other actes and statutes made in
confirmacion or for execucion of the same or of eny thyng therin contyned;
(7) And this ye shall doo ayenst all maner of persones of what estate degre or
condicion so ever they be, and in no wise do or attempte, nor to your power suffre to
be doon or attempted directly or indirectly, any thing or thinges priveleye or appertly
to the lett hydraunce damage or derogacion therof or of eny parte of the same, or of
eny thing or thynges that shalbe done by the Kynges Highnes by vertue or auctorite of
the said acte, by any manere of meanes or eny manere of pretence:
So helpe you God all Seyntes and the holy Evangelistis.

IV. The oaths copied down on the spare leaves of a manuscript gospel
(1) Ye shall swere and bear faith and truth and obedyence all onely to the
Kings Majestie supreme hed in erthe under God of the Church of Englond duryng his
life
(2) And to his heirs of his bodye of hys most and enterely belovyd laufull late
Wife Quene Jane begotten, and further to the heires of our said Soeraign Lorde,
(3) Accordyng to the lymytacyon yn the statute made for the suertye of hys
successyon yn the Crown of thys Realme mencioned and conteyned, according to the
statue and Lawes in that behalf made

34
Statutes of the Realm, 28 Hen. 8, c. 10, 3:661-662.
35
BL Additional MS. 4507, fols. 4r-6r, 7r-9r. There are two oaths copied in this manuscript. They
commence the same but depart at the end. See below.

554
 (9a) And you shall do no felonye, nor treasones, nor consent therunto; and if
you here or knowe of any, you shall shewe the Kyng and his Councell thereof
(9b) And also shall here faith and truth to our said Soveraign Lorde his heires
and pay all suche rent and do such servyce as is due to his grace for the Manour of
Bthat ye hold of our said Soveraign Lorde,'
So God you help and all Saynts Etc

E: Instructions for the Visitation of the Friars, Their Profession, and the
Profession of the Other Clerical Institutions in 1534

For the two sets of instructions, the italicized text is not contained in the other
set of instructions. The text underlined in the instructions has no parallel in the actual
profession of the friars. In the actual professions of the friars and other clerical
institutions, the text in italics is not contained in the other profession.

I. General Instructions to the friars39

(1) Primum vt omnes et singuli fratres vnius cuiusque cenobii intra regnum
Angliae in domo sua capitulari (vt vocat) personaliter praesentes vna congregentur.
Deinde vt seorsum et separatim singuli examinentur super quibus visum fuerit.
(2) Vtfiat inquisitio atque vt singuli rationem reddere rogantur suae erga
Regem nostrum Henricum eius nominis octava fidei et obedientiae.
(3) Vt vniversi et singuli iurisiurandi sacramento obstringantur vti integram
perpetuamque fidem et obedientiam praestent erga eundem Regem nostrum cum Anna
Regina vxore eiusdem, et erga sobolem ex eadem Anna tarn progeneratam quam
progenerandam.
(4) Vt iureiurando omnes et singuli obligentur praedista omnia populo
notificare, praedicare, suadere vbicumque datibur Locus et occasio.
(5) Vt confirmatum ratumque habeant quod praedictus Rex noster Henricus
soit caput ecclesiae in Anglia prout tarn in conuocatione cleri quam in parliamento
decretum est et ratificatum.
(6) Vt confiteantur episcopum Romanum qui in suis bullis papae nomen
vsurpat a summi pontificis principatum sibi arrogat nihilo maioris dignitatis habendum
esse, quam caeteros quosuis episcopos in sua quenque dioecesi.
(7) Vt ne quis eorum pro concione privatim vel publice habenda eundem
episcopum Romanum appellare velit nomine papae, aut summi pontificis, sed nomine
episcopi Romani vel
ecclesiae Romanae neque orare pro eo tanquam papa, sed tanquam episcopo Romano
pro vt praedictum est.

This clause is more similar to oath D II than oath D III. The last bit of text in italics is not in the
second version of this oath on folios 7r to 9'.
37
This clause is in only the first oath.
38
This clause is in only the second oath.
39
BL Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv, fol. 1 l'"v (LP, VII 590).

555
 (8) Ne quis eorum omnium in vlla velprimata vel publica condone quicquam
ex sacris scripturis desumptum ad alienum sensum detorquere praesumat sed quisque
Christum eius que verba et facta omnia simpliciter, aperte, syncere, et ad amussim
sacrarum scripturarum et vere catholicorum doctorum praedicet.
(9) Vt diligens fiat inquisitio quot et qui in quoque cenobio concionatores sint,
deinde vt singulaie singulorum condones seuere examinentur, sint ne catholicae et
orthodoxae, an non ac vere Christiano concionatore dignae, an non: qoudsi
catholicae et orthodoxae inuenientur, tunc admittur, approbenturque, sinminus,
euestigio comburantur
(10) Noneantur omnes et singuli quotquot suntconcionaturi vt in suis
orationibus et comprecationibus de more faciendis, primum omnium Regem tamque
caput supremum ecclesiae Anglicanae deo et populi precibus commendent. Deinde
Reginam Annam cum sua sobole et turn demum Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem cum
caeteros cleri ordinibus prout videbitur.
(11) Vt quicquid auri aut argenti facti celatique, et quicquis aliorum bonorum
mobilium cuiuscunque generis aliquod cenobium possidere aut habere comperietur,
proferre et ostendere rogantur, atque etiam verum minime que mendacem elenchum
seu catalogum rerum omnium et singularum tradantes
(12) Vt omnia et singula cenobia ac fratres in eisdem aut poy [unsure of word]
quovis viuentes sese et successores suos conscientia ac iurisiurandi sacramento
obligent, et suo quique conuentuali sigillo in domibus suis capitularibus date
confirment, quatenus omnia et singula praedicta fideliter obseruent.

II. Instructions for the visitations of the Franciscan Observants 40

"SEQUUNTER ARTICULI COMMISSIONS, GENERALIUM VISITATORUM
REGNJ ANGLIAE DEPUTATORUM
(1) Jn primis quod omnes et singuli fratres cuiuscumque coenobij in domo sua
capitularj congregentur. Deinde singuli seorsum et separatim disquirantur super
sequentibus:
(2) Primo quod cogantur exhibere fidem et obedientiam Domino nostro Regi
Henrico.
(3) Jtem vniversi et singuli iuramento astringantur praestare integram fidem
erga ipsum regem Henricum, dominam reginam Annam et sobolem ex ipso rege et
ipsa regina Anna tarn procreatam quam procreandam.
(4b) Jtem quod confiteantur matrimonium ipsius regis cum ipsa regina Anna
esse verum et legittimum.
(5) Jtem quod confirmatum et ratum habeant, quod praedictus rex sit caput
supremum
ecclesiae Anglicanae prout in convocatione cleri et parlamenti decretum est et
ratificatum.
(6) Jtem vt confideantur Episcopum Romanum qui in suis bullis nomen papae
vsurpat, et summi Pontificis principatum sibi arrogat, nihil maioris dignitatis aut

Henry De Vocht, Acta Thomae Mori: History of the Reports of His Trial and Death with an Unedited
Contemporary Narrative (Louvain: Publications of the Institute for Economics of the University, 1947),
208-209.

556
authoritatis habendum esse quara ceteros quosque Episcopos in sua quaque diocesj, et
ipsum non esse caput ecclesiae vniuersalis.
(7) Jtem ne quis publice vel occulte vocare vel nominare debeat vel audeat
Episcopum Romanum nomine Papae aut summi pontificis, sed tantum nomine
Episcopi Romanj vel ecclesiae Romanae
(8b) Jtem si contingat aliquem praedicare, praedicet contra vsurpatiuj
Episcopi Romanj potestatem.
(9b) Jtem fratres minores de obseruantia, profiteantur regulam b. ffranciscj
obseruare sub obedientia regis et non Episcopi romanj. Accipiantque Georgium
vorby, prouincialem fratrum Augustinentium pro suo general) ministro.
(10) Jtem vt omnes et singuli concionatores et in suis orationibus ex more
faciendis primum omnium regem nostrum tanquam supremum caput Ecclesiae
Anglicanae Deo et populo commendent. Deinde reginam Annam cum sua sobele.
Demum Dominum Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem cum ceteris cleri ordinibus.
(12b) Jtem nee Ministrj fratrum Minorum obseruantinorum vel conuentualium
nee prouincialis patrum Carmelitarum, neque prouincialis cuiuscumque ordinis nee
aliquis alius suos fratres aut eorum aliquos visitare praesumat, priusquam frater
Georgius Vrobij, prouincialis aeremitarum sancti Augustinj, et frater Joannes Helsev
prouincialis fratum praedictorum generates visitatores omnium praedictorum
ordinum iuxta regnum Angliae a domino nostro rege henrio ordinati visitauerint fet]
certiorem reddiderint.
(11) Et quicquid auri vel argenti vel quorumcumque mobilium cuiuscumque
generis aliquod monasterium seu coenobium habere vel possidere compererint,
ipsorum cathalogum sine mendacio ostendere cogantur.

III. Profession of the friars41

(2) Quum ea sit non solum Christianae religionis & pietatis ratio sed nostrae
etiam obedientiae regula, ut domino nostro Henrico ejus nominis octavo, cui uni &
foli, post Christum Jesum servatorem nostrum, debemus universa, non modo
omnimodam in Christo, & eandem sinceram, integram perpetuamque animi
devotionem, fidem, observantiam, honorem, cultum, reverentiam praestemus, sed
etiam, de eadem fide & observantia nostra, rationem, quotienscumque postulabitur
reddamus, & palam omnibus, se res poscat, libentissime testemur,
(3) Noverint universi ad quos praesens scriptum pervenerit quod nos, Priores
& conventus fratrum, videlicet, minorum ordinis sancti Francisci, Fratrum
praedicatorum ordinis sancti cominici, fratrum heremitarum sancti Augustini, &
Fratrum carmelitarum ordinis beatae Mariae virginis, etiam prior ordinis cruciferorum
in civitate londonie, uno ore & voce at que unanimi omnium & singulorum consensu
& assensu, hoc scripto nostro sub sigillis nostris comunibus in domibus nostris
capitularibus dato, pro nobis & successoribus nostris omnibus & singulis imperpetuum
profitemur testamur ac fideliter promittimus & spondemus, nos dictos Priores &
conventus & successores nostras omnes & singulos integram, inviolatam, sinceram,

1
NA C 54/402, m 33d; Rymer, Foedera, 14:487 {LP VII 665). This particular profession was made on
April 17, 1534.

557
perpetuamque fidem observantiam & obedientiam semper praestaturos erga Dominum
Regem nostrum Henricum octavum,
(4b) & erga serenissiman Reginam Annam uxorem ejusdem, & erga castum
sanctumque matrimonium nuper non solum inter eosdem juste & legittime contractum
ratum & consummation, sed etiam tarn in duabus convocationibus cleri, quam in
parliamento dominorum spiritualium & temporalium atque communium in eodem
parliamento congregatorum & praesentium determinatum, & per Thomam
Cantuariensem Archiepiscopum solemniter confirmatum, & erga quamcumque aliam
ejusdem Henrici Regis nostri uxorem post mortem praedictae Annae nunc uxoris ejus
legittime ducendam, & erga sobolem dicti domini regis Henrici ex praedicta Anna
legittime tarn progentiam quam progenerandam, & erga sobolem dicti domini regis ex
alia quacumque legittima uxore post mortem ejusdem Annae legittime
progenerandam,
(4) & quod haec eadem populo notificabimus praedicabimus & suadebimus
ubicumque dabitur locus & occasio.
(5) Item, quod confirmatum ratumque habemus semperque & perpetuo
habituri simus quod praedictus Rex noster Henricus est caput ecclesiae Anglicanae.
(6) Item, quod Episcopus Romanus, qui in suis bullis papae nomen usurpat &
summi pontificis principatum sibi arrogat, nihilo majoris neque auctoritatis aut
jurisdictionis habendus sit quam coeteri quivis Episcopi in Anglia vel alibi gentium in
sua quisque dioecese.
(13) Item, quod soli dicto Dominio Regi & successoribus suis adhaerebimus,
atque ejus deer eta ac proclamationes, insuper omnes Angliae leges, atque etiam
statuta omnia in parliamento & per parliamentum deer eta confirmata stabilita &
ratificata perpetuo manutenebimus, episcopi Romani legibus decretis & canonibus, si
qui contra legem divinam & sacram scripturam esse invenientur, imperpetuum
42
renunciantes.
(8) Item, quod nullus nostrum omnium in ulla vel privata vel publica concione
quicquam ex sacris scripturis desumptum ad alienum sensum detorquere praesumet,
sed quisque christum ejusque verba & facta simpliciter aperte sincere, & ad norman
seu regulam sacrarum scripturarum & vere catholicorum atque orthodoxorum
doctorum, praedicabit catholice & orthodoxe. 43
(10) Item, quod unusquisque in suis orationibus & comprecationibus de more
faciendis, Primum omnium regem tanquam supremum caput ecclesiae Anglicanae
deo, and populi precibus commendabit, Deinde Reginam cum sua sobole, turn demum
Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem cum caeteris cleri ordinibus prout videbitur.
(12) Item, quod omnes & singuli praedicti Priores & conventus & successores
nostri conscientiae ac jusjurandi sacramento nosmet firmiter obligamus quod omnia &
singula praedicta fideliter imperpetuum observabimus.

" This article has no precedent in the instructions for the visitation of the friars.
43
This clause is not in the profession of the prioress and convent of the priory of Dartford, Kent made
on May 14, 1534; NA E 25 39/2 (LP VII 921.1), Rymer, Foedera, 14: 490-491.
44
This clause is not in the profession of the prioress and convent of the priory of Dartford, Kent made
on May 14, 1534; NA E 25 39/2 (LP VII 921.1), Rymer, Foedera, 14: 490-491.

558
IV. The standard profession of nonmendicant clerical institutions from 1534
(2) Quum ea sit non solum Christianae Religionis et pietatis ratio, sed nostrae
etiam obedientiae Regula domino Regi nostro Henrico ejus nominis octavo (cui uni et
soli post Christum Jesum servatorem nostrum debemus vniversa) non modo
omnimodam in Christo, et eandem sinceram, integram, perpetuamque animi
devotionem, fidem, et observantiam, honorem, cultum, et reverentiam praestemus, sed
eitam de eadem fide, et observantia nostra, rationem (quotienscumque postulabitur)
reddamus, et palam omnibus (si res poscat) libentissime testemur,
(3) Nouerit universi ad quos praesens scriptum pervenerit, quod Nos Decanus
et Capitulum Ecclesiae Cathedralis divi Pauli Londoniae, Londoniensis Dioecesis, uno
ore et voce, atque unanimi omnium consensu et assensu, hoc scriptor nostro sub
Sigillo nostro communi in domo nostra capitulari dato, pro nobis et successoribus
nostris omnibus et singulis imperpetuum profitemur, testamur, ac fideliter promittimus
et spondemus nos dictos Decanum & Capitulum et Successores nostros omnes et
singulos integram, inviolatem, synceram, perpetuamque fidem observantiam, et
obedientiam semper praestaturous erga Dominum Regem nostrum Henricum octavum,
et erga, Annam Reginam uxorem ejusdem, et erga sobolem ejus es eadem Anna
legittime tarn progenitam quam progenerandam,
(4) et quod haec eadem populo notifiscabimus, praedicabiumus, et suadebimus
ubicumque dabitur locus et occasio,46
(5) Item quod confirmatum ratumque habemus, semperque et perpetuo,
habituri sumus, quod praedictus Rex noster Henricus est caput Ecclesiae Anglicanae,
(6) Item quod Episcopus Romanus, qui in suis bullis Papae nomen usrupat, et
summi pontificis principatum sibi arrogat, non habet majorem aliquam jurisdictionem
collatem sibi a deo in sacra scriptura in hoc Regno Angliae, quam quivis alius externus
Episcopus,47
(7) Item quod nullus nostrum in ulla sacra condone privatim vel pub lice
habenda, eundem Episcopum Romanum apellabit nomine Papae, aut summi pontificis,
sed nomine Episcopi Romani, vel Ecclesiae Romanae, et quod nullus nostrum orabit
pro eo tanquam papa, sed tanquam Episcopo Romano.
(13) Item quod soli dicto domino Regi et Successoribus suis adhaeribimus, et
ejus Leges ac Decreta manutenebimus, Episcopi Romani Legibus Decreitis, et
canonibus, qui contra legem divinam, et sacram scripturam, aut contra iura hujus regni
49
esse invenientur, imperpetuum renunciantes,

The text of this profession is taken from the profession of the dean and chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral
made on June 20, 1534; NA E 35 82/1; Rymer, Foedera, 14:493-494 (LP, VII 865).
Compare to (3) of the friars' profession. The institutional profession is missing the section on
Henry's marriage to Anne having been declared legitimate by Parliament, Convocation, and the
archbishop of Canterbury.
47
Although the basic meaning remains the same, the wording of this clause varies among the different
institutional professions of 1534. The second half of this clause sometimes reads: "nichilo maioris
dignitatis habendis sit quam ceteris Episcopi in sua quisque diocese."
48
This clause has no parallel in the friars' profession, but it is the seventh article of the instructions for
the visitation of the friars.
49
An abbreviated form of clause (13) in the friars' profession.

559
 (8) Item quod nullus nostrum omnium in ulla vel privata vel publica concione
quicquam ex sacris scripturis desumptum, ad alienum sensum detorquere praesumet,
sed quisque Christum, ejusque verba & facta simpliciter, aperte, sincere, et ad normam
seu Regulam sacrarum scripturarum & vere catholicorum atque orthodoxorum
doctorum praedicabit catholice et orthodoxe.
(10) Item quod unusquisque nostrum in suis orationibus et comprecationibus
de more faciendis, primam omnium Regem tanquam supremum Caput Ecclesiae
Anglicanae, Deo et populi precibus commendabit, Deinde Reginam ANNAM cum sua
sobole, turn demum Archiepiscopos Cantuariensem et Eboracesem cum caeteris cleri
ordinibus prout videbitur
(12) Item quod omnes et singuli praedicti Decanus et Capitulum et
Successores nostri, conscientiae et jusjurandi sacramento nosmet firmiter obligamus,
quod omnia et singula praedicta fideliter imperpetuum observabimus.
In cuius Rei testimonium huic scripto nostro commune Sigillum nostrum
appendimus, et nostra nomina, propria quisque manu subscripsimus.

F: 1535 Bishops and Universities

The italicized text in the bishops' profession denotes text not found in the
professions from the universities. Likewise, the italicized text in the professions from
the universities denotes additions to or changes from the standard bishops'
professions. The text underlined in the professions from the universities indicates a
phrase that varies among the surviving professions from the universities. The exact
variations are then explained in the footnotes.

I. The standard bishops' profession of 153550

(1) Ego Rolandus, Coventrensis et Lichfeldensis Episcopus, pure sponte et
abolute, in verbo Pontificio, profiteor ac spondeo, illustrissimae vestrae regiae
Majestati, singulari ac summo domino meo et Patrono henrico dei gratia Angliae et
franciae Regi, fidie defensor, domino hiberniae, atque in terris ecclesiae Anglicanae
supremo immediate sub Christo capiti,
(2) Quod posthac nulli externo Imperatori, Regi, Principi aut Praelato, nee
Romano Pontifici quem Papam vocant, fidelitatem et obedientiam, verbo aut scripto,
simpliciter vel sub juramento, promittam, aut dabo, vel dari curabo;
(3) sed ommi tempore casu et conditione partes vestrae regiae Majestatis ac
successorum vestrorum sequar et observabo, et pro virili defendam contra omnem
hominem quem vestrae Majestati aut successoribus vestris adversarium cognoscam vel
suspicabor, solique vestrae regiae Majestati velut supremo meo Principi fidelitatem et
obedientiam sincere et ex animo praestabo,
(4) Papatum romanum non esse a deo in sacris litteris ordinatum profiteor, sed
humanitus traditum firmiter affirmo, et palam declaro ac declarabo, et ut alii sic
publicent diligenter curabor,

This is Roland Lee's profession from February 27, 1535; NA E 25 36; printed in Rymer, Foedera,
14: 549-550; Wilkins, Concilia, 781-782.

560
 (5) Nee tractatum cum quocunque moratlium privatim aut publice inibo, aut
consentiam quod Pontifex Romanus aliquam auctoritatem vel jurisdictionem amplius
hie habeat aut exerceat aut ad ullam posthac restituatur,
(6) Ipsumque Romanum episcopum modernum, aut ejus in illo Episcopatu
successorem quemcunque, non Papum, non summum Pontificem, non universalem
Episcopum, nee sanctissimum domimum, sed solum Romanum Epsicopum etfratrem,
ut priscis Episcopis mos erat, scienter publice asseram,
(7) Juraque hujus regni municipalia pro extirpatione et sublatione Papatus et
auctoritatis et sublatione Papatus et auctoritatis ac luraisdictionis dicti Romani
Episcopi, quandocunque edita sive sancita, pro viribus scientia et ingeniolo meis, ipse
firmiter observabo, et ab aliis sic observari quantum in me fuerit curabo atque
efficiam,
(8) Nee posthac ad dictum Romanum Episcopum appellabo, aut appellanti
consentiam, nee in ejus Curia pro jure aut justitia agam, aut agenti respondebo, nee
ibidem accusatoris vel rei personam sustinebo,
(9) Et si quid dictus Episcopus per nuncium vel per litetteras mihi
significaverit, qualecunque id fuerit, illud quam citissime commode potero, aut vestrae
regiae Majestati, aut vestris a secretis Consiliariis, aut vestris successoribus, seu eorum
a secretis Consiliariis, significabo aut significari faciam,
(10) Ipseque Litteras aut Nuncium ad eundem Romanum Episcopum, nee ad
ejus curiam mittam aut mittie faciam, nisi vestrae Majestate conscia et consentiente,
aut vestro successore quod dictae Litterae vel nuncium ad ilium deferatur,
(11) Bullas brevia aut rescripta quaecunque, pro me, vel allis, ab Episcopo
Romano vel ejus Curia non impetrabo, vel ut talia a quovis impetrentur non consulam,
Et si talia pro me, inscio aut ignorante, generaliter vel specialiter, impetrabuntur, vel
alias quomodolibet concedentur, eis renunciabo & non consentiam, nee utar eisdem
ullo modo, at eas vestrae Majestati aut Successoribus tradi curabo
(12) Praeterea in vim pacti profiteor, et promitto, ac in \erbo pontificio
spondeo quod contra hanc meam praedictam professionem et sponsionem nulla
dispensatione, nulla exceptione, nullo juris vel facti remedio me tuebor, durante vita
mea naturali,
(13) Et si quam protestationem in praejudicium hujus meae professionis et
sponsionis feci, earn in praesens et in orane tempus futurum revoco, et eidem renuncio
per praesentes litteras, quibus meum proprium & Episcopatus mei nomen propria
manu subscripsi, & Sigillum meum majus apposui, in perpetuam jidem & testimonium
praescriptorum.

561
II. Professions of the universities and colleges from the fall of 1535
(lb) Invictissimo acpientissimo in Christoprincipi et domino nostro, Henrico
octavo, Dei gratia Angliae et Franciae regi, fidei defensori, domino Hiberniae, ac in
terris supremo ecclesiae Anglicanae sub Christo capiti. Vestri humiles subditi et
devotissimi oratores Willielmus Buckenham, magister sive custos collesii dicti
Gonville Hall, Cantabrigiae, et ejusdem loci socii , reverentiam et obedientiam, tarn
excellenti et praepotenti principi debitas et condignas cum omni subjectione et
honore. Noverit majestas vestra regia quod nos magister et socii predicti, non vi
aut metu coacti, dolove aut aliqua alia sinistra machinatione, ad haec inducti sive
seducti, sed ex nostris certis scientiis, animis deliberatis, merisque et spontaneis
voluntatibus; pure sponte et absolute, in verbo sacerdotii, profitemur, spondemus
CO

ac ad sancta Dei evangelia, per nos corporaliter tacta, juramus vestrae

illustrissimae regiae majestati, singulari ac summo domino nostro et patrono, Henrico
octavo, Dei gratia, Angliae et Franciae regi, fidei defensori, et domino Hibernaie, ac
in terris ecclesiae Anglicanae supremo immediate sub Christo capiti;
(2) quod posthac nulli externo imperatori regi principi aut prelato, nee
Romano pontifici,59 quem papam voccant, fidelitatem, aut obedientiam verbo vel
scripto, simpliciter vel sub juramento promittemus aut dabimus vel dari curabimus;
(3) sed omni tempore, casu, et conditione, partes vestrae regiae majestatis, ac
successorum vestrorum sequemur et observabimus, et pro virili defendemus contra
omnem hominem quem vestrae majestati aut successoribus vestris adversarium
cognoscemus et suspicabimur. Solique vestrae regiae majestati, velut supremo nostro
principi, et ecclesiae Anglicanae capiti, ac successoribus vestris, fidelitatem et
obedientiam sincere et ex animo praestabimus .
31
The base text of this profession is that of the master and fellows of Gonville Hall, Cambridge made
on October 25, 1535, printed in Fuller, History of Cambridge (1840), 164-166. I have collated this
profession with the three other surviving professions: Corpus Christi College, Oxford on September 9,
1535 (BL Lansdowne MS. 989, fols. 134r-136v (LP, IX 306)); Cambridge University on October 23,
1535 (BL Additional Charter 12827); and Cobham College, Kent on October 27, 1535 (NA E 25 32,
printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14: 554-55).
" This phrase of course varied depending on what college was making the profession.
53
The Cobham College profession and the Corpus Christi College profession add the word
"praeexcellentissimae" here. The Cambridge profession adds the word "excellentissimae".
54
This phrase varies depending on the profession. For example, the Cambrige profession says the
whole university of Cambridge while the Corpus Christi College profession notes the president and
scholars of the college.
The Cobham College profession and the Cambridge profession are missing "coacti".
56
The Cobham College profession has "conscientiis" instead of "scientiis".
57
The Cobham College profession has "fidelitatis" instead of "sacerdotii". The Cambridge profession
has "sacerdotum et fidelitatus". The Corpus Christi College profession has "sacerdotii respective et
fidelitate nostra".
The exact word order of this phrase varies among the professions, though all of them specify that the
oath is sworn touching the holy gospels of God.
59
The Cobham College profession is missing the underlined phrase.
60
The Cobham College and Cambridge professions have "viribus" instead of virili".
61
The Gonville Hall profession is the only one of the surviving professions to contain the phrase "ac
successoribus vestris".
62
The Cobham College profession and the Cambridge profession contain the additional phrase "ac per
praesentes praestamus" here.

562
 (4) Papatum Romanum non esse a Deo in sacris litteris ordinatum profitemur,
sed humanitus traditum63, constanter affirmamus, et palam declaramus, ac
declarabimus, et ut alii sic publicent diligenter curabimus.
(5) Nee tractatum cum quoqunque mortalium privatim aut publice inibimus,
aut consentiemus, quod pontifex Romanus, aliquam authoritatem et jurisdictionem,
amplius hie habeat aut exerceat, aut ad ullam posthac restituatur;
(6) Ipsumque Romanum episcopum modemum, aut ejus in illo episcopatu,
successorem quemcunque, non papam, non summum pontificem, non universalem
episcopum, nee sanctissimum dominum, sed solum Romanum episcopum, vel
pontificem, ut priscis mos erat, scienter publice asseremus
(7) Iuraque ac statute/65 hujus regni pro extirpatione et sublatione papatus, et
auctoritatis ac jurisdictionis dicti Romani episcopi, quandocunque edita sive sancitat,
edendaque sive sancienda, pro viribus, scientia, et ingeniolis nostris ipsi firmiter
observabimus, et ab aliis sic observari (quantum in nobis fuerit) curabimus atque
efficiemus;
(8) Nee posthac dictum Romanum episcopum appellabimus, aut appellanti 66
consentimus; nee in ejus curia pro jure aut justitia agemus, aut agenti
respondebimus, nee ibidem accusatoris vel rei personam sustinebimus
(9) Et si quid dictus episcopus per nuncium vel per literas nobis significaverit,
qualecunque id fuerit, illud quam citissime commode poterimus, aut vestrae regiae
majestati, aut vestris a secretis consiliariis significabimus aut significari faciemus
(10) Nosque literas aut nuncium ad eundem Romanum episcopum, vel ejus
curiam69 nee mittemus nee mitti faciemus, nisi vestra maj estate concia et consentiente,
aut vestro successore, quod dictae literae vel nuncim ad eum deferatur.
(11) Bullas brevia aut rescripta quaecunque pro nobis vel aliis ab episcopo
Romano vel ejus curia non impetrabimus, vel ut talia a quovis impetrentur non
consulemus, et si talia pro nobis insciis aut ignorantibus generaliter vel specialiter
impetrabuntur, vel alias quomodo libet concedentur, eis renunciabimus, et non
consentiemus, nee utemur eisdem ullo modo, at eas vestrae majestati aut successoribus
vestris tradi 70 curabimus
(14) Exemptioni vero qua Romano epicopo vel summo quern vocant pontifici,
aut ipsi, quo cum que nomine appelletur, ejusve Romanae ecclesiae mediate vel
immediate sumus velfuimus, ipsiusque concessionibus, privilegiis, largitionibs &
indultis quibuscumque expresse in his scriptis renunciamus,

The Cambridge profession omits the underlined phrase and substitutes "constitutumque" in its stead.
64
Fuller has "episcopumque" here, but it must be a mistranscription on his part.
65
The Corpus Christi College profession is missing the underlined words.
66
The Corpus Christi College profession adds the words "vel ut appellitur" here.
The Cobham College profession adds words "consentimus nee" here.
68
Like the bishops' profession (oath F I), the profession of Cambridge University, Cobham College,
and Corpus Christi College all add the phrase "aut vestris successoribus, seu eorum a secretis
consiliariis" here.
69
The Cobham College profession is missing the underlined phrase.
70
The professions of Cobham College and Cambridge University add the word "quamcitissime" here.
The Cambridge profession adds the words "nostram exemptionem tangentibus et concerventibus"
here, while the Corpus Christi College profession adds the words "dictam exemptionem respicientibus
vel conceneistibus".

563
 7?

(15) Et soli vestrae majestati vestrisque successoribus nos subditos et

subjectos profitemur, ac nos subjiciemus, et nos solummodo subditos fore
spondemus
(16) Nee eidem Romano pontifici, vel ejus nunciis, oratoribus, collectoribus,
aut legatis, ullam procurationem, pensionem, portionem, censum, aut quamcunque
aliam pecuniarum summam quocunque nomine appelletur, per nos aut interpositam
personam velpersonas solvemus, aut solvi faciemus:
(17) statutumque de successione vestra regia in Parliamento vestro editum, ac
omnia ac singula in eodem contenta, juxta formam et effectum ejusdem fideliter
observabimus.
(12) Praeterea in vim pacti profitemur et spondemus, ac in verbo sacerdotali
et sub fidelitate vestrae majestati debita et nostra coram Deo conscientia,
promittimus, quod contra hanc nostram praedictam professionem et sponsionem, nulla
dispensations 7 nulla exceptione, nulla appellatione, autprovocatione, nullove juris
vel facti remedio nos tuebimur
(13) Et si quam protestationem in praejudicium hujus nostrae professionis et
sponsionis fecimus, earn in praesens et in omne tempus futurum revocamus, et eidem
renunciamus per praesentes literas, quibus propris manibus nostra subscripsimus, 7 et
eas nostri communis sigilli apprehensione, et notarii publici infra scripti signo et
subscriptione committi, curavimus. 79

7
The professions of Cobham College and Corpus Christi College do not have the underlined phrase.
The profession of Cambridge University has "tanquam supremo ecclie Anglicane sub christo capiti"
instead of the underlined phrase.
73
The professions of Cambridge University and Corpus Christi College are missing the word "nos"
here.
7
The Cobham College profession adds the words "& per praesentes declaramus" here.
75
The professions of Cobham College and Corpus Christi College do not include phrase (17) on the Act
of Succession.
76
Instead of the underlined words, the profession of Cobham College has "fidelitatis", and the
professions of Cambridge University and Corpus Christi College have "sacerdotii et sub fidelitate".
77
The professions of Cobham College and Cambridge University are missing the words "nulla
dispensatione".
The profession of Cambridge University is missing "quibus propris manibus nostra subscripsimus".
7
The profession of Cobham College is missing "et eas nostri communis sigilli apprehensione, et notarii
publici infra scripti signo et subscriptione committi, curavimus".

564
 G: Post 1535 Henrician Oaths of Supremacy

I. Oath of supremacy as prescribed by the Act Extinguishing the Authority of the

Bishop of Rome of 153680
(1) He fromhensforth shall utterly reounce refuse relinquissh or forsake the
Bisshopp of Rome and his auctorite power and jurisdiccion;
(2) And that he shall never consent nor agree that the Bisshopp of Rome shall
practise excercise or have any maner of auctoritie jurisdiction or power within this
Realme or any other the Kynges Domynions, but that he shall resist the same at all
tymes to thuttermost of his power;
(3) And that fromhensforth he shall accepte repute and take the Kynges
Majestie to be the oonly supreme hedd in erth of the Church of Englond;
(4) And that to his connyng wytt and uttermost of his power, without file
fraude or other undewe meane, he shall observe kepe mayntene and defende the hole
effectes and contentes of all and singular actes and Statutes made and to be made
within this Realme, in derogacion extirpacion and extinguysshment of the Bisshopp of
Rome and his auctorite, and all other Actes and Statutes made and to be made in
reformacion and corroboracion of the Kynges Power of supreme heed in erth of the
o1

Churche of Englonde;
(5) And this he shall doo ayenst almanere of personnes of what estate dignytie
degre or condicion they be, and in no wise do nor attempte, nor to his power suffer to
be doon or attempted directly or indirectly, any thing or thinges prively or aptly to the
lett hyndraunce damage or derogacion therof or of any parte therof by any manere of
meanes or for eny manere of pretence;
(6) And in case any othe be made or hath be made by hym to eny person or
personnes, in mayntenance defence or favour of the Bisshopp of Rome or his auctorite
jurisdiction or power, he repute the same as vayne and adnychilate
So helpe hym God All Seyntes and the Holy Evangelistes.

The text is taken from Statutes of the Realm, 28 Hen. 8, c. 10, 3:665. The same oath (in the second
rather than the third person) is BL Additional MS. 39235, fol. 50\ which is labeled "The oath takyn
byfore admyttyng any to the college for renounsing thauthoritie of the busshop of Rome". "And
Ireland" is often added in the margin after "England" in the version from BL Additional MS. 39235.
This was also the oath sworn by the London Charterhouse on May 18, 1537 (NA E 25 82/2 [LP, VII (i)
1233], printed in Rymer, Foedera, 14:588-589). Finally, this oathminus the first clausewas taken
by many bishops-elect at their consecration. See for example Lambeth Palace Library, Cranmer's
Register, fols. 255r (Heath), 260v (Bonner).
81
Compare this clause to clause (16) of oath B V and to clause (6) of the various oaths of succession.
82
This clause is identical to clause (7) of the oath of succession.

565
II. Oath prescribed by the Act concerning the Establishment of the Kings Majesty's
Succession in the Imperial Crown of the Realm of 154483 (Normal text is from oath G
I. Italicized text is new.)
(7) I Robert, archebusshop ofYorke electe, havinge nowe the vale of darkness
of the usurped power, auctorite, and jurisdiction of the see and busshope of Rome
clerely taken away from myne yeis, do utterly testitfy and declare in my conscience,
that nether the see, nor the busshope of Rome, nor any foraine potestate hath nor
ought to have any jurisdiction, power, or auctorite within this realme, nether by God's
lawe, nor by any juste lawe or meanes
(1) And though by sufferance and abusions in tymes past, they aforesaid have
usurped and vendicated afayned and unlawful! power and jurisdictgion within this
realme, which hath been supported tyll few yeares past; therefore because yt might be
denied and thought thereby, that I toke or take it for juste and good, I therefore do
now clerely andfrankely renounce, forsake, refuse, and relinquishe that pretended
auctorite, power, and jurisdiction both of the see and busshope of Rome, and of all
other for ayne powers,
(2) And that I shall never consent nor agree that the foresaid see or busshope
of rome, or any of their successours shall practice, exercise, or have any manner of
auctorite, jurisdiction, or power within this realme, nor any other the kynge's realms
or dominions; nor any forayne potestate, of what estate, degree, or condition soever
he be, but that 1 shall resist the same to th'uttermost of my power;
(8) And that I shall bear faith, all trouth and true allegiance to the kynges
majestye, and to his heires and successors declared, or hereafter to be declared by
auctorite ofth 'acte made in the session of the parliament holden at Westmynster the
14'1 day of January, in the xxv. yere, and in the saide acte made in the xxviii. yere of
the kynges majesty's reigne;
(3) And that I shall accept, repute, and take the kings majestye, his heyres and
successors, when they or any of them shall enjoy his place, to be th'only supreme
heade of the church of England and Ireland in earthe under God, and in all other his
highness's dominions;
(4) and that with my body, connynge, wytte, and uttermost of my power,
without gyle, fraude, or any other undue meanes, I shall observe, keape, maintenie,
and defende all the king's majesty's styles, titles, and rights, with these effects and
contents ofth 'actes provided for the same, and all other actes and statutes made or to
be made within this realme in and for that purpose; and the derogation, extirpation,
and extinguisshment of the usurped and pretended auctorite, power, and jurisdiction
of the see and busshope of Rome, and all other forayne potentates or potestates as
afore; and also as well the said statute made in the said xxviii. Yere, as the statute
made in the saide session of the parliament holden in the xxxv. Yere of the kinges
majesty's reign, for establishment and declaration of his highnes sucsession, and all
actes and statutes made and to be made in confirmation and corroboration of the
kinges majesties power and supremacy in earthe of the churche of England and of

The text of this oath is taken from Wilkins, Concilia, 3:870-871. Its text is the same as the oath in
Statutes of the Realm, 35 Hen. 8, c. 1, 3:956-957. It is also in many episcopal registers from the 1540s.
84
This clause is an edited amalgamation of clauses 1-3 of oath D, III.

566
Ireland, and other his grace's dominions, I shall also defende and mayntene with my
body and goods, withe all my witte and power,
(5) And this 1 shall do against all maner of persons, of what estate, dignity,
degree, or condition they be; and in no wyse doe or attempte, nor to my power suffre
or knowe to be done or attempted, directly or indirectly, any thinge or thinges prively
or apertly to the let, hindraunce, damage, or derogation of any manner of pretence;
(6) And in case any oathe hath been made by me to any person or persons in
mayntenaunce, defence, or favour of the bishop of Rome, or his authority, jurisdiction,
or power, or against any the statutes aforesaid, I repute the same as vayne and
adnihilate;
(9) / shall wholly observe and keepe this oathe.
So helpe me God, all saintes, and the holy evangelistes

H: Elizabethan State Oaths

I. The Elizabethan oath of supremacy85 (The numbering of the parenthetical clauses

draws attention to similar clauses in the Henrician oaths of supremacy in section G.
Italicized text is lifted directly from oath G II. The majority of the text in the
Elizabethan oath, however, is original.)
(10) I A. B. doo utterly testifie and declare in my Conscience, that the Quenes
Highnes is thonelye supreme Governour of the Realme and of all other her Highnes
Dominions and Countreis, aswell in all Spirituall or Eclesiasticall Thinges or Causes
as Temporall,
(7) and that no forreine Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate hathe or
oughte to have any Jurisdiccion Power Superioritee Preheminence or Aucthoritee
Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme,
(1) and therfore I doo utterly renounce and forsake all forraine Jurisdiccions
Powers Superiorities and Aucthorities,
(8) and doo promise that from hensforthe I shall beare Faithe and true
Allegiance to the Quenes Highnes her Heires and lawfull Successoures,
(4) and to my power shall assist and defende all Jurisdiccions Prehemineces
Privileges and Aucthorities granted or belonging to the Quenes Highnes her Heires
and Successoures, or united or annexed to Thimperiall Crowne of this Realme: So
helpe me God and by the Contentes of this Booke.

II. The oath imposed on the northern rebels in 1570 before receiving a pardon86
First, you shall swear, that yee be heartily sorry that yee have offended the
queen's majesty in the late rebellion; and that you do and shall repute and take all
oaths and promises heretofore made to any person or persons for and touching the said
rebellion, to be wicked, unlawful, and of none effect; also, that you have offended God

The text of this oath is taken from Statutes of the Realm, 1 Eliz. 1, c. 1, 4:352. It can be found in any
episcopal register of Elizabeth's reign as well as many other documents.
86
Printed in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 2:321-322.

567
and her highness in taking any such oath, or in making any promise for that purpose.
And that from henceforth yee shall be true and faithful subject unto the queen, our
sovereign lady Elizabeth, &c. And that you shall from henceforth obey and allow all
laws, &c. not being repealed. And all the same yee shall against all persons maintain
and defend to the uttermost of your power; and shall assist all such judges, justices,
commissioners, officers, and ministers, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, as the
queen's majesty shall appoint for the due execution of any of her majesy's laws,
ordinances, injunctions, statutes, or proclamations.
Item, Ye shall never hereafter during your lives make any unlawful assemblies
or commotions, nor put yourselves in any number in any forcible array, at the
commandment of any person whatsoever, but only at the commandment of the queen's
majesty, or her lieutenant, &c.
Item, You shall not do or commit any treasons, murders, felonies, nor suffer
any such to be done by any person whatsoever; but you shall openly bewray the same
to the queen's majesty, or to such as have her majesty's laws in administration. And
in case there shall happen any person or persons which shall utter and declare unto you
privily or openly any seditious matters, or move you to any insurrection, &c. or speak
any slanderous words of the queen's majesty, or any of her counsellors; you shall
likewise open and disclose the same, and shall endeavor yourself to apprehend all such
persons, and so have them commited to sure prison.
And you shall also swear, that you do utterly testify and declare in your
consciences, that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and
of all other her highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual and
ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal; and that no foreign prince, parson, prelate,
&c. [as in the oath of supremacy.] So help you God, and the contents of this book.

568
 Bibliography

Manuscripts

Bodleian Library, Oxford

Ashmole MS. 750. A homily against covetousness and swearing.
Ashmole MS. 1284. An assize sermon on Jeremiah 4:2.
Ashmole MS. 1729. Letter to Dr. Peter Ligham from Cranmer on the metropolitan visitation of the
clergy.
Bodleian MS. 46533. Feckenham's The Declaration of svche Scruples, and staies of Conscience,
touchinge the Othe of Supremacy".
Rawlinson MS. B 167. Transcriptions of ecclesiastical oaths by Richard Smith.
Rawlinson MS. B 202. Documents on the ex officio oath, mostly a copy of BL Cotton MS. Cleopatr
Fi.
Tanner MS. 84. Bainbrigg and Johnson's petition to the vice-chancellor of Cambridge against the ex
officio oath.

British Library
Additional Charter 12827. Oath of supremacy of the University of Cambridge from 1535.
Additional MS. 4507. Later Henrician oaths of supremacy in a manuscripts Gospel.
Additional MS. 24202. Lollard treatise against the episcopal oath of canonical obedience to the
pope.
Additional MS. 28843. Documents on the ex officio oath copied from Cotton MS. Cleopatra F i.
Additional MS. 32091. Sir John Cheke's letter to Cardinal Pole and Queen Mary.
Additional MS. 34319 Stephen Gardiner's oath to the king for the restoration of his temporalities.
Additional MS. 38656. Subscriptions of the top clergy of England against papal authority.
Additional MS. 38823. Digges' account of the 1584 debate over the oath of association.
Additional MS. 39235. Later Henrician oath of supremacy.
Additional MS. 39830. Sir Thomas Tresham's papers.
Additional MS. 48022. Robert Beale's manuscripts.
Additional MS. 48023. Robert Beale's manuscripts, including the letter-book of Thomas Norton.
Additional MS. 48039. Robert Beale's manuscripts.
Additional MS. 48064. Robert Beale's manuscripts.
Additional MS. 48116. Robert Beale's manuscripts.
Cotton MS. Cleopatra E iv. Papers relating to the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII.
Cotton MS. Cleopatra E v. Papers relating to the reform of the church during the reign of Henry
VIII.
Cotton MS. Cleopatra E vi. Papers relating to religious matters during the sixteenth century.
Cotton MS. Cleopatra F i. Documents on the ex officio oath.
Cotton MS. Otho C x. Letters from the reign of Henry VIII.
Cotton MS. Tiberius E viii. Coronation oaths, including oath revised by Henry VIII.
Cotton MS. Titus F ii. Copies of the rolls of Parliament from the reign of Elizabeth I.
Cotton MS. Vespasian C vii. Diplomatic papers, mostly from the sixteenth century.
Cotton MS. Vespasian C xiv. Various oaths of office.
Harleian MS. 160. Various oaths of office.
Harleian MS. 282. Correspondence between Ambassador Thomas Wyatt and Henry VIII.
Harleian MS. 283. Copy of Mary Tudor's submission.
Harleian MS 353. Sir John Cheke's recantation of 1556.
Harleian MS. 358. Petitions of Bainbrigg and John to Lord Burghley, 1589.
Harleian MS. 419. John Foxe's manuscripts.
Harleian MS. 421. John Foxe's manuscripts.
Harleian MS. 425. John Foxe's manuscripts.
Harleian MS. 433. Various oaths of office.
Harleian MS. 703. Letter of the Privy Council to Sussex on the oath of supremacy of justices of the

569
 peace.
Harleian MS. 785. Various oaths of office, including a coronation oath.
Harleian MS. 859. Account of the Star Chamber trail of Sir Thomas Tresham and his companions.
Harleian MS. 2143. Abstracts of Trials in the Star Chamber.
Harleian MS. 6676. Various oaths of office.
Harleian MS. 6848. Examinations of Separatists.
Harleian MS. 6849. Examinations and trials of Puritans (including Cartwright) and Separatists.
Harleian MS. 6873. Various oaths of office.
Harleian MS. 7041 Copy of the oath of supremacy of the University of Cambridge.
Harleian MS. 7042. Examinations and trials of Puritans (including Cartwright) and Separatists.
Harleian MS. 7571. Copy of a commission to tender the oath of supremacy in Sussex.
Lansdowne MS. 42. Letters and Papers of Lord Burghley, 1584.
Lansdowne MS. 61. Burghley's papers from 1589, especially petitions of Bainbrigg and Johnson.
Lansdowne MS. 68. Burghley's papers from 1591, including documents on Cartwright's trial and
letters from the imprisoned Puritans.
Lansdowne MS. 72. Cartwright's letter to Burghley on why he refused to swear the ex officio oath.
Lansdowne MS. 73. Burghley's papers from 1593, including a letter from Beale on the ex officio
oath.
Lansdowne MS. 77. "A new Yeres Guyte ffor an Old Yeres Grief, called a Pitfall for Perjuros."
Lansdowne MS. 82. Burghley's papers of 1596, including a letter by Morice on his "A just and
necessarie defence".
Lansdowne MS. 98. Digges' account of the 1584 debate over the oath of association.
Lansdowne MS. 105. Elizabethan Parliamentary bill against vain swearing.
Lansdowne MS. 113. Digges' account of the 1584 debate over the oath of association.
Lansdowne MS. 119. Copy of "Certain motions for a conference on religion."
Lansdowne MS. 120. Ecclesiastical documents, including the crown's case against the Puritans.
Lansdowne MS. 155. Various oaths of office and Sir Julius Caesar's of Thomas Norton's Devices.
Lansdowne MS. 389. Marian Protestant tract against perjury.
Lansdowne MS. 421. Documents on ecclesiastical courts, including a copy of Beale's treatise
against the ex officio oath.
Lansdowne MS. 470. Coronation oath.
Lansdowne MS. 621. Various oaths of office.
Lansdowne MS. 762. Various oaths of office.
Lansdowne MS 870. Coronation oath.
Lansdowne MS. 989. Oath of supremacy of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Royal MS. 7 B xii. "A trewe note of certen articles confessed and allowed by Mr. D. Feckname".
Royal MS. 9 A xiv. Various oaths of office.

Cambridge University Library

CUR Guard Book 6.1. Documents relating to Bainbrigg and Johnson in 1589.
MS. Gg. vi. Treatise on the court leet.
MS. Ii. i. 39. Thomas Wygenhale's "Speculum iuratoris".
MS. Mm. i. 29. Common-place book of Thomas Earl, minister of St. Mildred's, Bread Street.
MS. Mm. i. 51 (Baker 40). Morice's narrative of his parliamentary speech and bill against the ex
officio oath and his subsequent punishment in 1593.

Canterbury Cathedral Archives

DCc, Register U2. Sede vacente register for the archbishopric of Canterbury, 1559.

Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone

Drb/A/r/1/13, Microfilm Z3. John Fisher's Register.

Christ Church, Oxford

Wake MS. 306. Records of Convocation.

570
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
MS. 106. Documents relating to the University of Cambridge.
MS. 109. Anonymous treatise entitled De votis monasticis.
MS. 114. Letters and papers of Matthew Parker.
MS. 119. Letters and papers of Matthew Parker.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

MS 294. The justification of Cartwright, Snape, and other imprisoned Puritans of their refusal of the
ex officio oath, together with another anonymous treatise against the oath.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

MS. 261 Letters of the martyrs and Robert Wisdom's revocation of his recantation.

Guildhall Library
MS. 9531/10. Tunstall's Register.
MS. 9531/11. Stokesley's Register.
MS. 9531/12. Bonner's Register.

Inner Temple Library

Miscellaneous MS. 149. Notes by William Petyt.
Petyt MS. 511, vol. 16. Copy of Beale's treatise against the ex officio oath.
Petyt MS. 538, vol. 38. Ecclesiastical documents, including Appellant oaths of allegiance.
Petyt MS. 538, vol. 47. Ecclesiastical documents, chiefly from the reign of Elizabeth 1.
Petyt MS. 539, vol. 52. Ecclesiastical documents, chiefly from the reign of Elizabeth 1.
Petyt MS. 538, vol. 54. Ecclesiastical documents, chiefly from the reign of Elizabeth I.

Lambeth Palace Library

Arundell's Register
Cranmer's Register.
MS. 234. Morice's "A just and necessarie defence of a brief Treatise made against generall oathes
exacted by ordinaries & judges ecclesiastical. . . ."
MS. 445. A discourse on the ex officio oath.
MS. 2004. Documents on the ex officio oath.
MS. 2019. Anonymous account of Morice's bill against the ex officio oath in the Parliament of 1593.
MS. 2026. Documents on the ex officio oath, including copies of treatises by Beale and Morice.
MS. 2686. Commission for the royal visitation of the clergy in 1559 for London, Norwich, and Ely.
MS. 3470. Morice's letter to Whitgift accompanying his "A just and necessarie defence" and
Whitgift's letter to Lord Buckhurst on his confrontation with Burghley concerning Morice.
MS. CM 4/191. Interrogatories ministered to Cartwright and other imprisoned Puritan minister in
the Star Chamber and their depositions.
MS. CM 13/57. Subscriptions of the clergy during the royal visitation of 1559.
MS. CM 13/58. Subscriptions of the clergy during the royal visitation of 1559.
MS. CM 51, #22. Tunstall's oath of canonical obedience.
MS. 2002. Twelve points against the bill for swearing of bishops and archbishops.
Pole's Register.
Warham's Register.

Lancashire Record Office

DDKE/Box 122/1. The earl of Derby's instructions for the 1591 recusant commissioners.

The National Archives

C 82/690, no. 2. Model form of a new bishop's oath to the king from 1534.
C 54. Oaths of supremacy of friars.
C 66/663. Henrician patent rolls.
C66/954. Elizabethan patent rolls.

571
 C 66/972, Elizabethan patent rolls.
C 202/1. Oaths of supremacy of justices of peace in 1579 and writs for their tendering.
C 212/23/4. Oaths of supremacy and office of escheators.
C 254/179, 190, 202, 208, 232, 233, 234, 235, 235A. Oaths of supremacy and office during
Elizabeth's reign.
DL 41/1182 Roll of subscriptions to the oath of succession from Lancashire.
E 25. Oaths of supremacy of clerical institutions and bishops.
E36/118. Documents on the Pilgrimage of Grace.
E36/119. Documents on the Pilgrimage of Grace.
E36/121. Documents on the Pilgrimage of Grace.
E 36/63. Subscriptions of the parish clergy against papal authority.
E 199/59/1. Elizabethan oaths of supremacy and office for sheriffs in Wales.
SP1. State papers, domestic, Henry VIII.
SP2. Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, Folios, 1516-1539.
SP6. Theological Tracts of Henry VIII.
SP11. State papers, domestic, Mary I.
SP12. State papers, domestic, Elizabeth I.
SP15. State papers, domestic, Edward VI to James I, addenda.
SP46. State papers, domestic, supplementary.
STAC 5 A39/23. Interrogatories administered to witnesses in the Star Chamber on behalf of
Cartwright and the imprisoned Puritan ministers.
STAC 5 A49/34. Interrogatories administered to witnesses in the Star Chamber trial of Cartwright
and the imprisoned Puritan ministers on behalf of the queen.
STAC 5 A56/1. Interrogatories ministered to Cartwright and other imprisoned Puritan minister in
the Star Chamber and their depositions.

Norfolk Record Office

DN/ACT 7, Book 8. Thomas Rose's recantation.

Calendars of Manuscripts
Brewer, J. S., R. H. Brodie, and James Gairdner, ed. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the
Reign of Henry VIII, Preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and Elsewhere. 2"
ed. 1920. Reprint, Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965.
Brown, Rawdon, G. Cavendish Bentinck, and H. F. Brown, ed. Calendar of State Papers and
Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice : and in
Other Libraries of Northern Italy. London: Longman Green, 1864-1947.
Collingridge, J. H., et al., ed. Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office,
Elizabeth 1. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1939.
Gayangos, Pascual, ed. Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations
between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere. Vol. 4. London:
Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1862-1954.
Gilson, J. P., ed. Catalogue ofAdditions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years
MDCCCCXI-MDCCCCXV. London: William Clowes and Sons, 1925.
Hamilton, Hans Claude, Ernest George Atkinson, and Robert Pentland Mahaffy, ed. Calendar of State
Papers Relating to Ireland, of the Reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. London:
Longman, Green,Longman, & Roberts, 1860-1912.
Hardy, William John, ed. The Manuscripts of the Lord Kenyon. Historical Manuscripts Commission,
14th Report. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894.
Historical Manuscripts Commission. Calendar of Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquis of
Salisbury at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1883-1976.
Hume, Martin A. S., ed. Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved
Principally in the Archives of Simancas. 1892-1899. Reprint, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint,
1971.

572
Knighton, C.S., ed. Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series of the Reign of Mary 1, 1553-1558.
London: Public Record Office, 1998.
Lemon, Robert, and Mary Anne Everett Green, ed. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the
Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, 1547-[1625] Preserved in the State Paper Department of
Her Majesty's PublicRecord Office. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1856-
72.
Peel, Albert, ed. The Seconde Parte of a Register: Being a Calendar of Manuscripts under That Title
IntendedforPublication by the Puritans about 1593, and Now in Dr Williams's Library, London.
Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1915.

Modern Editions of Primary Sources

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Vol. 39, Religion and Worship. Edited and translated by Kevin
D. O'Rourke. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
Augustine. Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount. Translated by William Findlay. Edited by D.S. Schaff. In
St. Augustin: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, edited by
Philp Schaff, l-63.1888.Reprint, Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfl06.html.
. "Sermon 180." In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21s' Century, Pt. 3, Vol.
1, Sermons on the New Testament (148-183), translated by Edmund Hill, edited by John E. Rostelle,
314-323. New Rochelle and New York: New City Press, 1992.
. St Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, edited by Roy J. Deferrari, 53-110. Washington
DC: The Catholic University Press, 1952.
Bale, John. The Complete Plays of John Bale. Edited Peter Happe. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985.
. Select Works of John Bale. Edited by Henry Christmas. Parker Society, vol. 1. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1849.
Banks, Mary Macleod, ed. An Alphabet of Tales: an English 15lh Century Translation of the
'Alphabetum Narrationum" ofEtienne de Besancon. English Early Text Society, o.s., 127.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1905.
Basil. St. Basil: Letters and Selected Works. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 1895 Reprint,
Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.html.
Barnum, Priscilla Heath, ed. Dives and Pauper. Early English Text Society, o.s., 275. London: Oxford
University Press, 1976.
Barrow, Henry. The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587-1590. Edited by Leland H. Carlson. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
Bateson, Mary, ed. "Aske's Examination," English Historical Review 5 (1890): 550-573.
. "A Collection of Original Letters from the Bishops to the Privy Council, 1564, with Returns of
the Justices of the Peace and Others Classified According to Their Religious Convictions." In
Camden Miscellany, Volume the Ninth, Camden Society, n.s. vol. 53, 1-83. Westminster, 1895.
. "The Pilgrimage of Grace." English Historical Review 5 (1890): 330-345.
Baylor, Michael G, ed. and trans. The Radical Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991.
Beauvais, Vincent of. Speculum quadruplex sive speculum maius. Vol. 3, Speculum morale. 1624.
Reprint, Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck, 1964.
Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria : Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps Adolph Rusch of
Strassburg 1480/81. Introduction by Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson. Brepols:
Turnhout, 1992.
Bond, Ronald B., ed. Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and
Wilful Rebellion(l570). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
Bray, Gerald, ed. Documents of the English Reformation. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1994.
. Records of Convocation. Woodbridge, Boydell, 2005-6.
. Tudor Church Reform: The Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum

573
 Ecclesiasticarum. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000.
Bradford, John. The Writings of John Bradford. Edited by Aubrey Townsend. Parker Society, vol. 4.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848.
Brandeis, Arthur, ed. Jacob's Well, An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man's Conscience. Early
English Text Society, o.s., 115. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1900.
Bruce, John, ed. "Narrative of Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas
Tresham, Sir William Catesby, and Others, for a Contempt in Refusing to Swear That They Had Not
Harboured Campion the Jesuit." Archaeologia 30 (1844): 80-110.
Bullinger, Henry. The Decades of Henry Bullinger. Translated by H.l. Edited by Thomas Harding.
Parker Society, vols. 7-10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849-52.
Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, ed. The Lisle Letters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis
Battles. London: S.C.M. Press, 1961.
. loannls Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia. Vol. 22. Edited by Guilielmus Baum, Eduardus
Cunitz, and
Eduardus Reuss. Braunschweig: C.A. Schwetschke et sons, 1880.
Cartwright, Thomas. Cartwrightiana. Edited by Albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson. Elizabethan Non-
Conformist
Texts, vol. 1. London: Routledge, 2003.
Catholic Record Society. Miscellanea II. Vol 2, Catholic Record Society. London, 1906.
. Miscellanea XII. Vol. 22, Catholic Record Society. London, 1921.
Cecil, William, and William Allen. The Execution of Justice in England by William Cecil and A True,
Sincere, and Modest Defense of English Catholics by William Allen. Edited by Robert M. Kingdon.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965.
Champollion-Figeac, M. Aime, ed. Collection de documents inedits sur I'histoire de Francepublies
par ordre du roi et par les soins du ministre de I 'instruction publique. Paris: Imprimerie Royal,
1847.
Chauncy, Maurince. The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers: The Short
Narration. Edited by G.W.S. Curtis. Translated by A.F. Radcliffe. Introduction by E. Margaret
Thompson. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1935.
Chitty, Herbert, ed. Registra Stephani Gardiner et Johannis Poynet. Introduction by Henry Elliott
Maiden and Herbert Chitty. Canterbury and York Society, vol. 37. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1930.
Chrysostom, John. The Homilies on the Statutes to the People of'Antioch. Edited by W. R. W. Stephens.
In St. Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises; Select Homilies and Letters; Homiles on
the Statutes, edited by Philip Schaff, 317-489. 1889. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnfl09.html.
Cooper, Henry Charles, ed. Annals of Cambridge. Cambridge: Warwick and Co, 1842.
Coverdale, Miles. Remains ofMyles Coverdale. Edited by George Pearson. Parker Society, vol. 14.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846.
Cox, J. Charles, ed. "William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace." Transactions of the East Riding
Antiquarian Society 10 (1903): 80-106.
Cromwell, Thomas. The Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell. Edited by R. B. Merriman. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1902.
Cyprian. "On the Morality." Translated by Ernest Wallis. In Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus,
Cyprian, Caius, Novatiam, Appendix, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A.
Cleveland Coxe, 469-475. 1886. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.html.
D'Ewes, Simonds. A Compleat Journal of the Votes, Speeches and Debates, Both of the House of Lords
and House of Commons Throughout the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Of Glorious Memory. 1693.
Reprint, Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1974.
Dasent, J. R., ed. Acts of the Privy Council of England. London: H. M. Stationery Office by Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1890-1907.
Diekstra, F. N. M., ed. Book for a Simple and Devout Woman: A Late Middle English Adaptation of
Peraldus' Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus and Friar Laurent's Somme le Roi. Groningen: Egbert

574
 Forsten, 1998.
Dobson R. B., ed., The Peasants' Revolt of 1381. London: Macmillan, 1970.
Dubuis, Paule Hochuli, and Sandra Coram-Mekkey, ed. Registres du Conseil de Geneve a Tepoque de
Calvin Geneva, Droz, 2004.
Ellis, Henry, ed. Original Letters, Illustrative of English History. Series II, III. London, Harding and
Lepard, 1827, 1846.
Englander, David, et al., ed. Culture and Belief in Europe, 1450-1600: An Anthology of Sources.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Fisher, John. English Works ofJohn Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469-1535): Sermons and Other
Writings, 1520-1535. Edited by Cecilia A. Hatt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Frere, W. H., ed. Registrum Johannis Whyte, Episcopi Wintoniensis, A.D. MDLVI-MDL1X, Canterbury
and York Society, vol. 16. London, 1914.
. Registrum Matthei Parker diocesis cantuariensis, A.D. 1559-1575. Transcribed by E. Margaret
Thompson. Canterbury and York Societies, vols. 35-36, 38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928-
33.
. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation. London: Longman, Green,
and Co., 1910.
Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments [...] . The Variorum Edition, [online]. (hriOnline, Sheffield 2004).
http://www.hrionline.shef.ac.uk/foxe/.
Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: with a Life of Martyrologist, and Vindication of the
Work. Edited by George Townsend. New York: Ams Press, 1965.
Friendberg, Aemilius. ed. Corpus Juris Canonici. 1879-1881. Reprint, Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange,
2000.
Gardiner, Stephen. Letters of Stephen Gardiner. Edited by James Arthur Muller. Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1933.
. Obedience in Church & State: Three Political Tracts by Stephen Gardiner. Edited and
translated by Pierre Janelle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930.
[Garnet, Henry.] A treatise of Equivocation: wherein is largely discussed the questions whether a
Catholic or any other person before a magistrate beyng demaunded uppon his oath whether Preiste
were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary) without Periury
and securely in conscience answere, No, with this secreat meanign reserued in his mynde, That he
was not there so that any man is bounde to detect it. Edited by David Jardine. London: Longman,
Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851.
Gee, Henry, and William John Hardy, ed. Documents Illustrative of English Church History. London:
MacMillan, 1896.
Greenwood, John, and Henry Barrow. The Writings of John Greenwood 1587-1590, Together with the
Joint Writings of Henry Barrow and John Greenwood. Edited by Leland H. Carlson. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
. The Writings of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591-93. Edited by Leland H. Carlson.
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970.
Hall, Edward. Hall's Chronicle; containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the
Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth, in Which Are
Particularly Described the Manner and Customs of Those Periods. London: J. Johnson et al., 1809.
Harper-Bill, Christopher, ed. The Register of John Morton Archbishop of Canterbury 1486-1500.
Canterbury and York Society, vol. 75. Leeds: Duffield Printers, 1987.
Harpsfield, Nicholas. The Life and Death ofSr Thomas Moore, Knight, Someymes Lord High
Chancellor of England, Written in the Tyme ofQueene Marie . . . . Edited by Elsie Vaughan
Hitchcock. Early English Text Society, o.s., 186. London:Oxford University Press, 1932.
Hartley, T. E., ed. Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth 1. Leicester: Leicester University Press,
1981,1995.
Haynes, Samuel, ed. A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reigns of King Henry VIII,
King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth From the Year 1542 to 1570. Transcribed from
Original Letters and other Authentick Memorials Never before Publish 'd, Left by William Cecil
Lord Burghley, and Now Remaining at the Hatfield House, in the Library of the Right Honourable
the Present Earl of Salisbury. London: William Bowyer, 1740.

575
Hearne, Thomas, ed. Syl/oge epistolarum a variis Angliaeprincipibus scriptarum. In Titi Livii Foro-
Juliensis vita Henrici Qitinti, regis Angliae. Oxford, 1716.
Hill, Richard. Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill's
Commonpace-Book. Edited by Roman Dyboski. Early English Text Society, e.s. 101. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1907.
Hinde, Gladys, ed. The Registers of'Cuthbert Tunstall Bishop of Durham 1530-59 and James Pilkington
Bishop of Durham 1561-76. Surtees Society, vol. 161. Durham: Andrews & Co, 1952.
Holmes, P. J., ed. Elizabethan Casuistry. Catholic Records Society, vol. 67. London, 1981.
Hooper, John. Early Writings of John Hooper. Eiteded by Samuel Carr. Parker Society, vol. 20.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843.
. Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, Together with His Letters and Other Pieces. Edited by
Charles Nevinson. Parker Society., vol. 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852.
Howell, T. B., ed. A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other
Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783, With Notes and Other
Illustrations. London: Londman et al., 1816.
Hughes, Paul L, and James F. Larkin, ed., Tudor Royal Proclamations. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1964.
Hutchinson, Roger. The Works of Roger Hutchinson. Edited by John Bruce. Parker Society, vol. 22.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848.
Idley, Peter. Peter Idley's Instructions to His Son. Edited by Charlotte D'Evelyn. Boston: D.C. Heath,
1935.
Jacob, E. F., ed. The Register of Henry Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury 1414-144.3. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1943.
James I. The Political Works of James I. Introduction by Charles Howard Mcllwain. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1918.
Jerome. S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars 1, 7: Commentariorvm in Mathevm. Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 77. Turnholti: Brepols, 1969.
Journal of the House of Lords. Vol. 1. London, 1802.
Ketley, Jospeh, ed. The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549, A.D. 1552: with Other Documents Set Forth by
Authority in the Reign of King Edward VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844.
Kitching, C. J., ed. The Royal Visitation of 1559: Act Book for the Northern Province. Surtees Society,
vol. 187. Gateshead: Northumberland Press, 1975.
Latimer, Hugh. Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Edited by George Elwes Corrie. Parker
Society, vol. 28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845.
. Sermons by Hugh Latimer. Edited by George Elwes Corrie. Parker Society, vol. 27.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844.
Laurent, Dominican. The Book of Vices and Virtues: A Fourteenth Century English Translation of the
"Somme le roi" of Lorens d'Orleans. Edited by W. Nelson Francis. Early English Text Society, o.s.,
217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942.
Lloyd, Charles, ed. Formularies of Faith Put Forth By Authority During the Reign of Henry VIII. viz
Articles About Religion, 1536. The Institution of a Christian man, 1537. A Necessary Doctrine and
Erudition For any Christian Man, 1543. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1856.
Luther, Martin. The Estate of Marriage. Translated by Walther I. Brandt. In The Christian in Society 11,
edited by Walther I. Brandt, 11-49. Vol. 45 of Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press,
1962.
. Ivdicivm Martini Lvtheri de Votis [Themata de VotisJ. In D. Martin Luthers Werke, 323-335.
Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1889.
. The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows. Translated by James Atkinson. In The
Christian in Society I, edited by James Atkinson. Vol. 44, Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1966.
. Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings. Edited by Timothy Lull. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989.
. To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. In The Christian in Society I, edited by James
Atkinson. Vol. 44, Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.
Luther, Martin and John Calvin. Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Edited by Harro Hopfl.

576
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Mannying, Robert. Robert of'Brunne 's 'Handlyng Synne, 'AD 1303, with Those Parts of the Anglo-
French Treatise on which It Was Founded, William of Wadington 's "Manuel des Pechiez " Re-
Editedfrom Mss. in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries. Edited by Frederick J. Furnivall.
Early English Text Society, o.s. 119. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1901.
Matthew, F. D., ed. "The Trial of Richard Wyche." English Historical Review 5 (1890): 530-544.
Maxwell-Lyte, Henry, ed. The Registers of Thomas Wolsey Bishop of Bath and Wells 1518-1523, John
Clerke . . . William Knyght. . . and Gilbert Bourne, Somerset Record Society, vol. 55. 1940.
McSheffrey, Shannon, and Norman Tanner, ed. Lollards of Coventry 1486-1522. Camden Society, 5*
ser, vol. 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Milner, Edith, and Edith Benham, ed. Records of the Lumleys ofLumley Castle. London: George Bell
and Sons, 1904.
Mirk, John. Mirk's Festival: A Collection of Homilies. Edited by Theodore Erbe. Early English Text
Society, e.s., 96. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1905.
More, Thomas. The Apology. Edited by J. B. Trapp. Vol. 9, Complete Works of St. Thomas More. New
Have, CT: Yale University Press, 1979.
. The Confutation ofTyndale 's Answer. Edited by L.A. Schuster et. al. Vol. 8, The Complete
Works of Thomas More. New Haven and London: Yale University, Press, 1973.
. The Devellation of Salem and Bizance. Edited by John Guy et al. Vol. 10, The Complete Works
of Thomas More. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987.
. A Dialogue concerning Heresies. Edited by Thomas M.C. Lawler et al. Vol. 6, The Complete
Works of St. Thomas More. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
. The Last Letters of Thomas More. Edited by Alvaro de Silva. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2000.
Morris, Richard, ed. Dan Michel's Ayenbite oflnwy : or, Remorse of Conscience. Early English Text
Society, o.s., 23. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Nazianzus, Gregory of. "The Second Oration on Easter." In Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen,
edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 422-434. 1894. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1995.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.html.
Nelson, Venetia, ed. A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A prose version of the Speculum Vitae,
ed. from B.L. MS Harley 45. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1981.
[Netter, Thomas, of Walden?]. Fasciculi zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wyclifcum tritico. Edited by
Walter Waddington Shirley. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858.
Nichols, John Gough, ed. The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, From
A.D. 1550 toA.D. 1563. Camden Society, vol. 42. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1868.
Origen. De Principiis. Translated by Frederick Crombie. In Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian,
Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, edited by Alexander
Roberts, James Donaldson,and A. Cleveland Cox, 239-384. 1885. Reprint, Peabody, MA:
Henrickson, 1995. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anfD4.html.
Ortroy, F. van, ed. "Vie du bienheureux martyr Jean Fisher Cardinal, eveque de Rochester." Analecta
Bollandiana 10 (1891): 121-365; 12 (1893): 97-283.
Parker, Matthew. Correspondence of Matthew Parker, D.D. Archbishop of Canterbury. Comprising
Letters Written by and to Him, From A.D. 1535, to His Death, A.D. 1575. Edited by John Bruce.
Parker Society, vol. 33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853.
Petti, Anthony G. Recusant Documents from Ellesmere Manuscripts, Catholic Record Society, vol. 60.
London, 1968.
Philpot, John. The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot. Edited by Robert Eden. Parker Society,
vol. 34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842.
Pocock, Nicolas. Records of the Reformation; the Divorce 1527-1533. . . . Oxford: Clarendon, 1870.
Pollen, John Hungerford. Miscellanea I. Catholic Record Society, vol. 1. London, 1905.
Reynes, Robert. The Commonplace Book of Robert Reynes ofAcle: An Edition of Tanner MS 407.
Edited by Cameron Louis. New York and London: Garland, 1980.
Ridley, Nicholas. The Works of Nicholas Ridley. Edited by Henry Christmas. Parker Society, vol. 39.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841.
Robinson Hastings, ed. and trans., Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, Written During

577
 the Reigns of King Henry Vlll, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary: Chiefly from the Archives of
Zurich. Parker Society, vol. 53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, J 846.
. The Zurich Letters: Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others
with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, During the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth. Parker Society, vol.
50. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 1842.
. The Zurich Letters: Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others
with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, During the Reign of the Queen Elizabeth, 2" Series, Parker
Society., vol. 51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845.
Roper, William. A Man of Singular Virtue: Being a Life of Sir Thomas More by His Son-ln-Law
William Roper and a Selection of More's Letters. Edited by A.L. Rowse. London: Folio Society,
1980.
Ross, Woodburn O., ed. Middle English Sermons: Edited from British Museum MS. Royal 18 B. xxiii.
Early English Text Society, o.s., 209. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1940.
Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento tempore Edwardi R.I -fad finem
Henrici R. VII.]. London, 1767-1777.
Rymer, Thomas, ed. Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cujuscunque generis acta publico, inter reges
Anglice et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates, ah ineunte
sazculo duo-decimo, viz ah anno 1101, ad nostra usque tempore habita aut traetata; ex autographis,
infra secretiores Archivorum regiorum thesaurarias, per multa sceecula reconditis, fldeliter
exscripta. London, 1726-35.
Saint Germain, Christopher. A Treatise concernynge the Diuision Berwene the Spirytualtie and
Temporalitie. Edited by J. B. Trapp. Vol. 9, Complete Works of St. Thomas More. New Have, CT:
Yale University Press, 1979.
Schroeder, H. J. (ed.), Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1941.
Scott, Tom, and Bob Scribner, ed. The German Peasants' War: A History in Documents. New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1991.
Sharp, Cuthbert, ed. The Rising in the North: The 1569 Rebellion Being a Reprint of the Memorials of
the Rebellion of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. Foreword by Robert Wood.
Durham City: Shotten, 1975.
Simmons, Thomas Frederick, ed. The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass with
Rubrics and Devotions for the People in Four Texts and Offices in English according to the Use of
York From Manuscripts of the Xth to theXVth Century. Early English Text Society, o.s., 4 1 .
London: N. Triibner, 1879.
Smith, Lucy Toulmin. A Common-Place Book of the Fifteenth Century, Containing A Religious Play
and Poetry, Legal Forms, and Local Accounts. London: Triibner, 1886.
State Papers, Published under the Authority of His Majesty's Commission. King Henry the Eighth.
London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1830-52.
The Statutes of the Realm. 1817. Reprint, London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963.
Swinburn, Lilian M., ed. Laterne of'Li^t. Early English Text Society, o.s., 109. London, Kegan Paul and
Humpfrey Milford, 1917.
Tanner, Norman P., ed. Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31, Camden Society, ser. 4, vol.
20. London: Royal Historical Society, 1977.
Toller, T. Northcote, ed. Correspondence of Edward, Third Earl of Derby, During the Years 24 to 31
Henry VIII. Chetham Society, n.s., vol. 19. Manchester, 1890.
Tyndale, William. An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue. Edited by Henry Walter. Parker Society,
vol. 44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850.
Tyndale, William and John Frith. The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John
Frith. Edited by Thomas Russell. London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1831.
Usher, Roland G., ed. The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth as Illustrated by the
Minute Book of the Dedham Classis 1582-1589. Camden Society, 3 r d series, vol. 8. London: Royal
Historical Society, 1905.
Vitry, Jacques de. The Exempla or Ilustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry.
Edited and translated by Thomas Frederick Crane. Folklore Society, vol. 26. 1890. Reprint,
Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967.
Vocht, Henry De, ed. Acta Thomae Mori: History of the Reports of His Trial and Death with an

578
 Unedited Contemporary Narrative. Louvain: Publications of the Institute for Economics of the
University, 1947.
Wakefield, Walter L., and Austin P. Evans, ed. and trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
Wenzel, Siegfried, ed and trans. Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher's Handbook.
University Park, PN: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.
Whitford, Richard. Richard Whytford's The pype or tonne of the lyfe of perfection. Vol. 5, A werkefor
householders. Edited by James Hogg. Salzburg: Inst. f. Anglistik u. Amerikanistik, Univ. Salzburg,
1979.
Wilkins, David, ed. Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae . . . [MDJCCXVll. London, 1737.
Wright, Thomas, ed. Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of Monasteries. London:
John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1843.
Wriothesley, Charles. A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, From A.D. 1485 to
1559. Edited by William Douglas Hamilton. Camden Society, n.s., vol. 11 and 20. Westminster,
1875-77.
Wood, A. C , ed. Registrum Simonis de Langham cantuariensis archiepiscopi. Canterbury and York
Society, vol. 53 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Wycliffe, John. Johannis Wyclif tractatus de mandatis divinis : accedit tractatus de statu innocencie. . .
Edited by Johann Loserth and F. D. Matthew. 1922. Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1966.
. Select English Works of John Wyclif. Edited by Thomas Arnold. Oxford: Clarendon, 1871.
Zwingli, Heinrich. Zwingli and Bullinger: Selected Translations with Introductions and Notes.
Edited by G. W.Bromiley. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953.

Primary Books and Pamphlets

Adams, lonas. The order of keeping a court leet, and court baron with the charges appertayning to the
same: truly andplaynly deliuered in the English tongue, for the profile of all men, and most
commodious for young students of the lawes, and all others within the iurisdiction of those courtes
(1593).
Askew, Anne. The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the Romysh
popes vpholders, with the Elucydacyon ofJohan Bale (London [Marburg?], 1546 [1547]).
. The lattre examinacyon ofAnne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the wycked
Synagoge of Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon ofJohan Bale (Marburg [Wesel], 1547).
Atterbury, Francis. The rights, powers, and priviledges, of an English convocation, stated and
vindicated in answer to a late book ofD. Wake's, entituled, The authority of Christian princes over
their ecclesiastical synods asserted, &c. and to several other pieces (1700).
[Bale, John]. A Christen exhortacion vnto customable swearers. What a ryght and lawfull othe is:
whan, and before whom, it owght to be. Item. The maner ofsayinge grace, or geuynge thankes vnto
God ([Antwerp], [1543?]).
. The apology oflohan Bale agaynste a ranke papyst aunswering both hym and hys doctours,
that neyther their vowes nor yet their priesthode are of the Gospell, but of Antichrist (1550).
. Yet a course at the Romyshe foxe . . . (Zurich [Antwerp], 1543).
Bancroft, Richard. Dangerous positions and proceedings published and practised within this Hand of
Britaine, under pretence of reformation, andfor the presbyteriall discipline (1640).
Barnes, Robert. A supplicacion vnto the most gracyous prynce H. the viij (1534).
. That by Gods laws it is lawfull for Priestes that hath not the gift ofchastite to marry wives. In
The whole workes ofW. Tyndall, Iohn Frith, and Doct. Barnes, three worth martyrs, andprincipall
teachers of this Churche of Englande (1573).
. The supplication ofdoctour Barnes unto the moost gracyous kynge Henry the eyght, with the
declaration of his articles condemnedfor heresy by the byshops (London, [1548]).
Becon, Thomas. An inuectyue agenst the moost wicked and detestable vyce of swearing (1543).
Bicknoll, Edmond. A Swoord agaynst swearyng, conteining these principal poyntes. 1 That there is a
lawful vse of an oth, contrary to the assertion of the Manichees and Anabaptistes. 2 Howe great a
sinne it is to swearefalsly, vainely, rashly, or customably. 3 That common or vsual swearing leadeth

579
 vnto periurie. 4 Examples of Gods histe and visyble punishment vpon blasphemers, perjurers, and
such as have procured Gods wrath by cursing and bannyng, whiche we call execration (1579).
Bomelius, Henricus. The summe of the holye scripture and ordinarye of the Christen teachyng, the true
Christen faithe, by the whiche we be all justified. And of the verture ofbaptesme, after the teaching
of the Gospell and of the Apostles, with an informacyon howe all estatesshulde lyve accordynge to
the Gospell. [Translated by Simon Fish]. ([Antwerp, [1529]).
The book of oaths, and the severall forms thereof, both antient and modern. Faithfully collected out of
sundry authentike books and records, not heretofore extant, compiled in one volume. Very useful for
all persons whatsoever, especially those that undertake any office ofmagistracie or publique
imployment in the Common-wealth. Whereunto is added a perfect table (1649).
[Bradshaw, William, and Thomas Digges.} Hvmble motives for association to maintaine religion
established (1601).
A briefe censvre vpon the pvritane pamphlet: entitvled, (Hvmble motyves,for association to maintayne
religion established.) Reprooving it of so many vntruthes, as there beleaues in the same ([1601]).
Bucer, Martin. The gratulation of the mooste famous clerke M. Martin Bucer. . . And hys answere vnto
the two ralylinge epistles ofSteuen, Bisshoppe of Winchester, concerninge the vnmaried state of
preestes and cloysterars, wherein is euidently declared, that it is against the lawes of God. . . to
refrain from holye matrimonii ([1549]).
Bullinger, Henry. A sermon made of the confessing ofChriste, and the tnnthe of the gospell: and of the
foule denyinge of the same, made in the conuocaion of the clergie at Zurich the 28. daye ofJanuarie
in the yeare of the lorde (1555). In Vermigli, Peter Martyr, A Treatise of the cohabitacyon of the
faithful! with the vnfaithfull. Wherunto is added. A Sermon made of the confessing ofChriste and
his gospel, and of the denyinge of the same (1565).
Calvin, John. The mynde of the godly and excellent lerned man M. Ihon Caluyne, what a faithful! man,
whiche is instructe in the Worde of God, ought to do, dwellinge amongest the papists (Ipswich,
1548).
. A short instruction for to arme all good Christian people agaynst the pestiferous errours of the
common secte ofAnabaptistes. (1549).
Carpenter, Alexander. Destmctorium viciorum (Paris, 1521).
Carthusian, Denis the. The lyfe ofPrestes This present treatyse concernynge thestate and lyfe of
chanons, prestes, clerkes, and minystres of the church, wasfyrst compyled in Latyne by the reuerend
and deuoute father Dyonisius, sometyme one of the Charterhouse in Ruremond, and taken and
exemplified with great diligence out of an original! copy, ye which he wrote with his owne hande,
and nowe agayne beynge diligently corrected, is translated into the Englyshe tonge, vnto the
honour of god, and for the vtiiitie and soule helth of clerkes, and other studentes of the same
([1533?]).
Chauncy, Maurice. His toria aliqvot nostri saecvli martyrum cumpia, turn lectu iucunda, nunquam
antehac typis excusa (Mainz, 1550).
Chertsey, Andrew. The crafte to lyue well and to dye well (1505).
. lhesus. The floure of the commaundementes of god with many examples and auctorytees
extracte and drawen as well of holy scryptures as of other doctours and good auncient faders,
the whiche is moche vtyle and prouffytable vnto all people. The. x. commaundementes of the
lawe. Thou shalt worshyp one god onely. And loue hym with thy herteperfytely . . . Thefyue
commaundementes of the chyrche. The sondayes here thou masse and the festes of
commaundement. . . . The foure ymbres vigyles thou shalte faste, and the lente entyerly (1510).
Cosin, Richard. An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical! of late times by
some chalenged, and also diuersly by them impugned. . . . Whereunto . . . 1 haue presumed to
adionie that right excellent and sound determination (concerning oaths) which was made by M.
Lancelot Androwes (1593).
. An apologies: of, and for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical!, of late times by
some challenged, and also diuersly by them impugned (1591).
Crowley, Robert. The confutation of xiii. articles, wherunto Nicolas Shaxton, late byshop of Saulburye
subscribed and caused be set forthe in print the yere of our Lord. M.L.xlvi. when he recanted in
Smithfielde at London at the burning ofmestres Anne Askue, which is liuely set forth in the figure
folowynge (1548).

580
Doleman, R. [William Allen, Sir Francis Englefield, and Robert Parsons?]. A conference about the next
succession to the crowne oflngland, diuided into two parts. . . .(N. [Antwerp], 1594 [1595]).
Downame, John. Foure treatises, tending to disswade all Christians from foure no /esse hainous then
common sinnes; namely, the abuses of swaering, Drunkenesse, Whoredome, and Briberie (1608).
Gardiner, Stephen. De vera obediencia: An oration made in Latine, by the right reuerende father in
God Stephan bishop of Winchestre, now lord chauncelour of England. With the preface of Edmunde
Boner . . . touching true obedience (Rome [Wesel?], 1553).
. Stephani Winton. episcopi Angli, ad Matrinvm Bvcerum, de impudenti eiusdem pseudologia
conquestio (Louvain, 1544).
Hawes, Stephen. The conuersyon ofswerers (1509).
[Harpsfield, Nicholas?]. Bishop Cranmer's Recantacyons. Edited by Lord Houghton. Introduction by J.
Gairdner Philobiblon Society Miscellanies 15, 1877-84.
Henry VIII. A copy of the letters, wherin the most redouted & mighty prince, our souerayne lorde kyng
Henry the eight, kyng ofEnglande . . . made answere vnto a certayne letter ofMartyn Luther, sent
vnto him by the same and also the copy of the foresaid Luthers letter, in such order, as here after
foloweth (1527).
Home, Robert. An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe ofWynchester, to a booke entituled, "The
Declaration ofsvche scruples, and stales of conscience, touchinge the othe of supremacy", as M.
John Fekenham, by wry tinge did deliuer vnto the L. Bishop of Winchester, with his resolutions made
thereunto (1566).
James I. An for the oath of allegiance first set forth without a name, and now by the author, the right
high and prince, by the grace of God, King of great Britaine, France and Ireland, defender of the
faith, &c. Together, with a premonition of his to all most mightie monarches, kings, free princes and
states of Christendome (1609).
Joye, George. The defence of the mariage ofpreists: agenst Steuen Gardiner. . . with a confutation of
their vnaduysed vowes vnaduysedly diffmed: whereby they haue so wykedly separated them whom
God cowpled in lawfull mariage (Auryk [Antwerp], [1541]).
. The exposicion of Daniel the prophete gathered oute of Philip Melanchton, Iohan
Ecolampadius, Chonrade Pellicane [and] out oflohan Draconite. . . . ([Antwerp], [1545]).
. The letters whyche Iohan Ashwellpriour of Newnham Abbey besydes Bedforde, sente secretely
to the Byshope of Lyncolne in theyeare of our Lord M.D.xxvii. Where in the sayde pryour accuseth
George loye that tyme beyng felow of Peter college in Cambrydge, offower opinyons: wyth the
answere of the sayde George vn to the same opynyons. ([ 1548?]).
Laurent, Domincian. This book was compyled and made atte requeste of kyng Phelyp of Fraunce . . .
whyche book is callyd in frensshe. Ie liure Royall that is to say the ryal book, or a book for a
kyng. . . .(1485 Or 1486).
[Luther, Martin], An exposition in to the seventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians.
[Translated by William Roy]. Included in Erasmus, An exhortation to the diligent studye of
scripture. . . . ([Antwerp], [1529]).
Martin, Thomas [and Stephen Gardiner?], y4 traictise declaryng and plainly prouyng, that the pretensed
marriage ofpriestes, and professed persones, is no mariage, but altogether vnlawful, and in all
ages, and al countreies of Christendome, bothe forbidden, and also punyshed. . . . (1554).
The metynge of Doctor Barons and doctor Powell at paradise gate [and] oftheyr communication bothe
drawen to Smithfylde from, the towar. The one burned for heresye as the papistes do saye truly and.
the other quartered for popery and all within one houre ([1548]).
Melanchthon, Philipp. A very godly defense, full oflerning, defending the mariage ofpreistes, gathered
by Philip Melancthon, & sent vnto the kyng of Englond, Henry the aight, translated out oflatyne
into englishe, by Lewes Beuchame (Lipse [Antwerp], [1541]).
Morice, James. A briefe treatise ofoathes exacted by ordinaries and ecclesiastical iudges, to answere
generallie to all such articles or interrogatories, as pleaseth them to propound And of their forced
and constrained oathes ex officio, wherein is proued that the same are vnlawfull ([Middelburg],
[1590?]).
Norton, Thomas. A warning agaynst the dangerous practices of Papistes, and specially the parteners of
the late rebellion (1570?).
Nowell, Alexander. A reproufe written by Alexander Nowell of a booke entituled A proufe of certayne

581
 articles in religion denied by M. luell, set furth by Thomas Dorman, bachelor ofdivinitie (1565).
Parker, Matthew. A defence ofpr testes mariages stablysshed by the imperial! lawes of the realme of
Englande, agaynst a civilian, namyng hym selfe Thomas Martin doctour of the civile lawes, goyng
about to disprove the saide mariages, lawfull by the eternal! worde of God, and by the hygh court of
parliament, only forbydden by forayne lawes and canons of the Pope, coloured with the visour of the
Churche. Whiche lawes and canons, were extynguy'shed by the saydeparliament (1567).
Parsons, Robert. A treatise tending to mitigation tovvardes Catholike-subiectes in England Wherin is
declared, that it is not impossible for subiects of different religion, (especially Catholikes and
Protestantes) to live togeather in dutiful! obedience and subiection, vnder the gouernment of his
Maiesty of Great Britany. Against the seditions wrytings of Thomas Morton minister, & some others
to the contrary. Whose two false and slavnderovs grovndes, pretended to be dravvne from Catholike
doctrine & practice, concerning rebellion and eqviuocation, are ouerthrowne, and cast vpon
himselfe. Dedicated to the learned schoole-deuines, cyuill and canon lawyers of the two vniuersities
of England. By P.R. ([Saint-Omer], 1607).
Peraldus, Gulielmus. Sumarivm summe virtutum et vitiorum per figures ([Lyons?], 1500).
Ponet, John. A defence for mariage ofpriestes by Scriptvre and avnciente wryters (1549).
Pro divo Carolo Romanorvm lmperatore Invictissimo, pio, feUce, semper Augvsto, Patrepatriae, in
satisfactionem quidem sine talione eorum quae in ilium scripta, ac pleraque etiam in vvlgvm aediat
fuere, Apologetic! libri duo nvper ex Hispaniis allati cum alijs nonnullis, quorvm catalogos ante
cviusque exordium reperies (Anvers, 1527).
Seton, Alexander and William Tolwyn. The declaracion made at Poules Crosse in the cytye of London
the fourth Sonday ofAduent by Alexander Seyton and Mayster Willyam Tolwyn, persone ofS.
Anthonynes in the sayd cytye of London, the yere of our Lord GodM.D.XLi. ([1542]).
Smyth, Richard. Eivsdem D. Richardi Smythei confvtatio qvorundam articulorum de votis monasticis
Petri Martyris Itali, Oxoniae in Anglia theologiam profitentis. In Celeberrunu sacrae theologiae
professoris D. Richari Smythei, in achademia Oxoniensi sacras Iiteras profitentis de coelibatu
sacerdotum liber vnus. Eiusdem de votis monasticis liber alter, nunc primum typis excusi (Louvain,
1550).
Stapleton, Thomas. A counterblast to M. Homes vayne blaste against M. Fekenham : Wherein is set
forthe: a full reply to M. Homes Answer, and to euerypart therofmade, against the declaration of
my L. Abbat of Westminster, M. Fekenham, touching, the Othe of Supremacy (Louvrain, 1567).
Turner, William. The rescuynge of the romishe fox other wyse called the examination of the hunter
deuised by Steuen Gardiner. . . . (Winchester [Bonn], [1545]).
Vermigli, Peter Martyr. Defensio D. Petri Martyris Vermiglii Florentini diuinarum literarvm in schola
Tigurina professoris, ad Riccardi Smythaei Angli, olim theologiae professoris Oxoniensis dvos
libellos de caelibatu sacerdotum, et votis monasticis (Basel, 1559).
Wentworth, Peter. A pithie exhortation on to her Maiestie for establishing her svccussor to the crowne
(1598).
Watson, Robert. Aetiologi a Roberti Watsoni Angli, in qua explicatur, quare deprehensus annum vnum
& menses pene quatur, propter Evangelivm incarceratvs fuit: quenam inter ipsum & eius
Antagonistas in carcere habita fuit disceptatio, de Transubstantiatione & reali Christ! praesentia
in Sacramento: & quo pacto corpore incolumi & illibata conscientia tandem expediuit eum
Dominus ([Emdem], [1556]).
White, Christopher. Ofoathes their obiect, forme, and bond.the punishment ofperiurie, and the
impietie ofpapall dispensations. . . . (1627).
Whitford, Richard. Here begynneth the boke called the Pype, or tonne, of the lyfe of perfection The
reason or cause wherof dotheplaynely appere in theprocesse (1532).
Wiburn, Perceval. A checke or reproofe of M. Howlets vntimely shreeching in her Maiesties eares with
an answeare to the reasons alleadged in a discourse thervnto annexed, why Catholikes (as they are
called) refuse to goe to church: wherein (among other things) the papists traiterous and treacherous
doctrine and demeanour towards our Soveraigne and the state, is somewhat at large vpon occasion
vnfolded: their divelish pretended conscience also examined, and the foundation thereof
vndermined. And lastly shewed that it [sic] is the duety of all true Christians and subiectes to haunt
publike church assemblies (1581).

582
 Secondary Sources
Adams, Simon. Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2002.
Alford, Stephen. The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558-
1569 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Aston, Margaret. Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion. London:
Hambledon Press, 1984.
Aungier, George James. The History and Antiquities of'Syon Monastery, the Parish oflsleworth, and
the Chaperly ofHounslow. London: J.B. Nicols and Son, 1840.
Batley, J. Y. On a Reformer's Latin Bible: Being an Essay on the 'Adversaria' in the Vulgate of
Thomas Bilney. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, & Co., 1940.
Bellany, Alastair. The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the
Overbury Affair, 1603-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Bernard, George W. "A Comment on Dr Guy's reply," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986):
284-287.
. The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
. "The Making of Religious Policy, 1533-1546: Henry VII and the Search for the Middle Way."
Historical Journal 41 (1998):321 -349.
. "The Pardon of the Clergy Reconsidered." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986): 258-
282.
. Power and Politics in Tudor England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.
. "The Tyranny of Henry VIII." In Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented
to C S. L. Davies, edited by G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn, 113-129. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Birt, Henry Norbert. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement: A Study of Contemporary Documents.
London: George Bell and Sons, 1907.
Bohna, Montgomery. "Armed Force and Civic Legitimacy in Jack Cade's Revolt, 1450." English
Historical Review 118 (2003): 563-583.
Bossy, John. "Henri IV, the Appelants and the Jesuits," Recusant History 8 (1965): 80-122.
. "Moral arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments." In Conscience and Casuistry in
Early Modern Europe, edited by Edmund Leites, 214-234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988.
Bowker, Margaret. The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521-
1547. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
. "The Supremacy and the Episcopate: The Struggle for Control, 1534-1540." Historical
Journal 18 (1975): 227-243.
Braun, Harald E., and Edward Vallance, ed. Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-
1700. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Brigden, Susan. London and the Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
. "Religion and Social Obligation in Early Sixteenth-Century London." Past and Present 103
(1984): 67-112.
. "Youth and the English Reformation." In The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500-1640,
edited by Peter Marshall, 55-84. London: Arnold, 1997.
Bruce, John. "Observations on the Circumstances which Occasioned the Death of Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester." Archaeologia 25 (1834): 61-99.
Burnet, Gilbert. History of the Reformation of the Church of England. Edited by Nicolas Pocock. 1865.
Reprint, Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg International Publishers, 1969.
Bush, Michael. The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996.
Bush, Michael, and David Bownes. The Defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Postpardon
Revolts of December 1536 to March 1537 and Their Effect. Hull: University of Hull Press, 1999.
Campell, Louise. "A Diagnosis of Religious Moderation: Matthew Parker and the 1559 Settlement." In

583
 Moderate Voices in the European Reformation, edited by Luc Racaul and Alex Ryrie, 32-50.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
Carrafiello, Michael. "Robert Parsons and Equivocation." Catholic Historical Review 79 (] 993): 671 -
680.
Carter, Christopher. "The Family of Love and Its Enemies." Sixteenth-Century Journal 37 (2006): 651-
672.
Chester, Alan G. Hugh Latimer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954.
Chibi, A. Andrew. Henry Vlll's Bishops: Diplomants, Administrators, Scholars and Shepherds.
Cambridge: James Clarke, 2003.
. Henry VIII 's Conservative Scholar: Bishop John Stokesley and the Divorce, Royal Supremacy
and Doctrinal Reform. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997.
Collinson, Patrick. Elizabethan Essays. London: Hambledon Press, 1994.
. "The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I." Bulletin of the John Rylands University
Library of Manchester, 69 (1987):394-424.
. "Night schools, Conventicles and Churches: Continuities and Discontinuities in Early
Protestant Ecclesiology." In The Beginnings of English Protestantism, edited by Peter Marshall and
Alec Ryrie, 209-235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Cooper, J. P. "The Supplication against the Ordinaries Reconsidered." English Historical Review 72
(1957): 616-641.
Copeland, Rita. Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of
Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Craun, E. D., '"Inordinata Locutio': Blasphemy in Pastoral Literature, 1200-1500." Traditio 39 (1983):
135-162.
. Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the
Deviant Speaker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Cressy, David. "Binding the Nation: the Bonds of Association, 1584 and 1696." In Tudor Rule and
Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from His American Friends, edited by Delloyd J. Guth and John
W. McKenna, 217-234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Cruickshank, C. G. The English Occupation ofTournai 1513-1519. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
Cummings, Brian. "Swearing in Public: More and Shakespeare." English Literary Renaissance 27
(1997): 197-232.
Curtis, Mark H. Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558-1642: An Essay on Changing Relations
between English Universities and English Society. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.
Cust, Richard. "News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England." Past and Present 112
(1986): 60-90.
Darby, Harold S. Hugh Latimer. London: Epwroth Press, 1953.
Davies, C. S. L. "The Cromwellian Decade: Authority and Consent." Transaction of the Royal
Historical Society, 6th ser., 7 (1997): 177-195.
Davies, J. F. "Lollardy and the Reformation in England." In The Impact of the English Reformation,
1500-1640, edited by Peter Marshall, 37-54. London: Arnold, 1997.
Demaus, Robert. Hugh Latimer: A Biography. London: Religious Tract Society, 1903.
Dickens, A. G. The English Reformation. 2nd edition. London: B. T. Batsford, 1989.
Dictionary of National Biography. Multiple vols. Prepared under various editors. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1885-1990.
Diefendorf, Barbara. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Dodds, Madeleine Hope, and Ruth Dodds. The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536-1537 and The Exeter
Conspiracy 1538. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915.
Doran, Susan. "Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Hapsburg Marriage Negotiations
of 1559-1567." English Historical Review 104 (1989): 909-926.
Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.l400-c.l580. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
. The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2001.
Elton, G.R. "The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry

584
 VIII." English Historical Review 66 (1951): 507-534.
. "The Evolution of a Reformation Statute." English Historical Review 64 (1949): 174-197.
. Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Eubel Konrad et al. ed., Hierarchia catholica medii aevi.... Monasterii, 1898- .
Febvre, Lucien. "The Origins of a the French Reformation: A Badly-Put Question?" \nA New Kind of
History: From the Writings of Febvre, edited Peter Burke, translated by K. Folca, 44-107. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
Fines, John. A Biographical Register of Early English Protestants and Others Opposed to the Roman
Catholic Church. Sutton Courteney Press, 1985.
Fletcher, Anthony, and Diarmaid MacCulloch. Tudor Rebellions . 5th edition. Harlow, England:
Pearson, 2004.
Freeman, Thomas S. "Dissenters from a Dissenting Church: The Challenge of the Freewillers, 1550-
1558." In The Beginnings of English Protestantism, edited by Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, 129-
156. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
. "Publish and Perish: the Scribal Culture of the Marian Martyrs." In The Uses of Script and
Print, 1300-1700, edited by Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham, 235-254. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Fuller, Thomas. The History of the University of Cambridge, and of Waltham Abbey with the Appeal of
Injured Innocence. Edited by James Nicols. London: Thomas Tegg, 1840.
Gee, Henry. Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion, 1558-1564. Oxford: Clarendon, 1898.
Graves, Michael A. R. "The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's 'Men-
of-Business1." Parliamentary History 2 (1983): 11-38.
. Thomas Norton: The Parliament Man. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
. "Thomas Norton the Parliament Man: An Elizabethan M. P., 1559-1581." Historical Journal
23 (1980): 17-35.
Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Griffiths, Ralph A. The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422-1461. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.
Guy, John. "Henry VIII and the Praemunire Manoeuvres of 1530-1531." English Historical Review 97
(1982): 481-503.
. "The Pardon of the Clergy: a Reply." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986): 283-284.
. "Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution." In Reassessing
the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500-1550, edited by Alistair Fox and John
Guy, 151-178. New York: Blackwell, 1986.
. Tudor England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Harris, Tim. London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration
until the Exclusion Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Harvey, I. M. W. Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Haigh, Christopher. English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993.
-. Elizabeth I. 2nd edition. London: Longmans, 1988.
. "Success and Failure in the English Reformation." Past and Present 173 (2001): 28-49.
. "Why did it happen?" The Tablet, April 20, 2002. http://www.thetablet.co.uk./cgi-
bin/archive_db.cgi?tablet-. 00623.
Haugaard, Willaim P. Elizabeth and the English Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of
Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Hauser, Henri. "Le traite de Madrid et la cession de la Bourgogne a Charles-Quint: etude sur le
sentiment national Bourguignon en 1525-1526." Revue Bourguignonne 22 (1912): 1-180.
Heist, William W. The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday. East Lansing MI: Michigan State College
Press, 1952.
Helmholz, R. H. "Origins of the Privilege Against Self-incrimination: the Role of the European lus
Commune." New York University Law Review 65 (1990): 962-990.
Heriot, Duncan B. "Anabaptism in England during the 16lh and 17th Centuries." Transactions of the
Congregational Historical Society 12(1933):256-271; 13 (1939): 312-320.

585
Hickerson, Megan. "Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England: Anne Askew and the Bishop of London,"
Journal of British Studies 46 (2007): 774-795.
. "Ways of Lying: Anne Askew and the Examinations," Gender and History 18 (2006): 50-65.
Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. New York: Schocken Books,
1964.
Hindle, Steve. The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550-1640. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2000.
Hodgson Phyllis. "Ignorancia Sacerdotum: A Fifteenth-Century Discourse on the Lambeth
Constitutions." Review of English Studies 24 (1948): 1-11.
Hope, Andrew. "Lollardy: The Stone the Builders Rejected?" In Protestantism and the National
Church in Sixteenth-Century England, edited by Peter Lake and Maria Dowling, 1-35. London:
CroomHelm, 1987.
Horst, Irvin Buckwalter. The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558.
Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1972.
Hoyle, R. W. The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Hoyle, R. W., and A. J. L. Winchester, "A Lost Source for the Rising of 1536 in north-west England."
English Historical Review, 118 (2003): 120-129.
Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clardendon,
1988.
. "Which Wyche? The Framing of the Lollard Heretic and / or Saint." In Texts and the
Repression of Medieval Heresy, edited by Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller, 221-237. York Studies
in Medieval Theology, vol. 4. Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2003.
Hudson, William. Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber. Edited by Francis Halgrave and Thomas
Garden Barnes. 1792. Reprint, Birmingham: Legal Classics Library, 1986.
Hughes, Philip. "The Earliest Life of John Fisher." Blackfriars 16 (1935): 414-418.
Hutton, Ronald. "The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations." In The Impact of the English
Reformation, 1500-1640, edited by Peter Marshall, 142-167. London: Arnold, 1997.
Ives, Eric. "Henry VIII: the Political Perspective." In The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and
Piety, edited by Diarmaid MacCulloch, 13-34. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.
. "Stress, Faction and Ideology in Early-Tudor England." Historical Journal 34 (1991): 193-202.
Jones, David Martin. Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: The Political
Significance of Oaths and Engagements. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1999.
Jones, Norman. The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
. Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559. London: Royal Historical
Society, 1982.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.
. "The Right to Remain Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc." Speculum 68 (1993): 992-1026.
Kelly, Michael. "The Submission of the Clergy." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 5th
series, 15 (1965): 97-119.
Kennedy, W. M. The 'Interpretations' of the Bishops and Their Influence on Elizabethan Episcopal
Policy. London: Longmans, Green Co, 1908.
Kingdon, Robert. "Confessionalism in Calvin's Geneva." Archivfur Reformationgeschichte 96 (2005):
109-116.
Knowles, David. The Tudor Age. Vol. 3, The Religious Orders in England. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1959.
Lamb, John. An Historical Account of the Thirty-nine Articles from the First Promulgation of Them in
M.D.LIII. to Their Final Establishment in M.D.LXX1. with Exact Copies of the Latin and English
Manuscripts, and Facsimiles of the Signatures of the Archbishops and Bishops, etc. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1829.
Lake, Peter. "The Dilemma of the Establishment Puritan: the Cambridge Heads and the Case of Francis
Johnson and Cuthbert Bainbrigg." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978): 23-35.
. "Moving the Goal Posts? Modified Subscription and the Construction of Conformity in the
Early Stuart Church." In Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, edited by
Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier, 179-205. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000.

586
Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. "Puritans, Papists, and the 'Public Sphere' in Early Modern England:
The Edmund Campion Affair in Context." Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 587-627.
Lake, Peter, and Steve Pincus. "Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England," Journal of
British Studies 45 (2006): 270-292.
Le Vasseur.Ephemerides ordinis Cartusiensis. Monstrolii, 1890.
Lehmberg, Stanford E. The Reformation Parliament, 1529-1536. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970.
Lee, James. '"Ye Shall Disturbe Noe Mans Right': Oath-Taking and Oath-Breaking in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Bristol," Urban History 34 (2007): 27-38.
Legg, Leopold G. Wickham. English Coronation Records. Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1901.
Levy, Leonard W. Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-incrimination. Chicago:
IvanR. Dee, 1968.
Loades, David. Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
. Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government, and Religion in England, 1553-1558. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Lowe, J. Andreas. Richard Smyth and the Language of Orthodoxy: Re-Imagining Tudor Catholic
Polemicism. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
MacCaffrey, Wallace. Elizabeth 1. London: Edward Arnold, 1993.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. New York:
Palgrave, 1999.
. "Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church." In The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and
Piety, edited by Diarmaid MacCulloch, 159-180. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.
. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Maguire, Mary Hume. "Attack of the Common Lawyers on the Oath Ex Officio as Administered in the
Ecclesiastical Courts in England." In Essays in History and Political Theory in Honor of Charles
HowardMcllwain, 199-229. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.
Manning, Roger B. Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex: A Study in the Enforcement of the
Religious Settlement, 1558-1603. Bristol: Leicester University Press, 1969.
Maitland, S. R. The Reformation in England. London: John Lane, 1906.
Marsh, Christopher. Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding Their Peace. New York:
St. Martin's Press,1998.
Marshall, Peter. "Papist as Heretic: The Burning of John Forest, 1538." Historical Journal 41 (1998):
351-374.
. Religious Identities in Henry VIll's England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
Marshall, Peter, and Alec Ryrie. "Introduction: Protestantisms and their beginnings." In The Beginnings
of English Protestantism, 1-13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Mayer, Thomas F. "On the Road to 1534: the Occupation of Tournai and Henry VIll's Theory of
Sovereignty." In Tudor Political Culture, edited by Dale Hoak, 11-30. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
Monter, E. William. Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Moyes, J. "Warham: An English Prelate on the Eve of the Reformation." Dublin Review 114 (1894):
390-420.
Mullinger, James Bass. The University of Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884
Neale, John E. Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581. London: J. Cape, 1953.
. Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584-1601. London: J. Cape, 1957.
. "The Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity." English Historical Review 65 (1950):
302-332.
. Essays in Elizabethan History. London: J. Cape, 1958.
Nicholson, Graham. "The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation." In Law and Government under
the Tudors, edited by Claire Cross, David Loades and J.J. Scarisbrick, 19-30. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Nolcken, Christina von. "Richard Wyche, a Certain Knight, and the Beginning of the End." In Lollardy
and the Gentry, edited by Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond, 127-154. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1997.

587
Owst, G. R. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966.
Parish, Helen. Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy, and Practice.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.
Parmiter, Geoffrey de C. "Bishop Bonner and the Oath." Recusant History 11 (1972): 215-236.
Pearse, M. T. Between Known Men and Visible Saints: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Dissent. Madison:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994.
Pearson, A. F. Scott. Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535-1603. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1925.
Pettegree, Andrew. Marian Protestantism: Six Studies. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.
Phythian-Adams, Charles. "Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450-1550."
In Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History, edited by Peter Clark
and Paul Slack, 57-85. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Pollen, John Hungerford. The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: A Study of Their
Politics Civil Life and Government. London: Longmans, Green and Co: 1920.
Porter, H. C. Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1958.
Questier, Michael C. Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic
Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
. Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
. "Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the
Jacobean Oath of Allegiance." HistoricalJournal 40 (1997): 311-329.
Read, Conyers. "Faction in the English Privy Council under Elizabeth." Annual Report of the American
Historical Association 28 (1911): 111-119.
Reardon, Bernard M. G. Religious Thought in the Reformation. London: Longman, 1981.
Redworth, Glyn. "Whatever Happened to the English Reformation?" History Today 37 (October 1987):
29-36.
Rex, Richard. "The Crisis of Obedience: God's Word and Henry's Reformation." Historical Journal 39
(1996): 863-894.
. "The Execution of the Holy Maid of Kent," Historical Research 64 (1991): 216-220.
. The Lollards. Houndmills, Basingstroke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002.
Ridley, Jaspar. The Tudor Age. London: Constable, 1988.
Riordan, Michael, and Alec Ryrie. "Stephen Gardiner and the Making of a Protestant Villain."
Sixteenth-Century Journal 34 (2003): 1039-1063.
Rose, Elliot. Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth 1 and
James I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Rouse, E. Clive. "Wall Paintings in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Corby, Lincolnshire."
Archaeological Journal 100(1943): 157-163.
Russell, Henry G. "Lollard Opposition to Oaths by Creatures." American Historical Review 51 (1946):
668-684.
Ryan, C. J. "The Jacobean Oath of Allegiance and English Lay Catholics." Catholic Historical Review
28(1942): 159-183.
Ryrie, Alec. "Counting sheep, counting shepherds: the problem of allegiance in the English
Reformation." In The Beginnings of English Protestatism, edited by Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie,
84-110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
. The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Sacks, David Harris. "The Promise and Contract in Early Modern England: Slade's Case in
Perspective." In Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe, edited by V. Kahn and L. Hutson, 28-
53. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Scarisbrick, J.J. Henry VI11. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.
. "The Pardon of the Clergy." Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1956): 22-39.
. The Reformation and the English People. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
Scribner, Robert. "The Impact of the Reformation on Daily Life." In Mensch und Objekt im Mittelalter
und in der Friihen Neuzeit: LebenAlltagKidtur, edited by Gerhard Jaritz, 315-343. Vienna:

588
 Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990.
. "Ritual and Reformation." In The German People and the Reformation, edited by R. Po-shia
Hsia, 122-144. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Shagan, Ethan. "The English Inquisition: Constitutional Conflict and Ecclesiastical Law in the 1590s."
Historical Journal 47 (2004): 541-565.
. Popular Politics and the English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Simpson, Richard. Edmund Campion: Jesuit Protomartyr of England. London: Burns and Oates, 1907.
Sommerville, Johann P. "The 'New Art of Lying': Equivocation, Cental reservation, and Casuistry." In
Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern England, edited by Edmund Leites, 159-184.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
. "Papalist Political Thought and the Controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance." In
Catholics and the Protestant nation': Religion Politics and Identity in Early Modern England,
edited by Ethan Shagan, 162-184. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005.
Spurr, John. "A Profane History of Early Modern Oaths." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
6 lh Series, 11 (2001): 37-64.
. "Perjury, Profanity and Politics." The Seventeenth Century 8 (1993): 29-50.
. '"The Strongest Bond of Concience': Oaths and the Limits of Toleration in Early Modern
England." In Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, edited by Harald E.
Braun and Edward Vallance, 151-165. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Steinmetz, David C. Reformers in the Wings: From Geiler von Kaysersberg to Theodore Beza. 2" ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Stelten, Leo F., ed. Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin. Peabody, MA; Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.
Strype, John. Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and Other Various Occurrences
in the Church of England, During Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign: Together with an Appendix of
Original Papers of State, Records, and Letters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824.
. 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
the First. . . . London: John Wyat, 1721.
. The History of the Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal, the
First Bishop of London, and the Second Archbishop of York and Canterbury Successively, in the
Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Oxford: Clarendon, 1821.
. The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of
Queen Elizabeth . . . To which is Added, an Appendix, Containing Various Transcripts of Records,
Letters . . . and Other Secret Papers. . . . London: John Wyat, 1711.
. The Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, John Whitgift, D.D. The Third and Last
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, In the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; Who, Under Her Majesty, in That
Station, Governed the Church of England for the Space of Twenty Years. London: 1718.
. The Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer, Lord Bp. of London in
the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Oxford: Clarendon, 1821.
. The Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, Kt. First Instructor, Afterwards Secretary of State, to
King Edward VI. One of the Great Restorers of Good Learning and True Religion in this Kingdom.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1821.
. Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God Thomas Cranmer, Sometime Lord Archbishop
of Canterbury. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1812.
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.
Thompson, E. Margaret. The Carthusian Order in England. London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1930.
Tierney, M. A., ed. Dodd's Church History of England From the Commencement of the Sixteenth
Century to the Revolution in 1688. 1839. Reprint, New York, Ams Press, 1971.
Tutino, Stefania. "Between Nicodemism and 'Honest' Dissimulation: The Society of Jesus in England."
Historical Research 79 (2006): 534-553.
. Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early-Modern England, 1570-1625. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007.
Tyler, John Endell. Oaths: Their Origin, Nature and History. London: John W. Parker, 1834.
Ullmann, Walter. "The Realm of England is an Empire." JournalI of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979):

589
 181-200.
Usher, Roland G. The Reconstruction of the English Church. New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1910.
. The Rise and Fall of the High Commission. Introduction by Philip Tyler. Oxford: Clarendon,
1913.
Vallance, Edward. "Loyal or Rebellious? Protestant Associations in England 1584-1696" Seventeenth
Century 17 (2002): 1-23.
. "Protestation, Vow, Covenant and Engagement: Swearing Allegiance in the English Civil
War." Historical Research 75 (2002): 408-424.
. Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the
Political Nation, 1553-1682. Woodbndge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005.
Wabuda, Susan. "Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The 'Subtle
Shadows' of Dr Edward Crome." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44 (1993): 224-242.
. Preaching During the English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Walker, Greg. "Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered." Journal of
Ecclesiastical History 40 (1989): 219-238.
Wall, Alison. "The Greatest Disgrace': The Making and Unmaking of JPs in Elizabethan and Jacobean
England," English Historical Review 119 (2004): 312-332.
Walsham, Alexandra. Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500-1700.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
. Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England
Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1993.
. "Ordeals of Conscience: Casuistry, Conformity and Confessional Identity in Post-Reformation
England." In Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, edited by Harald E.
Braun and Edward Vallance, 32-48. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
. Providence in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Walter, John. "Public Transcripts, Popular Agency and the Politics of Subsistence in Early Modern
England." In Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in
Britain and Ireland, edited by Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, 123-148. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
. Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
Watt, Tessa. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991.
Wendel, Francois. Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought. Translated by
Philip Mairet. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1950.
Whiting, Robert. '"For the Health of My Soul': Prayers for the Dead in the Tudor South-West." In The
Impact of the English Reformation, 1500-1640, edited by Peter Marshall,121-142. London: Arnold,
1997.
Williams, Penry. "Elizabethan Oxford: State, Church and University 1558-1603." In The Collegiate
University. Vol. 3, The History of the University of Oxford, edited by James McConica, 397-440.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
Wood, Anthony a. The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, in Two Books. Edited by
JohnGutch. Oxford, 1792.
Woodforde, Christopher. The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century. London:
Oxford University Press, 1950.
Woolf, Rosemary. The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968.
Zagorin, Perez. Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Zaret, David. Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-
Modern England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

590
 Unpublished Theses
Beckett, Neil. "Sheen Charterhouse: From Its Foundation to Its Dissolution." PhD diss., Oxford
University, 1992.
Mohr, Melissa. "Strong Language: Oaths, Obscenities, and Performative Literature in Early Modern
England." PhD diss., Stanford University, 2003.
Nicholson, Graham David. "The Nature and Function of Historical Argument in the Henrician
Reformation." PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1977.
Tail, N.D. "The Brigittine Monastery of Syon (Middlesex) with Special Reference to Its Monastic
Usage." D. Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1975.

591