Leading Puritan figures (lay) Flashcards
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
His father, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, attempted but failed to prevent Mary’s accession, which doomed the family until Robert was rehabilitated for his participation in the Battle of St Quentin in 1557,
A childhood friend of Queen Elizabeth’s, he became privy councilor in October 1562, Earl of Leicester in 1564 and Lord Steward of the Royal Household in 1587.
He courted Queen Elizabeth in vain for many years, to the point where his wife’s accidental death in 1560 was rumoured to be masterminded by Dudley himself. He tried to mediate between CofE bishops and non-conforming preachers, as a patron of the Puritan movement. Initially sympathetic to Mary, Queen of Scots, he began advocating for her execution in the mid-1580s.
Dudley was raised Protestant. He was a patron to Edwardian clerics and returning exiles, but also maintained contact with Catholics. His influence declined however under Whitgift. Appointed Lieutenant and Captain-General of the Queen’s Armies and Companies in 1588, he died of ill-health some weeks after the Spanish Armada.
(Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia) –Annabelle
Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick
Like his little brother Robert, Ambrose Dudley was initially sentenced to death for his role in the failed attempt to establish Lady Jane Grey as Queen, but he was rehabilitated after he fought in the Battle of St Quentin. He was created Earl of Warwick by Elizabeth I in 1561. He commanded several military expeditions with more or less success. He was sworn of the privy council in September 1573. Once again like Robert, Ambrose Dudley was a major patron of the Puritan movement and supported non-conforming preachers. (Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikipedia) –Annabelle
Sir Francis Walsingham
secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her “spymaster”
a committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary’s death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.
Nathaniel Bacon
colonist of the Virginia Colony, famous as the instigator of Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, which collapsed when Bacon died from dysentery.
Sir Walter Mildmay (bef. 1523 – 31 May 1589)
He used what influence he possessed to shield the Puritans from the attacks of the bishops, and often urged the Queen to intervene on behalf of the Protestants in the Low Countries.[7] In his speeches in Parliament he argued that a liberal grant of subsidies placed the government under an obligation to redress grievances, and thus identified himself with the popular party in the commons.
1588, Cambridge:
The architect was Ralph Symons, and in 1588 the new building was opened with a dedication festival, which Mildmay attended. He installed in the college a master, Laurence Chaderton, three fellows, and four scholars; but subsequent benefactions soon increased the fellowships to fourteen and the scholarships to fifty. According to Fuller, Mildmay, on coming to court, after the college was opened was addressed by the Queen with the words: “Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a puritan foundation”, to which Mildmay replied: “No, madam; far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof”.
Sir Francis Knollys (c. 1511 / c. 1514 – 19 July 1596)
English courtier in the service of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and was a Member of Parliament for a number of constituencies.
Throughout his parliamentary career he was a frequent spokesman for the government on questions of general politics, but in ecclesiastical matters he preserved as a zealous puritan an independent attitude.
In May 1568 Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England, and flung herself on Elizabeth’s protection. She had found refuge in Carlisle Castle, and the delicate duty of taking charge of the fugitive was entrusted jointly to Knollys and to Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton. On 28 May Knollys arrived at the castle, and was admitted to Mary’s presence. At his first interview he was conscious of Mary’s powerful fascination. But to her requests for an interview with Elizabeth, and for help to regain her throne, he returned the evasive answers which Elizabeth’s advisers had suggested to him, and he frankly drew her attention to the suspicions in which Darnley’s murder involved her.
A month passed, and no decision was reached in London respecting Mary’s future. On 13 July Knollys contrived to remove her, despite “‘her tragical demonstrations”, to Bolton Castle, the seat of Lord Scrope, where he tried to amuse her by teaching her to write and speak English. Knollys’s position grew more and more distasteful, and writing on 16 July to Cecil, whom he kept well informed of Mary’s conversation and conduct, he angrily demanded his recall. But while lamenting his occupation, Knollys conscientiously endeavoured to convert his prisoner to his puritanic views, and she read the English prayer-book under his guidance.
Knollys never wavered in his consistent championship of the puritans. In May 1574 he joined Edmund Grindal (Archbishop of York), Sir Walter Mildmay, and Sir Thomas Smith in a letter to John Parkhurst (Bishop of Norwich), arguing in favour of the religious exercises known as “prophesyings”. But he was zealous in opposition to heresy, and in September 1581 he begged Burghley and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester to repress such “anabaptisticall sectaries” as members of the “Family of Love”, “who do serve the turn of the papists”. Writing to John Whitgift (Archbishop of Canterbury), 20 June 1584, he hotly condemned the archbishop’s attempts to prosecute puritan preachers in the Court of High Commission as unjustly despotic, and treading “the highway to the pope”. He supported Cartwright with equal vehemence. On 24 May 1584 he sent to Burghley a bitter attack on “the undermining ambition and covetousness of some of our bishops”, and on their persecutions of the puritans. Repeating his views in July 1586, he urged the banishment of all recusants and the exclusion from public offices of all who married recusants. In 1588 he charged Whitgift with endangering the queen’s safety by his popish tyranny, and embodied his accusation in a series of articles which Whitgift characterised as a fond and scandalous syllogism.[2]
In the parliament of 1588–9 he vainly endeavoured to pass a bill against non-residence of the clergy and pluralities. In the course of the discussion he denounced the claims of the bishops “to keep courts in their own name”, and denied them any “worldly pre-eminence”. This speech, “related by himself” to Burghley, was published in 1608, together with a letter to Knollys from his friend, the puritan John Rainolds, in which Bishop Bancroft’s sermon at St Paul’s Cross (9 February 1588–9) was keenly criticised. The volume was entitled “Informations, or a Protestation and a Treatise from Scotland … all suggesting the Usurpation of Papal Bishops”. Knollys’ contribution reappeared as “Speeches used in the parliament by Sir Francis Knoles”, in William Stoughton’s “Assertion for True and Christian Church Policie” (London, 1642). Throughout 1589 and 1590 he was seeking, in correspondence with Burghley, to convince the latter of the impolicy of adopting Whitgift’s theory of the divine right of bishops. On 9 January 1591 he told his correspondent that he marvelled “how her Majestie can be persuaded that she is in as much danger of such as are called Purytanes as she is of the Papysts”. Finally, on 14 May 1591, he declared that he would prefer to retire from politics and political office rather than cease to express his hostility to the bishops’ claims with full freedom.
John Rainolds
John Rainolds (or Reynolds) (1549 – 21 May 1607) was an English academic and churchman, of Puritan views. He is remembered for his role in the Authorized Version of the Bible, a project of which he was initiator.
By 1589, he had acquired a considerable reputation as a disputant on the Puritan side, and the story goes that Elizabeth I visiting the university in 1592 “schooled him for his obstinate preciseness, willing him to follow her laws, and not run before them.”
Creation of the King James Version of the Bible
The chief events of his subsequent career were his share in the Hampton Court Conference, where he was the most prominent representative of the Puritan party and received a good deal of favour from the King.
During the Conference, the Puritans, led by Rainolds as spokesperson, directly questioned James about their grievances. However, almost every request brought forward by Rainolds was immediately denied or disputed by James.[7] At some point during the course of Rainolds’ pleading before the king, Rainolds made a request that “one only translation of the Bible . . . [be] declared authentical, and read in the church”. Whether Rainolds was asking for a new translation or simply for a direction to authorize only one of the existing English translations, most took Rainolds’ words as a request for the former. James readily agreed to a new translation.
During the creation of the subsequent drafting of the new translation of the Bible, Rainolds worked as a part of the group which undertook the translation of the Prophets. The group met weekly in Rainolds’ lodgings in Corpus. Despite being afflicted by failing eyesight and gout, Rainolds continued the work of translation to the end of his life, even being carried into the meeting room.
Rober Beale, clerk of the council, (1541–1601)
was an English diplomat, administrator, and antiquary in the reign of Elizabeth I. As Clerk of the Privy Council, Beale wrote the official record of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, to which he was an eyewitness.
The papers of the diplomat and administrator Sir Robert Beale constitute one of the most remarkable extant archives for the study of the intellectual and political networks of early modern Europe. Beale held the office of Clerk to the Privy Council — the most significant secretarial office of the Tudor state — for an unprecedented twenty-nine years, from 1572 until his death. In that role he helped to shape both the political and administrative culture of the Elizabethan regime.
Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon
Francis Russel, Earl of Bedford
(born c. 1527—died July 18, 1585, London)
Protestant supporter of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Took his seat in the House of Lords as Lord Russell in 1552. Russell was in sympathy with the Protestant reformers, whose opinions he shared, and was imprisoned during the earlier part of Mary’s reign.
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne (November 1558) Bedford became an active figure in public life. He was made a privy councillor, had some influence in the religious settlement, and was sent on diplomatic errands to Charles IX of France and Mary Stuart.
Lady Knyvett (employed John More, the apostle of Norwich)
Robert Froth (Hadleigh); Edmund Allen
Rich merchants
Sir Robert Jermyn (1539-1614)
Suffolk landowner and magistrate (JP from 1577 and later high sheriff). He was removed from the bench (JP) for his radical PN views from 1583-93. He was MP for Suffolk in 1584 and 1586 and then elected for East Looe in 1588-9.
Supported the Dedham conference and Bury St Edmund’s combination lecture. example of a “godly magistrate” (sources wikipedia + Collinson and Craig; par AMZ)
Job Throckmorton (1545-1601)
Throckmorton grew up in a religiously divided environment. He graduated from Oxford in 1566). Throckmorton was asked by the privy council in 1584 to investigate William Skynner’s recusant activities (supporter of MQS).
In 1586, he prepared speeches on the fate of MQS, the war with Spain in the Netherlands and the puritan demands for a preaching ministry which he delivered after his shady election for Warwick in 1586. the same year, he denounced Mary Stuart in Parliament (“the daughter of sedition, the mother of rebellion, the nurce of impietie”), defended puritanism and the Prebyterian bills, and attacked European enemies (Spain, France, even the regency regime in Scotland → “No hope of Spayne, no trust in Fraunce, colde comforte in Scotlande”)
Most of the Marprelate tracts were printed in Warwickshire (evidence that Throckmorton was involved in their early production). Comparisons were made between his parliament speeches and the tracts. Yet, despite his trial in 1590, he was not sentenced. He then laid low until his death, although he kept on writing after his trial. (Oxford dictionary of national biography)
